Founders - #69 Charles Goodyear: An Inventor's Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly

Episode Date: April 28, 2019

What I learned from reading The Goodyear Story: An Inventor's Obsession and The Struggle For A Rubber Monopoly by Richard Korman.An obsessive quest to find the recipe for rubber (0:01)Charles Goodyear epitomized the spirit of the upstart American technologists (6:15)the early life of Goodyear's family (20:10)coming up with the idea for a domestic made only hardware store (29:00)a crushing failure + debtor's prison (35:20)accidentally finding his life's work (38:18)optimism + positive mental attitude (44:30)Patent #3633 (1:03:30)why Charles did what he did (1:11:30) ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Long before America became an international economic powerhouse in the late 19th century, a generation of visionary inventors gambled on innovations they hoped would bring them riches. Chief among them was Charles Goodyear, who in the 1830s began an obsessive quest to find the recipe for rubber, the material he believed would change the world. Chasing his dream exacted a stiff price, plunging Goodyear and his family into an underworld of poverty and litigation. He spent extended periods in debtor's prison and acquired powerful enemies determined to control this miracle substance before he did. His victory in a dramatic lawsuit argued by Daniel Webster made Goodyear into an American legend, but it never released him from his tragic fixation or relieved the pain it caused those close to him. The Goodyear

story is a fascinating biography that also provides a panoramic view of America at the dawn of its industrial revolution. Drawing on recently discovered archival sources Richard Corman tells a suspenseful story of scientific expert experimentation and legal struggle while he vividly portrays one of the godfathers of today's new economy pioneers okay so that is actually from the back cover of the book that I have in my hand and the one I want to talk to you about, the one I read this week, which was The Goodyear Story, An Inventor's Obsession, and The Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly by Richard Corman. Before I jump into the book too, I just want to read some of the blurbs that I felt were helpful. They're on the back cover as well. Here's one. It says, a case study in psychopathology. Remember that word. A case study in psychopathology remember that that word a case

study in psychopathology and business it also portrays the waning era of the inventor as tinkerer before science put such investigation on a systemic footing another one is although corman doesn't emphasize it often his book serves as an inspiration for entrepreneurs of any age that's a good description of why it's going to be on the podcast. And finally, besides tracing the life of this inspiring entrepreneur, Corman's social history of factory life and debtor's prison in the early to mid-1800s is exceedingly well drawn. I'm going to, instead of starting in his early life, I want to start right before he dies, actually. And there's some excerpts on, that take place over a few pages in the prologue

that I think give you a good idea, like a good prep to who Charles Goodyear is, or was, rather, before we get into his early life and learn about how he basically created one of the largest, what has become one of the largest industries in the world. If you think about all the different uses that we use today for what's termed vulcanized rubber. And that's basically the process that Charles Goodyear invented and was the basis of his business. All right. So it says one, this is actually taking place. Let me, let me give you some background here. This is, there's a huge, I would say like it's a huge convention. It's taking place in 1851. It's called the Great Exhibition of 1851. It is in England

and it's where everybody is gathering together to show off the products they make and the inventions they have. And Charles Goodyear is at this convention. So I want to read a little bit about this. So it says, one of the most celebrated American exhibitors, notorious was the word his competitors would have used, was a former Philadelphia hardware store owner named Charles Goodyear. He epitomized the spirit of the upstart American technologist. So I actually started with that sentence. I wanted to include that sentence at the beginning of the podcast because when I read it, and I'm glad it appears towards the

beginning of the book, is I, it kind of like smacked me in the face where, you know, when I, when I hear the word technologist today, I mind immediately goes to information technology, the technological revolution that we're currently living through, the one of the internet, computers, basically bits. I don't really think of technology in atoms. And that's my fault. I should. And I think it's helpful when we're going back through history and trying to study the lives of these people that founded great movements, companies, inventions, whatever the case was. It really is like it was the technology of their day. And all the practical applications of vulcanized rubber that came after 1844, which is when Goodyear was granted his patent on it, it was a form of technology. And so I'm bringing this, talking to you about this at the beginning,

because it kind of calls out my own ignorance, where it's like, oh, okay, I've got so used to viewing things in my own mindset, based on my own experiences. And yet, in just a sentence there, the author kind of brings me out of that perspective and is like, no, you just need to look at like technology is all about doing something new, like something more, doing more with less. We just happen to be focused on, you know, information technology. Yet rubber was a massive technology, vulcanized rubber, I should say, because there was a rubber industry before that of course that kind of had a boom and then bust and i'll talk a little bit about that as well in the podcast but um it was a massive technological revolution and while i was

reading this book i couldn't help but compare and contrast um the great book by david mccullough about the wright brothers and again like they now they're coming about, I think, 60 years after Goodyear died, maybe like 40 years after Goodyear died, somewhere in there. But, you know, the development of airplane, clearly they were technologists. Now, as I'll I think I'll circle back around to later is they had a lot of pragmatic traits that Goodyear lacked that made them much more successful in their lives than Goodyear was. So you understand what I mean by that in a little bit. Okay, so let's get back to this exhibition that's happening in the 1850s. Clearly, Charles Goodyear was using his presence at the Great Exhibition to establish himself once and for all as one of the century's leading men of progress, an identity he had been chasing much of his life. So 1851, he's about 51, 52 years old.

He's going to die about seven years. He dies at the age of 59. And at this time, he's been struggling, which like the back cover of the book was referencing, for about 25, almost 30 years of his life okay says the precocious first child of a hard-working connecticut farmer and button maker goodyear was groomed for a career in business almost from birth at 17 he entered a hardware store apprenticeship and eventually in partnership with his father and brother set up up a shop in Philadelphia that seemed to flourish. Then suddenly the business plunged into financial ruin and his family returned to the blacksmith's

trade, but with Goodyear burdened by a huge debt. So that is, I think Goodyear's life is a warning to all of us about the dangers of debt. Remember when I opened the podcast, it talks about, hey, he spent a good deal of time in debtor's prison, which we'll obviously get to there. And this is also one of the traits that I feel the Wright brothers mastered. They were industrious. They kept records. They were frugal.

They had a profitable bicycle business, if you remember the podcast I did, that supported their experimentation in flight. Goodyear was a very, very reckless person. So I'm going to share a lot of that with you today as a warning. Like I always say, there's a lot of things I've learned from reading these books about what good ideas that I want to apply in my own life. And I should hopefully share with you so you do as well. But in almost every example, there's things I learned. It's like, oh, okay, I want to learn from this guy's mistake because I don't want to live the life he had.

