David Gelles: Patagonia, Capitalism, and the 'Dirtbag' Billionaire

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Few business leaders are as paradoxical or as inspiring as Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. My guest today is David Gelles. David is a New York Times journalist and author of Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia Made a Fortune and Gave It All Away. He's also the author of The Man Who Broke Capitalism, which is a book about former GE CEO Jack Welch. In today's conversation, David and I dig into the paradoxes at the heart of Chernard's story. We talk about how he's a dirtbag climber who hated capitalism, yet built a billion-dollar company, how he became a billionaire and then gave it all away. We also explore why Chouinard resisted sharing ownership with employees for decades, how Patagonia balances planet over people, and why its model of mission-locked capitalism matters in today's era of deregulation and dealmaker capitalism. David also contrasts Chouinard's purpose-driven playbook with Jack Welch's shareholder primacy capitalism and reflects on what these two archetypes tell us about the future of business. Business. With that, here's my conversation with David Gelles. This story about Chouinard, the story about Patagonia, it seems like it can be really a larger story about capitalism itself, because Chouinard really highlights some of the contradictions, I think, inherent in our capitalistic society. And so really what I want to explore today are a lot of the paradoxes that are really brought up in this and just see what does that suggest about where capitalism is heading. Obviously, lots of good things about capitalism, and there's some bad things about it. So let's just start with Chouinard himself. This is a guy that starts out life and really to this day is still basically a dirtbag climber. He's not really into all the trappings of what money can buy, yet he ends up building Patagonia, a multi-billion dollar company. So talk to me a little bit about the inherent conflict within him as far as being a dirtbag climber, yet he builds a multi-billion dollar company.

Yeah, well, you've honed right in on it. This is a book that at the heart of it has a paradox, and it's not one that ever gets resolved. And in the process of writing this book, I had to get comfortable with that contradiction, with dwelling in these inconsistencies, in the hypocrisy, some might even say, But ultimately just acknowledging that this is a man and a company that embody sort of two ends of a spectrum that never fully get reconciled. And so as to Chouinard himself, you use the word dirtbag climber, and I think it's really important at the outset to really be specific about what that means. A lot of people hear the word dirtbag and they say like, oh, that's like an uncouth, unsavory person that I wouldn't want to be around. But you used it correctly. You said it was a dirtbag climber in the outdoor community from which Chinard came, the term dirtbag is almost the highest compliment. It's like a term of endearment that denotes the most hardcore athletes who are so fundamentally enamored with the outdoors and so fundamentally uninterested in materialism that they are literally content to sleep in the dirt if it means they're closer to their next climb. And so that identity is core to Chouinard, and it ultimately becomes core to the company's identity itself. So that's where he's coming from. He starts out as this extreme athlete, this hardcore pioneering rock climber in the '50s and '60s. And amongst all the people who would go on to build billion-dollar businesses, perhaps Chouinard is the least likely. Not only because, well, that's not, you know, the natural proving ground for a multi-billion-dollar entrepreneur, but he grew up hating businessmen. He called businessmen greaseballs. He didn't respect capitalism, and yet nevertheless, less. Years go by, he becomes wealthier and wealthier, the company gets bigger and bigger, and the central paradox gets all that much harder to reconcile.

And you spent a lot of time with him over the past few years as you were writing this book and, and doing the research, and he's still alive today?

Correct. 86 now.

86. Okay. Has he ever squared this dilemma, let's just call it, of him being the dirtbag climber yet building this multi-billion dollar company, or has that always been something that he's wrestled with his whole life here?

You know, I don't, I don't think this is an act. He is not the most self-reflective individual, and I don't mean that as a criticism, but that's not where he puts his energy, is trying to make sense of it. You know, he puts his energy into the things he loves, and if other people want to see it as a contradiction and analyze him and write multi-hundred-page books about him and his life, like, so be it, so be it. But It's not something he's done himself. And I think that extends all the way to how he's given his wealth away in later years, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. But some people say, oh, well, what about his views on the tax system? Does he think it's fair for individuals? I was like, I don't think he spends time thinking about that. And some people might see that perhaps lack of introspection and call it a failing of some sort. But I see it as this consistency. He is literally the same person he was basically 60 years ago. His interests haven't changed. His passions haven't changed. His views on how he should spend his money and how the company should behave really haven't changed. And that consistency, I think, helps explain some of why he doesn't feel the need, in my opinion, to sort of dwell too much on making sense of it all. He sort of is who he is, the company is what it is, and he leaves it to other people to make sense of it.

Yeah, so that's why guys like you and I can sit here and have a conversation and talk about it. Here we are.

Yeah.

Another contradiction. I mean, we know that capitalism has the ability to raise all the boats, let's just say, okay? So there's an opportunity that capitalism can spread the wealth. Yet in Chouinard's case, he and his wife, they kept very tight ownership of Patagonia. And my understanding is they, they didn't have other shareholders, and I'm not sure that they even had a profit sharing plan of any type. So how do you think about him being, let's say, a fairly progressive guy in many ways in terms of how he structured Patagonia, yet at the same time he kept very tight control on the wealth and didn't really spread the wealth for the people. And, and I think I read somewhere, or maybe heard you say on another podcast, that Patagonia didn't necessarily pay high wages either. What's sort of your take on the fact that they really kept tight ownership and didn't really spread the wealth with the people that were helping him create the wealth?

Yeah, well, I think let's separate those two issues, and I think they're both valid points. So let's talk about two different things: why they kept control and how they did that, and the second is why they didn't share some of the profits more generously, you could say, or the equity with their employees. To the first point, Chouinard didn't really trust anyone else to maintain the same integrity and values that he believed he could and his family could with sole control of the company, which is to say he believed that if he took a major equity stake from an outside individual, they might at some point say, well, we actually think the company should grow faster, and if that means you have to compromise your labor standards or your quality standards Well, let's do that because we're in business. And he didn't want to be in a position where he had outside investors doing that, whether from a private capital raise or from an IPO, even worse in his mind. And he didn't share it with the employees, again, the equity, for the same reason. At the end of the day, he said, even if my employees are all values aligned today, if I cede some control to them, who knows what they're going to be like in 10 or 15 or 20 years? Who knows what outside circumstances? Might prompt them to make different sorts of decisions, even if they're all values-aligned today. What if they aren't in 10 or 20 years? He didn't want to take that risk of losing control. And I think that at a deep level explains why he never took on any outside investors, which is extraordinary, right? To build a multibillion-dollar business. I don't need to tell you and your audience how hard, how unique that is to bootstrap a company that becomes a multibillion-dollar powerhouse. Wow. To the second point though, why he didn't be more generous with financial incentives for Patagonia employees over the years. I think Patagonia employees are well paid today. I don't, you know, they're not making Google money, but I think they're well compensated for a retailer in Southern California. I think that they obviously pay competitive wages and at the store level, I think their wages and benefits are actually above average for a lot of sort of the retail, actual in-the-store employees. That said, People never went to Patagonia to get rich. I mean, the few people that did left very quickly because they realized that wasn't gonna happen. But here again, let's come back to who Chouinard is and his identity as a dirtbag climber. He was never in it for the money. He never cared about money. And so when Patagonia did start spitting off tens of millions of dollars in profits a year, hundreds of millions of dollars of profits a year, you know, they make roughly $100 million a year in profit. Today. He was very clear he wasn't interested in keeping and spending all that money himself on luxury goods and yachts and sports teams, and he didn't think his employees should either. And so he plowed the majority of the profits that he took from the company over the years to things like conservation and environmental activism. And it was just never his priority to make money for himself. And as a result. I think he never thought that it was really the most important thing to make his employees rich as well. Now, that bred some amount of resentment, right? There are plenty of Patagonia employees who had their hearts in the right place, cared about nature, supported conservation and environmental activism, and yes, wanted to get paid more. And that's probably totally fine. That's normal, right? They have kids, they're living in Southern California. Of course they want to make more money. But Chouinard never cared. That is another one of these contradictions. He and his family are set. They may not live in the most luxurious mansions, but let's not be naive. They're going to be fine for the rest of their lives. Their kids and their grandkids are going to be fine for the rest of their lives. And other people, that's probably not the case. You know, I know of longtime Patagonia employees who worked there for decades, and I don't want to say they're scraping to get by at this later stage in their years, But they don't have the kind of cushion that Chouinards have, and that does breed some resentment.

