#350 How To Sell Like Steve Jobs

In short

Podcast Episode Notes: How To Sell Like Steve Jobs

Episode Overview

Podcast Title: Founders
Episode Title: #350 How To Sell Like Steve Jobs
Episode Description: Analysis of "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs" by Carmine Gallo, focusing on how Jobs effectively sold ideas and products.

Key Themes and Concepts

Customer Experience First
Quote: “Start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology.” — Steve Jobs (1997)
Importance of understanding what customers truly want before presenting technological solutions.

What Are You Really Selling?
Key Question: What does this do for me?
Steve Jobs defined his role as selling tools that unleash human potential rather than just selling products.
Examples:
iMac Introduction: Jobs highlighted how the iMac improved user experience before discussing the product itself.
Juan Trippe’s Value Proposition: Showed how Pan Am Airlines could save time, illustrating the need to present clear benefits to customers.

Effective Presentation Techniques
Structure of Presentations:
Organize content into three main points.
Use simple language and clear stories to convey ideas.
Avoid jargon and focus on benefits.
Visual Aids: Use images instead of text-heavy slides to maintain audience engagement.

Repetition is Key
Quote: “Human nature has a flaw. We forget that we forget.”
Repeat key ideas and messages to ensure they are remembered by the audience.
Example: Apple’s slogan "the world's thinnest notebook" for the MacBook Air was reiterated in multiple formats.

Social Proof and Storytelling
Utilizing testimonials and success stories to create a sense of trust and validation.
Jobs often showcased popular endorsements to illustrate product success.

Passion and Purpose
Messianic Sense of Purpose:
Jobs approached his role with a belief that his products would change the world.
Quote: “Belief is irresistible.” — Phil Knight
Passionate storytelling connects with audiences and conveys genuine excitement about the product.

Practice and Rehearsal
Effective presenters like Jobs practiced extensively (90 hours of rehearsal for every hour on stage).
Attention to detail in preparation results in a polished, engaging presentation.

Key Takeaways

Focus on customer needs and start presentations by addressing their problems.
Clearly articulate what you are selling, emphasizing the improvements and benefits for the customer.
Use simple language, engaging stories, and repeat key messages to ensure retention.
Passionately communicate your purpose and belief in your product to engage your audience.
Rehearse thoroughly to deliver a seamless presentation that resonates with your audience.

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00The 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 Gallo. 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 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.

0:30And 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. 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 spends so much time and effort learning how to sell.

0:57In fact, in this book, he said that he considered his keynote presentations competitive weapon. He considered it 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 there's three things that I'm going to talk to you about today. One, what are you really selling? Two, how Steve Jobs made his presentations.

1:28And three, the importance of developing a messianic sense of purpose. And so I want to start with what are you really selling? Because 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 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. He says, you got to start with the customer experience and work back towards the technology, not the other way around.

1:59He did this when he sold too. The number one question that you have to answer, the one question that 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 worked 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. To get on the internet simply and fast. He starts with the improvement that his product makes before he even introduces his product.

2:39He 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 use. So what he just did there, that is called drawing a verbal roadmap for your audience. I'll go into more detail in 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.

3:14You 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 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 roadmap for his audience. And then he goes into the solution to that problem.

3:49The 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, I know 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. And then he goes into the next one. The new iMac has a gorgeous display. Again, Steve is describing his product the way that you would describe your lover. But in a few short, simple sentences, you already know, okay, the problem is I want to get on the internet.

4:24I'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 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 greatest content marketing in business history, I would argue is Warren Buffett's shareholder letters.

4:55He does this exact same thing. Takes something unbelievably complex and uses simple and direct 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 letter. 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 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 California.

5:26Southern California is a highly desirable location and has been for decades and is usually very difficult to build new supply. And what he wrote was perfect because 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 loss to lease, et cetera. If you want their money for 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?

6:02And 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, 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, Ivar Kroger, he did exactly what Steve Jobs did. He did exactly what the advice that my friend Moses gave.

6:32Explain what we will do with your money in plain English. Ivar Kroger comes from Europe. comes to America to pitch on 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 shape. I'm going to loan that money in exchange. They're going to grant me a monopoly for match production and selling matches inside of their company. Government loans for match monopolies.

7:05This 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 it from like 1922 to like 1930, something like 25 % of all the securities traded in America were for Ivar Kruger'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?

