Steve Jobs co-founded Apple at the age of 21 in 1976. Within four years, the company was listed on the stock exchange and Steve was worth $217 million at the age of 25.
As Apple continued its phenomenal growth, it was decided that professional management had to be hired to run the huge organization. So in 1983, Steve hired John Scully to be the CEO. However, within two years, the CEO and directors at Apple could not get along with Steve Jobs (he was known to be an erratic and emotional manager) and stripped him of all his duties, forcing him to resign from the very company he founded in failure and disgrace. To make things worse, Apple sued Steve for neglecting his duties. While those in the business world wrote him off, Steve when possessed the *millionaire mindset*, took it as a huge learning experience and took the proactive action of starting a new and better company called NeXT computers. He believed that he could develop a range of hardware and software that would be even better than that at Apple. Did he succeed? Undaunted, he again took the feedback and went on to found Pixar Animation Studios, which became a huge success in creating the first breakthrough fully digitally animated movie ‘Toy Story’. In the meantime, Apple Computer was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1995 after suffering from internal mismanagement and lack of new product innovation. The company was making losses of $800 million to $1 billion a year and its share price dropped from a high of $18 to $3.80. Believing that he could save Apple, Steve Jobs agreed to return as CEO for a nominal pay of $1 (he was doing it purely for the passion… millionaire habit 5). When Steve took over, he fired all the unproductive executives and spearheaded the launch of revolutionary products like the iMac, iPod and iTunes. The revolutionary operating system (OS) he developed at NeXT was then evolved into the highly popular Mac OS X. As a result of these successful products, Apple turned its $1 billion loss into $1.3 billion in profits by 2005. Its share price rose from $3.80 to a high of $75! Looking back, Steve realized that if he never got fired from Apple, he would never have founded NeXT and Pixar Animation. If not for Pixar, he would not have become a pioneer in digital animation and if not for NeXT software he developed, Apple would never have the Mac OS X operating system that has made Apple a huge success today. It is for this reason that many millionaires believe that ‘*everything happens for a reason*’ and that ‘*adversity is often opportunity in disguise *’ provided you learn from your experience and continue to take consistent action!
