I finally had a chance to finish up reading the Delivering Happiness book I’ve been reading and writing about for the last few weeks. In all, I do recommend the book both to startups, and to those running a larger company. The book is almost two books in one. The first half, as I covered in my posts, Discovering Happiness and Now This is Real Passion, are about Tony’s early startup experience and the path he was on that led to his personal discovery of what his passions really were. This was the part of the book that I enjoyed the most as it focuses on my situation and on one of my favorite areas of interest: internal motivation and discovering one’s passions.

The second part of the book deals with the management of Zappos, as Tony transitioned into running and growing a company. Here, he discusses how he built the now famous Zappos culture. He discusses this in detail, including many internal memos and company letters, and even including 24 pages of the company’s Core Values Document. I touched on this in my previous post The Zappos Culture Book. This is all very interesting, but since I’m more involved in the early startup days, it’s a bit beyond where I need to be. It was still helpful and I identified with many of the core values, and felt like I would be comfortable adopting the entire thing, as-is, for my own company, though with some personal changes here and there.

I do think that overall, the book could have been better with an editor reviewing and chopping out maybe 25%. For that reason I gave it 4/5 stars, compared with 5/5 for both Rework and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It. If you remember, with Rework, between the next-to-last and final draft they cut the book in half, down to 27,000 words from 57,000. Delivering Happiness would have been better a bit shorter and more focused.

In this second part of the book, spanning sections 2 and 3, you will learn what it is that Tony believes are the only competitive advantages they have, “everything else can be copied”. You’ll read examples of how the company stood behind its culture and core values and how they developed what those would even be. Tony will discuss the number one driver of growth: customer service and word of mouth, and how that is more than a marketing scheme, but a way of life for the entire team at Zappos. Tony also discusses the importance and value they place on their call center, and how differently they handle that than most other companies, and how other companies can instill excellent customer service at their companies.

As I mentioned earlier you’ll be able to read the entire Core Values Document of the company with helpful example stories where they put it in practice and how it effected the people and the company. Tony will discuss his experience with beginning to speak publicly and how he changed his approach on how to prepare for speaking and how freeing the new approach was. He concludes with a discussion on the science and study of what happiness means and the frameworks of happiness.

I would summarize the entire book into one main theme: Do what you are passionate about, embrace your passions, and share them with others, focusing, in all you do, to make others happy in every opportunity, using all your skills, experiences and passions.

Remember to post a comment on any of my Zappos posts to be entered to win a free copy of the book. I’ll name the winner on Monday. You could share an idea, ask a question, share a related quote or experience as well.

Update:I’ll be shipping a copy of Delivering Happiness to the winner of the free book, Amber Weinberg. Thanks for reading Amber!

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. ~ George Bernard Shaw

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. ~ H.S. Truman

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. ~ Carlos Castaneda

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I did not attend FOWA in Miami last week, but after just 20 minutes of following the twitter stream of #FOWA, I wished I had. The twitter stream was very informative and provided some great quotes and tips from the superb lineup of speakers they had. The organizer of FOWA should make it a point at future conferences to market the twitter feed, because following it led me to realize I absolutely must attend the next one.

I compiled a list of my favorite twitterered quotes and tips from the FOWA feed. Note: Each tip indicates the speaker first, then the tip, and then who provided it via twitter:

• @garyvee: the sucky people are going to lose jobs and people with real skills are going to flourish = “market correction” (via @whitneyhess)
• @spolsky: Breaking bread together every day is critical for team dynamic. Daily team meal keeps them all motivated, connected (via @whitneyhess)
• ?: “If you want 2 create the next phenomenal app stop treating your programming like an assembly line + more like a movie studio.” (via @snoebiz)
• @spolsky: You have to create conversations about your app… advertising isn’t going to work anymore. (via @dimensionmedia)
• @halvorson: Your content is a strategic asset for your brand. Treat it as such. (via @alexdc)
• @spolsky: How to scale your dev team: Lower barriers. Recognize that Jedis are rare, & you need to keep them focused on their core competancies (via @whitneyhess)
• ?: You need uninterrupted time to get work done. Too many people are doing work “moments” throughout their day. (via @orian)
• @jasonfried: if you want to be productive stay the hell away from each other (via @vincefrantz)
• @jasonfried: HTML email gets better results than text emails (via @genuine)
• @jasonfried: Percentage coupons seem to drive more sales than dollar off coupons. (via @jseifer)
• @jasonfried: People are going to trust free services/products less. People will look at companies that are stable. (via @refreshdetroit)
• @jasonfried: I don’t pay attention to the competitors, I don’t care about the competition. I focus on building a great product (via @frederickduboi)
• @jasonfried: Don’t focus on the competition. We’re in a world where 100 companies doing the same thing can be very successful (via @whitneyhess)
• @jasonfried: is there a culture of failure for startups in tech? Jason Fried is saying that fail early and fail often is the current mantra (via @carybran)
• @jasonfried: Fail early and fail often” is not a good credo. Don’t learn from mistakes, better to learn from your successes (via @Murrayiz)
• @jasonfried: “Somehow failure became cool.” Wouldn’t tell a farmer to fail early & fail often. Why do we think it’s ok in software? (via @whitneyhess)

I’m not one to set “resolutions” for the new year. I set my personal goals on my birthday, because for me this has more meaning than a calendar change. So instead, on this New Year’s Eve, I thought I’d offer up a toast to those out there striving to reach their own goals, whatever they may be.

Over the past year I have met in person or online, so many more like-minded people than in all my years previous. It’s encouraging, it really is. I attribute the increase in connecting with this new crowd to three things: 1) I set it as a personal goal on my birthday last year, 2) I became involved in the right online social networks (not all will do), and 3) I joined the Ruby on Rails community full time.

Many of you have provided encouragement, motivation, and wisdom as well as shared your experiences. And for that, I am very grateful. I’ve never felt clearer in the direction I’m taking, and I’ve never made as much progress. The fears are still there, as is the little voice that tries to object to the optimism I feel, but thanks to many of you, I’m able to tell that little voice to take a hike.

And so, first to my fellow entrepreneurs and web service startups, I toast you, and wish you the happiest of New Year’s and the best of success in reaching your personal and professional goals (which to me are one and the same).

And next, to those of you who are still unsure where your passions lie, and what direction you want to take, I wish you clarity and peace in the year ahead, and encourage you to seek out those who can motivate you as they have motivated me.

And to any and all who have hopes and dreams of achievements and success, I urge you to persevere through all the obstacles and road blocks that may come your way. Most of them are never as big as they appear, and there are plenty of others out there who have been right where you are and can lend a helping hand and offer some motivational words when needed.

Remember, if its not challenging, and there is little risk of failure, then its probably not worth doing and offers little reward.

Happy New Years!