7:42I'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 voraciously. And he sent me, he told me about this book on the life of one trip and the history of Pan Am 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 I came across something that is a great illustration of this.

8:15So it talks about one trip early in his 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 country that they were operating in, that country's government insisted that that paperwork has to be brought to the Capitol and it has to be stamped. That was a problem for the United Fruit Company. Why? Because in between them and the Capitol 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 three days on very dangerous roads.

8:52So Juan Tripp comes in and is like, oh, actually, you know what? I can fly your documents over the mountain and I can do it in an hour and a half. And so Eric's notes on this, he says, I love how crystal clear this value proposition is. Instead of three days by Dangerous Road, it's one 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 your product? Juan Tripp's answer is, instead of three days by dangerous road, it's one and a half hours by air.

9:35For 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're 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 improved. You do not sell the product. You're not selling your product. You are selling the 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 studied and discussed on this podcast.

10:13I don't even know how many. I'll list all the episodes I've done. I probably done, what, eight episodes on them? And all 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 storyteller, the 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 in the book, but I feel I can't think of another product that has a better tagline than the original iPod.

10:42And their tagline was, was very simple. It's written from the customer's perspective and it describes the better future. 1 ,000 songs in your pocket. Now, I am old enough to remember when MP3 players and 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 specifically remember them, like you drive around your car with your friends. Like, hey, what do you want to listen to? Like, oh, grab this giant book of CDs and flip through and try to figure out what album that we want to listen to.

11:14So you could do that, or you could walk around with a giant Discman, or you can just use an iPod and have 1 ,000 songs in your pocket. Now, think about how crazy this is, right? So 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.

11:48Steve didn't sell a product. He sold an improvement. There's a great book called Ogilvy on Advertising. I just recently reread it. It came out in the 1980s. It's written by David Ogilvy. In the book, he tells you, there's a bunch of examples on great ads and marketing, and I think every single entrepreneur should read that book. It's a 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 majority of campaigns contain no problem whatsoever. That is the most important sentence in this book.

12:21Read 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 maxim that comes up 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.

12:53So I just talked about the first one, iPod, 1000 songs in your pocket. When they come 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, 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 MacBook Air. It's the thinnest notebook in the world.

13:27Number four, we decided to 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 that I reread books that I've covered. Think about how crazy it is. Not only am I rereading a book that I've covered, right? It's a book that I've made a podcast about before, so I took a ton of time and actually, you know, probably 40 hours really digesting the book.

14:01Then 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 that you loved. Watch, rewatch 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 two, 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.

14:30And once you figure that out, 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 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.

15:07And 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 loved drawing out his thinking on the whiteboard. In fact, I was telling my friend Rick Gerson about this 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.

15:43And so I was telling my friend Rick about this, and he's like, oh, that's funny. 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 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 built like this hub and spoke model. And he was talking about all 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.

16:13And 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 is another three point list. So number one, create a list of points you want your audience to remember. Number two, organize that list until you're left with only three main points. And number three, under each point, add stories, easy to remember facts, metaphors, and social proof. And you'd 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.

16:49So it has an opening, it has three stories, and then it has a conclusion. And if you go back and I've listened to and watched 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 that. These are very simple, direct language. My first story is about connecting the dots.

17:21My second story is about love and loss. My third story is about death. The author states in the book that he does 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 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.

17:52It actually comes from the founder of Sequoia Capital, Don Valentine. And he says, the art of storytelling is critically important. Most of the entrepreneurs who come to us 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 was able to avoid when he made great presentations.

18:25And 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 two megabytes of data into a pipe 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.

19:00They 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 Land did this as well. I want to read this paragraph from this biography of Edwin Land that I read. It says, Edwin Land resorted to a bit of showbiz. 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 powerfully persuasive.

19:32Sounds like Edwin Land and Steve Jobs. when Edwin Land pitched polarizing sunglasses to American Optical. So he developed the technology for polarizing sunglasses. He 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 windowsill. The bowl would refract glare into the room. When the American optical executives arrived at the door, Land mock apologized for the glare, saying, you probably can't even see the fish.

20:12And 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 his slides, how many just have images on there? they would have an image and then if they had any words it'd be very simple and clear words but 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 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.

21:03By adding context, it 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, 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 in 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 reading the interview or listening to him.

