Tony Hsieh Quotes - Page 2

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

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

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.

Most innovation comes from outside your industry applied to your own

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.

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

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.

Without conscious and deliberate effort, inertia always wins

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.

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

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

You've gotta love the game. To become really good, you need to live it and sleep it.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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).

The problem when someone feels burned out, bored, unchallenged, or stifled by their work is not the job itself but rather the environment and playground rules given to them to do the job at hand.

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

Zappos uses call center technology to track average call time per agent. But the goal isn't to reduce this average - it's more important that we make an emotional connection with the customer, rather than just quickly getting them off the phone.

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

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.

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.

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