The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

To illustrate, Komisar takes the reader through a hypothetical Silicon Valley start-up, with an eager entrepreneur named Lenny trying to get funding for an online casket-selling business. As Komisar helps Lenny find the real purpose of the business, the passion behind the revenue projections, he reflects back on his life as an entrepreneur. Komisar emerges as a master storyteller, the kind of guy you'd feel honored to share a bottle of wine with. And you believe his conclusion: "When all is said and done, the journey is the reward." It's great if you've made billions on the journey, but the important thing is that you do something you can truly throw yourself into. --Lou Schuler

Product Description
What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life . . . ?

It's a question most of us consider only hypothetically-opting instead to "do what we have to do" to earn a living. But in the critically acclaimed bestseller The Monk and the Riddle, entrepreneurial sage Randy Komisar asks us to answer it for real. The book's timeless advice-to make work pay not just in cash, but in experience, satisfaction, and joy-will be embraced by anyone who wants success to come not just from what they do, but from who they are. At once a fictional tale of Komisar's encounters with a would-be entrepreneur and a personal account of how Komisar found meaning not in work's rewards but in work itself, the book illustrates what's wrong with the mainstream thinking that we should sacrifice our lives to make a living. Described by Fortune.com as "part personal essay, part fictional narrative and part meditation on the nature of work and life," The Monk and the Riddle is essential reading on the art of creating a life while making a living.

So, here's my attempt at summarizing the book. It's a story about a business plan being pitched by a budding entrepeneur that Komisar is reviewing for a VC friend. The (factitious...I presume) story includes Komisar's personal perspectives about how one's career interacts with one's life and passions, how his own career, life, and passions have evolved together, and how VC's look at business plans / ideas. The story is well written and not the typical Harvard Business School Press book, in that all of the wisdom and content are presented neatly within a story.

If you need more from your job than a wage, you will likely find some pearls of wisdom in this story. If you like what you read here, check out Komisar's article in the March/April '00 HBR. If you're interested in some insight into how VC's look at business ideas, there is certainly plenty of information within this story for you too.

Finally, about the five stars, the book is absolutely deserving of them. This story hit me right between the eyes in so many ways, was so elegantly presented, and so refreshing, that I highly recommend it.


Read this book before you write your business plan   May 15, 2000
K. Knight (Silicon Valley)
35 out of 37 found this review helpful

Consider this book a gift of 15-20 years, the period it took Randy to gain the life lessons that are conveyed in this deceptively thin, but deep, book.

So deep in fact, that many readers and reviewers may miss their significance for three simple reasons:

First, the book doesn't give answers. This is a brilliant insight which frustrates 'inside the box thinkers' no end. After you've written a dozen business plans and pitched a hundred venture capitaliists, you quickly discover the conribution of 'dumb luck' in getting a company funded and through a liquidity event. The hubris which generally accompanies fast millions blinds most people to the mere veneer of control they exert on the destiny of a business.

Second, some people won't get the cosmic joke. Using the vehicle of a pseudo dotcom called Funerals.com, the book gently makes fun of the absurdity of monomaniacal obsession with business, contrasted to the shortness of life. Again, the authors allow the reader to explore the journey of a startup in ways which few others dare imagine.

Third: they permit the struggle to appear deceptively easy. Randy glosses over how the passions of the founders are quickly subsumed by the demands of capital, perhaps the only shortcoming that bears mention.

If Randy or a top tier business school could develop an algorithm that properly values passion on the balance sheet, inspired founders everywhere would be more likely to adopt his guidance from day one.

Implicit in the message is the question: "What do you have to become to be successful?" Their insights may help you avoid a Faustian bargain. That is a gift you'll want to savor and pass on to others.


