Founders - #205 James Dyson (Invention: A Life)

Starting point is 00:00:00 In many ways, I have come to live what might seem to be a contradictory life, part in the future, part in the past. Most of my waking time is spent in our labs, surrounded by Dyson's engineers and scientists, exploring ideas that we hope might shape the future. Ours is a life of challenge and frustration, all of which is a fulfilling pastime. But I also have an interest verging on obsession with the past, with the stories, artifacts, and spaces that have shaped our world. Repairing the old and adding to the new has become as much an important part of my life as inventing for the future. Renovation might sound an odd enthusiasm for a modern designer and engineer,

Starting point is 00:00:43 yet there is much to learn from the past and from those who have shaped the world before us. It is about understanding and celebrating the progress that has been achieved, learning from it, and building on it. Let me give you an example. The Whittle jet engine, which we have lovingly restored to its original specification and which we fire up from time to time in the parking lot at the Dyson headquarters, is another example of restoration of the past. Though it needed love when we took it on, the Whittle engine is not some old world object. It's the embodiment of Frank Whittle's revolutionary concept, a way of solving the

Starting point is 00:01:22 problem of how aircraft could fly at much greater height, speed, and smoothness than they could possibly do in 1930. The idea that he formulated at the age of 23 to form a new aero engine was as extraordinary as it was fragile. And who wanted to believe Whittle was right? Certainly not government experts. He had to pursue his project alone. Yet in doing so, he revolutionized flight for everyone and changed the course of the Second World War. many similar designs and engineering icons scattered around our campuses, each with its own story. There's the English electric lightning jet that's hanging in one of our campus cafes, the Concorde engine in one of our office spaces, the dissected Mini parked in another, and a Harrier jump jet in the parking lot. One of these, the Mini, which I can't help but coming back to, is a good example of why you should not listen to market research. The British Motor Corporation, BMC, cancelled one of the two

Starting point is 00:02:34 proposed Mini production lines as a result of the feedback from market research. The corporation was told that people would refuse to buy a car with such small wheels. In the event, the BMC was never able to catch up with the demand that followed the launch of the trend-setting Mini. There are many more examples I won't name here, yet each such artifact has its own story of against-the-odds progress and lessons on why having faith in your ideas and believing in progress is so important. What these pieces of our history demonstrate is that it is hard for other people to understand or get excited by a new idea. This requires self-reliance and faith on the part of the inventor. I can also see that it is hard for an outsider to understand the challenge and thrill of inventing new technology,

Starting point is 00:03:26 designing and manufacturing the product, and then selling it to the world. Being an entrepreneur is not necessarily about making a fast buck. It's about creating new products and new opportunities, generating rewarding employment and opportunities in the process. The entrepreneur is part of a cycle of renewal, driving progress. It is not easy. The margin between profits and loss, between success and failure is small. Just as you think you have understood a situation and how things work, it changes without warning. There are traps around every corner. As soon as Dyson became successful,

Starting point is 00:04:08 people in Britain asked when I was going to sell the company, as if I were only lowering myself temporarily to the dim and grubby world of uncreative manufacturing. Once I made my first million, it was surely time for me to get away from the sweat, grime, and grim routine of factory life and become a reclusive landowner building duck houses and perhaps cleaning the moat around my house. In any case, why would a supposedly educated person be ruling around in factories when he could be doing something quote-unquote creative, and preferably from an office or a studio? Is it that they did not see a company as an enterprise that makes wonderful products, employs, and supports many others?

Starting point is 00:04:51 Is it because they admire brilliance and easy success over the long stamina and grind of running a business for generations? Many wise friends advised me to sell in the early days when a few attractive offers came in. I suspect they feared that I might lose it all or they felt that I had achieved all that I needed to achieve. A family business has most of its wealth tied up in the business. So continuing to keep it as a family business is both a risk and a responsibility. But I like living on knife's edge, competing and building

Starting point is 00:05:26 the business. I am passionate about developing new technology and working with a wonderful and creative team around me. Those kind people totally missed the point. I didn't work on those 5,127 vacuum cleaner prototypes or even set up Dyson to make money. I did it because I had a burning desire to do so. I find inventing, researching, testing, designing, and manufacturing both creative and satisfying. Going against established expert thinking was a huge risk. No one could confirm that what we were doing was a good idea. Everyone, in fact, confirmed the reverse. The data were all against it. If, however, we had believed the quote-unquote science and not trusted our instincts, we should have ended up

Starting point is 00:06:18 following the path of dull conformity. In following a different path, obstacles will be put in the way of pioneering manufacturers. Yet the process of creativity and of solving seemingly insolvable problems is rather wonderful. It is hard to be pioneering because you don't know whether or not you're going to succeed. You will stumble and have to pick yourself back up, believing that you will succeed. It is scary. I am scared all the time. Fear, though, can be a good thing as it pumps the adrenaline and motivates, as athletes will confirm. A life of perpetual learning, pursuing science, engineering, and technology has been a magical and fulfilling adventure. The quiet thrill of improving products through the application of technology

Starting point is 00:07:10 and making them enjoyable and surprising to use. For an engineer, the creative impulse, the desire to improve things, and the need to solve problems are a state of mind that cannot be switched off. It is there all the time, whether you're at work or you're at home. It is the intellectual challenge of seeing frustrations and problems and developing a product or system that solves them. Scientists and engineers combined recognize today's problems and are capable of providing new solutions. History has proved this time and time again. That's an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Invention, A Life, and it was written by James Dyson. So this is an updated autobiography. If you've listened to even a few of these episodes by now,

Starting point is 00:08:04 you know that I think that his original autobiography that he wrote 20 years ago, or I guess over 20 years ago by now, is a must have. It should be in every entrepreneur's library. It should be in the library of anybody that's trying to do something difficult because it's all about struggle and perseverance and overcoming that. This book is now updated. He writes it. He's 74 years old. When his last autobiography ends, he has one product. He's 74 years old. When his last autobiography ends, he has one product. He's about to make a washing machine, but at that time, he's just made his vacuum cleaner. He's about to expand to the American market. He's dominating the market in Britain. When that book ends, I think he's doing something like $300 million a year in revenue.

Starting point is 00:08:42 Over the next 20 years, he builds this gigantic privately owned business. His family owns 100% of the business to this day. And now they're doing billions. It's like something like $8 to $10 billion a year in revenue, a billion or $2 billion a year in profit. And what was remarkable to me, because I just reread his original autobiography, what a week ago, two weeks ago, something like that. And then read this right after because this book was just released. So I don't don't normally do you know brand new books on the podcast most of the books i read for the podcast are extremely old um but james lyson is a personal hero of mine so of course as soon as i even saw i pre-ordered the book i didn't even know it was

Starting point is 00:09:18 coming out i was googling or assuming i was on amazon searching for the uh his previous autobiography to see if they had any more in stock. And it said, oh, a new book. So I immediately pre-ordered it. And what's remarkable to me is he's the same person. It's just now 20 years older, 20 years wiser, has 20 years more experience. So there's a ton of highlights. Before I get into why he wrote the book, because he tells us explicitly, like, well, why is he doing this?

Starting point is 00:09:46 He did a fantastic interview on the Tim Ferriss podcast. I think it's Tim Ferriss number 530. So if you want to hear James in his own words, I highly recommend listening to that podcast. I just want to pull out, I wrote down a quote or two from there because he talks about he's going around doing podcast interviews, obviously promoting the book. And he said something, he tells us exactly,'s the what's the theme of the book right uh the theme of the book is really that you don't have to be an expert and this is james talking

Starting point is 00:10:12 and in fact experts are often unhelpful you have to have enthusiasm curiosity a thirst for knowledge and determination and those are the things that will solve all of the world's problems. And one big problem that he talks about is like young kids are now orroated defense on the nobility of engineering, manufacturing, working with your hands, learning to sell, working in factories, and doing the slow, difficult, dirty work that others deride. And he's not, and as we'll see later, he's not just talking about this. He's actually inventing new ways to educate people. He started his, he rethought college. It's amazing how, and of course, just like he rethought vacuum cleaners and every other product, he worked from first principles like, okay, if we could design this today, how would it be? Wait

Starting point is 00:11:13 till I get that. That's towards the end of the book, but it's just remarkable. All right, so let's go into this. He says, I wanted to share my story as the first cohort of Dyson students graduated from Dyson University. For them and all of us students dedicated to the pursuit of curiosity, learning, and embracing the joys of making things. It is a story told through the life of creating and developing things, as well as expressing a call to arms for young people to become engineers, creating solutions to our current and future problems. And so he's saying flat out,

Starting point is 00:11:45 I'm trying to do this to inspire you. And why is that so important? Because he talks about the importance of having heroes, that everybody has heroes that came before them, that they look to not only for wisdom, for mistakes to avoid, but for inspiration. And this guy, wait till you, I mean, the amount of historical knowledge that it's in this man's brain is unbelievable. And if you see on, if you listen to Founders Number 200, at the very end, I did a bonus episode. So that whole podcast is like, I don't know, two and a half hours long, something like that. And on the end, it's 45 minutes of what I learned from reading. James wrote a book. It's called The History of Great Inventions. And he's kind of just like the at the introduction, or the part I read for the podcast

Starting point is 00:12:30 that that served as introduction to this podcast, but actually towards the end of the book, where he's talking about is like, I feel you know, my life is somewhat contradictory, like I invent for the future, but I'm obsessed with with history. So he this is something I think you and I have been talking about over and over again. I feel like it's been top of mind the last few podcasts. It's like combine, develop this deep historical knowledge and combine what you learned from that with the edge of technology. We're seeing that James is yet another example of that. So I'm really excited. So I got to calm down because I really do admire.

Starting point is 00:13:01 I just cannot believe what this guy was able to accomplish. It's just remarkable. All right. So it says, during my career, I've tried to seek out those young people who can make the world a better place. I've seen what miracles they can achieve. This book is aimed at encouraging them. So flat out, I'm trying to inspire the next generation. And he says that later on in the book.

Starting point is 00:13:19 And it really did hit me where it's just like one of the benefits of reading biographies is you're constantly reminded of the passage of time. And there's pictures in the book. Like there's a picture of the day him and his wife got married they're still married and then a picture of him today and 52 years separates those two pictures an entire lifetime and what's crazy to me is that's how long his career has been so much so So the idea, it's like the founder of Shopify has this great quote. He said it the most succinctly, like why he reads biographies, right? And that's Toby. I think his last name is Luque. But I know how to pronounce Toby, though.

Starting point is 00:13:58 So what Toby said, he's like, books are cheat codes. He's like, you can download, in a few hours, you can download the entire learnings, the accumulated learnings of someone's entire career. I don't have the quote in front of me. But that's like a paraphrase. Like he did use the word cheat codes, like you can download the best ideas they have in a few hours. And so the book I hold in my hand is like, why would you not buy this? I think I paid $25 for this book. And it contains the best idea and worst ideas that james had over 52 years it's it's incredible all right so it says during my career i try to seek out those young people who can make the world a better place i have seen what miracles they can achieve this book is aimed at

Starting point is 00:14:35 encouraging them i never finished my thought so what he says at the end he's like listen i'm not one to give advice i'm one to give encouragement and he's like we can't have that he's like and the reason i thought about how biographies remind you of the passage of time is he is because let me fast forward to where he says that hold on it was just a random sentence where he says towards the end of the book he's talking about you know it's not about giving advice it's about giving encouragement getting out of their way letting them explore and develop into their own humans and he says uh talking about you know politicians should be telling what to do, all these other people. And he says, nor should even old people like me telling them what to do.

