Innovating Through Adversity: Dr. Rob Yonover's Journey from Caregiver to Inventor

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Live in the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can agree. Welcome to the Live in the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest is Dr. Rob Yanova. Dr. Yanova is a scientist, author, inventor, adventurer, and a man whose story spans multiple worlds. Dr. Yanova was a caregiver to his wife for nearly two decades, while raising small children and inventing life-saving products for the military and manned space flights. Dr. Yanova has done some amazing things. He's done things like explore erupting volcanoes, surf the Hawaiian North Shore, and appear on Short Tank. His story is a story of innovation, family, and pushing limits. So we're going to be talking to Dr. Yanova about everything that he's up to about those life-saving products. And he he's even in Hawaii right now. So, Dr. Yanova, thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Thank you, Curtis. It's great to be here. I appreciate it, and thanks for the intro.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Yeah, I'm uh I'm Dr. Rob Yonover from Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm a surfer and a scientist and inventor. And I came to Hawaii 42 years ago to work on submarine volcanoes off Galapagos. I went down in a submersible, then I analyzed those at MIT, NASA, and here in Hawaii. And while I was doing my PhD, I invented some survival gear, and that was like 40 years ago, and I've been working on it forever and saving lives and getting it on military aircraft and ground troops and even on SpaceX, and just became really in love with inventing problem solving. I've been doing it my whole life, and not all my not all my ideas are good, but I'm pretty good at picking the good ones. So, you know, it's been a long journey, and as you mentioned, my wife got sick when we had little kids, so I had to add that to the fold, and I became a caregiver and took care of her for 19 years while raising the kids and working on my inventions. So it's been it's been a crazy life, and I'm still surfing. I'm getting older, but I'm still into it. I paddle a couple miles a day to keep fit, and I'm still going to the North Shore and I'm down to like 20-foot face waves. I used to be at 30-foot face waves, but I don't want to kill myself up there. So I'm still in the game though, and I'm really enjoying it. And just I love meeting new people, and I do a lot of outreach education, the kids and adults, just to get them excited of about entrepreneurship and science. And that's a pretty pretty overall summation of what I do, what I've done.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Well, you know, you spent 19 years caring for your wife while uh having a career. What did that experience teach you about endurance and perspective?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yeah, I mean, that was for two people that really were overachievers and had really done really well in their life, and then all of a sudden get the diagnosis of you know, you're getting multiple, you have multiple sclerosis, and you're gonna go from walking to a cane to a week cane to a walker to a wheelchair within one year. It definitely put a whole new perspective on my life. But you know what? We were just glad that our kids weren't sick, and we just made do, you know, you you live through it, you you endure by enduring. So you just keep, you know, one foot in front of the other, and it was really hard, but it was really challenging, but it was also really rewarding because I essentially became the arms and legs of my wife. So we kind of bonded in a way that's really special compared to most people because we were forced into a situation where I really we really had to rely on each other, and me even more so, because she couldn't move, so I would have to feed her, bathe her, do everything. Yet I wanted to keep her, you know, happy and part of our lives. And I wanted her, her our kids to have a mother. And I, you know, she wanted to check out along the way, and I kept encouraging her, no, you're you're still a big part of this family, you know, just for the kids to know they have a mother and to tell them something about their day or something about their life and aspirations. It just is really hard to explain how it changed us and me especially, but when you have to step up like that, you start to see what's important in life even more clearly. And for me, that was family and sticking together, you know, and making it work. And now my kids are old, they're 26 and 23, and I've got a couple couple grandkids, and it's really cool. I mean, they didn't get to meet their grandmother, but they met her in spirit, and it's been a great journey, and I feel really fulfilled in many, many aspects of life because I was able to do that. And a lot of a lot of people wouldn't have done that, but I'm happy to say that I I was willing and able to do it, so I did it, and and I'm really proud of that. It's one of my proudest achievements. Forget you know, the invention is great, and I saved lives with my streamer, but keeping the family together and keeping my life, my wife, you know, healthy enough to be part of a family and and live a happy life of what was left of it, which was a long time, was really, really rewarding.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Yeah, because I was just gonna say, most people struggle with just one of those roles. So, how did you manage to balance, you know, a father, inventor, caregiver, and an entrepreneur all at the same time?

