{"id":92,"date":"2011-10-06T13:40:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T20:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/?p=92"},"modified":"2012-05-16T12:08:58","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T19:08:58","slug":"remembering-steve-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/?p=92","title":{"rendered":"Wisdom for Entrepreneurs from Steve Jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>Remembering Steve Jobs, 1955-2011<\/em><\/p>\n

1. Create a product with soul.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Jobs proved that to create a product that customers would not just\u00c2\u00a0use, but love, you have to marry science with art.<\/p>\n

2. Start small but think big.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to put a ding in the universe,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jobs famously said.<\/p>\n

3. Your time is limited, so don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t waste it living someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t build the life that someone else wants you to- Jobs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life is a lesson in making original decisions.<\/p>\n

4. Stick to your guns.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Interviewers often said that Jobs was a tough interview- he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t answer their questions, but rather always said exactly what he wanted to say.<\/p>\n

5. Find real solutions to real problems.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Jobs made the claim early on that 99-cent mp3s would save the music industry. Indeed- since April 2008, the Apple iTunes Store has been the number one music vendor in the U.S., and by October 4, 2011, the iTunes store sold its 16 billionth song.<\/p>\n

6. Become a market leader.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Own and control the technology that you create and use, to reduce the ability for others to successfully imitate to your standards.<\/p>\n

7. Make a product that can sell itself.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Apple\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s advertisements were famous for simply showcasing their products. They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work overtime to convince you- their elegant user interface did, all on its own, by being head and shoulders above the competition.<\/p>\n

8. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t listen to your customers too much.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Jobs was famous for his assertion that listening to customers too much is a waste of time. You have to think on their behalf but ignore their skepticism if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to create something that no one has ever seen before.<\/p>\n

9. Live every day as though you have nothing to lose.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Jobs. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is no reason not to follow your heart.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

10. Look at the silver lining in failure.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0When Jobs was fired from Apple, he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But, he realized, it was the best thing that ever happened to him, because it freed him to enter one of the most creative periods of his life, he said in his Stanford commencement speech.<\/p>\n

11. If you love what you do, you will find a way.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Jobs said that when he was fired from Apple, he thought about running away from the valley. But then he realized that he loved what he did, and the events at Apple couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change that.<\/p>\n

12. Have faith in your journey.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Jobs described you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t connect all of the dots when you look forward in time, but you can, in retrospect, see the way that pieces fall into place to bring you lessons.<\/p>\n

13. Trust your inner voice.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let the noise of others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 opinions drown out your own inner voice,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said- following his inner voice allowed Jobs to both pivot into different projects and to innovate.<\/p>\n

14. Be a perfectionist.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all heard the stories of Jobs being an unapologetic taskmaster, to the point that he alienated some co-workers. And yet, his passion created products that speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

15. Keep your eye on the endgame.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really care about being right, you know, I just care about success,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jobs famously said, after he was fired by Apple. Borrow ideas if you have to, but focus on the implementation, and on improving rather than the politics of business.<\/p>\n

16. Surround yourself with talent.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Although Steve stands out as the leader who made Apple what it is today, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a myth that he alone is responsible for Apple\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s success. A team of talented leaders- Phil Schiller, Jony Ive, Peter Oppenheimer, Tim Cook, and Ron Johnson- work overtime at Apple to build Apple.<\/p>\n

17. Let simplicity reign.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Jobs was famous for talking about the power of saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when it came to adding bells and whistles to his products. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been said that choosing what not to do was more important to him than choosing what to do.<\/p>\n

18. Create a unified team.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Under Jobs, the executive team at Apple held weekly meetings to review every single product under development, and handed responsibility for all expenses to its Chief Financial Officer alone. Jobs thought that Sony, for example, had too many divisions to create a viable iPod, iPad or iPhone competitor. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not synergy that makes [Apple] work,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a unified team.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

19. Teach your company your vision.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Apple hired an academic from Yale Management School to create an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Apple University\u00e2\u20ac\u009d inside the company, so that his knowledge could be passed on and the structure and vision of Apple could be taught to future employees.<\/p>\n

20. Create buzz.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Apple creates a lot of hype by keeping its new products a secret until the very last minute. Although the policies of its tight ship are occasionally controversial, it seems to have incidents in which employees leave prototypes in bars fueling even more speculation on the web about the next iPhone.<\/p>\n

21. Keep a Beginner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mind.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a phrase in Buddhism, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBeginner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wonderful to have a beginner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jobs once said. Keep a sense of exploration and wonder in the world.<\/p>\n

22. Be a yardstick of quality.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Some people aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t used to an environment where excellence is expected,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Jobs.<\/p>\n

23. Think differently.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Although the Apple stores were considered a huge risk, Jobs pushed ahead with the idea, pointing out that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Apple now has over 357 stores worldwide, and in 2010 the stores earned over $3.2 billion, about 13% of total Apple sales.<\/p>\n

24. Defy expectations- visually.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0At his 2008 Keynote speech, Jobs showed how the MacBook air fit into a standard office envelope, creating an image that no on could forget.<\/p>\n

25. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0This was a phrase that Jobs saw on an issue of The Whole Earth Catalogue, a magazine he loved when he was growing up. They printed it on the back cover of their final issue, he described in his in his 2005 speech at Stanford. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have always wished that for myself,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n

reprinted from endeavor.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remembering Steve Jobs, 1955-2011 1. Create a product with soul.\u00c2\u00a0Jobs proved that to create a product that customers would not just\u00c2\u00a0use, but love, you have to marry science with art. 2. Start small but think big.\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to put a ding in the universe,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jobs famously said. 3. Your time is limited, so don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t waste […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,7,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-leadership","category-perspectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tahomagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}