The following was sent to all Zappos employees this past Monday:

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Team,

Happy New Year! To kick off the year, I sent this on Jan. 2nd to a smaller group, but a few folks suggested that it should be sent to all Zappos employees. Here is a slightly cleaned up and better version of what was sent.

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"It was the best of times and it was the worst of times." – A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

On CNBC Reports 2008, Maria Bartiromo quoted Charles Dickens, noting that, while Dickens was referring to the French Revolution, he could have easily been talking about 2008.

No doubt, 2008 was a very challenging year, starting out with a weak economic and retail environment that degraded slowly in the first half of the year and then fell off a cliff in the second half of the year. Depending on what reports you read, online ecommerce was down 3-5% this holiday season, marking the first time ecommerce didn't grow. Reading about these not-so-positive reports just goes to show how very lucky we are at Zappos, because we were able to ride through these rocky times and produce pretty incredible results. No, things weren't perfect, but 2008 was still a great year for us! Official results have to wait until our finance team closes the books and releases the audited financials in early March, but we managed to grow our business over last year and during the holiday season (when ecommerce was down), exceeded $1B in gross merchandise sales, and by Doing More with Less, kept ourselves profitable and cash positive – all the while having a lot of fun serving our customers!

We can reminisce about 2008, but now that 2009 is here and we are back from some much needed downtime, it's time to get our A-game back on. We'll be going over our goals and our "official" plans as soon as our board approves them, but even before that "officially" happens, we already know what we need to do.

One thing I encourage you to do is to refer back to our Core Values document and specifically the challenge in there: make at least one improvement every week that makes Zappos better. Ideally, we would do this every single day. It sounds daunting, but remember improvements don't have to be dramatic. Think about what it means to improve just 1% per day and build upon that every single day. Doing so has a dramatic effect and will make us 37x better, not 365% (3.65x) better at the end of the year. Wake up every day and ask yourself not only what is the 1% improvement I can change to make Zappos better, but also what is the 1% improvement I can change to make myself better personally and professionally – because we, Zappos, can't grow unless we as individual people grow too.

Imagine yourself making 1% changes every day that compounds and will make you and Zappos 37x better by the end of the year. Imagine if every employee at Zappos was doing the same. Imagine how much better you, Zappos and the
world will be next year.

It won't be easy and 2009 will no doubt present its own set of challenges, but we positively will get through it. Have a great and happy 2009!

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P.S. Also check out Tony's blog entry, Your Culture Is Your Brand.

P.P.S. This is for the math geeks. If you start out with $100 at the beginning of the year and you were able to increase what you have by 1% every single day, at the end of the year, you would have $3,778.34 = $100 * (1 + 1%) ^ 365. That is 37.78x what you had at the beginning of the year. Get that 1% every single day!

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Do you have a story about how small changes every single day made a huge difference in the long-run? If so, leave us a comment below or email me: alfred (at) zappos.com.

Follow me on Twitter: @zappos_alfred

Yesterday, I had the privilege to give the luncheon keynote at the National Conference on Operations and Fulfillment (NCOF) held in Orlando, FL. The audience mostly runs call center, distribution, and fulfillment operations for a wide range of companies, some small, some large, and some very large. My talk was about "Delivering the WOW Customer Experience" and I basically amended (ripped off) Tony's "Top Ten Lessons" presentation. Given the audience, I presented more metrics and gave more examples and stories relating to the operations and fulfillment side of Zappos. The core message was still about the importance of company culture and the impact of customer service. There were a number of questions during the Q&A and then a number of people came up after the presentation to thank me for giving them so much insight into the inner workings of Zappos. What was good to hear was how many organizations were learning similar lessons or facing similar issues, no matter how large they are or how long they have been in existence.

In business, we are judged by our ability to delivering great long-term results. What we sometimes forget is that great long-term results are delivered by engaged employees. That is why at Zappos, we spend so much time, energy, and resources to continuously improve our company culture and keep our employees engaged.

For a copy of the presentation, please email: culturebook "at" zappos.com, or me directly: alfred "at" zappos.com.

P.S. I began my talk with something fun and a little weird. Right before my talk, over the PA system the conference organizers were nice enough to gently remind everyone to "please silence all cell phones and pagers". When I got to the podium, I told the audience that they should feel free to turn their cell phones back on because what their customers have to say is far more important than what I have to say. I was serious, but everyone laughed. That helped lighten the mood.