Home > Books, Review > Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

June 16th, 2010


It looks like I have been reading quite a number of Business category books of late.

Delivering Happiness is the first book by Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com. I don’t know about you, but I’m not very familiar with Zappos until recently. Truth is, I was reading this blog post Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is Delivering Happiness from NikiCheong.com and instead of trying to get a free copy there, I went directly to deliveringhappiness.com to get a review copy.

So here it is, the review of the Delivering Happiness book. I have extra copies of the book too, so if you care to read to the end of this post, I’ll tell you how you can get one. 😉

The book is put into three sections.

Section 1 – Profits
This section is the personal story of Tony Hsieh about his growing up in US, going through college and trying to make money since a very young age.
I personally find this section of the book the most interesting, probably the fact that I’m a software developer and that he wrote it in a funny and simple to understand way.
Tony told stories of his multiple startup business, some of which failed and a few succeeded.
He even had a very short stint in Oracle before starting up his own LinkExchange with a partner and later sold it off for $265 million to Microsoft!
After selling LinkExchange and becoming a millionnaire, Tony then went on to start Zappos and then played poker. No, seriously, poker.

Section 2 – Profits and Passion
While Section 1 is Tony’s personal story, Section 2 is the story of Zappos. This part of the book tells of how Zappos went past survival and then growth.
Zappos had went through growth, downsizing, funding, problem with products shipping and moving from San Francisco to Las Vegas.
Rarely do companies reveal their story and how things work but in this section, Tony shares about how the company culture is and more uniquely, a list of ten core values of Zappos.
Read more about the core values here.
The one that I admire most is Be Humble.

Be Humble is probably the core value that ends up affecting our hiring decisions the most. There are a lot of experienced, smart, and talented people we interview that we know can make and immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But a lot of them are also really egotistical, so we end up not hiring them. At most companies, the hiring manager would probably argue that we should hire such a candidate because he or she will add a lot of value to the company, which is probably why most large corporations don’t have great cultures.

Section 3 – Profits, Passion and Purpose
This final section is finally the purpose of this book, delivering happiness.
Tony shares his finding that happiness is actually the common thing that everyone looks for, although in short term, they might have objective such as retiring early, making money, finding a soulmate or running faster.

My personal opinion is that this book is one of those better ones that instead of becoming reference book, is more of a conversational business book that I will recommend my friends.
It’s a good read if you like stories about web entrepreneur, life of a millionnaire and something about finding happiness in what you do.

Do you have a personal favourite business book that isn’t just another reference book? Recommend me one in the comment section below and if you could, please let me know why it is your favourite. A random selection of comments will receive a copy of Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh delivered to you anywhere in the world.

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    1. June 18th, 2010 at 07:09 | #1

      I read a lot of management books, not necessarily business books. Many years ago, Michael Dell’s Direct from Dell would have intrigued you. I read Bill Gate Speak and his “Business in the speed of thought” but Dell’s autobiography and how he build his business is more interesting read.

      If you want to compete in a market, no one is as good as Gary Hamel and Pralahad of “Competing with future” , teaches you frameworks of marketing and competiion.

      I also read a lot of Harvard Business Review book series, the ones on Decision Making and Change is good, they are not dry, trust me. 😉

    2. June 18th, 2010 at 10:35 | #2

      @JoV
      I always thought Harvard Business Review book series are dry stuff. Thanks JoV, I think I’ll be getting the Direct from Dell soon, hope it’s still as interesting. 🙂

    3. June 20th, 2010 at 17:46 | #3

      Do you stay anywhere near PJ SS2, the same row as the police station? There is a rental bookstore which used to stock up 2 or 3 titles on HBR books. You have to pay RM1 or RM2 to loan the books for a month. It might have closed down now, but it was quite a good book rental shops then for me.

      Do check it out. The Dell book and the HBR series I loan it from there.

    4. August 10th, 2010 at 14:40 | #4

      Marvin,

      Came across your website while I was googgling on ‘delivering happiness’.

      Personally, I love Timothy Ferris ‘4 hours workweek’. Practical and so achievable. Totally blew my mind away. I uses his negotiating template in my work and it works! So impressed with it. Highly recommended book for anyone who wants to achieve more with less!

      I can’t help but to add on Leo Babauta ‘The Power of Less’. Highlighted the concerns many are facing be it in work, family, relationship or finances and how we can have less distractions to produce more. Very easy to read and inspiring book to re-think of things.

      Thanks for sharing delivering happiness!

    5. August 16th, 2010 at 17:21 | #5

      @alwaysLovely
      Thanks for sharing/recommending your books too Ai Ling! 🙂

    1. July 22nd, 2010 at 08:20 | #1
    2. August 10th, 2010 at 17:58 | #2
    3. May 27th, 2011 at 00:13 | #3