“All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts — not [with] analysis.” — Jeff Bezos
“When you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so, but it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct, intuition, taste, heart.” — Jeff Bezos
“There wasn’t a single financially savvy person who supported the decision to launch Amazon Prime. Zero. Every spreadsheet showed that it was going to be a disaster. So that had to just be made with gut.” — Jeff Bezos
More from Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos participates in the Milestone Celebration Dinner at the Economic Club of Washington in Washington, D.C.:
You have a great business idea. Perhaps it’s something unique or something you’re particularly good at. How do you know whether you should invest in it or simply keep it as a hobby?
Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist at Wharton, created the following graphic to help answer that question.
How to decide whether your idea should become a project: 1. Interest: do you think about it in your free time and bring it up in random conversations? 2. Importance: will it benefit others? 3. Contribution: do you have something novel to add?
James Altucher – serial entrepreneur, author, podcast host – expands on this:
A) always good to have a couple of things going on at a time to see if they fall within the sweet spot of the diagram since so very few things do.
B) learn the skill of “experimenting” so you can take small steps with little downside and great upside to see what things “click”.
C) often something feels like it hits the sweet spot but then it stalls. Don’t be afraid to quit something that’s not quite clicking.
D) I always wait for my heart and mind to agree before I fully engage in a new activity.
Too often I did things for money that I did not love and too often I did things for my heart that had no other benefit to me.
The heart and the brain must be in agreement. Experiments helped me with that.
Example, I’ve spent the past 5 years doing standup comedy up to 20-30 hours a week. It’s not monetizable. But it added to my skills in podcasting, public speaking, ideation, etc.
But, mindlessly playing online chess for hours a day (which I am prone to do) is my heart talking but not my brain.
And starting a hedge fund way back when was my brain talking but not my heart. I hated every minute of it and not a good source of income ultimately.
Subscribe to Get Our Report on Getting Through the Economic Depression:
The Covid-19 economic crisis is gripping the world. After 20 years in the asset management business, it looks like we are fighting through unprecedented territory.
This is war. I created a 17 step, 47 page guide to help DumbWealth subscribers get through this.
I originally planned on printing the guide and selling copies for $20+. Instead I’m giving this away free because I think we all need to help each other during these difficult times.
Leveraging Toronto’s technology community, the City of Toronto and Digital Main Street have brought together a range of partners to build and optimize online stores for Toronto’s independent businesses and artists at no-cost.
Thanks to volunteer developers, business students, and corporate partners, Toronto’s independent small businesses and artists can access ShopHERE to get their online store built and launched with hands-on support throughout the entire process in just a matter of days.
What do you get:
Choice of an online store customized with their information, branding, logo, etc.
Hands-on assistance setting up and launching their online store.
Training to support their online store, including topics such as digital marketing, shipping and inventory management.
Access to free tools to help support the launch of their online stores.
Here are the requirements:
Be a business located or artist in the City of Toronto that:
Pays commercial property taxes in the City of Toronto (rents or owns commercial property)
Have fewer than 10 employees or fewer than 25 employees if they are a restaurant or bar
Not be a corporate chain or franchise
Or must be an artist located within the City of Toronto
