Jeff Bezos Advice For young Entrepreneurs

Summary

The speaker emphasizes the importance of choosing a life of service and adventure over ease and comfort, suggesting that one's legacy of improvement and customer obsession is more fulfilling. They advocate for learning from customer feedback to address root causes of issues, maintaining a nimble 'day one' culture even as a company grows, and the value of long-term thinking in business. The transcript also highlights the Amazonian principles of customer obsession, invention, and operational excellence as the foundation of their success.

Takeaways

• 😀 **Life Choices**: The speaker emphasizes the importance of choosing a life of service and adventure over ease and comfort, suggesting that one's legacy of pride at 90 years old hinges on such choices.
• 🔧 **Continuous Improvement**: The message that no matter how good one is, there is always room for improvement is a recurring theme, encouraging a mindset of perpetual betterment.
• 👂 **Listening to Customers**: The speaker highlights the value of customer feedback, especially the 'divine discontent' it represents, as a tool for identifying and addressing systemic issues.
• 🔍 **Root Cause Analysis**: A key takeaway is the necessity of not just addressing symptoms but finding and fixing the root causes of problems to prevent their recurrence.
• 💼 **Work-Life Balance**: The idea that one should strive to enjoy at least half of their work life is presented, acknowledging that every job comes with undesirable aspects.
• 🧘 **Stress Management**: The speaker advises on delegating stress and setting up life to minimize disliked activities, advocating for the importance of control over one's environment and time.
• 🚀 **Entrepreneurial Spirit**: Maintaining a 'day one' culture of agility and entrepreneurial spirit, even as a company scales, is identified as crucial for innovation and operational success.
• 💡 **Invention and Creativity**: The script stresses the importance of invention over imitation, aiming to offer something better to customers by putting a unique twist on existing solutions.
• 🏆 **Proud of Earned Achievements**: The speaker differentiates between celebrating gifts, which are unearned, and taking pride in achievements that result from personal effort and choices.
• 🌐 **Global Impact**: The transcript touches on the benefits of scale and scope, such as robustness and the ability to take punches, while also advocating for nimbleness.
• 📈 **Long-Term Thinking**: Ownership and long-term thinking are linked, with the speaker urging a focus on the fundamentals of the business rather than short-term stock price fluctuations.

Q & A

What are the two life paths suggested for personal fulfillment?

The script suggests choosing between a life of ease and comfort or a life of service and adventure, implying that the latter may lead to greater pride when reflecting upon one's life at an older age.

What is the importance of always striving to be better, according to the speaker?

The speaker emphasizes the importance of continuous self-improvement, suggesting that no matter how good one is, there is always room for growth and becoming better.

How does the speaker suggest using customer feedback to improve operations?

The speaker advises to listen to customers, especially their discontent, to identify patterns and root causes of issues. By understanding what went wrong, one can fix the system to prevent the same problem from happening again.

What is the speaker's perspective on the inevitability of job-related dissatisfaction?

The speaker believes that every job comes with aspects that one may not like, and it's important to accept this reality rather than resenting these parts of the job.

What advice does the speaker give regarding work-life balance and stress for senior executives?

The speaker suggests that senior executives should aim to minimize stress by delegating effectively and setting up their lives to maintain a balance, avoiding being over-scheduled.

Why does the speaker argue that hard work is not necessarily disliked by people?

The speaker argues that people do not necessarily dislike hard work; rather, they dislike a lack of control over their lives and environment, which can lead to stress and dissatisfaction.

What is the speaker's advice for young people starting their careers?

The speaker advises young people to find something they are passionate about and to focus on their choices rather than their innate gifts, as it is their choices that shape their lives.

What is the core principle of Amazon's culture according to the speaker?

The core principle of Amazon's culture, as mentioned by the speaker, is customer obsession, which is prioritized over competitor obsession and underlies everything they do.

How does the speaker describe the challenge of maintaining a 'Day One' culture as a company grows?

The speaker describes the challenge as maintaining nimbleness and entrepreneurial spirit despite the scale and scope of a large company, emphasizing the importance of avoiding bureaucracy and keeping decision-making processes lightweight.

What is the speaker's view on the relationship between stock price fluctuations and intelligence?

The speaker humorously suggests that one should not feel smarter when the stock price is up or dumber when it's down, emphasizing the importance of focusing on the fundamentals of the business rather than daily stock price changes.

What are the key elements of Amazon's culture that the speaker highlights?

The speaker highlights genuine customer obsession, a focus on invention, a willingness to think long-term, and operational excellence as the key elements of Amazon's culture.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Embracing a Life of Service and Continuous Improvement

The speaker encourages choosing a life of service and adventure over ease and comfort, suggesting that one's legacy of improvement and customer service will be a source of pride in old age. They emphasize the importance of listening to customer feedback to identify systemic issues and fix them at the root cause, rather than just addressing symptoms. The speaker also discusses the inevitability of job-related overheads and the importance of not resenting these aspects of work. They advise against over-scheduling oneself to maintain control and freedom, and highlight the importance of passion in one's work for achieving greatness.

