The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles To Grow Your Business Like Amazon

For business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business, pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

We are back. It's Brad. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business. And today I am going to bring to you a very special guest. We're going to talk about some things that I don't think get mentioned often enough and we're going to talk about some of the bigger strategic plays as it revolves around business and especially as it revolves around this little known entrepreneur named Jeff Bezos. I say that because I'm interviewing Steve Anderson today. Now, Steve is the author of a book called the Bezos 14 principles to grow your business like Amazon, which is available this month, September of 2019. As the time we're recording this. Steve's got a long career, 35 plus years helping the insurance industry understand, integrate and leverage current and emerging technologies. And this ranges anywhere from business management systems to social platforms. And he's really great at analyzing what's happening now and explaining its implications for the future. He's worked a lot in the insurance business and ventured out to a lot of other verticals in helping to really deconstruct the methodologies behind Jeff Bezos personal letters to Amazon shareholders between 1997 and 2018. And he provides readers with a guide on some of the key takeaways and principles that Jeff has leveraged. I call him Jeff because obviously, obviously your personal friends. Right, of course.

Right.

So without any further ado, Steve Anderson, welcome to Bacon Wrap Business. It's good to have you.

Oh, Brad, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on your podcast.

So, yeah, so as I mentioned in the introduction, your background really is in the insurance industry. So I'm take me through before we jump into the Bezos letters, take me through a little bit about that history. I guess you started off as a producer in the insurance industry.

Yeah. Even the fact that you know that that's the right term for a salesperson means you've got a little bit of background in the industry.

I do. I was my, it wasn't my first job out college, but my very first professional job out of college after working at Disney for a little bit was at Prudential Investments. I was a financial advisor, primarily focusing on the investment side, but I was licensed insurance, so I was very familiar with that. And that's, you know, I got out of the, I left Peru back in 2007 and you know, got into starting my own publishing business and have been kind of doing this ever since. But yeah, I've got a great, pretty big background in that space.

Yeah. So for me, kind of, I would say somewhat similar. Out of college I was a business major, wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do. Married this great lady whose father happened to own an insurance agency. And so he had some health issues and he was, you know, small agent, independent agent, selling all kinds, you know, auto, home business, life group, medical, wide range of stuff. And so I came in to help him out for a couple of years, spent some time learning the business and ended up spending 13 years working for him.

Kind of the short version of the reason I left is his son, my brother in law, came in the business and it became somewhat apparent what the trajectory was going to be and decided I would move on and like the industry, so stayed in it. Ended up moving to the Texas, Dallas, Fort Worth area, working for an insurance agency there, selling as a producer, but also working on operations. So that's where the technology pieces come in.

That's where I was in the biz. I was in, I was in dfw. Dallas.

Dallas, yeah.

So yeah, my financial career, yeah, we.

Lived in mid cities, so Hearst, Hearst, Ulis, Bedford, so. And really developed a love for the technology side of stuff. And so actually in 1999, went out on my own, started my own business doing really what I still do today, research, writing, speaking, consulting around helping these small businesses. And that's the way I look at it, understand technology both from an internal operational standpoint, how to best utilize new stuff, but also from the insurance standpoint, what are the different new risks their clients were facing because of their adoption of technology. So it's an interesting marrying of those two interests.

Nice.

Yeah.

And you mentioned the risk. And that's one of the things that as you and I were talking about offline, I mean obviously the entire insurance business is all about risk. But then as you started to outline, just briefly, you know, before we got on the air, that you know, risk and growth are very related. And I think a lot of people understand that just intrinsically. Yeah. If you can't grow unless you take risks. But you've really started to take a closer look at this, break it down and especially break it down through the lens of what Bezos semi successful entrepreneur.

Has done in his letters to his shareholders. And I really want to dive into that. And by the way, I also think it's just on a side note, I think it's actually brilliant that you wrote a book called the Bezos Letters, because it just from. I'm a marketer through and through, and I love the fact that you take something that everybody is very, very familiar with, like Jeff Bezos, etcetera, And it's such a powerful way to kind of capital on the publicity and the cachet that his name has, but to analyze and do a great service. But I think that, like, by the way, I just. I thought that was brilliant when I first saw it.

I was gonna say it certainly helps to have Bezos and Amazon on the COVID Oh, absolutely. That might have been a little strategic.

So, yeah, it might have been brilliant.

