From Invention to Shark Tank with Rick Hopper

Source: GeniusDen archive transcript checked against the recording. Administrative opening and closing material is omitted; the presentation wording is otherwise preserved with light readability edits.

Rick: You guys are all smarter than me, better looking and more capable, probably, of doing what I do. This isn't what I do. I'm not a professional speaker. I'm a professional friend maker, actually. Everywhere I go, I learned at an early age that when I went into a room and there was a vibe, I knew that I could say something and change the room. I go through my life changing my world one room at a time.

I was in the bank recently, it was a Monday morning everybody was, "It's Monday morning, ..." You know how we can be. Somebody asked me, "How are you doing Mr. Hopper? It's Monday." I said, "I'm so excited that it's Monday because I have all week long to kick, just to rock this week. I hate Fridays because when it's all over, I have to go the weekend and I've got so much fun to have and so many friends to make in this world."

Rick: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He oversold me. I'm not that good. I do have a lot of experiences in my life. I've had a lot of really painful experiences that have happened to me in business. This one great event, ReadeREST on Shark Tank was ... I'm the luckiest guy in the world because forty thousand applicants per season. I never saw Shark Tank for the first two seasons because I was busy. I'm a businessman, I don't watch game shows. I started my business in 2005.

I'm going to go backwards a little bit and just tell you a little bit about my life I've lived and how I got to the Shark Tank, and then how things have been since then. There's going to be a bunch of little stories all mixed in.

As a kid, I was always really inventive. I was super shy up until I was fifteen. This thing happened and I wasn't shy anymore, and that's where a story will be in a book coming up. As a little kid, I loved Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys, Tinker Toys, and Erector Sets. When I was thirteen, my dad had, he was a plumber, and we were pretty poor. It didn't seem poor, poor, poor to me, but we didn't get to buy the cool shoes and every year we went, we walked down to Vans, because I grew up in Southern California, and the original Vans shoes was a little, tiny box building, a little block about the size of this room, and we would walk two miles and get our annual pair of shoes.

Every year, halfway through the student year, I would have a hole in my toe. Too bad, it's raining. My dad's a plumber, he's got a stack of PVC pipe and and old bed sheet lying around, some duct tape, so I tore the hole in my right shoe a little bit bigger, I curled my toes back, and I had made a sail, like a wind sail out of this stuff, and I'm on my skateboard, I am a sailor. My friends wanted to ride it. I would say, "Make your own sail!"

My whole life, I was just ... Find a way to turn stuff, one thing into another. I was talking to a kid today. I lived in his neighborhood and he said, "Oh my God, I watch that show all the time," and he wanted to tell me about his idea. We got on the topic of, "You've been sitting on this idea for how many years and you haven't even done anything with it?" I wanted to just choke him. It drives me crazy. People don't do stuff.

Anyway, I said, "Look." I grabbed a cardboard box and I said, "Look. I can make anything out of this box with some tape and a knife. I could build you a prototype." Because I didn't have a lot when I was a kid, I had to be creative and industrious. That's what I did, I made due. I had to learn how to fix my bike, and then when I got my driver's license, I was working at a pizza place, I had to go buy my first car, five hundred bucks. My employer at the pizza place had to loan me two hundred and fifty bucks of it. I had to be creative and I worked hard my whole life.

I get to school, really no money. I tried to go to college a couple times. I did half a semester twice. The first one was for personal reasons. I'm on tape so I'm not going to talk about it. This girlfriend broke up with me and I was really bummed out, so I quit. Then the next one was, half way through the semester, my uncle called me and says, "Hey, do you want to come live in Hawaii and make twenty bucks an hour?" I'm eighteen years old. I didn't need to think about that. I went and did that.

I didn't go to school, I wasn't really that interested. I just started working. Nobody in my family really went to school, so there wasn't a real high bar, high standard for that. I knew that if I worked circles around you, and moved faster, and I did more, I got more. That was the theme in my life all the way through. I was working at the pizza joint and a friend of mine took me on this job and taught me how to install windows and doors.

Fifteen years later, I'm still installing windows and doors, closets, kitchen kitchens, you name it, I can build anything. I spent four hundred hours, hand-crafting a wooden sea kayak. It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, a spherical kayak. I can build anything, but I wasn't making any money.

One day, I was building some French doors for this guy in this little shop, sawdust everywhere, but the guy next door, he had a roll-up door that went up every morning, and he would take out palettes and palettes of these little square boxes. They were about this thick and I would ask, "What are those things?" I found out after a month, I'm watching this guying sawing, I've never seen so much sawdust in my life. There's so many piles of these little square boxes. He says, "Those are shadow boxes." Do you know what those are? You put trinkets. People will buy anything and put it on a shelf. They put the shelf in their house, and they say, "Wow, look how cool my little square shelf thing is with all my crap on it."

I said, "Why do you make so many of these?" He said, "A couple years ago, I had a dream. I wanted to sell one shadow box in every town in America." He says, "Do you know how many towns there are?" He says, "In a gift shop, every gift shop in every town in America." He says, "Do you know how many gift shops there are?" I'm going, "From the looks of it, there's a lot of gift shops."

He took a little concept and a little dream, and he turned it into tons of sawdust. [Unclear statement about whether the neighbor was making money]. I was twenty-one years old at the time, and I was still doing doors and windows, and then ... I'm just going to give you a little trail through my life up until today, and then we'll hit some other stuff. I got married when I was twenty-one. I was building stuff, I was working with my hands, and then I tried smoking meth. Did anybody ever try smoking meth? Don't raise your hand.

I got addicted instantly and within six months, I looked in the mirror, weighed about hundred and forty-five pounds. I'm a two hundred and fifty pound guy, if you couldn't tell. I looked in the mirror and I said to myself that I was going to die a drug addict, because I liked it. It wasn't too long after that that my wife kicked me out and I was on the street. I'm sure everybody knows somebody who's been down that road. I've been down that road and I don't recommend trying that stuff out. Let's make that very clear.

When I got clean in 1994, I went and got a job at Home Depot. I did that for six years. I went to college at Home Depot. At the time, in the mid nineties, they had the most amazing training. Every type of business type of training, from inventory management, staffing, HR, I went through all this training and I learned how to be a businessman at Home Depot.

Six years later, to the day, I quit my job. The reason I quit my job was because, a couple months before that, I was installing some windows and I got pissed, because nobody would make a product that would simplify my life as a window installer. Why doesn't somebody make this product, and make it for me? My hand went up, involuntarily, "I'll do it myself.' I didn't even know what the word extrusion meant, but I went and found somebody that could extrude plastics. I found this perfect adhesive, I mean this double-sided adhesive stuff ... Now, I'm not going to say the name of the company, because the current owner is very proud of it. He's done everything in his power to scrub my fingerprints off the business once I sold my interest.

