When I was a young man, I met ice cream impresario Tom Carvel: widely credited as the entrepreneur who created big league franchising.

What struck me most about our conversation was that Tom’s first store was an accident: when his truck broke down on a road in Westchester, NY, and he lacked the funds to repair it, he started selling ice cream from the spot where he was stranded. He was smart and flexible enough to recognize that his original business plan wasn’t as good as the accident he had stumbled on to …..and he let the latter drive his success.

Levi Straus. Nike. Gatorade. Craig’s List. All more or less accidents
or experiments that turned out to be major enterprises. There is such a convoluted irony, a staggering twist of fate, in a guy who decides to create a superior running shoe with a waffle iron, succeeding at it and then turning that track meet tinkering into a global business.

There is a profound life lesson embedded in this syndrome. Sometimes, many times, more often than we give credit for it because to do so would toss out the rules and violate the convention that empowers so many of the guardians of the status quo – the lack of planning, of wrapping everything up in a ribbon, is the true driver of exceptional success.

Instead of holding life close to us and seeking to pull all of the levers in perfect synchronicity, sometimes we are better off -more successful and exhilerated-letting life run away from us and seeing where the jet steam can and will take us. Like a kid on a beach watching our kite do the kind of aerial acrobatics we could never engineer on our own, we need to let the wind do its magic and marvel and learn from it.

The other day, I observed the absolute worst salesperson I have ever had the painful experience of watching, try to make a sale. She came to the scene of the crime with a carefully scripted pitch in mind and as much as she saw that it was the wrong pitch for the wrong prospects, she refused to listen, to stumble on to an opportunity to sell her product in a different way, to have an accidental success, to watch her kite waltz through the afternoon sky.

She was opposed to accidents. Immune to them. Determined to stick to the script. She advised us that she was a Harvard MBA, that we were the equivalent of poorly informed misfits and she wasn’t going to find a way to sell her ice cream from a broken truck, thank you, no matter how much we were cheering her on to do just that.

We wanted to buy her product. We wanted it to work for us. But she refused to help us fall in love with what she was selling. She was a Harvard MBA. She didn’t deal in love.

History is replete with accidents that evolve into epics. When Abraham Lincoln was running for President, he was an accident of a candidate running against pillars of the nation raised by writers of the rules, of the conventions, to win high office and preside over the nation.

When Lincoln and his adversaries arrived at the Republican Convention, it was the accident who walked away with the prize and the same accident who would construct an administration of men he could not easily control, so that he could watch them invent solutions for a plagued nation. Men of soaring ambition and substantial intellect. Men who might rush past him in the jet stream.

Precisely what Lincoln prayed for. Abe knew he needed a plan to save the Union. And an accident.

As you construct your companies and departments, as you help to guide their evolution, as you preside over your life, welcome the accidents everyone tells you to beware of.

Mark Stevens
CEO

The hardest thing about learning how to fly a plane is learning how to fly with instruments. And what makes that so challenging is that you have to abandon all of your instincts, forgo everything you have been taught to do to that point, and trust the invisible.

There you are flying through fog, through dense clouds, you can’t see up, down or straight ahead. Nothing but white out. And it feels, almost for certain, that the plane is tilted wrong, or pointed earthward or upside down. And you want to steer through it, to correct what feels wrong, to get back on course, but the rub is that the instruments say all is fine. You are flying right. All is well.

And although you can’t see a damn thing, you have to trust the instruments and stay the course even though its feels as if you are nosediving toward disaster.

People spend their entire lives seeking to avoid this sense of uncertainty. Of refusing to trust what they can’t see. Of staying planted on the ground, out of the skies, nowhere near the clouds. They believe the choice is simple: know precisely where you are at all times, that you are flying right, straight and true — or never let the wheels leave the ground.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could be a more devastating deception they play on themselves.

The fact is, we are all pilots in fog at times. Some embrace this as part of the adventure of life. And as a state of adrenalin rush that is the difference between watching the evening weather report on TV and falling in love. Or starting a business with your own money. Or reinvesting in one that’s clawing its way through a rough patch.

Let’s take the romance part. Recently, I heard someone say that they didn’t want to fall in love because “It might not work out.” And then they said, “If I fall in love and it doesn’t work out, well that would be like a car accident. ”

The message was, stay out of the fog. Well, excuse me, that means stay out of one of the best things life can possibly offer us.

