I’m a huge Chouinard fan boy, and this is an oldie but a goodie. On why he turned away multi-million dollar buyout offers: 

“There’d be all this pressure to grow, grow, grow, and there’s a limit to this idea. There’s a limit to what I’m trying to do. And once again, it’s not going over the edge. It’s knowing what size you should be, knowing who you are, and don’t exceed that.”

As a guy in the middle of a small but growing business, this combination of understanding your limits and having clarity about why you’re in business in the first place is gold:

“We had been growing 50 percent a year, every year, and we were strung out financially. And suddenly — you know, we were ramped up for more growth, and it didn’t happen,” Chouinard said. “And so we got in financial trouble. And that’s when I decided to re-look at all our values and see, ‘Why are we in business? And what are we trying to do here?'”