The $5K Lesson: What I Learned From the Investment That Changed Everything

I spent 30 days telling you what I learned from a $5,000 retreat I never even went to. But I never gave you the full story.

Today I am giving you the full story. And then we are putting it to rest for good.

This is not an episode about regret. It is not a cautionary tale or a warning or a confessional. It is the story of the most expensive yes I ever said — what it cracked open, what it cost, and why every single door that opened after it was worth more than the five thousand dollars I left on the table.

What This Episode Holds

• The full story behind the $5K investment — the yes, the unraveling, and the moment she finally said no and asked for her money back
• The woman who made that investment — desperate, still looking to other people for the answers, still not trusting herself — and the woman who came out the other side
• How postpartum entrepreneurship pulled her into a world of targeted noise and how she kept reaching for the wrong rope trying to climb out
• The moment she realized she had been trying to learn from someone whose life she did not even want
• What it actually means to say yes from a place of abundance versus yes from a place of desperation — and how to know the difference
• Why this investment, as painful and expensive as it was, is the thing that finally unlocked the chain keeping her buried underneath narratives that were never hers
• Peeling back the onion — why becoming is not about finding the woman you lost but about finding joy in every single layer of who you are

Who This Episode Is For

• The woman who has made an expensive decision and is still carrying shame about it
• The mother in the online business world who has been targeted, overwhelmed, and has grabbed every rope thrown at her trying to find solid ground
• The woman who has been saying yes from a place of desperation and is ready to learn what a yes from abundance actually feels like
• The woman who has been looking to everyone else for the answers and is starting to suspect she has had them inside her all along
• The entrepreneur who is done following someone else's path to someone else's life

Key Quote

"It was a full body yes in a desperate place. It wasn't a full body yes from a place of abundance and self-trust and self-knowledge and self-worth. I was still thinking that I was not worthy and enough and that someone else was going to save me."

You are not behind. You are not too much. And you do not have to choose between your family and the life you are building. Keep peeling back the layers. The woman underneath every single one of them is worth finding.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Should I learn after sending 5k on retreat that I'm not even going to? Do you all remember that that line does that line sound familiar? Because I know that I spent three days telling you all about the lessons I learned after sending 5k on retreat that I didn't even go to. But I didn't actually give you the full story. I feel like you are deserting of hearing the full story because it was such a pivotal and important moment of my life. It was a very expensive lesson. Zero 10 recommends, but every fruitful opportunity and door that was opened after that decision, every fruitful decision I have made since that point forward is astronomical. And so I want to share with you the story about how I spent 5k on a retreat that I didn't need to go to. And then we're gonna put that baby to rest. So I hope you listened to today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Let's get into it. Welcome to the Crab Shack, the show where we rewrite the rules for success for mothers who are building businesses, creating wealth, and raising families all at the same time. In case we haven't met yet, I'm Ashley Crab, and this show isn't about balance, it's not about productivity, and it's not about doing more. And it's not about doing any of that perfectly. This is a space for mothers who know that yes, we are carrying more than anyone acknowledges, but our crosses are not ours to bear alone. And we are ready as mothers to turn that knowledge into power, into leadership, into abundant wealth. Here we talk about what it actually takes, what it actually looks like to build a business inside the crazy reality of motherhood. The labor, the identity shifts, the ambition, the pressure, and the truth that none of it disqualifies us from wealth. It qualifies us for leadership. Because mothers don't need to shrink to succeed. We need to be seen. We need to be heard. Let's get into today's episode.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

