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Radical Personal Finance

938: The Tragic End of Billionaire Tony Hsieh

Radical Personal Finance

Joshua J. Sheats, MSFS, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, RHU, REBC, CAP

Self-improvement, Business, Education, Investing

4.21.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

0:02.8

skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,

0:07.0

while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheetz,

0:10.8

I am your host. Today I want to share with you a story, a story that is both inspirational

0:18.0

and also devastatingly sad. The story is about Tony Shea, the founder of Zappos, and today there

0:26.0

is a new book being released on his life. The book is entitled Wonderboy, Tony Shea, Zappos,

0:32.7

and the myth of happiness in Silicon Valley. From the book blurb of the promotional book blurb,

0:40.5

we read, in 1998 at the age of 24, Tony Shea sold his first company to Microsoft for $265 million.

0:49.7

In 2009 at the age of 35, he sold his e-commerce company Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion.

0:58.2

In 2020 at the age of 46, he died. Tony Shea revolutionized both the tech world and corporate

1:05.7

culture. He was a business visionary. He was also a man in search of happiness. So why did it all go

1:13.7

so wrong? I have not yet read this book. I am planning on reading it very soon,

1:20.0

but I wanted to share with you the text of an article that was released as part of the promotional

1:26.0

tour. The articles were released on Forbes in the last day or two, because I have found this saga

1:32.4

of Tony Shea's life to be one of the most compelling and gripping of the modern day.

1:40.4

In history, we go back and we study the stories of Howard Hughes and other weirdos who have

1:47.2

amassed great wealth, but sometimes I find it hard to relate to them. But in the modern day,

1:53.8

we have an example of someone like Tony Shea, and this story again is incredible because Tony Shea's

2:00.8

company that he built was amazing. I used to order from Zappos. I loved it. It was a wonderful

2:05.2

place to shop for shoes. And when he sold it to Amazon, he became a billionaire and practically

2:11.2

overnight. And yet what happened after was quite stunning. Let me read to you some portions from

2:18.5

this article published in Forbes. This is an excerpt from the book Wonderboy published as part of

...

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