The REAL Story of the Snowmobile – John Boyd’s Famous Metaphor Comes to Life

A grain elevator turned upside down. A Chevy bumper cut in half. A Model T steering sector pulled from the yard. That’s not a lab; that’s the birth of the modern snowmobile—and the clearest proof that real creativity starts with what’s already in your hands.

We sit down with Mitchell Johnson to trace Polaris’s arc from a small Minnesota shop to a powerhouse that reshaped winter travel, ATVs, and utility vehicles. Along the way, we map John Boyd’s snowmobile metaphor to the shop floor: analysis breaks things apart; synthesis recombines them into something that works in the wild. Mitchell shares how his father and uncle—fresh from the Navy—built the first sleds, learned fast from failure when the track sank, and fixed it with canvas pockets. He walks us through Alaska’s transformation from dog teams to snowmobiles, and the cultural DNA that kept Polaris close to terrain, test riders, and customers.

If you care about innovation that survives contact with reality, this conversation is a field manual. Listen for practical insights on synthesis, OODA in practice, cross-pollination between domains, and customer-driven design that wins off-road and on ice. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with your boss,  and drop a review so more builders can find it.

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Polaris Snowmobile History

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March 25, 2025

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting Up Boyd’s Snowmobile Metaphor
• 3:41 Analysis And Synthesis Explained
• 6:16 Introducing Mitchell Johnson And Polaris Roots
• 8:46 Building The First Snowmobile From Scraps
• 14:26 Lessons On Real-World Creativity
• 17:36 Veterans’ Ingenuity And Boyd’s Ideas
• 20:26 Alaska Journey And Impact On Transport
• 24:16 From Snowmobiles To ATVs: A New Playbook
• 29:06 Sportsman 500: Redesigning The Standard
• 33:36 Marketing Breakthrough: You Gotta Ride It
• 35:56 Culture, Frontline Insight, And OODA In Practice
• 38:56 Beyond Off-Road: Boats, Tracks, And What’s Next

Transcript

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:53

All right, Moose. We talk about the metaphor of snowmobiles quite a bit. We've have a speech from John Boyd. He's brought it up several times. I definitely want to go through that with you. But I never took the time to think about where did the snowmobile actually come from?

unknown: 2:07

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:07

And I don't know about you. Do you know the history of the snowmobile?

SPEAKER_02: 2:10

I have an idea from some some research I've done through some friends up in the Great North. So let's do this.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:16

I don't I don't know if you have the uh I didn't let's put it this way.

SPEAKER_02: 2:21

For as much as we talk about snowmobiles, I didn't realize that we were one degree of separation away.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:26

I know. We'll introduce our guest here in a moment.

SPEAKER_02: 2:28

There's no accidents. There's no accidents.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:30

Yeah. So those for those listeners that are not familiar and those that are familiar, what I'd like Moose to do, if that's okay with you, Moose, is I have the Hardy and Strong Vincent High School speech by John Boyd where he breaks it down. I think you have the text in the uh chat. Can you walk us through that? Do you have access to that?

SPEAKER_02: 2:46

Yeah, talking about the imagining different domains, right?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:49

Yeah, let's walk, let's just walk everybody through that real fast. So okay.

SPEAKER_02: 2:53

So John, so John Boyd was trying to get us to destroy and create, like to destroy our perception of reality and create a new one based off of as circumstances unfold and things change. So he says, imagine four domains that have nothing to do with each other. At one quadrant, you have a bicycle, and the other one you have a skier on the slopes, the other one you have a boat with an outboard motor, and the other one you have a tank. And he says, now let's let's do analysis and synthesis, which was his other component of orientation, which is another word for you know destroying and then creating. So by analysis, we'd break down every one of those domains and their and into their components. So if we look at a bike, we'd say, okay, let's take apart the handlebars, the seat, the chain, the pedals, the spokes, the wheels, the skier on the slopes. We're gonna take the skis, the boots, the poles, the snow, the mountain, the chairlift. Uh the boat with an outboard motor, we've got the hull, the motor, the gas, the engine, the fishing tackle, and then the tank, we've got the turret, the gun, the treads, the engine. And he says, now what we're gonna do is we're gonna cross out and imagine that none of those previous domains exist. So bicycle doesn't exist anymore, skier on the slopes, toy tank, boat with an outboard motor, those things no longer exist. And you're left with a CN of anarchy, all of these components that have nothing to do with each other. But what if we started trying to synthesize something? We've analyzed all this, and that's where most people stop. Now we have to synthesize this. Now let's synthesize this into something that didn't previously exist from all four domains that had nothing to do with each other. So we'll take the handlebars, we'll take the seat, the tracks, the snow, the skis, and we realized that we could create a snowmobile. John Boyd in his uh revelation said to us that the difference between a winner and the loser is someone that can make snowmobiles as a winner and someone who cannot, who is the who is the loser. So we have a we have a winner on with us on the uh on the show today um that knows a little bit about making snowmobiles. As we alluded to, as much as we talk about snowmobiles, and as much as that's become a symbol for John Boyd, it's there are no quinces in the universe. And here we are with uh one degree of separation from the snowmobile.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 5:09

