Entrepreneur and aviator Dick Smith's secrets to resilience

Dick Smith is one of Australia's most prolific entrepreneurs and businessmen. Starting his first business at just 24, he found that one of Australia's most beloved electronics retailers, Dick Smith Electronics. But for every success came multiple failures, with dicturning each of those lows into an opportunity to learn and grow. I'm Richard the Crapney, and this is fly. More than just one of our most recognisable businessmen, Dick Smith is an aviator, philanthropist, adventurer, and world record holder. In this episode, I never thought I'd ever be able to fly helicopter. But from that day on until today, I've had this magic carpet to be able to fly twice around the world by helicopter to fly to the north pole by helicopter and just think what a wonderful machine. I go one-on-one with Dick Smith to find out more about his resilience through the many trials he's faced during his life. A lot of people who had been resilient, suffered hardship in their life. They weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth. And in reading your excellent biography, which I'll be talking about later, you've said you've got a nine minute attention span. So can we have more than nine minutes today, perhaps? Well, we'll see how we go. It's fantastic to be here, by the way. You said when you were young, you had a speech defect, you weren't very good at learning, hopeless at sport, couldn't learn the times table, bad hat and writing. You said, I'm a bit of a nut, but I'm good at the practical things. And you look at the way your whole life went. From that beginning, you have achieved the most remarkable things. Do you have a thought about that? I think I've been incredibly lucky. Number one, I won the lottery of life. I was born in Australia in Sydney, the biggest capital city in 1944. And to be born at that date and to have lived through the times, I've never had to go to war. I just missed out on the compulsory ballot for Vietnam. And I was starting my business and making lots of money when my friends were a year younger, were in Vietnam. So I've been very fortunate. Now you had jobs when you were at home, but one thing to change your life and perspective was the scouts. And you said that the scouts taught you how to take risks and particularly leadership. Yeah, I think it's the greatest youth leadership organisation in the world is Boy Scouts. And the amazing thing is that it's all basically voluntary. The leaders I had, my scout leaders, all were there for free. Talk about incredible. And the amazing thing is that many of them had come back from the Second World War where talk about risk taking. I mean, one of them flew bombers from England over Germany at night and imagine living through that in effect. So they encouraged what I call responsible risk taking. They allowed us to take risk. I remember just in a simple way, the scout master had, he was a builder and he had a truck and he had put 30 scouts on the back of the truck and take us to the scout camp in the Blue Mountains. Now today, no such thing like that would be allowed. There wasn't a seatbelt in sight. But we were allowed to take risks and that taught me responsible risk taking, which has helped me so far in my life. It'd be married to Pip for 56 years and you have two wonderfully respected, successful independent daughters, a wonderful family with Hailey and Jenny. And you mentioned that when you were married, you bought a $60 ring to give to Pip. Are you still wearing that ring? Yeah. Pip still got it, but I did buy it later. After we married, I think nearly 50 years are slightly bigger diamond because I thought that was pretty small, the one for $60. But look, what people don't realize, they look at someone who's sort of a millionaire known for being well off and they think, obviously, that person had a plan to become a millionaire. But in fact, I had no such plan because I didn't have any qualifications. I would have loved to have gone to union, got qualifications, but for some reason, I wasn't able to do that. And so I thought I'll start my own business and the plan was to have a small car radio business employing two or three people. And that was going to be the height of success. I had no understanding that it was going to become very successful. And in the end, I think Dick Smith electronics employed over 1,000 people and did over a billion dollars turn over. So that was a huge shock to me. Now, to try and put you quickly into perspective, I just want to look at some of the mantras that have been sort of the values for how you run your life. First one is honesty. One of the most important drivers of success. Yes, the reason honesty is an important success force is that to be successful, you have to surround yourself with capable people, another one of the successful sources, surround yourself with capable people. But if they detect any dishonesty, they'll be dishonest to you. And so right at the start, I remember saying I'd put you staff on and we had a problem with people stealing stuff as many businesses do. And I said, look, if you see me doing something dishonest, discuss it with me. And if you don't get an honest answer, go straight to the police because that's what I'll be doing with you. So I made it absolutely clear that we were running an honest business and that meant the whole thing could work properly. I've never yet seen a really successful person who's dishonest. Maybe you can do it in a little way and steal a little bit. But if you want to surround yourself with capable people, you have to show that you're honest. And I was very fortunate to be asked to your idea of birthday party. And I saw friends going back to your twenties that have all remained closest friends. Yes. And you would say they've all been honest and you're loyal to each other. And it can show that your friends have lasted your whole life. Yes. I don't fall out with people. There's no one who I've ever worked with that I don't can't talk to you now. I've never fallen out with people. Sometimes it hasn't worked out. I put someone on and I normally try for six months. And I've had to be tough enough to say, look, this is not working. It's not working. You're not going to have a successful career here and it's not going to be good for the business. But I've still remained in many ways friends with those people because they knew that I was honest enough to say it's not working. Let's go our own ways. All right. Now the next really important one comes from the Scouts. Be prepared. Be prepared. Incredibly important. Now it's funny. It's two words which I learnt from the very first days. Be prepared. Be paid and powerfully. He started the Scout movement. And in my book, I insisted to the publisher that I left in a reasonably short chapter about how I nearly died because I wasn't prepared. What I decided to do was walk across to the west of Sydney. There's quite a wilderness area in the Colo River area. And I decided I'd do a bushwalk across it in one weekend. And I'd plan for the whole walk to only be done in good weather. But when I got to the start of the walk, the weather changed and it started raining and we got misplaced