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#307 · it's immoral not to guarantee your services

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Can or should you guarantee results that you're not 100% sure you can deliver?

I always do. A guarantee isn't just promising I'll do X; it's not promising I'll make you $50,000. In offer terms, a guarantee is: I guarantee you I'll make you $50,000, or I'll give you all your money back and then give you a $250 gift card to the restaurant of your choice. That's what I consider a guarantee. Many people worry when they start a new industry and someone like me says you should guarantee stuff, thinking they can't guarantee because they're not good at it. The reality is, if you don't have a guarantee in your offer, you're leaving about three times the top of the funnel on the table, according to my math, maybe more, at the cost of maybe 5% of your margin, because your refund rate will be much lower than you think. Assuming a 5% refund rate, mathematically you get 3x top line for a 5% reduction in bottom line. Doing the math, that's 285% of the money you'd otherwise make without a guarantee. Meaning it's illogical not to include a guarantee. I also think guarantees make you work harder from a motivational perspective. If you compare two universes—one where you offer a guarantee to a customer and one where you don't—you'll work harder in the universe with the guarantee, because you're personally incentivized to perform. So there's really no reason not to do a guarantee; it's better for you and better for the client, who gets better results. It is immoral not to guarantee your services—that's my takeaway.

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What happens if you can't fulfill a guarantee — have you ever had to refund or not charge, and what do you do if the issue is with a different process?

Well, you give them a refund. You give them all of their money back and then potentially even more — maybe you buy them a $200 Amazon gift card to the steakhouse of their choice, whatever it is. The reality is if you cannot hit the constraints of your offer and you cannot deliver on that guarantee, you must make it 100% money back or risk-averse or whatever. It cannot have cost them anything to have engaged in this offer with you. Why? Because that is the core part of what makes a good offer. People need to feel totally comfortable. They need to see it on both a logical and emotional basis as being a 100% win for them. All roads need to lead to some sort of success — whether or not it works for them, they need to basically walk away with more than they got when they started. That is simply the reality of marketing in the current year. The point I'm making here is you should not be having to give a refund on 100% of deals — if you have to give a refund on 100% of deals, you're just not very good at the service. But even if you are not good at the service and you have to give a refund on 100% of deals, that's very useful information, and you'll also have learned a lot about how to do the sorts of deals we're talking about simply by going through this process. So if you look at the two universes — one where you did the refund and one where you did not — which one would make you better? The one where you did the refund. Therefore, you should do more of the refunds.

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How do people create performance-based guarantees (e.g., X leads or you don’t pay, X months guaranteed, or X money if you don’t pay), especially when outcomes are hard to predict for beginners?

It's a great question. Think of two universes: one with no guarantee, one with a guarantee. With no guarantee, conversion is lower. With a guarantee—e.g., 100% guarantee of 2X ROI, money back plus a $100 gift card—conversion is much higher. Beyond conversion, guarantees increase the probability of success because they align incentives: if you don’t deliver the promised result, you don’t get paid and must refund, so you work harder to fulfill it. Psychologically, you’re more likely to achieve what you’ve guaranteed. Examples like Alex Rosi’s crazy guarantees (pay double if you don’t make X money) show how compelling they are. Even at the start of any business, lead generation is the bottleneck; improving conversion via guarantees gives you a higher chance of success and provides free experience (you still deliver value even if you refund). Logically, morally, ethically, guarantees are the way to go. They let you hedge bets without being reckless—offering a guarantee implicitly acknowledges a chance of failure and promises restitution. I used to avoid guarantees, but after adopting them my income jumped from $2K to $20K a month. My advice: make offering guarantees a habit.

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Should I offer guarantees in my offers even if I'm not confident I can deliver them?

Offering guarantees makes you work harder and learn more because your ass is on the line. As Jack Roberts said, show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome. If you guarantee a result and must refund if you fail, you’ll push harder than if you just take money without a guarantee. You’re not just promising a result; you’re creating an offer like “I’ll get you 20 book meetings in 60 days or I’ll refund you.” That’s how it works. I was once told never to guarantee anything, which held me back, but now I believe you should 100% guarantee—it’s the minimum entry ticket these days.

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How should I decide what to guarantee for my performance system—behavior, output, money—and how would you present it as an offer?

Nick says it’s difficult to guarantee outcomes you don’t directly control. In Maker School he guarantees a first client or a refund, which is downstream of his control but still offered. He notes that in practice, money is the strongest guarantee because it’s simple and quantifiable; you can offer a money‑back guarantee even without direct control, as the program’s overall value is evident—participants often find it valuable and may have a pipeline of leads even if they don’t land a client. He shares that his refund rate is very low because participants interact with him daily for 90 days. He appreciates the question, noting that most sellers focus on agents rather than outcomes, and thanks for the AI comment reframe. Regarding school growth boost, he says he would enable the feature, estimating it brings about 20‑30 % of net new people, so letting the platform take a cut is fine because you still grow your top line; he doesn’t know the exact percentage but sees it as acceptable.

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