Risk & Business Magazine Cooke Insurance Group 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?

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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