And no, it’s not ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’

Steve Jobs needs no introduction. Much has been made of everything from his management style to creativity. As a small business owner his experience at Apple can feel like a different world. But there is one thing you can learn from him that you can apply as you build your business.

Every single company these days is in some way a technology company – it’s almost impossible to build a successful business that isn’t underpinned by technology. Jobs was clear on how you should build that business.

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology” — Steve Jobs

Let’s unpack why this is so important.

Too often businesses, of any size, can end up with a knot of underlying technology as their ‘stack’ is added to over time. Sometimes businesses can invest in technology that promises a lot but then is never used. It’s important you never fall into this trap and Jobs clearly articulates how to avoid it.

Your primary consideration must be the experience you want your users and customers to have. From that point, you then work outwards to define what technology will enable that experience. It’s why having a vision of the best experience you can offer is so important.

Thanks to people like Steve Jobs, our expectations of what ‘good’ is in customer experience have advanced substantially. This is where we also have to recognize that Apple’s customers are also likely your customers, and so they’ll have similar expectations when it comes to quality of experience.

Luckily, there are also now a lot of off-the-shelf platforms like Shopify, Tidio and Squarespace that enable any business of any size build and deliver a great experience.

If you’re a smaller scale businesses trying to select the right technology, remember this - you don’t need everything. It’s highly likely you won’t have the team or the time to use all of the functionality on offer from many technology platforms.

What you need is the technology that allows you deliver the best customer experience with the time and resources you have available, and ideally that will also scale with you over time.

So be selective, make it seamless and keep that Steve Jobs quote in the forefront of your mind.