Robo Hendrickson — How to Prototype and Patent Your Ideas

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Yo.

Hello, hello, hello again.

Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

We're back again and today we're talking to Robocop.

Robocop. No, we're talking to Robo Hendrickson. Oh, easy to confuse.

Yes, they look the same.

This is a rodeo riding, beer drinking.

Texas cowboy, but also is amazing with advertisements, agency, bringing products to market and making some badass stuff out there.

Yeah. In this episode we learned a lot about how, you know, how inventions kind of get to market, how to patent things, what the different types of patents mean, you know, how much it costs to fight if somebody is infringing on your patent.

It was like a start to finish. Like bring a product idea to the point where you're actually, you know, either raising money or, you know, crowdfunding or, you know, that kind of phase and everything in between. A lot of people skip and like totally nails everything down.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we talk about like, if you have an idea for a product, how to prototype the product and then how to go to more scale with it and then how to crowdfund it and then how to get patents on it. And it's just like a, you know, if you ever had an idea for like a physical product that you'd like to launch into the world, this episode is your blueprint.

Yeah. Now, Robo is just a super cool dude too. He was just a fun guy, Been around for a long time in this space and obviously has a crazy different experience than a lot of us riding in the rodeo for what, 10 plus years I think he said, and then took that to where he's at now. And he just has a pretty awesome sounding lifestyle. And he's built this thing and he gives back too. He has a whole cause like a one to one type thing. Kind of like tom shoes. He was saying he modeled them. I won't give it away, but you know, towards the end of this podcast, he really dives deep in why that is like the big driver in his business and life. And also there was that whole list that he listed out. He kind of had like a turning point and he figured out like, I'm not going to give it away, but there was like a clear turning point in his life and career that all of us should probably do well.

He basically made this list and off this list designed his ideal life and business. Business and just sort of reverse Engineered. How do I, how do I, you know, act upon this list that I just created?

Yeah.

And so we'll, we'll get into that. But you know what? It's cool if you're out for a run, if you're exercising, if you're driving.

Just completely changed his pitch and he's.

Like, you're doing the dishes. If you are walking the dog. If you're doing something where you can't really be taking notes, if you're walking.

Your turtle, it's going to be a long walk.

It's going to be a long walk. But if you're doing something where it's hard to take notes right now, don't worry, we got you covered. Why you should be taking notes, you slacker. But we're going to take the notes for you.

I feel so, like, judged right now. He's pointing his finger. He's like, you, you mother. Take some notes.

Well, the problem is, you are the problem.

Jesus. Okay, we just freaking cut to the jugular.

Why am I the bad guy?

Because. Because Joe is lazy and he doesn't like to take notes. We actually hired somebody on our team to take notes for us.

So you're calling me smart?

No, I'm calling you lazy.

Well, and smart. I'll take lazy. We're getting off topic here. No, we're not. The point is on topic.

We're taking notes for you on this episode. If you can't take notes for yourself, we're taking the notes for you. If you go to evergreenprofits.com, find this episode, give us your email address, we'll give you all the notes that our team took. Steven, our notes writer, does a killer job of pulling out all the tips and tactics and step by step processes that are mentioned on this episode. And we're just going to give them to you and you go to evergreenprofits.com, find this episode, opt in, we'll send you the notes.

They are free. Matt said the free word. At least for now.

Yes, for now, they are free.

I can't guarantee this for eternity, but when you listen to this as it's live, it should be free.

Put it this way. When our episodes go live, go down the. Load the notes as soon as you possibly can. Because these notes for each episode will not always be free except for when the episode first comes out.

We're just trying to be honest and help you out.

Yeah. Go to evergreenprofess.com, find this episode with Robo Hendrickson. And if you give us Your email address. We will hook you up with the notes that we took on this episode, assuming you get the notes in the amount of time that the notes are live for you.

You know what I'm excited about?

What? Rubbing your hands together.

Well, that's just. I don't know. That's because I'm excited.

He's trying to start a fire.

I am. Slowly.

All right, you know what we should do?

I'm excited to go talk to Robo. So that's what we should do. Okay. Yo, Robo, we're live, man. Can you hear us now?

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

You are loud and clear. Sounded good. We're recording. So. Hey, man, thanks for filling in. You know, we just had a cancellation. I'm just kidding.

Like I said, I know my place.

Tell us more about that, man. I saw you went to the Imp. You're out in. Near Austin. You're in Texas.

Yeah, I live about four miles or four hours north of Austin.

Okay, cool. So it's an easy fill in drive. You know, David Gonzalez probably called you. Hey, hey, hey.

I'm assuming Robo is not your real name. Maybe it is, maybe I'm wrong, but where did the name Robo come from?

My given name is Shirley. But no, I was. It was a nickname that I got when I rodeoed professionally and it just stuck.

Like, were you a robot on the bull? Were you just like unstoppable back in the day?

No, you know, it was nearing kind of the end of my career and I had these big Don Joy knee braces on my knees and I had a big brace on my elbow to keep my body from falling apart. And I was at a rodeo somewhere and that's when RoboCop came out. So they said, oh my God, he looks like robocop. And they started calling me Robo Rider. And then it just was Robo.

That's rad. So what kind of events and things? I've no clue about rodeos and how this all works. Describe that a bit. We have one in San Diego that I'm aware of, but that's about it.

Yeah, I loved California rodeos, but the. No, I grew up on a ranch in western South Dakota and.

It wasn't really. It wasn't one of those things that. I don't know how to explain this, but you just sort of did everybody rodeo. All my friends, my family. So you just, you just sort of picked up from there. And then I, you know, as I made my way and got older, you know, out of high School and went to college on a rodeo scholarship and which was interesting because I won a rodeo scholarship at the national college finals and then I could use it anywhere I wanted to. And I wanted to go to a design school. So there's not very many design schools with a rodeo program.

So I went and found the two that existed and I toured them and I couldn't afford to get into Cal Poly so I went to Hays, Kansas of all places.

Okay, yeah, Cal Poly. I could see that fitting well there. You know, agricultural and kind of. It's a cool spot. Kansas is cool too. I'm imagining you made the most of it.

You bet.

Rabbit.

Yeah.

