The book that I want to talk to you about today is the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs,
how to be insanely great in front of any audience and is written by Carmine Gallo.
So a friend of mine found it a company and he raised money from some of the best venture
capital firms in the world. And he sent me this book because he says they told him his investors told
him that he should read this book before his next round of fundraising. And apparently they give
this advice to other founders and their portfolio as well. This book makes the case that Steve Jobs
was the greatest business storyteller of our time. And so I think the ideas in this book
are really important because essentially if you read the book, it tells you how to sell like Steve Jobs.
And since business is sales, I want to dedicate an entire episode to going over some of his ideas
because think about it. You're selling when you pitch an idea, you're selling when you talk to
customers, you're selling when you're trying to recruit people to come work for you, you're selling
when you try to raise money for your business. And I think when you study the life and career of
Steve Jobs, it's very obvious that he believed all these things. It's why he spends so much time
in effort learning how to sell. In fact, in this book, he said that he considered his keynote
presentations competitive weapon and he considered a competitive weapon for Apple. There's a great
quote in the book about why this is so important. And it says a person can have the greatest idea
in the world. But if that person can't convince enough other people, it doesn't matter. And so what
I did is I took the ideas in this book and I organized them in the way that the book recommends. So
there's three things that I'm going to talk to you about today. One, what are you really selling?
Two, how Steve Jobs made his presentations. And three, the importance of developing a messionic
sense of purpose. And so I want to start with what are you really selling? Because I really do believe
this is the most important part of the entire book. So if you would ask Steve Jobs, he wouldn't say,
oh, like, what do you do for living? Oh, I sell computers. No, he would say that he sells tools
that unleash human potential tools that change the way that you work and that change the way that you
play. And so there's a quote Steve Jobs said in 1997 that he says, you got to start with the customer
experience and work back towards the technology, not the other way around. He did this when he sold
to the number one question that you have to answer the one question that matters the most is why should
I care? Why should the customer care? And if you go back and watch and you can also read his
presentations in this book, you see that he started with the customer experience and then work back
towards the technology. So I want to go over his 1998 iMac presentation. So he starts out by saying,
we made this computer, this iMac for the number one reason customers tell us that they want a
computer to get on the internet simply and fast. He starts with the improvement that his product
makes before he even introduces his product. He says, we went out and looked at all the other
products out there. We noticed some things about them pretty much universally. They are all using
last year's processor. Secondly, they all have pretty crummy displays on them. These things are
ugly. What that means is they have lower performance and they are harder to use. So what he just did
there, that is called drawing a verbal roadmap for your audience. I'll go into more detail in section
number two and actually how he does this. But if you look at what just happened, he starts with the
problem. It's 1998. You want to get on this new thing called the internet. You want a simple
and fast way to do so. The problem is all the products, all the other computers out there,
they're complex, slow and ugly. And he uses very simple words, words that are unusual, which we'll
talk about more in a little bit, crummy. That is a simple but unusual word, especially in a business
presentation. And then he didn't say ugly. He said, ugly. And then after those two sentences,
he tells you what that means, what that means is they have lower performance and they are harder
to use. That is drawing a verbal roadmap for his audience. And then he goes into the solution to
that problem. The solution is the product that he made. So let me tell you about iMac. The new iMac
is fast. It screams. So when I got to this part, I didn't know that myself. Do you think any of Steve
Jobs competitors describe the speed of their products with that same phrase? It screams.
This is unusual but memorable words. And it's very simple to understand. Then he goes into the next one.
The new iMac has a gorgeous display. Again, Steve is describing his product the way that you
describe your lover. But in a few short simple sentences, you already know, okay, the problem is,
I want to get on the internet. I'm hearing great things about it. It's complex. It's hard to do.
I need a simple way and a fast way to do that. That option is not available to me because all the
other computers that are not Apple products, he just said they're crummy. They're ugly. They're complex.
But this new iMac, it screams. I mean, it's fast. It has a gorgeous display. It must be great to
look at. And the genius of the way that Steve Jobs sold it, I would argue that Warren Buffett does
the exact same thing. I've made the point multiple times that if you think of the greatest content
marketing in business history, I would argue is Warren Buffett's shareholder letter. He does this
exact same thing. Takes something unbelievably complex and uses simple and direct language. It takes
plain it to you. And if you either watch Steve Jobs presentations or read the transcripts,
it's just like reading Warren Buffett's shareholder. There's almost no jargon. It is simple and
direct language. A lot of storytelling. My friend Moses Kagan wrote something great about this to
illustrate this point. What Moses does is he's a real estate investor. So he's raised over $200
million from investors. And he takes that money and he buys apartment buildings in Southern California.
Southern California is a highly desirable location and has been, you know, for decades and is usually
very difficult to build new supply. And what he wrote was perfect because he raises money from rich
people and he sees the way he does it is very different from some of the other people in his industry.
And he wrote, normal rich people have no idea what M.O.I.C. is. Let alone IRR or lost to lease, etc.
