#514: Chip Wilson — Building Lululemon, The Art of Setting Goals, and The 10 Great Decisions of Your Life

Chip Wilson — Building Lululemon, the Art of Setting Goals, and the 10 Great Decisions of Your Life | Brought to you by Laird Superfood http://lairdsuperfood.com/tim clean, plant-based creamers, Four Sigmatic http://foursigmatic.com/tim mushroom coffee, and Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim premium mattresses. More on all three below. Chip Wilson (@chipYVR https://twitter.com/chipyvr) is a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist. His career in the apparel industry began in 1979 as founder and CEO of Westbeach Snowboarding Ltd. In 1998, after selling Westbeach in 1997, he founded lululemon athletica inc. https://shop.lululemon.com/, creating an entirely new category of technical apparel called “athleisure” — now a $400 billion global industry. Through his holding company and family office, Chip focuses his interests on apparel, real estate, private equity, passive investments, and philanthropy. Chip and his wife Shannon’s passion for design led to the creation of the internationally recognized KPU Wilson School of Design in 2018. In 2019, the Wilsons partnered with Anta Sports to buy Amer Sports, which includes brands such as Arc’teryx, Salomon, and Wilson Sporting Goods. Chip currently sits on Amer’s board of directors. The 2021 edition of his business memoir, The Story of lululemon https://chipwilson.com/book/ is available for free at chipwilson.com/book http://chipwilson.com/book. Last but not least, Chip is steadfast in his pursuit to cure facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). He is on the board of Facio Therapies https://www.facio-therapies.com/ and has begun his latest big 2021 project, Cure FSHD. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by Laird Superfood http://lairdsuperfood.com/tim. Founded by big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton and volleyball champion Gabby Reece, Laird Superfood http://lairdsuperfood.com/tim promises to deliver high-impact fuel to help you get through your busiest days. Laird Superfood http://lairdsuperfood.com/tim offers a line of plant-based products designed to optimize your daily rituals from sunrise to sunset. My two favorite products are their Turmeric Superfood Creamer and Unsweetened Superfood Creamer. I put one of them in practically everything. Both can really optimize your daily coffee or tea ritual, and a $10 bag will last you a long time. For a limited time, Laird Superfood http://lairdsuperfood.com/tim is offering you guys 20% off your order when you use code TIM20 at checkout. Check out LairdSuperfood.com/Tim http://lairdsuperfood.com/tim to see my favorite products and learn more. * This podcast is also brought to you by Four Sigmatic http://foursigmatic.com/tim and their delicious mushroom coffee, featuring lion’s mane and chaga http://foursigmatic.com/tim. It tastes like coffee, but it has less than half the caffeine of what you would find in a regular cup of coffee. I do not get any jitters, acid reflux, or any type of stomach burn. It’s organic and keto friendly, plus every single batch is third-party lab tested. You can try it right now by going to FourSigmatic.com/Tim http://foursigmatic.com/tim and using the code TIM. You will receive up to 39% off on the lion’s mane coffee bundle http://foursigmatic.com/tim. Simply visit FourSigmatic.com/Tim http://foursigmatic.com/tim. If you are in the experimental mindset, I do not think you’ll be disappointed. * This episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim! Helix was selected as the #1 best overall mattress of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix http://helixsleep.com/tim, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete http://helixsleep.com/tim—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, to my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim http://helixsleep.com/tim. * If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Top of the day to you. My guest today is Chip Wilson. You can find him on Twitter @ChipYVR. We'll explain what that means. And online at ChipWilson.com. He is a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist. There are a couple of names you may recognize in this bio. His career in the apparel industry began in 1979. He's founder and CEO of West Beach Snowboarding Limited. In 1998, after selling West Beach in 1997, he founded Lululemon Athletica, Inc., creating an entirely new category of technical apparel called athleisure, which is now a $400 billion or so global industry. Through his holding company and family office,

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  Chip focuses his interests on apparel, real estate, private equity, passive investments, and philanthropy. Chip and his wife Shannon's passion for design led to the creation of the internationally recognized KPU Wilson School of Design in 2018. In 2019, the Wilsons partnered with Antisports to buy Amersports, which includes brands such as Arc'teryx, Solomon, and Wilson Sporting Goods. Chip currently sits on Amers' Board of Directors. The 2021 edition of his business memoir, The Story of Lululemon, is available for free at ChipWilson.com/book. So be sure to check that out. ChipWilson.com/book. Last but not least, Chip is steadfast in his pursuit

• 1:25Tim Ferriss?

  to cure facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, known as FSHD. He is on the Board of Faciotherapies, that's F-A-C-I-O, and has begun his latest big 2021 project, Cure FSHD. As I mentioned, you can find him online, ChipWilson.com, Twitter @ChipYVR, Facebook, ChipYVR, Instagram, ChipWilsonOfficial. And we cover a lot of ground in this one. A lot of different angles, a lot of different facets, and a lot of really good stories. Please enjoy this conversation with Chip Wilson.

• 2:05Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic, which is part of my morning routine, also part of my afternoon routine. Routine saves me. So there are a number of ways that I use Four Sigmatic. In the mornings, I regularly start with their mushroom coffee instead of regular coffee, and it doesn't taste like mushroom. Let me explain this. First of all, zero sugar, zero calories, half the caffeine of regular coffee. It's easy on my stomach, tastes amazing, and all you have to do is add hot water. I use travel packets. I've been to probably a dozen countries with various products from Four Sigmatic, and their mushroom coffee is top of the list. That's number one. I travel with it. I recommend

• 2:49Tim Ferriss?

  it. I give it to my employees. I give it to house guests. So if you're one of the 60% of Americans or more who drink coffee daily, consider switching it up. This stuff is amazing. That's part one. That is the cognitive enhancement side, easy on the system side, energizing side. The next is actually their Chaga Tea, which tastes delicious. It is decaf, completely decaf. And some may recognize Chaga. It is nicknamed the king of the mushrooms. It is excellent for immune system support. So needless to say, I am focused on that right now myself, and so I will often have that in the afternoons. They make all sorts of different mushroom

• 3:32Tim Ferriss?

  blends. If you are doing exercises, I am on a daily basis to keep myself sane. Cordyceps, excellent for endurance. They have a whole slew of options that you can check out. Every single batch is third-party lab-tested for heavy metals, allergens, all the bad stuff, to make sure that what gets into your hands is what you want to put in your mouth. And they always offer a 100% money-back guarantee. So you can try it risk-free. Why not? I've worked out an exclusive offer with Four Sigmatic on their bestselling Lion's Mane coffee. I literally have a mug full of it in front of me right now. And this is just for you, my dear podcast listeners. Receive up to 39% off. I don't know how we arrived at 39%, but 39% off, it's a lot. Their best- Selling Lion's Mane Coffee Bundles.

• 4:15Tim Ferriss?

  To claim this deal, you must go to foursigmatic.com/tim. This offer is only for you and is not available on their regular website. Go to foursigmatic, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/tim to get yourself some awesome and delicious mushroom coffee. Full discount is applied at checkout.

• 4:39Tim Ferriss?

  This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is super important to me. In the last few years, I've come to conclude it is the end all be all, that all good things, good mood, good performance, good everything, seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize it. I've tried pills and potions, all sorts of different mattresses, you name it. And for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one in the guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. It's something that they comment on. Helix Sleep has a quiz, takes about two minutes to complete, that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. With Helix, there's a specific mattress for each and every body.

• 5:25Tim Ferriss?

  That is your body, also your taste. So let's say you sleep on your side in like a super soft bed. No problem. Or if you're a back sleeper who likes a mattress that's as firm as a rock, they've got a mattress for you too. Helix was selected as the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ Magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. Just go to helixsleep.com/tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty and you get to try it out for 100 nights, risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it. And now, my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to $200 off of all mattress orders and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim.

• 6:08Tim Ferriss?

  These are not cheap pillows either, so getting two for free is an upgraded deal. So that's up to $200 off and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. That's helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim for up to $200 off. So, check it out one more time. Helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim.

• 6:35Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 6:42Tim Ferriss?

  Now we're seeing an appropriate time.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 6:58Tim Ferriss?

  Chip, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Well, thanks, Tim. I hope my smile is coming through.

• 7:04Tim Ferriss?

  It is. It is. And I'm excited to have this conversation for so many reasons. Number one, you mentioned before we started recording, you had a theory about being 43, which is my exact age. So we may start there. But also because as you said in your words, you said, I'm an open book. And I wanted to share a little backstory. So when we are looking at different podcast guests, possible guests, we have a whole process for looking at different types of interviews, audio, video, doing a whole vetting process, asking all these questions. And I got two responses back from two different people on my team. And one was, oh, my God, I don't know. He says exactly what's on his mind. Look at all of these things. Might be a red flag.

• 7:49Tim Ferriss?

  And then the other person basically came back saying, he says all these things. Absolute green light. And I was like, okay.

• 7:56Tim Ferriss?

  That's perfect. And as I also mentioned before we started, I can prepare until the cows come home, but I need somebody who's willing to play ball. So I've been looking forward to this. Certainly know at least one of the brands that you're certainly that you're very well acquainted with, Lululemon. I wanted to start with a couple of questions. One will seem kind of odd, but I recognize in your social media handles, Chip YVR, Chip YVR on Twitter, Facebook, and so on. For people who don't know YVR, I happen to, but what is YVR?

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Well, that's the airport code for Vancouver. YVR.

• 8:42Tim Ferriss?

  And how long has Vancouver been your home stomping grounds?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I moved from California when I was five to Calgary and then moved out of there when I was 16 to go to university in Edmonton and then left there to work in Alaska for two years on the oil pipeline, came back to Calgary, got a job, moved to Toronto for a year, and then I moved to Vancouver and when the World Expo was here in 1986.