Yeah. And obviously it helps in terms of people recognizing. But kind of where the book came about was this idea that I started developing around risk. And you're right, the insurance business is all about risk, but frankly, it's all about mitigating risk. It's all about staying away from risk. It's all about not risking. And the thought that kept coming back to me over the last number of years was the fact that, no, actually, in today's environment, if you wait too long, that's your biggest risk. Yeah. You know, not taking action may be the biggest risk you face. And as companies get bigger and become successful, that's also one of their biggest risks. Meaning, yeah, they got successful, but the mindset starts changing to how can we protect what got us here, not risking something new and where we need to head. And lots of examples of companies that didn't make that transition well, that's what brought me to Amazon. Because they have made the transition well. Right. So I started asking the question, why? What did they do? And that's when I came across the letters to shareholders, and I sort of knew about them. In fact, most people I talk about sort of know about them. But I have yet to meet anybody who's read through all 21 letters. And when I started doing that, I realized that Jeff Bezos.

Wrote about not just what Amazon did well that year that he was writing about, but how they did it. And that became fascinating to me because he has provided in those letters what I call hidden in plain sight, his plan for growing Amazon. And that's what I started trying to understand.

Then, make available in a more friendly format than just reading through the letters. Because they take some work.

Oh, yeah, I imagine.

So.

What are some of the bigger insights and takeaways? And especially as it applies to.

Anybody from small businesses, small and medium business owners, to entrepreneurs who are starting out, because it can be very intimidating to go, oh, let's learn some lessons from Amazon. Like, well, that's a different story. They're this, you know, one of the biggest companies in the world. Although it is funny, like, when you realize they started off, you know, just a tiny little business like anybody else.

Yeah, it was Bezos on his hands and knees putting books and packages and taking them in his car to the post office. So people forget that. One and two, I don't make the argument you will become the next Amazon, because that's probably not likely. There are some unique things that happened in the late 90s, and I think combined with that and a unique perspective by Bezos, he was able to capitalize on some of that. And here's the other thing. There are a lot of people that don't like Amazon. They think they're putting small businesses out of business. So I asked people to suspend that, because even if you don't like them, I think you have to agree they're successful, both Amazon and Bezos. So what can we learn from what they have done and maybe learn that we don't want to do? Right. I'm absolutely open to that.

So let's dive in and give some of the insights that you've really found that if somebody could really take away and apply their own business.

So I have 14 principles, and they're broken down into what I call four cycles. So the cycles are testing, build, accelerate and scale. And I believe every business, big or small, is going through these cycles, either continuously with new products, new services, or new, if you're a new startup. So some of the ones that seem to resonate maybe a little bit more with people is actually principle number one in the test cycle, which is encourage successful failure.

And one of the things that I keep thinking is that startup businesses, new entrepreneurs, new businesses starting up, you know, people think by their very nature they're risk takers. And I think that's right, but only to a degree. Because if you look at the success rate or conversely, the failure rate of those new startups, something's not working. Right. They're not taking smart risks. And I believe Bezos is the master of risk and the master of using risk strategically. Strategically to grow. And that's the idea here with encourage successful failure. Because if you're not experimenting.

Then you're not growing.

Right.

And by its very nature, an experiment means you don't know the outcome. If you knew the outcome was going to be successful, it's not an experiment. And so. Right. I mean, and so then you're just.

Basically caught, then you're basically just copying a proven model.

Copying a proven model. And that's fine to a degree, but then what are you doing to enhance and grow? Right? And so Bezos says several times in his letters he believes Amazon is the best place to fail because they have a culture there.

Supporting experimentation, which means they have to support failure. Now I have to say immediately after that because I'm sure some of your listeners are thinking, yeah, but what if it's a stupid failure or if it's a continual failure? And that's not what I'm talking about. Amazon has an intolerance for incompetence. So they expect you to bring your best game all the time. So it's not about being stupid and it's not about taking unnecessary risks, but it's about taking strategic risks. So has Amazon failed at things all the time? In fact, in the last couple of years, Bezos has said that if Amazon is not growing the size of their failures, they're not moving the needle enough. And he even says billion dollar failures. Now I know for, you know, most people listening, that's like a crazy thought. And I'm not saying you bet the farm, you know, but what is it that you have been wanting to test an experiment and haven't pulled the trigger on? What as a business owner is a new product that you don't know if it's going to work or not? Well, you know what, get something out and get feedback and test. Actually, Google has been a great model for moving forward, getting feedback, iterating, changing and developing what are hugely successful products there.

