Risk & Business Magazine Conner Insurance Fall 2016 | Page 14

RELATIONSHIPS What Are Your Most Important Relationships? Who Do You Rely On? Y ears ago, my friend Ken Glickman was speaking at one of my events to around five hundred people. The scenario he laid out went like this: Imagine being on the Titanic with three of your closest friends…and the ship starts sinking. Your friends are in the water and freezing, and if they don’t get a life jacket in one minute, they’re finished. The dilemma? You only have two life jackets. At that moment, you immediately come face-to-face with the difference between “important” and “most important.” Now, hopefully you’re never put in that sort of situation, but I’ve thought about that scenario a lot. Who can I really count on? 14 | FALL 2016 WHO WILL REALLY BE THERE FOR ME? Who can I call in the middle of the night if I needed $25,000 for an emergency, and, without any explanation required, would send it to me? Off the top of my head, I have dozens of people like this in my life because I try to live my life in a way that is focused on being valuable to others. However, it can be hard to narrow things down to just a few key relationships. This process of elimination forces us to think, “Who do I REALLY rely on?” The most successful people make asking themselves this question a priority in their lives when it comes to budgeting focus and energy to their most important relationships. In my own life, a lot of times I will do genius networking by connecting my friends with each other, and they will often become even greater friends with each other than they are with me. This actually points to another rarely revealed reality: Since I hang around many successful entrepreneurs, I know for a fact there are a lot of very successful LONELY entrepreneurs. For instance, I remember being at a spa with someone who is famous (I won’t share their name here), and we were just sitting and talking. I asked, “Who do you hang out with the most? Who are your friends?” Their response was, “This is the first time