If Jeff Bezos Owned a Service Business – How Would he Grow it?
Jeff Bezos has grown Amazon to the point where it’s one of the world’s biggest businesses.
But how would he grow a service business?
Of all the tech gurus of today, Jeff Bezos has perhaps the biggest success story. He founded Amazon back in 1994 as a little online book retailer. Working from the comfort of his own garage, he started selling and shipping books out to people using the web.
That’s such a common thing nowadays that it’s easy to forget how different this idea was back then.
Fast forward to today and Amazon is one of the world’s biggest businesses. It feels like the company has its fingers in every single pie.
Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer. It also offers music and movie streaming services, as well as being at the forefront of AI development.
And Jeff Bezos has profited massively from it. He’s one of the richest men in the world. And he’ll be taking us all up into space if he can turn his latest ambition into a reality.
We know what you’re thinking.
What does this have to do with service business growth?
Bezos has done amazing things in the tech industry. But we think he’d do a great job of achieving service business growth too.
This is how he’d do it.
How Would Bezos Do It?
To understand how Bezos would grow a service business, we’ve got to look at how he did it for Amazon.
Here are some of the secrets of Bezos’ success and how they apply to service business growth.
Secret #1 – He’d Think Outside the Box
You can trace this all the way back to his start.
Back in 1994, nobody was really thinking about selling online that much. The average website was basically an extended business card. It was a place to tell others about your business.
Bezos saw the potential in the web. He saw that ordering products online was the future because it offered convenience and allowed for greater access.
It took a while for the tech to really catch up to his thinking. But thinking differently to everyone else ensured Bezos would buck the traditional retail model.
And he looks likely to do it all over again with Blue Origin (Bezos’ space company).
You’ve got to do the same with your service business. You probably have dozens of companies in your area competing for the same pool of customers.
Find a way to stand out from the crowd.
Think outside the box so you can compete on more than just your price. Offer a customer service that wows everyone you work with. Send thank-you notes and gift cards to customers to show that you value them.
Consider how you can add to what you do to achieve greater service business growth.
If you think like everybody else you’ll achieve the same results as everybody else.
Secret #2 – He’d Learn From His Mistakes
Amazon doesn’t hit home run after home run. They’ve made a ton of mistakes over the years.
Take the Amazon Fire. Bezos tried to get in on the smartphone game but he was too late to the party. The Fire fell by the wayside along with dozens of other failed phones.
Amazon also once tried to copy eBay’s model of online auctioning. That’s not what the site’s customers wanted and that failed too.
There’s an important point here. Every failure taught Bezos a lesson. He didn’t let the bad ideas stop him from pushing his vision forward. He analyzes, learns, and moves on as a better and more informed leader.
We think he’d do the same with a service business.
Strategy is knowledge. A great service business owner never stops learning. In fact, your business is the sum of how you apply the lessons you learn over the years.
That goes for your failures as well as your successes. To grow a service business, you’ve got to try new things and analyze the results. Learn from what doesn’t work and use it to build strategies that do work.
Secret #3 – He’d Make Customer Experience the Brand
Bezos places a huge amount of importance in the idea of customer experience.
He once said:
“If there’s one reason we have done better than all of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business.”
With Amazon, Bezos has constantly redefined the very idea of the customer experience in retail. He’s done it so many times that the customer experience is the brand.
During the early days of the company, Amazon’s brand grew because it offered a new way to buy.
As more companies jumped on the eCommerce bandwagon, Amazon stayed ahead because it offered the best experience. It has faster shipping times and more variety. Amazon evolved from a simple bookstore into an all-purpose provider while others still focus on one niche.
The creation of Alexa transforms the experience even more. Now, you can talk to Alexa and tell it to order something for you.
Amazon’s always creating wow experiences for its customers. And that’s something that CEO Warrior espouses.
Your customer experience is your brand. To grow a service business, you need to create an experience that nobody else offers. That’s how you get customers to keep coming back.
We believe that Bezos would achieve service business growth through a focus on the customer experience. He’d find a way to do things differently, just like he did with Amazon.
Secret #4 – He’d Make it Run Without Him
Amazon processes millions of orders every day.
Jeff Bezos isn’t sitting at a desk processing every single one of them. Amazon runs without his involvement. If Bezos decides to take some time off, Amazon isn’t going to shut down for the week while he’s out of the office.
Can you say the same about your service business?
A lot of service business owners can’t. Their companies are completely reliant on them being around to deal with customers and handle all sorts of tasks.
When that happens, you’re unable to focus on the big picture.
If Bezos owned a service business, taking himself away from the day-to-day stuff would be a top priority. He’d achieve service business growth by creating processes and building an awesome team.
You should do the same. You can’t grow a service business if the whole business relies on you being there. It’s not scalable. Your people can’t take the initiative and your processes likely aren’t good enough.
Secret #5 – He’d Create an Awesome Recruiting Strategy
Bezos has a simple philosophy when it comes to recruiting:
“Every time we hire someone, he or she should raise the bar for the next hire, so that the overall talent pool is always improving.”
It’s such a brilliant way to look at things. Constant improvement is one of the keys to service business growth. The business starts to stagnate the minute that you get complacent.
This recruiting strategy ensures that never happens at Amazon. Every new recruit challenges the company to get better. It also challenges the people who work at Amazon to raise themselves up to reach the level of the new recruit.
Recruiting isn’t about finding people to fill gaps. It’s about finding the A-players who share your vision and want to improve in any way that they can.
Bezos would employ the same strategies for a service business as he does at Amazon. He’d evaluate performance constantly and provide a means for his people to provide feedback.
And he’d build an in-depth recruiting process to make sure he got the right people on board.
Secret #6 – He’d Have the Courage to Take Risks
Amazon started because Jeff Bezos took a risk.
He had a great job with a hedge fund back in the 1990s. Bezos could have just carried on down that route and made plenty of money for himself.
Instead, he quit the job and took a risk on building a business out of his garage.
Over 20 years later, we all see the results.
He’d use that appetite for risk to grow a service business too. In your case, embracing risk means being willing to make changes.
That’s another of the keys to service business growth. To move your business to the next level, you’ve got to be willing to take the leap.
There’s a lot of courage involved because it’s easy to stick with the status quo. But it’s only through taking risks that you’ll make worthwhile changes in your service business.
Think Like Bezos and Transform Your Business
Jeff Bezos has built a business empire that’s an inspiration to any service business.
And a lot of the strategies and secrets he uses transfer over. You’ve got to have the courage to try new things so you stand apart. Accept that failure is a possibility and use it as a learning opportunity.
Remember that the customer experience is paramount and focus on making yours memorable.
And finally, put the processes in place and bring the right people in so your business can run without you.
With CEO Warrior, you can learn how to grow a service business like Jeff Bezos would.
