you guys will find that you have
passions and having a passion is a gift
I think we all have passions and you
don't get to choose them they pick you
but you have to be alert to them you
have to be looking for them and when you
find your passion it's a fantastic gift
for you because it gives you direction
it gives you purpose you could have a
job or you can have a career or you can
have a calling and the best thing is to
have a calling and if you find your
passion you'll have that and all your
work won't feel like work to you many
many kids and many grown-ups do figure
out over time what their passions are
and sometimes we let our I don't think
it's that hard I think what happens
though sometimes is that we let our
intellectual selves overrule those
passions and so that's what needs to be
guarded against my job one of my jobs as
the leader of Amazon is to encourage
people to be bold
and people love to focus on things that
aren't yet working and that's good it's
human nature that kind of divine
discontent can be very helpful but you
really you know it's incredibly hard to
get people to take bold bets and you
need to encourage that and if you're
gonna take bold bets they're gonna be
experiments and if their experiments you
don't know ahead of time go they're
going to work experiments are by their
very nature prone to failure but big
success is a few big successes
compensate for dozens and dozens of
things that didn't work so you know bold
bets AWS Kindle Amazon Prime our 3rd
party seller business all of those
things are examples of bull bets that
that did work and they pay for a lot of
experiments I've made billions of
dollars of failures at amazon.com
literally billions of dollars of
failures and
you know you might remember pets calm or
Cosmo or you know give myself a root
canal with no anesthesia very easily
none of those things are fun but but
they also they don't matter what really
matters is companies that don't continue
to experiment companies that don't
embrace failure they eventually get in
the desperate position where they only
thing they can do is we could kind of
Hail Mary bet at the very end of their
corporate existence
whereas companies that are you know
making bets all along even you know big
bets but not bet the company bets I
don't I don't believe in bet the company
bets that's when you're desperate that's
that's the last thing you can do it's
not you can be out of work and you have
terrible work-life balance you know even
though you've got all the time in the
world right you could just feel like oh
my god you know I'm miserable and you
would be draining energy and so you have
to find that harmony it's a much better
word and I think for most people it's
about meaning people want to know that
they're doing something interesting and
useful and for us you know because of
the challenges that we have chosen for
ourselves we get to work in the future
and it's super fun to work in the future
for the right kind of person do you need
to be if you nimble and robust so you
need to be able to take a punch and you
also need to be quick and and and and
innovative and and doing new things at a
high speed that's that's the best
defense against the future and you have
to always be leaning into the future if
you're if you're leaning away from the
future the future is gonna win every
time never ever ever lean away from the
future we all have adversity in our
lives yeah I I would I would I doubt if
you really you know if you know somebody
any friend or anybody that you talk to
there's no lack of adversity and the and
by the way that's good because it's what
teaches us how to get back up you fall
down you get back up it always happens
and you know you get certain gifts in
life and you want to take advantage of
those but you I guess my advice on
adversity and success would be to be
proud not of your gifts but of your hard
work and your choices so you know you
may be the kinds of gifts you get light
you know you might be really good at
math it might be really easy for you
that's a kind of gift but practicing
that math and taking it to the next step
that could be very challenging and hard
and take a lot of sweat that's a choice
you can't really be proud of your gifts
because they were given to you you can
be grateful for them and thankful for
them and but your choices you choose to
work hard you choose to do hard things
those are choices that you can be proud
of being an inventor requires because
the world is so complicated you have to
be a domain expert I mean in a way even
if even if you're not at the beginning
you have to learn learn learn learn
learn enough so to become a domain
expert but the danger is once you've
become a domain expert you can be
trapped by that knowledge and so
inventors have this paradoxical ability
to have that you know 10,000 hours of
practice and be a real domain expert and
have that beginner's mind have that that
look at it freshly even though they know
so much about the domain and that's the
key to inventing you have to have both
and I think that is intentional I think
all of us have that inside of us and we
can all do it but you have to be
intentional about it you have to say
yeah I am going to become an expert and
I'm gonna keep my beginner's mind you
can't skip steps you have to put one
foot in front of the other things take
time
you there are no shortcuts and but but
you want to do those steps with you know
passion and ferocity it's easy to have
ideas it's very hard to turn an idea
into a successful product
there are a lot of steps in between it
takes persistence relentlessness so I
always tell people who are you know who
think they want to be entrepreneurs it's
you need a combination of stubborn
relentlessness and flexibility and you
have to know when to bewitch and
basically you need to be stubborn on
your vision because otherwise it'll be
too easy to give up but you need to be
very flexible on the details because as
you go along pursuing your vision you'll
find that some of your preconceptions
were wrong you're gonna need to be able
to change those things so I think taking
an idea successfully all the way to the
market and turning it into a real
product that people care about and that
really improves people's lives is a lot
of hard work
don't try to chase what is kind of the
hot passion of the day I think we
actually saw this I think you see it all
over the place in many different context
but I think we saw it in the internet
world quite a bit where you know it's
sort of peak of the sort of Internet you
know mania and say 1999 you found people
who were you know very passionate
something they kind of left that job and
decided I'm gonna you know could do
something in the internet because it's
you know it was almost like the you know
the 18-49 Gold Rush in a way I mean you
find that people if you go back and
study the history of the 18-49 Gold Rush
you find that you know at that time
everybody who was in was within the
shouting distance of California was you
know they might have been a doctor but
they quit being a doctor and they
started panning for gold and that that
almost never works and even if it does
work you know according to some metric
financial success or whatever it might
be I suspect it leaves you ultimately
unsatisfied so you really need to
be very clear with yourself and I think
one of the best ways to do that is this
notion of projecting yourself forward to
age 80 looking back on your life and
trying to make sure you've minimized the
number of regrets you have that works
for that works for career decisions it
works for family decisions you know do
you want I have a 14 month old son and
it's very easy for me to if I think
about myself when I'm 80 I know I want
to watch that little guy grow up and so
if it's I don't want to be 80 and think
shoot you know I missed that whole thing
and I don't have the kind of
relationship with my son that I wished I
had and so on and so on
so if you think about that so I guess
another thing that I would recommend to
people is that they always take a long
term point of view and I think this is
something about which there's a lot of
controversy you know there's a you know
there's a you know something a lot of
people and I'm just not one of them
believe that you should live for the now
I think what you do is you think about
the the great expanse of time ahead of
you and try to make sure that you're
planning for that in a way that's gonna
leave you ultimately satisfied so this
is just my this is the way it works for
me and I mean this is everybody needs to
find that for themself so there are a
lot of paths to satisfaction and you
need to find one that works works for
you
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