SPECIAL: Steve Jobs (Part 1)

yeah i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a road less travel never looking back alright we've got a special episode here this is from ben wilson ben wilson a producer for my first but on the side he's got a podcast called how to take for the world and i love it it was actually in my top like spotify wrap up podcast name with sean and so we air some of his episodes on our feed because we think it's amazing and so this episode is with steve jobs there's actually a two part series so this is well you could be listening in one or two right now but it's a two part series and give it a listen he does a really good job of saying the background of who steve was and what motivated him but he also does a really good job of explaining what you can learn from him in the world of business so incredibly fascinating check it out how to take over the world's the name of the podcast and here is steve jobs and we'll show you oh yeah but high power i just one second follow me hard i'd like to take this chance to apologize absolutely nobody hello and welcome to how to take over the world this is ben wilson today we're gonna be talking about steve jobs steve is a really interesting case i think in many ways he is the face of greatness for our time if you go to a list of most admired executives or ceos of the twenty first century or of all time he almost always appears and usually at the very top of the list and when you ask silicon valley entrepreneurs for their greatest inspiration his name pops up all the time and i think that's understandable he helped introduce the world to some of the most important technologies of our time you think about the smartphone the personal computers things that are really foundational to the way we live steve jobs constructed a lot of the user experience around that so a lot of the way that we live our lives is at least partially constructed by steve jobs he helped create some of the most iconic consumer products ever including the apple too the mac and the imac the ipod the iphone the ipad itunes the app store he founded the most valuable company of all time in apple his estate is worth nineteen billion dollar so obviously he was successful financially two of the companies he owned and is most known for apple and pixar are two of the most iconic brands in america and in the world there have been dozens of books written about him a handful of movies and countless profiles and articles if you're gonna talk about how to take over the world you almost have to talk about steve jobs his vision and mindset are everywhere around us from the ubiquitous use of touchscreen smartphones to the way entrepreneurs ob obsessed over making physically beautiful products his minimalist design aesthetic is the standard for technology forward companies in many ways we are living steve jobs world so if we wanna talk about how to take over the world well don't we better talk about steve jobs but in my experience trying to emulate steve jobs is a dangerous game bill gates joke that if you wrote a book about steve jobs management style it should be called don't try this at home and i agree steve broke all the rules that includes the stupid rules yes but it also includes some of the good rules about management in life that most people probably should follow he dropped out of college without a good job lined up early in his career he was an over bearing and often abusive boss he wasn't a great programmer or engineer he was known for his temper and for lashing out and yelling in these massive tantrum he could drive people to near nervous breakdowns he was a complete jerk to those around him oftentimes he insulted people all the time he rarely listened to others and always thought he knew best and some people think that he succeeded because of these things i take the opposite you i think he legitimately had huge weaknesses glaring flaws remember he founded two companies and was majority owner of one other he was kicked out of one and the other two failed at their original purposes at least but he succeeded magnificent because the management and entrepreneurial techniques and strategies he used were so powerful that they made up for these drawbacks and therein actually lies the power of steve jobs life not that he had no weaknesses but that his strengths were so powerful that they could outweigh his huge glaring flaws but unfortunately a lot of people have trouble dis his strengths and his weaknesses so with this episode i feel a little bit like i'm like giving you the one ring from lord to the rings the lessons here are extremely powerful but i would just say make sure that you listen to and understand the whole thing exercise cost you know i if your number one takeaway from this lesson is in order to be more like steve jobs i have to be a jerk and be really mean to people that's that's just not the right lesson and that's not what made him great at three little notes before we get started first there's a ton to learn and analyze so this is a multi part episode second my sources i use a number of different resources but the two i leaned on by far the most are walter isaac biography steve jobs and the book becoming steve jobs colon the evolution of a reckless ups start into a visionary leader by brent sc and rick t last thing is a mild content warning there are some quotes i use that contain strong language and that's it okay let's go steve was born in nineteen fifty five in wisconsin his biological mother was a wisconsin girl and his biological father was a syrian immigrant studying in the united states neither of their parents were happy about the match so they decided to give up steve for adoption their one requirement was that he'd be placed with parents who were college graduates paul and clara jobs were not college graduates paul was a mechanic and clara was a stay at home mom the adoption almost didn't go through when steve's biological mother joanne found this out but the jobs promised to send him to college and until the adoption did go through as steve had a good childhood paul and clay had a stable and loving marriage they raised him in the southern bay area in the santa clara valley or the area that's now known as silicon valley and they were good parents although once they started to realize just how smart steve was they were very differential to him he was almost never punished by his parents and even when he got in trouble at school his dad would tell the teachers that it was their fault you know if you can't keep him interested in your lessons and that's on you so he had a good upbringing but maybe was i think it's fair to say a little bit spoiled it was an interesting time to be growing up in silicon valley the first round of silicon valley companies had already seen success he packard var shock semiconductors and others these were different from our current silicon valley companies they were big hardware manufacturers often working with big corporate and government contracts even so these companies made the bay the hub for electronics and computing and people could already tell the electronics and computing was the future and for those living and working in silicon valley at the time the possibilities really seemed endless the future was being written and they were gonna be the authors and this is the spirit in the atmosphere that steve jobs was breathing in as he grew up and i i don't think that he could have become steve jobs he couldn't have done what he did if he had grown up anywhere else here's what he said about growing up when he did quote you had all these military companies on the cutting edge it was mysterious and high tech and made live here very exciting and not only was it an exciting area but it was an exciting time period he grew up during the sixties and seventies it was time when people were encouraged to question authority to think for themselves so the culture that steve jobs grew up in really lent itself to innovation and to changed entrepreneurship as steve jobs comes onto the scene and there's one attribute that he has and is known for really from the beginning from his childhood and it's his ability to persuade and manipulate other people a sc and t sal put it in becoming steve jobs quote steve innate understood from an early age that the right word thirds and stories could help him win the attention he needed to get what he wanted there's a story i like from one of his elementary school teachers there's a picture of his class on hawaiian shirt day you're supposed to wear a hawaiian shirt to school on that day and in the picture from that day there's one kid who's not wearing a hawaiian shirt and it's not steve jobs steve jobs was in fact the one who had forgotten to wear a hawaiian shirt but he had literally talk the shirt off another kids back and so this other kid is just wearing a random t shirt and steve jobs is fitting in with the class wearing a hawaiian shirt he had this sort of tom sawyer ask ability to persuade other people to do things so he became sort of a prank with this ability there's some pretty good stories like time he set up posters for a fake bring your pet to school day all these kids see them and don't know they're fake so they show up to school with their pets and none of the teachers know what's going on and it creates complete pan of the school despite this behavior steve was undeniably bright school administrators thought maybe he should skip two grades in order to keep him busy and interested his parents sen thought no that will be too isolating to have him with kids that much older than he is too hard on him socially so he did just skip one grade he skipped fifth grade and from the beginning he was someone who stood at the intersection of humanity's and technology he really liked the human humanity he liked english he liked writing he's a big fan of plato doh and shakespeare and mel but he also interested in electronics he joined this thing called the explorer club and we'll put together at electronic kits and and stuff like that this is something we'll explore later because it was really instrumental to his success this fact that he enjoyed and understood both art and the humanities and technology and how to use that another thing that defines steve early on was his ability to focus intensely when he got it in his head that he wanted to do something he had this other otherworldly ability to focus like a laser beam and and just get it done this sort of tunnel vision meant he didn't see boundaries and obstacles or you know social expectations of things that he was doing rules he was breaking steve joined the this explorers club that i mentioned and they had projects that they were supposed to complete in this explorer club and for one of his projects steve needed a part but he couldn't find it he he found out that he packard made it and what would you do okay i need this part i don't have it i can't find it hugh at packard makes it what is the next logical step well steve with his laser beam focus this is the idea he comes up with he goes through the phone book well i'll i'll read his description quote back then people didn't have unlisted numbers so i looked up bill he in palo alto and called him at