It amazes me when I see smart people sitting around a conference table, an 800-pound gorillla of a business opportunity or challenge looking them square in the face – and they have nothing to say. They don’t feel passion for the subject, aren’t sure they understand it, haven’t spent time thinking about it. So they observe. In silence.
And that speaks volumes.
The mental trick that is easy to play on yourself, to fall victim to, is that there is a rigid biforcation between business and life. But the truth is, it is one and the same.
You learn about business by first learning about life. How to work with others. Who leads and who follows. What differentiates the smart from the dunces. The power of curiosity. The results of relentless drive. The exhileration and sometimes the disappointment of love.
We learn all of this in classrooms and school yards and bedrooms. And if we are wise, we recognize there is a natural continuum to the workplace. The boardroom. The laboratory. The factory.
Once you understand that business is life, and you break down the artificial walls that are said to divide them, you will never sit at a conference table passionless. Speechless. Instead, you will think about how this so-so product idea someone has put before you lacks the attributes to elicit love from its target customer base and you will remind yourself that people act when they “fall in love” not when they “fall in like.” and you will have ideas for reshaping the product so that it can make that critical transition.
That’s not business, that’s life. Or perhaps it’s just the route to great business. And a great life. 
When I was first learning about business, and thinking that business and life were worlds of their own, I stumbled upon the great physicists. I read Newton’s laws and I thought, there is a powerful relationship between science and business. And then further, between science and business and the big ball of wax: life.
In every aspect of life, from product development to the cultivation of human relationships, at some point or points there are actions and then equal and opposite reactions to them. Did Steve Jobs know, when he was fired by Apple’s board, that he would return again and again, each time more triumphant than the past and then Newton would finally catch up with him? Not entirely. As he said at a Stamford Commencement speech several years ago, when the axe first fell at Apple, he was devastated. But in true Newtonian fashion, true life reality, he was in polar opposite land only years later. And now he is facing another Newton law about bodies in motion and bodies at rest.
When I met his double helix rival Bill Gates (I am now writing a book on Gates and Jobs), Bill told me his mentor was Nobel Laureatte Richard Feinman. A great scientist, Feinman was however particularly skilled at seeing science, and gaining scientific epiphanies, through the observation of every day life on the streets. He knew there is no science and life. There is just life. All fits under that vast umbrella.
This morning I hiked in the zero- degree sunshine of a glorious Northeastern morning, the ground white with snow, the trees glistening with ice. I had a dozen ideas, all inspired by the nature I was immersed in.
Four times I removed my gloves and with frozen hands, recorded the ideas on my blackberry. I was too excited to wait.
It is life.
Mark Stevens
CEO
Social poster
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It’s Richard FEYNMAN you’re referring to, Richard Feinman is also a scientist & the two get confused alot!
Dear Mark,
Just wanted to let you know Grant Griffiths and I are spreading a little link love for ya.
He and I agreed to guest post for each other, as our blogs offer related content. For my guest post on his site, I wrote up a little review of your book, and my experience attending your lunch seminar at the Tribecca Y in NYC.
Here’s the link:
http://www.blogforprofit.com/guest_post/your-marketing-sucks