Did you. Did you do. So when did you actually stop? Like at what age did you stop doing the rodeo gig?

So I rodeoed professionally for 10 years, 11 years. And I had started working in the advertising business and just doing. Man, I was working for little crappy rag newspapers laying out those ads in the back of the magazine and fell in love. I was immediately. I took to it because it was the first real job I ever had. You know, when you rodeo, you're pretty worthless as an employee, so you usually only work for construction or on ranches and stuff. But I always had a creative bent to me and desired to pursue that and went to work for some of these magazines and newspapers. And then I worked my way into some ad agencies as a freelancer and I quit rodeo and full time in 94 or 5 and I did it part time on weekends for a couple years and then completely quit when I became a partner at one of the ad agencies. About 98 I think is when I hung it up for good.

Nice. Nice. So it started in magazines, ads and all that stuff and then kind of morphed because now you're doing I guess last. Now, you know, jump ahead to where we're at now. How many businesses do you currently own and kind of operate?

Well, I have.

Partners in several companies that you know, that we all take part in. So I have the animal healthcare company, it's actually called Animal Stewards International. And we launched the first brand is Full Bucket. And then I have partners in a grill. It's called Dragon Grill.

Those are some badass looking grills by the way.

Aren't those cool? I'm glad you guys went and checked it out. I'll have to send you our latest little investor video that we did. It's really cool.

Cool.

We've been working on that for a couple years and pretty much started pre launch in February and got it rolled out and we're doing our first investor round right now, talking to folks. And then I have another company called Smash. And, you know, I've been inventing little gizmos and gadgets for long time and was always a really hard process to do if you don't know what you're doing. And I'd launched a few products that, you know.

I had somebody come up to me maybe five years ago, was a veterinarian at one of our animal health conferences. And he said, I understand that you do inventing. And I said, yeah, I've dabbled around in it. And he had an idea. It was really cool. So he said, I, you know, heard you help inventors. I said, no, I don't. I never have. So. But after I heard what he had, I was hooked and knew that it was a big deal. So I partnered up with, with him on the product called Limbit. And we started developing it. And it's still under development because it's a very expensive.

Proposition. So you, you. If you have money, you can go fast. If you don't have money, you go slow or you quit. And I'm not much of a quitter. So we've. We're still developing the Limb bit and the partners I have, and also Smash Factory, I had more and more people come and want help. So I thought, hey, I'll just launch a company, Smash Factory, and we'll help inventors. And then we started that, and I realized that I don't want inventors.

I'd been in the service business and the ad agency side for, I think we sold our agency in 2006, and then we had an Internet company. I kept the digital arm of the ad agency and I sold it to my partner in 2009. And I was.

Service companies. I wanted to be a products guy, and I wanted to take what I'd learned launching new products for companies and apply it to my own. And so.

When I started Smash Factory and started dealing with service again, it reminded me of why I wanted to get out of it. I didn't really shudder it. I just used Smash Factory as the holding company for most of my own projects.

Hey, that makes sense now, because when I was checking it out. I love your about pages, by the way. They're just like images of you guys just doing fun, badass shit. There's like, no text really on there. I'm like, I like this.

That's funny. Yeah.

That'S lazy. That's called lazy. I just didn't write an about us page, so I just threw Pictures I thought were funny up there.

It works.

Yeah. But. Yeah. So Smash Factory has morphed just being a holding company. And one of the projects that came out of that was the. The Dragon Grill. And I was working with two young entrepreneurs out of Bismarck, North Dakota. They came up with the idea and didn't know what they were doing. This is kind of a fun story.

These two guys, I just love them to death. John and Anton Royce are two very special people, and they own a roofing company in Bismarck and had this idea for this grill that would attach to the truck tailgate so they could feed their crews. And one day they just. They said, to hell with it. Let's. Let's go do something with it. So they found out that Ron lynch was talking in Austin, and I think it was the. Oh, it's called capitalism capitalist.

Oh, yeah, that capitalism.

Ryan Moran's event.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ryan's deal. But it was before that. I don't remember what it was called before that, but so they. They loaded up in their pickup with this grill, and they drove from Bismarck, North Dakota, all straight through to Austin, and they went and saw Ron speak. And then they hunted him down in the bathroom.

And they pitched him the idea in the. In the. In the john. And he said. He said, boys, this is a great idea. He said, but I'm. I'm. I'm the guy that takes you from 20 million to 200 million.

Yeah.

He said, you need to give Robo a call. And so they called me, and.

On their way home, they stopped in here and spent a couple days with me. And I loved the idea. But more importantly.

I saw something in them. You know, the product ideas. There is no bad product idea. There's better ones. But some guy took a rubber fish and you push a button and it sings to you. And he sold $200 million worth.

So that is true.

There's no bad ideas. It's just the person behind him. And I knew that these two had the guts and determination, and so I partnered up with them on the Grill and started developing that in 2016. And.

Developing something from scratch like that inventing stuff is very.

And you have a lot of get your ass handed to you all the time. And I've never regretted my decision because of the. I didn't pick the product. I picked the partners.

Interesting. So is that typically your approach is always partners first you look at those qualities before any kind of venture you get into?

Absolutely. When I sold the digital company, we were doing Google AdWords and building websites and When I sold it, I took my money and tried to launch a.

Advertising network. You know, this was 2008, 9, and the Google hadn't really, you know, dialed in the algorithm and they didn't have targeting as well as they do now. And so there were a lot of, you know, these niche publications. Like we went after ATVs, RVs, horse network and pet networks and built out a platform. And I partnered up with a guy in San Diego, he's from San Diego, an older gentleman who had a big development team. So I partnered up with him and we launched this deal. And I didn't do enough due diligence on him. I just knew he had what I needed. And I blindly went into a partnership and it was.

It failed. We were succeeding, but because of his.

Lack of ethics, it failed. And.

You know, it was a huge failure for me. It wiped me out. But it taught me a hell of a lesson on partnerships and how.

If you pick the right people, you can conquer anything.

So what are some qualities that you look for in a partner? You said ethics was a big one. That didn't align with you and that guy.