home and he answered and chatted with me for twenty minutes he got me the parts and he also got me a job in their plant so his his solution with his focus again he just like somehow doesn't see social boundaries the things that you are just not supposed to do he doesn't get it so i need this from he at packard okay well bill hewitt he's the ceo if he went packard i'll call him and he just calls him up and gets the part it works that later he would do the same thing in an electronics class in high school but it was a a little bit sketch he needs a depart for a project for an an actual high school class so he just collect called the manufacturer who was in detroit and told them he was designing a new product and wanted to test out the part so they send him the part for free they air freight it and it gets to him right away again this intense focus made steve a master of getting things done he never saw i don't know if he didn't see or if he didn't understand the things that you're just sort of not supposed to do and so he would just do whatever it took to get things done in high school a mutual friend introduced jobs to a guy by the name of steve w he was called was for short a was is five years older than steve jobs and he's an unbelievably brilliant engineer he's kind of the opposite of steve jobs he's an engineer's engineer he believes that engineering is sort of the ultimate human pursuit because as an engineer you make things you make a better world and was is kind of shy he loves to engineer but he does not love to persuade or manipulate people he doesn't want a manager tell people what to do so they're both geniuses but steve jobs is a natural leader and steve w is i don't know whatever the opposite of a natural leader is despite their differences jobs and was become really good friends and they bond over electronics and music they hunt down bob tilt bob dylan tapes and do prank with their electronics to give you an example of the kind of prank they would pull was invented basically a tv scramble you could point it at any tv push a button and it would cause the tv to go fuzzy the best thing about it was that it could work from pretty far away so w steve would go to the windows of college dorms and use this thing push the button and watch people's reactions as their tv stopped working and what they would do is try and get people to do weird stuff so for example as soon as someone touched their tv they would un scramble it and then scramble it again if that person took their hand off the tv so that soon they're watching tv with their hand on the tv they can't leave the tv set because they think that if they do it's gonna go fuzzy again their tv is not gonna work the way steve jobs told it they would have people hopping around on one foot just to try and get their tv to work it's just another example of steve getting satisfaction from some form of manipulation it is at its core i i guess a form of persuasion he's altering people's behavior by using technology which obviously fore shadows his career most interestingly steve and was invent something called the blue box the blue box started as a prank but it became steve jobs first enterprise it basically hacked long distance calls for my younger listeners phones were very different back then long distance calls calls to a different state or country could be very expensive and the way calls were actually made was through a series of sounds that the buttons made when you dialed most people just assumed it was actually pushing the buttons that connected you to the right number but it wasn't so someone smart figured out that if you were able to mimic some of these sounds you could get a pay phone to make long distance calls for free stephen was found out about a whistle that could do this but it didn't work super consistently didn't work super well was thinks about it and thinks there has to be some way to do this digitally to make it more reliable so he goes into his lab and he's able to engineer a device to do exactly that you put this little electronic device to the phone and press the button and it'll make a long distance call for you for free so they assemble this device in a little blue box and they test it out and it works and so they're calling everywhere they call southern california is the first person they call they call hotel in london and they call the vatican and try and get through to the pope was is pretending to be henry kissing and they almost get through before someone figures out well something something is fishy here this isn't really henry kissing steve jobs comes up with the idea to make it a product and actually sell it and quoting now from the isaac biography quote it was then that they reached an important milestone one that would establish a pattern in their partnerships jobs came up with the idea that the blue box could be more than merely a hobby they could build and sell it i got together the rest of the components like the casing and power supply and keypad and figured out how we could price it job said for foreshadowing roles he would play when he founded apple the finished product was about the size of two x playing guards the parts cost about forty dollars and jobs decided they should sell it for a hundred and fifty this end of the quote that's some pretty good markup again forty dollars to build it they sold it for a hundred and fifty and they are pretty successful selling it they sell mostly college students they go into college dorms and say hey is george here and let's students go what no there's no george here and they say oh well we're looking for this guy george he was trying to buy this thing it's called the blue box look it makes long distance calls and and that's how they sell people on it and this works really well for a while and then eventually someone pulls a gun on them and they decide okay this is too sketchy and they stop selling the blue box and i mean they're tricking phone companies into free into free calls technically this is illegal so it's not like they could be millionaires you know make a a huge business out of this they have a nice little run they sell some they make a little bit of money good for high school but after a few months they stop selling the blue box i think this story is illustrative because it shows how much the small things are the big things i mean you know the story of the blue box is basically how apple is founded eventually i mean it's crazy how much this pretends how jobs career will go persuading someone else using their technology and turning into a true consumer product the clever branding and sales the big markup it's all there in this very first enterprise and what i see too often is people trying to jump straight to apple without ever having their blue box i mean obviously i am very encouraging at people who want to have of big dreams that this podcast is called how to take over the world of of course that's the thing that i love and into so many people you know try to write a novel and you asked them i'm okay have you ever written a short story and the answer is no the best way to figure out what you will what you will be successful at where you're going to be successful at is to see what you have been successful at in the past and try to replicate it on a larger and larger scale so as i mentioned with writing start with a short story it's a business start with something small and simple and see if you can make it profitable no one tries to be a professional baseball player without dominating their little league first so dominate your little league find your blue box it'll point you in the right direction also during this time period you see steve jobs for the first time deliberately cultivating a personal brand and honing his persuasion skills natural ability is great but you have to focus on and study persuasion if you want to be a master and that's what he starts to do here from the isaac and biography quote he learned to stare at people without blinking and he perfect long silence pun by s chicago bursts of fast talking this odd mix of intensity and a combined with his shoulder length hair and sc beard gave him the aura of a crazed shaman he os between charismatic and creepy end of the quote he was cultivating a personal brand and figuring how to get people to bend to his will yeah his brand is kind of creepy and odd to start with but he was really able to capture and hold people's attention with it there's a quote that i think helps illustrate this it's from a guy who comes onto to the scene later named john sc you said quote steve's look of contempt is un yielding it's like an x ray boring inside your bones down to where you're soft and destructive mortal his use of looks silence and conversational ticks and tricks to bend people to his will starts now way back in high school well eventually steve graduates from high school and his parents really wanted him to go to college they made this promise to by law parents that he would go to college and they wanna live up to that the only problem is he doesn't really want to go to college his parents hardly ever tried to tell him what to do but this was important really important to them so for the first time they're kinda leaning hard on him to make this decision and he passively aggressively chooses reed college in oregon why how's his passive aggressive well it's a very nice literal arts college at the time it was literally one of the most expensive colleges in the entire country is sort of this act of defiance to make it hard you know you're gonna make me do this while i'm gonna make it hard on you but his parents agreed to pay and they pony up the money and they send him to read college at reed steve is a total counter cultural rebel and hippie he experiments a lot with psychedelics especially lsd he often goes to hippie commune and picks apples he starts doing bizarre diets that he would intermittently do throughout his life he would do things like only eat apples or only eat certain vegetables and he would do this for weeks at a time i don't have the quote in front me but there's one person who's was talking about this period of his life and said steve would go on these diets where he i'm only eating apples picked by virgins in the light of a full moon and that's it was totally crazy stuff that he was doing and that's partially because anything steve jobs decided to do he did one hundred and ten percent at this point he's a committed vegan and he reads something that makes him believe the only reason we need to shower is because we eat meat he thinks if you don't eat meat your sweat won't smell bad and so by his logic since he doesn't eat meat he doesn't have to shower and everyone tells him he smells bad but he steve jobs so he convince himself that everyone else is crazy not him so he almost never showers or bae he's a real crazy hip type at this point in his life well college was never going to work out well for seed jobs he hated authority he hated being told what to do like most great men and women he had a craving to be in charge and if you've ever been a freshman in college if your freshman experience was anything like mine you know that that is not the the right position situation to be in in order to