The School of Greatness - 112 How to Cultivate Creativity, Cash In On Crowdfunding, and Turn Great Ideas Into Millions with Chris Hawker

Episode Date: December 5, 2014

"The leader's job isn't to have all the ideas. It's to make sure all the ideas are heard and that the best one wins." - Chris Hawker If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, links, and more at www.lewishowes.com/112.

This is episode number 112 with world-renowned inventor Christopher Hawker Welcome to the school of greatness My name is Lewis Howes a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur in each week We bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. My name is Lewis Howes. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

I've got my good buddy and friend Chris Hawker on and we're going to be talking all about how to cultivate creativity in your business and your life. Now, Chris Hawker is a dear friend of mine. He is one of my early on mentors when I got out of playing professional football. He really kind of took me under his wing and taught me a lot about product design and development and PR and marketing and sales. I traveled all around the country with him at trade shows and just learned a lot about the business of turning ideas into products and then turning products into sales. So early on, he really helped shape a lot of the information

that I learned and how I apply that into my strategy today. Very brilliant man has taken over 80 products to market in big box retailers from Walmart Target Bed Bath and Beyond any type of big box retail you can think of he's got a product there. Some very cool wins he's had is one is called the power squid. And he licensed a product power squid to Philips and was making a lot in sales off of royalties every single month for a number of years. Also, a little famous invention is called the onion goggles. And if you do a hashtag search of onion goggles or go on Google and search it, you'll see people wearing these

and posting pictures of themselves constantly all over the place in the world. So he's had a lot of cool products. Some of his products have sold over millions of units. And he has also become a crowdfunding expert. He was part of one of the biggest crowdfunding, I guess it is the biggest crowdfunding project ever called the coolest cooler that did 13 and a half million dollars in sales on Kickstarter. He helped redesign a product that failed on a Kickstarter launch previously. And he was part of that redesign that did 13.5 million. He's also taken a couple of his own products to market with crowdfunding on Indiegogo, one that did about $250,000 in sales called the quick key. And he'll talk about

all of this in the interview today. Very excited to dive in. Good friend of mine. And I hope you guys enjoy this interview. Now let's go ahead and dive into this episode number 112 with the one and only Chris Hawker. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. I'm very grateful for today's guest. His name is Mr. Chris Hawker. What's up, Chris? Hi, Lewis. Thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah, man. I'm very excited about this. We've had you on before. I forget the episode number, but I'll have it linked up in the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 112. But I wanted to bring you back on for a couple of reasons. One, you've done a lot of great things over the last year since we had you on, and you're up to some big things right now.

So I wanted to talk about creativity. And for those that don't know who Chris is, he's taken over 80 products to the market. He's a world-renowned inventor, but really an overall brilliant creative mind as well. And he's developed a lot of different products around the market right now. But he's also done some other new things with crowdfunding, which we're going to talk about today. But I wanted to dive into your thoughts on creativity. You're like the king of creativity. People hire you to come up with names for products, for companies, for branding, creativity, for how to design something. They're hiring you constantly to figure out how to take their idea or an idea that they

want to have and turn it into a reality, into a physical product or into something that has value in the world. And so I wanted to ask you about how does one cultivate creativity in their life or in their business? How does someone become creative or let out their creativity? Because I think we're all born with creativity, but somewhere along the line, and we talked about this earlier, someone told us that our drawings suck. I know me specifically, I drew like horribly and then I stopped drawing and, uh, you know, and I stopped thinking I was creative in artistic ways and I became creative in other ways. So how does one, um, you know, kind of unlock their creative

potential and turning into profit for themselves or for their life or for their business. So how do you use creativity or cultivate that for your life and your business? Well, first, I'd like to draw the distinction between creativity and being artistic, because one of the things that I hear so often from people is that they're not creative. They say, wow, you're really creative. I wish I were creative. I'm not creative at all. And I think to your point, everyone's actually very creative, but because people may not be good at drawing or painting or some form of art, they don't think that they are creative. And that to me is a tragedy because as soon as you start saying to yourself, well, I'm not creative, then

you know, you probably become less creative than you actually are because you're telling yourself you're not creative, right? You know, you're going to believe yourself. Um, you become what you believe, right? Exactly. And, and if you're monitoring that to yourself, it's hard to resist. Meanwhile, being creative is only, you know, it's related to being artistically talented, but it's actually a different thing. Being creative is the ability to come up with alternatives, alternative ideas, and what I call divergent thought. So as you take on a particular creative task, like coming up with a name for a company, the question is, how are you going to effectively do that that and so sort of the process I use for coming up with creative ideas is by following a process I call conversations for creativity or

innovation and so it's recognizing that there are a series of phases that you go through as you're starting with ideas and narrowing it down to you know the final idea so the first step in any creative process is coming up with a lot of different possibilities before you start analyzing them and winnowing down to the one that you want to go forward let's give it let's use an example let's use like like say someone wants to come up with a name for a product. It could be like an online product, a physical product, or a website name, or a podcast name. Let's use an example like that. Can we kind of just make something up here?

