A local car wash ran a loyalty program
For every car wash you paid for, you got one stamp on your card.
If you completed eight washes, you got one free wash.
Another set of customers also joined that very same loyalty program.
But they didn't have eight blocks to fill on their card. They had ten
blocks to fill. But there was a difference. The second set of customers
had two stamps already filled for them in advance.
You see what's happening, right?
You do right?
If not, please come back when you do.
Both sets of customers have to fill in the exact same number of
stamps to get the free car wash--namely eight washes. So which group
did better?
Think hard and then... take a guess.
Because unless you know, it's a guess.
Yup, the second group.
In fact 34% of the second group got to their free car wash vs.
just 19% of the first group.
So hopefully you're asking yourself, "why did this happen?"
It's called momentum
And it's a feeling you know exceedingly well. If you have to start
a project, you dilly and you dally. You find every reason to avoid
the project, because starting up is so hard. But once you've got
about 20% of the project going, you feel the wind in your sails and
you move groggily ahead, but at least you're moving.
And this is what resistance hates the most.
It hates momentum, because momentum disregards the temptation to
get easily distracted; it avoids those fervent pleas to just head
to the cafe or do something that's not project-related.
This works with customers and it works with patients. I mean think about
the dynamics.
You get a patient feeling at least 20% better and all of a sudden they
have that magical momentum.
Which is why you need to create momentum both for yourself and your
patients.
Let's start with your Patient. Let's say you want them to do
something really big and momentous.
Where do you start?
You start with the tiny bits.
So tiny in fact, that they're almost impossible to goof up.
(You need to be making notes on this, because this will change
how you look at your patient snd your practice. I don't care if
you're a real estate person, or an antique dealer, this still
applies.)
So let's take an example.
At a Mastermind, we want to create a safe zone as quickly as possible.
But this is difficult if everyone just shows up on the day of the event
itself. Everything is new; everything is different and hence quite
intimidating.
You don't know what to expect.
So we have a meeting and greet session the day before.
What do they have to do for the meet and greet?
Why, nothing other than show up.
That's easy, huh?
So they show up. And they don't show up in their regal outfits.
Everyone's casually dressed. There are no speeches, no notes, no
seats to find, nothing to do but show up.
And when they've shown up, we take them to the room and show them
the room. They get a chance to see where they're sitting. They see
the notes on their desks. And then we have a question session. If
there are any questions, they can get it out of the way. Once
they're done, we suggest they go to dinner together.
So what just happened there?
20% of the safe zone was created BEFORE the workshop began. When
you watch the participants walk in the next day, they're not
frozen. They're laughing, they're joking and they're having a great
time. There's no fear and intimidation. They see some familiar faces
and they know people. They're relaxed. And hence the momentum
towards creating a safe zone is well on its way.
And no matter whether you're in an office setting, or whatever, you can
knock out the resistance simply by getting stamps on their card.
Once the patient gets started, they continue to move along more
efficiently than if they started from zero.
But how do you use this concept for your own goals?
Weight Loss
Let's say you want to lose weight. What do you do? You need to get
20% on your card, right? Well, don't start with this big vigorous
program of losing 50 pounds in weight. Just focus on one thing you are
guaranteed to achieve. E.g. No munching sweets after lunch or
dinner. (One step at a time. Small steps if you will.)
Now this isn't about eating less, or exercising more or doing Zumba
steps. It's just a little something that is almost like cheating.
But it gets the momentum in place. A week of this simple activity
and you're well on your way to getting 20% on your card.
If you're doing chiropractic, give them small steps. You can't save
their lives in one visit. You can't make a huge change in one visit.
But isn't this kinda sneaky, almost like fooling your brain?
Sure it is. But why do you care? You want to get the job done,
don't you? So go ahead and fool their brain, if that's what it
takes. And help your patients fool their brain. If you're running
into patients that won't show up, won't do their assignments at
home, don't implement things on time--then look for the
blockage.
The blockage lies in them having to fill ten stamps on their card,
instead of eight. Are you getting the picture.
