Author: Tony Hsieh
Publisher: Business Plus
To many, this sounds like corporate trite to which we pay no more than lip service because making employees and customers happy demand costs. But to Tony Hsieh, it is corporate culture; a core value that all employees of Zappos live for.
Zappos, the world’s largest online shoes retailer, was co-founded by Hsieh when he was in his early twenties. Within 10 years, what seemed like a “poster child of bad Internet ideas” became an empire that raked in a billion dollars a year in sales.
What makes Zappos successful is not the timing in which Hsieh embarked on this project (Zappos was created at the heights of the dotcom boom). It is because of Hsieh’s passionate commitment to customer service.
“Zappos is not an average company and our service is not average. We expect every employee to deliver WOW to customers,” says Hsieh in his first book titled Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, in which he lays bare everything about Zappos, its success secrets and more, including his life.
The book begins with the young Hsieh, a gifted student but a rather lazy one, who would later become an Internet millionaire and an inspiration.
Through various ventures that he engaged in as a student, Hsieh displayed entrepreneurial flair. The most enjoyable part of the book comes after Hsieh graduates from college.
Bored by his first job at Oracle, Hsieh co-founded a web design business, which subsequently morphed into an online advertising network called LinkExchange.
In 1997, two years into business, the company was sold to Microsoft for US$265mil and Hsieh walked away a millionaire at the age of 24.
In the months between LinkExchange and Zappos, Hsieh soul searched through poker and PLUR, a rave community with the acronym that stands for “Peace, Love, Unity, Respect”. Both of these engagements gave him unique insights which would help him later in business.
Hsieh ended up investing most of his money in selling shoes online under a weird name – Zappos. After going through several years of financial mishaps and making a number of mistakes, Hsieh finally found the winning formula – that happiness is the core of running a great company.
Hsieh writes this book to inspire other companies to change and, together, deliver happiness to the world.
Despite sounding a little crazy, Hsieh is a very wise man. His wittiness is reflected in the way he thinks and in his pragmatic skills. His creativity abounds and thoughtfulness knows no ends.
As a CEO, he is genuine, fun loving, unconventional and charismatic. Most importantly, he is unafraid of challenges but instead, seems to revel in tackling them. All these attributes warrant him recognition as a business leader of the modern age.
This insightful book is not just a peek into the mind of a genius; it also contains lots of inspiring ideas that one can put into practice in business or personal life.
But the words are not Hsieh’s alone. Employees too relate their experiences about finding meaning in their work at Zappos.
This book is also a wonderful instruction manual for anyone working for others or themselves. It is packed with common business concepts tweaked to become uncommonly yet suited for the running of companies in the 21st century. For instance, culture is brand and profit is happiness.
At Zappos, while it is important to work hard, it is more important to work with a touch of weirdness to make work more interesting.
This book is a classic tale of how hard work, steadfastness, creativity, talent, craziness, failure and success blend together to create and achieve an extraordinary dream.
Every page oozes happiness. But that’s not all, Hsieh includes many thought provoking anecdotes: “When you walk with purpose, you collide with destiny.” – Beatrice Berry. “No matter what your past has been, you have a spotless future.” – Author unknown. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.” – A tweet post.
A business autobiography notwithstanding, this book is sweet and I love it. You will too.
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