🕴️The G of the Week: Jeff Bezos

Welcome to The G of the Week

A quick yet insightful look into one badass person we can all learn from.

This week's G is Jeff Bezos.

What Makes Jeff Interesting?

He founded Amazon in 1994, and almost 30 years later, the company is the largest online sales company in the world.

What Can You Learn From Jeff?

Here are the two key lessons we can learn from the founder of Amazon:

1. Regret minimization framework.

Jeff was one of the top guys at a large New York-based investment banking firm.

He was making the big bucks.

But when he saw the growth of the Internet, he wondered whether or not to quit his job to start a company.

Faced with this decision, Jeff used the "regret minimization framework."

He pictured himself as 80 years old and asked himself:

"Would I regret missing out on this opportunity?"

He concluded that he would not regret leaving his job to start a company, which was the right decision.

2. Stubborn on the vision, flexible on the details.

Jeff's vision for Amazon was and still is "to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices."

First of all, that's an epic vision statement.

Second, when building Amazon, he would be stubborn about that vision.

Otherwise, he would give up.

But when pursuing that vision, Jeff would be flexible because he has more information as he moves forward.

Or, as one modern philosopher said, "The more you f*ck around, the more you find out."

Jeff's Words of Wisdom:

• “If we think long term, we can accomplish things we wouldn’t otherwise accomplish.”

• “Amazon is not too big to fail. If we start to focus on ourselves instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end.”

• "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?" And I submit to you that the second question is actually the more important of the two - because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want a vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, " Jeff, I love Amazon' I just wish the prices were a little higher" [or] "I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly. Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long-term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it."

That's all for this week.

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