• 9:08Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for adding a few. Signposts for me that we're going to touch on because I'm not going to leave Alaska alone. But before we get to Alaska, I certainly want to explore that chapter. Could you speak to a bit of your upbringing? I'd love to hear perhaps of your primary influences. I know you've mentioned your father before, at least in some interviews, which I'd be curious to hear about. But what did your upbringing look like?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  I'd say it was near perfect. Yes, my parents got divorced, but they both remarried people that were perfect for them. I was raised in the suburbs of Calgary. My dad was a phys ed teacher and my mom was a home sewer. And, you know, she loved the house and, you know, anything to do with decorating with that. But the sewing machine was her love. I think I was eight years old and my dad was running the Kiwanis camp for underprivileged kids outside of Calgary. And this woman saw me swim and said, you know, you should get this kid into competitive swimming. And so their speedo costs $7 and there was no such thing as goggles at the time. So it fit into our budget perfectly and I started swimming.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  You know, I think I had the perfect, I don't even have near the perfect body as some of the people you've interviewed before on this program.

• 10:26Tim Ferriss?

  Me neither.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  But good enough. And, and I believe it added incredible structure to my life around getting up in the morning, early swim practice. I'd train with my dad, who I went to his school when I was in grade seven or something like that. And then training again at night, weights, the whole works. And I had Olympic coaches and I think I, more than anything, I learned about hard work equals results. And I think I learned that goal setting really works. So when I think about other influences of my life, I think just that middle class, not having anything, being creative, learning how to go door to door and selling to raise money for the swim trips I had to go on. You know, just good prairie people.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  I can't say enough of that, especially as I built, you know, a global business, just hiring people from the prairies right through the US up to Canada's beautiful people.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Anyway, I think I can leave it there.

• 11:26Tim Ferriss?

  Let's hop to Alaska. How did you end up in Alaska? What chain of events or decisions led you to Alaska?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Isn't it fascinating? Kind of go back a bit and just say that at dinner parties, I say, I started off and I say, you make 10 great decisions in your life. And then I asked people for their top three. And so there I was in the Edmonton Airport, small little thing. And a woman comes up to me and says, oh, you know, my son. And I went, oh, yes, I know your son, Mrs. McCarthy. And we'd start talking and she says, well, my husband is going up. He's running one of the five sections of the Alaska oil pipeline, which at the time was the largest free enterprise project in the world and massive. So from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay. And I said, too bad you're not American. You can come up and work with us. And I went, well, it just so happens I'm American.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  So she says, great. So, you know, so one thing leads to another. And I know if I get up there, I can get a job. It was just a couple of years after the Vietnam War. And I think I didn't, you know, I was like 17 years old or something like that. And, and so I went up there and I went, I got to customs and I went, I said, what are you doing here? He said, I'm just tourist and I'm coming in as a Canadian. And he looked through my bags. It was all construction clothing, et cetera. He says, well, you're coming in here to take an American's job. I can't let you in. And I said, oh, God, he says, okay, I'm coming in as an American then. He says, okay, step across. I stepped across. He says, report to your draft board first thing tomorrow morning. You know, it was a great fear because you'd heard so much about the Vietnam War.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  And I still didn't really understand, you know, what would the repercussions? And would war start again? Would I be in that? But that was my entry into Alaska.

• 13:10Tim Ferriss?

  And what were you doing as your job?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  I was, I would say, the highest paid 18 year old laborer in the whole world. It was a cost plus job. I was working, getting paid 18 hours a day, probably working 10, travel time, overtime, the whole works. And I think I made more in my first three days because it was a US holiday than I made in my whole summer working in Calgary, working in the parks. So I did everything from help build a largest pipeline suspension bridge in the world to putting holes in the ground in order to put in vertical structural members to build a bridge and then put the pipe across. And then I worked on, we sent this go-kart into the pipe with a couple of welders in it.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  My job was to put a fan on the end and make sure it didn't run out of gas. So, and that would have been like four or five hours with nothing to do. And I think maybe that's leading to the biggest change in my life and in something that I know you love. And my mother had sent me an article from a guy, Art Bushwald. Is that the right pronunciation? It was a long time ago, maybe too old for you.

• 14:17Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, good question. I don't know who that is.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  New York Times. Anyway, it was, you have to train your brain the same way you train your body. And then I was an athlete, I understood how to train my body and the results of that. But it never occurred to me of training my brain that way. I decided to figure out what the top 100 books of all time was, and I was going to read them. And, and so there I was, probably 18 years old, and I just probably one of the best read 18 year olds in the world.

• 14:41Tim Ferriss?

  All right, we're going to absolutely come back to books. But before I get lost in my own train of thought, or the train that careens off the tracks, the theory about 43, selfishly, I must ask this, before we move on, I am going to come back after that to the 10 great decisions and some of your other great decisions. But what is your theory about 43?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Well, what I noticed after watching thousands and thousands of people is that people get glasses at 43. Have you ever noticed that?

• 15:13Tim Ferriss?

  They get glasses, physical glasses.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Physical glasses. And, and I was going, you know, and I think there was, I also noticed there's an incredible correlation of people getting divorced at 43. And I started to look at what was going on and I thought, I think you get glasses. And I think for the first time in your life, it occurs to people that they're going to die. And I think they start thinking about what happens on my deathbed. And a lot of things that I think matter don't matter. And a lot of things I'm doing, if I do this for the rest of my life, I'm going to die a miserable death. And I think people really start looking at the person they're married to, the children they have, the city they live in, the job they have. And of course, this is what occurs in men's midlife crisis.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  But I think the same thing happens to women. Men probably go out and buy that red convertible, or they did at one point. I think they're probably found something else now. But, but you get, you get the idea. It's a come to Jesus moment about what life really is.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think the kids, what happens at forty three, I think the children are thirteen years old, because I'd say most people get married at thirty, and suddenly the children don't really want to be around the parents anymore and don't need the parents. And the parents don't really know what to do with themselves, especially if the couple is living vicariously through their children. Now, you're forty three and you might be having children right now, and my assistant just had, who's forty two, just had a child. Like, things are changing drastically about how long people are waiting to have children. So that age may change.

• 16:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm happy to say that I have a zero percent risk of getting divorced this year because I'm not married. So I'm thrilled, I'm thrilled that I've, at least for the time being, dodged that one. But I do think there, I mean, certainly for me, this year has been an eye opener with respect to visiting, thinking about mortality, because I've looked at the average lifespan through my lineage on my maternal and paternal lines, and the men tend to croak around eighty five. Doesn't really matter what they do, they tend to croak around eighty five. And so that would make me just past the halfway mark, which is very different from being before the halfway mark in terms of orientation.

• 17:37Tim Ferriss?

  So certainly mortality is on the mind.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  What's your goal? What's your goal to live? How long would you like to live?

• 17:44Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I don't have a number in mind. I have kind of techno-optimist crypto-anarchist life extension friends who are planning on one fifty, one seventy five. These types of dreams are not new. One could argue that there are technologies, ways to deconstruct the aging process, treat it as a disease, incorporate and infuse technology, kind of brain-computer interfaces, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if I can survive, ideally thrive to the point with, with a high degree of cognitive and physical functioning to

• 18:24Tim Ferriss?

  the point where I can still play sports with my kids when they have left the home, which is at this age already, you know, asking me to really keep up a good regimen. I feel like I'll be quite happy with that. So I don't have an exact number, but having that vision in my mind, like whether we live, not to make this a soliloquy from me on aging, what do I know, but I lost my hair early, which I guess was a blessing in disguise since I shaved my head with wrestling. But so I've had to face some of these fears already. I spent a good amount of time thinking about organisms such as trees or shifts that take very long periods of time.

• 19:09Tim Ferriss?

  So whether I live 85, 75, 95, 125, it's all kind of the blink of a firefly relative to so many other things. So I don't have, I don't have an exact number. Do you?

• 19:21Speaker 02

  First off, I, I wonder if by just setting a longer goal, first off, I wanted to live till 80 and then I went, oh, well, that's maybe self defeating. Maybe if I think I'm going to live to 80 and all my goals are fulfilled, maybe I'll live to 80 and then die. But if I set my goal at 120, well, my physiology and my brain, just to end my way and make decisions and move around the world have me live to that age. And I am at 150 also. And I think everything's pointing through Peter Diamandis at the Singularity University and that type of thing. If we can live 20 years longer, we can almost live forever. So technology's changing fast.

• 20:04Tim Ferriss?

  It is, it is, I think mostly in terms of performance or health span. I was chatting with a friend of mine named Peter Attia. He's an M D. He's been on the podcast a number of times and he describes something called the centenarian Olympics. So it's like, if you live to 100, what do you want to be able to do at 100, right? And is it sort of a goblet squat, picking up grandkids or great grandkids? If so, where do you need to be now to look at the incremental loss of muscle mass? What can you do to hedge that so that when you are at 100, you were able to do sort of the heptathlon or decathlon of centenarians? So I do spend some time thinking about that. So.

• 20:49Tim Ferriss?

  Forty-three, check. I'm also hopefully not getting glasses this year. We'll see. If I, if I need to, I will. So Alaska sounds like, is that one of your top three of your top 10, or it's, it's one of your top 10 decisions?

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Sure, it's definitely in my top 10. To be able to go, to drop everything, go somewhere where I didn't know anything about, being 17 years old, that's a big decision is more like connected to the word suicide. It's one or the other, where I'd say it's more like a choice. I had many choices. I could have just quit university and gone traveling, go to university, gone and worked in the city, been secured. A lot of what other people did, I think it looked weird to me. I felt like with what people had told me about the money there, but I didn't really believe it, that I could trade my life in for money for a short period of time, and then I could leapfrog my life forward, which in fact it ended up doing,

• 21:45Speaker 02

  and change my context for the world, you know, because it's very easy to kind of get into a rut even when at 17.

• 21:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. What was your, and maybe this isn't the best way to look at it, but chronologically, so let's just say we timestamp Alaska as a great decision. What was your next great choice or decision, or one that comes to mind?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Because I'd done so much goal setting with swimming, I didn't come to it out of reading. I think I just did it on my own. And I set these goals that by 19, I was going to buy a house. By 30, I was going to be in my own business. So maybe it was a choice to set goals at that time, which really then started affecting the rest of my life. And I think to be, you know, sitting in, I was working for an oil company in Calgary at the age of 30, and to actually quit all that security and all that money to start a surf brand in the middle of the prairies in Alberta was a little bit crazy. As I said, my, one of my quotes is like, an entrepreneur is just, is someone who's just too incompetent to work for anyone else.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  And many, many people had told me I wasn't that great a corporate worker and I got to believe them. And in fact, I just had to follow a dream, but choices. Yeah. So those are, those are three. I think buying the house at 19 and going to my own business at 30 were the next couple.

• 23:15Tim Ferriss?

  So starting a surf brand and leaving the security, I want to take a closer look at, because I think many people at some point in their lives have an argument or a rationale along the lines of, I'm just going to make and save money for X number of years and then I will do Y. More often than not, though, I would say that does not happen. That does not play out according to that, let's say, haphazard commitment. But in your case, you wanted to have your own business by 30. You made that a goal. Could you walk us through how you made that decision? What, did you have a day in the calendar? You knew a year

• 23:57Tim Ferriss?

  in advance when you were going to quit? I mean, how did that actually come to manifest?

• 24:03Speaker 02

  When I graduated out of university when I was 25, so I was on what I'd call the eight-year bachelor program. But I mean, part and parcel of that, I have to go back and just say my dad remarried a stewardess with Air Canada and I got five free trips anywhere in the world. And I had in that time, because you know, in today's dollars, $700,000 from working the last oil pipeline at the age of 19. I, I mean, my life is, it was on steroids and I was the luckiest guy in the world.

• 24:36Tim Ferriss?

  That's a huge sum of money. That's a huge sum of money.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable. And of course, I blew a lot of it. I just, I used a lot of it to educate myself for the future.

• 24:45Tim Ferriss?

  What, what do you mean by that?

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Well, I forced mistakes. I forced mistakes. I, well, when I traveled a lot with the money, I would take courses in university that I thought were bizarre. You know, I'd take public speaking and agriculture, you know, novels of the American mid 50s type of thing. And I had time, so I had time to learn. But I think when I got into the business of making apparel, which was really when I was 25, as I, as at the same time, I had this corporate job, my travel to Brazil or Bermuda to find out about long shorts, because long shorts had never Been seen before, but in Bermuda, all the men wore long shorts to going to San Clemente,

• 25:29Speaker 02

  California to the Hoffmann's fabrics there and learning about how much fabric I had to buy in order to get my own pattern and where to import it from and how to do financing for it. I mean, these are all things that I forced upon myself and it was all very expensive, but I had the money to do it with.

• 25:48Tim Ferriss?

  How did you go from pipeline to apparel? Or when did that interest slash direction develop?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  It was probably always there. I mean, my dad is a phys ed teacher and my mom is a sewer and myself as an athlete, especially being in a speedo. When I started moving out of competitive swimming and I started to do triathlons when they first started in maybe 1980 or something like that, the clothing was terribly made. So my, actually, my first, my first venture into apparel was making triathlon clothing. And of course, there was a global market of about 200 people for it. So that was a, I learned that I needed economy of scale production to make any money. And that was one of my learnings there. What happened is I brought that triathlon clothing and at the same time, I, you know, as I said,

• 26:41Speaker 02

  I was originally from California and my parents would ship me back every summertime and probably from 1960 on. So I got to see how apparel in California changed year by year. I mean, in snapshots. I think if you're living in the forest, you can't see the trees growing. If you're outside and you come there, you can, once a year, you can see it. And definitely there's this thing called surfing, which was, and surf clothing, which was really coming from Australia into California at the time. I kind of put that together with having traveled to, you know, Brazil and like I said, Bermuda to learn about long shorts and then putting the technology together about what I wanted to wear as an athlete and then what I wanted to wear when I wasn't being an athlete. So was the, the advent in the, what was I'd

• 27:26Speaker 02

  say 1963 or four of the hoodie, you know, on the beach, you know, which I think Silicon Valley has adopted as their.

• 27:34Tim Ferriss?

  De facto uniform.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So what really happened is I came back in when I was 25, I came back from California with a pair of these shorts for my girlfriend. They were kind of wrap shorts, made like diapers, but made out of flowered fabric. She loved them. All her friends loved them because I had context from my mother about how to make a pattern and how to sew. I just put those two things together and said, well, if you like them so much and your friends like them, let's make a whole bunch. So, and then we kind of went through the process of pattern making, getting sewers, creating an industry out of that. And so that's how it got to be when I was 30 years old, I could afford to quit my corporate job and go into that full time.

• 28:15Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned a few goals. You mentioned buying the house. You mentioned starting your own business. Did you have goals going out five, 10, 15, 20 years beyond that? In other words, by the time you started that business, did you have a longer list of goals ahead of you that you'd already written out?

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Only, only one more, and that was to be retired by 40. And when I mean retired, that means getting up in the morning and doing exactly what I wanted to do. And it took me until 42 to get there, so I failed. But, you know, it got me there. Yeah.

• 28:54Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned the goal setting with respect to athletics. I know that there are a number of authors and books that we may end up talking about during your period of voracious consumption in Alaska and then beyond. I know a couple of names, Jim Collins, Brian Tracy, and then Ayn Rand, Alice Shrugged, and others. Did any particular books influence you when it came to how you set goals?

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Definitely, Inside of the Psychology of Achievement by Brian Tracy has about maybe an hour, hour and a half on goal setting. So I learned the linguistic structure of goal setting. I think they were smart goals, but fundamentally, I, I didn't like them. I did like them. What I didn't like was I learned that I was setting my goals from my past. So in other words, I had lived a life with experiences. And maybe the easiest one for me to say is just, you know, weight, you know, I was probably 242 pounds. So, you know, just thinking about being 242 pounds, I went, well, I want to be

• 30:04Speaker 02

  220 or something. So I would set a goal a year in the future that I want to, you know, I will be 220 pounds by December 31st, 2015, something like that. But what I really got from the landmark course, which has been really fun and mail to me, is that I could see how constraining my life was creating my future from the past as opposed to creating my present from the future. It's really easy. If I woke up in the hospital with amnesia, having been in a car accident, and I got to set goals, well, I wouldn't be able to set them from my experiences in the past. So basically what I'm saying, I'd be unconstrained.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  And so I started to think about that weight one and going, well, if I was to wake up in the hospital with amnesia, I'd probably do a little bit of research and then find out that the optimum weight is 208. So I could start to see how constraining goals were from this past base part. I think putting those two ideas together changed goal setting for me. In SMART goals, the A is for achievable. I got to find out very young age how failure was, you know, because I pushed for failure a lot, that failure was actually a great thing to learn and to accept it as a kind of an exciting thing, like a learning experience. So I like to set my goals, so I'll fail 50% of the time. And I don't go out of my way to fail.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  But if I fail, now I get to reset my life, reset that goal, and go after it again, if it's exciting to me.

• 31:41Tim Ferriss?

  Could you give us any examples of goals that you are proudest of achieving, goals that you're proudest of not achieving? I don't know if that's the best way to word it, but there's part of me, and this is just thinking out loud, I was going to say speaking out loud, which is usually the case, is if the achievable needs to be modified so that even if you're failing half of the time, you're not failing completely. In other words, like if you set your goals really aggressively and you succeed partially, you're probably still. Quite ahead on the scoreboards when you kind of look at how things settle. Could you walk us through any examples of of goals you've set that you've achieved and not achieved?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  I'd like to take it back into my dad, as you asked about earlier, because I don't want to let this story go to waste. And it's really a good one on goal setting. So I was 10 years old. I was a mediocre swimmer. I'm at the end of the pool about to do the 100 meter backstroke. My dad comes up to me and said, instead of like going 80% and trying to save to the end and trying to look good at the end by kind of sprinting or having anything left at the end, why don't you just try once to go full out, like full out? And you know, if on a 25 meter pool, if you drown on the third length, I'll come and get you type of thing. And so I can sense in my mind like there was, okay, so there's a goal.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Now, the goal is the Canadian record. I'm eight seconds off the Canadian record. There's no way. But in fact, by going full out and giving 100%, that's exactly what happened. I broke the Canadian record. So my context then for goals and things that I do, if I don't give 100%, I'm afraid I'm going to fail. Which is the very opposite than how most people are, how you phrase it about always saving a little bit. Again, even at that young age came from, I never wanted to be on my deathbed going, if I didn't give it all when I was 10 years old in that race, would I be spending 90 years thinking about, oh, I wish, I never want to be in that position.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  So consequently, I've failed a lot because I do exactly that. But the wins that I get are far exceed those those failures so that I end up, it appears as though I've ended up living the life that I wanted to live.

• 34:09Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any goals that you can share that you haven't reached that nonetheless you are glad you set as goals?

• 34:17Speaker 02

  When I was at Lou Lemon, my goal would have been to Train and develop 100,000 people through this transformational development program that I'd set up, you know, including the landmark psychology of achievement, good to great, seven habits of highly effective people. It was a program that I had set up that way, which I probably got to 20,000 and then I kind of lost control of the company. I felt like I could have really changed the way corporate America changed how to make profit, how to, how to develop people. I think just by coincidence, I just happened

• 34:59Speaker 02

  to end up in a business with women at exactly the right time when, when they were just so highly educated and nobody else was really training and developing them. So I, I think I got attached to developing women and board of directors and everything like that. But I think I was more just in the right place at the right time.

• 35:20Tim Ferriss?

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• 36:02Tim Ferriss?

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• 36:46Tim Ferriss?

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• 37:02Tim Ferriss?

  I was going to jump next to this transformational curriculum, which we will get to, but I want to add a little connective tissue. So you have West Beach. That's 1979, getting it right. Why didn't you continue with that indefinitely? I guess I'm wondering if you could just share with me and with listeners, what transpired once that found its groove and what led you to Lululemon?

