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8/3/2019 Steve Jobs_Favorite Quotes

1/11

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3/11

Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes

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Customer Experience Management

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Steve Jobs

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John DiJulius

Chief Visionary Officer, The DiJulius Group

published yesterday

+5

Find something you love so much, you cant wait for the sun to rise

Steve Jobs

Great leaders rally people to a better future

Steve Jobs

Dont sell products, services, or jobs, sell dreams & a vision

Steve Jobs

Leaders are fascinated by the future, you are a leader if, and only if, you are

restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with the

status quo. As a leader you are never satisfied with the present, because in

your head you can see a better future, and the friction between what is and

what could be burns you, stirs you, propels you forward.

Steve Jobs



4/11

Make a dent in the universe

Steve Jobs

Im convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs

from the non successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so

much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that Ithink most people give up. I dont blame them. Its really touch and it

consumes your life. If youve got a family and youre in the early days of a

company, I cant imagine how one could do it. Im sure its been done, but its

rough. Its pretty much an eighteen hour day job seven days a week for

awhile. Unless youve got a lot of passion for this, youre not going to survive.

Youre going to give it up. So youve got to have an idea, or a problem, or a

wrong you want to right that youre passionate about, otherwise youre not

going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think thats half the battle

right there.

Steve jobs

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesnt matter to me. Going to bed at

night saying weve done something wonderfulthats what matters to me.

Steve jobs

If you pursue ideas with the goal of getting rich, you may have a small

chance of succeeding. More likely, youll give up when the inevitable hurdlesarise.

Steve jobs

Breakthrough innovationthe kind that moves society forwardwill be

much, much harder to achieve. Innovation occurs when someone is

obsessively passionate about a particular subject, whether its building

computers that delight consumers, creating technologies that reduce the

worlds dependence on fossil fuels, developing life-saving medicines,cultivating an exceptionally engaging workplace, or any number of other

ventures that improve the human condition. The people who obsess over

these ideas cannot imagine doing anything else. Thinking about the subject

consumes them, energizes them, and ultimately inspires them to create

breakthrough companies, products and services.

Passion wont protect you against setbacks, but it will insure that no failure

is ever final.



5/11

Passion is the emotional fuel that drives your vision. Its what you hold onto

when your ideas are challenged and people turn you down, when you are

rejected by experts and the people closest to you. Its the fuel that keeps

you going when there is no outside validation for your dream.

There is a terrible moment when failure is staring in the face. And actually, if

you persevere a bit longer youll start to climb out of it.

Ive always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of

failures theyve had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots

of failures to get there is probably more creative.

Dont let your obsession die. Embrace it, revel in it, and use it to stand apart.Follow your heart and not the crowd.

A bold vision inspires team members and turns them into evangelists for a

project. And evangelists can, beyond a doubt, change the world.

The only way to come up with something newsomething world

changingis to think outside of the constraints everyone else has. You haveto think outside of the artificial limits everyone else has already set.

Passion is meaningless without vision.

A vision is how you will make the world a better place.

People surround themselves with interesting people who expand their domain

of knowledge.

Spend fifteen minutes a day asking questions that challenge the status quo.

Instead of asking how? use questions that begin with why? and what

if?



6/11

It is hard to design by focus groups because most of the time people dont

know what they want until you show it to them.

Steve jobs

Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them

what they need well before they realize it themselves. More than Applelistening to us, its us who listens to Apple.

Listening to your customers is acceptable for driving incremental innovation,

but it hardly generate breakthroughs. A better description for what Apple

delivers is called a technological epiphany. A vision of what the customer

will want in the future. In this way, Apple changes the way you see the world.

Filling a gap customers didnt know they had.

Transformational breakthroughs are rarely the result of focus groups.

Customers didnt ask for the itunes store, but today they cant live without it.

Customers didnt ask for the iphone, but today millions of people cant live

without it.

To do a good job of those things we decided to do, we must eliminate all theunimportant opportunities, select from the remainder only those that we have

the resources to do well, and concentrate our efforts on them.

What are you deeply passionate about? What are you genetically coded

forwhat activities do you feel you are made to do? What makes economic

sensewhat can you make a living at?

To succeed in any business, you need an exceptionally clear vision. Andto me, a vision is something you can say in one sentence.

