31 How to Be Innovative (Plus Turn Ideas Into Profitable Products) with Chris Hawker

Have you ever had a bright idea; one that you thought would make you millions, but you didn't know how invent it or bring it to market? Well, in this weeks episode I have world famous inventor Chris Hawker to show you how it's done. Chris is a great friend, and one of my first mentors […] Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 31 with Chris Hawker.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  What is up all the greats out there? I hope you're having a fantastic week and we've got a big episode today on the School of Greatness. It's with one of my early on mentors and now good friends, Chris Hawker. Now, for those that know who do not know who Chris Hawker is, he is a famous inventor, kind of behind the scenes type of guy, but in front of the scenes type of products. He's got over 30 products, I believe, on the market to date. He's been everywhere as in Costco and Walmart and Bed Bath & Beyond and Best Buy and pretty much every type of consumer goods store you can think of. He's got some type of product or some type of influence in those stores.

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  So this episode is all about how does someone go from idea to landing on the shelves of Walmart? Or how does it, what does it take to come up with a great idea and become innovative in business? And we also talk about the importance of design and how this comes into play with your inventions or anything in life. So this is going to be a very interesting episode. I'm super pumped for this, having Chris in the studio here in LA. Very excited to share with you a wealth of his information. One of the smartest guys I've ever met. Literally a genius and couldn't be happier to have my good friend here in the studio. But before we get into that, want to give a quick shout out to the fan of the week.

• 2:00Lewis Howes?

  And I got a post on Instagram. I keep getting all you guys' pictures and posts of where you're watching the show. So keep it up. Keep tagging me on Instagram and

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  Sharing where you're watching, excuse me, where you're listening to the School of Greatness all over the world. And this week is with Natalie Sisson. And she says, working out overlooking an incredible view of the Strip of Las Vegas while listening to Lewis Howes's School of Greatness podcast. Hashtag hustling, dream big, first million. And it's got a sweet view of the Strip with her on the treadmill going pretty fast. So thanks Natalie Sisson for the shout out. Pumped that you're listening while you're running. So without further ado, I am super pumped to introduce you to my mentor and good friend, Chris Hawker.

• 3:01Lewis Howes?

  Welcome, everyone. Thanks for coming on today. I'm with my good friend and early mentor, Chris Hawker. What is up, Chris?

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Hey, Lewis.

• 3:09Lewis Howes?

  We are in my studio in Los Angeles. Beautiful view today, looking out the the windows here of Los Angeles, Hollywood Hills, downtown.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Looks just like Ohio.

• 3:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right.

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  Chris is from Columbus and is, in my mind, a very famous inventor. And we're talking about inventions in general today, but also innovation, design, designing your life, your business, all these good things. So want to get started and kind of talk about inventions. And first ask you a few simple questions. And how many products have you actually invented?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Well, I've helped bring over 70 products to market. Probably of my own conception, maybe a third of those were my own ideas. But I've also then collaborated with other inventors and companies to bring products to market. So the total number is a little over 70 right now, though we've got a few more on the way this year.

• 4:06Lewis Howes?

  Over 70, and how many are currently being sold, I guess, or on the market?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Probably about half that number.

• 4:14Lewis Howes?

  Half, okay, so about thirty-five.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  A lot of products have a life cycle. They come and then sell for a while and then, and then go and so.

• 4:22Lewis Howes?

  And where are your products at? Where are they located?

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Uh, all over. Pretty much every major retailer in America. So we've got products at Walmart, products at Target, products at grocery chains, specialty stores, Bed Bath and Beyond, uh, you know, niche markets, sporting goods, all over the place.

• 4:43Lewis Howes?

  And tell me how you first got started.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Well, when I was a teenager, I worked in a fish store and I started an aquarium maintenance business where I would set up fancy aquariums and doctor's offices in the homes of wealthy individuals and I specialized in reef tanks, which are like fairly sophisticated saltwater aquariums with invertebrates, corals in particular. And I started having ideas for my own filtration products. So I, I would, I learned from someone I, you know, found in the Yellow Pages who did acrylic fabrication, how to do acrylic fabrication. And then I worked with him to develop, uh, some of my, you know, filter, filter ideas, which I would sell to my clients.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  So that was my first experience with doing, uh, sort of product development was, was a protein skimming filters for saltwater aquariums. And then when I went to college, I went to Ohio State University and I, uh, started, when I went to college, I had to shut down my aquarium maintenance business, but I continued to try to manufacture and sell my filters, which were called the Trident series Protein Skimmers. Protein Skimmer is a

• 5:58Speaker 01

  filter that, uh, scrubs protein using a column of aerated water from the water in order to purify.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Purify it for the sensitive invertebrate creatures, which are very sensitive. So I I started sort of not mass producing this, but making them and selling them through mail order and did that through college, selling filtration components. And then the real breakthrough came as in my senior year of college, where I I studied, actually got a degree in comparative religion from Ohio State. I I was already kind of in business. So I was studying what my passion was, which was understanding humans and why they do what they do. That's what I was trying to figure out with that degree. But during my senior year, I started developing a professional

• 6:51Speaker 01

  quality algae scraper. So a tool to remove the algae that grows on the walls of the tank. And that having been a professional algae remover, at the time, the only thing available was a sponge on a stick or a magnet scraper, which is fine if you've got one tank. But if you're cleaning tanks all day long, the magnet's inefficient and doesn't work very well. So I just wanted a high quality product that was like a carpenter's hammer. It didn't need to be miraculous. It just needed to not be junk. And I figured I wouldn't be the only person who would be interested in that. I thought I'd sell, you know, a couple thousand other professionals. And so I developed this by calling up companies