I always like to look at extremes here. And so if we take what you just described here about how Chouinard thought about why he wanted to keep control and didn't really spread the wealth as generously as he probably could have, if you take that to the extreme, and like if every company did that, if every founder did that, if there was no Google money except for, you know, Sergey and the founders there, If the founders hoarded all the money, I mean, what does that say about society? What does that say about capitalism as a system and its ability to raise the wealth of a lot of people that are participating in the creation of that wealth? Is that a good thing, a bad thing?

Well, I mean, it's not my job to say whether it's good or bad. I'll note though that, you know, Chouinard, his whole life was a real critic of the system, and yet he always understood that he had to operate within it. And I think you see examples of that time and again. He understood that in a situation where he was the one to retain control, he was going to have to make some of these tough choices. And he was willing to make some of these tough choices because he had to. And if that meant he was a little unpopular with his employees, so be it. I don't think he was too, again, self-reflective or introspective about that. But same thing when it came to give away the company. He, I think, is no fan of money in politics, for example. And yet when he gave away the company, he set up some 501(c)(4)s, dark money groups that allowed Patagonia to give untraced money to political causes if it so chooses. And even in the core business, the retail business itself, he was the first to like call foul on multinational corporations and unethical supply chains and terrible labor standards. And yet what does Patagonia do? Well, It uses fossil fuels to transport its goods all around the country, all around the world. It employs low-wage workers in loud, hot factories in the developing world to sew its clothes together, doesn't pay them the wages it's paying people at its store on Newbury Street in Boston. Right. And so all of these contradictions exist. All these paradoxes that you said are real. And yet for a company to thrive, and have an impact in this society, in this world, that often means working within an imperfect system.

You mentioned how he wasn't necessarily self-reflective here, but when you talk about him working within the system, was he conscious of that, or was he trying to reform the system from within? Or was he like, hey, this is, this is what capitalism is, I'm just gonna do what it sort of requires? Or was he actually trying to reform it in some sense?

Listen, I want to be careful here not to speak fully for him. I'm his biographer. I can't know what was in his heart of hearts. I can speak to touchpoints. I can speak to moments he told me about. So I'm always careful not to act as if I'm speaking directly for him. What I can tell you is that over the years, he routinely said, and he told me at various points, that he did believe that Patagonia could be a sort of beacon for other companies, that it could show other companies that there was a different way to do business. Now, that's very different than believing that one little billion-dollar clothing company from Southern California can change the system or fix the system. So it's important, I think, here to recognize that there's a big difference between modeling good behavior and believing that a little good behavior is going to change a lot of bad behavior, right? And he was, I think, never naive enough or delusional enough to think that Patagonia was going to solve the world's problem. But even on the point about Patagonia serving as a good role model to other companies and other executives, it's had an impact. And I chart that impact in the book. In Dirtbag Billionaire, I talk all about how Patagonia worked with big companies like Walmart, how it set up all these sustainable business groups like the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, the Textile Exchange, Time to Vote, the B Corp movement, Cascail. It was involved in creating all these things. And yet At the end of his career, when I got Chanard into those few reflective moments, when he did sort of step back and try to get him to assess his career and his impact, he was dissatisfied with Patagonia's impact. He felt like, yeah, it may have been a good example, but at the end of the day, very little changed. And I think that was a source of frustration for him.

You mentioned Walmart. I think in your book you wrote that he did make some impact when a certain CEO was at Walmart. Well, then when they had a change in leadership, the next guy pretty much dismissed what had been done. Is that accurate?

