|Int| Transforming Trash to Treasure with Neil Krovats's Green Business Breakthroughs | Ep 105 - On Your Lead

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And I always say you know, you're crazy until you're
successful.
Then you're brilliant as anentrepreneur, as a random.
You're absolutely crazy untilsuccess.
And then all of a sudden theychart all those crazy ways you
had about you and these thingsyou do.
They're really kind of anegative until you're successful
, Like, oh yeah, he used to dothis, he used to stand on his
head and think about things.
That's brilliant.
But it's now because, if it'spart of the recipe for success

(00:22):
that they saw, all those crazythings are actually now becoming
really like what you want to do, and that's cool because that's
the new way.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
My name is Thad David .
I'm a former Marine recon scoutsniper with two deployments to
Iraq.
As a civilian, I've nowfacilitated hundreds of personal
and professional developmenttrainings across the country,
and it struck me recently thatthe same things that help
civilians will also helpveterans succeed in their new
roles as well.
Join me as we define civiliansuccess principles to inspire

(00:50):
veteran victories.
Welcome to another episode.
I'm here today with NeilKravatz.
He is the founder and owner ofClearline Technologies.
How are you doing, neil?
I'm great.
How are you doing, neil?
I'm great.
How are you today?
I'm wonderful.
Thank you so much for takingsome time out of your very busy,
busy day.
I know you are literally allover the map all over the world

(01:11):
spreading the good word.
I'd love to just dive in reallyquick, if you don't mind.
Tell us what you do and I knowyou have this huge goal of what
you and your company are goingto do and what you're currently
doing.
Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, so I was a manufacturer's agent family
business for quite a few yearsand one day and we were plumbing
and heating products veryglamorous, glamorous stuff, you
know, toilets and toilet seatsand stuff and we were some guy
came just one day with a newline of products they wanted us
to look at and it was these pipesupports that were made out of

(01:46):
plastic.
Now, pipe supports go onrooftops for supporting.
When you look at a commercialroof and you see a pipe along
the roof, you see a block ofsomething underneath it.
That's called a pipe support.
And so he had made one out ofplastic.
Mostly people were just usinglumber, like 4x4s.
And so when we did our researchand came back to him and said,

(02:08):
yeah, we'll take the line, uh,he had given it to somebody else
.
So we, uh.
So at that point I just went.
Well, you know, I think theidea was great.
I had a great response from theplumbers.
I thought, well, let's see ifwe can't make something
ourselves.
So I changed hats from being amanufacturer's rep to being a
manufacturer, which you know, Ialways knew that the better
money was in the unlimited lifeis with manufacturing, not with

(02:31):
being an agent for somebody elseBecause your territory limits
you and, being somebody likemyself, I can't stand
limitations, being told thatthis is all you're ever going to
do.
And we had a very smallterritory, small city.
We were in Manitoba.
That this is all you're evergoing to do.
And we had a very smallterritory, small city.
We were in Manitoba, canadait's a province in Canada and in
a very small town, 700,000people.
The whole province was amillion people, so you had to

(02:55):
really sell a lot of stuff tomake a living.
But anyway, so yeah.
So I invented this productthere's a whole long story to
that, you know decided I need tofind something that could
compete with wood blocks.
I wasn't going to come out inthe market with some expensive
thing and try to get plumbers tostop using something that costs
half and get them to use ourproduct.
My thought was that if I madeit out of garbage, that would be

(03:18):
a very inexpensive input cost.
I started looking for differentwaste streams that we could
utilize to manufacture a pipesupport.
So I happened across recycledtire rubber and there was a guy
making curbs in montreal, canada, and they were making these
parking curbs and I called themup and we, uh, were able to buy

(03:43):
their seconds that they hadmanufactured with square ends
instead of chamfered ends.
That started the business.
I cut them all up, put somebrochures together and put some
steel on them and made a wholeproduct line and went to market
with it.
I remember when we used to getexcited for getting an order of
20 of them.
Now we get excited when we getan order 200 000.

(04:05):
So it's uh, the scale haschanged.
Excitement's still there, butthe scale has changed that's
absolutely brought up and I loveit.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Everything that I do and in my, my day-to-day job, I
work in the trade, so I lovethat this originated in the
trades, because it's changed somuch of my life.
And to see what you've done youdo all of this out of recycled
tires.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yes, yeah, and we we're getting into the science
of anything that's uh recycledmaterials that we can.
We can blend with our rubber tomake different physical
characteristics that allow us toexpand our products into more
uh other areas uh, stiffer, youknow, more compression strength.
We're looking at a product thatgoes under buildings for doing
seismic protection on onconcrete buildings.

(04:50):
It's a whole bunch of differentthings, but we need different,
different styles or differenttypes of characteristics for the
rubber.
So we're looking at all otherkinds of waste streams that we
can blend with the rubber tocreate different mechanical
capabilities and characteristics.
That's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
It's really amazing what you've done and where it
started.
And now your goal and correctme if I'm off base on it is to
eliminate all of the world'sused tires, because they just
sit there.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, I mean the thing about using waste streams
is it's exciting to me.
Maybe I need to have moreexcitement in my life, but I
love when you can find somethingout there, and I think the
whole world does.
I mean you look at the talentshows out there.
People are so drawn to.
When you can find a diamond inthe rough, something where it's
a waste it's something that noone's using or whatever you can

(05:39):
grab it and make it intosomething.
I think the world is quiteenamoredored with that concept
and it inspires people and, andso when we come up with
different things that we makeout of, uh waste streams, uh
it's, it's really fun and peoplereally get excitement out
because it's like you knowyou're finding this diamond,
this treasure and uh.
So I look at all the wastestreams out there as a treasure

(05:59):
hunt.
When you look at how much goesinto the, the dumps every year,
and I mean there's more materialbeing thrown out every year
than being manufactured everyyear and there's that's material
and if you can bake, break itdown to being an actual uh
commodity or a resource likegold or steel or anything like
that.
That's how I look at the rubber.

(06:20):
So I have 1.8 billion tires.
A billion tires go into thedump every year around the world
and only 25% of that getsrecycled into something.
And so you know, I look at thisthere's there's billions of
pounds, 70 billion pounds, ofrubber out there.
That's for mine, for the taking.

(06:41):
It's just sitting there.
I can have it for free prettymuch, and make whatever I want
out of it.
So now it's a case of well, whatelse can I make with rubber?
And there's no end.
So we just have to continuallygrow.
We're growing exponentially.
I think our growth has been 50%per year for the last three
years, and that's a companythat's 20 years old and
developing new things.

(07:07):
So we went from having the pipesupport to now we have curbs and
speed bumps and traffic bases.
You know those cones.
They have that rubber base onthe bottom, and we're constantly
developing more products, whichis what I enjoy doing.
Now, that being said, why notset the goal that we can change
the world?
Instead of just making yourproduct hoping to make some
money, let's actually take thisand ramp it up a bit and see
what we can do about actuallysolving the tire problem,

(07:29):
because you know input, output,all the output of the rubber out
there in this world can beturned into an input, then you
would solve the problem.
Sounds very simple for 70billion pounds of rubber, you
got to find a use for it, but uh, but yeah, that's kind of.
That's kind of how we look atthings.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
That's an incredible thing that you've done and I
love how you always hear withentrepreneurship is kind of swim
to open water, and you've donethat with the resources that you
need to build your products.
Where is everybody else to thatdiamond in the rough?

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Everybody's looking for the next shiny thing.
You literally went to the dumpand said, well, what can we make
here?
And it's pretty fascinating.
And and here's the here's thesecret.
Don't tell anybody this, butthe margins when you take
garbage and make it into aproduct are spectacular.
And you know I mean that it'sall, it's all so simple.
When you say it online, you gooh, wow, yeah, duh, but the less
you spend, the more you make.

(08:29):
Retaining of your, of your, ofyour sales is number one.
I always said to somebody I'dway rather have a company that
sells five million dollars butprofits three million than a
company that sells a hundredmillion dollars and profits
three million, and that's and I.
That happens all the time.
Another company that sells $100million and profits $3 million
that happens all the time.
What do you mean?

