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Building the Brand with Lululemon Founder
Join host Brett Gilliland in an exclusive interview with Chip Wilson, the visionary founder of Lululemon. Discover the secrets behind Lululemon’s rise to luxury brand status and Chip’s entrepreneurial journey. Learn how he identified a new market in the ’90s, created quality products at competitive prices, and embraced personal development for success.
**Key Highlights:**
– ?♂️ Unveiling the Yoga Apparel Revolution
– ? Investing in Overlooked Talent: Empowering Women in Business
– ? Chip Wilson’s Focus 90 Strategy: Goal Setting for Success
– ? Taking Risks and Doing Meaningful Work: Advice to the Younger Self
Tune in to gain insights into Chip’s “grind” of building a business, his timeless advice, and the impactful Focus 90 strategy. Don’t miss this episode filled with inspiration and practical wisdom from the man who changed the game in athletic apparel!
#Lululemon #Entrepreneurship #SuccessStories #Focus90Strategy #BusinessInnovation
Watch HERE on Youtube!
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I’m your host, Brett Gilliland. And today,
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I’m so decided to be with an entrepreneur,
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an author. He is the founder of lululemon,
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and, his name is Chip Wilson Chip. How
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are you doing today? Fantastic, Brett. Fantastic. Awesome.
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Well, it’s great to have you. It’s, you’ve
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got a heck of a story, and I’m
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excited for our listeners to, hear that. Like,
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on every show, I always ask Chip is,
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it’s a big question, but what what helped
00:00:38.000 –> 00:00:39.000
make you the man you are today? Cause
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you are more than, obviously, the father a
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five boys, a husband, an entrepreneur,
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and an author.
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What helps you make all those things?
00:00:49.000 –> 00:00:51.000
So everyone wondered how much is genetics and
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how much is environment, and I think I
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had the perfect amount of both. You know,
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as
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athletic, you know, a father who is an
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athlete and a mom who is, home sour.
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And then I then I think we just
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never had much money. Kind of that lower
00:01:06.000 –> 00:01:08.000
kinda middle class debt. It was a you
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don’t make as much money as a phys
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ed teacher.
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And, but I think I had a lot
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of drive. And I think that that I
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sometimes wonder is that genetic, or is that,
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was I, you know, was that
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built into me. I don’t know. But I
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feel like I just wanted to succeed. I
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wanted to find out what was going on
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in the world. I wanted to add all
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these ideas, and I wondered if everyone else
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had the same idea.
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And so that, that drive obviously helped you
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very much in the, in the in the
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business, but we’ll we’ll talk about Lululemon in
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a little bit, but I know you you
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got into what cert you had the surf
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company. You had a skate company, a snowboarding
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company,
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all sorts of stuff. So tell us about
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those.
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Well, when I graduated at a university, it’s
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twenty five, so it’s on the eight year
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bachelor program.
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I never know that.
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I started to do triathlons and that was
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I mean, that was a long time ago.
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So nineteen probably eighty, I guess. And that
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then there was only about ten people in
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the world doing triathlons.
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I had,
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I quickly found out that there was no
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good clothing, especially for that kind of distance
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and a lot of rushing, a lot of
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issues. And because my mom was a sower
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and had some ideas. I started making triathlon
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clothing, but, of course, there wasn’t enough people
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to make it.
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I was originally from California San Diego and
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living in Canada.
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And,
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and so I
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with that, I started
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supplementing what I had and start bringing up
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surf gear from Gordon Smith and Stucy and
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O. B. Bellabaugh and quicksilver and that into
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Canada. Really the first person to bring that
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into Canada, kind of a a virgin territory
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for that market.
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And,
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And so I think that I just,
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that
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the travel and stuff didn’t go, but the
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surf stuff went really well. And then That
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kind of had its rise and fall because
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you start in almost every industry. You start
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off with three businesses.
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It goes to five hundred and then falls
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to three again.
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And so as that was going up and
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falling, then skateboarding was coming up and then
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falling and then snowboarding,
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you know, came up and then started falling
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too. So I I followed those general trends.
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And so you followed those trends, and then
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you saw another trend, around mindfulness and yoga,
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and and you started this, this little company
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called lululemon.
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So talk to us about that. I’m I’m
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wearing lululemon pants right now too. Hope that’s
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alright. I wear them all the time.
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Well, you never know what people are wearing
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behind the microphone. That’s right. Sitting down.
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That’s right.
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I think,
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like I said, I saw these, you
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know, athletic social trends, you know, rise and
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fall
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I had failed a couple times. I tried
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beach volleyball, and I tried mountain biking. But
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what I discovered is neither of those sports,
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which became big. No one wanted to look
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like that on the street.
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So,
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You know, I got I got I sold
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my Suresgate snowboard company,
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and I sat around for a Wilson, and
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I kinda looked around. And of course, I
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was injured from from falling a lot, snowboarding
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and skateboarding. So I started doing yoga
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first class that was in Vancouver type of
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thing, and I looked around and I went
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You know, this is gonna this is pretty
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cool. This is gonna be I could sense
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it went from six people to thirty people
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in one month
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And,
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and if I extrapolated back the seerskates snowboard
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business, I went, wow, this is gonna be
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just as big. And it’s much opportunity.
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So I had an expertise in technical apparel,
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especially first layer of stretch for women that
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would went under snowboard clothing.
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And I just started making it, a version
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of that for yoga.
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And,
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and then I could go into a million
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different ways going from there, but maybe you
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have another question you wanna lead with. Well,
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I just I think it’s, you know, it’s
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one thing to have an idea. It’s one
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thing to say, oh, you know, my mom
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you know, knew how to do this stuff.
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I know how to do that stuff. But,
00:05:06.000 –> 00:05:08.000
I mean, how do you go out and
00:05:08.000 –> 00:05:10.000
then just create this little lemon craze? And
00:05:10.000 –> 00:05:11.000
I know we could talk about that for
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hours, but it has become a brand that
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I think is, you know, in the athletic
00:05:16.000 –> 00:05:19.000
wear, obviously, but it’s also a a symbol,
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you know, the the kids want it.
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You know, moms want it, dads want it.
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Now, heck, my some of my boys, you
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know, wanna wear the t shirts and stuff.
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I mean, you’ve created this thing that’s that’s
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become a brand, a symbol. Right? And so
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how did that happen? Cause it doesn’t just
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happen overnight?
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Yeah. So you’re looking for the, moment, and
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then what to do with type of thing
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because of Yeah. Sense.
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When,
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so I was in the middle of this
00:05:47.000 –> 00:05:48.000
yoga Gilliland
00:05:48.000 –> 00:05:50.000
I was only like fifteen days into it.
00:05:50.000 –> 00:05:52.000
And I read an article in the newspaper
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where it said sixty percent of the graduates
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at a university for now, a woman
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And in nineteen ninety eight, that was a
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phenomenal number because when I went to university,
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it felt like twenty percent.
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Sure. Maybe because I couldn’t get any dates.
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It felt like twenty percent.
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Yeah. Right. So, it it really I mean,
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that was astounding to me. And it didn’t
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work in a lot of reading in Africa
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about the whole goal was to educate women
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because the
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the more educated women are than the fewer
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children they will have and the longer they’ll
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wait to have children.
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So I extrapolated
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out, and I went, oh my god, you
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know, for the first time ever we’re gonna
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end up with a brand new employee
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and a brand new consumer that’s consumer that’s
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never existed before.
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A highly educated university woman that now goes
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into the workforce and now suddenly
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isn’t leaving at the age of twenty four
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to have a Wilson
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And so they’re gonna wait till they’re thirty
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two. So that’s that’s what I extrapolated. So
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with that market then became the new Lululemon
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employee, and it him a customer that was,
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highly educated media savvy
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owned their own condo traveled with as was
00:07:05.000 –> 00:07:06.000
athletic, stylish,
00:07:06.000 –> 00:07:09.000
basically a lot of consumer spending involved.
00:07:11.000 –> 00:07:11.000
And so
00:07:12.000 –> 00:07:15.000
I went so That was there. And then
00:07:15.000 –> 00:07:18.000
also I could sense that in the nineties,
00:07:18.000 –> 00:07:20.000
there was a there was a lot of
00:07:20.000 –> 00:07:22.000
talk in the media about breast cancer for
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Gilliland
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I and I had sensed from being in
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the workforce and kinda and being the age
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I am that,
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prior to that, you know, woman who came
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into the workforce,
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were kinda emulating their fathers.
00:07:34.000 –> 00:07:36.000
And they were doing the three Martini lunches.
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They were smoking cigarettes
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because they thought that that’s what was successful.
00:07:41.000 –> 00:07:43.000
And I think, you know, when you combine
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that with the heavy dose of the pill
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at that time, I think it created, you
00:07:47.000 –> 00:07:47.000
know, the
00:07:48.000 –> 00:07:51.000
atmosphere for breast cancer at that time. So
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I think when when these,
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when these
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girls at work, twenty now gonna be twenty
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two to thirty two, which I call who
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I call super girls,
00:08:01.000 –> 00:08:04.000
had these power woman, mothers who were basically
00:08:05.000 –> 00:08:05.000
unhealthy,
00:08:06.000 –> 00:08:08.000
and these super girls just didn’t wanna live
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their life like that.
00:08:09.000 –> 00:08:12.000
And I think that yoga was something that
00:08:12.000 –> 00:08:12.000
was
00:08:13.000 –> 00:08:15.000
accessible. It was feminine. And what I mean,
00:08:15.000 –> 00:08:17.000
accessible, they could do at lunch hour. They
00:08:17.000 –> 00:08:19.000
could do it in the morning. Didn’t have
00:08:19.000 –> 00:08:20.000
to go to snow, you know, find the
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surf. You didn’t have to find the mountains.
00:08:23.000 –> 00:08:23.000
Yeah. And,
00:08:24.000 –> 00:08:26.000
and it was, yeah, so it was feminine,
00:08:26.000 –> 00:08:28.000
stylish, the whole works. And I think,
00:08:29.000 –> 00:08:31.000
when you combine that with I had a
00:08:31.000 –> 00:08:33.000
couple other ideas. Do you wanna hear them?
00:08:33.000 –> 00:08:34.000
Sure. Sure.
00:08:34.000 –> 00:08:36.000
Well, I call this I call this Supergirl
00:08:36.000 –> 00:08:39.000
Supergirls because that in the in the nineties,
00:08:40.000 –> 00:08:42.000
for the first time, you saw a girl
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in,
00:08:43.000 –> 00:08:45.000
with superheroes like cartoons.
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And so they they were wearing lycra, and
00:08:48.000 –> 00:08:50.000
they were equal in power to men. And
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I think that the supergirl mothers were wearing
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all the big power suits with the big
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shoulder pads looking very mannish,
00:08:58.000 –> 00:09:00.000
but who the girls were looking up to
00:09:00.000 –> 00:09:03.000
were these like lycra clad power superheroes on
00:09:03.000 –> 00:09:04.000
TV.
00:09:04.000 –> 00:09:05.000
So
00:09:05.000 –> 00:09:06.000
I also think that,
00:09:07.000 –> 00:09:10.000
in the nineties are, you had amazing the
00:09:10.000 –> 00:09:11.000
public divorces
00:09:11.000 –> 00:09:12.000
peaked.
00:09:12.000 –> 00:09:14.000
And I think you had,
00:09:15.000 –> 00:09:17.000
fathers who didn’t ever knew what to do
00:09:17.000 –> 00:09:18.000
with they with their daughters.
00:09:19.000 –> 00:09:23.000
Right. They became baseball coaches, soccer coaches, and
00:09:23.000 –> 00:09:25.000
athletic coaches. And so I think these girls
00:09:25.000 –> 00:09:28.000
became exceedingly athletic And,
00:09:29.000 –> 00:09:32.000
and I think that the, you know, basically,
00:09:32.000 –> 00:09:34.000
they those all those things kinda combine together
00:09:35.000 –> 00:09:38.000
provided the the perfect template for this new
00:09:38.000 –> 00:09:39.000
market and this new sport.
00:09:41.000 –> 00:09:43.000
So do you want me I am a
00:09:43.000 –> 00:09:45.000
pause there for a second. I’m just thinking
00:09:45.000 –> 00:09:46.000
in my mind about it it seems like
00:09:46.000 –> 00:09:48.000
you are a very deep thinker. Right? I
00:09:48.000 –> 00:09:50.000
mean, you keep think I think this. I
00:09:50.000 –> 00:09:52.000
think that I mean, you’re tying the kinda
00:09:52.000 –> 00:09:55.000
the comic wonder woman type person to the
00:09:55.000 –> 00:09:56.000
business woman today,
00:09:57.000 –> 00:09:59.000
and and you bring that together into this
00:09:59.000 –> 00:10:01.000
brand. Right? So when when you think when
00:10:01.000 –> 00:10:03.000
you say, I think. Are you a thinker?
00:10:03.000 –> 00:10:05.000
Are you sitting around in a room thinking
00:10:05.000 –> 00:10:06.000
all day? What are you doing?
00:10:07.000 –> 00:10:09.000
I’m I’m probably your reader.
00:10:09.000 –> 00:10:12.000
Okay. Phenomenal amount and all those have. I
00:10:12.000 –> 00:10:12.000
and I
00:10:13.000 –> 00:10:15.000
where’d that come from? I don’t know, but
00:10:15.000 –> 00:10:16.000
it’s
00:10:17.000 –> 00:10:19.000
You know, I would I’d read every magazine,
00:10:19.000 –> 00:10:21.000
three or four newspapers a day.
00:10:23.000 –> 00:10:25.000
I very rarely watch TV when I was
00:10:25.000 –> 00:10:26.000
young.
00:10:27.000 –> 00:10:29.000
And even to today except for Netflix is
00:10:29.000 –> 00:10:31.000
kinda taking a little bit.
00:10:32.000 –> 00:10:34.000
And I think that I just lose all
00:10:34.000 –> 00:10:34.000
extrapolated.
00:10:35.000 –> 00:10:38.000
I was extrapolating out ideas, and I was,
00:10:38.000 –> 00:10:41.000
meshing two different ideas together.
00:10:42.000 –> 00:10:44.000
And basically, what I could see three things
00:10:44.000 –> 00:10:46.000
happen very, very quickly. I would jump on
00:10:46.000 –> 00:10:48.000
it, which is kinda what I didn’t surf
00:10:48.000 –> 00:10:50.000
skate snowboard, and then again, in yoga.
00:10:51.000 –> 00:10:53.000
So I would have seen, I, the first
00:10:53.000 –> 00:10:55.000
yoga class I would have had would have
00:10:55.000 –> 00:10:57.000
had a little poster on a telephone, post
00:10:57.000 –> 00:10:59.000
a little rip off telephone. Do you know
00:10:59.000 –> 00:11:01.000
that type of thing? And then maybe a
00:11:01.000 –> 00:11:03.000
couple days later, I would have heard two
00:11:03.000 –> 00:11:04.000
people talk
00:11:04.000 –> 00:11:06.000
in the coffee shop about yoga.
00:11:07.000 –> 00:11:08.000
And then I would have read an article
00:11:08.000 –> 00:11:10.000
about yoga in the newspaper
00:11:10.000 –> 00:11:12.000
or something, you know, that I went, and
00:11:12.000 –> 00:11:13.000
I’d go, oh my god. Like, I’ve I’ve
00:11:13.000 –> 00:11:17.000
never never, like, seen anything about yoga. And
00:11:17.000 –> 00:11:19.000
now three things in one week, like,
00:11:20.000 –> 00:11:22.000
That’s when an entrepreneur is someone who has
00:11:22.000 –> 00:11:25.000
an idea jumps on it. And then once
00:11:25.000 –> 00:11:27.000
once that three things happen, I mean, I
00:11:27.000 –> 00:11:29.000
can My mind immediately goes out twenty years.
00:11:30.000 –> 00:11:32.000
And it goes now. Chip is something that
00:11:32.000 –> 00:11:34.000
I should do or not do. And,
00:11:35.000 –> 00:11:36.000
At that time in my life, I could
00:11:36.000 –> 00:11:37.000
definitely have,
00:11:38.000 –> 00:11:41.000
I’ve done nothing. I had sold my my
00:11:41.000 –> 00:11:43.000
first company, and when I mean nothing, that
00:11:43.000 –> 00:11:44.000
means I’d have to job as a Brett
00:11:45.000 –> 00:11:47.000
at Starbucks to, you know, but I could’ve
00:11:47.000 –> 00:11:49.000
paid off a house and bought a car
00:11:49.000 –> 00:11:51.000
and sent my kids to, to school. So,
00:11:52.000 –> 00:11:54.000
But, you know, they decided to jump back
00:11:54.000 –> 00:11:57.000
in. The idea would do good. Yeah. So
00:11:57.000 –> 00:12:00.000
talk about the the success of lululemon, but
00:12:00.000 –> 00:12:01.000
on the flip side of that, we’re gonna
00:12:01.000 –> 00:12:02.000
I would like to talk about what’s what’s
00:12:02.000 –> 00:12:04.000
some of the stuff that maybe brought you
00:12:04.000 –> 00:12:05.000
to your needs or some of your failures
00:12:05.000 –> 00:12:07.000
that you publicly shared that,
00:12:07.000 –> 00:12:09.000
you know, so many of us, I think
00:12:09.000 –> 00:12:10.000
we look at people like you and we
00:12:10.000 –> 00:12:12.000
say, oh, god. Here’s this guy that had
00:12:12.000 –> 00:12:15.000
this, you know, meteoric rise to success, but
00:12:15.000 –> 00:12:17.000
clearly it wasn’t that. And and so what
00:12:17.000 –> 00:12:18.000
are some of those failures that as a
00:12:18.000 –> 00:12:22.000
newer lululemon founder that you were bumping into,
00:12:22.000 –> 00:12:23.000
that that were really tough.
00:12:24.000 –> 00:12:25.000
Well, yeah.
00:12:26.000 –> 00:12:28.000
Even before I see that, I think, to
00:12:28.000 –> 00:12:30.000
say twenty years, I had this company called
00:12:30.000 –> 00:12:33.000
the West Beach surf company, Gilliland
00:12:33.000 –> 00:12:35.000
it didn’t make any money. So it was
00:12:35.000 –> 00:12:37.000
every year, I thought it would do better.
00:12:37.000 –> 00:12:38.000
Every year, I thought it would do better
00:12:38.000 –> 00:12:39.000
every year.
00:12:40.000 –> 00:12:40.000
And,
00:12:40.000 –> 00:12:42.000
at the end of the day, I had
00:12:42.000 –> 00:12:43.000
these two
00:12:46.000 –> 00:12:48.000
two retail stores of our own. We made
00:12:48.000 –> 00:12:50.000
our own clothing designed and put it in
00:12:50.000 –> 00:12:52.000
our stores And these two stores made a
00:12:52.000 –> 00:12:54.000
million dollars a year, and these two and
00:12:54.000 –> 00:12:57.000
these mid this international wholesale business we had
00:12:57.000 –> 00:12:58.000
lost a million dollars a year.
00:12:59.000 –> 00:13:01.000
So what I’m really getting at there is
00:13:01.000 –> 00:13:03.000
that there was, like, twenty years of learning.
00:13:03.000 –> 00:13:05.000
And then to be able to sell that
00:13:05.000 –> 00:13:08.000
and sit back and go, okay. What didn’t
00:13:08.000 –> 00:13:10.000
work about that and what did work about
00:13:10.000 –> 00:13:12.000
it? So what did work about it is
00:13:12.000 –> 00:13:14.000
the vertical retailer, get getting rid of the
00:13:14.000 –> 00:13:15.000
wholesaler.
00:13:16.000 –> 00:13:19.000
Now almost everybody gets into wholesale because you
00:13:19.000 –> 00:13:21.000
can make a few samples, show it to
00:13:21.000 –> 00:13:22.000
a lot of people, get a lot of
00:13:22.000 –> 00:13:25.000
orders, and then go to a manufacturer, get
00:13:25.000 –> 00:13:26.000
it done. But then you have to then
00:13:26.000 –> 00:13:29.000
there’s a big, big middle man in between
00:13:29.000 –> 00:13:31.000
that’s taking a lot of the profit.
00:13:31.000 –> 00:13:32.000
So
00:13:33.000 –> 00:13:35.000
I’m I’m getting around to your question. Oh,
00:13:35.000 –> 00:13:38.000
this is great. But it’s it’s it was
00:13:38.000 –> 00:13:39.000
a matter of
00:13:39.000 –> 00:13:41.000
I had to get to five stores.
00:13:42.000 –> 00:13:44.000
In order to get economy of scale production
00:13:45.000 –> 00:13:47.000
in order to get my cost down on
00:13:47.000 –> 00:13:49.000
my product to make any product.
00:13:49.000 –> 00:13:51.000
And when you come out with a brand
00:13:51.000 –> 00:13:53.000
new brand and a net brand new product
00:13:54.000 –> 00:13:56.000
with no marketing dollars,
00:13:56.000 –> 00:13:58.000
zero, and none,
00:13:58.000 –> 00:13:59.000
then
00:13:59.000 –> 00:14:00.000
then that’s a struggle.
00:14:01.000 –> 00:14:03.000
And that’s what every almost every entrepreneur that
00:14:03.000 –> 00:14:05.000
goes into anything that needs mass production,
00:14:06.000 –> 00:14:07.000
goes through.
00:14:07.000 –> 00:14:08.000
So
00:14:08.000 –> 00:14:10.000
I borrowed I bought a house. I bought
00:14:10.000 –> 00:14:12.000
a house for about half a million dollars
00:14:12.000 –> 00:14:15.000
in nineteen ninety eight. I brought two hundred
00:14:15.000 –> 00:14:17.000
million two hundred thousand on it.
00:14:17.000 –> 00:14:19.000
Got through about a year,
00:14:19.000 –> 00:14:22.000
borrowed another two hundred thousand dollars on it.
00:14:22.000 –> 00:14:22.000
And,
00:14:24.000 –> 00:14:26.000
and then, and then that’s it. Right? And
00:14:26.000 –> 00:14:28.000
then I ran out of that And then
00:14:28.000 –> 00:14:30.000
I had done some wholesale because I had
00:14:30.000 –> 00:14:32.000
to do wholesale in order to get my
00:14:32.000 –> 00:14:34.000
economy of scale numbers up, that company went
00:14:34.000 –> 00:14:35.000
bankrupt.
00:14:36.000 –> 00:14:37.000
And so now I didn’t have enough money
00:14:37.000 –> 00:14:38.000
to pay my employees.
00:14:39.000 –> 00:14:40.000
And,
00:14:40.000 –> 00:14:42.000
so I got a job,
00:14:43.000 –> 00:14:45.000
West Beach moved back from Portland back to
00:14:45.000 –> 00:14:47.000
Vancouver, and they offered me my job to
00:14:47.000 –> 00:14:49.000
be CEO. So I took that job in
00:14:49.000 –> 00:14:51.000
order to fund Lou Gilliland
00:14:51.000 –> 00:14:53.000
then we ran out of that money.
00:14:53.000 –> 00:14:55.000
And then I if I hadn’t and then
00:14:55.000 –> 00:14:58.000
that Christmas, if I hadn’t got fired from
00:14:58.000 –> 00:15:00.000
West Beach, because they con they really combine
00:15:00.000 –> 00:15:03.000
SIMs skateboards in West Beach, our West Beach,
00:15:04.000 –> 00:15:06.000
snowboard together, and so that CEO took over.
00:15:06.000 –> 00:15:09.000
So I got a fifty thousand dollar severance.
00:15:09.000 –> 00:15:11.000
If it wasn’t for that fifty Little little
00:15:11.000 –> 00:15:12.000
grading room.
00:15:13.000 –> 00:15:14.000
It never would have happened.
00:15:15.000 –> 00:15:16.000
So there was a bunch of things in
00:15:16.000 –> 00:15:17.000
there that,
00:15:18.000 –> 00:15:20.000
and actually another thing that happened is that
00:15:20.000 –> 00:15:23.000
the Vancouver Housing prices were going up so
00:15:23.000 –> 00:15:23.000
fast.