Sure, yeah, absolutely we can. Do you want to make up a specific podcast and name it? Oh, shoot. Let's go with something that you use for your podcast or a product. Let's go through a product that you've used and like an example of how you went about coming up with that name. So let's talk about the process I used to come up with one of my more notable names, the power squid, which is one of my more successful inventions, which was a power strip with little extension cords coming off of it called the power squid. So as we set out to come up with a name for the product,

initially you want to come up with as many possibilities as you can. And we want to generate ideas without necessarily evaluating whether or not they're good. Cause the part of brain that you use to evaluate ideas, to analyze them and decide whether or not they're good or bad or if they work is different than the part of your brain that generates possibilities. And when you're engaging the one, you're not using the other at the same time. And so the biggest mistake people make in creative processes is too quickly moving from generating possibilities to analyzing them.

What do you mean? What do you mean by that? I mean, like, let's say you're coming up with names and the first name you come up with for a product like the power squid is the power multiplier. And then you're like, okay, is the power multiplier or good name? Does it work? Is it have the features we want or people can understand it now you're starting to analyze whether or not it's a good name so don't analyze it until you come up with like 50 names is what you're saying right because now you're switching gears you're switching gears from like coming up with tons of ideas until you're now just coming up with one idea and then you're spending all your time analyzing it and then you finally decide whether or not you think it's good. Now you're like, okay, now let's switch back to coming up with the next idea.

Interesting. So you basically write out a bunch of names first before you even think, is that a good name? You're just like, we're just putting it out there as ideas. Right. And the brilliant thing is that when you start coming up with ideas without analyzing whether they're good or not and coming up with more and more and more ideas, then you get into a flow and you might start jotting down things that don't make any sense whatsoever or are totally off the wall from what you were originally thinking. And they may not in the end be the right name. It's not to say that that's the name, but it may trigger a thought that leads to the right name so getting all these ideas out like when i start a naming process i'll start

thinking of colors and like what are the colors i want to associate with it what are the emotions that i want to associate with the product so that it's capturing as i start the process of coming up with more names i'm sort of preconditioning my mind to think of the kinds of things that are associated with those adjectives I come up with. So I want something futuristic. I want something sleek. I want something technical, but I want something with humor in it. I want to come up with some things then that have emotional attachment or create visual imagery. And I want, you know, I, the colors that come to mind are black and blue and purple. And I think, you know, when I come up with names, words that might be related to the product

or incorporated in the name, just start making a list. They could be multiplier or extension or many or few or, you know, tentacles or arms or legs or spiders or, you know, you're just coming up with all these names and then you can start mixing and matching the words. And then because you've sort of got some idea of like the kind of feelings you're trying to evoke with the name, it helps you evaluate them once you get to that point. But part of the creative process is that usually your brain starts in the analytical zone where you're coming up with things that are based on what you expect. And what you want to do is exhaust all the obvious answers because the most exciting

possibilities usually occur outside of what's obvious because the obvious ones are you know obvious they're right by nature not that excited so it's when you get to that moment where you're like i can't think of anything else but you start forcing yourself to try to think of more ideas that suddenly your brain switches modes and it goes from like the analytical mind to the intuitive mind things start popping out that would never have come out if you'd stopped too soon. Right. And if, and if you switch into that other mode too soon in that process, then you're not going to get to that place where you start to come up with a really creative ideas. Yeah. It sounds like it's a, you know, it's something that takes practice as well. And the more you do

it, the probably easier it flows and it comes to you. It's just like creative writing or anything like that. The more you, you just like creative writing or anything like that the more you you know throw it on the on the paper you know whatever's coming in your head and you just keep writing and you don't stop then eventually it's going to start you know flowing into beautiful poetry right and really the skill is is learning to do less and less and just let the words flow without trying to control them and letting the part of my brain that's intuitive and not controlled by my cognitive thoughts start coming up with the ideas and putting them out there and making connections that I'm not able to make consciously, but that are

somehow buried in there. So once you have this long list of possibilities, and then you start mixing and matching within those possibilities and say well i've got these words spider i've got the word squid i've got and i've got the word octopus and i've got the word power and electricity and then i can say electro squid electro spider power spider and then you know you can come up with all these mixing matching of the names i mean actually the original name for the power squid when i first thought of it was power blossom which was like flower blossom was a power blossom but then as i you know decided to do the naming process with it not just stick with my first instinct i was like because power blossom was really you know cutesy but i wanted something

more technical and something more science fiction because the product itself had a kind of a science fictiony aspect to it the design arose out of another creative process that i sometimes use which is i tried to imagine a world and i used at the time star wars so i was like imagining the world of star wars and luke skywalker jumped out of his xWing and he needs a power strip type device and he like pulls something out of his bag. You know, what's it look like? And so imagining the world in which the thing occurs and then seeing the thing in it and it appears fully formed

rather than having to like try to imagine what the thing looks like without the context. So if you can clearly imagine the context in which your device is going to exist, then it helps you to come up with both the design and the or an info product, whatever it might be. Right. It's imagining the world in which it occurs, kind of an idealized world, and then visualizing the product in it. And then your brain fills in all the gaps.

I like it. I like it. It creates things fully formed for you so you don't have to piece it together. Right. That's cool. Go ahead. you so you don't have to like piece it together right that's cool um i'm not go ahead well i was just going to say you know going back to the process about generating possibilities once you've got a whole bunch of possibilities on the table then you start to narrow it down and engage a different part of your brain so instead of divergent thought coming up with as many divergent ideas as possible we're now going to converge and start to

coming up with as many divergent ideas as possible. We're now going to converge and start to eliminate the ideas that are obviously non-starters and narrow the field so that we can give more careful consideration to the ideas that seem to have more potential in them. So the initial thing we call a conversation for possibilities, and then we go into a conversation for opportunities. Which one of those possibilities actually represents something worth looking further into? And that point engages then like a different part of the creative process, which is not the creativity of coming up with more ideas, but the creativity of being able to use your mind to understand which one of these is going to serve your purposes best by prototyping reality in your mind so like in product design if you're looking like how could i make a better power strip if you're going to make prototypes by hand that takes a certain

amount of time or if you're going to draw them that takes a certain amount of time but you can imagine things very quickly and imagine hundreds and hundreds of options in the time it takes you to draw one and so the more accurately you can replicate reality with your mind the better you can prototype things with your brain like and test different possibilities so now as you've got all these possibilities lined up for the name of your product, you can start imagining them on the product and seeing how people would react, seeing how it would feel. Visualizing it as it's already happening. I like that. Okay.

Is there any other part to the process leading up to this? Well, then you get down to the brass tacks of does it work? Does it fit the functional criteria that I need for the product? So when it comes to a name like the PowerSquid, are there trademarks that other people have that I need to not infringe on? you know, something attractive in terms of a URL based on the name, is the name easy to confuse with other names of other things? So like if you call it something that has another meaning that's very commonly searched, then like if someone goes online and tries to search for your product, then they're going to find something else that already exists in great quantity. So like it turns out there's a band called Power Squid. And they weren't a really big band.

But if you searched online, that's what came up. But if they had been a hugely powerfully successful band, and I was trying to name my product Power Squid, and you searched it and you came up with all this stuff with a band, it would be harder to find your product. So you want stuff that's distinctive in the world and sometimes it may be a product or something that's in a different market or industry but it's still going to interfere with people finding your thing online which is obviously where they're going to need to find whatever it is so now we're like really

getting analytical about like does does this name work? And that's, you know, not the process of coming up with new ideas, but determining which one you're going to go forward with. But to know which ones are even worth pursuing, you first have to generate enough ideas that you're not going with the immediate obvious one, which is usually not going to be the most interesting one. And you want an interesting name or design or concept because interesting means it's distinctive. It's got something that other things don't have. Right. So that's like the creative brainstorming process I use individually. It also translates into sort of a group creative process here at trident which is

you know we're a product development and marketing firm and that's what we call you know typically people brainstorming and that's the group creative process though i prefer to call it a group mind not a brainstorm because brainstorm implies chaos that there's no order to it and really that's not what's occurring um it may be like that very initial like let's come up with ideas part but it's really not ideally chaotic what it is is the people in the conversation generating possibilities and everyone has agreed to several kind of ground rules one One is you're not analyzing the products. So again, the idea is people too quickly move into the analytical phase and start shutting down possibilities. So people are throwing out ideas for whatever the product name is or the product

idea and other people who see themselves as, you know, they're the devil's advocate. They'll often say, well, I'm the devil's advocate. Right. And they think they're performing an important role and they can, but that comes later. If they bring in their devil's advocate language and ideas too early in the process to start shutting down possibilities, it actually short circuits that whole process where the people who are trying to come up with new possibilities in order to populate the field aren't going to be able to come with those ideas because they start getting defensive and feeling like they need to defend their concepts. So you have to be able to turn that off for that period.

Another thing is as you ask questions, instead of asking questions of people that shut down possibilities, like why, why that you, you know, why did you say that? Or, you know, how come you think that's a good idea? It's more like opening up possibilities as like what's missing or what else? So some questions narrow things down, some questions expand things, open-ended questions. And so asking open-ended questions that expand possibilities is an important part of the conversation for innovation. Another one is what we call looking for the gold. So let's say someone has an idea and you don't think it's a very good idea, but there's something in it that's valuable that could lead to the better idea. If you are focused exclusively on what's not good

about the idea, then you're going to miss the gold nugget in what someone's saying. So as people are presenting ideas and new possibilities, something they say, even though it's not the thing, may trigger that idea in you and you don't want to miss that. The next rule or guideline for a group mind is you're not waiting your turn. You're listening carefully to what other people are saying and then building on what they're saying as opposed to waiting your turn, which is like I'm letting them finish what they're saying. So I can then give my idea.

So it's kind of like improv class. Where it's like this and. Right. Building on it right. Right. Because otherwise you'll never get to a new place. You'll only get to the place that one of the people in the group would have gotten. If you want to get to some place that you would never have gotten on your own, then that requires building off of the ideas that other people have. So listening to what

they say and then building on that rather than pulling the conversation back to the idea that you wanted to share. Now, you can write down a note so that you don't forget it and then follow the conversation, let the conversation evolve. And then later on, if you hit a dead end with some sort of angle, then you can say, well, here's another idea I had a while back. I want to put this into the space so that we can look at that and then introduce that into the conversation. So it's not that you abandon it, but if you're sitting there just waiting your turn, A, you're not building on what the other people are saying, and B, you're not actually listening to them most of the time. You're listening to yourself instead of listening carefully to what they're saying.

