How Jeff Bezos Built His Trillion Dollar Empire
Episode Stats
Words per minute
200.50133
Harmful content
Misogyny
5
sentences flagged
Summary
Brad Stone is a senior executive editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News and author of Amazon Unbound, a book about the company's founder, Jeff Bezos. He s also the author of The Everything Store: A Book About Amazon, which became the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2013.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
There's just so much to learn from Amazon and this little company in Seattle had become a trillion dollar empire and Bezos, the wealthiest person in the world.
00:00:08.180
Would you say Bezos is number one nemesis right now is Elon Musk?
00:00:12.980
Elon came in with SpaceX and kind of just went much faster and got the government to pay for a lot of his projects.
00:00:18.300
And so Jeff has been uniquely in space kind of struggling to catch up.
00:00:24.880
Why does Bezos like to be more private rather than public?
00:00:32.160
He's not like a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk where he can whip up his followers into a frenzy of fandom.
00:00:41.600
Maybe a lack of empathy, longer term well-being of employees.
00:00:46.660
And it is, you know, and I think we've seen some of the impact of that from the fulfillment centers, how tough that environment is and how Amazon tends to churn through employees.
00:00:57.820
You know, it almost seems like he's OK with a lot of things, but he is not OK with the unionization of Amazon.
00:01:08.460
So they're hiring and they're firing and they're working around the clock.
00:01:14.520
And all of those things, Patrick, that I just described are things that, you know, a union is going to collectively bargain against.
00:01:20.560
You know, we've seen again and again around the world, Amazon walking away from facilities when the discussion turns to unions.
0.64
00:01:27.120
So if you want to find out about the $180 billion man today, maybe $200 by the time you watch it, but the $180 billion man, Jeff Bezos, learn more about him.
00:01:39.960
There is no one that's written and researched him more than my guest today, Brad Stone, who is a senior executive editor for global technology at Bloomberg News.
00:01:49.940
And he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that cover high tech companies, startups, cybersecurity and Internet trends around the world.
00:01:57.780
He wrote a book in 2013 called The Everything Store about Amazon, which became the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
00:02:07.380
Didn't please McKenzie Scott at the time, McKenzie Bezos at the time when the book came out.
00:02:14.760
We read it ourselves, translated in 35 different languages.
00:02:17.380
And after writing a book about Bezos, eight years later, he writes another book called Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, which just came out last week.
00:02:29.840
With that being said, Brad, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.
00:02:36.020
So is this true that you are a twin and you're a father of twins?
00:02:41.780
I like to say that we are reproducing at an exponential rate.
00:02:46.080
I got to tell you, they say it skips a generation, but apparently it didn't skip yours.
00:02:58.660
Maybe there is a secret sauce in your family we don't know about.
00:03:01.420
Maybe your next book needs to be how to produce twins.
00:03:06.980
So, Brad, out of everybody you can study, out of everybody you can go out there and research and do what you do about, why did you pick Jeff Bezos?
00:03:16.080
Boy, I mean, early on, it was almost circumstance, Patrick.
00:03:19.040
I was writing about Silicon Valley for the New York Times and then Bloomberg.
00:03:24.060
And, you know, there were books about Google and Apple and Facebook.
00:03:27.380
And, you know, Amazon seemed a little bit of the cipher in the tech community.
00:03:32.580
Up there in Seattle, private, fiercely secretive.
00:03:35.780
And so the Everything Store was born out of, you know, opportunism.
00:03:39.780
You know, I wanted to write a company about and a person who I thought was interesting.
00:03:44.160
And, of course, then Amazon became very interesting.
00:03:46.820
And the book kind of hit at a moment where the book industry in the larger world was grappling with Amazon's power.
00:03:53.400
And then, you know, five, six years passed and the story had changed.
00:03:58.460
And this little company in Seattle had become a trillion dollar empire and Bezos, the wealthiest person in the world.
00:04:04.700
And so I sort of realized my first effort needed a sequel, a second chapter.
00:04:09.560
And then in some ways, as I was working on the book, the story just kept getting more interesting.
00:04:13.920
So first time you interviewed, it's interesting when you're saying that, because at first you're like, why would he write a book about it?
00:04:22.500
It was a $120 billion company, I believe, in 2012 when you were writing the book.
00:04:29.320
Today, they're a $1.625 trillion auto company, 1.2 million employees.
00:04:35.880
He's bought a lot of different things, about to buy a lot of other companies.
00:04:38.420
Maybe we'll talk about the possibility of them buying MGM.
00:04:42.640
But, you know, the first book, I feel like in a part of the book, you write the fact that you had a chance to interview him for the first book.
00:04:51.820
Then when you came out, he wasn't too happy about it because of a part of the story.
00:04:56.520
Can you tell us what the evolution is from the first book to the second book?
00:05:00.880
Well, I mean, first of all, you know, the books are similar in one respect.
00:05:05.300
You know, there's just so much to learn from Amazon.
00:05:07.420
It is almost the, you know, the example of modern business and the opportunity of disruption.
00:05:15.200
And so, you know, both, I think both books are full of revelations and lessons for students of business.
00:05:22.520
In terms of the company's cooperation, it was actually very similar, maybe even a little bit better this time in terms of, you know, the company emerging from its shell, allowing me to interview senior executives.
00:05:33.420
Bezos himself was very guarded on the first book.
00:05:37.820
He he he sort of like listened to my pitch and then he said he didn't want to cooperate.
00:05:45.160
He didn't like it for a number of reasons, including the depiction of its corporate culture is pretty tough.
00:05:50.900
And of course, I feel like that's sort of been proven out amply by time and various testimony from employees.
00:05:57.380
And then there was a personal aspect to it, which I think you're referring to, which is I ended up tracking down his biological father, long lost biological father in the first book.
00:06:07.120
And and that sort of hit a little bit too close to home.
00:06:10.400
You mentioned the negative review from his wife at the time, Mackenzie.
00:06:13.800
And then years passed. And, you know, when I came to him for this book, they they you know, he and emailed him directly.
00:06:20.980
You know, he decided they decided to cooperate.
00:06:25.500
But, you know, I would point to the fact that over the past few years, you know, Bezos has been a scarce entity on the on the public stage, at least.
00:06:33.600
But in terms of interviews and reflections and grappling with the tough questions around Amazon, he he just doesn't tend to do that a lot.
