570 | Turning Mistakes Into Gold: The Power of Proactive Service and Genuine Care

Hey folks, before we kick off today's episode, I wanna touch on something crucial that we like to call Fake Delegation. Ever do that you think you delegate, but find yourself micromanaging or taking tasks back. It's frustrating, right?

You're left burnt out, your team slows down and your business doesn't grow. That's why we created Five Ways You Fake Delegate. It comes from our own combined experiences and challenges in business and our desire to always serve you best.

We've been there, and this guide is our way of helping you navigate those delegation missteps. Grab it from the show notes, it's free, and might just change the way you lead. Now onto our episode.

On today's episode, we are talking about the importance of customer relationships in small businesses. So whether you're the CEO or leading a team, this one is packed with tips to keep your customers coming back for more.That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are today, we're talking about something that is inevitable, something that is going to happen inside of your business.

And for those of you that have been in business long enough, it's probably happened a considerable number of times. What are we talking about? We're talking about making mistakes. What is it like when we make mistakes?

What are the opportunities for turning those mistakes around? The opportunities for growth, the opportunities for deeper customer trust? It's about the resilience and grace of small business owners in the face of challenges, or small business leaders in the face of challenges.

So that is what we are hitting today. And one handled correctly, as I talked about in the the front bumper there on the show, it gives us opportunities for growth. It gives us opportunities to get our clients coming back. It gives us opportunities for greater loyalty, greater trust.

But we gotta start off by talking about the inevitability of mistakes. It is ridiculous to think that you are not going to make mistakes. Now, I am one of those guys who goes against the, the populace out there. I don't know if it's the populace, but there are some, so some thought leaders who make statements like failure is not an option, and I absolutely go against that thought process.

Now, they don't actually think you can't fail. Their concept of what they're saying is, is that you go until you reach success, and that's great, that's fantastic, but it leaves a bad perception in the mind of so many people, I can't fail. Failure is bad. Failure is terrible, folks.

Failure is not terrible failure. Most failure actually has the ability to teach you and grow you in stuff, right? But fatal failures suck. We all know that there are big mistakes that happen that are terrible. We don't enjoy those.

But here's the thing, if you are constantly working your butt off to avoid failure, then eventually what you're gonna discover is it's easier to not do stuff so that you don't ultimately fail.

What your team will absolutely do is learn that the less they put their necks out, the less failure comes their way. So here's the way that I look at it. I, I look at failure as being a great teacher.

I, I say that failure is a teacher to the person who can receive it, right? The person who can actually receive the lesson from failure is going to grow. That person's going to do more.

They're gonna take more risks. They're gonna stick their neck out more. So the thing is, is that mistakes are gonna happen. Failure is going to happen.

I I, we have, I always tell people, people sometimes will hit me up and maybe they haven't been listening to us for too long, and they're like, gosh, you never make mistakes.

I'm like, oh, for the love. I have an entire business built from making mistakes and just learning how to fix those things, learning how to do something about it. That's what we do. We teach people, Hey, we screw things up like crazy.

And then we teach you how not to screw it up. You know, we figure out the solutions and then we teach you how not to screw it up.

That's how this, that's what this business is based on, right? But sometimes it sounds like to some folks, they're like, oh, it's, it's good teaching and instruction. That guy must have it all together. His company must have it all together.

We were talking about this the other day with some of our, our client leaders, business owners. How many times people come to our big events, our Next Level Leadership LIVE Event, and they look around the room and they think all of these folks have it together.

I'm the only one in here who's messing up. I'm the only one who doesn't know exactly what's going on. And when you talk to every veteran leader, everybody who's in there, they all walked in the door thinking the same thing.

They all walked in the door thinking, these guys have it together. I don't. And when you discover, I usually make a joke about it. At some point, when you discover everybody else in the room either feels the same way or has felt the same way, it just gives this great relief of, oh, okay, we're all in the same boat here.

