Steve Jobs – A Tech Icon & Business Genius Could Not Re-engineer His Own DNA

Health and Nature Still Trump Technology and Wealth, as Steve Jobs faced

For many people, the death of Steve Jobs at age 56 came as a shock. For others, not so much. It was common knowledge that his health was very poor. After taking extended medical leave in January of this year, and later resigning officially as CEO of Apple Inc. in August 2011, we all knew his time was short.

For me, Steve Jobs was a contradiction. Yes, he was a visionary, technology genius, extraordinary leader, and changed the way we interact with technology. Steve also had a different side of himself that perhaps raised the hair on my neck a bit. He actively promoted a cult-like following around Apple that created acolytes rather than customers. Steve forced his i“Product” followers to conform to Apple’s way of doing things and put technology into a box that only Apple held the magic key to. In many way Steve Jobs was the antithesis to the open source, transparent, wisdom of the crowd mentality that is driving the Web 2.0 revolution.

Well, I guess some people like to have the simplicity of being put in a box, especially when that box is the coolest, most stylish and most functional box on the market.

His was a life well lived

Looking back over the many slideshow images of Steve Jobs through the years you can see his was a life lived with passion and purpose. From the early days in 1976 when Jobs and Wozniak started Apple from Steve’s family garage with no money and a dream, Steve had a vision of making technology accessible to everyone. He was not always right in business, and there were many years in the 1980s when Apple was losing ground to Microsoft and the PC. It was probably the lessons he learned from these difficult years that gave him the insight to reinvigorate Apple to become the world’s #1 technology gadget company and post record profits.

Steve Jobs wasn’t the type to ever give up or stop moving forward. I think this is what I respect most about Steve Jobs. When he was forced out of Apple by then CEO John Sculley in 1984, Steve claimed that being fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to him. “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.”

Steve started a company called NeXT Computers in 1985 and then bought Pixar in 1986. His vision of the future with Pixar was another winner for Jobs, who built the world leader in digital animation and sold Pixar to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion. During that time, Apple had brought Steve back as their CEO in 1996 after buying NeXT for $429 million.

And so Steve Jobs started his second chapter with Apple. He brought the company back from losing over $2 billion the previous two years to becoming the most valuable corporation in the world. His success came from refocusing Apple away from the business market (owned by Microsoft and the PC) and towards the household consumer, graphics designer and must have techno-gadget geek. Apple has become the coolest technology company in the world with the “must have” new products. Steve Jobs also revolutionized the music industry by creating iTunes, the world’s largest online store for digital music, sounding the death bell for music stores around the world.

The flame that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast

Steve Jobs was an icon to our modern age. His mind was brilliant, as he thought of new ways to interface with technology and to revolutionize our everyday life. Sometimes he knew better than us what would work best, and so made consumers do things “Apple’s Way”. That didn’t seem to hurt the company, however. And Steve could sell ice to an Eskimo. When the iPhone4 had a fundamental design flaw causing problems when people held it in a certain way, he sold everyone a stylish iPhone cover for $20 that solved the problem. No product recalls for Apple.

So often we see people like Steve Jobs, who burn so brightly that we are drawn to them, snatched from this world far too early. And even though Apple or Steve’s family is not saying what illness took his life, pancreatic cancer seems to be the most likely cause. It is one of those types of cancer that almost no one recovers from.

But he never gave in to his illnesses. Even after beginning to suffer serious health issues, Steve Jobs continued to work. It was after his health problems began that Apple came out with both the iPhone and the iPad. He continued to push his designers and engineers to break the bounds of conventional thinking and develop products that would change everything. The competition would collectively hold their breath when Steve Jobs did another new Apple product launch.

And Steve was never in it for the money. In 2010, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth to be $8.3 billion. Did that matter to Steve? Probably not that much. His annual salary as CEO of Apple was $1 per year since his return in 1996. But, even with unfathomable wealth, he could not hold off the disease that attacked his body.

Legacy issues Steve Jobs leaves his family with

And because this is a life and health insurance blog, I will now seg-way into estate planning and life insurance.

For the amount of wealth that Steve Jobs had, the life insurance industry wouldn’t actually have much to offer him. Also, he would have had to buy his life insurance when he was much younger, before his health had begun to change. There is no life insurance company out there that would offer coverage for someone diagnosed with pancreatic cancer or had undergone a liver transplant. As we have seen, the chances of dying soon after are very high.

The reason I say life insurance companies couldn’t offer Steve Jobs adequate coverage is because a single person can only be insured for about $100 million in Canada and the US. Even if he was able to broker a deal for more coverage he might have gotten up to $150 million if he was lucky. This would not even begin to touch the estate taxes owing the US government upon his death. His vast fortune would have to be protected in other ways.

I suspect that Steve Jobs, being of sound mind if not sound body, was able to arrange his affairs. One solution would be to move his vast wealth, which was mainly in the form of Apple and Disney shares, into a family trust, where he was the trustee and his family are the beneficiaries. Upon his death, the management of such a trust can move to a professional trustee firm or trusted legal counsel, and the wealth can still be held for the use and benefit of his family. Beyond the grave, Steve Jobs could have set out guidelines of how his trust would be used and how moneys would be distributed. He could have even had his estate/trust engage in philanthropic works after he is gone. The beauty of a trust is that it creates an estate freeze on all existing assets and crystallizes the taxation owning while you are still alive. Assets are then moved into trust where they can continue to grow and work for his family as an enduring business entity that does not expire when he does.

Estate planning issues of the mega-rich and other high net worth people

Very few people are in the same class as Steve Jobs. The vast majority of wealthy Canadians and Americans would do very well buy owning permanent life insurance for their estate. It is the most cost effective way to generate tax free income in Canada for your estate upon death. Liquid cash for the estate can take care of a number of things, like funeral expenses, legal and executor fees, estate and final taxes owing, and create a legacy for children and grand-children.

Life insurance should be a fundamental piece of a person’s estate plan, especially if you are a high net worth individual. It isn’t, however, the entire estate plan. There needs to be careful consideration on designing a strong will, power of attorney, establishing trusts if need be, move ownership of shares of the family business to the next generation, etc. There is a lot of planning that needs to take place. As you go through this planning with your team (lawyer, accountant, financial advisor and insurance broker) you will see how much your estate will need to pay out in taxes and other expenses. This is where a life insurance policy can create those funds for the lowest cost product out there today (assuming you are healthy enough to qualify for it).

Thanks, Steve, for seeing a vision of what the world could be and making it happen

Thanks, Steve, for putting your stamp on this world. Even though I write this article on a PC (Dell laptop to be precise), I still own 3 Apple devises in my home; iPad, iPod Touch and AppleTV. Your legacy has impacted all our lives. May the brilliance you brought to the world have rubbed-off on your successors at Apple. May your dreams of revolutionizing our world continue in your absence. And God bless your loved ones, who will miss you most dearly.

The article was written by +Mitch Reynolds. If you found this article interesting or it made you think, please feel free to share your comments below. Liking us on Facebook, giving us a +1 on Google or Tweeting this article about Steve Jobs would be very much appreciated.

No related posts.