The Real Reason I Spent $10,000 To Attend a One-Day Workshop

I didn’t spend nearly $10,000 on a one-day AI workshop in New York because I needed more information.

I went because I was tired of something most entrepreneurs quietly struggle with: knowing a lot, but not moving fast enough on any of it.

And somewhere between the flight, the hotel, the ticket, and stepping into a room full of builders, something clicked for me in a way no YouTube video ever has.

This episode isn’t about AI.

It’s about what actually changes your business when you stop learning in isolation and start building in the right environment.

Because the truth is, information has never been easier to access… yet execution has never felt harder to maintain.

And I had to ask myself: What am I really paying for when I invest like this?

In this episode, I break down:

•  Why I chose a $10K room over “free” content online 
•  The real reason most entrepreneurs stay stuck (and it’s not lack of knowledge) 
•  What shifts when you’re forced to build in real time instead of planning forever 
•  Why being the smartest person in the room is a slow death for growth 
•  The difference between consuming strategies and actually becoming the person who executes them 
•  What I noticed about high-level entrepreneurs that changed how I make decisions 
•  Why clarity, speed, and feedback are the real currencies of growth 

If this episode makes you rethink how you’re learning and executing, share it with someone who’s been stuck in “preparation mode” for too long.

And if you’re ready to move from learning to actually building, message me WORKSHOP on Instagram: @itsraquelq

We’re not collecting ideas anymore, we’re building momentum.

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Transcript

I didn't spend ten thousand dollars on information. I spent $10,000 on collapsing time. That's what I was really buying. I was buying speed. I was buying clarity. feedback. buying relationships. I was buying perspective. And I was buying momentum.

And those things are incredibly difficult to get sitting behind a computer trying to figure out everything by yourself.

Last week I spent almost ten thousand dollars to attend a one-day AI workshop in New York. The ticket alone was six thousand dollars. Then there was a flight, then there was a hotel, and of course food and the time away from your business and the time away from your family. And I know exactly what some people are thinking. Raquel, couldn't you just have watched it on YouTube? Couldn't you have bought the course? Couldn't you have downloaded the notes afterward? Absolutely. But that's not why I went and I didn't go for more information. I went for implementation. And sitting in a room reminded me of something I think a lot of entrepreneurs need to hear this right now. We live in a world where information has been more available than ever. You can ask Chat GPT or Clyde almost anything.

You can watch endless YouTube videos. You can find things on social media. You can listen to podcasts all day. You can download PDFs, checklists, guides, and frameworks.

Guess what my friend? Information is everywhere. And yet somehow people are more overwhelmed than ever. They're consuming more but implementing less. And that was my biggest takeaway from New York. Not AI, not prompts, not automation growth. because there were three lessons that kind of stood out for me during that trip.

Lesson number one is be careful who you learn from. One thing I noticed over the years is that people who continue to grow are still usually investing in themselves. The best athletes still have coaches, the best CEOs have advisors, the best entrepreneurs still put themselves in rooms when they are not the smartest person there. And yet today everyone has a microphone. Everyone has a platform.

Everyone has some kind of advice and one thing that concerns me about the coaching industry right now is there are a lot of people teaching a lot of different things that they actually have never implemented. They consume information, they repeat the information, they've learned the language, and they've never actually done the work. I know you probably can name a few people that you could think of as I say this. There's a difference between someone who studies success and someone who's actively building success.

There's a difference between someone who teaches theory and someone who teaches from experience. one of the reasons I continue to invest in rooms like this is because I actually want to learn from people who are actively building, people who are testing, people who are solving problems in real time, people who are implementing what they teach because information is everywhere but wisdom, my friend, comes from experience. And experience still today matters. And that's what Claude, or that's what ChatGPT can't always necessarily give you.

Lesson number two is the people winning are still betting on themselves. I spent more than two decades building businesses. I have built teams. I have invested in real estate.

I have coach agents all over North America. I have started companies and yet I spend money learning still today. Why? Because the moment you think you've arrived is usually the moment you stop growing. One thing I've noticed about successful people is they don't wait until they have certainty. They don't wait until they know exactly how everything's gonna work out. They make decisions before they have all the answers. They bet on themselves. Every major breakthrough I've experienced happened because I got into a room.

A room with bigger thinkers, a room with people doing more things at a higher level, a room that challenged the way I was thinking. And as I've gotten older, I realized something else. There are very few people I can call and say, Hey, I found a room I think we should be in. And they immediately say yes. Not because they know exactly what they're getting; not because they have a guaranteed ROI, but because they understand that growth often requires faith before certainty. They trust themselves enough to make that investment. They trust themselves to go figure it out.

And I think that is one of the biggest differences between people who continue to grow and people who stay stuck. The people who will continue to grow are always willing to bet on themselves.

And lesson number three is information is free. Guess what? Implementation is rare. This was probably my biggest takeaway from New York. Most entrepreneurs do not have an information problem. And by the way, in that room, there were people from all over the world, people that came from Europe, people that came from South America. I was so impressed for a one-day workshop. You see, most entrepreneurs don't have an information problem. They have an implementation problem.

They know what they should be doing. They know that they should be creating content. They know that they should be following up and generating leads. They know that they've got to build systems. They know that they should hire. They know that they need to delegate. They know they should invest in themselves because the issue isn't knowledge. The issue is execution or time. The value of the room wasn't the information. The value was building in real time. You got to build six AI agents in real time, asking questions in real time, getting feedback in real time, making decisions in real time, solving problems in real time.

And being around seven and eight figure entrepreneurs while building this was absolute gold. You got to see what they were already doing with their business instead of you trying to figure it out all from scratch. Things that might have taken me weeks, months to figure out happened in a single day. And I will always pay to compress time. And that's when it hit me.

I didn't spend ten thousand dollars on information. I spent $10,000 on collapsing time. That's what I was really buying. I was buying speed. I was buying clarity. I was buying feedback. I was buying relationships. I was buying perspective. And I was buying momentum.

And those things are incredibly difficult to get sitting behind a computer trying to figure out everything by yourself.

And the bigger lesson is if New York reminded me of anything, it's this. The gap between where you are and where you want to be is rarely an information gap. It's usually an implementation gap. And most people already know this: that they should be doing more so than consuming.

The question isn't whether you know the question is whether you're doing it, And that's what I want to challenge you with today. What's one thing you've been putting off? What's the room you've been afraid to join? What's the investment you've been afraid to make? What's the system you've been meaning to build? And what's the conversation you've been avoiding? Because your next breakthrough is probably hiding behind the thing.

That you actually keep postponing. I didn't leave New York with a hundred pages of note. I left with clarity. I left with decisions. I left with actions. And action is what changes businesses day in and day out. Action is what also changes families, and action is what changes lives.

So this week, don't ask yourself what else do you need to learn.

Ask yourself, what am I finally going to implement? Because information is everywhere, implementation is rare. And the people who continue to grow are usually the ones that are going and willing to invest and get in the rooms and bet on themselves before they see the outcome.

That's how you build better. That's how you create opportunities, and that's how you play bigger. So

If this episode resonated with you, I want you to share it with a friend who needs to hear it. And if you are at the point where you are ready to stop collecting information and start implementing, this is exactly why we host our monthly Play Bigger Workshops. So DM me the word workshop at @itsraquelq, not for more theories, not for more ideas, but for execution, because sometimes the fastest way to move forward isn't another month of you trying to figure it out on your own.

It's getting in the room. I want to thank you for hanging out with me on another quick episode. And until next time, don't forget to keep Playing Bigger.