or lost. The map dissolved. And I'd been taught by my scanning movement. If ever you go bushwalking, put your map in a waterproof container or cover. Waterproof cover. The map dissolved. We got misplaced. We ended up. We're supposed to finish the walk on the Sunday by Sunday night. We had to lie down in sopping, sleeping bags. The three of us, myself and my two mates. And I thought if it gets below freezing tonight, we're all going to die of exposure. We'll be dead. And I couldn't believe it at 5am in the morning. Suddenly you had a bit of light. And I remember tapping Rob Palant beside me and he murmured. And then John Webby website tapped him and he murmured. And I thought we're alive. I can't believe it. But that point on, I nearly lost the lives of myself and my two friends because I wasn't prepared for bad weather. And for ever since, I've always been prepared. And that's one of the reasons I'm still alive. Because when you read the book about all your journeys, particularly around the North and South poles, your preparation must have been intense. And you covered all these different, you've talked to different people in countries, different countries, you're preparing all the fuel supplies, all the what-ifs, amazing preparation. And so if people think you would just set off on your journeys without any preparation or the fences that will be totally wrong. Look, I've always believed that everything will go wrong. And I remember I was with another adventurer in Antarctica. And he said to me, Dick, you're not a real adventurer. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, you think everything will go wrong. And I said, well, that's why I'm alive. And so I'd get an envelope and write down all the things that can go wrong. And how do you reduce risk? And one of the ways of reducing risk, I've always had the best aircraft. I've done five flights around the world at low level, sometimes in atrocious weather conditions. But I sort of owe my life to North American technology, because you get the best North American, that's American and Canadian aircraft. And they are fortunately very reliable. There are many times in my adventures, adventures that if I had an engine failure, being in single-engine aircraft, mostly I wouldn't be here. It's all very well. I had a life jacket and a life raft. But to have an engine failure over the North Atlantic in a storm, it's very unlikely you're going to live. And you've never needed outside assistance or rescue, with all your travels. Amazing. Five flights around the world and two quite risky balloon flights, one across Australia and the other one from New Zealand to Australia. I've never had to call out search and rescue. Now, I've always been prepared. I've always had a survival beacon with me, and in later flights we've had things like spider tracks or GPS positioning system. But I'm absolutely amazed that I've never had to call for rescue. And I've never had people having to search for me. A lot of luck. And also the fact that I've had such reliable aircraft. And you're flying down near the Antarctica, where it's near the magnetic South Pole, where normal compasses don't work. And then one of those trips, the Amiga, which is a radio navigation system, that failed. I've never actually heard of Amiga's failing. I thought they were pretty reliable. Yes, what they can do is they can jump a lane. And I'll quickly tell you the story because it was absolutely frightening. I'd planned to fly. No one had ever flown from Australia to Antarctica, to Antarctica, our Australian territory. And so my plan was to take off early in the morning from Hobart, fly all day, and land on the ice in Antarctica. But what happened? We couldn't get the weather window. And finally, the Met Bureau said, "Look, if you take off on this particular Saturday night and you fly all night, you'll be able to land in the morning." And so I decided to take that risk because normally it's safer to fly in the daylight, the night time. So we flew all night across the Great Southern Ocean. And about 3 a.m. in pitch darkness, the Amiga system said that aircraft was turning. And instead of heading south, we were turning and heading north. Now, if that was so, that would have been to our deaths because we would have ran out of fuel over the Great Southern Ocean. Luckily, well, first of all, we look for the stars and couldn't see them. And so we turned on the landing lights and we were in a snow storm. So we climbed to get above the cloud. We got to 18,000 feet, no extra oxygen. So we could hardly think properly, but still in the cloud. We had to then descend to get a bit of oxygen so we could think. And eventually we came out of the cloud. Fantastic. There's all the stars in front of me. I look around because of my boy scout training. I knew how to find the south from the Southern Cross, but there was no Southern Cross. Luckily, with the Twin Otter Aircraft, you can put your head forward and look back. And I eventually found the Southern Cross. And I worked out that what had happened, the Omega system had jumped a track, which they can do. And so we had to ignore the instrument. We'd only churned about 15 degrees, not 180 degrees. Then the sun came up over the bottom of the world, the midnight sun, once you get to the Antarctic Circle. The problem was we were right over the South magnetic pole. So the compass was completely useless. When the sun came up, I had a sun compass. I was able to get my very accurate heading. And I worked out that we were only 15 degrees. Of course, and eventually Casey Basin Antarctic had a beacon. And we honed in on the beacon. We landed on the ice. No skis. We just had tires. And we were worried the aircraft might turn over. But it landed, went from about 150 metres and stopped dead. We then fitted the skis and spent five weeks in Antarctica. But this is interesting. I've been on, I've been in command of 380s, where the co-pilot didn't know how to identify the Southern Cross or certainly to find South. So these are skills that you have that even commercial pilots don't have. I think everyone should know how to find South and the Southern Cross. But so you went back to basics and that saved you. I never thought when I learned in the scouts, I think it was in the cubs at about 10 years of age that I'd need to use this to save my life. Now my co-pilot was an experienced Antarctic pilot, but he was from England. And all his Antarctic flying was in summer time. So he'd never seen the Southern Cross. He knew where the North Star was, but it was so fortunate that that training I got is a cab. I mean the scout movement has had an incredible effect on my life and it's one of the reasons I'm alive. Now you say you're a skeptic, but I think a lot of the reason for that is because you're a helicopter pilot. Because I remember, you said you did 56 hours of flying training, instruction to fly helicopter, which I take that with the highest of respect. Because when I did my helicopter conversion, I realized it was learning a hundred ways to kill you without trying. And if you look at any helicopter pilot in flight, they're always looking down, because that's where they think they're going to go. And they