the best $300 I've ever spent?
Photo by Anton Darius on Unsplash
It’s about time I came clean:
I’m a sauna addict.
Before COVID, my evening routine almost always consisted of spending 20 minutes in the sauna after a workout.
That obviously wasn’t possible for most of this year.
So for the majority of the past 6 months, I’ve been pining for the opportunity to get profusely sweaty on a regular basis.
And with winter approaching and the days getting colder and shorter…
My need for some hot, sweaty action has been increasing by the minute.
I know that might sound a bit ridiculous.
But for me, the sauna is a meditative experience. It’s about getting uncomfortable and learning to sit with that discomfort.
And it just zens me out.
Plus, I tend to get a bit melancholy during the winter anyway. There’s something about a 4:30PM sunset that doesn’t sit well with my soul.
So, since the sauna at my gym isn’t open… and may not be for the foreseeable future…
I decided to take matters into my own hands.
Last week, I started searching Amazon for in-home saunas.
The first thing I thought of was a semi-fancy, wood-enclosure, infrared sauna.
They run anywhere from $1,300 to $2,000 or more.
But I didn’t really want to spend that much. So I kept searching.
The next thing I found was this weird Lego-block-looking sauna enclosure…
Where your body is in the thing. But your hands and head are out.
WTF?
Not interested.
Eventually, I discovered something genius:
The portable steam room.
… which sounds crazy. But is very much a real thing.
Basically, it’s a grow tent (that people normally use to grow marijuana) with a steam generator that funnels steam through a port in the side.
I read some reviews and saw that, while it definitely had a few issues, most people were pretty happy with it.
I was going to wait a day to pull the trigger, because I can be a bit of an impulsive buyer.
But while I was reading questions and reviews, I noticed something:
People were mentioning that the product had been selling out regularly.
And even though I’d only known this thing existed for about 4 hours…
I wanted it. Bad.
I was already envisioning myself doing morning sauna sessions in my room and hitting the sauna after a workout.
But if I waited for a day, like I initially planned… it might sell out.
I might have to wait months to actually get it!
So I decided to break the rule I’d set for myself and buy it anyway. All in all, it probably ended up costing me around $300.
I had my first at-home sauna sessions last night and have concluded that it might be the best $300 I’ve ever spent.
Time will tell if it holds up or not (fingers crossed!), but as of right now — I’m pretty happy I decided to make that impulse purchase.
I’m sure there are a lot of lessons we could pull from this, but to me…
The 2 biggest lessons from this experience are…
1. Future-pacing is powerful.
Check out what I said above:
“I was already envisioning myself doing morning sauna sessions in my room and hitting the sauna after a workout.”
Before I bought the sauna, I had mentally built up a picture of what my life would look like after owning it.
I really liked that picture. And once I had built up that picture in my mind…
The idea of not having the sauna actually felt pretty shitty.
I knew the product existed…
I knew it could make my life better…
And I knew exactly how it would do that.
I had painted that picture myself. And I was sold on it. Which brings me to point #2.
2. Scarcity and urgency work.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with scarcity, because so many marketers use it falsely.
But the reason they do it is because scarcity and urgency work. They get people to decide whether they really want something or not.
They get people to picture their lives with a product and then say…
“But it won’t be around forever! So grab it now if you want it!”
The good news is that there are plenty of legitimate ways to do this. You just gotta get a little creative sometimes.
The truth is:
I would have bought the sauna regardless of whether I waited a day or not.
But, looking back, I’m glad I did buy it…
And I’m glad that I was pushed to make a decision quickly…
Because three days after I bought it, the product listing disappeared from Amazon.