Latest / Force Tech Talks / Force Tech Talk Episode 24 Pt2: The Founder Story, with Mike Salmon (Part 2)
Transcript
- 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:35:05 Mike Salmon So welcome back. We're picking up the conversation again with Mike salmon, the founder of Force Technologies. If you've watched the first part, you know that we're getting into some real nitty gritty here, some interesting stories. Hey, you should see what's on the cutting room floor. But let's pick out the rest with Mike salmon. 00:00:35:07 - 00:01:02:16 Mike Salmon You know, you build something, whether it's furniture or whatever it might be, and it is delivered with to you with that one bit missing. That's it. I can't build this piece of earth. And it's that same principle, isn't it? I'm interested, and I don't think I've got time to go into this, but your comment about insufficient engineers. That's something I'm hearing quite a lot at the moment, and I'd love to pick that up probably another time with you on that. 00:01:02:19 - 00:01:33:15 Mike Salmon But equally the the the knowledge. I remember speaking to an engineering company that had to during a pandemic, reverse engineer. The some medical piece of equipment. There was not even any manuals left. Yeah. That's why they had to reverse engineer because we suddenly needed more of these. But there was no physical manuals anymore. So you've got the people not sufficient, the documentation not kept properly. 00:01:33:17 - 00:01:51:19 Mike Salmon Which is where I guess you guys become even more vital. We make a we make a point of always buying. When we see old data books, we buy them. We've got a huge library and we've got all the old data books. Now, what a lot of people don't realize is a lot of the data used to be held on Google and search engines. 00:01:51:24 - 00:02:07:15 Mike Salmon Okay. They take them off. They're not on them anymore. So we have people come and say, do you remember that part? And you go back and you look at a book that engineers would would recognize called it I see master. They would look in there and they go and they would say, oh, wait a minute, you could do that, do that. 00:02:07:21 - 00:02:33:09 Mike Salmon We we've got the information. We can photocopy the data books of the, of a part they want. Right. Which is getting rarer and rarer that they can actually find the information. Exactly. They've got an old circuit diagram with part numbers on these things that no one's ever heard of. And because I've been around for 40 odd years and designing for previous years of that, you know, I'd recognize something. 00:02:33:09 - 00:03:00:28 Mike Salmon I worked on Concorde, you know. Wow. And then some of the old radar planes and stuff like that. Wow. And a lot of we got 37 devices on the European fire aircraft. Okay, okay. That we've designed. Yeah. Which is such high tech. But it was it was designed in 1960 something really, you know. Oh, we got those. I remember selling you those back in 1996. 00:03:01:05 - 00:03:23:17 Mike Salmon I love it. And of course, that's a forever moving, you know, scale, isn't it? Is that I don't know, to me, 2000 still doesn't seem like very long ago. But then we reminded, no, it's 26 years ago. Well, that means that there's obsolescence considerations in the 2000 now already. Yeah. To into in like 1980 which always regarded as being not that long ago. 00:03:23:18 - 00:03:53:09 Mike Salmon I remember I remember having here then I don't think either of us could. Well I'm being optimistic. Yeah. Yeah. And you can actually go back and go. I remember that part, you know, and then some of these things are dire still being produced that were designed back in 1790. Yeah, I can believe it. You know, and we stock when we see something that was always valuable and it was always common. 