December 4, 2024 • 37 mins
In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, we take you on a journey from a time when no two bowling lanes played the same due to hand cleaning and oiling inconsistencies, to an era where precise patterns could be put down using machinery, and those patterns would determine how the game should be played on a given night. It's a study in picking the right problems to solve and finding a life's work where no one else may be looking.
This episode is about the invention of the lane oil machine for bowling alleys. If you are a bowler, you are likely equipped to understand all the topics in this episode, if not, you don't necessarily need bowling knowledge as the key items you may not understand are explained. If you have no clue what bowling even is, as a passionate bowler myself, I would encourage you to learn more about the game!
For this episode, I'm speaking to Don Agent, long-time employee of Kegel, the leading lane oil machine manufacturer in the world. He shares his insights of working with Kegel's founder John Davis, as they traveled the world, showing bowling proprietors how to improve the sport through use of specialized equipment and the creation of standards.
Show Notes
- Here is a link to Kegel - https://www.kegel.net/
- Here is an example of a lane oil pattern
- Here is what a modern lane oil machine looks like.
- Here is an article about lane topography
- Here is a quick video demonstration of topographical effects on a bowlers shot
- You can find a picture of the initial product, "The Key", here. Scroll down to the bottom under the year 1981.
The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering.
If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below.
Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Concerning the bowling industry specifically,
he was a people magnet.
And I literally was veryfortunate to be able to
experience that and traveledextensively with it extensively
with him around the world andthe country for many years.
If you wanted to talk bowling oranything learning related with
(00:22):
bowling, uh he'd lend his ear100%.
I remember one time a bunch ofus were sitting at his house or
we're having a couple of beers,and all of a sudden we were
talking about topography and thelaying machines, and somebody
just piped up and said, Hey, canwe talk about something else?
And John just froze and he said,My God, what else would there be
(00:45):
to talk about?
SPEAKER_00 (01:54):
And this is episode one, season one, where we are
focusing on starting somethingnew.
In this episode and thefollowing, we'll be discussing
how to pick the right problem,and we'll be giving two wildly
different case studies.
In the opening, you heard fromDon Agent talking about John
Davis, a man who revolutionizedthe sport of bowling through the
(02:15):
invention of the lane machine.
I picked John Davis as thesubject of this episode because
I love the sport of bowling, andbecause it's a great example of
picking a problem where no oneis currently looking at Imagine
(02:43):
yourself in the 1970s, wherepeople are walking around in
bell bottoms, you can hear thesound of a disco, cigarette
smoke is wafting through theair, and polyester is king,
whether in clothes or bowlingballs.
In the 1970s, bowling alleyswere a great place to meet up,
and they were filled everyevening with people in leagues
looking for some funcompetition.
(03:04):
John Davis is working as a pinsetter mechanic and as a lane
man, a person who oils thelanes.
And back then the lanes werewooden, and the oil helped
protect it and prevent cracking,and lowered the wear and tear as
balls rolled down the lanes.
Over time, it was noticed theoil highly influenced a ball's
path down the lane, since loweror no oil spots create high
(03:27):
friction, and highly oiled spotshave no friction.
That's when the lane man's jobbecame more difficult.
He needed to put oil out on thelanes that created an enjoyable
playing environment.
However, as John walked thecenter as the leagues came to an
end for the night, all he heardwere complaints.
These lanes were awful.
Neither lane played the same.
(03:48):
He wanted to do better, exceptthere were no guides, there were
no rules of thumbs, there wasn'teven standardized equipment to
do so.
But John Davis stepped inthinking like an engineer.
John would first revolutionizethe cleaning of the lanes with
an invention called the key.
He would then go on to createthe lane oil machine that could
apply oil with precision indifferent volumes from side to
(04:10):
side and front to back of thelane.
Today we call this a lanepattern.
If you're interested in seeingsome of these lane patterns, I
put a link to some in the shownotes.
After creating his lane oilmachine, John would go on
working with the ProfessionalBowlers Association, or PBA, and
change the way the game wasplayed.
In this episode, you're going tohear from Don Agent about the
(04:31):
journey and some of thechallenges and successes of the
problem solved by John Davis.
It's likely that you need toknow one more bit of
information, a word that you'llhear, and that's topography.
In bowling, we consider lanetopography the shape of the lane
as nothing is ever perfectlyfat.
(04:52):
So there can be crowns ordepressions in the surface of
the lane, or even the overalllane itself could be sloped from
right to left, left to right,front to back, back to front.
And this also createsinconsistencies in the same way
lane oil does.
It wasn't always well understoodthat topography played a role,
but eventually it was found outafter John Davis had solved the
(05:13):
lane oil issue.
A quick disclaimer about thisepisode.
It's going to sound like this isan episode about bowling, which
(05:34):
due to the invention and thenature of it, it is.
However, that's partiallybecause often the engineering of
a product or a solution cannotbe separated from the industry
itself.
A lot of the stories that you'veheard about as far as
engineering successes are theones that apply to just about
every industry.
(05:55):
The invention of the computer.
Those sorts of successes areindustry spanning and
revolutionize the entire world.
But one of the points of thisepisode is the fact that you can
revolutionize a small segment ofthe world and have other people
appreciate it.
(06:15):
And that by looking for thoselittle opportunities, you have
the opportunity to carve outsomething big for your own life.
With that, let's get into ourdiscussion with Don Agent of
Kegel to talk about his founder,John Davis, who unfortunately
passed away in 2013.
(06:46):
Out of the articles I've read,John wanted to make two lanes
playing the same, playconsistent.
Did he ever talk about a pointthat was the breaking point of I
have to do this?
SPEAKER_01 (06:57):
There was.
When lanes were different, theywere different from an
engineering standpoint.
Say they're one or two boardsdifferent.
So a board is about one to oneand a sixteenth of an inch in
(07:18):
width on a bowling.
The complaints were there, butnot to the magnitude they are
today.
Ironically enough, though, thethere was a breaking point.
And some of the viewers, youngerones may have may never have
heard of this product.
But essentially, one day Johnwent to clean his lanes, and
back in that time, we usedT-bars, which was basically a
piece of wood with a weight onit, with a handle on it, the
(07:40):
width of the lane, you wrapped atowel around it, and you had
water in the towel with sometype of cleaner.
In this case, people were usingspick and span pointer.
He ran out.
There was no dramatic moment.
He was like, oh my god, I'm out,but I still have to do this
procedure.
And he decided, I'm just goingto use straight water.
And he's pushing the T-bar down,and he manipulated the position
(08:03):
of it a little bit.
And light bulb went off, and hewatched the oil actually bead up
because oil and water don't mix.
