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The biggest (and hardest) lesson I’ve learned in life is that the external world is just a reflection of the world within.

Tony Hsieh

For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.
TONY HSIEH

Character Culture Destiny Organization
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

Company Customer Myself Passionate Service Stand
Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.
TONY HSIEH

Inspirational Money Passion Start
If someone is self-aware, then they can always continue to grow. If they’re not self-aware, I think it’s harder for them to evolve or adapt beyond who they already are.
TONY HSIEH

Aware Beyond Evolution Growth Hard Myself Thinking
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

Creativity Employee Environment Myself Personality Role Shine Try View
Money alone isn’t enough to bring happiness… happiness is when you’re actually truly ok with losing everything you have.
TONY HSIEH

Alone Enough Happiness Lose Money True Yourself
The problem when someone feels burned out, bored, unchallenged, or stifled by their work is not the job itself but rather the environment and playground rules given to them to do the job at hand.
TONY HSIEH

Burn Environment Feeling Hands Job Play Problem Rule Yourself
I think everyone should get a little exposure to computer science because it really forces you to think in a slightly different way, and it’s a skill that you can apply in life in general, whether you end up in computer science or not.
TONY HSIEH

Different End Exposure Force Life Science Thinking Yourself
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

Company Employee End Engagement Profit Purpose See
Things are never as bad or as good as they seem.
TONY HSIEH

Appearance Bad Goodness
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.
TONY HSIEH

Belief Brand Culture Empowerment Greatness Ourselves Passionate
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.
TONY HSIEH

Existence Focus Friendship Myself Reward
Get the culture right, and everything else just falls into place.
TONY HSIEH

Culture Fall Place Right
There’s a big difference between motivation and inspiration: Inspire through values and motivation takes care of itself.
TONY HSIEH

Big Care Difference Inspirational Motivational Value
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

Balance Business Decision Growth Learning Mistake Quick
Success is getting to a point where you’d be truly OK with losing everything you have and starting over.
TONY HSIEH

Lose Start Success True Yourself

The biggest (and hardest) lesson I’ve learned in life is that the external world is just a reflection of the world within.

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The biggest (and hardest) lesson I’ve learned in life is that the external world is just a reflection of the world within.

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Popular Authors

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