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STEVE JOBS – THE SEPARATION OF SUCCESS – THE ANSWER [MOTIVATIONAL VIDEOS]


what separates the successful
entrepreneurs from the non successful
ones is pure perseverance now that’s why
you need to do it young that’s why we
started Apple we said you know we have
absolutely nothing to lose I was 20
years old at the time woz was twenty
four or five said we have nothing to
lose me we have no families no children
no houses woz had an old car you know I
had a Volkswagen van I mean well we were
gonna lose is that our cars and the
shirts off our back we had nothing to
lose and we had everything to gain and
we figured even if we crash and burn and
lose everything the experience will have
been worth ten times the cost so what
did we have to lose there was no risk
and that’s you know I think that’s a
very healthy way to look at it some
people say well you could have gone to
college and been a lawyer well you’re
right but you can go to college and be a
lawyer when you’re 25 and there’s
nothing that stops you from doing that
you really the only thing you really
have in your life is time and if you
invest that time in yourself to have
great experiences that are gonna enrich
you then you can’t possibly lose so I
always advise people don’t wait do
something when you’re young when you
have nothing to lose and keep that in
mind and I think that’s the best way not
that people can’t start companies when
they’re 50 I’ve seen that very
successful companies but it’s a lot
easier when you’re young and have
nothing to lose and don’t have the
responsibilities to other people that
you will acquire later on in your life I
think I was worth about over a million
dollars when I was 23 and over ten
million dollars from I was 24 and over a
and it wasn’t that important because I
never did it for the money I I think
money is wonderful thing because it
enables you to do things
it enables you to invest in ideas that
don’t have a short-term payback and
things like that but especially at that
point in my life it was it was not the
most important thing the most important
thing was the company the people the
products we were making what we were
gonna enable people to do with these
products so I didn’t think about it a
great deal and I never sold any stock
just really believed that the company
would would do very well over the long
term
people say you you have to have a lot of
passion for what you’re doing and it’s
totally true and the reason is is
because it’s so hard that if you don’t
any rational person would give up it’s
really hard and you have to do it over a
sustained period of time so if you don’t
love it if you’re not having fun doing
it you don’t really love it you’re gonna
give up and that’s what happens to most
people actually if you really look at
that the ones that ended up you know
being successful unquote in the eyes of
society and the ones that didn’t
oftentimes it’s the ones that are
successful loved what they did so they
could persevere well you know when it
got really tough and and the ones that
didn’t love it quit because they’re
saying right who would want to put up
with this stuff if you don’t love it so
it’s a lot of hard work and and it’s a
lot of worrying constantly and if you
don’t love it you’re gonna fail so you
got to love it you got to have passion
you’ve also had a lot of requests from
companies to port next step to other
platforms and we’re talking to some of
those companies right now now son we got
a lot of requests from son customers to
port next step to sons a lot of them are
saying look we may not want to buy many
more but we already bought 500 and we
only throw them in the bay so can we put
your software them because son is
falling behind in software now son says
they’d rather stick needles in their
eyes than help us do this
that’s a quote and so we’re evaluating
right now which will be worse for Sun if
we poured it or if we don’t port it and
since we’re fairly since we’re fairly
customer driven we’ll probably end up
doing what the customers ask us to do
because we want to make them happy came
up with the software called next step
which lets you build apps five to ten
times faster than anything anyone has
ever seen and after you build them
they’re deployable and usable by mere
mortals because it’s really easy to use
this computer in any manner and you can
interoperate your custom apps seamlessly
with a bunch of off-the-shelf
productivity apps so we go to these
companies that use Suns and take two
years to write their apps or thinking
about using cents and they can write
their apps in about 90 days on the next
now if you’re on wall street and you can
write you can create a new product in 90
days versus your competitor in two years
that’s eight new products you can field
for there every one and you can start to
see the competitive advantage that can
be created this way now we had no idea
that we were any good at this when we
started next a lot of times you don’t
know what your competitive advantage is
when you launch a new product when we
did the Macintosh we never anticipated
desktop publishing when we created the
Mac sounds funny because that turned out
to be the Mac’s compelling advantage
right the thing that it did not one and
a half or two times better than
everything else but you know four or
five times better than anything else
where you had to have one we never
anticipated it we anticipated bitmap
displays and laser printers but we never
thought about PageMaker that whole
industry really coming down to the