LOVE.

Here’s what I see as the point: there is no point. Just life livers and life pretenders.

I wish the best for the latter but they bore me to tears. They leave the earth no better than when they inherited their space in it. They take up space. There are no medical centers named for them. They have never built an enterprise. They did not write Imagine. They don’t know how to collaborate on an opus like that. They may be sweet and kind and brush their teeth and iron their clothes and send Hallmark cards and be politically correct and pass the social litmus test invented by liars and hidden atheists, but. But. But.

They have never had a snowball fight in fog. They need order, and there is no order in that.

I hear it every day of my life.

“I am afraid.”

People tell me they are afraid of losing money. Of getting sick. Of being misunderstood. Of shooting too high. Of being misunderstood. Of shooting too low. Of breaking some kind of social code someone at Harvard invented. Of being disliked. Of taking a risk. Of doing what society frowns at.

What they are really saying in so many words is that they are afraid of life. And once this fear is allowed to fester, once it is left unchecked, once it qualifies for all manner of justification, it sucks its victims into a black hole.

The fear mushrooms and the life diminishes. It is a miserable syndrome. It is paralyzing. It leaves its marks frozen in a compromised place, hostage to what everyone else wants but detached from the experiences, the journey, they really want to take.

Fear makes millions, billions, their own worst enemy. Their heart says fly me away to this beautiful vision that stands before me. Let me take it by its outstretched hand and soar to a place I know will be exhilarating, magnificent, rewarding, challenging, intoxicating, delicious. The hand is honest and pure and true and loving and willing to reach out over and over again, but the coupling never occurs.

Fear strikes. Fear stops. Fear freezes the momentum in its tracks. The person who needs to be safe, to pass the acid test of acceptability imposed by anonymous crowds, to walk the beaten path, to do the traditional thing, to insure against failure, says “No” to the dangerous liaison, the high risk project, the change in direction, the road the priests of false morality seek to bar from passage (for all but themselves.)

Paradoxically, fear prevails when in truth there is nothing in life to fear. There is nothing in death to fear. Fear is the enemy of life. If one has faith, if one simply identifies the few genuine truths and passions in their lives and pursues them with zest and courage, well that is the definition of a life well lived.

The universal aspiration should be to replace fear with faith. There are so many rich things you can do with your life that have zero guarantee of success but which you must jump into like a child cannon balling into a summer pond.

Your career.
Your romance.
Your friendships.
Your time alone.
Your time with many.

All must be conducted with a determination to do it your way, to fully cultivate the gift of life, to take the chances, to embrace the risks, to put the standard setters, the paper prophets, back in their boxes and to busy themselves with others.

You will not fear. You will pick your goals, decide when to act, walk the high wire, care nothing at all when the fear mongers chasten you. You will go to that special place where people achieve and experience the exceptional.
You will never again look back and say I let it get away out of fear.

You will not fear. You see the black hole. It is not for you.

There is too much life to live.

Mark Stevens
CEO

So I think Counting Crows is one of the best bands of the past two decades. No Led Zep but who is or was? At their best, Counting Crows was genuinely good, original, and at times (Recovering The Satellites, Anna Begins) exceptional.

And then they lost the artistic magic or Adam got tired or who knows what but a devoted following sat in disgust listening to Hard Candy, the first Milk Dud by a group of guys who seemed incapable of sinking so low.

Ok, so they had a loser. Everyone is entitled to a bad day now and then and so the devoted waited for the recovery album. And waited. And waited. And nothing…..

Until late last month when the band on the run released Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

It is a clunker. It is a once seamless band that made magic instinctively now trying too hard. You can hear the hard work. You can hear all the old riffs repeated here.

I think they knew it. I think they recognized this was January compared to August And Everything After.

So what do they do to breathe some life into a wounded bird? They try all kinds of traditional PR, which will drive some heightened anticipation for sure, but it’s sales they want. You can’t take anticipation to the bank.

They know a little secret about the Internet. You can listen to it. You can hear it. So they take the only hook song on the album, You Can’t Count On Me, create a landing page, give you a link to download and viola, digi does what print can’t even touch. (It’s not called a hook for nothing). It sells songs.

