Cook, then Apple's COO, told the Auburn graduates about the most significant decision of his life: joining Apple in early 1998. At the time, Apple was widely considered to be on the verge of extinction — Michael Dell had publicly said he'd 'shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.' Cook's employer Compaq was the world's largest PC company. Every rational analysis favored staying. One CEO told him he'd be a fool to leave. But within five minutes of his first interview with Steve Jobs, Cook wanted to throw caution to the wind. He listened to his intuition, not his left brain — and everything that followed proved it right. He distilled his life's lesson into this single principle: intuition opens the door, but relentless preparation and execution are what make it meaningful.