In his book, Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh delivers a must-read for all Internet entrepreneurs, business owners and corporate executives in general.

On one level Tony Hsieh (pronounced ‘Shay’) provides a riveting tale of the incredible ups and downs he has experienced as an entrepreneur. On another level Tony provides a prescription for how to build a successful company and achieve personal fulfillment As you might imagine, it has to do with delivering happiness…

My Background To Reading Delivering Happiness

I had the opportunity to read Delivering Happiness not so long after reaching my own conclusion about what makes people – including myself – happy. And when I say ‘happy’ I mean happy in a long-term sense: having an overall sense of contentment with life – the ability to look at your life and say:

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

My theory is that true happiness comes from devoting your own unique talents and abilities to helping others; making a positive contribution to the world in a way only you can make.

It doesn’t come from being thanked for that contribution. Regardless of whether or not anyone appreciates your contribution, just knowing that you are making a positive impact using your own individual gifts brings you happiness and fulfillment

For me, part of that happiness comes from building our company, Kikabink, into a vehicle that gives people specific tools and knowledge to help them start and build their own fulfilling online businesses (which, I hope, will deliver products and services that bring THEIR customers happiness). For others it might be composing music or raising a family. We all have different callings.

Providing exceptional customer service also lies at the heart of what we strive for at Kikabink. Since I knew Zappos and Tony Hsieh were obsessed with customer service, I thought Delivering Happiness might provide some insights into how we might harness customer centricity to set our company apart (sadly from a lot of other Internet marketing companies for whom customer service seems to be a necessarily evil, if they bother with it at all…) and also set the stage for our overall success.

For these reasons and more – including my insatiable appetite for books on entrepreneurs and business leaders – I was excited at the opportunity to read a free advance copy of Delivering Happiness for the purpose of writing a review.

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh did not disappoint.

From Worm Farmer To Internet Millionaire

Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness begins with Tony describing his path from gifted – if a little lazy – student to Internet millionaire. Early on, through such childhood ventures as running a worm farm and a mail order business, Tony displayed entrepreneurial flair.

He was also a twenty-something in Silicon Valley at the height of the ‘dotcom boom’ in the mid-to-late 1990s. The combination of the two probably made it inevitable that, after graduating from Harvard University and spending just five months in a boring job at Oracle, Tony would begin a web design business that subsequently morphed into banner advertising network, LinkExchange.

Tony’s description of starting, building and selling LinkExchange reads like the veritable Internet startup dream story. The company grew super-fast and, within a few years of starting it, Tony and his co-founders sold the company to Microsoft for an impressive $265 million.

But Tony’s explanation of WHY he sold LinkExchange, and his subsequent realization that the cash windfall he received from selling the company did NOT bring him happiness, serve as clues to what would lead him – and Zappos – in their subsequent direction.

A direction that led Tony Hsieh to almost lose all the millions of dollars he made selling LinkExchange to Microsoft.

Saving The Company By Delivering Happiness

In Delivering Happiness Tony explains how the lessons of LinkExchange and the period of his life between selling the company and becoming involved in Zappos set him up to pursue happiness for its own sake… even if it meant losing much of his money in an effort to save Zappos from bankruptcy.

Interestingly, it was through the need to stay afloat that Zappos began to focus on customer service as a core business strategy. Specifically, the company decided to devote most of its marketing resources to delighting existing customers and enticing them to repurchase from Zappos, rather than trying to acquire new customers. Of course, Zappos’ resultant focus on customer service ended up attracting both repeat customers and new customers.

After its strategy of delivering happiness to customers – as well as a timely $6 million line of credit from the Wells Fargo bank – saved Zappos from ruin, the company expanded its customer service focus from ‘forced’ business strategy to all-encompassing business philosophy.

In the book, and with contributions from Zappos employees and even customers, Tony explains how Zappos lives, breathes and makes money from its devotion to customer service. And how this obsession with customer service has taken Zappos from the brink of failure to making over $1 billion in annual sales.

And this is where Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness truly shines for the student of business. Tony shares Zappos’ 10 core values, internal corporate emails and documents, and a list of links to a host of resources – including the kind of internal materials most companies would NEVER make public. Together, these provide entrepreneurs and business executives with solid ideas for enhancing their own customer service and businesses overall. Thank you, Tony Hsieh.

So, as much as Delivering Happiness is a fun, easy to read book about an entrepreneur and the business he helped build, it’s also a resource you might find yourself referring to again and again. Not so much because it’s a how-to manual (it’s not) but because of its distillation of powerful insights about what customer service looks like and what causes people to be happy.

I highly recommend Delivering Happiness to anyone who loves reading books about entrepreneurs, but especially to business people seeking to build or help build successful, sustainable companies. For the company founder, CEO or business executive, Tony Hsieh’s book provides the answer to the question of how to build a great business and be personally fulfilled at the same time. (Hint: as indicated above, you need one to have the other… and it’s all about delivering happiness…)

Get your copy of Delivering Happiness by visiting Delivering Happiness Book or ordering from Amazon.