Who Said Success Has to Cost You Everything?

Dear reader,

I don’t know what it is about New York City, but every time I visit, something happens.

This time, I wasn’t going to New York for business. No investor meetings, no BYOU presentations, no networking agenda. I was going purely for pleasure, together with someone who is very dear to my heart and who absolutely LOVES New York.

The last time I visited NYC was in January, and I was so incredibly sick that I honestly couldn’t understand what everyone was so excited about. So when the opportunity came to experience it again, I thought, why not? Show me your favorite places, the little hidden gems, the restaurants, the energy, all of it. Maybe I had completely missed the magic last time.

We arrived on Wednesday, and that first evening already felt like a completely different New York. We went to the rooftop bar at the Refinery Hotel, and oh my goodness, what a place! The atmosphere, the views, the conversations. I was loving every second of it. And somehow, we ended up meeting this wonderful person from San Francisco. Which made me laugh, because whenever I’m in San Francisco, I somehow end up meeting founders, people in finance, or someone building something in tech.

Thursday was spent exploring the city, walking around, discovering places and going out that evening. And that evening a thought entered my mind.

What if I actually lived here?

Not just visiting for a few days, but really building a life in America. Waking up surrounded by this energy, growing BYOU in the States, meeting people who are building companies and thinking on a completely different scale. There’s an intensity to New York that I find incredibly exciting, and I can absolutely see why so many founders are drawn to it.

But almost immediately, another thought came up. I would never want to move to America if my best friend Gertjan wasn’t coming with me.

I know, I know. Here I am, a founder with big international ambitions, talking about how I wouldn’t move without my best friend. 😂

But I’m serious. That friendship means the world to me. You can have the beautiful house, the successful company, the financial freedom, the entire dream life, but if you lose the people who make that life meaningful, what exactly have you gained?

The following day, what had started as an exciting little fantasy about living in New York suddenly became something much heavier. I began questioning myself, my ambitions and whether I was making the right decisions about my future. Which surprised me, because I’m generally not someone who walks around feeling insecure.

But let me explain why the idea of moving to America isn’t as simple as packing my bags and booking a one-way ticket.

Since January, my life has finally been moving in such a beautiful direction. After a period when I was living from Airbnb to Airbnb, constantly moving around without really having a place to call home, I finally have my own apartment in Amsterdam. My work is going incredibly well, I’ve surrounded myself with wonderful clients, and financially I’ve managed to rebuild a strong position after losing everything following my time in the UK.

BYOU is in a much stronger place too, that feeling of coming home. Peace of mind. Oh my goodness, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that feeling now.

Would I really give all of that up, just when I’ve finally created some stability?

And before I knew it, the questions started coming.

If I don’t move, am I really ambitious enough?

Am I holding BYOU back?

Am I actually going all-in?

Would a more successful founder simply take the risk and figure everything out along the way?

It’s fascinating how quickly your mind can turn an exciting possibility into a reason to question yourself.

What made it even more interesting was realizing how much the opinions of people I love can influence me.

When someone who means very little to me has an opinion about my life, I can usually listen, smile and continue doing exactly what I believe is right.

But when someone I deeply care about believes strongly that I should do something, I take their words seriously.

At one point, I was so overwhelmed by it that I actually considered going home early. I didn’t want to spend a beautiful trip feeling like I needed to defend the life I’d built or prove how serious I was about my company.

Luckily, the next day we went to the Hamptons.

And if you ask me now what I loved most about this entire trip, I would probably say the Hamptons. Sorry, New York. 😂

We stayed at Marram in Montauk, a beautiful beach hotel with this peaceful, the spiritual atmosphere. The ocean, the slower pace of everything. It was such a contrast to Manhattan and that was exactly what we needed.

I still remember him asking me, “But Danique, don’t you have to work? Don’t you have any meetings?”

And I remember my reaction even more clearly. My voice became quieter, almost as if I needed to explain myself.

“But… I’m here with you. I moved my meetings to next week, when I’m back home.”

For a moment, I felt this strange urge to start explaining how busy I actually was. To mention everything I was working on, the meetings I had scheduled, all the things happening with BYOU. Almost as if I needed to prove that I was also a hardworking founder.

But why on earth would I do that?

I was on a beautiful trip with someone who had put so much thought into organizing it, and I had chosen to give him my time and attention. Isn’t that something beautiful?

I wanted to listen, laugh, have long conversations, discover places together and actually experience the moments we were creating. And looking back, I’m so happy I made that choice.

We also did something I love to do: fire ceremonies. The idea is that you reflect on a behavior, belief or pattern you want to release. You speak it out loud, normally write it down on something that can safely be burned, and then place it into the fire. You watch the flames consume the words you’ve written, almost as if you’re physically letting go of something you’ve been carrying around inside yourself.

We also had a reading together, where we could each ask a question to reflect on.

My question was simple.

What do I need to let go of?

And after everything that had happened over the previous days, the answer felt almost painfully obvious. That constant feeling of not being good enough. Not doing enough. Not being far enough ahead. Not having achieved enough yet.

It’s something I’ve become increasingly aware of, especially when it comes to BYOU. I can launch things quickly, take risks, make decisions and put myself out there. But when it comes to truly standing behind what I’ve created, celebrating it and confidently showing the world what BYOU can become, there’s sometimes this little voice in my head saying, “Not yet. It’s not good enough.”

But then came his question.

He asked, “How is Danique still in my life five years from now?”

And the woman immediately responded, “But Danique is not a business plan.”

🫠🫠

I still laugh thinking about that moment, because what an interesting response. And it made me think about something I hadn’t really considered before:

how much the questions we ask influence the answers we receive. Because imagine asking, “How do I make sure someone is still in my life five years from now?”

But what if you asked, “What can I change within myself so that this person continues to choose to be in my life?”

That’s a completely different question, isn’t it? Suddenly, you’re not trying to control the future or someone else’s choices.

You’re looking at your own behavior, your own patterns and the things you can actually influence.

New York showed me how much I love the drive and energy in the States. The opportunities, the people, the conversations, the scale at which people think. I still feel an enormous pull towards America, and I absolutely want to continue building BYOU there. But that doesn’t mean I need to move tomorrow or abandon everything I’ve created in the Netherlands just to prove that I’m serious.

Maybe my foundation is in Amsterdam, while some of my biggest opportunities for growth are in America.

And maybe that’s perfectly fine.

Know what matters to you. Know what season you’re in. And have the confidence to make decisions based on that, even when other people would choose differently.

Because the more I reflect on this trip, the more I realize that my biggest challenge wasn’t deciding whether to move to America. It was recognizing how quickly I could start feeling not good enough when my decisions didn’t match someone I care about expectations.

How many ideas never get shared because someone thinks they’re not good enough?

How many founders hesitate to approach investors because they don’t believe they’re ready?

How many opportunities do we miss because we’re waiting to become some imaginary better version of ourselves?

Looking back, I don’t want to build a successful company at the expense of everything that makes my life meaningful.

I want to build something extraordinary for the world while staying true to who I am. And I don’t think those two things have to compete.

So if you’re reading this and you’re in a season where you’re questioning whether you’re doing enough, whether you’re moving fast enough or whether your choices look ambitious enough to the outside world, I hope you’ll ask yourself something.

Are these actually your expectations? Or have you slowly started measuring your life against someone else’s idea of what success should look like?

Perhaps the most important question of all is this:

What deserves your energy in this season of your life?

Not five years from now.

Right now.

With love,

Danique ❤️