Rick: Long story short, I had five thousand dollars left. I saved that much money and I bought my first house. It was a little condo, this little four bedroom condo. I had five thousand bucks left. I put all my money and I went out to find this guy that could make my stuff. He makes it for me ... It's not exactly like ... I told him to make it this width, this thick, use this adhesive. The adhesive cost me a couple thousand bucks and I made several thousand feet of this, and he squares the plastic with double-sided tape.

I took it, and I took a week off of work. I was still working at that place. I went and talked to the window installers. In a week, I sold twenty thousand dollars' worth of these strips of plastic. That was a lot of money for a guy that's making peanuts, fifteen bucks an hour.

Rick: I sold twenty thousand bucks' worth of these strips of plastic and I started getting calls from the people I sold it to, "This stuff doesn't work. Come get it. Give me my money back. "What?" We burnt through the money pretty quick. Do you know why this is doing this?

Rick: I had all these customers calling me back. I figured it out. There was a design flaw. There was a radius in this stuff that was supposed to be perfectly flat, and there was nothing I could do. This big manufacturer, is he going to honor his thing with me because there's a thirty thousandth radius? Just a tiny little radius on this thing? I went to bed that night literally in tears, thinking my dream ... I had run the numbers, "I'm going to make money for the first time in my life!" I was so stoked and I went to bed that night, literally in tears.

Now, there's only been two times in my life that I can definitely tell you God spoke to me, where I heard it. I'll tell you about both of those tonight. This one was about two in the morning. I'm sleeping, salt in my ears from tears, and I heard, "No. No. No." Followed up with, "Why are you laying there?" I get out of bed ... By the way, my wife took me back a couple years later, and we're back together now. My wife's in the bed.

So I get up, and I'm pacing. I hit my head on the ceiling because I had this slope in the [unclear] ceiling, and I had built a loft and I didn't get a permit for the loft, and so I hit my head on the ceiling. It was like, "You have to go to the guy that made it for you and tell him to fix it, and tell him to buy the adhesive again." I thought, "No, there's no way." I didn't have that kind of confidence to go to this guy. The next morning, I went down there. The guy, he fixed it, he made new stuff. Within two days, all those people who were pissed off at me because I sold them a crappy product, I had brought them a perfect product to put their own stuff back, gave it to them, boom, customer service. They loved the product.

So then, I thought I made it through this hurdle and it was like the end of my world, actually, when I was in bed that night. I think I'm going to speed that story up real quick. I took another month of work off, I sold forty thousand bucks' worth of stuff. I went in there to the window installers, I said, "I don't want to waste your time with the window installation company," I gave them two hundred dollars' worth of stuff. "Give this to your best installer and when he falls in love with it, here's my number, here's my little price list."

I had a little S-10 pickup and a little Predator in the back seat and a computer right here, and I was printing out these brochures. I pull up, I look at the name of the window company and I type it in there, and I print a little brochure with their name on it, and I've got a paper cutter in my passenger seat, and I cut the paper, and I fold it. Sometimes, it didn't line up right. That's good enough. Perfection could be an advantage, I think, I heard Mark Cuban talk about that recently.

I'm doing this. I'm giving this trim away. Every single person called me back. The next thing you know, three years later, I'm doing five million dollars a year of these strips of plastic. Except for one guy, his name was Dale, he embarrassed me publicly in front of five people in his office. I walked in there, you know, I'm on cloud nine, I'm building my company, and I gave him the brochure. He's a show-off. He grabs it, he throws it at me. "Whack." It hits me in the chest, and he starts laughing. Two of the people in there started laughing with him, and the other three were pissed and embarrassed because this guy was abusive. I picked up the brochure and I put it at the far end of his desk, because he's a pretty big fella. He couldn't reach very far. I put it on the end of his desk, and said, "If you change your mind ..." He couldn't throw it at me twice.

A couple months later, he calls me back. He goes around me and goes into my office, orders a couple thousand bucks' worth of product. Then, he didn't pay me, but he ordered another three thousand dollars' worth of stuff, so he owes me five grand. A couple months later, I thought, "My receivables, boom boom." I figured out what those were, receivables, those are great.

Rick: Receivables. The dude owes me five grand. I say, "Hey, Dale. This is Rick. What's up bro? You beat up on me in front of your people, and now you don't pay me?" "Hey man, I'll pay you when I'm ready. Click." I call him back, "Hey dude, don't fuck with me. I'm just telling you, this universe conspires in my favor. I'm not even coming down there, I'm just warning you." Three months later, home boy has a stroke. Dead.

You don't mess with Rick Hopper! That's not even funny. Home boy's out. What happened after that is, the biggest company in San Diego bought his company for pennies on the dollar and that guy bought more window trim from me than anybody, and I made all my money back.

I'm sorry, that story has absolutely no value for any of you, except to say that ... You guys have all read the books about attraction and luck, and all that stuff. I'm a firm believer, but it comes from ... Does anybody know what faith is? Anybody that knows the actual definition of faith? Come on. Faith is the ...

Rick: Faith is the evidence of things not seen, and the ... Something or the other, hope for. Right? Pretty darn close. What is faith? My Christian friends, they talk about faith all the time. Not very many of them actually have any, because I can see it, because I've learned what faith is. I believe in God. I get accused of ... I call myself a Christian.

Male: Proverbs.

Rick: I'm a lover of the Proverbs, because it's in the middle of the Bible and there is no Jesus, there is no Hell, there is no getting beat up by the Bible or nothing. It was the most profound wisdom written by the most successful guy that ever walked the face of the Earth four thousand years ago. He wrote some really cool stuff down, one of which says, "Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, though he does not even desire to get wisdom?" Now, I'm not a preacher, so that's all I've got for you.

I'm a firm believer in what faith really is, and I try to tell everybody. I ask people ... It's not an argument. It's more like ... I'm not a teacher, but I like to take people to school sometimes with faith. Faith is not an idea. It's not a, "I wish real hard." It's not, "I really feel strongly about this thing." It's not a feeling, it's not an idea, it's not a belief, it doesn't happen in here. Faith doesn't happen in here, and it doesn't happen between here. That's not what faith is. Faith ... Actually, I wrote it down. It came to me a little bit ago. Faith is actions, result. I summed it up. Faith is actions, results. It's the results. It's the proof. It's the proof. It's the result of action.

Rick: All right, all right. A little sidebar. Does everybody know what faith is now? Action. Just do it. We got that from what? Nike. "Just do it." I'm going to go get "Just did it," because it's done. As a matter of fact, let's slip a little story in here. This week, I converted, I took my facility, I turned over my packet ship and my fulfillment over to the company, the two hundred thousand square foot building over here that does all my assembly and packaging, I just turned over my daily fulfillment because the guy that's been doing that is way too valuable.

