#85 Walter and Olive Ann Beech (Aviation Legends)

What I learned from reading The Barnstormer and The Lady: Aviation Legends Walter and Olive Ann Beech by Dennis Farney. ---- 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

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• 0:01David Senra?

  It's the roar, that throaty growl, a sound so distinct and intriguing that it causes your eye and your ear to search the sky for its source. A tiny speck on the horizon draws nearer, and soon a dramatically different-looking airplane comes into view. It looks mighty and powerful, but at the same time sleek and elegant. One wonders, who was venturesome and inventive enough to build and design this beautiful maverick? This book is a story of how that unique airplane, and many others, came to be, and the two people responsible for their creation. They were Walter and Olive Ann Beech, co-founders of Beach Aircraft, and I am proud to say

• 0:45David Senra?

  they were my parents. These two, both forceful and determined, even if rather eccentric personalities, combined their individual strengths and talents with uncanny ease and rapport to create an extremely successful company with an undisputed reputation of excellence in quality and service. What were their experiences that launched them on the path that eventually led them together? How did two individuals with rather humble beginnings reach such great heights and accomplish so much at a time when aviation was young, and America was struggling through the Great Depression, and women executives were rare or nonexistent?

• 1:30David Senra?

  My mother was a reserved and elegant lady. She carried herself with dignity. She was extremely insightful and loyal. She also could be rather imperious, and her very demeanor commanded respect. This quality served her well when she took over Beach Aircraft after my father's sudden death. She was then a woman in a man's world. The idea of a woman CEO, let alone the CEO of a Fortune 500-sized aircraft company, was almost unheard of in those days. But she did more than survive. She took the company to new heights and became fondly known as the First Lady of Aviation.

• 2:10David Senra?

  It has long been in my mind and heart to have a biography written about these two remarkable people. Much has been written about the airplanes Beech Aircraft made, but little has been written about the man and the woman behind those airplanes. Very little is known about the warmth of their personalities and the strength of their characters. How did they meet adversity? How did the two of them, each so strong and so stubborn, manage to work together? He called her Annie and she called him Popper. Together, they built a company whose name became a byword for excellence.

• 2:52David Senra?

  This is their story, a very human story, and one that I wanted to tell. So that is actually Walter and Olive's daughter Mary Lynn Oliver, writing in the foreword for the book that I read this week and the one that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Barnstormer and the Lady: Aviation Legends Walter and Olive Ann Beech by Dennis Farny. And I just thought of something while I was reading that I'm going to go back to the first page real quick before we jump into the rest of the book. And where is the sentence that I'm looking for?

• 3:30David Senra?

  Okay, so it talks about that they were both forceful and determined, they were rather eccentric, and it says, "What led them to create an extremely successful company with an undisputed reputation of excellence in quality and service." And I just, the thought just randomly popped in my mind, like, I think it's a good goal for everybody that wants to start a company or any kind of work that you want to do, is that your children can look back. Her, in this case, the daughter, Mary Lynn, is writing those words about 60 years after her father died and about 15 years or 20 years after her mother died. I don't know why I thought about that just now, but I think that's a really good goal,

• 4:15David Senra?

  to have your children look back at what you were doing, the kind of person you were, and be very proud of you. So I want to tell you first how I found this book. I ordered it a few months ago, maybe a month or two ago. And it was actually, if you listened to Founders number 65 on Kirk Kerkorian. So Beach Aircraft winds up being this giant massively successful company. I had never heard of it before, before I read, I think the book is called The Gambler. And it's the life of Kirk Kerkorian, which is a fantastic book. And the podcast I did, actually, a lot of people liked it. So if you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to it. I think it was interesting. But in that book, and I don't know if I referenced it on the podcast, but in that book,

• 5:00David Senra?

  Kirk deals, because he's in aviation as well. So he introduces us, or I guess the author that's writing about Kirk's life, introduces us to the presence that was Olive Ann Beech. And so I was like, oh, okay, I'd never heard of this person. Let me go look. And I searched Amazon, first I read her Wikipedia page, and then I searched Amazon and found this book. And it's kind of like, I have the hardcover version. I don't even know if there's another version, but it's almost like it's a family album, telling the story of not only the family, but the work they did. There's tons of pictures and anecdotes. And what it reminds me of is if you listen to Founders number 52, which is The Republic of Tea,

• 5:40David Senra?

  a lot of what I'm going to talk to you about today comes from Olive Ann's personal, I wouldn't say a lot, but a good portion of what I found most fascinating was, she's a very private lady, she didn't do a lot of interviews. And so a lot of the insights we're going to have into how she thought and how she worked, came from her personal notes, her personal diary. And just like in The Republic of Tea, which it's a book, but essentially it's somebody compiled faxes between the three co-founders of Republic and Tea. Going back, like they had like two years of planning stage. And then when they start finding, launching the company, I think that's when the book ends. And you see like they're, you know, I don't think they thought it was going to be a book. You see how they thought and what they were experiencing as it happened. And I think that's incredibly insightful.

• 6:25David Senra?

  It's something I referenced when I studied Henry Royce, because he took such notes about his work that eventually Rolls Royce combined his notes into a book and gave it to future employees. So they understood like the level of quality that they were expected to meet.

• 6:42David Senra?

  So then, as I'm reading this book and I'm learning about both Olive Ann and her husband Walter, I was like, originally when I was set down to do the podcast, or when I was thinking about doing the podcast, I was like, "Okay, I'll cover both of them combined," similar to what I did on Founder's 51 with the two founders of Banana Republic who were also married. And they were also featured in Founder's 52 because they were some of the co-founders of Republic Tea. And then you quickly realize like, "No, you need to isolate and talk about Olive Ann because Walter dies. And he has a massive heart attack. He dies." And for the next 30, 35 years, roughly of the company, it's Olive Ann's show.

• 7:24David Senra?

  She's by far the most important character in the book. Before I jump into the book, I just want to tell you about the private podcast that Feed I have that's reserved exclusively for people that are helping spread the word about this podcast. So there's multiple ways you can access it. None of it costs money. And I also don't give them away for free. I reserve it exclusively for people that are willing to leave reviews, recommendations, or talk about the podcast on social media. So, for example, if you're listening to this podcast on Overcast, they have a recommendation function where if you press that star, it turns gold. If you take a screenshot of that, showing that you've recommended by pressing the star, and email it to me at [email protected], I'll reply back with a personal email with that private podcast link.

• 8:08David Senra?

  It gives you access to seven podcasts that I've created that are available nowhere else. If you're listening on places like Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher, anywhere else that you can actually leave a review, leave a review, take a screenshot of the review, email it to me at [email protected], same situation there. And then something I just started, I think a week or two ago, which is also helpful, is if you talk about the podcast, let's say on Twitter, and you mention @founderspodcast, you can just say, "Hey, I recommend this podcast. If you guys want to check it out." Some people even mentioned specific episodes they liked, which I really loved. I liked that idea. So if you want to do that, that works too. I will automatically DM you the private podcast link.

• 8:48David Senra?

  As long as you're following me on Twitter, it'll let me DM you right away. Okay, so that's just a way for me to say thank you and hopefully incentivize you with spreading, obviously, the podcast.

• 9:04David Senra?

