A few days back, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon came in the headlines for surpassing Bill Gates as the richest person in the world. In fact, he is the one who has revolutionised the way we shop today.
In his childhood, Jeff had a passion for fixing things and figuring out how stuff works. Moreover, Jeff resigned from his position as a senior vice president at D.E. Shaw to start the e-commerce website Amazon.com.
Just like Apple, he established his company in a garage with his first employee, Shel Kaphan. Having said that, a wealthy man like Jeff Bezos had to start from somewhere right? In this article, we take a quick glimpse at 6 business lessons we can learn from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
#1 Flexibility and stubborn
“The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible, more or less simultaneously. The hard part is figuring out when to be which!”
According to Jeff Bezos, an ambitious entrepreneur must be stubborn and flexible. If in case you are not stubborn, you tend to give up easily and if you are not flexible, you’ll never come up with a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.
#2 Two pizza theory
Jeff Bezos believes in the ‘Two Pizza theory’, where a group of working people should be small enough to feed with only two pizzas. When the team tends to grow bigger, the work efficiency becomes very less.
#3 Make it long term
“If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn’t otherwise accomplish.”
When it comes to Jeff Bezos, long-term thinking, and experimenting are the stepping stones for the growth of any company. Doing experiments paves way for new innovations, which is needed to stay competitive in this dynamic market. It seems in Amazon, experimenting, and taking a risk to do something new has always been a part of the culture.
#4 Focus on customers
“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”
While most of the tech companies are obsessed with their competitors, Jeff Bezos on the other hand rather asks them to concentrate on their customers.
#5 Surround yourself with the right people
If you want to accomplish something great, you need to surround yourself with great people on your team. When you are with the right people, you will be filled with lots of optimism and plenty of innovative ideas at the end of the day.
#6 Deploy patience
“We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”
If you are an entrepreneur, you must know that building a business takes time and effort. Hang on there and never give up!
When it comes to success, be it a SME’s or big enterprise, it has to do with a kind of leadership the company has. Instead of feeling limited by failures, prepare to face it and head on.
Whats your opinion about Jeff Bezos theory? Do you agree to it? Let us know in the comment section below.
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