The collected wisdom of Jeff Bezos.

Who do you admire and why?

For me, I am a big fan of #Bezos. Be it being responsive when you write to him with an idea or the clarity of his thinking and particularly his balanced approach to life, self regulation/self management.

You may also have read my post on how to manage meetings but here I have distilled his quotes which I think bring out the essence of the man.

my personal favourite is

• "If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy. And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy."

Leadership

• "We can't be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode."
• "The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it's so easy to be motivated."
• "If you make a decision with a 70% chance of being right, you're going to be wrong 30% of the time."
• "I believe in the power of wandering. All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts... not analysis."
• "A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last."
• "Great teams are not made from people who all think alike. You need a diversity of thought."
• "I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person."
• "My own view is that every company requires a long-term view."
• "Setting High Standards: I always tell people, if we have a good quarter it’s because of the work we did three, four, five years ago. It’s not because we did a good job this quarter."

Innovation

• "If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to double your inventiveness."
• "I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com. Literally."
• "What’s dangerous is not to evolve."
• "You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate."
• "Embracing Failure: I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com. Literally."
• "Future-Oriented: What’s dangerous is not to evolve."
• "Challenging the Status Quo: If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new."
• "Driving Innovation: We innovate by starting with the customer and working backward. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent."
• "Creative Thinking: I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."
• "Future-Focused Innovation: We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details..."

Customer Focus

• "The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth's most customer-centric company."
• "If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful."
• "Customer Obsession: We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better."
• "Meeting Needs: The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works."
• "Customer Obsession: You can have the best technology, you can have the best business model, but if the storytelling isn’t amazing, it won’t matter. Nobody will watch."
• "Customer Experience: We’re not really a retailer, we’re a customer service company."
• "Understanding Needs: We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards."
• "Exceeding Expectations: If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends."
• "Customer Loyalty: If you're truly obsessed about your customers, it will cover a lot of your other mistakes."

Risk-taking and Entrepreneurship

• "To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment."
• "One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."
• "Embracing Uncertainty: You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate."
• "Bold Moves: If you decide that you're going to do only the things you know are going to work, you're going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table."
• "Embracing Risk: To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment."
• "Visionary Thinking: Your margin is my opportunity."

Work-Life Balance

• "If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy. And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy."
• "Work hard, have fun, make history."
• "Life Choices: One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you."
• "Work-Life Harmony: I get asked about work-life balance all the time. That’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off."

Business Strategy

• "I very frequently get the question: 'What’s going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?'"
• "Your margin is my opportunity."
• "I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate."
• "To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment."

Personal Growth and Life Philosophy

• "Work hard, have fun, make history."
• "One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."
• "Find the things that you’re passionate about. Those are the things you’re going to do well."
• "I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com. Literally. You might remember Pets.com or Kozmo. None of those things worked. But we learned from each of those."
• "Balancing Life: The common question that gets asked in business is, 'why?' That's a good question, but an equally valid question is, 'why not?'"

Additional Insights

• "The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy."
• "If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve."
• "Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room."
• "If you decide that you're going to do only the things you know are going to work, you're going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table."
• "We can’t just look at short-term gains. We must be focused on the long term, and most importantly, on the long-term health of our customers and our business."
• "Part of company culture is path-dependent -- it’s the lessons you learn along the way."

If you are an entrepreneur looking to build a business you may find these thoughts motivating and relevant.

Decision Making

• "If you make a decision with a 70% chance of being right, you're going to be wrong 30% of the time."
• "The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy."

Managing Time/Energy

• "If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy. And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy."
• "Work-Life Harmony: I get asked about work-life balance all the time. That’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off."

Team Building

• "Great teams are not made from people who all think alike. You need a diversity of thought."
• "I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person."

Building a Culture

• "A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last."
• "Part of company culture is path-dependent -- it’s the lessons you learn along the way."
• "I always tell people, if we have a good quarter it’s because of the work we did three, four, five years ago. It’s not because we did a good job this quarter."

Entrepreneurship

• "To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment."
• "One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."
• "Embracing Risk: To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment."
• "Visionary Thinking: Your margin is my opportunity."

On regulations:

• "I think regulations are imperfect in every field, and I think by having a good partnership between the regulators and the companies, we can find regulations that do protect the customer, do protect individuals, but also allow companies to operate effectively."
• "Is it possible for big companies to be beloved? Absolutely it is. But they have to use their power and their scale for good, and they also have to be transparent and authentic and humble."

On bureaucracy:

• "In a large organisation, there will always be many problems, because at scale, humans create bureaucracy."
• "Communication is a sign of dysfunction. It means people aren't working together in a close, organic way. We should be trying to figure out a way for teams to communicate less with each other, not more."

On mistakes:

• "I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate."
• "If you decide that you're going to do only the things you know are going to work, you're going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table."
• "Failure and invention are inseparable twins."
• "I've made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com. Literally billions of dollars of failures."
• "Mistakes are a sign that the process is not fool-proof. They are not something to be avoided at all costs but embraced as the inevitable result of taking risks and trying new things. Without making mistakes, it is unlikely that you'll make breakthrough innovations."

Being Frugal

• "I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

For me, I think that entrepreneurship and frugality goes hand in hand, In a world where people think about raising large sums of money, I very much believe in the whole concept of being frugal as it focuses the mind. You can't spend your way out of a problem.

Not every venture has been a success but Bezos embraces and learns from failure. For example here are some examples of projects that didn't meet expectations.

• Fire Phone - Amazon's smartphone launched in 2014 and was meant to compete with Apple and Samsung devices. But it had lackluster sales and was priced too high. Amazon took a $170 million write-down on the Fire Phone.
• Amazon Auctions - Launched in 1999 as a competitor to eBay. It failed to gain traction and was shut down in 2002.
• WebPay - A PayPal competitor created by Amazon in the late 1990s. It failed to take off and was discontinued after just a few years.
• Amazon Destinations - A travel booking site launched by Amazon in 2015. It was intended to take on sites like Expedia but never gained momentum even after heavy promotion on the Amazon site. It was shuttered in 2019.
• Amazon Wallet - A digital wallet app introduced in 2014 but discontinued just a year later due to low adoption.
• Amazon Restaurants - A food delivery service Amazon tried expanding to several cities in the US. It shut down in 2019 after failing to compete with rivals like GrubHub and Uber Eats.
• Endless.com - A high-end fashion retail site Amazon launched in 2007 but closed in 2012 after failing to establish itself in the luxury space.
• Amazon Local Register - A credit card payment processing device meant to compete with Square. Discontinued in 2015 due to lack of merchant adoption.
• Askville - An online Q&A community launched by Amazon in 2007 and closed in 2013 after being overrun with spam and low-quality content.