This is a story all small business owners need to take to heart.

I live in a quaint, cozy townhome. I love my home! It’s my fortress from the world. But I’m a very business professional, and I don’t always make time to clean it like I should.

I live in a gated community. Members of my gated community post messages from time to time on an electronic message board. One woman (whom I’ve never actually met) posted that she has launched a house cleaning business and was looking for new clients. I made contact with her, told her I would like to hire her to clean my floor twice a month, and we agreed on a negotiated price.

We scheduled the first cleaning for July 3rd, the day before I was to host a small brunch party for some friends. However, the cleaning lady texted me the day she was to arrive and said she simply would not have the bandwidth to honor our appointment because she was also tasked with doing two different “deep cleans” on two homes that were filthy. I was disappointed, but we rescheduled for a week later, the very day I was to host a dinner party. She was to do the job in the early afternoon on that very day. (I cleaned the floor myself on July 3rd).

On the day she was supposed to arrive for the rescheduled visit, she texted me mid-day, about an hour before she was due to arrive, and said that she could not honor the timeframe we had set, but that she would show up at 4:00 PM to do the job.

I informed her that my dinner party guests would already have arrived by then. I told her this was unacceptable. She told me she had no choice, it was either arrive and clean my floor during the party or not at all. I informed her that it appeared to me that she was not managing her business, but that her business was managing her. I further informed her that since she has not been able or willing to keep her word twice in a row, I was seeing a pattern, and that I was unwilling to work that way.

She did not reply.

And again, I cleaned the floor myself, which set me behind schedule in other ways.

What do we learn from this?

This small business owner is not likely to succeed in business. She makes promises she cannot keep. Unless she curtails that tendency right away, she is going to alienate a large percentage of her customer base. The notion of scheduling intelligently is not a skill she has developed. She very likely will disappoint many of her customer’s by not showing up to jobs when agreed upon. She will lose customers just as she lost me. She will become discouraged and perhaps despondent and will throw in the towel, shutter her small business, and go work at Walmart.

Attention Business Owners: when you make an agreement with a client, that agreement is sacrosanct. Careful attention much go into things as basic as the planning and scheduling process so that you do not cut it too close and fail to show up when you say you will. Most clients will forgive one infraction. But if that infraction is the very first experience you have with a client, you have to move heaven and earth to ensure you do not repeat that same mistake. If your second agreement with a client is also violated, thus striking out your first two times up at bat, most clients will not overlook that. They will perceive that you are not a serious businessperson. They will rightfully sense that doing business with you is going to be a headache, a disappointment, and they will terminate the relationship.

Make promises you can keep. And keep them.

That’s all that needs to be said.