All In Quotes

“Jeff Bezos strives to hire “missionaries” who are completely dedicated to providing customers with superior products and services. He contrasts them with “mercenaries” who work primarily to make money.”
― Robert Bruce Shaw, All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary

“study conducted by the recruiting firm Korn Ferry found that many people, while perhaps not obsessive, want to be challenged. The researchers examined why professionals leave their jobs and found a variety of reasons, with the most common being boredom. One-third of the respondents said they wanted to do something that would more fully challenge them.34 They would take the risk of moving to another job in hopes of doing work that would better utilize their skills and allow them to grow as professionals. This was more important than other motivators, including the desire to make more money. For them, being bored is worse than being underpaid”
― Robert Bruce Shaw, All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary

“Several factors are apparent in those with a strong sense of vocation, be it found or created. First, their calling is endlessly fascinating to them. They care about their work and can spend a vast amount of time on it, when others would become bored and move on to something else. They believe their “work is much more fun than fun.”17 Steve Jobs told college students in a now-famous commencement speech that “your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
― Robert Bruce Shaw, All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary

“He tells his colleagues that it is not the customers’ job to create something they don’t know they need. That’s Amazon’s job.”
― Robert Bruce Shaw, All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary

“Bezos told employees that they could count on Amazon’s customers, those who had embraced the company and the services it provided, to remain loyal—right up until someone else, be it a significant competitor or a small start-up, gave them more of what they wanted.”
― Robert Bruce Shaw, All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary

“In describing his existence, Seinfeld says, “A lot of the stuff I do is out of pure obsessiveness.”15”
― Robert Bruce Shaw, All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary

“Comedian Jerry Seinfeld performs over one hundred stand-up routines each year. Now over sixty-five years old, he doesn’t do it for financial reasons, since his net worth is an estimated $800 million. “I like money,” he says, “but it’s never been about the money.”14 Instead, Seinfeld spends the majority of his time writing jokes that work—which he shapes and reshapes to produce the most laughter. One of his peers commented that most comedians are lazy bastards, while Seinfeld is a dedicated craftsman. When at home, he goes to his office in New York City, sits alone, and for hours on end reworks jokes on a yellow legal pad. In some cases he will spend years thinking about and modifying a single joke—altering its flow, inserting or deleting a word, and changing the way he delivers it in front of an audience. His life is one of fine-tuning jokes, smoothing things out, and making one small fix after another.”
― Robert Bruce Shaw, All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary

“Obsession is more than pursuing a long-term goal—it is the singular focus and unrelenting drive needed to achieve an audacious undertaking.”
― Robert Bruce Shaw, All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary