Time period 5/1/2011 - 10/31/2012

169, 013 units sold

I should also point out that we maintained an almost spotless seller record on Amazon - 97% or better feedback and rated Excellent by them, which is very tough to achieve.

Still awake?  Here comes the good part.

So, I woke up on a Monday in late October of 2012 with an email from Amazon that informed me that Amazon was permanently closing my account because “they suspected we had sold a counterfeit item.”  The action was permanent. The end.  Have a nice life.

Wha???

Amazon allows you to appeal the decision via email one time, and so I did.  I pointed out all the logical arguments:  a) hey Amazon, what item are you talking about? Can we see it so I can agree or disagree?  b) in the last 17 months we have sold 169,013 items and have NEVER had a complaint for counterfeit, which is because we literally examine each and every item we receive before we send it back out for sale and since we have been inspecting dvd’s for over 10 years, we are experts at detecting counterfeit.  c) did I mention we are rated Excellent by Amazon with a 97% feedback rating?

Within 48 hours, Amazon wrote back to say that my appeal has been denied.  The end.  Have a nice life.  I wrote all of my Amazon contacts.  No response.

So, just like that, my second  business had been wiped out.

Hold the phone - there’s a lot more. Go get some more coffee

Well, I can’t really have a nice life just yet.  Know why?  Because I have 55,000 items stored at Amazon’s FBA warehouses, and now they are all just sitting there incurring storage fees.  Amazon will happily either return my items to me or destroy them for me.  For .50 a unit + shipping or for .15 a unit, respectively.

We’re entrepreneurs - let’s do math!

55,000 x .50 = $27,500 + shipping to return my items

55,000 x .15 = $8,250 to destroy all of my items

Amount of money I have after the spectacular failure of Inflatable Madness a few years earlier =  $0.00.

I try to explain my dilemma to Amazon via their email case system, and it goes something like this (cue the Benny Hill music):

Me: Amazon has permanently closed my account. I have a large volume of items in the FBA program. I cannot afford either the .15 disposal or the .50 return fee. I would like to have my items returned to me. How can Amazon help me accomplish this?

Amazon: Greetings,

I apologize for the current situation you are facing.

Unfortunately, there is no other way other than place a removal order or disposal order which will be charged of the amount you have already mentioned in your email.

We will not be able to exempt the removal or disposal fees in this case.

Please write back to us with your confirmation so we can go ahead with further processes for placing a removal or disposal order for your existing items in our fulfillment center

We look forward to hearing from you soon,

Me: I’m not sure you understood my original email. Amazon has turned off my account and cut off all of my income. I cannot afford either the .15 disposal fee or the .50 return fee. I feel that Amazon should waive the return fee and give me back my inventory.

Amazon: Greetings,

I deeply apologize and I completely understand your situation.

Please know that we will not be able to waive out the removal or the disposal fees as Sellers are not exempted of this fee. Therefore I kindly request you to create a removal order for the units present in the Fulfillment Center.

Sooo,  there’s that.

Here’s where we start to go down the rabbit hole.

A few weeks later, I receive a phone call from another seller of dvd’s and music.  Not just another seller - really they are the second largest 3rd party FBA seller of media on Amazon. They are huge. 10 times my size or more. He tells me that they have been kicked off of Amazon as well for “potentially selling a counterfeit item”.  They had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their product back out of Amazon’s FBA program and their overall business has taken a serious hit.

He then very casually asks me how I was handling the lawsuit against me.

Exsqueeze me? Baking powder?

I tell him I have no clue what he’s talking about, and he points me to a legal website that states that I have been sued by a major DVD manufacturer/distributor for selling counterfeit.

Um, huhhhh?

This was at the end of October.  I did not receive a single piece of paper about the case until mid-December.  Sure enough, I was being sued for selling a counterfeit item on Amazon.  I call up some attorneys and am told that my legal fees would be $25k or more to defend myself.  I faint. Then I wake up and faint again.  If I don’t have the money to destroy my items, I sure don’t have the money to defend myself.

I write to the attorney for the rights holder and explain that they’ve got the wrong guy and tell them all the reasons and statistics and track record of my company, and ask them to drop the case.

They don’t, and the case progresses through the courts while I helplessly watch.

The attorneys wait until the case passes a point of no return to actually send me the evidence they have against me.  It’s a packet with photocopies of the Amazon receipt showing they bought the item from my user id on Amazon, the package they received, and the item in question, which turned out to be a brand new and sealed boxset from the TV show The Mentalist (or as my mother-in-law calls it, The Medalist).