You know, some of us are further along, some of us are not. We're all working on the same stuff. We're all, you know, wanting to have it together, but realize that we don't have it together. So mistakes are gonna happen. They're gonna be, you know, some of the things are gonna be just setbacks.

Other things are gonna be opportunities for growth, right? The importance is that you have to look at the opportunity that's in front of you and solve it the best way you can. Now I'll give you an example of, you know, just one of the billions of mistakes that we've made.

I remember one time we were shifting some invoicing and also shifting who was taking responsibility over some of the sales receipts that were going in.

And the process, because of the way we were shifting, the invoicing ended up double dipping, double charging one of our clients. Everybody else was fine, but it double charged one of our clients. And the moment we realized it, which praise God, we realized it before the client did.

We were all over it. My leaders were looking into it going, what in the heck happened? How did this happen? Why did it happen? You know, how are we gonna fix this thing? And so they very quickly went into, you know, solution mode, solve the problem, but get to the client as fast as possible.

So we ended up being the one informing the client. How many times are you the one as a client finding out something and the, the company doesn't have a clue? You know, you have to go back to them and prove to them that they did something wrong.

Well, for us, we were jumping on it as fast as we could. Contacted the client. Here's what we're doing here. We've already reversed these charges. We're also giving you some free stuff we, we solved beyond just giving them their money back.

And the client was like, ah, no big deal, no problem. Thank you for, thank you for letting me know the way that we handled it, the way that we jumped on it, solved it, didn't complain, didn't act like victims, didn't act like it wasn't our fault.

Didn't, you know, do any of the number of things that you've experienced with other companies, the way that we handled that created a fantastic response from somebody who's like, oh, no big deal. So the money's back in my account, it's already taken care of. Oh, okay, well we didn't even notice it. So you're good.

And we gave them free stuff. You don't have to give us free stuff. We're gonna give you some free stuff. Sorry, but we're doing it. We screwed this thing up. We wanna take care of you.

So we went through this process of solving that only to find out it happened again. Uugh. Listen, one of the things-- I do not mind making mistakes. I don't mind, you know, I would prefer that our mistakes don't involve the client. That's my ultimate goal, right?

I don't mind making mistakes. One of the things I hate is making the same mistake. That drives me nuts. I thought we solved this. I thought we fixed this. Well, we found out that there was another piece to it that we didn't know about or we didn't understand. We had to jump in again.

So praise God, we caught it ahead of time, got to the client again, and solved things. And I believe gave more free stuff. I, I, I think maybe took money off of, you know, some of the, the expenditure.

And once again, the client was like, okay man, I appreciate it. Thanks for letting me know. Here's the deal. Stuff is gonna happen. This is one of my more painful ones because I hate when it affects a client.

I don't mind us making, I, I mean, and the truth is, this was one of those events where I'm like, okay, guys, fix this. Make sure it doesn't happen again. It happened. Nobody gets their head cut off. Nobody loses their job. Nobody gets ripped on solve. Do something about it. It happened. Fix it.

Right? So here's the thing. I don't like it when it's customer facing, but even when it is, it is a phenomenal opportunity internally for us to do something about it.

So that gave us an opportunity internally to solve things inside of our own business with our own team to find them, discover them. But it also gave us the opportunity to bless the client that we just messed over, right?

So it gave us a chance to give them some free stuff or take money off of their bill. Whatever it was, we did things to help the client. The funny thing is, is the client didn't even experience a problem. It's not like it jacked up their account. It's not like it caused them to bounce checks. It didn't affect them one bit.

Not at all. But here's the thing, it doesn't matter. We don't look at it as, well, it didn't affect you. You shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't do anything special for you. Nope, we screwed up. We made a mistake.

We immediately jump on this and say, not only do we need to fix it as soon as possible, but we need to bless the client because we screwed something up. Guess what that does for that client? It creates this level of loyalty. It creates this level of trust that we are always gonna look out for them, even to our own detriment, right?