00:15:24.000 –> 00:15:26.000
That I was able actually to take another
00:15:26.000 –> 00:15:26.000
hundred thousand,
00:15:27.000 –> 00:15:29.000
you know, at that point. Right. So there
00:15:29.000 –> 00:15:31.000
it was I was mortgaged to the Wilson,
00:15:31.000 –> 00:15:33.000
and had everything in this business, and it
00:15:33.000 –> 00:15:35.000
was either gonna work or I was in
00:15:35.000 –> 00:15:36.000
a lot of trouble.
00:15:37.000 –> 00:15:40.000
Yeah. Or and homeless. Right? So it’s but
00:15:40.000 –> 00:15:41.000
talk about that because there’s a lot of
00:15:41.000 –> 00:15:43.000
learning even just in that is a lot
00:15:43.000 –> 00:15:45.000
of people are are listening this. Right? They
00:15:45.000 –> 00:15:46.000
may be driving on the road. They may
00:15:46.000 –> 00:15:48.000
be in their and they’re not happy. They’ve
00:15:48.000 –> 00:15:51.000
got this great idea, this vision that’s twenty
00:15:51.000 –> 00:15:52.000
years long,
00:15:52.000 –> 00:15:54.000
but a lot of people are scared to
00:15:54.000 –> 00:15:55.000
go take
00:15:55.000 –> 00:15:57.000
three loans off their house, right, and going
00:15:57.000 –> 00:15:59.000
to Brett. And as you would say, push
00:15:59.000 –> 00:16:00.000
all the chips in. Right? A lot of
00:16:00.000 –> 00:16:01.000
people are scared to do that. So what
00:16:01.000 –> 00:16:03.000
was it about you that was different? Do
00:16:03.000 –> 00:16:03.000
you think?
00:16:04.000 –> 00:16:06.000
Well, I think for me, because I’d seen
00:16:06.000 –> 00:16:08.000
it three times before in the search gauge
00:16:08.000 –> 00:16:10.000
somewhere business, I I had an idea of
00:16:10.000 –> 00:16:13.000
where was going. I also had f evidence
00:16:13.000 –> 00:16:17.000
of this new business, this new business model
00:16:17.000 –> 00:16:18.000
of being vertical and not wholesale.
00:16:19.000 –> 00:16:21.000
I could also sense that whoever got into
00:16:21.000 –> 00:16:24.000
a lululemon product, you could see in their
00:16:24.000 –> 00:16:27.000
eyes. You could see how they feel. They
00:16:27.000 –> 00:16:29.000
when they bought the the clothing, they just
00:16:29.000 –> 00:16:31.000
didn’t buy one thing. They were buying three
00:16:31.000 –> 00:16:31.000
things.
00:16:32.000 –> 00:16:32.000
And
00:16:33.000 –> 00:16:34.000
it it wasn’t,
00:16:37.000 –> 00:16:38.000
It was just like I had to have
00:16:38.000 –> 00:16:40.000
faith because I knew I had the right
00:16:40.000 –> 00:16:43.000
product at the right time for the right
00:16:43.000 –> 00:16:44.000
market. And,
00:16:44.000 –> 00:16:47.000
and then I had to let myself, I
00:16:47.000 –> 00:16:48.000
wanted to let word-of-mouth
00:16:48.000 –> 00:16:49.000
make it work.
00:16:50.000 –> 00:16:51.000
And,
00:16:51.000 –> 00:16:53.000
anyway, but you’re getting back to the people
00:16:53.000 –> 00:16:55.000
that are sitting on the freeway listening to
00:16:55.000 –> 00:16:58.000
it. I think there’s two things for me,
00:16:58.000 –> 00:17:00.000
and that is if I was sitting on
00:17:00.000 –> 00:17:02.000
my deathbed and I didn’t do it, would
00:17:02.000 –> 00:17:04.000
I always be regretting it? I only have
00:17:04.000 –> 00:17:05.000
life to live.
00:17:05.000 –> 00:17:06.000
And
00:17:06.000 –> 00:17:08.000
is it a life worth living?
00:17:09.000 –> 00:17:10.000
And I think the other thing on the
00:17:10.000 –> 00:17:12.000
other side I look at, which is quite
00:17:12.000 –> 00:17:15.000
recent, would my twelve year old self be
00:17:15.000 –> 00:17:16.000
proud of me today?
00:17:17.000 –> 00:17:20.000
And and that really is an interesting thought
00:17:20.000 –> 00:17:21.000
because it goes,
00:17:21.000 –> 00:17:24.000
you know, like, did I did I They
00:17:24.000 –> 00:17:25.000
play in life of fear and do they
00:17:25.000 –> 00:17:27.000
live a life of possibility.
00:17:29.000 –> 00:17:30.000
She’s writing that down. Would my twelve year
00:17:30.000 –> 00:17:32.000
old self be proud of me today? That’s
00:17:32.000 –> 00:17:34.000
that’s phenomenal. Gilliland
00:17:34.000 –> 00:17:36.000
I think too, it’s it has become this,
00:17:36.000 –> 00:17:39.000
like, luxury brand. Right? It it’s whether you
00:17:39.000 –> 00:17:41.000
have your iPhone and a lululemon
00:17:42.000 –> 00:17:44.000
pants and your you know, Louis Vuitton purse,
00:17:44.000 –> 00:17:46.000
right, for the women, you know, in the
00:17:46.000 –> 00:17:48.000
world. And and it’s but how does that
00:17:48.000 –> 00:17:50.000
happen to win at the time? I guess
00:17:50.000 –> 00:17:52.000
it really wasn’t a lot of competition, but
00:17:52.000 –> 00:17:54.000
you’re still able now to go out and
00:17:54.000 –> 00:17:56.000
sell a hundred and twenty dollar pair of
00:17:56.000 –> 00:17:57.000
pants in that world, right, a pair of
00:17:57.000 –> 00:17:59.000
yoga pants when everybody else wants to charge
00:17:59.000 –> 00:18:01.000
fifty bucks. I mean, how do you get
00:18:01.000 –> 00:18:01.000
away with that?
00:18:02.000 –> 00:18:03.000
Well, because,
00:18:04.000 –> 00:18:06.000
people are under the perception that it’s the
00:18:06.000 –> 00:18:07.000
same product.
00:18:08.000 –> 00:18:09.000
Yeah. It’s not. At the end of the
00:18:09.000 –> 00:18:10.000
day,
00:18:11.000 –> 00:18:12.000
The idea
00:18:13.000 –> 00:18:15.000
was to make a better quality product at
00:18:15.000 –> 00:18:17.000
a better price than the competition.
00:18:18.000 –> 00:18:20.000
The fact is is the competition can’t make
00:18:20.000 –> 00:18:22.000
a better product than the them. And the
00:18:22.000 –> 00:18:24.000
reason is is because Lu Lemma’s vertical
00:18:25.000 –> 00:18:28.000
doesn’t have to doesn’t have any wholesale. So
00:18:28.000 –> 00:18:30.000
it can make because it it only sells
00:18:30.000 –> 00:18:32.000
to itself. It doesn’t have to have the
00:18:32.000 –> 00:18:33.000
same,
00:18:36.000 –> 00:18:36.000
markups.
00:18:37.000 –> 00:18:38.000
So what am I saying there?
00:18:40.000 –> 00:18:43.000
So what what ends up, because Lululemon can
00:18:43.000 –> 00:18:44.000
make a better quality product at a better
00:18:44.000 –> 00:18:47.000
price, it’s goods are made out of Wilson.
00:18:47.000 –> 00:18:50.000
Not polyester. So polyester stinks,
00:18:50.000 –> 00:18:51.000
and polyester
00:18:51.000 –> 00:18:54.000
doesn’t feel the same way that nylon does.
00:18:54.000 –> 00:18:56.000
It doesn’t it doesn’t combine with the lycra
00:18:56.000 –> 00:18:57.000
heart.
00:18:57.000 –> 00:18:58.000
Or the,
00:18:59.000 –> 00:19:00.000
or the technical
00:19:01.000 –> 00:19:04.000
properties that we can put inside fibers can
00:19:04.000 –> 00:19:06.000
go inside nylon so much better than polyester.
00:19:07.000 –> 00:19:09.000
So the, you know, the anti stain anti
00:19:09.000 –> 00:19:10.000
wicking,
00:19:11.000 –> 00:19:12.000
the breathability,
00:19:13.000 –> 00:19:15.000
it’s just an entirely different product.
00:19:15.000 –> 00:19:16.000
But
00:19:16.000 –> 00:19:18.000
you can’t really flu lemon is was set
00:19:18.000 –> 00:19:21.000
up never to kinda like be a raw
00:19:21.000 –> 00:19:24.000
raw about itself. You know, so it doesn’t
00:19:24.000 –> 00:19:25.000
have to be We put all our money
00:19:25.000 –> 00:19:27.000
into training and development of people and the
00:19:27.000 –> 00:19:30.000
quality of the product, and we let people
00:19:30.000 –> 00:19:32.000
talk for the for it for the product.
00:19:32.000 –> 00:19:34.000
While you’re talking about that, I know personal
00:19:34.000 –> 00:19:36.000
development was a big deal for you personally,
00:19:36.000 –> 00:19:37.000
but also was a really big deal for
00:19:37.000 –> 00:19:39.000
your employees. So talk about that and what
00:19:39.000 –> 00:19:41.000
role that played in the company.
00:19:42.000 –> 00:19:45.000
Well, I was selfish and that I when
00:19:45.000 –> 00:19:47.000
I started Lou Lem and I just decided
00:19:47.000 –> 00:19:48.000
I never wanted to be with anybody, I
00:19:48.000 –> 00:19:51.000
didn’t who wasn’t phenomenal Wilson Brett, and I
00:19:51.000 –> 00:19:52.000
wanted to go to work with every day.
00:19:52.000 –> 00:19:54.000
That’s where I spent all my time.
00:19:54.000 –> 00:19:55.000
So
00:19:55.000 –> 00:19:57.000
so from that point of view, I just
00:19:57.000 –> 00:19:58.000
want people to know that it was a
00:19:58.000 –> 00:19:59.000
selfish thing,
00:20:00.000 –> 00:20:00.000
but And,
00:20:01.000 –> 00:20:03.000
but I also knew that
00:20:04.000 –> 00:20:06.000
that suddenly you had all these women that
00:20:06.000 –> 00:20:08.000
were out of the universe see. And no
00:20:08.000 –> 00:20:10.000
and I think I was the only person
00:20:10.000 –> 00:20:13.000
that could really see that they were gonna
00:20:13.000 –> 00:20:15.000
be around for at least eight years, nine
00:20:15.000 –> 00:20:17.000
years before they had before they had a
00:20:17.000 –> 00:20:18.000
family.
00:20:18.000 –> 00:20:21.000
So they were really worth investing in. And
00:20:21.000 –> 00:20:24.000
I gotta get no other company was investing
00:20:24.000 –> 00:20:26.000
in women at that time. It just it
00:20:26.000 –> 00:20:28.000
was just no return on it.
00:20:28.000 –> 00:20:29.000
So
00:20:29.000 –> 00:20:32.000
so to be so I think the woman
00:20:32.000 –> 00:20:34.000
that came to Lou, Gilliland, like, they were
00:20:34.000 –> 00:20:37.000
ready for it. They wanted something. And because,
00:20:39.000 –> 00:20:42.000
personal development at that time was very unmasked
00:20:42.000 –> 00:20:44.000
masculine, but very feminine. I think Chip is
00:20:44.000 –> 00:20:46.000
the other thing that made Lou lemon work,
00:20:46.000 –> 00:20:49.000
and that woman were really willing to take
00:20:49.000 –> 00:20:50.000
on, like,
00:20:51.000 –> 00:20:53.000
who am I and how am I how
00:20:53.000 –> 00:20:54.000
am I the most effective?
00:20:54.000 –> 00:20:56.000
How do I communicate?
00:20:57.000 –> 00:20:58.000
When, you know, what is responsibility?
00:20:59.000 –> 00:21:00.000
What is integrity?
00:21:00.000 –> 00:21:02.000
You know, these things that I think men
00:21:02.000 –> 00:21:04.000
were masking, but women were really willing to
00:21:04.000 –> 00:21:06.000
face up to. So
00:21:07.000 –> 00:21:09.000
our whole program then was set up around
00:21:09.000 –> 00:21:10.000
those concepts,
00:21:11.000 –> 00:21:11.000
integrity
00:21:12.000 –> 00:21:13.000
responsibility,
00:21:13.000 –> 00:21:15.000
and, which everyone’s
00:21:15.000 –> 00:21:18.000
everyone says that. Right? But here’s Here’s the
00:21:18.000 –> 00:21:19.000
thing about integrity.
00:21:21.000 –> 00:21:23.000
And everyone says they have integrity,
00:21:23.000 –> 00:21:25.000
but inside a company, if everyone has a
00:21:25.000 –> 00:21:28.000
different definition of integrity, And in fact, there
00:21:28.000 –> 00:21:29.000
is no integrity.
00:21:31.000 –> 00:21:33.000
So the company has to have one definition
00:21:33.000 –> 00:21:37.000
of integrity, which then is then everyone knows
00:21:37.000 –> 00:21:37.000
what it is.
00:21:38.000 –> 00:21:40.000
So out of there are the four,
00:21:40.000 –> 00:21:43.000
platforms that we used, and I would suggest
00:21:43.000 –> 00:21:45.000
this any entrepreneur, it doesn’t have to be
00:21:45.000 –> 00:21:47.000
the ones that I set out.
00:21:47.000 –> 00:21:49.000
When we so ones we use were seven
00:21:49.000 –> 00:21:51.000
habits of highly effective people,
00:21:51.000 –> 00:21:53.000
the book Good to Great, which I think
00:21:53.000 –> 00:21:55.000
is is Chip book ever.
00:21:56.000 –> 00:21:58.000
The psychology of achievement by Brian Tracy,
00:21:59.000 –> 00:22:00.000
And inside of that is an hour of
00:22:00.000 –> 00:22:02.000
the psychology of why people do and do
00:22:02.000 –> 00:22:04.000
not goal set.
00:22:04.000 –> 00:22:07.000
And then the landmark form course, which really
00:22:07.000 –> 00:22:07.000
sets
00:22:08.000 –> 00:22:09.000
What is responsibility?
00:22:09.000 –> 00:22:12.000
What is integrity? And how do people? What’s
00:22:12.000 –> 00:22:15.000
the psychology about? How and why people communicate?
00:22:15.000 –> 00:22:16.000
So you did that. So you had them
00:22:16.000 –> 00:22:18.000
read those, those four books or go through
00:22:18.000 –> 00:22:20.000
those programs. And then what was what was
00:22:20.000 –> 00:22:23.000
the the accountability to that? So, yeah, yeah,
00:22:23.000 –> 00:22:25.000
I read it, or is it Now now
00:22:25.000 –> 00:22:26.000
there’s a, you know, an hour meeting to
00:22:26.000 –> 00:22:28.000
talk about the book. What was that like?
00:22:29.000 –> 00:22:29.000
Yeah.
00:22:30.000 –> 00:22:30.000
So
00:22:30.000 –> 00:22:32.000
one, two things. One, we set up a
00:22:32.000 –> 00:22:33.000
linguistic abstractions.
00:22:33.000 –> 00:22:36.000
We had about thirty terms and definitions that
00:22:36.000 –> 00:22:38.000
that came out of these books that we
00:22:38.000 –> 00:22:40.000
use as our platform for communication.
00:22:42.000 –> 00:22:43.000
The other thing we did is that
00:22:44.000 –> 00:22:47.000
And Chip is this is actually the fascinating
00:22:47.000 –> 00:22:47.000
part.
00:22:48.000 –> 00:22:50.000
So we were so big on goal setting.
00:22:50.000 –> 00:22:53.000
So In a goal then, a goal is
00:22:53.000 –> 00:22:55.000
only a differentiates from a vision because a
00:22:55.000 –> 00:22:57.000
goal has is quantifiable
00:22:57.000 –> 00:22:58.000
with a by windy.
00:22:59.000 –> 00:23:00.000
So
00:23:00.000 –> 00:23:03.000
I’m gonna take something pretty simple. So
00:23:03.000 –> 00:23:05.000
I’m sitting there. I’m two hundred and forty
00:23:05.000 –> 00:23:07.000
two pounds, and I go, okay.
00:23:08.000 –> 00:23:11.000
By next December thirty first two thousand and
00:23:11.000 –> 00:23:11.000
twenty,
00:23:12.000 –> 00:23:15.000
I am two hundred and thirty pounds. Okay.
00:23:15.000 –> 00:23:16.000
That’s a goal. Quantifiable
00:23:16.000 –> 00:23:18.000
with the buy win date. It could be
00:23:18.000 –> 00:23:21.000
things like I will take my family to
00:23:21.000 –> 00:23:22.000
Croatia
00:23:22.000 –> 00:23:23.000
for seven days
00:23:23.000 –> 00:23:26.000
sometime next, you know, in the year 02:20,
00:23:26.000 –> 00:23:27.000
something like that. Yep.
00:23:27.000 –> 00:23:30.000
We had them split between health, business, and,
00:23:31.000 –> 00:23:32.000
and personal. Now, interesting thing
00:23:33.000 –> 00:23:33.000
about
00:23:35.000 –> 00:23:37.000
that I’ve discovered about goal setting and it
00:23:37.000 –> 00:23:40.000
really came from the landmark about creating,
00:23:41.000 –> 00:23:43.000
our present from the future, not from the
00:23:43.000 –> 00:23:44.000
past.
00:23:45.000 –> 00:23:47.000
So I found that even I was setting
00:23:47.000 –> 00:23:49.000
my goals based on the past. So I’m
00:23:49.000 –> 00:23:51.000
two hundred and forty two pounds, and I
00:23:51.000 –> 00:23:53.000
wanna be two hundred and thirty based on
00:23:53.000 –> 00:23:55.000
being two hundred and forty two pounds.
00:23:56.000 –> 00:23:57.000
But if I was to wake up in
00:23:57.000 –> 00:23:59.000
the hospital with amnesia and I had no
00:23:59.000 –> 00:24:02.000
idea what how much I weighed or or
00:24:02.000 –> 00:24:03.000
anything,
00:24:03.000 –> 00:24:06.000
and I had no past history at all.
00:24:06.000 –> 00:24:08.000
And I went and researched what it six
00:24:08.000 –> 00:24:11.000
foot three, sixty four year old man,
00:24:11.000 –> 00:24:13.000
should weigh, you know, it would say two
00:24:13.000 –> 00:24:14.000
hundred and eight pounds.
00:24:15.000 –> 00:24:17.000
So you can see the difference in goal
00:24:17.000 –> 00:24:20.000
setting between setting goals from a unknown future
00:24:20.000 –> 00:24:23.000
as opposed to, a constrained past.
00:24:23.000 –> 00:24:26.000
And the difference would have been, what, twelve
00:24:26.000 –> 00:24:26.000
pounds.
00:24:27.000 –> 00:24:29.000
And that would have would have been a
00:24:29.000 –> 00:24:31.000
massive difference. But, and I only use that
00:24:31.000 –> 00:24:33.000
because it’s easy numbers to use.
00:24:34.000 –> 00:24:36.000
But when people think about, you know, their
00:24:36.000 –> 00:24:38.000
career, how much money they wanna make, or
00:24:38.000 –> 00:24:40.000
how, how much time they wanna put into
00:24:40.000 –> 00:24:43.000
loving their, their, their spouse, or How much
00:24:43.000 –> 00:24:45.000
time they wanna spend with their children, these
00:24:45.000 –> 00:24:48.000
those that twelve pounds is ten percent, which
00:24:48.000 –> 00:24:49.000
is what makes things work for, don’t work
00:24:49.000 –> 00:24:51.000
in line. Yeah. That’s the game changer. Isn’t
00:24:51.000 –> 00:24:53.000
it? So how did you drive that in
00:24:53.000 –> 00:24:55.000
your culture? I mean, what you personally, I
00:24:55.000 –> 00:24:57.000
know, obviously, as the the founder, CEO, the
00:24:57.000 –> 00:25:00.000
leader, the everything of that company early on,
00:25:00.000 –> 00:25:02.000
How did you personally drive culture?
00:25:03.000 –> 00:25:04.000
Well,
00:25:05.000 –> 00:25:08.000
I’ve I actually once I set it the
00:25:08.000 –> 00:25:10.000
template up, as I said, about so many
00:25:10.000 –> 00:25:12.000
things at Lululemon, I think I
00:25:12.000 –> 00:25:14.000
I set a template up, and then we
00:25:14.000 –> 00:25:17.000
just had these amazing people that just took
00:25:17.000 –> 00:25:18.000
it and ran
00:25:19.000 –> 00:25:21.000
I’m kind of an idea guy. I’m not
00:25:21.000 –> 00:25:23.000
a structural Wilson, and,
00:25:24.000 –> 00:25:24.000
but
00:25:25.000 –> 00:25:26.000
I think that
00:25:26.000 –> 00:25:29.000
There was something in these goals that had
00:25:29.000 –> 00:25:31.000
people’s lives really worked for them. And, of
00:25:31.000 –> 00:25:32.000
course,
00:25:32.000 –> 00:25:34.000
Lou lemon, not only because of the product
00:25:34.000 –> 00:25:36.000
and the business model, but because of the
00:25:36.000 –> 00:25:38.000
type of people we have ended up making
00:25:38.000 –> 00:25:40.000
so much money. It was almost a self,
00:25:41.000 –> 00:25:43.000
what do they call that? A self,
00:25:43.000 –> 00:25:46.000
prophecy. Prophecy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s gonna
00:25:46.000 –> 00:25:47.000
happen.
00:25:47.000 –> 00:25:50.000
But we had a template for goal setting,
00:25:51.000 –> 00:25:53.000
in eighteen goals. So we set goals for
00:25:53.000 –> 00:25:55.000
First off, you said a vision for your
00:25:55.000 –> 00:25:58.000
life, like ten years out. So mine would
00:25:58.000 –> 00:26:00.000
have been, you know, mine was like twenty
00:26:00.000 –> 00:26:01.000
or thirty years out. It was I’m gonna
00:26:01.000 –> 00:26:04.000
be sitting around a table at Thanksgiving with
00:26:04.000 –> 00:26:06.000
my children, grandchildren, and I’m gonna they’re all
00:26:06.000 –> 00:26:08.000
gonna be laughing at me because I’m old
00:26:08.000 –> 00:26:10.000
and crazy. You know? I mean, if that
00:26:10.000 –> 00:26:12.000
happens that, you know, at at
00:26:12.000 –> 00:26:14.000
eighty five or something, then I’m gonna be
00:26:14.000 –> 00:26:16.000
a happy man. Right? Yes. So when I
00:26:16.000 –> 00:26:18.000
start working my goals back from there, so
00:26:18.000 –> 00:26:19.000
What are the ten year goals I have
00:26:19.000 –> 00:26:21.000
to have? What are that five year goals
00:26:21.000 –> 00:26:23.000
and what are the one year goals? And
00:26:23.000 –> 00:26:24.000
when you start at the top of the
00:26:24.000 –> 00:26:26.000
vision, you work back that it makes it
00:26:26.000 –> 00:26:28.000
pretty easy to do one year goals. Seeing
00:26:28.000 –> 00:26:30.000
where you have to get in the five
00:26:30.000 –> 00:26:32.000
and ten. Yep. Yeah. I don’t disagree with
00:26:32.000 –> 00:26:33.000
that. And I think, and and I’ll just
00:26:33.000 –> 00:26:35.000
give you my concept if if and give
00:26:35.000 –> 00:26:37.000
me your feedback on Chip, but one of
00:26:37.000 –> 00:26:38.000
them is I call it Focus ninety. So
00:26:38.000 –> 00:26:40.000
when I walk in my office door every
00:26:40.000 –> 00:26:43.000
day, I Brett my briefcase down, I get
00:26:43.000 –> 00:26:45.000
my water, I know the things I gotta
00:26:45.000 –> 00:26:47.000
do. I got four things I gotta do
00:26:47.000 –> 00:26:49.000
the first ninety minutes of every day. And
00:26:49.000 –> 00:26:51.000
if I can win that moment, I’ll win
00:26:51.000 –> 00:26:52.000
the rest of the day. Right? And then
00:26:52.000 –> 00:26:54.000
But my ten year goal, my five year
00:26:54.000 –> 00:26:57.000
goal, my one year goal, and my ninety
00:26:57.000 –> 00:26:58.000
day goals are all written on that same
00:26:58.000 –> 00:27:00.000
piece of paper, and I read it every
00:27:00.000 –> 00:27:00.000
morning.