As you might expect, I cannot tell anything from these copies. The copies are in black and white and I can not find anything wrong with the boxset.

I again write the attorney for the rights holder and tell him that I don’t see any evidence of counterfeit, that it was a new sealed item, and that we obviously can’t open new items and inspect them because they wouldn’t be new anymore.  They ignore me.

About a week later I had a dream.  I was on a brand new cruise ship with a brand new crew and I was staying in a brand new cabin. The weird part was that I couldn’t find my cabin because they were all brand new and they all looked the same.

Within 2 minutes of waking up, I literally said “holy s**t!” out loud.

The item was new.

Which means it probably wasn’t mine.

To explain,  Amazon.com FBA has a program called “co-mingling”.  What this means is that if you are in the program, and I am, if you send a new sealed item to FBA, you do not need to place an inventory sticker on it like to do for every other item you send to Amazon.  You don’t have to sticker it at all.  What Amazon does with your item is co-mingle it with all of the sellers of that item who are also in the program and Amazon’s own inventory and when they sell that item they pull a unit at random from their co-mingled stock.

In other words, the physical item I sent to Amazon may or may not have been the physical item the customer received! The item wasn’t mine.

This time I got the attorney on the phone.  I explained the situation to her, and she said “Mr Harmon, in California copyright law, we don’t have to prove that the item was yours - just that we bought the item from your user id on Amazon”.

So I called more attorneys, who were all willing to help me for $25,000. They would not verify what the rights holder’s attorney had told me, but they’d be happy to look it up for $25,000.

Ironically and suspiciously, a few days later my phone rang and it was an attorney from Amazon.  Finally! I could explain this to them and they would reopen my account and I could get back to selling again…

“I’m just calling to inform you that there were no other sellers of that item that were in the co-mingling program,” the attorney said. Oh crap - Amazon and the manufacturer/distributor were in cahoots.

“Ok. But Amazon had stock of that item, correct?” I replied.

“I’m just calling to inform you that there were no other sellers of that item that were in the co-mingling program,” the attorney said.

Mmmmmmmk.

Gang, I would love to be able to tell you that this story has a happy ending, but the fact is that I lost the court case.  I’m the proud owner of a giant fine that will bankrupt me.

The title of this article is “Third Party Sellers Need To Rethink The Amazon.com  FBA Program,” so let’s think through why I have said that:

1.  I was an Excellent rated seller on Amazon with 97% positive feedback.  We had never had a complaint for counterfeit, so the ratio stands at 169,013 to 1, or .00000592% . Amazon holds sellers to the highest standards in all of the 3rd party selling industry - that fact alone should have warranted some defense against this claim.  Yet Amazon just stepped aside and let a giant corporation obliterate me. I should also point out that the same company has sued over 80 other sellers in the same manner in the past 8 months.

2.  Once your product is at FBA, they’ve got you.  Amazon can raise fees on you, which they have done, and they can even implement fees that didn’t even exist when you sent them the items. A few years ago, Amazon implemented a new fee called a “long term storage fee” where they clobbered any seller with storage fees for items in Amazon’s warehouse for over a year.  That one cost me $50,000 in product I was forced to destroy.  As I’ve already explained, Amazon will charge you a fee to return your product or destroy it.

3.  For the love of all that’s holy, NEVER agree to use Amazon’s co-mingling program.  If you do, my situation proves that you are liable for other sellers products, not Amazon.

To prove my co-mingling point even further, I recently ordered Amazon to return some items to me so I can resell them and recover some fees.  When we sent out all of our items to the FBA program, they all went to 2 different Amazon warehouses.  Now that I’m receiving them back, guess what?  So far, the new sealed product has arrived back from 9 different warehouses.  Yep, they’re sending back someone else’s new sealed items to me.

This situation literally breaks my heart.  I was a HUGE proponent of Amazon’s FBA program for a long time.  I counseled other sellers to use it, I wrote about it, and I loved using it.  There are thousands of other FBA sellers out there, and I used to think about how smart we all were to outsource major components of our businesses to Amazon.

Now? Yeahhhh not so much.

Best,

Kevin Harmon

kevin@redshortsmedia.com

Kevin on Twitter

Kevin on Facebook:

Kevin on Linkedin:

I love to blog and work with social media.  Let me know if I can help you!

