I don't love the use of guarantees when it comes to a Thought Leaders practice. If I were a watchmaker, I could guarantee the watch you buy from me is waterproof. It's a stamp of quality for a product. If it turns out not to be so, I would fix it or replace it. The guarantee is a warranty on my tangible workmanship. Apple gives you the choice to buy Apple Care, their insurance product, or not. In that way, their guarantee is really an additional product they sell. Gotta love/hate Apple, right?
Because the impact and results of education are the joint responsibility of the student and the teacher, society, systems, or markets they operate in, all we can do is promise we'll do our best, and if each of us does something new, better, different or not, it's on us as students or consumers of the learning to absorb and apply what we can.
"It's on us as students or consumers of the learning to absorb and apply what we can."
Internet marketers love to guarantee things and suggest you do too. If anyone asks you 'what guarantees do you provide as a thought leader?', you can only ever guarantee that you will show up in good faith and serve to the best of your ability. If you have ever had any resistance to providing written guarantees, or 100% money-back offers, as a thought leader it comes from your understanding that people have complete agency and free will to act on your advice or not. Trust your instinct, you are not a watchmaker. Guarantees and money backs are for rugs and watches not wisdom and insights.
There is no doubt that systems can limit or support our opportunities (insert your favourite privilege here) and at the end of the day giving up your power to a system of limits is folly. Why would you?
Similarly, you can't be liable for what someone chooses to do with your shared teachings. Liability claims and disclaimers then become in part evidence of the abdication of personal responsibility. Your success or failure in any endeavour is on each of us doing our best in good faith, student and teacher. No doubt, we as teachers have a duty of care and a responsibility to those we teach and serve but ultimately if they do or do not gain or lose from the learning experience, it's on them. Anything else is owning, possessing, or claiming your student/client success, that smells of egotistical disempowerment. This cuts both ways of course I don't own your success or failure. You do.
Here at Thought Leaders, we can guarantee that what we teach has worked for hundreds of experts. In each case, they found a way to marry what we teach with what they want to do and as a result, they increase their commercial success. We don't work harder than our students, we don't promise miracle solutions or silver bullets. We do promise to turn up as the best version of ourselves ad help you to do the same.
That's our guarantee and perhaps it could be yours too?
If you want to learn more about Thought Leaders Business School, join us at our next discovery session.
If you've thought about attending one of our discovery sessions but haven't managed to make it yet, you can watch the replay of our last session here.Matt Church
Founder