Discover the secret to success – Amazon style!

  photo by Striatic

I came across a great video (thanks to My Venture Pad) by Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) that has some really impactful and timeless advice.  It’s only a short 8 minute video, but there are a lot of really important ideas that come out of this.

The first thing that stands out to me is the confidence and the credibility that someone like Jeff Bezos has.  The purpose of the video is to give some background on why the recent purchase of Zappos by Amazon makes sense – primarily based on a shared culture and values of customer service and creativity.  This is a guy that launched one of the biggest success stories of our time 15 years ago (it’s amazing that it’s been that long) and he comfortably admits that they made mistakes along the way.

That’s how real life and business work – you learn from your mistakes and you get better.

However even bigger than that is his clear belief that everything stems from giving the customers what they want!  It’s not a revolutionary idea, but I can think of only a handful of companies (Amazon and Zappos among them) that have really put the idea into tangible practice.

See the rest of the post for a summary and the actual video:

4 Points on how to succeed in business

Looking back at the 15 years of a hugely successful business like Amazon, Jeff Bezos boils down his keys to success to 4 simple points.

1.  Obsess over the customers

It’s not obsessing over the competition, or technology, or things that are in your way, it’s a constant reminder that if you make the customers happy, then you are on the right path.

2.  Invent…on  behalf of your customers

Innovation is critical, but only if you’re doing it to improve the customer experience or to address something the customer wants.  How many businesses are inventing things they think are interesting, but ultimately not what the customers want?

3.  Think long term!

This is one that most publicly traded companies fail at – they are looking at what they’re going to tell Wall Street at the end of the quarter, and if the plans or products don’t help that story immediately then it’s probably not getting done.

4.  It’s always Day 1

You can’t rest on your laurels – the world is changing and you need to keep changing with it if you want to stay successful.

You can find the video here.

That’s a pretty strong list – are you applying these ideas to your business?  What do this mean to you?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach