I’ve made billions of dollars of
failures at amazon.com literally
billions of dollars of failures it’s
easy to have ideas it’s very hard to
turn an idea into a successful product
do something you’re very passionate
about and don’t try to chase what is
kind of the hot passion of the day he’s
best known as the founder chairman and
CEO of amazon.com he’s also the founder
of Blue Origin a human spaceflight
company he’s currently listed as a third
wealthiest person in the world with a
net worth of 70 2.8 billion dollars
he’s Jeff Bezos and here’s my take on
his top ten rules for success volume 2
also guys as you’re watching if you hear
something that really resonates with you
please leave it down the comments below
and put quotes around it to other people
can be inspired also when you write it
down it’s much more likely to lock in
for yourself as well
enjoy
my job one of my jobs as the leader of
Amazon is to encourage people to be bold
and people love to focus on things that
aren’t yet working and that’s good it’s
human nature that kind of divine
discontent can be very helpful but you
really you know it’s incredibly hard to
get people to take bold bets and you
need to encourage that and if you’re
going to take bold bets they’re going to
be experiments and if they’re
experiments you don’t know ahead of time
though they’re going to work
experiments are by their very nature
prone to failure but big successes a few
big successes compensate for dozens and
dozens of things that didn’t work so you
know bold bets AWS Kindle Amazon Prime
our 3rd party seller business all of
those things are examples of bold bets
that that did work and they pay for a
lot of experiments I’ve made billions of
dollars of failures at Amazon calm
literally billions of dollars of
failures and you know you might remember
pets calm or Cosmo or you know give
myself a root canal with no anesthesia
very easily none of those things are fun
but but they also they don’t matter what
really matters is companies that don’t
continue to experiment companies that
don’t embrace failure they eventually
get in the desperate position where they
only thing they can do is make a kind of
Hail Mary bet at the very end of their
corporate existence where as companies
that are you know making bets all along
even you know big bets but not bet the
company bets I don’t believe in bet the
company bets that’s when you’re
desperate that’s that’s the last thing
you can do we know from our past
experiences that big things start small
you know the biggest oak starts from an
acorn and you’ve got to recognize you
want to do anything new you’ve got to be
willing to let that acorn grow into a
little sapling
and finally into a small tree and maybe
one day it’ll be a big business on its
own in fact that’s one of the models for
one of your initiatives and forgive my
pronunciation of the Latin but Greta
team for Oct what does that mean to you
well it means step by step ferociously
and it’s the motto for Blue Origin and
basically you can’t skip steps you have
to put one foot in front of other things
take time
you there are no shortcuts and but but
you want to do those steps with you know
passion and ferocity
I think Prai our most important piece of
intellectual property is our brand name
and I think people and I think this is
very important for anybody who’s going
to start a company or market an
invention to understand is that brands
for companies are like reputations for
people and reputations are hard earned
and easily lost so the most important
intellectual property that a company can
have is for us it’s that it’s it’s it’s
Amazon it’s that name but what it stands
for we’ve worked very hard to earn trust
you can’t ask for trust you just have to
do it the hard way one step at a time
you make a promise and then fulfill the
promise you say we’ll deliver this to
you you know tomorrow and you actually
deliver it tomorrow okay and if you do
that over and over again then ultimately
you can instill your company’s name with
a reputation and that’s I think you know
sometimes people talk about brands in
this very amorphous way but for me I
like to think of it as a person and what
is the reputation that that person has
and how have they earned that reputation
I think stress you can be one of the
things that’s very important to note
about stress is the stress primarily
comes from not taking action over
something that you can have some control
over so if I find that some particular
thing is causing me to have stress
that’s a warning flag for me what it
means is
there’s something that I haven’t
completely identified perhaps in my
conscious mind that is bothering me and
I haven’t yet taken any action I find as
soon as I identify it and make the first
phone call or send off the first email
message or whatever it is that we’re
going to do to start to address that
situation even if it’s not solved the
mere fact that we’re addressing it
dramatically reduces any stress that
might come from it so stress comes from
ignoring things that you shouldn’t be
ignoring I think in large part so stress
doesn’t come people get stress wrong all
the time my opinion stress doesn’t come
from hard work for example you know you
can be working incredibly hard and
loving it and likewise you can be out of
work and incredibly stressed over that
so and likewise if you kind of use the
you know use that as an analogy for what
I was just talking about if you’re out
of work but you’re going through you
know a disciplined approach of you know