How can you fill two stamps in advance?
How can you get the momentum going?
Figure that out, and more patients will get to the finish line
faster than ever before. And ironically, so will you!
Okay Doc, that's it for today.
I think you have plenty to think about now.
I've given you a 20% head start.
Now run with it.
Dr. Carney
Life is good when you know what marketing can do for you!!
It is a GREAT LIFE!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
What Did I Learn From Steve Jobs
As you probably know, Steve Jobs biography came out last week–all 600+ pages of it. I personally have not read it, but a mentor of mine finished reading it a few days ago.
Here's what he wrote: "His ideas have been floating around in my head and I’ve come up with 5 of his principles that I think you and I could use in our dry cleaning businesses.
But before I get started, I want to warn you, that if you read this book, it’s not all fun and games. He was a weird dude. He could be nice one minute and as nasty as he was nice the next. He had a strange diet and would sometime eat one food for a couple of weeks. And some of these arcane beliefs led to his early death.
It was not easy reading, but I’m a Mac guy and I wanted to find out what was going on in this guys head. So here’s the 5 things I learned from Steve Jobs:
1. The journey is the reward. And he’s right on with this one. It’s not the destination, but the journey that is the most rewarding part of our businesses. You and I are blessed. We are less than 1 in a 100 people that have the privilege of owning our own businesses. We determine the kind of life we want to lead. Some of you might not be doing that right now, but you can get there. I like some of my members do what we want to do every day. So enjoy the journey of owning and running your own business.
2. Focus on only 5 things in your business. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, it was only months away from bankruptcy. He got rid of every product except for 5 of them. What are you focusing on in your business? What few things can you give all your attention to that will make them shine. Maybe it’s only 3 in your business. Stop going after 20 different things. I will tell you this. When Steve gave a presentation, he always always talked about three things. He kept it simple. Maybe you should do the same.
3. The Reality Distortion Field. This is a made up term from some of Steve’s employee’s. He would twist reality with his products and services (because there was no such product) and convince his team that they could produce them. And because of this, his company has produced some of the most incredible products the world has ever seen. I think this cut down to simple terms means he thought outside his own box. That's what got him where he wanted to be.
4. Market Research. When Steve was asked about market research, he said that how was his customer to know what they wanted. I’d have to show it to them first. Henry Ford said that his customers wanted faster horses, not automobiles. They didn’t know what automobiles were.
5. The devil is in the details. Steve’s name was on over 200 patents having to do with everything from software, hardware and even the glass staircases in his Apple stores. You should be involved in all the marketing for your business, what your quality and appearance is, and what your customer is going to experience from your business. No detail is too small when it comes to these things. I pick out the positive quotes that my customers get on their reminder calls every week. I’m the only one that can do that. I write ALL the advertisement and communication with my customers. Get into the details. If you don't want to do that, you hire me. I'm not cheap, but I'll make you a lot of money.
That’s what I learned from Steve Jobs. If you want to read the book, be my guest. But remember I warned you."
I'm ordering it today. I see if my coach here is right.
If you're smart and you order the book, maybe you can tell me your ideas and we can mastermind.
Talk later.
Dr. Carney
As you probably know, Steve Jobs biography came out last week–all 600+ pages of it. I personally have not read it, but a mentor of mine finished reading it a few days ago.
Here's what he wrote: "His ideas have been floating around in my head and I’ve come up with 5 of his principles that I think you and I could use in our dry cleaning businesses.
But before I get started, I want to warn you, that if you read this book, it’s not all fun and games. He was a weird dude. He could be nice one minute and as nasty as he was nice the next. He had a strange diet and would sometime eat one food for a couple of weeks. And some of these arcane beliefs led to his early death.
It was not easy reading, but I’m a Mac guy and I wanted to find out what was going on in this guys head. So here’s the 5 things I learned from Steve Jobs:
1. The journey is the reward. And he’s right on with this one. It’s not the destination, but the journey that is the most rewarding part of our businesses. You and I are blessed. We are less than 1 in a 100 people that have the privilege of owning our own businesses. We determine the kind of life we want to lead. Some of you might not be doing that right now, but you can get there. I like some of my members do what we want to do every day. So enjoy the journey of owning and running your own business.
