Podcasts about everything store jeff bezos

Founders ✓ Claim Key Takeaways Check Out the Founders Podcast Episode Page & Show NotesRead the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgWhat I learned from reading The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan by Tom Shone.---EightSleep: Get the best sleep of your life and unlock more energy with the Pod 3. Get $150 off at eightsleep.com/founders/---One of the best podcasts I've heard this year: Listen to Invest Like The Best #336 Jeremy Giffon Special Situations in Private Markets ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(7:00) The only way I know how to work is to sort of burrow in on one project very obsessively.(7:25) People will say to me, "There are people online who are obsessed with Inception or obsessed with Memento.”They're asking me to comment on that, as if I thought it were weird or something, and I'm like, Well, I was obsessed with it for years. Genuinely obsessed with it. So it doesn't strike me as weird. . . I feel like I have managed to wrap them the up in it way I try to wrap myself up.(8:30) The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron. (Founders #311)(11:00) I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm a craftsman. I don't make a work of art; I make a movie. — George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (15:30) Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. (Founders #209)(22:45) Nolan is relentlessly resourceful. He wants to spend as as little money as possible so he can maintain as much control over the project as possible.(23:30) He makes his first movie on the weekends while he working a full-time job!(29:30) The efficiency of filmmaking is for me a way of keeping control. The pressure of time, the pressure of money. Even though they feel like restrictions at the time, and you chafe against them, they're helping you make decisions. They really are. If I know that deadline is there, then my creative process ramps up exponentially.(34:00) The result of making a billion dollar blockbuster: Suddenly his position at Warner Brothers went from solid to unassailable.(37:00) Stories can add to your own thinking but you need your own foundation to add them to first.(38:00) I know it's more fun when we're all together and we can do the thing together. That's why we keep it as a family business.(39:00) Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name: The First Forty Years of Britain s Most Prestigious Company by Peter Pugh. (Founders #287)(43:30) Every time a new feature or product was proposed, he decreed that the narrative should take the shape of a mock press release. The goal was to get employees to distill a pitch into its purest essence, to start from something the customer might see—the public announcement—and work backward. Bezos didn't believe anyone could make a good decision about a feature or a product without knowing precisely how it would be communicated to the world. — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)(45:30) Once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore; you always look at yourself through their eyes.(49:30) I often have terrible luck with the weather, but my philosophy is to shoot no matter what the weather is, always shooting no matter what weather, just keeping going, keeping going. Letting everybody on the crew and cast know we're really serious about doing that, no matter what the conditions are, so they're not looking out the window first thing and going, Oh, we will or won't shoot today.----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Founders ✓ Claim Key Takeaways Check Out the Founders Podcast Episode Page & Show NotesRead the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgWhat I learned from reading The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan by Tom Shone.---EightSleep: Get the best sleep of your life and unlock more energy with the Pod 3. Get $150 off at eightsleep.com/founders/---One of the best podcasts I've heard this year: Listen to Invest Like The Best #336 Jeremy Giffon Special Situations in Private Markets ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(7:00) The only way I know how to work is to sort of burrow in on one project very obsessively.(7:25) People will say to me, "There are people online who are obsessed with Inception or obsessed with Memento.”They're asking me to comment on that, as if I thought it were weird or something, and I'm like, Well, I was obsessed with it for years. Genuinely obsessed with it. So it doesn't strike me as weird. . . I feel like I have managed to wrap them the up in it way I try to wrap myself up.(8:30) The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron. (Founders #311)(11:00) I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm a craftsman. I don't make a work of art; I make a movie. — George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (15:30) Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. (Founders #209)(22:45) Nolan is relentlessly resourceful. He wants to spend as as little money as possible so he can maintain as much control over the project as possible.(23:30) He makes his first movie on the weekends while he working a full-time job!(29:30) The efficiency of filmmaking is for me a way of keeping control. The pressure of time, the pressure of money. Even though they feel like restrictions at the time, and you chafe against them, they're helping you make decisions. They really are. If I know that deadline is there, then my creative process ramps up exponentially.(34:00) The result of making a billion dollar blockbuster: Suddenly his position at Warner Brothers went from solid to unassailable.(37:00) Stories can add to your own thinking but you need your own foundation to add them to first.(38:00) I know it's more fun when we're all together and we can do the thing together. That's why we keep it as a family business.(39:00) Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name: The First Forty Years of Britain s Most Prestigious Company by Peter Pugh. (Founders #287)(43:30) Every time a new feature or product was proposed, he decreed that the narrative should take the shape of a mock press release. The goal was to get employees to distill a pitch into its purest essence, to start from something the customer might see—the public announcement—and work backward. Bezos didn't believe anyone could make a good decision about a feature or a product without knowing precisely how it would be communicated to the world. — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)(45:30) Once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore; you always look at yourself through their eyes.(49:30) I often have terrible luck with the weather, but my philosophy is to shoot no matter what the weather is, always shooting no matter what weather, just keeping going, keeping going. Letting everybody on the crew and cast know we're really serious about doing that, no matter what the conditions are, so they're not looking out the window first thing and going, Oh, we will or won't shoot today.----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan by Tom Shone.---EightSleep: Get the best sleep of your life and unlock more energy with the Pod 3. Get $150 off at eightsleep.com/founders/---Join Founders AMAMembers of Founders AMA can:-Email me your questions directly (you get a private email address in the confirmation email) -Promote your company to other members by including a link to your website with you question -Unlock 30 Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes immediately-Listen to new Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes every week ---One of the best podcasts I've heard this year: Listen to Invest Like The Best #336 Jeremy Giffon Special Situations in Private Markets ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(7:00) The only way I know how to work is to sort of burrow in on one project very obsessively.(7:25) People will say to me, "There are people online who are obsessed with Inception or obsessed with Memento.”They're asking me to comment on that, as if I thought it were weird or something, and I'm like, Well, I was obsessed with it for years. Genuinely obsessed with it. So it doesn't strike me as weird. . . I feel like I have managed to wrap them the up in it way I try to wrap myself up.(8:30) The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron. (Founders #311)(11:00) I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm a craftsman. I don't make a work of art; I make a movie. — George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (15:30) Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. (Founders #209)(22:45) Nolan is relentlessly resourceful. He wants to spend as as little money as possible so he can maintain as much control over the project as possible.(23:30) He makes his first movie on the weekends while he working a full-time job!(29:30) The efficiency of filmmaking is for me a way of keeping control. The pressure of time, the pressure of money. Even though they feel like restrictions at the time, and you chafe against them, they're helping you make decisions. They really are. If I know that deadline is there, then my creative process ramps up exponentially.(34:00) The result of making a billion dollar blockbuster: Suddenly his position at Warner Brothers went from solid to unassailable.(37:00) Stories can add to your own thinking but you need your own foundation to add them to first.(38:00) I know it's more fun when we're all together and we can do the thing together. That's why we keep it as a family business.(39:00) Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name: The First Forty Years of Britain s Most Prestigious Company by Peter Pugh. (Founders #287)(43:30) Every time a new feature or product was proposed, he decreed that the narrative should take the shape of a mock press release. The goal was to get employees to distill a pitch into its purest essence, to start from something the customer might see—the public announcement—and work backward. Bezos didn't believe anyone could make a good decision about a feature or a product without knowing precisely how it would be communicated to the world. — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)(45:30) Once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore; you always look at yourself through their eyes.(49:30) I often have terrible luck with the weather, but my philosophy is to shoot no matter what the weather is, always shooting no matter what weather, just keeping going, keeping going. Letting everybody on the crew and cast know we're really serious about doing that, no matter what the conditions are, so they're not looking out the window first thing and going, Oh, we will or won't shoot today.----Join Founders AMAMembers of Founders AMA can:-Email me your questions directly (you get a private email address in the confirmation email) -Promote your company to other members by including a link to your website with you question -Unlock 30 Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes immediately-Listen to new Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes every week ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters (for the 3rd time!) Read Jeff's letter in book form: Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos or for free online: Amazon Investor Relations—This episode is brought to you by: Tiny: Tiny is the easiest way to sell your business. Quick and straightforward exits for Founders.—Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best  Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can now ask me questions directly which I will answer in Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes [2:30] Amazon hopes to create an enduring franchise[3:00] Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh trade-offs differently than some companies.[4:00] We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers.[4:00] We will work hard to spend wisely and maintain our lean culture. We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture.[4:00] We set out to offer customers something they simply could not get any other way.[5:00] Word of mouth remains the most powerful customer acquisition tool that we have.[5:00] We are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren't meant to be easy.[6:00] "To read Bezos' shareholder letters is to get a crash course in running a high-growth internet business from someone who mastered it before any of the playbooks were written." — From CB Insights[7:00] Common themes repeated in Jeff's letters:more innovation is ahead of usit is still early — the opporunity —if we execute well — is enourmouswe will move quicklywe will endure. amazon will be a durable long lasting companywe will focus on cash flowonce in a lifetime opportunities will be risky (jeff gave himself a 30% chance of success at best)customer obsession is our north star. it is what we will bet the company on.BOLD frugal lean culture that sam walton would approve ofthis will be hard — all valuable things arewe will have to learn along the way[8:00] Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)[11:00] I would love to ask Jeff the question, “If you could only have one word to describe you on your tombstone, what would it be?” My guess is he would pick “relentless.”[16:00] We believe we have reached a "tipping  point," where this platform allows us to launch new ecommerce businesses faster, with a higher quality of customer experience, a lower incremental cost, a higher chance of success, and a faster path to scale and profitability than any other company. (A company that builds companies)[17:00] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102)[19:00] We will continue to invest heavily in introductions to new customers. Though it's sometimes hard to imagine with all that has happened in the last five years, this remains Day 1 for ecommerce, and these are the early days of category formation where many customers are forming relationships for the first time. We must work hard to grow the number of customers who shop with us. (He was right about this — what is the lifetime value of an Amazon customer over 17 years?)[21:00] To us, operational excellence implies two things: delivering continuous improvement in customer experience and driving productivity, margin, efficiency, and asset velocity across all our businesses.Often, the best way to drive one of these is to deliver the other.For instance, more efficient distribution yields faster delivery times, which in turn lowers contacts per order and customer service costs. These, in turn, improve customer experience and build brand, which in turn decreases customer acquisition and retention costs.[22:00] Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda (Founders #281)[24:00] Jeff Bezos on The Electricity Metaphor for the Web's Future[27:00] Repeat this loop: Focus on cost improvement makes it possible for us to afford to lower prices, which drives growth. Growth spreads fixed costs across more sales, reducing cost per unit, which makes possible more price reductions. Customers like this, and it's good for shareholders. Please expect us to repeat this loop.[29:00] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)[35:00] My Life and Work by Henry Ford. (Founders #266)[40:00] Jeff Bezos is unapologetically extreme. He is already the best and still wants to be better.[41:00] This part is incredible— on the need for good judgement and why data may lead you to make the wrong decision:Our quantitative understanding of elasticity is short-term. We can estimate what a price reduction will do this week and this quarter. But we cannot numerically estimate the effect that consistently lowering prices will have on our business over five years or ten years or more. Our judgment is that relentlessly returning efficiency improvements and scale economies to customers in the form of lower prices creates a virtuous cycle that leads over the long term to a much larger dollar amount of free cash flow, and thereby to a much more valuable Amazon.[43:00] Don't build an undifferentiated commodity business. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)[44:00] Differentiation is survival.[49:00] Missionaries build better products.[50:00] Long-term thinking levers our existing abilities and lets us do new things we couldn't otherwise contemplate. It supports the failure and iteration required for invention, and it frees us to pioneer in unexplored spaces. Seek instant gratification-or the elusive promise of it-and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you. Long-term orientation interacts well with customer obsession. If we can identify a customer need and if we can further develop conviction that that need is meaningful and durable, our approach permits us to work patiently for multiple years to deliver a solution.[52:00] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes.[53:00] Similar idea said two different ways:Jeff Bezos: The financial results for 2009 reflect the cumulative efforts of 15 years of customer experience improvements.Peter Thiel: If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now?[55:00] The most radical and transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity—to pursue their dreams.[57:00] A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics.—Customers love it—It can grow to very large size—It has strong returns on capital—It's durable in time-with the potential to endure for decades.When you find one of these get married.[1:03:00] Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected. — Inside Steve's Brain by Leander Kahney. (Founders #204)[1:03:00] I believe high standards are teachable. High standards are contagious.  —Jeff Bezos[1:04:00] Leaders have relentlessly high standards. Many people may think these standards are unreasonably high.[1:07:00] The key point here is that you can improve results through the simple act of teaching scope-that a great memo probably should take a week or more.[1:10:00] Differentiation is Survival and the Universe Wants You to be TypicalIn what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal?How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness?To keep alive the thing or things that make you special?We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable.What I'm asking you to do is to embrace how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness.The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you.Don't let it happen.Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can now ask me questions directly which I will answer in Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes —I use Readwise to organize and remember everything I read. You can try Readwise for 60 days for free https://readwise.io/founders/—“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Roland Lazenby.  Support Founders' sponsors: Tiny: The easiest way to sell your business. Quick and straightforward exits for Founders. andCapital: Raise, hold, and spend capital all in one place. and Tegus is a search engine for business knowledge that's used by founders, investors, and executives. Try it for free by visiting Tegus.[9:15] Notes from The Redeem Team documentary:30 seconds into the first practice Kobe is diving for loose balls. That set the tone.Players go clubbing. Come back at 5:30am and see Kobe working out. "This motherfucker Kobe was already drenched in sweat. Yeah he's different"— LeBron James. By the end of the week the whole team was on Kobe's schedule.Understand the responsibility. I know I'm not going to fucking lose. I am not going to fucking lose. Not when I'm wearing this (team USA jersey) and not at this time in my career. You're going to have to fucking shoot me. That's how I want you to play. — Coach KAt one point you will have a grandkid on your lap and they will ask you weren't you in the Olympics ? What did you do? You wanna say: Well son, we lost to that fucking Greek team? —Coach KWhen you're in the Olympic village you're around people who are the best in the world at what they do. That is more special that celebrities in LA because this is athlete to athlete — I understand what they put their body through to get here. There's so much respect and mutual admiration. —KobeWhat Kobe told team USA going into the 4th quarter: Just think about the play in front of you.[12:07] At every turn his declarations of future greatness have been met with head shaking and raised eyebrows.[14:33]  It's almost like Kobe's insane level of dedication was like compensation for the bad decision making of his father.[15:15] 4 parts to Kobe's blueprint:Master the fundamentalsImprove your weaknessesStudy the greatsConcentrate[15:12] Listening to Founders is like watching game tape of history's greatest entrepreneurs.[15:40] I used to watch their moves and then I'd add them to my game. It was the beginning of a career-long focus on studying game recordings.[15:48] He would invest long hours each day in breaking down his own performances and those of opponents— far more than what any other NBA player would ever contemplate undertaking.[17:08] Jay Z' autobiography: Decoded by Jay Z.  (Founders #238)[21:22] If you're not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you're good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground. —The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)[21:58] If you're breaking down tape of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and so many other greats, you come to consider them your teachers.[22:39] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)[23:00] Jordan and Knight certainly shared a competitive nature that bordered on insanity, Moore added. "If you think Jordan and Kobe are competitive, go meet Phil Knight. He's a no bullshit competitor. It's, 'You play for me or I can't stand you, I will kill you.' That's Phil Knight, full stop. And he's not shy about it.”[29:30]  He studied the game harder than anyone else has ever studied the game.[30:00] One day just before practice, the team was informed that it couldn't have the gym due to flooding.“This is bullshit!” he screamed, slamming a ball off the floor. “This is bullshit! We got practice, I want to practice. This is ridiculous!" (He was in high school)[31:10] Kobe had a closet at home filled with critical research. It held all these VHS tapes of Michael's games. [32:00] Kobe on Michael Jordan: What you get from me— is from him. I don't get five championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice.[32:22] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price. (Founders #107)[35:22] Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West, it had revealed his heart. It was there in the skill set alone, in some ways, just the amount of work that a player would have to have done to possess such immaculate moves, the footwork and fakes and execution, the hours that must have been put into that kind of perfection.[37:55] Part of his strategy for keeping his disappointment at bay was to focus on others who had faced far more difficult circumstances. "I read the autobiography of Jackie Robinson," Bryant said. “I was thinking about all the hard times I'd go through this year, and that it'd never compare to what he went through. That just kind of helped put things in perspective."[38:50] Kobe's favorite book was Enders Game by Orson Scott Card. [39:00] The only way he could keep the whole dream going was to work harder and harder and harder, to spin his fantasies around and around until they wrapped him tight in a new reality.[39:45] Estée Lauder: A Success Storyby Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)[41:00] I think that game was vital to how good he became. That level of embarrassment to happen to somebody like him? The next year he came out like a fucking maniac.[41:15] Leading By Design: The Ikea Story by Bertil Torekull. (Founders #104)[46:03] Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212)[47:00] The best book on the emotional toll entrepreneurs experience:  Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)[54:15] Highly competitive personalities like Jordan and Bryant could absolutely kill a team atmosphere with displays of ruthlessness or selfishness.[55:22] He stands up, points around the room and says, You motherfuckers don't belong in the same court with me.You're all shit. And he walked out of the locker room.[56:07] 4 ideas from Kobe:Search for your limitsExtreme personal practiceResourcefullness—find a way.Study the greats[57:39] He was one of the rare few who simply cared far more about the game than anyone else.[1:02:24] The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant [1:02:53] Why Warren Buffett reads annual reports brought to you by Tegus[1:09:03] Steve Jobs on why marketing is about values brought to you by Capital[1:13:36] Warren Buffett masterclass on how to differentiate your product brought to you by Tiny—“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux.--Support Founders' sponsors: Tegus is a search engine for business knowledge that's used by founders, investors, and executives. It's incredible what they're building. Try it for free by visiting Tegus.and Sam Hinkie's unique venture capital firm 87 Capital. If i was raising money and looking for a long term partner Sam is the first person I would call. If you are the kind of founder that we study on this podcast and you are looking for a long term partner go to 87capital.comand Get 60 days free of Readwise. It is the best app I pay for. I couldn't make Founders without it.--[8:00] Thread of highlights from Cable Cowboy by @Loadlinefinance[8:31] Malone was stalwart about building long term value through leveraged cash flow. Earnings didn't count. He wasn't constrained by quarterly expectations.[8:53] Malone built the pipes, then bought the water that flows through them.[9:12] Malone took spartan operations to another level. Absolutely no bureaucracy. No waste. We don't believe in staff. Staff are people who second-guess people.[9:40] Malone averaged one M&A deal every two weeks over 15 years. That's insane. These guys were slinging billion dollar deals like bowls of breakfast cereal.[10:02] One of the best parts of the book is Robichaux's exploration of Malone's complex personality. It's not just a fawning glow piece.[10:46] The beginning of industries are always filled with cowboys, pirates, and misfits.[12:05] This book— by far — has been the most requested book for me to cover on Founders for years.[12:51] Founders episodes on Andrew Carnegie:Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73)The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie. (Founders #74)Founders episodes on JP Morgan:The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow (Founders #139)The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield (Founders #142)[14:37] Mavericks Lecture: John Malone[15:04] Two Rockefeller podcasts:Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248)John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254)[18:45] Bob when recruiting John: You've got a great future here. If you can create it.[19:32] Malone's top executives were rough riders.[20:49] In 1972 TCI had $19 million in annual revenue and its debt load was an obscene $132 million.[21:49] Magness learned to listen instead of talk.Successful people listen. Those who don't listen, don't survive long. —Michael Jordan Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil (Founders #213)[24:41] That $2,500 loan turns into hundreds of millions of dollars for his grandsons.[25:47] New employees were asked can you walk 10 miles in 10 below zero weather?[26:42] The cable companies hardly paid any taxes because of the high depreciation on the equipment.[28:24] He skimmed the company's numbers, looked up at Betsy and blurted out, I'm gonna hire the smartest son of a bitch I can find.[30:55] Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher (Founders #242)[32:26] Once you make a guy rich don't expect him to work hard. Very unusual people do that.[33:24] You can identify an opportunity because you have deep knowledge about one industry and you see that there is an industry developing parallel to the industry that you know about. Jay Gould saw the importance of the telegraph industry in part because telegraph lines were laid next to railraod tracks.Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson (Founders #267)Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr (Founders #258)[35:24] 1. You raise money so you can increase production. 2. Use your increased production to get better rates on transportation than other refiners. 3. Use your increased profits —because you have better transportation —to buy your competitors. 4. You continue to find secret sources of income. — John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254)[36:40] Malone thinks about his industry more than anyone else.[38:07] He blundered early by suggesting in a meeting that Amazon executives who traveled frequently should be permitted to fly business-class. Jeff slammed his hand on the table and said, “That is not how an owner thinks! That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.”  — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179)[38:58] Our experience has been that the manager of an already high-cost operation frequently is uncommonly resourceful in finding new ways to add to overhead, while the manager of a tightly-run operation usually continues to find additional methods to curtail costs, even when his costs are already well below those of his competitors. — Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders 1965-2018 by Warren Buffett (Founders #88)[40:24] FedEx was fearful the bank would try to seize the mortgaged planes. The bank had a young officer keeping track of the situation. Every time he showed up at the airport, we would radio the planes not to land. It was all very touchy. — Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble (Founders #151)[41:14] How John described this point in his career: I'm the head of a little pipsqueak company in debt up to its ass, a couple million dollars in revenue, and not credit worthy to borrow from a bank. We're barely making it.[42:25] Malone like the mathematics of it. Tax sheltered cash flow could be leveraged to land more loans, to create more tax sheltered cash flow.[43:52] Stay in the game long enough to get lucky.[47:05] Bowerman's response to other coaches: “As a coach, my heart is always divided between pity for the men they wreck and scorn for how easy they are to beat.” —Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore. (Founders #153)[49:27] "Forget about earnings. That's a priesthood of the accounting profession," he would preach, unrelentingly. "What you're really after is appreciating assets.”[50:23] If you control distribution you get equity in return.[53:04] My Life and Work by Henry Ford (Founders #266)[54:49] Call Me Ted by Ted Turner[1:06:33] When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved.  — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)—“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading My Life and Work by Henry Ford.--Support Founders sponsors: Tegus is a search engine for business knowledge that's used by founders, investors, and executives. It's incredible what they're building. Try it for free by visiting Tegus.and Sam Hinkie's unique venture capital firm 87 Capital. If i was raising money and looking for a long term partner Sam is the first person I would call. If you are the kind of founder that we study on this podcast and you are looking for a long term partner go to 87capital.com--[7:45] True education is gained through the discipline of life.[8:00] Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #263)[9:40] Reading this book is like having a one-sided conversation with one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever live who just speaks directly to you and tells you, “Hey this is my philosophy on company building.”[12:40] His main idea is that business exists for one reason and one reason only —to provide service for other people.[12:50] Everything I do is serving my true end — which is to make a product that makes other people's lives better.[13:47] A sale is proof of utility.[15:00] The sense of accomplishment from overcoming difficulty is satisfying in a way that a life of leisure and ease will never be.[16:00] I think Amazon's culture is largely based on one thing. It's not based on 14. It's based on customer obsession. That is what Bezos would die on the hill for.  —Invest Like The Best: Ravi Gupta[20:04] Later Bezos recalled speaking at an all-hands meeting called to address the assault by Barnes & Noble. “Look, you should wake up worried, terrified every morning,” he told his employees. “But don't be worried about our competitors because they`re never going to send us any money anyway. Let's be worried about our customers and stay heads-down focused.” — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179)[20:40] Henry Fords philosophy: Get rid of waste, increase efficiency through thinking and technology, drop your prices and make more money with less profit per car, watch your costs religiously, when needed bring that business process in house, and always focus on service.[21:15] Money comes naturally as the result of service.  —Henry Ford[21:56] Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)[22:10] Churchill tells his son “Your idle and lazy life is very offensive to me. You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence.”[23:45] 3 part series on the founder of General Motors Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan:Billy Durant Creator of General Motors: The Story of the Flamboyant Genius Who Helped Lead America into the Automobile Age by Lawrence Gustin. (Founders #120)Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History by William Pelfrey. (Founders #121)My Years with General Motors by Alfred Sloan. (Founders #122)[24:16] Henry Ford's ONE idea that was different from every other automobile manufacturer:He was determined to concentrate on the low end of the market, where he believed that high volume would drive costs down and at the same time feed even more demand for the product. It was a fundamental difference in philosophy.  — Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History by William Pelfrey. (Founders #121)[25:50] There must be a better way of doing that. And so through a thousand processes.[27:59] The only way to truly understand what you're doing is to do it for a long time and focus on it.[28:30] It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game that you've been playing all your life. — Mickey Mantle[32:25] One idea at a time is about as much as anyone can handle.[35:45] Picking up horse shit used to be a job.[37:30] That is the way with wise people — they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work.[38:20] I cannot say that it was hard work. No work with interest is ever hard.[40:45] None of this works unless you bet on yourself. And usually you are not in the best position when you have to make this decision.[49:59] The most beautiful things in the world are those from which all excess weight has been eliminated.[50:15] Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245)[54:10] I can entirely sympathize with the desire to quit a life of activity and retire to a life of ease. I have never felt the urge myself.[55:30] I don't wanna make a low quality cheap product. I wanna make a high quality cheap product. To do that he's literally got to invent the ability to mass produce cars —which did not exist before Henry Ford.[56:00] A principle rather than an individual is at work. And that the principle is so simple that it seems mysterious.[56:25] He says if we can save 10 steps a day for each of the 12,000 employees that I have, you will save 50 miles of wasted motion and misspent energy every day. The way Ford's brain works is very similar to the way Rockefeller's brain works. — Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)[58:25] What a line! : No one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible.[59:10] I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible.[59:30] Not a single operation is ever considered as being done in the best or cheapest way in our company.[1:01:05] Continuous improvement makes your business likely to survive economic downturns.[1:05:27] “The definition of business is problems." His philosophy came down to a simple fact of business life: success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively. — Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. (Founders #20)[1:06:38] The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively.[1:06:53] That is the point that Henry Ford is making. You should thank your stars for the problem that you're having because once you solve it, you will now have better problem solving abilities. And therefore it's likely over time, that your company becomes more successful as a result of you being forced into this very difficult position to actually grow and acquire these new skills, because business is problems.[1:08:45] Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in the most: himself. —George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35)[1:12:35] Henry Ford distilled down to five words: maximum service at minimum cost.[1:18:52] Every advance begins in a small way and with the individual.—Get 60 days free of Readwise. It is the best app I pay for. I could not make Founders without it.----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg.[0:01] Why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with, it's run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn't believe anything until he's discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you and I do. He has no small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning with everything. That's why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away.[1:33] More books on Edwin Land: Insisting on The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Chris Bonanos [2:18] “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that's what I wanted to do.” —  Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson (Founders #214)[5:17] This guy started one of the great technology monopolies and ran it for 50 years.[7:35] He lived his life more intensely than the rest of us.[8:53] His interest in our reactions was minimal — polite, sometimes kind, but limited by the great drain of energy necessary to sustain his own part.[9:30] He never argued his ideas. If people didn't believe in them, he ignored those people. —A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman  (Founders #95) Loomis was not someone you could argue with. He would listen patiently to an opposing opinion. But his consideration was nothing more than that-an act of politeness on his part.” — Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant (Founders #143)[11:40] Right before he introduces the most important product he ever makes — he is in a fight for his life. There's a good chance that Polaroid is going to be bankrupt.[14:29] The parallel to Steve Jobs is striking. Edwin Land —like jobs — had to turn around the company he founded before they ran out of money![15:02] At 37 he had achieved everything to which he aspired except success.[15:32] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)[22:48] The heroes of your heroes become your heroes.[23:39] Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was —and left disappointed. —Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)[27:22] The young hurl themselves into vast problems that have troubled the world's best thinkers, believing that they can find a solution. It is well that they should for, from time to time, one of them does. — Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock. (Founders #261)[29:30] He concentrated ferociously on his quest.[29:43] We live in the age of infinite distraction.[30:03] My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had.[30:29] Among all the components and Land's intellectual arsenal, the chief one seems to be simple concentration. — The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker. (Founders #132)[41:50] A Landian question took nothing for granted, accepted no common knowledge, tested the cliche, and treated conventional wisdom as an oxymoron.[42:44] A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein  (Founders #134)[48:33] They had no alternative but to succeed with the camera. Everyone left at Polaroid knew that at the present rate of decline the business, the company, and their jobs would not survive 1947.[55:45] Smith estimated that throughout the eighties he spent at least four hours a day reading. He found he relied quite heavily on his own vision, backed by assimilating information from many different disciplines all at once. “The common trait of people who supposedly have vision is that they spend a lot of time reading and gathering information, and then synthesize it until they come up with an idea." — Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble (Founders #151)[59:05] If you're not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you're good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground. — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179) [1:02:24] They were among the first of the park's attractions to be finished, but the pressure of time was already weighing on everyone. One day John Hench stopped by to check the progress on the coaches and had an idea, which he brought to his boss. "Why don't we just leave the leather straps off, Walt? The people are never going to appreciate all the close-up detail."Walt Disney treated Hench to a tart little lecture: "You're being a poor communicator. People are okay, don't you ever forget that. They will respond to it. They will appreciate it."Hench didn't argue. "We put the best darn leather straps on that stagecoach you've ever seen."— Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #158)[1:05:53] There is no such thing as group originality or group creativity or group perspicacity. I do believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness. Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds.[1:10:32] There's nothing more refreshing than thinking for a few minutes with your eyes closed.[1:11:00] The present is the past biting into the future.----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Fill out the form on our website to be a guest on the showhttps://wsreip.com/contact/    Sponsors: Deese Real Estate and Property Managementhttps://www.deeserealestate.com/   G3 Homes https://www.g3-homes.com/ The Everything Store - Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Shoe Dog Our Guests - Chris & Taylor @Flipping_Spokane We are a husband and wife team that enjoys remodeling in our spare time. We bought our first fixer upper after renting for a year and hating it. Our Instagram says we "flip" but we aren't a business and we don't do your stereotypical flips... and we're slow so I guess we can barely call ourselves flippers. We both work and home remodel just kind of started as a hobby that we did on our days off. We do about 1 (sometimes 2) houses a year. They are our primary properties and we live in them with our cats during the majority of the renovations. Our goal has never been to buy a house for super cheap, put as little into it as possible, use cheap materials and do a really generic remodel. In fact, stuff like that drives us crazy. When we buy a house to renovate, our goal is to always take this overlooked, run down house and turn it into someone's forever home. We work really hard to embrace the personality of the house and make sure that we are putting quality, long lasting materials into our homes. It's just a perk that we get to make money while giving new life to a property. https://www.instagram.com/flipping_spokane/