Right. You're thinking about your idea and how you can bring it to the top as opposed to supporting them. Gotcha. Okay. Two more points in these conversations. One is no one gets credit individually for the output of the brainstorm. Like if you're like, oh, that was my idea in the brainstorm, nine out of 10 times, half the people in the brainstorm thought it was their idea. Wow. And they're convinced it was their idea. Oh, I said that. And then I said that. And you're like, wait a wait a second that was me who said that and like two other guys are thinking the same thing and that's a sign that

it was working really well because everyone thought it was their idea because the conversation led to the point where like some suddenly something became obvious the right thing became obvious and then it occurred arose in several minds at the same time and now if everyone's trying to take individual credit again it short circuits this process by which we come up with the ideas and then suddenly people are protecting their turf and trying to like hold back their best ideas or make sure they're presenting them in a way that they get the credit for it. And therefore it's, you know, it short circuits the ability of the group to come up with the best possible idea. And so like, it's important that you give up credit in order that the whole group gets credit for the output of it, because some people play different roles in that type of

conversation. Like there may be one person who is never the person who gets the basket, but is great at doing assists. And without that person, the team could fall apart. But if they're not ever getting credit because they're not the one who actually mouths the idea. And so you think, well, we don't need them in the room because they're not the one who mouths the idea. And then you kick them out. And then later you find that you're not coming up with as good ideas, good of ideas. It may be, you know, that that person was asking questions that were triggering the right ideas and other people. So it's not just about being the guy at the front who has all the ideas. It's about being involved in this conversation where everyone's aligned on the outcome, but not, you know, trying to take individual credit. And then, and then the

last piece of it is, uh, the conversation that we have is like the saying that we have on the wall in our conference room at Trident is when egos drop away, the best idea wins. And so this is related to that last point about no one gets particular credit, but it's also about, you've got to like drop your ego and it's not about your idea. It's about the best idea, the idea that's going to serve the outcome the best, whether it's a name or a concept for a new product or whatever it may be as a solution to some social problem, an angle on an article, whatever you want to brainstorm about. The leader's job isn't to have all the ideas. It's to make sure all the ideas are heard and that the best one wins.

And so that's how we create a culture of innovation or creativity here at Trident. of innovation or creativity here at Trident. It's not just an action that we take, but it's actually just creating these types of conversations that lead people to coming up with ideas and knowing that they're free to come up with ideas. They won't be criticized for coming up with ideas. It's not wrong to have a bad idea, a quote, bad idea. It's good to just be coming up with new possibilities

that can expand the thoughts. And so people feel free to present things all the time. And that doesn't mean they're all great ideas. Right. But the most important thing is creating an atmosphere where all the ideas come forward and no one feels like they shouldn't bring it forward. I like that. Yeah, I like that. like they shouldn't bring it forward.

I like that. Yeah, I like that. Definitely a good process to follow for anyone, even if you only have like two people to run an idea by if you don't have a whole mind group or brainstorming mind group. But if you have a couple people to run it by, this is a good process to follow. Now, I work a lot in the online product space. I create a lot of online courses.

I've become really effective at creating and launching and selling online courses. And you've become really effective at creating, launching, and selling or licensing physical products. And you've brought over 80 products to market. And some of them have been huge successes where you, you know, sell it off to another company or you license it to a company. You've done manufacturing. You've done pretty much every different type of style of product and licensing and manufacturing you can think of. And you've also recently in the last year got into crowdfunding.

So I want to ask you, first off, what are the best or most effective ways to launch a physical product today? Now that there is crowdfunding and I see you doing more of it, I know you're also still doing licensing and I think manufacturing a little bit, but what's the best way today to take a physical product and bring it to market? And maybe talk about the pros and cons of traditional ways of manufacturing and licensing and now new ways of crowdfunding and getting your product out there before it's actually created. Sure thing. So the traditional, the original way of bringing a product to market

was to start a company to manufacture it and sell it. The other traditional way is licensing where you take an idea, develop it into a prototype to a certain level of completion. It could be a rough prototype or an advanced prototype and then apply for a patent and then license it to a company who will make it and sell it and then pay you a royalty. And then crowdfunding is actually not an exactly third option, but what it is a way to do is pre-sell a product to raise money. So you have the capital to launch the product, to create it, and then bring it to market, usually with the idea that you're going to then start a company to make and sell it. So it's really a way to launch a product for then starting a company to make and sell it. Or alternatively, you can use it as a way to prove a product for then starting a company to make and sell it. Or alternatively,

you can use it as a way to prove interest in a product and then go license it. So it's really an interim step or a pre-launch step before one of the other two models. But it has a huge implication for bringing products to market today. So what I would say the best way to bring a product to market today is if it is crowdfundable, meaning it's a type of product that would work in crowdfunding, then you would want to do a crowdfunding campaign. You'd want to do that first before trying to manufacture it or get the mold yourself or doing anything like that is what you're saying? Right, right.

