My approach to business focuses on the basics: make sure income exceeds expenses by a wide margin. This may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how often otherwise intelligent people forget this. The entire internet boom—and inevitable bust—was based on the notion that there was a new paradigm where profits no longer mattered.

That said, business isn't only about making money: it's also about people and life. If you solely look at the balance sheets, you will lose sight of critical issues...and lose money. You must be able to understand and manage the human aspects—employees and customers. Forget their interests at your own peril. If you do, you will fail...and you will deserve to fail.

That said, there are times when myopic beancounters "win". Big businesses that use legal and political maneuvers to bend the rules in their favor can be contemptuous and even incompetent...and still make scads of money. But such businesses lack the skill to create things—and creating is what makes business fun.

Moving on. I have some business heros.

One business hero is James Burke (whom I've met), who led Johnson & Johnson through a product tampering scare by voluntarily pulling Tylenol from the shelves—and leading the effort to develop tamper-resistant packaging. His work personifies doing well by doing good.

I am also impressed by the internet hosting company, Rackspace, which offers incredible service to its customers.

Here's my recommendations: love your work; think in terms of people; watch the balance sheets—but remember to look up at the world.

Oh, and "marketing"? You need to have empathy to understand it and do it correctly. All the research in the world will be unintelligible if you can't empathize with your customers.