Transcriber: Hiroko Kawano Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
I used to be successful according to society.
I had left a well-paid job in marketing to become an entrepreneur.
And very soon, I could buy anything I wanted -
not anything in the world, anything I wanted, which was a lot still.
My impulse purchases included a brand-new car and a house.
My entire life was just about fun,
and I can say I created some amazing memories,
but it was just fun.
I wanted more. I wanted joy.
I wanted to do something that would last, something that mattered.
So I started working with students, and this was fantastic.
For the first time in my life,
people would come up to me and say,
"Thank you. You've changed my life."
And that was so valuable to me
that I would do it for just a little bit of money
if they wouldn't pay me enough.
I would even do it for free - a lot -
until I reached a point
where even a small financial setback could ruin me as an entrepreneur.
And of course, it did.
In the middle of summer of 2016, when all schools are closed
and I wouldn't have any income for another two months or so,
I received five envelopes at the same time from the tax services,
demanding that I pay for my glory days,
immediately.
This cost me everything I had: all my savings, all the money that I had.
And all I had left in an instant
was just a few coins that I found between the cushions of the sofa
and in my coat pockets and in my car
and 3 euros and 97 cents in the bank.
Two days later,
my daughter would come back from staying with her father.
She would come back on her birthday.
And I couldn't afford to bake her a cake.
What I wanted to do was just to crawl into bed and cry -
which I don't like -
and just hide under the covers until it would all just go away.
But I couldn't.
I didn't have time because I only had 48 hours to prove to myself
that I was better than this,
that I was a good mother.
So what I did was the most terrifying and the most embarrassing thing
I've ever done in my life:
I decided to expose myself publicly as a failure.
And I thought that the best place to start would be rock bottom.
So I gave away my last bit of money, and then I had absolutely nothing.
And then the only way was up.
I called it "the money project."
I published a video on Facebook,
stating that I had failed gloriously as an entrepreneur;
that I was totally broke;
and that I was determined to change my situation,
to learn anything I could about entrepreneurship and business, money,
and enhance my financial intelligence;
and that I was determined to become free of financial stress
within six months,
and to go from nothing to a fortune -
or at least discover what the secret to doing that was -
and to become a successful entrepreneur.
And I would write a book about it.
And this book I would sell right away for 10 euros a copy.
And that day, I didn't dare look at the responses on my timeline,
because this was quite scary.
But that first day, I sold 64 books.
And I had a fortune.
Until this day, I've never felt more rich in my entire life,
because this meant I could now bake a birthday cake
and she could have a proper birthday,
which she did.
And then I read.
I've flogged. I blogged. I interviewed.
I learned anything I could.
And I succeeded.
Within six months, I was free of financial stress,
and I could say that I was a successful entrepreneur.
And all this time,
I had been thinking that this money project -
what I called it -
was about money, of course, and business,
but deep down, it was about something completely different:
it was about value and about life.
And I will share with you what I learned about life.
Lesson number one: Money is important.
Quite a cliche. (Laughs)
But I was raised in a way to believe that money is not important.
And I inherited this conviction somehow - I can't blame anyone in particular -
but somehow it planted a conviction in my head
that people with money are not nice people.
So when I had money, I would spend it as soon as I could.
And then when I found my purpose, working with students,
I just didn't ask for it.
I didn't care.
I just wanted to change the world,
which I had no impact on whatsoever with 3 euros and 97 cents.
And I also learned that money doesn't make you a bad person.
It just makes you more of who you are.
So if you're a jerk with a lot of money,
you're probably a jerk when you're broke as well.
And if I would have more money, I would simply give more.
But if I have to worry about money every day, all day,
I can't even take care of myself, and I have nothing to give.
Lesson number two: Money equals time.
As soon as we start working, we start exchanging time for money,
which is a problem
because we can always make more money but we can never make more time.
And I started to exchange my time for far too little money.
I could barely survive.
And at the end of the month,
there was nothing ever left to invest in my future.
So I would have to spend all my time to make just a little bit of money.
I'd probably have to do that for the rest of my life
because there was nothing left.
And for the rest of my life,
I would have given away the one thing that means the very most to me,
which is time.
Time with my loved ones and time for myself.
So I decided that it was time that I value my time.
I would spend it more consciously.
And when it comes to work,
I would have to exchange it for more money
so I could spend less time working and more time actually living.
Lesson number three: Money equals value.
It took me two years to discover that the money project is not about money.
It's about value.
And I've always seen myself as a confident person,
but I didn't value myself.
Because the way you treat yourself
is a reflection of the way you see yourself.
And I'd been treating myself like crap,
which I found a terrible example to set for my daughter.
So changing my rates wasn't enough.
I had to change the way I see myself.
I had to start seeing myself as a person of value.
And that was not easily done.
It's a process, and I'm still working on it.
So I still, on a regular basis, I still have to remind myself,
"It's okay, you're worth every penny."
And even now I find it hard to say this out loud.
I get a bit embarrassed,
so I'm still learning.
I have to keep practicing.
