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WASHINGTON-
Amazon.com
Inc.
AMZN -1.16%
General Manager Jeff Bezos tries never to schedule a meeting before 10 am
"I go to bed early, get up early, enjoy a walk in the morning," read the newspaper, drink a cup of coffee and have lunch with his children, he said. Mr. Bezos organizes "high IQ" meetings before lunch and tries to make his tough decisions at 5 pm
Mr. Bezos said that his main task every day as a senior executive was to make a small number of high quality decisions. It also means eight hours of sleep. "I think better, I have more energy, my mood is better," he said.
'Everything I already did started small. Amazon started with a few people."
If he slept less, he could make more decisions. But it was not worth it. "If I have three good decisions a day, that's enough," he said. "They should just be of the highest quality possible."
The point of view on Mr. Bezos' philosophy of time management appeared as the founder of Amazon addressed Thursday to a crowd of about 1,400 people at an event organized by the Economic Club of Washington, DC.
He talked about Amazon's early days and the lessons he learned from decades of rapid change from the online bookstore in his garage to the oversight of a large company with several commercial lines and offices. in the whole world.
This explosive growth pushed Amazon last week to briefly become the second US company to reach $ 1 trillion after
Apple
Inc.
and made Mr. Bezos the richest person in the world.
It's a title that Mr. Bezos said never to have looked for. "I'd much rather that they say like" the inventor Jeff Bezos "or" the entrepreneur Jeff Bezos "or the" father Jeff Bezos. "This sort of thing makes a lot more sense to me." he told the audience.
While Amazon's action is currently close to record highs, he said he continues to tell employees the same thing he said to them in more than two decades of all-hands meetings.
"When the stock is up 30% in a month, do not feel 30% smarter, because when the stock is down 30% in a month, it will not be nice to feel 30% of nonsense. "Mr. Bezos said.
He quoted a quote from legendary investor Benjamin Graham, who said that in the short term, the stock market is a voting machine. In the long run, it's a weighing device.
While Amazon is looking for a location for its new headquarters – dubbed HQ2 -, cities across the country are trying to seduce the tech giant. At stake: 50,000 jobs and $ 5 billion in investments.
"What you need to do is operate your business this way, knowing that you will be weighed someday," he said. "Never spend time thinking about the daily stock price. I never do."
He also learned the importance of clarity when choosing a name for his company. Initially, he wanted to name his online start-up Cadabra, as in the abracadabra term of the former magician.
When he called to speak with a lawyer about the incorporation of the company, the lawyer misunderstood the corpse's name. "I was like, OK, it's not going to work."
About three months later, he changed to Amazon: "The largest river on Earth, the largest choice of the earth," he said.
Mr. Bezos has spent time talking about one of his favorite topics: the customer.
When he planned to expand Amazon beyond his initial book, his music and video activities, he sent an e-mail to a random group of 1,000 customers, asking them what to do. they wanted to buy on his site. Most responded with everything they needed to buy in the moment, like windshield wipers.
"I thought," We can sell anything that way, "he said.
Mr Bezos said that he would bring many of his business leadership lessons to his new Bezos Day One fund, which he announced on Thursday and said he would be financed with an initial investment of 2 billions of dollars to help homeless families and form a new network -the income areas.
The first day refers to one of Mr. Bezos' most fundamental lessons: how to keep a business in startup mode.
"Everything I did started small. Amazon started with a few people, "he said. "It's hard to remember you, but for me, it was like I was driving parcels to the post office myself and hoping that someday we could afford a forklift.
He tried to keep this spirit while the company expanded to more than half a million employees. "Even if it's a big company, I want her to have the heart and mind of a little girl," he said.
Mr. Bezos will now bring his legendary customer focus to a new group – in this case, preschoolers.
"The first thing that has allowed us to succeed is the obsessive and compulsive obsession of the customer, as opposed to the obsession of the competitor," he said. "We will be obsessively focused on the child. We will be scientists when we can be. And we will use the heart and intuition.
Write to Laura Stevens at [email protected]
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