Steve Jobs Built a Different Kind of Company – What Kind Are You Building?

pc vs macApple has been different since its beginnings. Its computers didn’t look like the ones we were familiar with.  Its software was incompatible with the programs we were accustomed to. Its CEO was WAY different than the suit & ties of that time.  Today it’s still different.

Each day I read countless articles by people trying to figure out what kind of company Apple is.  Is it a hardware company like Dell & HP?  Or is it a software company like Microsoft?  Maybe it’s a retailer like JC Penny? I heard a talking head this morning throw out the name Atari.  I believe she wanted to try out a new vocabulary word “rapid obsolescence.” WTF. Most likely in another 30 years people will still be asking the same questions.

Jony Ive was chosen as one of  TIME’s 100 most influential people in the world.  Unless you follow Apple closely you may have never heard of Jony Ive, but he has been driving force behind the look and feel of many of Apple’s products. The following quote is from that article. I have placed emphasis on a line that I can’t get out of my head.

Jony Ive is himself classic Apple. Brushed steel, polished glass hardware, complicated software honed to simplicity. His genius is not just his ability to see what others cannot but also how he applies it. To watch him with his workmates in the holy of holies, Apple’s design lab, or on a night out is to observe a very rare esprit de corps. They love their boss, and he loves them. What the competitors don’t seem to understand is you cannot get people this smart to work this hard just for money. Jony is Obi-Wan. His team are Jedi whose nobility depends on the pursuit of greatness over profit, believing the latter will always follow the former, stubbornly passing up near-term good opportunities to pursue great ones in the distance. Jony’s values happen to add value — emotional and financial. It takes a unique alchemy of form and function for millions of people to feel so passionately about the robot in their pocket.

Wow! What the competitors don’t seem to understand is you cannot get people this smart to work this hard just for money. 

Wall Street has been in a tizzy, because Samsung is making phones with larger screen sizes and the phones are quite popular.  Since Apple hasn’t released an equivalent device, the Street is convinced that Apple has fallen behind the innovation curve. Tim Cook, CEO, says to create a larger screen phone the company would have to make technolgical tradeoffs that would impact the phone’s overall experience.  The company is not willing to make those compromises.  In other words, he is willing to sacrifice short term profits for a longer term gain.

Obviously it’s easy for Tim Cook or Jony Ive take that position with many millions in the bank.  However, as an aspiring or struggling entrepreneur where do you stand? Are you willing to take a short term hit?  Is it all about the money?  These are questions that we must contemplate as entrepreneurs.

There is a Bigger Elephant in the Room for Entrepreneurs

I created my first Pinterest board today.  Check it out.  Not really sure what to do with it, but it could become a repository for cool quotes that I come across.  I saw this one, but had to clean it up for my audience.

Excuses

I have written several post recently on fears that American workers have concerning entrepreneurship -  Fear of Going Broke and How Entrepreneurs Overcome Fear. An Edward Jones survey found that:

  • 61% fear losing savings
  • 58% fear lack of support and safety net
  • 50% fear losing healthcare and retirement benefits
  • 49% fear lack of work/life balance
  • 34% fear doing it alone and feeling isolated

Those are all real concerns, but there is an elephant in the room that may be be scarier than all of those. Once again, I will draw on a Steve Jobs story.

Steve Jobs gives employees a little speech when they’re promoted to Vice President at Apple, according to Adam Lashinsky in a new article in Fortune that’s not online yet.  Lashinsky calls it the “Difference Between the Janitor and the Vice President.”

Jobs tells the VP that if the garbage in his office is not being emptied regularly for some reason, he would ask the janitor what the problem is. The janitor could reasonably respond by saying, “Well, the lock on the door was changed, and I couldn’t get a key.”

An irritation for Jobs, for an understandable excuse for why the janitor couldn’t do his job. As a janitor, he’s allowed to have excuses.  ”When you’re the janitor, reasons matter,” Jobs tells newly minted VPs, according to Lashinsky.

“Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering,” says Jobs, adding, that Rubicon is “crossed when you become a VP.”  In other words, you have no excuse for failure. You are now responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn’t matter what you say.  (Business Insider)

I recently took a big hit on one my investments and was sharing this with my Mother.  She said, who can we blame? There was a time when I would have blamed Wall Street, the weather, anyone and everyone except the man in the mirror.  This time I calmly said to my Mother – that CEO needs to be fired! LOL.

Actually, I said there are no fingers to point – this is on me.

Steve Jobs – Master the Message

There are many aspiring entrepreneurs that would rather build their widget and let someone else sell it.  I’m sad to report that you may have a problem.  Until you have grown beyond the small business classification – you – the owner, the founder, the chief cook and bottle washer will be your company’s best sales person. No one knows the product and benefits better than you. No one is more passionate about the design, the services, the intricate details than you. I’m not suggesting that you have to become the pushy telemarketer or a sleazy used car sales person, but you do have to master your message and learn to convey it to people.

No one was a better salesperson at Apple than Steve Jobs.  However, if you called him one he would probably rip you to pieces. Over time he made the transition, from the guy who almost threw up from nervousness before his first television appearance

 

to the guy that delivered a sales presentation better than any professional salesperson could have dreamed. IMO, mastering your message is as important as anything else on aspiring entrepreneurs to do list.  You may want to consider joining your local ToastMasters group to kickstart the process.

 

Two Fewer Unemployed Folks in New Jersey Thanks to Entrepreneur U

The great recession is having a lingering effect on highly skilled people and will continue so for awhile.  Just this morning, I was thinking about writing a blog post along this lines of this article in Inc. (Entrepreneurship Education for the Jobless).  The reality is that corporate America may never look like 2008 again.  Many of those jobs are not coming back leaving people with three choices:

  1. If you are unemployed keep fighting for those few jobs that are available.
  2. If you are employed – please don’t piss off anyone on your job. If you are on the edge – see #1.
  3. Create a job vs. looking for one. Make something happen on your own.

IMO, the go to school, get a good job and live happily ever after days are over. In this post great recession economy, I believe it’s important to shift our mindsets to that of a producer.  Determine what value you have to offer to the market place and focus on delivering it. Leverage the resources that are out there like New Jersey non-profit Intersect fund.  There are others like it…

Read full article here.

5 Ways to Test Your Startup Idea Before You Invest Too Much Time and Money

I stumbled across a great article on Inc. dot com on ways to validate your startup idea. The author stated that he is often hired to build a websites for entrepreneurs who aren’t sure if they are solving a real world problem. They are going with their gut.

It often comes down to gut, because until the orders are rolling in – we just don’t know. I thought that his 5 ways to test your theory were pretty innovative.

  1. Use smoke tests – Place an ad on Craigslist to see if any people contact you.
  2. Assess yourself – Instead of building products that are simply cool – ask yourself if it is something that you would buy.
  3. Find a mentor or industry advisor – leverage your network and make a connection. Person may be able to help you gauge needs.
  4. Conduct a survey – Create a survey on Survey Money and share it on your Facebook page or Twitter feed.
  5. Trust your gut – IMO, in most startups it comes down to gut decision. The more you exercise it – the more chiseled it gets.

Items 1, 3 & 4 were challenging 5-10 years ago. Now with Social Media ideas can be flushed out fairly quickly.

Read the full article here.