Quit sales. Go to Mexico.
Notes from a sales rep turned CEO working from wifi and $10 camps in Baja
The Escape Plan Most Sales Reps Never Consider
The life of a sales rep in today’s work culture is… pretty bleak. If you’ve lived it, you know exactly what I mean.
Every year the quotas get bigger.
Every quarter the targets reset.
Every month brings some new “strategic realignment” that shuffles leadership, restructures teams, and leaves you wondering whether you’re even playing the same game you signed up for.
But the craziest part? Most of us don’t stop to question it. We convince ourselves that we’re making “good money,” that this is just what adult life feels like, that the stress is normal because that’s what everyone around us is doing.
For years I did the same thing. I tied my sense of accomplishment, and, if I’m honest, my sense of self-worth, to whatever number appeared on my commission check.
I told myself that once I hit a specific income level, I’d finally feel secure. Or comfortable. Or proud. Or safe.
But safety is an illusion in sales.
You hit quota and your reward is… a bigger quota.
You crush a quarter and leadership responds with silence.
You have one slow month and suddenly you’re questioning everything you’ve ever done.
It’s a recipe for burnout, and I followed it to the letter.
But instead of giving you another rant about corporate sales culture (you get enough of those from me on TikTok), I want to tell you about the moment things shifted for me—and the alternative that I don’t think most reps even realize exists.
Yesterday, at 4:30 PM, I crossed into Baja.
Golden hour.
Sky glowing.
The Pacific to my right and a decade-long dream finally turning into a real experience.
My wife and I were rolling in with the dogs sleeping behind us, Big Blue humming along, and the air felt different, wide open in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a kid.
There wasn’t a meeting I needed to rush to. No Slack notification that could ruin my mood. No performance review lingering in the back of my mind. No anxiety about how leadership might shake up territories next quarter.
I told my wife that it reminded me of heading to scout camp as a kid. Even though it was only an hour away it felt like it took 12 hours to get there because time slows down when you are excited.
It’s freeing. This is what is missing from the life of sales people today.
Just freedom. Real, literal freedom.
And it hit me how radically different this was from who I used to be.
A few years ago, I wouldn’t have believed this version of my life was possible.
Back then, my days were defined by forecasts, pipeline coverage, and the constant pressure to perform. Sundays weren’t weekends, they were countdowns. The first of the month wasn’t fresh opportunity, it was a reminder that everything you did last quarter no longer mattered.
I told myself that this was the cost of success.
That the anxiety was part of the job.
That “good money” was worth it.
But as I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic, chugging black coffee, stepping into yet another office full of stressed-out top performers… I kept wondering why no one seemed genuinely happy. Why we were all running so hard toward some undefined finish line that kept moving the closer we got.
Corporate sales gives you the illusion of progress, but the reality is that you’re sprinting on a treadmill someone else is controlling.
So what changed?
The simplest way to put it is this:
I stopped using my sales skills to build someone else’s recurring revenue…
and I started using them to build my own.
The truth is that you already have everything you need to create a life with more autonomy, more flexibility, and more upside than any sales compensation plan will ever give you. Sales reps underestimate how valuable their skill set is, mostly because they only use it inside the walls of one company.
But the same skills that help you hit quota are the exact same skills that can build your own business:
Prospecting
Running pipeline
Handling objections
Following up consistently
Communicating value
Closing deals
The difference isn’t the skill set, it’s who benefits from it.
When you sell for someone else, you build their wealth.
When you sell for yourself, you build your freedom.
That’s the shift most reps never make because corporate life trains you to think that entrepreneurship is “too risky,” when in reality the riskiest thing you can do is stay at a job where everything resets to zero every month and your entire future depends on hitting an arbitrary number.
Crossing into Baja reminded me why I made the leap.
Not for the money.
Not for some ego-driven “entrepreneur” title.
Not for the hustle culture nonsense.
I did it for this moment.
This ability to pack up and drive south for a few weeks—to work from beaches, mountain towns, or wherever I feel pulled. To build a life where time is abundant, mornings are slow, and my energy isn’t tethered to a CRM dashboard.
Corporate life teaches you that freedom is earned.
Entrepreneurship taught me it can be designed.
If you’re still in sales and feeling the burn, you’re not imagining it.
The system isn’t built to give you peace.
It’s built to extract the maximum performance possible until you break, or until you decide you want something else.
And if you do decide you want something else… you don’t need to reinvent yourself.
You just need to redirect the skills you already have.
That’s what this newsletter is for.
That’s what the Escape Plan is about.
And that’s why I’m writing this from a small coastal town in Baja instead of a fluorescent-lit office.
I’ll keep sharing the journey.
And if you’re ready to build your own version of it, I’m here to help you do it.
If you work in sales today and are ready for a change, I invite you to book a call here.
- Dave