THE DREAM IN ACTION

So a few weeks ago Zappos sent me a couple books for free :) …

Then on the flight back from SF last week, where/when I do most of my reading, I wrapped up ‘Delivering Happiness‘ by Tony Hsieh of @Zappos. I got the books as a part of their blogger out reach campaign. As far as I know it’s worked really well. I’ve seen a ton of posts around the interwebs today…

In short the book made me really happy, seriously. It was a cool mix of personal stories from Tony’s young entrepreneurial endeavors, all the way up to the sale (or marriage as he calls it) of Zappos to Amazon for $1.2B. His accomplishments are freakin amazing… let’s do some quick math…

He started a company called LinkExchange in 1997-ish and solid it after 2.5 years for $260 million dollars. Then he joined Zappos in 2000 and sold it to Amazon for $1.2B 10 years later. This means that each year he’s with a company, over his career he’s added $100 million / year of value to those companies.

Show me another entrepreneur with that track record!

The book starts out with Tony’s first venture, a worm farm. And in his pursuits for profit he learns he must have a passion for his work in order to succeed. Then with Zappos, a truly brilliant company, he’s realized that a purpose must back that passion in order to create LONG TERM sustainability. The book details the 10-Core-Values of Zappos’ culture and provides indepth letters from employees about how that culture and the Core values have impacted their lives and experiences at Zappos.

Tony is a brilliant entrepreneur and someone I really look forward to meeting someday soon.

Thanks Tony & Zappos for the books! I’ll surely be passing them along.