I need him in another spot in my company, and so I talked to the guy that had got it, the guy that had taken over that department, and I said, "You guys do fulfillment. I want to come turn it over. I've got a quote from the owner of the company, it's all good, it's all lined up." I'm loading the truck, all my stuff, and he sends me an email that says, "If you guys want to get together and brainstorm about the new project ..." I said, "Dude, we're on our way bro. Make room." Action.

Rick: I'm just kidding, bro. Let's go back to how we got here. I learned a lot about business from everybody that knows how. One thing that I learned through all of this process is, I don't really know how to do stuff. I have tape and knives and saws, and I can build anything, but that's all. I can't make a thousand of them. I'm a man who's got ... Nobody has time for that, right? I found out that you guys ... I'll tell you this. I was at a college graduation last year. My niece was graduating. There were nine hundred and four graduates. I'm sitting in the stands, the sun's beating down, I'm looking at nine hundred ... I counted. I count everything, it's kind of weird.

I'm looking around at all these people that went to school for a bunch of years, and they all learned how to do something. I thought, "Those are my employees." I surround myself with people that are really good. They're really good and specialized, and know how to do stuff. If you don't really know how to do much, find some people that do, moral of that story.

I'm going through. I'm going to go to the end of that window treatment company real quick. A year into the business, I sell my half of the company off. It's gone. I'll start right up with this. The only ship guaranteed to sink is the partnership.

Rick: If you don't write it up or define it properly and look at it like a freeway, we're going to look down the road together. Let's talk about it first. We hope to go from here to there and if we can get the thing going, let's talk about some possible exits. Let's define off-ramp number one. When we get to that point, let's talk about ... Right now, before the motor is running, before the wheels are turning, you make a lot of decisions ahead of time because you're going to keep some friends if you do that.

I sold that company. I come home, I've got some money. I've got some residual income coming in, because I did this buyout thing where they are going to give me money for four years every month and I go home and a week later, my wife says, "What are you going to do?" I ask, "Today or ...?" "No, what are you going to do? You can't hang around here." I've never hung around a house in my life. She is awesome but she didn't want me to hang around the house every day.

I turned forty. My eyes get fuzzy. I woke up one morning. My cell phone, the stuff was wrong with the lettering. They turned fuzzy. I thought something might have been wrong with my phone, it was that fast. I saw all my friends doing it. "You're going to need glasses." I could see everything perfect. My brain says, "Dude, I saw somebody wearing a clip, like a little pin on their shirt. You've got to come up with something." I was non-stop with my hands like I was going to make something. I grabbed some magnets, some paper clips and tools, a pin, different shapes, epoxy, mixed up some. You've got to mix that for a long time because it's epoxy. I dropped these little drops on there. I need something metal. I've got a little washer on my shirt. Clip. You've got to be kidding me? This is awesome.

For nine months, I walked around with a paper clip on my shirt, every single day. "Hey man, what is that?" "That's my paperclip." "That's awesome. Where do I get one of those?" "I'll make you one." I started making it out of everything, clothes pins, springs. I'd take a cord and pull it, snip it in half. I'd bend it, epoxy and magnets. "Here you go, buddy." I'm making it for my friends and then my wife says, "What are you going to do?" I say, "I'm going to make some glass-holders." I went into production and I thought, "Crap, people love these things. I've got to get the patent." Has anybody ever done a patent search? It's not that hard but you've got to be able to do a little reading.

Don't be scared of that. USPTO dot gov. I've got to do some work. You've got to do something. You go look, and you find out. A guy had a patent a few years earlier for that type of thing. I look it up, there it is. It's done. Magnetic force eyeglass holder. Utility patent was issued in 2002. I spent twenty grand on this project before I even looked for the patent. I was pretty bummed. Here is me, for that.

I know what I'll do. I did a background check. The old dude was eighty-five years old. Bernard, bless your soul. Myrna, thank you so much. I just did a background check and found out he can't stop me. I saw the patent transferred to his wife's name. I called her. "Hey, I'm interested in getting a hold of some of your magnetic eyeglass holders. I need them." She says, "The patent is for sale," before I could even finish my sentence. I say, "Yes, but what if I just wanted?" "The patent is for sale." I ask, "How much?" "Ten grand." I said, "Your guy couldn't make any money. How do you think I'm going to make any money off of this thing? That ten grand has no value."

Sure enough, I said, "I'll give you five grand." She said, "Let me talk to my kids." She says, "Call back later." Done. Do you know what I did the next day? I got my car. I drove eight hours to her house, bought the patent from her for five grand. That's luck. Do you know how much money it costs to get a patent? Here I am, I've got this patent. I've got this product. I've never heard of Shark Tank. It's January 1, 2011. I said, "I'm going to find out who my customer is," and one thing I've learned when I was working at Home Depot, the manager that hired me, she's in big league now. She's up in the Northwest. She is a president or something but she used to scream in my face, "Hopper, if you don't have it, you can't sell it." I would be out of stock in one of those departments.

I'm trying to get all this stuff on this shelf but the people keep buying it. What do you want me to do? If you don't have it, you can't sell it. I made it. I got the patent. Now, I've got some. I'm going to sell it. Sure enough, I found this website. I don't remember what it was called, where they have all these shows. I'm going to go to golf show, home show, gun show, grill show, jewelry show, street fairs, farmers' markets. You name it. Every weekend, I had my little ten by ten tent set up in front of people of all demographics. Who is my customer? You've got to go do something.

I swear, this generation, sitting around on the computer. If your knuckles are not bleeding from knocking on doors and your feet don't hurt for getting off your ass and going and talking to human beings in person and touching them and squeezing them, and getting involved with them personally, feeling their energy, you're missing out. I go to these shows every weekend, it's crazy. Everywhere I went, I heard the same thing every day, other than, "Dude, that's awesome." I heard, "Dude, you've got to get on Shark Tank." I asked, "What's that?" They said, "What? Are you off the cave? Everyone knows what Shark Tank is." Does anybody here not know what Shark Tank is? Not the Shark Week. Thank god.

I heard every variation of what people think Shark Tank is. "It's this game show. It's this content. It's a reality show where people go on there and they fight for their lives." "Cool. I'm a businessman, I've got stuff to do." For six months, I heard the same thing, "Dude, you've got to get on Shark Tank." Then, June something, a good friend of mine calls me and I'm going to try not curse. I've been practicing my cursing a lot lately, not because I'm angry, because I like it, but because we've got the camera rolling and my grandkids are going to watch this, I'm going to be good.

My buddy calls me and says, "Dude, you [bleeped] idiot." I said, "What's up, bro? Really?" "You haven't even looked at Shark Tank." Jesus. He comes over. It's ten in the morning. My fingers are bleeding because I can't make these things fast enough. I'm doing it by hand. You've got to do something. He comes over. I look up Shark Tank and for the first time in my life, I watched some little two-minute snippets, you've seen them. I thought, "There is something to this thing." I sent them an email. I found out that it's a selection process. Tell us this, tell us this. Don't give us videos. Don't send us this.

