Pivotal People
Join us in conversations with inspiring people doing amazing things. Their insights and experiences help motivate all of us to find our purpose that fits with our abilities, gifts and life situation. Get a "behind the scenes" look at successful people making a difference in the world and benefit from their advice for the rest of us. Our guests include authors, artists, leaders, coaches, pastors, business people and speakers.
Pivotal People
Kurt Avery--Sawyer Think: How a Small Company Disrupts Markets and Changes the World
Kurt Avery, author of the book "Sawyer Think: How a Small Company Disrupts Markets and Changes the World" and Founder and CEO of Sawyer Products, shares his extraordinary journey from the humble beginnings of his Sawyer Products to their monumental impact on the world. His bold entrepreneurial strategies, faith, perseverance, and a mantra of continuous improvement have driven Sawyer Products to revolutionize clean water access globally, beginning with a critical role during the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Kurt discusses the role of technology and data analysis in making these solutions scalable and the importance of philanthropy in supporting community outreach initiatives. With practical insights from his book "Sawyer Think" and the company's commitment to innovation, Kurt Avery illustrates how Sawyer Products continues to push boundaries, proving that small beginnings can indeed lead to extraordinary change.
Learn more and connect with Kurt at https://www.sawyer.com/
Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential
Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
Follow us on Instagram @stephanie_nelson_cm
Follow us on Facebook at CouponMom
I would like to welcome Kurt Avery to the Pivotal People podcast. Kurt is the founder and CEO of Sawyer Products and I'll read you quickly his bio, but then I'm going to tell you the thumbnail of who he really is. Since 2008, sawyer Products has impacted 28 million people by providing access to clean drinking water. With 140 charitable partners, sawyer participates in relief efforts for nearly every major natural disaster, numerous war zones and military conflicts, distributing transformational solutions to families, schools and orphanages in over 80 countries. Sawyer Products makes a number of products, originally for camping and hiking. Their major product we're talking about today is their Sawyer water filters, and I know that's not the correct brand name, but Kurt has written a wonderful book called Sawyer.
Speaker 1:Think how a small company disrupts markets and changes the world, but, importantly, over 25 tips to help you do the same. So I'm going to tell you Kurt is an incredibly successful business person and now incredibly generous philanthropist, and if anyone is hearing this is saying well, you know, of course he can do it. He owns a company that's super successful and he's making plenty of money and he can give to charity. Oh no, that is not how it started, and I hope this story will encourage so many people to say, hey, what can God do with the little thing that I know how to do? It certainly encouraged me. So, kurt, thank you so much for joining us. I can't wait to really talk about your amazing story.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for letting me be on.
Speaker 1:So I'm just going to do thumbnail and then we're going to get into details, because I love a good business story and I love a good generosity story and this is both of those combined. So what Kurt's book does I mean he's run a business for 40 years he gives us it's a business book really practical strategies If you're manufacturing a product or if you have a service. His various techniques for determining profitability and for getting retail shelf space and developing relationships with customers and partners. And he took a long-term view on this. He actually the first 25 years of his business. He only turned a profit for two years. All right, they made money, but he put it back into research and development technology, which is why Sawyer Products makes the very best water filter available on the market.
Speaker 1:We're going to have to talk about that Haiti president story because that was so fabulous. So as you listen to this, you know Kurt got into. It was starting in 84. Okay, so what is that? 40 years ago, he started out a company on his own that made insect repellents and sunblock targeted towards campers and hikers. In 1988, he moved his family to Florida because he was partnering with a manufacturer there who was doing private label for him. So he took a risk. He took his whole family to Florida. Two years later, the Gulf War happened the first one, I think it's Desert Shield. Two years later, the Gulf War happened the first one, I think it's Desert Shield and he bid on a military contract to get the contract for sunscreen and I thought it was funny. At the time he was producing about 10,000 bottles a week and the contract required 230,000 bottles a week. And he went ahead and applied for the contract. He got it. A friend of his loaned him a whole bunch of money to ramp up production and he ended up selling 3.2 million bottles of product. So that was one of the years he made a profit. That's a good thing. He turned around and he bought that little company in Florida that manufactured the product. So next then he got into water filters in 2005. So you're talking about 21 years after you started your company. You produced what I consider a world changing product, still targeted to campers and hikers.
Speaker 1:2010,. Here's the turning point and we're going to talk about that. In 2010, the earthquake in Haiti happened, and so now you have all of those people who have no access to clean water, and Compassion International asked him to send 75,000 water filters to Haiti, and they did 25,000 water filters to Haiti, and they did. And he went to Haiti along with other manufacturers of other water treatment products so different kinds of filters and different kinds of, you know, chlorine treatment products and all of these vendors, including Kurt, were in a circle in the conference room and the president of Haiti came in and went around and spoke to each vendor and he asked them the question Now I'm curious, you're here in Haiti.
Speaker 1:Obviously everyone had to purify water. He asked these vendors what product are you using for your own personal use? And every single one said Kurt's product. And I'm going to stop right there, because I think your company motto was always good enough is not good enough. So they continue to improve and listen to customers and improve their product until they got to the point, at a natural disaster, that all of those people would use Kurt's product instead of their own. So I say that because now everyone knows you have the very best product in the market. Based on that, now let's get into the story. Thank you for indulging me on your timeline, but I am just so amazed by this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was quite an experience actually.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to ask you, let's talk about that first military contract and also Kurt. Throughout the whole book his faith in God is so clear. He gives us all kinds of examples of things that are really you could say they're coincidences, but they're just too much of coincidences to really be. This is God. And so people say you know, if God? Some people say, if God wants me to do that, he'll open the door. Well, I'm going to say that Kurt was pretty good at either knocking on doors or walking through doors, but it was a partnership between, I think, god's amazing miracles and your stick-to-itiveness. So that first contract, the military contract, what were you thinking?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not normal. You'll figure that out pretty soon. First of all, I have a really big God. I mean, look at creation and everything. So I don't box him in. And if you let God be as big as he is, he'll use you as much as he wants to. I mean, it's just you got to have the skill he can use anybody. We're built for bigger things, so we don't hold back.
Speaker 2:So we had just gotten in the sunscreen business like a month, month and a half earlier when the contract came out, and so you know, like you said, we were making $2,000 a day and $10,000 a week and hand filling them, pumping them by hand, we had to go to $200,000. So of course I said, yeah, we'll do that. The other sad part of it was we penciled and did our, sharpened it and said, okay, we're going to bid 69 cents. The next lowest bid was $1.99. And we said, okay, what are we missing here? I mean we're going to get killed if we're wrong, but we were confident in our numbers and we did hit it and we actually made it for $0.35 or something like that.
Speaker 1:You weren't greedy. I think, that's a point I took away from it, Kurt you were not greedy.
Speaker 2:No, no. Well, our philosophy at the time we do a lot with the military. If they're ducking bullets, we don't need to make money off of that. So I didn't find out until later that Saudi Arabia actually paid for all those. So maybe I could have put a little more in there, but we weren't going to stiff the soldiers. So then we start, we're sending it down there and then we find out there's a clause in the contract that says you must be a commercial product, you have to be on the market. Well, we were in business for like a month, month and a half. I'd made two cases. One case went to California, the other case went to Broadway Hardware in McAllen, texas. Turns out the inspector was in McAllen, texas. He drives down the road a mile, goes into Broadway Hardware, sees our case on the shelf and says you're a commercial brand, you get the contract. We'd already been making product and the clause was if you're not commercial, they have the right to buy it and you pay the difference. So now tell me that was an accident, right?
Speaker 1:That story and now just to give listeners perspective you had no idea this is a national contract. You had no idea where that inspector lived. You had no idea where his business was located. You only had your product in two stores and he happened in McAllen, texas. That's not like New York City. He happened to walk into one of two stores where you had product Unbelievable.
Speaker 2:Unbelievable, yeah, and there's quite a few more stories like that along the way. So you know God's had his hand on this thing for a long time, so it's a God thing, not just us.
Speaker 1:You know, initially when you started in 84, moved to Florida in 88. You got that first contract in 1990. So you're at six years Now out of 40, that doesn't sound like too much, but for most people when you're starting a business we don't give it six years. And perhaps you were, you know, breaking even, I don't know. But you were faithful, okay, and that one product led to the next product led to water filter. So when I saw this, you started making your water filter type of water filter in 2005. So that's 21 years in Right, and you were making two.
Speaker 1:I love Kurt has all of these business techniques. One is market disruption. I so love market disruption. Let's talk about that. So in 2005, you come out with your first couple of filters. Price points are like I'm going to round up okay, $90 and $30.