be in charge there's this story that was comes to visit him at reed and steve grabs his course schedule and says they're making me take all these courses and was just replies yes that's what they do in college so steve is tired of this and drops out after just a semester he hangs out and we'll drop in on classes that he's actually interested in and he does that for about a year but pretty soon he decides he's you know living on his parents dime time he decides he's wasting their money and decides to move back to california and move in with his parents once he moves back home he's looking for a job and he sees a listing for a job at atari atari was one of the very first video game makers they created pong and some some early famous games and the job ads said have fun make money and steve decides okay that's the job he wants so he goes about getting the job in a very steve jobs kind of way i'm quoting now from the isaac biography that day jobs walked into the lobby of the video game manufacturer atari and told the personnel director who was started by his un unmarked hair and attire he wouldn't leave until they gave him a job when jobs arrived in the atari lobby wearing sandals and demanding a job the chief engineer a a ko was the one summoned a describe the experience this way quote i was told we've got a hippie kid in the lobby he says he's not going to leave until we hire him should we call the cops or let him in i said bring him on in and they hire him that very same day steve is kind of a good employee atari he's good at designing games in a really simple and cool way that people like the head guys at atari really like him for that but the average workers hate him because he's prick and arrogant and he thinks he knows better than everyone he yells at people all the time and he smells terrible because he's still almost never showering and despite the fact that steve is doing well atari he's still basically an insane hippie at heart one of his old friends from reed college bob fried convince steve that he needs to go to india to find himself spiritually here's how a a and the head engineer tar described what happened next quote he comes in and stares at me into declares i'm going to find my guru and i say no shit that's super right me tells you something about the spirit of the era that when steve quits his job to go to india and find his guru his boss's response is basically good luck caf fun steve also wants him to help pay for his trip to india and that's a step too far a says no but they do work out an arrangement he says okay i can't send you to india on the company's dime but we have some problems in munich with some of our or your european distributors and so we'll send you there and you can help fix the problem and then it'll be way cheaper to get from europe to india than it is from america to india so that's what they do so a a aragorn sends him off saying say hi to your guru for me this is a good moment to reflect on how much steve jobs was a product of his era i mean think about it steve is a low level employee at atari he says he's going to quit his job and go to atari and not only do they not get mad they are mildly supportive they do some things to help him with that the culture he grew up in was very instrumental to his development and it wasn't just a culture his friend who convinced him to go to india i mentioned is a guy named robert fried when i was doing research for this i looked up bob fried and he is the founder of ivan h mines a giant mining company in asia he's a billionaire and i thought to myself man what are the chances that steve jobs would just happen to be friends with another billionaire in college it just seems like such a free coincidence and then you start to think about who else he knows and is in his inner circle he knows steve w who turns out to be one of the smartest computer engineers of all time he's friendly with bill he who who's the ceo of hewitt at packard and a a chief engineer atari and he would go on to become friends with the founder of oracle larry ellis another billionaire there the founder intel andy grove he'd have a personal relationship with bill gates and you just think about this and yes trust man there's no way that this is a coincidence that all of these guys knew each other i started to think about all the other successful people that i know of and their friend groups the first thing that came to mind oddly enough was isaac newton he used friends with volta hair and with john lock to other great philosophers and men of science but there are tons of other examples like this now you think about gertrude stein she was an artist she's a writer she had a salon in paris in the nineteen twenties and thirties and here are the people who hung out in her salon pablo picasso henry mat ernest hemingway f scott fitzgerald and ezra pound among others and that reads like a who's who of the great artists of the time or think of the inkling this was a gathering of writers in oxford who had a number of extremely famous authors come from it some of the most famous authors of the twentieth century the most notable being jr r r tolkien writer of lord of the rings and c s lewis the writer of the chronicles in ar and at this time steve jobs was doing sort of a similar thing i guess he was developing his own inner circle of geniuses i think he was probably doing it subconsciously certainly if it was intentional i've never heard him talk about it and there's no way any of them especially steve would have been so successful without this tribe of people who are also doing similar things innovating pushing boundaries trying new things and anyone who has enormous success has a group of people like this i call it their tribe of man geniuses and innovators don't appear out of nowhere or create their successes all on their own they come from groups and from cultures you need the right people and the right culture steve jobs summed up the culture of the time pretty well he said when i went to school it was right after the sixties and before this general wave of practical purposeful fullness had said in new students aren't even thinking in idealistic terms or at least nowhere near as much the idealistic wind of the sixties is still at our backs though and most of the people i know who are my age have that ingrained in them forever see jobs was able to be steve jobs because of the friends he ad and the spirit of the times and a mistake i see a lot of people make is they think they're going to lock themselves in their bedroom and work furiously until they have programmed the next facebook or written the next great american novel or invented some greats technology or device or product or whatever but you look at history and that basically never happens you have to somehow be friends with the other great entrepreneurs or writers or musicians or whatever you're going for of your time you have to find your tribe of man acts and if you can't find it then you have to go out and create it that's one of the key elements of success so go find your tribe of man x and if you can't find it then move to new york or la or dc or london or whatever that tribe is and if you still can't find it then make don't go it alone it doesn't work okay so so back to steve so steve does go to germany for atari and the germans hate him there these very proper businessman in suits and he's not in who he doesn't even wear shoes he's got long hair he smells terrible he fixes the problems that the german distributors of atari were having but they hated him so they call a a corn and complain and his response hilarious he says i said did you solve the prop did he solve the problem and they said yeah i said well if you got any more problems you just call me i got more guys just like him they said no no we'll take care of things next time so having done his work in germany steve heads to india unfortunately the guru he was looking for had died just a few weeks before he gets there but he's there for seven months going to religious festivals hanging out in mona and just generally doing the stuff that you know i would assume the an american spiritual seeker in in india in india would do he doesn't find enlightenment it doesn't mark a huge change in his life course but it does suddenly change his perspective it makes him more att to the issues of the world gives him more of a grounding and eastern philosophy that he would carry with him throughout his entire life so it is a growing experience for him a good experience for him if not necessarily a defining or hugely transformative one i've already touched on briefly but he was really obsessive when people talk about balance and having balance in your life you know whether they're talking about the balance person you know they always drink eight glasses of water they do yoga every morning they always make sure to spend time with their friends and call their mom on the weekends keep a stable job the balanced way for steve to approach spirituality would probably be to buy a book on meditation practices and read a little bit every morning but there was no less balanced than steve jobs it was a part of his insane ability to focus that when he was focused in on something he was totally obsessed with it and the kind of person who ob obsessed over spiritual enlightenment enough to go to india for seven months is the type of person who would be obsessed enough to do what he did in technology and business so i think that's another key thing to take away from how he lived his life the single minded obsession well when steve finally gets back from india he goes back to atari offices and this being the bay area in the seventies they know have no hard feelings they're glad to see him back they say welcome back and they give him his job back right away in the meantime you remember was the brilliant engineer who helps steve design the blue box well he is about to change the world was had joined his own tribe of man x he had started going to something called the homebrew computer club at the time computers were for the most part these massive mainframe frames that took up an entire room and were only owned by the government or huge corporations and this club is a group of bay area tinker engineers and nerds who are interested in making their own computers home computers and was is especially interested in personal computing and terminals and what does that mean terminals well at this point in time personal computers were still using punch cards and flashing lights to give you results and mostly in binary code so we think of as a personal computer you know a screen where you type in some some keys and words appear that didn't exist at the time home computers were not life changing productivity machines they were glorified calculators that more often than not you had to understand binary code in order to operate they were niche tools for nerds basically well wallace is trying really hard to figure out how to make his computer work with a tv screen so that you could actually see what's happening and one day he finally figures it out w said in his own words i typed a few keys on the keyboard and i was shocked the letters were displayed on the screen it was the first time in his tree anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own computer screen right in front of them it's rare that the significance of an historical event like this really happens in a single moment but i love to in that was typing on his keyboard and something appearing on a screen for the first time ever i what a cool moment and w initial inclination is to give this away to the homebrew computer club guys tell them how he did it in a spirit of openness in collaboration and let them use the design for their own purposes but he's very excited about it and tells his good old buddy steve jobs about the idea and jobs convince his was that they should start a company turn this into an actual product and sell them in a healthy markup just like the blue box so at first was does not want to do this remember he's not a businessman he doesn't like business but here you just see what a master of persuasion steve jobs is he knows exactly what buttons to push in order to get laws to do what he wants steve tells him quote even if we lose our money we'll have a company for once in our lives will have a company was said about that time quote i was excited to think about us like that to be two best friends starting a company wow i knew right then that i do it how could i not so steve has him one hundred percent convinced and even excited for doing something starting a company that he didn't want to do right before that conversation it's a pretty amazing demonstration of steve's ability to read people and say just the right thing to persuade them so they start this company they band around a few ideas for names but steve jobs is the one who comes up with apple they start in the jobs garage paul jobs moves out his vintage cars to make room and in some way steve is just like a classic small businessman you hear about the way he runs apple this time it reminds me of like a middle eastern fruit vendor he's got his mom and dad working for him for free he's got old girlfriends coming over working minimum wage helping them sold their microchip at one of things steve is great at is getting computer parts for super cheap he's out there h with manufacturers and wholesaler over pennies for their parts he's unbelievably resourceful and a great negotiator and a great motivator now w wants to sell these computers for what it costs to manufacture them but steve wants to sell them at a healthy markup and of course steve jobs prevail and they sell them for six hundred and sixty six dollars you can only manufacture so many computers out of your parents garage but they do manage to manufacture and sell a couple hundred enough to turn a profit and this is the apple one is the name of the computer and it's the best personal computer of the time it's only problem is it looks i don't sc it comes in a wooden box and it doesn't come with all the accessories like a power supply or cables and things like that it's revolutionary but at the same time it's basically still for hobby other people many of them in the homebrew computing club have been working on personal computers as well so the apple one isn't the only thing out there when they launch it they go to a computer convention and steve jobs sees the competition most of the other computers were better looking than the wooden apple one or at least they were more professional looking they were metal they were a little bit clunky but it's then that steve realizes he wants to create something friendly and approachable he wants to create the first consumer computer that's targeted to normal people so he and was said about doing that by creating the apple too and the apple too is going to be their real breakthrough product the thing that changes the world see jobs is in the appliance aisle at macy's when he was struck by the design of of all things a c art food processor and so he decides that he wants a sleek case made of light molded plastic just like a c art realizes that this will make it seem like it belongs in a home like it's approachable and similar to something that people can understand of course that turns out to be a genius insight one that will pay off handsome at the same time as they're designing the apple to steve and was mostly steve are trying to create a real company as well up until this point they're still operating out of steve's garage and steve realizes he doesn't have the background or experience to really start and operate a company so he starts associating himself with and going after people who would be able to do this who would be able to run this company one of his first steps in doing this is he wants an experienced publicity guy to get them some press he had seen an intel ad and he loved it so he wanted to meet the guy behind it he asked around and finds out that the guy who had done it is named regis mckenna he's a big shot public assist his business card reads regis make mckenna himself but regis was a big deal and doesn't have time for two hippie kids making computers in their garage so steve calls his office and he gets one of mckenna associates and he brushes them off so there's no way you're actually talking to regis mckenna so what do you do after this i mean a normal person might i don't know look for the second best public around but steve jobs is not a normal person he calls back almost every single day for a couple of weeks until he finally gets patched through to regis mckenna and eventually steve convince regis just to take them on as a client mckenna gets them a new logo the one you know of as the apple logo the apple with the bite taken out of it through and he does some really great branding work for them he also connects them with the money guys the executives the people who will help them get off the ground in other areas like manufacturing and operations they also hire a ceo a guy by the name of michael scott yes like the office and a big part of his job is to manage steve jobs at this point steve is turning into a joint brat he screams at lower level employees he frequently dev evolves into shouting and or crying he has temper outburst he thinks he's above the rules and we'll show up late to meetings they're definitely not going to get rid of him i mean he's one of the founders this is his company and they recognize that he's brilliant he's a genius but he has to be managed and so they ring in the ceo to do that they also make a major marketing hire make mckenna had referred jobs and was to a potential investor named don valentine he meets was and jobs with their un uncomfortable looks and jobs smelling horrible afterwards he calls mckenna and he asks why did you send me these renegade from the human race by the way that is definitely a goal of mine to before i die be called by someone anyway i don't care a renegade of the human race but this valentine's guys is like these these guys are crazy but as a favor to reach make mckenna i'll try and connect you some to some people so he connects them to this guy named mike mark and mike mark is a marketing specialist and he would end up having a huge influence since seed jobs you can see it in the three point marketing philosophy that he comes up with for apple i'll read from the original document where he outlines the three points of the philosophy the first empathy we will truly understand their needs better than any other company second is focus in order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities the third is weird and kind of weird but it says imp people do judge a book by its cover we may have the best product the highest quality the most useful software etcetera but if we present them in a slip shot manner they will be perceived as slips s if we present them in a creative professional manner we will imp the desired qualities so empathy focus imp again if imp kind of an awkward word but fine we'll use it because they use it and steve jobs really internalize this you can see this philosophy shining through and some of the things he did later he later said when you open the box of an iphone or ipad we want the tactile experience to set the tone for how you perceive the product mike taught me that steve's success can basically be summed up as his ability to execute on this marketing philosophy he empathize with the customer truly understood what they wanted on an intuitive level then he focused he focused all his energy and effort on making the best product and eliminated all distractions and then he imp he presented and marketed the product in a beautiful way that created a whole brand experience he learned this early on and it's one of the major keys if you can do those three things you'll be able to create value and be successful so remember those empathize focus imp if you can find a way to do that if you can empathize the people if you can understand what they need if you can focus on providing a solution and then create an entire brand by imp those characteristics you want onto every aspect of of their interaction with you you're going to find success and those principles certainly paid off for apple when it came to the launch of the apple too the first launch is at the west coast computer fair jobs pays a bunch of money for a prime spot at the fair it seemed totally ridiculous to a lot of people and this tiny company but steve jobs new early on the importance of creating buzz especially at the launch of a new product when they get there and are setting up there's a small problem when the apple twos arrive they've been ding up a little bit in transit and so they have some minor blemishes and scratches now a lot of people thought this was fine steve jobs being steve jobs did not think this was fine so what does he do he gets a couple of low level employees and they stay up all night polishing out any of these blemishes in the apple too so that they will look absolutely perfect for their unveiling at the event the next day the launch of the apple two ended up being a huge success it does generate a ton of buzz and not just buzz it generates a ton of sales as well it would eventually sell millions of units in its various models it was basically the first mass market personal computer and it not only was financially successful for apple it basically launched the industry of personal computing after the launch of the apple two apple was a real company they move out of the garage and into an office they start hiring real employees they go legit and by the way i know i haven't talked a lot about steve jobs personal life but it is worth mentioning that around this time he had a child with his girlfriend chris anne brennan she names the girl lisa and at first steve will not admit pate maternity he claims that she's not his daughter he's not the father and therefore he is completely absent from her life well chris anne sue him for child support and they do a pate opportunity test and yep it is his daughter and yeah at first he still just barely recognizes her he doesn't hate or mist tree his daughter it's just like she doesn't exist it's pretty horrible and weirdly i think somewhat horrifying i think this kind of behavior connects to one of his greatest strengths which is his ability to focus if you listen to my episode on napoleon you might remember his description of opening and shutting