#065: Dyson – It sucks, but not enough‪.‬ The Empire Builders Podcast

That is the prospect’s dissatisfaction.  5,136 iterations later the problem is solved.



Dave Young:



Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is well it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.



[No Bull RV Ad]







Dave Young:



Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, along with Stephen Semple. Stephen, when you told me what the topic of today's podcast is, I immediately thought of commercials that they do. And we're talking about Dyson today. So the company that makes the vacuum cleaners and fans, I assume other things. But I've read a little bit about, is it Stephen Dyson? Is that his name?



Stephen Semple:



No, it's James Dyson.



Dave Young:



James Dyson.



Stephen Semple:



You're so close.



Dave Young:



You're Stephen. Stephen Semple.



Stephen Semple:



I'm Stephen. I really shouldn't make fun of remembering names because I'm terrible at it, so.



Dave Young:



He doesn't care. As long as we remember the last name, which is Dyson.



Stephen Semple:



That's it. Yeah. So Dyson was founded by James Dyson on July 8th, 1991 and you're right. They make vacuum cleaners, and hand dryers, and air purifiers and all sorts of stuff. And they sell over $8 billion of this stuff. They have 13,000 employees and they're still privately held. They're still a privately held company, which is really unusual, really quite remarkable. They're really best known for their vacuums. And that was the first product. That's what we're going to talk about today, because it's really interesting. And you'll notice this parallel of some other things we've talked about, story about how this vacuum all came about.



Dave Young:



So here's a guy, he's British, right?



Stephen Semple:



Correct.



Dave Young:



Here's a guy sitting, saying to himself, all these other vacuum cleaners suck, but not enough.



Stephen Semple:



Correct. That's exactly it. That is exactly it. And the interesting thing is James Dyson did a lot of innovation and he really kind of considers himself this amateur engineer. So yes. And what he means by that is he would look at a product and he'd go, this product is not good. How can I improve it? But you would think somebody who thinks that way and has that background, you would think that he went to university for science, right? Like engineering or math or something along that lines.



Dave Young:



And he didn't.



Stephen Semple:



He did not. He did the arts and classics in university.



Dave Young:



No kidding.



Stephen Semple:



Yes. And what drives me crazy, and he'll even say it, so many people frown on the arts and classics in terms of an education, because it's not practical, but he'll tell you a lot of his thinking came from that degree in terms of how he looks at the world. So while he was in university for the classics, he discovered design and in the mid 60s, design was not being talked about at all. And when he was told what it was, he became really interested. So he went to the Royal College of Art and he studied furniture and then architectural design. But at his heart he still considers himself a very much an amateur engineer. Again, he looks at things and he says, how can I make it better? So in 1974, so remember the company was founded in 1991, 1974 he buys a Hoover Junior vacuum. So it's 17 years before founding of Dyson. This is one of those upright vacuum cleaners, it's got the pillow sort of case thing hanging out the back.



Dave Young:



Yeah. The big nasty bag that you put in there and



Stephen Semple:



Yeah.



Dave Young:



Zip it up.



Stephen Semple: