The Apple Way

I woke up to my alarm at 1:15 AM, yesterday morning, and I was on the road, from San Diego to San Jose, about an hour later. There's something very relaxing about driving through Los Angeles at 4 AM, without any traffic. The sunrise's subtle changes in lighting, in California's San Joaquin Central Valley, is unseen, yet clearly noticed.

Lately, I've been flying myself from San Diego to San Jose which takes about three hours compared to the typical one hour commercial flight. But, I had a late night event on Monday evening so I figured that driving was the safer option. The private terminal at San Jose Airport (FBO) has a quiet room and shower in the pilot's lounge, so I was able to sleep a bit and then get cleaned up before speaking at 1:30 PM. (Is that confusing because I drove, but used a pilot's lounge? Well, I used my pilot knowledge and skills to pilot my car there.)

Three years ago, my buddy Kedar introduced me to his MBA classmate, Minnie, who’s originally from China. Minnie lives in NYC and she organizes tours where business delegations come over from China to tour Silicon Valley. These business people want to understand what makes Silicon Valley, Silicon Vally. They do this through presentations given to them by companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tesla, IBM, Stanford, etc., etc. Of course, they want to learn about Apple, but Apple’s a very secretive company and they don’t offer business tours and presentations to the public.

Cupertino is the only place Apple sells apparel. 

That’s where I come in. Since I used to work for Apple, I give the business delegations a presentation about what makes Apple different, when it comes to design and marketing. Plus, I can do something Apple employees can’t do, which is speculate about future Apple products. After my presentation, we take a trip to the Apple Visitor Center and get a tour from an Apple employee. 

1 Infinite Loop: Steve Jobs' office is still in this building.

Sometimes, we'll also visit the Infinite Loop campus (both campuses are about two miles apart). The nice thing about visiting the Infinite Loop Apple Store is that it's in the same building where Steve Jobs' office is, left untouched since the day he died with his name still on the door. Plus, the group gets to say they visited the “Mothership.” 

Voila!