Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gets more than his fair share of negative press in the court of public opinion. Whether he’s a benefit or a blight to society depends on who you listen to, however the facts lean clearly in one direction.  

For Amazon to exist, one person needed to shoulder the burden. Jeff Bezos is the visionary leader who, through hard work and enormous risk, contributes immensely to the prosperity of the free world through the creation of his internet-based enterprise.   

Amazon makes money for everyone, least of all Jeff Bezos. In 2020, the value of Amazon jumped by $570 billion! Jeff Bezos owns about 10 percent of the company he created, so his personal net worth increased by $57 billion. This was derided by some as too much, however it was a testament to the magnificence of the company he founded.   

At the same time that his personal fortunes increased, Jeff Bezos created $513 billion (that’s half a trillion dollars!) of value for the other shareholders of Amazon. Banks, pension funds, labor unions, insurance companies and other institutional investors own the majority of Amazon. When you get a loan for a car, a pension as a teacher, strike pay from a union or home insurance after a fire, there’s very likely a little bit of Amazon wealth making each transaction possible. Amazon primarily makes money for the institutions and shareholders that own it, not for Bezos.    

It’s popular to talk about the perceived value of a company when share prices rise, but little attention is given when a company fails and the value evaporates almost entirely. The founders of Yahoo, the first internet brand, saw the value of their company go from $128 billion in 2000 to $5 billion in 2021 when Apollo bought the final version of the company — a dramatic loss of 96 percent of the value. Blockbuster founder David Cook saw the market value of the company he founded peak at $5 billion in 2002 then go into bankruptcy in 2010. You can see how it’s remarkable to consistently grow a company over a span of decades as Amazon has done.  

Amazon helps the little guys, too. It boosted retail sales on products to magnitudes never before seen. If you have a small business selling handcrafted jewelry or a large business selling millions in electronics, Amazon Marketplace brings customers around the world to your doorstep. In 2021 third-party sellers accounted for 60 percent of sales on Amazon.  Global consumers had more choice, and consumers showed up in droves to buy. Last year 54 percent of all product searches on the internet took place inside the Amazon online store.    

Amazon is a large employer with 1.6 million employees and it’s a good employer, providing jobs for everyone from MBA grads to people who never finished high school. The average starting wage is more than $18 an hour, or over $36,000 a year for a fulltime worker.   

Jeff Bezos pays his taxes, too. In spite of what many believe, he paid $1.4 billion on income of $6.5 billion between 2006 and 2018. Within that time frame, he paid no taxes (in 2007 and 2011) because in those two years Bezos had no need to pay himself a salary or sell any of his Amazon shares and so had no taxable income. He was among a large percent of the U.S. population that pays no federal taxes. (In 2021, 57 percent paid no federal taxes.) 

Apart from the annual cornucopia of 1.6 million jobs, with a median pay of $29,007 USD globally (totaling $46.4 billion paid in salaries), $43 billion in research and development, and billions in new shareholder value, Jeff Bezos made the largest philanthropic donation in 2020 with a $10 billion donation to launch the Bezos Earth Fund to fight the climate crisis. That is far better than most of us. More than half of all Americans donated to a charity last year and the average donation was $567.    

Despite all of these accomplishments and stunning figures, U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich labels Bezos a Scrooge capitalist. Reich emphasizes that the working people of America outnumber corporate executives by a wide margin. He puts this idea forward as if the leadership, appetite for risk, insane work hours and innovation are on par between the two groups. Amazon employs 1.6 million people, however only Bezos had the drive, foresight and ability to create something that didn’t exist before.   

Building Amazon wasn’t easy. Naysayers were abundant. Bezos originally selling books online in 1995, then started selling electronics in 1999. In 2000 he allowed third-party vendors to sell goods online via Amazon Marketplace. Each time the company moved further into its future identity, few people cheered it on. It took a lot of grit for Bezos to keep moving forward. In May 1999, Barron’s ran the story AMAZON.BOMB, calling the concept of online sales “silly.” 

