okay so the book I'm going to talk to you about today is insanely simple the obsession that drives Apple's success and it was written by Ken seagull this book is a little different from the books that you and I normally talk about it is not a biography but it is a fascinating look into how it was working with Steve Jobs because Ken seagull was the Ad Agency creative director of The Firm that Steve used when he was at next and then when he came back to Apple to lead that turnaround and so at this point I've made I don't know 10 episodes on Steve jobs I've read as many books on him as I can find and yet there were stories in this book that I have found nowhere else and it's because Ken worked with Steve intimately for over a decade Steve had no problem calling Ken at midnight to debate a single word in the ad copy and so one of the things that Ken noticed that was different from the other clients that he had was that Steve Steve's dedication to Simplicity was almost religious in nature and you would see that religious-like dedication to Simplicity throughout the entire way that Steve ran is business to the way he communicated internally with his employees to the way he communicated externally to his potential customers to how he organized his team to how he's built his products and so Ken noticed that Steve had a tool to do this and he calls it the simple stick which is one of my favorite stories this is the second or third time that I've read the book and considering I've reread my highlights all the time it's like the 10th time I read the book and for some reason I failed to make an episode on it before so I'm rectifying that mistake here but the simple stick the reason I bring that up is because from the very first time I read the the book you know probably 8 years ago something like that this idea of the simple stick always stuck in my mind so the simple stick is just a tool that Steve Jobs used to keep his team from over complicating things if an idea was not distilled down to its Essence Steve would reject it if an idea took a turn when it should have traveled in a straight line Steve would reject it so an example that comes up over and over again in the book is if you made two different versions of anything Steve would hit you with the simple stick until you simplified it down to one there was an ad made many decades ago for the Macintosh and it said the tagline on the ad was describing the Macintosh and it said that it was simply amazing and amazingly simple Steve wanted Apple to make products that were simply amazing and amazingly simple and the simple stick was the tool that he used to make that happen and so the main thesis behind this entire book and why I want to talk to you about it is that people prefer Simplicity customers respond to it yet humans naturally over complicate things true Simplicity that is applied consist consistently throughout your entire organization is extremely rare just think about every single business that you ever interact with most of the businesses the products and services that we use that we buy would not be described as a product of clear thinking and simplicity keep in mind the time frame that we're talking about we're talking most of the the book is about the time where Steve comes back to Apple Apple is losing money their product line sucks they either have to turn it around or die so I think one of the things that Steve realized that and and a lot of other history great entrepreneurs realized that Simplicity actually helps you scale and so when I was reading this part of the book I thought about Sam Walton when I read I read his autobiography multiple times the last time I made an episode on it was episode 234 but he has a line in that book where he says if you don't zero in on bureaucracy every so often you will naturally build in layers you never set out to add bureaucracy you get it period without even knowing so you always have to be looking to eliminate it the simple stick was how Steve eliminated at its source there's a great line in Sam Walton's autobiography that's by Walmart executive and it's a story about how Sam is trying to use the simples stick he's constantly questioning and let me just read this to you says I'll give you an example that drove Sam crazy until we started doing something about it when merchandise came into the back of a store it was supposed to be marked at the right price and marked correctly on the spot but because it often wasn't getting done properly we created positions called test scanners people who go around the stores with handheld scanners making sure everything is priced correctly there's another layer right there and Sam didn't ever visit a store without asking if we really needed these folks and I think that story is a great example that humans naturally over complicate things and it's the leader's job to constantly question do we actually need this additional layer the more layers you have the harder it is to scale so the simple stick is the tool I want to go into detail on how Steve did this with the first thing I think is probably the most important is the way he communicated I've told you in the past I think he's the clearest thinker the clearest Communicator out of every single person I've read about and so Steve believed that blunt communication was effective direct communication is extremely simple so in every single book that I've ever read about Steve Jobs the people that worked with him all say the exact same thing he was very easy to understand if he thought something was great he's going to tell you if he thought your work was that's one of his favorite words to describe poor work if he thought your work was he's going to tell you in fact the first meeting that Steve Jobs had with the author Ken seagull right Steve goes up to him he's like your TV work is great and Ken great and he goes but your print work is the reason this is important because if somebody's that direct with you you know immediately what you need to do Ken knew immediately what he needed to do oh okay if I want to keep Steve as a client my print work has to improve right now employees like all other people respond to clear communication there is a book that I've read multiple times I think I've done two podcasts on it maybe the last time I did the podcast on it was episode 281 that episode is called working with Steve Jobs it is about this book called creative selection which is written by Ken coanda Ken was a programmer who demoed multiple times and worked closely with Steve Jobs I want to read this section from Ken's book that is so excellent and if you haven't listened to episode 281 I would listen to it after you get done with this one and so he's describing how clear Steve's