SPEAKER_01 6:28

I know it's really crazy. When I think back about it, it was you ever see those daredevil guys that spin plates and they spin one plate, then they go to the next plate and spin it, and then spin it? That's kind of how my life was. I would take care of the kids, get them off to school, first take care of my wife, then get my kids, then get to work, then get some exercise in, and get, you know, it just kept repeating. It was it was like, what do I need to do? What do I want to do? What do I have to do? And just keep prioritizing what I need to do in that moment, but also still carving a little time out for myself to recharge. And fortunately, we bought a townhouse on the water here many, many years ago, and I'm able to take a break and go into the ocean and paddle a couple miles for my lunch break. And that I did a lot of rough water fishing and sold my fish to restaurants. That was coupled with surfing gave me the brakes I needed to recharge my batteries. And also, I think it's important to leave a project, do another project, then come back to it because you have a fresh set of eyes and perspective. That really helped me too. So some of the times I get stuck in my inventing world, I would leave it stuck for a while, but then I'd come back and go, Oh, maybe I can try this. So doing all these other things really helped me balance my mind.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Well, talk about just available technology, you know, like you say, used by the military and space. So uh tell us about it and tell us about what problem you were trying to solve when you created it.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

When we first got to Hawaii, we were flying on a my friend rented a little Cessna, a little single-engine plane, and we flew from Oahu to Kauai, and I looked down. And if you've ever been in a plane over water, it's just a massive amount of blue water or over mountains, it's a massive amount of brown land. So I started thinking, what if the plane didn't sound good? It's like they didn't really keep it, keep it tuned well. So I thought, oh, we might crash here. I could probably swim to shore, but my my wife and friends, this is before she got sick. I don't know if they'll make it. The plane's gonna sink. And I started looking at what they had in terms of signaling devices, and they had flares and smoke and sea dye marker, but I thought those all go away right away. Like a flare is only a few seconds, and the sea dye marker dissipates in the water, and the smoke's only a few minutes. So I thought of some trying to get something more of a permanent marker to mark your position. And I flew back to Miami where I grew up, and uh the this artist, Christo, had wrapped these islands in pink plastic. And when we were doing our turn to come into Miami International Airport, I looked down out of the window and the pink plastic really stood out, and it gave me the idea to have a long tail. Initially it was pink, but it ultimately became orange. And then I it took me a few years to figure out how to make it work so it wouldn't twist up and curl up. And I invented struts in it, so there's spreader bars every three feet, so it's like a centipede or your vertebrae or a caterpillar. When you're segmented, it gives you internal structure, so it won't twist up and curl up. And that little simple idea, I kept promoting it and trying to get people to you know learn about it. And I got military approvals and I worked the media and I used to send faxes all over the world trying to get press and coverage, and I just kept playing the long game till the military started taking notice of it, and they they would test it. And you know what? When they tested it against flares, smoke, and sea dye, after a few minutes, they had nothing but the streamer, and it's called the sea rescue streamer, and it's a play on word, the sea rescue is S-E-E. You have to be seen to be rescued, and that became my flagship invention, and now 40 years later, I'm still working on it, and I, you know, I'm still selling it all over the world, the militaries use it all over, it's even on SpaceX under the seat of all the astronauts, and it's on fighter jets, so it's really, really cool how it's evolved, and it's evolved because I had the tenacity and perseverance to never quit. I I, you know, there are many, many times when I could have quit, but one of the strategies I had was to play the long game by keeping a day job. You got to generate money so you can keep funding your invention or your new business. A lot of people make the mistake of quitting their job or thinking that a startup business or invention is gonna all of a sudden make money. But you don't know if it's gonna take three months, six months, or five years to get profitable. So if you have a regular, what I call a day job, that will fund your overhead and that will take the pressure off having to have it succeed right away. And that is the reason I'm talking to you and still doing it, because I never really pushed too hard on the timeline, and that was really a smart thing to do. And the best analogy is the tortoise and