Lauren Sánchez says that living with Jeff Bezos is like having a “master class” in business advice every day.
Sánchez told The Wall Street Journal in her first solo interview since it was revealed she was involved in a romantic relationship with the Amazon founder that he gives her tips on everything from management to scheduling meetings.
Sánchez is a former news anchor who founded the first female-owned aerial film and production company, Black Ops Aviation. She is also a licensed pilotand has become involved in Bezos’ philanthropy efforts.
Sánchez said that the best business advice Bezos has given her was to avoid talking too soon in meetings.
“I hold a lot of meetings and I would talk first in a meeting and he goes, ‘No, no, no. You’re the boss. You talk last. You let everyone else talk so that they don’t get swayed by your opinion,'” Sánchez told the publication.
Bezos’ business advice echoes the sentiments of experts. Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of management at the University of Chicago, previously told Insider that the best way to create a ” psychologically safe” — and therefore successful workplace — is to listen to everyone’s views before the manager speaks their opinion.
“The best practice is if the person expressing dissent is unaware they are expressing dissent,” Fishbach said.
Sánchez said that Bezos has advised her to keep her meetings short — under an hour if possible. He also told her to have the person running the meeting write a document outlining the plan for the discussion and tell them to keep it under six pages.
Some of the most powerful people in the business world have offered similar advice in the past. In 2018, Elon Musk told Tesla staff to get rid of frequent meetings and if they had to set up a meeting to keep it short. The Tesla CEO said “excessive meetings are the blight of big companies.”
Sánchez’s relationship with Bezos was outed by several tabloids in 2019. At the time, Sánchez was still married to her former spouse, Patrick Whitesell, the executive chairman at William Morris Endeavor, and Bezos had just announced a split from then-wife MacKenzie Scott hours before the news was revealed.
Sánchez touched on her relationship with the billionaire at several points in the interview, calling him “goofy” and detailing their Sunday morning routine.
“He’s so happy, he inspires me every day, he makes me a better person every day; he’s the most loving human I know,” she told the publication.