In Final Letter As Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos Shares Secret Of His Success

Jeff Bezos, the world¡¯s richest man, in his final letter to his shareholders as Amazon CEO has advised its readers to keep their distinctiveness.

Reuters

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In case you were living under a rock, you¡¯d know that Jeff Bezos recently announced that he would be stepping down from his role of the Chief Executive Officer.

Bezos would step down at the end of the third quarter and will transition to become executive chairman of Amazon¡¯s board. His position will be taken by Andy Jassy who currently serves as the CEO for Amazon Web Services.

The letter begins with Bezos talking about his first letter to shareholders in the year 1997 and how at the time Amazon has come a long way from having 158 employees to 614, with 1.5 million customer accounts. And today, they¡¯re a team of 1.3 million employees around the world with over 200 million Prime members worldwide.

While concluding the letter, Bezos shared a passage from Richard Dawkins¡¯s book, ¡®The Blind Watchmaker where he shared how all ¡®Amazonians¡¯ must keep their ¡®distinctiveness¡¯. Bezos said, ¡°We all know that distinctiveness ¨C originality ¨C is valuable. We are all taught to ¡®be yourself.¡¯ What I¡¯m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical ¨C in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don¡¯t let it happen.¡±

Reuters

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Bezos added, ¡°You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it¡¯s worth it. The fairy tale version of ¡°be yourself¡± is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don¡¯t expect it to be easy or free. You¡¯ll have to put energy into it continuously. The world will always try to make Amazon more typical ¨C to bring us into equilibrium with our environment. It will take continuous effort, but we can and must be better than that.¡±