Walter Isaacson

Jeff Bezos

The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson

Invent and Wander

Roxan

To make the decision, Bezos used a mental exercise that would become a famous part of his risk calculation process. He called it a "regrat minimaztion framework". He would imagine what he would fell when he turned eighty and though back to the decision/ "I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have, "he explains - I knew that when i was eighty, I was not going to regret doing this. 

Customer service business rather than internet business. 

So i asked the CEO of time inc whether i was making a mistake by choosing bezos and would look silly in the years to come if the internet economy deflated. No, Don told me. "Stick with your choice, jeff bezos is not in the internet business, he is in the customer-service business. he will be around for decades to come.

Bezos had a rule, which was to use his hearth and his intuition as well as empirical data in making big decision. there has to be risk taking. you have to have instinct. all the good decisions have made that way.

He knew that creating amazon prime was what he calls a one way door. it was a difficult decision to reverse, but necessary one.

the genesis of amazon echo was in one way, like steve jobs development of apple ipod. it arouse out of intuition rather than demand. no customer was asking for echo.

"Focus relentlessly and passionately on the customer" 

As he put in his own mantra. we intend to build the worlds most customer centric company, I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning in fear, not of out competition, but for our customers. 

An investor complained that Bezos was forgetting that amazon only makes money when it sells things, so negetive reviews hurt the business, "when i read that letter i thought we don't make money when we sell things, we make money when we help customers make purchase decisions. 

our energy at amazon comes from the desire to impress customers rather than the zeal to best competitors,A

perhaps a somewhat subtle one- of customer driven focus is that it aidsa certain type of proactivity. 

when were at our best, we don't wait for external pressures. we are inherently driven to improve our services, adding benefits, and features, before we have to. these investments are motivated by customer focus rather than by reaction to competitions 

There are many ways to centre your business. you can be competitor focused, product focused, technology focused, business model focused, but in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of day 1 vitality

Why? there are many advantages to customer centric approach, but here's the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy. even when your customers don't know it yet, they want something better. 

your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. bo customer ever asked for amazon prime, but it sure turns out they wanted it. 

staying in day 1 will require you to experiment, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double then when you see a customer delight. 

A customer obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.

When something bad happens to you you have three choices, you can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.

I didn't think i regret trying and failing, and i suspected i would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. after much consideration, I took the *

 path to follow my passion and i'm proud of that choice everyday.

tomorrow in a very real sense, your life - the life you author from scratch on your own-begins: how will you use your gifts? what choices will you make? 

will inertia will be your guide, or will you follow your passion? 

will you follow dogma? or will you be original?

will you choose a life of ease, or life of service and adventures?

will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions? 

will you bluff it out when your wrong, or will you apologize?

will yu play it safe or will you be a little bit swashbuckling? 

when its tough, will you give up? or will you be relentless? 

will you be cynic or will you be a builder?

I WILL HAZARD A PREDICTION. when you are 80 years old and in uite moment of reflection, narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices  you have made. in the end we are our choices, build yourself a great story.

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