Meetings!
What? Amanda Green called me back within an hour. Every client I’ve ever known will spend a hunk of time convincing themselves that they really wanted to hire me. Or they decide that they really don’t. Nothing I’m going to say will make a difference, so why should I stay on the line while they’re deciding?
Ms. Green was one of the apologetic ones, like needing the services of a supernatural plumber was a moral failing on her part (sometimes it is, but those people either never clean up after themselves, or they’re dead). I let her get a few apologies out before I steered the conversation to actually having a face to face meeting. She wanted one right away, and didn’t blink when I gave her my office address. That didn’t say anything one way or the other about how serious her situation was, but it spoke wonderful volumes on her willingness to pay.
I was expecting a forty-something woman with nervous eyes and a perpetual look of worry on her face to show up at my office late that afternoon, and that’s exactly what I got. But I was also expecting her to wear useless New Age jewelry, all crystals and clunky stones and maybe a dreamcatcher necklace. I was half-right: she might have been wearing tacky occult jewelry, but it was real tacky occult jewelry. Ms. Green here either knew her business, or knew somebody who did.