delivering happiness 
by tony hsieh 

Tony Hsieh, Zappos founder, shares powerful insights on how to deliver happiness to customers in order to make a business venture successful. The book is more of a biography that shares Hsieh’s stories and viewpoints on creating the path to success and building a happy workplace.

Here is a summary of the different things covered in the book.

Chapter 1 & 2: The ups and downs
In the first chapter, Hsieh takes the reader down the memory lane of his childhood wherein he tells the readers about how his parents had mapped out his life. From wanting him to learn to play piano to doing every little to big thing in life, Hsieh’s parents had decided everything for him when he had plans of his own and wanted to study computers, technology and build his own business.

He also discusses how he began thinking outside the box at a young age when he was in school and eventually made his way to Harvard. While he never took too many classes in college or school, he learnt a lot, did well in the exams and also kept running his business. It was creative thinking that helped him achieve that.

The second chapter talks about the different struggles people experience in life and how people emerge victorious, but sometimes things do not work out in their favor. The chapter also discusses how Hsieh experimented with different career options such as working for a reputable company, running his own business, declining offers to sell it and eventually selling it at a whopping price of $265 million to Microsoft.

Chapter 3 & 4: Diversify
In chapter 3, Hsieh shares his story about how he invested in and diversified Zappos by looking for different companies that required seed money to start off their business ventures. He then met Nick and Fred who had worked on creating a website that sold shoes. While Hsieh wasn’t sure of the idea, he still invested in it and soon, the business started doing well. It was then that Hsieh invested more money in the company and changed its name to Zappos.

Following that success story, Hsieh invested in around 27 other business in need of seed money and diversified his investments. However, he was soon bored with not being directly involved in the routine activities of all the businesses and then experimented with poker. He talks about how a company’s CEO must study the business in depth before investing in it to make an informed decision.

Then in the next chapter**,** Hsieh talks about how Zappos was doing good business, but its sales became adversely affected after the 9/11 episode. The sales dropped low and to save his company, Hsieh changed Zappos’ business model and turned into a dropshipping. He also liquidated his assets to get enough money to buy inventory and was able to turn the idea into a huge success. However, Zappos experienced problems with a company that it had outsourced to ship their orders, which affected their sales to which Hsieh argues that while outsourcing can be great, it is not always the best option especially when you don’t have any control over what the other service provider is doing.

Chapter 5 & 6: Platform for Growth
Chapter 5 centers on the importance of building a company culture and focusing more on creating loyal customers instead of advertising. When a company has scores of happy customers, they will publicize it themselves and the company won’t really need the support of any other advertisement. Hsieh emphasizes on the importance of establishing core values and principles in a business to make it a huge success.

Then in chapter 6, the focus is on the need to build and maintain great, profitable relationships with influential and reputable people across the globe to take your business to the next level. Building strong networks is what helps a business grow and that’s how Hsieh drew the attention of other successful businesses towards Zappos.

Chapter 7: End Game
In the last chapter of the book, Hsieh encourages the readers to ponder on their goals and aspirations in life because it is only when you are clear on what you wish to achieve that you can become successful in life. He also talks about how one’s mission should be to deliver happiness to the entire world, including your customers when running a business because that’s how you can influence people. This can be achieved by pursuing an idea you are truly invested in.

Delivering Happiness is a warm, inspirational read that holds readers by the hand on how to run a successful business.