Clients First: The Two Word Miracle

The Evil People

Is it easy to do the right thing? Not always. The long-suffering would argue that it is never easy—always hard. I think Clients First makes it easier, because by putting the Client First you are already on the doing-the-right-thing path. JoAnn and I have had some awful clients. To ease the tension, we called them “the evil people,” for they were deeply hurtful. Out of more than 5,000 clients, we could probably number them on the fingers of two hands, but they were memorable. Was there a way to avoid these evil people? I think not. They came from nowhere in the middle of otherwise normal transactions. We could not have weeded them out with a questionnaire nor seen it in their eyes nor predicted their behavior based on the way they dressed. Had we tried, we would have lost many wonderful clients in the effort.

We did the best we could with these undesirable clients and moved on. In retrospect, there were lessons to be learned from these experiences. I might have preferred to learn these insights from a book or a lecture or heard about them from another agent, but they were nonetheless valuable teachings.