My Client Retired 10 Years Ago. We Still Talk About Roses.

He built IoT smart home devices in France. He'd been cheated by a supplier. He still chose to trust a rookie. Fifteen years later, they're still talking about roses.

Michel is French. He ran an IoT smart home company. And he was the first person in this industry who truly believed in me.

I can't recall the exact year — 2011, 2012, somewhere in there. What I do recall is him telling me, matter-of-factly: he'd been cheated by a Chinese supplier. Never got a cent back.

So when we discussed our first order, he made a request that stopped me cold: ship first, pay later.

For a rookie barely out of her depth, that wasn't a payment term. That was terror. I stalled for days. Couldn't bring myself to say yes.

Michel didn't walk. No impatience, no ultimatum — just steady, unhurried emails, nudging a frightened newcomer forward, one message at a time. Then he offered a way through: let's start small. I'll pay upfront.

That first order arrived without a hitch. I sat alone in my rented apartment, exhaled, and for the first time in my working life, allowed myself to believe that trust between a buyer and a supplier could be real.

After that, Michel would say the same thing almost every time we spoke:

"Lisa, you are always first."

It meant this: if I could supply it, the order was mine. No bidding. No backup. No second source. To a girl who could barely write a business email in English, those five words were everything.

He gave me so much more than purchase orders. He taught me how to price without panicking, how to write an email a European buyer would actually read, how to negotiate without losing my footing. From 2011 to 2016 — a handful of years — he walked beside me through the stretch of my career where the ground was least steady.

Michel retired in 2016. He was 55.

But he never really left.

The holiday greetings kept coming, right on schedule. Every spring, without fail, he'd send photos from his rose competition — that vast estate of his, spilling over with blooms and vegetables, a ritual between us that nothing has ever interrupted.

One day he told me: after retirement, every supplier went quiet. Only Lisa still writes.

Just yesterday — March 17, 2026 — my colleague glanced at my screen and froze. "Michel? Hasn't he been retired for, like, ten years?"

I shrugged. Yeah. Isn't that what you do — stay in touch with an old friend?

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Michel's son was driving an ambulance in France. He was terrified for his own family. And still — still — he was checking on us in China. During those months, his daughter would occasionally send a message on his behalf:

My father wants to know if you're safe.

Sit with that for a moment. A retired Frenchman, on the other side of the world, asking his daughter to message a Chinese supplier to make sure she's okay.

A client-vendor relationship doesn't look like that. Something else does.

It's 2026 now. Michel is 65 — three children, four grandchildren, a home full of noise and warmth. And yesterday, March 17th, we were messaging each other. Same as always.

I sometimes joke: I outlasted my client's career.

The truth, though, is simpler and sweeter: my client retired, and he didn't forget me.

Michel taught me one thing that I carry into every deal I touch:

Trust isn't built on the first order. It's built on the fifteenth year of showing up.

That's why I don't treat clients like transactions. Every BOM I source, every shipment I track, every email I write — I'm asking myself the same quiet question: fifteen years from now, will you and I still be talking about roses?

I don't know when Michel will stumble upon this story.

And I don't know if you, reading this right now — a friend, a client, someone I haven't met yet — will one day find your name in the next one.