The Best Clients Are Rarely the Easy Ones

In the family office business there’s a deep-seated conviction: find good clients and the work goes smoothly. But after a few years, many people discover a counterintuitive truth—the clients who give you the biggest headaches are often the very ones who push you to grow the fastest. A good client is not the same as an “easy” client.

Andy (Liu Yu) is a founding partner of Flourishing Tree Family Office. This interview is about the gains and losses of his years working with clients: what a good client looks like, how trust is built, which money you shouldn’t take, and which goodbyes could have been more graceful. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Who Is the Right Client

Q: After all these years in the family office business, what does a “good client” look like to you?

Andy: We’ve boiled it down to about three things.

First, a great aspiration and a sense of responsibility. He’s genuinely passionate about family legacy—he wants to do it well and for the long haul, not on a whim or as a me-too request for wealth management. Only with that founding intention will he be willing to put in the energy to move things forward.

Second, an open mind. Family legacy is complex; there’s no off-the-shelf standard answer on this road—it calls for constant learning and exploration. A good client is happy to take in new knowledge, keeps revising his own understanding, and stays perpetually in motion rather than clinging to fixed views. Only such a client is willing to work through options with us and search for best practices.

And third, a willingness to trust and collaborate. An excellent client is willing to treat us as his partner and trusted counsel; the two sides can build deep trust and an easy rapport, and together do the work of legacy well.

Clients who meet these three criteria are far smoother to serve, and it’s more comfortable for both sides. Ironically, some clients just want to offload everything onto us and stay out of the discussion themselves—those are actually harder to work with. A client with a genuinely pressing need will give his time and energy and throw himself into the planning alongside us.

Q: And are clients like that also easy to serve?

Andy: Not necessarily. A good client isn’t the same as an easy-to-serve client. Some good clients trust us completely and let go, handing us the lead, and they’re effortless to serve; others have grand goals and very high demands, and are in fact much harder to serve. But the latter often “force” us to expand the boundaries of our capability—just as building muscle requires resistance—and they push the team to grow. The key is not to let this kind of client take up an uncontrolled share of the portfolio, so they don’t exceed what the team can digest. But you must have some of them, to push us forward. If all our clients were easy and pressure-free, that would actually mean we’d stopped moving.

Q: Where do new clients come from?

Andy: Mainly through referrals, of two kinds. One is referrals from existing clients—satisfied clients introduce their relatives, friends, and business partners. This kind of introduction comes with a built-in endorsement of trust and often achieves twice the result with half the effort; and when an introduction happens, it usually means the person really does have a legacy or wealth-management need, or the existing client wouldn’t rashly recommend us. The other kind is professionals—lawyers, tax advisors, investment managers, industry friends whose values align with ours—who, once they understand our service philosophy, send suitable clients our way. These two kinds of leads are the highest quality and have always been the mainstay of our client base. We’ve done very little active marketing.

Q: Do you ever turn clients away?

Andy: Yes. If the values don’t match, we won’t take them on no matter how rich they are. There was once a gentleman who came to us to set up a trust; as we talked, it emerged that his motive was to hide assets in a divorce so his spouse couldn’t claim a share. That plainly crosses ethical and legal lines, and we declined on the spot and asked him to look elsewhere. Our principle is that wealth should make people happier; a deal that runs counter to that principle is one we can’t touch, however handsome the payoff.

There’s another kind, where the philosophy fits but the timing isn’t right—say the pain point isn’t urgent, or they don’t yet know us well enough. With these we don’t press for an immediate decision; we stay on friendly terms, keep offering valuable information, and trust that when their need grows stronger one day, they’ll naturally think of us. As a joke I say I sometimes have to play the “player”—giving only mild attention to a not-quite-right lead, investing no real feeling or commitment, and saving my energy for the clients who are a true fit and whose timing is ripe. That’s said in jest, of course; in practice it simply means letting the other side’s willingness and degree of fit determine the depth and pace of the follow-up.

How Trust Is Built

If good clients aren’t “easy,” then how do you build trust with a good client who isn’t “easy”? That’s the second question to answer.

Q: The first time you meet a client, what wins their trust?