If you want their money for your project, include a slide in your deck titled,
what we will do with your money in plain English. To answer the question, why should I care
that equals what does this do for me? And it's not just for customers. It applies to obviously
pitching employees pitching investors. If you listen to the episode I did two weeks ago,
it's episode 348, the financial genius behind a century of Wall Street scandals. It's called
the Match King. If you haven't listened to it, highly recommend you do and read the book too.
I've bought the book for a few friends now and they just cannot believe the story that's in the book.
But if you listen to the episode, if you read that book, E.V.R. Croger, he did exactly what Steve
Jobs did. He did exactly with the advice that my friend Moses gave. Explain what we will do with
your money in plain English. E.V.R. Croger comes from Europe, comes to America to pitch
American investors. And he explains in very clear language, what am I going to do with your money?
Government loans for match monopolies. I'm going to raise money from America. I'm going to take
that money back to Europe. There's all these smaller European governments that are in bad financial
shape. I'm going to loan that money in exchange. They are going to grant me a monopoly for match
production and match and selling matches inside of their company. Government loans for match monopolies.
This is important because he put it in a phrase. I was he's in a stand and so his investors would
then repeat this to that phrase to other investors. Government loans for match monopolies.
Easy to understand ideas spread and how much they spread in that book. It makes the claim. It was
crazy to think about. I think it was in the 1920 decades. I don't have it in front of me, but I
I'm pretty sure it's from like 1922 to like 1930 something like 25% of all the securities
traded in America were for E.V.R. Croger's companies. And so again, for the love of God, no jargon,
just use simple and direct language and focus on why should you care. I'm explaining what this
does for you. Now, this applies to pitching customers too. My friend Eric is one of the greatest
entrepreneurs that I know. He also reads voraciously and he sent me. He told me about this book on
the life of one trip and the history of Pan Am Airways. The book is called an American saga. I
have it. I eventually read it and do an episode on the future, but I was reading through all the notes
that Eric took on the book and I was reading his notes at the same time. I was reading the
presentation secrets of Steve Jobs and it came across something that is a great illustration of
this. So it talks about one trip early in his career. He talked to his customer to understand
their problem. This is the United Fruit Company, by the way, which is hilarious if you think about
how many episodes have done on the book, the fish they ate the well. But the United Fruit Company
had paperwork and in the country that they were operating in, that country's government
insisted that that paperwork has to be brought to the capital and it has to be stamped.
That was a problem for the United Fruit Company. Why? Because in between them and the capital is a
9,000 foot high mountain. And so to take this paperwork and get it on the other side of the mountain,
they have to drive for three days on very dangerous roads. So one trip comes in and it's like,
oh, actually, you know what? I can fly your documents over the mountain and I can do it in an hour and a
half. And so Eric's notes on this, he says, I love how crystal clear this value proposition is.
Instead of three days of dangerous road, it's one and a half hours by air. That is a 48x
improvement in time savings. Time is money and allows companies to work so much faster. The best
B2B companies save businesses time. So in order to figure out what you are really selling, you have
to answer this question. Why should your customers care about your product? One trip's answer is,
instead of three days by dangerous road, it's one and a half hours by air. For Steve Jobs,
it's you want to get on the internet quickly and simply in the iMac does this for you.
The reason I started with this, the reason why I think figuring out what you are really selling
is so important. The most important lesson in the book is because it is a very old idea.
The idea that you should sell the improve, you do not sell the product, you're not selling your
product. You are selling the improvement that your product makes. People do not care about your
product. They care about themselves. They only care about what your product does for them. That is
why all, think about all the greatest advertising agency founders that you and I have studied and
discussed on this podcast. I don't even know how many. I'll list all the episodes that I've
done. I probably don't what eight episodes on them. And all the greatest advertising agency founders
said the same thing. Sell the improvement that your product makes. Sell the better future that your
customer will receive if they use your product. The reason that Steve Jobs was such a great story tell
the reason that he was such a great salesperson is because he did that. Think about the greatest line
he ever came up with, the greatest, I mean, they have a lot of great tag lines on the book,
but I feel I can't think of another product that has a better tagline than the original iPod.
And their tag line was very simple. It's written from the customer's perspective and it describes
the better future 1000 songs in your pocket. Now, I am old enough to remember when MP3 players in
the iPod came out. I grew up, right? We had books full of CDs. Do you remember this? Like,
you would have books full of CDs in your house, like these, like, almost like these binder things.
I specifically remember them, like, you drive around your car with your friends. Hey, what do you
want to listen to? Like, oh, grab this giant book of CDs and flip through and try to figure out
what album that we want to listen to. So you could do that or you could walk around to the giant
disc man or you can just use an iPod and have 1000 songs in your pocket. Now think about how crazy
this is, right? So the evolution goes from, you know, giant books of CDs to 1000 songs in your
pocket and then think about Spotify. It's not 1000 songs in your pocket. It's every song in history
in your pocket. So to figure out what you're really selling, you have to figure out what you're
actually improving in their lives and when you see a lot of these products that are struggling in
the market, it's usually because they're a solution and search of a problem. Steve didn't sell a
product. He sold an improvement. There's a great book called Ogovy on advertising. I just recently
reread it. It came out like the 1980s is written by David Ogovy in the book. He tells you there's a
bunch of examples on great ads and marketing and I think every single entrepreneur should read that
book. It's no brainer. But he tells you what the most important sentence in the book is. He says
advertising, which promises no benefit to the customer does not sell yet. The majority of campaigns
contain no problem whatsoever. That is the most important sentence in this book read it again.
