#180 Jeff Bezos (Invention of a Global Empire)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th.
Number one, his genius was not in inventing. Rather, it was in inventing a system of invention. Dozens of researchers and engineers and tinkerers labored beneath Edison in a carefully constructed hierarchical organization that he founded and oversaw.
Number two, it has always seemed strange to me the things that we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the compliments of failure in our system. And those traits that we detest, sharpness, greed, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.
And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.
So those are two quotes that appear at the very beginning of the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, and it was written by Brad Stone. This is the sequel to The Everything Stone. So this is, or The Everything Stone, The Everything Store. And this is part three in this miniature three-part series that I'm doing on Jeff Bezos. You don't have to listen to them in order, but it might be helpful if you do. I think starting with The Everything Store before Amazon Unbound makes a lot of sense because it does go in sequential order. So a lot of what I found most interesting in the book and what I'm gonna talk to you more about today is really there's a lot of quotes from Jeff Bezos that are occurring not only in public speeches, but also internally in the company. And I think that's gonna reveal a lot about how he thinks about building the company. And the reason I wanted to start with those two quotes, one, both are from actually novels. The first quote was from a fictional account of the race to electrify America, where Thomas Edison is obviously a central character in that. And I wanna start with a quote that Jeff Bezos says that could have easily come out of Thomas Edison's mouth over a hundred years ago. And Jeff says, he says, every interesting thing I've ever done, every important thing I've ever done, every beneficial thing I've ever done has been through a cascade of experiments and mistakes and failures.
I'm covered in scar tissue as a result of this. And so what is the same thing if you go back and read the biography of Thomas Edison, think of them two or three books on him. It's the same thing that Jeff Bezos is saying, is that you grow through experimentation and the inevitable failure that occurs as a result. They both say it's not an experiment if you know the outcome of that experiment. And the only way you're gonna grow is by taking a risk, by going into the unknown and saying, hey, I have an idea. I'm gonna test this hypothesis I have. I know I'm gonna eventually make a mistake, and then I'm gonna learn from those mistakes, course correct and move forward. And so we're gonna see in Jeff's, his philosophy on building business, like what was so remarkable about reading this book, is that you see a lot of the ideas that he developed when Amazon was just a company selling books, and then eventually just a company that focused on retail. He applies those same lessons and philosophies over and over again in developing all these different, disparate business lines that Amazon has. And so by the end of this podcast, even if you've never read any other books on Jeff Bezos, you'll have an idea of how he thinks, his counterintuitive, unique way, and in some cases, a very relentless and ruthless way, no doubt about it. He's a very, very extreme character. As you can see the second quote that's in the book, he has a lot of those traits, like a lot of the founders that we study. But the point I'm trying to make to you is that he just has a really consistent methodology of how he goes about experimenting, taking the experiments that are showing signs of success and relentlessly moving forward to make those small businesses into big businesses. So I'm gonna just read some highlights here. This is the idea that you should develop your own metric of success. And this is something Jeff did at very early days. You can read his very first shareholder letter, and you're gonna see his operating philosophy. So it says Bezos wanted to set his own metric for success without interference from impatient outsiders. So he encoded his operating philosophy in his first letter to shareholders. So this is the first letter for shareholders for Amazon. We're gonna see that he also wrote a similar document for Blue Origin. It's a founding memo, and it actually hasn't been released. According to Brad Stone, it had never been released before this book. And so it's towards the end of this book. Vowing a focus not on immediate financial returns or on satisfying the myopic demands of Wall Street, but on increasing cash flow and the growing market share to generate value over the long term to loyal shareholders.