It better be accurate because it's in the book, so. That's what I hope so. But yeah, yeah, that, you've got it exactly right. The story in the book sort of picks up in the mid-aughts, you know, 2005, '06, and it's right after Hurricane Katrina happens. And Lee Scott is then the CEO of Walmart. And, you know, Walmart helped with the immediate disaster response after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, faster than FEMA even. And that got Lee Scott thinking like, wait, you know, maybe I'm not just running a retailer. Maybe I'm running a big company here that has the potential to really help our country. So he then goes on this journey of trying to understand how else Walmart can show up in the world, help its community, help the planet even. And that ultimately leads him to Patagonia. For many years then, Patagonia and Walmart worked together. And with a guy named Jib Ellison, with a guy named Rick Ridgeway, Chouinard himself goes out to Bentonville. If you can believe that crazy scene in the book where he's out there. And then you have Walmart executives in their suits going to Southern California where all these surfers are hanging out, running Patagonia. Some definite odd bedfellows moments along the way. But Walmart ultimately takes some real steps. They work to reduce their carbon emissions. They start looking at ways to reduce packaging and save waste. They start experimenting with things like organic cotton, and they get really deep in a partnership with Patagonia. They even start thinking about co-branding some clothes together, if you can believe that. Never happened, but there was a real effort to have a Patagonia x Walmart jeans, if you can imagine it. And then you said it, Lee Scott leaves, and poof, the next CEO, not interested in this stuff. Back to basics. Let's focus on the bottom line, let's focus on the next quarter. And a lot of these initiatives go out the window. And that, I think, is such an important point of contrast. Whereas Walmart and so many public companies— I can't tell you how many companies I've written about in The New York Times that went on some sustainability journey and then the CEO changed, then poof, all out the window. That happens at public companies where leadership changes over and over. The board changes and they're still, you know, like very beholden to the next quarter. At Patagonia, the values stayed consistent. Chouinard, you know, wasn't CEO, wasn't in an operational role all those years, but he chose people who he believed really were values-aligned and were going to make the right series of decisions, even when it meant profits were going to take a hit, even when it meant they were going to see revenues drop year over year, sometimes 20% revenue drop if they were trying to address some problem they found in their supply chain. So be it. So be it. They were willing to take that hit if it meant doing the right thing. And that is where I think the distinction between a public company with all the stakeholders and all the shareholders and institutional investors and the whole nine yards and the promise of activists waiting in the wings is so clearly contrasted with a private company. And not only just a private company, but one that has a complete sole ownership That is what gave Patagonia the freedom to do so many of the radical things that it did.

Another really interesting contrast that you talked about in the book is between Chouinard and his almost lifelong friend, Doug Tompkins. So tell me who Doug is, because you should probably be writing a biography about him as well, because he has such a fascinating story too. So tell me a little bit about him. And the contrast that you showed between those two guys who both started out essentially as dirtbag climbers.

It's an incredible friendship, one that I argue really sort of shaped the world we live in today. Doug Tompkins, just very briefly, was the founder of both The North Face and Esprit. So if you can imagine that two best friends found The North Face Esprit, Black Diamond, and Patagonia.

Pretty amazing.

