Things to Learn from ‘Delivering Happiness, A Path To Profits, Passion, And Purpose’ Book

Book Review: ‘Delivering Happiness’
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Book Review: ‘Delivering Happiness’
Introduction
Tony Hsieh in his book ‘Delivering Happiness, A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose’ talks about his experiences and life in the business world. He tells how he helped capitalize Zappos, which he later joined. The book is easy to read. How Hsieh uses personal views to write the book makes it lively to the reader. However, at some point, he deviates a little and tells about Zappos and its culture. The paper reviews the book using four elements; the book title, running a business, company values and lessons business people can learn from reading the book.
The Book Title
Tony Hsieh was very creative in his selection of the title of the book. In the business world, everyone wants to experience happiness, which comes in terms of increased revenue for the business. When Tony Hsieh states that his book will deliver happiness to the readers and especially the business people, he immediately gets the attention of the readers. The title is simple, memorable and applicable to many people. It invokes curiosity in people, which encourages them to read the whole book trying to figure out the ‘happiness’ Tony Hsieh is talking about. As one reads through, it is easy to identify the three great lessons that Tony Hsieh uses to deliver happiness to companies.
The first lesson is that company`s culture is usually more essential compared to a customer service. A good company culture boosts the company performance and increases its total revenue. In the beginning, Zappos hired too many workers. Tony Hsieh says that sometimes when he came to the office, he did not even know half of the workers. He later learned that most of the people hired did not even fit in the company procedure. When he decided to change the system and retain only a few people who understood the company goals, the company began to rise (Hsieh, 2010).
Next is that any individual going into business should identify one business aspect which they are good at and invest in it. This is a good strategy that makes it easy for such an individual to determine the market gap, acquire the needed resources and plan the production process. It is easy, but requires focus to meet the set goals. For instance, Zappos is based only on customer service and has since strived to be the best provider (Hsieh, 2010).
Finally, Tony Hsieh states that every business should invest zero dollars in marketing. At the moment, companies are spending a lot of money in marketing and product promotion. Tony Hsieh, however, claims that businesses should focus more on meeting customer demands and improving the quality of their products as opposed to marketing (Hsieh, 2010). Tony Hsieh believes that people should invest a lot on the quality and quantity of their products or services and allow the products to market the business. He claims that spending a lot of money convincing people to buy or like your company products is not a good initiative. Instead, if the product or service is excellent and liked by a few people in the market, it would marketize itself among people, and soon everyone will want to have a taste of it. This theory differs from what most people understand in terms of marketing and product promotion (Hsieh, 2010).
Culture and Running a Successful Business
Tony Hsieh compares running a business to a poker game. He states that the different parts of the game represent how various departments of a company contribute to its success or failure. The main elements of a firm are marketing and finance departments, the business culture and the willingness of the owners to go through the learning process continually. Zappos used these four elements to capture the market and improve its revenue margin.
Hsieh begins by stating that both poker and business industry are exciting, but complicated fields. In a poker game, there are different players with different skills. Though each one of them has the motive to win and make more money, the chance of winning is solely dependent on the willingness of the players to take risks. In the same way, an industry constitutes many businesses operating in the same business line. These enterprises have noticeable links. He, however, states that the failure of a business is mainly caused by job dissatisfaction. This is a problem that affects all business, including Zappos. It has direct impacts on a company’s operations and consequently its profits (Hsieh, 2010).
There are many causes of job dissatisfaction. The main ones are a poor choice of business and lack of necessary skills. In his view, Hsieh believes that when a person chooses to invest in a particular business field, they have to love what they are doing. He argues that when one invests in what they like, they will not struggle to make it perfect. Instead, they will always be willing to work and it makes it better. Love is as a result of passion, and it drives the individual to be creative and innovative. Creativity and being innovative makes it possible to develop excellent production techniques that are cost-effective. It is crucial to conduct a marketing research to identify all the market gaps. After that, one should only get into a business venture in which they have an interest in and can offer the best quality. Similarly, it is also essential to have some prior understanding of the business operations and requirements. If it is possible, one should consider training. Education within the workplace is a crucial tool for success. He states, “learn by doing…educate yourself…do not be afraid to ask for advice” (Hsieh, 2010, p. 66). Both the proprietor and the worker should be satisfied with the job.
He continues to argue that the business culture adopted by the business should be the one that creates the competitive business environment. The culture allows the management to assign tasks to employees and encourage them to give the best quality of the output. Workers slowly become self-motivated. For example, in BankNewport, the administration helps their workers through the forums and productive discussions, which they use to explain to the employees the company policies, vision and mission statements (Hsieh, 2010).
Company Values
Companies develop core values t...