How to Make a Dent in the Universe: 7 Rules for Smart Risk-Taking from Steve Jobs
I’ll admit I’m not the most avid book reader. I hate having paper books clutter up my house, and I don’t find reading long-form material on a digital device to be a great experience. But once in a while, I’ll still pick up a book and get completely lost in it. This usually happens with biographies. I love them because they’re one of the best ways to get a deep perspective on some of the most fascinating people in the world.
The other day, I picked up a copy of the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. I opened it up and, over the course of 800 pages, I barely set it down for more than a few minutes at a time.
While I’ve always been generally aware of Steve and his story with Apple, the level of personal detail and side stories is incredible. And as I read about the growth of Jobs from a barefoot hippie in India to the founder of a fledgling computer company and eventually to the leader of a tech giant that would transform multiple industries, I noticed myself nodding along as the details of all the risks Jobs took along the way unfolded.
Steve had a knack for knowing how to take smart, calculated risks. But so much of what he accomplished was led by his own incredible intuition.
As I read along, I took a few notes that ended up transforming into seven distinct rules for smart risk-taking. They’re already shaping the way I make decisions for the future. Maybe they’ll shape the way you do, too.
7 Rules for Smart Risk-Taking from Steve Jobs
1. You have to surround yourself with A-Players to succeed.
From the first days of Apple, Steve knew the key to building a successful company and getting his massive risk to pay off was to make sure the business only employed the best of the best.
And to make sure only A-Players were at Apple, Steve ran the company as an A-Player himself. He had no tolerance for anyone who wasn’t interested in doing their best work, and he had no problem firing people whose best work simply wasn’t good enough.
For much of his career, Steve was criticized as being harsh and mean-spirited towards his employees. But he also knew something that his critics didn’t. He knew that A-Players would only stick around if they were surrounded by other A-Players. Putting on the pressure and demanding perfection from his team ensured those who couldn’t cut it wouldn’t last long or drive the A-Players to the competition.
As I make plans for the big risks in my life, I remind myself that I must surround myself with only the best people who can help me succeed. This means demanding a lot from my friends and colleagues. In the end, everyone wins when you demand the best.
2. Only partner with geniuses.
Over the decades, Steve built partnerships with many people and businesses, but the ones that made Apple great were the geniuses who could not only see the future, but help build it.
To launch Apple, Steve could have worked with any number of engineers who knew how to assemble circuit boards, but he chose Steve Wozniak because Woz was an absolute genius and was ambitious enough to invent rather than just mimic what already existed. It was that ambition and genius that lead to the development of the Apple II which launched the industry of personal computers.
Later on, Steve partnered with Bill Gates and Microsoft—the geniuses behind Word and Excel to make sure that great software that everyone wanted got built for the Mac.
When he went looking for another company to invest in, he found the genius story-teller and animator, John Lasseter, who was running Pixar. When he realized there was no way to build a future selling the computers and graphics processors that Pixar was making, he relied on John to take the company another direction by actually using the computers to make their own movies. The result was one of the most successful film studios in history.
All along the way, there were many opportunities for Jobs to fail, but because he picked only the very best to partner with, he had absolute geniuses in his corner to fall back on when it was time to make difficult transitions. To give yourself the best chance of success when hard times come, I recommend doing the same.
3. Sometimes, you have to bet the farm on a great idea.
Apple went through two periods of incredible success and one period of doldrums that almost put it out of business.
In the beginning, Apple rose to prominence because Jobs was willing to bet the entire company on the Apple II. He did it again when they released the first Mac. He saw the value in what he was creating and believed in it enough to bet the entire future of the company on it.
When Apple declined, it was because a bunch of suits started running the company and, instead of focusing on building great products, they focused on squeezing a few more dollars out of the ones they had. They stopped innovating and even threw Jobs out of the company for several years.
It turned around again when Steve came back, became CEO, and bet the whole company on the iMac and then on the iPod.
What I learned is that when you really know you have a great idea, you can’t be afraid to lay everything you’ve got on the line for it. To play it safe will only end in lackluster results that eventually take you to zero.
4. When everything’s going wrong, you must stay focused.
Throughout his life, Steve repeated over and over that his success was due to extreme focus. And he was able to keep his focus on the future even as everything was falling apart around him.
When he returned to work at Apple, the company was falling apart and hemorrhaging cash. At one point, the business was just 90 days from completely running out of money.
Jobs never flinched. Instead, he kept his head down and kept working on the iMac—the machine he knew was going to save them.
Every year, Jobs would take his product team on a retreat and get them to list out every idea they had for new products and improvements. Hundreds of things would make it on the list. Then, Steve would say, “Okay, we can do three of these things. Which will they be?”
The times when Apple was most successful was when Steve forced the company to dump loads of offerings and focus just on making a few great products.
Even as he was days away from dying in 2011 and no longer involved in running Apple, he was working on the final design of the yacht being built for his family. He knew he would never see it, but he focused his attention on finishing it.
When I start to feel scattered and being pulled in too many directions, I try to remember that focusing on just a few important things will improve my odds of success.
5. Sometimes you have to be an asshole to make a dent in the universe.
Steve believed in what he was doing more than anyone. He knew how important his work was and that he was fighting for the future of technology on behalf of the whole world. His goal, as he would say it, was to “put a dent in the universe.”
If someone tried to stand in his way or challenge the value of what he was doing, he had no problem dismantling them or their character with fury.
In fact, Jobs was probably most (in)famous for being a giant asshole. He would publicly insult other tech giants he didn’t like. He’d call up reporters who gave Apple bad press and tear them apart.
He was even incredibly mean to his own employees and team members. He knew just how to ruthlessly tear people down in a way that only Steve Jobs could do.
Few people outside his circle appreciated this side of him, but those closest to him—family, friends, and team members—all admit that he drove them to be the very best they could be.
I just don’t have the same mean streak that Jobs had, but I’ve learned that when I’m working with others who aren’t performing as well as I know they can, sometimes it takes more than just a gentle nudge to get them back on track.
At the end of the day, I know I’d rather be remembered for inspiring the best in people than being the nicest guy they knew.
6. Never be afraid to steal great ideas.
Here’s a funny inconsistency.
Once Steve was successful, he would ruthlessly attack anyone he thought was ripping off Apple. Despite the longstanding partnership between Apple and Microsoft, he would rail on them for stealing the design of his OS. When he ran Pixar, he was furious with Dreamworks for creating Ants—a movie he saw as a ripoff of A Bug’s Life. And he started a personal vendetta with Google when they launched their Andriod OS after Apple built iOS.
But in his early days, he boasted about the fact that Apple built great products because they were unashamed about stealing the best ideas.
In fact, Jobs developed the world’s first graphical user interface after stealing it from Xerox. And Xerox was even a major investor in Apple at the time!
Perhaps the reason he became so angry about it later was because he knew he had great ideas and, if other people took and adapted them, they might create something even better.
In the end, though, I use this lesson to remind myself that few ideas are truly original. Everything is inspired by something else, so I shouldn’t be afraid to take great ideas and build them into my own.
7. How you launch is just as important as what you launch.
There’s a common belief—especially among creators—that if they just build the best thing they can, everything else will work itself out. It’s the Field of Dreams mentality—”if you build it, they will come.”
When Jobs and Wozniak were launching Apple, Woz’s dad, a practical engineer, hated Jobs and even told him so, saying Woz deserved all the credit because he built the computer they were going to sell. Jobs deserved nothing because he was a useless salesman that didn’t actually make anything.
But Jobs knew better. He knew the value of his salesmanship; Woz built a great machine, but he could never have sold more than a few of them. He wasn’t up to the task.
Jobs knew that if their amazing new machine was going to be successful, it was going to be because Steve could launch it in a way that explained to the whole world that they had to buy it, or they were going to be left behind.
Over the years, Jobs continued to perfect the way he launched new products. As a result, he sold more and more, even while competitors made similarly great products.
The rule I take from this is that I cannot depend on my creations and ideas to sell themselves. If I want to see them, as Steve would say, make a dent in the universe, I have to also be their biggest champion and carefully craft the way I release them.
Your Homework Today
These are the seven most important rules for taking smarter risks I’ve learned from studying the life of the legend, Steve Jobs. I hope to use them to put a dent in the universe in my own way.