Why hello there.

I know it’s been two months since I last wrote anything, and do I ever have some updates… but those will come in time. Instead, I wanted to write a reflection piece given that my 6 year anniversary of moving to Los Angeles is today. It’s probably best to start with some context as to how I ended up here, right?

Back in April of 2016, I was visiting LA during a quarterly review with Facebook and my client; Five Four Club (later rebranded to Menlo Club). I’d stay for the weekend, only to hang out with the two CEOs and have them offer me a job to come in-house to manage their growth marketing efforts full-time. As someone who had been yearning to get out of Toronto and expand my career, I jumped at the opportunity and decided to accept it after some back & forth negotiating (which included putting into my contract that I would get OVO tickets yearly lol). I started that July where I would fly out every 2 weeks to work so that I could start getting familiar with the business, but still allowing me to tie up some loose ends and begin the move from Toronto which would take a bit to finish. Eventually the time would come in September that my buddy Robin and I flew to Seattle and began a week-long road trip down the coast with our final destination being LA and my new apartment. Accepting that job and uprooting my life in Toronto was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life, but it didn’t come without it’s trials that pushed me to my limits. Rather than write out a novel about my life in LA on this post (that’s what the upcoming book is for), let’s get into a few lessons that LA has taught me 6 years later that may be applicable no matter where you live.

Change Isn’t Easy

This one is kind of straight-forward but let me remind you that change ain’t easy. It’s uncomfortable as hell, and it usually doesn’t feel very good in the beginning but that’s how you know that it’s probably good for you (the same way that medicine tastes like shit). I found LA incredibly difficult in the beginning (and still do from time to time) because it was an entirely new setting for me to adapt to. As someone who is confident and usually a leader in most settings, it felt extremely scary to be so lost in a new country and not have any friends or people to navigate it with. I put on a strong face when in public, but inside I was getting eaten up by loneliness and frustration about how hard I was finding the move. Given I was 26 at the time, friends weren’t the easiest to make either as most people had their ‘circle’ and didn’t really accept new friend applications at that time. Plus, I was finding that a lot of relationships in the city were purely transactional in that if you had nothing to offer the person that you were engaging with, they probably wanted nothing to do with you. Friendships here were more like business transactions than actually being because two people had mutual interests and wanted to bring joy to each other’s lives.

My advice if you are going through something similar in your life? Be patient and focus on what makes you happy. Yes, cliche to say but if you focus on things that make you happy (ex: hobbies), you’ll eventually run into other people who share the same interests and that’s the easiest way to form a bond that isn’t so transactional. Plus I’ve never regretted putting my time and effort into anything that brings me happiness.

Oh, and I also don’t want to sugarcoat how hard it’s going to be sometimes to not be able to walk down the block and go to your friends house or drive 20 minutes to see your family. These people are no longer within arm’s reach, so make sure you get lot’s of FaceTime’s going and try to travel home as much as you can… or you can bug them a million times to come visit you instead, which is my strategy.

(Good) People Are So Important To Keep Around

Remember how I mentioned a lot of relationships are transactional? Well not all of them will be and sometimes your life intersects with some real gems of people. Keep them around at all costs.

One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned growing up is that my friend group is constantly shrinking due to falling outs, relationships, having babies, careers and moving away among a variety of other reasons. Basically… life taking us in different directions. So if you have people that you enjoy being around, bring you joy, and add value to your life then it’s super important to make sure that you put in effort to keep them around. Life can get very distracting and it’s easy to not follow up, call, text or bail on plans with people and just think that you’ll be able to follow up with next week. The reality is, sometimes you can’t. I learned this the hard way when finding out about my friend Ralph passing away earlier this year after not being in contact since 2020.

Something I also did for a while was complain that I didn’t have enough friends, yet if I actually stopped and thought about all of the people in LA that I had met, I could have probably converted some of those people into friends with just a little effort. Grab a coffee. Go to dinner. Take a hike (literally). I bet we all have people that are ‘acquantices’ who actually could turn into something more if we just took the time to get to know them a little better. It’s basically dating without hooking up, so maybe we should spend more time on building friendships than on a slew of failed first dates? What a revelation.

