When it comes to financial decisions, sometimes even the most well-intentioned choices can turn out to be bad investments. Instead of fixating on what we lost, we can instead shift our perspective and recognize that the value of an investment is not solely determined by how extensively it is used but rather by the impact it had and what we learned.
Kristen shares a tough lesson she learned that taught her resilience and to encourage that setbacks are inevitable, but they don’t define us. Instead of dwelling on a loss, remember to focus on extracting the lessons from the experience and using them to grow.
Let’s look at a few highlights:
Why do people adopt the mindset of the clean plate club How to grow and learn even when you make a bad investment
What Kristin learned from making a bad investment and how she grew
By letting go of the notion that we must finish one thing before buying another, we open ourselves to endless possibilities. What seemed like a costly error transformed into a powerful learning opportunity. Kristen gained knowledge, resilience, and a long-term perspective. This lesson became the foundation of her investment philosophy, allowing her to make more informed decisions and avoid repeating past mistakes.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https:/Kristenboss.com/question
Connect with Kristen: If you’re ready to learn the simple process of running your social selling business online, you have to check out Kristen’s live group coaching program! The Social Selling Academy: www.thesocialsellingacademy.com
Transcript for Episode #165: The 50k Lesson
Kristen Boss (00:19): You are listening to the Kristen Boss Podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week, I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning.
Kristen Boss (00:56): Hey, bosses. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am super excited about this particular story lesson I’m going to be sharing with you a personal experience where it was painful, but I learned a really valuable lesson. In fact, it’s called the $50,000 lesson. And if you’re like, that sounds like a ridiculously expensive lesson, and I would never want to pay for a $50,000 lesson, well, you get to learn from mine. So hopefully you won’t make the same mistake. However, the principles of the story is going to apply and meet you where you are in your business right now. So here’s something that I’m noticing that’s kind of trending in the entrepreneurial space, the online business spaces, I’m noticing that people, there’s a tendency to have high course consumption from people, meaning there’s a lot of people that are buying online courses, trainings here and there, joining programs, joining offers.
Kristen Boss (01:49): And what I noticed from people is there are several types of people. There is the person that buys all the things and never implements. They are just cannot. They’re a compulsive course purchaser. They’re just like, Ooh, that one looks good. I’ll buy that one. But they start and then they drop it, and then they’re like, ah. And then they buy the next one, or I’m going to call it our perfectionist course consumer. And these are people that spend money on investments to grow their business. They buy the course, they buy the training, and they have in their mind that in order for them to extract the value of the course, they have to implement and use the course perfectly and consume all the material, watch every video, use every tool. Otherwise, they deem themselves an irresponsible investor. But that’s just not the case. But I think a lot of people get stuck in this because they’re like, well, I bought that one course and I still am working through that material, or I invested in that one thing.
Kristen Boss (02:48): I still have yet to watch the videos. Or, yeah, I started that, but I haven’t nearly gotten as much as I want out of it. And so they tell themselves, I’m not allowed to invest in another thing until I, it’s almost like the idea of clearing your plate at dinnertime. It’s like, I’ve only got the most out of this meal if I cleaned my entire plate instead of, and people do this with their courses. This is why I think it’s such a good lesson is have you decided when you invest in something, why you’re investing it and what makes it valuable? What you determine what your return on investment is. So let me go back to the dinner example or paying for food at a nice restaurant. So let’s say you buy a really nice juicy steak and a side of potatoes, and you’ve got all this stuff and you’re eating your meal, you’re really enjoying it.
Kristen Boss (03:39): It’s very tasty, and you notice you’re getting full and it’s starting to feel uncomfortable. And you look down at your plate and you still have half your food left. And the story you’re telling yourself is, I spent $60 on this filet mignon. I can’t leave three ounces on the plate because I spent $60. So you feel like you have to finish the steak because you spent the money instead of, I’m spending the money to have this quality food experience until I am satisfied, and I don’t have to feel guilty if there is food left on the plate. It tends to have, it’s almost the concept of scarcity, of food scarcity, or maybe money scarcity when it comes to buying food. It’s like, well, I spent a lot of money on this food, therefore I don’t want to waste food. Because in your mind, you view it as wasting money.
Kristen Boss (04:28): So you are in the Clean Plate Club and you will finish the steak even if it makes you incredibly uncomfortable, you feel ill, you feel sick, and suddenly the experience you wanted is not the experience you’re getting because now you’ve stuffed yourself full and it’s not a great experience. Okay, let’s take this analogy back to purchasing courses or buying programs to improve your skills and to get better in the business marketplace. Here’s the thing. I think people are getting better at investing into courses and knowledge to grow their skillset. I think it’s becoming very mainstream, very norm. But here is where I see people get hung up is they believe that I can’t invest in another thing because I haven’t gone through every single nook and cranny of this course. But that’s not what determines you using it or getting the value out of the course.
Kristen Boss (05:22): It’s have you implemented, did you get what you wanted when you decided to buy the course? I have bought courses to have access to only one piece of the intellectual property. So let me give you an example of that. I had somebody join my social selling academy, and she didn’t want any of the other materials because she wasn’t a network marketer. She was a coach, and what she wanted access to was my content on copywriting, organic marketing and selling. She’s like, because I, she’s like, I may not be a network marketer, but I’m a coach and I want to learn how you sell, and I really want to learn how you write really good copy and how you write emails. I want to learn that. So in her mind, she’s like, I’m going to invest the $2,000 just to have access to those things. And sure, if I want to do anything else I can.
Kristen Boss (06:11): But what she did was she assigned value and said, learning copywriting, getting access to organic marketing and learning how to sell that is worth $2,000 to me. So instead of saying, if I’m paying $2,000 and I’m only using parts of the material, then I’m irresponsibly investing instead of what could I possibly get if I learn copywriting, if I get access to that material, could it help me make more money in the marketplace if the answer is yes, yes. And then the question she would ask herself is, do I believe it will help me make more than $2,000 with these skills? Yes. So of course I’m going to make the money back by acquiring this skill. So she assigned certain monetary value to one tiny component in my program and said, and I, it was a very eye-opening conversation for me because I was like, Hey, because she happened to be a colleague.
Kristen Boss (07:04): And I was like, what are you doing in my program? I was like, you’re not at work marketer. I’m like, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re enjoying it. She’s like, I really just wanted to learn all about your copywriting. And so I just decided to join. I was like, you spent $2,000 just to learn copywriting? She’s like, yes, and it actually is that valuable to me. So that changed the way I view how we consume content. And here’s what I, I’m also noticing is people tend to hoard free and cheap content. I just want the free things, and it’s like, are you valuing free or are you just taking it in and inhaling it? It’s not nutrient dense food that’s actually filling you up and getting you further in your business, but a lot of people just want to survive on cheap fuel. I feel like free trainings are like sugar.
Kristen Boss (07:55): It’ll give you a little bit of energy, and then you’re going to crash maybe 10 days later or five days later, or sometimes 48 hours later because free trainings and cheap trainings aren’t meant to change your entire life. But I think people tend to view content that way and being like, I’m just going to keep consuming free content and expect it to change my life when that’s, but we’re not assigning real value to that. And so when we don’t have a lot of value, we don’t have a lot of skin in the game. So what is really causing us to go all in on ourselves and do the hard thing and implement? When I decided to invest in a trainer, for me, it was a lot of money to spend on my health. And listen, I can spend all the money in my business because I’m like, yes, how’s it going to grow my bottom line?
Kristen Boss (08:42): How is it going to help my company? How is it going to help my skillset? But we tend to devalue things that improve our quality of life where it’s like, unless it makes me money, then it might not be worth it, or maybe it’s not worth the price. We to only think about how does this help me make money back instead of how does this enrich my life? How does this improve my quality of life? So me spending $5,000 to completely change my health, I decided, okay, it’s spending the $5,000 to become a different person, to learn these habits, to learn these skills, to figure out how to be the healthiest version of me for my entire life. It’s not like, oh, I’m paying $5,000 to lose 10, 15 pounds. I’ve done that before. I’m paying $5,000 to lose 15 pounds for the last time and keep it off for the rest of my life, and to enable and instill these habits in myself to completely change the trajectory of my quality of life.
Kristen Boss (09:38): This is how we have to start making investment decisions. It’s like we tend to only want to look at the bottom line, but instead of like, oh, wait, but hold on. What is the value of the process and who I become in the process? What is the value of the investment of itself? Is the investment teaching me something about me? So I want to tell you a story that kind of wraps this up kind of nicely. It takes the analogy with what I’m trying to convey. So I was in a very, very, very high level mastermind that was a hundred K a year, and part of that package, and it was a business expense. And part of that was in that package, I get to be in a Facebook community, and it meant there was four quarterly meetings with the coach and my peers, and that was it.
Kristen Boss (10:30): It was one day of coaching. I didn’t get anything else in between the sessions. So for me, it was like, okay, if I have four meetings and I’m paying a hundred K a year, each meeting is worth $25,000 to me. And so for me, and I had to renew every six months and pay 50 K. And so what happened was I went to meeting one and meeting one. It was a terrible meeting, it was just a really bad experience. And I went home and kind of wrecked. I was actually kind of traumatized. It was harmful coaching. I ended up needing to work as a therapist because of the coaching that happened. And so I was like, oh. But at the time I couldn’t see that at the time. I was just like, wow, I just need help working through what this coach told me to do.
Kristen Boss (11:18): But then the next quarterly meeting, you’re you, it might shock you to hear this, but the next quarterly meeting, the coach did not show up to the meeting, and we were told to just meet amongst ourselves and essentially deliver the program to ourselves. And there was no rescheduling. There was no, I’m so sorry. This is terrible. Here’s other times that we can get you in. And so in my mind, I had flown out to the place where the meeting was, I had moved my schedule accordingly. So there I am. I traveled. I was at this hotel and I’m getting ready to go to the meeting and then told meeting’s not going to happen, or actually, the median is going to happen. The coach isn’t going to be there. You guys just coach each other. And I just remember feeling at a total loss in the moment.
Kristen Boss (12:09): I’m like, how is this okay? Why is this okay? And so I had a moment where I was like, okay, I really need to think about this. And so I decided in that moment, I was like, this is unacceptable. This is not fulfilling services rendered. And that’s when I decided I’m no longer going to work with this individual, work in this container, work in this community and all that. Now, a lot of have of people would looked at that medium, been like, oh my gosh, you lost $25,000. And I will say, that is where my men, mine went at first. Oh my gosh, I’ve lost $25,000. But here’s the thing. I asked myself the most valuable question when I was flying home and I was upset. I was hurt, I was frustrated. I was mad at myself being like, how did I not see this?
Kristen Boss (12:57): How is this acceptable? How is this how businesses run? And I looked at the six months with this individual, and it was like 50 K, I’d spent 50 K and invested 50 k. And so there I am sitting with this and I’m like, wow. I always tell myself that I’m going to get the lessons I need with every investment I have with everything I do in my business. I’m always going to get, if I’m going to pay 75 K to do this thing, I’m going to get 75 K of value. It’s something I’ve taught myself. Instead of sitting there and being like, well, we’ll wait and see to see if you can provide the value to me, I’m always looking for how can I personally take responsibility to extract value out of the situation. So I’m getting the lesson. And so that’s what I did.
Kristen Boss (13:43): I was on the plane ride home and I ask myself, okay, man, this is not the lesson I wanted. This is like I am going to learn a $50,000 lesson here. What is the lesson for me here? And now, most people would’ve been spiraling, freaking out. But for me, I ask myself the most valuable question, if I inv with this $50,000 investment for six months, what is my $50,000 lesson here? And here’s what happened on the plane ride home, on the plane ride home. I ended up spending the entire flight home riding my company core values, how we treat our customers, our fulfillment plan, our company ethics, are I restructured some of my programs where I’m like, what is in the best interest to our students and our clients? And I went deeply introspective and I evaluated my company because I’m like, I never want to make this mistake.
Kristen Boss (14:39): I don’t want anyone else to ever feel the way I do right now. So what do I need to clean up in my business so that I never make this mistake or so that I, no one ever feels this way. So that’s when I wrote down my company core values, our code of conduct, our ethics, how we treat our clients, all of that, our client fulfillment. I just wrote it down the entire flight home, and I was like, you know what? I paid $50,000 to develop my company culture. My core values are ethics, our standards, our client fulfillment, how to protect our clients, how to respect the agency of our clients and our students, and how do we coach without causing harm? I built our company ethics, and so I didn’t paid $50,000 to this individual to grow my business, grow my bottom line, have access to learning these things.