Okay. American mechanics became obsessed with ingenuity as much as rugged individualism. That was also part of the emerging national identity. Remember, this was only about 20. He was born about 25 years after the foundation of America as a country, so it's in its infancy. The virtue of industriousness, technology, and prosperity became for many Americans almost providentially linked. Goodyear made a conscious decision to become a full-time inventor at a time when the New England tinkerer still had an exalted place in the American imagination as he searched for the technological handhold that would give him a place in the world of invention Goodyear discovered what

he quickly convinced himself would be a miracle substance it was rubber and he believed that if he could unlock its potential it would change his his fortunes and change the world as well. This is an important part. With no background in the developing science of chemistry, he was poorly prepared for the task. He knew nothing of molecular science. So all of the breakthroughs that he was able to make, they came solely from trial and error.

He had no formal background or education. Now, what's interesting is there's a lot of people that were trying to solve this problem simultaneously that did have a background, and yet Goodyear got there faster. It says something about the benefits of trial and error. Okay, it says he never fully understood that what he eventually accomplished by adding chemicals and heat to the pastry raw rubber was one of the auspicious early milestones of the new age of synthetics. All Charles Goodyear knew was that he had a versatile miracle material that he first called, this is his word for vulcanized rubber, he called it heated metallic gum composition. And another time, lightheartedly described as the mighty elastic substance.

In the 1830s and 40s, as he struggled to find a way to change rubber, Goodyear became obsessed with this miracle substance. This is hilarious. Kind of gives you an idea. He was very much an eccentric. He dressed in rubber and extolled its virtues to anyone who would listen. He had the mentality of the wildcatters who would soon populate the Pennsylvania oil fields. His spendthrift borrowing and spending, and this is something you don't want to emulate,

and his unwillingness to return to safer means of earning a living exposed his family to terrible hardship and set events in motion that cost some of them their lives. To justify his family's suffering, he rationalized his economic plight, his embarrassments, as people at the time called it, as a test of his Christian faith. Okay, so the author's picking up something very important there that throughout the book and throughout the life story, he compared himself to the, first of all, he's an extremely religious man.

He basically just invented all day long, and then in any spare time, the only hobbies he had was basically spending time with his family. And in spending time with his family, they would read the Bible and pray and talk about God all the time. So he's very developed person and he compared himself to there's a story in the bible by i think you call it pronounce it job or job excuse me job rather and you know it's a story of trials and tribulations and how to like maintain your faith even when everything around your life is kind of going to

shit and that is there's many times in the book where Charles is talking about, he's like, you know, he was, they called him, he had a manic optimism where he's like, he had to step back after step back. He's like, this is okay. This is just God testing me. And I know in the future that I will, everything will work out okay

because he's already told me this. So that was a central part of his identity. It's something you should know. All right, the Goodyear story told and retold held tremendous appeal for americans who feared his brush with debtors prison but admired his self-made success and there's a i don't even know if you could ever i mean he was certainly successful in the sense that that um he invented like he he laid the foundation of an entire new industry where thousands and thousands of people and now tens of billions of dollars a year is transacted. But he didn't really, he never had, I don't think he ever had a positive net worth.

After he had some financial success with the hardware store, he was in his 20s. But once that failed, I don't think, he was always in debt for the rest of his life, even when he was getting huge payments, license payments to use of his patent. So, again, this is where his story differs from the Wright brothers, where he just was very – he was way less a businessman than he was an inventor. And unfortunately, he didn't have the financial discipline that could have maybe saved him from a lot of heartache. All right, but this is important. The story inspired inventor Gail Borden, who was also at the Great Exhibition. And he actually meets Goodyear's sons.

And I wanted to include this part. He says, this is a direct quote from Gale. I should have given up in despair if I had not read a sketch of your father's life, he told one of Goodyear's sons. So again, I do think that you could call Charles Goodyear successful, financially successful, no, but because he just reaps such a small, like he produced way more value than he was able to capture right and that's something as entrepreneurs like you have to solve how are you going to capture just a small percentage of the value that you're creating uh charles never figured that out but i feel like reading his story inspired you know uh generations of people like that came

after him some that met him during his lifetime, just like Gale saying, he's like, listen, I would have given up if I didn't know about the legendary perseverance. That, you know, they were referencing this landmark trial that was argued by Daniel Webster, who's also another famous person in history. In the judge, one of the,

there's two judges in the trial, and one judge talked about, he referenced Charles Goodyear, and he said he had superhuman perseverance. So that's something that I think we should take away. And I think that superhuman perseverance, even in the face of financial disaster and death of loved ones close to him, et cetera, et cetera, is something that is inspiring. I also think that one quote by Gale is a good reason why we're spending so much time, why I'm spending so much time reading these books and you're spending so much time listening to this podcast and hopefully reading some of these books yourself as well. Okay, so real quick, I'm going to end this section here. The once desperate man shambling around in the blistered rubber jacket, this is a callback to his appearance years earlier, had placed himself among the great

inventors of his time. His legend would outlive the monopoly that bore his name and his own fluctuating personal fortune. In the end, his name would become synonymous with this heroic, solitary inventor who risked everything for his ideas he definitely did that but while almost everyone knew his name and miraculous discovery few knew the rest of the good year story i think that's a good uh good segue into jumping into his life now he says while everyone uh almost everyone knew his name in Miraculous Discovery, few knew the rest of his Goodyear story. Include me into that latter group, because I have to confess I made a rookie mistake here. I ordered this book.

I was like, oh, this sounds interesting. Thinking that I was ordering the book for the person that started the Goodyear, you know, why do I know his name? I know his name because there's a massive American corporation called Goodyear Tires. So clearly the guy that invented rubber is the same founder of the company. Wrong. Wrong. I was completely wrong about that. He, the Goodyear Tires was created like something like 40 years after

Charles Goodyear died. And it's in very similar way to how Elon has named Tesla Motors like a, you know, it's like a dedication to his affinity for Nikola Tesla. The founder of Goodyear Tires was inspired by Charles Goodyear. So he actually named his company after him. And so part of me is like, oh, man, David, I can't believe you made that mistake. And then the other part was like, well, after I thought about about it for a little bit i was like well that's that might be good that i'm not too prejudiced against the books like if i find a book that's semi-interesting i just order it immediately um because i don't i think you should be saving money and and i think there's a benefit to being frugal and a lot of areas in life i don't think in buying

books that's one area like 10 or you can risk10 or $15, maybe $20 on a book, and contained in that book could be an idea that changes your life. So I'm actually glad that I made this mistake because I wound up ordering the book thinking I was going to get one story and I got another story, but I still got value out of it. And I think this point was illustrated probably the best by Seth Godin, the author, and he's got one of the most famous blogs on the internet, but he's got this quote that I keep on my phone in my favorites folder. And it

says, a book is a bargain, still a screaming bargain. You pay 15, 20 bucks and you have something that might change your life. You have something that reminds you 20 years later where you were when you read it. I love buying books. So I kind of share that same sentiment with Seth. Okay. So let's get into, and we're going to go back in time. We're done with the great exhibition. And we're going to get into like his early life. How did he stumble into this desire to want to be an inventor and and and to go through all the stuff that he went through um so this is a little bit about charles father and it was just describing the time in which he lived you know very provincial um almost no

infrastructure at all uh very little technology and says it was a time when hard-working businessmen of humble birth could vault into the class of the newly wealthy, but could also take breathtaking falls. And his father's name was Amasa. And so a little bit about him. Amasa was a typical combination of a farmer, artisan, store owner, neither rich nor poor, shifting restlessly from venture to venture, seeking any advantage in a fast-changing regional economy. So those two ideas are linked. There's not a very developed economy. Therefore, you may have a venture that's working today and it's not working next year.

Changes rather rapidly, very much more sporadic. And everybody was basically decentralized and segmented. So he said he spent an inordinate amount of time in his workshop. It was the place of the most sublime activity in a mass's life this is really inspiring to me making things silence the murmurings of discontent caused by the exhausting repetitions of farm life and making things was a regional fixation so we always talk about on the podcast like it's very bizarre i'm gonna say i don't definitely don't want to go back to this time but almost everybody this time worked for themselves in some way now a lot of it was subsistence so they're growing their own food maybe you

have a you have a slight surplus you could sell to your neighbor whatever the case was but we went from a time where like almost everybody was for all intents and purposes like self-employed to now at least in the country I live in you know it's one of the most distressing statistics I've come across is like we're at a 40 year low for the start of new businesses. And the percentage of people that are self-employed is at a 40 year low. And I find that extremely distressing. It should be the opposite. And unfortunately, in my opinion, a boss or whatever the case is.

Like, a lot of people think it's security. And I really don't think, like, I always tell you, back when I was in college 15 years ago, this was right before Facebook, I had a MySpace profile. And on my MySpace profile, there's a quote that I think of all the time. And it's, uh, there's no, there's no such thing as security, only opportunity. Um, and so these people, like, I don't want to live the life they, they had, but they were, they made things where a lot of people that just have a normal day job, like they're not making things, they're not creating stuff that's new. They're kind of moving existing things around. Maybe I don't want to like overgeneralize there. I mean, you are like, let's say people that have a normal job,

they may be a part of a larger thing being made. But I like this idea of just small groups of people, even one person making something that say, hey, I need to create this. And that of course could be like the seed, the beginning of a company that grows um but what i'm most excited about in the age we are now is like you see that the the the optimal size of a company meaning the amount of employees that's what i mean by size is actually decreasing which that's speaks to like the leverage that technology is enabling us to do. And I love seeing, so people that have left reviews already know this because I covered this book that expounds on this idea.

It's called Unscaled. And I forgot the author's name at the moment, but he wrote an entire book about, hey, I think the economies of scale that were a result of the Industrial Revolution in the last, like I say, 150, 200 years of commerce in the Western world, I think that's being reversed. And that's this whole thesis for the book. And it's one that I kind of, I basically agree with as well. So anyways, it's weird how things, the more they change, the more they stay the same. In this case,

farm life sucked. He didn't want to do that all the time. But then his hobby, his relief was creating something, becoming what they said, an artisan, a store owner. And he says, making things silence the murmurings of discontent caused by the exhausting repetitions of farm life. And making things was a regional fixation. Entrepreneurs all around New England reinvented the farmer's tool shop as a site for rapid production rather than handcrafted perfection. So he's already trying to expand. And this is the reason I bring this up is because, one, I found it interesting, and two, this is the beginning of how the family's hardware business

that actually brings them a good amount of prosperity temporarily. Okay, so this is a little bit about Charles' personality, his father's personality, and then opportunity. His father lacked some of the worldly knowledge and the never-ending stream of new ideas his son seemed to possess. So how old is Goodyear at this time? I think he's a teenager. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's a teenager. Let's see.

Yeah, this is in the 18-teens,'s he's a teenager because he's born 1800 um so uh charles has a bunch of ideas that his father doesn't um and then this is the a good um this is charles personality as seen through one of his his tutor this guy named deforest who actually becomes one of his lifelong friends and largest person that loans Charles money so he can do his business, the rubber business later on. But says DeForest found Goodyear ridiculous, boastful, and unrealistic. But he also was delighted in the boy's precocity and the way he easily mastered his lessons and had so much to say about the world around him. Goodyear had a far more active imagination and the ability to articulate his ideas with passion and humor and wordplay. That was probably his greatest trait. He was extremely charismatic.

Some would say he exaggerated, other people say he would lie, but he could sell you easily. And I think having the ability uh having sale the ability for sales is one of the most important um skills i think needed moving forward in the economy that we're in and in the world that we're in and charles definitely had that and the unfortunate part he used the sales to to like to go deeper into debt because he kept borrowing money from people as opposed to like selling his invention. I think one would have made him rich and the other undoubtedly made him poor.

OK, says Charles own ambitions drew him to merchandising and trade into the larger world of the metropolis. So he's like, listen, we live in this tiny little town. And what I don't even know if it's in Connecticut now. I don't even know if Connecticut was a thing back then. But he moves to Philadelphia. He does a five-year apprenticeship. So he says a five-year apprenticeship at Rogers and Brothers, an importer of English hardware. It says Charles worked 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, learning the basics of retailing and importing in a way he never could have in,

I think he pronounced it Nagatuck, but Nagatuck is just this tiny town he lived in. The hard work wore him down, and soon he became so sick that by age 21, he had to return home to Connecticut. He would have preferred to remain in Philadelphia to start his own business. He was greatly disappointed. So that just covers the years from 17 to 21. Okay, so it says, this tells you a little bit about the inner workings of Charles' family at the time. And I have an idea that it's probably the inner workings of a lot of families in the area at the time It says, business was the deeper framework in which everything functioned

