About · Keith Bresee
I got into business because of a television commercial.
It was a minute long. It didn't show a single product. And it ended with a line I've organized my life around.
01 · The commercial
Here's to the crazy ones.
Apple ran it in 1997. I didn't see it on TV. I found it later, the version Steve Jobs read himself, and I've watched it more times than I'd admit to a stranger.
It ends with 1 line:
"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."
That line is the reason I work for myself. Not a business plan. Not a mentor. A commercial. I wanted to be one of the people who change things instead of one of the people who wait to be told they can. Steve had a word for that kind of person, and I'll get to it.
02 · The first Mac
I saved up for it at 14.
My first Mac. I paid for it myself, it took a long time, and I'd do it again tomorrow. It went through every year of school with me. My degree is in visual communications, photography and cinema photography, and everything I made for it, at school and at home, was made on that machine.
I never thought of it as a computer. I thought of it as the thing that let me do the work. That's the whole standard, and I learned it before I could name it.
03 · October 5, 2011
I was playing Magic: The Gathering in a college cafeteria.
4th year. A table of guys, a pile of cards. My phone buzzed. A buddy of mine, the only person I knew who was as far gone on Apple as I was, texted me that Steve Jobs had died.
We'd spent years arguing with anyone who'd take the other side. Mac versus PC. Every "iPhone killer" that never killed anything. We were obnoxious about it, and we were obnoxious because the stuff had changed our lives.
He's the first person I ever cried over that I never met. I'm not going to dress that up. My hero had died.
Then I started reading.
04 · The reading
Everything by anyone who'd been in the room.
The authorized biography. Every book by someone who'd worked beside Steve or known him. I skipped the ones written from the outside looking in, not because they were bad, because they couldn't tell me what I wanted to know: how he thought, how Apple actually worked, and how you build a culture where people do the best work of their lives.
Steve had a word for that culture.
"Pirates! Not The Navy."
He brought it back from a dinner with Jay Chiat, gave it to Jay Elliot, and told nobody else until it showed up on sweatshirts at the Macintosh team's off-site. I've lived by it since the day I read it.
Also: for the last 12 years I've worn a long-sleeve black shirt and jeans just about everywhere I go. People who know me stopped asking a long time ago. You can draw your own conclusion.
05 · The book that made every move
I've moved 6,000 miles across 3 coasts. 1 book came every time.
When The Steve Jobs Way came out in 2011, it was the first Steve book that felt like it was written from inside the room. Because it was. Jay Elliot had been Apple's Senior Vice President under Steve, in the room for the Macintosh reviews, and the man Steve looked to as a mentor. Then he wrote Leading Apple With Steve Jobs.
Since then I've moved 3 times, coast to coast to coast. Every move, the books went into storage. Some of them are still in storage 2,000 miles from where I'm sitting. And every move, 3 or 4 books rode with me instead. Leading Apple With Steve Jobs was one of them. Every time.
06 · Then I met him
It started as a podcast interview.
I got the chance to meet Jay. The interview turned into a working relationship, and the working relationship turned into a book: It's the Product, Stupid. Jay's system for building products, from the Macintosh reviews to the day Steve called him back to hold the first iPhone prototype, written down as a letter to 1 founder, with the 4 questions and the worksheets to run it.
Of all the people who shaped how I think, he's the one I got to sit across from. I don't take that lightly. Making this book with him is the honor of my working life.
07 · What I believe
Don't move products. Enrich lives.
"It's not just a job, it's a journey. Let's never forget that… Your customers dream of a happier and better life. Don't move products. Instead, enrich lives."
I believe the book we made puts that in the hands of the people who build things. And I believe enough of them, running the same review on their own products, is a movement. Products that put a ding in the universe, one honest weekend at a time.
I'm a misfit. A rebel. A troublemaker. A round peg in a square hole, and God knows I am. If that's you too, you're in the right place. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. I believe that. Let's go do it.
