#201 Isambard Kingdom Brunel (James Dyson's Hero)

What I learned from reading Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Definitive Biography of The Engineer, Visionary, and Great Briton by L. T. C. Rolt. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- 1. His career was to him a tremendous adventure.2. I have always made it a rule, which I have found by some years experience a safe and profitable one, to have nothing to do with newspaper articles.3. It is consoling to be thus reminded that the lunatic fringe is a hardy perennial and not a phenomenon peculiar to our day and age.4. The livelihood of anybody relying upon their penmanship is generally precarious.5. One whose high spirits seemed quite impervious to cold and discomfort.6. The ready wit and the gaiety concealed a fire and a power which would drive him, undeterred by repeated disappointments, to achieve fame and fortune.7. The name of Isambard Brunel would not mean what it does today if he had not displayed the same characteristics of dogged persistence and an unlimited capacity for hard work which distinguish the self-taught engineers.8. A great man achieves eminence by his capacity to live more fully and intensely than his fellows and in so doing his faults as well as his virtues become the more obvious.9. It is not in freedom from faults but in the ability to transcend and master them that greatness lies.10. Isambard Brunel threw into the work all that unsparing energy which was to distinguish his whole life. For as much as thirty-six hours at a time he would not leave the tunnel, pausing only for a brief cat-nap.11. The Brunels were not men to sit down with folded hands and bewail their misfortune.12. Spurred on by Brunel's unconquerable determination, the work went forward.13. Iť's a gloomy perspective and yet bad as it is I cannot with all my efforts work myself up to be down hearted.14. Never Despair has always been my motto – we may succeed yet. Persevere.15. This time he was going to win, but it would be a great struggle.16. He never lost faith in himself.17. He determined then to make perfection of his work the supreme goal and from that resolve he never subsequently wavered.18. He knew that it would be so because, as any artist or craftsman must, he had alrcady conccived the completed work in his imagination19. For it was an inviolable rule of Brunel's that he would never, under any circumstances, accept an appointment which involved divided responsibility. In any work upon which he engaged there could be only one engineer and he must have the full responsibility for the work and for the conduct of his staff.20. Plain, gentlemanly language seems to have no effect upon you. I must try stronger language and stronger measures. You are a cursed, lazy, inattentive, apathetic vagabond, and if you continue to neglect my instructions, and to show such infernal laziness, I shall send you about your business. I have frequently told you, amongst other absurd, untidy habits, that that of making drawings on the back of others was inconvenient; by your cursed neglect of that you have again wasted more of my time than your whole life is worth.21. Experiment was the breath of life to Brunel and for him precedents only existed to be questioned.22. Brunel rejected precedent and proceeded from first principles. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Senra?

  A century is a brief span, as a historian measures time. Yet between 1760 and 1860, a small group of men transformed the face of England and brought about an economic and social upheaval so vast that the life of no single person in this country remained unaffected by it. They set in motion a process of rapid, technical evolution that still continues. Of this small group of men, whose lives had such prodigious consequences, Inzembard Kingdom Brunel was perhaps the outstanding personality. He has his statue in marble. Every boy's railway book refers to him.

• 0:42David Senra?

  You may have seen his name engraved upon that great bridge. We may know of him as the overambitious author of The Broadgauge, or of that premature giant among ships, The Great Eastern. Perhaps we only remember him by virtue of the evocative overtones of that remarkable name. A name in which all the pride and self-confidence of an era seems to ring out like a brazen challenge. What sort of man was this Brunel? That is the question which this book tries to answer. Although I've always admired Brunel's work, my inquiry was inspired by curiosity and not by hero worship.

• 1:24David Senra?

  But the further I went, the clearer did it seem to me that, large though the achievement was, the man was larger still. Brunel, in fact, was more than a great engineer. He was an artist and a visionary. A great man with a strangely magnetic personality which uniquely distinguished him even in that age of powerful individualism in which he moved. To learn something about such a man, about his private thoughts, his hopes and ambitions, and about the spirit which drove him, is to know about the sources from which the greatest of all revolutions derived its dynamic strength.

• 2:05David Senra?

  That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Definitive Biography of the Engineer, Visionary, and Great Briton. And it was written all the way back in 1957 by LTC Rolt. So before I jump back into the book, I just want to tell you where I got the idea to read a biography on Brunel. Last week, I reread the autobiography of James Dyson. And James Dyson is extremely explicit in his autobiography. He's like, listen, Isambard Brunel, Kingdom Brunel, is my personal god. He talks about all the ideas that he learned from studying the life and career of Brunel, that he applied to his own career, and that he would use the example of the persistence and doggedness and perseverance

• 2:50David Senra?

  of Brunel to inspire him not to give up in his own work. And so he credits Brunel with building the foundation of Dyson's multibillion-dollar empire that he has now. And so I just want to reread this part again, because I think it's so important. It speaks to the power of biography and learning from the great people that came before us. And so this is Dyson talking about Brunel. "Isambard Kingdom Brunel was unable to think small, and nothing was a barrier to him. The mere fact that something had never been done before presented to Brunel no suggestion that the doing of it was impossible. He was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age."

• 3:32David Senra?

  So I'm actually going to pause right there before I finish this paragraph. "This biography of Brunel covers his entire career. Most of my highlights, as I go back and reread them, is about what Dyson picked off here: the fact that he was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine." James says it's impossible to imagine in this feckless age. Remember, James is writing this book in the early 2000s. Funny, the author, LTC Rolt, is writing this book in the 50s and thinks the same exact way. There's a lot of paragraphs in the book where Rolt's like, "They just don't make people like this anymore." So let's go back to this. "He was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age. While I could never lay claim to the genius of a man like that, I have tried to be as confident in my vision as he was."

• 4:17David Senra?

  And it's the most important, I think, sentence that Dyson ever writes about Brunel. "And at times in my life when I have encountered difficulty and self-doubt, I have looked to his example to fire me on." Skipping ahead a little bit, he says, "I have told myself when people try to make me modify my ideas that the Great Western Railway could not have worked as anything but the vision of a single man." We're going to go into more of Brunel's obsession with having complete control of every single project. "Pursued with dogged determination, that was nothing less than obsession. Throughout my story, I will try to return to Brunel and to other designers and engineers to show how identifying with them and seeing parallels with every stage of my own life

• 5:00David Senra?

  enabled me to see my career as a whole and to know that it would all turn out the way it has." Okay, so let's go back to the biography of Brunel. The book starts out with this story, this guy named Charles MacFarlane, who's traveling with Brunel, doesn't know him. They're traveling in the winter from France to England, and so they have to go, they have to cross the channel in a small boat. They wind up being pulled in like this horse-drawn carriage. And I'm going to skip that entire story. I just want to pull out one sentence because I thought this was a fantastic description of Brunel's personality. Again, most of my highlights is just going to focus not on what he accomplished, but who he was as a person. And so MacFarlane's talking about, it's like, who is this guy? And his impression of a young Brunel, Brunel's in his early 20s at this point in his life,

• 5:45David Senra?

  he said, "He was one whose high spirits seemed quite impervious to cold and discomfort." So they wind up striking up a conversation. They start to become friends on this little journey. And Brunel invites MacFarlane. He's like, "Hey, I'm going to my dad's house. Do you want to come with me?" Brunel's father is a famous engineer at this point. His name is Mark Brunel. He is, well, he was at this point in history, trying to build a tunnel under the River Thames. And it just got closed. He's going to wind up having to spend some time in debtor's prison, which James talks about in his autobiography, the fact that, you know, as bad as his circumstances and his financial circumstances were before he strikes success with his Dyson vacuum, you know, he's not in debtor's prison.

• 6:30David Senra?

  But this is MacFarlane having a conversation with Mark Brunel. He's expressing, you know, his condolences for the fact that at this current time in history, the tunnel is shut down. They're not going to continue the work. It's too dangerous. They ran out of money. A bunch of people died. And I just want to pull out, pull out Mark Brunel's positive mental attitude here. So it says, "Mark Brunel scarcely needed consolation of this kind, for he had suffered many disappointments in his lifetime and was ever philosophical in adversity." Courage, he was fond of saying. A man who can do something and keep a warm, sanguine heart will never starve. And then we go back to another description from McFarlane of a young Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

• 7:10David Senra?

