Even after stepping down as the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos remains at the top of the Forbes The World’s Real-Time Billionaires list, as he holds onto the number one position with an iron grip. With an estimated net worth of $203 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Bezos’ fortune has skyrocketed since he first founded the company in 1994.
Professional Life
Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon, World’s largest internet company, and second to hit the US$ 1 Trillion mark after Apple. Jeff founded the company in 1994 as an online book store. Although Amazon is now bigger than ever, it wasn’t the only name on his mind. Relentless was another such name, and even today if you visit relentless.com you’ll be redirected to Amazon. Today, Amazon has expanded into various sectors including cloud computing, home assistant hardware, music/video streaming services, organic foods, and many more. In 2017, Amazon’s net profit was US$ 3 Billion. Same year, in November Jeff Bezos sold 1 million Amazon shares worth US$ 1.1 Billion. But, in 2018 the profits jumped to about $12 Billion. Jeff also owns a rocket company that goes by the name of Blue Origin. It is one of SpaceX’s competitor and Jeff’s cue to become a Trillionaire.
His fortune saw a substantial increase in 2020. When the pandemic hit and most businesses were floundering, Amazon was thriving as e-commerce demand went through the roof. Thanks to the blossoming business boom, his net worth went up by $75 million in that year alone. He has faced a certain amount of criticism for this over the years. While his fortune grew, and many of his warehouse workers were living on food stamps, there was a public backlash against the business tycoon. He received a salary of $81,840 as the CEO of Amazon and additional compensations worth $1.6 million last year. His fortune even exceeds the national GDP of certain nations and even the entire British Monarchy, as per the Business Insider report. Fair to say Bezos does not live like the average American. One prime example is that he does not pay Income tax. According to USA Today, and data accessed from the Internal Revenue Service, in 2007, an already billionaire Bezos, was not paying any federal taxes. A few years later in 2011, he again paid no taxes and even received a $4,000 tax credit for his children. His retirement from his leadership role at the forefront of the company marks a big change for the market landscape as Andy Jassy takes over.
Advices given by Jeff Bezos
Take Risks
“When you think about the things that you will regret when you’re 80, they’re almost always the things that you did not do. They’re acts of omission. Very rarely are you going to regret something that you did that failed and didn’t work or whatever”
Make good decisions-Fast
Bezos believes that the key to maintaining an innovative business is to make “high-quality, high-velocity decisions.” “All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts not with analysis”
Don’t lose your distinctiveness
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.”
Bezos said “The fairy tale version of the advice ‘be yourself’ is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free”.
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