The Jeff Bezos success process. Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon was aware that discovering his passion and growing the skills necessary to shoot him skyward may be the first steps towards achieving notable success but he also knew he had to take it further to be the JEFF BEZOS we all know today. So, he drew a plan.
Draw a plan
your business plan reflects your vision for your pre-determined venture which had been influenced by your passion and what steps you plan to take to achieve this end. Jeff Bezos who drew the Business plan for Amazon while on a road trip with his wife Mackenzie from New York to Seattle once said “You know the business plan won’t survive its first encounters with reality. It will always be different. The reality will never be the plan, but the discipline of writing the plan forces you to think through some of the issues and to get sort of mentally comfortable in the space. Then you start to understand, if you push on this knob this will move over here and so on. So, that’s the first step.” He named the company Amazon after the world’s largest river as is evident in the company’s growth as the world’s largest online retailer. He had a plan, he followed through adjusting as he went to meet the ultimate goal; SUCCESS.
Make a move the Jeff Bezos successful way
Bezos had a plan but he knew he had to do more than have a plan so in 1994, he moved to Seattle, Washington; the move was planned as he knew there were lots of tech companies in Seattle and he would have access to bright tech minds. He moved to Washington where he rented a two-bedroom house in Bellevue in which he and four employees set up operations and he definitely made a move as in about a year of his move to Seattle, even with limited funds, loan from parents, share offers to friends, Amazon Kicked off fully in 1995.
Be organized
The fingers, though feeble as separate units, becomes strong when closed into a fist. Bezos had a passion, a vision and was armed with a plan but without an organized structure to implement, it could all have been for naught. Bezos first employee was Shelley Kaplan; a computer programmer who was responsible for developing the company’s website. One of Jeff Bezos famous structural organization stories in the early years was how he organized his employees into “two pizza teams”. They were grouped into teams less than ten for each shift ensuring that they could be fed with two pizzas while they worked autonomously in close knit functions to further optimize productivity.
Learn on the job the Jeff Bezos way
Amazon launched a project in 2004 called block view, its sole purpose was to match pictures of store fronts and shops with product listings on its search engine called A9.com, and this was before the development of Google earth view. To this end, they flew photographers all over the country who took pictures of shops and restaurants. It did not pan out as Amazon eventually dropped the project when it did not work out as envisaged and moved on to other projects. Apparently, Amazon learnt from this as it retained the sophisticated algorithms which remembered your search history and used that to personalize results along with things like your bookmarks and calendar.
Feedback As a Success Process
It is said that “clear communication is essential for business success”, in the early years, Jeff Bezos had an open line of communication with customers and dissatisfied customers could email him directly. In a post he said, “If your whole culture is competitor-obsessed, it’s hard to stay motivated if you are out in front. Whereas customers are also unsatisfied, always discontent, always want more. So no matter how far in front you get in front of competitors, you are still behind your customers. They are always pulling you along,”
Consolidate on success like Jeff Bezos
When you have a passion, a vision, a plan and you work hard at it, Success is inevitable but the trick to making success long lasting is consolidating your success, like plants, it should be watered, pruned and ultimately grown with dedication. Since Amazon, Jeff Bezos had consolidated his success by founding a space exploration company called “Blue Origin”, he bought “the Washington post” while Amazon itself has over 40 subsidiaries including the online store; Zappos, the movie review website, IMDb, Audible, Diapers.com and so on.
In 25 years, Jeff Bezos has grown momentously into a force most people can only imagine but more importantly, he has proven that, if it can be imagined, it can be achieved.
Citation and credits; https://businessinsider.com, https://groovewallet.com, https://biography.com, https://articles.bplans.com/jeff-bezos-on-why-you-should-have-a-plan/