Podcast appearances and mentions of charles kettering

１年を振り返ると、継続できたこと／できなかったこと、様々あるかもしれません。 これまで「継続できたこと」と「継続できなかったこと」の違いを振り返ることで、継続に必要なものを明確にすることができます。 今回は「継続できる自分になる！」をテーマに、続けられる種族「Ｋ族（けいぞく）」になる５つのポイントを挙げながら「継続は力なり」につながるシステムについてお話しています。 ■ Useful Expressions： You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time. (Charles Kettering) ●テーマのリクエストや番組へのご感想もお待ちしています！ https://ws.formzu.net/dist/S41569386/ ●YouTube「Jayの英語ブースターチャンネル」のご登録 http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=jayscoreup ●毎日配信ボキャブラリーブースターのご登録 http://boosterstation.jp/vocabulary/ ●ブログ「英語モチベーション・ブースター」 https://ameblo.jp/jay-english/ Jayskill243.mp3

１年を振り返ると、継続できたこと／できなかったこと、様々あるかもしれません。 これまで「継続できたこと」と「継続できなかったこと」の違いを振り返ることで、継続に必要なものを明確にすることができます。 今回は「継続できる自分になる！」をテーマに、続けられる種族「Ｋ族（けいぞく）」になる５つのポイントを挙げながら「継続は力なり」につながるシステムについてお話しています。 ■ Useful Expressions： You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time. (Charles Kettering) ●テーマのリクエストや番組へのご感想もお待ちしています！ https://ws.formzu.net/dist/S41569386/ ●YouTube「Jayの英語ブースターチャンネル」のご登録 http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=jayscoreup ●毎日配信ボキャブラリーブースターのご登録 http://boosterstation.jp/vocabulary/ ●ブログ「英語モチベーション・ブースター」 https://ameblo.jp/jay-english/ MP3 シェア用コードを表示

Sign-up for my free 20-day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: 7 Biblical Principles for Resolving Conflict at WorkDevotional: 3 of 7A person's insight gives him patience, and his virtue is to overlook an offense. (Proverbs 19:11)We're in a series exploring seven biblical principles for resolving conflict at work. Here's the third…Principle #3: Resolve to Overlook or Address the offense that has caused a lack of peace between you and someone else.You may be surprised to learn that Scripture commends overlooking certain offenses, but it's there in black and white (see Proverbs 19:11). And I think we see evidence of this in the life of Christ. Take Jesus's exchange with the “rich young ruler.” After Jesus pointed to God's commands such as the ones to “not murder,” and “not commit adultery,” the young man said, “All these things I have kept from my youth” (see Matthew 19:16-22). To which Jesus must have thought, “Really?”While this man may not have technically murdered or cheated on his wife, Jesus's Sermon on the Mount made clear that no human (save Christ himself) is capable of keeping those commandments perfectly. Jesus undoubtedly saw pride and spiritual blindness in this young man's heart. But he chose “to overlook [the] offense” in this particular interaction.So yes, sometimes we'd be wise to overlook an offense. But other times, we'd be wise to address an offense that is leading to a lack of peace (see Proverbs 27:5). How can we discern when to overlook and when to address an offense that is causing conflict? Here are three steps.#1: Write down the offense as clearly as you can. Because as Charles Kettering once said, “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” Go back to the note I encouraged you to start last week and complete this sentence: “I feel a lack of peace with [Name] because…” And be as detailed as you can about why you feel a lack of peace towards this person.#2: Pray for wisdom on whether to address or overlook the offense. James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”#3: Ask yourself these diagnostic questions.Does the offense dishonor God?Has the offense damaged my relationship with the person?Has this person's actions hurt themselves or others?Was the offending action done intentionally?Is the offending action a recurring issue?If I overlook the offense, will I continue to dwell on it?If the answer to all of these questions is “no,” then it's probably wise to overlook the issue which, according to Ken Sande, “involves a deliberate decision not to talk about it, dwell on it, or let it grow into pent-up bitterness or anger.”If you can do that, praise God! If not, we've got some more work to do together next week.

Hey all! Welcome to another episode of Mr. P.'s Tales from the Road! In this edition, we take a look at the history, times and demise of one of Detroit, Michigan's largest abandoned schools; Charles Kettering High School. Once a gem in the crown of the Detroit Public Schools, Kettering went from a bright and airy educational bastion to a ruined, shredded and forlorn ruin, now on the chopping block to be demolished. Personal exploratory tales and history abound, so get yourself an overly sweet can of Faygo, pick up a few fully-loaded Coney's , settle down, listen in and enjoy the show! Have a great weekend and we'll see you in the next episode! -Mr. P. Also now available on APPLE PODCAST!: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mr-p-s-tales-from-the-road/id1717990959 MR. P. INFO: The majority of my work gets published at the Mr. P. Explores Facebook Community:⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/MrPExplores/⁠⁠  Stop by for full photo explorations, history and stories told from the road! Mr. P. Explores Instagram (extras that never make the site or videos, and much more!):⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/mr.p_explores/⁠⁠@mr.p_explores TWITTER (X?):⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/ExploresMr⁠⁠ @ExploresMr  (come on over and say hello!)  Thanks all, and have a great week! FLICKR: ⁠https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrpexplores/

Check out the ⁠⁠Patreon Community by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠clicking here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! In this newsletter we discuss two main things, the parenting moment is about moments I treasure and the training thought is about microsessions (link mentioned is here). The quote we share this week is from Charles Kettering. _____________________ Want strength coaching? Check out my coaching services by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠clicking here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. _____________________ Enjoyed the audio version of the email and want to sign up to the Stronger Dads Newsletter? You can sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.strongerdads.co.nz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ _____________________ Keen to support the Stronger Dads Collective? Join the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Let's start the year strong! Here are some inspiring quotes to help you start the new year off on the right foot: 1️⃣ “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.” - Oprah Winfrey 2️⃣ “Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on.” - Hal Borland 3️⃣ “New beginnings are in order, and you are bound to feel some level of excitement as new chances come your way.” - Oscar Auliq-Ice 4️⃣ “And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” - Rainer Maria Rilke 5️⃣ “Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress.” - Charles Kettering 6️⃣ “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” - Plato 7️⃣ “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” - Eleanor Roosevelt 8️⃣ “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” - C.S. Lewis 9️⃣ “The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written.” - Melody Beattie

Jak 1,2-3 achtet es für lauter Freude, wenn ihr in mancherlei Anfechtungen geratet, da ihr ja wisst, dass die Bewährung eures Glaubens standhaftes Ausharren bewirkt. (SCH2000) Kommentar von MacDonald (CLV) 1,2 In diesem Abschnitt behandelt Jakobus das Thema Versuchung. Er benutzt das Wort auf zweierlei Weise. In den Versen 2-12 könnte man die Versuchungen als von Gott zugedachte »Versuchungen« oder von Gott gesandte Probleme bezeichnen, womit die Echtheit unseres Glaubens geprüft und wir in das Ebenbild Christi verwandelt werden. In den Versen 13-17 wird dagegen das Thema der von Satan kommenden Versuchungen behandelt. Sie haben ihren Ursprung im Inneren des Menschen und führen zur Sünde. Das christliche Leben ist voller Probleme. Sie kommen ungebeten und unerwartet. Manchmal sind es einzelne Probleme, mit denen wir zu tun haben, mitunter aber kommen sie auch zuhauf. Sie kommen unausweichlich. Jakobus schreibt nicht: »Falls ihr in mancherlei Versuchungen geratet«, sondern: »Wenn ihr …« Wir können Schwierigkeiten nicht ausweichen. Die Frage lautet nur: »Wie gehen wir damit um?« Es gibt mehrere mögliche Haltungen, die wir gegenüber diesen Erprobungen, Anfechtungen und Versuchungen des Lebens einnehmen können. Wir können uns gegen sie auflehnen (Hebr 12,5), indem wir eine Trotzhaltung einnehmen und uns dabei noch rühmen, dass wir uns aus eigener Kraft bis zum Sieg durchkämpfen werden. Auf der anderen Seite können wir unter dem Druck mutlos werden und sogar aufgeben (Hebr 12,5). Das ist reiner Fatalismus. Wir könnten infolgedessen sogar die Tatsache infrage stellen, dass der Herr für uns sorgt. Und drittens können wir murren und uns über unsere Probleme beklagen. Davor warnt uns jedoch Paulus in 1. Korinther 10,10. Eine vierte Möglichkeit besteht darin, sich dem Selbstmitleid zu überlassen, an niemand anders mehr zu denken, sich auf die eigene Lage zu konzentrieren und zu versuchen, bei anderen Mitleid zu erregen. Es gibt aber noch eine bessere Möglichkeit: Wir können durch die Schwierigkeiten und Probleme des Lebens geschult werden. Wir können im Grunde sagen: »Gott hat diese Anfechtung in meinem Leben erlaubt. Er hat sicher etwas Gutes mit mir vor. Ich weiß zwar nicht, was Gott damit bezweckt, aber ich will versuchen, es herauszufinden. Ich möchte, dass sich seine Ziele in meinem Leben erfüllen.« Da rät Jakobus: »Achtet es für lauter Freude, meine Brüder, wenn ihr in mancherlei Versuchungen geratet.« Lehnt euch nicht auf! Lasst euch nicht gehen! Freut euch! Diese Probleme sind keine Feinde, die darauf abzielen, euch zugrunde zu richten. Sie sind Freunde, die euch helfen wollen, eine christliche Wesensart zu entwickeln. Gott versucht, in jedem seiner Kinder Christusähnlichkeit hervorzubringen. Dieser Vorgang beinhaltet notwendigerweise Leid, Enttäuschung und Verwirrung. Die Frucht des Geistes kann nicht nur durch Sonnenschein hervorgebracht werden, es muss auch Wolken und Regen geben. Versuchung ist niemals angenehm, sie ist schwierig zu ertragen, und wir mögen sie nicht. Aber hinterher bringt sie »denen, die durch sie geübt sind, die friedsame Frucht der Gerechtigkeit« (Hebr 12,11). Wie oft hören wir Christen sagen, die gerade eine große Krise überstanden haben: »Es war eine sehr schwere Zeit, aber ich möchte sie gegen nichts in der Welt eintauschen.« 1,3 Jakobus spricht von der »Bewährung eures Glaubens«. Er stellt den Glauben als ein Edelmetall dar, das vom Prüfer (Gott) auf Echtheit hin untersucht wird. Das Metall wird dem Feuer der Verfolgung, der Krankheit, des Leidens und der Schmerzen unterworfen. Ohne Probleme würden wir uns nie im Ausharren üben. Sogar Weltmenschen erkennen, dass Probleme den Charakter stärken. Charles Kettering, ein bekannter Industrieller, sagte einst: »Probleme sind der Preis des Fortschritts. Bringen Sie mir bitte nur Probleme. Gute Nachrichten schwächen mich.« .:: FRAGEN::. Schreib mir! bibelverse@christliche-gewohnheiten.de .:: ANKI ::. ankisrs.net

In our previous episode, we looked at the history of flight - from dinosaurs to the modern aircraft that carry people and things all over the world. Those helped to make the world smaller, but UAVs and drones have had a very different impact in how we lead our lives - and will have an even more substantial impact in the future. That might not have seemed so likely in the 1700s, though - when unmann Unmanned Aircraft Napoleon conquered Venice in 1797 and then ceded control to the Austrians the same year. He then took it as part of a treaty in 1805 and established the first Kingdom of Italy. Then lost it in 1814. And so they revolted in 1848. One of the ways the Austrians crushed the revolt, in part employing balloons, which had been invented in 1783, that were packed with explosives. 200 balloons packed with bombs later, one found a target. Not a huge surprise that such techniques didn't get used again for some time. The Japanese tried a similar tactic to bomb the US in World War II - then there were random balloons in the 2020s, just for funsies. A few other inventions needed to find one another in order to evolve into something entirely new. Radio was invented in the 1890s. Nikola Tesla built a radio controlled boat in 1898. Airplanes came along in 1903. Then came airships moved by radio. So it was just a matter of time before the cost of radio equipment came down enough to match the cost of building smaller airplanes that could be controlled with remote controls as well.  The first documented occurrence of that was in 1907 when Percy Sperry filed a patent for a kite fashioned to look and operate like a plane, but glide in the wind. The kite string was the first remote control. Then electrical signals went through those strings and eventually the wire turned into radio - the same progress we see with most manual machinery that needs to be mobile. Technology moves upmarket, so Sperry Corporation the aircraft with autopilot features in 1912. At this point, that was just a gyroscopic heading indicator and attitude indicator that had been connected to hydraulically operated elevators and rudders but over time would be able to react to all types of environmental changes to save pilots from having to constantly manually react while flying. That helped to pave the way for longer and safer flights, as automation often does. Then came World War I. Tesla discussed aerial combat using unmanned aircraft in 1915 and Charles Kettering (who developed the electric cash register and the electric car starter) gave us The Kettering Bug, a flying, remote controlled torpedo of sorts. Elmer Sperry worked on a similar device. British war engineers like Archibald Low were also working on attempts but the technology didn't evolve fast enough and by the end of the war there wasn't much interest in military funding. But a couple of decades can do a lot. Both for miniaturization and maturity of technology. 1936 saw the development of the first navy UAV aircraft by the name of Queen Bee by Admiral William H. Stanley then the QF2. They was primarily used for aerial target practice as a low-cost radio-controlled drone. The idea was an instant hit and later on, the military called for the development of similar systems, many of which came from Hollywood of all places. Reginald Denny was a British gunner in World War I. They shot things from airplanes. After the war he moved to Hollywood to be an actor. By the 1930s he got interested in model airplanes that could fly and joined up with Paul Whittier to open a chain of hobby shops. He designed a few planes and eventually grew them to be sold to the US military as targets. The Radioplane as they would be known even got joysticks and they sold tens of thousands during World War II.  War wasn't the only use for UAVs. Others were experimenting and by 1936 we got the first radio controlled model airplane competition in 1936, a movement that continued to grow and evolve into the 1970s. We got the Academy of Model Aeronautics (or AMA) in 1936, who launched a magazine called Model Aviation and continues to publish, provide insurance, and act as the UAV, RC airplane, and drone community representative to the FAA. Their membership still runs close to 200,000. Most of these model planes were managed from the ground using radio remote controls.  The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, was established in 1934 to manage the airwaves. They stepped in to manage what frequencies could be used for different use cases in the US, including radio controlled planes. Where there is activity, there are stars. The Big Guff, built by brothers Walt and Bill Guff, was the first truly successful RC airplane in that hobbiest market. Over the next decades solid state electronics got smaller, cheaper, and more practical. As did the way we could transmit bits over those wireless links.  1947 saw the first radar-guided missile, the subsonic Firebird, which over time evolved into a number of programs. Electro-mechanical computers had been used to calculate trajectories for ordinances during World War II so with knowledge of infrared, we got infrared homing then television cameras mounted into missiles and when combined with the proximity fuse, which came with small pressure, magnetic, acoustic, radio, then optical transmitters. We got much better at blowing things up.  Part of that was studying the German V-2 rocket programs. They used an analog computer to control the direction and altitude of missiles. The US Polaris and Minuteman missile programs added transistors then microchips to missiles to control the guidance systems. Rockets had computers and so they showed up in airplanes to aid humans in guiding those, often replacing Sperry's original gyroscopic automations. The Apollo Guidance Computer from the 1969 moon landing was an early example of times when humans even put their lives in the hands of computers - with manual override capabilities of course. Then as the price of chips fell in the 1980s we started to see them in model airplanes. Modern Drones By now, radio controlled aircraft had been used for target practice, to deliver payloads and blow things up, and even for spying. Aircraft without humans to weight them down could run on electric motors rather than combustable engines. Thus they were quieter. This technology allowed the UAVs to fly undetected thus laying the very foundation for the modern depiction of drones used by the military for covert operations.  As the costs fell and carrying capacity increased, we saw them used in filmmaking, surveying, weather monitoring, and anywhere else a hobbyist could use their hobby in their career. But the cameras weren't that great yet. Then Fairchild developed the charge-coupled device, or CCD, in 1969. The first digital camera arguably came out of Eastman Kodak in 1975 when Steven Sasson built a prototype using a mixture of batteries, movie camera lenses, Fairchild CCD sensors, and Motorola parts. Sony came out with the Magnetic Video Camera in 1981 and Canon put the RC701 on the market in 1986. Fuji, Dycam, even the Apple QuickTake, came out in the next few years. Cameras were getting better resolution, and as we turned the page into the 1990s, those cameras got smaller and used CompactFlash to store images and video files. The first aerial photograph is attributed to Gaspar Tournachon, but the militaries of the world used UAVs that were B-17 and Grumman Hellcats from World War II that had been converted to drones full of sensors to study nuclear radiation clouds when testing weapons. Those evolved into Reconnaisance drones like the Aerojet SD-2, with mounted analog cameras in the 50s and 60s. During that time we saw the Ryan Firebees and DC-130As run thousands of flights snapping photos to aid intelligence gathering. Every country was in on it. The USSR, Iran, North Korea, Britain. And the DARPA-instigated Amber and then Predator drones might be considered the modern precursor to drones we play with today. Again, we see the larger military uses come down market once secrecy and cost meet a cool factor down-market. DARPA spent $40 million on the Amber program. Manufacturers of consumer drones have certainly made far more than that.  Hobbyists started to develop Do It Yourself (DIY) drone kits in the early 2000s. Now that there were websites, we didn't have to wait for magazines to show up, we could take to the World Wide Web forums and trade ideas for how to do what the US CIA had done when they conducted the first armed drone strike in 2001 - just maybe without the weapon systems since this was in the back yard.  Lithium-ion batteries were getting cheaper and lighter. As were much faster chips. Robotics had come a long way as well, and moving small parts of model aircraft was much simpler than avoiding all the chairs in a room at Stanford. Hobbyists turned into companies that built and sold drones of all sizes, some of which got in the way of commercial aircraft. So the FAA started issuing drone permits in 2006.  Every technology had a point, where the confluence of all these technologies meets into a truly commercially viable product. We had Wi-Fi, RF (or radio frequency), iPhones, mobile apps, tiny digital cameras in our phones, and even in spy teddy bears, we understood flight, propellers, plastics were heavier-than-air, but lighter than metal. So in 2010 we got the Parrot AR Drone. This was the first drone that was sold to the masses that was just plug and play. And an explosion of drone makers followed, with consumer products ranging from around $20 to hundreds now. Drone races, drone aerogymnastics, drone footage on our Apple and Google TV screens, and with TinyML projects for every possible machine learning need we can imagine, UAVs that stabilize cameras, can find objects based on information we program into it, and any other use we can imagine.  The concept of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has come a long way since the Austrians tried to bomb the Venetians into submission. Today  there are mini drones, foldable drones, massive drones that can carry packages, racing drones, and even military drones programmed to kill. In fact, right now there are debates raging in the UN around whether to allow drones to autonomously kill. Because Skynet.  We're also experimenting with passenger drone technology. Because autonomous driving is another convergence just waiting in the wings. Imagine going to the top of a building and getting in a small pod then flying a few buildings over - or to the next city. Maybe in our lifetimes, but not as soon as some of the companies who have gone public to do just this thought. 

Connie's motivational quote for today is by – Charles Kettering, “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.” I love this quote.  When COVID hit and the work stopped I know I had to pivot hard and unlearn the many things that I had been doing that worked, that stopped working in one day.    UGH!  So, learning and unlearning, and relearning are needed approaches.  So as a business owner I know I need to keep an open mind, learn new and relevant things every day, and continue to challenge how and why I do the things I do with the thought process of always looking to improve, work smarter not harder, and grow without overwhelm and burnout.    Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SsnrPYO08uE   About William Gammon:   Bill is the owner and founder of Gammon and Associates. He is an accomplished senior executive, advisor, author, mentor, coach, and thought leader with over 50 years of experience.   How to Get in Touch With William Gammon:   Website:  http://gammonandassoc.net/ Email:   williamwgammon@msn.com   Stalk me online! LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/conniewhitman Download Free Communication Style Assessment: https://www.changingthesalesgame.com/communication-style-assessment  All-Star Community:  https://changingthesalesgame.mykajabi.com/All-Star-Community Enlightenment of Change Facebook group: tinyurl.com/EOCFacebookGroup   Subscribe and listen to the Enlightenment of Change podcast on your favorite podcast streaming service or on YouTube.  New episodes post every week - listen to Connie dive into new sales and business topics or problems you may have in your business.  

On today's episode, Jeff talks to Garrett Maroon, owner of Maroon Group Real Estate and host of the Serving Not Selling Podcast. He shares how he built a referral business that generates over 100 transactions per year.  Garrett's system is easy to implement, requires little money, and no cold calls yet generates consistent business no matter what the rest of the market is doing.  Tune in and follow his lead to build a solid referral business in your market. Episode Highlights: Garrett shares how initially he was against the idea of joining real-estate but then after months of exploring this field he said yes to it. Garrett's encouragement to agents is one of his favorite quotes from Charles Kettering is the only time you can't afford to fail is the last time you try. The world is different, people interact differently. Garrett explains why it is important to understand and adapt. Garrett explains how he shifted that mindset of becoming a real estate agent versus a friend. Garrett talks about the research he did on consumer psychology.  Garrett talks about the importance of building relationships even though they may not be a potential client.  If you are an agent who struggles to talk about your business, you probably should say it more often and if you are an agent who has no problem talking about yourself and your business, you probably should say it less. Consistency is everything. It's not about perfection, about consistency. “You can have the perfect post. But it doesn't matter if you're not going to follow it up with a bunch of other posts,” says Jeff. For his clients, every quarter Garrett has the same rhythm of personal touches. He shares the cadence of the quarters. You just have to think about how you can actually consistently care for people. That is how you win in the real estate industry. Garrett talks about the future generation, the millennials and how they are reluctant to answer their phones. He shares how you can get a better hold of them. Garrett explains how he has a systemic approach towards building relationships.  The old school people teach agents to abuse their various vendors, which as per Garrett is not the right way to do it.  3 Key Points: Garrett talks about his database of clients, how he started with just 40 people and how he was able to organically grow it.  Garrett shares sales pitches and how he indirectly approaches people and lets them know that he is a real-estate agent.  If you have the old school mindset, you need to change it again. You are going to get left behind. It's just not going to work, says Jeff.   Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Follow Up Boss (Sponsor) Chime (Sponsor) Z buyer (sponsor)   Garrett Maroon: text 804-878-2200 https://www.businessbyrelationships.com/ https://servingnotselling.buzzsprout.com/

"A Problem Well Stated is Half Solved," said the late Charles Kettering who headed the GM research department in the mid 20th century. How does this apply to the application of critical thought in coaching, especially in minor hockey? Dean Holden explains what it means and how it applies, referring as well to the work of Robert Ennis ("Critical Thinking Dispositions"). Also mentioned is the 2006 World Cup match between Argentina and Serbia/Montenegro in which the Argentines completed 26 consecutive passes before scoring. Here is the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR3Om0WfErAThe Robert Ennis research document PDF can be found online.(Note: As Richard Bercuson reiterates in the podcast, there is not, nor has there ever been, research suggesting a link between being near plastic pylons and cancer.)Contact: richard(at)grassrootsminorhockey.comTwitter:Richard - @berky544Dean - @SportIQTraining

What I learned from reading Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush.Support Founders' sponsors: Tiny: The easiest way to sell your business. Quick and straightforward exits for Founders. andCapital: Raise, hold, and spend capital all in one place. and Tegus is a search engine for business knowledge that's used by founders, investors, and executives. It's incredible what they're building. Try it for free by visiting Tegus.[7:15] Pieces of the Action offers his hard-won lessons on how to operate and manage effectively within complex organizations and drive ambitious, unprecedented programs to fruition.[8:54] Stripe Press Books:The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell WaldropThe Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 by Jordan Mechner.[9:24] Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary[10:40] Any exploration of the institutions that shape how we do research, generate discoveries, create inventions, and turn ideas into innovations inevitably leads back to Vannevar Bush.[11:26] No American has had greater influence in the growth of science and technology than Vannevar Bush.[12:23] That's why I'm going to encourage you to order this book —because when you pick it up and you read it —you're reading the words of an 80 year old genius. One of the most formidable and accomplished people that has ever lived— laying out what he learned over his six decade long career.[14:38] A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95)[15:12] Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing by Thierry Bardini[15:48] I don't know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart's ideas. —  The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #157)[18:54] Bush points out that tipping points often rest with far-seeing, energetic individuals. We can be those individuals.[20:36] I went into this book with little more than a name and came out with the closest thing to a mentor someone you've never met can be.[20:58] We are not the first to face problems, and as we face them we can hold our heads high. In such spirit was this book written.[24:38] The essence of civilization is the transmission of the findings of each generation to the next.[29:00] This is not a call for optimism, it is a call for determination.[31:12] It is pleasant to turn to situations where conservatism or lethargy were overcome by farseeing, energetic individuals.[31:34] People are really a power law and that the best ones can change everything. —Sam Hinkie[33:46] There should never be, throughout an organization, any doubt as to where authority for making decisions resides, or any doubt that they will be promptly made.[34:32] You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow." — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos by Jeff Bezos and Walter Isaacson.(Founders #155)[38:36] Rigid lines of authority do not produce the best innovations.[38:42] Research projects flowered in pockets all around the company, many of them without Steve's blessing or even awareness.They'd come to Steve's attention only if one of his key managers decided that the project or technology showed real potential.In that case, Steve would check it out, and the information he'd glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain. Sometimes that's where it would sit, and nothing would happen. Sometimes, on the other hand, he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether.This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable. —Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Founders #265)[40:56] He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work.  —Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. (Founders #135)[42:22] Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant. (Founders #143)[45:35] If a man is a good judge of men, he can go far on that skill alone.[46:00] All the past episodes mentioned by Vannevar Bush in this book:General Leslie Groves: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215)J. Robert Oppenheimer: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215)Alfred Lee Loomis: Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant. (Founders #143)J.P. Morgan: The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139)The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield. (Founders #142)Orville Wright: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. (Founders #239)Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone. (Founders #241)Edwin Land: Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #263)Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264)Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West by Mark Foster. (Founders #66)Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd (Founders #125)Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bellby Charlotte Gray. (Founders #138)[48:21] Difficulties are often encountered in bringing an invention into production and use.[48:47] An invention has some of the characteristics of a poem.It is said that a poet may derive real joy out of making a poem, even if it is never published, even if he does not recite it to his friends, even if it is not a very good poem.No doubt, one has to be a poet to understand this.In the same way, an inventor can derive real satisfaction out of making an invention, even if he never expects to make a nickel out of it, even if he knows it is a bit foolish, provided he feels it involves ingenuity and insight.An inventor invents because he cannot help it, and also because he gets quiet fun out of doing so.Sometimes he even makes money at it, but not by himself. One has to be an inventor to understand this.One evening in Dayton, I dined alone with Orville Wright.During a long evening, we discussed inventions we had made that had never amounted to anything. He took me up to the attic and showed me models of various weird gadgets.I had plenty of similar efforts to tell him about, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.Neither of us would have thus spilled things except to a fellow practitioner, one who had enjoyed the elation of creation and who knew that such elation is, to a true devotee, independent of practical results.So it is also, I understand, with poets.[51:28] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)[52:21] When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen. (Founders #50)[57:18] If a company operates only under patents it owns, and infringes on no others, its monopoly should not be disturbed, and the courts so hold. An excellent example is Polaroid Corporation. Founded by Edwin Land, one of the most ingenious men I ever knew (and also one of the wisest), it has grown and prospered because of his inventions and those of his team.[1:00:46] I came to the realization that they knew more about the subject than I did. In some ways, this was not strange. They were concentrating on it and I was getting involved in other things.[1:01:31] P.T. Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson. (Founders #137)[1:05:53] We make progress, lots of progress, in nearly every intellectual field, only to find that the more we probe, the faster our field of ignorance expands.[1:11:41] All the books from Stripe Press—Get 60 days free of Readwise. It is the best app I pay for. I couldn't make Founders without it.—“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

What I learned from reading Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson.--Support Founders' sponsors: Tegus is a search engine for business knowledge that's used by founders, investors, and executives. It's incredible what they're building. Try it for free by visiting Tegus.and Sam Hinkie's unique venture capital firm 87 Capital. If i was raising money and looking for a long term partner Sam is the first person I would call. If you are the kind of founder that we study on this podcast and you are looking for a long term partner go to 87capital.comand Get 60 days free of Readwise. It is the best app I pay for. I couldn't make Founders without it.—[8:00] Podcast starts [8:26] He had known how to gather interest, faith, and hope in the success of his projects.[9:31] I think of this episode as part 5 in a 5 part series that started on episode 263:#263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg.#264 Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. #265 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli#266 My Life and Work by Henry Ford.[11:20] Follow your natural drift. —Charlie Munger[11:54] Warren Buffett: “Bill Gates Sr. posed the question to the table: What factor did people feel was the most important in getting to where they'd gotten in life? And I said, ‘Focus.' And Bill said the same thing.” —Focus and Finding Your Favorite Problems by Frederik Gieschen[12:46] Focus! A simple thing to say and a nearly impossible thing to do over the long term.[15:51] We have a picture of the boy receiving blow after blow and learning that there was inexplicable cruelty and pain in this world.[19:49] He is working from the time the sun rises till 10 or 11 at night. He is 11 years old.[19:58] He reads the entire library. Every book. All of them.[21:52] At this point in history the telegraph is the leading edge of communication technology in the world.[23:01] My refuge was a Detroit public library. I started with the first book on the bottom shelf and went through the lot one by one. I did not read a few books. I read the library.[23:21] Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill GurleyBlake Robbins Notes on Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You LoveGreatness isn't random. It is earned. If you're going to research something, this is your lucky day. Information is freely available on the internet — that's the good news. The bad news is that you now have zero excuse for not being the most knowledgeable in any subject you want because it's right there at your fingertips.[29:00] Why his work on the telegraph was so important to everything that happened later in his life: The germs of many ideas and stratagems perfected by him in later years were implanted in his mind when he worked at the telegraph. He described this phase of his life afterward, his mind was in a tumult, besieged by all sorts of ideas and schemes. All the future potentialities of electricity obsessed him night and day. It was then that he dared to hope that he would become an inventor.[31:29] Edison's insane schedule: Though he had worked up to an early hour of the morning at the telegraph office, Edison began reading the Experimental Researches In Electricity (Faraday's book) when he returned to his room at 4 A.M. and continued throughout the day that followed, so that he went back to his telegraph without having slept. He was filled with determination to learn all he could.[32:38] All the Thomas Edison episodes:The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented The Modern World by Randall Stross (Founders #3)Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes. (Founders #83)The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Tripby Jeff Guinn. (Founders #190)[32:57] Having one's own shop, working on projects of one's own choosing, making enough money today so one could do the same tomorrow: These were the modest goals of Thomas Edison when he struck out on his own as full-time inventor and manufacturer. The grand goal was nothing other than enjoying the autonomy of entrepreneur and forestalling a return to the servitude of employee. —The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented The Modern World by Randall Stross[40:54] Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Founders #258)[48:00] It's this idea where you can identify an opportunity because you have deep knowledge about one industry and you see that there is an industry developing  parallel to the industry that you know about. Jay Gould saw the importance of the telegraph industry in part because telegraph lines were laid next to railraod tracks.[49:17] Edison describes the fights between the robber barons as strange financial warfare.[54:35] You should build a company that you actually enjoy working in.[55:47] Don't make this mistake:John Ott who served under Edison for half a century, at the end of his life described the "sacrifices" some of Edison's old co-workers had made, and he commented on their reasons for so doing."My children grew up without knowing their father," he said. "When I did get home at night, which was seldom, they were in bed.""Why did you do it?" he was asked."Because Edison made your work interesting. He made me feel that I was making something with him. I wasn't just a workman. And then in those days, we all hoped to get rich with him.”[57:26] Don't try to sell a new technology to an exisiting monopoly. Western Union was a telegraphy monopoly: He approached Western union people with the idea of reproducing and recording the human voice, but they saw no conceivable use for it![58:07] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)[59:42] Passion is infectious. No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet by Molly Knight Raskin. (Founders #24)[1:01:23] For more detail on the War of the Currents listen to episode 83 Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes.[1:03:05] From the book Empire of Light: And so it was that J. Pierpont, Morgan, whose house had been the first in New York to be wired for electricity by Edison but a decade earlier, now erased Edison's name out of corporate existence without even the courtesy of a telegram or a phone call to the great inventor.Edison biographer Matthew Josephson wrote, "To Morgan it made little difference so long as it all resulted in a big trustification for which he would be the banker."Edison had been, in the vocabulary of the times, Morganized.[1:06:03] One of Thomas Edison's favorite books: Toilers of The Sea by Victor Hugo[1:08:26] “The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never quit until I get what I want.” —Thomas Edison[1:08:35] “Remember, nothing that's good works by itself. You've gotta make the damn thing work.” —Thomas Edison[1:12:04] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana Kingby Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)[1:12:58] He (Steve Jobs) was always easy to understand.He would either approve a demo, or he would request to see something different next time.Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say, often with highly detailed specificity, what he wanted to happen next.He was always trying to ensure the products were as intuitive and straightforward as possible, and he was willing to invest his own time, effort, and influence to see that they were.Through looking at demos, asking for specific changes, then reviewing the changed work again later on and giving a final approval before we could ship, Steve could make a product turn out like he wanted.— Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda (Bonus episode between Founders #110 and #111)[1:15:48] Charles Kettering is the 20th Century's Ben Franklin. — Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd (Founders #125)—Get 60 days free of Readwise. It is the best app I pay for. I could not make Founders without—“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

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there - said Charles Kettering. As a leader how much time, efforts, and energy I'm putting into the long-term aspects of my Business, on a daily basis? In other words, how much time, efforts, and energy I'm able to put on a daily basis, into things that really matter over a period of time? The future shapes-up based on what we do today. We have the power to make choices – as to what to do, what not to do – that goes-on to shape our future to a large extent. It's important to note that the future of business depends on the choices we make today; what we think and do today. What we do on a daily basis keeps the needle moving constantly, consistently. Aligning it to where we want to go, what we want to get, is therefore supremely important. The question is, as a leader, on a daily basis, how much time, efforts, and energy I'm putting into the long-term aspects, the future of my Business? My name is PK Narayanan, wishing you the best! Thank you #ceo #scaleup #leadership --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pk-narayanan/message

It's true that millennials and GenZer's have different cultural and social expectations from baby boomers, but that doesn't mean leading them has to be difficult! In this episode, Sheri goes over 6 key steps that will not only change the way you lead, but will empower your employees, your team and, in turn, strengthen productivity! Whether it's a purpose-driven mission or ensuring professional development, your employees will come to value what you stand for and feel identified with their work! This episode will teach you how to facilitate communication, improvement, and engagement among your employees of all ages! BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: How to really develop your team's growth The endless benefits of empowering your employees' strengths and professional development What really motivates your team- hint it's not just a good paycheck anymore Why annual reviews don't work The shifting workforce can sometimes cause friction in really understanding how to effectively lead a team, but with these six simple steps, you'll be smooth sailing through a sea rich in engagement, empowerment, and most of all, a deep appreciation for each other & the job amongst your team members.    This week's quote is from Charles Kettering  “The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”    ______________________________________________ Have questions or comments about today's episode?  Email Sheri at sheri@navigatingyourleadership.com Leave a voice message and let me know what you liked about today's message or suggest future topics.   Head over to https://www.sherimiterco.com/podcast and look for the SpeakPipe Icon (send a voicemail) on the sidebar! Schedule a complimentary insight session today and see how we might work together in the future: https://app.delenta.com/ta/@sherimiterco   

