What Makes Jeff Bezos, the e-commerce giant’s CEO, step down as CEO and slide towards the chairman post? It is a question that would pop into everyone’s mind after hearing the news. By the 3rd quarter of 2021, Jeff Bezos said he would step down as CEO, to focus more on his passions. It is quite a decision taken by him.

Someone stepping down from the CEO’s chair to look and move towards things they are highly passionate about is quite rare. Jeff Bezos made a rare decision to focus more on “the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, the Washington Post, and Many more passions of his own.  Furthermore, after Bezos steps down, he will be replaced by Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy.

After all of these years, the takeaway Jeff Bezos gives to his employees, company, customers, and a global audience is at a wide perspective and of great use.

Never stop acting on the word ‘new’:

Though books were the beginning of Amazon, it was certainly not the end. Jeff Bezos took on the big bookstore chains in 1994, and three years later, the company carried more than 2.5 million titles with $148 million in sales.

Bezos had no intention of stopping at books alone. Along with books, Amazon started expanding offers in CDs, DVDs, clothing, toys, office products, and more. And coming to today, it has come up as being a payment gateway, Amazon movies and series streaming platform, and much more. This aspect clearly states that new things and inventions never stopped coming into the picture for Amazon. 

The never-ending invention process was a great reason why Amazon was sustained throughout all of these years in the market. Jeff Bezos kept adding new, in all of their operations, in turn growing faster than average. It is a proven fact that new things can teach us more than failing us.

“If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.” – Jeff Bezos

Break the stereotype and makeup to new normals

Jeff Bezos was the first company to introduce a loyalty program called Amazon Prime, where two-day deliveries and one-day deliveries were normalized for the loyal customers on prime. These programs needed intense work from packaging, transport, order placement departments, and more work efficiently. Still, Bezos made them work effortlessly and normalized online shopping like a day at the mall.

Secondly, he invited third-party sellers to list merchandise on Amazon and compete directly with his own products. Inviting competition to one’s own forefront is rare; it brought a different aspect to businesses in the marketplace.

Breaking stereotypes is never easy; it is hard to come across traditionally followed ways and methods. But breaking them can lead to the next big thing that can turn heads or a better way of doing things than they used to be done initially. New normals are the rise of how we got past landlines to cell phones and from fresh air to air conditioners; if it weren’t for breaking the stereotypes, we would have never had these changes.

If you are good at something, make sure you make a buck hawking it to others

In 2006, Amazon began to offer cloud computing services to other businesses. It was an in-built technology by the company to run its own business, but they took the smart route and hawked it to others. It quickly attracted customers all the way from NASA to Netflix and served as a cash cow to Amazon, where it made $35 billion in 2019.

If you know a certain characteristic, skill, or invention that can interest the world, make sure you use your ideas to the fullest to grow along with them. While your idea grows in the market, you can grow individually or as a business without fail.

Aim for the sky, and never settle for less

Jeff Bezos was always one that viewed success in ideas and never numbers. He is also among the very few customer-oriented businessmen in the world. He was the one that said, “If you are competitor-focused, you have to wait until a competitor does something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering“. Jeff Bezos started Amazon, one of the first online businesses in his own garage, through belief in his tech skills and the internet alone.

Today Bezos is worth $182 billion; the world’s richest person, along with an estimation to be the world’s first trillionaire. The best part about him and the launch of Amazon was that he was aware that Amazon could not exist in a physical world, and in 1995 when we were all lagging on the aspect of the internet, he utilized it to the fullest.

Jeff Bezos never really thought about what he might lose through the launch of Amazon or quitting his well-paying lucrative job. If he did think about it, did not take advantage of the opportunities, and did not take risks, he would not be #1 on the wealthiest list. Amazon was one of the companies that thought big and started small, but still started, irrespective of the environmental forces against it.