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Author of that Jeff Bezos biography, it's safe to say Brad Stone understands everyone's favourite cardboard abuser, Amazon like the back of his hand. As the company turns a pivotal moment as the baton is handed to Andy Jassy from Jeff Bezos, where does it go next? How will it maintain and strengthen its power? Find out this and a whole lot more on Mouthwash.ABOUT BRAD (@bradstone)Brad Stone is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News where he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he's authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He's a regular contributor to Bloomberg's technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology. Author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley; it's safe to say Brad gets Silicon Valley and specifically, everyone's favourite cardboard abuser, Amazon.Previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek, Brad lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.On this special episode I am thrilled to be sharing a excerpt from the recent season three opener of my Remarkable Retail podcast, where my podcast partner Steve Dennis and I interview Brad Stone. Brad is the senior executive editor of global technology at Bloomberg News and author of Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.  Let's listen in now starting with an introduction by Steve. Remarkable Retail is back with Season 3 and we kick it off with our special guest Brad Stone, senior executive editor for global technology at Bloomberg News and bestselling author of several books, including his latest Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.In this fast-paced interview--nicely timed for the week that Andy Jassy takes over as CEO of Amazon--we have the opportunity to dig into the company's journey since Brad's last book ( The Everything Store) and take an insider's view of Jeff Bezos' unique leadership style. In addition to unpacking some of the keys to the company's remarkable growth--and apparent invincibility--Brad shares some illuminating and amusing anecdotes. We also tee up what's most important to keep an eye on in the future.Brad Stone is the author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. It traces the transformation of Amazon into one of the largest and most feared companies of the world and the accompanying emergence of its founder, Jeff Bezos, as the richest man alive.Brad is also the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which chronicled the foundational early years of the company. The book, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was translated into more than 35 languages and won the 2013 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2017, he also published The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley. Brad is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News where he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he's authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He's a regular contributor to Bloomberg's technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology.He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters.Steve Dennis is an advisor, keynote speaker and author on strategic growth and business innovation. You can learn more about Steve on his       website.    The expanded and revised edition of his bestselling book  Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is now available at  Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a      Forbes senior contributor and on       Twitter and       LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel      here.Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus        Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  and       The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.  You can learn more about Michael       here  or on       LinkedIn. 

