Let My People Go Surfing The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual
Reviews
Book consists of 3 parts - autobiography, company culture, environmental activism. The book lives off of real life examples and stories from Yvon. While this works great in the first two sections, it gets a bit repetitive in the last. This mostly due to the last section being vague in terms of what to carry over into your own life. The first two sections on the other hand are inspiring and tell a fascinating story of an unique character.
Loved the storytelling behind the creation of Patagonia and the business lay down!
i love everything patagonia stands for as a business, and respect yvon chouinard as a leader + entrepreneur + thinker. the lower rating is not because i disagree with any of the ideas that the book stands for; it just ends up feeling a bit like a patagonia catalog by the end, which is not really what i look for in a memoir. i think what contributed to this feeling was that the first half was much more biographical, sharing chouinard's business origin story, while the second half was more of a summary of patagonia's initiatives and values -- less attached to chouinard's own experiences and learnings. while chouinard acknowledges that no business can be perfect in the effort to use fewer resources/minimize negative impact on planet, this book doesn't *really* dive into any problems that patagonia has/is continuing to grapple with and is more focused on what they've done well (which ultimately, perhaps despite his intentions, makes it feel like it's marketing patagonia despite so much of his narrative discouraging unnecessary consumption). i would have been curious to read about some of the issues that they're still trying to come up w solutions for, or mistakes they've made that go deeper than 'we designed a product that was so popular it sold out too fast' since part of patagonia's mission is finding ways to use business to preserve and restore nature (with the intention of encouraging other businesses to do the same), i think it would have been helpful to conclude with some kind of summary/how-to guide of their business model that could be applied to other businesses. while it was interesting to read about patagonia's philosophies from product design to management, it could have been more impactful to emphasize how translatable patagonia's ethos is to other businesses rather than merely berating ~big business~ for its sins. what are the main things that every business can do better based on what chouinard has learned from founding patagonia? besides 'care more' i don't think people necessarily leave this book with a clear framework or actionable goals. anyways, i did like this book! much love to patagonia! if you already care about the environment, you'll agree with everything he says; if you don't, i imagine you'd feel a little bit looked down upon - despite being a wildly successful businessman himself, chouinard is no fan of ~typical capitalist success stories~
I bought a Patagonia sweater after reading the book as I’m deeply moved by their mission. However, although this book might have been revolutionary for the environment when it was written, reading it in 2021 felt boring and outdated.
I still use a lot of the oneliners I‘ve learned from this book! Great read.
This is a book about the sustainability and environment wrapped in a business book. It gives fascinating insights into how Patagonia runs their business and how they try to make conscious sustainable decisions for both employees, their customers and the environment. It's a book that left a big mark on me in the way I view consumption and businesses that will stay with me for years.
Must read for anyone interested in the Patagonia, and building a sustainable and happy company
Good but dragged on repeating the same messages. Did leave me admiring the way Patagonia chooses to run their company and feeling hopeful for the standards we hold companies to into the future, especially in fashion and retail
It's a little preachy, but talks a lot about Patagonia's attempts to produce clothes that will not hurt the environment. I wish it focused a little more on Patagonia and less on how we're slowly killing the world, but overall, good book. I should mention the audiobook is confusing as the reader uses the same voice even when the author of a passage changes. It can be very confusing at times.
Fantastic dive into the experience of building a great company. The book changes pretty dramatically at the end, switching from the story of the founding of Patagonia into an argument for environmentalism, but it's still a great book. I'm not offended by the argument, I just didn't need it, and it's out of place. It turned me from a skeptic into a believer of the company, but also just gave me a lot of respect for the founding team. They really did something special, and they did it in ways that no one else did before or has since. Others could, they just aren't brave enough to try.
I love Patagonia more with everything I learn about them. This book, by founder Yvon Chouinard, is equal parts personal memoir, business philosophy, and manifesto for saving the world. He's an exceptional writer with an incredible story, and a lot to say about all aspects of business, from effective copywriting to workplace equality to ethical business practice. It's one of the best books I've read all year. "I have a definition of evil different from most people. Evil doesn't have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil."
Enjoyable and easy to read. My review is here: http://simpledream.net/2015/09/17/boo...
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” A practical manifesto for that, through the lens of Patagonia and its founder.