It was an obsession that enveloped all the good years But possessed Charles in particular Clarissa, this is the wife, he marries her in 1824 when they're relatively young It says, Clarissa learned that loving Charles meant loving to hear his ideas, which he discussed obsessively. Oh, so he actually has, and so he's talking about he's obsessed with his ideas. He comes up with a great idea. So remember, he just did about a four to five year apprenticeship at a hardware store in philadelphia and in this time this was after the

second the war of 1812 uh so so the hardware at the time in the american colonies or i guess yeah they it was had to be imported from britain right but they had already already fought Americans had already fought the British on American soil twice by this time so there was kind of like a xenophobia like a Racism if you will or whatever term you want to put on it We're like like no us versus them tribalism Street going through here. We're like, you know, basically screw the British through the English like we hate these people would they've killed You know, we spilled blood with them twice. So he comes up with a really good idea that gives him an advantage, a temporary advantage, but an advantage nonetheless. And he's like, what if we just say we're going to open a

hardware store and we're going to say we're only going to sell domestic made hardware? Like there was no such thing at the time. All the hardware stores you'd go in and you'd inevitably be giving people you hate or the people they hate at the time, British people more money or British companies rather, more money. And so he had a really good idea. But the problem is, as we've seen book after book, podcast after podcast, is he over leverages himself. And being over leveraged of debt is not something new in human history. This has been going on for centuries and it always leads to the same outcome. It's like we have to, we have to constantly relearn the same issue over and over again. And I, the quote I've been saying in a lot of podcasts lately that comes from one of the guys that made a billion over a billion

dollars. Uh, he was featured in Michael Lewis's big short, like, you know, a lot of people mistake leverage for genius. They're not the same thing. Um, you know, a lot of people mistake leverage for genius. They're not the same thing. And so he's over leverage and they're going to do well and then they're going to be thrown into poverty. All right, so Charles soon expanded operations into several states. These are the domestic only hardware stores. And according to Goodyear, his family earned a handsome fortune. And like the dry goods businesses,

domestic hardware sales soon became a constantly increasing department of trade. It will be remembered by many hardware men of the present day, Charles wrote two decades later, that from 1826 to 1830, the inventor was known in our commercial cities to be the pioneer in domestic hardware and occupied a position in business every way desirable. The fullness of Goodyear's late 20s as an innovative, wealthy merchant and a happy husband and father. So that's a description there. Okay. So I need to stop. There's two things. A lot of these quotes that we get from Charles about himself came from like this autobiography that he wrote later on, about two decades after the events I'm in now. And it's really weird because he wrote

he wrote it himself but he first himself in the third person and so that quote where he's like uh the inventor was known in our commercial cities to be the pioneer domestic hardware he's talking about himself but in the book this is why i love misfits because it's just so weird they make life interesting uh the inventor is himself so he that's how he references himself in his own autobiography. And it's quoted a lot in the book I have in my hand. And just, I don't know, it's funny. It makes me laugh. So this is kind of funny. This is like the early version of angel investing. But this is the version of angel investing in the 1800s. Charles' enterprising nature was fully engaged. He became a partner in two new inventions patented by some other inventors.

So I'll skip what it is because they both fail, but it says each new idea and each new opportunity cried out to be exploited. He was grateful for what he had, but also vexed whenever he saw a new opportunity slipping away. This effort to seize the main chance, in fact, was to prove the undoing of his first business career. So it says by expanding, okay, so you see what he's doing here? He claims this invention of the pioneer in domestic hardware is what he's calling himself. It's producing profits.

Part of the way he's juicing some of his profits, though, is, remember, this is before the civil war. So he's extending credit to farmers in the South that have these huge plantations to buy domestic made hardware, American made hardware from him. And the problem is he's extending so much credit and then expanding his business at the same time. Now, what's going to happen when he's over leveraged himself? If there's a, let's say a financial panic, which happens all the time throughout human history and will happen, has happened in our past and will certainly happen in the future.

Well, what do you think is going to happen when he's counting on these receivables being paid and expanding at a pace where basically the company has no savings no buffer well a panic comes along and the southern farmers stop paying them and that's it that's the end of his his wealthy 20s um and this is actually the high point of his economic uh as far as like net worth this is the highest this is the best he he does for his life um so it says by expanding granting credit to southern farmers and investing in real estate inventions Goodyear tied up the cash generated by his hardware store no big mistake there Charles when trouble struck there was no cushion that's it it's a Reynolds rap for Charles Goodyear and

his entire family and it's just devastating what happens. But at the same time, it's also like, again, I keep I want to compare and contrast Charles Goodyear to the Wright brothers like they would never do that. They took profit from their bicycle shop. They were extremely industrious, extremely frugal, did everything themselves, and they did not overextend themselves. That way they could actually reap the benefits of their invention, even though, you made uh i think when uh uh which i can't remember which one died first i think wilbur orville i think was the one that survived um but anyways you know his net worth at the time was around 10 million dollars certainly not like vanderbilt level roosevelt or rockefeller level but not poor by any means, like very comfortable life, successful financially. Goodyear never even gets anywhere close to that.

So again, it's also his own fault. This is a dumb idea. You took your money instead of saving it for bad times that inevitably come. He's angel investing. Those inventions don't work out. He's speculating in real estate. That real estate bubble pops. and then he's granting credit,

and his hardware stores go out of business. So it says this is the beginning of when he starts getting arrested, and they have debtors prisons at the time. This meant they had to pledge to pay debt holders in several states in order to avoid arrest and imprisonment. That's something that he has to deal with for about 30 years of his life. He even goes to debtor's prison in Europe a few years before he dies. So it says, this is, so the note I left myself on the next page is a hell of a sentence,

which I'm going to read to you in a minute, crushing failure and then debtor's prison. And this is the hell of a sentence, which I'm going to read to you in a minute, crushing failure and then debtor's prison. And this is the hell of a sentence. Step by step, creditors dismantled all signs of their earlier prosperity. So that's what happens when you play around with debt, that you think humans and their unbounded hubris think that they can master something that ancients have been warning us to avoid for thousands of years. Literally thousands of years you have humans saying, hey, this is what happens. You get in debt. You start to become essentially like a slave. Oh, what's going to, like they basically have control over you.

And it's weird to live through a time where I think to paper over the paltry economic growth that we've had, at least in the country that I've lived in, you you know we've kind of papered over the fact that the u.s economy is not growing like it did in the 40s and 50s after world war ii that kind of sputtered out and now we're just papering it over with debt and we're acting like this is normal um and then we see what happens you know 10 12 let's see the time i'm recording this 10 12 years ago when these these these inevitably had the amount of debt we rack up has to be paid back so um it's just again something that you we want to uh we want to avoid and we're kind of learning that through all the experiences of these different entrepreneurs the ones unfortunately that that have to deal with this

and it says um so for amass and ccythia, that's his parents' eldest son, the man who considered his business visionary, the fall may have been hardest of all. Charles had led his family to disaster and rightfully assumed the remaining unpaid debt of about $12,000. So it's important to know when I throw out numbers, you know, $12,000 means something different to us today than it did in the 1830s. The way it made sense to me is like the average job at this time would pay about $500 a year. So that kind of puts in the context when we get into how much debt. And he winds up having hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt throughout his life. And, you know, that's excessive. Um, and then this,

the book is a great description. It was like starting life at age 30, owing a fortune. It would take a lifetime to repay. Cause what would that, that would be about 24 years of the average person's salary. Uh, no ordinary, ordinary trait. And then his decision, mean again part of me admires his like his the way he he um he had like skin in the game where he would like uh accept risks but it's also like i don't know if i'd do that same thing if you dig it that hole that big um so it says and what i mean by that here's a sentence no ordinary trade or profession could overcome so heavy a debt so charles decided he would make a profession of invention striking it rich by inventing was a wild form of speculation as any that existed at the time so he started trying to invent he was really good with like metals since they made