Yeah. So the things I look for, most importantly are the synergy between me and them. I'm not a typical business guy. I cuss a lot, I chew, I live on a farm, I like to drink too much in public places.

I love it all.

But I like a synergy and then absolutely ethics. I got to get a feel for their honesty and their transparency, openness. And I also look for the willingness to be open minded, the. Be able to change your mind, you know, go ahead and have, have a, you know, I want them to have strong opinions, but, you know, you. This is a partnership and a lot of entrepreneurs are, you know, got to have their way. And so there's. Those are some of the key ones. And then there's, you know, really, it's the grit and determination. The tenacity, I guess is. The best word I could say is that I look for.

Individuals who have shown signs in the past of them being able to overcome insane obstacles and keep going. Every time I've not followed that pathway of partnership, it doesn't work out.

I like that. Yeah. And it's tough because we've definitely, I mean, Matt and I are a partnership. And definitely there'd be those moments where we might butt heads. But if it wasn't for that, that's usually our biggest aha moments. And this kind of comes up with a better path for this vision we have. And we were actually hanging out with Ryan Dice the other day, and he said, if two partners don't kind of clash heads. Not fisticuffs kind of stuff, but if you have to get there, that's fine. But as long as you resolve that. He was like, then the partnership's kind of. One of you guys are useless if you're not having these healthy kind of exchanges.

Yeah. If two parties ever fight, one's irrelevant is basically what he said.

Yeah. And we've been thinking about that. We're like, oh, shit. Yeah, that's totally true, because I could see that.

I completely agree. In fact, it's funny you say that.

Health company. We're looking at building a fulfillment center down in Fredericksburg. And so I made a trip down there for the weekend to look at some property.

We did our quarterly strategy meeting with my two partners, Rob and Keith. And, you know, one. One whole day, it seemed like we were locked, locked up. Our horns were just locked. We were just not agreeing on a lot of things. And. But at the end of the day, you know, we. We made some really important decisions, and they were the right decisions. I didn't get my way 100% of the time, but. But I know those guys. I trust them, and I respect them, and I respect their opinions and their acumen and their smarts, and it's gonna work out great. And just like you said, you know, we do that, we lock horns, but we respect each other enough that we figure it out and keep going.

Yeah. Respect is huge. I think that's the biggest part in any relationship there. Yeah.

Yeah. Joe respects me. I don't respect him.

You're working on it.

That's right. Yeah. There's a lot of work on Want.

To be the man or the wife?

Coming at you, Matt.

So I'm curious about the process of actually, like, getting something to market. So once. Once somebody has an idea for a product, you know, what. What are kind of the first steps somebody would take? You know, I've got this idea. Maybe I don't even have a prototype yet or anything. I just got an idea. You know, where would somebody go from there?

Well, so the.

Process that I use is not a traditional process because, you know that you might find it a product incubator or something like that, but it's real.

Grassroots, and bootstrapping is basically what it is. So the first thing is to test your idea and play around with it. I always have them sketch a lot, make a lot of iterations and sketches to work out problem solutions with your product idea.

It helps you work through design, it helps you work through the functionality of it. The more you do that, you don't have to be an artist. I'm a horrible artist, but I'll do hundreds of sketches on an idea and it'll just continue to morph from the brain to the paper and it's sort of bringing and making it real.

I have met a lot of people who have a product idea but they've never gone through that process. And so it's very nebulous in their mind and they haven't worked through problems. And then I like to do what's called a, I call it a Frankenstein mock up. So I'll use whatever I can, you know, PVC pipe or, or you know, aluminum paper, just anything I can to, to make a physical version of it. And you know, in today's world it's, it's a lot easier to do 3D printing and things like that. But I don't find that, you know, at that stage I'm just trying to. The size, the dimensions, the usability, the, you know, how does it feel? You know, what, how is it gonna do this? And I just play around with that. And then if, if I really in the background, what I'm doing is I'm doing research. I'm researching for products that are similar. I'm doing research on the patent uspto.gov or you can actually use google.com patents and look for similar products, see if somebody's already come up with it. And so I'm playing around with the physical representation and I'm doing research to find out what's out there. In my research phase it, it'll bring new ideas to the table. You know, I'll see things, other products that are not in my category, but I think that'd be really cool to add to it. And I just keep working it like clay. That's about the best way I can say is it's a very organic process. And then once I do that, I start doing the research on the market opportunity. Who are the leaders in the space? I look at, you know, how big is it, how much room is there? Is it, am I looking at a one million dollar idea or a one billion dollar idea? And I try to.

You know, now I really try to go for, for ideas that are going to be, you know, have the opportunity to be well over 2,300 million. You know, in the beginning I went after small stuff just to be able to conquer it. You know, they're deeper. So I just, I did a couple of really dumb product ideas. But like I said, there's really no bad ideas. So it taught me a lot. And I didn't have to spend much money, you know, because I'm gonna lose money, but I didn't because I'm gonna make mistakes. And so they were, you know, they, I made small mistakes and cost me little and, and, but I learned a lot. And then, and then normally what I'll do is then I'll start, then I'll step it up and I'll try to get professional help where I might go to an industrial designer and I choose industrial designers that are also.

Mechanical engineers or electrical engineers who have a really good eye for design and have a lot of knowledge on manufacturing process. I don't use designers that haven't really been, you know, involved in the, in the production process or been right there on the factory floors and learned how everything is done. The ones that have, are much more valuable for me.

And then I'll get them to make, you know, the actual concept art, which I just call it, you know, it's basically a digital prototype. You know, the look and feel and working out, you know, the finishing and the functionality and the different pieces and parts.

And then, you know, through this whole process at every stage is sort of a decision making process. You know, what, what am I going to do if I didn't find a patent on it? About the same time I'm getting my 3D art done, I'm filing a provisional patent. And a provisional patent is it's kind of a newer tool that gives inventors a way to stick their flag in the ground. It's a fairly simple process, it's cheap and for like 100, I think it cost me 150 bucks to file a provisional patent and basically say this is my idea, this is how it works, this is what it does. And I submit that to the, the U.S. patent Office and that gives me one year. It's basically saying I have one year to do all of my due diligence.

Work through my problems, see if I can get funding and align everything during that 12 month period. @ the end of that.

