PDF Summary:The Bezos Blueprint, by Carmine Gallo

In The Bezos Blueprint, business communication expert Carmine Gallo explains how to improve your communication by internalizing the principles that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos uses in his writing and speaking. Gallo says that if you follow Bezos’s communication “blueprint,” you’ll set yourself apart from your competition, pitch your ideas more effectively, and inspire others to follow your lead.

Gallo analyzes decades’ worth of Bezos’s shareholder letters, speeches, emails, and other communications to derive a set of principles that anyone can use to become a more effective communicator. These principles include surprising insights such as why you should start a project with a press release and why Bezos banned Powerpoint in favor of storytelling. In our guide, we’ll explain each principle and show you how to implement it in your own writing and speaking. Along the way, we’ll expand on these principles by comparing them to advice from other business and communication experts.

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Gallo explains that at Amazon, proposals for new products, services, and other ideas take this mock press release form. This approach forces presenters to focus on the ultimate vision and make it compelling. Instead of pitching a project with research and data, starting with the press release forces you to think about your ultimate takeaway point and why it matters to the average person. Once that vision is clear, you can work backward to figure out what you need to do to get there.

Gallo identifies two benefits to this approach:

• It forces you to think through and refine your ideas. You’ll have to be absolutely clear about what your finished idea will look like, how it’ll work, and who’ll care about it. Sloppy or incomplete thought will be obvious.
• Because a press release aims at selling the new idea to the general public, it’ll make your pitch as simple and compelling as possible—which raises your chances of convincing executives, investors, or partners to get on board.

Don’t Stifle Innovation by Aiming For a Press Release Too Early

While starting with the press release can be a powerful tool because it forces you to think about your end goal early on, some experts warn that focusing on an end goal too early can stifle innovation.

For example, Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues in Antifragile that most of the world’s greatest inventions have come from tinkering—experimentation without a specific outcome in mind—and many discoveries have come from mistakes and happy accidents. However, Taleb says, many investors (especially government investors) only fund research aimed at specific, predefined goals. This practice eliminates tinkering and, Taleb says, greatly reduces the chances of progress.

That’s not to say that mock press releases inherently quash innovation. Instead, Taleb’s insight suggests the importance of giving your innovators the time and resources to tinker without an end goal or a big picture in mind. Once they have an idea they’re ready to pitch, then they can apply the press release strategy to refine the idea and articulate its benefits so as to best position it to investors and others.

Principle #3: Tell Stories

One way to simplify complex ideas and explain why they matter is to tell a story about them. According to Gallo, Bezos is a natural storyteller with an intuitive grasp of how to use narrative to get an idea across to his audience. In this section, we’ll explore Bezos’s narrative techniques and explain how to use storytelling to make complex ideas relatable.

(Shortform note: Storytelling is a powerful way to communicate in part because the human brain is designed to connect ideas using the same cause-and-effect logic that powers stories. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman points out that the brain makes causal connections automatically—in fact, we make these connections even when they aren’t warranted, leading to mistakes in what’s known as the narrative fallacy.)

Make Complex Ideas Concrete

Complex ideas are often abstract, and abstract ideas are hard to understand. Therefore, one of your goals in communicating simply about complex things is to make the abstract concrete. According to Gallo, Bezos demonstrates several ways to do so.

Use Metaphors

Gallo says that Bezos excels at condensing complex ideas into vivid metaphors. For instance, after reading The Mythical Man-Month, Bezos wanted to share one of its basic insights: The larger the team, the more time and effort it takes for team members to communicate with each other and actually get their work done. Instead of explaining the theory or the mathematical formula that describes this phenomenon, Bezos crafted a simple metaphor: “We try to create teams that are no larger than can be fed by two pizzas.”

Bezos’s Two-Pizza Metaphor Worked on Multiple Levels

Frederick Brooks wrote The Mythical Man-Month as a guide for teams working on complex projects, and the mathematical formula in the book that Bezos referenced found that when more people are involved in a project, opportunities for miscommunication multiply exponentially. This was the problem Bezos was trying to prevent with his two-pizza rule.

But Bezos’s metaphor was more than just a way to simplify the rule: It also conveyed an emotion. In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins points out that when crafting metaphors, you should pay attention not just to the literal meaning you’re trying to express, but also to the layers of additional meaning the metaphor implies. For example, Bezos’s “two-pizza teams” gives a rough guideline as to the ideal maximum size of a team, but it also conjures up images of a friendly, casual work environment and long hours spent on hard but fulfilling work. Different metaphors—say, “passenger van teams”—might describe a similar team size but lack the implications that made two-pizza teams so apt for Bezos’s purposes.)