That's right. Hey, Moose was excellent, man. Nice breakdown of the metaphor of snowmobile. Mitchell Johnson's here with us. Mitchell's family created the snowmobiles. So, Mitchell, welcome to the show. And can you take us back through the history of this snowmobile? Well, thank you, Ponch.

SPEAKER_00: 5:24

Good to be here. So uh my father and my uncle founded Polaris Industries right after they got back from Second World War. They were both in the Navy. They called the the company uh Hateen Hoyce and Derrick. My uncle's name was uh Edgar Hateen, my he married my dad's sister, that's why he's my uncle. My dad was David Johnson. And uh, so they they did a lot of uh inventing of various products to be used in the North Country for farming and agriculture. And uh they started out with a Hoys and Derrick, that's why it was called uh Hateen Hoys and Derrick. But anyway, uh moving forward from 1945 when they got back from the Second World War, founded the, or they they incorporated in 1954 as Polaris Industries. They picked up a name from a product they bought uh in in North Dakota from a fellow. And uh they were building what we knew at the time, or what they called the time the straw chopper for using on uh on uh a backup combines for for harvesting. My father was an outdoorsman, they all were outdoorsmen up here in northern Minnesota on the Canadian border, and uh my father would uh snowshoe or walk or ski, he had cross-country skis to this cabin in the woods up north, right on the border, and uh he said there's there's got to be a better way to do this. So he was and he was uh a synthesizer, shall we say, and and he had all these uh pieces around him, but they built grain elevators, which was a chute that had a had a chain on it and cleats, and it brought the grain up to the uh to elevated the grain up to the bin and uh cars around and whatever, and he said, there's got to be a better way to do this. So he looks around, and uh, you know, one of the things that's become evident to me is that uh, you know, I I've I always used to think I wasn't creative. Because I look, you know, I read the comic books, you read the the comic books, and you see this bubble over these people, and oh, the light bulb turns on. They invent something out of out of free space, you know. Well, so I never did anything like that. Well, really, as I matured and grew up, it really being innovative in my view is looking at what you have around you and figuring out how to use that to create something new that hasn't existed before. And so in this case, my father had these grain elevators and said, and uh, they wanted to go over the snow, and and it's and he he said he didn't invent the snowmobile. There had been snowmobiles back uh Carly Lysian had a motorized toboggan uh that was used actually by the military and had a uh motorcycle engine on it. Well, he he looked around, he had this this uh grain ale there, he tipped it upside down. Now it now it had cleats pushing it on the ground. Now they gotta figure it out, they gotta have a seat to sit on. So they and then, well, how are we gonna steer it? Well, they went outside, they got a uh a 36 uh Chevrolet that was back behind the shop. So what'd they do? They cut the bumper off, cut it in half, and turned the the bumper upside down and they made skis. Well, now they have to have a steering gear. Well, they had a Model T out in the back that had a planetary steering sector in it. Well, they pulled that out, hooked that up to the skis, and now they have something to steer. So now you they're putting these, he is putting these parts together, and he's got friends and workers around him, and and uh they they they drove it out the door, didn't work. Didn't work at all. Well, what happened? They went into the snow and the the cleats went directly to the bottom of the snow. Didn't float on the snow at all. So then what did they do? Well, they put canvas, they had canvas sitting in the corner that because they they used it for uh some of their other products. They they put canvas between the cleats on the track, and then now that the the cleats then uh created uh or the the canvas created a pocket for the snow so this the the track didn't go right to the bottom and uh and then sponge floated on the snow. So they realized they uh well it worked and they used it for their everyday, you know, getting out to the hunting camp. And then the guy across the street who was a who was a wolf hunter and he won he he hunted on uh with with snowshoes. He saw that and thinks I want I want to I want to buy that. Well they sold the first dad sold the first one he built for$465, and they started building a second one. And then that was his partner, Alan, built the second one, and and uh there was a logger north of town, and he was using a horse to get out to where he was logging. So he said, Can I, you know, I'd like to I'd like to get one of those, and the rest is history. I mean, today uh there's snowmobiles around the world that are very, you know, are offspring of what was created here in in Roseville, Minnesota.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 10:28

