Firstly, could you please tell us about yourself? (Who are you, where do you live, what do you do for a living?)

My bio is here: http://about.zappos.com/meet-our-monkeys/tony-hsieh-ceo

“Tony originally got involved with Zappos as an advisor and investor in 1999, about 2 months after the company was founded. Over time, Tony ended up spending more and more time with the company because it was both the most fun and the most promising out of all the companies that he was involved with. He eventually joined Zappos full time in 2000. Under his leadership, Zappos has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.”

Who/what is your greatest inspiration in business and life in general?

I’ve recently be inspired to learn more about the science of happiness. There’s a great book called “The Happiness Hypothesis” that I would highly recommend.

I recently received your Zappos Culture book, how did you go about making such a big company with so much culture?

How do you manage to offer such impressive customer service?

I recently gave a presentation at SXSW Interactive that answers both of these questions. You can find the slides here:

http://www.slideshare.net/zappos/zappos-sxsw-31409

And you can find the audio podcast of it here:

http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/news/videos_and_podcasts

Zappos had an annual gross over $1 billion last year, how has this affected you and the people around you? Have you changed, as a person, since you started at Zappos?

As we’ve grown, our culture has gotten stronger because we make company culture our #1 priority. For me, I feel like I’m always learning something new because the company is constantly growing.

You were a guest at the Tweetathon 2009, what are your opinions about Social Media?

I think Twitter is a great way to connect on a more personal level with friends, employees, and customers.

Have you ever had times where you thought yourself or your business as a failure? If so how did you stop feeling like it? If not how do you keep yourself so optimistic?

A lot of people are in business to try to make money. If that’s the primary driver, I think it’s pretty hard to do well in the long term. But if instead you’re doing something that you’re so passionate about doing that you’d be happy doing it for 10 years without making any money, I think that you’re much more likely to be successful, and the optimism will come naturally on its own.

What advice would you give to somebody wanting to start their first business? What was the best advice you have been given?

Chase the vision and passion, not the money.