Secrets of the
Successful
The words and principles that have guided
some of our highest achievers
By Richard Jerome
Steve Jobs
For better or for worse, the tech giant,
industrial designer and Apple
co-founder profoundly influenced the
way we live by pioneering the
microcomputer revolution of the
1970s and ’80s. Jobs (1955–2011)
showed early genius for electronics
but struggled in school because of a
rebellious disposition. After dropping
out of Reed College, he became
close friends with fellow computer wiz
Steve Wozniak and worked for Atari,
designing video games. After Wozniak
designed and built the Apple I
computer, he and Jobs started their
iconic company. The years to follow
brought the spectacularly successful
Macintosh, laser printers and a
succession of “I” devices and apps.
Worth an estimated $7 billion at his
death, Jobs shared with biographer
Walter Isaacson a belief in serving
something larger than oneself.
“We’re always talking about following
your passion, but we’re all part of the
flow of history,” he said. “You’ve got
to put something back into the flow
of history that’s going to help your
community, help other people . . . so
that 20, 30, 40 years from now . . .
people will say, this person didn’t just
have a passion; he cared about
making something that other people
could benefit from.”Jane Goodall
Widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on chimpanzees,
Goodall, 85, has spent more than half a century studying them in
Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park. Her love for the primates
blossomed as a child, when her father gave her a stuffed chimp she
named Jubilee. Goodall’s mother, meanwhile, inspired her to dream big—
and to persist. “When I was about 10 years old and dreaming of going to
Africa, living with animals and writing books about them, everyone laughed
at me,” she recalled. “World War II was raging across Europe. My family
had no money and couldn’t even afford a bicycle for me. Africa was far
away and full of dangerous animals, and, most damning of all, I was a
mere girl. Only boys could expect to do those kinds of things. But my
mother said, ‘If you really want something and you work hard and you take
advantage of opportunities—and you never, ever give up—you will find a
way.’ The opportunity was a letter from a friend inviting me to Kenya. The
hard work was waitressing at a hotel to earn money for the trip—and
spending hours reading books about Africa and animals, so I was ready
when Dr. Louis Leakey offered me the opportunity to study chimpanzees.”