“I love the Joie de Vivre Heart icon that Chip uses to illustrate how a passionate corporate culture breeds happy employees, which leads to satisfied customers, which results in a profitable and sustainable business.”

—Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman, Virgin Group Ltd.

“Late in his life, Abe Maslow imagined how his iconic hierarchy of needs could be translated to the collective, especially to companies, but he never fully realized that vision. Chip Conley has channeled Abe's point of view and made it relevant to the business world. There is no person on the planet better versed in how to create a self-actualized organization than Chip and Peak is his virtuoso manifesto.”

—Michael Murphy, cofounder, Esalen Institute

“Peak was one of the sources of inspiration for Life@Facebook, our new comprehensive approach to caring for our people and those who matter to them.”

—Tudor Havriliuc, vice president, human resources, Facebook

“The world could use more conscious capitalists who realize the most neglected fact in business is we're all human. Chip Conley's Peak is one of the most practical and inspiring books of this new era of stakeholder-centered businesses. This was required reading for many of our top execs.”

—Kip Tindell, cofounder and chairman, The Container Store

“WeWork truly resonates with Chip's Peak principles as we believe our mission is to create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living. As a fellow former hotel industry CEO, I have the utmost admiration for Chip's approach to leadership and how it translates into success.”

—Michael Gross, vice-chair, WeWork

“Within this engrossing, inspiring, and all-around wonderful book is the gripping story of an extraordinary company facing the most trying circumstances imaginable and emerging stronger than ever. If you want to build a great business, work in a great business, or simply understand what greatness in business is all about, you need to read Peak.”

—Bo Burlingham, editor-at-large of Inc. and author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big

“There aren't many books that do a more brilliant job of showing how both a company and a leader can create loyalty and differentiation by just applying a little common sense psychology. Like most wonders of the world, Peak is both simple and complex at the same time, but, most importantly, it's effective as a way of seeing business and life.”

—Leslie Blodgett, founder and former CEO, bareMinerals

“Chip Conley has captured something special here. Peak shows how to apply fundamental human principles toward building a great company and offers poignant insights for all leaders.”

—John Donahoe, former CEO, eBay

“What do Yvon Chouinard, Timothy Leary, and a company where one-third of the employees clean toilets for a living have in common? As brilliant entrepreneur Chip Conley will teach you in this groundbreaking book: Abraham Maslow. Essential reading for anyone trying to create an organization with meaning.”

—Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and Tribes

“Chip's book is a rare combination of poignant story, potent theory, and prescriptive action steps—it is applicable to both public and private sector work.”

—Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor of California

“Chip Conley proves that Abraham Maslow's brilliant theories regarding work and leadership cannot only be applied in the real world but, when embraced, often lead to enormous competitive advantages. Chip's book is an instructive guide for any leader who seeks to build enlightened organizations that tap the potential of employees and capture the hearts and minds of customers and shareholders.”

—Deborah Collins Stephens, coauthor of Maslow on Management and The Maslow Business Reader and cofounder of The Center for Innovative Leadership

To Abraham H. Maslow, whose lifetime of learning offered a precious gift to the world.

And to my Joie de Vivre crew, who “sought the peak” with me every day.

The Rebel Rules

Marketing That Matters

Peak

Emotional Equations

I first met Chip Conley at an event where we were both speaking in 2007, just one year before we hit $1 billion in gross merchandise sales at Zappos.com. When he presented his concepts from Peak, I was instantly struck with how similar our philosophies about building a brand and business were. I later found out that we were both passionate students of the field of positive psychology—essentially, the science of happiness—and that we had both applied our learning to our respective businesses as well as our personal lives. I felt like we were kindred spirits.

At Zappos, our goal is to wow our customers, our employees, our vendors, and ultimately our investors. We strive to deliver the very best customer service and customer experience, and ultimately our brand is about delivering happiness to the world. Our hope is that 10 years from now, people won't even realize that we started selling shoes online, and perhaps 20 to 30 years from now, there may even be a Zappos Airlines that's focused on just delivering the very best customer experience.

Our number-one priority at Zappos is company culture. Our belief is that if we get the culture right, then most of the other stuff, like building a long-term enduring brand, delivering great service, and finding passionate employees and customers, will happen naturally on its own.

Building a brand today is very different from building a brand 50 years ago. It used to be that a few people got together in a room, decided what the brand positioning was going to be, and then spent a lot of money buying advertising telling people what their brand was. And if you were able to spend enough money, then you were able to build your brand.

Today, what you do and who you are matter much more than what you say. Your brand is the combination of everyone's experience with your company, which is ultimately a byproduct of your company's culture.

A company's culture and a company's brand are really just two sides of the same coin. The brand may lag the culture at first, but eventually it will catch up. At the end of the day, every brand is basically a short cut to emotions. All of the world's greatest enduring brands ultimately appeal to one or more human emotions. Peak provides a great framework for thinking about how to accomplish that.

One of our core values at Zappos is to Pursue Growth and Learning, so we offer many different classes to help our employees grow both personally and professionally. We are such a fan of Chip's work that Peak has become required reading for many of our employees, and our training team now offers a class specifically designed to cover all the concepts from the book that you are now holding in your hands.

Every employee and visitor to our headquarters in Las Vegas is offered a free copy of Peak, and we even have posters on the walls of our headquarters in Las Vegas to serve as a daily reminder to our employees to always keep Chip's modified version of Maslow's Hierarchy in mind.

If you're interested in building an enduring brand and business, this book will be one of the best investments you'll ever make. I encourage you to do what we've done at Zappos: get a copy for each and every one of your employees. This book is one of the rare few that can help you and your employees grow both personally and professionally.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com (ceo@zappos.com)

P.S. If you're ever in the Las Vegas area, I would like to invite you to come and tour our headquarters to observe firsthand many of the concepts from Peak in action. To schedule your tour, just go to https://www.zapposinsights.com/tours.

Books teach me. Even my own. Writing a book helps make sense of what I've learned at the congested crossroads of psychology and business. And I enjoy sharing the wisdom found on the journey. You're welcome to think of me as your crossing guard at that confusing intersection.

It's been 10 years since Peak was published and I'm thrilled the book is still a favorite with so many people, and in so many different industries and countries. This updated edition offers new insights from me, as well as many examples of new companies—from Facebook to WeWork—that use the Peak model in their organizational strategy. You'll also find a whole new chapter on Peak Leadership Practices (Chapter Fourteen) and a new Managerial Assessment tool regarding the Employee Pyramid in the Appendix.

Quite a bit has changed for me in the past decade. Just six months after Peak came out in 2007, it was clear we were entering the Great Recession, not long after recovering from the dot-com bust. Who knew my company would experience two once-in-a-lifetime downturns in the same decade? Déjà vu. Joie de Vivre (JdV). Don't worry, this isn't a French lesson; let's just say I felt a whole lot of déjà vu at JdV between 2008 and 2010.

During difficult times, it's natural to feel paralyzed and to operate exclusively in survival mode. Most of us are working in infectious fear factories, where risk aversion runs rampant at a time when creativity, innovation, and teamwork are more needed than ever. That's where you, the leader, come in. W. Edward Deming, father of the total quality movement, once said that the primary duty of every leader is to remove fear from the workplace. But organizational wellness doesn't emerge simply from the absence of fear. Fear must be replaced with a positive spirit of fulfillment and vitality that comes from the principles outlined in this book. What's true of the companies we love is true of the leaders we love. They are deeply admired for being passionate, smart, resilient, trustworthy, original, and humane—the same qualities we admire in people.

Joie de Vivre made it through that difficult time. But I had a health scare in late 2008, which woke me up to the fact that my new calling was to primarily be a writer and speaker. Of course, that was confusing to me, and everyone around me, as we thought I'd be the owner and CEO of my company for at least another 25 years. Ultimately, I sold Joie de Vivre, the brand and the management company, in mid-2010. But I kept ownership in much of the hotel real estate, and provided guidance to the new ownership team (led by John Pritzker of Geolo Capital, whose father started the Hyatt hotel chain). This gave me time to sort through my emotions after my heart literally stopped at age 47, which led me to write Emotional Equations.

In March 2013, I was approached by Brian Chesky, the CEO and cofounder of Airbnb, at the time a small start-up home-sharing company. He and some of the young execs had read Peak and were intrigued by how it might apply to Airbnb's business model. Brian asked if I wanted to “democratize hospitality,” which sounded pretty nifty to me. But I only wanted to do it part-time since I'd just launched a business, Fest300 (now part of Everfest), to share my passion for the world's best festivals. Not surprising, the part-time consulting gig turned into a full-time obsession and leadership role for this “retired” CEO. Fifteen hours a week became 15 hours a day. How many chances do you get to disrupt your favorite industry? For me it happened not just once—as a boutique hotelier long ago—but a second time, at the forefront of the sharing economy.

