Dr. Rob Yonover: SEE/RESCUE® Streamer

[00:00:03] Jason S. Bradshaw: Hi, and welcome to this episode of Chats With Jason. I'm of course your host, Jason S Bradshaw, and this is the show that helps you transform the experience to transform your business.

[00:00:54] Dr. Rob Yonover: Thanks, Jason. Great to be here. I appreciate that.

[00:01:07] Dr. Rob Yonover: Sure. I'm a scientist that became an inventor. I got a PhD working on lava flows off the Galapagos Islands. I went down in a submersible two miles down to get my data, worked with lasers at NASA and MIT studying them, and I'm a big wave surfer. I live in Hawaii, so it seems like I'm always on the edge of dying between volcanoes, deep water diving, surfing.

[00:01:47] Dr. Rob Yonover: And I have a lot of inventions, but this one never left. It kept coming back and I knew it was a good one. And that's to your audience. I know everyone has a lot of ideas. The question is, which do you pick? And I was crowdsourcing before it was fashionable and I would bounce it off people.

[00:02:42] Jason S. Bradshaw: What a diversion it was and I have to say when your details came across my to be a guest on this show I watched the Shark Tank interview and lo and behold, I remembered watching that interview when it first aired. And.

[00:03:01] Jason S. Bradshaw: Now, I think it would be easy for the people watching and listening today to think, oh gosh, Dr. Rob's just said that, military approval,

[00:03:13] Jason S. Bradshaw: it's on SpaceX, like this guy not only has made it. And was on Shark Tank, you know that someone, Mark Cuban or someone must have just doubled down and invested heavily. But that's not the story. Is it?

[00:04:20] Dr. Rob Yonover: The Streamer, I've been like, the tortoise and the hare, that great story. I'm like the tortoise. I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm not giving up. People thought I would go away. And even the Shark Tank guys, you think I'm going away. I'm not going away. And that's where their timeframe is much different. Those guys are like the hares. They want to run to the money right away. And I'm like, I want to keep saving lives, keep building the technology, build other technologies, inspire other people, just keep grinding on it.

[00:05:20] Dr. Rob Yonover: Finally said, you don't have to memorize. I said, great, you free me up because I like to read the audience. In real time. Just like you, I'm talking to you now. If you start rolling your eyes and getting bored, I'm like, okay, I got to change a little. You got to have your mind has to go quick. It's the trade show mentality. Whoever's coming by, by booth, I got to look them in their eye. Say, what are they interested in? I got to say something. How are they receiving it? Is it working? Do I need to speed up? Do I need to slow down? Do I need to change the subject? I'm always trying to do that. But I do practice a lot, so I have all these different variations of tangents, if you will, or approaches that I can take, and I found that to be very useful.

[00:06:40] Jason S. Bradshaw: No, it's great. In fact, one of the questions that I'd thought of asking you was, how do you prepare for a pitch like Shark Tank? Because, as leaders, as entrepreneurs, you have to pitch constantly.

[00:06:52] Jason S. Bradshaw: I was, a C-suite executive in a large global company, but I had to pitch to the board all the time or the investment board, right? And if you're an entrepreneur, you have to pitch to potential investors and here you are, an inventor, pitching to not only, billionaires but also on not only national, but global TV. And I was thinking, how does one prepare for it? And what I took away from what you were saying was, first of all, you have to read your audience, regardless of whether you've got a well rehearsed pitch or not, you need to read your audience and be ready to pivot based on their level of engagement.

[00:07:24] Jason S. Bradshaw: Second is, be true to yourself, because what I heard from you was, you were being encouraged, shall we say, to have a rehearsed scripted pitch. When you broke three of that model, you were able to do a better job and get your message across.

[00:09:24] Dr. Rob Yonover: And the amount of pressure for that, I knew 9 million people are going to watch it. There are 50 cameras there. There's five sharks and there's a hundred people just lurking around looking, it was a massive, massive pressure. Thing is in academia, I had done it. I've defended my PhD dissertation. And I grew up in a family. We were always arguing, not in a bad way, we're just debating things. Even my buddies on the street corner, we're always arguing. So we're always fashioning our lingo on whatever level, PhD or street level, you gotta be able to have discourse and also be able to listen. That's a good skill and I'm pretty good at it. I talk a lot, but I'm pretty good at social cues and I know what I'm talking too much.

[00:10:17] Dr. Rob Yonover: The funny thing about it is social media blew up that day because the show I was on had a wine glass, a sippy wine glass.

[00:10:27] Dr. Rob Yonover: A backpack you can't cut into. And I forgot the third thing, but it was something- oh! Booty pants that made your butt look bigger. And they all got funded and I didn't. And there was a little bit of a public outcry on social media saying, I can't believe you didn't fund this guy to save lives, but you're funding booty pants.

[00:11:46] Jason S. Bradshaw: You're still waiting?

[00:12:05] Jason S. Bradshaw: Yeah, Mark's sold the Mavericks, so maybe his diary's gonna clear up a little.

[00:12:11] Jason S. Bradshaw: And so the last question I have around the shark experience is, here you are, you've invented this lifesaving device, you've got patents. One of the questions that they always ask, is this something that people can copy easily?

[00:12:30] Dr. Rob Yonover: Right.

[00:12:41] Dr. Rob Yonover: Definitely. I said that, they talked about how like Mark Cuban talked about it being bimodal -all or nothing. Cause when I got panicked a little. I went with the what are you gonna do with the money? And I went for the mandate, the home run. We have to have these on all life jackets, flight jackets, life rafts, which they should be. But that statement by him, he was right. So the point is you go for that. And I keep doing that. I keep going for the home run, but I keep trying to hit singles all along. So I don't try to get the military or the coast guard to make this required equipment. I try that, but in a parallel and another channel, I'm trying to sell it to Joe Boter or Joanne Kayaker or whoever, so it's a dual use- dual programs and that they help crystallize that because I could see that it's true. It is too risky to go off all the way for the approvals.

[00:13:48] Dr. Rob Yonover: But yeah, I learned a lot from them and they were good. I'm not being arrogant, but Mark Cuban was tracking the best. The others, remember this isn't a technical crowd and Mark Cuban, I think is a technical guy wannabe. I mean, yes, he's got that software, he's in the computer world, but I'm like from pure science. So I'm a PhD scientist talking to a bunch of people that are used to selling like cookies and little knickknacks and that's fine. And they make way more money than me, but I had to keep switching gears on what am I talking about and make sure they understood it. And if you watch it again, you'll see exactly that happened. He fed me the perfect line. He goes, I don't see the guy. Damon said that. I go, yeah, that's the whole point. He fed me the perfect line of why the streamer works. It was really cool. And I also got to give a little nudge to Mr. Wonderful 'cause, he's always abusing everyone. I knew he was short and bald, and they asked me, who do you want me to demo? I go, let me use Kevin to demo it. So I knew he'd take the streamer from me to unfurl it down the hallway. And I knew I could look down on him for all the people he hassled. And they made jokes about it too. So it was a cool experience.

[00:14:55] Dr. Rob Yonover: I was upset at the time after I was pretty frustrated. I couldn't believe that they didn't want to invest. But as time went by, I'm like, oh, maybe this is a good thing.

[00:15:11] Dr. Rob Yonover: Right.

[00:15:15] Dr. Rob Yonover: Right.

[00:15:20] Dr. Rob Yonover: That's right. That's right.

[00:15:29] Dr. Rob Yonover: Thank you.

[00:15:37] Dr. Rob Yonover: Yeah.

[00:16:03] Dr. Rob Yonover: No, it's true.

[00:16:19] Dr. Rob Yonover: yeah.

[00:16:22] Dr. Rob Yonover: I grew up in a real tight neighborhood. We were very competitive. Being a surfer, it's the same kind of thing. You're always getting drilled. The wave come and crushes you. You can't get discouraged or you'll drown in the moment. You survive it and it makes you stronger. I know that sounds corny and just the way we were competitive as kids, sports wise, dating wise, whatever, just tenacious is a good word. I appreciate that. You get knocked down and that's really the test is how do you come back from that? So I kind of almost welcome failure sometimes.

