Another Win – Still No Reason to Celebrate

Lessons From the Courtroom

A few months ago, I wrote a blog called Why We’re Taking a Client to Court.

I didn’t write it to embarrass anyone (as no names were mentioned).

I didn’t write it to position us as tough or intimidating.

I wrote it because I believe in transparency, and because every business owner I’ve previously worked with, am currently working with, or those considering working with us deserves to know the level to which ethics run through everything we do.

One that holds its standards, even when it’s inconvenient.

This week, that case concluded. The court found in our favour.

And I’ll be honest with you, there’s no part of me that wants to shout about that.

I Wish the Record Didn’t Exist

We now have an unbroken 100% success rate in small claims court. Nine cases across more than a decade. Nine wins.

I wish it were zero.

Not because of what the wins represent — clarity, fairness, documented delivery, but because every one of those cases represents a relationship that broke down. A conversation that should have happened and didn’t. A commitment made and not honoured.

That’s not a success metric I ever wanted to track.

But since the record exists, it exists for a reason. And I think it’s worth explaining what I actually took from this one.

What the Courtroom Teaches You That the Boardroom Doesn’t

When you stand before a judge as a litigant in person — no barrister, just you, your evidence, and your preparation — it strips everything back.

There’s no spin. No charm. No brand positioning. There’s only what you agreed, what you delivered, and whether the facts support both.

What I’ve learned, case by case over the years, is that our 100% record isn’t really about being good at going to court. It’s about how we run the business before it ever gets near a courtroom.

Every session confirmed. Every piece of work is evidenced. Every commitment — ours and theirs — documented from day one.

We don’t prepare our contracts like we expect to use them in court. We prepare them because transparency and accountability are what ethical coaching actually looks like in practice, not just in a values statement.

The court simply confirms what was already true.

This One Was for You

To every client who has ever invested in the #ADDAZERO methodology. Who showed up, did the work, honoured their commitment, and trusted us with their business — this result matters because of you.

Not because of the money, though fair exchange of value is fundamental.

Not because of the principle in the abstract, though I’ll always defend it.

But because when someone receives the full value of a coaching engagement — the frameworks, the accountability, the access, the results — and then walks away without honouring their side, they’re not just shortchanging me. They’re devaluing the investment of every single person who did pay. Every client who stretched to make it work. Every business owner who committed when it felt uncomfortable.

You deserved someone who wasn’t going to let that slide.

So we didn’t.

One Thing I’d Change

If I’m being completely candid, there’s one thing I’d do differently.

Not the pursuit. Not the documentation. Not the outcome.

The conversation earlier.

Every one of these cases, when I look back, had a point where a more direct, more uncomfortable conversation — had it happened sooner — might have resolved things without a courtroom. That’s not always true, and I won’t pretend the outcome would always be different. But it’s a reminder I carry.

Holding the line on standards doesn’t have to mean waiting for the line to be crossed. It can mean naming the tension earlier, with more honesty, before it becomes something that needs resolving in front of a judge.

That’s the real lesson.

I’ve Been on the Other Side of This Too

I want to be clear about something: I am not someone who has only ever been wronged.

Last year, I also wrote separately about four joint ventures that didn’t survive their first year. Ego, including my own blind spots. Misaligned values I spotted too late. Relationships that looked right on the surface and weren’t underneath. Uncomfortable conversations I delayed, just like the ones I’m describing here.

Those experiences didn’t just happen to me. In some cases, they happened because of me. Or at least, because of decisions I made or didn’t make quickly enough.

I raise this not to invite sympathy, but because I think it matters. The reason I believe so strongly in clear agreements, honest conversations, and early intervention isn’t theoretical. It’s because I’ve seen what happens — and felt what it costs — when those things are absent from both sides of a table.

The standard I hold clients to is the same standard I hold myself to. That’s what ethical business actually means.

What Doesn’t Change

Our terms. Our transparency. Our delivery. Our documentation.

And our willingness to defend all of it. Not to win, but because the 850+ clients who trusted us with their businesses, their livelihoods, and their freedom deserve nothing less.

In arduis fidelis.