• 7:35Speaker 01

  who manufacture things, injection molders, or people who made different types of rods and materials, and just asking questions. I didn't know how to do anything and no one around me to teach me. So in order to learn, I just started calling up factories and saying, hey, I'm trying to make an algae scraper. I did this nice drawing of what I think it should look like and how I think it should work. Can you give me some advice? And I got into a lot of dead ends, where people were like, well, I don't know what to tell you. But I found certain people who are extremely willing to to talk to me. And

• 8:10Speaker 01

  In particular, it turned out I had a family relative Rex Clark, who had a injection molding company in Vancouver, Washington, as a distant cousin, and he taught me about injection molding, like, top to bottom, explained all the ins and outs of how you can make a plastic part. And so with his tutelage and then instruction from other people who I, who were willing to open up, and I found people were generally very willing, if I called them and asked them questions, to tell me everything. And so I finally sort of figured out all the components of the, this device, and then I started selling them. And the way I sold them was through a company called Kent Marine. So I didn't want to start a company and try to sell the products into the industry myself.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  You licensed them? So, well, that particular deal is what we call a private labeling arrangement. I bought the molds. Sure. With a loan from my parents, having blown all my money I had from selling filter components on beer and college. Right. And some travel, or some road trips. But then, so my parents loaned me some money, I bought the molds, and I would sell, I struck a deal with Jack Kent at Kent Marine, who was a guy who I had met because he was buying some of my filter components. And he said, yeah, let's do an algae scraper. And so he would buy them and sell them, and I would get them made. And it was, it was a real cool arrangement. He would place an order

• 9:37Speaker 01

  with me. I would place an order with the factory. The factory would ship the goods to him, and he would pay me, and I would pay the factory. So I never had to come up with the cash. He came up with the cash, and You didn't have to warehouse them? I didn't have to warehouse them. I didn't have to do anything. So I was basically acting as a broker. You were drop shipping, basically. Yeah, yeah. And we sold 35,000 units in the first year. Wow. So, yeah, it turned out More than 2,000? More than 2,000. This afforded me the great privilege of never having to get a job with my religion degree. I was like, what am I gonna do? So, yeah, I

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Started selling the algae scraper and I was like, it immediately became, you know, much more successful than I ever imagined. I was like, wow, inventing is easy. This is an easy way to make money. I'm gonna just do this over and over and started a company developing my inventions because I had a lot of ideas. I was, you know, engineers, people always think, oh, you could always tell he was an engineer because he would take the radio apart and fix it and then rebuild it. And I was not that kid. I was a kid who would buy the radio, take it apart and then stare at it and just admire how cool it was looking. I had no idea how it worked. I was like, not technical in that way, but I had

• 11:02Speaker 01

  a great appreciation for the parts and like the beauty of these designed components. And I mean, even as a very little kid, like five, six years old, my mom would take me to garage sales and what I would do is I'd buy things like old typewriters and radios and I'd bring them home to take them apart. That was my hobby, taking things apart, not to fix them or to understand them, but to appreciate them. So over the years, I just developed a strong appreciation and a palate, if you will, for what's cool, what turns me on. And so having done this algae scraper and had this success, I was like, oh, I know what's cool. That's what I was telling them. I know what's cool. I'm gonna start just pumping

• 11:44Speaker 01

  stuff out. Boom. Cool stuff. Yeah, cool stuff. And that was my sort of dream when I started. So I ended up hiring an industrial designer and then a second industrial designer and,

• 11:56Speaker 01

  you know, developing to sell products. So after my algae scrapers, we expanded on that algae scraper line and then moved into guitar accessories. I actually, right after college, immediately after college, I went to guitar building school in Phoenix, the Roberto Van School of Luthery, which is the only guitar building school in the world because I was a guitar player and it kind of fit in with this idea of being an inventor, being a product developer. And so then I branched and I decided not to pursue it as a career, though I did build a few guitars, which was a great experience, but I also learned that is Not a great way to make a living. It's a lot of hard work.

• 12:32Lewis Howes?

  Months and months to get one guitar or something, right?

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and many hours tedious work. I'm not, I don't have the attention to detail or the patience and it's it's kind of hard. It's it's basically like being a cabinet maker, only they pay you way less.

• 12:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Cause people just think, oh, a $2,500 guitar, that's an expensive guitar. And actually, that guy's making like 10 bucks an hour.

• 12:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  If if he made it himself because of the amount of time, the cost of the materials, etc. So. Uh, but what I did do is then we started designing some guitar accessories and. Uh, basically my next like five or six products totally flopped. I mean, just disastrous. We did like guitar string winder. And.

• 13:10Lewis Howes?

  When you thought it was gonna be easy, the first one was a hit.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  The first one was, I got very lucky and and Jack Kent, who was the the man who owned the company was selling the algae scraper was really. Uh, I was very fortunate to run into this guy because he took me under his wing. And even though I was selling him goods, he was like, well. Here's how you should do this, Chris, because obviously you're just a young guy, but he you seem like a sharp kid. I'm gonna just take you under my wing. And he was very explicit about it. And so he's like, you should charge me twice what you get them from the factory for.

• 13:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, no.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  And I was like, I was gonna like, charge him like way less than that.

• 13:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  So and then he he taught me about margins. He taught me about all the ins and outs of how you bring a product to market, how you get it made and sold. Though he specialized in chemical stuff, so the algae scraper was a hard good. And so he didn't know about that. I actually knew more about that than he did.

• 14:05Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Um. So. We developed this like great partnership and mentorship where he became my first real. You know, business mentor other than my father, who had always been a businessman and sort of taught me.

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Some theories or ideas about business, but not didn't. He was an insurance agent, so he didn't really know anything. That would directly help me with product development. So Jack became my first uh, person there and.

• 14:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  And.

• 14:32Lewis Howes?

