When a visionary like Amazon founder and Chief Executive Officer gives much-needed advice to upcoming visionaries, dreamers, and entrepreneurs, then everyone sits up and takes notice. For someone who has been at the forefront of the e-commerce revolution and continues to innovate aggressively despite turning his company into a global behemoth, Bezos is not particularly known for doing a lot of interviews. That big said, his sheer record when it comes to innovation and disruptive ideas over the course of two decades has made him one of the most important thinkers of the age. Bezos was speaking at an Amazon fire chat and spoke passionately about the future. He also reiterated that he is stubborn when it comes to his ideas and perhaps that is the primary reason why he has managed to turn an online bookstore into what is now known as ‘the Everything Store.’
Bezos stated that he does not give up on ideas it the execution proves to be painful in the initial stages. Regarding entrepreneurship, he said,
If you want to be an entrepreneur, the most important thing is to be customer obsessed, so don’t just satisfy your customers, figure out how to absolutely delight them. The number one thing is passion — whosoever your customers are. You have got to have some passion for the arena that you’re going to develop and work in.
He went on to state that if one goes into an industry about which he does not have much passion, then he is almost certainly going to lose out to people who are passionate about the industry in questions. Those people will eventually create better products and succeed in the market.
However, one of the most important statements from Bezos was about risk and how it is important for entrepreneurs to be risk takers if he is to succeed. He went on to add that despite the fact that Amazon is comfortably placed as one of the world’s biggest corporations, the company is still willing to take risks and entertain ideas that could go on to make a major difference.