When I'm not hosting this podcast, I am writing books, but it is really hard for me to write when I'm at home, so I like to find remote cabins in the middle of nowhere to just hang out and write. But I hate the idea of my house just sitting empty, doing nothing but collecting dust and definitely not collecting checks. And that's why I'm an Airbnb host. It's one of my all-time favorite side hustles. Other popular side hustles are awesome, too, don't get me wrong, but they often involve big startup costs. By hosting your space, you're monetizing what you already have access to. It It doesn't get easier than that. And if you're new to the side hustle game and you're anxious about getting started, don't worry, because you're not in this alone. Airbnb makes it super easy to host. I mean, if I could do it, you could do it. And your home might be worth a lot more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb. Com/host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. So I've been on TV a long time, like a long, long, 20 years long time.

I've been on TV shows with hundreds of viewers and TV shows with millions of viewers. I would be lying to you if I said I didn't get nervous every now and then, because for sure I do. And let's be real, especially with the bigger ones. I've been going on Good Morning America a lot lately to talk about the most recent M&N happenings, which has been awesome for sure. But what hasn't been so awesome was my most recent appearance, where I did what I think was maybe the stupidest thing I've ever done on TV. Jason and I talk about it on a recent episode of Health Wanted, which I am about to share with you because I am a sucker for punishment, I guess. But I think it's a valuable lesson because we all make mistakes at work, and conventional wisdom tells us that we should own up to those mistakes. But actually, as Jason and I discuss, it's not always the right move. This conversation really helped me lick my wounds, but also feel better about the whole thing, so I won't freak out as much when it happens the next time. Although I really hope nothing ever this embarrassing ever, ever happens to me ever again.

Anyway, I hope you get a good laugh from this one.

This is Help Wanting, the show that tackles all the big work questions you cannot ask anyone else. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor and Chief of Entreprene magazine.

And I'm New York Times best-selling author and money expert, Nicole Lappin.

The helpline is open.

Okay, Jason, do you want me to tell you an embarrassing story about myself?

I mean, you don't have to ask. You could just jump right into it.

It's a recent story. I still feel like my armpits are getting sweaty thinking about it. My palms, mostly.

Okay, this is good. This is raw. I like raw and embarrassing.

So as we're building this network, I've I've been lucky enough to be asked to go on Good Morning America a few times. And you're really good at it. Very you to say. I have been doing this TV thing for a couple of decades now. And so I still get a little nervous. I'm I'm not going to lie, on some big shows like that.

That makes me feel better, by the way, that you still do. Oh, really? Yeah. Anyway, keep going. Keep going. I like this. Okay.

So I went on Good Morning America to talk about the debt ceiling and did the segment. There was a lot of facts, figures, breaking down of the thing. It went fine. The main part of the segment was fine. When they thanked me for coming, which is the most basic part of this.

Right. The outro at the very end of the segment where they're just like, Thanks for coming on the show, Nicole.

Thanks for coming. I don't know how, this has never happened to me before, but I said, What the fuck did I say? Morgan is here because she was also there. So she witnessed this whole thing unfold.

Where I said- Morgan, our executive producer of- Extraordinary. … Of Help Wanted.

I said, You, too, or, Thanks for coming, too. Thank you for coming by.

What did I say? Not quite.

Not quite. I said something terrible. I said something akin to what you would say at the airport when somebody is like, Have a good flight. You're like, You, too. You, too. They're not going on a flight. And it was mortifying for me. I was completely mortified. What did I say, Morgan?

So what you said was, and just to take a step back, because I think it makes a little bit more sense thinking about how the segment started as well. The two hosts, when the segment started, was like, Hi, friend. And Nicole, back to them, was like, Hi, friend. So she had already set up this call and response situation. And so what happened at the end was- Terrible. Was that one of the hosts said, It's always great to have you here. And Nicole said, You, too.

No, I think it was like, It's always great to have you here. Or then I was like, I think I trailed off because I stopped myself. You're right.

It could have just been, It's always great to have you.

Yeah, something like that.

It could have been that.

We have video evidence of it. I'm reluctant to go back and check the tape because it's so cringe-worthy. It was not great.

Are we going to air this on the show? Should we?

The interesting thing is we can air it on social, but we couldn't air it on the podcast because you can't hear Nicole say that at all.

