CHRISTOPHER
HOFFMANN
AWARD-WINNING INVENTOR | FOUNDER | SPEAKER | AUTHOR
ABOUT
Is your MVP stalled at 80%?
Is your unstoppable vision coasting to a stop?
I've picked the lock on my own golden handcuffs multiple times, so I know exactly how stuck it can feel from the inside — as a CEO or CTO looking out over a team who just can't seem to get across the finish line.
But from the outside looking in, my confident, seasoned — and sometimes disruptive — innovation process has redirected thousands of creative and business trajectories from dead ends to the open road.
I specialize in helping you make the technical and emotional decisions few have the confidence AND the guts to make.
I've appeared on national television as an innovator, been the subject of multiple documentaries, and featured on technology shows and podcasts. I've stood on the TEDx stage predicting the future of urban transportation, and products I've launched have earned over 24 million YouTube views.
I don't bill by the hour — I invest in alignment and in the willingness to grow. Because it's not about the goal. . . it's about the person you need to become to get there.
Let me be your guide. Let me help you get stronger.
Book one honest conversation to start down the road to your new success...
History
“The Product is the Doorway into the Experience”
My path to understanding how to recreate emotion, in a product or artistic performance, started as I went kicking and screaming out of high-school and the claustrophobic monotony of formal education. Carrying a few drawings from drafting class, and the gift of growing up with access to my dad’s machine-shop, I earned my keep through a 15-year career as a mechanical engineer in the Auto Industry. To counter the white-collar sound of Musak during the day, I taught myself to play bass guitar and joined a punk rock band, playing night-clubs in Detroit.
After four years thriving in NYC in the late 80s, working in music studios as an audio engineer, taking voice lessons, acting improv, scoring the soundtrack and acting in a short film winning the CINE Golden Eagle award, I consolidated all those life lessons and returned to my mechanical engineering roots in Detroit. There, I not only designed high tech manufacturing systems but the more sophisticated products they produced.
Fully adopting the life of an inventor, I dove deep into the psychology of product design. One of my favorite stories, how Malcolm Sayer, the designer of the Jaguar XK-E must have embodied the “feeling” of what he wanted the XK-E to illicit and then proceeded to push the body-styling clay around until it recreated that feeling.
As a solo inventor or team leader on the “sleeves-up” frontlines of cutting-edge innovation, I’ve built global supplier relations, communicated with advanced software teams, circuit board layout, mold tooling, pilot lines and every aspect of product engineering. All while continually assuring what I’m building will resonate in the market.
Today, I offer my highly tuned intuition and manufacturing skill to clients who are starving for the same inspiration, to bring my un-stuck, “looking out over a Mosh-pit” view on life, helping others to see what’s already there, or to shine a light on something they missed.
My Services
I offer design inspiration to teams and personal guidance to others on their journey to becoming a highly effective, skillful, unstuck force of nature. On stage as a motivational speaker, through my training as an improv actor, I’ve refined the skill of taking the audience on an emotional roller-coaster and then dropping down into a valley of honesty.
My classes, talks, and seminars are for those well on their way to mastering their craft.
COMPANIES
Past
Projects
Having built three companies of my own, across multiple industries, I offer design and manufacturing innovation from start-ups to fortune 100 companies.
Explore my past projects to see how leveraging emerging technologies has strengthened brand loyalty and enhanced customer experience.
RYNO MOTORS
COSTUME LIGHTING
COLORFLY
Accomplishments In Numbers
80,000
Hours on the Job
1000s
Creative Projects
100,000
Lessons Learned
25M
YouTube Views
CHRISTOPHER’S BOOK
HEART in GEAR isn’t just a men’s self-help book, it’s a visceral descent into the psyche of Chris Hoffmann as he claws his way through his start-up adventures as founder of RYNO Motors. Hoffmann boldly invites his readers to bear witness to his trials of the heart as he embarked on a journey to use his heroic explorations as his most liberating act of rebellion. Across these personal narratives and insights into how men can’t stand up in a culture until they know what they are standing up in, we follow Chris as he evolves from a rigid, up-in-his-head engineer into an embodied, awakened man and leader.
From his dogged determination to build a global business as inventor of one of the world’s first single-wheel, electric motorcycles, to lessons learned trying to navigate single life after a 20-year marriage, these stories illuminate what it means to immerse oneself in tough challenges, impactful relationships, and true surrender.