I’ve been working with the creators of StartUpNation since 2001 when I was hired to shoot Rich Sloan doing yoga on the conference room table in the Birmingham Michigan office of the up and coming StartUpNation.  I was recently offered the opportunity to blog about photography if I thought I could contribute to entrepreneurs and start ups. I think I can so I’ll give it a shot.  I’ll be talking about all things photography, from how to do a shoot in the office, to what’s the best stock agency for what your needs are, to rights and usage contracts.  I’ll be answering questions about any thing relating to the business of photography and photography in your business. If I don’t know the answers I’ll look to the vast knowledge base of my peers and will share what I learn with you, so post your questions and comments about you’re photographic quandaries here, and I’ll help you along the image driven super highway of successful businesses.

I should tell you a bit about me.
I began my career as a photographer early in life.  My brother had a darkroom in a closet at our house when I was a sixth grader.  It didn’t take long for my teachers at school to see an opportunity to recruit the next news paper and yearbook photographer.  That’s when I learned that you can have fun and provide a needed service at the same time.  I could get credits for graduation if I work on the year book and news paper staff!  Life was good.  Then one day I was handed a press pass to cover the cheerleaders for a story for the news paper, that was all the motivation I ever needed to pursue my career.  When I was a senior in High School I was introduced to an advertising photographer in my home town of Detroit named Ameen Howrani.  He let me watch him work one day, he was shooting a news crew for the local ABC affiliate.  It was very glamorous, they had food there!  I was face to face with the local anchor man!  That’s when I decided that advertising was where it’s at.  Fast forward 25 years.  I have photographed some really great people, some incredibly beautiful places, and some of the most interesting stuff you’ll ever see.  I picked up a few professional sports teams along the way as well.  Namely the Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Tigers, Detroit Lions, and currently Tampa Bay Ray’s as well as the NHL, NFL, MLB and other editorial venues related to sports. I’ve had unprecedented access to closed door behind the scenes events in the NFL, NHL, and MLB to name just a few. I was given the opportunity to shoot a book for the Detroit Red Wings called “48 Hours with the Detroit Red Wings”. Its a chronological documentation of what happens in forty eight hours in the world of the Red Wings Hockey team.  I was able to travel with the team to photograph players, coaches, and staff. We took two days to shoot the book so we could show the travel aspect of how the team lives on the road (and above the clouds).  During that shoot I was given access to coaches meetings that had never been photographed before.  One of the best experiences I had with the Red  Wings was Flying on the team jet to Washington DC to the White House to meet President George W Bush.   I was given an assignment by the Detroit Tigers Baseball team to shoot an eighteen page photo essay of Tiger Stadium during the final home stand ever to be played there.  The parting shot was Al Kaline in his nineteen sixty eight world series uniform (it still fit), pondering his days playing in that historic stadium.  The cover shot was of the stadium from the corner of Michigan and Trumble on a Friday night with fireworks lighting the sky.  I was able to get images never before captured, such as the neon Tiger Stadium sign from the roof of the press elevator.  I’m currently team photographer for the Tampa Bay Ray’s Baseball team, and have a nice client list of local and national companies and agencies as well.  I live in the St Petersburg area of Florida where I’ve lived for the past six years.  Before that I lived mostly in the suburbs of Detroit with a few years in New York city.  Please feel free to see some of the photographs I mention here at www.kovich.com

As I wrote a while ago here in my blog about the Twitter squatter who was trying to extort StartupNation, there are definitely systems in place at the social media companies that support ethical companies and certainly intellectual property rights of individuals and companies. Twitter worked on our behalf to wrestle away the /startupnation account for us given that it was a registered trademark owned by our business and was obviously strategic to us as well as a source of confusion in the marketplace under the squatter’s control. They quickly moved the account into our control.

Now through the encouragement of Daliah Saper of Saper Law, we’ve done the same thing at Facebook. In less than 24 hours, by following their simple, clear instructions, we were able to pull www.facebook.com/startupnation away from the squatter and now have that username as our own, appropriately so.