(08:50):
You see these giant companiesthat everybody gives such
respect to.
They're doing $100 million, buttheir EBITDA, the bottom line,
is usually 7% to 10%.
When you're making productwhere your input cost is almost
zero, I'll guarantee you rightnow your EBITDA is a hell of a
lot more.
It's fascinating.

(09:12):
We do everything that way,where we look at the bottom line
of the company and what we'remaking.
People will use failures intrying to use recycled materials
that cost too much or all thedebate of that.
We always say that if it'sgoing to end up costing more

(09:33):
than the comparative product,then we won't do it.
It doesn't make any sense to dothat.
People are not willing to paymore for something because it's
environmentally advantageous.
They'll maybe pay 2% more orit'll be a tipping point between
one or the other, but for themost part and I don't think that
people should, and I thinkwe've been slamming that down

(09:55):
not we, but the environmentalindustry of manufacturing stuff
has been slamming that downpeople's throats that they
should pay more because it'slike eco-bullying, it's like,
well, you should want to do dothis, so you should be willing
to pay more.
And I say no, you should wantto do this because it's good for
the world and you don't pay anymore for it.
So you know, at clearline, wecreated this criteria and it's

(10:18):
it's, it's.
Uh, if you look at our logo, wehave three leaves on our logo
and that's the clear line.
Criteria is the three things.
One is that when we develop aproduct, it has to be priced the
same or better than the productthat we're going up against
that.
We're replacing that's anon-green product.
Secondly, it has to be trulygreen.

(10:40):
If it's not, if it'sgreenwashinghing, you just
undermine the whole thing andyou undermine everybody's
reasons for doing this, becausepeople will point to that.
We're going to see there are abunch of snake oil sales
salesman.
It doesn't really, you know,doesn't really work or whatever.
And the other thing is has to,it has to actually meet the spec
and there's so often where agreen alternative or some other

(11:01):
alternative to what's being doneright now it doesn't actually
do it as well.
But you're supposed to justhold your nose and say, yeah,
it's almost as good, but youknow, not really, because it's
green, it's not as good as theother stuff.
And I I always laugh aboutthinking about the guy who I
want to hire for my nextsalesman is the guy who started
citronella for candles to keepmosquitoes away because it

(11:23):
doesn't work.
And I mean, if you're not inthe mosquito zone you won't
understand necessarily what I'mtalking about.
But they use a citronella andthey put it and they infused
everything with it and they wentall the market.
Oh, it's, it's green, becauseit's, you know, lemons and all
that kind of crap and it neverworked.
It didn't work as good as thetoxic stuff, you know, the off
or whatever.
But you were supposed to justsort of say, well, yeah, but

(11:43):
it's green, so I'm going to buyit.
That's crap too.
So again, all three things hasto be as good price the same and
are actually really green.
And if you hit those threethings every time, my bet is
that when you hit those threethings every time, you will win
the decision 9.9 times out of 10when people are given that
point.
Well, point nine times out often when people are given that

(12:10):
one.
Well, here's all the things.
Now which one would you buy?

Speaker 2 (12:11):
the one that is actually made out of petroleum
or toxic or what have you, orthis one, and this one is most
reflex.
That's incredible.
I love that you tied that inand your citronella example is
perfect.
Like I've ptsd from likefeeling mosquitoes biting me
while it's just not working.
I've said at work then itdidn't do it.
But that's incredible.
It makes it really simple as aconsumer to make that purchase.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, and you don't have to be.
Everybody's always afraid of asnake oil salesman trying to
pull the wool over their eyes,and I understand that, and we
get very mad when someone does.
And it always makes me mad whenI'll find somebody in the
industry who has anenvironmental edge to their idea
of what they're doing.
And it's all crap because thenit undermines all of us.
And I remember one time I wasat a building show and this guy

(12:55):
was selling garage doors, metalgarage doors.
I went, oh well, how are thesegreen?
He said, well, we're not usingwood.
That's like.
You know.
Wood is a replenishment product.
Like wood is actually goodForestation, using trees is what

(13:17):
, that's what they're good for.
And because now the industry isresponsible in replants, using
wood is actually incrediblyenvironmental because it's it's,
it replenishes itself, and Imean trees have to be cut down
eventually or else they'll fall.
So, uh, there's nothing wrongwith using wood, but it's all I
mean.
And you know I want to get intothe debate of the whole green
thing because that's just anightmare.
But what I love about myproducts are is there's no

(13:41):
debate about global warming.
The stuff in my product, myproduct, cleans up the world and
we all know that pollution isbad.
No matter what side of theaisle you're on, you can
appreciate that pollution is bad, and my product takes pollution
and turns it into a finishedproduct that makes the world a
better place.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
It's amazing.
I love what you've done andwhat you continue to do
literally all over the world.
It's amazing to hear about.
And so I know.
We met, we're sitting on anairplane randomly next to each
other and we started talkingabout and you brought up this
concept that I would love tohear you just kind of, before we
deep dive too far into it, justkind of kind of give a brief

(14:24):
overview, but the how, howpeople are random or sequential
in in this nature of it, andwhat gave you that idea?
What is it?
How would you just give theelevator pitch of it?

Speaker 1 (14:35):
yeah.
So, uh, I mean, being anentrepreneur is somebody who
sees things that people don't.
They always ask why?
And then figure out, theyquestion the stuff that we have
taken as the mundane beige inthis world that we just accept,
and they go why, why are weputting up with this?
And they try to figure a way todo it better.
And, uh, it takes what I call arandom mind to think this way.

(14:58):
Uh, I mean, we can all do it,and being random or being
sequential is is a spectrum.
They're not either one or theother.
You can fall anywhere amongstthe spectrum.
Uh, so if you look at it asbeing, you know, all the way to
one side is you're really randomand all the way to the other
side is you're really sequential.
And if you get beyond this onepoint on either side of random,

(15:19):
you become uh dysfunctional.
You're too random, you can'tactually organize your thoughts,
you can't actually be effective.
And the same thing with on thesequential side is you become
what people would call ocd andyou're now not effective and
you're you're, you're uhhandcuffed with this.
But in between, somewhere weall run.

(15:40):
And you know I was laughing,you know I explained to people
this because everyone alwayssays when I talk to them about
if you're random versus you'resequential, everyone wants to
know where they are and I'm like, well, I can't tell you or I
can give you an idea where Ithink.
But there's those guys that youmeet that everybody likes, and
they're usually like everybodylikes me.
They'll say, oh, that that fatgreat guy, love him everybody.

(16:01):
Yeah, he's what I call middler,and these are the people who
sit right in the middle and theyget along with both sides, they
can understand both sidesequally and they are the one
that everybody likes because ofthat, because they understand.
To understand somebody is towalk a mile in their footsteps
and to be random, where you walkthrough the world with a

(16:26):
peripheral vision that's wideopen, and as you walk from here
to there, you can be looking atthis, looking at that and
thinking about all thesedifferent things at the same
time.
Sequentials are more about astraight line and walking from
here to here in the mostefficient way, and they don't
all of a sudden start thinkingabout how that light fixture
looks like the one from your oldhouse that you lived in, and

(16:47):
boy, you'd like to find that.
Oh, that house is kind of.
I remember that house.
I wonder who owns it now, asyou're walking towards this over
and you're having all thesedifferent things happening in
mind, but you're able to controlit and focus in a way that
sequentials just don'tunderstand.
And I I say to people becauseyou know, you hear as a random,
you always hear people saying,oh, he's unfocused, he's all

(17:07):
over the place and they, youknow, because they can't
understand what it is to spin 10plates at the same time.
And I use this, the platespinner, uh example, because you
know, in the circus they justhave the guy who spin all the
plates.
He has to keep them all going.
He starts with one.
They put a whole bunch of goodand that's life to me is that,
as I'll have 15 plates on the goand I'll be spinning them all

(17:29):
and having huge energy andreally enjoying it, whereas as
if you tell me just to focus onone plate and just spin that one
plate, that plate's gonna fallbefore you know it because I'm
gonna be off doing somethingelse, I'll be bored it, it won't
keep my attention and I'll bedone.
And the world wants us to focuson the one thing and we are

