Steve Jobs' Secret Storytelling Formula Revealed

Here are the elements you need in every successful story. But I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old, and he lived in Palo Alto. His number was still in the phone book, and he answered the phone himself. Yes, hi, I'm Steve Jobs. I'm 12 years old. I'm a student in high school, and I want to build a frequency counter. And I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have. And he laughed, and he gave me the spare parts to build his frequency counter, and he gave me a job that summer in Hewlett Packard working on the assembly line, putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters. He got me a job in the place that built them, and I was in heaven. And I've never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked. And when people ask me, I try to be as responsive to pay that debt of gratitude back. Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that's what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them.