How Customer Challenges Have Shaped the Oystashell Product Range

Innovate or Die – Innovation Needs More Ears Than Egos

Podcast: The Brainy Podcast
Hosts: Soraya Shaw & Tracy
Guest: Martin Downey (Founder of Oystashell & Internetwork)
Note: Cleaned professional transcript. Stutters, filler words, and mis-transcriptions have been corrected.

[00:00:03] Announcer:

This is The Brainy Podcast [music] with Soraya Shaw and Tracy, inspiring creativity and innovation through evidence-based neuroscience.

[00:00:15] Tracy:

Welcome back everybody. Today we are working with the title of "Innovate or Die", which is a tough one, but really what we want to do is look at the importance of the way you look at problems around you and how you solve them through innovating new products or ideas and turning them into a business. To help us storyboard that, we're joined by Martin Downey today, who is a good friend of mine and a client. Welcome.

[00:00:43] Soraya Shaw:

We'll get to know a bit more about Martin as we chat. I'm just super excited for you to be able to share your story of Oystashell and how it came to be. I guess it's quite a big question to start with, but can you just tell us a little bit about what Oystashell is and how it came to life?

[00:01:16] Martin Downey:

Okay, it's a genuine pleasure to be on your podcast. Thanks so much for inviting me. Oystashell came about because my IT company, Internetwork, does loads of installations. It has a niche in mental health hospital installations as well as lots of other clients. But we have a quite large data cabling department that goes around the country installing in hospitals and buildings right across the whole of the UK. And in that process, we complete and hang Wi-Fis and CCTV cameras as well as the normal day-to-day data sockets that you're using for your computers.

[00:01:58] Martin Downey:

A few years ago, Wi-Fi was in its early stages. People were only having a very close-knit set of Wi-Fi in the admin areas of hospitals. And in the process, we were asked to put them on ceilings. They were really vulnerable. And in a mental health setting, if you leave anything on a ceiling that's got edges or sharp bits, a patient can potentially harm themselves. They can even use something hanging from the ceiling as a ligature point. We had just finished our first installation for this company we were working with. And the engineer came out, looked up at the ceiling, and said, "I know they'll have that off the ceiling in no time." That was a lightbulb moment. Something went off in my head.

[00:03:02] Martin Downey:

We have a client called Arnold Engineering, who literally I could hit their factory with a rock from behind my building. We've looked after them for 20 years. They make polycarbonate riot shields for the police all over the world—Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, anywhere. So, I drew something that looked like my dog Milo had drawn it on sheets of A4, and went round to see—

[00:03:22] Tracy:

—that piece of paper.

[00:03:24] Soraya Shaw:

I remember showing it to you.

[00:03:26] Martin Downey:

I went round to see James McKeown at Arnold Engineering, sat down with him, and said, "Can you make this?" And he said, "Oh, yeah." I took the prototype to the CIO of the healthcare company that we were working with. I showed it to him, and he said to his number two, "Do you think we're going to have problems with Wi-Fis being bashed off ceilings?" And his number two—I could have kissed him—said, "Yes, I think we are." And from that, Oystashell was born. Within a very short space of time, this company had bought about 350 units, which kind of self-funded what we were doing, and laid the foundation for designing some more stuff.

[00:04:01] Martin Downey:

Then they came back to us and said, "We've got larger Wi-Fis that we need to cover, so we now need a larger dome." So suddenly you're being asked to make a larger one. Now you've got two. And they both need design registration and patenting. Luckily, because Internetwork was doing well, we were reasonably well funded, and that minimized the actual financial risk for us. This spread to the NHS. So Great Ormond Street Hospital has put Oystashells in three of their mental health wards for children. Which for me personally is the design pinnacle of doing something for the health arena. It's almost a choke-up moment because everybody knows GOSH. It's internationally renowned as being an amazing place. So that's been fun.

[00:05:00] Martin Downey:

And then on the other side, we've got friends in Florida, Tony and Diane Clark. I said to them a couple of years ago, "Wouldn't it be fun if we set up Oystashell LLC in America?" We're already approaching about $50,000 worth of shells. It's starting to take off, and we've got places in Australia and New Zealand that are ordering them on a regular basis now.

