The Beauty Of A Tribe

Depending on what side of the Atlantic you call home, ‘Zappos’ may or may not be a household name to you, and the same goes for Tony Hsieh its CEO. This pioneering online retailer may not yet have reached European shores but it’s becoming well known as the business success story that grew to $1billion revenues in under ten years. Last year the company was acquired by Amazon in a deal worth $1.2billion. Tony has a book out - ‘Delivering Happiness: a path to profits, passion, and purpose’ (out in the US now/ out in the UK July) - where he tells the story of his entrepreneurial life, sharing insight into how he made Zappos so unique, and ultimately so successful.

I first saw Tony close-up at SXSW Interactive 2009 where he gave a keynote. I was impressed by how understated this successful entrepreneur was, standing on stage in jeans and t-shirt. Twelve months later it was great to be a – tenuous – guest (via my friend Espree Devora) on board Tony’s ‘Delivering Happiness’ bus one night travelling around Austin, Texas at SXSW 2010. What was clear from that evening was that Tony is a generous guy. We hadn’t properly met, yet here was the CEO of a $1B company personally fetching me BBQ food and letting me down a few vodkas at his on board bar. Reading his book you get a real sense of that spirit of generosity in hosting parties and bringing people together. He describes the loft apartment in San Francisco where he lived surrounded by friends, and his decision to buy the penthouse apartment so he could host huge parties. He wanted to create an environment where people could come together and hang out. Without realising it, he says, with his friends he had created and developed their very own tribe which was bringing stability and excitement to the group’s future. And that feeling is powerful as he explains in this excerpt from the book:

“The connectedness we felt was making all of us happier, and we realized that it was something that we had missed from our college days. I made a note to myself to make sure I never lost sight of the value of a tribe where people truly felt connected and cared about the well-being of one another”.

Of course, that spirit of togetherness is at the heart of Zappos; where he has created a strong and unique organisational culture that has become the brand’s USP and made it famous in entrepreneurial circles around the world.

I may not have labelled it as ‘culture’ at the time, but that same spirit has been evident in every successful business I have worked in, or with. That culture where you hang out with you co-workers out of the office, where you’d rather sit in the board room after hours drinking wine and playing ‘beat the intro’ than going home, where your work and non-work identies blur.

‘Delivering Happiness’ is a great story of Tony’s journey in creating and building Zappos, and of all the inevitable highs and lows along the way. Zappos’ success story may have different contributing factors but #1 is about that focus on organisational culture that resulted in great loyalty, productivity and customer service. And whether it’s about building a billion dollar business or transforming a school bus into a party bus for his friends, of course (of course!), it’s all about the people.  

Tony Hsieh: Everything I've Learnt

I’m a huge fan of Tony Hsieh and everything he’s achieved with Zappos. From when I saw his keynote at SXSW in 2009 I’ve followed his business with interest (and it was great to meet him at SXSW this year on board the Delivering Happiness bus). Tony was in London this week for Google Zeitgeist. Unfortunately he was too busy to meet up on this trip but he shot a video with Loïc Le Meur, founder of Le Web where  Loïc asked about the lessons he’s learnt in business. From the inevitable lessons in the importance of Culture to Work/Life integration, there’s some great takeaways here.


WATCH THE VIDEO HERE (I removed the embedded video as it was not displaying properly in some browsers)

This video is taken from Loïc Le Meur’s blog. Merci bien Loïc! 

"An Englishman In Austin"

I have just written a column about my experiences in Austin Texas at SXSW for The Hospital Club's website. If you want to know what I was doing on a customised American school bus with the senior management of Zappos, check out the piece here.

RETHINKING BUSINESS

So as I reach the end of SXSW 2010 what's my takeaways from five days?

#1 Staying Authentic: whatever technological developments, whatever trends, new platforms or tools come along, (of course) success is about keeping it real. I was reminded of this many times in the last few days, not least by @garyvee in his keynote/ Q&Afest.

#2 You Don't Have To Grow It Big: I've been evangelising this for a while, that you don't have to build a business big to be a success; you don't have to scale up your people or your reach the whole time, you can grow in other ways. So I loved @jasonfried's message from 'Rework' that instead of building it big, why not focus on building a business that is sustainable, profitable and comfortable. Yep yep.

#3 Reaching out to others: I put 'collaboration' as one of my themes for 2010 and a session here reminded me of the benefits of reaching out to the crowd. @jeffrey and @scottbelsky ran a session on crowdsourcing showing how businesses/ brands can tap into consumer insight and the intellectual capital of the crowd. We're used to outsourcing so much in business today, going out to the crowd is a great resource.

#4 Unplanning our businesses: Of course, my own theme for SXSW was 'Unplanning' your business but it was great to hear this from other speakers, not just @jasonfried but also @Ev who reminded us that 'whatever you assume when you start out (in business), you're wrong'. I'm not anti-planning, just evangelising that passion and vision are more powerful/valuable than a business plan (check out my Unplan blog).

#5 It's all about results: another drum I've been banging is that we need to rethink' work'; that 'work is a mindset, not a place you go'. So I loved the session on ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment) led by @alevit that talked about the cultural change from workers being rewarded for 'just showing up' to instead getting rewarded for results. It creates some opportunities - and challenges - for freelancers and independent consultants to cease being paid by the day, but being paid by the outcome of what they do. That doesn't mean we need to get obsessed with data and analytics to look at ROI, but it's a much more realistic way of looking at productivity.

#6 Business doesn't have to be dull. These are tough times for business and we're having to work harder than ever. But as many speakers reminded us, we should not be total workaholics and we need to learn to 'switch off'. And from all the sessions, parties and connections SXSW reminds me that business can be fun. One SXSW moment sticks in my head; it was the evening I was lucky  (thanks for the invite @espreedevora )to be on Tony Hsieh's 'Delivering Happiness' bus, going around Austin - hip-hop playing, an on-board bar, a woman making balloons, and the senior management of Zappos and their friends having fun. No suits or traditional networking in sight.

#7 Rethink 'Business'. I think it's time we rethink what 'business' is. Someone - I think @jeffrey - said 'business is the mechanism for taking an idea from concept to delivery' and that's a good one. To some, SXSW interactive is about geeks, or technology, or creativity; to me - it's just about business. Not the business of Wall St, The City, your local Chamber Of Commerce or Business Link,not about suits, powerpoint presentations and business plans but THE BUSINESS OF YOU & ME. Doing it your way, your style and you don't need to give a damn about 'the rules' (whatever they are). I got a tweet today that my Unplan idea is 'dangerous rubbish' but I'm seeking to disrupt the assumptions of the status quo and show people you can be successful by doing it your own way. It's like what Tim Ferriss wrote to me in his book when I met him on a rooftop in Austin: 'here's to experimenting often and exploring the uncommon'.

Juggler Stories #2: Espree Devora

I’ve been so lucky in enjoying support from a great bunch of people who read my book 'Juggle!'. 12 months ago at South By South West 2009 Espree Devora saw a poster advertising the book; she got in touch with me just as I was leaving town, so we never actually met up. I was really pleased to hear the book resonated with her - so much so she sent 20 copies to her friends at Zappos - so finally, on Saturday we got to meet up, talk and hang out at SXSW 2010. LA-based Espree is founder of an action sports business Zex Sports and a classic entrepreneur, full of energy, ideas and ability. She is a great connector, adept at putting people together and making introductions. She invited me as her guest on board Tony Hsieh's 'Delivering Happiness' Bus later that evening and introduced me to a whole bunch of great people. Before we did that, I shot this video of her talking about juggling:


*if you can't see the video above, watch it on YouTube here

The Story of The Billion Dollar Online Shoe Store

Now my book ‘Juggle!’ is sitting in Zappo’s HQ in Nevada, I’ve been soaking up more information about Tony Hsieh and the story of Zappos. There’s a great interview and profile written by Max Chafkin in May’s issue of Inc. magazine.
You can read the article online here, but here are some extracts:

Zappos & The Importance Of Books

‘At the conclusion of the tour, we are invited to peruse the company library, which is filled with multiple copies of two dozen business and self-help books. We are urged to take whatever grabs our fancy, a policy that applies to employees as well. Roberson explains that one of Zappos's core values is personal growth and that books are given out to help employees grow with the company’

Zappos’ Focus On Hiring for Culture

‘Such rapid growth was exciting. But it also led Hsieh to wonder how he could preserve Zappos' radical dedication to customer service and its fun, loose work environment. "We always hired for culture fit," he says. "But we were growing so quickly that managers who hadn't been around for very long might not know what our culture was." He wrote an e-mail to the entire company asking for help, and he distilled the responses into a list of 10 core values, including "Be humble," "Create fun and a little weirdness," and "Deliver WOW through service." Then he assigned and collected short essays from every employee on the subject of the company's culture and published them, unedited, in a book that he distributed to the staff.’

Zappos & The Future

‘At a time when most business leaders are retrenching, Hsieh is thinking big. In late 2006, he launched an outsourcing program to handle selling, customer service, and shipping for other companies, and last December, he started an educational website for small businesses that charges them $39.95 a month to tap Zappos executives for advice. Hsieh has said Zappos will eventually move beyond retail to businesses such as hotels and banking -- anything where customer service is paramount. "I wouldn't rule out a Zappos airline that's just about the best customer service," he announced at the Web 2.0 conference last fall’

Zappos is not (yet) a household name outside of the USA but the story of Hsieh and his brand success is starting to spreading. Here in the UK, you can order from the Zappos website, but it lacks the ‘wow’ of the US experience; the shipping is not free here, but that may change if they choose to have a UK presence in the future.

So watch out for Zappos....

'Juggle!' Goes To Vegas

Like a lot of connections as a result of attending SXSW, I can’t remember exactly how I ‘met’ Espree Devora (although unfortunately we only met on Twitter just as I was leaving town). But Espree read my book 'Juggle!' and was kind enough to wow about it; she called it ‘an entrepreneur’s bible’.

Espree and her team at action sports company Zex Sports have been inspired by Zappos and their commitment to customer service. So when Espree went to visit Zappos recently, she wanted to send the executives she'd met a gift; and she kindly ordered 20 copies of ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life’ that I signed for each of them.

The books are now sitting in Zappos' HQ in Vegas and a few copies in the company’s library for staff and visitors to browse.

I want to say a huge thank you to Espree for bigging-up the book and spreading the word to Zappos and beyond. As they say at SXSW, ‘awesome’!