00:06:40.620
So that that prompts two questions right there that that I'll go to one of them, then the other one.
00:06:46.140
The first one is the father that, you know, chasing him down and then, you know, wanting to speak with the biological father.
00:06:53.600
What was that experience like for you when you spoke?
00:07:00.400
What did you notice when he spoke to his father?
00:07:03.420
Yeah, well, I mean, I'll I'll just say, you know, back then I was sort of curious.
00:07:08.220
Well, what makes what are the ingredients, you know, that go into such a unique and driven entrepreneur, entrepreneur and business figure?
00:07:18.300
And, you know, and that is everything from his mentors to his early jobs and, of course, to his upbringing.
00:07:24.240
And, you know, Patrick, he he went to his high school years and largely grew up there in South Florida and, you know, talk to friends and and family members.
00:07:33.680
He allowed me to talk to his parents, his mother and his father, who's actually really a stepfather.
00:07:39.060
And one of the questions that I was considering as I pursued it is, you know, well, OK, so where was the biological father?
00:07:45.800
And had that created any kind of an absence in his life that contributed to his remarkable drive?
00:07:50.600
So, you know, track down the father who was running a bike shop in Arizona.
00:07:55.160
And it turned out that the guy hadn't known that his son had become Jeff Bezos.
00:07:59.500
And that ended up just being a sort of remarkable story and a little bit of a wistful story and tied back into the Amazon story,
00:08:06.020
because Bezos had always run the company with this principle of never having any regrets.
00:08:10.480
And here I had tracked down the father figure who had been important in his very early life,
00:08:16.280
then had left the family and had a lot of regrets.
00:08:18.880
So in that way, it tied a bow around one aspect of that story.
00:08:25.720
I think it's what you use in a book, the first one.
00:08:27.540
But going back with his father, are you saying like his father didn't know that Jeff was his son?
00:08:34.940
Like you had to find out also you so you had to find out through his mom, who is his biological father and walk you through that part.
00:08:51.840
He was in their lives for for two or three years after that.
00:08:55.360
And then they they got divorced and he left and he had lost track of the family
00:09:01.400
and didn't know what had happened to the son that he had had as a kid and didn't know if he was alive or not.
00:09:07.640
And then ultimately, when I knocked on his door in 2013, didn't know that this wealthy, public facing, famous businessman was that kid, that baby.
00:09:24.300
After the meeting with you and him, did he reach out to Jeff at all?
00:09:27.080
Did they have any kind of interactions or conference meetings?
00:09:29.660
Yeah, he tried to reach out and Bezos wrote him a note.
00:09:33.980
And then he and then he passed away about a year later, I think.
00:09:46.060
Do you notice a correlation between individuals who, you know, there are people that become millionaires.
00:09:54.860
I mean, you know, you can come up with a good idea and become a billionaire.
00:09:57.060
But there are a few people that, for whatever flipping reason, they cannot stop.
00:10:05.800
It's this energy like, when is it going to be enough for you?
00:10:08.980
When, like, and then you go back and you study Elon Musk with the relationship with his father.
00:10:19.580
Do you think there is a correlation with one of the parents almost not seeing like they're going to amount to anything?
00:10:27.240
How dare you leave me that I'm going to prove a point the rest of my life for you to say you weren't there?
00:10:36.440
Let's not advise that an ingredient to good parenting or raising a motivated child is to depart their life.
00:10:45.120
But and yet, you know, yeah, I think so in some way.
00:10:50.920
You know, and obviously every kid abandoned by a parent is, you know, not going to be a high achiever.
00:10:59.040
And yet in some of those cases and, you know, we can look to Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, you know, when the parental figure was missing, it seemed to have been at least one ingredient in a remarkable ambition and level of achievement.
00:11:14.040
You know, I'm not a psychologist or, you know, so I don't I don't really know.
00:11:17.680
But certainly that's why I went down that path.
00:11:20.720
And, you know, and it's an open question, you know, whether that was sort of fair game.
00:11:26.000
And I don't you know, and even after all these years, I mean, I'll defend it.
00:11:29.740
But I think it's you know, it's a good question, you know, like probing into the private life and the early life of a business figure.
00:11:36.440
I mean, I would say that Bezos is now had has made an impact on this on this world to such an extent that, you know, understanding from whence he came and that elixir, you know, that fueled him is is is is interesting.
00:11:49.780
I think that's an understatement when you think about, you know, the impact he's made in the world.
00:11:54.220
And I don't think he's stopping anytime soon, even though he gave it up to Andy Jazzy from AWS, which, by the way, in an interview with Google seven years ago, when they asked you, who do you think would replace him?
00:12:03.060
You actually brought up Andy's name that could potentially one day because the guys at the top are loyal to him.
00:12:08.520
Yes, they may have a high turnover ratio and middle management, but the guys at the top enjoy working with them based on the culture that they have there.
00:12:19.660
He said one time that he had a following out with his dad, I believe.
00:12:23.140
And he told his dad, how much do I have to spend for you to never call me ever again?
00:12:28.300
If I buy you a house, if I buy you a car, if I spend money because he wanted to say you were not there during the years.
00:12:34.560
I'm going to I'm going to let you know right now you want money.
00:12:39.440
But there almost seems like there's a driver that I thought maybe a little bit more to go into.
00:12:43.940
It'd be very interesting if a psychologist or a psychiatrist and you actually worked on a project together to see how much deeper that can get.
00:12:50.660
The other part you said is the fact that when you wanted to go interview him, he kind of like, no, I'll let my executives talk to you, but not myself.
00:13:01.420
He doesn't like to, you know, go and, you know, talk about those tough conversations.
00:13:05.460
You know, Elon Musk on the opposite end, he's like total opposite.
00:13:10.480
He'll tweet, you know, he'll go smoke weed with Joe.
00:13:14.140
He'll go, you know, hey, $69,000 for the Tesla, $420 a share.
00:13:21.940
He's a troll master, chess master, game, all this stuff that he does.
00:13:28.280
Why does Bezos like to be more private rather than public?
00:13:32.040
Is it a personality thing or is it just kind of a, you know, he sees way too much risk in being in a public eye?
00:13:39.600
I mean, Elon, I mean, their styles are so different.
00:13:42.340
Elon has, you know, everything that you described, but also he's, you know, we can admit maybe that he's undisciplined.
00:13:49.860
The tweets are, you know, as likely to get him into trouble, either regulatory or legal, as whip his fans into a frenzy.
00:14:02.900
He can do it in part because his ventures are really inspirational.
00:14:06.880
Tesla and, um, and SpaceX, you know, Bezos, maybe, you know, yes, there's a personal personality difference.
00:14:15.980
The stories that he tells in interviews are like polished little stones that he's used and deployed over the years.
00:14:22.840
I could probably give the speech myself, you know, at the same time, he is, uh, the CEO, the founder of a company that evokes much more complicated feelings in people, you know, uh, um, uh, and that's, you know, that's, um, rightly or, or not.
00:14:40.760
It's, it's competition is sympathetic, small and pop mom and pop businesses.
00:14:46.020
Um, it's sort of like, in some respects, Walmart, you know, a juggernaut from afar that reaches into communities.
00:14:52.320
Um, it employees of tons of people in everyone's local community.
00:14:55.780
It's got complicated kind of tax relief schemes and it's a lightning rod.
00:15:00.740
It is, it is, it's occupied that place in the public imagination right now where people both depend on it.
00:15:07.780
And in the same breath, after they're clicking the buy now button, they're criticizing it.
00:15:12.260
I mean, and so maybe he has to be more careful, maybe to sit down and make himself available like Elon does is in some respects dangerous because he's going to be asked about taxes and relationship with the workers and competition.
00:15:27.140
So I don't, I don't know, but he is just more disciplined and careful and he, look, it's personality.
00:15:32.160
He can't, he, he, he, he can't, he's not like a Steve jobs or an Elon Musk where he can whip up his followers into, you know, a frenzy of fandom.
00:15:40.960
It's just, he's a, he's kind of still a geek Patrick when it gets down to it, a nerd.
00:15:49.820
Would you say Musk, Jobs, Gates, Zuck, you know, uh, uh, uh, Bezos, would you kind of say the personalities where Gates is a little bit more, but he's been in a public eye more lately, you know, vaccine, all this other stuff.
00:16:05.360
Challenges we're facing, but would you kind of put it more on the Gates and Zuck side than the Elon and Jobs side?
00:16:12.640
I mean, in some ways, I think he tries to be up here hovering above it.
00:16:17.160
You know, he's so strategic in, in what he says and how he talks and where he does it.
00:16:23.060
In some ways it's when he talks, when he writes a letter to shareholders, when he gives an interview with a fellow billionaire on a stage somewhere, um, or when he talks about Blue Origin, a space company, it's tactical.
00:16:37.340
You know, he's, he's, you know, one of the things is he's just incredibly strategic with his time.
00:16:42.160
And so partly it might be that, but when he does talk, there's always a goal and a, and a, you know, and an end game.
00:16:48.440
So I don't know that he's really even that consumed with his public image.
00:16:52.060
Um, I mean, I, he certainly does care about it because you see him responding to criticism in his writing and, and his, and the speeches he does give.
00:16:59.580
But, um, I think he just tries to sort of hover above it and no longer really cares perhaps.
00:17:04.780
And with $180 billion fortune, maybe he doesn't have to, uh, you know, cares that much about getting people to really understand them.
00:17:14.220
I think he cares because, yeah, because, you know, he responded to Trump and his guy told him not to do it.
00:17:19.280
And you were kind of talking about it yourself.
00:17:22.280
Jay call, you know, all that stuff that was going on, let it go.
00:17:25.440
And they had this little battle going on back and forth.
00:17:28.100
I asked because, you know, uh, it's an old school style.
00:17:32.780
He has this whole thing about being in the public eye.
00:17:37.580
Social media has almost forced a lot of CEOs to be in a public eye.
00:17:41.380
Generally, you know, powerful business people were like, listen, just, you know,
00:17:47.720
You know, your publicist would say, don't talk to anybody.
00:17:50.220
What if you say the wrong thing where today it's more like, let me go handle.
00:17:56.920
So it does show a lot of discipline to him internally.
00:17:59.680
You know, as you did the interview from the first book to the second one,
00:18:03.340
obviously on the second one, you're saying you didn't meet with him,
00:18:05.200
but he did allow you to go on and interview a lot of his executive, which is great.
00:18:09.360
Did you ever read the book accidental millionaire that was written in the eighties?
00:18:12.820
I want to say, uh, uh, it was a book written in the eighties.
00:18:17.180
And these were former employees that left, you know, the book accidental billionaire about
00:18:22.840
There was a book called accidental millionaire.
00:18:25.080
And it was written when you read the book, you could tell it was written by former employee
00:18:34.780
And in many documentaries, when they interview people that worked with jobs at his peak,
00:18:40.440
you know, you talk about bully, which we'll get to chapter three here in a minute,
00:18:43.040
but they say, you know, uh, uh, how he was and how he would, you know, flip out and this
00:18:48.640
and that when you were doing interviews from people recently, not, not 2013, I'm talking
00:18:55.400
about recently and interviewing former people as well as exact existing people.
00:19:00.480
What things have you seen evolve in the last eight years from 2012 to 2020, 2021?
00:19:06.620
In terms of the corporate culture or the, in terms of like, let's just say 2003, when
00:19:11.540
you were talking to disgruntled employees who left, they would say, Oh, he's still this
00:19:14.640
maybe disgruntled employees that now left are saying something different.
00:19:18.160
And the people that are there who are happy are saying something different.
00:19:21.280
Like Bezos has changed because of that, that, that.
00:19:23.580
Well, first of all, you know, yes, there are disgruntled employees, but you know, it's the
00:19:29.940
preponderance of, of the, of the workers that I've interviewed over the years, you know,
00:19:34.400
have been, I think pretty sort of a clear eyed, um, you know, and, and Frank about their
00:19:42.100
contributions, the, the, the pride they took at the work, but also, but also the, some
00:19:47.100
of the disadvantages or the, you know, the leadership style that ultimately burned them
00:19:53.740
It's sometimes exhausted or, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder from being lashed to a rocket
00:19:59.540
ship, you know, captain by a CEO who just never stopped.
00:20:04.440
And in the early years, they described this leadership style that was brusque and demanding
00:20:12.180
And in the first book, the everything store, I tell all sorts of stories of Bezos saying remarkable
00:20:16.900
things, you know, like, why are you wasting my life?
00:20:20.580
And then, and Amazon Unbound, that leadership style has matured somewhat.
