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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Related answers

youtube ↗Offers

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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youtube ↗Offers

I've heard your guarantee offers quite a bit. When you say I guarantee you X days or you don't pay, how does the deal actually go? Do you generate and book a lead yourself by calling without charging anything up front until day X? Or do they get charged per booked appointment? Or do they pay up front and get a full refund if you don't achieve results in however many days?

I use a guarantee very commonly in cold email and other marketing methods — I'll guarantee X result in Y time or you don't pay. It's not exactly true if you take it super literally, since at some point in time they will have paid, but the framing is short and fits nicely above the fold of the copy. When somebody actually gets on the call, I clarify it's a money-back guarantee: if by the time I said I'd achieve the results I haven't, they end up in the same state they started in — the state where they didn't pay. I haven't had many problems with this, but I'm also experienced at explaining the mechanics — I've heard of situations where less experienced people run a similar offer, get on a call, the prospect asks how it works, and they fumble the explanation ('well, you pay me and then later I give you your money back'), which doesn't match what the email implied. So it comes down to skill in framing it live: I'm happy to front-load the opportunity, get people on a call, showcase a ton of value, and let them arrive at trusting me based on my YouTube, Google presence, etc. — results may vary based on how well you can do that yourself. If you don't want to run the exact same offer, you can just change the language at the end from 'or you don't pay' to 'or I'll give you all your money back' — and nowadays I wouldn't even recommend a plain refund, I'd add something extra on top, like 'or I'll give you your money back and get you a night at your favorite steakhouse.' When you do that and actually mean it, it massively increases your top-of-funnel — maybe 300% more people through the door — and the cost is just a 5-10% refund rate plus a small bonus, which is nothing compared to the volume gained.

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youtube ↗Offers

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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youtube ↗Mindset

How can I overcome a lack of confidence in my work and feel secure when pitching automation projects?

Learn to pitch your work as a deliverable rather than as time, and back it with a guarantee. If the deliverable doesn’t meet expectations, the client pays nothing, and you’re both happy. It may sound odd to offer free work, but you can say, ‘I’ll deliver X as we agreed, and if you don’t love it you owe me nothing.’ This removes risk for the client and eliminates the mental block of ‘what if it doesn’t work?’ If the project fails, the client gets their money back and you haven’t lost more than the time you invested, which is still valuable experience. You can then charge more on future projects because you’ve proven the system works. Even if you have rent and other expenses, you can treat the guarantee as a side‑hustle risk that pays off long term. I learned the hard way in a door‑to‑door marketing agency that never offering guarantees cost me millions; once I started guaranteeing offers, my top line tripled with only a small refund rate, making the guarantee a logical decision.

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