{"id":7070804,"date":"2026-10-13T15:27:41","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T15:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accountants4yourbusiness.co.uk\/business\/finance\/757-steve-jobs-hated-the-name-genius-bar-how-he-came-around-with-ron-johnson\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T15:27:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T15:27:41","slug":"757-steve-jobs-hated-the-name-genius-bar-how-he-came-around-with-ron-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accountants4yourbusiness.co.uk\/?p=7070804","title":{"rendered":"#757: Steve Jobs Hated the Name \u201cGenius Bar.\u201d How He Came Around, with Ron Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n On the morning Apple opened its first stores, Ron Johnson called Steve Jobs to apologize. Thirty minutes before the doors opened in Glendale, California, only about 50 people were in line, and Ron was sure he’d blown it. Steve’s reply (“have faith, they’ll come”) said a lot about the Steve Jobs leadership style Ron had spent the past year learning.\n <\/p>\n

\n They came. By closing time, 7,000 people had visited the store, in a line that wound down the mall, past JCPenney, and out into the parking lot.\n <\/p>\n

\n Ron hadn’t come from tech. He’d turned down Goldman Sachs to unload trucks at Mervyn’s, then brought Michael Graves design to Target. When Steve first asked him to send an email, he had to admit he’d never sent one.\n <\/p>\n

\n Ron came on the show to talk about what Steve Jobs leadership looked like up close: the nightly 8 p.m. phone calls, the Saturday-morning blowup over a few columns in a Boston-area store, and how Steve went from hating the name “Genius Bar” to trademarking it in a single day.\n <\/p>\n

\n He also talks about the bet that didn’t work. As CEO of JCPenney, Ron brought an Apple-sized vision to a 100-year-old company and moved before he’d earned his team’s trust. He explains why lessons from Steve Jobs leadership couldn’t make up for that, and what it taught him about leading change.\n <\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Listen on<\/span>Apple Podcasts<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Listen on<\/span>Spotify<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>Watch on<\/span>YouTube<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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