One of my favorite stories on leadership, and being an inspiration, even in difficult times, it comes from Steve Jobs. When he was a young kid, his father said, “Steve, go outside and paint the fence in front of the house.” Steve Jobs said to his father, “No problem.” He loved his dad very much. His dad was a craftsman. That’s where he learned this love of detail. So, a few hours later, his father comes outside,and sort of inspects the fence, and he goes, “Well, Steve, you did a great job painting the outside of the fence, but you didn’t paint the inside of the fence,” and Steve Jobs looks up at his dad, and he says,”Well, Dad, no one’s going to see the inside of the fence,” and Steve Jobs’s father looks at his son and says, “But, son, we will.”Well, now, it’s the mid-1980s, and Steve Jobs is sitting around with his design team, and they’re working on the first Apple Macintosh, and he looks at his team, and he says, “I want this computer to be a work of art,” because he loved works of art. But said, “The real deliverable, gang, is this: I want the inside of the computer to be so beautiful it brings tears to people’s eyes,” and the people around him said,”Well, Steve, no one’s going to see the inside of the computer,” and Steve Jobs looked at his design team, and said, “But we will.” And when Steve Jobs saw the first Apple Macintosh, he started to cry, because Steve Jobs was really not an entrepreneur; he was an artist, and he looked at his design team, and he said, “I want you to sign the circuit board,” and they said, “Why, Steve?” And he said, “Because all artists sign their work.” Inspiration is unbelievably important when you go to work every day. You want to radiate that positive energy. You want to be that person, even if things are falling apart, or you lost a deal, or people are negative, you say, “Hey, gang, you know what? Adversity is nothing more than opportunity in wolf’s clothing.”