05:04

🎓 The Significance of Choices Over Gifts in Shaping Life

This paragraph delves into the difference between innate gifts and the choices that truly shape one's life. The speaker advises not to be overly proud of one's gifts, as they are unearned, but to take pride in achievements that result from effort and choices. They reflect on their own journey, realizing that being a good student was a gift, not something to be proud of, and that true pride comes from challenging oneself and stepping out of comfort zones. The speaker also touches on Amazon's core values, particularly customer obsession, which is critical to maintaining a 'Day One' culture of innovation and agility, even as the company scales.

10:05

🛠 Cultivating a Culture of Long-Term Thinking and Operational Excellence

The speaker discusses the importance of maintaining a 'Day One' mentality at Amazon, which includes a focus on customer obsession, invention, and long-term thinking. They address the challenges of scaling a company while retaining its entrepreneurial spirit and nimbleness. The speaker warns against treating every decision as irreversible and emphasizes the need for maintaining quick decision-making velocity. They also stress the importance of ownership mentality, where employees take care of the company as if it were their own, and the focus on fundamentals over short-term stock price fluctuations. The paragraph concludes with a reiteration of Amazon's commitment to customer-centric innovation and operational excellence.

Keywords

💡Ease and Comfort

This concept refers to a lifestyle choice that prioritizes simplicity and minimal stress, often associated with a lack of challenges or risks. In the video, it is juxtaposed with a life of service and adventure, suggesting that while ease and comfort might be appealing, they may not lead to the same level of personal pride or fulfillment as a life dedicated to serving others and seeking new experiences.

💡Service and Adventure

Service and adventure represent a life path characterized by dedication to helping others and seeking out new challenges. The speaker implies that this path, as opposed to one of ease and comfort, is more likely to elicit a sense of pride when reflecting back on one's life, especially in old age.

💡Customer Obsession

Customer obsession is a core value emphasized in the script, indicating a company's relentless focus on customer needs and satisfaction above all else. It is contrasted with competitor obsession, suggesting that a customer-centric approach is more sustainable and effective in the long run. The speaker uses this term to underline Amazon's commitment to understanding and exceeding customer expectations.

💡Divine Discontent

Divine discontent refers to the perpetual dissatisfaction of customers, which is seen as a driving force for improvement. The speaker mentions this concept to highlight the importance of always striving to do better and to innovate in response to customer feedback, even when the feedback is negative or critical.

💡Root Cause

Identifying the root cause involves looking beyond the immediate symptoms of a problem to understand its underlying origins. The speaker discusses this in the context of using customer feedback to find and address the fundamental issues within a system, ensuring that problems are resolved comprehensively rather than just superficially.

💡Operational Success

Operational success is the achievement of efficient and effective processes within an organization. The speaker credits the company's focus on addressing root causes and continuous improvement, as driven by customer feedback, as the secret to their sustained operational success over two decades.

💡Overhead

Overhead refers to the necessary but often less enjoyable aspects of a job or task. The speaker uses this term to acknowledge that every job comes with elements that are not inherently fulfilling, and the key is to manage and minimize these aspects without resenting them.

💡Stress Delegation

Stress delegation is the concept of distributing responsibilities to reduce individual stress, especially for those in leadership positions. The speaker suggests that CEOs and senior executives should delegate effectively to maintain a balanced and less stressful work life.

💡Day One Culture

Day One culture represents the entrepreneurial spirit and agility associated with the early days of a company. The speaker discusses the importance of preserving this culture even as a company grows and scales, to avoid becoming bureaucratic and to maintain the speed and inventiveness of decision-making.

💡Invention

Invention, in the context of the video, is the drive to create new and improved offerings that are not just copies of what already exists. The speaker emphasizes the need for Amazon to innovate and offer pioneering products or services that provide clear benefits to customers over existing alternatives.

💡Long-Term Thinking

Long-term thinking is the practice of making decisions and planning with a focus on the distant future rather than immediate gains. The speaker connects this concept with the mentality of ownership, where one takes a more enduring approach to business decisions, considering the fundamentals rather than short-term stock price fluctuations.

Highlights

The choice between a life of ease and comfort or a life of service and adventure, and the pride one feels at 90 reflecting on their life choices.

The importance of continuous self-improvement and the concept that no matter how good we are, there's always room for being better.

The value of customer feedback, especially in identifying systemic issues that need addressing to prevent future problems.

The distinction between fixing symptoms versus addressing root causes to ensure long-term operational success.