Here’s the simple, step-by-step process we followed in case you have a squatter issue and/or trademark issue as it relates to a Facebook username:

1. Go to the bottom of any Facebook page. Click on the link called “Terms.”
   For your convenience, that link is here.
2. Scroll down to #5, “Protecting Other People’s Rights,” and select “How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement”.
   For your convenience that link is here.
3. For copyright infringement, scroll down to “How to report claims of copyright infringement by users” and select the link.
   For your convenience, that link is here.
4. For trademark (or other intellectual property concerns), which was what applied to our situation given our registered trademark for StartupNation that the squatter was unethically using for their benefit, scroll down to “How to report other claims of intellectual property infringement by users” and select the link.
   For your convenience, that link is here.

We are always looking out for you and hope that you find similar success and satisfaction in the process, which is set up and well enforced by Facebook.

We hope that you can soon make your own blog entry titled, “Me 1, Facebook Squatter 0″!

Rich

Yep. We’ve all been there. It’s not fun, but frustration is a part of business.

Instead of taking it personally, you need to move on to the next opportunity. And this can be easier said than done so here are three, quick tips to help you feel better about your business and get back on the road to success.

1. Follow a Plan.

Do you have a plan to obtain new business, or are you just pitching whatever comes across your desk? If you don’t have a plan, it’s time to stop what you are doing and focus.

• What do you want to accomplish and how are you going to get there?
• What do you need to do, and when, to reach your goals?

This will help you organize your sales process and know exactly what steps to take after a potential customer turns you down.

2. Let it Go.

Instead of focusing on lost sales, move on. Give yourself a few minutes to review why your products or services were rejected, and learn from your mistakes. Then, use this new knowledge in your future pitches.

You will feel a lot better if you concentrate on positive thoughts rather than dwelling on the negative. And sometimes this can be difficult so don’t be afraid to turn to a friend for support, read a good, self-help book or blast some upbeat music to get back on track.

This is important because if you feel depressed and frustrated, potential clients will feel your sad vibe. However, if you radiate a positive energy, you’ll be more likely to get others excited about the benefits your products or services can provide.

3. Review Successes.

Things can get pretty ugly out there in the business world. There are many people who do not want to see you succeed, and it can often seem like you are fighting a constant, uphill battle.

But please don’t let it get to you!

When you start to get frustrated, look back at your successes. Think of all the things you have done right for your business, and be proud of how far you have come.

Also, think of ten things you are thankful for and write them down. After all, many people wish they had what you do right now, and it helps to take a minute and appreciate all of the good things in your life.

You Can Do It!

All of us go through trying times in our business lives. It’s how you react to these challenges that matters.

Hang in there, and get through them the best that you can. Vision success in your mind every day.

If you continue to focus on your plan for success and learn from your mistakes, things will probably get better when you least expect it. And when your sales numbers skyrocket, just think of the great “rags to riches” story you’ll have to tell the media!

Do you have some tips to share with others on how you get through the tough times as an entrepreneur? Please share them here or write to me at www.rembrandtwrites.com. Thanks!

You have a thought…. No, that’s not good enough… more staring at the screen…

Ugh… writer’s block!

Well, most of us have been there at one time or another. The important thing is to just start writing… about anything. Eventually, your thoughts will circle around to something pertinent to write about.

Or, you can start writing in a different way so that you can take full advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) copywriting and give customers what they want.

What is SEO anyway?

There is a lot of buzz about SEO, and many entrepreneurs ask me what it is and why they need it.

Well, basically, SEO is the process of using the right keywords in the right places in your Website copy so that your business shows up in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo! and others.

For example, if you provide carpet-cleaning services, you want your business to appear at the top of the list when people type “carpet cleaning services” into Google or one of the other search engines.

If your business name isn’t there, most people will click on the names listed first. In other words, if your site doesn’t have search engine optimization with the right keywords, you lose business to the competition.

Now, this may seem technical, but it really isn’t.

If you are doing your own writing, start with research and figure out which keywords you want to use and make a list. For help, check out the Google Keyword Tool, Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, and other, free services. Next, follow these:

3 Key Items to Include in Your SEO Copy

1. Provide Benefits.

Write about all of the benefits your business offers customers.

How will they feel and what will they get from using your products and/or services?

To begin any piece of copywriting, make a list of all your benefits and go from there. It will help you start writing and stress what is important to the customer.

2. Be Unique.

Once you know the benefits you have to offer, write down why you are unique.

Why should a customer go to you instead of the competition?

Maybe you have extensive experience in a particular area, excellent personal service, special discounts, etc.

Once you discover what makes you unique and how this uniqueness benefits customers, be sure to mention it in your copy.

3. Offer Value.

When you sit down to write, think about your customers…

What keeps them up at night?

