I was in a mad rush to get to the funeral and was dreadfully late. Although I live in Silicon Valley, I punched the local address into the GPS on my Prius and the electronic voice advised confidently, "It's 54 hours and 3,615 miles to your destination." It thought Oak Hill was in Tennessee, so I called the front desk. "Thanks so much for calling us today!" the receptionist answered in a voice so perky it would have been better suited for a toy store or theme park. When I arrived, I spotted her dazzling white teeth and blond braids as she enthusiastically pointed to the black hearse and ancient-looking pallbearers. "You will find Irving and his family out there!" she gushed.

I was listening to voicemail on my cellphone while driving 2 mph in a funeral processional and I didn't have the juice to return any of the calls. As we cruised painfully and haltingly through the cemetery, there were gravestones teetering as if ready to collapse in this old section of the park. At first the rundown tombstones looked like a Disney attraction or preparations for Halloween. But they became more menacing as the sky darkened and rain smeared my dirty windshield. There was row after row of weathering sandstone with names of loved ones almost melted off. Epitaphs became incomplete as the storm scratched earthly sentimentality from the rock: "She was the best mo..." "A loving father... "...in peace"

On the far side of a stone wall, I found what was apparently the Jewish quarter and the tombstones were even more jammed together, twisted and crumbling. It made me feel queasy to see so many shoved together as if they were an inconvenience, an afterthought or an uncomfortable obligation. As the long line of cars stopped one last time, a gust of wind banged persistently, resisting my efforts to open the door. I abandoned my broken umbrella and followed a weepy black line of mourners to a sparkling oak casket poised over a ten foot, perfectly carved, rectangle pit. The rabbi handed me a shovel and I was uncertain what to do with it. He gestured to the pile of dirt and the line of others pitching earth on the beautiful woodwork. I pushed the spade into the dusty clay soil and, as I lifted, the wind ignited the dirt into a cloud that exploded into stinging dust and turned my crisp yellow tie black. Now all of us were wiping our eyes.

When my parents died it was a great relief considering their circumstances and pain. It was of course a tragedy, too, but this funeral was different.

Actually both my parents refused to have funerals. I had answered my mother's wishes for her body to be sent to Stanford Medical for students to explore. She made those plans on the day I was born, September 28, 1957. She and her dad had narrowly escaped death when he was a NY street cop working in Queens and she had always talked about how that made her a survivor. She nearly lost her life again before I was born when a rare breakout of polio swept Silicon Valley. She spent 6 months in an iron lung on death row and spent another year learning to walk again. Then by accident, she was pregnant again. Her first son had died at birth. Her second son was born with brain damage. Why she chose the birthday of her one and only healthy son--why my birth to make such odd plans for her demise in an anatomy class, I was never clear. I suspected it was titillating and humorous political statement for her. A declaration of independence from polio and prior tragedies or from rotting six feet under. I admired her zest for survival, but the thought of her stone cold at my alma matter was gruesome. I would have preferred a funeral. My dad insisted on cremation, with his ashes scattered at the lighthouse at Santa Cruz beach at his request. But his parents were somewhere here at Oak Hill. I'd never buried anyone before. I'd watched people die, but never this.

Leaving 25 voicemails unanswered, I felt blessed that I could run from the funeral to a flight to San Diego. I needed the distraction. Training Magazine was a very successful event...125 of the biggest companies and lots of rich engagement. At the reception that night, I got mobbed by people touched by my message. It was Cinco de Mayo, and there was a hunger to party about being alive. Simply alive, with permission to live with purpose. When you're at so many companies, you don't get to hear the message often enough. It felt great to come from a funeral to a ballroom of people who needed healing. After all the busyness of business life, you don't have to go far to find a place where none of that busyness matters. A blink of the eye...and it all comes down to is how you serve.