  How how important do you think it is to have a mentor early on?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I think.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  There are very, very few instances of people who achieve any level of greatness without standing on the shoulders of other people who are eager generally, looking for people who, young whippersnappers, up and comers, who they can hitch their wagon to because they can thrive on the energy. And, and you know, I find myself in that position too. Like I now, it's like for me, having the opportunity to share what I've learned gives me a legacy about, you know, I, I figured all this stuff out kind of the hard way. I had some mentors, but I've also cut my own path. And having gotten all this hard-won

• 15:20Speaker 01

  knowledge, I don't want it to stop with me. It's, it's way more fun to share it and get other people doing what I'm doing. So.

• 15:29Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Well, it's fun having you on right now and talking about this just because you were one of my first mentors and you helped me in my growth so much. And that's something I talk about on the show a lot is the importance of having mentors to reach basically the top or the next level or continue to get in the next level.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Well, and, and just to comment on that, I'll say in a really great mentorship relationship, the mentor learns just as much from the mentee as the other way around. So like when you came into my office and started showing up, Lewis had a.

• 16:03Lewis Howes?

  Bugging you?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, bugging me. You had a desk. We gave, we gave him a desk in the kitchen of the office and we would just go on walks every day and, and brainstorm about what he was doing and he would brainstorm what I was doing. But I was teaching you about some basics of business and.

• 16:21Lewis Howes?

  Inventing and product design and marketing and everything.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  All those things. And, uh, but I immediately began learning from you about passion and about focus and drive, uh, because you had those things in much greater quantity than I did. And so I was feeding off of you, just as you were feeding off of me at the same time. And that's really like in a mentorship relationship, I think an important thing to understand is you want to pick students who aren't.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Just taking, but they're giving back because it's that's where you get the most value. And also it's the most fun. And plus, if you pick students who are going to go on to great things, it makes you look really good. So, thank you.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Yeah. When I first, you know, I first met Chris through my ex-girlfriend. Because I was basically injured. I had a, you know, a huge cast on and broken my wrist. Just retired from football and I made this like little cast sleeve. And I told my ex-girlfriend, I was like, God, I really want to like, take this to market or sell it. And I was like, I need to find an inventor. And she was like, oh, I know a famous inventor. He's done like this big power squid and all these other products. And so you had just moved back, I think like two weeks before that.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  I'd been in Santa Cruz, California for three years.

• 17:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Taking a break from the weather.

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  And you just moved back and I go, I have to meet this guy. Let's meet him. Like, I don't care where he's at. I'll, I'll stalk him. Let's go. And I show up and I was like this thug, like showing up with a backwards cap. Your baggy jeans and like, just getting out of playing football. And I had this thing on my cast and I have it on right then.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were wearing.

• 18:00Lewis Howes?

  I was wearing this thing that I like sourced from China. And, uh, and then I just bugged you. You're like, I don't have time for you. I'm like getting settled back in Columbus and I was like, I will do whatever.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Right. He's like, I'll, I'll come in tomorrow and we'll talk. And I was like, all right, come in and we'll talk. And then, and then the next day he's there too. And I'm like, uh, okay. Well, you could come in for an hour a day.

• 18:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  I get, and then pretty soon it was like just five days a week and.

• 18:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  And there was a trade there too. You became my personal trainer.

• 18:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Then you kicked my ass.

• 18:30Lewis Howes?

  So I added value. I added value. I didn't just take.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Right. No, you were adding.

• 18:34Lewis Howes?

  That's, that's a key to finding a good mentor is like adding lots of value if possible.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Like if you're going to ask someone for their knowledge and wisdom, it's not, if it's, if it's a one-way street, it'll run out of gas real fast.

• 18:45Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Yeah. So I would train you. A few days a week in the gym with one arm.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:51Lewis Howes?

  Try to like do one arm pull ups with you or whatever. And then we would take walks and you'd teach me everything that you knew. It was amazing.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I taught him everything he knows, people.

• 18:59Lewis Howes?

  It was like a year, it was like a year and a half. It was about a year and a half of that, right?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, a year and a half.

• 19:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was so fun. It was really a great thing. So.

• 19:07Lewis Howes?

  It was amazing. And you're originally like, oh, we'll do this for like three to six months. And then it just was a year and a half.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we became great friends.

• 19:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  It was fun. And, uh, and like I said, I mean, I was learning, I was getting at least as much from it as you were. So it was, it was a real great thing. And I recognized instantly that, I mean, literally the, the minute I met you, I was like, I, I came home and I was like, Summer, that's my wife. I was like, I just met a guy who's like very interesting. And he's.

• 19:35Lewis Howes?

  It's a good word.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Much more successful than I will be. He's got a drive that I've never encountered before. And I wanna, I wanna, I want to learn something about what he's got. So.

• 19:47Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it was, you know, I'll say one of, one of the skills that's driven my own success has been recognizing talent, whether it's in a person or if it's in an idea or a product. And to just instantly recognize what, you know, something about it that like, there's something there. There's something special, which like maybe towards the end of this, uh, conversation, we can talk about noticing, which is I think a really.

• 20:20Lewis Howes?

  We will.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Important skill to develop if you, if you wanna innovate.

• 20:25Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think it's, you know, mentioning recognizing talent, but then knowing what to do with it. Cause you know, anyone can maybe be like, oh, that's an interesting thing, but if they don't take action on it or whatever, then it's just an interesting idea.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 20:39Lewis Howes?

  What you told me five years ago is that there are no million dollar ideas, only million dollar executions.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 20:47Lewis Howes?

  So everyone can be like, this is a million dollar idea. This is gonna make me millions. But if you don't execute the right way, or leverage the talent or whatever it may be, then you really have nothing.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. I mean, I got stacks and stacks of ideas.

• 21:00Lewis Howes?

  A million dollar ideas.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got stacks of them. But there is, you know, it does help to start with the right idea.

• 21:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And the right person. So it's, it's both. It's like starting with the right kind of idea. And then. Knowing what to do with it's the second half of the equation.

• 21:19Lewis Howes?

  So now, how do you find the right idea or become innovative in business or in life? How does someone innovate?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Well,

• 21:29Speaker 01

  when it comes to inventing, coming up with products, all the best ideas that I've experienced come from personal experience. So we deal at my company Trident Design with a lot of inventors. So we invent our own things and then we also work with companies and inventors who have their own ideas. And so they come to us and, you know, here's my idea. What do you think? You know, is this, does this have legs? And, and some of those people come to us with ideas that they came up with because they're trying to get rich. You know, I want to invent something and then I'm going to, it's like winning the Lotto. I'm going to come up with this great idea and I'm going to be rich. It's going to be awesome.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  And then other people come up with an invention because they need it desperately. I, I have been scraping aquariums and with a sponge on a stick and it's garbage. And I need a high quality tool. Why does the carpenter get a nice hammer and I get a sponge on a stick? So, you know, so I needed it. It was for me. And, but it turns out there were a lot of people like me who were tired of suffering with the low quality stuff. So, um, you know, you could be a surgeon and needed new surgical device. You could be a, you know, police officer and need something to help you with your job. You could be a passionate hobbyist of, you know, a winemaker or whatever it is.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  But then out of your own personal experience, you come up with a problem that needs to be solved. And no one's done the right thing. There, there isn't a solution yet, or you don't think there is one. So drawing on your personal experience, either your job or your hobby or your passion to identify the ideas is, is where most of the best invention ideas come from. Because the, uh, because you know, the customer. Whereas if you're trying to just make money, who's the customer? You're not really, you know, haven't identified a customer. The customer is like some theoretical person that you don't know intimately well. But if, if you design something that

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Is for someone just like you and you know that if you saw this thing, you would have to buy it because it fulfilled a need that you desperately had, then there's a good chance that that product's going to succeed.

• 23:52Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  And so that's where, that's where product ideas come from.

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  And so I guess.

• 24:00Lewis Howes?

  So filling a need is usually the best one.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, for coming up.

• 24:03Lewis Howes?

  For yourself.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  For yourself.

• 24:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  And, and some people, you know, if you become a professional in an industry of a product company, you develop a skill to know what the market needs.

• 24:14Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Not based on personal experience.

• 24:17Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  So companies innovate in a, in a different way, based on intimate knowledge of a category and what's out there and, and seeing holes in the marketplace. But inventors, in, in, independent inventors are people trying to come up with new things, not just incremental improvements.

• 24:34Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Need to draw on their own experience.

• 24:38Lewis Howes?

  So it's one thing to innovate and find great ideas, but really monetizing those ideas is, you know, how you build a business, I guess. So how does someone go from taking an idea to getting into Walmart? And I know there's many steps, I guess, or phases or.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:57Lewis Howes?

  Assets, but how do you, what's like, you know, the quick overview?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so if someone has an idea for a product and they want to get it on the market, they're basically, there are two paths. You can either start a company and make it, or you can license it.

• 25:14Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  So starting a company and making it is, is kind of the, the obvious answer. Um, though it's the hard one. And then the easy one is develop it to a certain point and then typically you get a patent or a patent, you file for patent protection and then you license the intellectual property protected by that patent to another company who will make it, sell it and pay you a royalty. So. Um, why you would choose one of those paths comes down to, you know, a few factors. So if you're going to start a company, you have to be able to afford it, both time wise, emotionally and financially. So if you don't have the wherewithal to gather the funds, either because

• 25:57Speaker 01

  you have them or can raise them, then starting a company is not an option for you.

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  And if you want to keep your day job as a police officer, because or your night job, you either like that might be, you like your job, you just had an idea and you want to make money from it, but you're not prepared to come up with a hundred thousand dollars and start going to trade shows and dealing with China or wherever the things being made and having inventory and employees and you know, you can't do it casually. Starting a company, if you look out at the world, you don't see too many companies that make products that are run as just an off, you know, on the side business.

• 26:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Most of them are run by teams of people, you know, large teams of people who work seventy hours a week, you know, I mean, it's not a small task. So the biggest factor other than that wherewithal issue then is lifestyle choice. Like what do you want from your life? And like, one of the things we say at Trident is like, not every great idea is an economic opportunity for you. So like, like if you invent the new type of internal combustion engine and you're not Ford, you know, like it's going to be tough to monetize that.

• 27:11Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  So if you come up with an invention idea that is, you know, really, really big and you're not a really, really big company, then it, or really, really ballsy, audacious person like Elon Musk or something like that, you're not going to find that to be a productive path. So, you know, it kind of comes back to that first idea, uh, too about like, what's the best idea? Like, I guess a point I forgot to mention is important to invent something or have an idea whose scale is within your reasonable reach.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  So what type of things do you guys invent in general?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  We're doing simpler consumer products mostly, but we also do medical devices and things with. Ranging from consumer electronics, housewares products, hardware products, most famously the Power Squid, which you mentioned earlier, which is a power strip with flexible outlets. So it looks like a squid and the outlets are on the end of little extension cords. It was, that was actually my own invention and has been my most successful product to date. It's sold several million units. It's licensed to Philips. It's now coming out under the GE brand. It's out under Stanley brand.

• 28:22Lewis Howes?

  It's in Bed Bath and Beyond, Costco, everything, right?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  It's been in those places. It's, you know, it's come and gone in a lot of places.

• 28:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  And it's, and it's past its heyday, but it's a

• 28:32Lewis Howes?