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Jeff Bezos' empire, once housed in a garage, now spans the globe. Between services like Whole Foods, Prime Video, and Amazon's cloud computing unit AWS, plus Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post, it's nearly impossible to go a day without encountering its impact. Many argue we live in a world run, supplied, and controlled by Amazon and its founder. But how did this man and his company come to dominate such a large part of modern commerce? Sometimes called Amazon's biographer, journalist Brad Stone joined us with the deeply reported and vividly drawn portrait of how a retail upstart became arguably one of the most powerful and feared entities in the global economy, also contained in his book Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. In conversation with The New York Times' Karen Weise, Stone took us from his bestseller which captured the rise of Amazon, The Everything Store, to the Amazon and Bezos of today. He looked at how Amazon has expanded over the last decade especially, with new products like virtual assistant Alexa and with a workforce that has quintupled in size. Stone presented a picture of a man, probing the evolution of Bezos himself, from a geeky technologist to billionaire–and to his transition away from day-to-day activities as CEO to executive chairman. Brad Stone is senior executive editor of global technology at Bloomberg News. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which has been translated into over thirty-five languages, and The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley. He has covered Silicon Valley for more than twenty years and lives in the San Francisco Bay area. Karen Weise is a technology correspondent for The New York Times based in Seattle, covering Amazon, Microsoft, and the region's tech scene. Before joining The New York Times in 2018, she worked for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News, as well as the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica. Buy the Book: https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/book/9781982132613  Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

On today's episode, Ryan talks to journalist and author Brad Stone about his new book Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, the future implications of technology guided business practices, the moral tension that arises in the midst of large scale business growth, and more. Brad Stone is the author of four books, including 2014's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters.Beekeeper's Naturals is the company that's reinventing your medicine with clean, effective products that actually work. Beekeepers Naturals has great products like Propolis Spray and B.LXR. Visit beekeepersnaturals.com/STOIC or enter code “STOIC” to get 20% off your first order.DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping.Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It's the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookFollow Brad Stone: Homepage, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook

We're back with Season 3 and we kick it off with our special guest Brad Stone, senior executive editor for global technology at Bloomberg News and bestselling author of several books, including his latest Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.We open up the episode with our quick takes on recent earnings announcements from Nike and Bed, Bath & Beyond, pending IPO action from digitally native brand pioneers Warby Parker and Allbirds and what we should make of deal activity in the lingerie category. Indeed, we over it all!Then, in a fast-paced interview--nicely timed for the week that Andy Jassy takes over as CEO of Amazon--we have the opportunity to dig into the company's journey since Brad's last book ( The Everything Store) and take an insider's view of Jeff Bezos' unique leadership style. In addition to unpacking some of the keys to the company's remarkable growth--and apparent invincibility--Brad shares some illuminating and amusing anecdotes. We also tee up what's most important to keep an eye on in the future.NOTE: We'll be releasing episodes every two weeks, through September 7, when we'll move back to a weekly format.Brad Stone is the author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. It traces the transformation of Amazon into one of the largest and most feared companies of the world and the accompanying emergence of its founder, Jeff Bezos, as the richest man alive.Brad is also the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which chronicled the foundational early years of the company. The book, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was translated into more than 35 languages and won the 2013 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2017, he also published The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley. Brad is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News where he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he's authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He's a regular contributor to Bloomberg's technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology.He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters.Steve Dennis is an advisor, keynote speaker and author on strategic growth and business innovation. You can learn more about Steve on his       website.    The expanded and revised edition of his bestselling book  Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is now available at  Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a      Forbes senior contributor and on       Twitter and       LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel      here.Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus        Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  and       The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.  You can learn more about Michael       here  or on       LinkedIn. 

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Barry Ritholtz speaks with Brad Stone, author of the just-published “Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire” and senior executive editor for technology at Bloomberg News. Stone is also the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon,” and “The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley.”

Brad Stone -Amazon Unbound The Not Old Better Show, Author Interview Series Welcome to The Not Old Better Show.  I'm Paul Vogelzang and our packed show today includes this week's Healthy Headline about Laughter Therapy, along with today's guest, Brad Stone has written the most current, up-to-date, tell-all about Jeff Bezos and the ubiquitous Amazon!   Shopping on Amazon.com has become part of our lives, and the Amazon delivery trucks can be seen everywhere, in nearly every country, and every neighborhood and block here in the US.  Half of US households are Amazon Prime members and Amazon's annual 2020 revenue was $386 BN!   Brad Stone, author of the new book "Amazon Unbound," tells us all about Amazon, the inside-the-store look at the largest online retailer in the world.  Brad Stone tells us how he managed to get inside the Jeff Bezos bubble, despite the fact that Amazon is "a secretive company and Bezos is a secretive person." Brad Stone also says Bezos “won the Pandemic,” by providing products from A to Z (amazon's logo), and delivery during the lockdown.  A real coup, benefit, and relief for all of us needing supplies but unwilling and prohibited from shopping without our masks.  Brad Stone's new book, Amazon Unbound, is an unvarnished picture of Amazon's unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealing the most important business story of our time.  Listen as Brad Stone reads a passage from his new book, ‘Amazon Unbound,' telling us the story of how Jeff Bezos fell in love with the ‘single cow burger.' An amazing story… That of course was our guest today, author Brad Stone reading a passage from his new book, ‘Amazon Unbound.' Brad Stone is senior executive editor of global technology at Bloomberg News. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which has been translated into over thirty-five languages. He has covered Silicon Valley for more than twenty years and lives in the San Francisco Bay area, and Brad Stone is here with us today.  Before we talk to Brad Stone, as always, let's go to our Healthy Headline of the week:  Why Laughter Therapy can Be Such Powerful Medicine for The Trying Times.  After a year of social isolation and lockdown, so many in our audience here on The Not Old Better Show are at risk of isolation and loneliness.  Laughing is an excellent way to reduce stress in our lives, and can help you to cope with and survive a stressful lifestyle. Laughter provides a full-scale workout for your muscles and unleashes a rush of stress-busting endorphins.  Samuel Langhorne Clemons, whose pen name was Mark Twain, lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced, once said:  "Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand."  From the National Institutes of Health Research, Dr. CYK Williams and his team in the UK reviewed several studies on the subjects of how best to overcome the risks associated with isolation and loneliness, using laughter.  Laughter Therapy has been around for a while, but a new review of the research by Dr. Williams indicates more effective use. Now our interview with Bloomberg finance writer Brad Stone,  author of the new book, ‘Amazon Unbound.'  My thanks to Brad Stone, author of the new book ‘Amazon Unbound.'  Hopefully, today's show has shed some insight into Amazon.com and its leader Jeff Bezos.  Shop smart online and one more fact, as you probably know, Jeff Bezos has stepped down as CEO of Amazon.  Bezos left in his Prime.  It's a joke!  Remember laughter is important! You can find out more on our website: notold-better.com.  Thanks for joining us today and until next time, Let's Talk About Better.   The Not Old Better Show. Thanks, everybody!

