10 Things I Learned After Losing a Lot of Money: Dorothée Loorbach (Transcript)

In this talk, Dorothée Loorbach unmasks our relation to money and reveals her personal life-changing learnings from her six months project of becoming financially carefree again.

Here is the full text of Dorothée’s talk titled “10 things I learned after losing a lot of money” at TEDxMünster conference.

TRANSCRIPT:

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 the 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 €3.97 in the bank.