Two guys founded all four of those brands. I mean, really extraordinary. All brands that are still going today. You know, Esprit isn't as big in the United States anymore, but it's still out there internationally. And it was a monster company in the '80s and '90s. They linked up early during Chouinard's dirtbag climbing years. They went on a series of really pivotal expeditions together, including the 1968 trip that ultimately inspired Chouinard to really found Patagonia. It gave Patagonia its name because they went to Patagonia, the place in Chile and Argentina. It gave Patagonia its logo. The mountain that they summited on that trip is the inspiration for the Patagonia logo. And it was in Patagonia itself during 30 days when they were trapped in an ice cave waiting to summit that mountain that Doug and Chouinard really started talking about the future of their businesses. And a couple things came out of those conversations that truly shaped Patagonia and the rest of Chouinard's career. Number one, Chouinard really heard Tompkins drill into him the idea that it wasn't enough to make climbing equipment, which is mostly what Chouinard was making at this time. He was making carabiners and little, you know, metal pieces for rock climbers. Tompkins, who was starting to have early success with the company, told Chouinard that he needed to get into the clothing business. That's where he was going to make his real money. That's where he was going to make his impact. Chouinard resisted for a few years, but ultimately, boom, Patagonia is on the map. The other thing that they talked about then, and you know, I was— I don't have the recordings from the cave because they didn't have a recorder, but I heard this from one of their friends who was with them in that ice cave. If you can imagine this, there were 5 guys in an ice cave for 30 days waiting to climb a mountain. All they had was a couple books. Chouinard was reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. They were just like waiting. Waiting, talking a little, trying to just like stay sharp so when the window for the weather opened, they could summit. But Tompkins and Chouinard talked about ownership, and they talked about control, and they understood. Listen, they weren't talking about it in terms of institutional investors. That wasn't on their radar. But they understood, and they were talking, according to another one of their buds who was there, they were talking about the need to stay in control of their own businesses. And that even at that stage, early on, 1968, before Patagonia had been created, one of the guys on that trip said he remembered them talking about how important it was not to let other people get behind the wheel, that they didn't trust other people even then. And you fast forward to today, and like, what a pivotal series of conversations that was.

And yet they took two divergent paths. So Chouinard kept control of his company his whole life. And then of course, you know, we'll get to the end of the story where he gives it away to a purpose-based trust. But Tompkins did something different. So two things he did differently. One is he loved the wealth. There was a period of time when he loved all the trappings of the hundreds of millions of dollars that he was worth during the Esprit years. So he traveled fancy. Fancy jets and yachts and, you know, hung out with celebrities and whatnot. So he really enjoyed that kind of lifestyle. Chouinard never did that. But then the second thing is Tompkins sold out. He cashed out of the business, and then he went to Patagonia and bought millions of acres of land down there and really went into conservation. So talk to me about, you know, sort of those two contrasts. Chouinard, always a dirtbag climber. Tompkins loved the trappings of wealth. But then Tompkins sold out and used his money to do something else, whereas Chouinard just sort of kept at it. Tell me a little bit about how you see those contrasts.

You nailed it. Listen, Chouinard always sort of rolled his eyes at Doug's taste for luxury. And when Tompkins was gallivanting around the world in a private plane and driving a red Ferrari, you know, like, Chouinard was like, just couldn't bear it. Nevertheless, of course, they stayed close friends. And Chouinard, you know, by this point he had millions of dollars too. Tens, hundreds of millions of dollars by the '80s, '90s. Maybe not hundreds in the '80s, '90s, but they were enjoying real, real profits from Patagonia by this point. He kept living in a log cabin. Same log cabin I visited when I was reporting. It's a two-story log cabin, but it's still, I mean, it's a log cabin. And I walked in there a couple years ago. He's using the same secondhand furniture that they bought when they moved in 50 years ago. He's cooking off a cast iron skillet he's had for 50 years. There's no help. There was no cleaning lady. You know, we did the dishes every night after we cooked. He would come home from fishing and we would clean fish in the sink and go outside on the Weber and smoke the fish. I mean, this guy is still a dirtbag, which is extraordinary. And yeah, contrast that with Doug in his heyday. Oof, couldn't be more different. You fast forward to that moment you noted when Doug ultimately cashes out of Esprit, gets hundreds of millions of dollars, and starts buying up big acreage. It's important to note though, at that moment, Doug becomes really disenchanted by the material lifestyle. He sells the plane, he sells the art, sells the cars. He moves to real remote Chile and begins this project of acquiring lands with the aim to build national parks. And so he sort of goes back to his dirtbag roots. Chouinard, though, resisted the same offers. Tompkins kept telling him, do the same thing I did. Sell Patagonia. Take your hundreds of millions. Come on down here. We'll just keep buying land and fish together like it's going to be the best. I mean, I got to say, it sounds pretty good to me, Steve. If you try— it's the bro lifestyle, right? Yeah. Bring it on.

