In business, one of the most important decisions for an entrepreneur or a CEO to make is what business to be in. Everything else can and will eventually be copied. Even today, our belief is that our Brand, our Culture, and our Pipeline (which we internally refer to as “BCP”) are the only competitive advantages that we will have in the long run.

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). Completely unedited? That’s crazy! A few seconds (and probably a vodka shot or two) later… Yeah, let’s do it! Customer service, culture, and employee development We would ask employees to write, in a few paragraphs, the answer to the question: What does Zappos culture mean to you? Except for correcting typos, we would leave it unedited and publish everything in a book. The 10 Core Values weren’t fully established yet, but a culture book seemed like a powerful way to focus the company on the core values- because all of the content would come from the source of those values, the people who worked at Zappos. 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). There was a feeling of no judgment, and as I glanced around the warehouse, I saw each person as an individual to be appreciated for just being himself or herself, dancing to the music. My grade of the book: A- (using the American grading system) - highly recommended!īelow are the top lessons I got out of the book! Spiritual rave partiesĪs someone who is usually known as being the most logical and rational person in a group, I was surprised to feel myself swept with an overwhelming sense of spirituality-not in the religious sense, but a sense of deep connection with everyone who was there as well as the rest of the universe. Really recommended, especially for people interested in business and entrepreneurship. Tony Hsieh repeated the story of Elon Musk with Zappos, from coming in as an investor to dumping all his money to let the company survive, to building it into the top retailer later purchased by Amazon. Easy read, and a very insightful story from the CEO of an iconic company.

Zappos delivering happiness