We're giving away stuff because we screwed something up that really did not affect them at all. I mean, goodness gracious, what if it was, it did affect them? What if it caused them to bounce, you know, three checks that they had going out to their vendors or something, right?

We took care of it, solved it, and went above and beyond. This is something that is important for you to teach your team. I cannot tell you, I have had companies, I had a phone company who just drove me nuts, ended up taking a lot of money out of my account, even though they had told me they were not going to do this.

And they kept doing it every single month. And I still, no matter how many I spent something like, I think it was 11 or 12 hours on the phone and still never got the money back, still never got it. And I was like, I am losing so much money of my time sitting on this phone trying to solve this thing at this point.

I'm cutting my losses and moving on. And the way that they treated me was as if it was my fault. They treated me as if I was the problem. Now here's a company that has no problem taking my money, but then their customer service concept concept was to act as though I did something wrong.

And you all know what it's like when you're trying to get to somebody that that's supposed to solve the problem. You have to go through 14 different people being transferred over and over and over again who know nothing about it. And then they make you explain the whole situation from the beginning all over again.

Every single time you jump on the phone, even though you've got a case number that it should explain everything, it's such a crazy mess. That takes us into the second thing we need to focus on. And that is proactive customer service.

Now, proactive customer service is a lot like I just talked about. Discovering that you've done something that the mistake has happened is just the first thing. The awareness is just the first thing.

The next thing you need to do is you need to put yourself, have some empathy here. Put yourself in the shoes of the other person. Well, Chris, you just talked about an example that it didn't affect that person. That's correct. But what if it had, what if it would've, what if it could have?

So for me, the first thing is, oh my gosh, I hope we didn't mess anything up. Solve this right away. Get that money back in their account. Solve this thing as fast as you possibly can. And then since we're probably gonna have a ticked off customer because we screwed something up, bless them with stuff.

Give them stuff. Do something about it. Give them a discount. Do something right? Assume the worst. Assume that your mistake is worse than you think it is. And then when you discover that it didn't affect the client at all, fantastic, that's great, that's wonderful.

But you still do the free stuff. You still do the blessings, right? The thing is, is you have to proactively work on solving problems when they happen.

But it doesn't stop there. You've got to work your butt off to make sure it doesn't happen. So one of the things we put in place with this was a two sets of eyes accountability process that we made sure that this doesn't happen.

It doesn't, you know, we don't see this issue again, that when something goes through and we haven't had a problem since this, which this was years ago, we haven't had an issue on that. Now, crossing my fingers, hoping, you know, Lord, please don't let that happen again.

But our process should solve this issue. Which to this point, it absolutely has. We haven't experienced a problem right? Because we've become proactive, not reactive. The first situation was very reactive.

Where we are now is very proactive. How do you know? So our five steps, our fixing a problem is what happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens again? And on that last one, you have to think outside the box. 'cause there may be some things you haven't noticed or seen yet.

So you have to even try and think through how can this thing still fail after we're putting this fix in place, right? Being proactive helps out not only your team, your your customer service, but it helps to not have the problem show up in the first place, right?

So once it happens, go into solution mode. But folks, how do we make sure it doesn't happen in the, in the future? So I'll give you another example of years ago when we used to do, gosh, 10,000 people events.

I will say that I am glad I don't do 10,000 people events anymore. Those were, those were quite taxing, they were fun, they were a blast. But it's quite taxing. And I will say that with those events come a myriad of issues,
there are a lot of things that you have to think through, a lot of things that you have to solve before they happen.

There was a, I think when we finally got to our largest checklist of handling things, it was somewhere around 60 pages long. When we took it out of the country, it became a hundred page long checklist of things that we had to,
to take care of.

And most of those things were just solving problems in case something came up. A lot of those things never happened, but we did such a great job of making sure we were proactive just in case.

While in that process, you have to hire some pretty amazing people. You have to hire people that are very detail oriented. You have to hire people who can move and decisions and solve problems, personality with problem solving and moving and getting things done.