[00:05:45] Tracy:

Martin, that is incredible. I didn't know some of that myself, and yet we stayed connected on its progress, and I just am so invested in what you're doing. I think one of the things just listening to the way you described that is how you didn't do what most people try and do: solve a problem that everybody is aware of. What you did, and what your engineers did, is identify a problem that the environment didn't even have on its radar at the time. You had to bring it to them as a problem with a solution.

[00:06:16] Martin Downey:

Here's the truth. They put Wi-Fis in cupboards and hid them in electrical risers. So, it made for a very poor Wi-Fi experience. Our solution allows you to have Wi-Fi where it's supposed to be, in the open air. In fact, if I tilt my laptop forward, there's an Oystashell on the ceiling. I'll just take it a bit closer so you can see a Ubiquiti Wi-Fi installed in the ceiling tile. And that's the third one that we made as a result of a friend of mine saying to me, "You know, you should make them for suspended ceilings." So, that was another voyage of discovery that we went along.

[00:06:44] Soraya Shaw:

A lot of people get stopped with innovating and creating through fear. Through fear of actually doing it—will it work? Will it not work? And they give up early. What's driven you? What's kept you going?

[00:06:55] Martin Downey:

That fear never goes away. You're constantly doubting yourself. For every six or seven people that come to you and say, "I'd really like your product," maybe two or three will ghost you afterwards. I take everything transactionally very personally anyway because I'm just built that way. And so, that's a real challenge. But you're buoyed up by the situation of talking to people who are really invested in it. They're the ones that keep you having faith in it.

[00:07:18] Martin Downey:

I was talking to a guy who was installing in a prison—I won't mention the prison, but it's up north. He had been talking to us for about 18 months and we'd got nowhere. We'd done new designs for him. We tried to make what he wanted, and whatever we were doing wasn't sticking with him. Then he came to me and said, "You know the standard one you make? Can you make that smaller?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Can you make it waterproof as well?" I said, "Yeah, we can put a neoprene gasket around the inside bit." They bought 850 overnight. So, now we've got an arrangement with this company—whenever they're working with the Ministry of Justice, Oystashells are going to be deployed over the Wi-Fis to keep prisoners safe and to make sure the Wi-Fis don't get bashed off.

[00:08:12] Tracy:

At the very beginning before we started recording, we used the word serendipity. But it strikes me as well that one of the key things you've been doing is building relationships. And that's all built on trust, isn't it? You trust people whether it takes 18 months or not.

[00:08:30] Martin Downey:

Very much. Right from the word go when we started working together, Tracy said spotting the opportunity is absolutely key in any kind of business. My wife, Julie, she helped found our original IT company, Internetwork. Julie's the analytical one who juggles all the figures and makes sure that we've got enough money to be able to do all these crazy ideas. So, it really is a two-way thing between the two of us. I can't emphasize enough how important inventing and innovation are on one side, but also that grounded element holding it all together. We often joke that I'm managing director and she's commercial director, but really she's managing director and I'm mismanaging director.

[00:09:20] Tracy:

The job that Soraya and I do outside of the podcast is very much around spotting and noticing patterns and trends. And one of the things that we're creating with a pattern of our guests that come on, is they all have quite an eclectic past. You've worked in the music industry. You've had huge success as a music producer. You've then retrained, reinvented yourself in IT, built your own business, and now you've created something that solves a massive problem in really sensitive environments. Would you agree, Soraya, we seem to have a theme?

[00:10:05] Soraya Shaw:

Yeah. And I think what's very interesting from a brain perspective about that, because Tracy, you and I have all pivoted really. We all started commercially in our first careers and did all the FTSE 100 stuff. And we're all quite creative as well. It's people who've really—and I don't mean creative in that you're painting or drawing. It's just your thinking, how you make connections. Your brain's always making connections all the time.

[00:10:40] Martin Downey:

If you're in any way creative, that never stops. It ramifies through every part of your life. It's not so prevalent now in Internetwork, but a few years ago lots of us were musicians. We didn't go and recruit musicians, but a lot of them had this other side of their brain where they were scientific to solve people's problems, but they were creative musically. And therefore had this double facet to be able to—and it made them good problem solvers.