a series of job interviews and so on and
working to remedy that situation you’re
going to be a lot less stressed than if
you’re just worrying about it and doing
nothing if you’re giving great customer
experience there’s the only way to do
that is with happy people you can’t do
it with a set of miserable people you
know watching the clock all day so does
that include work-life balance and all
those things yes but I would I use I
teach three leadership classes a year at
Amazon I’m a part of it they’re bigger
classes but I come in and teach a
session and I always talk about
work-life balance except I like to use
the phrase work life harmony rather than
balance because to me balance implies a
strict trade whereas I find that when I
am happy at work I come home more
energized I’m a better husband better
dad and when I’m happy home I come in
and the better boss and
better colleague and so that that it’s
not you could be out of work and we have
terrible work-life balance you know even
though you’ve got all the time in the
world right you could just feel like oh
my god you know I’m miserable and you
would be draining energy and so you have
to find that harmony it’s a much better
word and I think for most people it’s
about meaning people want to know that
they’re doing something interesting and
useful and for us you know because of
the challenges that we have chosen for
ourselves we get to work in the future
and it’s super fun to work in the future
for the right kind of person it’s easy
to have ideas it’s very hard to turn an
idea into a successful product there are
a lot of steps in between it takes
persistence relentlessness so I always
tell people who are you know who think
they want to be entrepreneurs it’s you
need a combination of stubborn
relentlessness and flexibility and you
have to know when to bewitch and
basically you need to be stubborn on
your vision because otherwise it’ll be
too easy to give up but you need to be
very flexible on the details because as
you go along pursuing your vision you’ll
find that some of your preconceptions
were wrong and you’re going to need to
be able to change those things so I
think taking an idea successfully all
the way to the market and turning it
into a real product that people care
about and it really improves people’s
lives if a lot of hard work I had some
family role models and I had some other
people you know some sort of historical
role models that I looked at too so
certainly my my grandfather was a
serious role model for me I just had so
much time I you learn different things
from grandparents and you learn from
parents it’s a it’s a great I would
encourage anybody to try to spend time
not only with their parents but with
their grandparents and that but I and I
also had I to people I always would read
about and
or Thomas Edison and Walt Disney those
were sort of my – you know biographical
heroes I always been interested in in
inventors and invention and Edison of
course just you know for for a little
kid is the and probably for adults too I
still feel this way at least is that not
only the symbol of that but the actual
fact of that the just incredible
inventor and I’ve always felt that
there’s a certain kind of important
pioneering that goes on from an inventor
like Thomas Edison and then Disney was a
different sort of thing he also you know
real pioneer and an inventor and doing
new things but it seemed to me that he
had this incredible capability to create
a vision that he could get a large
number of people to share because the
things that Disney invented like
Disneyland you know the theme parks are
so and they were such big visions that
no single individual unlike a lot of the
things that Edison worked on no single
individual could never pull them off and
and Walt Disney really was able to get a
big team of people working in a
concerted direction I don’t really
remember the exact day or anything but
when I was in college is when I started
thinking about wanting to be an
entrepreneur someday so it was I was not
the kid with the lemonade stand you know
I didn’t I wasn’t one of these kids who
was always trying to race one I always
wanted to be a scientist when I was
little but I’d also always loved
computers I liked I was lucky because at
my age this is unusual to have access to
a mainframe computer from my elementary
school when I was in fourth grade and
quickly learned that there was a
pre-programmed star trek game on that
computer and then I never did anything
except play Star Trek with the computer
so I know how formative that was
certainly led
it’s really helped my Star Trek
knowledge considerably and and but I’ve
always loved computers somewhere in
college I started watching some of the
people who are like setting up you know
college pizza delivery services and you
know the kind of the core entrepreneurs
and thinking you know this looks like a
really fun thing to do
are you some very rare I
that can be done by a single individual
almost everything that is going to
change the world solve a problem improve
something these are usually big efforts
and they require you know teams a team
working together to really get something
important done and that has been the
story of amazon.com every step along the
way we’ve had a team here that is is
making this work I mean I don’t know
even even at the smallest scale you have
to figure out how to get help from your
friends from your family members from
people that you can hire in those early