Bezos is a unicorn capitalist, similar to unicorn capitalists Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison and Elon Musk. He boosts the world’s prosperity. We don’t need fewer people like Bezos, we need more. 

Business-to-business marketing is delusional. We continue to act as if customers make buying decisions in a rational void, free from any messy emotional constraints. The truth is that they never have, and they never will.

Many studies back up this idea and provide a more clear picture of the drivers that go into business purchasing decisions. Some B2B marketers have taken this research to heart and are beginning to talk about their customers as if they were humans and not just numbers. We can achieve more as professionals if we’re prepared to go further to benefit our brands, our customers, and ourselves.   

It’s partly because customers continuously evolve, seeking emotional connections and purposes that resonate with them. Customers should be at the heart of your business, not just lucky to be considered at the end of the product development and sales process.   

How do marketers deal with the current challenges and changes in B2B marketing? We must shift our focus from products to people, make a meaningful and positive difference, and continually self-improve.  

To keep up with the ever-changing market, look to your customers and embrace a new mindset to engage them using these approaches:  

1. Shift your focus 

Most businesses try to put their customers first, but that doesn’t always happen. Even business-to-customer companies have to try hard to remember that customers are the essential element of their operations. Putting products first in businesses is no longer sustainable.   

Products don’t buy themselves; people keep businesses afloat. Everyone you engage with is a human being with feelings, preferences, and insecurities, just like you. Of course, in B2B marketing, you’re speaking not to just one person, but a whole audience made up of employees and business partners. They don’t come to you as a brand or business to hear your corporate technical jargon. They want to know that there’s a human behind the product.   

Customers don’t just buy from you. They buy into you. As a business, your primary goal should be following your vision and improving your customers’ lives, even before profit. More than this, you need to use emotion to unlock people’s understanding so that you can move minds. You can make a substantial, meaningful, and positive difference by doing so. That’s what humanizing B2B marketing is all about.  

2. Make a positive difference  

Having a purpose requires that your company show up in the world in a way that proves you’re trying to make a meaningful and positive difference to the lives of your customers — and not just selling products for the sake of it. Having an overarching human purpose and communicating it well improves lives.   

The customer will always be an afterthought if you treat B2B marketing as a production process. Instead, say to yourself, “We have these amazing customers. What can we create for them? What would inspire them? What could change and make their lives better?” Think how transformational that would be. You’d be addressing their needs.   

You want to be a teacher, not a salesperson; a trusted educator, not a mere advisor. Offering new insights through your products, services, and marketing makes you indispensable and irreplaceable. But, more importantly, you’re positively impacting your customers.   

3. Access your likeability  

In the new era of business, being liked is a fundamental requirement for your brand success. It gives you a commercial advantage. Your customers make their buying decisions based on which company or brand they like the best — it’s as simple as that. This has always been the case to a certain extent, but it’s essential today.   

Over the past 10 years, there’s been a massive shift in how buyers think, act, and feel about business brands. For many years companies relied on expensive salespeople to create the likeability factor. Still, today, when communications are usually online rather than face-to-face, they recognize that they need to invest in their brands to deliver a positive and friendly experience.  

In this new era, it’s vital that you don’t think of business as a sales game to be won or lost. You must have a voice, be relevant, and make a positive impact.    

It’s no longer sustainable to do business as usual. The discussion surrounding humanizing B2B marketing is prominent because it’s essential. People are the foundation of the success of our businesses and industry. We rely on them as much as they depend on us. Customers search for new insights and wisdom through their favorite products. Like the brands they buy from, they want to trust and feel their lives impacted positively and substantially.   

It’s easy to put profit at the center of the mission and vision of a business. Truly understanding your customers and all their human motivations, thoughts, and desires is far more complicated. It takes time, energy, and empathy. But it’s worth it for everyone involved. Humanizing B2B marketing changes lives in both big and small ways.  

Bill Gates. Richard Branson. Steve Jobs. When you hear these names, you immediately think of business legends. Billionaires with success stories so profound they’ll continue to influence generations of entrepreneurs. But what you might not realize is that this group has something else in common: they’re all college dropouts. 

These stories aren’t the standard path, of course. The skills and experience we can gain from college is invaluable to our business success. But what if you’re eager to start your entrepreneurial journey and don’t want to wait until after graduation? You might get a lot of pushback from people telling you to hold off until you’re out of school, but the stories of Michael Dell and Mark Zuckerberg serve as proof that it’s possible — though not easy — to start building a business while earning a degree. Just like Dell and Zuckerberg, I was also so excited to bring my ideas to life that I started my first company out of my dorm room as well.

There’s some unique advantages to being a student entrepreneur that other founders lack. You have access to free or subsidized educational resources, mentorship opportunities from faculty members and/or other students, as well as a large pool of potential customers to target your products or services to. It does come with its fair share of obstacles though, like limited time to focus on both school and work, as well as a higher rate of stress. All of this on top of the lingering pressure that 20 percent of small business don’t survive past their first year. Don’t let this prevent you from working towards your dream of running your own business. Below are some tips for successfully starting a company while also earning your degree.

1. Come up with a unique business idea

This isn’t the time to try to come up with a business that’s never been done before. Instead, start small and think of a unique way to monetize something that’s already an interest of yours. What simple service or product can you offer to someone to make their lives easier? What problems can you help solve through your business idea? As you begin developing this idea, you can also align some of your electives with your goals to help you gain the skills and knowledge to push yourself further. If there aren’t any specific electives that align with your industry, or these courses wouldn’t apply to your degree, try doing more general classes, like marketing or writing. As your business grows, these skills will also be a critical part of your growth and profitability.

2. Create a customer base

Having a business idea is important, but don’t get so wrapped up in the idea that you spend all your time finalizing your product or service only to quickly realize you have no customers. When you’re first starting out, you need sales in order to even have a business, so it often makes more sense to build a customer base before going all-in on a product or service. That way, when you do put all of your time, energy, and money into developing your business idea, you know you’ll have people who are waiting to buy from you.Being in college, your customer base could be right in front of your nose. Your fellow classmates could be the perfect group of people to center your products or services around. It makes selling even easier too, since you have access to them on campus at all times. They could also give you some valuable insight into the kinds of things they like or don’t like, so don’t forget to use them as a sounding board for your ideas.

3. Develop a business plan and get funding

This is what sets the real entrepreneurs apart from the amateurs. You need a working business plan with a budget in order to launch a successful startup. Here is what every business plan must have:

• An executive summary, which provides the fundamental details about your business (information about your product or service, your target audience. etc.)
• A mission statement, which should specify the products or services you’re offering
• A marketing plan, which should show how you plan to reach your target audience
• An operational plan, which will detail the day-to-day of your business
• A list of your company’s managerial organization and fiscal planning

Then, there’s the funding side of launching a startup. As a college student, you should look into grants, loans, and scholarships that have been designed for people in your unique position. 

4. Build your brand

This is perhaps the most fun part of starting a business. In this step, you want to make your business legitimate and actually put it out into the public’s eye. The first step is building a website. There are affordable ways to do this, including using free platforms like WordPress and Wix. Then, you’ll want to create and personalize your social media profiles. The socials you create will depend on the audience you’re trying to reach, but the big five include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok. Tie all of these elements together and start building your following so you can start making sales. The most important thing to remember as a college student trying to launch your first business is to find balance. You don’t want your business to distract you from your studies, but you also need to be able to find between classes and homework to focus on getting your business in order. Once you have that balance, follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way to being a successful entrepreneur even before you graduate college. 

Everywhere you look these days, companies, governments, and communities are talking about ‘better business,’ what it means, who it affects, and why it is relevant.

The UK’s proposed Better Business Act is rallying behind the cries for how we define the ‘future of the corporation.’ The suggested contract defines it as the legal obligation for every company to align their interests with those of the wider society and the environment.

I want to talk about one successful public-private partnership evidencing this ethos in action; TRANSFORM.

