by Hap Klopp
Before the spark the Kocklemans were seemingly average Americans. Peter, the older, was an engineer. John was a computer consultant. But the two had always wanted to start a business together.
Theirs was not so much a spark as a lightning bolt. According to Outside magazine, John saw his first bungee jump on the television show “That’s Incredible.” John, whose boyhood hero was Evel Knievel, called his brother in 1987 and suggested they jump off the 140-foot bridge at Don Pedro Reservoir near Yosemite. Peter agreed and afterward called it “the most intense thrill I’d ever had in my life.” He told Outside, “I felt like a spider dropping into the Grand Canyon on a thread.”
It was a 140-foot spark. Well, a little less than 140 feet—the idea, after all, was not to hit bottom. But it was a spark, nevertheless, and a year later John quit his job. He thought it would be a good idea to start a bungee-jumping business. He called Peter. “Come on, screw security,” he told his brother. “Screw stability and upward mobility. That’s not what you’re on earth for—to sit there and be calm, to sit there and die slowly.”
Peter, the cautious one, was caught. It was the die slowly part. “The saddest thing I ever saw,” he told Outside, “was the engineers [he worked with] who had stayed 30 years beyond the time they should have gone out and pursued a dream, so I decided to go for it.” He opted for personal freedom. Bungee Adventures was born.
The sport of bungee jumping, legend has it, was invented by a woman on Pentecost Island who tricked her abusive husband into suicide. According to local legend, this man chased his wife to a cliff. The woman jumped; so did he. The man fell. The woman, who had tied vines to her legs, had her fall stopped at the last second. From then on, in the village of Bunlap on Pentecost Island, the men decided it would never happen again. All men would learn to jump as proof of manhood and, incidentally, to ensure a good harvest of yams. One spark, and all along it was yams.
But not for the Kockleman brothers, who used the technologically advanced bungee cords rather than vines. Their spark was the need for total commitment of body, soul, and mind. They prove that even the craziest thing, if it’s something you love, can be quite logical. Let me explain. Bungee jumping is actually a mechanical exercise that involves many things, including Peter’s engineering skills. All these things must be factored into every jump—the height of the jump, the weight of the jumper, the length of the cords. The Kocklemans’ image of being the best is really a result of creative logic—primal energy harnessed to create extraordinary events, bungee jumps.
The Kocklemans are the kings of bungee jumping and heroes of the famous Don’t-try-this-yourself bungee-jumping sneaker commercial for the Reebok Pump. In three weeks the commercial was banned.
But it was an eye-catching commercial. The idea was to show how the Pump fits snugger than an ordinary sneaker. Both brothers stood on a bridge. One brother pumped his Pumps. The other brother wore another brand—no pump. They both jumped. At the end the commercial showed the brother with the Pumps hanging upside down from his bungee cord. And then it showed the other cord—empty.
What it showed me, though, was two brothers making money doing what they love. That’s what a good spark will get you.
Someone once said, “Search the parks in all the cities and you will never find a statue of committees.” Committees do not create sparks; they drown them. Only an individual spawns the vision. And that’s what the spark is, really—a vision. Without a vision, nothing happens. Vision is not external but internal—a mirror holds the key.
A climber I know failed on his two greatest climbs—K2 and Mt. Everest—because at the last minute he lost conviction in himself and his vision. This man seemed to have everything all good climbers do—strength, determination, and a cerebral appreciation of nature and man’s minute role in it.
As a challenge beyond just climbing, he decided to organize and lead some major climbs. This is quite an involved process. It includes fund-raising, procuring permits, and selecting team members. It also involves leadership—pairing up climbers, deciding the route, and adjusting to the inevitable surprises that occur on a major climb. It is a very tiring role.
In both of his failures the same thing happened. He had done everything perfectly. He was well organized, and everything went well as his group pushed to the last camp before the final assault on the peak. But as is always the case, conditions were harsh. At the last moment, when all the pieces were in place for a fine-tuned effort by a group with a singular goal, he wavered. He didn’t lead. Each time there was more than one possible route to take. Rather than deciding, the leader put it up to a vote. Well, some people, on thinking about it, wanted to go one way. Others wanted to go the other way. Some were shooting for personal firsts, others for world recognition. People were tired, tempers were short. The air was nearly impossible to breathe. And the leader said, “How about a vote?”
What happened should be obvious to anyone who has been through a crisis, business or otherwise. The team fell apart. They split up and went their own ways. Some went back down. Those who went forward failed to reach the peak—without teamwork and support they were doomed to failure.
The point is, democracy doesn’t work at 8,000 meters, and it doesn’t work in a crisis. Sometimes you just have to tell people exactly what to do and they will gladly accept it. The climber who organized these climbs was still in the decision stage when he should have been in the action stage. He let the group of climbers vote on two different approaches and inevitably ended up with dissatisfied climbers who had nothing more to give when their route wasn’t chosen. There is a difference between management and leadership, and there are clear points when a leader must lead.
This just further illustrates why there are no statues of committees. This is not to say that democracy is bad. As I will show later, it is essential that leaders tap into the knowledge of others to be successful. However, at some point you have to open up and be honest. Don’t kid yourself—leading is not easy. You have to want to be a leader or you will find the sacrifices required are too great. Don’t take the role of a leader for its celebrity, because if you only rise to the bait to be liked and adored, you probably will never want to or be capable of making tough decisions. Leaders must make tough decisions, long before there is certainty. A leader scrutinizes all doubts and then, if his conviction doesn’t waver, presses on toward the goal. At that point the adventure accelerates.
Morris L. West said in The Shoes of a Fisherman, “It takes so much to be a full human being that there are few who have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price…. One has to abandon altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing.”
Or, as John Kockelman told his brother, “Screw stability.”
Take that next step. Bill Gates, the phenomenally successful founder of Microsoft, described his role as president of the company as follows: “My job is to have a vision and communicate it.”
How simple. But of course it isn’t, or the entire world would be successful. The reason it isn’t is not that people lack visions. All people, if they are honest, have some visions. But so often you are told, implicitly or explicitly, that the vision is impossible. “Don’t try that,” others say. And if you do, they warn you to be sure you have something to fall back on. So often, someone tries to drown your vision in their embalming fluid.
But you have to dig below the day-to-day bottom line of security and analyze your life in a linear format. You know the past. You know the present. The future is up to you. What is it that you really want from life? Honestly?
There is one more question: What are you going to do about it?
Robert Noyes knew. He decided early on in his career that a nonexistent technology could be invented, and that it would be marketable.
Noyes is generally considered the father of the semiconductor industry. A semiconductor is what re
placed the old vacuum tubes that were in radios and televisions. The technology has since evolved into the computer chip and fueled high-tech industry around the world.
Noyes was convinced that semiconductor technology could revolutionize electronics. Beyond that, he was convinced that he was the one to lead the charge. His belief was based on two things: the logic from his academic work at Stanford University and a near-religious belief in himself and his vision. His vision did not so much see the future as create it.
And creating the future is the reason for the spark. What good is a great idea that dies unborn in a risk-free and terribly bored mind? Without the logic to make it work, an idea is useless—an intellectual miscarriage.
Every vision does not have to be a grand one on the scale of a new industry. Small visions are equally valid. What’s important is not the size of the vision but the honesty of it and the commitment to it.
One of my favorite small visions came from one person within a large company, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. As in most large companies, the employees complained about the constant ringing of their phones. Anybody who works near a phone can relate to this problem. Just when you get going on something—just when you get that inner roll we all strive for—the phone rings.
After analysis, it turned out at Northwestern Mutual Life that most of the bothersome calls were internal. This is a humorous irony—employees trying to get things done were keeping other employees from getting their work done. Certainly most of the calls were important. Still, those doing the calling were also complaining about being called. In essence, efficiency was hurt by employees trying to be more efficient. An unsolvable dilemma, right? Of course not. What Northwestern Mutual Life did was set aside one day a week—Thursday—for no internal phone calls. If you have a question on Thursday, hold it. Move on to something else. Don’t bother anyone, and no one will bother you. It worked marvelously. People were happier, and efficiency went way up.
This next story is great because it shows how a little ingenuity coupled with the good fortune of being at the right place at the right time will reap untold rewards for someone with foresight. I have a friend who was a ski instructor, bartender, and construction worker in Vail when that resort first started to grow. One of his jobs was to build the Vail jail—not much more than a few holding cells for those fun-loving people who got a bit too rowdy on a Saturday night.
As he was building the jail, my friend began to contemplate his own Saturday-night tendencies—he, like many of my friends, had an affinity for good times. In other words, he thought as he was laying the bricks, it wouldn’t hurt to plan ahead. Sure enough, not long after the jail was built my friend managed to get himself arrested for a little Rocky Mountain rowdiness at a local bar. But as I said, this story is about foresight—vision, if you will. When my friend was building the jail, he had left one brick loose and hidden a key to the cell behind it. By the time the sheriff got back to the bar where he had arrested my friend, he found my friend already there entertaining everybody with his tale of a “daring” jail-house escape.
Another small but effective vision was that of Glen Plake. Basically, Plake wanted to ski for a living. The problem, obviously, was that lots of people would like to ski for a living. Being a instructor is not very lucrative. He aimed higher. To start with, he went into extreme skiing—that is, skiing out past civilization onto mountains only accessed by hiking, climbing, or helicopters. But a lot of people had already gotten into extreme skiing. In fact, some were even paying money to go extreme skiing. Plake wanted to be paid, rather than pay.
