Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just penned a new letter to his shareholders that should serve as a wakeup call for anyone in business. The following letter is a window into the mindset of a successful entrepreneur who truly understands that if you’re not moving forward you’re getting left in the dust. Below I’ve included an excerpt from Jeff’s insightful shareholder letter, as well as a link to read the full letter:
“Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight. A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.
[In Day 2], you stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, ‘Well, we followed the process.’ A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process.”
The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.”
In many ways I see us as having a Day One company, in that we are only just now beginning to really tap into our full potential with the Shopping Annuity. We approach shopping in a different way with one to one marketing matching product to people and people to product because no one can track and reward spending like we can with digital aggregation and the Shopping Annuity. No one else has what we have: SHOP.COM, universal shopping cart, monetized entrepreneurial people power, customer tracking system, MPCP integrated into the Shopping Annuity and Assessment tool, the list goes on and on…
The same principles Jeff Bezos discusses in his recent shareholder message can also be applied to our business. The fact that it’s coming from a former competitor shouldn’t matter as the message resonates in both business and life. The same principles apply to us and our Uberization of the Shopping Annuity! Let’s make it happen!
Keep Growing!
-JR Ridinger