the hare, that that famous pro proverb where the hare runs so fast and he thinks he's so far ahead, and he just takes a break and falls asleep on the side of the road. I'm the tortoise, I just keep chugging away, chugging away, I don't stop, and I outwork and outlast everyone. And that's kind of how I approach this and how I've approached life, even with the caregiving. It's like don't rush to the end, embrace the little steps you take all day, every day. So that's kind of the journey I've taken. And and I've invented a bunch of survival gear, but you know what? The one I picked, and the other good thing about being a successful inventor is having the ability to pick the one that's most likely to succeed and get to market and also save lives. And I, you know, the streamer has saved lives, and I've met the people that it saved, and it was really gratifying to have people thank you for saving their lives. That was that meant the world to me. You know, forget you know, I've made money off of it, but have someone say, hey, thanks for saving my life, your invention worked, it was great. And that was really great and gratifying.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, I was gonna say uh you've accumulated over 57 million uh views technology online. So at what point did you realize that that this invention was gonna be bigger than you expected or could imagine?

SPEAKER_01 13:33

I think once the Navy approved it initially, I knew that it would it would have legs and last. But then I started working the media and getting exposure. And just like 10 years ago out of the 40-year journey, I think eight years ago, I got on Shark Tank and there was a cattle call here in Hawaii, and I got in line with 400 people and I made the cut, and I kept making the cut until I got on the show. I think it was 9 million people or 19 million. I get confused. 9 million people saw it that night when it aired live on ABC. And, you know, I just kept working the media because I believe that media exposure is way better than advertising because it's third-party exposure. These are people that you know have to filter out everyone that wants to get media and press. So it's it's kind of like a neutral endorsement, whereas an advertisement you have to pay for, and you can say whatever you want in an ad, and you have to even say it's a paid advertisement. So the 58 million was a few years ago. My son-in-law said, Hey, you're going viral on YouTube, and I didn't even know about this, but someone picked up my Shark Tank pitch and made a short out of it, a one-minute video, and put it on YouTube, and it kept getting, you know, it went up to 4 million, 5 million. I'm like, wow, this is great. So I kept taking pictures of the screen because I know it wasn't, they they got to take it down eventually because ABC doesn't want someone taking Shark Tank and pirating it and putting it up online. But I kept, and it lasted for several months, and it got up to 58 million hits. They they they now just took it down. But it was really cool and it was fun to read the uh comments. People were really encouraging and people were funny about it, and it's just the the one thing though it taught me, and even on TikTok, someone did the same thing a few years ago, and I got 16 million hits. But even with all those multiple millions of hits, I didn't get the sales you would expect from that type of exposure. And the reason that is, is because people don't really care about safety until it's too late. And, you know, if you think about the car, safety in your car, an airbag, a seatbelt. That happened in Europe, and then it happened where they made it mandatory because too many people were dying. So I think that's what has to happen for the streamer to become a mandatory thing on all life rafts, all life jackets on boats, flight jackets, cruise ships, airplanes, everywhere. It's not going to happen until they force people to buy, you know, have it. And in the meantime, the real smart safety conscious people will buy it. And the thing I noticed early on is the military, they're trained, they trained to be safe. So their um appetite for safety is much greater than civilians. So they're still our best customer because they they want and have to be safe, they have to protect their troops. So it's been quite a journey, and it's fun on the media, and you know, it's just it kind of has a life of its own. And I have sales reps all over the world in different countries, and I have Amazon's reps that sell it through Amazon. And what's funny is I don't even know where it's sold a lot of times because my reps buy it and resell it. So people say, Hey, are you? You know, I just saw it here. I'm like, oh, that's news to me, too. So it's kind of funny. It really truly has a life of its own. It's kind of like I gave birth to another child, and he's kind of child is kind of a renegade. He's he or she shows up all over the place, and that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Speaking of that, you you've pitched on Shark Tank and work with major organizations. So talk about what that experience taught you about uh bringing an idea from concept to reality.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah, that was, you know, I I mean, I was pretty experienced when I applied for the show. So I wasn't like a novice, and the streamer had some traction, and I had licensed it for 15 years to a group in Hawaii. So I had some traction and I had a massive amount of experience giving presentations through my PhD work in academia and then in my invention work. So I was kind of a seasoned veteran when I got in that line of 400 people at a hotel in Waikiki Beach to pitch the idea to the producers. So I made the cut, I kept making the cut, then I pitched over in LA and I made that cut, and then I was, you know, then there, there it is. Mark Cuban and Mr. Wonderful are in front of me. I walk out on the stage, and there are a million cameras following me, and you know, I was pretty nervous, but I was more excited, and you know, it it's they kind of make you stay there and do a stare-down with all the sharks because they want your facial uh reaction for the TV show. That was kind of nerve-wracking because I was dying to start my pitch and I had to wait like a minute. But once I started going, I you know, I felt comfortable because again, I tell people this all the time no one knows your invention or business better than you, or at least no one should. So I felt very confident in what I was talking about. And you know, they really had trouble figuring it out. Mark Cuban got it right away, but some of them, and it was perfect the way they the way they didn't understand, because it I've given a talk so many times that I they gave me great lead-in questions. Like Damon John said, Oh, I don't see it. I go, I don't see the guy because I showed a before and after picture. Without the streamer, it's just a big picture of blue water. The guy's in the picture, but his head's a the size of a pin. But then he says, I can't see the guy. I go, that's the whole point. And then I showed the after picture, and there's that same pinhead with a little orange tail, and then they got it, and they really liked it. They thought it was great, they thought it would save lives, but they didn't want to invest. And this was shocking to me because I tried to offer such a low price, and I assumed there'd be a bidding war. Because who doesn't want to save lives? I thought they would jump at the opportunity to be heroic and save all these lives all over the world by getting this thing out to the masses. But they, I think I did too well and it backfired on me because they thought, we can't help you. You you're doing so well yourself, and we don't know the space. So, you know, so they all went out, which is really disappointing. And I, you know, afterwards they interviewed me for the show and I said, they said, Are you disappointed? And I go, Yeah, I'm disappointed. They'd rather invest in cupcakes and saving lives, which was really funny, but they were never going to use that on the air. And, you know, afterward, I realized my disappointment went away in a day or two because I realized it's better not to have their money. Because if you take people's money, then you have a partner, then you have a boss, then you have an advisor that's telling you things. For instance, they might tell me to move from Hawaii, move the factory from Hawaii. They might tell me to go to a trade show in Timbuktu every weekend. You know, I didn't want to run it the way I want to run it, especially as I've gotten older. I don't really want to live on an airplane. And it's just nicer to do it yours, my own pace, as I said before, about the tortoise and the hare. So it was a lot of pressure, it was a great experience, and you know, they've been replaying it on CNBC for eight years. I think they've shown it over a hundred times. So it's it's and I'm part of a group of people that have been on the show, and they call it being on the show, they call the gift that keeps giving, because they keep showing it. So it was like a third-party endorsement by neutral people, famous people like Mark Cuban and Mr. Wonderful. And it's great. I mean, they keep showing every time they show it, I get some sales and from Amazon, and I get really interesting requests from all over the world, and they show that. Show all over the world, too. It's on CNBC, is a cable network that's shown everywhere. So it's really it was quite an experience, but it was a lot of pressure. And you know, the thing that people don't realize about me is I really, really work hard. I seem casual and everything, but just like the tortoise and the hare, I'm kind of outworking everyone. I'm moving slow, maybe, but I'm really always working, always strategizing and always correcting my mistakes when I make them.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Where you've explored erupting volcanoes and gone miles beneath the ocean in Alvin. So talk about which one of those adventures uh had the most outlook on your life.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Well, clearly it was going down in the submersible two miles deep. It took two hours to get to the bottom. We were 200 miles away from Galapagos, got to the bottom, and we're four hours on the bottom, and then two to get back up, and it's tiny. The submersible is like a closet with three people in it. The pilot and two scientists, and you're looking out a small little glass window, and the pilot has a slightly larger one, and you're telling the pilot which lava samples to take. It was like going to the moon. I felt like an astronaut. And on the way down, there's glowing creatures, and it was like snowing, fluorescent green snow, but it was basically dead bioturbidity. It's dead creatures just snowing down to the bottom of the ocean. And then on the bottom, saw some really weird creatures. Like it looked like a monkey's skull with an eel's tail, and it was translucent. You could see right in it. And it was just phenomenal. And I'm a little claustrophobic, so I they test you before you go down the submersible by putting you in the submersible while it's still on the ship. And that was harder for me than actually going in it because it was hot on the ship and it's really cold down there, so it kind of made me uncomfortable, but I just kind of faked it like I was comfortable, but there was no way I was missing the opportunity. And I got two submersible dives, and it was definitely the top one experience of my life. I mean, a lot of active volcanoes I've been on in Costa Rica, Hawaii, Iceland, and that's incredible too. Italy, to see liquid earth pouring out, the ground rumbling, it's a close second through through third or fourth and fifth. But it just the difference is when you go down the submersible, only a few hundred or thousand people in the world have ever been down that deep. Even military submersibles or the military subs only go half a mile. Two miles down is crazy. Like I said, it takes two hours of free falling down to get to the bottom, which is crazy. And it's not tethered either, it's not attached to the ship. So at any point, if there's any problem, you're gonna die. You know, even a pinhole like we learned a few years ago when that uh commercial submersible guy imploded and killed all those people. Very dangerous, but very exciting. And I I would go down tomorrow if they asked me again. So I was just a young guy at the time. I was only 25, and still, like 40 40 years later, it's still the most exciting thing I've ever done.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Well, let's talk about Caregivers Survival Guide to tell us about that guy, what we can expect, and what do caregivers uh rarely hear, but often need to hear?

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Well, first of all, as a man and an inventor, scientist, I had a really different perspective because I tried to solve these problems and the the hoops I had to get over just in the little things, like like how do you figure out um taking her to the bathroom when you're in a store? She Cindy refused to go into a men's bathroom, and I understand they're much more less kept than the women's, but then I have to go into a women's public bathroom with my wife in a wheelchair and go in the stall, and the people next to me are don't know I'm there. I I would really be quiet because I didn't want to embarrass everyone. So just little tricks on how you keep your mental state, the physical. I I I invented a peddling apparatus. She found a pedaling machine that goes under your desk, and I hooked her up to a camping chair with belts and croc shoes and attached her to this pedaling machine, which pedaled her legs for eight hours a day, which helped with her atrophy, and it helped psychologically see her legs moving. And so I, you know, I in the book I break down all the different aspects of it: the physical, the emotional, the social, the financial. I mean, I estimated at one time I had we had to get help. In the 19 years, I estimated 183 helpers in my house in my face over the years, which was really probably the worst part about it. Every morning I'd have to wake up with some stranger in my house because I'd have to get a few hours to do my work or take care of the kids. So we'd hire someone for six or eight hours out of the 24 hours a day. And you know, that the other thing was financially, it's like a bankruptcy sentence. And we didn't go bankrupt, but we were close, and I kept having to refinance our townhouse. So, you know, that there, it's just that my perspective is different. It's so different that when we the New York publisher went to publish the book, they couldn't find a suitable picture of a man pushing a woman in a wheelchair because it's so used to being the other way around. So, you know, that was just the beginning of that. And I just try to help people and give them a guide to what they might be going through. And because I went through it and I kind of took notes and I took and I tried to figure out little tricks and inventions to make it more um livable, you know, more survivable. And and it's ironic that I invent survival gear and I had to help our families survive this illness. But, you know, the little things too, like kind of normalizing the wheelchair for our kids. So my son and daughter learned how to pop wheelies in the wheelchair