Ron Johnson, who ran operations at Apple, says building great products requires relentless work and belief. He points to the iPhone and iPad, which Steve Jobs delayed repeatedly to get right, as proof that nothing easy becomes iconic. Success isn't money or market share but the joy of making something that matters.
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But none of this is easy, right? It takes will. If you talk to Tim, I bet every one of the companies he's funded has had 1, 2, 3, 4 near-death experiences. There's nothing easy about business. There's nothing easy about creating. But you got to keep sticking with it and adapting and going forward. But things look easy when they work. But that's because they weren't. It's because people worked really hard and worked really well together to produce those things. There was nothing easy about that iPhone. Now, the iPhone was under development for probably— well, the iPad was actually designed before the iPhone. A lot of people don't— I probably shouldn't say that, but that was worked on for a long time. But then we said, well, the phone's a bigger business. Why don't we make a phone? But that phone was probably— Steve wouldn't let that come out for probably 2 years beyond when many people wanted to because it was hard and it had to be exactly right and it couldn't come out just okay. It had to come out profoundly great. You know what I mean? Takes time. It's hard. You gotta have will, you gotta have belief, persistence, all those things. And finally, the outcome of all that is a journey that you measure success not by how much money you earn, what your market share is, by how much joy it provided your life, right? You guys saw Chariots of Fire? I love that scene when the guy says, I feel God's pleasure when I run fast, right? We all find joy, meaning, pleasure through our journey in what we do. And when you get a place where you work that happens to be a place where you get joy, it becomes like a hobby and you can't wait to go to work. And what you do is infectious and people respond and it just works. But if you don't find that place of joy, you'll just have a career and you'll be successful in the world's eyes, but you aren't gonna do anything probably profound. Does that make sense? And so at this stage in your life when you're just beginning that journey, you're on that highway, you got a lot of choices, think very carefully about the path you pick, right? But whatever path you do, use your imagination, believe in what you're trying to do, stick with it, don't give up, right? And, uh, Just believe in yourself. Does that make sense? Yeah. And if you do those kind of things, you'll have a very successful, very successful life, if you will.