7 April 2026 (4 days after I originally wrote this post)

The Aftermath After You Win

I didn’t plan to write this part.

The original post ended where I thought the story ended — with a judgment, a lesson, and a reminder of why we do things the way we do them. In arduis fidelis. Faithful through adversity. Case closed.

Except it wasn’t.

What Nobody Tells You About Winning

Within hours of the court entering judgment in our favour, the contact started.

Not an acknowledgement. Not a plan to pay. Not even silence — which, frankly, I’d have welcomed.

What followed was a sustained campaign of harassment across two platforms, beginning on the evening of the judgment itself and continuing through the Easter weekend. Offensive messages. Threats. The deliberate weaponisation of personal information shared in confidence during a professional relationship. An explicit instruction from me to stop — sent simultaneously on both platforms, read on both platforms — followed by an escalation of the unsolicited contacts in direct defiance of it.

I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I don’t need it, and quite frankly, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

I’m sharing it because nobody talks about this part.

The business books cover how to pursue a debt. The legal guides tell you how to enforce a judgment. But nobody writes about what it actually costs to be right — in time, in energy, in the quiet erosion of an Easter weekend that should have been spent doing anything else.

The Real Price of the Judgment

The court awarded us the outstanding debt, plus interest, plus costs.

What it didn’t account for was the hours spent building the evidence bundle. The months of preparation. The cost — financial and personal — of doing all of that while running a business, managing a team, and keeping clients moving forward.

And then the aftermath. The screenshots. The evidence logs. The formal notices. The careful, measured responses when every instinct says something far less measured.

None of that appears in the award.

I raise this not to suggest the pursuit wasn’t worth it — it was, and I’d do it again, not for the money, but on behalf of over 850 other clients, and over 8,500 invoices sent out, that have been paid on time — because I think business owners deserve an honest picture. Especially the accidentally successful ones, who are often so busy keeping their businesses moving that they absorb these costs in silence and call it the price of doing business.

It isn’t. And you shouldn’t have to.

What It Confirmed

Here’s the thing about adversity. It doesn’t reveal character — it confirms it.

When someone loses with grace, you learn something about them. When someone loses without it, you learn something too. The response to a judgment is, in many ways, more revealing than anything that happened before it.

I already knew what kind of business we are running. I already knew what our standards looked like and why they existed. The courtroom confirmed it. The aftermath confirmed it again, but differently.

What both the win, and the vile and unsolicited response from the Defendant has shown, it a mirror of exactly who and what ‘standards’ they operate within.

Because staying measured when you’re being provoked is harder than staying measured when everything is calm. Choosing the right response when the wrong one would feel entirely justified — that’s where values either hold or they don’t.

Ours held.

Why I’m Still Not Celebrating

I said in the original post that there was no part of me that wanted to shout about winning.

That’s still true. More so, if anything.

Because a win that costs this much — in time, in energy, in having your personal history used as a weapon by someone who once called themselves a colleague — isn’t something you raise a glass to. It’s something you process, document, act on appropriately, and then quietly move past.

The judgment was fair. The response to it was not. Those are both true, and I can hold both without letting either of them define what comes next.

What comes next is the same thing that always comes next.

The work. The clients. The mission. The standard.

In arduis fidelis.

Faithful through adversity. Not just when adversity looks like a difficult hearing. But when it looks like an Easter weekend, you didn’t get back.

Ready to work with a coach who holds the line — and holds themselves to the same standard?

Start with your Business Freedom Assessment: www.mytruenorth.club/bfa

Or if you’d like to experience the methodology in person, join us at the next #ADDAZERO Game Changer: www.mytruenorth.club/game-changer

Jay Allen is a Business Freedom Coach and the founder of My TrueNORTH Limited — the UK’s leading ethical coaching practice — and creator of the #ADDAZERO Methodology, a proven framework used by business owners across 34 countries to grow, scale, and exit successfully. A former British Army Combat Medic, Jay holds an MSc in International Business Ethics and is the author of the #ADDAZERO trilogy. He works with accidentally successful business owners who are ready to reclaim their freedom.

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