Speaker 1:And then in 2007, because you listen to consumers when you're hiking, these are back country hikers, these are people who need to filter the water. I'm from Colorado. We learned growing up you never drink the water out of the stream and when I was reading this book I was so fascinated by it. I'm sharing it with my husband and he has been a backcountry hiker and he's like oh yeah, that's the filter we used. I mean, it's the filter people trust. So when you're hiking, their packs have to be as light as possible.
Speaker 1:And you said your first filter was something like you know, 3.7 ounces or something like that. That's not much right, well, to a hiker it is. In 2007, you were getting feedback from social media influencers that their followers wished it was lighter and because you had R&D, you worked and worked on that and cut it down to what is at 1.4 ounces. That's a big difference and that was your market disruption. You called it the mini, you priced it for less, you priced it at $19.99, and it changed the market. Now I want to ask about this, just for perspective in 2001, there were only about 80,000 water filters sold a year in this category to campers and hikers, and now it's over a million. So 80,000 a year to over a million. What happened, kurt? Did you get more hikers or did they just stop drinking the dirty water? What were they doing before?
Speaker 2:Well, the other filters on the market were heavy and we brought a technology that came from kidney dialysis, so it was very light and we're at 0.1 micron absolute, which meant you cannot get sick, and we're the only ones that make a filter that you cannot get biologically sick with anything that goes through it. Other ones will do fairly well, but they can't get to that level where you got everything that biological. And so it was light. It was a new technology hollow fiber membranes. Other people were using ceramics or paper matrix or whatever, so it was a new technology and it just hit.
Speaker 2:I mean, why would you use a heavy thing that doesn't get everything when you got this two ounce thing that gets it all and they never wear out? See, that was the trick is you just keep cleaning them so you don't have to ever replace it. It's good, for we got filters now that have been working every day in homes for 15 years in Honduras. So it's a game changer technology wise. Now you can't really get anything that's not hollow fiber membrane. We have a lot of knockoffs, but nothing at our level. But everything's this technology now.
Speaker 1:Well, ok. So here's how I saw that piece of the story. You were in a position to make planned obsolescence. You could have created a filter. These hikers love your filter. They love it. It's 1.4 ounces, it works. And, by the way, when he talks about the quality of it, they don't test randomly, they test every single filter three times. Okay, I mean, that's amazing. Anyone in manufacturing. You make 10,000 units. You test a few. No, you guys test every single one three times.
Speaker 1:So here you could have said, hey, these hikers, they're spending so much on their tents and the backpacks and everything they can afford. You will just make it that at last one year. But you didn't do that. Because I get so excited about this. This is where I see God. It put you in a position. You didn't see this in 2000,.
Speaker 1:I think it was 2010 when you first became involved in hey, this wonderful filter that works for hikers and could actually save lives in countries where they have no clean water, which is perhaps one of the biggest problems in the world. And had you made it that it only lasted one year, it wouldn't be sustainable for people who you can't replace it every year. So what I get excited about, kurt, is that you demonstrated throughout your story that you were not greedy. You were not greedy. You were financially successful, but you were not greedy. You listened to your customers. Greedy, you were financially successful, but you were not greedy. You listened to your customers. You priced it at points that made sense for the customer. You banked on well, okay, I'll just have to sell more volume. That's how I'm going to make up my margin, which is why your business skills are so interesting.
Speaker 2:One of the lessons in the book is incremental variable pricing. So we price it to where we were going to be, not where we were, knowing that we'd get the volume. But the other reason I wasn't raised that way if I got a product that doesn't need to be obsolescence, I can't make it obsolete. I just can't do that. But think about when you go into a village and you have a product that can get everything versus a product that can't Do you go into a village and say, listen, 90% of you are going to be okay, the other 10, you're still going to get sick. I mean, you can't do that. So we have to be at the standard where we get everything, so nobody is sick when they use our filters.
Speaker 1:Okay. So now let's really get into the whole piece of your efforts to purify water for people in need. So you got to the point with when that mini exploded. You know when, in 2007, when that thing just went crazy, you've got to be bringing in the money. Then 2010, compassion International, just three years later. You know, just three years later, out of all of your history, what if Compassion International had come to you 15 years earlier, you wouldn't have had the same solution. So there, out of 40 years, you got a three-year gap between your wonderful new improvement and when Haiti needed you, and that must have really opened your eyes. How did you feel when you saw what your filter was doing in situations like that?