Use Data Sparingly, and Illustrate It

Gallo warns that it’s especially important to find meaningful ways to explain data. Start by narrowing down which data you highlight: Too much data quickly confuses audiences, so focus only on the most important fact or two. Then, help your audience understand the data by placing it in context and giving them a concrete reference such as a physical comparison that makes it easier to imagine what a number really means. For example, Bezos once described Amazon’s book selection by saying that it “would now occupy 6 football fields.”

Not only does this comparison ground Amazon’s book inventory in the real world, but it also opens the door for you to tell a story about the number—a story, perhaps, about why Amazon’s superior selection is good news for customers.

(Shortform note: Some experts warn that while it’s important that you interpret numbers for your audience, you should take care not to misinterpret the information you’re presenting. In How to Lie With Statistics, Darrell Huff explains that just because your data is accurate doesn’t mean it’s directly related to what you’re claiming to prove. For example, if you wanted to convince your audience that Amazon’s stock price is about to rise, citing its large book inventory might impress (and mislead) your audience, but it wouldn’t prove the point.)

Make Your Message Into a Narrative

Another way to engage your audience through storytelling is to structure your message as a narrative. According to Gallo, many of Bezos’s communications follow a three-act narrative structure.

(Shortform note: The three-act structure (which Syd Field popularized in his book Screenplay) is one of several options for structuring your story. Some models are more complex, like the five-part Freytag’s Pyramid, which divides narratives into setup, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Others are simpler, like Aristotle’s two-part model of complication and resolution. But what all these models have in common—and what you need to make your message into a narrative—is a deliberately crafted story arc.)

The three-act structure is made up of the following parts:

Act 1) Setup: The storyteller sets the scene, introduces the key characters, and establishes the world. At some point, an inciting incident kicks the main character into action by giving her a problem to solve or a goal to achieve. For example, Gallo says, when Bezos tells the story of Amazon, he begins by talking about his parents and grandparents, who taught him the lessons he’d use later in life (setup). He then describes the moment when he had the idea for a massive online bookstore (inciting incident).

Act 2) Challenges: The main character encounters obstacles and setbacks on the way to her goal. These challenges force the main character to grow and change. For example, after launching Amazon, Bezos faced challenges ranging from the need to mail packages himself to the dot-com collapse that tanked the company’s stock price and put its future in doubt.

Act 3) Resolution: The main character overcomes the obstacles and achieves her goal. In the process, she improves herself and the world, as when, Bezos says, Amazon overcame its obstacles and became one of the world’s top companies by continuing to put customers first (resolution).

Sell Your Ideas Using Stories

In Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller provides a more detailed seven-part story outline that he designed as a sales device. But his outline isn’t just for selling products—you can also use it to sell ideas or to motivate, influence, or persuade. Here’s how:

• Show the audience that they want something they don’t yet have (Gallo’s Act 1: Setup.

• Point out an obstacle standing between the audience and the thing they want (this and the next four steps are elaborations on Gallo’s Act 2: Challenges).

• Frame yourself as a mentor who can guide them past the obstacle.

• Explain how you (or your idea or product) can solve the audience’s problem.

• Tell the audience what next step they should take.

• Point out the risks of not acting.

• Preview the happy ending the audience can expect if they take the action you recommend (Gallo’s Act 3: Resolution).

Note that in Miller’s approach, the audience is the hero of the story and you’re merely a helper. This makes the audience the center of attention, forcing you to explain why your message matters to them and how it will make a positive difference in their lives. This may not always be the best approach, especially when you’re not directly selling something. For instance, the story Gallo mentions above makes Bezos and Amazon the heroes—a choice potentially designed to generate goodwill given that the story in question was the core of Bezos’s testimony before a US Congress antitrust committee.

Abandon Powerpoint

To reap the benefits of narrative communication during presentations and meetings, Gallo suggests that you avoid using Powerpoint. He explains that Bezos banned Powerpoint presentations—collections of slides filled with bullet points, fragmented sentences, and isolated pieces of data—at Amazon, insisting that anyone presenting information at a meeting do so instead with short memos structured like narratives. Gallo explains that the typical slide is too detailed, too complex, and too hard to read, which allows presenters to get away with weak connections, poor organization, and insufficient explanations of the key ideas. It also causes listeners to disengage and not pay proper attention.

