Compass No.33
Andrew Luck's return to football and lessons from James Dyson on learning from failure and iterating one step a time
Thought provoking article
I really enjoyed The Athletic’s profile on former NFL quarterback, Andrew Luck’s, return to football as the general manager of Stanford’s football program. For those that aren’t familiar with his story, Luck was the no.1 draft pick in the 2012 NFL draft. Despite earning Pro Bowl honors and successfully leading his team, the Indianapolis Colts, to the playoffs in 2018, Luck made the decision to retire early from the NFL at age 29 due to sustained pain from a series of injuries.
While his circumstances may be somewhat unique, I think anyone that’s ever gone through a career transition can relate to what it’s like to confront losing one identity and having to navigate the uncertain and tough process of figuring out who you are now. This section of the piece stood out to me:
If he wasn’t a quarterback, what was he? For a while, he was a stay-at-home dad, cleaning bottles and changing diapers and shuttling his daughters to and from daycare while Nicole’s career as a field producer for ESPN and NBC took off. “I can tell ya, I have some serious empathy for stay-at-home parents,” Luck says. “Because that is a calling.”
In his free time, he skied. He surfed. He fished. He camped. He went to therapy. Eventually, he started watching football again.
“At one point, I was like, ‘I have almost three-fourths of my life left. I’m tired of being stuck.'”
The game had battered him, then emptied him. He needed time to grieve. The more he did, the more it hit him: that was part of his story, too. The end. The pain. The decision he never questioned and the bitterness he wouldn’t let creep in. Even at his lowest point, while tears reddened in his eyes after he’d been booed off his home field the night he retired, Luck stood behind a lectern and thanked football for the hard moments that led him there. He was grateful, even for the scars.
Podcast insights that stayed with me
There was a strong case to be made for featuring the Taylor Swift interview on Jason and Travis Kelce’s podcast last week, but instead I give you a look at Tim Ferriss’ 2021 interview with Sir James Dyson (inventor and founder of Dyson).
Background on the Dyson story
Dyson was captivated by the ways cyclone technology could be used to create a better vacuum. It would take him almost four years and 5,126 prototypes before he was able to create a working model. During that time, he supported himself and his family via an investment from mentor Jememy Fry and proceeds from the sale of land he owned, funds that collectively amounted to about £60,000.
Eventually, Dyson went into deep debt to continue funding the idea. In his words, he had no “plan B.” He’d literally “bet the house,” putting his house up as collateral against a bank loan.
It would take over 12 years to commercialize the technology from the time Dyson began working on the first prototype. Initially, Dyson tried to pursue licensing agreements for several years but failed to get any traction. Eventually, he made the decision to begin commercializing and manufacturing the vacuums on his own.
On learning from failure
“Failure is exciting. You learn from failure. If you are taught something and then what you do works, you haven’t really learnt anything. Learning what doesn’t work is usually more interesting.”
On prototyping the initial Dyson vacuum one change at a time
“You have to start at the beginning and go one step at a time. Every time you try to jump to the solution it doesn’t work and then you’ve got lost.”
On not doing market research while he attempted to commercialize the initial Dyson vacuum
“It’s too easy to ask someone whether or not your product will be successful. You can’t get a straight answer.”
*I’ve heard good things about Dyson’s autobiography, Invention: A life. It’s next up on my reading list.