#204 Steve Jobs (Inside Steve's Brain)

What I learned from reading Inside Steve's Brian by Leander Kahney. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- 1. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.2. He remade Apple in his own image. Apple is Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives.3. I'm looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. Am willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that 'vision thing' and I'm not afraid to start from the beginning.4. Good storytelling lasts for decades. I don't think you'll be able to boot up any computer today in 20 years. But Snow White has sold 28 million copies, and it's a 60-year-old production.5. Jobs has said the starting point is the user experience.6. In everything I've done it really pays to go after the best people in the world. 7. My dream is that every person in the world will have their own Apple computer. To do that, we've got to be a great marketing company.8. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.9. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea or a problem you're passionate about; otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.10. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that motives make so much difference. Our primary goal here is to make the world's best PCs—not to be the biggest or the richest. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Senra?

  It's hard to believe that one man revolutionized computers in the 1970s with the Apple II and the 1980s with the Mac, animated movies in the 1990s with Pixar, and digital music in the 2000s with iPod and iTunes. Inside Steve's Brain cuts through the cult of personality that surrounds Jobs to unearth the secrets to his unbelievable results. It reveals the real Steve Jobs, not his heart or his famous temper, but his mind. So what's really inside Steve's brain? According to Leander Kahney, who has covered Jobs since the early 1990s, it's a fascinating bundle of contradictions. Jobs is an elitist who thinks most people are bozos, but he makes gadgets so easy to use that a bozo can master them.

• 0:45David Senra?

  He's obsessive with a filthy temper, but he forges deep partnerships with creative geniuses like Wozniak, Jonathan Ive, and John Lasseter. He's a Buddhist and an anti-materialist, but he produces mass-market products in Asian factories. And he promotes them with absolute mastery of the crassest medium: advertising. In short, Jobs has embraced the traits that some consider flaws: narcissism, perfectionism, the desire for total control, to lead Apple and Pixar to triumph against steep odds. And in the process, he has become a self-made billionaire. In Inside Steve's Brain, Connie distills the principles that guides Jobs as he launches killer products,

• 1:30David Senra?

  attracts fanatically loyal customers, and manages some of the world's most powerful brands. The result is a unique book about Steve Jobs that is part biography and part leadership guide, and impossible to pit down. It gives you a peek inside Steve's brain and might even teach you something about how to build your own culture of innovation. That is from the inside cover of the book that we talked about today, which is Inside Steve's Brain. It was written by Leander Connie. So I want to tell you real quick before I jump into the book. I want to tell you how I found this book. It's been recommended to me a few times over the years. Most recently, somebody recommended it to me. They had listened to Founder's Number 178, which is the book about Jonathan Ive.

• 2:13David Senra?

  And they pointed out, they're like, hey, do you know that guy has, that author, rather, he wrote another book. It's this book, Inside Steve's Brain. I didn't, I didn't make the connection previously. Or maybe I did, but I forgot about it. But anyways, that, that made me think of, I was like, okay, you know what? I want to, I have to read that book because I thought Connie did such a great job with the Jonathan Ive book. So when I went to buy the book, I realized that there's been an updated version. And there was an updated version, a reprint with additional chapters after Steve passed away. And I didn't want that. I wanted this to be a period piece. So this book was written in 2007. We're 10 years into the return of Steve Jobs to Apple. The iPhone has just been released.

• 2:53David Senra?

  It looks very promising, but it's not a 10th or a 100th of what it is today. And I think there's value in reading a book that's like a snapshot in time. So I've done this before. I've done six different, six different podcasts, six different books on, on Jobs. Most of them are biographies. Two of them, two out of the six were like, it talks about, one was the book Insanely Simple, which is Apple's approach to marketing. And it's more of like a business book, right? And then Creative Selection, which is fantastic because it's about like how Apple develops products. But the four biographies I read, I'm just going to list them in case you haven't seen them or listened to the podcast or read the book yet. Number five is Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

• 3:36David Senra?

  Number 19 was Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. Number 76 was Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple. And then number 77 was Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing. Many of those books I'm going to wind up rereading in the future and re, and recording another podcast on because they're so valuable. But the reason I'm bringing this to your attention now is because I would actually read them in the opposite order that I read them. I would start with Michael Moritz's book, Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple. And if you can actually get the original copy of the book, it's called The Little Kingdom. I got the updated version in 2009. But what's amazing about that book, that book was published in 1984.

• 4:19David Senra?

  So it covers the first seven years of the history of Apple. And we see a, it's a snapshot in time, just like this book is, a snapshot in time to a young Steve Jobs and the way he talks and thinks about products. And a lot of the traits that are in that book, he carries on for multiple decades. And what's really wild about that is, you know, you and I always talk about the idea that like a lot can change in one lifetime. The author of that book, he was a reporter for Time Magazine when he wrote that book. And then he gets into investing. He's a billionaire. If you fast forward to present day, like he's a billionaire investor. It's just a reminder that so much can change in one lifetime. And then after that, I would read Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing, because that book is all about the, his wilderness years,

• 5:01David Senra?

  from 1985 to about 1997, when he goes back to Apple. And you see, you see one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history just make mistake after mistake after mistake. And that's another period piece, because it ends right at the beginning, or right as he's coming back to Apple. And then I would read Becoming Steve Jobs, which is like an overview of his life, and then Steve Jobs by Isaacson. And the reason I would put Steve Jobs by Isaacson last is because Steve actually worked, even though Steve Jobs by Isaacson was, was published before Becoming Steve Jobs, is because Steve worked hand in hand with Isaacson on that book. And the way that book ends, you know, he knows he's going to die and he's reflecting on the lessons he learned and how he looks at the process of company building

• 5:45David Senra?

  and dedicating his entire life to Apple. Just even if you read the last few chapters, I mean, obviously read the whole book. It's gigantic. I think it's like 500 pages, something like that. But it's, it's just so, the last chapter where, I'm pretty sure it's the last chapter. It's close to the end of the book where Walter is like, listen, I'm just going to let Steve, in his own words, describe like his legacy and then how he thinks about his work. So anyways, that's why it was important to me to not get the updated version. This book is written in November 2007. Most of the highlights I'm going to talk to you about today, I really, I really want to treat this as if Steve is talking directly to you and I. So most, almost every single highlight is going to be Steve in his own words.

• 6:26David Senra?