Andy: First the inner principle, in eight characters: treat people with sincerity, and put yourself in their shoes. Whether or not they sign, whether or not they’re prominent, we consider their interests without reservation and treat every exchange as a chance to build trust. Many clients later told us that when they first chose us, the professionalism of the plan was one thing, but more than that, it was sensing in our conversations that we sincerely wanted the best for them.

Then the method. We lay out for the client our overall framework for family wealth legacy, whose core concept is the perpetual cash flow of family wealth. Around it, we break wealth management into three links: the creation, protection, and distribution of cash flow. Whatever concerns the client is discussed within this structure. That way, however sprawling the legacy question, the client can see the main thread and won’t get lost in some technical detail. Many institutions sell products case by case, and the client ends up with spare parts; we give him a panoramic picture, so he understands how each step serves the long-term goal. The complex problem gets broken down, and that feeling alone is reassuring.

On tools, though, we’re quite flexible. Some clients are used to a structured process, so we prepare a basic information form—family members, asset distribution, needs and intentions all in it. But we won’t hand a client a form to fill out the moment we meet; that would be rude. With a more sensitive, guarded client, I simply don’t open the laptop or take out the form—I just talk face to face and fill in the record from memory afterward. Warmth first, process second. Of course, behind the scenes we have a strict filing standard; every client’s important information and credential documents are organized and archived. You can’t get so absorbed in the conversation that you neglect the record and then go digging through WeChat chat logs afterward to find the information—that’s unprofessional.

Q: What do you do when the conversation with a client falls silent?

Andy: In my earlier years I feared silence too, and would go to great lengths to fill every gap. Then one time, a senior figure—also a mentor in the industry—invited me to his home for tea. It was my first visit, and after a few pleasantries the room fell quiet for a long while. I was thoroughly ill at ease, afraid the silence made me seem rude. But this elder told me: “When people sit together, they don’t have to talk the whole time. Quietly thinking your own thoughts, and picking the conversation back up when something comes to mind—that’s more relaxing for everyone.”

That struck me deeply. A truly harmonious relationship doesn’t need words filling every space.

Now, with clients, I’d rather treat them as friends, as family. Think of it: when we’re with family and friends, we too fall quiet for a moment, and no one demands nonstop talk. A measured pause often means both sides are gathering their thoughts. This is especially true since many of the clients we serve are seasoned, steady entrepreneurs, already accustomed to reflection and stillness, who won’t feel slighted by a moment’s silence. If anything, our looking nervous and chattering on could backfire.

That said, the homework can’t be skimped on at all. For a new client we’re meeting for the first time—especially a well-known entrepreneur or high-net-worth individual—we research the background in advance and map out topics he might find interesting, ready for the conversation. Some clients are straight to the point, question-and-answer in style, wanting a precise answer to every question. When we can’t answer on the spot, we honestly say we need time to look into it and follow up with a reply as soon as we can after the meeting, rather than bluffing our way through.

Q: Why do clients choose you rather than institutions like trust companies or insurance companies?

Andy: The starting point is different. Many financial institutions are constrained by their own line of business and are used to pushing the products they’re good at: trust companies sell trusts, insurance companies push insurance, immigration agents talk residency planning. The client gets served in scattershot fashion, a hammer here and a club there, resolving a few fragmentary problems piecemeal but without a single legacy strategy running through it all.

We do the opposite. When a client raises a specific request, we probe the motive behind it. If a client says, “I want to set up a family trust,” we don’t dive straight into the details of the trust plan; instead we explore with him: why did you think of setting up a trust? Which part of your needs does a trust address? What other related issues need to be considered at the same time? Digging in, we often find that setting up a trust is just one small step toward his ultimate goal—what he really wants is wealth security plus protection for his children—and so the family governance structure, the legal arrangements, and the investment strategy all have to be planned together. First ask why, then decide what, and last discuss how. Many peers start from “how”; we start from “why”—a different order, and an entirely different result. So after talking with us, the client feels that what we care about is his legacy as a whole, not just selling him a product.

Q: Can clients perceive the value of this kind of holistic planning?

Andy: They can, especially those who’ve been burned. There was an entrepreneur who missed the best window for family trust planning. He was fully in a position to start laying the groundwork while his assets were still small, but he insisted on waiting—until his assets had swelled to a certain size and a dispute arose, at which point he hurriedly set up a trust, had to hire top lawyers to litigate, spent enormous energy, and still couldn’t make up for the losses his earlier misjudgment had caused. No matter how flawless the execution, it can’t fix an error of direction.

