FIND YOUR FLOW! How Lululemon's Founder Chip Wilson Built A Billion Dollar Brand

The Tony Robbins Podcast

Tony Robbins

Marketing, Smallbusinessowner, Education, Tonyrobbins, Business

4.4 • 6.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2023

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special 3-PART MASTERCLASS, we drop you inside a Tony Robbins Business Mastery seminar to learn HOW TO BUILD A BRAND, SHOWCASE YOUR X FACTOR, and BRING YOUR UNIQUE PRODUCT or SERVICE to a COMPETITIVE MARKET.

In PART TWO, you'll hear Tony Robbins in a one-on-one interview with CHIP WILSON, the Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist who is best known for founding the athletic apparel company Lululemon Athletica.

Wilson is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential entrepreneurs in the apparel industry. After working in the ski industry for several years, Wilson first founded Westbeach Snowboard in 1979, which eventually became one of the largest snowboarding apparel companies in the world.

In 1998, Wilson started Lululemon Athletica with the goal of creating high-quality yoga apparel that was both functional and fashionable. Thanks to Chip’s commitment to innovation and culture, Lululemon quickly gained a following among yoga enthusiasts, growing into a billion-dollar global brand. Wilson served as CEO of Lululemon from its inception until 2005, and he remained a board member until 2013.

Throughout his career, Wilson has been known for his unconventional approach to business and his willingness to take risks. He has also been an active philanthropist, supporting a variety of causes related to education, health, and the environment – including his own non-profit imagine1day, which works to improve education in Ethiopia.

Special Note: Please stick around to the end of this interview for an exclusive Q&A with all three of our Business Mastery guests – Gail Becker, Dan Cathy and Chip Wilson!

***

Business Mastery is the world’s premier business training event designed and hosted by the world’s #1 authority on personal growth, business transformation and peak performance – Tony Robbins. This five-day event equips entrepreneurs, business owners and operators with cutting-edge systems, skills and strategies not found anywhere else to create an invincible advantage against competitors.

Business Mastery is designed to help participants thrive in any economic climate as they discover critical factors impacting their businesses currently, and design an action plan for the next phase of growth, whether they seek more profits or an exit strategy. This includes marketing tips, maximizing a business’ digital presence to actually get seen and discovered online and how to anticipate and solve the biggest business problems.

During this comprehensive program, participants gain the same proprietary tools and methodologies Tony Robbins has used to make more than 70 businesses profitable. They’ll also unlock exclusive growth tips from industry giants from companies like Airbnb, OrangeTheory, Shake Shack, SoulCycle, Warby Parker and more.

Now available as an immersive virtual event, Tony Robbins’s Business Mastery is drawing even larger crowds and a new generation of business owners.

Learn more about Business Mastery: https://tonyr.co/bm-podcast

AUDIO SHOW NOTES

[00:00] Mary B. Intro

[01:37] Introduction to Chip Wilson

[02:44] The 7 year arch [04:04] Knowing when to sell

[05:15] Power through reinvention

[06:03] Three books that made an impact

[06:37] Embracing your inner “risk taker”

[07:14] Muscular Dystrophy diagnosis led to Lululemon

[09:31] A mission to make lives better

[10:35] Bringing innovation (and style) to yoga

[14:00] Find your ideal customer

[14:40] Business Mastery Ad

[18:37] Disrupting the athletic leisure space

[22:17] Keeping up with trends

[24:43] Navigating challenges

[29:00] The hedgehog and the fox

[30:19] Lululemon’s manifesto

[32:03] Chip on seller's remorse

[34:57] Creating culture at Lululemon

[37:37] When accountants run the company

[41:06] Sharing lessons learned

[42:45] Audience question for Gail: Was there an employee you hired who really pushed your company forward?

[44:29] Audience question for panel: How do you choose the right project when you have several choices?

[49:33] Audience question for panel: How can we create family-life balance as entrepreneurs?

[01:02:38] Audience question for panel: How do you take a company with a loyal customer base and continue growing it?