Part 1: Struggling to Solve a Problem? Try Reframing It. Experts in problem-solving emphasize the importance of deeply understanding the problem before implementing countermeasures. And many cite Charles Kettering's maxim that “A problem well-framed is a problem half-solved.” But what, precisely, is a “well-framed” problem? I've written before about some of the obvious errors to avoid — couching a solution in the form of a problem, and relying on generalities instead of specifics. Part 2: What Pandemic Parenting Can Teach Us About Leadership. An executive-coaching client of Sanyin's recently made an offhand comment that revealed something stunning about parenting over the past year. A busy executive with three kids and an equally busy working spouse, she quipped, “Who knew my kitchen would turn into my executive coach?” When Sanyin asked what she meant, she listed a litany of experiences from around her kitchen table: keeping her kids creatively engaged in their school activities while planning a meal and while, on the other side of the room, her laptop was logged into a virtual strategy session with her team. She reflected, “What I had to learn this past year to keep all my worlds integrated was a crucible I'd never wish on anyone. I know I had it better than many working parents. But I gained some new skills that will serve me well going forward.” Part 3: Top Digital Banking Transformation Trends for 2021. When the pandemic hit, most financial institutions entered a crisis mode of building digital capabilities that allowed consumers to the bank without branches. As we enter 2021, banks and credit unions must rethink the definition of 'digital banking,' with the application of data, analytics, technology, innovation, and people that will transform customer experiences. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/maifors/support

Roy Allen opened his first root beer stand in 1919, in Lodi, California. He'd bought a recipe for root beer and boy, it sure was a hit. He brought in people to help. One was Frank Wright, who would become a partner in the endeavor and they'd change the name to A&W Root Beer, for their names, and open a restaurant in 1923 in Sacramento, California. Allen bought Wright back out in 1925, but kept the name. Having paid for the root beer license he decided to franchise out the use of that - but let's not call that the first fast food chain just yet. After all, it was just a license to make root beer just like he'd bought the recipe all those years ago.  A&W's Allen sold the company in 1950 to retire. The franchise agreements moved from a cash payment to royalties. But after Allen the ownership of the company bounced around until it landed with United Fruit which would become United Brands, who took A&W to the masses and the root beer company was split from the restaurant chain with the chain eventually owned by Yum! Brands now nearly 1,000 locations and over $300M in revenues.  White Castle  As A&W franchised, some experimented with other franchising options or with not going that route at all. Around the same time Wright opened his first stand, Walt Anderson was running a few food stands around Witchita. He met up with Billy Ingram and in 1921 they opened the first White Castle, putting in $700 of their own money. By 1927 they expanded out to Indianapolis. As is often the case, the original cook with the concept sold out his part of the business in 1933 when they moved their headquarters to Columbus, Ohio and the Ingram family expanded all over the United States. Many a fast food chain is franchised but White Castle has stayed family owned and operates profitably not taking on debt to grow.  Kentucky Fried Chicken  KFC îs fried chicken. They sell some other stuff I guess. They were started by Harland Sanders in 1930 but as we see with a lot of these they didn't start franchising until after the war. His big hack was to realize he needed to cook chicken faster to serve more customers and so he converted a pressure cooker into a pressure fryer, completely revolutionizing how food is fried.  He perfected his original recipe in 1940 and by 1952 was able to parlay the success of his early success into franchising out what is now the second largest fast food chain in the world. But the largest is McDonald's.  McDonalds 1940 comes around and Richard and Maurice McDonald open a little restaurant called McDonalds. It was a drive-up barbecue joint in San Bernadino. But drive-in restaurants were getting competitive and while looking back at the business, they realized that four fifths of the sales were hamburgers. So they shut down for a bit and got rid of the car hops that were popular at the time, simplified the menu and trimmed out everything they could - getting down to less than 10 items on the menu.  They were able to get prices down to 15 cent hamburgers using something they called the Speedee Service System. That was an assembly-line of food preparation that became the standard in the fast food industry over the next few decades. They also looked at industrial equipment and used that to add french fries and shakes, which finally unlocked an explosion of sales and profits doubled.  But then the milkshake mixer salesman payed a visit to them in San Bernadino to see why the brothers need 8 of his mixers and was amazed to find they were, in fact, cranking out 48 shakes at a time with them. The assembly-line opened his eyes and he bought the rights to franchise the McDonalds concept opening his first one in Des Plaines, Illinois. One of the best growth hacks for any company is just to have an amazing sales and marketing arm. OK, so not a hack but just good business. And Ray Kroc will go down as one of the greatest. From those humble beginnings selling milkshake mixers he moved from licensing to buying the company outright for $2.7 million dollars in 1961.  Another growth hack was to realize, thanks to a former VP at Tastee-Freez, that owning the real estate brought yet another revenue stream. A low deposit and a 20% or higher increase in the monthly spend would grow into a nearly 38 billion dollar revenue stream.  The highway system was paying dividends to the economy. People were moving out to the suburbs. Cars were shipping in the highest volumes ever. They added the filet-o-fish and were exploding internationally in the 60s and 70s and now sitting on over 39,000 stores with about a $175 billion market cap with over $5 billion dollars in revenue. Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives Those post-war years were good to fast food. Anyone that's been to a 50s themed restaurant can see the car culture on display and drive-ins were certainly a part of that. People were living their lives at a new pace to match the speed of those cars and it was a golden age of growth in the United States. The computer industry was growing right along with those diners, drive-ins, and dives.  One company that started before World War II and grew fast was Dairy Queen, started in 1940 by John Fremont McCullough. He'd invented soft-serve ice cream in 1938 and opened the first Dairy Queen in Joliet, Illinois with his friend Sherb Noble, who'd been selling his soft-serve ice cream out of his shop for a couple of years. During those post-war 1950s explosive years they introduced the Dilly Bar and have now expanded to 6,800 locations around the world.  William Rosenberg opened a little coffee shop in in Quincy, Massachusetts. As with the others in this story, he parlayed quick successes and started to sell franchises in 1955 and Dunkin' Donuts grew to 12,400 locations.  In-N-Out Burger started in 1948 as well, by Harry and Esther Snyder and while they've only expanded around the west coast of the US, they've grown to around 350 locations and stay family owned.  Pizza Hut was started in 1958 in Wichita, Kanas. While it was more of a restaurant for a long time, it's now owned by Yum! Brands and operates well over 18,000 locations. Yum! Also owns KFC and Taco Bell. Glen Bell served as a cook in World War II and moved to San Bernardino to open a drive-in hot dog stand in 1948. He sold it and started a taco stand, selling them for 19 cents a piece, expanding to three locations by 1955 and went serial entrepreneur - selling those locations and opening four new ones he called El Tacos down in Long Beach. He sold that to his partner in 1962 and started his first Taco Bell, finally ready to start selling franchises in 1964 and grew it to 100 restaurants by 1967.  They took Taco Bell public in 1970 when they had 325 locations. And Pepsi bought the 868 location in 1978 for $125 million in stock, eventually spinning the food business off to what is now called Yum! Brands and co-branding with cousin restaurants in that portfolio - Pizza Hut and Long John Silver's. I haven't been to a Long John Silver's since I was a kid but they still have over a thousand locations and date back to a hamburger stand started in 1929 that over the years pivoted to a roast beef sandwich shop and pivoting many times until landing on the fish and chips concept in 1969.  The Impact of Computing It's hard to imagine that any of these companies could have grown the way they did without more than an assembly-line of human automation. Mechanical cash registers had been around since the Civil War in the United States, with early patents filed in 1883 by Charles Kettering and James Ritty. Arguably the abacus and counting frame goes back way further but the Ritty Model I patent was sparked the interest of Jacob Eckert who bought the patent, added some features and took on $10,000 in debt to take the cash register to market, forming National Manufacturing Company. That became National Cash Register still a more than 6 billion dollar market cap company. But the growth of IBM and other computing companies, the release of semiconductors, and the miniaturization and dropping costs of printed circuit boards helped lead to the advent of electronic cash registers. After all those are just purpose-built computers. IBM introduced the first point of sale system in 1973, bringing that cash register into the digital age. Suddenly a cash register could be in the front as a simplified terminal to send print outs or information to a screen in the back.  Those IBM 3650s evolved to the first use of peer-to-peer client-server technology and ended up in Dillard's in 1974. That same year McDonald's had William Brobeck and Associates develop a microprocessor-based terminal. It was based on the Intel 8008 chip and used a simple push-button device to allow cashiers to enter orders. This gave us a queue of orders being sent by terminals in the front. And we got touchscreens registers in 1986, running on the Atari 520ST, with IBM introducing a 486-based system running on FlexOS.  Credit Cards As we moved into the 90s, fast food chains were spreading fast and the way we payed for goods was starting to change. All these electronic registers could suddenly send the amount owed over an electronic link to a credit card processing machine.  John Biggins launched the Charg-it card in 1946 and it spread to Franklin National Bank a few years later. Diners Club Card picked up on the trend and launched the Diners Club Card in 1950, growing to 20,000 cardholders in 1951. American Express came along in 1958 with their card and in just five years grew to a million cards. Bank of America released their BankAmericard in 1958, which became the first general-purpose credit card. They started in California and went national in the first ten years. That would evolve into Visa by 1966 and by 1966 we got MasterCard as well. THat's also the same year the Barclaycard brought credit cards outside the US for the first time, showing up first in England. Then Carte bleue in 67 in France and the Eurocard as a collaboration between the Wallenberg family and Interbank in 1968 to serve the rest of Europe. Those spread and by the 90s we had enough people using them to reach a critical mass where fast food needed to take them as well. Whataburger and Carl's Jr added the option in 1989, Arby's in 1990,  and while slower to adopt taking cards, McDonald's finally did so in 2002. We were well on our way to becoming a cashless society. And the rise of the PC led to POS systems moving a little down-market and systems from and others like Aloha, designed in 1998 (now owned by NCR). And lots of other brands of devices as well as home-brewed tooling from large vendors.   And computers helped revolutionize the entire organization. Chains could automate supply lines to stores with computerized supply chain management. Desktop computers also led to management functions being computerized in the back office, like scheduling and time clocks and so less managers were needed. That was happening all over post-War America by the 90s. Post-War America  In that era after World War II people were fascinated with having the same experiences over and over - and having them be identical. Think about it, before the war life was slower and every meal required work. After it was fast and the food always came out hot and felt like a suburban life, wherever you were. Even when that white flight was destroying city centers and the homogeneity leading to further centralized organizations dividing communities.  People flocked to open these restaurants. They could make money, it was easier to get a loan to open a store with a known brand, there were high profit margins, and in a lot of cases, there was a higher chance of success than many other industries. This leads to even more homogeneity. That rang true for other types of franchising on the rise as well. Fast food became a harbinger of things to come and indicative of other business trends as well. These days we think of high fructose corn syrup, fried food, and GMOs when we think of fast food. And that certainly led to the rise. People who eat fast food want that. Following the first wave of fast food we got other brands rising as well. Arby's was founded in 1964, Subway in 1965, Wendy's in 1969, Jack in the Box in 1961, Chick-fil-A in 1946, just a few miles from where I was born. And newer chains like Quiznos in 1981, Jimmy John's in 1983, and Chipotle in 1993. These touch other areas of the market focusing on hotter, faster, or spicier.  From the burger craze to the drive-in craze to just plain fast, fast food has been with us since long before anyone listening to this episode was born and is likely to continue on long after we're gone. Love it or hate it, it's a common go-to when we're working on systems - especially far from home.  And the industry continues to evolve. A barrier to opening any type of retail chain was once the point of sale system. Another was finding a way to accept credit cards. Stripe emerged to help with the credit cards and a cadre of tablet and app-based solutions for the iPhone, Android, and tablets emerged to help make taking credit cards simple for new businesses. A lot of the development was once put into upmarket solutions but these days downmarket is so much more approachable. And various fraud prevention machine learning algorithms and chip and pin technologies makes taking a credit card for a simple transaction safer than ever.  The Future The fast food and retail in general continues to evolve. The next evolution seems to be self-service. This is well underway but a number of companies are looking at kiosks to take orders and all those cashiers might find RFID tags as another threat to their jobs. If a machine can see what's in a cart on the way out of a store there's no need for cashiers. Here, we see the digitization as one wave of technology but given the inexpensive cost of labor we are just now seeing the cost of the technology come down to where it's cheaper. Much as the cost of clockworks and then industrialization caused first the displacement of Roman slave labor and then workers in factories. Been to a parking ramp recently? That's a controlled enough environment where the people were some of the first to be replaced with simple computers that processed first magnetic stripes and now license plates using simple character recognition technology. Another revolution that has already begun is how we get the food. Grubhub launched in 2004, we got Postmates in 2011, and DoorDash came in 2013 to make it where we don't even have to leave the house to get our burger fix. We can just open an app, use our finger print to check out, and have items show up at our homes often in less time than if we'd of gone to pick it up. And given that they have a lot of drivers and know exactly where they are, Uber attempted to merge with DoorDash in 2019, but that's fine because they'd already launched Uber Eats in 2014. But DoorDash has about half that market at $2.9 billion in revenues for 2020 and that's just with 18 million users - still less than 10% of US households. I guess that's why DoorDash enjoys a nearly $60 billion market cap. We are in an era of technology empires. And yet McDonald's is only worth about three times what DoorDash is worth and guess which one is growing faster. Empires come and go.  The ability to manage an empire that scales larger than the technology and communications capabilities allows for was a downfall of many an empire - from Rome to Poland to the Russian Czarist empire. Each was profoundly changed by splitting up the empire as with Rome, becoming a pawn between neighboring empires, or even the development of an entirely new system of governance, as with Russia. Fast food employs four and a half million people in the US today, with another almost 10 million people employed globally. About half of those are adults. An industry that's grown from revenues of just $6 billion to a half trillion dollar industry since just 1970. And those employees often make minimum wage. Think about this, that's over twice the number of slaves as there were in the Roman Empire. Many of whom rose up to conquer the empire. And the name of the game is automation. Has been since that McDonald's Speedee Service System that enthralled Ray Kroc. But the human labor will some day soon be drastically cut. Just as the McDonald brothers cut car hops from their roster all those years ago. And that domino will knock down others in every establishment we walk into to pay for goods. Probably not in the next 5 years, but certainly in my lifetime. Job displacement due to technology is nothing new. It goes back past the Romans. But it is accelerating faster than at other points in history. And you have to wonder what kinds of socio, political, and economical repercussions we'll have. Add in other changes around the world and the next few decades will be interesting to watch. 

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://quiteaquote.in/2021/02/23/charles-kettering-half-solved/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/quiteaquote/message

Episode: 2054 The Zephyr, a silver streak across America in 1934.  Today, a silver streak.

One hundred years ago the world changed - transitioning from the horse and buggy to the automobile.  Most of the cars in that age were electric, relying on big bulky batteries for power.   Henry Ford and Charles Kettering doomed those early electrics (you will have to listen to find out how).  General Motors revived it in the 1990's, then killed it again.  But from the ashes emerged products like the Prius, and companies like Tesla.   Annie and Jay Warmke of Blue Rock Station discuss how this time around everything is different - and how the electric car will change our society in ways as profound as the horseless carriage did 100 years ago.  (Repeat from April 2020)

Episode: 2044 Kettering's failed guided missile -- a 1918 Buzz-Bomb.  Today, Kettering's Buzz Bomb.

Jeff Borschowa is a professional problem solver, connecting businesses with the solutions they need in order to thrive.  Jeff is a super connector and he brings his vast business network to solve business problems.  Jeff believes that a “problem well-defined is half-solved. (Charles Kettering)”  Jeff is particularly passionate about solving cash flow problems for his business clients. Links: LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-borschowa Business Website:  https://excolo33.com Business Website:  https://xchange.club

There was a time that the battle between Electric, Gasoline, and Steam powered cars was a dead heat. So why did gas win? Was it price? Or power? Speed, noise, marketing, or political influence? Or was it just Bad Timing? Reader's Digest magazine told us about the invention of the LED 60 years ago. But those tiny lights that make your phone screen so clear didn't transition immediately into everyday use. They have a long and muddled history. This story brings together Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Charles Kettering, Nick Holonyak, and Dan Riskin's Great Aunt Marney. These science stories from history shed light on the modern research being done on Type 2 Diabetes. Specifically, we highlight the work of SciMar as they examine the hormone HISS - Hepatic Insulin Sensitizing Substance - and the effect it has on glucose levels in people who are insulin resistant. www.SciMar.ca

Charles_Kettering grew up poor and had health problems. Yet, he persevered and invented many things including the self-starter in cars and became a multi-millionaire. Let us see how he did it.

Inspired by the words of U.S. inventor Charles Kettering, “if you have always done it that way, it's probably wrong,” Innovation Capital, presented by PatSnap, was borne out of a desire to go where no other innovation podcast has gone. Just as the world's top innovators have pushed the boundaries of what's familiar and accepted, host Ray Chohan takes a completely fresh and unfiltered look at some of the biggest topics shaping innovation today. From the key drivers of innovation to its role in the economic value chain and groundbreaking outputs, Innovation Capital leaves no question unanswered. When it comes to innovation, we are your capital; your mecca for daring discussion, and the fuel for your growth and scalability. Welcome to Innovation Capital. Innovation Capital will air weekly starting in December. Stay tuned!