Don’t Believe Everything You See and Hear

So this is most certainly not a problem exclusive to LA as I’d argue it’s affecting our entire generation, but I definitely think it’s something that is on a whole other level here. What am I talking about? Well our good old friend social media, and the types of appearances that we portray on our pages.

Too many of us, myself included, portray the absolute best of what our life has to offer in that moment. The problem is, life isn’t always this peachy and we aren’t sharing any of that, so social media has turned into this competition of who can display the better life; whether we are doing it on purpose or not. Everybody looks like they are out here living the dream and it’s starting to set unrealistic standards about how life should look to each of us. The other problem about what is going on is half the stuff being displayed on social media isn’t even true. Whether it’s people photoshopping their looks, or wearing clothing they can’t afford… it’s been a tool that makes us look better than we really are. I’ve met too many people in LA who are living beyond their means just to try and keep up with the appearance they are portraying on their Instagram.

Here’s the reality; we’re all different people on different paths. Some are on an easier path, some are not. Some have great opportunities always available, and some have to work their ass off to get any opportunity. Instead of constantly comparing yourself to those around you, set your own standards and goals and strive to meet those exclusively. Sure, you can use others as a reference point, but in no way should they be defining how you live your life. I can admit that I got sucked into this world early on in LA and it really affected my perception of how I viewed life. Despite living in a nice apartment and being able to travel and pay my bills comfortably, it wasn’t enough when I compared myself to my peers who always had the better picture. This was such a toxic habit and it really led to me spiralling out in 2019, among other things.

Don’t get me wrong; I still fall into this trap every once in a while. My advice? Be grateful about what you have and how far you’ve come. I use a gratitude journal as my anchor back to reality when I start to get upset about how my life is comparing to those on my IG.

Put Yourself First, Always

So I mentioned that moving to LA came with it’s struggles… well, it drove me to my lowest mental point that I’ve ever been at. Rewind back to the Fall of 2019 and not only was I having horrible dating experiences and very few friends to socialize with but I also worked in the most toxic work environment that I’ve ever seen. My CEO and I had a very abusive relationship towards one another, and I consumed myself with my work because I thought it would help make him like me better plus pay off financially. Spoiler alert – it didn’t.

I get into a lot of detail on this experience in my book, but to provide some quick context, the environment I was in was extremely difficult to work in. A neverending amount of work led to long hours with very little satisfaction as it always felt like it wasn’t enough. The company was on a downward spiral revenue-wise, and even internally it was a revolving door of employees where people left and the rest of us were left to pick up their responsibilities without ever filling the position back in. Cue up COVID and this only got worse as we were freaking out about what would happen to the fashion industry in a world where people didn’t need to get dressed up to leave their house. Plus, our company had never experienced remote work before and it was clear that some employees couldn’t handle it. After spending 2020 working almost 16 hour days and weekends to launch two new e-com brands on top of a new subscription platform, I got COVID near the end of the year and was put on a ventilator for 3 days in Mexico. The fucked up part? I was still on my phone slacking & emailing my team since it was in the middle of our Black Friday campaigns and they needed my help. Nobody forced me to do this, but the fact that I felt pressured to shows what kind of environment this company had setup for it’s employees. There was no gratitude shown for this either from other team members or upper management. It’s almost as they expected me to work since I wasn’t completely incapicitated. A few months later, I would get passed up on a promotion and raise (which I hadn’t had one in 3 years by that point) and this would be the final straw that leads me to my final lesson that LA has taught me:

Put yourself first. Every fucking time.

Starting 2021 off with a new perspective about valuing myself above everything else was the best decision I made that year. I stopped working past 8 hours a day, and never on weekends. I started to get my daily routine in order; like my diet and sleep which helped with my health. By not working all the time, I suddenly had more time to do things I enjoyed like cooking, gaming, and studying astrophysics. I also started to prioritize the people in my life by spending more time with them. Overall, I just started working to live rather than living to work. I’ve continued this mantra ever since, and it’s something that has really helped me get more out of life in the past two years.

You know what’s a weird concept? I’ve lived in LA longer than I lived in Toronto… but that’s also kind of cool. I’m grateful to be able to have two homes now.

More to come in the book, but until then… thank you as always.