My money. Let's go fishing.

Oh, my gosh. But Chouinard never did. For two reasons, I think. Number one, and perhaps most importantly, he still believed that Patagonia could be this force for good. He still believed it could be an inspiration to other companies, and he didn't want to lose control. Same thing, right? Consistency there again. And number two, the promise of a payday, even if it was one that was going to give him a ton of money to give to conservation, It was never interesting to him. He just didn't care. Yeah, he liked giving away the money he had, but I think for Chouinard, you know, the difference between giving $10 million away in a year and $100 million a year, it's a little fuzzy. You know, he gives away what he has, and if that's more, great. If it's less, great. But he's not trying to be some, like, world historical philanthropist. You know, Doug was down there in South America making a name for himself and on the front page of newspapers and leading marches. And he had an enormous ego. I mean, I think you talk to anyone who knew Doug Tompkins and they will tell you this man had a titanic ego and loved being the center of attention in a lot of ways. Chouinard had no interest in any of that, right? This is a man who has never been comfortable with attention. This is a man who has never sought out the limelight. To the contrary, he didn't want me to write this book. And so that contrast, right? These two men in some ways couldn't be more similar. They couldn't have been closer. You know, they were friends their whole lives. Chouinard was with Doug when he tragically died in an accident in Chile. And yet they were so different in so many fundamental ways.

And I think it was, what, 2015 when that accident happened, when Doug passed away?

Yeah, that's correct.

So this is kind of a random question, but Let's flash forward 25 years from now.

Yeah.

Who do you think is gonna have the longer lasting, bigger impact legacy? Is it gonna be Chouinard and what he did at Patagonia and the fact that it's in the trust now and it's gonna continue to perpetuate? Or is it gonna be Tompkins with the millions of acres that he was able to put in conservation in Patagonia and perhaps the impact that that might have or the inspiration that may have for other people to do other conservation things? Can you even speculate on that?

Well, it's a bit apples to oranges, right? Those are very different types of legacies. And so I think what's amazing here is you got these two guys who both found really powerful ways to leave legacies. I'll also note that, as I describe in Dirtbag Billionaire, Chouinard helped fund a lot of Tompkins' land purchases, and he made land purchases of his own. And he never went out of his way to advertise that. He didn't want his name on the parks, right? There's Doug Tompkins National Park, and there's no Chouinard Park. Right. That never— nevertheless, a lot of Patagonia's money, a lot of the Chouinard family's money has gone to supporting those projects over the years, very quietly, very behind the scenes. As for Patagonia, look, who knows? I would argue that Patagonia, though it is a relatively small company, has already had in its own ways a big impact on corporate America. I mentioned all those business groups, the B Corp movement, Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Time to Vote. The list goes on. Patagonia was involved in the formation of all those. Without Patagonia, a lot of that stuff probably doesn't happen. And so there are ripples that are already coming off this company. So they're different kinds of legacies, and I think it's important to honor both of them for what they are.

So this isn't your only book. You also wrote a book about Jack Welch. And another great contrast here between how Jack Welch thought about capitalism and shareholder primacy and how Chouinard thinks about capitalism. He and Melinda were the only shareholders, essentially, of that. So compare and contrast how Welch was a leader and how he thought about capitalism versus Chouinard. And can either of what those two folks did, can that help us think about the future of capitalism? And quote, "Is one of them winning or not winning?" Or how do you think about that?