Starting point is 00:15:12 And that really that one random sentence hit me really hard when I thought about it. Like, you know, the time that passed in between these two autobiographies, like he has now turned into an old man and he knows it. He's still working like flat out his wife has a postscript in the book and that's what she says um and she's like james is still you know working flat out he's he's still completely obsessed and that's one of his things like the idea i would still ever sell my company is ridiculous he's like this company i built this for my family for generations like i'm obsessed i want to work on this till the day i die but going back to this i just had this idea that we have the opportunity to learn from a 74-year-old James Dyson who spent five decades learning everything

Starting point is 00:15:51 that he put down in the book, this book for us, it's just a remarkable book. So one of the most remarkable pieces of technology that humans are able to create. It's amazing. So it says, this book is aimed at encouraging them. may well become hairs heirs to my heroes inventors engineers and designers who make their appearances in these pages and there's there's got to be i don't know dozen like a dozen maybe 20 different you know heroes from the history of entrepreneurship engineering and designing that he references like this is what i learned from this guy and this is what i learned from that guy. And this is what I learned from that guy. And this is really what I'm trying to do like in my own tiny, tiny way with founders.

Starting point is 00:16:30 I'm willing to spend thousands and thousands of hours going through these history books and pulling these ideas and trying to push them forward to make sure they don't die. So more people can learn them than when you learn it, you tell somebody else and that person tells somebody else.

Starting point is 00:16:42 And I think everybody benefits from that. So I don't know. I just I'm really inspired by what he's what he's saying here. So he says they become heirs to my heroes, inventors, engineers and designers who make their appearances. These pages like them, they will not find it easy. Like them, they will not find it easy. And they will need oodles, oodles of determination and stamina along the way. They will have to run and run hard, which is how my

Starting point is 00:17:06 life story begins. And the lessons he learns from running, I went into way more detail because he goes into way more detail in his previous autobiography in this one. But in this biography, he talks in way more detail about how devastating it was for his father to die so young. And how that changed the person he was. And it changed the trajectory of his life and career. So he's eight years old at the time. They're on a road trip and they stop off on the highway. And they're just like walking to this little field.

Starting point is 00:17:39 And then he comes across his father. He says, so I turned around a corner. I discovered my father was being violently sick. Before I could say anything, he said, don't tell mom. It was typical of him not to want to cause alarm. I felt immense love and compassion for him. Dad died the following year in 1956 when he was only 40. He had been 30 when he came back from the war. Three years later, he was diagnosed with cancer, throat and lungs. His last days were spent in a Westminster hospital. He had said goodbye, holding a small leather suitcase as he waved from the back door. He set off to the train station and caught the train that took him to London.

Starting point is 00:18:22 That was the last time I saw him. His brave cheerfulness chokes me every time I recall the scene. It is impossible to imagine my father's emotions as he waved goodbye knowing that he might be on his way to London to die. 60 years have not softened these memories, nor the sadness that he missed enjoying his three children growing up and marrying wonderful people. How he would have relished playing with his grandchildren, of whom there are seven. This is a difficult part to get through. This was all the more poignant when I observed one of my own grandchildren, Mick, at the age I was when my father died. And this is just heavy because, you know, James is a fully formed adult. He's had a lifetime of experiences by the time he's having this thought.

Starting point is 00:19:15 And yet to see his grandson at the same age that he was when his father died and realized how vulnerable a child at that age still is and how much they need their parents, especially their father. Mick is loving, bright as a button, and self-possessed. Yet still at that age, he took his ruffled, soft toy puppy to bed with him. He was far too vulnerable to lose his father. And then James ties this all together here. Look at this. I realized how much I missed mine as I watched Mick playing ping pong with his loving father.

Starting point is 00:19:56 And this paragraph is just a great example of why I truly believe biographies are the best thing that you could spend time reading because these are not words on a page. These are lives. These were actual people that lived and died. I felt the devastating loss of my dad, his love, his humor, and the things he taught me. I feared for a future without him. I was suddenly alone. Ever since, a part of me has been making up for that painfully unjust separation from my father and for the years he lost. Little could be worse than my father dying when he did. So at the time that his father dies, his mom is now being a single mom. She's got to raise three kids. So he goes on in this section to talk about just how strong his mother had to be to do that.

Starting point is 00:20:37 Raising three kids on her own. She wound up continuing to get an education. I think she wound up getting maybe two different degrees. And she had to work. And the story of and how their stories relate is because James's life story is at its fundamental level. It's a story of determination, determination and strength that he got from her. And when you're reading this book and you're reading his other autobiography, there's just so many times where you're just just like why is this guy not giving up it's not you know reminding me of this time around um when i read the the book on churchill uh the splendid and levile um a few weeks ago and we got these notes from like all the like these internal

Starting point is 00:21:17 sometimes they were diary entries by nazi officers sometimes there were letters written to within the the german nazi guess, establishment party, whatever. And they're just they could not like why. What the hell? Like, what is this Churchill? Is this Churchill guy insane? Like, why is he not giving up? It's obvious we've already won. And, you know, they repeat that over and over again. Just the idea. And I feel James is the same way from an outsider's perspective is like, why is this guy not giving up? So then he talks a little bit about getting this from his mother and then, you know, her dying or young as well from cancer. He's not a little boy. She outlives her husband, I think, by 20 years. But one of the most devastating parts of his previous autobiography is just him talking about the cruel twist of fate

Starting point is 00:22:00 that she didn't get to see her grandchildren, like she didn't get to be there for her grandchildren. So it says, through a bitter twist of fate in 1978, my get to see her grandchildren like she didn't get to be there for her grandchildren so it says through a bitter twist of fate in 1978 my mom was diagnosed with and then very quickly died of liver cancer my wife claims that i have inherited my mother's determination and warrior spirit and then this two words to really wrap up the impact that his mother had on his life she encouraged so i So I want to read you a quote, a note that I wrote to myself when I was listening to that Tim Ferriss podcast with the interview with James Dyson. And he says, this is James Dyson talking. He says, in long distance running, there's a thing called the pain barrier. There's a point three quarters of the way through the race where it's really starting to hurt and you can't see the end and you want to give up you go through that process with every invention with every

Starting point is 00:22:48 technological breakthrough it looks brilliant at the end because from where you because the difference from where you started and where you ended up there's such a difference yeah there's such a big leap so it looks like an act of brilliance but it wasn't it was just hard work and so he's talking about and now going back to this book, he's talking about what running taught him. And I'm going to tell you what this reminded me of two other founders that we've talked about in the past. Running also taught me to overcome the pain barrier. When everyone else feels exhausted, that is the opportunity to accelerate whatever the pain and win the race. Stamina and determination with creativity are needed to overcome seemingly impossible difficulties

Starting point is 00:23:25 and i double underline that that section that is that part of the sentence rather whatever the pain that is the opportunity to accelerate whatever the pain and win the race and there's a quote that i uh that i keep and i two quotes that i constantly remind myself of. And one first comes from Arnold Schwarzenegger and the second comes from the founder of Four Seasons, Izzy Sharp. So this is Arnold. He says, you experience pain and you just go on and on. That's what makes you grow. That is what divides one from becoming a champion

Starting point is 00:23:58 and one from not being a champion. If you can't go through this pain barrier, forget it. That is what most people lack having the guts to go in and say i will go through and i don't care what happens it doesn't matter because it's all worth it and then the founder of four seasons again you know both both of these have had both these people have wonderfully and let's include j in there, but all three of these people had wonderfully productive lives, had a list of great accomplishments that they can point to with satisfaction. And they all say the same thing. And so the founder of Four Seasons says, excellence is often just a capacity for taking pain. So the same lesson that James Dyson

Starting point is 00:24:43 has learned from running, he applied to his career now he's going to talk about this experience is the best teacher wait to see how he redoes he rethinks college and he really like he's putting his money where his mouth is here visceral experience is a powerful teacher learning by trial and error our experimentation can be exciting the lessons that you learn are deeply ingrained learning by failure is a remarkably good way of gaining knowledge. Failure is to be welcomed rather than avoided or feared. It's part of learning. It should not be feared by the engineer or scientist or indeed by anyone else.

Starting point is 00:25:16 Okay, so I'm fast-forwarding the story. He's now at art school. He's on his own. So he says he's living in London. I was now self-reliant. I had no one to turn to. And then he talks about, and this is something he does throughout the entire book over and over again. He talks about all the principles that he learned from previous product makers.

Starting point is 00:25:36 So while he's in London, he doesn't have a lot of money. So to get around, he has a little Honda motorcycle that's called the Super Cub. And he says, and then a lot of the things he learned about this wonderful product, he tried to apply to his own products later on. They mentioned the invention of the engineer Sochiro Honda, most likely mispronouncing his first name, who I greatly admire for his addiction to the continuous improvement of products. So this is the Super Cub.

Starting point is 00:26:07 The Super Cub was simplicity itself to own and ride. This was an early example of an inventive manufacturer taking an existing product, which is exactly what James does, in this case, the low-cost motorcycle, and transforming it into a much better and much more attractive proposition than anything available at that time. So I think that sentence is a description of James's MO, take an existing product and transform it into a much better and more attractive proposition than anything else that's available. Honda's genius

Starting point is 00:26:40 was to think against the grain while focusing on continuous improvement. And those are two principles that James lives by. He says difference for the sake of it. You have to go. You cannot build a product that's just like everybody else's. You have to go against the grain, not only because it's better, but because it's different, even if it wasn't better. And then the second principle that he talks about over and over again, he's like, listen, you always should be perpetually dissatisfied with your product because everything in the world can always be improved. And so he's talking about his life in art school.

Starting point is 00:27:07 This is where he meets the love of his life. Deidre, they're still married to this day. So this is on his wife. And then just decades of struggle. It says up until quite recently, Deidre, Deidre, Deidre, I think, had has had to put up with a perpetual lack of funds. She made clothes for herself and sometimes for our children. To save money, we grew our own vegetables. Craziest of all, during the first 30 years of our marriage,

Starting point is 00:27:31 she agreed unselfishly, and so typically of her, to keep putting her signature to endless bank guarantee forms in front of solicitors, signing away all of our possessions. If we had, he's talking about multiple times in his career, he had to do personal guarantees and use his house as collateral to get money to build his products. And if his company failed, his family would be homeless. If we had defaulted on the bank loans, we should have been evicted from our, we would have been evicted from our home. She has a mild manner, but is not one to give in or give up.

Starting point is 00:28:07 And that's another thing that, again, you'll see when you read biographies. The advice they give and their approach to life is vastly different than the stuff you'll hear everybody else talk about. And this idea, Arnold was the same way, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, over and over again. They don't believe in plan B. They're like, they have a backup plan. It's ridiculous. We burn the boats and we either go forward or we die. And James says, so listen, I had no plan B. It had to work. I pinned everything on it. I bet the house literally. And so now he's talking about, there's a bunch of teachers that he had that expanded his mind and a bunch of heroes they introduced him to, which which was very helpful throughout his career. And then he just learns that because the people he's studying at art school and the people he's admiring, he's about to meet his his his the greatest mentors ever going to have in his life.