Speaker 2:Obviously it blows you away. I mean, I'm just a country boy, so it's kind of my wife and I. We pinch ourselves as to what's going on now. But we had to develop the delivery system because they needed buckets and things, whereas the hikers weren't bringing buckets with them. And you'll see now. We've now evolved to our latest product, which is putting it on a tap. You can just stick this on a faucet anywhere in the world and the water's safe. And we are now to the point where we can give somebody 10 years of clean water for 10 cents, just 10 cents. That's all it takes to give somebody 10 years of water. Wow. So we had to evolve the delivery system, not the technology. We had the technology, but we had to change the way people used it and how they could get there. Now it's as simple as screwing on a bottle and drink. That's the only way it's used on the Appalachian Trails is. They just take the filter and they put it on a smart water bottle and they just drink. They don't bring anything else with them.
Speaker 1:So for people who haven't read the whole book, you have a couple of your water filter. Like Chris Beth of the Bucket Ministry has been on the podcast and his whole ministry is really taking your filter, which he discovered at REI when he started his initiative to third world countries to purify water, and it's literally a five-gallon bucket with your filter attached, and his ministry works with local partners, so perhaps the local church in a village and the indigenous people there are the ones training the families on how to use these filters, and your one filter with the five-gallon bucket could actually impact three households, so you don't even necessarily need one per household and if people are trained on how to clean it, it can last forever, you said.
Speaker 2:It technically can. Yeah, another model that Chris has won, another one is Water for Women. They do one they call it Water Woman and she does three other houses. So one filter does four houses.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And they've been using it, and those we have filters that are still in use after 15 years that system, so you can impact quite a few people with this.
Speaker 1:How many water filters, would you say, have been distributed to people outside of camping and hiking, but people who need clean water? How many have been distributed?
Speaker 2:Many million, many million. Like I said, we're at the 28 million mark. But it's also disasters, because people like Samaritan's Purse keep two plane loads ready at all times, because even on day two everybody has to have water. Helene Red Cross got in and joined us. We sent filters up. They sent filters up. We had 100,000 filters in North Carolina and Tennessee to serve the people with Hurricane Helene because they didn't have any water. We had hikers carrying. Our hiker community got together and were carrying filters up to places vehicles couldn't get to. Wow, so any natural disaster, we're there and, like with a hurricane, it's easy. They actually go in before, if you remember, when Puerto Rico had the two hurricanes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you see the picture of all the water bottles stuck on the tarmac. It's because we got there first. There was a point where probably half of the Puerto Ricans were drinking out of our filters before the rescue showed up, because you can take one duffel bag and bring in enough for 200,000 people.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, so could you give us some stats on how many people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water?
Speaker 2:The number everybody uses is 800 million.
Speaker 1:And what percentage is that? Is that like a quarter?
Speaker 2:Well, a little less than 10%. A little more than 10% because there's 7 billion, maybe 8 billion now, so it's pretty close to 10%.
Speaker 1:What I found interesting in your book was how you really described the ripple effect of that. So, for example, not only the people who don't have access to clean water. It causes diarrhea, productivity, mist, dehydration. People don't think clearly when they're dehydrated. So if you talk about emotional and mental and those kinds of stresses, so many things can be solved by having clean water to drink.
Speaker 2:Well, even the project that, Chris, just you mentioned, chris Beth the bucket ministry completed in Kibera. Violence has gone away. I mean you can walk down the streets now because it's called water scarcity and water security, since that's not become an issue, these gangs are not going after each other. Everybody's got all the water they want, so it's safe to walk now. It's just. Even the president of Kenya said he can't believe the difference in the safety because the water showed up. We also typically save the family anywhere from 10 to 20% of their annual income because they don't have to buy water. They don't have to buy medicine. They're closing medical clinics in Kabir because there's not enough customers anymore. So you talk about green products. We've eliminated so much fossil fuel consumption because you don't have to boil the water in very efficient ways. So there's so many benefits. It's mind-boggling, the whole family relationship. People start businesses. They can cook with clean water now, so they can sell products that they couldn't before. So it's quite a game changer.