desktop maybe we weren’t smart enough
but we were smart enough to see it start
to happen nine to twelve months later
and we changed our entire marketing and
business strategy to focus on desktop
publishing and it became the Trojan
horse that eventually got the Mac into
corporate America where it could show
its owners all the other wonderful
things you could do likewise when we
created next step this revolutionary
object-oriented software that we have
our target customer coming from the PC
world where shrink-wrapped apps were
king was Lotus in Adobe in WordPerfect
in all the shrink-wrap apps developers
and the purpose was to let them create
their apps five to ten times faster
these shrink-wrapped apps and it worked
we have a ton of shrink-wrapped apps now
on Best of Breed in almost every
category but it wasn’t till early and 91
early last year little over a year ago
that some really big companies came to
us and said you don’t understand what
you’ve got the same software that allows
Lotus to create their apps five to ten
times faster is letting us build our
in-house mission-critical apps five to
ten times faster and this is the biggest
problem we’ve had this is a huge problem
for every big company and almost all
medium-sized companies and you have the
solution in your hands and you dummies
don’t even know it and it took him about
three months before we finally heard and
in last summer we changed our whole
sales and marketing strategy around to
focus on that it’s taken off like a rock
and we grew about 4x last year and
probably grow about 2x this year and our
customer list is is now very very strong
and growing like crazy we just got back
from spending a few days in DC and in
New York and we’re talking to customers
Apple was a very classic Silicon Valley
startup in the sense that Steve Wozniak
and my partner both worked for Hewlett
Packard matter of fact woz was still
working there when we started Apple and
Hewlett Packard was the genesis of of
not just the concept of starting your
own company but and of course it was the
primary role model in the valley but it
was also the the ethics or the ethical
basis of how you wanted to build your
company a company that was based on
values not based on just making money
and HP had had the HP way and they had a
list of their values and the first one
was we need to make a profit or else we
can’t keep this company going but after
that they got into how they wanted to
treat individuals and conduct their
corporate life and it was it’s very
idealistic in my opinion so we were we
were very much influenced by that the
second thing that made us very very
typical in a way was that we were
building a product that we ourselves
were the customer for we were building
something we wanted ourselves just like
Hewlett and Packard started building
test equipment and equipment for
engineers while they were engineers so
they they could in essence do the
marketing they could figure out what an
engineer might want in a product as well
as designing we wanted a computer and we
knew exactly what we wanted in a
computer so we could do the marketing as
well as the engineering of that product
this changed later as we started selling
to people that were different than us
but certainly in the first several years
of Apple we were selling to people that
were just like us and a lot of Silicon
Valley companies have started that way
and it’s it’s you know it’s very
I’m working pretty hard and so there are
a lot of people but I’m one of them my
cars they’re pretty early and it’s in
the parking lot pretty late and on
weekends so and I value my family time a
lot so I I’m pretty committed to this
and seeing Apple turn around the company
I mean it’s I started the company with
Steve Wozniak on my parent’s garage you
know 20 years ago and over 22 years ago
and so there’s a definite place in my
heart for this I’m drawing a salary if I
think $1 per year so I hope I’m not
burdening the shareholders too much and
and I’m I very much want to see Apple
get turned around and I think it’s gonna
so I don’t know how much more committed
I could be if people need these symbols
well maybe that’ll happen I don’t know
but but you know my answer to them is I
don’t know how I could be working any
harder and when you make a copy of an
audio cassette tape let’s say an analog
copy of an audio recording you get a
noise artifacts hiss right we’ve all
experienced that well the same thing
happens when you make a analog copy or
an optical copy of a piece of film if
you copy optically one piece of film to
another you get hiss if you will and in
this case the noise artifacts are visual
you get you get a dirty frame
well when George was making the original
Star Wars he had to combine many many
pieces of film together to make one
frame some with the models some with the
matte paintings some with a human
character some with the special effects
and by the time he got through combining
all these pieces of film to make just
one frame of his movie it was dirty and
he being the genius that he was thought
I wonder if I could if I combine them
digitally if they could be totally clean
because when you make a digital copy of
an analog recording it’s perfect and it
turns out if you make a digital copy of
a piece of film it’s perfect sure
clearer sharper clearer without the
noise artifacts so George hired this guy
named ed
Kamel who was at the New York Institute
of Technology to come out and build a
computer group for him and to figure out
how to solve this problem and they did
and George was the first one to ever do
this and after this problem was solved
George decided that he’d solve this
problem and he he could he decided he
would sell this computer group and I
ended up buying them I met Ed and Edie
told me his dream was to to make the
world’s first computer animated film and
I bought into that dream both sort of
spiritually and financially and together
we started Pixar in 1986 been very lucky
in meeting incredibly talented people
and and hanging out with them and so
that’s been my greatest strength and
you know I think all of us all of us
need to be on guard against arrogance
which which knocks at the door whenever
you’re successful have you been through
that oh sure sure now by that correct me
if I’m wrong get an incredible high with
the initial success with Apple and then
other competitors get in and it’s so
great well as you you may know I was
basically fired from Apple when I was 30
and and and was invited to come back
twelve years later so so that was that
was difficult when it happened but maybe
the best thing that ever happened to me
there wouldn’t be a Pixar if that hadn’t
happened and so you know you just you
move on life goes on and you learn from
it we’re at the end here but you were
fired from Apple one in 230 asked to
come back when they were what 42 did you
think that moment how sweet it is no I
thought at that moment what you know
what a circle of life you know life is
just always mysterious and surprising
and you never know what’s around the
did it hurt to have your people the
people who you know love you boo you
like that is it this sea huh
I didn’t know this was people People
magazine no well this is this is there
is well I and and I’d like I’d like no
you you brought it up yourself you said
emotion you know emotionally you know
are different you know I mean I I don’t
feel my job is to win a popularity
contest right now you know I feel my job
is to help the team at Apple do the
right things to turn this company around
so that it can really prosper again and
and I think that’s gonna happen and if
something you know some people I mean
the markets we’re talking markets now
that are so large that there’s you know
someone or some group of people that
aren’t gonna like just about anything we
do but my job’s not to win a popularity
now I’ve actually always found something
that to be very true which is most
people don’t get those experiences
because they never ask I’ve never found
anybody that didn’t want to help me if I
asked him for help I always call him up
I called up
this’ll date me but I called up Bill
Hewlett when I was 12 years old and he
lived in Palo Alto his number was still
in a phonebook and he answered the phone
himself did I yes hi I’m Steve Jobs I’m
12 years old I I’m a student in high
school and I want to build a frequency
counter and I was wondering if you had
any spare parts I could have and he
laughed and he gave me the spare parts
to build his frequency counter and he
gave me a job that summer in Hewlett
Packard working on the assembly line
putting nuts and bolts together on
frequency counters he got me a job in
the place that built him and I was in
heaven and I’ve never found anyone who
said no or hung up the phone when I call
I just asked and when people ask me I
try to be as responsive you know to pay
that that debt of gratitude back most
people never pick up the phone and call
most people never ask and that’s what
separates sometimes the people to do
things from the people that just dream
about them you got it you got to act and
you’ve got to be willing to fail you’ve
got to be willing to crash and burn you
know with people on the phone with
starting a company with whatever if
you’re afraid of failing you won’t get
very far my model of business is the
Beatles you know there were four very
talented guys who who kept each other’s
kind of negative tendencies in check
they balanced each other and and and the
sum was greater than the total was
greater than the sum of the parts and
that’s how I see business you know great
great things in business are never done
by one person they’re done by it they’re
done by a team of people and and we’ve
got that here at Pixar and we’ve got
that at Apple
well and so that’s that’s what lets me
do this well you know with the Beatles
when they were together they did truly
brilliant innovative work and when they
split up they did good work but it was
it it was never the same and I I see
business that way too it’s really always
a team there is an entrepreneurial risk
culture in the valley that is as
important to it is as key of a reason
why Silicon Valley exists as any other
reason I mean the primary reasons are
the entrepreneurial risk culture the
Roma of which role models are very big
part second is the University Stanford
and Berkeley there wouldn’t be a Silicon
Valley if they weren’t Stanford and
Berkeley constantly bringing in human
capital which decides to stay here cuz
it’s so nice and and third certainly for
the number of companies that start is
the financial infrastructure as well and
then fourth is the beehive effect you’ve
got a lot of extraordinarily talented
people and the beehive effect says that
that it’s a lot more efficient to have
that talent and all those companies
together and let me give you an example
when you want to start a company you
need to hire some experienced people
just can’t hire people out of school
most of the time so you have to hire
some experienced talent well you’re
gonna ask somebody to leave a job maybe
they have a family and come to your
