My friend Turney Duff was a wall street trader back in the early 2000s, and one day he called one of his many sales traders with an order.
He said he was using anywhere between 50 and 60 different brokers at the time, so he could have called almost anyone, but on this day, he called his guy at Merrill Lynch. Ring-ring.
“Can you please buy one million shares of AMGN,” Turney asked.
“I’ll call you right back,” the sales trader replied.
Moments later, the phone rang on one of Turney’s outside lines, and he picked it up.
“What’s up?”
“Go away,” the broker said to him.
“What?”
“Go away. My biotech trader is out today, and his backup sucks,” the Merrill sales trader said. In Wall Street lingo “go away” means to take your business elsewhere. He was telling him to use a different firm because the backup trader wouldn’t have done as good of job.
Turney hung up the phone and thought about what had just happened...
The Merrill Lynch sales trader was passing up a $60,000 commission check. $60,000!
And in that moment, Turney realized that he could trust that sales trader forever. Instead of taking the $60,000, which most people would have done, he did what was in his client’s (Turney) best interest. So, Turney picked up the phone and gave the order to another broker. But then he made the Merrill Lynch sales trader one of his go-to brokers for the next decade. By turning down one order, the guy got 10 years of business.
Can you imagine if universities offered a class called Trust 101? It’d be so beneficial.
I have so many stories and so much more insight to share that has benefitted my life and business journey.