So once you figure out what you're actually selling, what is your main idea, try to describe it
as succinctly as possible. If you can do it in one sentence, that's even better. And then you expand
on it and then as you expand on it, then you repeat it a lot. You and I have talked about this
maximum that comes up over and over again with great leaders. Repetition is persuasive. And if you
can describe your idea in one line, it will be repeated by your audience. So I want to give you an
example. I'm going to pick up the book. There's a bunch of taglines that they use for different
products and they go over all the presentations in the book. So I just talked about the first one.
I bought 1000 songs in your pocket when they come out with the Mac book air. Their tagline is it's
the world's thinnest notebook. Now listen to how much Steve Jobs and Apple repeats this over and
over again. They repeated in the presentation on their all their marketing materials. Any press
releases their website. I'm going to list all the different ways. They say the exact same thing.
What is MacBook Air? It's the world's thinnest notebook. That's number one. Number two, the world's
thinnest notebook. Number three, this is the MacBook Air. It's the thinnest notebook in the world.
Number four, we decided to build the world's thinnest notebook. Number five, MacBook Air,
the world's thinnest notebook. Number six, Apple introduces MacBook Air, the world's thinnest notebook.
Number seven, we've built the world's thinnest notebook. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Human nature has a
flaw. We forget that we forget. Go back at this whole time. I go back and you obviously know that
reread books that I've covered. Think about how crazy this is. Not only am I rereading a book that
I've covered, right? It's a book that I've made a podcast about in the few before. Sorry, I took a
ton of time and actually, you know, probably 40 hours really digesting the book. Then I reread the
highlights and yet I'll go and reread the book and it's amazing. If I hadn't read the book in a year
or two years or five years, you can do this. Go back and pick up a book that you loved. Watch,
rewatch a movie that you loved. Listen to a podcast episode that you loved that you haven't heard or
read or watched or listened to in let's say two, three years. You will be shocked at how much you
forget. We forget that we forget. So the most important thing to know from this section, the most
important thing to learn from this section, figure out what you are really selling. And once you
figure that out, make sure that you have a headline or a way to describe it succinctly. And that
description should answer why does the customer, why does the employee, why is the person you're
recruiting, why does the investor that you're raising money from, why should they care? How will
their future be better by buying or agreeing to what you are selling? And then once you do that,
you consistently repeat that headline in your conversations, in your marketing materials,
in your presentations, in your slides, in your brochures, in your press releases, and on your
website. So the second thing that I want to talk about is how Steve actually made his presentations.
And the first thing he did was that he planned his presentations in analog. He would use pen and
paper before opening keynote and using any kind of software and he'd love drawing out his thinking
on the whiteboard. In fact, I was telling my friend Rick Gerson about this book as I was reading it.
And something that pops up in this book popped up in the book from last week, which is called
Insanely Simple. And then another book called Creative Selection, which is all about people that
worked very close to Steve Jobs describing how he worked. And this idea that he would act as his
own slideshow that he would jump up from a conversation to the whiteboard appears over and over again.
And so I was telling my friend Rick about this and he's like, oh, that's funny. That's he did the
exact same thing when I met him. And Rick told me sorry when he went to meet Steve Jobs, this is
when Steve Jobs was running Pixar. They were thinking about making an investment in Pixar. And so
the conversation quickly went to the whiteboard. And then Steve just essentially built like this hub and
spoke model. And he was talking about all the different businesses that you could launch off of a
single movie just like Disney did. So you have merchandise. You could do theme parks. You could
branch into other forms of media. And the way Steve wanted to explain this point was to draw on
the whiteboard. And so the way the book describes how Steve structured his presentations is another
three point list as a number one. Create a list of points you want your audience to remember.
Number two, organize that list until you're left with only three main points. And number three,
under each point add stories, easy to remember facts, metaphors and social proof. And you'd see
that Steve did this not just in product presentation. Think about his most famous speech ever is the
commencement address he gave at Stanford. And the actual structure of that speech is dead simple. So
it has an opening. It has three stories. And then it has a conclusion. And if you go back and I
listen to and watch that speech, I don't forget how many times, but you can actually go and see his
transitions as he gets to his first, second and third point. I pulled them out of the transcript.
So it says the first story is about connecting the dots. Then he fills that in with the story.
