Jensen Huang, Steve Jobs and other billionaires who got advice in unlikely places and ‘changed’ their careers

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Apple founder Steve Jobs, billionaire and philanthropist Melinda French Gates, and former Pepsi Co chief executive Indra Nooyi have at least two things in common: first, that they have led or worked in the world’s biggest companies, and second, they have all got life-changing advice from unlikeliest of places and people – ranging from a competing hiring manager to an elderly gardener in Tokyo.

Jensen Huang’s recalls a gardener’s advice

For Jensen Huang, CEO of the world’s biggest company by market cap Nvidia, has previously shared that the secret to corporate endurance didn't come from a tech seminar, but from a temple garden in Japan. While observing an elderly gardener meticulously tending to moss with a pair of bamboo tweezers, Huang asked how he could possibly maintain such a vast property with such a tiny tool.


“He said something that is perfect. He said, ‘I have plenty of time.’ That’s the best career advice I can give you…Most of the time, I wait for things to come to me. I’m rarely chasing things,” Huang recalled at the Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association in 2023, as per a report by Fortune.

When Steve Jobs got idea from luxury fashion mogul

When Apple was considering moving away from big-box retailers like Sears, Jobs sought advice from Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH. Arnault was a master of high-end brick-and-mortar luxury, and encouraged Jobs to pursue the then-radical idea of standalone Apple Stores.

“Everybody thought it’s completely crazy to sell Apple products in a shop,” Arnault recalled during a 2016 interview at the Oxford Union. He said that even Michael Dell, Dell Technologies CEO, thought it would never work.

“I must say, I was myself a little doubtful of selling [iPods in shops]…But it was working,” he added.

The IBM manager who told Melinda French Gates to join Microsoft

Melinda French Gates is now one of the world's leading philanthropists but she owes her start at Microsoft to a woman who was supposed to be hiring her for IBM. After interning at IBM for two summers, French Gates was ready to sign her full-time offer when she mentioned she had one final interview with a "tiny" Seattle startup.

“My hiring manager at IBM said to me, ‘If they give you an offer, you should take it,’” French Gates recalled. The manager explained that the rapid growth at Microsoft would allow a young recruit to ascend the ranks much faster than the established hierarchy at IBM.

She took the advice, moved to the West Coast, and spent nine years at Microsoft, ultimately becoming a key architect of the company’s rise into a $3.6 trillion titan.

Indra Nooyi got her inspiration from pop culture

Unlike French Gates and Huang, unconventional advice can also come from television screen.

Indra Nooyi, the former PepsiCo CEO, credited the TV show Sex and the City with teaching her about female leadership. Watching the 94-episode run, Nooyi was struck by the "sisterhood" of the characters.

“They never judged each other; they supported each other,” Nooyi said in 2019, using the show as a blueprint for reducing unconscious bias and internal competition among women in the workplace.