What Jeff Bezos Taught Me In 15 Minutes

When a guy like Jeff Bezos gives you a peek into his business operations, his mindset, you should really pay attention. I caught an old interview of his a while back, one of those long-form conversations where he actually explains how he thinks instead of just repeating press-release talking points, and it wasn't until I heard him lay out one idea that I realized how much alike we are.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not comparing Ad Zombies to Amazon. The only similarities are the A, M, Z, and the O. Wait, that's eerily similar!

What I'm really saying is the way I treat my business, the way I run my business, the way I think about my business, is very much aligned with the way Jeff runs and thinks about Amazon. I've been doing this 40+ years, I've written over 100,000 ads and helped generate more than $300 billion in revenue for clients, and I still caught myself nodding along like a rookie hearing it for the first time.

Day 1 vs. Day 2: The Only Day That Matters

Let's start at what I believe to be the single most important day in the life of any business, Day 1. That's the only day that matters.

In the early days of Amazon, Jeff worked out of a building named Day 1 as a reminder that the company should always be in Day 1 mode.

You see, Day 1 companies (or start ups), think fast, move fast, execute fast.

Day 2 companies move more slowly. They get bogged down in bureaucracy, and while they still make sound decisions, they move at a fraction of the speed necessary to sustain healthy growth. Day 2 companies are in a state of stasis, they are stagnant. It's the polar opposite of Day 1 businesses.

So I definitely run my company as a Day 1 business, right? I think so…

Results Over Process

Jeff believes businesses should focus on results, rather than the processes they've created.

We've created quite a few processes in my company over the last few years, so this part I find particularly fascinating. Jeff thinks that over time the process becomes "the thing" that companies focus on and the outcome is the process, and sometimes what starts to get overlooked is the desired outcome of the process.

That's pretty heavy for me to consider. Over the last few years, we've spent an awful lot of time building processes to streamline our efficiency -- intake forms, revision rounds, approval chains, the whole nine yards. All of it built with good intentions.

So, I have to ask myself: have we overlooked the desired outcome? Have we gone from a Day 1 company to, dare I say it, a Day 2 company? No, let's call it a Day 1.5 company.

While we operate like the nimble startup we are, our processes have slowly started to push us towards being a Day 2 business. I noticed it when a client asked for a same-day turnaround on a piece of copy and my first instinct was to explain our three-step revision process instead of just asking what they needed and getting it done.

Don't get me wrong, businesses need processes to prevent chaos. And, Brandon has done an outstanding job of developing the processes that keep the business moving. The real question here is this: are we getting bogged down in our processes to a point where we are focused on the process as the thing rather than the outcome the process was built to facilitate?

To remain a Day 1 company we have to embrace trends as they show up, we have to quickly adopt new things, we have to move fast and break shit…constantly. That's part of why we've spent real time figuring out what AI actually does for our agency instead of either ignoring it or pretending it writes the ads for us -- a Day 2 company either bans the new tool outright or adopts it blindly. A Day 1 company tests it.

So what is the thing? What is our thing?

The Thing Is Our Customers

Our thing is our customers, not our processes. I'm actually a bit obsessed with making our customers happy, and after 40+ years and 100,000+ ads written, I can tell you the agencies that survive aren't the ones with the tightest process, they're the ones the client actually trusts. That's the whole idea behind building real trust instead of babysitting clients with status calls -- trust is a Day 1 behavior, box-checking is a Day 2 one.

There are many ways to focus a business: competitor-based, product-based, or technology-based. For us, being customer-based (or customer-focused) is the best way to maintain our Day 1 approach, and ultimately, our health for the long haul.

Move Fast, Decide Faster

Another thing that's a hallmark of Day 1 companies is that they move FAST. This means making high volume decisions.

Day 2 companies also make lots of decisions. But in Day 2 companies, they tend to focus on (or even obsess over) the quality of the decision, which slows them down.

I'd rather focus on the quantity of decisions because as we make lots of high speed decisions we can course correct from the ones that are mistakes and double down on the ones that prove fruitful. (Information we wouldn't have if we hadn't made the decisions to try things.)

Finally, and perhaps the most important part of being a Day 1 company for me is this: I am not the judge, the jury, nor the king. My decision doesn't outweigh those in my company, my team. There isn't one right answer, they are sometimes five right answers. When we test those answers to determine the right way to do something we often find a gem or a diamond in the rough that can be further refined. It's the same logic I use when I tell junior writers not to write the headline last -- test a handful of directions fast instead of laboring over the one you think is perfect.

Something that Jeff Bezos said, and that I'm starting to wrap my head around, is that most decisions can probably be made with around 70% of the necessary information. He believes that if you wait for 90% (or more), you're probably just being slow. Course correcting on quick decisions, in most cases, is less costly than making slow, overly calculated decisions.

How does he reconcile making quick decisions without full consensus? He calls it Disagree & Commit: we don't have to agree on everything, we just need to commit to something and make corrections along the way.

So now I am course correcting.

Day 1 was the most important day in this company's history and I'm committed to treating every day just like Day 1.