Chapter 7 〇6. Steve Jobs: When life hits you hard, please don't lose confidence

Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Computer, the president of Apple and Pixar.The image of him wearing a T-shirt and jeans introducing Apple's new products in front of the big screen is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, but what many people don't know is that he has fought against various crises all his life, and that image is far taller than the former. Jobs was abandoned by his biological mother when he was born and was raised by adopters. He dropped out of school in middle school and could not be recognized in school when he was a teenager, but he showed full talent in electronic technology.He was bohemian, dropped out of college at the age of 18, and even had the experience of studying Zen in India. In 1977, Jobs and his partners established Apple. At that time, there were only two people in the company. The office was in the garage, and the products were just a few circuit boards. However, it became popular in the personal computer market in the future.When Apple was in its heyday, Jobs was kicked out of the company because of conflicts with the operator.Jobs re-started his business again, established NEXT and Pixar, and successfully produced animated films such as "The Incredibles" and other box office hits.Afterwards, Jobs returned to Apple and led Apple to be successfully promoted to a fashion model leading the consumption of a generation of young people.

Apple has become a label associated with Jobs.During the decades of Apple's development, the dreams that Jobs once imagined flashed everywhere.Apple has been at the forefront of personal computing since the first Apple computer.Jobs' life and career is also a legend.His success is not only that he and Apple have become a myth in the minds of a generation, but also that his success is a classic personal struggle history of persevering in realizing his dreams.Whether it was being kicked out of his founding company, or when cancer life was not guaranteed, Jobs ran his life and business with an unquenchable enthusiasm.

For a long time, Jobs is still fighting cancer, and Apple has been frustrated in the capital market because of the loss of Jobs.At present, a huge crisis that Apple needs to face is: what would Apple do without Jobs? Opinion: I was ousted from the company I started, but I still love it.In hindsight, getting fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to me.I'm well aware that sometimes life will pick up a piece and smack you on the head, but don't lose heart.I know very well that the only thing that keeps me going is that I love what I do. Love what you do, and this can be done with passion at all times.Setbacks are not terrible. What is terrible is that you lose yourself, your enthusiasm for your career, and your confidence in standing up again in the face of setbacks.Jobs was kicked out of the company he founded, but still faced the future with an entrepreneurial mentality, which may not be what others can do.

background of the crisis On September 17, 1985, Steve Jobs submitted his resignation to Apple's board of directors.He eventually ended his more than 10-year relationship with Apple.This incident was as tragic as a strong man breaking his arm. Jobs has always been closely associated with Apple's image of a bitten apple. In 1975, Jobs, a college dropout, and Woz, who was 5 years older than him, founded Apple in a garage.Due to its admiration for technology, Apple has made a big splash in the personal computer market and is considered the leader of personal computers.However, after more than 10 years of development, Apple began to decline in the face of the impact of IBM and other companies. The direct reason was that Jobs ignored the highly profitable Apple II computer and focused all his attention on the then McGinn Tosh on board.Due to the lack of a comprehensive grasp of the market, coupled with the adventurous attitude of walking the tightrope in technology, and Jobs’ personal paranoia over the Macintosh machine, Apple’s sales profit has dropped sharply, and the market sales target has become empty talk. .Jobs' irrational, unbalanced and extremely individualistic behavior within Apple also led to the decision of Apple's board of directors to demote Steve Jobs.

This is undoubtedly a heavy blow to Jobs, who has always been self-centered and extremely conceited.The proposal was made by Murray, Jobs' longtime collaborator, John Sculley, the president he had personally picked, and McKinna.At that time, Apple was experiencing the biggest crisis since its inception. In the market, competition from personal computer companies such as IBM caused Apple to suffer repeated setbacks. Internally, because of Jobs's dictatorship, the management was on the verge of disintegration.After receiving the news of his demotion, Jobs has been trying to take action to save this fatal crisis in his personal life, but with little success.Although he was retained as chairman of the board of directors, the position of head of Apple's Macintosh machine development group was given to someone else.This company, which has poured all his dedication into it, is already waving goodbye to him.