And that was your father was in the Navy. I want to go back to that. Uh is that is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay. So a couple of veterans get together, brothers, family members, and they do exactly what you said. And we should know we're recording this on Veterans Day. Yeah. So it's so apropos, it's ridiculous. And just the metaphor of creating snowmobiles, we talked about that quite a bit, and I think you broke it down, and we want to go deeper with you for sure. But this idea of creativity, just so folks know and you're aware, that the the observer oriented act loop emerged as John Boyd was trying to discover the nature of creativity, right? How do living systems create? And he was looking back at his life and others to figure out uh what that's all about. And that metaphor pops up quite a bit, the snowmobile metaphor. And today we call it the adjacent possible. Stuart Kaufman talks about this quite a bit. Not everybody needs to know that. It's just he's talking about snowmobiles. Stuart Kaufman is saying, hey, we have more things today. We can make more things tomorrow. And that's, you know, in order to get to the snowmobile, you had to have the Model T, you had the Chevy, you had the grain elevator. All these things were, again, snowmobiles in their own right based off of something that was available yesterday, right? Social spiral. Yeah, it's snowmobiles. Yeah, Moose, any thoughts on this? This is pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_02: 12:36

I mean, what Mitchell just shared with us was first of all, it was a perfect example of Boyd's, you know, your your dad and your uncle did exactly what John Boyd talked about, the difference between a winner and a loser. And of course, Polaris is a winning, a winning organization. I know I I love, even though I went to college in Milwaukee, I'm actually partial to Indian motorcycles versus Harley. So I know that Polaris owns Indian now, but I think that's important because it's it's living proof. And the metaphor, I mean, the the book that uh just came out that Ian Brown and Franzo Singer wrote is called Snowmobiles and Grand Ideals. And it's almost like the the snowmobile is like the mascot of jumbo-type thinking because what he's talking about is exactly what your what uh Mitchell, what your dad and your uncle did. They broke down things that didn't have anything to do with the other and created something completely novel that for those that use them, you know, we don't have many of them here in Manhattan that I'm aware of. I've not yet seen one, but where where the snowmobile is used, you know, it's become synonymous. What did do you know what your dad and your uncle, like you know, they were Navy veterans. What did they do in the Navy?

SPEAKER_00: 13:45

Uh uh was uh in China uh and he was on uh a ship there. They were in the process of uh turning over the the war was winding down, they were turning over the the U.S. ships to the uh to Shankai-shek and in what became the Taiwan uh uh exodus. And uh so they were training, he was he was actively training um uh uh the uh Chinese nationals how to run these ships. He was in the engine room and he talks about how uh uh they shut him down because the mufflers were leaking and and uh they and they'd flood the engine room. And so he said he so he spent his time uh whittling on wood to pound them into the mufflers until he could get it welded to keep the to keep the salt water from spraying all over the engine rooms. But I mean, my my point is being creative with what's around you. You got some wood and you got a whittler and you got engine water spraying all over. Well, you got it, we gotta fix this.

SPEAKER_02: 14:48

So Do you know what your uncle did in the Navy?

SPEAKER_00: 14:51

You know, I don't. He he had an early medical discharge. He came home early, and uh I sat around listening to my dad's stories. So I I I'm I don't know what he did. He I mean he was he was I don't know that he was in China. Yeah, he was stationed somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02: 15:08

Well, Ponch and I are extremely biased to the naval forces of our country. You know, I'm a I'm a former Marine captain and Ponch is a retired Navy captain. And when I think of your the way you just described your dad, you know, first of all, I think that just because that we deal with the sea, which is always changing and always fluctuating, you have to be you have to be creative and you have to be on your game. But also, too, when you're on a ship and having lived on ship and Ponch has also lived on ships, you're once you're out there, what you have is what you have. What you've got is what you got. So if he was doing things uh creatively to satisfy things, like it's interesting that he would eventually create the snowmobile because that's exactly what you would have learned in the Navy and the Marine Corps is how to jerry rig things, you know, with what you got, because you can't go to Walmart. You know, you can't go to Home Depot when you're out deployed on a ship. So I mean it seems like that kind of ingenuity that I imagine he had it before he went to the Navy, but I'm sure that the Navy kind of honed that.

SPEAKER_00: 16:04

Well, uh certainly he talks fondly about his time in the Navy and and and uh working with what they had, so to speak. And and he grew up uh uh Swedish immigrants, and I told some stories to Ponch, but you know they they had what they had up in northern Minnesota, and for example, Polaris in the early days, they're 400 miles north of Minneapolis, St. Paul. That's where they got the steel, that's where they got most of their stuff. And 400 miles in those days was a long, long way from where they were. So they most everything they did was what with what they could put together from what was around them in terms of what the things they had at hand.

SPEAKER_02: 16:43

Yeah. I'm wondering if I imagine Polaris dealing with global supply lines and supply chains and air freight and everything is probably very different. Yeah, yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 16:53

So 1956-ish, I think we we have the snowmobile, the evolution of the company. You get some fast followers, you get some companies that are copying you, not only in the snowmobile, but but other ways. Can you talk a little bit more uh about the maturity of the company or the evolution of the company into what it has become today?

SPEAKER_00: 17:12

Well, sure. So just a comment here. Uh so this was 56, 1960. Edgar, uh dad's boyhood friend and brother-in-law, uh, said, we got to figure out how to promote this. So Edgar cooked up a trip with uh with a bush pilot up in Alaska, who I who was originally from Roseau, and uh they decided to, and they worked with the Air Force and uh made a trip with a snowmobile, well, with uh four people, three snowmobiles from the Bering Sea, vessel all the way to Fairbanks, off the Cuscaquin River and across the the Yukon portage over to the Yukon River and Fairbanks, you know, Tanana River and Fairbanks. It was uh over a month's trip. Anyway, Edgar commented that they only um all they saw was dog teams as as transportation. So and that was in that was in 1960. I remember I was 11 years old. I remember when when the truck left town with with the snowmobiles, and Edgar was off. And and uh, you know, I I I was just all all excited when I couldn't go along. Only 11 years old, had to go to school. But uh in 19 in 2000, which would be 40 years later, uh I had the occasion to uh lead a trip with my father and my uncle Edgar. And we we retraced, we we we retraced uh the trip that Edgar made and visited with some of the very people who remember when when Edgar came through 40 years later. My point is we didn't all they saw was dog teams. We didn't see one dog team except a few that were training for racing. All we saw was snowmobiles. And snowmobiles had radically changed the whole uh transportation of Alaska. There weren't there they're not there aren't roads to these villages, but we we went from village to village, stayed in the gymnasiums, and we came through and and uh it was fascinating to see how things had changed in 40 years. So then going on with Polaris they uh uh did very well in snowmobiles, but they also saw an opportunity in uh in they were in off-road vehicles and uh they said, well, you know, and they and they were everything they did was outdoors. They they and Polaris saw an opportunity with uh ATVs in Honda started the ATV uh business with their ATC uh and became quite popular through the um 70s. Yeah, through the 70s and and and into the 80s. Well, in 85, Polaris decided they were doing well on snowmobiles, they decided to get into ATVs. And so again, we have some of this synthesis going on in the culture that was developed within Polaris is well, we're not gonna build uh just a Honda. And there was in Kawasaki and Yamaha, there were the four big four were Japanese companies. So we came to the ATV business and we're we're laughed at, really, because we we had two we we we use what we had at hand. We had two stroke engines, we had a C rubber bell CVT, two stroke engines came from snowmobiles, rubber bell cvt came from snowmobiles. We had all the all the com competitors, we built our first prototypes, and uh we were in the big four from from uh Japan, they came from a motorcycle heritage and they had and they had a good product. But so let now we've got all the we're developing our first one, we see an opportunity. You know, I was there and uh in the Neandermite got my engineering degree and been to business school. We said, well, we're not gonna build a Honda. We took what we had. Snowmobiles had long travel suspensions. Motorcycles have very they they drive on roads, they have very short travel suspensions. We would ride these ATVs and we thought they were terrible. You're driving for one hour and and it was like riding an irony board. Uh they had foot pegs. Uh and so we went on and drove, you know. I tell the story of Dalton the Cell. We were out in in the woods here in uh south of town. Where's all where's Dalton? Well, he was with us, you know, and we were riding a competitor's machines. We were still in the process of figuring out what we're developing our own. Oh, let's go back and find him. So there's Dalton on this hill. Both his feet had slipped off the foot pegs, and he was pinned. The back wheels were over his his ankles. He couldn't move on a downhill slope. Well, we have running boards on on snowmobiles. Let's just put running boards on these uh ATVs. So they put running boards on. We had a steel, we had a we had a rubber belt CVT, we had two-stroke engines. There are automatic transmissions in the CVT, it's constant velocity transmission. Now we came from snowmobiles. So you didn't have to shift. And they were they were just easy to drive compared to uh having to figure out what gear you are, shift in off-road conditions. And so the whole we we came to the marketplace with a snowmobile heritage, a snowmobile viewpoint, an operational psychology, shall we say, and we were laughed at. Okay, this is in 1985. 1895, we were all we were we had caught up to all the the big three world one ahead of us Honda. By uh 2000, we had passed Honda. We today we are number one in ATVs, and we and it it's it's not that I mean they've got good machines. Honda pioneered the the ATV market with their ATC. Uh but Polaris came with a different mentality, and now all the manufacturers build a Polaris derivative, essentially, the Sportsman 500, which changed the ATV business. The Sportsman 500 is the iconic ATV, and it is now uh well it's it's it's the all-time uh number one model sold in the industry. And it's the it's it's the more and and and if I want to brag a little bit, I was the leader of that whole program. And you know, I I I learned a few things from my dad, and I'm thankful for that.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 23:55