I say, "Dear Shark Tank, I've never seen your show before but I get hundreds of people telling me ..." They don't want you to send them a picture. I broke the rules, and we'll talk about rule-breaking in a minute. I sent them a link. I said, "Here. Click on this link and you're going to see a picture of me." They click on a link. "Rick Hopper here for ReadeREST. I've got a problem with my glasses. Every time I put them on my shirt, I bend over and they fall down, scratched again. Son of a ..." I has this whole video and a week and a half later, I love this part of the story. I'm in Southern California, I spent forty-eight years there. I have one of these big Mercedes square vans with two surfboards stuck to the inside. I'm in my van, just got done surfing. Wet suit is off. I'm dripping wet, totally naked. My phone rings and it's the head-producer of Shark Tank. That happened.

I went through the process. You guys are going to hear all kinds of stuff about getting on the show and for those of us who are lucky enough to be recognized and accepted by the Shark Tank and had an opportunity to go through the process of doing the contract, the demo video and then going or literally flying in. I drove in. They do a mock set up, making sure you're not going to freeze up on camera. They open the doors. Then you come down the corridor and there they are. Five some of the most well-liked and most hated, most powerful people on TV. It was terrible. I really did almost pass out. I'll tell you a little story here.

Do you guys remember my episode where I come in? I come down the thing. I trip, I fall and I tumble on the ground. Some of you guys probably remember that. I have this scar on my shoulder that goes from here to here, because a year earlier, I had crashed my electric skateboard. I had this remote controlled, sixteen powered electric skateboard that goes twenty-five miles an hour. I had literally thousands of miles on this thing. I rode it for nine years. I used to commute with this all over the South Cal. Every time my friends would see me, "Dude, you're going to kill yourself." I'd never gotten hurt before. I didn't even know I was breakable yet.

I'm cruising down. I hit a pothole. I fall down. Now, I'm wearing my paperclip version of my ReadeREST. I fall down really hard, break my shoulder, break my wrist, bloodied my feet up because I was wearing my flip-flops. Rule number two—never break that one. Rule number one is out; rule number three, we'll talk about that later. I pop up. My collar bone is up here and my shoulder is down here. I set my remote control. I take my thumb, I stick it in my belt, I shoved my shoulder in place so it felt like where it belongs. I held it there, went and got my shoes, pulled my phone out, got on my skateboard. I take off.

Now, I'm on my phone on my electric skateboard with a broken shoulder, calling my wife, "Hey honey, I'm going to ER." I get to the ER and I've got a broken shoulder and a broken [unclear: navicular] bone because I'd broken this one snowboarding a couple of years earlier. Some of us don't ever want to grow up. We have to stop doing that dangerous stuff. She says, "How do you know?" I said, "I searched." "No, don't do that." Okay. I get my insurance card out and I can't read it because I'm forty-five or something. I go like this. Awesome. My ReadeREST worked through the crash and everything. She is looking at me and I ask, "Did you see that?" I'm telling her the story about the crash and my reading glass holder is like ... Have you seen Erin Brown?

The producers, I'm talking to them in the van. They said, "I'm going to call you on Thursday at 10:45. We're going to need forty-five minutes of your time to get ready and have your one or two minute pitch ready, ready to go and be memorable." The most memorable thing that ever happened to me was the pain, this and the whole experience. I think, "Okay. Here is what I'm going to do. I'm going to bed." I watched some full episodes. I'm going to go up to the doors. I'm going to come down, trip and fall down. I'm going to get up, "I'm good." I told my friends and all my friends said, "Dude. Don't take the fall, bro. They are going to think you're an idiot." All my friends told me that.

I had to get special permission from the legal department to fall down on stage. I come in. I fall. It was awesome.

Female: Were you on your skateboard?

Rick: No, I was getting to it. I was going to bring my skateboard, come ripping in there and I thought, what if I actually break my shoulder going like that? I go in there. I tumble and I fall down. Now, I can't give away a lot of stuff about the show. There is a lot of secrecy and stuff like that. I get in and there is a little X of paint on the floor. When you start your pitch, you have to start at the spot. The camera is set up and the angles. I roll in. I'm staying on the X. Mark, Daymond, Kevin, Lori and Robert. I'm looking at them, stare to death. I'm starting going like this, tunnel vision, because I looked in their eyes and they are all saying the same thing, "What an idiot."

I thought, "My god, my friends were right. I'm an idiot." Right before I passed out. Has anybody ever done that, go, "Oh my god, I'm passing out." I said, "No." I started back up and I just said, "My name is Rick Hopper and my company is ReadeREST," and all that stuff. You can watch the show.

Male: Tell them how long you've got to stand there to get the [unclear].

Rick: Sixty seconds. They made me stand up for sixty seconds.

Male: After falling.

Rick: ... Three, four, five ... Six, seven ... It was terrible. I'll speed up. You are you going to miss out on a lot of stuff tonight. I think they carted me off the property in this van. "Get him out of here." After the show, we taped it. "Get him out of here because we don't want him talking to any other participants in the Shark Tank." They keep everybody separate because some people blab too much. The next day, Lori calls me. "Rick, what's going on?" I was Lori's very first deal. That was her very first day on the set and she was a pro right out of the gate. I don't know how much she practiced but it seemed like she had been doing it for years when I was talking to her on stage at the Shark Tank set.

We get together the next night and we talked about the deal. We worked out the terms and to this day, it's been four years this months since we taped and that episode aired a few months later, and we have a great relationship. She is the hardest working human being I've ever met my life. Sometimes I wonder if she's a vampire, because she doesn't sleep. Sorry, Lori. Sometimes, two in the morning, I'm talking to her. Five in the morning, eight, in the middle of the day. Any given day. Can you imagine? She makes more deals than anybody. She's got so much stuff going and it's not like she has a hundred people on her team. She's got this really efficient crew of people and her husband is just awesome and a big part of her support system. Enough of that.

We go to get on QVC and I can't make them fast enough. I'm going to get into this topic real quick, called meditation. It's not a creepy type of meditation. It's not going, "Ohm," or whatever. It's not religious or anything like that, but I'll tell you this. I couldn't make the product fast enough. I could only make five thousand sets in two months to get into QVC, to get it on the show. They had to have a minimum amount of product to put it on the show. We had a hundred thousand dollars' worth of product. We sold nothing. She gets on the show. Five minutes later, sold out. A hundred grand. I don't know whether to be excited. I just made some money. I've got to get home and make some more ReadeREST, bro. Right now. I've got to get back to California. That's where I was making it at the time.

My wife had kicked me out of the house, not like that, but the business. I was in the spare room. The living room, full of packaging and the neighbor kids, child labor and all that stuff. I moved into this little building that's about this size right here. There is nothing in it, because my stuff is little but I was hoping I could get some stuff in it and fill it up. If you don't have it, you can't sell it. I wanted to sell a lot of these things.