21:38And 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. Well, I see a lot of BMWs on the road. I see a lot of Mercedes. I know about them. They're prestigious. They're luxurious. 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.

22:10So let me give you 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. So he could have left it there. It's like, okay, 4 million, that's a big number. But he actually added context and it 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.

Read the full transcript

22:44It's one of my favorite books. 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 book, the author is trying to put in context just how rich Daniel Ludwig was. And in doing so, he made the numbers way more memorable, so much so that I'm telling you about it a year or two later. And he made the point that if you took a million dollars in $100 bills and stacked them up, that stack would be 16 inches high.

23:18But 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 inches high. A billion dollars is taller than the 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.

24:02And uncommon doesn't mean complex. Like if you think about going back to 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 his own love for his products. I 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.

24:43And it says most business communicators lose sight of the fact that their audiences want to be informed and entertained. And you do that with no jargon, just simple, memorable words. Think about Ben Franklin. Think about Charlie Munger. Think about David Ogilvie. These are the people that are masters at this. In fact, I went back when I when I was thinking about the section, I went back on YouTube and was just watching a bunch of like Charlie Munger zingers at the Berkshire annual meeting. and I took note of the part where after Charlie says what he says, the audience laughs. Again, most business communicators lose sight of the fact that their audience wants to be informed and entertained.

25:18So 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 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.

25:52They're like the guy who's willing to give up sex, but not quite yet. And again, laughter. How many business presentations have you heard of that mentioned somebody's sex life. These are uncommon words in business presentations, and that's what makes them memorable. That makes them human. So Steve would use words, if you think about all the, 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 practiced, which we'll get to in a minute, over and over again, every single presentation, it still sounded like him.

26:27Another thing that Steve used in a bunch of his presentations is he loved using social proof. He would make sure he would read, he'd 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's Almanac, Charlie Munger speaks about the importance of social proof over and 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 by what we see others do and approve.

26:59Therefore, 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 Munger was the first person I've ever heard describe why that's actually, he has this entire section in Portrait's Almanac 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 winner -take -all or winner -take -most flywheel, which leads to ever greater specialization, which leads to more scale.

27:33If you haven't read it, I assume you have a copy of the new version of Portiaz Almanac just came out last year. If you do, that section's 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 book, it talks about the fact that reading favorable reviews was a very common technique in Steve's presentation. And then the final point I want to pull out in this section two of how Steve Jobs made his presentations was the importance of practice.

28:04So the public praises people for what they practice in private. A great presenter, based on the stats in this book, the best presenters, the best public speakers will actually practice 90 hours for every one hour they need to be on stage. A 90 to 1 practice to performance ratio. Steve did this as well. he was also, as we already know from all the books we've read and the podcasts 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.

28:42In fact, there's a hilarious story in the book where he comes, he arrives four hours late to an interview one time because he was practicing his presentation. And in this 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.

29:16He was driven by this 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 Thiel's book, Zero 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 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.

29:54I 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 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.

30:29I 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 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 Clow, who was friends with Steve Jobs for 30 years. I talked about him in last week's episode because he made many of the greatest Apple ads. And this is what he said about Steve.

31:07From 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 can literally be transferred to another human being. I think of one of my favorite descriptions of this, as she comes from Phil Knight's autobiography, Shoe Dog. It wasn't until Phil switched to something he was truly passionate about, something that he truly believed in, that he found any kind of success.

31:48And so I'm just gonna 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 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, 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 coaches, the runners, the fans, and I'd show them my shoes.

32:21The 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. He's going to start listing all the ways he failed at selling beforehand, right? What is the point of what you and I are talking about? how to sell like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a master salesman. Phil Knight was a master salesman. I had been unable to sell encyclopedias and I despised it. I've 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.

33:00Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible. Passion is infectious and belief is irresistible. The main point that I'm trying to tell you is you need to identify what you are most 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. Here's 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 Newsweek before it was public and the reporter said that Steve started crying as he watched it.

33:43And 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 there's so many bad presentations, one of the reasons that so many people are worse at sales than they could be is because few people actually express excitement about what they're speaking about. I guarantee you Phil Knight's 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 their 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 Ogilvie.

34:25He 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 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 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.

35:07I 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 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 me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with.

35:53It's 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 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.

36:27You'll see that each product has a single idea expressed clearly that describes exactly why you should care, that describes what 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 expressed clearly for Founders Notes, you'll see that even use some social proof. It's in the headline. It 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 on this stuff, the fact that I live this stuff, that I don't need to read from a script.