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Brad Stone, the author of "Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire", to discuss how a retail upstart became one of the most powerful and feared entities in the global economy. Brad Stone is the author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. It traces the transformation of Amazon into one of the largest and most feared companies of the world and the accompanying emergence of its founder, Jeff Bezos, as the richest man alive. Brad is also the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which chronicled the foundational early years of the company. The book, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was translated into more than 35 languages and won the 2013 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2017, he also published The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley. Brad is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News where he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he’s authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He’s a regular contributor to Bloomberg’s technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology. He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About BradAuthor and Senior Executive Editor, Bloomberg TechnologyBrad Stone is the author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire,published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. It traces the transformation of Amazon into one of the largest and most feared companies of the world and the accompanying emergence of Jeff Bezos as the richest man alive. Brad is also the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which chronicled the foundational early years of the company and its founder. The book, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was translated into more than 35 languages and won the 2013 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2017, he also published The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley.Brad is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg Newswhere he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he’s authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He’s a regular contributor to Bloomberg’s technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology. He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originallyfrom Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wifeand three daughtersLinks: The Everything Store: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0316219282/ Amazon Unbound: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Unbound-Invention-Global-Empire/dp/1982132612/ Andy Jassy book review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1Q4CQQV1ALSN0/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00FJFJOLC TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It’s an awesome approach. I’ve used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there’s more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It’s awesome. If you don’t do something like this, you’re likely to find out that you’ve gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It’s one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That’s canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I’m a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by VMware. Because let’s face it, the past year hasn’t been kind to our AWS bills, or honestly any cloud bills. The pandemic had a bunch of impacts: it forced us to move workloads to the cloud sooner than we would have otherwise, we saw strange patterns such as user traffic drops off but infrastructure spend doesn’t. What do you do about it? Well, the CloudLIVE 2021 virtual conference is your chance to connect with people wrestling with the same type of thing, be they practitioners, vendors in the space, leaders of thought—ahem, ahem—and get some behind the scenes look into various ways different companies are handling this. Hosted by CloudHealth by VMware on May 20, the CloudLIVE 2021 conference will be 100% virtual and 100% free to attend, so you really have no excuses for missing out on this opportunity to deal with people who care about cloud bills. Visit cloudlive.com/coreyto learn more and save your virtual seat today. That’s cloud L-I-V-E slash Corey. C-O-R-E-Y. Drop the E, we’re all in trouble. My thanks to VMware for sponsoring this ridiculous episode.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I’m Corey Quinn. Sometimes people tell me that I should write a book about Amazon. And that sounds awful. But to be sure, today, my guest is Brad Stone, someone who has written not one, but two books about Amazon, one of which coming out on May 11th, or as most of you will know while listening to this, today. Brad, thanks for joining me.Brad: Corey, thanks for having me.Corey: So, what on earth would inspire you to not just write a book about one of what is in many ways an incredibly secretive company, but then to go back and do it again?Brad: Yeah. I’m a glutton for punishment. And Corey, my hair right now is completely white way before it should be, and I think that Amazon might be responsible for some of that. So, as you contemplate your own project, consider that this company—will you already know: it can age you. They are sometimes resistant to scrutiny.So, to answer your question, I set out to write The Everything Store back in 2011, and this was a much smaller company. It was a cute little tiny internet company of about $100 billion in market value. And poor, impoverished Jeff Bezos maybe had, I’d be guessing maybe $50 billion.So anyway, it was a much different time. And that was a great experience. The company was kind of flowering as the book came out. And to my surprise, it was embraced not by Bezos or the management team, who maybe we’ll talk about didn’t love it, but by Amazon employees, and customers, and competitors, and prospective employees. And I was really proud of it that this had become a kind of definitive account of the early years of the company.And then a funny thing happened. The little cute little internet company became a juggernaut, a $1.5 trillion market cap. Bezos is the wealthiest guy in the world now with a $200 billion fortune, and Alexa, and the rise of AWS, and the Go store, and incursions into India and Mexico and other countries, I mean, so much had changed, and my definitive history felt a little out of date. And so back in 2017—also a different world, Bezos is a happily married man; he’s the CEO of Amazon, Amazon’s headquarters are in Seattle only—I set out to research and write Amazon Unbound. And as I was writing the story, yeah, just, like, the ground kept shifting under my feet.Corey: Not a lot changes in the big sphere. I mean, one of the things that Bezos said is, “Oh, what’s going to be different in 10 years? I think the better question is, ‘what’s going to not be different in 10 years?’” but watching the company shift, watching it grow, just from the outside has been a real wild ride, I’ve got to say. And I restrict myself primarily to the AWS parts because well, there’s too much to cover if you go far beyond that, and two, it’s a very different place with very different challenges around it.I viewed The Everything Store when it came out and I read that, almost like it was a biography of Jeff Bezos himself. And in some respects, Amazon Unbound feels like it hews in that direction as well, but it also goes beyond that. How do you approach separating out the story of Amazon from the story of Jeff Bezos?Brad: Yeah, you’re putting your finger on almost the core challenge, and the adjoining challenge, which is how do you create a narrative, a linear story? Often readers want a chronological story out of a miasma of overlapping events, and initiatives, and challenges. Amazon’s really decentralized; everything is happening at once. Bezos is close to some things, he was very close to Alexa. He is really distant from other things.Andy Jassy for years had a lot of independence to run AWS. So, how do you tell that story, and then keep Bezos in the center? I mean, Andy Jassy and Jeff Wilke and everyone, I mean, those are great business people. Not necessarily dynamic personalities as, Corey, you know well, but people want to read about Jeff Bezos. He is a larger-than-life figure.He’s a pioneer. He’s an innovator. He’s controversial. And so the challenge all along is to, kind of, keep him in the center. And so that’s just, like, a writing challenge. It’s a narrative challenge.And the lucky thing is that Amazon does tend to orbit around Jeff Bezos’s brain. And so in all the storytelling, even the AWS bits of the book, which we can talk about, as an author, you can always bring Bezos back just by following the facts. You’ll eventually get, in the evolution of any story, to an S Team meeting, or to an acquisition discussion where Jeff had an impact, said something insightful, walked out of a meeting, raise the bar, had impossibly high standards. So, the last thing I’ll say is, because Amazon’s so decentralized, when you write these books you have to talk to a lot of people. And then you get all the pieces of the puzzle, and you start to assemble them, and the challenge as a writer is to, kind of, keep Bezos, your main character in the lens at all times, never let him drift too far out.Corey: One of the things that I learned from it was just the way that Bezos apparently talks to his senior executives, as far as, “I will invest in this project, more than you might think I would.” I guess I’ve never really heard of a budget meeting talking about, “I”—in the first person—“Will invest.” Like, that is what happens, but for some reason the business books never put it quite that starkly or frame it quite that way. But in hindsight, it made a lot of things of my own understanding of Amazon fall into place. That makes sense.Brad: He’s got a lot of levers, ways in which he’ll back a new initiative or express his support. And one of them is simply how he spends his time. So, with Alexa in the early years, he would meet once or twice a week with that team. But another lever is just the amount of investment. And oftentimes teams will come to him—the India team is a great example—they’ll come to the S Team with a budget, and they’ll list out their priorities and their goals for the coming year, and he’ll say, “You know, you’re thinking about this all wrong. Don’t constrain yourself. Tell us what the goals are, tell us what the opportunity is, then we’ll figure out how much it costs.”And his mindset is like you can kind of break up opportunity into two categories: one are the land grabs, the big immediate opportunities where he will go all out, and India was a great example of that, I think the failed fire phone was another example, Prime Video, he doesn’t cap the investment, he wants to win. And then there are the more greenfield opportunities that he thinks he can go slower on and groceries for a long time was in that category. And there the budgets might be more constrained. The other example is the much older businesses, just like the retail business. That’s 20 years old—I have a chapter about that—and the advertising business, and he recognized that the retail business wasn’t profitable and it was depending on advertising as a crutch, and he blew it up because he thinks that those older divisions shouldn’t require investment; they should be able to stand on their own.Corey: One quote you had as well, that just really resonated with me, as far as basically my entire ethos of how I make fun of Amazon is—and I’m going to read the excerpt here. My apologies. You have to listen to your own words being read back toward you—Brad: [laugh].Corey: These were typically Amazonian names: geeky, obscure, and endlessly debated inside AWS since—according to an early AWS exec—Bezos had once mused, “You know, the name is about 3% of what matters, but sometimes 3% is the difference between winning and losing.” And I just want to call that out because I don’t think I’ve ever seen an AWS exec ever admit that names might be even 3% worth of important. Looking at how terrible some of their service names are, I would say that 3% might be an aspirational target for their worldview.Brad: [laugh]. Let me throw this back at you, Corey. Have you ever figured out why certain AWS services are Amazon and why others are AWS?Corey: I did. I got to sit down—in the before times—with then the VP of Global Marketing, Ariel Kelman—who’s now Oracle’s Chief Marketing Officer—and Jeff Barr. And the direction that they took that in was that if you could use an AWS service without getting into the AWS weeds of a bunch of other services, then it was called Amazon whatever. Amazon S3, for example, as a primitive service doesn’t need a bunch of other AWS services hooked into it, so that gets the Amazon moniker. Whereas if you’re dealing with a service that requires the integration of a whole bunch of AWS in the weeds stuff—Brad: Mmm, right.Corey: —then it’s AWS. For example, AWS Systems Manager is useless without a whole bunch of other Amazon services. And they say they don’t get it perfectly right all the time, but that is the direction that it’s gone in. And for better or worse, I still have to look a lot of them up myself because I don’t care nearly as much as their branding people do.Brad: Right. Well, I’ll tell you in the chapter about AWS, that quote comes up when the team is contemplating the names of the databases. And they do go into long debates, and I remember talking to Charlie Bell about the search for Redshift, and they go back and forth on it, and the funny thing about that one was, of course, Oracle interpreted it as a competitive slight. Its corporate color, I guess, being red, which he intended it more as a physics term. But yeah, when they were launching Aurora and Redshift, they contemplated those names quite a bit. And I don’t know if it’s 3%. I don’t know if it does matter, but certainly, those services have become really important to a lot of businesses.Corey: Oh, yeah. And once you name something, it’s really hard to rename it. And AWS does view for—better or worse—APIs as a promise, so when you build something and presented a certain way, they’re never going to turn it off. Our grandkids are going to have to deal with some of these decisions once they get into computers. That’s a problem.And I understand the ethos behind it, but again, it’s easy to make fun of names; it’s an accessible thing because let’s be very real here, a lot of what AWS does is incredibly inaccessible to people who don’t live in this space. But naming is something that everyone can get behind making fun of.Brad: Absolutely. Yep. And [laugh] it’s perhaps why they spend a lot of time on it because they know that this is going to be the shingle that they hang out to the world. I don’t know that they’re anticipating your ridicule, but it’s obviously key to the marketing process for them.Corey: Some of the more aware ones do. But that’s a different topic for a different time. One question I have for you that I wrestle with myself is I’ve been spending the last four years or so basically studying AWS all the time. And there’s a lot of things they get right; there’s a lot of things that they get wrong. But for better or worse, it’s very difficult not to come away from an in-depth study with an appreciation for an awful lot of the things that they do. At least for me.I’m not saying that I fall in love with the company and will excuse them their wrongs; I absolutely do not do that. But it is hard, bordering on impossible for me, to not come away with a deep respect for a lot of the things that they do and clearly believe. How do you feel about that? Looking at Amazon, do you come away with this with, “Ooh. Remind me to never to become a Prime member and get rid of everything with an Amazon logo in my house,” versus the you’re about to wind up wondering if they can hire you for some esoteric role? Where do you fall on that spectrum?Brad: I think I’m probably with you. I come away with an admiration. And look, I mean, let me say upfront, I am a Prime member. I have a Alexas in my home, probably more than my wife and kids are comfortable with. We watch Prime Video, we have Prime Video.We order from Amazon all the time, we ordered from Whole Foods. I’m an Amazon customer, and so part of my appreciation comes from, like all other customers, the fact that Amazon uniquely restores time to our lives rather than extracts it. I wouldn’t say that about the social networks, right? You know, those can be time-wasters. Amazon’s a great efficiency machine.But in terms of my journalism, you know, now two books and this big in-depth study in Amazon Unbound, and you have to admire what they have built. I mean, a historic American institution that has not only changed our economic reality, in ways good and bad but over the last year and a half, in the pandemic was among the few institutions that functioned properly and served as a kind of lifeline. And there is a critique in Amazon Unbound and we can talk about it, but it’s hard to come away—I think you said it well—it’s hard to come away after studying this company and studying the top executives, and how Jeff Bezos, thinks and how he has conceived products without real admiration for what they have built over the last 25 years.Corey: Well, let’s get into your critique of Amazon. What do you think is, from what you’ve seen with all of the years of research you put into this company, what’s the worst thing about them?Brad: Well, that’s a good way to put it, Corey. [laugh]. Let me—Corey: [laugh]. It’s like, talk about a target-rich opportunity. Like, “Oh, wow. It’s like my children. I can’t stand any of them. How in the world could I pick just one?” But give it a shot.Brad: Right. Well, let me start this way, which is I often will listen to their critiques from Amazon critics—and I’m sure you might feel this way as well—and just think, like, “Do they get it?” They’ll argue that Amazon exercised its size and might to buy the companies that led to Alexa. As I write in the Alexa chapter, that’s not true at all. They bought a couple of small companies, and those executives were all horrified at what Amazon was trying to do, and then they made it work.Or the critics will say, “Fifty percent or more of internet users start their product searches on Amazon. Amazon has lock-in.” That’s not true either. Lock-in on the internet is only as strong as a browser window that remains open. And you could always go find a competitor or search on a search engine.So, I find at least some of the public criticism to be a little specious. And often, these are people that complained about Walmart for ten years. And now Amazon’s the big, bad boogeyman.Corey: Oh, I still know people who refuse to do business with Walmart but buy a bunch of stuff from Amazon, and I’m looking at these things going, any complaints you have about Walmart are very difficult to avoid mapping to Amazon.Brad: Here’s maybe the distillation of the critique that’s an Amazon Unbound. We make fun of Facebook for, “Move fast and break things.” And they broke things, including, potentially, our democracy. When you look at the creation of the Amazon Marketplace, Jeff wanted a leader who can answer the question, “How would you bring a million sellers into the Amazon Marketplace?” And what that tells you is he wanted to create a system, a self-service system, where you could funnel sellers the world over into the system and sell immediately.And that happened, and a lot of those sellers, there was no friction, and many of them came from the Wild West of Chinese eCommerce. And you had—inevitably because there were no guardrails—you had fraud and counterfeit, and all sorts of lawsuits and damage. Amazon moved fast and broke things. And then subsequently tried to clean it up. And if you look at the emergence of the Amazon supply chain and the logistics division, the vans that now crawl our streets, or the semi-trailers on our highways, or the planes.Amazon moved fast there, too. And the first innings of that game were all about hiring contractors, not employees, getting them on the road with a minimum of guidance. And people died. There were accidents. You know, there weren’t just drivers flinging packages into our front yards, or going to the bathroom on somebody’s porch.That happened, but there were also accidents and costs. And so I think some of the critique is that Amazon, despite its profession that it focuses only on customers, is also very competitor-aware and competitor-driven, and they move fast, often to kind of get ahead of competitors, and they build the systems and they’re often self-service systems, and they avoid employment where it’s possible, and the result have been costs to society, the cost of moving quickly. And then on the back-end when there are lawsuits, Amazon attempts to either evade responsibility or settle cases, and then hide those from the public. And I think that is at the heart of what I show in a couple of ways in Amazon Unbound. And it’s not just Amazon; it’s very typical right now of corporate America and particularly tech companies.And part of it is the state of the laws and regulations that allow the companies to get away with it, and really restrict the rights of plaintiffs, of people who are wronged from extracting significant penalties from these companies and really changing their behavior.Corey: Which makes perfect sense. I have the luxury of not having to think about that by having a mental division and hopefully one day a real division between AWS and Amazon’s retail arm. For me at least, the thing I always had an issue with was their treatment of staff in many respects. It is well known that in the FAANG constellation of tech companies, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, apparently, it’s an acronym and it’s cutesy. People in tech think they’re funny.But the problem is that Amazon’s compensation is significantly below that. One thing I loved in your book was that you do a breakdown of how those base salaries work, how most of it is stock-based and with a back-loaded vesting and the rest, and looking through the somewhat lengthy excerpt—but I will not read your own words to you this time—it more or less completely confirms what I said in my exposé of this, which means if we’re wrong, we’re both wrong. And we’ve—and people have been very convincing and very unified across the board. We’re clearly not wrong. It’s nice to at least get external confirmation of some of the things that I stumble over.Brad: But I think this is all part of the same thing. What I described as the move fast and break things mentality, often in a race with competition, and your issues about the quality, the tenor of work, and the compensation schemes, I think maybe and this might have been a more elegant answer to your question, we can wrap it all up under the mantle of empathy. And I think it probably starts with the founder and soon-to-be-former CEO. And look, I mean, an epic business figure, a builder, an inventor, but when you lay out the hierarchy of qualities, and attributes, and strengths, maybe empathy with the plight of others wasn’t near the top. And when it comes to the treatment of the workforce, and the white-collar employees, and the compensation schemes, and how they’re very specifically designed to make people uncomfortable, to keep them running fast, to churn them out if they don’t cut it, and the same thing in the workforce, and then the big-scale systems and marketplace and logistics—look, maybe empathy is a drag, and not having it can be a business accelerant, and I think that’s what we’re talking