I'm Al Roker! I'm here with Equalman!
Word of mouth is now World of mouth
Because someone asked "What's the social play?" What's the mobile play?"
Our clients and customers are telling us "Hey, we love what you're doing here."
"Are you doing more of that today?"
What I'm telling you here today, I'm not suggesting we get rid of Face-to-Face.
Digital Leaders are made.... not born.
On today's show, we have the CEO and founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos.
He started Amazon in July of 1994
And for almost a decade, if not more, the company did not make money.
And so everyone would always laugh and say "They don't make money."
"Why would you invest in Amazon?"
Well those that did are happy campers today.
Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world at an estimated $137 Billion dollars.
So without further ado, here is super tip #1 from Jeff Bezos.
I did do a lot of soul searching. I went to my boss at the time. I really like my job.
I told my boss I was going to go do this thing. Start an internet book store.
And I already told my wife, and she's like "Great, let's go!"
And I said to my boss, "This is a good idea. I think this is a good idea, but this would be a better idea
for someone who already didn't have a good job.
And that sort of made some logical sense to me
And he convinced me to think about it for a couple of days, so I went away.
I was really trying to get my head around how to think about this
and I think
For me the right way to make that very personal decision
Because those decisions are personal. They're not like data-driven business decisons.
They are, "What does you heart say?" And for me
The best way to think about it was to project myself forward to age 80
And so look when I'm 80-years old
I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have
I don't want to be 80-years old in a quiet moment of reflection
thinking back over my life and cataloging a bunch of major regrets.
and I think our regrets... our biggest regrets, in most cases, you could murder somebody
Okay you'd regret that. But in most cases...
Our biggest regrets turn out to be acts of omission.
It's paths not taken. And they haunt us. We wonder what would have happened?
I love that person and I never told them
And then, they married somebody else.
I... You know...I didn't do this and so
That's the frame of mind I put myself in.
And once I did that. Once I thought about it that way, it was immediately obvious to me.
I knew that when I'm 80, I would never regret trying this thing that I was super excited about and it failing.
If it failed? Fine. I would be very proud of the fact when I'm 80 that I tried.
And I also knew that it would always haunt me if I didn't try.
And so that would be a regret. It would 100% chance of a regret if I didn't try.
And basically a 0% chance of a regret if I tried and failed.
So I think that is a useful metric for any important life decision.
Now we purposely started off with this tip because I think it resonates with so many of you out there.
It resonates with me because I had to go through the same process
He had to make that hard decision. He had a great job.
I think there's a big misnomer out there in the media propagated by a lot of folks.
That most startup entrepreneurs hate what they're doing so then they move on.
In fact, it's probably the opposite.
The hardest decision is when you actually enjoy what you're doing but it's not your absolute passion.
And that was true for me.
So I was always fortunate to always have great jobs, great bosses.
So when I decided to take the leap, again some of you have heard this before
If you've listened to this podcast or some of our content
But I think it bares relevance to repeat it
Is when I made the switch, it wasn't overnight. I didn't go in and quit my job
I was able to... I was fortunate to talk to my boss who was the founder of a very large company
And ask "Can we kind of staddle this? Can we have a win-win situation?"
So I actually then served as an advisor. Got rid of my global team.
My global digital team.
And just served as an advisor for a couple of years.
As I started to write the books. As I started to speak.
Because before, what I was doing was just taking a vacation day. And I was exhausted.
I'd fly to Bueno Ares. Be on stage, then fly the next day to be in front of my team.
So for you, you might be faced with a similar situation.
That you actually might enjoy your job.
It's well paying. It gives you great benefits.
It's good hours. You're trying to support your family
So it's not an easy decision. So the reason I love this tip, is this comes from Jeff Bezos.
Imagine if he didn't make that decision to start that online library or that online bookstore.
And stayed doing what he was doing, which was a very capable, high-paying job.
So remember, it isn't an easy decision when you do it
And just reflect back on Jeff Bezos had to go through the same thing that you're probably
wrestling with right now.