Steve jobs

As long as you have an idea that improves someones life or moves society

forward, then you have a story to tell. Its up to you to communicate your

story in a way that inspires, energizes and excites your listeners.



7/11

First, you need to believe in yourself. Dont waiver. There will be

peopleand Im talking about the vast majority of people, practically

everybody youll ever meetwho just think in black and white terms.

The key to successful innovation is matching your passion with an aptitude core competency

He painted a picture of how it would change everything about the way we

worked, educated our children, and entertained ourselves. You couldnt help

but to buy in.

A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages

perseverance. In doing so, it transforms great talent into exceptionalaccomplishment.

Compelling vision is far different from a mission statement. Traditional

mission statements are long, convoluted paragraphs, typically drawn up by

committee, and destined to be tucked into a drawer somewhere and largely

forgotten. Not one business professional Ive ever met, not one, has ever been

able to recite his or her companys mission word for word. If you cannot

remember I, then why bother? Toss the mission statement. Its a was of time.

Make a vision instead; its far more inspiring.

A vision is a picture of a better world that your products or service makes

possible. Captivating visions inspires investors, employees and customers, and

best of all, they inspire those stakeholders to become evangelists for the

organization. An inspiring vision meets three criteria. Its specific, concise,

and consistent.

Epiphanies rarely occur in familiar surroundings. The key to thinking

differently is to perceive things differently, through the lenses of a trailblazer.

And to see things through these lenses, you must force your brain to make

connections it otherwise would have missed. It sounds difficult, but there are

simple ways to get the creative juices flowing.

Scientists who have studied innovation, creativity, and brain behavior say the

answer is to bombard the brain with new experiences.



8/11

Reply to this comment

Successful innovators engage in active experimentation, whether its

intellectual exploration, physical tinkering, or seeking out new surroundings.

Lets go invent tomorrow instead of wondering about what happened

yesterday.

So why cant most companies innovate the way apple does? Because they

lack two things: Jobss commitment to excellence and Jobss commitment to

the customer experience.

It is a simple idea that grew out of an understanding of his customers, not

asking them, but knowing them.

Your customers dont care about you. They dont care about your product or

service. They care about themselves, their dreams, their goals. Now, they will

care much more if you help them reach their goals, and to do that, you must

understand their goals, as well as their needs and deepest desires.

5 Comments

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Brielle Nikaido

Community Manager, FocusPosted yesterday

Great list. Thank you so much for sharing this!

FlagPermalink |

+3



9/11

1 Reply to this comment



Brian Phelps

Lead Designer, Focus

Posted yesterday

"Heres to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. Theyre not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you cant do is ignore

them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the

crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are

the ones who do." - Apple Inc.

FlagPermalink |

0

Vasile Stoica

Founder, Business

Consulting VS

Posted yesterday

"Love is like a puzzle, hard to piece together, but beautiful when all the right pieces are put together. [Steve

Jobs]

FlagPermalink |

+2

Alan Berkson

Business Strategist, Intelligist Group

Posted yesterday

"You've gotta start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology" - Steve Jobs at 1997

WWDC

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0

Phil Donaldson

Brian Phelps Replied yesterday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDiH-lA93Ew&feature=related

Reply to this answer...



10/11


answeredPhil Donaldson In what ways has Steve

Jobs changed your life?

yesterday

answeredBob Parsons What is the most important

thing you can do to rank on Google?

yesterday

answeredMichael Schmier Apple fanboys and

fangirls, did you just lose a little faith in Apple's ability

to innovate?

yesterday

answeredAlan Berkson Is Apple an Experience

Company or a Product Company?

yesterday

answeredGreg Morton What exactly does a CEO do?

yesterday

answeredKelli Schmith What is the one business

characteristic that you would like to mimic of Steve

Director Of Marketing, PropelGrowth

Posted yesterday

Yes and YES!!!!!! Wonderful thoughts. I like these as well:

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected"

Steve Jobs

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." Steve Jobs

Speaking to the quote on failure that John D. shared, Steve Jobs was not afraid to admit when he was wrong. I

heard a sound bite earlier today where he mentioned how he apologized for "screwing up" after getting fired

from Apple. Also, the fact that he was willing to not go forward with an idea rather than try to squeeze a buck

out of it. There was a humble and practical side to Steve Jobs that was admirable.

Thanks for this discussion.

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