How can you solve their problems in your own, unique way?

What’s in it for them?

By thinking about your customers and fulfilling their needs, you will be able to write copy that they want to read. And if you really focus on fulfilling their desires, you will write copy that sells too.

Profits Await!

With these three, quick tips, you will be able to write better copy for your business that will get noticed by the search engines.

Now, if you really want to take advantage of search engine optimization copywriting and significantly increase site visitors, online awareness and sales, hire a professional, SEO writer. Your ROI will be well worth it, and you can concentrate on your core responsibilities running your business!

For more information about SEO, please contact me below or see:

How to Avoid SEO Rip-Offs
http://www.startupnation.com/business-blogs/index.php/2011/03/16/avoid-seo-rip-offs/

Your Site Isn’t Optimized, Why Not?

http://www.startupnation.com/business-blogs/index.php/2011/01/18/seo-2/

Simple Publicity
http://www.rembrandtwrites.com/simple-publicity/

Yep. I hear this a lot. And unfortunately, I have to tell a lot of entrepreneurs that they just wasted their money.

Maybe you can relate?

Did you just spend a lot of time and money on a search-engine-optimization (SEO) service promising you great exposure online… but you don’t see any results?

Well, I hate to tell you this, but if your site  is not showing up on the search engines, it’s NOT optimized!

Now, I know you may have just spent a fortune on this whole process, but it’s time for some tough love…

If your site is not showing up, you need to stop the denial. Review your process and find out what is missing.

Ask yourself these questions.

Did your SEO service:

• Conduct the appropriate research and provide you with a keyword database?
• Use this database to provide different keyword coding on each page of your site?
• Monitor and test various words and phrases to see what works and what doesn’t?
• Update your site content with the appropriate links and headers?
• Provide expertise in writing copy that sells and not just the technical side of things?

When it comes right down to it, your site is only going to show up on the search engines when you
provide value and unique information.

If you use shortcuts or avoid research and monitoring, you are going to waste time and money.

Yes, there are many SEO services out there that will do a great job. But if you want results, look at the
whole picture.

Before moving forward with any SEO service, make sure your tactics include the technical side of things
and the appropriate research, writing and monitoring for best results.

This way, your site will appear on the search engines and your potential customers will be able to find you.

Did you recently optimize your site but with little results? Please let me know here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

Great! Now, what do you do?

A.     Sit back and watch who signs up.

B.     Communicate with your new registrants right away.

C.    Send valuable information to your list on a regular basis.

If you answered B and C… Ding, Ding Ding! You are right!

Newsletter Set Up is Just the Beginning.

The whole reason you have an online newsletter registration
is so that you can collect the contact information for potential
customers.

Once you get their names and e-mails, the real work begins…

• Send a thank you.

Immediately after people register for your newsletter, send them
a personalized, e-mail thank-you note. It should include a welcome
message, all the benefits they will be receiving and any kind of
free e-report, survey, white paper, etc. that you agreed to send
them if they registered.

• Schedule e-mail auto-responders.

What are they?

Well, after you send out your initial thank-you
and welcome e-mail, you need to communicate with your
list on a regular basis.

With e-mail auto-responders, you send e-mails to your
audience to remind them about your business. And these 5-10
e-mails are scheduled for automatic delivery over a matter of weeks.

However, you want to ensure these e-mail messages are personal
and provide value to the readers.

Perhaps, you can share a story about something that happened
to you recently, provide a business tip or talk about a current,
news story?

At the end of your e-mail, you remind your list about
a particular product or service that you are selling.

This way, you communicate with your list in a way that provides value,
reminds them you are around and allows them to get to know you
over time.

It is a fantastic way to build long-term, customer relationships.

• Are you blogging and using social media?

In addition to sending out the e-mail auto-responders mentioned above,
you also want to let your list know when you have a new blog entry,
article, sale, etc. And this is just a simple process of scheduling an
e-mail to go out whenever you have a new entry.

For these services, check out:

http://aweber.com/?324776
www.constantcontact.com
www.icontact.com
www.myemma.com
www.verticalresponse.com

This way, you can easily stay in touch with your list on a regular
basis and keep your products and services top-of-mind while
providing value.

• Monitor e-mail auto-responder results.

Once your newsletter-registration and e-mail auto-responder
process is in place, be sure to monitor it regularly.