communication was to his employees and this is what Ken says Steve was at the center of all circles he made all of the important product decisions that's hilarious because the amount of detail and what he's paying attention to that I'll get to in this book is it's exactly what Ken Ken is saying here he made all the important product decisions from my standpoint as an individual programmer demoing to Steve was like visiting the Oracle of Deli the demo was my question and Steve's response was the answer while the pronouncements from the Greek oracle often came in the form of confusing riddles this was not true with Steve listen to this line i' double underlined it highlighted it it's so important he was always easy to understand he would either approve a demo or he would request to see something different next time whenever Steve reviewed a demo he would say often with highly detailed specificity what he wanted to happen next he was always trying to ensure that the products were intuitive and straightforward another word for simple right as possible and he was willing to invest his own time effort and influence to see that they were in that example Steve is doing that with his employee when he's saying to Ken hey your TV is great your print stuff is it needs to get better he's doing the exact same thing with one of his vendors being blunt being direct is the most simple form of communication and I think one of the most important byproducts of this is that with clear communication with the blunt communication that Steve used everybody understood the standards that he insisted they upheld so there's this great uh video I'll link it down below and this guy named Andy Miller it's I've watched this video I don't know 50 times he sold his company to Apple for $275 million and then he moved the entire company from Boston to copertino and he worked with Steve Jobs and he's describing this byproduct of the clear communication that Steve had with him and everybody else around him and Andy said that you are aware of the consequences if you screw up and Andy says that something that Steve would repeat to him was that Andy you are a very complicated man and that was not a compliment Andy said that Steve's whole world was Simplicity he wanted everything boiled down to its Essence and he tells this one story again this is it just makes it makes yourself this this direct communication this blunt communication I think I really truly believe it makes you easy to interface with and so Andy was daydreaming one time he's sitting in a meeting with Steve Jobs and Tim Tim Cook and all these like high-end Executives I think there's like four to six uh of like Steve's top team in the room and Andy's there and Andy's Daydream he's like how the hell did I get here like how did I wind up here this is Steve Jobs I cannot believe this is happening and so Steve noticed that Andy wasn't paying attention so he asked him a question related to what they were talking about and he's like okay Andy what do you think about this and Andy couldn't answer it and Steve said you weren't paying attention were you and he's like no I wasn't he goes okay if I ever notice that again you won't be in the room and you won't be at Apple think about that you think at the end of that exchange was Andy left like I wonder I wonder what what he meant by that what should I do next no you know exactly blunt communication is simple again I think this this part that blunt communication makes your standards easy to understand for others it's very important it's also not just it Steve Job is not the only person that did this so I obviously you know I've make all these episodes on Michael Jordan I'm kind of obsessed with his competitive nature and I was rewatching the documentary uh the last dance and there was a couple things that Michael said that I think he shares in common with Steve Jobs and actually took screenshots of what Michael was talking about and so I want to compare when Michael came to the Chicago Bulls in 1984 to when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 and so Michael in the documentary is talking about why you know when they're winning championships when they're when all all these new people come in after the Bulls won the third Championship like why are you so hard on your teammates Michael and he says again this is very clear communication when I got here we were meaning the Chicago Bulls were a terrible terrible team when he got there and we got to elevate to being a championship quality team this is the punchline there's certain standards that you have to live by and when I saw that and I'm reading this book I'm thinking about what Michael Jordan said on the Last Dance I'm thinking about what Ken seagull's writing in this book I thought of there's this guy named Mike Moritz a lot of people describe him as the best venture capitalist of all time way before he's a venture capitalist he wrote this book called uh the Little Kingdom how apple and Steve Jobs changed the world it was published the book is published before Steve Jobs gets kicked out the first time Mike is an a fantastic writer transitions from being a journalist to an investor winds up being world class at that as well but then which most f saying is Michael updates the book I think somewhere in maybe 2008 2009 something like that and he the updated version is a version I read and now it's called return to the Little Kingdom I want to read this tell me this is not the exact same thing that Michael Jordan is talking about and Michael Moritz is discussing the unparalleled story of apple right Michael Jordan just said hey I when I came to the Bulls when I got here we were and we elevated to being a championship quality team and so therefore name you're coming in new to something we built so I'm going to insist that there's certain standards that you have to live by Michael Jordan was the leader of the Bulls just like Steve Jobs was the leader of apple and this is what Mike morett said on the unparalleled story of Apple this is why I keep making podcast after podcast reading book after book of Steve Jobs why is it so important for you and I to revisit this to talk about this you know every few weeks every few months at least you know hopefully a couple times a year because this is what Mike Mor said many are familiar with the reemergence of Apple they may not be as familiar with the fact that it has few if any parallels when did a Founder ever return to the company from which he had been so rudely rejected to engineer a turnaround as complete and spectacular as apples while turnarounds are difficult in any circumstances they are doubly difficult in a technology company it is not too much of a stretch to say that Steve founded Apple not once but twice and the second time he was alone Steve Jobs not complete that turnaround without Chris Crystal Clear communication so this is also something that why it's also rare it's rare in like let's say the normal population and probably extremely common in the population of the people that you and I study these you know world-class entrepreneurs because most people don't want blunt communication because blunt communication creates conflict that is why it's rare there's a great line from Jeff Bezos so Jeff Bezos is known for being you know a very blunt Communicator Jeff Bezos says I think in his sharehold letters if I'm not mistaken he said that he would take conflict over agreement every time because he believes that conflict produces a better result most people don't want conflict Jeff basos didn't run from it he wasn't afraid of it Steve Jobs would agree he did not clearly did not run from conflict or from blunt communication and I think what Steve and Jeff both share in common and again je I've done what I don't know seven episodes on on Jeff Steve and Jeff had one thing in common or they had a bunch of things in common but one thing above all is they put the quality of the work above being liked and this idea of blunt communication this idea of being very easy to understand it's not just when Steve was speaking to it's also in his written material as well so there's a great thing in the book that I want to read too and it's about you know Ken made these ads and then he gets an email from Apple's legal team and he says I was surprised one day to get an email from the Apple lawyers concerning a newspaper ad that was going to run in just 3 days Steve Jobs had already approved it now Apple's lawyers are saying that they had some problems with it so doing my duty I sent an email to Steve advising him that there was a wrench in the works his own legal team I asked Steve for his guidance just minutes after I hit the send button his reply landed in my inbox the lawyers so again so far we have two examples of Steve communicating directly with Ken one was they were having a conversation love your TV work your print work is Ken knows immediately what to do now an email he's saying lores what do you think like Ken knows what to do Steve is saying run the ad and another very valuable consequence of this Simplicity is that Steve was able to run his business he ran his business as if there was little time to waste he was like this was like a kid remember I I told you a story when he was 19-year-olds working for Nolan Bushnell Nolan Bushnell is the founder of Atari was Steve Jobs Mentor he's like a decade older uh than Steve Jobs and he wrote an entire book about what that was like and he's like oh Steve had one speed go and I think the clear communication helped with that because you can't move fast if your communication isn't simple and easy to understand so before I move on from this section what is the opposite if you really think about what is the opposite of blunt communication what is the opposite of direct communication Ken makes the case and he picks a great word for this he says that it's Meandering communication so I went to to the dictionary and the definition of Meandering and you apply to communication is communication that moves slowly in no particular direction with no clear purpose communication that takes a turn instead of traveling in a straight line if you rambled Steve would cut you off if you mooved slow he would fire you so that's Steve using Simplicity and the way he communicated now another way he use Simplicity is how he organized his team so his favorite way to work is small all groups of very smart people and in fact Steve was speaking at a conference it was the all things D conference shortly before he died and you could see he clearly very sick and he was talking about this in very early days I'll give you an example of when he was building the Macintosh when he was in ag 20s and then right before he died he says we have zero committees we are organized like a startup one person is in charge of iPhone OS one person is in charge of Mac hardware one person is in charge of marketing one person is in charge of operations we are organized like a startup we are the biggest startup on the planet and I think the main principle here is not only is this simpler but if you think about this the ultimate DEC if the ultimate decision maker is involved in every step of the way Steve would Steve believed that the quality of the work increases it's also I think he's right about that and I also think that's just the way he liked to work in fact there's a line in the book there's a quote in the book where Steve says the way I like to work is where I touch everything one of my favorite maxims that you see that appears over and over again if you analyze what's actually taking place in a lot of these books that you and I are reading and talking about is that actions Express priority Steve shows you with his actions how he spends his time what's important to him so there's a ton of examples in the book but like Steve did not believe in delegating marketing and advertising decisions at all this is not an exaggeration he approved every single image that was used in an ad he would approve every single word he would deliberate over the copy this is when he's calling Ken at midnight to talk about a single word the degree to which he did this canot not be understated it didn't matter if it was a billboard in Missouri or a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal it is not going out until he approves it and so there's no way you can work like this unless you have a very simplified structure he hated what he called big company behavior and so let me give an example it's very common for executive CEOs founders of giant companies you have people filtering all kinds of things for you right but Steve put the quality of the product above everything else and then he he he says in another book hey I truly believe that the we're making the best products in the world I want every single person to have in the world to have access to an Apple device which is funny because the way they're priced but his whole point was that to do that we have to get world- class not only at building we we already build world-class products but we had to get world- class at marketing and so I remember when I read that for the first time I think this is episode 204 this a long time ago you know many many years ago and I remember the note I left myself that I was trying to like put into my own words like what is he saying here and I was like oh if you believe that your product will improve the life of your customer then you have a moral obligation to get good at marketing I believe that is what Steve Jobs believed and yet in this book there's an actually interesting idea for you and I on how to do that so the way I think about what the the the lesson is in the book is like if this is important to you it's one of your top priorities right do not let other people filter for you and so Steve did something that's very interesting so obviously he's got marketing people on his marketing and advertising team right he's he got outside ad agencies he insisted on seeing the ads before his Executives he didn't want them to filter what he saw because they they could start guessing like oh you know uh Steve won't like this we don't need to show that one to him he's like no no I don't want this filtered at all the ads are created by the advertising agency they go straight to me another way that was very fascinating is think about if you've ever been in these meetings they they like pitch their idea to you like you have maybe the the the image or the demo of what the ad's going to look like maybe it's the video and they want to like set it up and they're like setting it up and they narrate to you before and he's like stop doing that and he has a great again this is just simple clear communication are you going to be sitting next to me explaining these things when I see the ad in the newspaper and the answer is of course not and so if you if you really think about it like one of the the supporting characters of this book is the number one Steve was obsessed with trying to get as close to the number one as possible we'll talk more about that in a little bit but I was thinking about what he was saying I was like oh well the only thing more simple than one is zero and by what what's happening in this meeting he like oh he wants zero words he wants to see it just like a potential customer would see it and how this is related to this idea that Steve wanted to be organized like a startup he just wanted these small groups of smart people all dedicated to a single thing have one top priorities Ken talks about the amount of people in a meeting where they are literally deciding what what Apple ads the public is going to see it's like there's a handful of people he talks about other companies in the book where he'll count there'll be like 32 people in a room Steve Jobs would never allow that there's stories in the book where if he notices a a spectator to a meeting that is not essential he will ask them why are you here if there's not a good response He he'll make them leave simplicity's best friend is small groups of smart people so he did this in the beginning of his career so his commitment to small groups of smart people sometimes included designing the team within constraints so when he was building the first Macintosh he's in his 20s he limited the team to 100 people if you wanted to add a person if you say hey we need you know this person help you act you first have to find the person that was unnecessary and replace them and then I'm really glad that I reread this book after I just read the book on how Walt Disney built Disneyland because I didn't understand the first time through without that additional context that there's another benefit when it comes to just organizing your entire team or company into these small groups of smart people because if you're doing something new and creative creativity is not a process it's it's not scripted and something that Steve had in common with Walt Disney was there were both comfortable with an absence of process and so I want to read this excerpt to you from the book that I just did on episode 347 where where you know the entire book about how did Walt Disney build what he considered his Masterpiece which is Disneyland and so we have a guy working for Walt Disney said you asked the question what was the process like I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things I have to remind you during the Walt period of Designing Disneyland we didn't have processes we just did the work process came later all of these things had never been done before Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park they had never designed a Disneyland so we're in the same boat at one time and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along and not even discuss plans timing or anything we just worked and Walt just walked around and made suggestions that's idea where Walt just walking around and making suggestions if you read all these books on Steve Jobs it's very Sim similar there's an absence of process Steve made suggestions changes were made then Steve would review the changes and make more suggestions Walt Disney and Steve Jobs both trusted their own taste and judgment so another great reason to read this book too is like I'm not saying that Steve's taste and judgment were perfect in this book you have one of undoubtedly one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever do it the book is full of bad ideas coming from Steve let me give you an example so Ken seagull the author he's the one that came up with the name iMac and thank God he did because you know what Steve wanted to call the iMac before it was called iMac he wanted to call the iMac macman one of Steve's Heroes was the founder of Sony AK Marita and one of the most successful Sony products of all time are the Walkman or was the Walkman and so Steve's like oh okay we can call ours the macman and if that idea wasn't in this book you would have never believe that Steve Jobs would come up with such a terrible product name there's another crazy idea that does not sound like Steve at all but he was seriously considered he his idea was like Hey what if uh Instead at the time they were charging for operating system upgrades that Apple just gives you for free now and so you you know you pay $99 or $129 something like that to to upgrade the operating system on your Mac and he's like hey what if we gave it away for free and we just did an ad supported version of Mac OS and instead of buying them you can get it for free but you have to watch an ad be every time before you use your computer what that doesn't sound like Steve Jobs right and thankfully both of those you know ideas Steve changed his mind and again just this this constant itation let's surround myself with these small groups of smart people let's make suggestions let's make changes and over time our products will improve okay so I want to move on to the third thing I want to talk to you about which is I mentioned earlier that the number one is like the supporting actor The Supporting Cast in this book and there's a line the first time I read the book that I've never forgot about and it says the further you get away from one the more complexity that you invite in and so I want to talk about their advertising first but I think this applies to more than just ads so your goal is a single idea expressed clearly and for advertising you really should try to pick just one message per ad and so this is another example where they're going over this idea for ads for a new Apple product and Steve's like well there's five things they do really well we should mention all five things in the ad and the founder of the advertising agency and a like close friend of Steve Jobs for like three decades this guy named Lee CLA he did this demonstration of the difference between a good ad and a and a a bad ad so Lee crumpled up a piece of paper into a ball and threw it to Steve and asked him to catch it and Steve was able to and he and Lee says that is a good ad then he crumpled up five pieces of paper into little balls and threw them all towards Steve at the same time and asked them to catch him and Steve didn't catch any of them and Lee said that is a bad ad and Lee's point was that the more things that you ask people to focus on the less that they remember so I remember reading James Dyson's autobiography for the first time I've read it three times since then the last time was episode 300 if you want to listen to it again but he says something also he's like you simply cannot mixure messages when selling something new a consumer can barely handle one great new idea let alone two or even several so he talks about in that book when Dyson's first product is that cyclonic vacuum cleaner it was he thought it was the world's best vacuum cleaner a a byproduct of the product he made though an added benefit was the fact that the vacuum cleaner could also be used as a dry cleaner for your clothes James never never mentioned that in his ads he let the customer discover that use later on because in the marketing of the vacuum cleaner he learned what Lee CLA had had learned as well your goal is a single message a single idea expressed clearly one message per ad so then you have this principle the further you get away from one the more complexity you invite in for products and it compares the operating system upgrades of app Apple and Windows so at this time Apple offered the operating system leopard as an upgrade it had one version and one price Microsoft was offering Windows Vista at this time it had four versions all with different features and all at different prices and it's funny to see the difference today because this book is you know 15 years old I just saw that there's four different versions of the apple pencil there's no way that Steve would like that uh there's another great story in the book where he's got a team that at the time they're trying to figure out okay you have this file on your computer from iMovie you have this home movie you want to put into physical form you want to make it into like a DVD and so his team comes up with like this this complicated presentation he just ignores the presentation walks over to the Whiteboard and he starts drawing out he he says this is the application it's got one window you drag the video into the window and then it has one button again further you get away from one the more complex you involve in that one button says burn and then Steve says that's it that is what we're going to make and then he walked out of the room after Steve Jobs died Johnny I gave this great interview with Vanity Fair and he said something I'll never forget I've mentioned it multiple times he said that Steve was the most remarkably focused person he ever knew so he Steve would even do this when he he would the advice he'd give or the the direction not even advice he made it mandatory the direction he gave his advertising agency he's like listen for every single quarter we're going to have a single Focus so whatever product or feature that we are focused on we're going to be focused on that for the entire quarter it's going to be mentioned in every ad and it's going to be the main thing you see when you go to apple.com Steve's most important concern was making things easier for customers and so this entire thing when you think about this third section where it's like focus on one the further you get away from one the more complexity you invite in there's two things I think Steve understood you know instinctively that when you attempt to communicate more than one thing you were dividing your audience's attention and the reason I think that that that was an instinctual thing to him is because he applied it to both internally so like his teammates his employees and externally to his ads and his marketing this idea when you attempt to communicate more than one thing you are dividing your audience's attention it's very important number two people find more words confusing I love to read I love to read probably more as you as you know probably more than you know 99% of the people on the planet whatever that number is it drives me batshit crazy when I read an 800 page book and this is very common you read an 800 page book when that book should have been 400 300 Pages editing your thinking is an act of service and it takes time and effort that's why people don't do it there's this famous saying that I was thinking of when I got to this section you know because I'm jotting down I'm trying to like interpret it like distill these ideas so I remember them in the shortest amount of time possible and I was like oh this is like this this thing it's attributed to many different people but it says I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn't have the time and so that's been attributed to people like Mark Twain cisero and Pascal in fact after I took that note to myself the fact that you know people find more words confusing you need to edit your thinking and I I really think editing is an AC of service but I'm I was rereading Steve's shareholder letters from Pixar and his 1997 share this is hilarious how everything's connected in his 1997 shareholder letter he says he quotes he he attributes to Pascal in the letter that I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn't have time and he's like well since I'm only working on Pixar I have plenty of time so I'm going to write you a long letter for this shareholder letter but he certainly didn't do that when he went back to Apple he didn't do it internally and he didn't do it externally he understood that people find more words confusing and that you really need to edit your thinking down to its Essence and I think viewing that as an act of service to other people because that is what it is our time here is limited do not take 2 hours to say something you could say in 15 minutes don't take a thousand words when you can join picture editing is an act of