In this episode, Mariette Frey discusses the importance of figuring out where to move and introduces the FRED Framework, which stands for Finances, Robustness, Ecosystem, and Dreams. She emphasizes the need to start with your dreams and visualize your ideal life. Mariette then guides listeners through the framework, including assessing their financial situation, considering their physical and mental strength, and identifying the community and environment they need to thrive. She also highlights the importance of revisiting and adjusting their dreams as they go through the framework. The episode concludes with a quote from Michael Jordan about overcoming obstacles.
Takeaways
- Start with your dreams and visualize your ideal life in a new location.
- Assess your financial situation and create a baseline to understand your financial readiness for a move.
- Consider your physical and mental strength to ensure you are prepared for the challenges of moving.
- Identify the community and environment you need to thrive and create a checklist of must-haves for your new location through a ‘City POC’ or a ‘Bake-Off’
- Revisit and adjust your dreams as you go through the framework to ensure alignment with your goals and desires.
Chapters – Updated timestamps in “Subheads” section
- 00:00 Introduction and the Importance of Figuring Out Where to Move
- 03:26 The FRED Framework: Finances, Robustness, Ecosystem, and Dreams
- 10:10 Dreams: Journaling Exercise and Visualizing Your Ideal Life
- 12:06 Finances: Assessing Your Financial Situation and Creating a Baseline
- 25:36 Robustness: Considering Your Physical and Mental Strength
- 30:34 Ecosystem: Identifying the Community and Environment You Need to Thrive
- 41:41 Dreams Part 2: Revisiting Your Dreams and Making Adjustments
- 44:03 Conclusion and Michael Jordan Quote
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Thank you for listening! XO, Mariette
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How to Figure Out Where You Should Move
Introduction and the Importance of Figuring Out Where to Move
I am so excited to talk to you about figuring out where to move. This is a theme that comes up in a lot of the conversations that I have with people. It comes down to, “I want to move, I just don’t know where. That’s been holding me back.” I want to help remove some of those obstacles for you because it’s important. I am creating a digital course. It is not ready for pre-sale yet, but I will let you know.
If you’re on my mailing list, you will be the first to know when it’s going on pre-sale. If you are on my mailing list, which you can go to MariettesOnTheMove.com and register for the mailer, which sounds pretty obvious, you will get this workbook. It’s the FRED Framework Workbook. It is quite robust to use one of the framework words. I think it’s like fourteen pages or something like that. I’m revamping it a little bit. It’s going to be even better when we’re done.
Our brains are problem-solving devices. Depending on what you are saying and how you are approaching this conversation internally, it is how the outcome is going to happen. I’ll give you examples. If you’re to say, “I don’t know where I want to move. I know I don’t want to be here, but I don’t want to move,” your brain is like, “Don’t move.” If you say, “What are the things that I need to have in my community to thrive outside of where I live, and how can I get there? Who can help me get there?”
All of a sudden, your brain is like, “I’m ready. Challenge accepted. Let’s do this.” Just to remind you, if you’re new to this show or if you’re new to me as a coach, I am a relocation coach. I’m a moving mentor. I truly, honestly tell people to move probably only half the time. A lot of times, people have things that they need right around them. They just don’t know how to harness it. There are some times when to get to your dreams, that’s what you have to do, because you have that dream city in mind.
The FRED Framework: Finances, Robustness, Ecosystem, and Dreams
The FRED Framework Workbook is literally a roadmap to use when you’re deciding to move. I’m going through it. If you followed my journey, or you can look at some of the blog posts that I have, I will start writing more about what my journey has been. Six months ago, I was ready to move. Going through the framework myself, I took a step back because I’m mature now. I don’t just YOLO and spontaneously do things. I’m a little bit silly, and that’s something you’d better get ready for this season, because I am authentically me again.
I am going through all of this because I love helping people move. I love helping people discover where their destiny is. If moving is part of that destiny, like planning it out and getting ready for it and acting as if, it gets me all fired up. To go through the framework, if you are new to this, FRED is an acronym. It stands for Finances, Robustness, think mental and physical strength, Ecosystem, and Dreams. What I do is we start with your dreams, because if you don’t have a target to aim for, you’re not going to hit it every time.
