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How I Built This with Guy Raz

Leatherman Tool Group: Tim Leatherman

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.831.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2022

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Most entrepreneurs expect it will take at least a few years for their businesses to gain traction. But Tim Leatherman waited 7 years to make a single, $175 sale. In the late 1970s, he had set up shop in his brother-in-law's garage, scavenged some metal from old appliances, and built a tool that he'd dreamed up a few years before: a foldable pair of pliers with several other tools tucked into the handles. Tim worked for years trying to market his design to knife and tool companies, but none of them were interested. Was it a tool? A gadget? A knife? Eventually he was able to convince mail-order catalogs to sell the tool; and within the space of a decade, he went from selling a single knife to a million every year. Today Tim's company is worth over a $100 million and his last name has become a household brand: the Leatherman. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

0:07.0

Download the app today.

0:09.0

When you leave home, can you ever really go back?

0:12.0

Made a version!

0:13.0

Soccer legend Leo Messi and I both left Argentina as kids.

0:17.0

You know you're that piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit anywhere.

0:20.0

To so many immigrants, football is a way to reconnect.

0:23.0

Listen to the last cop in the embedded podcast feed

0:26.0

to hear the latest collaboration from MPR and Fuduro Studios.

0:32.0

I was at this show.

0:34.0

There was a man and his name was Skiets Houchens.

0:37.0

Skiets Houchens?

0:39.0

Yes.

0:40.0

It's like a movie.

0:42.0

So Skiets comes up to my table and says,

0:45.0

what are you doing?

0:46.0

And I said, I'm waiting for someone to stop

0:49.0

and I'm going to want to show them the prototype of my new type of puck and knife.

0:52.0

And Skiets says, you can't do that.

0:55.0

The people walking by, they're like zombies.

0:58.0

They're in the days.

1:00.0

They don't see anything.

...

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