How Did Tony Hsieh Deliver Happiness

Bus290 Section 01
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Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

February 4, 2014 Haofei Chen Xinyue Wang
When Tony Hsieh was nine years old, his dream was to make lots of money by breeding and selling earthworms, so his parents paid $33.45 for a box of mud that contained at least one hundred earthworms. Then he built a “worm box” in his back yard and fed them raw egg yolks; unfortunately, thirty days later, he found that most worms were gone. Hsieh felt bad about failing, but this experience did not stop him on the way to success.
When Hsieh was young, his parents emigrated from Taiwan to the United State; they had high expectations for him, and they hoped he could become a doctor. So they were strict with him, but Hsieh was more interested in running his own business and coming up with different ways to make money; more money meant he could live the way he liked.
When he was a child, he did a lot of garage sales during his elementary school years. Then in middle school, he had a newspaper
route, made his own newsletter, sold pin-on buttons. Through these activities, he made two hundred dollars average per month. In high school, he tried more interesting things, learning many languages and instruments. But he concentrated on how to make more money. During his high school time, he worked for a company named GDI and sold magic trick equipment. After he entered Harvard University，he set up a magazine with friends, organized a study group, experienced many different things for the first time in college, and worked for BBN company. In his junior year, he opened a snack bar. He also met Alfred Lin, who would join Zappos as CEO and COO.
After Hsieh graduated, he found a job at Oracle，though it was a easy job for him, he was paid a lot of money. He felt lucky, but after some time， he got bored. At the same time, the World Wide Web became popular, so he quit his job at Oracle and began his online business. At first, he did not make much money, he doubted his choice，but he did not give up and began running Internet Link Exchange. Unexpectedly, this business was so successful, that someone wanted to buy the company, but he refused because he thought the company was still too young. Under his efforts，the company grown to more than one hundred employees in 1998; then he sold it to Microsoft and left. Hsieh did not realize that selling his company was a turning point in his life.
After leaving his company, Hsieh and his friends decided to start an investment fund.
Soon, he got a message from a man named Nick, who said he had just set up a website called “shoesite,” the birth of Zappos. Then he began to operate this website and used more money running the website. At the same time, Hsieh became interested in poker. By learning to play poker, he learned some experiences that can be used in business. Then he decided to do something more meaningful，so he decided to invest in many different fields and lost a lot of money. He realized that investing in the fields he did not know at all is a really bad idea. Running this time, he also went to Zappos and met with the employees every two weeks to give them some suggestions. Although there were few people working, the small team still made big
progress.
Things became not good after some time, the company had trouble, nearly going bankrupt, a company decided not to invest in Zappos, this meant Zippos was going to go bankrupt. In this case，Hsieh decided to invest four-month funds to Zappos so he could not use more money on other events, more money on one event meant higher risk for him. This is one part of the book, when Hsith talked about the relationship between people. He had a lot of friends in many different fields, but he did not have a friend that could be with him all the time. He held a big birthday party and spent several weeks to prepare it. In fact, this party was a success, there were over one hundred people who attended his party and through this party, he realized that we should not use traditional business ideas to build relationships; we should make friends and deepen friendships. Through friendships, we can get more help whether in business or in your personal lives.
On April of 2010, because of some reasons, many companies went bankrupted, Zappos was the only one that could hold on, but it still needed more funds, so they began to meet different people and companies to get more new ideas. Although there are still lots of difficulties, Tony Hsieh decided to devote himself totally to Zappos, he believed this was the what he wanted to do for a few years.
Zappos went through a recession, the dot-com stock market crash, so Hsieh felt stressful. Hsieh just focused on survival; he knew he had no choice but to succeed. Alfred and Hsieh decided to invest some more money from the Venture Frogs fund, but eventually they used up what little money was left in the fund.
Then, Hsieh decided to set up a 9-Month hiring Plan that hiring which they would need to following very carefully, maximizing their gross profit and needing the employees to think about how to increase gross profit over the next 9 months. Finally, Hsieh tried to minimize expense, even work for free, but the situation was dire. Even though it would hurt Zappos’ growth, they decided to cut most of their marketing expenses and to refocus our efforts on trying to get the customers to purchase again and more frequently. Also, they listed seven critical points to accomplish in a few months: 1. The culture is about the culture 2. It’s a short-term expense, long-term investment 3. Make it available to everyone 4. Give your evangelists a voice 5. A word is a word, and a picture is worth a thousand… but a brand is worth a million 6. Not all cultures are the same 7. Evolve

