sINTRODUCTION
It’s Always Day One
In the summer of 2004, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made a surprising decision that shocked his leadership team. He banned PowerPoint. Instead of slides and bullet points, Amazon’s executive team would have to pitch ideas in the form of memos and narratives. The world’s most advanced e-commerce company had replaced a modern presentation tool with an ancient communication device invented more than five thousand years earlier: the written word. The new system forced everyone to share ideas using simple words, short sentences, and clear explanations. The blueprint that Bezos introduced set the foundation that would fuel Amazon’s astonishing growth for the next two decades.
Jeff Bezos is a dreamer who turned a bold idea into the world’s most influential company. Along the way, he created strategies to radically reimagine the way leaders deliver presentations, share ideas, and align their teams around a common vision. A student of leadership and communication, Bezos learned to motivate people to achieve what few thought was possible. Now the tools he used are available to you.
This book is not about Bezos the billionaire or Amazon the e-commerce juggernaut. Those subjects are covered in other books and in endless debates about the role of wealth or the impact of Amazon’s influence in the economy. No, this book is about something more fundamental that applies to each and every reader. The Bezos Blueprint focuses on an overlooked and underappreciated part of the Amazon growth story, a topic that’s foundational to the success of your life and career: communication.
Until now, no author has focused squarely on the writing and storytelling skills that set Bezos apart. No book has analyzed the forty-eight thousand words Bezos wrote over twenty-four years of shareholder letters. And no author has interviewed as many former Amazon executives and CEOs who have adopted the Bezos communication model to build their own companies.
One legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist told me that business school students should be required to learn about Bezos’s writing and communication strategies. He even said he’d teach the class himself—if he were “twenty years younger.”
Bezos pioneered communication tools to elevate the way Amazonians write, collaborate, innovate, pitch, and present. By doing so, he created a scalable model that could grow from a small team working in a Seattle garage to one of the world’s largest employers. In short, Bezos drew a blueprint.
I teach communication skills to executives in an advanced leadership program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. They are leaders in the “built environment”: designers and developers who have created magnificent structures, buildings, and even cities around the world. Their vision is to build smarter, healthier, greener, and, overall, better places to live. Communication-skills training is an essential part of the curriculum, because if they can’t sell their idea to investors, stakeholders, and community members, there’s little chance that anything will be built.
But no matter how grand the vision, nothing happens without a blueprint.
A blueprint translates a designer’s vision into a detailed model that others can follow to bring the idea alive. It acts as a plan to make sure everyone in the construction process is on the same page. In addition, blueprints are scalable, so the designer does not have to be present for engineers, contractors, and workers to turn the vision into reality.
Although Jeff Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 to pursue his passion for philanthropy and space exploration, the communication blueprint he created continues to serve as a model for employees and leaders in every part of the company. Current Amazon executives use the same language and expound on the same principles that Bezos consistently repeated in speeches, interviews, and presentations over his twenty-seven-year tenure.
The communication strategies that Bezos pioneered at Amazon stretch far beyond the company’s giant footprint. Amazon is known as “America’s CEO Factory,” spawning a legion of entrepreneurs who have founded their own start-ups, many of which touch your life every day. They are part of what The Wall Street Journal calls the “diaspora of Amazon alumni spreading the business gospel of Jeff Bezos across the corporate world.” These former executives, many of whom you’ll meet in this book, are adopting aspects of the Amazon culture that fit their leadership style and discarding the parts of the culture that do not work for them.
The blueprint left an indelible impression on Adam Selipsky. After working at Amazon for eleven years, Selipsky left the company in 2016 to be the CEO of Seattle software giant Tableau. “One of the things I flagrantly ripped off from Amazon was the narrative,”1 he admitted. Bezos’s ideas like replacing PowerPoint with written narratives or crafting a press release before building a product (strategies you’ll learn in upcoming chapters), served as a model for Selipsky well after his career at Amazon—and when he came back.