Yvon Chouinard is such a badass. And super inspiring. Great stories of outdoor shenanigans mixed with business philosophies that all MBAs should have to read so they understand the full implications of "business." It can lag a bit after the History, but pretty quick read.
It's not a bad book but the way it's organized makes it hard to follow. I had very high expectations after reading Phil Knight's "Shoe Dog".
A neat history of an innovative company that is passionately dedicated to saving the environment. It meanders a bit, and goes on a bit long about environmental causes, but a worthwhile read.
Highlights
Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over drafts and blue-prints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?
It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
I really like the way simplicity is described here by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
Perfection is reached when you have nothing to take away.
I have a different definition of evil from most people. Evil doesn’t have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.
When a government is breaking or refusing to enforce its own laws, then I believe civil disobedience is the rightful course of action.
In fact a typical cotton product labeled 100 percent cotton is on average only 73 percent cotton; all the rest is resins, plasticizers, and chemicals added in the finishing process.
I don’t really believe that humans are evil; it’s just that we are not very intelligent animals.
I’m pessimistic because I see no will in society to do enough about the impending doom. Yet there’s no difference between a pessimist who says, “It’s all over, don’t bother trying to do anything, forget about voting, it won’t make a difference,” and an optimist who says, “Relax, everything is going to turn out fine.” Either way the results are the same. Nothing gets done.
When there is no crisis, the wise leader or CEO will invent one. Not by crying wolf but by challenging the employees with change.
When there’s a problem of any kind, these people have the confidence to think it through and solve it themselves instead of looking for a “repairman.” The longevity of a CEO’s career is directly proportional to his problem-solving skills and ability to adapt and grow with the job.
The fact that Patagonia has had six CEOs in its thirty years can be regarded as a failure to find and keep the right person (or as the failure of Patagonia’s two hardheaded owners to relinquish power). Looking back, I see that each person brought with him a diverse set of skills that have been valuable to the company, whether he came from a background of retail, finance, biology, ex-Seal team, or education.
What do the kids think? I walked into our child care building one day and asked some of the four-and five-year-olds, “Hi, kids! How’s school?” One young guy immediately corrected me. “We’re not in school, we’re at work. My mother works over there, and I work here.” What a difference that is from your average kid whose father or mother disappears every day for eight hours or more and who thus grows up with no concept of work. It’s no wonder every young kid dreams of being “sponsored” by a big corporation like Oakley or Nike, as if this were what work is all about.
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. —FRANÇOIS AUGUSTE RENÉ CHATEAUBRIAND
We want to be the best company, and it’s easier to try to be the best small company than the best big company.
It’s okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise you’re just crazy.
If you were to tell a parent that the local drinking water is unsafe for their children, you’d spark immediate outrage. But tell the same person that cancer clusters show up inexplicably in long-term studies of children who live in their pesticide-intensive farming community, and the response is less pronounced.
Even if he or she isn’t aware of it, every individual spends an entire lifetime creating and evolving a personal image that others perceive. A company too creates and evolves an image that can stem from its reason to be in business, can grow out of its actions, or perhaps is assembled from pieces by the creative mind of an advertising person. A company’s (and a person’s) image can be very different from their self-image.
In particular, we found that the postsale care of a clothing product caused as much as four times the amount of harm as the entire manufacturing process.
Someone once said that the poor can’t afford to buy cheap goods. You can buy a cheap blender that will burn out the first time you try to grind some ice cubes, or you can wait until you can afford a quality one that will last. Ironically, the longer you wait, the less you may have to spend; at my age, it’s becoming easier to buy only products that will “last a lifetime.”
We begin with the premise that all life on Earth is facing a critical time, during which survivability will be the issue that increasingly dominates public concern. Where survivability is not the issue, the quality of human experience of life may be, as well as the decline in health of the natural world as reflected in the loss of biodiversity, cultural diversity, and the planet’s life support systems. The root causes of this situation include basic values embodied in our economic system, including the values of the corporate world. Primary among the problematic corporate values are the primacy of expansion and short-term profit over such other considerations as quality, sustainability, environmental and human health, and successful communities.
I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product line—and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful.
I didn’t buy a tent until I was almost forty, preferring to sleep under boulders and under the low-hanging branches of an alpine fir.
Developing a natural immunity to the turistas and giardia is not an easy passage, but if you refuse to take Flagyl and antibiotics and don’t drink iodine-treated or chlorinated water, the immunity gradually happens.