The Newsletter, Issue #102
November 4th, 2026

Your Reputation is built after the Yes!

Hi Reader,

During my consulting years in the Middle East, I worked with different type of industries. In the retail and luxury brands, one of my clients was a jewelry house you would recognise from the colour of its box alone 😉.

One of the things that stayed with me from working in that world is how much attention goes into the moment after someone buys.

Think about what happens when you buy a really special piece of jewelry.

Nobody just swipes your card and hands you a bag. Someone walks you through what you're taking home. How to care for it. What the house will do for you later, like cleaning, resizing or repairs.

The packaging is opened and closed with a kind of ceremony. And very often, you hear from them again, long after you've walked out the door.

When I first saw this up close, I thought it was about luxury and good manners. Then I understood it was strategy.

At that price, the moment right after paying is exactly when the doubt creeps in.

Was that too much? Did I really need it? And the person who just bought is the one who's going to be asked, "Where did you get that?" at the next dinner. How she feels walking out of that store decides what she says next.

Now compare that to how most of us run our own businesses.

We put almost all of our communication effort into getting the yes. The posts, the emails, the discovery calls, the proposal. And then, the moment the invoice is paid, we go quiet and get to work.

This week's episode of Let's Make Waves walks through how your offer maps out every moment where communication needs to show up, before, during and after the work (details at the end of this email). Here, I want to spend time on the middle part. The one almost nobody talks about.

The doubt doesn't leave when she pays

When someone invests in a high-ticket offer, a coaching program, a consulting package, a done-for-you service, they're usually feeling two things at once. Excitement, because they finally did it. And a quiet worry, because that was a lot of money, and they are trusting you with something that matters to them.

If that worry gets no answer, it grows.

They start reading every delay as a sign. A slow reply. A session that felt a bit flat. A week where nothing seems to change.

And the uncomfortable part is that most of the time, the work is going exactly as it should. The problem isn't the delivery. It's the silence around it.

What research on waiting lines can teach us

There's a classic piece of service research I came across that perfectly explains this. In the 1980s, David Maister, who later became one of the most respected advisers to professional service firms, wrote a paper called The Psychology of Waiting Lines.

He was studying why some waits drive people crazy and others don't. Two of his principles have stayed with me:

"Uncertain waits are longer than known, finite waits."

"Unexplained waits are longer than explained waits."

He was talking about queues at banks and airports. But read those two lines again and think about your client in month two of working with you.

She's waiting for results. If she doesn't know when they're likely to show up, or why things feel slow right now, every week feels longer than it is. And her patience runs out faster than it should.

The fix isn't to work harder, but to tell her, in advance, what the journey is going to feel like.

Three moments to communicate on purpose

You don't need a complicated client experience to do this well. You need to plan what you say at three moments that most founders leave to chance.

1. The first 48 hours after they say yes. This is their doubt window. A clear welcome that tells them exactly what happens next, what you need from them, and when they'll hear from you again does more for their confidence than any testimonial on your website. They should finish reading it thinking, "Okay. She has a plan. I'm in good hands."

2. Before the hard part, not during it. Every transformation has a dip. The point where things feel messy, slow or uncomfortable, before they get better. You know when that usually happens in your work. So tell them before it arrives. "Around week six, you might feel like nothing is moving. That's normal, and here's why." When the dip comes, they won't panic. They'll think, "She told me this would happen." And they'll trust you more, not less.

3. When they can't see their own progress. When you're inside a change, you often can't see it. You only notice what's still missing. So mark the milestones for them. Remind them where they started, what they've done, and what's shifted. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can send a client is a simple message that says, "Look how far you've come."

This is where your reputation actually gets built

Here's why I care so much about this part. Your content tells people what you're like. Your delivery shows them.

And what your client experiences while working with you is exactly what she'll describe when someone asks about you. She won't describe your feed, or your bio, or anything on social media. She'll talk about how it felt to be your client.

This is the Testimony pillar of my TRUST Method™, and most people think it starts when they ask for a testimonial. It doesn't. It starts the day she pays, because the testimonial you eventually get is just her describing the experience you designed (or didn't).

The jewelry house understood this. The sale was never the finish line. It was the beginning of the story the client would tell about them.

A small exercise for this week

Pick the offer you care about most, and write three short messages. They don't have to be perfect. Start with first drafts.

The welcome: what happens in the first week, what you need from her, and when she'll hear from you next.
The heads-up: when the hard part usually comes in your work, what it might feel like, and why it's part of the process.
The milestone: a message reminding her where she started and what has already changed.

If you already send something like these, read them again with her worry in mind. Do they answer it? Or do they just tell her the logistics?

And hit reply Reader, and tell me: what's the question your clients always ask you halfway through? I have a feeling the answer is the heads-up message you haven't written yet.

Have a great week. Keep making waves. You've got this.

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NEW EPISODE ON LET'S MAKE WAVES PODCAST

This week's episode, Your Offer Is Your Communication Map - Why Content Alone Can't Sell a High-Ticket Offer, is for the founder with an offer she believes in that isn't selling the way it should.

I go through