Book Review: Invent and Wander: The collected writings of Jeff Bezos
Book Review: Invent and Wander: The collected writings of Jeff Bezos
My top 5 highlights and lessons
Amazon is a phenomenal business success story. The book ‘Invent and Wander’ provides valuable insight into Amazon's success, highlighting their customer focus, data-driven decision-making , and vision-oriented approach to business. The book is basically the shareholder letters that Jeff Bezos writes to his investors, it so impacted me that I told members of my Whatsapp group that we’ll review it on March 15. Here are my highlights and lessons
Heads-down unwavering focus on their customers is the rallying cry of their business. He said “ I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified of the customer” Notice he didn’t say BE TERRIFIED of the competition. They believe that competition is not the key to sales success, but rather a complete understanding of their customer's needs is.
“ Many of the important decisions we make at amazon.com can be made with data. There is a right answer and a wrong answer” Hmm I recently did a poll for one of my products to ascertain the source of our buyers and the data revealed INSTAGRAM! Based on the data I over-indexed on Instagram by making my videos better, the captions more compelling, and much more. Do you use data for your business decisions? Look at the backend of your social media it will reveal a lot of data concerning where your traffic is coming from and let the data inform your next move or improvement, stop fixating on your competition and allowing them determine your next move.
Work backward. In amazon, they work from their core value IMPROVE THE CUSTOMERS EXPERIENCE. To achieve your bold vision, start by working backward. Take Amazon's example, where they launched Kindle with a vision of making every book, ever printed, in any language, all available to customers in less than 60 seconds. By reverse engineering, Amazon identified competencies they needed to improve, hired new talent, and expanded their knowledge base. Thus, you too can work backward to identify goals and take the necessary steps to achieve your vision. To grow embrace a bigger vision, for example i want to have over 200,000 subscribers on my Youtube Channel that’s a bold dream so because of that i am improving my competencies in : Thumbnail, headlines, getting better at interviewing guest, etc. It is the vision that is driving my growth.
People will pay you money when you sell them convenience and frictionless ness
Don’t sell a product or service sell the ease of getting it and then remove any friction to getting it.
Convenience and frictionless ness are key to selling products, as demonstrated by Netflix
The value drivers of amazon.com are Low prices, Vast selection, and fast and convenient delivery. This is what drives all their judgments and decisions in the company. Vision is not a place you go to, it’s a place you come from, the valu drivers of amazon is a perfect example of that.
These value drivers such as low prices, vast selection, and fast and convenient delivery, reflect a missionary rather than a business mindset. These were some of my highlights , i truly enjoyed this book.
I encourage you to join me in the book review by signing up for my WhatsApp group. It’s N5,000 but you may get an N5,000,000 idea.
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