It sounds like a threat aimed at rivals. It is a note left on your own price list.

Bezos was describing what he saw when he looked at an incumbent. The fat in someone else's pricing was not their reward. It was his opening.

Now turn the sentence around.

Every business carries a line it would rather nobody examined.

The delivery fee that costs you a fraction of what you charge. The annual retainer that renews by itself because nobody at the client checks. The setup charge that stayed after setup got easy.

None of it feels like greed. It feels like the business paying you back at last.

Your customer does not see it that way. Neither does the founder two MRT stops away, building the same service with less overhead and a copy of your rate card.

Margin you earn by doing something hard is a moat. Margin you keep because nobody is looking is an invitation, addressed to whoever looks first.

The work is not to cut every price to the bone. It is to know which of your margins you could defend out loud, to a customer, across a table.

Those you keep. The rest you shrink yourself, or someone else shrinks for you, on their terms, with your clients.

So today: open your price sheet and circle the one line you would least like a customer to ask about. Write down what it costs you to deliver. Then decide, before Friday, whether you are cutting it or explaining it.

If you won't read that line closely, a competitor will.