James Dyson: 5,127 Prototypes

1. 0:00 – 0:48

   Introduction: A Love for History and Technology

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      [static] You have a weird, uh, combination of, like, you build some of the greatest modern technology, but you're-- you have this obsession with and love of, like, the past, which I think is very interesting.

   2. SPSpeaker0:12

      Yeah. A, a healthy obsession with the past, I think. It is, is... I mean, I did Latin, Greek, and ancient history at school-

   3. DSDavid Senra0:18

      Yeah

   4. SPSpeaker0:19

      ... and apparently of no use at all, but it is, it is interesting how Greek civilization took place and how Roman civilization started and how it failed and how people governed.

   5. DSDavid Senra0:29

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SPSpeaker0:29

      Were oligarchies good? Were dictatorships good? So, uh, or democracies. You know, all, all-- it's interesting, and history repeats itself, and it's repeating itself rather too quickly at the moment. So it's, uh, history is interesting.

   7. DSDavid Senra0:44

      We were talking before we started recording. I have this obsession with reading everything that you

2. 0:48 – 2:01

   The Inspiration Behind Writing a History of Great Inventions

   1. DSDavid Senra0:48

      have written. I've read your [chuckles] uh, first autobiography five times, your second one at least two times. But then, you know, people might know about this, but they don't know that you actually wrote A History of Great Inventions, and what I noticed about this is it was published-- I think you were writing this in, like, 2001. What-

   2. SPSpeaker1:07

      Yeah

   3. DSDavid Senra1:07

      ... caused you? Like, why did you do this? You were building your company at the exact same time.

   4. SPSpeaker1:11

      Yes, uh, because I'm really interested in inventions, how, how they happened, who did them, what personalities were behind them, and they are inspiring stories. And luckily, an editor of a big newspaper in Britain, um, asked me to do it, so I agreed to do it, and actually we published it as a series of colour supplements to a weekend newspaper and then put it into a book.

   5. DSDavid Senra1:34

      How old were you when you started this, when, when you had this obsession with history?

   6. SPSpeaker1:39

      Oh, from school. Absolutely from school. Um, but particularly Greek and Roman history. I mean, British history is really interesting, and I know all the kings and queens. I know their dates. Uh, I'm not, I'm not a very clever person, actually. I'm not good at remembering things, but I have remembered all that history, and it, it jolly well does repeat itself, so you can learn really interesting things

3. 2:01 – 2:38

   The Importance of Learning from History

   1. SPSpeaker2:01

      from history.

   2. DSDavid Senra2:01

      And this is what I've noticed. People that are, you know, the best in the world at what they do or near the best in the world at what they do, they all have this love of learning from history. Charlie Munger has one of my greatest qu-- uh, favourite quotes about this. He says that, uh, "Learning from history is a form of leverage," and you can actually, you know, use ideas of people long dead, and you'll find out that they were very similar to you, that they had the same-- they went through the same struggles, the same-- they had the same fears, they had the same insecurities, they had the same triumphs. And if you can just pick up a book of [chuckles] somebody's life story, like the ones that I have in front of me... I told you before we started recording, I was going through, you know, a very-- I had this obsession and love with my work, just

4. 2:38 – 3:53

   The Struggles and Triumphs of Starting Founders

   1. DSDavid Senra2:38

      like you do, and in my case, was, it was not invention, it was creating podcasting, podcasts. And this book, I found it, you know, I think it was April 2018, the very first time, uh, I read it, and I'd already been struggling to start my podcast for two years with very-- almost no, uh, success at all. Basically none, no success. And it took me five and a half years of struggle, and the reason this is so important to find at year two into that five and a half years, before I had any, uh, you know, even remote level of success, is because I'm like, well, James struggled-- this book is, ninety percent of it is you struggling for fourteen years, building 5,127 prototypes-

   2. SPSpeaker3:16

      Mm

   3. DSDavid Senra3:16

      ... and refusing to give up. You're also funny as hell in the book, where you're like: [chuckles] "Anytime, if you think I'm, you know, have a little bit of ego, just re- realize that I'm only, I'm only celebrating that I have the stubbornness of a mule."

   4. SPSpeaker3:30

      Mm-hmm.

   5. DSDavid Senra3:30

      This is the notes, so obviously I mark up the books like crazy, and I was showing you just before we started recording, and this is really-- I got to the very last page, and when I was recording my thoughts for the benefit of other people by making the podcast, this is what you inspired me to do is, like, "I hope Dyson's story inspires you to say, when you get knocked down, 'All right, then, let's give it another go.'"

   6. SPSpeaker3:52

      Mm-hmm.

5. 3:53 – 5:38

   Embracing Failure and the Joy of Experimentation

   1. SPSpeaker3:53

      Yeah, bouncing back is really important, and, uh, if you are, um, exploring new territory, very-- experimenting, you're trying to do something different, which is what, you know, you and I want to do, uh, you're gonna fail many times, and you've got to bounce back from it. And actually, if you learn that failure is so much more interesting than success, 'cause failure, you question it. Well, why did it go wrong? And actually, the reason it goes wrong is often very, very interesting. When something works, you say, "Great, that works," and you don't even stop to wonder why it worked. So if you've, you've got to enjoy failure. As-- that's, uh, sounds a difficult thing to do, but you have to enjoy failure if you want to improve things, if you want to not change the world, but change things and improve things. Goes hand in hand, and it always saddens me that school doesn't really teach that. At school or university, the thing is to be brilliant and to get the answer right first time, and, uh, there are brilliant people who can do that, but for the rest of us, we're not brilliant, and to get there, we have to strive, and we have to go through failure, and we realise that, you know, you don't get it right first time, you don't get it right the second time. In my case, and I counted it, it's 5,127 times. One of the things I always want to say is that that sounds like a struggle. Okay, it was a struggle, but actually it was a hugely enjoyable struggle. The debt was mounting, and I had three children and a wife and a home and a mortgage to pay, like everybody else, but, um, I had a real point in life. I had a real aim, and I had to get there. And the failures were interesting because I'd learned from every single one of them, almost every single one of them.

   2. DSDavid Senra5:33

      Say more about that you had an aim in life. So the mission? How did you think of it then, while you were

6. 5:38 – 7:10

   Discovering a Passion for Engineering

   1. DSDavid Senra5:38

      going through it?

   2. SPSpeaker5:38

      Well, when I discovered that I loved engineering-- 'cause I, I did classics at school.

   3. DSDavid Senra5:42

      Yeah.

   4. SPSpeaker5:42

      Like, I couldn't be further away from engineering, and then I went to study design and then discovered engineering. So engineering was new to me. It was like something new, and I had this sort of stupid thought when I was at college that I wanted to design products, I wanted to engineer them, I wanted to develop their technology, and I wanted to manufacture them, and I wanted to sell them.... so it's a sort of megalomania thought. [chuckles]

   5. DSDavid Senra6:05

      Why? Why is it a megalomania thought?

   6. SPSpeaker6:07

      'Cause, 'cause I was a, just a penniless student in London, you know? Like, how, how could I have this thought of being, you know, a global manufacturer? And I don't know how or why I had that thought, but there were interesting things happening at that time because Concorde was happening. Um, Issigonis brought out his Mini car, uh, you know, which is still going today, by the way. [chuckles] Huge-

   7. DSDavid Senra6:29

      Yeah

   8. SPSpeaker6:29

      ... successful today. So there were in- it, it was-- and it was about 15 years after the Second World War, so there was deprivation during the war and immediately afterwards. But suddenly, um, particularly in the mid-'60s, and I think particularly in London, where I was, there was a feeling that, "Ah, we're free of the past. We can do something new and different." And Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and Buckminster Fuller, all these people were having really expansive and revolutionary thoughts about design, engineering, buildings, and so on. So I, I was very lucky to be part of that era, and I think it... You know, I caught the bug, [chuckles] and had this very cheeky idea that that's what I wanted to be.

7. 7:10 – 10:39

   The Influence of Jeremy Fry

   1. DSDavid Senra7:10

      So this is when you meet Jeremy Fry. I'm, I, uh, actually was not expecting to start our conversation the way we just did, but I'm glad it, it leads perfectly to how I really wanted to start, which is, like, I want... If you can explain who Jeremy Fry was and the impact that he had on your life.

   2. SPSpeaker7:25

      Mm. Well, I, I was at the Royal College of Art doing design, and I was taught by a very famous structural engineer who worked with Foster and Rogers, and I became interested in engineering. And I designed a, a, a Buckminster Fuller-type structure for an impresario in London. It was a theatre for an impresario in London. And I went to, um, uh, this engineering company, this, uh, millionaire who had founded an engineering company, and asked him if he'd give money to the theatre, and he said, "No, but I'll give you a job. I can see you're an interesting young person, so I'll give you a job." So he started giving me jobs, and one of them was to design this high-speed landing craft, which was his invention, that I engineered it and designed it. And he then said... And I was a long-haired student with, you know, long hair, flared trousers, tight shirts, flower shirts, all that sort of thing. He said, he said, "Come and start the company, making it and selling it." So I sort of looked at him a bit and said, "I don't know how to sell things." And he said, "Look, you're the engineer. You've chosen every square inch of that product or everything. You know it all. You're the best person to sell it." So that was a, that was an interesting sort of revelation for me, 'cause I'd always thought there were professions and, you know, there was sales as one profession, engineering was another, and manufacturing was another, and being a manager was another. And suddenly it was this entrepreneur himself saying to me, "Well, look, you're, you're an engineer and designer, and you know all about the product. Go and make it, and go and sell it." So it, it broke down all the barriers for me. We became great friends, and we had lots of discussions about, uh, engineering and, a- and shared this passion for engineering and for making things.

   3. DSDavid Senra9:04

      And you found somebody that also had an obsession with the past, past engineers, past designers, past inventors, that you could actually have a con- deep conversations with about how they built their products, why they'd made these certain decisions-

   4. SPSpeaker9:15

      Mm

   5. DSDavid Senra9:15

      ... and then you used those to inform the work that you guys were doing, correct?

   6. SPSpeaker9:19

      Yes, I mean, he, he was a friend of Issigonis, so, uh, I'd, I'd never met Issigonis, but I heard about him from him.

   7. DSDavid Senra9:26

      Mm.

   8. SPSpeaker9:26

      They used to do hill racing together, design cars that... very, very light cars that raced up hills very quickly with very little power. So it's sort of s- very skinny engineering, minimalist engineering. Uh, and so he, he had quite a lot of stories from, from that era. He was 20 years older than me, so, uh, he had seen a bit of life be- [chuckles] during the war and-

   9. DSDavid Senra9:47

      Mm

   10. SPSpeaker9:47

       ... uh, um, and had done this racing car thing and established an engineering company. So he, he just removed the barriers, um, that it was okay to be an obsessive engineer, and you, you just do whatever it is you want to do, and then you go out and sell it. And hopefully, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, people will follow you. Uh, so y- you know, to get that advice from someone at that crucial stage in my life was, was, um, I say mind-blowing. It was... It enabled me to carry on and, and do things that everybody said I couldn't do.

   11. DSDavid Senra10:23

       And then what do you think-- 'cause you worked on the Sea Truck for five years before you left?

   12. SPSpeaker10:27

       Yeah, about seven-

   13. DSDavid Senra10:28

       Seven years

   14. SPSpeaker10:28

       ... 'cause I, I, I did two years of it when I was at college. I moonlighted and, and designed it while I was... and made one while I was at college. And then I left college and ran the business, making and selling it.

8. 10:39 – 12:16

   Lessons Learned from the Sea Truck

   1. DSDavid Senra10:39

      What were some of the most important lessons from y- the seven years when you were doing the Sea Truck?

   2. SPSpeaker10:43

      Oh, I think I learnt everything from that. I learnt how to manufacture, how to approach manufacturers and get them to make components, how to set up a factory, building the product, how to sell it overseas, uh, how to find agents and distributors, all that sort of thing, and learn failures and successes with that. To learn that it's all about people, not appearances or how big their company was. It's finding the right sort of person with the right sort of enthusiasm.

   3. DSDavid Senra11:10

      Say, say more about that.

   4. SPSpeaker11:11

      Probably if you're running a public company, and you're choosing a distributor, let's say, for Canada, um, it would be probably irresponsible to find an individual who is just starting out, rather than choosing an established distributor. But of course, the person who's just starting out, okay, he hasn't got a name yet, but he's probably incredibly enthusiastic and will put everything behind it and work all hours to make it work. So it's the person, not the business, really, that you're backing.

   5. DSDavid Senra11:40

      My friend Josh Kushner has this great quote when you have to decide when you're partnering with somebody, you know, do you decide the most experienced, the most educated, or who wants it the most? You always choose the person that wants it the most.

   6. SPSpeaker11:51

      Experience is an interesting thing, and Jeremy Fry taught me this. He hated experienced people. He also hated people with beards and some- [chuckles]

   7. DSDavid Senra11:59

      Oh, no [chuckles]

   8. SPSpeaker12:00

      ... something else. [chuckles]

   9. DSDavid Senra12:01

      [chuckles] Oh, no.

   10. SPSpeaker12:01

       But anyway, but this was a different era. This was a different era.

   11. DSDavid Senra12:03

       [chuckles]

   12. SPSpeaker12:03

       Oh, yeah, smoking pipes. That's right, 'cause people used to smoke pipes back in the '60s.

   13. DSDavid Senra12:07

       [chuckles]

   14. SPSpeaker12:08

       And beards were, beards were different in the '60s. Uh, but, um, anyway, come back to the experience, though, which is the important thing....

9. 12:16 – 15:35

   The Value of Naivety in Innovation

   1. SPSpeaker12:16

      uh, the, the-- and I've discovered this. If, if you're experienced, you know how to, why not to do something or how not to do something. Whereas if you're naive and you're a young engineer, you're just qualified or you're, you're still training, you, you don't have that negativity towards certain things. And often it's, um, something that hasn't worked previously that could work and is interesting to follow. So you're, you're very open, and n- I love naivety, people asking silly questions, stupid questions, because it creates a different way of doing things, and we've got to find different ways of doing things all the time.

   2. DSDavid Senra12:56

      My friend Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, uh, we had a conversation about this, where he actually thinks naivety is, like, one of the greatest assets a young entrepreneur or an inventor can have. 'Cause he's like: "If I knew how difficult it would be to make Spotify succeed at the beginning, [chuckles] I would not have done that." [chuckles]

   3. SPSpeaker13:12

      Yeah. Yes, na- naivety equals stupidity. I d- I don't think that. I think that naivety is interesting because you're thinking really hard, "How the hell do I do this? I don't know how to solve this problem." The experienced person might think they know how to solve it, but the naive person doesn't, so they're thinking much harder and more intelligently.

   4. DSDavid Senra13:33

      James Dyson is obsessed with crafting a high-quality product, and he's made some of the best products in the world by running tens of thousands of experiments throughout his life. Every single experiment was aimed at making a better product for his customer. That is exactly what the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp, does. Dyson reminds me of my friend Kareem, who's the co-founder and CTO of Ramp. I spend a lot of time talking to Kareem, and every single conversation centers around his obsession with crafting a high-quality product and using the latest technology to constantly create better experiences for his customers. This is exactly what James Dyson does. Kareem and James Dyson both believe that nothing is ever good enough and everything can be improved. Ramp has one of the most talented technical teams in finance, and they use rapid, relentless iteration to make their product better every day, just like Dyson. So far this year, Ramp has shipped over three hundred new features. Ramp is completely committed to using AI to make a better experience for their customers and to automate as much of your business's finances as possible. In fact, Kareem just wrote this: "It is our duty to be first movers and push limits so we can make the greatest possible product experience for our customers." That sounds a lot like James Dyson to me, and it is why many of the fastest-growing and most innovative companies in the world are running their business on Ramp. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Let AI chase your receipts and close your books so you can use your time and energy building great things for your customers. Because at the end of the day, that is what this is all about, building a product or service that makes someone else's life better. That is what I'm trying to do, that is what Dyson has dedicated his life to doing, and that is what Ramp has done, too. Get started today by going to ramp.com. So Jeremy was in the, the business of hiring people like a young James Dyson. Just smart, enthusiastic person that clearly wants to do this, as opposed to anybody that was... came from, like, another company or, like, even a competitor.

   5. SPSpeaker15:29

      It- exactly that.

   6. DSDavid Senra15:29

      You're doing this now.

   7. SPSpeaker15:31

      Yeah.

   8. DSDavid Senra15:31

      You still do this-

   9. SPSpeaker15:31

      Yeah

   10. DSDavid Senra15:32

       ... forty years later, fifty years later.

   11. SPSpeaker15:34

       Yes, and we've taken

10. 15:35 – 21:47

    The Dyson Institute: A New Approach to Education

    1. SPSpeaker15:35

       it one stage further 'cause we've started our own university. So we're taking seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds and starting even younger, and they work in the business, and they ask naive questions.

    2. DSDavid Senra15:45

       You cover the university in the book. Again, uh, one of the things I, I, I've personally learned from you is, like, differentiation for the sake of it.

    3. SPSpeaker15:53

       Mm-hmm.

    4. DSDavid Senra15:53

       And so anything that I'm going to do, I look around... One of my heroes is Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid.

    5. SPSpeaker15:59

       Mm-hmm. Mm.

    6. DSDavid Senra15:59

       And he had this great line. He's like: "My personal motto is, 'Don't do anything somebody else can do.'" Can you explain exactly your entire-- like, how you structured and how you des- no, how you designed the Dyson University?

    7. SPSpeaker16:11

       University is very expensive-

    8. DSDavid Senra16:13

       Yes

    9. SPSpeaker16:13

       ... so at the end-

    10. DSDavid Senra16:14

        Especially in the United States.

    11. SPSpeaker16:15

        [chuckles] Right. And it's getting as bad in England. Yeah, and it's terrible, and you're saddled with that debt, um, for a long time. I mean, sometimes twenty years. And in any case, um, a lot of the debt is not repaid, and we need to find a different way to teach people. And it's ridiculous because they're only taught for half the year. The rest of it is holidays. So you've got these big institutions, expensive institutions, with people only there part-time. Uh, it's madness. And also, uh, as I learnt when I was at college, working with an engineering company-

    12. DSDavid Senra16:49

        'Cause you were working with Jeremy while you were still in school.

    13. SPSpeaker16:52

        While I was... Yes, I was, uh, sort of moonlighting. The college knew what I was doing and approved of it, but, um, it wasn't what normal students did. So f- that, but I loved that experience, w- working with people who are having to do things, not academics, people having to do things and having to do them in a hurry. And, uh, I really enjoyed that, and I thought, "Well, why can't I give that opportunity to other people?" Uh, so we started our own university. Um, and it, it's a difficult thing to do 'cause it-- the government has to approve it, and w- for seven years, we had to work with another university, and none of them would work with us 'cause they didn't like the... They saw us as big competitors 'cause we pay our students.

    14. DSDavid Senra17:33

        Yeah, that's an- [chuckles] You're- you start with, why are we saddling these young people with an albatross-

    15. SPSpeaker17:39

        Mm

    16. DSDavid Senra17:39

        ... of debt around their necks that's going to limit their, you know, what they can actually pursue? They're gonna be taking jobs that they're forced to take-

    17. SPSpeaker17:44

        Mm

    18. DSDavid Senra17:44

        ... that they don't wanna take, maybe for money, as opposed to you following your, just-- I don't even call it a passion. I think it's more like an obsession that you have.

    19. SPSpeaker17:51

        Mm.

    20. DSDavid Senra17:51

        So am I correct? There's no tuition.

    21. SPSpeaker17:54

        Yes, there's tuition. We teach them two days a week-

    22. DSDavid Senra17:56

        Okay

    23. SPSpeaker17:57

        ... and they work with us three days a week.