Well, listen, I would love to say that Chouinard's vision of capitalism is fully ascendant and everyone was following his lead. I don't know that we're quite there yet. Listen, what I would say is my last book, The Man Who Broke Capitalism, was really a scathing indictment of Jack Welch and the shareholder primacy version of capitalism that we mostly know, right? That's mostly the world we all inhabit today, I would say, unfortunately, right? I'm not anti-capitalist. I'm not a socialist. I'm not anti-profits. And I think things have gotten so skewed, so out of whack, that we have a system that prioritizes short-term profits, the wealth creation for a really exceptionally few, be they institutional investors or senior executives, at the expense of a lot of workers, a lot of everyday investors, and certainly at the expense of communities and the planet. None of that should be controversial at this point. Like, we got a system that's out of whack. So which version is ascendant? Listen, I would say that the story I tell in the last book, The Man Who Broke Capitalism, charts almost 70 or 80 years, right? It goes from the postwar years after World War II all the way to the present day. And I chart the ascendance of shareholder capitalism and the rise of that Milton Friedman version of how to do things. And that was a multi-generational story, right? If it is the case that things might find some more equilibrium, might swing back in the other direction, that too is going to be a multi-generational project. And Patagonia, as I've said before, is not going to do it itself. But if it can be one small part of it, if it can be, you know, a touchstone on that journey, towards something a bit more humane, well, then I think, you know, Bernard will have done some important work.

Well, speaking of swinging back, so I had Evan Asnos on the podcast here recently, and you probably know Evan, and his recent book is The Haves and Have Yachts.

Yeah.

And one of the stories that he told me was about GE, and he had mentioned that I think he had talked to the daughter of Reg Jones, and Reg Jones was the CEO, as you well know, of GE before Jack Welch came in. And Reg Jones was sort of the guy that we think of as maybe a statesman, very humble, not in it for himself, and created GE that was more paternalistic than more of the cutthroat that Jack Welch built. And when Jones was the CEO, I think his pay was maybe 15 times, maybe 20 times what the frontline worker was. And today, CEOs of publicly traded companies, it's what, about 350 times the average of a frontline worker? And there's a big contrast there. And we talked about at Walmart how going from one CEO to the next CEO completely changed things. And of course, big change from Jones to Welsh. So maybe there is a swing back. Maybe things go on a pendulum. And if things get too far out of whack, maybe things swing back. But then we get to today, and now we have the Trump administration. And now it seems like we're almost moving to more of a dealmaker capitalism, where everything's a deal. And, you know, let's make a deal, you know, Monty Hall or whatever. So again, if you had to speculate based on— you've done a lot of research, you've talked to a lot of people, you pay attention to this, you write about this every day. How do you think about the future of capitalism? Do things really swing in pendulums? Are you optimistic about the future of capitalism? Do you think we're going to continue to be, you know, winner-take-all society to some extent? How do you think about things like that?

I'm not naive, Steve. So I look at the forces that are aligned to preserve the status quo, and it seems to me really hard to see a path forward that is going to quickly deliver the kind of equity that we used to see from corporate America. And I'm not— I mean, forget DEI, that's not what I'm talking about. What I mean by equity is a vision of sharing the wealth created by corporations that doesn't begin and end with the shareholders, right? I always hearken back— I think it was the 1953 annual GE report, which I, I cite in my book, where they talk about— it was best year ever for the company, record sales, record profits. And in their annual report, they talked so proudly about how they had distributed those profits and what they had done with their money. And at the top of the list was, we paid more wages than ever before. First thing that they were proud about: we are so proud we have paid more money to our employees than ever before. Who says that these days? Everyone's trying to minimize labor costs. Next thing they said, oh, and by the way, we paid our suppliers more than ever before. How great is that? Sounds like, what are you crazy? Right? Today? What do you mean you just paid your— but they were like, oh, that means that our suppliers are gonna have more money to invest in making better products for us to use as components. What an upside-down world. Okay, next thing they said, oh, and by the way, we are so proud we paid record taxes to the federal government. How great is that? I mean, come on. But they meant it. And they said, oh, and by the way, lastly, we don't want to forget, we paid some profits to our shareholders. It was a great year. I mean, like, what a world. So we're nowhere close to that moment again. Not naive in thinking that returning to that is going to be easy or that we'll ever fully get there. I'll also note that doing so, moving this needle, it's probably not going to happen voluntarily. The market as we have it now, with a focus on quarterly earnings with activist investors, again, these forces are aligned in such a way that makes it really hard to change a lot of these behaviors. And if you try to change it, like poof, you got a hedge fund on your tail and you might be out of there if the board gets spooked. That said, we live in a society, I think, of laws and If lawmakers chose to adopt certain regulatory policies, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm a lawmaker and know exactly how to do it, but there's plenty of policy proposals out there that have creative ways to try to move some of these things in more equitable directions. Well, that's the world we live in. So I don't want to pretend like this is some system that has been delivered from the heavens that we all magically have to obey. Right? Let's not forget, like, we live in the world and the society that we collectively create. And if we don't like it, we as a community over time have the power to change it.

