The new issue of Networking Times just went on sale and online—and this issue contains a special sneak preview of our companion volume to The Go-Giver.

For this year-end “Giving” issue, in place of my usual last-page editorial, we printed a piece coauthored by Bob Burg and myself entitled The Opposite of Dismal, which is adapted from our forthcoming book, Go-Givers Sell More, scheduled to launch on February 18.

Here is a portion:

To be successful in this business, it’s important to understand how giving works. The essence of it is this: the more you give, the more you have.

How can that possibly be true? It seems to fly in the face of logic. But it is logical—it just follows a different sort of logic from the one we’re used to, something like the difference between the classic physics of Newton and the strange world of quantum mechanics.

Newtonian physics has a 2 + 2 = 4 kind of logic: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Picture atoms, the ultimate building blocks of nature, as little billiard balls: inert bits of matter that move when you hit them in predictable, linear paths. Bank the 6 ball off the side, hit it into the corner pocket.

But as quantum physics discovered, atoms are not inert building blocks at all, but are themselves tiny universes each embodying unimaginably vast amounts of energy behaving in entirely unpredictable ways that seem to defy Newtonian logic.

Classic business operates by billiard-ball logic: action = reaction. You give me $100, and I’ll give you $100 worth of lumber. You loan me a grand, I pay you back a grand plus interest (friction). Classic physics says, when you give something away, you no longer have it: transactions deplete. Sell off your lumber, steel, oil, hours, effort, and it’s gone.

Economics is called the “dismal science” because it catalogs this ongoing process of depletion.

But managing relationships based on the billiard-ball logic of economics is not a very productive way to live. Good for keeping track of widgets, foot-pounds and minutes on the clock—but not of people and their interactions. We try it anyway: “I did the dishes last night, tonight it’s your turn.” And for a while, it seems to work—but never in the long term. The arithmetic invariably breaks down…

You can read the whole article here.