How One Man Rewrote the Rules of Capitalism - David Gelles

0:28Let's think about compound interest. Erica as perhaps the most righteously pro-social icon of socially responsible business there is, even though the revenues are still relatively small, just about a billion dollars a year. That's the lesson here, is that when you stick with your gun, when you have that consistency in the conviction for a long time, there are real dividends. He manifested this life that he's living in. He just decided, I'm taking this on. I'm hella high water. I'm going to view the world differently. I'm going to give back a lot of the money. I'm going to focus on conservation because this is my love of nature.

1:03I'm going to use the apparel business, the sportswear business, I'm going to call it, to fund and purposely fund my philosophy about how I think about the world and how I want to preserve the world. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining me now is New York Times reporter, but also New York Times bestselling author, David Gellis. The title of the book and what a masterpiece this book is. The title of the book is Dirtbag Billionaire. May somebody somewhere, some way, somehow, David, call me a dirtbag billionaire some way. But unfortunately, I'm only a billionaire in Zimbabwe.

1:42But anyway, the title of this book, Dirtbag Billionaire, how Yvonne Chouinard, hopefully I got that right, how Yvonne Chouinard built Patagonia, made a fortune and gave it all away. Well, first of all, welcome back to Open Book. Celebrated guest here. Your last book on Jack Welch was phenomenal and I think sea-changing in terms of U.S. corporate culture and U.S. history. So congratulations on that. but what drew you to the Patagonia story and Yvonne Chouinard in particular? Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me back, Anthony. Always a pleasure to chat with you. You know, as you know, I've been a business reporter for 20 plus years now.

2:27We've talked about plenty of stories over the years and I've covered the good of business, but I've covered the bad of business. You know, I interviewed Bernie Madoff in prison. I covered Boeing after the 737 Max crashes. But along the way, I also really endeavored to look for those narratives that showed how business could be a force for good. And I'm not sitting here saying Chouinard is perfect or that Patagonia is without its flaws. But as I think you will find when you get into the book, there's a narrative here that shows how one decision at a time, one episode at a time, a company can sort of wrestle with its own demons and try to forge a more constructive path through the wilds of late capitalism and try to make a positive impact in this world.

3:18And that, to me, is just as compelling as the bad news stories. So, I mean, this is like a Nike, right? I mean, it's like an apparel company, right? I mean, it's a, you know, and when you think about it, though, I mean, I'm used to tech. You're used to tech. I'm used to Bitcoin. You either are used to Bitcoin or not used to it, but this is literally hardcore making garments. Said differently, this is a Garmento story. And so tell us about this wonderful guy, how he got into this business and what made him so well-suited, frankly, for this business. Yeah, and it's important to note at the outset here, this is not a guy who wanted to be a businessman.

3:59This is not some entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur who went out and tried to make a company, let alone a fortune. He sort of stumbled his way into this. He was a rock climber as a young man. And then he became a blacksmith who started making his own rock climbing gear. He was good enough at it that other people wanted his gear. So all of a sudden he had this little climbing gear operation by the late 60s, early 70s. But then he makes this pivotal turn to clothing. And he very quickly realizes that more people are going to buy T-shirts than carabiners. And off to the races it is. Patagonia goes over the last 52 years from being a bootstrapped maker of sort of ill-fitting shorts and T-shirts and rain jackets to what is now a billion plus dollar revenue organization making all the stuff we know it for.

4:51Black hole bags and baggy shorts and R1 fleeces and vests and all the rest of it. but it was really an accidental turn. He didn't set out to do it, but that's where he landed. Yeah, I've never met the guy. You've had access to the whole team. I don't know. He comes across likable. Is he likable to his staff though? Because he's a little erratic. Yeah, I mean, I think of the second sentence of the book, I describe him as cantankerous. So likable, I don't think is the first word people use. He can be charming. Let me tell you why I say likable. as an entrepreneur, I look at this SOB and I'm like, okay, I learned from this guy.