place to work well if your company’s in
Montana and they move their family and
your company fails there is not another
company in Montana that they go to work
for most likely they’re not to move
again
as where if you all you have to do is
convince them to turn left instead of
right down the road to go to work in the
morning but they keep their same house
their kids don’t have to change school
etc and if your company fails well they
just go get a job another week at some
other company you can have a much higher
probability of recruiting them and so
that’s the beehive effect and those four
things together I think are why Silicon
Valley is today you know what it is the
entrepreneur proneural risk culture has
a lot to do with with role models
starting off with Hewlett and Packard
and models of Engineers that started
companies models of marketing people
that started companies and you know even
some spectacular failures some of the
failures are you know is widely
discussed as the as the successes and
even some you know even the failures
people are admired for trying and I
think they pick themselves up dust
themselves often you know go get a job
maybe they don’t own the company maybe
they’re not a founder of the next
company but they’ve got a really good
job and you know they there’s no real
chance that they’ll end up destitute the
people that are really good want to work
with the best people they can find
hopefully people that are even better
than them you know I mean that’s my view
of thing seems like all the good people
I really want to hire it seems to take
me a year to hire them and it’s always
been that way even at Apple some of the
best technical people or whoever it
always seem to take me like a year to
pry them out of HP or wherever it took
me it took me over a year to high mining
mike has the award you’re about a year
and a half and they’re all worth it what
happens is I usually meet somebody that
is really good I think is very very good
and you can’t get them and then you go
try to find other people and you know
nobody measures up you know when you
meet somebody that good just you always
compare them this one person you know
you’re gonna be settling for second best
if you compromise I’ve always found it
best not to compromise and now Apple was
a very classic Silicon Valley startup in
the sense that Steve Wozniak and my
partner both worked for Hewlett Packard
matter of fact woz was still working
there when we started Apple and Hewlett
Packard was the genesis of of not just
the concept of starting your own company
but and of course it was the primary
role model in the valley but it was also
the ethics or the ethical basis of how
you wanted to build your company a
company that was based on values not
based on just making money and HP had
had the HP way and they had a list of
their values and the first one was we
need to make a profit or else we can’t
keep this company going but after that
they got into how they wanted to treat
individuals and conduct their corporate
life and it was it’s very idealistic in
my opinion so we were we were very much
influenced by that the second thing that
made us very very typical in a way was
that we were building a product that we
ourselves were the customer for we were
building something we wanted ourselves
just like Hewlett and Packard started
building test equipment and equipment
for engineers well they were engineers
so they they could in essence do the
marketing they could figure out what an
engineer might want and
product as well as designing we wanted a
computer and we knew exactly what we
wanted in a computer so we could do the
marketing as well as the engineering of
that product this changed later as we
started selling to people that were
different than us but certainly in the
first several years of Apple we were
selling to people that were just like us
and a lot of Silicon Valley companies
have started that way group of people
that do not use quality in their
marketing are the Japanese you never see
them using quality in their marketing
it’s only the American companies that do
and yet if you ask people on the street
which products have the best reputation
for quality they will tell you the
Japanese products now why is that how
could that be the answer is because
customers don’t form their opinions on
quality from marketing they don’t form
their opinions on quality from who won
the the Deming award or who won the
Baldrige award they form their opinions
on quality from their own experience
with the products or the services and so
one can spend enormous amounts of money
on quality one can win every quality
where there is and yet if your products
don’t live up to it customers will not
keep that opinion for long in their
minds and so I think where we have to
start is with our products and our
services not with our marketing
department and we need to get back to
the basics and go improve our products
and services
now again quality isn’t just the product
or the service it’s having the right
product you know knowing where the
markets going and having the most
innovative products is just as much a
part of quality as the quality of the
construction of the product when you
have it
I don’t think it will be like that
because like I’ll take myself all the
work that I have done it’s a very
strange business and a very strange
endeavor of life all the work that I
have done in my life
will be obsolete by the time you know 50
Apple 2 is obsolete now Apple ones were
obsolete many years ago the Macintosh is