What I do is we start with the dreaming phase. If you go to my website, MariettesOnTheMove.com, and you register for the mailer, it will automatically send you this framework once you opt in. I’m going to go through the framework. It starts by giving you a welcome and reminding you what FRED stands for and how we reverse engineer you into the framework. It tells you a little bit about who I am. My name is Mariette Frey. I’ve moved eighteen times in the last 24 years to five of America’s top cities. I’ve lived in Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, New York City, Bloomington, Illinois, Carbondale, Illinois, and Munster, Indiana.
I’ve lived all over, and I can honestly say there are some moves that, if I put the FRED framework in place, I probably wouldn’t have moved to. I’ve learned something through all of those. I work for an amazing company. We’re a Fortune 200 company. I am a field sales manager for that company. Through the years, they have relocated me to all these amazing places. I didn’t use their relocation packages. I did all the moves on my own. I did get reimbursed, I will put that out there, because moving is expensive. That’s something we go through in finances.
It taught me so much about the moving industry and interstate moves versus intrastate moves. If you work for a corporate company, think of your intranet as your internal SharePoint site. Your internet is something that crosses the interweb and the global highways of the internet. It’s also interstate if you think about it that way. When you go state to state to state on the highway, that’s called interstate driving. That’s why you say, “I’m going to get onto Interstate 77, 85, or 294.”
Dreams: Journaling Exercise and Visualizing Your Ideal Life
It goes through a little bit about my story and what brought me to all my moves. We start with dreams. This is a journaling exercise. If you automatically turned off and were rolling your eyes, and you’re like, “I don’t like to journal. I have a graveyard of journals,” like me, don’t think of it as journaling per se. Think about it as an idea soup. What are all the things that, in my life, I have come up with that I want to do? That could be everything from being a Broadway star to being a backup dancer on one of J-Lo’s videos, or being a pipe fitter, a construction worker, or a real estate agent.
Whatever it is that you have thought of, and whatever city it is that you’ve thought of moving to, that you maybe visited for a weekend, you’re like, “San Diego. I could live here in a heartbeat. This is amazing,” write all of that stuff down. I’m going to ask you to take it one step further. I want you to think about what you are wearing in this dream, what you are feeling in this dream, and what you smell in this dream. I can tell you, when I moved to New York City, I wasn’t smelling garbage on the streets. There was a garbage strike happening when I moved there, and it stunk. That was one thing I wasn’t prepared for.
Start with your dreams. If you do not have a target to aim for, you will not hit it every time. Share on XI want you to picture exactly where you are, what you feel, what you’re wearing, and all of those things. Don’t worry about the how. A lot of people are like, “I have no money in the bank.” Don’t worry about the how. Think about the what. There are exercises that we can do to help you specifically hone in on whether or not that’s the right place for you, or if it’s even still the dream. I can tell you that, for the longest time, I wanted to be an actress. I got to do some acting bits.
I was on Chicago Fire and Chicago PD as an extra. I didn’t do major parts. I was on Below Deck Mediterranean as a guest. I did a bunch of stuff like that. I did some theater work. I did a lot of auditions. What I learned from all of that is there’s a lot of waiting around, and I don’t love it anymore. I love talking to you on a day-to-day basis and coaching and mentoring, and getting fired up about your dreams and helping you figure out what you want to do, because I’ve been able to figure out what I want to do. This is how I did it.
A lot of people say to make a pro and con list. I don’t want you to do that. I want you to just make a pro list. Get out all of those things that have been circling around your head. What happens is we think about an experience with one side of our brain, and we close it out with another side of our brain. Until we say, “I don’t want to be a TV actress or a Broadway star anymore,” we can close out that dream and release that pressure off of this guiding light that you have above you, saying, “Remember, you wanted to be an actress.” You have to intentionally do these things.