[00:17:08] Dr. Rob Yonover: These guys- okay, assholes you don't want this. You guys think this is not worth, I'll show you. That's a phrase that goes in my mind a lot. I'll show you. Which is, it's maybe not the best personality trait if you let it go into too many aspects of your life. But I try to just channel it into surfing where, okay, wave, you're crushing me on the North Shore. There's 20 feet of whitewater on me. I'll show you. I'll live through this and surf another day, another wave. Same thing in business. Okay, you're crushing me. You said I'm worthless. We're talking very advanced. The early Streamer I got laughed at. I mean it was a joke. And even some of the comments, someone lifted my shark tank pitch and put it on Tiktok. Got 15 million hits. And I was reading the comments and it was so funny. One guy goes, man, this guy made a million dollars with a fruit roll up, which is a candy, which was brilliant. I laugh at that. That's awesome. So you just have to roll with the punches. And I'm sensitive though, I am. So if someone says something bad about me, again, I use it as fuel. I turn it around and internally say, okay, you don't think it's worth it. It's not that I think that I'm worthless, but you don't think my idea is worth anything? I do. I put a lot of time into this. I've tested it. I've launched it. I've bounced it off a lot of people, not just my family or my friends. This is professional people have said, yes, this is good. It's worked with people. So I come from a place where I know it's a good idea. And I just had a meeting with the air force yesterday. Some of these guys still, it's hard to get the word out, especially in this day and age with social media. There's getting eyeballs in any place is hard. I don't get frustrated and I don't get like just bogged down to starting over. And in fact, I love talking to people like you who don't know anything about it except for maybe shark tank. And then, it's a challenge to me to go from zero to 100 miles an hour with anyone. Get you up to speed. Get to where you're comfortable understanding it. And then you become a disciple. If you can get other people to vouch for you as a third party, that's more powerful anyway. My brother taught me- he was in advertising- he goes listen editors are sitting on their ass all day wondering what to write about. You got to convince them to write about this and not only it's free publicity- It's third party publicity, which is much more valuable. I could buy an ad in the New York Times, so what I have money. But if the New York Times editorial writes about this great technology, it's gonna save life -that is worth way more. And that's what I continue to do. And I continue to look for those kinds of opportunities. And yours is another opportunity.

[00:20:17] Dr. Rob Yonover: So that's where I come from.

[00:20:21] Dr. Rob Yonover: Thank you.

[00:20:41] Dr. Rob Yonover: It's funny.

[00:20:49] Dr. Rob Yonover: Exactly.

[00:21:04] Dr. Rob Yonover: And I don't know if that's me personally or all humans get that. But I want to prove myself. Oh, maybe I have a chip on my shoulder. And also you get older. I'm an old guy now. I like getting fired up. I like something that energizes me. I don't wanna just go off into the old people's farm.

[00:21:37] Jason S. Bradshaw: And then of course you encouraged us all to be problem solvers, to be inventive. Earlier in the show, you said, I'm going to paraphrase it, but

[00:21:47] Jason S. Bradshaw: said something like you knew that the Streamer was the thing. It absolutely was the thing that you had to be constantly pushing,

[00:21:58] Jason S. Bradshaw: because it was going to make a difference. How did you know?

[00:22:19] Dr. Rob Yonover: Then I talked to people that had lived through it- a couple of guys. If you live through being lost at sea, you know what the first thing you say is. You flew over me four times. Why didn't you see me? Another validation of having an orange streamer, a 25 or 40 foot long orange tail. I know that would solve the problem.

[00:23:34] Dr. Rob Yonover: And the other thing about getting nervous in front of talks is no one knows your subject more than you. And I learned that when I was getting my PhD. So I could talk and these guys, these other professors are coming at me, but no one knows what I've been studying as well as me, no one knows my invention and that's my version of look at the audience. They're all naked. You know that saying we're supposed to relax you. I don't think that way. I tell people, you know about it more than anyone. So if they press you, you just talk about what you know, and know what you know. Don't bullshit them. Know your stuff inside and out and be prepared.

[00:24:47] Dr. Rob Yonover: I also like to do flash inventing. I like to try to say, I have two minutes to solve this problem, with three pieces of string and a piece of tape. How would I do it? Because I read a lot about survival stories, and they're out lost at sea for 70 days. They have a piece of string and a fork. How are they going to catch a fish? Or how are they going to live? I always like to do that. And even when I fished for years, and I think about contingencies. Okay, now if the motor breaks, and if I get cut and I'm losing blood what do I do? What would I do here? Keep using your brain. Keep problem solving, and whatever your field is, keep doing that and try to think about the worst thing that happened. Don't always think about how great it's going to be when everything's great. No, the worst things are always going to happen. It takes twice as long to launch something with twice as much money. That's probably an understatement. It's probably 10x really.

[00:26:05] Jason S. Bradshaw: Yeah, that makes, it makes a lot of sense. So what's one thing that you would say is the key to inventing a successful product?

[00:26:56] Yeah, great. So as we wrap up what's one thing that our audience should start doing as soon as they finish listening today?

[00:28:19] Jason S. Bradshaw: Yeah, great a piece of advice there for us, Dr. Rob. Now, Dr. Rob, how do people get to learn more about the work that you do and importantly, your invention, the Streamer.

[00:29:16] Jason S. Bradshaw: Fantastic. Of course, we'll put links to your books and to the SEE/RESCUE® Streamer in the show notes.

[00:29:23] Jason S. Bradshaw: it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much

[00:29:25] Jason S. Bradshaw: for giving generosity of your time.