Speaker 1:The other thing I thought was interesting about this water filter solution was you know that in these villages people will dig a well? Well, that doesn't necessarily mean it's clean water.
Speaker 2:Correct. Most of the wells break down anyway. So if there's surface water we can drink it. But if you don't have surface water, a lot of times they'd build a deep well. A deep well could get to clean water, but it's very complicated and the year later 80% of them aren't working. So then you can build a shallow well if you have to, but either way, shallow or long, the water gets contaminated once it leaves the tap from the well. You got to bring it home, you got to take care of it. So you still need a filter. But we can at least get them to where they only need to go shallow and not deep, much less complicated well that they might be able to sustain.
Speaker 1:So you can see why I'm so excited about this solution. Of course, any reader is going to think what I thought was all right, Kurt, we have the solution to the world's water problem, and it's a problem Not just you know, not just water, but violence and all kinds of other negative things that come from water scarcity. Why don't we have this filter everywhere? It's so inexpensive it's 10 cents per person for 10 years. Stick around, Stick around. That's why I said I think we're at the beginning of the story.
Speaker 2:You watch us over the next two years. We got a few things cooking that we can scale up. We can do a whole country in less than a year and then nobody's sick. They got 15% GDP increase. All that kind of stuff we're negotiating with countries. Now it's just who's going to pay for it. So I've got calls even last week, this week. Stick around, it's about to blow up.
Speaker 1:Well, what I loved in your story is that, okay, as you've made money, you could easily, you know, buy a few houses, go on a bunch of nice vacations, and I hope you do some of that. But you are so called by God. It's so beautiful. There's no U-Hauls in heaven. The Egyptian kings used to bury themselves, or they used to bury them with chariots, with all their possessions, and guess what? They all just disintegrated. Wouldn't it be more fun to? If you have some margin and most people do have a little margin when you talk about, you know, 10 cents per person for 10 years can you make an impact? Wouldn't it be wonderful to see your money at work before you die? And in your case, you've just multiplied it and multiplied it and multiplied it. You've started a foundation, the Sawyer Foundation, which supports some really neat ministries, and one I'd love to talk about, aroma, with the director Aaron the sports ministry, if you could share that.
Speaker 2:We have two. That's at Messiah University. We also have what's called the SEED program at Hope College Same thing. So what we do is my daughter was a basketball player and so they were going on a trip and I said, well, why don't you go down and do sports ministries? Don't go down and build houses, you're taking jobs away. Go down there and roll out the ball and they will come, and sure they did come. So you know, then they're going to think, well, you've got these athletes who are great, they're good, you know, athletic people Use their talents in sports as the ministry, not construction and then we built into it.
Speaker 2:They'd spend a half a day or whatever distributing filters, because that impacted and the whole idea was you know, the kids loved it and we try, and actually we try and have the schools go back to back, so we're not just show up once a year.
Speaker 2:But you know, either you want to be a, you figure out you want to be a missionary, or you want to do a short terms, or you want to stay home and pray and give money, but what is figure out, how you're going to put missions into your life as a Christian? And it's exploded. So each school goes on four trips a year, 15 athletes and it's a really neat part of it is it's never one sport because the NCAA doesn't allow that. So we've now mixed the sports so they've become more friends and they go to each other's games now and both ADs athletic directors, have said we used to have 22 teams, now we have one department because they're all just mingled together and we have a lot of people have become full-time missionaries out of that. So that's been a great, great program for them, long lasting impact on both there and here.
Speaker 1:And here. So I'm sitting here thinking, if you have a college student at that young age, they're experiencing and seeing what they're seeing when they're going overseas and they're helping people, that is, you can't even measure the life-changing impact of that.
Speaker 2:No, we also send nursing students from various schools, and we do engineers from various schools, so it's more than just that.
Speaker 1:So a key piece, what I'm hearing is, as you involve these organizations, it's people in ministry doing something really practical, so they're sharing their faith while they're training the families on how to use water filters.
Speaker 2:One of the other parts of the book. You mentioned that trying to encourage business people to do the same thing. I have parts in there where we teach you how you can do things tax-free. So our whole thing is I use things that are tax deductible and so I can give more instead of giving. You know, I always say if I made cupcakes we'd have to sell the cupcakes, make the profits, settle up with the IRS and then we could give away something. But because we have the very thing that people need and I own the company 100%, I don't have to make a profit. Nobody tells me I have to make a profit so I can lose money before it gets to the profit line. And there's techniques which you know. If you're a plumber, if you're a restaurant or whatever, you can do some of these same techniques to magnify your gift giving tax free.
