Why I shaved my head and moved to Miami

People keep asking me why I buzzed my head and bounced from Phoenix to Miami. The answer isn't random. It comes down to two words. Balance and identity. Let me break down how I actually think about both, because it's probably different than what you've heard.

I've closed $9M+ in sales and I'm scaling my own coaching business past six figures a month right now. Take that for what it's worth. But two things always come up when I train people on sales. Balance, and how they see themselves. So let's get into it.

The question that started this

A guy in my community named Kyle sent me this message. He said ever since he got into sales, it runs his life. He works almost every hour of every day. Shower, driving, doesn't matter. He doesn't feel burnt out, but every time he's doing something that isn't moving him forward, like selling, scripting, role playing, he feels guilty. He asked if that's normal and what my balance actually looks like.

This is really common for someone young and hungry like Kyle. I ran into the exact same thing. My answer to him was simple. Ask yourself where this whole idea of "balance" even comes from.

Are you actually unhappy with your day to day? Or are you just measuring yourself against expectations from people who aren't even on the same path as you, living a life you don't even want?

Don't expect an extraordinary life doing ordinary things. Be okay being different if you're looking for a different outcome.

If you asked a random person if I have balance, they'd say no. That's fine. I enjoy what I do and I wouldn't trade places with them.

Growing up average was the thing that scared me

I grew up in a small town in Kansas. Not much going on there. I always had this aching feeling that I didn't want to be the same as everyone else. I didn't want to be average.

Here's the weird part. I had zero good examples of what extraordinary looked like. None. But I had a ton of examples of what average looked like. That fear of ending up average is what pushed me to do things outside the ordinary.

I was the first person in my family to go to college, let alone graduate high school. So I felt like I had to go. Looking back, I probably wouldn't do it again, but that's beside the point. Right when I graduated, COVID hit. I said screw it, got a remote sales job, and shipped off to Miami.

If you asked my family if that was smart, they'd probably say I was taking a dumb amount of risk. But I didn't want to live the life any of them lived. And the reason I'm in a position where nobody from my peer group growing up is in the same spot... it's because I didn't do what they did.

We want to be exceptional, but we don't want to be the exception.

Being the exception is hard. Standing off on your own is hard. But that's the requirement. Nobody tells you that part.

The tradeoff question

Here's the real filter I use. Is the tradeoff okay with you? If it is, you should be fine making that trade.

What holds most people back isn't ability. It's the fear of what other people will think. If you replayed my life back to you, you'd probably say I'm a pretty boring 27 year old. I don't go to bars. I don't drink much. I don't do the stuff most people my age do. I just don't find it interesting.

But I'm way further ahead than most people when it comes to finances. That was a trade I was willing to make, consciously.

There's no such thing as having extraordinary results and not being obsessive about it.

I was obsessed with sales. It was everything for years. That's the only reason I eventually got to a point where I could have any balance at all. If you just want to make $30k a month and work 20 hours a week, you can get there. But you're only getting there after two, three, four years of total imbalance first.

Once you hit the number, you miss the grind

Here's something nobody tells you. Once you get to $30k, $40k, $50k a month and you can do it with relative ease, you actually miss the grind. You start looking for the next hill to climb.

That's where identity comes in. You have to be the person who climbs hills. Because once you hit your first $10k, $20k, $30k, $40k, $50k month, you realize two things fast. One, it doesn't make you happy. Two, it's honestly not that much money.

What actually brings fulfillment is doing the hard things. If you can shift from being someone who's just chasing the money to being someone who does hard things, you'll be better at everything. Not just sales. Business. Life.

Sales is hard. Having hard conversations is hard. But if you find joy in it, that's what keeps you going without burning out.

Most burnout I see isn't from working too much. It's a misalignment between what people expect and what they're actually looking for. If you shift your identity to match the person who gets the outcome you want, you probably won't have balance. But you'll get the outcome.

Why Miami, why the buzzed head

I lived in Phoenix for just under two years. Before that, I swore I'd never work out of an office. I'd been doing remote sales for years, living in Miami Beach, loving it. Then some life stuff happened, I got out of a relationship, and an opportunity came up to move to Scottsdale and work in an office.

First couple months, great. After a few months, it started eating me up inside. So getting out of that environment was really about getting back to my original identity. Someone who's free but still puts in the work. Getting back to my old self who actually enjoyed the grind, just doing it on my own time, my own place, with the beach and the weather right there.

Now the buzzed head. With my head buzzed, I look ridiculous. I do. If you go back to when I first started YouTube, I had the same buzzed head. Every time I look in the mirror and I'm not working, I think, "why did I do this to myself for no reason."

That discomfort is the point. It's a constant reminder to put in the work to get the outcome I want, which right now is scaling my coaching business past six figures a month.

There's going to be stretches where you have zero balance. I'm in one right now. You never know how long that stretch lasts. But if you put the work in, you get the fruits of it eventually.

The bottom line

If you want different outcomes, understand that balance isn't something you always get to have. Sometimes you get it, a lot of times you don't. What matters more is making sure your identity matches the person who actually gets the results you're chasing.

For me, changing my location and changing my hair helped me lock into a new identity and a new sense of urgency. I'm not saying go shave your head. But switch something up. Novelty and a change in surroundings forces focus. And you don't get huge leaps in your life without focus.