Jeff Bezos Reveals The Secret Of His Success: Five Mantras We Can All Learn From Him

At Amazon's Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas this week, CEO Jeff Bezos took to the stage to say a few words about space, the future, and how Amazon fits into all of it. He also took a moment though to give out some business advice to entrepreneurs everywhere.

So here are five tidbits to take away from the richest man in the world.

Images courtesy: Reuters

It's not "just business"

Bezos advised businessmen to not just be all about the money. "You'll be competing against those who are passionate," he told the crowd. "You have to be a missionary, not a mercenary. And, paradoxically, the missionaries end up making more money."

Take risks

"If you have a business idea with no risk, it's probably already being done," he said. "You've got to have something that might not work. It will be, in many ways, an experiment. We take risks all the time, we talk about failure." Think about Amazon itself for instance. When they started out, they were just selling books, out of an office with maybe under a 100 people. Today, it's made Bezos the wealthiest person in the world.

Failure is not the end

But when those risks don't pan out, Bezos wants you to know it's not the end of the world. "We need big failures in order to move the needle. If we don't, we're not swinging enough. You really should be swinging hard, and you will fail, but that's okay."

"When you swing hard in baseball, the maximum number of runs you can get is four. When you swing hard in business, you can get 100 runs. So you really should swing hard, and you are going to fail a lot, and you need a culture that supports that. When do you know when to stop? When the last champion is ready to throw in the towel, it's time to stop. And usually, that last champion is me."

Being right means being informed

At the very least, Bezos says, you shouldn't be so conceited as to think you have nothing to learn. "People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot," he said. "People who are right a lot change their mind without a lot of new data. They wake up and reanalyze things and change their mind. If you don't change your mind frequently, you're going to be wrong a lot. People who are right a lot want to dis-confirm their fundamental biases. "

Earth's future is bright

Another thing Bezos talked about, is how he believes residential areas in the future won't just be communities, they'll be whole planets. "The reason we go to space is to save the earth," he said. "We need to move industry to the moon. Earth will be zoned residential. The earth will be zoned for residential and light industry."

Honestly, given enough time and money to move people, that's actually a possibility, if a distant one. It would be the most efficient way to preserve our home planet's environment, while still continuing industry's advance. But that still doesn't mean industry doesn't need to change at all.