You can. So I get off the segment, I see Morgan. She's the mom, the cool mom on the side of the stage in Mean Girls with the camcorder, cheering me on, recording the segment. So great to see her shining bright face. You crushed it. And I'm like, I'm the worst. I can't believe I did it. She was legitimately confused, which made me a little bit more comforted, I guess. But then I was like, You weren't even listening. It was terrible. Everybody hates me. How did I say something so horrible? I fucked everything up. And she's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And I was like, You We recorded it, right? Let's listen to it. And then we went back and listened to it. And sure enough, she was like, Oh. But wait, just so that I can understand this scene here, do you think that the Anchors on Good Morning America heard you? That is where the jury is out.

Okay. Well, then how about this? This I know is speculative, but do you think that if the Anchor is at GMA heard you, they would have cared or thought it was bad or thought it was funny?

The mean girl inside my head thinks that they would have thought it was terrible and not funny and escorted me out of the building, right? Like, the worst case scenario.

Yeah.

So we went back and we checked the tape, and indeed, I did say something dumb. Yeah. Not great. Not ideal. And so I started panicking. Morgan artfully, skillfully, as usual, talks me off a ledge. It's totally fine. I believed her. She didn't hear it live, but there was some evidence of a trailing out weird thing that I said. And so I immediately sprung into like, oh, my God. And by the way, the segment that we did was live to tape. So in television, it's either live-live, where it's like there's a little bit of a delay in case somebody swears, but it's live, or it's taped, in which case then it's edited and then air later, or it's live to tape. So it's like as if it was live, but if something crazy happens or if you go over for time, they can edit it out. For instance, they use the wrong cover art of money rehab. I saw that going into the segment. It threw me off, and I was like, Fuck, we have to make sure that we get them to change that. So stuff like that, they could actually go back and change, and they did.

So the big question was, do I go back in addition to telling them they used the wrong cover art for the show, do I say, Hey, also this terrible, weird, awkward bananas thing that I said, because also the music was coming out, so I couldn't make fun of myself, which I may have done. That would have felt right if there was a little bit more time. Should I tell the producer, Hey, can you also got this little part out at the end? Okay. And so the debate was, do I call attention to the thing that we don't know if anyone else heard?

And this, I think I should just interject to tee up the episode that we're hearing, because this is not just an episode of telling me this story. This is an episode where we are going to interrogate this question, which is what to do when you have messed up, when you are embarrassed. How do you handle it? When do you call it out? When do you just keep rolling? And here you had this question, which is, you knew you made a mistake. Let us all be clear. It was a mistake. A pretty small mistake, all things considered, but one that you, television professional, don't feel good that you made. No. And there is an opportunity to do something about it, but one that just calls more attention to it. And also maybe you're thinking you don't want to be difficult if there's not a reason to be difficult. And so what do you do when you have made a mistake? And you know other people might see you and think that person made a mistake?

Or as Nicole said at the time, here's some more color. Nicole really was panicking after the segment, and she crushed this description on the debt ceiling and treasury yields and all of these things that are really complicated. And so that's like such a feat. And Nicole is so defeated in the dressing room, and she goes, Such a stupid head.

Wow. This is really just like the care bear's version of a big screw up here, right? It's a small mistake, and then you're calling yourself a stupid head? Yeah. What did you do?

Morgan initially said, Don't say anything. Don't call more attention to it.

Morgan, is that the reason not to say anything is because you don't want to draw more attention to it? What was your argument?

Thank you for asking because it wasn't quite my argument.

Okay, good. Misrepresentation. Let's clear it up.

Oh, okay.

Nicole, to me in the green room after the segment, was like, Should I talk to the producer, Kevin, about it and ask for them to cut it? And I said no, because nobody noticed. It was such a little, teeny tiny thing that the music was already playing over. I didn't notice, and I had my complete all eyeballs on it. And so I was like, the ask to fix this thing is way bigger than the actual thing itself. It was getting spun in your head out of control. It was this teeny tiny little thing that nobody noticed. So don't ask them to edit it because it's nothing.

And then what did I do?

Nicole asked them to cut it out. And they said no because nobody I would notice.

They said no. Nicole. I'm such a stupid head. Did that make you feel worse than having had not asked in the first place?

Yeah, Morgan was right, as usual.

And now that it's out, first of all, did angry hordes of people amass outside your home because you said, Thanks, you too, or whatever it is that you said on Good Morning, America. Did anybody notice or care?

No. I always get hate stuff, especially after doing more national shows, but no.

Okay. How do you feel now that it is out in the world? It happened. People saw it. Possibly a suburban mom in Des Moines, Iowa, heard it and said, tee-ee.