The reality of work-life balance and the overhead that comes with every job, suggesting a realistic approach to job satisfaction.

The delegating of stress in leadership roles and the importance of setting up a life to minimize stress.

The dislike of being out of control and the importance of having freedom of movement in one's schedule.

The advice for young professionals to find passion in their work and the difficulty of achieving greatness without it.

The emphasis on making choices rather than relying on innate gifts, as it is the choices that construct one's life.

The Amazon core value of customer obsession over competitor obsession and its impact on long-term business success.

The challenge of maintaining a 'Day One' culture with the scale and scope of a large company like Amazon.

The importance of decision-making velocity and avoiding heavyweight processes that can slow it down.

The concept of ownership in business, including the mentality of long-term thinking and its benefits.

The focus on fundamentals of the business rather than daily stock price fluctuations to ensure sustainable growth.

The Amazon culture of invention, aiming to offer pioneering products and services that improve customer experience.

The value of operational excellence in reducing defects and its role in maintaining Amazon's customer-centric approach.

The emphasis on maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit alongside the advantages of scale and scope in a large organization.

Transcripts

you can choose a life of ease and

comfort or you can choose a life of

service and adventure which one of those

when you're 90 years old are you going

to be more proud of

good a guy like you no matter how good

we are we can still be better you can

always be better customers have a divine

discontent and they teach you if you

listen to customers so we watch for that

and you see pattern so we can find

places where it's not working

something's going wrong and that's

really how I get the feedback is from

customer input and often you know on all

caps angry

you ruined my child's birthday because

the gif didn't show up on time and we

take that and what you really want to do

is you take that it's an anecdote it's a

single example but you need to find the

root cause what went wrong deep inside

the system how did this happen because

then you can fix it for everyone so that

that particular problem will never

happen again

you don't just fix the symptom you have

to fix the root cause and that's been

the secret to our operational success

for 20 years a guy like you there are a

lot of things that are a waste of time

you know and you think about your life I

think I often tell people that I work

with if you can get because people

people have very high standards for how

they want their work life to be and and

I said look if you can get your work

life to be where you enjoy half of it

that is a home that is amazing because

very few people ever achieve that

because the truth is everything comes

with overhead that's reality everything

comes with pieces that you don't like

you could be a Supreme Court justice and

there's still gonna be pieces of your

job you don't like you can be a

university professor and it's still

going to be Peter if to go to committee

meetings and you have to do thing you

know there every job comes with pieces

you don't like and we need to say that's

just how that's part of it and and and

not resent those pieces or try not to

but also try to minimize them I tell

senior executives you should have the

least stress you know there's this weird

I think false

idea that CEOs I'm a CEO there's this

false idea that CEOs are under the most

stress well I look at like why you're in

charge

why don't you delegate the stress

it's your choice and so it's you have to

figure out how to set up your life in

such a way that you can minimize the

things and I find people don't dislike

hard work but people dislike and what is

being out of control like they can't

control their life they can't control

their environment this happens to me

when I get over scheduled

I hate being over scheduled I want some

time to be able to think and free myself

we all have the same amount of time in

the world nobody has more time than

anybody else and when you become a very

successful person one of the things you

start to get over scheduled you have

this event you had to agree to do this

and maybe last night you were like why

didn't I agree to do this I have to go

on stage tomorrow

I wish I were really with my family and

you know or I hope maybe not this case

let's say that you like this one but in

general that kind of thing happens and

so you have to guard your time and and

try to save a little bit flexible so

that's for me it's not a waste of time

but I like to have some freedom of

movement rather than having every minute

of every day

scheduled a guy like you so a young

person starting their career I think

they're probably a lot of things that

some of them are very well known and

people have heard that many times

they're still true one of those that you

should always focus on a young person

should find something that they're

passionate about to do and that's not

gonna surprise anyone it's a clear thing

to do it's very hard if you don't love

your work you're never going to be great

at it

I think the other thing I would suggest

too

any young person even before they start

their career is to really think about

their choices because I find young

people and I when I was young I had I

made this mistake too

you can get very fixed on your gifts so

everybody has gifts you know you you

have gifts and you have things that you

didn't get gifted maybe you're extremely

beautiful maybe you're extremely good at

mathematics maybe you there are a lot of

things that you can be given but those

things can confuse you because they're

not the things that construct your life

it's your choices that construct your

life not your guests you can celebrate

your gifts be proud of them be happy of

them actually don't be proud of them be

be celebratory of them but you can't be

proud because they're gifts they were

given to you you didn't earn them you

can only be proud of the things you earn

and so as I got older I started to

realize I wasn't proud of my gifts I was

always good at school school is always

easy for me and I was always proud that

I was a great student

I got aids in all my classes I was good

at math all of that and I thought I

