Steve Jobs Didn’t Care What You Thought!

The ones of you that will be successful in here will develop the ability to distinguish signal from noise. The distractions are called noise, and the signal is what your mandate is, whatever that is. I worked for Steve Jobs years ago, developing all his educational software, and we would meet every quarter to determine development budgets.

Steve was not a very nice guy. I remember one specific day in Cupertino, in the old office, and I was there with my team. He used to berate everybody. He was brutal. One of my marketing teams said, "You know, Steve, before we do the next version of Oregon Trail, which is going to cost 12 million to put out next quarter, of which you're going to have to pay at least eight of it, we want to do some market research about the feature sets with teachers in 110,000 schools in America."

He went out of his mind. He said, "They don't know what they want until I tell them what they want. I will decide what they want, and only I will decide." I mean, I couldn't take it anymore. I said, "Steve, when you say that, you don't respect anybody in this room."

He said, "Are we making money? Are we growing share? Am I dominating in schools? Yes or no?"

That's true, Steve. He said, "Well, shut up and let's just stay focused." That's 85% signal right there. He doesn't care what you think, doesn't give a damn, and is so focused on delivering results.

And how wildly successful he was! The modern-day example of him, and the only man on earth that is 100% signal, is Elon Musk. He will walk away from a conversation if he doesn't feel he's gaining any useful information. He is 100% focused on signal, and look at what he has achieved—and he's not even finished yet.