My initial title was Hospitality Guru, which in a few weeks morphed into Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy. Brian said he liked the way my mind worked strategically and also asked me to create a Learning and Development department. Over four years, I oversaw more than a half-dozen departments and key initiatives for the company before moving into my Strategic Advisor role—and back to blessed part-time status. But what a fascinating journey it's been! We weren't really called a hospitality company in early 2013, and we were thought of as a travel tech start-up with a design focus. Today, we offer more accommodations than the top three hotel companies in the world combined—Marriott (including their Starwood acquisition), Hilton, and Intercontinental—and our private market valuation has surpassed $30 billion.

Today, I also see pyramids on whiteboards all over Airbnb's headquarters and our more than 20 offices around the world. But I remember just four months into my tenure, when Brian asked me to lead a three-day retreat for Estaff—our dozen-person senior leadership team—and I introduced the principles of Peak to develop our 2014 strategic initiatives. It's been a true peak experience to see the business model I developed applied at such a deep level to a fast-growing, high-profile company playing on a global canvas. Airbnb was going to succeed whether I was there or not. But I do feel a certain joy and honor at how my contribution helped this fledgling and extremely talented leadership team earn Inc. magazine's Company of the Year cover story in December 2014, and Glassdoor's Best Places to Work award in December 2015. And, I do believe the underpinning of Peak's humane approach to business has helped Airbnb steer clear of some of the cultural, personality, and strategic challenges that have hurt the reputations of other sharing economy companies.

While it turned into a huge disruption in my life, I'm glad I said yes to Brian. Many hoteliers couldn't see Airbnb coming. But I recognized that Brian's investment in the company's culture, and the fact that home sharing was addressing an unrecognized need for travelers—living like a local affordably—meant Airbnb had the potential to go big. As I point out in Chapters Seven through Nine on the Customer Pyramid, established companies can miss innovation if they get too fixated at the base and address only the expectations of their core customers.

A more mobile populace leads to changes in lodging needs. There's a growing number of mostly Millennials choosing to be “digital nomads,” living parts of the year in places like Bali or Baja, and the rest of the year in cities such as Boston or Austin. These folks are less interested in being upwardly mobile and are, instead, outwardly mobile. Equipped with a laptop and a smartphone, a Wi-Fi connection and a coworking space, these freelancers, entrepreneurs, and other modern merchants are not typically weighed down by home or car ownership.

My Baby Boomer generation saw work and leisure as an “either/or” proposition. With an occasional sabbatical to moderate workaholism, the global nomad phenomenon is “both/and”—enjoy a great life while doing work on the road. Add in the “bleisure” trend, where business travelers tack on a few extra days of leisure to an interesting destination, and you see an upward trajectory in the extended-stay lodging market. Nearly 60 percent of Airbnb's room-night demand in many major metropolitan markets is guests staying a week or longer, whereas the average length of stay for most urban hotels is less than three days. Thinking about the expectations, desires, and unrecognized needs of these new kinds of travelers has helped Airbnb deliver a level of guest satisfaction that far exceeds the hotel industry average (based upon net promoter score as the common metric). This is part of the reason we've grown so quickly.

Over the past decade, I've been introduced to so many business leaders who are also “peakers.” What's been surprising is how universal this Peak model is, no matter the industry, geography, or culture of the company. Some might be surprised that investment bankers are also intrigued by this humanistic approach to business, yet Merrill Lynch has invited me to give eight speeches to their various employees and customers around the world.

But it's another investment bank, Houlihan Lokey, that woke me up to the biggest realization I've had about my Maslovian model since I wrote the book: the two lines that define the boundaries between the Survive, Success, and Transformation levels of the Employee, Customer, and Investor pyramids are not fixed. When I was leading a workshop for Houlihan Lokey's top leaders, one astutely pointed out that, depending upon the industry and the economy, the bottom of the pyramid that defines survival could represent 80 percent of the pyramid. For example, investment bankers are money-obsessed. So, the base of their employee pyramid takes huge precedence. But, interestingly enough, both Merrill Lynch and Houlihan Lokey execs have agreed that the next two levels of the pyramid (Recognition and Meaning), while thin in the world of investment banking, represent the differentiators for an employer. This is where loyalty is created with their slightly mercenary bankers. As one exec said to me, “Peak helped us see that many of our bankers are stuck at the success level of the pyramids, not seeing the disruptive transformation available at the peak.” I call this “the illusion of being ahead” that afflicts many established companies and execs, who are just coasting along based upon historical momentum.

