Most people couldn't. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, isn't most people.


The lesson of how, in 1983, he recruited then PepsiCo president John Sculley (the renown marketing genius behind the market share grabbing "Pepsi Challenge" campaign) to a relatively new Apple, is a textbook example of how to get things done in business.

At the time, the hit Apple II computer was running out of gas and Jobs was passionately pursuing a pet project that would eventually become the Apple Macintosh. While he pursued the Macintosh with mesianic zeal, he needed a more orthodox chief executive to run the company. A respectable face who could sell Apple to the investment community and corporate America. He wanted John Sculley.

But Sculley, who had joined PepsiCo as a trainee and became the company's youngest ever VP of Marketing in 1970, had little incentive to make a change. He was making lots of money, was now president of the company and was being recognized as a hero for the success he had already delivered during his tenure.

Here is what happened, in Sculley's own words, that brought him to Apple —

"...and then he looked up at me and just stared at me with the stare that only Steve Jobs has and he said 'do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?' And I just gulped because I knew I would wonder for the rest of my life what I would have missed."

And the rest is history.

Here are the key elements that moved mountains for Jobs (and will for anyone else who uses them):

1. Big Thinking — Small visions don't inspire or motivate anyone. Counter intuitively, big visions are often easier to bring to fruition than little ones. This is because they attract the people and resources, seemingly out of the blue, that never get mobilized with small, insignicant visions.
   
2. Passion — We all have a sixth sense that attracts us to people with passion. Jobs has it... Will Smith has it ... Bill Clinton has it ... do you? If not, you either need to dig deep to find it, or get involved with something else that you do have passion for.
   
3. Audacity — If you're truly thinking big and acting with passion you are likely going to come off as audacious. If you're not, then you're likely missing the boat on items #1 & #2.
   
4. Sincerity — You must believe at your core in what your saying/doing. Few things are more persausive than truly sincere audaciousness.

Everyone wants to be part of something that's meaningful and bigger than themselves. Create the opportunity for a big, hairy, meaningful endeaovor and people will jump on your bandwagon. In 3 words — "Selling sugar water" — Jobs got Sculley to join Apple by reframing his presidency of a Fortune 500 company as to be virtually void of meaning.