Last night, I talked with my friends, Christina and Mark, about Steve Jobs. We all respect Steve for his incredible innovation. Mark said he was a legend, but he was tough to work with. I told Mark that he had a firm belief in Simplicity. Maybe because he rejected complicated ideas so often and people around him thought he was difficult. It was a good discussion with Mark over a sushi dinner.

Simplicity enables us to focus on what’s important. It’s to improve the simple things we do to get better results. Complexity drains your energy and resources for marginal or no results. About two decades ago, one of my mentors told me a story of two gold miners. One digs a five-foot hole and moves to the next. The other continued on the abandoned spot from the first miner to dig deep into it, going through sands, mud, water, bronze, and silver to get his gold. It was the moment of my life that I decided to reduce 99% of our products from 750 to 3 core items to scale up. It’s better to have three things for many people than to create many things for three people.

Mentorship works. Whether it’s a friend, a colleague, a teacher, your spouse, or your mentee can open up your mind.