Delivering Happiness

My first book review!  Tony Hsieh and the Delivering Happiness team offered me a review copy of his first book and I jumped at the opportunity. I’m glad I did…

From his first attempt at worm farming as a young boy to the billion dollar sale of Zappos to Amazon in 2009 Tony Hsieh has been an entrepreneur for most of his life. Tech savvy and naturally hard working Tony (failed worm farm notwithstanding) has a sense for what worked in business.

Delivering Happiness – A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose is part autobiography (with a narrow focus) and part business manual. Hsieh talks about his early businesses selling burgers and pizza in college, his small business investments and attempts leading up to investing in and becoming CEO of Zappos.com.

It seems the biggest success at Zappos is the company culture. Zappos would hire the second or third most qualified candidate (though still highly qualified for sure) if they were a better personality fit into the Zappos culture (to many employees it seems to be a way of life). This book made me want to work for Zappos.com – too bad they’re in Las Vegas!

This is not a “how to make money” manual by any means, but any business owner could learn a lot from the story of how Zappos went from the brink of failure to their billion dollar sale to Amazon by focusing on making both customers and employees HAPPY. It’s a “bottom-up” not a “top-down” culture that really believes every employee is as important as the next.

A great, quick read for anyone – you don’t need to consider yourself an entrepreneur to get something out of this book. It contains not just business lessons but life lessons as well. It’s no wonder that both Tony Hsieh and Zappos have become as hugely successful as they are. It’s about people, not profits; a lesson 99% of business owners could learn a lot from.

To learn more about Delivering Happiness please click here:

http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com

Or to purchase your own copy go to Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappiness

I also have one extra copy available for my very first blog giveaway! To enter just leave a comment on this post. Admittedly I don’t have a lot of readers so I will leave entries open for a while.