service so the fourth thing that I want to talk about and why Simplicity is so important because simple is fast so he comes back this hilarious story because they're working on hiring a new advertising agency at Apple is I should be clear more clear here so at the time Gil Amelio is the CEO of Apple he's the one that buys makes the decision to buy next he is the CEO of Apple right before Steve Jobs takes over and when Steve comes back and now he takes over Apple Gil is fired Gil had this like really complicated ongoing process to pick a new advertising agency keep in mind they're losing money if they do not turn things around they will literally run out of money and go bankrupt and Gil's idea is like okay we're going to we need a new advertising agency and this is the way we're going to do it we're going to interview more than 20 different advertising agencies and then compare them and then pick the best one Steve comes back immediately and he cancels this entire process right before Charlie Munger died he said something that so important and he said that trust is one of the greatest economic forces on Earth and what Steve did here is a perfect example of that Steve canceled his entire process and he called somebody that he trusted he called somebody that he had a relationship with he calls his old friend Lee CLA Lee CLA is the one that did the 1984 Macintosh ad that was a decade before where we are in the story Steve trusted Lee and that trust enabled him to move faster that is so much simple than sitting down I'm going to interview how the hell do you even interview 20 different advertising agencies how long is that going to take and then you have to whittle them down okay now we got our top 10 now we got our top five now we're down to two or three simple as fast so Steve calls Lee they immediately start working the second ad they do is the hears to the crazy one ad and so in the book Ken is talking about that the fact that that ad was created it they came up with the ad they made it and they aired it in less time than it would have taken Gil aelio to complete all the initial meetings for the 20 different advertising agencies Gil was being complex and so therefore he was moving slow Steve was being being simple so therefore he moved fast there's a hilarious story I did this uh this episode on herb kellerer which is the founder of Southwest he's one of my favorite Founders I've ever studied I I find him wildly entertaining it's episode 322 if you haven't heard it yet but he herb also had this like religious dedication to Simplicity and so there's a fantastic story in the book that I think is related to what Steve was doing at Apple and why Simplicity is so important because it's fast so uh it says her Keller illustrates the speed with which Southwest mov moves by telling a story about Don Valentine former VP of marketing why would he be former I wonder why Valentine had just joined from Dr Pepper so you know a big slow bureaucratic Organization no disrespect to them right Valentine had just joined from Dr Pepper when the Marketing Group met in January you got to remember these dates January they're meeting in January to discuss a new television campaign Valentine was ready with his timeline for producing Spots I'm going to try not to laugh already we're meeting in January so this is what he says okay we're ready guys let's do this we're going to write the script in March Pardon Me 2 months from now we're going to write the script in March we're going to get script approval in April remember we're in January for God's sake so we're going to write the script in March we're going to get script approval in April we're going to cast this commercial in June what the what are you doing and we're going to shoot it in September when Valentine finished herb said Don I hate to tell you but we're talking about next Wednesday not we're not running this ad n months from from now we're not going to take 9 months we're going to make an ad and it's going to be done and shot by next Wednesday simple is fast and I think what the advice that herb would give you and I think the advice that Steve would give you if you feel you're not moving fast enough narrow your scope simplify and then up the intensity and there's another thing that herb and Steve had this is the fifth thing I want to talk you about and this is another thing that they both had in common and it is how they taught how they taught is a casual conversation with the ultimate decision maker and the reason I I thought about this section two it's like why would why do I want to name this like how Steve taught there is a great line from uh Jim Sagal who's the founder and former CEO of Costco and he says as a leader if you're not spending 90% of your time teaching you're not doing your job what did Michael Jordan say he was teaching he was the leader of the team he was teaching his team there are certain standards that you live by this is the Chicago Bull way this is the apple way this is the Southwest Airlines way Jim sinle saying this is how we do things at Costco if you're not spending 90% of your time teaching you're not doing your job and the way Steve taught was through conversations says in the book if you had this like slick presentation this is internally okay I'm going to do an entire new the next episode will be about how Steve Jobs sold and I'll tell you more about that in a minute but if you had a slick presentation internally Steve suspected that you spent the value The Limited valuable time that you had wrapping the idea making it beautiful instead of spending the time thinking through the idea itself and getting to its Essence he talks about that over and over again get to the essence of the ideal Bo idea boil everything down do not use when he told Andy uh Andy Miller the guy that sold his company for 275 million to Steve that I mentioned earlier something Andy says in that video that Steve would say do not use 10 words when you can use one use a picture instead of a deck with a 100 words he would tell Andy over and over again you have to think like an apple guy that is him that is Steve teaching Andy this is the standards of excellence we have this is how we do things at Apple great companies have distinct cultures they have a distinct way of doing things I just spent the week with one of the most valuable private companies it's run by I I'm not going to name the company or who the person is but I would say is the 78-year-old founder who's been running the company for 45 years it's just like I I I described it as like oh I spent the week inside of one of these books it is very obvious when you interact with all the I was with their top Executives or 40 top Executives and the founder it is very