For several reasons because, you know, I guess I shouldn't assume everyone is familiar with crowdfunding. A lot of people probably are. But just really quickly, crowdfunding, the two main sites are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. And you can put up a project on one of those sites. And it doesn't have to be a physical product. It could be a CD you want to make or a book you want to write. But it's most, you know, it's used for all those things. But from my world, it's for launching inventions and products. And you can present your product as something that you want to make, but you need to raise money. And the real breakthrough

with crowdfunding is that it gives the ability to raise capital to entrepreneurs without having to sell equity and without having an unproven product in terms of market demand in order before they get that money. So using an example would be easiest. Earlier this year, I launched a product called the QuickKey, which is a little multi-tool that was the size and shape of a key that allows you to open up boxes or mail or cut twine or in a head of bottle opener on a cute little product. This is your first time launching a Kickstarter, right? Yeah. We did it on Indiegogo, which is the other platform. We decided to try it because I've been watching it for a few years grow. And I was like, I need to try this because it's important to my industry and I should see how it is to actually go through it. And how did it do? What were the results? What were you wanting and what were the results? Well, the goal on our campaign was $4,000, though we were really secretly hoping to raise about $20,000.

And in fact, we raised $221,000. And so that was far exceeding our expectations, which really opened my eyes up to the possibilities here with crowdfunding. And basically what you're doing is pre-selling the product to people who say, I want you to make this product and I'll pre-order one even though I know I'm not going to get it for a while because you still have to produce the molds in order to make it and then ship them all out. But I like it enough that I want to now with my students in the digital product space is to actually sell it on a webinar or sell it on a landing page first, bring in sales to see if people actually want it and then create it over the next couple of weeks and deliver an educational course where a lot of people spend all this time and energy developing the logo and the branding and the backend, and then they create the content and then they launch it six months later, or they lose steam and they never launch it.

And then they realize that no one actually wants it anyways. And for me, crowdfunding is like brilliant because it's kind of what I've been doing in the digital space, teaching people. And so you get proof of concepts. Right now you've got the carbon flyer that I'm a part of as well. It's a, you know, something that we're both working on, but you're running with it. And the goal is 50,000. And we raised that in the first four days. And now it continues to grow. So you're seeing that people actually want the product. And then it gets the word out about your product for you. It does

marketing for you. And so you have a built-in audience already of buyers before you have to actually create it, which is really brilliant. Right. In the past, we would have had to invest a couple hundred thousand dollars in getting the product ready for market without knowing whether anyone- If anyone would buy it. Right. And then to get that money, we would have had to sell equity in the company to someone else or come up with the money ourselves. And it's a lot of money. And then we would have had to sell equity in the company to someone else or come up with the money ourselves. And it's a lot of money. And then we would have launched the product without any customer awareness, trying to sell it to buyers at retailers just based on their opinion as to whether or not consumers would buy it.

And then they may or may not buy it. And so the risk in terms of money and effort and development is so much higher. And what crowdfunding does is dramatically reduces the risk. So we still had to invest some time and effort and money to get the product ready for the crowdfunding campaign. It's not a magic bullet. I mean, we had a couple hundred hours in developing the campaign. The video, the rendering, the models, everything, right? Right.

So the rendering, the models, everything, right? Right. All the pieces plus getting ready to launch the campaign, setting up our social media strategy and our PR strategy and our advertising strategy to push the campaign once it went live. So a lot of time went into the front end as well as a lot of time in developing the product up to a working prototype. working prototype, but not nearly as much as would have gone into it in order to get the product ready for manufacturing, probably a quarter or less of the investment in time and money to get it ready for the campaign than to actually launch it in the marketplace. And now, because it's launched and it's doing very well, we've got feedback from the marketplace that our target customers want the product. We've got pre-sales of the product that we can use to fund the creation of the molds without having to go out and raise equity.

And when later we go to buyers at retailers to sell them the product, instead of saying, we think this is going to sell, we can point out to our campaign and say, look, we've already shown that thousands of people want this product and are willing to pay for it, even though it's not yet available. So they're willing to pay for it. We think there's a real good shot that other people in a normal retail setting would be willing to pay for it. So it's really compelling, though it only works for products that work in the crowdfunding space, most of which are things that appeal to, when it comes to products, tech gadget males, younger males between like 20 and 50 maybe,

people with some disposable income. It's not a lot of ladies. It's not a lot of non-tech savvy people. It's not a lot of older people when it comes to gadget type items. Now, when it comes to plays and CDs, it's a different audience and, and film that I don't, I can't speak to, uh, cogently, but when it comes to products, the stuff that's doing the best are those things that are like cool gadgets for the most part. And the cool thing, you know, you've been a part of a couple of big successes. You've only done, And the cool thing, you've been a part of a couple of big successes. You've only been a part of four campaigns now with your touch on it. One of them was The Coolest Cooler, which is the most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time, I think.

It raised over $12.5 million. Is that right? It raised $13.2 million. $13.2 million. And he hired you to redesign The Coolest Cool cooler, parts of it at least. Right. So the story there is the inventor was a guy named Ryan Grepper, and he'd run it on Kickstarter, the same exact product idea for a cooler with a built-in margarita blender and Bluetooth speaker earlier in the year and raised $125,000. But that fell short.