drawers in his mind he compared his mind to this big cover and when he wanted to think about something he opened that drawer and when he was done he closed the drawer and thought about something else he was able to completely compartment his mind well steve is able to do something similar he can totally compartment from the isaac biography quote when jobs did not want to deal with the distraction he sometimes just ignored it as if he could will it out of existence at times he was able to distort reality not just for others but even for himself steve basically closes the lisa drawer in his mind and it's like he doesn't even have a daughter well after a few years steve does start start taking responsibility and tries to repair his relationship with lisa they would have a tumultuous relationship she could be a strong will as her father but he was a father to her and eventually she came to live with him often for a number of years and so so he does start to grow up with the way that he treats his daughter he also starts to grow up in other ways too he edges away from all these insane diets of eating only apples and carrots that are picked by people who are left handed he stops dropping lsd and it's really around this time sort of shortly after and starting a little bit before the launch of the apple too that his primary identity starts shifting from a hippie and a spiritual and a free thinker to that of an entrepreneur well the apple two is great but it's ultimately w creation yes steve designed it at least externally but w built the circuit board and the internals and it's really was baby and now steve wants some thing to call his own so he starts a project for a new computer and what he decides to call it is absolutely jaw dropping he calls it the lisa and this is at a time when he is still denying that lisa is in fact his daughter as walter isaac put it the name jobs chose would have caused even the most jade psychiatrist to do a double take he claims it stands for logical integrated software architecture which is totally meaningless means nothing but he names it after a daughter who he says is not his daughter i i still have no great working theory for why he did this except for some weird freudian and guilt i don't know he starts building lisa but after a while he starts to realize that it's not going to be all that revolutionary it's really just kind of an upgraded apple too so he's looking around for something new something innovative something big there's an employee apple named jeff ras and this guy wants to design an inexpensive simple computer for the masses with a graphical user interface or gui remember w big innovation was to make a computer that you could type on and see the result on a screen but everything is still text based there is no such thing at this point as a computer mouse or icons or any of that you have to type into the computer control it which means you basically have to understand computer code on some level at least very basic commands but this guy jeff ras had heard about the gui the graphical user interface it's what you think of as a computer interface today has a mouse and windows you can open and close and icons and the the whole thing it's being developed down the road at xerox research center in silicon valley xerox is considered a big tech company at the time now you might think of them as just a manufacturer of copier and printers but there was a time when they were very innovative at this point in time they're a mature technology company they were considered really well positioned to compete in the coming personal computer industry and xerox is not doing anything with this gui interface yet the headquarters of xerox is out on the east coast and the big executives at xerox know that this research lab has developed this but they don't realize how revolutionary it is or how important it could be but this guy at apple jeff ras has heard about this gooey and he wants to check it out and use it so apple and xerox come to a deal where xerox gets to invest in apple you know they're this hot new startup up that everyone wants to invest in everyone knows they're gonna blow up and be worth millions and millions dollars so apple says okay you can invest and get one million dollars worth of shares in apple if u xerox show us this graphical user interface you're working on and the xerox executives not knowing how valuable this technology agree to this deal they say sure have a look knock yourselves out now the executives of xerox may not have realized how valuable this technology was but the researchers who actually came up with it and developed it they did and they were not happy about having to show this technology to apple so steve jobs shows up at xerox research lab with a few his engineers and the xerox guys are kinda trying to put them off they just keep showing them a word processing application kinda like oh isn't this cute look you've got a mouse so you can move it around and find different places in this text document and steve jobs really shines here he starts going ballistic he keeps yelling let's stop this bullshit he wants to see the real thing the operating system in the programming language that makes us possible so the xerox folks hud privately and say okay this is going crazy what do we do they said okay well we'll show them just a little bit more so they show off an un unspecified version that isn't really the full thing that isn't really their full operating system they think that this will impress steve jobs and throw them off and he won't act they won't actually have to show him the whole thing and how it works well they're wrong they show the un unsatisfied version but steve huddle with his engineers and ask them if this is it if this is what they're looking for and they say we don't think so we don't think this is the whole thing so steve comes back and just starts going ballistic and screaming at the xerox engineers again there's a standoff they really really don't wanna show him this graphical user interface so he's just be braid them and they still don't wanna do anything so eventually steve calls up the executives on the east coast and says i thought we had a deal but your guys out here aren't showing me anything this is bullshit and this works the executives call their engineers in palo alto and say hey you kinda show you jobs the whole thing the whole en and they're furious about this the head engineer storms out in a rage and says i won't be a part of this but the other guys open up the and show steve jobs and the apple engineers the whole thing the whole graphical user interface and he steve and the engineers are just soaking it up as they as they show it jobs is jumping around and waving his arms one of the main xerox engineers later called quote he was hopping around so much i don't know how he actually saw most of the demo but he did because he kept asking questions he was the exclamation point for every step i showed jobs kept shouting you're sitting on a gold mine i can't believe xerox is not taking advantage of this steve jobs later said about the incident it was like a veil being lifted from my eyes i could see what the future of computing was destined to be when the xerox park meeting ended after more than two hours jobs drove back to the office speeding is convertible and yelling this is it we've got to do it now this technology starts out getting implemented in v lisa but then steve with his insane management techniques and erratic personality gets kicked off the lisa team his behavior has gotten even more bell the engineers are constantly offended by how much he insults them and there's also a philosophical disagreement the engineers wants to build lisa for business customers the segment of the market that is most likely to actually buy a computer while steve really wants to build what he calls lisa for the people for the home for the average consumer well the ceo agrees that steve is out of control and thinks a computer for business customers will probably be more successful and sell more so he removed steve as head of the lisa team and steve isn't actually too too upset about this remember he was already starting to realize that the lisa was too much of an upgrade he didn't think it was revolutionary enough so he's looking around for a team where he can implement this gui technology and he finds a small project called the macintosh so steve takes over the macintosh team he wants it to be the first true mass market computer he's obsessed at being friendly and approachable and steve is really the pioneer of this idea he didn't it didn't even make sense to most of the engineers one of the designers said quote even though steve didn't draw any of the lines his ideas and inspiration made the design what it is to be honest we didn't know what it meant for a computer to be friendly until steve told us steve had this vision of what a computer should be and it was way past what anyone had envisioned up until then he later said great art stretches taste it doesn't follow taste and he certainly worked according to that principle when someone asked him what market research he did on the macintosh he responded did alexander graham bell do any market research before he invented the telephone working on the macintosh one thing he does is hire one of the head engineers from xerox who had been working on the gui back at xerox he tells him and i kid you not this is a direct quote quote everything you've ever done in your life is shit so why don't you come work for me and and he did steve could motivate people by pushing them this is one of those areas where i think bill gates would say don't try this at home some people might read this and say okay i'm gonna be rude and extremely blunt with people it worked for steve jobs it work for me but his rude wasn't the asset here his asset was his passion for product and his willingness to be honest his rude i think really was a liability the only reason that he actually was able to hire this guy after telling him that everything you've done in your life is shit was because he had this amazing passion for the actual product and it was shining through anyway steve doesn't stop with xerox engineers he also starts rating the top engineers at apple to come work on his macintosh project there's a great engineer a guy by the name of andy hertz and steve comes up to his cubicle one day and says hey you're working on the macintosh now i'll read from the isaac biography what happens next quote hertz replied that he needed a couple more days to finish apple two product he was in the middle of what's more important than working on the macintosh jobs demanded hertz explained that he needed to get his apple two dos program in good enough shape to hand it over to someone else you're just wasting your time with that jobs replied who cares about the apple too the apple two will be dead in a few years the macintosh is the few of apple and you're going to start on it now with that jobs yank out the power cord to hertz apple too causing the code he was working on to vanish come with me job said i'm gonna take you to your new desk jobs drove hertz computer and all his silver mercedes to the macintosh offices here's your new