[01:07:49] Question from Gail: Did you ever feel like giving up?

[01:10:06] Question from Chip: Did the struggles in your younger years make you the entrepreneurs you are today?

[01:12:00] Questions from Tony: What are you most proud of in your journey, and what is the best business advice ever received?

[01:18:22] Sign off

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Tony Robbins podcast. It's Mary B. The episode you're about to hear with Chip Wilson of Lulu Lemon is the last one in this three-part business mastery special series.
0:11.0	So at the end, you'll hear the roundtable panel discussion and the Q&A with Tony and the other CEOs offering their own lessons and mentorship to the live studio audience.
0:23.0	Before we jump into it, I just want you guys to know that this year's business mastery is coming up. So if you're interested in finally taking your business to the next level with Tony's help, then please come join us at BusinessMastory 2023.
0:36.0	The dates this year are August 15th through 20th. Come get down to business with us in person here in beautiful Palm Beach or if you prefer, you can attend right from the comforts of your own home through Zoom.
0:51.0	Just for you, our brilliant podcast listeners, go to TonyRavins.com forward slash business podcast to get your ticket. We cannot wait to meet you this summer. Okay, here's Tony.
1:08.0	When you decide you're going to be best in the world at something, you can't just be for that end up being on that one product because it pervades throughout the whole business.
1:17.0	So your logistics have to be best. Your manufacturing has to be best. Your delivery has to be marketing has to be best in order to not let any competition slightly move into that market.
1:37.0	So last but far from the least, you have a third interview. Are you in general and give it up for Chip Wilson Blue Love?
1:48.0	Chip, it's so great to have you. You've had a wild journey, a beautiful journey, a challenging journey, like any great entrepreneur. I understood you worked in the oil fields in your twenties.
1:59.0	And then at 25, you started your first company. And if I understand it correctly, that was originally oriented towards what was happening in the surf community, correct? How's a little bit about that journey with your first company if you would?
2:11.0	Yeah, so I actually started in Tretlum clothing. I was a big guy. I mean, not as big as you, but you know, and almost all clothing had seams on the inside that would open. And so especially in saltwater, the rashing and I just couldn't nothing fit me. And you know, you were probably in the same situation.
2:34.0	So, you know, my mom's a sore. My dad's a physed teacher. I think genetically I came through it all. And so got in the surf business. And that's what I learned really is that there's the seven year arc, you know, between something starting off at nothing.
2:48.0	Yes. Becoming like going from three counties to 500 companies, emerges in acquisitions and then too much competition dumping a product and then there's three companies left.
3:00.0	And so I saw that happen in skateboard and I saw it happen in surfing. So I got to know when the right time was to get in and right time to get out.
3:08.0	And then snowboarding, right? Wasn't that the last version of that company in Westbrook? Was it snowboarding? Oh, snowboarding. Yeah, that was that was the last part of it.
3:15.0	And you started anticipating in each of those cases. So you built that business over 17 years. And if I understood correctly sold it for $15 million, you were wet 42 years all at that point.
3:25.0	Yeah, so it works out to about $6 an hour. Well, that's most that's most entrepreneurs. You break us down to our hourly wage.
3:34.0	Humbles us, doesn't it? Well, when you pay banks off and private equity and partners, yeah, that's I get it. So but at that point, you had a certain little cash and you sold your business.
3:44.0	So one question is why do you sell it at that time? And then the second question is I understand that year, you read a hundred of the best business and personal development books out there and came up with a philosophy of giving without an expectation of return.
3:57.0	So tell us first, why do you sell the business and tell us about your journey before you built blue lemon and how it affected you and building it?
4:04.0	Well, why did I sell the business? One 18 years of really not making any money. I mean, we got one big hit at the end. And otherwise it was poverty all the way through.
4:14.0	So, but the finally I went in and I hope everybody hears that. Remember Airbnb, Joe, talking about eight years, nothing. And then eight years later, 50 billion.
	...

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