Founders
Episode 99 #99 Carroll Shelby (My name is Carroll Shelby and performance is my business)
Founders

Episode 99: #99 Carroll Shelby (My name is Carroll Shelby and performance is my business)

Founders

Episode 99

#99 Carroll Shelby (My name is Carroll Shelby and performance is my business)

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading Carroll Shelby: The Authorized Biography by Rinsey Mills.

What I learned from reading Carroll Shelby: The Authorized Biography by Rinsey Mills. 

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[3:27] I love everything about this person. I like the way he thought. I like the way he lived his life.

[3:38] It is almost unbelievable all the different events that could happen in one human lifetime.

[3:52] He lived to 89 years old and he used every single year that he was alive.

[5:22] He could talk his way out of anything.

[6:40] He knew what he wanted. He didn't want anybody else telling him what to do.

[7:41] He had a love for anything that would go fast.

[10:48] He didn’t know what to do with his life.

[15:54] Follow your natural drift. —Charlie Munger

[17:00] I can't work for anybody.

[18:42]  He has fun his entire life. As soon as they stop being fun he runs away.

[22:20] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #93 and #222) 

[24:17]  Money only solves money problems.

[26:32] Scratching around doing insignificant races with inferior machinery wasn't an option in which he could see any future.

[27:26] Whatever setbacks he encountered he was invariably able to bounce back through a combination of self-belief and an aptitude for making other people believe in him.

[27:45] Enthusiasm and passion are universal attractive traits.

[28:05] Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime. (Founders #97) and Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automobile Empire by Luca Dal Monte. (Founders #98) 

[30:29] The Purple Cow by Seth Godin

[32:22] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts. (Founders #110)

[32:38] Having extreme focus in the information age is a superpower.

[36:13] Racing was a means to an end. He wanted to build his own car. That was his main goal.

[42:34] He still didn't know quite how he was going to do it but if he was finally going to produce his own sports car.

[53:48] All big things start small.

[58:31] 12 months after Shelby was deeply depressed his life is completely different and the Shelby Cobra starts to take shape.

[1:00:06] A summary of the early days of Shelby Automotive: Everything had to be done tomorrow and by the cheapest method possible.

[1:01:12] It wasn't uncommon for them to work until two or three in the morning and be back down there at 7:30 the next morning.

[1:02:22] There's just something special about a group of highly talented, smart people working together for a common goal.

[1:03:48] Shelby hates company politics. That is why he wanted to run a smaller company.

[1:17:30] My name is Carroll Shelby and performance is my business. 

“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

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#99 Carroll Shelby (My name is Carroll Shelby and performance is my business)

Introduction

"Shelby, the name itself conjures up immediate visions of Cobras, GT350s and GT500s pounding around an historic road course with throaty horsepower coming from under the hood and tires on the edge of adhesion. But for me personally, the Shelby name will always mean much more. I've been blessed to have known Carroll since I was a teenager, walking the pit road with my father at Le Mans during Ford's first major assault on Ferrari in 1966. By then, he was already a legend in my eyes, having had great success as a race driver for companies like Aston Martin and Maserati during the 1950s and being named Sports Illustrated Driver of the Year in 1956 and 1957.

So when I first met Carroll at Le Mans, as his Shelby American race team was preparing the GT40s for the Ford Motor Company, I was thrilled to meet the man who has since become a lifelong friend. Subsequently, I worked for him during a summer break while I was in college. He gave me the opportunity to spend some time with him, taking in the wisdom that is truly Carroll. The name Shelby means so many things to so many people. But to me, Carroll is an innovator. He is a man who is always ahead of his time, who has created, designed and developed performance products that have been second to none. The fact that most of them have been with and for Ford Motor Company is a personal point of pride for me. Carroll is passionate about performance vehicles, but he's also passionate about life, his family, his many, many friends that he has made in the 60-plus years he's been involved in our industry. I am proud to be counted among them".

So those words were written by Edsel Ford II, which is the great-grandson of Henry Ford. And they appear in the foreword of the book that I read this week and the one that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Carroll Shelby: The Authorized Biography, and it was written by Rinsey Mills. A little while back, I was listening to an author who had just completed a biography, writing a biography on Winston Churchill. And he was talking about the process of writing biography. That's why I was listening to that. That's what I was interested in. And I found it fascinating because he talks about Winston Churchill, like why does the world need another biography of him? He has -- I think the author said over 1,100 -- definitely over 1,000 biographies have been published about the life of Winston Churchill.

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