That’s a little bit of an exercise. The page itself says dreams, and it has some of that stuff on there, lets you make that idea soup. If you want to journal in an actual journal after that, and think about how you felt doing that exercise, even one step further. It then takes you to the next page to a checklist. One, it says, “I want you to daydream about moving to a new city. Let’s talk about your dreams.” It talks about reviewing your finances, your robustness. It’s going to take you now to reverse engineer yourself through the framework to get to that dream. It goes through the ecosystem, too, which is a huge part of all this.
At the end, we tie it back to your dreams to see if even how the dream has changed, or if it’s time to pivot, or if you’re happy being right where you are. One of the things I start with is connections. I want you to write down in this space ten or more people who can help you get to those dreams. Whether they’re people that you find on LinkedIn, people in your community, people who are influencers, or somehow you can get connected with and get a message to. Who are those people? I want you to narrow that down to your top three. We’re still dreaming. We’re still not focused on the how. We’re focusing on the what, and then your network. That’s important.
Finances: Assessing Your Financial Situation and Creating a Baseline
We get into the un-fun stuff, which is typically talking about your finances. Nobody likes to talk about this part because it’s better to go right into some people’s heads. We’ll figure it out. Everything is figureoutable. There’s also a part that says, “You irresponsibly moved without having a safety net, and now you’re scrambling and you can’t take risks that you would like to if you had money in the bank.” That’s why it’s important to take a baseline of where you are.
It’s hard. It’s hard to admit that, “I’ve been spending too much money because I’m trying to fill a void because I’m lonely,” or “I’m eating out every night because I don’t think I’m a good cook, and I refuse to watch YouTube videos for free to learn because I was told once that I’m not good at it.” There are some truths that you are going to have to paint if you are serious about moving. If there is anything that wastes a lot of money, it’s moving. You need to get a baseline.
There’s a spot for a list of your debts. There’s a spot for your list of savings. There is what your gross pay is, which is before your taxes and deductions, and everything gets taken out. What your net pay is, so what you walk away with. If you have an hourly job, estimate based on how many hours, on average, you can look at your past ten paychecks and on average see how much you’ve worked, or if you’re in a full-time job that has a salary, that should be the same number every week unless you’re in sales. You can then take an average of what you estimate your minimums, like your highs and lows.
At minimum, that’s what you’re going to make, and then any other income. On my favorites page, I have several side hustles that you can do. A great one is voiceover work. My friend, Jesse Carroll, has an awesome digital course about how to be a voiceover artist from your home. It takes very little money to set up. You can rent the equipment if you want to get started. In your first couple of jobs that you get, you can buy your own equipment and you can set it up in a closet. I have my voiceover studio literally in my office closet. I took everything out of it. I put moving blankets up because I had a surplus of them. I put a little shelving unit that I was going to donate in there.
It’s not perfect. I don’t love it, quite honestly, but it works. I can see my copy. I have my microphone right in front of my mouth. Underneath is my soundbox and all that stuff. I have my computer and everything set up behind me. He recommends using Audacity. It is a super-easy program. At one point, I visited him in New York City, and I watched him. He is lightning fast. I am still pecking at it. It’s still a challenge for me, but I’m learning. There’s that side hustle.
I am an affiliate for a CBD company. It is an amazing CBD company called Green Compass. It’s here in North Carolina. It’s the only water-soluble jelly and tincture that you can have. What’s important about that is there’s a lot of CBD out there that’s garbage. It’s full of sugar. Not good ingredients. Not going to do anything for your body. They eliminate all of the crap. It’s all goodness. I have seen such a difference in my anxiety. I’ve seen such a difference in my well-being, my skin, and how I sleep.
I no longer take melatonin. I take the sleep tincture. You put it under your mouth or your tongue. You wait for a minute, and then you swallow it. Funny story. The first time I ever took it, I assumed it was an oral tincture, which it is. I’m putting that out there. I don’t know. I put it under my tongue. I was reading the box, and it said essential oils. It tastes disgusting. I’m sorry. It does. Green Compass, if there’s a way to make it taste better, I would love that. When it’s under your tongue, you don’t taste it because it’s not hitting your taste buds. I let a little hit my tongue.