I heard about this. It was one of the first couple of times I had done this and I had heard the concept from a book I read that was originally published in 1925. A guy that used to know a lot of the American inventors. A lot of these guys referred to god infinite intelligence and then they believed that our conscious mind has direct contact to our subconscious mind or abdominal mind, or soul, and that there is this god almighty that they didn't want to split their audience and they said, "We're going to call it infinite intelligence, so everybody gets a chance to try this."

I do it. I'm really good at it. I know how to pray. My dad took me to the Baptist church when I was a kid and I would pray out loud and everything in front of people. I believe in the prayer, but do you know what I believe in more than anything in prayer? I believe in listening. There were three times I heard god's voice. The second time was "Shh, I know. Stop talking." Do you know what I did? I said, "I'm going to shut up," and I started listening. That's what meditation is.

I took this problem. I was hitting a wall in my life. I took this problem. I don't care if it's personal or business. For me, it was an assembly process. I get in my rolling chair and it echoes in there. I sit down and I can sit back. I lay back and I consciously pass of the problem to my subconscious mind and went to sleep for fifteen minutes. Infinite intelligence wrestles with the problems and sorts things out, hands it back. It hands it back to my mind. I come flying out of my seat with this picture of this process in my mind, but this thing, it has grooves in it, and holes, and there is this little hand-held tool thing. It makes me cry sometimes, this is so powerful.

I did that meditation process of shutting up and sitting down, being quiet and really listening and allowing something completely outside of myself that is way more powerful than me to influence something in my life. I brought all my tools. Belt sander, table saw, drill press and I thought, "I've got to make this thing." These magnets come in, they stay together, you can stack the magnets. I made this thing. It took me about twenty minutes. I had a piece of locker that was broken. I made a big hatchet thing out of it. I didn't care what it looked like. I cut it up. I drill a hole on the right angle and I did those things. Next thing, I heard a sound. I just went down a hundred magnets, like that.

Male: I've seen it. It works.

Rick: He's seen it. I'm doing this now. I've got two guys standing in front of a sixteen-foot long table. Two guys can make ten thousand of these a day. I don't plug anything in. There is no machines. There is no oil. There is no lubricant. There is nothing. I get the glue. I was mixing it up by hand, the glue and the thing. A year later, I thought, "I can make it even faster." I called one of the best, top three automators in the land. "I want you to come down and take a look at my process, and figure out a way to make it go faster. I want to make a machine. I'll spend a hundred grand on this machine."

Two different guys came in. They saw what I was doing. "You can't make this any faster. It's not possible." I got that from listening. Be quiet and believing. That's not what faith is. Let's not confuse faith with "I believe or I wish, or I want." I guess there is little faith in it, because I did something. I sat down. I shut up. I laid back and I came flying out of my seat. I don't want to much talk about this but my wife said, "Honey, I'm a little concerned that if you're talking too much about yourself that you're going to come off arrogant. I don't want you to turn people off," and stuff. "No, they invited me to do this talk. I've got to talk about myself." I was just joking a little bit there.

I feel like I have the perfect mixture of confidence and humility, because I live my life as if I can't fail, because I know I can't fail. There is only learning experience. You guys have heard all that stuff. Do it. Learn it. Go, do it. I believe that and I've heard that for years. I understood the concept. I live my life as if I can't fail.

I was talking to this super-successful guy. He invited me to dinner, because he thinks I'm special because I got on Shark Tank. I don't care, I'm going to dinner. I'm really nothing, or as they say, "I ain't shit." I go with the home boy, I go to dinner and he's all ... I say, "What do you attribute to this?" He says, "I can't fail." He didn't say, "I live my life as if I can't fail." He says, with absolute confidence, "I can't fail." He says, "Everything, every time won't get my way or every time I have some problem or this thing happens, it's not fail. That was just what happened today and I lost everything. I'm going to do it again." That's what life is all about. It's the journey.

The main thing that keeps my feet firmly planted on the ground and it keeps what I believe, I believe the part of me that's most attractive and contagious is my enthusiasm. That is a hundred percent optional. My confidence is because I don't believe I am the author of my ideas. In fact, I know I am not. It's not that I don't believe it. I know I'm not the author of my ideas. I'm not the author of my enthusiasm. I'm not the author of my energy. I'm not the author of my ability to do things. I am blessed with the opportunity to intentionally drag my ass off the couch when I feel like I'm four hundred pounds because I'm just tired and a statement has to get done, but I'm not the author of my ideas, my enthusiasm, my energy. I just know that the more I use, the more I get.

The more I love you, the more I'm invested in the things with you and the more I encourage people and tell them, "Listen, this is terrible. You're going to lose your house if you keep going that way," that's encouragement. Dude, I saved your ass, because I'm telling you all the reasons why you're not going to make money with that idea, then you've got thin skin and you don't want to look at the truth. You better wise up. Look in the mirror and tell yourself the truth.

I think I want to talk real quick about up-drafts. I'm Hong Kong a couple of years ago. The sun is just coming up and I can't sleep, because of whatever time it is. I'm looking out the window. I'm on the thirtieth floor and everything is tall in Hong Kong. I'm looking out this window and I saw two hawks. They were about the same height as ... They were pretty high. I was pretty high and this one hawk goes this way, and this one hawk takes off across the bay. I don't remember what it's called. This one hawk comes up over here, takes off across the bay and I'm just watching him. This hawk takes off and he's doing this. He's working it. He's just flying across the bay. The whole time, my view is getting smaller and smaller. I watch this hawk come over here and he's doing circles. He is going up.

He never flapped his wings once. He is going up. That hawk knows where the up-drafts are. He goes up. He goes all the way up and he never took a single flap of the wings, and he glided across that entire bay, for about four miles. He went out of sight before my eyes. How do you know where the up-drafts are? Do you guys know where the up-drafts are? [Unclear audience response about heat transfer]. Different ways that it happens. In life, spiritual, financial life, there are so many different opportunities to catch up-drafts, but if you don't know the area, if you move around a lot ...

"I've got problems with this." Stop. "I've got problems with these people and I've got to go over here and do something different." If you really hunker down to those rules and stick to something ... but the only way to be happy in it ... Let's talk about success for just a minute. You guys have heard all this. I'm just going to re-iterate something. It's what I've learned about my life. I had just got off drugs. I had a little two-bedroom apartment. My wife took me back. We're in this little two-bedroom apartment with three kids. There was this little backyard. I am sitting and it was hot, it was a hundred degrees and we had no air conditioning.

I'm listening to the baseball game on the black and white TV in the house. I'm sitting out on the back patio, so stoned on the life because I was making adjustments to my own. Bills were paid and I had just bought my wife a new car, her very first new car ever. All the bills are paid. I was making more money than we were spending. I had love. I loved the people I worked with. I loved the places I was going. I was the happiest guy in the world and I realized, I don't think I can ever be this happy again as long as I live, and it's true. Since then, I went to make some money, bought an airplane, pilot's license, Harleys, Hot Rods, all the crap and it's fun.

