I saw an old friend last night--a guy who got registered a month after I did but who has stayed in production all these years.  He appeared sick and coughed a lot--smoker.  I did not ask, he did not tell.

We were joking about our early days and how we won trips to Europe for "hitting a hunded" meaning doing $100 grand in gross in a year.

Now he does "More than million" but he did not elaborate--I had heard it was actually more like two or three million.

I asked about his book.  75% of his production comes from three clients--all of whom he has had since the early days, found them by smiling and dialing.

He said, "I could never get to them today, but we grew up together."

He did not mean literally--he meant that they were baby entrepreneurs when he was a baby broker.  One was a $30,000 account that wrote options--it's now a $60 million account that writes options, just a hell of a lot more of them.

I asked if he was saying that he grew $30,000 to $60 million and he said, "Hell no--his father in law left them more than $60,000,000.  The option writing was going well, but not that well.  We tried to figure it out once and about the best we could come up with was he was averaging close to 20%."

I asked if he ever feels threatened that they will leave--three accounts is not a lot of breathing room.

He said not really, but that they remind him from time to time that they could ruin his life with the stroke of a pen.  He chuckled and then started hacking--not good.

There are a lot of ways to build your book--this is one of them, but it's sure a scary way.

For what it's worth, he looks the part--conservative dresser, very well spoken and his eyes absolutely twinkle with intelligence.

No doubt those three clients are very similar.

+++++

Another old acquaintance was there too.  He is a gigolo.  His first wife was the widow of a pilot who had died in a small plane--he was carrying some pretty good life insurance so she became a young and relatively wealthy widow.  The gigolo latched onto her--they stayed married for about three years.

They got divorced because he took up with the wife of a friend.  So there he was, no meal ticket.

He looked around the country club set and found a lonely woman executive with a very nice house and all the contacts.  They lived together--in sin--for more than twenty years.  She got ovarian cancer..............

He's a nice looking guy, but he was getting older, mid 50s.  One day on the tennis courts at the county club he met the daughter of the CEOs of a HUGE consumer products company.  No matter who you are you have one of their signature products in your very home--right now!

Anyway, she was late twenties. He was mid fifties.  They got married and he started living a lifestyle of the rich and famous.  Fifth Avenue Apartment and ocean front mansion in Naples.  They did not own their own plane, but did have a corporate jet time sharing arrangement.

After about five years he used a search engine to check up on a girl he had dated back in college.

The divorce is not finished, but he's going to leave the marriage with what he came into it with.  A great collection of Elvis CDs and some ties.

As my wife said, "Men are so stupid."  She's right.