2. Focus on only 5 things in your business. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, it was only months away from bankruptcy. He got rid of every product except for 5 of them. What are you focusing on in your business? What few things can you give all your attention to that will make them shine. Maybe it’s only 3 in your business. Stop going after 20 different things. I will tell you this. When Steve gave a presentation, he always always talked about three things. He kept it simple. Maybe you should do the same.
3. The Reality Distortion Field. This is a made up term from some of Steve’s employee’s. He would twist reality with his products and services (because there was no such product) and convince his team that they could produce them. And because of this, his company has produced some of the most incredible products the world has ever seen. I think this cut down to simple terms means he thought outside his own box. That's what got him where he wanted to be.
4. Market Research. When Steve was asked about market research, he said that how was his customer to know what they wanted. I’d have to show it to them first. Henry Ford said that his customers wanted faster horses, not automobiles. They didn’t know what automobiles were.
5. The devil is in the details. Steve’s name was on over 200 patents having to do with everything from software, hardware and even the glass staircases in his Apple stores. You should be involved in all the marketing for your business, what your quality and appearance is, and what your customer is going to experience from your business. No detail is too small when it comes to these things. I pick out the positive quotes that my customers get on their reminder calls every week. I’m the only one that can do that. I write ALL the advertisement and communication with my customers. Get into the details. If you don't want to do that, you hire me. I'm not cheap, but I'll make you a lot of money.
That’s what I learned from Steve Jobs. If you want to read the book, be my guest. But remember I warned you."
I'm ordering it today. I see if my coach here is right.
If you're smart and you order the book, maybe you can tell me your ideas and we can mastermind.
Talk later.
Dr. Carney
I'm trying...
Hey it's Monday and I love speed.
It's dangerous, but I still love it.
I wrote a pretty good blog already for
the day, so I thought,"Hey, I'm going
to start including a video embedded on
every entry or at least every time I
blog."
So here it is.
If you like speed and you like Ferrari's
you'll love this video.
It's dangerous, but I still love it.
I wrote a pretty good blog already for
the day, so I thought,"Hey, I'm going
to start including a video embedded on
every entry or at least every time I
blog."
So here it is.
If you like speed and you like Ferrari's
you'll love this video.
What's the Best Excuse To Use?
Monday
Blogtime USA
7:39 AM PST
Hey
If you ever needed another good reason or excuse
to exercise, I've got one for you:
Exercise makes your brain bigger.
Actually that statement isn't entirely accurate.
To be more specific, exercise was found to increase
brain size slightly, but far more important to increase
"spatial reasoning."
So what's "spatial reasoning?"
Spatial reasoning is the ability to recognize patterns,
and remember phrases, numbers, and so-on. This was
discovered by researchers at the Universities of Chicago
and Pittsburgh.
It is also one of the most important factors to the prevention
of Alzheimer's and dementia, so it's pretty important.
A mentor of mine told me a story about a woman who suffered
with dementia the last ten years of her life. But unlike most
dementia patients she was fully functional - thanks to exercise.
She drove and had a mind that was unbelievably sharp right up
until an accident injured her beyond the ability to exercise.
After that, she mentally went downhill rapidly.
Thankfully, she passed in peace... and she had ten wonderfully
active years thanks to her willingness to take up weight training
at the young age of 71.
Now she wasn't crazy about doing hours in the gym.
What she did was she eventually walked up to 3 miles per day
and trained in the gym 3 days per week.
That kept her mind sharp. It wasn't a lot, but she was dedicated
to staying as young as she could, for as long as she could. I mean
who wants to be put in a nursing home where all they do is feed you,
make you fat, and you get to sit around and look at eash other?
----------------------
Exercise increases the
QUALITY of your life.
----------------------
Quantity is no where near as important to me as quality, when it
comes to working out and exercising.
