Nobody gives you a second chance because you are sorry. They give you one because you are still worth backing.
“Hi Wim, I am Jeremy Burkhardt. I started SpeakerCraft to be the market leader in architectural speakers. I sold it, and I am doing it again with Origin Acoustics. I do not know you, but I have heard a lot about you. We have to work together. I will have someone contact you to make it happen. Bye.”
I did not get a word in.
He was in Switzerland. I was in Spain. He was using the phone of a man I do not trust. He had asked that man for my number, then said, call him and put him on.
No email. No introduction. No polite route.
I picked up anyway. I always pick up.
A few days later his European rep wrote to arrange a call. Her first line was that Jeremy had told her we had spoken, and that I wanted to work with Origin Acoustics.
I had not said that. I had not said anything.
I said no on that call. Softly. The way you say no when you would rather leave the subject open.
They did not take it as final.
So a few weeks later, at the show, on the afternoon before the doors opened, I said it again. To their faces. Properly.
My reason was the true one, which is not always the case.
We were deep with a large audio group and doing well. We had spent years earning a shot at more territory. It had finally come. Italy had just been promised to us.
An unknown American speaker brand would have complicated the only conversation I cared about.
So I protected what we already had. That afternoon it felt careful. Grown up.
The doors opened the next morning.
Safety by familiarity is not safety
Here is what took me years to see.
We did have something. That is the part worth your time, because a story about a naive man is no use to anybody.
We had paper for Spain and Portugal. Signed. Performing.
On Italy we had a promise. Given to my face by a man who had never once treated us badly. Then put in an email.
I let the paper vouch for the promise.
That is the whole mistake. The real deal made the empty one feel real.
I see it in a second now, in other people. We think we are weighing risk. Most of the time we are weighing familiarity.
The name is known. The man has been decent. The last contract was clean. So this must be fine.
Safety by familiarity is not safety.
The wind had already shifted. I was still trimmed for the old one, because somebody I trusted told me the wind was fine.
Ten seconds to decide what to do with my face
Then I walked past their stand.
Our Italian customers were standing there. Being received. Not by us. By our direct competitor, who had been given Italy while we were being told Italy was ours.
He was enjoying it. That stung. It came with the package.
Ten seconds to decide what to do with my face.
We walked over. Not just me. Every one of our salespeople.
We said hello to our customers, and then we stayed. As long as we could. On a stand that was not ours. In a room full of people who understood exactly what had happened.
You could feel it move around that stand. Why is Genesis here. Why are those clients still standing with them.
Walking away would have been honest. It would also have been an announcement. Beaten, and leaving.
We stayed. What we said that morning went a long way past Italy.
Now the true thing about me, not the modest one.
They poked the bear.
I meet grace with grace. I meet competition with competition. Not in a burst. Every day. Every week. Every deal. Every opportunity.
I would not want to compete with me.
That morning I decided Italy would be ours, and that we would go at that competitor in his own market. Italy is one of our strongest markets today.
The clever route
Now the part I am least proud of. Most of you will recognise it.
I did not call Jeremy. Not for weeks.
First I tried to be clever. I went back at the group and pushed for a split on Italy. Some arrangement that left me a piece of the promise without having to say the whole thing was gone.
Two or three weeks of that. It made no sense and it had no effect. I was negotiating with people who had already decided. Everyone in the room knew it except me.
That is what we do instead of going back. We hunt for the version of the ending that lets us avoid admitting we were wrong.
When the clever route was properly dead, I wrote the email.
It was short. Could we have a call.
Then I made the case. Not on my knees. He would have had no use for that, and neither did I.
We made a mistake. We were set up. We want the chance we turned down.
He said yes, and not cleanly. Other territories had distributors by then. We would have to live beside them and out-work them. And we would have to reach a level he named, inside three years.
We took it. We hit it.
A year later he flew over and drove four countries with us to launch the brand. A laptop, too much coffee, a different room of installers every night.
The line I keep is not even mine. It is what we worked out on that trip.
Together we redefined the pitch, and put the goal posts where everyone could win.
You do not get that from a handshake at a trade show.
That is not grace. That is a bet.
For years I told this story as though he had been generous. I want to correct that. The generous version is no use to you.
Knowing the man now, I do not think it was generosity.
Look at that first call again. He had heard a lot about me before he ever picked up a phone. He had been asking.
So when I came back beaten, he was not being kind to a man who felt sorry. He was looking at someone with more drive than sense, freshly humiliated, who would work like hell to prove it had been a mistake.
He could smell it.
That is not grace. That is a bet.
And a bet is worth more to you than grace, because grace cannot be earned and a bet can.
Nobody gives you a second chance because you are sorry. They give you one because you are still worth backing.
The apology gets you the meeting. What you built while nobody was watching gets you the answer.
If I had gone back softer, sadder, sorrier, he would have been polite. I would never have heard from him again.
The door I told myself was closed
I had treated no as a door that opens one way.
You turn a man down, he moves on, it is gone. That is how it feels. That is how I assumed it worked.
I had said no to him twice. The door was open both times.
The doors we call one way are usually the doors we are too embarrassed to walk back through.
You could say I was lucky. He happened to still be interested. He happened to be a man who bets on people.
I will not argue. Luck was in the room.
But luck comes to almost everybody, and most of it is left lying where it lands. Picking it up means saying out loud that you were wrong the first time.
Two things happened that week. For years I only told you about one.
We walked over to a stand where we were not welcome, and stood with our customers.
And weeks later I walked back through a door I had told myself was closed.
Same move, twice. A refusal to accept somebody else’s version of where the story ends.
w. 🌊
Make My Mess My Message is a book written in public, one Friday at a time. This issue first appeared on LinkedIn. Every issue lives here.
Leave a Reply