A Quote by Yvon Chouinard

...it's always been difficult for us to lead an examined life as a corporation. I've always felt like a company has the responsibility to not wait for the government to tell it what to do, or to wait for the consumer to tell it what to do, but as soon as it finds out it's doing something wrong, stop doing it.
The media is the only business in the world where the customer is always wrong. If you're a news consumer, if you're a customer, and you complain to them, they will tell you that you are not sophisticated enough to understand what they do, and they're tell you to go listen or watch somewhere else. They're not even really doing the news for you. They're doing news for other journalists and other people in government because that's their real audience.
Lobbyists really are experts in their fields and know what they are talking about. That's why the government always listens to them as they tell the government what it's doing wrong and what it should be doing instead.
In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.
If you wait for customers to tell you that you need to do something, you're too late. Good business leaders should be half a step ahead of what customers want, i.e. they don't actually quite know they want it. That's what innovation's about. With Plan A, we didn't wait for the consumers to tell us.
Never make a move until you find yourself making it, because it might be too soon. It's always better to wait. Whenever you're not sure, wait, and in time you'll find yourself doing it. To act before then would be a mistake.
That's the trouble with awards for a body of work. They always come at both a good time and a wrong time. Good because they tell you what you've been doing was worth the doing and wrong because they ought to come when you're young and excited and hungry for assurance that what you're doing is worth the doing.
My favorite time at NPR has been 'Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!' It was loads of fun and gave me a chance to meet and talk in person to the audiences that I felt I had known for so many years on the air.
I fantasized doing something like 'Wait, Wait.'
Everyone was talking about having airplanes disappear. And I said, "Wait, wait, wait. That's what you like? I'd tell you a story about something like my girlfriend leaving me, and the magic was really hard. The airplane thing was comparatively easy, and people liked that thing?" I realized at that moment, the power of the simple idea.
Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?" "Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?
I always tell people I romanticize about doing something simple, like doing radio in northern California.
I tell the stories in front of audiences and wait for something to happen. It's similar to a standup comic doing his schtick for an audience.
I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.
I've always felt like a teacher. Whenever I've learned something important, my reaction has always been to tell everybody about it. I read a book, I buy 100 copies and I send them out.
I was in rehearsal and reading the script and I was like, 'Wait, wait, wait, wait. I think I'm related to Data,' which was crazy but that was really cool. Going back to watch' Next Generation' and getting to see Brent doing his thing and just how incredible he was and it was obvious to see why he was such a beloved character.
In our comic cons and interviews, they're always asking him questions, of course, because people love Jean-Luc Picard. They love Sir Patrick Stewart. But he always likes to stop everyone and go, Wait, but these new characters, I can't wait for you to meet these new people.' He very much always tries to make space for us.
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