Today's quote is a mantra for pursuing our dreams with passion and fervor.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shop online here: https://www.advantagediecast.com Connect with me on social media! Facebook: http://bit.ly/FBP-ADC Instagram: http://bit.ly/IG-ADC Facebook Group: http://bit.ly/FBG-64th-Gear-Jammers YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/Toy-Talk-on-YouTube YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/L64h0Xs5Y9M Boom! What’s going on Everyone? I’m Logan the 64th Gear Jammer Skeele, and I'm opening the doors on another episode of Toy Talk. Several years ago, I went to South Bend Indiana on a work trip at my old job. Part of the itinerary included visiting the Studebaker Museum and the American Historical Truck Society’s National Convention and Truck Show event at the St. Joseph County 4-H Fairgrounds. The Studebaker Museum was amazing, and their collection was impressive, but the best part of the trip was seeing all the vintage semi-trucks at the big show. There were classics from the 1910s all the way to the 1990s on display. The biggest attraction though was inside a building. There were not just one, but two General Motors Futurliners. One of them was fully restored and the other was in need of a restore. These machines were just mammoth in size. The fully restored one was opened up with an exhibit from the National Auto and Truck Museum of Auburn Indiana who owns Futurliner #10. Let’s take a trip through time to see why this marvelous machine was made. Dialing the clock back to May 27, 1933 to be exact, Chicago celebrated their “CENTURY OF PROGRESS” by hosting the Chicago World’s Fair. The main objectives of the Chicago World's Fair were to highlight finished products, demonstrate how products were made, and show people how science works. After all, this was an exciting time of discovery in America. The motor car was being perfected. Air travel was just taking off, and many other advancements in science and industry were happening despite the depression. In the General Motors Pavilion, General Motors demonstrated how Sound Stops Sound, cooking on a Magnetic Stove, a Photo Elastic Stress Study and Music on a Light Beam. But GM's most important exhibit was a FULLY functioning Chevrolet production line. This exhibit was intended to show the contributions factories were making to modern society. Incidentally, attendees at the fair could purchase a Chevrolet car right off the line. Charles Kettering, GMs vice president in charge of research was inspired with the reception GM received with their exhibits and developed the idea to take GM on the road. The GM "Parade of Progress" road show was the result. The show toured throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and even Cuba from 1936 to 1956 only stopping during WWII. The Parade of Progress played to millions of people, showing them working examples of modern innovations that would make people’s lives easier and better. Kettering’s, Parade of Progress was like a “World’s Fair on Wheels” that traveled from town to town in large red and white streamlined trucks. When the vehicles arrived in a small town, they would a park where a large tent could be erected, and the displays would be open to the public free-of-charge. On display were jet engines, microwave ovens, and sound waves that traveled on a flashlight beam. The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild Competition staged an automotive design contest in which teenagers competed for college scholarships by designing and building scale model “dream cars”. The winners were then showcased in continuing The Parade of Progress. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/logan-skeele/message

When Alfred Sloan and Charles Kettering, the geniuses of General Motors joined DuPont in the leaded gasoline business, they had loads of evidence leaded gas could kill.  The tobacco industry executives who worked to make cigarettes more addictive knew about the connections to lung cancer.  So, how could they do it? Barbara Freese tackles the question in her book Industrial-Strength Denial. How could anyone defend slavery or toxic mortgage packages?

