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

All of life is an ebb and a flow.

Success, beauty, joy, failure, disappointment washes in and just when you think any or all of these facets of life are permanent, they wash back out to the sea.

Gone. A thing of the past.

Why does this 180 occur? Only God knows. The seas ebb and flow, as does all of life.
The most interesting thing, however, is that the wise and the tough - and they must be both - understand this rhythm and work with it, in fact celebrate it, for its own majesty.

What do I mean by this? So you take on a client, a customer, or even more importantly a friend, and you are delighted by the union. There is something deliciously new in your life and you want, you are compelled, you are thrilled to make it greater than the sum of its parts.

For a moment, all is easy in the honeymoon. What a magical word “honey moon.” And then issues emerge:

* Are you serving the customer well?

* Is one plus one proving to be three?

* Is the client truly something special, a partner, or simply a party to a transaction?

If the latter proves to be true, the more you and your business give to it, the more disappointing that realization is. You are vesting in a ghost.

This must be where the term “paper thin” originated.

Back to the celebration. To the understanding of the ebb and flow.

The realization that we gave everything we had to a shadow but just because the customer proved to be an illusion, a wisp, doesn’t mean we lost a thing.

In fact, we gained. We learned more about the real and the artificial. About those who respond to a service culture, friendship, and those who live in a wax museum. Those who are not only no longer part of our extended family, but never really were. They are transactions lists. They are born for the ebb and the flow, especially the flow. All of our service methodologies fail to impact them because they are automatons.

Does this mean we stop behaving as friends? As family members? To the wooden soldiers, yes, but to everyone else who walks into our universe, our stores, our offices, our websites, of course not.

We celebrate the loss of the plastic. The customers who, once you seem to build a true relationship with them, turn quickly in search of a sale. Those who tell you in dozens of ways before you are prepared to hear it, that they see the kind of service you are seeking to deliver as a threat that pales in comparison to a cheap promotion.

And then, if you embrace the ebb and the flow, you wave goodbye. Why?

Because you understand. Because you never abandon your determination to give, to sustain your company’s service culture, your human human joy in moving beyond the transactional.

You just learn which doors to enter and which to close.

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

Okay, so the nation is stuck in the quicksand of a subprime crisis, millions are driving away from their split levels, banks are hemorrhaging red ink, the battered stock market is teetering on a free fall, and President Obama’s first day as Commander-in-Chief will be focused on declaring war on a full-blown recession.

As wise and creative as he may prove to be, he will likely tackle it the wrong way: the economists’ way, with all kinds of technical maneuvers five people in the Monetary Brain Trust pretend to understand. They will jiggle the discount rate and manipulate the money supply and create guaranteed mortgages and dole out health insurance and play 101 Washington games that completely avoid why we got into this morass in the first place and why we will do it again and again and again and again.

We formalize it all and make it sound inevitable by calling it economic cycles, but it’s really just a total personal failure on the part of Americans to treat money with the respect it deserves. Does this mean to worship money? Of course not. But it does mean to respect what money can and cannot do for you.

We all work for money. We all earn it. We all want it. The difference between the members of the religion of the rich and the atheists of the rich is that the former truly achieve financial independence from it while the latter watch it slip through their hands. And no matter how much they earn, they never feel rich. And they never are.

The idea is not to make as much money as you can, but instead to live life as fully and completely as possible. Of course, the two intersect. You need money to own a nice home (one you can actually afford), to vacation, to send your children to school, to weather the inevitable storms and curve balls, to indulge in luxuries now and then, to retire if and when you want, and to walk away from your boss or your client when they don’t deserve your time and your talent.

The only way to have this kind of wealth, this wealthy life, this independence, is to:

* Recognize that the most important money you have is the money no one can see. It is the money you don’t spend, it is the money that builds your financial bedrock, it is the money you worked for, yes, but that then turns around and works for you because it is invested in appreciable assets.

* Learn the importance of making money while you are sleeping. No one of real wealth earns it, grows it, and keeps it by simply working harder. They work smarter. They find a way to create a portfolio and\or to build a business that generates profits while they are fast asleep in their beds or dozing on a beach.

* Stop spending a dime to impress other people. This is incredibly shallow, hollow, and self-defeating. It prompts millions to buy homes and cars and Christmas gifts they cannot afford. It makes them slaves to jobs they hate, to bosses and careers they detest. It assures they will never have financial independence. It is the real reason for the mortgage crisis. It is the real reason people don’t have the money to retire after a life of labor. It is the real reason why people with no money for health insurance spend hundreds on lottery tickets. It is the real reason why men, women, and entire families with very significant incomes have no money in the bank and need sleeping pills to escape the night.

Working hard is noble. Working smart is even better. Making money this hard, along with smart work, produces a wonderful reward.

But unless you treat that money with respect, unless you live below your means, unless you treat the creation and protection of wealth as a near religious experience, you will always wonder why it’s you who comes up short.

When it’s no mystery at all.
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.

