My friend Lewis Howes is working on a new book.
Naturally, he’s excited.
At a conference, he told a group of people about his book – including the title.
Now let me make one thing clear: this wasn’t a big group of people. It was a small group of trusted confidantes.
Well…
One of these people stole his book title and published a talk on it.
Seriously.
And sure, he later apologized. But I find this entire scenario troubling. Here’s why:
Right now there’s a mantra in the entrepreneurship world where people openly brag about “Never asking for permission. Ask for an apology.”
And on one hand, I get it. Sometimes, in the interest of “shipping it,” you need to ship it. Without apologies. But if you are doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing… and you do it anyway… you may find yourself in an impossible, unrecoverable position.
Because sometimes, “Sorry” is not enough.
A few years ago, someone stole my friend Ramit Sethi’s sales page. Word for word. I remember reading it and thinking, “Wait a second… REALLY!?”
Now I wasn’t friends with the person who stole the page, but I was an acquaintance. So, I reached out to them to let them know how I felt. “Yea, I was inspired by Ramit!”
“Uh. No. You stole his work.”
And they refused to make it right until Ramit involved lawyers.
They later apologized. They later said they learned their lesson. But does “sorry” wash away all the bad feelings?
Of course not.
I mean, here I am, writing about the incident several years later.
You may think, “Well, why don’t you just forgive and forget?”
And sure, you could.
But there are too many people in the world who do the right thing that, as a busy entrepreneur, you’re better off focusing on those who do the right thing… vs those who have a history of doing the wrong thing.
It gets worse too.
I know I showed you a few examples of people who clearly did a bad thing… and now they suffer the consequences for it… but consider this example:
I’m in the market for a new custom cake. I spoke to a cake decorator, and they told me they’d call me at noon. But noon came and went and I never got a phone call.
2 days later, I got a text message: “Sorry I missed you. So busy!”
I ignored it.
They followed up with examples.
I ignored it.
There are too many other cake decorators out there who wouldn’t go back on their word – and I rather do business with them.
So…
The big question is this: what should you do when sorry isn’t enough?
When you want to win over someone for good, the truth is: sorry isn’t enough.
And you only really have two choices when you find yourself in this unfortunate position:
Choice #1: Move on
Know that you’ll never have a relationship with the person you just disappointed. And know that they’re likely telling people about it… forever.
Choice #2: Over compensate
Now imagine if that cake decorator followed up with me and said, “I know I let you down. The cake is on me.”
Sure, it would be expensive. But it would win me over.
How do I know?
A few years ago I was looking for an apartment. I was talking to a real estate agent in NYC, and they clearly made a huge mistake.
Then I got an email: “Hey Derek, I realized I messed up. So, if you want this apartment, I’ll waive my entire fee. I like to build a long term relationship with my clients, and I know you’ll need to either buy a place or rent a place in the future… so I rather make it right with you now.”
Think about this for a second.
A rental fee in NYC is thousands of dollars. And they were willing to waive it to compensate for their mistake. Did she win me over?
Heck yea she did.
I then decided to do some research on this real estate agent. And what did I find?
I discovered that she’s one of the top performing real estate agents in all of NYC.
It made complete sense.
I did something similar. When I first started my online business, my system accidentally billed someone twice. There was some kind of error, and they got billed twice. And it put them in an unfortunate position since it took the money right out of her debit account.
What did i do?
Yes, I refunded her the payment. But I also wired her the money so she could access the funds immediately.
In the end, I ended up giving her twice her money back. But she deserved it. I made a mistake. And I had to fix it.
And that’s the secret.
If you make a mistake, do everything to make it right. Even if it comes at a great expense to you and your business. Especially if you want an ongoing relationship with the person.
Now I pass it to you…
Has there even been a time when sorry wasn’t enough?
What did it take to win you over?
Hmmmm, you say “spread the love” but the real question is, would you sitll make such a sacrifice if it didn’t profit you in the long run (protecting your reputation, etc)? Would you do this in your personal/social life? During times when you are not wealthy?.
I understand this is good business, but we still need to call it for what it is.
We all make mistakes (I’ve made more than my fair share). But there is a difference between an intensional and unintentional act. One time, during my previous life in healthcare, I was stressed (probably needed to eat something too) and spoke to a woman in another department in an unprofessional manner. It bothered me for the rest of the day. I felt I had to be courageous enough to apologize to this woman, becasue she did not deserve it. I did and learned that in one of my bad moments a friendship began becasue I was honest with her and apologized.
