Jeff Bezos: Super U Podcast
Our new episode of the Super U Podcast is live! The Super U Podcast delivers curated tips from top performers and thought leaders to help unlock and unleash your inner superpower. This week’s episode features tips from Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.
Click here to subscribe to the Super U Podcast. Need a sneak peek? Below is the Super U Podcast: Jeff Bezos, as well as Erik’s main takeaways.
[1:18] Episode Introduction — Welcoming Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is the CEO and founder of Amazon, which was founded in July 1994. During the first ten years, the company didn’t make money. Now, Bezos is the richest man in the world, worth an estimated $137B.
[1:58] Minimize Regrets
Bezos created Amazon, originally an online book store, after imagining himself at 80 years old and realizing that if he didn’t start the company, he’d regret it. Most of the time, our biggest regrets are acts of omission or paths not taken. Bezos dismisses the notion that entrepreneurs must hate their job in order to take a chance and start something new. Bezos loved his job but knew that Amazon was a risk worth taking. Taking a leap of faith is not easy, but neglecting opportunities leaves you with a 100% chance of regret.
[6:25] Bold Bets
Bezos encourages the audience to take bold bets. Bezos admits his failures have amounted to billions of dollars. Nevertheless, with experiments, big success compensates for failure. Amazon’s Prime and Kindle features are great examples of success. Other companies, like Google, believe in the power of experiment; Google devotes 20% of each employee’s time to experimentation. This combats the idea that the bigger a company gets, the harder it becomes for employees to make bold bets.
[9:34] Brand Name
A brand name is a company’s most important piece of intellectual property. Brands for companies are like reputations for people. They are easy to ruin and take work to develop. Erik Qualman emphasizes this in his book, What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube. Privacy is dead. Upholding a good reputation is essential for companies today since integrity and reputation are one in the same. Personal and company branding is everything.
[12:18] Culture at Amazon
Amazon’s employees are missionaries of great customer experience. Bezos’ employees experience “work-life harmony.” Many thought leaders use the term “work-life harmony,” because everything is hyper-connected in today’s world. If employees are happy at work, they are happy at home and vice-versa. Being satisfied in a job comes from finding meaning in work.
[15:34] Minimize Stress: Take Action
Stress comes from ignoring things that shouldn’t be ignored. Bezos encourages us to sit down and identity where fear is coming from so we can tackle it. We should take action when we can. Merely addressing a situation, even if we don’t completely solve it, can help mitigate stress.
[20:30] Failure Is Inevitable
If you know in advance something isn’t going to work, it’s not an experiment. Failure and experimenting are twins! Bezos says that if you have a 10% chance of a 100% return, you should take it every time, even if you’re wrong 9 times out of 10. In baseball, if you swing for the fences, you hit more home runs but strike out more as well. However, the baseball analogy is limited because the success is capped at four runs. In business, you can have thousands of runs. Always swing.
[22:18] Pioneers Get Pushback
Pushback is a signal that we are pioneering. When we aren’t getting pushback, we are likely to become the disrupted instead of the disruptor. Embrace it!
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Take a look at behind-the-scenes footage on our <<Equalman YouTube Channel>>