He beat it up off the lane infront of the towel.
And then by the time when he gotto the lane and did a certain
maneuver, it scooked it up.
He was like, wow, unbelievable.
(08:34):
From that standpoint, he tookwhat he saw and what he felt,
and he went back and they builtthese things literally at the
house.
His wife sewed the towels forthese.
While the little kids wereplaying, because they had three
kids.
This was a family that was notborn into money.
It was essentially the realityof necessity as a mother of
(08:54):
invention.
Banged off and he went back andhe perfected a tool based on
some of the motion and thevisual observations he saw.
And boom, he they sold likegangbusters.
That was the key, right?
Yes, sir.
Do you have any idea how muchthose cost back in the day?
Believe it or not, yes, and wealso still sell them.
The key was created in 1981,essentially, for sale, Pat did
(09:17):
the whole deal.
They were retailing, dependingon who you were,$300 to$350.
And when I say when I saydepending on who you were, he
was from the Midwest and hisfamily.
And so in the beginning, he madeprobably lower cost deals, but
he did.
SPEAKER_00 (09:32):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (09:32):
With friends of him and his own community.
And when he had moved toFlorida, he did as well.
SPEAKER_00 (10:08):
If you made four to five of them in a month,
assuming they were high marginitems, you could scrape by for a
family.
If you made more than 15 of themin a month, you were probably
doing well.
As Dawn mentioned, they weremaking these at the house as a
husband and wife duo.
Making fifteen in a month meantproducing four a week or so,
(10:32):
which seems doable.
But then the magic happened, andthey received an order for 700
all at once.
That would be like getting an$800,000 order today.
Can you imagine going from sucha humble husband and wife
manufacturing from homeoperation to big time with one
order?
(10:53):
That's what picking the rightproblem and going after it does.
Every day staying in business isanother day closer to getting
lucky.
And when that luck strikes, youhave an opportunity.
Cash out or double down.
You know what John did?
He bought a bowling alley.
(11:14):
It became another way for him tomake money, it acted as his
research center, and it allowedhim to better relate to all the
other bowling proprietors,because he didn't have to
imagine what it was like to be abowling alley owner anymore.
He was one.
(11:41):
The lane oil machine is a pieceof equipment that runs down the
lane and sprays oil in differentvolumes across the boards based
on how it is programmed.
This creates a lane pattern.
In general, a standard lanepattern, often called a typical
house shot, is going to have ahigher volume of oil in the
middle 20 boards and a lowervolume of oil on the outside 10
(12:04):
boards of both the left and theright side of the lane.
It will be ran from the foulline to about 36 feet or up to
44 feet in most centers,depending on other factors like
lane surface friction and othermaintenance considerations.
In the show notes you can findan example of a lane machine,
(12:25):
and you can see the program thatis used to tell the machine what
to lay down.
(12:57):
Do you have any insight on that?
SPEAKER_01 (12:59):
The best way I can answer that is number one, uh
there was no risk.
It was actually the next logicalstep in the process.
Okay, from a lanesman'sstandpoint, if John was alive,
he'd tell you the same thingbecause what comes out of my
mouth is exactly what he taughtme.
80% of people's problems when weget phone calls and tech support
(13:22):
start out as lanes aren'tplaying right, condition is
horrible, I need to change oil,blah, blah, blah.
But once we start fine-tuningit, it's cleaning related in the
end.
So I used to say you can't painta Mona Lisa on a piece of toilet
paper.
You've got to have a canvas.
Okay.
So by John creating the key andthe cleaning capabilities, it
(13:43):
allowed him to have a canvas.
But now he didn't have a reallygood paintbrush because of the
methods that existed.
So now he's got this beautifulcanvas, and he says, I got to
come up with something to painton this.
That was the next evolution.
What if I can guarantee now?
I can guarantee the lanes willalways be clean.
That variable's gone.
What if I can guarantee that theapplication is the same on every
(14:04):
lane?
That variable's gone.
Lanes may play different due totopography and all these other
things, but our the goal wasalways to take out as many
variables as possible so that wecould look at a fellow bowler
and say, hey, listen, we didthem the same.
They're identical.
And if you're feeling adifference, let's sit down and
have a conversation becausethere are other reasons why this
(14:24):
is probably the case.
SPEAKER_00 (14:38):
John had a history of working with the PBA, and
I've read different things overthe years, but it's a little
muddled as far as my knowledgeof the history and the back and
forth between it.
What was the PBA doing beforeKegel came around?
And what was the synergy betweenthe two?
Who took more away from theother, do you think?
SPEAKER_01 (14:54):
Both entities got wonderful benefits out of it.
Now it depends on what bowleryou talk to.
As I used to say, I had 124 newenemies and one new best friend.
SPEAKER_00 (15:05):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (15:05):
You know, because when we took over the tour, it
was full-time around 1995.
I started in 96, so I went outthere for a period of years.
Um but John was trying to helpWenny, Steve Cross, Carrie
Mogart, these were Ron Marshall,who unfortunately is no longer
alive, but that was the originalcore group that started Lane
(15:26):
Maintenance for the PVA Tour.
Before that happened, they wentfrom center to center, and hey,
whatever the mechanic did, orwhatever was there, there wasn't
any consistency or statute untilthat program started.
So that's what they did prior tous coming in, as our equipment
developed.
All of a sudden we found, or thethe sport found that equipment
(15:48):
could create more consistencythan the human.
As good as Winnie and C.
Cross and Lawn Marshall andJerry Mogar were at what they
did, everything was handapplication.
You're talking applying oil witha spray gun, a bug spray.
SPEAKER_00 (16:01):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (16:01):
Cross-wiping, dragging a pattern out, and you
gotta do 50 lanes of this andtrying to make them all quite
the same.
Literally, it's not even anattainable goal for most.
(16:24):
I don't think anybody else onthis plant would have been able
to do it.
But in the 90s, when John hadgotten to this level of
equipment and he started toreally extend the company, add a
team of the people like myselfand the tech sport group and our
chemist center Dennis Shears anda lot of other people, then it
was like, okay, I got somethingwhere I can definitively say we
can make this better.
(16:45):
So he actually approached thetour.
We never got paid in thebeginning of those days to do
lands.
We did those three all of mypayroll, my expenses, travel,
company vehicles, anything.
That was covered by junk.
But equally, I think bothentities benefited because
essentially, now I would go intoVolume Center or one of my
(17:07):
colleagues to a tournament, andthe whole neighborhoods watching
that machine were watching thereaction on that lane.
Where can I get it?
