Tony Hsieh Quotes

Problems are just mile markers. Each one we pass means we've gotten better.

The brand is just a lagging indicator of a company's culture.

The biggest (and hardest) lesson I've learned in life is that the external world is just a reflection of the world within.

The best businesses are really ones that can combine passion, profits, and purpose.

If you're focused on the friendship as its own reward, serendipitous stuff just happens. I know that sounds weird, but I can tell you for our 12 years of existence, it's actually how a lot of stuff happens.

Studies find top 3 most stressful moments in people's lives: death, divorce, and properly pronouncing "Worcestershire sauce."

Don't play games that you don't understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.

Envision, create, and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you.

We decided that if we get the culture right, most of the stuff, like building a brand around delivering the very best customer service, will just take care of itself.

Our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff, like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand or empowering passionate employees and customers, will happen on its own.

Whatever you're thinking, think bigger.

For me, my role is about unleashing what people already have inside them that is maybe suppressed in most work environments.

Your brand is your culture.

Things are never as bad or as good as they seem.

Potential to increase the lifetime value of the customer. Usually marketing departments assume that the lifetime value of a customer is fixed when doing their ROI calculations. We view the lifetime value of a customer to be a moving target that can increase if we can create more and more positive emotional associations with our brand through every interaction that a person has with us. Another common trap that many marketers fall into is focusing too much on trying to figure out how to generate a lot of buzz, when really they should be focused on building engagement and trust. I can tell you that my mom has zero buzz, but when she says something, I listen. To that end, most of our efforts on the customer service and customer experience side actually happen after we've already made the sale and taken a customer's credit card number.

Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can't deliver good service from unhappy employees.

Get the culture right, and everything else just falls into place.

Just figure out what your personal values are then just make those the corporate values.

Most innovation comes from outside your industry applied to your own

Our customers call and e-mail us to say that's how it feels when a Zappos box arrives. And that's how we view this company.

I'd rather spend money on things that improve the customer experience than on marketing.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached the summit just as the sun was rising. I couldn't believe that we had actually done it. We were standing at the highest point in all of Africa, looking down at the clouds below us, with the sun directly in front of us, its rays welcoming us to the beginning of a new day. It didn't seem like this was something that humans were meant to experience, yet here we were

Sorry, investing was pretty boring and I really missed being part of building something. I felt like I was always standing on the sidelines, so Zappos ... really liked the people there and got involved full-time and I've been full-time ever since.

It doesn't cost anything to say hi when you pass someone else in the hallway, whereas, most corporations if you pass you avoid eye contact.

If there are too many competitors, even if you're the best it's a lot harder to win.

I thought about how easily we are all brainwashed by our society and culture to stop thinking and just assume by default that more money equals more success and more happiness, when ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life.

I view my role more as trying to set up an environment where the personalities, creativity and individuality of all the different employees come out and can shine.

Be true to yourself. If you follow that principle, a lot of decisions are actually pretty easy.

Don't be cocky. Don't be flashy. There's always someone better than you.

My advice is to stop trying to "network" in the traditional business sense, and instead just try to build up the number and depth of your friendships, where the friendship itself is its own reward. The more diverse your set of friendships are, the more likely you'll derive both personal and business benefits from your friendship later down the road. You won't know exactly what those benefits will be, but if your friendships are genuine, those benefits will magically appear 2-3 years later down the road.

I think when people say they dread going into work on Monday morning, it's because they know they are leaving a piece of themselves at home. Why not see what happens when you challenge your employees to bring all of their talents to their job and reward them not for doing it just like everyone else, but for pushing the envelope, being adventurous, creative, and open-minded, and trying new things?

Business is all about learning to balance the short-term, medium-term and long-term and I think it's when things are going well it covers up a lot of mistakes and bad decisions because you're growing so quickly ...

At Zappos, one of our core values is to Pursue Growth and Learning. In the lobby of our headquarters, we have a giving library where we give away books to employees and visitors that we think will help with their growth, both personally and professionally. I can't wait to add The Compound Effect to our library.

when a customer calls looking for a specific style of shoes in a specific size that we're out of stock on. In those instances, every rep is trained to research at least three competitors' Web sites, and if the shoe is found in stock to direct the customer to the competitor. Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we're not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we're trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time.

The best leaders are servant leaders - they serve those they lead.

Whatever you are thinking, think bigger.

SEO expertise is a core need for today's online businesses.

If someone is self-aware, then they can always continue to grow. If they're not self-aware, I think it's harder for them to evolve or adapt beyond who they already are.

I believe that there's something interesting about anyone and everyone - you just have to figure out what that something is.

The combination of physical synchrony with other humans and being part of something bigger than oneself (and thus losing momentarily a sense of self) leads to a greater sense of happiness.

First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - GANDHI

If you're worried about putting food on the table or putting a roof over your head, that stress is definitely will contribute to unhappiness, but once you have your basic needs met then incremental money.

I had decided to stop chasing the money, and start chasing the passion.

Never accept or be too comfortable with the status quo, because the companies that get into trouble are historically the ones that aren't able to adapt to change and respond quickly enough.

I made a list of the happiest periods in my life, and I realized that none of them involved money. I realized that building stuff and being creative and inventive made me happy. connecting with a friend and talking through the entire night until the sun rose made me happy. Trick-or-treating in middle school with a group of my closest friends made me happy. Pickles made me happy.

Customer service shouldn't just be A department, it should be the entire company.

Every employee can affect your company's brand, not just the front-line employees that are paid to talk to your customers.

The ultimate definition of success is: you could lose everything that you have and truly be okay with it. Your happiness isn't based on external factors.

Help shape the stories that people are telling about you.

Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships), and vision/meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself).

For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn fast.

Your culture is your brand.

For example, for most of our loyal repeat customers, we do surprise upgrades to overnight shipping, even though we only promise them standard ground shipping when they choose the free shipping option. In conjunction with that, we run our warehouse 24/7, which actually isn't the most efficient way to run a warehouse. The most efficient way to run a warehouse is to let the orders pile up, so that when a warehouse worker needs to walk around the warehouse to pick the orders, the picking density is higher, so the picker has less of a distance to walk. But we're not trying to maximize for picking efficiency. We're trying to maximize the customer experience, which in the e-commerce business is defined in part by getting orders out to our customers as quickly as possible. The combination of a 24/7 warehouse, surprise upgrades to overnight shipping, and having our warehouse located just fifteen

There's a big difference between motivation and inspiration: Inspire through values and motivation takes care of itself.

Twitter is like hugging. Just because it's hard to measure the return on investment doesn't mean there isn't value there.

Have fun. The game is a lot more enjoyable when you're trying to do more than just make money.

What's the best way to build a brand for the long term? In a word: culture.

Good businesses generate missions to drive their profits. Great businesses generate profits to drive their missions.

We already treat our vendors well, but we can build up our reputation within the vendor community even more by really treating our vendors as true partners in the business. Most vendors aren't happy dealing with most retailers because the retailers, especially the department stores, usually try to squeeze every last dollar out of them. We could be the first major retailer that doesn't try to do that.

Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.

Someone broke into my car last night. Nothing worth taking, car is actually less of a mess now. I should schedule this monthly.

It's more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long difficult words but rather short easy words like What about lunch?" - Winnie-the-Pooh

Continual Learning Educate yourself. Read books and learn from others who have done it before. Learn by doing. Theory is nice, but nothing replaces actual experience. Learn by surrounding yourself with talented players. Just because you win a hand doesn't mean you're good and you don't have more learning to do. You might have just gotten lucky. Don't be afraid to ask for advice.

Inspire other communities and cities to reinvent themselves.