I have never purchased shoes online. Nevertheless, this book written by Zappos Inc CEO and co-founder Tony Hsieh is immensly intriguing and inspiring. “Delivering Happiness” is the current motto/slogan/vision of the maildrop shoebox company.
Tony describes his life journey from worm-farm primary school backyard entrepreneur via Harvard to startup ventures and the Zappos adventure. He writes in a very funny and personal way about his peculiar experiences and it seems like it could have been me, in a positive way. (Of course on a smaller scale.) It is this personal connection that drives the book and builds momentum and credibility for Tony’s message that happiness is a perfectly valid business and life goal!
Of course, the next step is to build on the science of positive psychology and happiness to ensure that we create some pleasure/profits, more passion and clear picture of the purpose.
It is the first time that I read a book like this, where the author is a successful entrepreneur. Many other books about “authentic leadership” and positive messaging are based on moral arguments and ideology, written by armchair CEOs. This book is much more believable, because Zappos is there to prove that it actually works.
The book is written from a very American perspective, so I look forward to hearing the comments of my colleagues here in China how they experience the message and ideas in the book. Maybe it helps that Tony Hsieh is an American-born Chinese…
I hope that Mao Yun soon will write a book about creating and running Alibaba and Taobao, the Chinese equivalent to Amazon+Ebay+Zappos+Paypal+DealXtreme. I use Taobao every week, and to me it delivers happiness. I can only guess that Mao Yun follows a similar philosophy…
Goran Christiansson's Blog 