10 things I learned after losing a lot of money | Dorothée Loorbach | TEDxMünster

0:12 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't 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

0:57 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

1:43 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 in my coat pockets and in my car and three 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

2:30 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

3:16 situation to learn anything I could about entrepreneurship and business and 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 years agopi 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 I until this day I've never felt more

4:03 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 vlogged I vlogged 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

4:51 quite a cliche 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 that 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 three 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

5:36 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 and I

6:23 would 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

7:10 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've been treating myself like crap which I found a terrible example to set for my daughter so changing my rates was not 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

7:57 so I'm still learning I have to keep practicing lesson number four what people say doesn't matter you're a cheap 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 Quiet Ones they hit safely in my inbox confessing only to me that they had screwed up to 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

8:43 be a failure but they were very glad that I went public and expose 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 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 and happy it has nothing to do with you and the

9:30 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 it's a number five people say 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

10:16 we just have less money than most people 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 that kind of thinking was not going to do my circumstances any good 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 okay 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

11:02 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 okay be ready there's another question be

11:49 honest I promise I won't tell anyone but be honest who's still at the end of the month sometimes is out of money or a lot of times maybe yeah that's quite a lot huh okay 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

12:34 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 that's one thing that I learned from this project is I can't afford to be poor I said 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

13:23 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 take up 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

14:15 freed my mind 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 epictitis 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

15:02 when I had nothing all I could afford was to go somewhere quiet to just sit still or read a book or go outside go go for a run play with my child and in those moments I found my most Pro of 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 I choose to live as if I'm broke

15:50 and without the worries I can finally say money is not important [Applause]