Delivering Happiness: Ten Years Later
I first read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) ten years ago (2015). At the time, I was deep in the day-to-day of running a company with 26 people, and the idea of building a values-driven culture felt both necessary and slightly out of reach.
Fast forward ten years, and I’m not just older – I’m wiser, more weathered, and far more certain about what actually builds a business that lasts. Re-reading this book now brings new revelations.
Back then, what struck me most was the unity. The clarity. The way Tony created a single focus for his team and made culture the operating system of the company. This time, it was the leadership. The grit. The commercial intelligence behind the brand.
Tony thought like that, too. Only his lens was different. He used poker as his training ground. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know – he didn’t just play. He studied. He learned where to play, who to play with, and when to walk away. That translated directly into Zappos strategy. Right table. Right timing. Don’t go on tilt. Don’t hedge. Play the long game.
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In fact, he pulled the strategy from poker into how he thought about business:
- Choose the right table (market) – table selection is everything.
- Don’t be afraid to move if the table is too tough.
- Too many irrational players? You might be the best and still not win.
- Think long term – the most profitable player isn’t the one who wins the most hands.
- Avoid going on tilt – emotional reactions cost more than money.
- Play within your means – know your risk, protect your runway.
- Learn while the stakes are low – test early, adapt quickly.
- Don’t chase hype or copy others – understand your game.
- Stick to your principles – cheating never scales.
- Patience, stamina, adaptability – this is how you win over time.
And he didn’t do it alone. He made his team part of everything. They co-created. They made mistakes – big ones – but they learned.
At one point, Zappos was burning cash fast. Instead of panicking, they got methodical. Ran the numbers. Asked better questions. Built a new path forward.
That’s what the long game really looks like. It’s not about a quick win or a flashy fix. It’s about adjusting your stance when the conditions shift, taking hits without losing direction, and making decisions that stand the test of time.
Jeff Bezos called this out too.
long-term thinking isn’t just strategic. It’s essential.
They were proactive. Not reactive. And that, for me, is a massive distinction.
Reading that reminded me of a similar moment in my own journey back in 2004/2005 when we had to make tough calls of closing one of our offices. Because we were forecasting regularly and looking ahead, we were able to make decisions early – without panic. That kind of clarity doesn’t come from instinct. It comes from discipline.
Zappos built systems for things most businesses leave to chance – like happiness.
Not just customer happiness, but employee happiness. Founder happiness.
And they used real frameworks to understand what it looked like.
- Control.
- Connection.
- Purpose.
They recognised that happy teams don’t happen by accident. You have to design for it.
And design they did. With Zappos U, they built an internal learning platform with over 80 courses, designed to immerse employees in the company’s culture, values and philosophy. – from public speaking to Excel to improv. Not because it looked good, but because it mattered. They didn’t just hire great people. They helped them grow.
The way they approached hiring was equally deliberate. It wasn’t just about skills. It was about fit. About weirdness. About being aligned. They had interview questions like
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you?”
and
“What’s the best mistake you ever made at work?”
They weren’t gimmicks. They were signals.
Are you one of us?
Do you get what we’re building?
Can you bring energy and curiosity to the table?
They also asked deeper questions – about solving problems outside your role, thinking outside the box, and what you learned from your biggest mistakes. These weren’t interview fillers. They were values tests.
I learned this lesson the hard way.
I once hired someone without following our usual process – because we got on. I trusted my gut, overlooked the broader context, and didn’t align the decision with our company values. For nine months, it created constant low-level friction. On the surface, everything looked fine.
But under it? Unrest, misalignment, and a team that couldn’t get out of storming mode (Tuckman’s team development model). I’d hired someone lovely – but they weren’t a fit.
And I’d held onto them out of fear – and it cost me about £100k (like I said, I learned the hard way)
Small businesses are unlikely to build a four-year recruitment pipeline, and they don’t need to. But the thinking behind Zappos’ approach still applies.
The key is to be deliberate. Define what a good fit means for your team (after all, how can someone fit into something you haven’t defined?) – not just in skills, but in values, energy and attitude. Hire when you’re steady, not scrambling. And treat every interaction – interview or not – as a chance to spot potential.
That’s how you recruit with intention instead of reaction.
Tony’s approach to vendors also impressed me.
He gave them full transparency. He brought them into the fold with open-book honesty. And that move changed everything. It turned suppliers into partners who were invested in the success of Zappos and had a unique expertise and insights that Zappos couldn’t hope to replicate.