37:00I 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. It 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 Founders.

37:34So one of the most common requests that I've received over the years is this desire for, David, can you introduce me to other people that listen to Founders? and I didn't do anything with that information because 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 to 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.

38:04So I heard that multiple times. I reread that part, I rewound that part. And I thought about, okay, what is the 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 realized, oh, I accidentally stumbled. I had this idea.

38:37And 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 on July 29th to the 31st is I ran out the entire venue. That means that if you attend, every single person you see there is there for the same reason and has the same interest as you.

39:17Number two, if you just heard what Steve Jobs, one of Steve Jobs' main principles, 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 facilitate a lot of these relationships so quickly at the last event is these are intentionally smaller events.

39:50This event in Scotts Valley, California, on July 29th to the 31st that I highly encourage you to attend is only going to be around 120 to 130 people. And it is the end result, why I think I stumbled onto something is because the amount of friendships, investments, deals, customer leads, partnerships, and other opportunities 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 onto something because again, the single idea expressed clearly. The reason this event exists is to build relationships.

40:29So even the way that 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 happen to be an expert in, just reply back to your confirmation email after you apply. And then my events team will handle everything else. I am doing this event in partnership with Rick Burnham and Paul Busser. They're the founders of Seder Grove, which is a $500 million holding company. And one of the breakout sessions will be about how they started and structured their company.

41:05I 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 Notre 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 that you can never possibly predict.

41:41So to come to the event and to build relationships with other high -value people, the first thing you need to do is go to founderspodcast .com forward slash 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 explain. So for years, people knew because 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 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.

42:14You just heard me use what is now called Founders Notes. So foundersnotes .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 Kelleher, 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.

42:54And the reason I say this was pulled out of me, this idea to build this product in partnership with Readwise, and again, this is the power of relationships because I found out about Readwise 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 it wasn't until five years later that I then sent, I had talked to Tristan, and I had sent Tristan emails like, hey, there's actually an 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?

43:31I 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 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 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.

44:15Learning 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 listened 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 did history's greatest entrepreneurs think about hiring?

44:51All I did was type in hiring into the keyword search in 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 it like Founders GPT or the names were terrible.

45:25And I take solace that Steve Jobs also came up with bad names, the Mac man, 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 highlights or the main lessons into a book and sound judgment.

45:56And the second one definition was that a sage is a wise, 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 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.

46:29Another 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 can do so easily by going to foundersnotes .com. That is founders with an S just like the podcast, foundersnotes .com.

47:02Thank you very much for the support. Thank you very much for listening. And I'll talk to you again soon.

From the publisher

What I learned from reading The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo
----
Learning from history is a form of leverage. —Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the super power to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand.
Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders
You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.
You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.
A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:
What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?
Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)
How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?
What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?
Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
(1:00) You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology—not the other way around. —Steve Jobs in 1997
(6:00) Why should I care = What does this do for me?
(6:00) The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy. (Founders #348)
(7:00) Easy to understand, easy to spread.
(8:00) An American Saga: Juan Trippe and His Pan Am Empire by Robert Daley
(8:00) The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)
(9:00) love how crystal clear this value proposition is. Instead of 3 days driving on dangerous road, it’s 1.5 hours by air. That’s a 48x improvement in time savings. This allows the company to work so much faster. The best B2B companies save businesses time.
(10:00) Great Advertising Founders Episodes:
Albert Lasker (Founders #206)
Claude Hopkins (Founders #170 and #207)
David Ogilvy (Founders #82, 89, 169, 189, 306, 343)
(12:00) Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatever. (That is the most important sentence in this book. Read it again.) — Ogilvy on Advertising
(13:00) Repeat, repeat, repeat. Human nature has a flaw. We forget that we forget.
(19:00) Start with the problem. Do not start talking about your product before you describe the problem your product solves.
(23:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)
(27:00) Being so well known has advantages of scale—what you might call an informational advantage.
Psychologists use the term social proof. We are all influenced-subconsciously and, to some extent, consciously-by 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.
— the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger (Founders #329)
(29:00) Marketing is theatre.
(32:00) Belief is irresistible. — Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)
(35:00) 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 third of the way down the list. It was not too proud 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’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Ask about this episode

In short

Transcript

More from Founders