539: Saving Lives with Clean Water Solutions with Kurt Avery

How do you boost your profits while making social change? Our guest today is Kurt Avery. He founded Sawyer in 1984. And today, it is a trusted leader offering the best, most technology, advanced solutions for protection against sun, bugs, water, and injuries. And, and that is amazing in and of itself, but their story isn't so much about

building just a successful business. Since 02/2008 alone, Sawyer has teamed up with a 40 charities in 80 countries, impacting more than 28,000,000 people, worldwide donating 90% of their profits each year, to helping those in need. And so we're gonna be talking about that. Serving is certainly an integral part of their DNA, and, and that's what we're gonna be we're gonna be talking about that intersection of making your business profitable and successful, impactful in the world, and also,

doing a lot of really good things with it. So, Kurt, welcome. We're glad to have you here on the latest transfer Well, thank you for letting me be here. Of course. Of course. And quick shout out to KC Communications for the wonderful introduction. I always like to thank those that, make the introduction to amazing guests like Kurt. So thank you, to the team at KC Communications. So let's dive into it. And, I gotta ask you, like, in the beginning okay.

So first of all, your book, Sawyer, Think, fantastic. I've read a lot of books and a lot of business books and, you know, the tactical books and so forth. This has gotta be one of the best books. In terms of just diving in, there's no fluff. You do have stories in there, so it's it's engaging and inspiring. But it's a it's a deep dive into how to build a successful business, and really disrupt markets, change the

world while you're doing it. Did you imagine when you were starting Sawyer that it would become what it is today? Well, let's say I probably thought it was in the beginning, but then we quickly crashed. I had been with some very big name marketing, product companies. You would know the names if I mentioned them. So I thought it was easy. So we went out, oh, this is so easy, and then crashed. Forgot to switch from big time

marketing to guerilla marketing. So I would say we we lost money 23 of the first twenty five years till we were overnight success. So we we we had our struggles, but we knew in the end, good products win. So we just kept plowing. Yeah. Well, and that there's a important lesson there for entrepreneurs because a lot of times, you know, entrepreneurs think they have the next greatest thing, and then they real they think it's gonna be super easy. I mean, I know myself too. It's like, okay.

I got started in business when I was in my teens. I'm like, okay. By the time I'm 18, by the time I'm 21, and it's like, it's just gonna we're just gonna set this up and cruise and, you know, it'll all it'll all work out smoothly, but it didn't. And and there's a lesson in that, and that's where the growth is is, of course, in those challenges. What do you do in those challenges? So Yeah.

We we actually have a perfect example right now. Our latest new product, which you put on your faucet around the world, and you get clean water, 500 gallons a day, whatever. The engineer finished with it, and it was great. I mean, it's a phenomenal product. And then just last week, he said, well, you know, maybe we should let the patents go because nobody's using it. I said, John, you you just invented the product. Now we have to teach people how to use it. I mean, they

don't know how to use it, how to clean it. You know, one of the words in the, mantras in the, international disaster relief is, you gotta change behavior. So you can give them a product, but if they don't change behavior, they're not gonna use the product. I mean, think of that like the model t. You had to teach everybody how what a car was first. You know? So we're not and we just got started. Marketing is the study of human behavior and how to change human behavior. So I said, you you just

finished with the product six months ago. We gotta now teach everybody how to use it in a hundred languages. So we're just getting started actually on on that product. So it's gonna take a while. Yeah. Talk about that because you were in marketing before, and you mentioned about it being the study of human behavior. What are some of the things that, are important to understand about human behavior? Because it changes over time, and you've seen

that. Yeah. Well, one of the lessons that I'm really big on is called creative destruction. Everything changes. It changes because of laws. It changes because of technology or changes because of the culture. So we dive in, and so we we we watch every generation. Millennials are not Gen z's. Gen z's are not the alphas that are coming up, but we change our messages. We change our products constantly. I mean, look how fast the market goes from Instagram to Facebook to TikTok. I

mean, it it goes. I mean, you you can you can explode one of those in a matter of months. So you have to stay on why aren't people doing what they're doing. Understand how they think. We spend a lot of time understanding how the generations think, and they all think differently. And and now in our side, we even got the boomers coming back in because now the kids are out of the nest, and they're ready to go hiking again and be outdoors. So we have to stay on top of their

buying I mean, look how fast Amazon came from nowhere to be in the dominant retail network. So, you know, we exploded. We're very big on Amazon, but I remember one of our distributors says, well, what are you gonna do when Amazon goes out of business? I said, well, you're not quite getting the picture here. They are meeting what the consumer wants to do. They don't want to go to the store. So you have to walk you have to look at all that stuff. Be where because

everything destroys, everything creates. It's always gonna change. Be three to five years ahead of everybody else figuring out what we call unintended consequences. They're only unintended if you didn't think them through. They should not be a surprise to you if you thought through human behavior and how it's gonna be three, five years from now. There are no unintended consequences

if you're if you're on the ball. Yeah. And I actually love glad you mentioned that because that was one of my favorite chapters when we talked about that and the idea that everything creates and destroys and those unintended consequences. When we look at AI, thinking three to five years out, AI obviously is already, a a force to be reckoned with, if you will. Now how do you see that? Because you've been thinking about it. You've been talking to your team about that.

