Jeff Bezos Says This Moment Changed His Life — Are You in a Similar Spot in Your Career?
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is one of the wealthiest people in the world; Forbes recently reported his net worth at $114 billion. It’s hard for most of us to imagine being in a similar spot as Bezos at any point in our careers, but Bezos had a moment when he realized he needed to change his career plans.
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In the 1990s, Bezos was at Princeton University with a major in physics and a spot in the top 25 students in his honor program. At the Economic Club in Washington in 2018, he said that he and his roommate had struggled with a differential equation for hours without success. They asked a friend for help, and “We show him this problem, and he looks at it, stares at it for a while and says ‘Cosine, that’s the answer.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s the answer?’ And he’s like ‘Yes, let me show you,” said Bezos.
An Important Realization
Their friend wrote out the entire solution for them, and Bezos said, “That was an important moment for me because that was when I realized I was never going to be a great theoretical physicist. I started doing some soul-searching. In most occupations, you will contribute if you’re in the 90th percentile. In theoretical physics, you gotta be one of the top 50 people in the world, or you’re not helping much.”
According to an interview with Wired in 1999, Bezos said, “I looked around the room, and it was clear to me that there were three people in the class who were much, much better at [physics] than I was, and it was much, much easier for them.” “It was a really sort of startling insight that there were these people whose brains were wired differently,” he said. As a result of this realization, Bezos switched his major to electrical engineering and computer science and committed to starting his own business.
Bezos decided to start an online business after he “found a staggering statistic: the web was growing at 2,300% per year” in 1994, he told CNBC. He launched Amazon in 1995 to sell books. Today, Amazon is valued at over $1 trillion, a gateway to far more than books.
His success came about because Bezos took a dispassionate look at his capabilities compared to his competition. By realizing he was not likely to achieve what he wanted in his first choice career of physics, he pivoted to use his strong analytical skills in electrical engineering and computers. While working at a hedge fund, he looked for a growth area to enter. He chose the internet and excelled.
How About You?
Where are you in your career journey? Whether in high school, college, or already pursuing a career, have you stopped to assess your strengths, competition, and prospects realistically? Have you considered what other areas fit your skills, talents, and interests well? If not, now would be a good time.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Jeff Bezos Says This Moment Changed His Life — Are You in a Similar Spot in Your Career?