hardware he just accidentally stumbles into what becomes his life work and says the rubber business had pretty much ruined anyone who had hitched its hopes to it but charles goodyear knew little of this when he stumbled upon his new fixation years later he would consider himself blessed by ignorance so that that um has definitely happened where a lot of people will make innovations in fields not because they're experts but because they're ignorant they don't know what they can't do roxbury india rubber company shop in new york is where he discovers this uh he's visiting it. That's where he discovers what's happening with rubber. So let me, let me stop here and tell you what's going on. So there was like a, a massive bubble in rubber about, I think 10 years before the time in the

book, somewhere around there. And they're like, Oh my God, this is a miracle. It's a miracle substance. It can be used for all, manufactured all kinds of different products. It's elastic. It's waterproof. It doesn't break. It has, you know, all the benefits. At the time though, before Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber,

they didn't know that it wouldn't last. So what happened was the outside would be fine, but then slowly but surely, there'd be like this odor that come from it, right? People are like, oh, what is that smell? And then what happens was the inside was decaying. And so the outside would look strong and then the things that were supposed to be unbreakable would start to break because what Charles Goodyear, what he discovered was they were trying to heat rubber with other materials like sulfur and lead and all this other stuff, but they were doing it like 200,

215 degrees. You'd have to get up to like 275. So that is the foundation of what he discovered by accident that it's counterintuitive that, oh, if you go, let's say you go above 215, 220, whatever the actual temperature was, it starts to fall apart. But if you kept it in there and the heat increased, it would actually bond and make the bond stronger, so then it wouldn't decay from the inside and it would actually last longer. So the reason I bring that up is because when Goodyear gets started in this, he's on the, what is it, the trough of sorrow.

You ever see that that um like describes how some this phenomenon that that's apparent throughout uh history when with regard to humanity that is it's like there's like these bubbles like we all get really excited about something then it pops then it goes down and then you have like a long period to actually of like experimentation and struggle before you have it rises again to some level of utility. I think that's what it's called. But in any case, that's where Goodyear is is introduced to the rubber industry. Now, what I found interesting was I'm always interested by these ideas that that humans discover, even though they're separated by geography, thousands of miles, and in some cases, centuries. So Goodyear developed vulcanization of rubber in 1839,

but there's been like, they call them Mesoamericans. So people, the cultures in South America, there's also some in the Native Americans, they had stabilized rubber for other objects as early as like 1600. So this was an idea that humans kept discovering that, hey, this substance, this natural rubber substance that comes from the bark of this tree has some kind of utility. And so, you know, across a couple centuries and different cultures, you had people doing experimentations with it it wasn't until Goodyear like had the final um like figured out the final piece of the puzzle was missing which is heating it at a higher temperature that it was actually like the modern rubber industry was born and just look around like how much of uh your life is affected by the the work of Goodyear and others like the tires in your car

came from that the bottom of your shoes are probably rubber um there's uh one of the main one of the um main reasons that that Goodyear kept persevering is because he was convinced that he would save thousands of souls is how he called it because at the time a lot of any time like a ship would sink remember this 1800s how people were getting to and fro um and they would drown and he's like and he'd work himself to a state of exhaustion he had lead poisoning which is another story um but he kept yelling and not yelling but he kept telling his wife like i can't rest because these souls are dying and I could save them. So, you know, rubber life preservers.

So anyways, so now he's visiting this company in New York, and he says the agent in the store told Goodyear that he should try to improve the rubber itself and that all the rubber companies that had sprung up were doomed to failure soon. Goodyear was surprised that this wonder substance had baffled all the efforts of chemists and manufacturers. Although he did not know it, he had discovered his life work. He immediately began to experiment applying substances to the rubber, searching for a way to cure it and make it insensible to climatic extremes. He even worked on his experiments during the time he spent in debtor's prison. So if it was too hot outside, it would melt. And if the climate was too cold and rubber was left outside, it would crack. So there's something I repeat so much in my personal life that's become kind of like a running joke between me and some friends. And like when we're when you're presented with an obstacle in life, I'm like, I say this as, I say it like tongue in

cheek and kind of in jest, but it is really true. Like you, you just need the twin attributes of a positive mental attitude and perseverance. And as long as you have those two, you're kind of solve that. And it doesn't have to be a big problem. It can be like, you can't beat a stage in a video game. Like, um, but I do think that there is something superhuman about Goodyear's perseverance and his optimism. So here's a little bit about that. Now there's about six years have passed in the book. So it says, he was now nearly 36 and had aged dramatically from his days of success in Philadelphia. So now William DeForest, the guy that was his tutor, his successful person, comes to visit him.

It says, William DeForest came to see his friend and was surprised that good years worn appearance and shabby clothing on reaching the room where good year lived and worked deforest found a space littered with kettles gum shellac and rubber good year chirped optimistically william here is something that will pay all my debts and make us comfortable uh it says the india rubber business is below par, answered DeForest. And then this is a reply from Goodyear. And I am the man to bring it back again. And one of the things that's so devastating about his life story is that he would make, so the notes I would leave myself is like one, he'd make one step forward, two steps back.

He'd make little progress and then inevitably just kind of find ways to kind of screw it up. Some of those, you know, within his control, some without. I would argue that also being unprepared for things outside of your control is something like he should have known given his past experiences. So he's made progress with rubber. He still has not vulcanized it. We're about, let's see, 11 years, about three years before he discovers a process and about nine years before he's granted the patent. So he's got a business going. He thinks he solved the issue of rubber riding away, but he's still heavily in debt. The company is making a little bit of money, but it's not enough to service its debts. And then, well, I'll go right to the book. Just as the little business was getting on its feet, in 1836, another panic and financial depression, deeper and longer lasting than its predecessors,

once again brought the U.S. economy to its knees. The national economy unraveled and 618 banks failed. 39,000 people became insolvent debtors, which means they could be put in prison. Hunger was rampant. The person funding all of, so this guy named Ballard was funding Charles' business and Charles' living expenses for his family. So Ballard sustained significant losses

and not only withdrew further funding from Goodyear, but also asked him to pay back some of the money that he already advanced him. Of course, he wasn't able to. The Goodyears once again lapsed into wretched subsistence. Charles would take the ferry trip to Manhattan with cups or spoons or other family possessions in his pockets, hoping to pawn them in his city.

