[cmos]

In my startup we had a customer who said they weren't going to pay us. I was upset and pissed as I had given them another chance after a previous payment issue to help them out of their hole. It felt personal.

My lead salesperson asked "do you know what a sunk cost is?" "no" "it's an accounting term for money that can not be retrieved, and going after it will probably only cost you more money, so you just have to write it off" "your being upset is compounding the loss. Let's spend that time and energy creating new sales instead of being sad about old ones. You need to write this off"

Felt 10x better, we then brainstormed and invented.