The most important decisions in family wealth legacy are often not which product to choose or how high the yield is, but the top-level design—things like “when to begin the legacy arrangements” and “in what manner to pass wealth to the next generation.” When clients engage us, much of the time what they want is a trusted decision advisor to help them get right those choices that bear on the family’s fate. Get the direction right, and the execution can be handed to the various specialist institutions; get it wrong, and even the small things you’d done right may come to nothing. A good client’s being “high-maintenance” only matters when the direction is right—when the direction is wrong, being “easy” is in fact the greatest risk.

Q: Do clients ever question you—about, say, team size or depth of expertise?

Andy: Often. Some clients ask directly: “Do you have your own professional investment team? How good are your investment capabilities?” “How many family trusts have you done? Is your experience deep enough?” On one hand we honestly answer as to our team size and range of experience; on the other, we make the division of labor clear: the big investment banks and big law firms are stronger than us in their own fields—there’s no arguing that—and we play the role of chief architect and chief coordinator, integrating the most suitable resources across fields to serve the client. On law and trusts we partner with top law firms; on investment we handpick external managers. Our value is to safeguard the overall correctness of the plan for the client and to coordinate all parties in moving it forward. The perspective of integrated legacy planning is precisely what many single-field experts lack.

Other clients feel our plans are too complex—these tend to be younger, often with an internet-startup background: “Isn’t this overcomplicated? Do we really need to consider so much?” In that case we go gradual: solve the most pressing problem in front of him first, but design the plan with interfaces left open for the future, seeding the possibility of further expansion. For instance, start by building a simple trust or shareholding structure, and later, as his buy-in grows, expand its functions step by step. Easy first, hard later—it’s more palatable than handing over an elaborate blueprint at the outset. If a client truly can’t accept it for now, we respect his choice and let him first meet the simple need in front of him. Interestingly, some clients, after experiencing the market’s fragmented, treat-the-head-when-the-head-hurts, treat-the-foot-when-the-foot-hurts service, come to understand the importance of holistic planning all the more, and later circle back to us for a systematic solution.

Of course, if someone cares only about single-investment returns and wants us to stack our past performance up against others’, then his philosophy probably doesn’t align with ours; he isn’t our target client for now, and there’s no need to force it.

Q: And when it comes to fees? Where does the confidence come from?

Andy: I have firsthand experience of this. A senior figure in the industry does high-end coaching, and he once shared his fee standard with me: a single coaching engagement, priced in the millions of yuan. I asked myself at the time: if I were offering a comparable high-end service, how much would I dare to charge? Maybe half a million would already leave me a little uneasy, and a million I wouldn’t even dare imagine. That contrast made me realize the client can sense our own judgment of our worth. Quoting with full confidence sends the message that “our service is worth this price,” and the client tends to trust your professionalism more; conversely, if our own tone is hesitant, the client will naturally discount his view of your ability. Only when you truly believe you’re worth it will others believe you’re worth it.

This kind of presence isn’t constant; it depends on your state and on whom you’re facing, and it takes continual self-tempering.

Q: So what moves a client may not be the expertise itself?

Andy: Many firms are evenly matched at the level of professional skill and product; what ultimately decides which one a client chooses is often that bit of feeling and presence beyond the expertise.

In the past I hosted events at Noah Wealth; years of stirring emotion and drawing out resonance on stage honed in me a sensitivity to people, an ability to catch the other person’s mood and points of focus. Placed in a client relationship, that sensitivity is empathy—it lets you catch a good client’s high demands rather than be crushed by them. When I throw myself wholly into the conversation and I’m on form, I can often hold a client’s attention firmly and create an excellent atmosphere for communication. There’s a touch of natural gift in this, but more of it is ground out through years of practice.

My partners have said, too, that empathy is one of my strengths, and I feel the same. Whenever a client pours out their family’s story, confusion, and pressure, I naturally put myself in their place: if this were my family, what would I do? When many clients first sized us up, they felt everyone was much the same on the professional front; in the end they chose us because a kind of emotional trust had formed from the very first meeting. Professional ability matters, of course, but these things that can’t be written into a standard procedure—personal charisma, sincerity, empathy, confidence—are the most precious and the hardest to replicate. This is the inner strength everyone on the team is cultivating, and it’s what competitors find hardest to copy.