• 37:33Speaker 02

  This probably isn't a secret to anybody that's that's watched businesses rise and fall. But the surf business started off with about three or four companies. And then very quickly went to 500 companies when everyone discovered I can make clothing in the whole world and want surf clothing. So let's say that's between 1978 and 1985. And so it gets to 500 companies and suddenly there's too much supply for too few buyers. And then there's the mergers and acquisitions phase, the bankruptcy phase. And then I'd say three or four of the strongest companies end up buying all the rest of the brands or whatever brands are left. And then that's, that's how it ends up being.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Same in the US auto industry, and then it went global and now it's happening on a global stage. So I saw that happening in surf and just so happened that skateboard starting. And I decided to switch the company from surf into skateboard. And of course, I had the perfect shorts for them because I had these long shorts. So it was the first time long shorts that came out. The kids loved them for their knees because they kept falling on their knees and there was no knee pads at the time. So I guess that context of saying, oh, I saw what happened that surf industry. I bet you the same thing's going to happen in skateboarding. And sure enough, skateboarding went straight up, you know, from nineteen eighty-three to probably, you know, nineteen eighty-seven, and then started to decline.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  And at the same time, this thing called snowboarding happened. And so I could see now I had kind of like this winning formula. Okay, there's a time to get in and there's a time to get out of an industry. So it just so happened I'd moved from Calgary to Vancouver. And because of Whistler, it's got a glacier that's opened all summer long. And all the best snowboarders from the world would congregate in the summertime in Whistler to practice on the glacier. I saw that occur. And then went, okay, so now I got it in my mind, like every five years, the world of which I'm, let's call it I'm an expert in now, changes. And so the idea is I got to get in on a sport at its beginning

• 39:45Speaker 02

  and then understand a sport that is not just going to be technical, but is also people want to wear on the street to kind of show that they're part of that sport. And so I failed in mountain biking and beach volleyball. That didn't work. So there's some failures for it for you. But I had an opportunity to sell West Beach, the snowboard company, to Morrow Snowboards out of Salem, Oregon in ninety-seven, when the Japanese yen was at its very highest because Japan was buying thirty percent of all snowboard gear around the world. And the trend was kind of moving over. So it was the right time to sell. And I sold and I had nothing to go to. And then it was just, I did something which I'd

• 40:28Speaker 02

  seen in a lot of my life is I saw three things happen in one week. And I went, this is a trend. I got to get on it. And it was yoga. So I had a bad back from skateboarding and snowboarding. I'd fallen so many times. And, and so I picked it up and, uh, well, no, I, first off, I saw a, one of those rip away tabs on a telephone post for yoga. And then I read an article in the paper that said, you know, something about yoga. And then I was in a coffee shop and I heard two women talk about yoga all in one week. And I went, man, this is, I, I gotta like, look at this. And so that's, that's how that ended up happening. Where I did fail was actually moving into meditation for Lululemon. You know, I tried to move it there, but I mean, that's

• 41:12Speaker 02

  another story, or maybe we can talk about it later.

• 41:15Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I'll take a note of meditation. Lululemon, there's all sorts of lore around this name. What are some of the other options, if you remember, that you considered for the company? And how did you end up on Lululemon?

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Um, I wish I could remember more of the names now, but the only one I can remember is one of them was athletically hip. And it's because I was a tragically hip music fan, but also because in the book Catch Twenty Two, you know, there's a part in there where the write letters home and then the censor would write on the bottom tragically yours. And so it's kind of like this combination of things. Yeah. So, well, it's a great story, as I think all good brands have. And so when I had the skateboarding business, I bought another company called Homeless Skateboards. You know, I started selling it to the Japanese and to the Europeans and it was all going well, but skateboarding, I said, like, is going down

• 42:14Speaker 02

  and snowboarding was going up. So I made that tough business decision to go, I'm stopping on skateboarding. I'm going to put all my efforts into snowboarding. So. You know, I had to know the Japanese at the time, like, they really put a lot of money and effort into the brand of homeless. They really liked the style. And I was cutting this brand off at the throat, so to speak. One of the things I tried to do, I tried to trademark it, but H O M is French for male, and there were too many names like that. So that wasn't possible. So I stopped producing the brand. I didn't own the name. And later that year, I'm showing the Japanese our snowboard brand. And afterwards, they go, oh, Mr. Chip San, we want to, where's homeless? And I said, I told you guys, I'm not doing it, you know, and I gave them the reasons.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, the Japanese yen was at its very highest. I mean, they were buying Pebble Beach, the Empire State Building, they were buying up America, a lot like the Chinese are doing now. And so they called me up and they went, Mr. Chip San, we want to buy name homeless from you. So I went, okay, well, I'm selling pure air here because I don't own it. I'm not making it. I gave them a price I thought was absolutely ridiculous. And they went, mm, okay. And I went, oh, that's the easiest money I ever made in my life. And I went, why did they like that name so much? And I started to surmise that the young people who wanted to buy American

• 43:38Speaker 02

  brand names, they were being fed by the five big trading companies in Japan, the American brand names, you know, that they, that the Japanese trading companies were making, but real authentic American names had an L in it. Because a Japanese company wouldn't come up with a name with an L in it. So I went, oh, okay. So I know what I'm going to do. Next time I have a name, I'm going to come up with a name for a business, I'm going to put three L's in it and see if I can get three times as much.

• 44:08Tim Ferriss?

  How did you come up with the name Lululemon?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Well, it was purely, I think I was just working on alliterations. And it was like, maybe for two or three years, it was this la la la la la la la la la. And I just wrote it down one day amongst these other 20 names, of which I got 100 women to choose from the names and the logos. They ended up picking the name Lululemon. And then they liked the logo from athletically hip, which is just an A with a circle around it.

• 44:36Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing. When you sold that brand, the homeless brand, do you recall the, the year or the rough timing of that?

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Ninety, ninety-four?

• 44:45Tim Ferriss?

  Ninety-four. Yeah, that would have been a few years, a few years after I left Japan. I was there as an exchange student where I was the, at one point, he only wears, Waldo, American student in a school uniform in Japan. And it was fascinating to see the cult devotion developed around certain brands. And there were

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 45:09Tim Ferriss?

  Both foreign brands or brands that were perceived to be foreign, but were actually created on home soil in Japan. I mean, there were these denim brands that had Brad Pitt as a spokesperson. There was Mr. Coffee, which had Tommy Lee Jones still, I think, uses Tommy Lee Jones. And then separately, this incredible excitement around actual US brands or European brands. So something I got to see firsthand. And for people who are curious, I'll just mention that the question of L and R in Japanese is an interesting one linguistically, because Japanese is a syllabary. So they have syllables instead of independent consonants. So you have like kakiku keiko, mamimume mo, and then there's

• 45:54Tim Ferriss?

  dairu deiro. And so it's the sound that they use that is most approximate to an L is actually a combination of R, L, and D. And that's part of the reason they have such a challenge with distinguishing those. So Lululemon, what were your expectations or hopes for Lululemon in the beginning?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Quite honestly, after working for 20 years at West Beach and not paying myself $30,000 a year, and then being able to sell it for $1 million, pay $200,000 in tax and buy a house and buy a car, put my kids in a school, which, you know, they're appropriate for, I was sitting around and I didn't have anything. So it was in the quest of nothing. So I started Lululemon with the goal of being able to ride my beach cruiser to work in back every day, have one store and make it the best in the world. And I was really, really, really tired of being around people who I didn't want to work with. And so to be with people I wanted to work with then, I knew that I had to

• 46:59Speaker 02

  set up a development program in order to develop people to have the opportunity to be people I wanted to be around. So my goal was ride my beach cruiser and work with great people and have the best quality product in the world and then determine whether this new idea I had of vertical retailing, so missing the wholesale business. And of course, the analogy now is people that go direct to e-commerce. So, but at that time, you know, I was on the forefront of that. So I wanted to see these three things work.

• 47:33Tim Ferriss?

  And just to, for my own clarity, when you say vertical, you mean rather than going through distributors and wholesale accounts and all of that, you're creating your own retail outlets to sell directly to consumers?

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Correct. I mean, it's not like other people weren't doing that. I mean, maybe the Gap was doing it, maybe a few others, but I'd started it in 1980 with West Beach. But I was trying to run two different businesses, a wholesale and my own retail stores where I could design, manufacture, and sell right to my own stores. So I was missing like the manufacturer's markup and the wholesale markup. It was seemed like an easy business to me. I didn't realize I'd actually invented something, I guess.

• 48:18Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to, I want to give a nod before we move any further to a listener of this podcast named Christian Butzak, I might be getting that pronunciation wrong, but who suggested a whole number of questions for you and, and they think this is as opportune a time as any to present a few of them. They're actually very well thought through, but very difficult to fact check.

• 48:42Tim Ferriss?

  So you'll have to, you'll have to let me know if any of these are off. I'm just going to use almost like sentence fragments that we can launch off of, and I'm doing this right now for, for a reason. So one of the bullets that he put in this email is Chip pitches a tent in his store and sleeps in it to save on theft insurance.

• 49:01Tim Ferriss?

  For how many years did he sleep in his own store? Can you elaborate? Is this a true story?

• 49:07Speaker 02

  It is a true story. I really had run out of money almost three times, starting Lululemon. And we had a store, there was starting to be a lot of break-ins in the area. I couldn't afford the insurance on break-in insurance. And I determined that break-ins only happened on Friday and Saturday night. And so I took my two sons and that's where we spent Friday and Saturday night in a tent in the store.

• 49:35Tim Ferriss?

  Did anyone ever try to break in? Did you ever thwart any invaders?

• 49:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 49:42Tim Ferriss?

  How long did you, uh, did you do that? Do you, over what period of time?

• 49:45Speaker 02

  I'd say about six months.

• 49:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, all right. So I wanted to introduce that because then it offers a contrast with where I want to go next, which is this number you mentioned, like around 20,000, like 20 to 30,000 people who've gone through this transformational curriculum, which was set up at Lululemon. And I think those numbers, if not all of those people, a very high percentage would have gone through the landmark training, which is

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 50:17Tim Ferriss?

  which is involved and not, not inexpensive. I found in an interview where the following came up, and I'd love to hear you elaborate on this because I'm sure a lot of thought went into it. Firstly, we had five books or courses, which everyone took in the first two to three weeks they were with the company. Out of this, we created a linguistic abstraction of 30 terms and definitions, which became the culture of our company. That allowed us to expand exponentially because suddenly everyone was speaking the same language. So this is all super interesting to me. And I'd love to start with the five books or courses. I think you mentioned a number of them earlier, but if you wouldn't mind, to the best of your memory, what were some of the required books and required trainings, so to speak, that people would go through?

• 51:01Speaker 02

  So the three day landmark course, which in summary really taught me about integrity, responsibility and choice, the Brian Tracy psychology of achievement, which really did a study of successful people and what successful people do and don't do. Everything from raising children to religion to communication to philanthropy to goal setting, the whole gambit. The third would have been, and of course, you know, we both love this book, Good to Great. And just the context that good is the enemy of great is just like, it's just an amazing context for me. The next one would have been The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  All these things are so relevant today. I mean, maybe they're a little bit outdated. Anyway, so is Carnegie, I guess. And then the fourth one would have been The Goal by Goldblatt. And it's really a fiction book, very fun to read about the constraint theory of production. So, you know, he has children and he's having a hard time getting the factory, but he gets the factory. It's, I can't believe that someone's taken something so boring and made it so interesting.