Speaker 1:Which is all perfectly legal, and actually those laws are put in place to encourage people to be more generous.
Speaker 2:Give unto Caesar. What is Caesar? I'm not going to mess with the IRS.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. You went on to start the Sawyer Foundation and originally Sawyer Products was the only donor. But other people like me. I look at this and say I can't invent a product that I can distribute to millions of people. But this guy's got some really great momentum and so now you have outside donors momentum, and so now you have outside donors. And I want to emphasize this that anyone who donates to the Sawyer Foundation, 100% of your donation goes to clean water efforts. Nothing goes to administration because Kurt's company covers the cost of administration. I think that's important, kurt.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't really know where their money goes when they donate it, but you guarantee that it all goes to that 10 cents per person for 10 years piece of what the foundation does is is take sponsors, companies that take people, veterans, outdoors for an outdoor experience, you know, and that kind of thing. But it's mostly the water and and, like I said, even anything from the book, any proceeds that we get from the book, are all going to go to the foundation for water projects. We're, we're fine, I, I, you know I, I'm an old country boy we're fine, we got the house paid for he's extremely humble.
Speaker 1:I'm not'm an old country boy, we're fine, we got the house paid for. He's extremely humble. I'm not sure that old country boy implies you know abilities, but it was such a combination of your really good business skills which seems to me like common sense as you describe them on all these concepts. Anyone who likes business and I love it you have to read this book, because his concepts are so easy to understand. He has little formulas, they're just common sense, but they're not really easily understood. So he makes it easy and you're like okay, I could do the math here, I can figure this out. Combine that with his humility and not being greedy.
Speaker 1:When you talk about humility in business, I think one of the most important things you demonstrated in your business was how you listened to customers and you made some pretty big and expensive changes based on what customers said, instead of being defensive, and then, as a result, it exploded in the private sector, in his commercial sector. It exploded, and then I keep saying this. Then, three years later, haiti happens and Compassion International comes to you and you are ready. You're ready.
Speaker 1:And I don't know that you would have been ready if you had been satisfied with you know, the $90 price point, but by the time they came you're down to $20. And I bet you know, I bet you've done it for a lot less than that. So one of the stories you said that I so loved was your wife and talking about the success you two have experienced together, and she said it's like the story of loaves and fishes. You know, you just like the little boy with his lunch, you just bring what little you have to God and just stand by and wait to see how he multiplies it. And I love that analogy. That is something all of us should really embrace and imagine.
Speaker 2:Well, that was the first big gift he gave me was her. I mean, she's a rock, she's awesome. So we pinch ourselves where we are now and what God's done with this thing and what he's about to do. We're about to go to another whole level.
Speaker 1:Well, talk about that, because you did talk in your book about throughout your whole experience. You have relied so much on research and data and data analysis and to me it seems simple why can't you just take this product and get it to everyone in the world who needs it? Well, you're methodical, you've demonstrated that. So you are doing some studies right now to gather data, to give governments probably the data they need to make this kind of a big decision. Can you talk to us about that?
Speaker 2:the data they need to make this kind of a big decision. Can you talk to us about that? Yeah, again, we're not just a filter anymore. So internationally, each filter now comes with a unique QR code, so every filter has its own code. So now and then, if you hit the code, you can do several things with it. We have GIS tracking, so if you want to measure these things, you can go back and we have questionnaires you can ask. That's how we built the database.
Speaker 1:Now, just to clarify, Kurt, this is actually what interested me most about the bucket ministry I forgot about this is that for people listening, they have a way to track exactly what each individual filter is doing, how many people it's impacting, what it did to reduce disease very, very specifics. So most people wouldn't have that kind of data.