Honestly, for us, I can honestlysay back then, it was a huge
benefit for us, one orsomething.
There was a point that they alsoallowed us to gather data that
(17:28):
we would not have been able toget on our own.
Because we essentially were ableto go to all these different
places under their blanket,measure lanes, look at different
surfaces, differenttopographical situations,
climate, all these things, as westarted putting these together
across all these years, then allthe things I think John thought
about from the 70s and 80sclicked and made sense and went,
(17:49):
okay, I got proof.
Okay.
Was the public ready to hearthat?
I don't think so.
I don't think it was very wellreceived.
It was by specific bowlers, butnot as the masses.
Whereas today, yes.
But people understand, wow,topography has an effect, even
say because of social media oraccess to information, what have
you.
But back then I think they werestill sketchy.
Yeah, you're just trying to comeup with an excuse because you
(18:10):
didn't do your job well.
And it wasn't the case.
We we were able to prove thatseven hooked more than eight
because seven went uphill aninch and a half from the foul
lane of the pending, and laneeight went downhill three
inches.
And there was no writtenspecification for that in the
guidelines of our sport.
But as an engineer, you'llunderstand that gravity and
coefficient refrictions and allthese things end up taking over.
SPEAKER_00 (18:50):
And what he's referring to is that there's
factors outside of the lane oilthat contribute to how a ball
goes down the lane.
So things like temperature,surface condition, the way the
lanes are constructed, maybeyour building has settled
differentially from one end tothe other, and so the lanes are
(19:10):
actually tilted right to left orleft to right.
All of these became factors,factors that bowling proprietors
necessarily wanted to hearbecause the fix to them was so
much more expensive than a laneoil machine.
Imagine having to re-level 50lanes, unscrewing all the
different wood pieces, and thenput shims in at multiple
(19:31):
different lengths down a 60-footlane to make sure that they're
100% level.
That takes a lot of effort and alot of cost.
As time progressed, these thingswere understood better, and
sometimes they were dealt with,and sometimes they were left
alone and just treated as it iswhat it is because the cost is
too much to change.
At one point in time, nobodythought about the effects that
(19:53):
this stuff was having on thelanes.
John Davis and the company hefounded Keggle were the ones
that were sort of saying.
Well, we know this is the case.
We've done the testing.
(20:16):
For all the engineers out therewho desire to invent things, I
think the most common problemthat holds them back is the
worry of how will I sell this?
I think they're confident intheir abilities to invent
products and build useful items,but they're not always confident
(20:37):
in how do they sell these andmove these products and turn a
product invention into acompany.
With that, I've asked Dawn to gothrough and really highlight how
this useful invention of thelane oil machine, which
automated the oiling of lanesand made them more consistent
and better, how it was sold andhow it was adopted.
(21:14):
One thing that I've noticed is,and this is even after I started
bullying, which was also in the90s, lane maintenance seems
fairly high in quality in mostcenters today.
That happened over time.
What do you think made it soubiquitous that everybody had to
adopt it?
Was it just competition amongstthe centers?
SPEAKER_01 (21:32):
You actually you pretty much answered the answer
I was going to give you.
Essentially, back in the mid-90swhen I was still doing
installations for the company,you would get a sanctioned
technology machine, Phoenix S, asanction two, but that first
high-end machine that he hadbuilt for the ability to have
(21:53):
absolute control, if I wentinto, let's say, Chicago,
anywhere, and put one in, withinabout six to eight weeks, if
there were 12 bowling centers inChicago, six of them had called
and said, We gotta have it.
And it was literally when youseated one in an area, because
as a bowler, whether you feelthe swear or not, but obviously
(22:15):
being around it, people want toscore well.
They don't want to not bowl welland go home and be miserable.
So they gravitate sometimes.
And especially back in the 90swhen sanctioned technology
really came out in mass scale,and you dropped one in an area.
We used to laugh when we gothome.
We're like, oh, we'll wait andsee when the phone rings.
(22:36):
I knew when I left that bowlingcenter was gonna call me in a
day or two and go, My God, myfriend down the road that's got
a center is going nuts, he'sgonna call you.
SPEAKER_00 (22:45):
It changed the playing field.
What you're talking about is thedream of any company making a
product, right?
One sale leads to other salesand it grows exponentially.
SPEAKER_01 (22:55):
And his main purpose with that was that anything he's
ever made was to solve aproblem.
That was it.
SPEAKER_00 (23:02):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (23:02):
And it was always about the sportable.
SPEAKER_00 (23:20):
And they knew that if they sold one into an area,
they would get many more orders.
I call this being in the weaponsbusiness, not in the figurative
sense of something that harmspeople, but in the sense that by
creating this product, youcreate unfair advantage for the
person that buys it.
And as a result, theircompetition has to buy it, and
(23:42):
the cycle goes on and on and onin a figurative arms race.
That's where most engineersshould strive if they want to
invent a product and pick aproblem where they know they can
improve something sodrastically, it will become
ubiquitous.
And I can think of a number ofthings off the top of my head
where this has been the case forengineers.
If you think of computationalfluid dynamics software for
(24:04):
aerodynamics, there's not aaerospace company in the world
that's not using some form ofthat.
And that's because it madethings so much better, so much
more cost efficient thantesting, that it just had to be
adopted by anyone to becomecompetitive.
And there's all sorts ofproblems out there in this realm
(24:24):
you can be tackling if you justpick correctly.
One thing that shouldn't beunderestimated when it comes to
picking the right problems tosolve is the need to make
everyone feel better.
Once people realized the lanemachine made week to week more
consistent at league, playerswere happier and proprietors
were less worried about peoplequitting, which made them happy
(24:45):
too.
As a bowler myself, it seemssilly to say, but a great night
at league has me feeling goodthe next morning still.
And a bad one has me questioningwhy I keep playing this sport.
And I'm one of the most avidplayers you'll meet.
So if I'm questioning why I keepdoing it, you can see where
(25:07):
proprietors would get worriedabout people that just want to
give up.
Do you think someone else wouldhave or could have built Kegel?
(25:30):
Or do you think he was thatunique?
SPEAKER_01 (25:33):
I love this man dearly, so I'm gonna say no.
As Don Agent, but as somebodythat also has traveled for this
company has has met someunbelievably brilliant people in
this industry globally.
I'm gonna say like anything.
Yeah, if Einstein hadn't lived,would there have been another
(25:54):
one?
Maybe not on Einstein, but therewould have been I think, yes,
there would have been somebodythat would have tried to take up
a challenge.
And I believe that I've metpeople that were capable of that
in my travels.