because we just tried to normalize the whole situation, and we'd go out, we'd get invited to parties, and Cindy was very self-conscious about she didn't like being seen in a wheelchair, and she was beautiful all the way to the end. You couldn't even tell she was paralyzed until you saw me feeding her. So I would get to a party and put up, put her wheelchair in the corner and put her, carry her to the best chair in the house so she could be kind of the center of the attention. And another time we got invited to a club, which is kind of crazy. Who invites a couple in a wheelchair to go out clubbing? So we got there and everyone starts dancing. And of course, I put the wheelchair to the side and I put her in a booth, and she just said, You want to make out? I go, sure. So we started kissing because she said, Isn't that what everyone's here for anyway? So you just kind of had to keep your humor. There was a lot of humor, you know, as best you could in the heaviness of it, is to focus on the lightness of it if you can. So, you know, it was quite a journey, and I just tried to help people. You know, I think I'm a frustrated professor at heart. So, you know, I didn't get to teach. I taught, you know, I do a lot of outreach to kids. I teach them about volcanoes, inventing, entrepreneurship, and also caregiving. I've I've spoken to nurses and and people with in caregiving situations. I think I love the process of helping people through knowledge, you know, and it and if I because I had great people in my life teach me things, starting with my parents and friends and family. And I like to learn. You know, I'm a lifelong learner. And when I have learned something, I like to share it with people, especially if it can help them.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Yeah, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Okay, well, in addition to that book, I wrote Hardcore Inventing about inventing and um hardcore health. The other thing about being a caregiver is I could not afford to get sick. And of course, I didn't want to die surfing big waves. So I really became a health freak. And even at my tender age of 67 now, I'm in really good shape. I still can paddle two miles a day and so forth. And some of my other inventions I'm working on now, my big invention that I'm hoping to optimize and perfect is a portable desalinator that converts salt water into drinking water. The big wars in the future are going to be fought over water, fresh water. You know, oil is nice to have, but you can live without oil. You can't live without water. So I invented a very simple system using a Gore-Tex lens, which and it's like a double Ziploc bag. The inner bag is black with a Gore-Tex filter in it. So the water evaporates in the sun, and only the water vapor goes through the filter, the vorte-x filter, and it goes into the out inside of the outer bag, and then you can drink it. The problem is it doesn't make enough water yet. So I'm trying to perfect that. The military wants a pint a day, and I can make a half a cup a day. So I'm I'm kind of far away still, but I'm trying to get there. And I'm still writing and I'm doing the I'm doing a lot of podcasts. I'm just trying to share my knowledge. I I wrote a lot about um growing up in Florida and being a pool boy, and I put that out on Facebook just for free, some of these crazy stories. I grew up with some, you know, it was kind of like wonder years on steroids back then. And it was just a crazy, crazy upbringing. It was really, really great. I had a great childhood. I was really blessed in that. And again, trying to share what I've learned and just kind of get it off my chest. I learned Cindy was a social worker counselor, and she taught me early on when I met her in college that you gotta not let things fester inside you. You gotta let it out. And I've been letting stuff out ever since. You know, we if we have something that I want to argue with her, I didn't let it stay inside me and fester and become a big deal. Right then, I would say, this bothers me. Why can't you do this? Or should I do this differently, or whatever it is? We'll call it a discussion, not an argument. But that really helped me. And and the same, I feel like creativity, creatively, I want to get everything out of me. I want to, when I die, I want to not have any regrets that I didn't try the things I wanted to try and get the things that I think about out of me. And and and it's just rewarding. It's rewarding. And once in a while, someone will say, Hey, I like that, and whether it's a reading or my invention or saved my life, and it's gratifying. But I really just like doing it anyway. Even if no one was watching, I think I would invent and write books and things.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Well, so people can keep up with everything that you're up to, they'll add your contact info. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Uh, just go to Rob Yonover, R-O-B-Y-O-N-O-B-E-R on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. It's all under my name. My name's unique, so you can find it.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.