  Okay, so let's go ahead and jump into the book. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her personality. It says, "In one absolutely central way, they were exactly the same." They're talking about Walter and Olive Ann. "Each was determined to be in control." She had a ladylike demeanor was coupled with a pronounced bent for managing figures and managing money. So that was her, I would say, her primary skill. Her husband was like a, that's why it's called the barnstormer. He was an early stunt pilot and pioneer in the aviation industry. But he was integral in producing a lot of their first airplane designs based on what he would experience in the air. But it's mentioned many times in the book

• 9:48David Senra?

  that the company would have undoubtedly went under and failed, like a lot of the early airplane manufacturers did, without her ability to manage resources and to make sure that payroll was met and that the company was turning a profit. A little bit more about her personality, just so you understand who she was as a person. It says, "Mrs. Beech had no time for dumb questions. No time for prying questions at all. She would dismiss them with a little wave of her hand. In this, she resembled another captain of industry, Henry Ford, who lived by a terse motto, 'Never complain, never explain.'" Once, somebody asked her why she didn't sit down for more in-depth interviews. This is her response, she says, "They'll ask me why blue is my favorite color," she said.

• 10:31David Senra?

  "What makes me laugh and what makes me cry. Maybe I don't want them to know." The few times in her life that she did grant interviews, she always regretted it. She was an intensely, intensely private person. And something also you might want to know is they would reference her that she was an iron fist in a velvet glove. So if you ever see pictures of her, and there's tons of pictures in this book of her, she looks absolutely glamorous. But she was extremely quiet and relentless. So I think that's where she got the moniker of Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove. Before I jump back into her personality, I just want to talk a little bit about, because I find it so fascinating

• 11:13David Senra?

  that they started essentially at the beginning of a massive industry. It kind of echoes what you and I were talking about on the podcast with Empires of Light, with the beginning of the electricity industry. So it says, "The lives of Walter and Olive Ann span almost all of that history," meaning the aviation history, "from its daredevil years of 1920 barnstormers and wingwalkers to today's multi-billion dollar industry." She didn't step down, she died in like 1993, and she didn't step down from the company, I think, till like 1980 or something like that. So it says, "This is a story of that uniquely American type, the entrepreneur.

• 11:57David Senra?

  Entrepreneurs don't merely create new products and new ideas. Through their work and their enterprises, they define and create themselves." Such an interesting thought. "When entrepreneurs fail, their failures can be as spectacular as an airplane crash. But when they succeed, whole new industries grow up where none existed before, with economic and social implications beyond their most expansive beginnings." So Olive Ann actually starts out in the aviation industry, working for a company called Travel Air. They hire her, I think she's 19 at the time, and she becomes Walter's secretary. And the note I left myself is, "If you don't know something, it doesn't matter, you can learn." And here's an example of that.

• 12:40David Senra?

  It says, "When she first became Walter's secretary, she had to ask a company engineer to draw her a sketch of an airplane with its essential parts labeled. Back then, in one associate's words, 'She didn't know an aileron from a tail feather.'" I'd actually look up what an aileron was too, because I didn't know what that was. And it is actually a hinge surface in the trailing edge of an airplane wing that's used to control lateral balance. If you've ever been sitting by the wing of an airplane, you see it go up and down during the flight, it's that little flap, I guess I would call it. My point being here is, you have somebody that winds up becoming one of the most important figures in all of aviation history.

• 13:22David Senra?

  And of course, no one's born knowing what we need to know. Everybody learns that. And so she starts out as a young 19-year-old, not knowing anything, to the point where she doesn't even know the, like, how an airplane is constructed, like, what are the important parts, to basically dominating and becoming one of the most important people in the industry. So now I'm gonna jump into some of her mottos and codes, her life codes that we see from her private diary. And this is, the book's gonna reference her diary and her private journaling a lot. I think it might be my favorite parts. So it says, "It was dangerous to be irreverent of our own Misses Beach." She's a very serious person. "Grown men would flinch when they were summoned to stand on her blue carpet. There, only

• 14:07David Senra?

  raising her voice, she would tell them precisely what she wanted done or where they had aired. She would tolerate one mistake, but live by the model, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Few people got the chance to fool her three times." It says, "She was very demanding, and she was the head of everything. All of Anne lived by a code of self-reliance that she learned from her parents." And now here's some of the codes that she learned from her parents. "Sit on your own blisters," which means "Live with your own mistakes." "When a job is once begun, never leave it until it's done. Be

• 14:46David Senra?

  the labor great or small, do it well or not at all. Sit up straight and tall. Throw your shoulder back, throw your shoulders back and breathe." This was her recipe for steadying herself in anxiety pounding situations. So on the very next page, I love this part. "She was always learning," and of course you're gonna have to, to be able to stay on top of an industry for almost half a century. And then she's also obsessed with having the power of positive thinking. This is something in my own life I call PMA, which is Positive Mental Attitude, which I'll talk about in a minute. So it says, "She was perhaps," this, we're gonna get an idea of her early

• 15:27David Senra?

  life and her lack of education, which I hate using that word, but it says, "She was perhaps more conscious than she let on on the lack of a college education. Her formal education stopped with a Wichita area, Wichita area business school, but her self-education never stopped." So I don't even think she went to high school. I think she skipped high school and then the business schools, like, they were teaching People how to do like basic like office management secretary work and stuff like that. Her personal desk diaries are full of words and phrases she was teaching herself. So here's one of them that she wrote. It's in French, I think it says coup de main. And it says, the definition of that is a swift attack that relies on speed and surprise

• 16:11David Senra?

  to accomplish its objectives in a single blow. Remember coup de main, that's important for later on. Another one she wrote down, steel true, blade straight. Paste it into the diaries are numerous self-help maxims and testaments to the power of positive thinking. And here's a like a short little, almost like a poem that she wrote and she wanted to memorize. You can't expect your ships to come home unless you send them out. Stand up to be seen. Speak up to be heard. Shut up to be appreciated. No one can make you inferior without your consent. That's another important motto of hers. No one can make you feel inferior.

• 16:56David Senra?

  That phrase, it seems, is key to understanding this elegant, successful, very private woman. And what she's calling there, the power of positive thinking, I repeat this over and over again, so much that like I get kind of made fun of, but I think the combination of a positive mental attitude and perseverance, I think the combination of those two traits is like the key to overcome almost any problem that you may have. And I think it's extremely important, going back to that way, the famous Andrew Carnegie quote, paraphrase, I don't have in front of me, but it's like, the mind can be brought into sunshine. That's not, hold on, let me, let me look it up real quick, because I'm butchering that quote. That's not, I don't think that's how it starts. It's his most famous quote, okay.

• 17:41David Senra?

  A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune. Young people should know that it can be cultivated, that the mind, like the body, can be moved from shade into sunshine. I think it's essential for your mind to be in sunshine and not in the shade.

• 17:54David Senra?

  This is just some funny stuff that it comes across because I think the beginnings like I've talked, talked a lot about. The beginning of industries are just fascinating to me.

• 18:03David Senra?

  So here's a list of flight safety rules. It says flight safety rules of that era, let's say early 1920s, maybe even before. Clearly indicates the precarious seat of the pants nature of the whole business. And there's a list of 10. I'm just going to pull out four of them that made me chuckle. Pilots should carry hankies in a handy position to wipe off goggles. Riding on steps, wings, or tail of a machine is prohibited. This was the funniest one. Do not trust altitude instruments. And then this was a bizarre one. Pilots will not wear spurs while flying. And it's just another example that everything big starts small.

• 18:44David Senra?

  And when you go and analyze things that are now big and you look at them when they were, were once small, they just look vastly different. And you see stuff like that. I think it's humorous. So a lot of these, um, Beech Aircraft was founded and, uh, the entire history of its, uh, the company was based in Wichita, Kansas. And it's bizarre, like, there's a bunch of other companies, aircraft companies at the time that get started there. So the question I had for myself was like, why was Wichita the air capital? Like, it came up with that nickname, like, why did it happen in Kansas? Like, that just seems random. So some people had, had, um, had theories, and this was one of them. They said, uh, the sky was usually clear and the flat planes, planes all around were a forgiving environment for pilots.

• 19:28David Senra?

  Says no territory in the world has more natural emergency landing fields. Every wheat field in Kansas is one. So that kind of makes sense, but the author says, no, that, that's, it's not actually why. It's because Wichita had a lot of money. By eight, 1918, Kansas was producing nearly 13% of the entire US oil production. So a lot of the entrepreneurs that had made money in oil production then started in turn funding and starting in some cases, these aircraft companies. Um, and it says, like, let me just get the list. Some of them might sound familiar to you. Uh, Beech Aircraft, Cessna, well, probably maybe the most famous aircraft company of all time was founded there.

• 20:12David Senra?

  Stearman Aircraft, which in turn would eventually be merged with Boeing Aircraft. And then later in the book, Learjet, um, also starts in Kansas.

• 20:22David Senra?

  Okay, so let's talk more about her early life. And it says, "When Olive, when Olive Ann was just a girl, she went to a soda fountain one day and encountered a boy who would, who not only teased her, but also occupied the last remaining stool. So she pushed him off the stool and took it for herself. Sometimes you just have to do these things," she explained decades later to a friend. "Sometimes you just have to do these things." The remark says a great deal about the inner core of this steely, quietly assertive woman. "Her birthplace was a rural farmhouse that her father had built with his own hands. The stern maxims that Olive Ann would live by, 'Sit on your own blisters,' for example,

• 21:02David Senra?

  'Sit up straight and tall,' were instilled into her from the very beginning. She had a pronounced bent towards order and organization." So she definitely came from humble beginnings. Not only did her father have to build the house they live in, but she's living in a tiny town at this point, and there's only 600 people. And it's called Waverly. It says, "Meticulous and mature beyond her years, she had her own bank account by age seven and was handling all the bill paying for her parents by age 11." So they wind up, her father's a carpenter by trade, and they have to move from this tiny town, and they have to go to where, like, the big city for more opportunity, and I

• 21:43David Senra?

  just chuckled, it was a growing town approaching 3,000 citizens at the time. "She never attended high school. Instead, she attended the American Secretarial and Business College. She also took night courses. Then at age 17, she went to work as a bookkeeper and office manager for an electrical appliance and contracting firm. She lived in a boarding house there and on the side, kept books for Joe's garage." So she had a little, you know, kind of side business here. "These two jobs together earned her $18 a week."

• 22:14David Senra?

  By this time, she was already practicing what would become a lifelong habit of collecting admonitions on the good life and how to live it. And so she collects all these little maxims and poems that she wants to reference back. Here's one of them. It says, "I have to live with myself and so, I want to be fit for myself to know. I want to be able, as the days go by, to always look myself in the eye. I don't want to stand with the setting sun and hate myself for the things I have done." To reference Carnegie again, he says, "The internal judge reigns supreme," I think is the quote. Meaning, it's most important that, uh, that how you've, the most important thing is how you feel, truly feel about yourself and to make sure that you're making yourself and changing yourself into a person that you can actually respect.

• 22:59David Senra?

  Uh, one offered this philosophical advice on the value of perseverance. Uh, that's one thing she definitely never would give up. "The one who sticks to a losing cause, although his fortunes get a fall, may find that gaining strength and pride, he's not the loser after all." Uh, two qualities Olive Ann never lacked were self-confidence and assertiveness. Uh, one day she marched into a local bank, or she marched into a local bank one day and asked for a loan of a thousand dollars. A substantial sum at that time, uh, particularly for someone making eighteen dollars a week. But somehow she talked the bank into giving it to her. As it turned out, the loan was part of a larger strategy. After a couple of weeks, she repaid it, having held on to the money.

• 23:44David Senra?

  And now, she had a credit rating. Okay, so now I want to skip ahead to the founding of Beechcraft. Travel Air winds up getting purchased by another company. They, they moved from Kansas to New York City. They're not able to build the airplanes they want. And so they wind up leaving and starting their own company in the heart of the Great Depression. It says, "The company was a huge gamble for all three of them." So there was Walter, Olive Ann, and then one of the engineers, the other co-founder. "To be sure, Walter and Olive Ann left New York with a tidy sum. As stockholders, they had sold Travel Air high, and now the Depression would enable Beech Aircraft to buy back into the airplane business low. Even so, it was about the worst possible time to launch a new business.

• 24:27David Senra?

  It took more than money and more than a promising idea. It took courage. America came close to rock bottom in 1932." So this is the economic environment they're launching into. It says, "Crude oil sold for 10 cents a barrel. The entire aviation industry produced a total of only 549 commercial planes valued at little more than $2 million." So, the ground floor, the entire aviation industry. $2 million this time, that's insane. And they had a very simple, as you can tell, like Olive really liked to orient around simple ideas and simple rules. So the idea for the company was, "We are going to build the best damn airplane ever,

• 25:11David Senra?

  and no near-depression is going to stop us." So not only are they going to launch during the Depression, but they take this counterintuitive strategy of making it a super-expensive luxury plane, and it works. So it says, "Beech Aircraft began in a small corner of the Cessna factory, leased from the Cessna Board of Directors. In the teeth of the Depression, Beech Aircraft began building, not a cheap plane tailored to hard times, but a luxury plane. With Depression-era sales of even inexpensive airplanes plummeting, they wagered their future on this line of costly airplanes." And the name of the plane was the Model 17.

• 25:52David Senra?

  Almost 100 years later, it was voted by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the most beautiful airplane of all time. And there's a bunch of pictures in the book. I mean, it looks, it looks amazing. It's gorgeous. So, it says, "It was Olive Ann who juggled the books, met the payroll, and collected the bills. There was one occasion in which Walter was worried about a $10,000 unpaid bill from a customer in Texas. Olive Ann drove down, drove back, and plunked the $10,000 on his desk. 'There's your damn money,' she said." And so while Walter was focused on trying to build the Model 17 and then obviously put it into production, she focused on making sure the company was frugal, they were not

• 26:33David Senra?

  wasteful. As you, as I just, you just heard, they started out, they were like subleasing space from Cessna. So they kept all their expenses as low as possible until sales started rolling in, but they did not, they, they managed resources intelligently enough to make sure they didn't shortchange the actual product that they were making. And then this was interesting. So the note I left myself was naysayers are constant. This is how they're starting to, so everybody said like, this is a stupid idea, of course, like you're building an expensive plane, let's you know there's a great depression going on, etc., etc., etc. And so they wind up running an ad, and I love what they did here. It says, "In high good humor, the ad compared the Model 17 to past inventions

• 27:17David Senra?

  that had also drawn initial scorn." So this is, this tells you something about not all of Ann and Walter too, that they just didn't, they believed in their convictions. They believed in their ability, I think they, the reference is like, they believed in their ability to shape the future through their own efforts. So they had supreme level of confidence. And so this ad says, they basically ignored, not only did they ignore initial scorn, but they, they use it to their benefit and use it as marketing material. So they talk about the telephone, and then in parentheses in the ad, it talks about like what people said when these inventions came out at the, at the time. It says, "Oh my God, it talks." "The steam-powered train engine, unimportant. And the Wright Brothers airplane, both crazy.

