Have You Heard?

For two days, I lay there in the darkness, shades drawn and the covers pulled over my head. I was paralyzed — with fear, with self-loathing, with shame, and with a realization that I didn’t know what to do next.

I had hundreds of creditors I couldn’t pay. Hundreds, affecting the lives of thousands of people. A few days before, one of them had called me on the phone. “I want my money by Friday or I’ll kill you,” he said.

So writes entrepreneur Jack DeBoer in the prologue for his new book, “Risk Only Money: Success in Business Without Risking Family, Friends and Reputation,” which will be published June 8.

The 80-year-old has given countless speeches over the course of his roller-coaster career in hotel and apartment development. For years, people have asked for copies or for his notes — anything they could study.

So, out of a sense of obligation, DeBoer wrote this book to share the lessons he learned the hard way.

Lessons that “had I known, I wouldn’t have suffered a lot of the pain I’ve been through.”

Writing the book, which DeBoer has been working on the last three or four years, presented its own difficulty.

“I wish I could write it and not put my name on it, but I’ve been talked out of that,” DeBoer says.

“I do not want this to be viewed as the story of Jack’s life. That’s not the point of the book at all.”

He divides his book into three areas: striving, success and significance.

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