We think about an experience with one side of our brain and close it out with another side. Share on XI swallow it. It goes down my mouth. I had one of those choking moments, a little bit, at the same time I was swallowing. I was like, “Was I not supposed to ingest that? It’s an essential oil. Was I supposed to rub that on my arms or my armpits?” I panicked. It was one of those comical moments that I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I got on our website and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I had this moment of relief from all the panic. It is an oil tincture. You do put it under your tongue. I did do it right. Probably one of the funniest moments I’ve ever had alone. I was embarrassed to tell anybody at first, but you’re my people, and now I’m telling you.
I’ve got that. I’ve got SAVVI Athleisure Wear. They have now dipped into holistic and wellness things. They’ve always said that they’re going to be a lifestyle brand. In any of my videos, you see me working out. I don’t have many videos working out because I haven’t done it in a long time. I’m getting back to it. My back is getting to a much better place where I can work out again. You’ll start seeing a lot more SAVVI stuff.
Legitimately, I was a Lululemon and Athleta snob for a very long time. This stuff is magical. It keeps the girls high and tight. It keeps the butt high and tight. It hugs in the right places. It smooths in the right places. It’s comfortable. It’s moisture-wicking. I can sweat my butt off in it. Ten minutes later, it’s fine. I can go run errands and things like that. I sweat a ton in Pilates. It’s perfect for it. You can rep that. If you want to even be a podcaster, Riverside is the platform that I’m recording this on. You can join that platform. I get a kickback on the affiliate link. I’ve tried a couple of them. This is magical. I love it. It helps me write my show notes. It transcribes it for me. If I ever decide to write a book, I have some good quotes to use.
MONAT. Organic skin care and hair care. I use it. If you see my hair, it is nice and shiny. My skin has gotten so much better. I’m using the Be Balanced routine. I love it. It’s holistic, anti-aging. There are no chemical ingredients. It’s organic. I have a ton of side hustles that you can do, that you can find right on my favorites page. I’m sure there’s more, and I’m forgetting it. There are lots of side hustles that you can do to earn some extra income.
Back to the framework, if you get to know me, you know that I go out on a lot of tangents, and that was one of them. Anyway, finances. You’re going to record your debts. You’re going to record your savings. You’re going to take all of those numbers, and you’re going to add them up and see where you are. It is scary. It is a punch in the proverbial face, because you have to reflect and think, “Where am I at? What did I get myself into?” There’s no one coming to rescue you. You’re an adult. You might have a trust fund, but I would say 97% of Americans do not have some trust fund that’s going to save them if they keep doing the habits that they’re doing.
It is very natural to have a total emotional roller coaster in those two exercises because, dreams, you’re euphoric, and you’re thinking about love and all of the things that you want for yourself, and then you go to finances, and it is a stark reality of what’s happening in your life. They say your finances reflect where you are emotionally, and that could not be more true.
There’s also on the page is my friend Hannah. She is doing this picture. When we were on Below Deck Mediterranean, when we first got to the hotel, there was this huge wall, and she’s a professional parkour athlete, and she’s hilarious. She was on Squid Games, the reality show, so if you watch that, you’ve seen Hannah, but she’s doing this jump on the wall, and I happened to catch her at the absolute perfect moment, but she’s @Parkour_Mama on Instagram, so check her out.
She’s got some of the funniest videos. I love blooper reels, and for the longest time, she was only putting the highlights, and then she started putting the blooper reels, and I’m like, “Girl, you have taken it to the next level for me.” I love that, because if I try to do any of that, I would be all of those bloopers every day.
Anyway, you’ve got your baseline at that point. The next page is going through the fact that you’ve made it to that next stage. We then go back to some of the reflections. We talk a little bit about the money cues. Two of my favorite questions when I’m coaching somebody, and they are overspending, or they feel blocked and can’t make money, or whatever they’re dealing with, one of the questions I ask them is, “What are you trying to prove?” The second follow-up question I ask is, “Who are you trying to prove it to?”
I know when I moved to San Francisco, I lived right down the street from a Bebe. I don’t know if you guys remember that. I was in there enough. I should have known how to say the title of that. The people that I was hanging out with were a lot better off than me financially. They came from very wealthy families, and I felt I had to keep up and always wore the latest and greatest. It made me feel good. It made me feel confident. It made me look like I was okay financially, but I was racking up some debt.
