Every so often, life reminds us that at any moment we can be reduced to a bathrobe, a box of tissues, and a heroic dislike of soup.

When that happens, some of us might try to run our business from bed. This may feel noble. It might even feel necessary.  But a healthy company should continue to function well when one person is temporarily horizontal.

So, the job, when you’re sick, is simple: take care of yourself, and trust people to do their work. A fever has never improved anyone’s judgment. Most emails are not emergencies. And not every problem needs to be solved by you.

In fact, being sidelined can be useful. It reveals whether you’ve built a team—or merely collected people who wait for you to tell them what to do. The best employees rise when given a chance. Clear systems keep moving. Good culture shows itself.

Sometimes the best executive decision is to take a nap. The conference call can wait.

This lesson transcends one bad day in bed. We should strive from the beginning to build an organization that is steady, resilient, and that can function effectively without drama. Each member of a team should have clearly delineated responsibilities. If you have delegated wisely, and guided people well, you can create systems that do not stop functioning efficiently when one person catches a cold.

Build that kind of company now.

One day, when you’re under three blankets sounding like a broken accordion, you’ll be very glad you did.

I know that I am.

Alan

I have six adult children, ages 38 to 62—old enough to know everything, and wise enough to often prove it.

Over the years, I’ve adopted a simple parenting philosophy: never give advice to adult children unless they ask.

Not because I lack opinions. Quite the opposite. I have advice on everything—business, relationships, health, socks, breakfast cereal. I am, in fact, a walking advice factory, at least in my own mind.

But I’ve learned something important: advice given to adults has a strange side effect. It makes them feel like children, and no 60-year-old attorney wants to feel like a 12-year-old who forgot his homework.

Let me introduce the cast.

One child is a doctor married to another doctor. When I say anything medical, they smile kindly—the way grown children do when they know their father means well.

Another is a highly respected professor at UCLA. Happily, he not only accepts my ideas, but he also often asks for them, which is one of the pleasures of having children who have grown into people you genuinely enjoy talking with.

One is a successful attorney. Offering legal advice to a lawyer is like bringing your own spices to a Michelin-starred restaurant—and then critiquing the chef.

One is a yoga teacher, deeply experienced in KIUT yoga. I once tried to impress her with breathing advice. At 86, it turns out I breathe like an amateur.

The youngest two are just as accomplished and just as capable of making their own decisions. One is a talented writer who does not need my editorial advice. The other is an insightful therapist who certainly does not need my help exploring anyone’s psyche.

Yet sometimes I slip. Because a parent never fully retires.

Occasionally, I will hear myself say, “You might want to…” and immediately stop before I say more.

Advice is rarely about the listener. 

It’s about the speaker. It says, “I know better. Let me save you from making a mistake.” But what I’ve learned slowly, sometimes reluctantly, is this:

We learn most deeply from our own experience.  Painful, expensive and sometimes hilarious experience.

So now when a child calls with a problem, I listen.

And then I do something very difficult for me:  I refrain from solving their problem. Just…understanding, and respect.

Here’s the irony: The less advice I give, the more they ask for it. And when they do, I try to offer it not as instruction, but as a story…a possibility…a “this worked for me.”

There’s a quiet shift that happens somewhere along the way.  You stop parenting children, and you start loving adults.  They are no longer branches growing from you.  They are fully formed trees, with their own roots, their own seasons, their own storms. 

And if you stand back—just far enough—you can see something remarkable.

Not what they need from you. But the independent men and women they have become.

The greatest gift I can give them is not my answers. 

It’s my trust.

And in that small act of restraint—occasionally awkward—there is something that feels a lot like love.

Alan

Susan and I’d been married for about two years—long enough for me to know where she kept the coffee filters, but not quite long enough for me to know when I should keep my business worries to myself.

One morning, over breakfast, I overshared my business woes.

“I’m short on cash,” I said, trying to sound calm and CEO-like, which is hard to do when you have no idea how you’re going to make payroll on Friday.

Susan didn’t blink. Though she was a licensed social worker, she didn’t offer helpful advice, a breathing technique, or a reminder to eat more oatmeal. She simply said, “I have $40,000 saved. You can have it.”

Forty thousand dollars.

At that time, in the late 70’s, that was not just money—it was a lifetime. It represented years of discipline, delayed gratification, and probably saying “no” to anything indulgent, like shoes that sparkled or fancy vacations. And she offered all of it to me, as casually as someone might offer you a second cup of coffee.

I was stunned. Deeply, genuinely moved. I thanked her—profusely, embarrassingly, repeatedly. And then, being the practical businessman I was (and still am), I added, “The problem is… I could go through that amount by 10 a.m. and still need more.”

Not my finest romantic moment.

Somewhere, a poet lost his wings.

Years later, I read a Wall Street Journal piece about the Ten Rules of Business. Rule number one: Don’t run out of cash. Rule number ten: Don’t run out of cash. The other eight rules, the article suggested, were more or less filler—like the parsley on a steak plate. Nice, but not the point.

But Susan taught me something the article didn’t mention.

There’s another kind of “cash.” The kind you don’t list on a balance sheet.

Trust and generosity. The quiet, breathtaking willingness of another human being to say, “What’s mine is yours. We’ll figure it out together.”

I did solve the cash problem another way, the business survived, even thrived. I’m still in the game today, long enough to have learned far more rules, many of them the hard way.

But that morning stayed with me.

Because while I was busy calculating how fast I could spend $40,000, Susan was demonstrating something far more valuable: how quickly one person can give everything they have to another without hesitation.

And here’s the part that touches me, even now.

Cash problems come and go. You tighten, you stretch, you survive.

But moments like that?

They’re priceless.

And if you’re not careful—if you’re too focused on the numbers, the deals, the next 10 a.m.—you can run out of those.

Long before you run out of cash.

Alan