Delivering Happiness

party loft selling, or else the company would be out of business. In the
meantime, I hoped Fred would be able to convince more brands to sell to us
so that we could increase our sales, but that would only help things if the
new inventory we got didn’t wind up just sitting on the loading docks. I
thought through what seemed like a thousand “what-if” scenarios as I tried
to answer as many e-mails as I could before I had to leave for my trip. I was
in the middle of an e-mail when I realized that I had to stop typing.
I had a plane to catch.
Snows of Kilimanjaro
It was raining on the day that Jenn and I started hiking up Kilimanjaro.
After flying from airport to airport for twenty-four hours, we had finally
arrived in Tanzania. With a day of rest, we were driven to the drop-off point
with all of our hiking gear and introduced to our guide and the rest of the
team that would be navigating us up the mountain.
Although we were halfway around the world, I couldn’t get Zappos out
of my head. I knew that back at home, it felt like vultures were circling
around Zappos. We had gotten so far, and had so much opportunity in front
of us. But the cash flowing out of the company felt like an infection that
overshadowed everything else that was going right. We could have
prevented it if we had figured things out earlier, or if I hadn’t bought the

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party loft in the first place. But now, the fate of the company rested on
being able to find a buyer for the loft in time.
I’d already played out the scenario of what would happen if there was no
buyer, if things didn’t work out. I told myself I would be at peace with it
because it had been challenging, and a lot of fun, while it lasted. I was
mentally and emotionally tired.
I thought about all the people over the past few years who had been a