Your Feelings About a Client's Money Show in the Room

Imagine a travel adviser named Tamsin Ferrand who plans family trips from a small office in her town. Her own holidays are a week at her sister’s cottage. Mrs. Penhallow asks her to the house to plan two weeks in Italy in July. The trip is for Mrs. Penhallow, her husband, their two teenagers, and her father, who is 81 and walks with a cane.

Mrs. Penhallow’s email includes a link to a villa she has found on Lake Como, at $38,000 a week. One week costs more than Tamsin earned last summer. She feels a jolt when she sees the figure, part wonder and part something sour.

Tamsin knows the villa. Its garden goes down to the lake in about 90 stone steps, and the road is at the top. At the house, Mrs. Penhallow turns her laptop around to show the photos. “Isn’t it something?” she asks. “It’s stunning,” Tamsin says. “You have wonderful taste.” She says nothing about the steps.

Mrs. Penhallow asks whether a private boat for a day would be too much. “Not at all. Whatever you’d like,” Tamsin says. Before she leaves, she hands over a list of three cheaper hotels in town. “Just in case the villa is a lot,” she says. Mrs. Penhallow books the villa through her. In July, her father spends most of the trip at the top of the garden. When a friend asks about Tamsin, Mrs. Penhallow says, “She agreed with everything I said. I could have booked it myself.”

Suppose instead that Tamsin feels the same jolt when she sees the figure. This time, in the car before the meeting, she names it to herself: wonder, and some envy. Then she writes on her card what the job needs from her. She writes the steps at Mrs. Penhallow’s villa, the lift at another across the lake, and which one she would choose.

“It’s beautiful, and I know it well,” she says. “The garden goes down to the lake in about 90 steps, and the road is at the top. With your father’s cane, I’d look at the villa across the water. It has a lift down to the dock, and it’s $41,000 a week.” Mrs. Penhallow asks about the boat. “I’d do it on your second day, before the weekend crowds,” Tamsin says. “It’s about $3,500 with a captain.” Mrs. Penhallow books the villa with the lift. In July, her father rides it down to the water every morning.

Tamsin felt the same jolt both times. What changed was whether the feeling decided what she said. In the first version, it came out three ways. She agreed with everything, and she kept back the one fact that mattered most. She also added three cheaper hotels that nobody had asked for. In the second version, she named the feeling before she walked in, and she gave Mrs. Penhallow what the job needed.

So when a client’s money stirs awe, envy, or resentment in you, name the feeling before the meeting. Then decide what the job needs from you, and give the client that. Here is why these feelings are so common, how they come out, and what three professionals’ accounts show.

Many people see the rich as capable but cold, and envy them

Susan Fiske is a psychologist at Princeton University. In 2010, she summed up her lab’s research on how people feel about those above and below them. Her starting point is that people want two questions answered about anyone they meet. The first is whether the person means them well, which she calls warmth. The second is whether the person is able to act on what they intend, which she calls competence.

In her research, people tend to see the rich as capable but not warm. The feeling that goes with that picture is envy, and Fiske calls it a mixed feeling. Most people place themselves somewhere below the top, she writes. So envy is the feeling they report most often toward people above them.

Envy can lead people to go along with those above them. It can also lead them to work against those people. In one of her studies, people looked at photos of others having small mishaps, such as a wealthy businessman sitting in gum. When the person was one they envied, they could not help smiling a little.

Fiske also ties envy to resentment and to a sense of unfairness. People who envy someone may decide that the person must have had unfair advantages. She adds that envy can ease. One way is when people depend on someone, because then they try harder to understand what makes that person tick.

Those were people rating groups and looking at photos, and the step to a client’s house is the course’s own. Here is the step. Going along with someone above you is what deference looks like at a client’s table. The smile at the businessman in the gum is the sour side. At a client’s table, it comes out as coolness. A client is someone you depend on. So the job itself gives you a reason to look past the picture to the person.

Awe is the course’s word for the wonder Tamsin felt at the price, the same as being dazzled by a client’s lifestyle. Awe tends to come out as going along, too.

These feelings are about the client’s money. Feeling out of place in a client’s house is a different feeling, about where you stand. The two can arrive together, and each comes out in its own ways.

A New Hampshire designer held back the fabrics she could not afford herself

Christine Kohut is an interior designer in North Hampton, New Hampshire. In 2023, she told Business of Home about a phone call from more than 10 years earlier. Before it, she said, insecurity about not having a degree was holding her back. In her words, “you’re just grabbing at whatever comes your way.”

Then a man called to hire her while she sat in the pickup line at her children’s school. He asked what she charged. “And without thinking, I tripled my hourly rate,” she said. He asked when they could meet.

After that, she started bringing higher-end fabrics and materials to her clients, “and realizing that no one was saying no.” Looking back, she said that she had been afraid to offer those fabrics before. “Maybe I couldn’t afford it, so I didn’t think my clientele could afford it.”

Kohut’s feeling about money came out in the fabrics she did not show her clients. Her own budget was setting the limit on what they saw.

Her answer now, she said, is to “pretend that I can afford anything in the world.” The course suggests a different measure, for one reason. Pretending swaps your own budget for an imagined one, and neither of them is the client’s. So measure what you offer against what the client told you they want. The test is whether the money will get the client what they asked for.

A New York tutor was amazed by the houses, resented the parents, and knew which was which

A tutor who writes under the pen name K. C. worked for years with high school students in Manhattan and on Long Island. She worked through tutoring companies that served wealthy families. In 2016, she wrote about it for The Financial Diet. “I was also amazed by the jaw-dropping opulence of some students’ homes,” she wrote. Some of the foyers were bigger than the kitchen and common room of her Harlem apartment put together.

