The Employees of Zappos.com - The Power of WOW

Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR

THE POWER OF WOW

A must-read about an extraordinary business endeavor in our everyday world. Tony and company have pioneered how to scale organizational effectiveness with heart, and much of their story is shared here with transparency, humility, and great storytelling. This provides a glimpse of the future of how to get things done on the planet, sustainably, with efficient elegance.

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first, and Zappos proves it. Lots of CEOs love to write books to tell us how great their companies are; what a treat to hear the stories from the actual employees who work there.

Simon Sinek, optimist and New York Times bestselling author of Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last

Zappos is a powerful example of a modern company that has embraced a simple truth: Passionate employees are any organizations single greatest asset. The Power of WOW is a timely reminder that no business leader can afford to ignore the value of an inspired workforce.

Chip Conley, hospitality entrepreneur and author of Wisdom at Work

The Power of WOW offers the wisdom of the collective: a direct glimpse into the thinkers, dreamers, and doers that bring Zappos to life every day. This collection of stories will fuel a passion that you can bring back to your business and take your own culture to the next level.

BJ Bueno, founder of The Cult Branding Company

Over the past decade, Ive had the privilege of training thousands of Zappos employees. What a remarkable and resilient company. The highly personal stories and lessons in this book should be read by all modern business leadersand anyone who wants to make customers and employees alike say WOW!

Dr. Sean Stephenson, professional speaker and author of Get Off Your But

In todays world, there is a massive gap between perception and reality, highlighted particularly by social media. So when you look at a prolific and aspirational company like Zappos through this lens, you have to wonder... is this distorted hype or reality?

The Power of WOW gives a glimpse into the humanity that drives Zapposreal people navigating the corporate landscape of a visionary company that truly walks the walk. This book showcases the vulnerability, the realities, and the highs and lows of an aspirational human company, building upon its foundationpeople first.

The Power of WOW is not a social-hype piece, but a reinforcement that its perception and its reality are in fact, one and the same.

Mick Ebeling, founder and CEO of Not Impossible Labs

Zapponians work like great artists, communicate like good family, and laugh like a bunch of people partying their asses off in Vegas. And I love them for that. So go read this book, you wont regret it.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, actor and founder of HITRECORD

THE POWER OF WOW

Copyright 2019 by Zappos.com LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.

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First E-Book Edition: October 2019

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019015086

ISBN 9781948836579 (trade cloth)

ISBN 9781948836821 (electronic)

Copyediting by Elizabeth Degenhard

Proofreading by Sarah Vostok and Chris Gage

Text design and composition by Kit Sweeney Photography & Design

Cover photo Design Assets

Cover design and photo editing by Derrin Hawkins and Sarah Avinger

Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing

Employee headshots by Peter Gaunt

Distributed to the trade by Two Rivers Distribution, an Ingram brand www.tworiversdistribution.com

Special discounts for bulk sales are available.

Please contact .

This book is dedicated to all of our

customers, employees, community members,

vendors, and shareholders that have been a

part of our journey over the past twenty years

(and for many more to come).

Zappos Company Purpose:

To inspire the world by showing its possible to simultaneously deliver happiness to customers, employees, community, vendors, and shareholders in a long-term, sustainable way .

tl;drTo live and deliver WOW

CONTENTS

Rather than write a traditional foreword here at the beginning, I decided to sprinkle random color commentary throughout the book instead. Youll see my comments in thought bubbles like the one youre reading right now. Think of these as text messages Im sending you at various points in the book.

In addition to all the Zappos employees who contributed to this book, we partnered with Mark Dagostino, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of various books, including The Magnolia Story, to interview us, write, and help weave all of our stories together.

Without further ado, lets start with Marks story of how this whole project came to life...

Tony Hsieh

CEO, Zappos.com

Ten years agocoincidentally, right around the same time Zappos was finalizing its partnership deal with a little company called AmazonI published my very first book, My Life Outside the Ring, with legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan.

I wrote that book while juggling a relentlessly busy, more-than-full-time day job at one of the biggest magazines in the world with my family duties of helping to raise two young children. Which means I wrote it in my spare time, toiling away at my laptop from midnight to 3 A.M., every day.

It was exhausting. It was invigorating. It was challenging. It took a toll on my family and my sleepbut the effort paid off. My first book became a New York Times bestseller and would eventually serve as the launch pad for the biggest, most daring decision of my adult life: to leave my steady job behind and take on the life of a full-time coauthor; a life of working from home, doing what I love, but never knowing where my next paycheck might come from.

My leap of faith worked pretty well at first. In my first few years I wrote books with a US presidential candidate, a legendary sports figure, an army general, TV stars, and more. I loved what I was doingbut something was off. As time went by, some of these books werent selling as well as Id hoped. After more than half a decade, I was just sort of getting by (financially speaking). And I was starting to question whether Id made a bad decision, mostly because the potential new book projects that kept coming my way seemed increasingly driven by less-than-thrilling subjects. They were ego-driven projects by businesspeople who wanted to capitalize on my prior successes, or books from celebrities who wanted to entertain with gossip and fun stories (and not much else) to make some money.