10 Rules of Success by Jeff Bezos

It is not uncommon that Jeff Bezos' rules for success have become one of those decalogues that make history. And this is because almost everything the famous CEO of Amazon does has become historical: from his incredible company to his maxims for life.

Legend has it that Jeff Bezos was born into a modest family and that during adolescence he only dreamed of space travel. Years later, after graduating in Electronic Science and Engineering, he became first a telecommunications operative and then a boring bank clerk.

Everything changed during a trip between New Jersey and Seattle. In the middle of the journey he wondered if at 80 years old he was going to regret having missed the beginning of the Internet. He replied yes. Then, he left the world of Wall Street and, thanks to an extraordinary nose for business, ended up becoming the richest man in the world with Amazon.

Who is Jeff Bezos?

Jeff Bezos is one of those men who managed to see in the long term when many were clouded by the immediate . In 1994, when the Internet was just an idea that was beginning to be tested, this man had the lucidity to realize that everything was going to change. So he opted for a virtual book store that eventually took him to the pinnacle of success.

Just five years later, many began to be amazed by the sustained growth of that venture. Time magazine consecrated him as the character of the year in 1999, and to explain his success, Bezos said at the time:

“We are growing faster than any company in the world. Here, what we do is help people search and find the things they want. Guide them to make the best decisions as buyers. In a way, we're making their lives better, even if it's just a little bit."

Amazon began to market other products and it could be said that it was the first company to demonstrate that online purchases and sales were possible . From the beginning it was clear that it was necessary to diversify and today it has investments in areas as dissimilar as Google, or a laboratory to extend people's lives.

Today he is the richest man in the world. According to Forbes magazine , his fortune amounts to 204.6 billion dollars . Unlike most of him, during 2020 he has had great commercial success. He has also become a guru in the business world; Proof of this are the 10 rules for success by Jeff Bezos, the topic we will talk about next.

10 Rules of Success

Jeff Bezos' Rules for Success is a compendium and synthesis of the perspective of this famous entrepreneur who has marked an entire era. In them he offers simple and profound guidelines that serve as a focus of orientation for all entrepreneurs. Let's see what they're about.

1. The strategy must be based on the things that will not change

The first of Jeff Bezos's rules for success refers to what is essential to any strategy and that, therefore, does not change, but must be maintained. It doesn't matter what kind of business you start, or what kind of company you have; There are three elements that must always be present in the strategy.

Those elements are: offering a greater variety, achieving lower prices and being able to offer fast and reliable delivery . All three aspects are decisive in business success and, according to Jeff Bezos, the backbone of a winning strategy.

2. Obsess over customers

For a long time there were entrepreneurs obsessed with the product, with the processes or with sales. Esots focused all their efforts on optimizing more and more some of these aspects. Jeff Bezos is one of the pioneers of a new approach that has proven to be successful: customer centricity .

So important is the client for this tycoon that for a long time he left an empty chair in meetings with managers; that chair represented the client. Today a new type of employee sits there, specially trained to represent the client. They are called “customer experience standard raisers” .

3. We are willing to be misunderstood for a long time

Jeff Bezos is an innovator and as such he knows that changes and novelties often generate resistance at the beginning . The more decisive the innovation, the more rejection it may encounter at first. This is due to the tendency of most people to “stay the same”.

That is why the third of Jeff Bezos' rules for success says that the innovator must mentally prepare for that resistance and even that rejection. This is a natural part of the process of introducing novelties and breaking established patterns.

4. There are two kinds of companies: Those that try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We are from the second group

Price is a critical issue in any undertaking because this factor is closely linked to utility and profitability . There are not a few who fail due to an immediate approach at this point; they want to charge more because they are more attentive to accounting than to the customer.

In this regard, Jeff Bezos is a true model of the opposite. Everything at Amazon is geared toward cutting costs and passing the savings on to consumers . In fact, one of the company's eight official values ​​is frugality.

5. Determine what customers need and work on it

This is another one of Jeff Bezos' rules for success that talks about customers. On this point, the tycoon is radical: everything at Amazon is done based on what customers want , how they want it, and when they want it.

The multinational's experts are at the service of consumers. Kindle , for example, is the product of customer feedback; They were the ones who gave shape to that idea and the engineers did nothing but materialize what the people asked for.

6. Our culture is friendly and intense, but if we have to choose, we prefer it to be intense

When Jeff Bezos speaks of an "intense culture" he is referring to its obsession with collecting data on absolutely everything and measuring everything that is measurable. For this important businessman, information, particularly that which has to do with customers, is everything.

For the same reason, he points out that, if necessary, he would have to choose the intense facet of his company culture, even over the friendly one. This means that, for him, information is the crucial factor. He also calls this “measurement culture” .

7. If you want to develop your creativity you must be willing to fail

This is one of Jeff Bezos' ten rules for success that not only applies to the business world, but also to personal life. By definition, creativity is a leap into the void. Hardly anyone creates something new on the first try ; the usual thing is that a chain of actions must be carried out, trial and error, until innovation is achieved.

For the same reason, anyone who wants to create must also strengthen their capacity to tolerate frustration. If something characterizes the great inventors and discoverers, it is not the bursts of inspiration, but a perseverance to all tests. They try again and again until they succeed.

8. In the old world, you had to spend 30% creating a great service, and 70% spreading it. In the new to the world, it's the other way around

Until not long ago, advertising and dissemination occupied an important place in the plans of any company. Good dissemination work was considered to be the necessary condition for the product or service to win over consumers.

Jeff Bezos sees it in a different way. Even the advertising budget on Amazon is really modest. For this famous CEO, word of mouth is the strongest trend in terms of disclosure; For this reason, efforts should not be focused on publicizing or promoting the product or service, but on taking it to its maximum expression .

9. We should all be able to live in a Call Center

This rule insists on the importance of the customer. When the CEO of Amazon speaks of "living in a Call Center " he refers to the disposition that the entrepreneur and all the staff must have to attend to consumers, at any time and place.

At Amazon all executives are required to undergo customer service training, for two days each year, and this includes Bezos himself. This is a clear sign that customer service is an axis of the company . The result is timely, friendly and open attention to understand and manage the needs, problems and expectations of consumers.

10. We are in day 1 of the Internet. There is much to learn

The last of Jeff Bezos' rules for success recalls a hard truth: the Internet is an incipient reality . It is true that it has changed the world in its short life, but this is only a taste of what it can offer in the present and what it could generate in the future.

Therefore, entrepreneurs need to be aware of this and put themselves in “explore” and “learn” mode. The potential of the network is infinite and that is why it is not enough to imitate what is there, or follow the trend of the moment, but it is also necessary to apply efforts to continue discovering the possibilities of this fabulous invention.

The most interesting thing about Jeff Bezos' ten rules for success is that they are simple and consistent principles that any entrepreneur can apply. The secret is to do it thoroughly instead of framing them and adopting them as an ideal that does not materialize on a day-to-day basis.

From the life story of Jeff Bezos we must rescue his example of audacity. He is one of those men who did not wait for someone to show him the way to go, but he was able to risk everything for everything; he had the acuity to see on the Internet a path to infinity and that was the beginning of his enormous fortune. Quite a role model.