Yeah, Google's definitely one of the most innovative, quick failures like try it, screw it up, set, you know, kick it.

Out, close it down. And Amazon's the same way. I mean, Amazon, you know, perhaps closes down things faster than they try new things. And what's always interesting now through this lens is, you know, the press talking about their big failure. And all I'm going thinking is what have they learned and what's, what are they going to turn that into?

Yeah, that's a great point. Now you also mentioned when we were offline, we talk a lot about, you know, when we think about customer service or customer obsession, et cetera, which is the Amazon thing, how important it is. And it's actually, I know that, you know, customer success, you know, customer retention, customer experience is so important and growing, even from an exit valuation thing, that I know that a lot of PE firms, private equity firms, et cetera, are looking very deeply and closely at the customer experience and the retention, et cetera. And they're, they're placing increased valuations on that. And there probably is nobody better at customer service obsession than Amazon is. But as you mentioned to me, a lot of people don't really understand what it means to obsess over that. So what insights can you give us as far as that goes?

So for Amazon, customer obsession is a core value. And again, as he reiterates numerous times in the letters, everything they do at Amazon is through the lens of is this better for the customer? And not even through the lens, is this better for shareholders. Now, Bezos believes very strongly that if you take care of the customer, shareholders will see value. And actually, over the years, you can see that. But Amazon lost a lot of money over the early years because they were completely reinvesting everything into better experience. Why do people shop on Amazon?

Because they can trust.

They trust, they have a great experience. Everything on the website makes it easier to do. For example, I was just on their website earlier today.

I think we all were.

Well, of course, right? And up popped I was looking at a book, and up popped a reminder that said, you already purchased this book.

So as opposed to buy it again another year, retailer do, oh, yeah, buy it again. Why remind them? Well, because we don't want the customer to be disappointed. So obsession.

Has a whole different connotation than customer experience, customer journey, customer focus. Right. All customer service. All the things that we hear businesses talk about, but we hear obsession. And that certainly caught my attention. So let me give you a quick story just of what obsession looks like. And we have this in the book. It was a year ago Christmas. I have now seven grandchildren under the age of six. So we were at my daughter's house in Pittsburgh, you know, Christmas Eve, and kids opening packages, right? All the chaos around Christmas time for us. And this is as I was researching the book and the, the dads in the room had their pocket knives out trying to open the packages that all the toys were in. Now, if you think about, right, it's plastic, it's the ties, it's the. I mean, oh, yeah, it was a real problem and dangerous, right? Where all the kids are running around with knives and all that kind of stuff. Amazon started a program several years ago called Frustration Free Packaging. And what they realized was all of that clamshell plastic packaging is not necessary at Amazon. It's necessary in the toy store. You know, if you're going to Target and you see all because yet you want to attract the kids, you Want them to see what's inside. At Amazon, their shelf, you see pictures. And so they started encouraging manufacturers. They started with just a few hundred. Now they have several thousand manufacturers who package their things, one with less packaging, so less for you to throw away and easy to open. And in some cases you can ship it in the box that the toy, let's say is in and you don't have to put it in another box. So again, sustainability, easy to open, all about the customer and helping them have a better experience. That's just one example. There are thousands of examples of what Amazon has done on behalf of the customer.

Right?

Yeah.

And sometimes to the detriment of sellers. I know I've got a lot of folks on my list who are Amazon sellers and they've got, you know, they got products like that. I mean Amazon is notorious for sometimes it comes the other way where if you're a seller you are going get run over by a train and bam, your entire business is gone or something's screwed up. But more often than not it has to do with because you did something that did not provide the, you know, the perfect customer experience as you didn't respond fast enough.

You didn't, you know, if there was a problem with the product, if there was any of those things. And actually Amazon Marketplace is a fascinating study of both failure and success. And, and I think anybody selling on Marketplace better understand what Amazon means by obsession because you're right, you know, they, Amazon unapologetically will not tolerate you treating their customers worse than what they would want.

Yeah, absolutely. What are, yeah. One of the other things you mentioned in some of the pre recording conversations is the concept of understanding the flywheel. And as it applies to Amazon, I understand what a flywheel is. In fact, I had an episode not too long ago on the show called the video Flywheel as a lot and I it was one of the more popular episodes. Go ahead and explain this in terms of how Amazon uses it, how other people can use the flywheel.

Yeah, so the flywheel principle is in the build area and for Amazon it became a pivotal point in their development. So the background of the concept is from Jim Collins who wrote a well known business book called Good to Great. It's actually chapter eight in that book. What most people don't know is that Jim Collins was invited by Bezos before the publication of that book in 2001 to come to Amazon and spend the day talking to the senior leadership team called the S team. And they spent most of the day talking about the flywheel concept and Amazon, the S team, the members there, actually sketched out the Amazon flywheel. If you go to the Amazon website, you can actually see that sketch. And it became so important at Amazon in terms of their viewpoint of what they had to do to grow that Bezos didn't want anybody to talk about it because they felt it was their secret sauce. So the flywheel, as you say, is typically mechanical. Takes a lot of effort to get that flywheel moving. But what are the components in your business that if you keep pushing, will help generate more and more sales? Well, for Amazon, it was a great customer experience on their website, which would bring more customers in to the site to purchase. The more customers that came to the site as they developed the marketplace structure in the early 2000s brought more third party sellers because they would have more eyeballs on their products and services, not just Amazon. That brought more customers in, which gave Amazon and third party sellers more leverage with manufacturers to lower prices, which brought more people in. And word of mouth now generated the three customer pillars at Amazon, which from the very beginning were wide selection, fast delivery and ease of use. And so.

You look at, even today, when you look at them acquiring Whole Foods, what does that do? Well, brings a whole new batch of customers in, right? And prime as one of their big bets. And so you, you start filtering what Amazon does. So what's starting to resonate with early readers of the book is that they haven't thought about their business that way. What are the things they have they they can push, Right. And you know, for Amazon, low prices is key. But if you're a luxury brand, low prices isn't the key. And I want to give your readers, if they want more insight into the flywheel. Jim Collins actually published in early 2019amonograph. It's not very long, but it's a additional explanation of that chapter. And he gives several case studies. What I thought was most interesting in that was one of the case studies was an elementary school who began to understand their flywheel. So their goal was to improve test scores for their students. What they realized is in order to do that, they needed to attract and more importantly retain high quality teachers. So that became the inputs that they worked on. They worked on recruiting and supporting teachers, not just working with students to get better grades, because what they realized is that's going to happen if we push in these other areas. So the point here is it's not just about low prices, it's not just about growth. It could be about a number of things, but I call it Perhaps the most important, but also the hardest one to grasp and work on. And this is not a quick, oh, yeah, let's do that. I think it's something that really takes some time to really think about your business. What are the components that that could be for you?

Right. That's one of the things. It's interesting to a degree. This is one of the things. It's an initiative I'm doing with one of my bigger clients actually starting really this week and all throughout the month is, you know, we've dialed in a lot of the. A lot of the customer acquisition to the point where improvements in what we're doing become incremental because, you know, there's only so much traffic you can buy. There's only. Only so much. I mean, in this case, at least, you know, we're not gonna all of a sudden double conversion necessarily based on what we're doing. It's because. Taking a lot of refinement. But now what we've done is taken a step back and say, okay, well, what are some of the more leveraged things we can do that, you know, we're working on this one little aspect over here. So we're going in to do a complete customer experience audit to say, all right, what happens at every stage of that. Because it is one of the areas that we've realized probably has been neglected and focusing on the front end. And it's not even how can we maximize the revenue on the back end. It's how can we maximize the experience so that it can get that flywheel turning more. So because the more people that are having great experience, more success they're having.

The more word of mouth, the more they stay. So their lifetime value increases because they're staying longer.

Yeah. And it was one of the interesting analyses we did, and this was the first time I had done this, which is we really put a number to.

Just improving retention. It sounds like something normally you would do, but I end up. End up focusing on front end acquisition more often because that's what.

And a lot of people do, right? Yes. You know, they want the new business and not spending enough time on keeping what we've got and increasing our share of that purchase money.

Yeah. And when we did. When we did the financial model on what it looked like just keeping the average. Because this is a. There is a monthly service fee involved in this, and it's a high monthly service fee. Just keeping somebody an extra.

For instance, if I can keep. If I can help them keep somebody an extra month, I'm Sorry, an extra week on average, not even an extra month. Just take their entire churn and retention rate, just one extra week. That'll completely pay for my very expensive retainer in helping them. So I was like, you know, I think it with no extra cost, I mean, besides a handful of little implementation things. So that was a big eye opener for me when I started to do that.