Do you view Chouinard and Patagonia and Doug Tompkins and people like that, are they just sort of like one-off people and one-off companies, or are they the sparks out there that other people can look to as inspiration and say, well, maybe I can build a company, not exactly like what those guys did, but under the idea of certain principles that they believe that may, you know, differ slightly from the others. So we're not going to just copy what these other companies do. Do you have some optimism that those people can be some leading lights of future entrepreneurs?

Yeah, I think they are at once unicorns. They are these exceptions that prove the rule, and they are also real practical examples. And that may be a paradox, but we've been talking about paradoxes all out, right? No one could ever recreate Chouinard's life, and we haven't talked about it a lot, but I mean, this guy led 100 lives. The adventures he had, the things he did are just extraordinary, just like, like an adventure movie, right? He was stalking wild tigers in Siberia. He got lost in the mountains of Bhutan. Crazy stuff. So no one can ever recreate his life, and no company can ever recreate Patagonia. But that's not the point, right? I think at the end of the day, you look at his life and you look at Patagonia, and you have a series of choices that individuals made that led to a bunch of really exceptional outcomes. And without trying to replicate a narrative, I think that's the lesson. You can make certain decisions that lead to outcomes that you want to see in the world. And sometimes it requires sacrifice, and sometimes it might mean saying no to some short-term profits. But in time, I really contend that those choices add up. And when expressed consistently over years and decades, that consistency in values that solid, consistent ethical framework leads to really remarkable outcomes.

So the book has been out for a short time now. When you were writing it, did you allow Chouinard to read it along the way, or—

No. Okay, so this is an independent book. This is an independent book. It was not sanctioned. It was not approved. He cooperated. I fact-checked it, but he did not read it before it was published. Okay.

Has he read it now?

I don't know if he's read the whole thing. He is a hard man to get in touch with. He does not own a cell phone. He does not have an email address, and he has never owned a computer. These are facts.

And he's built a multibillion-dollar company without that technology. Pretty amazing.

Correct. Yes. What I have heard is that he didn't like the title. Yeah. Not because of the word dirtbag, but because of the word billionaire. He hates being called a billionaire. And to be fair, he's no longer one. He gave the money away, gave the equity away. But I did hear from the family that while they didn't always love some of the things I put in the book, because there's some tough moments in that book, they felt I got it right. And I'm really grateful for that. Yeah.

Which is like the highest praise you can get as an author.

Yep. Exactly.

Any other feedback that you're hearing from, from the public or any other conversations that you're having with people, some of the insights that came out or conclusions that people are drawing from it, or perhaps optimism that it might be leading to?

The response has been tremendous. I mean, there is so much appetite for a story like this at this moment, especially. People are hungry for narratives that show that companies can do good in the world and that billionaires don't have to only be disruptive forces for chaos. And so I think this story is resonating because people recognize that Patagonia may not be replicable, and it may not be the biggest company, but herein are a series of lessons that we can really learn something from. And so that's why I hope everyone checks out Dirtbag Billionaire.

And I hope they do too. I read it in full and I thought it was a great book and appreciate it. I was definitely familiar with Chouinard. I had read his book Let My People Go Surfing that he wrote back in about 2010. So always been fascinated by what he's been able to do. And yeah, so I appreciate you writing the book. It's a great read. Encourage everybody to to check it out. And thank you for being on the podcast today. Really enjoyed the conversation.

Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it, Steve.

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