The inventor behind the Leatherman multi-tool and founder of the beloved company presents his inspiring personal story as a practical how-to guide for entrepreneurs, artists, and creatives of all kinds who want to pursue their own big ideas. On a budget trip to Europe in 1975, Tim Leatherman started making a list of ideas for what to do with the rest of his life. After months of fixing the plumbing in cheap hotels and toiling on his temperamental Fiat, Tim added to his list of ideas: “add pliers to pocket knife.” Little did he know he would spend the following four decades building an iconic American company that would go on to manufacture more than 90 million multi-tools in its Portland, Oregon, factory. His latest multi-tool is a book. In • You don’t have to be “qualified” to pursue your big idea • If you’re serious about your principles, they become your competitive advantage • Your most important tool is a willingness to figure things out as you go along Weaving storytelling, advice, and never-before-seen photos, this is a visionary and intimate look at a true American icon, meant to inspire and enable dreamers to bring their ideas to life.

Autorentext

Tim Leatherman invented the Leatherman multi-tool. He is the co-founder, owner, chair, and a very engaged part-time employee of Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. He has appeared at events and retail stores all over the world to sign tools and greet Leatherman fans. He and his products have been covered in many national and international publications and programs.

He has won national championships in pickleball (but in an ancient age group and a middling skill level), swallowed more of the Zambezi River than is considered healthy, once hit the only tree north of the Arctic Circle, has traveled into the hinterlands of Mongolia, attended the Bolshoi Ballet without wearing a suit, occasionally casts a fly for trout and drops a lure for salmon, and has the two cutest grandsons in the history of mankind. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Chau.

Chris Kornelis, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, has written and co-authored numerous books.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

You don't have to be “qualified” to pursue your big idea. In fact, it might help if you're not.

I had no business going into business.

I didn’t have an MBA. I’d never hired an employee. I was only vaguely familiar with the concept of a spreadsheet. And I certainly didn’t know how to put together a business plan. At first, none of these deficiencies was a problem, because I wasn’t trying to build a business. I was trying to build my invention.

But I didn’t know how to build my invention, either.

In the fall of 1976, I stepped into my brother-in-law’s garage in Portland, Oregon. I wasn’t going to come out until I was holding in my hand the idea that I had in my head. I didn’t know how to build it. I didn’t even have the right tools. What I had was an idea that I’d found in a dark, cold, cheap hotel in Bulgaria and a determination to see it through.

**SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM FIRST
**
A year earlier, my wife, Chau, and I had decided to go on an adventure to answer two questions:

1. What is it like to live under communism?

2. What are we going to do with the rest of our lives?

Chau was born and raised in Vietnam, which is where we lived when we got married. We were both extremely curious to see what was in store for our friends in Vietnam now that the communists controlled the whole country. Countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia had been under communist rule for thirty years, so Eastern Europe seemed like the place to go to get an idea of what was next for Vietnam.

As for what we were going to do with the rest of our lives, traveling the world seemed like the way to figure it out. Since I was a kid, I’ve been enchanted by the idea of exploring. Two of the most resonant objects from my childhood memories inspired images of adventures to far-off places.

The first was a box of coins. My father served in the Merchant Marine during World War II and had traveled across Europe when he was a young man. He kept a box filled with coins from his travels—oddly shaped and some with holes, all of them inspiration for my dreams of seeing places like Chile, Egypt, and Mozambique.

The other was a globe. What better way to fire up a child’s imagination than to put your finger on a spinning globe and discover places like Argentina, Libya, New Zealand, Iran, and, my personal favorite, reaching out to me in big block letters: OUTER MONGOLIA?

In my teens, I traveled by train across the continental United States and by bus to a Boy Scout ranch in New Mexico. In college, I took a freighter from Bangkok to Singapore, then made my way back to Bangkok by land all by myself. By my mid-twenties, I’d long since discovered for myself that there is a clarifying element to travel. The difference between what you need and what you want becomes clear. And your priorities have a way of shaking themselves out. Travel, it seemed, would be the perfect guide to find our next chapter.

We didn’t have much money, of course, but we were able to cobble together a pair of tickets to London.

We were on our way.

After a quick stop in Washington, DC, and a few weeks in the UK, our trip began in earnest when we got to Amsterdam and purchased “the little monster,” a used 1969 Fiat 600D, for $300.

We got an answer to our question about communism quickly. The lights went out when we crossed the border from democratic Sweden to Poland in the Soviet Union’s Eastern Bloc. There weren’t many restaurants or shops. It was hard to find parts to repair the little monster. Life, generally, seemed drab.

When we were back in capitalist nations, like Turkey, it was as if someone had flipped the light switch back on. Life was sunnier. There were more opportunities. It made us sad for our friends back in Vietnam, and grateful that we would be able to pursue our dreams in the United States.

As for what we would do for the rest of our lives, the trip produced plenty of ideas. In fact, I started a list titled “Ideas to Cash In On.”

I’ve long believed that the best ideas don’t come from market surveys or polling customers. They come from one person solving their own problem. When you travel, you encounter a lot of problems. It’s a gold mine of ideas.

One of my first sources of inspiration was the little monster. Within forty-eight hours of buying it, I had to fix the brakes. In Prague, we got in the car at one-thirty one morning and the little monster would not budge. But nothing could beat the day in Bulgaria when I realized Chau was beginning to sink lower and lower. The passenger seat was literally falling through the floor. She rode in the back seat until we got to Turkey, where industrious kids operating a welding business on the sidewalk patched up the floorboard for us.

We had to fix the Fiat so often and for so many different reasons that I started thinking about how convenient it would be if a city’s repair shops were all in one centralized place—not just for cars, but for everything—so that every time you needed something fixed, you knew which part of town would be able to address your needs. I wrote down on my list of ideas to cash in on: “Repairs bazaar.”

In Krakow, we went to a movie theater and saw Duel, one of Steven Spielberg’s first films. These were the days when most theaters had seats all at the same level on the floor, so I could only see what wasn’t blocked by the tall gentleman in front of me. On my list, I wrote: “Theater seating.” After seeing a movie w…