The Power of Avoiding Other People's Mistakes
Learning from the errors of others like James Dyson
Hello there,
We traveled to the Olympic Peninsula last weekend to camp on the beach and check out the tide pools. Hurray for sea stars, anemones, and tiny crabs!
The sunny weather contrasted with cold temperatures and lots of wind. But I was reminded that our most meaningful experiences involve overcoming obstacles, and our beach walk directly into chilling wind certainly checked that box.
Not all hardship, however, needs to be experienced first hand.
The amazing thing about reading is the opportunity to learn from other people’s mistakes!
“Read everything you can; knowledge is the competitive equalizer.”
— Chip Wilson (Lululemon)
And thusly I share this lesson with you — a forecast of 50 degrees with 30 mph wind feels a bit frigid with a toddler. Yes, I realize it was much colder in the ocean… but we aren’t dolphins!
This week we dive into mistakes along James Dyson’s path to enormous success, the value of stubbornness to win out in the end, plus a constructive tip on learning in your field.
What NOT to do from the World’s Most Stubborn Entrepreneur
James Dyson made several enormous mistakes along the way as he built a billion dollar business.
He notoriously fabricated 5,127 prototypes before he started production on his best-selling cyclone vacuum. But he could have worked with a team to get it done faster!
It’s a romantic vision of the single inventor toiling away in his garage for years, but even Thomas Edison had an entire team!
The most powerful way to work involves collaboration, but through stubbornness James Dyson persevered essentially alone. And he almost lost his house along the way, refinancing multiples times to have the money to keep his business going!
Learning from painful experience
Dyson was early in seeing the power of direct consumer sales when he had no other options for the Ballbarrow, an innovation in wheelbarrow design using a spherical wheel.
He could not convince distributors to take his product. He could not get store owners to stock his product. As a last resort he took out an advertisements in the newspaper and the people began to buy his product.
As sales grew, the direct connection to customers allowed Ballbarrow to build strong loyal base. Much of the growth came through word of mouth.
When a product is remarkable, the endorsements from user saying, “you have got to try this!” keeps marketing costs low. With high manufacturing costs — certainly the case as they fabricated Ballbarrow in England — you must keep other costs low to make money on each sale.
After several years of steady growth, the company’s board of directors wanted to scale up. They hired a CEO with a sales background. And that’s when everything began to fall apart.
The new CEO brought his single-minded approach to selling and asked, “why aren’t we in retail?” Instead of listening to the answer, he began shipping the product to suppliers and stores. This cut the profit margin down so much the company began losing money on each sale.
And what did the board decided to do next? Expand and grow! Which sounds even crazier when you learn that the interest rate on loans was 25% — paying enormous sums to borrow money and lose it?!
The salesman CEO disagreed with all of James Dyson’s advice, ultimately pushing James out of his own company. What happened to the Ballbarrow company? They went bankrupt.
Meanwhile, Dyson had an idea for a better cyclonic vacuum, inspired by a piece of equipment he built for powder coating the ball barrow.
And luckily the Ballbarrow board told him it was a stupid idea — “If there is a better vacuum, Hoover would have come up with it already!”
This left Dyson the chance to go build it for himself, and learn a few more lessons through mistakes. A few more lessons things that went wrong include:
Failing to sell. Fresh out of college Dyson worked for Jeremy Fry to sell the Sea Truck, which looked different from any other water vessel out there. It took Dyson months to figure out how to land a sale with buyers, and the ability to sell something unique became one of his greatest strengths.
Losing business ownership. James Dyson tried many times to partner with others, mainly for access to money so that he could move forward. After Amway tried demanded an enormous refund on his products — a very expensive legal battle — he discovered the value of keeping ownership.
Persistence and Stamina. In 1982, Dyson initially thought up the cyclone vacuum. The first version of the vacuum launched in 1987, licensed to a Japanese brand that insisted the product be bright pink. Intent on world-wide distribution, his team released a new design, the first “Dyson” vacuum, in 1993, a fifteen years journey.
The story of Dyson vacuums offers examples of nearly everything that can go wrong, but what’s amazing is the persistence through it all.
“While it is easy, of course, for me to celebrate my doggedness now and say that it is all you need to succeed, the truth is that it demoralized me terribly.”
Where the tortoise went wrong
James Dyson resonated with the Japanese approach to business and work. Instead of searching for the lone genius, they placed emphasis on slow and steady progress.
Akio Morita, leader of Sony in the 1980s, saw the future in a product no one expected to take off. The game-changing invention didn’t come out of thin air.
They already manufactured a bulky cassette recorder, the TC-D5, which Sony’s co-founder would haul around the world on his business travels to listen to music.
The Walkman received poor reviews at launch because it could not record anything itself — it could only playback sound. It came with lightweight foam headphones, and the initial press respond was abysmal.
Slowly more and more people tried it. They fell in love with music on the go. And ultimately the word “walkman” entered the Oxford English Diciontary.
Innovation requires day-to-day improvement to eventually land on an amazing product. But we don’t all need to mortgage our homes multiple times to get there.
Hopefully you found some widsom in Dyson’s missteps and challenges. I certainly don’t intend to launch any product in pink!
Worthy & Remarkable
Apple’s Vision Pro AR headset announcement makes me wonder how soon we’ll completely stop interacting in person, but until then there’s Phill the AI massage robot (IndieGogo)
The Virgo “safest cycling helmet” (Kickstarter) has a face guard, visor, and “nine optimal airflows to keep you cool” — probably pairs well with last week’s 250 mi range ebike!
Space Acacia is a massive tent, insulated floor that doubles a soft bed, plus a “temperature adjusting canopy” and raised $600k already
Stefan Sagmeister on the power of time off — inspiring talk on how sabbaticals every 7 years led to his best work (2010)
Darkest Before Dawn is a climbing film about two strong guys trying the famous route on El Cap, and there’s a sweet falling montage at minute 6
Michaela Kirsch becomes the 30th person and 3rd woman to climb La Rambla (5.15a), just 9 months after receiving her PhD in occupational therapy.
Two Pro UK Climber Ladies head to Zion to try some sandstone crack climbing — I swear that park is the most underrated climbing area in the US.
Rick Ridgeway tells the story of carrying 200 lb loads to cross the Tibetan Plateau with Conrad Anger, Galen Rowell, and Jimmy Chin in 2006 — I’m currently reading his book, Life Lived Wild, so stay tuned for more of his stories.
One Thing from Me
I watched an inspiring talk by Bill Gurley to the business students at the University of Texas - he titled it Runnin’ Down a Dream. He emphasizes the value of role models and mentors in your field or industry.
Danny Meyer opened his first restaurant at age 27 and later ran a three- Michelin-star-rated in NYC. He went on to start Shake Shack and he epitomizes this technique.
Danny made a list of the 12 people doing the most innovative things in the restaurant industry. He studied their writings and personally connected with 100% of them.
And Bill Gurley did this himself early in his career as an investor by connecting with leading figures. He was obsessed with learning in his field and in the 1980’s sent out a “newsletter” via fax to other investors.
For months now I have set a daily reminder to write 3 tasks to help or connect with others. The question this leaves me with is, “who are those 12 people for me?”
With all the podcasts and videos available today you can learn from nearly successful person by listening or reading to their lessons and stories!
Hopefully I’ve left you with some new people or ideas to explore.
Thanks,
Jono
PS - this is what summer should look like
PPS - if you’re curious how fast someone could climb El Capitan, I made a video for you