YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Van Doren

lines on the record: 77
first: 2021-11-14
most recent: 2021-11-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So, the longer this job takes, the more money they make, they're incentivized to take longer. What if we paid by the job? We say, hey, no matter what, I don't know what the number is, I'm just going to make it up. What if we say, hey, we're going to pay you $300 a night and you can leave as soon as the job is done. And that one switch saved FedEx's business. And so we see that Paul's going to use the same idea.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So eventually he does so well that they're like, hey, our factor in the West Coast in California is not doing well. We're going to send you over there. So this is where he's going to be until the day he quits and then starts vans. And so that's also why Vans was started in Southern California where it still headquartered today. But he really does something smart here. He really is analyzing they're having production issues. So he's like, okay, well, let's see if we can realign the incentives. And so this is also something we saw we learned from the founder of FedEx, Fred Smith, when they were having a hard time, they had that hub and spoke idea. So all the packages, I think, at the time in FedEx history was going through like Memphis, if I remember correctly. And you'd hire all these people, like college students to work overnight. If you were slow down in this main area, then all the flights that were waiting, the spokes of the hub, is the way to think about that, I guess, couldn't take off. So he's like, okay, instead of paying, like we're paying by the hour.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Work being done and aren't interested in learning. They prefer to stay in the comfort of their ivory tower. So, he's still working in a factory at the time. He needs to make more money. And to know myself is this guy is relentless. So he says, I had a second job at night on Saturdays and on Saturdays. I'd bring my family and we would wash windows and floors in the supermarket. The regular staff used to go in and wash the floor in the market in two and a half hours. We did it in 56 minutes, so he's obsessed with the system design, which I know I've repeated, but it's really important to understand the work that he does. And you can obviously provide a massive advantage if you pay attention to that too, because now he's doing what two and a half times faster than the other one. Why would somebody who washed, he asked these questions, and it kind of makes my job easier. It's just like, why are people not interested in improving the work they're doing every day? It doesn't make any sense to Paul. Why would somebody who wash floors all their life not want to do it more efficiently? I did it that fast by organizing the family force, all of us, including the kids, pitched in. Who's on water? Who's on the scrub? We found the most efficient ways to”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perfectly made shoe. I pass through the ringer twice. And this is hilarious. No one noticed that it was a repeat. It's the same shoe. You're going to judge the same shoe. You already know where I'm going with this. They're going to give different ratings to the same shoe. So what the hell are we doing? The vice president of sales first graded that shoe as poor when he said it's perfect, right? And the next time it went around, he graded it as excellent. Even Bob gave that shoe a different grade each time. My experiment proved that we did indeed have a serious quality control problem. The people in charge of quality control had no idea what they were looking at. And this is where he gets into his advantage. I don't even think he states this, but he says, if those executives had started out as workers on the floor, they would have been able to grade those shoes correctly with ease. They would have known exactly what flaws to look for. As it was, they didn't have a clue. The average factory worker often dislikes top executives because they are almost never willing to get their hands dirty. Most haven't worked their way up in a company. They are not familiar with the actual”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had to switch the dipping tank every time you wanted to do white shoes, which took five to ten minutes to accomplish. We changed tanks back and forth three or four times a day, depending on the orders. Changing tanks all the time, this is very, see how very simple logic he has? Changing tanks all the time made no sense to me. I told Bob it made more sense to make all white shoes on one day and all color shoes on another day. Sure enough, we tested that change, making that one change saved enough time to noticeably edge up production because people are not, if you have to do this multiple times a day, you stop the production line, then you're paying all these people hourly and they're just sitting there. Bob was pleased and I got a promotion. So that's what I was explaining to earlier. It's like, okay, he starts off, his line performs better than the other line. Then he gets charges two lines. Then he gets put in charge of entire department. Then entire factory. And it just goes on and on. In factory work, there's a lot of absenteeism. And so I guess I should just back up. This is another example of just.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spent years learning, you know, people have been selling shoes forever, way before Paul was alive. They'll sell shoes way after he died. But I just love the idea of somebody mastering an industry or just having a way. Hey, I can come up with a way to make a better shoe and come a ways to sell a better shoe. And as long as I'm making a product that other people want and I'm serving my customers, then I can create a wonderful life. This guy's going to sell his company for like $75 million in the 80s. Like that's a lot. I mean, there's still a lot of money today. But in the 80s, there's a considerable sum of money. He's a ninth grade dropout. Like, I find these stories is just basic question what you're doing story is extremely inspiring because it just opens up entrepreneurship for such a larger amount of people than trying to create like a next Google or something like that. You know, it's just there's so many more people.