Last year sometime, I was on a call with a client, Jamie Wallace, who told me about a terrible review someone had left him on Google. He’d made some mistakes in a past business and now they were coming back to haunt him. I gave him some suggestions during an hour of online, google doc coaching with him on what he might write in response. I knew where I wanted to take it and, within an hour of my time, we’d gotten there. He ended up running with the ideas and turned his lemon into lemonade.

Recently, I followed up with a few questions.

How did it feel when you saw the review?

I had an instant pit in my stomach…anxiety rose up and a bit of disbelief, how could this rear it’s head a decade after the fact? I found it very hard to suppress the bad feelings, shame, guilt, feeling of failing.

When I gave you the idea of responding to it, how did that feel?

I realized that I had to take some action in the form of a reply but I was a bit hesitant at the time, I tend to avoid conflict and had no idea of how to pull this off.

How did it feel as we worked through the crafting of it?

Once we started working on the reply I started to see that this bad review was actually creating a platform for me/my company to tell our story, a feeling of relief was present and I could see this whole series of events being beneficial.

How did it feel to read the final version and see what we came up with?

I was quite amazed at how you crafted this reply gradually with some small touches along the way. It was really in my words but with some light touches on your end, a much better approach than having someone just write the reply in my name. The final product was brilliant and also yielded a small bonus document that I now offer visitors to our website as a free gift, Eight Questions To Ask Your Next Landscaping Company To Protect Yourself From An Unpleasant Experience (And Make Sure You Don’t Need To Leave a Bad Google Review Of Your Own) + The Only Answers You Should Accept

We ended up with something much different than your initial draft – did you see it coming?

No, I had no idea that the process would unfold as it did.

How did it feel to publish this?

Total relief. When our previous company went bankrupt 10+ years ago I felt a lot of shame. I continued to work the landscape industry and this history seemed to pop up on occasion and cause me some pain. I dealt with it my putting it away, pushing this aside in my mind (head in the sand). To have this part of my working life documented and posted for all to see is very liberating and to this day that blog post is very well read.

What’s the response been?

The biggest concern for me was checking in on how I felt. This whole process resonated. The response was mixed from people I know, two clients who are lawyers thought this was not a good direction to take. As I gave it some more thought I realized that their work is quite secretive and to be so open and transparent is probably totally counter to their approach. I had other clients who thought this was great and really liked the vulnerable part of the post. The most important part of this process for me is the transparency it has created.

To read what Jamie and I came up with click here.