about, right?That some of these systems seem a little inhumane, and maybe to their credit, when Amazon recognizes that—or when Jeff has recognized it00, he’s course-corrected a little bit. But I think it’s all part of that same bundle. And maybe perversely, it’s one of the reasons why Amazon has succeeded so much.Corey: I think that it’s hard to argue against the idea of culture flowing from the top. And every anecdote I’ve ever heard about Jeff Bezos, never having met the man myself, is always filtered through someone else; in many cases, you. But there are a lot of anecdotes from folks inside Amazon, folks outside Amazon, et cetera, and I think that no one could make a serious argument that he is not fearsomely intelligent, penetratingly insightful, and profoundly gifted in a whole bunch of different ways. People like to say, “Well, he started Amazon with several $100,000 and loan from his parents, so he’s not really in any ways a self-made anything.” Well, no one is self-made. Let’s be very clear on that.But getting a few $100,000 to invest in a business, especially these days, is not that high of a stumbling block for an awful lot of folks similarly situated. He has had outsized success based upon where he started and where he wound up ending now. But not a single story that I’ve ever heard about him makes me think, yeah, that’s the kind of guy I want to be friends with. That’s the kind of guy I want to invite to a backyard barbecue and hang out with, and trade stories about our respective kids, and just basically have a social conversation with. Even a business conversation doesn’t feel like it would be particularly warm or compelling.It would be educational, don’t get me wrong, but he doesn’t strike me as someone who really understands empathy in any meaningful sense. I’m sure he has those aspects to him. I’m sure he has a warm, wonderful relationship with his kids, presumably because they still speak to him, but none of that ever leaks through into his public or corporate persona.Brad: Mmm, partially agree, partially disagree. I mean, certainly maybe the warmth you’re right on, but this is someone who’s incredibly charismatic, who is incredibly smart, who thinks really deeply about the future, and has intense personal opinions about current events. And getting a beer with him—which I have not done—with sound fantastic. Kicking back at the fireplace at his ranch in Texas, [laugh] to me, I’m sure it’s tremendously entertaining to talk to him. But when it comes to folks like us, Corey, I have a feeling it’s not going to happen, whether you want to or not.He’s also incredibly guarded around the jackals of the media, so perhaps it doesn’t make a difference one way or another. But, yeah, you’re right. I mean, he’s all business at work. And it is interesting that the turnover in the executive ranks, even among the veterans right now, is pretty high. And I don’t know, I mean, I think Amazon goes through people in a way, maybe a little less on the AWS side. You would know that better than me. But—Corey: Yes and no. There’s been some turnover there that you can also pretty easily write down to internal political drama—for lack of a better term—palace intrigue. For lack of a better term. When, for example, Adam Selipsky is going to be the new CEO of AWS as Andy Jesse ascends to be the CEO of all Amazon—the everything CEO as it were. And that has absolutely got to have rubbed some people in unpleasant ways.Let’s be realistic here about what this shows: he quit AWS to go be the CEO of Tableau, and now he’s coming back to run AWS. Clearly, the way to get ahead there is to quit. And that might not be the message they’re intending to send, but that’s something that people can look at and take away, that leaving a company doesn’t mean you can’t boomerang and go back there at a higher level in the future.Brad: Right.Corey: And that might be what people are waking up to because it used to be a culture of once you’re out, you’re out. Clearly not the case anymore. They were passed over for a promotion they wanted, “Well, okay, I’m going to go talk to another company. Oh, my God, they’re paying people in yachts.” And it becomes, at some level, time for something new.I don’t begrudge people who decide to stay; I don’t begrudge people who decide to leave, but one of my big thrusts for a long time has been understand the trade-offs of either one of those decisions and what the other side looks like so you go into it with your eyes open. And I feel like, on some level, a lot of folks there didn’t necessarily feel that they could have their eyes open in the way that they can now.Brad: Mm-hm. Interesting. Yeah. Selipsky coming back, I never thought about that, sends a strong message. And Amazon wants builders, and operators, and entrepreneurial thinking at the top and in the S Team. And the fact that Andy had a experienced leadership team at AWS and then went outside it for the CEO could be interpreted as pretty demotivating for that team. Now, they’ve all worked with Adam before, and I’ve met him and he seems like a great guy so maybe there are no hard feelings, but—Corey: I never have. He left a few months before I started this place. So, it—I get the sense that he knew I was coming and said, “Well, better get out of here. This isn’t going to go well at all.”Brad: [laugh]. I actually went to interview him for this book, and I sat in his office at Tableau thinking, “Okay, here’s a former AWS guy,” and I got to tell you, he was really on script and didn’t say anything bad, and I thought, “Okay, well, that wasn’t the best use of my time.” He was great to meet, and it was an interesting conversation, but the goss he did not deliver. And so when I saw that he got this job, I thought, well, he’s smart. He smartly didn’t burn any bridges, at least with me.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at ChaosSearch., you could run Elasticsearch or Elastic Cloud—or OpenSearch as they’re calling it now—or a self-hosted ELK stack. But why? ChaosSearch gives you the same API you’ve come to know and tolerate, along with unlimited data retention and no data movement. Just throw your data into S3 and proceed from there as you would expect. This is great for IT operations folks, for app performance monitoring, cybersecurity. If you’re using Elasticsearch, consider not running Elasticsearch. They’re also available now in the AWS marketplace if you’d prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count towards your EDB commitment. Discover what companies like HubSpot, Klarna, Equifax, Armor Security, and Blackboard already have. To learn more, visit chaossearch.io and tell them I sent you just so you can see them facepalm, yet again.Corey: No. And it’s pretty clear that you don’t get to rise to those levels without being incredibly disciplined with respect to message. I don’t pity Andy Jesse’s new job wherein a key portion of the job description is going to be testifying before Congress. Without going into details, I’ve been in situations where I’ve gotten to ask him questions before in a real-time Q&A environment, and my real question hidden behind the question was, “How long can I knock him off of his prepared talking points?” Because I—Brad: Good luck. [laugh].Corey: Yeah. I got the answer: about two and a half seconds, which honestly was a little bit longer than I thought I would get. But yeah, incredibly disciplined and incredibly insightful, penetrating answers, but they always go right back to talking points. And that’s what you have to do at that level. I’ve heard stories—it may have been from your book—that Andy and Adam were both still friendly after Adam’s departure, they would still hang out socially and clearly, relationships are still being maintained, if oh, by the way, you’re going to be my successor. It’s kind of neat. I’m curious to see how this plays out once that transition goes into effect.Brad: Yeah, it’ll be interesting. And then also, Andy’s grand homecoming to the other parts of the business. He started in the retail organization. He was Jeff’s shadow. He ran the marketing department at very early Amazon.He’s been in all those meetings over the years, but he’s also been very focused on AWS. So, I would imagine there’s a learning curve as he gets back into the details of the other 75% of Amazon.Corey: It turns out that part of the business has likely changed in the last 15 years, just a smidgen when every person you knew over there is now 10,000 people. There was an anecdote in your book that early on in those days, Andy Jesse was almost let go as part of a layoff or a restructuring, and Jeff Bezos personally saved his job. How solid is that?Brad: Oh, that is solid. An S Team member told me that, who was Andy’s boss at the time. And the story was, in the late 90s—I hope I remember this right—there was a purge of the marketing department. Jeff always thought that marketing—in the early days marketing was purely satisfying customers, so why do we need all these people? And there was a purge of the marketing department back when Amazon was trying to right-size the ship and get profitable and survive the dotcom bust.And Jeff intervened in the layoffs and said, “Not Andy. He’s one of the most—yeah, highest ceiling folks we have.” And he made him his first full-time shadow. Oh, and that comes right from an S Team member. I won’t say the name because I can’t remember if that was on or off the record.But yeah, it was super interesting. You know what? I’ve always wondered how good of a identifier of talent and character is Bezos. And he has some weaknesses there. I mean, obviously, in his personal life, he certainly didn’t identify Lauren Sánchez’s brother as the threat that he became.You know, I tell the story in the book of the horrific story of the CEO of Amazon Mexico, who Jeff interviewed, and they hired and then later ended up what appears to be hiring an assassin to kill his wife. I tell the story in the book. It’s a horrible story. So, not to lay that at the feet of Jeff Bezos, of course, but he often I think, moves quickly. And I actually have a quote from a friend of his in the book saying, “It’s better to not be kind of paranoid, and the”—sort of—I can’t remember what the quote is.It’s to trust people rather than be paranoid about everyone. And if you trust someone wrongly, then you of course-correct. With Andy, though, he somehow had an intuitive sense that this guy was very high potential, and that’s pretty impressive.Corey: You’re never going to bet a thousand. There’s always going to be people that slip through the cracks. But learning who these people are and getting different angles on them is always interesting. Every once in a while—and maybe I’m completely wrong on this, but never having spent time one on one with Andy Jassy, I have to rely on other folks and different anecdotes, most of them, I can’t disclose the source of, but every time that I wind up hearing about these stories, and maybe I’m projecting here, but there are aspects of him where it seems like there is a genuinely nice person in there who is worried, on some level, that people are going to find out that he’s a nice person.Brad: [laugh]. I think he is. He’s extraordinarily nice. He seems like a regular guy, and what’s sort of impressive is that obviously he’s extraordinarily wealthy now, and unlike, let’s say Bezos, who’s obviously much more wealthy, but who, who really has leaned into that lifestyle, my sense is Andy does not. He’s still—I don’t know if he’s on the corporate jet yet, but at least until recently he wasn’t, and he presents humbly. I don’t know if he’s still getting as close from wherever, [unintelligible 00:32:50] or Nordstroms.Corey: He might be, but it is clear that he’s having them tailored because fit is something—I spent a lot of time in better years focusing on sartorial attention, and wherever he’s sourcing them from aside, they fit well.Brad: Okay, well, they didn’t always. Right?Corey: No. He’s, he’s… there’s been a lot of changes over the past decade. He is either discovered a hidden wellspring of being one of the best naturally talented speakers on the planet, or he’s gone through some coaching to improve in those areas. Not that he was bad at the start, but now he’s compelling.Brad: Okay. Well, now we’re talking about his clothes and his speaking style. But—Corey: Let’s be very honest here. If he were a woman, we would have been talking about that as the beginning topic of this. It’s on some level—Brad: Or we wouldn’t have because we’d know it’s improper these days.Corey: We would like to hope. But I am absolutely willing to turn it back around.Brad: [laugh]. Anyway.Corey: So, I’m curious, going back a little bit to criticisms here, Amazon has been criticized roundly by regulators and Congress and the rest—folks on both sides of the aisle—for a variety of things. What do you see is being the fair criticisms versus the unfair criticisms?Brad: Well, I mean, I think we covered some of the unfair ones. But there’s one criticism that Amazon uses AWS to subsidize other parts of the business. I don’t know how you feel about that, but until recently at least, my reading of the balance sheet was that the enormous profits of AWS were primarily going to buy more AWS. They were investing in capital assets and building more data centers.Corey: Via a series of capital leases because cash flow is king in how they drive those things there. Oh, yeah.Brad: Right. Yeah. You know, and I illustrate in the book how when it did become apparent that retail was leaning on advertising, Jeff didn’t accept that. He wanted retail to stand on its own, and it led to some layoffs and fiercer negotiations with brands, higher fees for sellers. Advertising is the free cash flow that goes in Prime movies, and TV shows, and Alexa, and stuff we probably don’t know about.So, this idea that Amazon is sort of improperly funneling money between the divisions to undercut competitors on price, I think we could put that in the unfair bucket. In the fair bucket, those are the things that we can all look at and just go, “Okay, that feels a little wrong.” So, for an example, the private brand strategy. Now, of course, every supermarket and drugstore is going to line their shelves with store brands. But when you go to an Amazon search results page these days, and they are pockmarked with Amazon brands, and Whole Foods brands, and then sponsored listings, the pay-to-play highest bidder wins.And then we now know that, at least for a couple of years, Amazon managers, private label managers were kind of peeking at the third-party data to figure out what was selling and what they should introduce is a private Amazon brand. It just feels a little creepy that Amazon as the everything store is so different than your normal Costco or your drugstore. The shelves are endless; Amazon has the data, access to the data, and the way that they’re parlaying their valuable real estate and the data at their disposal to figure out what to launch, it just feels a little wrong. And it’s a small part of their business, but I think it’s one where they’re vulnerable. The other thing is, in the book, I tried to figure out how can I take the gauge of third-party sellers?There’s so many disgruntled voices, but do they really speak for everyone? And so instead of going to the enemies, I went to every third-party seller that had been mentioned in Jeff Bezos’s shareholder letters over the past decade. And these were the allies. These were the success stories that Bezos was touting in his sacrosanct investor letter, and almost to a one, they had all become disgruntled. And so the way in which the rules of the marketplace change, the way that the fees go up, and the difficulty that sellers often have in getting a person or a guiding hand at Amazon to help them with those changes, that kind of feels wrong.And I think that maybe that’s not a source of regulation, but it could be a source of disruptive competition. If somebody can figure out how to create a marketplace that caters to sellers a little better with lower fees, then they could do to Amazon with Amazon years ago did to eBay. And considering that Marketplace is now a preponderance of sales more than even retail on amazon.com, that can end up hurting the company.Corey: Yeah, at some point, you need to continue growing things, and you’ve run out of genuinely helpful ways, and in turn in start to have to modify customer behavior in order to continue doing things, or expand into brand new markets. We saw the AWS bleeding over into Alexa as an example of that. And I think there’s a lot of interesting things still to come in spaces like that. It’s interesting watching how the Alexa ecosystem has evolved. There’s still some very basic usability bugs that drive me nuts, but at the same token, it’s not something that I think we’re going to see radically changing the world the next five years. It feels like a hobby, but also a lucrative one, and keeps people continuing to feed into the Amazon ecosystem. Do you see that playing out differently?Brad: Wait, with Alexa?Brad: Absolutely.Brad: Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, it feels like there was more promise in the early years, and that maybe they’ve hit a little bit of a wall in terms of the AI and the natural language understanding. It feels like the ecosystem that they tried to build, the app store-like ecosystem of third-party skills makers, that hasn’t crystallized in the way we hoped—in the way they hoped. And then some of these new devices like the glasses or the wristband that have Alexa feel, just, strange, right?Like, I’m not putting Alexa on my face. And those haven’t done as well. And so yeah, I think they pioneered a category: Alexa plays music and answers basic queries really well, and yet it hasn’t quite been conversational in the way that I think Jeff Bezos had hoped in the early days. I don’t know if it’s a profitable business now. I mean, they make a lot of money on the hardware, but the team is huge.I think it was, like, 10,000 people the last I checked. And the R&D costs are quite large. And they’re continuing to try to improve the AI, so I think Jeff Bezos talks about the seeds, and then the main businesses, and I don’t think Alexa has graduated yet. I think there’s still a little bit of a question mark.Corey: It’s one of those things that we remain to see. One last thing that I wanted to highlight and thank you for, was that when you wrote the original book, The Everything Store, Andy Jassy wrote a one-star review. It went into some depth about all the things that, from his perspective, you got wrong, were unfair about, et cetera.And that can be played off as a lot of different things, but you can almost set that aside for a minute and look at it as the really only time in recent memory that Andy Jassy has sat down and written something, clearly himself, and then posted it publicly. He writes a lot—Amazon has a writing culture—but they don’t sign their six-pagers. It’s very difficult to figure out where one person starts and one person stops. This shows that he is a gifted writer in many respects, and I don’t think we have another writing sample from him to compare it to.Brad: So, Corey, you’re saying I should be honored by his one-star review of The Everything Store?Corey: Oh, absolutely.Brad: [laugh].Corey: He, he just ignores me. You actually got a response.Brad: I got a response. Well.Corey: And we’ll put a link to that review in the [show notes 00:40:10] because of course we will.Brad: Yes, thank you. Do you—remember, other Amazon executives also left one-star reviews. And Jeff’s wife, and now ex-wife Mackenzie left a one-star review. And it was a part of a, I think a little bit of a reflexive reaction and campaign that Jeff himself orchestrated at my—this was understanding now, in retrospect. After the book came out, he didn’t like it.He didn’t like aspects of his family life that were represented in the book, and he asked members of the S Team to leave bad reviews. And not all of them did, and Andy did. So, you wonder why he’s CEO now. No, I’m kidding about that. But you know what?It ended up, kind of perversely, even though that was uncomfortable in the moment, ended up being good for the first book. And I’ve seen Andy subsequently, and no hard feelings. I don’t quite remember what his review said. Didn’t it, strangely, like, quote a movie or something like that?Corey: I recall that it did. It went in a bunch of different directions, and at the end—it ended with, “Well, maybe someday he’ll write the actual story. And I’m not trying to bait anyone into doing it, but this book isn’t it.” Well, in the absence of factual corrections, that’s what we go with. That is also a very Amazonian thing. They don’t tell their own story, but they’re super quick to correct the record—Brad: Yeah.Corey: —after someone says a thing.Brad: But I don’t recall him making many specific claims of anything I got wrong. But why don’t we hope that there’s a sequel review for Amazon Unbound? I will look forward to that from Andy.Corey: I absolutely hope so. It’s one of those things that we just really, I guess, hope goes in a positive direction. Now, I will say I don’t try to do any reviews that are all positive. And that’s true. There’s one thing that you wrote that I vehemently disagree with.Brad: Okay, let’s hear it.Corey: Former Distinguished Engineer and VP at AWS, Tim Bray, who resigned on conscientious objector grounds, more or less, has been a guest on the show, and I have to say, you did him dirty. You described him—Brad: How did I—what did I do? Mm-hm.Corey: Oh, I quote, “Bray, a fedora-wearing software developer”—which is true, but still is evocative in an unpleasant way—“And one of the creators of the influential web programming language, XML”—which is true, but talk about bringing up someone’s demons to haunt them. Oh, my starts.Brad: [laugh]. But wait. How is the fedora-wearing pejorative?Corey: Oh, it has a whole implication series of, and entire subculture of the gamer types, people who are misogynist, et cetera. It winds up being an unfair characterization—Brad: But he does wear a fedora.Corey: He does. And he can pull it off. He has also mentioned that he is well into retirement age, and it was a different era when he wore one. But that’s not something that people often will associate with him. It’s—Brad: I’m so naive. You’re referring to things that I do not understand what the implication was that I made. But—Corey: Oh, spend more time with the children of Reddit. You’ll catch on quickly.Brad: [laugh]. I try, I try not to do that. But thank you, Corey.Corey: Of course. So, thank you so much for taking the time to go through what you’ve written. I’m looking forward to seeing the reaction once the book is published widely. Where can people buy it? There’s an easy answer, of course, of Amazon itself, but is there somewhere you would prefer them to shop?Brad: Well, everyone can make their own decisions. I flattered if anyone decides to pick up the book. But of course, there is always their independent bookstore. On sale now.Corey: Excellent. And we will, of course, throw a link to the book in the [show notes 00:43:31]. Brad, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it.Brad: Corey, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you.Corey: Brad Stone, author of Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, on sale now wherever fine books are sold—and crappy ones, too. I’m Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you’ve hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice and then a multi-paragraph, very long screed telling me exactly what I got wrong.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

