Build for Resilience | Simon Sinek

We always talk about being a stable company, and we talk about investing in stable companies. And, you know, are you. Are you stable? And you think about stability. Stability is an immobile object, you know. And so companies that are built for stability, yes, they're able to weather storms, but they don't come out stronger or better. They just come out. They get through. Building a company for resilience means that you go into darkness, but you're actually able to adapt for new times, new technologies, new cultures, new politics, new tastes. And you come actually out of the hard times stronger than you went in. Victorinox is a great example. Victorinox, many of us know them by their signature product, which is the old Swiss army knife. And this company made, basically, made a name for themselves on this. Basically one line of product. They had other product, but this was the core. And then something happened that they couldn't predict, nor could they prepare for, which is September 11th happened. And overnight we were banned from taking their product in our bags, in our hand luggage, or in our pockets. So many of us used to carry a Swiss army knife in our pockets or just throw one in our hand luggage. Like, we all had one. You know, every birthday, for every teenager, they got at least one right. Every corporate gift, you had a couple of Swiss army knives. And now we were banned from carrying them, which means you're less likely to buy one to give as a gift. And so their business plummeted overnight through no fault of their own, through no market conditions, nothing predictable. But the genius of Victorinox is that they were built for resilience. And what they did was they, in good times, instead of giving away all the money and big bonuses, in good times, they actually saved a ton of money. And their attitude was, good times don't last, but neither do bad times. And if we want to get through bad times, we need to have. We need. We need cash. And so instead of panicking and taking loans or whatever it is, they had their own stack of cash that they'd been hoarding. So they had a little financial resilience, but then they looked at other products and they asked their people to help build up, and they started investing heavily in watches. Now we have Victorinox watches, which are much more, and it's still Swiss made. Everything that they could do, everything that they knew how to do, clothing, everything. They leveraged their brand heavily and they built it back up. Also, they protected all of their people. They actually made deals with companies prior that if bad times ever happened, that other companies would borrow their employees which I thought was genius. So they didn't lose their jobs, they just did their job somewhere else.

And they completely reinvented their company. Now to this day, their Swiss army knife never really recovered. It came up back a bit, but it's now not the major product. It is a minor product that they sell because they actually came out stronger and reinvented. And to be able to do that, think about that coming in as one kind of company and coming out of another kind of company. Very, very rare and very, very special, but very infinite minded.