Sunday evening, a new connection sent me a message. We'd just met. He was kind, he was direct, and he asked a question that made me laugh out loud and wince at the exact same time: "What does Complimentary CFO mean? Free? Or is it Complementary?"
Reader, it was supposed to say Complementary CFO.
For who knows how long, my tagline had quietly been offering free CFO services to the entire internet. Bold business model. Not the one I meant to run.
Here's what I didn't do: get defensive, explain it away, or feel some type of way about a near-stranger pointing out a mistake in the first week of knowing me.
Here's what I did do: I thanked him. I made a joke. I fixed it.
"You know, sometimes I feel like I work for free. ;-) Thanks for the edit!"
That's it. That's the whole response. And I want to talk about why that reaction, or more accurately, that response, matters. I think we've all been trained to treat criticism like an attack when it's usually just information.
React vs. Respond
A reaction is fast and it's about you. It's the flinch, the defensiveness, the mental essay you start drafting about why the other person is wrong, or rude, or missing context. Reactions protect the ego. That's their whole job.
A response is slower and it's about the situation. It asks: is this useful? Is it true? What do I do with it? Responses protect the relationship, and honestly, the business.
When someone points out a typo, a miscalculation, a gap in your thinking, your ego wants to explain, minimize, or deflect. But your business wants you to say thank you and go fix the thing. Every time I've chosen the second one, it's cost me nothing and paid me back tenfold.
Why Embarrassing Feedback Is a Gift, Not an Attack
Think about what actually happened here. A person I'd just met, who had zero obligation to say anything, took ten seconds out of his Sunday to tell me my tagline had a typo that materially changed its meaning. He could have scrolled past. He could have quietly judged and said nothing, which happens far more often than we'd like to believe.
Instead, he told me. That's not a dig. That's someone doing me a favor with excellent timing.
If a stranger is willing to point out something's off in the first five minutes of knowing you, that's a sign of goodwill, not judgment. The people who never say anything aren't being nicer. They're just letting you walk around with something stuck to your shoe.
What Appreciating Feedback Actually Looks Like
It's not complicated, and it doesn't require pretending you're not a little embarrassed. Appreciation looks like:
That last one matters more than people realize. Every time you respond to feedback with grace instead of defensiveness, you're training the people around you to keep being honest with you. Every time you react with prickliness, you're training them to stop.
The Business Case for a Thick Skin and a Light Touch
I work in finance and culture, two fields where being wrong out loud is basically part of the job description. Numbers get corrected. Assumptions get challenged. Cultural diagnostics surface things leadership didn't want to hear. If I couldn't take a typo correction from a new connection with good humor, I'd have no business asking executives to sit with much harder truths about their organizations.
The way you handle small, low-stakes feedback is a preview of how you'll handle the big stuff. Clients are watching, even when they're not saying so. A founder who can laugh at "Complimentary CFO" is a founder who can probably handle "your margins are a mess" without getting defensive about it either.
So, Was It Free?
For the record: no. Complementary CFO services are very much a paid offering. But if you caught the error before I fixed it and want to test that theory, I appreciate the enthusiasm, and I'll still send an invoice. ;-)
Thanks again to the new connection who caught it. This is exactly the kind of thing I'd want someone to tell me.
Culture CFO helps growing businesses align financial strategy with organizational culture.