thought that's who I was but it's not

true those are the things that are gifts

what was hard for me is deciding to work

hard deciding to use my gifts in certain

ways to challenge myself to do things

that I didn't think I could do to put

myself in uncomfortable situations we

all get I would say to a young person

you can choose a life of ease and

comfort or you can choose a life of

service and adventure which one of those

when you're 90 years old are you gonna

be more proud of okay we only have a few

principles of the Amazon kind of core

values that we go back to over and over

again and if you looked at each of the

things that we do you would see those

run straight through everything so the

first one and by far the most important

one is customer obsession and we talk

about it as customer obsession

as opposed to competitor obsession and I

have seen over and over again companies

talk about that their customer focused

but really when I pay close attention to

them I believe they are competitor

focused and that's just a completely

different mentality by the way

competitor focus can work but I don't

think it works in the long run as well

as customer focus for one thing once

you're the leader if your whole culture

is competitor obsessed it's kind of hard

to stay energized and motivated if

you're out in front whereas customers

are always unsatisfied they're always

discontent they always want more and so

no matter how far you get out there in

front of your competitors you're still

behind your customers so they're always

pulling you along so customer obsession

is a deep principle that underlies

everything we do and how do you it so

the real question for me is how do you

go about maintaining a day one culture

you know it's great to have the scale of

Amazon we have financial resources we

have lots of brilliant people we can

accomplish great things we have global

scope we have operations all over the

world but the downside of that is that

you can lose your nimbleness you can

lose your entrepreneurial spirit you can

lose your that kind of heart that the

that small companies often have and so

if you could have the best of both

worlds if you can have that

entrepreneurial spirit and heart while

at the same time having all the

advantages that come with scale and

scope I think think of the things that

you could do and and so the question is

how do you achieve that the scale is

good because it makes you robust you

know a big boxer can take a punch to the

head the question is you also want to

dodge those punches so you'd like to be

nimble you want to be big and nimble and

I find there are a lot of things that

are protective of the day one mentality

I already spent some time on one of them

which is customer obsession I think

that's the most important thing if you

can and it

it's harder as you get bigger when

you're a little tiny company figure ten

person startup company every single

person the company is focused on the

customer when you get to be a bigger

company you've got all the middle you've

got middle managers and you've got all

these layers and the those people aren't

on the front lines they're not

interacting with customers every day

they're insulated from customers and

they start to manage not the customer

happiness directly but they start to

manage through proxies like metrics and

processes and some of those things can

become bureaucratic so it's very

challenging but one of the things that

happens is the decision-making velocity

slows down and I think the reason one of

the reasons that that happens is that

people all say junior executives inside

the big company start to model all

decisions as if they are heavyweight

irreversible highly consequential

decisions and so even to a doors you

could make you make a decision it's the

wrong decision you can just back up back

through the door and try again

even those reversible decisions start to

be made with heavyweight processes and

so you can teach people that these

pitfalls and and and traps and then

teach them to avoid those traps and

that's what we're trying to do at Amazon

so that we can maintain our

inventiveness and our hearts and our

kind of small companies spirit even as

we have the scale and scope of a larger

company if the stock is up 10% this

month

don't feel 10% smarter because when the

stock is down 10% some month you're

gonna have to fill up 10% dumber and

it's not going to feel as good and so

it's you know ownership is we give most

of our compensation is is done in terms

of stock compensation and in part and

parcel with ownership is a mentality of

long term thinking you know you owners

think longer term than renters do so I

have a friend who rented his house to

some tenants and instead of getting a

Christmas tree stand at Christmas they

just nailed the Christmas

into the hardwood floors of the house no

owner would ever do that and but

sometimes there that's a bad tenant you

know they're a good good tenants but

that's a bad tenant and it's because you

know it's the same old thing about you

know nobody ever washed a rental car and

you you take better care of the things

that you own and and but but one of the

responsibilities of ownership and

definitely deep inside the Amazon

culture is to think about the

fundamentals of the business and not the

daily fluctuations in the stock price

it's not there's no information in it

what are you really focusing on so you

know I'm focusing on those things that I

think make Amazon unusual genuine

customer obsession so like every single

thing you just mentioned when you know

when our senior executives sit down and

review those programs they're looking

for customer obsession where how is

second one that we're focused on is

invention we don't like to do me two

offerings we want to take will be

inspired by something we've seen the

world we're not hermetically sealed but

we want to put our own twist on it we

want to try to do something better for

customers that's pioneering so where is

the invention you know why is this going

to be better for customers than the

already whatever is serving that need in

the world today and and then a

willingness to think long term so I'm

very focused on those things and also

the operational excellence is reducing

defects at their root those are the

things that's the culture of Amazon it's

the habits that we have those are the

things I'm focused on and those are the

things that all of our senior people are

focused on

[Music]