The "Stepping Down" of Visionary Steve Jobs

As you probably know Steve Jobs left Apple on August 24, 2011.  This event left me rather melancholy and pensive for much of the day.  Few individuals inspire me as much as he.  Every time I think about his career I am dumbfounded by the number of "lives" one entrepreneur could experience.  I certainly don't know Steve, but I sure wish I did.

If you are a business owner, with a tendency towards being somewhat of a "geek" (like me), I highly recommend the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley.  If you have seen it, watch it again.  This movie does such a great job of demonstrating that it is the visionaries who ultimately succeed in business.   I absolutely love the scene when Jobs sends Steve Wozniak to HP to "demo" the first Apple Computer they had invented.  The HP stuffed suit looks down his nose at the personal computer (plywood case and all) and asks: "what would an average person want with a computer".  That interaction is only rivaled by the equally amusing scene when the IBM bigwig tells a 20 something Bill Gates that "there's no money in software".  Classic.

When I launched PayLessFirst.com early last month I was relatively happy with the product I was taking to market.  I knew the site was far from perfect, but I really believed the concept was sound and that I had created something that had the potential to take on a life of it's own.  I had never heard of Groupons, nor Living Social when I first approach my developer with the concept late in 2010. When he told me about those sites, explaining how huge they were and that they were already doing something similar to what I had in mind, I don't even remember taking pause.

I thought I had a better idea, and I just hope these organizations are either too arrogant or too busy to notice me before I have enough time to grow the site.   You see, I give the American business owner a lot of credit. I don't think they need to be spoon fed a cookie cutter marketing program. I would rather deliver the venue and let the my merchant partners serve themselves.  PayLessFirst only looks similar to the other coupon sites out there, at the core, it is very different.

I wanted to deliver the venue while letting the business owner create their own offer, publish it, and manage it themselves with little to no input from me. We charge no set up fee, no monthly fee and return 95% of the coupon selling price back to the merchant who delivers the goods and services (whether the coupon gets redeemed or not).  That's how it should be.  While we are happy to help, I think most business owners don't need my help.   They know their business better than I ever could, and if tens of thousands of people who didn't grow up using computers can sell stuff on ebay, collect their payment on paypal, then track the delivery online.... why would a business owner need me to sell him an online marketing portal?  That is why I set up PayLessFirst  to be a self serve alternative to the other online marketers of coupons.  Personally, I don't like to ask for,  nor do I often read directions, it's more fun to just dive in and do it myself, and I made Paylessfirst.com for people like me.

Like most adventures in business, you can't possibly guess where you will finish until long after the race is well underway.  I thought I knew what my mission and objectives were the day I launched the site but in a very short time I learned I didn't have a clue.  The vision has expanded. I was in it for me and my family at first.  I thought I had a million dollar idea but now the idea has become so much bigger than the money I was after.  I want my site to be a game changer. I want Wal-Mart & Home Depot to be trying to figure out where all their customers went.  I want to see local business owners be forced to hire new people and expand because they are so busy.  I want to give community minded people who always wanted to do business locally a cost effective and easy way to do that.  That's not the place I started from, but it is where i am now, and I like it.

I like to think that Steve Jobs was kinda like that.  Do you think he could see the IPad, the IPod, the IPhone or even the Macintosh on the day he sold his first Apple Computer?  I  suspect  he was just looking to make a few bucks and maybe live comfortably, but then he caught a vision and suddenly it wasn't about the money any more.  I thank God for visionaries....just imagine if he had cashed out and took an early retirement 20 years ago.....

We wouldn't have Buzz Lightyear.......

Take care of yourself Steve and thanks for everything, may you enjoy your retirement and reach To Infinity and Beyond!


PayLessFirst is a local business with a national vision. We seek to help local merchants to compete with big box stores, itinerant retailers, and online competitors by educating consumers on the benefits of “buying local”.  We also promote and maintain an online directory of independently-owned, local businesses for the encouragement & convenience of conscientious shopping.  To add your business to our national directory for free, click here.