BOOK REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

DELIVERING HAPPINESS － A Path To Profits, Passion, And Purpose
By Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com,Inc. 


OVERVIEW: In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, Delivering Happiness shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success﹣and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own. Hsieh offers the following as standard operating procedure at Zappos: Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit, make customer service the responsibility of the entire company﹣not just a department, focus on company culture as the #1 priority, apply research from the science of happiness to running a business, help employees grow−both personally and professionally, seek to change the world, oh, and make money too.

AUTHOR: In 1999, at the age of twenty-four, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange the company he cofounded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO. He helped Zappos grow from almost nothing to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually, while simultaneously making Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For" list. 

MY REVIEW: I agree with Seth Godin, bestselling author of Linchpin when he said, "This book is funny, true, important, and useful." Now, Tony Hsieh may have a different world view than I do, but he has passion for life and enjoys making other people happy and I like that. This is his story ﹣ and he tells it well. I am always interested in how some people are able to "make it big." I was so intrigued by Tony's story that I read the book through the first day I got it. The back of the book lists the top ten reasons why you should want to read the book. I will just mention five of them: You want to learn from all the mistakes we made at Zappos over the years so that your business can avoid make some of the same ones. You want to build a long-term, enduring business and brand. You want to create a stronger company culture, which will make your employees and coworkers happier and create more employee engagement, leading to higher productivity. You want to find inspiration and happiness in work and in life. You ran out of firewood for your fireplace. This book makes an excellent fire-starter.

WIN A COPY OF THIS BOOK

The generous folks at Hachette Book Group are allowing me to host this book giveaway for three (3) copies!

• Winners are restricted to the US and Canada. No PO Box mailing address please. You do not have to be a blogger to win.

• I must have a way of contacting you, so be sure to leave your email address in your comment.

• Some choose to omit the @ sign and the . dot by writing it in "code" like this: you (at) your email (dot)com.

• I'll close the comments July 21 and pick the three winners. I will contact the winners via email to get their mailing information. The winners will have three days to respond. If I do not hear from them within three days, I will select another winner(s).