If you decide that you aren't going to pursue it or you can't pursue it, or you don't have the money or for whatever reason. You know, it's kind of no harm, no foul. If you decide that you do have something, then you've got to submit a full on utility patent at that time. And so this is where your expenses start to go up and you've got to hire you know, patent attorney. And I've done some of my own patents where I've submitted my own, but they're pretty weak. I recommend getting a patent attorney.

Because they can just do a way better job of strengthening your patent and really enlarging your claims and getting it through patent process. The actual utility patent process is going to take a minimum of two to three years.

Before you'll have.

One. How about for the provision, can you do that yourself or is that someone, you have to hire an attorney for.

That? Well, I recommend doing them yourself. I mean, if you have unlimited funds or you have some extra cash, then hire an attorney. It's just better if.

Then there's. I have templates. At the Smash Factory Academy, I was trying to do some education stuff for my partner, so we put together the Smash Factory Academy and online course. But again, I didn't want to do that either. So I built it and it just sits.

There. But anyhow, some of the best things come out that.

Way. Yeah, you know, I like to do a lot of worthless work for.

Nothing. Yeah. So real quick, if you're filing a utility patent and it takes two or three years to get issued, what stops somebody else from just kind of swooping in and making the same thing in that.

Window? Well, it used to not, but now they go ahead and do it. I mean it doesn't, you know, so the, you're basically when you file your provisional and then all the way through your patent process before your patent is accepted, it's, you're basically in patent pending stage. And the risk that people have for doing, you know, knocking you off before your patents issued is that when you do get your patent, you have, you know, the government's giving you the right to sue. And so anything that you may have built or worked on.

Stealing my idea, I have the ability to go sue your pants off and take it. So you run a risk of.

Patent infringement. And that's another thing that a lot of.

New product developers don't understand is that a patent doesn't protect you. It just gives you the right to protect yourself and to take a full on, you know, patent to trial. You know, a patent infringement to trial, it's, you know, you're looking at 150, $200,000 price tag, it's expensive and it takes forever. You could be tied up in court for five years.

So yeah, you're not going to want to do that on products that you know are never going to return the investment.

And so that's also another thing is that when I do my patent research. If I find something that is similar, doesn't necessarily mean I can't pursue my idea. I can, there's a lot of options. I can either make changes to mine to get out outside the scope of their patent, or I can contact them and see if I can get a license. Or if the product is unpatentable and there's really nobody has a patent, then I can just go compete head to head in the market. I can just do a better job of marketing than what's out there because obviously I came up with the idea because whoever got the ideas and isn't doing anything with it. So. But once, once we, you know, we're underway on that stage in the patent process and I've realized that this is a good market and I can make money and that there's a hole there that I can take advantage of.

Then I get my 3D artwork done and then I review my funding. I try to find out is this something that I can afford to, to take all the way or is this something I'm going to have to get some investment capital for, Basically assess what my capital needs are as well as how I'm going to get those funds put together. And if I decide to pull the trigger, I might have found friends and family or something or private equity that is interested in it that will help me get through the development stage. And, you know, the goal is to get to, you know, selling the items. And so you gotta use whatever way you can. You know, with the new crowdfunding, that's been a great opportunity for people who've never had that before.

But it's, it's very. I mean, there's, I don't think there's enough people out there giving warnings about the crowdfunding platforms and how, you know, the things that can go wrong and the failure rates of.

Crowdfunding. Have you, do you have any off the top of your head that you have experience with or you've heard of?

No. You know, it would just be second, Secondhand, basically, because I, I've not launched a product on, on crowdfunding. I have a couple that are in development that I will take to the Kickstarter.

Indiegogo.

Yeah. And.

When they're ready to get to that stage. But that's something. That's the reason a lot of people fail, is that they didn't do all the homework first. And, you know, one of my partners is an industrial designer here. He's a genius. And he said, you know, people call all the time and they want to know what's a prototype going to cost and how much to manufacture it. And so, you know, he'll basically say, well, you know, a prototype is going to be for this particular project is going to be 1500 bucks. And it looks, I'll bet you could get those made for, you know, $100 each if your quantity's right. And those are just guesstimates based off his experience. Well, he'll have people take that, they'll have a Ripshawn prototype made, you know, that looks good but doesn't function and they'll do a Kickstarter. And then once they get their funding closed, they might be really good at marketing. They get their funding closed and they start to go get their product made and they realize that, well, it's $1,500 a prototype, but you might have to make 10 prototypes to get it right.

It's $100 of a unit until you actually get in there and they figure out the complexity of it and it's actually going to be $300 a unit. Oh, and boy, there's tooling involved. You got to get dies and stamps made and that's going to 40,000. So all those things that they didn't go far enough in their preparation, so their cost are completely whack, their break even points whack, their, you know, their financials are whack. And so those are the ones that, you know, that are disappointing people who funded them. And so I'll take it, I take it all the way to where I'm at. My very final prototype. I'm at, I know exactly what my cost of goods are going to be. They have, they have, all they're doing is they're waiting for the money to make the tooling and go into production and that's when I'll pull the trigger. And so that takes time. I mean I've been, I have one project that's.

Two and a half years in the making. It's sort of a side project. So it's not like full time focus. And you know, we're just now at the stage where I'm getting the actual cost of goods put together. So I won't do my Kickstarter on it until I'm using the proto, the final, what we call the final working.

I'm using it in my demonstration because it's as perfect as we can get it without making tooling. And so when we make the tooling, it'll get better. And that's when I'll pull the.

Trigger. I like that. That's crazy. So that was a full like from start to finish, not even finish, but how long so after you get it to launch, you get funding and all that. Are you looking to sell this product or this business or are you one to market it or hire someone to market it for the long.

Term? Well, so for me it just depends on the project.

There's some products that I know that I'm not the guy, I'm not. I don't have enough passion in it to see it through to a full on business.

And so I'll look for either a partner that wants to do that, that's interested in that or I'll look for license and I'll try to go get it licensed.

The ones like the Dragon Grill. Yeah, I was, I want to go balls deep on that because I mean how fun will it be to go hang out at tailgating parties and you know, selling grills? That's gonna be a blast. I'm all in on that one. So it just sort of depends.

