In China, there is a whole subindustry of "training teachers" (培训老师) that charge exorbitant fees in order to teach you how to be successful. Obviously, if they were actually successful, they wouldn't be charging you money to teach you how to be successful. But that's beside the point! They traffic in the hopes and dreams of the lower middle class aspirational Chinese citizen. Think of them as worse Asian versions of Tony Robbins.

Well, I can't afford to pay these guys the more than 200,000 CNY that they command from the laobaixing (老百姓) for them to be my mentor. So I've taken the habit of tracking down my own mentors in life. I will be presenting my studies of those characters periodically here on my blog. I call it:

CASES IN SUCCESS

The first virtual mentor I will present is a guy most everyone will know through his company - Amazon, one of two companies to have commanded a $1 trillion valuation at some point. More interestingly, at least to me, is the fact that after the Dot Com Bubble in 2000, AMZN shares traded down more than 90% after reaching a high of more than $100 during one of investment's great speculative bubbles. At that time, many businessmen would have been disappointed and closed down shop.

But the founder and CEO of Amazon persisted. This year his stock has seen a record high of more than $2050 and currently trades at $1663. Are you reading this out there, Crypto World? The lesson here is simple.

Keep thinking. Keep building.

Don't worry about the price the market accords to your company. Worry about the value YOU and YOUR EMPLOYEES bring to your company. In the long run, the latter is what's important. Never the former.

And now without further ado, the story of Jeff Bezos. In 527 words.

Come on! We're trying to learn the habits of success here. Not write a biography!

Jeff Bezos is an Internet pioneer. He founded Amazon, a technology-driven e-commerce website. In the 2016 version of the Forbes 400 ranking of top billionaires, he was the second wealthiest American. Microsoft’s Bill Gates is the only American more wealthy than Mr. Bezos. This retailer early on established a goal to be “the world’s most customer-centric company.” To that end, Amazon has been wildly successful.

He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1986. Afterwards, Bezos held a variety of roles on Wall Street. His first jobs were as an engineer and computer scientist. In 1994, he read a statistic stating that Web usage was growing at an annual rate of 2300 percent. The “gold rush” of the Internet’s early days called to him. He promptly quit his respected job at a quantitative hedge fund. He then drove across the country to begin his life as a Seattle entrepreneur. He wrote the business plan en route.

He based his decision to begin his startup on a “regret minimization framework.” He asked himself a set of two simple questions. Would he regret having tried and failed? No. Would he regret having not tried? Always. Therefore, Amazon.com was born.

This iconic picture is lifted from a 60 Minutes piece done on Amazon in 1999.

Amazon started at the dawn of the Dot-Com Boom era (1995-2000). After moving his family out West, Bezos spent a year preparing to launch his company. He opened a small office, recruited talent, and established vendor relationships. Mostly, however, he spent a year working on complex software infrastructure. Amazon.com launched in July 1995. The company was started with $300,000 of seed capital from his parents (almost their entire life savings) and then later $1 million from 20 angel investors.

Initially, the online platform focused exclusively on books. Why books? Bezos believed that books were the “first best” products to use in an e-commerce business. They were flat and easy to ship. The category also offers a diverse array of similar products. These characteristics are perfectly suited to the sophisticated management only available through a computer database. There are millions of books in print at any given time. It is impossible for a bricks-and-mortar retail bookstore to offer all of these titles at once. Amazon can at least come close to this ideal.

In the first 30 days of its existence, Amazon received orders from all 50 states and 45 countries. Having started with a distribution center the size of a one-car garage, the company was obviously unprepared for this rush of orders. It quickly moved to a two thousand square foot concrete warehouse. It has been cramped for space ever since. Today, Bezos’ $370 billion company is the largest retailer in the world.

How can we aspire to be as successful as Mr. Bezos? First, you should “make sure you are focused on something you are passionate about.” Another important factor is your perspective on risk. Because “risk is a necessary component of progress,” a company must “use its precious startup funds to systematically eliminate risk.” Lastly, experimentation is key. You have to keep trying until you find the right mix of strategic elements that wholly satisfy your customers.

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