A Quiet Tribute to Tony Hsieh
As you may have heard, entrepreneur and CEO, Tony Hsieh, passed away a few days ago. I’m not here to claim that I am more distraught about this than anyone else, or that he was more of a hero to me. I simply want to publish another blog in the ecosystem expressing my appreciation for the work he did and the stories he told.
After about a year of freelancing post-college, my hustle had run out of steam. Clients weren’t keeping me on, I was feeling burned out, and I was looking for guidance. I took an older Social Strategist connect out to lunch, and asked him questions about the industry. He recommended a few books to me, one of which was Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh.
I wasn’t much of a reader in 2017, but I devoured Delivering Happiness cover to cover within a week. Tony’s stories about his small entrepreneurial ventures as a child, then founding LinkExchange in his early 20s, then building Zappos were very inspiring to me. The way he spoke about creating something he was proud of helped me see the path beyond my burned out hustle. Delivering Happiness, in conjunction with a few other books, really reignited my motivation and passion to keep working on a non-traditional path.
As I have written about before, I had trouble keeping clients when I first started freelancing. I was too focused on the work and not focused enough on my clients’ experience. Tony’s model of keeping the customer experience as the top priority helped me reshape howI viewed my work. Within a few months of reading Delivering Happiness, I started working with my longest standing retainer client. We are still working together today.
Hats off to a man who re-wrote the script. Hats off to a man who pioneered good customer service in the digital age. It’s apparent that anyone who had the pleasure of working with Tony was grateful for that experience. At the end of the day, businesses go under. Empires fall. Our work and our names are forgotten after a few generations. More and more, I’m gaining a conviction that each of our lives should be devoted to making the world a better place for the moments we spend on it. It seems Tony did that for his coworkers, and his employees, and developed a model that will make work better for many people for many years to come.
Rest in peace, Tony Hsieh.
