Transforming America's Tap Water with Rich Razgaitis

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals with great shows like Marketing Against the Grain. Today, we'll be breaking down how to transform America's tap water. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Rich Raz Razgatis into EO Fire Studios. Raz co-founded Flow Water in 2013 with a singular mission to put an end to single-use plastic water bottles. He started his career in Fortune 500 companies, including Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly. Since 2002, he has been the CEO or president of several high venture capital-backed startups and privately held turnaround and growth.

0:43Today, we'll be chatting about how do we solve this water crisis, the systemic issues in tap water. We'll talk about recycling and uncycling and how we're eating plastic every day, Fire Nation, David and Goliath, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Raz and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. J.J. Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success.

1:24A must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Raz, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. JLD, great to be on the show. Really appreciate it.

2:02Probably the thing that I believe is fairly contrarian around business success is to follow your purpose, not your passion. If the two line up, that's great. But I would not reverse the two. I would always be focused on fulfilling and finding what your purpose is and following that. Fire Nation, you can tell that we are about to talk about somebody's purpose right now that's making a massive impact in the world. Because a lot of you that are listening here right now, Fire Nation, you know that water comprises more than 60 % of our body. But you still don't focus on the water that you consume. It's just not something that many, many people have even in their mindsets.

2:49I want to talk right now, Raz, about the systemic issues in tap water. Can we trust what's on tap in the United States? Well, JLG, that's a good starting point because a lot of people think that you can trust tap water or they're used to trusting tap water or some people don't trust it, but they don't really know why. They think that something might be wrong with it or they read something or they smelled something in the tap water. The data is really clear. Number one, consumer sentiment, about 75 % of Americans either don't trust or don't like the taste of tap water. So that's one big issue right there.

3:24But the second issue is you can no longer trust your tap water, period, full stop, end of story. And yes, there's exceptions to this, but there are a variety of reasons why. One of the examples of that is the introduction of glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup in the 70s. Now you'll find glyphosate, trace amounts of glyphosate in tap water nationwide. Heavy metals and lead we're well familiar with. And there's an inordinate amount of lead in tap water across the U.S. that supersedes the EPA safety guidelines. And there's a variety of other things that are man-made, human-made chemicals that have been introduced.

4:02PFAS, chromium-6, microplastics, and pharmaceuticals, herbicides. The list goes on. So we're unfortunately, quite unfortunately, no longer in a position where you can just trust what's coming out of the tap. And we can't rely on municipalities, government, state, county to be able to deliver that to us in a safe and efficient manner. So we're in a position where we need to take responsibility for our own drinking water. Can we trust systems like the AquaSona and other under the sink that's attached to your tap, but goes through a filtration slash remineralization slash reverse osmosis system? What are your thoughts on that?

4:43Here's what I would say about under sink and countertop and fridge systems and fridge filters. As a starting point, something is better than nothing. So you can get a single-stage carbon filter. You know, a lot of Brita filters are single-stage carbon filters, not all of them. Those are better than nothing. On a scale of 1 to 10, in my opinion, they're like a 1 or 2. So it's better than a 0. It's going to filter out some impediments and impurities in the water. But you want your water. 70 % of your body is made up of water. 70 % to 80 % of Americans are chronically dehydrated. optimizing your water intake is one of the best things that you can do for health, performance, fitness, acuity, satiety, the list goes on.

5:30And so you want your water to be at a nine or a 10. I mean, you really want it to be at a 10 out of 10. And so the best way to get there is by utilizing reverse osmosis water. I mean, that is gold standard. So anything that's an RO system, and that could go under the sink or it could be on the counter, but reverse osmosis is really gold standard for removing all the impurities and impediments in water. RO typically removes up to 99.99 % of all the contaminants in tap water. But there's a second add-on that I have to add, which is a lot of systems are just RO systems, and then you're left with the closest thing you can get to distilled water.

6:09I mean, like the most kind of basic essence of just the molecules H2O. The problem with that is your body and your taste buds actually need minerals to not only enjoy drinking that water, but also to better assimilate and absorb that water. So I would be looking for systems that have both an RO system that just extracts a huge amount and almost all of the contaminants from it. But then I'd also make sure that you have some form of remineralization and you can do that with filters. There's other ways that people remineralize their water as well with electrolyte salts or other kind of mineral blends that they put into their RO water after it's been purified.

6:50Now, this stat I find absolutely crazy. Americans are now eating and drinking one credit card's worth of plastic every single week. Let's talk about how big of a problem this is and how do we move from an unsuccessful world of quote quote unquote, recycling to uncycling? Those are both great topics. If I can start with the recycling and uncycling first, and then I'll work backwards to the problem that we have. So for decades, there have been nonprofits, beverage companies, consumers, advocacy organizations that have been heralding the importance of recycling. And the reality is it doesn't happen.

7:36It doesn't happen at scale. The data is really clear. Roughly 20 to 25 percent of Americans, after many decades of education and awareness and importance and encouragement and making it easier, only about 20 to 25 percent of Americans actually recycle. And then there's another long story, which I won't get into, that only about 20 % of the stuff that makes it into the recycling bin actually makes it through the whole entire recycling reclamation process. So it's a losing proposition. Of course, I would still advocate recycle whenever, wherever you can. But the solution to this is uncycling. Uncycling is keeping the contaminant from even being created in the first place so we don't have to do anything with it.

8:20And that's really the focus that we're working on right now is how do we prevent the need from single-use plastic water bottles even coming into an existence? And the way that we do that is getting people to fall in love with the tap again. Now, your question about how big of a problem is this microplastic problem, it's a huge problem. And, in fact, just to give you an idea of the significance of it, and I'll tell a personal story about just when we were starting Flow Water to today, and then I'll tell you some data as well. When we first started this about 11 years ago, I remember I would circulate to the – we had a very small team at that time.

8:52And initially, there were only two of us, and there were three, four, five for about a year. And I would circulate every article I ever saw on microplastics in the environment. And I could do that because there was only like one every two or three months in major media. And then you had to kind of go dig deeper to find something else. Well, now, you know, every Facebook feed every day is fraught with articles around microplastic and what's happening to the environment. And the data is really clear. Number one, the microplastics are not only in bottled water, but they're also in your tap water.

9:23So there was a study done out of SUNY about five years ago. And that study showed that on average in every liter of water, both bottled as well as tap water in the US, there were over 300 micro particulates of plastic in that liter of water. And so the headline to that is, you know, some people are like, hey, I'm not drinking microplastics because I don't drink bottled water. No, the reality is you are now drinking bottled water, even if you're not drinking bottled water. And it's a little bit like being in a room with six people and it's a closed room and five don't smoke and one smokes. Guess what?

9:58You're all smoking because that one person smoking. You got the second hand. So we basically are now suffering the effects of big bottled water companies, big beverage companies, contaminating the environment and then other plastic contaminants as well. plastic doesn't biodegrade it photodegrades which means one piece goes into two four eight sixteen thirty two until it enters the ecosystem where we're eating and drinking it further to the problem is that the number of chemicals that go into the creation of plastics are ten thousand cigarettes are kind of quote unquote only six thousand so i'm not saying that a bottle of water is as bad as cigarettes but there is this dose effect which is you do not want to be permeating your stomach and intestinal lining.

10:42You do not want to be with microplastics. You do not want to be absorbing hormones that are in water as well as that are in the plastics and the oils that go into the creation of that bottle of water that's slowly degrading and permeating us. So it's a big problem. To just add one last point to that, microplastics are not, you know, it's not just the environment. People, you know, first think, oh gosh, it's so bad for the fish and feel sorry for the sea turtles, and then suddenly it gets into our internal systems. Well, they're finding microplastics now in the air at Mount Everest, crossing the blood-brain barrier in humans, and actually in umbilical tissue in newborn babies.

11:25So when I say it is everywhere, plastics are permeating everywhere, and we need to get them out of our environment, number one, and we need to get them out of our systems, number two. Fire Nation, this is a problem that we all need to be both aware of and willing to do something about for not just the health of you, but for the children, for the generations to come. I mean, this is something that's only getting worse until we find a solution to start working this back to a more manageable place. We have a lot more to talk about around this and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. There are plenty of things to worry about when trying to grow your business.

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15:07So Raz, let's talk real quick because Flow Water actually had a very interesting announcement. I think it was in 2022 with Blue Water. Can you talk about that? I can. We merged with Blue Water in March of 2022. So Blue Water was a strategic investor of ours, and they led our Series B financing in 2018 at the very tail end of 2018. So this is a group of individuals and investors and particularly a founder and the visionary behind Blue Water, the investment arm, as well as Blue Water. The company is Banked Ritri, and he's been a super successful multi-time entrepreneur that has been involved in ESG and particularly passionate about water.

15:54And so they started a company called Blue Water in 2013. We started Flow Water in 2013. There also was a blue investment group. Neither of the water companies knew of each other until like roughly 2016, 2017. So they invested in 2018, worked with them for several years. They were terrific to work with. We ended up merging in March, April of 2022. That year, we ended up having the best, you know, we had many years going up into COVID. We were growing 100 % year over year, but we had the best year in terms of overall metrics, generating profitability in 2022. part of that as a result of the merger, part of that as a result of just combining like entities that are very complementary to each other.