You know, I started in the marketing side so I can handle actually taking it to fruition. And I've run, you know, businesses now to where I know the operations, I know all the inputs. There's a lot of people that just don't have any of that experience. And so it's very, it's. Those are even additional costs. You know, they're going to have to go out and hire somebody to write their marketing plan and execute it and all those things. And I don't have to, I can do that myself. But so you just kind of have to, you, you do a lot, you do a lot of personal inventory. You know, you're, you have to know yourself pretty well where your strengths and weaknesses are, what your desires are and that will help drive your decision making process more than.

Anything. Now you mentioned a little bit earlier that you're kind of looking for products that you can see as maybe like billion dollar products or 300 million plus versus products that might make a million dollars. How do you distinguish when looking at products what you think could be like a seven figure product versus nine or ten figure.

Product? Well, I guess now in my career I'm so damn old, I use a lot of my own instincts. You know.

I do quite a bit of market research. You know, I like to find out how big is the market size, how often do people buy the products, what are they spending on them, what's the common margins in all the different sales channels. And that'll give me a pretty good Indication if I'm looking at something that is just going to sell a few hundred thousand or if it could be a big market. And so, for instance, in the grilling market.

You know, the over 80% of household owners have two and a half grills. And when I say two and a half, that's how many they, you know, because they're always breaking. But.

That'S a lot of people buying grills and they purchase every two years.

And.

The market itself is really.

Saturated. In the mass market grill, it's really monopolized basically by three big grill manufacturers that sell through the big box retail retailers. But the boutique grill, you know, the big Green egg and Traeger and all these little boutique grills that are popping up, you know, they're the hottest selling outdoor item and it's the biggest growth sector in, you know, outdoor living space. And, you know, people are opening up more and more to spending more money on unique products like that. So, you know, I tried to dig around and find out kind of what their sales numbers are, and it gives me a good indication that, yeah, I mean, you could, you can make, you can be selling 500,000, you know, $500 million of these a year if you do it right. Because there's that much demand for those kind of products and.

And those trends that I talked about combined with using instinct kind of gives me the.

Indication.

That'S cool. It seems like just a lot of experience just, right, you're in the. It's where your interests lie too. And you kind of start spotting these gaps that maybe other people, even if it is a saturated market, like the grills or the big players in there, the stock still a big fucking market there, buying a bunch of expensive grills. Right.

So.

Right. I love.

It. Think about, think about what yeti did, you know, with, with coolers, you know, with ice.

Chests. They have a storefront in Austin now.

Too. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, we're basically gonna try to ride their same coattails and do very similar rollout that they did and position the grill right alongside the yeti. And, you know, I think that that's what's missing in the grilling market is there isn't really. There's really novel grills that are doing a really good job of, you know, now you can use pellets to smoke your meat, but. And I didn't mean that, you know, that's what she.

Said.

But that was.

Good. But the, you know, nobody's really taken the, the grill and made it as versatile as possible. You Know, this thing's got so many ways to go, and you can use it so many places, and it's gonna be the toughest grill ever made. And I think that that uniqueness is gonna really spark something in, you know, in those. In people that really want to do, you know, adventure grilling, I.

Guess. Yeah. And that makes sense now because I was on the website, you know, it was like, just as tough or tougher than your cooler. You know, the grill itself, which I'm like, oh, that makes sense. Carrying piggybacking off a yeti. They're badass coolers. I love it. What did you say? So, like, when you wrote in some of these topics, you said, good products are nice, but tacos can really make a difference. I was like, all right, I like this. He needs to explain it now. I'm fucking.

Hungry. Just as a side note, I think the bio that you gave us is one of the best bios we've ever had submitted to.

Us.

Yeah.

The tacos.

Thing. Well, see, so that actually has. That's actually got. Is pretty deep in a way that I really tired of.

Marketers who have become, you know, one trick pony that they think the only way to, you know, get your product and make sales is, you know, Facebook ads, you know, things like that. And.

What.

That. What I meant by that statement was, you know, we've. We started the. I look at every channel as an opportunity. I try to. I try to find the best way platform to get the product out there. And, yeah, it might end up being, you know, Instagram, who knows? But we had. We opened up and started selling our products to dealers, you know, the dog and cat boutique stores. This is for the full bucket products, the animal healthcare supplements. We started, you know, kind of pursuing getting them into retail space. And we got, you know, we had quite a few, you know, pick up the product. You know, they'd heard through the grapevine and through veterinarians, because that's where we started. Our sales process was in the veterinary channel. Then we expanded. Well, we didn't expand. We jumped all the way over to just direct to consumer. And then now we're backfilling into the retail space, and it just wasn't really getting much traction. You know, I mean, we were. We kind of looked at it as a loss. Cause we were like, well, you know, a lot of these dealers are calling us saying that product's not moving. We don't have enough, you know, advertising support to get the name out there, blah, blah, blah. And then we hired a new sales Guy in November.

And he'd never been in sales. He knew the animal health market and the horse market and everything, but he'd never been in the sales position. But I knew he was a natural and he's just that kind of guy. And so I basically told him, focus on the veterinarian, focus on other areas. He says about these stores. And I said, yeah, we're not really having a lot of luck there. He's like, okay. Well then all of a sudden, you know, these stores started ordering product like crazy. And he was in here one day and I said, well, what the hell? He goes, yeah, shit. I just take them tacos during lunch and sit down with the sales staff and hell, they didn't know nothing about our products. And so I just explained to them how we're better than everybody else and they might as well throw that shit in the tr. And they loved him. And so they listened to what he, you know, how he positioned the products so when people come in the store, go over to the full bucket products and they explain what the differences are and they like zig and they like these tacos and that he stops in and brings them donuts. And it's our fastest. I mean we grew 324% in the last six.

Months.

Damn.

And it's all because he took the time to go in there and do that. So that's kind of what that meant is you can have all the analytics you want, you can have all the stuff, but if you're really not giving, you know, really trying different things, then, then it's not as.

Valuable. Yeah, it's so damn true too because there's so many people that just try to force a square peg in a round hole when using I gotta make Facebook ads work or Instagram. I'm gonna be insta famous with this product or get this influencer to promote it. Just maybe there's an easier way. Just look a little outside of the.

Box. When you're hammer, everything looks like a.

Nail. That's right. That's right, dude. So another thing that caught my eye is everyone loves a visionary with giant balls, big ass balls. Everyone loves.

It. Don't leave off that part.

Giant. And it's true. I mean, that's why so many people are pumped up on Elon Musk and all the crazy stuff. His big moonshot or Mars shot, his big visions.

For you. What would you say a visionary is in your.

Eyes? Well, so what I meant by that with the giant balls thing is that.

It'S human nature and by the way.

President Kennedy actually.

You know, he wanted to go to the moon. You remember, you know that story, he wanted to go to the.

Moon. I don't know all the details.

But yeah, so he wanted to go to the moon, he challenged our country to go to the moon and in a short time he wanted to beat the Russians to the moon. And at the time when he said that, I mean, we were so far away from that and there's no fucking way that we could do that. Well.

We did, we got there. But just think of the technology that came out of that, the prosperity, the. I mean we're, we use things today that were developed back then. And that vision, which was a crazy, ballsy vision, it resonated with enough people that things really happened. And so even if we didn't make the moon, we still would have had amazing things come out of it.

So now Elon Musk, he basically just kind of one up Kennedy. Oh well, fuck that, we'll go to Mars, right? Think of the innovations coming out of that vision and think of the people who have fallen in line to be part of that.

And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs get so caught up in the technical aspect of their product or their service that they don't sit down and come up with their own Mars. You know, what the hell are we? What's way, way, way bigger than animal supplements, probiotic supplements? Well, transforming the industry and using. Our goal was to build a business that could self generate giving back so that as the business grows, the giving gets bigger and bigger. And so we, you know, our One for one program is, dude, if I sat here I could do a whole hour on what we're doing in Central America with our, with our one for one.

Program. We went, give us a quick, yeah, quick overview of that. That sounds.

Interesting. So you know, the goal was, hey, we're going to do for every dose that we sell of our full bucket products, we are basically going to give nutritional supplement to these horses and donkeys and mules in these third world countries. Because those are, those animals are extremely important to those people's lives. You know, these are very, very poor farmers. And that.

Donkey, you know, if you have to replace them, that's two years worth of their wages to replace one. And they're malnourished and their health care is poor and it's mostly because of ignorance. They don't know how to trim their feet or float their teeth or feed them the right foods. And so what we did was we knew that nutrition was really lacking. We Work with the University of Guatemala's veterinary program. And those students go do soil and stool samples and blood samples in those volcanic regions where we do our.

They'Re lacking and you know, because they're living on the sides of volcanic mountains and there's the ash that's built up, there's phosphorus, zincs in the soil so they don't get into the grass and it doesn't get into the animal. And the animals, you know, body's breaking down. And so we.

Type of product for those regions. We, you know, we have it made in country.

Manufacturing partners down there that we pay them, they make the product for us so that there's more jobs there. Then we started off, you know, of course we couldn't give much in the beginning, so we would go down and do it. We go, we go down in work. The university students are with us. We would hand out the supplement. We would teach the people about nutrition, we teach them about, you know, the health care.

And, and then we come home, you know, it'd be an eight, nine day trip. And then we started going twice a year. Now we go four times a year. And we wanted to build a bridge so for others to get involved. So we take volunteers. So we, you know, they'll be 14, you know, 10 to 14 veterinarians and farriers and industry professionals will go with us and they'll spend seven, eight days, you know, traipsing around in the mountains and working with these people and on their animals. And our product is now, because of our sales, we have enough that we actually provide, you know, supplement year round. So the university students, they make sure that it gets distributed. And we went and looked at, it's growing more and more. We actually even bring some of the students up here so they can do internships here. You know, we have the finest vets in the world are here in the United States. And so they come up, work, you know, side by side. There's actually two of them here in country right now. When they go back to Guatemala, they'll be the best vets in.

Guatemala. And that's.

Cool. Yeah. And so.

Some of the vet students that were with us the first few years, you know, we started the program in 2011. Students now, you know, they've come up, they've gone back down, they've started their own practices in Guatemala City, which is where all the wealthy people live that are in that country. And they have really nice horses. So they work on these really, really nice horses. But then because of our program, they want to Give back. And we're looking at building a permanent hospital down there that'll be the full bucket, you know, base in that area. The. Some of the past students will run it and, you know, we'll kind of set that all up because there's really no good hospital there. And. Yeah, it's just when I go down and I'm, I'm seeing it in action, it. I get overwhelmed. I get teared up just thinking about the program and everything we do, we try to create sustainability. We have no desire for providing welfare. And so we'll teach the local, you know, a couple of local young men how to trim feet on a horse. And then we'll provide them the tools and show them how to run their business and, and they'll be, you know, farriers, and they can make money being farriers. And we micro finance it because we found that the stick rates better, you know, with. If they have to pay us back, they tend to stick with it better. And. Yeah, so. And, you know, we went and did a tour in Belize because I think we're going to go into Belize, we go to Nicaragua. You know, we're going to expand to a few more of those small countries down there. We used to go to Mexico, but we had to pull out because it got really rough and wasn't safe.

So.

Yeah. How did you, how did, how did you discover this, this mission? How did you, like, you know, how did this come to you? That this, this is something that I want, this is a problem I want to try to.

Solve.

Okay. So that. I'm so glad you asked that question because I, in 2008 or 9, I sold my digital company and like I said, I tried to launch the HORSE ad network and the, the RV Ad network and all those, and that failed. And it wiped me out. It was, it. It took all our money and, and you know, so I had to go. I had to go work, you know, pay mortgage. So I started doing. I didn't want to go back in and do the whole ad agency stuff. So.

Some of my old clients were private equity guys. And so they, they hired me to go, you know, take a look at the businesses that they were potentially going to buy. And I'd go in with the, the financial team and I would review the businesses from a marketing and sales standpoint. And it was a lot of fun. It was really fun to do that, but it was, it was not fulfilling at all. And the.

It wasn't, wasn't doing it for me. And I was miserable. And you Know, I'm going and working on all these companies. It was very learning. You know, I got to pop the hood on business, really get to look, look around in there. And so I was learning a lot. And I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next year. Lost. And so one morning I had a moment of clarity that's probably, you know, not hungover that morning.

I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I thought, well, fuck, I'll start with what I don't want to do. So I got out of notepad and I started writing down things that I just didn't like about business and work and all that stuff. And I Bet I had 200 line items. And it was, you know, I hate being told what to do when I don't agree with the. The task. I hate this. I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like, you know, suits formality. I don't like dishonest people and so on and so forth. And then. And I started that process, and I did that, you know, for a couple mornings. And then I gave it a rest and I went back to it. And I realized that out of those two or 300 things, that a lot of them were pretty similar. Like, they could all fall under a certain bucket. And so I started kind of aligning them in their own little buckets and their verticals. And when I was done with that, I think I had eight or nine things that all fell under a vertical of things that I hate. And so then I just flipped it. Well, if I hate that, then what's the opposite of that? So if I hate basically working for someone which sort of was one of the buckets, well, the opposite is I got to be my own BO. I didn't say I had to be an owner, but I have to be my own boss no matter who I work for. And then I hated businesses that just take away and don't give back. They're just driven by their profit. And there's no thought about the future. There's no thought put into pride in the work, all those things. So I had, at the end of the day, I had what I called my eight mana points, and it was my manifesto. These are the eight things. Now I don't know what I want to do. By God, if it included all these eight things.

That would make me happy. It didn't matter if I was selling ice cream. Well, that couldn't be one unless I was selling a lot. Because one of my things was I Didn't projects and put my energy into projects that didn't have Runway, you know, that couldn't have the possibility to make.

Money.

And.

And so once I had that, you know, we don't realize. People don't realize how much opportunity is around them. There is so much opportunity for those people who are, you know, willing to put in work and, you know, all that stuff. There's just opportunity everywhere. But it's hard to recognize the opportunity without having some sort of a lens, you know, to look through. And not only did this, my manifesto, provide that lens to where all of a sudden I was there and go, man, okay, a lot of things are making sense all of a sudden, literally. And I was sitting there talking to my wife. She was in the kitchen. And I said. I said, you know, that job offer I've got with that private equity company in Plano, and I've been dragging my feet for six months. They offered me a hell of a position, incredible salary.

I said, it only meets one of the criteria on here. I could make a lot of money.

But it doesn't meet any of the others. I don't like the industry that we serve. I don't really like working with. It's not something. One of my points was I wanted a business that my kids could be proud of and even get involved in. You know, I wanted my kids. I didn't want that work, family barrier. I wanted my kids to.

Hang out and, you know, all that. And I couldn't do that with this company. And I said, but you know what? She said? What? I said, you know, two young veterinarians that I met, you know, I started working with about a month ago. I was just. At that time, I was just doing some strategic advice for Rob and Keith, because they had had me for four years, and it was really. It just hit a brick wall. They weren't. It wasn't going anywhere. And so I was trying to help them. And I knew. I knew their personal working together. I knew that they had the same desires to build something that was going to last and that they wanted. You know, they were very, very successful veterinarians, so they didn't need to do this shit at all.

I said, they meet seven of the eight. And she goes, well, which one do they Runway? I said, you know, supplements. They have two products. And the horse supplement market's not a very big market. I mean, you throw it all in. It's. It's not that big. And she said, well, could it? And I said, well, you know, if we went into Pet space and started doing pets. That's a big one. You know, that's a $13 billion market. And, you know, if we got into doing stuff for the cattle and sheep and pigs. Yeah, I mean, it could be, I guess. And she said, well, maybe that's what you ought to do. And so I called him on the phone and I said, hey, I've been thinking about you guys and. And I think I'd like to join you all. And they said, we just talked about you yesterday. We want to have you as a.

Partner. That's.

Awesome. There was. And so we shut down. I can't remember the name of their company. We shut it down and we started Animal Stewards and With Full Bucket as our flagship.

Brand. Damn, that is cool, man. Thanks for sharing that journey, because I think a lot of folks will get pigeonholed in something they don't feel super pumped with and haven't even just taken that simple effort of. Write down all the stuff you hate, all the shit that's just bugging you, keeping you up at night, and then find the counter to that, because there's always something there. And yeah, usually it's easier. I know I've done that similar kind of thing before. It's easier to start with the negatives because that's like. I feel maybe it's human nature or something. Like we just immediately kind of go to the negative, but it's up to you to bring it back to the positive, make it consistent, constructive. And that's exactly what you.

Did. Yeah. And.

It'S amazing. You know, I was always a. I don't know what you call it, a personal growth person. I was reading books and all.

That stuff, and the rodeo toad and Tony.

Robbins. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that was the original. But yeah, there's always. Always trying to improve myself and just a seeker that.

Way.

But.

It was really amazing how I didn't know myself. Does that make sense? You know, I mean, I'm trying to improve myself, but I didn't know myself. I didn't until that day. You know, I wasn't young back then. It was what that was in2010, I think. But I didn't really know myself until I wrote it all down and I looked at it and went, yeah, that's. That's pretty good. I like that. And that changed a lot of things. I mean, that's really been a guiding light that I can use to make better.

Decisions. Yeah, man. Would you say that that's probably. I mean, that kick started this whole new life of Yours. So I mean it sounds like that was the catalyst. That was.

It. Absolutely no, 100% that was it. Is that whenever. And I still deviate some. You make those decisions as you're going along and you forget to pull out. Pull out your paper and take a look. And then I'll wake up one day, oh, I can't. I got to get out of that. I got to quit because that's a bad.

Idea.

We've done something similar. Is like. Yeah. Create these filters. And it could be like philosophies or whatever you want to call it. But make sure it passes those filters. And it's like if it doesn't, it's like, eh, let's question what we're doing here. There's a way to modify it, sell it, partner up or something. So we get out of that. Yeah, whatever that thing, that trigger.

Is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's. It's really.

Important.

Nice. Well, cool. I mean we're. We're at about the end of our time here. We have a couple last minute little wrap up.

Questions. I'm bummed though, because there's a lot of shit that we didn't even talk about. Oh yeah, I love these stories. Yeah, we'll make it happen.