00:20:25.400
Um, you know, he, he, he, he doesn't, you know, he bottles that up, uh, and, and, you
00:20:30.620
know, but he still has incredibly high standards and he'll walk out of a room if he feels like
00:20:36.060
employees haven't solved the problem or aren't betting big enough or thinking big enough or
00:20:42.780
I tell the story in Amazon Unbound of Alexa and the creation of Alexa, which she sponsored
00:20:49.840
And it's really, you know, this lesson for, I think anybody in business of, you know, how
00:20:54.080
just having the idea isn't enough, but you have to, as a CEO sort of use your leadership
00:21:00.140
magic to sponsor it, to get into the details, to understand the technical specifications, and
00:21:06.120
then to allow your employees as one says, I quote her in the book is to be unbound, you
00:21:11.980
know, to not limit themselves in terms of how they're thinking or investing.
00:21:17.020
The, the big question with Alexa was how, how they're, they were going to test it.
00:21:20.720
And ultimately before launch, ultimately they bring it out into the world, uh, in disguise
00:21:26.360
and they rent apartments and houses and shroud the thing with the acoustic fabric and get
00:21:34.220
And that's the only reason why I got smart enough to launch.
00:21:37.260
And that was Bezos basically pushing his people.
00:21:39.460
So yeah, I think the quality, the, the tenor of the testimony about the culture has changed,
00:21:46.200
It's just his leadership style softened a little bit.
00:21:48.400
So, okay, his leadership style softened a little bit, but it's still, so, so do you
00:21:53.040
notice, what do you notice with the guys that can stay with them long-term?
00:21:56.740
Because when you're working with a hard charging guy, listen, it's gotta be very annoying.
00:22:02.340
You either like it and you're almost just as screwed up as the other person is that you're
00:22:06.540
driven by it, or you're just like, I can tolerate this for five years.
00:22:10.300
I don't know if I can do this 10 years or 20 years.
00:22:17.060
But those you notice that can last with Bezos long-term, what do they have in common?
00:22:26.080
I think they buy into the leadership style and the culture.
00:22:31.700
They are, you know, they're, they're independent thinkers.
00:22:38.040
You know, Bezos had, you know, Jeff Wilkie for a long time.
00:22:46.000
I mean, they both were really, you know, like protégés in a way and made big contributions
00:22:54.640
But I think actually one factor, Patrick, is that Bezos just trusted them and then gave
00:23:03.220
And, you know, Bezos focuses on the new things.
00:23:05.960
And Wilkie ran the retail business and Jassy ran the cloud business.
00:23:10.420
And then Bezos would sort of show up every so often to, you know, to push them and sometimes
00:23:15.840
to undermine them or make them, you know, rethink elements of their business.
00:23:19.520
And so, you know, I think, I think the tolerance for that style was, was sort of key because
00:23:24.960
obviously, you know, if you, if you're, if you've created a, you know, multi-billion dollar
00:23:28.700
business and then the boss is showing up, I think to blow, blow you up every once in a
00:23:32.580
while, that takes a little bit of patience and self-awareness and you have to have a lot
00:23:37.920
So I think that's, that's, that's another key element.
00:23:40.840
They, they, they all had, they all seem to, you know, be members of the Bezos admiration
00:23:45.680
And of course you have to be, if you're going to be in there for the long haul and put up
00:23:48.820
with the challenges of, of that culture, you know, it's because you're buying in not just
00:23:53.320
to the style, but to the guy and the belief that, you know, he's a visionary and he's right
00:24:00.160
I mean, he's, he's a true prophet visionary, you know, it's, and what makes him, you know,
00:24:04.080
I guess I'll ask this question before we go to the next topic is on.
00:24:07.920
On style wise, you know, there are leaders who are very good with messaging.
00:24:14.400
There are those who are maybe not very good at expressing their message to you, but they're
00:24:27.780
There are those who are great developers of product.
00:24:32.000
There are those that are actually very good with numbers.
00:24:33.900
Like they know how to go raise the money and Hey, we'll go get this.
00:24:36.400
And they'll speak the balance sheet language better than others, almost like a CFO, but
00:24:40.840
And then there are some that just sheer drive competition.
00:24:47.520
If you were to say his number one, not Pat, he's all of that.
00:24:51.780
I get that, but I want to know, like, I know, but you know, like I'm talking about the one
00:25:04.200
So we're going to posit that most of the boxes are checked.
00:25:09.040
And of course, you know, he's, but I, you know, I'm going to say actually that there's
00:25:12.860
a little bit just to round it out a little bit of a, what I would call maybe a lack of
00:25:18.180
empathy or, you know, an, a willingness to disregard, uh, feelings, um, the need to drive
00:25:25.960
to consensus, um, you know, the low longer term wellbeing of employees.
00:25:31.120
And that's, you know, it sounds brutal and it, and it is, you know, and I think we've
00:25:35.720
seen some of the impact of that from the fulfillment centers, how tough that environment
00:25:39.320
is and how Amazon tends to churn through employees and Bezos is the architect of that system and
00:25:47.080
And maybe that is the, you know, the, the ingredient, uh, part, part of it, of his success.
00:25:53.220
And the thing that also is not to be emulated or, you know, in most environments, we would
00:26:00.020
Um, you know, this is, this is part of the reason why it's a, it's a difficult culture and
00:26:05.040
why the rate of turnover is high and why he doesn't seem to care.
00:26:08.600
He sits atop of this massive expanding empire because in some ways, you know, that he's
00:26:13.560
focused on the construction of a business that serves customers and the feelings of
00:26:18.200
everyone who is in the middle, making that machinery work doesn't really matter.
00:26:22.800
And, and, and I don't know, maybe that's it because there are plenty of inventors and
00:26:26.560
innovators and there's, there are plenty of, uh, business architects and yet he has
00:26:30.500
constructed a business on a scale that's been almost unknown to man.
00:26:34.240
And it's because he never stops and doesn't slow down.
00:26:36.760
It doesn't seem to concern himself with the things that might, you know, give you or I
00:26:54.780
Um, it's almost like not feeling guilty for what others have to do to get the work.
00:27:03.760
I don't feel guilty for your lack of effort or lack of desire to want to learn and improve.
00:27:12.900
And I'm sure you saw when he was on SNL, right.
00:27:14.820
And he got up and, you know, maybe something, you know, Bezos would never do, but Elon gets
00:27:20.420
And he says, I'm actually making history tonight as a first person with Asperger's to
00:27:24.860
host SNL, or at least the first to admit to it.