    24. DSDavid Senra17:59

        But you pay them for the three days.

    25. SPSpeaker18:00

        We pay, we pay them. We pay them forty-five thousand dollars a year.

    26. DSDavid Senra18:03

        Mm.

    27. SPSpeaker18:03

        They have cars, and they go on skiing holidays. So there's normal people. They're not students. They're, they're in a student group. We have about a hundred and seventy of them altogether, but they're interspersed throughout the company, and they love that. They love working with people who are earning money and having to do-- having to make things work, having to do engineering, having to do marketing or selling, whatever it is, manufacturing. They like the reality of that, and it inspires them to learn the academic side.... 'cause a lot of them said, "You know, the academic side of engineering is difficult, it's hard, but I'm inspired to do it because I got to practice it every day."

    28. DSDavid Senra18:39

        As opposed to separating the two?

    29. SPSpeaker18:40

        As opposed to going to university and just having academia for four years. With us, they're d- th- they're being inventors, they're developing technology, and they're learning exactly why they need to know the academic side, the theory.

    30. DSDavid Senra18:54

        Explain why it's better to have a per-- in your opinion, a person with no experience than somebody that came from a, an existing company.
11. 21:47 – 23:04

    The Decision to Leave and Start the Ballbarrow

    1. SPSpeaker21:47

       Mm. Yeah.

    2. DSDavid Senra21:47

       And but you had, I think, a wife and at least one child when you left to do the Ballbarrow?

    3. SPSpeaker21:53

       Uh, two.

    4. DSDavid Senra21:53

       Two.

    5. SPSpeaker21:54

       Two children.

    6. DSDavid Senra21:54

       Okay, so two kids.

    7. SPSpeaker21:54

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    8. DSDavid Senra21:55

       You have, I think, a mortgage.

    9. SPSpeaker21:56

       marry, yeah.

    10. DSDavid Senra21:57

        So you have a family to take care of. You have a great high-paying job-

    11. SPSpeaker22:00

        Mm

    12. DSDavid Senra22:00

        ... right? Uh, you have- you're working hand in hand with somebody you greatly admire, that has taught you a ton in seven years.

    13. SPSpeaker22:06

        Yeah.

    14. DSDavid Senra22:06

        And yet you're like: I need to go out and be an entrepreneur and do my own thing.

    15. SPSpeaker22:10

        Mm.

    16. DSDavid Senra22:11

        Okay, so I wanna talk about that. But then the second thing that I didn't understand, no matter how many times I read this, why didn't you let him fund it?

    17. SPSpeaker22:19

        That was a really stupid decision. [laughing]

    18. DSDavid Senra22:21

        [chuckles] Well, that's what I couldn't understand.

    19. SPSpeaker22:24

        Because, um, and in fact, he and, uh, ultimately, when I started the vacuum cleaner business, we did fund it together.

    20. DSDavid Senra22:29

        Yes.

    21. SPSpeaker22:30

        Uh, so that-

    22. DSDavid Senra22:30

        Which we'll get to.

    23. SPSpeaker22:31

        Yeah.

    24. DSDavid Senra22:31

        Okay.

    25. SPSpeaker22:31

        That was a really stupid decision because he was someone who understood about starting businesses, how difficult it was. And in fact, I went to borrow money off my brother-in-law and another party, uh, who didn't understand the difficulties of starting businesses and the growth pains, and so on.

    26. DSDavid Senra22:48

        Before we get there, c- just the, the decision to leave a great-

    27. SPSpeaker22:51

        Yes, yes. Yeah.

    28. DSDavid Senra22:52

        You're st-

    29. SPSpeaker22:52

        Yeah

    30. DSDavid Senra22:52

        ... It's almost like you seek, [exhales] tell me if I'm wrong with this. I know you seek difference for the sake of it. In that time period, you may not be like this now, in that time period, it felt like you were seeking risk for the sake of risk.

12. 23:04 – 30:49

    Reflections on Risk and Personal Loss

    1. SPSpeaker23:04

       Yeah, no, I, I've thought a bit about that, and I, I think it's partly because, um, my father died when I was eight, nine. And I think, I think that had a sort of profound effect on me that I didn't realise at the time. Um, because I felt very different to other people, 'cause I was a bo- I was at boarding school, and the headmaster was very kind, and he, um, allowed me to stay on for ten years without paying any fees. So that was an extraordinary act of kindness. Um, but, uh, I, ev- everybody else had parents, two parents. There, there weren't single-parent families in those days, and even if the, the two had split up, they appeared to come together to come and see their child at school. But I had just my mother coming to see me, my impoverished mother coming to see me, so I felt different. And also, I think if you, if you've lost a parent at that age, uh, life can't get much worse. So [chuckles] you're prepared to take risks because you've started from a, a horrible starting point. Risk has become a sort of thing I, well, I need to live with. I need to live on the knife edge all the time.

    2. DSDavid Senra24:09

       You still feel that way today?

    3. SPSpeaker24:10

       I still feel that today, yes. And um, it's not, I mean, it doesn't make me unhappy, don't get me wrong, but, but I, I like living, uh, for the moment in danger because you're onto something new, you're doing something different, and it's risky. It's not... The, the result is not sure at all. In fact, it's very unsure, uh, very dangerous. So, uh, and I don't mind that.... it doesn't keep me awake at night.

    4. DSDavid Senra24:37

       So it starts when your father dies at, he died really young, forty year- he was forty years old?

    5. SPSpeaker24:41

       Yeah, forty, yeah.

    6. DSDavid Senra24:42

       When you were nine.

    7. SPSpeaker24:43

       Mm-hmm.

    8. DSDavid Senra24:43

       It's one of the most... I, I don't even wanna start talking about it, start tearing up 'cause, like, that just, just, that part just destroys me. And you s- I guess I'll talk about this now. I wanna go back to the risk and, and making that jump. One of the, I think one of the most profound impacts that your second book has is you're writing this sixty years after your father dies.

    9. SPSpeaker25:02

       Mm.

    10. DSDavid Senra25:03

        And you're talking about your grandson, Mick, and you realize, now as a sixty-nine-year-old man with a lifelong set of experiences, just how vulnerable you were. 'Cause he's still taking his, your grandson, Mick, is still taking his stuffed animal to bed, and now you're left alone with... A, a nine-year-old boy needs his father.

    11. SPSpeaker25:26

        Yeah, no, he, he had a, a profound influence on me. Um, he had to do everything. I mean, he, he, um, he loved producing plays. Uh, he loved directing them. I've got notes in his sort of lit- little Shakespeare books, crossing out lines and making notes about things. And he did puppet shows. He played the recorder. He did, he taught rugger, he taught hockey. Uh, he just wanted to do everything, and I'm a bit like that, and I was certainly like that at school, um, especially if it didn't involve academia. But it was, uh... And he, and he was like that.

    12. DSDavid Senra26:03

        I just thought of a connection maybe I don't, I didn't make previously. He wanted to change professions towards the end of his life.

    13. SPSpeaker26:13

        He, he fought in the war in, in Burma.

    14. DSDavid Senra26:14

        Okay.

    15. SPSpeaker26:15

        We call it the Forgotten War.

    16. DSDavid Senra26:16

        Yeah.

    17. SPSpeaker26:16

        And it really was. You know, it was a nasty, nasty war, a long way away. Um, and he came back from that in nineteen forty-six, and in nineteen forty-nine, he ca- contracted cancer.

    18. DSDavid Senra26:27

        Okay.

    19. SPSpeaker26:28

        So he'd been away from his wife for six years, you know, first six, six years of their life together. Then he had three years being a classics master at school, and then he got cancer, and so he was in and out of hospital for the-

    20. DSDavid Senra26:41

        Okay, well, there was... He, he had-

    21. SPSpeaker26:42

        -the next seven years.

    22. DSDavid Senra26:43

        Did he have the opportunity to work for the BBC or something like that?

    23. SPSpeaker26:45

        That's what he wanted to do.

    24. DSDavid Senra26:46

        That's what he wanted to do-

    25. SPSpeaker26:47

        Yeah, yes

    26. DSDavid Senra26:47

        ... but never had the opportunity.

    27. SPSpeaker26:48

        But never had the opportunity to do it.

    28. DSDavid Senra26:49

        And now I'm thinking, I just asked you, the question was just like, how the hell do you leave this fantastic position to go off on your own? You realize, well, I had the opportunity to, where, like, your dad, unfortunately-

    29. SPSpeaker27:01

        Mm

    30. DSDavid Senra27:01

        ... uh, uh, for, for a situation outside of his control, never got that opportunity.
13. 30:49 – 37:24

    The Challenges of the Ballbarrow Business

    1. SPSpeaker30:49

       Right at the beginning, um, having people fund it, uh, help fund it, 'cause I had to put up a, a guarantee. Uh, my brother-in-law put up a guarantee.

    2. DSDavid Senra30:58

       The guarantee's against your house?

    3. SPSpeaker30:59

       Uh, the guarantee was against my house.

    4. DSDavid Senra31:01

       Okay.

    5. SPSpeaker31:02

       Um, fortunately, I had a house by then. Uh, my brother-in-law put up a guarantee, and we borrowed money from the bank. Uh, by the way, interest rates went to twenty-two percent while we were doing that business-

    6. DSDavid Senra31:14

       Yeah

    7. SPSpeaker31:14

       ... and that was the killer.

    8. DSDavid Senra31:15

       Mm-hmm.

    9. SPSpeaker31:16

       Um, so, uh, I, I borrowed money again when I started the Ballbarrow, the vacuum cleaner business. Um, so it's not borrowing money that's the problem, it's involving people who don't understand, uh, startups and the pain you have to go through.

    10. DSDavid Senra31:31

        What did they not understand?

