I was lucky to get the chance to interview Mr. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. Take a look at my interview with him. Kick back, relax, and enjoy.

1. What is your educational background?

I graduated from Harvard in 1995.

2. Do you own any other websites or domain names? If so, what are they?

We have a number of different web sites that we operate:

http://www.zappos.com
http://blogs.zappos.com
http://about.zappos.com
http://couture.zappos.com
http://running.zappos.com
http://outdoor.zappos.com
http://rideshop.zappos.com
http://www.6pm.com

3. What do you do for Zappos.com?

I’m the CEO

4. Do you have certain techniques that you believe are the key to your success?

I would call them philosophies rather than techniques. Our #1 focus at Zappos is our company culture. Our belief is that if we get the culture right, most of the other stuff, like delivering great customer service or building a long term enduring brand, will happen naturally on its own.

5. What’s your job as a CEO like of such a big company on a day-to-day basis?

My job really varies from day to day and week to week. Sometimes I’m traveling and giving presentations and doing interviews, and other times I might be involved in new product launches or diving into the details of certain departments. It really varies and just depends on where I can contribute the most.

6. What do you believe is the key to running a successful e-commerce business is a tough economy?

For us, we’ve found that the key has been to remain focused on delivering the very best customer service. On any given day, about 75% of our customers are repeat customers, and they are also the customers that help us grow through word of mouth. Our philosophy is to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising/marketing, and put that into improving the customer experience instead, and let our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.

7. What marketing techniques have you found to work the best for your e-commerce business?

As mentioned above, word of mouth.

8. When did you get into the the e-commerce business and why?

You can read the story of how Zappos came about here:

http://about.zappos.com/zappos-story/in-the-beginning-let-there-be-shoes

9. Is there a word of advice you would like give to internet entrepreneurs who are just starting out?

Figure out what you are so passionate about that you would enjoy doing it for 10 years even if you never made a dime… That’s what you should be doing.

If you have any questions for Mr. Hsieh, or general comments, I’m sure he’d be happy to take a peak at them, and I would love to hear them as well. Just comment below.