By checking your e-mail service, you can see how many people
opened your e-mail, the most popular content and clicks,
the best subject lines and send times, undeliverables, spam notices,
and more.

This is valuable information you can use to get the best results
for your e-mail efforts. Plus, you can use this data to discover key
trends with your list members, conduct follow-up, stop issues before
they become big problems, and create new content to meet their
specific needs.

Take Advantage of This Process.

Having a newsletter registration allows you to create and
grow your own list of customers. But this is just the beginning.

Once you offer your newsletter, it’s important to provide
personalized information  to your list on a regular basis via
an e-mail auto-responder series.

Now, you may think that your customers will turn away if you
send them too many e-mails. And sure, you will get some
unsubscribes. But you do not want these “uninterested” people
on your list anyway.

Just be sure to send valuable information your customers can
use. And note that there is an art to the content and timing of these
e-mails… so I strongly advise that you hire an experienced, SEO
copywriter to help you write and send them.

But it’s well worth the time, cost and effort. With good, e-mail
auto-responders, your list will actually look forward to
receiving  your e-mails.

And this means you can build valuable,
long-term customer relationships that will catapult your business
above the competition and dramatically increase sales.

Do you need assistance setting up your newsletter process and
e-mail auto-responder series? Please write to me here or at
www.rembrandtwrites.com. Your site traffic will increase!

How does worm farming + raving + poker playing = Zappos?

What everyone knows about Tony Hsieh is that he’s the Zen Master of Culture at Zappos, a wildly successful shoe website that was just sold to Amazon for $1.2 billion - not bad for 10 years work.  I think what most people don’t know is how Tony got there.  What’s great about this book is that we get an honest account of a successful entrepreneurs’ childhood, upbringing, failures, and successes - all told to us by Tony himself.

Tony didn’t just show up as CEO of Zappos out of nowhere.  In fact, he began his career as a 9-year old worm farmer.  That didn’t go so well, so he started a newsletter - that failed. By middle school he was running a mail order button business which did quite well and gave Tony all the milk money he wanted. He got a job as a computer programmer in high school, and in college he started a food business.

After college, Tony quickly realized that working for The Man wasn’t all that exciting, even if The Man was Oracle.  So, he and his buddies got together and started a small company called LinkExchange, which they sold to Microsoft less than 2 years later for $265 million. That was a LOT of milk money.

He became a start-up investor after that, investing in more than 20 companies.  One of them was a small start-up called Zappos, whose founders had this nutty idea for selling shoes in the internet.  At the time, that was a ridiculous idea - Zappos needed a drop-ship model, and most shoe companies just didn’t have the ability to do that. Shoe suppliers wouldn’t sell product to Zappos either because they weren’t a brick and mortar store.

With Zappos, Tony had lots of issues and obstacles to overcome, and it didn’t take long before Tony took Zappos under his wing full time and became CEO.

What I really love about Tony and Zappos is that it’s actually a very typical “overnight success” story that was 10 years in the making.  Several times, the Zappos team was staring at bankruptcy and failure - they were literally making decisions on a monthly basis to continue operations.   Tony and the gang simply believed that it would work, and via pig headed determination, it finally did.

The last 1/3 of the book dives into the fabled Zappos culture and, finally, what happiness really is.   Personally, I think that culture is a very hard thing to define and describe.   Tony does the best he can by allowing several members of his team to contribute to the book and describe culture in their own words, and he discusses several ideas, such as the Culture Book. Tony loves poker, and draws a lot of similarities between poker and business and culture.  He also loved the rave scene and it’s easy so see how that scene became foundation for the ideals behind the culture of Zappos years later.

I don’t know how many answers are here for readers seeking to duplicate the unique culture of Zappos in their own organizations. For me, it’s hard to answer for myself the question “Is Zappos successful because of their culture, or does Zappos have a unique culture because of their success?”  I think the only way to really answer that question is if Tony applied his culture to other things.  How cool would it be, for example, to see a Zappos Airlines? Or a Zappos lawn care service?  Personally, I think Tony could take Delivering Happiness to the ultimate level by starting a multi level marketing company with “Ambassadors of Happy” spreading happiness throughout the world with products designed to make people happier.  Wow - I said a form of “happy” four times in that last sentence, and now I’m even happier.  Just said it twice more - I’m on to something.

Tony digs into the meaning of happiness and what it is at the end of the book.  He approaches it from a scientific point of view, so if you get real excited about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Happiness as a Fractal, then you’ve come to the right place.

