The other day I heard a great interview with Jeff Bezos. Here are a few takeaways:
- Be hyper-obsessed with your customers, not your competition. Many companies are so focused on what their competitors are doing that they totally miss on serving their customers needs or solving a problem that no one has solved yet. If you serve your customers the right way, your competition becomes irrelevant.
- Most regrets are regrets of omission. If you try and fail, you learn. If you never try, you will regret it for the rest of your life.
- It's better to make a few really good decisions than it is to make a bunch of OK ones. Make time to think.
- Every quarter was baked three years before hand. He laughs when people congratulate him on the results from a solid quarter. The reality of today is a result of planning years before.
Since inception Amazon has been criticized for its short-term earnings performance. Now that Amazon is one of the most valuable companies in the world, it just goes to show that a short-term critic and a long-term thinker will never see eye to eye. Anything worth doing will be extremely tough and will take a lot of time. I challenge you to think about the long game. What are you baking up that will come to fruition three years from now?