I woke up really early on Monday and wanted to watch a movie. A quick scroll through Netflix got me to “Jobs,” the Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher.
As a guy that is interested in finance and tech, movies like this — “The Social Network” and “The Big Short” being a couple other examples — really speak to me.
A common theme throughout movies like these is the “cost” required to achieve a sky-high dream.
Steve Jobs was a complete asshole throughout the creation of Apple. He was blunt; he’d tell people if they were replaceable. “Foreplay” wasn’t his thing. He got down to business.
When Apple became a publicly-traded company, he decided not to give some of his earliest employees stock options. They had a job, but they were just another employee in the Apple sea.
Jobs didn’t make a ton of friends with this style of leadership. But he helped create some of the greatest pieces of tech we see today.
It made me wonder how to take these kinds of creative geniuses.
So much of the conversation around humanity’s superstars is that it’s not worth it. The fame and fortune often come at the cost of true friendships, peace of mind, and privacy.
The best sports writer in modern times, Wright Thompson, wrote a book entitled “The Cost of These Dreams” in 2019 that featured stories on some of the world’s greatest sports figures and how they experienced regret on their life paths in one way or another.
When push comes to shove, though, would any of these legends actually give back what they achieved for some patch of sunshine?
Jobs died after 56 years of impact that would take some 500 years to achieve. How many of you are reading this on an iPhone or Mac computer?
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful...that’s what matters to me.”
Jobs surely suffered immensely throughout his time on Earth. He brought it all upon himself.
But as he faded into the beyond, he had left the world a better place. Not everyone can say that.