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Good afternoon. All of you, deep inside, have an idea that is brewing. We're all made to be creative. We are made to be makers. And it starts early. When I was 12, this was my favorite toy in the world. It's a Rubik's cube. And for you kids, this was our fidget spinners. And this was our iPad. Now, my dream and sole ambition in life was to invent a round Rubik's Cube. You can tell the nerds early. In one day, my mom took me to the mall. And we went to KB Toys. And what I saw there on the shelf crushed me. Somebody had already made a round Rubik's cube. And they came up with a better name than round Rubik's Cube. They called it the impossible ball, the impossible. And in my 12 year old mind, they had stolen my idea. Now, children, little did I know at the time, that I would grow up and my passion in life would be to become a patent attorney, and protect inventors from having their ideas stolen. Children believe that their ideas are unique, they believe that their dreams will come true. But something happens to us as adults. People convince us that we don't have what we what it takes. They convinced us that our dreams are just fantasies. Like Oprah Winfrey, was told that she's too ugly to be on television. Well, it is Disney was fired by by a newspaper editor for not having enough imagination. So what do we do? We stay confined within that safe comfort zone. that comfort zone that President Theodore Roosevelt referred to as the grey Twilight. And to paraphrase him, far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, then to lit rank, with those timid spirits, who neither enjoy nor suffer much. Because they live in that gray twilight, that neither knows victory, nor defeat. I've spent most of my life in this gray twilight. How many of you have done the same? You stay within that comfort zone? A place where you know that you're never going to fly. But at least you're not going to drown. Now speaking of drowning, and escaping the great Twilight, I'd like to tell you about a client of mine. Troy, Phil ATRA, who was fishing one day, he was nine miles offshore. And his boat was not responding the way he expected it to. It was taking on water. And he thought he knew it was going to sink either with him or without him. Now nine miles, if you're driving, it's not much of an obstacle. If you're on a boat, it's a little bit tougher. If you're on a bicycle, it would be a challenge for some of us. If we're running or walking, it would be a challenge I think for a lot of us. Now imagine swimming nine miles. That's exactly the choice that Troy fillet Troy had. And for 16 hours straight in the cold waters of the Atlantic. That's exactly what he did. He swam and then it got dark, pitch dark and he continued swimming, and swimming and swimming. Now when dawn broke, there was fog everywhere. A gray fog. The sky was light gray. The water was dark gray. And far into the horizon. He was finally able to see a tiny little sliver of land. And what Troy did, he focused on it? And then he went, escaping. Escaping. Escaping. The grey. Escaping, escaping, escaping the grey. You're free to join in escaping, escaping, escaping the gray. This will be a book signing and aerobics all in one let's go. Escaping, escaping escaping the grey looked at the land, escaping, escaping, escaping the gray 16 hours later. Chilled to his bones, dehydrated, cold and exhausted. He crawled onto the shore and collapsed. Troy Phil ATRA had escaped the grey in the most literal sense. He escaped the gray waters of the Atlantic. But this experience triggered in him an idea, an idea that today has become an incredibly successful business. The first inflatable throwable raft that's approved by the Coast Guard for all vessels that Troy did not just escape the gray, in a literal sense. The real gray that he escaped was the gray of self doubt, the gray of resisting ridicule the gray of pursuing a dream, when sometimes you don't see that great sliver of land, and all you have is fog everywhere. That's the gray that he escaped. Now, like Troy, I escaped the gray myself, when I left a prestigious, large New York City law firm to go out on my own. This was 17 years, three months, and three days ago. And I've never looked back. My personal Bible, during this entire journey was a classic book by Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. Now, this is one of my all time favorite books of all time. Now when it became the copyright expired, and I'm a copyright attorney. So I look into these things. So I knew that my God, this classic is perfect for inventors, somebody needs to take these teachings that are somewhat apply, and really zoom in and write, Think and Grow Rich from the perspective of the inventor. But then that gray fog keeps me from doing it. That somebody is always somebody else. It's not me. Somebody else should take Napoleon Hills classic, and rewrite it for inventors. And there was that that gray fog and an idea that inside you. If you learn to listen to it, it will speak to you. And it did. It kept telling me you need to rewrite, Think and Grow Rich for inventors and write it from the perspective of an inventor. Like Troy, I saw a tiny sliver of land. And that's the idea speaks and tells you what you need. What the idea told me is it's a John, you're you have spent 20 years of your career in the trenches with inventors. I've seen clients of mine start with a simple concept and go all the way through selling their ideas many times for millions of dollars. Two years ago, a client of mine sold his business for $100 million. So I knew I was on the right path. And I went forward escaping, escaping, escaping the grey escaping, escaping escaping the grey and what happens out in the ocean. There's waves and I saw a huge wave coming towards me. And this wave spoke. And it said on it. There are 1000s of patent attorneys that represent inventors. What makes you special?