00:27:01.000 –> 00:27:03.000
Good for you. Well, that’s probably why you
00:27:03.000 –> 00:27:04.000
are what you are.
00:27:04.000 –> 00:27:06.000
Yeah. But your I mean, your thoughts on
00:27:06.000 –> 00:27:07.000
that. Right? I mean, that’s probably your habits
00:27:07.000 –> 00:27:09.000
and your rituals when you were early in
00:27:09.000 –> 00:27:11.000
your career, those were the things you were
00:27:11.000 –> 00:27:12.000
doing. Right? So if you can if you
00:27:12.000 –> 00:27:13.000
can give us a a thought of a
00:27:13.000 –> 00:27:14.000
goal, I know you said at one point
00:27:14.000 –> 00:27:17.000
you wanted to open five lululemons, but What’s
00:27:17.000 –> 00:27:18.000
an example? Because you don’t probably say I
00:27:18.000 –> 00:27:20.000
wanna sell one million pair of pants or
00:27:20.000 –> 00:27:23.000
I wanna make ten million dollars. I mean,
00:27:23.000 –> 00:27:25.000
what were those goals at that time?
00:27:26.000 –> 00:27:26.000
Well,
00:27:27.000 –> 00:27:29.000
before I say Lou Lumen, there’s this one
00:27:29.000 –> 00:27:31.000
I was a competitive summer when I was
00:27:31.000 –> 00:27:33.000
young. So I think So they had age
00:27:33.000 –> 00:27:36.000
groups ten and under eleven and 12:13, fourteen.
00:27:36.000 –> 00:27:36.000
So
00:27:37.000 –> 00:27:39.000
you knew that by the age of fourteen,
00:27:39.000 –> 00:27:41.000
that was the Canadian record. So speak or
00:27:41.000 –> 00:27:44.000
the American record, whatever you wanna call it.
00:27:44.000 –> 00:27:44.000
And
00:27:44.000 –> 00:27:46.000
and when you turn fifteen,
00:27:46.000 –> 00:27:48.000
you had to break break the record by
00:27:48.000 –> 00:27:50.000
that day or you did So it was
00:27:50.000 –> 00:27:53.000
automatic goal setting. I, you know, I will
00:27:54.000 –> 00:27:56.000
swim the hundred backstroke in x time
00:27:57.000 –> 00:27:59.000
by the age of my fifteenth birthday. So
00:27:59.000 –> 00:28:00.000
that type of thing.
00:28:00.000 –> 00:28:01.000
So
00:28:01.000 –> 00:28:04.000
for us, for me, I remember my wife
00:28:04.000 –> 00:28:05.000
and I originally
00:28:05.000 –> 00:28:07.000
setting out our goals. We had no money.
00:28:07.000 –> 00:28:09.000
We were in debt up to our eyeballs.
00:28:10.000 –> 00:28:12.000
And, but, you know, we were the template
00:28:12.000 –> 00:28:14.000
for the everyone else in the in the
00:28:14.000 –> 00:28:16.000
company My wife was the first designer, and
00:28:17.000 –> 00:28:18.000
so we were in it together. And,
00:28:19.000 –> 00:28:22.000
so we decided we were going to have
00:28:22.000 –> 00:28:24.000
in ten years, we were gonna have thirty
00:28:24.000 –> 00:28:25.000
million dollars in the bank. We were gonna
00:28:25.000 –> 00:28:26.000
have,
00:28:26.000 –> 00:28:28.000
a ten million dollar house on the ocean,
00:28:29.000 –> 00:28:30.000
and we were gonna have
00:28:31.000 –> 00:28:33.000
And then what was it beyond that? Those
00:28:33.000 –> 00:28:36.000
are the material ones, which are really easy
00:28:36.000 –> 00:28:38.000
for me to remember because it happened.
00:28:39.000 –> 00:28:41.000
Now what’s interesting about that is because we
00:28:41.000 –> 00:28:43.000
had that set in,
00:28:43.000 –> 00:28:45.000
at a certain point when Lou Lemney came
00:28:45.000 –> 00:28:46.000
incredibly
00:28:50.000 –> 00:28:52.000
strong, and we were our cash flow was
00:28:52.000 –> 00:28:52.000
unbelievable.
00:28:54.000 –> 00:28:55.000
We
00:28:55.000 –> 00:28:57.000
We did. We decided that we were gonna
00:28:57.000 –> 00:29:00.000
prioritize family, and we were gonna prioritize the
00:29:00.000 –> 00:29:01.000
goals that we’d set.
00:29:01.000 –> 00:29:04.000
So then we just that decision then had
00:29:04.000 –> 00:29:05.000
to sell to private equity.
00:29:06.000 –> 00:29:08.000
We didn’t have to sell to private equity.
00:29:08.000 –> 00:29:10.000
We didn’t have to end up going public.
00:29:10.000 –> 00:29:12.000
But we, as a family, have these Gilliland
00:29:12.000 –> 00:29:15.000
that those goals are then driving our decision.
00:29:15.000 –> 00:29:16.000
Yep.
00:29:16.000 –> 00:29:19.000
Makes total sense. Right? The the personal vision,
00:29:19.000 –> 00:29:21.000
the personal goals are driven by the vehicle
00:29:21.000 –> 00:29:23.000
that you happen to be sitting in. Right?
00:29:23.000 –> 00:29:25.000
And that’s, for you, that was Lewis Lemmon.
00:29:25.000 –> 00:29:27.000
So what changed for you when you were
00:29:27.000 –> 00:29:29.000
in debt up to your eyeballs, as you
00:29:29.000 –> 00:29:32.000
said, and now became massively successful financially.
00:29:33.000 –> 00:29:34.000
What changed?
00:29:36.000 –> 00:29:37.000
I don’t
00:29:37.000 –> 00:29:40.000
well, I don’t think anything changed out. Yeah.
00:29:40.000 –> 00:29:42.000
By selling, of course, I lost control of
00:29:42.000 –> 00:29:45.000
Lou Gilliland that is That’s another story.
00:29:46.000 –> 00:29:48.000
Because I started to lululemon quite late in
00:29:48.000 –> 00:29:51.000
life, I mean, sometimes I get labeled colonel
00:29:51.000 –> 00:29:53.000
Sanders about starting businesses late.
00:29:54.000 –> 00:29:55.000
You know, that was, I guess, that was
00:29:55.000 –> 00:29:57.000
about forty two when I started, but Lou
00:29:57.000 –> 00:29:59.000
Lemon really didn’t, you know, come to any
00:29:59.000 –> 00:30:01.000
success till I was fifty.
00:30:02.000 –> 00:30:04.000
And, you know, those eight years were, like,
00:30:04.000 –> 00:30:06.000
I said, a struggle to get there.
00:30:07.000 –> 00:30:08.000
But it was,
00:30:08.000 –> 00:30:11.000
so once you’re fifty, it’s I don’t think
00:30:11.000 –> 00:30:14.000
anyone changes. You know, like, it’s the things
00:30:14.000 –> 00:30:15.000
that were all as important to me was,
00:30:15.000 –> 00:30:18.000
you know, course, Gilliland because without health, you
00:30:18.000 –> 00:30:20.000
know, that your ability to enjoy your family
00:30:20.000 –> 00:30:22.000
is is very small.
00:30:23.000 –> 00:30:26.000
And, you know, I think it’s it comes
00:30:26.000 –> 00:30:29.000
down to Matt’s law’s hierarchy of needs. And,
00:30:29.000 –> 00:30:31.000
you know, first off, you gotta take care
00:30:31.000 –> 00:30:34.000
of survival and, and reproduction. And once that’s
00:30:34.000 –> 00:30:37.000
occurred, then you start moving into
00:30:37.000 –> 00:30:38.000
longevity
00:30:38.000 –> 00:30:41.000
and relay, you know, like, healthy relationships.
00:30:41.000 –> 00:30:43.000
And I think that’s where my my priorities
00:30:43.000 –> 00:30:44.000
always.
00:30:44.000 –> 00:30:45.000
Well, I think it’s it’s neat to hear
00:30:45.000 –> 00:30:47.000
you say that too because people, you know,
00:30:47.000 –> 00:30:48.000
I’m in the money business. That’s what we
00:30:48.000 –> 00:30:51.000
do every day. And and so people think
00:30:51.000 –> 00:30:53.000
once they reach these certain levels,
00:30:53.000 –> 00:30:55.000
right, whether it’s ten million or a hundred
00:30:55.000 –> 00:30:58.000
million or a billion or ten Wilson, that
00:30:58.000 –> 00:31:00.000
that’s gonna be the trigger point for something
00:31:00.000 –> 00:31:01.000
in their life. And and all the successful
00:31:01.000 –> 00:31:03.000
people I get to talk to with the
00:31:03.000 –> 00:31:03.000
people like yourself,
00:31:04.000 –> 00:31:06.000
wasn’t this moment if I have x in
00:31:06.000 –> 00:31:08.000
the bank, and now my life is completely
00:31:08.000 –> 00:31:11.000
different. Right? Yeah. No. I mean, what money
00:31:11.000 –> 00:31:13.000
does allow someone to buy its time.
00:31:14.000 –> 00:31:16.000
And, some sixty four.
00:31:17.000 –> 00:31:17.000
I, I mean,
00:31:18.000 –> 00:31:20.000
you can get where where, like, I have
00:31:20.000 –> 00:31:22.000
a driver. You know, and I have a
00:31:22.000 –> 00:31:24.000
driver and people go, oh my god. That’s
00:31:24.000 –> 00:31:26.000
so ostentatious, but it’s only different than having
00:31:26.000 –> 00:31:29.000
an executive assistant or having a gardener at
00:31:29.000 –> 00:31:31.000
your house. You know, if they if I
00:31:31.000 –> 00:31:33.000
can pay that person twenty five dollars an
00:31:33.000 –> 00:31:35.000
hour, and I can do three hundred dollars
00:31:35.000 –> 00:31:37.000
worth of work at the time he drives
00:31:37.000 –> 00:31:39.000
me to my workout and back, then I
00:31:39.000 –> 00:31:42.000
make money on that. So it it I,
00:31:42.000 –> 00:31:45.000
and my whole idea behind driving, saving time
00:31:45.000 –> 00:31:46.000
is so I can be with my children
00:31:46.000 –> 00:31:49.000
and family because my highest priority. So what’s
00:31:49.000 –> 00:31:51.000
that dude or, or or female? What were
00:31:51.000 –> 00:31:53.000
they doing right now? As we we’re speaking
00:31:53.000 –> 00:31:55.000
here today, where’s the driver? Setting outside waiting
00:31:55.000 –> 00:31:56.000
or are they at home waiting for the
00:31:56.000 –> 00:31:57.000
end of the day?
00:31:58.000 –> 00:32:00.000
No. Because often I’ll walk home or things
00:32:00.000 –> 00:32:02.000
like that. So I, you know, especially in
00:32:02.000 –> 00:32:04.000
the summertime. So, no, they’ll be, they take
00:32:04.000 –> 00:32:06.000
care of. We have a couple of houses
00:32:06.000 –> 00:32:08.000
and I’ll be taking care of some, renovations
00:32:08.000 –> 00:32:10.000
that we have going on. Nice. You know,
00:32:10.000 –> 00:32:12.000
if the guy card needs filled with gas,
00:32:12.000 –> 00:32:14.000
I’ll do that, or I need to, you
00:32:14.000 –> 00:32:16.000
know, all those All those things that you
00:32:16.000 –> 00:32:18.000
you always wished you had someone to do,
00:32:18.000 –> 00:32:20.000
but it doesn’t do them. I got that.
00:32:20.000 –> 00:32:22.000
You got it. I’m I’m giving you a
00:32:22.000 –> 00:32:25.000
fist pump right there. That that’s awesome. So
00:32:25.000 –> 00:32:26.000
what are your habits when you were on
00:32:26.000 –> 00:32:29.000
the grind, versus today? I think we’ll talk
00:32:29.000 –> 00:32:30.000
about both of them if we can. But
00:32:30.000 –> 00:32:32.000
what were the habits and rituals that the
00:32:32.000 –> 00:32:34.000
no mis items that you had do during
00:32:34.000 –> 00:32:34.000
the grind.
00:32:35.000 –> 00:32:38.000
During the grind of, building a business. Building
00:32:38.000 –> 00:32:39.000
a business. I mean, it’s, you know, again,
00:32:39.000 –> 00:32:41.000
we talked earlier before we started recording, you
00:32:41.000 –> 00:32:43.000
know, you have five sons. I’ve got four
00:32:43.000 –> 00:32:44.000
sons, and I’m, you know, I’m I’m at
00:32:44.000 –> 00:32:46.000
work, and then I go straight to a
00:32:46.000 –> 00:32:48.000
a sporting event, and it’s coaching, and then
00:32:48.000 –> 00:32:49.000
it’s, you know, you go home and you
00:32:49.000 –> 00:32:50.000
go to bed and you get up and
00:32:50.000 –> 00:32:51.000
you do it all over again. Right? It’s
00:32:51.000 –> 00:32:52.000
vicious cycle.
00:32:52.000 –> 00:32:54.000
But what were those no mis items for
00:32:54.000 –> 00:32:55.000
you?
00:32:55.000 –> 00:32:57.000
Well, I it’s funny you say the grind
00:32:57.000 –> 00:33:00.000
because in Vancouver, we have three mountains inside
00:33:00.000 –> 00:33:02.000
city if you don’t know right right on
00:33:02.000 –> 00:33:05.000
the ocean. So it’s a phenomenal place, and
00:33:05.000 –> 00:33:07.000
and I do this thing called the Grouse
00:33:07.000 –> 00:33:09.000
Grind every morning of all. Four mornings a
00:33:09.000 –> 00:33:12.000
week. So it’s a one hour hike Brett
00:33:12.000 –> 00:33:13.000
up a mountain. So it it,
00:33:14.000 –> 00:33:15.000
so when you said that, I was a
00:33:15.000 –> 00:33:16.000
little bit confused.
00:33:17.000 –> 00:33:20.000
So in my most things I must do,
00:33:20.000 –> 00:33:22.000
first thing in the morning is I must
00:33:22.000 –> 00:33:24.000
get that endorphin rush.
00:33:24.000 –> 00:33:27.000
And so I will go to University of
00:33:27.000 –> 00:33:29.000
BC, which is maybe about ten minute drive
00:33:29.000 –> 00:33:30.000
away and run the stairs,
00:33:31.000 –> 00:33:33.000
which takes about maybe five minutes to get
00:33:33.000 –> 00:33:35.000
to the top stairs in the walk down.
00:33:35.000 –> 00:33:37.000
I’ll do that five times.
00:33:37.000 –> 00:33:39.000
I’ll do the bus grind, which then takes
00:33:39.000 –> 00:33:40.000
an hour to do. It’s just to cross
00:33:40.000 –> 00:33:41.000
the town.
00:33:41.000 –> 00:33:44.000
And, and then maybe, you know, so that’s
00:33:44.000 –> 00:33:45.000
critical for me.
00:33:46.000 –> 00:33:47.000
And then,
00:33:48.000 –> 00:33:50.000
And then what do I do coming into
00:33:50.000 –> 00:33:51.000
work?
00:33:52.000 –> 00:33:54.000
Now as I’ll know, during the grind part
00:33:54.000 –> 00:33:55.000
of lululemon,
00:33:55.000 –> 00:33:57.000
what would have occurred?
00:34:00.000 –> 00:34:03.000
I I think it’s my one of the
00:34:03.000 –> 00:34:05.000
things I made sure once a week I
00:34:05.000 –> 00:34:07.000
would sit down for an hour just a
00:34:07.000 –> 00:34:09.000
pencil and a piece of paper and just
00:34:09.000 –> 00:34:11.000
think about where the where the future need
00:34:11.000 –> 00:34:14.000
to be. I think my expertise is be
00:34:14.000 –> 00:34:16.000
seeing the world five to seven years in
00:34:16.000 –> 00:34:17.000
the future,
00:34:17.000 –> 00:34:19.000
which is really, really difficult for a lot
00:34:19.000 –> 00:34:21.000
of people I work with. Yeah. Because I’m
00:34:21.000 –> 00:34:24.000
kinda like you know, I’m willing to give
00:34:24.000 –> 00:34:26.000
up a lot of what’s happening and good
00:34:26.000 –> 00:34:27.000
right now in order to build out where
00:34:27.000 –> 00:34:29.000
the world’s going.
00:34:29.000 –> 00:34:29.000
So
00:34:30.000 –> 00:34:32.000
That’s important. And then I think it’s just
00:34:32.000 –> 00:34:34.000
the regularly scheduled meetings,
00:34:34.000 –> 00:34:37.000
and then probably even leaving at 01:00
00:34:37.000 –> 00:34:39.000
in going for a walk or going for,
00:34:39.000 –> 00:34:41.000
like, a thirty minute run would have been
00:34:41.000 –> 00:34:42.000
critical at that time.
00:34:42.000 –> 00:34:43.000
And then,
00:34:44.000 –> 00:34:46.000
and then absolutely being home for dinner with
00:34:46.000 –> 00:34:47.000
my family was critical.
00:34:49.000 –> 00:34:50.000
I,
00:34:50.000 –> 00:34:53.000
again, part of selling the company to private
00:34:53.000 –> 00:34:55.000
equity was either I had to make the
00:34:55.000 –> 00:34:57.000
choice of I was gonna be traveling. I’m
00:34:57.000 –> 00:34:59.000
building a global business, so we were already
00:34:59.000 –> 00:35:02.000
in many countries already either
00:35:02.000 –> 00:35:04.000
I was gonna be on the road building
00:35:04.000 –> 00:35:06.000
a business or I was gonna be letting
00:35:06.000 –> 00:35:09.000
that business Brett me raise a great Gilliland
00:35:10.000 –> 00:35:11.000
great chose the family.
00:35:11.000 –> 00:35:13.000
When that’s a that’s a great choice. Great,
00:35:13.000 –> 00:35:15.000
Joseph. It’s it’s neat to see some at
00:35:15.000 –> 00:35:17.000
your level, and then that was still the
00:35:17.000 –> 00:35:19.000
number one priority. So congratulations on that. So
00:35:19.000 –> 00:35:21.000
what would you look back and tell
00:35:21.000 –> 00:35:24.000
the, Chip Wilson, the thirty year old Chip
00:35:24.000 –> 00:35:25.000
Wilson, or the forty year old Chip Wilson.
00:35:25.000 –> 00:35:27.000
What what advice would you give that guy?
00:35:29.000 –> 00:35:32.000
I would have given that guy the advice
00:35:32.000 –> 00:35:33.000
that I probably I didn’t need to sell
00:35:33.000 –> 00:35:35.000
to private equity, and I didn’t need to
00:35:35.000 –> 00:35:36.000
go public.
00:35:36.000 –> 00:35:39.000
That’s funny. I was listening to,
00:35:39.000 –> 00:35:42.000
to Bill Gates say exactly the same thing
00:35:42.000 –> 00:35:43.000
a couple months ago, and,
00:35:44.000 –> 00:35:45.000
his big regret
00:35:46.000 –> 00:35:49.000
it’s the ability to move quicker and faster.
00:35:49.000 –> 00:35:50.000
And I think,
00:35:51.000 –> 00:35:51.000
entrepreneurs
00:35:52.000 –> 00:35:54.000
can see the future and the,
00:35:54.000 –> 00:35:56.000
It’s very, very difficult for other people to
00:35:56.000 –> 00:35:59.000
see, especially inside a public company.
00:35:59.000 –> 00:36:01.000
I could have with the massive amount that
00:36:01.000 –> 00:36:03.000
Lebanon was making at the time I did
00:36:03.000 –> 00:36:06.000
private equity. I I probably could have just
00:36:06.000 –> 00:36:08.000
gone to my bank and said, give me
00:36:08.000 –> 00:36:09.000
forty million dollars out of encumbered.
00:36:10.000 –> 00:36:12.000
And then I able to buy my ten
00:36:12.000 –> 00:36:14.000
million dollar house and put thirty million in
00:36:14.000 –> 00:36:14.000
the bank.
00:36:15.000 –> 00:36:17.000
And, and then run the business that way.
00:36:17.000 –> 00:36:19.000
Yeah. But I didn’t. And, I got a
00:36:19.000 –> 00:36:22.000
I got a different outcome from it. So
00:36:22.000 –> 00:36:25.000
That would have been my my I would
00:36:25.000 –> 00:36:25.000
say
00:36:26.000 –> 00:36:29.000
I I went private equity and
00:36:29.000 –> 00:36:31.000
in order to get advisors
00:36:32.000 –> 00:36:33.000
because people had told me, well, I didn’t
00:36:34.000 –> 00:36:36.000
I haven’t run a billion dollar company before
00:36:36.000 –> 00:36:37.000
you. I don’t know what you’re doing. You
00:36:37.000 –> 00:36:38.000
need people around you.
00:36:39.000 –> 00:36:41.000
The advisors I got through private equity, I
00:36:41.000 –> 00:36:43.000
think were they were self interested.
00:36:44.000 –> 00:36:45.000
They and so I had
00:36:46.000 –> 00:36:48.000
of courses they should be. Right? I mean,
00:36:48.000 –> 00:36:50.000
I’m not I’m not naive in that, but,
00:36:51.000 –> 00:36:53.000
what I mean is how I would structured
00:36:53.000 –> 00:36:56.000
the deal going into private equity
00:36:56.000 –> 00:36:56.000
was,
00:36:57.000 –> 00:37:00.000
really handcuff me as when we went public.
00:37:00.000 –> 00:37:02.000
I lost control of the board. I so
00:37:02.000 –> 00:37:04.000
consequently, I lost control of the culture at
00:37:04.000 –> 00:37:05.000
the moment.
00:37:06.000 –> 00:37:06.000
And,
00:37:07.000 –> 00:37:10.000
Blue Lemmon went probably through five years of
00:37:10.000 –> 00:37:11.000
the greatest growth in athletic
00:37:12.000 –> 00:37:16.000
clothing between Tully two to thirteen and 02:18
00:37:16.000 –> 00:37:18.000
when it when it just went flat. If
00:37:18.000 –> 00:37:20.000
you look at the stock, it went nowhere
00:37:20.000 –> 00:37:23.000
because it kind of self imploded because it
00:37:23.000 –> 00:37:25.000
just had a it just had board of
00:37:25.000 –> 00:37:28.000
directors that you know, where your normal
00:37:28.000 –> 00:37:30.000
run of the mill trying to do good
00:37:30.000 –> 00:37:33.000
people, but, you know, who were running by
00:37:33.000 –> 00:37:34.000
fear as opposed to possibility.
00:37:35.000 –> 00:37:36.000
So talk to us about that. I asked
00:37:36.000 –> 00:37:38.000
this in every episode, fear.
00:37:39.000 –> 00:37:40.000
You mentioned it. So we’ll bring it up
00:37:40.000 –> 00:37:41.000
now, but how many of the fears you
00:37:41.000 –> 00:37:43.000
put in your mind? Over your career blew
00:37:43.000 –> 00:37:45.000
up to the magnitude you put them in
00:37:45.000 –> 00:37:46.000
your mind to be.
00:37:50.000 –> 00:37:52.000
Do I have them? Fears?
00:37:53.000 –> 00:37:55.000
So you probably put some in your mind
00:37:55.000 –> 00:37:56.000
early on. Right? Like, maybe this won’t make
00:37:56.000 –> 00:37:59.000
maybe I’ll go bankrupt. What whatever the, the
00:37:59.000 –> 00:38:01.000
fears were in your mind. How many of
00:38:01.000 –> 00:38:02.000
those actually blew up, though?
