He became very knowledgable, technically, but did not put much energy into building business relationships, at first. Now he believes that relationsips are at least half, though probably more, of the contributing factors to success. All things tend to decay if you don't put time and energy into them. Even business people want to be loved, so focus on relationships and success will just start happening. Find the path of least resistance and continue along.
Ponds are stagnant.
Gravity and light explain everything. There are thousands of laws, but you can boil them down to common denominators. Silicon chips start with sand. If you can see things in different ways, you can notice similarities and skills become interchangeable. Debugging a memory leak, for example, requires going all the way to the lowest core.