• 28:02David Senra?

  But Beech Aircraft has had the last laugh." As the company put it, "The early critics of the Beechcraft are now busy trying to imitate its many superior features. The Beechcraft is out in front and will stay there." And I think that counterintuitive point still holds true today. So let me give you an example. Like you could buy a normal, like, regular plane at this time for, let's say, $3,000. The Model 17 was priced anywhere from $8,000 to $24,000. So as long as you're building one of the best products available, in this case, they definitely were, like, the companies are able to charge more, it logically follows, like, they're gonna have more money. They're gonna have, in many cases, they have larger margins.

• 28:44David Senra?

  And that, having more money and having larger margins, even though the aviation industry is not, like, excessive margins by any means, is what actually helped the company survive and then thrive throughout the 30s. So it's definitely not the take that somebody that has never done something like this before would approach. Like, "Oh, the depression, okay, let me make the cheapest plane possible." Well, if you make the cheapest plane possible, one, you have less overall dollars. Let's say you're selling a plane for $2,000 instead, and your margins are smaller. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna go out of business. You can't do that. This is a little bit more about Olive's personality, and then this is gonna be bad times ahead. So there's many coups that Olive Anne has to deal with.

• 29:27David Senra?

  One happens when Walter gets extremely sick, and then another happens when he dies. And both, the motivation for the coup is because they didn't think women should be running companies. So it's obviously just an indication of, like, the time that we're in and the environment that she's having to work through. Before I get there to World War II, though, there's something that's interesting. There was races, races for airplanes, like the car industry before it, provided a unique marketing opportunity for these companies. In fact, there's a movie being made about this, because Ford, some of the early, some of the early, like, attention and publicity that Ford got was by building race cars.

• 30:07David Senra?

  And he used that publicity to spur car sales for, like, obviously, like, for normal people, not non-race cars. Well, the same thing is playing out in airplanes. And they used it, Beach used it for, like, to establish early credibility. And then, of course, after the credibility follows sales orders.

• 30:27David Senra?

  Beach airplanes continue to compete in air races. They competed in 1936 Mile High Air Race in Denver, Colorado. A Beech Staggerwing, which is one of the planes they created or they were manufacturing, won that race and two more Beech planes finished in the top five. This led to an often repeated company boast. It takes a Beechcraft to beat a Beechcraft. There's two traits of Olive Ann that may seem contradictory, but I don't think they are. She was enamored with business. In fact, she'd have, she'd ask to be driven around Wichita and she would keep a list and notes of all the new businesses. But at the same time, she made a point of laying her work aside when the day was done. And this is, I think, something that a lot of people struggle with because it is also

• 31:11David Senra?

  a counterintuitive point that's something that, you know, okay, if I just put in more hours, if I just keep working, I'll make more progress. And sometimes I think it's better to, as hard as it may be, to put it down and let, like you're, you're, just have more time to think about it. So, you know, let's say you end your day at five or six o'clock, whatever the case is, and then for several hours, like your brain on a conscious and subconscious level, like you're going to be thinking about all the stuff you're doing during the day. And I think that's why a lot of people always talk about like, oh, I had an insight, it was in the shower the next morning. Like it's, Elon's talked about this, even though he doesn't abide by that, that it's like, oh, it's not that you're having the idea in the shower, it's just like the, he's down, I think he has like a typical geeky way of describing.

• 31:54David Senra?

  He's like, oh, I'm downloading last night's computation. But Olive Ann definitely was interested and had a passion for business, but also knew when to turn it off. I guess is the point I'm trying to make. So now we're going to get into, the note I left myself with speed, the speed was made necessary and we, plus we all have potential than we know, more potential than we know, rather. So now... This was the very beginning of World War II. And it says, "Now the concern wasn't finding jobs for existing workers. It was finding workers to handle a gush of wartime orders." So the growth of this company due to World War II is staggering. It says, "The company was building planes and hammering together new factories as fast as it could.

• 32:39David Senra?

  In only 83 days, it erected two sprawling assembly buildings exceeding 300,000 square feet." Remember, they started in a tiny little sublease from Cessna. Skeptical onlookers questioned whether such monstrous structures were even necessary. Soon Beech would outgrow even these structures and had to be forced to expand into hastily erected tents outside. Congress had appropriated money for only, uh, so in April 1940. It says, "Congress had appropriated money for only 47 new warplanes. Only a month later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called upon the aircraft industry to gear up for producing 50,000 new planes." So it goes from, "Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna pay for 47." Oh, no, not 47. Make that 50,000.

• 33:23David Senra?

  So that's what I mean, we all have more potential than we know, and the speed was made necessary. Um, so it says, "By June 1940, Beech had a backlog of orders totaling 1.2 million. By September," so what is that? July, August, three months later, "by September, it was 22 million." So what, almost 22 times. A few months later, 82 million. The payroll jumped from 700 employees before the war to 6,000, and then jumped again to 17,700. So an additional 17,000 employees. Uh, "The factory began turning out, uh, new models. It's called the Model 18, uh, before the newly expanded assembly areas even had heat." Oh, this is what I meant about, "We all have more potential than we know."

• 34:07David Senra?

  Addition to that is, so they're, they're having to, they're working in a factory, right? And they have to get the work done because you're, it's literally life and death. It's just life, life and death, life and death at this point, okay? So it says, "Before the newly expanded assembly areas even had heat, the temperature within the buildings was kept barely above freezing." So they had to have these like, they're not even space heaters, because I don't think they existed at the time. Basically, they had to like arti- to have artificial ways to heat it up, heat the area, like the factories up, before they had like central heating, because the tools would freeze to the side of the airplanes. And so that's what I mean about, we all have more potential, we're way more adaptable than we, than we, we have even an inkling

• 34:52David Senra?

  of thought of. You just have to be forced into that environment and then you're going to adapt. They didn't by choice wanted to make planes and deal with steel and aluminum and all the, and, and all these tools in an environment where the temperature's freezing. But they had to, and guess what? They survived. They adapted. It's not easy, and that's not the point. The point is that, you know, humans are much more capable than we think. I, I listened to an audio book a few months ago, this guy named David Goggins, it's called Can't Hurt Me. And I only, I, I didn't finish the second half of the book, because I'm more interested in like, as you could see from the podcast, like the beginnings of people's lives, and especially like this guy had a really just messed up.

• 35:36David Senra?

  He was in a, his dad was really abusive, beat the crap out of him and his mom, and sold drugs and had guns everywhere. And he just took that like pain and suffering and used it as fuel, right? But he says something in the book that I thought was interesting, that he's convinced that most humans are living at forty percent of their actual capabilities, that we just got used to like not tapping into our potential, and I really like that idea. So he used that in like a physical form. He's like three hundred pounds at the time, and he wants to join the Navy. They're like, no, you're too fat. Like you gotta lose weight. He had to lose like a hundred pounds. I forgot the exact, let's say a hundred pounds in forty days, or something like that. Then he starts running, he's never ran in his life, starts running hundred mile races. And he just realized like, oh, I had all this untapped, untapped potential.

• 36:20David Senra?

  Before, I would just sit at home, I'd come home from work, he was like an exterminator, like a, people like, like go to businesses and kill insects. And he'd come home and just watch movies and drink milkshakes. And that same person that would just sit on the couch and drink milkshakes, you know, a few years later, is running hundred mile races. It's like we're not even tapping into our potential. That's something I definitely believe. And I think reading all these books definitely reinforces that. But I just thought that was fascinating that, you know, we had this huge, I mean, World War II was the largest world war in human history and in our species history. And you had people doing extreme things to meet an extreme demand. So it kind of illustrates that in a small way. Not a

• 37:03David Senra?

  small way, meaning the magnitude of what they're doing, but like a small amount of time, I should say. So this is a failed, another, one of the failed coups against Olive. It says, as events unfolded, Walter and Olive Ann both wound up at the same time in the same hospital. So he winds up, Walter has like, something called encephalitis, which is a painful affliction of the joints called, and like your spine, like you have inflammation in the brain, you have headaches, stiffness of the neck, you can die from this. He doesn't die from it, but he dies from a heart attack shortly thereafter. But it says, as events unfolded, Walter and Olive Ann both wound up in the same hospital at the same time. She was in the hospital to deliver their second daughter, Mary Lynn. That's the person who wrote the introduction that I referenced earlier. With both beaches out of action,

• 37:48David Senra?

  a dangerous power vacuum developed at beach headquarters. Remember, this is, not only are they both in the hospital, but they're, they're having, their company's growing exponentially. And lower level executives moved to fill it. They mounted a corporate coup and appears that they had support for it in high places. So what does that mean? It says, the company's eastern bankers wondered whether beach aircrafts could survive without Walter. So did the Reconstruction Finance Corp. These are all the companies that are granting them loans during, for the wartime expansion. Which had granted the company large loans to get the war work started. But the plotters made the fatal mistake of underestimating Olive Ann. This woman was gangster. Even while in the hospital, she had taken the precaution of having a direct line installed to beach headquarters.

• 38:33David Senra?

  It says meanwhile, word reached Mrs. B that one of her new executives was saying that Walter would never come back, and he knew just the right replacement, himself. Mrs. Beach ordered the self-promoter and 13 other new men fired. This is more about Olive Ann during the war years. During the war years, Olive Ann worked 10 to 12 hour days. In addition to everything else, she took her turn in a volunteer corps of women workers who called themselves the Gardettes, joining them as they kept an eye out for any saboteurs who might threaten the factory complex at night. And in a particularly insightful one-sentence summation of her personality, this article that they're writing about Beach at this time, it says, "Her genius lies in commanding respect.

• 39:17David Senra?

  She had an instinctive talent for managing money and when necessary, finding more of it." So the note I left myself on the next page was, "Tough times don't last, tough people do." Oh, and I should, I guess I should tell you, uh, I think Walter's, Walter's already died at this point, if I'm not mistaken. So it says, "The company's wartime buildup turned out to be a short-term liability, but a longer-term opportunity." And you'll see what I mean by, like, they knew they were gonna get through tough times if they're, if they adapt, and they could find, like, creative solutions out, which is what I'm about to read to you here. And they realize that they're not gonna have to do this forever, because eventually, things will return, you know, the regress to the mean, or they'll get a little easier. It had required Beach to fast-expand its manufacturing facilities to the point

• 39:59David Senra?

  that the company now had considerable more capacity than they could utilize immediately. So this is after the war. "On the other hand, the government mandated buildup enabled Beach to expand under favorable government loans." So that's a good thing, right? "However, despite its best efforts, Beach Aircraft did lose money in both 1946 and 1947." Oh, so Walter's not dead yet. "Scratching for business wherever it could be found, the company entered one of the most unusual periods in its history. It started producing an array of products that had nothing at all to do with aviation." This is what I mean about being good and resourceful, not just wasting money. "As a subcontractor, Beach built vending machines, metal pie plates, refrigerator components, and even the great American cornharvester.

• 40:44David Senra?

  The company also began to design an automobile." So they're just using, trying to find any kind of opportunity to sell products to utilize their excess capacity that they had in the factory. Of course, as soon as World War II's over, the government's not gonna be buying 50,000 planes a year. Um, okay. Alright, so now we're at the point where...

• 41:08David Senra?

  Um, we're at the point, this is, are we in the 1950s? Cause he dies in 1950. Okay, yeah, I think he's dead by now. Alright, so the, something that's integral in understanding, um, Olive is she... Well, first of all, the one quality she demanded above all else was loyalty. But there was not, it was very little...

• 41:31David Senra?

  I'm gonna just say, from my reading, I don't think she believed in shades of gray. You're either with her or against her, and she's kind of ruthless to this aspect. So you can be partially loyal. Um, you were either loyal, or you were gone. Uh, so there's a number of, so now this is Bill Beach, this is, um, okay, so... Walter's brother, R.K., okay? He tried to do a coup after Walter died, and she disappears him, is how the book describes it. So she kicks him out of the company, which is her husband's obviously brother. His son, Bill Beach, years later is talking about this. And he says, "There were a number of people who went to Dad," which is her husband's brother, right? "And essentially, they said, 'A woman can't run this company.'" Uh, Bill Beach said in an interview for this book, he laughed.

• 42:16David Senra?

  "Well, that proved wrong, didn't it?" Uh, R.K. Beach, that's the uncle, was summarily forced out and became, became a kind of non-person within the company. So it's kind of a crazy ruthless aspect of her personality. It's not only like she'd erase you from company history, but no one would be allowed to talk about you again. It was kind of crazy. Um, so this is, uh, this is the son again. Um, it says, "For me, growing up in the Beach family," this is a different son. This guy's name is Walter. But it says, "For me, growing up in the Beach family was always very confusing, and more than a little intimidating. There was this hierarchy of power that was always in play, and Olive Ann, of course, sat at the top of the mountain." Um, she says that, he says, "I was aware from an early age that people could disappear from the family.

• 43:02David Senra?

  Once they were gone, they were rarely have ever, if ever spoken of again. Um, nothing seems to have dented Olive Ann's quiet self-assurance and her determination to lead the company she had co-founded."

• 43:15David Senra?

  So let's talk a little bit about her management style now that she's in complete control. She was crisp and direct. A woman who wasted little time on small talk. Oh, it's a woman after my own heart. Olive Ann said what she had to say, directed what she wanted done to be done, and didn't invite an extended discussion. She was just a force. You never took anything for granted with her. You always had to be at your best. It was her way or you could leave. This is another, this is a stepson that also worked in the company. Beach Aircraft was very much a family-run business. She believed in hard work for herself and her employees and viewed hard work as a pleasure and a privilege in and of itself. Her personal motto was slowly we go.

• 43:59David Senra?