Geoff Thatcher is the CEO of Creative principals, providing creative leadership for brand experiences, museums, visitor centres and attractions. He is the author of the CEO's Time Machine and a TEDx Speaker. In this show, discover: The power of experience through story The correlation between stories and leadership What the CEO's Time Machine can do for you How note taking can lead to creating great stories Follow us and explore our social media tribe from our Website: https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Learn more about Geoff Thatcher here: Instagram: @geoffthatcher   Geoff on LinkedIn Twitter: @geoffthatcher The Book web site is www.ceotimemachine.com  Creative Principles: https://www.creativeprincipals.com   Full Podcast Transcript Below.   ----more----    Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.   Today's special guest is Geoff Thatcher. He is an experienced creative director who excelled at leading projects from concept to reality. He is the CEO of Creative Principles and he is the author of The CEO's Time Machine. But before we get a chance to speak with Geoff, it is The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News   Steve Rush: Ever wondered why you can get captivated listening to a leader who tells a great story? The history of storytelling dates back many thousands of years ago when we lived in caves where we used to use pigment to paint on our walls with our hands before we could speak. Then when we could start to communicate using our verbal communication; we used to create stories and myths while sitting around campfires in order to inspire people and let people know what was going on in our world. The ancient Greeks then carved their language into walls to tell how history was evolving for them. Generations and cultures grew and developed. Routines and rituals were turned into stories. Legends were created, and legacies were left behind for generations to pass on.   English writer and actor William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays in the 16th century. Shakespeare was a huge influence on storytelling because of his ability to really transform our language into stuff that we even use today. So how can stories help us as leaders? Well, storytelling is a key leadership technique because of its quick, powerful, energizing, and collaborative approach to persuading and entertaining people. It also helps us make an emotional connection. Yeah, of course, stories have to be authentic and make sense because if not, they become fables and folklore, then you also don't get buy in.   If through story you create that emotional connectivity, you will also create buy-in with your audience. So we may have replaced our medium of campfires with social media and high tech video conferencing, so the next time you are communicating a key message, think about how stories can bring it to life. There is an old Native American proverb I love and want to share with you: Tell me the facts and I will learn, tell me the truth and I will believe, but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. That has been our Leadership Hacker News. If you have any insights, information or stuff that, you would just like our listeners to hear, get in touch with us.   Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: I am joined on today show by Geoff Thatcher. Geoff is the founder and CEO of Creative Principles. He is a TEDx speaker and the author of The CEO's Time Machine. Geoff, welcome to the show.   Geoff Thatcher: Thank you, Steve.   Steve Rush: Our pleasure indeed.   Geoff Thatcher: It is great to be here.   Steve Rush: So before we get into the concept of The CEO's Time Machine and some of the work you do at the moment with Creative Principles, tell us a little bit about your journey into becoming a CEO yourself?   Geoff Thatcher: Well, I have been very lucky to have basically grown up in the industry that I still work in, so I started as a 14 year old clean-up boy, and that was the actual title of the job. I was a clean-up boy at an amusement park.   Steve Rush: Right.   Geoff Thatcher: And worked all my way through high school and college, and then after a brief flirtation with journalism have been back working in theme parks, museums, visitor's centres, brand experiences, and experiences for a long time. It is very rewarding to have been basically working in the same industry since I was 14. I just love the fact that what was part of my childhood is also part of my career now as a 52-year-old guy.   Steve Rush: So what has been the draw to theme parks and the world of themes and entertainment for you? What has been the draw?   Geoff Thatcher: That is a really good question and you know, on the surface of it is that it is fun and you bring smiles to people and it's about creating experiences. On a deeper level though. It is really about storytelling. Now, when I was, you know…train engineer at an amusement park. You know choo-choo, try having a steam engine around a Lake and, you know, looking at zoo animals. I did not think much about story, but you know, after college and you know, studying journalism and actually working as a reporter and then coming back into this industry. You really begin to realize that the best experiences, the ones that are most memorable are those experiences that are based upon a powerful story. So Steve you're in the UK and we certainly have a great love for Harry Potter here in the United States, and so when you go to Universal Studios and you immerse yourself at Hogwarts and that wonderful story. It really is quite a memorable experience, and so that is to me, what is most precious is, I love telling stories.   Steve Rush: Telling stories, not just through the written word, but through the experiences that you now create on behalf of the organization you lead. So tell us a little bit about Creative Principles, and what it is you do right now?   Geoff Thatcher: Well, that is right. I mean, if you are going to tell a story and an experience, the first thing you have to do is actually write that story. And so what we do at creative principles is we are, as the name would imply creative leaders and we work on high level creative concepts for theme parks and museums and visitor centres and corporate brand experiences. And so we started the company about three years ago. I mean, obviously I have been doing this my whole career, but three years ago, went out on our own and started the company. And since then we've worked on everything from the grand opening of Warner Bros World Abu Dhabi, which was just fantastic to work with those amazing brands. I mean, you have Batman and the joker and, you know, bugs bunny and, you know, the Flintstones. To an amazing corporate brand experience in Singapore and in Boston of all things and insurance company, FM Global. But they had a great story to tell and, you know, don't have to get into the details, of what story an insurance company might have to tell, but needless to say. We all have, I think appreciated the value of insurance here, as we faced a pandemic and other challenges before us. It is nice to have a little bit of ability to be resilient, and so the company that we work for in creating these experiences, FM Global, their motto. Their tagline is resilience and the power of resilience, and so it is important, especially in challenging times that; we learn how to be resilient.   Steve Rush: Story telling as a principle is not new of course; when we were living in caves 50,000 years ago, it was the only way that we were able to really communicate and that's where storytelling kind of got its early grounding if you like. In gathering insights, and gathering people and gathering audiences, what do you notice is the direct correlation between storytelling and the leaders that you have worked with when you are creating those things experiences?   Geoff Thatcher: Well, the best leaders tell great stories and they tell those great stories over and over and over again. I am sure if we were to talk about our childhoods we would be able to talk about those stories that our parents told us over and over and over again, to the point where you almost begin to roll your eyes and go, oh, not that story again, please no. But that's actually a good thing. I mean, if you are in the workplace and you are the CEO and if your employees start to roll their eyes and go, please don't tell us the story about note taking again. Well, maybe you are actually starting to make a difference in getting that story ingrained into the culture of your company. So I would always encourage CEOs to tell stories and tell the same story and tell it over and over again, because those stories become part of your culture and part of who you are.   Steve Rush: I observe that too when I particularly coach leaders. I make a direct correlation with those who are more effective in terms of engagement, by their ability to tell better stories than those who are aren't. Would you noticed that too?   Geoff Thatcher: Absolutely, I mean the challenge, I think sometimes with leaders is almost all of us can tell a great story, but can you tell a great story that makes a point? I mean, for example, you know. I talk about how I got my job in the first place as a 14 year old, I wanted to work at this amusement park and I wanted what I thought to be the best job at this amusement park, which was working in their swimming pool, which we didn't have water parks back then. It was a big, you know, million gallon swimming pool with diving boards and, you know old water slides, which are much different than today's water slides. But I wanted, what I thought was the best job. I did not want to work, you know, in food service; I did not want to take tickets. I wanted to work at the swimming pool as a clean-up boy, because I knew that would lead to the being a lifeguard, which is kind of a sexy job. And you know, that would lead to other opportunities, and so the way I got that job was politely bugging the manager, the swim pole for three weeks straight, almost single day. I would find that manager walking around the swimming pool because I was a regular; I had been a regular at that pool since I was five years old and I would just simply, you know, smile and ask her, you know, hey, I applied for the position. Is anything available? You know, hey, have you heard anything? Hey, have you checked with your manager? Hey, is there a chance for me to have a job? I mean, I always did it with a smile, but I politely bugged her.   And after about three weeks, she finally said, well, no, there's still not a position open, but fine. Why don't you come in and we will get you on staff. And you know, you may not work for many hours, but you're hired, and that I think is an important lesson that any leader could teach their employees is you need to politely bug people. If you want to get stuff done, whether you are in sales or in management, or leadership or human resources or anything else. Politely bugging gets results, and so I tell that story all the time. I have told that story to my kids so many times they are probably sick of it, but it is important to teach those lessons. And too many leaders not only are afraid to tell stories because it makes them vulnerable, but they're afraid to tell stories that make a powerful point.   Steve Rush: And a powerful point hits that emotional connection, which creates an action shift in people, doesn't it?   Geoff Thatcher: Absolutely.   Steve Rush: So, as you were growing through your leadership career, Geoff. Where did you take your leadership inspiration from or who even?   Geoff Thatcher: Well, I have been fortunate in my career to have both really good leaders and really bad leaders. And so we can learn from both, you know, I remember being a very young leader, so I was 17 years old and I got a job as an area supervisor at Lagoon Amusement Park and went through a management training course as a 17 year old. And so you can learn so much by taking those courses. I remember this is going to really date me. I remember going to a, you know, the Franklin Planner, you know, the old Franklin Planner. I think they are still around. Right, and I went to a Franklin Planner, you know, time management seminar as like a 19 year old. And it was fascinating to experience that but if I were to probably pick one leader. His name would be Boyd Clark and he was the CEO of the Tom Peters Company. And if you're in leadership or, you know, business gurus, you know who Tom Peters is.   Steve Rush: Sure, Yeah. He is a guru in learning and development for sure.   Geoff Thatcher: Oh, absolutely. I mean wrote In Search of Excellence in the eighties, which was like the big, big, big management, you know, business book of that era and still speaks today. I, I believe, but Boyd was the CEO of the Tom Peters company. He was in leadership training and development and, you know, Boyd taught me so many lessons and he was kind and just a really, really great guy. And unfortunately Boyd died of cancer, but you know, he was really a mentor to me and I remember there was just so many little things he taught you along the way. And I remember one of my favourite lessons was. We were having a meeting and the company was, you know, debating its future. And there were several leaders in the company that wanted it to shift from being a training and leadership Development Company to a Consulting Company.   And Boyd patiently listened to the different leaders in the company debate and argue whether it should be a consulting company or a training and development company, and then finally he stood up at the end and he asked a question of the people that were arguing at for it to be a consulting company. And he said, how much do we charge for a day of consulting? And they said $2,500 a day. He goes, that is our day rate for day of consulting is $2,500, and then he turned to the people arguing for the leadership side, and he said. How much do we charge for a day of leadership training and development? And at the time they said $9,500 and he goes $9,500, and then he looked around the room and he said, we're a training and development company! And then sat down. Everybody got the message, you know. Yes, you know, consulting is nice, but when it comes time to supporting the company and being a business that it is about making money.   Steve Rush: Lots of organizations make the mistake of trying to become too diverse or to pivot away from their core proposition and in doing so often and lose that key focus that they were so successful in building their business with.   Geoff Thatcher: Yeah, it is funny, isn't it? You know, I have had other experiences where I just don't understand why a company's changed when they don't need to change. I mean, there is so many examples. You know, it is really interesting, you know, look at history and, you know, certainly when we talk about The CEO's Time Machine and the book part of that is traveling back in time. There is so many examples of companies who did not change when they needed to and also examples of companies that changed when there was no reason to.   Steve Rush: And there is no right or wrong answer is there? I think it is very much around timing and opportunity. And if you think about some of the evolution and innovation that we experienced today, that is because somebody said, “let's do this and let's be creative and let's do these left of field things that we never even envisaged before”. And sometimes that creative thinking can create the motivation and indeed the business opportunity that follows.   Geoff Thatcher: What you should never ever stop creating and I mean, since Steve you're in the UK and I love my history, one of my favourite examples in history of somebody simply trying to do something new, but it leading to something far beyond his imaginations is Abraham Darby and the invention of the Blast Furnace. Now the Blast Furnace really ushered in the industrial revolution, which has changed the world in so many ways. And you would think, Oh wow, Abraham Darby, I can't, you know. You must have had this amazing vision for the future of the world, with the industrial revolution and creating the blast furnace. But it was actually just a guy trying to figure out a better way to make an iron pot, that is it.   Steve Rush: Yep.   Geoff Thatcher: He was trying to make a cheap iron pot. That is such a simple ambition and yet in trying to achieve that very simple ambition, he ended up changing the world. And so, you know, no matter what business you're in, I hope you're trying to improve what you're doing because through those incremental improvements, you may just stumble upon something that will transform the world.   Steve Rush: I love that principle of just letting creativity take over and see what happens also.   Geoff Thatcher: Yeah, I mean, it is really true. I mean, we did, this was a long time ago, but we did at the 150th anniversary of the Smithsonian, which is a big museum complex, if you will. In the United States, in DC. At the a hundred 50th anniversary of the Smithsonian. They took all of their artefacts on tour and Intel was a sponsor, and so we created a theatre an immersive experiential theatre for Intel and it was called more than you ever imagined theatre. That was the name of the theatre, more than you ever imagined. And the whole point of it was throughout time. All great inventors, never truly realized what people would do with their invention and Intel of course, was talking about the, you know, the chip and, you know, the semiconductor and that people are doing way more than the inventors of the semiconductor ever thought possible. And it was the same was true with Gutenberg, Edison, Ford, Darby, all great inventors, never truly understood the amazing things people would do with their inventions.   Steve Rush: Right, and therefore it is imperative, isn't it? That we are also scanning for new ideation because whilst somebody else might have the idea, I might be able to evolve it.   Geoff Thatcher: Exactly and can I just say for a moment that I love talking to someone from the UK, because you say whilst, and I've never been able to do it and do it properly. It is all, you know, it is always, wow. While we do this, while we do that, but it is whilst, and it just, I can't even say it right.   Steve Rush: It is a really Interesting word that I forgot I use because while I was writing my book, my editor who was American, used to say Steve, you've got to stop saying whilst, please, can you say, while. Cause nobody in America will understand what you mean, anyway.   Geoff Thatcher: He should have let you be English, right? I mean, you did invent the language for goodness sakes.   Steve Rush: Well, apparently so, so Geoff, it is no surprise that being creative director will really immerse you into the mind-set of storytelling and thinking about stuff differently. And the book, The CEO's Time Machine was one that you evolved over a period of time. Right? Tell us a little bit about that.   Geoff Thatcher: I actually wrote the book in 2016 when I was traveling back and forth between Cincinnati, Ohio and Riyadh Saudi Arabia. And we were working on a traveling exhibition for the King Abdullah foundation and King Abdulla had just died and his foundation, which is basically his family had really wanted to kind of honour his legacy. And I don't want to get into geopolitics, Steve, but there's no doubt that a lot of the changes that you're seeing in Saudi Arabia, a lot of the reforms, and it has changed so much since 2016 when I first started working over there. But those changes are doing large part to the fact that King Abdullah introduced a scholarship program that sent hundreds of thousands of students to the United Kingdom, to Canada, to the United States, to France and other countries to get an education, to get a college degree.   And then they came home and they want to change and the crown Prince is simply responding to the demands of his people for that change, and so that's exciting and when we were working on this traveling exhibition, I started thinking about time travel. And I was talking to Bruce Weindruch from the history factory who were working with on the project. And he had this philosophy and this book called Start With the Future and Work Back, which is that we all need to start with the future. Where do we want to go? But we need to look back in our own life and our own company's history and the own history of our country at those milestones to help us get to where we need to be. As I was thinking about all of these things, I started thinking about; wouldn't it be interesting if there was a CEO who had a time machine?   So we wrote a book about a kind of Elon Musk, Steve jobs type of CEO, who is always inventing the future, creating new markets. And the rumour is, is that he has a time machine in his secret R&D garage as if he's like Tony stark, right, with his secret, you know, R&D lab in the basement of his house. But this time it's a garage behind his company headquarters, and he's turning over the reins of his company to a much younger protégé. And the last thing he has to do before he turns things over and leaves the company is to introduce her to his time machine and that's what the book is about.   Steve Rush: And it is a neat, really neat idea, but the whole philosophy of being innovative and forward thinking versus looking back, splits the camps and somewhat, doesn't it? Speak about innovation, lots of people I speak to say yeah, yeah - we just need to leave the past behind and head into the future versus learn from the past and head into the future. Where do you sit with that?   Geoff Thatcher: I think that too many leaders today are focused on so much on the future as they should be, but they're focused so much on the future that they abandoned their own past. And they forget that there are amazing things that they can learn from their past. One of the examples that I give and certainly they were a client and while I was not involved in industrial designers and like that. I do know that, you know, when I worked for Honeywell, they were passionate about only really caring about the future. You know, they really did not want to talk about the past at all and then I find it ironic then. That in this obsession for the future, they missed one of the greatest inventions of the last decade, which was the Nest Thermostat. And it's hard not to argue that the Nest Thermostat wasn't based upon a very simple, innovative design that Honeywell innovated, which is the Circular Thermostat. It was the Honeywell classic, iconic, Circular Thermostat is an iconic classic design. And I think in the obsession to focus on the future, they miss that inspiration. They missed that connection to their past that could have truly brought them forward into a new future, and instead Nest saw that Circular Thermostat for what it was, which is an incredible innovation that should be repurposed and redesigned for digital age.   Steve Rush: Part of the story that you tell through The CEO's Time Machine is where your CEO is handing over the reins to the protégé. They have a walk through the garage and there is this range of seamlessly useless kit and Nintendo's and other artefacts that this individual CEO has collected over time. But there's a story behind each of those that sets out these principles for some leadership behaviours. Just tell us a little bit about a few of those?   Geoff Thatcher: Sure, one of the cool things I think about the book is it's written like a theme park attraction. And that's what we do at my company is I'm an experienced designer. And so in the queue, if you will, in that windy path, that leads from the entrance of the garage to the time machine itself. The CEO has collected a bunch of artefacts and these artefacts are all about important lessons that we can learn in business. So for example, you know, he keeps a spark plug of a Delco spark plug, and you are like, why, why on earth would you want to keep a Delco spark plug? But the Delco spark plug is there because it reminds him of Charles Kettering invention of the electric starter, which changed automobile history forever and introduced and made the automobiles safer, not just men to drive, but really safe women to drive because they don't even have to crank the car to start it up.   And so that was an incredible adventure and it was invented right in Dayton, Ohio. And then of course at the same time, Charles Kettering was inventing the electric starter. You had the Wright brothers and keeps some artefacts and some books of the Wright brothers on hand as well, because there is one lesson you can learn from the Wright brothers is that you should always focus on innovation rather than litigation. They spent so much time suing people over patent infringement that they have failed and missed this amazing, you know, window to invent the future of aviation. And they seeded their leadership position to, you know, Lockheed and Northrop and Martin and others that we still see in Boeing, if you will. And others that we still see you know, leading the industry today and it's really, really sad. And so one thing that I think a lot of companies miss when they look at their own history is they focus on important milestones.   Like we introduced the new, you know, XY-5000 model, and who cares? what you need to focus on is lessons that were learned and why those lessons are important for us today and sometimes that's very hard to curate and very hard to figure out, but, you know, it's fascinating to me that, you know, here you had in Dayton Ohio. National cash register, which became NCR, you had AC Delco, which was purchased and really became the R&D lab for General Motors, and the Wright Brothers, here you had this amazing innovation happening at Dayton Ohio at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century. And there are so many lessons to be learned, including why they didn't maintain that leadership position. There is a reason why Silicon Valley is not in Dayton, Ohio today and yet it was in 1910.   Steve Rush: And those stories that you talked about before. Is a way to bring those lessons to life, isn't it?   Geoff Thatcher: Absolutely, and if you don't know your Genesis story of your company and how you came to be. It is very important that those stories be curated and those stories be told. So everyone in the company understands those important lessons that they can take away from things. I mean, this pandemic introduced, I think, an important lesson for my career, if you will and my little company. In our life, which is, you know, when that pandemic hit like everybody else, we looked around and we were like, oh crap. I mean, we had project after project going on hold. It is impossible to do business development in March and April is people are dying and, you know, the sickness is spreading. I mean, what are you going to do? And I turned to Zoey, who's our designer and also happens to be my daughter. And I said, you know that book, we've been talking about? That book that we have been toying around with, I said, let's do it and we just had this intense desire to get it done, and so, while I had written the story in 2016, it just sat on a shelf. So Zoey cranked out 43 illustrations in three weeks, we called a publisher. We called a copy editor. We called the graphic designer and we were able to get the book published and on Amazon in less than five weeks.   Steve Rush: Wow.   Geoff Thatcher: And it was a rewarding time to pivot and everybody is pivoting right now because of the pandemic. And I guess one of the lessons we all need to learn from this is, you know, maybe next time we shouldn't wait for there to be a pandemic before we pivot. Maybe we should, instead of treating projects in their spare time, we should actually, you know. Slot them into the project line-up. There is a guy named Jim Coudal in Chicago, who's a designer. And he likes to say, you know, the problem with doing project in your spare time is there's never any spare time. And so his philosophy was always. If they had a cool idea, they would just treat it like a regular client. And they would give it a job number and they would just slot it into their schedule and get it done and I think, you know, one lesson I hope all of us can learn from this pandemic is we shouldn't wait for the next pandemic to pivot.   Steve Rush: This is super, yeah.   Geoff Thatcher: We should constantly be looking for ways to pivot.   Steve Rush: Ah, wholly agree with that. Whole principle of strategic thinking is just that it is the stories we need to tell ourselves for the future. “What if”, scenarios, aren't they? The wildcards?   Geoff Thatcher: Absolutely. Absolutely.   Steve Rush: What lessons are you hoping for that folks are going to take from the book Geoff?   Geoff Thatcher: Well, more than anything else, you know, I hope people really take the story to heart. And I hope at the end of the day, they care more about the history of their own company. At the end of the day. I hope they care more about the future of their company and they realize that no matter whether you travel back in time or travel to the future, you still have to be decisive in the moment. I mean you and I could travel back in time and talk to Abraham Darby and we could probably learn a lot of interesting things about the birthplace of the industrial revolution and lessons he learned in inventing the Blast Furnace, but we still have to come back to this moment in time. We still have to come back to the present and make a decision. I mean, if you and I were to go back to 1919 and talk to people about the Spanish flu, we could learn a lot, but we would still have to come back to 2020 and we would have to make a decision.   Steve Rush: Right.   Geoff Thatcher: And so that's, that is what I hope people take from this book is connecting the past to the future by being decisive today.   Steve Rush: Really great principles and thank you for sharing them as well, Geoff, by the way.   Geoff Thatcher: Hey, anytime, thank you for having me.   Steve Rush: Leadership is what you do as well as what you inspire. So this is part of the show where we turn that leadership lens on you and I hack into your leadership mind, and we're going to explore a couple of things. First thing we want to explore with you is. What your top leadership hacks or ideas would be that you would share with our listeners?   Geoff Thatcher: Number one is to write, we have forgotten the importance of writing because most leaders don't require their people to write for them because they're too busy and don't want to read. And so if you are a leader, make sure that you tell your people that you would like to read what they write and then take that extra time to read what they put together. And the reason why that's important is because you can't get to the depth of thought by simply talking about it and putting together a few PowerPoint slides. You miss the connective tissue between bullet points. If you don't actually take the time to write. And so if you're a young person in an organization, even if your boss won't read what you write, that doesn't mean you shouldn't write because your presentations, your PowerPoints, your proposals will have more depth of thought and more logic and more meaning. If you take the time to write, so number one, I would say, don't forget to read and write, which sounds very remedial and basic, but based on my experience, it's woefully missing in many, many organizations today.   Steve Rush: Right?   Geoff Thatcher: It is just so much easier.   Steve Rush: It is often the context that is missing in the communication as well, isn't it? Geoff Thatcher: Right, I mean, I was just working on a project where all they wanted to do was sit around the table and talk about it and talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. And, you know, at some point one smart person has to go away and write about it. So sure, talk about it, but it realized that at some point, you know, somebody actually has to go away and create a narrative. I can tell you from experience. I know what it is like, and I am sure, you know, it is like Steve. You wrote a book to be sitting there and you have this idea in your head of where you want the chapter to go, but as you are writing it, you realize that does not make any sense. That is not going to work. Well, I thought it was going to work. I had it in my head. I talked about it with my colleagues. Why isn't it working? Well because you are actually having to sit down and do it. You are actually having to sit down and write, and so, you know, someone might have an amazing business plan, but if you don't sit down and write it out, you're never going to know if it actually makes sense. So that is my number one leadership hack is to write.   My number two, leadership hack is to take great notes. If you know anything about The CEO's Time Machine. The book that I wrote, you know, that note taking is also a very important part of that, of that story. And note taking to me is perceived by most young people as being remedial. And we need to change and shift perception about note taking because the people that take really, really, really good notes, what they're actually doing is managing the intellectual of their company. And so that's a kind of job that you should have, and if you establish yourself as being somebody who can really manage intellectual property and take amazing notes, you'll be invited to the most important meetings. If you are a 24-year-old young person in an organization. That is where you want to be is in those important meetings, managing that intellectual property.   And I guess the third leadership hack I would say is manage expectations. There are so many unrealistic expectations in the workplace today, and we need to constantly manage those expectations, whether its things like how to deliver ideas. People think sometimes that there is coming up with great ideas is just all fun and games, and it is not. There can be serious arguments, and debate and clashes of opinions, so you need to match expectations. And I just think there's too many people today that have unrealistic expectations about the workplace. Whether it is about how much money they should make. About the relationships, they should have in the workplace. About the loyalty that accompany should or should not have. If you don't manage those expectations, you're going to have employees who are constantly disappointed because their unrealistic expectations are not being met.   Steve Rush: And ironically managing expectations comes from telling great stories as well.   Geoff Thatcher: It does.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Geoff Thatcher: It does, I mean, you know. One of the stories I tell when it comes to managing expectations is I talk about a colleague of mine named Todd Hall. And Todd and I after a very long day in Dubai, came back to the hotel and we were standing in the lobby and he looked at me and he said, I don't want to have dinner with you. And I looked back at him and I said, I don't want to have dinner with you either, and he looked at me and he said, good night. And I said, good night, and we turned and walked away. And people like, what, how rude. Our point is this; Todd Hall is not my friend. Todd Hall is an amazing colleague, a talented man. I love working with him, but Todd Hall is not my friend. I have never done anything socially with him. I have never hung out with he and his wife. I don't want to hang out with he and his wife and that's okay.   He is a colleague. We have mutual interests. We want to make sure that both of us do a really good job and make each other look really good, but we do not have to be friends, and so too many people come into the workplace and they think they have to be best friends with everybody on the job and that's just not true. That is what I mean by managing expectations.   Steve Rush: Super wise words Geoff. Thank you.   Geoff Thatcher: I am really a nice guy though, by the way, I believe in being friendly, to be clear. You should be friendly, but you don't have to be friends.   Steve Rush: Yeah, I get that, so we want to explore with you now. What we affectionately call Hack to Attack, and this is a time in your work or your life where something hasn't worked out as you were intending it to. So maybe it is not worked out well, or indeed, we have screwed up, but we have now used that experience and we learned from it and we use it as a lesson in our life now. What would be your Hack to Attack?   Geoff Thatcher: Well, I got fired twice. Both times, it was initially quite devastating but in the end, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, both times. And so I would say that if you haven't had a bad experience, whether it be being fired or getting yelled at or you know having a big disappointment at work. That you are probably just not trying hard enough, so learn from your mistakes, but don't be afraid of making mistakes. I am really, really glad I got fired. So don't fret about those types of things, because it'll be all right,   Steve Rush: And lessons can be learned from each of those experiences as well. Right?   Geoff Thatcher: Absolutely.   Steve Rush: So now as the author of The CEO's Time Machine, I'm going to get you to do some time travel. And I'm going to ask you to travel back in your time machine and bump into Geoff at 21, and you have an opportunity to tell him a story and give him some advice. What would it be?   Geoff Thatcher: 21, so when I was 21 years old, I was a missionary for my church. Full time volunteer missionary for my church in rural Kentucky called Paris Kentucky. It was towards the end of my six months there and I was getting my haircut from a local man who was also a member of our church. And he was talking to me and asking me questions just about my life and my family and in the course of that discussion, it came out that I have a black brother, a black sister, three Korean sisters. I come from a multiracial family, adopted. I have five biological siblings and five adopted siblings and he stopped cutting my hair. And he said, well that explains it. And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, now I know why the Lord sent you here, and I said, what do you mean?   And he said, the Lord sent you here because we needed you to help change us. And I looked at him a little surprised, and it is true. When we first came to that congregation as young 21-year-old missionaries that was a white congregation. There was not really any black members, or there wasn't any racial diversity in the congregation. We worked really hard in the African American community there in Paris, Kentucky and we baptized and brought in several members of the church from the African American community, and didn't really think anything about it. I mean, I was a kid, I just did not think at all about it at all. But this barber just was very blunt with me and he said, you know, he goes, really appreciate what you've done because you're changing us and I was still kind of a young idiot.   I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, kind of looked at me very nonchalant. And he's like, well, I'm racist and you've helped us to see we should change. And what's ironic about this whole story is that in the end, this barber became best friends with Mama Cosette, who was the matriarch of one of the families that we brought into the church. And they're still friends to this day. I saw them several years ago and saw Mama Cosette and she and his barber are still very close. So I guess what I would say to my 21 year old self is not anything that I would say. I think I would want my 21-year-old self to say back to me. To look at the challenges we face today with the innocence of a young person. Because honestly, when we went into that town, I did not even notice that there was a black section of town and a white section of town.   You know what I mean? We just started teaching people and just starting to serve and to help people. I think a beauty in not seeing colour, there is a beauty and not seeing race and there is a beauty in doing what Martin Luther King said is to, judge people by the content of their character instead of the colour of their skin. And so I think it would actually be me today as a 52 year old man learning something from my 21 year old self, rather than me trying to teach my 21 year old self  anything. Because that was a powerful experience for me to have this barber talk about the power of change and his self-awareness and understanding his own personal history and the way he was raised and knowing that he needed to change and then the love that allowed him to change. Cause Mama Cosette loved him and he ended up loving her right back, so that is probably what I would learn more than anything else.   Steve Rush: Really profound story and parents can learn as much from their kids. Right?   Geoff Thatcher: Absolutely and in fact, the reality is if you are a leader in an organization today and you want to travel to the future, all you have to do is walk down the hallway and talk to a 21-year-old working in your company because they are the future of your company. We can learn a lot from our younger selves.   Steve Rush: Super words. Thank you, Geoff. So as folks are listening to this. They are probably thinking, how can I get a hold a copy of The CEO's Time Machine, but more importantly, how can they find out a little bit more about the work that you do? Where would you like them to go?   Geoff Thatcher: Probably the easiest way to find us as ceotimemachine.com that is ceotimemachine.com but sorry, just a little joke with the advertising voice there. Of course, you can Google us you know, Geoff Thatcher, you know, on LinkedIn. Creative Principles has a website, our company, but probably the quickest and easiest way is just to go to ceotimemachine.com and the book is for sale on Amazon and everywhere else. Steve Rush: Also, make sure we put the details of the book and indeed your LinkedIn profile and websites in the show notes too.   Geoff Thatcher: Thank you so much.   Steve Rush: Geoff it just goes for me to say I have had a real ball listening to the stories and the anecdotes you shared, and it has been a real pleasure in listening to some of those stories with you. And I just wanted to say on behalf of our listeners, thanks for being on The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Geoff Thatcher: Thanks for listening to my stories. I appreciate it.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker    

What I learned from reading Life of an American Workman by Walter Chrysler. If you want to listen to the full episode you’ll need to upgrade to the Misfit feed. You will immediately unlock 135 full length episodes. You also get access to my personal notebook containing notes on 285 podcasts and lectures on entrepreneurship. Upgrade now.

What I learned from reading The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America’s Cup, Twice by Julian Guthrie.If you want to listen to the full episode you’ll need to upgrade to the Misfit feed. You will get access to every full episode. These episodes are available nowhere else. Upgrade now.Notes and quotes from Founders #126: Larry Ellison to Steve Jobs: I’m talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it. I’m not talking about moral perfection. I’m talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime. Larry’s choice for history’s greatest person could not have been more different from Gandhi (Steve Jobs’s choice): the military leader Napoleon Bonaparte.   Steve liked to say the Beatles were his management model — four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great. Larry’s favorite history book was Will and Ariel Durant’s The Age of Napoleon, which he had read several times. Like his buddy Steve, and like Larry himself, Napoleon was an outsider who was told he would never amount to anything. Now this book is technically about the America’s Cup race. But that's not really what it's about. This books gives insights into extreme winners. Steve and Larry had found they had much in common. They both had adoptive parents. Both considered their adoptive parents their real parents. Both were “OCD,” and both were antiauthoritarian. They shared a disdain for conventional wisdom and felt people too often equated obedience with intelligence. They never graduated from college, and Steve loved to boast that he’d left Reed College after just two weeks while it took others, including Larry and their rival Bill Gates, months or even years to drop out.  Steve Jobs: “Why do people buy art when they can make their own art?” Larry thought for a moment and replied, “Well, Steve, not everyone can make his own art. You can. It’s a gift.” What he (Steve Jobs) liked was designing and redesigning things to make them more useful and more beautiful. If Michael Jordan sold enterprise software he would be Larry Ellison. Larry is addicted to winning. An idea I learned from Steve was the further you get away from one, the more complexity you are inviting in. Larry was a voracious reader who spent a great deal of time studying science and technology, but his favorite subject was history. He learned more about human nature, management, and leadership by reading history than by reading books about business. His adopted Dad said over and over again to Larry, “You are a loser. You are going to amount to nothing in life.” Larry treats life like an adventure. He envied how Graham’s parents supported him on his adventure, as this was the opposite of his own life. The story of Graham transported Larry from the regimentation of high school to the adventure and freedom of the sea. Here was a boy alone at sea for weeks at a stretch; dealing with storms, circling sharks, and broken masts; visiting exotic locales. Through it all he was his own navigator. That is definitely the way Larry approached his life. Why Larry uses competition as a way to test himself: He wanted to see just how much better a sailor he had become. It will be an interesting test. There was a clarity to be found in sports that couldn’t be had in business. At Oracle he still wanted to beat the rivals IBM and Microsoft, but business was a marathon without end; there was always another quarter. In sports, the buzzer sounds and time runs out. It is not what two groups do a like that matters. It's what they do differently that's liable to count. —Charles Kettering Why test yourself: After the laughter died down Larry turned serious. “Why do we do these things? George Mallory said the reason he wanted to climb Everest was because ‘it’s there.’ I don’t think so. I think Mallory was wrong. It’s not because it’s there. It’s because we’re there, and we wonder if we can do it.”  Larry’s personality: He didn’t like letting them have control. It was the same reason he didn’t have a driver, and it was why he liked to pilot his own planes and why he had been married and divorced three times. He didn’t like being told what he could and couldn’t do. With any new thing you do in your life, you are going to have to overcome people telling you that you are an idiot. While Ellison demanded absolute loyalty, he did not always return it. The people he liked best were the ones who were doing something for him. The people he hired were all geniuses until the day they resigned—when in Ellison's view— they became idiots or worse. What Larry is reading during the dot com bubble collapse: The books on his nightstand included Fate Is the Hunter: A Pilot’s Memoir by Ernest Gann, The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith, and William Manchester’s multivolume biography of Winston Churchill. Whenever Larry felt remotely close to being at risk of failure he couldn’t stop working.  I’m going to read you one of the funniest paragraphs I have ever read. The guy Larry is talking to is insane: In the dot—com heyday he got a call from Farzad Nazem, who used to work at Oracle and was now a top executive at Yahoo. Nazem told Larry, “Disney wants to merge with us. Why would we ever want to do something like that? What have they got?” Larry answered his old friend, “Gee, let me think. They have the most valuable film library in the world, the most valuable TV channels in world, and successful theme parks everywhere. Disney makes tons of money and they’re probably the most beloved brand on the planet. Now, what have you got? A Web page with news on it and free e-mail. Has everyone gone crazy?” Oracle has been around for 40 years. How many companies can survive 40+ years? One of the key insights I took away from Larry is this idea about game within a game. I'm glad I'm reading these books about Larry Ellison at the same time I watched this 10 part documentary on Michael Jordan (The Last Dance) because I think both Jordan and Ellison figured out something that is fundamental to our nature. I don't think they were setting out to try to figure out something fundamental about human nature. They did so in their own process of self discovery. They hack themselves by creating games within games. They understand over a long period of time that your motivations, your dedication, your discipline is going to ebb and flow and they had to find a way to hack themselves. There is one sentence that sums up Larry’s personality: “Winning. That is my idea of fun.” There are a lot of extreme winners on Larry’s team. That is one of the things I like most about the book. It gives you insights into their mindset, how they prepare for their sport—which I think is applicable to whatever you do for a living. Dixon said, “Larry, my advice is that we go out there tomorrow to try to win the race. We will probably get beaten and you should be prepared to lose gracefully.” Larry was stunned by the suggestion. After a long pause, he said that he could be gracious after losing, but wasn't capable of being gracious while he was losing, he had come here to win. The Vince Lombardi line Larry loves: Every team in the National Football League has has the talent necessary to win the championship. It's simply a matter of what you're willing to give up. Then Lombardi looked at them and said, I expect you to give up everything, and he left the room. Give me human will and the intense desire to win, and it will trump talent every day of the week. His lack of interest in marriage was not about fidelity, but had more to do with problems he had with authority. In marriage, he had to live a good part of his life the way the other person wanted him to live it. Larry wanted to live his life his way. This part reminds me of what we learned on the podcast I did on Frank Lloyd Wright. His favorite Japanese saying was, “Your garden is not complete until there is nothing else you can take out of it.”   Rafael Nadal asked how Larry had made his life such a success. Larry launched into a long philosophical musing about how innovation in technology is quite often based on finding errors in conventional wisdom, and when you find an error you have to have the courage take a different approach even when everyone else says you’re wrong. Then Larry abruptly stopped himself. “Forget everything I just said. The answer is simple. I never give up.” He was incapable of waving the white flag. Kobe Bryant: A young player should not be worried about his legacy. Wake up, identify your weakness and work on that. Go to sleep, wake up, and do that all over again. 20 years from now, you'll look back and see your legacy for yourself. That's life. Larry is constantly willing to put himself in uncomfortable situations so he can improve. One of Larry’s favorite maxims was: “The brain’s primary purpose is deception, and the primary person to be deceived is the owner.” How does his favorite Maxim relate to why he likes sports? Because in sports, you can't deceive yourself. He just said the brain's primary purpose is to deceive yourself—so he needs to hack himself. He needs to have his game within a game, so he is incapable of deceiving himself. Larry liked having opponents, even enemies. “I learn a lot about myself when I compete against somebody. I measure myself by winning and losing. Every shot in basketball is clearly judged by an orange hoop — make or miss. The hoop makes it difficult to deceive yourself.” The insight is if we do something really hard we won’t have any competition. The athletes Larry knew were obsessed with the game they played. They were like his friend Steve Jobs who worried about the color of the screws inside a computer. They reminded Larry of a line from Tombstone: Wyatt Earp asks Doc Holliday,“ What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?” Doc replies, “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” For better and worse, Larry had the same hole, and he tried to fill it by winning. But as soon as he closed in on one of his goals, he immediately set another difficult and distant goal. In that way, he kept moving the finish line just out of reach. Back home, standing by the lake where he and Steve had debated things great and small, Larry was certain that decades from now there would be two guys walking somewhere, talking about their icons. Steve would be mentioned. He would be one of those “misfits, rebels, troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes, the ones who see things differently,” words popularized in Apple’s “Think Different” ad campaign. Steve would be remembered as one of those with “no respect for the status quo.” Those moments are my most cherished and enduring memories of my time with Steve. The four of us sitting together at Kona, eating papayas and laughing for no reason at all. I'll miss those times. Goodbye, Steve. Larry’s nightmare: In Larry’s mind, it fed into a culture based on a homogenized egalitarian ethos where everyone was the same, where there are no winners and no losers, and where there are no more heroes. Larry says something to Russell (the guy running his team). It echoes what Charles Kettering said last week: It is not what two people do the same that matters. It is what they do differently that's liable to count. Larry says, “You already have a job, Russell. You've got to figure out why we're so damn slow, our said another way. Why is New Zealand so fast? What are they doing that we're not? Don’t give up before you absolutely have to. Stay in problem solving mode: Larry was not happy when he heard that speeches were being written and plans being made for the handover of the Cup, but he ignored it all until he was asked to settle an argument over who was going to give the concession speech during the handover. “Let me get this straight: people are fighting over who gets to give the concession speech? I don’t give a fuck who gives the concession speech. If we lose, everyone who wants to give a concession speech can give a concession speech. But we haven’t lost yet. Why don’t we focus on winning the next fucking race , rather than concession speeches.”Larry, a licensed commercial pilot with thousands of hours flying jets, likened their situation to a plane in distress. When pilots have a serious emergency, they immediately go into problem solving mode, and they stay in that mode until the problem is solved — or until just before impact. In that final moment, the aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder captures the pilot’s brief concession speech. There are two versions of the speech, one secular, one not: “Oh God ” and “ Oh shit.” Larry had not yet reached his “Oh God” or “Oh shit” moment. Down 8 points to 1, he remained in problem solving mode. As Muhammad Ali once said, “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.” No one was going to live or die on the basis of these things. But contests were his best teachers. At some point, one person gets measured against another. They find out who wins and who doesn’t, and along the way they learn something about themselves. Larry had learned that he loved the striving, the facing of setbacks, and the trying again.  It’s hard for me to quit when I’m losing — and it’s hard for me to quit when I’m winning. It’s just hard for me to quit. I’m addicted to competing.Listen to the full episode now by upgrading to the Misfit feed: If you want to listen to the full episode you’ll need to upgrade to the Misfit feed. You will get access to every full episode. These episodes are available nowhere else. Upgrade now.

What I learned from reading The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America's Cup, Twice by Julian Guthrie.[0:01] Larry Ellison to Steve Jobs: I'm talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it. I'm not talking about moral perfection. I'm talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime.[0:56] Larry's choice for history's greatest person could not have been more different from Gandhi (Steve Jobs's choice): the military leader Napoleon Bonaparte.  [3:15] Steve liked to say the Beatles were his management model — four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great.[3:47] Larry's favorite history book was Will and Ariel Durant's The Age of Napoleon, which he had read several times. Like his buddy Steve, and like Larry himself, Napoleon was an outsider who was told he would never amount to anything.[6:09] Now the book is technically about the America's Cup race. But that is not really what it is about. This books gives insights into extreme winners.[7:50] Steve and Larry had found they had much in common. They both had adoptive parents. Both considered their adoptive parents their real parents. Both were “OCD,” and both were antiauthoritarian. They shared a disdain for conventional wisdom and felt people too often equated obedience with intelligence. They never graduated from college, and Steve loved to boast that he'd left Reed College after just two weeks while it took others, including Larry and their rival Bill Gates, months or even years to drop out. [9:09] Steve Jobs: “Why do people buy art when they can make their own art?” Larry thought for a moment and replied, “Well , Steve , not everyone can make his own art. You can. It's a gift.”[10:46] What he (Steve Jobs) liked was designing and redesigning things to make them more useful and more beautiful.[11:02] If Michael Jordan sold enterprise software he would be Larry Ellison. Larry is addicted to winning.[12:38] An idea I learned from Steve was the further you get away from one the more complexity you are inviting in.[13:20] Larry was a voracious reader who spent a great deal of time studying science and technology, but his favorite subject was history. He learned more about human nature, management, and leadership by reading history than by reading books about business.[14:52] His adopted Dad said over and over again to Larry, “You are a loser. You are going to amount to nothing in life.”[15:19] Larry treats life like an adventure.[15:26] He envied how Graham's parents supported him on his adventure, as this was the opposite of his own life. The story of Graham transported Larry from the regimentation of high school to the adventure and freedom of the sea. Here was a boy alone at sea for weeks at a stretch; dealing with storms, circling sharks, and broken masts; visiting exotic locales. Through it all he was his own navigator.That is definitely the way Larry approached his life.[18:04] Why Larry uses competition as a way to test himself: He wanted to see just how much better a sailor he had become. It will be an interesting test. There was a clarity to be found in sports that couldn't be had in business. At Oracle he still wanted to beat the rivals IBM and Microsoft, but business was a marathon without end; there was always another quarter. In sports , the buzzer sounds and time runs out.[18:50] It is not what two groups do a like that matters. It's what they do differently that's liable to count. —Charles Kettering[22:20] Why test yourself: After the laughter died down Larry turned serious. “Why do we do these things? George Mallory said the reason he wanted to climb Everest was because ‘it's there.' I don't think so. I think Mallory was wrong. It's not because it's there. It's because we're there, and we wonder if we can do it.” [24:11] Larry's personality: He didn't like letting them have control. It was the same reason he didn't have a driver, and it was why he liked to pilot his own planes and why he had been married and divorced three times. He didn't like being told what he could and couldn't do.[26:04] With any new thing you do in your life, you are going to have to overcome people telling you that you are an idiot.[28:08] While Ellison demanded absolute loyalty, he did not always return it. The people he liked best were the ones who were doing something for him. The people he hired were all geniuses until the day they resigned—when in Ellison's view— they became idiots or worse.[29:44] What Larry is reading during the dot com bubble collapse: The books on his nightstand included Fate Is the Hunter: A Pilot's Memoir by Ernest Gann, The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith, and William Manchester's multivolume biography of Winston Churchill.[30:25] Whenever Larry felt remotely close to being at risk of failure he couldn't stop working. [30:58] I'm going to read you one of the funniest paragraphs I have ever read. The guy Larry is talking to is insane:In the dot—com heyday he got a call from Farzad Nazem, who used to work at Oracle and was now a top executive at Yahoo. Nazem told Larry, “Disney wants to merge with us. Why would we ever want to do something like that? What have they got?” Larry answered his old friend, “Gee , let me think. They have the most valuable film library in the world, the most valuable TV channels in world, and successful theme parks everywhere. Disney makes tons of money and they're probably the most beloved brand on the planet. Now, what have you got? A Web page with news on it and free e-mail. Has everyone gone crazy ?”[32:38] Oracle has been around for 40 years. How many companies can survive 40+ years?[33:00] One of the key insights I took away from Larry is this idea about game within a game. I'm glad I'm reading these books about Larry Ellison at the same time I watched this 10 part documentary on Michael Jordan (The Last Dance) because I think both Jordan and Ellison figured out something that is fundamental to our nature.I don't think hey were not setting out to try to figure out something fundamental about human nature. They did so in their own process of self discovery.They hack themselves by creating games within games.They understand over a long period of time that your motivations, your dedication, your discipline is going to ebb and flow and they had to find a way to hack themselves.[38:19] There is one sentence that sums up Larry's personality: “Winning. That is my idea of fun.”[38:38] There are a lot of extreme winners on Larry's team. That is one of the things I like most about the book. It gives you insights into their mindset, how they prepare for their sport—which I think is applicable to whatever you do for a living.[40:00] Dixon said, “Larry, my advice is that we go out there tomorrow to try to win the race. We will probably get beaten and you should be prepared to lose gracefully.” Larry was stunned by the suggestion. After a long pause, he said that he could be gracious after losing, but wasn't capable of being gracious while he was losing, he had come here to win.[42:00] The Vince Lombardi line Larry loves: Every team in the National Football League has has the talent necessary to win the championship. It's simply a matter of what you're willing to give up. Then Lombardi looked at them and said, I expect you to give up everything, and he left the room.[42:25] Give me human will and the intense desire to win, and it will trump talent every day of the week.[43:05] His lack of interest in marriage was not about fidelity, but had more to do with problems he had with authority. In marriage, he had to live a good part of his life the way the other person wanted him to live it. Larry wanted to live his life his way. This part reminds me of what we learned on the podcast I did on Frank Lloyd Wright.[44:17] His favorite Japanese saying was, “Your garden is not complete until there is nothing else you can take out of it.”  [44:44] Rafael Nadal asked how Larry had made his life such a success. Larry launched into a long philosophical musing about how innovation in technology is quite often based on finding errors in conventional wisdom, and when you find an error you have to have the courage take a different approach even when everyone else says you're wrong. Then Larry abruptly stopped himself. “Forget everything I just said. The answer is simple. I never give up.” [46:09] He was incapable of waving the white flag.[46:24] Kobe Bryant: A young player should not be worried about his legacy. Wake up, identify your weakness and work on that. Go to sleep, wake up, and do that all over again. 20 years from now, you'll look back and see your legacy for yourself. That's life.[46:47] Larry is constantly willing to put himself in uncomfortable situations so he can improve.[49:00] One of Larry's favorite maxims was: “The brain's primary purpose is deception, and the primary person to be deceived is the owner.”[49:07] How does his favorite Maxim relate to why he likes sports? Because in sports, you can't deceive yourself. He just said the brain's primary purpose is to deceive yourself—so he needs to hack himself. He needs to have his game within a game, so he is incapable of deceiving himself. Larry liked having opponents, even enemies. “I learn a lot about myself when I compete against somebody. I measure myself by winning and losing. Every shot in basketball is clearly judged by an orange hoop — make or miss. The hoop makes it difficult to deceive yourself.”[49:56] The insight is if we do something really hard we won't have any competition.[52:26] The athletes Larry knew were obsessed with the game they played. They were like his friend Steve Jobs who worried about the color of the screws inside a computer.[53:12] They reminded Larry of a line from Tombstone: Wyatt Earp asks Doc Holliday,“ What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?” Doc replies, “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” For better and worse, Larry had the same hole, and he tried to fill it by winning. But as soon as he closed in on one of his goals, he immediately set another difficult and distant goal. In that way, he kept moving the finish line just out of reach.[54:31] Back home, standing by the lake where he and Steve had debated things great and small, Larry was certain that decades from now there would be two guys walking somewhere, talking about their icons. Steve would be mentioned. He would be one of those “misfits, rebels, troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes, the ones who see things differently,” words popularized in Apple's “Think Different” ad campaign. Steve would be remembered as one of those with “no respect for the status quo.”[59:16] Those moments are my most cherished and enduring memories of my time with Steve. The four of us sitting together at Kona, eating papayas and laughing for no reason at all. I'll miss those times. Goodbye, Steve.[1:00:00] Larry's nightmare: In Larry's mind, it fed into a culture based on a homogenized egalitarian ethos where everyone was the same, where there are no winners and no losers, and where there are no more heroes.[1:02:21] Larry says something to Russell (the guy running his team). It echoes what Charles Kettering said last week: It is not what two people do the same that matters. It is what they do differently. Larry says, “You already have a job, Russell. You've got to figure out why we're so damn slow, our set another way. Why is New Zealand so fast? What are they doing that we're not?[1:03:08] Don't give up before you absolutely have to. Stay in problem solving mode: Larry was not happy when he heard that speeches were being written and plans being made for the handover of the Cup, but he ignored it all until he was asked to settle an argument over who was going to give the concession speech during the handover. “Let me get this straight: people are fighting over who gets to give the concession speech? I don't give a fuck who gives the concession speech. If we lose, everyone who wants to give a concession speech can give a concession speech. But we haven't lost yet. Why don't we focus on winning the next fucking race , rather than concession speeches.”Larry, a licensed commercial pilot with thousands of hours flying jets, likened their situation to a plane in distress. When pilots have a serious emergency, they immediately go into problem solving mode, and they stay in that mode until the problem is solved — or until just before impact. In that final moment, the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder captures the pilot's brief concession speech. There are two versions of the speech, one secular, one not: “Oh God ” and “ Oh shit.” Larry had not yet reached his “Oh God” or “Oh shit” moment. Down 8 points to 1, he remained in problem solving mode.[1:06:19] As Muhammad Ali once said, “It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.” No one was going to live or die on the basis of these things. But contests were his best teachers. At some point, one person gets measured against another. They find out who wins and who doesn't, and along the way they learn something about themselves. Larry had learned that he loved the striving, the facing of setbacks, and the trying again. [1:07:56] It's hard for me to quit when I'm losing — and it's hard for me to quit when I'm winning. It's just hard for me to quit. I'm addicted to competing.—“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. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