00:27:27.920
So I won't make a lot of eye contact with the cast in that, but, um, uh, but already I'm
00:27:31.760
pretty good at running human in emulation mode, right?
00:27:34.400
He touches on this Asperger's things and back in the days that would write about Gates with
00:27:41.400
And it was a rumor underlined that people would talk about that, you know, he would lash out
00:27:50.280
You know, do you, do you, and I know you don't talk about this.
00:27:53.980
You've not talked about in the first book, nor the second book.
00:27:56.000
Is there, is there an element of that where it gives you the advantage because rejection,
00:28:02.400
you're like, you don't even know what rejection feels like because you don't have emotions
00:28:06.280
Do you kind of see a strength and a correlation with that and succeeding at this level?
00:28:16.020
And yes, it's definitely one that I've thought about and of course resisted making any medical
00:28:20.580
diagnosis because I don't know, um, uh, but, you know, to look at it sort of, you know,
00:28:29.040
There is a remarkable ability that Bezos has to fail, uh, in public.
00:28:35.360
You know, the, the fire phone is a great example.
00:28:39.060
I tell that story and, and, and, yeah, very good story.
00:28:42.620
Um, you know, other efforts, um, when, when he battled with the national inquirer over his
00:28:48.000
personal relationship, you know, and, and posted that, that article on medium, um, you
00:28:53.600
know, that basically risked embarrassment and, you know, did something that probably most
00:28:57.580
of us, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't consider doing and, and, you know, moved on and, and
00:29:03.460
The risking of embarrassment is another aspect of this, you know, of this ability to not,
00:29:09.200
you know, not seem seemingly to care that much about public embarrassment that, yeah,
00:29:14.640
there's, there's a little bit of a shield, you know, to some of the negative, uh, effects
00:29:20.160
of growth and fame and that he has, and it's been remarkable armor, I think for him.
00:29:25.860
So, yes, I think it's definitely, if, if, you know, if he is like Elon somewhere there
00:29:30.720
on the spectrum and we, you know, we don't know.
00:29:32.480
And by the way, I've met Elon and, um, I never thought that that was true.
00:29:37.020
So I thought that was surprising that he would say that about himself.
00:29:39.900
Uh, but in any event, yeah, I mean, it's, it's clearly can be effective in, in some
00:29:48.040
Are you saying you met Elon because Elon actually has a personality and he's loose and, you
00:29:52.180
know, is that why you're saying why you never thought he would have that?
00:29:56.320
Because even when you see that, you're like, even on SNL, he looked like he was having a,
00:30:01.620
You know, I think the biggest thing was, did you watch Tiger Woods' documentary that came
00:30:08.680
I highly recommend, I just watch it a few weeks.
00:30:10.780
So it's not like I watch it when it first came out.
00:30:14.880
It's because, you know, last dance was so great.
00:30:17.320
What the hell is going to reach last dance, right?
00:30:19.660
But when you watch it, there is a scene that, you know, there's a lot of scenes that stuck
00:30:26.000
out to me, but there was one scene where his girlfriend from high school, they had
0.99
00:30:36.960
So it's not like he's not known, but there's this part about Tiger just being childlike
00:30:44.620
And then when his dad was around, yes, I plan on winning 19.
00:30:49.940
So it was like a robotic, but behind closed doors, it was this like loose thing.
00:30:53.960
I think what we're starting to see with Elon is Elon's just finally accepted the fact that
00:30:58.560
he's this, you know, big kid stuck in a brilliant genius guy's body and he's okay being himself.
00:31:03.680
I think Elon's probably reached a level of comfort in himself more than some of these
00:31:10.280
And I think the world's enjoying his brilliance.
00:31:13.100
I may be wrong, who knows, but that's what I noticed with them.
00:31:16.080
If you don't mind sharing that story with the phone, because that's a great management
00:31:21.560
tip to give to other leaders on how to deal with some of their folks who go through massive
00:31:28.300
I think it's a great story if you don't mind sharing that with the audience.
00:31:31.600
And let's recognize that Amazon is in a unique position to fail, right?
00:31:37.180
It, you know, has this engine of cash growth in the retail business and the cloud business.
00:31:42.940
So Bezos believes he can try a lot of different things.
00:31:45.380
And at the time that he's gestating Alexa, he, you know, has this idea for a phone.
00:31:50.320
He wants to enter, you know, this category of device that's growing so quickly with the
00:31:58.880
And, you know, he, he has a notion for a phone with a three-dimensional screen that'll give
00:32:04.980
you a kind of a 3D image with all these front facing cameras, and you can use the phone to
00:32:09.400
scan any product and I'll give you a price and show you how to build it.
00:32:12.600
And he, he whips up the project inside the company.
00:32:18.100
The employees on it really don't get the vision.
00:32:20.940
They think that Amazon should be offering a low price consistent with its image.
00:32:27.480
And they even buy dog, the employees buy dog tags that say disagree and commit, which
00:32:33.180
is a leadership principle inside Amazon, but a kind of sly way of saying that they didn't
00:32:43.600
They have to restart the project inside the company.
00:32:56.420
Doesn't necessarily embrace the blame publicly because it was his idea, but he moves on quickly.
00:33:02.520
And three months later, they, they announce Alexa.
00:33:04.800
So in some ways, the, I think the lesson is, uh, trying a lot of different things, embracing
00:33:09.540
failure, not, uh, you know, not punishing the organization or your employees when you, when,
00:33:14.700
when you fail, not losing a lot of time to go recognize the failure, take the write-off,
00:33:21.580
Um, you know, and, and then the fact that, you know, if, even if you fail, as long as
00:33:25.500
you're trying, you know, five other things and one of them hits, you're going to come
00:33:29.240
out ahead, which is what happened with Amazon and Alexa.
00:33:33.860
You know, obviously it's his idea that failed, but a guy, the VP that had the project, at
00:33:38.440
least he told him, I don't want you to, what, what was the line?
00:33:40.340
I don't want you to think about it for a minute.
00:33:42.080
Promise me you won't think about it for a minute and you'll move on.
00:33:44.760
So it shows a different side of his, but you know, there's a story about you chasing
00:33:49.060
down the voice actress of Alexa in Boulder, Colorado.
00:33:52.660
And she told you that she cannot interview with you.
