Example Of Effective Leadership In Jeff Bezos Life Path

Since the beginning of people’s lives, everyone makes choices and decisions which gradually define a person itself. It is often difficult to identify whether the decision was good or bad because each person has a different level of awareness of the importance. Some things which I find absurd may save someone else’s life and vice versa. People make decisions every minute from the second they wake up. These decisions may be small but still build a person or these decisions may be big and in the meantime change people’s perception of things. By triggering the new ideas and inventions off people may observe how the world is changing. Consequently, nowadays, people freely use the internet, fly from one point to another in a matter of hours, talking to a person while being on the other side of the planet, or make an order of something that is not provided in some countries. From the very start, it all was just an idea and a decision to make. However, people sometimes do not see what is hidden behind the curtains: sleepless nights, countless hours of work, choosing between things that are obligatory or pleasurable, sacrificing time. The perfect example of a man, who did not give up, chose the more difficult path, and finally achieved what he deserved, is Jeff Bezos.

Jeff was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother, Jacquelyn Gise, was married for only a short time to his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. Bezos has no memory of him. Instead, Bezos thinks of Miguel Bezos as his father. Miguel, also known as Mike, married Jacquelyn in 1968 when Jeff was four years old. Mike legally adopted Jeff at that time. Two years later, his sister, Christina, and brother, Mark, were born. Jeff’s parents recognized his creativity when he was three years old. One day Jacquelyn found him playing with a screwdriver. He was trying to turn his crib into a bed. Jeff loved to build things, especially toys. At age 12, he became interested in a toy called the Infinity Cube. In this clear box, rotating mirrors create the illusion of an endless tunnel. However, the $22 cost was too much for the family budget. Jeff figured out which parts he needed to buy and built his own toy for less.

When Jeff was four, the Bezos family moved to Houston, Texas. Jeff spent summers with his mother’s parents on a ranch in Cotulla, Texas. Jeff’s grandfather, Lawrence Preston Gise, nurtured Jeff’s ingenuity. Together they fixed bulldozers, cared for cattle, and repaired windmills. Jeff’s skills grew as he spent his summer days on the ranch.

Jeff liked school, and he excelled at it. His teachers noticed he was very bright. He was placed in the advanced student program at Houston’s River Oaks Elementary. In 1974, when Jeff was in fourth grade, his school got a computer. Computers were new to most people, and the teachers didn’t know how to use them. Jeff stayed after school and figured out how to make the school’s computer work. This experience sparked Jeff’s interest in computers. He also loved building things. Jeff became skilled at rigging traps throughout the house. To keep his siblings from entering his room, he made a buzzer that would sound whenever they opened his door.

By high school, Jeff had moved to Miami, Florida, with his family. He graduated from high school in 1982 at the top of his class and gave a speech on graduation day. During his speech, Jeff talked about becoming a space entrepreneur. He envisioned space hotels and space stores. He felt it would be good for people to have options in case something happened to the planet Earth and they needed to leave. After high school, Jeff enrolled at Princeton University. There he planned to study physics. However, advanced physics classes were hard for him. He changed his plan. Jeff graduated from Princeton in 1986 with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science.

After Bezos graduated, he worked in New York City in the finance field. He eventually noticed a trend that would change his life. The Internet, a global network of computers that made it possible to communicate cheaply and quickly, had been invented in the 1960s. By the early 1990s, the Internet was growing at an incredible rate. Bezos hit upon the idea of opening an online store.

The only problem was that Bezos already had a high-paying job. He was also scheduled to receive a hefty bonus at the end of the year. In 1993 he had married MacKenzie Tuttle, who worked with him in New York City. He needed to consider her feelings. MacKenzie said she would support him no matter what. Bezos had to make this hard choice by himself. He used a method he often used for hard decisions. Bezos called it a Regret Minimization Framework. He imagined himself at 80 years old. Then he asked that version of himself which decision would leave him with the fewest regrets. Bezos decided if he didn’t take the risk, he would regret it. Now he needed to decide what to sell on the Internet. He made a list of 20 options. Bezos considered things such as software, books, and clothes. After analyzing his choices, he picked books. Selecting books would allow Bezos to sell a wide selection of one type of product and build customer trust. It would be impossible to sell every product right away, but books would give him a good start. With millions of books in print worldwide, he had plenty of products to sell. On Independence Day weekend in 1994,

Bezos and MacKenzie flew to Texas. There they picked up a car given to them by Bezos’s father. MacKenzie drove them to Seattle, Washington.

Bezos sat beside her and wrote a business plan on his laptop. Two factors made Seattle an attractive choice for Bezos’s new company. First, many talented computer programmers lived there. Second, the company would be close to a major book distribution warehouse.

On the way to Seattle, Bezos contacted an attorney to help him set up his company. The attorney asked Bezos what he wanted the company to be called. Bezos suggested “Cadabra,” as in the magicians’ phrase “Abracadabra.” The attorney thought Bezos had said “cadaver,” meaning a dead body. Bezos didn’t want customers to mishear his company’s name in the same way. But he needed to register his company name soon. On July 5, 1994, he registered it under the temporary name “Cadabra.” In the following weeks, Bezos considered new names. He wanted the name to start with an A so it would come up first in online directories. These websites helped users find information on the Internet before search engines such as Google became popular. The directories often listed sites alphabetically. Bezos studied the A section of the dictionary for ideas. Finally, he settled on the “Amazon,” after the largest river in the world.