Didn't hit his mark. Yeah. Yeah, it fell short of his goal. So he came to us to redesign it. So we didn't run his campaign. We just redesigned the product, but we really made it super cool. If you look up the coolest cooler online, you'll see it's a very, very cool looking item. And then he relaunched the campaign. It wasn't just the design. He also had a new campaign strategy different marketing and also very importantly different timing for the campaign he launched it in the summer when people were thinking about coolers which made a huge impact compared to when he tried to launch it in the

winter hoping to be able to deliver it for cooler time but no one's thinking about it no one was hot and sweaty and you know right out the lake but the difference was you know between the first campaign and the second campaign was 13 million dollars not too bad not too bad fun to be part of and watch from ringside yeah couldn't have happened to a more deserving or great guy ryan grepper is, you know, he's a serial inventor. He actually has an info product called the Inventor's Blueprint and tries to educate inventors on the process. But this was a huge, huge victory. But he's a very generous, very kind guy who is also very hardworking and dedicated to

delivering on his product. And, you know, it could have happened to any number of people, but the guy it happened to happens to be a great dude who I really like and respect a lot for how he's handled his success and, you know, been very generous with everyone around him in the process. And so you launched the ClickKey, which did $225,000, $250,000, $225,000? $221,000. $221,000, 250, 225, 221, 221,000. And now you're at 77,000 and growing

every day with like 30 something days left on the carbon flyer, which I'll have all these things linked up in the show notes at lewishouse.com slash one 12. So make sure to check all these products out and, uh, feel free to back the carbon flyer, which I'm part of also. What can you tell me what has been the keys to being success as a crowdfunding? Like what have you seen has worked for you? You also did another product that only did I think, like 16 or $20,000, not as much. So what works well, for your campaign to be successful? And what are some things that people can be doing to, you know, pre-sell their products first before trying to go the manufacturing route first? Yeah.

So first and foremost, you got to have a product that is appropriate for the venue. And so that means appealing to the audience that goes to these places to back projects. Like I said, the younger male tech savvy guys, you have to then have a product that is visually appealing generally because it's people are browsing around. There's lots of cool looking stuff. The stuff that does best is typically the stuff that looks the coolest that people are going to be excited by when they see it. And that demonstrates, well, that's got a good story behind it. So even if you have a really revolutionary, you know, housewares product, but it doesn't look exciting, then it's, you know, not necessarily going to do that well. You're facing an uphill battle there. So having the right kind of product in the right kind of space, that's really important.

Then preparation is the most important part, actually, of the whole whole campaign what you do before you launch because once you launch the you know the die is already cast more or less like you're gonna either succeed or not based on what you do because right at the beginning you have your opportunity to get a big burst of energy that you you build up through pre-work build it you through social media work, like with the Carbon Flyer, we built a Facebook page and then gathered a bunch of likes, interacted with the community, started talking to people in the RC radio control community and people interested in Carbon Flyer and gathered a bunch of likes so that right when the campaign launched, we were able to promote it

to those people, as well as our internal network of friends and family who were prepared to know that we were launching on a certain date so that they could promote us early and back us early in order to generate momentum, which got us higher page rank inside Indiegogo, which then creates a virtuous cycle where because you have higher page rank, you start to get organic hits. And so those organic sales are where the really big money comes in because your own network for most people, not Lewis Howes necessarily, but for most people is rather limited. And compared to the amount of traffic Indiegogo or Kickstarter get on their own, which is millions of unique visitors a month, plus they have email lists that they send email newsletters out to

that have millions and millions of people in them. And that's where you get your big money. But you only get into those emails and you only get high page rank if you have a really strong initial burst out of the gates. And so prepping the marketing in all those pieces so that right when you launch, you get a big surge is one thing that's just really important to success. And we've got probably 200 man hours for the carbon flyer before we even

launched designing the campaign, but also preparing the marketing side of it so that on launch day, we had a good showing. And by the end of the first day, we were on the front page of Indiegogo. And since then, we've fallen off the front page. We've gone back to it a couple of times just as we hit press and things like that. But generally, once you're near the top, you stay near the top. If you don't get to 30% of your funding goal in the first 48 hours, your chances of hitting your total funding goal starts to drop precipitously as time goes on.

So people will contact me regularly and say, hey, my campaign's five days old and I've only got like 10 backers so far. Can you help me? And you're like, well, it's too late. Wow. Like you're better off canceling your campaign and starting over. Really? Yeah.

So the key is to get, how much did you say? 33% in the first what you say 33 in the first what 30 in the first 48 hours i think wow but i try to go for 100 in 48 hours that's my goal right so part of that's like setting your goal so you can hit that the setting your goal is you know you want to set it so it's not unrealistically low but you don't necessarily want to set it as high as you might actually want to get to right because psychology behind it right yeah if you set it too high they'll scare people off and so you want to like because they'll think well it's too high he's never going to get funded or and and so they don't want to risk funding

something that's not going to make it at the end so setting that is important the content creation of the campaign like you spend a lot of time studying other campaigns that work in order to craft a campaign that's effective so the video is the most important part of the whole thing you got to have high quality video that's compelling and makes people want the thing that you're trying to promote and then your perk structure is super important how you're you know what you're trying to promote. And then your perk structure is super important. How you're, you know, what you're offering to people at what prices and how you're presenting that in order to get people excited about it is also very important. And again, studying what other people have done. There's a lot of articles all over the place about best practices, plus

Kickstarter and Indiegogo both have best practices information that you can get if you're running a campaign about perk structure i haven't worked with kickstarter directly but i know indiegogo has consultants on staff who will help review your campaign and give you advice on improving it that's nice so it's a really important to you know both prepare for the initial launch and also then to have a campaign that once you launch, people show up and they, you know, back your project. Right. And then the last piece of it, so that's, you know, before the campaign, the launch, and then during the campaign is the next thing. And you can't underestimate how much energy it takes.

