No bookkeeping necessary.

When friends and trusted individuals are involved, the best policy is not to keep tabs on what one party or another does to be helpful or kind.

Being in the radio business, I came close to losing my house early in my programming career. A friend offered to give me $5,000 that would help me make the payment for a few months. But I refused. Said I had no guarantee that I could repay him and in fact didn’t even have a job prospect. I shook hands and left.

The next day he called me back to his office and took out the envelope again (it felt like a funeral scene from the Sopranos – you know, an envelope with money in it).

This time he looked me in the eye and said, “You are going to be somebody and I want to bet on you. I do not care if you ever pay the money back. It comes without strings”.

I reluctantly took the money and shortly thereafter got a great programming job. One of the first things I did was recommend my friend to be the station’s local attorney and I returned the favor.

How did he get me to take the money when I didn’t know if I could ever repay it?

He leaned forward and said, among friends “you owe everybody and everybody owes you”.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.