In my long journey as a mixer, producer, teacher, and mentor, many young people have asked me what’s most important in my career. Based on my experience in the music business, the answer to me is clear: friends. I might add that friendship is not only important in your career, it’s important in your life. From the perspective of my Buddhist practice, there is nothing more precious than friendship and the bonds you create with other human beings in your life. Since all the material gains can’t fit inside your consciousness, you also “can’t take it with you, as the saying goes. If you subscribe to the belief that life is eternal, then one thing is clear: the impact that you have on others and the ways in which you help others and minister to their sufferings is indeed the “treasure” that you take to the other side.

So what is the relationship economy? It is the strength that comes from fostering strong bonds of commitment and giving with people you encounter on your journey. My career over the past 35 years has included big successes, stratospheric highs, and devastating lows. That is the story for most people I know and have read about. So what is the most important thing when you’re successful, and more importantly not successful? It’s the friends you share these ups and downs with. I’ve spent years in the studio with world-famous, incredibly talented musicians and singers, and often what I’ve discovered is that the more famous they get, the more money they generate, the more isolated and unhappy they become. At a certain point, all the fawning and spending doesn’t bring them the happiness they crave. Soon they don’t know who to trust, and they end up in a self-destructive cycle, doing drugs and pining for the good old days when they were broke and happy. This is not a trope, it’s a well-documented real world situation.

Like any financial annuity, the relationship economy requires regular attention to mind the friendships that are your greatest asset.

I remember reading an essay about Christina Onassis, the daughter of the billionaire shipping magnate Aristotle, who married Jackie Kennedy after her husband’s death. She lived on an isolated Greek island and had to fly her “friends” in and bribe them to spend time with her. She was terribly lonely and had inconsolable depression. At one point she was so lonely she contemplated suicide. All that money and so unhappy. Why? Because money doesn’t bring happiness. Neither does having 10,000 followers on Instagram. Both of these concepts have been well documented.

My experience as a young engineer in New York City was a clear example of how important friends are. My first roommate in NYC was a drummer and fellow classmate at the University of Miami music school, Graham Hawthorne. Like me and other UM grads, we were all hustling around NY for gigs and supporting each other by attending each other’s shows and looking out for opportunities. Shortly after Graham and I moved into this shithole basement apartment in Chelsea, Graham started working as a drum programmer for Fred Zarr, a producer in Brooklyn. Yes, there were drum programmers who were drummers in the ‘80s. Fred was the music director for Madonna, who at that time was the biggest artist on the planet. Among other things, Fred was famous for playing the string intro to “Papa Dont’ Preach” on the Emulator. After a couple sessions at Fred’s home studio in south Brooklyn, Graham suggested to Fred that I also work for him as an engineer. At that time I was a lowly assistant cleaning toilets, answering phones, and making lots of coffee. I wasn’t able to engineer there and I was hungry for action.

Fred invited me to join Graham the next weekend at his studio. When I arrived and looked around Fred’s basement studio, all I saw were posters for all of Madonna’s records and movies. They were all signed by her, and for the first time in my life, I felt I was in the “Big Time.” Our first song was not for Madonna, it was for Fred’s high-school girlfriend, who happened to be a terrible singer…the worst. Her name was Betty, and we worked on recording vocals for her song for months, which at the age of 23 seemed like an eternity. Weekend after weekend, I would go to his studio and suffer through tortuous vocal sessions. When I’d get home, I would complain to Graham that it was the worst gig of my life. I wanted to quit. “Man, I’ll never get a gig with Madonna!” I would shout at Graham. As any good friend would, he counseled me to hang in there and that something better would materialize, so I took his sage advice (though I still grumbled).

