Jeff Bezos

episode 116

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 116. I’m your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always, I am joined by the man from the jungle himself. Mr. Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning mind the man from the jungle himself is here to dig into adventure, to dig into the landscape of business, and more importantly, to learn from some incredible entrepreneurs and innovators.

How are you doing Mike? I'm doing great. I loved, uh, the change up the pivot that we did with Tom Brady. I thought that was like a nice bounce off the Ryan holiday series. So much, so, very much to learn from Tom, but I tell you what I think today, worrying for a real treat. We got someone who's got a little bit of Tom, a little bit of [00:01:00] Ryan holiday and some really unique themselves.

Mark, who are we going to study today? Today is a pretty unique moment, actually, Mike, because we're going to be digging in actually for the third time into the teachings. And the entrepreneurial leadership style of Mr. Jeff Bezos recently changed the landscape. By once again, creating a unique newsworthy moment, he's actually stepped down or he will be soon stepping down as CEO of Amazon.

And what a perfect moment, Mike, for us to not only reflect on what he's done with Amazon, but also how he's shaped a lot of the. Ecosystems around the business itself. Totally. I don't think we, we could research for weeks and still not quite make a good enough case for [00:02:00] the impact of Jeff. I think, um, Before we celebrate all the good things.

I think we should acknowledge that he ain't. Perfect. Perfect. Um, I think certainly the conditions in some of the distribution centers has really come under criticism. I think that, do you remember Mark? They did that thing where they were trying to find a second headquarters and, uh, it was a bit of a shambles and they got chosen.

Sure they chose New York and then New York said we don't want you. It was all a little bit off. Wasn't it? Yeah. Again, it was, it was pretty unique because that wouldn't normally necessarily be a newsworthy element. Is it, you know, I think what was so pivotal when that came out was the city NYC. I think it okay.

Great. Well, these are jobs. This is a huge well-known. Business. This is a significant, you know, almost [00:03:00] investment by a Silicon Valley, um, globally renowned business believing in our city. And it's, it's strange when you kind of step back from the day-to-day of that and think, wow, it's, he's created a platform, a business that's so.

Pivotal in all of our lives kind of don't really notice it. You're right. You're right. And I think where I was going is I do want to acknowledge that, you know, or things that Amazon and Jeff could have done better, but that being said, look, if you're not upsetting people, then you're obviously not trying hard enough.

Right. So. I think what we would like to do on this show is to really dig into some of the things that Jeff does that have created his success and the impact that he's had on the world. And I think we're in for a real treat because let me make the case to you, Mark, and to all of our listeners. I think [00:04:00] we're often very familiar with what Jeff and Amazon have done on the outside.

Uh, they've revolutionized the way we shop they're incredibly customer centric. But what I would propose is that they did some amazing things. They took something like hosting, which is a huge cost and a huge problem. And they turned it into another company. That's AWS that started out as an internal service inside of Amazon and has become.

I mean, if you were to take AWS, their web services businesses and spin it out, it would be a massive company all on its own. The point here is I think we underestimate a little bit some of the things on the real insight, some of the practices that both Jeff and his teams do and what the great news is is we have decoded, we've researched those and we've pulled them all together into an absolute basis extract against a [00:05:00] Mark.

And, uh, I want you to throw us let's leap into the world of Jeff Bezos. Where do you want to start? Well, I think what a fantastic moment to reflect. On Jeff Bezos's impact in, in the world, uh, as, as well as, uh, Amazon itself and AWS is to actually hear from, um, one of our other, um, favorite content creators, Mike, uh, Mr.

Scott Galloway, AKA professor G. He's got a great clip here. And this is a fantastic intro, I think to the show one, one, six, and Jeff Bezos, where we dig into those accomplishments and how radical and influential their work. So this first clip Mike, I want to hear from, with Mr. Professor G is how it was never about books.

[00:06:00] Hey, we want to recognize the accomplishments of an extraordinary entrepreneur and business mind in a capitalist society improvements in our standard of living are in large part, a function of the progress that private companies make and in the history of capitalism, which. By the way is by far the best system in the world, few people have been a greater catalyst for progress.

And change positive change in the private sector than Jeff Bezos. Last week basis announced you would step down as Amazon CEO bringing a graceful close to what will go down. As one of the greatest business legacies we have ever witnessed. What Bezos has achieved is simply put on precedent, taking a firm from zero to $1.6 trillion in market capitalization, turning cost centers, including product fulfillment, technology and content.

That at one point represented over 90% of revenues into new business lines, including Amazon web services, Amazon basics, Amazon publishing and [00:07:00] Amazon fulfillment. Think about that. Take your biggest costs and turn them into enormous. Businesses talk about a jujitsu move for the ages. Three, establishing a monogamous relationship with 82% of us households.

Nobody in history has accomplished any of those things. Let alone all three. Over the past 12 months, Amazon hired over half a million people. They have become in their 27 year history. The second largest employer. In America, Bezos is also responsible for one of the biggest pay hikes of all time from as low as $10 in some locations to $15 nationwide, over a quarter of a million full-time Amazon employees and another hundred thousand seasonal workers benefited and even more workers benefited by following or being forced to follow Amazon in some.