    11. SPSpeaker31:33

        They just didn't understand the business, the, what it, what it's like. Um, for example, uh, the Ballbarrow was copied in America by an ex-employee and another company, and they wanted to go after him and teach him a lesson. And I said, "No, no, no, let, let him do it. If he wants to do it, let him do it, and we'll come into America, um, and we'll sell ours against his. He'll pave the way, and we'll come and sell our original version." But they wanted vengeance, so we spent a lot of money trying to sue them, you know, to no good effect, really. So that- that's one example. The real thing I learned is that, um, it's much better to put your own money in. I didn't have any money. I borrowed it, but I was-- it, it was money that had been given to me by a bank, so it was my money-

    12. DSDavid Senra32:23

        Mm-hmm

    13. SPSpeaker32:23

        ... even though I was on the line for it, and my wife had to sign the house away and all our possessions and all that sort of thing. Um, so I was making my decisions for me. I wasn't having to worry about investors and what they might think, which, which when I was doing the Ballbarrow business, I was always doing that. You know, I was having to ring them up and say: Do you think we should do this? Is it okay if I do this?

    14. DSDavid Senra32:43

        You seem to have an inherent, I don't want to interrupt you, an inherent distaste for anybody else having any kind of control over what you're doing.

    15. SPSpeaker32:54

        No, not that at all. That's not what I meant.

    16. DSDavid Senra32:57

        Okay.

    17. SPSpeaker32:57

        I'm glad you raised that. That's not what I meant. For example, I have non-executive directors. I run the business as though it was a public business, but it's a private business-

    18. DSDavid Senra33:05

        Okay

    19. SPSpeaker33:05

        ... and I think it's very important to have good people advising you. Now, what I meant was when I, when I, when I'm entirely on my own and I make a decision, I make a decision without reference, uh, certainly in the early days, to anybody else. Is it the right decision for the business? You know, will it make a better product? Will it sell more? All that sort of thing. That's ve- very, very single-minded. You don't have to worry about investors at all. I had to worry about the bank balance, but I didn't have to worry about investors, which made me very single-minded. And, you know, my... If, if there's a failure, it's my failure. It's all down to me. Whereas, if you've got other people, then, you know, other people are making joint decisions. So I really enjoyed not having anyone to turn to, whereas with the Ballbarrow business, there were other directors, there were other investors, so I had to worry about what they thought. Perhaps I shouldn't have, but I did. But, but if you're on your own, you make the decision for entirely the right reason.

    20. DSDavid Senra34:05

        What do you think that you thought was important that they did not for the, for that specific product?

    21. SPSpeaker34:11

        When we started selling the Ballbarrow, the retailers, the-- first of all, there weren't big, um, hardware chains. They were individual-owned hardware stores.

    22. DSDavid Senra34:21

        So there was no Home Depot or Lowe's or anything?

    23. SPSpeaker34:23

        No Home Depot.

    24. DSDavid Senra34:23

        Okay.

    25. SPSpeaker34:23

        None of that, which makes life a lot easier. You might not think that, but it does make life a lot easier-

    26. DSDavid Senra34:28

        Yeah

    27. SPSpeaker34:28

        ... if you're manufacturing something. So we had to sell through wholesalers who sold to all the individual retailers, and garden centers, where you go and buy garden stuff, they were all individually owned. So you had to have teams of salespeople going around all these places, trying to sell products to them. "Oh, yes, we can take one this week, and, you know, one more then." I, I, it was a completely mad system. Um, now, I'd started the business selling direct to people through little adverts in the newspaper, tiny little adverts, and people would send checks. In those days, people used to send checks. It was pre-credit cards.

    28. DSDavid Senra35:05

        You have a great line about this in the book. You said, "The entrenched professional will always resist longer than the independent consumer."

    29. SPSpeaker35:11

        Yes, exactly. So, um, exactly that, and that, that was the point. And the illustration of that is when, when I went around trying to sell to garden centers and hardware stores, they were not interested. They actually laughed. They said, "That thing with the big red ball, no one will ever buy that." Um, but they did buy it from these little ads, so I wanted to go on expanding the idea of selling direct and not having a middle person-

    30. DSDavid Senra35:36

        Mm
14. 37:24 – 37:46

    The Importance of Persistence

    1. SPSpeaker37:24

       And they didn't believe in it.

    2. DSDavid Senra37:25

       This is why I, I'm obsessed with people, uh, so far, for every single person I've talked to for the show, they've done what they do for excessively long period of time, anywhere from twenty to forty-five years. And I think you just... You see this over and over in these stories. Like, you're, you're- people are in way too big of a rush. It's like you're gonna have these happy accidents. You just stay in the game long enough to get lucky-

    3. SPSpeaker37:44

       Mm

    4. DSDavid Senra37:44

       ... because as a by-product of the stuff

15. 37:46 – 38:34

    Accidental Discoveries in Engineering

    1. DSDavid Senra37:46

       you're doing, in the case of the- you're working on the Ballbarrow, right? And you discover what a cyclone is, because you were solving a problem with the Ballbarrow. You had-- There's no way you could have predicted at the beginning that you could apply it to another domain and then wipe the floor with all your competitors. Can you explain what you were doing and how you accidentally discovered the cyclone for the first time?

    2. SPSpeaker38:04

       The important thing is, is to observe things all the time, for an engineer, and work out how they work, and also, uh, incidentally, you're always working out how to make them work better. Would it be better if I did this? Isn't there a better way of doing that? And, um, and that, that always happens with all the inventions. They don't just come out of the sky. They occur because you observe something. So curiosity and observation and trying to understand things is the way to come up with new ways of doing things.

16. 38:34 – 42:44

    The Cyclone Vacuum Cleaner Invention

    1. SPSpeaker38:34

       And so it was with the, with the vacuum cleaner. As you said, we, we, um, we had this huge plant that, uh, that sprayed the, the frames with powder. [clears throat] A lot of the powder missed the frames because it's, it's spraying these sort of open things, there's masses of it missing it, and you suck it- we were sucking it away onto a cloth filter, a huge cloth filter, which clogged all the time.

    2. DSDavid Senra38:54

       Like a vacuum bag. [chuckles]

    3. SPSpeaker38:55

       Like a vacuum bag. You see, so [chuckles] that's, you make the connection. You see, you make the connection. And what, um, clever people did, um, was have this huge cyclone. So I got a quote for one, and we- no way we could afford it. So over a couple of weekends, we built one, and it was thirty foot high, and, uh, it- we had to make a hole in the roof of the factory to stuff the, uh, it has a chimney, a sort of outlet at the top. And a cyclone separates dust from air, so there's, between you and I, there's a lot of dust, and a cyclone will separate that by centrifugal force. Uh, so it's... If you, if you drive at a, a corner of a road very fast in your Porsche, you, uh, if you drive too fast, you spin off into the ditch. Um, and so that is with a dust particle. A dust particle, though the ones between us are floating, they're very, they're very fine. If you make them go round a corner at very high speed, they get flung out to the edge, into the ditch. So a cyclone is a con- a, a circular container, and you apply enormous centrifugal force to the dust particles within it, and they all get flung to the outside wall, and the only way out is from the centre, a chimney in the centre. So that's, that's the basic principle of a cyclone. So I m- I made... I- yes, I'd used vacuum cleaners like everybody else, and they always seemed to make this screaming noise and, [chuckles] and, uh, not pick things up. And, uh, one weekend, I, uh, I was cleaning the house, and the bag was full. Well, no, it said the bag was clogged, which is a slightly different thing. Anyway, I, um, so I, I looked around for a new bag, couldn't find one in the house, so I, uh, opened it up, emptied it out, and then gaffer taped it back up again and shoved it back in. Still no suction, so I thought, "That's odd." I thought, uh, you know, the suck- it didn't suck because the bag was full. I suddenly realised the bag was empty and something else was at play here, and I opened it up. I took the gaffer tape off and opened it up, and there was a fine lining of fine dust around the inside of the bag. And I suddenly realised that the suction is created by airflow, which has to go through the pores of the bag, but this fine dust is clogging the pores. It's not the fact the bag's full, it's the fact that the bag is clogged. They call it a bag full indicator. That's a lie. It's a bag clogged indicator. [chuckles] Um, so I felt pretty angry about this, and I, I did go, got out and went, drove to a shop and bought a new bag and put it in, and I had good suction for a short while, and then it dropped off again, and it said, "Bag full." It wasn't bag full. The bag was clogged. Um, so I got pretty angry about this, but I... And I came to a realisation, it's not a very clever realisation, that the [chuckles] all the air is trying to go through these little h- little holes in the bag, and it's so easy for them to be clogged. And then, of course, I remembered the big cyclone, huge thirty-foot cyclone we built at the factory to stop the cloth getting clogged in the dust. Instead, we were spinning it out successfully by centrifugal force. It never clogged. So I thought, "Why don't we have one of those thirty-foot cyclones inside a vacuum cleaner, you know, a foot high?" So it wasn't very clever, really. So I built one out of cardboard.

    4. DSDavid Senra42:09

       It's very clever.

    5. SPSpeaker42:10

       Well, not really.

    6. DSDavid Senra42:10

       No, it's very clever.

    7. SPSpeaker42:11

       It's not, it's not very clever. So [chuckles] I built one very quickly in the kitchen at home out of cardboard and gaffer tape again. I took the bag off my, um, upright vacuum cleaner, replaced it with a bit of hose and this cardboard mini version of the thirty-foot one we built at work out of steel, and pushed it around, and I was pushing around the first vacuum cleaner that never loses suction. Um, so I thought I had a good idea, so I filed a patent, and I offered it to the Ballbarrow company.

    8. DSDavid Senra42:43

       Why?

17. 42:44 – 45:15

    Challenges of Seasonal Products

    1. DSDavid Senra42:44

       You- because you guys are doing all these, like, gardening products, right?

    2. SPSpeaker42:47

       Mm.

    3. DSDavid Senra42:47

       Uh, I don't think... W- were you making anything else that wasn't related to gardening before this at Ballbarrow?

    4. SPSpeaker42:52

       No.