As Dave Ramsey said, “You’re buying things you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t even like.” I did like those people. That part wasn’t true, and I’m still very dear friends with a bunch of them. I get to go see one on Tuesday night and have dinner with her. I cannot wait. I’m so excited. She and her husband are two of my absolute favorite people in the world. I usually ask that question, and I have to think about it. Sometimes we don’t even answer it in the session. It’s something that you have to come back to.
There’s always something you’re doing to prove something when your spending is out of control. Whether it’s filling a void, filling the loneliness, whatever it is, it’s that endorphin release that you can change and find a new way to release, to get that high that could be making you money instead of spending money.
When moving houses, you need to record your debt and savings. Take all of those numbers and add them up to see where you are. Share on XThe next question that I ask is, “If you lost your job the day you moved into your new place, would you have enough in savings to live for 3 to 6 months?” That’s a very real question. We are in a market and an economy where companies do mass layoffs for no reason, or there’s always a reason, but if their numbers are down, they trim the fat. If you are new at a company, you could be one of the first to go. That’s typically how they do it. It’s hierarchy. Sometimes it’s the top people who go because they cost the company so much money, even though they have the most experience and bring the best tribal knowledge.
Anyway, that is the last of the money questions. It gives you a little added layer to think about because moving is expensive. There are so many unknown costs that I can’t even tell you. One of the things that I want to do at some point this year, I don’t have time to do it, but I have saved all of the receipts from all of my moves. I remember going through my receipts at one point, and even on moving supplies, I spent $400, and that’s boxes, tape, bubble wrap, crazy stuff. It all adds up. Plus, you add on first month’s rent, last month’s rent, the deposit, or if you’re moving into a new house, a down payment, the homeowner’s insurance, all the things that come on with turning your electric on, turning your cable on, there are fees for everything.
Robustness: Considering Your Physical and Mental Strength
One of the ways we overcome that is by doing a proof of concept, or I call it a city POC, and the POC stands for proof of concept. We’ll get into that in a second when we talk about the ecosystem. The next part of the framework is robustness. First of all, the word robustness is a noun, and it’s defined as the quality or condition of being strong and in good condition. The ability to withstand or overcome adverse conditions or rigorous testing. You will be tested when you move. It’s stressful. They say it’s the second most stressful event in somebody’s life, only second to divorce. It is physically taxing on your body. Think about lifting all of the boxes, putting them into a staging area, lifting everything out of your house, and moving furniture. It is very physically taxing.
If you are not in a place, physically or mentally, to start the packing process and move, you don’t have the motivation. I love Mel Robbins’ definition of motivation. It’s, “You want to do something or you don’t want to do something.” If you think about how exhausted you are at the end of your workday, think about packing up your entire house after that. Are you going to be motivated? No, it sucks. We go into some questions about that, like, “What part are you the most excited about of the fresh start? What part are you the most nervous about in this fresh start?”
It goes through how much free time you have to pack and sort some things, and what your tendencies are. I don’t know if you’ve done Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies quiz. I love it. I live by it. There is the Upholder, who sets goals, and they do what they do. There is the Obliger, which is what I am, where I will make promises to myself. If somebody asks me to do something and they need it done, like if my boss comes to me and says, “I need you to take over this speech and do it tomorrow afternoon,” I’m going to drop everything that I was planning on doing, and I’m going to do that for him because I’m obligated to do that instead of setting boundaries and say, “I need more than 24 hours to do that,” which, my boss is awesome, he’s never done that. If you’re tuning in, thank you for never doing that to me.
I’m the type of person who would do it. Every single tendency has a motto that comes with it. If you take the quiz, it takes you four minutes. It’s twelve questions, but she sends you an output of the tendency. The book will tell you what your major tendency is and what your minor tendency is. The rebel is, “You can’t make me, and neither can I.” I’m an obliger, but I lean rebel.