[00:11:23] Soraya Shaw:

Yeah. I think what's important about our guests is it's that knowledge and that experience that builds up over time. You're building those connections in your brain and you're seeing opportunities. From a brain's perspective, the brain is shaping and changing all the time. There's a lot of new work at the moment about how we're all actually super agers—that as you age, your cognition gets much better, which is completely the opposite of what people are told. It's not true at all. If you can capture all this wonderful diversity of ideas and people's thinking, it's so rich.

[00:11:50] Soraya Shaw:

I want to finish just by talking about your wife. It reminds me, my husband says that I have a chaotic brain. I don't know what that means. Whereas he's wonderfully logical, and that partnership really works. You need somebody who can almost bring you back down and make sure you're grounded. I think it's really important.

[00:12:17] Martin Downey:

I have an expansion on that. I did a science degree—medical biochemistry at university—and then I graduated and joined a rock band, but that's another story. I'd enjoyed academic study beforehand, but when I got to university it was a very different higher level and I didn't really enjoy it. The attrition was pounding. It was like labs and lectures, labs and lectures, write up, and just repeat the same process for three years. I nearly pulled out in my first year.

[00:12:55] Martin Downey:

Years later, I never understood why I'd been quite academic in school, but wasn't at university—I was a minnow in this lake of giants. Anyway, Tracy encouraged our company to have Discovery Insights and we did psychometric profiling. Turns out I'm on the borderline between introvert and extrovert, but down the bottom in the caring 'Mr. Sunshine' sector that's great at selling and talking to people, but absolutely rubbish at doing any kind of analytical work. Julie, on the other hand, is right in the center of the analytical quadrant, in the blue area. Jungian theory says that when you're under stress, you can work in your opposite type, but it's really stressful for you to do that. Can you imagine how miserable I was at university doing a science degree? I should have just done a music subject. I would have thrived.

[00:14:15] Martin Downey:

One of the things I was going to say to you was, in your podcast with Paul Copeland, you talked about looking somewhere else for that creative inspiration about how you generate something. The older you get, if you're going to be successful in business and cognitive thought, being a sponge and open to other people's suggestions is the watchword. I would say without exaggeration, half the products that we've developed have been modified or shaped into a new product because of requests from our clients or observations from friends. Going into it thinking you know all the answers is not a good approach, I feel. You have to listen to them.

[00:14:59] Tracy:

Which is very much in your street of communication style as well. That's how you tend to communicate. What were the biggest things that you had to learn or figure out from scratch where you might have needed to reach out for advice?

[00:15:32] Martin Downey:

Listening to the results of showing the prototype to somebody... invaluable. Crushing, but invaluable. We took the prototype, and I thought when I first designed it that the cable would come out and go into a socket next door to it. But he took one look at it and went, "No, no, no. Can't have the hole there. Can't have any cables. I don't want patients being able to see inside it." So that immediately shaped another level of how we designed it. They didn't want them to be see-through. Other companies want them to be see-through.

[00:16:02] Soraya Shaw:

The thing I hear there as well is your openness to feedback. So many people have an ego and aren't open to feedback at all. But actually, your learning and your grace comes from, "Okay, let's take that feedback and what can we do with it?"

[00:16:15] Martin Downey:

Don't get me wrong, you get bruised by it. When we first designed it, we made them with 4 mm slots because we were afraid the Wi-Fis were going to get overheated. We gave a sample to the health service up in the northeast, Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys. They were instrumental in saying, "We don't want the larger holes. We want them to be small." That culminated in us giving them a shell to stick on the ceiling with the new design. They took a rubber mallet and a metal hammer and a big piece of wood and smashed it about for 15 minutes. And tried to set fire to it and it just sat there. The ceiling was an absolute mess where they bounced off glancing blows, but the Oystashell was completely intact. It had a few smudges on it from rubber mallets. That's become the de facto standard. So they helped us.

[00:17:42] Tracy:

Martin, as this continues to evolve and develop, where do you strike the balance between adjusting things to customer needs—not just the feedback to improve it, but their positioning of it in their environment—and production? Because every tweak and every change in design affects production, particularly as you scale.

