Transcription
Steve would say, by the way, not a nice guy. Not a nice guy. A man or woman that understands the signal-noise ratio, that focuses on that, they'll be successful. He does not deal with noise. He is 100% signal. The 18 hours he's awake, it's all signal. Look how wildly successful he was. But here's why.
So, I used to work for guys like Steve Jobs and others in my career. Let me, um, let me give you one that I think is very important. We'll start with this one. I used to work for Steve Jobs in the early 90s making all of his educational software. I mean, it was just Oh, there they are. My goodness, you guys do good research. Those are the kind of things that we did for him, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. All of that. It's hard to find. Those are senior ROMs. But you know, and I would say, Steve, you know, we got to do some market research on Oregon Trail. I mean, it's a huge title. It's in 110,000 school buildings. We got to do an update. It's going to cost you 12, 15 million bucks. We want to find out what the students want. We want to find out what the teachers want. Want to find out what the parents want. Steve would say, by the way, not a nice guy. Not a nice guy. He would say to a room full of people, "Kevin, I don't give a what the students want or the parents think or anybody thinks. It's what I want. They don't know what they want till I tell them what they want." And I said, "Steve, you sound like such an—you have no idea what that sounds like." He says, "No, no, that's how it is, Kevin. Now, are you making money with me? Are we—are you—am I your fastest-growing OEM? Have we not been wildly successful and continue to be?" I said, "Yes, Steve, that's true." He said, "Then shut up and do what I say." That's how he would talk to you. 100%. And here's what I learned. Look how wildly successful he was. But here's why.
There's a concept that he understood that very few people focused on back then in the early 90s: signal-to-noise ratio. What was so brilliant about Jobs that that I tell every CEO now—and I don't care if you're an S&P 500 CEO or you're just starting a business—his vision of Signal was the top three to five things you have to get done in the next 18 hours. Not your vision for the business next week or next month or next year. Just the next 18 hours you're awake. You're going to get those three things or five things done that you have deemed critical for your mission; they must get done today. Anything that stops you from doing that is the noise. So this signal-to-noise ratio, to be successful for Steve Jobs, was 80/20. 80 signal, 20 noise. And I knew that to be true with him because he would email me at 2:30 in the morning, expect me to get back to him because back then we didn't have texts. It was all email. He was right. He was right. And the only other person that I've seen that has a higher ratio than that is Elon Musk. He has no noise. He does not deal with noise. He is 100% signal. 24 seconds of, you know, every cycle. I mean, the guy is just 60 seconds of every minute, 60 minutes of every hour. The 18 hours he's awake, it's all signal. And look what he's achieved.
Now, that's very awkward for him socially because noise is dealing with your family sometimes, or noise is saying hi to a friend, or noise is—is—is listening to some doom scrolling on, you know, some social media app that just takes your mind, or maybe playing your guitar. But very few people on earth, and if you go back in history, you're going to find out that the geniuses of their time were close to 100% signal. And so I can really sort of summarize this for my audience: signal is the most urgent thing you should be focused on right now, and noise is basically everything. Oh, the goals you set for that—the weight—that you were awake. If you're going to be awake 18 hours, yeah, and you've determined that there's three things you have to get done, you're going to get those done. No matter what it takes, you're going to get those done. And you're not going to let anything distract you from those three to five things. If you're a CEO and you achieve that and you can get those done with 80% of your time based on that, you're extraordinarily successful. You are absolutely—and you're Steve Jobs, or you're an Elon Musk, or you're somebody—if you—if you even talk to Bezos—I don't know him personally, but I've heard in many interviews like I knew—you know—I've—I've met Elon just a few times; I spent a lot of time with Jobs—but they say the same thing: Bezos will not make a decision after 1:00 in the afternoon because he felt that the noise was too high; the signal for him was in the morning hours. It—this is a crucial aspect of success that that I now understand to be the ability of—of—of—it defines an entrepreneur. A man or woman that understands the signal-noise ratio, that focuses on that, they'll be successful. The ones that can't—that get down to a 50/50 signal-noise—they'll fail. It's that simple.