And go, man.

And it's actually, I think I have more fun going in and working on customer experience and retention and things like that as opposed to front end customer acquisition. That's the hardest, but it's not always the most effective. It's, you know, start with the consumer in mind.

Well, and here's a thought.

Bezos and Amazon consider the need for a customer to contact you a failure.

And the point there is really kind of from two angles. One is, is there a process internally that we're not aware of that's causing someone to have to contact us? So their first move is to look at the process and see, is it broken? Can we fix that? And the second is if there is a problem, can we automate the response? Meaning, and again, I use this example in the book. A few years ago, there was a reporter who was on Amazon streaming the movie Casablanca because he was writing an article about the business lessons from the movie. And he kept stopping it and rewinding it and going forward. And he got an email from Amazon automatically that basically said, hey, hey, we noticed that you had problems watching the movie Casablanca, so we apologize for that. And we have credited your account for the rental fee for the movie. So he wrote an article about it and he said, Amazon saw that I had trouble streaming this movie. I mean, think about that. It is a automated, proactive response to a problem. And so, and actually there are three things now that I think about it. The third thing is can they do self service?

So they're, you know, from their publishing platform to Amazon Web services, they do as much self service as you possibly can and streamline that process. And so when you're looking at your own customer service journey experience, that might help in terms of you and anybody listening to think through where are our bottlenecks? The phrase I like to use is where are we causing the customer too much friction?

Right, right. Yeah, it's powerful. And especially when you realize that, you know, the cost of, you know, for every customer you keep, I mean, that's worth a lot more than the new customers you get because it doesn't really cost you much.

Correct.

Go back through minor implementation stuff, there Were there any other. I mean there's a lot. I think you said there's 14, there's 14.

Right.

So.

Really kind of stood out as something that people can.

Yeah, let me pick one out of the third cycle, which is accelerate, and it's called generate high velocity decisions. And so.

As businesses grow, there actually tends to be a slowdown of the decision making process. Right. When you're yourself, you decide and off you go. So Bezos talks a lot about the decision making process at Amazon and he identifies two types of decisions. Type 1, type 2. Type 1 decisions are irreversible, high valued.

Almost bet the farm type of decisions. And he said those decisions need to be made slowly with lots of data.

Type 2 decisions are reversible. As he describes it in the letters, it's like walking through a door and not liking what you see on the other side and turning around and coming back. And he said the vast majority of decisions in businesses are type two, not type one. But as businesses get bigger, they tend to shift decisions to a type 1. So multiple layers, multiple meetings, multiple approvals that actually slow down the decision making process. And when you slow down that process, you cause your growth to slow, basically. And so I think that's really interesting. And the example we don't write about it in the book, but have thought a lot about is when Amazon recently had their announcement for their second major headquarters. So Seattle's their headquarters now. They had a, you know, big process of identifying a city for a new headquarters. They ended up picking New York city and Washington D.C. area, Crystal City for two, splitting them up. And then pretty quickly in New York City there was a backlash.

People didn't like it, they were getting too much money. Did Amazon need all this government incentives from New York state and city? Right. And pretty quickly, in really less than two weeks, Amazon came back and said, okay, no, we've changed our mind, we're not going to go here. Because they didn't want to go someplace that they were always going to be fighting with, trying to get acceptance. What looked like a type one decision actually was a type two decision. They could reverse it when they didn't like what they saw. Now again, I don't want to get in the politics of who was right, who was wrong, all of that, but it is an illustration of one deciding quickly and defaulting to taking action and not trying to drag out something that they thought would not benefit them long term.

Right. That's fantastic. And it is true. And it's true. The big, it's, you know, Big companies, it's true at small companies. I mean, there really is no difference in.

What business owners, executives, entrepreneurs are going through. It's just like the magnitude and the complexity sometimes. But when you really boil it down to the first principles, reasoning and thinking about this, I mean, it's really fundamental stuff, but it's so easily overlooked. And I mean, Amazon's a tremendous place. I mean we've all, well, not all of us, but, but you know, most of us who've been around for a while, you know, if we're not in college right now, we've, we remember the birth of Amazon. I remember where I was the first time I ever logged onto Amazon and thinking, why did they name it after a jungle in Brazil?

Right.