What I learned from reading Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd[3:06] If you had to summarize Charles Kettering this is the way you would do it: “As symbol of progress and the American way of life—as creator of ideas and builder of industries and employment—as inspirer of men to nobler thoughts and greater accomplishments—as foe of ignorance and discouragement—as friend of learning and optimistic resolve—Charles F. Kettering stands among the great men of all time.”[3:36] He was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. Among his most widely used automotive developments were the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. He was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. He developed  the world's first aerial missile. He led the advancement of practical, lightweight two-stroke diesel engines, revolutionizing the locomotive and heavy equipment industries.[4:42] This is Ket talking about why it is so important to approach your work with the mindset that you are a professional amateur: We are simply professional amateurs. We are amateurs because we are doing things for the first time. We are professional because we know we are going to have a lot of trouble. The price of progress is trouble. And I don't think the price is too high.[6:52] There is a quote from Thomas Edison that says “We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.” Ket has that same belief. This is Ket echoing Thomas Edison: “In reality, we have only begun to knock a few chips from the great quarry of knowledge that has been given us to dig out and use. We are like the two fellows who started to walk from New York to San Francisco. When they got over into New Jersey, one said: “We must be pretty nearly there. We have been walking a long, long time.” That is just how we are in what we know technically. We have just barely begun.[9:57] I am enthusiastic about being an American because I came from the hills in Ohio. I was a hillbilly. [10:21] I thought the only thing involved in opportunity was whether I knew how to think with my head and how to do with my hands.[13:37] One lesson from his childhood that stuck with him his whole life is that you need to only worry about things you can control. One of the older men is teaching him this through a story: Besides learning about water power and flour mills, he got from the wise old miller some bits of philosophy which he stored in his young mind. “A lot of people are bound to worry,” the miller once told him. “If you can do something about it, you ought to worry. I would think there was something wrong with you if you didn't. But if you can't do anything, then worrying is just like running this mill when there is no grist to grind. All that does is to wear out the mill.”[14:49] He is not interested in rote memorization. He wants to understand the principles behind the thing. He wants to know the why.[18:12] The man from whom he learned most was Hiram Sweet, the wagon maker. But Sweet was more than a wagon maker. He was, as Kettering said long afterward, “an engineer of such keen ability as to be remarkable. You would no more think of running across such a man in a small town than you would of flying without a flying machine.” Hiram Sweet had invented and built a self-computing cash register which was in daily use at the drugstore. He had also made an astronomical clock. “Where did you find out all this?” Kettering asked Sweet. “I work in this wagon shop ten hours a day,” he replied, “from six-thirty in the morning until five-thirty in the afternoon; and when I have no wagon work to do I work on Sweet's head.” Years afterward, when Kettering had become a noted man, he recalled the days spent in Sweet's wagon shop, “Letting him work on my head . . . I learned more from that old wagon maker than I did in college. The world was so wonderful and he knew so little about it that he hated to sleep.”[20:22] Ket got what he said later was one of the important lessons he learned in college. He learned it from the eminent actor, Joseph Jefferson. Jefferson, together with his company, came to the university town to play his famous part of Rip Van Winkle.One of the men asked him how often he had played the part of Rip Van Winkle. The great actor told just how many hundreds of times he had played Rip. “Don't you get terribly tired doing it so often?” he was asked. “Yes, I did get tired after a while. But the people wanted Rip. And so I went on playing him. I said to myself, ‘It doesn't matter how you feel. Your job is to entertain the audience.' Then I made up my mind that I would try to portray Rip Van Winkle just a little better each time. And that constant effort at improving the part has kept up my interest and enthusiasm.”[23:15] There is a time during Henry Ford's third attempt at building an automobile manufacturing company. And he comes to see Charlie Sorensen.He's like, “You know what? We're about to run out of money. I guess I'm just not going be able to accomplish this goal.”There's this conversation that takes place between Henry and Charlie and at the end, Ford is fired back up. Ford was like “I felt like quitting at the beginning of the conversation. Now I don't.”A few short years later, he winds up attaining his life goal of building a car so inexpensively that the average person can have it. I think that's important.There's so many times in Ford's life story that he wants to quit, that he's disheartened.[26:44] The obstacle of not knowing how never kept him from undertaking anything he thought needed to be done. “It is a fundamental rule with me,” he said once, “that if I want to do something I start, whether I know how or not. . . . As a rule you can find that out by trying.”[28:04] Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement.[36:18] Remembering the loyal support she (his wife) gave him during that trying period and afterward, Kettering said of her, “She was a great help in those early struggles, for she never got discouraged.” After she passes away from cancer he says she was the only thing in his life that he never tried to improve.[41:19] How Ket and his partner financed their company: To get even that small endeavor under way Kettering and Deeds had to put in all the money they could scrape up, and they mortgaged everything they had. Deeds put a mortgage on his house and Kettering on a lot that he owned. Both borrowed money on their life insurance policies. They also put up their patents and the contract with Cadillac as collateral for a loan from the bank. Cadillac paid them some money in advance. They sold some preferred stock, too, and raised money in every way possible.[42:09] All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new.[45:29] Kettering admired The Wright Brothers and all they did in overcoming obstacles to successful flight. Those obstacles were psychological as well as physical, for it was commonly believed then that heavier-than-air flight was impossible.  “The Wright Brothers,” Kettering said, “flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.”[46:08] I have always had a rule for myself. Never fly when the birds don't, because they have had a lot of experience.[49:22] The destruction of a theory is of no consequence for theories are only steppingstones. More great scientific developments have been made by stumbling than by what is thought of as science. In my opinion an ounce of experimentation is worth a pound of theory.[50:57] Ket hates committees: Mrs. Kettering read about Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic, she said to her husband, “How wonderful that he did it all alone!” “It would have been still more wonderful,” Kettering replied, “if he had done it with a committee.”[51:30] We find that in research a certain amount of intelligent ignorance is essential to progress; for, if you know too much, you won't try the thing.[54:42] New ideas are the hardest things in the world to merchandise.[56:03] So great was his respect for independent thought and initiative in others that it was often difficult for those working on a project to find out just what he himself thought ought to be done in a given circumstance. He was careful not to stamp out a spark of fire in anyone. Instead, he would fan it to a bright glow. [57:31] He has been an inspiration to me and to the whole organization, particularly in directing our thoughts and our imagination and our activities toward doing a better job technically and the tremendous importance of technological progress.[1:00:07] You have to try things: Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world.[1:00:19] In putting out new things troubles are not the exception. They are the rule. That is why I have said on so many occasions that the price of progress is trouble.[1:03:16] Let the competition think you are crazy. By the time they get it it will be too late: If you will help them keep on thinking that, we'll not be bothered with competition during the years in which we are working out the bugs and developing a really good locomotive.[1:05:14] It is not what two groups do alike that matters. It's what they do differently that is liable to count.[1:05:47] There are no places in an industrial situation where anyone can sit and rest. It is a question of change, change, change all the time. You can't have profit without progress.[1:06:18] We don't know enough to plan new industries: You can't plan industries, because you can't tell whether something is going to be an industry or not when you see it, and the chances are that it grows up right in front of you without ever being recognized as being an industry. Who planned the automobile industry? Nobody thought anything of it at all. It grew in spite of planning.[1:08:22] Because the field of human knowledge is so far from complete, he thinks our schools ought to teach that we know very little about anything.[1:09:04] The greatest thing that most fellows are lacking today is the fool trait of jumping into something and sticking at it until they come out all right.[1:09:54] He seems to have a complete absence of any timidity whatsoever. [1:10:54] I can conceive of nothing more foolish than to say the world is finished. We are not at the end of our progress but at the beginning. —“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. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

What I learned from reading Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas BoydIf you want to listen to the full episode you’ll need to upgrade to the Misfit feed. You will get access to every full episode. These episodes are available nowhere else. Upgrade now.Notes and quotes from Founders #125If you had to summarize Charles Kettering this is the way you would do it: “As symbol of progress and the American way of life—as creator of ideas and builder of industries and employment—as inspirer of men to nobler thoughts and greater accomplishments—as foe of ignorance and discouragement—as friend of learning and optimistic resolve—Charles F. Kettering stands among the great men of all time.” He was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. Among his most widely used automotive developments were the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. He was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. He developed  the world's first aerial missile. He led the advancement of practical, lightweight two-stroke diesel engines, revolutionizing the locomotive and heavy equipment industries. This is Ket talking about why it is so important to approach your work with the mindset that you are a professional amateur: We are simply professional amateurs. We are amateurs because we are doing things for the first time. We are professional because we know we are going to have a lot of trouble. The price of progress is trouble. And I don’t think the price is too high. There is a quote from Thomas Edison that says “We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.” Ket has that same belief. This is Ket echoing Thomas Edison: “In reality, we have only begun to knock a few chips from the great quarry of knowledge that has been given us to dig out and use. We are like the two fellows who started to walk from New York to San Francisco. When they got over into New Jersey, one said: “We must be pretty nearly there. We have been walking a long, long time.” That is just how we are in what we know technically. We have just barely begun. I am enthusiastic about being an American because I came from the hills in Ohio. I was a hillbilly.  I thought the only thing involved in opportunity was whether I knew how to think with my head and how to do with my hands. One lesson from his childhood that stuck with him his whole life is that you need to only worry about things you can control. One of the older men is teaching him this through a story: Besides learning about water power and flour mills, he got from the wise old miller some bits of philosophy which he stored in his young mind. “A lot of people are bound to worry,” the miller once told him. “If you can do something about it, you ought to worry. I would think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t. But if you can’t do anything, then worrying is just like running this mill when there is no grist to grind. All that does is to wear out the mill.” He is not interested in rote memorization. He wants to understand the principles behind the thing. He wants to know the why. The man from whom he learned most was Hiram Sweet, the wagon maker. But Sweet was more than a wagon maker. He was, as Kettering said long afterward, “an engineer of such keen ability as to be remarkable. You would no more think of running across such a man in a small town than you would of flying without a flying machine.” Hiram Sweet had invented and built a self-computing cash register which was in daily use at the drugstore. He had also made an astronomical clock. “Where did you find out all this?” Kettering asked Sweet. “I work in this wagon shop ten hours a day,” he replied, “from six-thirty in the morning until five-thirty in the afternoon; and when I have no wagon work to do I work on Sweet’s head.” Years afterward, when Kettering had become a noted man, he recalled the days spent in Sweet’s wagon shop, “Letting him work on my head . . . I learned more from that old wagon maker than I did in college. The world was so wonderful and he knew so little about it that he hated to sleep.” Ket got what he said later was one of the important lessons he learned in college. He learned it from the eminent actor, Joseph Jefferson. Jefferson, together with his company, came to the university town to play his famous part of Rip Van Winkle. One of the men asked him how often he had played the part of Rip Van Winkle. The great actor told just how many hundreds of times he had played Rip. “Don’t you get terribly tired doing it so often?” he was asked. “Yes, I did get tired after a while. But the people wanted Rip. And so I went on playing him. I said to myself, ‘It doesn’t matter how you feel. Your job is to entertain the audience.’ Then I made up my mind that I would try to portray Rip Van Winkle just a little better each time. And that constant effort at improving the part has kept up my interest and enthusiasm.” There is a time during Henry Ford’s third attempt at building an automobile manufacturing company. And he comes to see Charlie Sorensen. He's like, “You know what? We're about to run out of money. I guess I'm just not going be able to accomplish this goal.” There's this conversation that takes place between Henry and Charlie and at the end, Ford is fired back up. Ford was like “I felt like quitting at the beginning of the conversation. Now I don't.” A few short years later, he winds up attaining his life goal of building a car so inexpensively that the average person can have it. I think that’s important. There's so many times in Ford’s life story that he wants to quit, that he's disheartened. The obstacle of not knowing how never kept him from undertaking anything he thought needed to be done. “It is a fundamental rule with me,” he said once, “that if I want to do something I start, whether I know how or not. . . . As a rule you can find that out by trying.” Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. Remembering the loyal support she (his wife) gave him during that trying period and afterward, Kettering said of her, “She was a great help in those early struggles, for she never got discouraged.” After she passes away from cancer he says she was the only thing in his life that he never tried to improve. How Ket and his partner financed their company: To get even that small endeavor under way Kettering and Deeds had to put in all the money they could scrape up, and they mortgaged everything they had. Deeds put a mortgage on his house and Kettering on a lot that he owned. Both borrowed money on their life insurance policies. They also put up their patents and the contract with Cadillac as collateral for a loan from the bank. Cadillac paid them some money in advance. They sold some preferred stock, too, and raised money in every way possible. All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new. Kettering admired The Wright Brothers and all they did in overcoming obstacles to successful flight. Those obstacles were psychological as well as physical, for it was commonly believed then that heavier-than-air flight was impossible.  “The Wright Brothers,” Kettering said, “flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.” I have always had a rule for myself. Never fly when the birds don’t, because they have had a lot of experience. The destruction of a theory is of no consequence for theories are only steppingstones. More great scientific developments have been made by stumbling than by what is thought of as science. In my opinion an ounce of experimentation is worth a pound of theory. Ket hates committees: Mrs. Kettering read about Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic, she said to her husband, “How wonderful that he did it all alone!” “It would have been still more wonderful,” Kettering replied, “if he had done it with a committee.” We find that in research a certain amount of intelligent ignorance is essential to progress; for, if you know too much, you won’t try the thing. New ideas are the hardest things in the world to merchandise. So great was his respect for independent thought and initiative in others that it was often difficult for those working on a project to find out just what he himself thought ought to be done in a given circumstance. He was careful not to stamp out a spark of fire in anyone. Instead, he would fan it to a bright glow.  He has been an inspiration to me and to the whole organization, particularly in directing our thoughts and our imagination and our activities toward doing a better job technically and the tremendous importance of technological progress. You have to try things: Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world. In putting out new things troubles are not the exception. They are the rule. That is why I have said on so many occasions that the price of progress is trouble. Let the competition think you are crazy. By the time they get it it will be too late: If you will help them keep on thinking that, we’ll not be bothered with competition during the years in which we are working out the bugs and developing a really good locomotive. It is not what two groups do alike that matters. It’s what they do differently that is liable to count. There are no places in an industrial situation where anyone can sit and rest. It is a question of change, change, change all the time. You can’t have profit without progress. We don’t know enough to plan new industries: You can’t plan industries, because you can’t tell whether something is going to be an industry or not when you see it, and the chances are that it grows up right in front of you without ever being recognized as being an industry. Who planned the automobile industry? Nobody thought anything of it at all. It grew in spite of planning. Because the field of human knowledge is so far from complete, he thinks our schools ought to teach that we know very little about anything. The greatest thing that most fellows are lacking today is the fool trait of jumping into something and sticking at it until they come out all right. He seems to have a complete absence of any timidity whatsoever.  I can conceive of nothing more foolish than to say the world is finished. We are not at the end of our progress but at the beginning. Listen to the full episode now by upgrading to the Misfit feed: If you want to listen to the full episode you’ll need to upgrade to the Misfit feed. You will get access to every full episode. These episodes are available nowhere else. Upgrade now.