Selipsky returned to Amazon in 2021 to run Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud-computing division that powers the backbone for more than one million customers such as Netflix, Airbnb, and Zoom. In his first televised interviews as the chief executive of AWS, it was hard to tell Selipsky apart from the Amazon founder, even though Selipsky had never worked directly for Bezos (he worked for Andy Jassy, who replaced Bezos as Amazon CEO).
“It’s still Day One for AWS and for our customers,”2 Selipsky said, referring to a metaphor that Bezos instilled as a guiding management philosophy in his first shareholder letter. “The long-term business strategy is to focus maniacally—not on competitors, but on customers,” Selipsky continued. “We need to wake up every day understanding exactly what customers need us to build next, and work backwards from there.” Selipsky was communicating a message that, as you’ll learn later, was pure Bezos.
Amazon alumni are not the only evangelists for the Bezos blueprint. The strategies revealed in this book have been implemented by CEOs and senior leaders at Best Buy, Whole Foods, J.P.Morgan, Hulu, and scores of other brands that are household names. Some leaders like former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi have jumped at the opportunity to learn more about Amazon from the inside. Nooyi joined Amazon’s board after she left PepsiCo to get “a front-row seat to the thinking of one of the most innovative, customer-centric companies I’ve ever encountered.” By reading this book, you, too, will have a front-row seat to a dreamer whose idea transformed the world in which we live and who turned communication into a competive advantage.
SELL DREAMS, NOT PRODUCTS
The company that started as an online bookseller has grown into an internet retailer that sells an astonishing 350 million products globally. But Bezos is not “the world’s greatest salesman” because Amazon sells everything to everybody. He’s the world’s greatest salesman because he sells dreams, not products. And that has made all the difference.
One year before Amazon had sold a single book, Bezos had to sell something more important than a product; he had to sell his vision. In 1994 and early 1995, Bezos held sixty meetings with family, friends, and potential funders. He asked each person to invest $50,000 in his revolutionary idea. Amazon was a tough sell at the time because few people had any experience with e-commerce. The most common question they had for Bezos was, “What’s the internet?”
The meetings did not all end successfully. Bezos failed to convince most of the people he pitched, but he did persuade twenty-two people to invest in his start-up. A pitch that lands one of three investors represents a remarkable success rate for any start-up. It’s even more striking for an e-commerce company in the mid-’90s. Amazon’s earliest investors were not placing a bet on the company; they were betting on the person behind the idea. They were sold on Bezos and his vision.
Tom Alberg wrote one of those checks. By the time he stepped down from Amazon’s board after twenty-three years, Alberg’s initial investment was worth more than $30 million. Alberg said he was impressed with Bezos in those early meetings, especially his skill at putting numbers in perspective that proved to be irresistible to long-term investors (I’ll cover data storytelling in chapter 15). Over time, Alberg also grew to admire Bezos’s ability to build teams who live his principles every day.
Later, in June 1996, Bezos received another $8 million from John Doerr’s venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins. It was the only VC capital that Amazon raised before going public a year later, an investment that would return more than $1 billion. “What I saw was an amazing founder and an amazing opportunity,”3 Doerr recalls about his first meeting with Bezos. “He had a technical background and a dream that he could get big fast and change the way the world works.”
When Doerr flew to Seattle to visit the company in a “seedy part” of the city, he was surprised to find desks made out of wooden doors purchased at Home Depot. As you’ll see in chapter 14, the doors were a visible metaphor that constantly reminded employees to follow one of Amazon’s core principles: frugality. After Andy Jassy replaced Bezos as CEO, Doerr predicted that the company would not lose sight of its values because Bezos had ingrained his principles throughout the organization.
That’s the power of a blueprint—it’s a model that scales as your idea or company grows.
You can have a great idea, but the secret to success in any endeavor is convincing someone else to take action on your idea. You don’t need a sales title to consider yourself a salesperson. Selling is everything, and you do it more often than you think. Studies by Dan Pink and other researchers show that business professionals spend 40 percent of their time on the job doing something akin to selling: persuading, influencing, motivating, coaxing, and convincing. That means your impact over twenty-four minutes of every hour of every day requires sharpening a skill that you can learn from the masters of persuasion.
