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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.

Tony Hsieh

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Tony Hsieh
Age: 46 †
Born: 1973
Born: December 12
Died: 2020
Died: November 27
Businessperson
Computer Scientist
Entrepreneur
Internet Entrepreneur
Urbana
Illinois
Xie Jiahua
Tony Xie
Turn
Amenities
Turns
Cruise
Business
Ship
Like
Ships
Lots
Quickly
Harder
Bigger

More quotes by Tony Hsieh

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Help shape the stories that people are telling about you.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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Success is getting to a point where you'd be truly OK with losing everything you have and starting over.
Tony Hsieh
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Service Over the years, the number one driver of our growth at Zappos has been repeat customers and word of mouth. Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience instead, letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.
Tony Hsieh
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I made a list of the happiest periods of my life & I realized that none of them involve money.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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Most companies are very quick to hire and slow to fire, when really it should be the other way around.
Tony Hsieh
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We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn't want to just sell shoes. I wasn't even into shoes - but I was passionate about customer service.
Tony Hsieh
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Having a higher purpose is more than just about profits. You actually end up making more profits in the long run because employees really are a lot more engaged and customers see the higher purpose in the company.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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To never forget that the most important thing in life is the quality of life we lead.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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Ask yourself: would you be comfortable printing everything your employees, customers & partners have to say about your culture?
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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There's a big difference between motivation and inspiration: Inspire through values and motivation takes care of itself.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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Learn by doing. Theory is nice, but nothing replaces actual experience.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh