Steve Jobs - A Classic Example of Grit, Passion and Vision

1955 - 2011
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I've always loved reading biographies, studying people, learning and adopting successful strategies of the greats and applying them in my daily routine. I read a piece on Steve jobs a little less than a decade ago and what I admired most about his story was his ability to bounce back from "adversities" and return with bigger, better and stronger concepts with an unmatched drive to become better...


Personally, I thought it was most ridiculous for someone to get fired from a company he created. This was the situation Mr. Jobs found himself in the summer of 1985. I believe it is a very common trend in history for trailblazers, like Mr. Jobs to hit major stumbling blocks in their lives before finding true success. How Mr. Jobs handled that situation is a challenge to anyone who wants to live a life just a little bit better than ordinary...


Given that we're currently in the internet start-up craze, I think this is a befitting inspirational story to the millions of entrepreneurs out there still looking to get their ideas off the ground.


Look at it this way, your start up is like a baby… Your baby... An idea that you have nurtured and dreamed of for a good amount of time and you have the spine to bring those dreams to reality. Of course, there are quite a number of  bumps on the road for start-ups. The most common are constrained finances, naysayers, legal issues and bureaucratic bottlenecks. However, successful entrepreneurs welcome these challenges and they bring forth their revolutionary concepts to reality regardless. No excuses, no exceptions…


That's where Mr. Jobs found himself and instead of wasting his creative genius in fighting his coworkers or publicly making a fool of himself in the media, he started another...


He founded Next, and later on Pixar... and what I admire most about him is this: Even with Pixar's astronomical success, Mr. Jobs never forgot about Apple... He was relentless, tenacious, and persistent. He proved that Apple was not just a fluke, but was part of who he really was... Apple was his baby... and with a remarkable turn of events, he rejoined the Apple team and Apple rode on this giant visionary's wave of influence to become the game-changer it is today.


This beautiful love story doesn't just hold lessons for entrepreneurs, but for anyone who has ever had a dream of making a true impact in the world. It's for visionaries and super achievers... We're all witnesses to a life well lived and it's our duty to emulate Mr. Jobs’ drive and work ethic to become a little bit better, everyday.


Here are a few quotes attributed to Mr. Steve Jobs: Learn whatever you can from them and remember that, "Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do".

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Do Great Work:

"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. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

– Stanford commencement speech 2005

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Death and motivation:

"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. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

– Stanford commencement speech 2005

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Vision:

"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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

– Stanford commencement speech 2005

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Innovation:

"Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10.30 at night with a new idea, or because they realised something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.

"And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important."

– Business Week 2004

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Design:

"In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service."

– Fortune magazine 2000

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Internet Start-ups:

"The problem with the internet start-up craze isn't that too many people are starting companies; it's that too many people aren't sticking with it. That's somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That's when you find out who you are and what your values are.

"So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they're gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective."

– Fortune magazine 2000

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Life and what matters:

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful … that's what matters to me."

– Wall Street Journal 1993

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Simplicity:

"That's been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

– Business Week 1998

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Helping people:

"There's nothing that makes my day more than getting an e-mail from some random person in the universe who just bought an iPad over in the UK and tells me the story about how it's the coolest product they've ever brought home in their lives. That's what keeps me going. It's what kept me five years ago [when he was diagnosed with cancer], it's what kept me going 10 years ago when the doors were almost closed. And it's what will keep me going five years from now whatever happens."

- AllThingsD Conference, 2010

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Photo Credits: Apple Website