I remember thinking that I was like, that's, that's kind of a weird name.

That's kind of a weird name. Well, actually, do you know the name, the original name?

What was the original name?

It was Cadabra.

Have heard that.

Abracadabra. So it was Cadabra. And when the Bezos was talking to the attorney to register the, the corporation, the attorney kept calling it Cadaver.

And so they decided that might not be the right name for it. Right.

That's funny. That is funny. But.

No, but actually I have to.

Say if you go to that.com, it'll direct you to Amazon.

Oh, that's beautiful.

Yeah, so it's still, it's still an active domain.

I love that. But yeah, and my point there being that it's just, it's just really unique in the fact that we've all been able to witness the growth. I mean, Apple's the same way, but even more so like Amazon. Because Apple, a lot of people, you know, don't remember it was in the 70s when it really developed. But Amazon is very much the new generation company that came up out of nowhere and exploded by focusing, making big bets on the right things. And I think that we talk about risk and you mentioned earlier, insurance is about removing risk. Obviously, I know what you mean, but it's really not. Insurance is really about hedging risk and it's making sure that you can do the things you want to do so that you are taking the right risk. Risk, the calculated risk so that, you know, if you want to make a big investment decision, you have to weigh everything and you have to say, is the, you know, is the return going to be worth the risk? Is this a risk worth taking?

You know, am I betting the farm? Is this irreversible? Will this Screw everything up. And that's the thing that I think that entrepreneurs, that's the real skill sets of entrepreneurs that we, you know, it's bigger, deeper, strategic thinking is what really moves the needle. And all of the other stuff down in the weeds can be handled by hires. But this is, this is the most highly paid skill in the world, is thinking like this.

Yes. Yeah. And that's my point. And principle 14, I just got to introduce here, just because your conversation is believe it's always day one and it's principle 14, but it's key at Amazon. It's a mindset. It's not a process, it's a mindset. And for Bezos, the mindset is we are still a startup, which again, is hard to get your head around when an organization has almost 650,000 employees worldwide. But Bezos continues to reiterate, we have to think like a startup. We have to think like those early days when we were scrapping to make payroll, to get books out, to do whatever. And in fact, he ends every single letter. So 21 letters. He ends with two things in various forms. It changed over the early years, but one, he always appends the 1997 letter to every subsequent letter. And he says, as is my practice, I attach the 1997 letter so you can in essence, what my fill in the blank words are so you can see where we came from.

Yeah, that's great.

And then he says, it's always day one.

And so that's an interesting, you know, when you think about, again, entrepreneurs and startups and small businesses and, you know, keeping that focus on what it was like in those early days and keeping that energy for Amazon, that's got to be hard.

I don't know. I don't know if I'd be able to do it. I think if I had Bezos money, I'd be like, yeah, it's not so much day one anymore, but I mean, I don't have a business like Amazon.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, he's a rare breed. But I think if we can glean what we can off of that, and it's the way that people think and realizing that, yeah, it's not dumb luck that somebody like Bezos got to where he's at. But, but that it's, yeah, it's very strategic thinking and I think it's super cool that you've helped distill this knowledge down into a way that is more accessible for executives and entrepreneurs around the world to kind of be able to digest this. And even if they Just pick up one little aspect out of that that can serve as a leverage point to help increase their flywheel. That's fantastic.

And that was my goal, in essence, to be a guide to the lessons I think are in those shareholders letters.

Yeah, Steve, what's. Go ahead.

No, you go ahead.

I was just gonna kind of flip it back now on to you at this point in the conversation saying, you know, you've been so generous in distilling a lot of not only your own wisdom from your own, you know, business, both as a, you know, as a professional, as a. And also as a consultant and somebody who works with other individuals and businesses and helping them apply some of this. Now's a chance for kind me and maybe some of my listeners to jog our brains and see if we can give back in any way. What is a. Are there any particular nuts you're trying to crack in your own business life, etc. And by a nut you're trying to crack, I mean, that can mean somebody you're trying to meet, a skill you're trying to learn, something you're trying to solve, something you're trying to figure out, do and, you know, or just kind of maybe you've got some ideas on how to do it, but it isn't quite cracked yet. And, you know, selling more books is not quite enough. That's just.

Well, yeah, it. So two things come to mind. One, somebody I'd like to meet is Jeff Bezos. You know, if anybody has a connection, let me know. I'd be happy to send you.