I can tell you, I hired, I think I had a team of four event coordinators at that time that that's all they did. And in the hiring process, every now and then, I would get somebody that would come in and I, I remember this one gal sitting down at the table, and all she did was brag about how amazing she's day of event, about how great she's at putting out fires.

I mean, she can put out fires, solve things, solve issues. And in her mind, somehow this seemed like a great thing to brag about. But as she bragged about it, it pointed something out to me. I want you to think about what it might've pointed out.

And so what I did is I went ahead and ended the interview and she said, so I just, Hey, thank you so much. I appreciate your time, you know, we'll, we'll process through this, yada, yada, whatever it was that I said.

And she goes, did I, did I say something wrong? Was there something that you know you didn't like? And I said, well, I'm not looking for a hero. I don't want somebody who's phenomenal at putting out fires day of event.

Because if you're somebody who's so great at putting out fires day of event, that tells me something, you didn't do a good job on the front side to make sure there weren't any fires. And you could just see her face just go, oh crud.

You know, I shouldn't have said that that way, or whatever it was, right? But no matter what, it just showed me something that she takes a lot of pride in there being problems, day of and being the hero who solves everything. Folks, I'm gonna tell you, I don't need that person on my team.

I really don't. Do I need people who can put out fires day of event, totally abs. Absolutely. I don't need a hero, though. A hero will allow things to go wrong so that they can put out fires so that fires actually start. I need somebody who does, runs an event so insanely well that the audience doesn't even know that they existed.

I don't need them to see somebody jumping up and putting out fires, right? Obviously not literal fires. Well, it could be, but I need somebody who's so proactive that they are thinking through every aspect of what they need to do to make sure mistakes don't happen.

And a part of that proactiveness is learning from reactive situations. What do I mean by that?

So quite often you have to react to something that happened. You better be a phenomenal note taker. I wanna know everything, write it all down. What happened? How did it happen? Go through the whole scenario.

Get all this stuff in place so that we can proactively put in place the things we need to do to make sure that never happens again.

How did we get to a hundred page checklist? We started off, you know, so many years, decades ago, I started off by being handed a one and a half sheet long legal pad, piece of paper on how to do these specific events.

And I looked at this now again, that back in those days, it, it was probably less than a thousand people, you know, probably a thousand people ish. I looked at that piece of paper and it wasn't in big venues. I looked at that piece of paper and I went, there is no possible, I know myself.

There is no possible way I can pull off an event without mistakes using this little information. Surely there's a lot of mistakes that happen at these events. And sure enough, that's exactly what there was.

And so I went on this process of setting things up for future event coordinators by going through every possible mistake I could think of and putting it down. That's being proactive, guys, that is being proactive, that is having accountability to the processes, right?

This is anticipating issues. Not only did we focus on issues, we focused on customer needs. I'll tell you what, 10,000 people, you're gonna have some pregnant ladies. Pregnant ladies don't wanna sit in the middle of an aisle because they have to get up and go to the bathroom often.

So if you care about people, you do your best to make sure that you can get the pregnant ladies on the aisle so that when they have to run to the bathroom multiple times during a multi-hour event, they're taken care of.

Yes, we even anticipated pregnant people because that's caring. That's thinking about what does the customer need?

How do you solve issues for the customer right now, that's just one example of an incredible number of things that we used to do to make sure that we were taking care of the customer and anticipating the customer's needs. So proactive customer service is an absolute must.

What's the third thing you need to do? You must build trust through care and service. So what does it look like to actually care about your customers beyond the transaction so that you can build long lasting relationships?

You know, there's some things that we, we do events, a lot of events, we do a lot of coaching, we do a lot of helping people. But some of our events, what we've done is we've put on the backside of those events things to keep helping people out, processes, emails, suggestions, tips, reminders, so that we go beyond the event and handing this over to somebody and saying, okay, here's the things you know you need to go and do over the next six months.

And instead of just letting them go and try and figure it out. We have processes that help for our Next-Level Life. We've got like a 30 day email system set up and running for years that helps people to understand what they should be doing, what they should be thinking about, reminders of things for them to do.

On our StratPlan, we have a, gosh, I think it's a four month process, if I'm correct on how it works out.

What we have is what we call the success calls, where after a company has come through this big event and they walk away with a six month to 12 month process that they're gonna be implementing to solve all of these issues and grow in revenue, that we have one of our leaders actually contacting them to make sure that they're walking through the process well, to hold them accountable to the process, to answer any questions, to set them up for success.

So things you need to be doing is listening. You need to be focusing on understanding your customer's feedback. You need to learn how you can improve your services. You need to show that you care beyond the transaction. If you don't, then how does a customer view themselves in your eyes that all they are is a transaction?

And I can tell you that doesn't create loyalty in a customer's eyes with you. That doesn't build trust. In fact, the stat, gosh, it's been a few years since I've updated the stat, but a couple years ago at least, the stat was 60% of people leave your business to go to a competitor or somebody else who does the same type of work because of indifference.

And the indifference is they feel that you, your company is indifferent to them. You don't really care. And so they will leave your company to go to somebody else because it feels as though the other company cares more.

Folks, that's just powerful. That is something you need to really recognize. I'll tell you, I have had calls at nighttime. I have had calls on the weekends where I have helped out clients that were just in, you know, terrible situations.

And I've told them, guys, you can reach out to me. You know, I may be in an event, I may not be able to return your call, but I'm going to get back to you at some point and try and help you solve whatever it is. And I'll tell you, it has blown people away to go, man, I can't believe you took my call.

I'm like, why? Like, well, you're busy. I'm like, so are you. You obviously would not be reaching out to me to ask me how my weekend went. You know, you're not gonna be reaching out to me to see how my dog is doing. You're reaching out because something is hurting you.

Something is difficult and painful and you need some help. And so I'm here to help. What does that do for the long-term relationship of your clients?

What does that tell your clients? Now? Am I there for them all the time? No. Am I there to take calls every single night? No.

You know, we, on our Sabbath, I'm not taking calls on that day, I'm resting on that day, right? I truly believe that we should be taking that time of rest. And so, no, I'm not handling work stuff during that timeframe.

But if I can, if there's times that I can and there's things I can solve and I can help people out, you better believe I'm gonna help out. I'm gonna try, I'm gonna do what I can.

That speaks to the client about how much we care, how much we're not there just for transactions that we're actually there to help them out. It's the power of the personalized experience in demonstrating care and, and, and building trust, building loyalty.

What's the fourth thing you need to do? Gracefully handle mistakes.

So as I talked about before, we have a five step process of what we can do to solve issues, and they solve probably 98% of the problems we have in our business. But you probably heard me say in there that we don't chop anybody's head off, we don't rip anybody apart. We don't go after the person, we solve the problem and then we teach like crazy.

So here's just some key strategies, some things that you can do. And again, like I said, our process is what happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens again?

But here's some things that are super important on top of this that you can do and help your team to get to solution instead of fear instead of concern for themselves and concern for their own neck, right?

So first thing is immediate acknowledgement. Train your whole entire team, your whole entire company that acknowledging the mistake is the most important thing you can do.

If you do not acknowledge that a mistake is happening, and many people won't, many people will try and sweep it under the rug. Many people will procrastinate. Many people will believe that it will just go away on its own.
It's not going anywhere.

Folks, you will have a mountain of issues if you do that all underneath this one rug. There's an importance of acknowledging the mistake as soon as it's identified. Don't hide it, don't hold back.

And again, what the conversations that I've had with new team members when they're hiding a mistake, and I've had that multiple times in the past, is, why did you not tell somebody? And the answer is always, well, it's either I, I just didn't want to disappoint you.

Or, well, I was afraid of how I was gonna get my head ripped off for this situation. That's when we ask questions like, have you ever with us before? Well, no. Have you seen us solve problems? Yes. Have you seen us rip anybody's head off? No.

What makes you think it's gonna happen to you? Well, because other leaders have done that in the past. Okay, well, don't convict us with the, the sins of the other leaders that you've experienced in your life. Instead, challenge our character.

If you've not seen us rip anybody's head off, then please don't put on us that we may rip somebody's head off until you see it. Don't put that on us. Instead, recognize that holding back on, acknowledging an issue and sharing that and seeking help to solve it is actually going to get you in more trouble.

Because if we have to find out or figure this out, then there's going to be a heavier consequence. No, we're not gonna rip your head off. But what we are gonna do is give you a warning. Hey, listen, we are focused on solving these issues, especially when it comes to our clients.

We gotta get this thing done. You holding back means that I can't trust you with this. If I can't trust you with this, I can't keep you in this position, this situation. I need somebody who goes, you know what? No matter what, acknowledge this, share this so that we can get this solved correctly.

Now, if the person can solve it on their own and it's no big deal and it doesn't affect anything, that's one thing. But really what we're looking at is the things that need to be, the issues that need to be passed up through leadership, help leadership to understand or help other team members.

Or maybe it's a, a client that's in another team member's area, but you were helping out and mess something up. You've gotta let that person or those leaders know.

Hey folks, A couple years ago I was visiting with a client and the CEO said to me, Chris, we're not gonna hit our goal. I asked him what he meant and he said, we're gonna miss our three year revenue goal coming out of StratPlan by a few months.

I didn't realize it at first that he was having a little fun with me by saying they were about to triple their company in less than three years. How freaking awesome is that? Folks, these are the kinds of results that businesses get by coming through our four-day StratPlan event.

On average, we find $2.1 million worth of revenue in the next 12 months that the company was not planning on. And this event is for all size businesses. If you're small, medium, or large, it works for every single business because it's not industry specific.

It's about gaining all the information about all the things inside of your business that are holding you back from success, and then giving you a plan and a process on how to walk that out and be successful in your business by discovering the things that are holding you back.

It helps you get to all of those goals that you've been planning on for a long time.

So if you're ready to get the perspective you need to solve what's holding you and your business back so you can grow faster than you need StratPlan to learn more, go to chrislocurto.com/stratplan. That's chrislocurto.com/stratplan.

Second thing is transparent communication. Keeping the customer informed about what went wrong and and what is being done to rectify it is vitally important.

Now, are there times that you probably have a mistake that literally doesn't impact the client? You know, it can't possibly impact the client, it's just gonna possibly create more worry or stress if you inform the client.

Yeah, there's probably some of those times, yes, we've had those situations in the past and it's solve it here. It hasn't gone out, it hasn't affected anybody. Solve it here, get that thing taken care of.

But if it even has the slightest possibility of impacting your client, even the smallest amount, make sure that you're communicating with transparency. Make sure that you're jumping on it right away and helping them to know and understand, right?

Maybe what you do is you reticence your apology. You know, the the art of apologizing, you know, is something that I feel like so many people have lost. So many of these generations seem to be losing this.

Hey, I am sorry. Hey, I screwed this up. We screwed this up. Hey, we're taking responsibility. It drives me nuts to see people not be able to take responsibility.

And by the way, parents, you're probably teaching that to your kids if you are not holding them accountable and pushing them to take responsibility. If you don't take responsibility then and can be held accountable, then I, I bet you're passing that onto your kids.

This is something that you need to do. We don't have a problem going, we screwed that up. That is our fault. It's our responsibility. We're doing this.

I, I, I had a, oh, you could already tell I'll never hire another island. I had an island. What does that mean? A person that they were only focused about themselves.

They only thought about themselves. They cared about themselves. They cared about how they won. They wanted to use other people for their own personal gain. That's what you call an island, right?

Somebody who couldn't work with the team, couldn't work with anybody else, but could definitely get other people to do stuff for him. I had this person and one time created, created a high end sale. I mean, it was a really nice sale.