Mindset and Lessons

Q: Over these years of serving clients, has your own state of mind had its ups and downs?

Andy: Big ups and downs, like a curve.

When I first started building the business, I was full of confidence in my own philosophy and methods, always feeling that what we offered was one-of-a-kind value; psychologically I was in an “I’m the expert, you need me” state, feeling I had the upper hand. Clients chose us largely because they were won over by the philosophy.

Once the actual service began and we entered the daily execution and follow-up, we and the client became partners fighting side by side, our positions more equal—discussing plans and solving problems together, a bit like co-founding a venture.

Later still, as the collaboration settled into the trivial detail of daily routine—the client is, after all, the one putting up the money and making the decisions, while we handle execution and delivery—the psychological balance inevitably tilted toward the client. He judges our work good or bad; we mind his satisfaction. In that phase I became, for a time, sensitive and anxious, terrified that some shortfall would displease the client, even worried he wouldn’t renew. It was like walking a tightrope, dreading that poor service would lose the client—a lot of pressure.

Only after a few years of trial and struggle did I gradually build confidence in my own worth and reach a firmer mutual trust with clients. My state of mind is much steadier now; I no longer fret over every gain and loss. Looking back at that anxiety, the root cause wasn’t that the client was bad—precisely because the client was good, he had high demands, he was “high-maintenance.” Once I saw through this layer, pressure stopped being a signal of failure. I know where our professional value lies: if we’re an irreplaceable strategic partner in the client’s eyes, he won’t lightly give up the relationship; conversely, if our value falls short, being replaced is only natural. Grasping this, I’ve actually become more at ease—daring to hold to a professional opinion, able to accept all kinds of feedback calmly, no longer treating every one of the client’s criticisms as the sky falling, the way I once did.

My colleagues feel similarly. In the past we always hoped to make a plan perfect in every way and win the client’s hundred-percent approval; if a client raised even ten percent’s worth of doubt, we’d be terribly dejected, doubting we’d done well enough. Now we understand that every client has a different perspective, that raising objections is perfectly normal, and that there’s no need to over-read it. As long as our value is something the client truly needs and can’t easily get elsewhere, the basis of the collaboration is solid. If we fall short of a perfect score one time, we simply work to improve the next. A client’s feedback is less a criticism than a direction pointing us toward growth.

Q: Do you use any closing techniques to get a signature?

Andy: No. A family office provides comprehensive, long-term service; it can’t be hard-sold the way you’d push a fund or an insurance policy. If a client isn’t psychologically ready to commit to this work of legacy, a rushed signing won’t go far anyway. So we don’t go in for the eager “final kick at goal”; our attention is on thorough communication up front. When all of a client’s key doubts have been answered and he’s arrived at a basic recognition of our value, he’ll often propose moving to the next stage himself. A signing the client proposes on his own has a high success rate and stays stable afterward. When we sense a client is still hesitating, we’d rather keep him company a while longer than rush to push. In practice, this patience has actually won clients’ trust—they feel we genuinely want the best for them, not that we’re anxious to collect a service fee.

Q: What’s the biggest lesson of these years?

Andy: Frankly, on the matter of the signing process and boundaries, we used to be insufficiently professional—too casual. Often we’d do a great deal of work for a client before any signing, yet the hard things—scope of service, fee standards—weren’t pinned down in time, and misunderstandings easily followed.

There’s a mindset problem behind it. In the past we traded on being small and nimble and felt it was fine to settle many things verbally; add to that a wish to leave the client with the impression that “we can do anything, the more the better,” and we always tended to blur the scope and over-promise. In the short term the client found us wonderfully eager; in the long term there were plenty of problems: on one hand the client might expect too much and be disappointed when some things weren’t done; on the other, because we ourselves had no boundaries, input and output fell out of balance, and the team tired easily.

We’ve changed that now. Before a formal engagement, we give the client a clear service plan and fee statement, spelling out what we will and won’t do, the expected timeline and cost, so the client decides with a clear picture. Once the client agrees, signs the agreement, and pays the retainer, we then start the service per what was agreed. A proper process draws a clear boundary around the service, prevents the endless “unlimited liability” giving of the later stages, and also ensures the client spends with full clarity.