5:31I like his balls. I like his wrist staking. I like the edges of his personality, which are frankly going to make him successful. But then up against that is a little gnarliness. He's got some sharp elbows, David, right? Big time, big time. And I think that there's an inherent contradiction in there, an inherent paradox between his sort of professed love and affection for his staff, His own book was called Let My People Go Surfing. He sort of tried to characterize and present Patagonia as this idealistic vision of a place you could go work in Southern California and hang out and you don't have to work so hard maybe.

6:07The reality is much more complicated. His employees, and I've spoke to hundreds of them over the years, they get worked real hard. And by the way, he never gave any of them equity. By the way, he wasn't paying the wages that a Nike, let alone a Google, was paying. And so there were trade-offs along the way. But I think you identified a real critical aspect of it. He had a tolerance for risk. He was willing to sacrifice for things he believed in. And when it came time and when it really counted, he tended to make the right moves at the right time. And some of that, as you'll know, Anthony, is just that ineffable, unteachable instinct.

6:48He had it. Some of it is also not giving up, though. You know, I have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've been in the wrong place at the right time. But just staying in the game, David, right? I think there's a big lesson here from Yvonne on that, too. Don't you think? For sure. And I'll try to take it one level deeper and really understand the impact that him sticking with his principles, with his values over time had. And here's one way to think about it. Let's think about compound interest. We all know what compound interest does with money over time. But what's the compound interest of values-based leadership?

7:34And what I mean by that is, as I trace in the book, this is a man in a company that knew what I believed in 50 years ago. And they've made a series of decisions, of principled decisions, based on that same set of values and criteria over and over for 50 years. And the result is a brand that is regarded by Axios Harris as the most trusted brand in the country that is renowned in corporate America as perhaps the most righteously pro-social icon of socially responsible business there is, even though the revenues are still relatively small, just about a billion dollars a year. And so that's, you know, I think that's the lesson here is that when you stick with your guns, when you have that consistency in the conviction for a long time, there are real dividends.

8:30I go to that, though. When you talk about doing well by doing good and you talk about a purpose driven company, a lot of people pay lip service to that. You know that I know that. And I mean, Google had that thing, do no evil. And all they did was evil. I mean, you know, so so this is different. he's actually like drinking his own kool-aid so tell us about the connectivity between the statements about his culture and his actual culture yeah it's it listen it is easy to greenwash yourself to some nice headlines and magazine covers these days i've written those stories i've read those stories uh the interesting thing here is that while patagonia has actually not done a lot to promote its own efforts in a lot of these areas.

9:22Over the years, time and again, they really made a series of decisions that advanced the ball when it comes to how apparel brands in particular are thinking about managing their negative externalities, to use a term that economists love. And what I mean by that is in the 1980s, they understood that conventional cotton was nasty stuff. And it used formaldehyde and it was making people sick and it was ruining the fields where it was grown. And so they said, we're not going to use conventional cotton anymore. In the 80s, they made the full switch to organic cotton. More recently, we've been hearing all about PFAS, these forever chemicals that seem to be in everything.

10:07Patagonia understood some years ago that they were using PFAS too. And they said, we're going to stop. And if we can't figure out a non-toxic replacement we're going to stop making waterproof gear it took a long time and there were fits and starts over the years but they sort of finally figured it out and now they're making non-toxic waterproof gear over and over they've been confronted with their own shortcomings and instead of sweeping it under the rug or kicking it down the road or issuing some friday evening press release and trying to move on, they've tried to do the hard work to get a little incrementally better.

10:47Okay. So why are we calling this billionaire a dirtbag? Go. Dirtbag, to many people, they hear it. They think, oh, you must not like the guy or it's a pejorative or a slur. No. Chouinard himself calls himself a dirtbag. He self-identifies as a dirtbag because in the rock climbing community from which he came, dirtbag is a term of affection. It's a term of endearment. It means someone who is so hardcore about climbing, so unenamored with material possessions that they are literally content to sleep in the dirt. And so let me just share with you, when Chouinard heard the title of this book, Dirtbag Billionaire, he was pissed off.

