Morgan Friedman: Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of Client Horror Stories. Very excited to have with me today the one and only Tim Brownson. How are you doing today, Tim?
Tim Brownson: I’m doing good, thanks Morgan. How are you?
Morgan Friedman: I am excited to have you here today. I enjoyed our preparatory call a few weeks ago, and the moment is finally here.
Tim Brownson: Yes, and I am stoked to be here. I always like to talk about my big failures in life.
Morgan Friedman: So speaking about that, I have my drink in hand. I am all ears to hear about your worst client horror story experience.
Tim Brownson: Okay. So it was about 2006, because it was not long after I became a coach and then moved to the US. We moved to the US in February 2006. And I had got no clients — or maybe I got one, I think I got one from a referral, from the only person I knew in the Orlando area. And then this guy contacted me, and he told me a little bit about his personal life that he wanted some help with, just away from his business — a successful business person — and he wanted to know if I would go to him, basically. I mean, I’d set up my website saying you must come to me, but I thought, well, okay, I need the clients, basically, I need to start bringing some money in, otherwise I’m going to end up going back into sales. And then when he gave me his address, it was like, “Yes, I’m definitely going there,” because he lived in a place called Windermere, which is just west of Orlando — a very elite, prestigious zip code. A lot of the US Ryder Cup golfers play out there, or the pro circuit golfers. And he had a beachfront house. I thought, this is fantastic. So I went to see him, and we did the first session. I was there maybe two hours, which is twice as long as I intended, but he talked and talked, and he gave me a tour of his house. And I said, well, you know, can we sort payment now? And he said, ah, you know, I can’t actually — can we do payment next time, is that okay? And I’m like, okay, all right, we can maybe do that then. So I went away, and I felt a little bit uncomfortable with that. So I went away, and I went back the next time, a week or so later. And in my second session, I always do core values — I always like to really get under the skin of what makes somebody tick — and we did that session, and then we got to the end of it, and he carried on talking. He carried on talking, and I said, listen, I’m going to have to go, can we sort out payment? He said, oh yeah, yeah, of course, hang on a minute. And he disappeared, and he was gone a while. And then he shouted — he sort of poked his head around, I was actually in the main room — and he said, Tim, come in. And I thought he was going to take me to give me a check. This was back in the day when people cut checks — you remember those? Yeah, exactly.
Morgan Friedman: The younger people watching us will be like, what is that?
Tim Brownson: I know, I know, exactly. Yeah, checks — they were the thing, how you paid people. And so I went into what was his office, and he got his laptop open. He said, come and look at this, and he took me around his side of the desk, and he got an Excel spreadsheet open. I am not a spreadsheet person, I am not an accounts person. He’s got all these numbers on it, and I said, yeah, I didn’t really know what he was showing me. He said, look at this, and he went through all these numbers. Basically, cut a long story short, he was showing me how he was taking $18,000 out of his business — I won’t mention the business, although 20 years on, I’m sure it’s out of business by now — but how he’s taking $18,000. I honestly can’t remember now if it was a week or a month, but it doesn’t really matter, it’s still pretty bad — out of his business, to pay for his house and his lifestyle, but he wasn’t paying any of his employees. And he thought it was really clever that he was moving this money, doing these things, and telling his employees that he couldn’t pay them. So they were working for effectively nothing. And I don’t know how long that had been running for.
Morgan Friedman: Wow, okay. So I have a few interesting stories so far — I have a few comments and questions. First, I just kind of want to understand what he’s thinking, because if you don’t pay your employees for more than a few days or weeks or something, they’re going to disappear. So was he planning on just shutting down the business, and this is his way of shutting it down?
Tim Brownson: Yeah, I think he was just trying to get as much money out of the business before he wrapped it up. And you can play people along for a little while. I remember — going back, I said 2006, it would have been late 2006, so maybe it was before… I was going to say maybe it was the financial crisis, which was towards the end of 2007, wasn’t it? I can’t remember the ins and outs, but at that point I was just — and the irony, we’d just done a session on values, and what is really important, what drives us, what motivates us — I can’t remember what his values were now, but I’m sure they weren’t stealing. Nobody really values that. So I just said, look, we’re done here. And I just went back into the room, picked up my suitcase — didn’t even have a laptop, this is how long ago it was, pen and paper — and left. And then when I got outside, I realized I hadn’t been paid, and there was no way he was going to pay me now. So that was it, and I never heard from him again.
