What I learned from rereading Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard.
I had always avoided thinking of myself as a businessman.
I was a climber, a surfer, a kayaker, a skier, and a blacksmith.
We simply enjoyed making good tools and functional clothes that we and our friends wanted.
And one day it dawned on me that I was a businessman and would probably be one for a long time.
It was also clear that in order to survive at this game, we had to get serious.
I also knew that I would never be happy playing by the normal rules of business.
I wanted to distance myself as far as possible from those pasty faced corpses in suits that I saw on airline magazine ads.
If I had to be a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.
One of my favorite sayings about entrepreneurship is, if you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent.
The delinquent is saying with his actions, this sucks.
I'm going to go do my own thing.
Since I had never wanted to be a businessman, I needed a few good reasons to be one.
One thing I did not want to change.
Even if we got serious, work had to be enjoyable on a daily basis.
We all had to come to work on the balls of our feet and go up the stairs two steps at a time.
We needed to be surrounded by friends who could dress whatever way they wanted and even be barefoot.
We all needed to have flex time to surf the waves when they were good, or to ski the powder after a big snowstorm, or to stay home and take care of a sick child.
Breaking the rules and making my own system work are the creative parts of management that is particularly satisfying for me.
The original intent for writing let my people go surfing was for it to be a philosophical manual for the employees of Patagonia.
We have always considered Patagonia an experiment in doing business in unconventional ways.