The link below to a video might be a ‘feel-good story’ with a lesson to treat every person as you would like to be treated, but if you read viewers comments below the video, you will realize that many have actually experienced something like it.
So did I. Here is my story. I was just recruited in a high profile stockbrokers job with my own office and administrative assistant, by a large American financial firm just entering Canada. This firm’s mission was to open a retail brokerage office in the neighbourhood to get the business of the average Mr and Mrs Investor. Their rationale was simply this: there are diamonds in your backyard, you don’t have to go to Bay Street to find them and the average investor is not given much importance by the big names. There was no minimum investor asset required, but the average account turned out to be between $30,000 and $50,000 dollars. The firms policy was to require the broker, in this case me, to knock on residential doors and ask for the investment business. It was one of the most interesting parts of my business life. Contrary to what I expected - slamming of doors and a hostile response, what I actually got was a friendly conversation, technical inquiries and a promise to visit my office. Mostly they followed up with that promised visit and as for the door slam - I never got it even though I was prepared for it. One thing I learned early doing this. Often that gleaming Mercedes or BMW or Jaguar sitting in that two car garage meant little. It was from some rusty, beat-up Ford or old model parked car house that I got my best and most lucrative accounts. I tell you all this so that I can lead in to my actual experience. I would get many walk-ins (people without appointments) to my ground floor office. They were always a welcome addition to my day. Business that I got without actually working for it. One day there was this Fed-Ex guy who dropped in. He was not my usual courier person and as I suspected later, he asked for this route because of my office. After handing the package to my assistant, he hung around for a few moments and then hesitantly stepped into my private space. I greeted him in a friendly manner, not asking him what he wanted but allowing him to lead the conversation. He was asking for some Government long term high interest bonds and some blue chip stocks. I gave him the information, all the while thinking what a waste of my time, but I never gave him any indication of my scepticism. This continued for a couple of the following visits that he made and on his fourth visit, he asked to sit down and requested me to create a portfolio for $300,000. I thought he was joking, but I played the mummy and did what he thought was a good job, something he approved. He asked me to open an investment account for him and took out a loose leaf cheque from his pocket and asked me to place the order for the investments in the portfolio I had just created. You can imagine how stunned I was, but I didn’t let on. In the following three weeks, he visited me thrice - each time giving me a fresh $300,000 per visit. It seemed to be his lucky number. A total investment of $1.2 million. When I asked him where the money came from (due diligence), he said he had sold property in Thailand. He was Thai. I asked no more, because for money laundering prevention proposes I required no more. He gave me cheques from his Canadian bank accounts and the diligence became the responsibility of the banks. Besides I had done my complete KYC (Know Your Client) in the days when it was not a known procedure. The firm was forward thinking in many respects. I learnt valuable lessons from my Thai Fed Ex courier and also from a following few other incidents that reminded me to be always humble and friendly in business and in turn that behaviour was always rewarded. 75-year-old man came to a car dealership for an expensive car. He was ki... https://youtu.be/OEC5SmmS0D4 Roland. Toronto.
