“Trust is a Currency”

Last month, on the last day of the college recruiting period for the class of 2021, one of my friends and former college teammates reached out to me for help. He had a player that had dreamed of playing at Michigan but was not recruited although he was a top player in his state.

He sent me the kid's film but I didn’t watch it. He told me about the kid's other D1 offers but I didn’t confirm them.

I didn’t need the background, I trusted him.

I reached out to one of my childhood coaches for the cell phone number of Michigan’s top recruiter. As I was typing a message explaining the circumstances, he replied with the cell number of the recruiter.

He didn’t need the background. He trusted me!

As bad luck would have it, that recruiter had just changed his number that week.

I emailed my former intern who was a captain of the Michigan football team in 2012 and was on the coaching staff at Michigan last year before being hired by the Bengals.

Within an hour he sent me the new number. He didn’t ask for a bunch of details. He trusted me.

Michigan looked at this kid's film, talked to my buddy who set this all in motion, called the student-athlete, and offered him a spot on the team.

In a matter of 24 hours, this all occurred because of trust.

Earlier this month a parent sent me an aggressive text because I wasn’t willing to write a letter of recommendation for her son. I tried to explain, unsuccessfully, that it would be too expensive for me to write that letter because I wasn’t sure that her boy could be trusted to deliver on his word. His lack of follow-through could cause harm to an infinite amount of folks who may need a solid recommendation in the future.

Trust is a currency and he had spent all of his trust with me. Perhaps over time, it can be earned again, but it’s too important to me to be able to help the people who have not erroneously spent their trust.

It’s the best way I can deliver on my personal ethos:

“Obsessed with creating access to opportunity for others”

If you want to be of use to your friends, family, and community, you have to take great care of whom you spend trust on. That trust can be invested in the right person or thrown away forever on the wrong person.

Be careful what and whom you spend your trust on.

Also, GO GREEN!!