Delivering Happiness : A path to Profits, Passion and Purpose (By Tony Hsieh) - Recommended Reading.

Dear Readers,

Earlier last month I found an interesting book to read and adding another good book into my library collection, the title is Delivering Happiness A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose written by Tony Hsieh CEO of Zappos.com. It is a great book to read. Tony talks about his long journey in the world of entrepreneur. 

This book is not about telling you what to do and what not to do, just a story about his success, what he had learned from his mistake, how he rise from failure, a failure that almost cost him everything that he had worked for. It also talks about some of the funny thing happen and decision that he had ever made. Tony also mention about what is important in winning customer trust, how we can retain existing customer while winner over new customer. 

In 1996 he co-founded LinkExchange formerly known as Internet Link Exhange, together with his college mate Sanjay they setup an online advertisement site. Somewhere in August 1996 they received a 1 million offer from Bigfoot to take over LinkExchange, but they decided to turn down the offer the next meeting. their decision to turn such a huge amount of offer had be a blessing in disguise few month later a member of Sequoia Capital Micheal Moritz decided to invest in LinkExchange making him one of the board member. after building LinkExchange for another several year, they finally sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million dolar. The whole story can be found in chapter 2.

In Chapter 2 talks about what happen after their successful selling of LinkExchange, how they diversify their investment after a huge earning from the selling LinkExchange. Chapter 3 also talks about their new ventures, how the idea a venturing into another internet related business came about. Zappos.com is their next big project. From this chapter on, tells us how they build a company from scratch, the core business of Zappos.com was originally specifically related to selling footwear online. how they tried to pioneered a new way of selling footwear without any knowledge about the industry itself. The building of Zappos.com also almost cost them everything, but later in 2009 Zappos.com was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at 1.2 billion, making it the largest acquisition in Amazon History. Read more about the mistakes and success made by Zappos team and how they build a new path to ensure that the same mistake is not being repeated. 

In Chapter 5 Tony Talks about The Platform for growth, how they plan to strengthen Zappos.com as a brand through customer service, while creating a more open and transparent culture in the organization. In this chapter it all about building a stronger organization. stronger bond among its staff through a unique organization culture that can be seen and experience in Zappos. 

This book is divided into 3 sections. Section 1 is titled "PROFITS" which covers mostly stories of Tony growing up, and stories about his earliest venture into the world of business and later finding his path to Zappos. Section 2 is more about "PROFITS & PASSION". This section is more into the topic of Business , some of his important philosophies which he believed and lived in Zappos, this section also include some of the important emails and documents by Tony Hsieh. The Final Section 3 is titled "PROFITS,PASSION&PURPOSE" this section covers the vision tof Zappos moving forward into the next level.

As Tony mentioned, this book is more about his story about the setup and growing of Zappos, mistake made, lesson learned and hopping that his readers would avoid making the same mistakes that he has gone through.

My advice is, go and get a copy...

Here are the Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Read This Book..

Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Read This Book

10	You want to learn about the path that we took at Zappos to go from nothing to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in less than ten years.
9	You want to learn about the path that I took that eventually led me to Zappos, and the lessons I learned along the way.
8	You want to learn from all the mistakes we made at Zappos over the years so that your business can avoid making some of the same ones.
7	You want to figure out the right balance of profits, passion, and purpose in business and in life.
6	You want to build a long-term enduring business and brand.
5	You want to create a stronger company culture, which will make your employees or colleagues happier and create more employee engagement, leading to higher productivity.
4	You want to deliver a better customer experience, which will make your customers happier and create more customer loyalty, leading to increased profits.
3	You want to build something special.
2	You want to find inspiration and happiness in work and in life.
1	You ran out of firewood for your fireplace. This book makes for an excellent fire starter.