We are back again in Garden of Ashley. We are sitting under the vibrant green bean vine. And I'm really excited to share Mr. With you today, and then I'm really excited to not ever share it again, honestly. But I have made a lot of extensive decisions of us here. I mean a lot of usel called sensitive states. I like to pick it up as in essence. Expensive index. And when the ROI was there or not immediately, whatever. Um, for whether the ROI was there and what I anticipated it to be, or conditioned to be, or proved it to be, you know, I I don't regret the suspensive decisions, this is expensive in desistence. I don't really care if you look at the state, because it's IT, and I have learned so much on IK innocent. The woman who made that I can assist was still discuted, was still a new power. I was still looking into other people, other fleshy people, for the answers to everything. I still didn't trust myself, y'all. I still didn't trust myself. I was lacking clearly, I was like in discerning, I was lacking this death, this rooted sense of joy and love. I have much just for life for myself. That was the woman who made the five innocent. I love that woman. That woman wasn't a bad one. That wasn't a woman whose chapter I would be raised, but the chapter that I named right now, the woman that I have messaged and who is sitting in a very in front of me today is is not a better woman, but she is a blossomed woman. She is a blossomed woman and she is a really terrible girl, and I love her even more. Even more. I love her even more because she made that fucking investment in the meeting and on her tree, right? Because it allowed me to come to be this one. To come to be the woman who must be better, to be the woman who knows that she hasn't even scratched the surface of everything she is capable. I really don't think that the opportunities and the experiences and situations and dinosaurs lessons would have happened, I wouldn't have made that I take investment. And I think I'm gonna assume here that a lot of you who follow me are around my age, they're gonna take a couple of years. I mean we've really seen it all, guys. We've seen it all. And sometimes I just don't go back to like a loud chattering and like my space and Zenga, where we just posted a speaker, where it's the songs, and like we didn't have to deal with all this strategy and AI and algorithm, but yeah, right, and that's not our order by the rules.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

