I just finished reading the Steve Jobs biography. It is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read. Jobs was a difficult and perplexing man, but there are more earmarks in that book than any other business / marketing / branding book that I’ve ever read…and this is a biography.
Though I do not share much in common with Jobs when it comes to technology, his temper, how he treated people and is diets (he was mostly a vegetarian, I ate a ‘Baconator’ from Wendy’s over the weekend, I’m pretty sure Jobs wouldn’t eat that)…but what hit close was his vision for what he was building, how he built it and and why he built it.
I’ve always tried explaining what it is about Snoloha that is so fulfilling…why it drives me. I’ve never really been able to articulate it. I can ‘feel it’, but for some reason I never knew how to explain it. So when Jobs, in his own words, explained what drove him, it made PERFECT sense to me…and it goes like this:
“What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us. I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It’s about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how — because we can’t write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me.”
That really sums up for me. I can’t write a Jimmy Buffett song or a Judd Apatow movie, so Snoloha is about creating something, in a way that I know how, for the world to enjoy. That is what drives me.
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