Off the cuff

The producer asked me "would you like to practice your presentation on me, before you go up to face the Dragons?" I declined, he asked why, I told him that I hadn't actually put anything together, at that point it was his face that drained of colour! He then told me that "if you freeze or cock it up that's what the camera will see and that's what the TV will show". I told him that I'd prefer to speak from the cuff as it came to me and not to use a "canned" speech. I'd rather look nervous on TV than insincere, having seen politicians (and the like) in their droves talk so perfectly (yet insincerely) from scripts crafted for them.

The "jump light" went on, and up the stairs to face the Dragons I went.

It is kind of intimidating to stand there in front of not only five Dragons (whose sole intent seems to be, to devour the innocent), then there's the camera, and the action! Add to that the crew (20-30 technicians et-al, in the shadows of the room), and the 3 foot spotlight directly overhead.

It was a bit intense, but once you get past the first minute, without having a heart attack, you start to settle down and get your point across.

My strategy really was a simple one, although I didn't have a speech prepared I knew that if I stayed on track with my 4 R's I'd be in decent shape. The 4 R's were...

The Request (£150,000 for a 15% stake in my venture). The Reason (years of suffering bad shave days). The Research (eight years of R&D and lubricant formulations). The Results (the best shaves that I've ever had).

Background in Tribology

You are given three minutes for the initial introduction of yourself and the product. I managed to get through that well enough and I'm sure they let me overrun that time, but I was also sure I'd caught their interest.

After the three minutes it's then question & answer time, which I'm told lasts an average of 8 minutes. The Dragons seemed keen and curious, and did recognise the problems they too had experienced, with bad shave days.

They were eager to enquire about my engineering background, I served my apprenticeship (40 years ago now) with DeHavilland, at Lostock, near Bolton. From there I'd gone on to work in the aerospace industry in the UK, Canada and on contracts for the US Government (much of it interesting stuff, F18's, Grumman A10's, Blackhawk's and even Patrol Frigates).

My work was for the most part in Quality Assurance but I also studied Tribology, the study of Friction & Lubrication, becoming a member of the American Society of Lubrication Engineers (ASLE) in 1986.

I relayed much of this background to the Dragons, and related how my knowledge of lubricants (and how metals cut), had helped me formulate Ultra. This went on for around 20 minutes, and was received well.

Then came a turning point, I was asked why I was requesting £150,000 for a 15% stake in my venture. My response was that I'd worked for eight years perfecting the formulation of Ultra, and that I'd applied for patent rights in some 17 countries costing me around £200,000 to that point.