Tony Hsieh Quotes

A bigger business is like a cruise ship: There are lots of amenities and you can go a lot further, but it's harder to turn quickly.

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

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

Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.

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

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

Your personal core values define who you are, and a company's core values ultimately define the company's character and brand. For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.

A great brand is a story that never stops unfolding.

Your culture is your brand.

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

To WOW, you must differentiate yourself, which means do something a little unconventional and innovative. You must do something that’s above and beyond what’s expected. And whatever you do must have an emotional impact on the receiver.

Whatever you're thinking, think bigger.

Open, honest communication is the best foundation for any relationship, but remember that at the end of the day it's not what you say or what you do, but how you make people feel that matters the most.

Most companies are very quick to hire and slow to fire, when really it should be the other way around.

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

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

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

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

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. Eating a baked potato after a swim meet made me happy. Pickles made me happy.

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

Learn by doing. Theory is nice, but nothing replaces actual experience.

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

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

Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn fast.

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.

Whatever you are thinking, think bigger.

To never forget that the most important thing in life is the quality of life we lead.

I think everyone should get a little exposure to computer science because it really forces you to think in a slightly different way, and it's a skill that you can apply in life in general, whether you end up in computer science or not.

I think the most important thing is just if you hire people whose personal values match the corporate core values - and not just the stated ones.

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.

Instead of getting an iPad, I now use my iPhone with a giant magnifying glass attached to my face.

Without conscious and deliberate effort, inertia always wins

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

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

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

Rather than focus on trying to get a lot of customers to market yourself, really focus more on the actual product or service itself and existing users to, like, what would make them happier, what would make them come back more and more times or in our case buy more often.

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

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?

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.

Ask yourself: would you be comfortable printing everything your employees, customers & partners have to say about your culture?

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 think maybe 50 years ago people and businesses felt like they had to choose between maximizing profits and making customers happy or making employees happy, and I think we're actually living in a special time where everyone's hyperconnected, whether through Twitter or blogs and so on. Information travels so quickly that it's actually possible to have it all, to make customers happy through customer service, to make employees happy through strong company cultures, and have that actually drive growth and profits.

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

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.

For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.

Money alone isn't enough to bring happiness... happiness is when you're actually truly ok with losing everything you have.

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

Success is getting to a point where you'd be truly OK with losing everything you have and starting over.

If I was going to go into an office I wanted it to be with people I would choose to be around even if we didn't have to work together and so that was one of the major reasons why I decided out of all the different companies we invested in to work with Zappos.

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