  He's going to use the word, there's a lot of people that describe Brunel as gaiety, which is the state or quality of being lighthearted or cheerful. But that was the, that was his external face to the world. Inside of him burned an intense fire. He's got a fire in the belly. He wakes up every day with a burning desire to achieve mission success. And he was willing to sacrifice his entire life to this. And in the end, he had an early death due to a large part because of his working habits. So let me go into that now. McFarlane could never have guessed that the ready wit and gaiety concealed a fire and a power which would drive him, undeterred by repeated disappointments, to achieve within

• 7:54David Senra?

  a decade a degree of fame and fortune such as his father had never enjoyed. The father lived to a peaceful old age. The son sacrificed his life to his great achievements. More about his personality. The name of Isambard Brunel would not mean what it does today if he had not displayed the same characteristics of dogged persistence. How many times in Dyson's autobiography did he use that phrase, dogged persistence? He says it over and over again. And again, I just want to remind you that great quote from Steve Jobs where he's like, listen, I'm convinced half of what separates a successful entrepreneur from the unsuccessful is pure perseverance. Most people give up. So let's go back to this. If he had not displayed the same characteristics of dogged persistence and an unlimited capacity

• 8:38David Senra?

  for hard work which distinguished the self-taught engineer. For he was more than a painstaking and ingenious craftsman. He was also an artist of remarkable versatility and vivid imagination. But what most distinguished him was the force which drove him. This is that fire in the belly that I just referenced, that burning desire to achieve mission success. His strength lay in the imaginative flair which could seize upon and combine ideas in new ways. He was acutely self-conscious. Oh, I need to pause here. So, one of the benefits of reading such an old book is because this author, he wrote a bunch of biographies of other engineers. He was also a trained engineer as well. But he had access, temporary access, to Brunel's own writing and his personal diary, which was under lock and key.

• 9:22David Senra?

  So, we actually see the difference between the strength and outward appearance that he would put up for the rest of society and other people, and then his own doubts, self-doubts, which, again, everybody has. You just don't see them. And so, that's one of the benefits of this book. "He was acutely self-conscious, and the private man was a character very different from that of the cold, proud, abundantly self-confident engineer whom he impersonated to such perfection on the public stage." And then this sentence is fantastic. It's also going to remind me of something that Jeff Bezos said. I'll get there in a minute. And really, a reminder that, it serves a reminder to me, as I'm reading this book, and hopefully to you, that life is an adventure. And to some degree, it's a waste if we just survive and not treat it as the adventure it is.

• 10:07David Senra?

  "A great man achieves eminence by his capacity to live more fully and intensely than his fellows, and in doing so, his faults as well as his virtues become the more obvious." So, I double underlined, "to live more fully and intensely." There's a lot of sentences and paragraphs and references in this book, and the fact that Brunel treated life as a grand adventure. A large part, almost all of his life, he treated his work as a grand adventure. I think that's a fantastic idea. But the second part of the sentence where it says, "Listen, if you're going to be doing this, you're going to live more fully and intensely than most people. People are going to obviously see what you produce in the world, but they're going to beware of your faults, not just your virtues, but your faults are going to become obvious."

• 10:52David Senra?

  And so, when I read that, there's a great quote that I saved from Jeff Bezos, and he was extremely young the first time he said it. He's repeated this since then. It's become almost like a Jeff-ism, these sayings that he repeats over and over again that he has for multiple decades. But he says, "If you never want to be criticized, for goodness sake, don't do anything new." All right, so let's continue here. This is a great first sentence in this paragraph. "It is not in freedom from faults, but in the ability to transcend and master them, that greatness lies." The key to that mastery is self-knowledge. And in his early years, young Brunel's entries in his private journal reveal his own awareness, so he's self-aware, of his own weaknesses.

• 11:36David Senra?

  He writes, and this is where he just knows. This is not very different than Coco Chanel's mindset. You know, the fact that I'm not here to play. I'm here to make a fortune. I'm here to be great. I'm here to be the best there ever was. He writes, "My self-conceit and love of glory vie with each other, which part of them shall govern me." The latter, meaning his love of glory. Listen to this. He knows, he's like, "I'm obsessed with going down in history," right? And it causes him this love of glory. And he's young when he's writing this. For him to be so self-aware is really rather amazing now I'm looking back on it. "It's going to cause me to do some really foolish things, things hopefully he changes later in his life." The latter is so strong, so it's, let's put the word in there.

• 12:20David Senra?

  "My love of glory is so strong that I often do the most silly, useless things to appear to advantage before those whom I care nothing about." Okay, so I want to fast-forward in the story. He's still, or I guess I'm going backwards on the story. He's still, he's a late teenager, I think, at this point in his life. And his dad does something smart. He sets up an apprenticeship for Isambard under a master craftsman. I don't know how to pronounce, this guy's French, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, so I'm going to call him Louis. But he's like, one of the best watchmakers at the time. And he actually inspires like, an entire, like, future generations of craftsmen that describe themselves as like, studying under the tutelage of this guy.

• 13:05David Senra?

  They use his name as like, their school. So it says, "Brunel's education was completed by a period of apprenticeship under Louis, who was a maker of watches and scientific instruments. This last move reflects the soundness of Mark," that's his dad, "Mark's judgment. He could not have found a finer or more critical nurse for his son's mechanical talents. Louis was regarded as the supreme craftsman in his field. The exacting standards of workmanship under which Brunel insisted throughout his lifetime were undoubtedly formed at this time." In 1822, when he was 16, he returned to England and began to work with his father. So gifted was young Brunel, and such was the intelligence and enthusiasm which he

• 13:46David Senra?

  brought to bear upon his father's projects, that in spite of his youth, he rapidly became more of a trusted and able partner than an assistant. He was thus able to play a major role when, in 1824, Mark Brunel embarked upon his greatest adventure, the boring of a tunnel under the Thames. Okay, so let's get to the working conditions as they're trying to dig this tunnel. And the fact that so many people are getting sick is actually going to give Brunel an opportunity to, at a very young age, to actually lead the project. So he says, "Because the Thames at this period was a little more than an open sewer, the stench at the working face was appalling. Working under such conditions, it is not surprising that throughout the whole period

• 14:29David Senra?

  of construction, sickness claimed a much heavier toll than the accidents." When the work began, William Armstrong was the resident engineer under Mark. And Brunel, or Isambard, is the assistant to William Armstrong. Mark is going to fall sick, so he can't work, says Mark was taken seriously ill. A few weeks later, Armstrong broke down and resigned his post. So with his dad sick and the person he was supposed to be assisting quitting, that puts Isambard in the role of the engineer in charge. So it says, "Isambard was in the role of the engineer in charge, took over at short notice, the leading part in an engineering drama which excited the wonder of Europe."

• 15:12David Senra?

  So this is one of the largest projects on the continent at the time, and as such is going to have, obviously, have a lot of people's attention. I need to remind you, Isambard is 20 years old at this point in his life. "The fact that he was barely 20 years of age occasioned little remark. Yet today, when..." And this is so funny. "Yet today, when an education fetish prolongs childish irresponsibility far into adolescence, it seems almost incredible that such an immense burden of responsibility should have been laid on such young shoulders." Remember, he's writing these words in the 1950s. Right? So he says, "An educational fetish prolongs childish irresponsibility far into adolescence."

• 15:54David Senra?

  A large part of this book that I mainly omitted from my highlights is the fact that, you know, engineers valued practical knowledge, knowledge through experimentation, knowledge through work. They have quite a bit of negative things to say about, you know, theoretical people. There's a lot of professors and stuff brought in to opine about like the feasibility of what the engineers are, engineers are building. And the theorists say, hey, it's impossible. And then yet, in this book, the engineers keep proving over and over again that it's not. But I think what Mark did with his son here is the fact that he put in work at a really young age, even before he was 20. This is very similar to, you know, the most recent example that comes to mind. I read the, those two books, or that two-part series, rather, on the Rothschilds. The Rothschilds believed in starting younger

• 16:37David Senra?

  members of the family in the business really early. They thought it was a huge mistake taking some of the prime years, you know, from 18 to 22, 18 to 23, and not having them work. They thought apprenticeship and actually the act of doing the work was more educational than just sitting in a classroom. So it obviously doesn't have to be either or. I'm just bringing to your attention the fact that, hey, for a large part of human history, we put a lot more responsibility on younger people than we do now. And they succeeded and thrived at an early age. And we see that as a case with Isambard. It says, "Isambard threw himself into work with all that unsparing energy, which was distinguished his whole life. His working habits were insane. For as much as 36 hours at a time,

• 17:18David Senra?

  he would not leave the tunnel, pausing only for a brief cat nap." I got to that part. And when I read the, that book Hard Drive on a young Bill Gates, this is exactly when he would work. He wouldn't really pay attention to time. He would do these, these like sprints, where he would work 30, 36 hours at a time, then crash for like 10 hours, 11 hours, get back up and do it all over again. And in that book, and a young Bill Gates repeats over and over again, his desire, he wanted to be known as hardcore. That was something that, that drove him. This is a description of both the father and the son. "The Brunelles were not men to sit down with folded hands and bewail their misfortune." And so that's the reaction to, you know, almost everything that could go wrong went wrong in this project.

• 18:02David Senra?

  Reminded me of the takeaway from James Dyson's autobiography. Like, when you get knocked down, you know, you just say, all right, then, let's give it another go. This also reminded me of the story of Thomas Edison. He was like 64, 67, something like that. Well, his fire, his laboratory and factory in New Jersey is, it caught fire. They go grab him from his house. He comes, like, he's essentially just watching his life's work burn down. And he's cracking jokes. And he's basically saying, okay, and they have, they have a quote in there. It says something to the effect of, you know, even though I'm 67 years old or 64 years old, I'll start again tomorrow. Or I'll start anew tomorrow. And what I took away from that is like, obviously, I don't want this fire to happen. It's outside of my control.

• 18:48David Senra?

  It has happened. All I can control is my reaction to this. So I gotta get up again tomorrow. All right, let's give it another go tomorrow. So there's going to be a giant accident in the tunnel. It's going to shut down construction for years and years and years. It almost kills Brunel. And so this is about that accident, but really, it's about Hisan Bard's unusual response. And again, we go into the person of Brunel. Although it was obvious that Brunel was seriously ill and that his leg was giving him acute pain, he remained, as usual, quite undaunted and refused to leave. He was unable to walk, and so he laid on a mattress from which he directed the diving operations. So what happened is you're digging a tunnel under a river. Multiple times, this is going to be the worst time, but multiple times, the river decides to come through the tunnel.

• 19:33David Senra?

  And so you have this huge mass of water that winds up just destroying all the equipment down there. People drown. And this is the worst time, the one that leads him to say, okay, we're going to shut this tunnel for a long time. He was unable to walk, so he's on a mattress, refusing to leave. And he almost dies from this. He's going to have like months of recuperation after this, from which he directed the diving operations and would not be taken home until he had learned the extent of the cavity in the riverbed. And so as he's recuperating later on, he writes in this journal, this hidden journal, how he felt. And this is where we just see he's got a very unusual mindset to somebody, you know, that came very, very close to dying at a young age. "When he laid up, he recalled his terrifying experience in the tunnel and set it down for no one but his, but his eye, in the private journal, which he always kept under lock and

• 20:18David Senra?

  key, and which was not opened until after his death. This account gives us the most revealing glimpse we have of his strange nature." A nature in which the sense of drama was so strong that it could become totally absorbing and exclude all sense of personal danger or fear. So a few highlights here for you from his journal. "I have now been laid up quite useless for 14 weeks. I shan't forget that day." So this is funny because the book is quite old and the way they write, it was actually extremely difficult. Like, "I almost gave up a few times." And I was like, "What are you gonna give up in the middle of reading a biography of Brunel? Like, you missed the main point, David? What's wrong with you?"

• 21:01David Senra?

  But there is like, not a language barrier here, but I had to translate a bunch of things and then I'd had to watch a bunch of other documentaries to make sure I'm actually understanding what the authors tried to tell me. But it just, "I shan't. I shan't forget the day. I shan't forget that day very near finished my journey." See what I mean? It's like, that's a weird way to say, "I almost died." "When the danger is over, it is rather amusing." While, so he's saying, "It's amusing I almost died." Right? That's a very strange response. "While it existed, so while I'm in it, I can't say the feeling was at all uncomfortable." So he's saying, "While it was happening, it wasn't uncomfortable." Now, here's the weird thing. "The contrary. In this instance, it was an excitement." So the water comes rushing through.

• 21:45David Senra?

  He says, "When we were obliged to run, I felt nothing in particular. I was only thinking of the best way to get out." He says, and then a few lines down, "I took it very much as a matter of course, that I never expected we should get out." So he's saying, "I thought I was gonna die there." Eventually, he jumps up to like this arch, so the water is beneath him, like this huge rushing flow of water. And he says, "I stood still there nearly for a minute. I was anxious for..." He's gonna name two other people that he was working with. He wanted to make, like, he wasn't worried about himself. He was worried about the fact that two of his friends might have died. "Who I felt too sure had never risen from the fall..." And I thought were crushed under the great stage.

• 22:27David Senra?

  I kept calling them by name to encourage them to come up through the opening where he's standing, right? While standing there, this is the crazy thing, though. While standing there, the effect was grand. And he italicized that. "The roar of the rushing water in a confined passage and by its velocity rushing past the opening was grand." He uses that word again. "Very grand." That's the third time he describes it using the word grand. "I cannot compare it to anything." "The sight and the whole affair was well worth the risk. If I had been kept under another minute," meaning if I didn't escape one minute later, "I was to die." So there it is. That's the extreme mindset of Brunel.

• 23:11David Senra?

  At the time he wrote this, he still hoped to return to his post as an engineer in charge, but it was not to be. The accident marked a turning point in his career. Seven years would pass before work on the tunnel was resumed, and by then, he would be much too fully occupied with projects as yet undreamed of for him to play his old role again. The biggest project of that is going to be the Great Western Railway. Okay, so now we get to his years of frustration. So he is 22 years old. I'm going to read my note to you. So he's 22 years old. He starts to wonder about his future. Completely normal. The name of the chapter is "The Years of Frustration," and compares his low point, where he's at in his life, to his friend's high point. But yet, he refuses to be negative.

• 23:54David Senra?

  Brunel had still found time to sit by the fireside, wondering what the future held for him. And this is where we go back to his diary, his journal. "What will become of me?" he asks. And then his dreams begin. "I will build a fleet of ships and build a new London bridge. I will build tunnels and at last be rich and have a house built. I will be the first engineer and an example for future ones." So this is his, you know, he's, he's, his entire thing was, "I'm going to go down in history as being someone that is great." So now we see that it goes back and forth. This idea of terror, euphoria and terror that you and I always talk about, that when you're doing something difficult, building a company, whatever it is, you only have experienced two emotions, euphoria and terror. And so now he's going to talk about his friend.

• 24:39David Senra?

  "Palmer has already built new London docks and thus has established his fortune, while I have been engaged on the tunnel, which failed." And so he's kind of beating himself up, but at the end, he does something extremely smart. "It's a gloomy perspective, and yet, bad as it is, I cannot, with all my efforts, work myself up to be downhearted." And he goes back and forth. Again, it's not static. He's excited about his future plans, and then he goes back, he's like, "I'm a failure." Then he goes, "Okay, I'm excited again." And then sometimes he finds this weird equilibrium, where he's like, "Okay, well, maybe I won't be good or great, I'll just be mediocre. I suppose a sort of middle path will be the most likely one: a mediocre success, an engineer, sometimes employed and sometimes not."

• 25:23David Senra?

  And so he's just talking about the fact that the tunnel is dead, they're not going to do it right now, they don't know if they're going to do it in the future at this point. And this is where we see that he comes up with his motto that he uses for his entire life. So I've seen this over and over again as I read these biographies. I think it's a really good idea to have a life motto. Let me give you some examples. Teddy Roosevelt got his life motto from his dad, "Get action," which is a great way to think about how Teddy lived his life. Shackleton, Ernest Shackleton, who I told you last week is the lock screen of my phone, his motto was, "By endurance we conquer." Stan Lee, the guy that invented Marvel, "Ever upward." And so Brunel's is going to be, "Never despair.

• 26:08David Senra?

  The tunnel will never be finished now in my father's lifetime, I fear. However, never despair has always been my motto. We may succeed, yet persevere." Remember, this is a note to himself. "The tunnel will never be finished now in my father's lifetime, I fear. However, never despair has always been my motto. We may succeed, yet persevere." So now, back to the author. "The next few years must decide whether he would become a mediocrity or the first engineer and an example for future ones." So that's the path, "Best ever, I'm just going to be mediocre." "Persevere. He threw himself into the task of establishing his reputation as an engineer with his unsparring energy. But many disappointments lay in store for him before the ride of fortune suddenly turned and swept him to fame."

• 26:53David Senra?

  So then, this chapter goes through all the different things that he's trying that never work out. And so, really, the note of himself is, there's going to be a lot of dead ends when you're trying something new. And so he winds up doing this experiment. Again, he doesn't really work on one thing at a time either. I mean, when he does these major projects, he will. Like, once he hits on something, he will. But he has a bunch of experiments, usually in the air. On and off, he'd been trying this experiment. I'm going to skip over what it is and just really give you what he took away from it. He's experimenting, he's talking about, you know, I've been experimenting this thing for the last six months, how is that possible? And then he says something really interesting here in his journal. "A one-fourtieth of the remainder of my life. What a life, the life of a dreamer.

• 27:38David Senra?

  I am always building castles in the air, what time I waste." So he's saying, "I just wasted six months on something that didn't work out. That's one-fourtieth of the remainder of my life." He winds up living to the age of 52. But I think that idea of looking at what, like, the time you're spending and compared to how much time you have left is a very powerful idea. So it just goes on, years and years of struggle, and again, we see the comparison. Comparison is the thief of joy. It's one of the greatest quotes I've ever come across. And he's got, he's forced to compare where he's at in life with the other engineers that are, that are doing great things. And it's like, why am I not doing great things yet? These were discouraging times for Brunel. And so I'm going to skip over the names. Walther was lauded for his great suspension bridge.

• 28:22David Senra?

  Walther was lauded for the New London Bridge. This other one starts saying, "A new railway." He's saying, "What do I have to show? An uncompleted tunnel, a useless gas engine, two abortive dock schemes of little moment, and a miserable dispute over an observatory." So it's got to be extremely difficult. It's like, these people are out here doing the things that I want to do, they're succeeding, and I'm just running into dead end after dead end after dead end. He had, in fact, as we shall see, already laid the foundations for success, but this was not evident to him as of yet. For the present, he had to accept the crumbs that were let fall by more successful engineers. And so that's the main lesson from Brunel. The fact that it's not that he's persevering and everything's fine.

• 29:07David Senra?

  It's like, so many people presented with what's happening in his life would just cave and give up and go home. And so he does some, there's, the note I left myself on this page is, "A bunch of smart moves by Brunel." And then I want to tell you about this quote from the founder of Atari. All right, so it says Brunel's character was that of... Was of that finely tempered resilient quality which flexes under misfortune but never breaks. He could and undoubtedly did during these years of difficulty and repeated disappointments when fate seemed implacably against him, plumb into depths of despondency. Of course, so I love, one of the most, again, I hope, I really hope you bought the book and you read James Dyson's autobiography, it's fantastic, but he talks about, he's

• 29:51David Senra?

  like, listen, he's like, it's easy for me to say now, I have one of the most profitable companies, I own 100% of it, I'm wildly successful, I get to do whatever I, you know, I want to do, I'm making tons of money, I'm making other people, I'm building products that make other people's lives better, but it's like, it's easy for me to tell you now not to give up, but there were days when I crawled into my bed completely depressed, convinced I was never going to succeed. And so we see a similar time in Brunel's life. The fact is, like, a lot of people have those feelings. How are you going to respond? How did James Dyson respond? How did Brunel respond? And the fact is, he's like, listen, I'm depressed, and he talks about it over and over again, but I'm going to keep going forward. Yet he never lost faith in himself.

• 30:34David Senra?

  Once, once one project on which he had pinned his hopes had failed, he would rapidly recover from that blow, dismiss it from his mind, and concentrate upon the next with undiminished energy. I mean, really, what could you do? You can't, what are you going to sit there and cry over spilled milk? What is Brunel supposed to do? It did not work out, I wanted it to work out, it didn't, what am I going to do? It's like, I can only control what my next move is. So this is what I mean by smart moves by him. He wound up hiding his feelings behind a bold front of self-confidence and enthusiasm, which impressed everyone he met, and which, aside from his remarkable abilities, contributed more than anything else to his ultimate success. So he's not going to let anybody see him get it down, see him get down, rather. When I read that, when I got to this paragraph, it really did, what popped to my mind? Is what Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, mentor of Steve Jobs,

• 31:19David Senra?

  told a 19-year-old Steve Jobs. Remember, he hired Steve Jobs. He had the opportunity to have Steve Jobs as an employee. And Steve tells him, or excuse me, Nolan tells him right before he found Apple, rather. He's like, listen, if you pretend to be completely in control, people will assume that you are. And so we see, when you read these biographies of Steve Jobs, he took that advice and ran with it. And we see very similar to, you know, it echoes what's happening in Brunel. It's the fact that in his diary, he's like, damn it. I'm depressed. I don't understand why things aren't working out for me. But externally, especially because he's got to go and convince people to hire him for these projects, right? These are large, physical infrastructure projects at the very beginning of the industrial revolution.

• 32:02David Senra?

  It's not like he could do it by himself. Like, he's got to have this aura of self-confidence, I guess is the way we put it. He pressed everyone he met with, okay, says contributed more to anything to his ultimate success. Pride never drove him, another smart move, pride never drove him to make the fatal mistake of refusing any commission as too humble. And why would he do that? Because Brunel treated every single experience of his life as a learning experience. So he's just racking up all these experiences, these jobs. Some are failing, some are small and they're succeeding. And that he uses all the things they're exposed to as lessons. Think about what Charlie Munger said, like, you really should think of ideas as tools, right? And so as you go and you're reading, you're having all these experiences, you're just adding tools to your toolbox.

• 32:47David Senra?

  And then you just pull it out at the right time. And guess what? If you have a tool that no longer works, dispose it and grab a new one. I think that's a very astute observation by Grandpa Charlie there. Thanks to those acute powers of, so he says, he never refused a commission as being too humble. Thanks to his acute powers of observation, everything he undertook contributed something of value to that store of experience, which was the secret of his versatility. So that leads him to be able to design, not only when he does the Great Western Railway, he's got to build an entire, it's one of the largest railways in the world at the time, he's building everything from scratch, but he builds, he winds up making a mistake

• 33:28David Senra?

  on trying to improve other parts, like the actual locomotives, which wasn't a good idea. But he's also building the train stations, and they're grand artistic buildings. He's having to go through rock. He builds bridges, he builds tunnels, he builds ships. He's just extremely versatile in all the engineering jobs that he takes. And so now we get to this fortunate opportunity, as the author was saying, hey, he laid the foundation of success, he didn't understand that at that point in his life yet, though, right? That opportunity had not revealed itself yet. So he says, and this is just fantastic writing here by the author, "It is impossible to read history or biography without being struck by the momentous consequences of trivial events. We are constantly reminded that life

• 34:10David Senra?

  is a great and unpredictable adventure to which we awake each morning." See, this is what I love about reading these books, and one of the main takeaways I take for myself is like, my life needs to be adventure. I do not just want to exist. And part of that is learning, like, I look up and down my family tree, and there's just so many people that just existed. There's no passion, there's no adventure, there's no thrill of life. They're born, they lived, and they died, and I don't want that for me. And I think, again, reading these books is just a constant reminder that life can be extremely, that quote by Mark Andreessen that I absolutely love, Mark says, "The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and

• 34:50David Senra?

  passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think." Constant reminder, life is a grand adventure, it can be whatever you want it to be. All right, so let's go back to this. "It is impossible to read history or biography without being struck by the momentous consequences of trivial events. We are constantly reminded that life is a great and unpredictable adventure to which we awake each morning." How many people do you know that actually wake up with that mindset? Probably not many. And if you have a lot of them around you, you're extremely fortunate. That the most humdrum or apparently wasted day may afterwards be seen in recollection to mark a significant turning point in our lives. So it is with Brunel. He had not been guilty of overindulgence immediately after his accident in the tunnel,

• 35:35David Senra?

  had he not been guilty of overindulgence immediately after his accident in the tunnel, his future might have taken a different course and the great works with which his name will always be associated might never have been built. So what that means there is just too many distractions where he's trying to recover. His parents send him to Clifton. They advise him to go to this space at Clifton. This is where unbeknownst to him, they're about to, they're about to have a, a contest for engineers to submit designs to what is going to wind up being the Clifton Suspension Bridge. I advise you to, to Google that. Take a look at this bridge. The design came from Brunel. It was completed after he died, though. It is gorgeous. And so this is going to be this opportunity for him.

• 36:20David Senra?

  Again, he's there for, let me just read this. Why am I running over my own point? All right. So it says Brunel spent his covalence, his covalence sketching and climbing about the gorges while the tall ships came and went with the tide. So this is just where he happens to be. It is easy to imagine his excitement when he heard of the proposal to build a bridge, or excuse me, to invite engineers to submit designs to build a bridge. Here indeed was a project after his own heart. So he happens just to be studying this area. He found it very beautiful. He's doing drawings because he's just a very interested person in general. And then later on, they said, hey, we're fellow engineers. Who wants to submit designs for this bridge? So right place, right time, right? It says Brunel decided that, and then we see one of the things about Brunel is like,

• 37:04David Senra?

  I want to build great things, but they want to build great things that are beautiful. And again, that, that heavily influenced Dyson to, for that he talks about in his autobiography over and over again, the importance of the physical design of your product. If you're making physical products, but you can get them, you can enhance their beauty by keeping the design close to the function of the actual, like in the case of Brunel, it's a bridge. In the case of Dyson, it's a ball barrel or a vacuum cleaner. So we see that here Brunel decided that the site called for a suspension bridge and he lavished upon his competition designs, infinite pains and exquisite draftsmanship. So they became not merely engineering drawings, but works of art. Then he's traveling all around this area, studying the bridges that came before him.

• 37:49David Senra?

  And why is he doing that? Because then you learn things that you want to copy and things that you want to avoid. In this way Brunel learned what to emulate and what to improve and then what to avoid. Same motivations that Brunel has in studying the bridge that we do have studying, you know, the careers of people that came before us. Here's the problem. The bridge, so it's the same, the same theme that you see and that you saw in Dyson's life on the last podcast, you see in Brunel's life. One step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back, over and over again. There's a bunch of riots that have nothing to do with Brunel. And so they wind up pushing back this, this, he wins, obviously the, he gets in charge of this project. And as soon as they start trying to make progress, there's a bunch of civil unrest

• 38:32David Senra?

  and riots break, riots break out and they stop working on the bridge. All thoughts of proceeding with the Clifton Bridge scheme were forgotten. The year of 1832 passed without any further, any further moves being made and Brunel occupied himself with other concerns. The summer of that year found him in a state of great despondency, at odds with himself and much discouraged by his persistent lack of success. We go to his, his journal. I'm unhappy, exceedingly so. Brunel took stock of his gloomy situation, so many irons and none of them hot. And this is another example of even though it looks bad, he doesn't know things that are developing behind the scenes that are going to change his fortune.

• 39:14David Senra?

  Unknown to him, in the autumn of 1832, same year where they're not making any progress on this bridge, when his future had seemed so dark and unpromising, four Bristol merchants had gathered to discuss the possibility of building a railway from Bristol to London.

• 39:30David Senra?

  And so this is going to be the Great Western Railway. He talks about, so he's submitting a bid and we go back to his, his, his journal. Was this Brunel's long awaited opportunity? How will this end? He wrote in his diary that night. So he doesn't know how it's going to end, but he doesn't lack the self belief, right? Already, he did not doubt that he could secure the appointment. What then of his rivals? This is how he described the, the competing bids. Admittedly, they were not very formidable. And that word formidable comes up over and over and over again. Let's define it. Inspiring, respect, being impressively large, powerful, intense, or capable. So the day, so he winds up obviously getting the, getting hired as the main engineer. And he, this was fantastic. He wasted no time.

• 40:15David Senra?

  So he gets told, okay, you got the job? He goes to work right away. Brunel wasted no time in getting down to work. The great adventure, there's that word again, had begun. The great adventure had begun. And this is where we see like his love of an arduous schedule. Many people think led to, you know, his early death. These were such hectic days that he had, he had scarcely found time to sleep for more than an odd hour or so. His days were spent traveling about in coaches or on horseback, while by night, he worked on his, on his reports, estimates and calculations. And as if this was not enough, there were other irons to be attended to. So it's funny, he went from, you know, just saying, I have a bunch of irons in the fire. None of them are hot. Once he gets hired to be the engineer of the Great Western Railway, this is going to be, you know, all eyes are on him.

• 40:59David Senra?

  His services are now in demand. So he's doing surveys for other stuff. He's working on docks and all these other things. And so we get, we see his, his, his schedule at this point. He's working 20 hours a day. I don't even know how this is possible. And so in his, there's a, there's one phrase that's over and over again in his diary. Up at five, up at five, up at five, up at 5 a.m. Such pressure of work taxed even Brunel's extraordinary powers of endurance to the utmost, and he confessed to one of his most trusted assistants that between ourselves, it is harder, it is harder work than I like, and I'm rarely much under 20 hours a day at it. And so why is it so difficult? Because of the, this is unprecedented. And that's the thing about Brunel that I don't know if I'm explaining to you, like the stuff he's, he, he attempts. No one has ever done these things on the size and scale that he has.

• 41:44David Senra?

  And that's what he's going after. While others shook their heads and pronounced that a line from London to Bristol was too long and over ambitious, his was a mind that impatiently scorned such limitations. Already in imagination, he had traveled far beyond Bristol, and soon, very soon, he would span the Atlantic to New York. So the Western Railway it must be. As to its greatness, upon that, he was already determined. And so they're saying, you can't even build. Like, what are you doing? You can't. This is way too ambitious. He took it one step further. He's like, hey, when I'm done doing the Great Western Railway, I want to be able to sell a ticket so you can go all the way to New York. So you get to the end of the line, and then you get on one of these giant ships that I'm going to build.

• 42:26David Senra?

  So he takes something that people think is already crazy ambitious and adds to it. Let me finish this paragraph. This time, he was going to win, but it would be a great struggle. So let's go to the diary of somebody that's working with him. And we get a description of how Brunel worked. I believe that at this time, he scarcely ever went to bed, though I never remembered to have seen him tired or out of spirits. He was a very constant smoker. He'd smoke cigars 24/7 and would nap in an armchair very frequently with a cigar in his mouth. And if we were to start out of town at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning, it was his frequent practice to rouse me out of bed at 3:00, at 3:00 a.m., when I would invariably find him up and dressed and in such glee at the fun of having curtailed my slumbers by two

• 43:10David Senra?

  or three hours more than necessary. No one would have supposed that during the night, he had been poring over plans and estimates and engrossed in serious labors, which to most men would have proved destructive of their energies during the following day. What is this guy on? Like, what's the, I guess, the equivalent of what people would take now is like modafinil or a bunch of Adderall? Like, what is, what's the 18th, what is the equivalent in 1800s? Like, how is this guy doing this? But I never saw him otherwise than full of gaiety and apparently as ready for work as though he had been sleeping through the night. And so this is Brunel. He's 29 years old. He's fired up, and he just cannot believe how fast his life changed. Brunel's meteoric success was due not only to his undoubted genius as an engineer and

• 43:54David Senra?

  his unlimited capacity for hard work, but also the magnetic power of his extraordinary personality. Brunel could hardly bring himself to believe it. It seemed too good to be true. So it talks about, at this point, he's been working, so he's been working on the railway for almost two years. He was so busy that he stopped updating his diary. Taking down his long neglected diary from the shelf, he reopened it and wrote, "What a blank in my journal, and during the most eventful part of my life. When I last wrote in this book, I was just emerging from obscurity. I had been toiling away most unprofitably at numerous things. Unprofitably, at least at the moment. What a change. The railway now is in progress. I am the engineer to the finest work in England, and I have a

• 44:36David Senra?

  handsome salary." It is like looking back upon a fearful past, but we have succeeded." So he's talking about rereading his past entries. It's like looking upon, back upon a fearful past, but we have succeeded. "A pretty considerable capital is likely to pass through my hands at this age of, and this at the age of 29. I really can hardly believe it when I think of it. In fact, I am now somebody. Everything has prospered. Everything at this moment is sunshine. I don't like it. It can't last." This guy. "Bad weather must surely come. Let me see the storm in time to gather my sails." So he's like, things are going to be, gonna be true. Of course, it's gonna be difficult. And he's obviously gonna have a lot of struggles. It takes the, almost, I think, eight, 10

• 45:19David Senra?

  years to finish the railway. But we see an update in his diary. This is a year later. He's still doing well. And really, this is just a fantastic, you know, what we're all striving for, to feel this satisfaction with our work, right? Work is gonna be a huge part of your life, a third to half of your entire life. I mean, half if you consider the time you're actually awake. You know, if you sleep eight hours a day, you have 16 hours left, you work for eight, you know, obviously, some people will work a lot more. Even if you work for eight hours a day, it's half your life. "When I last wrote, I was in high spirits, it seems," and then this guy's working, essentially, if he's awake, if his eyes are open, he's working, he's insane. "When last I wrote, I was in high

• 46:01David Senra?

  spirits, it seems, but dreading a reverse. I dread it still, yet everything has prospered since, and is still going on well." So he's talking about, you know, the fact that his services are in high demand. And really, this is a fantastic sentence. It just, you know, the satisfaction, working extremely hard for something. The things you work the hardest for, and obviously the things you derive the most satisfaction out of. And he says, really, my business is something extraordinary. So it talks about the fact that he got married, but he's, you know, he's really just married to his work. He does have kids. But he says, my profession is, after all, my only fit wife. The author says, this is probably some of the truest words he ever spoke. He determined then to make perfection of his work the supreme

• 46:46David Senra?

  goal. And from that resolve, he never subsequently wavered. And that really is central to understanding the life of Brunel. Like, he has one thing in his life, and he's willing to sacrifice. It's, if you ever had to compete head to head with somebody like this, like, it's nearly impossible, because he does, he'll sacrifice family, he'll sacrifice health. Health, he'll sacrifice everything. And he does. He winds up, he's gonna have a stroke. Towards the end of the book, he has a stroke. He's, you know, the last great project he worked on is this gigantic ship that's like, six times larger than anything else that's ever existed in the world. And they're about to launch it, and he has a stroke. And then he dies, you know, a short time later. Let's go back to where we are, though. He's still building the railway. And again, the reminder that all the things that Brunel is attempting,

• 47:31David Senra?

  they're unprecedented. He's not, remember when Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, told us, like, don't build a me too product. You should only do, don't do anything that anyone else can do. And that's how he guided his career. Same thing with what Brunel does. It is hard for us today to appreciate the immensity of the task which confronted Brunel in the construction of the Great Western Railway. History holds no previous record of engineering adventure upon so heroic a scale. That's fantastic writing, by the way. When he had written before that he was an engineer to the finest work in England, he was making no idle boast. He knew that it would be so, because, as any artist or craftsman must, he had already conceived the completed work in his imagination. In the course of the survey, so surveying the land where he's building the railway, right?

• 48:16David Senra?

  In the course of the survey, he had covered every yard of the way, and had seen with it the mind's eye, his iron road lying wide and true. He's saying, he's manifesting this, he is seeing it with his mind's eye before it exists. And some people think that's, you know, that's It's like willy foo foo like nonsense, you know? All I can say is I've this idea, this important visualization. You go read Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about that over and over again. He sat up at night and saw his life. He told himself over and over again, I'm already the greatest bodybuilder in the world. I'm already making millions. I'm already going to be the greatest, highest paid actor in Hollywood. You know, way before it happened. Bob Noes, let's take a more specific example.

• 48:59David Senra?

  Bob Noes, founder of Intel, Fairchild Semiconductor. You name other entrepreneurs in history that are more successful than this guy. There's not, that list is extremely small. Talks about every night. He would sit down for his entire life. He started it because he was like, if I remember correctly, like a diver, like a, you know, diving into pools. And he would visualize, see himself the night before with the successful completion of his dives. And then he carried that into his business career later on. In sports, this works. Kobe Bryant talked about, you know, well before he had that 81 point game. He talked about being a kid and visualizing just getting hot and hitting every shot. And he talks about, he's like, in a dream, you know, you're not going to be like, oh, you know, oh, I bricked that three. I stopped at 50 points.

• 49:44David Senra?

  So he says, in my mind, I had scored over 100 points. I saw myself do it before I did it. It sounds, if you take an isolation, it does sound a little bit crazy, but the mind is something we just don't understand and it's extremely, extremely powerful. So here we have, again, Brunel, before this gigantic unprecedented railway, something that he used to struggle through to do for almost a decade, before it exists. He's like, I saw it. I traveled when it was just grass and gravel and rock and I saw it. And now all I have to do is go through the motions to bring this dream into reality. It's extremely powerful. I got goosebumps right now. To gather about him, men who could satisfy his exacting standards and match his tireless

• 50:27David Senra?

  energy was not easy and he was often disappointed. And so let's go back to this idea, or let's not go back to it because I just, like, let's continue this idea of.

• 50:40David Senra?

  This is an example of an employee not living up to Brunel's standards, right? And we've seen this over and over again. When I read stuff like this, the one thing that's lodged in my mind, because I've read like four or five books about David Ogilvie, he's a personal hero of mine, somebody I aspire to be like for sure, somebody I don't measure up to at all yet, but I hope to in my completed form. And what he learned from, he was an Englishman in a French kitchen for a master chef, but this guy named Pétard, I think is how you pronounce it. And that's something that he learned over and over again. It's like, listen, like, you cannot let mediocre people on your team at all. This guy would wind up firing people because their pastries wouldn't rise high enough. Like, he was an extreme, Ogilvie learned from him, you know, as a young man at the time, probably in his twenties when he's working for this guy, one of the most respected chefs

• 51:24David Senra?

  in Paris, like, okay, this is how, like, the customers, what's interesting to me is like, that part is hidden from the customer, right? The customer's like, wow, this food's the greatest, this experience at this restaurant's amazing. They don't see all the work behind the scenes that Ogilvie's getting to see, right? And this just relentless dedication to extreme excellence. In fact, I'm about to give you another bonus episode here in the next few days, and I'm rereading this guy, this guy did something smart. It has to do with Buffett shareholder letters that are organized on topic and not by year. And so that'll come out in a few days, because I've already, I'm almost done reading. But I'm glad I'm reading this at the same time as reading this book, because Buffett talks about that. He's like, listen, you gotta cut the mediocre people. Like, you can't have mediocre people in management, even if they're nice.

• 52:09David Senra?

  Like, you just can't. Very few people can run businesses well. There's a lot of mediocrity and bad decision-making, so like, you have to have a good person in charge of the business, whether it's yourself, whether it's somebody else. So he's saying, you gotta cut the mediocre people out. That's exactly what Ogilvie would say as well. And so we see Brunel, you know, being kind of ruthless about this. The assistant who made the mistake receives the following missive, and he must have felt, he must have been left decidedly weak in the knees. So this is now Brunel talking about somebody on the Great Western Railway that made a mistake. Plain gentlemanly language seems to have no effect upon you.

• 52:52David Senra?

  I must try stronger language and stronger measures. You are a cursed, lazy, inattentive, apathetic vagabond. And if you continue to neglect my instructions and to show such infernal laziness, I shall send you about your business. I have frequently told you, amongst other absurd, untidy habits, that that of making drawings on the back of others was inconvenient. By your cursed neglect of that, you have again wasted more of my time than your whole life is worth.

• 53:28David Senra?

  In such a fashion did Brunel forge and temper his human tools. Okay, so moving on. When you're like learning about Brunel, you know, he has this like huge battle over the size of these gauges that are used in the in the construction of railways. I'm skipping over that all the part. I'm going to give you the line that's important. Okay. Because they're talking about, hey, you know, like he, when you ask questions like, why is something done this way? Usually you keep going and you can follow it back to like the beginning of the industry. And it's like, well, that's how this first guy did it. So then everybody just copied, you know, for many, many years without asking why. That was the case here. This guy, you know, starts a standard gauge, talks about the size and everything else. I'm skipping over that. It's just like, hey, this is what worked then.