(17:51):
rewarded for being compliant howwe're taught in school.
You're rewarded for beingcompliant, you are punished for
not being compliant to the rulesand everything is structured
sequentially.
You know, school is all abouthere.
I'm going to feed you thislesson that starts here and ends
there in a straight line, pointone up to point whatever, and

(18:16):
then you are rewarded for howperfectly you regurgitate that
sequence, in perfection,straight, and that's either an A
, but for us we bring texturebecause, remember, we're walking
through a world where ourperipheral vision is all over
here.
And I talked about in schoolhow, when I was, you know, when
you're learning a lesson inschool and they'll start with

(18:38):
number one, and then number two,three, and you're getting it,
and all of a sudden you're atnumber six or whatever it may be
, and you take off and got theconcept, and now you're pulling
in this.
You're thinking about somethingthat happened to you one time
over here that relates and thisrelates.
You're trying to look forsomething to relate it to, and
ideas, and, and you ask theteacher about something that has
to do with where you are inyour thought process up here,

(18:59):
and they want you back down,step number eight, and they're
like I'm not on, I'm on stepnumber 90 and they're like what
are you talking about?
Get back down here.
What kind of stupid questionwas that?
Because they can't see whereyou're looking at from and they
want to bring you back down andthey'll say well, that's not
where we're going, we're notgoing there and going.
I know where you're going.
This is way better, because Iadded this and this and this,

(19:21):
and, and they're like stop,let's drug you, let's call you,
add, put you back in the in theroom and we'll just feed it to
you one step at a time.
And that's something thathappens every day.
And I identified this becausethat's me, like I am.
I am a an interesting study,because I'm the guy on the very
far side, right?

(19:41):
So those are the studies of theinterest.
Ones are the most dramatic.
Yep, and if I was told to, youknow, focus, what you know,
let's just focus on one thingand it's like your understanding
of focus, not yours, but thesequential understanding of
focus and the randomsunderstanding of focus are two
completely different definitionsof the word.
So focus for me is being ableto keep my attention and work on

(20:07):
multiple ideas at the same time, and I've got all these things
going on at the same time in acomplex construct.
That's focus.
So when they take a look atpeople like me and say you're
not focused, it's exactly theopposite, whereas the sequential
world defines focus as havingyour thought and your attention

(20:28):
on one individual thing.
That's focus and that's not myfocus.
That's not how I focus.
That's not how randoms focus,which allows us to bring things
out from you know they.
Always you'll hearterminologies like sequentials
will say oh, that came out ofleft field.
Well, that's because I live inleft field, like nothing's left

(20:51):
field to me, it's all just field.
I see it all at the same time.
I'm bringing this and that Iexplain to this.
I love the one because youalways know a sequential,
because they always say the samething.
When you come up with aspectacular idea, it's simple.
All great innovation is usuallyquite simple.
It simplifies things, doesn'tmake things more complex.

(21:12):
The first thing I always say iswhy did I think of that which,
if you're a sensitive guy whichyou, you don't.
You lose all sensitivity andyou develop a real thick skin
being around them your wholelife?
Because?
But if you're a sensitive guy,you'd say like, like, as if
they're offending you, that theyshould have.
They're smarter than you andthey should have thought, but
but you don't, because you justwant them to understand.
Like, at random, I can walk amile, like I talked about

(21:35):
earlier.
How to understand somebody isto walk a mile on their footstep
.
I can walk 10 miles in asequential footstep because it's
linear, you can follow it.
It's all been perfectly laidout and you can do it.
I'll hate it and I'll kind ofveer a lot.
As you know, I'll never do itlike they would and I'll get a.

(21:55):
I'll get a C or D at the end,but I can do it right.
It's predictable.
To beat to walk a mile in thefootsteps of a random is to be
able to understand the balanceof the complex constructs of
thought, to be bringing it allat the same time and and thought

(22:15):
isn't just about one singularindividual amount of time.
I could be bringing somethingfrom something I saw 20 years
ago and 15 years ago and 13, and, and today and yesterday, and
pull it all together on aconcept, an idea that pulls into
a one moment.
You go holy shit, what a greatidea.
And that's why here's here's aquick test if you, if you want
to know if you're, how randomyou are or if you're sequential.

(22:37):
Uh, you never remember whereyou left anything.
Where's my keys, honey?
Oh man, you forgot.
You can't find your keys again.
What's wrong with you?
Well, because from the time Iput my keys down honey, oh man,
you forgot.
You can't find your keys again.
What's wrong with you?
Well, because from the time Iput my keys down to the time I'm
here right now, I had 4,000different things go in my head
and it was not a great straightline that I could walk back
through Right, retrace yoursteps.

(23:01):
To retrace the steps for arandom moment of an hour is so
difficult because theconversation does not have any
link.
The thought process has nolinkage.
The linkage is is is all overthe place, so you pluck a little
from here and here and here,and so to retrace those steps is

(23:21):
really tough.
So you have to retrace it withthinking about what you were
feeling and what you're like.
It's a feeling that you retraceand a and a zone that you get
into that you retrace and try tofeel, yeah, I was thinking
about this, and when I wasthinking about that, these, you
got to retrace that thing andit's really hard.
So to find out where my keysare.
I don't know no-transcript andget my ass kicked when I came

(24:13):
home because my grades sucked.
So there's a place for you,there's a place for us, there's
a place for everybody in thisworld.
I'm just trying to shed light onthe world, to say, hey, uh,
when you meet a random and byway, and he's not looking you in
the eye when he talks, becausehe hasn't trained his eyes to
not follow his mind, becausewhen a random is talking to you

(24:36):
and they do this and they dothat, it's because they're
following the ideas, even thoughthey're hearing every word
you're saying, but they haven'ttrained themselves to, uh,
adhere to what people need tosee, which is eye contact, and
you'll see an autistic.
You know one thing about autism, which is and I'm not, I'm not
a psychologist, I've done a lotof research on this but I mean,
autism is one of the big thingsautism is is, um, eye contact,

(25:02):
and you know, it's just anotherthing that doesn't go along with
the world of how we all expectto solve.
So people will be, willmisinterpret that, so, at any
rate.
So, yeah, so I said a lot aboutthis stuff, but, uh, and of
course, as being random.
We're all over the place rightnow because I'm just letting it
go from one idea to another.
I have this nice list of all theways I was going to talk to you

(25:23):
about stuff.
There's no way I'm writing abook and I decided in the book
I'm going to make all thechapters be like first chapter
will be chapter five and thenwe'll go to number eight and
then number one after that.
And the other guy I join moreis that is is fucking with my
sequential engineers becauseI'll be in a conversation with

(25:44):
them and I'll go off onto atangent about something like
we're talking about this andwell, you know what about this,
and we're gonna do that.
And I go off on these tangentsand you know, allowing us to
think and create together andwatching the pain in their face
when I'm on a tangent becausethey want.
So they're just counting themoments until we get back onto
the conversation where we leftoff.

(26:05):
So you watch them in physicalpain.
Well, I'm off on some tangent,but because I'm the boss, we're
still on that tangent.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yep well, and I I had .
When you said, give me oneplate and tell me to focus on
this one plate, I half imaginedyou saying and I spin the plate
and I realized that platereminded me of my buddy's house
back when I was a kid and likejust, and that's why it falls
off, because it's not able tograb it.
But I love your explanation ofit.
I I'm very excited.
I know you're writing a bookand putting it together and I

(26:34):
can't wait to to read it all.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
It was a really just amazing concept well, you know,
I I don't think I'm sayinganything that the world didn't
know, and I think that's thecase with most books, because
nothing's been reinvented inpsychology.
This world is just discovery,and it's the idea on.
This is one of the big things Iwanted to do.
I hope to do is help sequentialparents understand their random
child, and I've had that happena couple times where I've been

(26:58):
on a plane, like talking withyou.
Yeah, on that plane I wasexplaining to a lady who said
next to me about this and got ontop and she started to cry
because she was so overwhelmedbecause she says my child is
that and I know he's smart, buthe's just having trouble and
he's in trouble at school, andall this because and it's like

(27:19):
yeah, he's not being engaged andthey want to drug him.
They want to say say, well, youknow he's ADHD.
Like if I hear that one moretime, if I hear one more person
call me ADD, now I don't getthat.
I understand it because they'retrying to put an understanding
to me and, as I've said, tounderstand a human being is to