  There's, you know, I've read a ton of books on him, obviously, watched a bunch of talks. There's quotes in this book that I've never even heard from him before. So that was really, like, that was really beneficial. I'm going to give you a little bit of background real quick and then we're going to, most of, like I said, most of what I'm going to talk to you about is just him talking directly to us, right? So this is November 2007. Apple has a monopoly on the MP3 player market with the iPod. In the United States, the iPod has nearly 90% market share. The iTunes Music Store sells 5 million songs a day and they have 80% of all, they're selling 80% of all the digital music that is sold online.

• 7:03David Senra?

  Jobs has just sold Pixar to Disney for 7.4 billion and at this point, he is the largest individual shareholder in Disney. And then somebody, this is a quote about Jobs, "He is the Henry J. Kaiser or Walt Disney of his era." I've done podcasts, multiple podcasts on Walt Disney and then Henry Kaiser. A lot of people don't know who he was, but after World War II, or even, I guess, during World War II, he was as famous as Elon, in his day, he was as, Henry Kaiser was as famous as Elon Musk is today. Kaiser started over 100 companies. He built the Hoover Dam. I mean, it's just remarkable. There's a, I read his biography. It's in the archive if you want to listen to that as well.

• 7:47David Senra?

  So then, let's jump right into what Steve's talking about. He says, you know, "As a kid, I was just, it was kind of uncontrollable." I mean, as an adult, he's uncontrollable too, right? And he's like, "I was a borderline delinquent." One of my favorite quotes about entrepreneurship comes from Yvon Chouinard. And he's like, "Listen, if you want to understand the entrepreneur, the mindset of an entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent." The juvenile delinquent is saying with his actions, "This sucks. I want to go my own way." That's a paraphrase because I don't have it in front of me. So he's like, you know, "At school, Jobs was a borderline delinquent. I would have absolutely ended up in jail." So a neighbor of his actually gave him, this is the result of a neighbor giving him a hobbyist electronics kit as a kid. And this is one of the most important ideas that

• 8:29David Senra?

  Steve has. It echoes what, one of my favorite quotes from Marc Andreessen where he says, you know, "The world is much more malleable than we think." And so Steve is talking about what he learned as experimenting and tinkering with electronics when he was a kid. These things, meaning the electronics, were not mysteries anymore. It became much more clear that they were the results of human creation, not these magical things. And then it gives us a little history, because it's really hard. I think Apple today might be the world's most valuable company, but they've been at it for multiple decades. And they grew, what's amazing to me is what the introduction said, where it's like, you know, this guy's made innovative products in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010, right before he died.

• 9:11David Senra?

  That's insane. It says, "In 1983, Apple entered the Fortune 500 at number 411, the fastest ascent of any company in business history." This is Steve talking about that. Because one thing he'll tell you over and over again, he's like, "Listen, if you're starting a company just to make money, you've already lost." He's like, "The money will come as a byproduct of building great products and building a great organization, but you absolutely cannot put that first, or you're dooming yourself." So he says, "I was worth about $1 million when I was 23. I was worth $10 million when I was 24. And I was worth over $100 million when I was 25. And it wasn't that important, because I never did it for the money." And then this is the state of affairs as the book opens up, as he's writing this. This is 10 years into Apple's return. "Apple's engaged in probably the most remarkable

• 9:56David Senra?

  second act ever seen in technology." And so that was, at the time, the Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. "The iPod is a Smash, and the iPhone looks like one." And that is a great example of why I didn't want the updated version. It looks like one. It looks like it's going to be a Smash. They have no idea that they have created the greatest consumer product ever created, the most successful consumer product. I can't think of another one than the iPhone. And so this is an example of something you and I talk about all the time. Like, turn your personality into a business philosophy. Your work is too important, you should develop your own philosophy, it should be unique to you. And this quote is fantastic. So it says, "All the traits, the instincts that made Steve Jobs a bad fit for the business world are perfect for the world of consumer devices."

• 10:41David Senra?

  So he's talking about the failure of his time at NeXT. "He made and remade Apple in his own image." And this is the greatest quote. "Apple is Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives. He's someone who has turned his personality traits into a business philosophy." And here's a great quote from Steve Jobs. I've never, I don't think I've ever come across this quote, and I absolutely love it. This is Steve Jobs' resume at Apple's dot Mac website. And so he's describing himself, and this is fantastic. "I'm looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. I'm willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that vision thing, and I'm not afraid

• 11:24David Senra?

  to start from the beginning." And that is a description of Apple, right? When he came back. "I'm looking for a fixer-upper but has a solid foundation." I'm going to read this again. "I'm looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. I'm willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that vision thing, and I'm not afraid to start from the beginning." That last sentence might be the most important. "I'm not afraid to start from the beginning." So I want to read you a quote. This is from Gil Amelio. This is the CEO, the person that winds up, was running Apple before Steve comes back. And he's the one that decides to buy NeXT. They're having all these issues. It's like, okay, maybe we can use the next operating system, and we'll bring Steve back, and he can do some consulting.

• 12:05David Senra?

  And again, at this point, Steve claims, he's like, no, I don't know if I'm... And Larry Ellison, I think, backs him up on this, if I'm not mistaken. But, you know, he claims that it was not his intention to take back control of Apple. I don't know if I believe that, but this is, to note to myself, his passion is infectious and charisma is king. And this is Emilio talking about them hammering out. He's at Steve's house. Steve's like, let's go for a walk. He loved to have meetings while he was walking, while he's moving. And he says, "I was hooked in by Steve's energy and enthusiasm. I do remember how animated he is on his feet, how his full mental abilities materialize when he's up and moving, how he becomes more expressive. We headed back for the house with a deal wrapped up."

• 12:50David Senra?

  And so that deal is when they went to buying NeXT for over $400 million. One way to think about that is Apple pays $400 million to rehire Steve Jobs and they got the deal of a lifetime. Steve is also famous for saying that the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. I think he was a fantastic storyteller. He talks about good storytelling can last for decades. He would compare and contrast the work that he was doing at Pixar compared to what he did at Apple. And he's like, "Listen, my devices, you won't be able to boot up a device I make 20 years from now, right? We're always constantly building. Something will last for a few years and it goes into the dump. What you're doing," talking about what Ed Catmull's doing and the people at Pixar's, like, "if you do it correctly, like, good storytelling lasts forever." And he gives an example. This is another thing that I was talking about last week, or not last week, a few

• 13:35David Senra?

  days ago, on the podcast with George D'Orio. The idea that, and this has popped up over and over, that the best founders have this deep historical knowledge. And I used Marc Andreessen as an example. He's doing something smart, or you can observe it just by listening to him talk. Listening to him talk is the fact that he has this crazy historical knowledge. And then he combines the deep historical knowledge about humanity in general and businesses specifically with also hanging out on the edges of technology, hanging on the edges of the internet where a lot of the new opportunities are obviously coming. And you combine those two and I think you have something powerful. Steve does the same thing. You'll see throughout the book, and in general, you just hear him talk. He's constantly referencing, like, what was Walt Disney doing 50 years ago?