obvious they have a distinct culture and they are literally the the best in class in their industry and one of the executives said the founder has all I think it's like 10,000 people 11,000 people all Marching In The Same Direction you would say that about Steve Jobs you would say that about herb kellerer and what is remarkable is how informal Steve was this this is how he's teaching his entire company it's a casual conversation with the ultimate decision maker and if you can Center these these casual conversations around a demo or picture even better but Steve would just talk about why the product needs to exist how the product worked and why it is different and better than other products and he loved to use visuals if he could instead of words because he thought a picture was simpler than words again he's trying to make things as simple as possible so he would there's many examples in the book and I'll talk about this more and how he gave presentations too he would just like jump up he' have the conversation and he would draw out the idea if there wasn't a demo of like the software or the product there or an image of it he would draw on the Whiteboard as a way to illustrate his point and there's a fascinating line in the book that said that Steve acted as his own slideshow he did not want to see a slideshow with a bunch of bullet points he would tell you converse with people rather than present to them there is one exception to that rule and that's when Steve did the new product presentation for Apple's new products that was not a casual conversation that was a presentation that presentation was painstakingly choreographed there he was relentless about rehearsing it he had backup plans for everything the thing that was the same about the internal uh conversations and the external presentations was that he loved using images demos simple language and then ideas stripped down to its Essence I'm not going to spend too much time here because the next episode I've read an entire book on how Steve Jobs prepared for presentations that I think is going to be very valuable to you and I because business is sales we're selling customers we're selling employees on the company Mission we're selling recruits on why you want to join the company and I think the book that I'm going to talk about in the next episode is really a blueprint from a you know super salesman a master salesman that Steve Jobs was and the last thing I want to talk to you about is a way to find a simple path forward and I actually call this the heurst principal I came up with that name myself it's from this biography of William Randolph Hurst that I met read many years ago and there's an idea in it that I think can be applied to whatever industry that you're working in so I want to get to one of the most important things that I ever read and it took me rereading it multiple times for it to actually sink in and have a fundamental understanding of what it actually meant there's a line in Walter isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs that says one of jobs talents was spotting markets that were filled with second rate products and when you analyze Steve Jobs career through that lens that one of his greatest talents was spotting markets that were filled with second rate products you see it over and over again he did this with computers he did this with MP3 players he did this with phones he did this with tablets and one of the Hallmarks of a second rate product is the fact that is too complex I'm going to read from the book cuz this is so important this is describing because remember this is the focus on really the turnaround of Apple the iPod really was the product that helped Apple turn the corner and so when Steve analyzed that he says that he believed that the music player category needed most was Simplicity and whichever company delivered it would soon be running this planet that is a quote from Steve Jobs whichever company delivered it would soon be running this planet it turned out that one key Insight allowed Apple to LEAP ahead of the other company Steve explained in a 2006 interview now this is Steve's words we had the hardware expertise the industrial design expertise and the software expertise including iTunes one of the biggest insights we had was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod but to manage it in iTunes other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless in other words we analyzed everything that our competitors were doing and in focusing on what they were not doing we found a simple path forward so why do I call that the Hurst principal William Randolph Hurst built a media Empire that would be worth like $30 billion in today's dollars and it started out with a single newspaper in San Francisco that his father gave to him and so at the time there was a bunch of other newspapers competitors in the serving the same city right they're all in San Francisco their newspapers are very similar there's very little differentiation and their distribution the way they are selling there's no differentiation they would sell they'd hire these things these little kids called Newsies they're like little boys they're like 9 10 12 years old and they'd roam around the streets selling the newspaper you know for a penny or two pennies and so Willi Randolph first is looking at this right and he's like well I want to build a media Empire I have one newspaper I want to expand I have little product differentiation I have no distribution differentiation what should I do and he realizes like well the people in San Francisco are not unique they're like people everywhere they read the newspaper because they want to know what's going on in the world what's going on in their in the the country what's going on in sports and business and everything else that newspapers read about and yet me and all my competitors are just focused about the residence in San Francisco is there something that my competitors are not doing are there markets that my competitors are ignoring that I can attack and so what he did was he put his newspapers on trains and started sending them to all the communities that might be 100 miles from San Francisco 200 miles from San Francisco he's like well they don't live in San Francisco but they're the same kind of people and they're probably interested in the same things so instead of fighting What Might Have Been a losing battle just kind ofly cutting prices and doing the exact same thing as his competitors he put his newspapers on trains and drastically expanded the market this immediately Works he starts making much more money than his competitors and then he uses that extra money to start buying up his competitors and he expands to other