How To Sell Like Steve Jobs

0:00 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 Gallow 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

0:21 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 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 want to dedicate an entire episode to going over some of his ideas because think about it

0:42 you're selling when you pitch an idea 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 he

0:59 said that he can Ed 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 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

1:20 there's three things that I'm going to talk to you about today one what do 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 cuz 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

1:42 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 and so there's a quote Steve Jobs said in 1997 that he says you got to start with the customer experience and work back towards the technology not the other way around did this when he sold too the number one question that you have to answer the one question that

2:04 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 for the number one reason customers tell us that they want a computer

2:30 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 you

3:00 so what he just did there that is called drawing a verbal road map for your audience I'll go into more detail on 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 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

3:23 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 road map for his audience and then he goes into the solution to that

3:48 problem the solution is the product that he made so let me tell you about iMac the new iMac is fast it screams so when I got to this part no 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 then he goes into the next one the new iMac has a gorgeous display again Steve

4:16 is describing his product the way that you 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

4:38 this new iMac it screams that means it's fast it has a gorgeous display 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 the the greatest content Marketing in business history I would argue is Warren Buffett shareholder letters he does this exact same thing takes something unbelievably complex and uses simple and direct

5:00 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 very 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 to illustrate this point what Moses does is he's a real estate investor so he's raised over $200 million from investors and he takes that money and he buys apartment buildings in Southern

5:26 California Southern California is a highly desirable location and has you know for decades and is usually very difficult to build new Supply and what he wrote was perfect cuz 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 lost to lease Etc if you want their money for

5:49 your project include a slide in your deck titled 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 if you haven't listened to it

6:16 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 the episode if you read that book Evar Kroger he did exactly what Steve Jobs did he did exactly with the advice that that my friend Moses gave explain what we will do with your money in plain English Evar Kroger comes from Europe comes to America to pitch

6:38 American 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 sh 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 government loans

7:04 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 this to that phrase to other investors government loans for match monopolies easy to understand ideas spread and how much they spread in that book it makes the claim it was 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

7:27 like 1922 to like 19 30 something like 25% of all the Securities traded in America were for Evar Krueger'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 entrepreneurs that I know he also reads viciously and he sent me he told me about this book on the

7:55 life of Juan trip and the history of PanAm Airways the book is called an American Saga I have it I'll eventually read it and do an episode on 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 it came across something that is a great illustration of this so it talks about W trip early in his

8:16 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 the fish that ate the whale but the United Fruit Company had paperwork and in the Co in the country that they were operating in that country's government insisted that that paperwork has to be brought to the capital and it has to be stamped that

8:36 was a problem for the United Fruit Company why because in between them and the capital 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 3 Days on very dangerous roads so Juan trip comes in he like oh actually you know what I can fly your documents over the mountain and I can do it in an hour and and a half and so Eric's notes on this

9:02 he says I love how crystal clear this value proposition is instead of 3 days of by dangerous road it's 1 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 product Juan Trip's answer is

9:31 instead of 3 Days by dangerous road it's 1 and 1 half hours by air for Steve Jobs 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 are 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

9:57 you're not selling your product you are selling the impr 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 have studied and discussed on this podcast I don't even know how many I I'll list all the episodes that done I've probably done what Eight Episodes on them and all

10:18 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 the reason that Steve Jobs was such a great great Storyteller 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 on the book but I feel I I can't think of

10:39 another product that has a better tagline than the original iPod and their tagline was was very simple it's written from the customer perspective and it describes the better future 1,000 songs in 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

11:04 I specifically remember them like you drive around your car with your friends like hey what do you want to listen 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 the giant disc man or you can just use an iPod and have 1,000 songs in your pocket now think about how crazy this is right so

11:22 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 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 and 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

11:49 product he sold an improvement there's a great book called Olie on Advertising I just recently reread it it came out like the 1980s it's written by David ogy in the book he tells you there's a bunch of examples on great ads and and marketing and I think every single entrepreneur should read that book it's 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

12:14 majority of campaigns contain no problem whatsoever that is the most 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 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

12:37 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 so I just talked about the first one iPod 10,000 songs in your pocket when when they come

12:57 out 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 presentation on their all the 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

