Let me start with something uncomfortable.
Everyone talks about scale. Build bigger. Reach more people. I’ve spent 24 years trying to touch millions with Mindvalley.
And I’ve finally figured out the part no one tells you: the bigger you get, the more you realize that apps, content, and algorithms all have an invisible ceiling.
Let me explain.
In 2002, I was VP of a dot-com with offices in San Francisco and New York. I was paid well, earning the equivalent of $150,000 a year in today’s money. I had stability. A decent place to live. Everything that was supposed to matter.
But something felt off.
While I had money and stability, I lacked meaning. I woke up every day dreading going to work. Work was a chore. Something I simply did not enjoy.
I’d worked many jobs across the years, as a dishwasher in Michigan, for a nonprofit in New York helping Americans understand other cultures, and climbing the corporate ladder as a VP of Sales in technology. But this VP role? It was draining the life out of me.
One day, in the middle of that chaos, I made a decision that made absolutely no financial sense.
I paid $10,000 to train as a Silva Method facilitator.
The Silva Method was a meditation course I’d taken about 18 months earlier. It has transformed me. In fact, it was the very course that helped me go from an intern at this company to a VP in record time. Now I had the promotion, the salary, and the title.
So why would I suddenly throw away $10,000 to become a facilitator?
Here’s what I understood, even then:
The best investment is never the one that makes immediate sense.
It was a gut feeling, really. I knew I wanted to start a business. I just didn’t know what. I dabbled with many ideas, an early version of a blogging software app (Blogger.com beat me to it), a unique spin on children’s stuffed animal toys. Nothing felt right.
But then I saw a quote by Nelson Mandela that I couldn’t shake from my head. It said:
“If you want to change the world, change education.”
I thought about that. And I realized something profound: the best education I’d ever received wasn’t university. It wasn’t Microsoft.
It was meditation. Mindset. Consciousness.
That was the education that truly transformed my life.
So I decided to double down. I decided to dedicate my life to upgrading human education, not just teaching people how to make a living, but how to live.
I put down $10,000 to train with one of Jose Silva’s nephews. Jose himself had passed away in 1999, so I never got to meet this brilliant man.
After I graduated, I decided to teach my first Silva class.
(This is the exact classroom in which I taught that class.)
As you can see, it was small. Hardly anything to brag about. And I took this picture before my students poured in.
I taught them the Silva Method over a weekend and earned about $2,000-$3,000.
I felt rich for the first time in my life.
I’d earned money on my own initiative. But more than that, I felt something I’d never felt in that VP role.
I felt alive.
I couldn’t see the future. If you’d told me that 20 years ago, before making that decision to become a Silva instructor and teach my first class, that I would be running an education app company that does well over 100 million in revenue, and that app would be featured in every Apple store in the world, I would have thought you were crazy.
Everything started from that crummy hotel room at a Holiday Inn in 2002.
While my VP of Sales job made me money but drained the life out of me, teaching and helping students with the Silva Method lit me up.
I felt joy. A connection. A centeredness that I had never experienced before. I was contributing. I was making a difference.
From there, I built a website to sell meditation CDs. Then, building an app. The n creating Mindvalley. Then, creating festivals around the world.
Each step of growth came from this one question:
How could I spread enlightened ideas to more and more people?
The mission vs. the money
You remember when I earned $2,000-$3,000 teaching that first Silva Method class?
I said it was the first time I felt genuinely rich.
But here’s what actually happened that weekend:
I made a choice. Not between a job and a mission, but between two kinds of lives.
One pays you. One fills you.
Business people do it for the dollars. Entrepreneurs do it to change the world.
The difference?
When you’re acting from a mission, everything changes.
That $2,000 didn’t feel like income; it felt like an impact. It felt aligned. It felt alive.
And that alignment? That’s what compounds.
That’s what scales from one hotel room in 2002 to 100 million people in 2024.
The real question isn’t
“Will this make money?”
It’s:
“Is this me solving something that matters?”
When the answer is yes, money follows. Impact follows. A life that means something follows.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
If your work is only about you, it will eventually exhaust you.
But if your work is about something bigger than you, something that serves humanity, something that heals, uplifts, and transforms, then that energy finds you.
All great movements start small.
A classroom. A garage. A dorm room. A hotel conference room with bad carpet and stale coffee.
But they start with a decision.
Not to make money. Not to build a brand. But to serve a mission.
So let me leave you with this:
What injustice bothers you?
What system feels broken?
What part of humanity deserves an upgrade?
And what would happen if you stopped asking:
“What’s practical?” and started asking, “What’s noble?”
Because that $10,000 decision? It wasn’t about meditation. It was about saying yes to a mission. And when you say yes to a noble mission, the world rearranges itself around you.
Sincerely,
Vishen
One last thing: Ask yourself one honest question: If money were guaranteed, what mission would you choose? Drop it in the comments. Sometimes speaking it publicly is the first step toward making it real.
If you are interested in the Mindvalley Certified Life Coach, I’ve added a little bit of information below; see the PS line.
PS: Because of how becoming a coach and facilitator changed my life. In 2021, I started a company with co-founder Ajit Nawalkha called Mindvalley Coach. To train people to become coaches and facilitators.
Over 12,000 coaches have been trained so far, and many of them didn’t do it to turn this into a side business, like I did, but because they want to bring the practices of elevating humanity to their employees, businesses, and families.
If you find this interesting, our next Certified Life Coaching class starts March 4. Go here to learn more.