(27:40):
walk a mile in their footsteps.
Sequentials can't possibly walka mile in my footstep because
it's so out of control.
They can't.
They can't balance all thatstuff at the same time if it's
not following.
You know, because I mean, likeI said in school, you're
rewarded for being this way,right.
I mean, when you're in school,what's what do you get straight
A's for?
Perfect, sequential, linearthought process to follow, learn

(28:05):
the lesson and bring it back ina perfect understanding of that
.
You know exactly where it is.
From there here to the end, Igot, like I was a 50 average in
school and the one thing you'llnotice when you find all
entrepreneurs, uh, like myself,they all got 50 averages.
Like hardly any of them evergot straight A's and usually, if
they got straight A's, becausethey found a way to cheat.
And uh, um, averages, likehardly any of them ever got

(28:28):
straight A's and usually, ifthey got straight A's, because
they found a way to cheat.
And uh, um, I remember when Iwas in, when I was the grade 12
grades.
Uh, they came home and they gotput up on the fridge.
My girlfriend at the time cameover the house and she saw the
grades and she, she thoughtthose were the number of
students in each of myclassrooms.
True story, anyway.
But yeah, no, I mean we don'tdo well and we get.
We get beaten up our wholelives for being this way and um,

(28:52):
and my hope is to stop peoplefrom drugging these kids who
have random minds.
They're not add, they're randomand they need to be understood
for how they're processingrandom.
Sequential is about how youprocess information.
I process information from anyangle, any level, any time.

(29:12):
It doesn't have to be justvisual angles.
I say you walk with aperipheral vision where
everything you walk by younotice everything.
But it's also time, everythingI walk by.
I can pass this thing tosomething I remember from 25
years ago.
My memory is off the chartsbecause it drives my girlfriend

(29:34):
crazy.
I never forget anything becauseI have a visual understanding.
I feel the things, my inputs.
They're not rote learned,they're feeling learned and they
are part of a larger construct.
So every time I have an input,I put it into a story of
something else that comes alongwith it.
So I just have a.
That's how I explain my abilityto be able to recall anything.

(29:58):
A a line from a movie that I saw25 years ago.
That's relevant to this ideathat I'm trying to explain to my
staff.
It's it's it's you know.
So it's just me trying tounderstand.
And isn't that usually the wayright?
We usually?
You know, when people becomedoctors, a lot of times they go
into the field that is relevantto something they have as a
problem Right or has beencausing friction in their lives.

(30:21):
So yeah, I'm trying to explainmyself so that people will and I
I I wonder about one thingabout this is that you know,
with great pressure you can dobetter things.
You know the, the, the diamondunder great pressure, the, the,
the coal under great pressurecomes on right.
And I wonder if, if we let usrandoms off the hook and let us

(30:50):
be overly understood, we don'twork so hard to try to be
understood and prove ourconcepts, because we're
constantly trying to prove ourconcepts to people.
I love this.
This is my favorite thing.
Again, I'm going off so you canreel me in.
No, no, I love it.
What's the first thing when youcome up with this thing that's
ever been done before and it's aconcept that's like new, and

(31:10):
you take it to the authoritiesNow, the authorities are always
sequential, like nobody's comingto me and say hey, neil, we
need you to come in here becausewe want to set a bunch of rules
and regulations.
Like, I never write a rule orregulation for anybody for

(31:32):
anybody.
So, um, the the ability to beable to um work amongst all
those rules.
Right, where was that going?
I'm trying to figure out wejust, oh see, I lost it.
Now I retraced my steps.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
I'm gonna have a hard time remembering where I was
going with that well, I thinkyou were you were talking about
and I'm with you I was thinkingabout um.
This is fantastic that this iswhere we're at right now talking
about being um, random with it.
The you were talking about how,like, if you were to let
everybody be random and or letthe randoms go, that, the

(31:59):
diamond, that if you didn't havethe pressure under the diamond
yeah, so we have thick skinbecause we're constantly getting
in shit and our way is neveracceptable, right, and it's not
accepted by by the, the world'srankings and the ratings.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
I never get good grades, so never the smart guy,
so you're never getting.
No one's ever giving you thebenefit of the doubt because
you're not the smart guy, you'redumb guy.
You're the guy who got 50average.
So you know, and you have to bebetter and you have to be able
to uh, verbally, uh, debate yourconcepts and your ideas.

(32:35):
I get greater joy, my joy, whenI come up with something, when
I invent a product or what haveyou and I've written.
You know, I used to do awebcast show, a webcast show and
I wrote and directed it andcreated it and all that.
And I got greater joy fromwatching people laugh in the
audience and then I would leave.
I didn't want to be around toget thought about me.

(32:56):
I love when people see myconcept and they applaud it,
whether they buy it or they seeit, laugh at it or whatever.
It is the, the getting the, theuh, recognition for it is not
where I get my energy.
I get my energy from theconcept being proven to be right
.
I would say the person who'smost surprised by a crazy

(33:17):
concept that I've created thatbecomes successful is actually
me.
Because you have, but you don'tever have such great confidence
that you know it's going towork because it's new and it's
it's it's new world and it's newterritory.
So you're trying the best andyou're a huge proponent of it.
People think that you're,you're being, you know, you're

(33:38):
100 confidence, but it's no.
You're just.
You're on the team, and theteam of mine.
I always talk about devil'sadvocates.
I hate these people.
What do devil advocates do?
What?
What purpose are they like?
And the ones who are devil'sadvocates will tell you they're,
they're really important onthis process of trying to figure
out whether this amazing thingcan happen.
And I said here's how it goes.

(34:01):
If you want to figure out whysomething won't work, you can
figure it out every time, but atthe same time, you just want to
spend your want to figure outwhy something won't work.
You can figure it out everytime, but at the same time, if
you just want to spend your timeto figure out how you can make
it work, you'll find that outtoo.
So which one would you ratherspend your time on and these
people are like, oh, you justwant yes men around.
It's like no, it's not aboutyes men or no men or anything,

(34:27):
it's about yes, we can do.
That which is actually on mybusiness cards is yes, we can do
that Because everything'spossible.
It's just what are you willingto sacrifice for that?
I can make the next greatestthing, but it could end up
costing too much and thatdoesn't work, but everything's
possible.
I remember this is a bizarrestory.
I remember this is a bizarrestory.
I remember one time I watchedthis thing on TV about how some

(34:48):
guy made this material out ofhousehold items and it could
withstand a blowtorch.
And it was just this paste.
You could put a blowtorch on it.
On the other side, it wouldn'tbe hot.
I was like this is amazingstuff.
And I was selling insulation atthe time.
Coincidentally, I went to theguys who were the engineers of
the insulation company and said,well, what about this?

(35:08):
Why don't we make theinsulation out of this stuff?
It's amazing.
It was just out of house on it.
They said, yeah, the thing youdon't understand is yes, we
could make it doing it that way,but the cost would be
exponential.
You couldn't do it without acost being because of the
different things it would.
So, yeah, you could do that,but the cost would be so high.
So that's why it's not gamers.
So you know, anything'spossible.