After reluctantly accepting this reality, he didn't just get depressed.In the next month, Jobs traveled all over Europe and went to the Soviet Union. During this time, he was still trying his best to recommend Apple's Macintosh to users all over the world. At the same time, he was also thinking about how to control his own life.In his 2005 speech to Stanford University students, he recalled: "In the first few months, I really didn't know what to do. I lost the baton that the previous entrepreneurs gave me. I put Things got so bad. But I found the light and I still love what I do. What happened to Apple didn't change that. I got kicked out, but I'm still in love. So I decided to start over Again. I didn't see it at the time, but it turns out getting fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to me. The blissful feeling of being a success was replaced by the lightness of being an entrepreneur again: to anything Not so sure. It made me feel so free to enter one of the most creative phases of my life."

As Jobs said, he wasn't crushed.Before officially submitting his resignation, the dreamy Jobs started his business again when he was 30 years old.He brought a group of creators from Apple and started again, creating NeXT, a company that began designing new computers for the education market. NeXT has indeed won the favor of many people in the early days of its business, and has secretly become the "needle" for Jobs to return to Apple. Opinion: Bob Dylan is a role model in my life.When I grew up, I knew the words of all his songs by heart, but my appreciation for him was never superficial, but I derived a lot of life inspiration from it.When you admire an artist, if they are very good at one aspect, you will find that they can create a brilliant career with this expertise alone, and that they leave the impression on the outside world that they have gained real success.

Doing what you are good at means that you must "delegate power", which is not only suitable for the planning of the company's future, but also suitable for operation and management.A successful company must be "professional and popular", and a successful manager must know how to guide the company out of the predicament in the most suitable way. background of the crisis In 1985, after Jobs was dismissed from Apple, he founded NeXT, a computer design company with the same nature as Apple, mainly manufacturing personal computers for the education market. Jobs obviously placed high hopes on NeXT. He dug a group of technical talents from Apple to the newly established company, which still conducts research and development of personal computers.And high-profile hired people to design the company building and logo, wanting to compete with the original "child" - Apple.At first, thanks to the efforts of Jobs, NeXT won the favor of many investors, and a steady stream of funds were injected into the company. Jobs also ambitiously hoped that the company could create a new type of computer that shocked the world.But in fact, NeXT has never developed a computer that can shake the world. Instead, it has achieved unexpected gains in the operating system.Jobs also owns Pixar. In the animation market, Pixar has entered Hollywood, winning word of mouth and box office.

When NeXT and Pixar fell into trouble one after another, Jobs decisively took cost-cutting measures such as layoffs, but the core operating system software and Pixar's animation production department have not been affected by the company's crisis.This also paved the way for Jobs to return to Apple in the future.It is precisely because Jobs persisted in the most core and best parts that he was able to once again outline another brilliance in his career blueprint. In 1994, when Jobs's personal life entered a kind of peaceful happiness, Apple fell into the abyss of depression and couldn't extricate itself.

Since 1993, Apple has entered a precarious age.John who asked Jobs out of Apple?Sculley had to leave Apple because of declining sales and performance.That year, Apple had a quarterly loss of $188 million.Even after the president's baton was handed over to Michael one after another?Spindler and Jill ?After Amelio's hands, Apple has not been able to raise its head from the low market share.At one point, the board of directors thought of completely shifting Apple's product line and even seeking mergers and acquisitions from other companies.At this time, Jobs successfully returned to Apple with the help of NeXT's operating system.

