The Formula that Leads to Wild Success- Part 10 : Steve Jobs

People who back their ideas and opportunities with hard work, a positive attitude and faith are very successful. They’re the individuals we look up to and admire in society. They follow the unofficial winning formula of humanity, which they put into practice each day.

They have maximized their talent by believing in themselves, having the audacity to put themselves in the spotlight and outworking everyone while never, ever giving up. We choose people like these as role models to look up to and inspire us. They serve as a baseline — a standard of greatness — for us to study and measure ourselves against.

This is the 10th and final profile in my series on individuals, who in their own unique way, followed this formula to overwhelming success. All 10 are people who have shattered the limits — of what many thought was possible — to re-define greatness.

Today, I conclude with the story of a man you are probably very familiar with. In fact, you may be reading this article on one of the phones he invented. I write about the inimitable, Steve Jobs.

You can read Part 1 on Michael Jordan here, Part 2 on Oprah Winfrey here, Part 3 on Elon Musk here, Part 4 on Martin Luther King Jr. here, Part 5 on Misty Copeland here, Part 6 on J.K. Rowling here, Part 7 on Gordon Ramsay here, Part 8 on Simone Biles here and Part 9 on Ellen DeGeneres here. Enjoy!

A Visionary

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. 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

For ages to come, history and mankind will be singing the praises of the great innovator, Steve Jobs. Not because he was a perfect human or because he knew all the answers. Far from it. He simply gave every ounce of his creativity, God-given intelligence and effort to introducing new, vibrant technologies to help the world grow and prosper. He made this his mission in life.

I started out this series writing about, perhaps, the greatest athlete the world has ever seen: Michael Jordan. I conclude with perhaps the greatest innovator and businessman most living people have witnessed. Steve Jobs wasn’t the best because he had the most talent or because he got all the breaks. Steve Jobs became the titan of the business and technology world because he was willing to imagine a future that others could only dream of.

He backed that vision with extraordinary conviction in his beliefs, hard work and persistence.

I thought about telling a bit more about Jobs’ life and providing details into his biography. Though I realized, you’ve likely already read about him. I chose to talk about a few particular examples of key decisions in his life and lessons for those of us who dare to create a world we picture vividly each day in our dreams.

The Money Will Come

“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.” — Steve Jobs

When Steve Jobs first invented the MacIntosh computer, he was fixated on creating the best possible product that he could. He did so out of the spirit of competition and wanting to be the best — not making a profit. In fact, he never talked about making a profit. He simply wanted to make the best computer that he could.

When the original MacIntosh was finally created, it cost way too much money. This ended up leading to Jobs losing his job as the CEO of the company that he co-founded.

“Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation.” — Steve Jobs

Pour all your heart into doing something you love and creating whatever your art, product or work is, as your masterpiece. The money will come.

Be Great at a Few Things

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” — Steve Jobs

When Jobs came back to Apple as it’s CEO in 1997, he was able to bring the company from the doldrums to being one of the most profitable companies in the world. He did so by getting Apple to focus on just a few products. He’s famous for cancelling ongoing projects in favor of doing just a few things right. It’s a lesson for all of us.

Sometimes, we don’t get anything accomplished because we think about trying too many things and worrying whether we’ll succeed. Jobs was able to get Apple to create incredible products like the iPhone, iMac and iPad, but they all came in stages and sequences. He never tried to do too many things at once.

Love What You Do — Fight to Get There

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.” — Steve Jobs

It’s important to note that Jobs was no angel. He was an extremely demanding boss who had eccentricities and quirks that made him a nightmare for some employees. He was a modern-day mad genius who made decisions in the name of creating great products. Sometimes, that meant hurting people on his way to the top.

Jobs also really loved what he did and possessed the vision to get there. He refused to accept second-best and he would not be denied in crafting the creative vision he believed in. He never settled. He worked each day with a subject matter that he cared about, which made it that much easier to talk about, market and sell.

Jobs was a marketing genius and he was able to do so with such brilliance because he loved what he did. He was fired from Apple but never let that slow him down. He came back better than ever because he knew that what he wanted to create for the world was a superior product that people would love. He wasn’t going to let a little rejection get in the way of a dream.

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. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. — Steve Jobs

Closing

I close this series (at the bottom) with Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address to the graduating class of Stanford University in 2005. I think often about our educational system and the things we are taught. We may not all benefit from Madame Bovary (no offense, Monsieur Flaubert!) or the details behind the Wilmot Proviso (look it up!) but I guarantee you, the 15 minutes of this video may benefit you more than any lesson you’ll ever learn in a classroom.

The prescience and wisdom behind these words are enough to propel you to begin your journey today toward accomplishing what your heart desires. Remember- everything — EVERYTHING IN LIFE — begins with an idea. You have to use your mind, first. When you give life to that idea through faith, when you cultivate a spirit of desire and courage, you give way to a future of possibility.

You channel those thoughts and feelings into an indomitable spirit of enthusiasm which fuels creativity that sustains you and leads to hard work, persistence and an unwavering, unstoppable positive attitude. I’m a dreamer and a believer, in case you haven’t already been able to tell by reading this series.

I truly believe that anything is possible. I believe that a poor, black boy from Atlanta could defy all odds and become one of the greatest leaders and figures in human history. I believe that a young Englishwoman, despite how many times she was told, “No” and that she’d never make it — could become one of the bestselling authors in the history of mankind.

I believe that the common threads of success are distilled for you here in my formula and that they are yours for the taking if you have the willpower to act upon them. Opportunity surely matters. Those from wealth and privilege are given the gifts of a desirable education, roofs over their heads and access to advantageous opportunities.

And yet as this series has proven, so many of the greatest success stories in history have been written by those who came from very little. Those who came from broken families — like Oprah Winfrey — and who grew up so poor they were given little hope at surviving.

People who lived day-to-day, wondering where their next meal would come from, as they were crammed into a small motel room, like Misty Copeland. People who overcame an abusive parent that beat them and gave them little hope, like Gordon Ramsay.

People who were told they were too small and that their skin color didn’t exactly fit in a mostly white sport — like Simone Biles. Success is for you. Success is for me. But I don’t define success around monetary gain. The greatest success is reaching your journey toward personal fulfillment in the form of the highest level of self-actualization that your destiny will allow.

This is living a virtuous life with faith, hope and love. When you better yourself and refuse to ever be denied, you find that as you keep going, you get more oxygen, more opportunity and you start to turn the corner past the disappointments and failures that used to hold you back. By becoming who God intended you to be, you set the world ablaze, as St. Catherine of Siena once said.

You make the world a better place because you give others hope that someday, somewhere, if they believe and work hard, they too can reach their dreams. As the great innovator, who is the subject of this piece, once said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Good luck!