Lesson number four: What people say doesn't matter.
"You're a cheap whore."
"You're a fraud."
"How can you do this to your child?"
Just a few of the comments that I received.
The hateful ones were on my timeline on Facebook.
But the quiet ones, they hid safely in my inbox,
confessing only to me that they had screwed up too,
that they too had found their purpose and wanted to change the world
and worked really hard, 80 hours a week, just like me,
and barely surviving.
But no one could know.
So they didn't go public,
because they were too ashamed to be a failure.
But they were very glad that I went public and exposed myself as a failure
because now they could learn from my mistakes.
And I was thankful that I could help them.
And I was also thankful for the haters,
whether it was the strangers on my timeline
or even some of my own friends talking badly about me behind my back.
Because they taught me that nothing is ever personal,
not really.
What people say about you and what people think about you -
it comes from their view of the world.
It's from their opinions and their values and their experiences,
and maybe they're having a bad day, or they're very insecure or unhappy.
It has nothing to do with you.
And the way other people treat you is not a reflection of who you are.
It's a reflection of who they are.
So now when someone says something hurtful to me,
it still hurts,
but not as much,
because I know it probably has nothing to do with me.
Lesson number five: What people say matters.
What people say matters most when people is you.
Because a person
with the most opinions about you -
the person who talks to you the most -
is you,
and you tend to believe yourself, right?
So be kind.
A few days into the project, I asked my daughter,
"How do our money worries make you feel?"
And she said,
"We don't have money worries.
We just have less money than most people."
(Laughter)
And then I realized that until that moment,
I had been saying to myself, on a regular basis,
"You're such a failure."
And then I realized, because of my daughter,
that kind of thinking was not going to do my circumstances any good.
And that's what they are - circumstances.
They don't define you.
Your response to them does.
And my response was to be kind to myself,
to say to myself,
"You'll be OK.
You can do this."
And then whatever it took, I would do it.
Lesson number six: It's really simple.
I learned so much about business and entrepreneurship;
and compounding, investing, entrepreneurship;
about scalability, our rates, sales,
low-hanging fruit, runway, value propositions.
But to be honest, everything I learned, I could have learned from my grandmother.
Because the essence is this:
spend less,
earn more,
invest wisely
and, most of all, value yourself.
But simple is not always easy.
Let me ask you a question.
Who makes more money today than you did at your very first job?
That's quite a lot of people. OK.
Be ready: there's another question.
Be honest -
I promise I won't tell anyone -
but be honest.
Who still, at the end of the month, sometimes is out of money?
Or a lot of times, maybe?
Yeah, it's quite a lot, huh?
OK, you're not alone.
And this is why: it's called "Parkinson's Law."
Your expenses will always rise to match your income.
This is why most people retire poor,
and why lottery winners
tend to end up with less money a few years after they won
than they had before.
And about a year after I started the money project,
I was earning a lot of money.
I was doing well,
but still, I didn't really have anything left at the end of the month.
And I realized that when it comes to spending,
I'm a 12-year-old.
So I should treat myself accordingly.
So, now, I hardly have any access to my money.
As soon as money comes in,
most of it goes straight to accounts that I cannot touch.
And I will probably have to do this for the rest of my life,
and I don't care.
Because if there's one thing that I learned from this project
is I can't afford to be poor.
Lesson number eight: Being broke sucks.
It does.
Two years ago, my entire life was urgent -
everything was urgent.
I had to be a full-time problem solver, which is both exhausting and impossible.
It's a catch-22.
Because scarcity captures the mind.
Research shows
that when all you can think about, and that was the case for me,
when all you can think about is
How do I get food on the table tonight?
How do I get money today? -
that takes up all of your thinking space.
There's no room left to solve anything for tomorrow or next week
or to make a change next year.
You're stuck in the situation.
And my situation was that my brain felt like a ticking time bomb.
I can still today hear the sound of the bills dropping on my doormat,
and it still freaks me out.
And day and night, I felt this blind panic.
I couldn't breathe.
There was no way out.
I was suffocating.
So the first thing and the only thing that I could do was breathe.
(Exhale)
I freed my mind, and I made a decision
that I was going to be successful in the direction of my purpose.
I found my focus.
I stopped sabotaging myself.
And I became successful.
Lesson nine: Stay broke.
Epictetus said, a very long time ago,
"Wealth consists not in having great possessions,
but in having few wants."
The paradox is that the more money you have,
the more silence and no Wi-Fi become a luxury.
It's ridiculous how much money rich people - money-wise rich people -
spend on going somewhere quiet.
When I had nothing, all I could afford was to go somewhere quiet,
to just sit still or read a book or go outside or go for run,
play with my child.
And in those moments,
I found my most profound moments of happiness.
I learned that my daughter doesn't need any money
or expensive gifts or fancy trips.
All she wants, really,
is a few moments a day of my undivided attention.
And all I really want is to be present in my own life.
So now that I have money,
(Laughs)
I choose to live as if I'm broke.
And without the worries,
I can finally say:
Money is not important.
(Applause)