Don't get me wrong. There is more fun. I've never been any more happy than I was that day. I will say, if you're not happy with little, guarantee, you'll never be happy with much. If you were born spoiled, had everything handed to you, god bless your soul. There is going to be a drag and a chase. I've seen it happen so many times with so many of my friends. Let's do Q & A. Actually, I call this matchmaking session. You're going to ask me questions and I'm either going to answer it or I'm not going to have the answer, but somebody else here will. We're going to do a little matchmaking session. Does anybody have any questions?

Male: When you had those automators come in and you had those two guys building everything out for you and they told you, "We can't make it any faster." You said, then you jumped and you went off somewhere else. Did you believe them? Do you have automators now? It seems like you didn't believe them and that you could do something quicker and faster.

Rick: The question is when I had the automators in to check on process, did I believe them? Did I not believe? Did I think that we could still make it faster even though these so-called great automators, those people who are supposedly pros and stuff suck at what they do most of the time? Sorry, and it goes for me.

When those guys came in, I had done a lot of research on them. Based on the terminology and the recommendation and referrals like that, these were the guys and I understood by now the complicating factors of automation of my process with the two-part epoxy and the flow of the hardening process, I did believe them. Normally, I will beat something to death with "There has got to be a better way." I am always creating efficiencies but God portions me a little bit of energy each day. I need to carry it carefully this energy into every single day and if I allow myself to deplete that stuff with negative energy, I'm even talking to the point of if you're being negative to that guy and I could hear you, it's influencing me.

That's negative energy. It's going to suck me dry. I did believe them and I didn't want to waste my little portion of energy any more days, and focused my attention on areas I could improve, and I could create more efficiency.

Male: How did you do that?

Rick: Let's talk about this area over here. Instead of that process, there is always a bottleneck. There is always a bottleneck, but everything we can do, we can make a hundred of these a day, but I can only make twenty of these a day. If you can't figure out how to turn that twenty into a hundred, you better make two of them, you better make five of them, and that's really what it comes down to is I knew I could only make those that fast and I could make that many. If I need more, so I did, I tripled my production capacity and that was one eight-hour shift. Then, I could triple that by going twenty-four hours, three eight-hour shifts at three stations. I could produce ninety thousand ReadeREST a day. No. As a matter of fact, I spent four thousand dollars on two weeks gearing up for something I never needed, because if you think about that much product, I was really majoring in the minors and I wasn't necessarily going further with that.

Rick: Great question. He says, what did I do differently than the guy that invented the product? Why was I successful with it and him, not? It turns out and I found out later, somebody who knew him found me and sent me a book that he had written called How to Part Market and Patent Your Invention. He was a patent writer for the sixties, and old dude, like me. He knew about all that stuff but when it came to product design, production and having something that works, sadly, he went straight to China.

China makes what we want them to make, just so you know. They made a lot of great stuff, if you manage your business right, present and a lot of accountability. He went over there. He had the product made. He brought it back. Two things happened. The magnets he had were really bulky, hideous, bulky. The colors were terrible. The magnets were popping out of the plastic. The adhesive failed. They were using a cheap adhesive and there was a drugstore at the time that had a big chain of drugstores that is no longer in existence, on the shelf, the blister patch with the blisters, when you walked up to the product on the shelf, blisters for the product were on the floor because they fell apart. The adhesive of packaging failed and he got kicked out of the stores.

You don't get to make too many mistakes like that, because first impression is one place where it really matters. Did that help?

Male: Are you saying execution?

Rick: Say?

Male: Are you saying execution matters?

Rick: Testing. Testing. Testing and the accountability, because the guy that's making your stuff, you better have a good relationship with him. Get your nose in there. If they are not letting you into the facility to take a look at what's going on, you've got to be involved. You've got be hands-on. You've got to test that product. Hang on it. Everything I've ever built, if I couldn't hang on with my whole two hundred pounds, it wasn't done. I'm just saying it.

Male: I've got a microphone, so I'll use it. You grow fast. You're out of Shark Tank. Your world has exploded. Tell us about how you handled that growth and tell us about your people problem and how you solved it.

Rick: I get down to the Tank. I got a deal with Lori. I've got to make all this stuff and I go, "Crap." Before the show aired, I go, "I'm going to talk to some people that have been here." I called this lady that had been on Shark Tank on the season before. I called her. "Hey, I saw you on Shark Tank. I've heard you have a lot of success. I just got on the show and I was wondering if you could call me back and share some of your experience with this, so I know what to expect and be ready for them." No call back.

I called her again. "Hey, this is ..." No call back. That's why I call everybody back, because I owe it to the universe. We're drawing like crazy. We get to the thing and here is what happened. I put my life savings into production. I made two hundred and fifty thousand ReadeRESTs. We had seven months from the time we taped to the time it aired. I had twenty different people. I was spending all my money on labor and help, and packaging. We had all that and the space in that little warehouse was full of stuff. The show aired and we had a web developer there to handle this, build the website ... and the next thing I know, at the end of the night, I only sold two thousand ReadeRESTs, because people have a short attention span and they go the next product. They are gone.

My website was a great website and then I sold two thousand ReadeRESTs that night. It's about two in the morning. Here I am. I went to my little building. My product was in thousand-piece boxes. I'm standing in the warehouse with these pallets. I've got one hand on one box and one hand on another. Those are the two boxes that I sold from the airing of the Shark Tank, and I had pallets of this stuff. It tickled me, like when you get a charley horse. Ow, ow. This is so funny. I say, "Wait a minute. I already know people who want this product." I've been standing in front of them. I'm making cash, handing over. I've got twenty-five thousand dollars in this safe over here, and I'm selling all these things. I'm going to sell this stuff and I've got, I don't know, five million dollars in ReadeRESTs in this building. I've got my retirement right here.

I've never had more fun in my life than I have now, and we'll get to that. The next morning, Lori has them on QVC. Eight minutes later, she sells three hundred thousand dollars' of ReadeRESTs. I get a call from Walgreens. "My mom saw you on Shark Tank. I'm the buyer of Walgreens." All these buyers are coming and I'm saying, "Sorry, guys." I know how hard it is to get through the buyers. I've got their numbers because they called me. That's one of the lucky comments of all that.

We're rolling like mad and finding the people process. Luckily, two guys can make a lot of these things on one table. It takes six people to support those two guys because everything comes down to spreadsheets and graph paper. My two best friends in the whole wide world, graph paper and spreadsheets. Spreadsheet is an amazing calculator. I can make a calculator dance. We can only so many in an hour of this process and I can do this many in an hour. These guys need three people to do the packaging and then I need one support guy to carry the stuff around this stuff.

