Steve Wozniak: Pursue what you value most

- [Narrator] "That's perfect!" Cal said. I was back at Larry King's breakfast table, and they had just told Larry and Cal that in a few days I would be interviewing Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple who built one of the first personal computers with his bare hands. "The best part is that you won't have the same problem you had when you interviewed Bill Gates," Cal said. "This time you can't be nervous. He's the Woz. Where are you doing the interview?" Larry asked. "At a restaurant in Cupertino." "When I was starting out, I did an interview show at Pumpernik's Deli in Miami. Restaurants are great. Everyone just wants to have fun." "Alex, do me a favor," Cal said. "Don't take your notepad. Try it as an experiment. If the interview fails, you can blame me." I was hesitant, but I thought it was worth trying after what had happened with the Bill Gates interview. A few days later, I boarded a plane, and within hours, I was walking up to Mandarin Gourmet, a restaurant two blocks from Apple headquarters. I was standing in the front entrance when my phone rang. It was my friend Ryan. "The Woz?" he asked as I told him what I was up to. "Bro, I know you were having trouble getting interviews, but Woz peaked like 20 years ago. Look at the Forbes list. He's not even on it. I don't get why you're doing this. Actually, you know what? Maybe it's good you're interviewing him. Try to figure out why Woz never became as successful as Steve Jobs." Before I could respond, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Steve Wozniak striding toward me wearing sneakers and sunglasses. A pen and green laser pointer were clipped to the chest pocket of his shirt. I hung up my phone and greeted him and then stepped inside. The restaurant was a sea of white tablecloths. As soon as we sat, I picked up a menu, but Wozniak motioned for me to put it down. He called over the waiter and ordered for both of us, with the enthusiasm of a kid who could get all the desserts he wanted. Our table was soon overflowing with fried rice, vegetable chow mein, Chinese chicken salad, sesame chicken, honey walnut prawns, Mongolian beef, and crispy egg rolls! Even before our first bite, Wozniak already seemed to be the happiest person I had ever met. Whether he was telling me about his wife, his dogs, his favorite restaurants, or the road trip he was about to take to Lake Tahoe, Wozniak seemed to love everything about his life. He told me that he met Steve Jobs in 1971, just a few miles from where we were sitting. Jobs was in high school, and Wozniak was in college. A mutual friend of theirs, named Bill Fernandez, introduced them. The moment they met, Wozniak and Jobs hit it off and spent hours sitting on a sidewalk, laughing and sharing stories about pranks they had pulled. "One of my favorite pranks was during my first year of college," Wozniak told me. "I built a TV jammer, which you could hide in the palm of your hand. You could turn a knob and jam any TV set you wanted, making the show go fuzzy with static." Wozniak said that one night he and a friend went over to the common room of another dorm to mess around. There were about 20 students sitting around, watching a color TV. Wozniak sat in the back, concealed the jammer in his hand, and made the TV malfunction. "For the first few times, I had my friend get up and hit the TV. Bonk, and the TV would go perfect! Then I jammed it again. After a while, my friend hit the TV harder and harder, but if he smacked that TV enough, it worked. By the end of half-an-hour, I had the whole group of college kids pounding the TV with their fists. And if it was a show they really wanted to watch, they would hit the TV with chairs!" Wozniak kept visiting the dorm to see how far he could take this. One time, he noticed a few students were at the TV set trying to fix it, and one guy had his hand on the middle of the screen and his foot in the air. Wozniak quickly turned the jammer off. When the guy took his hand away from the screen or put his foot down, Wozniak turned the jammer on. The guy stood there with his hand in the middle of the screen and his foot in the air for a half-an-hour as everyone else (chuckling) watched the TV show. As Wozniak told me about another prank, a woman with short brown hair joined our table. "Woz," she said, "did you show him the laser pointer test?" Wozniak introduced his wife, Janet. He unclipped the green laser pointer from his shirt and held it close to my face, telling me it could detect how much brains I had. When he shined it into my right ear, green light appeared on the opposite wall. "Holy crap," he said, "your head is completely empty!" Glancing down, I spotted a second laser pointer he was holding under the table. Wozniak and I let out a laugh. He clipped his laser pointer back on his shirt and told his wife about my mission. He shared with her the names of the people I was interviewing. "You know," he said turning to me and lowering his voice, "I don't know why you're interviewing me. I'm not a, uh, successful mogul like Steve Jobs or anything like that." His words trailed as though he was baiting me for a response. It felt like he was testing me, but I didn't know what to say, so I did the only thing I could think of. I stuffed an egg roll in my mouth. "When I was a kid," Wozniak said, "I had two goals for my life. The first was to create something with engineering that changes the world. The second was to live life on my own terms. Most people do things because that's what society tells them they should do. But if you stop and do the math, if you actually think for yourself, you'll realize there's a better way to do things." "Is that why you're so happy?" I asked him. "Bingo," Wozniak said. "I'm happy because I do what I want every day." "Oh," his wife said, laughing, "he does exactly what he wants." I was curious about the difference between Wozniak and Steve Jobs, so I asked what it was like founding Apple when it was just the two of them. Wozniak shared a handful of stories, but what stood out most were the ones that made it clear how different their values were. One story took place before Apple was formed. Jobs was working at Atari and was assigned to create a video game. He knew Wozniak was a better engineer, so he made a deal. If Wozniak would create the game, they would split the $700 pay. Wozniak was grateful for the opportunity and built the game. As soon as Jobs got paid, he gave his friend the $350 he had promised. 10 years later, Wozniak learned that Jobs hadn't been paid $700 for the game, but rather thousands of dollars. When the story broke in the news, Steve Jobs denied it, but even the CEO of Atari claimed it was true. Another story took place early in Apple's growth. At the time, it seemed obvious Jobs would be the company's CEO, but it wasn't clear where Wozniak would fit in on the executive team. Jobs asked him what position he wanted. Wozniak knew that managing people and dealing with corporate politics were the last things he wanted to do. So he told Jobs he wanted his position capped at engineer. "Society tells you that success is getting the most powerful position possible," Wozniak said. "But I asked myself, 'Is that what would make me happiest?'" The final story Wozniak shared took place around the time Apple filed for its initial public offering. Jobs and Wozniak were set to make more money than they ever imagined. Leading up to the public offering, Wozniak found out that Jobs had refused stock options to some of Apple's earliest employees. To Wozniak, these people were family. They helped build the company, but Jobs refused to budge. So Wozniak took it upon himself and gifted some of his own shares to the early employees so they all could share in the financial rewards. On the day the company went public, those early employees became millionaires. As I watched Wozniak lean back in his chair, cracking open a fortune cookie, and laughing with his wife, I could hear the words Ryan had told me before the interview ringing in my ears, but the only thing that came to mind was, who's to say Steve jobs was more successful?