  It's been a lot of knockoffs too.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  And there's been knockoffs and, you know, like I said, every product has its life cycle. So it, it, it came and had a great show, won a bunch of awards, lots and lots of media press. And, and really that product came out in 2005. I thought of it in 2001. And then I licensed it. So, you know, back on the licensing option,

• 28:56Speaker 01

  quick is relative, you know? People think quick and they think, you know, oh, Tiny Wings app was programmed in a weekend and then that guy became a millionaire. So like people think the, the, all the news stories about apps and have people thinking, oh, product is, you can like get rich overnight. But an average timeframe from like idea to marketplace, if you're starting from scratch as an inventor is realistically three to six years. Like it's not a fast thing because of all the steps from A to Z that, that have to happen. Like you have to have the idea, you have to develop the product, you have to develop a presentation, you have to file for a patent. Now you have to find someone to license it to, which is a huge task and can take a very long time

• 29:40Speaker 01

  because you're like identifying targets, trying to chase down meetings. Then you get the meetings, then you gotta present the product, you gotta get them interested. And if you're just an independent solo inventor.

• 29:50Lewis Howes?

  It's very challenging.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  It's very challenging because a lot of companies have what I call an immune response to inventors. They like have been burned in the past by crazy inventors who, you know, I, I know inventors and some of them are indeed quite

• 30:05Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Great. Well, by crazy, I mean, they have far more passion and perspective.

• 30:10Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  So they're not like literally crazy, though there are some of those too. But, but there's just a lot of people who have unrealistic expectations based on things that they've seen in the, in the media. That aren't real or that are like the one in a million story that made the news because it was the one in a million story. But the vast majority of products are not grand slam home runs that made someone rich overnight. They were base hits or doubles that occurred after years and years of effort. And so, yeah, the, but the power squid came out in two thousand and five, you know, after I licensed it to a company called Power Sentry, which was owned by Fiskers, the office products company.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  And then it launched and it took off very fast. It was like an overnight success made in four or five years. So it wasn't 20 years, but it was, it was several years in the making and then it came out and it, it took off and ultimately sold, you know, several million units, brought in over a million dollars in royalties. And so that's, you know, the licensing side. So you can make the product or you can license it. And the great thing about licensing is you stop your efforts when the entrepreneur is just beginning. You get to keep your day job. You collected a check usually on a quarterly basis, based on the sales of the product that someone else is taking all the effort to do.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  To promote, to manufacture, to ship, to whatever.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  To ensure.

• 31:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Warehouse. There's, it's a very complicated number of things to do. And I don't want to discourage people from starting companies that make and sell products because people start companies and make and sell products and get rich all the time doing that. But you have to go in with your eyes open, knowing that it's, it's going to be a lifestyle.

• 31:54Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  You're starting a company.

• 31:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And you need to do that with your eyes open. And I see many lives ruined by people unblindly going into like, oh, I'm going to start a company and do this thing and they don't get sound advice. And pretty soon they've got a warehouse full of.

• 32:11Lewis Howes?

  Inventory.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Inventory.

• 32:12Lewis Howes?

  You can't sell.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause everyone's like, oh, once I'll just get some inventory and then I'll sell it. It'll be easy. I'm here to say the hardest part in the equation is selling the goods.

• 32:22Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Developing and inventing stuff is fun and easy.

• 32:26Lewis Howes?

  And you've done both. You've started side companies of products, like the thirsty light was one where you manufactured. You did everything and tried to sell it all.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 32:34Lewis Howes?

  And that's one that I was involved in, you know, doing PR for like in the kitchen.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:39Lewis Howes?

  For, you know, weeks and weeks, but.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I I have, I've I've manufactured quite a few things and today I manufacture nothing. I focus exclusively on licensing. We help other people to make things. But for my own interest, uh, making and selling things smacks of work and I have an allergy to to work. I like to play all day and inventing stuff, talking to people, you know, cutting deals. This to me feels like play.

• 33:07Lewis Howes?

  More fun, yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:08Lewis Howes?

  So now, so you're solely focusing on licensing, but creating as well. You have a whole design team of designers, industrial designers, right? But basically, it's all about licensing now.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  That's for my own ideas.

• 33:21Lewis Howes?

  Right, for you.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:22Lewis Howes?

  So inventors come to you as well. And they say, hey, I've got this idea. How does it work? If you like the idea, then you say, okay, I can make this for you for a certain price.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  And then I can help you take it and license it for you.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so so Trident does, you know, we're basically two things. We're product development and commercialization and then all the things involved with both of those fields. So we have a team of industrial designers and engineers and graphic designers and marketers and video producers who can put all the pieces together to help someone develop and then launch a product, whether they're going to license, whether they want to license it or whether or not they want to sell it themselves. And then we have licensing agents. So if they want to license it, that's something we do. If they want to sell it themselves, then obviously they're building a company.

• 34:05Lewis Howes?

  You just pass it off to them.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, then it's, they're just like a company who hires us to do industrial design, which we do quite a bit of as well. Where corporations will hire our team to develop new products for them in particular inventions. So like people come to us if they need an inventive new solution or or new angle on something because our specialty is not styling, it's inventing, coming up with new ways to do old things. And so we've sort of developed this skill set where we know how to look at things from a fresh perspective and come up with ideas that, you know, are new, but usually not that comp, it's not like they're complicated. They're like things that are hidden in plain sight.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  But everyone else is blinded by the past. So, you know, this is how a stapler has always been made. You know, this is what it looks like. This is what a stapler is. And so that, you know, one of the secrets to transforming a product and innovating is to not look at a stapler as a stapler, but to look at a stapler as a paper connecting system.

• 35:18Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  So you're like, okay, we're trying to connect paper. Are there other options? And what would be the best way, given all the possibilities that exist today, both in materials and technology and mechanisms and manufacturing capabilities? Because so often people see what's been done before, they decide that's what the thing is, and then if they're going to improve on a stapler, they just try to make a

• 35:44Lewis Howes?

  Cooler looking one.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  A cooler looking one, or they add a little feature to it.

• 35:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  And I haven't worked on a stapler, that's just a case in point, but you know, the Power Squid's a great example where everyone was making

• 35:55Lewis Howes?