That level of trust created more innovation, faster decisions, and better results.
The same thing applies to customers. Zappos’ customer service wasn’t just a function – it was philosophy. The ten service commandments weren’t tucked away in a manual. They were part of daily life:
- Empower staff to do the right thing.
- Celebrate WOW moments.
- Never use scripts.
- Treat service as brand, not overhead.
- Remove friction from contact.
These were lived principles. And they worked.
It’s no surprise that Amazon noticed. When they acquired Zappos, Jeff Bezos highlighted four shared principles:
- Customer obsession
- long-term thinking
- constant innovation, and
- the belief that it’s always Day One.
That’s rare. And it confirmed just how aligned Zappos had become with the future of business.
Video from Jeff Bezos about Amazon and Zappos 2009
Tony Hseih's "Your Culture Is Your Brand" blog - 2010
The chapter on culture and core values was reminiscent of our own shift in 2015. We made them real. Not just values, but tools. We used them to hire. To fire. To create clarity.
I think that was the moment that marked a real turning point for us. The current iteration of our business began in 2012, and after reading Delivering Happiness in 2015, we began the process of defining what we truly stood for. The first set of core values we built gave shape to what had previously been instinct. It allowed us to see our own culture more clearly. And over time, we evolved those values, refining them again in 2022 into something that felt fully representative of who we are today.
It was calming, actually. A strange kind of relief. Like expressing something I’d been carrying for years. Once we had that clarity, we could hire and fire by it. We could protect the culture with confidence. It became a safety net – not to constrain us, but to hold us.
Then came the harder realisation. In 2023, I saw something I hadn’t wanted to admit. My own happiness wasn’t being served by the business.
I was in burnout. Living in a state of permanent fight-or-flight. Everything was urgent. Everything was on me. There was no room for family, for health, for fun. And the business itself, founded in 2012 on the power of automation, was no longer aligned with the world we were working in. Automation had become native. AI had arrived. Our old model was being outpaced.
So we made the decision to remove me as a point of pressure and dependency. I had to fire myself from different roles and responsibilities, not out of failure, but out of necessity.
And from that space came clarity. The business wasn’t just about serving clients anymore. It had to serve me too.
We have also been inspired to share what we have learned through our experience of implementing and mentoring / coaching in our blogs and workshops.
Zappos showed that culture isn’t a campaign. It’s a commitment. It doesn’t happen just because you say so. It happens when you show up, model it, hold people to it, and defend it.
Because what you tolerate? That’s your real culture.
And learning – true growth – was never optional. They built it into the system. Required learning for roles. Constant upskilling. Even improv classes to build agility.
Here are just a few of the internal courses Zappos offered as part of their employee development…
| Course Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Zappos History | Zappos History An overview of the company's origins, growth, and core values. |
| Science of Happiness 101 | Introduction to the principles of happiness and their application in the workplace. |
| Tribal Leadership | Exploring how to build and lead effective teams within the organization. |
| Public Speaking | Developing communication skills for presentations and meetings. |
| Delivering Happiness | Understanding the company's philosophy and how to apply it in daily operations. |
What I love most, though, is that this book ends where most books begin – with the personal. With asking what happiness really means. For the customer. For the team. For the founder.
It’s not just about customer happiness. It’s about employee happiness – and founder happiness too, That deeper question.
What does happiness actually look like for you, your team, your culture?
Zappos taught us that it’s built on perceived
- control,
- connection and
- purpose.
It’s measured in the frameworks we build and the conversations we’re willing to have.
Most people don’t know what happiness looks like for them. They’ve never defined it. That’s the real risk. If you can’t define it, you can’t design for it – and you’ll never be able to deliver it.
Reading it again now, I realise how much of that philosophy soaked into how I work and how I lead. Whether I knew it or not, this book got under my skin in the best way.
It made me reflect on what I want my business to feel like.
Not just what it looks like from the outside, but what it actually feels like to build, to work inside of, and to be responsible for.
Because if it doesn’t feel good – if it doesn’t create space for people to grow, connect and thrive – then what are we building it for?
So that’s where I’ll leave this reflection.
What does happiness look like for you?
If you haven’t read Delivering Happiness yet, do. And if you have – it might be time to revisit it.
You’ll probably find, like I did, that it shaped more than you realised.
