I Am Not Okay With This
A sleep supplement CEO taught me the five words that matter more than A/B testing or content engagement.
For four years, I’ve taken the same sleep gummy. At nearly $1,000 a year, it’s a real line item in my personal budget. Worth it, because it actually works.
When I opened a new bottle and noticed the texture and flavor had changed, I sent a note to customer service, mostly out of habit. I didn’t expect much.
The response was swift. They were working with a new manufacturer, they said, and immediately offered to send a complimentary bottle of a slightly different product to bridge the gap. That was enough. I was satisfied.
Then the CEO emailed me personally.
He explained they were reverting to the original formula because the new version didn’t meet his standards. He offered another free bottle once it was back in stock. He wrote: “As a consumer myself, I understand the frustration... I am not okay with this & will not let it happen to you.”
That’s the whole playbook. Not just a good CEO, but a company where the whole system is working.
I kept coming back to that phrase a few weeks later, when I had a frustrating experience with a reputation management service. A real business. Established, with millions in annual revenue. Not a scam. Not a startup. A company with enough scale to have a Head of Sales and a co-founder on the org chart. And yet. A no-show on the first call, a bait-and-switch on the second, and silence when I tried to flag, as a professional courtesy, where their funnel was leaking.
The contrast isn’t really about company size. It’s about whether leadership understands that every friction point is a signal.
I once spoke with a nonprofit news CEO in the South who took this seriously in a way most people would call inefficient. When a subscriber couldn’t access the website, his team didn’t just send a help link. On occasion, they went to people’s homes to help them set up a computer. That’s not scalable. It’s also not forgettable. Those subscribers don’t leave. They become the people who put the organization in their will.
In media, we talk endlessly about audience engagement. We A/B test subject lines and obsess over open rates. But we treat customer service as a cost center. We automate it, ignore it, and assume trust lives in the content. It doesn’t.
Trust is built or lost in the friction.
The supplement CEO won me over not because his product is perfect, but because he refused to be okay with my disappointment. The reputation management firm lost me, not because they made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. They lost me because they didn’t seem to notice I was there.
If you’re building something worth believing in, that’s the standard. Not perfection. Just: I am not okay with this & will not let it happen to you.
Have you ever had a “gummy CEO” moment—where a brand turned a failure into a win by simply refusing to be okay with your disappointment? Or conversely, where have you seen the “scaling gap” kill a relationship you were ready to invest in? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
If you know a leader who is currently navigating the “scaling gap” or trying to build a culture of intentionality, please share this with them. Trust is a strategic advantage we can all afford to build.