(35:28):
It's just what.
Are you willing to give up todo it?
What's going to be the netresult?
And that's how you have to workthrough as an engineer and
trial, or as an entrepreneur andtrial these different things
and go to the wall and be thechampion of it.
All innovation has to.
Ever heard the saying that allinnovation has three phases I
was actually just going to askyou.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
I think you would share this on the airplane and I
was very excited to have youshare it, so I love that it's
right in sync with you so threephases of innovation are this
ridicule, debate andself-evidence.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
What that means is when you come up with a new
thing that nobody's ever heardof before, it's ridicule, it's
like, well, you're crazy, that'sstupid, that won't work, you
know, because you're doingsomething that everybody knows
not to be true and not and, intheir mind, not possible.
So you're crazy.
Well, somewhere along the line,somebody of who's got some

(36:23):
valid validation, this world hassome credibility, will say, hey
, actually that's not a bad idea.
And it can gain a little bit ofmomentum where people actually,
you know, maybe and you'vedeveloped a little further, and
it becomes the debate stagewhere everybody's debating
whether it actually like peoplewho are will actually take the
time to debate it becausethere's enough there that they
think it may be muscle.
And when the debate is over andyou've actually you find out,

(36:44):
yes, it's going to work.
Then it's self-evident, like,well, yeah, we all know that.
And then the entrepreneur is theguy who can start the idea,
take it through, accept theridicule, the thick skin, take
it through to the debate stageand be able to verbally defend
it and challenge it and debate.
And then the big one which yousee happen very often, not

(37:09):
happen, as often is then when itbecomes self-evident to
actually commercialize it andmake off, because those are,
those are all different sets ofskills, but that's what it takes
.
That's why, you see, mostinventors never make any money
off their inventions.
It's always somebody else whograbbed it after the fact and
applied it differently and madeyou know, like the guy who
invented mp3 didn't make nearlyas much money as ste Jobs did

(37:32):
with the iPod.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
I was going to ask you for an example that's a
phenomenal example of somebodythat brought it through the
first two stages and then Appletook it and made it.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah.
That's a great example.
Yeah, so we are the ones whoabsorb that beating and what
keeps us to go through to thatthird phase, to get through the
first and the second?
I'll give you an example, areal-life example, on my three
phases of innovation.
It was the Green Movement, theenvironmental, the understanding

(38:05):
that the world was having somethreat to its environment.
The first guys that came outwith this thing were long-haired
.
The first guys that came outwith this thing were long-haired
birkenstock, wearing hippieincense, burning pot smoke and
whack jobs, tree huggers, right,all those things those are not
really nice terms, right, butthose are which would be defined

(38:27):
as ridicule.
And then, all of a sudden, somescientists listened and they
went wait a minute, actually Ithink they got something here, I
think there might.
So it became a real debate andscientists listened and they
went wait a minute, actually, Ithink they got something here, I
think there might be something.
It became a real debate andeveryone's back and forth on
that.
And then something happened,and I don't remember the year,
it was the same year that Dolecame up with his movie
Convenient Truth of theenvironmental movie Not Dole,

(38:50):
sorry, the guy who almost waspresident lost by a Chad or two.
Environmental the Democrat onthe environmental side, that was
inconvenient.
Al Gore, gore right, al GoreDole and Gore right One syllable
Anyhow.
So he came up with that movieand at the same time, all the

(39:12):
scientists of the world had thisbig meeting and they all came
together and agreed that therewas a actual problem global
warming and that and at the sametime, the democrats and the
republicans both came togetherand agreed that this is actually
a situation that needs to belooked at.
So all those three got togetherand said you know what?

(39:34):
You're right, there issomething here.
And that caused the world to go.
This is now self-evident.
We all know that there'ssomething going on.
It's not just oh, by the way,it's really hot today, or it's
cold today, or we have snow.
They went holy shit, there'ssomething going on here.
So that was when it becameself-evident.
And now, when it becomesself-evident, we all go oh yeah,
we know that, we know about,whether you believe it or not.

(39:55):
And again, this is not to getinto a uh, political argument,
but it's about the.
It's about I'm just giving thatas an example.
So you look at it right.
They went from hippies whackjobs to debate, and then now
everybody knows it.
We're all trying to do what wecan and people are trying to
commercialize and make productsthat'll do it better and all

(40:16):
that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
It's a great walkthrough of just the
progression of those threephases and, yeah, I love it.
I think it's a fantasticexample and, if I'm hearing you
correctly, anybody that is anentrepreneur should be prepared
to go through these three phases, because it sounds like they
get lost on thatself-actualization where they're
kind of out of steam and yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Well, the whole world's against you, because
what do they do?
This is what I love when youinnovate, you're going to do
something that's never been donebefore, so you take it to,
let's say, you take it to thegovernment.
You go we want to do this, sowhat does the government do?
Let's bring in our experts.
Hey, get the experts on this.
Now, what are experts?
They are the guys whose wholelives are wrapped up in exactly

(41:01):
how it's always been, and theyare the expert on exactly how
this one thing has always been.
And you're asking them ifthey're wrong and there's
actually a better way of doingit.
Like, why the hell would youask them?
Of course they're not going tohave an open mind to it, because
and not because they're angryor they, you know, devious it's

(41:22):
just they don't see it.
They look at it this way andyou're going hey, what if we did
see this thing over there?
And they go I don't see thatover there.
And you take their hand and gohold on oh crap, see that over
there.
And you take their hand, you gohold on.
Oh crap, yeah, that's, yeah,that'll work.
Why didn't I see that?
Because, yeah, you couldn't,and I'm walking like this and

(41:43):
you're walking like that.
So it's always.
The answer is always right infront of our, our eyes.
It's very simple, which makesit harder, because it's if it's
that easy, what you've heardthese ones well, it's not easy.
Why didn't somebody else do itbefore?
If it's that simple, why didn'tsomebody else come up with that
?
It can't be that great, becausethat's too obvious.
And Hidden in Plain Sightshould be the title of that

(42:06):
entrepreneur's book, because Ijust took a rubber curb that was
already being manufactured andcut it up into a smaller block
and put some steel on it andcreated a multi-million dollar
business that I started forunder $1,000.
And I have every time.
Why didn't I think of that?

(42:27):
I don't know, but this dumbjock figured it out.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
So I mean, if I could figure out, anybody could Well
it's interesting and I know it'sright there in what was said
but the moment you had made avisual reference where you had,
kind of, when the sequentialsays, why didn't I think of that
?
And you moved their hand alittle bit, because I'm over
here, and what I'm imagining,though, is the moment you switch
their thought.
The sequential then just jumpslockstep and now they just go in

(42:57):
that direction.
That's the new direction thatwe're headed, but that's the
line that they're moving down,and then it's very interesting
on the back end of it Once theexperts validate it right.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
They got to be validated because it still
couldn't be.
This 50 average guy can't beright.
We got to get some validationon this one because it can't be
possible, right?
So, yeah, and it's a case of uhand then, and then the carrying
out and getting it done.
Everybody's required to need tohelp, those quenchers need to
help, everybody needs to helppull together.
And I always say you know,you're crazy until you're

(43:31):
successful.
Then then you're brilliant asan entrepreneur, as a random,
you're absolutely crazy untilsuccess.
And then all of a sudden theychart all those crazy ways you
had about you and these thingsyou do.
They're really kind of anegative until you're successful
.
Like, oh yeah, he used to dothis, he used to stand on his
head and think about things.
That's brilliant.
But it's now because, if it'spart of the recipe for success

(43:52):
that they saw, all those crazythings are actually now becoming
really like what you want to doand that's cool because that's
the new way I was reading thisbook.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Actually, I read it a couple times and there's one
section of it this wasn't thecontext of it, but they talked
about Elon Musk and everybodywas like man, I wish I had the
idea to invent blank or do this.
I just wish Musk would maybekeep his Twitter or X profile,
like the things that he says outto the world.
If he could just reign those inand he was like that's kind of

(44:22):
you don't get to choose.
Like he's going to be crazy andoutlandish.
Like what type of 20 year oldsays I'm going to take on the
three biggest motor companies onthe planet, you gotta be pretty
crazy, well, biggest motorcompanies on the planet.
You gotta be pretty crazy, well, and ballsy, yeah, and ball and
.
But then you expect him to saycrazy.
You can't expect him not to becrazy.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
And his random things that he, you know, tweets or
throws out to the world that'sjust that's what makes all the
things you love about him too,like mike tyson you can't expect
a guy whose life is, he'samazing at being a complete
savage and then you want tobring him in and put a tuxedo on
him and have him date girlslike, and then they go oh, I
can't believe he did that, what?

(45:01):
Oh, this is terrible.
Yep, you don't get one withoutthe other.
You don't see a lot of you knowupper class ivy leaguers
becoming the next world championof boxing, because to be the
world champion of boxing youhave to be an absolute animal,
because that's just what ittakes.
Yeah, but you can't then say,well, then we want you to be a,

(45:22):
you know, drink tea with yourfinger up and and be like one of
the societies, like everybodyelse, and it's the same thing
for randoms like we're to beable to walk and think and look
all these things and do all thisthing.
It doesn't necessarily conform.
And you know, like I wrote downabout how the world uh, rewards
sequentiality and they punishnon-conformity and in in the um.

