Jeff Bezos Took 60 Meetings to Raise Amazon's First $1 Million—Now Worth $361 Billion, He Says Stress Fades When You 'Take the First Step'
Key Takeaways
- •Jeff Bezos said in 2017 that stress usually stems from inaction and disappears once a person takes the first step toward addressing the problem.
- •Bezos, whose net worth stands at $361 billion, launched Amazon from a rented garage and attended 60 meetings to raise his first $1 million in seed capital in the mid-1990s.
- •Bezos recommends recruiting friends or allies to tackle problems together, an approach he says can transform stressful situations into enjoyable ones.
- •Amazon's 16 leadership principles, including customer obsession, ownership, and invent and simplify, are used in hiring and decision-making across the company, with CEO Andy Jassy noting they require constant practice.
- •Other executives manage stress differently: Laxman Narasimhan relies on meditation, exercise, and protected family time, Damola Adamolekun practices emotional control, and Satya Nadella promotes open communication and flexible workplace policies to prevent burnout.
When life feels chaotic, procrastinating or ignoring mounting problems often seems like the easier path. But Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest and most successful people in the world, argues that avoidance is not the real cure for anxiety and stress. Coming from the leader of a company whose workforce exceeds 1.5 million people worldwide, his advice lands amid an increasingly open corporate conversation about burnout and work-life balance.
"I find if I'm stressed about something it's usually because I'm not doing anything about it," Bezos said in 2017 during a visit to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. "I'm listening to my body as a signal that something is wrong, and I find that the stress goes away the second I take the first step."
Bezos, who now has a net worth of $361 billion and ranks as the world's second-richest man, built what is today the No. 1 company on the Fortune 500. The road was hardly smooth: he started Amazon in a rented garage and had to sit through 60 meetings to raise the first $1 million in seed capital for his nascent company in the mid-1990s. The startup he was pitching then began as an online bookstore and has since grown into a business spanning e-commerce, cloud computing, and logistics.
Rather than letting that pressure overwhelm, Bezos treats anxiety as fuel for motivation.
"If I'm stressed about something, I'm trying to figure out why [I am] stressed," he said. "I'm listening to my body as a signal."
To handle stressful situations, Bezos recommends talking to others and finding allies to problem-solve with—an approach he says can transform an anxiety-inducing situation into one that is actually "fun."
"If you can find friends who are interested in similar things or want to help you solve a problem, problem-solving is inspiring for me all by itself," he added. "There's nothing more fun than getting in a room with a group of inventors and saying: 'Look, here's the problem. Let's invent a solution to it.' And as soon as you start doing that, I find that it turns from something that might create stress into something that creates fun."
For problem-solving at scale, Amazon's most prominent leaders can also turn to Bezos' 16 leadership principles for guidance. Principles such as "customer obsession," "ownership," and "invent and simplify" are published on the company's corporate site and are used in hiring and decision-making across the organization.
"The leadership principles are something you have to constantly work at," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in the company's Leadership Principles Explained video series. "When they're applied well, they're powerful."
How Other CEOs Handle Stress
While Bezos says his key to handling stress is simply pushing through, other chief executives take a variety of approaches to combat anxiety—a topic that has moved from private struggle to public talking point in recent executive commentary.
Former Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan, for example, told Fortune in a 2023 interview that he relies on three nonnegotiables to beat burnout: daily meditation, regular exercise, and protected family time. "I'm very disciplined about balance," said Narasimhan, who now serves on the boards of the Brookings Institution and Verizon.
Red Lobster CEO Damola Adamolekun, meanwhile, practices emotional control to make sure his team never sees him stressed, he told Business Insider. "Practicing emotional control means taking a moment to pause, assess the situation, and respond thoughtfully, rather than reacting impulsively," said the 37-year-old CEO. "When you model emotional control, you create a stable environment where your team feels supported and motivated, even in the face of adversity."
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella takes an approach somewhat similar to Bezos in that he confronts adversity head-on. That means facilitating open communication and building flexibility into workplace policies so employees do not burn out—which in turn reduces his own leadership stress.
"The notion of having work-life harmony in a highly competitive economy is a first-class topic," Nadella once said. "The key is to make sure you're engaging in a dialogue with your employees. There also needs to be flexibility in all the [workplace] policies that someone like me sets and propagates. You cannot have people burn out. It's bad for your company, and it's bad for society."
For readers who want to go deeper, Amazon's full list of 16 leadership principles is published on its corporate website, alongside Jassy's comments in the Leadership Principles Explained series.
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on July 26, 2026.