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More than full time because this guy's insane, but it's really interesting he takes lessons from his earlier experiences that they learned from his father when they were producing clothespins and sparklers. And he just thinks of in systems. And that's really all he ever does for the rest of his life while making clothespins and sparklers. I'd learned the importance of logical progression in setting up manufacturing systems. And then what he realized, well, if I can make a shoe, I can certainly can sell them. Why are we just being middlemen? Let's just set up our factory stores. And so that's what Vans was famous for. And so at the very beginning, they were just, he was eventually going to make the move to Southern California. They were just local Southern California company. Their first, I think, 70 stores were just in California. So it says, well, I learned the importance of logical progression setting up manufacturing systems. It did not take a rocket scientist. And I just love books like this.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want the stress, I want these situations that cause me discomfort because that's where I'm going to grow and learn. I can't imagine anything worse than not caring if I win or lose. I care. I'm emotional. Hell, I have too much emotion. I could win seven races in a row, but if I lost the eighth race, I was down in the dumps, I was inconsolable. Winning seven out of eight races would never be good enough. I'm not wired that way. I am really bad at losing. After ninth grade, I dropped out of school. This is when he's going to start working in the shoe industry. I was 16. I had decent enough grades and I was in top of my class in math and science, but I just didn't see the point. School didn't challenge me. The idea of being a high school dropout, the idea that I would be, that I would rather work, never bothered me. A friend of mine asked me recently if I was a rebel. That summer after I dropped out of school, I would say I had been more of a delinquent. So he's going to start working in the shoe factory. This is his full-time job for the next 20 years.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As my hero Ted Williams said, I'd like to have the bases loaded every time I come up. To me, the more critical the situation, the better I'll perform. I don't create clutch situations just to feel the rush. I prefer to eliminate risk than encourage it. But I for one have always found defeat intoxicating, especially when it's someone else's, and when it's mine, I can't say it's ever done anything but made me think smarter and behave differently. Hell, it's only after I lost something or when something didn't go my way that I was afforded the opportunity to shine. So a few pages on, he continues a very similar thought. He was obsessed with going to, so he's talking about this idea of he would like to go watch the horse races. This is something when he retires from vans, he does for, he buys horses and races them and likes to bet on him. But anyways, this ties into just his unique personality and I want the press.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Managed our time. No one set boundaries or perimeters are directed us to how to entertain one another. The expectation was that we would figure it out and that nature, through patterns or connection or wonderment, would be our teacher. That kind of freedom proved instructive in ways I couldn't have anticipated.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The extreme level of autonomy that his parents gave him. This would never happen in today's age. And just essentially, I mean, his brother runs away at 12 years old. I think they're in Massachusetts. His brother runs away to New York City. They wind up finding him. So if he's 12, this might be the 1940s, right? And they bring him back. Then he runs away again, and his mom is begging his father, please go get him. He's like, he's just going to keep running away. And so he runs away at 12 and just survives in New York City for two decades on his own. And they never go back and get him. I mean, they'll visit with them, but they never make him come home. So this is what I mean about an extreme level of autonomy. The extraordinary thing about being kids was that we were allowed to stretch out in any direction that pleased us. We were allowed to explore our whims on any given day to have goals by noon we hadn't considered over breakfast, to spend the day adventuring, and to come home dirty. No one questioned how we planned to spend our day. No one might.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was never a question that the kids wouldn't work equally as hard. We all participated in the family business and there was dignity in being of service. Dignity and pride in a job well done And so not only would his father have them, all the kids help out in the family business, but then he talked to him. He'd educate them through conversation. And I thought this was very smart that his dad did. And talked about, well, let me just read what Paul says. He always pushed me to come up with the why, why is something happening? And that's really, there's not a lot of like fancy stuff here at all. And I think that's very instructive to us. Paul just asked, like, why are we doing it this way? Why is this process this way? Is there a way that we can do it better? And most of the people just around him are on autopilot. So he says, and this is, it comes from what he learned from his father when he was, he starts working, you know, six years old sweeping up. He's working like making clothes, manufacturing clothes pins and sparklers when he's 12. Like he's working full-time essentially from the time maybe he's like 10, 11, 12. Then he's working full-time for the rest of his life. He always pushed me to come up with a why and I've always had a knack for figuring out the how. Those two skills have served me well my entire life. And so then he just”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then this is something he copies for the rest of his life. This guy's got an extreme work ethic. There's multiple times when there's crises, and not only when he was working for somebody else, but in his own business where he's working days in a row, no sleep. My parents taught me the principle of working hard by example. Remember, he's growing up in the depressions. If you're able to survive an environment like that, you're not going to come on the other side as a soft person, right? My parents taught me the principles of working hard by example. They both put in long hours on the job and at home. My mom worked in a factory. She actually works in the shoe factory. She's the one that gets them the job. And dad labored in his workshop every single day. He was the most hardworking man I have ever known.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I recognize the thrill of potential failure, and I think what he's implying there, I recognize the thrill of potential failure, that unless something is difficult to do, Not a lot of satisfaction at the end when you actually complete it, but when he struggles and fans is a massive struggle, including even after they were successful, going bankrupt, his brother runs the company to the ground. He's got to come back. And within four years, he turns it around and they wind up selling it. But that idea, I recognize the thrill of potential failure. That's a very interesting sentence to me. The day-to-day family dynamic left an imprint on me. Sometimes I can't say why I do something a certain way, except it's how my mother or father did it and how they loved us and how their love unrelentingly demanded that all of us be the best versions of ourselves. My parents taught me so much more than I ever learned in school. My parents taught me long ago that people were the most important thing in your life, more important than money or prestige or possessions. My father believed that family always came first, and so do I.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so then he talks about, Paul talks about one of his heroes when he was a boy, somebody who wanted to copy and emulate was the famous baseball player Ted Williams. And so he talks about this for a little bit. Ted Williams was a lot like my old man in that he played his own game. He didn't tip his hat for anybody. And so he talks about what he learned from Ted Williams the year, I think this record might still stand, although I haven't paid attention to baseball in multiple decades, but he winds up batting over 400, and this is what he learned about Ted refusing to sit out. So he says, Ted didn't have to step up to the plate. He had a 3.399999999999999999999999999 hitting average on the year. The statistician would have rounded the score up to 400, but Ted Williams refused to take the bench. If he was going to break a record, he wanted to earn it. I like that. This is a crazy sentence. He'll refer to this idea. He's about to tell us multiple times in the book in the future.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The mines and stuff like they used to, but explaining the value in your business setup to serve other people. And the kids learn not only to serve other people at a very young age, but also the ability to solve problems, which they can use their entire life. So says my father put us all to work by age five or six. I knew I could do things to help support my family, even if it was just to sweep up after my father in his workshop. He does the same thing. Every single his kids, one of his kids starts working at vans at 10 years old and doing whatever he can. He's still working there when his book was published. Fifty years later.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Growth that I knew about was the expanding shanty towns. And yet he talks about if this is all you knew, you learn to adapt. He thought he had a great childhood. He says, yes, I shared an owl house with seven people, no indoor plumbing. How crazy is that? And no, we didn't have hot water on tap. We bathed in a basin with a cup and a half of water we would heat on the stove. It was a pain. I knew no one had much of anything, but we had what we needed, we had electricity, we had a furnace, we had running water. I don't think we ever went hungry or went without, but then I wouldn't have known any different. And so it's very common at this time, the entire family, every single kid is going to help in the family business. This is actually something I've seen over and over again in the topographies. I think it's really smart what they're doing. Now, in this case, it's out of necessity. So it's not like they had a choice, but you most likely are in a different position and you could have a choice. I think work is one of the best forms of education. And I'm not trying, I'm not saying abuse child labor laws have a little kid working.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, then he tells us a little bit about his early life, by far the most influential person. If there was one single influential person on him, whose dad talks about later in the book, just being absolutely devastated because his dad dies, I think he is Paul's still in his 20s when that happens. He winds up having another 20 years with his mom, but he was just completely depressed when that happened. So says so much of who I am, what I believe in, and what I know how to do I learn from my parents. My father, so his dad's an inventor, an entrepreneur, somebody that was willing to fix problems work extremely hard, almost like Paul mirrored a lot of the traits he saw. He says my father was the kind of gambler who more often bet on himself taking calculated risks that required skills and smarts, a lifelong entrepreneur. He invented and built things for a living, wooden things, things that popped and exploded, things like toys and fireworks. He could engineer anything, build anything, fix anything, and outsmart just about anybody.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Standing behind you with a stopwatch, like, come on. So it says, My business would be a business that felt authentic, hence the title of the book. And that's his approach to business, but also the fact that he said there's really a line between business Paul and personal Paul. So he says, my would be a business that felt authentic, not just in making a quality product, but by operating in a way that was true to who I was. I can say with conviction that building the company that became vans was a personal expression all the way. And maybe the main point that Paul would give advice to future entrepreneurs is you got to put people over everything. People first, he's still an introduction, but he ends the book this way. One of my credos, which still stands at vans decades later, is that we weren't a shoe company, but a people company that made shoes. That distinction may sound like nothing, but believe me, it's everything.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So now he's going to talk about what being an entrepreneur meant to him at the very beginning. He says, I suddenly had the luxury of being 100% myself, free to do things exactly as I saw fit and with abandon. For once, I didn't need to check with corporate or ask the owner or listen to some Harvard graduate who was timing production workers with a stopwatch about what was efficient. That's a story that comes later. I don't know if I actually have highlights on it, but what he's talking about is Bob and his dad would hire these people. And remember, Paul knew everything about he was the one that he started out in one factory or one line in one factory. And eventually he keeps getting promoted because the line he's in charge of keeps outperforming everything, every other line in the company. Then he's eventually running two lines and they like that trend continues. Then he's running a factory. And then his factory is performing better than all the other company factories. And it keeps going so on and so forth that way. But what he realized about these...”