They were well crafted, did great in drop tests, but were 4-5 times more expensive than other cases in the market. 

Apart from selling to fan people, or telling customers “these are made by Apple and have the official logo on them,” how else could you sell these?

You have to treat them like a $2,000 door to door vacuum cleaner sale. You have to take the time and chip at it. You have to throw the (sales) kitchen sink at it. 

This is a difficulty:”hard” practice that all sales should work on.

And it’s one of the most satisfying deals to close. Someone trust you enough to spend $50 on a phone case.

“This is a fuxking insult to everything I’ve done at this company … Get out of my office you two jerks!” Said Bill Gates after he let the XBOX team develop its own operating system instead of using Windows. *2

I find these exchanges fascinating.

What does it take for teams to get there, where emotions are allowed to be thrown around?

Where personal attacks aren’t really personal?

Is it more liberating to work in an environment where people can let loose, become unhinged, and “be themselves?”

What is it like if I don’t need to be concerned about how I manifest my emotions, from laughing out loud to cursing someone’s extended family?

Can the team throw the same tantrum back at Jobs and Gates?

Is this the ultimate form of #bossbetter?

*1 – “Making iTunes available for Windows changed everything for Apple” https://qz.com/136239/making-itunes-available-for-windows-changed-everything-for-apple/

*2 – “Xbox: The Oral History of an American Video Game Empire.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-06/xbox-the-oral-history-of-an-american-video-game-empire

Hank’s specialty was motivation at scale. During those long days, Hank was the reason we endured. Everyday, he would hit the floor and do his magic. He fanned the fire in people, created purpose out of thin air and dragged the entire team with him. He probably could get a forest of dead trees to twerk if there’s ever a need for that.

One morning, we were desperate- customers were complaining, teammates called in sick in droves. “I got this.” Hank said, and he managed to get everyone excited around … new paper shopping bags.
***
GSDers are priceless- A problem? They fix it. Shit hit the fan? They wipe the room clean and invent a splash proof fan. An angry customer? They have the candies ready.

Yet, most folks I’ve talked to lament that true GSDers were hard to come by. Yes, there are true GSDers. They are called founders, entrepreneurs. For the rest of us, we are GSDers too! The difference? Most of us are specialised GSDers.

Hank may be great at cheerleading, but don’t ask him to create a 3 months plan. He can’t get that done.

#bossbetter and see the unique GSDers in each of us.

I loved it. Isn’t great to believe that destiny will always somehow be on our side? When I looked back, dots did connect:
– I spent about a year as a recruiter. I had to interview at least 4 people every day. I interviewed more than 800 people. When I got to hire my first team member I realised I was much better at getting to the bottom of candidates answers than all my peers.

– At Nike, we had to present all the time- 10 people internal meetings, trade shows of 1000 attendees. I once had to present while juggling a football on a 360 degree stage in front of hundreds of people. I became a pretty versatile presenter thanks to all those hours of practicing.

But then, I realised more often than not, I got Steve’s message wrong. I often confused what he said with “everything happen for a reason,” a mindset that encouraged passive acceptance. Or I would use his saying to justify my lack of thoughtfulness in my actions. “Don’t think too much! The dots will connect!”

He was giving us an always available anchor for us to dive deep and commit.

So have faith, commit, and do the hard work.

Brand new Apple laptops with the new M1 chip that are 15x faster? Go!

How do you sell the benefits of 15x? How do I RELATE 15x to you?

The ability to make a story relatable is one element of good story telling (and a classic #bossbetter kind of hack). You can sell anything when your audience feel that you feel them, you are one of them, you understand them.

Let me give this a shot in public.

The new Apple M1 chip is 15x faster. How fast?

You know when you open up a game on your iPhone, it takes a few seconds to load? With this new M1 chip, it will not need to load. Just
clickappandplay.

Yes, clickappandplay.

Or it is like the first time I used steamed iron my wife bought me. In just one gentle stroke, it magically steamed away all the wrinkles on my shirts. It was so satisfying I ended up ironing everything in my closet.

This is the kind of fast we are talking about- power that let you do whatever the hell you want, performance that you know you can rely on, and speed that will make even the most mundane tasks absolutely irresistible.

How did I do? How would you sell 15x?

The same is true for leadership. Nobody should expect “10 Quick Tips To Lead at Apple.” Leadership takes hours of practices to master. There is no shortcut to great leadership.

No two violinists are the same, and no two leaders are the same. The great work of our lives is to find and hone our unique brand of “playing,” be it a musical instrument, or how we serve our teams.

And great violinists get there with the help of the best teachers.

Who’s your teacher?

#okmonday #bossbetter

Everyday, how do we:

Unbox thousands of phones before the store opens
Get them into the hands of thousands of customers

Make 10,000 customers feel cared for (what does “cared for” really mean, btw?!)
Keep the 10,000th smiles on our teams’ faces genuine
Help our teams feel eager answering “how much is it” for the 10,000th time
Probe hundreds of teammates to uncover their feelings
Build enough trust so our teams feel safe to tell us what they really think about everything (including you)

How do we:
Teach to our managers?
Help them recover from frustration after their plans got revised for the 100th time
Help them feel purposeful after failing repeatedly to get our teams to just smile
Re-energize them after yet another customer complain
Lead them to remain faithful in their journeys of tribulations and growth

How do I:
Remain genuine after saying the 10,000th “thank you” to the team
Unite hundreds of teammates, security guards, cleaning teams, moment after moment
Stay clear minded, hopeful, energised, doing all of the above, day after day

This is for one store in one day.

And I love the iPhone 12 Mini.

I was bad with names. Yep, I was one of those “oh I am really bad with names” managers.

But people was my business. “I am bad with names” basically meant “Your name doesn’t deserve my effort.” It’s as bad as an accountant who says “I am bad with numbers.”

#bossbetter? ‍

So I put names into spreadsheets. I experimented with all sorts of hacks, from memory palaces to all the Anki varieties available on Earth. I repeated people’s names way too frequently in conversations.

Yet I am still bad at it. I still need to exert effort to retain names. They still don’t come naturally to me. But I am glad I have worked on creating this dot, albeit a tiny one.

I might not be great with a lot of names, but since my interactions nowadays are mostly one to one, my work around remembering names allowed me to become very good at remembering a lot about … one name.

What did I learn? There has to be dots to begin with. They don’t magically show up. We have to work on creating dots. Faith should come next.