Transcript: Hi, it’s Ben Lai from Sales Ethos. Today I’m doing a book review of the title “Delivering Happiness: a path to profit, passion and purpose by Tony Hsieh. This is an excellent book for those of you who are looking to improve your company culture. And just in case you haven’t heard of the company Zappos, they’re are big ecommerce company in America that sells shoes. Tony Shea is the author and the CEO of this company. One of the key reasons that this is such a great book is because it tells the story detail by detail about how they went about building this massive company without compromising on the things that are most important to them. And so I’m going to share with you my three key points and learnings from it as a summary of the book Delivering Happiness.
Delivering Happiness Takeaway #1: Focus on culture and values
So point number one is that they were immensely focused on their company culture and values. And I mentioned this in a previous video, that if you want to increase the morale of your staff, that you really have to start from the values. It’s not enough just to, to brainstorm with the rest of the executives, and then put a plaque on the board, and with those values written on it, and expect that to motivate people. You have to live these out. You have to constantly communicate these to your people. In Tony Hsieh’s case with Zappos, they would hire and fire based on their core values. It’s not that you have to copy their values, you need to come up with your own. And as a result, you need to make sure that you’re living these out on a regular basis.
Delivering Happiness Takeaway #2: Focus on customer happiness
This leads me to point number two, which is one of their core values, which is to find ways to wow customers at every turn. And this is attributed to why they have been so successful. People, when they buy shoes from their website are really pleased when they realize that instead of this seven day shipping, which they were promised, Zappos pays for expedited shipping, and they get the shoes the very next day. In addition to that, they also have an unconditional return policy. So if the shoes don’t fit, or they don’t like the style, they can simply return it at no cost to the customer. So all of these things put together creates a really great experience for their customers. And this is a major factor for why they have been so successful.
Delivering Happiness Takeaway #3: Be passionate about your work
Now, point number three is that they are really passionate about what they do. And that is once again, one of their core values. It’s not as though they were sitting down one day, and then they thought “Hmm, I would be, you know, what would really fulfill me in life? Selling shoes online, right?
Which goes against the advice that a lot of motivational speakers would give nowadays, in terms of pursuing your passion. And I agree with Tony’s view on this in that you need to focus on serving others first and be passionate about that, regardless of the form it takes. You see, they started with the perspective “Where’s the gap in the market?” “What are the trends looking like?” They saw that there was a gap in the online shoe retailing space, and they went into that as a result. And they became passionate about selling shoes online. And the people that they hire became passionate about serving customers and wowing customers.
Delivering Happiness Review and Summary
So those are the three main takeaways that I got from the book. What what would the main things that you got? I’d be really interested to hear what you think. Leave a comment below. Don’t forget to “like” and subscribe. Remember that integrity plus skills equals success.
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