I just think that the amountthat he sacrificed, both
(26:17):
personally and professionally,to just literally try to get two
lanes to play the same, I don'tthink most people would have the
stomach for.
I traveled the world and I knowall three of his children very
well.
There was a large portion of hislife that he wasn't able to do
like a lot of successfulbusiness people, but wasn't able
(26:38):
to be there every day and playthe kids or everything was full,
everything was well.
Going back to what are we gonnatalk about?
What would we talk about?
That was it was that wasliteral.
No, I don't think so to thiscapacity, but I think yes.
There there are definitelypeople that that had the same
passion, and it would havedefinitely made a dent.
SPEAKER_00 (27:11):
You just heard Don mention that he thought there's
other in the bowling world thatcould have tackled this
challenge of making two lanesplay the same, much as John
Davis did.
I think that's an importantcomponent of anybody who wants
to do anything related toengineering.
You likely have the skills,especially if you're a degreed
(27:31):
engineer today, which John Daviswas not, but he thought like
one.
You likely already have theskills, but what you need is you
need to be picking the rightproblems to work on and the
right ones to tackle.
No one is going to send you aninvite to solve the most
interesting problems.
(27:52):
In fact, the people that oftencome up with the most
interesting problems to tackleare the ones that want to take
those problems on themselves.
John didn't say, I have thisproblem, two lanes don't play
the same.
Let me hire somebody to lead upthe investigation of this.
He let it up himself, but he didhire a few other people to help
(28:16):
him look at areas that weremaybe outside of his knowledge
or expertise.
He did start to hire people tolook at lane oil chemistry and
items like that that maybeweren't common knowledge.
You have an opportunity today todo something amazing if you just
pick the right pattern to workon this brings me to the
(28:49):
question that you said wasinteresting.
You think about a thin layer ofoil on a lane and it seems like
a small problem.
But today you hear everybody'saiming to revolutionize things
with artificial intelligence andgoing to space and colonizing
Mars or whatever.
Do you think there's not enoughpeople like John who are just
looking at a small problem andsaying, even though this seems
small, there's a life's workhere.
There's a lot going on here.
(29:11):
100% agree with that.
SPEAKER_01 (29:13):
As a mechanic personally, I've always felt
that the little things that gounobserved are usually the
largest problems that exist orwill create the largest
problems.
I'm a Penn Center mechanic bytrade before I came into this
portion of the industry.
So for me, you can have a littlebearing in a ball wheel guide
roller that helps keep your ballwheel rolling, and that goes
(29:35):
out, and then it takes out thebearings in the lower ball wheel
guide rollers, and then itcreates stress on the lift rods.
So in the end, the little$3bearing created$1,000 worth of
damage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was another thing thatwas just phenomenal.
John is using mechanic first,honestly, Ben Center mechanic
person foremost when he lookedat things, much like his brother
(29:57):
Mark Davis, my dear friend, andwas my boss for many years.
So we always people tend to lookat the big picture first when
let's see what created the bigpicture.
So yeah, I think honestly, theworld needs more people to
sometimes step back and go, hey,maybe this giant problem we got
is only because of this littlething.
(30:17):
Going back to the phone callsagain.
Lanes are plain inconsistent.
I've changed oils, my bowlersare going nuts, I'm going to
close the bullets there.
And then we're on the phone withthem, and we find out they got a
clogged cleaner filter, andthey're not spraying cleaner on
the lane, had nothing to do withthe oil account.
As far as the oil system, it inturn affected the ball reaction
oil gap.
But one little tiny thing as afilter created thousands of
(30:39):
dollars worth of havoc andpeople that are on sets.
I mean sometimes with today'stechnology, we gotta step back.
I'll be honest with you.
I'm still old school, a lot ofthings, as I was trying to hook
up off that.
I still write with a fountainpen.
Um, I still have notebooks, andand I still look, listen, and
feel.
(30:59):
And I think it's stillimportant, even from an
engineering standpoint, to notforget that the littlest
shiniest thing can create thebiggest problem.
You've got to have your eyes oneverything.
SPEAKER_00 (31:23):
There is so much to unpack from that conversation.
As far as picking the rightproblems go, here are some
learnable lessons from JohnDavis and his founding of Kegel.
First, John had an end goal.
Making two lanes played the samewas always the goal, but he
didn't tackle it at once.
(31:44):
He picked something he knew hecould make better.
He made the key for cleaning thelanes and began selling it as a
product.
And that was something simplethat he could start with.
For number two, with an earlyproduct success, he was able to
manufacture them at home, whichkept the overhead low.
(32:04):
Some people imagine starting outand becoming entrepreneurial to
be much grander than this, andit prevents them from finding
success.
Humble beginnings are almostalways the secret to great
successes.
And third, successes from thesimpler items created funding
(32:26):
for the more complex.
By selling the key, John createdhis opportunity to develop a
lane oil machine.
No doubt the lane oil machineswere capital-intensive in their
RD, as today they sell for fivefigures.
However, having a thrivingbusiness building the keys and
(32:48):
owning a bowling alley providedhim the money needed to do RD
and the lane oil machine.
And the takeaway here is thatpeople underestimate the
exponential potential of solvingproblems.
Each time you do it, you get anew level of capital to fund a
bigger problem that you cansolve.
(33:10):
To this day, while being a muchbigger company, Kegel continues
to research bowling lanesurfaces, topological effects,
lane oil chemistry, the physicalmechanics of players, and much
more.
They aren't done learning eventhough John Davis has passed.
You can hear the great respectDon has during our interview for
John Davis.
(33:30):
While he didn't say this to medirectly, Don talks about
getting to travel the world andholds the work he did in high
esteem.
By picking the right problem,John Davis gave many like Don
and other Kegel employees apurpose and allowed them to make
a contribution and be around asport they love on the daily.
And that in itself, givingpeople something that makes them
(33:53):
happy to do on the daily issomething to strive for.
Thank you to Don Agent forallowing me to interview him.
He was very kind to share hisexperiences with us on the
podcast, and we could not bemore grateful to be a bit of a
(34:24):
little bit of a little bit of alittle bit of a little bit.
(35:30):
I hope that we can keepimproving this.
What I'd like to do is build acommunity around this podcast of
engineers that are excited aboutthe problems they work on and
that can bounce ideas off oneanother.
In furtherance of that goal, I'dappreciate it if you had a
listen today.
If you're not already connectedwith me, go on to LinkedIn,
(35:50):
search the Engineering PassionExpress podcast or Brandon
Donnelly, find my profile, andsend me a LinkedIn request.
I will be posting notes andepisode updates and additional
topics on LinkedIn.
So if you connect with me there,that will help start our
community.
