I will take credit for the most powerful driving force in the lives of both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Both proclaimed openly, extensively their believe that a person must orient themselves around the passion of their life. Their business views followed directly from this Phillips business teaching. It is the first law of my The Seven Laws of Money published in 1974. (co-author Salli Rasberry)
Both Steves said that every detail of their business life was driven by their passion. Both also emphasized the need for fun in business. Another point that I made many times publicly and devoted a chapter to in my Honest Business.(co-author Salli Rasberry)
What I do not take credit for is the persistent and pervasive dishonesty of Jobs. Nor do I have anything to do with his mean-spiritedness, sense of revenge, nor his litigious focus on proprietary and secret business elements. He was an immature brat.
I proclaimed openness and honesty in business as desirable attributes. Wozniak understood this and argued consistently my position against Jobs.
Both Wozniak and Jobs owe a far greater technical debt to John Capt. Crunch Draper than either acknowledges. Both Jobs and Wozniak made money, later used for their business, by making and selling blue boxes. Blue boxes were used to illegally circumvent the telephone network. Both were able to build them but their claim to have designed them is fallacious. Capt. Crunch and his cohorts were the ones who understood the phone network and provided the technical skills. It was common for hippies to use illegally generated money to start businesses (usually the money was from pot.)
Isaacson makes a big deal in his book about Jobs' veganism, love of Japan and his Zen Buddhism. These were core experiences of the inner 250,000 people in the hippie circle. I am still surrounded by the post hippie attachment to these values. Today I am in Tokyo.
One element that is central to Isaacson's book is the debate between openness and proprietary. While I was a fanatic advocate of openness and made it a requirement for businesses to join the Briarpatch, I did not explain problems with proprietary behavior until I taught hippie classes in the early 1980s and included it in the 1984 book Marketing Without Advertising.
Footnote: The photo of John Draper looks like he was the day he demonstrated his blue box for me and we listened in on an FBI conversation.
