I moved to LA

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Candidate,

Well, I moved from NYC to LA.

After moving from San Francisco to NYC over 10 years ago, this is a big change. When I moved to NYC, I only knew a few people. In NYC, I met my wife, grew my business, met new friends, changed my entire view on fitness, and so many other things.

My wife and I are both from California, so we've thought about moving back for a long time, especially since both our parents live in California.

Here's what happened to accelerate the move...

When COVID happened, I was fortunate that I could move fast — I got out of town, I set up a COVID fund for IWT employees, donated money to Feeding America, etc.

Part of the reason I started moving fast was a class I took in college on trauma, where we studied why certain people survived catastrophic events (e.g., plane crashes, concert fires, etc). One common characteristic of survivors was they acted fast.

Also...I've watched a lot of dark movies like Contagion, Children of Men, and Batman, so when I started reading the exponential charts, I was like....babe, we should get out of here. Right now. Worst case, I'd feel a little stupid if I was overreacting...but I'd rather overreact than underreact.

So I told Cass we should leave. It was pretty early on in March, before anyone really started leaving. We booked a flight to Sacramento to stay with my parents, but the morning of the flight, Cass woke up with a cough. We decided to change our plan.

She went on Airbnb and started looking for a house where we could stay for a while. I just asked for 2 things:

Let's make it far away from NYC
Let's make sure it's near a hospital

We found a place, booked it sight unseen, and drove up that day...

...and we've been there for the last few months.

We went from living in an NYC highrise to a very different type of living, where we only left our house once every two weeks to go to Walmart. BTW, we didn't live on an alpaca farm, but we did visit one, and I just had to share these photos with you guys.

We only went back to NYC once, to vote. It was bittersweet going back to the same apartment I've lived in for 10+ years — back to the amazing city where my wife and I met each other and where I grew up from my late 20s to today.

Even in the few hours we were there, we ran into a friend on the streets, a classic NYC moment. We saw our favorite restaurants (closed)...and we walked past the streets we'd lived in for years and years. I wasn't ready to leave NYC, but that 12-hour trip home helped us feel ready to turn the page for now.

Cass and I had always talked about going back to California, so she suggested we try it now and see if we liked it. Our parents both live in CA and we've never lived in California together. We did some searches online, found a furnished place near the beach, toured it via FaceTime, and rented it.

We gave our furniture to our family and hired an organizer to go into the apartment, pack everything up, donate whatever we didn't need, and ship the rest.

I told Cass, "It's like we're minimalists!" but then I said, "Wait, make sure that box of sweaters is insured." I guess I'm not really a 21-year-old nomad.

And we made the move.

The first night we were here, we sat outside eating Mexican food, watching the sunset, and decided we were going to stay for a while.

I miss NYC. I miss my friends, I miss my gym, I miss my apartment and living my California-lifestyle-in-NYC-while-working-from-home, walking the streets during weekday afternoons. I hope we go back someday.

Moving isn't something I love. Hell, I rented the same apartment in NYC for over 10 years!! But we decided to accelerate our decision, be closer to our family, and try out California. And that's where I'm writing this from.

This time, I had help boxing and shipping things, but even more than that, I had my rule of thumb: In times of uncertainty and crisis, it's better to overreact than underreact. Instead of getting bogged down in analysis paralysis and minutiae, I learned to look around, acknowledge reality, make a plan — and MOVE.

Move can mean protecting your family, it can mean battening down the hatches of your finances, or it can even mean physically moving. Whatever's possible for you.

I'm grateful to be safe and to be able to (physically) move during a pandemic. We don't have children, which makes this a lot easier. I'm grateful to have been able to make the move with a business that gives me the freedom to be this flexible.

Also, I'm grateful I am now on a 100% taco diet. Please send me your LA Mexican food recommendations.

In times of crisis, I use my personal rule to Acknowledge Reality, Make a Decision, and MOVE. Do you want to hear some of my other rules? (If so, reply to this, let me know.)

P.S. I'll be speaking at an online conference, Podia Create 2020, September 24. My talk will focus around the psychology of starting a business (including some tactics we tried here at IWT). Here's a trailer of the conference and here's a free signup link.