Speaker 2:Well, we're just getting started, because now, with the QR code, you hit it with your cell phone and you go right to our help thing, where we have animations on how to install, how to maintain best practices. Translate Right now we're at 18 languages and dialects, but we can add a new language in two weeks. So now you can mass distribute these products. People only need a smartphone, which there's so many of them around, so we no longer have to rely on teaching the people individually. We can teach them through the QR code and the animations. So now and this is all very new and the tab filter is only a couple of months old so now countries could just pass these things out like cell phones. I mean, I think someday everybody will have one of these, whether it's from Sawyer or somebody else jumps in and makes the right kind of filter, we don't care. But it'd have to be a big company to do it. Anybody in the market now isn't capable of doing it, but there are companies that could. So why wouldn't everybody have one of these? But until they know how to use them, it will do them no good. So now, with the QR code and the animations, we can pass these out to anybody, and we've already done that. We've tested it. You pass it out, they hit it, they know how to make it work and all the different formats and how to clean it. We teach them best practices because you also got to wash your hands and all that stuff too. So that's another whole level. So now we are capable of passing out a million of these to some countries. Just pass them out, tell them to hit the QR code with their phone and start using it.
Speaker 2:That's all happened within the last month or two. So, as I said, stick around. We're about to go to the next level. That comes from what I call creative destruction, which is in the book Look around the corner. How are you going to do something three, four years from now and get there before anybody else Solve your problem? What are the questions that you need to answer now to be ready for when it's going to show up years from now? So those are little techniques that we use and we're ready Right now. We are capable now and in the current models you really have to teach 100, 200 people at a time to make sure they know how to use it With the phone system. You can pass out millions and everybody will figure out how to use it. So we're at that next level literally in the last few months.
Speaker 1:So what I hear, which I really respect, is your willingness to keep your mind open to learn new things and new techniques, instead of saying you know, I've been doing this for 40 years, I don't need to learn all of this new stuff. You have embraced social media, so you started out insect repellent 40 years ago, and now you're explaining to me this brilliant product that can be self-training, essentially, and has the ability to track data, which is only going to be more powerful. Can you imagine if you have exponentially more water filters out there? You have exponentially more data. How can anybody argue with those results?
Speaker 1:Again, he's been doing this 40 years. He could be on the beach saying I'm perfectly comfortable, but no, you're saying we're just starting, and so I want people to get this book, not just for ourselves but, I think, for our kids, you know, to give people hope and encouragement that you know I only have this little. You know two fish and five loaves of bread. I really don't have much. What can I do? More than you probably think, if you have as you said, a big God.
Speaker 2:Well, and I do say you, you got to stay within your skill set. Most important thing to know is what you can and can't do. God doesn't ask you to do things you can't do, but he will push you to do things you can do and you fill in around you. You mentioned all the things. I have so much talent in this company. I get the best of the best. It's not hard to get the best of the best when you're doing what we're doing. It's not just about the money, it's about whatever we're doing too. So I delegate all that stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know social media, but I have people that do, and we're very in tune to the different generations. We change all our messages as we move from millennials to Zs to as, and then now it comes to Bs, and so we're all over that stuff learning about them, understanding our customers. Anybody can do that. You just have to get outside the box, stay within your skill sets, hire around you what you're not real good at and just go for it. This is America. Come on, We'll pick you up and try again if it didn't work, but there's a lot of things we get a kick out of the. I don't know if you know the story of the Sriracha with the company that did that. He made five critical mistakes and I said if he had just read the book he wouldn't have made those mistakes. So it's here to keep you from making a mistake because you just didn't think about it or see it. So I do the math. Some of these I've invented, some of them are adapted and embellished and whatever, but they're very practical.
Speaker 1:They are, so it's called Sawyer Think it's available everywhere, I'm sure, and if we want to get Mostly Amazon, obviously. Mostly yeah.
Speaker 2:Or you can get it from Sawyer. We don't charge any extra.
Speaker 1:Okay, tell us how can people get in touch with you If they have questions or if they would love to hear you speak I don't know if you ever do that or connect with your company or your foundation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all you have to do is go to Sawyercom hit customer service, they'll get it to me. All right, we're not that big. I delegate, so I offload everything that isn't in our wheelhouse. So we're pretty small.
Speaker 1:Good, so you can get to the beach. I just want to thank you so much, kurt, for writing this book and for taking the time to talk to me. As you can tell, I'm super excited about your story, but now I tuned in and now I get to pay attention. I think other people will too. I want to thank you so much and I wish you the best of luck and I think there's a lot more involved than luck. So thank you for reminding us that we have a big God and he can work with whatever we have.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for being interested and giving us the time. Yeah, we don't believe in luck. It's God that has his hand on this thing, that's right.
.jpg)