cities that is the beginning of what turns into this giant multi- tens of billions of dollars Empire all of that from a relatively simple idea so the hear principle is very simple you write down on a piece of paper everything that your competitors are doing whether in the product design or their distribution then you draw a giant X across it you tell yourself you cannot do it the way they're doing it and you force yourself to think about new ways and new Solutions this exact same thing he didn't probably didn't write it on a piece of paper certainly didn't call it the Hearst principal but if you think about what Steve Jobs is telling us he's analyzed what his while his competitors were doing he attacked a market full of second rate products he says if I can't do that I'm forced to find a new way way and he found a new and better way in that change trajectory of Apple forever and I think this quote from Steve Jobs is a perfect place to close simple can be harder than complex you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple but it's worth it in the end because once you get there you can move mountains and that is where I'll leave it highly recommend buying the book reading the book keeping it close to you it's a great resource if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player are available at Founders podcast.com you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time that is 349 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon 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 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 by people that listen to so one of the most common requests that I've received over the years is this desire for can David can you introduce me to other people that listen to Founders and I didn't do anything with that information cuz 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 uh the same one that you just listened to and if you really think about one of the main ideas it's like hey your goal really should be that you have a single idea that's expressed clearly so I would heard that multiple times I reread that part I re that part and I thought about okay what is this single idea expressed clearly like 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 realiz oh I accidentally stumbled I had this idea and that was you know a test of that hypothesis but I realized like oh I actually stumbled on a great way to help other people build relationships 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 in on July 29th to the 31st is I ran out the entire venue that means that when if you attend every single person you see there is for the same reason 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 job's main principles is like 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 facilitated a lot of these relationships so quickly at the last event is these are intentionally smaller events this event in Scots Valley California on July 29th through the 31st that I highly encourage you to attend is only going to be around 120 to 130 people and it is the the end result why I think I stumbled on something is because the amount of friendships Investments deals customer leads Partnerships and other opportunities that CA that have 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 on to something because again the single idea expressed clearly the reason this event exist is to build relationships so even the way that the 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 Happ to be an expert in just reply back to your confirmation email after you apply and then my events team will handle the everything else I am doing this event in partnership with Rick Burnham and Paul buer they're the founders of SAR Grove which is a $500 million holding company and one of the breakout sessions will be about how they started and Str 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 NRE Dame and they actually invited me to speak at their art of investing class and that relationship led to this partnership which is a great illustration of again the single idea expressed clearly why does this exist exists to help you build relationships with other high value people and that opens up opportunities in the future you can never possibly predict so to come to the event and to build relationship with other high Valu people the first thing you need to do is go to Founders podcast.com 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 cat loging 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' 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 Founders notes.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 kellerer James Dyson all these other ideas from past 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 rewise and again this is the the power of relationships because I found out about re wise 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 I was until five years later that I then sent I had talked to Tristan and I had sent trist email like hey there's actually 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 data base 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 that was important to Steve Jobs hey we need a single idea expressed clearly one of my favorite lines that I've ever heard this is why there's so many there's such a high amount of people that you and I study that were obsessed 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 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 do how did History's Greatest entrepreneurs think about hiring all I did was type in hiring into the keyword search and 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 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 like Founders GPT or the names were terrible the name and I take solace that Steve Jobs also came up with bad names the macman for God's sake so anyways he's like this is after using this this is not the right names 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 that is every single person you and I study on the podcast they they've had a deep understanding of Life accumulated knowledge because they've they spent 50 years on their career and then somebody put all the the highlights or the the main lessons into a book and sound judgment and the second one uh definition was that a sage is a wise 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 a way to a board meeting I needed uh 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 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 com 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 Founders notes.com that is Founders with an S just like the podcast Founders notes.com thank you very much for your support thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you again soon