[00:18:00] Martin Downey:

It's a great point. Let me do the production bit first. Production is a real challenge. Our lovely manufacturers, Arnold Engineering, make stuff for Red Bull and Mercedes in F1. Oystashell is a lovely company to work with, but it's right at the back of the queue where F1 is concerned. So, it can take 4 to 6 weeks to get stuff done. Talking it through and having a great relationship, you've got to manage the customer expectation that when they order something, it isn't going to be manufactured immediately. We have a best seller, but if I had a thousand of every single model, I'd quickly go bankrupt. You have to do it on a just-in-time approach.

[00:18:50] Tracy:

And balancing the nuanced customer needs with production? Like when you described the size of the hole, when does that become a mainstream change in the overall look of the product and version control?

[00:19:17] Martin Downey:

That was a really good observation of theirs that we had agonized about. It improved the aesthetic look of the shell itself—it didn't have a honeycomb cheese look to it. It was really aesthetically pleasing to look at. For me, that was a no-brainer. I was just worried about the Wi-Fis overheating, but actually the air gap between the ceiling and the internal area is enough to keep it going. And then some people come back and go, "We don't want any holes in it and we want a neoprene gasket around it to keep it waterproof." So, every Stonegate pub in London has an Oystashell in their kitchens to keep their Wi-Fis free from grease, grime, and condensation. At no time did I ever think, "Oh, we need to make one waterproof." For outside, yes, but not indoor.

[00:20:10] Martin Downey:

So now we've got three or four different products available in the Wi-Fi arena, and we're moving out to the camera arena. We're getting requests for chemical environments like labs that need their cameras covered.

[00:20:25] Soraya Shaw:

I have just loved you navigating your way through the story of Oystashell, and I've got a really corny end feel about that. It's like the world really feels like it's your oyster now and where it goes next. [laughter]

[00:20:45] Martin Downey:

I know. We can cut it out. Don't worry.

[00:20:50] Soraya Shaw:

No, because my next question really was what's next for you? What are the channels that you're looking at, because you've just introduced a kitchen environment. What are the plans for it next?

[00:21:25] Martin Downey:

What we haven't done yet is make it famous. All my companies have grown organically, and after 25 years Internetwork is a quite sizable company even though it's got a very small bunch of people working in it. One thing I've learned over the years is that engaging people who work with you, who you can trust and you like—we've got such a nice bunch of people working with us. Making ourselves a bit more famous, ensuring people know we are a safe company to deal with and that we have our patients' best interests at heart. And to our clients at Internetwork, that we're engaging to do the very best job we can and still be approachable, friendly people who like to have a laugh at the same time as taking their business seriously.

[00:22:20] Tracy:

So quickly, what's the website? Let's make you famous. What is it?

[00:22:25] Martin Downey:

www.oystashell.com.

[00:22:35] Tracy:

This is why I love watching manufacturing and production, because seeing stuff made is quite exciting. And watching this go from that little sketch on a piece of paper that I saw to the story you shared today is just magical, and I'm so proud of what you've managed to create. You've shared a lot of the ups and the downs and, as expected, some of your emotions around it. What advice would you give to other leaders that are trying to build something new or challenge thinking?

[00:23:09] Martin Downey:

I think being open. The old adage from Steve Jobs that you employ smarter people than you to help you do the job—listening to the advice of your colleagues. And like with the ceiling tiles, listening to what people say to you about their observations, because they come at it from a different sideways view. They're not looking at it for the reason you invented it; they're looking at it as a shape or another way of doing a particular function. They're coming at it from a completely different angle and those things fundamentally help you shape how you move it forward.

[00:24:08] Soraya Shaw:

What's interesting about that is from neuroscience we know that people want to have purpose and need to be in environments where they feel trusted, safe, and secure. Because otherwise the brain just shuts down, and you don't get any ideas or creativity whatsoever. You've created an environment where people feel safe, secure, happy, and they want to share their innovation and ideas with you because they know they'll be appreciated and respected.

[00:24:33] Martin Downey:

I hope so. That's exactly how we look at it. I own the companies with my wife, but I almost forget most of the time that I actually own companies. I just like working here because I like the people and I want to make it successful. Making a profit and earning a living is obviously the end goal, but you kind of forget you're doing that because you're enjoying what you're doing. It isn't what I wanted to do—I wanted to be a successful musician, but I had to find another way of earning a living when my children came along.

[00:25:29] Tracy:

Do you remember when we were sat down doing your first three-year plan and you said, "I want more time for my guitars."

[00:25:35] Martin Downey:

Yeah, still haven't found that, I'm afraid.

[00:25:40] Tracy:

Doesn't stop you buying them though, does it?

[00:25:45] Martin Downey:

It doesn't stop me buying them. Julie describes my guitar collection as a forest now, Soraya. You can't move them. They're all over the house.

[00:25:57] Tracy:

I'm interested, because Internetwork is already a running beast. Its growth path has quadrupled since I first met you. How do you protect a new idea from derailing the existing function?

[00:26:10] Martin Downey:

By not playing guitar anymore. [Laughter] I'm still involved in helping the day-to-day running with Internetwork. I'm involved in the data cabling side, but I have very little to do with the MSP side of fixing IT and looking after computers. We've got an amazing team in Steve Wood and Terry Weeks who run it well. We've also got a really good balance of men and women in our organization. There's a calming, stabilizing presence by having a decent balance.

[00:27:06] Soraya Shaw:

Oh, that's a really important thing to share actually. It's natural diversity, not on a policy. It's down to who's best for the job.

[00:27:15] Tracy:

But you always talk about them like they're your family.

[00:27:20] Martin Downey:

It's a family business. We care about them. It's really easy for people to say that and it not be true, but we feel it in our bones. And if that ramifies into the care of how we look after clients, then long may it continue.

[00:28:10] Soraya Shaw:

That's quite an interesting point, because you can see companies get to a certain size and lose their culture. There's a real danger that they become a monster that they weren't when they started. How do you ensure that you retain those values and beliefs?

[00:28:20] Martin Downey:

You get Tracy in to manage the behaviors of all the people involved. They're not going to go against her, that's for sure. Gosh, she's inspirational.

[00:28:37] Soraya Shaw:

Okay, so we have two questions that we always ask everybody who comes on the show. The first is, what's your leadership secret?

[00:28:50] Martin Downey:

I think I touched on that: the people you employ are smarter than you, and always listen to them. Allow them to shape things. We're going to restructure Internetwork slightly from a marketing point of view, and I want everybody involved in that because everybody's got a stake. The other thing is trust and collaboration, but the most important thing in any leadership situation is empathy. I watched how my parents talked to people and hopefully a little bit of that rubbed off.

[00:29:41] Soraya Shaw:

And the last question is, how do you create joy amongst your teams and the people you collaborate with?

[00:29:50] Martin Downey:

It just arises all day. I literally walked into the office upstairs and my daughters, Joanna and Megan, who are both exhibiting with me at our next exhibition in the world of mental health... I just looked at Megan, and we both cracked up at something somebody said. Nobody else understood why it was funny, but it's just an unbridled joy in the fact that things are going okay for the companies, and we're enjoying that journey.

[00:30:43] Tracy:

I love that. That's the sort of silly instinctive giggle that happens in families. Our original hope for today with our tough title of "Innovate or Die" was to help people listening have a clearer understanding of how innovation actually happens, and you've done a beautiful job of unraveling that. Also, to give people the confidence to act on ideas even without a blueprint. We've ticked those off our list today. I can't thank you enough for joining us. It's been an absolute joy.

[00:31:25] Martin Downey:

It's been lovely to meet you. I've had a blast. I'm really honored that you asked me to be on it and hopefully we get to do another one further down the line to see where things have developed.

[00:31:39] Soraya Shaw:

Tracy was very excited about having you on our podcast. Because he's good fun, he's very successful, and I love the way your brain works. To sum up, one of the phrases that we're utilizing increasingly is about businesses using all the brains in their business, and you've demonstrated that beautifully today. So I think that's a nice thing to end on. Thank you.

[00:32:10] Announcer:

Enjoyed this episode? [music] Listen to more at brainycast.com.