Transcription
Steve, by the way, 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. That's how it is, Kevin. Now, are you making money with me? Have we not been wildly successful and continue to be?"
I said, "Yes, Steve, that's true."
He said, "And shut up and do what I say." That's how he 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 of signal to noise ratio.
What was so brilliant about Jobs? 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 those 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. 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, 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.