A billion women came before Marilyn Monroe. A billion have come after.

But she has never shared the stage, the life stage, with anyone. She is a timeless beauty, an exotic wonder woman, a sexual shockwave, an object of universal lust. And an extraordinary business lesson.

No woman ever stood in a room with Marilyn and felt beautiful. No man ever shared her presence and felt sane. She stole the heart of the most heroic athlete of her time, Joe DiMaggio–himself an American icon. She captured the soul of the greatest American playwright, Arthur Miller. She married them both and then she moved on to Camelot and wrapped the Commander-In-Chief, JFK, around her finger.

Marilyn is of no distinct period in history. She is known to teenagers and seniors alike, urban and rural, Elton John (who sings beautifully about her) and Vladmir Putin, (who has watched her films). The world loves Marilyn. Even those who pretend they are too smart and sophisticated to admit they do.

Marilyn Monroe is irresistible.

I watched a news story this morning on CNBC reporting on crowds lining up in the wee hours to buy the newly discounted iPhone. Why would they do that? Why did thousands do the same when the product was first introduced. Why have so many millions bought them when they already had phones?

Because Steve Jobs has always understood Marilyn Monroe. He has spent his entire career making sure he wasn’t selling things people liked.

Like is a commodity. Love is a force and a barrier to entry. Great marketing always finds a way to transition a product, a company, from like to love. If the marketing fails to do that, the marketing is just a glorified way of going through the motions.

I want to live in a world surrounded only by people and things that intoxicate me. Unfortunately, there are no such pure plays, but I am bored to tears when I have to spend time in the land of like. So I search out the people and things I can be passionate about– and like a soldier carrying his girlfriends picture into battle–I think of them. Amazing how they cast a glow that makes everything more beautiful.

Every time you wonder how you can make your business better, resist the temptation to read a treatise from Harvard Business School.

Look at a picture of Marilyn Monroe.

Mark Stevens

CEO

There are rumors swirling around Wall Street that Steve Jobs is dying. The Street cares because Jobs is the driven genius behind his miracle of an American wonderama company.

Without Steve, Apple would slide into mediocrity. A GM of technology. And with that ugly demise, its shares would free fall. So the Street cares that the man who is still a boy wonder may be dying.

And he is.

But before you rush to call your broker, so is everyone else. Ok. Ok. I know that’s not a very cheerful assessment of life but I can tell you I am usually a cheerful person. But my state of mind has no impact on what is for many, one of the most painful facts of life: that death comes with the package and the moment you are born you start to march to your demise. (Look, I didn’t invent this crazy system, so resist the urge to shoot the messenger. It’s just the way it is.)

No one is spared. Not Lincoln, Ghandi, Einstein, Mozart, Socrates, Curie, Garbo, Monroe . Nor will you. Just like Jobs, you are living and dying.

Now, there is a silver lining here should you choose to embrace it. While you are alive, the possibilities before you are limitless. You can soar through the days or the years and make magic happen during the time you have on this precious earth.

Allow me to suggest a few options, all of which I am pursuing, to make your life a concerto and your death, well just something that happens after you finish playing your piece:

* Take the elements all around you and seek to shape them into something greater than the sum of their parts.

* Go someplace you are afraid of, face down the fear and then revel in the new strength you have found.

* Spend time alone, talking to no one and instead using all of your creative and intellectual energy to make yourself wiser and more complete.

* Mentor someone who wants to learn from you….and encourage them to race past you in their level of achievement.

* Learn from a mentor who has shown you, in one way or another, that they are wiser than you.

* Rid yourself of all adversarial relationships. There is no place for this in life.

* Take your career to another level. Invent something. Create something. Look at what you have done to date as simply part of a continuum, an upward trajectory.

* Do not care a whit what others think of the way you live your life. It is, after all, yours not theirs.

Truth be told, Steve Jobs is living to a far greater degree than he is dying. Same for the millions of unknown men and women who are making a personal epic out of life and don’t give barely a thought to the final act.

Mark Stevens
CEO