  She preferred a more incremental approach. I'm going to expound on this in a little bit. She's also something she's criticized for, but the note I left myself, which I'll talk about in a little bit, is I'm not at all convinced that she didn't take the right approach. She gets criticized when she didn't, I might argue that she did. There was advantages to her incremental approach. It held down development costs and allowed the company to get maximum use out of existing manufacturing equipment. People, their criticism that there was a serious downside to this incremental approach. It kept Beach Aircraft from fully embracing jets, even as competitors returning to them in the 1960s and 70s, which I'll talk about more. So not only was she relentlessly resourceful, but she also taught that, taught her daughters.

• 44:44David Senra?

  They had two daughters. Obviously, they don't have a father, the father dies, and they're still young. They have an inheritance from their dad's estate, and the daughters get something like a $1.2 million, something like that. And it says Olive Ann used the trust fund as a way of teaching her two daughters about investment and money. They'd always enjoyed their vacations in the mountains in Colorado. Now she suggested that they, they together find and buy a vacation cabin in their own names. They did. Eventually Mary Lynn became sole owner, and as of 2009, the cabin continued to be in family ownership more than a half a century after its initial purchase. It was, oh, so this is something interesting, though. Something at the time, so they make 4.8 million in profits, right? But this was before taxes.

• 45:25David Senra?

  And they had, at the time, they had this thing called a wartime excess profits tax. Imagine this being able to be passed today. And I'm not saying it should have been, but I think with World War II is the one example of like, everybody making sacrifices, where now there's a lot of countries that can fight wars and the citizens don't even know what's going on. You know, it's kind of the opposite of what, like, if you're gonna fight a war and if you're gonna go overseas and kill people, I think like, people should have to, like, citizens should have to sacrifice for that. So it says, um, this wartime excess profits took away, I guess it's almost like a 75% tax. It says, "Total taxes took a bite of 3.1 million." So, they made 4.8 million, they had to pay massive, uh, tax, and it was 1.7. Alright, um, so she hits a crisis.

• 46:10David Senra?

  Um, as cra- I wrote, I don't, sometimes I confuse myself with notes. A crisis as read from her personal notes, Royce and Banana Republic. Oh, I was talking about my, I love the fact that companies, and I wish everybody did this, where they, they take notes about their processes, about how they think about their products, about how they do customer, uh, how they support their customers, and I wish, like, every company published these documents, because I think they're so valuable. And so what I was referencing myself is that, what I referenced earlier, how Royce took, Henry Royce took such notes that turned into a book, and how Banana Republic, the founders of Banana Republic did the same thing. Alright, so anyways, this is, um, she's going through a crisis in, is this 1954? 1953, okay, so it says, um, "Finally, there are some maxims embodying the power of positive

• 46:55David Senra?

  thinking and common sense." This is something that's very important to her. She says, "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. He who thinks by the inch and talks by the yard should be removed by the foot. Happiness is a matter of habit. Gather it fresh every day, or you may never get it at all. You can't have rosy thoughts about the future when your mind is full of blues about the past." Now remember, she's running a hugely, um-

• 47:29David Senra?

  Complicated enterprise, you know, her husband, somebody she's known for maybe 20 years, the father of her children dies unexpectedly, and she's having to deal with this. And we're kind of seeing what's going on internally. Like, how is she able to survive this? It says, "In the fall of 1953 and continuing through 1954, the pace and volume of her entries suddenly intensify. She was struggling with her biggest corporate crisis since becoming Beach CEO. The crisis moves into an even more dangerous phase when the banks seem to be losing faith in Beechcraft." So not only does she have to deal with internal coups from underlings, but banks are trying to basically cut her off. "It was a bad time.

• 48:12David Senra?

  A November entry reads simply, 'Trying days.' It was followed by a December entry that reads, 'Road roughens.' Immediately following this entry, she wrote that unidentified someone mentioned bankruptcy. My hair turned red." This is evident in another entry that reads, "visited..." So she's making some progress. "visited with National City and Fourth National Bank of Wichita again. She's deciding to replace the bankers that are giving her the trouble. Making good progress, working towards goal. By late April, she could elatedly declare victory. Happy day. Telegram of cancellation of V loans sent to First National in New York."

• 48:53David Senra?

  So before they could knock her out, she does the actual knockout blow and says, "We're prepaying everything." And this telegram is basically saying, "Hey, we're going to prepay, and then you need to consider this telegram." Like, "The end of our business relationship. We want nothing to do with you anymore." Because they weren't supporting her during tough times. Olive Ann celebrated this occasion, which, remember, I bring this up because, one, this goes on for almost a year, and, two, like, from the outside, it's like, okay, the company's making millions of dollars, they're doing tens of millions of dollars in sales. Everything seems, from the outside, it might appear everything's okay. But people are not... We, as a species, we tend to broadcast the things that are going well and hide the things that are going bad. Everybody has bad things that are happening to them.

• 49:38David Senra?

  Don't be fooled. Don't be brainwashed into this. Like, this is very important to understand, that Beechcraft is undoubtedly a success. It's a successful company until it winds up being sold. Like, for its entire existence, it was successful. But that doesn't mean it was easy. That doesn't mean every time was bad. And I think that people need to understand that. So it says, oh, remember, I told you to remember the term coup de main. So he says, "Oliver Ann celebrated the occasion which seems to have caught First National by surprise in many ways and for a good long time. Coup de main, she exalted in her diary. She had written the term in her diaries a number of times over the years." It's almost like she's manifesting it. "Now she had pulled off a coup de main in reality." So the author continues, "If there was times where her first fierce determination flagged,

• 50:23David Senra?

  and it is almost certain that there were, little evidence of those times appear in her diaries beyond those entries," meaning the entries I just read to you. "Steel true, blade straight," in which she's almost, she wrote that over and over again, "in which she almost seems to be talking to herself, summoning up her courage. Only occasionally do self-doubt surfaces in this entry, a speech, a good one I wrote, but I'm afraid I won't be able to give it justice for why I don't have the answer." So this part reminded me of, one of the documentaries I'd recommend anybody interested in entrepreneurship watching is, it's on HBO, it's called The Defiant Ones. And I don't know if you know who Jimmy Iovine was. I've heard his name, but I didn't know much about him until I watched the documentary. And he's one of these people that have just insane careers that don't make any sense. Like, starts out, he's kind of like a loser,

• 51:09David Senra?

  winds up getting a job at a recording studio, answering the phones, becomes a producer at 22, 23 years old, starts working with people like Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon, has massive hits as a producer, then found Interscope Records, who in this like first few years of its existence, becomes one of the most successful record companies of all time, signs people like Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, goes on to found Beats by Dre with Dr. Dre, sells it a few years later for $3 billion to Apple. Anyways, he has this really, I think maybe his most important idea is his idea about fear. And this is what Oliver Ann is experiencing here in her diary entry. And he says, I'm just gonna read this quote that I took notes on one time.

• 51:53David Senra?

  He says, "You need to learn to turn fear into a tailwind instead of a headwind. Fear is as powerful as the force. If you can harness it, it is an asset and you will have a big, big advantage. That has been my whole thing." And this is what I mean, the most important idea, I think, that I've heard from him. "When I feel fear, I have trained myself to move forward. The fight is never over with fear. It is never gone. You have to harness it." So specifically, that one sentence, "When you feel fear, you have to train yourself to move forward." Understand that everybody feels fear. It's completely natural to the human experience. But what's unnatural is going forward in the face of fear. And so that's what he's talking about. Like, for many people, when they feel fear, it's a tailwind. It pushes them back.

