Lawrence Baxter Final Mixdown 
April 22, 2020 

​This archived conversation has been selectively excerpted to highlight themes that continue to shape Lawrence Baxter’s philosophy on leadership and entrepreneurial excellence

 (4:12) Mark Green: Lawrence, welcome to CARSYEAH, my friend. Are you buckled up and ready for a fun ride?  I am. I've got a three-point seat belt on,  and I'm looking forward to it.

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(4:21) Lawrence Baxter:Thank you, Mark.

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(4:22) Mark Green: You're welcome. Well, we'll have some fun here. You deal with some incredibly cool cars.​ Boy, I can't wait to talk to you here today. But first, I'm gonna ask you this question. What's one thing that most people don't know about Lawrence Baxter?

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(4:36) Lawrence Baxter: I think it's probably my very magpie-like backstory.  I have had a very eclectic career, academic, businessperson, lawyer, back to academic, and, um, now a sort of jack-of-all-trades.

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(4:56) Mark Green: Well, I find it fascinating because when I discovered you and asked you to be a guest here, I was looking back over your history and everything, and I went, wait a minute. Why did I invite a law professor on the show? What does this have to do with it, and I went, oh, okay.  Now I see what we're talking about.  Some very cool British sports cars and your life around this new vet that you've got and what you're gonna be doing with it. So I think we're gonna have a lot of fun here today. I think it's gonna be great. And we're gonna start with a success quote or a mantra.​ This is some kind of saying that's been instrumental  in forming your life and your success. It's a really nice way to get those inspirational tires smoking here on Cars, yeah? So Lawrence, grab the wheel.

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(5:40) Lawrence Baxter: Mark, I don't always follow this advice, but it has influenced me, and I know that I should always follow it. And that is the phrase my dad taught me  when I was growing up, which was:

 

" If I was gonna do anything, I should do it right, if I was gonna do it at all. As I look back and things that I have done, my heart has not been there or I've taken a shortcut— it's actually been worse than average. But when my passion was there and I knew that it had to be done right, I've always been proud of what I've done. 

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(6:09) Mark Green: Yeah. You know, it's a great concept, and your dad was a wise man. I think that's a great way to go through life.​ And, you know, there's another saying that kind of relates to this. Why is there always... there's never enough time.Well, I shouldn't say never, but if there wasn't enough time to do it right the first time, why is there always enough time to go back and fix what you messed up?  I think the way this quote works for you is absolutely positive.​ And the fact that you applied this passion term to it is what Cars Yeah, is all about. People that have wrapped their passion for cars and trucks and motorcycles  into their careers to be successful. So give me an example of how you've incorporated that into what you're doing there at Bespoke British Sports Cars.

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(6:49) Lawrence Baxter: Well, I've gotten more and more interested,  maybe this is the sort of academic side of me, in the long-term history of these gorgeous cars. And I confined it at first to a sort of wave of nostalgia when I got not really wealthy. But when I was able to afford cars that I couldn't afford when I was 18 years old, I started to read about them and I was fascinated by why they came into existence at all. You know, nowadays, they're beautiful supercars and SUVs, but they tend to look a lot like each other. Uh, whereas if you go back to the 50s and 60s and early 70s, the adventurism of the designers and the manufacturers started to fascinate me. And I learned more and more, and everybody knows about Malcolm Sayer, who joined Jaguar from the Bristol Aircraft Corporation, brought aerodynamics back after Detroit had decided not to pay much attention to it in the 30s.

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"And it came to be clear to me that it was not just a mechanical achievement or a fabrication achievement, it was a functional art form. And that really inspires me because that is a combination of skill, talent and passion. And so passion has, I think, always been very often the unacknowledged trigger for me in doing something well, which is, I think the old adage goes, if you find something you are passionate about, you will never have to work a day in your life."

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(8:21)  Mark Green: Yes, absolutely.​ Well, it plays true. And if you're gonna spend, we spend so much time in our careers and in our work, we might as well be enjoying that time.  And I've had, well, 1,536 people before you on this show that have expressed that very same adage. And many of them came from other industries where they maybe weren't so happy. And when they finally found their passion, that made their whole life really, really more enriched and happier and more helpful to the people that they're serving as well. Well, let's talk more about your business because I find it fascinating. Jaguar is the car that started it for me way back when I was a little boy. My father bought me a Jaguar XKE Coupe Matchbox by Lesney. I still have it sitting here on my desk. Something that has always stayed with me. He had an MGTC for a while, which was the first car, well, actually the first car I ever rode in, real car, was an MGA that my dad borrowed from a friend and drove around in. So I guess my roots go back to MG, Jaguar, Britain, uh, somehow there. My lineage certainly in my family does. Tell our listeners about your business, what exactly you do, what you provide people,  and all the fun that you're creating for a lot of automotive enthusiasts.