11:32Not because of the word dirtbag, but because of the word billionaire because he hates billionaires. It's the last thing he ever wanted to be known as. Let me ask that follow-up question. He hates them because? Listen, this is my interpretation. He never used this phrase. But Anthony, he believes money corrupts at a deep and abiding level. He does not trust concentrated wealth in the hands of individuals. Well, it's imbued in the book. Yeah. I mean, you've laced the book with that messaging, I guess. I mean, it's a good segue into anti-authoritarianism. He seems like he wants to preserve the natural world.

12:18He doesn't like, I mean, you and I both know this, so it's worth saying we have 5.7 billion people living under some type of authoritarian structure. this man, this dirtbag billionaire, he abhors it. So tell us why he feels so strongly against authoritarian. Yeah. And here I would note, you know, he is not the most self-reflective individual. He doesn't spend a lot of time analyzing his place in the world. He has visceral reaction to billionaires and a visceral reaction to concentrated power in the hands of a few. He has a visceral reaction to this administration and what it's doing to the natural world and democracy, sure.

12:59But he doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about like, oh, there's 5.7 people living under some type of authoritarian rule. That's just not how his brain works, in my experience. That said, he's always been political at a certain level. He's always been unafraid to piss some people off when he needs to. And I'm thinking all the way back to the 70s, when he started funding grassroots environmental activists. And that model, his first check that he wrote was for$3 ,000 52 years ago. Today, the way he structured the company, he's now funneling roughly$100 million a year out the door to conservation and grassroots environmental activism.

13:44And so there again, you talk about compound interest, bam, you stick with these principles, you know what you believe in, you really stay with it, you're going to have impact in the long run. Yeah, you got to give him a lot of credit for that. But the other thing I give him credit for is the unorthodoxy. This guy is literally one of the most unorthodox decision makers. I'm reading this book and I'm thinking, okay, it's going to go this way. Boom, it goes all the way over here. Tell us a little bit about that. Take us through some of those decisions and take us through his philosophy. How do you become that big of a ballsy risk taker?

14:24Yeah. So he was an iconoclast. There's no doubt about that. And just to try to put some meat on the bones here, you know, we're talking to a business community here. And when you think about what the prerogative is for any business on any given day, week, quarter, it's to grow the business, right? And yet there's time and again when he decides to deliberately restrain the growth of the business. He says, I don't want to grow that fast. And so that, I think, is what we mean when we say he's like dodged when everyone else was weaving. He's gone this way when everyone else is going the other way.

15:03He has simply said he's not going to play by the same set of rules that everyone else is. And how do you get there? How do you become that kind of a risk taker? I would offer two things. One, I mean, he was, as you know, because you spend some time with the book, he was a crazy, crazy sportsman. I mean, this was a guy who almost died so many times in avalanches, in falls off cliffs, trapped in ice caves. I mean, this man has packed many lives into one lifetime. So some risk taking is just innate in that kind of life of adventure. But the other piece that I don't think we can ignore, let me just add this, is he had the freedom to take these kind of risks because he maintained control of the company, right?

15:47He never took outside investors. He didn't have a cap table. He didn't have some venture guys on the board breathing down his neck. He retained control, which let him take the kinds of risks he wanted to take. Tell me about a big one. Tell me about, you know, you did all this homework. I had access to all these people. tell me about a very big exogenous risk that could have been a game ender had it not worked out that's great i'm thinking back i'm blanking on the exact year here but i think it's 1992 or so um they have some best-selling products right these are these are a couple products that are making up the lion's share of their revenues and profits and he gets really dissatisfied with them.

16:31The quality isn't good. The materials aren't great. And he works with some new fabric developers to develop alternatives for both of these products. And they come up with good alternatives. And then he goes to his team and he says, all right, right before the biggest sales conference of the year, by the way, we're replacing our two main products. And we have this new material that you've never heard of, but I promise you it's going to be better. They freaked out, right? His sales reps were going to have to go to all their retails, all their distributors and say, guys, sorry, the thing that you sell the most of, we don't carry it anymore, but we've got this new thing and we hope you like it.

17:11It was those kinds of episodes over and over that he was willing to do and that tended to pay off. Listen, in that case, it worked. The new products were better, but it was not a given, right? And had it failed, it could have jeopardized the company. There's a little bit of Steve Jobs in there. I mean, when Steve Jobs, he literally capped the iPod and he put it in the iPhone. And he said, well, someone was going to do it. It might as well be me. I mean, that's exactly what's going on here with Patagonia. He's moving ahead of his contemporaries and his competitors as it relates to what people want, right?

