Tony Hsieh's Rule for Success: Maximize Serendipity
Create the opportunity for meaningful collisions, says the Zappos CEO. Then just watch as the best things unfold.
Tony Hsieh is a
serial entrepreneurco-founded Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer he
now runs. He's also co-founder of the Downtown Project, which is seeking to
revitalize Las Vegas's downtown. He spoke with Inc. reporter Issie Lapowsky.
My fascination
with serendipity started in college. I think for most people, college was the
last time it was normal to just randomly run into people all the time. As you
get older, you drive to work, see the same people every day, then go home. But
the best things happen when people are running into each other and sharing
ideas.
At Zappos, we
do a lot to get people running into each other. At our office, for example,
there are exits on all four sides of the building. We've locked them all except
one. It's more inconvenient, but we prioritize collisions over convenience. The
Downtown Project, our drive to revitalize downtown Las Vegas, does the same
thing, but on a much bigger scale. We thought, How can we get people in the
city to run into each other more often? So we're moving our office into the old
city-hall building, and we've already got 10 tech start-ups to set up nearby.
It's all about maximizing collisions and accelerating serendipity.
Even the idea
of starting the Downtown Project came from luck. It happened at a bar. I just
happened to become friendly with the owner of the place, and he'd been in Vegas
for much longer than I had. I randomly mentioned that we might buy a plot of
land and build our own Zappos campus, like Google or Apple.
He was the one
who said, "No, you guys should think about moving downtown and working
with the community here." It was something we hadn't even considered
before, but that one conversation in a bar changed everything.
I think you can
create your own luck. The key is to meet as many people as you can and really
get to know them. If you're in an environment where you're always running into
people, the chances of one of those collisions being meaningful is maybe 1 in
1,000. But if you do it 100 times more, your odds go up.
My advice is:
Meet lots of different people without trying to extract value from them. You
don't need to connect the dots right away. But if you think about each person
as a new dot on your canvas, over time, you'll see the full picture.
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