00:38:05.000 –> 00:38:06.000
Well,
00:38:07.000 –> 00:38:08.000
I don’t think
00:38:09.000 –> 00:38:11.000
I can’t say they actually did. I don’t
00:38:11.000 –> 00:38:13.000
think I had that many I don’t think
00:38:13.000 –> 00:38:15.000
I’ve had years like that. I think part
00:38:15.000 –> 00:38:17.000
of my what works for me in life
00:38:17.000 –> 00:38:19.000
is I’m incredibly trusting
00:38:21.000 –> 00:38:23.000
and I believe in people what they say
00:38:23.000 –> 00:38:24.000
to me.
00:38:24.000 –> 00:38:25.000
And I,
00:38:27.000 –> 00:38:28.000
and I’m incredibly
00:38:28.000 –> 00:38:31.000
positive about the future. So I think that
00:38:31.000 –> 00:38:32.000
you ask
00:38:33.000 –> 00:38:34.000
a lot of
00:38:34.000 –> 00:38:36.000
what what other people have as fears.
00:38:37.000 –> 00:38:37.000
Now
00:38:38.000 –> 00:38:40.000
where that works that works for me, because
00:38:40.000 –> 00:38:43.000
I get incredible people around me. We can
00:38:43.000 –> 00:38:45.000
build a great company, but then I also
00:38:45.000 –> 00:38:46.000
attract
00:38:46.000 –> 00:38:49.000
a certain number of people that are Let’s
00:38:49.000 –> 00:38:51.000
say unable to make money on their own,
00:38:51.000 –> 00:38:52.000
but they’re entrepreneurial
00:38:52.000 –> 00:38:54.000
knowing how to make money off of people
00:38:54.000 –> 00:38:56.000
who who have my personality.
00:38:57.000 –> 00:38:58.000
And,
00:38:59.000 –> 00:39:00.000
and I have to sit back and go,
00:39:00.000 –> 00:39:02.000
well, I was always that way. You know,
00:39:02.000 –> 00:39:03.000
I drove an old car and left a
00:39:03.000 –> 00:39:06.000
piece in it because you wanna take my
00:39:06.000 –> 00:39:07.000
car go for it. I just, you know,
00:39:07.000 –> 00:39:10.000
because details and small things in life are
00:39:10.000 –> 00:39:10.000
very, very
00:39:11.000 –> 00:39:13.000
they they just can’t take up my mind
00:39:13.000 –> 00:39:15.000
because I’ve got like, big, big ideas. So
00:39:15.000 –> 00:39:18.000
I need to, I need to free my
00:39:18.000 –> 00:39:19.000
mind to,
00:39:20.000 –> 00:39:21.000
to love and trust everybody
00:39:22.000 –> 00:39:24.000
to think of possibility and be out there
00:39:24.000 –> 00:39:26.000
in the future and not get consumed with
00:39:26.000 –> 00:39:28.000
fear and what ifs.
00:39:28.000 –> 00:39:30.000
I love that. So You don’t have to
00:39:30.000 –> 00:39:31.000
name drop unless you want to, which is
00:39:31.000 –> 00:39:33.000
totally fine. But, I mean, so when somebody
00:39:33.000 –> 00:39:35.000
gets to your level now, I mean, who
00:39:35.000 –> 00:39:37.000
are you surrounding yourself with to to keep
00:39:37.000 –> 00:39:39.000
yourself a student in the game and and,
00:39:39.000 –> 00:39:41.000
you know, grabbing lunch with. I mean, who
00:39:41.000 –> 00:39:42.000
what what is that buddy system like for
00:39:42.000 –> 00:39:44.000
you, today with your level?
00:39:45.000 –> 00:39:47.000
You know, I just think enough having been
00:39:47.000 –> 00:39:49.000
in Canada and being and on the west
00:39:49.000 –> 00:39:52.000
coast of Canada. I mean, there’s nobody here.
00:39:52.000 –> 00:39:55.000
Like, you know, there’s very I have
00:39:55.000 –> 00:39:58.000
you know, a ninety year old billionaire here
00:39:58.000 –> 00:40:00.000
in Vancouver, Joe Siegel, who,
00:40:01.000 –> 00:40:02.000
was in the apparel business and is a
00:40:02.000 –> 00:40:04.000
wonderful, wonderful man. And
00:40:05.000 –> 00:40:06.000
I think about,
00:40:07.000 –> 00:40:09.000
you know, five years ago, he said to
00:40:09.000 –> 00:40:11.000
me, you know, Chip, you know, like, you
00:40:11.000 –> 00:40:13.000
got two more big ones in you. You
00:40:13.000 –> 00:40:13.000
know,
00:40:14.000 –> 00:40:16.000
and so I went, well, that’s interesting.
00:40:16.000 –> 00:40:18.000
And, you know, he said to me, you
00:40:18.000 –> 00:40:20.000
know, at sixty, I kinda like, you know,
00:40:20.000 –> 00:40:21.000
I thought like I retired, but I started
00:40:21.000 –> 00:40:23.000
putting my money into real estate. I was
00:40:23.000 –> 00:40:26.000
making my seven percent return a year. Carrie,
00:40:26.000 –> 00:40:28.000
I’m ninety years old, and I’ve,
00:40:28.000 –> 00:40:29.000
you know,
00:40:29.000 –> 00:40:31.000
What have I done in thirty years up
00:40:31.000 –> 00:40:33.000
there? Nothing? You know, it wasn’t exciting. You
00:40:33.000 –> 00:40:35.000
said, you know, like, take fifty percent of
00:40:35.000 –> 00:40:36.000
all your own at risk at all.
00:40:37.000 –> 00:40:39.000
Wow. What’s it? What? I mean,
00:40:39.000 –> 00:40:41.000
what’s it gonna matter? Like, do things that
00:40:41.000 –> 00:40:43.000
are, you know, standing?
00:40:43.000 –> 00:40:45.000
And then he also applied that to philanthropy,
00:40:46.000 –> 00:40:47.000
like, rather than kinda free and pay and
00:40:47.000 –> 00:40:49.000
doing a little bit here and there, you
00:40:49.000 –> 00:40:51.000
know, like, what’s really gonna change the dial
00:40:51.000 –> 00:40:53.000
in the world, which I can do with
00:40:53.000 –> 00:40:54.000
the amount of money I have?
00:40:55.000 –> 00:40:58.000
That those are that’s probably one really key
00:40:58.000 –> 00:40:59.000
person.
00:40:59.000 –> 00:41:01.000
That’s awesome. I love that.
00:41:01.000 –> 00:41:02.000
So you said smartphone,
00:41:03.000 –> 00:41:05.000
it killed the balanced life. Now there’s only
00:41:05.000 –> 00:41:06.000
life choices.
00:41:07.000 –> 00:41:10.000
I love that. So true. Talk to us
00:41:10.000 –> 00:41:11.000
about that.
00:41:12.000 –> 00:41:12.000
Well,
00:41:13.000 –> 00:41:15.000
It would because I’m older I got the
00:41:15.000 –> 00:41:17.000
context of observing
00:41:17.000 –> 00:41:20.000
my employees and observing people. And of course,
00:41:20.000 –> 00:41:21.000
I have, you know, five boys so I
00:41:21.000 –> 00:41:23.000
get to observe to
00:41:23.000 –> 00:41:26.000
I could and even myself, and I could
00:41:26.000 –> 00:41:26.000
see where,
00:41:28.000 –> 00:41:29.000
with the digital world’s
00:41:29.000 –> 00:41:32.000
probably starting in ninety five or something like
00:41:32.000 –> 00:41:33.000
that. The amount of time
00:41:34.000 –> 00:41:36.000
that the amount of information that was coming
00:41:36.000 –> 00:41:40.000
to each individual person was becoming exponential. Gilliland
00:41:40.000 –> 00:41:42.000
I could also see that, you know, the
00:41:42.000 –> 00:41:44.000
algorithms that, you know, Google or Facebook, whoever
00:41:44.000 –> 00:41:47.000
has to keep them on, keep you on,
00:41:47.000 –> 00:41:49.000
their sightings and as much as possible was
00:41:49.000 –> 00:41:51.000
was eating up
00:41:51.000 –> 00:41:52.000
people’s,
00:41:53.000 –> 00:41:55.000
it was entertaining people in a way that
00:41:55.000 –> 00:41:57.000
gave them an dwarven rush.
00:41:59.000 –> 00:42:01.000
What I what I saw then is that
00:42:01.000 –> 00:42:03.000
life was passing people by.
00:42:04.000 –> 00:42:06.000
As often happens,
00:42:07.000 –> 00:42:09.000
without realizing that, oh, like, ten years has
00:42:09.000 –> 00:42:11.000
gone by. And I do I have I
00:42:11.000 –> 00:42:13.000
really appreciated my life? If I appreciated what
00:42:14.000 –> 00:42:16.000
done were up onto the people around me.
00:42:17.000 –> 00:42:18.000
So,
00:42:19.000 –> 00:42:21.000
and then at a certain point, it became
00:42:21.000 –> 00:42:22.000
so easy to have a smartphone that you
00:42:22.000 –> 00:42:25.000
didn’t need to be you know, when you’re,
00:42:26.000 –> 00:42:28.000
you know, when you’re at the office, you’re
00:42:28.000 –> 00:42:29.000
at the office or your family with your
00:42:29.000 –> 00:42:31.000
family, but now you could choose to be
00:42:31.000 –> 00:42:32.000
anywhere anytime.
00:42:34.000 –> 00:42:36.000
Basically, what I’m getting at is that we
00:42:38.000 –> 00:42:38.000
because
00:42:39.000 –> 00:42:40.000
life was moving
00:42:40.000 –> 00:42:41.000
exponentially,
00:42:43.000 –> 00:42:46.000
the number of times a person has to
00:42:46.000 –> 00:42:46.000
stop
00:42:47.000 –> 00:42:50.000
and be present to the world and be
00:42:50.000 –> 00:42:52.000
present to the people around them in what’s
00:42:52.000 –> 00:42:53.000
happening
00:42:53.000 –> 00:42:56.000
and to actually appreciate the life they have
00:42:56.000 –> 00:42:57.000
in that very exact moment.
00:42:58.000 –> 00:43:00.000
Has to happen not once every
00:43:00.000 –> 00:43:01.000
four months,
00:43:01.000 –> 00:43:04.000
but I actually expect today it needs to
00:43:04.000 –> 00:43:06.000
happen like four or five times a day.
00:43:06.000 –> 00:43:08.000
Well, because that phone
00:43:08.000 –> 00:43:09.000
can absorb
00:43:09.000 –> 00:43:11.000
everything and pretty soon
00:43:12.000 –> 00:43:14.000
as what happens to many people they lay
00:43:14.000 –> 00:43:16.000
on their death bed, and they go, what
00:43:16.000 –> 00:43:18.000
the hell happened to my life? Yeah. What
00:43:18.000 –> 00:43:20.000
happened in that moment? Did I why didn’t
00:43:20.000 –> 00:43:23.000
I appreciate it when I was there? And
00:43:23.000 –> 00:43:25.000
I think that that’s a life worth living.
00:43:25.000 –> 00:43:27.000
When we both have thirteen year olds, you
00:43:27.000 –> 00:43:28.000
know, and you think of their life at
00:43:28.000 –> 00:43:31.000
thirteen versus your and I’s life at thirteen,
00:43:31.000 –> 00:43:34.000
completely different. Right? It’s it’s it creates this
00:43:34.000 –> 00:43:34.000
addiction.
00:43:35.000 –> 00:43:36.000
Yeah. And
00:43:37.000 –> 00:43:39.000
and it also I’m I’m fascinated by how
00:43:39.000 –> 00:43:41.000
much the brain can actually absolutely
00:43:41.000 –> 00:43:42.000
absorb
00:43:42.000 –> 00:43:44.000
And, you know, we all told we were
00:43:44.000 –> 00:43:46.000
told to mirror you on our brain. We’re
00:43:46.000 –> 00:43:47.000
only using it to four or five percent
00:43:47.000 –> 00:43:50.000
of what’s possible. And Right. Now learning how
00:43:50.000 –> 00:43:52.000
much How much information can be stored in
00:43:52.000 –> 00:43:54.000
there? Lob in capacity.
00:43:54.000 –> 00:43:55.000
You’re smart.
00:43:55.000 –> 00:43:57.000
So if I stole your phone from you
00:43:57.000 –> 00:43:59.000
right now, besides email, and I say I’m
00:43:59.000 –> 00:44:02.000
a delete an app, any any any phone,
00:44:02.000 –> 00:44:04.000
anything on your phone that just Chip Wilson
00:44:04.000 –> 00:44:06.000
could not live without speaking to technology?
00:44:07.000 –> 00:44:09.000
I think it’s this new app called word
00:44:09.000 –> 00:44:12.000
power. It’s, kind of, it’s it’s a,
00:44:14.000 –> 00:44:15.000
it’s a crossword.
00:44:16.000 –> 00:44:18.000
And it’s, works on a it only gives
00:44:18.000 –> 00:44:20.000
you seven letters and it’s a crossword Gilliland
00:44:20.000 –> 00:44:22.000
you gotta fill it all out. And I
00:44:22.000 –> 00:44:24.000
find myself totally addicted to it.
00:44:25.000 –> 00:44:27.000
You gotta put your phone down. Right?
00:44:28.000 –> 00:44:30.000
Well, it’s been interesting because I actually when
00:44:30.000 –> 00:44:32.000
I was I was in Spain this last
00:44:32.000 –> 00:44:34.000
week and I And I, you know, it
00:44:34.000 –> 00:44:36.000
was a heat wave. Like, it was what
00:44:36.000 –> 00:44:38.000
was a hundred and twenty three degrees in
00:44:38.000 –> 00:44:40.000
them? Oh, man. Twenty five k a day.
00:44:40.000 –> 00:44:43.000
I run across this cold, fresh pond, and
00:44:43.000 –> 00:44:44.000
I and I
00:44:45.000 –> 00:44:46.000
dive in. And, of course, I’ve got my
00:44:46.000 –> 00:44:48.000
ear pods on, and I’ve got my phone
00:44:48.000 –> 00:44:51.000
here, and everything falls into the ended up
00:44:51.000 –> 00:44:53.000
fun and so I’ve been without a phone
00:44:53.000 –> 00:44:55.000
for three days now. So, uh-oh. Take your
00:44:55.000 –> 00:44:57.000
point very seriously. Yeah. Exactly.
00:44:58.000 –> 00:45:00.000
So what, favorite book you can recommend for
00:45:00.000 –> 00:45:00.000
our listeners?
00:45:03.000 –> 00:45:05.000
Besides your own?
00:45:06.000 –> 00:45:06.000
Legacy.
00:45:07.000 –> 00:45:08.000
Legacy.
00:45:08.000 –> 00:45:11.000
I concur, k e r r, and it’s
00:45:11.000 –> 00:45:11.000
about,
00:45:12.000 –> 00:45:14.000
the most winning sports team in history. It’s
00:45:14.000 –> 00:45:16.000
New Zealand All Blacks.
00:45:16.000 –> 00:45:19.000
Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about that book. And,
00:45:19.000 –> 00:45:21.000
and I read it. I’m the only god.
00:45:21.000 –> 00:45:23.000
This is a story about the culture of
00:45:23.000 –> 00:45:24.000
Lou Leanne.
00:45:25.000 –> 00:45:27.000
To top to bottom. There’s absolutely no difference.
00:45:27.000 –> 00:45:28.000
Everything
00:45:29.000 –> 00:45:31.000
that they quote in there about how they
00:45:31.000 –> 00:45:34.000
learned and and how they directed the people
00:45:34.000 –> 00:45:36.000
was all around good to Brett. The the
00:45:36.000 –> 00:45:37.000
landmark form,
00:45:38.000 –> 00:45:41.000
seven habits, because highly effective people Yeah. In
00:45:41.000 –> 00:45:43.000
goal setting. So it was like, Oh, I
00:45:43.000 –> 00:45:45.000
was it’s kinda neat to see that the
00:45:45.000 –> 00:45:47.000
number one winningest team in the world, you
00:45:47.000 –> 00:45:49.000
know, use the same platform.
00:45:50.000 –> 00:45:52.000
Yeah. That book’s a it’s gonna be around
00:45:52.000 –> 00:45:54.000
for generation after generation. Isn’t it the seven
00:45:54.000 –> 00:45:56.000
habits of highly affected people? Yeah. I mean,
00:45:56.000 –> 00:45:58.000
what’s what’s not to love?
00:45:58.000 –> 00:46:01.000
So, your favorite Chip, you’ve been around the
00:46:01.000 –> 00:46:04.000
world, obviously, probably multiple times. So, if you
00:46:04.000 –> 00:46:06.000
could go anywhere again today, where are you
00:46:06.000 –> 00:46:06.000
going?
00:46:07.000 –> 00:46:10.000
We’re going to the Antialis Mountains in Morocco,
00:46:10.000 –> 00:46:13.000
and we’re, hiking for seven or eight days.
00:46:13.000 –> 00:46:14.000
Called the calaver camping.
00:46:15.000 –> 00:46:16.000
You know, where we have, you know, lots
00:46:16.000 –> 00:46:19.000
of sherpas and cars, anything else, and they
00:46:19.000 –> 00:46:21.000
set the tents up and prepare them down.
00:46:21.000 –> 00:46:25.000
But the terrain there, and the, moving from
00:46:25.000 –> 00:46:28.000
desert to the upper mountains, foothills, to, you
00:46:28.000 –> 00:46:29.000
know, canyons was,
00:46:30.000 –> 00:46:32.000
I did it before, and that’s the only
00:46:32.000 –> 00:46:33.000
thing our family to do again. And so
00:46:33.000 –> 00:46:35.000
your all your kids are going everything on
00:46:35.000 –> 00:46:37.000
this trip. It’s it’s the Brett. I think
00:46:37.000 –> 00:46:40.000
hiking now could be the last way
00:46:41.000 –> 00:46:43.000
that parents can can
00:46:43.000 –> 00:46:45.000
have their kids like put their phones away
00:46:45.000 –> 00:46:48.000
because there’s no service and it’s amazing especially
00:46:48.000 –> 00:46:50.000
with boys, you know, after two hours of
00:46:50.000 –> 00:46:53.000
silence, they start talking. Right. Exactly.
00:46:54.000 –> 00:46:56.000
Start talking and start fighting. Right?
00:46:56.000 –> 00:46:58.000
So working our listeners find more of Chip
00:46:58.000 –> 00:46:59.000
Wilson.
00:47:00.000 –> 00:47:03.000
Well, I guess they can find, just going
00:47:03.000 –> 00:47:05.000
Chip chip Wilson dot com. I have there
00:47:05.000 –> 00:47:07.000
and you can kind of move every find
00:47:07.000 –> 00:47:09.000
everything from there. Yeah.
00:47:09.000 –> 00:47:10.000
Definitely,
00:47:10.000 –> 00:47:12.000
I think it’s, you know, probably reading my
00:47:12.000 –> 00:47:14.000
book and thanks for for plugging it a
00:47:14.000 –> 00:47:16.000
bit. Absolutely. It’s a great business book for
00:47:16.000 –> 00:47:17.000
entrepreneurs.
00:47:18.000 –> 00:47:19.000
And so you’re sitting in an office there.
00:47:19.000 –> 00:47:22.000
It looks like. What’s, what’s Chip Wilson’s day
00:47:22.000 –> 00:47:23.000
look like today?
00:47:25.000 –> 00:47:26.000
What did I let’s see. What did I
00:47:26.000 –> 00:47:28.000
do today? I got up. I took my
00:47:28.000 –> 00:47:31.000
boy to summer school. I came back without
00:47:31.000 –> 00:47:32.000
my phone.
00:47:32.000 –> 00:47:34.000
So I had to
00:47:34.000 –> 00:47:36.000
I I walked here. So it was an
00:47:36.000 –> 00:47:38.000
hour and a half to walk to work
00:47:38.000 –> 00:47:39.000
along the oceanfront
00:47:39.000 –> 00:47:42.000
of Vancouver, which is stunning.
00:47:42.000 –> 00:47:44.000
And I come to your gas town, which
00:47:44.000 –> 00:47:45.000
is our old part of Chip, the town
00:47:45.000 –> 00:47:47.000
where I am. And,
00:47:47.000 –> 00:47:50.000
and then I got Chip to Oh, I
00:47:50.000 –> 00:47:52.000
had a call with a guy that did
00:47:52.000 –> 00:47:53.000
an article on on me,
00:47:54.000 –> 00:47:56.000
from London a few months ago about the
00:47:56.000 –> 00:47:57.000
blue lemon AGM.
00:47:57.000 –> 00:47:58.000
And,
00:47:58.000 –> 00:48:01.000
And then I was and then I, of
00:48:01.000 –> 00:48:02.000
course, I haven’t been here for two weeks,
00:48:02.000 –> 00:48:05.000
so there’s all sorts of packages with apparel,
00:48:06.000 –> 00:48:09.000
samples and getting those to the right Gilliland,
00:48:11.000 –> 00:48:13.000
yeah, since someone wrote a book about, I’ll
00:48:13.000 –> 00:48:14.000
just show you.
00:48:19.000 –> 00:48:21.000
Actually, I don’t even know. It’s called B.
00:48:22.000 –> 00:48:24.000
B magazine. I haven’t even unwrapped it, but
00:48:24.000 –> 00:48:26.000
it’s, it was a good thing. It’s about
00:48:26.000 –> 00:48:28.000
a, a third party that does that and
00:48:28.000 –> 00:48:31.000
synopsis is on brands, and they and I
00:48:31.000 –> 00:48:32.000
think that’s one of the greatest things that
00:48:32.000 –> 00:48:34.000
we did at Lou lemon, as I put
00:48:34.000 –> 00:48:35.000
all the a lot of my sayings on
00:48:35.000 –> 00:48:37.000
the outside of Yeah. Bag.
00:48:38.000 –> 00:48:38.000
And,
00:48:38.000 –> 00:48:40.000
but, you know, Lou Lemon doesn’t shoot. They
00:48:40.000 –> 00:48:42.000
only put, like, two or three on now.
00:48:42.000 –> 00:48:44.000
They don’t put the fifty on I had
00:48:44.000 –> 00:48:47.000
before because It’s a lot cooler then. Yeah.
00:48:47.000 –> 00:48:48.000
We have a we’re living the world where
00:48:48.000 –> 00:48:52.000
you can’t actually say say truth anymore. You
00:48:52.000 –> 00:48:54.000
might hurt somebody’s feelings, Chip. Oh, I know.
00:48:54.000 –> 00:48:57.000
Terrible. Yeah. Terrible. And I’m good. You got
00:48:57.000 –> 00:48:58.000
them in the socks. You got them on
00:48:58.000 –> 00:49:00.000
the band of those t shirts. They were
00:49:00.000 –> 00:49:00.000
everywhere.
00:49:01.000 –> 00:49:01.000
Yeah.
00:49:02.000 –> 00:49:04.000
Well, Chip, it’s been awesome having you, man.
00:49:04.000 –> 00:49:06.000
And, it’s it’s crazy what you have done.
00:49:06.000 –> 00:49:09.000
You’ve literally changed the way people,
00:49:09.000 –> 00:49:11.000
dress. I mean, have you ever really thought
00:49:11.000 –> 00:49:11.000
about that?
00:49:13.000 –> 00:49:16.000
Yeah. I have, you know, and it’s of
00:49:16.000 –> 00:49:19.000
course, I Brett that way for so long.
00:49:20.000 –> 00:49:21.000
Like, even
00:49:22.000 –> 00:49:24.000
back in the day of going to to
00:49:24.000 –> 00:49:26.000
work in a suit and tie, I had
00:49:26.000 –> 00:49:28.000
my skateboard shoes on because I skateboarded to
00:49:28.000 –> 00:49:29.000
work and
00:49:30.000 –> 00:49:32.000
People now kinda thinking that, you know, wearing
00:49:32.000 –> 00:49:34.000
wedding shoes with a suit is kinda trendy
00:49:34.000 –> 00:49:36.000
and that, but, you know, that’s,
00:49:36.000 –> 00:49:39.000
it’s neat to see the world catch up
00:49:39.000 –> 00:49:40.000
to the way I thought life should be
00:49:40.000 –> 00:49:43.000
lived. Yeah. Well, that little black stretchy pants
00:49:43.000 –> 00:49:46.000
that you’ve made has changed the way people
00:49:46.000 –> 00:49:48.000
dress you know, the women Brett, and it’s
00:49:48.000 –> 00:49:49.000
amazing how you probably thought they were just
00:49:49.000 –> 00:49:51.000
giving yoga pants. And now they wear them
00:49:51.000 –> 00:49:53.000
dress they wear them dressy too. Right?
00:49:54.000 –> 00:49:56.000
Well, I knew that from the surfskate snowbird
00:49:56.000 –> 00:49:58.000
business that, you know, you make a product
00:49:58.000 –> 00:50:00.000
that can that’s technical and looks good on
00:50:00.000 –> 00:50:02.000
the street, you know, It was kind of
00:50:02.000 –> 00:50:03.000
Italian
00:50:03.000 –> 00:50:06.000
styling with West Coast function, I call it.
00:50:06.000 –> 00:50:06.000
Nice.
00:50:07.000 –> 00:50:09.000
Yeah. Well, very good. Well, Chip, thank you
00:50:09.000 –> 00:50:11.000
so much for being on the Circive success
00:50:11.000 –> 00:50:13.000
and, continued success to you, and we appreciate
00:50:13.000 –> 00:50:15.000
your time. K. Thank you very much, Brett.
00:50:15.000 –> 00:50:17.000
I have my brother is Brett, and my
00:50:17.000 –> 00:50:19.000
son is Brett, by the way. Well, perfect.
00:50:19.000 –> 00:50:19.000
Two tees.
00:50:21.000 –> 00:50:21.000
Yeah.
00:50:22.000 –> 00:50:22.000
I get
View all episodes
By BEYOND Media Group
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Join host Brett Gilliland in an exclusive interview with Chip Wilson, the visionary founder of Lululemon. Discover the secrets behind Lululemon’s rise to luxury brand status and Chip’s entrepreneurial journey. Learn how he identified a new market in the ’90s, created quality products at competitive prices, and embraced personal development for success.
**Key Highlights:**
– ?♂️ Unveiling the Yoga Apparel Revolution
– ? Investing in Overlooked Talent: Empowering Women in Business
– ? Chip Wilson’s Focus 90 Strategy: Goal Setting for Success
– ? Taking Risks and Doing Meaningful Work: Advice to the Younger Self
Tune in to gain insights into Chip’s “grind” of building a business, his timeless advice, and the impactful Focus 90 strategy. Don’t miss this episode filled with inspiration and practical wisdom from the man who changed the game in athletic apparel!
#Lululemon #Entrepreneurship #SuccessStories #Focus90Strategy #BusinessInnovation
Watch HERE on Youtube!
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I’m your host, Brett Gilliland. And today,
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I’m so decided to be with an entrepreneur,
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an author. He is the founder of lululemon,
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and, his name is Chip Wilson Chip. How
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are you doing today? Fantastic, Brett. Fantastic. Awesome.
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Well, it’s great to have you. It’s, you’ve
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got a heck of a story, and I’m
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excited for our listeners to, hear that. Like,
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on every show, I always ask Chip is,
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it’s a big question, but what what helped
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make you the man you are today? Cause
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you are more than, obviously, the father a
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five boys, a husband, an entrepreneur,
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and an author.
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What helps you make all those things?
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So everyone wondered how much is genetics and
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how much is environment, and I think I
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had the perfect amount of both. You know,
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as
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athletic, you know, a father who is an
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athlete and a mom who is, home sour.
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And then I then I think we just
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never had much money. Kind of that lower
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kinda middle class debt. It was a you
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don’t make as much money as a phys
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ed teacher.
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And, but I think I had a lot
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of drive. And I think that that I
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sometimes wonder is that genetic, or is that,
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was I, you know, was that
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built into me. I don’t know. But I
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feel like I just wanted to succeed. I
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wanted to find out what was going on
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in the world. I wanted to add all
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these ideas, and I wondered if everyone else
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had the same idea.
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And so that, that drive obviously helped you
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very much in the, in the in the
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business, but we’ll we’ll talk about Lululemon in
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a little bit, but I know you you
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got into what cert you had the surf
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company. You had a skate company, a snowboarding
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company,
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all sorts of stuff. So tell us about
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those.
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Well, when I graduated at a university, it’s
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twenty five, so it’s on the eight year
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bachelor program.
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I never know that.
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I started to do triathlons and that was
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I mean, that was a long time ago.
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So nineteen probably eighty, I guess. And that
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then there was only about ten people in
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the world doing triathlons.
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I had,
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I quickly found out that there was no
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good clothing, especially for that kind of distance
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and a lot of rushing, a lot of
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issues. And because my mom was a sower
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and had some ideas. I started making triathlon
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clothing, but, of course, there wasn’t enough people
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to make it.
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I was originally from California San Diego and
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living in Canada.
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And,
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and so I
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with that, I started
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supplementing what I had and start bringing up
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surf gear from Gordon Smith and Stucy and
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O. B. Bellabaugh and quicksilver and that into
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Canada. Really the first person to bring that
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into Canada, kind of a a virgin territory
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for that market.
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And,
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And so I think that I just,
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that
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the travel and stuff didn’t go, but the
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surf stuff went really well. And then That
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kind of had its rise and fall because
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you start in almost every industry. You start
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off with three businesses.
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It goes to five hundred and then falls
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to three again.
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And so as that was going up and
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falling, then skateboarding was coming up and then
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falling and then snowboarding,
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you know, came up and then started falling
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too. So I I followed those general trends.
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And so you followed those trends, and then
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you saw another trend, around mindfulness and yoga,
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and and you started this, this little company
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called lululemon.
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So talk to us about that. I’m I’m
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wearing lululemon pants right now too. Hope that’s
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alright. I wear them all the time.
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Well, you never know what people are wearing
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behind the microphone. That’s right. Sitting down.
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That’s right.
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I think,
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like I said, I saw these, you
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know, athletic social trends, you know, rise and
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fall
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I had failed a couple times. I tried
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beach volleyball, and I tried mountain biking. But
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what I discovered is neither of those sports,
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which became big. No one wanted to look
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like that on the street.
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So,
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You know, I got I got I sold
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my Suresgate snowboard company,
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and I sat around for a Wilson, and
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I kinda looked around. And of course, I
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was injured from from falling a lot, snowboarding
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and skateboarding. So I started doing yoga
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first class that was in Vancouver type of
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thing, and I looked around and I went
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You know, this is gonna this is pretty
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cool. This is gonna be I could sense
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it went from six people to thirty people
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in one month
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And,
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and if I extrapolated back the seerskates snowboard
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business, I went, wow, this is gonna be
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just as big. And it’s much opportunity.
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So I had an expertise in technical apparel,
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especially first layer of stretch for women that
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would went under snowboard clothing.
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And I just started making it, a version
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of that for yoga.
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And,
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and then I could go into a million
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different ways going from there, but maybe you
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have another question you wanna lead with. Well,
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I just I think it’s, you know, it’s
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one thing to have an idea. It’s one
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thing to say, oh, you know, my mom
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you know, knew how to do this stuff.
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I know how to do that stuff. But,
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I mean, how do you go out and
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then just create this little lemon craze? And
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I know we could talk about that for
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hours, but it has become a brand that
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I think is, you know, in the athletic
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wear, obviously, but it’s also a a symbol,
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you know, the the kids want it.
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You know, moms want it, dads want it.
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Now, heck, my some of my boys, you
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know, wanna wear the t shirts and stuff.
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I mean, you’ve created this thing that’s that’s
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become a brand, a symbol. Right? And so
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how did that happen? Cause it doesn’t just
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happen overnight?
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Yeah. So you’re looking for the, moment, and
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then what to do with type of thing
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because of Yeah. Sense.
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When,
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so I was in the middle of this
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yoga Gilliland
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I was only like fifteen days into it.
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And I read an article in the newspaper
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where it said sixty percent of the graduates
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at a university for now, a woman
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And in nineteen ninety eight, that was a
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phenomenal number because when I went to university,
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it felt like twenty percent.
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Sure. Maybe because I couldn’t get any dates.
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It felt like twenty percent.
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Yeah. Right. So, it it really I mean,
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that was astounding to me. And it didn’t
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work in a lot of reading in Africa
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about the whole goal was to educate women
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because the
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the more educated women are than the fewer
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children they will have and the longer they’ll
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wait to have children.
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So I extrapolated
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out, and I went, oh my god, you
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know, for the first time ever we’re gonna
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end up with a brand new employee
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and a brand new consumer that’s consumer that’s
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never existed before.
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A highly educated university woman that now goes
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into the workforce and now suddenly
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isn’t leaving at the age of twenty four
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to have a Wilson
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And so they’re gonna wait till they’re thirty
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two. So that’s that’s what I extrapolated. So
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with that market then became the new Lululemon
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employee, and it him a customer that was,
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highly educated media savvy
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owned their own condo traveled with as was
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athletic, stylish,
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basically a lot of consumer spending involved.
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And so
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I went so That was there. And then
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also I could sense that in the nineties,
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there was a there was a lot of
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talk in the media about breast cancer for
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Gilliland
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I and I had sensed from being in
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the workforce and kinda and being the age
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I am that,
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prior to that, you know, woman who came
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into the workforce,
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were kinda emulating their fathers.
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And they were doing the three Martini lunches.
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They were smoking cigarettes
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because they thought that that’s what was successful.
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And I think, you know, when you combine
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that with the heavy dose of the pill
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at that time, I think it created, you
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know, the
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atmosphere for breast cancer at that time. So
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I think when when these,
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when these
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girls at work, twenty now gonna be twenty
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two to thirty two, which I call who
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I call super girls,
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had these power woman, mothers who were basically
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unhealthy,
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and these super girls just didn’t wanna live
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their life like that.
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And I think that yoga was something that
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was
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accessible. It was feminine. And what I mean,
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accessible, they could do at lunch hour. They
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could do it in the morning. Didn’t have
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to go to snow, you know, find the
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surf. You didn’t have to find the mountains.
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Yeah. And,
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and it was, yeah, so it was feminine,
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stylish, the whole works. And I think,
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when you combine that with I had a
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couple other ideas. Do you wanna hear them?
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Sure. Sure.
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Well, I call this I call this Supergirl
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Supergirls because that in the in the nineties,
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for the first time, you saw a girl
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in,
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with superheroes like cartoons.
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And so they they were wearing lycra, and
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they were equal in power to men. And
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I think that the supergirl mothers were wearing
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all the big power suits with the big
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shoulder pads looking very mannish,
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but who the girls were looking up to
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were these like lycra clad power superheroes on
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TV.
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So
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I also think that,
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in the nineties are, you had amazing the
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public divorces
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peaked.
00:09:12.000 –> 00:09:14.000
And I think you had,
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fathers who didn’t ever knew what to do
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with they with their daughters.
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Right. They became baseball coaches, soccer coaches, and
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athletic coaches. And so I think these girls
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became exceedingly athletic And,
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and I think that the, you know, basically,
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they those all those things kinda combine together
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provided the the perfect template for this new
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market and this new sport.
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So do you want me I am a
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pause there for a second. I’m just thinking
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in my mind about it it seems like
00:09:46.000 –> 00:09:48.000
you are a very deep thinker. Right? I
00:09:48.000 –> 00:09:50.000
mean, you keep think I think this. I
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think that I mean, you’re tying the kinda
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the comic wonder woman type person to the
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business woman today,
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and and you bring that together into this
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brand. Right? So when when you think when
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you say, I think. Are you a thinker?
00:10:03.000 –> 00:10:05.000
Are you sitting around in a room thinking
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all day? What are you doing?
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I’m I’m probably your reader.
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Okay. Phenomenal amount and all those have. I
00:10:12.000 –> 00:10:12.000
and I
00:10:13.000 –> 00:10:15.000
where’d that come from? I don’t know, but
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it’s
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You know, I would I’d read every magazine,
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three or four newspapers a day.
00:10:23.000 –> 00:10:25.000
I very rarely watch TV when I was
00:10:25.000 –> 00:10:26.000
young.
00:10:27.000 –> 00:10:29.000
And even to today except for Netflix is
00:10:29.000 –> 00:10:31.000
kinda taking a little bit.
00:10:32.000 –> 00:10:34.000
And I think that I just lose all
00:10:34.000 –> 00:10:34.000
extrapolated.
00:10:35.000 –> 00:10:38.000
I was extrapolating out ideas, and I was,
00:10:38.000 –> 00:10:41.000
meshing two different ideas together.
00:10:42.000 –> 00:10:44.000
And basically, what I could see three things
00:10:44.000 –> 00:10:46.000
happen very, very quickly. I would jump on
00:10:46.000 –> 00:10:48.000
it, which is kinda what I didn’t surf
00:10:48.000 –> 00:10:50.000
skate snowboard, and then again, in yoga.
00:10:51.000 –> 00:10:53.000
So I would have seen, I, the first
00:10:53.000 –> 00:10:55.000
yoga class I would have had would have
00:10:55.000 –> 00:10:57.000
had a little poster on a telephone, post
00:10:57.000 –> 00:10:59.000
a little rip off telephone. Do you know
00:10:59.000 –> 00:11:01.000
that type of thing? And then maybe a
00:11:01.000 –> 00:11:03.000
couple days later, I would have heard two
00:11:03.000 –> 00:11:04.000
people talk
00:11:04.000 –> 00:11:06.000
in the coffee shop about yoga.
00:11:07.000 –> 00:11:08.000
And then I would have read an article
00:11:08.000 –> 00:11:10.000
about yoga in the newspaper
00:11:10.000 –> 00:11:12.000
or something, you know, that I went, and
00:11:12.000 –> 00:11:13.000
I’d go, oh my god. Like, I’ve I’ve
00:11:13.000 –> 00:11:17.000
never never, like, seen anything about yoga. And
00:11:17.000 –> 00:11:19.000
now three things in one week, like,
00:11:20.000 –> 00:11:22.000
That’s when an entrepreneur is someone who has
00:11:22.000 –> 00:11:25.000
an idea jumps on it. And then once
00:11:25.000 –> 00:11:27.000
once that three things happen, I mean, I
00:11:27.000 –> 00:11:29.000
can My mind immediately goes out twenty years.
00:11:30.000 –> 00:11:32.000
And it goes now. Chip is something that
00:11:32.000 –> 00:11:34.000
I should do or not do. And,
00:11:35.000 –> 00:11:36.000
At that time in my life, I could
00:11:36.000 –> 00:11:37.000
definitely have,
00:11:38.000 –> 00:11:41.000
I’ve done nothing. I had sold my my
00:11:41.000 –> 00:11:43.000
first company, and when I mean nothing, that
00:11:43.000 –> 00:11:44.000
means I’d have to job as a Brett
00:11:45.000 –> 00:11:47.000
at Starbucks to, you know, but I could’ve
00:11:47.000 –> 00:11:49.000
paid off a house and bought a car
00:11:49.000 –> 00:11:51.000
and sent my kids to, to school. So,
00:11:52.000 –> 00:11:54.000
But, you know, they decided to jump back
00:11:54.000 –> 00:11:57.000
in. The idea would do good. Yeah. So
00:11:57.000 –> 00:12:00.000
talk about the the success of lululemon, but
00:12:00.000 –> 00:12:01.000
on the flip side of that, we’re gonna
00:12:01.000 –> 00:12:02.000
I would like to talk about what’s what’s
00:12:02.000 –> 00:12:04.000
some of the stuff that maybe brought you
00:12:04.000 –> 00:12:05.000
to your needs or some of your failures
00:12:05.000 –> 00:12:07.000
that you publicly shared that,
00:12:07.000 –> 00:12:09.000
you know, so many of us, I think
00:12:09.000 –> 00:12:10.000
we look at people like you and we
00:12:10.000 –> 00:12:12.000
say, oh, god. Here’s this guy that had
00:12:12.000 –> 00:12:15.000
this, you know, meteoric rise to success, but
00:12:15.000 –> 00:12:17.000
clearly it wasn’t that. And and so what
00:12:17.000 –> 00:12:18.000
are some of those failures that as a
00:12:18.000 –> 00:12:22.000
newer lululemon founder that you were bumping into,
00:12:22.000 –> 00:12:23.000
that that were really tough.
00:12:24.000 –> 00:12:25.000
Well, yeah.
00:12:26.000 –> 00:12:28.000
Even before I see that, I think, to
00:12:28.000 –> 00:12:30.000
say twenty years, I had this company called
00:12:30.000 –> 00:12:33.000
the West Beach surf company, Gilliland
00:12:33.000 –> 00:12:35.000
it didn’t make any money. So it was
00:12:35.000 –> 00:12:37.000
every year, I thought it would do better.
00:12:37.000 –> 00:12:38.000
Every year, I thought it would do better
00:12:38.000 –> 00:12:39.000
every year.
00:12:40.000 –> 00:12:40.000
And,
00:12:40.000 –> 00:12:42.000
at the end of the day, I had
00:12:42.000 –> 00:12:43.000
these two
00:12:46.000 –> 00:12:48.000
two retail stores of our own. We made
00:12:48.000 –> 00:12:50.000
our own clothing designed and put it in
00:12:50.000 –> 00:12:52.000
our stores And these two stores made a
00:12:52.000 –> 00:12:54.000
million dollars a year, and these two and
00:12:54.000 –> 00:12:57.000
these mid this international wholesale business we had
00:12:57.000 –> 00:12:58.000
lost a million dollars a year.
00:12:59.000 –> 00:13:01.000
So what I’m really getting at there is
00:13:01.000 –> 00:13:03.000
that there was, like, twenty years of learning.
00:13:03.000 –> 00:13:05.000
And then to be able to sell that
00:13:05.000 –> 00:13:08.000
and sit back and go, okay. What didn’t
00:13:08.000 –> 00:13:10.000
work about that and what did work about
00:13:10.000 –> 00:13:12.000
it? So what did work about it is
00:13:12.000 –> 00:13:14.000
the vertical retailer, get getting rid of the
00:13:14.000 –> 00:13:15.000
wholesaler.
00:13:16.000 –> 00:13:19.000
Now almost everybody gets into wholesale because you
00:13:19.000 –> 00:13:21.000
can make a few samples, show it to
00:13:21.000 –> 00:13:22.000
a lot of people, get a lot of
00:13:22.000 –> 00:13:25.000
orders, and then go to a manufacturer, get
00:13:25.000 –> 00:13:26.000
it done. But then you have to then
00:13:26.000 –> 00:13:29.000
there’s a big, big middle man in between
00:13:29.000 –> 00:13:31.000
that’s taking a lot of the profit.
00:13:31.000 –> 00:13:32.000
So
00:13:33.000 –> 00:13:35.000
I’m I’m getting around to your question. Oh,
00:13:35.000 –> 00:13:38.000
this is great. But it’s it’s it was
00:13:38.000 –> 00:13:39.000
a matter of
00:13:39.000 –> 00:13:41.000
I had to get to five stores.
00:13:42.000 –> 00:13:44.000
In order to get economy of scale production
00:13:45.000 –> 00:13:47.000
in order to get my cost down on
00:13:47.000 –> 00:13:49.000
my product to make any product.
00:13:49.000 –> 00:13:51.000
And when you come out with a brand
00:13:51.000 –> 00:13:53.000
new brand and a net brand new product
00:13:54.000 –> 00:13:56.000
with no marketing dollars,
00:13:56.000 –> 00:13:58.000
zero, and none,
00:13:58.000 –> 00:13:59.000
then
00:13:59.000 –> 00:14:00.000
then that’s a struggle.
00:14:01.000 –> 00:14:03.000
And that’s what every almost every entrepreneur that
00:14:03.000 –> 00:14:05.000
goes into anything that needs mass production,
00:14:06.000 –> 00:14:07.000
goes through.
00:14:07.000 –> 00:14:08.000
So
00:14:08.000 –> 00:14:10.000
I borrowed I bought a house. I bought
00:14:10.000 –> 00:14:12.000
a house for about half a million dollars
00:14:12.000 –> 00:14:15.000
in nineteen ninety eight. I brought two hundred
00:14:15.000 –> 00:14:17.000
million two hundred thousand on it.
00:14:17.000 –> 00:14:19.000
Got through about a year,
00:14:19.000 –> 00:14:22.000
borrowed another two hundred thousand dollars on it.
00:14:22.000 –> 00:14:22.000
And,
00:14:24.000 –> 00:14:26.000
and then, and then that’s it. Right? And
00:14:26.000 –> 00:14:28.000
then I ran out of that And then
00:14:28.000 –> 00:14:30.000
I had done some wholesale because I had
00:14:30.000 –> 00:14:32.000
to do wholesale in order to get my
00:14:32.000 –> 00:14:34.000
economy of scale numbers up, that company went
00:14:34.000 –> 00:14:35.000
bankrupt.
00:14:36.000 –> 00:14:37.000
And so now I didn’t have enough money
00:14:37.000 –> 00:14:38.000
to pay my employees.
00:14:39.000 –> 00:14:40.000
And,
00:14:40.000 –> 00:14:42.000
so I got a job,
00:14:43.000 –> 00:14:45.000
West Beach moved back from Portland back to
00:14:45.000 –> 00:14:47.000
Vancouver, and they offered me my job to
00:14:47.000 –> 00:14:49.000
be CEO. So I took that job in
00:14:49.000 –> 00:14:51.000
order to fund Lou Gilliland
00:14:51.000 –> 00:14:53.000
then we ran out of that money.
00:14:53.000 –> 00:14:55.000
And then I if I hadn’t and then
00:14:55.000 –> 00:14:58.000
that Christmas, if I hadn’t got fired from
00:14:58.000 –> 00:15:00.000
West Beach, because they con they really combine
00:15:00.000 –> 00:15:03.000
SIMs skateboards in West Beach, our West Beach,
00:15:04.000 –> 00:15:06.000
snowboard together, and so that CEO took over.
00:15:06.000 –> 00:15:09.000
So I got a fifty thousand dollar severance.
00:15:09.000 –> 00:15:11.000
If it wasn’t for that fifty Little little
00:15:11.000 –> 00:15:12.000
grading room.
00:15:13.000 –> 00:15:14.000
It never would have happened.
00:15:15.000 –> 00:15:16.000
So there was a bunch of things in
00:15:16.000 –> 00:15:17.000
there that,
00:15:18.000 –> 00:15:20.000
and actually another thing that happened is that
00:15:20.000 –> 00:15:23.000
the Vancouver Housing prices were going up so
00:15:23.000 –> 00:15:23.000
fast.
00:15:24.000 –> 00:15:26.000
That I was able actually to take another
00:15:26.000 –> 00:15:26.000
hundred thousand,
00:15:27.000 –> 00:15:29.000
you know, at that point. Right. So there
00:15:29.000 –> 00:15:31.000
it was I was mortgaged to the Wilson,
00:15:31.000 –> 00:15:33.000
and had everything in this business, and it
00:15:33.000 –> 00:15:35.000
was either gonna work or I was in
00:15:35.000 –> 00:15:36.000
a lot of trouble.
00:15:37.000 –> 00:15:40.000
Yeah. Or and homeless. Right? So it’s but
00:15:40.000 –> 00:15:41.000
talk about that because there’s a lot of
00:15:41.000 –> 00:15:43.000
learning even just in that is a lot
00:15:43.000 –> 00:15:45.000
of people are are listening this. Right? They
00:15:45.000 –> 00:15:46.000
may be driving on the road. They may
00:15:46.000 –> 00:15:48.000
be in their and they’re not happy. They’ve
00:15:48.000 –> 00:15:51.000
got this great idea, this vision that’s twenty
00:15:51.000 –> 00:15:52.000
years long,
00:15:52.000 –> 00:15:54.000
but a lot of people are scared to
00:15:54.000 –> 00:15:55.000
go take
00:15:55.000 –> 00:15:57.000
three loans off their house, right, and going
00:15:57.000 –> 00:15:59.000
to Brett. And as you would say, push
00:15:59.000 –> 00:16:00.000
all the chips in. Right? A lot of
00:16:00.000 –> 00:16:01.000
people are scared to do that. So what
00:16:01.000 –> 00:16:03.000
was it about you that was different? Do
00:16:03.000 –> 00:16:03.000
you think?
00:16:04.000 –> 00:16:06.000
Well, I think for me, because I’d seen
00:16:06.000 –> 00:16:08.000
it three times before in the search gauge
00:16:08.000 –> 00:16:10.000
somewhere business, I I had an idea of
00:16:10.000 –> 00:16:13.000
where was going. I also had f evidence
00:16:13.000 –> 00:16:17.000
of this new business, this new business model
00:16:17.000 –> 00:16:18.000
of being vertical and not wholesale.
00:16:19.000 –> 00:16:21.000
I could also sense that whoever got into
00:16:21.000 –> 00:16:24.000
a lululemon product, you could see in their
00:16:24.000 –> 00:16:27.000
eyes. You could see how they feel. They
00:16:27.000 –> 00:16:29.000
when they bought the the clothing, they just
00:16:29.000 –> 00:16:31.000
didn’t buy one thing. They were buying three
00:16:31.000 –> 00:16:31.000
things.
00:16:32.000 –> 00:16:32.000
And
00:16:33.000 –> 00:16:34.000
it it wasn’t,
00:16:37.000 –> 00:16:38.000
It was just like I had to have
00:16:38.000 –> 00:16:40.000
faith because I knew I had the right
00:16:40.000 –> 00:16:43.000
product at the right time for the right
00:16:43.000 –> 00:16:44.000
market. And,
00:16:44.000 –> 00:16:47.000
and then I had to let myself, I
00:16:47.000 –> 00:16:48.000
wanted to let word-of-mouth
00:16:48.000 –> 00:16:49.000
make it work.
00:16:50.000 –> 00:16:51.000
And,
00:16:51.000 –> 00:16:53.000
anyway, but you’re getting back to the people
00:16:53.000 –> 00:16:55.000
that are sitting on the freeway listening to
00:16:55.000 –> 00:16:58.000
it. I think there’s two things for me,
00:16:58.000 –> 00:17:00.000
and that is if I was sitting on
00:17:00.000 –> 00:17:02.000
my deathbed and I didn’t do it, would
00:17:02.000 –> 00:17:04.000
I always be regretting it? I only have
00:17:04.000 –> 00:17:05.000
life to live.
00:17:05.000 –> 00:17:06.000
And
00:17:06.000 –> 00:17:08.000
is it a life worth living?
00:17:09.000 –> 00:17:10.000
And I think the other thing on the
00:17:10.000 –> 00:17:12.000
other side I look at, which is quite
00:17:12.000 –> 00:17:15.000
recent, would my twelve year old self be
00:17:15.000 –> 00:17:16.000
proud of me today?
00:17:17.000 –> 00:17:20.000
And and that really is an interesting thought
00:17:20.000 –> 00:17:21.000
because it goes,
00:17:21.000 –> 00:17:24.000
you know, like, did I did I They
00:17:24.000 –> 00:17:25.000
play in life of fear and do they
00:17:25.000 –> 00:17:27.000
live a life of possibility.
00:17:29.000 –> 00:17:30.000
She’s writing that down. Would my twelve year
00:17:30.000 –> 00:17:32.000
old self be proud of me today? That’s
00:17:32.000 –> 00:17:34.000
that’s phenomenal. Gilliland
00:17:34.000 –> 00:17:36.000
I think too, it’s it has become this,
00:17:36.000 –> 00:17:39.000
like, luxury brand. Right? It it’s whether you
00:17:39.000 –> 00:17:41.000
have your iPhone and a lululemon
00:17:42.000 –> 00:17:44.000
pants and your you know, Louis Vuitton purse,
00:17:44.000 –> 00:17:46.000
right, for the women, you know, in the
00:17:46.000 –> 00:17:48.000
world. And and it’s but how does that
00:17:48.000 –> 00:17:50.000
happen to win at the time? I guess
00:17:50.000 –> 00:17:52.000
it really wasn’t a lot of competition, but
00:17:52.000 –> 00:17:54.000
you’re still able now to go out and
00:17:54.000 –> 00:17:56.000
sell a hundred and twenty dollar pair of
00:17:56.000 –> 00:17:57.000
pants in that world, right, a pair of
00:17:57.000 –> 00:17:59.000
yoga pants when everybody else wants to charge
00:17:59.000 –> 00:18:01.000
fifty bucks. I mean, how do you get
00:18:01.000 –> 00:18:01.000
away with that?
00:18:02.000 –> 00:18:03.000
Well, because,
00:18:04.000 –> 00:18:06.000
people are under the perception that it’s the
00:18:06.000 –> 00:18:07.000
same product.
00:18:08.000 –> 00:18:09.000
Yeah. It’s not. At the end of the
00:18:09.000 –> 00:18:10.000
day,
00:18:11.000 –> 00:18:12.000
The idea
00:18:13.000 –> 00:18:15.000
was to make a better quality product at
00:18:15.000 –> 00:18:17.000
a better price than the competition.
00:18:18.000 –> 00:18:20.000
The fact is is the competition can’t make
00:18:20.000 –> 00:18:22.000
a better product than the them. And the
00:18:22.000 –> 00:18:24.000
reason is is because Lu Lemma’s vertical
00:18:25.000 –> 00:18:28.000
doesn’t have to doesn’t have any wholesale. So
00:18:28.000 –> 00:18:30.000
it can make because it it only sells
00:18:30.000 –> 00:18:32.000
to itself. It doesn’t have to have the
00:18:32.000 –> 00:18:33.000
same,
00:18:36.000 –> 00:18:36.000
markups.
00:18:37.000 –> 00:18:38.000
So what am I saying there?
00:18:40.000 –> 00:18:43.000
So what what ends up, because Lululemon can
00:18:43.000 –> 00:18:44.000
make a better quality product at a better
00:18:44.000 –> 00:18:47.000
price, it’s goods are made out of Wilson.
00:18:47.000 –> 00:18:50.000
Not polyester. So polyester stinks,
00:18:50.000 –> 00:18:51.000
and polyester
00:18:51.000 –> 00:18:54.000
doesn’t feel the same way that nylon does.
00:18:54.000 –> 00:18:56.000
It doesn’t it doesn’t combine with the lycra
00:18:56.000 –> 00:18:57.000
heart.
00:18:57.000 –> 00:18:58.000
Or the,
00:18:59.000 –> 00:19:00.000
or the technical
00:19:01.000 –> 00:19:04.000
properties that we can put inside fibers can
00:19:04.000 –> 00:19:06.000
go inside nylon so much better than polyester.
00:19:07.000 –> 00:19:09.000
So the, you know, the anti stain anti
00:19:09.000 –> 00:19:10.000
wicking,
00:19:11.000 –> 00:19:12.000
the breathability,
00:19:13.000 –> 00:19:15.000
it’s just an entirely different product.
00:19:15.000 –> 00:19:16.000
But
00:19:16.000 –> 00:19:18.000
you can’t really flu lemon is was set
00:19:18.000 –> 00:19:21.000
up never to kinda like be a raw
00:19:21.000 –> 00:19:24.000
raw about itself. You know, so it doesn’t
00:19:24.000 –> 00:19:25.000
have to be We put all our money
00:19:25.000 –> 00:19:27.000
into training and development of people and the
00:19:27.000 –> 00:19:30.000
quality of the product, and we let people
00:19:30.000 –> 00:19:32.000
talk for the for it for the product.
00:19:32.000 –> 00:19:34.000
While you’re talking about that, I know personal
00:19:34.000 –> 00:19:36.000
development was a big deal for you personally,
00:19:36.000 –> 00:19:37.000
but also was a really big deal for
00:19:37.000 –> 00:19:39.000
your employees. So talk about that and what
00:19:39.000 –> 00:19:41.000
role that played in the company.
00:19:42.000 –> 00:19:45.000
Well, I was selfish and that I when
00:19:45.000 –> 00:19:47.000
I started Lou Lem and I just decided
00:19:47.000 –> 00:19:48.000
I never wanted to be with anybody, I
00:19:48.000 –> 00:19:51.000
didn’t who wasn’t phenomenal Wilson Brett, and I
00:19:51.000 –> 00:19:52.000
wanted to go to work with every day.
00:19:52.000 –> 00:19:54.000
That’s where I spent all my time.
00:19:54.000 –> 00:19:55.000
So
00:19:55.000 –> 00:19:57.000
so from that point of view, I just
00:19:57.000 –> 00:19:58.000
want people to know that it was a
00:19:58.000 –> 00:19:59.000
selfish thing,
00:20:00.000 –> 00:20:00.000
but And,
00:20:01.000 –> 00:20:03.000
but I also knew that
00:20:04.000 –> 00:20:06.000
that suddenly you had all these women that
00:20:06.000 –> 00:20:08.000
were out of the universe see. And no
00:20:08.000 –> 00:20:10.000
and I think I was the only person
00:20:10.000 –> 00:20:13.000
that could really see that they were gonna
00:20:13.000 –> 00:20:15.000
be around for at least eight years, nine
00:20:15.000 –> 00:20:17.000
years before they had before they had a
00:20:17.000 –> 00:20:18.000
family.
00:20:18.000 –> 00:20:21.000
So they were really worth investing in. And
00:20:21.000 –> 00:20:24.000
I gotta get no other company was investing
00:20:24.000 –> 00:20:26.000
in women at that time. It just it
00:20:26.000 –> 00:20:28.000
was just no return on it.
00:20:28.000 –> 00:20:29.000
So
00:20:29.000 –> 00:20:32.000
so to be so I think the woman
00:20:32.000 –> 00:20:34.000
that came to Lou, Gilliland, like, they were
00:20:34.000 –> 00:20:37.000
ready for it. They wanted something. And because,
00:20:39.000 –> 00:20:42.000
personal development at that time was very unmasked
00:20:42.000 –> 00:20:44.000
masculine, but very feminine. I think Chip is
00:20:44.000 –> 00:20:46.000
the other thing that made Lou lemon work,
00:20:46.000 –> 00:20:49.000
and that woman were really willing to take
00:20:49.000 –> 00:20:50.000
on, like,
00:20:51.000 –> 00:20:53.000
who am I and how am I how
00:20:53.000 –> 00:20:54.000
am I the most effective?
00:20:54.000 –> 00:20:56.000
How do I communicate?
00:20:57.000 –> 00:20:58.000
When, you know, what is responsibility?
00:20:59.000 –> 00:21:00.000
What is integrity?
00:21:00.000 –> 00:21:02.000
You know, these things that I think men
00:21:02.000 –> 00:21:04.000
were masking, but women were really willing to
00:21:04.000 –> 00:21:06.000
face up to. So
00:21:07.000 –> 00:21:09.000
our whole program then was set up around
00:21:09.000 –> 00:21:10.000
those concepts,
00:21:11.000 –> 00:21:11.000
integrity
00:21:12.000 –> 00:21:13.000
responsibility,
00:21:13.000 –> 00:21:15.000
and, which everyone’s
00:21:15.000 –> 00:21:18.000
everyone says that. Right? But here’s Here’s the
00:21:18.000 –> 00:21:19.000
thing about integrity.
00:21:21.000 –> 00:21:23.000
And everyone says they have integrity,
00:21:23.000 –> 00:21:25.000
but inside a company, if everyone has a
00:21:25.000 –> 00:21:28.000
different definition of integrity, And in fact, there
00:21:28.000 –> 00:21:29.000
is no integrity.
00:21:31.000 –> 00:21:33.000
So the company has to have one definition
00:21:33.000 –> 00:21:37.000
of integrity, which then is then everyone knows
00:21:37.000 –> 00:21:37.000
what it is.
00:21:38.000 –> 00:21:40.000
So out of there are the four,
00:21:40.000 –> 00:21:43.000
platforms that we used, and I would suggest
00:21:43.000 –> 00:21:45.000
this any entrepreneur, it doesn’t have to be
00:21:45.000 –> 00:21:47.000
the ones that I set out.
00:21:47.000 –> 00:21:49.000
When we so ones we use were seven
00:21:49.000 –> 00:21:51.000
habits of highly effective people,
00:21:51.000 –> 00:21:53.000
the book Good to Great, which I think
00:21:53.000 –> 00:21:55.000
is is Chip book ever.
00:21:56.000 –> 00:21:58.000
The psychology of achievement by Brian Tracy,
00:21:59.000 –> 00:22:00.000
And inside of that is an hour of
00:22:00.000 –> 00:22:02.000
the psychology of why people do and do
00:22:02.000 –> 00:22:04.000
not goal set.
00:22:04.000 –> 00:22:07.000
And then the landmark form course, which really
00:22:07.000 –> 00:22:07.000
sets
00:22:08.000 –> 00:22:09.000
What is responsibility?
00:22:09.000 –> 00:22:12.000
What is integrity? And how do people? What’s
00:22:12.000 –> 00:22:15.000
the psychology about? How and why people communicate?
00:22:15.000 –> 00:22:16.000
So you did that. So you had them
00:22:16.000 –> 00:22:18.000
read those, those four books or go through
00:22:18.000 –> 00:22:20.000
those programs. And then what was what was
00:22:20.000 –> 00:22:23.000
the the accountability to that? So, yeah, yeah,
00:22:23.000 –> 00:22:25.000
I read it, or is it Now now
00:22:25.000 –> 00:22:26.000
there’s a, you know, an hour meeting to
00:22:26.000 –> 00:22:28.000
talk about the book. What was that like?
00:22:29.000 –> 00:22:29.000
Yeah.
00:22:30.000 –> 00:22:30.000
So
00:22:30.000 –> 00:22:32.000
one, two things. One, we set up a
00:22:32.000 –> 00:22:33.000
linguistic abstractions.
00:22:33.000 –> 00:22:36.000
We had about thirty terms and definitions that
00:22:36.000 –> 00:22:38.000
that came out of these books that we
00:22:38.000 –> 00:22:40.000
use as our platform for communication.
00:22:42.000 –> 00:22:43.000
The other thing we did is that
00:22:44.000 –> 00:22:47.000
And Chip is this is actually the fascinating
00:22:47.000 –> 00:22:47.000
part.
00:22:48.000 –> 00:22:50.000
So we were so big on goal setting.
00:22:50.000 –> 00:22:53.000
So In a goal then, a goal is
00:22:53.000 –> 00:22:55.000
only a differentiates from a vision because a
00:22:55.000 –> 00:22:57.000
goal has is quantifiable
00:22:57.000 –> 00:22:58.000
with a by windy.
00:22:59.000 –> 00:23:00.000
So
00:23:00.000 –> 00:23:03.000
I’m gonna take something pretty simple. So
00:23:03.000 –> 00:23:05.000
I’m sitting there. I’m two hundred and forty
00:23:05.000 –> 00:23:07.000
two pounds, and I go, okay.
00:23:08.000 –> 00:23:11.000
By next December thirty first two thousand and
00:23:11.000 –> 00:23:11.000
twenty,
00:23:12.000 –> 00:23:15.000
I am two hundred and thirty pounds. Okay.
00:23:15.000 –> 00:23:16.000
That’s a goal. Quantifiable
00:23:16.000 –> 00:23:18.000
with the buy win date. It could be
00:23:18.000 –> 00:23:21.000
things like I will take my family to
00:23:21.000 –> 00:23:22.000
Croatia
00:23:22.000 –> 00:23:23.000
for seven days
00:23:23.000 –> 00:23:26.000
sometime next, you know, in the year 02:20,
00:23:26.000 –> 00:23:27.000
something like that. Yep.
00:23:27.000 –> 00:23:30.000
We had them split between health, business, and,
00:23:31.000 –> 00:23:32.000
and personal. Now, interesting thing
00:23:33.000 –> 00:23:33.000
about
00:23:35.000 –> 00:23:37.000
that I’ve discovered about goal setting and it
00:23:37.000 –> 00:23:40.000
really came from the landmark about creating,
00:23:41.000 –> 00:23:43.000
our present from the future, not from the
00:23:43.000 –> 00:23:44.000
past.
00:23:45.000 –> 00:23:47.000
So I found that even I was setting
00:23:47.000 –> 00:23:49.000
my goals based on the past. So I’m
00:23:49.000 –> 00:23:51.000
two hundred and forty two pounds, and I
00:23:51.000 –> 00:23:53.000
wanna be two hundred and thirty based on
00:23:53.000 –> 00:23:55.000
being two hundred and forty two pounds.
00:23:56.000 –> 00:23:57.000
But if I was to wake up in
00:23:57.000 –> 00:23:59.000
the hospital with amnesia and I had no
00:23:59.000 –> 00:24:02.000
idea what how much I weighed or or
00:24:02.000 –> 00:24:03.000
anything,
00:24:03.000 –> 00:24:06.000
and I had no past history at all.
00:24:06.000 –> 00:24:08.000
And I went and researched what it six
00:24:08.000 –> 00:24:11.000
foot three, sixty four year old man,
00:24:11.000 –> 00:24:13.000
should weigh, you know, it would say two
00:24:13.000 –> 00:24:14.000
hundred and eight pounds.
00:24:15.000 –> 00:24:17.000
So you can see the difference in goal
00:24:17.000 –> 00:24:20.000
setting between setting goals from a unknown future
00:24:20.000 –> 00:24:23.000
as opposed to, a constrained past.
00:24:23.000 –> 00:24:26.000
And the difference would have been, what, twelve
00:24:26.000 –> 00:24:26.000
pounds.
00:24:27.000 –> 00:24:29.000
And that would have would have been a
00:24:29.000 –> 00:24:31.000
massive difference. But, and I only use that
00:24:31.000 –> 00:24:33.000
because it’s easy numbers to use.
00:24:34.000 –> 00:24:36.000
But when people think about, you know, their
00:24:36.000 –> 00:24:38.000
career, how much money they wanna make, or
00:24:38.000 –> 00:24:40.000
how, how much time they wanna put into
00:24:40.000 –> 00:24:43.000
loving their, their, their spouse, or How much
00:24:43.000 –> 00:24:45.000
time they wanna spend with their children, these
00:24:45.000 –> 00:24:48.000
those that twelve pounds is ten percent, which
00:24:48.000 –> 00:24:49.000
is what makes things work for, don’t work
00:24:49.000 –> 00:24:51.000
in line. Yeah. That’s the game changer. Isn’t
00:24:51.000 –> 00:24:53.000
it? So how did you drive that in
00:24:53.000 –> 00:24:55.000
your culture? I mean, what you personally, I
00:24:55.000 –> 00:24:57.000
know, obviously, as the the founder, CEO, the
00:24:57.000 –> 00:25:00.000
leader, the everything of that company early on,
00:25:00.000 –> 00:25:02.000
How did you personally drive culture?
00:25:03.000 –> 00:25:04.000
Well,
00:25:05.000 –> 00:25:08.000
I’ve I actually once I set it the
00:25:08.000 –> 00:25:10.000
template up, as I said, about so many
00:25:10.000 –> 00:25:12.000
things at Lululemon, I think I
00:25:12.000 –> 00:25:14.000
I set a template up, and then we
00:25:14.000 –> 00:25:17.000
just had these amazing people that just took
00:25:17.000 –> 00:25:18.000
it and ran
00:25:19.000 –> 00:25:21.000
I’m kind of an idea guy. I’m not
00:25:21.000 –> 00:25:23.000
a structural Wilson, and,
00:25:24.000 –> 00:25:24.000
but
00:25:25.000 –> 00:25:26.000
I think that
00:25:26.000 –> 00:25:29.000
There was something in these goals that had
00:25:29.000 –> 00:25:31.000
people’s lives really worked for them. And, of
00:25:31.000 –> 00:25:32.000
course,
00:25:32.000 –> 00:25:34.000
Lou lemon, not only because of the product
00:25:34.000 –> 00:25:36.000
and the business model, but because of the
00:25:36.000 –> 00:25:38.000
type of people we have ended up making
00:25:38.000 –> 00:25:40.000
so much money. It was almost a self,
00:25:41.000 –> 00:25:43.000
what do they call that? A self,
00:25:43.000 –> 00:25:46.000
prophecy. Prophecy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s gonna
00:25:46.000 –> 00:25:47.000
happen.
00:25:47.000 –> 00:25:50.000
But we had a template for goal setting,
00:25:51.000 –> 00:25:53.000
in eighteen goals. So we set goals for
00:25:53.000 –> 00:25:55.000
First off, you said a vision for your
00:25:55.000 –> 00:25:58.000
life, like ten years out. So mine would
00:25:58.000 –> 00:26:00.000
have been, you know, mine was like twenty
00:26:00.000 –> 00:26:01.000
or thirty years out. It was I’m gonna
00:26:01.000 –> 00:26:04.000
be sitting around a table at Thanksgiving with
00:26:04.000 –> 00:26:06.000
my children, grandchildren, and I’m gonna they’re all
00:26:06.000 –> 00:26:08.000
gonna be laughing at me because I’m old
00:26:08.000 –> 00:26:10.000
and crazy. You know? I mean, if that
00:26:10.000 –> 00:26:12.000
happens that, you know, at at
00:26:12.000 –> 00:26:14.000
eighty five or something, then I’m gonna be
00:26:14.000 –> 00:26:16.000
a happy man. Right? Yes. So when I
00:26:16.000 –> 00:26:18.000
start working my goals back from there, so
00:26:18.000 –> 00:26:19.000
What are the ten year goals I have
00:26:19.000 –> 00:26:21.000
to have? What are that five year goals
00:26:21.000 –> 00:26:23.000
and what are the one year goals? And
00:26:23.000 –> 00:26:24.000
when you start at the top of the
00:26:24.000 –> 00:26:26.000
vision, you work back that it makes it
00:26:26.000 –> 00:26:28.000
pretty easy to do one year goals. Seeing
00:26:28.000 –> 00:26:30.000
where you have to get in the five
00:26:30.000 –> 00:26:32.000
and ten. Yep. Yeah. I don’t disagree with
00:26:32.000 –> 00:26:33.000
that. And I think, and and I’ll just
00:26:33.000 –> 00:26:35.000
give you my concept if if and give
00:26:35.000 –> 00:26:37.000
me your feedback on Chip, but one of
00:26:37.000 –> 00:26:38.000
them is I call it Focus ninety. So
00:26:38.000 –> 00:26:40.000
when I walk in my office door every
00:26:40.000 –> 00:26:43.000
day, I Brett my briefcase down, I get
00:26:43.000 –> 00:26:45.000
my water, I know the things I gotta
00:26:45.000 –> 00:26:47.000
do. I got four things I gotta do
00:26:47.000 –> 00:26:49.000
the first ninety minutes of every day. And
00:26:49.000 –> 00:26:51.000
if I can win that moment, I’ll win
00:26:51.000 –> 00:26:52.000
the rest of the day. Right? And then
00:26:52.000 –> 00:26:54.000
But my ten year goal, my five year
00:26:54.000 –> 00:26:57.000
goal, my one year goal, and my ninety
00:26:57.000 –> 00:26:58.000
day goals are all written on that same
00:26:58.000 –> 00:27:00.000
piece of paper, and I read it every
00:27:00.000 –> 00:27:00.000
morning.
00:27:01.000 –> 00:27:03.000
Good for you. Well, that’s probably why you
00:27:03.000 –> 00:27:04.000
are what you are.
00:27:04.000 –> 00:27:06.000
Yeah. But your I mean, your thoughts on
00:27:06.000 –> 00:27:07.000
that. Right? I mean, that’s probably your habits
00:27:07.000 –> 00:27:09.000
and your rituals when you were early in
00:27:09.000 –> 00:27:11.000
your career, those were the things you were
00:27:11.000 –> 00:27:12.000
doing. Right? So if you can if you
00:27:12.000 –> 00:27:13.000
can give us a a thought of a
00:27:13.000 –> 00:27:14.000
goal, I know you said at one point
00:27:14.000 –> 00:27:17.000
you wanted to open five lululemons, but What’s
00:27:17.000 –> 00:27:18.000
an example? Because you don’t probably say I
00:27:18.000 –> 00:27:20.000
wanna sell one million pair of pants or
00:27:20.000 –> 00:27:23.000
I wanna make ten million dollars. I mean,
00:27:23.000 –> 00:27:25.000
what were those goals at that time?