• 54:12David Senra?

  Then, you know, this other guy saw what this guy did and he copied it. There's no reason for whatever. So really, there's no reason other than somebody did it before. And all they say is that they did so without pausing to consider the question on its merits. So, big, big takeaway from the life of Brunel's first principles thinking, which is not a new idea. And, you know, everybody talks about it now. It's literally written about in this book. And they were doing it in the 1800s, probably doing it before that as well. On the contrary, experiment was the breath of life to Brunel, and for him, precedence only existed to be questioned.

• 54:49David Senra?

  And it says Brunel rejected precedent and proceeded from first principles. Remember, this is a term you're going to hear constantly nowadays, right? It's a good idea. I'm not, obviously a good idea, but it's not a new idea. That's the point. Brunel rejected precedent and proceeded from first principles to design what he confidently believed would prove to be the perfect railway.

• 55:09David Senra?

  And so I also want to pull out one other point from this section, which was really fascinating. So it says, "To his critics," you know, him questioning, like trying to be different and trying to question every single part of what he's doing. His critics are like, "This is ridiculous." "To his critics, it appeared to be an example of a perverse striving for originality for originality's sake." So they're saying, "You're just trying to be original for original sake." So Dyson, as we learned on the last podcast, Dyson takes this one step further. He's like, "No, you should be different for the sake of it." And he's saying, "Difference in the idea, difference in the product, difference in the way you're running the business, that you're only going to get these monopolistic profits by being different." And sometimes, which was mind blowing, if you haven't gone back and listened to that podcast, definitely do that and obviously read the book, but where he talks about, it's

• 55:54David Senra?

  like, "Even if there's a better way, you should still do it differently." That is like, not, that's not, I don't even know if, out of all the books that I've read, I've ever come across an idea like that. And that speaks to just Dyson's fundamental belief in difference for the sake of it. And so, again, we're still building the Great Western Railway. I want to pull out more from his diary because I think it's so interesting. He's writing to a real friend so he can actually reveal himself, right? He's not going to tell, like, if you just bumped into him, or if you worked for him, he's not, you're not going to penetrate his, you know, the facade that he has, his external facade, right? So he's writing to a real friend and he's revealing the agony and terror. He's doing something that's never been done before.

• 56:35David Senra?

  It's a, one of the largest scales of human endeavor up to this point in history. It's not supposed to be easy. So he says, and he's like, very confused by it. This is a very interesting metaphor here. Let's check this out. "I can compare it to nothing but the sudden adoption of a language that's familiar enough to the speaker, but unfortunately understood by nobody but him. Every word has to be translated, and so it is with my work. One alteration has involved another, and no one part can be copied from what others have done. No one can fill up the details. I have to do that all myself. And invention is something like a spring of water, limited.

• 57:18David Senra?

  I fear sometimes, I fear I sometimes pump myself dry and remain for an hour or two utterly stupid." And yet, even as difficult it is, he has no regrets. He wants to be doing this. "I have never regretted one instant the course I have taken." And then a few pages later, just another great line. "His career was to him a tremendous adventure." And so there's, in addition to like the problems with the fact that it's difficult physical engineering, you have to battle the weather, the elements, the actual earth fighting back to you, you have to motivate employees. There's all this like politics involved because you're not going to do a large physical infrastructure without competing governments and interests. I skipped over a lot of that part.

• 58:02David Senra?

  Obviously, I might talk to you for an hour, hour and a half about these books, every single one, before I sit down and talk to you. I've spent 10, 15, 20 hours reading. So if you hear a podcast that piques your interest, it's a good sign that you can learn a lot more by reading the books. It's impossible to replicate the value you get just spending hour after hour after hour. If you're reading a biography of somebody, you're spending maybe 20 hours in their mind. Okay, so let's go back to where we are in the story, though. Fast forward a little bit, obviously past all that political stuff and these fights and these lawsuits and everything else that's going on. I want to talk about like the actual work. This is wild. They're having to go through rock at this point. But it says, "It was an immense undertaking and the more staggering when we remember

• 58:46David Senra?

  that apart from the steam pumps which kept the workings clear of water and the power of gunpowder which was used to blast away the rock, it was accomplished entirely by the strength of men and horses working by candlelight." This one tunnel for two and, just check this out. This is the mind blowing part. For two and a half years, the work consumed a ton of gunpowder and a ton of candles every week. He's going through a ton of gunpowder and a ton of candles every week for two and a half years, just for one part of the railway. Eventually, he winds up completing this project.

• 59:28David Senra?

  He was obsessed later on with the Great Eastern, the one, the giant ship that he is on. That he was working on when he dies. But this might be as great as if you look at actually ones that were actually completed. Because a lot of stuff had to be completed by other people or after he died and everything. This seems to me like I would be like, this is what I'd be most proud of, I guess. But let me summarize this here, which had seemed, the railway had seemed to many so impossible of realization only eight years before was now a magnificent reality. So go back to that. I saw the whole thing in my mind. I just have to go through the motions now to bring it to this, this thing I saw in my mind's eye. I see it laying there. I could touch it. It's iron. It is there, is now.

• 1:00:09David Senra?

  He took that dream, that vision, and it is now physically real. Other people can now interact with this thing that only took place in my mind. So there's an entire chapter called Brunel Against Bureaucracy. I'm going to pull out a couple of things here. I'm going to read my note to you first. He's against anything that stopped, that inhibits building, the ability to make unequivocal decisions. Steve Jobs quote in the Joni Ive book, I got to grab that in a minute, about telling the team that this is the way I want it. So the ability to have, again, companies are led by formidable, they're not led by committees. Great companies are led by formidable individuals that are capable of making unequivocal decisions. That is very clear if you study the history of entrepreneurship. This is the way I want it. The decision is mine.

• 1:00:53David Senra?

  I think if you could, oh, I think if you could talk to the, to these founders, so a lot of founders we're learning from on the podcast, obviously they're dead, we can't talk to them anymore, we have to read their words, and that's the way we have conversations with them. I think if you could talk to these founders, they'd say, there's too much emphasis on consensus. That is definitely what Brunel would say. Let me read this section, then I'll grab the Joni Ive, I just said his name incorrectly. Joni Ive. Oh, man. Okay. Even in the age of individualism, Brunel's public life was remarkable for his roundly expressed hatred of government officials and of any law, rule, or regulation which interfered with individual responsibility or initiative.

• 1:01:35David Senra?

  The innate caution of the civil service mentality, its inability to make unequivocal decisions or accept personal responsibility, represented the very opposite of all that Brunel stood for. So that's good. Describe something, in this case, a person, by describing their opposite. The inability to make unequivocal decisions and the inability to accept personal responsibility was the very opposite of what Brunel stood for. Okay, so there's a quote from this book on Johnny Ive, and it's Founder's Number 178, if you haven't listened to it. And it's Steve Jobs, he's coming back for Apple. He's dealing with, you know, this is the way I want things done. People are giving him a lot of pushback. And so this is another illustration of what they're saying.

• 1:02:19David Senra?

  Like Brunel needed the ability to make unequivocal decisions. Same thing Steve's running into here. "When we took it to the engineers, they came up with 38 reasons they couldn't do it." Jobs recalled. "And I said, 'No, no, no, we're doing this.'" And they said, "Well, why?" And I said, "Because I'm the CEO and I think it can be done." And so that quote, what Jobs is saying there is like, "I'm the one responsible." Like I'm the one, the one person in the company that can make unequivocal decisions. It has to be done this way. That mindset is very similar to how Brunel approached his work. In fact, he would constantly threaten to resign. When they say, "Hey, let's get you an assistant engineer or a resident engineer," he's like, "I don't even understand those terms. I don't care, that's how other projects are done. I will resign if I have, if I don't have complete,

• 1:03:01David Senra?

  like, complete authority and control." And so this is an example of that. The note of himself is, "I'm only doing this if I have full responsibility and control." There's a response when they're saying, "Hey, we're gonna hire some, you know, somebody to help you, like, basically like a number two kind of person, or maybe somebody you can share responsibility with." He gives this whole, like, crazy response. Just gonna pull up full lines. And this is, now, I fast forward a way in the story. We're almost at the end of his life. This is, he does a million different projects, right? But this is the Great Eastern. It's called, they called it the Great Leviathan. They wanted to change the name to the Great Eastern. And I'll go into like how, you know what, let me read that part to you first and then I'll give you it. So it says, actually, no, let me read this part. Let me not get confused.

