Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose
by Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com, Inc.
Copyright 2010, Business Plan, Grand Central Publishing
#1 NYT Bestseller, #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller
By Dawn Richerson for Blissness Splash, an Artella publication
Like a good pair of heels, Delivering Happiness makes you feel great even as it serves to support you on your business path. The pages are filled with sage business wisdom, but unlike so many books about business, these pages are alive with energy. From his early days harvesting earthworms, to the enormous success of Zappos, Tony Hsieh shares triumphs, mistakes and lessons learned.
This book is all about the shaping of Hsieh’s business philosophies. The opening quote comes from Morpheus of The Matrix: “There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”
The book’s first movement, entitled ‘Profits,’ discusses Hsieh’s pathway into business. ’Profits and Passion,’ the second section, contains the meat of how business is done daily at Zappos, and the third section, ’Profits, Passion and Purpose,’ reveals Hsieh’s vision.
“We knew that it wasn’t just about building a business,” writes Hsieh. “It was about building a lifestyle that was about delivering happiness to everyone, including ourselves.” This insight came on the day of Zappos’ sale to Amazon—a day which was the culmination of years of dedication to achieving the ultimate in customer satisfaction. Sprinkled with anecdotes that reveal Hsieh’s learning about business, Delivering Happiness talks about everything from the importance of humility to crowdsourcing.
With an unflappable sense of humor and, well, happiness, Hsieh tackles the mammoth subject of customer service with passion–fueled grace. Hsieh is enormously likable, and his book makes you feel as if you are walking with him on his path to success, just experiencing it all.
When a company Hsieh co-founded sold for $267 million to Microsoft, Hsieh describes wondering what was next. He made a list of the happiest moments of his life and came to the realization that none of them had anything to do with money. This was the moment, Hsieh says, when he decided to stop chasing money and start chasing passion.
The unfolding story of Zappos is instructive for many reasons, and there’s something totally engaging about the down-to-earth manner in which Hsieh recounts all that happened. He gleans business truths from poker, and relies on instinct and intuition to shift strategy.
As he writes about his affection for Red Bull, the energy drink, Hsieh manages to share some deep truths about brand loyalty and passion. We see the world through his eyes. Watching friends at a warehouse dance party, he ekes out another life truth: “Everyone in the warehouse had a shared purpose. We were all contributors to the collective rave experience.”
Delivering Happiness emphasizes the value of creating experience, trusting your passion, never outsourcing your core competency, and building and investing in company culture. Hsieh’s ’Top 10 Ways to Instill Customer Service’ are useful for anyone in business, from solo entrepreneurs right up to billion-dollar successes like Zappos.
The back cover features the top 10 reasons you should read this book. Number 1 reads, “You ran out of firewood for your fireplace.” While the book may indeed kindle a fire, it has the capacity to spark a passion in any creative, spiritual business that, through the ripples of its reach, literally changes the way we see the world—delivering happiness.
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