This year I’ve spent nearly €200K on my own growth, and I haven’t even told my parents (I mean, they’ll probably see this post though haha). My partner knows, he gets informed, but he doesn’t get consulted. Courses, coaches, masterminds, therapy and nervous system work all live inside that number.
Most people hear that and think I’m insane. So I want to show you how I decide what to invest in, because it might seem delusional but I promise you I think through every decision wisely.
I started investing in myself when I was broke
Before you think I only do this because I have money now: I started taking myself seriously when I had none. I was barely breaking even every month and still paid €250 a month for a coach to teach me how to run my business without running my body into the ground. I knew that if I didn’t learn it from someone, I’d end up broke with a burnout.
It wasn’t easy. I remember staring at Marie Forleo’s B-School for weeks, wondering if a €2K course was worth it and whether I even dared to spend that. The shift came when I stopped asking “is this expensive” and started asking what return it would give me in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. Compared to that return, 2K suddenly looked cheap.
Everyone says they wish they’d bought Bitcoin at €500. I barely bought any. What I did buy was a €50 fitness ebook, a €1K business course and that €250 a month mindset coach. Over the years I’ve spent somewhere around €1M on myself, and I call it research and development. You can lose the handbag or crash the car, but you carry yourself around for the rest of your life until you die, so might as well level up!
Bucket 1: skills that make what I already do pay more
The first bucket is skill acquisition. Copywriting, sales, leadership, even a course on creating viral quotes. Every skill makes you money because the thing you’re already doing gets better or faster.
Example: this month I bought a €97 course on editing my videos faster with AI, which means my team and I produce more in the same time or produce the same in less time. Either way I get hours back.
Bucket 2: rooms that turn my ceiling into my floor
The second bucket is the most expensive one: masterminds, high level groups and mentors. Right now I have 1 mentor at €20K, another at €30K and another at over €100K. I pick up skills there too, but mostly I’m paying to sit in a room that confronts me with a new normal.
Example of a new normal: years ago a mentor told me she doesn’t do email. I had always had hundreds of unread emails and hated every one of them, always running behind. I’d never considered that not doing email was an option. Today I have an auto reply, my team works on Slack only and clients reach me through other platforms. I learned that in a room where it was normal.
Last month I heard a man speak who spends €1M a month on ads, gets €3M back and spends most of his days playing with his toddler. Off the cuff he mentioned he records 3 new ads a day, every single day. I almost never do, and now 3 a day feels normal to me. That’s what I mean when I say the ceiling becomes the floor. If I’m the smartest person in the room, or the furthest ahead, I have a problem, because I can’t see what’s ahead of me if I don’t know it exists.
Bucket 3: the capacity to hold what I’m building
The third bucket is my nervous system and my capacity. Therapy, coaching, bodywork, nervous system retreats. I’m in my 30s, I’d never been a leader or a manager, and suddenly I had a team and clients to hold space for. A lot of my own patterns came up with that.
About a year and a half ago I kept bumping into the same ceiling. Skills weren’t solving it and the rooms were inspiring me, yet I was still stuck. So I went to someone who does bodywork and to a mindset coach and asked them to help me hold more. It wasn’t going to get easier, so I needed more room inside myself.
3 questions before you invest in any coach or course
- Is it solving a constraint you are actively hitting right now? Video editing is a real constraint for my team, so the €97 is easily worth it.
- Do you see a realistic path to 2x, 3x or even 10x the investment in the next 12 to 36 months? If you’re at €200K, want €300K and can see yourself getting there faster with a specific mentor at €15.000, the math works out.
- Are you willing to be a coachable student? I have to be willing to be the best student in the room who doesn’t revert to ‘I know better’ or ‘I’m too insecure to ask questions’. That doesn’t mean watching every module and executing every assignment perfectly. I’ve never watched every recording of a single course or mastermind I’ve been in. But when I’m in the room, I’m fully in the room, and I take what I need for the constraint I have that month.
I also stay in the same mastermind for 3 to 4 years at a time, because it takes time for a mentor to really know you.
You don’t have to figure it out alone
I’m not asking you to spend €199.000 on yourself. I’ve just noticed that so many founders, especially in Belgium, carry that voice saying “I should be able to figure this out myself.” I never use any of my coaches at 100%, I just stopped believing I was too far ahead to need them.
Listen to the full Fail to Win podcast episode above for the full breakdown.
If you’re at multiple 6 figures and want me as your 1:1 mentor, I built my Self-Made Millionaire Mastermind (scaling to 1M+) and my Gold Mastermind inside the Business Club (scaling to your first 500K year) for exactly this. The knowledge in those rooms comes from over €9M in my own sales and from all the investments in my own coaching. Apply here: fastforwardamy.com/mastermindapplication-eng
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