(45:48):
You know, we all are so happythat we're free, that we can
speak, because we're in acountry that we're lucky enough
to be free to speak, and thenthe communist countries they
don't.
And if you ever think about it?
Does china?
Does anybody in china actuallyever invent anything?
Or are they just incrediblygood at taking what's been
invented and copying it andmaking it better, which is a
sequential improvement of that,as opposed to coming up with

(46:09):
going hey, what if we did?
What if we had a voice that wason the phone that we could just
talk to and it could ask itquestions?
It would take things from theinternet.
We'll call it Siri.
Right, the last reallyinnovative thing that Apple ever
did was Siri.

(46:30):
Guess what also coincided withafter Siri Jobs died and he left
.
And what do they do?
Is they put a guy who gotstraight A's at some high league
Ivy League university.
Well, guys like me aren'tgetting straight A's at any
university.
Guys like me are getting the50s.

(46:50):
We're attending the bar atnight because we need to make
money to pay for ourselves toget through this thing and we're
way better at beer bash than weare at school.
And the guys that are gettingthe straight A's and stuff,
they're not like me and they areunbelievably good at following
the rules and recreating andmaking a perfect linear control

(47:17):
to higher levels.
So there was a book a long timeago that all business guys just
embraced.
It's called Good to Great.
It's like every businessman'sBible by Jim Collins, and that
book talked about that, wherethese Ivy League guys can make
good companies.
But these wild maverick guyswill make great companies

(47:39):
because they'll do all thesethings that are out here and out
there.
They don't make movies aboutsequential why?
Because, right, they alwayslike the movie about the guy who
buzzes the tower like Maverickand.
Top Gun.
That's the stuff that isexciting in life because it's
not expected.
Humor is funny because you, youtake a line of a of a story and

(48:02):
then you, you shoot off toanother direction people weren't
expecting, and thatmisdirection makes people laugh.
Everything is, you know,conformity is never innovative,
it's's never exciting, it'snever unbelievable.
It's like wow, that was amazing.
We did exactly what we expected, exactly the way we thought we

(48:24):
were going to do it, and thenight performed exactly how.
I thought Wow, was thatunbelievable?
That doesn't happen.
Nobody says that.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
I love that you brought this.
So I drew this graph right here.
I take a bunch of notes and Iknow I told you it was going to
be, but I actually drew up thisgraph that has this linear line
across it of random tosequential.
And I was going to ask youbecause if you were to let a
random just be a random, withoutholding them to the sequential

(48:55):
nature I mean the metric of asequential, because there are
hyper successful sequentials andnot so successful and then what
would be the ranking and howwould you?
You know, I'm trying to thinkof a word to place on it, not to
sequentialize, if I can usethat and make that up without
like putting a linear equationto it.

(49:15):
But how do you pinpoint it andsay like this is a successful
random versus an unsuccessful,and is that even a possible
thing?

Speaker 1 (49:24):
well, I mean to be to come up with a real cool.
This.
One of the biggest challengesis timing.
Having the right timing.
Fantastic idea can be amazing,but if it's not at the right
time of life, the right spotwhere innovation is coming
together and cost-effectivenessof innovation is at the right
time, I always say it's like theguy who originally came out

(49:46):
with the AR glasses, theaugmented reality glasses.
When they first came out, theyfailed because they needed a.
They were always had to bewired into a computer.
Well, you can't have thistether to something and the
battery was never.
Batteries couldn't make make itportable.

(50:08):
So you know, the inventor of itis still going.
And if you look at that, if youlook at the hockey stick line
of innovation, where it goeslike this and like this and like
this, then all of a suddensomething happens.
It does this okay, paradigmshift.
That little point right thereand that little point right
there is usually somethingchanged in innovation.
Somebody invented a waystronger, lightweight battery

(50:32):
that made those glasses all of asudden be able to be untethered
and now they can be portableand boom off, it goes.
But the whole world, uh, jumpsoff the bandwagon over here
somewhere because they don'thave to pay.
They just can't.
They don't have the stayingpower to stay with this vision
that the guy pushing it has andthat guy has is the guy.
And you're, you're you'refueled by the wanting to make

(50:56):
your theory right, not becauseyou're a narcissist and have to
be right.
It's because you just want this, you want to see it through and
challenge it, and you challengeit and your energy that's what
keeps you going in the darknights is because if it's just
about success or failure, wellshit, entrepreneurs would.
If you're trying to bring anidea from here here, nobody

(51:16):
would ever get it or cause you'dbe jumping off.
When all the investors jump off, it's taking too long and they
can't see it and they don'tunderstand it.
And you're still in it, you'restill pushing away and you still
have the faith that something'sgoing to happen to stick with
it.
And then boom, and that's whysome, some inventors, will

(51:38):
invent something and then theyget off, they jump off or it
fails or whatever.
Then somebody comes in later on.
They look into the archives ofan old invention that didn't
work because, oh, they needed abetter battery.
What if we?
They just invented this newbattery?
What would you see what I'msaying?
Yeah, well, the success of themis is when you actually find
that theory, that that works,and people.
It becomes the third phase,where it becomes self evidence.
Well, yeah, I do need that.
That is something that I'mactually going to be that's

(51:59):
effective and useful and andit'll, it'll, it'll go like you
know one other thing on therandom or sequential is um, I
challenge you to name onesequential artist in this world.
You won't find one.
You can't be an artist and besequential.
Your abstracts, like, like art,artistry and creating art is

(52:22):
abstract.
You can't do that on a linearperspective.
Well, this painting looked good, so what if I just add this and
this to it?
What if I?
You know, that doesn't.
That's not an artist.
And and so there's jobs that weall can do and like.
As yet, I'm always carefulbecause when I talk about this,
I've had so many people thatdoesn't, that's not an artist.
And so there's jobs that we allcan do.
And, like I said, I'm alwayscareful because when I talk
about this, I've had so manypeople kind of get put off,
thinking I'm telling them thatthey're something lesser and
it's like no, I'm not asking,I'm not trying to tell

(52:44):
sequentials they're lesser.
I'm trying to tell them thatwe're not idiots.
I'm just defending myself and mypeople to say, hey, when you
see one of us go, hey, this guymight actually have a brilliant
mind, it just doesn't act likemine and we should accept this
person, instead of looking atthem and saying he's crazy and
don't talk to him and he's nutsand all that.

(53:05):
There are some of us that aretruly nuts, but you know, with
insanity, Einstein best quote ofall time of Einstein is an idea
that at first not absurd, haslittle chance of success.
Love that, yeah, it's likebecause it has to be crazy to be
innovative, because innovativeis doing something that no one's
ever thought of before or a waythat no one's ever done before,

(53:27):
which would be the definitionto a lot of people is crazy.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
So there's definitely a clear linkage that one needs
the other.
A lot of people is crazy, sothere's definitely a clear
linkage that one needs the other.
You know, you, if with yourcompany and this massive,
massive organization that you'vebuilt, and you need sequentials
inside of it that are going tobe happy, that are happy to go
through and do it, and then asequential also needs a random
in order to innovate and createnew ways of thinking, and so

(53:53):
they're both linked together,not as polarized Well of
thinking, and so they're bothlinked together, not as
polarized.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Well, yeah, and texture, bringing texture to
things and creating more thanthe singular concept of the idea
.
And oh yeah, my company wouldbe dead if I didn't have a bunch
of sequential people in the keypositions, like chief
operations officer.
I don't have a bunch ofsequential people in the key
positions, like you know, chiefoperations officer, I don't want

(54:17):
me doing that, nobody herewants me doing that.
And guess what?
Accounting, like controller andall that.
I always laugh.
You know, in LinkedIn, you getthese crappy things from these
headhunters going.
We found a job that's perfectlysuited for you and it's like
they'll send me one that says anaccountant for a company.

(54:38):
Really, I'm perfect for it.
Obviously, you know me, I mustbe perfect, I must be something.
I don't know about myself, thatwhole doing the accounting and
stabbing myself in the eye witha fork.
But I've got people who lovethat and people who are in their
zone of what they're meant todo.
And, you know, accountants,I'll give them this pile of

(55:01):
bills and crap.
That just is awful to me andit's just like toxicity,
kryptonite.
I'll go and give it to themLike, oh, awesome, love it.
Great, I love you.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
You're doing this job that I would never do.
I love you.
I hug my accountant going,thank you.
Had referenced earlier thatthat woman with their kid and
that you have talked about, withADHD and you know it.
It almost seems unfair to havea random inside of the school
system.
That's so sequential.
However, it is what itcurrently is.
So how do you and and I don'tknow if you've given much

(55:48):
thought to this, but how do youhelp a random succeed in that,
in that?

Speaker 1 (55:53):
thought to that.
So there's a funny story.
This doesn't answer yourquestion specifically, but it's
kind of a funny story.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
I would be surprised if it did answer it specifically
yeah, well, stay on point.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
So I was giving, I, I sponsored an entrepreneurship
award to a school and at the endof the year they had all these
awards and there was theentrepreneurship board.
I sponsored it.
So I went and told my story and, as I gave the award, in this
girl and and in all these awardsto, to win this award, that
award, you had them 90 averageand had to do this and this and
this, and mine was a 70 average.

(56:25):
And they're like what?
Well, because if I put any morethan 70 average, guys who were
entrepreneurs would never win it.
The true entrepreneurs aren'tgoing to win it because we're
not getting, we're not gettinghigh grades.
Nineties would take us out.
So it was a 70 average.
It had to be something that youknow, as I had these.
All these parameters had to dowith what the actual being an
entrepreneur was and what ittakes to be an entrepreneur.

(56:47):
So the girl that won it, um,was a sweet girl and she, um,
was a sweet girl and she, uhinvented a charity that was
brilliant and, uh, it just, itwas out of left field how she
figured out how to fund it all.
It was really amazing.
And she created this charityand when she won it, after
hearing my story, she came upand she was, um, she was like

(57:08):
man, I, I always thought I wasdumb and I always, you know, and
I'm listening to your story andyou're like me I was like,
absolutely so she's like hey,I'm not, you know, I do have a
chance of making this world,because if you did and you're
like me, I do Right.
So that was kind of my goalwith the school, with helping

(57:30):
people understand that, hey,these people have a chance, give
them a chance, listen to theirideas, listen to their concepts,
and if it's crazy, it isprobably good.
And there are the crazy onestoo, crazy ideas, and that's
good.
All ideas are fine, I mean, ifthey're always based off.

(57:51):
There's a problem in this worldand I have an idea that this
isn't performing the way itcould.
I think I have an idea of doingsomething that's going to save
us time, save us money, save youknow something, do something
better than the other one, andthen that's a great idea.
And I always start with with my, my group, I'll bring a team
together on idea and say wealways have this way.
If we could do this, would thatbe cool and it's like, yeah,

(58:18):
but the ones that go, well, butwe can't because, no, no, don't
say why it won't or why it can't, or just, is this idea a good
idea?
If we could create somethingthat would make you know, save
babies lives, would that be agreat idea?
And, yes, it would Okay, great.
I want to hear why it won't.

(58:39):
Now, how can we make thishappen?
Now, let's think about it.
If this is a good idea, we allagree this is a great thing.
This would be a great thing.
Now, let's reverse, engineerand figure out how to get there
now, instead of looking at whyit won't work and stopping the
creative process.
Right, all those why it won'ts,they're great.

(59:00):
After we decide we love the ideathat's going to make change the
world, and after we figure outhow we can potentially get there
, then we can come back and say,okay, now tell me some of the
things I don't see that are thepitfalls or the speed bumps that
I didn't see.
Getting to here, what's goingto now?
Stop us.
Now, what's going to stop usfrom getting here, now that

(59:21):
we've decided it's great andhere's the vision of what it
could be.
That's how you take an ideafrom concept to reality and you
take those devils out, because Ialways love the fact like.
It says it right in the name.
They are the devil.
It's like.
It's like.
You know, it's sort of going.
Somebody comes to the idea well, you know, I just want to be

(59:42):
hitler's advocate for a minute.
What?
No, I don't want to hear fromyou.
You're the devil.
It's right in your name.
Leave out of the office it'sinteresting to that.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
You bring that maybe, and I don't think it ties into
this one.
But the the critic is, and Ithink it's in a um, that book
bird by bird.
I don't know if you've readthat one.
It's a.
It's a really great bookactually, with with you writing,
um, it's it's on writing, andlife is the little subtitle to
it I think she mentions.
The critic is the one that thatwalks onto the battlefield

(01:00:19):
after the battle's over andshoots all the wounded as
they're laying around.
It's like that's the easiestpart, that's the easiest way out
, the easy ways to walk in andsay, well, it's not going to
work.
Great.
Thank you for your contribution.
If we wanted to look at that,we could find that too,
schondenfreude.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
You ever heard of that?
German people are going to belistening to this and just
absolutely dying the fact thatjust completely munched the
pronunciation of it.
But it was a.
It was a scientist.
They came up with that.
People taking joy in otherpeople's failures.
Okay, my life is filled withthose people Because what it is

(01:00:57):
is you're saying, hey, I gotthis great idea and now they're
there.
If they are insecure in theirown selves, your success means
their failure and they want youto fail so they can go.
Oh, good thing, I didn't See itwas warranted.
I didn't try it because lookhow we failed.
And it makes them feel good fornot getting off their asses and
doing it, because they wouldhave failed anyway.
So it's kind of like, wow, andthey cheer for your failure,

(01:01:20):
they would have failed anyway.
So it's kind of like that, wow,you know, and they, they cheer
for your failure and and, uh,people always cheer for my
failures because it makes themfeel better, because I'm the
crazy guy out there doing allthis is to see he is crazy, he's
doing all that, but he's, youknow, that didn't work and that
didn't work and and like I saidwe are crazy until we're wildly
successful and then all of asudden we're brilliant and all
those things that looked crazy,that we were doing before we

(01:01:41):
were successful, are now lookingbrilliant.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Yeah and I really appreciate.
I love that tie back of and Ihave it written right here, just
crazy, uh, until you'resuccessful, and it's a really
cool thing well, it's like right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
I mean the old days, if you were having uh uh, if you
were uh going uh likealzheimer's before they created
also, or you had a dementiabefore they created the word
dementia, way back when you wereeither crazy or you're senile.
If you were rich, you weresenile.
If you were poor, you werecrazy, but you're always rich.

(01:02:17):
So he's sen, seen up, he's notrich.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Right, Neil.
I really appreciate you takingtime to share this.
I love those thoughts.
I don't know that you have anytime frame on it.
I know you're slowly puttingtogether some concepts for a
book.
Is there any time frame on whenany of us that would love to
read it would be able to expectit?

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
Cool, that would be a tough one, because, being a
random yep, you know, my uh, oneof my girlfriends once said he
called me mr 90 because I'm likegetting that last 10 percent
done again.
I'm not finishing.
I need to find somebody, Ithink, and that's the thing,
right, uh, I need to grab some,some talent to come along with
me to say, hey, let's get thisdone, you, let's keep you on,

(01:02:59):
and that's what my uh, my righthand man in the company, he's
great at doing, that he'll grabthe ideas and he'll keep them.
You know, the next day, in thenext day, oh, hey, have we done
this yet?
And it keeps brings me back andsay, okay, I'll tweak this and
tweak that, I'm going doing thisand I come back and I'll tweak
these things.
So you kind of need that, thatuh, that force to to help me

(01:03:19):
push it over the finish line.
I have, you know, hours andhours of notes and ideas and
stuff like that.
But uh, uh and and and, like Isaid, I think I, I should, I
need to get it done because Ithink it would really help a lot
of people in this world.
It would help those kids wholike that, that girl who thought
she was crap and she won anaward and she's like wow, and

(01:03:43):
the wow and the, the in her eyesit was amazing.
And she's like, wow, I'm notdumb, I actually am something.
And I was saying you know, ifyou're you go through school, if
you're a random and you gothrough school, if you're not
good socially and you're notgood at sports, what do you have
?
And that's what leads to peoplebeing isolated.

