Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

by Yvon Chouinard

We were like the wild species living on the edge of an ecosystem—adaptable, resilient, and tough.

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

One of my favorite sayings about entrepreneurship is: If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing.”

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different;

Doing risk sports had taught me another important lesson: Never exceed your limits.

“Make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

The first precept of industrial design is that the function of an object should determine its design and materials.

The more you know, the less you need.

I never forget Thoreau’s advice: “I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. . . .”

We live in a culture where replacement is king. We do routinely fix big-ticket items, like cars and washing machines, but primarily it’s easier and cheaper to go buy something new. There are other reasons to avoid repair, including labels that warn that repairing a product on your own will void the warranty or the lack of access to the information and parts necessary to repair something ourselves. These conditions create a society of product consumers, not owners. And there’s a difference. Owners are empowered to take responsibility for their purchases—from proper cleaning to repairing, reusing, and sharing. Consumers take, make, dispose, and repeat—a pattern that is driving us toward ecological bankruptcy.

When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. —Richard Buckminster Fuller

If you wait for the customer to tell you what to do, you’re too late. My customers didn’t want a model T, they wanted a faster horse. —Henry Ford

The entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good, take another, if not, step back. Learn by doing, it is a faster process.

It’s okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise, you’re just crazy.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. —L. P. Jacks

Leaders take risks, have long-term vision, create the strategic plans, and instigate change.

You might think that a nomadic society packs up and moves when things get bad. However, a wise leader knows that you also move when everything is going too well; everyone is laid-back, lazy, and happy. If you don’t move now, then you may not be able to move when the real crisis happens.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “In pleasant peace and security, how quickly the soul in a man begins to die.”

And as Bob Dylan says, “He not busy being born...

Anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist. —Kenneth Boulding

I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge. The more you know, the less you need.