Managing expectations is something we now take very seriously. In a new client engagement, we tell the person clearly: which items we’ll focus on completing in the first year, and roughly how long they’ll take; that our manpower is limited, and we take on only a limited number of clients each year to guarantee service quality. We lay all this out and aren’t afraid to let the client know our “ceiling.” Hearing it, the client actually feels more at ease, because he knows what he can get and what he can’t ask for; everyone has a clear sense of things, and the collaboration in fact lasts longer.

Q: In the course of service, have clients ever been dissatisfied with you?

Andy: Yes, but here’s the funny thing: clients’ dissatisfaction is often less than we imagine. Much of the time it’s we ourselves who hold service quality to a high standard—before the client has even spoken, we’ve grown tense and taken measures. The team is very sensitive to a client’s mood; at the slightest sign something’s off we hurry to adjust, so we’ve never had a major conflict to date. Sometimes we even mock ourselves as “oversensitive,” probably more anxious than the client himself. But from the server’s point of view, this anticipatory sensitivity isn’t a bad thing; it drives us to keep refining the details, defusing problems in advance rather than waiting for them to pile up until the client voices displeasure.

What clients raise most is timeliness of response. There was once a client who, over a certain stretch, had scheduled many business meetings; our internal staffing was tight and we didn’t respond to his arrangements right away, and the client got a little emotional—his tone on the phone turned distinctly impatient, pressing us on why the feedback was so slow in coming. In a situation like that, our approach is to face it and fix it at once, not to argue the reasons with the client. Apologize first, then find ways to speed up—pulling in other colleagues, optimizing the internal collaboration process. After that incident we reflected and resolved that, for similar urgent tasks, we’d add hands and race the clock, and never let a client’s reasonable expectations go unmet. If we’re truly short-handed, we’d rather seek third-party help than fail to complete a key task on time. What clients value is often precisely a kind of reliability and efficiency.

Q: Conversely, can clients see your value? A lot of family office work is invisible.

Andy: This is exactly the lesson we’re catching up on. Much of a family office’s work is sparing the client worry and averting risk—it moistens things silently, like a gentle rain, and the client may not remember it. If we don’t present it proactively, the client might feel that over the course of a year, nothing much seemed to happen.

So for long-term clients, we plan to hold a comprehensive service review at least once a year—compiling and reporting the main work done, the goals met, and the value created over the year, so the client knows clearly: this year, which matters large and small did my family office help me accomplish, and which hidden troubles did it resolve. Laying out every measure one by one, the client often realizes with a start: “So this much has already been done—no wonder I’ve had so much less to worry about this year.”

The dimensions of measurement aren’t only money, either. After several years of service inside a family, our hope is not just how much we’ve grown their wealth but also: has a better mechanism for communication been established within the family? Has the successor grown into the role? Have the family’s values and mission become clearer? If, through our coaching and companionship, the client’s children gradually acquire the ability to make investment decisions and take an ever more active part in family deliberations, that’s an extremely precious result. In the annual report we write not only the financial statements but also the year’s progress in family governance and the milestones of family members’ personal growth. In the long run, these intangible values are even more crucial than how much the wealth has grown.

Boundaries and Goodbyes

Q: Has there ever been a time when the service should have ended but didn’t?

Andy: There has, and it counts as no small reflection. Not every client needs to be served indefinitely. Recognizing when to bring a project to a proper close is likewise an art.

Here’s an actual example. There was a pair of brothers as clients who originally engaged us to build an offshore structure, to facilitate emigration and their children’s education. We completed the task smoothly, but afterward they had no intention of building a full family office system, since the main purpose had been achieved. We ought, at that juncture, to have formally concluded the engagement and handed the maintenance work over to them or to a local institution. Yet out of a sense of obligation we kept up a token service contact each year, and the result was a gradual drifting apart that petered out in the end. It wasn’t a failure, but it can’t be called a success either. The crux is that we didn’t give the relationship a clear accounting at the right moment. Force a relationship to continue, and both sides gradually lose freshness and engagement, and may even come to the misunderstanding that the service is inadequate.

