What drives Jeff Bezos

It is pretty rare that a business leader changes the landscape of an industry but to do this not in one but about half-a-dozen different industries is legendary stuff.?

And Jeff Bezos is one such business leader.

Founder of Amazon.com and arguably the most influential business leader in the world today

Here is a unique combination of 4 extreme qualities that separate Jeff Bezos from ordinary mortals.

No.1: Obsession.

Once when young Jeff’s mother visited his school a teacher told her that Jeff was routinely engrossed in school activities.

So much so that at times his teacher had no choice but to pick up Jeff’s chair, with Jeff still in it, to get him away from what he was doing and on to the next classroom activity.

That was the extent of his obsession when he got interested in something.

Another peek into his obsessive personality can be seen in the name Bezos chose when he was about to start his business.

Type ‘Relentless.com’ into your web browser and see where it takes you. You guessed it; this is a domain owned by Jeff Bezos and takes you directly to Amazon.com

Relentless was what Jeff wanted to name his company when he was starting but then decided not to use it because some friends pointed out that it was not a name that would help sell books.

“Relentless” suggests someone or something that is single-minded, tenacious, and harsh.

Bezos later?settled on Amazon.

As the longest river in the world, it also expressed his ambition to create the earth’s biggest bookstore.

But Obsession without a big ambition can take you to pretty dark places and big ambitions demand…

‘Ability to take Big Risks’ is the second quality of Jeff Bezos which makes him what he is today.

Imagine if you happened to be the youngest Vice President in one of the most innovative hedge funds in the world.

What would your life look like?

A big house,

Fancy car,

A fat salary,

A lot of attention and

Opportunities for growth

This is the dream job of most intelligent and hardworking people after a long career. Isn’t it?

You would not want to take any risks and derail a fantastic career going smoothly.

But that’s not what Jeff Bezos did.

At the age of thirty, Bezos quit his high-paying job and took an entrepreneurial leap of faith.

Not only that he invested all his life savings into this “crazy idea of starting an online bookstore” which he thought had only a 30 percent chance of success.

It was at a time when there was no internet business, as it was still a means to send emails and read blogs online.

But it’s not just taking blind risks that make an entrepreneur successful, any fool can do that.?

It is this third quality that dramatically shifted the odds in favor of Jeff Bezos. And it was…

Seeing Opportunities when nobody else saw them

If you order anything online today it comes to you.

You get it right on your doorstep in under an hour or in a day or two depending on the thing you order.

We don’t feel surprised and jump in joy just to celebrate this fairly common thing.

But if I use a time machine to transport to you 1990s and then you get to tell people pretty soon they?can order anything online right from your bedroom & get it delivered, people will think you are some crazy madman.

That’s the genius of Jeff Bezos, looking at the crazy adoption of internet he was busy thinking what sort of business he can build to take advantage of this wild trend.

And this is just one in the series of similar decisions that made him to push for innovations when others were happy with the status quo.

Kindle,

Echo,

Amazon Web services

Drone delivery

Offline stores

Robot workers

Seeing new opportunities demands new ways of thinking and working which is possible for Bezos because he is a….

Learning machine

This is the 4th factor that makes Bezos the best in business.

His reputation of being on top of things is such that people presenting any business ideas to him have to assume that he already knows more than anybody else on the topic being presented.

This is because once he is interested in a topic he goes to great lengths to understand everything about it.

He can tell you about any part of his business process in such great detail as if he is the manager responsible for it.

This is possible because he learns like a machine and is always looking for ways to update himself with whatever helps him in accomplishing his goals.

So here is my list of the top 4 qualities which explain the rise and rise of Jeff Bezos.

Would you add any more reasons that I have missed?

Do let me know in the comments.?

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PS: Weekly Business Profile Series 1