What a 600-Year-Old Tribe Taught the Founder of Patagonia About Building a Business That Lasts

Fellow steward,

Who's your favorite business builder?

Have your answer before you read on.

Mine is Yvon Chouinard.

Yvon founded Patagonia and wrote two books for people like us — people who want to build something that lasts. While his competitors chased cheap materials, disposable design, and cynical marketing, Yvon compounded quality across decades. He played a different game entirely.

Where did he find the nerve to resist?

The Iroquois.

"We're going to look to the Iroquois and their seven-generational planning," Yvon wrote. "Make all of our decisions as though we would be in business for 100 years."

The Iroquois Confederacy is over 600 years old. At the opening of every council meeting, they speak this incantation:

"Let us hope that the care, diligence and wisdom we bring to our decisions today honors those seven generations ago who made it possible for us to be here — so that seven generations from now will honor ours."

Six hundred years of institutional memory. Seven generations of accountability forward. That is not a philosophy. That is a forcing function.

Yvon borrowed it. Patagonia proves it works.

In family business, we have something most companies never will: a time horizon that stretches beyond a single career, a single quarter, a single lifetime. That is not a handicap in a short-term world. That is our greatest competitive advantage.

Stretching our decisions far beyond ourselves doesn't just produce better outcomes. It turns labor into vocation.

And vocation — not optimization — is what we're really after.

If you're anything like me, you want more meaning than money. You want to compound your life's work and — if you're lucky — pass it on to those who come next.

That is what the Iroquois understood. That is what Yvon proved. That is what we are building.

Onward, 

Matt