It doesn't cost anything to say hi when you pass someone else in the hallway, whereas, most corporations if you pass you avoid eye contact.

Don't be cocky. Don't be flashy. There's always someone better than you.

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.

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.

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.

My advice is to stop trying to "network" in the traditional business sense, and instead just try to build up the number and depth of your friendships, where the friendship itself is its own reward. The more diverse your set of friendships are, the more likely you'll derive both personal and business benefits from your friendship later down the road. You won't know exactly what those benefits will be, but if your friendships are genuine, those benefits will magically appear 2-3 years later down the road.

Help shape the stories that people are telling about you.