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.
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.
You should create an offer. The offer should look like: I will guarantee you X outcome in Y time, or I'll give you Z. Z could be your money back, a $250 Amazon gift card to your favorite steakhouse, or whatever you want. Basically, it needs to completely eliminate risk for them accepting the offer. Then you look and see if the business you're on a call with can actually achieve what you just said. If they don't have a good sales team and you're guaranteeing revenue, their ability to close that revenue depends on their sales team, meaning they won't be able to help you fulfill your guarantee, so you probably shouldn't work with them. As Hormosi said, virtually all sales calls are just verifying eligibility for the guarantee. When you run offers like this, you're literally on the call to see if your guarantee—say, booking them 20 sales appointments in 60 days or they don't pay—is something this company can actually deliver. You use the guarantee to get them on a call, then verify their eligibility. Some will say, 'Fuck yeah, we can totally do it.' Others won't look capable or competent; in those cases, you don't move forward because you know it's your ass on the line at the end of the day.
I would not offer a guarantee in that situation because it puts you in an extremely precarious position. I’ve been there before—it’s caused a lot of stress and even brought me close to eviction. While time and pressure can create results, they only go so far before jeopardizing your personal financial security. If you can’t deliver or refund, taking clients’ money and spending it on your own tools is risky and feels like a quasi‑ponzi scheme. The better move is to get a stable job or work elsewhere until you can reliably deliver on guarantees.
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.