Jeff Bezos (Insights, Stories, and Secrets)

**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. An insider's guide to the principles and practices that drove Amazon's meteoric rise. Colin Bryar and Bill Carr joined Amazon in the late 1990s, at a time when it was making the transition from a small company that used doors for desks to one of the fastest growing and most respected companies in the world. In Working Backwards, these two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the successes of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With 27 years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early 2000s, a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life, Bryar and Carr offer the first insider's account of the practices that set Amazon apart.
With lessons and techniques for applying Amazon's 14 leadership principles to your company or career, the authors illuminate how the principles inform decision making at all levels and reveal how the company's culture has been defined by four characteristics. Customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence.
Bryar and Carr explain the set of ground level practices that ensure these characteristics are translated into action and flow through all aspects of the business. Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative filled with the authors' in-the-room recollections of what being Amazonian is like and how it affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon's scale is achieved through commitment to its set of well-defined, rigorously executed principles and practices shared here for the very first time.
And that is an excerpt from the front cover of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is Working Backwards, Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon, written by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. And I want to do this bonus, this book is a bonus episode, because there's a sequel to what may be the most insightful biography I've ever read. That's The Everything Store, written by Brad Stone. Not only do you get a good idea of the early life of Jeff Bezos, what he was like as a young person, why he made the decision to quit his job at the age of 30 and start Amazon, but you also get a lot of his... He probably has the most unique ideas out of any entrepreneur that I've covered. And so that author is releasing in the next few weeks a book called Amazon Unbound. And I think a good way to prepare for that book is by reading this one. So let me go ahead and jump into a couple... There's a couple of interesting parts I found in the introduction that I want to bring to your attention. So it starts off saying, why is Amazon worthy of study? And it says, to say that Amazon is an unconventional company is an understatement. Its most significant initiatives have often been criticized and even derided as folly. And when I read those two sentences, I thought, I was like, well, that's actually a good thing. I remember in the book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy said that talent and good ideas is more likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels. And so those kind of people are going to be criticized by everybody else, and it's largely due to everybody else not understanding their ideas. So that may be an indicator that you actually have some good ideas if people disagree with them. So they continue talking about what this book is about. And then I'm going to really, when you think about the title, Working Backwards, I'm going to refer to that as it could all be so simple. That'll make sense in one second. So it says this book is primarily about showing you some of the unique principles and processes at Amazon with enough detail that you will be able to implement them if you choose to. So it's separated into two parts. The first part is going over the philosophies, the ideas, and the principles behind Amazon. And then the second part has to do with how they apply those philosophies to the building of many products. So it talks about the Kindle, Amazon Prime, Prime Video, and then AWS. And so let's go back to this idea that it could all be so simple. And it has to do with a fundamental core belief of Amazon. It says Amazon believes that long-term growth is best produced by putting the customer first.