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:

Read More…

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the danger of chasing rainbows and the importance of recognizing that your business is a tool to help you get what you want out of life.

I have a couple of different clients that are working on what they really want out of life, who they are, what their core values are.  It can be a very difficult exercise to work through.  However I think the payoff for uncovering your core values and your mission  – all of that hard work is huge!

Read More…