I called a man about my roof and he told me not to hire him. He climbed up. He was up there eleven minutes. He came down and said, "You don't need a roof." I said three companies had told me I needed a roof. He said, "Yeah, they would." He said I needed four shingles and a section of flashing. He said the roof had eight to ten years left. He said replacing it now would throw away a decade. I asked if he would do the four shingles. He said, "It's a two hundred dollar job. I'll do it but you should find somebody closer, I'm forty minutes out." He talked me out of a roof and then attempted to talk me out of himself. I then spent four minutes trying to convince him to take my money. I made a case. I presented arguments. At one point I said the words "please, I insist," to a man who was trying to leave. I have crossed an ocean to argue with an American about why he should be allowed to charge me. He did it in an afternoon. Twenty thousand dollars declined, on a ladder, alone, with no witness, in eleven minutes. I asked him why. He said, "Because you'd tell people." I said I would have told people either way. He would have been paid and I would have said good things. He said, "Yeah, but not the same way." Not the same way. He can distinguish two kinds of praise. The praise for a job done well, and the praise for the job refused. He has determined the second is worth more. He is correct, because I am writing about him and I would never have written about a roof. I asked how many roofs he has talked people out of. He said, "A lot." Then he said, "I'd rather do four small jobs for you over ten years than one big one." That is a business strategy and it is also just the truth, and in his case those became the same thing, which is the only definition of an honest trade I have ever found convincing. Tell me about the time a guy told you that you didn't need the thing. I already know that's why you still use him.