  Strips.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Strips. And then as the transformer plugs, the charger plugs started proliferate, as cellphones gave rise pretty soon, everyone had all these plugs. And if you're trying to plug them into a normal power strip, you'd cover up three outlets with one plug and it'd be very frustrating. And then, so you'd have six outlets, but you could only use two or three at the most. And even to use those, you were like doing what I call the plug juggle, like trying to figure out what's the puzzle that allows you to fit them all in there. So it's kind of annoying. And then like, once you had, you know, two things plugged in, now you like get the third thing there, you can't pull it to where you're at. So it had all these constraints. And the way people were trying to solve that at the time was making the strips bigger and bigger and spreading out the outlets more. And so the strips were just getting like really huge.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  And so the Power Squid, uh, you know, was just a fresh take, like, well, why is, why can't we have those little extension cords? And, and the way that happened was one night I was looking at my stereo and I was up, you know, late one night, having a little insomnia and

• 37:00Speaker 01

  I looked over, you know, the stereo and saw the power strip with all the cords, the mess of cords. And for some brief moment, I saw the cords coming out of it instead of into it. And then I was like, wait a second. That's cool. So I like quickly did this little drawing, labeled it the power blossom. And, and then brought it into my office the next day. And this is kind of in the early days of Trident. And, you know, by the end of the day, it become a squid. And then I started a whole series of events that eventually looked at that product coming out. So that comes back to that noticing thing I mentioned earlier. So a lot of people probably saw that same thing or had this similar idea.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Sort of the skill I've tried to develop over the years is, is noticing when I have an idea that might have legs.

• 37:52Lewis Howes?

  So how do you notice something?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  By trying to, by developing attention to wanting to notice when something crosses your mind. And instead of letting it come in and go out and never to be seen again, when you hear something, or you see something, or a lot of times I'll come up with an invention because I'll be like flipping through a magazine and I'll think I see something and I'm just like flipping through it and I'm like, wait a second, what did I just see? That was a cool idea. And then, but it wasn't actually what was there. It was a, I miss saw it kind of like when I miss saw the power strip and saw the cords coming out of it. I'll just like have seen something. It'll, I thought I saw something that was really cool. I'll flip back and it wasn't there. That's not what it was. It was something else. But the

• 38:41Speaker 01

  thing that I thought it was, was something cool, something with potential. And so then I like write it down. And then the next step. So getting back to the process, the next step after having that idea that either comes from your personal experience or from, or noticing it's usually a combination of those having that personal experience, then noticing that there's something missing.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Is then to do research because just because you so you think, oh, I've never seen that before. It must not exist.

• 39:13Lewis Howes?

  But there might be a patent on already.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Or it might exist and you just you weren't looking for it before. You're like, oh, I had an idea and I've never seen this before, but then people just assume it doesn't exist rather than thinking that.

• 39:24Lewis Howes?

  They start making it without.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  It's amazing what I've seen people do like spend hundreds of thousands of dollars pursuing something without ever doing research.

• 39:34Lewis Howes?

  And they do research, but they don't look for it in detail that they see what they want to see, right?

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Well, there's the, you know, what they call the confirmation bias. So people are looking to find what they want to find. So if they're looking, you know, if I was looking at the power squid now, you know, I was like, oh, great idea. Now let's do some research and make sure it's not actually out there and I just missed it. And that just because I hadn't seen it before, didn't mean it's not out there and I just hadn't noticed it. And so then, you know, you look around and if if you're look at the first page and you search tentacle power strip, right? And then it's not there. You're like, woohoo, I'm home free, you know? And you're like, well, did you search power strip with extension cords or did you search power strip flexible?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Flexible power, you know, then you and but usually when because of confirmation bias, people like prove to themselves on the first page that it doesn't exist. And then they stop because they don't want to find bad news. So they're looking actually to not find it rather than looking to find it. So that you got to get real serious. It's very helpful to get a third party, a patent attorney or a research firm.

• 40:45Lewis Howes?

  That's what you guys do too, right?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  We do do that. It's the first step of any process. We have a research staff that we look into the patents, the market landscape thoroughly. And we spend 20 hours digging on any project because it would be horrible to invest thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in a product. And I have done this only to find out that it, you know, it was out there already. You know, like some of those early mistakes I made, some of those early flops, bad decisions were me, you know, making the mistake of thinking that I knew what was out there. Because I hadn't seen it. And so in the fortunate success of that algae scraper early on afforded me.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  A lot of mistakes. And so I was able to make a lot of in products and have them fail. And learn lessons from those and I was very clear that I needed to learn. I mean, I knew I didn't know what I was doing. Right. You know, I knew that one product didn't make me an expert, but I knew that I wasn't committed to this career path because it was fun. Yeah. Like the first time I went into a store and saw my product hang on the shelves, I was hooked. Cause for me that was like, look, I'm anonymously famed. It's like anonymous fame. That. Yeah, I made that. There's someone looking at it. Oh, oh, oh, they're buying it. Oh, my God, I just made two dollars, you know.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And and that's now going to be in their home. And a little piece of me is in that house. And now there's little pieces of me and millions of households. So that's, you know, it's an interesting feeling. Often I will walk into someone's house and see a product that I invented or helped bring to market. Yeah, there's, oh, hi, Squiddy. So and and so it, it, it, that was what for me made it really exciting was just to realize that in a little way I was impacting people's lives. And so my personal bent, you know, some of our clients invent are surgeons who invent orthopedic surgical devices that are incredibly complex and, you know, over my head, but my,