• 14:19David Senra?

  In this book, he talks about what he learned from Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Edwin Land. He talks about in the beginning of his career that he would just call up. He's like, "I'm living in Silicon Valley. I have access to all these people that had built fabulous companies. I didn't know anything about building companies, so I'd call them up and try to pick their brain, try to take them to lunch, try to get jobs with them." You know, Bob Noyce, the people from AMD, I can't remember their names at the moment, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Nolan Bushnell, Andy Grove, just all these people.

• 14:48David Senra?

  And so what's funny is, right after I finished releasing that podcast, I just stumbled upon another podcast where this example that I was using is very evident. It's called, the podcast, in case you want to listen to it, it's the history of Silicon Valley. So the name of the podcast is The Rest Is History. And number 93 and number 94, Silicon Valley Part One, Silicon Valley Part Two. It's an interview with Marc Andreessen about the history of Silicon Valley, which is really funny because in that, he's comparing, like, he does a reference of like, it's the movement that Elon Musk is creating present day is not very dissimilar to the movement that Henry Ford had created previously. And he makes the contrast. He's like, listen, you know, it's implied. I don't think he says it specifically, but it's like, you have these founder-led companies

• 15:33David Senra?

  that can lead movements. He's like, there was a movement around Henry Ford, but there's not a movement around Ford Motor Company. And that really does speak to the, you know, people make all the difference in the world. But in that two-part series, you know, Marc is expressing his, his understanding developed through, you know, I don't even know, dozens, hundreds of hours of analyzing, like, his encyclopedic knowledge of his industry, and more importantly, how it relates to the States. Not very different than what I'm about to reach you here, is the fact that he's talking about like, how, what is, what Pixar's doing in the 90s, how does that compare with what Walt Disney was doing? You know, Snow White came out in the 1930s. So he says, "I don't think you'll be able to boot up any computers today in 20 years, but Snow White has sold 28 million copies."

• 16:18David Senra?

  And it's a 60-year-old production. So he's talking about the fact that good storytelling can last for decades. Now he gets into like, his stated, again, this is where I don't believe him, but is skeptical, do I want to do this? Jobs was skeptical that Apple could stage a comeback. He was so skeptical that he sold, so he's coming back in 1997. He gets a bunch of shares. He sold the 1.5 million shares he received from the next purchase at rock-bottom prices, all except for a single symbolic share. And so when I got to this section, it made me think of another quote, a highlight I saved from the book on Isaacson. This is Steve, this is from the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. And he's talking about like this period in his life, which is also very what this book,

• 17:03David Senra?

  like it's the same time period that's covered in this book, right? So he's talking about like, do I really want to do this? And he says, "We had just taken Pixar public and I was happy being CEO there. I never knew of anyone who served as CEO of two public companies and I wasn't even sure if it was legal. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was enjoying spending more time with my family. I was torn. I knew Apple was a mess, so I wondered, do I want to give up this nice lifestyle that I have? What will all the Pixar shareholders, what will all the Pixar shareholders, what will they think? I talked to people I respected, and this is funny. This is why I'm sending, why I'm reading this to you. Because Andy Grove, if you listen to the podcast I did on his memoir, he's written a bunch of other books. They're, you know, people quote them for, they're good for management, how to operate a company and everything else.

• 17:46David Senra?

  But his memoir is just a, even if you, it's just a phenomenally well-written book that takes you on this emotional roller coaster about the first 20 years of his life. And it's just, it's unbelievable what that guy was able to survive, right? So Jobs is about to call Andy Grove. And of course, if you read his memoir, Swimming Across, chances are you're going to go through that experience and you survive like that, you're going to be a hard ass, right? So we see that Andy Grove was known for that, just his, his reputation was like he had a blunt, like no bullshit personality, right? And communication style. And that was talked about in the book, The Innovators. I think that was founder's number 157, if I'm not mistaken. So it says, "I talked to people I respected. I finally called Andy Grove. I gave him the pros and the cons.

• 18:31David Senra?

  And in the middle, he stopped me and said, 'Steve, I don't give a shit about Apple.'" And then this is Steve's response. "I was stunned. It was then I realized I do give a shit about Apple. I started it and it's a good thing to have in the world." That was when I decided to go back on a temporary basis to help them hire a CEO. So that's a funny story. Like I chuckle every time I read it. But I also thought like, and I didn't realize that till I reread it a few days ago. I was like, wow, that's actually a good like decision-making framework about what you're working on. And it's a two-part decision-making framework. Do you actually give a shit about what you're doing? And the second part is, Is it a good thing to have in the world?

• 19:16David Senra?

  And if you're answering yes to both those questions, you have to do it, even if it's risky. And I think that's also an illustration of the power of storytelling, because that's the lesson, or maybe the insight you take away from that story, right? Like, do I really care about what I'm doing? And is it something good for the world to have in the world? Then I have to do it no matter what. And he's able to tell it in this funny anecdote. You know, I read that a long time ago. I've never forgotten it. Years and years, it just sits in your brain. So that's another thing where, maybe the thing I respect most about Steve Jobs, and I do have, granted, I definitely think, he's one of my favorite entrepreneurs ever. And I don't think that's a very profound thing I'm saying. Even if you don't think he's the greatest entrepreneur in history, he's definitely on Mount Rushmore.

• 19:58David Senra?

  If there's a Mount Rushmore of entrepreneurs in human history, he's definitely on it. But when I analyze everything, like the way he approached his work, the results of his work, the thing I might respect the most, or admire the most, or maybe the trait, maybe the better way to say this, is the trait that I want, and the ability he had that I want. It's like, I've never come across somebody that thought clear. His ability to, how clear his thinking is, when you read his words, and you read his biographies, he was a crystal-clear communicator. And I think that's how he was so successful in getting people. You can't do a lot of things by yourself, right? You have to get the collaboration of other people. And I think that was one of the, obviously, he's a great storyteller as well, but he

• 20:42David Senra?

  was just, there was no ambiguity. In that book, Creative Selection, which is written by a programmer, Ken Cosienda, I think is his name is, he worked on the keyboard for the original iPhone. He worked on Safari, and I can't, it escapes my memory what the other projects he worked on. But he says something about that, how every decision-making, like, he called Steve Jobs the oracle of Delphi. But he's like, the oracle, when you go to an oracle, in mythology, they'd come back, you'd ask them a question, and they'd come back with a riddle. He's like, no, no, Steve wasn't like that. It was crystal-clear. You knew exactly.

• 21:18David Senra?

  What he wanted you to do next. And I think that's extremely powerful. Let's go to the beginning when he's coming back to Apple. And again, he's just doing from top to bottom. Once he starts taking over control, he's trying to figure out like, what do I have here? Like, what are the product line? What's the product line need to be? Do I have? What's the financial resources I have? What are the people? Like, what's happening here? And really, this is something we discovered when we study what Jeff Bezos and Amazon does so well. It's just like, it could all be so simple. Like, just look at things from the customer's perspective and then work backwards from that. This is a quote from Steve, talking about the product line. This doesn't make any sense. What are we doing here? What I found when I got here was a zillion in one products. It was amazing.

• 22:01David Senra?

  And I started to ask people, why would I recommend a 3,400 over a 4,400? When should somebody jump up to the 6,500, but not a 7,300? And after three weeks, I couldn't figure this out. And if I couldn't figure this out, how could our customers figure this out?

• 22:18David Senra?

  Okay, so at this point in the book, this is when he's doing the survey. He's going through everything. I have more notes. I wrote longer notes than highlights on this book. And so I'm going to go through one by one, just tell you what thought spawned in my mind, what spurred in my mind. I don't know what I'm looking for there. What thought came to mind as I read this? So it says, "He immediately embarked on an extremely thorough survey of each and every product, and he went through the company piece by piece." I know that myself is here. That's a smart idea to do, not just for turnarounds. Like, why don't every couple of months, every year, whatever it is, do the same thing in our own company? Right? "He immediately embarked on an extremely thorough survey of each and every product that we're making. He went through the company piece by piece, asking why? Does this still make sense?"

• 23:00David Senra?

  Like, that's a very simple idea, but very powerful like results. The second thing is, they're in a bunch of these meetings, and he says something. Someone started taking notes. Steve said, "You don't need to take notes. If it's important, you'll remember it." So the thought that came to mind, you don't need to know everything, just the important things. Another one, he would sometimes ask hypothetical questions. If money were no object, what would you do? That's start with a question and work backwards. So we saw that with Jeff Bezos, I just mentioned that. Well, an example, I think this was in the book, Amazon Unbound, the most recent one written by Brad Stone. And he was getting, he was getting a little pissed at like, he didn't think the team he put in charge of Amazon Marketplace was being ambitious enough, so he'd like rip up their paperwork and stuff.

• 23:45David Senra?

  And then he just said, and something that you see Jeff do over and over again, he just, he starts with a question. So he's like, instead of like, let's keep having these meetings and we're wasting our time. He asked them a question, how would you get a million sellers into this marketplace? And that set the tone. One, it made his team way more ambitious. He told them, like, at that time, they're like, that's impossible. And two, he made it easy for them to start with the end in mind and then work backwards from that. And then the final thing that's happening on this page is, you know, Steve is cutting a bunch of things, right? He's like, we gotta keep cutting. If Apple's gonna survive, we have to keep cutting. There was no screaming matches, there was no calling other people idiots. It was simply him saying, we've got to focus and do things that we can be good at. And so a lot of people, let me give some context that's happened in the book, like,

• 24:28David Senra?

  they're making, Apple at the time was making printers, they're making millions of dollars a year doing this. And Steve's point was like, yeah, okay, we're making money at this, that's fine. But other companies can make printers just as good as we can. What they can't do, we need to focus on what we're best at, what people, what we can do that no one else can do. No one can make a better computer than us. That makes me think of his hero, Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid. He has this fantastic, and he would do the same thing in his companies, like, we're not diversifying into all this other garbage. Like, we made the world's first instant camera. And so he would say, one of, one of the quotes I love from Edwin Land, he's like, listen, my motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is, don't do anything that someone else can do.

• 25:13David Senra?

  Is that not what Steve Jobs is telling his team? Everybody, somebody else can make another printer just like us, they can't make an Apple computer. Let's focus on that. So one of my favorite videos you can watch on YouTube is just type in like Steve Jobs on marketing. And he goes in, he talks about marketing is about values and he's giving a speech. He's explaining his thinking behind what winds up being one of the greatest Apple ads ever. It's here's to the crazy ones. What he says here, this is just a paragraph. It was very, it's fantastic. I'm going to read this to you. "Jobs realized that while the products sucked, the Apple brand is still great. He considered the Apple brand as one of the core assets of the company and perhaps the core asset. Now we get in direct quotes from him. What are the great brands? Levi's, Coke, Disney, Nike?

• 25:57David Senra?

  Most people would put Apple in that category. You could spend billions of dollars building a brand not as good as Apple. Yet, Apple hasn't been doing anything with this incredible asset. What is Apple after all? Apple is about people who think outside the box. People who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference and not just get a job done. And so his thinking is like, instead of us saying, you know, hey, buy a new Apple. It's this fast and it has this much storage space. It's like, why don't we celebrate the creative people, the people that if they were alive today, you know would use an Apple machine? And I'm going to fast forward a little bit there.

• 26:41David Senra?

  This is really, really important, I think, to pull out because he's already, now he's taken the reins. We're still in the, in, we're about two years into his return to Apple. And the note for myself is, this is Steve Jobs, one of the greatest founders ever. And he is full of doubt and uncertainty. Why do you think you can get away without having doubt and uncertainty? Right? "I've never been so tired in my life. I come home at about 10 o'clock at night and flop straight into bed. And then I haul myself out at 6:00 the next morning, take a shower, and then go straight to work. I wouldn't be honest if some days I didn't question whether I made the right decision."

• 27:21David Senra?

  So what does he do? He does what every other human does. He looks to others for inspiration. This is not very different to what James Dyson was saying. He's like, listen, it's easy for me. I now own 100% of a company that's worth tens of billions of dollars. I've spent decades after decades releasing all these new innovative products that people all over the world love. And it's easy for me to say, oh, yeah, don't give up on your dreams. But he talks about in his autobiography, which is why that book is so important. He's like, I crawled in the house, covered in dust, depressed, thinking that I was just going to go on making prototypes, never going backwards, never going forward for the rest of my life. And what did Dyson say? He says, I looked to people like Isambard Kingdom Brunel. And at times in my own story, when I wanted to give up, I looked to him, and I don't

• 28:05David Senra?

  have the exact quote in front of me, but he's like, I looked to the arc of his life to realize, okay, he went through periods like this, too. And by identifying with him, it was able to give me the belief that my story would turn out okay in the end. That is, I'm paraphrasing, but that's exactly what Dyson was saying, right? How powerful. How much is the inspiration in the example of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, like, how valuable to that is to Dyson? It's worth literally billions. It's the same thing here. What is he saying? I wouldn't be honest if by some days I didn't question whether I made the right decision. What does he do? Jobs said he looked to his hero, Bob Dylan, for inspiration. And so he says, one of the many things that Jobs admired about Dylan was his refusal to stand still.