get uncomfortable at altitude. So I think the chronic RNAs that we have starts from at least flying these helicopters that really probably shouldn't fly, but through amazing technology can, and you can do amazing things with them. So, you know, from your background of saying you weren't very good at school, you're bringing in all of these skill sets that are at the top of your field in aviation. Yes, look, it changed my life to get into helicopters. A helicopter is a magic carpet. It's the ultimate off-road vehicle. And I never thought I'd ever be able to fly a helicopter. And what one day I was jammed at a country airport in bad weather, because I never thought I'd be able to get an instrument rating to fly in cloud. And this helicopter came in and landed, and everything else was grounded. I walked over the pilot and I said, "How come you're flying in this bad weather?" I said, "Is this helicopter instrument rated?" And he said, "No." He said, "With a helicopter, you just fly under the cloud. And if ever it gets too low, you land and have a cup of tea with somebody." Now, if you knew me, that I thought, "That's what I need. I need a helicopter." And I remember I got back in those days, I was just building up Dick Smith electronics and making a bit of money. And I rang up Bell helicopters and ordered a helicopter. It did take three weeks to learn to fly it. But from that day on until today, I've had this magic carpet to be able to fly twice around the world by helicopter to fly to the North Pole by helicopter and just think what a wonderful machine. And to spend so much to acknowledge that you need that training, not to be overconfident, get that skill set in training is a great part, I think, of why you've survived all your travel around the world. But also remember, I did my licence in 56 hours, I think, something like that. But that's just a licence to learn. Yes, you get your licence, but wow, with a helicopter, when I flew around the world, I think I'd done about 500 hours. And I'd say, that's the minimum for anyone to be relatively competent. I haven't told many people this, but when I first got into the helicopter and I was learning to fly, I couldn't hover it. It would, it would go sideways and leftwards and it would, and I said to my instructor, are there some people who can't learn? And luckily, he lied to me. He said, no, Dick, you'll get it in the end, everyone can learn. I found out later that some of my wealthy friends have tried to learn to fly helicopters and just couldn't get the knack of it. It's like trying to learn to ride a one-wheel bike, a unicycle, on a greasy surface plate. Now, I've never done that, but it's quite difficult. The amazing thing is if you've got the knack from your balance glands to just move that cyclic the centre control, just fractionally, you can end up now and I come in land here, I can sit the helicopter on a six-pence. No problems at all. A TV crew went to the air force base of Wagar when we were learning to fly helicopters and they're watching us coming into the Hobbit of Land and one of the chaps lost control and nearly took out the camera crew so they packed up and ran away. So, yes, of course, it's very hard to learn to Hobbit. But in terms of just landing and being nice, you've just reminded me that when I was flying helicopters up to Sydney to go to one of the military command headquarters with a general on board, we got caught because there was fog on the ground so we couldn't actually land at the Victoria barracks in Sydney. So we're hovering around the really round Terry Hills. You heard a helicopter and you called up on the frequency and said, "Hi, would you like to come and land here and have a cup of tea?" I can't remember that. Everywhere with a general on board. Did you come in and land or what happened? Well, no, just as you said that, the fog was rising and we managed to go and land at Victoria barracks, but I've always remembered that. I mean, here, you're just such a naturally friendly person which brings in all kinds of other opportunities towards your resilience. And so because you are now, you're introduced people. Here's the question. When you go and sit on an aeroplane and there's a stranger next to you, do you introduce yourself? Oh, yes, I do because people look at me and many people recognize me instantly. And I've just been overseas in Switzerland and I can't believe how many Australians there travel here because wherever I got on a station or in a cable car, there'd be someone wanting to get a selfie. And I thought, "I can't believe number one, there's so many Aussies overseas and so many can recognize me." But yes, normally, if I sit beside someone and someone looks at me, I can see them thinking, "Who's that? I know who it is. I just can't look at out." So I put my hand forward and said, "Dixmith, great to meet you." Even when I was flying as a pilot, I would walk around and talk to the passengers because every passenger, every person on an aeroplane is a story, waiting a few in a real conference. And so yes, by saying hello to the person next to you and just being open and friendly, you meet the most amazing people. Absolutely. And as you know, one of my main success forces that I've mentioned in my book is asking advice. That one of the reasons I've been able to achieve some success is because I've never had any problems in asking advice. And I remember, at one stage, I became the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority. And the bureaucrats would come and do these presentations, and that'd be using lots of letters. And I asked, "What do those letters stand for?" And after that bureaucrat left, my deputy chairman said, "Dick, I can't believe that you were gay enough to ask that because we didn't know what it means." But it would look as if we're ignorant by asking. So if I can advise anyone, the successful, so surround yourself with capable people and ask advice. But one thing about asking advice, you'll actually get a lot of wrong advice. So you have to use common sense to decide which is most likely to be correct. And that's how you'll do okay. And if you do ask someone for advice or someone to help, they will often invariably give it. But people will be very happy to help if you just ask. I think this attitude is critical to both the healthy life, healthy commerce and ultimately resilience. Now, you did your first solo flight in 1972, and then only 16 years later, you were the chairman of CASA. That is pretty astounding development in aviation. And you were notable when you were chairman because you wanted to bring in this concept of affordable safety. So we're talking about resilience. Then we're talking about affordable safety. Can you explain that? Yeah. Look, I was really just, I wanted the public to know the truth. And that is that in aviation, like everything else, that safety cost money. And you mentioned I bought in affordable safety. In fact, what I did was I communicated to the public that safety is limited by what society can afford. And we don't do every safety improvement. Imagine if you could put an ejection seat in every one's seat in a 747, if the four engines filed, which it could very minute chance