Same business. Same ambition. Completely different life.
What leaving the US actually changed and why it had nothing to do with working less.
I want to tell you something I don’t say enough.
My life is different now. Not just because I built a business. Not because I worked harder, got luckier, or finally cracked some productivity code.
Because I left. You’ve probably heard me say I left for love and stayed for the lifestyle.
If I had stayed in the United States, I know exactly what my life would look like right now.
I’d be in the school drop off line at 7:30 am, already behind schedule. Back at my desk by 8:15, checking emails I should have answered last night. Calls back to back until 3 pm. A quick lunch at my desk if I’m lucky. Pick up the kids, homework, dinner, and another two hours of work after the girls go to bed… because that’s what building something requires, right? That’s what you do. That’s the deal.
Hustle culture didn't ask me if I wanted to opt in. I just looked up one day and realised I'd been living inside it for years without ever making a conscious choice.
The US version of ambition is built on a very specific premise: that your capacity to work is the ceiling of what your life can be. That the harder you push, the more you earn, and the more you earn, the more you deserve the life you actually want… later. Always later.
I believed that for years.
Then I moved.
Here’s what my life looks like now, from Doha:
School run at 6:45 am and I’m back before 7:15 with time to breathe. A workout. A real breakfast. Work that starts at 10 am, when I’m actually ready for it. A 2 pm school run that I don’t have to apologize to anyone for. Dinner with my family at a table, not standing over the kitchen counter with my phone in my hand. In bed by 9:30, not because I failed to push through, but because this season of my life deserves rest.
The same business. The same clients. The same revenue.
A completely different life.
And here’s what took me a long time to understand: it wasn’t discipline that changed. It wasn’t a new morning routine, a productivity system, or finally getting my calendar under control.
It was the context I was living inside.
The U.S. was never going to let me rest. Not because it couldn’t, but because the entire culture is architected to make rest feel like failure. To make slowing down feel like falling behind. To make a 9:30 pm bedtime feel like something you have to justify.
Leaving didn’t fix everything. But it changed the question from “how do I survive this?” to “how do I want to actually live?”
That question is what the Global Citizens Roundtable is built around.
Not where to move. Not visa options or cost of living comparisons.
The real question: is there a version of your life, built around the same business and the same ambition, that doesn’t require you to run this hard just to stay in place?
For a lot of the people I speak to, the answer is yes.
But it requires making the Global Decision properly. Not impulsively, not romantically, not because Lisbon looks good on Instagram. With a framework. With your real life in front of you.
Monday, March 30th at 6pm ET.
Live. Free. For the people who are ready to ask the question honestly.
The hustle was never the goal.
— Sonaya