Passionate Entrepreneurship: Live Your Dreams Today!   August 17, 2000
Professor Donald Mitchell (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 96,000 Helpful Votes Globally)
23 out of 24 found this review helpful

Mr. Komisar has a simple message: It's the journey . . . not the destination . . . that counts, stupid! What that means is that you should focus on getting the most out of the moment, in creating a synthesis between what you value and what you spend your time on and do. The book opens with a brief story of Mr. Komisar giving a monk a ride on his motorcycle. After a long afternoon of riding, he delivers the monk where he wants to go. A few minutes later, he learns that the monk wants now to return to where they started. Finally, it sinks in. The monk just likes riding on motorcycles. He doesn't really have a destination in mind. Mr. Komisar connects that anecdote to his life as a young lawyer where he was so focused on goals, that he didn't see the conflict between his ambition for the future and the selling out of his values. Through a number of job changes and experiences, he emerges as someone who understands that the journey is all that counts, and takes on the role of virtual CEO for start-ups. This role means that he tries to help management accomplish what it wants, rather than representing the investors as venture capitalists do. It's a shift in direction that makes all the difference. My hat's off to Harvard Business School Press for publishing this heart-warming, inspiring book.

Most of the book is a fable about a stiff would-be entrepreneur named Lenny who seeks Mr. Komisar's advice. To get some idea of this fable, Lenny starts his pitch by saying that his business concept is to put the fun in funerals. Through the course of the book, Lenny learns (with a lot of prodding from Mr. Komisar and Lenny's co-founder) to connect to his original passion, to provide a place on the Web where geographically-dispersed families can connect to grieve when a loved one dies. They can also get advice on how to handle the grief and the funeral. Mr. Komisar interspaces his own experiences with the fable to provide context for his observations.

The fable is so far-fetched that it works well, because it allows you to see the differences more easily between serving an empowering vision that excites you, investors, potential employees, and customers and just trying to make a bundle.

For those who want to know a little more about fund-raising for start-ups, the fable is filled with worthwhile advice. If you want to know more, read Confessions of a Venture Capitalist (which I also reviewed).

At another level, the book makes the point that the reason to be an entrepreneur is to avoid the stultification of companies without a soul, operating only to meet the numbers. But you will have learned bad habits of forgetting about your soul-felt needs in mainstream corporate America, so you've got to regear as you enter entrepreneurship.

The book is very well written, and you'll get through it very quickly.

A good related book is Who Am I? which will give you tools to help you identify what you really want to get out of life.

You should also use this book as an opportunity to reexamine your beliefs about life and relationships. You may have lots of stalled thinking outside of your working life, as well.

Monk and the Riddle   April 13, 2000
Carolyn Gannon (Woodside, CA)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

A great book about more than just starting a company and the inner workings of Silicon Valley finance. It is about life, of finding the passion to go with the drive, of finding the value in people and discovering your core values. It is about how to live life. It will seen by most as a treatise on forming a business plan and selling it, but to me it is more about finding and fulfilling life's meaning, that each of us must create for ourselves. What is success but rather doing what we think is worthwile and significant. Time is not just change but an opportunity for the best kind of reward, excellance in our achieving our values. The journey has to be the reward for life is too short. I am reminded of a philiosopher years ago named Babarondus who spoke of living in the "frequency" of the moment. Randy explains this phrase as listen, learn, feel, execute, lead, find your excellance. And remember "No time to waste."


This one is a real keeper.   April 20, 2000
Bruce McNeece (Brooklyn, NY)
17 out of 20 found this review helpful

I don't usually read business books, but this is not your usual buisness book. Randy Komisar has been around the Valley for a long time, and here he tells the story of his wild career. At the same time, he takes readers along as he travels (on a Harley, I think) from deal to deal in Silicon Valley. You would think that his story would be all ego, like so many other business books. But instead he offers an entertaining portrait of a typical entrepreneur. Lenny, a guy who is all boast and energy, but doesn't really understand what drives him. Although the book touches on business issues--how VCs work, how to think through a business plan--its real focus is on personal growth and values. Unfortunately, this is a message sorely missing from most business books these days, and one that really needs to be heard. I know too many Lennys!