He was fired from the company he started. Twelve years later, he saved it from bankruptcy.
A few short lessons on goal setting — free, online — to turn “stuck” into a first real step.
Who Steve Jobs was
Steve Jobs co-founded Apple, was forced out, and returned to lead it to becoming one of the most valuable companies in history. He also built Pixar and reshaped music, phones, and animation.
The struggle
Jobs was born in 1955 and given up for adoption. He grew up in suburban California, curious and intense. He dropped out of Reed College after one semester because his parents could not afford tuition. He slept on friends’ floors, returned Coke bottles for deposits, and sat in on classes he was not enrolled in.
In 1976 he and Steve Wozniak started Apple in a garage. The company grew fast, but by 1985 Jobs clashed with the CEO he had hired, John Sculley. The board sided with Sculley. Jobs was stripped of power and pushed out of Apple.
Publicly humiliated at thirty, he started NeXT, a computer company that struggled. He also bought a small graphics division from Lucasfilm and turned it into Pixar. For years it looked like his best days were behind him.
The turning point
In 1996, Apple bought NeXT — mainly for its operating system. A year later, Jobs returned to Apple as interim CEO. The company was months from bankruptcy. He killed failing products, focused the product line, and bet on design, simplicity, and user experience.
The iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad followed. Apple became the most valuable company in the world. Pixar, meanwhile, had released Toy Story and changed animation forever.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” His dots included failure, exile, and return.
The principle
Your setbacks may be the setup for your second act. Jobs did not come back because he never failed. He came back because he kept building taste and vision even when no one was watching.
Apply it today
When you are rejected or sidelined, keep your standards high. Work on something worthy even if the audience is small. The skills you build in the wilderness become the reason you are trusted when the second chance arrives.
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