2020 Letter to Shareholders - Amazon
www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2020-letter-to-shareholders
What Jamie wrote
Jeff Bezos final annual shareholder letter as CEO of Amazon. Bezos letters have become the thing of legend and are great reads. He is a good writer, and you can tell he put some extra effort to make this one even more distinctive.
If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with. Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world. It’s on the way out.
His call to create value, as well as maintain distinctiveness is powerful.
In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal? How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness? To keep alive the thing or things that make you special?
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We all know that distinctiveness – originality – 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 – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.
I love that he highlights the energy this requires. You have to figure out where that energy is going to come from, and how will it be renewed.