Professor John Rizvi is a Board Certified Patent Attorney, Adjunct Professor of law, and recognized speaker in the field of intellectual property. He has over 25 years of experience in patent and trademark law and is one of the first group of attorneys ever to be Board Certified as an expert in this field. He is a recognized TED Talker with 2 of his talks featured last year in Inventor’s Digest in a listing of the “top 10 TED Talks for Inventors” and is the best-selling author of “Escaping the Gray” and “Think and Grow Rich for Inventors”.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- John’s father
- Jeff Bezos
When business started difficulties overcame:
“the biggest I think obstacle is seeking advice from others who are not entrepreneurs… When I went to resign and I talked about my idea of starting a law firm focusing on early-stage ideas like you are nuts, they said crazy, John this is career suicide. And that kept me from taking that first step years longer than I should have taken it. Because it’s hard to quit when you’re at the top… The biggest obstacle for me was really comfort. It’s the opposite of hey I had to start this business because I was starving – that’s not my story, my story is the opposite”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
Think and Grow Rich Book by Napoleon HillFavourite Quote:
” Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt
Recommended Online Resources:
- Justia provides free case law, codes, regulations and legal information for lawyers, business, students and consumers world wide
- Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, edited, and organized by its community of users in the form of opinions. Its publisher, Quora Inc., is based in Mountain View, California.
- Reddit gives you the best of the internet in one place. Get a constantly updating feed of breaking news, fun stories, pics, memes, and videos just for you.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“become comfortable with being uncomfortable. I would have a slight spin on that because I don’t think it’s really good to be uncomfortable but what I would say is become comfortable with uncertainty. And that’s been something that held me back for years. Like if you have uncertainty you feel as if something is wrong but I think as an entrepreneur just reaching a level in your thinking where you have uncertainty about steps or actions but that is just par for the course, that’s just how things are going to be.”…[Listen for More]
More About John Rizvi:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.” Jeff Bezos
Other Quotes From the Chat with John Rizvi:
- “the secret to success as an entrepreneur is the willingness to make mistakes and try and learn from them and move on…I think the more education you have and the more formal training you have the harder it is to be comfortable with this let’s try and see how it goes and then pivot approach. But that’s what took me a long time to learn”
- “I wish I would have joined a lot more mastermind groups at the early stages of my business because it’s easier to find people to guide you and mentor you when you got a small operation”
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