Steve Jobs on Success
(A compilation of lecture and interview notes.)When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and you need to try and live inside the world, try not to bash in the walls, have fun, save money
That is a limited life
Life can be broader
Everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you
You can make it better for you and others
Poke life
You can mold and change it
This is the most important thing you can know
Erroneous notion that life is just here and you are going to live in it
Rather than embracing it, improving it, loving it
Increase your perspective and see how you can change things
People say you need passion, because without it any rational person would give up
If you don't really love it, you're going to give up
The ones who were successful loved what they did so they could persevere when things got tough
Those who weren't failed because they were too reasonable
Design for yourself
Tremendous drain to build for everyone
Take risks and make connections
Did you know what was going to happen?
Nike man asked
Do you have any advice?
Well I do have some advice
Nike makes some of the best products in the world
But you also make a lot of crap
Get rid of crappy stuff and only sell the good stuff
Once people have a vision, you don't need to tell people what to do
Leadership is articulating a vision and getting a sense of that common vision
Insanely great at what they did
We don't have seasoned professionals
Tips of their fingers and in their passion they had an understanding of technology
Get a core group of incredible individuals to police themselves and decide what their standards are
Pursue excellence with them
Have everyone want to work because they really believe in it and they know what they want it to be
Professional management? Did not work for Apple
Did not know how to do anything, couldn't learn or teach anything
Best managers and individual contributors, don't WANT to manage, but have to
Betting on effectiveness skills will override experience needed
Don't do it for the money
23, worth over a million
10 mil 24
100 mil 25
Wasn't that important because he never was motivated by money
Money is wonderful because of enabling and investing power,
But the most important thing is the company, the people, the products we made that then enabled PEOPLE
Best personal computers in the world and make products we are proud to sell
at lowest price
However, there are some things we would not be proud to ship
And we cannot ship junk
There are thresholds we cannot cross because of who we are
People check themselves
We don't offer stripped down, lousy products
If you most those aside and compare us with the competitors, we compare competitively
Build around customers
You can please some of the people some of the time
But one of the hardest things when you are trying to affect change is that people like this gentleman are right
How does that fit in to a cohesive larger vision that will allow you to profit exceedingly?
You must start with the customer experience and work backward to the product and technology
Come up with a strategy and vision for apple, started with what incredible benefits can we give to the customer?
NOT let's sit down with the engineers and see our technology and figure out marketing
Marketing takes values
Dairy industry tried to tell you that milk was good for you
Sales went up
Got Milk, sales went up
Nike incredible marketing. They sell shoes
But when you think of Nike, you feel something different
Empowering, inspiring, honoring great athletics
They don't talk about their product
Apple spends on advertising the same
Stay hungry and stay foolish
Take risks
Keep working and driving your ideas forward
Keep thinking and seeking inspiration
Do not give up