Founders - #350 How To Sell Like Steve Jobs

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 it was written by Carmine Gallo. So a friend of mine founded 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 in their portfolio as well. This book makes the case that Steve Jobs was the greatest business storyteller of our time.

Starting point is 00:00:30 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 wanna dedicate an entire episode to going over some of his ideas. Because think about it, you're selling when you pitch an idea,

Starting point is 00:00:44 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. That's why he spent so much time and effort learning how to sell. In fact, in this book, he said that he considered his keynote presentations competitive weapon. 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

Starting point is 00:01:13 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 messianic 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 a 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.

Starting point is 00:01:52 And so there's a quote Steve Jobs said in 1997. 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, too. 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,

Starting point is 00:02:26 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 on 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

Starting point is 00:03:13 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.

Starting point is 00:03:50 So let me tell you about iMac. The new iMac is fast. It screams. So when I got to this part, I left 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.

Starting point is 00:04:11 Then he goes into the next one. The new iMac has a gorgeous display. Again, Steve is describing his product the way that you would 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,

Starting point is 00:04:39 it screams. That means 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, and 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. He takes something unbelievably complex and uses simple and direct language to explain 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

Starting point is 00:05:19 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 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 MOIC is, let alone IRR or loss to lease, etc. If you want their money for your project, include a slide in your deck titled,

Starting point is 00:05:53 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.

Starting point is 00:06:15 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 that episode, if you read that book, Ivar Kroger, he did exactly what Steve Jobs did. He did exactly what the advice that my friend Moses gave. Explain what we will do with your money in plain English. Ivar Kroger comes from Europe, comes to America to pitch American

Starting point is 00:06:39 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're going to grant me a monopoly for match production and match and selling matches inside of their company.

Starting point is 00:07:03 Government loans for match monopolies. This is important because he put it in a phrase that was easy to understand. And so his investors would then repeat that phrase to other investors. Government loans for match monopolies. Easy to understand ideas spread. And how much did 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 in front of me, but I'm pretty sure from like 1922 to like 1930, something like 25% of all the securities traded in America were for Ivar Kruger'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

Starting point is 00:07:48 entrepreneurs that I know. He also reads voraciously. And he sent me, he told me about this book on the life of Juan Tripp and the history of Pan Am Airways. The book is called An American Saga. I have it. I'll eventually read it and do an episode on it in 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 I came across something that is a great illustration of this. So it talks about Juan Tripp 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 I've done on the book,

Starting point is 00:08:23 The Fish That Ate the Whale. 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 Capitol and it has to be stamped. That was a problem for the United Fruit Company. Why? Because in between them and the Capitol is a 9,000-foot-high mountain. And so to take this paperwork and to get it on the other side of the mountain, they have to drive for three days on very dangerous roads. So Juan Trip comes in and he'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.

Starting point is 00:09:00 And so Eric's notes on this, he says, I love how crystal clear this value proposition is. Instead of three days by 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? Juan Tripp's answer is, instead of three days by Dangerous Road, it's one and a half hours by air. For Steve Jobs,

Starting point is 00:09:36 it's you want to get on the internet quickly and simply, and the iMac does this for you. The reason I started with this, the reason why I think figuring out what you're 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.

Starting point is 00:09:58 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 I've done. I probably done, 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.

Starting point is 00:10:27 The reason that Steve Jobs was such a great storyteller, the reason that he was such a great salesperson is because he did that. Think about that. The greatest line he ever came up with, the greatest, I mean, they have a lot of great taglines in the book, but I feel, I can't think of another product that has a better tagline than the original iPod. And their tagline was very simple. It's written from the customer's perspective and it describes the better future. 1,000 songs in

Starting point is 00:10:49 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, almost like these binder things. I specifically remember them, like you drive around your car with your friends and be like, 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 can walk around with a 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. Now think about how crazy this is, right? So the evolution goes from, you know, giant books of CDs to 1,000 songs in your pocket. And then think about Spotify. It's not

Starting point is 00:11:30 1,000 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. When you see a lot of these products that are struggling in the market, it's usually because they're a solution in search of a problem. Steve didn't sell a product. He sold an improvement. There's a great book called Ogilvy on Advertising. I just recently reread it. It came out in the 1980s. It's written by David Ogilvy. 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 a 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

Starting point is 00:12:18 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 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:12:53 So I just talked about the first one, iPod, 1,000 songs in your pocket. When they come up with the MacBook 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 repeat it in the world's thinnest notebook. Now listen to how much Steve Jobs and Apple repeats this over and over again. They repeat it in the presentation, on 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.

Starting point is 00:13:27 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. I do this all the time. I go back and you obviously know that I reread books that I've

Starting point is 00:13:50 covered. Think about how crazy it is. Not only am I rereading a book that I've covered, right? It's a book that I've made a podcast about before. So I took a ton of time and actually, you know, probably 40 hours really digesting the book. Then I've 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 could do this. Go back and pick up a book that you loved, rewatch a movie that you loved,

Starting point is 00:14:13 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 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.

Starting point is 00:14:31 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

Starting point is 00:14:50 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 to you 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 loved 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.

Starting point is 00:15:29 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. He did the exact same thing when I met him. And Rick told me the story. When he went to meet Steve Jobs, this is when Steve Jobs was running Pixar. They were thinking about making an investment in Pixar.

Starting point is 00:15:54 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

Starting point is 00:16:20 is another three point list. So 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've listened to and watched that speech, I forgot 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.

Starting point is 00:17:07 Then he fills that in with the story. Then he goes, my second story is about love and loss. Then he fills that in. Then he goes, my third story is about death. But think about that. These are very simple direct language. My first story is about connecting the dots. My second story is about love and loss.

Starting point is 00:17:24 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 actually comes from the founder of Sequoia Capital, Don Valentine.

Starting point is 00:17:56 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 some of the bad presentations 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.

Starting point is 00:18:28 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 problem their product solves. Start with the problem. In fact, I was thinking about this. I went back and looked

Starting point is 00:19:08 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,

Starting point is 00:20:06 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 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 would 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.

Starting point is 00:20:42 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, it 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 obsessed with market share. Like why is Apple's market share so tiny? And at the time they had like 5% of market share

Starting point is 00:21:23 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, you only have 5% market share. And actually reframing and adding context to anybody that was reading the interview or 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

Starting point is 00:21:58 luxurious. 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

Starting point is 00:22:35 iPhones a day. I think the reason this is so important is because we all know what numbers 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 author is 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 a year or two later. And he made the

Starting point is 00:23:09 point that if you took a million dollars in $100 bills and stacked 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 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.

Starting point is 00:23:41 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. This is something I referenced earlier, where he uses these uncommon words, especially uncommon words that you don't normally see in business presentations. And uncommon doesn't mean complex. Like if you think about going back to his 1998 iMac 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 look 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

Starting point is 00:24:29 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 ring true to you and I, because I think about all the different meetings you sat in or 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 Ogilvie.

Starting point is 00:24:57 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 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 of 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?

Starting point is 00:25:26 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 gonna 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.

Starting point is 00:25:44 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 have you heard of that mentioned somebody's sex life? These are uncommon words in business presentations, and that's what makes them memorable. That makes them human. So Steve would use words, if you think about all the, like, 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

Starting point is 00:26:23 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'd show 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 Almanac, Charlie Munger speaks about the importance of social proof over and over again.

Starting point is 00:26:48 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 and to some extent consciously by what we see others do and approve. Therefore, if everybody's buying something, we think it's better.

Starting point is 00:27:03 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 Portrait of the Almanac 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 Portia de Zamenach, just came out last year. If you do, that section's 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

Starting point is 00:27:52 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 podcasts 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

Starting point is 00:28:37 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 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.

Starting point is 00:28:59 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 messianic sense of purpose. Steve was an evangelist. He was driven by this messianic 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

Starting point is 00:29:30 definition of technology I've ever come across was actually in Peter Thiel's book, Zero 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 messianic sense of purpose sounds like. This is what a messianic sense of purpose sounds like. This is what a messianic sense of purpose sounds like. What we want to do is to change the way people use computers in the world.

Starting point is 00:30:10 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 messianic 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.

Starting point is 00:30:37 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 messianic sense of purpose sounds like comes from Lee Clow, who was friends with Steve Jobs for 30 years. I talked about him in last week's episode because he made many of the greatest Apple ads. And this is what he said about Steve.

Starting point is 00:31:07 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

Starting point is 00:31:32 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, Shoe Dog. It wasn't until Phil switched to something he was truly passionate about, something something 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, 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

Starting point is 00:32:15 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 had been, he's gonna 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.

Starting point is 00:32:39 Steve Jobs was a master salesman. Phil Knight was a master salesman. I had been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I despised it. I'd 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

Starting point is 00:33:10 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, a recruit, 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, the Here's to the Crazy One ad, arguably the most famous Apple ad. And so he's showing it to her,

Starting point is 00:33:36 this reporter from Newsweek before it was public. And the reporter said that 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 there's 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's 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 the mutual fund part of your career and you have not yet figured out how

Starting point is 00:34:19 to get to the running and the running shoe part of your career, I love this piece of advice from David Ogilvie. 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 longtime debt. Both Steve Jobs and Phil Knight knew what they were selling. They knew how to sell and they both developed a messianic sense of purpose about what they were selling, they knew how to sell, and they both developed a messianic sense of purpose about what they were selling. And I think this one paragraph, this 30-second clip of Steve Jobs speaking extemporaneously 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

Starting point is 00:35:03 things that really separates us from the high primates is that we're tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion 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 locomotion 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

Starting point is 00:35:53 is the equivalent of a bicycle for our mind. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. Recommend buying the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 350 books down, 1,000 to go. 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.

Starting point is 00:36:17 And then I tell you why. I'm gonna 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 event to

Starting point is 00:36:39 build relationships with other high value people. The single idea expressed clearly for founders notes, you'll see that it even used some social proof. It's in the headline. It says, Charlie Munger said, learning from history is a form of leverage. Founders Notes gives you the superpower to do this on demand. You will also hear,

Starting point is 00:36:55 because I'm up to my eyeballs on this 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, just like Steve Jobs. I can speak about it from the heart and with a messianic sense of purpose.

Starting point is 00:37:09 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. It 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

Starting point is 00:37:32 by people that listen to Founders. So one of the most common requests that I've received over the years is this desire for, 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, like, hey, your goal really should be that you have a single idea that's expressed clearly. So I heard that multiple

Starting point is 00:38:05 times. I reread that part. I rewound that part. And I thought about, okay, what is the single idea expressed clearly? 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, it wasn't until after I did the first Founders Conference, which was held back in March in 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, I actually stumbled on a great way to help other people build relationships

Starting point is 00:38:45 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 on July 29th to the 31st, is I ran out the entire venue. That means that if you attend, every single person you see there 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,

Starting point is 00:39:21 just make it his, one of his biggest concerns was 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. Your 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 a lot of these relationships so quickly at the last event

Starting point is 00:39:47 is these are intentionally smaller events. This event in Scotts Valley, California on July 29th to the 31st that I highly encourage you to attend is only going to be around 120 to 130 people. And it is the end result. Why I think I stumbled onto something is because the amount of friendships, investments, deals, customer leads, partnerships, and other opportunities that have

Starting point is 00:40:13 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 onto 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.

Starting point is 00:40:53 I am doing this event in partnership with Rick Burnham and Paul Buser. They're the founders of Seder Grove, 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 Notre Dame and they actually invited me to speak at their art of investing class.

Starting point is 00:41:25 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 in the future that 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 forward slash 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 let me explain. So for years, people knew because I'd go around talking about the fact that since 2018, I have been cataloging

Starting point is 00:42:04 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 foundersnotes.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's 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 Kelleher, James Dyson, all these other ideas from past

Starting point is 00:42:39 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 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 it wasn't until five years later that I then sent, I had talked to Tristan and I had sent Tristan emails like, hey, there's

Starting point is 00:43:21 actually a 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 came to Tristan. 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 was with learning from history, that had read hundreds of biographies throughout their career because they understood what Charlie Munger so eloquently said, that learning from history is a form of leverage. Learning from history is a form of leverage. Founders Notes gives you the superpower to do this on demand. The podcast is a great tool to learn from history, but it is

Starting point is 00:44:26 pushed to you. Founders 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 did history's greatest entrepreneurs think about hiring? All I did was type in hiring into the keyword search in 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.

Starting point is 00:45:08 And that idea also came, was pulled, 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 I was going to call it like Founders GPT or the names were terrible. And I take solace that Steve Jobs also came up with bad names, the Mac man, for God's sake. So anyways, he's like, this is after using this, this is not the right name. So 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.

Starting point is 00:45:44 That is every single person you and I study on the podcast. They've had a deep understanding of life, accumulated knowledge because 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, discerning, or prudent person. It describes someone who shows good judgment and makes well-considered decisions. So a friend of mine was like, hey, I was on the way to a board meeting. I needed some information about leadership. I was asking Sage for how history's greatest entrepreneurs thought 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

Starting point is 00:46:25 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 foundersnotes.com. That is founders with an S just like the podcast, foundersnotes.com. Thank you very much for the support. Thank you very much for listening. And I'll talk to you again soon.

Founders - #350 How To Sell Like Steve Jobs

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