Jeff Bezos may be responsible for the biggest one day raise of the American workforce in history. Bezos was both a dreamer [00:08:00] and deliverer of grand visions. The most trusted brand in the world. Amazon, what is the brand one part promise one part performance in his appreciate investor letter of 1997, Bezos articulated his relentless focus on his customers and what he knew from day one, but what took many of us years to realize it.

It was never about books. When he, when professor G just lets loose with that series of, of accomplishments. It's like the one, two, three, four punch is just like, and that, and that, and that I think, um, I think the, the scale of the success really is seen in that. Amazon. The second biggest employer in America decided to raise the salaries of its warehouse workers up to $15.

This is now, we're now two years on from that. And Congress still has [00:09:00] not passed the same legislation. So I think that this has actually been followed by many other companies. I believe even Walmart included have increased. Maybe not to the same extent, but have followed, uh, the Amazon lead here. And I really think Mike, what I would propose to you is that apart from doing good work and working hard, the fact that what Jeff and Amazon have done has made other companies follow they've, raised the bar on how we should treat customers.

And in some cases, employees. I would always step back and just go, wow. That's legacy to leave an impact where not only the work you did, but the knock on effect of your work made people improve themselves to improve conditions for others. To me, this is a truly remarkable enter. Think Mark, he's done all of this [00:10:00] and scaled it to a $1.6 trillion of value.

In a lifetime. I mean, this is what the old oil magnates did in families in generations. Um, he has done this in a relatively short amount of time. Hasn't he? Well, yeah, I'd say it's, I'd argue it's even less than a lifetime, you know, he's, he's done this in, I suppose, just the first half of his career. You know, if he's stepping down as CEO, now there are going to be moments.

Wait, we're going to keep on hearing about Jeff Bezos. Mike, I think he's going to go on to do even more. Great. Yeah. So it's fascinating to think, like he's obviously going to dabble in the space game, so he'll be toe-to-toe. I mean, can you imagine how exciting to see Bezos and Musk kind of innovating it out?

Like who can send out the most rockets who can go the furthest into this strategy, this fear and beyond, um, what exciting times we live in Mark and what we've got ahead [00:11:00] of us in this show is, um, essentially two parts to the show. The first part, being more about innovation and the externalities around the things that Jeff has done and the accomplishments of Amazon and some really good stuff to think about.

How to push up against convention, how to be a little bit contrarian and independent and bold thinker. But then on the second half, we're going to get into some of the practices, really practical stuff that you can do on the inside of an organization in order to get the most out of a team, to, for people to really perform at a high level.

So we've got so much. Ahead of us. I'm really looking forward to pulling these things apart and asking ourselves the question, Hey, how could we do a little bit of Jeff? Um, which is pretty exciting. So I think it's now that we need to turn our minds to some of the greatest [00:12:00] challenges that we have in building a company.

So where do you want to start Mark? Well, I think the perfect little reflection. So, as I've mentioned, we've, this is actually technically Mike, our third time of visiting the Bezos. And it does feel like the perfect moment, particularly as we're in our leadership series, we've just completed Mr. Tom Brady.

He was very, very, uh, another great record set or shall I say much like the $1.6 trillion worth as well as, um, Spinning out different business logistics as new business there's themselves. And actually by creating, um, the most trusted brand in the world, you know, this is, this is the accomplishments of the records that he's set.

Last week, we were hearing about how Tom Brady's is doing this incredible work with record setting himself, but more specifically on teams and in sport. This one, uh, this [00:13:00] first section, as you've already called out is about building a company building. The, uh, the legacy, shall we say? So I want to hear from Jeff himself and actually go, I went back into the library of clips that we've just hang on.

Did you go into the moonshots library? Is this true? Did, and you know, what's really exciting later in today's show, our listeners will find out where they can go. Oh, I listen to a particular show. So we're going to give them access to the library too. We're going to give them the keys to the cocaine. And I invite all of our listeners to pop back into moonshots history and check out some of our earliest shows as well.

But this particular clip, Mike. I, I really, really wanted to hear again, because it's such a great demonstration of Jeff Bezos as a fantastic leader. So the first clip we're going to hear in this section is Jeff Bezos telling us that we should all be willing to fail my jobs as the leader of [00:14:00] Amazon is to encourage people to be bold.

And people love to focus on things that aren't yet working. Um, and that's good. It's human nature that kind of divine discontent can be very helpful, but, uh, you really, you know, it's incredibly hard to get people to take bold bets and you need to encourage that. And if you're going to take bold bets, they're going to be experiments.

And if they're experiments, you don't know ahead of time that they're going to work. Uh, experiments are by their very nature, uh, prone to failure, big successes, a few big successes, compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn't work. So, you know, bold bets, AWS Kindle, Amazon prime, our third party seller business.

All of those things are examples of. Bull bets that, uh, that did work and they pay for a lot of experiments. I've made billions of dollars of failures@amazon.com, literally billions [00:15:00] of dollars of failures. And, uh, uh, you know, you might remember pets.com or Cosmo, or, you know, give myself a root canal with no anesthesia, very easily.

Uh, none of those things are fun, but the, but they also. They don't matter. What really matters is companies that don't continue to experiment companies that don't embrace failure. They eventually get in a desperate position where they only thing they can do is make a kind of hail Mary bet at the very end of their corporate existence.

Whereas companies that are. You know, uh, making bets all along, even, you know, big bets, but not bet the company bets. I don't, I don't believe in bet the company bets that's when you're desperate. That's that's the last thing you can do. I love this clip because what he basically says, if you're not constantly experimenting.

