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probably expecting me to jump right into areas of, of patents, trademarks copyrights, because I'm a board certified patent attorney, and an adjunct professor, that seems natural. But I'm going to start with this quote from Theodore Roosevelt. Because I do find in my 25 years in working and helping inventors, that it's not always the technical doctrines of law that are holding inventors back like I'm all for inventors getting the knowledge they need. But oftentimes, it's their comfort zone. And the fear of going outside the comfort zone that's holding them back. And this quote, from Theodore Roosevelt, one of my favorites, so far better it is, to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, tend to rank with those timid spirits who neither know who know neither victory nor defeat. And they suffer because they live in this great Twilight. And that's what Theodore Roosevelt spoke about. And where my the inspiration for my book escaping the grey came from a waiter. Today, I'm going to tell you about a client of mine, Alex Gomez that escaped this great Twilight by dropping out of medical school to pursue his invention. But first, I want to take a moment, I know unless he has given you the formal background on my education and experience. But what I want to do now is actually take you back in time, way back in time to when I was 12 years old. Now, I 12. And you might find this hard to believe at this point. But at 12, I was incredibly cool, and stylish. And here's proof. And I was on a mission. My goal. And so ambition in life was to take this Rubik's Cube and create a sphere, a Rubik's sphere. And I had a sketchbook under my bed with page after page of drawings of this this round Rubik's cube that I was going to make. In one day, my mom took me to the mall. And we went to a store called KB Toys. And some of you might remember that store I mean, it's still around, and malls are starting to open up. So it's not a fictional concept anymore. So my mom brought me to KB Toys, and I went to that aisle where I always went where they had the puzzles and games. And what I saw there on the shelf crushed me, somebody had already made around Rubik's cube. And they came up with a better name than round Rubik's Cube. They called it the impossible, the impossible ball. And in my 12 year old mind, they had stolen my idea. And I tried hard to fight back the tears. I I remember being in the mall, looking at this impossible and I actually have it. It's how long to hold it is over 30 years. Let's say that, so I purchased it through tears. And I remember seeing it and I looked up at my mom and trying hard not to cry. And I succeeded. But although I didn't cry, you know what? My mom started crying? And does anybody know you better than your mother. Your mom had seen that sketchbook with page after page of drawings of my designs, she had stumbled across and continuously picked up broken pieces of Rubik's cube because I will take a screwdriver to it and break these apart to try to figure out how it was made. And to come up with my design. In even though I didn't cry, my mom started crying. So I grabbed her by the hand and I dragged her out of that store. Now the store clerks had seen plenty of children crying, being taken out by their parents, but had never seen a parent being crying being dragged out by her son. And you know, children cry when they don't get what they want. And there's a reason for that. And that's because when you're a child, you actually have hope, and you believe it's possible to get the things that you dream of. But something happens to us as adults. We start losing hope. And we start getting afraid of going outside our comfort zone. So what do we do? We dream small and we dream safe. We stay confined in that gray twilight that President Theodore Roosevelt spoke to us about and that's the great Twilight that I I want to urge you to escape from because people will keep you in that great Twilight, if you met them. Oprah Winfrey was told that she's too ugly for television, and should stick to something like the radio. Walt Disney, one of my favorite quotes of all Disney, if you can dream it, you can do it. While Disney was fired by a newspaper editor, for not having enough imagination. Imagine that well, Disney, how many of your dreams have you not pursued because somebody convinced you that you don't fit this perfect mold. You've gone to the wrong schools you have don't have the right amount of education. You don't belong to the right social circles. And you don't have the contacts you need. Or you're from outside an industry and don't have the right training like my client, Alex Gomez that I told you about earlier. What would happen if you would ignore those naysayers? And would pursue those dreams anyway? What would happen? Well, I'll tell you what would happen in this quote from Mahatma Gandhi. First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Kind of a depressing quote. But I promise you, I'm going to come back to this. In the meantime, I want to tell you about my dream. When becoming the inventor of the spherical Rubik's Cube, didn't turn out in the impossible beat me to it. I still went on I love tinkering with new technology. I love building things with my hands. I always had projects I was working on in the garage. I became an engineer. But I dreamed of becoming a patent attorney. But not just any patent attorney, I wanted to work at the law firm of fish and nev. And if you don't know this law firm, efficient nev. They're the lawyers that represented Thomas Edison with the invention of the light bulb, Henry Ford with the automobile, Alexander Graham Bell with the telephone. And the Wright Brothers, with the invention of the airplane fishing need is to patents and inventions. But Muhammad Ali was to boxing. This firm was the greatest of all time. But I wasn't prepared for a world. That pigeon holed you and made decisions on how high you had a right to aspire, what you could dream about and what you could try to aim for. And the placement director at the University of Miami told me that I had zero chance of being hired by this law firm efficient need. John, she said the only interview from Harvard or Yale. And they're only looking at students that have worked with them as a summer intern during law school. Now, the concept of being a summer intern seemed absurd to me. Because I was an older student, I went back to school, back to law school, and supported myself as an engineer. I was a structural engineer working full time during the day, I didn't have the luxury of quitting my job, flying out to New York and working for a summer and then being unemployed. I didn't do a summer internship. But you know what? I finished at the very top of my class, I aced that Patent Bar Exam. And I decided that I'm going to ignore this placement director and send in my resume anyway. Because I'm telling you this, you probably think things ended up well. They didn't. I got this rejection letter. And it stung hard. It felt like a kick in the gut. And I did that night, I tossed and turned and I couldn't sleep. And the next day. At work, I was working at a construction site as a structural engineer. And during our lunch hour, I left and I drove to find a payphone a payphone for those of you that remember what one is. And I remember standing at the pay telephone with a quarter for five minutes trying to muster up the courage to call Miss Rogen, the person efficient needs that had rejected my application. And I finally got through. And when I had Miss Rogen on the line, I told her that reminded her that her law firms claim to fame is the representation of the Wright brothers. These were two bicycle mechanics and vented the airplane. They didn't fit any sort of perfect mold. Remember, neither one of the Wright brothers were into college. Only one of them even finished high school. They were from Dayton, Ohio. They were they had no investors. They were misfit. And the world, Miss judge them and told them that their dream of human flight was nothing but a fantasy. And that's when I was interrupted. Mr. raese Miss Rogen interrupted me, Hiring Committee decisions are final.