13:24 MacBook Air it's the thinnest notebook in the world number four we decided to build 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 I reread books that I've covered and think about how crazy it is

13:51 not only am I rereading a book that I've covered right it's a book that I've made a podcast about in the few 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

14:11 that you loved watch re-watch a movie that you loved listen to a podcast episode that you loved that you haven't heard or read or watched or listened to in let's say 2 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 the most important thing to learn from this section figure out what you are really selling and once you figure that out

14:32 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 selling and then once you do that you consistently repeat that headline in your conversations in your marketing materials in your presentations in your

14:59 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'd love drawing out his thinking on the whiteboard in fact I was telling my friend Rick Gerson about this

15:22 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 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

15:43 my friend Rick about this and he's like oh that's funny that's 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 just running Pixar they were thinking about making an investment in Pixar and so the conversation quickly went to the Whiteboard and then Steve just essentially bu built like this Hub and spoke model and he was talking about all

16:02 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 there's another threo list so number one create a list of points you want your audience to remember number two organize that list

16:28 until you're left with only three main points and number three under each point adds stories easy to remember facts metaphors and social proof and you 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

16:55 listened to and watch 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 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

17:16 that these are very simple direct language my first story is about connecting the dots my second story is about love and loss my third story is about death the author states in the book that he does believe 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

17:40 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's actually comes from the founder of seoa capital Don Valentine and he says The Art of Storytelling is critically important most of the entrepreneurs who come to us

18:00 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 like some of the like the bad presentations that they that they see all the time and you see a lot of the characteristics that make a bad presentation are what Steve Jobs of was able to avoid when he made great

18:25 presentations and one thing is people try to stuff way too much information 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 2 megabytes of data into a pipe

18:50 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 through some of my notes and highlights for the biographies on Edwin land which was Steve Jobs hero and you saw that Edwin L

19:15 did this as well I want to read this paragraph from this biography of Edwin L that I read it says Edwin L resorted to a bit of chis 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 powerly persuasive sounds like Edwin Lan and Steve Jobs when Edwin Lan pitched polarizing sunglasses to American Optical so he developed the technology for polarizing sunglasses he

19:41 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 window sill the bow would refract glare into the room when the American Optical Executives arrived at the door L mock apologized for the glare saying you probably can't even see

20:11 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 if you look at this his slides how many just have images on there they would have an image and then if they had

20:33 any words it'd be very simple and clear words but the the 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 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

20:51 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 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

21:13 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 and 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

21:36 reading the interviewer 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 Bo I see a lot of BMWs on the road I see a lot of Mercedes I know about them they're prestigious

21:58 they're luxuy says 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 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

22:23 so he could have left it there like okay 4 million that's a big number but he actually added context and it made makes it a lot more memorable so he says well 4 million divided by 200 days means that we sold 20,000 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

22:45 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 the book the author is trying to put in context just how rich Daniel ludwood was and in doing so he made the numbers way more memorable so much so that I'm telling you about it

23:07 you know a year or two later and he made the point that if you took a million dollar in $100 bills and stacked them up that stack would be 16 in 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 in high a billion dollars is taller than the

23:33 Empire State Building that is a great illustration of the difference between a million and a billion you can do this with time too 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 and he has 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

24:02 uncommon doesn't mean complex like if you think about go back to the 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 brought his own love for his products I

24:30 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

24:50 you do that with no jargon just simple memorable words think about Ben Franklin think about Charlie Munger think about David ogy these are the people are Masters at this in fact I went back when I when I was thinking about the section I went back in on YouTube and was just watching a bunch of like Charlie Monger zingers at the birkshire annual meeting and I took note of the part where after Charlie says what he says the audience

25:13 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 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 and Charlie says Warren if people weren't so often wrong we wouldn't be so rich and of course the

25:32 audience laughs and again I'm going to 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 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 you

25:59 heard of that mentioned somebody's sex life These are uncommon words and business presentations and that's what makes them memorable that would make 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 practice which we'll

26:23 get to in a minute over and over again every single presentation it still sounded like him another thing that's used in a bunch of his presentations is he loved using social proof he would make sure he would read he 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 Zac Charlie merer speaks about the importance of social proof over and

