According to Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, Steve Jobs last words of advice to him (Cook) was to “never ask what he (Jobs) would do. ‘Just do what’s right,’” What a great piece of advice for all of the corporate leaders and for anyone building their own business… be it a “brick and mortar” or a “virtual online” business.
Steve Jobs basically is talking about the “Golden Rule” that I know I learned when I was a kid at Sunday School. Always seemed like a good idea then and still does.
Recently I’ve heard the “American way” has changed that to read: ‘He who has the gold rules’. And a lot of what is wrong with American business today seems to be caused by that philosophy.
I’ve always found that listening to my customers and either fixing their complaints or finding a way to solve their problems has helped me build my business.
When I was first starting my online business my site had a forum… it was the first forum on my subject which was digital video editing. The site was DVEreview.com and I produced a monthly newsletter. That was way back in 1997.
Anyway, my forum at the time was pretty popular. And one day someone posted his comments… that basically said “he was starting his own forum on digital video editing and invited all my members to move to his site”. Of course if someone did that today they would be censored and you would probably never see that post. But back in those days we didn’t run our business like that… so the post was made public.
One of my members gave that person the best answer possible… far better than I could have. What my member said is “why do you want to start a new forum when Bob already has the best one online”.
That’s the type of response you get when you follow the Golden Rule or Steve Jobs’ advice of “Just do what’s right”.
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