00:34:04.480
Uh, when I'm coming into this book, Amazon Unbound, I'm thinking, well, what, what, what
00:34:12.440
And, but one of them was whose voice was emanating from this device in my kitchen.
00:34:16.600
We had known that there was a voice actress behind Siri.
0.92
00:34:19.720
So I figured the same thing was true for Alexa.
00:34:22.040
Alexa and, you know, and I've got all sorts of bits about the creation of Alexa, the first
00:34:26.160
whiteboard drawing that Bezos drew on it in his conference room of the device in 2011.
00:34:34.000
And I thought, you know, can I find her identity?
00:34:36.600
You know, did some digging, some detective work and yeah, found a voice actress named Nina
00:34:43.940
When I called her, she really said she couldn't talk, which I figured was the case.
00:34:49.540
And NDA Amazon, I think probably prefers the people to think of the voice Alexa as a kind
00:34:55.740
of voice of God emanating, you know, from Amazon's own computer servers.
00:35:00.780
But in fact, there's a voice actress who's recording a lot, a lot of audio in her home
00:35:06.660
And those sentences and phrases and paragraphs she utters, those are the words and the phrases
00:35:12.780
are all split up, you know, fed into a voice recognition system and then, you know, put
00:35:19.440
back together in, you know, in coherent, sometimes coherent, let's say phrases to respond to user
00:35:28.660
Yeah, that's definitely interesting because I mean, she's more famous than she, nobody knows
00:35:33.860
I guess if you Google, you know what she looks like, but to most people, she may be one of
00:35:37.840
the most famous people in the world, at least her voice.
00:35:39.940
Well, I would say maybe the most famous voice in history.
00:35:46.860
But, you know, and she's been in the last four or five Super Bowls too, without, without
00:35:52.560
I mean, the only, the voice that I think is very, maybe it's a good voice, Morgan Freeman,
00:35:56.640
but as far as famous, it would probably have to be Hearst.
00:35:59.940
You know, when, when you think about Bezos, the guy's extremely strategic.
00:36:05.360
You talk about him being a, you know, master chess, you know, plays chess with the game.
00:36:15.640
I recall him telling stories about playing chess with his grandfather growing up.
00:36:20.980
But in the world of business, the guy knows what moves to make.
00:36:28.940
And when you look at the companies he buys, he bought Whole Foods.
00:36:45.140
To control the narrative, a little bit of media.
00:36:46.960
If they're going to come after you, you've got a big platform.
00:36:49.800
All this stuff you're looking at, what he buys.
00:36:52.080
Prime, all these things that he goes through that he built, you know, Zappos.
00:36:56.300
There's always a motive behind where he's going himself.
00:36:59.820
What's the motive behind his interest with MGM?
00:37:03.080
Obviously, we don't know if the deal is going to get done or not.
00:37:05.520
But what is his motive behind the, what do you think is the motive behind wanting to buy MGM?
00:37:17.020
They want all their shelves full, infinite selection.
00:37:21.080
And early on, DVDs, home movies were one shelf of the everything store.
00:37:34.420
You can buy movies and stream and download them.
00:37:37.420
And then Netflix comes along with a subscription service.
00:37:40.520
You know, pay a certain amount per month and watch anything you want.
00:37:44.320
So Amazon copies that, Bezos integrates it into Prime.
00:37:49.620
Then Amazon and Netflix are dueling to license shows like Friends or Seinfeld.
00:37:58.520
And what they realize is it's less expensive, more strategic to just make those shows and movies
00:38:04.320
So Netflix and Amazon get into the production of original TV shows and movies.
00:38:09.340
That's the battle that we've seen now over many years.
00:38:12.600
And MGM is, you know, a huge catalog of the James Bond movies, the Survivor TV show, and
00:38:20.840
Amazon can plug into its vast catalog of Prime Video.
00:38:25.780
They also have something called IMDb TV, which is a free streaming service supported by ads.
00:38:30.960
So in some ways, MGM is, you know, a shot of steroids into this catalog of content that
00:38:42.480
And when they're Prime members or they're using IMDb TV, you know, they're better Amazon
00:38:52.620
It's this foot race that Amazon has engaged in with all these other companies, Disney,
00:38:57.880
Apple, now HBO owned by Time Warner, being joined with Discovery and Netflix and on and
00:39:09.620
So almost like how Disney disconnected themselves from, you know, Netflix and they went and created
00:39:17.440
I think it's the fastest growing in the world out of all the OTTs.
00:39:20.260
So he's thinking about taking the MGM catalog and adding it to Amazon, you know, what is
00:39:34.260
And then, you know, and then also the original, you know, MGM is a movie studio and it's got
00:39:42.420
It has the Creed franchise and Amazon is in business, you know, with Michael Jordan, the
00:39:48.520
And so there's lots of avenues there for Amazon to turbocharge its video offerings if
00:39:57.080
It almost seems like he sits there and he says, oh, who can we go up against?
00:40:12.900
It's this belief that the company, that the, you know, that it needs, it should be everywhere
00:40:19.920
So he failed on the phone side, which means let's go up against Apple and, you know, Android,
00:40:27.300
Do you think he has anything said in the, that he may want to go up against the social
00:40:33.140
I'm talking Facebook, Twitter, any of those guys?
00:40:36.800
It's re that's really interesting, Patrick, because early on, I found out that at one
00:40:41.120
point he actually had some of the earliest social media patents and didn't do much with
00:40:47.460
And, you know, I think that's one area of, you know, with which they, they haven't been
00:40:54.500
Twitch is maybe the sort of explicit, you know, anomaly there, but, but that's a little
00:41:04.920
They've, they have a social network for books called Goodreads, but they haven't done much
00:41:09.920
So, yeah, that's one area where maybe, maybe, you know, uniquely they haven't shown much
00:41:16.980
I'd be curious to know, because, you know, long-term wise, that's the one area where you
00:41:23.120
almost need to have some control if you want to have a, so, but we saw Google try to do
00:41:28.940
Maybe he saw that as a playbook of, well, it's not that easy to do.
00:41:33.380
So, and by the way, I mean, maybe that's been smart.
00:41:35.740
I mean, they've grown an advertising business without those assets and the social networks
00:41:40.020
are in the middle of a political storm that seems unending now and around free speech and
00:41:44.620
political expression and Amazon, plenty of controversy and regulatory attention, but it's
00:41:54.880
You always see Jack Dorsey, Zuck, all those guys, you know, always being grilled.