Quote (April 27/28): "Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail." (Charles Kettering)"make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, LOVE." (2 Peter 1:5-7)

Gibt es einen Zusammenhang zwischen Ideen und Geld? Ich denke ja. „Menschen mit einer neuen Idee gelten so lange als Spinner, bis sich die Sache durchgesetzt hat.“ gibt Mark Twain zu bedenken. Die Idee gehört nicht dem der sie zuerst gedacht hat sondern dem der sie zuerst umgesetzt hat. Oder wie es Werner Heisenberg formulierte: „Die Ideen sind nicht verantwortlich für das, was die Menschen aus ihnen machen.“ Doch wie kommen wir eigentlich auf Ideen? Unser Gehirn gleicht einem Arbeitsspeicher. Je mehr Du gleichzeitig bearbeitest, desto mehr wird Dein Unterbewusstsein aktiviert. Das führt dazu, dass dein Gehirn auch im Hintergrund weiter arbeitet. Wenn Du Deinen Arbeitsspeicher leeren willst, solltest du alle Deine Gedanken aufschreiben. Vielleicht sind aus deinen Gedanken bereits Ideen geworden, andernfalls sind deine schriftlichen Aufzeichnungen die Basis für deine Ideen. Plane den nächsten Tag immer am Abend zuvor. Somit kann Dein Unterbewusstsein in der Nacht arbeiten und Dir mögliche Lösungen aufzeigen. Nach dem Aufstehen wirst du dann plötzlich bemerkenswerte Ideen haben. Unser Verstand braucht zeitliche Orientierung. Deshalb hilft beim Ideen sammeln auch eine Zeitvorgabe. Um deine Zeit zu regulieren, kannst du Sanduhren oder einen Zeitwecker verwenden. Somit erinnerst du dich visuell bzw. akustisch daran, fokussiert zu bleiben. Eine Idee ist kein ausgearbeitetes Konzept. „Die Skizze sagt uns oft mehr als das ausgeführte Kunstwerk, weil sie uns zum Mitarbeiter macht“, weiß Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Eine Idee braucht demnach Austausch mit anderen Menschen. „Wenn Sie heute irgend eine Idee auf der Welt killen wollen, brauchen Sie nur dafür zu sorgen, dass ein Komitee darüber berät.“ gibt Charles Kettering zu bedenken. Ein Gedankenaustausch oder Reifeprozess muss also behutsam durchgeführt werden. Und schlussendlich benötigt man ein gutes Urteilsvermögen und die Gabe, auf sein Herz zu hören. So zum Ausdruck gebracht von Linus Pauling: „Man muss nicht nur mehr Ideen haben als andere, sondern auch die Fähigkeit besitzen, zu entscheiden, welche dieser Ideen gut sind.“ Und Dostojewski meint: „Man kann sich wohl in einer Idee irren, man kann sich aber nicht mit dem Herzen irren.“ Natürlich muss man seine Idee aber irgendwann auch nach außen hin sichtbar machen, Menschen von der eigenen Idee überzeugen können. Dafür braucht es wiederum andere Fähigkeiten. Denn: „Vom Management kann man nicht erwarten, dass es eine gute Idee erkennt, solange sie ihm nicht von einem guten Verkäufer präsentiert wird.“, sagt David Ogilvy. Sonst ergeht es Dir vielleicht so, wie es Ernst Hauschka beschreibt: „Manche hübsche Weintraube eines Weisen lebt weiter als Rosine im Kopf eines Narren.“ Und es kommt nicht nur auf das Verkaufen der eigenen Idee an. Leonardo da Vinci beschreibt, worauf wir noch achten sollten: „Geniale Menschen beginnen große Werke, fleißige Menschen vollenden sie.“ Darum benötigst du Selbstvertrauen, Willenskraft und Ausdauer. Oder wie Goethe es formulierte: „Alles auf der Welt kommt auf einen gescheiten Einfall und auf einen festen Entschluss an.“ Ich wünsche Dir eine ideenreiche Woche.

One hundred years ago the world changed - transitioning from the horse and buggy to the automobile.  Most of the cars in that age were electric, relying on big bulky batteries for power.  Henry Ford and Charles Kettering doomed those early electrics (you will have to listen to find out how).  General Motors revived it in the 1990's, then killed it again.  But from the ashes emerged products like the Prius, and companies like Tesla.  Annie and Jay Warmke of Blue Rock Station discuss how this time around everything is different - and how the electric car will change our society in ways as profound as the horseless carriage did 100 years ago.

In today’s episode, Christopher gives us a rundown on why he thinks committees kill legendary marketing. Why is so much marketing, shitty? Christopher Lochhead candidly shares his honest observation on the industry today: a lot of marketing efforts suck. Aside from bad creatives, much of this onslaught of marketing stems from their inability to make a difference in designing and dominating a market category. Who’s to blame? Christopher says its the committees. “This is probably true for most major initiatives in business, but it’s especially true in marketing because, fundamentally, legendary marketing is about leadership.” - Christopher Lochhead To become the leader in your space — the category queen — a company must define and dominate a market niche. This not only holds true in tech companies but for almost all industries today. To dominate a market, every company’s objective should focus on building the company that wins, with a clear point of view on problem-solving. The problem with committees  A famous automotive engineer and businessman, Charles Kettering, once said: “If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.” Why does committees hinder legendary marketing? “The problem with most committees is that they are focused on process, not results.” - Christopher Lochhead Committees generally try to incorporate everyone’s “feedback,” spend time “socializing ideas” and analyzing data. In the end, they are trying too hard to make everyone happy. Committees strive to be collaborative and ensure that all constituents have a say. More issues with committees A structural problem with many committees is that a lot of people can say no, while at the same time, they are not clear about who can say yes. By definition, if everybody agrees, that's not a legendary idea. “As a result, committees produce a compromise. They settle on the ideas that everyone could agree on. Not legendary ideas.” - Christopher Lochhead Additionally, people involved in committees are oftentimes not subject matter experts themselves, which further leads to mediocre marketing efforts. “It's not about what people like, it's about what's gonna work. Particularly what's gonna work through the lens. Will these help us design and dominate a giant category that matters and take 2/3 of the economics?” - Christopher Lochhead To hear more about committees kill legendary marketing and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founder/CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Link: Book: Play Bigger Lochhead.com We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

The reason I love hosting this show is because of the fabulous, pioneering women I have the pleasure of interviewing and my guest Renatha Exeter is the embodiment of the maxim “Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail” (Charles Kettering, American Inventor). She is the youngest and first female CEO of The Guyana Oil Company Limited; and her atypical ascension to this leadership strata is marked by personal sacrifice to ensure strong academic preparation; constant activation of her faith and resultant favour; and the unyielding support of her family circle. Renatha, for the past 15 years, has curated and shared a wealth and depth of expertise in the areas of business management, corporate and direct sales, marketing, and mass multi media platforming and positioning. Something tells me that she still has more achievements to be had.  Connect with me  Is it time you took your charge of your career? Do you know you have the drive and ambition to succeed like Renatha but need some support? Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve your leadership goals. For more information about the career development and consulting services offered for women who lead including one on one executive coaching and group mentoring visit;  Web:janicesutherland.com For career advice and solutions to those tricky questions, read my book!: This Woman Can - The no bullsh*t guide for women who lead Loving this episode? Tag me @iamjanicesutherland on Instagram or Facebook and share your favorite nugget using the hashtag #ThisWomanCan Leave a Review  Loving the show and want to help spread the word? Make my day and leave a review in iTunes! This will help us rank higher so that more fabulous women like yourself can hear these conversations. … and lastly, remember if I can, you can, this woman can! Janice             

With a modest two-story hotel and various small cottages, Long Key Fishing Camp offered a dramatic departure from the usual opulence of Henry Flagler's hotels. Palatial structures with manicured grounds, extravagant recreational facilities, and world-class amenities were the norm at Flagler's other hotels that dotted the east coast of Florida--but not at Long Key, the last resort to open during his lifetime. Prospective visitors were frankly warned not to expect the same level of comfort provided at sister properties. Yet still they came. This rustic island, with its unparalleled fishing grounds and cabins named after local fish-- "The Kingfish," "The Porpoise," "The Barracoota," "The Shark"--inspired fierce loyalty among its diverse and distinctive clientele, even during the dark years of the Great Depression. Zane Grey, Lou Gehrig, Wallace Stevens, Charles Kettering, Andrew Mellon, and Herbert Hoover were among those who would board the Florida East Coast Railway to visit this paradisiacal setting, many of them to return season after season. Completely destroyed by the fatal 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, the first documented category 5 storm to make landfall in the United States, Flagler's unique island getaway has been largely forgotten. Today we share the famous baseball players who found refuge from the limelight at Long Key. Today in Key West History is brought to you by 43 Keys Media. You can find us at http://43keys.com Today is Key West History is a proud member of the Florida Keys Podcast Network.

Are you ready to get a jump on this New Year ahead? Today's quote from Charles Kettering is about the power of perspective when it comes to time. Read on to learn more about this week's Let's Talk Sales inspiration. Charles Kettering Quote In this episode of Let's Talk Sales, it's all about this month's […] The post Let’s Talk Sales! Inspirational Quote from Charles Kettering – Episode 114 appeared first on Criteria For Success.

Lisa Cini, an award-winning, senior living designer and founder of Best Living Tech is interviewed by Jim Enright. Lisa shares how the entire family can benefit from adopting the multi-generational way of living. She points out that while this has been the norm worldwide, families in United States have oscillated between decentralized living and multi-generational living. Lisa explains the social experiment she conducted in her own home while inviting her parents and grandmother to live with her—life experiences and lessons that have informed her new book, Hive. Tune-in and discover the various ways in which you can successfully take up multi-generational living and why it yields immense benefits to grandparents, parents and children alike.   ●     00:09 – Connect with Jim via email; alternatively you can also send a voicemail via the Planet Boomerville website or get in touch with us via Facebook Messenger ●     01:00 – How to care for parents in old age is a quandary faced by many boomers; you can either let them stay on their own, put them in a care facility or have them stay with you ●     01:42 – Would you benefit from having a multi-generational household if your parents are staying with you? ●     02:14 – Today’s guest, Lisa Cini is an award winning senior living designer; her books, The Future Is Here: Senior Living Reimagined and Hive have opened to rave reviews o      02:42 – Her organization, Best Living Tech, houses some of the best products tailored for aged people ●     02:57 – This is the first of three very informative episodes: o      02:57 – In this 1st Episode we will be talking about AGING and MULTI-GENERATIONAL households o      03:10 – The 2nd Episode will be about the TECHNOLOGY that makes our lives easier o      03:06 – The 3rd Episode explains a holistic view and puts it all together ●     03:42 – Understanding how multi-generational living has evolved over the years o      03:42 – A common practice worldwide o      04:23 – Quite commonplace in the 1920’s during the time of the Great Depression o      04:57 – With passage of time, private housing became the norm as younger people started moving to the suburbs; senior living as a concept became prominent in the 1980’s o      06:24 – With the economy going SOUTH, this concept has become popular again; 23% of millennials and 25% of seniors are staying in multi-generational housing ●     08:33 – Lisa talks about her social experiment which has formed the basis of her latest book, Hive o      09:04 – Studies show that 90% of seniors are not happy with their present arrangement o      09:22 – In spite of paying an astronomical amount ranging from $3,000 to $12,000 per month, seniors are not happy with their accommodation o      09:35 – The baby boomer generation does not want someone else to tailor their life; they desire independence and flexibility o      10:05 – Being the oldest daughter, Lisa took the responsibility of her parents and grandmother; she started experimenting on them different ideas about social living o      11:37 – Even though she is an expert, Lisa found that taking care of older people is really difficult o      12:39 – Her parents wanted to move into a ranch style house, so they wouldn’t have to move around so much; convinced them to opt for first floor living which resulted in more activity and heightened oxygen flow to the brain o      14:24 – Parents have become healthier due to increased activity; attributes this positive change to more activity and higher energy o      15:30 – When you have people interacting with you, you tend to be the best “you” ●     16:28 – Learn how children can benefit from staying with their grandparents o      16:58 – Being surrounded by grandparents results in kids inculcating some great habits o      17:27 – A recent study showed that a single parent staying with grandparents has a greater chance of raising kids the right way than with two parents and no grandparents ●     20:23 – Some of the BENEFITS of multi-generational living o      20:40 – Her parents and grandparents like to contribute to the family by cooking food and folding clothes o      20:50 – Lisa’s husband and her mother are connecting well o      21:38 – Gets to see her sister and brothers much more often now ●     22:24 – Lisa shares some of the physical changes she made to her house o      24:08 – Installed day toilet seats that wash, dry and blow ▪       27:11 – Urges listeners to not underestimate the ability of seniors to pick up the latest technology; points out that her mother is quite active on Snapchat ●     27:51 – And some of the CHALLENGES that Lisa faced… o      27:51 – Had to deal with storage and privacy issues; every generation has a different idea regarding privacy o      29:20 – Her parents had to downsize from a 3,000 square foot home ●     30:56 – Lisa talks about her latest venture, Best Living Tech, where she wants seniors to have access to the best technology that is not easily available ●     32:19 –  Some of her favorite music: AC DC's Hell cats, Commodores, Brickhouse, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Louis Prima ●     34:56 – Born into a family where everybody is blessed with longevity, Lisa does not rule out living till 120! o      35:25 – Financial stability and peak physical and mental capabilities can give you the freedom to do anything o      37:32 – Technology has ensured longevity o      38:30 – Does not want to retire, but wants to choose how to be useful ●     38:57 – Access books, newsletter and blog articles by checking out Lisa’s website ●     39:38 – Charles Kettering says, “My interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there” ●     41:02 – Jim Enright’s sign-off message: Be stellar, and live life lively ●     41:10 – Spread the word with your baby boomer friends in person and on Facebook—Teach them how to listen to podcasts and how to subscribe  3 Key Points: 1.       An overwhelming majority of seniors prefer a home environment rather than a five star, custom one; they are not willing to let go their flexibility and independence. 2.       First floor living is always more beneficial for seniors since this increases their level of physical activity. 3.       Immense thought needs to be put into designing senior living spaces; toilet seats, contrasting hand rails and walls and door positioning are some of the key changes that will improve their living.

The buzz: 'I had to stop driving my car for a while…the tires got dizzy' -Stephen Wright. What can attendees expect at the 2nd Annual Best Practices for Automotive Conference -Oct. 17-19, 2016, Detroit-? Experts will explore trends and capabilities creating end-to-end transformational opportunities from an automotive customer's point of view. Topics include digitalization, cyber computing, omni-channels, and new players interacting in and disrupting markets to create exciting new possibilities. The experts speak. Larry Stolle, SAP: 'There is no wealth like knowledge and no poverty like ignorance' -Buddha Shakyamuni. Otto Schell, GM: 'Action is the foundational key to all success' -Picasso. Bill Powell, ARI: “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm” -Winston Churchill. Chet Harter, SAP: 'If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong' -Charles Kettering. Join us for Best Practices for Automotive: Accelerating Business in the Digital Age.

The buzz: It's NOT like “déjà vu all over again”! -Yogi Berra. Wake up call for the Chemical industry: Digital Transformation is real and more relevant than ever for your businesses. Reality check: Many of them still think of “digital” only as a way to improve manufacturing and supply chain. But today's digital is a path to becoming more agile and productive, growing profitability and achieving sustainable competitiveness. The time has come for the industry to refocus your digital lens on the future – and that starts now. The experts speak. Greg Gorbach, ARC Advisory Group: “If we have data, let's look at data. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine” -Jim Barksdale. Charles Wallace, Solenis: “Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster” -Elon Musk. Rich Seltz, SAP: “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong” -Charles Kettering. Join us for Chemical Industry: Digital Transformation as a Success Model.

The buzz: It's NOT like “déjà vu all over again”! -Yogi Berra. Wake up call for the Chemical industry: Digital Transformation is real and more relevant than ever for your businesses. Reality check: Many of them still think of “digital” only as a way to improve manufacturing and supply chain. But today's digital is a path to becoming more agile and productive, growing profitability and achieving sustainable competitiveness. The time has come for the industry to refocus your digital lens on the future – and that starts now. The experts speak. Greg Gorbach, ARC Advisory Group: “If we have data, let's look at data. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine” -Jim Barksdale. Charles Wallace, Solenis: “Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster” -Elon Musk. Rich Seltz, SAP: “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong” -Charles Kettering. Join us for Chemical Industry: Digital Transformation as a Success Model.

The buzz: Hum a few bars? Manufacturers: Achieving sustainable product innovation requires great discipline plus extraordinary collaboration within your company, across your stakeholder community, and with your customers. Why? Booming global competition requires you to have more product variants, faster time to market, lower costs – all while facing growing regulatory and sustainability requirements. How? Borrow a page from the music world: a PLM symphony of simplification, technology, automation, and agility. The experts speak. Alan Mendel, LeverX: “Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future” (Walt Disney). Jeff Doneghue, BUNN: “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps” (Confucius). Brian Soaper, SAP: “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong” (Charles Kettering). Join us for Orchestrating Sustainable Product Innovation: Compose Your Symphony.