Then he goes my second story is about love and loss. Then he fills that in. And he goes my third
story is about death. But think about that. That's these are very simple direct language. My first
story is about connecting the dots. My second story is about love and loss. My third story is about
death. The author states in the book that he does believe that the rule of three is one of the most
powerful concepts in communication. And the reason is because humans can only hold a tiny amount of
information in their short term memory. So you might talk for 30 minutes and the people you're
speaking to your audience, they're only going to remember a handful of things. People tend to
remember maxims or aphorisms. And then they can remember stories. In fact, one of my favorite all
time quotes I think about all the time I've mentioned on the podcast. I don't know a ton of times.
It's actually comes from the founder of Sequoia Capital, Don Valentine. And he says the art of
storytelling is critically important. Most of the entrepreneurs who come to us can't tell a story.
Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that's how the money works. The money flows
as a function of the story. So in the book, they're interviewing a bunch of venture capitalists.
And they talk about like some of the like the bad presentations that they that they see all the time.
And you see a lot of the characteristics that make a bad presentation are what Steve Jobs
was able to avoid when he made great presentations. And one thing is people try to stuff way too
much information. If you actually read the transcript or watch Steve's presentations, he doesn't
put too much information in the presentation. And his slides have almost no words on them.
The two biggest problems that these investors see is that most presenters try to squeeze way
too much information in there. There's a great line in the book where it says most people giving a
pitch try to squeeze two megabytes of data into a pipe that carries 128 kilobytes. And number two,
start with the problem. Do not start with the product. Most of the entrepreneurs just jump right
into the product. They forget to talk about the most important part, which is what's problem
their product solves. Start with the problem. In fact, I was thinking about this. I went back and
looked through some of my notes and highlights for the biographies on Edwin Land, which was Steve Jobs
hero. And you saw that Edwin Land did this as well. I want to read this paragraph from this
biography of Edwin Land that I read. It says Edwin Land resorted to a bit of showbiz. He was strikingly
good at explaining his work to people and powerfully persuasive. Who does that sound like, right?
Really good at explaining your work to people and powerfully persuasive. Sounds like Edwin Land
and Steve Jobs. When Edwin Land pitched polarizing sunglasses to American optical. So he developed
the technology for polarizing sunglasses. He is pitching his product to manufacturers of sunglasses.
And this is how he does his pitch. So when he pitches polarizing sunglasses to American optical,
he didn't just show up with a few samples. He rented a hotel room facing the sun and then brought
a bowl of goldfish, which he then put on the windowsill. The bowl would refract glare into the room.
When the American optical executives arrived at the door, Land mock apologized for the glare,
saying you probably can't even see the fish. And then he handed each of them a polarizing filter
what he wants to sell them. They look through the filter, they can see the fish, and he closed the deal.
So when you can tell a story, show a demo and use a picture. Steve loved photos. And the
interesting part of having, if you look at his slides, how many just have images on there,
they would have an image. And then if they had any words, it'd be very simple and clear words.
But one of the benefits of having just photos is because you can't, we've all been in presentations
where they just read the slides. It's the most boring thing ever, right? But if you just have a
picture, you can't read the slide. He can't use the words on the slide as a crutch. And so what
happens is he had to know the message that he wanted to convey. He had to have it down pat.
And the result of that is he was speaking to the audience instead of reading to the audience.
And so one thing that Steve was really great at was the ability to add context to any numbers
that he used by adding context actually makes it a lot more memorable and easy to understand. So
he would do this even in like conversations and interviews. So he would constantly, in the early days
of Apple, people constantly ask us like, you know, Apple has such a tiny, they were up to the market
share. Like why is Apple's market share so tiny? And at the time, they had like 5% of market share
in personal computers and 5% sounds really, really small. And so part of Steve's genius was taking
something that maybe looked poorly on behalf of himself or his company. It's like, oh, he only
have 5% market share and actually reframing and adding context to anybody that was reading the
interviewer listening to him. And he says our market share is greater than BMW or Mercedes in the
car industry. And yet no one thinks they're at a tremendous disadvantage because of their market
share. As a matter of fact, they're both highly desirable products and brands. He takes a number
and actually ties it to something. Well, I see a lot of BMWs on the road. I see a lot of Mercedes.
I know about them. They're prestigious. They're luxurious. So they say, okay, so 5% isn't actually
that bad. When possible, he would take these giant numbers that are actually kind of hard for us
to wrap our heads around and actually put it into more easy to understand terms. So let me give
you an example. 200 days after the release of the original iPhone, he gives another presentation.
And he goes on stage and he announces, hey, in the last 200 days, we have sold 4 million iPhones.
So he could have left it there. It's like, okay, 4 million. That's a big number. But he actually
added context and it makes it a lot more memorable. So he says, well, 4 million divided by 200 days
means that we sold 20,000 iPhones a day. I think the reason this is so important is because we all know
what number sound like. But we have a hard time actually comprehending them. So I remember reading
this book. It's one of my favorite books. It's episode 292. It's about Daniel Ludwig, which in
the 1980s, he was the richest man in the world and no one knew who he was or richest man in America.
