Zappos – Delivering Happiness in a Blog Post

Dear Tony, Fred, Alfred and all other Zappos employees

Instead of writing a traditional review of the book “Delivering Happiness” by Tony, I am writing this blog post as an open letter, to let you guys know how much I appreciate your inspiring work and of course the book.

In short, my name is Jonas, I am the managing partner of a small start-up from Copenhagen, Denmark. I am blessed with great colleagues, fantastic friends and a soul mate that is my inspiration in life. My everyday reminder to my self and the world through my email signature is – Smile, Small actions do matter and Stay true to yourself.

13 days ago I arrived in San Francisco, the start of a classic three week trip, driving around California, Nevada and Arizona.

One of the first things me and my girlfriend always does when starting a vacation is to go to the largest bookstore we can find and pick up a bunch of books – we picked up 22 and the first and most interesting book I started to read where “Delivering Happiness” – this being the most interesting because the sub line “A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose” is similar to something I work with through the VC our company is a part of – building a Quantum Company, through passion and energetic alignment.

You guys all know the book, so I wont go into detailed description, instead I will let you know why the book where such an amazing read for me.

I am not a guy that comes to tears when watching love stories or a sad and depressing drama, but the tears are running down my face almost every time I watch the movie “Rudy”.

Now what does this have to do with the book and Zappos. “Rudy” moves something in me, it builds up a knot in my stomach – its actually a knot of profound respect, joy and happiness – that knot kept building up while reading “Delivering Happiness” – not that I ever did cry while reading it (I would never tell If I did though).

The company we are building is called Mindjumpers, the word in it self shall be seen as a big part of what we really want to reflect in what we do – give peoples mind a jump – big or small or get people to be aware and start to do their own small mindjumps, for them self or for others – why? Because we strongly believe that by challenging your self and your perception is a great way to pursue personal growth and learning.

Our company is in a completely different market and again not that different, we have employees, customers and vendors. We have been focusing on delivering service to our customers and people around us – always above what they would expect – it’s a clearly implemented way of doing business, and we often gets challenged by others or our self, because for a small company like ours – this Is not a maximizing profits in the short run strategy.

Reading “Delivering Happiness” have given my self the extra willpower, the extra arguments and a whole lot of insights to stick by and keep this as our core strategy – and probably turn it up a nudge.

As a company just turned 2 years we have started to talk about our company culture, some of the things stands very clear – We work to do good and a difference in the world – we believe by focusing on the individuals passion, we will grow as persons and as a company.

In reality this means we strive to work with and for companies or organizations that are or are willing to start doing good in the world, as for instance a project right now is for a human rights NGO and is about rehabilitation of torture victims and fighting to putting and end to torture, this project is called “World Without Torture”.

When recruiting and employee development, we focus on what the person in question is passionate about – because we so strongly believe in passionate people.

BUT – reading your book, made me realize that we have to start working more conceptual with our company culture – because we already knows what we have done so far is the thing that makes us stand out and the reason why good things happens to us – working on our company culture will be an important project for us the coming 12 months.

One of the first things I will get done when I get back is something I should have done long ago, I spend a lot of time reading and encouraging my colleagues to read, but of course we need a Mindjumpers library – where people can order books they think should be in the library, check out books – and do recommendations and short reviews to inspire other colleagues to read them or just to share the knowledge of reading the particular book – this of course also inspired by your own Zappos Library.

There are so many things I would like to thank your inspirational company, employees and of course the book for – but running out of ink or what ever

Thank you for delivering happiness and inspiration – I will do my best to pass it on to all others I meet – you certainly did WOW me.

Yours truly and now devoted fan

Jonas

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