However, I’ve learned to keep my distance from those that have intentionally lied to me more than a few times. Derek, like you said in Choice #1, move on!
The wife and I really love this blog and appreciate the creativity and inspiration you provide. If you ever decide to take this blog to the next level by offering a Mobile App version my company Zenlight would love to help for an extremely low price, we appreciate the hard work you have put into this blog and wish you all future success in business and in life.
Thank you for your time, it is the most precious thing we all possess.
-Jacque’
I love this post! Thank you for writing it. I’ve always taken the “overcompensate” route, because if you don’t have your good name and good karma, what do you have? If you do right by your clients, your business will do well in the long run, I deeply believe that.
Most of the time the customer service I receive is also informed by this view, but over the summer I ordered a necklace from an online shop–set up to send profits to charity, in fact–and though I gave my shipping address as different from my billing address, they sent the necklace to the billing address (where I can’t pick it up, long story) and when I complained, treated me like I was trying to scam them. I was so shocked–their mistake, and then to be treated so shamefully! I’d share the name of the shop but they did eventually make it right after I wrote a long email saying I’m a small business owner too and when I make a mistake I always make it right. After that, they finally sent me the necklace (er, well, the wrong necklace, and then I had to exchange *that*) and also a gift of a couple of extra products as well, and an apology.
So I won’t publicly state their name, and while I would never be stupid enough to order from them again, I do have the impression that they learned something from the experience. I like to think my own business policy had a positive effect even in that crazy interaction where I was the customer.
This happened to me with Bluehost a few years ago. I signed up for their hosting at the recommendation of a blogger I respect. Within a day or two of signing up, their entire network went down. As a result, my site was down for a day or so.
Obviously not a great first impression. However, I work in IT, so I understand that sometimes “stuff” happens and there’s not much you can do about it (other than fix it as fast as you can). So I let it go. But then it happened again a few months later. And again a few months after that!
Now in their defense, each time they apologized profusely and kept us updated on their progress. But after the third time, I decided that “sorry wasn’t enough.” I remember one of their status updates mentioning that even the CEO was helping resolve the situation! I thought, “So what? How does that help me when my sites are down and I’m loosing revenue?”
Needless to say, I did not renew my contract when it expired and I never pass up an opportunity to steer people away from them.
Good points. I think most service providers are constantly trying to see what they can get away with, even when this doesn’t happen consciously, or they honestly don’t give a flying **** about losing customers, since more are in-coming anyway.
I’ve been loyal to an emailing service for half a decade by now, so last year I finally felt comfortable to set the yearly subscription on auto-renewal. Shouldn’t have done that, because when the due date arrived, nothing happened at their end. I paid manually. Lo and behold, a few days later (than due date) the same amount was withdrawn from my credit card.
Due to unemployment, since it took the last 15€ from my credit card, I had to eat at my parents’ until they returned the money. I wrote a super angry email mentioning the reason for my emotional reaction, but they barely apologised.
You know when you’re already down on your knees, almost defeated? Well, add nonchalant, heartless service on top of that, and it’s quite certain your customer will feel like absolutely nothing at all in that moment. Expendable, worth neither caring nor support nor kind words for free even.
The fact that I have so much on their servers and it would be a huge hassle for me to move once again to some new host, means they get away with their crappy service. Here’s the exact point where you see just what kind of losers are in business, selfish and horrible human beings for whom money is the only thing that matters. It’s ghastly to have to be associated by genetic similarities to such scum, because they had a choice and when at the crossroads chose so utterly wrong.
Somehow fixing beyond returning what they falsely had taken from me would have barey registered in their bookkeeping. Showing goodwill and integrity would have caused me to tell widely about this magnificent service business, but here I am instead, using them as a case study of what not to do.
Lucky for them I’m not in the mood to hang anyone in public today, so no names are mentioned, but imagine if they’d have screwed up on someone else’s account? Was it worth it then to be so cavalier about their actions? I think businesses underestimate grossly the power of social media today, because you’re not reaching friends over a cup in a coffee shop anymore, but actual strangers on the other side of the world.
