Success Strategies to Learn From Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos

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Jeff Bezos in the late July of 2017 had briefly surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates and had become the richest person in the world. Although it was a short span of being the no.1 he still remains one of the richest people in the world.

Bezos owns 17 percent shares of Amazon, a massively and rapidly growing company grateful to its cloud computing sector. Amazon however initially wasn’t a tech giant. In 1994, Bezos tried his luck by leaving a high powered hedge fund job and launching the e-commerce giant. Amazon was originally an online bookstore and the fastest company ever to reach $100 billion annual sales in 2015.

A sharp mind is required for such a staggering success. Here are some valuable success strategies to learn from the Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos.

Aligning skills to the market’s needs

Bezos, in 2009, described the corporate philosophy leading to the creation of the fiercely successful Kindle. It was company’s best-selling product at the time.

According to him entrepreneurs should determine what they are good at and find a segment in the market that needs the same skill. Alternatively, Bezos suggests is to know what their customers need and accordingly hone their skills.

Amazon did take the second route with Kindle. Amazon understood that e-books require e-readers and so they developed what the customers loved.

Be flexible and persevere or perish

Bezos in 2013 bought The Washington Post even though he has no previous newspaper experience for $250 million. This startled everyone as print journalism was a yesteryear industry which is rapidly declining due to the advent of digital media.

However, Bezos perceived it differently. Despite the state of the newspaper industry, Bezos bought the Post believing that it was a strong brand that hired many talented employees. The paper had two options to accept reality and lean on its strengths to find a way ahead in the face of changing the world or totally lose its existence.

Bezos opted to focus on the needs of the readers and not advertisers to transform The Washington Post into a profitable and modern enterprise that appeals to the paying customers.

Stay “forever young”

Bezos says one key to his incredible success is being young at heart. According to him, one should constantly find out and learn more about the new customers if the customer base is aging with you because you will otherwise become obsolete or irrelevant.

Experiment and learn from your attempts

Amazon’s road to success was completely paved with experimentation. While most of the experiments were successes, others did result into significant failures. To name a few of the ill fated projects like Amazon Destinations travel site, Amazon Local, Amazon Auctions and ZShops.

Bezos has been treating his business as a lab and doesn’t dwell on his blunders. According to him, experiments are the key to innovation and there is a lot to learn from them.

Swinging for the fences

Bezos never plays safe which is why he is one of the contenders for richest person in the world. The failures have been legendary costing him money. But the successes have earned Amazon billions.

Bezos stresses on the importance of aiming for the fences as one connection will be equivalent to thousand home runs.

Always question the processes and protocols

According to Bezos, it is seen that as companies grow they become more and more dependant on their standard systems and processes. He suggests that even though it is not at all wrong with having protocols in place, but, focusing too much on processes over outcomes can be hazardous and is the biggest mistake one makes when running a business.

(Photo Credit: Forbes, Business insider)