I went to see a chef tonight who knew Steve Jobs. I wanted to hear a few stories again, a few stories I heard when I barely paid attention to Steve Jobs, and I wanted to hear them again because I've been studying the guy. There's a lot people say is wrong with him, but he's just too smart. He's too smart and too relentless. People get stomped on.
The "reality distortion field" they say. It's another word for silver-tongued, and it is combined with a lot of other things, and there is no arguing with certain aspects of success. Though, you can't try to emulate something like this. Whatever he had, you can't learn from listening, and you can never be that. It's unreachable. Like anyone, unique. Whatever really happened, no one saw any of it. A combination of time and environment and person. So much too is marketing. Self-marketing. He controlled his image, but I like the way he looks at things. Some of it is twisting the world, but we are all "guilty" of this. It's the methodology I'm after.
One thing that really stuck out to me was tempo. If you watch him talk, Steve loves to mix it up. Even the fast-paced way he describes his enemies shows their angst and confusion. His efforts are spoken about in a calm and collected way. He uses simple words. During the iPhone announcement, Eric Schmidt's diction is miles away from Steve's. I don't want to wake someone, so I can't pull an exact quote, but Eric says something like "from blah blah blah perspective". Steve would never make something he was selling this complicated. When an interviewer says something Jobs doesn't like, he's no longer their friend. He doesn't let things he dislikes slip by being said without being unsaid. He controls the narrative, relentlessly, and you might even say he gets a kick out of making people feel uncomfortable.
So anyway: the chef, looking back decades.
"Hey, you had mentioned some stories about Steve Jobs when I was here before"
chef "Steve Jobs? Asshole."
"Hmm. Why do you say that?"
chef "He was picky. Always, I won't eat this or I won't eat that. I told him, if that's how it is, go eat at home."
This chef doesn't like talking about Steve Jobs btw. Later:
"You were saying before about Steve Jobs enjoying the food?"
chef "Steve Jobs never enjoyed the food. He barely ate anything."
"Then why did he come here?"
chef "He had to meet people. You work with people, sometimes you go out to fancy dinner. Steve Jobs loved to talk. Talk talk talk, but he ate without noticing the food. He didn't care about it."
That's what I thought I remembered. The bill (for two) was $872, and if I wanted to be dramatic, I wouldn't say anything about the food, but I'm nothing like that. The food was good, but, it's not what matters. Steve Jobs didn't get distracted. I type on some version of some MacBook. He focused.