An invitation to the 2024 year-end gathering led me to take part in the 2025 Jeju workshop as well. I do not remember exactly what I said last winter. It is embarrassing. But as I came down from the stage, I think I had the thought, “Why did I even say that?” Among several CEOs, I must have been overwhelmed by the atmosphere and let the stories in my head flow out. #global #education #ECONINE members and so on. They were probably mainly aspirations for business expansion.
“Business is love.” My, business as love. In 2024 as well, without thinking deeply about the context, I attended the event at the invitation of someone I was grateful to and liked. While thinking about how to lead ECONINE’s future in a more detailed and strategic direction, I completed the MBA programme at Gaeinji Consulting Group, and through that connection, I came to this place.
But business as love.
It was a topic connected to a sentence I had recently held in my heart: “Love is intelligence.” If business is love, and love is intelligence, I arrive at the conclusion that as an ESG expert and as a person who runs an organisation, I must possess love and intelligence. It is truly difficult. At times like this, I should lean on collective intelligence.
What made this workshop special was that it was made up of presentations by the participants. Even in the taxi to Jeju I was still in an online meeting, worried I might be late, but fortunately I arrived on time. Presentations by CEOs with different years and paths of experience went on for two full days. Insights I wanted to share poured down like a waterfall.
I spoke about yesterday’s self, sluggish systems, and parting from people one must part with for growth. I quoted Lee Hyung-gi’s poem “Falling Blossoms”: “the blessing achieved by parting.” Perhaps business is the work of noticing the blessing created by parting. After seeing the photos, I thought I should have put on makeup. Haha.
On the first day, I organised around keywords the presentations that ran on until 9:30 p.m. Afterwards, I ran around the hotel for 45 minutes with two wonderful CEOs born in 1988. We were already people who had been reading and writing together. Although none of us had planned it, all of us had packed workout clothes. Workout clothes are essential for business trips. That day, I woke up at 4:30 a.m., worked until it was time to go to the airport, and held an online meeting on the way to board the plane. Being a CEO is, in its own way, an extreme job. And yet, strangely, as one task follows another, energy is created. Physical strength is competence. The strongest truth in the universe.
Eat well, sleep deeply when time allows, and give it everything.
Even on the flight back home from Jeju, I met authors through three books. Over the weekend, I stayed in Jeju, climbed Seongsan Ilchulbong under the blazing 34-degree sun, and walked barefoot through Bijarim Forest. I burned myself out on this business trip too. Thanks to that, my face burned dark.
Business is love. Is business love? Must business be love?
Perhaps the object one must love while doing business is oneself. To truly cherish and love oneself while doing business is the hardest thing in the world, because the more one does business, the more one is exposed to new environments, and the more one learns, the more often one comes face to face with one’s own inadequacy. I am finding the necessary study, confronting new phases, and coming to know myself more deeply and clearly.
A leader is a being who ultimately turns negative emotions toward others, systems, and the world back toward themselves, training themselves constantly. On the path towards becoming someone who practises love, I think business is one language. I hope to learn business as a channel for practising love, but not let business itself become the purpose. In the process of learning that language, I hope to become someone better than yesterday, someone who can wait for themselves and love themselves even when their steps are slow.
Business is love. Business must be love.
P.S. If you are curious whether business is love, please read the book.