TRANSFORM is a collaboration between Unilever, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and EY that supports social entrepreneurs in South Asia and Africa, improving the lives of low-income households. We offer a combination of grant funding and bespoke business support through expertise and connections to corporate value chains.

Driven by the UN SDGs, in particular no.17, “partnerships for the goals,” it follows the mantra that no other UN SDG is possible without it – which is why it is so key for sustainable progression.

At the initiative’s six-year mark, and now with governments and corporations worldwide leaning further into their broader purpose-led strategies, it seems appropriate to share our learnings on building a global public-private partnership that supports the world’s most innovative impact enterprises. 

These enterprises range from the likes of Folia Water, an enterprise increasing access to clean drinking water for low-income consumers in Bangladesh, to Mr. Green Africa, the first recycling company to be a Certified B Corporation on the African continent.

With this in mind, I’ve selected our five significant learnings for building a successful public-private partnership.

1. The Holy Trinity: 3 core organizations are the perfect balance

These core organizations should be responsible for the overriding vision and direction of the partnership and the relationships with suppliers, enterprises, and stakeholders. A leaner central body will strengthen the management of potentially conflicting processes, rules, and requirements all partnerships undoubtedly face!

2.  Start small

A committed group of kick-starters allows the core organizations to form trusted relationships, stress-test, and empower the initiative. Avoid getting overexcited about the PR – the successes built from a tight-knit foundation will speak for themselves. 

3.  Define a shared purpose

Ask yourself, where do the common values between the core organizations lie? And how do we ensure this forms the foundation for a specific partnership goal? Remember, the optimal point you’re trying to hit is a vision with enough specificity that the whole team is clear and aligned while allowing enough room to explore different avenues and respond to crises.

4.  The Compatibility Test

Testing your area of collaboration helps build a pipeline by reviewing real projects and finding out where to set your boundaries. This is where reality starts to sink in, and the funding prospects are front and center of the conversation. Remember, if you encounter difficulties with the projects, you can always return to the mapping stage and redefine the shared values.

5.  Ground rules: balancing everyone’s needs

Make sure you prioritize the necessary requirements for each organization. Creating contractual templates means you’ll be best placed to deal with even the most unprecedented of events – for TRANSFORM, this meant a well-established blueprint for a rapid Covid-19 response. The model built on the collaboration’s firm relationships and frameworks meant that Unilever and the FCDO could launch the Hygiene & Behaviour Change Coalition (HBCC), which provided funding, technical assistance, and hygiene products to over 20 NGOs throughout 2020.

The partnership in practice 

Over the last six years, TRANSFORM has brought together three organizations with distinct areas of expertise, meaning we can offer blended business support; the accomplishments of the enterprises speak for themselves.

With advice from TRANSFORM, Drinkwell overcame growing pains to develop a new business model and partnered with Unilever’s extensive sales force to help sell their new innovative water ATM to communities in Bangladesh. This helped make Drinkwell what it is today: a nationally viable business model that solves the shortage of sanitized drinking water.

Similarly, Unilever’s counsel on recruiting, training, and expanding a network of formidable sales and distribution representatives, contributed to the growth of e-commerce and self-care platform Kasha. Experiencing five times year-on-year revenue growth, it has become one of the leading FemTech organizations in Africa.

TRANSFORM has shown that building a successful public-private partnership takes time, commitment, and resilience. The same is true of reaching the SDGs; no one organization can do it alone. We wanted to put the needs of society at the heart of our mission – and in the hands of some of the most exciting social entrepreneurs. TRANSFORM has shown that combining market-based ingenuity with unique capabilities of business and government offers a pathway to accelerate progress quicker.

If that’s not better business, I’m not sure what is.

Strategy is one of those business terms that is critical to understand but difficult to define. This ambiguity makes it hard to distinguish what makes up a good or bad strategy.

Fortunately for entrepreneurs, Professor Richard Rumelt’s book, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, does an incredible job of defining the various elements of strategy and laying out the foundation for establishing a good strategy while avoiding a bad one. This book has been an influential part of my entrepreneurial path over the years, so I had to make it the cornerstone of this piece. 

