#4 - Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Of all the books in this series, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is the only one that I have included that has contributed to my personal motivation, rather than practical business use. Jobs is a hero of mine, for his intense passion for perfection and ferocious drive that helped revolutionize six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

Does this biography offer practical advice for the day-to-day operation of our business? Not exactly. 

However, Steve Jobs is the symbol of the entrepreneur - the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. So much of the modern entrepreneurial spirit is inspired by his career; co-founding Apple in his parent’s garage, being ousted in 1985, founding Pixar and Next before returning to rescue Apple from bankruptcy in 1997. 

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Isaacson reveals that he once asked him what he thought was his most important creation, thinking he would answer the iPad or the Macintosh. Instead, Jobs said it was Apple the company. Making an enduring company, he said, was both far harder and more important than making a great product. How did he do it? Business schools will be studying that question a century from now. 

Isaacson’s book shares many astute insights into what makes Jobs so uniquely successful, that can have a renowned practical influence on the life of a business owner. The book is by no means a how-to as some of the others in this series are, yet it is the most actionable biography I’ve read to date, detailing the traits and tendencies of one of the greatest innovators of our time. 

My Most Important Lesson from this Book?

Focus - After rescuing the company, Jobs began taking his “top 100” people on a retreat each year. On the last day, he would stand in front of a whiteboard (he loved whiteboards, because they gave him complete control of a situation) and ask, “What are the 10 things we should be doing next?” People would fight to get their suggestions on the list. Jobs would write them down—and then cross off the ones he decreed dumb. After much jockeying, the group would come up with a list of 10. Then Jobs would slash the bottom seven and announce, “We can only do three.”

In his dying months, Larry Page—Google Co-founder—arranged to meet with Jobs to learn some lessons from the world’s most iconic CEO at the time. Jobs recalled telling Page:

“The main thing I stressed was focus. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest because they’re dragging you down.”

How we’ve used this lesson in our company? 

The natural tendency of young businesses is to try and cover as much ground, as quickly as possible, exposing the company to exciting new opportunities and growing in as many directions as possible. The quintessential founder is passionate and impulsive - slowing down never makes sense. 

In the early months of MultiplyMii, we were excited by any opportunity for outsourcing that fell on our doorstep. Cash was king, and we still didn’t know who we were, so we aggressively searched for our product-market fit. 

A few months later, with 10-15 clients in our system, we were in a strategic hysteria, with more ideas than time to flesh them out. It was at around that time that I was re-reading the Job biography, and the way forward was clear. Choose our best market and build them the best service offering that we can. Simplify and focus. We chose the e-commerce/Amazon industry and reconfigured our service to be tailor-fit to that market.

Shutting yourself off to potential opportunities is not an easy decision to explain to the team, especially in an early-stage business where any traction seems so positive. Focus is a commodity that’s so intangible - it’s beyond the currency of time or money. But remaining laser-focused on a single target is the most important thing a business can have. 

Additional Nuggets of Gold

• Know the Big Picture and the Details - Jobs’s passion was applied to issues both large and minuscule. Some CEOs are great at the vision; others are managers who know that God is in the details. Jobs was both. 
• Put Products Before Profits - When Jobs and his small team designed the original Macintosh, in the early 1980s, his injunction was to make it “insanely great.” He never spoke of profit maximization or cost trade-offs. “Don’t worry about the price, just specify the computer’s abilities”. Launching a business with profits as the key driver is short-sited and misconstrued. Jobs constantly reminded his team - “you have to be driven by the problem you’re trying to solve”. 
• Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish - Steve Jobs’ famous Standford address ended with the message, “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”. After every Escala consultant is onboarded, the message I give to them is a direct quote from Steve Jobs: “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you”. In order to innovate, you need to have the foolish confidence that you’re smarter than those before you. “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Who Should Read this Book?

I first read this biography when I was 16, as a foolish high school student who knew deep down that the corporate ladder wasn’t going to give him a sense of fulfillment. The Steve Jobs biography developed my curious passion into a focused hunger, leading me down the entrepreneurial path many years later. 

This year, almost 10 years later, I re-read his biography and was equally encapsulated and motivated by this man. At his core, Steve Jobs is a visionary who placed a dent in the universe. Every entrepreneur simply must read this book and question, what element of Job can I emulate in my career? 

Favorite Quotes

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So, it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”

“That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

“Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.”

“People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

Series Introduction - How Books Replaced a College Degree

#10 - The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz

#9 - The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

#8 - Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

#7 - Zero to One - Peter Theil

#6 - The Undoing Project - Michael Lewis

#5 - Freakonomics - Stephen D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner

#4 - Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson

#3 - The Sales Acceleration Formula - Mark Roberge

#2 - Multipliers - Liz Wiseman

#1 - Traction - Gino Wickman