Over 15 years ago, I was doing these in-person “mini classes” every Friday morning.

I wanted more people to come. (only about 5-8 people were attending on average)

This one lady would often attend and blurt out comments or questions in the middle of my presentations.. without even raising her hand!

Then she’d stay after and come tell me everything I did wrong in my presentation.

For months… she didn’t miss a single class.

And it drove me nuts.

I even had other attendees asking if I could ban this person from attending future classes.

So I was faced with a problem: How do I politely get rid of this “negative Nancy”?

Suddenly, a new thought popped in my head…

This person is in my class to see if I really care about her.

In other words, am I coaching and teaching just for money, or because I really love people?

I don’t think she thought she was there to test me on that… but I think God sent her to me to test me on how much I really cared for people.

SO at my next class, instead of asking her to never come back, I waited by the front door waiting for her to show up.

As she walked in, I told her I was so glad to see her and that I was glad she came. Really took a moment to connect with her and help her feel appreciated.

Then I asked a tiny favor…

“Would you mind just waiting until the Q&A time at the end before you ask questions? And would you mind just raising your hand so everyone gets a fair turn to ask?”

And for the first time ever, she waited until Q&A time to talk… and even raised her hand!

It blew my mind.

On the way home that day the thought popped in my head, “because YOU changed, SHE changed”

The next week, she brought 3 people with her to the class.

And every single next class she brought more and more people… and not just anyone, but really well-connected and influential people.

I couldn’t believe the caliber of people she knew and was inviting. It didn’t even make sense to me.

But it’s almost like she was a gate-keeper.

As soon as I became better and found a way to truly care about her, even through feeling irritated, she opened the door to SO MANY more people who came to my classes, bought my coaching, and made a big difference in me becoming successful.

Crazy thing is, I ended up hiring her as one of my first employees.

And she found even more ways to irritate me! And I got more and more opportunities to learn how to love her.

From then on, anytime a client or employee came to me talking about a person that was irritating them, I’d tell them “Your job is to learn how to love them, no matter how irritating they are! We MUST love the people.”

I wanted HER to go away so my class would be good. In my mind, SHE was ruining it.

Turns out, I was the problem… and my improving in the tiniest bit changed everything.

I estimate that over the years I’ve gained over 5,000 clients directly because of people she referred.

How many people are waiting behind an irritating client of yours?

How can you go out of your way to love and care for them in a way no one ever has?

“But Kirk, I tried loving this person and nothing good came of it”

Sure. That can happen.

But we, as humans, are really bad at judging when it will be “worth it” and when it won’t to love someone.

The best rule is always to just LOVE THE PEOPLE.

It’s been my #1 rule for the better part of 2 decades, and it always will be.

Quote of the week:

Song of the week:

- Kirk