Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

The first quarter of the book about Tony Hsieh's childhood and the lessons he learned feels a bit forced (my button business taught me the lesson of ______). But, my doubts were quickly dispelled with the story of Zappos. I loved how Tony focused on one thing, the best customer service, and did it really well. To have the best customer service, they focused on company culture through a system of hiring (it's easier to hire people who fit the culture than try to change people) and through employee advancement opportunities through their "pipeline," giving employees perceived control of their careers. I can't think of any other large company that has been able to sustain a culture (Starbucks had a unique culture, but in recent years they've become too big to sustain it). Tony says that the Zappos company culture is their one sustainable competitive advantage. Will company culture work for your company? It's hard to say, but there probably is one thing that your company could do better than any other company...and it is probably worthwhile to develop that.

The argument was made about Tony "getting lucky." I have to agree, but I'd add that any business success is 80% luck and 20% planning, tenacity, insight, and work ethic. The 20% is critical to making success, but it's not sufficient. Even the most brilliant people will fail more often than they succeed, but you don't often see the entire journey of failures before success. You could use the "luck" argument for any success (Thomas Edison just got lucky, after all, he was wrong 999 times before he was right).

I thought that Tony did an excellent job of narrating his book. This isn't the case with many authors turned narrators (i.e. Beer School), but with several authors like Malcom Gladwell and Bill Bryson, hearing the book in the author's voice puts you into the story better than with a professional narrator. I'd put Tony's narration squarely in this category.

This book is interesting and very informative for a business owner. I love Tony's style of writing - it's very natural and you feel like you know him. I would recommend this book to other business owners and my employees.

This is an amazing story, and one that inspires you to move forward with your passion. Success, as everybody knows it when it already hits the media, portrays the glory but not the story. Entrepreneurship is like surfing, you have to ride out the waves, you never know when you hit a great one.

I really enjoyed hearing about Tony's growth as an individual and listening to the trials and tribulations when building Zappos. Opposed to the standard book rambling off stats or uncommon words to give the perception of intelligence; Tony along with some other Zappos employees informally talk to you just like you were at Starbucks telling a story. Opposed to be lectured to like the professor in the last chapter of the book, it feels like you're experiencing birth and rise of Zappos alongside Tony and his staff. If you a business owner looking for an excellent inspirational book that provides a blueprint on how you can start thinking about changing your company's culture then this is the book!

The only thing I couldn't handle was the listening to an interview with Warren Bennis and Tony at the end. This guy is the typical professor who is obsessed with himself, self promotes another one of his ignoramus books, and talks down to Tony, all while trying to appear that his vast intellect is fair superior than Tony's while having no clue who Tony even is. I seriously would have rather listened to an air horn next to my ear than listen to Warren Bennis for another second. What's even worse that that the guy that introduces Warren and Tony to the group is so infatuated with him (Warren) that I wasn't sure if the guy was going to start licking Warrens big toe or start talking about the fan club.

Great book going through the history of Zappos and showing a successful business can be run a different way. Unlike other business books that put the owner on a pedestal this one keeps it real. What amazed me was the huge risk he took to make Zappos happen. While he should not read other books his voice added a level of authenticity and depth to this one.

Here is the thing, the book is a good listen. It was a crazy trip the man took from start to finish and made for an exciting listen. But as for a business book, not good. There is nothing business about it. The book should be in Entertainment section.
I am in business, and i can tell you, if you are doing $46 millioin a year in rev. and not making a profit. you have issues and a horrible business plan. Yes in the end it worked out for him, but 999 out of a 1,000 times the person will be writting a book on how they lost everything. And he almost did, dont get me wrong i know how the story ended and they deserve everything they got in the end.
But not because of great business, if anything, it shows when the owner of Amazon (a real business man) wasnt interested in the company until years later when really business people made it profitable....
With that being said, like mentioned earlier, great listen, exciting, but dont plan on learning anything to help you in your business.. this should be in entertainment..

Delivering Happiness is part brief autobiography, part “here are my brilliant ideas for how to conceive, start, and run a business”. He is more strongly oriented towards creating a corporate culture than any other business guru, and presents interesting ideas for how to create that culture. However, I’ve got a problem with Tony and the book - proof (or at least viable evidence) and replication. Tony was at the right place at the right time once and pretty much by accident made millions in the process. Out of boredom he joined what was to become Zappos. 10 years later he has made Zappos the largest online store specializing in footwear, with sales over $1B per year. But Zappos has always been on the verge of failure and is completely dependent on an ongoing 100 million dollar line of credit with their banks. This tells me that they have less than $1M (less than 10%) in profit. This would not be considered a successful situation for any business. For all of the hype about how brilliant Tony is, he hasn’t proved that culture is the key to business success. I wish he had–I’m a huge believer in developing corporate culture, one based on integrity, contribution, and “doing what is right”. He as not demonstrated that if you build the right culture the profits will follow. He has not demonstrated anything except that he was successful at making money by accident one time in his life, and his Zappos isn’t it. More disappointing is he discusses the dozens, possibly over a hundred other companies he helped start, most of which failed, none of which had more than marginal success. So like most of the other business gurus, he provides no proof or evidence of his ideas, and has not been able to replicate his one (apparently accidental) success. Not someone I would consider a viable role model, leader, or even teacher.

This book should have been sub-titled "An autobiography of Tony Hsieh." I bought this book expecting to learn alot of valuable lessons from someone who is clearly a brilliant business man. Instead I got hour after hour of his life story (and sometimes in WAY too graphic of detail). The second half of the book is one long commercial about Zappos. There were a few pearls of wisdom to be had, but overall I'd say this book is only for the hard-core Zappos/Tony Hsieh enthusiast.

I've always wanted to read this book ever since it got published in 2010, but I kept putting it off. I should had read this a lot sooner. If you are looking for another "Accidental Billionaires (Facebook)", "Delivering Happiness" is not for you. This book will never be a screenplay for the big screen, because it's more about philosophy, than sex, drugs, and tunes.

Delivering Happiness is not so much a business book so to say, but it's a cultural movement how business should run in this new Internet era. Many old school's companies tries to deliver happiness, base on their margin profit and their employees and customers comes second, and the Internet is another marketing scheme. With Tony Hsieh and his Zappos' team, they are becoming the new Nordstrom, where service and their employees always comes first.

I wished that all companies would take notice of Zappos' ways of doing business, but they won't because most companies are run by the elites and don't understand the new culture of customer service to be successful in the next era.

The first half of this book was very interesting, to see how Tony Hsieh got started and how he buildup Zappos, but the story faded toward the end, by having numinous praises among Zappos' staffs, trying to please the boss.

I just wished that we would had heard more from their customers.

Good content, nevertheless.

It was an entertaining book to listen to on the road, great ideas about culture in companies, customer service, experience and capacity building. Will start to apply ideas in my company.