After that, a salesman told Hsieh that they had a warehouse in Kentucky located right next to the UPS Worldport hub where is a good transportation position. Zappos decided to sign on with eLogistics and started putting together a plan for transferring their entire inventory in the Willows warehouse over to the eLogistics warehouse.
But the salesman had oversold their capabilities. Many customers weren’t getting what they had ordered because the eLogistics staff wasn’t able to put shoes away in a timely manner. When the problem became worse, Hsieh put all of his money into Zappos to keep it running and believed one thing his dream. Also Keith had found a new warehouse in Kentucky, and Zappos business could come into a right path, and they got a loan from Wells Fargo.
In San Francisco, Hsieh and his colleagues were having a hard time finding people who wanted to work in their customer service department. Because Hsieh wanted to provide the very best customer service, he thought that Zappos should not outsource that department. In order to build great customer service, Zappos offered free shipping both ways to make transactions as easy as possible and risk-free for their customers. Although the cost was expensive, the marketing result is what they wanted to see. No matter the cost, they had already built a famous brand, which was popular with customers.
After that, Hsieh intended to create a new company culture that would allow the very best customer service to happen naturally on its own. So Hsieh sent e-mails to all of his employees in order to get their opinion about the company culture. Then Zappos spent the next several years focusing on improving the customer experience, strengthening its culture, and investing in employees’ personal and professional development. Hsieh set an additional interesting step in process, but they eventually came up with our final list of ten core values, which are the most important. 1. Deliver WOW Through Service. 2. Embrace and Drive Change. 3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness. 4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded. 5. Pursue Growth and Learning. 6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication. 7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit. 8. Do More with Less. 9. Be Passionate and Determined. 10. Be Humble.
At Zappos, anything worth doing was worth doing with WOW, showing passion at work. Meanwhile, Hsieh was training his employees to be adventurous, creative, and open-minded. He wanted everyone not to be afraid to take risks and not to be afraid to make mistakes. Hsieh felt that if people aren’t making mistakes then they’re not taking enough risks.
Hsieh says it’s important for employees to grow personally and professionally: to constantly challenge and stretch themselves, and not be stuck in a job where they don’t feel like they are growing or learning. He believes that inside every employee is more potential than even the employee himself/herself realizes. His goal is to help employees unlock that potential. Also Hsieh needs employees to build open and honest relationships with communication, build a positive team and family spirit, do more with less, be passionate and determined and be humble. Not only does Hsieh build a company, but also he builds employees what he wants.
In the two years leading up to the announcement of the Amazon acquisition, Zappos achieved more and more media coverage. Every once in a while, a reporter or popular blogger would comment on Zappos, and the story would spread like wildfire. Hsieh used his passion and real personal story to describe his business experience, company culture, and management. Although Amazon wanted to merge with Zappos, Hsieh didn’t want to sell the company that contained his life, experience and painstaking effort. Finally, for the sake of Zappos, Hsieh agreed to the merger. In the end, it turned out that every one was taking different paths in pursuit of the same goal: happiness. In 2007, Hsieh started getting interested in learning more about the science of happiness. Also Hsieh transferred Maslow’s Hierarchy into three levels to business purposes: 1. At the top, customers 2. In the middle, employees 3. On the bottom, investors. Finally, Hsieh wanted to write this book for a different reason: to contribute to a happiness movement to help make the world a better place. Hsieh says that we should not forget to make your customers happier, to make your employees happier and to make yourself happier.
I learned much about leadership from Tony Hsieh. He has many positive leader attributes, but also a few negative ones. One of his good habits is that he is used to rethinking all the things that he has done, analyzing advantages and disadvantages, and getting experience from every case. He is also intelligent; he could think about one thing in different ways and find business opportunities that other people could not find, the ones who become the most successful are the ones who have the courage to stand and act despite their fears. We all know that building good relationships with people is necessary for a leader even an ordinary man. Leaders always share what they learned with their friends. Hsieh has his own principles，when he dealt with some things, he always stayed with his principle and did not waver.
There are hilarious story about the company culture and how the company is very selective bringing in charismatic and friendly employees who are passionate about what they do. An example of this attention to detail is in an instant message technical support conversation that one of the managers of the company had with on of their regular customer support representatives. The manager posed as an extrinsic customer who wanted to be referred to him in the third person, named Timmy. He would ask for the representative to also refer to himself in the third person and he played along. The representative was professional and also didn't take himself too seriously and was able to have fun on the job while providing the correct information to the customer and closing the sale. The company's dedication to customer satisfaction is not just some mantra that is posted on their wall: it is reflected everyday through the actions of its employees and by its policies, such as a no-questions-asked returns policy.
In my opinion, one thing he did that is not perfect is that he did not plan ahead, many times he did not even know the event clearly before investing. This made him lose lots of money, after which, he realized that he should through investigate and always be ready to cope with the worst possible case.
The author, Tony Hsieh, is the CEO of Zappos and an American Born Chinese. He has described his own management and business experience so that we can be inspired by his passion, thinking, and behavior. In my opinion, he succeeded by using his egalitarian management, gambling adventure, unlimited devotion and persisting on his ambition. For instance, he allowed each employee the right to advise each plan and decision; he used his own money as operating capital when his company had a financial crisis; he drove thirty-six hours nonstop in order to find a new warehouse for Zappos. The most important thing is the passion of his dream. No matter what cost and what trouble, Hsieh never gave up and tried his best to find solutions.
I believe there are four critical points that of a leader should have. First, leader must regard her employees as family members. Because her company seems like a mini-society, employees have a right to disagree with their employers. Hsieh would put the happiness of his employees ahead of himself? If the king makes his people happy, the country wills bloom. Second, she should devote everything to the company. If she wants to contribute to her company, she shows her responsibility by letting her employees know that she is trustworthy; she really does put emphasis on the company and finally wins their respect. At last, the most important thing, she must trust her decision. If she is weak and always hesitates in her plan, she will never be a successful leader. Tony Hsieh is a prefect model.