Anybody Reading Walter Isaacson Book on Steve Jobs?

[Glenn]

Hi,

One of my clients is a retired CIA Agent with mad computer skills.

About 5 years ago - Randy called me.

He'd located Steve Jobs Girlfriend from Reed College.

Randy spent hours with her. (I Asked questions too.)

She was still good friends and kept in touch with Steve.

AND she mentioned a guy named Robert
who was an older college student - mentor to Steve.

Debbie said Steve's Personality changed after meeting Robert.

TODAY...

I'm reading the book and Isaacson interviews OTHER college students
who said Steve got LOUDER and more outgoing after meeting Robert Friedland.

Friedland was on Work-Release from PRISON.

HE "Talked" the judge, the
cops, the Feds, the FBI into letting him go to
college - Instead of locking him in prison AFTER he was arrested with
125,000.00 of LSD in his pockets!

ANYWAY...

Anybody know of other BILLIONAIRES dropping LSD?

Friedland made billions by talking his way into GOLDMINING.

Jobs did it with APPLE.

Thanks,
Glenn Osborn

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by Glenn

Anybody know of other BILLIONAIRES dropping LSD?

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for the Steve Jobs info! I'll reply more to that in a little while (don't have a lot of time this particular moment)...

About BILLIONAIRES dropping LSD, I believe Richard Branson has, and I read that Bill Gates did, too. (I guess it was part of the "era" in certain circles...)

I found these with a bit of Googling...

Branson recounts trying pot and LSD in his book, Losing My Virginity, but says he's done drugs only "rarely." (From here.)

Gates told Playboy he did LSD in his interview with the magazine, published December 8, 1994. (From here.)

LSD was only made illegal in the USA in 1970, so before that, it was presumably legal.

Now, regarding my own personal view, I personally don't do drugs (apart from some occasional caffeine and chocolate!), and generally try to live a pretty "clean" life...

Best wishes,

Dien

Glenn, I read the book, good book, but, boy did Jobs come off as a complete jerk. Visionary, yes, but still a jerk. And a complete control freak, too. But, hey, he made a few millions, although money never seemed to motivate him.
Again, good read. I enjoyed it.

Just in case a few other's here, might be interested in those Particular Documents...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/apple/f...on-steve-jobs/

Phil

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by Glenn

Friedland made billions by talking his way into GOLDMINING.

Jobs did it with APPLE.

Hi Glenn,

When Steve Jobs passed away, I saved a whole bunch of articles about him. Your post inspired me to go back and read through some of them...

Here's a quote from one of them that I think is remarkable, and probably gets right to the heart of Steve Jobs' entrepreneurial success...

Back in 1997, Steve Jobs had just returned to be the CEO of Apple again. However, he hadn't yet "proven" himself with this second time at the company he co-founded...

At the Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), Jobs got a tough question from the audience... He was asked, what have you been doing the last 7 years?

Steve Jobs answered (in part)...

"The hardest thing is: how does that fit in to a cohesive, larger vision, that’s going to allow you to sell 8 billion dollars, 10 billion dollars of product a year? And, one of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it."

And also...

"And as we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with “What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer?” Not starting with “Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how are we going to market that?” And I think that’s the right path to take."

(This comes from here ... http://garry.posterous.com/how-steve...olls-wwdc-1997 . You can watch the video here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&t=51m15s and also here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE .)

This reminds me of an approach that some direct-response marketers take.

They write the sales piece first - before they even create the product!

In the sales letter, they make it a "dream" product. Everything the customer would ever want!

Then... Once they've got that nailed... Then, they create the product!

Now, the product may not be able to fulfil everything in the original sales letter. However, they have the "perfect vision" of the product - from the customer's point of view - first.

(Later, if they can't make the product fulfil every vision in the original sales letter, they edit the sales letter, so the new version accurately describes the product.)

However, this specifies essentially the same approach that Steve Jobs talks about. Look at it from the customer's point of view first. Then... figure out how to make it...

(So many "tech" companies in particular, but also others, do it backwards... I've got to work on applying this approach better myself, too...)

Best wishes,

Dien