I started thinking about who do I need and then, "Hey, guys." Those are my people. They are like six guys. "Do you guys have any friends that want to buy more French fries?" People are pretty easy to find, especially at that time. California unemployment rate, boom.

Rick: You've got to do something. Any more questions?

Male: When Lori and anybody else is investing with you, how much are you willing to give up as far as your ownership or what kind of relationship did you guys put down towards capital versus [unclear]? How profitable are you right now and all these kinds of financial business?

Rick: Lori offered me a hundred and fifty thousand bucks for sixty-five percent of the company and I'm staying out there in front of the sharks, going, "Hell, no. You cannot control the interest of my company." Then she says, "Then I'm going to take over production, distribution and ..." I've got a million dollar idea here. In fact, I've got three projects that can be worked on, and so, "Cool. Take it all. I'll do that." We got together and then we spent about four hours together, and we hit it off. We were cut from the same cloth. Humble beginnings, hard working. We did the deal just like it shows on the show but as time goes by, the relationship blossoms.

I talk to some of her other entrepreneurs sometimes and we just do some follow-ups. We don't discuss the exact terms of our business relationship, the money or the dollars. We sold fifteen million dollars in ReadeRESTs in the last four years, about three and a half years. I take that as a retail value because there are so many different price points of the product and so, again, we don't discuss the exact details of our business relationship, but I will tell you that it's really nice to have a Shark on your team. That's for sure.

Rick: The question was how long was I actually on the show for when it got taped, because they edit it down to fifteen minutes and was there anything that happened during the taping that either I wish would've aired or that was uncomfortable, or stuff you didn't see happened during that time.

Again, you didn't see me almost pass out. They cut that part up, because I just went right into it. I was in there for about ... Some people say forty-five minutes to an hour, some people are not sure, some people longer, but they've got to put it into TV. They take all the stuff they want that we did. Now there are no re-takes. You go in there and you go. That camera is rolling. There is no, "Stop here, stand here. You should say it like this. More energy," or nothing like that. It rolls straight through, no re-takes.

The were a few things that Cuban said that I wished they would have left on the air because it was really positive towards me and the product, but again, if they put everything on that show you guys would not be watching this show because it would just so boring watching every single answer and every question. Did that answer your question?

Male: I have a product that I personally think I can get it out on the market and put me under a strategy. I don't know that I need massive amounts of capital to do what I want to do. Would you say that somebody like me thinking like that, maybe you don't need to go to Shark Tank or would you say, based on your experience that even if you could a hundred percent do it all yourself you should try to get on something like that, because there is benefits beyond you getting a hundred percent of everything, but it's better to get fifty percent of more? Does that make sense?

Rick: Yes. The question, as I understand it, is if I had a product that I wanted to take to market and I believe I could take it to market, I got a lot of positive feedback on it and I've got the ability to fund it. I don't need a bunch of money and I believe it's going to go. Does somebody like me really need to go on that show? If you ask me, I would recommend you be on the show anyway for various reasons.

I would say it really comes down to your comfort level, because you're going to sign up an agreement and you're going to go into the possibility of giving up a controlling interest or at least a nice chunk of the business for somebody who's got plenty of opportunities. Because they have a line of a thousand opportunities at the front door and a line of five hundred opportunities at the back door, there is only so much time of the day. I don't care how great your product is, but your opportunity for them. They are going to go, "I'll give you half of what you want. I want twice as much as you want me to give," because that's just reality.

I'll give you an example. If I grew this company at the pace it was growing, it would have taken a very long time. It's a very personal decision, if you want to that. I would say if you don't need the money, you could say, "Look, I want a strategic partner. I want the massive exposure because I want to have a huge exposure on this, and I would love to do business with this shark or these couple of sharks," and use their connections and their resources, and then let them fund the thing. Give them control, and then possibly get into an organization with so much force power that you'll get a piece of the action, and then you can go do something else, participate in another business. There is a whole bunch of ways to play.

I think what really pisses them off though, when somebody goes in there that doesn't need the money and acts like they do. "I need the money." They are just doing it for the exposure. These sharks, they are using their own money. They are taking their own time, which is far more valuable than money at some point for most of these guys and they are really looking for opportunities. If you're going to go in there and just have your fifteen minutes of fame, and you're going to try to snooker them into thinking that you need them, they have the ability to make you look really bad. They can do that and it could happen.

Male: If you've watched all the shows, you will find that having some sales helps you with leverage position. It's a double-edged sword for you. Just so you guys know, maybe there is a product that you can sell in the largest flea market and you carry it out of States, sixty miles from Kansas to Texas. There is four hundred thousand people roll through there on the first Monday of every month.

Rick: Rick doesn't work with them.

Male: Yes. The idea is if you have a product that you may sell it and test market it. You can even do it locally. You'll find out whether you'll actually have customers and at that point, if you actually want to do something like this, you can actually say, "Now, I do have sales."

Rick: I tested. I proved the concepts and I have sales. Thank you. Question right here.

Female: I was on that line. My business is a proven concept. Can you tell them what you think? You just said a few sales just happened with a patent. The difference of what you would've gotten without proven concept. Are you following me?

Female: As an investment. They wanted sixty-five percent and you'd already had sales. What would the difference have been had you ...

Rick: The question is what do I think the difference would've been for dollars invested in my company versus valuation, versus what they would have wanted as far as vested interest in my company had I not proven and said, "I've sold fifty thousand of these things in a six-month period," or whatever? Five thousand of them. If I didn't have any sales but I had a prototype, yeah, I am a little piece of bait and the sharks are going after it.

I would say that every single deal is different. It depends on the product. There is only one product that I know at Shark Tank that was a prototype that went in there and they got a deal. Here is what I think is happening, and I've been watching the show for a while now. I talk to Lori a lot and I'm familiar with a lot of stuff that's going on with some of her deals and her entrepreneurs.

You're a shark. You've got this much money and this much time, and this many opportunities. You're in the driver's seat. I'm going to probably want to participate in a project that has wheels and is rolling, because there is a lot of risk and a lot of uncertainty with the beginning, the start-up phase of a public company, from an investor's standpoint. Now, from a shark standpoint, now there is lots of money out there. I've met so many people this last few years who have hundreds of millions, ten hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. I even met this guy that bought a mountain in Chile for a few hundred grand when gold was two-fifty and an ounce.

A couple of years ago, he sold for two point two billion dollars. The guy is a multi-billionaire. He is just smart with his money. There is so many people out there with money. There is so much money out there that if you really do have a great product, you have a great idea, there is a way to get it done, but you can't let it fear and hide it, and not, "I'll tell you but I can't tell you. I've got this thing. I'm scared that somebody is going to steal my idea." I'll tell you what, somebody is going to steal your idea if it's great.