Yeah. It's been a couple of weeks, I think. What is time? It's been at least a week. And so obviously, I've had some space from it. It still is something that makes me feel like a not smart head, at least. But yeah, I don't really care now. Okay. But it cut really deep at the time, and it ruined my day, basically. But also, which it shouldn't have ruined my day. I had an award thing, then I should have been able to move on. I was contemplating whether to make fun of myself and then draw more attention to it in a different way by putting it online and being like, Ha I'm such a money expert. They're just like us. Yeah. Yeah. So I was confronted with that as another choose your own adventure option.

Sure. So lean right into it. But you didn't do that. I didn't. So then when we decided to talk about it on this episode. Was there a part of you that said, No, let's just not do that. Let us ignore that this ever happened?

No, this feels right. I feel good about it. All things considered, I should have listened to Morgan, and I should have just not brought it up and not gone into a panic spiral. But I'm okay that it came out, and I'm okay that I didn't call attention to it because that was a big week for us. I leaned into the actual content of the debt ceiling stuff and breaking that down and the Webby Awards and all that stuff. I focused on the big things without poking more fun at myself on it. So I skipped that, too, which I'm fine with. But now I'm also fine making fun of myself. As you guys know, I am down to do.

I think that the question at the heart of this is what to do when the mistake is made. And in this case, I think that it was very clear- You weren't on the show, Jason. If you were able to step out of the panic attack, what should have happened? Because it wasn't that big of a deal. People have made incredibly large errors on television. This wasn't one of them. But I am going to counter this. Well, let's put this on the shelf for a second. And then I'm going to tell an edited version of a story that, Nicole, you will remember because it involves me calling you in a panic after I said something. And that was that I was interviewed on this radio show, but it wasn't live. One of the options that you said were they recorded it and they'd like to just air it as it was recorded, but it wasn't live immediately. It was going to air in a day or two. And the host had asked me a very sensitive business-related question about entrepreneur or the company. And I am not used to fielding those questions because people generally ask me about entrepreneurs and the stuff that I'm very comfortable talking about.

And I really don't speak to that side of the business. I can speak to editorial decisions that we make. But they asked me a question about the business side. It was a sensitive question. And I think that my answer was okay. But afterwards, I just was in a panic about whether I said the right thing and what would happen if the owner of entrepreneur heard it. Did I properly represent the brand? Did I say something irresponsible? And I did not know what to do. And I called you. And the advice that you gave me was pretty similar to the advice that Morgan gave you, which is to say that it's fine. What you said sounds fine. I didn't have the recording at the time, but I repeated back to you what I had said. And you're like, I think that it's fine. And I just like you in that moment, did not listen. And I reached out and I asked them to take it out.

Oh, I didn't know that part.

Oh, maybe I never gave it a follow-up.

I thought we had come to terms with that.

Interesting. We did. And then I kept freaking out. Yeah, I get it. Clearly, no, I get it. I felt good when I was on the phone with you, and then I got off the phone, and then I fell right back into the panic. And I slow walked into it in the most embarrassing way. At first, I emailed the guy and I was like, Hey, I'm just not sure if I answered that question properly. And he responded and said, Oh, well, here's the audio of it so you could hear it. And then I respond and I was like, Oh, could you maybe I don't know. Is there a way to trim it down or something like that? And he's like, No, I don't think so. And I said, Is there a way to take it out? I should have made a decision. I didn't make a decision. I kept wading into it. But anyway, he ultimately took it out. And as soon as he told me that he did that, my wave of panic just disappeared because it was gone. It was over. I have to say that in my case, I am going to say, I made the right decision.

And here's the distinction that I'm going to propose to the both of you, and you can decide whether or not to accept it. Stick around. Help Wanted will be right back.

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Find out how much at airbnb. Com/host. Me again. I hope you're loving this conversation, and I know you are. Of course you are. Don't forget to subscribe to Help Wanted. The link is in the episode description. Okay, back to me and Jason.

Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it. The distinction about whether or not to try to fix something when you messed up or to call more attention to it, or to do something more drastic, or whatever it is that these things represent, because ultimately, what we're talking about here is the broader experience of messing up and then trying to figure out how to react to it, is that I think that you have to realistically evaluate the stakes. And a good way to do that is to ask, what is the realistic worst case scenario? And Nicole, in your case, I think that the realistic worst case scenario is that some people heard it and thought that it was funny. And I don't think that it's the thing that anyone at Team GMA would listen to and say, well, we can't have Nicole Lappen back on to make that embarrassment on the air. It wasn't going to impact anything substantive going forward. Whereas mine, the realistic, I think, worst case scenario was that the owner of entrepreneur heard it and thought it was inappropriate, and then that impacted my role as an entrepreneur. And I think that it's worth thinking very realistically, what is the worst case scenario here?

