Selfmastered is the world's foremost peak performance company focused on entrepreneurs. Everything we do ensures our clients accelerate their personal performance and become business athletes that can scale their businesses quickly and thus drive the change they want to see in the world faster. Our mission is to help all entrepreneurs operate at peak performance to tackle the most significant challenges the world faces effectively.
Why we exist
The core concept within the Selfmastered thesis is that entrepreneurs do not fail because they can't identify business opportunities or gain traction, but because their execution & performance skills are insufficient to cope with the complexity of the fast-paced, ever-changing business landscape. Their inability to take care of themselves (performance) and make things happen consistently in their business career (execution) often leads them to personal & professional bankruptcies.
As we say internally: entrepreneurs don't have business problems. Entrepreneurs have personal problems that reflect on their businesses. Thus, Selfmastered's mission is to help the stuck get unstuck, and the unstuck become inevitable in their business pursuits by accelerating their performance to peak potential.
Who we help
We help entrepreneurs w/ small businesses (1-10 team members) that understand that hypergrowth in their companies requires mastering their personal performance first. We only work with founders who have an existing business making at least $10,000/month and want to scale to 6 & 7 figures. These businesses have the strategic framework needed to scale to 7-figures but lack the execution and personal performance frameworks to get there fast.
Occasionally, we also help executives or executives-to-be get promoted by accelerating their personal performance.
How we help
We help these founders become "Peak Performing Entrepreneurs" that consistently operate at peak performance and achieve in a day what others achieve in a week. We teach them several skills that schools don't teach so that they can sustain laser-like focus for up to 10h/day (in 4-5 sessions of 90-120 minutes), prioritize, plan & execute at an elite level under pressure and remove all faulty belief systems and negative emotions that may be holding them back (anxiety, self-doubt, self-sabotage, etc.)
How it works
Our program works spectacularly well (100% results rate for those who train with us for at least 12 weeks) because we don't teach opinion. We teach a data-driven methodology that has been perfected for over 5 years and blends together the most actionable frameworks from complexity science, neuroscience, and behavioral science to reliably help entrepreneurs achieve & sustain peak performance. We don't do "hacks", teach sketchy stuff like the "Law of Attraction" or indulge in "neuro-babble". Everything we do is based on peer-reviewed studies and all personal performance improvements we train our clients to achieve have clear KPIs.
What we believe
A "Peak Performing Entrepreneur" is someone who has achieved a perfect balance between stratospheric business results, deep life satisfaction, and personal freedom. To achieve this balance, we teach & follow a proven philosophy of personal performance that is grounded on 4 core principles:
1. Signal over noise - top performers only work on the right things in the correct sequence. Everything else is noise or waste.
2. Leverage - top performers architect their life & work to do more with less through the strategic deployment of all sorts of leverage.
3. Focus - top performers optimize their minds for maximum focus.
4. Data-driven excellence - top performers use selected KPIs to elevate their standards weekly so their desired results become inevitable. Math, not magic.
How we came to be
Part 1. Fixing myself
It all started in 2013 when I (Horacio León Castillo, just call me Leon) was finishing my Architecture studies in Madrid. My school was so demanding and prestigious that everybody outside wanted to get in, but those we were in desperately wanted to get out. In short, I spent 7 years putting in 90+ hour weeks and pulling incessant all-nighters to finish a degree that had zero job prospects (at that time). By the time I graduated, I had developed many physical problems, most notably narcolepsy and severe back pain that prevented me from staying awake or focusing at will. I was exhausted, and I was broke.
This dire situation sparked my interest in personal performance, and I started to fix myself, one step at a time. I started devouring books on self-management, psychology, behavioral science, and complex systems to understand how to become the best of the best. It all began with a question I kept asking myself then: "If Elon Musk could be insanely effective while working 100h/week at 40ish, why couldn't I?".