For instance, I have a lot of food allergies. I’m allergic to wheat, gluten, and dairy. I will sometimes self-sabotage and purposely eat them because I want to, and I do what I want, but I shouldn’t because they cause me harm. If eating dairy caused my brother to have a sinus infection like it does to me, I would never do it because I don’t want to hurt him. I love him too much.
The last one is the questioner. The questioner, as it sounds, literally questions everything. Even if they have data to prove that it’s legitimate, they’re still going to question everything, and then they’re going to go with their gut. It’s interesting to know what your tendency is, especially going through this process mentally, because there are tricks to avoid getting stuck in your tendency if you’re wanting to move.
Robustness is important. It is something that people overlook and don’t plan for. When they have a mental breakdown or if they move and they mentally weren’t prepared for it, six months from now, in that move, they could have the six-month funk. That is what I call it. You get into a place where you regret moving. You have that nostalgia for the place that you moved from, even though when you were moving from it, you hated it. It is something that I’ll probably do an entire show on because biologically, a lot happens when you’re transitioning from one place to another. It is a trauma that you experience. If you have had any bad experiences moving, that’s a trauma that you can face as well. We’ll talk about that another time.
Ecosystem: Identifying the Community and Environment You Need to Thrive
The next one is your ecosystem. This is the exercise that a lot of people use. You use the whole framework, but to figure out where you want to move. Just like your dreams, the place that you want to move to has to have a thriving community for you to thrive in that particular hobby, sport, career, whatever it is. They did a study on the blue zones, and the blue zones are those zones across the world, I think there are six of them or something, where people live over a hundred. All six of the blue zones, a major part of that is their community lifted them and got them to be the age that they’re at, which I think is incredible.
One of the things I do in the ecosystem is make a list. I have a checklist here. Your current environment, the community that you currently live in, what are your favorite things in that community? I live ten minutes from the Whitewater Center. If you’re not familiar with North Carolina or Charlotte, the Whitewater Center is where the US Olympic kayaking team practices during the year. There’s a rapid that runs through the entire 30 acres. There are bike trails, obstacle courses, and zip lines. It’s a nature extravaganza. It is so much fun. It’s my happy place. It brings me so much joy.
The first time I went there, I met Tuna Melts My Heart. I don’t know if you follow that Instagram, but it is the cutest chihuahua who is from Georgia. He’s got a significant overbite. He looks like a cartoon character, but he’s so sweet. What’s funny is that I see the mom of Tuna Tuna Melts My Heart. I said, “That looks like Tuna Melts My Heart.” She goes, “It is Tuna Melts My Heart.” I was like, “Can I hold him?” I went to pick up Tuna and hold him.
A lot happens biologically when you are transitioning from one place to another. Share on XThey let me. The parents of Tuna both look at me, and they’re like, “He does not let anybody touch him. That’s amazing.” There are pictures I have. I should probably resurface them on my Instagram. It’s pure joy on my face. To me, it signifies such a happy place. I used to bring my dogs there. They loved hiking and walking around the water. It’s right on the Catawba River. I did Pilates on a stand-up paddleboard right on the river. It’s a magnificent, fun place. You can bring groups there and everything. There’s a climbing rock wall, which I plan on doing this summer.
Anyway, what is the community that you are in? What does it have that you love? What do you need in your new community or your new neighborhood to feel that same joy? Is it a specialty coffee place? For me in particular, when I’m looking for where I want to live, the neighborhood, I can narrow it down to a 1-mile radius. There’s got to be a good specialty coffee place. It’s got to have a Pilates studio that I’ve been to and that I like.
For you, it could be a chain fitness. If you’re a Planet Fitness or one of the bigger chains like Lifetime Fitness. A lot of people love that gym and swear by it. What do you need? Do you need a great nightlife where the bars are open until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning? Do you long for quiet, and you want something that, after 7:00, it’s peaceful and you don’t hear anything? What does that neighborhood need? Are there groups within that neighborhood, like meetups? You can find a Facebook group, meet up with people, and build a community of like-minded people. You can have a group of friends that you can meet before you even move to that city?
