- When Steve Jobs was only 12 years old, he called the co -founder HP Bill Hewlett To request spare parts to build a frequency counter. This telephone call made him the tools and a work. His philosophy remained invaluable for his growth in the Apple foundation.
At the age of 12, most people care about their academic crushing or a scientific project that is due next week. But Steve Jobs had his mind on something else like spare parts: the spare parts necessary to build a frequency counter. He therefore found the phone number of the co -founder of Hewlett Packard (HP), Bill Hewlett, in the yellow pages and called him for a favor.
“I never found anyone who didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. I still call them, “said Jobs in 1994 interviewArchived by the Silicon Valley Historical Association.
Jobs recalled that Hewlett laughed when Jobs presented himself as a 12 -year -old high school student who needed the pieces. But ultimately, he gave him the components and a work. The co -founder of HP was so impressed by its reader that he set it up with a summer job in the company, bringing together nuts and bolts on frequency counters.
“He got me a job where they built them, and I was in paradise,” said Jobs. “I never found anyone who said” no “or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked.
This opportunity was the launchpad for the success of Jobs career, finally co -founding a company of 3.5 billions of Apple dollars with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. And Jobs carried this learning experience with him, saying that he had tried to reimburse this debt of gratitude by helping the others when they needed an opportunity.
The most difficult part for many could be to chase the courage to reach out – it can be intimidating to hit a business and hope that a leader is able to give an opportunity. And it might seem that the late 1960s, when Jobs contacted Hewlett on spare parts, could have been easier to get this support. After all, most Fortune 500 CEO phone numbers are extremely difficult to find now. But Jobs argues that managers are more willing to help than people cannot expect.
“Most people never pick up the phone and never call it, most people never ask. And that’s what sometimes separates people who do things that just dream of it, ”said Jobs. “You have to act. And you must be ready to fail.
Billionaires take a chance and find early success
Jobs was not the only billionaire CEO to relaunch their teenage career to continue their dreams of success.
The co -founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, used to sneak out of the house at the age of 13 to practice the coding of a local company, Computer Center Corp., through the city. At the time, computers were not yet a basic household food. He would therefore be in the company based in Seattle until the short hours in the morning, sometimes until 2 am, testing his own tailor -made code in exchange for his services fixing programming bugs to compute Center Corp.
Without this access and early experience on the hands, Gates said that he might not have advanced in his career and launched a technological business of $ 3.1 billion.
“We were children … None of us had real computer experience,” wrote Gates in his memories, Source code: my beginnings. “Without this lucky break of free computer time – call my first 500 hours – the next 9,500 hours may not have taken place at all.”
Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, also discovered his entrepreneurial passion at the start of life. At the age of six He started Sell eraser in its neighborhood; When Buffett was 13 years old, he obtained his first job of paper and even deduced the bike from his taxes. He obtained the itching to start his own business, so he launched a pinball Teenager for only $ 25. It then sold more than $ 1,000 after only a year. He can pale compared to the market capitalization of $ 989 billion from Berkshire Hathaway – but he laid the basics so that he was the adored entrepreneur that he is today.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