(01:04:04):
They're the, the cast-offs,because they can't relate, they
have nothing that they can takepride in, they're not getting
good grades, they're notexcelling in the sporting and
they're not being rewarded asbeing popular because they're
not, you know, charismatic.
And if you have those threethings, you get, you know those
are the kids who have the most,you know can potentially do the
worst things.

(01:04:24):
And because you're in isolation, isolation leads to, you know,
warping the brain a little bitand and I think that you know my
idea to to give people, uh,pride in what they are, which is
they could.
You know that movie, abeautiful mind.
It's like you know, and youknow, ever since, ever since,

(01:04:45):
elon musk became successful,what are people all accepting of
now?
Autism, god, oh man, yeah, he'sreally successful because he's.
No, he was autistic and lookhow successful he is.
Well, geez, these, these.
You know, I always say a randomhas a superhero, like an X-Man.
We all have our thing that'sreally exceptional and not like
the rest and that's how randomsthey have that.

(01:05:07):
But if they're not told, that'sactually a good thing.
Sometimes you'll try to bury it.
I have friends of mine.
I'll call them apologeticrandoms.
They are random but they aretrying as hard as they can to be
sequential and they'reembarrassed for their randomness
.
So they try to adapt themselvesinto being a sequential because

(01:05:29):
that's the only way.
I had a friend, my very goodfriend of mine, who I I just I
basically unveiled to her thatshe was actually a random.
She was the controller of a ofa company and she was a random.
And when I also explained it toher she was like Holy crap, I'm
in the wrong job, like this is.
And the stress in her that wasrelieved when she got rid of

(01:05:54):
that and went into doingsomething completely different
where she started her owncompany and started running the
business and doing the otherthings that no creating but the
stress that came off of herbecause she was trying to adapt
to being a sequential and beingtold that that's what's only
good.
You get a gold star if you actlike this, you get.
You get detention if you actlike that and and uh.

(01:06:17):
So sometimes you know peoplewill be.
They've adapted this becauseit's a very imposing and
controlling world ofsequentiality to fit in.
So it's like you know.
It's like you know, it's likeyou know, not, not unlike people
who are, who are gay, we'rebeing told they have to like the
opposite sex, that they don't.
They're having to and stressand they end up, you know, they

(01:06:39):
end up committing suicidesometimes and the mental
distress from that and then whenthey're told that, they can let
it fly they let it fly, man,they're like they want to tell
the whole world.
This was like my friend.
She was this really organizedperson.
I mean, next thing, you knowshe's like her house is a mess.
She could care less about thatstuff.
Her car is never washed.
I was going, wow, we reallyunleashed the beast here and you

(01:07:01):
know before, that was like whois this person?
She's having the time of herlife and world is, is, was her
oyster, and the unveiling ofthat was like this massive
freedom to be able to be who youare, and people don't think of
it in this term but, um, butyeah, that's.
That's kind of my goal is tosort of awaken some people to
sort of say hey, you know, andwhen you tell people your crazy

(01:07:22):
ideas, always tell the peoplewho will answer you by saying
that's cool, how are you goingto do that, as opposed to people
who are the devil's advocate,say well, that's not going to
work because that's not all that.
That's already been done.
If it was like, stay away fromthose people, the people who are
the best people in the worldfor a random are the people who
say that's awesome.

(01:07:43):
How are you going to do it?
Is there anything I can do tohelp you?
That's great.
I like the concept.
That's a really cool idea andhow you can work through it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
It's amazing and surrounding yourself with people
like that, not with the devil'sadvocate or Hitler's advocates
as you, as you.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
As you mentioned, I don't usually use the word
Hitler in a podcast very often,but yeah, it's I.
I I think that if people canjust accept other people for who
they are and understand youknow, it's like my son is
autistic and his mother didn'twant to tell the world that he
was autistic.

(01:08:21):
Now, he was very light on thespectrum, he was just like on
the edge of being so he couldfunction very well and he could,
you know, he would talk and hecould.
He could do things that a lotof autistic kids can't do.
He could, you know, be funnyand be extroverted and all that
kind of stuff and uh, butbecause, but he had some quirky

(01:08:44):
things about and because wenever he never told anybody,
because he was never told thathe was autistic, and my wife
thought we can just not make ita thing and and this way he will
become who he's going to bewithout having some sort of a
stigma or something put on.
But the backfire on that wasthat people would look at him

(01:09:07):
and dismiss him as being odd,and when you're obviously always
autistic, oh, oh, now Iunderstand why you did that.
Oh well, that you know.
And now when you come up withthings.
You understand where people arecoming from, which is
relationship 101, right, butit's like now.
You can understand.
Now, when you talk to me, evenif you're a sequential, you
won't get frustrated.
Oh, that's neil, that's how hethinks I can see.

(01:09:28):
You know, I understand now thathe's if he's looking off, this
is he's still like.
My girlfriend knows that shecan be talking to me, I can be
over and she knows I'm catchingevery single word.
She understands and that's, youknow, just the the process to
try to be understood and get allthese other people understood
just a little bit more.
If that's what I can do and Iget people understood a little

(01:09:49):
more than I've accomplished,what I'm going to do I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
I think you're well on your way.
I'm very, very excited to toread about it.
I know you're going to get itdone, so yeah I really
appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
You can help me, yeah , well, maybe that's.
Maybe that's why you and I met,because you're going to be the
one that's going to help me getthis thing done oh, whatever I
can do to help, please let meknow, I'm here.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
I'm definitely going to be the one asking you how can
it get done?
Because I love it.
I think it's absolutelyfantastic and and again,
that's's why I wanted to haveyou on the show and bring you on
board.
So thank you so much for takingthe time for sharing everything
that you have, and I lookforward to it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
Thank you, my pleasure.
It's fun to be able to talkabout it and as you talk about
it, other ideas came up in myhead of what we can do to try to
do more.
So I love being able to.
You know, our, uh, my canvas isalways the spoken word.
You know, I testify things onpeople and ideas and if it's
good, they say, they give youpositive feedback and you can
kind of you know.

(01:10:49):
So you know, you can't just keepit in a secret room and not
tell anybody because, uh, you'rejust gonna it's only gonna be
you who's collaborating on it, Ithink the collaboration of the
world, talking like I'd love forpeople to come back to me and I
do this when I talk to peoplebut this idea they come back and
they give me another idea thatI hadn't thought of, another
perspective on this.
So, uh, you know, anybodylistening to this, if they have

(01:11:11):
a perspective on this orsomething they see or they can
question why well, you said this, but I don't know if I
necessarily agree with that,because I've got a friend who's
this.
I'm like, hey, I love it.
I mean that the idea is fluidand the concept is a is an
evolving understanding and it'suh, you know, psychology is
something that is not black andwhite, so and you made me just

(01:11:32):
think of the.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
Uh, bernie brown has a concept that she talks about
she used it with her kids thatif you light a lighter, that if
a somebody that's not a friendwill run over and just blow out
your fires, just blow it out,and that's kind of like the
devil's advocate.
It's like that's not going towork and they blow it out.
But if you're a friend and I'vegot to walk this flame from A
to B or in a circle, whateverrandom nature that I want, a

(01:11:56):
friend walks over and helps youalong, they actually will block
the wind for you.
They'll help you with that.
And it made me think of youputting your idea and kind of
hide it away.
When you seal that flame up,it's also going to burn out too,
which is why it would be goodto not do that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
You know that old joke your good friend is the guy
who comes and bails you out ofjail and your best friend is the
guy that's sitting next to yougoing.
Holy shit, was that cool.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
So good.
You know, man.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate you and I,man.
Whenever the book comes out, Iwould love to have you back on
so we can introduce it and leteverybody know all the great
things that you put into it.
Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
Well, one thing I find funny about this one last
comment is I had this thing withthe camera.
I don't have laptops on myscreen and I've got to change
the camera angle, so thecamera's here and the picture's
there.
So you got to experience almosta full time of random mind,
because I'm looking the oppositedirection, I'm not looking you

(01:13:01):
in the eyes, I'm talking to you.
I guess also the whole podcastof that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
I think it was fantastic.
I think you did a great job ofjumping between all of it, but,
man, thank you so much, neil.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
Awesome, I really appreciate your time.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Thank you.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}|Int| Transforming Trash to Treasure with Neil Krovats's Green Business Breakthroughs | Ep 105