According to Ann Hiatt, who worked three feet from Jeff Bezos for several years, “The greatest gift in my life has been sitting next to the smartest CEOs in the world and learning step-by-step how they think, act, motivate, and make decisions.”4 Hiatt says the most important habit she learned from her former boss is to prioritize learning. She says Bezos walked into the office each morning with three newspapers tucked under his arm. Once he was finished reading them, he moved on to articles and briefing documents. Hiatt got the message and snagged the papers off Bezos’s desk to read during her lunch break.
The moment you think you know it all is the moment you stop growing. Bezos grew as a leader over time—and made remarkable improvements as a writer and speaker. You can make dramatic changes, too, but only if you see yourself as a learn-it-all and not a know-it-all.
The writing, storytelling, and presentation tactics you’re about to learn will unleash your potential, setting the foundation for your success as a student, entrepreneur, executive, leader, or business professional in any field. Once you have a solid foundation in writing and communication, you’ll find that these skills work like Amazon’s famous “flywheel,” creating an unstoppable cycle of success.
The communication strategies that Jeff Bezos pioneered at Amazon impact our lives each and every day. Even if you’re not one of Amazon’s three hundred million active global customers, you likely interact with companies powered by Amazon or inspired by Amazon. No single entrepreneur has had as much influence on your daily life as Jeff Bezos, and few business leaders have given as much careful consideration to communicating his vision as Bezos has—from Day One.
WANTED: TOP-NOTCH COMMUNICATION SKILLS
On August 23, 1994, Bezos placed his first job listing. Although he had yet to decide on a catchy name for his e-commerce company, Bezos did have a clear vision of the skills required to make the “well-capitalized Seattle start-up” a success. Since Bezos was looking for a Unix developer, job candidates had to know the programming language C++. Bezos added that familiarity with web servers and HTML would be helpful but “not necessary.” But Bezos considered only one skill essential for every position: “Top-notch communication skills.”5
Bezos was ahead of his time. A quarter century after Bezos posted the first job ad for Amazon.com, a LinkedIn survey of four thousand hiring professionals concluded that “communication skills” are, indeed, essential for success in any field. Hiring managers reported that, out of 120 skills, communication was in high demand and low supply. In most cases, technical know-how isn’t enough to rise to the top even in highly complex fields, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. According to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, “Human beings are underrated.”6 Speaking and writing—human skills—are fundamental to success in any field. According to surveys of hiring managers, writing and communication are the most sought-after skills across nearly every industry and even technical fields. In one report from Indeed.com, one of the world’s largest job websites, the trend toward remote work has only elevated the importance of foundational skills. Communication skills— both written and verbal—topped the list of eleven skills that employers desire most. Teamwork and leadership skills came in second and third, both of which are enhanced by learning to speak and write effectively.
The shift to remote work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the wave of employees quitting their jobs to become their own boss has only elevated the importance of communication skills. A McKinsey survey of eighteen thousand people in fifteen countries identified the skills required to “future-proof” your career.7 The 2021 report was one of the most comprehensive studies to take into account changes in a post-COVID workplace along with advances in artificial intelligence, automation, and digital technologies. While “digital fluency” is a skill set that tomorrow’s employers see as highly desirable in job candidates, most of the top skills required to future-proof a career fall under communication in all its forms: storytelling, public speaking, synthesizing and clarifying messages, translating information for different audiences and contexts, crafting an inspiring vision, developing relationships, and inspiring trust. McKinsey calls these “foundational skills,” and you’ll learn much more about developing each one throughout this book.
WHY STUDY BEZOS?
Bezos didn’t need anyone to tell him that communication skills were foundational. Very early in Amazon’s history, he connected effective communication to uncommon innovation. While he understood the power of data to improve the customer experience, Bezos recognized that innovation would propel Amazon’s growth. And innovation required intelligent human beings with excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
Award-winning author Walter Isaacson says he’s often asked who, of today’s contemporary leaders, he would put in the same category with his historical subjects: Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs.