And so his biography is called the invisible billionaire. But I remember at the very beginning of the
book, the others trying to put in context just how rich Daniel Ludwig was. And in doing so,
he made the numbers way more memorable so much so that I'm telling you about it, you know, a year or
two later. And he made the point that if you took a million dollars in 100 dollar bills and stack
them up, that stack would be 16 inches high. But if you did that for a billion dollars. So if you had
a billion dollars in 100 dollar bills and you put it in a stack, that stack would be taller than
the Empire State Building. A million dollars is 16 inches high. A billion dollars is taller than
the Empire State Building. That is a great illustration of the difference between a million and a
billion. You can do this with time too. So a million seconds ago was 11 and a half days ago. A
billion seconds ago was 31 years ago. Steve used another tactic to be more memorable as well. And he
has, this is something I referenced earlier, where he uses these uncommon words, especially uncommon
words that you don't normally see in business presentations. An uncommon doesn't mean complex. Like,
if you think about, go back to the his 1998, I'm at presentation using words like crummy and ugly
and it screams to describe how fast it is. There's many examples of Steve using this tactic. He said,
one time that he made the buttons on the screen looks so good that you'll want to lick them. He said
that everybody wants a MacBook Pro because they are so bitching. He would routinely talk about his
own love for his products. I love the ending. The call to action for the iPad presentation. He says,
we hope you love the iPad as much as we do. And there's a sentence in the book that I think will
bring true to you and I because I think about all the different meetings you said in our business
presentations you've been exposed to. And it says, most business communicators lose sight of the fact
that their audiences want to be informed and entertained. And you do that with no jargon,
just simple, memorable words. Think about Ben Franklin. Think about Charlie Munger. Think about David
Ogovie. These are the people that are masters at this. In fact, I went back when I was thinking about
the section I went back on YouTube and was just watching a bunch of like Charlie Munger's zingers
at the Berkshire annual meeting. And I took note of the part where after Charlie says what he says,
the audience laughs again. Most business communicators lose sight of the fact that their audience wants to
be informed and entertained. So I just want to pull out a couple ones that made me laugh because I do
think Charlie Munger was great at this. And so Warren says to Charlie, people don't seem to get that
point. Do you have any idea why? And Charlie says Warren, if people weren't so often wrong, we wouldn't
be so rich. And of course, the audience laughs. And again, I'm going to adhere to the rule of three
because that's what this book preaches, right? So here's the second one. Competency is a relative
concept. What I needed to get ahead was to compete against idiots. And luckily, there's a large
supply again, laughter. Number three, everybody wants fiscal virtue, but not quite yet. They're like
the guy who's willing to give up sex, but not quite yet. And again, laughter, how many business
presentations you've heard of that mentioned somebody's sex life. These are uncommon words and
business presentations. And that's what makes them memorable. That would make that makes them human.
So Steve would use words. If you think about all the like the, especially the adjectives that he used
in his presentations and his sales pitches, he'd use words like amazing, insanely great, gorgeous,
incredible. He also spoke that way in normal conversation. So even though he rehearsed and rehearsed
and practiced, which we'll get to in a minute over and over again, every single presentation,
it still sounded like him. Another thing that Steve used in a bunch of his presentations is he
loved using social proof. He would make sure he would read, he showed it on the screen, and he'd
also read testimonials. He wanted to make sure that everyone knew that other people also loved his
products. In the book, poor Charlie's Aminac, Charlie Munger speaks about the importance of social
proof over and over again. I just want to read a few sentences that I think illustrate why Steve
was doing this. Psychologists use the term social proof. We are all influenced subconsciously
into some extent consciously, but what we see others do and approve. Therefore, if everybody's buying
something, we think it's better. We don't like to be the one guy who's out of step. The social
proof phenomenon, which comes right out of psychology, gives huge advantages to scale.
And Charlie Munger was the first person I've ever heard describe why that's actually, he has this
entire section on in the, and Portrait's Aminac about the ungodly important advantages of scale.
And his whole point was like, well, social proof leads to more sales, which leads to better
distribution, which accelerates the winner take all or winner take most flywheel, which leads to
ever greater specialization, which leads to more scale. If you haven't read it, I assume you have
a copy of the new version of Portrait's Aminac just came out last year. If you do that sections on
page 91, you can also listen to the episode I made on it. It's episode 329. I talk about it in the
episodes. I think it's a really important point. And it was definitely really important to
Steve because multiple times throughout the book, it talks about the fact that reading favorable
reviews was a very common technique in Steve's presentations. And then the final point I want to
pull out in this section two of how Steve Jobs made his presentations was the importance of practice.
