Over the weekend I read the book "The Everything Store" by Brad Stone.
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"The Everything Store" is about the life of Amazon.com (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos. Author Brad Stone does a great job of explaining Bezos' philosophies and his mental models. I liked Bezos' philosophy on how to calculate taking risks in life. When Bezos decides whether or not he is going to take a risk, he pictures himself being 80 years old looking back at his life to make sure that he makes the best possible decision. He then decides if the risk is worth taking or not; when Bezos first started Amazon.com, he took a huge risk.
"I knew when I was 80 that I would never, for example, think about why I walked away from my 1994 Wall Street bonus right in the middle of the year at the worst possible time," he said. "That kind of thing just isn't something you worry about when you're 80 years old. At the same time, I knew that I might sincerely regret not having participated in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a revolutionizing event. When I thought about it that way, it was incredibly easy to make the decision."
One thing that you grasp from reading "The Everything Store" is how hard-working, dedicated and relentless Jeff Bezos is. In fact he bought the URL relentless.com and if you type that into the web you will be directed to Amazon.com.
Bezos would not listen to naysayers on his way to tremendous success building Amazon. There was a time early in Amazon's existence when Bezos was considering a partnership with Starbucks (SBUX). Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told Bezos that Amazon had a big problem and that Starbucks could solve it. "You have no physical presence," he said. "That is going to hold you back." I admire Bezos' confidence; he quickly replied to Shultz. "We are going to take this thing to the moon."
This was critical because Bezos had the confidence to pursue his dream, and he didn't care what other people thought. When Bezos made his decision to leave his high-paying job on Wall Street, he calculated that web activity had gone up by 230,000% in 1994 over the previous year. Bezos was later quoted as saying, "Things just don't grow that fast, It's highly unusual, and that started me thinking. What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?" This is one of the main reasons why Amazon focuses on growth and customer satisfaction.