Bret is a lovely and amazing person, but don’t sell yourself short. I guarantee you if you come up with a topic or problem to work on, and devote 10+ years to full time reading/tinkering/inventing/implementing in the field, allowing yourself to be creative, sweating the tiny details, and worrying more about making your inventions wonderful than profitable, you will be able to amaze yourself and all of the rest of us with what you make.