What started off as an online site to buy books has become one of the biggest ecommerce firms in the world, making its founder Jeff Bezos the world’s richest man.
The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos spent a major part of his life creating and conceptualizing the first online business platform, thereby revolutionizing the ecommerce ecosystem. Today, Amazon has a market capitalization of $707.32 billion and Jeff Bezos became the first person ever with a net worth of $116.6 billion.
Here are some business lessons everybody can learn from ecommerce baron!
Learn From The Right People
Learning is a continuous exercise. Surround yourself with those people who will help you learn and grow instead of pull you down. While hiring people for your company, make it a point to hire those who work well with others and have the necessary emotional intelligence to work well in a team and individually. More importantly, hire people who can teach something new to you and to your team.
Customers are King
Ever since the beginning of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has given more importance to the consumers and the consumer experience over everything else. From return policies to delivery and packaging, he has believed only if customers have a happy experience will they ever come back. Bezos has made it a point to obsess over the customers and not the competitors. While everything else is equally important, if the customers of the company are unhappy, no company will be able to survive.
Listen To The Critics
Any person who is thinking of starting a company or is the founder of a startup should have the ability to tolerate critics. Listening to criticism can help you formulate plans to develop the weaker aspects of your company and increase efficiency and effectiveness. Although it is difficult to take criticism, using such feedback will only help your company grow.
Create A Reputation
The only way to build a reputation is by doing the hard things well. Not everybody is able to get the hard things right. Work on creating a reputation in the society and not just building a brand. A company’s reputation speaks more than its brand image.
Evolve
Create, innovate, invest, invent, discover and evolve. A company that is not focusing on innovating itself constantly can become stagnant and start to rot. Keep up with the technology, lead the industry with bold changes and take the risks. Sticking to the same old ideologies and strategies can be very dangerous for a company. A startup that is not constantly reinventing itself is not moving forward.
Hire leaders and not just employees
When Amazon was first incorporated, the company had close to 600 employees. Today, Amazon is one of the biggest companies around the world with over 230,000 employees. Work on hiring versatile and talents employees who can become the leaders of tomorrow. The success of a company is affected by its ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base each of whom must think like, and therefore actually be, an owner.
Make A Difference
It’s not enough to just build a big company. Use that company and your influence to make a positive difference in the society. While the world’s second richest man, Bill Gates, set up a foundation for this purpose, Jeff Bezos along with Warren Buffett and the CEO of JPMorgan and Chase, Jamie Dimon recently announced they will be working on giving US workers and their families a better option on health insurance. As of 2017, the three companies combined have close to 840,000 employees. The three giants will be pooling their resources to significantly change the health care industry in the United States Of America. Along with helping the health care system, Jeff Bezos also donated $33 million to a scholarship fund for young “dreamers,” or immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.