All I can say is this. Your brain will thank you, as will the rest of your
body.
One of the best ways to start exercising when you are over 40 is by
walking. It gets you headed in the right direction. Then hit the gym.
Start out with some weight lifting, and just work your way up.
If you want to improve your level of fitness after the age of 40
start exercising, and recommend it for your patients.
If you're doing the weight loss, you should always recommend
walking and some exercise BASED upon the idea that they're
going to avoid Alzheimer's and dementia, so it's not that hard of
a sell.
If you like the idea of natural health, you have to be promoting
weight loss. You can be healthy if you're overweight. Your
patients know that, and that's why when the New Year rolls
around, they're going to be thinking of YOU.
Dr. Carney
Blogtime USA
7:39 AM PST
Hey
If you ever needed another good reason or excuse
to exercise, I've got one for you:
Exercise makes your brain bigger.
Actually that statement isn't entirely accurate.
To be more specific, exercise was found to increase
brain size slightly, but far more important to increase
"spatial reasoning."
So what's "spatial reasoning?"
Spatial reasoning is the ability to recognize patterns,
and remember phrases, numbers, and so-on. This was
discovered by researchers at the Universities of Chicago
and Pittsburgh.
It is also one of the most important factors to the prevention
of Alzheimer's and dementia, so it's pretty important.
A mentor of mine told me a story about a woman who suffered
with dementia the last ten years of her life. But unlike most
dementia patients she was fully functional - thanks to exercise.
She drove and had a mind that was unbelievably sharp right up
until an accident injured her beyond the ability to exercise.
After that, she mentally went downhill rapidly.
Thankfully, she passed in peace... and she had ten wonderfully
active years thanks to her willingness to take up weight training
at the young age of 71.
Now she wasn't crazy about doing hours in the gym.
What she did was she eventually walked up to 3 miles per day
and trained in the gym 3 days per week.
That kept her mind sharp. It wasn't a lot, but she was dedicated
to staying as young as she could, for as long as she could. I mean
who wants to be put in a nursing home where all they do is feed you,
make you fat, and you get to sit around and look at eash other?
----------------------
Exercise increases the
QUALITY of your life.
----------------------
Quantity is no where near as important to me as quality, when it
comes to working out and exercising.
All I can say is this. Your brain will thank you, as will the rest of your
body.
One of the best ways to start exercising when you are over 40 is by
walking. It gets you headed in the right direction. Then hit the gym.
Start out with some weight lifting, and just work your way up.
If you want to improve your level of fitness after the age of 40
start exercising, and recommend it for your patients.
If you're doing the weight loss, you should always recommend
walking and some exercise BASED upon the idea that they're
going to avoid Alzheimer's and dementia, so it's not that hard of
a sell.
If you like the idea of natural health, you have to be promoting
weight loss. You can be healthy if you're overweight. Your
patients know that, and that's why when the New Year rolls
around, they're going to be thinking of YOU.
Dr. Carney
Friday, November 4, 2011
It's Friday
Hey
It's Friday.
I'm going to see a show today that I've been
waiting to see.
I'll be leaving here shortly, but I wanted to send
this to you before I left.
I've been working on some really cool promos and I
might even share those with you if you're here on
the next post.
No promises, but I just wanted to get you engaged and
ready.
Here's a video that is only four minutes long.
From a marketing standpoint it's outstanding.
Why?
Because this doctor tells his story.
Listen to it, and learn from it.
both from a natural health aspect and from a
marketers standpoint.
I think you'll like it, and you might even
understand more about what chiropractic really
is.
Let me know.
You can always email me.
ddrroddc@yahoo.com
Dr. Carney
PS Don't forget. You can become more successful
by coaching with me and learning the little tricks that
turn your life into an ATM money making machine, the
right way.
PPS Remember, nurture your patients. They are your life blood.
More next time.
It's Friday.
I'm going to see a show today that I've been
waiting to see.
I'll be leaving here shortly, but I wanted to send
this to you before I left.