Part 2. Finding myself
At that time, the only thing that was clear to me was that I did not want to become an architect. I had to find something else. Since nobody in the strategic consulting or finance industries in Spain (where I was seeking a job at that time) would hire a 25yo architect (wrong age, wrong skillset), I realized I had no choice but to become so good that they couldn't ignore me. This is when I started teaching myself management, finance, economics, and everything in between. It took me 18 months to find a job at the real estate consulting department of a big4 consultancy.
I was 27 at that time. I started my career at 27, let that sink in.
Part 3. Blitzscaling myself
As soon as I got in, I deliberately started accelerating my performance to be my absolute best at this opportunity. I ferociously applied everything I was teaching myself. I soon started to develop my self-management tools to track & optimize my performance (which eventually became the Selfmastered Dashboard we give our clients). I learned and tested new things every week, pushing myself harder week on week. By the time I had to pull all-nighters to finish a deliverable for a client, I was able to recover quickly. Even as a financial analyst (lowest level in the corporate hierarchy), I was soon entrusted with heading key projects that involved 1-3 other departments: developing internal VDR tools for real estate transactions, new apps for NPL-loaded banks, etc. Big & exciting things.
20 months after I got this job, I was hired as Real Estate Manager at a private equity real estate fund.
Part 4. Scaling others
As I progressed through my real estate career, I was invited to co-found a seed-stage venture capital fund, Civeta. I'm still involved with Civeta Investments, and so far we've had the opportunity to invest in 37 entrepreneurs (pre-seed & seed). One of our investments has IPOed in the USA as part of $ROVR. At this stage in my career, I worked in venture capital during the weekends and in private equity during the weekdays, giving me an unprecedented perspective on how top performers manage themselves in high-stakes situations. My interest in personal performance (to the point of peak performance) grew even further as I started training & mentoring other people with the methodology I had developed to accelerate myself.
After 10 months as a manager at this Private Equity fund, I was promoted to Director. I had gone from architect to private equity director in 30 months (instead of the average 15 years).
Part 5. Starting Selfmastered
In 2019 I started to grow disenchanted with the private equity world. I liked the status and money it provided me, but I didn't care much about it. It frequently came to my mind that what I loved the most was investing in entrepreneurs and helping them accelerate their execution & performance. The more I embraced this mission, the less I cared about investing €5M-€85M in big real estate developments. In fall 2019, I quit my job in finance to entirely focus on building a training company that could help others on a global scale.
And thus Selfmastered was born.
During the first few months of business-building, I was invited by IE University to be the part-time Academic Coordinator of two prestigious masters in Real Estate globally (Master in Real Estate and Global Master in Real Estate Development). I guess there wasn't a better fit for this position than a trained architect with a great career in real estate that had now founded an edtech startup.
At the beginning of 2021, I was selected as TOP10 Finance Talent in Spain under 35 by NOVA, a top-talent global network, for my fast career within the Spanish private equity industry.
Part 6. Scaling Selfmastered
The first version of our flagship product, the Performance Accelerator Program, was released in December 2020. It encapsulated 5+ years of researching, compiling, and systematizing my methodology for peak performance. So far, more than 200 entrepreneurs/professionals have trusted Selfmastered to transform the way they operate in the world.
We continuously update our product based on new research findings. The Selfmastered Performance Accelerator 4.0. was released on January 1st, 2022.
We're only getting started. If you want to evolve into a business athlete that can achieve in 1 day what others do in 1 week, come join us!
Our team
Selfmastered delivers the best results in the world thanks to a small team of top-performing individuals who do in a day what others achieve in a week. Although we are fully remote, we like to get together 3-4 times a year and compete against each other in Marathons and Ironmans.
León Castillo (CEO & Founder)
Coordinates research, develops products, creates content, and helps clients.
Yannick Halm (Head of Growth)
Manages operations and growth: funnels, ads, and everything in between.
Benjamin George (Head of Admissions & Community)
Vets, onboards, coaches and keep clients accountable to results.
Isaac "Merlin" Frias (Head of Multimedia)
Handles all creative projects within the company.
