FBC – 201 – I Messed up… Now I have To Live With The Consequences

I Messed up… Now I have To Live With The Consequences.

Today, I am going to tell you about my most recent mistake and why you really shouldn't imitate this kind of behavior. I'm the first one to admit when I mess up, and in this case, I did.

All the details are inside.

It's kind of a rant that I'm going to do today.

So you have different business models. You want to start a business. But before that, you need to figure out if the business you want to start is an opportunity business or if it's a longevity business.

Basically an opportunity business is something that you're not passionate about but there is an opportunity there. You know, it's profitable, it's trendy and stuff. Everybody's getting a piece of the cake. You want yours. You don't necessarily care too much and you're just there to make your profit.

And then you have the longevity business, which is something you're really passionate about and you want to do for forever. Or for at least like the next five, 10 years or whatever.

So that's the subject of the podcast today, because one for one of my opportunity businesses, which is in some niche where I mean, to be honest, I don't know anything about it. I really don't. But it's still working really well for me. So, you know what? It's still going strong. But I'm not the one taking care of it because I'm the least qualified person to talk about it, because I don't know anything about the market.

Right. So basically for this business, what I have to do is hire a writer, for example, to write some content for me. So I've been hiring this new writer, from a very good site, you can get stuff written there for a really cheap price. Please don’t get it written for your longevity business.

If it’s your passion, something you’re more than happy to talk about yourself. You want your ideas and your personality in the content. Right. So just do it for you. Opportunity businesses where dude like you couldn't care less, you need good content. But you're not really connected to it in anyway.

So I hired this writer and I asked the writer. I said, well, I need something written on this specific subject. And please, I want something very informal and conversational. You know, for the tone, because you can specify. So I got a bunch of people who actually sent me back some articles that they've written.

And I found this guy and he sent me a piece and I scanned through the content. And I thought, you’re pretty good, my friend. Here it is. I'm going to send you everything I have now because I had a bunch of things to get written. I got very lazy because I couldn't be bothered and didn’t want to read anymore.

So that's my fault. I'm asking someone to do something for my business. I should actually go and read that stuff. And I figured, you know what, this guy's pretty good. So I kept feeding him stuff. So when other writers were sending me something that I really didn't like. I said, well, you know what? Let's give it to this guy. So today I was going through the content.

And I started reading the content and I was like, oh, man, oh, gee. So this guy, remember I told you, I told him to use conversational and informal tone. And I mean, the sentences were like, ah. I shall not do something. And I'm like, dude, who talks like that. Nobody talks like that.

I Messed up… Now I have To Live With The Consequences

And all of these sentences had really fancy complicated words and I'm like, who talks like that? I asked you to create content that people want to read. It's not for the Business Insider or forums or something.

It's just a blog. Right. So I want something where people are happy to read that stuff. So the thing is that I just realized this after validating all the pieces of content that this guy sent me back, I think he sent me like six or seven. So I've been spending a few hours now going through the content and like correcting stuff, you know, to make it presentable for, like, you know, a regular person.

And it sucks, man, because I should have done my homework. You know, in the beginning, I should have done my homework. There are two lessons here?

One is, do your homework in the beginning, right? Because it's easier to get it right the first time than having to go and correct all that stuff. Because now I'll have to go through all these articles and read them and correct them. It takes forever. I'm actually trying to find someone who can do that for me because I really, really don't want to do that. But, you know, it's a good lesson for me.

Second thing is, you want to relate to the reader and you want to feel that you have something in common with them. So don't try to sound like a professor or something or some like Egyptian pharaoh.

So anyway I thought I was going to rant. But I mean, who can I complain about? I can't complain about anything. It's my fault. Nobody else's fault. The dude wrote some stuff. I can accept or reject the content. Right. So my responsibility is to at least read it. I didn't do it. So don’t make this mistake guys!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you recover from a serious business mistake without losing trust?

Lead with a same-day public statement, name what broke, name what is being fixed, and name when. Refund or extend service before being asked. Customers forgive operators who own mistakes faster than they forgive silence. Recovery usually completes inside 30 days when the response begins inside 24 hours.

What types of mistakes are hardest to come back from?

Promises you cannot deliver, hidden charges, and silent feature removals. Each of those breaks the perceived contract. Recovery requires explicit restitution: refunds, public correction, and a written commitment to a guardrail. Anything less keeps the story alive on social platforms and ranks against your brand in Google search.

How do you stop the same mistake from happening twice?

Run a one-page incident review: trigger, blast radius, fix, and one structural change to prevent recurrence. File the document where the whole team (or future you) can read it. Solopreneurs without this discipline repeat the same operational mistake roughly three to four times before they finally fix the root cause.

Should you tell customers everything when something goes wrong?

Tell them everything that affects them, in plain language, without minimizing the impact. Skip internal blame and vendor finger-pointing. A clear timeline plus a concrete remediation plan rebuilds trust faster than any apology paragraph. Most customers stay if the response feels honest, prompt, and specifically tailored to them.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches, from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms, while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

Related Reading

• FBC – 4 Part 1 – This is the story of my life: Success, Failure and The Hurdles.
• FBC – 3 – Escape your life of sacrifice! Don’t settle for less than your dream lifestyle.
• FBC – 8 – The Weirdest Challenge To Boost Your Confidence
• Other really cool tips that will give you an unfair advantage

Further reading

• Martin's story page: the full origin story on Martin's story page.
• LinkedIn Newsletter (Diary of a Virtual CEO): operational tactics covered weekly in the LinkedIn Newsletter (Diary of a Virtual CEO).
• HubSpot Blog: sales and marketing benchmarks on the HubSpot Blog.
• Harvard Business Review: research on solo and founder-led operations from Harvard Business Review.