Several, several thousands of dollars and came to me so excited. And as the person, I'm like, man, that is fantastic. And as he is going through this stuff, he said something. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. What was that? What'd you say? He goes, I said this. I said, but that's not true.

He goes, yeah, but it doesn't matter. I go, no, it's a lie. It's not truth. He goes, Chris, we just sold this much money. I said, I don't care. I don't want any illegitimate dollars coming into this business.

And right now we have somebody who's been sold on something that is partially lies like, it doesn't even matter. It's a small thing. I said, I don't care. Integrity. I want you to go back right now. Call that client. Tell 'em you misspoke about that and see if they want their money back.

He goes, are you serious? I'm like, yep, I absolutely am. I said, I don't think it's gonna matter to the client either,
but what if it does? And so he went back and called the client, and the client didn't care, didn't matter. And he came back.

He goes, yeah, it didn't even matter. I go, but my integrity and your integrity should, that's the important thing. I don't ever want somebody paying us based on any aspect of a lie. I want there to be truth.

So this gives you the opportunity to teach and train your people that integrity is so vitally important. What do you think?

How do you think that customer responded when he heard, you know, my sales guy call him up and go, dude, I screwed up. I told you this. That wasn't truth. After we've already got his money and we're offering his money back.

Dang, that's crazy. Impressive. These people called me to give me my money back because of something that doesn't even matter. Or give me the option to take my money back. Nope. Keep the money, man. I'm coming to the, the, it was a big event out of the country. Keep the money. I'm coming, I'm in.

It created loyalty. It created trust because somebody realized that we were willing to give back money on even the smallest misstep. And we also gave a sincere apology in that process. So next thing you need to do speaks to that and what I talked about earlier, and that is making it right.

The concrete steps to not only fix the mistake, but to exceed the customer's expectations in the actual solution itself, right? So giving free stuff, taking money off of the charge, doing something to solve, giving them something completely for free that's big, depending upon how big the mistake was, right?

If we screw something up and it's affecting that client, then I want to, I wanna give them something. I want to take care of them somehow. Sometimes we've had such tiny screw ups, they were, they really didn't even matter.

And we're like, Hey, here's a free DISC, right? But it didn't even matter. I know, but we want you to have this. And then there's times we've done huge things to take care of a client from a mistake because a mistake, well, I shouldn't say huge.

I think we've probably discounted some stuff because we wanted to make sure that we were just compensating them for any possible trouble, even though it didn't create any trouble.

So making sure that you make it right, that you take care of the clients no matter what. Teaching your team what they can do and what they're allowed to do. You know, my leaders know that there's things that they can do immediately.

You know, if it's something that's big, then obviously they would have to come to me and go, Hey, we really massively screwed something up and here's what we wanna do. We haven't had that happen. So prayerfully that won't.

But what if it did? What if it did? Then we need to do whatever it takes to solve that problem. Another thing that you can do in this process of, you know, solving mistakes when they happen, is learning and improving.

How to use these mistakes as learning opportunities to prevent future issues. Again, like I talked about, taking massive amounts of notes, making sure that you're going through all the things that happened, what we could do better, being proactive, putting those things in place.

If you can do those things, you can solve pretty much any problem. And keep clients. Not only keep clients, gain loyalty. Not only gain loyalty, gain trust, not only gain trust, but gain more of the client doing business with you because they know they can trust you.

That's the one thing I've always been so proud to experience, is that if you screw something up with a client and you jump on it proactively, you solve all this stuff, you're sitting there going, man, I hope we don't lose that client.

And you find out you end up doing more business with them. Now, don't go screw up and make mistakes on the thought that you could do more business. I don't think anybody wants to go through that process.

But it's amazing that when you learn and solve things, how much better you do, not only with the client, but all of your future clients. When you do all of these different key strategies, then it creates accountability, it shines a light on integrity, and it absolutely reinforce the trust from the customer.

