Delivering Happiness (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

People edit see section history

• Tony Robbins: CEO, Zappos.
• Ms. Gore: Tony's high school computer science teacher.
• Sanjay: Tony's college roommate and co-founder of LinkExchange.
• Jerry Yang: Co-founder of Yahoo!
• Michael Moritz: Venture capitalist in CA.
• Ali: Add a description of this character.
• Fred Mossler: Worked in the shoe department at Nordstrom's, was brought in as the first hire at Zappos and as someone who knew something about shoes.
• Alfred L
• Nick Swinmurn
• Keith
• Lenny
• Timmy: Tony playing the role of a egotist customer
• Jonathan Haidt: The customer service executive
• Jeff Bezos
• Jenn Lim: Tony's longtime friend and back-up brain; Delivering Happiness CEO
• Hadi
• Charles Dickens
• David
• Gandhi
• Andy
• Gustav

Quotes edit see section history

• “When you walk with purpose, you collide with destiny.”

  Bertice Berry

• “He <Thomas Edison> was probably too busy working on other stuff, though, because, like Gandhi, he never did stop by my house. Maybe they were too busy hanging out with each other.”

  Tony Hsieh

• “There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

  Morpheus, The Matrix

• “I made a list of the happiest periods in my life, and I realized than none of them involved money. I realized that building stuff and being creative and inventive made me happy. Connecting with a friend and talking through the entire night until the sun rose made me happy. Trick-or-treating in middle school with a group of my closest friends made me happy. Eating a baked potato after a swim meet made me happy. Pickles made me happy. (Although for that one, I'm still unclear why. I think it's just because they are obviously delicious and I enjoy saying "pickles.")”

  Tony Hsieh

• “I thought about how easily we are all brainwashed by our society and culture to stop thinking and just assume by default that more money equals more success and more happiness, when ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life. I thought about how I enjoyed creating, building, and doing stuff that I was passionate about. And there was so much opportunity to create and build stuff, especially with the Internet still exploding, and not enough time to pursue every idea out there....I was about to miss out on <this> so that I could make even more money when I already had all the money I would ever need....I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a turning point for me in my life. I had decided to stop chasing the money, and start chasing the passion.”

  Tony Hsieh

• “I'd started to force myself to think again about what I was trying to get out of life. I asked myself what I was trying to accomplish, what I wanted to do, and whether I should be sitting at a different table. From my poker experience, I knew it was never too late to change tables.”

  Tony Hsieh

• “To me, it was really more a philosophy about always being open to meeting people no matter how they looked or what their backgrounds were. Every interaction with anyone anywhere was an opportunity to gain additional perspective. We are all human at the core, and it can be easy to lose sight of that in a world ruled by business, politics, and social status.”

  Tony Hsieh

• “I personally really dislike "business networking" events. At almost everyone of these events, it seems like the goal is to walk around and find people to trade business cards with, with the hope of meeting someone who can help you out in business and in exchange you can help that person out somehow....Instead, I really prefer to focus on just building relationships and getting to know people as just people, regardless of their position in the business world or even if they're not from the business world. I believe that there's something interesting about anyone and everyone--you just have to figure out what that something is. If anything, I've found that it's more interesting to build relationships with people that are not in the business world because they almost always can offer unique perspectives and insights, and also because those relationships tend to be more genuine.”

  Tony Hsieh

• “My parents weren't particularly thrilled that I had put all of my money into Zappos. They asked me if I was sure that I wanted to give up all that money, and I told them I was. Alfred told me, "As your friend and financial adviser, I'm advising you not to do it. It might pay off in the long run, but it's not worth the risk of being completely broke." I thought about Fred, how he had taken the leap of faith when he first joined Zappos because he believed in what was possible. He had give up a great career, just bought a new house, and had kids to take care of. He had risked his entire life for the Zappos dream. I told Alfred I was going to follow Fred's footsteps and do the same thing. We had taken it this far, and I wanted to see how far we could take Zappos. Even if Zappos failed, we would know that we had done everything we could to chase a dream we believed in.”

  Tony Hsieh

• “Be Humble is probably the core value that ends up affecting our hiring decisions the most. There are a lot of experienced, smart, and talented people we interview that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But a lot of them are also really egotistical, so we end up not hiring them. At most companies, the hiring manager would probably argue that we should hire such a candidate because he or she will add a lot of value to the company, which is probably why most large corporations don't have great cultures. Our philosophy at Zappos is that we're willing to make short-term sacrifices (including lost revenue or profits) if we believe that the long-term benefits are worth it. Protecting the company culture and sticking to core values is a long-term benefit.”

• “I can tell you that my mom has zero buzz, but when she says something, I listen.”

  Tony Hsieh

• “You ran out of firewood for your fireplace. This book makes an excellent fire-starter”

  Tony Hsieh

• “There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

  Morpheus

• “First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”

  Gandhi

• “I failed my way to success.”

