Jeff Bezos

A boy walks back into his house the night before the first day of school with bags of supplies, but not feeling as satisfied as he usually does. After a busy day of shopping, he usually feels complete, calm, and ready, but not this time. He forgot lined paper. He rustles through all the bags to find no paper. The store closed: He can’t go back now, it’s too late. His mom just looks at him saying, “It’s fine just order it on Amazon, it'll be here by tomorrow.” That’s just one situation in which Amazon could save the day. Jeff Bezos started his journey to become the greatest businessman in history. He always had an analytical mindset as a kid. Bezos charted a graph of the teachers' individual performances throughout the school year based on student surveys. At age 10, he calculated that his grandmother, a smoker, had already shaved off nine years of her life through a per-puff equation (Meis). Bezos had a hard start to his career: “Quitting his job, Bezos headed out to Seattle. ‘I will change the economics of the book industry,’ he is reputed to have told one venture capitalist. Ironically, some of the fundraising took place in the coffee shop of a Barnes & Noble bookstore” (“Jeffrey Bezos”). He was always sure of his decisions and was always looking for the best future. Jeff Bezos is beyond a regular businessman - he inspires his followers with his strong confidence and his more than adequate intelligence and resourcefulness.

Jeff Bezos Presenting SpeechJames Duncan Davidson from Portland, USA [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]His confidence has served him well in the business world, thinking into his future, not worrying about what others say about him, and always wanting to prove them wrong. When talking to an interviewer about how he is so good with competition, he says, “Your margin is my opportunity” (Tan). Bezos has no fear of his opponents. He realizes that when they mess up, it will be easy to come out on top. An article states he doesn't care much for extra popularity, saying, "He didn't employ a personal publicist to help bolster the Bezos myth, because he didn't need to. The sheer reach of his company did the mythmaking for him: Amazon has transformed the way we read, shop and watch TV, and through its cloud services division runs an astonishingly large portion of the internet" (Chozick). At the start of Amazon, some people didn't like him for his actions. Most people would've fallen into peer pressure. He didn't bother fixing the problem, because he knew perfecting the business and tending to the customers would solve the dispute. With the customers happy, it didn't matter what some businessmen were saying. Bezos explains his strategy to get through hard times, saying, “What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy” (Tan). He always thinks about the future. He thinks it is a waste of time to complain because most of the time you can start fixing the problem before you're done complaining. Bezos is always putting the customers first. He has locked priorities, with what competitors think of him at the bottom of the list; all that matters is that with happy customers, the company will prosper.

Bezos has always been smart, starting from as early as middle school, his curiosity and resourcefulness have served him well in his adventure in the competitive world of business. An article tells a story from his childhood, saying, "At age 10, he calculated that his grandmother, a smoker, had already shaved off nine years of her life through a per-puff equation. When he proudly informed her of his results, she burst into tears. Bezos' often obsessively analytical nature was impressive but not always endearing" (Meis). He always loved school. Not thinking of the social side, he wanted to impress his grandma with his findings which are amazing for his age, but are very sad directed at his grandma. Bezos loves having fun with education, especially math. He always wants to analyze everything, and make sure he is all-knowing on the topic. When talking about how he hires employees, he says, “Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful” (Tan). He likes to use his time wisely and efficiently. He thinks that it’s not smart to surround yourself with those who don't have the same morals and goals as you. Bezos thought analytically about everything, including social situations, “Single at the time, he started taking ballroom-dance classes, calculating if it would increase his exposure to what he called n+ women” (Stone 6). He took an analytical standpoint for everything, even his dating life. He can't help trying to be the best at simple things, whether its dancing, graphs, or business. He feels you have to take things the best as you can for you to progress.

Jeff Bezos in suitDoD photo by Senior Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz (Released) [Public domain]With his amount of confidence in his ideas, and the way he executes them with his smarts and efficiency, Bezos has become one of the most inspirational businessmen in the world. When talking to one venture capitalist, he says, “If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to double your inventiveness” (Tan). He is a great model to look to when starting something new. He always started small and slow, putting in too much work for not enough result. His results were always shortcoming; at the beginning he got mocked and made fun of because of them. But, Bezos could care less. He always knew his ideas would come out to something and it just took time. He was confident to know his results would triumph over any of his short-willed competitors. He was smart enough to use the resources he had to make the most out out of them, never wasting much time on anything to make him look good like advertisements or publicists, because he knew his golden work would make headlines on its own. Sometimes people might slip up like the boy before the first day of school, forgetting the small things like notebook paper that might just ruin your week. But, Bezos never worries about the now, he worries about his customers and the perfect future.

Works Cited

Chozick, Amy. "He's Come Undone." New York Times, 3 Mar. 2019, p. 1(L). Biography In Context, https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A576639749/BIC?u=powa9245&sid=BIC&xid=e0373d47.

“Jeffrey Bezos.” Bloomsbury Business Library - Business Thinkers & Management Giants, Jan. 2007, p. 2. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=b6h&AN=26674310&site=brc-live.

Meis, Cecilia. "JEFF BEZOS' NEW WORLD ORDER." Success, Fall 2018, p. 32+. Biography In Context, https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A546960221/BIC?u=powa9245&sid=BIC&xid=b5e36074.

Stone, Brad. “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone.” Goodreads, Goodreads, 15 Oct.2013,www.goodreads.com/book/show/17660462-the-everything-store.

Tan, Jon. “52 Of The Best Jeff Bezos Quotes, Carefully Sorted By Category.” Word-of-Mouth and Referral Marketing Blog, Word-of-Mouth and Referral Marketing Blog, 26 Jan. 2018, www.referralcandy.com/blog/jeff-bezos-quotes/.