By contrast, turning your ideas into a story (instead of a slideshow) forces you to think about what’s important, why, and how best to convey the implications of your ideas. It also helps listeners to pay better attention and more effectively absorb your messages.

(Shortform note: Although Bezos might oppose slides, Gallo himself points out that they can have their uses. In Talk Like TED, he suggests Powerpoint slides as a way to strengthen your presentation by engaging your audience’s senses (in this case, sight). If you do opt for a slideshow, experts recommend that you keep your slides simple and concise, incorporate images and visual aids, and keep the focus on yourself and the story you’re telling. By keeping the focus on yourself and your message, you’ll avoid the pitfalls Gallo warns about—you’ll be sure to make strong connections and explanations, and you’ll better engage your audience.)

Principle #4: Repeat and Refine Your Message

Although keeping it simple, getting to the point, and communicating in stories will take you a long way, Gallo writes that to master communication, you must continue to work at it. This involves repeating your purpose—to the point of obsession—and practicing your skills. In this section, we’ll discuss how to find and promote your purpose and how to hone your communication skills so that you can better pursue that purpose.

The Importance of Purpose

Gallo argues that good leaders have a clear purpose that informs everything they do. For Bezos, he says, that purpose is serving customers. As we’ve seen, this purpose infuses Bezos’s communication—not only does he constantly talk about his customers, his communication principles are designed to make his ideas as clear as possible to a general audience.

Why and How Your Organization Does What It Does

In Start With Why, Simon Sinek agrees that your why (his term for what Gallo calls purpose) is the most important part of your organization. In fact, he goes even further by arguing that what your organization does is actually the least important thing about it. Sinek describes an organization as three concentric circles:

• The innermost circle is your purpose or mission—your why. This is the core of your organization and the reason for its existence. As Gallo points out, for Amazon, the why is the customer.

• The next circle is how your organization pursues its mission. For example, Amazon follows its mission of serving the customer by providing a superior retail experience that saves customers time and money.

• The outermost circle is what your organization does. For Amazon, the what includes offering a huge inventory, finding ways to streamline online and in-person retail, and developing original technologies and media that people will enjoy.

Find Your Purpose

Gallo argues that your purpose is whatever drives you—he describes it as something that you can’t help working on and thinking about. He also suggests that a purpose should provide some kind of benefit to the world. He argues that you don’t have to go looking for your purpose, but that it will find you in time.

(Shortform note: While Gallo suggests that your purpose will find you on its own by emerging from your natural passions, Sinek argues that many people might not find their purpose unless they take active steps to uncover it. In Find Your Why, he suggests that you start by thinking of a set of stories that define who you are. Then, share those stories with a partner and have them take notes on the main themes and recurring concepts—these will form the core of your purpose statement. According to Sinek, only once you’ve done this work to discover your purpose and put it into words can you take steps to live and work in accordance with your purpose.)

Repeat Your Purpose

Once you know your purpose, take the time to state it in a way that’s as short, simple, understandable, and relatable as possible. Gallo describes your purpose as a mantra—it should be easy to repeat and easy to remember. He gives Amazon’s purpose statement as an example: Their mission is to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company.”

(Shortform note: Whereas Gallo recommends condensing your purpose or mission statement as much as possible, in First Things First, Stephen Covey offers a different perspective. Covey sees a mission statement as a form of personal expression and argues that it can be several sentences or even several pages depending on the individual. He also argues that your purpose should go beyond your business by unifying your personal, professional, family, and community roles. Amazon’s four-word statement falls far short of this outline, and yet a reader might still infer its goals of, at the very least, professional and community roles, in its desire to place customers at the center of its vision.)

Gallo recommends repeating your purpose relentlessly throughout all of your communication and points out that Bezos mentions customers almost obsessively. He suggests using language to frame and highlight your purpose—for example, you could say something like “The one thing you need to know about our organization is…”

(Shortform note: Using words and phrases to guide the reader through your text and emphasize important passages is known as signposting, and it’s a useful technique beyond just communicating your purpose. Signposting calls attention to the logical connections and hierarchies that organize your ideas and thereby aids in communicating complex information simply and clearly.

One of your goals in repeating your purpose is to instill it throughout your organization. Members of your organization should internalize it and act in accordance with it at all times. Likewise, the wider world should come to associate your organization with your purpose.