And then acting accordingly. What do you think?

Yeah, but you can't be realistic during those times. It's just your realistic goal, faculties are broken. They're just like, you're not in the realm of practical. The death spiral was like, they're never going to invite me back. I have so much pressure on this company. We're solidifying these relationships. It's going to ruin the company. We're never going to be able to get out there. I have people that we have to support lives. I fucked it all. There was no reasoning during That time with me or, frankly, maybe with you because it was clear that there could be a legal ramification. But for me, I was like, as much as Morgan tried to get me into a realistic assessment of worst case scenario, I wasn't going to get there. But now I can. That's what time does. It gives you some realism.

Yeah. One way to maybe gain some perspective on this is to, let's take a little dive into counter factual thinking. So counter factual thinking being the psychological term for comparing the experience that you had against an imagined experience and then ruminating, really, about how So generally, the way that it works is that you wish that you had the other experience instead. So the counter factual thinking will be the way in which you said something on TV versus the better way you could have said it, which is a upward counter factual thinking. We often don't do downward counter factual thinking, which is to say that we compare what we did against a way in which it could have gone even worse. What could have happened is that they said, Nicole, thanks for coming on the show. And you could have said, Fuck you all. That could have happened. It's unlikely, but it could have happened. And that would have been worse. So what we're doing is we're comparing what we did against the perfect version that we can imagine. And that is really unfair to us because there is a world of possibilities out there, and most of them are actually worse than the thing that we actually experienced.

And this isn't me talking. I had interviewed a couple of psychologists about counter factual thinking because I became interested in it. And they said that's a way to break that cycle is to stop locking yourself into one way in which it could have otherwise happened, the better way, and to start imagining all the other scenarios so that you recognize what you did actually in a broader spectrum of what could have happened.

Yeah. It's this power of negative thinking versus power of positive thinking, which we hear a lot. I think of it, too, as this soacism idea that I've talked about on the show before of imagining what the worst case scenario is, too, and then figuring out what would happen if that happened, really playing your fears and saying, Okay, well, let's say they said something, then what would happen? Then maybe I would just laugh it off and be like, But didn't I tell you about the debt ceiling? Like a boss? I don't know. Or would they have said, They wouldn't invite me back. Then what would I do? Would I pitch them more things? Whatever. Long story short, it would be okay. Would somebody come and take the company away and do all of those things? No. But the realistic worst case scenarios, if you keep going down that thread, the answer is always like, You will be okay. And then I find comfort in that.

Because there's always something tomorrow, right? The world does not end because of a decision. Something is going to happen tomorrow. So there's something to do, to fix, to adapt to, to adjust to, to create some other new opportunity, something like a big part of the problem when we are afraid of the of something that happened is that we just imagine the story stopping. You said the thing on GMA, and then they didn't invite you back, and that's the end. Carton down. That's how it happens.

She was a nice woman.

Something's going to happen tomorrow.

That's true. I think that these skills that are really beneficial in psychology can be really beneficial depending on the time and the place in business. There is a time and a place for power of positive thinking, for power of negative thinking, for stoicism, for playing out the worst case scenario, but also playing out the best case scenario, right? We always have this negativity bias, especially when things like this happen, and we just imagine the worst case scenario. But what about the best case scenario? What if they were like, Oh, my God, that was so charming. Come on every day. How real. You're just the realest, coolest, most normal money expert is just like us. That's what we're looking for in this show.

Yeah, that's totally right. It's a great point. And that reminds me of this thing that happened back in 2021, which was that, if you remember this, an HBO Max intern, which I guess is now just called Max, which is, can we all agree, the worst branding decision of all time. But back then, HBO Max. An HBO Max intern accidentally sent a test email to all the subscribers, which meant however many hundreds of thousands or millions I don't know, of people all got this random email from HBO Max that just said, Integration test email number one. And that was it. And so that was probably a very bad day for that intern. And HBO Max, whoever over there made this decision, made a really wonderful decision to just make light of it and tweeted out, We mistakenly sent out an empty test email to a portion of our HBO Max mailing list this evening. We apologize for the inconvenience. And as the jokes pile in, because of course, people started making jokes on Twitter. Yes, it was the intern. No, really. And we're helping them through it. Heart emoji. And do you remember what followed that?

No. So what followed that was this wonderful outpouring of people on Twitter all sharing the time where they screwed up as an intern. I will read some of them to you. Dear intern, when I was 25, I made a PDF assigning each employee to the Muppet they most reminded me of. I meant to send it to my work friend, but I accidentally They sent it to the entire company. My supervisor, Beaker, wanted to fire me, but the owners, Bert and Ernie, intervened, which I think is lovely. Dear intern, I was using my desktop calendar to make a monthly note of when I started my menstrual period, but after several months, I realized I was making that note on a calendar I shared with all of my colleagues company-wide. I was 37 years old. Okay, so these aren't just when they were interns. These are just mistakes people made. Dear intern, as a young lawyer, I proofread a legal brief and filed it with the court. I caught a typo and blindly used the global find and replace function. Pro tip, don't do that. My brief argued for the rights of the panties, not the parties.

All 50 pages of it. And it keeps on going. That's amazing. And then that got its own wave of coverage. And the lesson there is that sometimes you mess up and it's a big deal. And sometimes you mess up and everyone else messed up, too. And they all relate to it. And it's all okay. And I think that a lot of what's going to come next and what direction that's going to go depends upon the actions that are taken immediately after.

Yeah, but I guess there's also this idea of really leaning into what the mistake is can backfire. We've seen that a lot on social media. We, in the last decade, just had this authenticity rise, and I'm feeling some authenticity fatigue So that's why I didn't think it was particularly interesting for me because I could have said, let's just pull this part of the clip out and highlight it. This was the time I went into Barnes & Noble after Boss which was written, and I saw an X on my face on one of the books that I was signing, and I was totally mortified my initial instinct. And this was pre-authenticity-like blitz. I wanted to buy the book and hide it and make sure nobody saw it. But instead, I put it on social media and I was like, Thank you to this person who did that or whatever. So I could have done something similar where I just really tried to be vulnerable and authentic and all that stuff and share your stories about when you said a stupid thing back to the person wishing you a good flight or whatever. But I just felt like it was too much.

Yeah, I think that we're at a tipping point of some of that. So a lot of companies can also try to fix mistakes by just being super, super honest, right? And it has this great effect of dear intern in this nice moment. But maybe there's a time and a place where you don't need to highlight it. You don't need to hide it, but you also don't need to underline it.

Right. What we're not advocating for here is a world in which everybody's mistake becomes this thing that gets waved around. But I hadn't thought about this until you put these two things side by side. But in a way, I guess the question that needs to be asked, I think you tell me, the The question that needs to be asked is, how do I make this right? And there are a lot of ways to do that. And sometimes, how do I make this right is, I will wave this in the air and other people will appreciate it and they will rally to me. Sometimes, how do I make this right? Is, I will bury this 6 feet under the ground and nobody will ever hear about it again. And neither of those are right or wrong. They just are. And so I guess The thing to do is to ask that question and then follow it to whatever it's most logical and comfortable conclusion is. What do you think about that?

What struck me about your two stories, also side by side, it reminded me of this psychotherapist, Julia Samuels, who has this really interesting... The way that she implements her research around fight and flight is really interesting, but she makes the point that when we make a mistake and we feel this anxiety, we are just animals under fight or flight. And so we have to do something. That's the way that we're programmed. We won't feel better until we do something. And so that seemed to be what both of you guys did. You were like, I feel like I made a mistake, and I will not be able to feel better unless I do something. And I saw that with you, Nicole. You were like, I am a dummy. And you couldn't shake that until you talked to the GMA producer. But I think actually more of the difference than the stakes I see the big difference between the two of your stories is that Jason, you got what you asked for, and Nicole, you didn't. And so you had to make yourself feel better, Nicole yourself. And Jason, you had help with your problem. Nicole, you didn't.

You were just out on your own, and you had to make yourself feel better. And so what I hear is that it doesn't matter if your mistake is big or small, actually. You're not going to feel better unless you do something about it. And if it's a proper mistake that you need to fix, that will make you feel better. But even if it's a little mistake, you need to do something that will make yourself feel better. And so maybe it's just asking the GMA producer to cut it out, or maybe it's just sharing about it on social media. But just doing something that I think is commeserate with actually the mistake is the key.

Do you remember what I did to self-soothe, ultimately?

Alcohol?

Close. I had a big cookie.

That's a very well-earned cookie.

Absolutely. And that's commeserate with the crime. Just It was a cookie mistake because I'm not a stupid head.

No, just a cookie head. Well, Nicole and Morgan, thanks for coming on the show.

You, too.

Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason Pfeiffer.

And me, Nicole Lappen. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. If you want some help? Email our helpline at helpwanted@moneynewsnetwork. Com for the chance to have some of your questions answered on the show. And follow on Instagram @moneynews and TikTok @moneynewsnetwork for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe a little dance?

Oh, I didn't sign up for that.

All right. Well, talk to you soon.