RIP Steve Jobs.
I may be one of the only people you ever meet who still to this day has never had a cup of coffee. I may also be one of the few people who you may ever meet who doesn’t know how to use a Windows computer. Growing up since the 80’s we always had Macs at home and I was one of those crazy Apple people who always told my friends to buy a Mac. Everyone always talks about how Apple is constantly different, but I can tell you they’ve never changed. They’ve always stuck to simple design that works, merging art with technology. As a company, Apple has always taken care of their customers. In fact they are in my opinion, the leader in keeping customers. I have had a handful of “rotten apples,” but in the end the support has always won me over. While it may have taken the iPod to be the seed to grow Apple to what it is today, the saying “once you go Mac, you never go back” has allowed the company to grow exponentially. Steve Jobs was the man behind this company, and if you haven’t heard, he died today. He lead a company to develop innovative products but also insisted on the best customer service you can get. Once upon a time, before most of you reading this had an iPod, an iPhone or Mac, I worked for Apple. I remember sitting at Apple EBC NY and absorbing quite a bit of information on how the brand was developing strategies on how to better serve small business owners and how they were going to reach out to meet the needs of those businesses. While Steve Jobs had a reputation for being a demanding perfectionist, virtually every aspect of the brand he developed has been a success because of this. They way he ran things has been influential on my own business. You can offer a beautiful product, but the service that goes along with it is what is going to grow your business.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” ~ Steve Jobs
