A story that seems to be repeated but with a different ending. The “wonderful” agreement failed and asking for forgiveness turned it into a multi-million dollar business
It was a Friday in August 2017.
I was a first-time father and a novice entrepreneur.
Just a few months earlier, I had left my consulting job in Washington, DC, to embark on a crazy idea: a 100% bootstrapped startup agency.
But I wasn’t working that day. I was sitting in a hospital lobby, waiting for my wife to come out of surgery.
As you can imagine, I was stressed. The operation was taking hours longer than expected. I hadn’t heard anything. I tried to get some work done (the bank account was almost empty), but the thought of something going wrong on the operating table kept me from concentrating.
Then I got a call.
“Hello?”
«Nick. We have a serious problem.»
Uh oh.
“Who is it?”
I left.
“I’m Rachel. I can’t believe what just happened. Nick, this project has been a total failure. We flew eight people here for nothing.”
I was mortified.
“Everything fell apart”told me. “And this is all your fault”.
I didn’t know what to say. I literally hung up the phone. I racked my brain trying to figure out what the hell this was all about. This was one of the biggest companies in the world. In fact, it might be the most successful company of all time, founded almost 200 years ago and one of the most recognizable consumer goods brands in the world. This project was like a shot of Red Bull into my startup’s veins. But if things failed, well… I could hardly imagine the consequences. I didn’t want to.
I stared at the blank phone screen for a few minutes, wondering what to do. Then I called Rachel back. I blamed it on the poor service. We talked for exactly five minutes.
It turned out that she had screwed up big time. Rachel’s team had expected to meet dozens of people in New York, but none of them showed up. It was a week-long trip, and these people were the key to the whole thing.
So yeah. I was stunned. I felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest.
For a brief second, I wanted to die.
A few weeks earlier, I had had some great meetings with this company.
They expressed enthusiasm for my unique proposition, and said they had not found another provider that could offer all of these services as part of a single package.
They even managed to get an exception to company policy to pay me upfront for this project. I needed over $14,000 upfront, and they wired it to me in no time. But now I realized I had wasted it all.
That same night, sitting beside my bedridden wife (the operation had been successful, but not easy), I put on a brave face. I helped her, soothed her to sleep, made sure she was comfortable. But once she was asleep, I collapsed. I felt sick. My hands were shaking. I almost threw up.
There was no way to pay the company back. The money was already spent. And they had spent thousands on airfare and accommodation.
I had just started this business from scratch. I had no money at all. Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have been doing this at all.
But none of that mattered. My goal for the weekend? To figure out how to move forward and try not to dread the meeting the client had scheduled for Monday.
Oh, and taking care of my sick wife and our one-year-old son.
…I did the only thing I could think of. I called my best friend and told him the whole story. I was sobbing and too embarrassed to care that he was listening to me like that.
“It’s over. I regret having done this. Everything. I can’t imagine anything worse.”I told him.
But I will never forget what he told me.
“Nick, this had to happen.”
That?
“You set out to do something big and risky”he said with complete serenity. “Which means something like this was bound to happen.”
I still didn’t believe him, but he caught my attention.
“Nick, you need to call them and apologize. Profusely. Don’t let them get a word in edgewise. Tell them you’re so sorry and that this affects you in a very personal way. Keep apologizing until they insist you shut up.”.
I was skeptical, but I was desperate. At that point, I was too stressed to think. I felt like a robot, and I decided to do exactly what he told me.
…
Monday came and I walked into our conference call. The tension, thousands of miles away and in four different offices, was palpable.
“Apologizing isn’t going to fix this.”said.
They agreed. One of them even laughed in disbelief.
But I continued to apologize. For several minutes. I apologized in every way possible and explained exactly what had happened and why. I didn’t offer to fix anything (because I couldn’t), nor did I pretend that this couldn’t have been avoided.
They fell silent. Finally I stopped.
“Okay”.
That was it. That was all they said, and I’m not even sure which one of them said it. We ended the call, and I spent the next few weeks in a daze.
I felt absolutely horrible. I barely ate. I didn’t work. I tried to tell my wife, but she was still recovering and I didn’t want her to worry. And honestly, it’s hard to convey feelings like that to someone who wasn’t there. «Everything will be fine»he told me, but only because he couldn’t say anything else.
But then, something happened…
…
I received an email.
It was from Rachel, the project manager I’d utterly failed. The woman whose career I’d nearly ruined. The woman I now wished I’d never even met.
It had been almost a month since my embarrassing, tearful phone call with her and her supervisors. Today I was sitting in Starbucks, searching for data entry jobs on Upwork, any job I couldn’t screw up.
“Nick, we’d like you to help us with something.”
Umm. What!?
“We are putting everything behind us and would like you to manage participant incentives for our teams when we travel.”
I blinked. I rubbed my eyes. I stood up, walked around, and sat back down.
“Even though the project failed, the incentives part went smoothly, and we haven’t found anyone who can do it well. We think we can trust you with this.”
God. Heaven. Tears filled my eyes. I felt like jumping up on the little table in the corner of that Starbucks.
«I’m down»I wrote in response. “When can we chat?”.
…
Fast forward to today, February 1, 2024.
As of a few hours ago, I have billed this client for $1 million.
They’ve given me plenty of referrals, and introduced me to people who have become some of my closest confidants. I’ve met with them on-site and consulted with them on some awesome stuff. They even once paid for a trip to their headquarters for me, where I met the scientists and market researchers behind some of the world’s most successful consumer goods brands.
My work with them kept the lights on for seven years. That steady income base allowed me to move on to bigger and better things, until I eventually sold that business to one of the world’s leading information technology companies.
