We’ve been inspired by Steve Jobs for years, and many of us drew courage from him. We relate to one or more parts of his life that made him Steve: We fight illness. We have dropped out of college (or something else others expected us to complete). We are determined entrepreneurs. We have been ousted from things we love. We try to make a difference in the world.

Like many, many others, our family of Aveusians have been talking about what they treasured most about Steve Jobs. I found the lessons both cathartic and inspiring, and thought you may find them valuable too:

Chris LaVictoire Mahai says:  He saw failures as an opportunity to free himself to be or do the next thing. His successes were the result of being incredibly patient and all in when he believed in something.  He didn’t expect success every time – or quickly. If you look at his history…he took the long committed route most often.  About in the middle of his 2005 commencement address at Stanford, he talks about getting fired at Apple – and the media often replay the line about it being the best thing that happened to him.  But the line that really struck me is this one: “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”   Transcript 

Chris Malecek says: Focus groups are not the font of all wisdom.

Linda Ireland says: His ability to anticipate customer needs. I’m not sure Henry Ford actually said this but “If I asked people what they want they would have asked for a faster horse” would certainly be a belief Steve Jobs would share with him. Steve didn’t need to ask customers what they needed. He looked past the boundaries of products he was selling and saw unmet or emerging needs he could solve. As a result, the 10 millionth song was downloaded from the iTunes store in 2010 and I can’t imagine not having the sleek convergence of phone, email, music and video in my pocket.

He was a prickly optimist. Years ago in a past life I worked for a company in partnership with Apple. The first story I heard from my peers was how Apple staff would turn the other way rather than get trapped alone in an elevator with Steve. “He’s relentless.” “He asks the impossible.” Over the years I noted that while stories of Steve’s prickly side were common, they ALWAYS came wrapped in his determined optimism that something better than what exists was unequivocally possible. Despite being fired from a company he founded, and even in times when the market nearly wrote him off, Steve was always a prickly optimist.

Layne Pearson says: To me the lesson from Steve is not so much believing in yourself at all costs. It’s about being persistent, because none of us knows how things are going to turn out.

Nancy Norman says: Being brilliant is not enough.  Jobs [and others from Pythagoras and Galileo to Edison and George Washington Carver] found the depth to believe in himself and the courage to move forwards.  He adds to roles models who swim upstream without the need of fame and acclaim. 

Paula Morgan says: Steve Jobs certainly taught us that you can own your customers and they can feel great about it! It’s hard to feel that you are held hostage when the customer experience solves your need so completely and easily.

Mike Verdin says: He exemplified a youth as hero awakening. I remember in the 70’s much of the press revolved around young adults rioting, withdrawing from responsibility, or waiting their turn within an entrenched establishment. Steve Jobs helped short circuit that culture and showed through example youth as leader, youth as innovator, and youth as a constructive force in the economy that has carried on to this day.

Cameron Hay says: I had a couple of close brushes with Steve. After he was fired from Apple, and just before he started NeXT, he came to IBM to surreptitiously interview engineers to join his team. I didn't apply (biggest career mistake of my life), but I did talk to the people who did interview. He was perceived as arrogant, out of touch and yesterday's man. He had left Apple as an also ran...with barely 2% of the market, and no idea that the future of computers was in big business. It's hard to believe in hindsight, but at the time, nobody thought he was worth taking seriously...with his crazy idea for a new computer company. It could be that he was too far ahead of everyone else to be understood. Or, (what I chose to believe), he did go down dead ends, had false starts, and made mistakes, and was "lost" for a while. But he never lost his sense of creative edge, and it was those years that sharpened him for his triumphant return to Apple. That is what I chose to believe, because it gives us all hope that we can emerge from whatever struggle we may be in at the moment.

A couple of years ago, while I was CEO of at Unitron, we had just launched a really breakthrough set of hearing aids for the profoundly impaired, with pretty strong tech design elements. At the same time, I had just conceived and created an app on the new iPhone to self-test your own hearing, and we had gotten hundreds of thousands of downloads. I wrote Steve a letter. I told him that his device enabled people to become aware of their own hearing performance, and therefore allowed people to protect their gift of hearing, while gaining so much enjoyment through his transformation of personal audio starting with the iPod...this was something he probably never considered. Immediately afterwards, Apple marketing contacted us to use our new hearing aids in their Facetime ads (directed by Sam Mendes). So, while he didn't respond directly, I chose to believe he was moved enough to ask that our products be featured, and I also chose to believe that he liked our design (which is very high praise).

President Obama saw in him what many of us saw: “a man brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”

As we start the first full week in a world without Steve Jobs, what lessons will you carry forward? What will you be more of because of him?