So the public praises people for what they practice in private. A great presenter based on the
stats in this book, the best presenters, the best public speakers will actually practice 90 hours
for every one hour they need to be on stage. A 90 to one practice to performance ratio. Steve did
this as well. He was also, as we already know from all the books we've read and the podcast we've
made on him. He was involved, of course, in every detail of the presentation. And that's exactly how
he made it look effortless. It takes a lot of effort to make something look effortless. And there
was very few speakers that would rehearse more than Steve Jobs would. In fact, there's a hilarious
story in the book where he comes, he arrives four hours late to an interview one time because he
was practicing his presentation. And in this book, they quote another book, which is called the
second coming of Steve Jobs. I also have that book, but I haven't read it yet. And it says every
slide was written like a piece of poetry. We spent hours on what most people would consider low
level detail. Steve would labor over every presentation. Again, marketing is theater. So practice
your presentations. And number three, develop a messionic sense of purpose. Steve was an evangelist.
He was driven by this messionic zeal to create new experiences for his customers. He was clearly
passionate about building tools for other people. Steve dedicated his life to building technology that
made other people's lives better. The greatest definition of technology I've ever come across
was actually in Peter Teel's books, er, to one where Peter says properly understood any new
and better way of doing things is technology. Steve truly believed with all of his soul that the
products that he created was a new and better way of doing something for his customers. And so the
way that I want to explain this point is I want to take advice that's in the book. I want to use a
demo. I went and collected a bunch of quotes from Steve. And all of these are demos to what a
messionic sense of purpose sounds like. This is what a messionic sense of purpose sounds like.
What we want to do is to change the way people use computers in the world. We've got some incredible
ideas that will revolutionize the way people use computers. Apple is going to be the most important
computer company in the world. That was example number one example number two of what messionic
sense of purpose sounds like. I think you always had to be a little different to buy an apple
computer. I think the people who buy them are the creative spirits in this world. They are people
who are not just out to get a job done. They're out to change the world. We make tools for these
kinds of people. We are going to serve these people. A lot of times people think that they're crazy
but in that craziness we see genius. And those are the people we're making tools for.
The third example of what messionic sense of purpose sounds like comes from Lee Klaal who is
friends with Steve Jobs for 30 years. I talked about him last week's episode because he made many
of the greatest apple ads. And this is what he said about Steve. From the time he was a kid, Steve
thought his products could change the world. That's the key to understanding him. His charisma was a
result of a grand but strikingly simple vision to make the world a better place. What Lee is
describing Steve and what Steve's own words described him. It was that his passion for what he was
doing. Passion is infectious. The belief and passion you have in what you're doing can literally
be transferred to another human being. I think of one of my favorite descriptions of this.
Actually comes from Phil Knight's autobiography, Shudog. It wasn't until Phil switched to something he
was truly passionate about. Something that he truly believed in that he found any kind of success.
And so I'm just going to read a few sentences from his fantastic autobiography. He says,
my sales strategy was simple and I thought rather brilliant. I drove all over the Pacific
Northwest to various track meets. So before he started Nike Phil Knight ran track, he had a deep
love of running so much so that he literally said he really believed that if people he if he could
convince people to get out and run a few miles every day that the world would be a better place.
So let's go back to this. I drove all over the Pacific Northwest to various track meets. Between
races, I would chat up the coaches, the runners, the fans, and I'd show them my shoes. The response
was always the same. I couldn't write orders fast enough. Driving back to Portland, I would puzzle
over my sudden success at selling. I'd been out and he's going to start listing all the ways he
failed at selling beforehand, right? What is the point of what you and I are talking about? How to
sell like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a master salesman. Phil Knight was a master salesman.
I had been unable to sell encyclopedias and I despised it. I've been slightly better at selling
mutual funds, but I felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because I realized I
wasn't selling. I believed in running. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible. Passion is
infectious and belief is irresistible. The main point that I'm trying to tell you is you need to
identify what you are most passionate about. And then once you do share that enthusiasm with your
listeners, whether it's a customer overcrued an investor, you can inject them with your passion and
belief. There's a story in this book. Steve is sitting with a reporter from Newsweek. He is
previewing that think different ad. Here's to the crazy one ad. Probably the most famous,
I'll argue with the most famous Apple ad. And so he's showing it to her. This reporter from
Newsweek before his public and the reporter said to Steve started crying as he watched it.
And this is what she said. It wasn't fake. He was really crying over that stupid ad. And then
her next statement, she called it a stupid ad and her next statement. That's what I loved about
Steve. One of the reasons for so many bad presentations, one of the reasons that so many people
are worse at sales than they could be is because few people actually express excitement about
what they're speaking about. I guarantee you, Phil Knight sales pitch for encyclopedias and
mutual funds did not have him excited, but his sales pitch about running and running shoes did.
And so if you find yourself in the encyclopedia or their mutual fund part of your career and you
have not yet figured out how to get to the running and the running shoe part of your career,
I love this piece of advice from David Ogovy. He says, I admire people who work with gusto. If you
don't enjoy what you're doing, I beg you to find another job. Remember the Scottish proverb,
be happy while you're living for your long time dead. Both Steve Jobs and Phil Knight
knew what they were selling. They knew how to sell and they both developed a messionic
sense of purpose about what they were selling. And I think this one paragraph, this 30 second clip
of Steve Jobs speaking ex-temperaneously about his life's work is the perfect summary of everything
that you and I have been talking about today. And this is what he said, I think one of the things
that really separates us from the high primates is that we're tool builders. I read a study that
measured the efficiency of local motion for various species on the planet. The condor used the
least energy to move a kilometer and humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third
of the way down the list. It was not too proud of a showing for the crown of creation.
So that didn't look so good, but then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test
the efficiency of local motion for a man on a bicycle and a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle,
blew the condor away completely off the top of the charts. And that is what a computer is to me.
What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. Is the
equivalent of a bicycle for our mind? And that is where I leave it for the full story.
I recommend buying the book. You'll be buying the book using the links that's in the show notes.
You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 350 books down one thousand ago.
And I'll talk to you again soon. At the end of the last episode on Steve Jobs, I told a story
about two products and services that I'm making that I believe will make your life better. And then
I tell you why I'm going to replay that now for you because you'll be able to see, given on what
you just heard, how I applied some of Steve Jobs ideas on presenting and selling. You'll see that
each product has a single idea expressed clearly that describes exactly why you should care that
describes what the product does for you. So for founders events, it's very straightforward.
Come to a founders events to build relationships with other high value people. The single idea express
clearly for founders notes, you'll see that even use some social proof. It's in the headline.
It says Charlie Munger said, learning from history is a form of leverage. Founder's notes
gives you the superpower to do this on demand. You will also hear, because I'm up to my eyeballs and
the stuff, the fact that I live this stuff, that I don't need to read from a script. I think about
this every day. I practice it every day. And then therefore I can speak about it just like Steve Jobs.
I could speak about it from the heart and with a messianic sense of purpose. So here it goes.
I have just two quick things to tell you about before you go. Number one, I am hosting another
founders conference. This one will be on July 29th through the 31st is in a private venue
deep in the California Redwoods, this place is gorgeous. It is actually in Scotts Valley, California.
And the idea to do these two day conferences was actually pulled out of me by people that
listen to founders. So one of the most common requests that I've received over the years is this
desire for can't David, can you introduce me to other people that listen to founders?
And I didn't do anything with that information because I didn't know how to do it. And I actually
think I stumbled upon a great way to do it. And I'll tell you about that in a minute. But
I was thinking about I just listened to this entire episode back to the same one that you just
listened to. And if you really think about one of the main ideas is like, Hey, your goal really
should be that you have a single idea that's expressed clearly. So I would have heard that
multiple times. I reread that part of me round that part. And I thought about, Okay, what is the
single idea expressed clearly like, why do these founders conferences, these founder events?
Why do they need to exist? And they need to exist. And the reason the North Star that these
events exist is to help you build relationships with other founders, investors, executives,
and high value people. And it wasn't until after I had this idea and wasn't until after I did the
first founders conference, which was held back in March and Austin that I realized, Oh, I accidentally
stumbled. I had this idea and that was, you know, a test of that hypothesis. But I realized,
like, Oh, I actually stumbled on a great way to help other people build relationships with high
value people. And you do it really quickly. And there's a couple ways that these events are
structured that I think serve this goal. Right. What is that single idea expressed clearly? I want
to help high value people build relationships with each other. And so what I did at the event
back in March and I'm also doing at this event in July 29th to the 31st is I ran out the entire
venue. That means that when if you attend every single person you see there is for the same reason,
is there for the same reason and has the same interest as you. Number two, if you just heard what
Steve Jobs, one of Steve Jobs main principles is like, just make it his one of his biggest concerns
is making it as easy as possible for other people. And what I decided to do is like, I want to make
these all inclusive, which means that if you get your all you have to do is get yourself there.
Right. And I take care of the rest. You're lodging your food access to every single part of the
event is all taken care of. And then the third most important point that I think helped facilitate
it a lot of these relationships. So quickly the last event is these are intentionally smaller events.
This event in Scott's Valley, California on July 29th to the 31st that I highly encourage you to
attend is only going to be around a hundred and twenty to a hundred and thirty people. And it is
the the end result. Why I think I stumbled on something is because the amount of friendships,
investments, deals, customer leads, partnerships and other opportunities that can't that have happened
that came out as a result a direct result of the last event is staggering. I frankly was shocked by
it. And that leads me to believe that I'm on to something because again, the single idea expressed
clearly the reason this event exists is to build relationships. So even the way that the event is
scheduled, there is a lot of unstructured time to talk to other attendees. I will be there the
entire time. There will be a lot of smaller breakout sessions around specific topics. So if you
attend and you want to lead a breakout session around a topic that you happen to be an expert in,
just reply back to your confirmation email after you apply and then my events team will handle
everything else. I am doing this event in partnership with Rick Burnham and Paul Bucer. They have
a founders of Sedergrove, which is a $500 million holding company and one of the breakout sessions
will be about how they started and structured their company. I met Rick and Paul and built a
relationship with them through the podcast. They were listeners of the podcast and my friend Patrick
knew them and introduced them to me. And they also taught in addition to running this, they run a
podcast called the Art of Investing. They run their holding company, but they also teach at
Nordr Dame and they actually invited me to speak at their Art of Investing class. And that
relationship led to this partnership, which is a great illustration of again, the single idea
expressed clearly why does this exist? This exists to help you build relationships with other
high value people. And that opens up opportunities and futures you can never possibly predict.