After that, Jobs once again followed the principle of "doing what he does best" and successfully opened up the field of digital music.Apple has achieved the ultimate in "user-centered innovation".In addition to the continuous introduction of the Apple personal computer, the company has also dabbled in the field of digital music, and the reason is that Apple has made the small digital music player into a simple and fashionable "toy", which is the same as his founding. Apple has always maintained a high degree of consistency in emphasizing that all products must have a perfect appearance.Jobs will personally participate in the design of new products, pay attention to his reaction to the use of new products, and give feedback to engineers so that the design can be improved time and time again. From imac to ipod to iphone, Jobs led Apple further and further on the road of perfect appearance.This is what Jobs has been insisting on since he founded Apple. This "good thing" has also paid off for Apple. These products, which perfectly combine technology and appearance, and fully focus on user experience, help Apple quickly recover from the crisis. Get out and get on the road to business success again. Opinion: You can't connect the dots in your life when you look forward, you can only connect the important moments when you look backward, so you have to believe that one day, you will The various time points experienced in life are connected in one way.This belief makes all the difference in our lives. We don't have to mind all the misfortunes in the past. As Jobs said, we must believe in something, and these beliefs can lead us through the worst moments.The same is true of the ups and downs of business roads.Crises may be business opportunities for people of faith. background of the crisis In the 50 years of Jobs' life course, troughs and peaks have been interlaced. At 18, Jobs was a bohemian hippie with shoulder-length hair and a marijuana smoker.After graduating from high school, he persuaded his adoptive parents to enter the expensive Reed College.But this did not give Jobs a broad space to display his ambitions.His grades in the first semester were so bad that he dropped out.In the eyes of ordinary people, this is simply deviant, but it turns out later that perhaps this is the starting point of a business legend. Among the opportunities in life, there are always some difficulties and dangers that seem to be an insurmountable obstacle at the time, but when the time passes and the experience is experienced, it is found that those moments are often the incentives for future achievements.In addition to the famous experience of being kicked out of Apple, Jobs has many such moments throughout his career that he almost fell and then miraculously stood up. After establishing NeXT for the second time, Jobs relied on his enthusiasm for technology, persistence in his dreams, and his distinctive style of acting, which enabled NeXT to obtain sufficient financial support in the first few years.However, it is quite similar to the experience at Apple at the time. Because of the pursuit of product perfection and ignoring market demand, NeXT's personal computer did not bring Jobs achievements beyond Apple's computer. On the contrary, after launching some failed computer hardware one after another After the product, NEXT company was dying.At this time, Jobs was still paying for his dreams. He relied on Pixar's animation production and high-quality animation production software Rengerman to barely maintain the survival of NeXT.It is precisely because he did not give up NeXT that Jobs was able to rely on NeXT's operating system software to return to Apple smoothly after 10 years, and created another myth about the era of digital entertainment.On the other hand, the cooperation between Pixar and Disney has also experienced several ups and downs.During the production of "Toy Story", for various reasons, the animation produced by Pixar was also suspended at one time. Pixar's animation department may survive from repeated cost cutting simply because it won an Oscar down. At these critical moments, it can be said that these "points in life" not only did not make Jobs lose the motivation to live, but because he was good at seizing opportunities, he finally made him the darling of the business empire. When he was a teenager, Jobs got acquainted with Steve Woz, so that he combined his natural business acumen with Woz's excellent technical acumen, and created Apple, which was astonishing for a while; With his enthusiasm for computers, he re-started his business and established NeXT; when both NeXT and Pixar were short of funds, he cut the costs of the two companies but kept the animation production department, so that the cooperation between Pixar and Disney Repeatedly set off the climax of animated movies; when he returned to Apple with a vengeance, the company's business conditions were extremely difficult.However, entering the territory of digital music, launching an MP3 player and a series of corresponding software brought Apple back to the forefront of the market.When Apple's profits reached the ideal state, Jobs' health was red again, but he relied on some magical power to still stand in the spotlight and demonstrate the latest products for devout Apple fans... Every time you fall into the valley, it is a "point in life" as Jobs said, and what supports and connects these "points" is a kind of belief.He has a firm belief in life, in the industry he loves, in technology and innovation, and in his dreams. Jobs once described the most valuable thing, "Like when you become a father or a mother, although the birth of a child is a very big miracle, the real value is that you can live with the children, And help them grow. Now, the problem caused by the rapid development of the Internet is not because too many people have created such companies, but too many people can not persist. Of course, this is also understandable, because in In the process of starting a business, you may encounter despair and pain at any time, such as when you have to lay off the company's employees, when you have to abolish the company's R&D projects, and when you have to deal with various difficulties that arise. But Only after such experience can you understand what kind of person you are and where your value positioning lies.”