Over time, she came to resent many of the parents, and she was exact about what for. “I didn’t resent these families for all the remarkable privileges they enjoyed,” she wrote. She resented the parents “for spoiling their kids with a lifetime of apathetic household discipline and financial coddling.”

The feeling went with her between houses. On the subway from one lesson to the next, she found herself “mentally compiling and revising a preemptive ‘parenting manifesto’ of sorts.”

K. C. felt wonder and resentment at once, and she does not say whether either showed in her lessons. What she did was name exactly what the resentment was about. It was not the houses. It was how the parents used the money with their children.

The course’s view is that a feeling examined that closely tells you which part of it touches the job. A student who will not do the homework is a tutoring problem. A plain sentence to a parent about it is part of the work. The manifesto is not.

A Hamptons designer resents what the money expects, and part of it is a fact about the job

One interior designer works for wealthy clients in the Hamptons. In 2016, he spoke to The Daily Front Row without giving his name. The biggest challenge of working there, he said, is “the craziness of the clients.”

He went on, “There’s a lot of entitlement here.” Asked what he meant, he answered, “A lot of people believe that the more money they have, the faster things should happen for them.”

Inside the complaint is a fact about his trade. With custom furniture, he said, “there’s a standard timeline. It takes as long as it takes.”

Here is the course’s view of what that means. The timeline is part of the job, and a client needs to hear it. Said as a fact in the first meeting, it is information. Left inside the resentment, it can come out months later as an edge in your voice. That happens when the client asks why the sofa is not here yet.

The feelings come out as deference, coolness, or a smaller offer

The client does not see awe, envy, or resentment. The client sees what the feeling makes you do. The course sorts what it makes you do into three kinds, drawn from Fiske’s two sides of envy and from Kohut’s fabrics.

Deference is going along. You agree with each idea, keep your opinion back, and hand the client’s question back to them. Tamsin did all three. It comes most often with awe, and with the side of envy that goes along. It is how the expert turns into someone who does whatever the client asks.

Coolness is the sour side. It shows as short answers, a flat voice, or a joke about what the client spends. It comes most often with resentment, and with the side of envy that works against the client. Keeping the words in does not keep it hidden, because a feeling held behind a still face still reaches the client.

A smaller offer is leaving out what you could not afford yourself. Kohut kept back her fabrics. Tamsin added three hotels nobody asked for. Either way, your budget has taken the place of the client’s. The client does not see what the option that fits them would have been.

Examining the feeling means asking three questions, and they are the course’s own. Which feeling is it? What about the money sets it off? Does any part of it touch the job? The part that touches the job becomes a fact you tell the client, the way the designer could tell his timeline. The rest stays out of the room.

Why a joke about the client’s money goes wrong

Imagine a florist named Ottilie Marsh who meets Mrs. Fairweather about her daughter’s wedding. The wedding is in a tent on the lawn, for 200 guests. Walking the lawn, Mrs. Fairweather points out the new pool house. Ottilie laughs. “My whole apartment would fit in your pool house,” she says.

At the kitchen table, Ottilie gives her price. “For 200 guests, with the arches and the tables, it’s $28,000. Which I’m sure is nothing to you.” Mrs. Fairweather smiles and says she will be in touch. That evening, she tells her husband she wonders whether the florist priced the job by the house. She asks two other florists for quotes, and she books one of them.

Ottilie’s mistake was letting the feeling out as a joke. She meant it as friendly, a way to admit the gap between their lives. Mrs. Fairweather heard a florist thinking about her money. So she wondered whether the price was about her money too.

The version that works leaves the money out. Ottilie asks how the tent will be laid out and which colors the bride has chosen. Then she gives the price as a fact. “For 200 guests, with the arches and the tables, it’s $28,000.” Mrs. Fairweather asks when she needs the deposit, and she books Ottilie that week.

Examining a feeling about money is not giving up your views

Many professionals hold strong views about wealth. They may think it is unfair, or that it can spoil children, as K. C. did. Examining the feeling can seem like being asked to approve of how the client lives, or to pretend that you do.

The lesson asks for neither. K. C. kept her views, and she was exact about them. Kohut stopped letting her own budget decide what her clients saw. Your views are yours, and the only question is what reaches the client. You can think what you like about $38,000 a week at a lake. Mrs. Penhallow was paying Tamsin to know which villa had the lift.

How to keep your feelings about money out of the work

1. Before your next meeting with a wealthy client, write down which feeling their money stirs in you: awe, envy, or resentment. It may be more than one. Then write what about the money sets it off. It might be how much there is, how it was made, or how it is spent. For example, a private chef might write “envy,” because the family spends more on wine in a month than she pays in rent.
2. Next to each feeling, write how it tends to come out in you: deference, coolness, or a smaller offer. Use your last meeting in a house like that as your guide. For example, a dog walker might write that he said “Whatever works for you” to every question about the schedule.
3. Ask whether any part of the feeling touches the job. If it does, write it as a fact you will tell the client. For example, an event planner who resents clients who want everything at once writes, “The tent company needs the final guest count six weeks before the party.”
4. On your card for the meeting, write what the job needs from you. Write your opinion on the question the client is most likely to ask. Then write the option that fits what they told you, with its price. For example, a personal stylist writes, “Gala: I’d go custom, because she hates what’s in the shops. Custom gown, $6,000.”
5. In the meeting, leave the client’s money out of what you say. Make no jokes about the house and no remarks about what anything cost. Say your price as a fact, once. For example, a music teacher says, “It’s $140 a lesson, on Tuesdays at four.”
6. After the meeting, check what you offered against what the client said they wanted. If you left out an option because it felt like too much, write it down. Offer it first to the next client it fits. For example, a home organizer did not mention shelving to the ceiling for a garage. She puts it first on her list for the next garage.

Next: You will see why being known for one kind of work earns you more authority and higher fees.