In his
book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profit,
Passion and Purpose, Tony
Hsieh looks at one of the biggest thoughts behind starting a company; “Will it
make me happy?” This is a really
difficult question, and something that can’t really be answered by a simple “Yes”
or “No”. However, from reading this
book, and seeing how Hsieh went from Harvard slacker to multi-billionaire, I
can see that even he asks this question to himself.
This
book starts off with a basic biography of Tony Hsieh’s life. It starts at the beginning, when he’s growing
up in the Bay Area, California, and how he started thinking of ways to earn
money even as a kid. It then follows his
journey to high school, where he tricks a phone sex line in the computer lab
into thinking him and his buddies are over 21.
It even explores his college years, of him finding the best schedule to
get good grades without much work, and how he even ran his own kitchen in his
Harvard dorm.
After
his early life is explored, Tony Hsieh discusses the things that were
immediately contributory to his success.
After graduating Harvard, Hsieh got a job with Oracle, which he left
after five months to start LinkExchange, an ad service that gave companies a
presence on the internet. Several years
of hardship and struggle passed, and before he knew it, the company became a
huge success. He starting getting job
offers from companies like Yahoo and NBC, but it was eventually sold to
Microsoft for $265 million. Afterwards,
Hsieh realized the joy of starting a company from the bottom up, and decided to
continue on to his most famous, and his most successful, venture; Zappos.
When
discussing Zappos, Hsieh really went in-depth on what he envisioned his company
to be about. He was pitched the idea about
an online shoe sales company, and before he knew it, Zappos was born. It started with only drop shipments to the
few customers they had, but eventually, with the more customers they received,
they were able to expand exponentially.
Further on in the book, Hsieh discusses things like poker and raves in
relation to business. Admittedly, they
both seem completely different from business, but he finds a way to incorporate
the nature of both into Zappos, albeit with a few fire alarms thrown.
Throughout
the end of the book, Hsieh discusses the business practices and philosophies
that he learned from his experience. He
speaks of how he kept his principle of focusing on customer service, and even
focused on phone sales and inquiries when other companies were cutting back
their telemarketing departments. He also
talks about how he made Zappos a community, and how he got all personnel
involved in the company’s functions.
Of
course, there weren’t always good moments.
Several events, like the dotcom crash of 2002 and the later housing
crisis of 2008 really hit Zappos hard.
There were several points where Tony Hsieh nearly lost his company,
along with everything else. However,
through intuitive solutions, sound business practices, and a bit of money from
his pocket, Hsieh eventually persevered, and lead Zappos to their “marriage” to
Amazon on 2009.
Starting my own business wasn’t really the first
thought I had in my mind when I started here at NYU-Poly. However, after reading Tony Hsieh’s book, and
how he started, I must say I’m inspired.
Maybe with a group of dedicated people by my side and a little bit of
luck, I can start my own Zappos!
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