• 28:50David Senra?

  Many successful artists, at some point in their careers, atrophy. They keep doing what made them successful in the first place, but they don't evolve. If they keep on risking failure, they're still artists, Jobs said. Dylan and Picasso, another one of his heroes, and this is, again, goes back to just having that fundamental understanding of history. Da Vinci was a hero of his. Edwin Land was a hero of his. Dylan, Picasso, Einstein, just over and over again. So it says, if they keep on risking failure, they're still artists, Jobs said. Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure.

• 29:23David Senra?

  All right, so moving on, another thing about Jobs is there's no ambiguity with him. It's like zero or 100. People, he would make really quick judgments about people. He would call them geniuses or bozos. And this is the importance of editing. So you're only, Jobs was all about, again, people, the quality of people. And he's like, I'd rather just, instead of making a million products and having, you know, a bunch of C players, C and B players, like, I'm going to cut everything, I'm going to go down to four products, and I'm only going to put my best people on every product, right? So he says, "If we can make four great product platforms, that's all we need. We can then put our A team on every single one of them, instead of having B or C, a B or C team on any of them.

• 30:05David Senra?

  The result of this is that we can turn them out much faster." And so he winds up, you know, I think they lay off like, something like 3,000 people. I forgot the exact number, it's a lot of people. And this is part of the reason why. Jobs insisted on a clear chain of command. The organization, quote from Jobs here, "The organization is clean and simple to understand and very accountable. Everything just got simpler. That has been one of my mantras: focus and simplicity." And it's funny that he says like, the hierarchy's got like, easier to understand. He also didn't really care about hierarchy. Like, if he, he wouldn't, let's say he wanted to talk to you about something and you needed to do a demo, he would go directly to that employee. He wouldn't go to that, even if that person had maybe two or three layers in between him and Jobs. He was just like, I want to talk directly to him, I don't need to go to his boss.

• 30:50David Senra?

  One of Jobs' favorite maxims at Apple is, "Focus means saying no." He's talking about, now he's talking about building the iMac without a floppy disk, which sounds funny now, but at the time was like, a huge deal. And this is 1998, that's why it was a huge deal. And the note I left myself here is longer than the highlight. I'm going to read the highlight first. "Jobs wasn't 100% sure of the decision himself, but he trusted his gut that the floppy was becoming obsolete. The iMac was designed as an internet computer. This is 1998, you will not be free of doubts. Think about what the product is." And the quote I wrote, I jotted down, this quote I actually learned from Trader Joe.

• 31:33David Senra?

  And he says his favorite, his favorite quote about management ever was from Tex Thornton. Tex Thornton was the founder of Litton Industries, who also ties in. Litton Industries, one of the largest single investments by Henry Singleton and Claude Shannon, they made a ton of money on this guy's company. But Tex says, "If all the facts could be known, idiots could make the decisions." And so a way to think about that is you're not going to be free of doubts. You're going to have to make decisions under uncertainty. If all the facts could be known, idiots could make the decisions. I like this sentence because it made me think. Like, what do you, you can find out what you want your company to do by using examples of what you want your company not to be. And so he talks about like, we're, one thing that was, it seems obvious to us now, I guess,

• 32:17David Senra?

  but his focus is like, I'm selling computers to individuals. Like, I'm not going after the business market. And his whole point is like, people are already doing that. This is not fundamentally interesting to me. "The roots of Apple were to build computers for people, not for corporations. The world doesn't need another Dell or Compaq."

• 32:36David Senra?

  Okay, so now we get to how Steve worked. Demos, multiple variations, extreme attention to detail, deputism, a one-man focus group and embrace the grind. So it says, "For the next 18 months, the team had a weekly meeting with Jobs, during which they'd show him the latest mockups. Each element of the new interface, for each, excuse me, for each element of the new interface, Jobs requested several variations so that he could select the best ones." And again, if you want to know more detail about this, read the book Creative Selection. It's fantastic. "Jobs always asked for multiple variations of products in development, both hardware and software." So they give him a mockup, and this was funny. This is also something that's in the book Creative Selection.

• 33:19David Senra?

  "Jobs leaned forward, his nose to the screen, and would examine everything closely. He would compare the mockups pixel by pixel. He was way down into the details. He would scrutinize everything down to the pixel level." An example of how embracing the grind, how long this would take. "Jobs and the team spent six months refining the scrollbars to Jobs's satisfaction."

• 33:50David Senra?

  The scroll bars that you'd see in the Mac operating system. Six months just on the scroll bars. And so there's a great essay called "Embrace the Grind." It's written by this guy named Jacob Kaplan-Moss. I think if you just, when I Google "embrace the grind," it's the first thing that comes up. But it talks about like, he uses, he starts the post with, "A lot of people think that things that are magic are just somebody going to insane levels of trouble to make it seem like magic." And so he talks about how Penn and Teller do certain tricks and they'll reveal how they did it. And it was just way more work than you thought anybody would actually do for one trick, right? And he applied that, Jacob applied that in his own work where, I forgot which company he's working at, but they're having all these bug reports. They never resolve them.

• 34:34David Senra?

  It's completely disorganized. So he's put in charge to figure out like how, like, we're not making any progress. Anytime we solve one bug, there's like another, you know, a bunch of other that pop up. And so what he did is he essentially, he wrote out every single one, I think on a post-it note if I remember correctly, and locked himself in a room for three weeks straight. And so he organizes them. He winds up finding a bunch of duplicates and they start eliminating them from making no progress to making like hundreds of, removing like hundreds a day. And he laid the foundation to wind up getting to the point where they were, they were actually no longer going backwards. And I think it took like a year. So it's three weeks of intense work, right, to organize them and then attack them systematically.

• 35:19David Senra?