17:47I mean, everything is in here. Henry Ford, if I listen to my customers, they wanted faster horses. They didn't want a horseless carriage. That was the exact quote. So we'll go with that. On this topic, it's one unorthodox thing after next. I mean, it is such an improbable story. So what is the cultural glue that Yvonne represents to his company? Yeah. And this is another super fascinating piece, is trying to understand how he got everyone else to come along on this journey, because he did. And you talk to Patagonia employees today, and they've drunk the Kulik. I think there are a few elements that make him have that sort of convening power and that sort of ability to inspire.

18:33The first, I think, is that he just had the right priorities, man. Right. Like he wasn't in it to buy a sports team or to buy a big boat. He was in it to try to protect the natural world. And we can argue all day about whether he's been effective in that and whether his philanthropy is going to the right kinds of causes. But I think for other people who also have an affinity for the natural world and the planet that we all inhabit, it's easy to rally behind someone who says that they're in business to try to save the earth. Not saying it works, not saying it's not complicated, but I think that is such a unique message in the business world that, bam, you got some attention right there.

19:18And I think the second part is his history as an outdoorsman. You know, he was one of the world's greatest rock climbers in the 50s and 60s, pioneering routes, you know, lines up major mountains named after him because he was the first one to do it. He became an epic whitewater kayaker going down these crazy rivers. He did these monster expeditions into the Alps and the Himalayas. and today he's regarded as literally one of the best fishermen one of the best trout fishers the anglers in the world and so time and again he's sort of proven his chops in the outdoors community and again for other people in those worlds man that inspires a lot of fealty because you're sort of working with the best at that point i mean it but he i mean he earned it he deserves it i mean And the reason why I say he's so likable to me, even though he could have been cantankerous to others, is that he manifested this life that he's living in.

20:21He just decided, I'm taking this on. Come hell or high water. I'm going to view the world differently. I'm going to give back a lot of the money. I'm going to focus on conservation because this is my love of nature. I'm going to use the apparel business, the sportswear business, whatever I call it, to fund and purposely fund my philosophy about how I think about the world and how I want to preserve the world. So, all right. So you spent a lot of time with him. Give me a few words on your impression of his personality. What was he actually like? Yeah. Yeah. I want to note here that it's always, it's never going to be perfectly accurate.

21:03You know, I'm his biographer. So there was some self-awareness, right? Like what is it? Schrodinger's cat, right? Like when you open the box, is the cat the same cat that it would have been if you didn't open the box? There's philosophy here that helps us explain how it is that a dynamic like this can either show what's real or what he wants me to see. So I have to acknowledge all that. And the man I spent time with, by all accounts, was the same sort of man that everyone else I interviewed for the book, hundreds of people encountered over the years. He cares about just a few things, being in nature, talking about nature, fishing.

21:49He has a pretty rigid worldview. in terms of what matters and how it is he believes he can affect change. We've talked a little bit about that. He can be funny. He's not without humor. He can be a little crass at times. There's probably parts of certain conversations that I can't share. He is iconoclastic and combative at times. He's not afraid to say who he disagrees with and why he thinks some people are full of and it's also the case that at the end of the day i got the sense that he would much rather just be alone and when you look at how he spent his life and there's some real truth to that this is a man who had billions of dollars at his disposal had he so chosen right was the sole owner of a corporation with an equity value of three billion they had an offer at one point on the table for six billion dollars and he just said no he didn't love that about him he just said no he didn't want the money and instead what he wanted to do are the same things that he's always done which is to be alone in the woods alone on a river just at peace immersed in the natural world and that's who he is such a such a great story all right so we're we're down to the last five words you remember this from my last last time we were together i take with my producer five words from the author's book and then you react to the words i say the word responsibility in the context of this book i say responsibility you say what hard to achieve you know the the story here is not of a perfect company it's of one that has tried to get incrementally better over the years so i think responsibility is a goal, not an end state.

