Full transcript
0:02Steve, by the way, not a nice guy. He
0:05would say to a room full of people,
0:06"Kevin, I don't give a what the
0:08students want or the parents think or
0:11anybody thinks. It's what I want. They
0:13don't know what they want till I tell
0:15them what they want." And I said,
0:16"Steve, you sound like such an
0:19You have no idea what that sounds like."
0:21He just said, "No, no.
0:22That's how it is, Kevin. Now, are you
0:24making money with me? Am I your fastest
0:26growing OEM? Have we not been wildly
0:28successful and continue to be?" I said,
0:30"Yes, Steve, that's true." He said,
0:32"Then shut up and do what I
0:34say." That's how he used to talk to you?
0:35100%
0:37and here's what I learned. Look how
0:40wildly successful he was, but here's
0:42why. There's a concept that he
0:44understood that very few people focused
0:47on back then in the early '90s of
0:49signal-to-noise ratio. What was so
0:51brilliant about Jobs that I tell every
0:53CEO now, and I don't care if you're an
0:55S&P 500 CEO or you're just starting a
0:57business. His vision of signal was the
1:00top three to five things you have to get
1:02done in the next 18 hours. Not your
1:04vision for the business next week or
1:06next month or next year, just the next
1:0918 hours you're awake.
1:12You're going to get those three things
1:14or those five things done that you have
1:15deemed critical for your mission. They
1:18must get done today.
1:20Anything that stops you from doing that
1:21is the noise.
1:24So, this signal-to-noise ratio to be
1:26successful for Steve Jobs was 80/20. 80
1:30signal, 20 noise.
1:33And I knew that to be true with him
1:34because he would email me at 2:30 in the
1:36morning, expect me to get back to him
1:37because back then we didn't have texts,
1:39it was all email.
1:42He was right. He was right.
1:44And the only other person that I've seen
1:46that has a higher ratio than that
1:49is Elon Musk. He has no noise.
1:52He does not deal with noise. He is 100%
1:54signal 24 seconds
1:56of, you know, every cycle. I mean, the
1:57guy is just 60 seconds of every minute,
2:0060 minutes of every hour. The 18 hours
2:03he's awake, it's all signal. And look
2:05what he's achieved.