Today, I voted for my favorite micro-entrepreneurs at Entrepreneur.com--I think you'll find it fascinating! The stories of rags to riches reminded me of my visit with Tony Hsieh of Zappos in Vegas when the merger with Amazon was being wildly trumpeted--you'll particularly enjoy the CNET coverage. I asked Tony Hiseh to tell me about a time when he thought he was on the brink of bankruptcy. Every entrepreneur has been there.

This is his answer:

"In the first probably four or five years there were many times when we thought we couldn't make the next payroll," he shared. "Actually...our weekly routine was basically deciding which vendors to pay, and then putting off the others until one week after. There were definitely times we weren't sure if we'd still be around a month later." Whether you visit Southwest Airlines or Virgin, or a 100 of the other entrepreneurs I've met, you'll hear the same story.

So, what ultimately allowed them to succeed?

"A big part of it was that we had so many employees who were so passionate and believed in the long term vision," Tony acknowledged. "Many of them either reduced their pay or worked for free so we could keep going. I think that we learned it's about passion; passion for whatever you're doing." If you're ever in Vegas, it's worth the short, surreal trip to Henderson to take the Zappos company tour. When you walk through the offices of Zappos, you see a wacky, wild variety of those passions leaping from desks and cubicles throughout the company.

Tony has unlocked three drivers that motivate people--the same drivers we found in our research for Success Built to Last.

The Three Ps that Define Success:
Purpose, Passion and Performance

1. He encourages employees to express something unique about their Passions--whether it's clothing or surfing--and make that a part of their work environment.

2. Every employee has the opportunity to opt-out of the company after training--they're offered $2000 to leave. This is a great test of Purpose--do you truly believe in this company? Do you really want to work for this place or not? Less than 1% of employees take the offer.

3. When it comes to your Performance, if your job is to deal with customers, then your incentives are based on your customer service scores. Seems blindingly obvious, right? But you might be surprised at how most call centers rate people more on how fast they dump customers off the phone than how loyal customers are to the company. I met the woman who "proudly" held the record for the longest customer service call in history...I think it was about five hours!

Check out the video version of my interview with Tony on YouTube.