You Become Your Environment: A Summer in Paris
Paris is incredible. The beautiful architecture, fashionable, beautiful people, delicious & healthy food & pastries and the relaxing lifestyle. The people watching is pretty awesome, especially during Paris Fashion Week :). I finally get it after coming here innumerable times but mainly for business.
Spending 3 weeks here with the family in the Montmartre area during the summer was lovely. We enjoyed walking around and taking everything in. Sitting in a cafe having top quality coffee & desserts at great prices. The European lifestyle. I get why this city attracts so many people around the world. And why it’s the dream of many young and old people to live here. I truly get that phrase: ’Make your money in the US and spend it in Europe.’
But I have to admit after a week of this I was aching to get back to the intensity of America’s
The chill lifestyle is wonderful, for a short period of time. As my friend & investor Jason Lemkin calls it: “Cafe & Baguette Culture”. But I start to feel my edge wear off. Maybe I’m a little bit broken to chill out (probably), maybe I’m wired differently (definitely). I’m probably a dopamine-driven workaholic masochist. It helps in business for sure.
I still believe this incredible high quality lifestyle is not conducive to building massive companies of impact. You need a density of ambition and talent and a chill lifestyle kills this. IMO this explains the lack of massive high growth companies and lack of economic growth in Canada and Western Europe in general.
And by the way there is nothing wrong with wanting a good lifestyle or just having a regular life. We need people who want that. And I do think it’s a choice. Life is so much better for the average person in Western Europe & Canada compared to in the USA. However in an ever increasing volatile, dangerous and competitive world, I think it will be harder to maintain this lifestyle.
I’d say the great thing about this visit besides the reconciliation & quality time with family is that it gave me a great perspective on the beautiful lifestyle of Western Europe. One worth fighting for. I just hope people here realize it, figure out a way to pay for it and not take it for granted before it’s too late.
And for me personally, to paraphrase something I saw on X (sorry I can’t find it to properly attribute): spending time in Europe energizes me to return to America to work even harder & smarter to make more copious amounts of money so I can spend more time in Europe to enjoy the incredible quality of life in Western Europe, whether France or Italy more regularly and frequently. Throw in Albania, Ukraine, Greece,Serbia and Austria and this region is as close to heaven on earth.
Yet as I have said before, for the ubermensch there is no place in the world like America. Especially if you are crazy driven & ambitious, like “dominating the world & putting a dent in it” ambitious individuals. For those who don’t know what an Ubermensch is, he is one “who challenges individuals to rise above, create their own values and embrace life with courage and creativity.”
The guys at BowtiedBull said it best in their newsletter on July 8th, 2025: “This is the main reason why the USA is winning and will continue to win. As long as the USA is the best place in the world to move up the socioeconomic ladder, the best and the brightest will continue to show up.
Since the USA is the land of opportunity and the competitive edge is to recruit/steal the best and brightest from every other country (sorry homegrown talent isn’t enough this is basic statistics) we know that this is what people really care about. Getting theirs and getting their standard of living up.
The USA has been marketed as a land of opportunity for so long that no one cares about anything else. They just want to personally get ahead and improve their own lives. Extreme individualism. Anyone claiming otherwise is typically full of it. Year after year some political person sells out for money and would happily take a few million bucks to change their talking points. No questions asked.”
It’s not pretty but the reality rarely is.