days I think without that we would never
work
do something you’re very passionate
about and don’t try to chase what is
kind of the hot passion of the day I
think we actually saw this I think you
see it all over the place in many
different contexts so I think we saw it
in the internet world quite a bit where
you know it’s sort of peak of the sort
of Internet of you know mania and say
1999 you found people who were you know
very passionate I mean they kind of left
that job and decided I’m going to you
know do something in the internet
because it’s you know it was almost like
the you know the 18-49 Gold Rush in a
way I mean you find that people you
could go back and stay to the history of
the 18-49 Gold Rush you find that you
know at that time everybody who was in
within shouting distance of California
was you know they might have been a
doctor but they quit being a doctor and
they started panning for gold and that
that almost never works and even if it
does work you know according to some
metric financial success or whatever
might be I suspect it leaves you
ultimately unsatisfied so you really
need to be very clear with yourself and
I think one of the best ways to do that
is this notion of projecting yourself
forward to age 80 looking back on your
life and trying to make sure you
minimize the number of regrets you have
that works for that work for career
decisions it works for family decisions
you know do you want I have a 14 month
old son and it’s very easy for me to if
I think about myself when I’m 80 I know
I want to watch that little guy grow up
and so it’s I don’t want to be 80 and
think shoot you know I missed that whole
thing and I don’t have the kind of
relationship with my son that I wished I
had and so on and so on so if you think
about that so I guess another thing that
I would recommend to people is that they
always take a long term point of view
and I think this is something about
which there’s a lot of controversy you
know there’s a there’s a you know
something a lot of people and I’m just
not one of them believe that you should
live for the now I think what you do is
you think about the the great expanse of
time ahead of you and try to make sure
that you’re planning for that in a way
that’s going to leave you ultimately
satisfied so this is just my this is the
way it works for me and I mean this is
everybody needs to find that for
themselves so I think there are a lot of
paths to satisfaction and you need to
find one that works works for you
thank you guys so much for watching I’d
love to know what did you think of this
video and in general what do you think
of our volume 2 series leave it down in
the comments below I’m super curious to
find out what you have to say also I’d
love to learn what did you take from
this video what did you learn from Jeff
today which clip residents and most with
you and what are you going to
immediately apply to your life or your
business somehow please leave it down in
the comments and I’m going to join in
the discussion finally and with the
quick chair that the Carolyn Owens thank
you so much Carolyn for picking up a
copy of my book year one word and
posting a picture of it on Twitter I
really really really appreciate the
support and I hope you’re enjoying the
read so thank you guys so much for
watching I believe in you I hope you
continue to believe in yourself and
whatever your one word is much love I’ll
see you soon
– – speech that you don’t like about
yourself as a public figure is to
develop a thick skin it’s really the
only effective defense because you can’t
stop it and you know your are going to
be misunderstood if you’re doing
anything interesting in the world you’re
going to have critics the only way if
you absolutely can’t tolerate critics so
don’t do anything new or interesting and
then you can insulate yourself then
think how wonderful your life will get
the Bezos yeah usually people when you
if you see something I don’t know you’re
kind of a public figure and you’ve
probably things have probably been
written about you that you didn’t think
we’re nice that’s true and and in my
advice if you came to me and said
justice you know somebody wrote this and
it really hurt my feelings what should I
do
I would say go stand on a street corner
and watch in a crowded urban area and
watch all the people walk by and think
about what they’re thinking about I bet
you none of those people are thinking
about you if you’re stay on that street
corner and really in your mind you can
do this thought experiment like okay
there’s a woman who just walked by
what’s she actually thinking about
probably what might may be what she’s
going to cook for dinner that night or
that the argument that she had with one
of her employees or whatever it is like
it’s not about us a lot of small book
publishers and other smaller companies
worried that the power of Amazon give
them no chance you’ve got to earn your
keep in this world when you invent
something new if customers come to the
party it’s disruptive to the old way
yeah but I mean there are areas where
your power is so great and your margin
you’re prepared to make it so thin that
you can drive people out of business and
you have that kind of drink and people
worried is Amazon ruthless in their
pursuit of market share the Internet is
disrupting every media industry charlie
you know people can complain about that
but complaining is not a strategy amazon
is not happening to book selling the
future is happening to book selling