26:47 over again 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 but what we see others do and approve therefore if everybody's buying something we think it's better 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 M was the first person

27:13 I've ever heard describe why that's actually he has this entire section on in in PAC 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 win or 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 poric

27:37 just came out last year if you do that section is 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 the book it talks about the fact that reading favorable reviews was a very common technique in Steve's presentations and then the final point I want to pull out in this section

27:59 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 the best presenters the be best public speakers will actually practice 90 hours for every one hour they need to be on stage a 90 to1 practice to Performance ratio Steve did this as well he was also as we already know from all the the books we've read

28:28 and the podcast 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 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 comes he arrives 4 hours late to an interview one time because he was practicing his presentation and in this

28:51 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 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

29:17 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 definition of Technology I've ever come across was actually in Peter Teal's book z0 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

29:48 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 what we want to do is to change the way people use computers in the world we've got some

30:11 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

30:36 to change the world 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 CLA who was friends with Steve Jobs for 30 years I talked about him last week's episode because he made many of the

31:04 greatest apple ads and this is what he said about Steve 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 and passion you have in what you're doing

31:33 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 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

31:58 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 he he 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 Pacific Northwest to various track meets between races I would chat up the

32:18 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 going to start listing all the ways he failed at selling beforehand right what is this what is the point of what you and I are talking about how to sell like Steve Jobs Steve Jobs was a master salesman

32:41 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 is all you need to identify what you are most

33:13 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 he to the crazy one ad probably the most famous arguably the most famous Apple ad and so he's showing it to her this reporter from news before it was public

33:39 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 of so many bad presentations one of the reasons that so many people people are worse at sales than they could be is because few people actually Express

34:02 excitement about what they are speaking about I guarantee you Phil Knight 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 to get to the running and the running shoe part of your career I love this piece of advice from David olvy he

34:25 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 a long time dead 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 and I think this one paragraph This 30 second clip of Steve Jobs

34:53 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 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

35:21 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

35:49 me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with 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

36:12 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 and then I tell you why I'm going to 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 see that each product has a single idea expressed clearly that describes exactly why you should care that describes what

36:34 the product does for you so for Founders events it's very straightforward come to a Founders event to build relationships with other high value people the single idea Express clearly for Founders notes you'll see that even use some social proof it's in the headline 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 because I'm up to my eyeballs and the stuff the fact that I

36:57 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 from the heart and with a Messianic sense of purpose 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 is

37:19 in a private venue deep in the California Redwoods this place is gorgeous it is actually in Scotts Valley California and and the idea to do these two-day conferences was actually pulled out of me by people that listen to Founders so one of the most common request that I've received over the years is this desire for C can David can you introduce me to other people that listen to Founders and I didn't do anything with that information cuz I

37:46 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 is like hey your goal really should be that you have a single idea that's expressed clearly so I would

38:05 heard that multiple times I reread that part I re round 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

38:30 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 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

38:55 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

39:19 Steve Jobs one of Steve Jobs 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

39:40 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 the something is because the

40:06 amount of friendships Investments deals customer leads Partnerships and other opportunities that can't 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 exists is to build relationships so even the way that the the event is scheduled there is a lot of unstructured

40:34 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 the everything else I am doing this event in partnership with Rick Burnham and Paul buer they're the

40:57 founders of SAR 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

41:19 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 this 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 value people the first thing

41:44 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 cuz I'd go around talking about the fact that since 2018 I have been cataloging all the research that I do for this podcast and I was putting all of my notes and

42:08 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 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 can pull it up on demand and you just heard that because when I'm quoting Sam

42:31 Walton when I'm quoting Michael morritz 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

42:58 partnership with rewise and again this is the the power of relationships because I found out about rewise because one of the founders trist 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 email like hey there's actually

43:22 opportunity for us to partner here because I keep getting these emails these DMS these request 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 I 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

43:45 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 they had read hundreds of

44:07 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

44:36 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

44:57 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 stage for me and this person after using it said hey you know you had all these

45:19 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 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 name 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

45:41 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 definition was that a sage is a wise dis a wise Discerning or prudent person it describes someone who shows good

46:04 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 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 great greatest entrepreneurs on demand when you need it another

46:30 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

46:55 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