There is still a huge place for traditional PR in traditional media. And we should play it like it’s 1953. But with one hand, while the other is on the mouse. Because that “huge place” is relative and gets smaller every day.

And if you can’t hear the hook, you ain’t buying.

Think about it. The Web sings…..literally.

Mark Stevens

CEO

There are two kinds of people in this world. We’ll call them icebergs and palm trees. (Truth be told, there are likely thousands of types, but this is my blog and I’m in the mood to be simplistic. To make a point, of course.)

Anyway, back to my hypothesis, which I do believe in. In fact, which I think about all the time, some more than others, and when I do think about it, well, it opens up entire vistas of thought. Of insight. Of epiphanies.

Icebergs are impressive, but only from a distance. They can be beautiful in shape, pristine in color and composition, imposing in their steadfastness and they can be impervious to the elements that swirl around them. In human terms, they are stoic, silent, predictable. But get up close, scratch the surface, and it’s all just ice. It’s all rather cold. It’s all terribly inhuman. It doesn’t cry or think or change. It may melt, but that’s not the same thing as soaking in the moon and finding a way to chase it.

Palm trees give themselves up to the forces of the moment – the breezes, the gales, the tropical storms that emerge from nowhere and paint the day black – happy to twist and bend and make passionate love to the natural forces that rise up and make life so interesting, so compelling, so intriguing.

In my life, in all of the things I am so fortunate to experience at work and at play (which are really one and the same to me), I interact with and observe the icebergs and the palm trees. As I look for answers, adventures, innovations, collaborators, leaders, romantics, fighters, business builders, catalysts, friends, kindred spirits, inventors, new ways of growing MSCO, drivers of excellence for our clients and business partners, allies in my lust for life…..in all, it is the palm trees and only the palm trees that meet the test.

I need to be surrounded by palm trees.

It is only they who will not only accept the fates, the risks, the uncertainties, but will use the crazy quilt of life’s forces, of God’s forces, of the unknown, of the unpredictable, to continuously chase the moon, to reshape themselves, to give themselves with abandon to what they cannot see, or measure, or insure because they know, in most cases instinctively and subconsciously, that an iceberg is an inanimate object and a palm tree is a living thing.

The finest thing in life is to walk directly and confidently into the unknown. That is where success, in all of its forms, lies.

Mark Stevens
CEO

Today, I had lunch with two people I had never met before and it was one of those unusual encounters where the conversation zipped through a nanno second of small talk and zoomed into the heart of things. Into what’s this crazy thing called life all about and how do we leverage it to the hilt.

And I found myself ripping into one of my riffs about the two kinds of people on the planet. So now I’ll do it again to you. (At this point you may want to hit delete because this may be the musing of an overly philosophical mad man?).
So, the two kinds of people:

* Those in the “life protection” business.
* The tiny minority in the “live life like a reckless adventure” business.

The former want to be safe. To protect themselves from life’s curve balls.
To avoid risk. To be middle managers. To wear sunscreen. To drink wine spritzers. To do business as usual on the job because, well, it’s safe. To follow the rules. Anyone’s rules. Oh God, those rules are comfort food for the life protectors.

The latter say, I can’t protect against the vagaries of life. I can only wander out into the great blue unknown and revel in it. And if the sands shift or the plates slide or the bets come up bad or the curve balls come flying one after another, so what the hell. What the hell. What the flying hell. I will find a way to deal with it. I will see it as reason to think harder and smarter and cagier and to find a way to reinvent the wheel or to paint a gorgeous picture worthy of the Museum of Modern Art. I will walk right up to the safe middle managers so smug about their blemish-free performance record (never wandered from the straight and narrow, never made a single mistake) and I would break a rule right before their eyes. A sacred company rule. And then I would know how Picasso felt when he started turning French women into African masks. And when he made love in the middle of the day with a paint brush in one hand and a bottle of Bordeaux in the other.

Life needs livers. Risk takers. Dangerous minds. Total crazos. Lindberg.
Disney. Lauder. Houdini. Bezos. Jobs.