So to come to the event and to build relationships with other high value people, the first thing you
need to do is go to founderspodcast.com, forsearch events and apply. The second quick thing I have to
tell you about is another example of something being pulled out of me. And one of the benefits of
that you just heard. So let me explain. So for years, people knew because I'd go around talking about
the fact that since 2018, I have been cataloging all the research that I do for this podcast. And I was
putting all of my notes and highlights in this app called Readwise. I'd go around talking about
how great it is, how I couldn't make the podcast without it. You just heard me use what is now called
founders notes. So founders notes.com to sign up for this. But what this is is my own internal tool
that I use to catalog the collective knowledge of history is greatest entrepreneurs. So I can pull
it up on demand. And you just heard that because when I'm quoting Sam Walton, when I'm quoting
Michael Moritz, when I'm quoting Walt Disney, Herb Keller, her James Dyson, all these other ideas from
past Steve Jobs podcasts, I was doing that by searching this giant database that contains all my
notes, all my highlights, all my transcripts. And now this AI assistant that'll do all this reading
and research for you called Sage that I also built into founders notes. And the reason I say this
was pulled out of me this idea of to build this product in partnership with Readwise. And again,
this is the power of relationships because I found out about Readwise because one of the founders
Tristan sent me an email in 2018. And he's like, Hey, you obviously read a lot. You might think
this app is valuable. I didn't know it existed until then. And then I was until five years later
that I then sent I had talked to Tristan and I'd sent Tristan emails like, Hey, there's actually
opportunity for us to partner here because I keep getting these emails, these DMs, these requests
that, Hey, how can I have access to this giant second brain you have? I would argue it's the most
valuable database in the world when it comes to learning from history's greatest entrepreneurs.
And so the initial idea I came to Tristan and I was like, Hey, I would like people to be able to
see what I see. And then since then we've added so many more features and just made it so much
better that this is now a tool that I use nearly every single day. And if we go back to that idea,
the same idea that that was important to Steve Jobs, Hey, we need a single idea express clearly
one of my favorite lines that I've ever heard. This is why there's so many, there's such a
high amount of people that you and I study that were obsessed with learning from history that
had read hundreds of biographies throughout their career because they understood what Charlie
Munger's so eloquently said that learning from history is a form of leverage. Learning from history
is a form of leverage. Founder's notes gives you the superpower to do this on demand.
The podcast is a great tool to learn from history, but it is pushed to you. Founder's notes gives
you the ability to control it. It gives you the ability to tap into that collective knowledge of
history's greatest entrepreneurs and use it when you need it. And so there's two main ways that
you can search founders notes. One is a keyword search. If you listen to the last episode I just
did on Michael Jordan, the last 20 minutes of that podcast is me going through because I was
asked the question, how do how did history's greatest entrepreneurs think about hiring? All I did
was type in hiring into the keyword search and founders notes and then went through, you know,
there's probably like, I don't know, 10 or 15 different examples. The second thing if you don't
have a keyword search, I just ran into a friend of mine who has access to Sage. Sage is the AI
assistant that operates on top of founders notes. And that idea also came was pulled,
and I guess not pulled out of me. It was given to me by somebody that was beta testing Sage for me.
And this person after using it said, hey, you know, you had all these other names for it. I think
it was going to call like founders GPT or the name for terrible. The name and I take solace that
Steve Jobs also came up with bad names and the Mac man forgot sake. So anyway, he's like, this is
after using this. This is not the right names. You should call it Sage. And he sent these two
definitions. And he said, because Sage is a profoundly wise person, it refers to someone with a deep
understanding of life, accumulated knowledge and sound judgment. That is every single person you
and I study on the podcast. They they've had a deep understanding of life, accumulated knowledge
because they've they spent 50 years on their career. And then somebody put all the highlights or
the main lessons into a book and sound judgment. And the second one definition was that a sage is
a wise, wise discerning a prudent person. It describes someone who shows good judgment and makes
well considered decision. So a friend of mine was like, hey, I was on a way to a board meeting.
I needed some information about leadership. I was asking Sage for how history's greatest
entrepreneur started about leadership. And it gave me a bunch of good quotes that I used in the
board meeting. That is what I meant. Founders notes gives you the superpower to now access the
collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand when you need it. Another
subscriber just sent me this note that founders notes is giving him a compounding tactical advantage
over his competition. If you are going to spend hours and hours invested in listening to different
founders episodes, I would encourage you heavily to invest into a subscription for founders notes.
It makes the lessons that you're learning on the podcast even more powerful. And again, it gives
you the superpower to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on
demand. And you can do so easily by going to founders notes.com that is founders with an S just
like the podcast founders notes.com. Thank you very much for the support. Thank you very
much for listening and I'll talk to you again soon.
