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

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
Replaces
Actual
Theory
Nice
Learn
Experience
Nothing

More quotes by Tony Hsieh

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Instead of getting an iPad, I now use my iPhone with a giant magnifying glass attached to my face.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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Be true to yourself. If you follow that principle, a lot of decisions are actually pretty easy.
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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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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Help shape the stories that people are telling about you.
Tony Hsieh
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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.
Tony Hsieh
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The brand is just a lagging indicator of a company's culture.
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
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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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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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Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can't deliver good service from unhappy employees.
Tony Hsieh
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SEO expertise is a core need for today's online businesses.
Tony Hsieh
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Don't be cocky. Don't be flashy. There's always someone better than you.
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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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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Good businesses generate missions to drive their profits. Great businesses generate profits to drive their missions.
Tony Hsieh
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Twitter is like hugging. Just because it's hard to measure the return on investment doesn't mean there isn't value there.
Tony Hsieh
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Money alone isn't enough to bring happiness... happiness is when you're actually truly ok with losing everything you have.
Tony Hsieh
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I believe that there's something interesting about anyone and everyone - you just have to figure out what that something is.
Tony Hsieh