Goodness is more difficult than smart

When I was a child, my summer was always on the farm of grandparents in Texas, the farm of grandparents in Texas Sign in. I help repair the windmill, vaccine for cattle, and do other housework. Every afternoon, we will watch soap operas, especially \"Our Years\".

My grandparents participated in a RV club, a group of people who drove the AirStream dragging RVs who traveled around the United States and Canada. Every summer, I will join them.

We hung the RV behind the grandfather's car, and then added more than 300 AirStream explorers.

I love my grandparents, I respect them, and I sincerely look forward to these journey. It was a trip when I was about ten years old. I sat on the bench in the back seat as usual. My grandfather drove the car. My grandmother sat next to him and sucking with cigarettes. I hate the smell of smoke.

At that age, I will find any excuses to make some estimates or small arithmetic. I will calculate the small things such as fuel consumption and grocery spending.

I have heard a advertisement about smoking. I can't remember the details, but the advertisement is to say that every time a cigarette will reduce the life of a few minutes, it is about two minutes.

In any case, I decided to have an arithmetic for my grandmother. I estimate that my grandmother wants to suck a few cigarettes every day, take a few mouthfuls for each cigarette, and then get a reasonable figure with satisfaction.

Then, I stabbed the grandmother of the grandmother sitting in front of me, patted her shoulder, and proudly declared how long she would live because of smoking less.

I clearly remember what happened next, and that was unexpected. I was looking forward to small cleverness and arithmetic skills to win applause, but it did not happen.

On the contrary, my grandmother cried. My grandfather had been driving silently before, parked the car on the side of the road, got out of the car, opened my door, and waited for me to get out of the car with him.

Am I getting trouble? My grandfather is a wise and quiet person. He has never said harsh to me, is this the first time? Or would he let me go back to the car to apologize to my grandmother?

I have never encountered this situation before, so I have no idea what the consequences will happen. We stopped next to the RV.

My grandfather stared at me, silently, and then gently and calmly said: \"

Jeff, one day you will understand that goodness is more difficult than smart. [ 123]

2. Smart is a talentAnd goodness is a choice

The following I want to say that talent and choice are different.

Smart is a talent, and kindness is a choice.

Talent is easy -after all, they are born. And choice is not easy. If you are not careful, you may be tempted by talent, which may damage your choice. Everyone has many talents. I am convinced that one of the talents is to have a smart and capable mind.

Wisdom and intelligence must be sent in handy because we will travel on a miracle.

We humans, despite their steps forward, will eventually surprise ourselves. We can try to make cleaning energy, and we can also assemble micro -machines by atoms and atoms, so that it can pass through the cell wall and then repair the cells. Recently, an unusual and inevitable thing happened -humans finally synthesized life. In the next few years, we will not only synthesize our lives, but also drive them according to the manual.

As a civilized person, we will have so many talents, and each life individual has many unique talents. How do people use these talents? Will you be proud of your talent, or will you be proud of your choice?

3. Following the enthusiasm of my heart

23 years ago, I sprouted the idea of \u200b\u200bfounding Amazon. At that time, the reality I was facing was the increase in Internet usage at a rate of 2300%per year. I have never seen or heard anything so fast.

The idea of \u200b\u200bcreating an online bookstore covering millions of books made me excited, because this thing could not exist in the physical world. At that time, I was only 30 years old and I was married for a year.

I told my wife Mackenzie, I want to quit my job, and then do this crazy thing, it is likely to fail, because most startup companies are like this, and I am not sure what will happen after that. Mackenzie told me that I should let go.

When I was still a boy, I was the inventor of the garage. I made an automatic closing device with the less useful solar stoves filled with cement, umbrellas and tin foil, and a baking tray alarm used to deal with brothers and sisters. I have always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted to let me follow my inner enthusiasm.

I worked in a financial company in New York at the time. My colleagues were a group of very smart people. My boss was also very wise. I envious him. I told my boss I want to open a company selling books online.

He took me to walk in Central Park for a long time, listened to me carefully, and finally said, \"It sounds like a good idea, but for those who have not yet met a good job. , This idea will be better. \"

This logic makes sense to me. He persuaded me to think about 48 hours before making a decision. Thinking like that, this decision is really difficult, but in the end, I decided to fight once.

I think I will not regret the failure after trying, but I decide but do not put it into action at all. After careful thought, I chose that unsafe road to follow my inner enthusiasm. I am proud of that decision.

4. Put the customer in the first place, invent, and wait for

We have three ideas in Amazon. We have persisted for 23 years. This is 23 years. This is 23 years. The reason for our success: put customers first, invent, and wait patiently.

On the Internet, the company is a large -scale business, which is characterized by the high cost of fixed costs to be relatively low.

You can be two scale: you can be large, or you can be small, but it is difficult to be in the middle. Before many medium -sized companies have time to get bigger, they have broken the way of financing.

If everything you do needs to be achieved in three years, then you compete with many people. However, if you are willing to invest for seven years, you are now only competing with a small number of them, because few companies are willing to do so. As long as the length of the time is extended, you can pursue what you can't have before. In Amazon, we like to work for five to seven years. We are willing to plant and let them grow -we are very stubborn.

Today, the balance of power is moving from the company to consumers, and individuals are stronger than before. If you are a company, respond to this problem in the right way, it is to invest most of your energy, attention and money into creating great products or services, and reduce the cost of shouting and marketing. If I create a great product or service, my customers will tell each other each other. In the old world, you may have invested 30 % to build a great service, 70 % of the time to shout. But in the new world, this is the other way. The formation of your brand no longer relies on the company's description of yourself, but is what the company does.

For innovation, I believe that if you want to innovate, you must be misunderstood. The only way to escape the closed box is the invention. If you decide to only do what you know, then you will leave a lot of opportunities on the table. The company is rarely criticized without trying new things. However, many times, they will be criticized for trying new things.

For Amazon, if we see enough possibilities to gain market leadership, we will make bold rather than timid investment decisions. Some of these investment will be rewarded, and other investments have no results, but no matter which result, we will learn another valuable lesson.

The process of discovered is always unexpected.

If the number of experiments you do every year doubles, your creativity will double. Good goalkeeper will lead to slow innovation. When a platform is self -managed, even incredible ideas can be allowed to try, because the goalkeeper of no experts is ready to say \"This is not good!\"

In Amazon, the profit margin is not a one we seek optimization. factor. What we want to maximize is the absolute US dollar free cash flow per share. If we can achieve this by reducing profit margins, then we will do this. Free cash flow is something that investors can spend, while profit margins cannot be spent. The most important thing is the profit of the dollar: the actual US dollar amount. The company's valuation is not based on profit margins, but by one multiple of the dollars they actually earned. When we are forced to choose the current value of GAAP accounting standard reports and maximize future cash flow, we choose cash flow.

Your profit is my chance. Sometimes, market leadership can be directly transformed into higher income, higher profitability, greater capital flow speed, and corresponding more investment returns.