One of the #1 questions people want to know when they hear about my journey is: “How did you do it?”
The how being: how I quit a $200K+ corporate job to build a portfolio career filled with my diverse interests.
In 2022 when I finally was ready to make a meaningful change in my career, I had this same question.
I looked at people posting on LinkedIn and wondered how they seemed to grow so quickly, seemingly doing it all.
While the truth is I definitely can’t do it all and there are weeks where I need to take a break, the biggest reason for my growth is because I've invested way more than the average person in terms of both time and money.
But it wasn't always like that. Before my investment in career coaching, I never paid for learning and education myself.
I would only sign up for a course if I could get work to pay for it. I would only try career coaching if someone was offering it for free.
But what I found was that my heart wasn’t in it. After the course, I’d never use the content and after the free coaching sessions, I wouldn’t put in the work.
When something is handed to you for free, your stakes are pretty low.
It wasn't until I realized that I needed to put some money of my on own on the table to make it worthwhile.
Why you hesitate to invest in yourself
Money holds a lot of weight.
That’s because in our society, money is often correlated with power, success, and security.
Does this sound familiar?
You might worry you’ll waste it only to feel no closer to clarity or results
You might tell yourself you can’t spend right now because “you never know what’s going to happen with the economy”
You think you need to do more research to find the “perfect” person, course, resource to help you
You know if you invest money into something, you’ll actually have to follow through
So, you hold onto every dollar, convincing yourself you’ll spend later when it’s the “right” time.
But that’s the thing… when you think of money as something you “spend”, it’s gone forever.
When you turn “spend” into “invest”, you see a return on your investment.
It may take weeks, months, or sometimes years, but by doing the work now, you’re paving the way for your future self.
How much money and time I’ve invested
My lifestyle coach (round 1)
Money: $5400
Time: 6 months with 15 live sessions and lots of homework, soul-searching, active experimenting in between
Results: Bought an Airbnb, built a vision for my future, discovered I wanted to work for myself, separated my self worth from my work, decided I wanted to stay in current job and build on the side
My lifestyle coach (round 2)
Money: $2160
Time: 4 months of bi-monthly sessions and async support
Results: Transformed my relationship with money and built a financial bridge, learned a lot about putting myself out there (through practicing!), launched my first offer, started to post a little bit online while still employed
Strategy session w/ a biz coach
Money: $599
Time: 90 minutes + 2 weeks of async support
Results: Mapped out potential ideal client profiles and how to price my offers
Course on community building
Money: $399
Time: 6 hours on a Sunday
Results: Better understanding to how to build a community, which I am using to build into my Just Start program in Slack
My current biz coach
Money: $4000
Time: 4 months of bi-monthly session and async support
Results: Transforming my mindset (again!), launching my first cohort, connecting with others on a similar path, posting more authentically online
IPEC coaching training
Money: $1,795
Time: 30 hours over 3 days
Results: I’m taking this in November so TBD 🙂
Total: $12,558
The ROI of my investments
Spending $12K+ on myself might sound like a lot, but it’s given me returns that far outweigh the price tag.
→ I have clarity on my long term vision, so everything I do now ladders up to that.
→ I’m reaching my goals faster because I partner with people who have done what I want to do.
→ I’ve launched new income streams by learning to get over perfectionism and fear of failure.
→ I’ve learned to trust myself way more and have confidence that things will work out because I can figure it out.
You can’t really put a number on all of that, but to me it’s 100% worth it, always.
Investing in yourself
If you enjoyed hearing about my approach to investing in myself and have questions, sign up for the career pivot AMA session this week or feel free to reply to this email!
Ways to work with me this year:
Unblock Strategy Session: Get 60 minutes of strategic support on Zoom + 2 weeks of async support on whatever you’re working on to help unblock your goals and come up with a concrete action plan.
Just Start 6-Week Cohort: A 6-week cohort for the curious soul who wants to make a career pivot, without walking away from the stability they’ve worked hard to build. You’ll launch a mini career experiment alongside others exploring their next step.
1:1 Private Coaching: If you’re interested in 1:1 Private Coaching, sign up for the waitlist when I open up slots.