Mental Health Matters: The Curious Case of Millionaire Tony Hsieh.
On November 18th, 2020, famous entrepreneur and eccentric CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, was found unconscious after a fire started in a shed at a friend’s home in Connecticut. According to Forbes, Nine days later, he died at a local hospital from what the coroner described as “complications of smoke inhalation.” Hsieh was 46.
By age 24, Tony was a Harvard graduate and personally pocketed $30 million after selling a startup advertising website to Microsoft for $265 million in 1998.
In 2009, Zappos, the online shoe retailer led by Hsieh, was sold to Amazon for $1 billion.
Before his death, Hsieh’s net worth was conservatively estimated at around $700 million.
According to close friends and family, Hsieh was fixated with happiness and cultivating people-oriented company culture, and customer satisfaction was priority number one.
“He was never interested in shoes; Tony’s journey was improving the human condition,” said one close friend.
Others quoted in Forbes, say Tony had an addictive personality, battled mental health issues, and often struggled with feelings of loneliness, and lack of sleep that increased his use of drugs and alcohol. All of which took a darker turn for Hsieh once the Coronavirus pandemic began.
Tony’s obsession with happiness led him to take a modest $36,000 salary as CEO of Zappos as a statement to the company. Hsieh was also philanthropic, investing $350 million in housing and infrastructure projects into downtown Las Vegas hoping to revitalize the community.
In his 2010 best-selling book, “Delivering Happiness; A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.” Hsieh outlines the principles of happiness that he believed in. He also mentions in the book, taking shots of alcohol at company parties was commonplace. Other times employees chose between shaving their hair or dying it blue (company colors) to build greater community within the company.
Hsieh’s happiness obsession seems to have intensified this year when the pandemic began. The indefinite social isolation dealt with during this pandemic was undoubtedly a mental anchor pushing him into a depressive state and down a path unseen by close family and friends.
As the Coronavirus pandemic swept through America in the early Spring of 2020, Tony Hsieh began splitting his time between Park City, Utah, and Las Vegas.
According to Forbes, within a few weeks, Hsieh purchased nine properties for $18 million in Park City and was resolved to recreate his Las Vegas utopia in Utah.
In the summer months, Hsieh entirely moved to Park City and began to entice friends and close acquaintances to come to live with him in Utah. He offered to double their highest salary as long as they stayed loyal and didn’t challenge his drug and alcohol use.
Before his death, Tony began increasingly taking “whippets” — inhaling nitrous oxide cartridges and started a fascination with candles.
Playing with his oxygen intake was part of several quirky habits Hsieh embarked on near the end of his life:
· At one time, Hsieh went on a 26-day alphabet diet eating only foods that began with a single letter each day, starting with ‘a’ and ending a month later with ‘z’.
· He would see how long he could go without urinating.
· Took nature hikes barefoot high on Nitrous Oxide.
Many who knew Tony Hsieh say they believe his increased drug use was due to a desire to dissociate from reality.
However, I can’t help but feel Tony’s death is a reflection of our society’s continual failure to properly treat mental health as a disease and not a stigma.
The drug and alcohol abuse were there, even by Tony’s admission. According to the Wall Street Journal, Hsieh planned to enter rehab in Hawaii the day before he was discovered.
I also cannot help but think of all the privileges and resources he had as a multi-millionaire. He didn’t have to worry about paying the monthly utility bill, feeding his kids, or ever worrying about keeping a roof over his head.
In the hospitality industry, many of us, or our colleagues share battles of mental health and drug issues or a combination of both.
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), approximately 45% of adults living with addiction also have a co-occurring mental health disorder. The NSDUH also notes that this number only includes those adults who met the diagnostic criteria for mental illness. There could be many more individuals who struggle with addiction and poor mental health but lack a diagnosis.
Individuals in the hospitality industry work harder or as hard as anyone else. Our industry is notoriously underpaid and underappreciated by the public. And now, amid a global pandemic, we face the daily struggle to survive. That is if we are fortunate enough to be still employed.
When was the last time you went out to eat and thought of who’s washing your dishes after your meal? Or who’s going to mop the floor after you accidentally spilled some red wine, but the server insists, “it’s not a problem.”?
Mr. Hsieh had every economic resource in his life to be “happy,” and still, happiness was elusive for him.
My plea to you is to use Mr. Hsieh to indicate that regardless of your tax bracket, this pandemic affects us all, and we truly never know what someone else is thinking or going through.
That’s why I’m asking you all to be vigilant of your family and friends, but especially co-workers. Some of us have no choice but to put our struggles aside and focus on feeding our family.
In the meantime, remember we aren’t through this pandemic and that we must make a concerted effort to communicate with our loved ones and hold them accountable for their actions if they begin to struggle. We can’t be afraid to speak up for those we love.
