Jeff Bezos Started Amazon AWS & Kindle During Precarious Times (The Case For Splitting Your Focus)

All right, so today we are going to talk about when you should start working on multiple projects. So for me, I have a couple things going on right now. I have the software company, I have the ad agency, I have the podcast which has events that are tied to it, which also has— we're also tying a school to it as well. And what else do we do? I have a book coming out and in addition, I also create content for YouTube and the Leveling Up podcast. So I have a lot of different projects. Going on right now. And in addition to that, I'm also trying to buy other businesses or invest in other businesses as well. So there's a lot of balls in the air right now. And for me, I am the type of person that likes to start things and I then like to have someone else run it. I like to start things and I like to move on to the next thing. And then from time to time, I'll come back and I'll assist where I can with the other areas as long as my input is valued and people want to hear my input. The question then is, at what point do you decide, hey, I'm gonna start all these other things? 'Cause I think for a lot of people, it can lead to— the lack of focus that you have can lead to destruction. And so, here's what I mean by that. If you think about, let's say you have a bunch of different projects. So, you have, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4. And so, all of them, the way they rise, 'cause you have to split the attention, they rise slower. If you focused on one, it would go a lot faster 'cause all your energy would go into that. But if you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, it goes a little slower. So, it's gonna take you longer to get to where you wanna go. And the question is, do you wanna do that? Yeah. And then the other analogy I have is I always say success is like a sphere. I forgot where I get it from, but you start in the middle of the sphere and success is on all the edges of it. And all you need to do is go up and reach one, and then you've reached— you just hit the edge and then you've hit success. But too often people are all over the place. They're never able to hit one of the edges and therefore they're never able to achieve quote-unquote success. Here is— I think here's an anecdote that might be helpful for you. So Jeff Bezos, Amazon. So reportedly he's the richest person in the world, at least according to Forbes. We don't really know who the richest person in the world is, but due to public information, he is the richest person in the world. Okay, he's the richest person in the world. Amazon, back in the dot-com bust around 2000, 2001 or so, Amazon was struggling. Their stock price, I believe it dropped from close to $100 to, I think it was like $5 or $6 or so. So something around that range. But they were in firefighting mode. So they have done a lot of damage to repair and they had to, you know, keep the business afloat. And at the time, Amazon was not the giant that it is today. It was seen as a laughingstock by a lot of investors, people saying, oh, this company is never going to be profitable, never going to be profitable, blah, blah, blah, which is very short-term thinking. What ended up happening was as they were— Amazon at the time was very focused on books. It started out as a books business, like selling books online. And that was still their main revenue driver. And at the time, while they were— this is right after the dot-com bust. So imagine everything got hit and then At the same time, Jeff Bezos is trying to start this new thing called the Kindle, okay, the book reader. And he's also trying to start AWS, which is Amazon Web Services, which is a multi-billion dollar business line. Now, Kindle makes a lot of money as well, and then it helps in terms of distribution too for other people if they want to get their books out there. And it's a good business. If you think about it, at the time, Amazon is— they're trying to save the business. This is after they got hit by the dot-com bust. Everyone got hit by it. And you have the CEO on the side trying to start these other lines of businesses that are unproven. So imagine if you're working on his executive team, you're probably gonna push back and say, hey, look, we should probably focus on books. And so, but he decided, no, we're customer obsessed and we got to think about the long term. We got to try these other things too. And so that's the argument to start multiple things. But keep in mind, Jeff Bezos was the CEO, so he gets to call the shots. And the other thing I'll say is with Jeff Bezos, guess what? They're already a publicly traded company. Maybe he saw, maybe he saw something other people didn't see, but he had a solid business line already. So the key takeaway here is if you want to start multiple projects, ideally you're the one that calls the shots. But B, more importantly, you are— you already have one established business line. All right, so what does established mean? I don't know, what does it mean to you? It just depends on what you're aiming for. If you're trying to do AWS, you're trying to do this Kindle thing, you're gonna need a lot of capital. And your one cash cow at the time, your one main business, should be able to fund this other stuff. Okay, so I think maybe that's one way to look at it, because when I look at my ad agency Single Grain, I look at it as the cash cow that funds the other projects. And so because I The problem with an ad agency, depending on the business model, is for the most part, it's not super scalable unless you're doing like a pay-for-performance model, then it becomes a lot more scalable. Now, if that's the case, if it's not super scalable, what you do is you end up, you can go reinvest into other stuff. You can reinvest into R&D, you can reinvest into your people, whether it's giving people raises, bonuses, things like that, or you can hire more people. So, what do you want to do? It's your decision. You're the CEO, you call the shots if you are the CEO. Yeah. Again, just to rewind, I think it is okay, my opinion, to start multiple projects once you have one that is set, one that is cash flowing. And we've talked about a launchpad business, the launchpad business concept in the past. If you haven't checked it out yet, check out the interview with Andrew Wilkinson that I did on the Leveling Up podcast. But he talks about the launchpad business. Get something where you can earn $100,000 to $200,000 a year, cover your own expenses, that's your launchpad business, and then go off and do other stuff. And maybe if the launchpad business is doing even better, Kicking out more cash. He's another good example. He has MetaLab, and that's a web design firm or agency, and they kick out a ton of cash a year in profit. He just goes and buys other businesses or invests in other businesses, and that's what you can do with it. And then from there, you get even more scalability, and then you can build the pie even bigger. And look at Amazon now. They have— they built Amazon Prime, they have Amazon Video as well, they have a whole host of other stuff. They bought Whole Foods, okay? Alexa as a product line as well. So they just have a lot of different things going on. Jeff Bezos put money into Blue Origin, his space company, and he just wants to keep going for it, keep going for it. Now, you have to ask yourself, what do you want to do? For me, I'm enjoying the game, I just want to keep playing, so I'm just gonna keep doing this. It's— this is the model that will work. It's been proven to work. Look, Andrew Wilkinson has done it, Jeff Bezos has done it. It's proven to work. That's what I've been doing for the last couple years. And you just ask yourself, like, what is your ultimate goal? What's your ultimate vision? And I think at a certain point, yes, you do have to have multiple projects, but establish one first. Okay, get something going, cover your own expenses. If it kicks out even more cash than that, great. And then just go build other stuff. And that's the framework you need to build— well, to build whatever you want to build for the long term. So let me know what you think in the comments. Do you disagree? Do you agree? And if you're coming from the podcast world, please rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us grow. And you know what? We'll see you tomorrow.