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And I don't understand what your point is. Just thinking about this, it feels like it was yesterday, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. This Rogen. My point is that your hiring committee made a mistake. They need to look at my application again, because they have misjudged me. I got off the phone. I don't know if it made any difference at all. But I was young, and I felt better. At least I got this off my chest. And I felt better. until five days later, I got another letter in the mail. It was from the law firm of fish and meat, and my hands were shaking. I didn't know what they wanted. As a lawyer, I thought I was being sued. Instead, it was my dream law firm, asking me to come on board and join them as an attorney. Here's that quote, again, first, they ignore you, then they laugh at you. And then they fight you. Well, when they fight you, and if you have a new idea, something that's going to revolutionize an industry, then you can expect them to fight you. But you need to fight back. If you believe in your idea. It's come to you for a reason. Somebody is going to bring it to market if it has merit. If there's a demand for it, and you have a need, you believe there's a need that you found. They say necessity is the mother of invention. There are others that are that are aching for that product, and somebody has to bring it to market. So don't let those naysayers convince you not to pursue that idea. So after going back to fishing leave, I joined this law firm, and started learning from the best patent attorneys in the entire world. I was making more money and moved to New York City and was making more money than I had ever even dreamed about in my entire life. Now money will feel the hunger in your stomach. It's not going to feel the hunger and your soul, something was missing. And it took years efficient leave for me to really determine what it was. And it was this. I found myself day after day in meeting after meeting, working with corporate lawyers and MBAs and basically moving paper around, I was far removed from the creative spark of ingenuity of the inventor. Remember, somewhere deep inside me, was still that 12 year old boy that had dreamed of creating a round Rubik's Cube. I wanted to work with inventors. I wanted to feel their passion for their ideas. And what I wanted to find, I didn't want to work for huge multinational corporations and layers of bureaucracy. I wanted to find the Steve Jobs, the Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates of this world before they became Apple, Amazon, or Microsoft. I wanted the garage and better. And I mustered up the courage to speak to the lawyers efficiently and tell them that I'm quitting. And when I told them I'm going to quit. They said, John, this is career suicide. You're we're going to hold on to your resume for when you want to come back. They said there's no inventors in Florida, which is where I wanted to start up my practice. My parents lived in South Florida. John, you're making a serious mistake. And I didn't care. I quit. Started my own law firm. And I never went back. And you know what the irony is. Two years after I left to start my own firm, the prestigious law firm efficiently dissolved, and today they no longer exist. They were acquired by another firm ropes and gray and today efficiently is little more than a historic footnote. But my small law firm, some 20 years later, has grown beyond my wildest expectations. And today, my firm is the 53rd fastest growing law firm in the United States, and has made the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the country. I believe my job, and my calling in life is to help inventors see that just because you're outside an industry does not mean that you can't change that entire industry. Just because you don't fit that perfect mold, doesn't mean you're not the right one to bring an idea to market. Like my client, Alex Gomez, who I told you about earlier. Now Alex had realized that and he was in medical school in hospital operating rooms, doctors, their lenses on their cameras would get foggy. So they would dip the lens into a flask of water. Or even worse, put it underneath the faucet rinse off the lens to the lens would not be would be clear again. And then they would put put the instrument back inside the patient. This drove Alex crazy. This is nuts. This is introducing bacteria. It's septic. It went against everything he was taught in medical school. And he bought this contraption that he built his prototype, he brought it to my office, he put it on the corner of my desk, John, I don't care what they tell me. And they did. They told him he was they ridiculed Him. They called him a dropout. They labeled him a drop out. They ridiculed him for not having finished medical school, like who are you to tell us what the safe way to conduct surgeries are. He said, John, I don't care what they say, this device is going to change the way surgeries are conducted in hospital operating rooms. You have to fight for me fight and get me this patent, please fall for this patent. So I took on Alex as a client and filed a patent for him. Two years after I did that, Alex sold the idea to maytronics for over $100 million. And today, his idea has used his surgical lens defogger is used in millions of surgeries and saves lives every single day. Remember that quote from the beginning by Mahatma Gandhi, First they ignore you, then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. I promised you that wasn't the full quote. Here's the full quote. Then you win, then you win. But in order to win, you have to Ignore the naysayers. You have to believe in your idea. Escape that great twilight of your comfort zone and take that chance. We give ourselves fancy names for not for not going forward fancy means for our fear. We tell ourselves that our by not going forward. We're doing the prudent think. And we're being practical by not pursuing our dream. And we're doing the right thing by our families and for children. By playing it safe and not taking risks. They say the greatest risk is dying. We're all going to die someday. The greatest risk is dying. With that unfulfilled dream still suffocating inside you. Believe me, I know what it's like because I took five years of grinding it out efficiently before I had mustered up enough courage to go out on my own. There's this famous quote by English writer John Ruskin. And here it is, in the end. It doesn't matter how much you know, what you think? Or what you believe. The only thing that matters is what you do. Only thing that matters is what you do. So we're gonna go to q&a now. But I want you to keep that in mind. Because inventing is a long journey, oftentimes a lonely journey. And if you're bringing something new to market, you have to be prepared for people pushing back. Thank you