• 52:13Tim Ferriss?

  What was the, I'm going to admit, I don't know what that constraint refers to. I don't know what that is. Why was this important for people to read?

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Coming from Japan, I think a lot of this came from Japan because things are in there that big public companies can't do. If you have a factory that's at 80% capacity and is making a profit and is fulfilling on what you want it to do, then if you can fulfill on the rest of the 20% in the factory, your profit margin on that is almost exponential. So, for instance, Lou Lemon went to move into Australia. So in order to win Australia, we could actually move our production up from the 80% to the 100% and then take a lower margin Australia to win the marketplace because it really

• 53:03Speaker 02

  didn't cost us anything more to put on a few zeros on the production line. That's one of like 20 ideas that would be in the book.

• 53:12Tim Ferriss?

  Is it a book you would recommend to people who operate outside of manufacturing? Or is it really a kind of specialist's?

• 53:20Speaker 02

  No, I'd say anybody that's producing anything that's not digital, because digital works on a whole different level.

• 53:28Tim Ferriss?

  Got it to the goal. And are there any others you'd like to mention before I ask some follow ups on on Landmark?

• 53:34Speaker 02

  I love Mindset by Carol Duke. I think you had her, you may have, you may have talked to her at one time.

• 53:40Tim Ferriss?

  I, we've had, I think we've had some communication, but that is certainly a book that comes up as recommended quite a lot on the podcast.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  I really like Black Box Thinking. The amazing story there of the planes that were coming back and landing in World War II and they'd have a bunch of holes in the bottom and they'd looked at the patterns and go, yeah, we'll cover up where all the bullet holes are where really those are the ones that were making it back. It's where the bullet holes weren't is where you need to put their extra protection in. And it's really a way of looking at businesses, which I don't think, especially boards of directors and people who aren't really in the business and not really understand the business are looking for the holes in the planes that are landing where probably the entrepreneur founder, someone who's looking in the forecast can actually see what's occurring that doesn't look normal.

• 54:35Tim Ferriss?

  Were these books, these recommendations, Landmark, were they required or just available and recommended?

• 54:42Speaker 02

  No, the five books, the five, the Landmark and the four courses were required. In other words, we set up our training and development program to talk about these almost, well, quarterly, but because we had goal setting set into place and the goal setting, like I said, creating your goals from the future and failing 50% of the time, we would have those done monthly. And really, we would bring a lot of the learnings from the other books into the practice of goal setting.

• 55:13Tim Ferriss?

  How did you have those conversations? Was it broken down by location? Was it virtual? How were those conversations taking place?

• 55:23Speaker 02

  What we learned from the Brian Tracy is to set your the goals and then to post them. So if you went into a Lululemon store, every store had maybe fifteen to forty goals set up in the back room. And so everyone could look at everyone else's goals. And the idea is to put it out there in the public. In other words, the landmark course really got rid of people's fears about what people think of them, or what they call in the linguistic abstraction is looking good. So mostly people go around in the world looking good, trying to pretend there's something that they're not. So by putting up the goals then, and recognizing

• 56:05Speaker 02

  that we're all human beings, and we all have different things that we want to do, and there's no right or wrong in our goals. And also, a real underlying part of it was that we actually encouraged people to quit Lululemon. Like, we wanted them to have goals that were superior, or that moved on to their somewhere in their future, that we were training and developing these people, and they were going to go on and do what they really wanted to do in life. And my theory was if we trained people to be great, and they left Lululemon and went and did something else, they would talk so well about Lululemon in the future, that that was the best branding and marketing we could possibly do.

• 56:49Tim Ferriss?

  Were those goals that were posted publicly revisited in some systematic way, or reviewed in such a way that people felt somewhat accountable?

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Yes. So they were reviewed, I think, quarterly. And we encourage people to not get stuck in any goals. You know, if something worked last quarter, but doesn't work anymore, dump it and get something that you're excited about. I think it's important to say that inside of this, we had eighteen goals. So first off, we started from something that would be at that time was a vision, your ten year vision, and then you had your values, maybe three values. Which I can, I've changed a lot of my thinking around this. And then we have goals for one year, five year and 10 years. So from your vision, then it's easy to set 10 year goals.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  From your 10 year goals, once those are done, it becomes easier to set five year goals. And then it becomes quite easy to set one or two year goals. And everything has to be with conditions of satisfaction with a buy win date. So as you know, from Brian Tracy, it's fascinating how people will get around setting goals and being specific about it because they don't want to be responsible for actually fulfilling on them. So I found 80% of the time, people would not put a buy win date when they were going to do it. Or they would put the condition of satisfaction so vague that nobody knew whether it actually got done or not. Because people don't want to fail and people want to look good in front of other people.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  But once you kind of get that, the whole world is walking around trying to look good. I found it really released our people from looking good and getting rid of all the shoulds and wishes and tries in life and actually become an authentic human being that has issues just like anybody else, then I think it just freed our people up to be open and undefended about their goals.

• 58:49Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think if, and I know you've already described a few, but what are the, what are the strongest aspects or the greatest strengths of Landmark? And what are any of the weaknesses, if any, come to mind?

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Well, the weakness is that people come out of it like they've seen Jesus. So you know, this is where the cult part comes in it. But I first took it when I was 35 and I really, really didn't get the life that I was living. And basically I was always living in the angst of something I'd done wrong in the past or living in the future that wasn't here yet. And I was trying to figure out what to do to survive. I had lived my first thirty-five years of my life never really being in the present. And as my dad would said when I was seventeen years old, as I rolled my eyes, that the meaning of life is living in the moment.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  And of course, he, you know, is a burnt-out hippie and I, you know, why should I listen to him type of thing? Anyway, he ended up being right. So this ability to freely choose as though I have amnesia to be in the present. And then it was very clear to me because after years of athletics of swimming and triathlons and squash, recognizing that that three hours after an aerobic workout, my mind was so clear and I surmised it was for the same reason is that endorphin rush kind of eliminated my past and I didn't care anything in the past. If you don't have a past, then you don't have a future. Now, what does that mean?

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Imagine it's impossible to think about anything in the future without relating it to some experience in the past. So if I don't have a past, then I don't have a future. And I think this is the same reason that people get drunk or stoned to a great extent because it's the act of eliminating the past. So there's no past, there's no future, all there is is the present. You know, I think it's the forty-five seconds after sex. I think it's, you know, you can see a three-year-old child crawling around the rug. They have no past, they have no future, they're all, they're so creative. And I also see it in older people when they're told they've got three months until they die. They could care less about their past, they have no future, and they're looking at every blade of grass.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  So anyway, that's the come-to-Jesus moment that I really got. And the second part was integrity. And what I really got out of it is that everybody thinks they have integrity. But in fact, because everyone has a different definition of integrity, there is no integrity. So then the act of actually defining integrity was super important. And I took the same line that Landmark does, and I'm going to bastardize it a little bit, but integrity is doing what I say I will do when I say I will do it in the expected way. And if I can't get it done, then I have to clean up my mess and be responsible for that

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  mess, clean it up, and then set new conditions of satisfaction and new buy-win dates. So the whole company of Lou Lemon operated under that integrity principle. And it meant, you know, our meeting started on time. You did what you said you were gonna do. And it's not like if I say that I'm gonna be on a meeting on time and I'm driving to work and I get a telephone call saying my boy has been run over by a car. I'm not gonna make it to that meeting. It doesn't make me wrong. That's not what integrity is. There's many times when people can't be in integrity. But to clean up the mess caused by lack of integrity is where more integrity occurs. So that's the other thing.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  So the third thing then I think is most, most interesting to me is this thing about being responsible. I could sense that I was a complainer in life, you know, I complained, complained, complained, but you know, of course, we all know that after two complaints, nobody would listen to me anymore. It took me a while to get that. But more interesting is that when I was responsible for whatever the situation was, then immediately I have the power to do something about it. You know, when I left Lou Lemon, I could complain about it. Or I could decide to do something about what I saw wasn't working inside the company. So then to be responsible, they go, okay, I'll write the book on how I think Lou Lemon should operate and give context to the history and to the future so that

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  the existing management board of directors can have some template to go on. So that's how I was being responsible.

• 1:03:36Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any companies that come to mind that you think do a good job of talent development or employee development? And alternatively, why don't you think more companies do what you did with the required curriculum?

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  I don't think I would know about other companies because I'm not really in them, except for the ones I'm in now through the new purchase of Amer and these eight brands that are inside of it. I think fundamentally. More companies don't do it because of litigation out of the US. I think in order to take the landmark course, because you know, people have this kind of come to Jesus moment. And they've had to put into the writing of it before you go into the course that, you know, you have no psychological issues and blah, blah, blah. All the literature, all the legal literature that actually if someone was to look at it would scare the hell out of you. There's just no way you would do the course.

• 1:04:33Tim Ferriss?

  Could you give some more examples of the linguistic abstractions, those terms and definitions, which I guess are sort of shorthand for fast communication, if I'm understanding it correctly?

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  As I said, I used to think it was values, but I found that like the word extreme in the eighties, everyone started making fun of the extreme and advertisers started using that. And I think that people now hear values in a company as they start to roll their eyes. And yeah, yeah, everyone's got the same values type of thing. I have been encouraging the companies I'm working with, what are the five books that really define this company? And really light people up. And then out of those, take 30 terms and definitions that are key to those five books and develop a linguistic abstraction, which you can grow a global company on. And everybody knows and understands. So you're right, it's about speed of communication.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Some of them we've already gone over and that would be conditions of satisfaction and a buy win date, the definition of integrity. I have them listed in my bathroom on the wall. So they're sitting there and you know, I've read them 5,000 times.

• 1:05:42Tim Ferriss?

  This is in your personal bathroom?

