Inspirational Storytelling Amazon's CEO

Business Storytelling Blog 2

In life everyone have a dream, a dream to follow their most prominent goals and make their ideas come to light. Jeff Bezos CEO of Amazon gave an amazing speech at Princeton University's class commencement entitled “What matters more than your talents”.

Jeff started his speech by telling a very personal story about his summer vacations with his grand parents. He intrigued the audience with explaining how clever he was as a child. Although Jeff's cleverness came at the expense of his grandmothers feelings and made her cry. He quickly learned from his grandfather that although his statement was clever he must choose to be kind. He also told him to be careful how he use the gift of cleverness. Jeff's grandfather thought him a valuable lesson, Jeff used this lesson to convey his message of how he overcame adversities and learned from his mistakes. He explained that cleverness is a gift and kindness was a choice, the lesson he learned early in life from his grandfather. The story he told was personal and a story that his audience could clearly follow. It was inspirational and help him built trust with the audience. The personal story allowed the audience to connect emotionally, and gave him a way to transition this story into

a memorable idea that later gave him merit and allowed the people to grasp his clever or kindness choice concept.

Jeff Bezo story transitioned from his vacation with his grandparents into the challenges he faced when he made the choice to quit his job and start his on line book store. Amazon was his vision but by telling his story he was able to connect with the graduate students by letting them know that everyone has to start somewhere, but most importantly, his speak allowed the audience to go on a journey through his life from childhood to a present place of success.

I learned that by using a familiar story one can connect an audience.

Mr. Bezo personal story definitely helped gave me a deeper understanding about Jeff Bezo's struggle to build his story and his brand. He explained how he had fear but, he never let his fear get in the way of his dreams. Jeff's ultimate goal was to tell the graduating students to choose “ Cleverness as a gift and kindness as a choice”.

The moral of his story was always choose to be kind, because in the end we are our choices. Jeff end by saying “Build yourself a great story”. In my opinion his approach in giving this message was well thought out, clever, and exceptionally done. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmavNoChZc#t=6m25s