Ryan DeissCo-Founder & CEO, The Scalable Company

I watched a 20-year reputation get built in one phone call

28 Jun 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:47

In this short talk, the speaker recounts an anecdote about a cash‑strapped founder who receives a call from his largest client informing him that the client cannot pay an invoice. Instead of demanding payment or pushing back, the founder responds generously, telling the client to pay when they can and offering to help find a solution. That act of goodwill, made when the founder had little cash and no one was watching, becomes the single biggest source of referrals for the next ten years, effectively building the founder’s 20‑year reputation. The speaker uses the story to illustrate that reputations are forged by doing hard, values‑driven actions in private, not by easy gestures when business is booming or when everyone is watching.

Chapters

I watched a founder's 20-year reputation get built in one phone call. So at the time, this founder was really tight on cash, and he gets this call from his biggest client, and the client lets him know that, hey, we can't afford to pay our invoice. Now, despite having every reason to push back hard, instead he says, look, pay me when you can. Let's figure out how to get you through this. It sounds like a little thing, but that client wound up being his single biggest source of referrals for the next decade. It was basically the thing that built his business. And the lesson here is that anybody can be generous when business is booming. Anyone can be values-driven when there's plenty of cash on hand. But your reputation isn't built when you do the easy thing while everyone is watching. Your reputation is built when you do the hard thing when no one is watching.