Two Minds: What Steve Jobs and a Pile of Weeds Can Teach You About Vision

I know what you're thinking. "Here we go, another business guy about to tell me a Steve Jobs story." I'm waiting for the hate mail already.

But stick with me, because I don't think you've heard this one — and if you're running your own thing as an independent expert (or thinking about it), it might be the most useful story I tell you all year. It puts the visionary fallacy to rest for good.

The story you probably haven't heard

Back in the day, Steve Jobs bought Pixar from George Lucas. What drew him in wasn't movies — it was the computer graphics technology. That's what he thought he was buying: a tech company.

From day one, Ed Catmull, the head of Pixar, kept telling him something different. "Steve, I know you bought us for the technology. But at our heart, we're a movie company. This animation tech isn't the thing — it's how we tell great stories."

And Steve went, "Yeah, yeah. Moving right along."

Here's the part that gets me. Jobs respected Ed enormously — this became the longest business relationship of his entire life, longer than anyone at Apple. And still, year after year, Ed kept saying "we're a movie company," and Steve kept brushing it off. Meanwhile Pixar lost money every single year for about five years, and Jobs covered it out of his own pocket — something like $50 million of his own money — while they figured out what they were actually selling.

Then Pixar put together its first short animated film, five or six minutes long, and premiered it at an auditorium in California. Jobs was in the room. The short ends, the lights come up — standing ovation. People went gaga.

The next morning, Steve calls Ed. "I figured it out. I know what Pixar is." Ed's bracing himself — what's it going to be today, Steve? And Jobs says: "We're a movie company."

Not long after, Toy Story premiered. And the rest is history.

The visionary fallacy

Steve Jobs is rightly put on the pedestal as maybe the greatest visionary business leader of all time. I'm not here to take that down. I'm a fan. All credit due.

But look at what actually happened. The answer was staring him in the face for years. The person he trusted more than any other business partner in his life was telling him the answer out loud, on repeat. And Jobs — the visionary — still couldn't see it until the proof was undeniable, until a room full of people leapt to their feet.

That's the fallacy: we assume visionaries just see it, clean and clear, ahead of everyone else. The reality is that vision usually crystallizes only when the evidence shows up. Even for the best who ever did it.

So if you've ever doubted your own ability to see the big picture for your business — good. You're in excellent company. It doesn't mean you're not a visionary. It means you're normal.

The two minds you have to run at once

Here's why I tell this story every chance I get inside Band of Misfits.

To build something beautiful on your own — as a consultant, coach, fractional leader, whatever flavor of independent expert you are — you have to run two minds at the same time.

The first is the vision mind. This is the zoom-out. It sees the bigger picture: the real value proposition, the interesting combination of your life experience and your expertise, how you meet a need the market has (or doesn't even know it has yet). It's the mind that lets you become a category of one. And it has to get comfortable with a specific kind of tension — "I can see the vision, and I have no idea yet how I'll get there." That's okay. That's the job.

The second is the weed-pulling mind. This is the zoom-in. It's the emails, the proposals, the QuickBooks, the next thing on the to-do list, the next ten minutes. Unglamorous, necessary, endless. Even when you outsource it or hand it to AI, there are still plenty of weeds to pull.

The trap is living in only one of them.

Live only in the vision mind and you become the daydreamer. The "someday, maybe" person. Always talking about the next big thing, never any traction. We've all had someone like that in our lives. You don't want to be that person.

Live only in the weed-pulling mind and something quieter goes wrong. You get things done, sure — but you play too small, you feel too small, you miss the opportunities right in front of you, and one day you look back with regret. I don't want you looking back with regret. I want you looking forward with excitement.

That's the real rub: you don't get to pick one. You have to integrate both.

A simple zoom-out ritual you can start this week

Inside the band, we build rituals to do this together — we zoom out as a group, then zoom back in. But you don't need us to start. Here's the simple, practical version.

Schedule dedicated time every week to zoom out, on purpose, away from the task list. Then ask yourself a few questions:

• What am I not seeing?

• What's the bigger version of this business I'm here to build?

• What did I hear, see, or reflect on this week that's vital to the long-term growth of my company?

Go for a long walk. Get out in nature. Meditate. Do whatever your brain runs on. Because here's the thing — your brain runs on two things: stories and questions. Those questions above are prompts, and once you plant them, your brain starts diagnosing and coming back with answers. Real ones.

Not all of us have the muscle to sit in silence for long stretches and just discern. (I highly recommend you build that muscle, but that's another conversation.) For now, keep it simple: ask a couple of questions, listen for the answers, and write down whatever comes up. That's it. That's the zoom-out. That's the Steve Jobs visionary mind in practice — going out to gather the evidence, looking for the opportunities sitting right in front of you while you pull your weeds.

Where this lives

This two-minds practice is the core of what we do every single week inside Band of Misfits. Some of our members are aiming to cash out with millions. Some just want to make two or three times their old employed income. Honestly? The number doesn't matter. Numbers are numbers. What matters is whether you can hold both minds at once.

Inside the band, you get weekly live sessions, guest experts I call our crew members, a peer network of other independent experts who actually get it, and zoom-out rituals built right into the rhythm. If that sounds like your people, come join us.

And if you're not ready for that yet — that's okay too. Take the ritual above and run it on your own this week. Schedule the time. Ask the questions. Write down what comes.

One last thing before I go, in case nobody's told you today: you can do it. You really can. Keep going.

Profits + Peace ✌️

— Stephen