Great advice. I’ve been preparing for my son to come home from the hospital after he’s born, and an unfortunate side-effect of this is letting some of my client relationships suffer. I just don’t have time to focus on my business AND my family at such a hectic time. In light of that, I’ve been giving away some of my services for free to offset the damage to our working relationships. It’s not ideal, but keeping my clients happy is paramount to my business succeeding.
Great information and reminder to ‘own’ mistakes and do everything possible to make things right from the customer’s perspective.
Thanks for sharing,
Cheryl Burton
Maximize Self Leadership
Speaker, trainer, and certified coach
very good
it is very helpful content.
thanks
special special special
I loved this post…!!!! such post can help thousands of peoples across globe.
interesting 100%
keep posting & thanks for sharing
regards
This gives me some access and actions to take with a potential client that I spaced on calling and never cleaned it up with her.
Thanks!
Robert
Great post Derek- love the integrity and authenticity that it resonates. Keep inspiring and educating in your unique way. It’s terrific- thank you.
I agree Derek! There is a huge difference between dropping the ball because you are over serving your clients, and outright deliberate theft and plagiarism. The first one is damaging enough, but recoverable because your integrity can still show, and that shows goodwill and is so forgivable. The stealing thing shows me no integrity to begin with, and no amount of sucking up can correct this. Honestly, they should just not be entrepreneurs, as they show they are not creators and only take instead of contribute to the world. Too bad they instead only try stealing again later and hope they don’t get caught. Consumer beware!
Wish you could ship this entire wonderful post, and the comments, to some of our current politicians (Sorry, it’s just two weeks away from the election.)
Great article. I always try to rectify mistakes.
Unfortunately, not all businesses do this and they lose my business.
It’s rare that the effort has been made to win me over but I will definitely take this great advice onboard. Thanks!
As a small business owner, I have gracefully applied this tactic many times over the years.
If someone screws up and misses an appointment, they pay me. If I screw up somehow, I pay them. That’s just how good business is done.
Ya gotta suck up sometimes!
Have been self employed for over 18 years. My experience has been I have never been able to win a customer back once they really believed I had done them wrong. There’s been a few that came back, but they soon left. Now I don’t bother to get them back, rather just want to understand what happened and move on and try to do better.
This is a perfectly timed blog for me. I had this happen with a patient of mine recently.
We were communicating via e-mail on when to talk on the phone, I never transferred the phone call to my calendar, and boom, 2 weeks go by. I just realized my mistake and was figuring out the best way that I can salvage the relationship. I’m glad I decided to sleep on it, because this blog definitely changed how I’m going to approach correcting my error.
Great!
Thank you for this, Derek. I’m definitely on board with you with the second (overcompensate) option. Not everyone will expect it or appreciate it, but it doesn’t feel right to do it any other way.
On the other hand, when others wrong me, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. It takes multiple affronts for me to ignore them, but you reminded me that my time and attention are valuable. There’s no need to salvage every last relationship because there will be more. I should adopt that sort of abundance mindset.
This was an excellent article. Excellent. Thank you!
I am so tired of the “steal like an artist” line. I am an artist and I don’t steal other people’s work. That takes no creativity and no integrity. Thank you for your article.
I’m sorry you feel that way. Have you read the book? To me it doesn’t sound like it. I like Kleon’s commentary in that whole work. At no point does he encourage his reader to not be creative and not have any integrity at all. Spreading false information and judging unnecessarily is as bad as stealing in my humble opinion.
This is SUCH a good read!!
Timely post. I just had two similar experiences back to back. One company did the right thing, the other did the absolutely wrong thing. The “good” company ate $350 to win back my loyalty after falling down on expectations. The “bad” company lost my future business over a lousy $26. I didn’t care about $26. I cared about their lack of interest in extending good will.
So true! I do this is my business for all of the same reasons. Thank you for confirming what I already do. Your thoughts are appreciated.
WOW! I related to every single word of this! Twice now I have had my articles stolen and republished by someone else on Hub-spot who didn’t even bother to take off the resources i referred people to. Once I had an entire notebook with a book i was working on stolen from someone who insisted the red composition book that i had left lying in the first class seat was hers… I apologized and continued looking for my book which i never found and was only gone long enough to visit the lavatory. Another time is was partial content for a book and book title taken.
