Two Cities, Two Clocks

The decision

People ask why we moved to Madrid, and they usually expect a business answer. A cheaper base. A European expansion. A tax angle. There isn’t one. We moved for the kids.

My own path ran through Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles, back to Dallas and then New York. Every one of those moves was about work. Somewhere along the way, Panteha and I realized that our kids were growing up with a very American idea of the world: big, comfortable and a little too sure of itself. We wanted them to live somewhere they would have to adjust, listen and add a fourth language because they needed it, not because it was on a report card.

For as many years as I can remember, my wife would tell me on holiday in Europe that we should move here. After all, she grew up in Nice. Of course, I always said no: my work, I’m American, and so on.

Then came April 2023, a stunning day skiing in the French Alps, and the same question. This time, instead of dismissing it, I said, “Let’s do it!” From there, we had some choices to make.

Madrid won for practical reasons as much as romantic ones. It is safe. It is walkable. It is a capital city with a booming economy and a big airport, so I can get back to New York easily. It also sits two hours by plane from most of Europe.

What the kids got

The first few months were humbling for all of us. Being an immigrant is not easy. We struggled with paperwork, visas, housing, buying a car and so much more.

Then something shifted, and we all adjusted. The kids started at the Lycée Français and made new friends, as did we. They stopped translating and started thinking in Spanish. Today they move between languages mid-sentence, and they make fun of my awful Spanish, which I find both annoying and deeply satisfying.

Language was only the visible part. The bigger change is that they now take difference for granted. Their friends come from all around the world. They have learned that there is more than one way to run a dinner, a school day or a country. That is the international experience we were after, and you can’t get it from a semester abroad. It takes years of ordinary days.

And then there is Europe on the doorstep. In three years we have been to Corsica, Nice, Valencia, the Costa Brava, the Costa Blanca, the UK, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal, and we are just getting started. Weekends that would have meant a long-haul flight from New York are a train ride or a short flight from here. History stops being a chapter in a textbook when you have stood in it.

Two clocks

The business didn’t move with us. Sinecure’s clients, most of its team and most of its revenue sit in the United States, so I work New York hours from Madrid. In practice, that means my day has two halves.

Mornings belong to Madrid. I have time to read, run, ride my bike, explore the city center and play my favorite sport, golf. It is the quietest part of my working day, because New York is still asleep. A lot of my best thinking, and most of my writing, happens before the first American email arrives.

Afternoons and evenings belong to New York. The calls start around two in the afternoon and often run until eight. Dinner in Spain is late anyway, so the schedule fits the country better than it would fit almost anywhere else in Europe. Madrid is one of the few cities where finishing a call at eight and sitting down to dinner at nine is normal.

There is a cost. Some nights the two clocks fight, and the family loses. I still spend 12 weeks a year in New York, because some things only happen in a room: a board meeting, a client dinner, a hard conversation with someone on the team.

What Madrid taught me about work

I came here assuming I’d be the one adjusting. I didn’t expect the city to change how I think about work.

Spain takes the table seriously. Lunch is a meeting with no agenda, and the conversation after the meal, the sobremesa, is where the real business happens. Relationships come first and the deal follows. That runs against everything an American founder is trained to optimize, and it is exactly what I have been writing about on Talent / OS: when AI makes outreach infinite, trust becomes the scarce resource. Madrid figured that out a few centuries ago.

The city also has a different relationship with time. Shops close. Sundays are for family. People walk, slowly, at night, with their kids. In summer it’s not unusual to see families in the park at nine and sitting down to dinner at ten. It made me notice how much of my New York life was a performance of busyness.

What I miss, what I don’t

I miss a lot of things about New York. The biggest is the energy you feel just walking outside. I miss Central Park, the Natural History Museum on a rainy day and all of our friends. What I don’t miss is how hard balance is to find there. Life in New York is fast, expensive and logistically challenging with four kids.

What’s next

Our kids won’t be kids for long. There are universities to think about, careers, relationships and so much more. Whatever happens, they will carry this with them: a fourth language, a wider map and the habit of being the newcomer and working it out.

That was the point. Two cities. Two clocks. One family.