I’ve said very little about this and only hinted at what I’ve been doing and why. Consider this post a “results thus far” update, and by all means, not a conclusion just yet.

Many of you know that most of my life, up until I was 50, was spent rolling the dice on every venture. I was in a constant state of experimentation as I looked for real success, not just success on paper.

Many years ago, someone asked me a very good question that I’ve never forgotten. They asked, at what point have you made it? Was it when you signed the deal to buy a company, or was it upon a successful exit? I had to think about the answer for a long time, and I concluded that you’re a success at the decision point, not at the exit. That’s just the result of the decision point.

I remembered that conversation the day I bought control of Open Interface North America. I knew that it was my moment of success, not the moment the deal closed with Qualcomm and I achieved my exit, though some may argue. Success happens, in retrospect, at the point of action, not at the point of the result. While it’s true that results matter, it always begins with decisive action that gets us to a result. I know I say results matter in my writings, but I’m talking about what gets you to that outcome.

The morning I made the decision to sell my house in Kirkland was another decision point. That was my moment. What I’m living now are the results.

What I had to come to terms with was that, post-sale to Qualcomm, I was somewhat befuddled. I had plenty of money, lots of options in my day, but I sat up in my bedroom for days on end just surfing the internet, stuck in a mental loop. I put my energy into getting Exotics at Redmond Town Center launched, but I’d otherwise just sit there in a chair, going in a big circle. It was like I went from running a marathon to taking that same run and putting me on a gerbil wheel.

I took on two roles, as President and COO, and neither one was meaty enough. I felt held back in both roles, despite our results. I was hamstrung.

When COVID hit in 2020, I thought, wow, I’m suddenly on that same wheel again. I was sitting at home, reading stats about deaths and illnesses that quickly proved to be fraudulent. The numbers were not statistically possible and few seemed to care. What mattered more was that people take it seriously, never mind the erroneous numbers.

This drove me nuts, especially when others couldn’t see what was right in front of them. I set it all aside in frustration because I was living in Seattle under extreme draconian lockdowns over what I knew had to be a giant lie. It wasn’t like someone else was telling me it was a lie; the data was right in front of me from official government sources.

It wasn’t that COVID didn’t exist, it’s that the numbers were grossly exaggerated. This was mass hysteria and pointing it out, fueled the mass hysteria.

One early Sunday morning, when I knew there would be little traffic on the road, during the height of the lockdown, I drove to the emergency room entrances of five different hospitals to see the crisis up close. To my shock and amazement, there were no packed emergency rooms, and no chaos at the admissions counter. It all looked about as I’d expect on any given day. Yes, there were checkpoints and signs everywhere, but no people. It was creepy.

I even went to Harborview Medical Center, thinking that’s where I’d see it all because it was the war zone of hospitals. I parked my car on the street and walked over. They wouldn’t let me get too close to the door without a health issue, so I walked around to see from the other side of the street, and there was nothing—no line, nothing. It was like something out of a movie.

What I was hearing and seeing in the news was not what I was experiencing directly. That was the moment I decided I needed to get out! I was living in a city destroyed by an agenda that wasn’t yet clear to me. I didn’t want to fight it. I just wanted out and to get away from it. I wanted off the gerbil wheel and away from the insanity, and it was time to build a life where I could do my best work, unencumbered.

The experiment was: Could it be possible, with some planning, to create the perfect life anywhere and away from the overstated crisis and political insanity? Was there any place more sane? Was there such a thing as a place where common sense ruled? I needed to know the answer.

I believe in the “small experiment” before the big one. The small experiment was to spend about two to three weeks in my car with my dog, driving to Wisconsin and back, with detours to look at houses I found online. I wanted to know, could I create the perfect work-life somewhere else? I had no idea what was out there, other than the stereotypes I’d been hearing for years about life in the Midwest, even though it’s where I spent my childhood.

I blogged about the adventure every day as I slowly uncovered the truth about the lives of people in the United States, away from the media corruption and mass hysteria. I just wanted to know what was real. Were they living differently outside of Washington State? The answer was overwhelming, YES!

It was that drive that convinced me to return to Seattle, sell my house, and GTFO. Seattle was living a giant over-exaggerated lie.

The second I crossed the Washington border into Idaho—sanity! It only got better from there. A drive around the Midwest told me that my hunch was correct: there were sane people elsewhere. There were far fewer sheeple. Illinois? Ratcheted down! Minnesota? They were nuts! But Wisconsin (outside of Milwaukee and Madison), Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Colorado (outside of Denver), Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa were all places of sanity and rational thinking. This was all I needed to know. It was time for the big experiment.