I grew up on farms in Colorado, and I we had the three-wheel ATVs back then, where I remember that situation where your feet would get pinned underneath the the back tires. That's one situation. I don't know, it is of course the you know, in the three-wheel, you're gonna flip over it quite a bit, so bumping around. And that was in the late 70s, early 80s when I was riding those. And then fast forward to about, oh, I think three years ago, so 2022, or in South Dakota, and what are we driving around in? These big ATVs that had Polaris on the side, or I think on the backs. I mean, it's it's it's a it's an amazing upgrade. And by the way, those are fun to drive in uh the uh Dakota Mountains, uh just driving around and having having a blast in those. So I know what it's like to flip a three-wheeler or the old school ATV.

SPEAKER_02: 24:42

Yeah, I grew up in Western PA in you know in Pittsburgh, and that was always like the thing, like people would say, 'cause you say roll them and flip them, like you're not allowed to ride on a on a on a trike or a three-wheeler, you know. You're you know, Johnny so-and-so got his head cut off. Yeah. But uh but you also too, Polaris makes uh slingshots, and you see those driving around the well, yes, and and that's a unique vehicle.

SPEAKER_00: 25:09

And um, you know, that was developed when I was still at Polaris. And uh, you know, there's there's always this tension, shall we say, and that is, you know, how do you how do you come with something new but not be so radical that you lose some of the heritage, shall we say? No, and um the the slingshot I think is a great vehicle. And uh you know it ha it hasn't taken off, shall we say, like the ATV and and then the UTV Ranger. But you know, it it's it's it's a fine vehicle. And you know, uh I don't um you know I I I come more from the the innovative engineering side of things, but you know, I I did run the off-road division at Polaris at one time, and one of the things I learned there was you know, just because you build a better mousetrap doesn't mean the world beats a path to your door. You know, you've you've got to you've got to sell it, you've got to market it, you've got to develop it. And that happens by by being on the ground with the customer, with the product. You need to understand and know the product as well as your customer, but then of course you've got to listen to your customer so that you can continue to develop. My my point is we came with the Sportsman 500. We did we said we're not so we we were in the ATV business, we had a rear swing arm suspension, and we were coming with the uh with with what became the Sportsman 500. We were told by our marketing people that we needed uh, and we agreed, I mean, sure, we need a shaft drive. We had a chain drive to the rear as a swing arm suspension, rode great, had floorboards, all these things, but we needed shaft drive, and so we we came with this shaft drive, which basically I welded the swing arm to the transmission, and then now we had a stiff vehicle where we had to put an independent rear suspension on. The independent rear suspension was well, we weren't the first one to invented an independent rear suspension. Suzuki had them at with two inches of travel. Well, we came with an independent, I I just hired a suspension guy out of Ford. I said, Jeff, you got to make uh an independent rear suspension, but long travel. He made an independent rear suspension on sportsman for that had 11 inches of travel. And but it we said, yeah, that's great. Went out and drove it, it didn't work. Uh it it it would tip over, and and and so one of the snowmobile guys, we worked all in the same shop, engineering shop. One of the snowmobile guys looked at and said, Well, of course that won't work. You need an anti-roll bar like we have on snowmobiles, you know, a torsion bar. Well so Jeff was devastated and came and said, Let's put a torsion bar on it that afternoon. They're out running and it works fine. So they you know, they the guys are working together, the lot of cross-pollination. The torsion bar, the anti-roll bar, came right from the snowmobile. That was in in the same shop, uh, you know, 20 feet away. And sometimes you just you can't see things, but if you look around and pay attention, many times your solutions are right in front of you. Yeah. And we're blind to them.

SPEAKER_02: 28:32

That's um it's what's grabbing the stories you're telling and showing about how you have to keep building snowmobiles. And I don't mean, I mean, you're doing it in the literal sense. Polaris is still making snowmobiles, but in the Boyd sense, you know, metaphorically, keep making snowmobiles. It seems like you guys are always shattering models and writing uh writing new stuff. Um and you're no longer limited in snowmobiles because you do off-road vehicles, as you said, the motorcycles and then boats too.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 29:02

Yeah, hey Moose, I think one of the uh compelling parts of this conversation is the what Mitchell is saying supports what natural science and Oodoop says, and that's to be focused on the external environment, distributed decision making, empowering those that are closest to the customer to make those decisions and have that discourse within our organization, have those challenges and be respectful and have that respectful truth over artificial harmony, focused on what's right, not who's right. So the stories that Mitchell's telling are discovered from the heritage of the family, it sounds like it it was part of their DNA, if you will, to do these things. And that's carried throughout the history of the company and companies. But most organizations can't figure this stuff out. They struggle with this, right? They don't know that you need to let your frontline workers make decisions. We're seeing this in sports. We just had folks talk about constraints-load approach. You need to let your players make real-time decisions on the court, on the field. You give them the tools they need, the constraints they need to do that. And that's exactly, I just want to point this out that this isn't new. This isn't like a very unique thing. This is how you do business. This is how you create new things.

SPEAKER_02: 30:10

That's supposed to happen.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 30:11

Yeah, yeah. And and I guarantee you, you know, the Johnsons didn't know John Boyd's Oodaloop. They didn't go to a class on this. You don't need to go to a class on this, right? It just it could just emerge sometimes. But what we're offering folks is insights into how this actually works. What does oodaloop mean? What does disruption and creation mean? What does the world of reorientation mean? And this is it. It's it's creating novelty, which is what John Boyd was trying to understand when he created the ODA loop or sketched the OODA loop. How did a living system, somebody like him, create the energy maneuverability theory, come up with the aerial attack study, understand cognitive task analysis, do these things when experts are out in the field and they can't do the same, right? So uh I just want to point that out to our listeners that that's what I'm hearing from Mitchell on this.

SPEAKER_02: 30:59

Well, this is a fantastic Mitchell. It's an amazing story, Mitchell. It's and it's it's a great, it's such a great. I was just remarking to someone earlier about uh unfortunately America anymore. I don't think we have like like the things that you're talking about, like you know, your dad and your uncle like figuring out ways and finding out ways and just having the ability to just do it and then create something completely novel and then just keep keep going. It's a great model for others to to to well and then do it, you'll learn.

SPEAKER_03: 31:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:30

I mean, if if you sit, if if you just contemplate and figure and what I mean, you you do something and you learn, and that's where I think we had a big strength. I used to ride with our test drivers. I used to meet them at the back door every at at three o'clock when they came in for the afternoon. Because I needed to understand, you know, as I moved up in management, I needed to understand what was happening on the ground with them. And I would I would try to ride with them at least once every week. Because they would teach me so much. Now, I I was I'm an outdoor person and I rode a lot, excuse me. But you gotta you gotta be in touch with with two things, the product and the customer. Because you are you don't you don't represent all customers. You have a perspective from your standpoint. You know, and I mentioned about innovation in terms of the product, there's innovation in terms of the market and learning all this too. And we we brought some of that same culture. And I mentioned to Ponch in an earlier talk with him, you know, when we came out with the Sportsman 500, the rear swing arms, you could sit on them and you could bounce on the showroom floor. And oh, this is a great suspension. This is really nice. The Sportsman 500 had an independent grid suspension. When you bounced on it, it had to go sideways. So if it was static, sitting on the showroom floor, you'd bounce on it and then it wouldn't move. You had to be rolling. So and the Sportsman 500 wasn't selling. We thought it was great. Well, we were in NASCAR at the time. I was heading up to the off-road division. We were in NASCAR and we had a we had a uh driver drove the Polaris Remington car. Uh his name was Rick Mass. Well, how are we, what are we going to do about this? So we we we put a trailer behind our NASCAR, drove around the Darlington, uh, this is all on video, drove around the Darlington racetrack. Uh Rick Mass driving the car. He stopped, unloaded the Sportsman 500 uh from the trailer, wung his leg out of the Sportsman 500. We had video on the suspension. The suspension was just moving wild. He was going through railroad ties and rocks and the and and then he stopped. He swings his lead over, turns around, looked at the camera, and says, You gotta ride it to believe it. In his southern accent. You gotta ride it to believe it. And that is so true because what happened is we have people on the showroom floor sitting on it saying, This isn't a very good suspension. You gotta ride it to believe it. Meaning that's you experience the product. Well, it was interesting. Fortune 500s weren't selling very well. We started running that ad on Monday by Friday. This is unbelievable. We watched the sale just take off. And it was, you know, you gotta ride it to believe it. That that's it it applies to so much in life. You gotta ride it to believe it. You gotta experience it. You got this has to become a part of you in terms of how what your passion and what you want to do with you know with your with the product and how to use it.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 34:42

We f we feel that uh in what we do. Uh we have a saying that uh once you see it, you can't unsee it, right? But that's you have to get there first. You actually have to do it. You have to learn, you have to probe and do those things. Mitchell, this has been awesome. Can you kind of take us home and wrap it up and let our listeners know where they can find what you're doing now and what's next in the either of the companies that you're working with?

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

Well, you know, the this the story goes on. I mean, you you you read you replay this story. So I talked about the ATV and this 4500. The the Ranger is now a ubiquitous vehicle almost in the in the marketplace, the Ranger UTV. Polaris is by far the the leader there. I led it, I led with I I headed up that program and project at Polaris, and uh we reinvented the the off the the UTV. Um you know, and it so you know what am I doing today? I've uh you know I'm I'm still working with Polaris. I'm not an employee there, but uh you know help out with things, and I have a company alongside Polaris where we b we uh do uh CVT and for Polaris vehicles and and track systems for Polaris vehicles that are quite unique in the marketplace. And uh and then now I've just recently uh you know got into uh boats. We have a product that I uh Winnipeg Yall that I I I've I've been up north in the Canadian lakes and even up in the Arctic, and they have these commercial fishing hulls that are uh big small boats for big water. And so now I've started building these uh to for the sport fishing market where we've got Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods and some of these big lakes where the normal run-of-the-mill uh boats don't work well in these conditions. So I'm just I guess finding these things that I have passion for and and enjoy life. That's fantastic.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 36:35

Well, hey, we appreciate you being on with us here on No Way Out. I'm gonna turn it over to Moose to kind of take us home. Moose, uh, want to put a nice bow on this for everybody?

SPEAKER_02: 36:43

Yeah, Mitchell, we really appreciate you coming on and showing us the real world manifestation of what John Boyd was exactly talking about. That it, you know, he's metaphorically describing creating snowmobiles, and uh your dad and your uncle did it. Absolutely did it. I'd be curious to go through and ask, maybe Ponch we asked Mary or or Chuck, you know, did I wonder if Boyd had even looked into may have.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 37:09

We don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 37:10

You know, that's an interesting thought, anyway.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 37:13

No, thanks again for your time. So we'll keep you on here for a second, and thanks again for being on No Way Out.

SPEAKER_00: 37:18

I enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you.