Saturday salute – Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon
Every Saturday I salute someone or a group that deserves a little extra attention for his or her good deeds, achievements, creative solutions, witty comments or meaningful acts of customer love.
This week my hat goes off to Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon.
I've admired Jeff for many years, but tonight after reading the WSJ and an essay by Richard l. Brandt about his new book, "One Click: Jeff and the Rise of Amazon.com" I was reminded of what an amazing journey Jeff Bazos has had as an entrepreneur and the incredible success his company has earned.
An expensive lesson about copyright and photos in blogs
Internet photo police are a real thing. I learned this lesson the expensive way last year. I received a formal letter from Getty Images citing that an image on my blog from 2007 was copyrighted and the image company had no record I paid for use of the photo. Apparently, big photo houses now have teams of professionals watching the web and also use special image tracking software to find illegal photo usage.
I immediately looked into their claim and found that the blog article and photo in question was posted by an intern who had worked for me. I was not aware that there was a violation as I trusted that the intern knew the rules of copyright protected images and usage.
Saturday salute-Red Bull’s Flugtag
Every Saturday I salute someone or a group that deserves a little extra attention for his or her good deeds, super branding, achievements, creative solutions, witty comments or meaningful acts of customer love. This week my hat goes off to Red Bull, their amazing branding and the Flugtag celebrations they hosted in Tampa, Florida.
What's Flugtag?
Red Bull Flugtag challenges teams of everyday people to build homemade, human-powered flying machines and pilot them off a 30-foot high deck in hopes of achieving flight! Flugtag may mean "flying day" in German, but all these crafts ultimately splash into the waters below. They are judged not only on their flight's distance, but creativity and showmanship as well.
We all must carry on with big ideas, conviction and vision.
Let’s make Steve Jobs proud of the millions who he inspired. Listen to your inner voice. Live by your rules. Innovate. Value and create great design. Challenge convention. Stay hungry. Be obsessive about what you believe. Believe that you can make a difference. Make a difference. A recent interview on Fox when Steve Jobs stepped down from Apple. That was a sad day. There are not words to explain the loss so many felt on October 5, 2011.
The aging entrepreneur— When your mind says GO! And your body says NO!
Like I mentioned the other day, I have aged a bit since jumping into the world of being an entrepreneur. In fact, almost thirty years have whipped by me. Many things remain the same, but some things have changed.
My entrepreneurial traits that remain:
- I’m still very fearless in business.
- I still fear a few things like: being struck by lightning, being hit by a flying baseball, hockey puck or golf ball and I still hope I never meet a snake.
- I still have a strong sense of humor, love comedy and gravitate toward people who make me laugh.
- I still believe personal responsibility is a big deal. And when people don’t take responsibility for their actions and blame others for their fate, that’s not a laughing matter, it’s a character flaw.
- I still love my work, in fact so much that most of the time it doesn’t feel like work, but extremely satisfying play.
The aging entrepreneur like great wine gets better with age
For many years I was the youngest in many business situations. I was younger than all my employees, having started my ad agency when I was 22. I was also the youngest to sit on important boards and I was considered by many to be a very young entrepreneur running two companies.
Then one day that changed. I’m not really sure exactly when this happened, but suddenly—while I still felt young, liked loud, new rock bands, trendy fashions —I turned 50! YIKES!!
My amazing life has raced through three decades and now I’m not the youngest any more, except when I go to an event at my mom’s senior living community and thank God, I am the youngest there.