Famous Entrepreneur

At the age of 22, Tony Hsieh and his college roommate started an Internet marketing company. Two years later, they sold the company for $265 million dollars! Instead of retiring, Tony decided to invest in an online shoe store called Zappos.com. A year later, Tony became the CEO and hasn’t looked back since.

Based out of Henderson, Nevada, Zappos.com is home to about 800 employees, with an additional 800 employees at the warehouse in Kentucky. Tony says their work environment focuses on team and family, which is why he chooses to sit in a cubicle. “I don’t want to be someone that’s just off in a corner office somewhere and employees feel that I am not approachable,” Tony says.

Not only did Tony pass up a big office, he also only takes home $36,000 a year! “I’m doing it because I want to be involved in creating something that people are passionate about,” he says. “I’m not doing this for the money.”

So why get in the customer service business? “It was really just from me being personally annoyed whenever I received bad customer service,” Tony says. “It is really frustrating when I feel like the people on the other end [of the phone] don’t really care.”

When hiring new employees at Zappos, Tony says they do two sets of interviews. The first is with a hiring manager and their team. The second is with human resources for a “culture” fit. Tony says that no matter what job you’re hired to do, all employees must undergo four weeks of customer service training. “You’re actually on the phone for two weeks talking with customers. And people that can’t make it through that we either don’t hire or drop them during the training process.”


Tony is so dedicated to customer service that his ultimate goal is to build his brand around it. “We’re actually hoping 10 years from now people won’t even realize we started out selling shoes online, and maybe 30 years from now we’ll have a Zappos Airlines that’s just about the very best customer service in the airline industry.”

Tony has been so successful that he’s been invited to speak at entrepreneurial conferences about helping other people reach their goals. “Do what you would be passionate about doing for 10 years, even if you didn’t make a single dime during those 10 years, you’ll end up happier,” he says. “And kind of the ironic thing is if you do what you’re passionate about, the money will just naturally follow on its own.”

Another benefit to finding your passion is that employees as well as customers can sense your excitement. “That’s how we’ve grown over the past nine and a half years is just through customers being very loyal…but not just loyal. … They’re actually spreading the word about Zappos,” Tony says. “When they call us, they see that we’re real people and that we actually are passionate about the customer service and want to help them out.”