“Hopefully 10 years from now people won’t even realize we started out selling shoes. They will just think about Zappos as a place to get the best customer service.”

Customer service shouldn’t just be A department, it should be the entire company.

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.

Whatever you are thinking, think bigger.

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

The ultimate definition of success is: you could lose everything that you have and truly be okay with it. Your happiness isn’t based on external factors.

If you’re focused on the friendship as its own reward, serendipitous stuff just happens. I know that sounds weird, but I can tell you for our 12 years of existence, it’s actually how a lot of stuff happens.

Our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff, like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand or empowering passionate employees and customers, will happen on its own.

Good businesses generate missions to drive their profits. Great businesses generate profits to drive their missions.

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.

Open, honest communication is the best foundation for any relationship, but remember that at the end of the day it’s not what you say or what you do, but how you make people feel that matters the most.

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

Never accept or be too comfortable with the status quo, because the companies that get into trouble are historically the ones that aren’t able to adapt to change and respond quickly enough.

To never forget that the most important thing in life is the quality of life we lead.

Success is getting to a point where you’d be truly OK with losing everything you have and starting over.

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).

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.

If you have a business model that relies on customers being misinformed, you better start working on changing your business model.

Customers don’t measure you on how hard you tried, they measure you on what you deliver.

Good service leads to multiple sales. If you take good care of your customers, they will open doors you could never open by yourself.

If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.

Your customers don’t care about you. They don’t care about your product or service. They care about themselves, their dreams, their goals. Now, they will care much more if you help them reach their goals, and to do that, you must understand their goals, as well as their needs and deepest desires.

If the customer loves you, the government will have to love you.

I am convinced that companies should put staff first, customers second and shareholders third – ultimately that’s in the best interest of customers and shareholders.

We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.