16:38We're focusing largely on commercialization, brand building, and market development. And the Stockholm headquarters are focusing heavily, not just on commercialization, but also R &D and product development. So it's been a really, really good marriage. We're well past the honeymoon stage, and it has been a really fantastic partnership between two super aligned CEOs as well as teams. And on that note, I want to talk about David and Goliath because you are taking on big bottle water and big beverage companies to try and put an end to this endless wasteland of plastic infused, sugary, carbonated, caffeinated beverages.

17:17I think this merger gives you some more ammunition, some more strength and maybe size to fight. So tell us more about this. Every company probably needs, especially an entrepreneurial startup company, needs a villain to some degree. At least every good movie needs that. And I think probably every good entrepreneurial company needs that as well. You know, and we have ours in spades. Ours is what I compare to the big tobacco of the 60s and 70s, which is big beverage today and big bottled water today. And there are multiple prongs to that. One is just the proliferation and the contamination and the absolute wastefulness of creating billions of bottles of single-use plastics that are just being degraded into the environment and our bodies.

18:04So we covered that. But the other one is big beverage companies and what they're doing in terms of what I really think is compared to a legalized liquid heroin, which is getting kids hyped up, jacked up, addicted to sugary, caffeinated, carbonated beverages at a very young age. It's not unlike banks do. You try to get your banks and your credit cards, you try to get those customers and consumers when they're in college because there's a greater area under the curve and a greater LTV and customer lifespan with them. It's no different with big beverage companies and they're literally targeting kids and they're getting them addicted to stuff that is crap for them.

18:45And it's a real, real reason for the existence of me in this role in our company, which is if we can get people back to the tap, if we can get kids to fall in love with tap water again, not only are they going to perform better in school, but they're going to feel better. They're going to lose weight. They're not going to gain. They're going to have more mental acuity. If you look at ADHD, for example, really high dehydration level with ADHD. One of the best things you can do for a kid that has ADHD is make sure they're properly consumed with water. Instead, they're getting medicated in some cases, and in some cases that's necessary.

19:20But other times they're just getting medicated with pharmaceutical products, and they're getting their fix through sugary carbonated caffeinated beverages at the age of 13, 14, 15. It's absolute insanity. And people need to realize that we are being marketed to in the most subtle and most obvious ways. And we really need to resist it and retaliate against it and get back to doing what's good for us and our kids to ensure a successful future for them. I am positive that in 50 years time, that people are going to look at the soda advertising and industry and how they exploit children the same way that we now look at the cigarette industry 50, 100 years ago.

20:06And man, it's just so sad that it's going to injure and literally kill so many people until we get to that place where we really understand that it's just literally rat poison. So Raz, we talked about a lot here today. What is the one thing you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? One is you can make a huge difference by doing small things. And I think this is a truism in our entrepreneurial journey. It's a truism in our personal life. It's also a truism as it relates to health, wellness, sustainability. And I'll just give you an example of that. when things go well in a company or when things fall apart, it generally is not one big thing.

20:53And that goes, by the way, that's true for relationships. And, you know, if you go to church and you have a spiritual walk or you're doing things for the environment, but rarely things go really, really well or really, really wrong just due to one or two decisions. It's stacked decisions where you're making more right decisions than wrong ones. And you're going to make some wrong ones. Hopefully you make a lot of right ones. But that same premise applies to the environment, which is, you know, no one needs to go out and suddenly like just give up every single thing that you kind of hold true to your heart to do something good for sustainability and move in the right direction.

21:30But what you can do is something as simple as reusing a single-use bottle a second time. Or if you want to get a little bit more torqued about it, than revolting against what big beverage companies are doing. And when you go to your hotel or your kid's school or you go to your gym, whatever it is, speak your voice as a consumer about what it is that you demand, what it is that you want, because the only way the market will shift is based upon the consumer sentiment and what we will and will not stand for. And we're in a period of time now where we need to stand up for what it is that we know that is right, that is healthy, and that's good for longevity as well as good for our legacy in the form of what we leave in the environment and the world and the shape that we leave it in, as well as our children.

22:15Thank you for dropping these value bombs. And Fire Nation, I hope you recognize that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with RR and JLD today. So let's keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Raz, R-A-Z, in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. Raz, what's the best place Fire Nation can go to connect with you to learn more about Blue Water, Flow Water, what you have going on? What is your call to action? On the business side, you can go to www.drinkflowwater.com. There's also links to Blue Water, Blue Water products, and the merged entity through that website.

22:55And then on all the social channels, at drinkflowwater. And then finally, from a personal perspective, at Rich Razz Gatiss. Those are the three various ways, depending on how you and what you want to reach out to us for, that you can contact us. Razz, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Razz for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs are great at three things. Productivity, discipline, focus.

23:30That's why I created the Mastery Journal so that you can master these three things in a hundred days. And we're talking step-by-step. Visit themasteryjournal.com and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success.

24:03A must listen. Listen to Marketing Makes Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.