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Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes | Focus.com

Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes

TOPICS: Apple Customer Experience Management Customer Satisfaction Customer Service Customer Service Management General Management Leadership Management 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

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Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes | Focus.com

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 I think 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 hurdles arise. 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.

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Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes | Focus.com

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 have to 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?

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Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes | Focus.com

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 Apple listening 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 the unimportant 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. And to 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.

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Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes | Focus.com

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 exceptional accomplishment.

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.

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Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes | Focus.com

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, Focus Posted yesterday Great list. Thank you so much for sharing this!
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+3

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Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes | Focus.com

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.
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0 Brian Phelps Replied yesterday

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

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]
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+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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Phil Donaldson

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Favorite Steve Jobs Quotes | Focus.com

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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