This is the most manipulative and ugly way I’ve seen to try to get social media traffic YET. Why can’t you try to convince people to link a *positive* post?

You can decide if you want to spend $100 a year buying stuff from friends and coworkers kids, but that is not the business relationship he is talking about.

Do I loan money to a friend? Only when it is for a good cause, and only if they don’t already owe me money. IE once I loan them money, and they don’t pay me back, then I don’t loan them anymore. Do I hold a grudge that they haven’t paid me back? No. At least, I try not to and rarely do. Recently I bought someone something they could not afford to buy, but really needed, with the understanding that the beginning of April, he pays me back. IF he does, great. If he doesn’t, then he is never getting a loan from me, until it is paid. In the past, he has tended to pay me back, slowly, but he has.

First of all, the clients I have wouldn’t come to me about personal training, my business has nothing to do with that. And, no one would come looking for my services at her studio, but I did it basically just to get her to stop asking about it.

To try to make a really long story shorter, I quickly realized that she belongs to a network of people who strongly believe in the “tit for tat” way of life. Something I’m not used to doing, not the way they do it anyway. Let me just outline quickly how it all ended up working:

Coach’s wife hired me for an assignment that earned me $90. A few months later she approached me and said that even though I hadn’t said how much business she had generated for me, she felt that in return, I should sign up for a year’s worth of personal training from her – to the tune of $800.

An accountant client of hers said she wanted to hire me. Trying to pin this woman down for an appointment, just to meet, was nearly impossible. I later found out that the woman didn’t really want to do business with me unless I hired her FIRST to do my taxes for me (I do my own).

A lawyer client of hers hired me and I earned $90. But, somehow there were some ill feelings after the assignment because I hadn’t called the woman to draw up will papers at her office (she’s a probate lawyer). I was told that if I wanted to continue working for the lawyer, I had to let her “handle” my estate matters.

A judge’s wife client of hers hired me and I earned $20. Even though the woman had said she wanted to hire me on a regular basis to work with her, she hasn’t called me since. Why? Well, first of all, I was supposed to rent office space from her (one of her many ventures, but I don’t need office space), I was supposed to support her adult daughter’s business by going to get a “make over” at the price of $450 (to give me advice on how to improve myself, it’s a consultation thing). And, when she had paid me the measly $20, she invited me to lunch, and I had declined. I didn’t know I was supposed to go to lunch and immediately blow it on a lunch for a price I could feed my whole family for.

So, I managed to earn $200 from these referrals. But in reality, I was actually supposed to be spending a whole lot of money. I didn’t quite get that at first, but now I do.

If my suspicions are true, then this woman’s “successful” business is really an elaborate bartering system. She is a client of each of her client’s. They keep each other afloat by “buying” services from each other. It works, if what you give is equitable to what you get. In my case, I would have been out a lot of money to earn very little. I couldn’t possibly offer equivalent service for service trade with these people. I got out of the mess by stopping by her studio, with a homemade fruit basket (she didn’t know!) and retrieving the remaining business cards I had there. My current and new clients hire me for a job, they pay me, and I go on my merry way. It works well that way.

I recommended a good friend who was a contractor to another good friend who wanted to have some remodeling done on his house. The contractor had done great work for me, so I introduced them. Well, half way through my other friend’s very complex remodeling job the contractor declared bankruptcy and my friend ended up losing $20,000 in the process. The contractor friend lost his business.

I ended up losing both friends because there were just too many hard feelings all around to overcome. I was mortified. How I wish I hadn’t put myself in the middle of that business transaction, even though it wasn’t my fault and I made the recommendation in good faith.

My wife’s work (7 women 1 man) celebrate everything and buy everything from each other, cookies, candles, sex toys and still have a great relationship.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry”

Of course things can go wrong. My BIL & SIL begged my husband to sell them his used all wheel drive car when he was ready to replace it over five years ago and they needed something more reliable than what they had at the time. They have not maintained the car well and now it’s really starting to show its age. After more than five years, *now* they call us to complain about every maintenance issue, as though we sold them a lemon even though the car is 15 years old and had been trouble-free until recently….

I have many friends who are in business; sometimes if they’re selling the products I want, I’ll buy from them, if they’re not, I’ll go elsewhere. It has quite honestly never been an issue. And if someone sucked up their dignity and came to me to ask for a loan, I would assume they were in a fairly desperate situation and would consider the request with the compassion it required.

On the whole, I don’t ‘lend’; I donate an amount that I am okay to never see again, and if they repay me, so much the better.