Years ago, a poem i entered into t a contest that was later published by someone else. (how do i know that the poem i submitted was MINE- I was sitting at my computer one evening after an argument with my husband. He likes to eat those little candy coated licorices, i took one and bit into it… It was bitter and terrible so while talking to a friend i mentioned that the only reason my husband ate those was to remind him of how he felt about women. Bitter… I began writing and wrote the entire poem (my humorous thoughts based on what i saw as his perspective) and submitted it to a constant. It was published by someone else. My emails were ignored.
It doesn’t stop there either, I hired someone to do some copy work. When i read it, much of it sounded vaguely familiar, I did a google search and wow… only a few words had been changed. I couldn’t believe that i had paid for that!
While sitting in first class several years ago, I met an interesting lady who was a comedian. We talked the entire flight and had a great conversation. She commented on how nice my nails looked. I thanked her, then held up my hand with the one crooked nail and said yeah, all but this one. Together we both laughed at the crooked nail and then i told her the story about my nail tech Tammy and what Tammy had said to me when i had asked her to fix it. ” oh no. it not your nail, it your finger, it go like dat. to which i replied… well id didn’t go like dat when i came in her using my best rendition of a Vietnamese accent. She asked me the nail techs name again, and i told her. She said oh that’s good, i am so stealing that story and she did! The woman is a very well known comedian who can be found all over the internet with my story! So my questions is this: Do well known people, think it’s okay to take someone else’s story who is not well known.
Another time i actually heard another speaker telling the story i had told about my daughter.
It also affects pour personal lives and people who do things and say sorry but they are not truly sorry, only sorry they got caught. But that’s another blog for another time.
American Express double billed me one month. Then through disorganization wound up dragging the process out 7 months. They failed to honor compensation that we were promised by numerous managers through the process and customer service agents who promised to be documenting our conversations left no trail for the next person. Though managers and customer service agents gave me scripted apologies, high-level managers and the executive offices treated me like I was the one who wronged and inconvenienced them. American Express lost my business for good with their unapologetic and abusive responses to a loyal and long-term member. There’s nothing they could honestly do to get me back.
Absolutely brilliant email/post Derek. This is the first time I leave a blog comment. I usually dislike having to enter my name and email address, too much trouble, but this time I had to do it. I loved the lesson on this one, it reminded me of the emotional bank account Stephen Covey spoke about in the 7 Habits. If you make a mistake you better over compensate because your account is in big red numbers!! Thank you for this one, it is a lesson many people need to learn!
My close family member has been a pain in the ass for so many years. Insulting me, looking down on me and even threaten me to kill me (she didn’t actually meant it according to my other family members but still). When we had a family reunion to speak about the fact we don’t talk to each other anymore, my family forced her to apologize to me. She did. But her words mean nothing to me. When someone hurts you that bad and makes you so miserable you have to talk to a psychologist about it, I believe there’s no words to fix it. She believed that saying sorry was enough and expected me to forgive her. I said “ok” the same way she said “sorry”.
I’m a professional pet sitter. One of my regulars booked me for two visits for their doggies. Because it was close to a holiday weekend, I put them down for that weekend. It was actually for the weekend before and I completely missed the first 6pm visit until I saw a text message asking how they were doing at like 2am before I went to bed. I flew over to their house, texted them back a sincere apology (explained what happened), and did a late visit and the next morning’s visit for free. They have booked me for every vacation since then too.
Great article. And so rare. It’s actually in harmony of Bible principles that talk about monetary compensation when someone wrongs another person…not “an eye for an eye per se” but it talks about if someone’s bull dies on another person’s property, that person needs to make compensation with one of their bulls.
I think we all have a deep down sense of justice that gets violated and so tipping the scales back with compensation is the only way to restore balance and show that one is truly empathetic and understands the impact of the loss.
Love the story Derek. Yeah, there have been times where I made a mistake with someone’s insurance policy and offered to cut them a check for the amount I mis-quoted.
I’d rather speak here from the side of the one being wronged. I’ve been screwed a couple times recently by competing insurance agencies who knew better, but instead of expecting any apology or rectification, I got something even better. I got a chip on my shoulder, a fire lit under my ass. And I’ve been playing angry the past several months, and my site has seen a 50% increase in traffic since. Sometimes being wronged is a great motivation to get up and kick some ass!
Well said. I ofttimes don’t read long emails to the end, but was exceptional. Good advice.