When Chip Wilson was 12, he forged his mothers signature on a mothers allowance cheque so he could buy groceries.
His parents were in the midst of a bitter divorce and, other than Chip, no one was paying attention to such things as whether there was food in the fridge.
I was in survival mode, Wilson told the crowd at Sam Sullivans Public Salon at Queen Elizabeth Theatre last Wednesday night. I couldnt rely on anybody.
He took that attitude with him when he entered the business world to survive you have to do it all yourself. That philosophy worked well at the beginning but every time hed get a business to, lets say, the $15 million mark, everything would start collapsing around him.
He simply couldnt do it all.
He had to change his behaviour or continue to fail. He had to accept that what got me to where I am is not whats going to get me to where Im going.
The phenomenal success of Lululemon, the company he created and which has made him one of the richest men in British Columbia, is proof that he succeeded. (Another testament will be the huge house hes building in Kitsilano, stretching out over two lots.)
His talk focused on other people who have also had to recognize that the traits they adopted in youth might drive them to succeed but theyd never get as far as they wanted to unless they adopted new ones.
I know a girl whose operational mode was perfection, Wilson said. Her father was an alcoholic and she was always afraid that shed do something to cause an emotional eruption or, worse, cause her father to leave. So she became a perfectionist in all she did. Unfortunately, when she became a boss, her employees felt they could never satisfy her; she demanded perfection from them too.
Nothing changed until she learned to embrace the lessons of failures.
Another woman was 12 when her father left the family. She reacted by being highly competitive. She had to win at everything she did at sports, at the dinner table, at university, Wilson said. When things started to fall apart later in life, she started to realize that those around her had to be winners too if she wanted to succeed.
Finally, he told of the woman, the oldest of four children, who had to accept responsibility at an early age after her father lost his job.
She became one of the most successful women but she could never get the CEOs job [because] what corporations are looking for is someone who can be five years in the future.
Shes now a CEO because she gave responsibility for the present-day operations to others.
Presentations made at the Public Salons are videotaped by the University of British Columbia and are broadcast on the Public Salon Television on Shaw TV Channel 4 every Thursday at 6:30am, Saturday at 9:30pm and Sunday at noon. GlobalCivic.org.
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