Bezos Has Said He Tells Amazon Employees To ‘Wake Up Terrified Every Morning.’ Here’s Why [Video]

A good manager always finds ways to motivate employees, but according to one claim circulating online, Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos had a rather unorthodox method for doing so. The claim alleged that Bezos once said he tells his employees to “wake up terrified every morning.”

One video shared on TikTok (archived) in late 2024 featured an excerpt from an interview with Martha Beck, a self-described “bestselling author, coach and speaker,” from an episode of the podcast “The Diary of a CEO.” In the clip, Beck said: 

I was amazed to find that Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, says in his quarterly reports and loves to say, in many settings, that he tells all of the thousands of Amazon employees who work under him… he wants them all to wake up terrified every morning. And that’s the word he uses: terrified. And to stay terrified all day, …