00:27:26.000 –> 00:27:26.000
Well,
00:27:27.000 –> 00:27:29.000
before I say Lou Lumen, there’s this one
00:27:29.000 –> 00:27:31.000
I was a competitive summer when I was
00:27:31.000 –> 00:27:33.000
young. So I think So they had age
00:27:33.000 –> 00:27:36.000
groups ten and under eleven and 12:13, fourteen.
00:27:36.000 –> 00:27:36.000
So
00:27:37.000 –> 00:27:39.000
you knew that by the age of fourteen,
00:27:39.000 –> 00:27:41.000
that was the Canadian record. So speak or
00:27:41.000 –> 00:27:44.000
the American record, whatever you wanna call it.
00:27:44.000 –> 00:27:44.000
And
00:27:44.000 –> 00:27:46.000
and when you turn fifteen,
00:27:46.000 –> 00:27:48.000
you had to break break the record by
00:27:48.000 –> 00:27:50.000
that day or you did So it was
00:27:50.000 –> 00:27:53.000
automatic goal setting. I, you know, I will
00:27:54.000 –> 00:27:56.000
swim the hundred backstroke in x time
00:27:57.000 –> 00:27:59.000
by the age of my fifteenth birthday. So
00:27:59.000 –> 00:28:00.000
that type of thing.
00:28:00.000 –> 00:28:01.000
So
00:28:01.000 –> 00:28:04.000
for us, for me, I remember my wife
00:28:04.000 –> 00:28:05.000
and I originally
00:28:05.000 –> 00:28:07.000
setting out our goals. We had no money.
00:28:07.000 –> 00:28:09.000
We were in debt up to our eyeballs.
00:28:10.000 –> 00:28:12.000
And, but, you know, we were the template
00:28:12.000 –> 00:28:14.000
for the everyone else in the in the
00:28:14.000 –> 00:28:16.000
company My wife was the first designer, and
00:28:17.000 –> 00:28:18.000
so we were in it together. And,
00:28:19.000 –> 00:28:22.000
so we decided we were going to have
00:28:22.000 –> 00:28:24.000
in ten years, we were gonna have thirty
00:28:24.000 –> 00:28:25.000
million dollars in the bank. We were gonna
00:28:25.000 –> 00:28:26.000
have,
00:28:26.000 –> 00:28:28.000
a ten million dollar house on the ocean,
00:28:29.000 –> 00:28:30.000
and we were gonna have
00:28:31.000 –> 00:28:33.000
And then what was it beyond that? Those
00:28:33.000 –> 00:28:36.000
are the material ones, which are really easy
00:28:36.000 –> 00:28:38.000
for me to remember because it happened.
00:28:39.000 –> 00:28:41.000
Now what’s interesting about that is because we
00:28:41.000 –> 00:28:43.000
had that set in,
00:28:43.000 –> 00:28:45.000
at a certain point when Lou Lemney came
00:28:45.000 –> 00:28:46.000
incredibly
00:28:50.000 –> 00:28:52.000
strong, and we were our cash flow was
00:28:52.000 –> 00:28:52.000
unbelievable.
00:28:54.000 –> 00:28:55.000
We
00:28:55.000 –> 00:28:57.000
We did. We decided that we were gonna
00:28:57.000 –> 00:29:00.000
prioritize family, and we were gonna prioritize the
00:29:00.000 –> 00:29:01.000
goals that we’d set.
00:29:01.000 –> 00:29:04.000
So then we just that decision then had
00:29:04.000 –> 00:29:05.000
to sell to private equity.
00:29:06.000 –> 00:29:08.000
We didn’t have to sell to private equity.
00:29:08.000 –> 00:29:10.000
We didn’t have to end up going public.
00:29:10.000 –> 00:29:12.000
But we, as a family, have these Gilliland
00:29:12.000 –> 00:29:15.000
that those goals are then driving our decision.
00:29:15.000 –> 00:29:16.000
Yep.
00:29:16.000 –> 00:29:19.000
Makes total sense. Right? The the personal vision,
00:29:19.000 –> 00:29:21.000
the personal goals are driven by the vehicle
00:29:21.000 –> 00:29:23.000
that you happen to be sitting in. Right?
00:29:23.000 –> 00:29:25.000
And that’s, for you, that was Lewis Lemmon.
00:29:25.000 –> 00:29:27.000
So what changed for you when you were
00:29:27.000 –> 00:29:29.000
in debt up to your eyeballs, as you
00:29:29.000 –> 00:29:32.000
said, and now became massively successful financially.
00:29:33.000 –> 00:29:34.000
What changed?
00:29:36.000 –> 00:29:37.000
I don’t
00:29:37.000 –> 00:29:40.000
well, I don’t think anything changed out. Yeah.
00:29:40.000 –> 00:29:42.000
By selling, of course, I lost control of
00:29:42.000 –> 00:29:45.000
Lou Gilliland that is That’s another story.
00:29:46.000 –> 00:29:48.000
Because I started to lululemon quite late in
00:29:48.000 –> 00:29:51.000
life, I mean, sometimes I get labeled colonel
00:29:51.000 –> 00:29:53.000
Sanders about starting businesses late.
00:29:54.000 –> 00:29:55.000
You know, that was, I guess, that was
00:29:55.000 –> 00:29:57.000
about forty two when I started, but Lou
00:29:57.000 –> 00:29:59.000
Lemon really didn’t, you know, come to any
00:29:59.000 –> 00:30:01.000
success till I was fifty.
00:30:02.000 –> 00:30:04.000
And, you know, those eight years were, like,
00:30:04.000 –> 00:30:06.000
I said, a struggle to get there.
00:30:07.000 –> 00:30:08.000
But it was,
00:30:08.000 –> 00:30:11.000
so once you’re fifty, it’s I don’t think
00:30:11.000 –> 00:30:14.000
anyone changes. You know, like, it’s the things
00:30:14.000 –> 00:30:15.000
that were all as important to me was,
00:30:15.000 –> 00:30:18.000
you know, course, Gilliland because without health, you
00:30:18.000 –> 00:30:20.000
know, that your ability to enjoy your family
00:30:20.000 –> 00:30:22.000
is is very small.
00:30:23.000 –> 00:30:26.000
And, you know, I think it’s it comes
00:30:26.000 –> 00:30:29.000
down to Matt’s law’s hierarchy of needs. And,
00:30:29.000 –> 00:30:31.000
you know, first off, you gotta take care
00:30:31.000 –> 00:30:34.000
of survival and, and reproduction. And once that’s
00:30:34.000 –> 00:30:37.000
occurred, then you start moving into
00:30:37.000 –> 00:30:38.000
longevity
00:30:38.000 –> 00:30:41.000
and relay, you know, like, healthy relationships.
00:30:41.000 –> 00:30:43.000
And I think that’s where my my priorities
00:30:43.000 –> 00:30:44.000
always.
00:30:44.000 –> 00:30:45.000
Well, I think it’s it’s neat to hear
00:30:45.000 –> 00:30:47.000
you say that too because people, you know,
00:30:47.000 –> 00:30:48.000
I’m in the money business. That’s what we
00:30:48.000 –> 00:30:51.000
do every day. And and so people think
00:30:51.000 –> 00:30:53.000
once they reach these certain levels,
00:30:53.000 –> 00:30:55.000
right, whether it’s ten million or a hundred
00:30:55.000 –> 00:30:58.000
million or a billion or ten Wilson, that
00:30:58.000 –> 00:31:00.000
that’s gonna be the trigger point for something
00:31:00.000 –> 00:31:01.000
in their life. And and all the successful
00:31:01.000 –> 00:31:03.000
people I get to talk to with the
00:31:03.000 –> 00:31:03.000
people like yourself,
00:31:04.000 –> 00:31:06.000
wasn’t this moment if I have x in
00:31:06.000 –> 00:31:08.000
the bank, and now my life is completely
00:31:08.000 –> 00:31:11.000
different. Right? Yeah. No. I mean, what money
00:31:11.000 –> 00:31:13.000
does allow someone to buy its time.
00:31:14.000 –> 00:31:16.000
And, some sixty four.
00:31:17.000 –> 00:31:17.000
I, I mean,
00:31:18.000 –> 00:31:20.000
you can get where where, like, I have
00:31:20.000 –> 00:31:22.000
a driver. You know, and I have a
00:31:22.000 –> 00:31:24.000
driver and people go, oh my god. That’s
00:31:24.000 –> 00:31:26.000
so ostentatious, but it’s only different than having
00:31:26.000 –> 00:31:29.000
an executive assistant or having a gardener at
00:31:29.000 –> 00:31:31.000
your house. You know, if they if I
00:31:31.000 –> 00:31:33.000
can pay that person twenty five dollars an
00:31:33.000 –> 00:31:35.000
hour, and I can do three hundred dollars
00:31:35.000 –> 00:31:37.000
worth of work at the time he drives
00:31:37.000 –> 00:31:39.000
me to my workout and back, then I
00:31:39.000 –> 00:31:42.000
make money on that. So it it I,
00:31:42.000 –> 00:31:45.000
and my whole idea behind driving, saving time
00:31:45.000 –> 00:31:46.000
is so I can be with my children
00:31:46.000 –> 00:31:49.000
and family because my highest priority. So what’s
00:31:49.000 –> 00:31:51.000
that dude or, or or female? What were
00:31:51.000 –> 00:31:53.000
they doing right now? As we we’re speaking
00:31:53.000 –> 00:31:55.000
here today, where’s the driver? Setting outside waiting
00:31:55.000 –> 00:31:56.000
or are they at home waiting for the
00:31:56.000 –> 00:31:57.000
end of the day?
00:31:58.000 –> 00:32:00.000
No. Because often I’ll walk home or things
00:32:00.000 –> 00:32:02.000
like that. So I, you know, especially in
00:32:02.000 –> 00:32:04.000
the summertime. So, no, they’ll be, they take
00:32:04.000 –> 00:32:06.000
care of. We have a couple of houses
00:32:06.000 –> 00:32:08.000
and I’ll be taking care of some, renovations
00:32:08.000 –> 00:32:10.000
that we have going on. Nice. You know,
00:32:10.000 –> 00:32:12.000
if the guy card needs filled with gas,
00:32:12.000 –> 00:32:14.000
I’ll do that, or I need to, you
00:32:14.000 –> 00:32:16.000
know, all those All those things that you
00:32:16.000 –> 00:32:18.000
you always wished you had someone to do,
00:32:18.000 –> 00:32:20.000
but it doesn’t do them. I got that.
00:32:20.000 –> 00:32:22.000
You got it. I’m I’m giving you a
00:32:22.000 –> 00:32:25.000
fist pump right there. That that’s awesome. So
00:32:25.000 –> 00:32:26.000
what are your habits when you were on
00:32:26.000 –> 00:32:29.000
the grind, versus today? I think we’ll talk
00:32:29.000 –> 00:32:30.000
about both of them if we can. But
00:32:30.000 –> 00:32:32.000
what were the habits and rituals that the
00:32:32.000 –> 00:32:34.000
no mis items that you had do during
00:32:34.000 –> 00:32:34.000
the grind.
00:32:35.000 –> 00:32:38.000
During the grind of, building a business. Building
00:32:38.000 –> 00:32:39.000
a business. I mean, it’s, you know, again,
00:32:39.000 –> 00:32:41.000
we talked earlier before we started recording, you
00:32:41.000 –> 00:32:43.000
know, you have five sons. I’ve got four
00:32:43.000 –> 00:32:44.000
sons, and I’m, you know, I’m I’m at
00:32:44.000 –> 00:32:46.000
work, and then I go straight to a
00:32:46.000 –> 00:32:48.000
a sporting event, and it’s coaching, and then
00:32:48.000 –> 00:32:49.000
it’s, you know, you go home and you
00:32:49.000 –> 00:32:50.000
go to bed and you get up and
00:32:50.000 –> 00:32:51.000
you do it all over again. Right? It’s
00:32:51.000 –> 00:32:52.000
vicious cycle.
00:32:52.000 –> 00:32:54.000
But what were those no mis items for
00:32:54.000 –> 00:32:55.000
you?
00:32:55.000 –> 00:32:57.000
Well, I it’s funny you say the grind
00:32:57.000 –> 00:33:00.000
because in Vancouver, we have three mountains inside
00:33:00.000 –> 00:33:02.000
city if you don’t know right right on
00:33:02.000 –> 00:33:05.000
the ocean. So it’s a phenomenal place, and
00:33:05.000 –> 00:33:07.000
and I do this thing called the Grouse
00:33:07.000 –> 00:33:09.000
Grind every morning of all. Four mornings a
00:33:09.000 –> 00:33:12.000
week. So it’s a one hour hike Brett
00:33:12.000 –> 00:33:13.000
up a mountain. So it it,
00:33:14.000 –> 00:33:15.000
so when you said that, I was a
00:33:15.000 –> 00:33:16.000
little bit confused.
00:33:17.000 –> 00:33:20.000
So in my most things I must do,
00:33:20.000 –> 00:33:22.000
first thing in the morning is I must
00:33:22.000 –> 00:33:24.000
get that endorphin rush.
00:33:24.000 –> 00:33:27.000
And so I will go to University of
00:33:27.000 –> 00:33:29.000
BC, which is maybe about ten minute drive
00:33:29.000 –> 00:33:30.000
away and run the stairs,
00:33:31.000 –> 00:33:33.000
which takes about maybe five minutes to get
00:33:33.000 –> 00:33:35.000
to the top stairs in the walk down.
00:33:35.000 –> 00:33:37.000
I’ll do that five times.
00:33:37.000 –> 00:33:39.000
I’ll do the bus grind, which then takes
00:33:39.000 –> 00:33:40.000
an hour to do. It’s just to cross
00:33:40.000 –> 00:33:41.000
the town.
00:33:41.000 –> 00:33:44.000
And, and then maybe, you know, so that’s
00:33:44.000 –> 00:33:45.000
critical for me.
00:33:46.000 –> 00:33:47.000
And then,
00:33:48.000 –> 00:33:50.000
And then what do I do coming into
00:33:50.000 –> 00:33:51.000
work?
00:33:52.000 –> 00:33:54.000
Now as I’ll know, during the grind part
00:33:54.000 –> 00:33:55.000
of lululemon,
00:33:55.000 –> 00:33:57.000
what would have occurred?
00:34:00.000 –> 00:34:03.000
I I think it’s my one of the
00:34:03.000 –> 00:34:05.000
things I made sure once a week I
00:34:05.000 –> 00:34:07.000
would sit down for an hour just a
00:34:07.000 –> 00:34:09.000
pencil and a piece of paper and just
00:34:09.000 –> 00:34:11.000
think about where the where the future need
00:34:11.000 –> 00:34:14.000
to be. I think my expertise is be
00:34:14.000 –> 00:34:16.000
seeing the world five to seven years in
00:34:16.000 –> 00:34:17.000
the future,
00:34:17.000 –> 00:34:19.000
which is really, really difficult for a lot
00:34:19.000 –> 00:34:21.000
of people I work with. Yeah. Because I’m
00:34:21.000 –> 00:34:24.000
kinda like you know, I’m willing to give
00:34:24.000 –> 00:34:26.000
up a lot of what’s happening and good
00:34:26.000 –> 00:34:27.000
right now in order to build out where
00:34:27.000 –> 00:34:29.000
the world’s going.
00:34:29.000 –> 00:34:29.000
So
00:34:30.000 –> 00:34:32.000
That’s important. And then I think it’s just
00:34:32.000 –> 00:34:34.000
the regularly scheduled meetings,
00:34:34.000 –> 00:34:37.000
and then probably even leaving at 01:00
00:34:37.000 –> 00:34:39.000
in going for a walk or going for,
00:34:39.000 –> 00:34:41.000
like, a thirty minute run would have been
00:34:41.000 –> 00:34:42.000
critical at that time.
00:34:42.000 –> 00:34:43.000
And then,
00:34:44.000 –> 00:34:46.000
and then absolutely being home for dinner with
00:34:46.000 –> 00:34:47.000
my family was critical.
00:34:49.000 –> 00:34:50.000
I,
00:34:50.000 –> 00:34:53.000
again, part of selling the company to private
00:34:53.000 –> 00:34:55.000
equity was either I had to make the
00:34:55.000 –> 00:34:57.000
choice of I was gonna be traveling. I’m
00:34:57.000 –> 00:34:59.000
building a global business, so we were already
00:34:59.000 –> 00:35:02.000
in many countries already either
00:35:02.000 –> 00:35:04.000
I was gonna be on the road building
00:35:04.000 –> 00:35:06.000
a business or I was gonna be letting
00:35:06.000 –> 00:35:09.000
that business Brett me raise a great Gilliland
00:35:10.000 –> 00:35:11.000
great chose the family.
00:35:11.000 –> 00:35:13.000
When that’s a that’s a great choice. Great,
00:35:13.000 –> 00:35:15.000
Joseph. It’s it’s neat to see some at
00:35:15.000 –> 00:35:17.000
your level, and then that was still the
00:35:17.000 –> 00:35:19.000
number one priority. So congratulations on that. So
00:35:19.000 –> 00:35:21.000
what would you look back and tell
00:35:21.000 –> 00:35:24.000
the, Chip Wilson, the thirty year old Chip
00:35:24.000 –> 00:35:25.000
Wilson, or the forty year old Chip Wilson.
00:35:25.000 –> 00:35:27.000
What what advice would you give that guy?
00:35:29.000 –> 00:35:32.000
I would have given that guy the advice
00:35:32.000 –> 00:35:33.000
that I probably I didn’t need to sell
00:35:33.000 –> 00:35:35.000
to private equity, and I didn’t need to
00:35:35.000 –> 00:35:36.000
go public.
00:35:36.000 –> 00:35:39.000
That’s funny. I was listening to,
00:35:39.000 –> 00:35:42.000
to Bill Gates say exactly the same thing
00:35:42.000 –> 00:35:43.000
a couple months ago, and,
00:35:44.000 –> 00:35:45.000
his big regret
00:35:46.000 –> 00:35:49.000
it’s the ability to move quicker and faster.
00:35:49.000 –> 00:35:50.000
And I think,
00:35:51.000 –> 00:35:51.000
entrepreneurs
00:35:52.000 –> 00:35:54.000
can see the future and the,
00:35:54.000 –> 00:35:56.000
It’s very, very difficult for other people to
00:35:56.000 –> 00:35:59.000
see, especially inside a public company.
00:35:59.000 –> 00:36:01.000
I could have with the massive amount that
00:36:01.000 –> 00:36:03.000
Lebanon was making at the time I did
00:36:03.000 –> 00:36:06.000
private equity. I I probably could have just
00:36:06.000 –> 00:36:08.000
gone to my bank and said, give me
00:36:08.000 –> 00:36:09.000
forty million dollars out of encumbered.
00:36:10.000 –> 00:36:12.000
And then I able to buy my ten
00:36:12.000 –> 00:36:14.000
million dollar house and put thirty million in
00:36:14.000 –> 00:36:14.000
the bank.
00:36:15.000 –> 00:36:17.000
And, and then run the business that way.
00:36:17.000 –> 00:36:19.000
Yeah. But I didn’t. And, I got a
00:36:19.000 –> 00:36:22.000
I got a different outcome from it. So
00:36:22.000 –> 00:36:25.000
That would have been my my I would
00:36:25.000 –> 00:36:25.000
say
00:36:26.000 –> 00:36:29.000
I I went private equity and
00:36:29.000 –> 00:36:31.000
in order to get advisors
00:36:32.000 –> 00:36:33.000
because people had told me, well, I didn’t
00:36:34.000 –> 00:36:36.000
I haven’t run a billion dollar company before
00:36:36.000 –> 00:36:37.000
you. I don’t know what you’re doing. You
00:36:37.000 –> 00:36:38.000
need people around you.
00:36:39.000 –> 00:36:41.000
The advisors I got through private equity, I
00:36:41.000 –> 00:36:43.000
think were they were self interested.
00:36:44.000 –> 00:36:45.000
They and so I had
00:36:46.000 –> 00:36:48.000
of courses they should be. Right? I mean,
00:36:48.000 –> 00:36:50.000
I’m not I’m not naive in that, but,
00:36:51.000 –> 00:36:53.000
what I mean is how I would structured
00:36:53.000 –> 00:36:56.000
the deal going into private equity
00:36:56.000 –> 00:36:56.000
was,
00:36:57.000 –> 00:37:00.000
really handcuff me as when we went public.
00:37:00.000 –> 00:37:02.000
I lost control of the board. I so
00:37:02.000 –> 00:37:04.000
consequently, I lost control of the culture at
00:37:04.000 –> 00:37:05.000
the moment.
00:37:06.000 –> 00:37:06.000
And,
00:37:07.000 –> 00:37:10.000
Blue Lemmon went probably through five years of
00:37:10.000 –> 00:37:11.000
the greatest growth in athletic
00:37:12.000 –> 00:37:16.000
clothing between Tully two to thirteen and 02:18
00:37:16.000 –> 00:37:18.000
when it when it just went flat. If
00:37:18.000 –> 00:37:20.000
you look at the stock, it went nowhere
00:37:20.000 –> 00:37:23.000
because it kind of self imploded because it
00:37:23.000 –> 00:37:25.000
just had a it just had board of
00:37:25.000 –> 00:37:28.000
directors that you know, where your normal
00:37:28.000 –> 00:37:30.000
run of the mill trying to do good
00:37:30.000 –> 00:37:33.000
people, but, you know, who were running by
00:37:33.000 –> 00:37:34.000
fear as opposed to possibility.
00:37:35.000 –> 00:37:36.000
So talk to us about that. I asked
00:37:36.000 –> 00:37:38.000
this in every episode, fear.
00:37:39.000 –> 00:37:40.000
You mentioned it. So we’ll bring it up
00:37:40.000 –> 00:37:41.000
now, but how many of the fears you
00:37:41.000 –> 00:37:43.000
put in your mind? Over your career blew
00:37:43.000 –> 00:37:45.000
up to the magnitude you put them in
00:37:45.000 –> 00:37:46.000
your mind to be.
00:37:50.000 –> 00:37:52.000
Do I have them? Fears?
00:37:53.000 –> 00:37:55.000
So you probably put some in your mind
00:37:55.000 –> 00:37:56.000
early on. Right? Like, maybe this won’t make
00:37:56.000 –> 00:37:59.000
maybe I’ll go bankrupt. What whatever the, the
00:37:59.000 –> 00:38:01.000
fears were in your mind. How many of
00:38:01.000 –> 00:38:02.000
those actually blew up, though?
00:38:05.000 –> 00:38:06.000
Well,
00:38:07.000 –> 00:38:08.000
I don’t think
00:38:09.000 –> 00:38:11.000
I can’t say they actually did. I don’t
00:38:11.000 –> 00:38:13.000
think I had that many I don’t think
00:38:13.000 –> 00:38:15.000
I’ve had years like that. I think part
00:38:15.000 –> 00:38:17.000
of my what works for me in life
00:38:17.000 –> 00:38:19.000
is I’m incredibly trusting
00:38:21.000 –> 00:38:23.000
and I believe in people what they say
00:38:23.000 –> 00:38:24.000
to me.
00:38:24.000 –> 00:38:25.000
And I,
00:38:27.000 –> 00:38:28.000
and I’m incredibly
00:38:28.000 –> 00:38:31.000
positive about the future. So I think that
00:38:31.000 –> 00:38:32.000
you ask
00:38:33.000 –> 00:38:34.000
a lot of
00:38:34.000 –> 00:38:36.000
what what other people have as fears.
00:38:37.000 –> 00:38:37.000
Now
00:38:38.000 –> 00:38:40.000
where that works that works for me, because
00:38:40.000 –> 00:38:43.000
I get incredible people around me. We can
00:38:43.000 –> 00:38:45.000
build a great company, but then I also
00:38:45.000 –> 00:38:46.000
attract
00:38:46.000 –> 00:38:49.000
a certain number of people that are Let’s
00:38:49.000 –> 00:38:51.000
say unable to make money on their own,
00:38:51.000 –> 00:38:52.000
but they’re entrepreneurial
00:38:52.000 –> 00:38:54.000
knowing how to make money off of people
00:38:54.000 –> 00:38:56.000
who who have my personality.