failures at amazon.com literally
billions of dollars of failures it’s
easy to have ideas it’s very hard to
turn an idea into a successful product
do something you’re very passionate
about and don’t try to chase what is
kind of the hot passion of the day he’s
best known as the founder chairman and
CEO of amazon.com he’s also the founder
of Blue Origin a human spaceflight
company he’s currently listed as a third
wealthiest person in the world with a
net worth of 70 2.8 billion dollars
he’s Jeff Bezos and here’s my take on
his top ten rules for success volume 2
also guys as you’re watching if you hear
something that really resonates with you
please leave it down the comments below
and put quotes around it to other people
can be inspired also when you write it
down it’s much more likely to lock in
for yourself as well
enjoy
my job one of my jobs as the leader of
Amazon is to encourage people to be bold
and people love to focus on things that
aren’t yet working and that’s good it’s
human nature that kind of divine
discontent can be very helpful but you
really you know it’s incredibly hard to
get people to take bold bets and you
need to encourage that and if you’re
going to take bold bets they’re going to
be experiments and if they’re
experiments you don’t know ahead of time
though they’re going to work
experiments are by their very nature
prone to failure but big successes a few
big successes compensate for dozens and
dozens of things that didn’t work so you
know bold bets AWS Kindle Amazon Prime
our 3rd party seller business all of
those things are examples of bold bets
that that did work and they pay for a
lot of experiments I’ve made billions of
dollars of failures at Amazon calm
literally billions of dollars of
failures and you know you might remember
pets calm or Cosmo or you know give
myself a root canal with no anesthesia
very easily none of those things are fun
but but they also they don’t matter what
really matters is companies that don’t
continue to experiment companies that
don’t embrace failure they eventually
get in the desperate position where they
only thing they can do is make a kind of
Hail Mary bet at the very end of their
corporate existence where as companies
that are you know making bets all along
even you know big bets but not bet the
company bets I don’t believe in bet the
company bets that’s when you’re
desperate that’s that’s the last thing
you can do we know from our past
experiences that big things start small
you know the biggest oak starts from an
acorn and you’ve got to recognize you
want to do anything new you’ve got to be
willing to let that acorn grow into a
little sapling
and finally into a small tree and maybe
one day it’ll be a big business on its
own in fact that’s one of the models for
one of your initiatives and forgive my
pronunciation of the Latin but Greta
team for Oct what does that mean to you
well it means step by step ferociously
and it’s the motto for Blue Origin and
basically you can’t skip steps you have
to put one foot in front of other things
take time
you there are no shortcuts and but but
you want to do those steps with you know
passion and ferocity
I think Prai our most important piece of
intellectual property is our brand name
and I think people and I think this is
very important for anybody who’s going
to start a company or market an
invention to understand is that brands
for companies are like reputations for
people and reputations are hard earned
and easily lost so the most important
intellectual property that a company can
have is for us it’s that it’s it’s it’s
Amazon it’s that name but what it stands
for we’ve worked very hard to earn trust
you can’t ask for trust you just have to
do it the hard way one step at a time
you make a promise and then fulfill the
promise you say we’ll deliver this to
you you know tomorrow and you actually
deliver it tomorrow okay and if you do
that over and over again then ultimately
you can instill your company’s name with
a reputation and that’s I think you know
sometimes people talk about brands in
this very amorphous way but for me I
like to think of it as a person and what
is the reputation that that person has
and how have they earned that reputation
I think stress you can be one of the
things that’s very important to note
about stress is the stress primarily
comes from not taking action over
something that you can have some control
over so if I find that some particular
thing is causing me to have stress
that’s a warning flag for me what it
means is
there’s something that I haven’t
completely identified perhaps in my
conscious mind that is bothering me and
I haven’t yet taken any action I find as
soon as I identify it and make the first
phone call or send off the first email
message or whatever it is that we’re
going to do to start to address that
situation even if it’s not solved the
mere fact that we’re addressing it
dramatically reduces any stress that
might come from it so stress comes from
ignoring things that you shouldn’t be
ignoring I think in large part so stress
doesn’t come people get stress wrong all
the time my opinion stress doesn’t come
from hard work for example you know you
can be working incredibly hard and
loving it and likewise you can be out of
work and incredibly stressed over that
so and likewise if you kind of use the
you know use that as an analogy for what
I was just talking about if you’re out
of work but you’re going through you
know a disciplined approach of you know
a series of job interviews and so on and