(Shortform note: In addition to repeating your purpose, there are a few other steps you can take to infuse your purpose throughout your organization. For example, in The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, Patrick Lencioni argues that businesses should base hirings, firings, and performance reviews on how well candidates and employees align with the company’s purpose and values.)

Keep Growing Your Skills

Although Gallo suggests that Bezos is a naturally gifted communicator, he also points out that Bezos didn’t start off as skilled as he is now—instead, he honed his skills through years of experience and practice. For example, Gallo compares Bezos’s earlier shareholder letters to his later ones and finds that the later work is simpler and clearer. Similarly, he analyzes three Bezos speeches ranging from 1998 to 2019 to show how Bezos polished his message (from rambling to concise) and his delivery (from fumbling to confident) over the years.

Gallo argues that anyone can similarly improve their communication skills, and he suggests several ways you can learn from Bezos’s behaviors to improve your own communication, for both writing and public speaking.

(Shortform note: It’s easy to think that some people (like Bezos) are just naturally good at writing and speaking while other people aren’t. However, in Mindset, Carol S. Dweck warns that this belief, which she calls a fixed mindset, can limit your growth by causing you to give up instead of putting in the hard work needed to hone your craft—after all, why work hard when you believe you can’t improve? On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you’ll view your natural abilities as a starting point and seek ways to get better—such as by emulating people more advanced than you as Gallo recommends. Bezos’s evolving shareholder letters and speeches indicate he has a growth mindset, which has paved the way for his continued improvement.)

Read Widely

Gallo argues that the fastest way to become a better writer is to read as much as you can. He notes that reading widely will help you not only to become a better writer but also a better leader, and he lists several reasons behind this.

Reading allows you to experience different situations and perspectives, and to see how other people (real or fictional) have dealt with problems you might also face.

(Shortform note: Neuroscience research corroborates this benefit in a surprisingly literal way: Studies have shown that words with strong scent associations activate the parts of your brain that process smell. So in a sense, when you read a story, you actually experience whatever you’re reading about.

Reading equips you with facts and stories that might inform or illustrate your ideas later.

(Shortform note: In Talk Like TED, Gallo points out that what you learn from your reading can improve your public speaking, too: Listeners want to hear something new, and the more widely you read, the more likely you are to come across an interesting anecdote that’s not widely known.

Reading shows you different ways to organize and express thoughts—critical skills for crafting a compelling narrative.

(Shortform note: Similarly, reading can improve your persuasive and critical thinking skills by teaching you to dissect the rhetoric that other people use to make their cases.)

Gallo recommends that to get the most out of your reading, you should take notes and discuss your reading with others.

(Shortform note: Gallo’s advice essentially recommends that you go beyond passively consuming a text and instead actively interact with its messages. Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren have similar advice in How to Read a Book, where they propose that to gain a full understanding of a subject, you use a process of “syntopical,” or comparative reading. This involves compiling a bibliography on a topic, reading the most relevant passages in each book, taking notes that rephrase each author’s arguments in a common set of terms, and getting a sense of how each author answers the major questions about the topic—thereby interacting with the text as Gallo advises.)

Practice Your Presentations

Likewise, Gallo offers several pieces of advice for improving your presentation skills:

• Learn your natural strengths and emphasize them. Do you have a good sense of humor? A strong, dynamic voice? An ability to express ideas clearly and simply? A gift for compelling metaphors and comparisons? Make the most of whatever natural gifts you have.
• Craft a gripping message that’s simple, gets to the point, and tells a story. The better your message, the less you have to rely on your natural skills to make your presentation compelling.
• Present regularly, and rehearse your presentations to get more comfortable and refine your delivery.
• Record yourself on video to get a sense of your strengths and weaknesses from the audience’s perspective. Watching the recording will help you catch issues like too many filler words (“um,” “like,” “y’know”) and hard-to-read slides.

(Shortform note: Fear of public speaking is incredibly common, and if you want to become a better presenter, odds are you’ll have to deal with that fear. Experts recommend that you tackle the fear proactively by getting comfortable with your emotions, learning how to release excess anxiety, and visualizing what it will be like to stand in front of an audience. Gallo’s recommendations that you lean into your natural strengths, craft a compelling message, and rehearse can be seen, then, not only as methods to improve your skills but also as ways to reassure yourself of your skills and thus allay your fears—which, in turn, will improve your skills.)