00:42:03.680
What happened when they were trying to go to New York and, hey, we're going to bring
00:42:07.280
a 125,000 jobs at an average of a 25,000 jobs at an average of $150,000 a year salary.
00:42:14.600
Cuomo wanted it, but the Blasio, AOC, they kind of pushed him out.
00:42:21.780
And he's kind of like, wait a minute, what are we talking about here?
00:42:33.600
They were fleeing a political storm in Seattle where the Amazon had started to become blamed
00:42:39.220
for the problems of growth like gentrification and homelessness and rising home rates.
00:42:46.920
That and the fact that they were kind of running out of space in Seattle.
00:42:49.900
And, you know, they whipped up the country in a frenzy of competition for HQ2.
00:42:58.040
You know, they were talking about things like the low cost of construction they were looking
00:43:02.560
for, affordable home prices, the size of tax incentives, good transportation networks.
00:43:08.800
And then they pick New York and Washington, D.C.
00:43:11.720
And so right off the bat, you know, the world's kind of shocked because that is not what they
00:43:25.300
The decision process was largely driven by the personal preferences of Bezos and the
00:43:32.920
They get de Blasio and Cuomo to agree on the Amazon package in Long Island City.
00:43:41.520
And the dynamics of, you know, political dynamics in New York are such that, you know, whatever
00:43:45.940
de Blasio wants, you know, the council is going to kind of reject.
00:43:51.620
And I think the surprise for Amazon was that the same political dynamics, you know, that
00:43:56.640
were hurting them in Seattle were there in New York.
00:43:59.640
You know, the big tech companies, the tech lash, the fear of gentrification, you know,
00:44:09.400
So he asked for a helipad in the in the Queens headquarters.
00:44:12.580
And, you know, the New York Post puts it on the front page and they're off to the races.
00:44:17.100
And ultimately, you know, they were sort of unprepared for the backlash.
00:44:22.760
And then the whole thing kind of crystallizes on the issue of unions and whether Amazon would
00:44:29.500
And Bezos has always fought that from the very beginning.
00:44:34.520
And so when you know what I concluded was that when talks went to unionization and they
00:44:39.140
saw the political landscape was the same as it was in Seattle, it just wasn't worth it
00:44:43.640
And they pulled out, they grew instead in Manhattan and then in Washington, D.C.
00:44:51.280
You know, it almost seems like he's OK with taxes increasing.
00:44:57.800
But he is not OK with the union unionization of Amazon.
00:45:04.700
Well, you know, what they'll say and then we'll get to the real reason is that they don't
00:45:10.020
want an intermediary between them and their employees.
00:45:21.420
And what that means is that the company really has to get as close as possible to a 24-7
00:45:25.960
operating cycle and to go scale up during the holidays or when if a pandemic breaks out
00:45:33.020
and someone's suddenly buying or if there's a sudden surge in interest for a particular
00:45:37.460
piece of merchandise and then they scale down afterwards.
00:45:40.820
So they're hiring and they're firing and they're working around the clock.
00:45:44.180
And they're suddenly, you know, if there's a backlog, they're shifting employees to different
00:45:48.360
Um, and all of those things, Patrick, that I just described are things that, you know,
00:45:52.760
a union that's going to, you know, very quite naturally want to instill some order on their
00:45:57.640
workers' lives and create some employment security, it's going to collectively bargain
00:46:03.320
And so I think Amazon's viewed unions as a, as a impediment to their ability to push employees
00:46:09.860
to be flexible and to churn through workers in the fulfillment centers as the needs of the
00:46:15.300
That's probably the most charitable way to put it.
00:46:17.520
Um, you know, but, um, you know, we've seen again and again around the world, Amazon walking
00:46:23.980
away from, from facilities when the discussion turns to unions.
00:46:27.700
You see like, even what was going on with Georgia, he's like, right.
00:46:31.420
The day before they announced that, uh, uh, you know, they were about to announce that,
00:46:36.800
Hey, the voting, all that stuff that was going to take place the day before he goes up and
00:46:41.920
And I think we should, you know, people, rich people should pay more taxes.
00:46:45.540
And then the next day, the union topic just kind of went away.
00:46:48.240
It almost seemed like behind closed doors, there was a negotiation saying, if you say
00:46:53.100
something about raising taxes, we'll make a Atlanta go away or Georgia go away.
0.99
00:46:57.220
And it kind of did, uh, with the union topic, but let's go to a different topic.
00:47:00.560
So everybody has a, a, an arch nemesis and some of them change.
00:47:05.680
Some of them change from your twenties to your thirties, to your forties.
00:47:11.400
Every time you're going to like, let's just say when Michael's coming up, maybe it was
00:47:15.360
Then it became, let's just say Isaiah, you know, then it became, you know, somebody
00:47:19.760
on Barkley, some of these guys that you go through, would you say, you know, Bezos is
00:47:24.860
number one nemesis right now is a guy named Elon Musk.
00:47:28.700
Well, um, yeah, I mean, it was Donald Trump, uh, for many years, uh, they, they famously
00:47:36.640
went at it and, you know, I tell some of that story in the book, uh, right now, I think maybe
00:47:42.400
Patrick, um, Bezos has this company blue origin is this space company.
00:47:46.420
It's older than SpaceX, but he made some choices early on to, to constrain his investment,
00:47:51.260
to go slow, keep the headcount small and to move a step-by-step suborbital space, then
00:47:57.620
orbital, then the moon and Elon came in with SpaceX and kind of, you know, just went much
00:48:03.820
faster and got the government to pay for a lot of his projects.
00:48:06.300
And so Jeff has been, you know, uniquely in space, kind of struggling to catch up.
00:48:11.200
He's not used to being the second at anything, uh, you know, and, and now he is.
00:48:15.820
And then we see Amazon trying to launch a satellite network to compete with Starlink, which is
00:48:21.500
So I do think there's a spirited rivalry there.
00:48:24.840
And I don't, you know, I don't know that Bezos, look, he is the richest guy in the world
00:48:29.000
and the creation of Amazon probably dwarfs, you know, the creation of other companies
00:48:33.600
at this point in terms of just the impact and the overall market cap.
