As I’m writing this, I am trying to figure out why I’m not good buddies with Jeff Bezos after reading The 20 Smartest Things Jeff Bezos Has Ever Said; this is the concatenated business bible that everyone should follow – one way or another. Here are a few of my favs:
1.”All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.”
3. “Your margin is my opportunity.”
4. “If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.”
7. “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.”
8. “Any business plan won’t survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan.”
9. “In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.”
12. “We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.”
15. “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.”
16. “If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.”
17. “If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.”
20. “You want to look at what other companies are doing. It’s very important not to be hermetically sealed. But you don’t want to look at it as if, ‘OK, we’re going to copy that.’ You want to look at it and say, ‘That’s very interesting. What can we be inspired to do as a result of that?’ And then put your own unique twist on it.”
OK, maybe it’s not just a few, but everything that Jeff Bezos has said has been true; even after adding state tax, Amazon is still that successful business model to follow. Even if you sell only a few products and you follow only a few of the above rules, Bezos’ Method of Kaizen can help you and anyone else achieve their goals.
Thanks for your time.
Healing Thoughts,
Related Article: How To Pitch Jeff Bezos (And Other “Giant-Brained Aliens”)
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