I've got five knock-offs out there right now. One in Germany, one in Spain, one in China and that's why I got there and beating these people down, because it's a great product. People cannot knock you out. Move the fastest, get the most. You've got to go do something. Get out there and go get there fast, move the fastest, get the most and don't be afraid to do it. Lock up your intellectual properties best you can. It's like having a deadbolt on your door, and a piece of glass right next to it. Smash. Somebody is coming in. It's a false security.

Unless you've got the money to back up your patent, it's going to be a rough one if you've got a great idea, but if you at least locked up your intellectual properties and you have a little patent pending going, you can go talk to people and find people that you can trust. Some people are better judges of character and they can see what someone's intentions are. I can see people's souls when I look them in the eye and I read different definitions of humans. Different levels of stuff. I detect some.

If you don't have that skill, find somebody you can put under your arm here that does, that has your back, because it's really important that you get really close to having the right people in your life on the first try, because a lot of those are not even possible to recover from, when you get the wrong people in your life. Anyone else?

Male: How thorough was the vetting process to get on the show? Did they go through all your financials and when you incorporated and all that?

Rick: The question how thorough was the vetting of me with the Shark Tank, of organization, before they allowed me to step in front of the sharks. Very thorough. Full background check. They verify some corporate stuff and you sign an agreement that says that if you are not telling us the truth, we're going to kick your ass. Something like that. Not in those exact words, and then I got calls from their legal department with stuff like, "This thing happened twenty years ago. Tell us about it."

I'm going, "What? What is that now?" I couldn't remember how many but there was some stuff, and it wasn't even that big of a deal. I can't remember what it was, but it was something that's like, "Yes, I was there. That thing happened. How on earth?" They have some serious private investigative capabilities, apparently. Yes, they vet thoroughly. You sign an agreement that says, you're telling us the truth that your intellectual properties are accurate, that your sales are accurate. You're not embellishing your company.

They want to put meat and potatoes, and truth in front of ... They don't want whack jobs coming in there wasting their time. I can't imagine how much they have wrapped up in every minute, in every hour of producing that show. You come in there and you lie, and you're something other than what you portrayed, it's going to hurt legally. Anybody else? Right here.

Male: How much value would you say has it been to have a shark on your team?

Rick: The question is, what would I say how much value has it been to have a shark on my team. Let's put it this way. I had a Cessna 182 and I could climb at about thousand feet per minute. To get to ten thousand feet, it took about thirty minutes. I fly across Southern California and there is a fighter jet, air force base right down here. Now, I'm ten thousand feet. The planes are this big, the fighter jet. I see the two take off and the control tower calls in. He tells me, "These guys are going to come up and pass in front of you." I'm at ten thousand feet. These two guys take off and they climb, god only knows how fast, but three minutes later, they are at fifteen thousand feet, just like having a shark on the team.

Rick: You guys will identify with this. I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago. This guy, he is a really awesome dude. I've known him for quite a few years and he suddenly says, "Rick, how is life? He says, "Do you have balance in your life?" I said, "Yeah. I have balance. As a matter of fact, I've got so much balance in my life." Here is what happens. I'm going to go ahead and use this board, because I don't want it to go to total waste.

I asked them to bring this over here just in case I needed it. Here is a teeter-totter. This dude on teeter-totter, when you get up there ... Have you ever been on a teeter-totter really big and it's heavy? Then you get up there and you go like this, and you get it perfectly balanced. That's not Rick Hopper. Here is Rick Hopper. I want you to understand that I'm like this. I get on the teeter-totter. I figure out how heavy it is. I get that thing going. On the ground. It hits the ground and now it's heavy. I was a little guy. I was about this tall. I was super-skinny and super-lanky. They used to call me skinny-mini.

As soon as this side of the teeter-totter started going up, I'm going to take off running after the teeter-totter. As soon as it started going down, I take off on the other side of the teeter-totter, while it's going up, I go as far out to each end of that teeter-totter, all day long and that, my friends, is balance.

Rick: The question is, what was the third time you heard the voice of god? I'm in the middle of working at my company, and I'm at my desk. I'm thirty miles from home at my desk. I heard this thing, "Go see Jay, right now." Jay was a friend of mine, who I pretty much raised his boys more than him, because he was outside of home and then they were split up and we lived right by the kids' mom. When they little guys, I taught them how to dribble, showed them how to ride bikes, but I became really good friends with Jay, their dad.

Jay got brain cancer and I saw him all the time. For some reason, I saw him every day and all of the time. Half of his body is dead. He is in a wheelchair. He says, "Rick, can you come pick me up and take me to Sam's hockey game?" I pick him up and take him. Sam is a really good player. He steals the puck and scores. Thirty seconds later, steals the puck, drives down and scores, just to impress his dad because his dad can't come to a lot of hockey games. It's been a couple of months now. I've been so busy. I've got a business I'm running and I haven't talked to Jay, but I heard, "Go see Jay, right now."

I went to his house and I didn't even know if he was home, but I went to his house. I told my staff, "Hey, I've got to go." I take off. I walk into his house. Hospice dude in the kitchen. Gurney in the living room. He is just breathing heavy. He wouldn't surrender. He was done. I watched him on the table and I am scratching his head, scratching his beard. I get into an athletic position, get down here and I go, "Okay bro, we're going to surrender your last breath together right now." I start going in his ear and I say, "Done. Dude, stop." I just talked him to give up five minutes, to talk him down from breathing heavy and I talked him into letting one out and not breathing one in. He lets it out.

You don't want anyone to see that. I had an image in my mind for every day I wake up and I think about I was born, oxygen starts going in and out. Breathing in and breathing out, and I have to do it all the time, all the way until I surrender my last breath. Someday, more than likely, I'm going to know it's my last breath and I'm going to intentionally surrender my last breath. What's the last word am I going to say? What are my thoughts going to be? I think about this all the time and so each day ... I'm not morbid, I don't think about dying. I'm going to be here for a little while but fifty years ago today, I turned one month old. I'm halfway there. Actually, Tuesday.

I'm halfway there. These last thirty years, I got so many painful experiences, so much wisdom I get to carry with me through the rest of my life. These next thirty years, I'm on freaking fire. I'm so excited. I can't even sit still. My wife, it doesn't drive her crazy anymore but she tells her friends, "It's like I'm going through life like this and here is Rick. Do you know what Rick is doing the whole time? Digging his heels and smoking his brakes, trying to slow down," because I've only got a few years left.

I know I'm going to get to surrender my last breath someday. I don't need anything. I don't need to go anywhere, but I freaking love engaging with people. I don't have a destination. Yes, I'll sell this business somewhere between ten and thirty million bucks in the next couple of years. Yes, I'm going to do something else. I've got a billion-dollar idea right now, I can't touch. You're all going to think of it. There is so much opportunity in this world, so many people to engage with. Life is for me, I've heard some place, "It's not a destination, it's a journey." I'm telling you what, enjoy every day. If you don't love what you do and who you do with, go find some place with some people you do, because life is too freaking short. That's all I've got to say about that.