• 42:58Speaker 01

  but not over the head of the brilliant engineers and designers that I've got. And so we figure these things out and help them to get them to market. Um, but my own inventions tend to be these like, I, I, I think humble, humble items, things like power strips or, or recently I. Onion goggles. Yeah, onion goggles. So don't cry when you chop onions. Famous product, very successful product. Worn on TV all the time by celebrity chefs. And if you go on Flickr and search onion goggles, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of selfies of people wearing onion goggles. It's like a thing to do just randomly and they, and Phil on the Modern Family wore the onion goggles. That's right.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  And I have a picture of myself next to the TV. I'm wearing the onion goggles. And so is Al Bundy. I forget his actor's name, but he's Al Bundy to me anyway. So that's just cool and. Anyway, so just to get back to the process. So after you've done the research and you've determined that in fact, there does appear to be an opening, then you've got to develop the product. And this is, you know, the onion goggles segue nicely into this because when you execute your product, the thing is you you're turning your idea now into a product. You've got to turn it into a great product because that's what succeeds. You know, that's why Apple rose to the top. Now, you know, there was a lot of execution side to it and

• 44:24Speaker 01

  a lot of the execution was in creating relentless pursuit of great products. Like so many people think, well, Apple can do that because they're Apple, but we can't do that because we're not, you know, and and all these companies say, well, you know, we want to be great, but we, you know, we just can't afford to to take the kind of, you know, attention to detail that Apple does because, you know, we don't have. But that's that's how Apple got there. They weren't always that way. They weren't always that way. Lewis Howes was not always, you know, the famous social network entrepreneur that he is today, and he didn't wait until he became that to

• 45:06Speaker 01

  become powerful. He started powerful and then it happened for him because of that. And so it's the same way with products. Like you've got to create a great product, great products. If you make a great product that works very well, has great design, and is based on a great idea, it will succeed. I guarantee it. If the product is great, it will succeed. If the product fails, then there was something about it that was not great. I guess the other piece of that equation is, and the value is great, meaning how much you get for your dollar. So if you create the world's greatest product, and you've got a, you know, thousand dollar vegetable peeler, it's not so part of greatness is value

• 45:49Speaker 01

  density, a term I've developed, which means like you're getting more for your for your money. So if you create a, you know, the onion goggles. You could you could use shop goggles. You could use chemistry goggles. They're just glasses that protect your eyes from the fumes. But we and they could have been five dollar gimmicky silly things and a lot of people thought it was a silly idea and there's a lot of haters on the internet for the onion goggles. Oh, there's a monotask or silly product, though. They're also

• 46:20Lewis Howes?

  Comfortable and they're

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Hundreds of thousands of extremely passionate fans of the onion goggles because they work and they were made very nice. They're twenty dollars. They have anti-fog coating. They're

• 46:32Speaker 01

  made very nicely. They come in a case.

• 46:34Lewis Howes?

  Nice design.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, they they look cool. We designed them so they look very distinctive. They don't look like any other type of goggle. They are onion goggles. They've become what onion goggles are now. When people knock off onion goggles, which has happened several times, they look just like ours because everyone just is blinded by the past. They're like, oh, onion goggles look like this.

• 46:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  We established that benchmark. Now that other people are copying.

• 46:56Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  So that's what we call a knockoff is when and and you know, any successful product can be knocked off and a knockoff by definition is just a cheaper version. That's lower quality. And it's not a bad thing. It's an inevitable thing. They're gonna happen. If you make some if you knock something off, but you make it better, that's not called a knockoff. It's called an innovation. That's what an innovation is.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, interesting.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  So the onion goggles succeeded because we executed so well on the product. And then they became a sensation and have sold extremely well. And again, that was a product that was licensed. So we collect the royalty on the back end. And the royalty in a typical product is five, five percent.

• 47:36Lewis Howes?

  Five percent.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the range is like three to eight for a typical product of five is normal. And that's on wholesale sales. The price that the manufacturer sells it to the retail store for. And a lot of people hear that number. They're like, five percent.

• 47:48Lewis Howes?

  It's nothing.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  That's terrible.

• 47:50Lewis Howes?

  This is my idea.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Well, a well-run manufacturer. Based on almost infinite data from hundreds of years and makes 10% to 12% bottom line. So you do, you sell something for, you know, $20 retail, well, it wholesales for 10 because that pretty typically because people are doubling their money. But then you've got material costs. So, you know, if you're selling it for 10, that means usually that you paid somewhere like five or $6 for it. So you're actually only getting $4 in margin. Now you've got to pay a sales commission. Now you've got returns and defect allowances from the retailer.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  Overhead.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Now you've got secretaries and warehouse people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And after all those costs, you're making 10%. The inventor is getting five. The person who's taking all the risk, taking all the effort, doing all the hard labor of bringing that product, this is why it sounded like work to me, is like getting double of what you're getting for doing nothing.

• 48:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  It's an amazing deal for the inventor.

• 48:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Amazing. It's, it's actually, I, at some level, it's like overly fair to the inventor, except for the fact that that's the person who had the idea.

• 49:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  And they created value around it and then they protected it. And then they, and they, and they took the, the biggest risk. So they're getting the biggest proportional reward of anyone in the equation. Bigger than the retailer is like the retailer is doubling their money. They're getting 50% margins. Yeah, but they've got to pay for a store and employees and where I mean, it's.

• 49:22Lewis Howes?

  Insurance and all that.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not like most retailers are making, they're making 10% too.

• 49:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  So all these things, because of the efficiencies in the marketplace have been driven down where like everyone's making 10% in the normal value chain on their money. And so it's a very fair deal.

• 49:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  For the inventor.

• 49:42Lewis Howes?

  And you had, you had a pretty recent success with the hot dog slicer, right?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:46Lewis Howes?

  It's called the hot dog.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Hot dog slicer.

• 49:48Lewis Howes?