23:48Yeah, it's very well said. What about purpose? A little different from responsibility, but one of those big words, those big cultural words. I say the word purpose, you say the word what? I think it could be a motivator. I think it can be sort of its values in action. um and i also think it's not enough uh because what the team found out over and over is that they could put out a product that was a purpose-driven product you know that was like the newest most responsible piece of equipment they've ever built and if the quality sucked people wouldn't buy it yeah so purpose purposes can be important but it's not enough to sell a product you know we touched a little bit on this earlier but uh and i don't want to get overly metaphysical but when i say the word billionaire you say what it's complicated right well we see most people hear dick right most people hear dick yeah but you know what do you hear you you and i both know enough billionaires to know that they're not all dicks no that's the irony you know the the thing is like everything in life i mean i run into people this is either a backhanded compliment or an unbelievable dig i run into people i'm maybe on a subway tube with them or i'm you know traveling and they you know i'm at the baggage claim at an airport like oh you're way nicer than i thought you would be i mean maybe that's a compliment maybe it isn't right i don't hear dick i hear complexity but the word billionaire you give it to me Well, I think that's where I started.

25:27It's complicated. Billionaires have the potential to do a whole lot of good in the world, and we can point to plenty of those. And I would argue that Shannard, although he's no longer technically a billionaire, is one of those people that has tried to put his personal wealth toward causes greater than himself. and you can point to plenty of others who have done similarly generous things with their money. And then you can point to billionaires who are selfish and materialistic and taking advantage of people. And in the same way that folks like Chouinard have the ability to have an outsized influence on the causes they care about because they were billionaires at one point, so too do more nefarious billionaires have the opportunity to have an outsized, deleterious impact on society at large.

26:23And I don't think I need to go down the list of examples that are populating my head right now. Well said. Patagonia. Hey, when you say that, obviously the company comes to mind. But I will remind everyone that it is a region in South America. And it's a place where I had the opportunity to visit with Chouinard during my reporting of this book. And Patagonia, if you ever have the opportunity to go, go. It is a profound experience to be in the nature that is encompassed in this region, which stretches from Argentina down through Chile to the tip of South America. And I cannot tell you how incredibly moving it is to behold those mountains and those glaciers and the rivers and the fields.

27:19It is untouched planet Earth in a way that is getting harder and harder to find. Yeah. I mean, when I hear Patagonia, I think of that area in Argentina. but I do think of this brand and I do think of the exceptional quality of the brand. And I will say this to you, David, I want to get you to react to it. I do believe the names matter. Apple matters. Nike matters. Meaning if it was named Junkie as opposed to Nike, probably wouldn't have done as well. Right. You know, if it was named Eggplant as opposed to Apple, which is coming from the tree of life and Genesis and the Bible, probably doesn't do as well.

28:05Am I wrong on that? No, and you're right. And you're touching on another important truth here, which is that Chouinard always had a real knack for branding. He just had a gift for it. And in 1973, when he needed a name for the clothing company, he seized on Patagonia. He had just been there a few years earlier with some of his friends on this epic expedition. They got trapped in an ice cave. They almost died. They settled at this crazy mountain. That mountain becomes the inspiration for the logo. And Patagonia is one of these words like Shangri-La that conjures up this sense of like a sort of a remote magical place.

28:44But it was more than that. Patagonia was also a region that he wanted to make clothes that were strong enough to stand up to the elements in that harsh environment. And he did all of that and more. Okay, last word, and then I give you the last word, Yvon Chouinard. You know, I first and foremost think of this man in the natural world. Like when I close my eyes and imagine him, he's not behind a desk. He's fishing. He's walking in the woods. He's climbing. And so I think of him as an outdoorsman as much as I think of him as an entrepreneur. Well, I mean, this is a phenomenal interview, even better book.

29:31I mean, I loved it, David. So the title of the book is Dirtbag Billionaire, How Yvonne Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune and Gave It All Away. But there's so much in this book about culture and resilience and management decision making and sticking to the roots of value and customer and quality and all this other stuff. but the legendary david gellis uh thank you so much for joining us on open book always a pleasure anthony thanks for having me