I’ve been contemplating the idea of reading this book for years. It’s actually been so long on the reading list, so that I don’t even remember how it ended up there, who recommended it and why I thought it was worthwhile reading it. Luckily, folks in our internal engineering reading club asked to switch gears and read/discuss something less technical, so I offered a several books off the top of my list. We didn’t pick up this book after all, but I read it over the weekend, just due to one quote from the author, Tony Hseih, who described how he managed to write it within just 3 weeks.
We tried coffee. And alcohol. And then coffee and alcohol. We actually put coffee beans in a vodka bottle
Why Link to heading
I gotta admit, if you tried to describe the structure of this book, you’d probably come up with either “Yet another successful billionaire startup entrepreneur tells us how he dreamed about success and did indeed succeed. Whoaaa, clap-clap!” or “Yet another successful billionaire startup entrepreneur wrote up an infomercial to sell us even more of his shit”, depending on your mood. And it’s both somewhat true, however, it leaves important intangibles out of the equation. Tony is great story teller and he brilliantly weaves in his anecdotes and lessons learnt along the way. So to me, it’s more like an adventure book or movie where a main character is endlessly seeking something, until after they finally stumble upon it. You’ll walk you over a series of insightful mini-stories, starting from the author’s childhood, that would conclude with some future business wisdom:
- sometimes you make more money off of you side gig, rather than your business
- it’s important to know when to stop investing effort in a dead product
- automation is what allows a business to scale
- creativity and fun at workplace is great
- starting over a business you think you know of is hardly ever a piece of candy
- crowdsourcing and innovation can help solve problems quickly
Finding Passion Link to heading
As in any adventure movie, there will also be a conflict moment for our hero. It’s a truly teaching and touching story, that in the span of 18 months, Tony went from “I was already helping run a company that I was excited about” to “I dredged going back to the office”. The necessity of a company rapid growth made them hire people motivated by other things. That’s where he first learns a lesson, that culture matters so much, that it’s like death by a thousand paper cuts, or like the Chinese water torture, if you end up in the wrong environment.
The struggle yet again is that, by that time Tony didn’t know what he liked and was going to do, but he sure knew what he did NOT like and was NOT going to do.
Looking for a Purpose Link to heading
What separates great movies from good ones? Some purpose and a cathartic moment. And we’ll have all that with Tony in this book. We all heard dozens of stories how unicorn startups had to make a lot of pivots in order to become profitable businesses, so that it’s now so far far away from its original idea, nobody would even guess.
Same goes for Zappos, although with a caveat, and I find it amusing, that it wasn’t a killer feature in the app or a new business direction that made them a billion dollar company. First, it was realization that their unique selling proposition was second to none customer support. And it all finally blossomed into the “Your Culture Is Your Brand” motto and manifested in company core values:
- Deliver WOW Through Service
- Embrace and Drive Change
- Create Fun and a Little Weirdness
- Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
- Pursue Growth and Learning
- Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication
- Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
- Do More with Less
- Be Passionate and Determined
- Be Humble
End Game Link to heading
I honestly never thought that I’d be ever praising someone’s infomercial, but here I am, looking forward to defining core values with my teams, and fascinated with how slowly but surely finding passion and purpose, surrounding yourself with people who share it and building up on it can turn around business.
I would recommend this book for all the people seeking a greater purpose at their workplace or trying to build something bigger, albeit don’t treat it as a compass, it’s rather a GPS. Additionally, those who work with people a lot and engaged in hiring/branding activities would find a lot of insightful pieces of inspiration and subtle advice. Finally, everybody who’s fed up with copycat, clean-cut and neat stories about companies and people achieving success, would find Delivering Happiness a very refreshing management novel, rather than anything else.