As an entrepreneur myself, I think the thing that Tony has shown me the most in “Delivering Happiness” is that money isn’t always going to make you happy.  When Microsoft purchased LinkExchange, they gave Tony an additional sum (millions) to just “hang out” for a year.  Guess what - that didn’t make Tony happy or fulfilled, so he actually quit and gave that money back to Microsoft.  At Oracle after college, Tony’s job was ridiculously easy and high paying for his age, and yet he walked away from it because it wasn’t fulfilling him.

“Delivering Happiness” is a good, honest account of how a failed worm farmer became the Culture King.  I really enjoyed reading it, and I think you will too.

You can read more about the Delivering Happiness movement here:

Delivering Happiness

You can buy the book here:

Buy it on Amazon

Enjoy!

Kevin

@imadness on Twitter

bye gang

Employees want to do a good job. And what the boss often needs to do is get out of the way and let them perform. Of course, when I became a business owner, I fell prey to the kind of thinking that trips up so many entrepreneurs: You have to work endless hours, you have to micromanage every aspect of the business, you have to make every decision. Ack!

I don’t know if my businesses would have survived if I hadn’t come up with what I call Go Theory. (”Go” as in “just go away”.) Go Theory is not about where you go or what you do while you go away from the office. Go Theory is all about what you don’t do:

• Don’t send your employees lots of little reminders by email.
• Don’t keep checking your smart phone.
• Don’t miss the spectacular view or the interesting presentation or the quality time with friends because you were stressing out about what might be going on back at the office.

Instead, enjoy your time away. Because you’ve got great people taking care of the business while you’re gone. If that last sentence just sent a chill up your spine (“But…no one can possibly take care of my business except me!”), read on.

The first element of Go theory, its absolute essence, is hiring great people to work in your business:

• Fire quick and hire slow. Invest the time and money required to make the best choices. I don’t rely on just myself to spot the right person — I make sure that at least two other people whose opinions I respect interview the candidates.
• Hire smart. I hire people who are smarter than me.
• Pick people with a track record for doing their tasks and accomplishing their goals. You don’t want to deal with excuses.

The second element of Go theory involves what you do with those great employees once you have them:

• Give people a great place to work, including real benefits.
• Trust them to handle problems and give them room to succeed or fail.
• Get in the habit of throwing issues back to employees — otherwise, you’ll be chained to your business 24/7.
• Make your business a vibrant and healthy system and you’ll find that employees work better when you’re gone.

The third element of Go theory is at once the easiest — and the hardest:

• Give employees clear directions or goals, and leave them alone to do their jobs. A quick check-in early in the project to make sure they are on track is OK, but then…go away!

The idea is for you to work on your business instead of in your business. This forces you and your staff to create good systems that can run without you. As the CEO, you want to be useless in the day-to-day business activities so you can be proactive and reactive to markets and opportunities. Keep in mind that what puts your business ahead of the competition is not logging lots of hours at the office — it’s creativity. Ask yourself: How can you be creative if you’re spending all your time making sales calls?

Go Theory provides a lot of rewards, including a “real life” for the CEO and a stronger, healthier bottom line for the company. I find that in my absence my business thrives. Projects move forward, problems get solved, and new ideas emerge. All this — just because I learned to get out of the way and work from a beachside cafe two hours a day.

This one’s called Google Rocketship and it’s the most simple, easy-to-follow, supremely affordable advice we could assemble to ensure that your website is positioned to make it to the top of search results on Google.

What does ranking high on Google searches do for you? If it’s not obvious, it sends you free, pre-qualified traffic to your website and what you sell. With an effective “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) strategy for your website, you stand an infinitely better chance of having lots of traffic - the kind you want - coming to your site. The tricks of the trade for a layman is exactly what Google Rocketship teaches you.

It’s a three-part series, but you can just sharp shoot and download one at a time or just get a single ebook in the series if you want. For members at StartupNation (which is totally free), we’ve discounted the series price to 60% of the list price. A huge discount, in other words.

To motivate you a little more, listen to my recent podcast with Jonathan Smith (”From Zero to $100 million”) who optimized his website with the very principles we recommend in Google Rocketship and reeled in a $100 million dollar purchase order… UNSOLICITED! They found him at the top of Google and gave him a call!

Download Google Rocketship and get your website rockin’ with qualified traffic and new customers! By the end of one weekend, your website could be transformed!