Morgan Friedman: Okay, so this is interesting. There are a few aspects of this that might be useful to dive into. So first, what we were saying a minute ago, I think is worth elaborating on a bit — that he was planning on closing the business, and this was his sneaky way of trying to get an extra dime for himself and screw over the poor employees. And it’s interesting to me how many people don’t value their reputation. You do things like this, and everyone in your town, your community, your industry, is going to know he’s a bad actor. So you would have thought that someone would have cared more about their reputation than getting a few extra cents, but apparently not.
Tim Brownson: Yeah, apparently not. And in a small sort of community like Windermere was, that’s the kind of thing that would get round very quickly. I don’t know — I’ve met people like that, who seem to have had an integrity bypass operation or something, and I’m not sure how they ever manage to start businesses again, or even bring in income again, but some of them do get away with it. But the thing is — and I missed this out a bit — after the first session I had with him, I just felt something was off, and I said to my wife when I got home… First of all, I’d let him set the rules by going to him — I think that’s only one of two times I’ve ever done that, and the other time was for completely different reasons, paying somebody. So I let him set the rules, and then the first session went way over, and I said to my wife, there’s something I just don’t gel with, with this guy. And I should have basically walked away at that point, because anybody who’s in business knows — for the most part, it’s not always the case, but usually your gut is right about people. If you have a sense that, you know what, I’m not sure I’m going to work well with this person — it’s not very often, in 20 years now of coaching, 20 years before that in sales — I could probably count on one hand the times I’ve had a bad feeling about somebody and it’s turned out to be nothing, and they were a really good person and we got on. It very rarely happens.
Morgan Friedman: That makes sense. Another aspect of the story that I find interesting is how open and flagrant he was — like telling you, he was wearing it like a badge of pride. Because I would have thought that someone who would try to screw over people would be ashamed and would try to keep it on the down low, but he was the opposite.
Tim Brownson: Yeah, I think he thought it was just clever — I think he thought, look how clever I am, getting away with this. And like I said, it’s the best part of 20 years now, I can’t remember the intricacies of it, but he clearly thought he was pulling the wool over people’s eyes. And I would in some way admire him for doing this — like he was burning it down or something — well done for you for getting all that money, but not really, you know, it’s just not a good thing.
Morgan Friedman: So an interesting consequence of this, to me, is — we were saying a few minutes ago that people do things like this and they’ll get a bad reputation, but the fact that he was so open about it, showing it off to me, I interpret that as: in his mind, he didn’t even think he was doing a bad thing. He’s like, in your words, oh, I just came up with a clever way to save a few thousand dollars.
Tim Brownson: Right, exactly. So I think to people like that, it’s also a power thing — I can do this, so therefore I’m going to do it.
Morgan Friedman: Ooh, that is a good point. I can, so why not? I think another factor is this: in my experience, there are a lot of people who don’t treat other people like humans — like you’re just a row on a spreadsheet, you’re just an expense. So it could be that, in his mind, not treating them as humans, just viewing them as rows in a spreadsheet.
Tim Brownson: Okay, cool. And there’s no more negativity to that than editing any other Excel spreadsheet.
Morgan Friedman: Right, exactly. I used to sell into finance directors in the UK, CFOs in the US, and there, when they were looking at things like redundancies, people were literally a number. It was a payroll number — if we take these two numbers out, we can save this amount on the bottom line. So I’m sure there are elements of that — well, I can do this, so why not.