Starting point is 00:28:59 But he just realizes that, like a lot of these people didn't have experience to do what they did. Right. And so they and so he translates that. He's like, well, all these great inventors, like they didn't have experience necessarily in the field before they had this radical invention. He's like, so why am I hiring people that only have experience? And so he talks about this. And the great thing about this book is there's so many times like each chapter has to do with a particular part in his life. And this time is an art school. But he goes on like these rants. is there's so many times like each chapter has to do with a particular part in his life and this time he's in art school but he goes on like these rants and so i'll be reading a for a few pages going on a rants kind of just nodding along my head because everything he's saying like i i'm inclined to either if i don't even agree like empathize with and then i'm like oh wait we're

Starting point is 00:29:38 we're he's now going back in in time in his life i forgot where we were it's just very interesting so it says says, and this is the case, like he's now he's talking about art school, but he's fast forwarding into what he learned in art school and how he applies it to his business, which I thought was, you know, very useful. At Dyson, we don't particularly value experience. It tells you how things should be, it tells you how things should be done when we are much more interested in how things shouldn't be done. If you want to pioneer and invent new technology, you need to step into the unknown.

Starting point is 00:30:10 And in that realm, experience can be a hindrance. So he's got a tutor, like a teacher at the art school he's at. And he said, he made me think that anything was possible. And then now he's going to actually name this other one. One of my teachers, Tony Hunt, did more than anyone at the time to turn me on to engineering and to make the connection between design, engineering, art, and science. So he was an art student. He didn't realize that he could apply his artistic tendencies to actually solving real problems. And the way you do that is

Starting point is 00:30:38 by engineering and manufacturing a new product, right? Tony was as passionate about the aesthetics of structures as he was about how they worked and were made. Actually, these things all went together. So he's realizing, wait a minute, you don't have to silo this knowledge. You can learn ideas from design, engineering, art, and science and combine them. This perspective is very similar. It's not at all dissimilar to what we just learned with Steve Jobs and inside Steve's brain, where he's like, I don't really view art, technology, and science as different things. I think they're the exact same thing. Tony taught us that structures was architecture, that good buildings are defined by the structure that holds them up rather than by the style.

Starting point is 00:31:17 I was also really taken by the work of Buckminster Fuller, who he learned about Buckminster Fuller through Tony. And he says, Buckminster Fuller had demonstrated he learned about Buckminster Fuller through Tony. And he says, Buckminster Fuller had demonstrated, especially with his domes, that architecture and structures were indeed synonymous. Fuller himself was an eternal optimist. James describes himself as the same. His way of thinking as wonderful as it was contrary. He aimed to turn conventional thinking concerning architecture, homes, cars, land use, and the ways we might live upside down and inside out. That's the exact same way that James approaches his products. He wants to turn them upside down and inside out. He drew heavily for inspiration from the aircraft industry that necessarily sought lightness in his machines, or in their machines.

Starting point is 00:31:59 Just add lightness became Fuller's motto. And so James does something really smart here. He makes the connection by what he's learning from Buckminster Fuller's motto. And so James does something really smart here. He makes the connection by what he's learning from Buckminster Fuller. He's like, wait, those principles apply to making everyday products too. I could see that structural engineering would come to dominate architecture. I also understood that this would be true of products too. And it's while he's in school, he's designing this project. It's like this mushroom shaped theater. He tries to go raise money for it. And this is where he winds up through a project he's actually meets his mentor and he says uh the project did introduce

Starting point is 00:32:30 me though to jeremy fry the inventor and the engineer who more than anyone else encouraged me to think for myself and to just do it and then we see again he's talking about all the stuff he learned from jeremy and then uh that how he uses those same ideas that Jeremy did in his company, in Fry's company that James uses in his. Jeremy asked me to engineer, prototype, and sell a glass fiber C truck. As an art student just beginning, I was offered a job as head of a new marine division for Jeremy's successful engineering company. I jumped at the opportunity. So that's what he talks about this later on. This I'm going to hire for intelligence and enthusiasm over experience every single time, because that's what Jeremy did. He let me run this company. And I was a young kid for five years. And the experience that I got without him micromanaging me

Starting point is 00:33:22 was just invaluable. And he wound up proving he could do it. Like young people, James's point is like young people are way more capable if we actually give them an opportunity to show us what they're capable of instead of babying them. And so he talks about this here. I'm still amazed that Jeremy Fry entrusted me with the task of developing and selling the C truck. How well equipped was I as a designer and engineer?

Starting point is 00:33:43 Jeremy Fry taught me because he sees his whole point. He's like, I didn't have any experience doing this stuff. Jeremy Fry taught me. This is such a fantastic thought, too. He taught me without saying a word that each day is a form of education. When I set up on my own in my late 20s, I had to teach myself an awful lot about so many things before I made success with my dual cyclone vacuum cleaner. Another lesson from Jeremy. I knew nothing about selling. Jeremy Fry convinced me that I was the right person for the job.

Starting point is 00:34:16 Quote from Fry here. You know the C truck inside and out. Every nut and bolt. You've made it. You were the best person to sell it. And that's another one of James's idea that he pushes really hard. He's like the person that like there's no better person that can sell your own product than the person that actually made it. You know everything about it.

Starting point is 00:34:34 You care more about it. You've thought longer and harder than any other person on the planet about your product. Why are you not the one selling it? Which is what I did for the best part of the next five years. And then here he goes again on the importance of having role models. I made up my mind that what I really wanted to be was a manufacturer. I wanted to make new things, things that might seem strange and not things that you make because you know they will sell. The ultimate challenge, I suppose, was to design, make, and sell inventive and wholly new products. To do this, you need to be more than a designer and engineer. You need control over the whole process.

Starting point is 00:35:09 Just as my heroes, Honda, Andre Citron, and I looked that word up. That's how it's pronounced on YouTube, but it's not spelled that way. And Akio Morito. It's amazing how influential. That's the founder of Sony. Founder's number 102, if you haven't listened to that podcast, and just buy the book. His book is fantastic. He's influenced James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs.

Starting point is 00:35:31 Like, I mean, it tells you everything you need to know, right? He was extremely influential. And the book is hilarious because he's extremely aggressive and confident. And it comes through in his writing. It's fantastic. I had observed that designers work on what manufacturers and clients ask them to design and this held no appeal so he's like i don't want clients i want customers um and he's like i want i don't want you telling me what to make like i want to make it tell you why it's valuable and then if you like it buy it um so

Starting point is 00:35:58 he says rather grandly i had designed i decided i wanted to be the one developing the technology engineering and design of a product and making and marketing it too. How extremely, so he wants to be an engineer, or should be an entrepreneur is what he's saying there, right? How extremely fortunate I was to be able to discuss this with Jeremy and a genius of a mentor and how our heroes like Andre Citron had been able to design revolutionary new products and make a success of them i was left with a burning ambition to emulate these designer engineers like citron and i i don't know it's so johnis if this is the guy that designed the mini so his first name is alec alec is so johnis i don't know how to pronounce his last name. Even if you don't know, you obviously know his design. The Mini Cooper is one of the, or the Mini, I guess, is one of the most famous automotive designs of all time. But you've definitely heard, or you most likely have heard one of his quotes.

Starting point is 00:36:55 And he's the guy that famously said, a camel is a horse designed by committee, which I've heard many people repeat over and over again. I actually watched a video of Alec on YouTube. And it's just remarkable. Just in a few minutes, I think the video was like 10 minutes long. And the way he talks, I'm like, that's the proto James Dyson. Because he talks about, he's like, no, your product should look weird. Like, it should be different for the sake of it. He talked, just a lot of the ideas that, you know, we credit or that I learned from James Dyson. I'm like, oh, like, now I see where they're coming from. It's fantastic. All right. So this is why this is where we just get into this. And again, this is like an autobiography, but it's really a call to arms. I love what going quoting the founder of Shopify again. He's just

Starting point is 00:37:39 like, you know, like, oh, you're going to compete with Amazon. He's like, Amazon's building an empire. He's like, I'm trying to arm the rebels. And that just gets me fired up. I feel that's what James is doing with this book. It's like, let's arm the rebels. Let's entice an entire new generation of people to make products, to make things. That's the best way to make a difference in the world. Because a product makes somebody's life better. Hopefully it solves a problem, right?

Starting point is 00:38:01 And so it's a call to arms. This is like this full-throated defense. He's like, all these people are putting us down, saying what we do is like, oh, it's dirty work or it's not creative. It's like bullshit. That's not true at all. And so a lot of this he's going to he's focused on like why Britain has this this this this perspective. But, you know, there's there's some of this this perspective of in america in the country i live in and i think there's other places like so even if he uses the word britain i think we should we should think about this in terms of like whatever society you happen to live in like our community living like is this the thought process pervasive and how we can counteract this because we need you know uh millions and millions and millions more entrepreneurs.

Starting point is 00:38:46 So he says, I happen to find factories and production lines, romantic places. They are truly exciting. I like making things. And to be a good manufacturer, you really have to. He says there's been all too little incentive to innovate during the years in which Britain had an easy time selling run of the-the-mill manufactured goods to its imperial territory. So he's saying once Britain lost its empire after World War II, like we got fascinated with financial services, creative industries. He's like, listen, we do those well. That's fantastic. But we cannot – and when we're celebrating those, we cannot denigrate making things, like in factories, making things with our hands. He said something I never even

Starting point is 00:39:25 thought of. Let me go back to my notes from the interview he did with Tim Ferriss, which just popped to my mind while I'm talking to you about this. He says, making the product with your own hands is terribly important. Let me back up. So he's talking about, he's like, listen, engineers at Dyson, we don't hire, like you have to make your own prototype. You's not testers. He says, you don't give it to someone else to build. You go and build it yourself. This is exactly what Farai made him do when he was young, right? He's still doing it to this day. It's through the building of the prototype that you experience failure.

Starting point is 00:39:54 You learn how you might change and improvement. And he says, making the product with your own hands is terribly important. We were getting, this is the thought that blew my mind. We were given two hands and a brain. You should use both at the same time. Using hands using your hands is not a lowly activity. It's useful. Man has always done it. So anyways, let's go back to what he said about it's like, listen, I like working factories, you want to make products like you should want to do this. He says high quality manufacturing mattered very much indeed.

Starting point is 00:40:29 And this is where he goes into comparing the historical like the historical benefit of manufacturing in Britain compared to how it's like. He's like, how do you think we got rich? How do you think we got rich? High quality manufacturing mattered very much indeed. Yet there was very little little precious little of it. Why was this? One reason, following a spate of innovation from the Industrial Revolution, is that the wealthy sons of what had been mostly artisans, our lower middle class first generation industrialists, shipped off to school, immersed in classical culture and taught to hunt, fish and shoot and shoot and to look. This is so good. And to look down on the very world that had allowed their ascendancy from makers to squires.