It’s important to think about that community. I can tell you, when I moved to Bloomington, I was in remission for Crohn’s. It’s an autoimmune disease, I went to my primary care physician, whom I was meeting for the first time. One of the things that is very important to me, if you listen to the podcast or read anything that I put out there, holistic healing, homeopathy, and Eastern medicine in general are what I lean on first before I go to Western medicine and actual pharmaceuticals and meds, just because I know how my body reacts to it and the things that happen.
Being in remission for Crohn’s, I’ve done all those meds. I lost a lot of my hair in the first round of steroids that I did. It’s very traumatic for me. I asked my new primary care physician. Mind you, Bloomington, Illinois is two hours from Chicago. In Chicago, I was going to the Celiac Institute at UIC. I had an amazing doctor whom I still keep in touch with. I asked the doctor if he could recommend a gastroenterologist who leans holistically. He started laughing.
He said, “You might want to keep your doctor up in Chicago.” I said, “There are no holistic gastroenterologists or healers here?” He’s like, “No, this is a college town.” I’m like, “State Farm is here and Country’s here and it’s a gigantic city.” I did like my doctor in Chicago. I did end up keeping her and making the drive and seeing my family when I was up there and stuff.
What does that ecosystem need to have in order for you to thrive? I want you to do a city POC, which I mentioned earlier. That city POC is going to the city of your dreams. It could be two. It could be a bake-off. I work in technology in my full-time job. We do proofs of concept for companies that want to try a particular software or hardware to see if it works with their network. What we do in a city POC is you go to this city for longer than five days. I know that sounds crazy. I’ve heard the comment like, “I don’t have the money for a mini vacation.” It’s not a mini vacation. It’s market research.
Think about uprooting your entire house, spending all that money on a move, and moving to a place and getting there and being like, “I hate this place,” or “This is so different from what I thought it was going to be.” When I visited it for the weekend, which everything is magical on a weekend, you have that bias towards seeing what you want to see.
If you’re there for five days and you have your checklist of things that you need to have and you go exploring for five days, it’s not a vacation. Although, hopefully, you come out and you’re like, “This is better than I thought it was. I still want to move. I’m going to get gazelle intense about paying off my debts, saving money, researching apartments, and all that stuff.”
If you do that POC and you realize, “This isn’t what I thought it was going to be and I don’t love it,” you saved yourself a ton of money, a ton of stress, your family stress, and all of that. All it was was you’re taking that market research trip and figuring out if that was where you wanted to be. You explored, you looked at apartments, you did all of the things, and picture, “Can I live here?”
When I lived in New York, I went to the grocery store and I was shocked. At the time I was eating dairy, I was having dairy, and in the beginning stages of like, “This maybe doesn’t agree with me,” I was getting lots of sinus infections and all that stuff. What was crazy is that a gallon of milk was $8. This is in 2010. I almost lost my mind. I was like, “What are these golden cows they’re milking it from? What is $8?” It’s Manhattan, and that’s why everybody eats out in Manhattan, because the groceries are so expensive.
I legitimately think that if you go and do that market research or you do a bake-off, say there are two cities, if you were thinking about moving to San Diego or you’re thinking about moving to Austin and you go and spend a week or two at each one, whether you’re staying with a friend or you’re doing Airbnb or staying at my favorite hotel chain, the Marriott, because it’s my name, spelled differently, I highly encourage you to do that. If you think those two weeks are expensive, think about living there. Think about moving all of your stuff and uprooting your life, and then how expensive it would be to move back.
By doing a City Proof of Concept, you can determine if you do not actually like the place you are moving to. This way, you can save yourself a ton of money and stress. Share on XThis is a try-before-you-buy. It is almost a risk-free experience, outside of the money you’re spending to do the proof of concept. That city POC could make or break how content you feel. A lot of people will do the city POC and realize, “That’s not where I want to live at all. I think I want to live here.” My friend Tom, whom I work with, told me that I saved him $90,000. I was like, “Tell me more.” He said that he and his wife had their eye on a certain property, but they lived in Florida, and they were viewing it from the real estate websites.