There’s a part of all of us that wants, that demands, to be rooted in reality. To see what we are asked to believe in and to have empirical evidence of its existence.

Makes sense.

No it doesn’t.

You’ve never seen relativity, E=MC², but you believe in it. You have never set eyes on it, you have little or no idea of how it works, but you embrace it as one of the great feats of human history. Hmmm.

Still we are convinced that the really wise amongst us are hard-nosed realists who refused to indulge what we can’t put under a microscope and see with our own eyes. And then we fall in love and are swept away - sometimes over and over again - by a chemistry that is completely invisible.

And then there’s Beethoven’s Fifth and Faith and God. All invisible. All infinitely more powerful than anything you can put on a conference table and subject to legal, managerial and scientific due diligence.

Richard Kneer, creator of the hula-hoop and the Frisbee, died recently. Throughout his life he went sight seeing on The Isle Of The Invisible, as did Einstein, and Disney. So does everyone who creates something new as opposed to managing what is handed to us by history, ancient or recent.

It is all about dreaming. About saying what you can see, what you can measure and clearly define is simply a starting point. From this base of knowledge, this so called state of the art, the dreamers turn plastic tubes into toys that make millions want to hula and phones into entertainment centers and human relations from people going through the motions into teams of one sort or another that soar through space and reinvent everything the psychologists and sociologists define as normal and healthy.

Everyone who has ever done anything great has indulged in cartoon imagination. They left the realm of the absolute certain and had the drive and the guts to explore where there are no markers. No boundaries. No rules, because it is all undiscovered territory.

Pack up. There’s no better time to go sightseeing on the Isle Of The Invisible.

Yesterday Bill Gates announced a new approach to 21st century capitalism, and in the process he apparently transformed himself into God. Yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates declared that the world’s top executives should supplant capitalism for charity. Gates asserted that the world’s most successful executives and companies should switch from American capitalism to “creative capitalism” to assist the world’s poor and under served. While a very worthy idea, it begs the question: why didn’t Gates promote this idea when he was a capitalist himself?

For the past thirty years, Bill Gates has been a competitive, tough businessman obsessed with getting his product into the lives of every human on the planet. “Now that he’s done with capitalism, he declares that everyone else should give it up, as well,” says Mark Stevens, CEO of the global marketing-sales-management firm, MSCO. “In the wake of a U.S. recession, the sub-prime crisis and vast federal debt, Gates wants us to abandon capitalistic pursuits,” says Stevens. “Unfortunately, like so many capitalists before him, Gates reached an unfathomable pinnacle, and now is taking a free fall plunge into the surreal.”

Stevens cites other examples of such a peak-and-free fall pattern including Henry Ford, who became an avowed anti-Semite after his success mass-producing the automobile; John D. Rockefeller, who oversaw a petroleum production monopoly and then gave his vast fortune away; and Charles Lindbergh who completed the first solo transatlantic flight only to then help the Nazi regime during World War II.

Stevens adds: “Hey Bill, what time is Ballmer getting on the plane for Zaire?”

When you sit together in silence and the music plays without a sound, you know there is a love no one has to work at. No one can replace. No one but a very few - perhaps no one else at all - can experience. It is yours. Everyone else can only look on in envy. It is The Music Of The Silences. And it is so much more powerful than the music of the orchestra. Of the exclamations. Of the boisterous proclamations. When nothing has to be said, and yet everything is as clear as can be, it is a masterpiece.This is the art of the subtle. Once in a lifetime it strikes from nowhere and must be treasured for the rarity it is. But we must also learn from it to enhance our careers, our businesses, our lives.

Every great love has a quiet confidence about it. Every great business person lets their accomplishments talk for themselves. Every great company delivers something exceptional and allows the silent referrals to build its base. People go to business school for years to learn how to make noise. To beat drums. To spend zillions on advertising. Caught up in the machine of conventional wisdom, they forget that yes, life imitates art but business imitates life as well.

Look around at your loves, your friends, your romances. All hold greater business lessons than a lifetime at Wharton. All of the passion, the pathos, the complexity in your personal life, has a mirror image on the business side of the ledger. Actually, there is no other side. It is but one ledger, one canvas, upon which we paint ourselves, our minds, our hearts, our brains. Everything you do in the dark-far from the office, removed from the Blackberry-has implications, has learnings, has analogies, for everything you do in the neon of the boardroom.

If we can look through the Berlin Wall of our imagination and look from east to west, personal to business, business to personal, without obstruction, knowing the lessons apply in both realms because in reality there is only one realm, LIFE, we are infinitely smarter than if we allow only the Harvard Business Review to guide us. We learn more from love than we can from an MBA. More about business. About how to deliver greatness. How to respect and adore. How to drive for the exceptional. How to identify the good and the great and how to accept nothing but the latter.

A champion diver lands in the water without making a splash. If you have ever been privileged to hear The Music Of The Silences, you have the greatest education, and the most magnificent gift, anyone can provide.