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why were we depending on a handful of buyers anyway? Some day, some way, somehow I would figure out how to get rid of the middleman. Remember in the introduction he says that he invented he founded the world's first vertically integrated tennis shoe company. And he's going to do that many years after the story that I'm telling you right now takes place. I would figure out a way to get rid of the middleman because no amount of business would ever be worth my integrity. I will never forget that hour in Boston Common watching Bob Cohen chase pigeons. Not only did it help me figure out what sort of folks I wanted to work with, but it crystallized for me what I would be willing to work my ass off to avoid. I would never work with jerks. I also credit this experience with giving me courage. Many years later to start my own company. By then I had worked my way up to run Randy's most successful factory. I had learned the essentials of shoe manufacturing and a thing or two about business.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gordon Lee and my brother Jimmy took the flying leap alongside me. My debt to each is as obvious as the words on this page. I've experienced a lot of joy. I am also all of what I've lost. While my kids, their kids, and their kids' kids are healthy, I outlive my wife Drina and a number of my peers. I've lost brothers, business partners, colleagues, and friends. Everyone I knew from my shoemaking days is gone. Suffice it to say, no one is around to fact check most of what I offer herein. You'll have to take my word for it. And as you read, keep in mind I wrote for memory, recreating situations from the near and far past as best I could five decades after I started the Van Dorne Rubber Company, our brand is associated with expressive creators. Artist, musicians, skaters, and surfers, the trendsetters, the ones who go their own way”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also say find honorable people to be your partners, work with creative people and be fair. Be kind, give a shit about how you treat people and be aware of how your actions might disturb or distress them. In other words, don't be a jerk. Until our last breath we can do something good for someone else. I've had one hell of a ride, and in telling my story I tell Vans, but that isn't the whole of it. Without my kids, Vans wouldn't exist. They, alongside their mother Dolly, and me got their hands dirty and worked for tacos. My in laws dropped everything to help us launch. Bob Cohen listened to me when I was a sixteen year old supply boy at the Randolph Rubber Company. Serge Delia handed me a parachute when Bob left me no options but to jump.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the best any of us can. Many of my guiding principles are equally simple, and they've served me equally well. Don't rest on your laurels. Do the work. Don't just look to others to do it. Get your hands dirty. If a young entrepreneur came to me today and asked how to start a company, I would say right off the bat know what goes into making what you're selling. If you sell from a place of total confidence in the quality down to the details, you will succeed.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm just a small business owner who did well and found the right partners. When I was approached to write a business memoir, I wondered how I could explain my life as a series of tidy lessons learned. Eventually I realized that what I could offer to other businessmen and women is less formula and more whatever the opposite a formula is. Let's call it fluidity. I don't know where to draw the line between the business me and the personal me. It's something that I failed to teach my children. The lines have always been so damn blurred. The way I've run my business is the way I live my life. The one thing that has always been sacred to me, and this goes for life as much as business is just this try to do what's right. I learned early on what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. If you put thought into something and do what's right every single time you won't be far off from doing”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It helps that at Vans we used vulcanized rubber on the soles of our shoes. It helps that we identified retail spaces. It helps that we dialed in production like Leia Coca on his best day at Ford or Chrysler. It helps that we knew our customers, especially the skaters and the surfers and the moms. It helps that I handed over the reins in nineteen eighty when I got burned out and was able to return in nineteen eighty four for an order from a judge in bankruptcy court. It also helps that we were tenacious. I learned that what makes a successful entrepreneur is the same thing that makes a good skateboarder or a good surfer. You need grit and determination to get back up every time you're knocked off the board. In the world of successful entrepreneurs, I'm not Phil Knight. I'm not Ivan Shenard. I'm not Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. My guess is I'm unlike any other founding CEO.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My entire life I've never had one big idea. I'd like to think I woke up one day, figured out how to make the world's best canvas and rubber waffle soled deck shoes, how to distribute said shoes, and thus create the first vertically integrated tennis shoe company in the world, but the fact of it is I could have been growing potatoes. Actually, shoes has nothing to do with my success. What I've accomplished comes down to one thing. My knack for identifying and then solving problems. What I do better than anyone else is cut out distractions. If a system isn't working efficiently, I can see where it's jammed, eliminate the problem, and find a way to keep everything moving forward. Everyone has something that they naturally do better than anyone else. This just happens to be mine, and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to leverage it. Then there's everything I learned by doing.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source