Therefore having [00:16:00] some wins, some losses, some failures, you are on the path to extinction. And then he talks about that classic thing where you see companies buy other companies as the hope that, that. We'll kind of change everything. Um, it's like the last gasp it's, it's the last place, the final shot, the buzzer's counting down and they've realized they've been out innovated and they can no longer catch up.

So they try some sort of catapult move to me, ma this is a such a timely reminder that we've always got to have experiments and lots of them and be prepared that they will not only win. But they will also lose that. They won't turn out how we might wish. And, you know, Mark, I wanted to ask you, I think we're all fairly excited about the notion of experimentation, but how do we get over that?

That dread of failure. I mean, so often companies just seem to [00:17:00] be allergic to failure yet. What we hear is that Jeff's like, Oh man, I I've blown billions in pad decisions, but you know, we, we make some good ones and some bad ones. How do we get over that? The gloom of failure, the curse of failure, that the dread of failure.

What advice would you give to all of our listeners? If they're thinking of doing something a little different and experiment, as Jeff would say, how do, how do we get people over the hump? Uh, it's, it's quite liberating to hear Jeff state that he lost billions of dollars. Isn't it kind of makes me feel better.

I think the, the hardest thing that we can do is embrace that uncertainty that comes with the unknown. Um, you know, the idea of either stepping out of a job that you've been doing for a while or creating a product or business in a, in a space that you've always dreamed of, but you haven't yet [00:18:00] proved it's because you're uncertain about it.

And therefore you're going to, uh, have all of those anxious feelings. And I think for, from a business perspective, What Jeff's really saying here is you've got to innovate. Otherwise you're going to plateau. And, and I think what's really empowering about that clip and why it's such a great one to revisit is because it's, it's reminding us, Hey, don't rest on your laurels.

Constantly be trying to push the boundaries and create. Either better products or maybe better teams keep on learning. Always be curious. And let's, let's, let's go back to what I was talking about for a moment, because I think a lot of people don't experiment because of their fear. And, uh, I think we can really, um, help each other help our listeners if we sort of break that down.

So let me pitch [00:19:00] to you a little model that we might be able to use, and let's see if we can work on it together. My thinking is here. I think we have the habit of when we try something new. That we try and make it to complete. We try and make it really polished and fantastic. Okay. And that often takes a lot of time.

So by the time we actually kind of get it out there to see if it's going to work, it's almost like a finished product. And I think if we make our experiments smaller quicker, And don't hold them as like perfect showcases, but rough experiments, drafts, pilot projects, concept designs, and do them quickly.

Then the stakes of, if it doesn't work out are not nearly as great, or they know if you've spent, like, let's say you spend [00:20:00] six weeks working on an idea for an app. And you make some prototypes in Figma or sketch or something, and then you go out and show it to a bunch of people versus you take six months, you get a developer, you spend all this time and money and you get the same negative result.

Right. One's on a prototype you did for six weeks. One's on a huge effort of six months. Which one do you choose? Four. Yeah. And how many. Individuals have approached you or me, or maybe our listeners and said, Hey, I've got this great business idea. Okay. Well, what are the, what are the potential uses thing?

What are the target audience thing? Have you tested it? Have you done any research? Invariably, Mike, the answer is no. Yeah, there's a subjectivity. That's driving a lot of. Business leaders to create for the sake of [00:21:00] creating when you're right. You know, doing something even on a post-it note like you and I have done in the past where you collaborate with that target audience and ask them, Hey, is this it?

Hmm. You know, you can, you can do it in I'd argue. You could even do it in six minutes. Yeah, that's pretty extreme. That's some good prototyping, rapid prototyping, you know, look, I'll take it a different way. Let's say someone comes to you Mark and says, Hey Mark, I want you to join my newsletter. And you know, well, it feels like a big risk, right?

Uncertain. How much funding have you gone? Is this idea any good? Or whether they're from a big corporate, it doesn't really matter. The point here is what you can also do is you can make the experiment much smaller by saying, Hey, you know what I'm interested. Uh, I'd like to get to know you more. Why don't we just work on a little side project on our weekends and see how we find [00:22:00] working with each other.

That way you get to road, test me. And the same for myself. I can kind of kick the tires and check you out. The point here is you didn't have to make this massive leap, but you could just do a little experiment in the same way. You didn't have to build the app for six months. Make a prototype in six weeks.

And I think here, this is a great way to construct yourself to be failure ready because frankly, you know, a prototype of six weeks, it didn't work or Hey, it didn't work, but you know what we learned, we actually found out what people really need. So let's go make another one for six weeks still. Then you're two rounds in, and you're only half the time of the six months.

Right? Yeah. And I think that we make the habit of setting these overly ambitious goals. We take two bigger jumps and it really damages how we [00:23:00] feel about our risk appetite, our desire to embrace failure, because we made the stakes too. Hi. So by pulling them back and to saying what some low fidelity experiments that we can conduct, that would give us a sense of whether this idea would work.

It's a great way of getting more comfortable with failure. And I think the big lesson here, Mark, that we're all getting is that it is a natural course to creating Amazon is making mistakes. It is not. Some serene Zen like win after win after win. Jeff is teaching us here, actually failure. If you're failing, you actually know you're doing the right stuff because you're kind of pushing boundaries.

You're trying new things. And this is really important. I think if we can get comfortable with failure, if we can take this onboard, we know Jeff does it. So if we can make the risk smaller with this kind of low fidelity [00:24:00] tests, whether it's a personal relationship or an app, it doesn't matter. I think this is a great way for us.

To think differently about risk and failure and to set ourselves on a trajectory for a much more richer journey, a much longer journey where we can enjoy some of the success that someone like Jeff Bezos has. What do you think? I couldn't put it better myself. Let's put out a prototype. Let's hear what the users or the company or the teammates think, gather that feedback and make the most of that ex example in the longterm.

Now, Mike, it's kind of perfect because this next clip we've got. Is really Jeff telling us about the value of playing with this in mind. It's all about in his mind, how, and actually my, you know, this a little bit better than I do. I'm not going to take the, uh, take the mounts with too much, but this next clip that we've got is a really great example of Jeff Bezos being this portrayal blazing [00:25:00] leader, going up against arguably wall street.

And calling out that he wants to be in the space to be weighed in the longterm. So this next clip is all about Jeff saying how we should play the long game. So I have been a shareholder for a long, long time. Credibly happy, wrote it up in the bubble, wrote it all the way down, hung out for those seven lean years.

And then suddenly it takes off like a rocket ship. Very much believer in the long-term, the investment cycle, big bets, all that stuff. Even I last quarter had a little bit of a gulp when I saw the fact that you were not just breaking even anymore, but losing a boatload of money. And in fact, way more than you, you even said you were going to lose, which I thought was sandbagging, or they just said, they're going to lose it.

And they're going to come in with a profit and the stock is going to soar. It was worse than you said. So. When do you begin to say, Oh, okay. That's it gotta reign it in a little bit. [00:26:00] Where's this part where you're extra nice to me because, and the company I'm asking you to shareholder, look, we would all love all of our numbers to be smooth lines up into the right.

And, uh, that would be terrific, but that's not how it works. You know? Um, you know, the, those numbers are our output. Measures and you, I mean, I guess you could try to manage your quarterly earnings very precisely. But I think personally, that would be a mistake. You know, most of the work that we put into, um, any particular quarter happened years ago.

So it's not, you know, there's, there aren't that many knobs you can turn during court. I mean, you can, but they're very, they're like eating your seed corn. If you turn those knobs, you don't want to do that. And so, uh, it's, it's, uh, uh, I, you know, people, uh, I think if you focus on the country, cool inputs to your business, instead of the [00:27:00] outputs in the longterm, you get better results.

So the, the Benjamin Graham quote here is in the short term, the stock market is a voting machine in the long-term. It's a weighing machine. And I think people are well-advised to build a company that wants to be weighed and not voted upon. Um, Oh my gosh, this is another great clip, Mark. I'm so glad that we've got the chance to talk about this one, because this really speaks to how powerful his mental models are.

And I think the real lesson for our listeners is that we should have out, you know, First principles are key thoughts about how we see the world and how business should be done, how we should work with each other and they should be kind of irrefutable. So let me give you some context to this clip and explain why it's so in CISE.

So in 1997, when Amazon listed, Jeff [00:28:00] wrote a letter to investors, and he basically said, if you want cheap, quick, Profits. Amazon is not the place for you. If you want to play the quarterly earnings game, Amazon is not for you. He said, rather, we're going to play this longterm. And at the time there was no other CEO telling wall street.

This is how it's going to be. In fact, what you often see is that most CEOs are beholden to the expectation. I talk about quarterly expectations. Mark, what are the quarterly expectations? You know, you heard the interview or they're saying, Oh, I just thought you guys were sandbagging saying, you'd have more costs than you thought.

And then you'd come in and it'd be higher. Get a pop on the stock. And Jeff's like, no, we don't play that game. So we talk about first principles a lot, and this is where Jeff and Ilan are very similar. And I actually want to take all of our listeners back to 1997 and read to [00:29:00] you what Jeff told wall street.

And. The reason, this is so important to enjoy to digest is this is a man who is very clear in his thinking and his convictions. And I think this is so inspiring. So, uh, really informative to see that he wrote this back in 97. So let me read to you what Jeff Bezos wrote to his shareholders and wrote to wall street.

And I quote, we believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we created. The longterm. This value will be a direct result of our ability to extend and solidify our current market leadership position, the stronger our market leadership. The more powerful our economic model.

Now I'm just going to pause there. He already understood what is famously called the Amazon flywheel effect. He understood already in 97, just as a bookstore that as they [00:30:00] scaled the network effects of their business would, would extend. I mean, this is so, I mean the foresight that he is showing back in 97 years off the charts, but let's keep going and hear what else he's got to say.

Because of our emphasis on the long-term, we may make decisions and weigh trade-offs differently than some companies. We will continue need to make the investment decisions in light of the long-term market leadership considerations, rather than the short term for ability considerations or. Short-term wall street reactions.

We answer boulders to claim that the above is the right investment philosophy, but it's ours. And we would be remiss if we weren't clear in the approach we have taken and will continue to take. Boom, bam. Take that wall street. You are not messing with me. Remember what streets? Just a little.com back in 97.

It's like nothing like it is now yet he had [00:31:00] the power of his convictions. He had his first principles, long term thinking long term. How inspiring. I mean, obviously the biggest lift I can do here is a Simon Sinek, his latest book, right? He talks about the infinite game. He talks about legacy. What is, what we can draw from both cynic and Bezos here is we want to be weighed on the value we create, not voted on the short-term decisions of today or the short-term wins of today.

I think this is. Brilliance right here. What do you think about, yeah, it's I think whether it's a lesson that our listeners, as well as myself take to inspire us around businesses or products that we're building, I think it's also totally true when we turn inwards as well. Mike, you know, coming off the back of the Ron holiday series, where he was telling [00:32:00] us it's about, you know, reflection and trying to get.

Your self into, uh, not reacting in that short term element, but thinking about the longterm and seeing obstacles as opportunities, I think this is a, is a great demonstration of Jeff Bezos doing the same thing. Obviously, in this case, his obstacle was returns. It was perhaps even wall street, but what he's calling out here and I really, really love just that end of the beast that you were reading out.

We aren't bold as to claim it's the right investment approach. That awareness. I say, Hey, look, I might not be able to do it, but because I'm going to go and give it a go, I'm going to be bold. I'm going to own it. We're going to own it. I'm going to own it. So powerful. Yeah. And, and just to reminded to, to us and our listeners, we've all got to know what drives us.

What are our first principles? What are the things that are really important and stick. To them through thick and thin. And the context of this is he [00:33:00] was a small company telling wall street. This is how it's going to go. And in fact, he told them I ain't going to give you the profits you want, which traditionally marks the stock price down.

And he still had the conviction to go about and do it. That's pretty good. Isn't it. So, so forward facing. Now you did mention that we have in fact done many basis, uh, shows. Um, and in fact, we have covered 100 and roughly 14 other amazing people over the years, we've been doing the show, which is just a bit mind blowing as playing the long game right there.

Um, Now ma if our listeners want to go and dive into some of the back catalog into you called it the moonshots library, nonetheless. Um, Hey, where do they go? Where do they find these goodies? Well, our listeners, [00:34:00] you can navigate over to www.moonshots.io to find our full catalog library. Uh, A huge amount of 116 today, episodes of innovators, authors, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders that we've dug into www dot moonshots.

And I would invite you to check out our transcriptions or of our show notes, all of our mantras. And if you really, really like what you're hearing. Pop along to Apple podcasts or your preferred podcasting app of choice and leave us a little review because Mike, we like spreading the word of moonshots.

Don't we, we like hearing from all of our listeners around the world and fundamentally it's only when our listeners share once they interact with all months, they re give us a rating or review [00:35:00] does that, uh, that algorithm kick in and start spreading the moonshots. Lessons around the world. That's all right.

I mean, look man, there's really two reasons that we want everybody to give our show a rating or review, uh, uh, heart alike. Um, first of all, all of the main podcast players, the more that you like rate review and share the show, the more they recommend it to others. And it's really important because for us, we're on a mission to learn out loud and we believe that.

You know, going for a moonshot or being the best version of yourself is something that means a lot. And we think a lot of people in the world are trying to be the best version of themselves. So we hope that every day this show gives someone something to help them along on that journey for a little extra 1% boost.

But also my look. Our users have the coolest user names [00:36:00] on the planet. Um, and we were looking for some inspiration because we know we have a ton of listeners, um, coming in from all four corners of the world. I mean, right now it's a battle of Eastern Europe to be top of the charts because Bulgaria, Lithuania, uh, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Are all fighting it out to get us to actually number one on the business podcast charts.

It's phenomenal. So, thank you. We love you. Bulgaria, Lithuania, uh, check, uh, Poland guys, girls. Thank you. We really appreciate having so many listeners in the world. So give us a thumbs up a rating, a review because frankly, we just want to see the coolest user names. The user handles, um, on the planet. True moonshot is get in there and go for it.

We would appreciate it a lot. Okay, Mark [00:37:00] time for us to delve more into the inside of Amazon. Wouldn't you say? Yes, much. Like we love hearing from our listeners for Jeff and Amazon and all of the work that he's done at pivotal, um, to landscape around us. He also focuses on people. So now we're going to hear from.

Um, uh, Mr. Professor G again, Scott and getaway about how Bezos really inspires us when actually producting and creating work internally. So this first clip mic, that is just a fantastic one. This is really, really great. This is all about how Jeff Bezos created the six pager. Plenty of bedtime CEOs appear to take pride in being difficult to work for, and they let less visionary people worry about the details basis made building his team a top priority and was as innovative internally as he was externally to his consumers.

His most famous internal innovation. Was the ban on PowerPoint decks [00:38:00] and in their place, the six pager, a written memo that was required of any proposal to be read front to back at the outset of meetings. I love that the written word is a lost art. It demands a certain level of discipline and clarity around your thinking.

Bezos developed a core set. Of what he called leadership principles. And every Amazon manager is trained to use them to tackle every issue from billion dollar bets to organizing their holiday party. Is it a little bit of a call? Absolutely. And guess where the word culture comes from overall executive turnover at Amazon has been estimated at 2% compared to an average of 15% for other high growth companies and 24% for snap and 27% for Tesla.

That's right. That's right. Snap and Tesla lose the same proportion of employees every two weeks as Amazon loses. Right? Oh, I didn't [00:39:00] know that Amazon's turnover was so low in inverse. I'm shocked to hear that Tesla is losing a quarter of its workforce, the annual turnover. That's insane. Isn't that enormous?

Think about the amount of time a business. It goes through the stages of hiring, onboarding, training, communicating with a new hire and to lose a quarter a year. Think of all that wasted time where converse the Amazon only lose to the scent. I know really, really, really stark contrast there. But once again, the capacity to go against, uh, the trend where every company is like drowning in these Epic PowerPoint slides.

He's like, no, you know what? I'll bend that. You gotta have the six pager and you know, what they all do is they all have to sit around the table and read it together at the same time. Which is a nice [00:40:00] little practice where everybody is really getting, I mean, talk about getting people aligned, Mike, I think, you know, what we're learning here is that I'm going to take a guess that Jeff's like, I think when you're forced to write a proper narrative from start to finish in a proper document, right.

Rather than a jazzy slide presentation, the thinking needs to be good. I think the presentation can kind of cover and hide some glaring inadequacies of the thinking. If you've got the latest fonts and icons and stock photography, I think. A six pager. I mean, you got to know what you're talking about in a six pager, right?

Yeah. And it's similar, like to, when we have discussed on the minstrel podcast before the value of creating a skeleton deck, you know, or a white pager, because if you can condense everything onto maybe even just one page or maybe more and, and really focused on [00:41:00] that content. That's going to be where the magic happens.

Isn't it. That's where the original thinking, as well as the logistical, how to exists, can avoid those, like say fancy fonts, transitions, PowerPoint, death by PowerPoint, then, then even better. But I would take it one step further. Actually, Mike, I believe that this is quite similar to, uh, what Cal Newport.

Was really digging. Yeah. The monitors turn off the laptops, put away the mobile phones. And instead with this clip, you're just focusing on six pages, maybe it's printed, whatever it might be. You're suddenly removing, um, distractions. Oh, I can't find the right cable to plug in the computer. Oh no. Why isn't the mouse responding and why can't I click to the next slide?

They're rid of all that and focus on the actual here and now let's get all of those individuals in the room. [00:42:00] They've all made time in their schedules. Let's use that efficiently. Get down into the, into the guts of it. It's really focused on the core information from that six pager by stripping out all those distractions.

Yeah. And I, I think why this matters is I think a lot of companies make bad decisions because the initial thinking is not great. There's not a real analysis of the data. The problem. What do we learn from that? What can we benchmark as our options? Well, let's weigh up the pros and cons of the options. I think, you know, we're far more scrappier and reactive than that.

And what I love about this is this is a device that we can all use to think better. Because I am absolutely convinced. Writing is a way of making yourself think better. I think it forces you to go, you know, I often read things that I bright at first go and I, and I'm like, yeah, that's kind of it, but it's not [00:43:00] exactly what I want to say.

And it's those moments where you're, Oh, it's not exactly what I said. What am I trying? Once you hit that space where you're like, Hmm, I'm trying to make a connection between this and this other thing, because that's where the value is. But I haven't really said that. So the, the act of making those connections, creating a, a series of critical thoughts or a sense of logic is the data is what we can learn about the data.

This presents us with opportunities here. I weigh up the opportunities. Therefore I recommend option B. I think the, the journey of writing that down before you discuss it, It's so good because like anything, once you've written it all down and gone through sometimes that gut wrenching process. Yeah. Oh, it's not quite what I want to say once you're on the other side of that, if sort of mastered the idea, you sort of know it, you've gone through this, this inception process where you've onboarded the [00:44:00] thinking, and this is a great device for us all to think better.

So, what do you think? I mean, if, if, if you were going to propose something radical, could you use the six pager? I mean, how would you do it? It all starts with getting my own mindset, correct. Or sorry. Maybe the better word would be my own motivation and approach. Correct. And I think that really starts with personal development of an example that that would be journaling.

Yeah, exactly. We've spoken about it a number of times on the podcast, but once you sit down and really tackle that problem, whether it's work or whether it's a six pager or whether it's just something that you're dealing with personally and your personal life, scribbling it down, writing it out, enunciating it, putting it into.

Physical beings, maybe naming the beasts. That's another [00:45:00] frame that we've, uh, we've referenced before that that helps you work out the problem. So that's where I would start. Like I would start by naming it, accepting it, trying to figure out how I feel about it by writing it down and then using that same method, putting it into a, maybe it's a team facing.

Brief, maybe it's a team page as a sort of team facing note, or maybe it's next steps, whatever it might be. I totally agree with where you're coming from, which is by building something because you've got a white page in front of you by building something from the ground up. I am writing in a way that makes sense to you.

You're going to have a better chance of making it make sense. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And the better your thinking is you'll probably get a few suggestions in the meeting that make your thinking even better, right. Collaboration. [00:46:00] And that brings us, that brings us to another big basis thing, which is. Surrounding yourself with brilliant people.

And, uh, we've got another clip right now. And, um, you know, it's funny because it's very easy to get carried away with the myth of the entrepre and or the article, you know, Warren Buffett, Steve jobs, Jeff Bezos. But what I love here is we've got an insight into how Jeff actually thinks about people thinks about.

Team and how we can get the most out of them. So once again, let's have a listen to Jeff basis. What are you doing as the leader of a major online company to make sure that you are in touch with people like some 19 year old in his bedroom with a computer changing profoundly so much that all the record companies want to see him.

How do you stay in touch? [00:47:00] With that kind of experimentation and that kind of, uh, energy hire smart people. And how do you go about it? You don't hire cause cause you know, a single individual can not keep in touch with the plethora of, of new things happening. So what you have to do is you have to put in place a recruiting process that attracts and retains smart.

Talented hardworking people who want to be a part of your mission, whatever it is. But then when you talked to them, when they bring out the CEO to talk to these people, what's the mission statement. You tell them first it's Earth's most customer centric company. And we have a very, and I explain what we mean by that because we have a very precise definition for customer centric.

It means listen, invent and personalize. So first you have to listen to customers, companies that don't listen to customers fail. Second, you have to invent for customers because companies that only listen to customers fail, it's [00:48:00] not the customer's job to invent for themselves. It's our job at Amazon eCom to invent things like one-click and other things like, like sales rank going from one to 18 million, those kinds of things that customers really like.

That's our job, not theirs to think of that. And third is personalized. Take every individual customer and put them at the center of their own universe. And then w when we talk about Earth's most customer centric company, we mean that in a very Broadway, this is bigger than Amazon account. What we want to do is sort of uplift the worldwide standards for customer service and customer centricity.

So this is sort of like Sony sort of born right after world war two. Is a company that set out. If you go and look at their early mission statement, it was not to be known for quality. It was to make Japan known for quality, not Sony, Japan. And that's sort of what we want to do. We want to do something bigger than amazon.com [00:49:00] who they quite would define it.

For me, it would be that the, that we set a new example for customer service and customer centricity that other companies look at admire. And want to emulate, and that is a mission that people can get excited about. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm excited by that that was great. Isn't that a great snapshot into the mind of Jeff Bezos?

You can imagine him again, going back to your reading of the 1997 statement again, this is Jeff demonstrating to us. That he is all about the long-term he's creating Earth's most customer centric company. He doesn't mind that he's going to be broad. He's not necessarily saying amazon.com is going to be the answer instead.

It's the entire plethora of business units and elements and verticals. And, but where I think the real kicker is Mike, is that end bit. He wants to set an example for [00:50:00] others to follow him. He wants other companies, uh, maybe even governments, as we've heard about the minimum wage to be inspired, to take. Uh, so, so to speak a leaf out of, uh, the Amazon book and follow that go out and be more customer centric, go out and create a better product for those customer individuals.

I think that is such a powerful. Demonstration of why Jeff Bezos, to be honest, we kind of take him for granted. We know he's the richest man in the world. We know his business and the businesses, but actually for me, at least I sometimes forget just how pivotal and, uh, direct a lot of his work can be in affecting me as well as those things around me.

Have you heard that Sony's story before? I love that Sonny story. I haven't actually. I hadn't heard isn't it? Isn't it fascinating because what, what I sensed, [00:51:00] as he was saying, I want to uplift standards for customer service, just like Sony did for quality. And they started out for Japan. All of a sudden, as I listened to that, the vision really captured me.

I was like, Whoa. That is, I mean, that's when you and I were like applying for, for jobs in book distribution center. That's what, like, yeah, come on. I'm like that wasn't that wasn't that the root term, because the sense of the scale of their vision was just like, Whoa, when you suddenly appreciate. And perhaps this was one of Bezos's greatest achievements as Amazon CEO is too.

Not necessarily show where they were going to end up, you know, because of the, the desire to experiment the desire to occasionally fail, but always to stay bold and try new things [00:52:00] while simultaneously having an eye on the future and having an eye on, okay, well, this is where the market's going to go, and this is why we are doing it.

We've started with our why and our mission statement. It was actually to. Create a business that has an fathomable effect on us on consumerism, on. The lifestyles of many, many of us customer service levels. I mean, I mean, you know, delivery, they have totally defined our expectations about when things should be delivered.

I mean, they are the standard to which everybody else is scrambling to keep up. And I think it's a reminder of how important vision is if you really want to have. Do something that's meaningful and have impact in the world. You've got to be in tune, you've got to live this vision and purpose, just like we heard from, from Jeff.

And you will set the standard in whatever game you're playing. [00:53:00] I think, I think it's a, it's a very instructional to see. And you can just tell the way he's explaining that. I mean, that's not some sales speech, like. He's he's really in it. Um, and, and, and such a great way for us to kind of put a bookend on how he thinks about sharing the vision internally, how they write the six pages to get their thinking, right?

These are all the things that we can learn from, but also, I think Mark you myself. All of our listings. We can do them too. We can write a six pager, just do it. We can hire smart people. Just do it. We can wait for this have and audacious vision. That's far beyond our company, but setting a new standard in whatever game.

We play. I mean, this stuff is, is powerful that we have one, one last little zap of energy from Jeff basis. We do and exactly [00:54:00] to your point, Mike, we all have the capability to be bold, to go out and create something new and to have that vision. And we've all just got to go and experiment. But one final lesson that we can learn from Mr.

Bezos, as our closing clip, Mike. Is the fact that everything comes with overheads. People have very high standards, how they want their work life to be. And I said, look, if you can get your work life to be where you enjoy half of it, that is amazing because very few people ever achieve that because the truth is everything comes with overhead.

That's reality. Everything comes with pieces that you don't like. You can be a Supreme court justice, and there's still gonna be pieces of your job. You don't like every job comes with pieces. You don't like, and we need to say that's part of it. You have to figure out how to set up your life in such a way that you [00:55:00] can minimize the things.

And I find people don't dislike hard work, what people dislike and it is being, um, out of control. Like they can't control their life. They can't control their environment. This happens to me when I get over-scheduled. I hate being over-scheduled. I want some time to be able to think and free myself. We all have the same amount of time in the world.

Nobody has more time than anybody else. And when you become a very successful person, one of the things you start to get over-scheduled. So a young person starting their career. I think there are probably a lot of things. Some of them are very well known and people have heard them many times. They're still true.

One of the that you should always focus on a young person should find something that they're passionate about to do, and that's not going to surprise anyone. It's a clear thing to do. It's very hard. If you [00:56:00] don't love your work, you're never going to be great at it. The other thing I would suggest to any young person, even before they start their career, is to really think about their choices because I find young people and I, I, when I was young, I had, I made this mistake too.

You can get very fixed on your gifts. So everybody has gifts, you know, You have gifts and you have things that you didn't get gifted. Maybe you're extremely beautiful. Maybe you're extremely good at mathematics. Maybe you, there are lot of things that you can be given. But those things can confuse you because they're not the things that construct your life.

It's your choices, the construct, your life, not here at Gus. You can celebrate your gifts. Be proud of them. Be happy of them. Actually, don't be proud of them and be celebratory of them because you can't be proud because their gifts they were given to you, you didn't earn them. You can only be proud of the things you've earned.

And so, [00:57:00] as I got older, I started to realize I wasn't proud of my gifts. I was always good at school school. So it's easy for me. And I was always proud that I was a great student. I got A's in all my classes. I was good at math, all of that. And I thought, I thought that's who I was, but it's not true. Those are the things that are gifts.

What was hard for me is deciding to work hard, deciding to. Use my gifts in certain ways. It's a challenge myself to do things that I didn't think I could do to put myself in uncomfortable situations. We all get, I would say to a young person, you can choose a life of ease and comfort, or you can choose a life of service and adventure.

Which one of those, when you're 90 years old, are you going to be more proud of. Um, Jeff bringing it home serenaded by a lovely [00:58:00] piano, uh, background and beyond, um, Mark. That was, that was pretty awesome to hear somebody who's also got all this great thinking about opportunities, uh, innovation and failure, the writing, the six pager hiring smart people in the end.

You can hear that. He made a choice for hard work. And I thought that was very, very powerful. Yeah. It's a great bookend for the end of the show. Um, as well as for Jeff Bezos, the reason why he's is a feature within our leadership series, Mike, uh, because he's calling out, Hey look, things are hard. You're not necessarily going to be given an opportunity.

On a, on a silver platter, you're not necessarily going to be able to roll out of bed and, you know, find that life is easy every single day, each day may present a new challenge and much like Tom [00:59:00] Brady with the concept of evolving every day and much like the Ron holiday series where we're embracing obstacles.

Much like many, many of our other moon, such as Joe Rogan, this discomfort, this, um, ability to, uh, notice, but cope with moments that you don't really enjoy are those times when you're going to get the most out of it, you are going to become more resilient. You're going to become that much better. He's given us a lesson in, be just be ready to fail and for it to be hard and a bit uncomfortable.

Hasn't he it's, it's been quite, quite refreshing there. Yeah. I actually quite like that final clip because it reminds us, you get out of it. What you put in, you can choose how much you're going to be motivated today. You were in coasts while Mark. So we did, uh, another chapter in our Jeff Bezos [01:00:00] adventure.

And it's been a, it's been a blast. Hasn't it? Um, what, what thought, uh, are you, um, going to have top of mind when we finished the show, what do you, think's going to sit with you more than anything else. I want to be inspired by Jeff and think about the long game. Think about embracing right now and saying it's okay.

What happens in the future? Let's focus on creating the best value let's invest. Now in order to get that payoff down the longterm, let's see what happens down the road and just enjoy that journey you choose for the weighing machine by the sounds of it. I choose for the weighing machine. Very good. Very good.

Thank you to you, Mark. It's been great to come back to Jeff Bezos as he is. He has, uh, recently resigned from Amazon, but has started a whole new chapter of [01:01:00] his life. And so far he's created a company with $1.6 trillion. The second biggest employer in the USA. And he's done all of this in maybe just half a lifetime.

And I want to take the moment to thank all of you. Our listeners plow us, share with us your feedback, your views, your thoughts, your comments, and ideas, because we hope that today in exploring Jeff Bezos, that we have inspired you. So we would love you to inspire us and our journey in Jeff Bezos today started with the clarity of thought thoughts to go out and find the biggest opportunities, the biggest problems to solve in the world.

And if you go after those, you need to be willing to fail. It's part of the game. You need to play a long time, um, point of view, you need to be choosing for the weighing machine to create value. [01:02:00] And the way we do that is we think deeply, we write the six pages and we surround ourselves with smart people and we go out in the world to set the standard.

Yes, moonshot is, you can do this too. And if you make these choices, you have to know that it will not be perfect. And there will always be overhead, even when we're doing the things that we truly choose full, but every single day you have a choice. So what we learned from Jeff Bezos is to make good choices, choose for hard work, for challenge and for service to others.

And if you do this, you can go out in the world. Not only can you be the best version of yourself, but you will indeed. Have a good life. All right. That's it for the moonshots podcast. That's a wrap.