We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Jeff BezosRead
I think one of the things people don't understand is we can build more shareholder value by lowering product prices than we can by trying to raise margins. It's a more patient approach, but we think it leads to a stronger, healthier company. It also serves customers much, much better.
Interpretation
Lowering product prices can create more value for shareholders than increasing profit margins, leading to a healthier company and better customer service.
In this quote, Jeff Bezos highlights the importance of prioritizing customer satisfaction and long-term growth over short-term profit maximization. By choosing to lower product prices instead of raising profit margins, companies can build greater shareholder value while also fostering loyalty and trust among their customers, creating a sustainable business model that benefits all stakeholders.
In practice
In a business seminar discussing sustainable practices, this quote can illustrate a customer-first approach.
We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Work hard, have fun and make history.
If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy.
In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence.
All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.
We are not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other company.
When you start a company, it's a singular focus. You have the wind at your back.
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