on the verge of becoming obsolete in the
next few years this is a field where one
does not write a Principia which holds
up for 200 years this is not a field
where one paints a painting that will be
looked at for centuries or builds a
church that will be admired and you know
looked at in astonishment for centuries
you know this is a field where one does
one’s work and in 10 years it’s obsolete
and really will not be usable within 10
or 20 years I mean you can’t go back and
use an Apple one because there’s no
software for it in another 10 years or
so you won’t be able to use an Apple 2
you won’t be able to fire it up and see
what it was like so it’s it’s sort of
like it’s sort of like sediments of
rocks I mean you’re building up a
mountain and you get to contribute your
little layer of sedimentary rock to make
the mountain that much higher but no one
on the surface will unless they have
x-ray vision we’ll see your sentiment
they’ll stand on it it’ll you know it’ll
be appreciated by that rare geologists
but no it’s not like the Renaissance at
all but he taught me a long time ago a
very valuable lesson which is if you do
the right things on the top line the
bottom line will follow and what they
meant by that was if you get the right
strategy if you have the right people
and if you have the right whole trick
culture at your company you’ll do the
right products you’ll do the right
marketing you’ll do the right things
logistically in a manufacturing and
distribution and if you do all those
things right the bottom line will follow
I like working with people that make
products that will get used or
experienced by a lot of people where you
have a chance to in a very small way
influence how things go influence the
way people look at at a product or or
maybe even the world in a small way and
I I’m very lucky I get to do that at
Apple that’s what it looks like you know
I still believe that the computer
business is in its infancy that there’s
a tremendous amount more of a tremendous
amount of innovation that’s going to be
coming out I’m optimistic as to the
one of the things that was and I did was
we built blue boxes though these are
obsolete now but they were devices that
you could build you know when you make a
long-distance phone call in the
background here those are the telephone
computers actually signaling each other
sending information to each other to set
up your call
and the signaling that uses a lot like
touch-tone phones only it’s different
frequencies well you can make a box that
emits those frequencies that can make
those tones and there’s a way to there
used to be a way to fool the entire
telephone system into thinking you were
a telephone computer and to open up
itself and let you call anywhere in the
world for free and matter of fact you
could go to you could you know call from
a payphone go to White Plains New York
take a satellite to Europe take a cable
to Turkey come back to Los Angeles and
you go around the world three four times
and call the payphone next door and
shout in the phone be about 30 seconds
and come out the other end of the other
phone so we actually and these were
illegal I I have to add but in spite of
that we were so fascinated by them that
Roz and I actually figured out how to
build one we built the best one in the
world it was the first digital blue box
in the world and we would give them to
our friends and use them ourselves and
you know you rapidly run out of people
you want to call but it was the it was
the magic of the fact that two teenagers
could build this box for a hundred
dollars worth of parts and control
hundreds of billions of dollars of
infrastructure in the entire telephone
network in whole world from Los Altos
and Cupertino California that was
magical and experiences like that taught
us the power of ideas the power of
understanding that if you could build
this box you can control hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of telephone
infrastructure around the world that’s a
powerful thing and and that if we hadn’t
have made blue boxes we there would have
been no Apple because we would have not
had not only the confidence that we
could build something and make it work
because it took us six months of
discovery to figure how to build this it
was a tremendous
process in itself but we also had the
the the sense of magic that we could we
could sort of influence the world you
know control at the case of blue boxes
but something much more powerful in
controlling influencing in the case of
Apple and and they’re very closely
related I I really do to this day feel
if there hadn’t if we hadn’t it had
those blue box experiences there never
would have been an Apple Computer
now if you want to know what’s gonna
happen in five years you you don’t look
in the mainstream you look at the fringe
and the fringe back in 1975 was the
homebrew Computer Club and it was a
bunch of people that were in this area
that we’re injured building their own
computers because they couldn’t afford
to buy them and the computers were a
hundred thousand dollars fifty thousand
dollars and they could afford the
greatest people are self-managing they
don’t need to be managed you if they
know what if once they know what to do
they’ll go figure out how to do it they
don’t need to be managed at all what
they need is a common vision and that’s
what leadership is what leadership is is
having a vision being able to articulate
that so the people around you can
understand it and getting a consensus on a common vision
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