# Thinking about the Client Almost three decades ago, a Director asked me a question that has stayed with me ever since. *By Samuel Koh · 4 September 2026 · 5 min read · [Web version](https://samuel.producer.sg/papers/thinking-about-the-client)* ![Thinking about the Client](https://presso-app.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/presso/projects/EhbZ5fMKR5ugMuEGf/1788498429713.jpg) I was selling my technology to advisers in the market, and he wanted to know why. "Wouldn't you be a far more successful producer if you kept it to yourself?" He wasn't wrong about the arithmetic. But he didn't know what I was aiming for. I told him: if I use this for myself, I might serve 300 clients well in my lifetime. If I can put it in the hands of 1,000 producers, that becomes 300,000 clients. The technology was never the point. The client was the point. The adviser was how I reached them. That answer gave my work its meaning. It has not changed since the day I decided to leave my role as a Financial Planner at Manulife Financial in 1996, to focus on creating technology solutions to support the producer. Or so I thought. ### "I am thinking about the client" Recently, Lionel Chng, an industry veteran, joined our Producer Framework agency as an Account Manager. In one of our meetings, I asked him why he came on board. He said, simply: "I am thinking about the client." It hit me harder than he could have known. Because when I heard it, I had to be honest about how I've been running this business for the past two years. Producer Framework started with zero funding. It is three times the scope of my previous platform, which I sold three years ago. Building it has been a frenzy of financial pressure, product deadlines, market noise and survival. And somewhere in that frenzy, I noticed what our pitch had become. We go out and tell the market that PF has two focuses: - 1. Boost sales for the Adviser. Make more money. - 2. Boost recruitment for the Director. Make more money. Both true, effective. Yet incomplete. Neither of them says the thing I told that Director thirty years ago. Neither of them starts where my DNA starts. My mind was clouded, and I hadn't noticed. Then a man joined my own company and handed my founding conviction back to me in five words. ### The nod Yesterday, I presented to a young manager. When I introduced myself and PF, I didn't start with sales or recruitment. I started with the why. "We are thinking about the client. And then — how do we help advisers like yourself serve them better." She nodded. A small thing. But I saw in that nod something I hadn't felt in my own pitch for two years: recognition. She wasn't nodding at a sales pitch. She was nodding at a purpose she already carried herself, like many producers in the industry. That touched me. It also convicted me. ### The larger question I can't unsee Here is where the reflection widens beyond myself, and I want to tread with care. I am asking a question, not passing a verdict. Our industry runs on production. MDRT culture, the Million Dollar Round Table, has been an extremely effective way of driving that, in every company, globally. It pushes advisers to do better and sets a standard to aim for. It has been wildly successful, and it deserves that success. But every coin has two faces. If someone whose founding motivation was literally the client can get clouded by two years of production noise, what about the adviser who lives inside that noise for a whole career? Targets, qualifications, campaigns, recognition trips, leaderboards. All of it well-intentioned. All of it loud. So I ask, of myself first and the industry second: > Have we been asking enough about the financial well-being of the client, the person all of this is for? Is she really covered for the things that could go wrong in her life? Does the protection match the life she is actually living? Or have we, in the push for productivity, become more interested in closing another policy than in closing another gap? I don't ask this from a high horse. I ask it as someone who just caught himself drifting, and only because a colleague said five words that sounded exactly like the person I was thirty years ago. ### Returning to the DNA So this is my course correction, stated so I can be held to it. Producer Framework exists to think about the client first, and then to help advisers serve them better. Yes, the adviser who serves clients well will sell more. Yes, the director who builds a team of such advisers will grow faster. Income follows. But income is the consequence, not the compass. Thirty years ago, the answer was 300 versus 300,000. The number was never the point either. The point was the direction the thinking flows: it starts with the client, and everything else is downstream. I lost that thread for a while in the noise. I'm picking it back up. Thank you, Lionel. Sometimes the most important thing a new colleague brings isn't a book of business. It's a mirror.