• 52:38David Senra?

  It stops them. It slows them down. Jimmy's like, "No, no, no. One thing I did is I learned, I used it as fuel to speed me up, to get me to where I'm going." So, I think that's important. So this gives you an idea of the scope of the organization she was running. "Beach now counted more than 40 ongoing projects ranging from contracts and subcontracts for both commercial and military aircraft. They had advanced secret research projects in aerospace and the company's annual report for the fiscal year ending September 30th recorded revenues of nearly $104 million." More maxims. And it says, "The hallmark," this is something in her diary, "the hallmark of the adult is that he is willing to pay for what he wants.

• 53:22David Senra?

  Also, he knows the cost." And the note I scribbled to myself when I read it, I was like, "I wonder what was going on in her mind when she wrote that."

• 53:34David Senra?

  So, we always talk about this idea of books are regional links. I explained at the beginning of the podcast that Kirk Kokorian and the book on his life linked me to Olive Ann and the book on her life. And now I just found another book. So I've heard, you've heard, you've probably heard the term Lear Jet, right? Heard the term, don't know much about it. Had no idea that is named after the person that started the company, Bill Lear. So, this is an example of this book now. linking me to him. I've already put, um, found some biographies on him. I just gotta figure out which one I'm gonna read. So he'll eventually pop up in a new founders episode eventually, and you'll see why, cuz he's a misfit. He's a rebel. He's a madman. He's a crazy person, which I love to study.

• 54:16David Senra?

  Says, "Bill Lear is typically described as a man you could hate one minute and love the next. But this wasn't the case with Olive Ann. She thoroughly disliked him all of the time."

• 54:27David Senra?

  "But Bill Lear was a genius. There's absolutely no doubt about that." This is what I mean. Like, what? Wait till what I'm gonna read you right now. "He's credited with more than 150 inventions, including the car radio, the 8-track stereotape player, and the autopilot for jet aircraft. But his best-known creation of all was the Learjet." How do you do, like, it would take, it would take, uh... Typically, it would take a person multiple lifetimes to do all that. That's insane. "He invented the car radio, the 8-track stereo player, autopilot, and the Learjet." "The Learjet was this mass-produced, inexpensive, and speedy business jet. When he came to Wichita in 1962, he had been refining the Learjet design for three years. Now he was ready to build."

• 55:12David Senra?

  "What irritated her, Olive, most about Lear, he soon began hiring away Beach engineers." So he hires away one of her friends, and she, she just couldn't believe it. He says, "Mrs. Beach just couldn't believe that England would leave Beach for another company." So she, she, he hires away Jim Greenwood, and that's who the quote I just, um, uh, just referenced. And this is hilarious, her response later on, because once, again, there's no, what I referenced earlier, she's no black and white, like, or she's, there's no gray, it's black or white. "You're, Jim, you're on my team. Now you're off my team, so you're dead to me." "One day Greenwood, as a Learjet employee, bumped into her on a commercial flight." "Hello, Mrs. Beach," Greenwood ventured. "Oh, Mr. Greenwood," Olive Ann replied.

• 55:54David Senra?

  "If I'd known that you were going to be on this flight, I would've tried to think of something nice to say to you."

• 56:01David Senra?

  I read that and it made me chuckle. I think it's hilarious. Okay, so Lear starts his company. The first year, he gets fifty-two million dollars in sales the first year. And so what happens is everybody, you know, they're making these like little, I don't even know, I guess you call them turboprops, is what everybody was flying before the introduction of the jet. And so, um, this is where people were saying like her slow, we go incremental approach was, um, like people thought it was detrimental. I'm not, again, not at all convinced that this wasn't the wrong, like this was the wrong strategy. I, I think if I was in her shoes at this point in the company history, I would have done the exact same thing.

• 56:45David Senra?

  I would think it was the smarter thing to do, actually. I think the criticism she's getting is wrong. And so I guess before I tell you, like, the criticism, what the criticism, I should tell you what the criticism was. The criticism was that she was too slow to embrace the new trend in the industry and create an entire new, she wanted to incrementally approve the existing product line and not scratch everything they're doing in building a jet, which is a completely different product, right? And at this point, Beach Aircraft's been around for almost thirty years. Uh, the two co-founders that created most of the products were her, her husband, he's dead, and the engineer who's, uh, he's not really, he was the other co-founder, he's not really involved in the company's, like, off sailing. He had like a love of sailing, so it's writing sailing textbooks and those other stuff.

• 57:29David Senra?

  Um, and, like, are you gonna put your company in a precarious financial position? Like, I understand what their point is. The future is jets if you don't, um, if you don't embrace the trend for jets, right? Then you're gonna miss out on that. But it's also like, there's a lot of businesses that have like staying power. So you might not have this huge growth. They might not be doing fifty-two million dollars in, in, in sales, uh, the first year, but you're also competing with a company that was created from its foundation to build jets, as opposed to taking a huge organization, kinda trying to turn the ship around on a dime and do an entirely new product line. Like, and the reason I bring that up is like, okay, so let me read this part and then let me tell you why.

• 58:12David Senra?

  Um, and why, so this is her reasoning. She goes, "With the cost of developing them," meaning the new like incremental approach for the turboprops or whatever you wanna call them, "with the cost of developing them already pretty much written off, "a large percentage of each sale flowed right down to the bottom line as profit." On the other hand, the Learjet appeared to be the wave of the future. And so this is how the corporate history puts these decisions. Compared with pure jet power, the turboprop offered many advantages. Great savings in initial and operating costs. So they're cheaper. Ability to operate anywhere without limiting noise factors. Safe, easy, fast transition for the pilot accustomed to handling propeller-driven piston-powered aircraft.

• 58:52David Senra?

  And the executive who liked to take over the controls himself would have little that was new to learn to handle the company's, the name of the product is called King Air, with the proficiency of a veteran professional. Building the King Air turboprop was another example of all of Ann's slowly we grow approach. And it proved to be a highly profitable decision. Within 90 days of the initial announcement of the new model, advanced deposits for future deliveries already totaled 10.8 million. This is just the beginning. The King Air turboprop would be in continuous production for the next four and one-half decades. And as of 2009, was still in production. So she got a lot of, this is maybe her most criticized decision. It's like, oh, you missed this huge wave.

• 59:36David Senra?

  She even had a chance to buy Learjet and wouldn't because she hated that guy. But you know what I thought of when I, so as I'm thinking, as I'm reading about like the back and forth and like the pros and cons of this decision. It made me think of, there's a quote by Charlie Munger that I came across in the Tao of Charlie Munger. And I'm going to read it to you. And it says, "Over the very long term, history shows that the chance, the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company's owners are slim at best." So that, in light of that decision, given the competition and how the size of the company and what their expertise was, I think it was the right decision, is the decision I would have made.

• 1:00:18David Senra?

  I would have tried to increase profitability and understood that like, the, like you're not... You're better off managing what you're good at already than trying to do something new. I know there's other companies that have succeeded somewhat. Amazon, of course, being the outlier there, that they started off selling books online. They had this huge retail business and then because of their dedication to experimentation and their skillset, they now have a bunch of other hugely profitable businesses. AWS being one example. But in this case, you have a 60-year-old CEO. All the good product people are gone. Like, yes, of course you optimize what you already have. There's still a market there. So a lot of people think Learjet looks good because it's 52 million in sales.