Kristen Boss (15:35): And it didn’t happen, but I’m like, okay, but what did I get? What was my $50,000 lesson? And I ended up writing out our company Core Values and Culture and all those things, and I’m like, was that worth $50,000 to me? A hundred percent? Because I can tell you, without having those guideposts, without having that compass, without having such a clear idea of our own company values and our core values, when that is not firm, I could potentially lose way more than 50 to a hundred thousand when my company’s not operating from core values and we end up causing harm, or someone doesn’t have a good customer fulfillment experience or whatever it is. So I’m like, oh, I know. And I knew I was so convinced on the way home, I was like, oh, this is so worth $50,000. It is not the way I thought I was going to receive this.
Kristen Boss (16:23): This was a bummer experience. It was painful, but I got what I needed from the experience. Now, I could have had trust issues after that investment being like, I’m never paying for another coach. I’m never joining another mastermind. I don’t trust anybody. But I decided to be like, okay, but part of my $50,000 lesson is also I’m going to just comb through my entire experience and just look for the red flags that I ignored. I’m going to look for the things I’m going to ask myself. What questions should I have asked? What should I have looked for? And so suddenly I started creating a vetting process for myself of these are business circles I will be in. These are business circles I will not be in. So did it potentially save me thousands of dollars in the future from potentially joining not great masterminds or hiring the wrong coaches?
Kristen Boss (17:11): Yes, absolutely. So it helped me create a vetting experience of how do I now make decisions when it comes to my investments? And I immediately invested into another mastermind. Six weeks later. It came from a friend and it was great, but even in that mastermind, I learned that’s not a good fit for me either. And I still had to learn. I think I paid 25 k for the year, and overall the fulfillment was good that people were good, but it just wasn’t the most aligned thing for me. I ended up going to the one live event, and I just called it the 25 K live event being like, I didn’t go to any of the monthly meetings that they offer. I didn’t use any of the portal, the materials they have in their portal. For me, I was like, I really just want to go to the event, and I just paid the 25 K membership to go to the event.
Kristen Boss (17:59): So notice how I’m assigning to value to specific things. And so you might be like, oh, okay, Kristen, this is big dollar amounts. I’m not spending 50 K on masterminds. I’m not spending 25 K. No, but you might be spending $200 on this one course where you wanted to learn this one thing, or you wanted to learn this and you only learned one thing from it. And maybe you’re telling yourself, I’m not allowed to buy any more courses or learn any more new things because I haven’t finished that one because I haven’t finished it, haven’t used my investment. Well, and I would just say, wait, but hold on. What if you were to only get one thing? The one thing that you’ve gotten you’ve implemented, is that worth what you spent on the thing? Right? So for example, going back to the coach that joined my academy for her, she decided just having access to your material on writing copy and learning marketing, $2,000 of value to me.
Kristen Boss (18:54): So she got what she came for, and then she had zero judgment or thoughts about all the other unused things inside my program. And so for me, the $50,000 lesson, it was a lesson in client fulfillment, core values, how to vet the people I work with, how to make sure it’s the right mastermind, how to actually look for if there’s gas lighting happening, how to find red flags. And that is also when I started trauma informed coaching, that was huge for me. That experience was like, there was so much harm that I saw. I was like, okay, not only do I now see it, I’m now going to learn to become somebody who is a trauma informed coach. And not only that, I’m going to make sure I don’t cause harm as a coach, so I’m going to go get the training. I’m going to go get the certification.
Kristen Boss (19:46): I’m going to go figure those things out. So it wasn’t the lesson I wanted, but it was the lesson I needed. I still look back on everything I typed out on that flight home because I was disappointed because someone failed to deliver on what they were promising. I still decided on that flight home, I’m going to get $50,000 of value here. I’m going to get my $50,000 lesson. And I did. I flew home with a $50,000 lesson. Now, it wasn’t given to me by the coach. And I’m also, I want to be very clear here. I’m also not trying to excuse the coach’s behavior and gaslight myself into being like, I’m responsible for finding the value. No, no, no, no, no. I still held that coach responsible. I still told that coach, it’s absolutely unacceptable what you did. I still held my ground and told them what you did is wrong.
Kristen Boss (20:36): Here’s what I’m asking for. Here are the steps I’m taking. So I still called the coach out, and I still allowed myself to see I was wronged. But even in that, instead of just deci throwing my hands in the air and being like, man, what a waste. I was like, I waste nothing and I’m going to get the value I came for, even if it’s not what I originally signed up for. So I just want to give you that encouragement. I don’t know what it is that you are consuming. Maybe it’s your health journey, maybe it’s other things you have invested in and you’ve told yourself like, oh, I bought the thing. So let me give you an example here. Maybe you bought a treadmill, maybe you bought a Peloton and you spent $2,500 on the Peloton bike and you’ve only been on it five times this year.
