I was introduced to this book ‘Delivering Happiness‘ when I was reading Tim Ferriss blog.

What intrigued me at first was the young age of Tony who is the CEO of zappos.com and I was interested to find out how he transformed a company from scratch to $1 billion within a short period of time.

I didn’t know what zappos is all about and suspected it was the brand of the lighter people use to light up their cigarette.

I really love the book as it is written in a story manner, casual yet informative and inspiring. It’s contains the life story of Tony’s experiences, his ups and downs and how he handled his challenges.

I notice quite a number of similarities between entrepreneurs; one of the more distinctive one is that they had very enterprising mindset when they were young. Both Tony and Richard Branson (of Virgin Airlines) shared this in their books.

Who doesn’t encountered failures? It’s the way to react to the unsuccessful experiments which make them stronger, more determined. This is part of what ‘Delivering Happiness’ is all about. It involves the initial struggle of Zappos facing cashflow problems, lack of investors to pump in the money, failure of their 3rd party logistics company to meet up with expectations…

Tony’s (and his team) strong belief in Zappos led him to take risk to purse taking Zappos to a higher level. It’s really WOW for me to read his adventures, given the fact that at the age of late 20 – early 30, he was able to steer the company through such storm. It speaks volume of his foresight and entrepreneur’s spirit.

Next part of the book dedicates to the USP (unique selling point) of Zappos which differentiates itself from its competitors. Initially I thought it would be a boring section as it discusses on the company culture which to me is merely some SOP (standard operating procedure) meant for the sake of being on the wall. I was totally wrong. Zappos walk the talk, the entire company, everyone from management to customer service. I enjoyed the stories by their employees to illustrate each of the 10 core values Zappos follow.

Delivering Happiness isn’t a autobiography of Tony Hsieh, isn’t about Zappos but it’s a book which compasses the essential elements which created Zappos to be what it is now, courtesy of remarkable leadership in a fun and enjoyable environment!

I highly recommend this book for everyone who’s interested to

• Bring your passion to another level
• Create a more enjoyable working environment
• Understand what leaders do and their way of thinking in creating great companies
• Get some inspirations on creating ever-lasting business
• Broaden your perspectives on business-building in this new age period
• Doing differently for outstanding output
• Get more happiness

PS: It was written in the book that Zappos has a culture book for anyone who’s interested in reading more about their cultures through their employees. I thought I would have to pay for their book but instead there wasn’t any payment details when I went to the sign up page. The WOW thing is that I saw the UPS package on my desk 3 days later! Totally blew me off. When they meant fast delivery, it’s really fast!