00:03:53:11 - 00:04:16:04 Mike Salmon You know, we'll we'll buy 10,000 devices or 5000 devices in die form, which is always the cheapest part of a part of a device. And then we're stuck it. And then of course, you pay the price when you buy it. Yeah, yeah. And then storage with storage, for instance, customers come to us and they come to us and say, we want to stop this. 00:04:16:06 - 00:04:48:24 Mike Salmon This this part. Okay. For our new navigation system. Okay. We need to be able to cool off for 22 years so we don't mind dying the dive into 20 years, because obviously, you can't replicate the die that easy. Okay. But if they buy the die and put it in our stock, then when they come to say, oh, can I 5000 of those package parts, we can take the diet, put it in a package, assemble it, test it, give it to the customer, and the all is paying for. 00:04:49:01 - 00:05:10:10 Mike Salmon Okay. It's the bits around it. Yeah. Because he's already bought a die. Okay. And the testing, which we test, obviously for the for the part at the time they want it and that's, that's, that's why we just increased the Titan building to stock all this nitrogen storage stuff. Yeah, I remember paying for. Yeah, yeah, but it's got to be done. 00:05:10:11 - 00:05:27:27 Mike Salmon And, you know, if you put stuff in store there in stock, there's a lot of criteria you have to meet when you store it. Because when you pull that part at 20 years later, it's got to work. Yeah. Of it, if it's in a missile, for instance, you know, you can't say oh million missile missed because that gave in. 00:05:27:28 - 00:05:44:15 Mike Salmon You can't do that. It's got to be right. And we have certain programs that you take parts out and assemble them. Test them, you know, and you say, oh yeah, the five year old ones are okay. Yeah. So that's all part of sustainment. This is, you know, again, an analogy which will actually lead us nicely onto the. 00:05:44:17 - 00:06:09:19 Chris Dawes Next topic I want to cover is that yeah, you're saying about you store these, but you've got to look after them properly so that they work. It's the same as cars. People think, oh yeah, but it's been garage door these years. Doesn't mean that it's going to be okay. There are things that are still going to oxidize or whatever else it might be, and just rot away or eaten or things like that, and suddenly you go and get try to work on that car that's been sat in there for ten, 15, 20 years. 00:06:09:22 - 00:06:12:12 Chris Dawes It's when when I. 00:06:12:15 - 00:06:35:17 Mike Salmon Had a stroke, it wasn't that bad that I couldn't do anything. But by a restored a tail seven and a Morris minor traveler, which Karen wanted because I was going to cast my. So. Yeah. And I restored her traveler. Yeah. I'm British lady at the time. If it's more than a year old, you might as a friend of bin. 00:06:35:19 - 00:06:52:05 Mike Salmon Yeah, he's got bullet connectors. Oh, right. And then the seven is much better. And that's hers is 65 and 1973. So, yeah, it's a bit like that. They might have worked back in 19, 1980, but a bloody work. 00:06:52:05 - 00:07:02:27 Chris Dawes Now and but no, the key point with that is that you think oh yeah, but it's garage. So it's going to be okay. It's like, no, this is where you guys come in in terms of the way that you are storing these things. 00:07:02:29 - 00:07:06:00 Mike Salmon How to find you need to do reunification. 00:07:06:03 - 00:07:23:13 Chris Dawes Correct. People won't necessarily know this, but what I get to do professionally is commentate on motorsports. You were one of those people. And I must have. I'm sure I must have commentated on you at some point. You got to go racing it. That was one of your big passions. 00:07:23:16 - 00:07:55:17 Mike Salmon Yeah, I, I bought an old, Porsche SC, which I rode model, which was all right, but I completely turned that into a race car. And I said in the classic Porsche races. Wow. And I did that from 96. And then I just went up. I did that for a couple of years, and I did the the cup, which was in those days, things like the curtains and nine for fours. 00:07:55:19 - 00:08:17:09 Mike Salmon And that did that. And I was racing a GT, a Porsche, and it was one of the older Porsches. I thought that was quite well in that one of the oldest guys in the racing, I must admit, you know, but we had a little team, four guys and that. And so we were doing that racing around the UK and a few in Europe. 00:08:17:15 - 00:08:43:18 Mike Salmon Then I went to GT three, I bought GT3 and I raced in that and I came second in the championship with that. Oh wow. Which was never even heard of in my class. So yeah, that was good. And that was all across about 4 or 5 race a year in Europe and rest in UK. But you know, and then and then and I said to you before my pinnacle was I raced in the Super Cup at the 2001. 00:08:43:21 - 00:08:46:08 Mike Salmon Grand Prix, British Grand Prix. That was something else. 00:08:46:11 - 00:08:46:18 Chris Dawes Yeah. 00:08:46:19 - 00:09:17:10 Mike Salmon I bet I'm not running. No, of course, is that I did walk around the race circuit with the 200,000 people, with my race suit on for three days and not one person, not me for my autograph. I kept walking around with a suit on. It was really hot and nobody I was really upset about that. So yeah, I did that for a little while and then I, when I, when I got a little bit older, I decided that Porsches I'd had enough of Porsches. 00:09:17:16 - 00:09:40:28 Mike Salmon So I bought a, a touring car, a it was a 93 I think was a designation of the model, which was a 330 I. And then I put an M5 engineer and we did six, 12 and 24 hour races and did that for a few years. And then, yeah, it didn't do that well in that show. And I was starting to get old to think. 00:09:40:29 - 00:09:41:21 Chris Dawes Oh, okay. 00:09:41:22 - 00:09:49:10 Mike Salmon And starting to take my time a little bit more. Didn't have so much backing on on sponsorship then. Right. So I. 00:09:49:12 - 00:09:56:16 Chris Dawes And on that when you got sponsored by, I don't know whether we should say the name or not, but. 00:09:56:19 - 00:09:57:10 Mike Salmon A Porsche dealer. 00:09:57:11 - 00:10:04:27 Chris Dawes A Porsche dealer. Thank you. That's the safe way to say it. Because that you fitted into the slogan that they were using at the time. 00:10:04:28 - 00:10:31:09 Mike Salmon Yeah, it was, I was, I, I don't know what I would. I was in 2001, 655, something like that. Yeah. But, I was in the Portuguese. I was beating the young guys. So the fact that the slogan was at this day was that, you know, if a 55 year old can do this, well, that beating the youngsters, then you could have won. 00:10:31:10 - 00:10:36:17 Mike Salmon Yeah. And the implication was that, you know, if you had a portion you lost 30 years off your age. 00:10:36:18 - 00:10:38:18 Chris Dawes Absolutely. Exactly. 00:10:38:21 - 00:10:39:06 Mike Salmon Yes. 00:10:39:10 - 00:10:40:06 Chris Dawes That worked well. 00:10:40:06 - 00:11:01:24 Mike Salmon So I don't know how well they did, but they used to give me a car every year. Only for a year. Yeah. So they'd lend me one. A new car had come out and I would promote that or they would promote it. So yeah. And I bought, I bought my GT, three of them, because it was the first one to hit the country. 00:11:01:27 - 00:11:13:12 Chris Dawes Oh, to keep that one. Yeah, yeah. Another quick anecdote on the motorsport is that you beat some TV celebrities in when racing against them, the Top Gear. 00:11:13:18 - 00:11:36:12 Mike Salmon Oh yeah. Yeah. Something's going into six and 12 and 24 hour endurance racing. We actually entered the 24 hour race at that. What's in that top gear we're in? They were in the garage next to us, and they came. We were fighting with them for the 24 hours, you know, doing this. And eventually we got the cup and they didn't. 00:11:36:16 - 00:11:38:11 Chris Dawes Yeah, exactly. 00:11:38:13 - 00:11:47:05 Mike Salmon Which they're great guys. Real done to us guys. Yeah. Everyone knows people and we know about us to meet some of the top formula one drivers as well. 00:11:47:06 - 00:11:47:23 Chris Dawes Oh, nice. 00:11:47:24 - 00:11:53:19 Mike Salmon Yeah. Which was quite nice as well because you have all the tickets and you look good. You get what you like. Yeah. 00:11:53:22 - 00:11:55:25 Chris Dawes So what's your favorite circuit to race on? 00:11:55:27 - 00:12:00:12 Mike Salmon Oh, Silverstone. Really? Oh, yeah. I doubt there circuit in the world. 00:12:00:13 - 00:12:05:00 Chris Dawes Would you find it? It's interesting now because a lot of people say there's so much run off that it's quite sterile. 00:12:05:05 - 00:12:24:21 Mike Salmon They've all got that now. But the cars are so good. In fact my current car, which is quite a nice car I let my daughter to attract, I sat next to her. Yeah, but yeah, she told me quite a good little driver. Well then she said, well, perhaps I could do it. No, no, not not when you're about to have a baby. 00:12:24:23 - 00:12:35:00 Chris Dawes Yeah, you're probably not right. I've, I've driven a radical. Oh, yeah. GP circuit. And through that whole magnet. And Becketts bit is just ridiculous. 00:12:35:01 - 00:12:40:18 Mike Salmon The group, for once in his car. Yeah, that's one of the big engine. Was good for, group for. 00:12:40:21 - 00:12:52:19 Chris Dawes Yeah. Amazing. Amazing cars. Wrapping this one up then 40 years. Absolutely incredible. What do you see coming yet? Still yet to come. Well. 00:12:52:22 - 00:12:53:03 Mike Salmon For me. 00:12:53:04 - 00:12:55:00 Chris Dawes Or false technologies. 00:12:55:01 - 00:13:26:12 Mike Salmon Oh, force. As I say, it will incorporate a whole raft of opportunities in terms of assembly test applications, but not not like it has been, which is basically a distributor. And then a very small manufacturer. Don't think we'll never get into manufacturing in terms of diamonds factoring. We do some A6 stuff. We do replication using flash stuff or whatever is available. 00:13:26:15 - 00:13:45:16 Mike Salmon But it will come back to this offering, a solution to a problem. It's going to always be, you know, and if someone can come to us and say, this is my problem, then I think in in all the industry, there aren't many people that can do that. Some people can do that, some people can do that, some people can do this. 00:13:45:16 - 00:13:49:28 Mike Salmon But at the end of the day, no one can go and say, just give me your problem. 00:13:50:05 - 00:13:50:29 Chris Dawes No. 00:13:51:01 - 00:14:08:27 Mike Salmon You know, which is the easy thing for these project managers to do. Oh, I got a problem. Give it to false. If they can't come back with it, then we've got redesign the whole system. But. But we're still in the process of telling people what we can do and then believing it. 00:14:08:29 - 00:14:11:24 Chris Dawes Which is amazing after 40 years still having to do that. 00:14:11:27 - 00:14:31:01 Mike Salmon I know, I know, it's because of complacency. Yeah. These guys don't want to look elsewhere, you know, that's why they buy the Chinese stuff. Because it's there. Someone says, oh, you used to buy that for £10. It's now £3. Oh, I'd have that. Not the cost of what it's going to cost you. It's false. In other. 00:14:31:01 - 00:14:31:19 Chris Dawes Words. 00:14:31:22 - 00:14:32:24 Mike Salmon Stuff that don't work or. 00:14:32:24 - 00:14:33:11 Chris Dawes Stuff. 00:14:33:13 - 00:15:00:24 Mike Salmon Blows up after three minutes. Still there. The the the actual discipline is gone the wrong way, is still with buyers to place an order. And that's wrong. It's they. There should be a lot more than that. And we're seeing that now. We we don't talk a lot to buyers. We talk a lot to project managers and and people who are in control of buying an airplane. 00:15:00:27 - 00:15:01:12 Chris Dawes Yeah. 00:15:01:19 - 00:15:10:01 Mike Salmon Because then they realize, oh, we can't ship that airplane of $30 million because we haven't got an answer to that ten, $10 part. 00:15:10:05 - 00:15:27:27 Chris Dawes Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I'm assuming even things like operational aircrafts is that if they're sat on the ground because they can't be used, that's costing a fortune every single day. Yeah. And the big thing that's jumping out at me there then, is that it shouldn't be on the buyers to have all the answers. That's where you it's where you come in. 00:15:28:01 - 00:15:33:03 Chris Dawes You've got the answers. Understand that problem and you can come up with a solution to it. 00:15:33:04 - 00:15:54:08 Mike Salmon Because buyers just see himself as buyers. They've got a standard price. That's what they got on me. Right. And they won't buy that part because it's a dollar more than the standard price. Yeah, it's a $25 million airplane sitting on the runway. The Irish and I could never understand why I think it's moving, but it's always been like that. 00:15:54:10 - 00:15:56:28 Mike Salmon It's always been wrong. Yeah. You know. 00:15:57:00 - 00:16:05:15 Chris Dawes A couple of things to just quickly touch on then I don't know what this is. So I'm going to just throw it out there. Sovereign supply. What's that. 00:16:05:17 - 00:16:17:29 Mike Salmon I don't want really to go through much with Karen, who's now the CEO of course. But basically we feel from some of our customers there's always some problems in the world. 00:16:18:06 - 00:16:18:21 Chris Dawes Okay. 00:16:18:22 - 00:16:20:15 Mike Salmon And we can't say too much about that. 00:16:20:17 - 00:16:21:21 Chris Dawes No let's not. 00:16:21:22 - 00:16:42:18 Mike Salmon But without me thinking what I really think. And I think what's happening is that people are looking at they want to bring these hours, not, you know, sale get parts done. And over here and over there, and they want it all in how they want to know that there's a guy down the road that cares what he's doing. 00:16:42:21 - 00:16:51:00 Mike Salmon We'll do it. Okay. And he doesn't have to worry about someone increasing the tariffs or someone stopping a design. 00:16:51:01 - 00:16:56:04 Chris Dawes External impact. Yeah I get that anti-counterfeiting. There's another big, big issue. 00:16:56:05 - 00:17:20:18 Mike Salmon Well, yeah, by having correct testing facilities or knowing, I mean, we can get stuff tested wherever, whatever country want to go to. So the technology is always available. So if you could bring down as well as put in your stock and your testing and everything else all together. Yeah. They only got to worry about it's making it work. 00:17:20:21 - 00:17:26:28 Mike Salmon Not if he doesn't like you and he's going to stop you buying from the States or whatever. You know who's to say. 00:17:26:29 - 00:17:36:24 Chris Dawes Or not allowed. But they've been stopped from or whatever. Yeah, I know it's it's constantly evolving. I mean, it sounds like there's still so much of this story yet to be written. 00:17:36:28 - 00:18:04:29 Mike Salmon I've done a lot in my life. I'm really have done everything about toys, and I've managed to do everything, and I've got a fabulous family and we don't quite new grandchild and everything hunky dory, really. And it's nice to see it. And it's. She's doing Karen. She's doing everything I know is right. It's she's more prone to taking a risk than I ever was. 00:18:05:01 - 00:18:27:18 Mike Salmon And what she's going to be announcing in the next month or so is fantastic. And it's going to meet everything that that this, this country's contractors need. And we can we can feel it. You can feel. Oh, is that coming from now? Is that doing that or is it going to be always because he could change his mind in a minute. 00:18:27:19 - 00:18:30:19 Mike Salmon This is unknown person. Yes. 00:18:30:22 - 00:18:31:27 Chris Dawes Don't do it. 00:18:31:29 - 00:18:42:04 Mike Salmon He could stop the American, the semiconductor industry. They can say no more defense or aerospace products coming out of the US or whatever countries. 00:18:42:06 - 00:18:44:15 Chris Dawes Yeah, don't give it away. 00:18:44:17 - 00:18:46:13 Mike Salmon You must finish going to do that. 00:18:46:16 - 00:18:58:03 Chris Dawes Yeah, I know, I know. And of course, what I will pick up on is by the time this one goes out, that announcement may have already been out there as well, which is really exciting. It still won't. We won't take the risk and get you talking about it. 00:18:58:03 - 00:18:59:12 Mike Salmon But it's my life's worth. 00:18:59:13 - 00:19:30:27 Chris Dawes Yeah. No, don't. I'm not going to get you in trouble. Mike, honestly, we could keep talking forever and ever, and I'm already in trouble because we've gone on longer than I was supposed to. But there's so much more we could chat about. It's been absolutely wonderful to hear all these stories, both personally. Your sales, your engineering backgrounds, the risks that you've taken, the enthusiasm that is still there, the family involvement, the pride that runs through every member of the team, clearly of everything that you do and how it's helping people. 00:19:30:28 - 00:19:33:00 Chris Dawes It's inspiring as well as. 00:19:33:03 - 00:19:34:10 Mike Salmon Managers to come and say, this. 00:19:34:10 - 00:19:35:19 Chris Dawes Is your your life. 00:19:35:23 - 00:19:47:25 Mike Salmon Yeah. And I have been asked if I write a book, and I did start writing all the salient points of my life. Yeah, yeah. And I'm saying, yeah, I've done a lot. I have done an awful lot. You it. 00:19:47:25 - 00:19:49:18 Chris Dawes Is brilliant. It's the way it should be, isn't it? 00:19:49:19 - 00:19:50:10 Mike Salmon Yeah, yeah. 00:19:50:12 - 00:20:15:06 Chris Dawes Listen, Mike, honestly, I can't thank you enough. Thanks. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for that. So I hope you've enjoyed catching up with the founder, the director of engineering of Force Technologies. It's why this was going to be so much fun is that I didn't know all these details before we started speaking. I hope you've enjoyed it, and we'll see you next time on the next episode of Force Tech Talks. 00:20:15:12 - 00:20:15:29 Chris Dawes Thank you. 00:20:16:01 - 00:20:16:21 Mike Salmon Thank you.