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Archive for apple

What Is Possible?

By Rob Minton · Comments (4) · Monday, October 10th, 2011

In 2003, Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Imagine the impact this must have had on every aspect of his life. Everything must have changed from this point forward. His life would never be the same. If you know someone who has fought, or is fighting cancer, you probably have an idea of how significant a “cancer” diagnosis is to every aspect of their lives.

Here is what Jobs accomplished AFTER his diagnosis:

2003 – iTunes
2006 – Apple TV
2007 – iPhone & iPhone “Apps”
2008 – MacBook Air
2010 – iPad
2011 – iCloud

If Jobs was able to spearhead all of this while battling pancreatic cancer, what might we accomplish?

It’s obvious that Jobs spoke the truth in his 2005 commencement speech:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Hopefully, you’re not fighting a life threatening illness and thinking of what Jobs accomplished while battling cancer may bring some perspective for what you might accomplish.

Additional Reading:

Infographic Highlighting Jobs Major Accomplishments

How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple (Part One)


How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple (Part Two)

Comments (4)
Categories : Business Building, Business Re-invention
Tags : apple, steve jobs

How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple (Part Two)

By Rob Minton · Comments (1) · Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

I shared part one of my article on how Steve Jobs transformed Apple last week.  This week will dig a little further into Steve’s relentless work ethic. From “Inside Steve’s Brain” by Learner Kahney…

“I’d never been so tired in my life,” Jobs told Fortune in 1998. “I’d come home at about ten o’clock at night and flop straight into bed, then haul myself out at six the next morning and take a shower and go to work. My wife deserves all the credit for keeping me at it. She supported me and kept the family together with a husband in absentia.”

Another entrepreneur I’m good friends said he threw away “The Four Hour Workweek” after reading this quote about Steve Jobs. To build a great business, you’ve got to put the time in. There are no short cuts. My favorite quote from “Inside Steve’s Brain” is this one:

“I’m looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. Am willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that ‘vision thing’ and I’m not afraid to start from the beginning.”

Remember how you would include an “objective” in your resume? Well, the quote above is actually is Steve’s objective from his resume:
(click to enlarge)


Now, I’m not entirely sure this is his real resume, but it’s inspiring none the less. How would your resume read? Are you willing to tear down walls, build bridges and light fires? Are you afraid to start from the beginning? I hope not, because this tenacity is needed to succeed in real estate today.

Let’s move on to marketing, because Steve Jobs is a Master Marketer. Throughout “Inside Steve’s Brain”, I found many stories detailing Jobs as a great marketer. He is constantly thinking about selling. Advertising is a key part of Apple’s communication with its customers.

“My dream is that every person in the world will have their own Apple computer. To do that, we’ve got to be a great marketing company…. Jobs immediately boosted Apple’s advertising budget from $15 million to $100 million. The goal was to make Apple “first and foremost a product marketing company.”"

Did you catch the last sentence? The goal was to make Apple a marketing company. This very BIG, because it’s significantly different than what you might think. Remember, Apple was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Would you have the guts to increase your advertising budget over 600% when cash-flow was tight? At Apple with Jobs directing the ship, marketing has always been one of its key strategies. The company has used advertising as an extremely important and effective way to distinguish itself from the competition.

“Apple is famous for its lifestyle advertising. It never loads its ads with speeds and feeds, functions and features, like everyone else. Instead, Apple engages in lifestyle marketing. It portrays hip young people with “enviable lifestyles,” given to them courtesy of Apple’s products. The company’s highly successful iPod ad campaign shows young people grooving to the music in their heads. There is never any mention of the iPod’s hard-drive capacity.”

This advertising strategy is the exact opposite of other companies selling computers and electronic gadgets. Skim some of the advertisements for other electronics and computers and you’ll see the difference very quickly.

“Jobs’s product presentations are also integrated into big, coordinated advertising campaigns that are executed with a precision that would impress a general. The campaigns combine rumor and surprise with traditional marketing, and rely wholeheartedly on secrecy for their effectiveness. On the outside it can look somewhat chaotic and uncontrolled, but they are tightly planned and coordinated.”

In fact, I was amazed to learn that Apple plans their product launches way in advance in great detail. Here’s how it works as explained in “Inside Steve’s Brain:”

“A few days ahead of a product presentation, Apple’s PR department sends out invitations to the press and VIPs. The invitation gives the time and location of a “special event” but contains scant information about its nature or any upcoming products that might be revealed. It’s a tease. Jobs is effectively saying, “I’ve got a secret; guess what it is.” Immediately, tongues start wagging. There’ll be an explosion of blog posts and press articles speculating on what Jobs will announce. In years past, the speculation was limited to specialist Apple websites and fan forums, but more recently the mainstream press also reports the rumors. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, CNN, and the International Herald Tribune have all written breathless articles looking forward to Jobs’s product presentations. The rumormongering surrounding Macworld 2007–where Jobs introduced the iPhone–even made the nightly news on all the cable and TV networks, which is unheard of for any company in any industry.

Not even Hollywood can garner as much attention for its movie premieres. This kind of worldwide publicity is worth many hundreds of millions of dollars in free exposure. The launch of the iPhone in January 2007 was the biggest to date.

Standing onstage in San Francisco, Jobs single-handedly eclipsed the much larger Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which was happening at the same time. The CES is more important economically than Macworld, yet Jobs and the iPhone handily stole its thunder. Jobs’s iPhone launch also overshadowed announcements from much bigger companies, including the introduction of the consumer version of Microsoft’s Vista, and became the biggest technology story of the year. Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie estimated that the iPhone rumor reports and follow-up stories were worth $400 million in free advertising.

It was so successful that Apple didn’t spend a penny to advertise the iPhone before its launch. “Our secret marketing program for the iPhone was none,” Jobs told Apple employees in a company wide address. “We didn’t do anything.”

Didn’t do anything? Come on. They followed every successful marketing strategy in the book. It’s pretty obvious that Steve Jobs accomplished his goal and turned Apple into a great marketing company. He is a Master Marketer and there is a lot for you and I to learn from what he has accomplished.

I hope you enjoyed this article and if you’d like to learn more about Apple and Steve Jobs, I strongly recommend “Inside Steve’s Brain.” I absolutely loved the book and learned a great deal!

Comments (1)
Categories : Books, Business Re-invention, Marketing, Succcess
Tags : apple, inside steves brain, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Marketing, steve jobs

How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple (Part One)

By Rob Minton · Comments (0) · Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Whether your an Apple fan or not, you have to pay attention to what Steve Jobs as done for Apple. To be honest, I’ve been amazed by what he has accomplished. From “Inside Steve’s Brain” by Learner Kahney…

“Jobs pulled Apple from the brink of bankruptcy, and in ten years he’s made the company bigger and healthier than it’s ever been. He’s tripled Apple’s annual sales, doubled the Mac’s market share, and increased Apple’s stock 1,300 percent. Apple is making more money and shipping more computers than ever before, thanks to a string of hit products–and one giant blockbuster.”

And this was before the iPad! Job’s is a true rags to riches story. In fact, he sold his car to fund Apple when the company was initially started. By the age of 25, he was worth more than a hundred million after Apple went public. The amazing part is he has never been motivated by money. Instead, he was motivated to make durable products, which were simple to use.

What most people might not remember is that Jobs was actually pushed out of Apple by a CEO hired by his partner. After his departure, the company lost focus and got into several different markets trying to compete with everyone in the computer industry. This course of action brought the company to the edge of bankruptcy. However, a string of events brought Steve back to the company. His job was to turn the mess around and this he has certainly done.

Here’s a question for you to consider…

If lack of focus can take a billion dollar company down, what impact can it have on your business?

Jobs eliminated every product that wasn’t profitable. This required laying off thousands of people. This decision also let go of millions of dollars invested into products, which were not fully developed. However, these tough decisions were required in order to get the company back to profitability. Jobs would frequently say that if it wasn’t making a profit, it had to go.

You have to give up certain opportunities in your business, to build a stronger, more profitable business. Job’s once said, “Focus means saying no.”

When I talk to real estate agents, I often find that they are actually copying Apple’s failed business plan by trying to be everything to everyone. They’ll take any listing, work with any buyer and do just about anything to make a commission.

Zero focus.
Zero specialization.
Zero innovation.

And these same agents have trouble telling a prospective client “No.”

“The most important thing Jobs did was to radically simplify Apple’s product pipeline. Jobs drew a very simple two-by-two grid on the whiteboard. Across the top he wrote “Consumer” and “Professional,” and down the side, “Portable” and “Desktop.” Here was Apple’s new product strategy. Just four machines: two notebooks and two desktops, aimed at either consumers or professional users. Apple was in the computer business, and that meant it had to focus on computers.”

To Jobs, this was a key point. Most people in the industry wanted Apple to sell lower priced computers. However,  Jobs resisted this strategy because he didn’t want to compete with Dell, Compag and Gateway. In fact, he felt they were all racing to the bottom. The only distinguishing difference between these brands was the price.

Instead of taking on Dell with the cheapest possible computer, Apple would make first-class products to make enough profit to keep developing more first-class products. But Apple goes after the most profitable segment of the market, not the highest number of machines.”

This last sentence is probably the most important lesson you can extract from what Jobs did at Apple. Jobs focused on the most profitable segment of the market.

What is the most profitable segment of your real estate market?
Who is your most profitable client?

These are important questions for you to consistently consider for your business. Unfortunately, the most profitable segment tends to change with time. What was profitable previously, may not be
the most profitable segment going forward and you have to adjust your business accordingly.

Comments (0)
Categories : Books, Business Building, Business Re-invention, Succcess
Tags : apple, iPad, iPhone, iPod, steve jobs

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