Sean Rooney and Beverly Eckert met at 16, and while the adults warned them away from each other, they were together for 34 years until Sean was killed in the Twin Towers on 911. Yesterday Beverly was one of the 50 people who died in a plane crash near Buffalo. My radio mentors Davia and Nikki met Beverly in 2001 when she called the NPR Sonic Memorial phone line and shared the phone messages she received from her husband, Sean Rooney, shortly before he died. Beverly was on her way to Buffalo for a celebration of what would have been her husband's 58th birthday. When the project was honored with a Peabody Award, it was Beverly's story they chose to play at the ceremony. (I was exec producer of the Audie-award audiobooks for this project and member of their board. Another reminder of how we must treasure daily the love of our loved ones. Listen to Beverly and Sean's messages in this link .

Listen here

Imagine 100s of white-knuckled entrepreneurs gripping their PDA's

Fortunately, what started with great distraction from a plunging Nasdaq ended with a room full of happier campers. There was no point leading off with the usual powerpoint presentation as the financial tsunami drowned the audience. I closed my laptop on stage and walked out into the nervous crowd. It was much-needed group therapy for the first 20 minutes. I was reminded of Schwab in the 1987 Crash, when we were nearly wiped out. Had we not gone public with our NYSE IPO just a few weeks earlier, it would have been over for us on Black Friday. We didn't get even on the stock price for five long years. Who wanted to own a brokerage company during what we thought might become the Great Depression 2.0? It was a tough sale for us for years. What's clear to me now, two decades later, is that it was the buying opportunity of a generation. The landmines and bargains are even more extraordinary this time. Don't miss this fresh opportunity!

John Pappajohn says he flunked kindergarden. Not surprising if you're Greek and don't speak English. But for John, (above, right) it unleashed a need for self-reliance and risk that lies deep in the soul of the best entrepreneurs. It's common knowledge that those businesses that start out with overabundant funding fail as often as those that start with too little money.

Here in Des Moines, anyone who's made their living in or around America's heartland knows that a little scarcity goes a long way in creating discipline. When you don't take anything for granted, you're more likely to set a plan, stick to long-term thinking and not expect short cuts on the way to a good harvest. It's a wonderful combination of skepticism and unbridled optimism. You have to have faith to bet your life on rain arriving when you need it. But you had better be ready when it comes! Even after the 100 year flood, Iowa is one of the few states in the union with a balanced budget and the courage to make the sacrifices necessary to accomplish what they've set out to achieve without a hint of entitlement.

Venture capital pioneer John Pappajohn at 80 shows no signs of slowing down. He has more intellectual and emotional energy than men half his age and I'm proud to say I'm investing with John in one of his favorite new ventures.

Sir Richard insists that as the bloody pinkslips start flying, get off your bum.

Mark Thompson and Richard Branson

Sir Richard insists that as the bloody pinkslips start flying, get off your bum skip the pub and get down to business.

Step ONE: Whip out the address book and check in with folks to see how they are faring during this outrageous period in world history. It's in amazing times like these you don't have to worry about why you're calling! Give them a ring, drop them a note, send them flowers, take them a snack, email them an article--just be there for them adding some value and touching the hearts of everyone in your network.

Step TWO: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for people who matter! There is no bailout, no knight in shining armor coming to rescue us. We've got to be self-reliant and the most effective way that the world's most successful people do that is by helping others in times of need. You will earn huge points when you take one step beyond pleasantries and actually provide some support to others. 'Success is earned by helping others achieve success.'

Step THREE: Get Training & Start a home based business. You need that for three reasons: (1) It's smart to have a backstop, a fallback if the job doesn't work out. Beef up your skills in something you love and get set to start doing it. (2) Doing a home based business gives you some sense of control and reassurance if it's based on something you love doing. (3) If you don't know what that business should be, get a piece of paper and make three columns: In the first, Column A, put a list of all the things you love to do. (Stuff you'd secretly do for free, that give you energy and you're willing to tell the world about). Then in the next column, Column B, make a list of all the ways those things in Column A could be of value to others who will pay you for it. Finally, in Column C, write down all the people you know who might advise you, or somehow could be recruited to those passions. Nobody does anything worthwhile alone. Whatever you do, don't just sit there, as Branson demanded, extraordinary times call for extraordinary action! This may be the best time in a lifetime of excuses to get started doing something that really matters to you!!