Last Friday evening, my wife and I went to see the Moscow State Circus. I have to say, it was perhaps the best set of acrobatic acts I've ever seen (even better than Spelbound). I don't know how long they practice each stunt for, but I would imagine it takes up a significant portion of their life. It got me thinking about how a circus acrobat is somewhat like an entrepreneur, especially one like Tony Hsieh, who's book "Delivering Happiness" comes out today.
A few weeks ago, I noticed Tony was offering bloggers the chance to receive a free preview copy of the book so they could write about it on their blog, so here is my contribution to the cause:
Unfortunately I haven't managed to read the whole thing yet (I'm about half way though), but what I have read so far has been very interesting and inspiring. The way this ties in with circus performing is this:
The performers were taking their life in their hands, leaping in mid-air, sometimes without a safety net: if their footing or timing was off by a fraction, they'd probably fall to the floor leading to serious consequences. In the same way, Tony and his business partners put their whole financial wellbeing on the line for their company. If they'd failed, they would have come to a sticky end financially. Just as the circus performer had to put everything they had into their performance, Tony had to invest everything he had into his company.
I've not read as far into the book to read the result, but I know from hearing the news what the result was. If you don't know, lets just say: it was good.
Having listened to other talks by Tony, and reading the book, I know the main focus of his company (Zappos) has been customer service. This seems to have resulted in a very successful company, winning accolades in the industry. The customer service focus is displayed though events like the recent pricing error on sister site 6pm.com, where they decided to honour prices that had been offered by mistake.
I'm seriously impressed by Zappos/Tony's attitude. I don't buy shoes very often, and Zappos don't deliver to the UK, but if I was in America, I'd probably try them out. They even stock up to UK size 21, so even circus clowns could buy shoes there!
