Your High-Ticket Offer Isn't Being Delivered ā What to Do Whether You Sold It or Bought It
Business Fire Drills ā Episode 5
Transcript (cleaned)
You just signed your dream client, your huge offer that you were hoping and planning and wishing that someone would purchase. They've signed it. It feels so good. Like the growth, the expansion. I did it. It feels incredible. Or maybe you just hired someone. You just purchased the biggest offer you have ever spent money on. And you're a little bit nervous, but you are excited. You are enthusiastic. You are anticipating great results from this person, this program, this experience, whatever the case may be.
And then something shifts. If you were the one that sold the offer, maybe you're thinking, "Oh, I really don't want to run this thing anymore. I want to change it. This is not what I wanted to do." But you already sold it. You're like, "Yeah, I really don't want to do this." Or maybe you're the one that bought, and suddenly calls keep getting dropped or changed, or the deliverables are shifting. This just isn't matching up with what you thought you purchased.
So this is a Business Fire Drill. Because these business moments are predictable. Your panic is optional, and we're going to run the drill before the fire happens. I'm attorney Tamsen Horton. I've been putting out business fires since 2011, and I want to make sure that you don't get burned, your business doesn't get burned, and nothing is burning down all around you.
So we're talking about Before a High-Ticket Client Agreement Goes Sideways. And there's always two sides to an agreement. Another word for an agreement is a contract. They mean one and the same. You'll hear me use them interchangeably, so I'm not talking about two different things. I'm talking about the same thing. When you have a contract, when you have an agreement, you have to have two parties. You don't sign a contract with yourself. So we're going to talk about this fire drill from both sides of the coin. Money's exchanging hands, so we're going to talk about both sides: the seller side and the buyer side.
Now, first off, a fire alarm is going to go off. That's how we know to run the fire drill. When you're the seller, this alarm can go off internally, quietly, for you. You don't want to run the thing. I'll use, let's say it was a coaching program or a mastermind or a live event. And let's say you wanted to give them ten calls, and you're like, "Whoa, I gave way too many. This should have only been two." Or, "Oh, I said I would do this, but I don't really want to do it." Or, "Our business is taking a different direction. We're just going to retire this offering that we were doing. We're not going to do these services anymore." That's the fire alarm. That's what it sounds like. That's what it's going to feel like. That's what you're going to be thinking when the fire alarm is going off.
When you are the buyer side of the coin, what you're getting is going to start looking different. Maybe they're canceling and rescheduling calls, appointments, check-ins that you had going on. Maybe they said you'd get two tickets to an event and now they're saying you only get one ticket. Or any number of things. The facts and circumstances can have infinite possibilities. We're not covering those. We always want to strip away all of the drama and get to the core, get to the essence of what the fire is. So as a seller, you've changed your mind. You're not delivering, or life happened. That's also a piece that's always involved in this. Something happened and you're not delivering what you originally promised. Or you are the buyer and you are not getting what you were originally promised.
Our next question is, are we reacting or are we responding? When you react, it is that knee-jerk, quick, highly emotional, nervous-system, almost berserk or bizarre reaction. As a seller, maybe you just quit showing up. Or someone contacts you and you're like, "Yeah, I don't do that anymore. I sold it to you, but I don't do it anymore." That's always a fun one to be on the receiving end of. Or as a buyer, you're like, "Well, wait, I didn't get what I wanted," and so you jump on socials and you're posting how horrible, awful, mistreated, whatever the case may be. The underlying action could be completely justified. Reacting is not how we want to handle this. It's not going to help either one of your cases at all. And it is not the competent, professional person that you are.
Responding, on the other hand, is having a calm, informed, methodical, factual, professional response. That is what I'm going to walk you through, because we want to be able to respond to the fire versus reacting. It's the difference between a fire happening and you have no idea where the exit is, and now you're scrambling and running around and you're frantic, or a fire happens and you know: go out this door, turn right, go to the next door, turn left, and exit the building safely. That's what we're going for.
So let's run the drill. D-R-I-L-L. Very easy to remember. You're going to hear me say it over and over and over again, much like my children have to hear me all the time. My film crew.
So D, don't react. This is paramount. It doesn't make the fire go away. It doesn't make the facts and circumstances change, but it immediately defuses the situation. It does not pour more lighter fluid onto the fire. We don't want to do that. So if you are the seller and you hear yourself thinking, "I don't really want to do this anymore," maybe life has happened, you can't perform anymore, something has gone on. Don't react. Whatever that might look like. It could look like sending an email that says this program has ended. It could look like canceling calls. It could look like whatever would create frenzy and is that initial "I gotta do this now" kind of response. Don't do that.
If you are the buyer, do not take to social media. Do not. And here's a side public service announcement: if you see social media going berserk over a situation that someone else has let you know about, it might be a good idea to just keep your profile out of the thread. When you don't know what's happened, you probably don't want to say anything. You don't know the full story. This is a really good way to get yourself tangled up in someone else's fire before you know what's going on. We want to be informed. We want to keep it factual. I'm all about protection. I'm not a big gambler. I can go to Vegas and have no desire to gamble whatsoever. I'm a big protector, a huge protector. So do not take to socials. Do not overreact. Do not send nasty emails. Do not go berserk at all.
