Years ago, when I was working as an employee, I was given a rule that never sat right with me: “Never let the company lose money on a job.” At the time, we had made a planning mistake on a project I had quoted. If we had owned the mistake and fixed the work properly, the company would have lost a bit of money on the installation.
Instead, the instruction was clear: we still had to make our margin. So corners got cut. The job wasn’t done the way it should have been done. And I’m pretty sure we never saw that customer again. That experience stuck with me — not because of the mistake, but because of the rule. If the mistake is ours, the customer shouldn’t pay for it.
In our company today, if we mess something up, we fix it. Sometimes that means losing money on a job. But protecting a short-term margin at the expense of trust is a bad trade. When companies treat every job as a transaction, customers come… and they go. When you stand behind your word, even when it costs you, something different happens.
Customers come. And they stay.