The Best Things Ever Said & Succeeding For Good

“I think there are only two things you do as a leader: you pick the hill you want to take — that’s your vision — and then you lead a whole bunch of people up that hill with you.”
Bob Chapek – CEO of The Walt Disney Company

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and its a failure, you will fail above everyone elses success.”
James Cameron, Director

“It’s a very satisfying experience to be able to take a company and significantly improve it in every way.”
Graeme Hart, New Zealand businessperson

“Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.”
Reed Hastings, Founder and CEO of Netflix

“You can make a million excuses for why something didn’t go well, but ultimately, just fix it and get on with it. Be a solutions person.”
Emily Weiss, Founder and Former CEO of Glossier

“Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.”
Oprah Winfrey, Broadcaster & CEO of OWN Network

“What makes one successful is hard work, skill, resilience, and an appetite for risk taking.”
Tope Awotona, Founder & CEO of Calendly

“The best way to guarantee loss is to quit.”
Morgan Freeman, actor.

It’s easy to be a philanthropist when a million dollars in change can be idly thrown at a charity once a year and not make even a fraction of a dent in your profits.

But to give your entire moneymaker away to a charity to make them additional cash in perpetuity is an entirely different story, and practically unheard of in the world of entrepreneurialism, perhaps because the only people that would consider doing it never wanted to be entrepreneurs to begin with.

That is essentially the story of Yvon Chouinard, who recently made headlines for giving away his $3 billion business to a specially designed trust and nonprofit. At first blush it sounds like some sort of elaborate tax dodging scheme, but all the shares have been moved to the trust, and all its profits (which amounts to about $100 million a year) are designated to go toward fighting climate change and protecting undeveloped land. In fact it cost the Chouinards $17.5 million in taxes to make the transfer happen. “They didn’t get a charitable deduction for it. There is no tax benefit here whatsoever,” says Dan Mosley, a partner at BDT & Co.

“Hopefully, this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” said Chouinard in an interview with the NYT. “We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.”

Chouinard admits he never wanted a company, let alone a successful one. His massive success isn’t reflected in his appearance either, still rocking old clothes and an old Subaru. The company Patagonia was founded in 1973 and was on the bleeding edge of being green, considering itself an “activist company”. It primarily focuses on outdoor activity wear, and has various programmes that allow customers to upcycle their Patagonia gear for store credit. Up until now, 1% of its profits have gone to environmental groups, but now it looks like that number is going up to 100%.

One of the scrapped ideas for achieving such a focused commitment to nature preservation was to go public with the company, giving Chouinard plenty of capital to work with. But it wasn’t good enough for him.

“I don’t respect the stock market at all,” he said. “Once you’re public, you’ve lost control over the company, and you have to maximize profits for the shareholder, and then you become one of these irresponsible companies.”

In the end, 83 year old Chouinard is just happy to have his affairs all in order. “Now I could die tomorrow and the company is going to continue doing the right thing for the next 50 years, and I don’t have to be around.”