There will be three posts this week about
Delivering Happiness by
Tony Hsieh. This will not be the typical book review with the standard info about Tony’s background, early successes and the selling of two of his companies. When reading this book it became clear to me that Tony is sharing a large number of success principles that are common in success literature. He doesn’t call them principles but they still are principles.
The publisher also gave me a second book to give away. I am going to give this book, I will pay shipping, to a random comment author to my blog. At the end of the week I will pick the winner.
Here are the principles from the first part of the book that I found enlightening.
Action
“There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” Morpheus, The Matrix. Tony teaches us that everything takes action – life without action is just theory and theory doesn’t accomplish much. You have to live life and be in the game to find and deliver happiness.
Humility
Humility is a theme and a core value for Tony and for
Zappos. This has allowed him to endure many tough times personally and professionally because he was not focused on how he would look or how he would be impacted. When a person can separate himself or herself from the issue or opportunity, great things can happen.
No Man Is An Island
Early on Tony realized he couldn’t do everything himself. He knew he didn’t have the skills to cover everything in the business. One of his early businesses was website development and he was the sales person while his partner, Sanjay, was the programmer. Tony said about the two, “we made a good team.” He kept this mindset throughout his career – it takes more than one person to win.
Delayed Gratification
Tony had a chance to sell LinkExchange for $1 million when it was only 5 months old. When the company was about a year old, Yahoo offered $20 million of the company. Tony and his partners decided not to sell even though financially they would have been set for life. They know better things were down the road so they kept growing the business. To postpone pleasure into the future is a strong principle that has served Tony well.
Hire Right
Tony said “we hired a lot of smart, passionate