I told him about this concept, and I didn’t think he was even listening, but he was. They went and rented an Airbnb for a month. We work remotely in our jobs, so he could live anywhere, and he travels all over as it is. He said, “After renting a place for a month in that side of town, we realized that’s not where we wanted to live at all.” They ended up buying a place in that same city, but on the complete opposite side of town. They now have a bunch of acres of land. They love their new house, but they would have made that mistake on a spontaneous picture on a website. They are now loving their life. Think about that.
That’s an extreme case, like $90,000. Think about that in terms of renting an apartment. It is hard to get out of a lease in most cities. You have to come up with your sublet. You’re still on the hook if they don’t pay. There are a lot of legalities that you are maybe not thinking about. That city POC could be the difference between you digging in and thriving in a city, or you regretting that decision. I don’t want that for anybody. It is devastating. It is heartbreaking. I’ve been in that situation. It is something that I coach around specifically because I want to save you that time, that stress, and that money. That is the ecosystem.
Dreams Part 2: Revisiting Your Dreams and Making Adjustments
Last but not least in the framework, we are back to your dreams. We are back in the workbook to part two of dreams. We’ve reverse-engineered through all of those things with those dreams in mind that you had. We’ll narrow down those dreams. We’ll do an episode about how to narrow down. I have Kara Taylor, who is a dream builder coach. She’s going to walk us through exactly how to narrow down our dreams and get airtight on what that looks like. When you do a city POC, you’ve got that end in mind.
Dreams part two is taking a look at, is this still the dream? At that point, if it’s not, you can pivot. That’s the beauty of you taking ownership of your own life. You are able to pivot. If you don’t want to pivot and you get super excited and you want to move full force forward, you can figure out who’s going to be your biggest cheerleader, what small step you can take on your journey, and act as if you are moving in that direction. Even if you can’t do it for two years, let’s phase out what that looks like to get you there two years from today.
Are you going to walk a little bit differently into work in a job that you might hate? One of the episodes that we’re going to have coming up is Natalie Luke. She talks about workplace bullies and how to uplevel your career. Are you going to talk to the bullies a little bit differently, knowing you have a secret, that you’ve got an exit strategy, and you’re going to leave? You bet your butt you are. Taking that second part of dreams and tying all of this stuff together is the icing on the cake.
Conclusion and Michael Jordan Quote
I’m going to end this episode because I have to get ready to go to the airport. I’m running late, which, I live very close to the airport, I cut it tight often, and I shouldn’t do that. I’m going to end it on a Chicago quote from Michael Jordan, not Chicago specifically, but a Chicago guy. Michael Jordan, obviously, NBA five-time champ. There were a lot of championships when he was on the Bulls. Number 23. He said, “Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”
I want to give you those workarounds. I want to figure out how to climb that wall one step at a time. I’m excited for you to be here. You can get this workbook on MariettesOnTheMove.com. I hope you stay in touch. We’ve got a YouTube channel now. If you’re watching this, hi. That’s for my mom. “Hi, Mom,” because she watches it on YouTube. She was my big proponent of putting it on YouTube. Thank you. I guess a lot of people find their podcasts on YouTube. You were right. I was wrong.
This might be a clip on TikTok. I’m very new to TikTok. I don’t know how to use it, so if you have any tips, DM them to me, send them my way. If you see this clip on Instagram, let’s be friends. I want you to listen to my podcast. It’s new. I’ve celebrated my year. The way I get to keep doing this is if I have followers. If nobody is listening, then what am I doing this for?
I do want to go out on college campuses. That’s another thing. I want to speak to our juniors and seniors and teach them how to move smarter, teach them how to figure out where to go. If you have an in to a college campus, or you are a part of an organization, a sorority, a fraternity, or something that you want me to come and speak at, please DM me. All of my information is on my website. I am so excited. I’ll let you know. If you sign up for my mailing list, you’ll be the first to know when the digital course is released. I think it’s going to be a fun year.
If there’s something specifically you want to hear about on the podcast, or you want to DM me secretly or privately, you can do that too. I’m always up for responding to a certain degree. Some people get weird after a while. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope this was helpful. Keep moving forward. Bye for now.