Isaacson’s answer? Jeff Bezos.
“They were all very smart, but that’s not what made them special,”8 Isaacson said. “Smart people are a dime a dozen and often don’t amount to much. What counts is being creative and imaginative. That’s what makes someone a true innovator.”
Bezos shares traits with Isaacson’s other subjects: a passionate curiosity, a fervent imagination, and a childlike sense of wonder. According to Isaacson, Bezos also has a “personal passion” for writing, narrative, and storytelling. Bezos connects a deep interest in communication and a love of the humanities to his enthusiasm for technology and instinct for business. “That trifecta—humanities, technology, business—is what has made him one of our era’s most successful and influential innovators.”9
I agree with Isaacson because I’m often asked a similar question: Who’s the world’s best business communicator?
In my book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, I called the Apple cofounder the world’s best corporate storyteller. In Talk Like TED, I featured TED Talks as a platform to celebrate the world’s best public speakers. But when I’m asked to name the world’s best business communicator, one name stands out above all others: Jeff Bezos.
48,062 Words
Bezos is a masterful communicator, according to former Amazon executives I’ve interviewed. These leaders—many of whom have started their own successful companies—often cite the annual Amazon shareholder letters as models of business writing and communication. Some have suggested that the Bezos letters should be taught at business schools because the lessons they offer apply to leaders in any field.
Bezos personally wrote twenty-four letters from 1997 to 2020. The letters contain 48,062 words. I analyzed and scrutinized every one. I dissected and inspected every sentence. I grokked and grasped every paragraph. Few business leaders use metaphor as skillfully as Bezos. He built flywheels to power Amazon’s growth. He planted seeds that grew into massive business enterprises. He created two-pizza teams, explained why failure and invention are inseparable twins, and hired missionaries over mercenaries. And those metaphors are just the tip of the iceberg.
Jeff Bezos isn’t Ernest Hemingway, but his mission is not to write the next great American novel. Both writers, however, share something in common: Although their topics are complex, their writing is simple and accessible to most readers. Simplicity matters. According to a study in the Harvard Business Review, “Simplicity increases what scientists call the brain’s processing fluency. Short sentences, familiar words, and clean syntax ensure that the reader doesn’t have to exert too much brainpower to understand your meaning.”10
One of the most remarkable lessons you’ll learn from the shareholder letters is that writing is a skill anyone can learn and sharpen over time. As Amazon grew larger with each year, Bezos grew as a writer with each letter. Most of the letters that rank lowest in quality and clarity came in the first few years after Amazon’s IPO, while the highest-quality writing appears throughout Amazon’s second decade of being a public company. The last letter that Bezos wrote, in 2020, ranks higher in nearly every objective measure of quality than his first letter in 1997. Did I mention that writing is a skill you can sharpen over time?
Day One isn’t a strategy; it’s a mindset. In his first shareholder letter in 1997, Bezos wrote that today is “Day 1” for the internet and Amazon.com. For the next two decades, he used the catchphrase as a metaphor for creating and sustaining a culture of innovation no matter how large a company becomes. Amazon started with a big idea and a small team. As Amazon grew into a massive enterprise of more than 1.5 million employees, Bezos made sure it kept the heart and spirit of a start-up. Always learning. Always improving.
The Day One mindset isn’t about the skills you failed to learn yesterday; it’s about learning new skills to avoid failing in the future. Day One will set you up to succeed for what promises to be the most transformative decade in human history.
This book is divided into three parts. In part 1, you’ll set the foundation, learning to write with the “clarity of angels singing.” You’ll learn how to harness the power of persuasion by understanding the persuasive power of the written word. You’ll find out why strong writing skills are more essential than ever. You’ll discover that the road to the top is paved with the fewest words. You’ll find out why Bezos and other innovative leaders use simple words to explain complex things. And you’ll find out how a deliberately chosen metaphor fueled Amazon’s innovation and helped it survive the dot-com crash. You will also learn:
Copyright © 2022 by Carmine Gallo
