Steve Jobs (8 page)

that he conveys, that grabs everyone in the room and doesn’t

let go. Even journalists who should have built up an immunity

to such gravitational forces cannot escape the influence. Wired

.com editor Leander Kahney interviewed Jobs biographer Alan

Deutschman, who described a meeting with Jobs: “He uses

your first name very often. He looks directly in your eyes with

that laser-like stare. He has these movie-star eyes that are very

hypnotic. But what really gets you is the way he talks—there’s

something about the rhythm of his speech and the incredible

enthusiasm he conveys for whatever it is he’s talking about that

is just infectious.
”2

DEVELOP A MESSIANIC SENSE OF PURPOSE
29

Do What You Love

Deutschman said the Steve Jobs “X” factor is “the way he talks.”

But what exactly is it about the way he talks that pulls you in?

Jobs speaks with passion, enthusiasm, and energy. Jobs himself

tells us where his passion comes from: “You’ve got to find what

you love. 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.
”3

We all have a unique purpose. Some people, such as Jobs,

identify that purpose from an early age; others never do, because

they are caught up in catching up with the Joneses. One sure way to lose sight of your purpose is to chase money for the sake

of chasing money. Jobs is a billionaire and an extraordinary

communicator precisely because he followed his heart, his pas-

sion. The money, he most certainly knew, would come.

FINDING YOUR CORE PURPOSE

What is your core purpose? Once you find it, express it enthusias-

tically. One of the most profound experiences of my journalism

career happened during an interview with Chris Gardner. Actor

Will Smith played Gardner in the movie
The Pursuit of Happyness
.

In That Craziness, We See Genius

I think you always had to be a little different to buy an Apple

computer. I think the people who do buy them are the creative

spirits in this world. They are the people who are not out just to

get a job done; they’re out to change the world. We make tools

for those kinds of people . . . We are going to serve the people who

have been buying our products since the beginning. A lot of times,

people think they’re crazy. But in that craziness, we see genius.

And those are the people we’re making tools for
.4

STEVE JOBS

30
CREATE THE STORY

In the eighties, the real-life Gardner pursued an unpaid internship

to become a stockbroker. He was homeless at the time, spending

nights in the bathroom of an Oakland, California, subway sta-

tion. To make the situation even harder, Gardner took care of his

two-year-old son. The two slept together on the bathroom floor.

Every morning, Gardner would put on the one suit he had, drop

his son off at a very questionable day care, and take his classes.

Gardner finished top of his class, became a stockbroker, and

earned many millions of dollars. For a
BusinessWeek
column, I

asked him, “Mr. Gardner, how did you find the strength to keep

going?” His answer was so profound that I remember it to this

day: “Find something you love to do so much, you can’t wait for

the sun to rise to do it all over again.”
5

In

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
,

authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras studied eighteen leading

companies. Their conclusion: individuals are inspired by “core

values and a sense of purpose beyond just making money.
”6

From his earliest interviews, it becomes clear that Jobs was more

motivated by creating great products than by calculating how

much money he would make at building those products.

In a PBS documentary,
Triumph of the Nerds
, Jobs said, “I was

worth over a million dollars when I was twenty-three, and over

ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred

million dollars when I was twenty-five, and it wasn’t that impor-

tant, because I never did it for the money.
”7
I never did it for the
money.
This phrase holds the secret between becoming an extraordinary presenter and one mired in mediocrity for the rest of your

life. Jobs once said that being “the richest man in the cemetery”

didn’t matter to him; rather, “going to bed at night saying we’ve

done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.
”8 Gr
eat presenters are passionate, because they follow their hearts. Their

conversations become platforms to share that passion.

Malcolm Gladwell shares a fascinating observation in

Outliers
. He argues that most of the leaders who are responsible for the personal computing revolution were born in 1955. That’s

the magic year, he says. According to Gladwell, the chronol-

ogy makes sense because the first “minicomputer,” the Altair,

DEVELOP A MESSIANIC SENSE OF PURPOSE
31

was introduced in 1975, marking one of the most important

developments in the history of personal computers. He states:

“If you were more than a few years out of college in 1975, then

you belonged to the old paradigm. You had just bought a house.

You’re married. A baby is on the way. You’re in no position to

give up a good job and pension for some pie-in-the-sky $397

computer kit.
”9
Likewise, if you were too young, you would not be mature enough to participate in the revolution.

Gladwell speculates that the ideal age of tech industry titans

was around twenty or twenty-one, those born in 1954 or 1955.

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955. He was born at the

right time and in the right neighborhood to take advantage of

the moment. Gladwell points out that Jobs is one of an amazing

number of technology leaders born in 1954 and 1955 (including

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, Eric Schmidt, Scott McNealy,

and others). Gladwell’s conclusion is that these men became suc-

cessful precisely because computers were not big moneymakers

at the time. They were cool, and these men loved to tinker. The

message, claims Gladwell, is: to achieve success, do what you find

interesting. Do what you love, and follow your core purpose. As

Jobs has said, your heart knows where it wants to be.

THE LUCKIEST GUYS ON THE PLANET

On May 30, 2007, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates shared the stage in a

rare joint appearance at the technology conference D: All Things

Lust for It

In a New York Times article after the launch of the MacBook Air,

John Markoff wrote about witnessing Steve’s enthusiasm in

person. Markoff spent thirty minutes with Jobs after the con-

ference and noted that Jobs’s passion for personal computing

came across even more so than it did when he was performing

onstage. Jobs excitedly told Markoff, “I’m going to be the first

one in line to buy one of these. I’ve been lusting after this.
”10

32
CREATE THE STORY

Digital.
Wall Street Journal
columnists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher covered a variety of topics with the two tech titans. In

response to a question about Bill Gates’s “second act” as a philan-

thropist, Jobs credited Gates for making the world a better place

because Gates’s goal wasn’t to be the richest guy in the cemetery.

You know, I’m sure Bill was like me in this way. I mean, I

grew up fairly middle-class, lower middle-class, and I never

really cared much about money. And Apple was so successful

early on in life that I was very lucky that I didn’t have to care

about money then. And so I’ve been able to focus on work

and then later on, my family. And I sort of look at us as two

of the luckiest guys on the planet because we found what we

loved to do, we were at the right place at the right time, and

we’ve gotten to go to work every day with superbright people

for thirty years and do what we love doing. And so it’s hard

to be happier than that. And so I don’t think about legacy

much. I just think about being able to get up every day and

go in and hang around these great people and hopefully cre-

ate something that other people will love as much as we do.

And if we can do that, that’s grea
t.11

Nowhere in that quote do you hear Jobs speak of wealth,

stock options, or private planes. Those things are nice, but they

don’t motivate Jobs. His drive comes from doing what he loves—

designing great products that people enjoy.

Rally People to a Better Future

Donald Trump once remarked, “If you don’t have passion, you

have no energy, and if you don’t have energy, you have noth-

ing.” It all starts with passion. Passion stirs the emotions of your

listeners when you use it to paint a picture of a more meaning-

ful world, a world that your customers or employees can play a

part in creating.

Marcus Buckingham interviewed thousands of employees

who excelled at their jobs during his seventeen years at the