Starting point is 00:41:19 That reminds me of that that that little clip from Game of Thrones. I always reference where Bronn is asking the two Lannister brothers, who was it? Who were your ancestors that made your family rich? Were they fancy lads in silk? No, they were not. And so his point is like the industrial magnets, the manufacturers were the ones that made the wealth. Then when they got wealthy, they shipped their kids off to be immersed in classical culture. They come out of that environment looking down on the very world that allowed their ascendancy from makers to squires. So then he's talking about, listen to what we're actually, he's like,

Starting point is 00:41:56 anything to do with politics, the military, law, established church, the arts, and making money for money with as little as effort as possible was good. Making anything by hand and far worse by machinery in factories was very bad form indeed. And he says, like, this is our downfall. We cannot do this. When I was at school, one of the worst things teachers could say to you, as some did to me, about my lack of academic progress was you'll end up working in a factory. And so he's like, OK, but is that such a bad thing? And then he pulls out more of his historical knowledge. But think of the story of Paul Magus, inventor of the self-leveling hydropneumatic suspension. His invention, which was developed for Citroën, led to the struts for an aircraft and to gas-filled shock absorbers, which are two unsung inventions that have made our lives safer and more comfortable. And he's like, he's like, these two products that he made, and he started right at the age of 17, remained in production

Starting point is 00:42:50 for over 20 years. He says, and his point here is that Paul was hardly a thicko, which I guess is slang for like, moron, right? This guy was extremely intelligent. He's working a factory. And yet what could be less honorable and grubbier than making nothing? We have a history of the fast buck celebrated and making the fast buck celebrated in poetry, song, films, whereas the story of what has long been portrayed as the slow, difficult, and dirty business of making things is held up to ridicule. And then he does a great job. He's like, what has received truth and wisdom today is the exact opposite. He says, this smug sensibility served to reinforce the idea that

Starting point is 00:43:31 industry, the engineering and making of things was uncreative. And yet the industrial revolution took millions of people out of serfdom to give them homes and to create wealth for future generations. We ought to feel pride and relief that our industrial might was able to produce the technology and equipment to repel the threats of two 20th century world wars. If manufacturing has long been seen as a lowly pursuit, then selling has surely been seen as beyond the pale, even though bankers and others working in seemingly respectable financial services

Starting point is 00:44:05 are mostly salespeople by another name. And this is such a great line. Selling goes with manufacturing as wheels do with a bicycle. Products do not walk off shelves and into people's homes. And when a product is entirely new, the art of selling is needed to explain it, what it is, how it works, and why you might need and want it. And so we're still in the chapter on the sea truck. Do you see what I mean here? Like he's, he's giving a narrative of his life. And then he goes on these rants, these extremely passionate rants, because he's like, we have this exactly backwards. He's like making things as noble. Learning how to sell is noble. Making products that make people's lives better is noble. It's not dirty.

Starting point is 00:44:48 It's not to be looked down upon. We need more people doing this, not less. So he says selling can be noble and exciting. Jeremy Fry taught me. So he's talking about like now, like how to sell. Jeremy taught me not to pressure people into buying, but to ask them a lot of questions about what they did, how they worked, and what they might expect of a new product. I learned that most people don't really know exactly what they want, or if they do, it's only from what they know what happens to be available or possible at the time. That's what he's saying. You need to show them new possibilities, new ideas,

Starting point is 00:45:18 and new products, and explain the products as lucidly as possible. You also need to listen to your customers, aiming to improve products whenever necessary and simply for improvement's sake. So that's another thing, difference for the sake of it, improvement for the sake of it. Two main messages from the life and career of James Dyson. Dyson's advertising focuses on how our products are engineered and how they work rather than on gimmicks and snappy sales line. And that's another main thing that he talks about over and over again in the book is that there's nothing wrong with advertising, marketing. These things are needed. If your products literally improve the lives of your

Starting point is 00:45:54 customers, then you have a moral obligation to get good at that, right? And sales and marketing is just the art of selling more products. And he's like, but the fundamental aspect to your sales and marketing should be education. People are receptive. If you explain here, here's the problem. You know, you got this bag that's clogged. You got, you're leaving dirt on the floor. You can't see it. Here's the solution I came up with. Look, I'm vacuuming. The cyclone is much more powerful. Look at all. He has the, the, the, the area where the dust collects that bin is clear. Look, you see the difference. And he's like, people will respond. My products were four times as expensive as my competitors. the area where the dust collects, that bin is clear. Look, you see the difference. And he's like, people will respond. My products were four times as expensive as my competitors. And yet I outsold them. I sold more than they did at four times the price because of this. So

Starting point is 00:46:34 educate them. I really like that idea. I still find myself putting into practice at Dyson some of the same things Jeremy said and did when I worked for him half a century ago. He believed in taking on young people with no experience because this way he employed those with curious, unsullied, and open minds. He believed, most of all, in the power of enthusiasm. He was a natural teacher. And that's just another main lesson. I can tell you from reading over 200 of these biographies now, the best leaders to ever live, they think of themselves as teachers. And I think if we adapt that mentality to our work, it's like I'm just teaching everybody around me. I'm teaching them my philosophy, teaching them what I've learned.

Starting point is 00:47:15 He's teaching, in James' case, teaching them how to manufacture, how to think about engineering. And again, he's not telling you do A through Z. It's like these are the principles. Now go off and experiment and and add to them it's very fascinating um so saying jeremy was always happier making things in the machine shop than sitting around a boardroom um he he was interested in anyone enthusiastic who wanted to learn he loathed arrogance and experts by which he meant those who want you to believe that they know everything about a subject when the inventive mind knows instinctively that there's always further questions to be asked

Starting point is 00:47:48 and new discoveries to be made. And he continues to expound on the importance of learning from the careers of the designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs that came before you. He's talking about what he learned from Fry. Now, he's got a bunch of people. There's like three or four people here. They all shared, and he's telling us did they, what did they do similarly? And what, how is that different from how most people approach their work? So the four people

Starting point is 00:48:13 he's talking about here, it's Jeremy Fry, Alex, excuse me, Alec, Alec Mini. I'm just going to call him Mini. So, you know, the product, cause I don't have to announce his name. Then you have Buckminster Fuller, which he mentions a bunch of times. And then Alex Moulton, who created a new Better Bicycle. So it says, all of them shared an independence of mind, a hard work ethic, and a drive to succeed. They sought lightness in everything they made. And then they all had the desire to create a better way of an existing product and so he's using a case of this guy alex mootin uh alex wanted to create a better bicycle

Starting point is 00:48:51 it turned ideas he turned ideas and see he says this over and over again he turned ideas about what exactly a bicycle ought to be on its head now back to alec minnie alec minnie's view was market research's bunk and that one should never copy the opposition. Never copy the opposition. Exactly what James says. Edwin Land said the same thing. I've told you over and over again. He had a very personal motto. Never do anything anybody else could do. The best selling British car of all time is the Mini. If market research had ruled Alex's roost at BMC, it would never have existed. So he continues his train of thought for a while. And then he, this is really, I'm just going to pull out for you because

Starting point is 00:49:28 there, there's so many examples where there's just a market is, especially when you're creating something new and unusual, the market for that is usually larger than you can predict. And so he talks about what he learned from Akio Morita on the Walkman. Price at $150, the Walkman wasn't cheap. Sony hoped to sell 5,000 Walkmans a month. They sold 50,000 in the first two months. By the time the production ended in 2010, they had sold more than 400 million. When the Walkman came out, the press ridiculed it, but the market responded. People saw the attractive little device and heard it in action and fell in love with it. And so as he's continuing to work on a C truck, learning from Fry, he realizes, I have to go on my own.

Starting point is 00:50:12 I have to become an entrepreneur. And even he says, looking back, this is a crazy idea. I felt driven no matter how much I respected Jeremy and enjoyed working with him to go off on my own. In 1974, with two young children, substantial debt, and a whopping mortgage, I stepped out of an exciting job and a salary into the unknown. Against the grain, I was going to be a manufacturer. I was also going to be something else. I was also going to be something else key to successful invention. I was going to be an entrepreneur. And so then he talks about like, what was the opinion of entrepreneurs at this time? Cause I think they're just weird people, most of which are like kind of scammy. And so he says to those of us coming from an art school

Starting point is 00:50:55 background, uh, entrepreneurs were these stereotypes that were milking the system for as much money as they possibly could in our naive and inaccurate way. We thought of an entrepreneur as someone who exploits other people. This was the era of big corporations. There were very few individuals setting out to manufacture new and interesting things. Jeremy Fry, however, taught me that if you have a good idea for a new product, you engineer, prototype, manufacture, market, and then sell it. This makes you an entrepreneur. Jeremy showed me that far from being pirates, entrepreneurs could be creators and makers of better products, however odd. And so James becomes an entrepreneur because he has an idea for a new wheelbarrow. He calls this thing the Barbaro. And it came because

Starting point is 00:51:36 he was doing a bunch of restoration work for his house. And the wheelbarrow he was using kept getting stuck. It would run into things. It wasn't very maneuverable. He's like, how the hell have people been using this all the time? And so the note I left myself is number one, passionate anger. And number two, so many things in the world are like this. So there's opportunity hidden in plain sight. The more I used it, the more I realized that nobody had really thought about these problems or bothered to fix them for a very long time. And here we see he's going to use the same term that we just saw a bunch of his heroes use.

Starting point is 00:52:12 I wanted to change all of this to rethink the wheelbarrow from scratch. And so now he does it. He do that for the wheelbarrow. He does it for the vacuum cleaner. He does it for his entire business, all the different products they make. But as you'll see later, he does it for college. This is such a profound idea. Just take something that's important to you and rethink it from scratch. What not not what everybody else is doing with it. That's not important. Like what what do you think it should be in your heart of hearts? What the hell should it be? And then start from there. That is so, again, simple idea. Very profound, so, so hard to do. Now, I'm just going to pull something out. The ballbarrow he's doing, this is just, a lot can change in a lifetime. So he's doing a photo

Starting point is 00:52:56 shoot for the ballbarrow at this place called Doddington Park. It's like this massive estate. I think it was built in like the 1600s. Okay. We did a photo shoot one day at Doddington Park. His wife is pushing a barbara around the grounds for a camera. We could have never guessed then that a quarter of a century later, Doddington Park would be our family home. 1974, right? He goes and shoots marketing material for the product. 1979, the company fails. 2003, he buys the place. This is like 300 acres, 52,000 square feet. It's beautiful. I looked up, if you want, Doddington Park is what it's called. You can Google image search if you happen to be interested. But a lot can change in a lifetime. 1974, taking pictures here. 2003, I own the place. So it's while he's manufacturing the ball barrel.

Starting point is 00:53:57 Again, I'm not going to repeat too much, but I do want to point out, like, there was a series of mistakes that he made. And he made and then his partners made, which is why he doesn't want partners. But this actually wind up, he had to make these mistakes because they laid the foundation for his empire. So the first mistake there, at the time, interest rates, they're having to borrow a lot of money. So they have to, they're like, oh, now it's time to get a proper factory. And so like, how do we do that? We don't have any money.

Starting point is 00:54:16 Okay, well, let's get a bank loan. Well, the bank loans are like 25%, 22% interest. So it says, I found a new factory. These new overhead expenses meant extra borrowing from the bank at a time when interest rates were at 22%. At the same time, we experienced a bunch of problems. So they had to dry coat the frames of the ball bearings, right? And so the dry powder paint is getting everywhere.

Starting point is 00:54:34 And it's causing there's so much material that's in the air that has to be filtered out that they wind up having to stop production every hour. And so it says every hour, the filter clogged, the production line had to be stopped so that the cloth could be taken down and shaken out. Well, that's a hugely expensive problem you need to fix, right? So I asked around, what did smart people use? Cyclones, they answered. And so he goes to study what a cyclone is, realizes, hey, we can use this to take out, to filter out the material that's coming from this dry coating process, right? The cyclone collected dust all day and none of it, with none of it coming out and crucially never clogging. And so I'm skipping over massive parts of this.

Starting point is 00:55:15 I just want to give you one sentence that's important why I'm reading this section to you. The fact that mistakes were the foundation of his future empire. He just didn't know it yet. Looking at the cyclone gave me the idea for a revolutionary vacuum cleaner. So he gets kicked out of this company. I just want to push, I'm going to pull out the ideas, right? This is very fascinating. So he's talking about the valuable lessons that he learned. And he's specifically telling us, he's like, I want you to learn this. I was learning much that was to be useful when I set up on a much larger scale at Dyson, 15 years later. I was also putting into practice ideas I'd learned directly from Jeremy Fry and indirectly from Alec Minney.

Starting point is 00:55:51 Don't copy the opposition. Don't worry about market research. Alec might have just well said, follow your own star. And this is indeed what successful entrepreneurs do. The problem, though, was that I wasn't following my own star. And this proved to be the very reason why my first company was not a success. My very first consumer product was a failure, but one from which I learned valuable lessons. There was a lesson about assigning patents. He was the one that made the invention, but he gave away the patent to the company instead of keeping it himself. Another was about not having shareholders. I learned the importance of having absolute control

Starting point is 00:56:28 of my company and not undervaluing it. I knew how to make and sell, but not what it took to look after myself. From now on, though, I was determined not to let go of my own inventions, patents, and company. Today, Dyson is a global company. I own it, and this really matters to me. It remains a private company. And so now let me give you a summary of James Dyson's life at 32. At the end of the ball barrel experience, I was penniless again with no job and no income. I had three adorable children, a large mortgage to pay, and nothing to show for the past five years of toil. This was a very low moment and deeply worrying for Deidre and me. It was deeply upsetting too. My confidence took a big blow and it would take some years

Starting point is 00:57:20 to regain it. So he's in a bad position. He's got a lot of pressure, but he also does, like he's analyzing this rather intelligently. He's one, he's looking at the bright side of things. He found a market that lacks innovation. And then he gives us a list of ingredients that you're going to need. So he says, we had huge energy and I knew what I wanted to do and was getting on with it. Here was a field, the vacuum cleaner industry, where there had been no innovation for years, so the market ought to be ripe for something new. For the following 15 years, I lived in debt. That's wild. This might not sound encouraging to young inventors with an entrepreneurial spirit, yet if you believe you can achieve

Starting point is 00:58:00 something, then you have to give the project 100% of your creative energy. You have to believe that you'll get there in the end. You need determination, patience, and willpower. And so that idea, it's like, listen, this is not encouraging. This doesn't sound encouraging. Yet if you believe you can achieve something, then you have to give the project 100% of your creative energy. You have to believe that you'll get there in the end. So Henry Ford has this quote that he said a long time ago, that if he ever wanted to sabotage his competition, he would fill their staff with experts. And so James definitely echoes that philosophy in this book over and over again. And he's like, listen, like Jeremy Fry, I am

Starting point is 00:58:43 cautious of experts. And one of the reasons, of reasons is he goes and sees like the foremost expert on. So he says, this guy was considered the leading expert on the subject of cyclonic extraction. He was a very nice chap, but he told me that getting it down to the level. So he's talking about the level of microns that he would need for a domestic vacuum cleaner that a cyclone is impossible to do so. James, through his empirical chap, and he told me getting it down that low was impossible. Experts tend to be confident that they have all the answers, and because of this trait, they kill new ideas. This is why I have long admired engineers like Alec Minney and Andre Citron, who questioned orthodoxy, experimented, took calculated risks,

Starting point is 00:59:42 stood on the edge of error, and got things right. And when they got there, they continued to ask questions. And so I think that's the best way to understand his skepticism of experts. It's like, I'm all for you accumulating a lot of knowledge. But this idea where now I can stop, I haven't figured out that you stopped asking questions is where James is like, no, that's where you're messed up. That's where you actually got it wrong. And, you know, just this idea is like, no, that's impossible. But it wasn't. So something, another principle James learns from this is like, innovation is going to come outside of an industry. The incentives are too strong to overdo. Like if you're trying to build something new, instead of trying to improve an

Starting point is 01:00:23 existing industry, just build a new solution completely. And so there's a song, you know, cream, cash rules everything around me. One, something I learned from Charlie Munger is it's IREAM, incentives rule everything around me, incentives determine behavior, because he's at this time, he's not manufacturing a vacuum cleaner, he has this idea, he's like, okay, I'm just going to license it, like, I have a working prototype, let me go to these existing vacuum manufacturers, they're going to see it superior, they're going to jump all over my, my license, I'm going to make a ton of money. And I can keep inventing products. That was his initial plan. And he goes to one after another. And they're like, not interested at all, even

Starting point is 01:01:00 though it's, it's, he can demonstrate it's superior to their existing product. And he realized they're not interested in selling a bagless vacuum cleaner because they make so much money selling bags. The customer might want a solution to this problem if you can educate them that it's a problem to begin with, but the existing industry doesn't want you to fix this problem and take the money away from them. I learned that none of them was interested in doing something new and different. They were more interested in defending the vacuum cleaner bag market, which is worth more than $500 million in Europe alone at this time. So I'm fast forwarding. I said he was what, 32? I gave you an update, 32. Now he's 44. He's around 44 years old at this point. And this is another major turning point in his life.

Starting point is 01:01:49 And it really does speak to the importance of making sure you have the right people around you. He would not have been this successful without the support, the unyielding support of his wife. And it's just remarkable that she endured all this, right? So this is the lawsuit. It talks about like amway he signed a he signed a license agreement with amway in america they wind up um they wind up seeing his like getting his technology then canceling the license agreement suing him and then copying his technology so there have there's this huge fight and he's just like, I give up. I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do it

Starting point is 01:02:25 anymore. I can't. It's over. I just, I cannot keep going. And his wife is like, you have to. After five years of this bruising and bankrupting lawsuit, I was ready to pack it all in and settle the case. Deidre, however, stood firm and told me that I mustn't give up this was well judged shortly after our litigator called me amway have indicated that they're willing to settle i could go home more importantly than this i because he was having to constantly fly from from britain to america to do these depositions i think in michigan and it was just like weeks of just every day from like nine to five for weeks sitting in a deposition. At that time, his company's bleeding money.

Starting point is 01:03:08 If he's in a deposition, he's not he's not able to sell more licenses, not able to build more products. He's literally bleeding the single loan inventor dry. Right. More importantly than this, I could regain my life. The black cloud that had hung over our family life for all too many years was lifted. So he's saying like they got a little bit of settlement money, but we weren't rich. In fact, the award didn't even cover my share of the legal costs, but at least the costs had stopped. Instead of worrying whether or not we are going to be bankrupt. Remember, 44 years old at this point, there's nothing in his life that's going to say that he's going to build one of the most successful companies in human history nothing it does not look good at this point but he had the

Starting point is 01:03:51 reason i'm bringing this up to you and the reason i keep trying to repeat like some of this he had to go through this to get to that point i thought about um i was actually thinking this morning um about what steve jobs said because i had read over my highlights from inside steve's brain and he's talking about this is in 1998 or 1999 when he said this he's just like i i'm killing myself like i'm working from 6 a.m to 10 at night every day and he's like i'd be lying to you if i didn't know like if i didn't think I might be making a mistake. And so I thought about that. I'm like, let's pause right there. 98, 1999 maybe.

Starting point is 01:04:32 Steve Jobs says, forget it. This pain that I'm feeling, this struggle, I'm tired, I'm stressed, I'm full of doubt, I don't know if I can save this company, I don't know what's going to happen next i should just go home i can be ceo ceo of pixar i'm already that's fine i can get or even if you're not steve jobs you could get another job whatever the case is right and what would have happened if he did that there's no ipod there's no iPhone. There's no iPad. There's none of that. 90% or whatever the number is of Steve Jobs accomplishments in life were after that period. That period was like this. I can't do this anymore. I have doubts. This is that's true for James Dyson, where I'm at in the book. It's the same thing. I want to give

Starting point is 01:05:27 up. I can't do this anymore. I'm going to go bankrupt. Amway has pulverized me. And his wife is like, you can't. You have to. You can't settle. You got to keep fighting. So it says, but at least the cost had stopped. Instead of worrying whether or not we were going to be bankrupt, we could now think of the future. Almost all of our license agreements had failed and precious time was wasted. Instead of relying on other companies to make our technology, why not reverse the decision? And why not reverse the decision, meaning make it ourselves? We would take on these competitors that were content selling bags and their loss of suction, and we would be free to determine our own future, development, and designs. Instead of feeling dread about taking on the mountainous task of becoming a manufacturer,

Starting point is 01:06:14 we felt liberated. This was the moment we decided to go against market trends and to concentrate on an upright, cyclonic vacuum cleaner that we would make ourselves. There would be no more struggling with other companies. Now, there's definitely a lot more struggling, but not with other companies. Their patents, their executives, and their lawyers. We were going to do it our way, alone and independently. And so this is where he has to go all in.

Starting point is 01:06:43 At the time, he tries to raise money no one wants it he was willing to sell equity and everybody says no no we don't want to do that so that's how he winds up maintaining 100 ownership at dyson to this day because no one at the beginning wanted to invest money so he's got to raise money he's got no money but he's got a house and so he goes all in again and his wife agrees again and they wind up putting up the house and so they're now he's like i have a prototype i gotta manufacture this thing and manufacture it quickly and as soon as i have it i gotta sell the hell out of this thing um and so really it's just i'm gonna pull a couple highlights from this time the book is in way more detail fantastic part of the book because it really

Starting point is 01:07:20 goes into the very beginning of the company obviously i'm really trying to encourage you to buy and read the book so here we go i had no money for a factory uh i couldn't buy to to buy components or to do any marketing so all the money almost all the money that he had to borrow came into like tooling the actual like what what is needed to man for factories to manufacture to custom manufacture his design okay so he's like i have to look for a factory. So he winds up, there's a company that is making plastics for plastic components for his vacuum cleaner. And he realizes like, they're like, you, you guys aren't at full capacity. And this is what I mean about you have to be creative and resourceful. So it says it had very little work. I suggested that since they would be making the plastic components, perhaps we could assemble the vacuum cleaners

Starting point is 01:08:03 inside half the half of the building that they were not using. They said yes. So that solves a huge problem, right? The first production quality vacuum cleaner to bear the Dyson name started rolling off the production line in January 1993. I had already shown a working model. He starts out mail catalogs because he's a new manufacturer. He can't get into retailers. Like, what the hell is a Dyson? Like, no, I'll just sell a Hoover. But these mail order catalogs at the time were massive companies. Check this out. We'd already shown a working model to General Universal Stores, and they included it in their January 1993 catalog.