A completely different company, on a completely different continent, reinforced the message of the movable lines in the employee pyramid. Liderman is one of the largest security firms in Latin America, with more than 12,000 security guards, mostly in Peru and Ecuador. Its average employee makes as much in a month as the Houlihan Lokey investment bankers make in an hour. Yet, Liderman CEO Javier Calvo Perez Badiola, who also calls himself the “guardian of the culture,” told me at a Peak seminar in South America that their employee pyramid is dominated by money as well, because their guards and their families are living paycheck to paycheck. But, just as with the investment bankers, Javier—who is one of the most Peak-focused execs I've ever met—recognizes that you create a unique, loyalty-driven culture higher up the pyramid. This is part of the reason his company is consistently ranked one of the best employers in Latin America. Conversely, in many nonprofit, governmental, or educational institutions, the money slice of the pyramid is very thin and the meaning at the top is what predominates. So, these new insights have proven to me just how adaptable the Peak model is to just about any institution.

In my travels, I've met many inspired business leaders—some at conferences, others in the cliffside hot springs at Big Sur's Esalen Institute, and even some at the annual Burning Man event in Nevada. Bill Linton is an inspired idealist and, for 40 years, has been a pragmatic entrepreneur growing his life sciences company, Promega, to approximately $400 million in annual sales with a reputation that is world-class in the biotechnology world.

Bill and I are birds of a feather. Because we're both “Burners” (those who enjoy making the Burning Man pilgrimage each year), and because we consider Maslow as so fundamental to how we see life and business. Bill explains, “In the early 1990s, Promega's board and management team started exploring our purpose and meaning of being in business. As a model that reflects a path of meaningful growth, we chose Maslow's hierarchy and began to develop our purpose with corporate ‘self-transcendence’ as our aspirational goal. It was exciting and helpful to discover Peak and its insights. All our corporate leaders received it. Chip provides an excellent resource in how a business can access and practice a way of operating that brings greater reward for all parties involved. We have put the concepts into practice throughout the organization for the past two decades with excellent outcomes.”¹

Khalil Gibran said, “Work is love made visible.”² So true. If you're on the path of living a calling and you're in a habitat that supports that path. Tragically, only a small percentage of the world can say that. So, I'd like you to consider a one-month trial of the following exercise based upon the classic question we ask each other as strangers. When someone asks, “What do you do?” answer not with your profession, job title, or company. Tell them what creates meaning for you. This gives people a window into your occupational soul and it may also prompt them to ask a deeper question of themselves.

Or, they may just think you're a crackpot when you answer like I do: “I am a crossing guard at the congested intersection of psychology and business,” or “I dispense wisdom and uncover blind spots,” or “I help people do the best work of their lives.” A doctor could answer: “I fix people,” or “I listen,” or “I help people heal themselves.” My friend and colleague Debra Amador DeLaRosa helps people cultivate their unique stories and says, “I am a Story Gardener.” And Vivian Quach, who I featured at the start of my 2010 TED speech and has been cleaning hotel rooms in my first hotel, The Phoenix, for more than 30 years says, “I am the peace of mind police.” Who are you?

Finally, I share the following letter from someone whose life has been positively affected by this book. Receiving these kinds of letters keeps me motivated to continue writing about my experiences in business and in life. Thanks, Gabe! My next book, Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder celebrates what the young and not-so-young have to offer each other.

Dear Chip,

I know that you're a storyteller, so I hope you can take some time to read and enjoy this one. It's a little long, but I assure you it's worth it.

My first job in hospitality was running an elevator.

Despite being a college graduate, the only entry-level hotel job I could find was as a host of a rooftop venue at a new boutique hotel. Being last in the pecking order, every night it was my job to run the independent elevator that took guests up and down 27 floors to and from the hotel's popular rooftop. 

I was extremely embarrassed by my job. I had entered the hospitality world because of my love for creating experiences for those around me, and despite already having success in the service industry and travel booking, here I was confined to a tiny space for hours at a time. Something had to change.