  Hot dog slicer.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  And so. Flavouredly named hot dog slicer. Oh, we wanted to call it the safety dog, but an inventor came to us with the idea of doing a cute hot dog cutter that would cut up your hot dog into little chunks that were not choking hazards. Hot dog is the number one choking hazard for children.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  Mm.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Kills. Quite a few kids each year because the hot dog shaped just like a cork. And so the guy comes to us with this idea and this is, this is how our business works. If someone's going to license their product, he paid his fee to develop his idea to do a hot dog cutter into a product. We, we came up with the idea that it should look like a wiener dog and then figured out how it would work. You have a little tray, put the hot dog on it, you press the wiener dog over it and you know, viola, you got a bunch of little hot dog chunks. And then there's a little bowl in front of the dog that holds the ketchup. So it's super cute. And the reason we chose that is like back to that, you know, great design is like, well, part of,

• 50:49Speaker 01

  a lot of people think the design is just the aesthetics. It's just making something pretty after you've designed it. But really the aesthetics is part of the function. We call it the human function. So that's how you cause a product to engage with the end user. And successful products today especially are really engaging the human. Not just getting the job done, but appealing to the person, helping them understand what the product does and what the value of that product is to them. And then with the hot dogs, like so we realized, well, who's buying this? Why are they buying it? Is it moms afraid of their kids choking to death? Safety products are like that generally, you know, the data says they don't sell well.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  But a cute little dog for eating your hot dogs is adorable and costs three fifty at Walmart. So it's like crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's, it'll ship well over a million units this year. And so, so we developed it, prototyped it, filed for a patent and then shopped it around. And then we found a person, company to license it after considerable effort. And that company then manufactured it and sold it to Walmart and it sold on a clip strip next to the hot dog buns. So. Amazing. Yeah. And then Dan, the inventor makes, you know, a share. His percentage. His percentage, sixty percent of that's our deal.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  And then we get forty percent, you know, it'll generate on for him, what was like a $10,000 investment. Probably over half a million dollars in, in revenue by the time it's done, based on the success said. Now, the other side of that coin. Is that we've developed a lot of products that don't succeed. I mean, we're very good, but we don't have a crystal ball and, you know, you just can't always win. I mean, you get the products out there and then ultimately the consumer has to respond. And so we've had, you know, we've had our share of successes and we've had our share of failures. We've had our share of products we've developed, which have never made it to market.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  So, you know, we try very, very hard with every one of them, but it's just, you know, you obviously you can't bet a thousand. You can't even bet 500, you know, I think we bet around 300. So we feel pretty good about that.

• 53:07Lewis Howes?

  Right. Well, we've been, I feel like we could talk for hours on this stuff and there's a lot that I want to cover. Probably the next one on FIP, which is one of your philosophies and I won't spoil it for everyone now. We'll come, we'll have you come back on again and talk about that and a lot of other things on inventions and innovation and designing your life, because I think that's what's really cool for me to learn about. So, but until the next time, let's have you answer the question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Uh, so I'll say, I'll, I'll define greatness for myself. Not how I define greatness for other people, but like what I'm trying to do in myself for, to be great. Is I think greatness for me, Chris Hawker, is to, it's what I call being integral. So trying to be great in every aspect of my life. So, living up to my potential, embracing life in, in all of its aspects. So in my career, in my family, in my body, I'm not an athlete like you are, but I, I practice Tai Chi and Kung Fu and try to stay fit, eat healthy.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  I, you know, try to have a great relationship with my family and my friends, like really great, deep connections with my family and friends, as well as being well read, as well as traveled, as well as being an inventor and an idea thought leader. So for me, that's, that's my path is trying to really. Be great in all these different areas.

• 54:43Lewis Howes?

  Be great at everything.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Well, as great as I can be.

• 54:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not, I'm not measuring myself against other people, just against myself.

• 54:51Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Gotcha.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Am I, am I living up to my potential or trying to at least?

• 54:56Lewis Howes?

  Love it. Well, where can people find you online, Chris?

• 55:00Speaker 01

  I'm at trident-design.com or you can get me on Twitter at @inventorchris. And we got a Facebook page as well, so.

• 55:09Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Feel free, if you've got ideas, we want to hear them. You know, we'd love to talk to you. It's free to talk to us and get some feedback on whether your idea has legs, whether it is, you know, an economic opportunity for you.

• 55:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  And, and it's fun. I mean, inventing is like kite surfing. It's like, it's a hard thing.

• 55:31Lewis Howes?

  Challenging but fun.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Challenging but fun. And if you can master it, you'll be the coolest guy on the block. It's cool. It's fun and it's exciting.

• 55:38Lewis Howes?

  I love it. Thanks, Chris. And we'll have to have you come back on sometime soon to talk about everything else.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  It'd be my pleasure.

• 55:44Lewis Howes?

  Awesome.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Thanks, Louis.

• 55:54Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, great. There are no such thing as a million dollar idea. Only million dollar executions. So pumped that I could find that you had Chris on the show as he's been a mentor and a friend for a long time. Make sure to check out his site, trident-design.com. And look at all the cool stuff that he's been up to lately, all the different inventions that he's created and put out there in the market. If you've got an idea for a product or an invention, feel free to go to his site. There's a form. You can, you can call their office and check it out. And I highly recommend it as they're extremely successful at taking ideas that inventors have, bringing them to market, licensing them and all that other good stuff. So make sure to check Chris out.

• 56:37Lewis Howes?

  Also, want to give a quick shout out to the review of the week. And this is over on iTunes. Customer review of the week goes out to Alex Designs. And Alex said. On the headline, "Listen and Follow Greatness Dash Repeat." He said, "The best way to have true wealth in life is to model greatness." Lewis brings great interviews to his show. I just addicted and I can't stop listening. So thanks so much, Alex, for the review. And there are a lot of other reviews out here. But please, if you have not sent us a review or written us a review, go ahead over to iTunes and just leave a quick comment. Click on the ratings and leave your rating.

• 57:22Lewis Howes?

  I'd love to hear your feedback, good or bad. I would love to hear whatever you have to say, but just please leave us a review. So I know how to improve it for you in the future. And with that, guys, we've got a few killer episodes coming up in the coming weeks. I'm going to start posting these a couple of times a week and see how that works for the next month. So get ready for greatness coming out at you twice a week. With that, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and make sure to do something great.