I think maybe 50 years ago people and businesses felt like they had to choose between maximizing profits and making customers happy or making employees happy, and I think we're actually living in a special time where everyone's hyperconnected, whether through Twitter or blogs and so on. Information travels so quickly that it's actually possible to have it all, to make customers happy through customer service, to make employees happy through strong company cultures, and have that actually drive growth and profits.

Things are never as bad or as good as they seem.

Ask yourself: would you be comfortable printing everything your employees, customers & partners have to say about your culture?

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

Whatever you're thinking, think bigger.

You've gotta love the game. To become really good, you need to live it and sleep it.

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.