  And his whole point is that a lot of what we call magic is in the mundane, that if you're willing to actually embrace the grind, hence the title of the post, you can actually pull off things that are impossible to other people because they wouldn't even think to put in that much level of effort. How many people are spending six months on scroll bars? How many people are putting their nose to the screen and looking at things pixel by pixel? I think, and not only does it apply to Scrollbar, she applies it to everything. I think I have highlights later, but just in case I don't, I'll tell you now. Like, he's about to present, I think it was like a new Mac, I can't remember it, but he was doing one of his famous product presentations.

• 36:00David Senra?

  There happens to be a reporter in the audience watching him rehearse. And just, they kept going over like one part of the presentation, what the lighting was for that, like where it should be shown. And the Times reporter, I think it was a Times reporter, was just like, what does it matter? Why are you doing that? And I was like, that is the perfect illustration of the opposite, of the standard, right? If Steve Jobs' mantra is embrace the grind, the mantra of almost all of humanity is, eh, that's good enough. And if you can apply that embrace the grind philosophy over multiple decades, which Steve

• 36:37David Senra?

  clearly did, you produce magic, to use the term in the essay by Jacob. So let's go to the note I have left on myself, or I left on this page. "Crystal Clear Communication." I've already mentioned, you know, that's the thing I admire maybe most about him. And this is talking about when they're the first people to realize, hey, you can sell music. Like, you know, if you give people a better experience, like Napster, Kazaa, all the other things that were, the file share programs that we used when we were younger, you know, yeah, you're getting it for free, but it's, sometimes you're getting viruses, it's kind of a pain in the ass.

• 37:20David Senra?

  If I can deliver a better customer experience, and I communicate that customer experience, like, people will respond to that. And he really summarizes this by, "I'm going to give them a better experience for a dollar a song." Anybody can understand that, right? Why would somebody spend a dollar a song when they could just get the same song for free? Jobs' answer was, "The customer experience." And he says, "We don't see how you can convince people to stop being thieves unless you can offer them a carrot, not just a stick. And the carrot is, we're going to offer you a better experience, and it's only going to cost you a dollar a song." Jobs has said that the starting point should always be the user experience. And this is what he says about that. As technology becomes more and more complex, Apple's core strength of knowing how to make

• 38:03David Senra?

  very sophisticated technology comprehensible to mere mortals is in even greater demand. And that's just crystal clear communication, a better customer experience for a dollar a song. They used that same thing when the iPod came out, you know, 1,000 songs in your pocket in an instant. Anybody reads it, it's like, oh, okay. I know exactly the benefit that this product is promising me. This is another quote from him that I think is fantastic. He says, "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people are not used to an environment where excellence is expected." And if you're not in an environment like this, I think books and podcasts can actually simulate one. There's a quote, remember Andy Beal?

• 38:47David Senra?

  So that's the guy that started that bank. He winds up being a billionaire, kind of like this eccentric character. But I did a podcast on him when he was trying to see if he could take on like the best poker players in the world. It's like the professor, the banker and the suicide king or something like that. But there's a quote in that book that I think is, it speaks to why insisting on the highest quality standards and only having the best people, working with the best people is so important. And it says, "Andy had played against the best poker players in the world for nearly 300 hours. It was impossible to stick around against that level of competition and not improve." Okay, so now we got to this part that I referenced earlier where this Time reporter is watching.

• 39:32David Senra?

  It's for the iMac, is when they're doing the iMac introduction. And he's just like, what the hell is going on? He says, "Throughout all this time, the Time reporter is utterly mystified. Why so much effort is put into a single lighting queue? It seems to be so much work for such a small part of the show." And his point is, "Why invest so much elbow grease in getting every single little detail just right?" And now we get direct quotes, great quotes on design. From Steve, so it says, "Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it is all about.

• 40:17David Senra?

  It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, to chew it up, not just quickly swallow it." And then he's echoing the same point that you and I have been talking about for the last like 10 minutes. "Most people don't take the time to do that." And then he quotes some Romanian sculptor I've never even heard of, and this is a fantastic quote. "Simplicity is complexity resolved." So it's simplicity is not ignoring the problems, it's solving them, right? "When you start looking at a problem and you think it's really simple, you don't understand how complex the problem really is," Jobs said. "Once you get into the problem, you see that it's complicated, and then you come up with all these convoluted solutions." That's where most people stop. See, he's doing that again.

• 41:00David Senra?

  He's comparing and contrasting his embrace-the-grind ethos to how most people do, or to what most people do, rather. So it says, "That's where most people stop. And the solutions tend to work for a while, but the really great person will keep going. They'll find the underlying problem, and they'll come up with an elegant solution that works on every level." And if you think, I fast-forwarded Wayne's story, but if you think about what the Times reporter's saying, it's like, why are you going through such work for every little detail? This is a great maxim by Steve, but it also could be an answer to the confusion that the reporter's experiencing. Jobs says, "A great carpenter isn't going to use a lousy piece of wood for the back of a cabinet, even though no one's going to see it." So this is Jobs again on the importance of the quality of people you have.

• 41:45David Senra?

  And really, think about this, is you can't delegate the job of selecting the talent. You have to do that. "I always considered part of my job was to keep the quality level of people and organizations I work with very high. That's what I consider one of the few things I actually can contribute individually to, to really try to instill in the organization the goal of only having A players. In everything I've done, it really pays to go after the best people in the world." And then, once you hire the best people, then your job is to remove obstacles from them. He's talking about the development of the Macintosh. I thought this was fantastic. "The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay," Jobs said.

• 42:26David Senra?

  And then, this is Andy Hertzfield, who worked with Jobs forever, and he put it more bluntly. He says, "The most important thing Steve did was erect a giant shit-deflecting umbrella that protected the project from the evil suits across the street." And then, something that's also apparent if you study Steve Jobs is like how important marketing was to him. And it says, "Advertising has always been extremely important to Jobs, second only to technology. Jobs' long-stated ambition is to make computers accessible to all, which to him means they have to be advertised to the public." Quote from him, "My dream is that every person in the world will have their own Apple computer. To do that, we've got to be a great marketing company." And so, if you really analyze what he's saying there, if you believe your product will improve the lives

• 43:09David Senra?

  of your customer, you have a moral obligation to get good at marketing. Because the better you get at marketing, the more people will know about your product, the more people that get to experience the benefit that your product provides. This is Jobs on passion and not giving up. He says, "Without a passionate commitment to your work, you might lose interest in it and abandon it. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give up. So, you've got to have an idea or a problem or a wrong that you want to right, that you're passionate about. Otherwise, you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through." I think that's half the battle right there. Later on, he's given this interview. This is, I think this might be in the 80s, actually. He says, "I've always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes.

• 43:52David Senra?