Again. We will get together for some.

Beers. Hey, it's on us. If you're in San Diego, Texas, we'll find some. What do you drink? What is your drink of choice? Actually, I meant to ask that.

Earlier. You know, these days I'm doing the IPA thing. You know, I've gotten hooked on the IPA flavor, so I just do craft IPAs. I've never been a light beer drinker ever. I've always preferred craft beers, but I've been hooked on IPAs.

Same. IPAs are good. Yeah. And they took over San Diego for a long time.

So. Still.

Have. Yeah, still.

Yeah. That's all you can find in San Diego's IPAs. I had an IPA phase where I loved IPAs for a long time. But lately I've been really into like the dark beers again, like the stouts and porters and.

Stuff. Good.

Flavor. I'm sure I'll go back that way. I. You know how I just like you follow your flavor. But it does change. Mine does.

Anyways. Totally. Yeah. Same.

Here. For sure. Cool. So are there any, are there any books that you find yourself recommending often or referring back to often or just, you know, a go to book in your.

Library? Yeah, there is. And I always say this about books too. Is that.

The funny thing about Books are that number one is that there's the right book for the right time.

There are some books that were really, really influential on me and made actual change in my life, but if I'd have read them at a different time period, they wouldn't have been, you know, I don't think people think about that enough that they go, that was okay. But you know, then I might pick it up later and I read it and go, oh, this means nothing to me. You know, I don't. But some of the ones that I kind of go back to that I've read several times, you know, would be, I really like the Go Giver. You know, the two books that were influential in the process of, you know, starting these giving back businesses is that, you know, the Go Giver as well as Start Something that matters by Blake McCoskey. You know, he started Tom's.

Shoes. Oh, right, right.

Right. Yep. And you know, we basically just, you know, like what we're going to do for Dragon Grills with the Yeti. We did that with Tom's Shoes. You know, we're, we're not selling shoes, but we did the one for One program. We really studied their business model. You know, we tried to figure out, you know, where. It's hard to find this information because you kind of got to read between the lines on everything when people do an interview for a magazine that you're not getting the truth, you know, no, that's true. You're getting somebody's. You're getting one viewpoint of a car.

Wreck.

This is why we do a long form podcast and we don't edit this bitch. We leave this thing.

Raw.

But Start Something that Matters is a good book that.

Really gave us the taste for having a business that means a lot to you. Way more than just selling shit.

And then on Rework and yep, I really liked Rework because it made me, it made me.

I was always, you know, I'm not a traditionalist, I like to kind of break the rules anyways. But it gave me a really interesting perspective on, you know, loosening up on your business. Meaning, you know.

Like our full bucket business currently is all virtual. Everybody that works for us is just scattered around the country and you know, we manage a pretty broad group of people with no headquarters and you know, it wasn't easy, but Rework was kind of an interesting play on a different look at business. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do it like they do. You don't have to have a business plan. You don't have to, you know, all those things. So I really liked rework a lot. It meant a lot to me when I read it and I. That's a good one for it a lot. My new favorite is Shoe Dog. I just love Shoe Dog.

You know, the being able to hear that story firsthand was really powerful to me. And yeah, I've. I've already, you know, started to kind of implement some of the things that I picked up out of there and then.

Oh, what else would there be that, you know, there's so many. One of the things too, you know, like I said about books and they have the right time. Something else that's important is that you really have to read a lot and then cross reference so that you can. If you read one book and you go, okay, we're going to do that. But then the more experienced you get, the more you read and you dive down and you read, you know, 100 books in that category, then at the end you're going, okay. I think that guy was full of shit about those parts.

I know now that that wasn't that. Well, that doesn't jive. And so I think reading a lot is really beneficial for you. Being able to read between the lines and to call bullshit on stuff that was just written by.

Somebody. Love it, dude. That's exactly why, for one, we love to host this podcast because we bring in a whole wide range of people and philosophies so we can kind of cherry pick. Just personally, I know our listeners do the same. And hey, this relates back to beers too. You got to sample all the beers to see what's bullshit. Coors Light or whatever. And you're like, no, I like the IPA right now, but it might change. It's all time and please thing, you know. Yeah, well, simple things in.

Life. Simple.

Things. Cool, man. I appreciate your time, Robo. This has been fun and I'm not joking. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff we were going to touch on. Matt and I always joke, we're like, damn, this show's going to become a daily show soon because we're going to bring back a lot of these.

Guests we love and.

If anybody cancels, you know, you can always use.

Me.

On the bio. It actually says you're the last minute guy that fills in when people.

Cancel. That's exactly right. I'm the filler inner.

Professional. Love.

It. So where should we. We're going to, of course, link all your different ventures, all the cool stuff in the show notes. So you guys listening there's a lot we covered. It's all in the show notes at the website. But where should people go check you out? Maybe there's one specific place, social media or site, something like that.

Man. I don't know. It just depends on what they're interested in. I love sending people to Fullbucket to kind of read our. Read about what we're doing there, you know, and watch our. That video on our about us page. That's a good place. You know, so people who are interested in, you know, they have dogs or whatever, that would be good. And then smash Factory, you know, just reaching out through there is good because, you know, I need to get in there and update it with all of our new fresh.

Stuff. Yeah, yeah, Cool. Yeah. Full and full bucket. Just, you know, Matt and I, we actually had got some product from you from a mutual buddy, Rob Burns, who's helping you out with some videos. And yeah, we actually have our dog still on that. And I mean, I have a couple older dogs. One just turned 10 a couple days ago, and she's just freaking. She's literally chasing coyotes up our property.

Again. I love to hear that. Yeah, it's good stuff. And I'll send you guys a little care package.

Too. Rad, man. Appreciate that. You make good stuff. So check it out. Full bucket. If you have dogs, cats, horses, anything in between. He's got the.

Stuff. You got.

It. All right, Robo, Appreciate your.

Time. Hey, thank you, guys. I was honored to be fill.

In.

He wasn't a villain.

Everyone.

All right.

Brother. We'll talk soon, guys.

Thanks.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Before taking the time to listen, we want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliffs Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to to, and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for.

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