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, our office bathroom also, in our office bathroom. Yeah, we have the linguistic abstraction and then something I call the code, which is originally at Lululemon, I think it was the best and most incredible marketing thing anyone's ever done. And we put this code that really came from the landmark and all these five books that we've talked about. And things my dad told me, and we put them on the side of the bag, the shopping bag, the Lululemon shopping bag. And it probably existed like that for about maybe until a year after I left, but then they,

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Marketing department or the legal people kind of came into it again and went, you can't say that anymore. Social media is making us in trouble. You know, it'd be something like, instead of suntan lotion, which probably has a lot of chemicals in it, why don't you just get the right amount of sun? So of course, the fear around suntan companies like suing Lululemon, you know, just overtakes the company. And so those are the kinds of things that... So anyway, they did away with it.

• 1:06:48Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I want to come back to those types of conversations, but let me ask a maybe fundamental question about another term that much like integrity is either not defined at all or defined in so many different ways that it might as well not be defined. Brand. I think a lot of people, if they were asked, does Lululemon have a strong brand? They would say yes. But if they were pressed to define what that means, I think a lot of people would struggle. So what is a brand in your mind and what is it not?

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  It's a fascinating conversation, especially in today's social media world about, you know, as things have moved further to the left and anything that is said can be construed one way or the other. I believe that people originally set up a brand in order to target a certain market. And the more specific you are about who your market is, then the better job you can do about giving them the product that they want. And I think if I see any failure in American public companies over infinitum, it's eventually trying to be everything to everybody.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  And of course, this flies in the face of these terms like diversity. I think it's impossible to be great being everything to everybody. So, you know, for instance, clothing lines have always been separated between children's lines, teens' lines, women's lines, and then maybe retired people's lines. Because bodies change, tastes change, colors change. And a company that tries to be everything to everybody... It's just too messy. You end up with so much product and you have no, what are you getting out there as is who you are to those people?

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  My fear is, is for a company like Lou Lem, that's trying to be everything to everybody, is that will they end up going the way of the gap? And be becoming another common company and then, you know, because I think you can become everything to everybody and you're going to make a lot of profits for five years. Because all those people who weren't your customer before now start flooding in. But what eventually happens is the, the key drivers or the key consumers or the mavens and the connectors who really move a brand forward, start, stop buying the brand. But the board of directors and a CEO who's, you know, got three year options is going to go for the short-term profitability.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  So there's almost no stopping it. Unless, unless you have an owner-operator type CEO.

• 1:09:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, uh, I suppose whether we like it or not, humans are driven by incentives, right?

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Oh, God, did they have her.

• 1:09:50Tim Ferriss?

  And it's like, if you want someone who's incentivized to outperform for three months over a few successions because of their option plan versus an owner-operator who's in it for a hundred years, uh, you're just going to get very different behaviors.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  Well, if I could say one more thing about this, really, this just came to me like a couple of weeks ago. But if you have an owner that's out there making decisions for a hundred years and you have a private equity firm inside whose goal is to get in and out in seven years, that's fundamentally a problem inside of the company. Because the P firm wants short-term profits. They want to pump everything up and get out and the owner is trying to like, put the money where it'll be good for 20 years from now. It's really fascinating.

• 1:10:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, the study of humans, also the study of conflict, alas. I want to ask, maybe not directly about conflict, but I want to come back to free speech, social media, things like that. But first, I want to ask about some really micro details. This might be getting into the weeds, but I'm very, very interested because I believe that you consider store design a crucial endeavor, area of focus. I could be mistaken, but what are some strategies or approaches that you used for increasing retail sales? So the number of products in the store, change rooms, mirrors, color of walls. What were some of the elements that you experimented with?

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  Fundamentally, I think the first big difference for Lou Lemon that was so different than any other clothing brand was that we weren't run by merchandisers. So people that were like in Saks, who were trying to put 10 different brands together, make all the purses and the shoes and everything look good together. So rather than do that, Lou Lemon was, is first a functional company. And actually, all my companies are, I work at the same level. So function is number one. So not only is the apparel functional, but then you make it beautiful. So the store had to be functional. So rather than have a wall where pants and jackets and tops, you know, t-shirts and accessories all work

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  together in one color way and were pretty, I'm going to use this word pretty, so to speak, so that when people went in, they would go, wow, you know, type of thing. But the problem is, is that within like even seven days, one or two sizes would be sold out and probably the most popular sizes. So we did do that. We'd set things up for seven days like that. But then the store was set up to put pants would be in one area, tanks in another, shorts in another, and you would actually go to look at a mannequin. That's the short that I want. You'd be educated on why that short was being made. You'd go down to size six, there's your colors, and then you could pick that, and then you could go to a tank top or whatever, and you could look at all the sixes and all the different

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  styles and go, okay, I like that design of tank. Here's my size six. Here's the color I want and go with it. Basically, I was setting it up because I wanted, I understood clearly from listening to women that they were time constrained.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  And if they could get in and out of a store in under 10 minutes with exactly what they wanted, then I was actually saving them a hundred or $200 because I always came from that our customers were making a hundred dollars an hour coming in the store. So then we set up the right amount of change room so they never had to wait for a change room. We did the hang tags all on the same side. We had the price that was big, the size that was big. You didn't have to search for anything. The store was set up functionally so you could get what you wanted into the change room. There was three-way mirrors so a girl didn't have to come out and get, have someone ask. They could actually check their own sides out if they wanted to do that. Our cash register had the fastest checkout for, you know, by

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  the time you scanned it and got the price out and you're out the door. So I think women really appreciated that.

• 1:13:58Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it seems also to emerge a lot of these decisions from having a very clear picture of who your customer is, which you alluded to based on the assumption or archetype that as one factor has the income of a hundred dollars per hour. That allows you, if you set that as your base assumption slash target, it allows you to make many, many other decisions very quickly.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Very well said. Very well said. Yep, exactly.

• 1:14:32Tim Ferriss?

  Let's revisit the linguistic abstractions since we just took a very gratifying bathroom break and we're back in action. I feel so much better. I've, I'm in the process of rehydrating and you've printed out, as the overachiever you are, the linguistic abstractions. So please share.

• 1:14:52Speaker 02

  So being present, we've talked about clearing the past. We've, we haven't really talked about, but it's the same thing. I noticed that if I was to talk to you, but you had your mind on your business or your girlfriend, or you wanted to go skateboarding or whatever, you really wouldn't be listening to me. And this idea that there's no point in me talking until I've cleared what it is that's going on with you. You may have another meeting to go to, that something's more pressing. So I've got to make sure I clear you, the listener, before I can actually talk.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  I've wasted a lot of time forcing what I have to say down somebody who's not listening.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  We've talked about creating the present from the future. So committed listening is another one. So on the opposite end of that. So when you're talking, I've got to consistently clear myself so that I can actually hear what it is that you're saying. Often I find somebody starts talking and my mind goes. I'm really interested in this mirror neurons and how I really get now when I'm talking and somebody isn't listening. I can tell that they're not listening. Fascinating, really. So we know on a subconscious level that somebody isn't listening. Looking good. We've talked about winning formulas is an interesting one. So Winning formulas.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Winning formula. So when I was 12, my parents were divorced. I was competitive summer. I came home from lunch and nobody was there and there was no food. So I forged my mom's check, went down to Safeway, bought some food. And my 12 year old self told me that I couldn't trust even those who love me to take care of me. And so I then have to, if it's to be, it's up to me and I can't depend on anyone else. I've got to make it work for myself. So consequently, I take that winning formula anytime I'm in a stressful situation.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  And I go immediately to everyone, get out of my way. I'll do it myself. And that worked really well. I think when I started a company or I in certain situations. But in order to be an effective leader, I had to do the next linguistic abstraction. That is choose freely, choose freely in any position to be the type of leader that's required in that moment. So I really became powerful at Lululemon when I understood that I could delegate. I could ask for help. I could ask for opinions. It didn't have to be all me. And the more I find that I'm this word busy is more that tells me that I haven't delegated

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  or trained and developed people to take over jobs that I that I needed to do. Time is precious. In other words, every second of everyone's life is critical and it's not up to me to waste anybody's time. And I really am highly cognizant of, Tim, if you only want to go for 20 minutes, I'm here for 20 minutes and I don't want to go 21 if you've got something else to do. You know, that's fine with me. So I find that's probably where the word complaining comes in. Complaining is again, a linguistic abstraction to actually define complaining and not waste people's time. And again, choose to take action, which is another linguistic abstraction as opposed

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  to complaining, playing on the court, not living in the stands. So actually not observing life, not complaining about life, but actually getting into life and doing something with it. I could go on, but that I think you get the general gist.

• 1:18:49Tim Ferriss?

  Are those in your bathroom as commandments or reminders of principles for yourself? Is it to refresh your memory of these terms for communicating with others? What is the primary purpose of having those in your bathroom?

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  Well, to be authentic about my inauthenticities, I'd say I'm so weak on integrity. I find myself complaining. I put them up because I'm so weak and I need to keep reminding myself about how much my life has changed, even garnering 70% of what I say other people should do 100%. I guess it's a little bit like that smoker who's quit and then goes around evangelizing how everyone should quit smoking or drinking or something. Do you know what I mean? It's I'm kind of like a born again self-development person.

• 1:19:51Tim Ferriss?

  So let's tie two pieces together, which we've covered in the last 20 minutes or so. The importance of authenticity, the value of being yourself, not what other people want you to be. And this is what we'll add, sort of reconciling that or combining that with being a public facing CEO or leader of a company. So you have been more than willing to share your thoughts and opinions and speak very openly in public, in the press, and it's not always been extremely well received. Do you have any regrets? I'm not trying to imply that you should. I'm just wondering,

• 1:20:36Tim Ferriss?

  do you wish you had done anything differently? Would you have done anything differently? Or was it really just who you are and acting in integrity or authentically was speaking really candidly and publicly in the ways that you have over the years?

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  It's very tough to have an opinion, especially, I think my area of expertise in life is looking five years in the future and putting together what the world is going to look like, especially in the realm of athletics and apparel and that type of thing. But in order to be great at that, you have to see how all things in society are changing. Now, I have a big failure in that. And the big failure is I didn't understand in 213, because it was just the advent of social media, just that start of it. And it was a time when I could probably say I was the first to get

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  taken down in what I'd call the cancel culture. I didn't even really know what had happened to me.

• 1:21:39Tim Ferriss?

  Could you, for people who don't have any of the backstory, explain what happened?

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So I was going on Bloomberg to talk about this new concept that my wife and I had had around one-minute meditation. So again, the ability to choose in the moment how my brain wanted to be, rather than to having to do something longer. Anyway, it shifted into Blue Lemon, and it had had a massive quality issue. I wasn't the CEO at the time. I was the chairman, living in Australia, actually. But that doesn't matter. If I'm responsible, then I get to do something about it. That's the way I look at it. Anyway, she pivoted and asked me about the quality of the fabric. And I went, well, I knew in my mind that something was wrong

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  with the Blue Lemon fabric, or something was going on because we were getting returns, we were getting complaints like we'd never had before. And all I could really say at the time was that some of our pants don't work for some woman. I think I... Anyway, the interpretation of vast majority of people that they heard it from the point of view, oh, I was judging women in some sort of way, which, given that the business that I'd built, all about women, and all the women inside of it, nothing could be further from the truth. But I can understand where their interpretation of that was. The reality of it is, is that women were buying

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  two to three sizes too small in order to use it as compression, like Spanx. And like any fabric or any material, if you stretch it too far, it's not going to work. And that's kind of what was happening. But I didn't have that context at the time. So I was just trying to be as truthful as I could. But it came across for, if you're, again, listening through the lens of, oh, you know, you're judging me. So I didn't know women very well, did I? As much as I say I was in a woman's business and I was working with... Thousands of women, you know, that I didn't really get that this kind of was occurring. And maybe Lou Lemon had just exploded from being something that was very athletic to something

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  that was now being bought by everybody in society. And so I made a mistake for sure. Now, what was interesting about it, though, was just the, you know, coming back to Lou Lemon and the employees all supporting me, they understood where I was coming from, but the board of directors didn't. But nobody knew how the ends of the bell curve that complain and complain very loudly on social media can sound so big. Nobody knew the size of it, really. What I say is that our customer was that 32-year-old professional woman, single, owned her own condo,

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  athletic, very media savvy, understood how all this worked, and they weren't concerned with it. But it was really hard explaining that to, I think, a world which was now moving into a commodity media business. Media went from like five or six big newspapers to suddenly you're digital and now you have infinite number of media outlets. And then the only way that you can attract people to your TV show, article, or whatever is headlines and then sensationalism. So I found that people that said they were news outlets were now becoming kind of National

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  Enquirer, People Magazine, sensationalism. But they were saying they were news outlets, which really does fool people who don't have a context to what is news and what isn't news. And we've gone so far in that direction of this media being a commodity product. It's like beer and cigarettes where it's all done on marketing now, not really content. And then the real news is, I believe, is what you're doing, Tim, is this podcast, or then let's be more specific, anything in the world that's working and working really well now has eliminated the middleman.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  You've eliminated the middleman so you can come right to the source rather than getting a headline or a 144-word whatever.

• 1:26:01Tim Ferriss?

  It's helpful to hear. I mean, it's been fascinating to see also just.

• 1:26:06Tim Ferriss?

  In my experience, the evolution or de-evolution, the entropy of capturing reality and anger and rage and everything else in 144 characters or less. And it's a very polarizing experience, I think, and also seductive experience for people to consume media now because, as you indicated, if you want to compete effectively for attention, which is what these companies are doing, or their advertisers are doing vis a vis their platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc., then shock sells, right? Outrage sells, as does sex and vanity and these

• 1:26:47Tim Ferriss?

  other things, of course, greed, but it's a funhouse mirror of sorts that is adaptive to each individual. So it's kind of, and I don't want to go too far, but it's sort of dystopian in its ability to individualize without the individual realizing what is happening. And of course, this has been discussed, kind of ad nauseam in documentaries like The Social Dilemma and so forth. I wonder, you mentioned earlier, this is going to be a bit of a sideways step, but I would love to hear you describe what makes you, aside from extensive subject matter expertise in your world, right, in apparel and so

• 1:27:28Tim Ferriss?

  on, how do you develop the ability to really see what things might look like in five years? Because you seem to have done that over and over and over again. And I'm curious if it's intuitive, if it's from a lot of analysis and reading, if it's a combination, if it's something else. What does it look like to develop that skill?

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  Well, I probably didn't know I had it until I'd gone through a few iterations. But I think it really started off when I was 12 or 13 years old. And again, just, I'm a reader. I was a reader from very, very young age. And when I was reading and then I would observe, I would

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  Formulate an idea in my mind and about what the future was going to be. And then I think I just started noticing that whatever I thought about actually was coming true. And it's not like I'm a Robert Heinlein or something, you know, some science fiction writer, but maybe that was my area of expertise in it because I was right so often, I probably just started recognizing it's something that I enjoyed doing and then going, okay, now let's kind of put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. I have these ideas. If I lay down a business to do that, will the world actually line up around what I'm thinking? And it just so happened that that kept occurring.

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  Now I'm sixty five years old and I recognize I'm not in the world of knowing the minutia of social media and e-comm and there's parts of that I'm not living because I don't have to live it. It's not important to me because of other things that are more important. So now I feel I'm moving more to understanding how companies are working and how they become mediocre, how they become great. I'm really looking a lot about countries and how fascinated with how China is, obviously seems to me to be the next empire of the world and how America is becoming more like Europe, overregulated, overtaxed, moving further to the left.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  And it's actually funny to me to look at China now as Sebastian of free enterprise.

• 1:29:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've having lived in China for a period of time and studied at two universities and to have seen from visits there, and I'm sure you've spent quite a bit of time there as well, the change from bicycles everywhere in Beijing and people's liberation, army green jackets to the bikes disappearing, to the Audi Ferrari dealerships, to now, I mean, really what looks like science fiction in many of these mega cities. I mean, it is almost unfathomable how rapidly things are evolving and developing in China.

• 1:30:22Tim Ferriss?

  So that's certainly going to be an interesting X factor from this point forward. I'd love to ask you. A couple of complete non sequitur questions about hiring. So I'm reading here, just a note that I have, which says that you've written about hiring people by asking if they want families. I would love to hear you elaborate on that. Yet, in contrast, there are times in little black stretchy pants when you share stories of rolling down your window while sitting in your car and offering someone a job you've talked to for one minute. So what is it that you see in that person that allows you, prompts you to make such a fast offer? So do you want families? And then the, the fast job offer? Could you elaborate on both of those?

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  Sure, they probably overlap. What I noticed, notwithstanding, there's always going to be people that wouldn't want children. But through the landmark course, I noticed that almost 90, let's say, almost 80, 90% of people had some sort of issues with their parents. And really, it came down to children not forgiving their parents for the lousy job their parents did of raising them. These are parents that love their children to death, but it was just an interpretation and a story that the children would have. I really got where people that really wanted children, well, one, I think it's the number two instinct after survival. I think it's a great indication. If you want children, you want a family.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  I really wanted to hire women who wanted a family. And I was a little bit scared of those that didn't. And then the part about me rolling down the window, it wasn't really like I'd met the person for a minute. These were all people in my neighborhood. I was starting Lululemon. I'd watched them out running. I'd have watched them with their families. We were all young at the time and we all had like three, four, five-year-olds type of thing. And I could tell they were good people because I've watched clothing all my life, I could tell they had fashion sense or not. Or I'm going to use the word style. I don't really like the word fashion, but more like a style. And so when I kind of put the family and the style together, I went, this is going

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  to be a person I'd like working for me. And because I didn't want anybody who understood the wholesale clothing business.

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  That really I was open to hiring anybody because there was nobody that knew the vertical business. So it was like I got to take good people, train them in a new way of doing business. And that's what worked.

• 1:32:52Tim Ferriss?

  So you didn't, you didn't want to hire anyone with kind of legacy calcified thinking around how this business should or could be built?

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:33:05Tim Ferriss?

  How did those hires turn out overall? Did they tend to work out? Well, I mean, were they for sales positions? Were they for other positions? How did that experiment go?

• 1:33:15Speaker 02

  The first person I hired was Deanne Schweitzer. She was a single mother living in the alley behind me with two kids. So I hired her to run our first store and then she ended up being the head of product for Lululemon. So probably ended up being the number three or four person inside the company. I hired Delaney to run the store after her sister left and then Delaney ended up being the number two person at Lululemon under the CEO who, and I personally have always pushed for Delaney to be CEO of Lululemon, but I think the board of directors couldn't see anyone but kind of an Ivy League type person kind of moving in there. And I, anyway, I don't think they could have been more wrong. And I think that's been proved out. And then probably the third person is Eric Peterson,

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  who was running marketing for Electronic Arts here in Vancouver. I knew that I had the Olympics coming and I wanted to grill the marketing. I wanted, because I didn't have any money to sponsor. So we, we grilled the hell out of it. And he was, he understood long-term, word of mouth, community, marketing, and just again, giving, all three of these people really understood giving without expectation of return, looking for, you know, make a quality product. And in the long run, just have people talk about us.

• 1:34:30Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's worked out rather well over time. Let me ask just a few more questions. And this one sometimes is extremely difficult and unfruitful, but I'll try it anyway. Sometimes it works out. So we can, we can always fix it in post if it doesn't. But if you could put a, a message, could be a quote, a word, a question, an image, anything on metaphorically speaking, a huge billboard, just to get a message or anything out to. Billions of people, let's just imagine they all understand English. What might you put on that billboard?

• 1:35:12Speaker 02

  Coming from my most gifted book, which would be Catch 22, which is Pulitzer Prize winner from the 1960s, about a bunch of pilots who, flying over northern Italy and with an egotistical kernel that kept making them do more bombing missions till the time when they realized that either they were going to die next week or next month or two months from now, like every minute was critical. To the next story of my dad and always searching for the meaning of life and never finding it. And if he did find it, then he'd be disappointed because he had no purpose in life other than looking for it. When I was 60 years old, I went to my dad and I went, Dad, you know, if you had to give your 60-year-old self any advice, what would it be?

• 1:35:56Speaker 02

  And he went away for a day and he had the whole family around the table the next day. And he goes, so I've thought about it and here's the advice I'd give my 60-year-old self. Do it now, do it right fucking now.

• 1:36:10Speaker 02

  So that's what I'd put on a billboard.

• 1:36:13Tim Ferriss?