Kristen Boss (21:22): You can sit there and be like, I am so terrible at investing in my health. I’m never going to allow myself to buy a piece of workout equipment again because I’ve only been on my Peloton five times. Therefore, I’ve wasted my money instead of, okay, I’m going to turn around and sell this. Because what I’ve learned in this experience is I actually don’t spinning as much as I thought I did. I thought I was going to enjoy it. I don’t like it. Turns out I really just want a treadmill. And it, had I not tried this, I wouldn’t have learned that. Oh, were there some things in the buying process I could have learned from so that I don’t do this again? We can learn from every investment decision we make. It’s just like, okay, what was the lesson here? But instead of shaming ourselves and saying, I’m bad with money.
Kristen Boss (22:09): I’m not allowed to invest. I’m not allowed to do those things. And I also want to say there is we show up differently when the investment is costly instead of when it’s cheap or when it’s free. I don’t show up the same when something’s cheap. You want to know how I know this because I had a friend that was fitness coaching me for free last year, and she’s great, but because there was no exchange, meaning I wasn’t paying her a lot of money to where it was painful for me if I didn’t wake up and didn’t work out, there wasn’t pain there. It wasn’t like, oh, I paid a lot of money and I should get my butt up and go to the gym, therefore I should show up. That wasn’t the dialogue. It was like, man, I’m not paying anything anyways. And then on her end, there’s not the level of accountability on her end because when I pay a coach a lot of money, I know this was true for me.
Kristen Boss (23:03): When someone paid me a lot of money, I feel a certain responsibility to ensure they get that type of result. But if they’re doing something for free, I can guarantee you, if I were to coach you for free, the experience you would get from me versus what you get from me when you pay me is different because you show up differently. I show up differently when there’s not an exchange of value happening. It devalues the entire experience. So I just wanted to offer and share this lesson because maybe you have made a bad investment. I’m going to put quotes around that. Maybe you have made an investment that you have deemed a bad investment, or you’ve told yourself, I’m not good with investments because you haven’t cleaned your plate, so to speak. Instead of like, did I get what I needed? Did I learn a lesson and was that lesson of value to me?
Kristen Boss (23:51): If so, what if it’s not a waste? What if I’m not bad at this? And this is also I think what keeps people from investing, truly investing in a business program. For example, my academy or maybe another training you’re looking at or maybe a certification, they’re looking at their prior history and saying, well, I’ve bought things before and I wasn’t good at them, so I’m not allowed to buy this now because there’s almost like perfectionist purchasing decisions, meaning I’m only going to allow myself to invest if I know I can do it perfectly and consume it perfectly when that should never be the question you ask yourself. That should never be the standard. It should be, I’m going to invest and implement this one thing. Is it worth me put investing the money so I can learn this one thing and implement this one thing?
Kristen Boss (24:46): What would the value of that be to me instead of it’s only valuable if I consume every single thing? I think it’s just important to think about how you are viewing your investment decisions. I don’t even care if it’s like with clothes or houses or your education or your health or your fitness. Chances are you have some perfectionist purchasing thinking that might be keeping you from taking the next step and truly investing in your growth. So something to just think about today is ask yourself this thing that maybe I bought, or maybe it’s a Peloton for you. Maybe it’s a program being like, how did I still get what I needed, even if I didn’t use it in the way I thought I would? Sometimes that’s what we have to ask ourselves. And so for me, while it could have been painful, I could have been a victim and been like, oh my gosh, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
Kristen Boss (25:39): I decided when I flew home, I’m going to take responsibility and I’m going to get my $50,000 lesson. And that’s absolutely what I did. So maybe you need to look at a couple other areas of your life and be like, okay, what’s the lesson I wanted? And then what’s the lesson I got, the lesson I actually needed? Because sometimes we don’t get the lesson we want. We get the lesson we need, and that’s usually the lesson that hurts. So I encourage you to show up for yourself and bring perfectionistic thinking like take that out of the equation and do something for you. We’ll catch you in the next episode. That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to kristenboss.com.
