Tony Hsieh
I recently had the opportunity to interview Tony Hsieh. Tony is a great model for quality of life. He’s accomplished but grounded. He’s competitive in terms of reaching his ambitions, but not in a way that makes him want to aspire to others’ standards.
Tony embodies the term “quiet confidence.” He’s also one of the best examples out there of the progressive CEO, in which results are best achieved through humility over arrogance, persuasion over brow beating and the understanding that leadership is about serving the needs of those that work for you. While at Zappos, he has created a company culture that is one of the world’s best case studies for customer service. During Tony’s tenure, sales at Zappos.com have grown from $1.6 million to over $1 billion.
Below is a link to the video. My favorite part of this video is Tony’s take on friendships.
Click above to play video
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I am always impressed by people who have a diverse group of friends. Those that are successful but still maintain friendships with people they grew up, even if they are not on the same career plane. I think it shows they are authentic and humble and I’m sure they also appreciate the grounding quality of staying in touch with people that know them so well.
Marvin: That is so well said. Fortunately I think there is some shift where people with successful careers are finding the quality of life setback when a huge proportionate of your friends are through work on a similar career plane. I think there are great friendships to be made through the career sphere, later in life, but there’s a limit etc. And that there is nothing like those friendships where you can be weird and your friends love that about you.