  I don't know why, because they're harder. They're just much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everyone tells you that you've completely failed." And he's saying he's attracted to that. How crazy is that? And I like this too. He's like, you don't start out trying to innovate. You just start out, your focus is on making the best product possible. And if you follow that path, then you can't help but innovate. So he's like, when he was asked by a New York Times reporter if he ever consciously thinks about innovation, he responded, "No, we consciously think about making great products. We don't think, let's be innovative, let's take a class. Here are the five rules of innovation, let's put them up all over the company." Jobs said trying to systematize innovation is like somebody who's not cool trying to be cool. And this is funny, "It's painful to watch.

• 44:36David Senra?

  Like, it's like watching Michael Dell try to dance. His heroes are some of the industry's greatest inventors and entrepreneurs. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Edwin Land. Jobs often spoke of Land. Steve lionized Land. He saw in him, in Land, one of America's greatest inventors." And so we get this great description, this is in the 80s. Land had already been kicked out of his company. Steve's about to be kicked out of his company like a year or two from there. And so it says, this is a description of them meeting. And this is when Land just retired. He's like, "Forget this, I'm just gonna dedicate all my time to, to, to science." And so it was a fascinating afternoon because we were sitting in the big conference room with an empty table.

• 45:17David Senra?

  Dr. Land and Steve were both looking at the center of the table the whole time they were talking. Dr. Land was saying, "I could see what the Polaroid camera should be." I'm gonna restart this over because this is fantastic. Okay, ready? "I could see what the Polaroid camera should be. It was just as real to me as it was, as if it was sitting in front of me before I had ever built one." And Steve said, "Yeah, that's exactly the way I saw the Macintosh. If I asked someone who had only used a personal calculator what a Macintosh should be, they couldn't have told me. There was no way to do consumer research on it. I had to go and create it and then show it to the people and say, 'Now, what do you think?'"

• 46:01David Senra?

  Both of them had this ability to, well, not invent products, but discover products.

• 46:09David Senra?

  Both of, this is wild, man. Both of them said these products had always existed. It's just that no one has ever seen them before. We were the ones who discovered them. The Polaroid camera had always existed and the Macintosh had always existed. It was a matter of discovery. Steve had huge admiration for Dr. Land. He was fascinated by him. And not only do I think that's an interesting like part to read, but just this idea where you finally find someone that does like that, I'm like that too. And in Jobs' case, he actually got to meet this person. In most people's cases, like you have to, you have to find these people that you identify with, you know, through, usually through books or some others, some other medium, right?

• 46:53David Senra?

  But once you do, it is a way to realize, okay, I'm on the right path. This reminded me of a great story that Kobe Bryant told one time. And it's like, he's getting ready to play Jordan for the first time. He grew up idolizing Jordan, you know, copying his moves, learning from him as much as possible. And so they're about to play and his teammate comes up to him and Kobe's telling the story. Teammate comes up to him and says, hey, can I, can I give you some advice? And, and his teammate goes, whatever you do, don't look Jordan in the eye. And Kobe said, excuse me? Why the hell would I not look him in the eye? And then Kobe says, I don't think my teammate understood. I'm that too. You can't fucking look me in the eye either, buddy. And I think Jobs realized the same thing. He's like, I'm that too. And I think having that experience is actually really important because it like provides

• 47:38David Senra?

  you with extra motivation, like, okay, I'm on the right path. I'm, I think the same way this guy does. And I just love the idea of sitting there thinking of a young Steve Jobs. What is he at that age? Maybe 20, 28, 29 years old, sitting there, you know? If you think about it, put it in his shoes, a 28, 29 year old Steve Jobs talking to his idol, right? 95% of Steve Jobs' accomplishments are in the future and realizing, I think that way too. And look what this guy, that thinks like me, was able to accomplish. I don't know, I just love that. And I love the way that you can distill that down into what Kobe said. I'm that too. All right, so this is why Jobs always focused on the quality of the product first. Jobs noted that Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years, which sowed the seeds for its demise.

• 48:23David Senra?

  Instead of trying to develop new breakthrough products, the company concentrated on making maximum profits from its interface monopoly. The product, this is a quote from Jobs, "The product people aren't the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It's the marketing guys are the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever new market." Because what's the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself? Jobs said in situations like this, "The people who built the company in the first place, the product-oriented staff tended to become replaced by those with a sales focus." Then one day, this is Jobs still talking, "Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then, the best product people have left, and they're no longer listened to."

• 49:07David Senra?

  And so then, the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn't. And so the anecdote to that, Jobs' point is like, "Don't ever take your focus away from the product. The quality of the product has to be the first thing that you're focused on." And he's going to expand on this a couple pages later, and it's really on the importance of your motive. And I think this is, I've heard him express this idea, but not in these words before. Jobs uses as inspiration Hewlett Packard, one of the first Silicon Valley companies, and one that has always had a strong engineering culture. "The older I get, the more I'm convinced that motives make so much difference." "So much difference," Jobs said. "HP's primary goal was to make great products,

• 49:49David Senra?

  and our primary goal here is to make the world's best computer, not to be the biggest or the richest." One thing I like about Jobs, too, is the fact that he didn't silo great ideas, right? He saw everything as adding to and interacting with, like, ideas are more powerful the more you combine them, too. "The more you combine them." So he would say, like, "I don't really believe there's a difference between art and technology. I don't really think they need to be separate." And then you'll see where he draws like historical parallels, that this is not a new idea that he's saying, right? Jobs had said several times that he thinks technological creativity and artist creativity are two sides of the same coin. When asked about the differences between art and technology,

• 50:34David Senra?

  he said, "I've never believed that they're separate." Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and a great scientist. Michelangelo knew a tremendous amount about how to cut stones at a quarry, not just how to make a sculptor, right? "I don't believe that the best people in any of these fields see themselves as one branch of a forked tree. I just don't see that." People bring these ideas together a lot. Dr. Land at Polaroid said, "I want Polaroid to stand at the intersection of art and science," and I've never forgotten that. So this next quote is actually not from Jobs. And remember, the book opens 2007. They have, what, 90% of the MP3 player market with the iPod?

• 51:18David Senra?

  They're selling 80% of all digital music at the time. This is one of their competitors from Rap City. And it's the CEO, uh, am I right? No, this is Rob Glazer, founder and CEO of Real Networks, which operates the rival Rap City Music Service. And speaking in 2003, Glazer said, "It is absolutely clear now that five years from now, Apple will have 3% to 5% of the player market." So he's only off by, what, 85%, right? And the reason I bring that up is because there's something also where, like, I was watching an interview one time with Jay-Z. He was going around, this is many years ago, he was going around and promoting, because he only does interviews when, like, he's very private for a celebrity. He was doing an interview promoting Magna Carta Holy Grail.

