I spent almost two years of my life completely addicted to something. Virtually every day and sometimes more than once a day I would seek and get my fix. Like any junkie, any stressful event would force me to be an abuser. I used first thing every morning and I can even remember leaving work during stressful moments to go get my “attitude adjuster” as I called it. What was my drug of choice, you might be wondering? For me, it was Starbucks Coffee.I was as addicted as I could be; I met every criteria. Even when money was tight, I still had no problem throwing down 6 bucks for a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin. I started out slow, with a regular coffee and kept adding more and more until the end when I was drinking Quad Grande Lattes. This drink has so much caffeine in it that it could make the tortoise beat the hare and taunt him and laugh at him the whole race!

Not only that, my dealer treated me like absolute crap and yet I still kept coming back and I’m not talking about just taking my money that I couldn’t afford to spend. In my job, I wear a polo shirt that has my company name on one side of my chest and my embroidered name on the other, yet every morning when I walked in they would ask me my name! They weren’t asking because they wanted to get to know me, they were asking because they would write my name on the cup after they made my coffee. After about a week of reading my name directly from my shirt, I decided to have a little fun.

“Sir, can I get your name?” the coffee maker asked without making eye contact.

“Sure, it’s Heinrich.” I responded with a straight face. Sure enough, when they handed me my drink, my cup had Heinrich written on it. Each day I got braver and braver with my name choices – Javier, Sven, Tyrone, Sue, even Jorge (they spelled Jorge H-o-r-h-a-y). I finally realized that they didn’t care what my name was as long as I was willing to throw down my money. Not one single time did any coffee maker person ever just notice that my name was written on my shirt and just write “Keith” on my cup. It never happened, not once!

Wouldn’t it be great if we all had customers like me? Who wouldn’t love to have customers that are so addicted to your product that they allow you to treat them bad and yet keep showing up every morning? Unfortunately that’s not how it works in our business. The housing industry is built on relationships. My best friends in the world are either customers or former customers and I like it that way. My life is much better because I let down my all business constant sales pitch and just have fun with people who happen to be customers.

Yes, I’m a recovering Starbucks addict. In fact it’s been three years, two months, and 7 days since my last latte. Maybe you don’t need the Quad Grande Latte to beat the hare; you just have to remember his name.