• 1:03:44David Senra?

  So he's writing back to the directors of this project because he's the lead engineer, the only engineer, and he's like, that's going to remain, or I'm out of here. "The fact is, I have never embarked in any one thing to which I have so entirely devoted myself, and to which I have devoted so much time, thought, and labor, and on the success of which I have staked so much reputation, and to which I have so largely committed myself." So he's talking about this project. "And so therefore, I cannot act under any supervision, or form part of any system which recognizes any other advisor than myself, or any other source of information than mine, or any other question connected with the construction or mode of carrying out practically

• 1:04:25David Senra?

  this great project on which I have staked my character, nor could I continue to act if I could be assumed for a moment that the work required to be looked after anybody but myself. If any doubt ever arises on these points, I must cease to be responsible and cease to act." So there we have Brunel being unequivocal that he will be the one making the unequivocal decisions. And so they wind up, they wind up, right after they get the letter, like it served his purpose. Like, okay, we'll leave you alone, buddy. We'll withdraw the request then. So let me go back in the story a little bit. This is the crazy, again, he

• 1:05:07David Senra?

  only wants to do things that are unprecedented. And this reminds me of, you know, Bezos, Jeff Bezos telling us, like, it's better, like, you got one life to live, one career. It's better to be bold. I'd rather be bold than timid. It's like, just be bold. I mean, if you go back and read Bezos's shareholder letters, which I have, I did all his shareholder letters on what, Founder's Number 71, and then Invent and Wander, they're reprinted in that book, I think that's Founder's Number 155, somewhere like that, he uses the word bold all the time. So it says Brunel began to consider the idea of building a steamer large enough to carry her own fuel around the world. He had the conception of a ship six times the size of anything that had ever existed.

• 1:05:46David Senra?

  And that it's gonna hold that record for another almost 50 years. And this is like the age of like a rapid advancement. How crazy it is is an age of rapid advancement advancement in marine technology. And to some degree, you know, it was kind of folly to attempt something like this. But you don't, I guess you don't know your limit until you go over it, right? So it's gonna wind up holding the record for the larger ship. There's a lot of struggle in the book. He's got to deal with, you know, it goes, the company goes bankrupt. I mean, the story of his whole career is just like, oh, okay, I'm gonna try something unbelievably hard. Wow, it's unbelievably difficult. And this is where, you know, he's, he's at it day and night. He's completely committed. This is obviously, not obviously, but this is where he's gonna wind up dying before he sees a successful completion of it.

• 1:06:32David Senra?

  Uh, but they're about to launch at this point, ready for launching. The hull weighed over 12,000 tons. Never since time began had man attempted to move so great a weight. And there were many who shook their heads and pronounced such a feat impossible, predicting that the great ship would rust away where, where she lay, a monument to human folly and presumption. And so even launching the ship was just an unbelievable headache. But I want to point, pull out one thing here that I thought was really, again, another unique idea. Because most people say if one thing's not working, like, you know, just try a different route. And so Brunel would also have like his, his, like, okay, something's not working. I'll just do more of it. Like, check this out.

• 1:07:18David Senra?

  To him, it was a simply, it was simply a question of practicing that doctrine, which he had once preached. This is what he says, "To stick to the one point of attack, however defended, and if the force first brought up is not sufficient, to bring ten times as much, but never to try back upon another in the hope of finding it easier." So again, let me read that again, because this is like, he's got a, you know, he's writing in the 1800s. They, they spoke a little differently than we did. "To stick to the one point of attack, however defended, and if the force first brought upon is not sufficient, to bring ten times as much, but never to try to, never to try back upon another in hope of finding it easier.

• 1:08:03David Senra?

  It's not working, just do more of it." And moving ahead, we're almost to where he dies. A note I put myself on to summarize what's happening on the next few pages is, "Complete dedication until death, only focused on the successful completion of the task and to hell with everything else."

• 1:08:23David Senra?

  "From that moment when the semblance of his great ship had first taken shape under his pencil, it seemed as if it had claimed its creator's body and soul. It became an all-consuming passion to which he dedicated himself utterly without regard for health, for fortune, or for family. Slowly but surely, it excluded every other concern from his mind. He steeled himself to meet and confound betrayal, hostility, ridicule, and every kind of adversity in order to complete his task that no appeal of this kind could reach him. To yield, even in the smallest degree, to such persuasions would now appear to him an admission of defeat."

• 1:09:06David Senra?

  And so that, I mean, now we're towards the end of the book. It became apparent as I started studying Brunel, like, why Dyson? Because Dyson's also a misfit and, you know, a crazy person. Just his absolute refusal to give up, you know, is obviously not normal. I can see now, I could see all the way up until this point, why he would latch on to Brunel. He called him, again, "a personal god." That's what, how Dyson described Brunel, "a god." He was a god to me, right? And you get to that one paragraph and it's just like, all right, this is Dyson. Dyson is seeing in Brunel what he wants to reflect in himself. "He steeled himself to meet and confound betrayal." Dyson had to deal with that. Hostility, he had to deal with that.

• 1:09:48David Senra?

  Ridicule, and every kind of adversity in order to complete his task that no appeal of this kind could reach him. "To yield, even in the smallest degree, to such persuasions would now appear to him an admission of defeat." And I guess my point I'm trying to make there is like, understanding, now spending hours studying Brunel, I have an even more fundamental understanding of Dyson. It enhances my understanding of his work, of his life and career. This is where I said, or they say, he worked himself to death. He also had like a kidney disease, nephritis, is what, like complicated things. He went to having a stroke. So it says, "On the morning of Monday, September 5th, the engineer boarded his great ship for the last time.

• 1:10:30David Senra?

  At midday, that deadly adversary whom he had kept at bay so obstinately overtook him, and he was suddenly seized by a stroke. He was paralyzed but still conscious as he was carried down the ship and to his home." And so, the ship's in the water there, he wanted to be on board, because two days later, September 5th, he has a stroke. September 7th, they're actually take him down, take the ship down the river. And he was so confident that he had finally succeeded, right? So he's, the author makes the case, and other people made the case that he's gonna die on September 15th, so 10 days after stroke, right? In that interim, that 10-day period, like, he wanted to kind of wheel himself to stay alive, because he wanted to hear the successful, like, the first trip that the boat ever makes,

• 1:11:15David Senra?

  the part of it explodes. I shouldn't laugh, because it winds up killing him. But, he, once he hears the news, so I'm gonna read this section, this is where he dies. But, to give you the background before we read the section, the ship is still salvageable, and it lasts, and he does these transatlantic ships, you know, for many, I think many decades moving forward, if I'm not mistaken, after Brunel dies, but, he never understa, like, he never gets to, the main tragedy here is, the last thing he hears is that part of it exploded, because there's pressure built up in one of the engines, and, you know, a couple of people died that were on the boat. So, this is what they're gonna reference here. "His body paralyzed, only the engineer's spirit still rallied around him, holding

• 1:11:56David Senra?

  death at bay a while longer, but for one reason: to hear news of the success of his great ship. He was so confident of a triumph which must atone for every misfortune. Instead, came the news of this disaster. This final stroke was too cruel to be borne."

• 1:12:19David Senra?

  The spirit broken at last, the light in his eyes went out, and as night fell, he died. It is only from the words of friends, not intended for the public ear, that we can begin to understand the weight of such a loss. The most moving tribute of all came from his friend, Daniel, who in his diary wrote, "On the 15th of September, I lost my oldest and best friend. By his death, the greatest of England's engineers was lost. The man with the greatest originality of thought and power of execution, bold in his plans but right. The commercial world thought him extravagant.

• 1:13:04David Senra?

  But although he was so, great things are not done by those who sit down and count the cost of every thought and every action."

• 1:13:16David Senra?

  And that is where I'll leave it. For the full story, buy the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. Amazon sends me a small percentage of the sale when you do that. That's 201 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.