Starting point is 01:08:39 It might be hard now to recognize what big deals these were for us. GUS, which is General Universal Stores, was owned and run by Isaac Wolfson, and he was its chairman from 1932 to 1987. That guy was able to stick with that idea, huh? I drove up to their HQ to visit their buyer. He was skeptical. He then asked why he should remove a well-known brand such as Hoover from his pages to put in this unknown Dyson. My response was that your category your catalog is boring he was silent and then he agreed to buy from us because well my and that's the benefit like you know your hoover vacuum it might sell but look at it like put this weird looking almost futuristic alien looking machine next to and see

Starting point is 01:09:20 what happens and immediately start selling um but this idea where he would just dyson had that fortitude to you know like this isn't going well i need him like i need to pull out every last stop to get this guy to buy from me right now what happens once the gus buys from them their main competitors like oh gus has it so like this is important you get one to say yes and the others will follow so littlewoods this is the other mail order campaign, was both the largest family owned company in Britain and Europe's biggest private company. Because GUS was buying from us, they agreed to buy as well. And so this is the humble beginning of this company that has made him worth 10, 20, whatever billion dollars. All of this was achieved and had been accomplished in record time. It was a bit makeshift. There was a production line in half of a factory and the HQ of Dyson was a coach house, which is just like a

Starting point is 01:10:10 garage where we engineers, I think it was him and like two or three engineers at the time, where we engineers worked along with two salespeople and a personal assistant. We serviced our first vacuum cleaners in the coach house. And he talks, you know, you have to do whatever it takes is necessary. Their factory, their makeshift factory, which isn't really a factory, didn't have heating. So it was really freezing. The building was ice cold in the winter. When we needed more space, we bought a huge tent, secondhand tent, the size of a parking lot. So I can't, I don't have money to build a building, but I have a tent and we can

Starting point is 01:10:45 work out there. And he wraps this up here. This was a big uncertain moment for me. Within 18 months, we was, the vacuum cleaner was the biggest seller in the UK market. And this is where we get his first tiny, tiny bit of sense of relief. We were now selling quite well across a good spectrum of outlets and i knew we would survive deidre and i could relax a bit i had various degrees of perseverance underpinned by a kind of naive intelligence by which i mean following your own star along a path where you stop to question both yourself and expert opinion along the way a willingness he's talking about what he, like the ingredients that led to this,

Starting point is 01:11:27 what he was willing to do. A willingness to keep questioning the validity of an idea or indeed a product might sound ingenious in a world of slick global business, or ingenuous rather, but I can say it worked for me. And I think it can continue to work for inventors, engineers, designers, and makers in the future. I have been warned, for example, that being at least three times as expensive as most other vacuum cleaners,

Starting point is 01:11:54 that the DC-01, his very first vacuum cleaner, would be too expensive. But it sold really well. The sheer cost of producing it, and as a result the high price tag, was mitigated by the fact that those choosing it recognized its technological advantage over existing designs. Fifteen years of invention, frustration, and determination were finally beginning to pay off. I was now a proper manufacturer, thrilling to the sight and sound of production line, thrilling to the sight and the sound of a production line in full swing. I found it impressive, impressive, staggering even. I still do. Now think about that. The things you work the hardest for bring the most satisfaction. Think about how good he must have felt at this point of his life after 15 years of frustration.

Starting point is 01:12:48 And it's amazing that he still feels the same way 30 years later. And then he starts thinking, okay, how do I find more customers? And this is just a great question for us to ask. How best could I share my enthusiasm for what I knew was a great and innovative product? The answer to that question is where you're going to find new customers. How are more customers? How best could I share my enthusiasm for what I knew was a great and innovative product? So eventually he gets it into a few retailers. And there's a couple things happening on this page. Number one, the benefit of educating your market.

Starting point is 01:13:29 And then number two, something that keeps popping up over and over again, is treat your career as an adventure. The breakthrough was with Comet, this giant retailer, who allowed us to explain what our vacuum cleaner did on stickers on the clear bin. Even if just a few words and figures, I wanted to communicate the distinct advantages of our new technology and how our vacuum cleaners performed much better. By 1995, just two years after our launch, Dyson was turning a good profit and expanding rapidly. We had paid off the enormous bank loan and we were able to tear up the bank guarantee forms. DJ and I were enormously relieved. We could keep our home and pay off the mortgage. At the same time, we knew this was the most exciting adventure of our lives. And then James quoting Buckminster Fuller, which is what I was trying to paraphrase earlier.

Starting point is 01:14:17 You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete so there's a large chunk of the book which is all about the the new uh like the new products he made since uh you know that lapsed in the last like 20 years uh since uh the previous book that i read and i just want to pull out like there's just a couple principles it really is interesting how they go about designing products but this section like what i think something i learned, something I learned from James is he knows the value of your attention and how valuable if you can stay focused, which is very hard for most people to do, you can just accomplish a lot more.

Starting point is 01:14:56 You can make magical products. You can produce miracles. It's why Steve Jobs said that focus is saying no. That's like the best, shortest, max, the most succinct way to describe a really powerful idea. Focus is saying no. That's like the best, shortest, the most succinct way to describe which a really powerful idea. Focus is saying no. He's developing all this new technology and people are like,

Starting point is 01:15:11 hey, can we buy the technology from you? And he's like, even if this business would bring me a lot more money, it's still too expensive because it takes away our focus. That demonstrates, you know, extreme level of discipline on his part.

Starting point is 01:15:24 People often ask if we would supply other companies with our motors. Although it might be profitable for us to do so, we supply no one other than ourselves because I want Dyson engineers to be 100% focused on our next exciting motor development and not on retrofitting our motors to someone else's product. Another principle from this part in Dyson history, they're talking about designing new fans, and the note I left myself is just look at the products he makes. This is obviously a core thesis to his business, and that's why I mentioned earlier that opportunity just hides in plain sight.

Starting point is 01:16:03 You talk about fans and why are they all crappy? Why are all vacuum cleaners crappy? Why are we satisfied with the status quo? So he says, this was another one of those products that are used frequently by hundreds of millions of people, yet stuck in a technological time warp. Another one of his principles, that you increase sales by teaching. I didn't want anyone to buy our vacuum cleaner through slick advertising. I wanted them to buy it because it performed.

Starting point is 01:16:30 We could be straightforward in what we said, explaining things simply and clearly. And a lot of this he does himself because people buy from people. And it's interesting that he, like, even though he's not really an extroverted person, he says, I didn't say how brilliant my product was. I simply explained the technology because he has a fundamental understanding of the technology, even if his delivery, you know, like it doesn't have to be all polished. So I know what I'm talking about. Let me just explain what the benefit is. And what I realize is why he's doing this. He's at the same time, he's doing something that his competitors can't. And says the general idea was to show that Dyson was founded by Mr. Dyson and that he was responsible for Dyson products. He's writing this, but he's talking about like why he's doing this as opposed to just hiring a spokesman. Right. Big, long established multinationals, most of them public companies, would not be able to put forward an individual in the same way.

Starting point is 01:17:29 I want to skip way ahead because he has a large part of this book. It's the fact that he says, let me read the note. He says the West is moving too slow and is growing hostile to business. If it keeps up, Asia is going to kick our ass. Or going to kick ass, rather. So he's talking about, you know, now Dyson is headquartered in Singapore he was going to build the car he talks about that a little bit there's a whole chapter on the car in the book he winds up blowing like 700 million and realizing he can't do it but um he just talks about the difference in the attitude for getting help for business he says we came

Starting point is 01:17:59 across politicians who themselves in Singapore were often industrialists with a knowledge of manufacturing. In Westminster, the politicians in Westminster have no experience of industry and little or no interest in making things. Asia is growing at three times the rate of Western economies, whereas the EU share of world trade is declining from five to nine percent. Asia's share is rising from 16% to 25%. So I want to say, I can't remember the exact number. He said some crazy thing like, I think Dyson was still growing at like 50% a year or something like that. Don't quote me on that. I just remember thinking, wow, that's a very large number for a company that's been around for 30 years.

Starting point is 01:18:40 And he's saying this is all coming from Asian markets. And so it's a little bit about that here. Being in Singapore provides a different take on the world. If you place Singapore at the center of an atlas, you immediately understand how well it connects not just to China, Korea and Japan or to Indonesia and the Philippines, but also to India, Australia and New Zealand. And to countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh, which are growing and developing rapidly. On Singapore's doorstep is the fastest growing market area in the world. The more we became an, so he's talking about the more, now they're putting a lot of investment there, they're moving things there, they're buying parts there. So it says the more,

Starting point is 01:19:14 essentially we became an Asian company that just happened to be owned by British people. And so I'm going to pull out, he continues on this theme for quite a while. I'm going to pull out a couple of highlights for you over the next pages. In January 2019, we announced our decision to establish Dyson's global headquarters in Singapore, reflecting the fact that Asia is the center of our operations and that this has been the case for many years. While in Singapore, it has been relatively easy to find bright new graduate engineers and highly skilled workers, the same is not true in Britain. And this is why he starts Dyson University, which I'll go into in a little bit.

Starting point is 01:19:48 Because he says, like, I could hire thousands of more engineers in Britain overnight, and I can't find them. And he goes on to like, you know, we are worshipping the wrong things, worshipping being famous, worshipping being rich. We need to worship making things. Very similar to what Steve Jobs said in the 1984 interview in Playboy with Edwin Land. He's like, this guy, one of the greatest inventors of all time, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time is who we should aspire to be.

Starting point is 01:20:14 This is the role model. And he says, not a football player. I forgot the list of other things. He's like, why can't this be the role model? This is James echoing that exact same idea. Let's see, what, 40 years later. So he keeps going. There's a whole new market in India of young professionals. Dyson has become as much an Asian as it is a British business. Having started and consistently grown in Britain, we now sell over 95 percent of our products in other in our other global markets.

Starting point is 01:20:42 And so that's the difference between the first book i read and this book in that 20 years he went from almost i think 100 of his nearly 100 of his sales were in britain to now it's five percent so he talks about like we're we're we're being dumb on every level and nobody's doing anything about it he talks about 60 of the people that go to uh that that get degrees in engineering in british are from outside the EU. And he says after their studies, what does Britain do with them? We chuck them out. Why on earth would you send engineering graduates, researchers and doctorates packing when they have valuable technology at their fingertips that they take back to countries like China and use to compete against us? His point is like, why are we not employing them? Why are we not letting them stay here?

Starting point is 01:21:26 What the hell is wrong with you? So then he talks about the process of like, okay, well, I try to make things in Britain and this is the reaction I get. So we need government's help. I went to see Greg Clark, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Starting point is 01:21:41 When we asked during the meeting if he could help us in any way, he refused. I pointed out that he had just given Jaguar Land Rover $350 million for a new diesel engine plant, yet he was adamant that he could not support us. So at this time, he was trying to think of, he's like, why don't I try to make this electric car here? Eventually, he's going to have to move it to Singapore before he obviously closed the project. So he says for new, he was adamant he would not support us. The following week, I was in Singapore. I was invited to meet with the prime minister who could not have been more helpful. He introduced me to key members of his team who immediately set out about finding

Starting point is 01:22:13 land and development grants for building a factory. So this is a really helpful part of the book. It goes into way more detail than I'm going to go in here about the difference in attitude between governments. In one case, he's like he wants to build a new factory. They say, OK, it's going to be four years in Britain, four years of planning and two years of construction. He winds up building the factory in Singapore within four days. I think it's four days. They found like they within four days they found like the site. So and his point is like you if if if something is going to take you six years or four years in their case and they're doing it in four days they found like the site so and his point is like you if if something's going to take you six years or four years in their case and they're doing it in four days you are going to

Starting point is 01:22:51 lose uh so he goes and this is another example that's okay i'm meeting with you you say no i'm not gonna help you at all i get to meet and i'm not meeting with the secretary meeting with the prime minister who could not have been more helpful he introduced me members of team, who immediately set out finding land and development grants for building a factory. I came back from the trip, and then I asked for a meeting with Theresa May. She refused to see me. Given the attitude of the British government and the fact that the main market for electric cars in China, it seemed a bit silly to think of trying to make cars in England. And so this brings me to the one thing i really am impressed by what he did and it's really on

Starting point is 01:23:27 learning and how and how to rethink education today and i'm this is going to go over like 10 there's a bunch of highlights here in probably about 10 pages let me see if i can put this together in some kind of cohesive narrative for you so he says i was also going through the process he's talking about learning by doing like when he was building the 5127 prototypes and this is going to be the the story of how he winds up starting his own university because he's sick of trying to work within the bounds of what what um like these existing structure and he's like you guys that you're you're killing yourselves and you don't even know because the suicide that you're embarking on is slow moving and you don't realize you're getting your ass kicked by these other innovative hungrier companies cultures

Starting point is 01:24:14 countries it's remarkable what he does here and again what he does here is like when you think of like the importance of his main point to you and i right he's telling us rethink what you're doing rethink the product you're making rethink it. Don't just copy what everybody else is doing. There is innovations and improvements that can always be made, but you got to start with asking why. Asking why something is done that way is what stops you in your tracks, right? We don't need, he's like, we don't need more regurgitation of facts. We need people to ask, like, well, that's strange. Like, why is the vacuum cleaner like that? Why is a bicycle like that? Why can't I design a small car? Why can't I design a new university? Whatever the case is. So he says, this is where you're actually learning. And this is something

Starting point is 01:24:54 I feel like, especially when you're reading about 1800, history in 1800s, early 1900s, this idea, we put so much more emphasis on giving young people the ability to learn by doing and now we just have them sitting in there listening to rote instruction and you know wasting the primes of their life when they could be out and actually making a difference earlier so he says i was also going through a process of self-education and learning each failure taught me something and was a step forward and took it and was a step forward towards a working model i have been questioning things and learning every day since so what 25 30 years has passed since then learning by doing learning by trial and error learning by failing these are all effective forms of education

Starting point is 01:25:39 that is so i'm so glad he tied that all together like everybody knows like learning by doing learning by trial and we, we understand that. But it's just a form of education. Children love making things, and yet all too often, this innate curiosity and experimentation expressed through our hands is stamped out by the educational system that sees no virtue in such natural creativity. Because of this attitude, design and technology are not adequately covered in the school curriculum. Schools tended to be poorly equipped, and qualified teachers are few and far between. The result, aside from a woeful lack of engineers, is a commonly held view in England that engineers and technicians are somehow lower down the professional and social pecking order than bankers, YouTube influencers, and brand managers. He's going to reference, remember that, because he references the fact that this is what kids want to be.

Starting point is 01:26:30 They don't want to be, like, the same thing with Steve Jobs said, like, why isn't this what we aspire to be? And his whole point, I'm going to pull out one sentence for you because it's fantastic. You know, like, what happens if we keep on with this attitude? And he's focused on Britain. I see some of this where I live. It's probably where you live as well. I don't think it's just contained in Britain, but this is what he says. OK, let's go down this path. What's going to happen? The fourth industrial revolution is not going to dissipate anytime soon.

Starting point is 01:27:00 And the only way to win in this fourth industrial revolution, which, you know, the information age, whatever you want to call it, whatever term you want to use, is you got to turn whatever you're doing into a technology company. He's like, Dyson is not a vacuum cleaner company. It's a technology company. We have patents. We have scientists. We have engineers. We have software. We have programmers.

Starting point is 01:27:19 We have all of this. And then we just figure out ways to use a new. Basically, their thesis is how do we apply the latest technology and the best engineering to the improvement of everyday products the same process that apple uses to build some of the great you know the devices that we all happen to love or whatever the case may be james is doing that same application to you know a hair dryer a vacuum cleaner a fan a light that kind of stuff um so he i'm still in the education section though because he has this it i don't want to call it a rant because that's not stuff. So I'm still in the education section, though, because he has this. I don't want to call it a rant because that's not what it is. He's just laying out the case.

Starting point is 01:27:50 It's like we're killing ourselves. We cannot do this. Let's inspire the next generation to make things because by making things, we help solve problems. People who do well on exams in schools are not necessarily those who don't do well at work. Students are rewarded for following the train of thought set in textbooks. If they can think for themselves or question textbook knowledge, examiners can't give them marks that their original minds may well deserve. Things teachers and examiners might well disapprove of might just lead some young people towards some of the greatest designs of all time.

Starting point is 01:28:23 Children appear to be born with the desire and ability to make things, to experiment and play. This is a gift lost by all too many adults. Frank Whittle is a good example of how you don't need to be good at exams in school to change the world. Having left school at 15, he became a test pilot. His was a life of learning and tenaciousness. And he went on to invent the jet engine,

Starting point is 01:28:46 changing the course of aviation and our lives with it. Education should be about problem solving rather than retaining knowledge simply to pass exams. And we get to the climax of what he's saying here. Invention is a human imperative. And while the story of invention is littered with failures, the determination to make a success of something new, whether the printing press, the steam railway locomotive, the telephone, the television, the jet engine, the worldwide web,

Starting point is 01:29:13 and even the bagless cyclonic vacuum cleaner is not only its reward, it also brings previously unknown benefits to potentially billions of people. That is his point. We are mythologizing. We are lusting after the prestige of people that don't make anything. It is a giant distraction. The people that we need to encourage, the young people, to become engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, manufacturers. And his whole point is it doesn't have to be on a gigantic scale like dyson where they sell like 25 million products a year it could be an

Starting point is 01:29:50 individual but it's a human imperative to make things so then he starts putting his money where his mouth is so what he does is they start wind up uh they're like first they donate money and and and and knowledge to teach like existing classes right then then the method, like they didn't like the teaching methods. These are in existing schools in Britain. So they start teaching the classes at school themselves. And this is still going to reach a dead end. This is where he's going to start his university. And this is why I know this is a longer section.

Starting point is 01:30:16 This is why I'm tying this all together and why I'm so excited about it. So he says they start teaching classes at school to get kids excited about engineering invention. I just said that. At the same time, we began introducing schoolchildren to the world of ingenious inventors, engineers, and inventions. And so he's listing not only he's introducing you to the products that you might take for granted that somebody had to literally come and invent, but also the people behind those. This is so powerful. So he says we started introducing to all this. So he talks about the cat's eyes, which I'd never heard of. But, memory foam, Thomas Edison, windshield wipers,

Starting point is 01:31:08 Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who I just did a podcast on and is one of James's heroes. I think it's Founders 201. Velcro, zippers, and the smart 4-2 car. And this sentence is so fantastic because I think this is, I wonder if the vast majority of jobs that like our kids may have in the future or have not yet been to be invented but he's talking like we're getting like you can't just force people to do them you have to get excited so they take it on their own right so he says the success of the curriculum lay partly in the fact that students were excited excited about the idea that the jobs they might take up in the future had yet to be invented. So this Dyson University, which starts out as the Dyson Institute of Engineering Technology,

Starting point is 01:31:53 eventually actually becomes a university, started with a challenge. James is still trying to get cooperation in government. He goes to meet with them. He just complains, just bitches at how ineffective they are. And so it starts with a challenge. So he's's meeting with the minister of state for universities and science and it's this guy named johnson and so he's just complaining and so johnson threw down a challenge on on the shortage of engineers if i wasn't getting anywhere with the education system in my quest to raise the number of quality engineering graduates why don't i start a university of my own

Starting point is 01:32:22 and it was actually funny because he talks about it. He's like, listen, the meeting I had with this guy started badly because I went to the bathroom beforehand. I go to dry my hands and he had a foreign hand dryer. This is a government, a British government building. Geez, I don't know why I'm studying. A British government building and it has a foreign hand dryer. He's like, why aren't you using a Dyson? And so he just starts bitching and complaining and everything else and then that's when he just

Starting point is 01:32:48 got thrown down this challenge and James like I didn't even know I could do that and which is funny because this guy rethinks everything and so this is absolutely remarkable he rethought college and so he puts up a ton of money. It's like $50 million to start, which would eventually is going to turn into the Dyson University. And there's a lot more detail. I want to give you some highlights. They're just fantastic. And so he says, okay, first thing, there's no tuition. I'm paying for it. There's no tuition fees. Are undergraduates, and check this out, and you're going to sit in class for five days a week? Absolutely not. No, you will not. You're learning engineering and technology. You learn that by doing. Our undergraduates would work three days a week with Dyson on real research

Starting point is 01:33:34 projects alongside young Dyson engineers. And check this out. So there's no tuition. They're working three out of the five days a week, and they're earning a proper salary. Think about how we do everything backwards, right? These kids are just in hundreds of thousands of debt forever. I saw something the other day where this woman, she originally nine years ago, she graduates high school or graduates college. This is in the United States, by the way. This is just how stupid we are. Graduates $80,000 in student loan debt. She's been paying it for nine years. She has paid so far over those nine years, she's paid $120,000. She still owes $76,000. And so James sees this. He's like, this is ridiculous. This is stupid. Why are we doing this? He's like, I'm putting up my own money. There's no tuition

Starting point is 01:34:22 fees. Three days a week, you're coming to work for my company. You're going to work on real projects and I'm going to pay you a salary. And then we teach them for the two remaining days. When the first undergraduates complete their four-year course, which is this year, they actually graduate, they will be debt free. And why is this important? He says, I find it extraordinary and sad that most college graduates are saddled with huge debts from the moment they go out into the world our graduates would have studied intensely worked for a living and gained immense experience that's what he was doing he was working for jeremy fry right he got that the opportunity to do that while he was still in college so he's already rethought the whole

Starting point is 01:35:01 thing like there we are going to train them They don't have to work on Dyson. The program's, I think, I forgot how many people. But you don't have to work on Dyson. But he's hoping that he's, basically he's saying, hey, these colleges and universities are ineffective at training my people. I'm going to do this myself. So you can come here. Tuition's paid for. You can work for Dyson after, but you don't have to.

Starting point is 01:35:22 So he says, our graduates have studied at the end. They would have studied intensely, worked for a living, and gained immense experience. And he's like, but we have to understand, this is a very high bar. Like, he feels that normal universities are a little lazy. He goes, what's more, there was not going to be any easy ride. Undergraduates at Dyson University work 47 weeks a year. Much longer than 22 weeks at other universities. So James's point here is like, what the hell are they're young, aggressive,

Starting point is 01:35:51 tons of energy. Why are we not pushing them? They can accomplish a lot more. So he says, and he's like, I'm taking this extremely serious. We are being trusted with a vital ingredient of a young person's future. And he's then he about, like, why is he doing this? I believe that Dyson University represents a modern, this is so important, modern, forward-thinking, 21st century education relevant to the world of work. The undergraduates have a unique education at Dyson. They are working with the best engineers and scientists in the world, real practitioners. They learn and invent alongside them. They experience a wide range of disciplines on products and research that go into production quickly.

Starting point is 01:36:31 It is not for the faint hearted. James has no desire to hang around mediocre people. As well as having a 47 week year, they are here for four years rather than three. I estimate that this represents two and a half times the teaching offered by traditional universities so i saw a post on um this it's a sign it's called simonsaris.substack.com and this jumped out on me because what he's saying what what james is doing here is like pushing young people right yeah let me just give you this post and this guy reads a lot of biographies and what he writes here um i feel like i've noticed the same thing so he says when i read biographies early lives leap out the most leo leonardo da vinci was an apprentice was

Starting point is 01:37:14 sent to be an apprentice at 14 walt disney took on a number of jobs uh chiefly delivering papers when he was 11 years old uh This other guy published poems at 16. Andrew Carnegie finished his school at 12, and at 13, he began his second job as a telegraph office boy, where he convinced his superiors to teach him the telegraph machine itself. By 16, he was the family's mainstay of income. He says readers, and often biographers,

Starting point is 01:37:39 tend to fixate around the celebrity itself when people became famous or fortunate. We do the opposite here, right? But the early lives, long before success, contain something more revealing. Before you grasp, you have to reach. How did they learn how to reach? In my examples, the individuals, he's talking about the examples he just referenced, the ones I read to you. In my example, the individuals were all doing, he italicized that word, from a young age as opposed to merely schooling. And while they may not have wanted to work, the work was nonetheless something that

Starting point is 01:38:09 both they and society felt was useful, something purposeful and appreciated. In a sense, they had useful childhoods. He asked the question, do children today have useful childhoods? I find it striking just how early and how varied the avenues were that allowed one to pivot off script to do something differently than everyone else. He says for a 13 year old today, what is the equivalent of being a telegraph office boy where he can learn the tech, learn technology while contributing? Remember what his point is here is like the telegraph at that point in carnegie's life was the leading technology of its day in a set uh so oops let me go back down i just skipped over something uh what is the equivalent okay what about for a 16 year old what about for a 21 year old what is today's equivalent to being an apprentice of a i don't the guy that da vinci was apprenticed under. I can't pronounce his last name.