• 52:03David Senra?

  So this had to be like 2013 era. And so he talks about, like, when people say something to you, they're not talking about you. They're expressing like their own fears and like their own limitations, right? So he uses an example, it's like, his uncle, when he was a kid, he would like start beating on the table and start rapping. And his uncle would just be like, "What are you doing? Like, you're wasting your time." And then Jay-Z talks about, like, "I'm gonna be a famous rapper. I'm gonna sell millions of copies." And he's like, "You're never," uh, he's like, his uncle told him, he's like, "You'll never sell a million copies." And he has a line in one of his songs on that album. He's like, "My uncle said I'd never sell a million records. I sold a million records, like, a million times." And in the interview, his point is like when people are saying, you can't do something. It's like, no, no, what you need to hear is like, they can't do something. They're saying, I can't do that.

• 52:46David Senra?

  So they're, they're putting their limitations and their fears on you. And I think there was a, there was a great piece of advice. So one of the first acting jobs Arnold Schwarzenegger ever got was with, was with Lucille Ball. And I have a book on her. I'm going to read a book on her because, you know, she owned her, her own production company. She, like, this is extremely rare. She might've been the only person in Hollywood doing this at the time. And then for, not only was it rare in general for an actor to, to take control, create a control over that and take control of the profits and everything else, but the fact that she was a woman made it even crazier. But she gave him advice. She was like, towards the end of her career. He was just coming up. And he remembered that advice decades later because he, he's talked about in, in speeches, he wrote about in his book.

• 53:27David Senra?

  And she's like, listen, this industry is, you know, really distorted and messed up. But this is what the advice I have for you. Like, when somebody tells you no, you hear yes. So somebody says, no, you're not getting the part. You, you, she said something funny. She's like, you hear yes, and then you hug them and say, thank you for believing in me. So Arnold's point was just like, that he's like, that's advice I never forgot. But he would just, anytime anybody told him, no, that's not going to happen. He would automatically change it in mind that they're saying, yes, it will happen. No, you can't do this. Yes, you can do this. And so he used that as motivation and fuel to keep going. And, you know, he was like impenetrable to doubts. He was like the real life Terminator, where you shoot a bullet at him. Instead of shooting bullets at him and they bounce off, it's like words of discouragement

• 54:12David Senra?

  or, oh, you can't do this, bounce off. And I just think everything like what Lucille's saying, what Jay-Z's saying, relates to what this guy's saying. He doesn't know. Like, you guys probably, so fast forward, you probably have three to 5% of the market at that point. Don't tell me what I'm going to do. You don't know what I can do. All right, so moving on, this is real quick. Akio Morita, founder of Sony. In this book, Jobs goes and flies to Japan, meets with him. He's really influenced by the way Okio built Sony and the Walkman. You know, Walkman had sold a couple hundred million products. And so that was part of the inspiration for the iPod. But really, this section was very interesting because they learned, not only like they learned the demise of the Sony Walkman was that it was so easy to copy, right?

• 54:55David Senra?

  And so the note of myself on this page is kind of what we were talking about earlier, about the embracing the grind. How can you make what you do more difficult to copy? And it says, "Some critics liken the iPod to Sony's Walkman, which is eventually eclipsed by cheaper knockoffs." So, okay, well, that's nice that you have iPod. How are you going to stop? How are you going to avoid the fate of the Sony Walkman, even though it was one of the most successful consumer products of all time? And it says, "The iPod is substantially more difficult to copy than the Walkman was. It contains a whole..." And this is because of Jobs' philosophy on maintaining complete control and being completely integrated, right? "The iPod is substantially more difficult to copy than the Walkman was. It contains a whole ecosystem of different elements, which coordinate with each other:

• 55:37David Senra?

  the hardware, the software, and iTunes, the iTunes Store that is." And if you really think about it, what's the thing? What is the product that ended iPod's dominance? It wasn't a product from another company, it was the iPhone. The fact that they just bundled that with the iPhone. Now, it serves the same purpose. Your phone serves the same purpose that the iPod used to. That was really interesting. Anyway, so a really interesting, I thought, I think, is the fact that, you know, how can you do? How can you make what you do more difficult to copy? And then another example, I think, of this whole embrace the grind thing that you and I have talked about a lot today, the fact that if you have consistency over a long period of time, that produces miracles. It will look like magic to other people. "In 30 years since founding Apple, Jobs has remained remarkably consistent.

• 56:21David Senra?

  The demand for excellence, the pursuit of great design, the instinct for marketing, the insistence on ease of use and compatibility, all have been there from the get-go."

• 56:33David Senra?

  And then I'll close on this, and really, this is the importance of believing in your vision and then being patient enough for the rest of the world to catch up. The thing that Jobs cares about, the things that Jobs cares about, design, ease of use, good advertising, are right in the sweet spot of the new computer industry. And think about it, they had no idea how accurate these words were. Words are written in 2007. We now fast forward, you know, multiple years, we see that he was right, to the degree that even he probably couldn't fathom. The things that Jobs cares about, design, ease of use, good advertising, are right in the sweet spot of the new computer industry. Apple's the only company left in this industry that designs the whole thing, Jobs said. Hardware, software, developer relations, marketing.

• 57:18David Senra?

  It turns out that, in my opinion, that is Apple's greatest strategic advantage. It is Apple's core strategic advantage. If you believe that there's still room for innovation in this industry, which I do, because Apple can then innovate faster than anyone else. The great thing is that Apple's DNA hasn't changed, Jobs said. The place where Apple has been standing for the last two decades is exactly where computer technology and the consumer electronics markets are converging. So it's not like we're having to cross the river to go somewhere else. The other side of the river is coming to us. And that is where I'll leave it.

• 58:03David Senra?

  It's a wonderful little book, really fast to read. You don't even have to read it in order, you can read it like a chapter at a time if you really wanted to. So if you want the full story, read the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. If you want to support the podcast and a friend at the same time, I will leave a link in the show notes. If you use that link to buy a year subscription to Founders, I will extend it for a lifetime. I have to go do this and do manually, so as soon as I see it, usually, you know, I do it like within maybe the next day or whatever the case is. So I will leave a link if you want to buy a friend a lifetime access to Founders. That'll help your friend, help the podcast as well. That is 204 books down, 1,000 to go.

• 58:44David Senra?

  I will go, I will talk to you soon, and in the meantime, I will be embracing the grind.