00:38:57.000 –> 00:38:58.000
And,
00:38:59.000 –> 00:39:00.000
and I have to sit back and go,
00:39:00.000 –> 00:39:02.000
well, I was always that way. You know,
00:39:02.000 –> 00:39:03.000
I drove an old car and left a
00:39:03.000 –> 00:39:06.000
piece in it because you wanna take my
00:39:06.000 –> 00:39:07.000
car go for it. I just, you know,
00:39:07.000 –> 00:39:10.000
because details and small things in life are
00:39:10.000 –> 00:39:10.000
very, very
00:39:11.000 –> 00:39:13.000
they they just can’t take up my mind
00:39:13.000 –> 00:39:15.000
because I’ve got like, big, big ideas. So
00:39:15.000 –> 00:39:18.000
I need to, I need to free my
00:39:18.000 –> 00:39:19.000
mind to,
00:39:20.000 –> 00:39:21.000
to love and trust everybody
00:39:22.000 –> 00:39:24.000
to think of possibility and be out there
00:39:24.000 –> 00:39:26.000
in the future and not get consumed with
00:39:26.000 –> 00:39:28.000
fear and what ifs.
00:39:28.000 –> 00:39:30.000
I love that. So You don’t have to
00:39:30.000 –> 00:39:31.000
name drop unless you want to, which is
00:39:31.000 –> 00:39:33.000
totally fine. But, I mean, so when somebody
00:39:33.000 –> 00:39:35.000
gets to your level now, I mean, who
00:39:35.000 –> 00:39:37.000
are you surrounding yourself with to to keep
00:39:37.000 –> 00:39:39.000
yourself a student in the game and and,
00:39:39.000 –> 00:39:41.000
you know, grabbing lunch with. I mean, who
00:39:41.000 –> 00:39:42.000
what what is that buddy system like for
00:39:42.000 –> 00:39:44.000
you, today with your level?
00:39:45.000 –> 00:39:47.000
You know, I just think enough having been
00:39:47.000 –> 00:39:49.000
in Canada and being and on the west
00:39:49.000 –> 00:39:52.000
coast of Canada. I mean, there’s nobody here.
00:39:52.000 –> 00:39:55.000
Like, you know, there’s very I have
00:39:55.000 –> 00:39:58.000
you know, a ninety year old billionaire here
00:39:58.000 –> 00:40:00.000
in Vancouver, Joe Siegel, who,
00:40:01.000 –> 00:40:02.000
was in the apparel business and is a
00:40:02.000 –> 00:40:04.000
wonderful, wonderful man. And
00:40:05.000 –> 00:40:06.000
I think about,
00:40:07.000 –> 00:40:09.000
you know, five years ago, he said to
00:40:09.000 –> 00:40:11.000
me, you know, Chip, you know, like, you
00:40:11.000 –> 00:40:13.000
got two more big ones in you. You
00:40:13.000 –> 00:40:13.000
know,
00:40:14.000 –> 00:40:16.000
and so I went, well, that’s interesting.
00:40:16.000 –> 00:40:18.000
And, you know, he said to me, you
00:40:18.000 –> 00:40:20.000
know, at sixty, I kinda like, you know,
00:40:20.000 –> 00:40:21.000
I thought like I retired, but I started
00:40:21.000 –> 00:40:23.000
putting my money into real estate. I was
00:40:23.000 –> 00:40:26.000
making my seven percent return a year. Carrie,
00:40:26.000 –> 00:40:28.000
I’m ninety years old, and I’ve,
00:40:28.000 –> 00:40:29.000
you know,
00:40:29.000 –> 00:40:31.000
What have I done in thirty years up
00:40:31.000 –> 00:40:33.000
there? Nothing? You know, it wasn’t exciting. You
00:40:33.000 –> 00:40:35.000
said, you know, like, take fifty percent of
00:40:35.000 –> 00:40:36.000
all your own at risk at all.
00:40:37.000 –> 00:40:39.000
Wow. What’s it? What? I mean,
00:40:39.000 –> 00:40:41.000
what’s it gonna matter? Like, do things that
00:40:41.000 –> 00:40:43.000
are, you know, standing?
00:40:43.000 –> 00:40:45.000
And then he also applied that to philanthropy,
00:40:46.000 –> 00:40:47.000
like, rather than kinda free and pay and
00:40:47.000 –> 00:40:49.000
doing a little bit here and there, you
00:40:49.000 –> 00:40:51.000
know, like, what’s really gonna change the dial
00:40:51.000 –> 00:40:53.000
in the world, which I can do with
00:40:53.000 –> 00:40:54.000
the amount of money I have?
00:40:55.000 –> 00:40:58.000
That those are that’s probably one really key
00:40:58.000 –> 00:40:59.000
person.
00:40:59.000 –> 00:41:01.000
That’s awesome. I love that.
00:41:01.000 –> 00:41:02.000
So you said smartphone,
00:41:03.000 –> 00:41:05.000
it killed the balanced life. Now there’s only
00:41:05.000 –> 00:41:06.000
life choices.
00:41:07.000 –> 00:41:10.000
I love that. So true. Talk to us
00:41:10.000 –> 00:41:11.000
about that.
00:41:12.000 –> 00:41:12.000
Well,
00:41:13.000 –> 00:41:15.000
It would because I’m older I got the
00:41:15.000 –> 00:41:17.000
context of observing
00:41:17.000 –> 00:41:20.000
my employees and observing people. And of course,
00:41:20.000 –> 00:41:21.000
I have, you know, five boys so I
00:41:21.000 –> 00:41:23.000
get to observe to
00:41:23.000 –> 00:41:26.000
I could and even myself, and I could
00:41:26.000 –> 00:41:26.000
see where,
00:41:28.000 –> 00:41:29.000
with the digital world’s
00:41:29.000 –> 00:41:32.000
probably starting in ninety five or something like
00:41:32.000 –> 00:41:33.000
that. The amount of time
00:41:34.000 –> 00:41:36.000
that the amount of information that was coming
00:41:36.000 –> 00:41:40.000
to each individual person was becoming exponential. Gilliland
00:41:40.000 –> 00:41:42.000
I could also see that, you know, the
00:41:42.000 –> 00:41:44.000
algorithms that, you know, Google or Facebook, whoever
00:41:44.000 –> 00:41:47.000
has to keep them on, keep you on,
00:41:47.000 –> 00:41:49.000
their sightings and as much as possible was
00:41:49.000 –> 00:41:51.000
was eating up
00:41:51.000 –> 00:41:52.000
people’s,
00:41:53.000 –> 00:41:55.000
it was entertaining people in a way that
00:41:55.000 –> 00:41:57.000
gave them an dwarven rush.
00:41:59.000 –> 00:42:01.000
What I what I saw then is that
00:42:01.000 –> 00:42:03.000
life was passing people by.
00:42:04.000 –> 00:42:06.000
As often happens,
00:42:07.000 –> 00:42:09.000
without realizing that, oh, like, ten years has
00:42:09.000 –> 00:42:11.000
gone by. And I do I have I
00:42:11.000 –> 00:42:13.000
really appreciated my life? If I appreciated what
00:42:14.000 –> 00:42:16.000
done were up onto the people around me.
00:42:17.000 –> 00:42:18.000
So,
00:42:19.000 –> 00:42:21.000
and then at a certain point, it became
00:42:21.000 –> 00:42:22.000
so easy to have a smartphone that you
00:42:22.000 –> 00:42:25.000
didn’t need to be you know, when you’re,
00:42:26.000 –> 00:42:28.000
you know, when you’re at the office, you’re
00:42:28.000 –> 00:42:29.000
at the office or your family with your
00:42:29.000 –> 00:42:31.000
family, but now you could choose to be
00:42:31.000 –> 00:42:32.000
anywhere anytime.
00:42:34.000 –> 00:42:36.000
Basically, what I’m getting at is that we
00:42:38.000 –> 00:42:38.000
because
00:42:39.000 –> 00:42:40.000
life was moving
00:42:40.000 –> 00:42:41.000
exponentially,
00:42:43.000 –> 00:42:46.000
the number of times a person has to
00:42:46.000 –> 00:42:46.000
stop
00:42:47.000 –> 00:42:50.000
and be present to the world and be
00:42:50.000 –> 00:42:52.000
present to the people around them in what’s
00:42:52.000 –> 00:42:53.000
happening
00:42:53.000 –> 00:42:56.000
and to actually appreciate the life they have
00:42:56.000 –> 00:42:57.000
in that very exact moment.
00:42:58.000 –> 00:43:00.000
Has to happen not once every
00:43:00.000 –> 00:43:01.000
four months,
00:43:01.000 –> 00:43:04.000
but I actually expect today it needs to
00:43:04.000 –> 00:43:06.000
happen like four or five times a day.
00:43:06.000 –> 00:43:08.000
Well, because that phone
00:43:08.000 –> 00:43:09.000
can absorb
00:43:09.000 –> 00:43:11.000
everything and pretty soon
00:43:12.000 –> 00:43:14.000
as what happens to many people they lay
00:43:14.000 –> 00:43:16.000
on their death bed, and they go, what
00:43:16.000 –> 00:43:18.000
the hell happened to my life? Yeah. What
00:43:18.000 –> 00:43:20.000
happened in that moment? Did I why didn’t
00:43:20.000 –> 00:43:23.000
I appreciate it when I was there? And
00:43:23.000 –> 00:43:25.000
I think that that’s a life worth living.
00:43:25.000 –> 00:43:27.000
When we both have thirteen year olds, you
00:43:27.000 –> 00:43:28.000
know, and you think of their life at
00:43:28.000 –> 00:43:31.000
thirteen versus your and I’s life at thirteen,
00:43:31.000 –> 00:43:34.000
completely different. Right? It’s it’s it creates this
00:43:34.000 –> 00:43:34.000
addiction.
00:43:35.000 –> 00:43:36.000
Yeah. And
00:43:37.000 –> 00:43:39.000
and it also I’m I’m fascinated by how
00:43:39.000 –> 00:43:41.000
much the brain can actually absolutely
00:43:41.000 –> 00:43:42.000
absorb
00:43:42.000 –> 00:43:44.000
And, you know, we all told we were
00:43:44.000 –> 00:43:46.000
told to mirror you on our brain. We’re
00:43:46.000 –> 00:43:47.000
only using it to four or five percent
00:43:47.000 –> 00:43:50.000
of what’s possible. And Right. Now learning how
00:43:50.000 –> 00:43:52.000
much How much information can be stored in
00:43:52.000 –> 00:43:54.000
there? Lob in capacity.
00:43:54.000 –> 00:43:55.000
You’re smart.
00:43:55.000 –> 00:43:57.000
So if I stole your phone from you
00:43:57.000 –> 00:43:59.000
right now, besides email, and I say I’m
00:43:59.000 –> 00:44:02.000
a delete an app, any any any phone,
00:44:02.000 –> 00:44:04.000
anything on your phone that just Chip Wilson
00:44:04.000 –> 00:44:06.000
could not live without speaking to technology?
00:44:07.000 –> 00:44:09.000
I think it’s this new app called word
00:44:09.000 –> 00:44:12.000
power. It’s, kind of, it’s it’s a,
00:44:14.000 –> 00:44:15.000
it’s a crossword.
00:44:16.000 –> 00:44:18.000
And it’s, works on a it only gives
00:44:18.000 –> 00:44:20.000
you seven letters and it’s a crossword Gilliland
00:44:20.000 –> 00:44:22.000
you gotta fill it all out. And I
00:44:22.000 –> 00:44:24.000
find myself totally addicted to it.
00:44:25.000 –> 00:44:27.000
You gotta put your phone down. Right?
00:44:28.000 –> 00:44:30.000
Well, it’s been interesting because I actually when
00:44:30.000 –> 00:44:32.000
I was I was in Spain this last
00:44:32.000 –> 00:44:34.000
week and I And I, you know, it
00:44:34.000 –> 00:44:36.000
was a heat wave. Like, it was what
00:44:36.000 –> 00:44:38.000
was a hundred and twenty three degrees in
00:44:38.000 –> 00:44:40.000
them? Oh, man. Twenty five k a day.
00:44:40.000 –> 00:44:43.000
I run across this cold, fresh pond, and
00:44:43.000 –> 00:44:44.000
I and I
00:44:45.000 –> 00:44:46.000
dive in. And, of course, I’ve got my
00:44:46.000 –> 00:44:48.000
ear pods on, and I’ve got my phone
00:44:48.000 –> 00:44:51.000
here, and everything falls into the ended up
00:44:51.000 –> 00:44:53.000
fun and so I’ve been without a phone
00:44:53.000 –> 00:44:55.000
for three days now. So, uh-oh. Take your
00:44:55.000 –> 00:44:57.000
point very seriously. Yeah. Exactly.
00:44:58.000 –> 00:45:00.000
So what, favorite book you can recommend for
00:45:00.000 –> 00:45:00.000
our listeners?
00:45:03.000 –> 00:45:05.000
Besides your own?
00:45:06.000 –> 00:45:06.000
Legacy.
00:45:07.000 –> 00:45:08.000
Legacy.
00:45:08.000 –> 00:45:11.000
I concur, k e r r, and it’s
00:45:11.000 –> 00:45:11.000
about,
00:45:12.000 –> 00:45:14.000
the most winning sports team in history. It’s
00:45:14.000 –> 00:45:16.000
New Zealand All Blacks.
00:45:16.000 –> 00:45:19.000
Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about that book. And,
00:45:19.000 –> 00:45:21.000
and I read it. I’m the only god.
00:45:21.000 –> 00:45:23.000
This is a story about the culture of
00:45:23.000 –> 00:45:24.000
Lou Leanne.
00:45:25.000 –> 00:45:27.000
To top to bottom. There’s absolutely no difference.
00:45:27.000 –> 00:45:28.000
Everything
00:45:29.000 –> 00:45:31.000
that they quote in there about how they
00:45:31.000 –> 00:45:34.000
learned and and how they directed the people
00:45:34.000 –> 00:45:36.000
was all around good to Brett. The the
00:45:36.000 –> 00:45:37.000
landmark form,
00:45:38.000 –> 00:45:41.000
seven habits, because highly effective people Yeah. In
00:45:41.000 –> 00:45:43.000
goal setting. So it was like, Oh, I
00:45:43.000 –> 00:45:45.000
was it’s kinda neat to see that the
00:45:45.000 –> 00:45:47.000
number one winningest team in the world, you
00:45:47.000 –> 00:45:49.000
know, use the same platform.
00:45:50.000 –> 00:45:52.000
Yeah. That book’s a it’s gonna be around
00:45:52.000 –> 00:45:54.000
for generation after generation. Isn’t it the seven
00:45:54.000 –> 00:45:56.000
habits of highly affected people? Yeah. I mean,
00:45:56.000 –> 00:45:58.000
what’s what’s not to love?
00:45:58.000 –> 00:46:01.000
So, your favorite Chip, you’ve been around the
00:46:01.000 –> 00:46:04.000
world, obviously, probably multiple times. So, if you
00:46:04.000 –> 00:46:06.000
could go anywhere again today, where are you
00:46:06.000 –> 00:46:06.000
going?
00:46:07.000 –> 00:46:10.000
We’re going to the Antialis Mountains in Morocco,
00:46:10.000 –> 00:46:13.000
and we’re, hiking for seven or eight days.
00:46:13.000 –> 00:46:14.000
Called the calaver camping.
00:46:15.000 –> 00:46:16.000
You know, where we have, you know, lots
00:46:16.000 –> 00:46:19.000
of sherpas and cars, anything else, and they
00:46:19.000 –> 00:46:21.000
set the tents up and prepare them down.
00:46:21.000 –> 00:46:25.000
But the terrain there, and the, moving from
00:46:25.000 –> 00:46:28.000
desert to the upper mountains, foothills, to, you
00:46:28.000 –> 00:46:29.000
know, canyons was,
00:46:30.000 –> 00:46:32.000
I did it before, and that’s the only
00:46:32.000 –> 00:46:33.000
thing our family to do again. And so
00:46:33.000 –> 00:46:35.000
your all your kids are going everything on
00:46:35.000 –> 00:46:37.000
this trip. It’s it’s the Brett. I think
00:46:37.000 –> 00:46:40.000
hiking now could be the last way
00:46:41.000 –> 00:46:43.000
that parents can can
00:46:43.000 –> 00:46:45.000
have their kids like put their phones away
00:46:45.000 –> 00:46:48.000
because there’s no service and it’s amazing especially
00:46:48.000 –> 00:46:50.000
with boys, you know, after two hours of
00:46:50.000 –> 00:46:53.000
silence, they start talking. Right. Exactly.
00:46:54.000 –> 00:46:56.000
Start talking and start fighting. Right?
00:46:56.000 –> 00:46:58.000
So working our listeners find more of Chip
00:46:58.000 –> 00:46:59.000
Wilson.
00:47:00.000 –> 00:47:03.000
Well, I guess they can find, just going
00:47:03.000 –> 00:47:05.000
Chip chip Wilson dot com. I have there
00:47:05.000 –> 00:47:07.000
and you can kind of move every find
00:47:07.000 –> 00:47:09.000
everything from there. Yeah.
00:47:09.000 –> 00:47:10.000
Definitely,
00:47:10.000 –> 00:47:12.000
I think it’s, you know, probably reading my
00:47:12.000 –> 00:47:14.000
book and thanks for for plugging it a
00:47:14.000 –> 00:47:16.000
bit. Absolutely. It’s a great business book for
00:47:16.000 –> 00:47:17.000
entrepreneurs.
00:47:18.000 –> 00:47:19.000
And so you’re sitting in an office there.
00:47:19.000 –> 00:47:22.000
It looks like. What’s, what’s Chip Wilson’s day
00:47:22.000 –> 00:47:23.000
look like today?
00:47:25.000 –> 00:47:26.000
What did I let’s see. What did I
00:47:26.000 –> 00:47:28.000
do today? I got up. I took my
00:47:28.000 –> 00:47:31.000
boy to summer school. I came back without
00:47:31.000 –> 00:47:32.000
my phone.
00:47:32.000 –> 00:47:34.000
So I had to
00:47:34.000 –> 00:47:36.000
I I walked here. So it was an
00:47:36.000 –> 00:47:38.000
hour and a half to walk to work
00:47:38.000 –> 00:47:39.000
along the oceanfront
00:47:39.000 –> 00:47:42.000
of Vancouver, which is stunning.
00:47:42.000 –> 00:47:44.000
And I come to your gas town, which
00:47:44.000 –> 00:47:45.000
is our old part of Chip, the town
00:47:45.000 –> 00:47:47.000
where I am. And,
00:47:47.000 –> 00:47:50.000
and then I got Chip to Oh, I
00:47:50.000 –> 00:47:52.000
had a call with a guy that did
00:47:52.000 –> 00:47:53.000
an article on on me,
00:47:54.000 –> 00:47:56.000
from London a few months ago about the
00:47:56.000 –> 00:47:57.000
blue lemon AGM.
00:47:57.000 –> 00:47:58.000
And,
00:47:58.000 –> 00:48:01.000
And then I was and then I, of
00:48:01.000 –> 00:48:02.000
course, I haven’t been here for two weeks,
00:48:02.000 –> 00:48:05.000
so there’s all sorts of packages with apparel,
00:48:06.000 –> 00:48:09.000
samples and getting those to the right Gilliland,
00:48:11.000 –> 00:48:13.000
yeah, since someone wrote a book about, I’ll
00:48:13.000 –> 00:48:14.000
just show you.
00:48:19.000 –> 00:48:21.000
Actually, I don’t even know. It’s called B.
00:48:22.000 –> 00:48:24.000
B magazine. I haven’t even unwrapped it, but
00:48:24.000 –> 00:48:26.000
it’s, it was a good thing. It’s about
00:48:26.000 –> 00:48:28.000
a, a third party that does that and
00:48:28.000 –> 00:48:31.000
synopsis is on brands, and they and I
00:48:31.000 –> 00:48:32.000
think that’s one of the greatest things that
00:48:32.000 –> 00:48:34.000
we did at Lou lemon, as I put
00:48:34.000 –> 00:48:35.000
all the a lot of my sayings on
00:48:35.000 –> 00:48:37.000
the outside of Yeah. Bag.
00:48:38.000 –> 00:48:38.000
And,
00:48:38.000 –> 00:48:40.000
but, you know, Lou Lemon doesn’t shoot. They
00:48:40.000 –> 00:48:42.000
only put, like, two or three on now.
00:48:42.000 –> 00:48:44.000
They don’t put the fifty on I had
00:48:44.000 –> 00:48:47.000
before because It’s a lot cooler then. Yeah.
00:48:47.000 –> 00:48:48.000
We have a we’re living the world where
00:48:48.000 –> 00:48:52.000
you can’t actually say say truth anymore. You
00:48:52.000 –> 00:48:54.000
might hurt somebody’s feelings, Chip. Oh, I know.
00:48:54.000 –> 00:48:57.000
Terrible. Yeah. Terrible. And I’m good. You got
00:48:57.000 –> 00:48:58.000
them in the socks. You got them on
00:48:58.000 –> 00:49:00.000
the band of those t shirts. They were
00:49:00.000 –> 00:49:00.000
everywhere.
00:49:01.000 –> 00:49:01.000
Yeah.
00:49:02.000 –> 00:49:04.000
Well, Chip, it’s been awesome having you, man.
00:49:04.000 –> 00:49:06.000
And, it’s it’s crazy what you have done.
00:49:06.000 –> 00:49:09.000
You’ve literally changed the way people,
00:49:09.000 –> 00:49:11.000
dress. I mean, have you ever really thought
00:49:11.000 –> 00:49:11.000
about that?
00:49:13.000 –> 00:49:16.000
Yeah. I have, you know, and it’s of
00:49:16.000 –> 00:49:19.000
course, I Brett that way for so long.
00:49:20.000 –> 00:49:21.000
Like, even
00:49:22.000 –> 00:49:24.000
back in the day of going to to
00:49:24.000 –> 00:49:26.000
work in a suit and tie, I had
00:49:26.000 –> 00:49:28.000
my skateboard shoes on because I skateboarded to
00:49:28.000 –> 00:49:29.000
work and
00:49:30.000 –> 00:49:32.000
People now kinda thinking that, you know, wearing
00:49:32.000 –> 00:49:34.000
wedding shoes with a suit is kinda trendy
00:49:34.000 –> 00:49:36.000
and that, but, you know, that’s,
00:49:36.000 –> 00:49:39.000
it’s neat to see the world catch up
00:49:39.000 –> 00:49:40.000
to the way I thought life should be
00:49:40.000 –> 00:49:43.000
lived. Yeah. Well, that little black stretchy pants
00:49:43.000 –> 00:49:46.000
that you’ve made has changed the way people
00:49:46.000 –> 00:49:48.000
dress you know, the women Brett, and it’s
00:49:48.000 –> 00:49:49.000
amazing how you probably thought they were just
00:49:49.000 –> 00:49:51.000
giving yoga pants. And now they wear them
00:49:51.000 –> 00:49:53.000
dress they wear them dressy too. Right?
00:49:54.000 –> 00:49:56.000
Well, I knew that from the surfskate snowbird
00:49:56.000 –> 00:49:58.000
business that, you know, you make a product
00:49:58.000 –> 00:50:00.000
that can that’s technical and looks good on
00:50:00.000 –> 00:50:02.000
the street, you know, It was kind of
00:50:02.000 –> 00:50:03.000
Italian
00:50:03.000 –> 00:50:06.000
styling with West Coast function, I call it.
00:50:06.000 –> 00:50:06.000
Nice.
00:50:07.000 –> 00:50:09.000
Yeah. Well, very good. Well, Chip, thank you
00:50:09.000 –> 00:50:11.000
so much for being on the Circive success
00:50:11.000 –> 00:50:13.000
and, continued success to you, and we appreciate
00:50:13.000 –> 00:50:15.000
your time. K. Thank you very much, Brett.
00:50:15.000 –> 00:50:17.000
I have my brother is Brett, and my
00:50:17.000 –> 00:50:19.000
son is Brett, by the way. Well, perfect.
00:50:19.000 –> 00:50:19.000
Two tees.
00:50:21.000 –> 00:50:21.000
Yeah.
00:50:22.000 –> 00:50:22.000
I get
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