One of the major differences between ultra successful entrepreneurs and the rest of the world is the way they view failure. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon has been through a tech bubble in 2001, a great recession, and almost 20 years of naysayers waiting for Amazon to fail. But in a recent Business Insider interview, Bezos sits down with Henry Blodget explains why failure isn’t that big of a deal. Jeff also touches on the future of Amazon, work/life balance and why he purchased The Washington Post.
Stockholders, including Blodget, have been worried lately about the stock price of Amazon and its low profitability. It’s no secret that the recent Amazon Fire Phone was a flop. But Bezos’s declaration of, “My job, one of my jobs, is to encourage people to be bold” implies that he is more than willing to take more risks when it comes to Amazon products. The branching out into grocery delivery, tv shows, drones and a host of other things shows that Bezos is committed to being innovative.
The outlook he has on Amazon and life in general is positive and upbeat. Bezos beams when he talks about his family life and explains why he doesn’t do many interviews and travels less than 20% of the time. There’s so much that can be learned about the mind of a super entrepreneur in this interview.
Great quotes from the interview:
“You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you”.
“Companies that don’t continue to experiment, companies that don’t embrace failure, they eventually get in a desperate position where the only thing they can do is a Hail Mary bet at the very end of their corporate existence.”
“You take better care of the things that you own”.
“We don’t like to do ‘me too’ offerings…we’re going to try to do something that is better for customers”.
“We want to do something better for our customers that’s pioneering”.