I've been working on some really cool promos and I
might even share those with you if you're here on
the next post.
No promises, but I just wanted to get you engaged and
ready.
Here's a video that is only four minutes long.
From a marketing standpoint it's outstanding.
Why?
Because this doctor tells his story.
Listen to it, and learn from it.
both from a natural health aspect and from a
marketers standpoint.
I think you'll like it, and you might even
understand more about what chiropractic really
is.
Let me know.
You can always email me.
ddrroddc@yahoo.com
Dr. Carney
PS Don't forget. You can become more successful
by coaching with me and learning the little tricks that
turn your life into an ATM money making machine, the
right way.
PPS Remember, nurture your patients. They are your life blood.
More next time.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
READ THIS... It says alot about Steve Jobs
This was not written by me.
I believe it was written by his sister.
I'm not totally sure on this, but it's worth reading.
----------------------------------------------------------
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.
The Genius of Jobs (October 30, 2011)
Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.
When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.
We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.
I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being.
His full life. His illness. His dying.
Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.
That’s incredibly simple, but true.
He was the opposite of absent-minded.
He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.
When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.
He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.
Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.
He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood.
Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”
I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.
Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.
When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”
When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.
They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.
This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.
And he did.
Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.
Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.
Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?
He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.
He treasured happiness.
Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.
Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.
Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.
One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.
I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.
By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.
None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.
We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.
What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.
This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.
This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
I believe it was written by his sister.
I'm not totally sure on this, but it's worth reading.
----------------------------------------------------------
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.
The Genius of Jobs (October 30, 2011)
Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.
When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.
We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.
I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being.
His full life. His illness. His dying.
Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.
That’s incredibly simple, but true.
He was the opposite of absent-minded.
He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.
When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.
He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.
Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.
He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood.
Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”
I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.
Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.
When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”
When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.
They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.
This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.
And he did.
Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.
Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.
Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?
He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.
He treasured happiness.
Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.
Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.
Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.
One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.
I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.
By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.
None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.
We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.
What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.
This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.
This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
Just found this and thought I'd share.... enjoy!!!
12:35 PM
Tuesday
time flys....
November 1, 2011
Here's an entry I found and I have to share it
with you since I just deleted one.
The other one was about the GAME, but this one is
good as well. If you missed the last one, shame on
you. If you read it, good for you.
Here's what I found.
It's not about me, but it has some great points.
Enjoy.
--------------------------------------
I’m about to share a very personal experience
with you.
This is not something I’ve always felt comfortable
doing but my hope is that many of you will relate
as well as benefit from some powerful lessons I’ve
recently learned—lessons learned not by choice.
Some months ago I became involved in a relationship.
In spite of my initial hesitation and after being
patiently but ardently pursued by the other person
I slowly let go and began to trust that it could work.
I began to open up to trust and love.
Things seemed to be blossoming until I began to see
subtle signs that he might not be capable of fully
participating in a deeply intimate and emotionally
committed relationship even though he desired it.
Unfortunately I ignored the signs, hoping that maybe
an open two-way communication could resolve the bumps
along the road even though I could feel my serenity
slipping away.
Not long afterward I returned from vacation and found a
message waiting for me in my email inbox from this person
suddenly ending the relationship, and with only a vague
explanation.
Wow.
My immediate reaction was hurt, shock and disappointment
that commitment and trust could be so lightly discarded.
I always like to see the best in people and assume they
will honor the trust you’ve given them, or at least be
able to have an open and honest conversation if they can’t.
However not everyone is capable of this because, let’s
face it, open and transparent communication can be scary
and it takes a certain type of courage.
Most of us have probably been in this place of heartbreak
and sadness but I determined that I would not get stuck there.
I immediately turned to what I call my “transform-it toolkit”.
These are the tools I have mindfully chosen that can create a
true mindset and heart-set shift so I can accept what is, and
create inner change.
Your toolkit can include regular practices that work for you
such as: meditation, prayer, contemplation, nature walks, yoga,
reading inspirational books or scriptures that help you shift,
and powerful conversation with loving, safe, trustworthy and
non-judgmental friends.
Using your toolkit regularly is what keeps you emotionally and
spiritually open to amazing possibilities in your life that
you can’t even imagine because you haven’t experienced them yet.
The purpose of this toolkit is to help lead you quickly toward
healing and toward total honesty with yourself.
You see, it’s easy to get stuck in anger, blame or sadness,
or simply shut off your feelings but I knew that wasn’t where
I wanted to stay because I chose to live in joy.
My toolkit helps me quickly release old pain, anger, shame,
guilt, sadness or indifference and reveal these 4 Big Truths–
1.Everything happens for a reason. Our job is to figure out
the reason and the lesson
2.Everything that happens holds a mirror up to me to show me
where I need to change and be more honest with myself.
It can be hard to swallow and I may chose to ignore it and
stay in my comfort zone, but I do so at the expense of never
knowing deeper love, greater joy or never feeling or experiencing
life fully
3.Each person is at a different place on the path we all travel
toward knowing ourselves fully and being emotionally mature,
open and loving. If we each try to respect where the other is,
then we can let them move at their pace, not ours, even if that
means leaving them behind.
4.I am totally responsible for the life I create and how I react
to every situation that occurs in my life.
So when that unexpected email landed in my in-box signaling the
end of my relationship my first step was to surround myself with
loving, spiritually grounded friends to get some perspective on
the situation.
* What is the reason and what is the lesson?
* Where is the situation a mirror I need to hold up to myself? What judgment have I made of the other (person or situation) that also mirrors something I need to look at in myself?
* How can I accept the other—the person or situation I’ve judged—as being exactly where they are, not where I want them to be?
* How can I surrender the person or situation and let it go with light and love, even when I know it’s not what I would have wished, but it is WHAT IS.
* How can I use this new understanding of myself to transform my life, my situation, my relationships, my business for the better?
Other “tools” that reinforce this work for me are meditation and contemplation.
One of several revelations I had was that I needed to express –and stay grounded in–the essence of who I am more openly and powerfully in my life.
Just like your life, your business is a reflection of you. If your thoughts and beliefs about yourself, your relationships or your situation are limiting; if you are blaming others and not looking in the mirror; if you are hiding from the truth so you don’t have to feel emotional discomfort, then how can you fully express who you are in the world?
So what do you do when you’re hurt, frustrated, stuck or discouraged? You get out your “Transform It Toolkit” and put it to work for you.
And yes, it takes courage, time and patience to be open and vulnerable, to admit mistakes, to change old habits and beliefs that are closing you off from the life you want to live. And this means—to borrow a phrase used by several of my colleagues—you have to put on your Big Girl (or Big Boy) Panties! But you do need to chose—do you want to simply survive or do you want to thrive.
There are some GEMS in this person's thoughts.
I may not agree with all of them, and IF I do, I won't tell you in this blog. I mean, hey some things have to be private. Or I could be crazy and post my life on FACEBOOK. Give me a break.
But with that said, have a GREAT DAY.
Dr. Carney
Tuesday
time flys....
November 1, 2011
Here's an entry I found and I have to share it
with you since I just deleted one.
The other one was about the GAME, but this one is
good as well. If you missed the last one, shame on
you. If you read it, good for you.
Here's what I found.
It's not about me, but it has some great points.
Enjoy.
--------------------------------------
I’m about to share a very personal experience
with you.
This is not something I’ve always felt comfortable
doing but my hope is that many of you will relate
as well as benefit from some powerful lessons I’ve
recently learned—lessons learned not by choice.
Some months ago I became involved in a relationship.
In spite of my initial hesitation and after being
patiently but ardently pursued by the other person
I slowly let go and began to trust that it could work.
I began to open up to trust and love.
Things seemed to be blossoming until I began to see
subtle signs that he might not be capable of fully
participating in a deeply intimate and emotionally
committed relationship even though he desired it.
Unfortunately I ignored the signs, hoping that maybe
an open two-way communication could resolve the bumps
along the road even though I could feel my serenity
slipping away.
