In this solo Book Thinkers video, Nick Hutchison recommends Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness (subtitle: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose). He explains that the book was chosen by his workplace’s monthly book club for its focus on company culture, and he praises it as a “fun, riveting roller‑coaster” that chronicles how Zappos grew from zero gross merchandise revenue to over $1 billion in under ten years before being sold to Amazon. Hutchison highlights the book’s practical lessons, especially Zappos’s ten core values, reading each aloud and illustrating several with memorable anecdotes (e.g., a pizza‑ordering call that exemplifies “Deliver wow through service,” the mass relocation of staff to Las Vegas to “Embrace and drive change,” and extravagant office parties that embody “Create fun and a little weirdness”). He notes additional values such as adventurousness, growth, open communication, team spirit, frugality, passion, and humility. The reviewer frames the book as his “Bible” for customer service and culture, urges both employees and leaders to read it, and promises to implement its ideas in his own organization. He also references endorsements from Seth Godin and Jocko Willink to reinforce the book’s credibility, and concludes with a call to the Book Thinkers community to read and share the book.
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Hello, Book Thinkers family! Today's book tip is going to come from Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, who is the CEO and co-founder of Zappos. And the subtitle of this book is A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. I loved reading this book. It was originally picked up because at my full-time job we have a monthly book club that meets every week to discuss 1/4 of a book. They chose this book because it's supposed to be a fantastic book on company culture, something that every single company could improve on, and it did not let us down. I loved reading this book. I loved reading this book because Tony brought Zappos, which was at $0 in gross merchandise revenue, to over $1 billion in less than 10 years, and then they sold to Amazon. That story was detailed in these pages, and it was a very fun sort of riveting roller coaster read. I think everybody can learn from the lessons in that kind of growth of the business specifically, but then as far as culture goes, there are a lot of lessons that I'll talk about in just a minute. On the back of the book, Tony actually gives his top 10 reasons to read the book, and he starts with the growth of Zappos and everything that you'll learn along the way. And the last point here actually says, you just ran out of firewood for your fireplace. This book makes an excellent fire starter. So that just shows you the kind of comedy that's going to be in this book. And then lastly, before we jump into the actual lesson here, Seth Godin, who's one of my favorite authors, gives a testimonial on the front here, and I think that he sums things up pretty well. He says, this book is funny, true, true, important, and useful, just like Tony. So Tony, thank you if you watch this video. I learned a lot from you, and I'm going to continue to implement these things and continue to learn a lot. But the one thing that I did want to share with everybody as far as culture goes is that Zappos had a fantastic way of narrowing down everybody's core values into 10 core values that the entire company could exemplify, and I'm going to read them to you here. So number one is deliver wow through service. They want to make sure that every single person in the company has excellent customer service skills, and they really go at length to make sure that that happens. Excellent wow-level customer service is one of the reasons that Zappos was able to grow so rapidly, so fast. Having that as one of your building blocks puts you in a place for success. There's this funny story. One time Tony was out with some entrepreneur friends at a conference or something like that, and And all the pizza places were closed. So Tony had somebody else in the group call into the Zappos customer service hotline and try to order pizza. And normally a customer service rep would go, nope, we're an online shoe retailer, click. But no, they said, okay, where are you staying? And then they went, they put them on hold, then they went and looked up the open pizza places in the area that would deliver, and then got back on the line and listed them out. And it's like, wow, that is really wow-level customer service. That's fantastic. Number 2 is embrace and drive change. At one point, Tony uprooted the entire office and moved them 6 hours away to Vegas, and a lot of employees— I think 80% of them or something like that— actually changed and moved their entire lives over to Vegas. Not a lot of them had family or friends in the area, but they became a stronger company because they embraced that level of change. Number 3 is create fun and a little weirdness. There was fun at every step of this entire book. At one point, Tony even a party loft and he would throw huge grandiose parties, put on such spectacular shows. That was in the early days of Zappos, but it just goes to show how important it is to kind of let loose and have fun a little bit. Number 4 is be adventurous, creative, and open-minded. In order to get through this video, I'll just list out the rest of them, but I think you can understand there are sort of stories at every point for each one of these. Number 5 is pursue growth and learning. They have an entire library in the Zappos headquarters where people can go check out books and read them. It's fantastic. Number 6 is build open and honest relationships with communication. Tony details a lot of emails in this book that he sent to their customers and vendors and partners, as well as employees, that were pretty open and honest. Number 7, build a positive team and family spirit. Number 8, do more with less. Number 9, be passionate and determined. And number 10, be humble. This book has become my Bible for customer service and for company culture, and I think that if you're in a situation where you're looking to improve yours, you should read this book. Jocko Willink, inside of one of his books, talks about— oh, inside of Extreme Ownership, talks about leading up the chain. So if you're just an employee, read this book, lead up the chain, take ownership, and make sure that your bosses get a handle of this book because it truly can change your company. And I'm going to be a testament to that over the next few months as we implement a lot of these changes. So Tony, again, thank you for writing this book. Fantastic. I'm going to recommend it to as many people as humanly possible. So hopefully the Book Thinkers community embraces it. And with that, that's the end of my review. Go out there, read something. Have a great day. Bye.