    5. DSDavid Senra42:52

       And then I think one of your main observations was like, this is a not the best business because it's seasonal.

    6. SPSpeaker42:57

       It's horrible.... it's a, a seasonal-

    7. DSDavid Senra43:00

       Where-

    8. SPSpeaker43:00

       -product is awful. [chuckles]

    9. DSDavid Senra43:01

       Yeah. So why don't we, especially in England? [chuckles]

    10. SPSpeaker43:04

        But people buy, people buy vacuum cleaners all the time.

    11. DSDavid Senra43:06

        Yeah. [chuckles]

    12. SPSpeaker43:07

        So, you know, every day, and that's what I want. 'Cause with, with a seasonal product, you know, there, there's, there's a fallow period where you sell nothing, and then spring comes along, and hopefully, you know, you start to sell. So it's a... And, uh, you, you sell-- The weather makes a huge difference to what you sell, and if you have a bad spring, it's a wet spring, you never make up for that. So if you, if you change your product to make it better, you don't actually know one year to the next whether it's an improvement or not, whether it's sold more, but it all depends on the weather. So you, you've got to employ people during the winter when you don't need them, and then the summer, you need more people. It, it's just a hor-- seasonal business is a horrible business.

    13. DSDavid Senra43:45

        Avoid seasonal business.

    14. SPSpeaker43:45

        So I pity anyone who runs a ski resort or... [chuckles]

    15. DSDavid Senra43:49

        So, so you take this, this vacuum cleaner. "All right, guys, I have the solution to our problems."

    16. SPSpeaker43:53

        Yes.

    17. DSDavid Senra43:54

        "It's a genius invention. It's very clever," even though you keep saying it's not clever. "Uh, I have this clever invention," and their response is?

    18. SPSpeaker44:01

        Their response is: "If there was a better vacuum cleaner than Electrolux, then all the existing people would have done it."

    19. DSDavid Senra44:06

        I love that-

    20. SPSpeaker44:06

        So-

    21. DSDavid Senra44:06

        -you started our conversation that history repeats.

    22. SPSpeaker44:09

        Yeah.

    23. DSDavid Senra44:09

        The way I say is, like, human nature repeats, and so I think history rhymes, but human nature is very constant, and this idea of, "No, I, I can't possibly imagine a future that's different from our present-"

    24. SPSpeaker44:21

        Mm.

    25. DSDavid Senra44:21

        -just for some reason, the vast majority of humans just cannot do that-

    26. SPSpeaker44:26

        Mm

    27. DSDavid Senra44:26

        ... like, extra, like, step in thought process, and obviously-

    28. SPSpeaker44:29

        Well-

    29. DSDavid Senra44:29

        -I think you're gifted with that.

    30. SPSpeaker44:30

        And there's an assumption that experts do things correctly or in the most clever way.
18. 45:15 – 49:06

    The Struggles of Licensing and Manufacturing

    1. DSDavid Senra45:15

       um, at least your, your thought process. Now, you're, you're, you're kicked out, you lose your patent, you lose... How long? It was five years that you're working on the ball?

    2. SPSpeaker45:24

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    3. DSDavid Senra45:25

       So another-

    4. SPSpeaker45:25

       Yeah.

    5. DSDavid Senra45:25

       So you did seven years on the Sea Truck, then another five years.

    6. SPSpeaker45:28

       Yeah.

    7. DSDavid Senra45:28

       And now you're like, okay, why... Was there another product? You knew you wanted to invent. You knew you wanted, I think, invent more than manufacture. I think now you love manufacturing once you became one, but you were an inventor for-

    8. SPSpeaker45:40

       Well, no, no, I was a manufacturer, and, uh, but full manufacturer with the Sea Truck and with the Ballbarrow.

    9. DSDavid Senra45:46

       But at the beginning of the, the vacuum cleaner, you wanted to just-

    10. SPSpeaker45:49

        Yes

    11. DSDavid Senra45:49

        ... invent and license.

    12. SPSpeaker45:50

        Yes. I thought that... Yes, I thought, "Look, I've done all that. Uh, why can't I just invent and design things and license them to other people?" Like an author, you know, that writes a book and someone else sells it.

    13. DSDavid Senra46:01

        Which, which is surprising to me because you clearly like to control. You don't wanna rely on other people.

    14. SPSpeaker46:06

        Bad decision.

    15. DSDavid Senra46:07

        Okay, okay. [chuckles]

    16. SPSpeaker46:08

        [chuckles]

    17. DSDavid Senra46:08

        Anyways...

    18. SPSpeaker46:09

        It was a bad decision. No, it was a bad idea.

    19. DSDavid Senra46:12

        Okay.

    20. SPSpeaker46:12

        Uh, but-

    21. DSDavid Senra46:13

        Because you have to worry about what's going on in that other person's sh- And then there, there's, like, horror stories-

    22. SPSpeaker46:18

        Oh, yeah

    23. DSDavid Senra46:18

        ... you try to sell these licenses-

    24. SPSpeaker46:19

        Oh, yeah

    25. DSDavid Senra46:19

        ... and we talked about this in, in the books. Because, like, you, you might have one guy that's really enthusiastic, and you come back two months later, and he's gone.

    26. SPSpeaker46:26

        Gone, yeah.

    27. DSDavid Senra46:26

        And somebody-

    28. SPSpeaker46:27

        And someone else thinks the opposite. You know, it was a nightmare, and then I was b- becoming a lawyer 'cause I was doing license agreements all the time, and then worrying what happens when they, they cancel it and all that sort of thing.

    29. DSDavid Senra46:37

        What came to mind when you mentioned earlier the mistake that you thought, thought your Ballbarrow partner, your partners in the Ballbarrow had, where they wanted to chase this guy down in lawsuits.

    30. SPSpeaker46:43

        Mm.
19. 49:06 – 52:25

    The Coach House: Birthplace of Innovation

    1. DSDavid Senra49:06

       Uh, but now this is the Coach House.... right? And so for America, I had to look this up. I was like, "What the hell is a Coach House?" It's actually like, I, I heard another interview. He's like, "It's like the app, the garage for Steve Jobs."

    2. SPSpeaker49:15

       Yes, exactly.

    3. DSDavid Senra49:15

       It's like, I'm working in the garage-

    4. SPSpeaker49:17

       Yeah

    5. DSDavid Senra49:17

       ... so we call it a Coach House. Do you have any savings? Are you in debt? What is your financial-

    6. SPSpeaker49:22

       No, I'm in debt. I'm in debt. Um, I got into d- debt when I was a student.

    7. DSDavid Senra49:26

       Do you not understand how unusual that idea is? [chuckles] I have no money. I'm in debt. Let me do this other super risky thing-

    8. SPSpeaker49:33

       Mm

    9. DSDavid Senra49:33

       ... that I- you don't even have a working prototype yet.

    10. SPSpeaker49:35

        No. No. No, it's just an idea, really. Uh, I have a little cardboard one.

    11. DSDavid Senra49:41

        Take me in your mindset then. What do you think was driving you? Were you anger, like, the, the desire to prove yourself, the love of the product? What was actually happening at that point? That is an unusual decision to make, a decision-

    12. SPSpeaker49:52

        Mm

    13. DSDavid Senra49:52

        ... that your entire empire now rests upon. That's an incredible time in your life.

    14. SPSpeaker49:56

        Mm. Well, uh, I saw a problem with a product that everybody uses every day, a vital product to clean their homes, and I, as a user, I hated it because it had this bag that clogs, and then you have to go and buy another bag, and so on. But more than anything, it's the performance is lousy. I mean, i- if you have a s- a hundred-watt light bulb, it's supposed to give a hundred watts all the time, but this vacuum cleaner light bulb starts off at a hundred watts and ends up at twenty watts pretty quickly. So it's deeply unsatisfactory. So I thought if I can solve that problem... I thought if I could solve that problem, other people would buy that product. It's no substance, it's just an idea.

    15. DSDavid Senra50:39

        What was the chance that you gave yourself at success that you could actually solve the problem? You were pretty self-confident you could?

    16. SPSpeaker50:45

        No. [laughing]

    17. DSDavid Senra50:47

        We're getting crazy here! [chuckles]

    18. SPSpeaker50:49

        No, of course, of course not. Um, you, you don't know you can solve it-

    19. DSDavid Senra50:52

        Yeah

    20. SPSpeaker50:52

        ... but you've just got to try, and that's true today. You know, when, when we're trying to solve, we don't know we can solve. We don't know, don't know that we can make a motor go at one hundred and thirty thousand RPM-

    21. DSDavid Senra51:02

        Okay, well-

    22. SPSpeaker51:02

        -when existing motors only go fifty thousand RPM.

    23. DSDavid Senra51:04

        I want to talk about motors, so let me forget that.

    24. SPSpeaker51:06

        You, you, you don't know. You, you've just got to do it.

    25. DSDavid Senra51:09

        Okay, so I want to talk about motors.

    26. SPSpeaker51:10

        Yeah.

    27. DSDavid Senra51:10

        Only forgot that, about that. [laughing]

    28. SPSpeaker51:12

        [chuckles]

    29. DSDavid Senra51:14

        That's like one of the most-

    30. SPSpeaker51:15

        No-
20. 52:25 – 55:42

    The Journey of Prototyping

    1. DSDavid Senra52:25

       You, you're in debt, you have no more money, so how are you funding things? I know your wife is, like, selling art, but, like, did you go immediately to the bank to take out another mortgage? Like, what do you actually do?

    2. SPSpeaker52:33

       Exactly that. Uh, I went to the bank to take out a mortgage, and, uh, Jeremy Fry guaranteed part of it. So he, he said, we need, I don't know, what, about fifty thousand pounds or something for, to last two years. So he put up a guarantee for twenty-five thousand, and I put up a guarantee for twenty-five thousand. So that got the thing started.

    3. DSDavid Senra52:55

       Why could you do it for so cheap? 'Cause your only expense was your time?

    4. SPSpeaker52:58

       Yes.

    5. DSDavid Senra52:59

       Okay.

    6. SPSpeaker52:59

       Yes, I'm working at home. Uh, my only expense is my time and a few cheap materials. I couldn't buy a lathe or equipment.

    7. DSDavid Senra53:06

       Okay.

    8. SPSpeaker53:06

       I was doing it all with little Black & Deckers and things like that, uh, by hand. Like, I was making cyclones by rolling them in rollers. I went and bought some antique metal rollers down at a junk store for twenty-five pounds, and I could roll cyclones, you know, they're a funny shape, like a sort of a upside-down cone, and solder them together. So I was doing everything by hand. Um, but I could do that. I mean, it works. You, you can do things for nothing. [chuckles] You don't need to spend a lot of money.

    9. DSDavid Senra53:37

       And you thought, "I'll be able to figure this out, two years?"

    10. SPSpeaker53:41

        Yes.

    11. DSDavid Senra53:41

        It took how long?

    12. SPSpeaker53:42

        Five. Five years, and I'm still doing it. [laughing] Um, yeah-

    13. DSDavid Senra53:49

        You're not under, [chuckles] uh, you're not under great financial strain at the moment. [laughing]

    14. SPSpeaker53:54

        [chuckles] Um, actually, I thought, I thought I'd do it quicker than two years. I thought I'd do it within a year, but I discovered there were all sorts of problems, and also, with almost any idea, you find that when you start to apply for patents, that people have tried to do it before and patented things. There's very, very few patents we file where-

    15. DSDavid Senra54:11

        And you absolutely, that was a, that was a, that was... You had to have something that was patentable, right? 'Cause you-

    16. SPSpeaker54:15

        Yes. Oh, yes.

    17. DSDavid Senra54:16

        Okay, 'cause you, there's no-

    18. SPSpeaker54:17

        Well, 'cause we were going to try and license it.

    19. DSDavid Senra54:18

        Yes.

    20. SPSpeaker54:19

        So, so we had to have a good, strong patent.

    21. DSDavid Senra54:21

        Okay.

    22. SPSpeaker54:21

        Which we had. We ended up having a good, strong patent because we, we made a, a, an interesting discovery by accident. 'Cause i- if you're doing enough experiments, um, you're trying to be logical what you're doing, but sometimes, uh, y- y- uh, something occurs that's not logical, and it works. So you've just got to keep trying. Luck will happen to you.

    23. DSDavid Senra54:47

        This is why you're such a big believer in the Edisonian principle of design, where-

    24. SPSpeaker54:51

        Mm

    25. DSDavid Senra54:51

        ... I, I think in the book you say that the biggest problem you have with young people, even though you like working with them, is teaching them one change at a time.

    26. SPSpeaker54:58

        Mm.

    27. DSDavid Senra54:58

        Record what happens.

    28. SPSpeaker54:59

        Okay.

    29. DSDavid Senra54:59

        They'll, their, their instinct is, "Come in here. Something's not working. Let's change fifteen things." And your point is, how do you know what of the fifteen things you have done have changed? So at this point, you're doing... You have thick... Like, I know a lot about you 'cause I've been studying you for nine years.... you've worked- you've been working with your hands your entire life. Are you still working with your hands?

    30. SPSpeaker55:18

        Uh, no, not much.
21. 55:42 – 1:04:29

    The Role of Hands-On Work in Innovation

    1. SPSpeaker55:42

       no line. And it's fun, actually, working with your hands and your brain. It's something that, that schools despise for some reason.

    2. DSDavid Senra55:49

       This is gonna sound really weird to you. Maybe it won't, but because my entire work is all digital, right? I read a book, I sit down, I record into a microphone that's digital. It's connected to a computer. It goes out into the world. I don't... You know, I just see numbers go up on a screen. It's just, I'm by myself the whole time.

    3. SPSpeaker56:05

       Mm-hmm.

    4. DSDavid Senra56:05

       Um, I- one thing that I do, which is kind of working with my hands, is I've insisted on, I edit all the transcripts of every single episode by hand, and that is literally me going in there and changing a sentence or a word or adding punctuation. If I ever do anything else, or in addition, even just for fun, it has to be something physical.

    5. SPSpeaker56:24

       Mm.

    6. DSDavid Senra56:24

       Like, I don't wanna just ha- I, I feel I'm missing out on something, and I'm trying to approximate that by, like, physically touching, you know, pieces of paper. This is why the books look like they do, and I don't read digital copies.

    7. SPSpeaker56:34

       Mm. Mm.

    8. DSDavid Senra56:35

       Like, I like, I sit down with a pen, a, a, a ruler, uh, you know, Post-it notes, scissors.

    9. SPSpeaker56:41

       Right.

    10. DSDavid Senra56:41

        Like, I feel like it's like arts and crafts over here, but there's just some weird, uh, satisfaction I get out of working with my hands. My hands don't look like yours, though-

    11. SPSpeaker56:49

        Mm-hmm

    12. DSDavid Senra56:49

        ... from, like, you know, five decades of this.

    13. SPSpeaker56:50

        No, no, it's, it's something that's slightly despised at school, people who are good with their hands, who can mend cars and do plumbing and so on. They-

    14. DSDavid Senra56:57

        But the entire world that we inhabit is physical.

    15. SPSpeaker56:59

        Well, yes, exactly. [chuckles] I mean, that's how man started.

    16. DSDavid Senra57:02

        Somebody built this-

    17. SPSpeaker57:03

        Yeah

    18. DSDavid Senra57:03

        ... and, like, the building that we're in.

    19. SPSpeaker57:04

        Yeah, yeah.

    20. DSDavid Senra57:05

        Um-

    21. SPSpeaker57:05

        No, but we want to be intellectuals and not get involved in the dirty work. That, and it's a great shame because I think that's why we've lost, as countries, the ability to make things. Manufacturing is vanishing. From manufacturing made America great. It made Britain great, the Industrial Revolution.

    22. DSDavid Senra57:20

        It makes any country that's good at it, great.

    23. SPSpeaker57:22

        Great, yeah.

    24. DSDavid Senra57:23

        History again-

    25. SPSpeaker57:23

        Yeah

    26. DSDavid Senra57:23

        ... talk about history repeating.

    27. SPSpeaker57:24

        Yeah.

    28. DSDavid Senra57:24

        Hey!

    29. SPSpeaker57:25

        Yeah.

    30. DSDavid Senra57:25

        Why do you think... I love what you said, uh, we're gonna go back to this, but you have this great thing that, uh, growing up in Britain at the time you did, you know, they still remember Churchill and, and World War II and everything else. You know, like, well, one thing that we learned and we were taught was, like, we're not the weak ones. Like, we can actually persevere through, through unbelievably difficult times, where it looks like the end is near and not give up-
22. 1:04:29 – 1:08:44

    The Electric Car Project

    1. DSDavid Senra1:04:29

       Okay.

    2. SPSpeaker1:04:29

       And we had the brilliant idea of doing an electric car, uh-

    3. DSDavid Senra1:04:33

       Yeah

    4. SPSpeaker1:04:33

       ... before, [chuckles] because, um, we-

    5. DSDavid Senra1:04:36

       It's sitting in your, um, in your-

    6. SPSpeaker1:04:37

       We make, we make electric motors. We make, uh, uh, uh, filtration and, uh, cooling devices-

    7. DSDavid Senra1:04:43

       Let's, let's talk about the car

    8. SPSpeaker1:04:44

       ... and we're developing batteries.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:04:45

       Let, let's talk about the car.

    10. SPSpeaker1:04:46

        So, so we thought, "Oh, we should do an electric car."

    11. DSDavid Senra1:04:48

        When was this?

    12. SPSpeaker1:04:49

        Uh, twenty fourteen.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:04:52

        Okay.

    14. SPSpeaker1:04:53

        And I looked at the, what the industries were predicting, and they said two percent electric cars by twenty thirty. And I thought, "They've got that wrong. That can't be right." Uh, so we started developing an electric car. We're developing batteries, by the way, new technology. We still are. So the battery-

    15. DSDavid Senra1:05:09

        You manufacture your own batteries, too?

    16. SPSpeaker1:05:11

        Not yet, not yet. Uh-

    17. DSDavid Senra1:05:12

        But you want to.

    18. SPSpeaker1:05:13

        We want to, yeah.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:05:14

        What a surprise. You want control around it. [chuckles]

    20. SPSpeaker1:05:15

        [chuckles]

    21. DSDavid Senra1:05:16

        I know I'd understand that. [chuckles]

    22. SPSpeaker1:05:18

        New technology ones, not ordinary ones.

    23. DSDavid Senra1:05:19

        Yeah.

    24. SPSpeaker1:05:20

        Um, so we said we're, we're developing batteries, but electric motors are one of our things. Uh, air treatment is another one of our things. That's pretty much an electric car. Um, so, uh, we started developing one. What... W- And then we got to twenty seventeen, and Dieselgate happened. So up, uh, the first three or four years, Tesla was everything. Tesla was doing everything very, very successfully. Um, but no one was taking any notice of that. They all thought Tesla was a flash in the pan or something. They were ignoring it because it was such a different thing for them to do. They make internal combustion engines, not electric motors and batteries. So, um, the Gate- Dieselgate changed all that. They realised, apart from PR point of view, but also this horrific reaction to Dieselgate, that they had to get into e- electric cars. So all- most of the big manufacturers immediately jumped into electric cars and made them, uh, and they make a terrific loss on them. But-

    25. DSDavid Senra1:06:20

        Explain.

    26. SPSpeaker1:06:21

        Electric cars are a very expensive thing to make. Battery is incredibly expensive. The electronics involved in the battery is expensive. Um, the ba- batteries are very heavy, so it's a, it's a very different type of car and very expensive to make. I mean, much more expensive than the internal combustion engine. They were selling them at a loss for a complicated reason. Car manufacturers' emissions, which are controlled by law, are based on their overall emissions from their range of cars. So if they had-

    27. DSDavid Senra1:06:52

        Oh, not the individual model?

    28. SPSpeaker1:06:53

        Not the individual model. So if they had a, um, a model which didn't emit anything, they could go on making big gas-guzzling vehicles on which they make a lot of money. So they're prepared to lose money on the electric car, uh, to make the money on the big gas-guzzling SUV or whatever it is. Um, so, uh, but as a- a Te- Tesla and us were just electric vehicle manufacturers. Um, and Tesla's brilliant, and, you know, thirty billion dollars has gone into a huge investment. I'm little company on my own.... and I have faced a very uncertain future trying to sell an electric car in that sort of, uh, setup. And, uh, if you have fairly low volume in your new manufacturer, all your costs are thirty percent higher because you're not buying very many, um, seats from the seat manufacturer or very many tires from the tire manufacturer, and so on. So all your costs are much higher, and we knew that because-

    29. DSDavid Senra1:07:51

        You had a series of structural dis- uh, disadvantages.

    30. SPSpeaker1:07:53

        Huge disadvantages.
23. 1:08:44 – 1:09:33

    Reflecting on Painful Experiences

    1. SPSpeaker1:08:44

       Yeah.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:08:44

       Do you, do you ever get in it anymore and just drive around?

    3. SPSpeaker1:08:46

       No, no, no. [chuckles]

    4. DSDavid Senra1:08:47

       Are you... It's too painful?

    5. SPSpeaker1:08:48

       Yeah. [chuckles]

    6. DSDavid Senra1:08:49

       Like, would you get into seven- a car that cost you seven hundred and fifty million?

    7. SPSpeaker1:08:52

       Uh, one, one of the... Everybody said, "You know, you must have learnt a lot from that experience," and the answer is, I learnt absolutely nothing. [laughing]

    8. DSDavid Senra1:08:58

       [laughing] What do you mean?

    9. SPSpeaker1:09:00

       I mean, oh, I did-- No, I mean, it was f- it was fun to do, but I, uh, we, we-

    10. DSDavid Senra1:09:04

        It was fun to do?

    11. SPSpeaker1:09:05

        It was fun to do. And, um, half the people were snapped up by other manufacturers, and half the people working on it came to work on and do, um, vacuum cleaners and other things-

    12. DSDavid Senra1:09:15

        Oh, I didn't even think of the emotional... Think about if you worked on something for a decade, and it ain't going anywhere.

    13. SPSpeaker1:09:19

        Yeah.

    14. DSDavid Senra1:09:19

        They must feel-

    15. SPSpeaker1:09:20

        Well, five, yeah, not quite a decade, five, five or six years.

    16. DSDavid Senra1:09:22

        Five or six years.

    17. SPSpeaker1:09:23

        Yeah. Uh, no, it's an awful thing to do. Um, but, um, and sadly, we didn't really learn anything from it.

    18. DSDavid Senra1:09:30

        Yeah. [chuckles]

24. 1:09:33 – 1:10:59

    High Energy and Health Optimization

    1. DSDavid Senra1:09:33

       All of the founders and extreme winners that I have studied have this one trait in common: they have excessively high energy levels. After spending several hours with James Dyson, it was obvious that he is high energy too. If you're going to be the best at what you do, you need to maximize your energy and output, and that's why I've partnered with Function. I signed up for Function long before they were a sponsor of this podcast, and when you sign up, they ask you what your health goals are, and my response in all capital letters was maximum energy. Function provides access to comprehensive blood tests and other lab testing to help you improve your health so you can perform at your highest level. Function has made it easy for me to monitor and improve my internal health markers so that I feel at my absolute strongest. As a member of Function, you get access to test over a hundred plus biomarkers, from hormones, to toxins, to markers for heart health, inflammation, and stress. Function gives you a straightforward analysis of all your results, along with advice from expert doctors on how to improve things like your testosterone, your stress hormones, how to reduce toxins in your body, and much more. The platform is absolutely beautiful and provides an easy-to-understand picture of your overall health. Once you try Function, you will immediately understand why it's the fastest-growing health platform in the country. You can now join Function for just three hundred and sixty-five dollars a year. That's a dollar a day. Learn more and join by visiting functionhealth.com/senra, and use code SENRA25 for a twenty-five dollar credit towards your membership. That is functionhealth.com/senra.

25. 1:10:59 – 1:13:13

    Applying Skills to New Products

    1. DSDavid Senra1:10:59

       What is an example of you taking the existing skill set, uh, that Dyson has built up over many decades and applying it successfully to a, a new product, then, that did not come from... Like, that's the actual, uh, like, sequence of events. It's- that you didn't identify the product first. You're just like: Well, we have the skill set. What can we apply it to? Did you do that with hairdryers? What, what, what's like an example of that?

    2. SPSpeaker1:11:21

       Uh, yes, I mean, the, the- I think the way we approached the car was slightly dangerous-

    3. DSDavid Senra1:11:26

       Okay

    4. SPSpeaker1:11:26

       ... because, um, we were saying, "Look, we've got these skill sets."

    5. DSDavid Senra1:11:30

       And you were trying to match it.

    6. SPSpeaker1:11:31

       And we would say, "Oh, well, it looks, uh, it would go very well in a car," without really saying, um, you know, "Is that, is that gonna be a successful product? Is it gonna be a breakthrough product?" Well, it might have been a breakthrough product if we had managed to do the battery, and certainly our motors we developed were very efficient motors. And a- and electric car is all about efficiency, uh, aerodynamic efficiency, drive motor efficiency, and so that you can have better, uh, smaller batteries. Power consumption is a big thing.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:12:00

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SPSpeaker1:12:01

       Uh, but a sixth to a quarter of the power is taken up by air conditioning and heating, for example. So if you can make that more efficient, you can make your car go further. So it's all really about how far can you go on, on a battery.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:12:15

       How do you come up with a new product? I know you're very secretive. You don't talk about things you, you haven't released yet.

    10. SPSpeaker1:12:19

        No, it's a very good question. I haven't- I didn't answer it properly. [chuckles] You have- there's two ways: One is you realize you have a technology, and you can make a hairdryer.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:12:29

        How many of these do you make now? Motors.

    12. SPSpeaker1:12:31

        Oh, we've made about a hundred and fifty million of them.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:12:34

        A year, though, now?

    14. SPSpeaker1:12:35

        Uh, yeah, we make about thirty million a year.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:12:37

        And it's very interesting, in the book, you said that companies, other companies, try to get you to make motors for them, and you adamantly refuse. Is that still correct?

    16. SPSpeaker1:12:45

        That's correct.

    17. DSDavid Senra1:12:45

        And I love what you said because you want your engineers focused exclusively on your own products. It's the importance of focus, as opposed to retrofitting your technology to somebody else's product in somebody else's shop.

    18. SPSpeaker1:12:57

        It's not a good commercial decision, that, by the way, the one I've taken.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:13:00

        Yeah, but you're-

    20. SPSpeaker1:13:01

        'Cause I could, um, have a, a division that dealt with, um, other people, supplying motors to other people, which I'm sure would make money.

    21. DSDavid Senra1:13:09

        Okay, that... This is, this is very interesting. I think this is missing in business.

26. 1:13:13 – 1:16:14

    Focus and Single-Mindedness

    1. DSDavid Senra1:13:13

       I am- uh, we talked about before we started recording, I had this idea of anti-business billionaire. These people that are so obsessed with the pr- the quality of the product they're making, that's their number one. They just want to make the best possible product. They do things that may seem irrational-... because it would improve the quality of the product. And my-- the point I'd make is there's, there's, I think you're one of them, there's a series of people I've read about where people like that, that are just obsessed with making the best product for customers to solve an actual, real need and retain control, they wind up with the money anyways, but that's not the motivator. So why-- e- explain your rationale, and I think it's the right rationale, but I'm very curious if you can actually articulate it. Why do you not set up this other division that you wouldn't have to run, that would just make a bunch of money doing this thing? Why don't you do that?

    2. SPSpeaker1:14:00

       Because that doesn't excite me. [laughing]

    3. DSDavid Senra1:14:03

       Thank you.

    4. SPSpeaker1:14:04

       You, you know-

    5. DSDavid Senra1:14:04

       People forget the point of life is for living.

    6. SPSpeaker1:14:06

       I know. That's for making money. That's, uh, and, and it, it's developing a technology and coming out with different radical products. That's what interests me, not making money per se.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:14:15

       How long have you had the discipline to adhere to that? I'm just following excitement, I'm following curiosity, I'm following-

    8. SPSpeaker1:14:21

       Mm

    9. DSDavid Senra1:14:21

       ... interest. How? How long? Have you been like that forever?

    10. SPSpeaker1:14:24

        I think so. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I'm very, very single-minded, um, and not being distracted by things. And actually, it's really important that, because, um, when, when you, when, when you start running a business or doing things, uh, you have too much to do. There's too much to do. So you have to make-- all the time, you have to make a choice: what's the most important thing to do? What's the most important thing to do? If you get to be a big business, that's still important.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:14:53

        Say more about that.

    12. SPSpeaker1:14:54

        You, you... Well, th- if you get big, there's a tendency to think you've lo- lots of people, so you can do everything, but you can't, [chuckles] because people-- you can't do everything. You can't do everything well, uh, and you probably can't do everything anyway. So the important thing is to decide what's really the most important thing and just do that. And there are gonna be things you don't do, and there's gonna be some failures 'cause you're not doing things, but if you're doing something really, really well, then you'll be okay.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:15:22

        How do you go about deciding what's the most important thing for you?

    14. SPSpeaker1:15:24

        Well, that's the fun. [laughing] Uh, that's fun. I mean, it, it, it's-- you, you decide the most important thing, and that decis- that's an important decision. Uh, and you say, "Well, I haven't got time to do the other things, I won't do it." Will one of those kill me? I don't know. Probably not, uh, so I'll concentrate on the thing I really want to do, which I think is the right thing to do.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:15:46

        Is single-mindedness and focus the same thing to you, or do you mean different things?