This pawning of personal items is something that he does now and he does constantly throughout his life. His brother, Robert and Robert's wife and four children moved in so that both families could share Robert's furniture. Goodyear's parents also joined them, crowding the little salt box cottage near the factory. So he has a factory in Staten Island, which is making all this rubber on the grounds. This is tiny little house. And now he's living there. Charles has got a bunch of kids, a wife. So let's say there's probably 10 to 12 people this tiny little house and now he's living there um charles has got a bunch of

kids a wife so let's say there's probably 10 to 12 people in this little house um clarissa this is charles's wife reminded the children to be grateful for what they had and to trust the future would be better the discipline the family was suffering she told them was probably because they'd been because they'd been uncharitable toward the poor, and now they knew what poverty was like. So a lot of this was like, oh, you know, they filtered a lot of what was happening through their religious beliefs. So, okay, well, we must have done something wrong in the past, now we're being punished.

Let's, you know, what's the word, attain for our sins, I think is the phrase they use. And it'll be better in the future. Okay. At one point, and this is a great one-sentence summary of where they're at. At one point, the family is said to have counted its only asset as a set of teacups that were worth 50 cents. So what I'm describing to you here, I mean, you're talking about the majority of his life is how he lived through this. After he wins that trial where Daniel Webster basically defended his patent in U.S. court,

he was able to at least have like a roomier house and and like a doctor because he suffered from from gout and he had basically good year basically gave his life for this industry if you really think about it because he was one of the few people that were mixing lead in with sulfur and rubber and he thought lead was a key turns out i don't even think it was necessary for the process well as you probably know by now like if you if, if you would like, he's touching lead all day. It would absorb into his body and got in his bloodstream. So he suffered from lead poisoning. Remember, he dies at 59 years old.

He had gout. He had all kinds of issues. He'd have his, the lead poisoning would lead to aches and pains in his joints where he would, he wouldn't be able to get out of bed for five or six days. So it's just a tortuous existence. And yet through everything, you know, that's obviously a negative. But what I found so inspiring is he would refuse to give up. So this is an example of one step forward. A few years later, he has another benefactor, this guy named Eli,

and they open an actual shop. And it says, sales at Goodyear and Eli's, it's called Fancy Rubber Establishment, picked up, in addition to the, and this is some of the stuff they were selling, in addition to the rubber-coated fabric goods, such as coats, carpets, and capes. Who's wearing capes, by the way? Goodyear and Eli sold rubber or rubber coated bath bathtubs life preservers and mailbags and it says this is Goodyear again in his autobiography where he's referring to himself the prejudices of the public gave away uh Goodyear later wrote as and he described his fortunes at

this time as all together in the ascendant so they were talking about is that boom and bust cycle i was describing earlier the people would spend all this money in rubber rubber goods and then eventually they would like decay or start smelling so you'd have people that would go in their backyard and have to burn all the stuff they paid for because the smell was so odious so it took a while for people like okay i'll give this another try and then this is a description of his business. But patent licenses still paid more bills in the Goodyear home than did retail sales. Now, he had a series of patents.

I don't even know how many in his life, probably 100 or something like that, maybe less. But the only really important patent was the one that made all the difference was the one that he's granted in 1844. So we're still, this is not, that's not the patent they're referencing, but that is gives you, the reason I include that sentence is that gives you an idea of what his business was centered around. Yeah. He would manufacture some of these. The store really didn't make too much money, but most of the revenue his business came from came from licensing the patents for other businesses to make rubber goods and sell those rubber goods. And then he also set up another business that would, with attorneys where they would just go after people infringing his

patents. So they had basically two businesses for the bulk of his life at, well, not the bulk of his life, the last few remaining years of his life, should say okay so that's one step forward he's got this little business going on he's making a little bit in patent licenses licensing rather and uh inevitably a few pages later two steps back um so it says so what had been represented to the public as a revolutionary discovery was actually a continuation of a previous failure so what's happening is realized oh no like i did not actually solve he had not solved the vulcanization problem yet so he's saying yeah remember back when we had this all these problems with rubber i have now had this new process i've patented and i've now solved it all that did was delay the decay and the odor and all that other stuff.

So it says it was just a continuation of the previous failure. So he shut down his factory. He tried to get money from his acid. It was the process that he patented was acid gas. He thought it's called the acid gas process. So he tried to get money from his licensees, but they were disgusted by his failed mailbags and felt that they had already licensed a useless process,

which is an accurate description. Failed mailbags, what he's talking about is he won, Goodyear won a contract with the U.S. Postal Service to replace their leather, I think leather and cloth mailbags with ones that were waterproof and that would last forever. And he thought he could do that and then realized, oh, wait, this process that I thought I invented was just delaying the inevitable.

It says, friends implored Goodyear to give up. This is an important part, actually. Durable rubber, they said, was a thing no more to be realized than perpetual motion. There was no reason to believe he would ever succeed. His renewed income now cut off. Goodyear once again pawned his belongings and watched in dismay as those close to him suffered from the from their connection to his obsessive quest. So, again, that's that's the dichotomy between manic optimism, right? Like he wound up being right. It just took 20 years to realize that it was right.

So his critics at this time were actually incorrect, but they were correct at that time, which is even harder to press on when you think you're right, but there's no evidence that you're right. I don't even know how to reconcile that other than just to bring it to to your attention that you know there's in his case like he was correct so quitting i don't even know if this is the right sentence but our thought but quitting you know no i guess it is quitting would have been the wrong move um maybe i try to think of like what would i have done in this situation you know, without using just the benefit of hindsight, but maybe like continue your experimentation at night and work. Like he has a trade, he's a blacksmith. He, he can, he can manufacture, you won't be rich, wealthy, but he could pay the bills. He would owe a lot more, he would own a lot more things than not having a house and just having teacups, you knowups. I don't know. Maybe that's what I would have done. Maybe I would have said, hey, do your trade during

the day and maybe do your experimentation at night. But he wasn't wired like that. He had no hobbies. The book talks about how he would constantly be doing experimentation where he would just experiment throughout the night and fall asleep at the factory. He'd spend more than half nights away from his family just because he was such an obsessive personality. So maybe, you know, an obsessive person like that couldn't do it part time. All right. So it says, but now Charles' father and his wife. So Clarissa, Charles' wife, and then his father, Masa, are pissed.