Not long afterward I returned from vacation and found a
message waiting for me in my email inbox from this person
suddenly ending the relationship, and with only a vague
explanation.
Wow.
My immediate reaction was hurt, shock and disappointment
that commitment and trust could be so lightly discarded.
I always like to see the best in people and assume they
will honor the trust you’ve given them, or at least be
able to have an open and honest conversation if they can’t.
However not everyone is capable of this because, let’s
face it, open and transparent communication can be scary
and it takes a certain type of courage.
Most of us have probably been in this place of heartbreak
and sadness but I determined that I would not get stuck there.
I immediately turned to what I call my “transform-it toolkit”.
These are the tools I have mindfully chosen that can create a
true mindset and heart-set shift so I can accept what is, and
create inner change.
Your toolkit can include regular practices that work for you
such as: meditation, prayer, contemplation, nature walks, yoga,
reading inspirational books or scriptures that help you shift,
and powerful conversation with loving, safe, trustworthy and
non-judgmental friends.
Using your toolkit regularly is what keeps you emotionally and
spiritually open to amazing possibilities in your life that
you can’t even imagine because you haven’t experienced them yet.
The purpose of this toolkit is to help lead you quickly toward
healing and toward total honesty with yourself.
You see, it’s easy to get stuck in anger, blame or sadness,
or simply shut off your feelings but I knew that wasn’t where
I wanted to stay because I chose to live in joy.
My toolkit helps me quickly release old pain, anger, shame,
guilt, sadness or indifference and reveal these 4 Big Truths–
1.Everything happens for a reason. Our job is to figure out
the reason and the lesson
2.Everything that happens holds a mirror up to me to show me
where I need to change and be more honest with myself.
It can be hard to swallow and I may chose to ignore it and
stay in my comfort zone, but I do so at the expense of never
knowing deeper love, greater joy or never feeling or experiencing
life fully
3.Each person is at a different place on the path we all travel
toward knowing ourselves fully and being emotionally mature,
open and loving. If we each try to respect where the other is,
then we can let them move at their pace, not ours, even if that
means leaving them behind.
4.I am totally responsible for the life I create and how I react
to every situation that occurs in my life.
So when that unexpected email landed in my in-box signaling the
end of my relationship my first step was to surround myself with
loving, spiritually grounded friends to get some perspective on
the situation.
* What is the reason and what is the lesson?
* Where is the situation a mirror I need to hold up to myself? What judgment have I made of the other (person or situation) that also mirrors something I need to look at in myself?
* How can I accept the other—the person or situation I’ve judged—as being exactly where they are, not where I want them to be?
* How can I surrender the person or situation and let it go with light and love, even when I know it’s not what I would have wished, but it is WHAT IS.
* How can I use this new understanding of myself to transform my life, my situation, my relationships, my business for the better?
Other “tools” that reinforce this work for me are meditation and contemplation.
One of several revelations I had was that I needed to express –and stay grounded in–the essence of who I am more openly and powerfully in my life.
Just like your life, your business is a reflection of you. If your thoughts and beliefs about yourself, your relationships or your situation are limiting; if you are blaming others and not looking in the mirror; if you are hiding from the truth so you don’t have to feel emotional discomfort, then how can you fully express who you are in the world?
So what do you do when you’re hurt, frustrated, stuck or discouraged? You get out your “Transform It Toolkit” and put it to work for you.
And yes, it takes courage, time and patience to be open and vulnerable, to admit mistakes, to change old habits and beliefs that are closing you off from the life you want to live. And this means—to borrow a phrase used by several of my colleagues—you have to put on your Big Girl (or Big Boy) Panties! But you do need to chose—do you want to simply survive or do you want to thrive.
There are some GEMS in this person's thoughts.
I may not agree with all of them, and IF I do, I won't tell you in this blog. I mean, hey some things have to be private. Or I could be crazy and post my life on FACEBOOK. Give me a break.
But with that said, have a GREAT DAY.
Dr. Carney
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