I had my. I had. I had a. I wouldn't say I met him, but. Well, I did exchange a couple of words. This was my little Jeff Bezos thing. I went to.

Summit series, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it's a. It's a big event once a year, and it was in la, and Bezos was one of the main keynotes, actually. His brother interviewed him on stage. It was super cool. And then later that night.

Interview.

Yeah, yeah, it was really great. And then later that night, they had rented out the Orpheum Theater. And it was like, not an Orpheum Theater, was some other theater in downtown la. And there was a huge party. Like, it was like a nightclub. It was private. And it was really amazing that Jeff was there, like in the vip, in a VIP booth, and he was walking. So, first of all, I was walking out of the bathroom, and I see a guy walk in, and he's in a full suit, he's Got the little earpiece security detail.

Yeah.

And then I was like, what's this guy doing? He looked very serious. And then as I was walking out, Jeff walked right in, and I was like, oh, I'll be damned. He's probably. Hopefully gonna go use the same urinal I just did.

Yeah, there you go.

Later on, he was walking back through the. Through the crowd, and he was leaving, and they, you know, it was kind of parting, and he walked within six inches of me, and I was like, great speech today, Jeff. And he said, thanks, man. And I was like, all right.

Okay, that's good. Yeah.

I believe that was the exact day that the stock price went up enough to where he was named richest guy on Earth or richest man on earth. So that was kind of my fun. But I can't say that he's invited me over to dinner.

Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, someday, actually. So, you know, I think, actually. What. But what's interesting. Yeah. Sell more books, actually. That's. Yes, I want that. But part of what I'm seeing now is the impact the books are already making. So it's hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. It's been hit the USA Today best sellers list.

It's actually being translated into seven languages. Seven different countries have purchased the rights to publish it in their country. And. And that's all great. Right. And my head's spinning a little bit. Didn't prepare for that. But it's also. Back to your question is, okay, now I'm actually creating a new business. So in terms of speaking, writing, consulting, you know, around the principles and then helping. So that's been a mind shift for me in terms of even thinking about that and what does that look like? And I've started working. Working on putting a team together to help me with that. But that's.

That's a pretty big nut.

That's a big nut. Yeah. I mean, that's. And then actually is pivoting, you know, into a wider business audience than the niche that I've been insurance. Yeah.

Let me ask you this. So prior to the book. So the book is just really being released right now, right?

Yes. Okay.

Yeah. So prior to the book, now, did you have. Did you have much of a social following or newsletter or anything like. Much of an audience. And the reason I ask you this is I'd love to just hear what you did if you didn't. If you weren't already kind of considered a thought leader with an audience, et cetera, how you shopped the book and then started to get this really big early interest. If there was anything besides just the hook of the Bezos letters being such a. Such a brilliant and publicity worthy hook.

Yeah. So I think a couple things. One is within the insurance industry and certainly my niche, the distribution system, agents and brokers. I'm very well known and have a highly visible platform.

On LinkedIn.

I was an original LinkedIn influencer. So there were 150 people pick. So I have over 340,000 followers on link.

That's great. Yeah. So you didn't just come out of nowhere.

Yeah. And so that, you know, I tell people that's my 25 year overnight success.

The book really came. I had a bit of an inside track because my wife is in the book publishing business so that was pretty easy to find a publisher for the book and she's actually my co author of the book. So as we describe it, it's my concepts, my principles, my ideas and her words. So if you enjoy the book, it's probably because of her like the principles, it's because of me.

And frankly then certainly the topic gets people's attention. But as people have started reading early readers, we've got got some great endorsements. It's just resonated with people. So that's sort of the surprise. I always felt it was a good book and there were good principles there. But you know what, you know this. There are lots of business books out there that have, you know, good principles. And.

So I'm not exactly sure what was different and nice. We're trying to enjoy the ride right now, but it has been a bit of a wild ride over the last, you know, know, really two months now.