And they rise up in rebellion. It says, they demand that Charles stop spending money on rubber and return to hardware in the blacksmith's trade. They had had enough of the privations and humiliations that rubber had brought them. Charles' quest seemed less like the God-given mission he implied it was than an ungodly elevation of self, a vanglorious striving swaddled in half-hearted promises about the responsibility to take care of family and pay debts. It's a great

sentence there. Great writing by the author. So he doesn't listen to them. He continues on. this is something about his personality that i found interesting it's kind of a manifestation of what the author calls his manic optimism and from the moment he believed the the breakthrough that had eluded him so long was now a real probability he brought the whole power of his mind to bear on it. He talked of little, but he did rubber. This is the beginning of realizing, oh, I've actually made a breakthrough here. He was still penniless and borrowing from friends, but more than ever, he felt rich in prospect. I include that part because in the book it talks about, he says over and over again,

listen, I am meant to be a wealthy person. I'm just temporarily poor. So that's, again, one of the attributes I think is worth emulating, this belief in yourself that you'll figure it out, that I'm operating without a safety net that looks like it's dangerous to other people, but I know I'll do it. Now, does he ever reach that goal? No, but I think to reach that goal you must have a belief first so it's not like you can have you might not be able to have one without

the other um i mean i guess you could but there's just something about i the one thing that sustained i guess let me rephrase that the one thing that sustains Charles Stoddard's life is this this rabid and unrelenting belief in himself um and maybe that in in his case he thought it was god-given maybe it was just his way of saying hey like I I want to live the life that I have like pictured in my mind and I'm willing to go about and put things in motion to capture and to make that vision an actual reality. So this is the state of the Goodyear family in 1940. Goodyear's manic optimism evaporated. All the money had gone into experiments. That meant the adults and children in his family had to scrounge for food and fuel again, gathering wood wherever they could.

Goodyear himself hunted the local streams for turtles and bullfrogs for Clarissa to cook, and he borrowed small amounts anywhere he could. How he subsisted at this period, he later wrote of himself in the third person, charity alone can tell. So a family friend, this guy named William Beers, is giving us an insight into the family at this time. Beers remembers seeing tears in the eyes of Amasa, this is Charles' dad, when the old man explained that the Goodyears had once been rich.

And so this depth of poverty they're in is in between. That's in 1940. He discovers the process in 1938 to 1939. But in between the time he discovers it and the time he's actually able to patent it is some of the toughest times in his life. And that's about a five to six year period. that's where we're at uh in the story right now now it says the the author references like his manic optimism evaporated evaporated temporarily he it never evaporates till he dies but um but during this period it, like he wasn't, yes, he had superhuman perseverance, but he wasn't able to sustain that optimism forever.

He had periods of doubt. Now, what's weird about that is he never actually went and, like, tried to get another job or anything. He just kept going. And this is an example of the level of perseverance he had that I think makes him abnormal. And a little bit about his personality. So it says, Goodyear's perseverance in the face of disaster had a mesmerizing effect on those around him. While some laughed at him or pitied him, others clearly were drawn to his vision of riches from rubber and his dead certainty that he would triumph.

He demanded to be listened to. And in an age when face-to-face communication remained the most electrifying source of ideas and feelings, he won enough confidence to convince his neighbors to work for him for free or for very uncertain deferred wages. He also, he's also able to basically have, find, he was constantly in debt, but he constantly found new investors. And so that charisma, that persuasion that he had was one of his superpowers. I mean, it's devastating

because what they're talking about, he still persevered. They're talking about the fact that he was in poverty at the time. His father, brother, and brother's wife, and then his brother's wife and child got so mad at him about leading because they all followed him. Like, they followed kind of his lead. And one day they're like, forget it it we're done with the rubber industry we're going to go into business we're going to we're going into the pineapple trade okay and we're going to charter a boat we're going to go down to florida from new england we're going to collect pineapples we're going to bring them back and in one trip we'll make enough money to take the entire family out of poverty.

What happens is his father goes down there, his brother, his brother's wife, and his brother's three-year-old child down there. They go to Florida at the time. It's just swampland. And they catch malaria and they all die. And then he's left to take care of his mother who just lost her husband and her son and her daughter-in-law and her grandchild. And then his other brother dies, and he has to take care of his kids, too. And then something I, like, there's talk, it says Goodyear's perseverance in the face of disaster had a mesmerizing effect. Goodyear, he outlived, like, four of his kids.

At the time, it is very common for, they talk about in the book how like they wouldn't develop, um, emotional attachments to infants cause they didn't trust that they'd survive childhood. And, you know, sometimes he had like a newborn die after a month or two, his son died at three, three years old. And I, there's no way I could read that part because I would start crying uh just because you know you immediately start thinking about your own child um but i mean i the trials and tribulations this guy dealt with is just it's unfathomable to have to deal with this and he winds up outliving four or five of his kids his wife his father and two of his brothers and he only dies at 59iving four or five of his kids, his wife, his father, and two of his brothers, and he only dies at 59.

So that kind of tells you the circumstances at the time. Okay, so here we go. There's more about his debt. He says his avalanche of debt had grown to $59,000. Many times the average laborer's lifetime earning capacity. A laborer's salary was below $500 per year at the time. At this time, he keeps getting put into prison. And so they're actually, the invention invention of the passage of the bankruptcy law

happens around this time so he takes advantage of that he claims bankruptcy um for around that amount and he says he later wrote on that he never had cause to regret his decision to file for bankruptcy protection because soon his adventure began to be appreciated So through all the heartache that he's going through, he actually gets, finally gets, secures the patent that he's been working for for nearly all his life. And he wasn't able to do that unless he claimed bankruptcy and kind of stopped being put in jail. And so that's, it's one of the most famous patents of all time. It's patent number 3,633. And it says, this is how he looked at patents. He says, as with others of his time,

he understood that patents, like ideas, were a species of speculation rather than the culmination of a proven design. I never thought about it like that before. A patent was just another milestone in a sharp-elbowed marathon heading toward the ultimate goal, the creation of a sellable

process. Once a process was discovered, the idea was to build a high legal barbed wire fence around it as the government would allow. So that's basically describing the business strategy that Charles was pursuing. And it says, Goodyear felt some relief that patent number three, 3,633 was now safely in hand. He named the new substance metallic gum, elastic composition, and he touted its durability. Eventually, um,

there's another guy in this story, um, that is, is in some ways is like a good, is like a more advanced Goodyear in the rubber industry. He's in England. Uh, his name's Hancock and there's actually a book, uh, I think it's titled like Goodyear Hancock and the, the fight for the rubber monopoly or something like that. I actually have it on my, um, like I, I saved it on Amazon just in case I do get the book

later on. Um, because it's another way to learn about Goodyear but I think Hancock was a much more successful entrepreneur so I think if I do read that book I would do it do the lens of trying to learn about the strategies that Hancock utilized to build a much more successful business in the rubber industry than than Goodyear did but anyways he came up with the idea of vulcanization, that term. So Goodyear's calling it metallic gum elastic composition. Eventually, he just sees, like, oh, vulcanization's better. So then he starts referring it to as vulcanized rubber.

And he constantly updates this patent, which is actually upheld through several different trials. But Hancock does beat him in England England where Goodyear tries to force his patent. Hancock wins and makes sure that Goodyear never sees a cent from his rubber patent in England, which is actually interesting. It's in the book too, but I skipped over that part. Okay. So finally, now he is 1944. Let's see. He's 44 years old. He's going to die in about, what is that? Less than 16 years from here. But I want to get into his new way to make money. This is how he makes money. But again, he's racked up so much debt that he makes a lot of money, but he never works himself out of the debt. it says in his first few years after winning his patent goodyear

sold licensees licenses uh as prodigially i don't know how to pronounce that word as he signed ious one of his earliest earliest licenses for sheared rubber to be used in suspenders Went to a New Haven Manufacturer Who paid Goodyear $15,000 for the right to make Rubber products including sheared fabric Under Goodyear's four rubber related patents I'm just going through All the different ways he sold it

So $15,000 that's obviously a lot of money But I think When he dies his estate says he has Debt I think around like $200,000, something like that. Um, cause he, he's makes, he has cashflow, but then he just, he reinvests it. Cause he's like, Oh, I'm not going to stop there. Like rubber could be, he thought it could be used for, I think he wrote something like 300 different pages of all kinds of inventions that, that he planned to, uh, to apply rubber to. Um, so it says Goodyear sold a license for shoemaking. He also licensed the use for, of his patent to apply rubber to. So it says Goodyear sold a license for shoemaking.

He also licensed the use of his patent to make rubber clothing. Altogether, nine companies had licensed his patents by 1845. Although Goodyear took in considerable sums of money, so I just kind of ran over my own, where I was going. Although Goodyear took in considerable sums of money, he spent heavily on experiments and on servicing existing debts. His wealth was theoretical. His debt was real.

Patent number 3633 had put him into a new field of operation. Now he was not only able to license a technology protected by his patent, but he also could tap another potential source of income by pursuing infringers. Attorney Judson, that's the guy's last name, stepped in to fill the need for legal services that Goodyear now required on an ongoing basis. Still living on and spending borrowed money, Goodyear had no immediate way to pay for Judson's services. So this is another mistake he makes. So he did what he had become accustomed to do, stripping off a layer of equity in his invention and patent and using it as a payment. So Judson makes a small fortune that Goodyear never does because Goodyear is just a really good inventor, just a terrible business

person. He just did terrible deals like this over and over again. Thus, Goodyear executed the first of a series of agreements with Judson, making the attorney a 5% partner in patent number 3633 and any and all rubber inventions and a 10% partner in patent number 3633 and any and all rubber inventions and a 10% partner in any future inventions. Come on, man. You just gave away the farm. And then slowly but surely, Judson, I think, saw Goodyear as a mark

and he winds up getting, I think, something up to like 40% of the patent. Do more deals like this. At any time that Goodyear ran out of money, which was all the time, he kept just selling the most valuable thing he owned, which was equity. That's the frustrating part about reading the book. It's like, Goodyear, come on, man. What are you doing? It's very frustrating. He also did some weird things. Like he never kept a record at all. So like when he died, his son had to try to settle

his estate, which took like 10 years or something like that. And it's like, he didn't even know who he owed money to. He'd forget. He was just, I mean, okay, so let's look at that. It's like a weird thing to do, right? Like how do you keep records of nothing except for like your inventions? He had like a, the good part is he was solely focused on making inventions that he thought was

for the betterment of the world. The bad thing was because of his carelessness, it impoverished himself and his family and caused heartache and trouble for himself and those around him. So you have to take the good parts of his personality without the bad parts. Because if you have a combination like that, you're going to have a miserable life, which I definitely think Goodyear had, even though he might not have thought it like that. So this is an example of the devastatingness of his work on his health. So it says, in the mornings and evenings his joint ached.

Doctors told him he had gout, but more likely he suffered from lead poisoning. His feet and toes hurt so much that he often used a cane or crutches to move around, giving him the appearance of being older than his 52 years. His face had a yellow, unhealthy color. His eyes seemed to have retreated into his head. The inventor's career, Goodyear had learned, was a melancholy pursuit. A volume might be written in explanation of the peculiar difficulties and embarrassments to which inventors are subject. As a general rule, their labors begin, continue, and end in necessity, Goodyear wrote.

So again, that's from his autobiography. And even with all these health difficulties, this sentence is a good description of him. Goodyear resolved to carry on. And finally, I just want to close on one part because, and I almost, I was tempted to start the podcast with this, this one, but this is why he did what he did, and I think, like, it's fun, understanding why, or explaining to other people why you're doing what you're doing is fundamental for them understanding, like, the importance of it, and I think, like, in general, it's, like, a good leadership principle to, principle to like not just give instructions or not just give tasks

expect them to be completed but explain to the people that you're working with like why is it important that this happens um and to that end i think it's important for us to be able to understand who why and who goodyear was when you understand like why how he approaches like why do this because you know you got a book that's 200 some pages of just torture and it says all the licensees urged Goodyear to put some money in his pocket while he could by sticking to line extensions of existing products so you know be pragmatic right as he later wrote in third person with kind intentions no doubt, they, together with his other friends, earnestly depreciated his devoting more time or money to experiments, and constantly

urged him to turn his attention to obtaining compensation from the branches already established. Instead, he imagined a world of rubber bag claps, rubber swords, rubber pistol covers, rubber pontoons and pontoon boats, rubber breast pumps and urine bags. This world was taking shape in an eight inch by six inch hardcover journal on whose gold edged pages he sketched in delicate sure handed pencil lines of his visions. He's sketching out his visions in this notebook. Rubber inflatable invalid cushions, baby jumpers and swings, fetlock fenders, I don't even know what that is,

for horses and footback tubs. Goodyear kept his journal and pencil at his bedside, and he rose frequently during the night to record his latest epiphany. His experience had put him in possession, he believed, of much information that would otherwise be lost in the event of his death. If he died anytime soon, hospital patients and invalids might never lie down to rest in a rubber air or water bed. The hard of hearing could never benefit from a rubber ear trumpet,

and hernia sufferers would never be soothed by the abdominal supporters and tusses he had designed. He worked to record his vision so that these benefits would outlive him. And I think the framing of his life's work and making it bigger than just himself, at least to my understanding from reading the book, was a very important part of how he could continue on and suffer poverty, ill health, the death of those around him, and not give up and not just collapse and quit.

And when I, when I'm sitting here thinking about like, what are my final takeaways from this book? It's, it's that it's of, you know, having a larger mission in life that, that helps you get through the inevitable ups and downs that you're going to have. All right. And that's where I'll end it. If you want to read the full story and support the podcast at the same time, look at the link that's in the show notes. Oh, they just started doing construction

right next to my apartment. So you might be hearing that. My apologies. If not, go to amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash founders podcast. And you can see every single book that I've done so far for the podcast. If you buy it through that link,

the podcast gets a small percentage of the sale, no additional cost to you. It's a great way to get a book that you'll love and support the podcast at the same time. And if you go to... Whoa, super loud. All right, I guess that ends it. Just look for the link and I'll talk to you next week.