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(9:39) Lawrence Baxter: Sure. And it's actually going through a bit of a transition at the moment. So I'll tell you what we have done and then what we're hoping to do  over the next year or two.

 

(9:41) Mark Green: Ah, great.

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(9:49) Lawrence Baxter: So the background is that it's an accidental business. That's sort of been like everything I've done in my life.  It's not planned. I fell in love with the Jaguar C-Type mostly because of the history about itand the early Le Mans win. And I started to read about it. I thought it was just a gorgeously flowing design. And I knew I could never hope to afford one and maybe even never see a real one. So I started to look for replicas or recreations or evolutions as Proteus calls them. And I settled on the Proteus and sent an email off to the then CEO and chairman of Proteus, the wonderful man who's passed away now. And I never heard anything back. So I thought, well,  I will just stick to the cars I can really afford. And that's fine. And I'll always just admire it.  I got an email six months later out of the blue ( from Nigel Forsyth, who was the man in question. And he said, I've only just found this email in our email box. Are you still interested? So we set up conversation and one thing led to another. And I worked out how I could afford a Proteus C-type. And so I had it made. And I was still thinking of it solely in terms of just owning it and driving it. Because the one key for me with all the cars I've ever owned is, there must be cars that I must be able to drive, not a museum piece. And while in the process, I also got to know his company, his other company, Lynx.

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 (16:15) Mark Green: Take us to a time and a place where you were greatly challenged, but then tell us what that learning process was so that you could move forward in a very positive way.

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(9:49) Lawrence Baxter: 

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"I have a great admiration for entrepreneurs. I'm not much of one myself. It's always been small time with me, but I've never begrudged entrepreneurs who've been very successful  and made large amounts of money.And I finally found out why. I had thought, because my father was a serial entrepreneur, that I was one.Turns out I've always been with big institutions."

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 (16:53) Mark Green: You mentioned Wachovia, the bank.

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(16:55) Lawrence Baxter: I'm with Duke University now. Both wonderful institutions in which I had the safety of large-scale operations. And I had never been doing what people like my father and the thousands and millions of entrepreneurs around the world do, which is going out and taking a risk. So the basic part was, I helped found an organization called the Innovation Institute when I was the chair of the McCall Center for Visual Art in Charlotte. And I helped the executive director found it. And the idea was that you'd take artists and you would put them together with a facilitator  and then bring business executives in to learn about creativity and innovation. One of the reasons I was involved is that I'd had an internal unit at Wachovia that developed new businesses. So I was very happy that got set up. And she then said to me, Lawrence, you're gonna have to take that course. And with some indignance, I said, what? I know all about this.I don't need to take any course at this stage of my life. And she said, yes, you do. And she didn't let it go. So I signed up to take the course. And the first day we had it, the artist walked us through something that surprised me, which was the discipline that artists have. I had always assumed they were crazy people who got up and had brilliant ideas in the morning.And then they produced great works of art. And of course, I learned that that's not the case, that they work very, very hard. And there's a lot of trial and error. And to drive the point home, the artist said, your homework for the next session  is to go away and find a time in which you took a genuine risk. Well, that also sounds pretty mundane. But what he said was, that time has to be when you didn't have a plan B or a plan C, you actually took a risk and you didn't know what would happen. So I went away and I spent days thinking about this. And I eventually came up with the only time I could really think of taking a massive risk and not knowing what would happen. This is the part where you'll kind of roll your eyes. It was when I first kissed a girl. And I had no idea if I would get whacked, I'd get a slap in the face or what. But it was plunging into the abyss.  And it taught me, well, as it turned out, our teeth just bumped. And so it was all very embarrassing.

 

"But it taught me that true entrepreneurs and especially innovators, the Steve Jobs of the world and so on, are willing to take a risk that could end in total catastrophe.And that's why I admire them so much. So I went to my dad. He was still alive at the time."

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(19:51) Lawrence Baxter: And I said, Dad, you started all these businesses. First of all, where did you learn how to do what you started? And he said, well, I didn't.  I knew I would have to learn on the job. And I said, how did you live with that? And he said, I used to lie awake at night worrying about whether I could be payroll on Friday.

 

"And I realized the risks they took were so much greater and that they still take  than I ever took within the safety of big institutions, that this is what creativity and innovation were all about. This is an artist who's willing to put their art out in front of the public and endure the social scorn that it might generate.And so that's the biggest lesson for me, I think, is taking on something that's overwhelmingly frightening and actually going through with it. And sometimes you get lucky and you can pull it off." 

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 (32:40) Mark Green: Whats a personal habit you believe has helped you be successful throughout life??

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(32:43) Lawrence Baxter: I think with discipline. I try to maintain a regular schedule, uh, in work. In a way, everybody needs a vacation, but when I go on vacation I fall apart. I literally get nothing done, because I lurch from productivity to laziness. Um, maybe that a good thing or not. But personal discipline. 

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