I’ve read a fair number of the thousands of articles written in tribute to Apple founder Steve Jobs. Like many, his entrepreneurial success fascinated me – that someone could be so brilliant at product development, design, marketing and even retailing is simply amazing.
I’d be content to excel at just one of those.
The tenor of most the articles I’ve read is that Jobs took being a genius very seriously and worked very hard at it.
He was painfully aware that he wasn’t just pumping out computers and phones to keep the cash registers ringing – he had a belief that he was doing something spectacular.
“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,” Jobs said.
Many start-up entrepreneurs launch their businesses with dreams of changing the world, only to find that they get stuck in the grind of actually surviving and then thriving.
There’s nothing wrong with this – every business needs a solid platform.
But Steve Jobs’ big lesson is that we shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger goal, be it to develop a world-leading product or create a new way of doing things or build a new piece of revolutionary technology.
Don’t stop trying to do “something wonderful”.
Get it done – today!
