Turn criticism into R&D. What was the
secret for success that Steve Jobs
finally learned? In this episode, you're
going to get some insights into how
Steve Jobs when he came back to Apple
the second time, totally transformed
Apple to the success they are today. And
how he made his criticism that critics
and what they said into his R&D. So, I'm
Doug Andrew. I've been a financial
strategist, retirement planning
specialist for 47 years. I've trained a
lot of entrepreneurs, business owners
throughout my career on how to take
their business to 10 times often in less
than 60 months. And I'd like to tell the
story of Steve Jobs. In fact, I've shared
this in many of my books and
publications. I've written 11 books and
we've been blessed that many of them
have become national bestsellers. And so,
what was the secret to Steve Jobs
success? I think the second time he came
back to Apple, he had learned some things
instead of inventing technology, this
this icon of technology. Instead of
trying to create products that he
thought people would want, he started
listening to his customers and he
learned the secret to sort of just build
a better mousetrap, so to speak. So, let me
give you some ideas of how he began to
do this and then how he took what the
critics said, the criticism about any of
his products. And that was his new R&D
and this was a game changer for Steve
Jobs. For example, he did not invent the
cell phone. What did he do? He just
created a better mousetrap cell phone.
The iPhone and one of the most popular
cell phones that America and the world
has come to love was simply taking
existing technology and creating a
better platform for a phone. You know,
it's interesting
because the other day, our grandchildren
were playing in our little play hut
upstairs by our movie theater in our
home. They were back in there and they
recovered this old phone. It was a dial
phone. "Mom, dad, grandma, grandpa come over
here. What is this?" "Well, that's a
telephone." "Well, how does it work?" "Well,
will you you stuck your finger in here
and you would dial and you would come
around here to where it stopped and then
you'd pull your finger out. And then
you'd wait till it wound around." Oh,
my little granddaughter said, "I'll bet
you we're glad if you didn't have a lot
of nines in your phone number. That would
take forever." Yeah. "What else does it do
grandpa?" "It just made phone calls." "Oh, how
boring." Well, see, Steve Jobs took the
phone a cell phone and created a
platform. I can't remember what I last
checked. But there's probably about one
and a half million apps on the iPhone
Steve Jobs have to create the apps. No. He
created the platform for people to
develop apps that went on that platform.
And all the different apps that you used
these cell phone for all kinds of things.
And then the cameras. In the cell phones
are far better. Do you know that the
first digital camera weighed about 25
pounds and and cost about 25 thousand
bucks? They had to lift it with a
forklift off of an airplane the very
first digital camera. Now, you get 2 of
them on your smartphone for less than 10
bucks worth a thousand times better
resolution. And so, what Jobs did is he
took existing technology and created a
better mousetrap. And he created a
platform where other people would put
their things on that platform. Does that
make sense? Let me give you another
example. So, Steve Jobs did not invent the
mp3 player. He looked at the mp3
technology and you know, if you saw the
movie, he told his daughter, you're going to
have a thousand songs in your pocket. He
was talking about the iPod. And that he
could take that mp3 player and allow
music to be downloaded. Now, when he first
introduced that to the music industry,
they were scarcity minded. "Get out of
here, Mr. jobs. We only make
money when we sell an album. When we sell
a CD with 11 or 12 songs on it." We can't
make money one song at a time at 99
cents a download back." Then with iTunes.
He goes, "No. You'll make more money if you
let them do that." Well, they now love that
technology because people wanted the
song that they wanted to download. And
sometimes I've downloaded the same song
in multiple ways. The music industry
actually made more money by downloading
just the songs people wanted. So, that was
on the iPod. Now, the critics looked at
that. The first one I got was about this
big. They said, "Well, that's a
little bit bulky. I'm a jogger." And he
goes, "Thank you for that criticism." So, he
came out with the iPod Nano. And that
allowed me to strap it on my arm. See, I
bought that one too. And then some of
those joggers said, "Well, that's
cumbersome. I don't like the cord right
there. I want a clip." So, he came out with
the shuffle and the clip. I own them all.
And I'm a Microsoft guy. See, because I
want the latest and greatest and they
come with more and more capacity. So, he
took the criticism. "Well, I want something
smaller. I want something that clips." And
instead of going "Pssh".  He goes,
"Thank you." And he went out and developed
another one and another one and another
one. He learned how to take the criticism
and turn that into his research and
development. Let's take the iPad. When the
iPad first come out, they had all kinds
of critics. You know what? Goo wants a
tablet. We have laptops. We have PDAs. We
have our smartphones.
Who wants a tablet? Well, he didn't listen
to that that critics as far as the
demand that would be created. But
sometimes, I wonder you know in Isaiah in
the Old Testament, I'm Christian. And in
the Old Testament of the Bible Isaiah
chapter 3 it talks about these
prophecies of the latter days. And it
would always talk about how people will
be sort of caught up in their changeable
clothing, their suits of apparel and
their nose jewels and their earrings and
their trinkets and their bracelets and
their tablets and their... Tablets?
How come Isaiah who
apparently saw our day would have said
tablets? What's a tablet? Well, I go around
on subways in Tokyo Japan, I go to New
York. And sometimes, people aren't talking
to each other, they're all looking at
their tablet. So, yeah. That's what maybe
that was. But see that's a tablet. And I
remember shortly after the iPad came out
that in our living room, there were 11
iPads one Sunday after we had blessed a
little grandchild. And it was mainly
being dominated by the grandkids. I
remember singing in a choir at church
and an 85 year old woman looked at my
iPad where I was pulling up the songs
and the scripture says, "I want one of
those, okay?" So, the iPad came out it was
extremely popular. And then the critics
said, "That's a little bit big and bulky
to go in my purse." "Thank you for that
criticism." So, we came out with the iPad
Mini. I own several of each size. Now, I
take my educational videos and I had a
library of 153
videos back then. And I was buying 5
and 6 hundred of these iPad minis at
the time that would hold 64 gigs. And I
was downloading answer that 154 video so people at their
fingertips could watch my educational
videos. So, taking my content, combining it
with Steve Jobs technology, that created
a win-win. And this is where we have
cooperation. And this creates exponential
growth and this is what makes the world
go round.
So, I appreciated the technology that
allowed my videos to be downloaded 150 of them on one iPad
Mini that was dedicated to family
empowerment and asset optimization. But
see, Steve Jobs learned late in his
career that if you simply listen to what
your customers want and make the
criticism, the research and development
into your next product, you will never
run out of opportunity to provide what
the public really wants.So, you listen to
your customers or you will die. So, that's
why this technology icon, this guru
motivated me to
rethink my thinking and I began to
listen to my customers. So, whether you're
a realtor, doctor, a dentist, a
chiropractor a CPA listen and take the
criticism and come out with a better way,
a better service, a better product. I
share this story and many others in my
various books Entitlement Abolition.
Steve Jobs, I talked about in this book
called Learning Curves. You can go to
learningcurvesbook.com or entitlementabolitionbook.com. And will fire out a
free copy to you. You just pay nominal 5.95 shipping and handling. But
this is what I love sharing, is the many
lessons that I've learned by studying
lives of great people that change the
world where Steve Jobs within a couple
of hours of his passing, probably 80% of the world knew about his
death on one of his devices. I mean
that's pretty powerful when you have
that kind of an influence in the world.
And you can influence those you care
about in much the same way.
