A bedtime story for entrepreneurs, especially those going through a hard time.
Once upon a time…
…there was a little boy named Ole. He was the youngest of 10 brothers, born to poor parents in Jutland. Every boy needed a trade: Ole became apprentice to his older brother, a carpenter, and by the time he was a young man he was running a steady business building houses. He earned enough to buy a small workshop and he got married to a beautiful girl from the village. Life was good, and it only got better when their first son was born the next year, followed by three more boys over the next few years.
Disaster 1
But one day disaster struck: one of his young sons, playing in the workshop, accidentally set fire to a pile of wood shavings. The family escaped, but the workshop was burned to the ground.
Undaunted, Ole made plans for a bigger workshop. It was bigger than he could afford, so he and his family lived in a small apartment beside the workshop and rented out the other rooms. Business continued to grow. Life was good.
Disaster 2
In the early 1930s, the Great Depression hit, and the local farmers were the first to suffer. Ole’s customers could no longer afford to build new homes. Almost overnight, his business dried up. In desperation, Ole turned to making smaller items such as furniture, ladders and ironing boards, and even toys, out of the scraps of wood left over. Nothing could be wasted. But even though times were hard, Ole didn’t compromise on quality. His toys were made with the same precision and attention that he had always used when building houses or making furniture: the wood carefully chosen and seasoned, the finished toys sanded, primed and given three coats of paint to seal and protect them. Ole’s mantra was ‘Only the best is good enough.’
The toys became popular. Ole expanded his range: a bus, a ferry, an airplane – toys that his own boys loved. And now one of his young sons joined him in the business. They were getting by.
Disaster 3
And then, right in the midst of the Depression, Ole’s wife Kirstine died. Ole was left grieving, trying to keep his business going, and now raising four sons alone.
He continued working, quietly building up his range of toys, using his sons as his testers to see what worked and what didn’t. A few years later the war begin, and the Nazis invaded and occupied Denmark. Ole kept his head down and kept working. The company grew.
Disaster 4
One night during the war, as Ole and his sons slept in their little apartment, a short circuit in the workshop caused an electrical fire and although the family managed to escape, the new factory burned to the ground. Once again, Ole took the opportunity to rebuild bigger and better. He took out loans and built an enormous new factory on the old site, one specifically designed for assembly line production. By this time his company had around 40 employees.
A crazy risk
But Ole wasn’t content to stop there. He’d seen that things were changing. Although everyone around him told him he was a reckless fool and should stick to what he knew, he spent more than double his previous year’s profits to buy a new machine that used injection moulding to create plastic parts.
It took some time to get to grips with the new technology and develop a new product, but two years later, Ole’s company produced its first plastic toy – a set of moulded, interlocking building bricks.
His company, of course, was Lego: the name a portmanteau of two Danish words, leg and godt, meaning ‘play well’.
Today Lego is probably the world’s most successful toy company. Ole’s mantra, ‘Only the best is good enough’, is still the corporate motto.
And if it hadn’t been for two disastrous fires, one Great Depression, a tragic early death and an insanely risky business decision, it would probably never have happened.
Ole Kirk Christiansen had a remarkable blend of talent, integrity, resourcefulness, tenacity and vision. He took every boulder that fate threw at him and used it to build his life’s work.
Next time you step on a bit of Lego, think on that. (Though it won’t stop the special kind of pain, of course.)
