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These 3 crazily simple hacks can make you as successful as Jeff Besos
Hint: you can use them even if you don't sell books!
When you build anything, you have to face failures. If not, you are not doing something worth much.
Harsh but true.
But why so many don't recover from those failures whereas others pass through them and thrive?
What is the secret to success? There is no secret but 3 simple rules that I learned from Jeff Besos (well, from his book Invent and Wander). I call it the Long-Term Curiosity Framework.
It is nicely summed up in this video:
What is the secret of Amazon's success?
The story of the behemoth of e-commerce is not so linear. It even almost stopped early.
3 years after its launch in 1994, Amazon didn't do very well. So much so that a journalist, George Colony, referred to the web store as "amazon.toast".
This seemed to be the end of the road for Jeff Besos with his online bookstore.
But he came up with a genius idea: Amazon Prime in 2005. The promise of super fast delivery was so appealing to customers compared to the competition that the company's revenues went through the roof.
And he didn't stop there. Kindle, Amazon AWS, Prime Video, Alexa, Echo, Fire tablets... The list of innovations is long and makes up for a big part of the company's immense success (and the highly desirable wallet of Jeff).
How did he manage to make this happen and go from a big public failure to an e-commerce world leader position?
Here is the secret sauce.
The key to success: the Long-Term Curiosity Framework
The whole company's culture is bathed in a simple but crazily efficient framework.
These simple 3 rules dictate how people work at Amazon:
- Keep a first-day attitude
- Take a 3-year perspective
- Fail well and often
Let's detail each of them.
The first-day attitude
When you start a new job, a new hobby, or a sport, you feel excited. You look forward to this day.
Your mind is boiling with questions, and you feel fully awake and energized.
Then, after a few weeks, your brain recognizes the situation as not new anymore and categorizes many of these exciting things as routine stuff it doesn't need to pay attention to.
The same in relationships, by the way. No matter why so many marriages don't last. It needs efforts to maintain the spark.
Anyways.
The principle is to trick your mind into maintaining this "first-day" excitement. Take each day as the first.
It's an attitude to cultivate each morning before starting your day.
Jeff focuses on making his customers as happy as possible each day. I believe that it should be the focus of every business.
The 3-year perspective
On the contrary, the second mindset hack is to take a 3-year perspective. Treat each problem with a long-term vision and stay away from quick fixes that won't do any good to your business in the future.
Be ready to make short-term sacrifices for getting long-term benefits.
Amazon Prime was a silly idea from a one-year perspective. Not profitable at all. By envisioning what it could do for the company in 3 years or more, Jeff Besos took this risk which proved to be massively profitable.
The other benefit of this shift in perspective is that it helps define what really matters and stop running everywhere to stop little fires.
You will clarify the most critical priorities and use your resources much more efficiently.
Failing well and often
Most of our regrets are about things we didn't do and not things we tried.
Experimenting (and failing) often is the best way to find solutions to your problems. You will also increase your luck by exploring more opportunities.
Maintaining curiosity is the fuel for innovation, and this attitude can bring high benefits to your business.
Amazon products such as the Fire came from investing in risky projects.
Stepping out of your comfort zone is the surest way to maintain growth.
Takeaway
As always in life and business, there are no real secrets, no hacks (yes, I used the term in the somehow clickbaity title, but only to help you read this article and benefit from its lessons).
It comes down to a limited number of mindsets and attitudes that will make you successful.
Jeff teaches us his 3 rules:
- Keep a first-day attitude
- Take a 3-year perspective
- Fail well and often
You will agree that seeing the success he has by following them (well, he is also super smart), there is a chance that they can help you as well.
What should you do next?
Besides following me for more tips and tricks to make your life shine, you have to write down this Long-Term Curiosity Framework and use it!
Reading won't help you more. Put it into action starting today. No reasons, no excuses to wait. The results will be pretty immediate, at least mentally.
Note: links in this article may be affiliate links allowing me to get a tiny financial compensation at no extra cost for you!