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.
Good businesses generate missions to drive their profits. Great businesses generate profits to drive their missions.
Zappos is a customer service company that just happens to sell shoes.
Every employee can affect your company's brand, not just the front-line employees that are paid to talk to your customers.
Inspire other communities and cities to reinvent themselves.
A lot of people realize "I don't have to work in this job that I'm miserable at every year, or every day, and I don't have to live in, for example, New York City where it's super expensive and if I live somewhere else that is less expensive and could pursue my passion like, I can afford to do that."
Help inspire people to realize they are capable of changing the world.
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.
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.
I think a much better use of time and resources is to really focus on your existing users or customers and figure out what changes can you make in the Web site, the service, the product, whatever, to get them to come back more often to generate that repeat business and once you kind of figure out that formula, then when you get new customers the whole thing just kind of grows exponentially.
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.
Our society in general has is more money equals more happiness and all the research has shown that that's true up to a point, up until you can get your basic needs met, but then really there is other stuff that has a much bigger impact on your happiness besides just money.
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.
