Hello everybody. Welcome to Mystical Science. I’m your host Karen Elkins on the SuperPower Up! network. And for many years I’ve danced in the arena of breakthrough energies, and this is where I met my guest today, Christian Weber.
Today we’re discussing insights, innovations, and inspirations. And Christian has had his own inspired breakthrough, and from his hobbies to his passion turned business. But from a challenge to an obstacle also turned into being his gift. So, before I tell you what that invention is, what I will tease you with is it deals with everything from burners, people who go to burning man to firefighters. And he got his inspiration and answers to a question in a dream.
So, let me introduce Christian to you. He’s a man I know and admire. He’s a man of passion and conviction and compassion, besides his love for life. Mr. Christian Weber, over the past 30 years of experience and innovation, he’s an innovative entrepreneur covering a wide range of markets, among them, oil and gas, development and reworking, import exports, logistics, manufacturing, mining, software and internet systems. He has founded many … He has founded and funded many startups and he pushes the envelope from concepts technology to marketing. So, the title of the show today is innovation and inspiration. And with that Christian, what did you invent that was so awesome?
Thank you, Karen. That was quite an introduction. Hi everybody. Excited to be here. I invented a shelter called the ShiftPod, and it’s a high speed shelter. It’s made of a 12 layer patented composite fabric that reflects the heat of the sun, keeps your body heat in at night. And we’re really excited about it and we’ve been having a very good time over the past few years.
But you did something … What was your form? Your point of inspiration because you were having a lot of fun and you’re not somebody who doesn’t like to think. I happen to know Christian. So, Christian’s mind is a very busy mind and it’s a very inspired mine.
Yeah, it’s definitely a … I’m a workaholic, admitted workaholic. What I try and do is find work that is fun, so that working all the time is not detrimental.
No, but you’re a burner. So, where did this start from? It started from burning man.
Yeah, 1992 I went out to the desert kind of by mistake and found myself in the middle of this thing called burning man, and literally had a minivan and some peanut butter and jelly, and really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Ended up sleeping in the van and years after graduated in tents and you get a little older, make a little more money, you get into big RVs and think that’s the pinnacle of shelter out in the desert. It left a lot lacking. Four feet off the ground, the RVs wiggle, you’re disconnected from all your friends and it’s a lot of stuff to haul out to the desert, and I longed for having my feet on the ground and being connected again, and it made a big difference.
But you had something that enticed you. You thought that was … What is that? A Hexayurt?
Yeah. Hexayurt is an interesting shelter, a designed by a gentleman by the name of Vinay Gupta who studied under Bucky fuller. And it was designed as an emergency shelter for large disasters. And the idea was to take over Home Depots in an emergency and utilize them to build these foam insulation board shelters with tape and foam boards. And it’s an incredible design, very strong and durable. At the time it was a very innovative product and a great solution to a mass disasters.
But you had a dream, and because you thought … It took you three days to … See, I know the story. So, it took you … It would take three days to set that up. So, in some ways, for burning man, it was incredibly inefficient and you thought it had to be a better way.
Well, yeah, like most products, there’s always a better way to do it. That’s why we continue to innovate. As a human species, we innovate every day, and all of these different products get improved and there’s always a better mouse trap, right? So I was in … I was in my friend’s Hexayurt, Justin, and he didn’t … He’s like me, he doesn’t do anything normal. He’s got Persian rugs and tapestries and two air conditioning zones and couches and it was quite elegant. And so we’re sitting there and I’m thinking, “Wow, this is way better than an RV. I’m doing this next year.” Justin said, “all right, well it’s three days to build it, day to set it up $200 in tape every year, transportation, truck storage on and on and on.” I thought, “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m running a camp of 300 people. There’s no way I have time to take a week to set up my own place.”
And so, I quickly forgot about it until about four months later. I woke up in the middle of the night about three in the morning and couldn’t get the idea out of my head. There had to be a better way to fold it or tape it or do something to make it smaller and easier. And so I got the origami books out and I started folding paper and kind of figuring out some basic designs and got online, found some hardware, got in touch with a factory that could make the product and sent them sketches and designs and went round and round for about a month with them, figuring out all the details.
Then I took delivery of a sample, I took some photos of it, and set it up on video, and then posted that to my burning man list, all the people that the camped with us at burning man. At that time, the list is about 600 deep and a great response. I basically said the first 30 people that send me $800 will get one of these space pods and we’ll have space camp. And that was really the extent of the vision. And one thing led to another and one of our camp folks, Eddie posted it on Facebook and before I could say no, we had 300 people send me cash into the PayPal. And I thought, “Uh-oh.”
You’re in business.
Didn’t mean to do that. So I got on an airplane and, and basically spent as much time as it took to get it done. And we took delivery of the first 300 units during build week of burning man. I literally had to leave the desert and drive to San Francisco, rent two U-haul trucks, hand unload a container and load them all into the U-hauls and drive them back out to the desert and deliver them to the people that bought them. Because I mean, coming out to the desert, failure’s not an option. You can’t leave three to 600 people that are camping out in these units without a shelter. Right?
So, we literally were by the skin of our teeth, thanks to US customs and our manufacturers. We got them there just in time, and we delivered, and we delivered into really bad weather, it was 30 to 50 knots sustained winds. It was horrible. And we didn’t kill anybody and we didn’t have any catastrophic failures. So in December I turned it into a company, and we’ve been very pleasantly surprised. People love it, love the product. We’re now working with SAR teams and fire departments and Sheriff’s office dive teams and DHS and FEMA and Cal OES firefighters. It’s really been amazing.
We’re going to take a short break here, but before we do, Christian how can they find ShiftPod?
Well, we’re actually online, and we sell direct to consumer to keep the costs down. And you can find us at shiftpod.com.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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