12 Learning Lesson from Amazon

1. Give your customer a chair at your meeting. You do this by putting your feet totally in the customer’s experience. Remove the hat of being part of or attached to your company’s perspective. Then shift your paradigm to look at the experience from only the customer’s view. From this vantage point, tackle how your business can make the encounter exceptional for those you serve.
   
2. Empower others to empower you. Use your competition for your benefit. You can do this by selling your service to them.
   
3. Set a big vision. Shoot for landing on a new planet. If you miss, you might end up building a colony on the moon.
   
4. Use the data to predict trends. Get more sales out of your customers. For example, Amazon recommends products you’ll be interested in, which increases sales.
   
5. Set up a strong infrastructure. This labor can cause you to lose in the short run, but it will help you win in the long term. Having the proper infrastructure will allow you to take on new customers, enter new markets, and in the interim, grow your business.
   
6. Be humble and use money wisely. Start where you can; use what you already have. For instance, Jeff Bezos was driving an inexpensive Honda when initially starting amazon, and his office was very second-hand. As an example, he used a hand-sprayed Amazon sign and an unadorned desk. The customers did not care about how fancy the sign was or how rudimentary his space office was. They wanted to know when they could get their book. The tale of this story, spend money on things that make your customer’s experience better. Having an expensive desk will not make your customer more delighted. Managing well the resources you do have can help expand your territory. Stay humble and use your capital smartly, “do not despise the day of small things” (Zechariah 4:10).
   
7. Take a calculated and thoughtful risk. Bezos left the financial investment world to start an internet company; this was a calculated risk for him; that seriously paid off. He used a “regret minimization framework” to decide to leave Wall Street and start an internet company. The idea of the framework is to minimize any regret you would have for missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
   
8. Grow into new markets. Expose yourself to new markets and new ways of doing things. Don’t be scared to experiment with emerging markets to help grow your business beyond its initial offering.
   
9. Make execution everything. Ideas are easier to come up with than the work and focus it takes to execute them. Learning to implement your ideas will increase your chances of success.
   
10. Have fun! Enjoy doing what you do! Remember to laugh.
    
11. Nail it by focusing. Once you mastered one part of your business or category, ensure you take the knowledge you learn and expand to other areas of your company.
    
12. Let others pay for your business. Amazon Web Service (AWS) gives the company a steady cash flow to expand and develop better technology. This model provides a huge economic moat for paying expenses and resources for innovation. In addition, those who do business with Amazon get a competitive advantage by using their innovative technology, creating a win-win for both parties. 

ContractRight.com · 12 Learning Lesson from Amazon by ContractRight.com

Would you please share any lesson you see a small business or freelancer can learn from Amazon?