Tony Hseih’s “Delivering Happiness” is a reflection on the creation and growth of Zappos, the wildly successful E-Commerce online company with an insanely funky corporate culture. Tony’s narration offers a hilarious and real account about the life lessons he’s learned from being an entrepreneur, and the failures and victories that come with it.
The timeline of the book begins when he was a child, trying to start any sort of business that would make him some money. From worm farms to mail order businesses, he tried any sort of gig that he could imagine. You can see later on in the book how this curiosity manifests into an enormous acquisition by Amazon.
The major theme of the book is Tony’s focus on customer service, and serving others before you serve yourself. Zappos has turned customer service into their business, and it’s their core advantage and what makes them special.
Really, what makes the book a winner (and a NYT &WSJ Best Seller) are the life lessons and core values Tony instituted at Zappos to create a family culture. Zappos employees didn’t simply follow these values at worked, they lived by them.
These lessons were hard won through experiences that brought Zappos, and Tony, to the brink of bankruptcy and failure before going on to achieve 1 Billion Dollars in gross revenue in only ten years.
Some of the best core values that Tony shared:
Pursue Growth and Learning (if you’re not getting better and learning, you’re just standing still…)
Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open Minded (the best ideas come from taking calculated risks, and from unexpected
places)
Do More with Less (We often need much less than we think we need in life)
Create Fun and Weirdness (What is life without being fun, right?)
If you’re ever wondering how you can balance doing good in the world with being successful, I HIGHLY recommend this book. Or just read it because it’s a fantastic story of how to build a customer oriented business, the way the world is moving in terms of shopping.