Well, I hope it gets wilder and more fun. Well, thanks, I think it will and hopefully I can be a part of helping to move a handful of books for you as well. So if people want to buy this, I mean. Oh, by the way. So I don't know if this would work, but this would be fun. So a close friend of mine and former guest, I can't take, I can't take credit for this idea because it's brilliant and I have to give him credit. Mike Koenigs, I don't know if you have ever heard of Mike, but anyway, Mike has helped a lot of people publish books. He's a author himself, but he was talking about a great way to get your book in the hands of a VIP is to use Amazon. And it is if you think about it like this. So first of all, and it was a whole strategy behind this, but go to Amazon and buy your book as a gift for somebody else. It is almost. It's like you could easily find, you know, what the address of the Amazon headquarters is that Jeff lives in. Now, if Jeff orders something from Amazon now, maybe somebody there will buy it. But if any time somebody orders something from Amazon, a lot of times their assistant will not necessarily open it because who buys stuff from Amazon? Like, people buy stuff for themselves from Amazon. So it could be very personal, right? So oftentimes this is not all the time, but oftentimes the assistant won't, won't open the box or so it's most likely to get opened by that person.

And everybody likes getting in. Like getting your Amazon box is all. There's this psychological trigger, dopamine rush. But so one of the things he said, create especially as it applies. And by the way, I'll put a link in the show notes for everybody to watch this little clip of Mike talking about this strategy.

But.

Buy a book, let's say, for Jeff. Well, let's take it back from Jeff, for instance. Let's just say you are sending it to the CEO of another company, perhaps that you wanted to get a consulting gig with or just get in with. Maybe you've done a little research on the person, you know, in general about some of the stuff, and maybe it's me, right? Brad Costanzo, CEO of Costanzo Marketing Group. And you send me this book in Amazon and you do it as a gift, maybe it's even wrapped and. But they allow you to put a little note, right? So on that note, it says something like, brad, love. Like love what you're doing at. You know, your company wanted to give you this book. There's an idea on page 45 that might help move the needle or something of that nature. So make that real specific and then maybe put a little link. Maybe it's a YouTube video, maybe it's something else to like. Here's a video with more details about it. Something super personal to where now they can go, oh, I like this. And maybe it's a short Link, not a YouTube, right? They have to like type in all the crap. But if you just send somebody your book, it's kind of like a. I don't want to read your damn book. But if you say something like, Listen on Chapter 6 has a strategy that may or may not help your company specifically move the needle, especially as it comes to understanding the way a flywheel works or customer service, if this makes sense. If you'd like to discuss it, feel free to. To you know, to contact me. This would all be done, like, on the video. But I love the idea of using an Amazon, your book as an Amazon gift, as a sniper, like, as this little thing Right. To your perfect people. I think it would be hilarious if you brainstormed a way to send your book to Jeff via Amazon.

Like, because you never know. Like, it would actually be hilarious. Yeah, he would. Like, if I was Jeff and I got that, I would laugh enough to go, all right, let's contact you. That was smart. But anyway, I don't know if that idea will. But I would chew on it.

Yeah, I will chew on that. That's a great approach. Absolutely.

And even just using that for even that. Using that for anybody, any of the other, you know, companies that you kind of want to get in touch with. I mean, the fact that it's the Bezos letters combined with a delivery by Amazon is kind of extra special.

Yep.

So, anyway, hopefully that was kind of fun.

Well, this kind of brings us to the end of the epicizzle. I mean, other podcasts, they have episodes, but here at Bacon Wrap Business, we have epicizzles.

Oh.

So, but this has been great. Steve, what is the best way to.

Do you have a. I mean, obviously they could buy it on Amazon. Do you have a site set up to sell the book as well?

You know, for your listeners? TheBezosLetters.com and Bacon B A C O N will be some stuff specifically for your listeners. The book will be. The print book will be available September 17, and the ebook and audiobook are already available on Amazon, Audible, and actually Barnes and Noble. The ebook is available.

Beautiful. And if somebody wants to get a hold of you and talk to you about whether it's consulting or anything else, is there a good way to reach you?

Yep, Steve. Actually, my main website is steve anderson.com so steve anderson.com or steve the bezos letters.com.

Perfect. Well, Steve, I really appreciate you being on the show today. It's been fantastic to have you and. And I wish you tons of luck. And I can't wait to read the book myself.

Brad, thanks for having me, and I've really enjoyed the conversation today.

My pleasure. Okay, this episode is almost done, but our time together doesn't have to end. At least not yet. Subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next episode and head on over to baconrapbusiness.com where you can find more bonus material and you can leave me a voice message with your question. If it's good, I'll read it on the air. And if you you have a business problem you'd like my brain on, send me an email to ask Brad at baconwrappedbusiness. Com. Tell me more and I might be able to give you a second opinion on what's keeping you stuck. See you on the next episode.