  Thomas Edison

• “Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself”

  George Bernard Shaw

• “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit”

  H. S. Truman

• “We either make ourselves miserable or we can make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”

  Carlos Castaneda

• “hat lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us”

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• “When you walk with purpose, you collide with destiny”

  Bertice Berry

• “No matter what your past has been, you have a spotless future.”

  Unknown

• “Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb”

  Hugh Macleod

• “If you have more than 3 priorities then you dont have any”

  Jim Collins

• “If the person you're talking to isn't listening, be patient. Maybe he has a small piece of fluff in his ear”

  Winnie-the-Pooh

• “In the pursuit of knowledge, something is added every day. In the pursuit of enlightenment, something is dropped every day.”

  Lao-Tzu

• “Someone broke into my car last night. Nothing worth taking, car is actually less of a mess now. I should schedule this monthly.”

  Unknown

• “A great company is more likely to die of indigestion from too much oportunity than starvation from too little”

  Packard's Law

• “You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to suft”

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

• “Told ghost stories with friends last night. Now wondering whether ghosts sit around campfire & tell each other Peoples Stories”

  Unknown

• “To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”

  Soren Kierkegaard

• “Be humble: In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts mind there are few.”

  Shunryu Suzuki

• “I made a note to myself to make sure I never lost sight of the value of a tribe where people truly felt connected and cared about the well-being of one another. To me, connectedness- the number and depth of my relationships- was an important element of my happiness, and I was grateful for our tribe.”

  Tony Hsieh

• “The higher-purpose type of happiness is about being part of something bigger than yourself that has meaning to you. Research has shown that of the three types of happiness, this is the longest lasting. What I find interesting is that many people go through life chasing after the pleasure type of happiness, thinking that once they are able to sustain that, then they will worry about the passion and, if they get around to it, look for their higher purpose.”

  Tony Hsieh

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• “Envision, create, and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you,”

  Highlighted by 1118 Kindle customers

• Looking back, a big reason we hit our goal early was that we decided to invest our time, money, and resources into three key areas: customer service (which would build our brand and drive word of mouth), culture (which would lead to the formation of our core values), and employee training and development (which would eventually lead to the creation of our Pipeline Team).

  Highlighted by 1000 Kindle customers

• Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships), and vision/meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself).

  Highlighted by 920 Kindle customers

• Another common trap that many marketers fall into is focusing too much on trying to figure out how to generate a lot of buzz, when really they should be focused on building engagement and trust.

  Highlighted by 861 Kindle customers

• In business, one of the most important decisions for an entrepreneur or a CEO to make is what business to be in. It doesn’t matter how flawlessly a business is executed if it’s the wrong business or if it’s in too small a market.

  Highlighted by 828 Kindle customers

• I had decided to stop chasing the money, and start chasing the passion.

  Highlighted by 806 Kindle customers

• As unsexy and low-tech as it may sound, our belief is that the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. You have the customer’s undivided attention for five to ten minutes, and if you get the interaction right, what we’ve found is that the customer remembers the experience for a very long time and tells his or her friends about it.

  Highlighted by 785 Kindle customers

• it’s a bad idea to invest in industries you don’t understand, in companies you don’t have any control or influence over, or in people you don’t know or trust.

  Highlighted by 759 Kindle customers

• It was about building a lifestyle that was about delivering happiness to everyone, including ourselves.

  Highlighted by 595 Kindle customers

• At Zappos, we don’t measure call times (our longest phone call was almost six hours long!), and we don’t upsell. We just care about whether the rep goes above and beyond for every customer. We don’t have scripts because we trust our employees to use their best judgment when dealing with each and every customer. We want our reps to let their true personalities shine during each phone call so that they can develop a personal emotional connection (internally referred to as PEC) with the customer.

  Highlighted by 576 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Las Vegas, Nevada
• San Francisco, California
• Kentucky
• Amazon
• Zappos
• New York
• Wells Fargo
• Africa
• Mel
• United States

Organizations edit see section history

• Zappos: Online shoe retailer.
• Sequoia Capital: Add a description of this organization.
• Amazon.com
• LinkExchange

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

List the series to which this book belongs.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Tony Hsieh (Author) - Co-founded LinkExchange in 1996, sold it to Microsoft for $265 million in 1998. Got involved with Zappos as an adviser and investor in 1999. Eventually went full time with the company and became the CEO. Sold the company to Amazon in 2009 for $1.2 billion.

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: HF5386 .H864 2010
• Dewey: 658.409

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Business & Investing › Skills › Communications
• Books › Health, Mind & Body › Self-Help › Success
• Books › Business & Investing › Management & Leadership › Management
• Books › Business & Investing › Industries & Professions › Customer Service
• Books › Business & Investing › Management & Leadership › Leadership
• Books › Nonfiction › Education

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Delivering Happiness

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history