Starting point is 01:39:06 I'm going to answer the question. Whatever Simon is writing about in his post, what is the version of that today? It sounds a hell of a lot like what James Dyson is designing here. And just a few more things for you. He has a family charity motto, and I just love this idea of having a personal motto, a family motto. I told you right now my lock screen or on my phone is Ernest Shackleton. His motto was by endurance we conquer. So seeing his face covered in his beards covered in snow,

Starting point is 01:39:37 he looks half dead. Just a reminder of myself, like you just got to keep pushing. So he's got two mottos. well the the main motto here is never give up trying and he's got the latin version of that but he says another good one would be keep on running and then he closes with just a paragraph and it's really like how do we avoid he calls him i had to look this up a duffer i figured from the context it's probably like an idiot so a duffer is an incompetent or stupid person and he's this is how he closed it's kind of funny that's how he closes this book he says above all how can we avoid being duffers it comes from working away single-mindedly at solving a problem however many setbacks befall us even if that means 5,127 prototypes, and retaining an open mind. Remember, there is

Starting point is 01:40:28 nothing wrong with being persistently dissatisfied or even afraid. We should follow our interests and instincts, mistrusting experts, knowing that life is one long journey of learning, often from mistakes. We must keep on running, and we really can do better. And that is where I'll leave it. I highly, highly, highly recommend reading this book, buying this book. I would buy both. I would, against his original autobiography, Against the Odds, and this book, I think you read them in that order. It actually will help enhance what James is trying to tell us and hopefully you find ideas in there

Starting point is 01:41:07 that are beneficial to your work. If you want to buy the book, if you want to support the podcast and buy the book at the same time, I'll leave a link in the show notes. And when you buy it using that link, Amazon sends me a small percentage of sale at no additional cost to you.

Starting point is 01:41:20 If you want to support the podcast and a friend at the same time, I'll leave a link in there. If you buy a one-year gift subscription, I will extend it for your friends so they have access for life. That is 205 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon. so it's impossible to not keep reading these stories and see how you see people constantly question all the assumptions about uh the way people approach life or the approach work it's in every biography james dyson just went on and on about it for you know 350 pages or whatever it is not only does he do that all his heroes do that and

Starting point is 01:42:05 so of course like it's natural for us to do that right and so when i think about like podcasting i i want to question assumptions so this has to do with the fact that i i got a message from a longtime subscriber named joseph and he's like hey i've heard you mention this lifetime option like what's what's the story behind there you know like what's what's the thinking behind it um and so before i i'm going to tell you what i said uh but before i do that in case you don't know what i'm talking about i've mentioned on a few podcasts but i've been experimenting with this idea it's like okay this is obviously podcast founders doesn't have any ads it's a subscription-based podcast like is it possible to do a one- time lifetime payment?

Starting point is 01:42:46 Right. And from a consumer's perspective, they seem to really, really like that. But it's not at all clear if it's a sustainable business model. And I said, well, there's only way only one way I can do that is by testing that. And so you don't have to do this. I've talked to a lot of people. People have sent me messages and are like, hey, I'm keeping my subscription because I'll pay more over the long term and I want to. There's been people that are paying subscribers and they buy the lifetime payment and they refuse to cancel their subscription. So they have both just because they want to support even more. Some people said, you know, the one-time payment is better for me.

Starting point is 01:43:27 So they buy the one-time payment and then they cancel the subscription. I'm giving this option to new people. So, of course, I would, it's like an obligation, like it's unethical if I don't offer it to you. So if you all even link in there, you don't have to change at all, but it is the option. I am doing this most, I think maybe on a limited time. I'm not entirely sure on that point and i guess i'll talk to you more about that in a minute so there's a link there there's

Starting point is 01:43:49 no way if you do upgrade to a lifetime though you you got to upgrade your lifetime and then cancel your subscription there's all separate systems this private podcasting whole phenomenon is extremely new i mean the entire phenomenon of podcasting is still in the early early days right but this this generating unique private RSS feeds, which is what, you know, the entire basis of founders is still relatively new. So it's like, it's amazing how there's a bunch of different providers, but they don't all have everything I need. So I think I actually found one that might, but that's why it's kind of a big headache and not a headache, but I mean, I would like it if you could just upgrade to Lifetime if you wanted to.

Starting point is 01:44:26 And it automatically cancels, but it doesn't. So I'm just letting you know that option's there for you. It's up to you. You've got to do whatever you want to do. I'm just happy you listen and happy that you hopefully tell other people. But I'm just going to tell you the story here. And this is not something I planned. I just wrote this off the top of my head.

Starting point is 01:44:49 But it gives you an idea story here the dot and this is not something i planned i just wrote this off the top of my head but it gives you an idea into like why i'm doing this and while i i think i will always continue to experiment because i love podcasting i think it's an amazing medium and i'm just i don't i just see a lot of people doing what james said like everybody just does the same things and it's like they don't we don't have to recreate radio here, guys. Like this is just a medium, a podcast can be whatever you want it to be. And I want founders to be unique and weird and a little eccentric. Like I don't want to do what everybody else does. And I'm not putting down other podcasts, like if they love what they're doing, go and do that. I just I have that instinct, like I want difference for the sake of it, right. So it says one thing I'm learning from the reading biographies is the importance of questioning assumptions and creating experiments to see if other people's assumptions

Starting point is 01:45:31 are accurate. We were still in the early days of podcasting. So far, there are two ways, ads and subscriptions. I haven't seen anyone just try a pay once and listen forever option. If I was on the other side, I would like that. It would seem to me to be an amazing value, and it's pretty simple, or and it's simple. One less recurring payment, one less thing to think about. The question from the podcast perspective is, from the podcast perspective, is it a sustainable business model? Everyone assumes no, it's not. That is the assumption I'm testing. My own hypothesis is that podcasts are durable only. Durable. That's an important word here. My own hypothesis is that podcasts are durable only if they are good enough to be spread by word of mouth.

Starting point is 01:46:11 I'll pause what I'm reading here. And this is why I don't even know if any marketing stuff I do works at all. Because almost everybody that sends me a message about, hey, I like the podcast, whatever the case is, it's always a friend told me about it. A friend bought me a gift subscription. This person said it was great. Like, I don't, I really do think like that is the only thing that's going to make this durable is if people get enough value, because it's also natural, right? If you read a great book, listen to a good podcast, watch a good movie, eat a good restaurant, it's natural for us to share these things. And so I think like almost all my time should just be going into making it better. Right. And so this is my own hypothesis is that podcasts are durable only if they're good enough to be spread by word of mouth.

Starting point is 01:46:53 And as long as people keep telling other people, then there's no reason a lifetime option wouldn't work because that kind of functions as a reoccurring there. Right. Like somebody finds out about the podcast today, they buy a lifetime subscription, they listen for a while, they tell one or two or three other people, and that same process continues on over and over again, right? I may be wrong, and I'm very – I could – if you're listening in the future, like I could have just gone back to subscriptions maybe. And there is a chance that I just have – and I found a provider that can actually do this, and that's why I had to do either or because I didn't find somebody who could do both. Because maybe some people would just rather pay a small monthly fee than one time, whatever. But you might be listening to this feature and it might not be, like, what is this guy talking about? There's no lifetime option.

Starting point is 01:47:38 Well, then that's how you know I was wrong. But I have to be willing to experiment because it's just, it's in the early days of podcasting. We have no idea what this medium is going to be capable of and what i'm extremely interested in and it's almost scary to admit it is like i this is a i would love to do this for decades i have reading is the only hobby i've ever had in my life that I've had for multiple decades. Like I've been reading for 30 years. I read all the time now. It apparently is not, it's apparently just part of me, right? There's nothing, never been a time in my life like, I'm not really interested in books anymore. That's just never happened, right? So my whole

Starting point is 01:48:18 thing is like, I found something I love to do. I'm become strangely addicted to making podcasts. I'm sad if many days go in between me making a new podcast. And so it's just like really what I'm searching for here, right, is like, what is the most durable method that I can do this forever? And I don't know that answer. Maybe subscription, you know, maybe people will pay subscriptions for years i don't know um but i do know like it's really simple it's like okay i'll do a lifetime option you pay once listening forever hopefully you listen for a decade over that decade how many freaking people are you going to tell like a lot right so that's the thinking behind it so it says i may be wrong but the only way to find out is by testing maybe i stumble upon something other podcasts have missed people that have bought the lifetime access really seem to love it. And that's the also this is still early. I've only been testing it for a short, short amount of time. I don't have any definitive data.

Starting point is 01:49:12 It does seem to accelerate the rate of people that sign up. Right. There is something I've heard other people describe other products that have lifetime options is like un unresistible i think is the word i'm looking for i think that's the word they use um like oh it's simple okay you sign up you get 200 episodes i've already done or whatever the number is and then every future episode like it's really simple too right um but i also might be losing people that only want to pay you know 15 bucks a month or whatever the number is going to be so i don't know but let me go back to this maybe i stumble upon something other podcasts

Starting point is 01:49:50 i've missed people have bought the lifetime access seem to really love it worst case i end the experiment i go back just to subscriptions um and says hope i answer questions i should probably explain my thinking and my guests on the podcast others might be interested that's why i'm recording this now in case you find it useful um i do again i don't think about this like i'm making a show i have to use terminology that people use in the podcast industry like episodes but i don't i feel like this is just one giant conversation that we're having and that's why like i don't silo like when i'm learning about james dyson i'm telling you how his ideas relate to you know steve jobs and and larry ellis and all these other people that i've studied before like i

Starting point is 01:50:29 because i just fundamentally don't think of this as i think of it as a one giant conversation and so far we're at a couple hundred hours and if we're lucky we'll get to a couple thousand hours and i think one benefit of that approach is like i can just talk directly to you and a lot of the stuff i'm going to say is probably wrong, like because you just you're going to I'm going to run down dead ends. And I'm going to be wrong because that's exactly what is expected when you're trying to figure things out. And one thing that I think helps is like I listened to podcasts for years before I started one and that allows me to like think okay what would I like if I was on the other other side of this and one of that is why it's set up the way it is you know a lot of people say there's no fluff in this podcast it's all substance which is like the greatest compliment I can ever get but also it's

Starting point is 01:51:19 like I would like to know what they're thinking like I like that inside baseball is that the metaphor inside baseball of like yeah what goes into making these things? And so if you listen this long, thank you very much. Thank you very much for supporting the podcast. The best thing you could possibly do is something you're probably already doing. And that's telling as many people as possible. And if you have the means to do so buying subscriptions for now, if you buy a gift subscription, like I said before, I'll go back and I have to do this manually. Hopefully one day I don't, but I will extend it to be a lifetime. So that was my thinking. I just wanted to let you know what's up, what I think about,

Starting point is 01:51:57 because I'm obsessed with founders. I think about all the time I work on every day. And I also know that I don't have it all figured out yet. So that's just, it's exciting I want to treat this like an adventure and with that I should go start reading another book I'll talk to you soon

Your Ad Here

Founders - #205 James Dyson (Invention: A Life)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.