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wave hits me. That little sliver of land is gone. There I am. I stopped writing. And I'm thinking, you know, what does make me special? Yes, somebody has to write this book. But why me? And then the idea that inside, if you learn to listen to it, it speaks up. It is going to urge you to go forward. And that's exactly what happened. And the idea said, John, it said to myself, I'm not like other patent attorneys. My experience, I have been trained by the best patent attorneys in the world, my prior firm was fishing need. The law firm, that patented the Wright Brothers airplane, the patented Thomas Edison's light bulb, they patented Henry Ford's ideas, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, fish in need is to patents and inventions. What Muhammad i Li is to boxing, the greatest of all time. And I was back on track, escaping, escaping, escaping the grey, escaping, escaping escaping the gray. And there it was the next wave. This one's even bigger. And this one set on it. Yes, you might know patent law better than anybody else. But we're not in Kansas anymore. This isn't about patents. This isn't about being an author. And you're an unknown. You're nobody. Nobody knows John Rizvi as an author, and that we've hit great fog everywhere. And once again, I lost sight of that tiny sliver of land. And I thought that was done. I thought, You know what, I've had a good run. And I stopped writing. There it was speaking to me again. And then the idea is if it has a life of its own, because when an idea comes to you, you You are the only one that can birth it. It's in you. And it spoke and said to me, You know what? Helen Keller was an unknown. When she wrote about the experience of being deaf. She was not the first person or start being blind. She was not the first person that was blind in history. And Frank when she wrote her diary about her struggles in Nazi Germany. She was an unknown. She was certainly not the first person to face those struggles. And when Martin Luther King had his dream, he was not the first to have had that dream. And where would we be had he not gone forward and pursued with passion, what his beliefs were, at this time, for me, there was no turning back. Escaping, escaping, escaping the gray, escaping, escaping escaping the gray. And I was going to finish this book. And I did. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. And like Troy. I finally exhausted crawled onto the shore and collapsed. Now one of the things that famous author, Paolo Swellow says that when you want something and pursue it with all of your heart, the entire universe conspires to make it happen. And one day, I was working on some finishing touches on the book, and I hear typing. It was late at night typing from a 12 year olds room. And any of you that are parents know, this is a horror for a dad. So I go in, and I see Marian my 12 year old daughter on the computer, and she quickly closes the screen. And I walk up to her to marry him. Show me your screen. And, you know, she gets teary eyed and says Daddy, I wanted it to be a surprise. I said, Sweetie, are your dad's a patent? Attorney we don't do good with surprises here. So she, she turns on the computer. And you won't believe what I saw this cover. She said I'm taking a graphics art class. And I wanted to create a cover for your book. She didn't give me the idea for this cover, and I had it done by a graphics artist. Miriam created this cover. Marry him during the back. Let's give her a round of applause. It's amazing. So if ever, I think that the universe conspires to make an idea come true to to make someone's passion and inspiration come to life. This was it. and I are so I thought, Now, a couple months later, and I had sent my book out to experts in the industry to for feedback, I got a call from my long term time heroes, Kevin Harrington. Now Kevin is one of the original sharks on Shark Tank. He has launched over 500 products and had worldwide sales of over $5 billion. Kevin invited me to his home to talk about thinking Grow Rich for inventors. He's a huge fan of Napoleon Hills classic. Once again, the universe seems to have conspired to help me bring my idea to light. Now you have ideas. You have to have ideas. And that great Twilight is holding you back. pursuing it is going to be painful. I can tell you this from experience. You'll hear from Troy he can tell you it's going to be painful. I don't I can't promise you that it's going to be easy. What I can promise is that it's going to be worth it.