Moving on. Number five, the mutual benefits of handling mistakes. Well, so we've talked all about all of these great benefits of solving mistakes, handling mistakes. Now we need to take a look at what does it do?

What are some benefits to your culture? When you as a leader, you as a business owner, are leading the example of how to handle clients, how to handle mistakes.

So first thing is, is that you start to teach your team, you start to create a culture where people understand that mistakes are okay.

That this concept of, you know, failure is not an option, does not exist in this business. We don't wanna have fatal failures. We really don't want to have failures that our customer facing, even though it's gonna happen.

But if we do, we do something about it. So you begin to create this culture where team members feel safe inside of your business, inside of your team, that if they make a mistake, they're gonna hate it. They're gonna hate disappointing you. And here's an interesting thing.

The people who are worried about disappointing me are the people who are loyal to me. The people who are loyal to me are loyal to me because they've seen how I lead. Think about that. There's a massive world of difference between a boss and a leader.

There's a massive world of difference in a, a leader who creates a great culture and a leader who creates a culture of backstabbing and distrust and disloyalty and and ripping people's heads off.

So it is not surprising to me when I experience a problem and somebody's not speaking up about, it's usually only you know, somebody who's new, that the reason why is because they don't wanna disappoint me.

The more I lead the example my leaders lead, the example of failure is, okay, solve the problem. Do everything you can to take care of it. Be proactive to make sure it doesn't happen again in the future.

You begin to create this culture where people feel safe, they feel like they can trust you. They feel like if they do screw up, they're not looking to screw up. But if they do make a mistake that you're actually not only gonna take care of them in the process, but you're gonna teach them how to overcome it.

So there are so many great benefits on how it affects the culture of your business, how it affects your team, how it affects conversations, how it creates a self-policing style of proactiveness.

What do I mean by that? It's amazing how people will start to look out for other team members, Hey man, you don't wanna do that thing over there? Listen, I did that once three months ago and that really screwed a client up, or really made a mess or did something yada, yada, yada. So, hey, let me help you.

Lemme, can I give you some advice on that? Can I give you some tips on that? Team members become proactive to help out other team members. That's a part of self policing the culture. They don't want a culture to start falling apart.

They don't want a culture to start experiencing lots of mistakes and issues and drama and people not doing their work and productivity coming to a halt because everybody's focused on the mistake and and whether or not they're gonna get their head locked off.

So as you do all of these things, well, what you'll discover is it will really start to build your culture. And these will be long term, long lasting benefits that will affect the way that your team leads, your company, leads your customers, even lead your vendors, even leads each other that the internal client.

So five things you can do. First, understand that mistakes are inevitable. Make sure that you are being proactive with your customer service. Make sure that you're building trust through care and service. Make sure that you're gracefully handling mistakes.

Use grace you've screwed up a thousand times. Make sure that your team feels like you know they can be treated with grace. Also, recognize the mutual benefits of handling the mistakes well.

So don't forget that in all of this, there must be a mindset of accountability in learning. If we are not putting those things in place place, then we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. I'm telling you, the more you learn from your mistakes, the more you learn how to handle them, solve them.

Become proactive. Actually hold people accountable in situations, hold them accountable to processes. Then what you'll discover is you will create the culture of accountability and the culture of learning.

Also, remember, it's not about being perfect, it's about being authentic. It's about being accountable. It's about always aiming to serve the customer better.

Now folks, I'm gonna ask you for a favor. We would love to hear your stories of overcoming business mistakes and how it transformed your customer relationships.

You know what? What did you experience out of this? What did you see with your customers? What did you see with your team? So do us a favor, reach out on our social media channels or email us at [email protected].

Let's continue to learn from each other and go stronger together. So with that, until next time, embrace the journey of mistakes and all that goes with it.

I'm not saying you have to love it. I'm saying, if you will embrace the journey than you'll begin to implement solving problems at a much greater level. Well, that is all the time that we have for today.

I really appreciate that you guys have joined us. As always, we want you to take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.