It's a full-time job. We put about 40 man hours plus each week into running the campaign. So there are people who are assigned to building the campaign and there are people who are assigned to kind of like running it, responding to comments, coming up with, you know, posts for Facebook and updates and video updates. It's an ongoing project. And so once you start it, you've got to be prepared for 45 to 60 days of intense work. It's not free money. It's hard-earned money, but it comes with… It's not just launching something and hoping it works out. It's like constantly working it until the very last moment.

and hoping it works out. It's like constantly working it until the very last moment. I know my friend Manish Sethi runs Pavlok, which was a really successful campaign that just finished. I think he got $250,000. And he was constantly hustling

every single moment of every single day for like 40 days. And it wasn't just like, let's throw it up and hope something happens. That's where you're going to fail, it sounds like. And all the ones that are very successful that we've looked at, the't just like, let's throw it up and hope something happens. That's where you're going to fail, it sounds like.

And all the ones that are very successful that we've looked at, the videos are like highest quality. They're like music videos almost or like commercials. And the production value is really high. They're just like they crush it because their attention to detail. The ones that are doing like a million dollars plus, it's like super quality video and attention to detail throughout and their team is on point and everyone's hustling constantly to get attention i think that's really the key is to know that it's going to take work to make it happen you make it happen it doesn't happen by accident and and in the end the campaign itself isn't necessarily that profitable right because it costs money to then deliver those products and make those products, right?

Right. And Indiegogo or Kickstarter has fees and the payment system has fees. And if you get other – paying the people who do all this stuff, that costs money. We're buying Facebook ads, reinvesting in advertisements to grow it. reinvesting in advertisements to grow it. So at the end of the day, the campaign itself isn't necessarily super profitable, but it creates for you that, you know, ideally the money to fund the tooling so that you can create the product without having to go into debt or sell equity. It creates notoriety and awareness and it gives you coverage it gives you proven saleability of your product so it sets you up to win after the campaign and that's whether or not you want to set up a company

to manufacture and distribute the product or whether or not you want to go and license it so like with a quick key after a campaign ended we decided we got approached by a company who wanted to license it called night eyes who sells keychain accessories and 10, you know, 20,000 retail outlets there in Home Depot and Lowe's and many other REI, lots of different retail outfits all around the world. And we're like, they gave us a great offer, a much more lucrative offer than we would normally expect for such a small, humble item based on the fact that we had this proven success and it fit perfectly in their product line. So we're like, well, we can license it and they can get it into 20,000 locations. That'll take us how many years? You know, it took them 25 years to build up that distribution.

Right. So why not take that shortcut? Let them take over that product and collect a royalty and we can move on to the next thing which in our case is carbon flyer and now carbon flyer i don't want a license after i'm done because it's a fun and exciting project to be a part of and i have a carbon fiber did you explain exactly to explain exactly what it is the carbon flyer yeah go explain it sorry yeah so the carbon flyer is a carbon fiber airplane remote controlled via bluetooth so you can use your smartphone iphone or android to steer it by tilting your phone and it's got a built-in camera it's not a streaming

camera but it's a camera that records your flights and it's a toy. It's not a quadcopter that you use for shooting high quality video. It's much more of a toy that captures its flights, but it's just a really cool looking carbon fiber airplane. And on our campaign, it's a hundred bucks. So again, because we're selling direct to consumer, we're able to sell it for a lot less through the campaign than it would go for at a retail store, which would probably be about $150. We're thinking once the campaign is over. And so you're able to get it for a lower price and get this exposure. And this is a really cool product. It came to me.

I had a vision for this carbon fiber plane when I was walking through the park one day. vision for this carbon fiber plane when I was walking through the park one day. And in the past, and that was last summer, in the past, I would have had to spend years developing the product, getting it to market in all kinds of expense and rigmarole before I found out whether or not people really were interested and so much effort. You've done that many times. I have. The first 80 products I brought to market, you know, were that way. And in like power squid product was five years from the time I had the idea till I made my first dime. Wow. Carbon flyer was like, you know, maybe it was a year from the first idea till I got, you know, the first time. And not only that, I now know it's a viable product

as opposed to like PowerSquid. I spent all those years before I found out it was worthwhile. I had other projects that I've developed and spent five years on before they finally got to the market and found out that no one was interested. No one cared. Even though the buyers liked it, the consumers didn't, and it failed. You put all that energy into something over five years and it doesn't work out and it can be probably pretty frustrating.

Oh, yeah. I mean, that was the game I played and was used to, and it was very stressful in certain ways. And so crowdfunding has dramatically shifted the landscape for people with ideas for products because you can dramatically reduce the risk. You don't have to get investors. And it's also exciting because it's super hip right now. Maybe it won't be as exciting in a few years. It'll be more old hat.

