One of my colleague has a huge fetish for shoes :). As soon as you click on his system's internet browser it opens a site called DrMartens.com as the default page. Since we became friends, I have got a pair of ankle length shoes for myself, my wife got a pair of awesome sandal to go with traditional wear, she bought another pair of superb high heeled boots and I thanked my stars that the sites that he usually surfs don't have much of my daughter's taste or else I would have gone bankrupt by now. He is one heck of a shopper especially when it comes to Shoes and we made him our official shopper for all occasions :). And he is the one who introduced me to Zappos.com and the book by the company's CEO, which eventually merged with Amazon a decade back in a historic billion dollar merger. Unfortunately, till the moment that I started reading this book, I had no idea of Zappos existence :). Of-course not so internet savvy in 21st century helped me being so ignorant about this amazing company, its kool founders and how they go on to grow the sales to a billion dollar in gross revenues a month, till they get merged with Amazon. I have read a lot of non-fiction and self-help books in the past but this one was totally different and more interesting as it is written by the founder of Zappos - Tony Hsieh who clears the air about his grammar and English in the very first chapter itself :). I don't even what it means to end a sentence with a preposition but mention of that as a mistake by him tells a lot about the humbleness of the man who went from strength to strength in creating a empire of its own sort and never gave up even when he was on the verge of going bankrupt once. On top of that, I was even able to note down so many pointers that our own company needs to work on to make it a better place for our future talents and the current employee strength. It was one amazing experience to read a non-fiction after a while which actually had some real good ideas that can be very easily implemented and will certainly bear good results in the due course of time.
Although this one is a non-fiction and a story from Tony's real life, but it all can be summed up in one sentence that it is all about Tony (a Harvard graduate) and about the two companies that he co-founded, first of which he sold to Microsoft after 2 years of its inception in $265 million and the second he later merged (not sold) with Amazon upwards of a $1 Billion :). 250+ pages of sheer fun as he is no professional writer and he ended up writing this one in flat two and a half weeks :) as he claims a lot of coffee and alcohol helped him do that in that short period. His sense of humor is so amazing that he was totally able to keep me hooked with his theories of how to start, run and grow a company into an empire with a handful of core members who go on to any extent in achieving his dream and vision. Story of an earthworm farmer at an age of 9 years to a billion dollar sales man. It was incredible to know how easily he opens up professionally in the book but at the same time it was totally heart-breaking to know that he doesn't talk about his personal life, not even one bit in the whole book. There are stories about his parents in it but nothing that he talks about his own family, assuming he must be a married man and have a few kids of his own from the same period that his book talks about and that was a bit of a turn off for me. On top of that even Wiki has nothing to tell about his personal life :). But otherwise its a perfect read for those venturing out to be entrepreneurs in coming times. I was glad to know that unknowingly we are actually following quite a few of his philosophies in the company that I work for. Being a part of the core team who were the very first few employees of the firm that I work for, I am super glad that some of the ideas that he so brilliantly executed in his book, I am looking forward to try in real life. The moment I finished the book, I logged on to his website Zappos.com just to make sure that they have a customer care number right on the homepage which is answered by a human :) making it so much easier for its customers. On top of that having the head office in a city like Vegas helps a lot in keeping the employees motivated :) on that note, I gotta talk to my CEO to open a branch soon in Goa I guess.
Have you read "Delivering Happiness", do let me know how you like it if you have and if you haven't and are on the lookout for a super interesting read which may help you grow in professional life, this will certainly give you some good food for your thoughts.
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