of that happening, you could eject and parachute down into a life raft. Now, that would make it slightly safer, but it would make the air tickets unaffordable. So what I found out is I became chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, that the rules, the regulations are written around affordability. So I said we should tell people this because it's the truth. Now you can imagine it was, first of all, the media didn't understand it. And politically, they linked me talking about affordable safety with less safety. They said he must be talking of left safety if you're going to mention the cost, whereas I'd rather just tell the truth. And when I was chairman, I made a number of really important reforms. And one of them was, which have saved us hundreds of millions of dollars, and that meant more people can fly because the air tickets are not as expensive. At the time when I was chairman back in about 1990 or something like that, we had to do a complete certification for Australia for all new aircraft. So if you wanted to bring a Boeing 747 into Australia, Australia would send airworthiness people to Seattle, and they'd inspect the aircraft, and they'd come up with modifications to make it suitable to fly in Australia. And one of the modifications was the flight data recorder, which had a sampling rate of a certain number, Australia decided that no, we had to be different. We needed a greater sampling rate. Now, yes, it would make it minutely safer, immeasurably small, but it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for each aircraft. So when I was chairman, I managed to change the regulations. I got Ron Yates, who was an ex chief executive of Qantas, he did the Yates report, which said, no, Dixmyth is right, the International Civil Aviation Organization doesn't say every country has to have its own certification. It says that they can accept standards from other countries. So we managed to get the certification from five countries, things like the UK, France, the United States, Canada, to be accepted in Australia. So that meant there was a paperwork, or of course doing all the paperwork, but we didn't have to modify aircraft to meet some unique Australian standards, and that saved us a lot of money. And that aviation safety is all ultimately about risk and identifying it, rating it, and living with it and accepting it. And you were an expert at that, because in your aviation life, you have done five trips around the world, some in helicopters. You've broken multiple records. You broke the first world record for flying a helicopter around the world, easterly around the world, around the equator. And then you also did the first piloting from South Pole to North Pole around the world. And these were extremely high risk ventures, but you managed that risk and you came back alive. What lessons have you learned from taking on those high risk activities? Well, I got the best advice. I just asked advice. And for example, when I did the first solo helicopter flight around the world, I found that two Swiss pilots, really professional high-time Swiss pilots had flown the Atlantic by helicopter, the two of them. And so I contacted them. And I spoke to them, I said, "What advice can you give me?" And they said, "Well, by the safest aircraft in the world, when it comes to single engine, which is all I could afford." And that was the Bell Jet Ranger. And then someone said, "Dick, did you know that Bell get 50 engines a time for Allison?" And they come with all the specifications. So after I made the decision to fly around the world, I contacted Bell and I said, "Look, I'm planning this flight around the world, solo. No one had ever flown a helicopter around the world at that time. Could you pick the best engine, the one with the best specific fuel consumption, that had the coolest operating temperature?" And they agreed to. And then I went to the factory where the fuselage was about to be fitted out. And I asked them, "Could I put a notice on the fuselage saying this helicopter is going to attempt the first around the world flight?" And they agreed to that. And what's more, I said, "Would there be any chance of me talking to the workers who are going to build the helicopter?" And they said, "Yes." And so at lunchtime, they got everyone together. There was about 100 people in this room. And I stood up and I said, "My name's Dick Smith. I'm from Australia. I'm a relatively low-time helicopter pilot. I think I'd done about 600 hours. I said, "I'm going to attempt the first flight around the world and you'll be building my helicopter. Can you put double-care in it?" Because my life is going to depend on you. And I'm going to be over big ocean crossings where there's no way to auto-rotate if the engine fails. If I break down in really remote places, it's going to be really hard to get it fixed if ever. And they all clapped and cheered and thought it was fantastic and they did do this special work on it. And so that's what I talk about minimizing risk or managing risk. People couldn't believe that I'd spoken to the builders of the helicopter before I left. Didn't cost any more, but it was one of the reasons maybe with the five flights I've never had to call out emergency services. Now you're making a comment about the World War II pilots before. And I saw read a book about them where maybe 30% wouldn't come home from a mission. And the question was, how do the pilots talk to each other at the message night? Knowing that 30% won't be there the next night. And one of the views was, well, we regard ourselves as dead. We've already died and now let's go and do the job. Now in talking about the risk of what you did, you had a sentence where you said, "My desire for adventure is a deep-seated need for challenge and the adrenaline pumping excitement that risk-taking gives." So there are these two sides to it. How do you manage the adrenaline with the need to also survive? Yeah. Look, it's really hard to answer because if you had said to me as a young person that one day I was going to attempt to fly around the world solo in a single engine helicopter, I would have never believed it. It's not as if I had some plan. I didn't even know I'd ever be able to fly. And so I find it difficult to answer the question, why did I do that? I must have bought the helicopter and thought, what a fantastic machine. And I think my plan originally was to pick one up in the USA and fly home to Australia. And I remember getting the globe out and looking and thinking, if I put a big tank in the back of the helicopter where the passengers normally go, I could get about 600 nautical miles. That's about 1200 kilometers of range. And I remember looking, "Oh, there's Iceland and Greenland. I could get across the Northern Atlantic. Then I could get down to Australia." The big problem was getting across the Pacific Ocean. But I thought at least I can get two-thirds of the way. And so the plan was initially just to come to Australia. And then one of my mates said to me, "Wow, if you can fly from America to Australia, why don't you go around the world?" No one's ever done that before. And for some reason I decided I'd do that. Now, I'd done one flight over