  Do it now, do it right fucking now. Oh, what does that mean to you? Does it mean, is it principally just valuing time and every second? And if you, you really mean what you say or value something truly that you're going to just get after it right away? Or does it have a different, different meaning for you?

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  Life is just so short. And what is the term that Warner Earhart has? There's no performance without action. So people think, think, think, think, and they have an idea, they have an idea, they'd like to do something, da, da, da. And it all comes down to action. And there's just not a moment to waste, there's not a second to waste in life. Or you can choose to waste time, which is a highly... Creative process. So I don't want to like, say that that's not important. I'd say a lot of people have really great ideas and maybe even they can see the future and they, if they started their product or whatever they're doing or their concept right now, the first time

• 1:37:16Speaker 02

  they thought about it, then by the time they got their act together, the world would probably line up and they'd be highly successful. Can you wait that extra minute? Can you wait that extra month? Can you wait that extra two years until everything's right? Well, my kids are a little bit better. My wife loves me a little bit more. I've got a little bit more money in the bank. I got more equity in my house I can borrow. You know, I, I just don't think there's time.

• 1:37:41Tim Ferriss?

  Catch 22. That is one of your most gifted books. Why is that?

• 1:37:46Speaker 02

  There I am, 18 years old, reading it and I've read it 17 times now. So it's really my bible in life. It was really a wake up call. Again, most people don't get it till they're 43. Like I talked about, I got it when I was 18. Like here, it's talking about all these 18 year olds and they're gonna die. And so they start to create, well, maybe even like winning formulas because a winning formula is what you do in a survival situation. So they create different ways of surviving with the short amount of time they have left with them. So it's one of the great comedy books of all time because you have, um, uh, one of the characters Dunbar that decides that time

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  goes too quickly when life is fascinating. So he checks into a hospital and stares at the ceiling or will go in the back of a movie theater and will stand in line, go to the front and then as soon as he gets to the front, he'll go to the back again. And he refuses to talk to interesting people because time goes too quickly. So it's a series of mechanisms to make life go slowly. I've often wanted to be in my physics 20 class for the rest of my life, just because I know I could live forever.

• 1:39:00Tim Ferriss?

  What other books have you gifted often to other people? I know we've, we've mentioned a number of books throughout this episode. Are there any that, that we haven't mentioned yet?

• 1:39:10Speaker 02

  For me, you know, Atlas Shrugged was massive for me, you know, to read that again when I was 18. I mean, I know nothing about US politics and I could care less about the Tea Party and all the way that people, because I had no context that it was a philosophy. I just thought it was a book. And you know, when I read through the book and I really got about how to make a quality product, how to treat people really well, how not to let the naysayers say you can't do it, or that if you do make your money, that, you know, give me part of that money, because why should you have it all type of thing. I didn't really get it till I was

• 1:39:52Speaker 02

  about fifty-two or fifty-three and I read the book again and I recognized what an incredible impact that it had on my life. And I think it falls part and parcel with that, good to great, what is good and what is great. And did I possibly want to live a life of being good at something? No, I want to be great because on my deathbed, why would I want to know what good looked like? I want to know what great looks like?

• 1:40:16Tim Ferriss?

  I've two very important questions left. The first is, do you have any favorite restaurants in Vancouver or the surrounding areas that you can recommend since as soon as I am vaccinated, which I'm waiting patiently for, I am going to be traveling after my extremely strict quarantine. Do you have any, any favorite spots or recommendations for food?

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  You know, unfortunately, you know, I live in probably the nicest house in the world with the greatest view with a great wine cabinet and a wife that is second to none when it comes to cuisine. So, you know, we don't go out a lot, but I'd say-

• 1:40:59Tim Ferriss?

  So your house is the answer. That's where I need to go.

• 1:41:03Speaker 02

  Let me put it this way, when you're here, you're invited.

• 1:41:06Tim Ferriss?

  Where's Tim? I don't know. I think I saw him going down to the wine cellar. Uh-oh.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  You know, I'm not, you know, I have a, my favorite breakfast place is a place called Nelson the Seagull and they roast their own beans and they make their own bread. And when you put that combination of those two smells together, it's phenomenal. I know I'm not supposed to eat any bread, but the smell of that bread's great. And, you know, it's one of these places that it's in a hundred-year-old building with the big high ceilings and they've put about $5 into tenant improvements. So, you know what I mean? They've just gone to get, gone to every alley sale they could and bought chairs and tables, nothing mixes, but the quality of the product is second to none.

• 1:41:56Tim Ferriss?

  It's such a stunning part of the world and there's such cultural richness there. There's such a bounty of natural beauty and excellent crabs among many, many, many other things. I wanted to make sure that we mention something before closing and that is that you've updated your book, this is the 2021 edition now of The Story of Lululemon. And my understanding is you're making it available to download as EPUB or PDF for free on your website. Is that, is that accurate?

• 1:42:37Tim Ferriss?

  And the, the URL, as I have it here for folks, is chipwilson.com/book. So I want to make sure that, that we make note of that. Chip, is there anything else that you would like to say, any ask, request of the audience, closing comments, complaints to the editor that you'd like to file with me or otherwise before we wrap up?

• 1:43:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It maybe goes back to what we're saying, but I'd, I'd like to make the request that people reframe what the word news means. And I think, as I was saying, that people have news collapsed with sensationalism, negative news. And as Peter D. Amanda says, you know, our mindset is set by the people we hang out with and the media we consume. This is not just a plug for you, but I just can't say enough about walking with audio and listening to podcasts and biographies, books, fiction, it doesn't matter. The combination of these two things is so powerful, keeping in great shape and learning

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  at the same time. It's fantastic. So anyway, reframe the term news.

• 1:43:49Tim Ferriss?

  Here, here. I am on as, as much of a low information diet as possible these days. There's a lot of garbage calories out there. You gotta, you gotta be careful. Do you have any favorite audiobooks or audiobooks you've really enjoyed that, that come to mind? Could be biographies, could be any category?

• 1:44:10Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, yeah. You know, I actually, of course, you've had Dan Harris on 10% happier. I laughed all the way through that, learning about meditation. And I know you had Guy Raz on. I listened to every one of them. It doesn't matter how many businesses I listen to. They're all different and they're all fascinating. And thanks for, for, I like that little exchange of podcasts. You guys said it was good. You know, for people starting out, the e-myth was really a bible for me, you know, being able to put myself five years in the future, train and develop people to take care of the business. So I could lead it.

• 1:44:49Tim Ferriss?

  Michael Gerber, highly recommended.

• 1:44:51Speaker 02

  Another one, Guns, Germs and Steel. I loved old Pulitzer Prize winning book about how the world developed. And another one that's kind of an updated one on that is Disunited Nations. I really liked.

• 1:45:02Tim Ferriss?

  Disunited Nations.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  Disunited Nations. I think my favorite author of all time is John Le Carre, you know, did all the spy novels and isn't probably isn't relevant to anyone young nowadays. But I love the British understatement and his ability to tell a story and not tell me anything. But it's all those small little innuendos and the way the British talk it, it's the very opposite from the American marketing machine, if I can put it that way. I like, I like the way he makes me think and how he uses words. You know, I have English as a third language. So, you know, and that with no first two. So I'm really, I really.

• 1:45:46Tim Ferriss?

  That's how I feel. It's like Kurt Vonnegut said, paraphrasing here, but he said, you know, when I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. That's how I, that's how I feel most days. And.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  Like you're going for a lot longer, if you want me to. But I, I think one of the most fun ones I listened to lately was the magic strings of Frankie Presto. And

• 1:46:10Tim Ferriss?

  Not familiar with it.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  He brings in musicians from all over the world, actually, to give him approval to talk about them and for him to write the story. But by audio was great. And the potato factory, Middlesex, I could go on and on.

• 1:46:26Tim Ferriss?

  Goes on and on. There is really just such a cornucopia of brain food available. I'm finishing up The Overstory right now, which won a Pulitzer and is authored by Richard Powers, which is, it's about trees and each vignette kind of ties together a person or a family line with a particular tree or a particular old growth forest. And it's beautifully written, very dark at points, which has been challenging. But the prose and the storytelling is just so compelling that it's pulling me through. So that's another, another fantastic book.

• 1:47:08Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll plug it again, The Story of Lululemon, updated 2021, can be found for free at chipwilson.com/book. So that's as good a starting place as any. And Chip, this has been so much fun. I really enjoyed our conversation and I appreciate you making the time. So thank you.

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  Well, thanks for what you bring to the world. And I know it probably at some point comes from a selfish point of view because you're, you get to do all these great things, but isn't it nice when you can combine the two?

• 1:47:39Tim Ferriss?

  It is, it is. Oh yeah, this is, I have the best job in the world. I get to have these types of conversations for a so-called job. So until, until they yank me out of here or figure out that, that I'm an imposter, I'll keep doing it. And so thank you again, Chip. And to everybody listening, we will have everything we discussed in the show notes, links to everything at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, do it, do it fucking right now. Get after it, folks.

• 1:48:13Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered, it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:48:55Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is super important to me. In the last few years, I've come to conclude it is the end all be all that all good things, good mood, good performance, good everything seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize it. I've tried pills and potions, all sorts of different mattresses, you name it.

• 1:49:36Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:50:18Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:50:55Tim Ferriss?

  That's H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim for up to $200 off. So, check it out one more time. Helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic, which is part of my morning routine, also part of my afternoon routine. Routine saves me. So there are a number of ways that I use Four Sigmatic. In the mornings, I regularly start with their mushroom coffee instead of regular coffee, and it doesn't taste like mushroom. Let me explain this. First of all, zero sugar, zero calories, half the caffeine of regular coffee. It's easy on

• 1:51:35Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:52:19Tim Ferriss?

  decaf, and some may recognize Chaga. It is nicknamed the king of the mushrooms. It is excellent for immune system support. So needless to say, I've focused on that right now myself, and so I will- often have that in the afternoons. They make all sorts of different mushroom blends. If you are doing exercise, as I am on a daily basis to keep myself sane. Cordyceps, excellent for endurance. They have a whole slew of options that you can check out. Every single batch is third-party lab-tested for heavy metals, allergens, all the bad stuff, to make sure that what gets into your hands is what you want to put in your mouth. And they always offer a 100% money-back guarantee. So you can try it risk-free. Why not?

• 1:53:02Tim Ferriss?

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