--- title: This Is the Book That Helped Make Jeff Bezos the World’s Richest Man description: One of Jeff Bezos' favorite books is "Good to Great," by Jim Collins. It helped make Amazon a success, and made Jeff Bezos a billionaire. authors: - name: Martha C. White role: Writer url: https://money.com/author/martha-c-white/ education: BA, English, Princeton University at_money_since: 2015 articles: 350 covers: - Business - Banking - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Federal Reserve Rate Cuts - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology published: '2019-05-23T17:52:54.000Z' modified: '2024-05-17T04:06:48.000Z' section: Business tags: - Amazon - Billionaires - Jeff Bezos word_count: 624 canonical: https://money.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-success-book/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos Makes Announcement At Satellite 2019 Conference In DC](https://img.money.com/2019/05/jeff-bezos-favorite-book-2019-1148070239.jpg) *Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of Blue Origin, introduces a new lunar landing module called Blue Moon in Washington, D.C.* By the end of last year, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had [amassed a fortune](https://money.com/jeff-bezos-net-worth-amazon-2018/) estimated at around $132 billion. Even after the tabloid scandal that prompted his divorce earlier this year, Bezos still held onto an [estimated $109 billion](https://money.com/mackenzie-bezos-net-worth-divorce-richest-woman/) worth of Amazon stock — along with the title of the world's richest man. These eye-popping numbers make it easy to forget that Jeff Bezos's net worth wasn’t always astronomical. As an internet and e-commerce pioneer, Amazon had some home run ideas, sure, but there were also plenty of foul balls and some projects that were simply a swing and a miss (remember the Amazon [Fire Phone](https://money.com/amazon-fire-phone-deals-discounts-promotions/) fail?). Just how did Jeff Bezos cope with failures and come up with the winning ideas that helped make Amazon an enormous success — and make himself incredibly rich in the process? In a [new Vox podcast](https://www.vox.com/recode-podcasts/2019/5/17/18628388/jim-collins-good-great-turning-flywheel-book-jeff-bezos-amazon-kara-swisher-decode-podcast-interview) with Kara Swisher of Recode, former Stanford professor Jim Collins, the author of business books including [*Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t*](https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996), recalled a phone call he got from Bezos back in 2001 that changed the trajectory of Amazon, which was then a four-year-old company. At the time, Amazon was struggling in the wake of the dot-com bust and hadn’t yet turned a profit. Collins recounted to Swisher how he visited the Amazon campus and talked with Bezos and the other executives about a core idea of his book: Viewing business growth and success as a giant flywheel. The idea, he explained in the podcast, is that all of a company’s activities should be dedicated to creating and building momentum. “It’s not a list of things you want to do drawn as a circle, it’s an inevitable, ‘building A will drive B,’” he said. “The key is the causal linkage.” ![](https://img.money.com/2019/05/good-to-great.jpg) [*Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t*](https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996) gave Bezos and his team the road map for a strategic shift in what they needed to do to put that proverbial flywheel in motion. And it worked; they made the leap. Amazon turned its first profit in the last quarter of 2001, and it’s arguable that a big reason for the company’s meteoric rise has been its focus on sustainable growth for the long haul over short-term profits — in other words, keeping and honing their focus on what Collins called the "inexorable logic" that propels success. “If you can get the compounding momentum of your flywheel in a world that wants you to do something quick and overnight, it’s an enormously powerful thing,” Collins said. ![](https://img.money.com/2019/05/the-everything-store.jpg) It’s well-known that Jeff Bezos is a fan of this book. In the 2013 book about Amazon, [*The Everything Store*](https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0316219266/), author Brad Stone included a roundup of a dozen books Bezos found influential. As might be expected, “Jeff’s Reading List” is heavy on business and management books like *Good to Great*, though it also includes some unexpected titles, like Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel [*The Remains of the Day*](https://www.amazon.com/The-Remains-Day-Kazuo-Ishiguro/dp/0679731725). It should come as no surprise that Bezos (like fellow billionaire entrepreneur Bill Gates) is a voracious reader; after all, Amazon did start out life as an online bookstore. But the lesson he took away from *Good to Great* arguably had the greatest impact on his success. ![](https://img.money.com/2019/05/turning-the-flywheel.jpg) Budding entrepreneurs, take note. If you aspire to emulate Bezos and want to learn more about the flywheel principles, Collins just wrote a companion piece, [*Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great*](https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Flywheel-Monograph-Accompany-Great/dp/0062933795/), that goes into more detail about the underpinnings and real-life applications of this concept, which helped make Amazon what it is today, and helped make Jeff Bezos the world's richest man. *We’ve included affiliate links into this article.* [*Click here*](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/) *to learn what those are.* ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-success-book/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Business", "item": "https://money.com/business/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Entrepreneurship", "item": "https://money.com/entrepreneurship/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "This Is the Book That Helped Make Jeff Bezos the World’s Richest Man" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-success-book/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-success-book/", "name": "This Is the Book That Helped Make Jeff Bezos the World’s Richest Man", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2019-05-23T17:52:54.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-success-book/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-success-book/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-05-17T04:06:48.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "This Is the Book That Helped Make Jeff Bezos the World’s Richest Man", "articleSection": "Business", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2019/05/jeff-bezos-favorite-book-2019-1148070239.jpg", "width": 1270, "height": 948, "caption": "Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos Makes Announcement At Satellite 2019 Conference In DC" }, { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2019/05/good-to-great.jpg", "width": 800, "height": 835 }, { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2019/05/the-everything-store.jpg", "width": 280, "height": 433 }, { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2019/05/turning-the-flywheel.jpg", "width": 800, "height": 863 } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Martha C. 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