First, I timed each elevator trip. Thirty-two seconds. I began to practice different ways to introduce myself and create a routine of relaying the basic facts and information required before they reached the top, always leaving room for a joke or some improvisation. I'd even recommend drinks at the bar, views around the rooftop, and give them my own business card for table bookings. After a while, guests began asking for me instead of the hosts that were actually working the venue. 

I'd made the most of my “elevator pitch,” but I had yet to focus on another opportunity: the way down. In fact, most of the time I spent in that elevator alone, so how could I take advantage of that time?

When I told my parents I'd found a job, I decided to hide some of the details from them (specifically the moving metal box), but they still knew I was at the bottom of the food chain. As a gift, my mom sent me a book that she said would help me once I got to where I wanted to go. The book was called Peak, and I would read it every trip down in that elevator a half a minute at a time before hiding it in the emergency compartment as the doors opened for the next guests to go up.

Because of Peak I began to see more and more value in my job as well as those around me in other departments of the hotel. I also began approaching relationships with coworkers and guests more genuinely, enhancing my network and accelerating my development as a leader. It also provided me with a level of confidence in my decision-making that would serve me well when I got my shot.

Over the next three-and-a-half years, I worked from the elevator to management. While a lot of my own personal motivation led to my success, it was your book that prepared me for when I got my shot and provided a context from which I could evaluate and contribute to the overall leadership of the venue and hotel. I also decided to return to school for my master's, focusing on customer service psychology and business management before joining an up and coming hospitality group in 2015. I have since left that job and have been traveling around the world and preparing for beginning the next chapter of my life, one that introduces self-actualization, or perhaps my own “joie de vivre.”

I hope you enjoyed the story and continue to influence young professionals and companies poised to impact the world. Oh, and I can't wait for that next book, either.

Best,

Gabe Huntting

Deep down I always knew that business could be done differently. I founded and grew my company, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, with this rebellious spirit. But it wasn't until I was rocked to my foundation with a desperate economic downturn that I was truly able to see the power of my principles.

Celebrated restaurateur Danny Meyer told me he wrote his book Setting the Table because it helped him move from the intuitive to the intentional in how he ran the Union Square Hospitality Group. Brazilian CEO Ricardo Semlar has said he wrote his books The Seven-Day Weekend and Maverick to address one of his director's questions about whether what works in practice for their company could also work in theory. I decided to write Peak because it allowed me to combine three of my greatest interests: writing, psychology, and business. Writing this book required me to reconcile how Joie de Vivre has successfully interpreted one of the most famous theories of human motivation into how we do business. But my learning was most profound when I discovered dozens of other peak-performing companies that have also consciously and unconsciously relied on Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It wasn't just my little company that was fond of Abe's pyramid. Yet, taking all of this learning and turning it into a book was quite a task. Thankfully, at a very young age, I knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, so all the time spent researching and writing just helped connect me back to a lifelong aspiration. I guess that means I'm now grown up.

This book is about the miracle of human potential: employees living up to their full potential in the workplace, customers feeling the potential bliss associated with having their unrecognized needs met, and investors feeling fulfilled by seeing the potential of their capital leveraged. Celebrated author Fred Reichheld says, “The fundamental job of a leader is to be a role model, an exemplary partner whose primary goal is to help people grow to their fullest human potential.”¹ Great leaders know how to tap into potential and actualize it into reality. My hope is that whether you are a start-up entrepreneur or in management at a Fortune 500 company, you will be able to use the theory in this book to maximize your own potential as well as the potential of those around you. Don't get discouraged if this theory feels a little foreign. At Joie de Vivre, we weren't perfect, either. I can't say we acted on this theory every day in every one of our more than 40 businesses, but the process of educating everyone in the company about these principles made a big difference in our lives.

I might have called this book How I Survived the Great Depression and Created a Great Company and Great Relationships Along the Way, but I don't think my publisher could have fit that on the cover. It seems trite to say that companies are just communities of relationships. But common sense suggests, and empirical studies show, those organizations that create deeper loyalty—with employees, customers, and investors—experience more sustained success. In this age of commoditization, one of the truly differentiating characteristics of leaders and companies is the quality and durability of the relationships they create. Peak (a much more succinct title) will help you create peak experiences with those you work with so that these flourishing relationships will help you sustain peak performance.