“You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart– even when it leads you off the well worn path. And, that will make all the difference.” -Steve Jobs
Entrepreneur, Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer Co. in his family’s garage, when he was just 21 years old. Within four years his love for technology and innovation helped him revolutionize the personal computer. Jobs, the college dropout from humble beginnings, became a multi-millionaire, and a well-respected voice in the business world. But then– he was fired. After he was publicly let go from the company he created, Steve Jobs picked himself up, and continued to create great businesses (like NeXT and Pixar) and products, which eventually led Apple to hire him back as its CEO. With Steve Jobs at the helm for the second time, Apple continued to push the limits of what was possible, and brought innovative products like iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iWorks, iLife, and iPad to consumers all over the world. Throughout the years, Steve Jobs has shared his remarkable story and business insight through speeches, interviews, and keynote addresses. The team here at BrandMakerNews compiled ten inspiring bits of wisdom from Steve Jobs to encourage you to follow your heart as you build your own business empire.
Here Are 10 Bits of BUSINESS WISDOM From Steve Jobs:
1. Embrace the opportunity in every situation. “Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, and less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
2. Commit to doing great work and never settle. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking, and don’t settle.”
3. Make every day count. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
4. Don’t miss your moment. “Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
5. Keep your priorities in check. “Manage the top line, which is your strategy, your people and your products, and the bottom line will follow. My model for business is the Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
6. Attract remarkable people. “Building a company is really hard. It requires the greatest persuasive abilities to hire the best people and to keep them working at your company and doing the best work of their lives. We’ve been lucky to have great partners and to have attracted great people. Everything that has been done has been done by remarkable people.”
7. Choose the right horse to ride. “Apple is a company that doesn’t have the most resources. The way we’ve succeeded is by choosing the right horses to ride really carefully. We try to pick things that are in their Spring. If you choose wisely you can save yourself a tremendous amount of work, instead of trying to do everything. Sometimes you just have to pick the things that look like they’ll be the right horse to ride.”
8. Don’t stress…it will all work itself out. “If the market tells us we’re making the wrong choices, we’ll listen to the market. That’s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best product. And if we succeed, they’ll buy them, but if we don’t, then they won’t. And it will all work itself out.”
9. Move on to the next great thing. “If you do something and it turns out pretty good, you should go out and do something else wonderful. Don’t dwell on it for too long, just figure out what’s next.”
10. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. “Much of what I’d stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.”