00:48:37.020
So I don't know how really rivalrous he feels, but certainly in this respect and the, and,
00:48:42.440
and where we started the conversation, Elon's ability to whip, uh, his followers into fans
00:48:47.860
while Bezos kind of suffers the slings and arrows of criticism for Amazon's impact on the
00:48:55.880
I'm sure he looks at Elon and sort of feels that there are elements there that, uh, you
00:48:58.280
know, he, he needs to work harder to, to capture himself.
00:49:02.660
I know you said it earlier, where I said, you know, it's more like jobs, Musk, you know,
00:49:17.080
Does he walk in thinking, well, all these guys are trying to catch up to me?
00:49:22.980
I got to go be better than what Walmart built, what this guy did, what Rockefeller did, what
00:49:36.220
Like, like, like that, you know, does he have Vanderbilt Rockefeller?
00:49:48.820
There are elements of, of the Sam Walton philosophy and autobiography that he's woven into Amazon.
00:49:54.900
Um, look, I mean, I, I, I'm going to guess that I, I don't think so.
00:50:00.260
Um, but that he, he understands that part of the, uh, legacy of some of the business figures,
00:50:06.940
the historical business figures you mentioned was their philanthropic contributions and that
00:50:13.100
He's got a fortune that's about $200 billion that'll probably grow faster than he can give
00:50:17.960
And he's going to be measured based on how productive and effective he is doing that.
00:50:22.940
And we've seen, um, you know, Bill Gates and, and others make major contributions, but also
00:50:27.960
sort of stumble the, the work of giving the money away can be as difficult as the work of
00:50:33.840
So, and so, yeah, he's got a lot of, he's got a lot of work to do before, you know, he's
00:50:38.840
viewed as a, you know, billionaire philanthropist who made a positive contribution.
00:50:43.020
And not just, you know, this operator who, who managed to accumulate all this power and,
00:50:48.000
you know, the world feels very complicated about Bezos and Amazon right now.
00:50:51.760
So, you know, I don't know that there's a person he's chasing, but there might be an
00:50:55.060
ideal, um, you know, that he still has to get to before he really retires.
00:51:00.620
So competition, you know, uh, they say 70% of fortune 500 companies from 1960 are no longer
00:51:08.340
You know, it's like, these companies are no longer on.
00:51:13.160
Kmart was God, you know, at one point in Walmart was trying to catch up after the 1960, two and
00:51:19.240
a half, the super saving center year where Walmart, Kmart, Target all came out five years
00:51:24.680
later, you know, Walmart has 250, uh, Kmart has 250 stores.
00:51:33.900
Is Amazon something that you see yourself being around five years from now, uh, 50 years
00:51:40.420
from now where this is going to be so hard to beat these guys, or if there was a way
00:51:45.000
where competition could take these guys out, do you have any insight on how that would be?
00:51:54.980
Um, right now, Amazon is, I like to say a boulder rolling downhill, gathering speed.
00:51:59.940
The, the fulfillment centers are getting closer to major cities.
00:52:06.060
Um, the selections getting larger as they open up the marketplace to sellers around the
00:52:11.220
And they've got, you know, so many resources, not just the profit of the company, but the,
00:52:16.940
the capital they're willing, they're able to raise, you know, cheap prices from wall street.
00:52:21.300
The future of Amazon is, is more Amazon entering into more countries and more products and becoming
00:52:29.600
I mean, one weakness of the company is that there's so much surface area that there are
00:52:37.740
Shopify, the Canadian company is a good example of going right to brands who are hesitant of
00:52:42.700
kind of the chaos of Amazon to sell directly to customers.
00:52:46.800
So, I mean, I think, yeah, I think Amazon's around in a couple of decades when Bezos sort
00:52:51.240
of predicts that, you know, the, the future could be cloudy.
00:52:54.240
He's trying to motivate his employees, but this is a historic company.
00:52:58.240
I think it's, it's the company that's going to define the current century in good ways
00:53:02.980
And I think, you know, if regulators and lawmakers want to catch up to it, you know, they need
00:53:07.580
to understand it, which is one of the reasons I wrote the book and get into the mechanics
00:53:11.920
and, and really look for, you know, the true anti-competitive behavior or behavior that needs
00:53:17.260
And it's not easy because this, in some ways, it's not a monopoly.
00:53:21.020
It's in the biggest markets of the world, retail and enterprise software, and doesn't really
00:53:25.600
command even a majority of the, of the market activity.
00:53:30.000
So, yeah, I think, you know, Amazon will be around and if it does get split up, they'll
00:53:35.400
just be a little, a lot of little baby Bezos is running around it gobbling up the marketplace.
1.00
00:53:40.160
So that's not, you know, that, that's probably not going to give competitors any comfort either.
00:53:45.240
Which means, meaning they could go other places and start other companies, or you're saying
00:53:51.580
Well, I was just saying, if, if, if, if the government was going to break up Amazon or Amazon
00:54:00.900
It just might mean, you know, some very highly valued independent pieces that have the Amazon
00:54:05.880
culture and the Bezos operating style and, you know, and are just as aggressive and
00:54:10.100
competitive, but multiple entities instead of just one.
00:54:13.100
I mean, you kind of saw that happen with Watsons and IBM, where they try to break them apart
00:54:16.440
because they're only, I think their only enemy right now is going to be the government.
00:54:19.480
We're saying, Hey, you're kind of becoming a monopoly and them getting in their way.
00:54:24.060
And some of the guys may leave, like, you know how back in the days, if you worked under
00:54:29.260
You're like, I worked under Jack Welch for five years.
00:54:32.220
Let's hire this guy as an executive and bring them on board.
00:54:34.200
So some people may use it as a way to help them out with the rest of their career.
00:54:42.100
If you're watching this, we're going to put the link to his book, Amazon Unbound below.
00:54:48.080
Once again, Brad, thanks for being on Valuetainment.
00:54:51.440
So I'm curious what you took away from this interview here about Bezos, Amazon culture,
00:54:55.000
how we work, his personality, his DNA, the father story.
00:55:02.140
I want to hear from you also, if you enjoyed this interview.
00:55:04.920
One of them is with a deep dive that Tom Ellsworth did on AWS case study.
00:55:10.860
If you want to know more about why AWS is crushing it and why Andy Jazzy became the CEO of Amazon,
00:55:18.880
And if you want to find out about storytelling and marketing,
00:55:21.940
why companies like Amazon end up becoming who they are,
00:55:24.480
watch my interview with Don Miller on how he breaks down the art of storytelling and marketing.