R, record everything. Likely, when the fire's already going, there is a lack of a written agreement, or it was a very murky, ambiguous agreement that has contradictory clauses in it. If there is a written agreement, I want you to get your hands on it. I want you to create a filing system for everything you're going to collect. If you don't have a filing system, and you would like to have the exact filing system that I use for keeping track of all of my own fire drills, you are welcome to. In the link, there's a Fire Drill Kit Map that I am sharing with you that you just plug into wherever your storage container is. Mine happens to be Google Drive, and it will create the exact system that will keep the legal infrastructure of your business organized. Screenshots, sales pages, direct messages, emails, anything that you have that is a written record: pull it, put it in this folder. Again, we have not said anything publicly. We are not reacting. This is the responding. We're putting it in the folder. We are gathering the evidence, both if we sold it or if we purchased it.
I, identify the real risk. We've got to find the source of the fire. What is really going on? If I'm the seller, is it a situation where I've just decided we're not doing this anymore? I don't want to offer it. I overextended myself. I don't like it. It could be a number of things. Or life happened, and you woke up in the ICU, or a family member wakes up in the ICU, something catastrophic has happened, meaning you can't deliver. Those are different situations. They're handled differently. The expectation of your buyers is very different in those.
If you're the buyer, is this a case of a breach of contract? Meaning you're still missing two of the deliverables; the two are not happening. That's a breach of contract. Or are we moving into different legal arenas, which are that of misrepresentation or fraud? Those are very, very, very different risks. That's what we're identifying. That's what we're figuring out as we run this drill. How we approach those areas is very different. This is why we don't react. We do not want to jeopardize our position. I like to use the metaphor of, I do not want to fight with you in sinking quicksand. I want to be standing on concrete. I can walk much better on concrete. That's what we're doing when we run the drill. We're keeping you safe.
L, lead with calm. This is where you are a capable, articulate professional who is going to handle this fire drill in the best way possible for everyone involved. You have your evidence. As the seller, we're going to communicate clearly what needs to be communicated. Now, if you are dealing with really, call it, interesting facts and circumstances, I would highly recommend you get an attorney's eyes and ears on your facts and circumstances before you start communicating, because everything you communicate does become a record, and we don't want to make this fire worse. There are definitely ways to say things that defuse the fire, and there are ways to say things that pour lighter fluid on it against you. We don't want to do that.
If you are the buyer, this is you reaching out to the company with your evidence and saying, "I'm inquiring about this deliverable, this deliverable, this expectation, whatever the case may be. We need to discuss this. I need to bring this to your attention." Whatever that case may be, that's leading with calm.
L, lock in the lesson. When you're experiencing this fire, when this fire is over, we're going to lock in the lesson. What enabled this fire to start? That is what the lesson is, because we don't want it to happen again. So if we didn't have a written agreement, we're going to get a written agreement, and it's going to clearly communicate all of the various areas that could spark a fire. We're going to get that before you sell anything, before you buy anything. We are going to make sure that you have the purchase terms, which are not big, scary things. They truly are: this is what I'm expecting to provide to you, this is what you can expect to receive, this is what you're going to pay me, this is how we're going to handle disagreements, this is how we're going to end things. It's really just a great guidance tool for the relationship that you are entering into. And when everyone's on the same page going into it, you have far fewer fires that can get started.
We're also going to fix any systems issues that triggered this. Planning for the worst case when we are selling things is always part of the plan. Because if you plan for the worst case and you say, "If this were to happen, here's the protocol. If this were to happen, here's the protocol," those emails are written. Those templates are written. Those are in your home. If a fire erupted, do you know where your fire extinguisher is? Can you run to it, grab it, and put the fire out? That's what we are doing, because business moments are predictable. Your panic is optional. And I want to make sure you are not getting burned. Your business is not getting burned. Nothing is burning down around you.
You have three choices, really. Three options at this point. One, do nothing, because you've already run this drill. You already know that your bases are covered, and that if a high-ticket client agreement that you sold or purchased goes sideways, you have the terms, you've thought through the fire drill exit, like how to get out of the burning building, the burning issue. You're good. Guess what? You don't need to do anything right now. You already did it.
Option two, run the drill. The link for all the fire drills is in the description. You can grab it. There's thirty-plus of them. Each one is its own unique drill, and situations will typically trigger two or three drills. That's what you do now, because nobody figures out how to get out of the burning building when the building's on fire. You don't figure out how to get off the sinking ship when the ship is sinking. You figure it out on a Tuesday morning when you're on a walk with your backup buddy and the weather is good. This is when you do the drill. This is when you plan. Because there is not a magical date on the calendar where I can say, "Oh, I'm going to need this process because on November 3rd, all fires are going to just erupt." No, it doesn't happen on our calendar. So we've got to plan for it ahead of time. We don't buy the fire extinguisher when the fire is already going in our house, and we're scrambling and calling the fire department, which in my metaphorical case is when you call the attorneys. You buy the fire extinguisher. You put the fire alarms in when you move into your house. That's when you're doing this.
And option three: you immediately thought of a friend, a friend that is near and dear to your heart. And you're like, "Oh my gosh, they're going through this. They need this. I can see this happening in them, because I am hearing them talk about this new high-ticket offer that they are so excited about putting together," or, "I just heard them telling me about what they just bought. I wonder if they know this."
All options are valid. One is going to be right for you. Choose which one is right for you at this point in time.
Business moments are predictable. Panic is optional. We're going to run the drill before the fire starts.
