HAPPY AT ANY COST: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest Of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, by Kirsten Grind and Katherine Sayre, Simon & Schuster 2022

With enough money, we can buy almost anything, almost...  And Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh thought he could, through conscious application of large sums of his money, create happiness, maybe even change the world.  Initially he wanted to make the workplace a zone where individuals could deliver happiness in the products and service they sold.  He felt that our hierarchical organization work structures didn't have to be, and he pretty much eliminated them, replacing traditional business operations with a new, humanistic strategies.

From his Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas Hsieh extended his own vision of happiness as depicted in his New York Times' bestseller Delivering Happiness, to bigger outreach in new businesses and even real estate.  He showed us how to transform retail with a combination of endless variety, superior tech access and happy feelings into more immediate product search and web-based satisfaction.  In fact, Tony Hsieh seemed to have it all - money, brains,  friends, access to more money, and nearly endless freedom.

But somehow, as we learned of his departure from Amazon in 2020, the dark side of this brilliant entrepreneur started to emerge from the shadows. There were problems with alcohol, and according to authors Grind and Sayre, nitrous oxide.  Hsieh suffered from severe social anxiety and facial blindness problems as well, all of which led to periodic withdrawals. Not only were the dragons encroaching more and more on his daily life, but they were unsupportable long-term, and to the few observers who could see Hsieh's problems, they were unsustainable. 

Starting with immigrant Taiwanese parents, Hsieh had created a very different lifestyle after his graduation from Harvard, having majored in computer science.  First off, he sold a software package to Microsoft in 1996 for $265M; that sale allowed the entrepreneur to work at venture capital for a bit, followed by Zappos.  Along the way, Hsieh transformed from a whiz kid geek with growing Silicon Valley connections, to a member of the young billionaires' club, yet one more unmapped journey filled with growing power and dangerous sidelines.  We cannot, working backwards from the authors' depiction of a very sad Buddhist memorial service, clearly delineate what was good - and what business practices certainly changed the way we work - and what weaknesses Hsieh carried with him during this forty-six year journey.  But as we learned from this very detailed look at Hsieh's life and work and entourage, this entrepreneur created a more humanistic daily work life that showed how even busy retail can satisfy a human's need for happiness and playfulness.  When we think of comparable contemporary entrepreneurs - Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, for example - it seems clear that none of these brilliant and extremely lucky pioneers have the whole human life thing nailed - affairs, divorces, lawsuits, drugs litter their stories like discarded candy wrappers.  You can't have it all.  

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com