And at some point we'll figureout if there's additional
(36:12):
avenues that we can help shareour knowledge through.
The next episode is planned tolaunch in two weeks.
I hope that you subscribe tothis podcast and that you'll be
back for that episode.
It will continue on the topic ofpicking the right problem, but
rather than looking at a topicwhere John Davis focused in on a
(36:34):
very small, narrow industry, itwill be somebody who picked a
broad, overarching problem, butactually didn't succeed.
And we'll discuss where theymaybe went wrong, how they could
have tackled something ratherthan sort of leaving it where
they were.
I'll see you again on our nextjourney to the engineering
(36:57):
passion express.
Thank you for listening.
Concerning the bowling industry specifically,
he was a people magnet.
And I literally was veryfortunate to be able to
experience that and traveledextensively with it extensively
with him around the world andthe country for many years.
If you wanted to talk bowling oranything learning related with
(00:22):
bowling, uh he'd lend his ear100%.
I remember one time a bunch ofus were sitting at his house or
we're having a couple of beers,and all of a sudden we were
talking about topography and thelaying machines, and somebody
just piped up and said, Hey, canwe talk about something else?
And John just froze and he said,My God, what else would there be
(00:45):
to talk about?
SPEAKER_00 (01:54):
And this is episode one, season one, where we are
focusing on starting somethingnew.
In this episode and thefollowing, we'll be discussing
how to pick the right problem,and we'll be giving two wildly
different case studies.
In the opening, you heard fromDon Agent talking about John
Davis, a man who revolutionizedthe sport of bowling through the
(02:15):
invention of the lane machine.
I picked John Davis as thesubject of this episode because
I love the sport of bowling, andbecause it's a great example of
picking a problem where no oneis currently looking at Imagine
(02:43):
yourself in the 1970s, wherepeople are walking around in
bell bottoms, you can hear thesound of a disco, cigarette
smoke is wafting through theair, and polyester is king,
whether in clothes or bowlingballs.
In the 1970s, bowling alleyswere a great place to meet up,
and they were filled everyevening with people in leagues
looking for some funcompetition.
(03:04):
John Davis is working as a pinsetter mechanic and as a lane
man, a person who oils thelanes.
And back then the lanes werewooden, and the oil helped
protect it and prevent cracking,and lowered the wear and tear as
balls rolled down the lanes.
Over time, it was noticed theoil highly influenced a ball's
path down the lane, since loweror no oil spots create high
(03:27):
friction, and highly oiled spotshave no friction.
That's when the lane man's jobbecame more difficult.
He needed to put oil out on thelanes that created an enjoyable
playing environment.
However, as John walked thecenter as the leagues came to an
end for the night, all he heardwere complaints.
These lanes were awful.
Neither lane played the same.
(03:48):
He wanted to do better, exceptthere were no guides, there were
no rules of thumbs, there wasn'teven standardized equipment to
do so.
But John Davis stepped inthinking like an engineer.
John would first revolutionizethe cleaning of the lanes with
an invention called the key.
He would then go on to createthe lane oil machine that could
apply oil with precision indifferent volumes from side to
(04:10):
side and front to back of thelane.
Today we call this a lanepattern.
If you're interested in seeingsome of these lane patterns, I
put a link to some in the shownotes.
After creating his lane oilmachine, John would go on
working with the ProfessionalBowlers Association, or PBA, and
change the way the game wasplayed.
In this episode, you're going tohear from Don Agent about the
(04:31):
journey and some of thechallenges and successes of the
problem solved by John Davis.
It's likely that you need toknow one more bit of
information, a word that you'llhear, and that's topography.
In bowling, we consider lanetopography the shape of the lane
as nothing is ever perfectlyfat.
(04:52):
So there can be crowns ordepressions in the surface of
the lane, or even the overalllane itself could be sloped from
right to left, left to right,front to back, back to front.
And this also createsinconsistencies in the same way
lane oil does.
It wasn't always well understoodthat topography played a role,
but eventually it was found outafter John Davis had solved the
(05:13):
lane oil issue.
A quick disclaimer about thisepisode.
It's going to sound like this isan episode about bowling, which
(05:34):
due to the invention and thenature of it, it is.
However, that's partiallybecause often the engineering of
a product or a solution cannotbe separated from the industry
itself.
A lot of the stories that you'veheard about as far as
engineering successes are theones that apply to just about
every industry.
(05:55):
The invention of the computer.
Those sorts of successes areindustry spanning and
revolutionize the entire world.
But one of the points of thisepisode is the fact that you can
revolutionize a small segment ofthe world and have other people
appreciate it.
(06:15):
And that by looking for thoselittle opportunities, you have
the opportunity to carve outsomething big for your own life.
With that, let's get into ourdiscussion with Don Agent of
Kegel to talk about his founder,John Davis, who unfortunately
passed away in 2013.
(06:46):
Out of the articles I've read,John wanted to make two lanes
playing the same, playconsistent.
Did he ever talk about a pointthat was the breaking point of I
have to do this?
SPEAKER_01 (06:57):
There was.
When lanes were different, theywere different from an
engineering standpoint.
Say they're one or two boardsdifferent.
So a board is about one to oneand a sixteenth of an inch in
(07:18):
width on a bowling.
The complaints were there, butnot to the magnitude they are
today.
Ironically enough, though, thethere was a breaking point.
And some of the viewers, youngerones may have may never have
heard of this product.
But essentially, one day Johnwent to clean his lanes, and
back in that time, we usedT-bars, which was basically a
piece of wood with a weight onit, with a handle on it, the
(07:40):
width of the lane, you wrapped atowel around it, and you had
water in the towel with sometype of cleaner.
In this case, people were usingspick and span pointer.
He ran out.
There was no dramatic moment.
He was like, oh my god, I'm out,but I still have to do this
procedure.
And he decided, I'm just goingto use straight water.
And he's pushing the T-bar down,and he manipulated the position
(08:03):
of it a little bit.
And light bulb went off, and hewatched the oil actually bead up
because oil and water don't mix.
He beat it up off the lane infront of the towel.
And then by the time when he gotto the lane and did a certain
maneuver, it scooked it up.
He was like, wow, unbelievable.
(08:34):
From that standpoint, he tookwhat he saw and what he felt,
and he went back and they builtthese things literally at the
house.
His wife sewed the towels forthese.
While the little kids wereplaying, because they had three
kids.
This was a family that was notborn into money.
It was essentially the realityof necessity as a mother of
(08:54):
invention.
Banged off and he went back andhe perfected a tool based on
some of the motion and thevisual observations he saw.
And boom, he they sold likegangbusters.
That was the key, right?
Yes, sir.
Do you have any idea how muchthose cost back in the day?
Believe it or not, yes, and wealso still sell them.
The key was created in 1981,essentially, for sale, Pat did
(09:17):
the whole deal.
They were retailing, dependingon who you were,$300 to$350.
And when I say when I saydepending on who you were, he
was from the Midwest and hisfamily.
And so in the beginning, he madeprobably lower cost deals, but
he did.
SPEAKER_00 (09:32):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (09:32):
With friends of him and his own community.
And when he had moved toFlorida, he did as well.
SPEAKER_00 (10:08):
If you made four to five of them in a month,
assuming they were high marginitems, you could scrape by for a
family.
If you made more than 15 of themin a month, you were probably
doing well.
As Dawn mentioned, they weremaking these at the house as a
husband and wife duo.
Making fifteen in a month meantproducing four a week or so,
(10:32):
which seems doable.
But then the magic happened, andthey received an order for 700
all at once.
That would be like getting an$800,000 order today.
Can you imagine going from sucha humble husband and wife
manufacturing from homeoperation to big time with one
order?
(10:53):
That's what picking the rightproblem and going after it does.
Every day staying in business isanother day closer to getting
lucky.
And when that luck strikes, youhave an opportunity.
Cash out or double down.
You know what John did?
He bought a bowling alley.
(11:14):
It became another way for him tomake money, it acted as his
research center, and it allowedhim to better relate to all the
other bowling proprietors,because he didn't have to
imagine what it was like to be abowling alley owner anymore.
He was one.
(11:41):
The lane oil machine is a pieceof equipment that runs down the
lane and sprays oil in differentvolumes across the boards based
on how it is programmed.
This creates a lane pattern.
In general, a standard lanepattern, often called a typical
house shot, is going to have ahigher volume of oil in the
middle 20 boards and a lowervolume of oil on the outside 10
(12:04):
boards of both the left and theright side of the lane.
It will be ran from the foulline to about 36 feet or up to
44 feet in most centers,depending on other factors like
lane surface friction and othermaintenance considerations.
In the show notes you can findan example of a lane machine,
(12:25):
and you can see the program thatis used to tell the machine what
to lay down.
(12:57):
Do you have any insight on that?
SPEAKER_01 (12:59):
The best way I can answer that is number one, uh
there was no risk.
It was actually the next logicalstep in the process.
Okay, from a lanesman'sstandpoint, if John was alive,
he'd tell you the same thingbecause what comes out of my
mouth is exactly what he taughtme.
80% of people's problems when weget phone calls and tech support
(13:22):
start out as lanes aren'tplaying right, condition is
horrible, I need to change oil,blah, blah, blah.
But once we start fine-tuningit, it's cleaning related in the
end.
So I used to say you can't painta Mona Lisa on a piece of toilet
paper.
You've got to have a canvas.
Okay.
So by John creating the key andthe cleaning capabilities, it
(13:43):
allowed him to have a canvas.
But now he didn't have a reallygood paintbrush because of the
methods that existed.
So now he's got this beautifulcanvas, and he says, I got to
come up with something to painton this.
That was the next evolution.
What if I can guarantee now?
I can guarantee the lanes willalways be clean.
That variable's gone.
What if I can guarantee that theapplication is the same on every
(14:04):
lane?
That variable's gone.
Lanes may play different due totopography and all these other
things, but our the goal wasalways to take out as many
variables as possible so that wecould look at a fellow bowler
and say, hey, listen, we didthem the same.
They're identical.
And if you're feeling adifference, let's sit down and
have a conversation becausethere are other reasons why this
(14:24):
is probably the case.
SPEAKER_00 (14:38):
John had a history of working with the PBA, and
I've read different things overthe years, but it's a little
muddled as far as my knowledgeof the history and the back and
forth between it.
What was the PBA doing beforeKegel came around?
And what was the synergy betweenthe two?
Who took more away from theother, do you think?
SPEAKER_01 (14:54):
Both entities got wonderful benefits out of it.
Now it depends on what bowleryou talk to.
As I used to say, I had 124 newenemies and one new best friend.
SPEAKER_00 (15:05):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (15:05):
You know, because when we took over the tour, it
was full-time around 1995.
I started in 96, so I went outthere for a period of years.
Um but John was trying to helpWenny, Steve Cross, Carrie
Mogart, these were Ron Marshall,who unfortunately is no longer
alive, but that was the originalcore group that started Lane
(15:26):
Maintenance for the PVA Tour.
Before that happened, they wentfrom center to center, and hey,
whatever the mechanic did, orwhatever was there, there wasn't
any consistency or statute untilthat program started.
So that's what they did prior tous coming in, as our equipment
developed.
All of a sudden we found, or thethe sport found that equipment
(15:48):
could create more consistencythan the human.
As good as Winnie and C.
Cross and Lawn Marshall andJerry Mogar were at what they
did, everything was handapplication.
You're talking applying oil witha spray gun, a bug spray.
SPEAKER_00 (16:01):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (16:01):
Cross-wiping, dragging a pattern out, and you
gotta do 50 lanes of this andtrying to make them all quite
the same.
Literally, it's not even anattainable goal for most.
(16:24):
I don't think anybody else onthis plant would have been able
to do it.
But in the 90s, when John hadgotten to this level of
equipment and he started toreally extend the company, add a
team of the people like myselfand the tech sport group and our
chemist center Dennis Shears anda lot of other people, then it
was like, okay, I got somethingwhere I can definitively say we
can make this better.
(16:45):
So he actually approached thetour.
We never got paid in thebeginning of those days to do
lands.
We did those three all of mypayroll, my expenses, travel,
company vehicles, anything.
That was covered by junk.
But equally, I think bothentities benefited because
essentially, now I would go intoVolume Center or one of my
(17:07):
colleagues to a tournament, andthe whole neighborhoods watching
that machine were watching thereaction on that lane.
Where can I get it?
Honestly, for us, I can honestlysay back then, it was a huge
benefit for us, one orsomething.
There was a point that they alsoallowed us to gather data that
(17:28):
we would not have been able toget on our own.
Because we essentially were ableto go to all these different
places under their blanket,measure lanes, look at different
surfaces, differenttopographical situations,
climate, all these things, as westarted putting these together
across all these years, then allthe things I think John thought
about from the 70s and 80sclicked and made sense and went,
(17:49):
okay, I got proof.
Okay.
Was the public ready to hearthat?
I don't think so.
I don't think it was very wellreceived.
It was by specific bowlers, butnot as the masses.
Whereas today, yes.