So let’s begin — and to do that, we must first start with what Rumelt calls the kernels of strategy. Because for you to set yourself up with a successful strategy, you must understand what lies at the heart of strategy.

The Kernels of Good Strategy

The basic underlying structure of a good strategy is as follows:

Diagnosis

Part of developing a sound strategy is understanding how to leverage your resources to achieve results. To do this, and to do it successfully, you have to understand the challenges facing your organization. Ask yourself: What’s important? What’s not? This will hone your focus on diagnosing what’s most critical and then lead you down the path of figuring out how you can approach and address each challenge. If your diagnosis isn’t clear, your path to action won’t be either, so it’s important to get the diagnosis right.

Guiding Policy

Your diagnosis will inform your strategy. The purpose of a guiding policy is that it helps you establish your intentions so you can focus your attention in the right direction. There will be so many options available to you to begin setting your action plan, so you need to ensure you’re pursuing the path that makes the most sense for your goals. When you follow your policy and adapt your organization, you set yourself up for success.

Coherent Action Plan

Strategy without action is nothing, just as action without strategy is futile. Your diagnosis should inform your guiding policy, and then your guiding policy should help you develop steps to accomplish your goal. These steps should be clear and concise, but they won’t always be easy. The difficult part of strategy is that it comes with tough choices, but you must have the discipline to see these steps through to the very end. 

Good Strategy vs. Bad Strategy

Before we explore the elements of good strategy vs. bad strategy, it’s essential to understand the difference between them. Where a good strategy honestly acknowledges challenges and offers ways to overcome them, a bad strategy overlooks problems and creates aimless ambitions. So now, let’s take a deeper dive.

At the heart of a good strategy are the following elements:

1. Leverage your strengths: A leader’s strategic leverage comes from their ability to anticipate predictions that point them in the right direction, pivot when small adjustments are necessary, and concentrate their efforts on fewer objectives to be more impactful.
2. Press your advantages: A promising strategy pinpoints a company’s strengths or advantages, and then presses those advantages in the market.
3. Look for internal weakness: Leaders can’t just focus on the competition’s weakness; they must also prioritize strengthening the weakest links within their own organizations.
4. Watch for inertia and entropy: Inertia and entropy can pose risks to a business. Be mindful of inertia (a company’s resistance to change) and entropy (how a company devolves into chaos if not properly managed). 
5. Narrow your focus: Don’t divide up attention into too many channels. Instead, focus on one or two critical issues and work on resolving those. 
6. Choose feasible objectives: Leaders must pick feasible goals if they hope to reach the larger goals they’ve set for their companies. Too much ambition could lead to failure.
7. Beware of chasing growth: Don’t strive for growth just for the sake of growth. This could lead to unhealthy growth that is forced rather than intentional.
8. Treat your strategy as a design: Strategy isn’t chosen; it’s constructed. A good strategy must be tightly designed to form a whole that will help bring about a leader’s success.
9. Anticipate change: A leader should constantly predict what changes could impact their industry and, as a result, their business, and look for opportunities in these changes to help drive their competitive advantage.

Now, let’s transition into bad strategy. Rumelt defines the four characteristics of bad strategy as follows:

1. Fluff: Many leaders use grandiose phrasing to create an illusion of high-level thinking. Don’t do this. Instead, be honest, and make it simple. 
2. Failure to face the challenge: If a leader cannot correctly define their organization’s challenges, they will not accurately address them.
3. Mistaking goals for strategy: Setting a goal to achieve is different from actually developing a strategy to overcome the obstacles that will help you achieve those goals.
4. Bad strategic objectives: Objectives are considered harmful when they fail to address critical challenges or when they’re just altogether impractical. 

Rumelt wrote his book to challenge leaders to look at things from a new perspective. He didn’t want to offer formulas for building a good strategy but, instead, wanted to impart logic behind what makes a strategy good or bad. I hope you found as much help in his words as I have from reading his book, which I cannot recommend enough.