"I Got Rich When I Understood This" | Jeff Bezos

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I was going to start a company selling books on the internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job. You can have a job, or you can have a career, or you can have a calling, and if you can somehow figure out how to have a calling, you have hit the jackpot because that's the big deal.”

I met Jeff Bezos 25 years ago, and he told me, “Dave, I want you to invest in my company. What are you doing?”

“I'm going to start a bookstore in my garage. Okay, I'm going to put it online, people buy online, and I'm a ship out of my garage. But if you invest in me, Dave, someday I'm going to be the richest man in the world. I'll do over $100 billion.”

First of all, there is no such thing as $100 billion 25 years ago. Statistically, there's no such thing! Countries didn't have $100 billion; our national debt wasn't $100 billion, and this dude's telling me at 26 years old that he's going to be the richest man in the world because he has a garage and the internet. That was his truth.

Did I know that? No. But he did not know it, and neither did I. But the difference between him and I is I was laughing, scoffing, and jesting at him, and he was already applauding himself, going at the right way at the perfect time. “I'm going to make as much as I can as quickly,” and I'm sitting there going, “There’s no way this is going to be a big business.”

Do something you're very passionate about and don't try to chase what is kind of the hot passion of the day. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing, and I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.

After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I'm proud of that choice. As a young boy, I had been a garage inventor. I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn't work very well out of an umbrella and aluminum foil, baking pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I'd always wanted to be an inventor.

And “she” wanted me to follow my passion. There was a military phrase that I especially love, and it says, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” I have seen that in every endeavor I've ever been in. That's the kind of thing that really allows you to make progress. You know, you get certain gifts in life, and you want to take advantage of those.

But I guess my advice on adversity and success would be to be proud not of your gifts but of your hard work and your choices. You know, you may be the kind of person who receives gifts like, you know, you might be really good at math; it might be really easy for you. That's a kind of gift. But practicing that math and taking it to the next step could be very challenging and hard and take a lot of sweat.

That's a choice. You can't really be proud of your gifts because they were given to you. You can be grateful for them and thankful for them, but your choices—you choose to work hard, you choose to do hard things—those are choices that you can be proud of.

You can choose. We all get to choose our life stories, and it's the choices that define us, not our gifts. Everybody in this room has many gifts, I have many gifts. You can never be proud of your gifts because they're gifts; they were given to you. You might be, you know, tall, or you might be really good at math, or you might be extremely beautiful or handsome, or you know, there are many gifts.

You can only be proud really of your choices because those are the things that you are acting on. One of the most important choices that each of us has—and you know this just as well as I do—is you can choose a life of ease and comfort, or you can choose a life of service and adventure.

And when you’re 80, which one of those things do you think you're going to be more proud of? You're going to be more proud of having chosen a life of service and adventure.

There has never been a better time to be alive. I mean, it's just incredible—the amount of inspiration that the world generates for me, and I think for a lot of people. It's just insane the amount of change, convention, and opportunity.

Your life—the life you author from scratch on your own—begins. How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions? Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease or a life of service and adventure? Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions? Will you bluff it out when you're wrong, or will you apologize? Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling when it’s tough? Will you give up, or will you be relentless? Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder? Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

Every time you figure out some way of providing tools and services that empower other people to deploy their creativity, you're really onto something. You know, you're very lucky if you have a career. A lot of people end up with a job.

If you don't love your work, you're never going to be great at it. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton—all the curious from the ages—would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

How will you use these gifts, and will you take pride in your gifts, or pride in your choices?