A couple months after that fateful conversation Fred called me up and asked if I could come over and do a rough mix for a 14-year old artist he was developing for Atlantic Records named Debbie Gibson. I went over that Saturday and whipped up a decent blend on the song “Only in my Dreams,” and printed it to a DAT and forgot about it. Fred paid me $50 and I thanked him for thinking of me. Months later, Graham were at our favorite burger joint in the West Village, the Corner Bistro. As we were sitting in the booth waiting for our burgers I heard this song coming out of the jukebox. I recognized the intro riff…”dum, do dum, dayup..dum de dum, dayup…” I walked over to the jukebox. I remembered Fred had this long clap, that went “kawwww,” like the one in Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy.” My creative contribution to the rough mix was to put it in an auto panner, so every time the clap hit it would pan from right to left. Sure enough, I’m standing in front of the jukebox listening to my mix. “Holy shit! This is my demo mix. How did this happen?”

I called Fred straight away, and told him I’d heard it in a jukebox. Fred replied, “of course, Bob. It’s a hit on Billboard!” I replied, “What’s Billboard?” Fred said, “Bob, go to a newsstand and get Billboard magazine and open to the centerfold, the HOT 100.” Sure enough, there was a newsstand right down the street from the Bistro and when I opened to the center it was “Only in My Dreams,” number four with a bullet. I stood there on the corner in shock. How did this amazing thing come to happen to me?

The foolish person would say “This happened to me because I’m fucking amazing and I deserve it,” but the contrary is the truth. This happened because my friend and roommate vouched for me. Also, a new DJ on the scene — Little Louie Vega — had done an extended remix of the song, and after catching fire in the Miami clubs, the remix worked its way up the East coast until it became a number-one dance hit. Atlantic Records realized their good fortune and commissioned a radio single. They had to act fast, so they checked the vault and found my lowly $50 mix and mastered it. The rest, as they say, is history. Couple weeks later, I got fired from both my assisting jobs (they assumed rightly that I’d been working at competing studios) and I was summarily put on the street. Like it or not, I was now a freelance mixing engineer. Shortly thereafter I was commissioned to do several other records that also attained high chart positions, and I was on my way to success.

There are so many experiences I’ve had that led to more success and they were always the result of a friend vouching for me. I went on to do all of Debbie Gibson’s hit singles, and when it came time to do a remix for the B side of “Foolish Beat,” it was my friends, Graham Hawthorne and Andy Snitzer, who I called to play drums and sax.

Fourteen years later, Graham would call me again. His buddy, Tony Shanahan (who played with Patti Smith and other notable rock stars) was contracting a session for Trevor Horn, one of my favorite producers of all time. When I showed up for the session at the Hit Factory, there was Trevor Horn along with Diane Warren (probably the most successful songwriter in history), as well as Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer for the film Pearl Harbor, with Ben Affleck. Also there was the artist Faith Hill. The song was “There You’ll Be.” At the time, I had built a studio in Lower Manhattan called NuMedia. Trevor booked my studio and we ended up competing all of Faith’s vocals at my place. After that he flew me to Los Angeles to finish the tracking. For the orchestra, Trevor hired orchestrator David Campbell to write the score for a 140-piece orchestra. I remember commenting to the assistant that he looked an awful lot like Beck. He said “that’s because he’s Beck’s dad.” Wow. What an idiot…

Not only was the whole experience amazing, but the song was nominated for an Oscar for best song of 2000. Shortly thereafter, 9/11 happened. I was actually on my way to Los Angeles for the Latin Grammys. I was grounded in Detroit metro airport, and ended up in a motel near the airport. The song that I heard on the radio all day long was “There You’ll Be.” None of this would have happened if not for my long abiding friendship with Graham, who is still a close friend to this day.

The moral of this story is that it is truly the relationships that you cultivate in life that bring you the greatest success and happiness. Of course, friendship is not a one-way street. Friendships need to be nurtured, and that means giving as well as getting. As I get older, I realize more and more that there is more to life than Gold records and chart positions. It’s very important to cultivate a life outside of your career. I learned this tough lesson after decades of workaholism. When the music business crashed and all the recording studios shuttered (including mine) I had to do a lot of soul searching to find meaning in all the wreckage. What I discovered (much to my surprise) was that my friends were my greatest gift and benefit during those difficult times. I also learned how important it was for me to be a good friend.