Morgan Friedman: By the way, just thinking more about it — that he was likely not even viewing them as humans. My cynical side thinks that there are far too many people who reach the upper echelons of business who kind of have this sort of sociopathic or psychopathic instinct — like, in order to pass a certain level of wealth, it’s not quite a requirement, but it’s something close to a requirement that you need to view people like that. So maybe what was happening was he thought you were like in the club of these sociopaths, these psychopaths that don’t care about anyone — everything and everyone is just a number. So he was talking to you like a confidant, an equal. It turns out you’re just another nice guy.
Tim Brownson: Yeah, maybe he was sort of vetting me for the sociopath club, and I failed — I didn’t make it in. But you make a good point, because I think with some people, when you see people with insane amounts of wealth, billions, we could be doing this — I’d be sat on a beach in Bali counting my money and laughing a lot. I have no idea. I’ll never know.
Morgan Friedman: By the way, I had never heard the phrase sliding doors moment, but I remember the movie on that subject from 20 years ago, so I got the reference.
So what’s interesting about that is, in every episode of Client Horror Stories, I try to get at least one new lesson in. And it’s come up in the past, the lesson that everything is a test. And I like telling people about, like, the people you might work with — taking them to a restaurant, because how people treat the staff in a restaurant is often a test of whether they’re a good person. So I often think about and talk about it in the sense of: you want to test people, you want to work with potential clients, potential bosses, for the clues that they’re a good person. But here, it’s working exactly in reverse, where you’re being tested to see if you’re enough of a psychopath asshole.
Tim Brownson: Yeah, and I failed. Yeah, I think, for me, the big learning moment for this is not listening to my gut instinct—- or at least not examining it. It’s fine, sometimes our gut instinct can be wrong. It absolutely can be wrong — people have died because they’ve listened to their gut instincts.
Morgan Friedman: Okay,
Tim Brownson: But there are times when if you just take a step back and go, okay, what’s going on here, why am I uncomfortable about this — then you can start to put things together. Maybe it’s a false alarm. But it didn’t take me long in coaching to start listening to my gut on consult calls with people — a year or two, maybe — because early on I’d be thinking, especially with shorter clients, ah, you know what, I could probably do this. Yeah, I could — I think you talked yourself into reasons why you could do it. When your first instinct was, no, actually, I haven’t got the patience to work with somebody like this, or I’m not organized enough to work with a person that’s this scattered — do you know what I mean? So the gut instinct, for me, in business, is something we need to pay more attention to, because it’s easy to overrule it. Very easy.
Morgan Friedman: Yeah. And until this conversation, did you notice any other clues — did anything else smell off about him? Tell us about that.
Tim Brownson: I’m going to be honest and say I can’t remember. I can just remember saying to my wife something doesn’t feel quite right. And the fact that this guy was living on such an exclusive development — now, I don’t think I even thought about this at the time, or maybe I did and I’ve forgotten — but why did he pick me? I wonder how many people he must have known. And the thing is, in the coaching industry, the higher you go in the financial pecking order, the more it’s done by word of mouth. So if you want to coach millionaires, a billionaire, they’re not on Google looking for a life coach, right? So it’s not like — there was no way anybody could have recommended me, because the friend who did know me wouldn’t have known him. So it’s kind of like, now I’m thinking back, I should have thought, well, how did he find me? So yeah, there were a lot of things — I’m sure if I had stopped, not being — again, money can cloud it — like, oh, it’s a client, and maybe he knows people in the Windermere area, and this could get me in with Tiger, because Tiger Woods lived in the same area at the time — and next thing I know, I’ll just be coaching billionaire sports people. And then suddenly I’m back on that beach in Bali, counting my money and laughing a lot.
Morgan Friedman: There you go. That is funny. Tim, we’ve gotten a couple of nice lessons here. I like the story. And I usually test people for being nice and see if I’m being tested for being nice, but now I’m going to start paying attention. Maybe you’re actually testing to see how much of a asshole I am. Everyone is looking for something different — some people are looking for nice people, some people are looking for not-nice people. So this has been wonderful, getting to know you, and thank you for coming on to Client Horror Stories.
Tim Brownson: It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Morgan Friedman: And everyone who’s watched it, thank you for watching it all the way until the end. We hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we did. Until next time.
