I wrote the second check anyway.

In the fall of 2024 I put a down payment on a booth at a big industry conference. The booth was $3,000, half up front and half due before the conference. Once I added the flights and the hotel it came to about $5,500. That was before I factored in three days of my time.

That number might sound small but it was a big gamble. My firm was just a few months old and we had no revenue coming in. My thinking was simple. The enterprise buyers I wanted were going to be in that building for three days, and I wanted to be in it with them. I wanted my firm to get some exposure. It was how we were going to get our name out.

By the middle of that summer the business was telling me a different story. The conversations that were actually going somewhere were small. One person across a table. Smaller intimate gatherings. I was better one on one than I was in a big room.

I remember thinking the booth might not be the right forum for me right now.

Then I did the math and realized I was already in $1,500. Cancelling meant eating that cost and having nothing to show for it. Going meant that at least I would get something for what I had already spent.

Around that same time the conference started their marketing push, we were selected for a mention in one of their announcements. A small thing. It showed up right when I was looking for a reason and I took it.

I wrote the second check in the summer of 2025.

I'm an econ major. I'm very familiar with the concept of sunk costs. I have named it in other people's businesses more times than I can count. It is easy to see when it isn't your money.

I was listening to a Seth Godin podcast a while back and he brought the whole thing back up with an example so small it's almost silly. You prepay $35 to park in a garage. On the way, you spot a free space on the street. The free spot is easier to get in and out of. Most people will drive by the free spot and go to the garage because they already paid. The $35 is gone, so the only live question is which spot is better for the person you are right now.

Nobody agonizes over that one. $35 is a small price and you brush it off and forget about it.

Then move the decimal. Make it $1,500, or make it four years you don't get back, and watch what your brain does with the identical question. It stops being math and starts being about what you would be admitting.

That's the part the garage doesn't tell you. This bias doesn't show up when the number is small enough to see around. It shows up exactly when the cost is big enough to hurt, which is the same moment you most need to think clearly.

I flew out, set up, and stood there for three days.

I knew by the end of day one. The traffic never came, and the people who did walk past were headed somewhere they had decided before they got on the plane.

The part that gets me is that I knew this before I booked it. When I sat on the client side of these conferences, I avoided the exhibit floor completely, and so did everyone I worked with. You're worn out by the afternoon and you know exactly what happens the second you slow down in front of a booth. That was my own behavior for years. I bought a booth anyway.

By day two the exhibitors were talking to each other instead of to buyers. The story going around was that another conference had landed the same week and pulled the crowd. Everybody agreed. It was a good story and it might have been true.  It meant nobody standing in that aisle had to say the harder thing out loud.

Walking away in July would have cost me $1,500. Going cost me $5,500 and three days I didn't get back. The bias didn't just keep me in it. It kept costing me.

That conference is coming around again this year and I'm not going. The room hasn't changed and neither has the price. What changed is that I stopped counting the money I already spent as a reason to spend more.

Whatever you're sitting in right now, some earlier version of you paid for it. She made the best call she could have with what was in front of her that day. That money and those years are gone no matter what you decide next. Staying loyal to her decision doesn't refund a dollar of it.

The second payment isn't always money. Sometimes it's another year, or one more round of telling people it's about to work.

Look at yourself in the mirror and ask. If none of the money had been spent, would you buy it today? If none of the time had been spent, would you give it today?

If the answer is no, the only thing left to decide is how much more you're willing to pay to avoid admitting it.

Until next Tuesday.
Ceaneh