And we might as well all join category two. Because the life protection business doesn’t work. In the end, we all end, but the space from the beginning to the end is where the action is. And the action belongs to those who laugh at risk. Who jump into the water without a life preserver, swim the English Channel, stare down the sharks, best the world’s speed record, invent a novel category of software, put their chips on the line, fight to make it work and do it all again the next day.

That’s the arena. Everything else is like watching a concert atop Yankee stadium. Now that’s scary!
Mark Stevens
CEO

A few days ago, I was bestowed with a charming and old-fashioned gesture: A wish to “Have a Wonderful Weekend.” The problem is, the gesture was plastic. Literally. It was stamped on a bag of band-aids and toothpaste I’d purchased in a local pharmacy. Perhaps I am a cold-hearted SOB, but I don’t get the warm and fuzzies when a bag whispers sweet nothings in my ears. In fact I wanted to, and ultimately did, tell the pharmacy they would be advised to replace the weekend “love note” with one that reads: Whatever You Need, Whenever You Need It. Just call us at xxx or visit us at pleasingyoumakesushappy.com.

Why wasn’t this done at the outset? Why won’t they do it ever? Because what used to be one-on-one customer service that came from a culture that truly respected and appreciated customers as the soul and the lifeblood of a business has been reduced to a series of monotonous and superficial scripts that come from nowhere near the heart:

Have a nice day.

Please hold, we’ll be right with you.

If you would like to talk to a live person, press the pound key.

Well actually, I would prefer to talk to a dead person-or even a plastic bag- than push ten more buttons until I find someone totally annoyed that they have to DEAL with a customer. What’s really happening is that businesses are so focused on consummating transactions that they spend no time building enduring relationships. Plastic bags can’t do it. A “Thank You For Your Patronage ” note stamped on an invoice can’t do it. The only way it can be done is if Management develops a culture that truly embraces customers.

The classic customer service survey asks people:

1. Do you like our products/services?

2. Would you buy them again?

3. Would you recommend them to a friend?

What they don’t ask goes to the core of great business, of extraordinary companies:

Do you have faith in our company? Do you think we are committed to you?

They don’t go beneath the surface, the superficial, the scripts because they don’t want to know the answers. They don’t care. The DNA of true customer service, of businesses built on relationships as opposed to transactions, has virtually disappeared. Sadly, today’s managers think it’s all in the plastic bags.

Today, I sat on a beach and watched two yellow seaplanes flirt with each other. They dipped and banked, flew in tandem, then apart, only to line up again and then diverge under the gorgeous sun.

The courtship in the sky went on for all to watch, but I think I was the only one enrapt in their maneuvers. To me, it was as if they were without pilots: winged lovers playing out a relationship, testing each other, searching their souls, wondering if they were meant to be. Or not.

In their aerial ballet, they were cognizant, consciously or not, of The Line. This is the line between like and love. It impacts everything we do in life. And business is no exception.

When we like, we dabble and move on. When we love, we change. Forever. A part of us never reverts to the way we were before we crossed the like to love line.

Some companies know how to make this happen in the world of commerce. When I started out in business, I happened to meet dozens of Price Waterhouse clients. They were clients for decades and could not be lured away by competitors, regardless of the offer. I was told it was because PW had been working on their books for years and it was just too complicated to leave.

And I believed that nonsense.

Now I know better. PW trained its team to deliver a level of elite professional service and to treat clients as the kings and queens of the business world. Do that and you will have relationships that cross The Line, relationships for life.

In its heyday, Xerox used to pride itself on having its salespeople fly first class. Why? They were told that as the company’s sales force, they were the princes of the business. Elevated this way, treated with this rare caliber of respect, as royalty, they in turn served their customers in truly memorable fashion. The business world didn’t buy from Xerox; they adored the company. They would buy from no one else. They were in love.

All of the world’s greatest business people have been romantics. They are often painted as technicians or financial engineers or scientists, but first and foremost they are romantics. They have to be. They see The Line. They understand its power. They know why the seaplanes flew apart. They know it is better that they did because they were not the real thing.

But, they know how to create the real thing and the thermonuclear force that is unleashed when they do.

They get this by:

* Thinking ahead of you.
* Delivering what you want before you even thought you could get it.
* Generating a constant state of excitement.
* Creating the element of surprise.

In life, there is nothing more powerful than The Line. Getting close but failing to cross means you are a zillion miles away.

Back to Nature: A spiritual gathering with Mark Stevens at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation

Location: Ward Pound Ridge Reservation

Meeting Place: Trailside Museum Parking Lot

Date: Saturday January 26, 2008

Time: 12 noon – 1pm

Ward Pound Ridge Reservation means something special to us all. It is a place that helps dreamer’s dream and lover’s romance. Those with a heavy heart walk free from their sadness and melancholy if just for a moment. So magical is this place that something spectacular happens at the reservation everyday.

Something magical happened to Bedford resident Mark Stevens on a cold blustery day in 2005. He experienced an epiphany. Under a lone tree that soon became Stevens’ inspiration for the next year, he sat down and feverishly tapped the entire contents of his latest book, “God Is A Salesman” into his Blackberry.

Inspired by Ward Pound Ridge and in particular one tree, Stevens wrote a business book that illustrates how the power of faith can be cultivated and employed in all aspects of life and business. Referring fondly to this spot as the “God Tree” Stevens sees the miracle of worship brought out from the houses of prayer, away from the formalities of a sermon and laid bare in nature right here at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation.

Join him in the wilderness at Ward Pound Ridge, one of the most spiritual places on earth to experience the wonders of freedom, having faith can bring. Hear the story of how our beloved Ward Pound Ridge led to one of the most widely anticipated books, worldwide and how Stevens believes a great and genuine life is built on five key pillars.

This is a meeting with a difference…. it will be held at the reservation. There is no fee but please wear clothing suitable for the outdoors. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Melinda Mullin at Tel: 914 251 1500 ext 14.

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www.godisasalesman.com
MSCO 800 Westchester Avenue, Rye Brook, NY, 10573Directions to Trailside Museum Parking Lot

Ward Pound Ridge Reservation
6 Reservation Road,
Cross River, New York, 10518
Telephone: 914-867-7317

Interstate 684 to exit 6 (Katonah/Cross River). Turn onto Route 35 East for approximately 4 miles to Route 121 South. Turn right the entrance to Reservation is on left. The Trailside Museum Parking Lot is located inside the park about a mile and a half from the entrance.
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One day a few years ago as I was being wheeled down to the Operating Room for major surgery, a nurse asked me to name my favorite prayer. With less than a second of thought, I said the 23rd psalm and in an instant we were reciting it together. “The Lord is my shepherd….”

It is the masterpiece of prayers. Brief, gorgeous and inspiring. It puts life in the perfect perspective.

Note I said “life.” For all intents and purposes, the 23rd is supposed to be about death. “In the valley of the shadow of death…” But I prefer to see it as about life.

The psalm extols the values of faith and confidence.

Of living, and someday dying, without fear. With belief that we must live fully while we are alive on earth and let go with courage and dignity when the time has come to do that. When the time has come to rely on true faith. On God.

Continuing on this theme, a reader of this blog sent along a message suggesting that we should all contemplate what we would do on a given day if we knew it was the last 24 hours of our lives. Immediately, the mind whirls off to silly clichés filled with images of sky diving and bar hopping and wild spending sprees.

And then a lovely spirit I asked the question to, said, “Just what I am doing now. Enjoying a blue sky moment with a true friend in a little corner of the world that feels like heaven.” Nothing Hollywood would make a movie about. Just a friend and the sky and the sun and the warmth and the trust and the freedom and the absolute thrill of human chemistry when it is liberated to achieve and dream and love and sprint to places it has never gone before.

We all live in the valley of the shadow of life. This is our gift. This is our blessing. There is none better. Forget about the valley of the shadow of death. You have no control over that. Zero.

When you wake tomorrow, recommit yourself to life and;

• To risk.
• To courage.
• Rebuild your company.
• Quit your job.
• Invent something.
• Let go of an obligation.
• Kiss a friend.
• Make the impossible possible.
• Dredge up one of your failures of the past and make it work this time.
• Challenge your top three assumptions.
• Tell every judgmental person you know to look in the mirror before they speak another word.
• Admit your own worst trait and change it.

You live in the valley of the shadow of life. You are the luckiest person in the world.

Mark Stevens,
CEO

Tell me what you are going to do

tomorrow to live in the Valley of the Shadow of Life?