working to remedy that situation you’re
going to be a lot less stressed than if
you’re just worrying about it and doing
nothing if you’re giving great customer
experience there’s the only way to do
that is with happy people you can’t do
it with a set of miserable people you
know watching the clock all day so does
that include work-life balance and all
those things yes but I would I use I
teach three leadership classes a year at
Amazon I’m a part of it they’re bigger
classes but I come in and teach a
session and I always talk about
work-life balance except I like to use
the phrase work life harmony rather than
balance because to me balance implies a
strict trade whereas I find that when I
am happy at work I come home more
energized I’m a better husband better
dad and when I’m happy home I come in
and the better boss and
better colleague and so that that it’s
not you could be out of work and we have
terrible work-life balance you know even
though you’ve got all the time in the
world right you could just feel like oh
my god you know I’m miserable and you
would be draining energy and so you have
to find that harmony it’s a much better
word and I think for most people it’s
about meaning people want to know that
they’re doing something interesting and
useful and for us you know because of
the challenges that we have chosen for
ourselves we get to work in the future
and it’s super fun to work in the future
for the right kind of person it’s easy
to have ideas it’s very hard to turn an
idea into a successful product there are
a lot of steps in between it takes
persistence relentlessness so I always
tell people who are you know who think
they want to be entrepreneurs it’s you
need a combination of stubborn
relentlessness and flexibility and you
have to know when to bewitch and
basically you need to be stubborn on
your vision because otherwise it’ll be
too easy to give up but you need to be
very flexible on the details because as
you go along pursuing your vision you’ll
find that some of your preconceptions
were wrong and you’re going to need to
be able to change those things so I
think taking an idea successfully all
the way to the market and turning it
into a real product that people care
about and it really improves people’s
lives if a lot of hard work I had some
family role models and I had some other
people you know some sort of historical
role models that I looked at too so
certainly my my grandfather was a
serious role model for me I just had so
much time I you learn different things
from grandparents and you learn from
parents it’s a it’s a great I would
encourage anybody to try to spend time
not only with their parents but with
their grandparents and that but I and I
also had I to people I always would read
about and
or Thomas Edison and Walt Disney those
were sort of my – you know biographical
heroes I always been interested in in
inventors and invention and Edison of
course just you know for for a little
kid is the and probably for adults too I
still feel this way at least is that not
only the symbol of that but the actual
fact of that the just incredible
inventor and I’ve always felt that
there’s a certain kind of important
pioneering that goes on from an inventor
like Thomas Edison and then Disney was a
different sort of thing he also you know
real pioneer and an inventor and doing
new things but it seemed to me that he
had this incredible capability to create
a vision that he could get a large
number of people to share because the
things that Disney invented like
Disneyland you know the theme parks are
so and they were such big visions that
no single individual unlike a lot of the
things that Edison worked on no single
individual could never pull them off and
and Walt Disney really was able to get a
big team of people working in a
concerted direction I don’t really
remember the exact day or anything but
when I was in college is when I started
thinking about wanting to be an
entrepreneur someday so it was I was not
the kid with the lemonade stand you know
I didn’t I wasn’t one of these kids who
was always trying to race one I always
wanted to be a scientist when I was
little but I’d also always loved
computers I liked I was lucky because at
my age this is unusual to have access to
a mainframe computer from my elementary
school when I was in fourth grade and
quickly learned that there was a
pre-programmed star trek game on that
computer and then I never did anything
except play Star Trek with the computer
so I know how formative that was
certainly led
it’s really helped my Star Trek
knowledge considerably and and but I’ve
always loved computers somewhere in
college I started watching some of the
people who are like setting up you know
college pizza delivery services and you
know the kind of the core entrepreneurs
and thinking you know this looks like a
really fun thing to do
are you some very rare I
that can be done by a single individual
almost everything that is going to
change the world solve a problem improve
something these are usually big efforts
and they require you know teams a team
working together to really get something
important done and that has been the
story of amazon.com every step along the
way we’ve had a team here that is is
making this work I mean I don’t know
even even at the smallest scale you have
to figure out how to get help from your
friends from your family members from
people that you can hire in those early
days I think without that we would never
work
do something you’re very passionate
about and don’t try to chase what is
kind of the hot passion of the day I
think we actually saw this I think you
see it all over the place in many
different contexts so I think we saw it
in the internet world quite a bit where
you know it’s sort of peak of the sort
of Internet of you know mania and say
1999 you found people who were you know
very passionate I mean they kind of left
that job and decided I’m going to you
know do something in the internet
because it’s you know it was almost like
the you know the 18-49 Gold Rush in a
way I mean you find that people you
could go back and stay to the history of
the 18-49 Gold Rush you find that you
know at that time everybody who was in
within shouting distance of California
was you know they might have been a
doctor but they quit being a doctor and
they started panning for gold and that
that almost never works and even if it
does work you know according to some
metric financial success or whatever
might be I suspect it leaves you
ultimately unsatisfied so you really
need to be very clear with yourself and
I think one of the best ways to do that
is this notion of projecting yourself
forward to age 80 looking back on your
life and trying to make sure you
minimize the number of regrets you have
that works for that work for career
decisions it works for family decisions
you know do you want I have a 14 month
old son and it’s very easy for me to if
I think about myself when I’m 80 I know
I want to watch that little guy grow up
and so it’s I don’t want to be 80 and
think shoot you know I missed that whole
thing and I don’t have the kind of
relationship with my son that I wished I
had and so on and so on so if you think
about that so I guess another thing that
I would recommend to people is that they
always take a long term point of view
and I think this is something about
which there’s a lot of controversy you
know there’s a there’s a you know
something a lot of people and I’m just
not one of them believe that you should
live for the now I think what you do is
you think about the the great expanse of
time ahead of you and try to make sure
that you’re planning for that in a way
that’s going to leave you ultimately
satisfied so this is just my this is the
way it works for me and I mean this is
everybody needs to find that for
themselves so I think there are a lot of
paths to satisfaction and you need to
find one that works works for you
thank you guys so much for watching I’d
love to know what did you think of this
video and in general what do you think
of our volume 2 series leave it down in
the comments below I’m super curious to
find out what you have to say also I’d
love to learn what did you take from
this video what did you learn from Jeff
today which clip residents and most with
you and what are you going to
immediately apply to your life or your
business somehow please leave it down in
the comments and I’m going to join in
the discussion finally and with the
quick chair that the Carolyn Owens thank
you so much Carolyn for picking up a
copy of my book year one word and
posting a picture of it on Twitter I
really really really appreciate the
support and I hope you’re enjoying the
read so thank you guys so much for
watching I believe in you I hope you
continue to believe in yourself and
whatever your one word is much love I’ll
see you soon
– – speech that you don’t like about
yourself as a public figure is to
develop a thick skin it’s really the
only effective defense because you can’t
stop it and you know your are going to
be misunderstood if you’re doing
anything interesting in the world you’re
going to have critics the only way if
you absolutely can’t tolerate critics so
don’t do anything new or interesting and
then you can insulate yourself then
think how wonderful your life will get
the Bezos yeah usually people when you
if you see something I don’t know you’re
kind of a public figure and you’ve
probably things have probably been
written about you that you didn’t think
we’re nice that’s true and and in my
advice if you came to me and said
justice you know somebody wrote this and
it really hurt my feelings what should I
do
I would say go stand on a street corner
and watch in a crowded urban area and
watch all the people walk by and think
about what they’re thinking about I bet
you none of those people are thinking
about you if you’re stay on that street
corner and really in your mind you can
do this thought experiment like okay
there’s a woman who just walked by
what’s she actually thinking about
probably what might may be what she’s
going to cook for dinner that night or
that the argument that she had with one
of her employees or whatever it is like
it’s not about us a lot of small book
publishers and other smaller companies
worried that the power of Amazon give
them no chance you’ve got to earn your
keep in this world when you invent
something new if customers come to the
party it’s disruptive to the old way
yeah but I mean there are areas where
your power is so great and your margin
you’re prepared to make it so thin that
you can drive people out of business and
you have that kind of drink and people
worried is Amazon ruthless in their
pursuit of market share the Internet is
disrupting every media industry charlie
you know people can complain about that
but complaining is not a strategy amazon
is not happening to book selling the
future is happening to book selling
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