What he did was incredibly simple—he differentiated himself. He went visual. Instead of assuming the clean-cut, all-American look that most skiers go for, Plake became a sort of Sid Vicious on snow. He cut his hair into a spiked mohawk and colored it orange, yellow, and blue. He began to market himself as an image of an extreme skier with character. The ski companies, for example K-2, loved it. They hired him for posters. Filmmakers also found the new image incredibly attractive. He has become a wealthy, and happy, professional skier.
Small visions, when done for the right reasons, work. And better yet, they lead to bigger visions.
It happened to us at The North Face. In 1972 we analyzed the company and realized that most of our sales were in the summer. That made sense. People do the most outdoor activities in the summer. But we wanted to balance our business and cash flow.
We asked ourselves: What do our customers like to do in the winter? One obvious answer was cross-country skiing. It was a natural for those who like to go off into the back country. But from a business perspective it didn’t make sense. The number of people who cross-country skied on the West Coast, where we were located, was just too low for a major investment. We theorized the low number was not because of lack of interest—people love the outdoors summer or winter. The problem was there was nowhere to go—people wanted easy access to a beautiful place with trails. But on the West Coast there were no places with prepared trails or instructors.
Suddenly our small vision of a better wintertime cash flow became a lot bigger. The only way to create a demand for cross-country skis and clothing was to actually create the market in the western United States. The only way to do that was to get trails built.
I was never one to go after anything but the biggest and best, so we aimed for Yosemite National Park. We figured we needed a setting that was so spectacular it would almost sell itself to potential cross-country skiers. The thousand-foot vertical granite walls of Yosemite were a natural enticing backdrop for what we envisioned. All we had to do was convince the park concessionaires to develop a cross-country-skiing program. We were excited.
Then we met them. The concessionaires thought our idea was “intriguing,” but they rejected it. It was another committee fiasco. We met again—same thing. No problem, we thought. Just persevere. And we did. Finally they relented. “Great,” they said. “Yosemite will be glad to go ahead with the project. Only one thing. We’d like you to do all the work.” They wanted us to lay out the trails, get the equipment, find the instructors, and help promote the program. I guess they thought that would deter us. They thought wrong. It energized us.
I worked with Dave Harvey, one of our employees. Dave is an energetic dreamer—the kind of person who makes vision become fact. Dave had gone to school with Johannes von Trapp, youngest son of the von Trapp family, around whom the story The Sound of Music had been written. When the von Trapps came to the United States after escaping the Nazis, they opened a chalet in Stowe, Vermont. They offered meals, entertainment by the family, and cross-country skiing—something they had learned in their native Austria. The program was a success, and Johannes became a businessman specializing in crosscountry skiing.
Through Dave, we asked Johannes to help us. He was a lifelong cross-country skier. He was about six feet, three inches tall, rail thin, and a sort of philosophic mountain man. He had intelligence, experience, business savvy, and a perfect image for our new endeavor. Also, he knew some unemployed potential instructors. One of them was a young man named Ned Gillette, who had been a member of the 1968 U.S. Olympic ski team. Remember that name—Ned Gillette—it will come up again before I finish this book. Gillette’s whole life is a metaphor for what I am trying to say.
Anyway, Johannes had more to offer than just image and names. He knew how to lay out ski trails, and he knew what the American cross-country skier wanted. We listened, we learned, and we started a business. Ultimately, in fact, the winter business for The North Face exceeded that of the summer.
What happens when a spark hits—as it inevitably does with every human—is that there is a choice. Take it seriously or ignore it. At The North Face, we took it seriously. Why not improve winter cash flow? Why can’t cross-country skiing become popular? Why not lay out ski trails in Yosemite National Park? As George Bernard Shaw once said, “You see things and say why, but I dream of things that never were and say, why not.”
If you take th
e spark seriously, it then becomes necessary to manifest the vision. One of my favorite songs is “Teach Your Children,” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It begins with these words: “You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by …” A code to live by—what a beautiful, touching concept. But it is so difficult to keep your code—to remain true to yourself. It becomes so easy to make little compromises—rationalizations, if you will—because of your fear of the consequences. But little compromises very quickly become big compromises if you are not careful. Put differently, if you have something to fall back on (a little compromise), you will fall back on it (a huge compromise).
And so there is, inevitably, a test of the vision. Are you tough enough and true enough to stick with your vision?
I once sailed off the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia with a ruddy-faced captain who told some incredible stories. His name was Ian.
Ian loved to sail. When he was younger, he told me, he didn’t have enough money to own a boat. But still, he dreamed. His were not idle daydreams—he used logic to make his goal a reality. His goal was to be a charter captain. One day while crossing the English Channel, he saw the boat of his dreams—a 62-foot wooden ketch. Ian turned to his wife and instantly told her that someday he would own that exact boat. First he had to find out who owned the boat. It took a while, but he eventually found the owner. Then he had to raise funds and convince the owner to sell that beautiful boat. Neither was an easy task. It took him three years to raise the money and almost as long to convince the owner to sell the boat. “So, how do you like her?” he asked when he finished that story. I was riding on his dream boat.