• 1:01:01David Senra?

  It's 52 million in sales because jets are a lot more expensive than turboprop planes. And you have an entire market that is not looking at jets. And you already have, like, you're the standard bearer for quality and excellence in this turboprop industry. And what it just said, let me go back to that quote real quick.

• 1:01:20David Senra?

  Our research and development, right? Cost of development was already written off at this point. So a large percentage of each sale flowed right down to the bottom line. This was the smart financial decision. It's like she's being criticized for not competing with them. She competes with them, she part of lost. And then, so, okay, you compete with them, right? You lose and now your company's in a precarious financial position. You go bankrupt. How was that smarter? Sometimes you have to know, hey, what Charlie Munger said, everything, we're temporary beings. I talk about this all the time, but not only are we temporary, the businesses are temporary. The businesses, your business, the business you want to do, the business you might start in the future, the maybe one you run in your past, maybe not even running business, maybe businesses you admire.

• 1:02:01David Senra?

  They're like, you usually have one or two really good products, good ideas, and you live off of that. That's successful. There's nothing wrong with that. This idea that we have to constantly, like, throw everything away and not constantly, like, I don't buy that. I don't think it's a good idea. It just did not make sense. I did not, when I'm reading this, I'm like, I don't understand this criticism. What do you expect this person to do? And then why did it be, like, this company survives? It winds up merging with Raytheon, like, she winds up her, the stock for the Beechcraft air owners, shareholders, rather. It goes up like 4 or 5X in wake of that merger. Like, she did a good job. I don't understand this criticism. It's like this fake world where we're...

• 1:02:46David Senra?

  The criticism stems from like this fake world where we know what the future is and it's all predictable and the ideas are going to work out like as if we're not awash in a sea of chaos. Like, that's ridiculous. Alright, so now I want to fast forward to the end when she actually steps down at 76 years old. Before I get into that, I just want to remind you, as you've seen, I presented this podcast ad-free. My business model is very simple. I give half of my podcasts away for free. The people that want to get the other half, they're available on what I call the Misfit Feed. The Misfit Feed comes from that famous Apple app. It's called "Here's to the Crazy Ones." It starts out like, "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs and square holes." I just think it's a better name than just saying subscriber or whatever the case is.

• 1:03:28David Senra?

  Anyways, usually podcasters are like, "Oh, please sign up and support like me, the podcast." You're doing that, but honestly, by accessing these other podcasts that are available nowhere else, first and foremost, you're supporting yourself. And then secondary, hopefully you enjoy my work and you're learning from it and you're supporting me. So, if at all, if you're learning from this and you want to get more and support the ongoing production of these podcasts, please look at... There's a link below. You tap it within... I've put a stopwatch on this for like, I think 10 to 20 seconds, maybe 10 to 30 seconds for the time you tap that link to the time that the private feed is automatically installed in your podcast player of choice and you can be listening to the Misfit Feed, the exclusive podcasts that are available nowhere else.

• 1:04:13David Senra?

  Okay, so, back to Olive and Beach real quick. It says, this is an article, talks about referencing her stepping down. It says, "An aviation era. The independent reign of Olive and Beach, 76, the last founder and manager of a major aircraft firm is coming to an end. The quiet, small-town Kansas girl who cast her lot 55 years ago with Walter Beach..." A sometimes raucous ex-army pilot and barnstormer has made her biggest decision. Often called the first lady of aviation by Beech publishers, Olive Ann Beech is praised by both supporters and detractors with such comments as, "She thinks she's indestructible, and maybe she is."

• 1:04:54David Senra?

  Beech is the last of the builders started during aviation's golden years of the 1920s and early 1930s that still is controlled and run by a founder or immediate family member. And then I want to close on this, which actually hit me in the heart when I read it, it was really sad. I'm not trying to make you sad, but fundamentally, the story of companies stem from the story of people. The founders that started a company, the people that work there, the customers that buy the product, all of it is a story of people, we can't lose sight of that. This is her nephew talking.

• 1:05:36David Senra?

  She no longer seemed intimidating to me, and by that time I had grown very fond of her. I remember one New Year's Eve, 1987 I believe, when on a whim, I decided to drop by her house and wish her a Happy New Year. We sat in her breakfast room, drank strong coffee, and talked. She seemed generally pleased that I'd come by. I think I stayed for at least an hour. It was one of those few times, if not the only time, that I ever just sat alone with her and talked, casually and openly, without the family or a bunch of other people around. It remains one of my fondest memories of Aunt Ann. In her final years, I remember how sad I felt watching her decline, watching the once

• 1:06:19David Senra?

  towering presence become a little old lady, watching her sharp mind and sharp wit fade. I've seen the same thing happen to many other people, but in Aunt Ann, it seemed particularly poignant, given the imposing presence she had once been in my life. I carry part of Olive Ann with me to this day, things she's said to me and to others, her sense of taste and dignity, her generosity. And as I've grown older, I have discovered the deep wisdom that lies in her simple life motto, "Slowly we go."

• 1:06:58David Senra?

  Her life, and now skipping ahead, this is about five years later. Her life ended peacefully at her home on the morning of July 6, 1993. She simply slipped away in her sleep. She was gone now, the small-town girl with bangs and a determined gaze. The slender young woman with fashion model looks. The corporate executive who brooked no nonsense. The wife and mother of two. The elegant first lady of aviation who blazed a trail for other women to follow. She had forged her life, molded into a shape of her choosing by sheer strength of will.

• 1:07:40David Senra?

  "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent," she had reminded herself in her desk diary, in a phrase that had become her guidepost. And no one ever did.

• 1:07:55David Senra?

  So that is where I'll leave the story. If you want to learn more, as normal, this is, these are just the highlights and notes I took. It's a tiny, tiny part of the book. There's so much more to learn. I might even do, Walter seems like a crazy guy too, to do a podcast. So maybe I'll do a podcast on him in the future, I'm not sure. But if you want to buy the book and support the podcast. So first of all, if you want to support yourself by buying the book, you get something interesting to read. You support the author for taking all the time and effort to write books that we can all learn from. And then you support me and the podcast because there's a link below. Or you can just go to amazon.com/shop/founderspodcast. It's what's known as an Amazon affiliate link.

• 1:08:36David Senra?

  If you click, if you buy a book using that link, Amazon sends a small percentage of the sale to me at no additional cost to you. So it's a way to passively, basically, support the podcast. And more importantly, support yourself. Because there's very few activities that, better use of your time, other than spending time with family, taking care of your health, and working, than reading. And it's just a fantastic, beautiful book. Got the hardcover, tons of pictures. There's even some pictures of Olive Ann in here with Walt Disney. Which I particularly enjoyed, pictures of their products, just a, just an amazing and one I don't think I'll forget. All right. So that's it for me. If you want to support the podcast, get, unlock all my exclusive episodes available nowhere else. Don't forget,

• 1:09:20David Senra?

  click that Misfit feed or tap it in the, in your show notes in your podcast player. And I will be back next week with another biography of an entrepreneur. Thanks for listening.