Jeff Bezos’ qualifications and professional experience are undeniable. However, there is also another important factor behind his success: motivation. A gesture he recently communicated through social networks clearly shows how motivation is a fundamental axis in the day-to-day life of this multi-millionaire entrepreneur.
Although he no longer runs Amazon, Bezos’ business success is one of the most outstanding among the new tech billionaires. A constant in the professional career of this entrepreneur is perseverance. His good preparation and training are also known, and how he has taken advantage of the experience to improve over time.
But, a recent detail published on social networks has clearly shown how motivation from remembering his origins has also been very important.
Motivating himself by remembering that he was not always successful
The tendency in any human being is to be motivated by success. However, in this case, the entrepreneur and founder of Amazon reminds us that sometimes it is good to go back to your origins, no matter how successful you are.
A few weeks ago, he posted on Twitter a photo of a magazine cover from 2006. A 42-year-old Bezos illustrated a somewhat disturbing message with his image: he was talking about Amazon’s risky bet and the rejection it generated among Wall Street executives.
As a footnote to this photograph, Bezos himself stated that he kept this cover in his office as a reminder. A reminder that not everything was always smooth sailing and that sometimes risky projects can succeed: as was the case with Amazon.
The context of Bezos’s message
To better understand the importance of this message, it is necessary to understand the context in which Amazon developed in 2006. At that time, its valuation did not exceed 10 billion dollars. Worse still, the project had been built on promises made by the entrepreneur, which were not materializing.
All of this led to significant shareholder misgivings. Also, at the same time, financing and the main Wall Street gurus took a hard view of a project born with a huge initial outlay and a risky bet in terms of innovation.
It was a context in which the stock had lost 20% of its value while expenses had risen 52%. This was related to the AWS cloud computing platform, which today is one of Amazon’s main market capitalization assets.
Bezos has said on several occasions that big successes require big failures that motivate the movement of the billions of dollars behind big tech companies. That seems to be reinforced in his daily motivation, looking at that photograph that reminds him of how Wall Street once doubted his future success.