Now, taking the lesson to heart, before taking on a new client we judge more clearly whether the person is a long-term client. If we anticipate it’s just a one-off project, we explain the scope and timeline up front and wrap up per the agreement when it’s done, without dragging on indefinitely. If we find the other side shows no wish to deepen the collaboration, we communicate honestly and reposition the relationship as ordinary friends rather than client—so we don’t invest one-sidedly without a corresponding return.

In this line of work you have to develop a sense of proportion, an ability to “take profit”: knowing when your mission is complete, when you can retire on a job well done and hand the baton back to the client. Taking profit in investing means leaving once you’ve earned enough; taking profit in a client relationship means letting go once you’ve served enough—a good client doesn’t need to be served forever, either. However good the relationship, letting go when it’s time to let go is what it means to be responsible to both sides. An exit like that is precisely the mark of mature professionalism. The client will be grateful for our candor and decisiveness, leaving a good reputation for the future. And the energy we free up can go to serving families who need long-term companionship more, instead of being mired in a pointless war of attrition.

Q: Is there anything you absolutely won’t do?

Andy: Two lines. One is values: anything that runs counter to the core idea that “wealth should make the family happier,” we firmly won’t do. If a plan would bring hidden trouble or conflict to a family, we’ll think twice or even refuse, even if it’s legally feasible. When a client’s request is plainly unfair to certain family members and plants the seed of a major rift, we’ll try to dissuade him, because such an arrangement betrays the founding intention that legacy should make people happy.

The other is legality and compliance: anything openly illegal we absolutely won’t touch. No matter how much a client pays, we won’t help carry out any illegal operation. This is both professional integrity and a protection for the client and for ourselves.

Of course, the field of wealth legacy often moves through the gray zones of different jurisdictions and tax planning, and clients sometimes want to press their advantage to the maximum and challenge certain policy boundaries. Our stance is to fully disclose the risks and seek a sound balance. When a client wants the stars, we can’t just tell him they won’t fall from the sky; we have to tell him how to build a rocket, while also reminding him of the rocket’s risks. We study the range that laws and regulations permit, give the optimal plan, and tell the client clearly where the risk points and regulatory trends lie. If a client is set on taking the risk, we’ll raise a professional warning and even remonstrate. The moment we near a red line, we’ll sound the alarm without fail, preferring to err on the conservative side.

In our early days, to meet certain client demands, we might have harbored a chancer’s hope that everyone in the market did it this way. Not anymore. Step on a mine and the consequences are severe; we’d rather lose the business than trade away our principles. Now that the company is on a steady footing, we no longer have to take risks for survival the way we once did, and we’re more willing to tell clients the truth and throw cold water on them, and when necessary to hold firm in refusing an unreasonable demand. A client who truly respects us will understand that this is for his own good; one who doesn’t—well, no deal is fine.

Q: A final question. With a family, where do you hope to end up in the end?

Andy: We have an idea rather different from many of our peers: to help the client’s family grow on its own, rather than making the client depend on us forever. Many financial service providers, to make clients unable to do without them, deliberately keep information opaque, are unwilling to let clients get too involved, and want the client to hand everything over to them to handle. We’re the opposite.

We’re glad to see the capabilities and involvement of the client family’s members grow—whether the second-generation successor or a spouse. We even hope that after a period of service, the client’s family can master the tools and methods we provide and take part in running the family wealth-management system. We don’t worry about being “put out of a job” as a result. The value of a family office was always to help a family build the system and cultivate their own internal capacity for legacy.

Some of our clients’ family leaders—usually the ones at the helm of the family business—very much want their spouse and children to grow, and that’s precisely why they bring in a family office team, hoping to use an outside force like ours to spur their family to learn. In such cases our service isn’t only about solving wealth-management problems; it also includes providing education, training, and broadened horizons for family members. Like coaches, we accompany and guide them, so that step by step they can take up succession and decision-making. Perhaps it’s precisely this open attitude that leads many clients to feel we have “uncommon breadth of mind,” willing to teach them what truly matters—and trust, in turn, grows all the deeper.

The ideal state is for the family to truly produce a capable second-generation leader from within, one who can shoulder the great beam of family legacy. When that day comes, we step back behind the scenes and appear only when needed—not because the client has become “easy,” but because we no longer need them to be.