Blogging at the Par of Steve Jobs

Joe Boyle 2414 Views, , ,
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All too often, as bloggers, we get caught up in this morbidly disgusting mindset that we’re doing okay. Some seem to think that there is no room for improvement.

In reality, we often are looped in this mind game that we are who we are, the best are who they are, and everything is good in the world. Quiet frankly, it’s not.

It stops being about improving the quality, and more about keeping it at the same playing ground because, hey, it works. As Steve Jobs once said, though;

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Steve Jobs is Better Than You?

Steve Jobs died at age fifty-six, yet managed to completely revolutionize the computer, phone, music, and film industries.

Whether you like his products or not, a note of respect is demanded – he’s far better than you ever were and, most likely, ever will be.

Before journeying on in this article, I’d like to reference his 2007 keynote that brought a mystical household gift we all know today – the iPhone.

I’ve watched the entire keynote several times (you can quiz me on it later if you’d really like), but the entire presentation is clearly built on three points:

  • There was always just “one more thing”.
  • He thought he was the best and showed it.
  • He wasn’t afraid of the “big boys”.

When it came to the phone industry in 2007, RIM and Nokia were the top dogs – nobody at the time was brave enough to mess with them.

Steve, though, was smart enough to work on a beautiful product for nearly three years before-hand. The revolution was new to society, but old to the creator – pretty neat.

With just a swift hour and twenty minutes of presentation, he easily tore down an entire industry and overwrote it with tomorrow’s technology.

Steve wasn’t afraid to do it for one simple reason – he knew he was better. Why? He had better ideas.

The problem with most people of today’s society is simple – they incorporate one (or maybe two if they’ve gotten that far) big ideas into a product, work on it, and then deliver it.

Steve, however, took hundreds of ideas and put it into one product:

  • Touch screen
  • iPod
  • Full HTML web-browser
  • Full HTML eMail
  • Custom interface
  • (Watch the Keynote (; )

That simple style of “I just showed you the coolest thing you’ve ever seen, but here’s something better” is what allowed Steve to dominate an entire society.

What Can We Learn?

As a blogger, it may be difficult to gather what you could ever learn from a man like Steve Jobs.

As every A-list blogger will tell you, your website is a business – Apple is a business, too. It’s really easy to make the connection there, then.

The playing field is shrunken… By a lot. The point, though, is still valid – if you aren’t willing to fight to become the best, you don’t deserve to be called the best.

Out of the hundred-thousand [or so] websites created every single day, barely 100 will ever be called anywhere near decent.

Being that one that stands out and provides the yardstick of quality is the one that will stand before the others.

As many of Steve’s employees would say, Steve stood for nothing less then perfection – entire projects would be redone if even a minor flaw was apparent.

Are you willing to make that commitment? The payoff it pretty great. Obviously the point here is not to be the same or better than Steve Jobs, but rather, to have the same mindset, which ultimately is what blogging for business is all about.

Joe Boyle

Joe Boyle is the owner and founder of WebsiteBegin, a project that has spanned nearly two years, maintaining one goal throughout the entire venture – helping others succeed.

8 thoughts on “Blogging at the Par of Steve Jobs”

  • Hi Joe,
    thanks for sharing this post. I agree with you, that Jobs was a visionary and an innovator and a lot of his products are timeless.
    But there is always the other side of the coin – his family life wasn’t great and he wasn’t “good” boy. I recommend you to read his biography written by Walter Isaacson 🙂
    BR, Chris

    • Steve Jobs was a brilliant visionary who really had a commanding stance when it came to innovation. He knew what people wanted and created a company unlike any other. Instead of making people be his little robotic-clones that did whatever he said, he wanted a team of inspirational workers and engineers who could create their own ideas. He wanted to get more ideas than just his own.

      As for being”good” or having a great family life, that’s completely irrelevant. He only lacked those features because he chose to. It’s just how he was.

  • Hi Joe,

    I do agree – Most of the time its not only about improving the quality but also to keep the quality. How many times have this not been true – Especially when it comes to the Corporate Businesses. Personally – Most of the best innovations in technology comes from small to medium sized businesses. They tend to keep more of an open mind than staying in the same loop as you’ve mentioned in the beginning of your post.

    • I think creating great innovation is as simple as changing your mindset. I recall reading an interview with Steve Jobs in which he said something along the lines of “If there was a powerful computer back in my days, we never would have made an Apple computer”. I think the mindset of wanting to create change and have things that others say isn’t possible is what gears us towards our greatest successes.

  • Blogging on the par of Steve Jobs is just like too difficult. He was a big man, his inventions and discoveries prooved his eligibility. He was a master who achieved a lot of success in his entire career of technology. He had the brains to do it and hats off to that man.

    • Too difficult? Why do we live in a society where that term is such a common-wealth of a phrase? Before introducing the iPhone, Nokia and Blackberry were the big dogs – being told that they’d soon be put down by a computer company was absurd. I think the real idea is to just push forth and create things that will help a smaller group – others will eventually catch on.

  • There is absolutely no argument to the fact that Steve Jobs is a man to be inspired by, for anyone who wants to do something substantially constructive in their lives. There is a lesson to learn from him for anyone who wants to do a great business (including blogging). Few of the most important things about him, that we always need to keep in mind are- he wasn’t afraid to take risks, even if it meant standing up against the big dogs and secondly, it is necessary to keep letting the creativity flow in order to come up with path-breaking innovations. Nothing healthy ever came out of stagnation.

  • It all comes down to your motivation. If your main goal is to make some though, chances are your blog will be just good enough so that you reach your commercial goals. But if you truly want to bring something special to the world (like Jobs wanted), you’ll work really hard and at the end you’ll feel great about yourself… and hopefully with monetary rewards too.

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