Identifying Dishonest People! Part 1 - When You Identify One, Run Away From Them...

When I was about 25 years old, I had a client in my agency that did a lot of campaigns for the news. I had been working for almost a year at this time. Up until these events he had never ordered something too impressive, so I considered him a medium size client.

One day he asked me for a big project, he was getting ready to do a Real Estate ads and the budget for this particular campaign was about 300 thousand dollars.

I had to ask him: “Where would you be getting this sum of money for this campaign?”

He explained to me that the builder for these new constructions was going to deal with the costs of these campaigns, so I agreed and we got to working.

Im not sure how it works in other places, but here an agencies can emit credit for about 45 days on average, the work can be charged to the agency itself, or directly to client who ordered the work. In this particular case I spoke with the TV networks and explained that all the costs would be taken care of by my client, after all it was a big sum 300 thousand dollars.

When the campaign started airing, my client and I were sitting down, having a meeting and he started to share some personal things with me, some things his father had taught him.

Let me tell you CHB, my father taught me something very important for my life, he used to say to me all the time “My son, you must learn something very crucial for you life, every day there is an idiot and a clever guy on the road, so you know who you need to be? The smart man, so that you can smack the idiot”

When he said that to me and laughed and continued: “So CHB, because I learned that, I will never go wrong”

It was at that moment that a red light went off in my head, and I thought to myself: “Could it be that he thinks that I’m the idiot of these negotiations?”

So of course, I was seeing the way he was talking and his demeanour and I knew then he probably saw everyone around him like an idiot. He had won a lot of trust from me, enough for me to put my guard down and try to take advantage.

After 45 days that the campaign had started a letter arrives to my desk, it's a big network with a big invoice for me.

Immediately I told the emissary I would not be receiving that envelope, and I was very firm with my tone. I told him not to worry, that by the time he was back at the station I would have sorted this out with the finance department.

I knew what had happened, but I call the station to verify and yes, my client had called them and told him the agency was going to pickup all the costs. But I had the documents proving that the contract said otherwise, and this would be enough to fix the problem.

On the very next day my client calls me complaining that what kind of invoice was this, and that the station was collecting from him, for him I was trying to do “a crazy game” with him, but believe, he tried to play victim.

How great is this? The wolf ends up being a sheep.

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