water. I'd flown from Australia to Lord Howe Island, about 300 nautical miles. And it's interesting. I quite liked it. It's like an addiction. I knew it was risky, but I managed the risk by having the most reliable engine that I could get. And I did have a life jacket. I had a little life raft sitting beside me, so I thought a helicopter, some people think that if the engine fails, it crashes. No, it's supposed to auto-rotate. It's like a glide. And the advantage of a helicopter is you can land on the water, or on the land at almost zero speed. The disadvantage is in a helicopter most of the weight is up high. And so the helicopter will roll over very quickly. So you'll be pushing the door open underwater probably and then trying to get your life raft out. But that was the idea. And I knew that the chance of the engine failing was incredibly small. And so that's gave me the idea of flying initially to Australia. And then as it happened in the end to fly right around the world to be the first solo pilot to do it. Now, when you were doing that first flight around the world, you had to refill from a ship near the bearing sea. Yes. And you had to land on that. You had to find a ship. You made your own navigation aid to find the ship. It was bad weather. And it was risky. Now, what would you think if one of your daughters came up to you and said, Dad, I want to do a similar trip? I would be against it. Look, it's the riskiest thing I'd ever done. When I planned the flight around the world, solo in the helicopter, I thought Russia will allow me to land. So I can go from Japan to Russia, then across to Alaska. Quite short distances. I'm sure they will allow me to land. I even took out the Russian ambassador in Canberra for dinner. And he was enthusiastic and said, he'd do what he could. As a backup, what I told Bell helicopters, because no one had ever attempted to fly helicopter around the world at the time, I said, he said, how are you going to get across the Pacific Ocean? It's impossible. And I told them, I said, I'm going to land on a ship between Japan and Alaska. Now, I actually thought I'd never have to do that. I thought, for sure, it was the time of the Cold War, but I thought, look, in the end, Russia will allow me to land. But they wouldn't. The military said, no way. It appears later that that's where they had lots of radar and security. So I had to land on a ship. The problem was, and I say it's the riskiest thing I've ever done in my whole life and the fact that I got away with it. And that's the reason I wouldn't encourage my daughter or anyone to do it, is that that place you needed June to get the longest day. So you could fly what was it about 1200 nautical miles in one day. That's a long way for a helicopter. But the ship, you have fog in June. And the ship ran into fog. And so I've left Japan. I'm past my point of low return. I haven't got enough fuel to get back to Japan. And the ship calls up and says, we're in fog. You won't be able to land. Now, I looked to my left and I could see across the cloud a volcano sticking out of the cloud. And I knew that was in Russian territory, which I couldn't. I'm not allowed to fly in. So I headed towards it. And I remember, I called a high flying airline. And I said, this is a pan message. It's not a May day. But I said, I'm a helicopter trying to fly around the world. I'm heading for a ship. The ship's running to bed, whether I'm can you tell the Australian authorities I'm heading to a volcano in Russia. Luckily for me, about 10 minutes later, the ship calls back and said, look, with the fog's lifting, we think you can get in. So I take the greatest risk of my life. I'm above eight eighths of cloud. I descend through the cloud. And I wondered when's the cloud going to end? Luckily at about 800 feet, I came out of the cloud. And then I could see a little dot miles away. And I couldn't believe it. I had a beacon that I'd made up to home in on the ship because there was no GPS in those days. And the ship didn't exactly know where it was. People said, where was the ship waiting? No, it was just a cargo ship going from Japan to Seattle. So I had to time my take off to land on the ship halfway between Japan and Alaska. Anyway, to cut along, sorry, short, unbelievable. I just got to the ship. I'd never landed on a ship before in my life. I landed and I'd allowed one hour for refueling. And then another six hours to Alaska to getting just before nightfall. But because the ship was rolling, I'm not allowed for the fact that the fuel would come out of the fuel cap. It's on the side of a jet ranger. So we'd have to put the cap back in and wait for the ship to roll back again. So I took two hours to refuel not one hour. So I took off from the ship, luckily just missing the decas I took off because the helicopter was about 20% over gross weight. I had a special approval because I was doing this attempt. And I headed towards Alaska and I thought I'm going to get there after dark and finding a little US island in the dark wouldn't be good. But I picked up a tailwind. Sometimes you can be lucky. And I ended up making up that extra hour and I landed at this secret air force space at the end of the illusion chain, having done I think about 14 hours of flying a huge distance flying further than from Sydney to Auckland all in one day in a little tiny helicopter. So I was lucky to get away with it. I'd never do something like that again. And let me tell you the hindsight of the story was, if I'd flown to Russia exactly three months later, that Korean jet, the Korean 007 jet, it got shot down with 300 passengers or killed by the Russians in the same air space. So they wouldn't even allow an airliner to fly there. I don't know what they would have done when my helicopter arrived. And you have been absolutely resilient in your corporate life as well. With at least eight companies you were formed, including Dick Smith electronics, Dick Smith wholesale, Australian geographic, Dick Smith foods, and even charity events that raised a hundred million dollars for charity, which was the Berk to Berktown bash. So what is a secret to your corporate resilience? Now look, it's interesting. The media call me a serial entrepreneur and they're pretty right. Because I love building something up, but I've looked back. I don't like running it when it's there sort of things. I like the excitement of creating it. I like it when I was resilient in the early days of Dick Smith electronics because I had a large amount of stock stolen. And the advice was to put the business into liquidation closer down. And that's where I think I was resilient. Luckily, I met an accountant who said, look, Dick, no, he's a solicitor. He said, Dick, you could go into receivership and trade the business out. And I think I thought, well, that's what I'll do. In that resilience, you just keep battling. And my plan was to trade the business out of receivership and then pay back the money and close the business down. Because I thought it's not going to make any money. The incredible thing was in trading it out of receivership, that was the electronics company that I sold to Woolworth for over 20 million dollars about six years later. So