But I But by seeing it all, and by being entrepreneurs, women, mothers, humans on this planet in business, in the virtual world, and in our communities, we have seen it all in that regard. We've seen, you know, MLM, we've seen digital products, we've seen memberships and coaching. And I have gotten sucked in to every single one of those on some level, on some level, right? Like I decided to give up booze and I became addicted to like figuring out how someone else could give me the answers to run a business. That's crazy. Um, but really, like I've I've I've I've tried everyone, I've tried all the drugs of the entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial, solopreneur world. And you get addicted and you get sucked in, and you you don't lose yourself, but you do forget who you are. Like that robbed me of parts of myself more than motherhood ever did. I tell you what, it truly did because it it made me feel like I had to, and again, like this isn't anyone else's doing. This is my own choice, this is my own decision making. But like I constantly felt like in postpartum, because that is when my business turned to the virtual world, in postpartum. I had to, as a mother who felt like she didn't have a mother, had to look towards other women in business to be the motherly figure as I learned how to be a businesswoman because I never planned to be an entrepreneur. You all know that. And so, like, I feel like moms, especially, you know, we wanna, we, we wanna dive down the rabbit hole of like targeted marketing and like whatever that negative terminology is. But like, I do feel like in a way, mothers have been targeted in business in the online world of having so much overload when we're already overloaded, trying to figure out how we can live this new white picket fence dream that we just keep grabbing. We keep grasping onto this rope that's gonna help us climb out of this drowning pit that we feel in this time where we are new mothers, we're trying to figure out what we want to do with our lives now. We don't know if we want to go to the workforce, we don't know if we want to be entrepreneurs, and everyone has a freaking answer. And I don't think any of it's right. And when it comes down to it, all of it's the same. It's all the same narrative. All of it for a later episode. But I mean, that that woman was desperate. She was in such a state of desperation that she couldn't see the abundance she had. I couldn't see. Now I'm just talking in the third person. We'll come back to reality. I couldn't see the abundance that I had in my life. I couldn't see where I was already inherently wealthy, where I had already created my own wealth, where my generational wealth was already rooting. And I just I lived in this place of desperation where I just wanted more, but I didn't even know really what I wanted in the first place, or my vision of what I wanted got so messed up that like I was, I was just floating in this weird, weird little bubble. And it needed to be popped. And that's what making that 5K investment did. It popped that bubble that I was in because I finally reached for the wrong person. I reached for the person who wasn't the person who was going to help me, or at least not the way that I actually wanted to be helped. And I finally realized that I got to decide, one, to help myself. And two, I got to decide who helped me. I realized that I get to discern who helps me. Like you do get to do that when you're paying for help. And I finally trusted myself. And I don't think this woman was a bad woman. I don't think this woman was a bad businesswoman, but this woman's life wasn't what I wanted. I was trying to learn from someone who was trying to give me a life that I didn't want, who was trying to give me a path to that life that I didn't want. And because I didn't want that, and because, like honestly, she could tell that, I could tell at what point I then became a project for her. So it wasn't just that I made this investment. I made this investment feeling at the time that it was a full-body yes, that it was the right decision, that it was going to be a decision that was fruitful in the way that I thought it was supposed to be. And it's not always that. Sometimes the veil has to be revealed, pulled back, whatever the saying is. Like I had to feel that and make that decision because it was a yes in a place of desperation. It was a full-body yes in a desperate place. It wasn't a full-body yes from a place of abundance and self-self-security and self-trust and self-knowledge and self-worth. I was still thinking that I was not worthy and enough and that someone else was gonna save me. And because I was able to spend that money and and be okay with it in a way, it was like it finally unlocked the key to the vault, the chain that was keeping me buried underneath stories and narratives that were never mine. It was what allowed me to finally start resurrecting the woman that has always been here. It was what finally allowed me to start resurrecting true freaking radical authenticity, showing up real, actually feeling like the woman behind the real content, right? Because I think that's the other piece of all of this. That's the challenge, is that none of this feels fake to us. It's not like the past year has felt fake or that I have shown up on my podcast or on social media or in the real world fake. It's just I, it's like an you, you're an onion, right? It's like I finally peeled back another layer of an onion, of smelly ashley. Like I'm magnetic, I'm a smelly onion, baby, and I'm so cool with that. And I think what's neat is that it's not about this whole motherhood journey, this whole business journey, this whole journey of life. It's not about finding this person, this woman that you lost somewhere along the way. It's about, and it's not even about just resurrecting the woman that we've buried along the way. It's about finding joy and peeling back every single layer of the onion that we are, right? And I would not make that 5K investment again. I've made investments since then, but I wouldn't, I know now how to discern my yeses. I know now how to be clear in what these situations and these opportunities actually are. I'm I'm able to look at them with honesty and and and say yes from a place that is truthful and mirrors who I am and the life that I want to continue to create and the woman that I am and that I want to continue to be. And so it was so hard to say no. It was so hard to say, I'm not going to this event and I would like my money back. And it was hard to be told no. And it was hard to be told by the, it was hard to tell the friend who invited me that I'm gonna let you down and I'm not going. I mean, it wasn't an easy decision to make, but I made it and I was okay with it. And once I finally did it, I felt so freaking free. And I started to realize that I don't need a coach. I don't need a business mentor in the sense that I always, you know, that I thought I did over the last four years in business. I have everything I need inside of me. I have the ability to find more knowledge, to be more educated, to figure out systems and processes. And I get to discern with clarity and honesty and truth and love who I do want to work with. And that is so freaking cool, guys. I do 1010 recommend that. And so I just I don't, I don't even know if I feel like this most magnificently changed woman. I just continuously feel like this woman who comes more and more home to herself, who feels more and more comfortable in her own skin, who can hold herself more and more and more. And yes, we know that like I got a rad ass dad who holds me, like the ultimate girl dad. But like also, I have the power to hold myself. And other people hold me too, because my husband didn't hate me because of this, my husband didn't shame me because of this, my husband held me. My mom, whether I am fortunate or unfortunate enough to have explained this whole story to her, still held space for me. The internet didn't like cancel me or whatever. I don't know. Like people didn't maybe care that much, but like the space was still held, even with this decision that some people, one, are sick of hearing about, but two, think it's absolutely insane. It is. And I'm not gonna make it again. I'm gonna take every single lesson I learned from it and keep freaking moving. And so now we're gonna put this story to rest. Like now we're gonna put this story to bed, and I get to tell you about all of the cool, crazy, wild, mind-blowing, godly things that have happened since then. And so I hope, again, I hope you like this new format. I hope you like the Garden of Ashley at the Crab Shack. And I just, I hope you keep following along and I hope you continue to show up in your life, in your story, in your day as the most radically real version of you because it's awesome and I love it, and I think you'll love it too. I'll see you next week. If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mother who is creating something so real. This is how we change the conversation by making sure women like us are seen, heard, and freaking paid. And if you're ready to step into your next level of visibility, leadership, wealth, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss what is coming next. You can also connect with me on Instagram, you can subscribe to my newsletter, you can message me anytime you want. I share daily thoughts and conversations around motherhood, leadership, business, faith, and how it all comes together. I'll leave you with this. You are not behind, you are not too much, and you don't need to choose between your family and success. You are the woman who gets to have both. I'll see you in the next episode.