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Business Lessons From the Man Who Beat Amazon at Customer Service
What I learned from the book “Delivering Happiness”.
Tony Hsieh was the founder and CEO of LinkExchange, a company he sold to Microsoft for $265 million at the end of the 90s, two years after he had started it.
He went on to invest and become CEO of Zappos which he sold to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009.
One year later, Tony published a book in which he narrated the stories and principles that helped him build his companies.
This is how he did it.
First Ventures
Tony Hsieh knew from a very young age that he wanted to be rich. Not merely for the sake of buying fast cars, but to have the freedom to do what he wanted whenever he wanted.
He began his career as an entrepreneur at age 7 and built a worm farm.
After two weeks, all of the worms had escaped, so he gave up and focused on other businesses.
This is how kid Tony went on to organize garage sales during which he sold lemonade and junk, worked as a newspaper delivery guy, started a newsletter that didn’t work, tried to sell Christmas cards door-to-door in August, and eventually, sold pin-on buttons through the mail.










