Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

This phrase, published on the back of the final publication of The Whole Earth Catalog, and repeated by Steve Jobs to the Stanford Graduating Class of 2005, speaks of adventure, of failure, and ultimately, of success. Whether this success is measured in terms of personal, monetary, of professional success, can vary, and much of this measure of success is left to the determination of one entity – you.

In Jobs’ commencement speech, he spoke of life and death, of love and loss, and of connecting the dots. All three of these stories culminate with the same motos operandi, one that can be spelled out one phrase: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. It is through failures that we learn and succeed.

The words spoken by Jobs reverberated throughout the audience. His near death experience with cancer provided him with insight into living that most never attain. Many live their lives for the satisfaction of someone else, be it in a career path that was not of their own choosing or interest, or a marriage that was pre-arranged. The secret to success in life is not how much money you make, nor is it defined by whether you marry to satisfy societal norms. The secret to true success in life is captured if you can honestly say that when you wake up in the morning, you look forward to doing whatever it is you are going to do. All the rest will be taken care of, fall into place itself.

If its your job you hate, change it. If it is your social network you can’t stand, change it. If it is the place you live that disgruntles you, change it. Now, certainly some of this comes with financial risk and monetary needs. But if you can not make sufficient changes to your way of life that will allow you to live a life defined by self rather than others, success has no attainability.

Now this is meant in no way to be a post on Steve Jobs and Apple (I am not one to hide my fascination with the company and its Chief Executive Officer), but it is worth talking about their success, both business and individual, because they achieved such success through this hungry, foolish attitude. Founded in the 70′s by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple was an experiment run by two foolish 20-somethings with a healthy disregard for the impossible (quote by Larry Page, Google Genius and co-founder). It was this outsider technique that inspired the duo to “Think Different,” a company slogan and advertising campaign that lasted for several years, and a personal mantra, a philosophy that differentiated Apple from the rest.

I am reminded of two photographs shown in my business management class this quarter. These photos speak for themselves. Microsoft is a professional culture, one run by traditional corporate moguls, and Apple is a company that, much like Google, has thrown out the rules. They play by their own rule book. It is worth mentioning that there was about a 10-year gap where Apple diverged from this practice, firing Steve Jobs, and running their business to near-bankruptcy after numerous failed experiments and a product line that was large in number but low in quality. Jobs returned in the late 90′s after, ironically, Apple acquired NeXT, the side project Jobs created after his departure from Apple, along with Pixar Animation Studios. You see, despite the anger and emotions felt towards Apple, he still loved what he did. So he continued to pursue what he defined as the success to his own life, a career he loved, a career in technology and business.

Anywho, I digress. It is companies like Apple, Google, Flickr, among many others, that run not on the traditional corporate culture of suite, tie, briefcase, and endless meetings. These companies attain their success by starting from within. They treat their employees with respect, because quite frankly, without their work, their dedication, and their creative genius, the company could not survive. It is to the company’s benefit that they have a staffing problem where they have to turn away so many qualified candidates rather than seek them out.

“You’ve got to find what you love.” -Steve Jobs

If I could identify with one phrase, one saying that could define who I am and what I believe in, it is this. Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. The rest just happens.

[photo by Apple Computer]

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