if ever there is a God and I'm not religious, I certainly got the right answer for doing the right thing. So to me, I love creating a business. I love when things are going wrong and you have to get there. I remember with Dick Smith Foods, we'd run it for about five or six years. And I thought, what's the future? And I got a person to do a study and they said, look, it's basically going to have to close down. You'll not get enough Australians who are afford to pay more money for Australia to make it viable. And that motivated me. So I ran it then for about another five years and we ended up giving about 11 million dollars to charity, which was great. Eventually I did have to close it down because there was no way when we were about 30 or 40 cents a year, people would pay that bit extra support Australian farmers. But then Aldi, the German Aldi company came along and it was selling its peanut butter for a dollar cheaper. It was not only getting its peanuts from Argentina, but it was manufacturing and processing the peanut butter in Argentina, where the wages are really low. And us supporting Australian farmers and Australian wages, we couldn't afford it. So in the end, I had to close Dick Smith Foods down, but I think we ran it for about 11 years and it did a lot of good and gave hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business to Australian farmers. But some of the companies were not resilient. And you had a rule that if the company didn't turn a profit after seven or eight months to shut it down. So you didn't get locked into this bias of continuing or beating a dead horse. You were successful in many and you were unsuccessful in some, but you shut them down. That's part of your resilience. Definitely. And that's if I could give advice to anyone, is that you ask advice and you surround yourself with capable people. But if it doesn't seem to be working, it's better not to persevere with that. It's better to say, well, that's it. I'll concentrate on something else. And so that's part of, I think, being resilient, being open enough to yourself. I have this expression, the human power to self-delude is unlimited. And we can self-delude ourselves. And I met some friends who have started a business. And after a couple of years, it's pretty obvious that it's not going to work. But they've just kept going with it. And I've said, they would have done better to ask advice and to concentrate on something else. Each of those friends, by the way, eventually, did do that and then became very successful in their own right. So what you've got to decide is, is this going to work in the long run? Should I keep going at it or should I do something else? Because there's only one you. But the wonderful thing was, when you started Dick Smith electronics at the Big Bear Centre in Neutral Bay, with no knowledge of appetising, you made a sign that you put on top of a car and put it down on military road. And it had a title like Dick Smith electronics. And then the gobbly gook that when you're designing a form, the graphic layout program has put Latin words to show what's filling. And you left those words there and put it on the display, put it out. And that was a great success. Yes, it's interesting. I knew nothing about marketing or advertising, but I must be natural at it. And so in the early days, I had not much money to advertise, but it was interesting because one day, I realised that there must be a way of getting free publicity on the media. And so I came up with ideas. The first one was a very simple thing. I saw a petrol-powered pogo stick being talked about in an American magazine. So I ordered one of them and it took me about two or three months before it was shipped to Australia. And I jumped on this petrol-powered pogo stick. And it was the most useless thing you could ever imagine. You could get about two or three jumps out of it before it had nearly broke your legs. But I rang up the sun-herald newspaper, their top reporter, and said, "Look, I've got this petrol-powered pogo stick, and I'm going to bring in 5,000 of them and sell them to housewives to go to the supermarket." And he believed me, so he wrote the story. And that same day that the story appeared, the Channel 9 television show that night rang me up and said, "Would you come on to television to our late show and jump around on the pogo stick?" So I did that. And that was my start of free advertising, which I've been using until today. And you've made more out of the free advertising than anyone else. I think it's the key part of your success, even the wonderfully crazy things like towing icebergs and to Sydney Harbour. I mean, you're a genius at harvesting the media. Well, yes, the iceberg is really interesting because I'd started the quantum syntactic flights. People wanted to see Antarctic rated two, so we started flying to Antarctic for the day. And one of the lecturers talked about the fact that you might be able to turn iceberg from Antarctica to Australia and use it for water for irrigation. So I announced I was going to do this, but I said I was going to cut up the iceberg into little cubes and call them dixicles. And the media ran this and they kept ringing me up and saying, "When's the iceberg coming?" And then one day, one of my genius staff members, Gerald Nolan said, "Why look, Dick, April Fills' days coming. Why don't we bring a fake iceberg into Sydney Harbour?" I thought, "What a fantastic idea." So we got a badge from Stanards and we got plastic shitting to cover it. We announced to the media the iceberg was coming next week. And then the night before April Fills' day, we turned the iceberg out of Sydney Harbour just the badge. Out of Bondiat midnight, my friend Hansel put plastic over the badge and put shaving cream and firefighting foam. And then he towed it in through the heads. Now the key was, we had about 50 staff at the time, and so I got each of them to ring up the radio and TV stations early in the morning and say, "What's that coming in through the heads? It looks like an iceberg." So all of the switchboards were jammed in the newspapers and the media. And so in the end, we had a, from 2SM radio station, we had a person on the iceberg. And that was live transmitting from the iceberg. We ended up with thousands of people on the headlines as you came in through Sydney Heads and we towed the iceberg right up to the Opera House. And that gave me publicity right around the world. The total cost of hiring the badge and Hans was about $1,500. Yes. So just shows you, and even today, if you look up world's greatest hoaxes, it's normally in the top 10. People love that. In the very early days of running my electronics business, I started opening shops, and I really didn't know how to do it. But there was a very successful company in America called Lafayette. They had 50 shops. They had hundreds of millions of dollars turnover. So I wrote to them. I can't believe this now. And I wrote to the president. I said, "My name is Dick Smith. I have a little electronics shop in Australia. Would I be able to come and have a look at your business?" And he wrote back and said, "For sure, call in." So I bought the cheapest air ticket. I must have been about 28 years of age. I flew to America to the Lafayette company. They took me in and I asked questions like, "What percentage of turnover do you spend on advertising?" And all of these questions and they were all completely free because I wasn't competing with them being in Australia. And it just taught me things that would have taken me years to learn. So remember, ask advice, and that's a way of being successful. Copy the success of others. Absolutely. Ask advice. Copy the success of others. And very little of what I've done in my life has been original. Yes, telling the fake I spoke into Sydney Harbor on April Fool's Day. That was a bit different. But just about everything else... Pogo sticking. Pogo sticking. Well, selling it to the media was a bit different. But in many cases, the way I ran my business was to look around the world in those days there was no Google. So I had to buy an air ticket and see what they were doing overseas and copying it. And a young person could do that today. They could copy overseas and do it today. Surround yourself with capable people. Surround yourself with capable people. And that's really important at one stage. I think when I sold my business to Woolworth's, I had about three or four hundred staff. And I said to anyone, if you've stayed here for six months, you're pretty capable. You're the best. And then I remember when I opened up Australian Geographic magazine, which I ended up selling for over $40 million. I couldn't believe it. It was something that I started off thinking it would be quite small. Now, I remember feeling quite guilty when I sold AG. And so I did share some of the money out with some of the talented people because I thought, look, I'm no good at photography. I'm no good at writing. I can't do layout. But I have all these incredibly capable people working for me who have developed this wonderful magazine, which is still there today, sort of 40 years after I started it. And that was that formula. Surround yourself with capable people and then enthuse them to perform. That's very important, enthusing them to perform. And I'm good at doing that. All right. And this next one comes in, I think it's important because I have some friends who think they're total opposite. And they have not been resilient. And this one is never complain about your tax. Oh, yeah, that's an interesting one. And I remember I managed to get up to paying a million dollars tax. One of the reasons I don't complain about my tax is that when I was young, I was 15, I left school, got a job in a factory, and it was a few pounds a week, was much money. But when I actually got my pay packet, that had taken out the tax. And I said to my father, my father was a salesman and I said, look, they've taken the money out. And he explained, he said, that's your tax. He said, never complain about your tax. And I looked at dad and he said, because look at this fantastic country. He said the defense we've got the schools, the health, the roads. And I thought, he's absolutely right. This is an incredible country. So at one stage, I was doing really well and I ended up paying a million dollars tax a year. And so I decided from then on, I was going to pay a minimum of one million dollars. And I can tell you, I used to Scott to my friends. Not how much money I had, how much tax I was paying. And I get some friends who look on taxes are theft and they do everything they can to avoid it. And their morale must be low because of this. Whereas I'm proud to pay the tax over the years, I've paid lots. And when I fly along in my helicopter and I look down at this fantastic country, I think, wow, I'm at least putting my fair share in. And you would actually like to see the media publish a list of the top 100, 200 taxpayers in Australia. Absolutely. Look, we have this system where we publish the top wealthiest, the billionaires. I think we have over 100 billionaires. But in Japan, I understand the tax department sends the letter to the top 100 taxpayers. And say, you're one of the top 100 taxpayers, we'd like to release your name. Do you object or not? All of the Japanese agree. Now, imagine if we had a list, be great to compare the two, which had the 100 wealthiest people in Australia. And then the 100 top taxpayers. Because we need taxpayers. It's a fantastic country. You would hope that aligned. They probably wouldn't. I think there's a, I think they recently the tax department announced how many millionaires they were that pay no tax at all. They spend a fortune. And I've been approached over the years by these top accounts, you firms, who say, Dick, we can get it so you pay no tax. And I said, that would be just outrageous. I said, pay no tax at all. So it means I'm not paying for the police that's protecting men. I'm not paying for the health and the fantastic things we have in this country. I'd be, I'd consider myself a bludger. The interesting thing is the rich list. This was run at the time by the financial review. I asked them, I said, look, why don't you put the attitude of tax with the list of these people or at the very least put down whether they're a philanthropist or not because many of them are. Anyway, they said, no, we can't do that because it would offend too many people. And when I did a check, only 15% of our billionaires in Australia are known as philanthropists, only 15%. That's really shocking. It's very sad and you have been successful in business, but for anyone who has known you and the different charities, you have been overwhelmingly generous. And how much do you think you have given to charity? Oh, I know. I know. I've got an ambition. I've given $85 million by myself and my wife away, but we're going to make it 100 million before we die. And I'm proud, or I'm happy to talk about that because I'm proud about that. And it's interesting. My first donation, as I was getting dicks with electronics happen I was doing so well, a Dr. Tony Kidman contacted me, sent me a letter. Dr. Tony Kidman, we didn't know at the time because Nicole was only about eight years of age, but he was running this research into musculoskeletistrophy. And I managed to scrape together $10,000 and donated to him, and I remained lifelike friends the whole time he was alive. I was able to assist him in the research that he was doing. But let me tell you something about this my giving. Personally, it's totally for selfish reasons. It makes me feel good. I get greater satisfaction. I once wanted a waterfront house, but I ended up giving that money away and I felt a lot better. And there's nothing wrong with that. I have some quite wealthy friends who are quite unhappy in life. And I thought, gee, maybe they give away and they must do it secretly because you never hear about them giving anything. So I can't see what's wrong. I understand the ethos in America is that if you're wealthy, if you're a billionaire, you're basically obligated to be known as a philanthropist. I've been told you can't be a member of the golf club unless the two go together. Now, wouldn't that be great if we had that in Australia because we have some incredibly generous billionaires. Andrew Forest, Twiggy Forest has given, I think it's over $100 million. So he's incredibly generous. But I have a feeling we have some miserable billionaires who don't give anything. And that's a really sad that they should do that. Do you realize the only reason they're a billionaire is because of this fantastic country, because of the police security, the defense, all of the things which tax, normal taxpayers are paying for. If you're a policeman or a hospital worker, you have to pay your tax. So it really concerns me that someone who's really wealthy can go to one of these top-accountancy firms that are like leeches as far as I'm concerned. They'll charge millions of dollars in fees. So in the end, the billionaire pays no tax at all. Now that's wrong, that's completely wrong. And it's important to realise that the mantras that we've discussed at the beginning, all your failures and beliefs, were played out in businesses, which again is that the reason why you've had so many successes. But I've, I've, I've, look, I've, all those success forces, ask advice, surrounding yourself with capable people, communicating well as important one being honest. They're all things I learnt from experience. I'm not sort of a great book reader of those things. But because I've been able to do a came in business, it shows that they, that works. The last thing I'd like to cover is national resilience, because you have had many discussions in this area. You've watched Australia change over the decades. How resilient do you think we are as a nation today? I think we're incredibly resilient, but look, we've been incredibly fortunate. And that's one of the problems I've got in you asking the question from me, because as I mentioned, I won the lottery of life to be born in Australia in a period of growth from the, just after the Second World War. And I benefited from that. But things are not always going to be like that. But I believe that we are one of the best countries in the world. We're very fortunate. I am concerned about the completely unnecessary population growth. At the moment, we're on our way to a hundred million. And it's pretty obvious that if you have a hundred million people, each person is not going to be as wealthy as if you have 25 million. Because the intrinsic worth of our country is set by the minerals and by the farming capacity and all of those things we can have. And so I'd love to see and I certainly support a political party that said, let's have a population plan. Every Aussie family has a population plan. You can have 20 kids in your lifetime. No one does. They have the number of children they can give a good life to. Pretty obvious. It's just common sense. We should have our politicians should be saying how many people can we give a good life to. We're a very dry and arid country. There's already pressure on the Murray-Darling basin. They're saying there's not enough water sometimes in drought. So someone, it's just common sense, should say, what's an optimum number? And how should we get there? And one of the ways we'd get there is to still be generous with immigration. But instead of 300,000 a year, it should be about 70,000. I'm pro-immigration, but at sensible levels. And at the present time, they're saying, oh, the only problem with our huge growth is infrastructure. We just need more infrastructure. That's not the only problem. There is an optimum carrying capacity for our country, and that's certainly not 100 million. What I'm amazed is that most people I talk to agree with me, but no political party, even the Greens don't have a population plan. What they say to me, I've spoken to the Greens and they've said, oh, if you talk about population, it could be linked to racism because you have to talk about immigration. Whereas my view is, I think we should have a totally nondiscriminatory immigration system as we have, but we should have a plan. It's just common sense. All right. Australia was the number three country to get into space. We were the country to launch a satellite, and we were manufacturing. And you wrote in your book, you had to shut down a lot of the products that you were selling because you couldn't find manufacturers in Australia produce the components or the pieces. And we've seen manufacturing collapse. It really started with the Whitlam government when they took away the duties on products coming in. So we've seen manufacturing collapse to almost zero in Australia. And even in the resilience with things like the energy supplies, we have about 30 days of fuel in diesel and gasoline in the country. And 98% of our fuel comes from overseas in ships that we have no control over. So where Australia is reducing its resilience? And if there's no petroleum, and now there's the issue of solar and battery, what do you have a view on the energy? Yes, I have a song view on energy, and it's all tied up with nuclear energy because I'm a believer in climate change. I think for our grandchildren, we are leading into bad times if we keep putting carbon to the atmosphere. I've studied as much as I can. I'm patron of the Australian skeptics. And I've listened to people like Ian Plymer who believes there's not a problem in putting carbon to the atmosphere. And then I've listened to lots of other scientists who say there are. And my view is that the majority of scientists believe that putting carbon to the atmosphere is going to be negative for future generations. So we've got to stop doing that. It's obvious that we will basically have to electrify everything. And to electrify everything, we're going to need a lot more electrical energy. We can't really use coal to do that because it's going to put more carbon to the atmosphere. There's an ideal way. It's as if someone has given us the way out, and that's nuclear energy. And 30 countries have nuclear energy at the moment. I've just come back from France in Paris, which is humming away 70% nuclear for over 40 years. So that's the way I see it's going forward. Electrify everything going nuclear as much as possible certainly have wind and solar. But the problem with wind and solar is it's intermittent. And to turn it into a reliable base load power is incredibly expensive. Now, unfortunately, all of my greenie friends have deluded themselves into believing, oh, look, if we just believe in it, it'll be okay. Batteries are unbelievably expensive. That have to come down something like 30 times, not 30% 30 times in cost to allow us to get 24 hour reliable power from sun and wind. So that's why we should be looking to nuclear energy. And that's what I'm working on. There's a young chap, he's 18 years of age called Wilshackel, who runs a group called Nuclear for Australia. I'm supporting him financially because it's his generation that's going to be affected. Dick, you have been absolutely resilient personally, corporately. You've been an amazing influencer in Australia for its national resilience. And I think there are gems in what you've said today. So I thank you and I'm sure that everyone listening to this podcast will enjoy it. It's great to be appearing. Thank you. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes of Fly. And if you have a question about aviation or resilience, please email me at [email protected].