desk he said welcome to the mac team as you may have gathered steve jobs is obsessive with the mac team he gets all of the best people and he pushes them extremely hard he's able to persuade them to not only work hard but reach levels of genius and hard work that they didn't even know they possessed one way he's able to do that is with what his team eventually comes to call his reality distortion field and what is this reality distortion field it's this thing where reality seems to get suspended when you're with steve jobs team members would describe how when they were whiskey steve he could get them to believe these impossible things things like okay we can develop this new product in only six weeks and they would totally buy in and believe it and then when they leave an hour later it's like waking up for a dream they start to think wait what was i thinking isaac isaac described it this way quote when members of the mac team gotten snare in his reality distortion field they were almost h he reminded me of ras b said debbie coleman he laser beamed in on you and didn't blink it didn't matter if he was serving purple c aid you drank it but she believed that the reality of the distortion field was empowering it enabled jobs to inspire his team to change the course of computer history with a fraction of the resources of xerox or ibm it was a self fulfilling distortion she claimed you did the impossible because you did realize it was impossible andy hertz described it like this steve has the reality distortion field in his presence reality is malleable he can convince anyone of practically anything it wears off when he's not around but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules another guy triple it was dangerous to get caught and sees his distortion field but it was what led him to actually be able to change reality at w his reality distortion is when he has an illogical vision of the future such as telling me that i could design the breakout game in just a few days you realize that it can't be true but he somehow makes it true so it's this amazing tool somehow by creating this field he's able to convince people of the impossible and then actually get them to do it to do the impossible but it's a double edged sword because the truth is you can only distort reality so much and when you're trying distort it any further it can have negative consequences joanna hoffman a key early apple employee phrase it this way reality distortion has motivational value and i think that's fine however when it comes to setting a date in a way that affects the design of the product then we get into real deep shit there's this great story of the macintosh team it's the end of the development cycle the computer is basically done but the software team is not quite ready to ship all of the software they have been absolutely killing themselves working long hours day and night to get everything ready and right but they're just not going quite going to make it to the deadline they're gonna be a couple weeks late is all and they call up steve who was out on the east coast for the rollout to let him know that it's hey it's just gonna be a little bit late a couple weeks here's what happened quote software manager calmly explained the situation to jobs while hertz and others huddled around the speaker phone holding their breath all they needed was an extra two weeks the initial shipments to the dealers could have a version of the software labeled demo and these could be replaced as soon as the new code was finished at the end of the month there was a pause jobs did not get angry instead he spoke in cold somber tones he told them they were really great so great in fact that he knew they could get this done there's no way we're slipping he declared there was a collect collective gas in the band building workspace you guys have been working on this stuff for months now another couple weeks isn't going to make that much of a difference you may as well get it over with i'm gonna ship the code a week from monday with your names on it and that is kind of a motivational technique combined with a threat you know hey i'm shipping this and it's gonna have your names on it so if it doesn't work that's gonna be on you but it worked they work non nonstop for the next two weeks and they got the macintosh software ready to ship on time so again reality distortion field double edged sword in fact it has sort of its own narrowed of arc it starts with something very effective when he just sort of does it as an instinct early on in his career but then he becomes aware of it and thinks he can literally make anyone do anything just by using his reality distortion field and it really becomes a symbol of his failure as he tries to use it too much but he matures and upon his return to apple he's able to use the reality distortion field in a mature way realizing that you can't bend reality exactly how you want all the time but you can do a lot with it using this technique and how is he able to create this reality distortion field well there were a few different techniques to use one was as we saw in some of the previous stories sheer force of will other times it was his inability or unwillingness to see obstacles another technique was to help people see the bigger picture there's a fantastic example of this in the isaac biography quote from it one day jobs came into the cubicle of larry canyon an engineer who was working on the macintosh operating system and complained that it was taking too long to boot up kenyan started to explain but jobs cut him off if it could save a person's life would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time he asked kenyan allowed that he probably could jobs went to a whiteboard and show that if there were five million people using the mac and it took ten seconds extra to to turn it on every day that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetime saved per year larry was suit impressed and a few weeks later he came back and it booted up twenty eight seconds faster atkinson recalled steve had a away of motivating by looking at the bigger picture listen to one other time he guys his team to see the big picture midway through the macintosh development the case is finished they know what it's going to look like and so he brings his team into a room and tells them true artists sign their art so has them sign the inside of the case no one's going to see it but it's there every mac is going to ship with their signatures on the inside of it atkinson can send one of the engineers said quote with moments like this he got us seeing our work as art another tool he used was taking an extreme position everything was either the best thing ever or it totally sucked you usually it totally sucked but why did he do this well for one thing it forced him to actually find the weak spots and new ideas for another it forced people to have really great ideas if you know someone is going to attack your ideas totally sucking you're not going to even bring it to them until you know it's actually an awesome idea and you can defend it and if it was an awesome idea and you did defend it steve would respect to you and change his opinion sometimes in immediately there was even an award for the person who stood up to steve jobs the most and steve encouraged the award he was still going to tell you your stuff shocked but he liked it when you stood up to him and stood up for your idea and helped him see the other perspective and this inspires strength and passion in people who work for him one of the biggest problems managers have is getting people to care and that is not something steve jobs ever struggled with listen to this story from joanna hoffman she made some sales projections and steve changed the projections in a way that she hated and she thought was totally wrong she thought that he was going behind her back and messing with what she had done is something that was right and when she saw the projections that he had altered she was furious she describes the experience this way quote as i'm climbing the stairs i told his assistant i'm gonna take a knife and stab it into his heart the corporate counsel comes running out to strain her so she doesn't actually murder steve jobs but then she recounts quote but see heard me out and back down so yes there's this crazy conflict but i know i look back on my management experience and i would love to have an employee who cared so much about her work that she threatened to stab me in the heart over it it sounds crazy but it's kind of true apa is one of the biggest problems you will face as a manager steve jobs is able to inspire this kind of extreme passion in his employees all the time and one of the main ways he does that is by staking out these extreme positions and forcing people to defend their work and therein lies the paradox of what it meant to work for steve jobs it could be extremely grading and draining and yet many people look back on working with him fondly because he was able to get their best work out of them as debbie coleman said quote he would shout at a meeting you asshole you never do anything right it was like an hourly occurrence yet i consider myself the absolute luck person in the world to have worked with him and one thing to point out is steve did all this because he actually cared he cared about the product and about getting it right this wasn't some giant ego trip i mean i i know i've had the kind of manager who i go i bring them a report and they say no this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong so i go and i make the edits and i bring it back and they say this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong and some of the things that they now say are wrong are the changes that they told me to make the first time around and the kind of person that is looking for things wrong just to assert their authority say i'm the man i know what's going on here and for the most part steve's feedback is focused in the right direction he really wants to make great products there's a story that illustrates us with the calculator application that was going to ship with the macintosh the engineer working on it his name's esp and he shares the first iteration of the calculator with steve and here's what happens quote well it's a start job said but basically it stinks the background color is too dark some lines are the wrong thickness and the buttons are too big esp kept finding it in response to jobs critiques day after day but with each iteration came new criticisms so finally one afternoon when jobs came by esp unveiled his solution the steve jobs roll your own calculator construction set it allowed the user to tweak and personalize the looks of the calculator by changing the thickness of the lines the size of the buttons shading the background and other attributes instead of just laughing jobs plunged in and started to play around with the look to suit his tastes after about ten minutes he got it the way he liked his design not surprisingly was the one that shipped on the mac and remain the standard for fifteen years steve isn't just trolling esp with his criticism of the calculator in order to have control over him he doesn't just laugh off or get mad about this calculator construction set steve really does care about the way that this calculator looks so when given the opportunity to design it himself he does as steve jobs later said products are everything you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich your goal should be making something you believe in and steve jobs really was obsessed with making something that he believed in well they finish the macintosh and now they have to market it steve has this ad agency that he loves chi day and they come up with this advertisement it's the late fall early winter of nineteen eighty three and so that you're nineteen eighty four is about to begin you may have heard of the famous as george or novel nineteen eighty four it's a d dystopian novel about a tyra government it was written in nineteen forty nine so it was written in nineteen eighty four was way in the future and in the novel it's the year nineteen eighty four and big brother is in charge everyone lives under a terribly tyra surveillance state well steve's ad agents each height day comes up with an advertisement for the macintosh based around the idea of the novel nineteen eighty four the ad shows all these automaton workers with shaved heads dressed in gray marching around and watching a giant screen where there's a video of this big brother tyra figure and he's giving us a big speech and a woman comes running in dressed in orange and white the only color really in the entire advertisement and she throws a hammer and it shatter the screen where big brother is speaking then it fades to gray and simply says on january twenty fourth apple computer will introduce macintosh and you'll see why nineteen eighty four won't be like nineteen eighty four and that's it if you haven't seen it go check it out just search on youtube for apple nineteen eighty four ad it supposed to be shown during this year your super bowl steve loves it he thinks it's revolutionary and captures the spirit of apple and macintosh he and the ad agency show it to apple ceo and the board and they hate it and i i mean i guess in retrospect it's not too hard to see why it doesn't show the product it doesn't even say what the product is it doesn't say why you should buy it it makes no effort to actually sell the macintosh and so from a traditional advertising sales perspective it seems like it's gonna be a total disaster the first time they show it at a board meeting apple's ceo john sc asks who wants to move to find a new agency most of the board members hate it so much they thought it was the worst commercial they had ever seen in their entire lives sc the ceo asks chi day the ad agency to sell off the two commercial spots they're not gonna use them but despite the apple board's stations chi day still believes it's a great commercial so they lie they say hey they can't sell off the sixty second slot even though they never try so i say i'm sorry we're just gonna have to run it so it runs during the super bowl and it's a total hit it creates an unbelievable sensation it's the first time that a television commercial becomes a major new story in its own rights think about it you're usually paying good money to have people run your advertisement and yet networks and new stations are running the ad for free they're talking about it it's genius by causing a huge it creates tons of free advertising people are trying to watch your advertisement and while it doesn't introduce or sell the product by giving apple a foot in the door public attention it allows them to do that later because people are paying attention now they're asking what is this thing what is macintosh they want to know more so in the end use commercial that was so hated by the board was selected by both tv guide and advertising age as the greatest commercial all time and it's widely acknowledged by most people who know the advertising industry as one of the greatest advertisements of all time so through this commercial and through a spectacular launch event steve is able to create a ton of buzz for the macintosh and it comes out and sells like crazy it's the hot new thing and everyone wants one it's got this revolutionary graphical user interface it looks different from any computer before it it's the first mass market personal computer that was really designed from start to finish for regular people to use in their homes but he but steve jobs had not done a perfect job at designing it his pension for perfectionism had betrayed him for one thing it was too expensive for the average consumer consisted also that it be silent and not have fans so it often overheated it doesn't have enough ports for all the accessories people want to use and so with all these problems after the initial burst of enthusiasm chasm sales slow way way down and soon they're only hitting ten percent of their projected sales on the macintosh and things start to get uncomfortable for steve at apple as sales slow down he blames everyone except for himself he's often launching interviews vicious ti of entertaining outlandish conspiracy theories of people trying to undermine him at apple why they are really the the party responsible for the macintosh failing and things get worse and worse steve was great at introducing amazing revolutionary products but when he wasn't doing that he could get sort of cabin fever and that's what starts to happen now steve has this complicated role at apple he's a revolutionary he's inspiring he's been instrumental in introducing every revolutionary product they ever had but he's also a jerk you frequently throws tantrum he's made a lot of enemies he's way too much of a perfection he generates a lot of turnover by firing people all the time and so a lot of people wanna see him gone one of his key employees were a scathing report that's worth reading in full here it is he is a dreadful manager i have always liked steve but i have found it impossible to work for him jobs regularly misses appointments this is so well known as to almost be a running joke he acts without thinking and with bad judgment he does not give credit where due very often when told of a new idea he will immediately attack it and say it is worthless or even stupid and tell you that it is a waste of time to work on it this alone is bad management but if the idea is a good one he will soon be telling people about it as though it was his own the end of the report or end of that excerpt for the report you might put up with this kind of behavior someone is performing really well but if they're not performing that's a death sentence and steve jobs was not getting results in fact quite the opposite in his advertising for the macintosh steve had submarine the lisa basically saying that lisa was old news right as it was coming out and the macintosh isn't selling well because of its problems and would only sell well much later in more practical iterations that were developed after his exit so as steve gets sidelined more and more it becomes a apparent that conflict is inevitable eventually he gets relegated to a role so small that he can't take it anymore there's a big showdown at apple between him and the ceo john sc apple board chooses sc and steve gets kicked out of apple in retrospect firing steve jobs seems like a huge mistake we now know him as a huge success story he wouldn't wanna get rid of a guy like that and without steve jobs apple steadily declines and goes to the verge of bankruptcy until it's eventually saved by steve jobs so you know how could it not be a huge mistake to get rid of him but i think maybe firing him wasn't such a mistake at the time it seemed to completely necessary he was way out of control and most importantly he wasn't the manager or businessman he would be when he returned a decade later and he never would have become the great businessman manager that he did eventually become if not for his time in the wilderness away from apple so they make the decisions steve jobs you gotta go and he sells all his shares and leaves apple so what do you do next if you're steve jobs because he's he got a lot of options in front of him he's a millionaire he never has to work again if he doesn't want to but he's famous he could work anywhere if he wants to and what he does is he does two things he starts another computer company this one is oriented towards the education market and he calls it next and he also buys a little known computer company that produces hardware and software for three d animation it's called pixar now next was his main thing and that was his opportunity to isn't indulge his every whim good and bad he's been chopping at the bit you know he thinks he knows better than everyone else how to do everything he thinks he has all the greatest ideas well okay steve jobs blank slate here you go here's your chance to find out for sure improve it and as you might imagine next is a fascinating beautiful perfect disaster the original idea of next was to design a research computer for universities and everything had to be beautiful for steve jobs he's obsessed with design and the first thing he wants before he starts thinking about software or hardware is an amazing logo and he wants the best of the best to design his logo so he goes after this guy called paul rand rand had already done logos for es esquire ibm abc b ups and others and was considered by many to be the guru of logos second to none the very best and we know how steve jobs loves the very best the problem was he was under contract with ibm as a designer and obviously most sane people again would probably say oh well say love he's working for a competitor there's no way that he's gonna come work for me but not steve jobs he picks up the phone and calls ibm ceo the ceo is out of town but he's so persistent that he finally gets through to their vice chairman paul r after two days of insist calling decides it just wasn't worth the headache to keep dealing with jobs and basically says fine you know you want him so bad you can have him so steve is able to get what he wants by a combination of single minded focus and his belief that reality can be distorted to match his will and persistence so paul rand comes to work for next and design them a logo paul rand he designs the logo for next and presents it in a hundred page brochure and steve loves it he thinks this logo is amazing and despite his ejection from apple steve still has a bunch of cache in the industry he's able to hire some really really smart people to help him work on the next computer and so steve jobs and his team disappear for a few years originally he said he can have the next computer ready in eighteen months or something like that which is totally unrealistic it takes way longer than that to create a computer from scratch and this is one of those times when his reality distortion field totally fails him but nevertheless the public is fascinated to see what it is jobs is going to come up with next and when he announces an event to announce and demonstrate the next computer there's a ton of hype and it's a masterfully executed event thousands of people show up and they're waiting for hours and order to get in and see what jobs is going to unveil jobs gets on stage and welcomes everyone and tells them they're about to witness an event quote that occurs only once or twice in a decade a time when a new architecture is rolled out that is going to change the face of computing on stage is a table and something is clearly on the table covered by a black table cloth and at a climactic moment steve takes off the table cloth and reveals the next computer it's a beautiful computer a perfect to black square with exact ninety degree angles and as he introduces it he's able to make it sound completely revolutionary it's the first computer to be able to play music something we take for granted nowadays it has this great intuitive operating system that's easy to use yet powerful he shows off digital books claiming that the next computer is the biggest deal in book technology since the printing press he calls it incredible and the best thing we could have ever imagined for the grand finale he has y m the great c come on stage and play a do with the computer and this is amazing because remember no one has heard a computer play music before and now he's making it seem like this genius thing that can accompany a world famous jealous people go wild for it the audience is in like this inc frenzy but remember it's not four regular people you know it it's supposed to be for universities and frankly universities don't care about having a beautiful perfect black box they're not making irrational consumer decisions about what something looks like when they buy it they're you know they have purchasing departments and people who are in charge of this kind of thing what they care about is they want a computer that is powerful for their research labs and they want it for cheap well the next computer is the opposite of cheap it's over ten thousand dollars for a normal setup and that's not going to appeal to normal consumers or universities and so the thing barely sells at all it's a success in the popular imagination people are excited by the idea of the next computer but it's a disaster in terms of sales it's also delivered more than two years late because you know he was completely unrealistic about the time line and also no one develops for it because no one is buying it so in a very jobs z way it is both beautiful and impractical you remember the three things that were the apple marketing month empathy focus imp well steve had incredible empathy just an unbelievable understanding of the average consumer but because he refused to do market research he was terrible at having empathy in designing products for markets that he himself did not fall into and that included the university market he thought he could just make the most insanely great machine ever spare no expense jack up the price and the universities would pay that turns out not to be the case at all and as that becomes clear next falls on severe financial troubles and appears to be on the edge of collapsing the one good thing that does come out of it for next is they have an amazing operating system his chief software engineer a guy by the name of avi t leads to software team and the result is great it's spectacular it's responsive it's beautiful it's user friendly no one actually uses it but it is objectively speaking an unbelievable operating system and this will be important to the story later probably in the next episode we'll get we'll get around how that comes into play but let's take some time to talk about the other company he owned at the time pixar now we all know pixar as an animation studio but that is not at all what they were when see jobs purchase them they were actually the three d animation technology division of lucas film the film production studio owned by star wars creator george lucas at the time george lucas was going through a divorce and needed some cash so he decided to sell pixar so steve buys them he buys them as a technology company for ten million dollars the thinking is that they could create a computer and some applications that would be useful in creating and manipulating three d images so steve basically thinks he's buying a computer company and for the first ten or so year he owns them that's what they are but they're just not a very good one he has all these high minded ideas about how every consumer is going to want to have a computer dedicated to creating and rendering three d images which is crazy i mean did you ever know anyone who wanted a home computer specifically for creating three d images he was way off on that and so they're not unsuccessful at all in fact they're so unsuccessful that eventually they have to give up on their hardware division and stop selling computers altogether a normal person probably would have given up on them at some point but steve who bought the for ten million dollars ends up pouring fifty million dollars into the company to keep it a afloat now why doesn't steve give up on them well there are a couple of potential explanations but i think that one of the big ones is he had already been kicked out of apple next had fallen on super hard times and he just couldn't suffer another failure he was going to the grave with pixar if necessary but he was not going to see them fail and that's where we're gonna end this episode story wise steve has been out from apple next is failing pixar is failing apple even though he's not there anymore is also failing steve jobs is basically broke he's irrelevant he's a has been so let's take stock really quickly of how he got here steve is able to achieve some phenomenal success early in his career the apple one is a triumph that gets his company and career launched and the apple too is a huge success that sells like crazy and makes apple steve jobs worth a lot of money so what propelled him to this initial success well first and foremost it says knack for persuasion he's able to persuade people to give him what he wants to work harder to think of new ideas and to do things that they didn't know they were capable of what are some of his persuasion techniques well the first is focus he sees past and through normal everyday obstacles he put his mind to something and focus all his energy and thoughts on it and he did not let up until it was done think of him calling ibm until he was able to get them to give up paul rand the logo designer or doing the same thing with regis mckenna calling him calling him until he agreed to be their public the second is helping people see the bigger picture he was a master at changing perspective think of was who did not wanna to start apple initially until jobs puts it in the frame of an adventure they were two best friends and they would have their own company or the engineer who he got to cut down on the back boot up time about by calculating the amount of time it would save people and comparing that to saving lives lastly he used the power of taking an extreme position everything was the greatest thing ever or it totally sucked people he worked with were genius or they were bo this forced people to be better produce better thinking in products in order to meet his standards they knew that pretty good would never be good enough for steve jobs besides persuasion what else propelled few jobs well one other key was his tribe he managed to surround himself with geniuses rebels entrepreneurs and people who could help him succeed part of this was luck he was born at a time when silicon it was exploding with new ideas was a buzz with energy of invention he also grew up in the sixties and seventies when there was a spirit of ideal and free thinking but the other part was intentionally forming relationships was he stumbled into but who smart enough to stay friends with him regis mckenna was someone who helped him tremendously and he managed to be defend him by calling his office until the guy finally agreed to meet him so that was very much intentional the motley friend group that steve jobs cultivated his tribe of man was an indispensable element of his success the last thing to keep in mind about his success is his embodiment of the apple marketing philosophy remember the three components empathy focus imp he was a master of empathy he totally understood consumer demands even better than consumers that he knew what people wanted before people knew what people wanted focus we've have already touched on but he focused intensely on meeting those needs once he had perceived them and he imp his solution onto an entire brand identity having said all of that let's talk a little bit about why he had such a pre fall from grace i think it can be summed up this way steve jobs leadership techniques made him powerful but not invincible and he forgot that he thought he was invincible let's start with his bo behavior why was he so and why was it a problem i mean a lot of times it worked in his favor right he's able to motivate people with his negativity well remember earlier i said it was always focused on product he acted the way he did because he actually wanted to make the product better but i do think at a certain point the fame and notoriety started to go to his head at a certain point you know he got a he got hooked on a feeling and he was yelling at people just because you know it felt good to him being rude can be in some cases an acceptable by product you can deal with it but it is always and in all places a horrible goal if you're being rude to people to try to be rude to people it's gonna backfire on you and it backfired on him he also made business mistakes he was unbelievably good at anticipating people's product needs but there were a couple exceptions first at this point in his career he basically refused to acknowledge people's price needs he would take everything else into consideration and create an amazing product but he basically refused to make price concessions and second if he didn't fall into the market he was not good at understanding people who were different from himself especially at this point in time he thought that he was a genius he could understand everything and if people didn't see things the way he did eventually they would come around and so you know when people were different from him like purchasers in the higher education market he could just be totally way off base in the products that he created for them to sort of sum it up he really started to drink his own ko aid all his business endeavors had been very successful and in large part it was by following his own intuition so he basically shut down his critical thinking faculties he thought okay everything i touches his turns to gold so i don't have to think about it i can just do what feels good and i know it's gonna turn out amazing but then he's turning off his critical thinking a paradox but it happens all the time someone achieves success and then because they do they abandon the very thing that gave them that success and that's what happens here you gotta stay on your toes you have to be self evaluating from mistakes and errors all the time and that's something that's not happening here with steve jobs he would never second guess himself at this point in his career so we're gonna wrap up the first episode right here things look dire but tune into episode two to see how steve jobs turns it all or around and becomes one of the great business successes of all time