Do You Need To Move To A Big City To Be Successful? | Location Vs. Success

Do ambitious people have to move to big cities? I used to think the answer to this was absolutely. In fact, I did it. I packed up everything, I left the East Coast where I had gone to college, and I moved out west to Silicon Valley. And why did I do that? I did that because, well, you had to back then. The internet didn't really exist, and if you wanted to be part of a community, you had to go join that community. And then also what you find when you go to those big cities is you find a culture of ambition which is often not found in little markets. And so recently I started to realize, has this changed? Is it still the same thing as it's always been? And I went and looked, and I noticed there was a pattern, especially on Twitter and other platforms. I saw that the people doing this outside stuff and really kind of big vision type stuff were doing it in kind of random places. My friend Craig Fuller, who's doing FreightWaves from Chattanooga, there's Andrew Wilkinson in Vancouver, there's Brent Bashore who's doing it in Springfield. Like, these are all people that, as I look around and saw who are doing the really unique things, I didn't see LA, New York, Atlanta, Chicago. I didn't see those names over and over again as much as I would expect because those are the big population centers. There should be a disproportion of people online doing ambitious stuff from those places, but it's not. And it opened my mind to think maybe the world has changed a bunch, and I truly think it has. My story is pretty straightforward. I moved out to Silicon Valley, I stayed there for a number of years, and I ended up doing kind of what you expect. I learned a lot. I took on roles probably beyond my age at the time. And I think about San Antonio, which I love. I returned here in 2000. Them for. And I came back to a city that frankly is a little bit different than the big markets. I left for college and I wasn't ever planning to come back, but my story was I had a reason to come back. My family is very intertwined in the community here, and I went through a situation where my dad called and said, hey, I would like to retire, and here's an opportunity to come back and work in the family business and eventually take it over. And that seemed really exciting to me. And the reality is that being here in San Antonio since then, I've never really truly felt like I fit into the business community. I have amazing friends here. I totally love the people I get to I spend time with, but they're not business colleagues. I don't want to be judgmental about the way people approach living in San Antonio and to prioritize family and easy living. And like, that is a perfectly fine way to live. But there's the other end of the spectrum, whereas if you want to live a Bay Area or a New York style lifestyle in one of these other cities, like, it's tough. And if I think about where I have friction with San Antonio, it's because I try to live a San Francisco, both professional and personal lifestyle, but I try to live it in San Antonio. I want to live healthy, I want a bicycle commute, I want to do lots of travel, I want to think bigger about stuff. Those are all things that end up being at conflict with the way a typical person likes to live in San Antonio, and the mainstream here doesn't think that way. Today's sponsor is Moby Capital. Whether you need cash to solve a problem in your business or just need financing to grow as fast as you would like, Moby Capital is a great option. What's unique about their product is they offer financing in an unsecured manner. Moby Cap lends against your future revenue expectations, so there's no need to do things like pledge a house or do additional personal guarantees to make it work. And the best thing about MobyCap, they're located just down the road from me here in Austin, Texas, and they can turn around loans in as often as just a few hours. If you're interested in learning more about MobyCapital, thanks to them for helping with the video today. Go to mobicap.com and tell them that you heard about it on Girdley World. Now back to the show. In 2019, I had a pretty inspiring moment. My business coach, Tom Cuthbert, I'll put a link to his stuff in the comments. He asked me if I thought I would outgrow San Antonio, like, did I feel like my personal ambition was too big for the cultural ambition of the city? And to me, that was a pretty telling question. I didn't have a good answer at the time. I knew he had a point, right? Like, he had heard me talk about feeling like I didn't connect well with the business community, and then I felt like a bit of a fish out of water a lot of times. He's like, I'm fine with being different, you know, like, hey, there's a big world out there. And I kept that in the back of my mind. And then, like many, there was a transformational moment when COVID happened. And as I've talked to a a lot of friends, by the way. I find it super interesting the number of people's lives that have been totally transformed in weird ways by COVID. Because one day I opened up, I was super bored sitting at my house and I felt like I needed some social interaction. And I found the perfect platform for where introverts can go be extroverted. And it's Twitter. It's amazing. It's amazing for introverts. And so I spent a lot of time there and I discovered this was a great platform for somebody like me. I felt like I had so much to teach and so much to give and wanted to pay back for all the things that have been gifted to me from mentors and friends and family and parents over time. And I started to go all in on that platform. And what I discovered was there's this whole world that's migrated online and there's people who are doing extreme things and I could find my tribe there. I've been able to graduate or evolve, let's say, into spending more time in those types of communities. Tying this back to the original question of do people need to move to ambitious cities to find their tribe? I think that's not the case anymore. Like you just look at the case in point of all those people I listed off. Like you're able to do aggressive things and push the envelope from these far away places. And that's totally different than than when I was a young person. And to me, I think that's amazing for the future of these small cities. And so that's why I think today, like, you can live outside of those big markets and still be super hyper-ambitious. Like, I think it's totally functional now, and I don't think it was that way 25 years ago. And it's all been because of the shift both in the internet— and that's the obvious one from the technology there— but secondarily, in terms of how we've changed as a culture. COVID has forced so many of us to be comfortable in online communities. It made it so much more normal for all of us that we don't even think about how usual it is now. And for me, I'm so thankful because I think my business coach Tom might have been right that I would have needed to move away from San Antonio to find my tribe. But I'm so grateful that the online world has enabled that to happen. I get to have the best of both worlds. I get to continue to do things here with the people I love and the colleagues that I have both professionally and personally. But then I'm now part of a broader community that's a global one of people who are like me in my tribe doing things that I'm doing. And I can find peer groups and solace and learning from all those types of people no matter where they are. And so that's it. I think the answer is, if you're ambitious, you don't necessarily have to leave these little towns or smaller cities to do it. But there's nothing against moving to the big city. I'll— in fact, I'll probably encourage my kids to do it and tell them, go out and see the broader world, because at the very least they would get exposed to new things and different worlds and different networks than what they'll find just here in our city. And I think that's good for them. And then the best part is, for the future of San Antonio or Chattanooga or all these places, is you can go out there and you have the option to go to the big cities and then come back and not feel like you're going to lose so much because opportunity will follow you wherever you are, or at least wherever you can find an internet connection. Thanks for watching this video here on YouTube. Having a ton of fun making these. Tell me what you think in the comments below. Like, and if you really thought it was good, reshare it with your network, and I'll see you next week with another episode.