But people understand, wow,topography has an effect, even
say because of social media oraccess to information, what have
you.
But back then I think they werestill sketchy.
Yeah, you're just trying to comeup with an excuse because you
(18:10):
didn't do your job well.
And it wasn't the case.
We we were able to prove thatseven hooked more than eight
because seven went uphill aninch and a half from the foul
lane of the pending, and laneeight went downhill three
inches.
And there was no writtenspecification for that in the
guidelines of our sport.
But as an engineer, you'llunderstand that gravity and
coefficient refrictions and allthese things end up taking over.
SPEAKER_00 (18:50):
And what he's referring to is that there's
factors outside of the lane oilthat contribute to how a ball
goes down the lane.
So things like temperature,surface condition, the way the
lanes are constructed, maybeyour building has settled
differentially from one end tothe other, and so the lanes are
(19:10):
actually tilted right to left orleft to right.
All of these became factors,factors that bowling proprietors
necessarily wanted to hearbecause the fix to them was so
much more expensive than a laneoil machine.
Imagine having to re-level 50lanes, unscrewing all the
different wood pieces, and thenput shims in at multiple
(19:31):
different lengths down a 60-footlane to make sure that they're
100% level.
That takes a lot of effort and alot of cost.
As time progressed, these thingswere understood better, and
sometimes they were dealt with,and sometimes they were left
alone and just treated as it iswhat it is because the cost is
too much to change.
At one point in time, nobodythought about the effects that
(19:53):
this stuff was having on thelanes.
John Davis and the company hefounded Keggle were the ones
that were sort of saying.
Well, we know this is the case.
We've done the testing.
(20:16):
For all the engineers out therewho desire to invent things, I
think the most common problemthat holds them back is the
worry of how will I sell this?
I think they're confident intheir abilities to invent
products and build useful items,but they're not always confident
(20:37):
in how do they sell these andmove these products and turn a
product invention into acompany.
With that, I've asked Dawn to gothrough and really highlight how
this useful invention of thelane oil machine, which
automated the oiling of lanesand made them more consistent
and better, how it was sold andhow it was adopted.
(21:14):
One thing that I've noticed is,and this is even after I started
bullying, which was also in the90s, lane maintenance seems
fairly high in quality in mostcenters today.
That happened over time.
What do you think made it soubiquitous that everybody had to
adopt it?
Was it just competition amongstthe centers?
SPEAKER_01 (21:32):
You actually you pretty much answered the answer
I was going to give you.
Essentially, back in the mid-90swhen I was still doing
installations for the company,you would get a sanctioned
technology machine, Phoenix S, asanction two, but that first
high-end machine that he hadbuilt for the ability to have
(21:53):
absolute control, if I wentinto, let's say, Chicago,
anywhere, and put one in, withinabout six to eight weeks, if
there were 12 bowling centers inChicago, six of them had called
and said, We gotta have it.
And it was literally when youseated one in an area, because
as a bowler, whether you feelthe swear or not, but obviously
(22:15):
being around it, people want toscore well.
They don't want to not bowl welland go home and be miserable.
So they gravitate sometimes.
And especially back in the 90swhen sanctioned technology
really came out in mass scale,and you dropped one in an area.
We used to laugh when we gothome.
We're like, oh, we'll wait andsee when the phone rings.
(22:36):
I knew when I left that bowlingcenter was gonna call me in a
day or two and go, My God, myfriend down the road that's got
a center is going nuts, he'sgonna call you.
SPEAKER_00 (22:45):
It changed the playing field.
What you're talking about is thedream of any company making a
product, right?
One sale leads to other salesand it grows exponentially.
SPEAKER_01 (22:55):
And his main purpose with that was that anything he's
ever made was to solve aproblem.
That was it.
SPEAKER_00 (23:02):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (23:02):
And it was always about the sportable.
SPEAKER_00 (23:20):
And they knew that if they sold one into an area,
they would get many more orders.
I call this being in the weaponsbusiness, not in the figurative
sense of something that harmspeople, but in the sense that by
creating this product, youcreate unfair advantage for the
person that buys it.
And as a result, theircompetition has to buy it, and
(23:42):
the cycle goes on and on and onin a figurative arms race.
That's where most engineersshould strive if they want to
invent a product and pick aproblem where they know they can
improve something sodrastically, it will become
ubiquitous.
And I can think of a number ofthings off the top of my head
where this has been the case forengineers.
If you think of computationalfluid dynamics software for
(24:04):
aerodynamics, there's not aaerospace company in the world
that's not using some form ofthat.
And that's because it madethings so much better, so much
more cost efficient thantesting, that it just had to be
adopted by anyone to becomecompetitive.
And there's all sorts ofproblems out there in this realm
(24:24):
you can be tackling if you justpick correctly.
One thing that shouldn't beunderestimated when it comes to
picking the right problems tosolve is the need to make
everyone feel better.
Once people realized the lanemachine made week to week more
consistent at league, playerswere happier and proprietors
were less worried about peoplequitting, which made them happy
(24:45):
too.
As a bowler myself, it seemssilly to say, but a great night
at league has me feeling goodthe next morning still.
And a bad one has me questioningwhy I keep playing this sport.
And I'm one of the most avidplayers you'll meet.
So if I'm questioning why I keepdoing it, you can see where
(25:07):
proprietors would get worriedabout people that just want to
give up.
Do you think someone else wouldhave or could have built Kegel?
(25:30):
Or do you think he was thatunique?
SPEAKER_01 (25:33):
I love this man dearly, so I'm gonna say no.
As Don Agent, but as somebodythat also has traveled for this
company has has met someunbelievably brilliant people in
this industry globally.
I'm gonna say like anything.
Yeah, if Einstein hadn't lived,would there have been another
(25:54):
one?
Maybe not on Einstein, but therewould have been I think, yes,
there would have been somebodythat would have tried to take up
a challenge.
And I believe that I've metpeople that were capable of that
in my travels.
I just think that the amountthat he sacrificed, both
(26:17):
personally and professionally,to just literally try to get two
lanes to play the same, I don'tthink most people would have the
stomach for.
I traveled the world and I knowall three of his children very
well.
There was a large portion of hislife that he wasn't able to do
like a lot of successfulbusiness people, but wasn't able
(26:38):
to be there every day and playthe kids or everything was full,
everything was well.
Going back to what are we gonnatalk about?
What would we talk about?
That was it was that wasliteral.
No, I don't think so to thiscapacity, but I think yes.
There there are definitelypeople that that had the same
passion, and it would havedefinitely made a dent.
SPEAKER_00 (27:11):
You just heard Don mention that he thought there's
other in the bowling world thatcould have tackled this
challenge of making two lanesplay the same, much as John
Davis did.