What I learned from The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone.Upgrade now to automatically unlock every full length episode. You will get access to 186 full-length episodes available nowhere else. A new episode is added every week. Learn the key insights from biographies on Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, John D. Rockefeller, Coco Chanel, Andrew Carnegie, Enzo Ferrari, Dr. Suess, Estee Lauder, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Phil Knight, Joseph Pulitzer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Gates, P.T. Barnum, Edwin Land, Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler, Thomas Edison, David Ogilvy, Ben Franklin, Howard Hughes, George Lucas, Levi Strauss, Walt Disney and so many more. Learn from the founders of Nike, Patagonia, Apple, Microsoft, Hershey, General Motors, Ford, Standard Oil, Polaroid, Home Depot, MGM, Intel, Federal Express, Wal Mart, JP Morgan, Chrysler, Cadillac, Oracle, Hyundai, Seagram, Berkshire Hathaway, Teledyne, Adidas, Les Schwab, Renaissance Technologies, IKEA, Sony, Ferrari, and so many more. Subscribe now by tapping this link. 

Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators--Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg--Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing. The Everything Store will be the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/support

Find out the core aspects to creating a valuable, scalable, and sellable business. This book was a perspective shifter for us when we read it a number of years ago. It's a must-read for anyone interested in starting their own or becoming a business leader. Today's episode is inspired by book Built to Sell by John Warrillow. [00:00] Introduction | [01:32] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon | [14:12] Author: John Warrillow | [18:18] The trap that most business owners fall into | [26:18] Why every business owner should have a mentor | [33:40] Productising your business | [39:39] How to systemise and scale your business (The Machine) | [55:00] Four main business drivers | [1:15:24] Financial statements in business | [1:17:00] Episode's takeaway Other Mentioned: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon -> https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/books/the-everything-store-jeff-bezos-and-the-age-of-amazon.html John Warrillow's Podcast: Built to sell radio https://builttosell.com/radio/ Website: https://builttosell.com/ As with each episode, we pluck out what most resonated from the book and how we would like to bring it into our lives. --- If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to receive new episodes each week. Follow us, access show notes (including books mentioned) and listen to audio on the go: http://abstractable.co/ Subscribe to the YT channel: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=abstractable --- Stay connected: Follow Abstractable on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theabstractable Follow Abstractable on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theabstractable Follow Abstractable on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abstractable/ You can find The Abstractable Podcast on: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-abstractable-podcast/id1502025982 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/115u4wd7QGR7EXCLXeiJ27 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3Mud2hvb3Noa2FhLmNvbS9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC9pZC8xMTM2Mg

We continue to follow the meteoric rise of Jeff Bezos and his growing juggernaut of a company. This second part of our series starts with Barnes & Noble threatening to crush Bezos if he doesn't sell out. Like most decisions Bezos makes throughout his career, he calmly rejects that offer and doubles down on his belief that Amazon can change the landscape of American business. From tech startup to the largest company in the world, we dive into the growing pains and changes Amazon needed to make with people and strategy to create a business that changed the world.

We're suckers for a good “rags to riches” origin story of a scrappy founder stepping out into the abyss. What makes the story of Jeff Bezos and Amazon so intriguing is how comfortable Bezos had it when he went all-in on this company. In this first part of two episodes, Frank and Ian work through the early days of Amazon and find dozens of parallel lessons for any ambitious person looking to build a career.“The Everything Store” is a fascinating look into an American business icon and we break down every juicy bit in this two-part series.

All about amazon A Malayalam podcast This Malayalam Podcast is hosted by Krish Feedback Mail id themalayalipodcast@yahoo.com Instagram: @krishchekavar Facebook: @themalayalipodcast Twitter: @krishchekavar In Kerala Podcast is growing nowadays, please visit our 'The Malayali' Malayalam Podcast website website www.themalayali.in The best app to listen to Malayalam Podcast Google podcast Apple podcast Ganna Jiosaavn Spotify NOTE: This Malayalam podcast was heavily inspired by the book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon which is the best Malayalam podcast? I think the answer is very simple,just google " which is the best Malayalam Podcast" and google will list the best one for you

"Alexa - wer ist der reichste Mensch der Welt?" In der heutigen Folge sprechen wir über Jeff Bezos, den Gründer und CEO von Amazon. Bezos besitzt derzeit ein Vermögen von 182,6 Milliarden US-Dollar und hat mit seinem Unternehmen den weltweit größten Online-Einzelhändler erschaffen. Wir diskutieren das Geheimnis hinter dem Erfolg des Unternehmens, sprechen über die Firmenkultur und zeigen Innovationen auf, die aus dem Hause Amazon stammen. Die Informationen dazu haben wir aus dem Buch "The Everything Store" von Brad Stone. Darin bietet der Technologie-Experte einen spannenden Insiderblick hinter die Kulissen des Weltunternehmens. Fan vom Literatursenf? Folge uns auf https://www.instagram.com/literatursenf/ (Instagram)! Folge uns auf https://www.facebook.com/literatursenf/ (Facebook)!

Director, Adoption at Khoros in London Interview starts at 16:20 and ends at 49:09 “I find the Kindle good for highlighting, not as good for note taking. Even though I think that functionality has improved over the years, typing on the keypad on the Kindle doesn't work great for me. So depending on what I want to do and the type of book determines whether I want to go print version or read it on the Kindle.” News “Aggressive Amazon tactic pushes you to consider its own brand before you click ‘buy'” by Jay Greene at The Washington Post - August 28, 2019 Tech Tip read.amazon.com/notebook “External drive support in iOS 13 makes it possible to easily share files with a Kindle” by Chance Miller at 9To5Mac - June 18, 2019 Interview with Bryan Person My conversation with Bryan Person on TKC 89 - April 2, 2010 Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight (Audiobook) TKC 534: My interview with Power Reader Simon Eskioldsen - October 26, 2018 Audible Captions Audible Immersion Reading Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution by Christoph Biermann Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David J. Epstein Blinkist  Next Week's Guest Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD.  Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads! Outro Music for this episode is performed by my niece Fran Betlyon.  Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

Author of Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives Interview starts at 15:43 and ends at 43:50 “You can be super clever and have all your tricks, but fundamentally everything in your life is crowding out something else in your life. At some point you have to choose, and the choice should be thoughtful.” News “The Prime Challenges for Amazon's New Delivery Robot” by Matt Simon and Arielle Pardes Gear at Wired - January 23, 2019 “Meet Scout: Field testing a new delivery system with Amazon Scout” by Sean Scott at Amazon's Day One blog - January 23, 2019 Tech Tip Starbucks Reorder skill for Alexa Interview with Tim Harford Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives by Tim Harford “How frustration can make us more creative” - TED talk by Tim Harford in September, 2015 “Tim Harford: how behavioral economics helped kick my phone addiction” at The Financial Times - January 17, 2019 (Behind paywall, try Googling the title) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport - Available for pre-order, to be delivered February 5, 2019 Feedly Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms by Hannah Fry The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data by David Spiegelhalter - Available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk to be delivered March 28, 2019 The Invention of  Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution by David Wootton Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It by Chris Clearfield Marie Kondo's website The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy BBC podcast by Tim Harford Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy by Tim Harford Fright Tonight Alexa skill Content Early Riser by Jasper Fforde - available for preorder (hardcover only) with delivery February 12, 2019 The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics by John Hickenlooper Next Week's Guest Seth Godin, author of This Is Marketing: You Can't be Seen Until You Learn to See Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads! Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

Daniel Thornton - BioDaniel studied PPE at Oxford and History at LSE. He's had huge experience in central government. He worked in the Foreign Office, Parliament, the Treasury, DCLG and has been a Private Secretary to the Prime Minister. Since then he's worked for Gavi a charity promoting vaccination low-income countries; he's been a programme director at the leading think tank the Institute for Government and he's currently the Director for External Relations at Ark an educational charity running dozens of schools.Ron Heifetz- Wikipedia- Book: Leadership on the lineRalph Stacey- Wikipedia- Book: Strategic Management and Organisational DynamicsOther- Jeff Bezos' book: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon- Richard Pascale's book: Surfing the Edge of Chaos- Mark Foden's article comparing the Olympics and Unversal Credit: Government doesn't get complexity- Daniel Thornton's Ministers Reflect interview with Nick Clegg

Communication Tactics“Why don't they listen!?”We've all been there. We think we've explained the details to whomever we need to reach: employees, players, sons & daughters, peers yet the message doesn't seem to have been received. Why?Listen as Dave explains three necessary points used to improve communication tactics.Today's Guest - Ashley Boynes-ShuckDave welcomes Ashley back on the show and they have a lot to catch up on since last year's visit!Ashley's unique approach to social media marketing, what she likes to call "organic marketing", has helped her gain engagement with major brands. Her book Sick Idiot picked up engagement just prior to Super Bowl 51 after an organic marketing post she had crafted. Using the same approach she shared with her readers a Healthline article she had written about gender bias in healthcare following the women's march which was tweeted by the United Nations!We speak about some amazing work she is doing for The Autoimmunity Registry as a patient engagement officer, and how LinkedIn is the perfect vehicle to get her message to her target audience.Ashley offers great content creation tips for high school and college level students hoping to venture into the digital marketing world.About Ashley Boynes-ShuckAshley Boynes-Shuck is the author of two non-fiction health memoirs, Sick Idiot and Chronically Positive. She's also the novelist behind a fiction book To Exist and co-author of the anthology Empowered in Pittsburgh. Ashley is an advocate for health and animal causes, a certified health coach, a reporter and book reviewer plus a social media networker who reaches thousands with her tweets and posts.The NoBS Show is brought to you by audible.com. Get a FREE audiobook download and 30-day free trial at www.audibletrial.com/NoBS. Try a book like The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.

Hit the Bullseye: Messaging Pros--Leverage the Thank You!Why do people who work in Communications, PR or Marketing struggle with praise? Why do Messaging Pros fumble the thank you?When you've ‘saved the day' for clients or co-workers and they say: “Thank you so much for coming through.  You went above and beyond the call of duty.”How do you usually respond?  “Aw, it was nothing. No problem.  Love to help.  That's what we're here for.”You have just fumbled one of the greatest opportunities for future influence. Leverage Thank You based on Robert Cialdini's research about messaging, influence and Reciprocity. Guest: Stephan Bontrager is Director of Communications for Riverlife a public-private partnership working to build downtown Pittsburgh's urban riverfront park system.Stephan's Background:Attended Goshen College Stephan also participated in Pulse—Pittsburgh Urban Leadership Service Experience, a non profit cultivating a community of young servant leaders to transform Pittsburgh.Prior to Riverlife, Stephan was Director of Education and Community Engagement for public radio station 91.3 fm WYEP. He was on-air Midday Mix host and also directed the station's community engagement programs.His Mentors: Chris Cooke, Executive Director of Pulse taught Stephan to lead with a positive attitude and the importance of messaging. WYEP afternoon DJ Rosemary Welsch provided leadership, guidance and support.The Big Event: Riverlife's Party at the Pier 2016 Friday, August 26, 2016. The No BS Show is brought to you by audible.com. Get a FREE audiobook download and 30 day free trial at www.audibletrial.com/NoBS. Try a book like The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Download it for free today. Audibletrial.com/NoBS. Again that's audibletrial.com/NoBS for your FREE audiobook. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.

For this Christmas edition of New Tech City, a look back at two of our favorite segments from 2013. If you're like millions of other shoppers, you probably ordered at least a few gifts on the online retailer Amazon this holiday season. And even if your packages weren't delivered by drones, you won't want to miss my interview with Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Brad Stone about his book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. And it's not just about how Bezos's ingenious (sometimes controversial) tactics for selling us everything under the sun, but also insights into the CEO's aspirations for space travel and the giant clock he's building in a remote part of the world. Plus, a look at the startup Nextdoor, it wants to be a kind of Facebook for neighborhoods. Will you be its friend?

He wants to find in a cheaper way to get to outer space.  He's building a clock that ticks once a year, moves its "century hand" once every hundred years and chimes once a millennium.  Oh, and he's also the CEO of the world's largest online retailer, Amazon.  He is Jeff Bezos. In this week's New Tech City Quickie, Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Brad Stone, author of the new book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon throws light on the story behind the man and the company: His upbringing, his personality and management style and why Bezos continues to pump Amazon's extraordinary revenues into new ventures within the company instead of pleasing shareholders by turning a profit.

*Caitlin Strandberg* ( https://twitter.com/strandby ) *is a Principal at* *Lerer Hippeau* ( https://www.lererhippeau.com/ ) *, the most active early-stage venture capital fund in New York. The firm has more than 250 active portfolio companies with investments in leading consumer and enterprise companies, including* *Allbirds* ( https://www.allbirds.com/ ) *,* *Casper* ( https://casper.com/home-v2/ ) *,* *Guideline* ( https://www.guideline.com/ ) *, and* *K Health* ( https://www.khealth.ai/ ) *. Lerer Hippeau invests across all sectors, backing founders with product vision, customer insight, and a keen instinct for brand building.* *Previously, Caitlin was an early employee at* *LearnVest* ( https://learnvest.com/ ) *(acquired by* *Northwestern Mutual* ( https://www.northwesternmutual.com/ ) *) and* *Behance* ( https://www.behance.net/ ) *(acquired by* *Adobe* ( https://www.adobe.com/ ) *), as well as served as Vice President of* *FirstMark Capital* ( https://firstmarkcap.com/ ) *.* *You can follow Caitlin on Twitter* *Here* ( https://twitter.com/strandby ) *, where she posts lots of great content on startups. If you would like to follow your host, Mike, for updates on the show, you can follow him* *Here* ( https://twitter.com/MikeGelb ) *on Twitter.* *Two books that Caitlin would like to recommend are* *The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon* ( https://amzn.to/35PQGoE ) *by Brad Stone and* *Ready Player One* ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307887448?camp=1789&creativeASIN=0307887448&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) *by Earnest Cline.* *In this episode, you will learn –* * *What attracted Caitlin to startups and venture capital? The learnings and takeaways from being an operator at early-stage startups to venture capital?* * ** * *The challenges when investing in consumer startups at the early stages? How she evaluates opportunities and identifies if a startup is solving a real consumer pain point?* * ** * *Is the DTC area the golden age of brand? How she thinks about margin in relation to DTC? How much do consumers care about sustainable, eco-friendly products in relation to price? After investment, the cadence of communication among founders.* * ** * *What makes New York special? How she thinks about online customer acquisition today. What is one company that she is excited about investing in? What is one company she wishes she invested in? One piece of advice for founders of consumer companies?* * ** *If you would like to follow along* you can *click “Subscribe”* on the *Apple podcast app or whichever platform you are listening on*. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to also leave a review. You are also to see all episodes here and learn more at www.theconsumervc.com ( http://www.theconsumervc.com/ ) and follow Mike on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/MikeGelb ) or Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/mikegelb/ )