If you had to make a list of some of the most profoundly successful entrepreneurs to ever live, there is at least one name that would absolutely be on it: Steve Jobs.Today, people know Steven Paul Jobs as the co-founder of Apple Computer. He was a majority shareholder in Pixar, one of the most successful animated film studios ever. He was a member of The Walt Disney Company's Board of Directors. He changed the face of personal computing and then became a legend all over again years later with the release of the iPod. The debut of the iPhone changed the way we think about not just the Internet, but communication in general, forever.If you were to name a pivotal technology-related event that took place in the last four decades, there is a good chance that Steve Jobs had a hand in it. But one of the most influential people in tech history didn't start out that way - especially in those early days of his life.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News via Getty ImagesThe Steve Jobs Success Story: In the BeginningSteve Jobs was born in 1955 in San Francisco, California. His mother was named Joanne Carole Schieble, while his father was Abdulfattah Jandall. He was given up for adoption and was adopted by Clara Jobs and Paul Jobs shortly thereafter.Paul Jobs had many jobs throughout his life, including time spent as a machinist. That love of tinkering is something that he certainly passed on to Steve Jobs. Paul even built a workbench in the family garage so that young Steve could experiment with various things and work on his craftsmanship.In terms of his education, Steve Jobs had a difficult early few years. Many have noted that he had a hard time operating in a "traditional" classroom environment. He grew to resent authority figures pretty quickly and often misbehaved in a variety of ways. Believe it or not, he was even suspended from school on multiple occasions.Part of this had to do with the fact that Steve Jobs tended to be far more advanced than a lot of his classmates. His mother had taught him to read as a toddler, for example, so he was pretty far ahead developmentally speaking in most classes that he took. This led to an onset of boredom, which typically leads to misbehavior in children his age.By fourth grade, however, he had started to take more advanced classes and began to curb that unfortunate behavior that he had become known for.It wasn't until high school, however, that his perspective began to expand. He had always been interested in science and technology, but now he was starting to draw inspiration from sources that were decidedly more creative in nature. He started listening to music - especially rock and roll - in a way that he never had before. He took creative writing classes. He read the works of William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, and other fine literature. The list goes on and on.It's arguable that the seeds of the Steve Jobs that the world would come to know began here - both in terms of his creativity and in terms of the famous Steve Jobs leadership style.After high school, his good friend Steve Wozniak started at the University of California Berkeley campus. Jobs liked to visit him often and would study in the student union at Stanford University, which was nearby. Soon, Jobs enrolled in higher education himself - specifically at Reed College, which is located in Portland, Oregon.However, he dropped out of Reed College after just a single semester. He did so without letting his parents know about his decision. He said that his primary motivator was that he felt bad about spending his parents' hard-earned money on classes that he felt apathetic about. However, he did continue to audit a few classes from that point forward, which essentially allowed him to attend for free. They included calligraphy courses and others.What followed was a period in Jobs' life that can be described as one of self-discovery. He famously spent time couch-surfing at a Hare Krishna temple, where he would also eat the free meals they offered whenever he could. Right around this time he also went to India to visit a very specific ashram. After that ashram was closed, he luckily found another.Ultimately, he returned home to the United States and tried psychedelics for the first time. Not too long after that, he began practicing Zen Buddhism. He returned to a job he had earlier in his life at Atari. However, it was his friendship with Steve Wozniak that saw him start to make appreciable amounts of money. Steve Wozniak had developed something called a "blue box," which was a device that generated the tones necessary to "trick" a telephone network into letting someone make free long-distance calls. The blue box was a hit and once Steve Jobs decided to start selling them, he split all of the profits he made with Wozniak.The Beginning of Apple ComputerThe success of the blue box is partially what inspired Jobs to realize that he could eventually beat the massive computer companies at their own game, even though he lacked the substantial resources that they had.