I think that's an importantcomponent of anybody who wants
to do anything related toengineering.
You likely have the skills,especially if you're a degreed
(27:31):
engineer today, which John Daviswas not, but he thought like
one.
You likely already have theskills, but what you need is you
need to be picking the rightproblems to work on and the
right ones to tackle.
No one is going to send you aninvite to solve the most
interesting problems.
(27:52):
In fact, the people that oftencome up with the most
interesting problems to tackleare the ones that want to take
those problems on themselves.
John didn't say, I have thisproblem, two lanes don't play
the same.
Let me hire somebody to lead upthe investigation of this.
He let it up himself, but he didhire a few other people to help
(28:16):
him look at areas that weremaybe outside of his knowledge
or expertise.
He did start to hire people tolook at lane oil chemistry and
items like that that maybeweren't common knowledge.
You have an opportunity today todo something amazing if you just
pick the right pattern to workon this brings me to the
(28:49):
question that you said wasinteresting.
You think about a thin layer ofoil on a lane and it seems like
a small problem.
But today you hear everybody'saiming to revolutionize things
with artificial intelligence andgoing to space and colonizing
Mars or whatever.
Do you think there's not enoughpeople like John who are just
looking at a small problem andsaying, even though this seems
small, there's a life's workhere.
There's a lot going on here.
(29:11):
100% agree with that.
SPEAKER_01 (29:13):
As a mechanic personally, I've always felt
that the little things that gounobserved are usually the
largest problems that exist orwill create the largest
problems.
I'm a Penn Center mechanic bytrade before I came into this
portion of the industry.
So for me, you can have a littlebearing in a ball wheel guide
roller that helps keep your ballwheel rolling, and that goes
(29:35):
out, and then it takes out thebearings in the lower ball wheel
guide rollers, and then itcreates stress on the lift rods.
So in the end, the little$3bearing created$1,000 worth of
damage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was another thing thatwas just phenomenal.
John is using mechanic first,honestly, Ben Center mechanic
person foremost when he lookedat things, much like his brother
(29:57):
Mark Davis, my dear friend, andwas my boss for many years.
So we always people tend to lookat the big picture first when
let's see what created the bigpicture.
So yeah, I think honestly, theworld needs more people to
sometimes step back and go, hey,maybe this giant problem we got
is only because of this littlething.
(30:17):
Going back to the phone callsagain.
Lanes are plain inconsistent.
I've changed oils, my bowlersare going nuts, I'm going to
close the bullets there.
And then we're on the phone withthem, and we find out they got a
clogged cleaner filter, andthey're not spraying cleaner on
the lane, had nothing to do withthe oil account.
As far as the oil system, it inturn affected the ball reaction
oil gap.
But one little tiny thing as afilter created thousands of
(30:39):
dollars worth of havoc andpeople that are on sets.
I mean sometimes with today'stechnology, we gotta step back.
I'll be honest with you.
I'm still old school, a lot ofthings, as I was trying to hook
up off that.
I still write with a fountainpen.
Um, I still have notebooks, andand I still look, listen, and
feel.
(30:59):
And I think it's stillimportant, even from an
engineering standpoint, to notforget that the littlest
shiniest thing can create thebiggest problem.
You've got to have your eyes oneverything.
SPEAKER_00 (31:23):
There is so much to unpack from that conversation.
As far as picking the rightproblems go, here are some
learnable lessons from JohnDavis and his founding of Kegel.
First, John had an end goal.
Making two lanes played the samewas always the goal, but he
didn't tackle it at once.
(31:44):
He picked something he knew hecould make better.
He made the key for cleaning thelanes and began selling it as a
product.
And that was something simplethat he could start with.
For number two, with an earlyproduct success, he was able to
manufacture them at home, whichkept the overhead low.
(32:04):
Some people imagine starting outand becoming entrepreneurial to
be much grander than this, andit prevents them from finding
success.
Humble beginnings are almostalways the secret to great
successes.
And third, successes from thesimpler items created funding
(32:26):
for the more complex.
By selling the key, John createdhis opportunity to develop a
lane oil machine.
No doubt the lane oil machineswere capital-intensive in their
RD, as today they sell for fivefigures.
However, having a thrivingbusiness building the keys and
(32:48):
owning a bowling alley providedhim the money needed to do RD
and the lane oil machine.
And the takeaway here is thatpeople underestimate the
exponential potential of solvingproblems.
Each time you do it, you get anew level of capital to fund a
bigger problem that you cansolve.
(33:10):
To this day, while being a muchbigger company, Kegel continues
to research bowling lanesurfaces, topological effects,
lane oil chemistry, the physicalmechanics of players, and much
more.
They aren't done learning eventhough John Davis has passed.
You can hear the great respectDon has during our interview for
John Davis.
(33:30):
While he didn't say this to medirectly, Don talks about
getting to travel the world andholds the work he did in high
esteem.
By picking the right problem,John Davis gave many like Don
and other Kegel employees apurpose and allowed them to make
a contribution and be around asport they love on the daily.
And that in itself, givingpeople something that makes them
(33:53):
happy to do on the daily issomething to strive for.
Thank you to Don Agent forallowing me to interview him.
He was very kind to share hisexperiences with us on the
podcast, and we could not bemore grateful to be a bit of a
(34:24):
little bit of a little bit of alittle bit of a little bit.
(35:30):
I hope that we can keepimproving this.
What I'd like to do is build acommunity around this podcast of
engineers that are excited aboutthe problems they work on and
that can bounce ideas off oneanother.
In furtherance of that goal, I'dappreciate it if you had a
listen today.
If you're not already connectedwith me, go on to LinkedIn,
(35:50):
search the Engineering PassionExpress podcast or Brandon
Donnelly, find my profile, andsend me a LinkedIn request.
I will be posting notes andepisode updates and additional
topics on LinkedIn.
So if you connect with me there,that will help start our
community.
And at some point we'll figureout if there's additional
(36:12):
avenues that we can help shareour knowledge through.
The next episode is planned tolaunch in two weeks.
I hope that you subscribe tothis podcast and that you'll be
back for that episode.
It will continue on the topic ofpicking the right problem, but
rather than looking at a topicwhere John Davis focused in on a
(36:34):
very small, narrow industry, itwill be somebody who picked a
broad, overarching problem, butactually didn't succeed.
And we'll discuss where theymaybe went wrong, how they could
have tackled something ratherthan sort of leaving it where
they were.
I'll see you again on our nextjourney to the engineering
(36:57):
passion express.
Thank you for listening.
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