But at the moment, it still gets a lot of press and a lot of excitement. People talk about this stuff. press and a lot of excitement. People talk about this stuff. And the other cool thing is that products that never would have seen the light of day because they're too out there, like the coolest cooler, you could have come up with that idea, done such great design, and then try to take it to the igloos of the world. And they would have never taken the risk to develop and commercialize a product like that is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like it's a complicated, expensive project. And companies like igloo are risk averse because they're big companies and they're run by lawyers instead of entrepreneurs. And for the most part, I don't want to be smirks Igloo. I

don't know who's actually running that place, but you know, bigger corporations are risk averse. Now, because Ryan Grepper saw this idea and was able to fund it through this method, this product turns out is something that tons of people want over 60,000 backers on a Kickstarter. 60,000. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Incredible. And it never would have seen the light of day recently on Indiegogo. Uh, some, uh, ladies, young ladies came out with earphones with cat ears on them for like the rave scene. Cat ears without speakers and neon lights, which I'm really quite clear Sony was never going to come out with on their own. And they raised like $3 million. Amazing.

They're like 23-year-old girls, aren't they? Yeah, like Berkeley girls, I think. Crazy. Really amazing. aren't they yeah like berkeley girls i think so crazy really amazing and again a product that normal business probably never would have taken the risk on that turns out there's a demand for they're not for me but the people want people want lots of people apparently lots and lots of people i think you should get some lewis yeah right you it for my girlfriend um very cool well i'm uh you know i'm obviously excited about this because i'm a part of the carbon flyer and it's my first

time doing any go-go and it's cool to be working with you on something to see it to see it grow and it's just amazing you know it's cool because again i've been doing this in the digital space for a few years launching something or selling something before I launch it and then delivering it after people buy it. And it's worked effect. It's been extremely effective for me. And it's what I teach in a lot of my workshops for people to do to save time and energy and see if actually people buy it.

So again, this is kind of like a, a great way to do that with a physical product. It's still going to take a lot of time, but it's going to save you time based on what it would trying to manufacture it on your own and the money that you would spend on your own doing it that way. So I definitely recommend checking that out.

If you guys have a physical product that you want to launch that could fit in there. And I'm going to link up a bunch of resources. There's a couple of blogs on Tim Ferriss's site and other sites about crowdfunding that I'm going to link up that gives you some tips, some tools,

some strategies on how to do that as well. But we'll have everything linked up about what Krista talked about with creativity and just developing creative ideas and following this whole process that he uses

to find an idea and to take it to market. So we'll have that all linked up on the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 112. But I want to ask you two final questions, Chris. The first one is, what are you most grateful for recently? What I'm most grateful for recently is I just turned 40.

Yeah, congratulations. That was great. I had the most unbelievable 40th birthday party that my wife summer through for me. It was a beautiful, touching and epic at the same time. And I'm really just grateful for the fact that the first 40 years of my life have been so blessed with opportunity and amazing experiences and amazing, amazing supportive people. And so I really count myself to be very blessed in the life I get to live. Very few people have gotten to do the things that I've done and see the things

that I've seen and have the amount of fun I've had. So I really am very grateful for that. Turning 40 is also, I think, reaching, I call it the age of legitimacy. You know, I sort of like cross that line of like, I'm not a kid anymore. I'm a kid at heart always, but, you know, maybe what I say will carry a little more weight. Nice. Okay, cool. A final question, which you've answered before, I believe, a year ago. The final question is, what is your definition of greatness? Yeah, I think my definition of greatness has probably evolved a little. I think being great is being 100% authentically you and passionately you and putting everything into it because

you've got this one life to live and no one can measure externally whether or not you're truly being great. But if you're living fully into your own possibilities, that's my definition of greatness. I love it. Well, before we tell everyone where to go, I want to acknowledge you, Chris, for your mentorship and your friendship with me and your creativity and what you've been able to open up in me and your inspiration in the world. You've developed so many ideas and products that have made people smile, that have benefited people, whether it be in their home, their kitchen, out at the, you know, when they're

driving, whatever it may be, you've benefited so many human beings with your products and with your visions that you've turned into reality and your hard work over 20 years has paid off to really serve on such a big level. So I acknowledge you, Chris, for that creativity and that energy that you've created in the entire world. You're making a huge difference. I appreciate you and thank you so much for coming on and excited to see what happens in the journey moving ahead. Thanks, Lewis. I love you, man. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. Love you too, man. All right. Take care. Thank you guys so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. And make sure to go back to the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 112 for episode 112. Again, lewishouse.com slash 112. Would love to see you guys sharing this one out there on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and

everywhere else that you're listening to this. Go ahead and share it out there. Also, we'll have links up there for Trident Design where you can see Chris's website. If you have an idea, feel free to submit an idea and call their team to see if you want to take it to market. They've got a great service there. They've helped a lot of inventors. One of their most recent one worked with them and sold a million units, over a million units of a product. You can see it on the homepage over at trident-design.com.

Also, check out our Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign right now. We are seeing a lot of traction with the Carbon Flyer. If you want a great toy for a male friend of yours or for a female friend, for that matter, make sure to check it out and back and support us, Carbon Flyer campaign. It's a really cool tech toy. I think you guys are gonna like.

So you can check out the video there. You got the links back to all of Chris's information and everything else we talked about here in this episode. I appreciate you guys so much. We've got some incredible guests coming up in the few weeks here in the near future. So make sure to subscribe to the podcast School of Greatness on your Android app, on your iPhone. We're on SoundCloud or Stitcher. Subscribe to the podcast.

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