    16. SPSpeaker1:15:49

        Yes, it's the same thing.

    17. DSDavid Senra1:15:50

        It's the same thing.

    18. SPSpeaker1:15:51

        Same thing. And i- if your brain isn't very big, which mine isn't, it's, it's a much better way to do-- to run your life, is just to concentrate on one thing at a time.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:16:00

        But you have multiple product lines.

    20. SPSpeaker1:16:03

        Yeah, that's stretching my brain a bit.

    21. DSDavid Senra1:16:04

        Yeah.

    22. SPSpeaker1:16:05

        But yes, um, yes, and I'm learning to manage that in myself, and I've got lots of wonderful people around me, helping me, including my

27. 1:16:14 – 1:27:35

    The Journey of Dyson's Vacuum Cleaner

    1. SPSpeaker1:16:14

       son now.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:16:15

       I know you did the vacuum cleaner first, and you did a vacuum cleaner as so- as the only product at Dyson for how long?

    3. SPSpeaker1:16:20

       Eight years probably.

    4. DSDavid Senra1:16:21

       Okay.

    5. SPSpeaker1:16:21

       Yes. Yeah.

    6. DSDavid Senra1:16:22

       Focus, and then, uh, was the washing machine the second?

    7. SPSpeaker1:16:25

       The washing machine came on quite early, after about four or five years.

    8. DSDavid Senra1:16:27

       But it didn't work.

    9. SPSpeaker1:16:29

       It did work.

    10. DSDavid Senra1:16:30

        It, it works.

    11. SPSpeaker1:16:30

        It worked very well. Don't say that to me. [laughing]

    12. DSDavid Senra1:16:34

        [laughing]

    13. SPSpeaker1:16:34

        No, uh-

    14. DSDavid Senra1:16:35

        I hear you

    15. SPSpeaker1:16:35

        ... and I made, I made another mistake with that, which was that, um, you know, I' been making vacuum cleaners at a, at about, um, three hundred dollars, two hundred, three hundred dollars. The washing machine was, um, twelve hundred, thirteen hundred dollars to start, so it was more expensive than other people's washing machines.

    16. DSDavid Senra1:16:55

        Yeah, but the vacuum cleaner was more expensive than other vacuum cleaners, so...

    17. SPSpeaker1:16:58

        I, I, I, didn't wasn't-- well, I wasn't learning from history. [laughing]

    18. DSDavid Senra1:17:01

        [laughing]

    19. SPSpeaker1:17:02

        My marketing people said, "If you make it cheaper, you'll sell a lot more." Right, so for the last time in my life, I listened to them. [laughing] And, uh, um, you know, marketing people are getting on selling things, not decide what pro- what product it should be or how much it should be sold for. So I listened to them, and we didn't sell any more. We just lost more money. And, um, the other directors, non-executive directors, said, "You've got to stop that 'cause you're losing money at it." Actually, if I'd been on my own, I'd have probably gone on with it and put the price up. But, um, y- you know, sometimes you have to listen to other people, and they were probably right, so we put it behind us and got on with what we were doing.

    20. DSDavid Senra1:17:44

        They're still in operation, though.

    21. SPSpeaker1:17:46

        Oh, yeah. I, I use them. I mean, they're-

    22. DSDavid Senra1:17:47

        So you have your own Dyson washing machine?

    23. SPSpeaker1:17:49

        Oh, yes. Yes, yeah, yeah. It's great.

    24. DSDavid Senra1:17:51

        [laughing]

    25. SPSpeaker1:17:52

        It's great.

    26. DSDavid Senra1:17:52

        Very-

    27. SPSpeaker1:17:52

        And, uh, people have now copied a lot of the ideas, like the big door, and if you're trying to put a duvet in this tiny little hole, or... [chuckles] So, uh, uh, and it was very expensive to make, actually, that-- and I should have learnt my lesson from that, 'cause it had two drums. It had two motors and a gearbox that it had a lot of things that other washing machines don't have, but it did a very good job. It was a very good washing machine.

    28. DSDavid Senra1:18:15

        It begs the question: are there any other Dyson products that you own that are not available to consumers?

    29. SPSpeaker1:18:21

        [chuckles]

    30. DSDavid Senra1:18:21

        What else have you made for yourself?
28. 1:27:35 – 1:36:09

    Dogged Determination and Success

    1. DSDavid Senra1:27:35

       Do you think that is the key to, to s- succeed? Is a determination more important than... I mean, we talked about focus, but determination is much more important than intelligence.

    2. SPSpeaker1:27:45

       Yes. Yes, doggedness. Never, never g- never giving up, um, just carrying on and not worrying what other people are saying. You know, my friends said, "You're completely mad. What are you doing, spending all that- every day in that shed with all that dust around?"

    3. DSDavid Senra1:27:59

       So most people around you were trying to dissuade you from what you were doing?

    4. SPSpeaker1:28:02

       Yes, yes. Everybody thought I was mad.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:28:05

       How did you r- receive that, like, feedback or that criticism?

    6. SPSpeaker1:28:09

       The more I got it, the more encouraged I became, actually. 'Cause, [chuckles] well, I don't know. I, I remember when I, when I was trying to, when I was trying to license it, um, to... I went to all the people who are now my competitors and a lot of others as well, and they all turned it down. They were all quite interested in it, but turned it down, and the more it was turned down, the more I realized I had something.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:28:33

       You believed you were right?

    8. SPSpeaker1:28:34

       Yeah.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:28:35

       You had no doubt.

    10. SPSpeaker1:28:35

        Yeah. Because, um, they never really gave a good reason.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:28:40

        Well, for the vacuum, uh, the existing manufacturers, there's a great story in the book. You know, uh, again, I'm gonna quote Charlie Munger. He's one of my heroes. He's like: "Never, ever think about anything, uh, when you should be thinking about the power of incentives." He's like: "Incentives rule human-- Like, they drive so much of human behavior." And I'm thinking of Charlie when I'm reading your book, and it's like, yeah, you know what? It turns out it's really hard to sell... I know you don't like this word, the bagless vacuum cleaner. You just think it should be like-

    12. SPSpeaker1:29:03

        Mm

    13. DSDavid Senra1:29:03

        ... no loss of suction-

    14. SPSpeaker1:29:04

        Yeah, yeah, yeah

    15. DSDavid Senra1:29:04

        ... suction vacuum cleaner.

    16. SPSpeaker1:29:05

        That's right. [chuckles]

    17. DSDavid Senra1:29:05

        I'm just gonna use the, the term-

    18. SPSpeaker1:29:07

        Yeah

    19. DSDavid Senra1:29:07

        ... for the story. It's really hard to sell a bagless vacuum cleaner to people who make five hundred million dollars a year [chuckles] selling vacuum bags.

    20. SPSpeaker1:29:14

        Well, it was partly that. Um, it was partly that, and partly I realized they didn't want to change.

    21. DSDavid Senra1:29:20

        Human history repeating.

    22. SPSpeaker1:29:21

        Uh, yeah, and that, and that, that's what encouraged me. I mean, although each rejection, I, I should have got more and more depressed and-

    23. DSDavid Senra1:29:29

        And you had the opposite reaction!

    24. SPSpeaker1:29:29

        I had the opposite reaction.

    25. DSDavid Senra1:29:31

        Yeah.

    26. SPSpeaker1:29:31

        These, these guys don't want to change.

    27. DSDavid Senra1:29:34

        I, I, I'm gonna-- I think this is gonna be one of the most important things I learned from this conversation, is this idea. A- assuming that you're doing things for the right reason, you're following your curiosity, you're completely obsessed with what you're doing, this idea of taking essentially what is a negative and turning it into fuel.

    28. SPSpeaker1:29:47

        Yeah.

    29. DSDavid Senra1:29:48

        You're turning it into fuel. You're trying to dissuade me, and it's only making me m- more dogged. I, I think deter... uh, your dogged determination is a great line, by the way.

    30. SPSpeaker1:29:56

        Yes, it's not, uh... Well, no, the, the, the, they're, they're rejecting it without having a good reason.
29. 1:36:09 – 1:37:40

    The Influence of Early Life Experiences

    1. SPSpeaker1:36:09

       And I think, um, uh, my father's death has quite a lot to do with that, coming back to that. And, um, I was, uh, I was in a sort of a group, 'cause I-- we lived in a school, in a public school, uh, in a private school, is probably a better expression. Um, and the other teachers' children, uh, were the same sort of age, so we were a group, and we had the run of the school grounds during the holidays. But I was the youngest, so the others were up to five years older than me. So I was always dealing with people who were bigger and stronger than me or cleverer than me. And, um, so I think it, it made me always strive. So I think a combination of, of being the youngest, 'cause I was the youngest of three children anyway, uh, and younger than this group that I went around with, made me try to punch above my weight a bit, and made me very determined. 'Cause in order to succeed at anything, I had to be really, really good. In order to beat them at tennis or whatever it was, or in a race, I had to be, um, punching above my weight. So I think, I think that and losing my father, um, so losing-- realizing I was on my own, um, and I was away at boarding school on my own, so there's a... That, that whole combination, uh, made me the sort of character I am, made me never satisfied, always wanting to find something better, uh, and bouncing back from failures.

30. 1:37:40 – 1:38:20

    Conclusion and Final Thoughts

    1. DSDavid Senra1:37:41

       That's the perfect s- spot to end this conversation. James, they say, "Never meet your heroes," they're a hundred percent wrong. Um, I don't feel ashamed at all. [chuckles] You're one of my heroes. This conversation's been excellent. Out of all the people that I've studied and met, uh, you're definitely the person I try to emulate the most. I really appreciate you taking the time.

    2. SPSpeaker1:37:56

       Well, thank you, David. It's great to hear your story as well-

    3. DSDavid Senra1:37:59

       Thank you very much

    4. SPSpeaker1:37:59

       ... and how you succeeded. Thank you very much.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:38:02

       I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over four hundred biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.

Episode duration: 1:38:21