How do you see it impacting your business and or just business in general going forward that maybe other people are not thinking about yet? Yeah. You have to think of

AI as nothing more than the massive collection, rapidly collection of information. AI will only make decisions if you let it make decisions, but it's not gonna make the big decisions. The doctor's still gonna decide, but AI will give more information than they've ever had before and give them clues. So you're gonna see it core out the data collectors. So you have people in every company who's in charge of doing the analytics for

the data. You're not gonna replace the really educated high people making the final decisions, and you're not gonna replace the DoorDash people and the line workers, I mean, robots to extent, but, it's gonna carve out the middle ones. So a lot of these people that are middle management now who are the data collectors presenting information to the decision makers, they're not gonna be needed. So it's gonna devastate the semideucated. It's not gonna devastate the really

educated people. So you gotta go back and you gotta develop your skills to where you're the decision maker. Because otherwise, you're gonna be the person opening the doors going welcome to Walmart. So, it it's the middle piece that's gonna get it. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Yeah. Because we have a lot of people that are that are entrepreneurs on this that listen to this show that, there's also leaders, like those executive leaders that are making

decisions. And there's also a lot of even those middle managers, they're managing people, though, too. So, but there's a difference between managers and leaders. And when you talk about skill sets, maybe even for them to be able to learn how to lead well and so that they become in that invaluable I mean, it's always been necessary to be an invaluable part of the company that you're not easily replaceable, if you will, that you bring something to the table. I mean, that's just like in business

in general. Right. As long as you're the one making the decisions, it's the information gatherers that are in trouble because AI will do it so much bigger, so much broader, so much faster. The decision makers need to hone their skills because now they're gonna get hit with a massive amount of data, and it's not gonna be prescreened. Here's your choices, a, b, c, or d. No. You're gonna be looking at more choices. So you're gonna have to hone your decision making skills, your

your strategic skills. Yeah. So it it's gonna unfortunately separate the the masses from the haves and have nots again. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Well and there's also, of course, datasets and, like, what not that we wanna go down that that path for this conversation. We'll come back to Sawyer. But the, the idea that, like, AI gathers information, and so its information, its data is only as good as its data sources. And and you mentioned that too, like, in marketing.

Right? We we make certain choices online, and so then it just gives us more and more narrower choices based on what we chose before. And so that can be problematic. And I actually love what you said in your book is turn get off your your phone, you know, turn on stop using the calculator so that you can think because we're we're getting lazy in our thinking GPS. I resisted using a GPS system until I got moved to LA. And

then the streets are constantly always changing. Like, you know, you think it says west, and it's not west. It's going, you know, it's going north and stuff. So I was like, fine. Where's my GPS? But up into that point is like, I live in Toronto. It's a grid. I mean, how do you get lost? Or you go to a new city, it's like, figure it out. But so talk a little bit about that importance, of how to think and how you, even as a leader, you get people that are being hired by

your company. How do you teach them how to think the different generations? Ironically, I I I prescreen them. One of the things I do is I play mastermind with them. I don't know if you know that game mastermind. I wanna see how their I wanna see how their logic is. Can they make decisions? Can they take information and, you know, a, not b, plus you know, can they cognitively walk their self through the logic of getting to a conclusion with lots of options? So I make them play I make them play

mastermind just to know each other. Now that not everybody has to be like that. Okay? You need other people in the company. I mean, you know, but I just wanna know where are they. I also go by where they played sports. You

know, are they an individual contributor like they were in golf or tennis, or are they a team person? If they were a team person, take soccer. You know, the forwards are happy to make mistakes because if they shoot 10 times and one goes in, their name's in the paper. Midfielders see the whole thing. Defenders are too afraid to take a chance because they can't make a mistake. So where what sport in basketball?

Where where were you? Were you the point guard that saw the whole thing? So depending on how you think, you kinda bring that to your sports too. So I'm I I go through that where they where they played, and, I I just wanna know how people think. Now not that I don't it depends on the job. I mean, there's room for the people people too. I mean Yeah. You know, customer relations and all that. They don't need to be deep thinkers. They need to know how to how to work with people and be

friends and and all that and you know? So I I gotta get in their head. I gotta see how they think, what what their skills are. Everybody has skills. God God's created everybody different. You know? God forbid, we're all accountants. You know? So we're all different, and you got a place. I just wanna know where it is so I don't misfire.

Yeah. Well and this is a skill talking about thinking is a skill, that needs to be developed one way or the other. And even, like, working with people, I mean, how do you navigate working with understanding human behavior, how you work with different people in different contexts? And it's interesting that reminds me of years ago, identifying somebody that would replace me in a specific role, and that's she had less experience compared to some of the others

that had all these certifications. But one of the things that struck me when I interviewed her is she said, well, I worked in retail, and I got to know a lot of different people and work with a lot of different, you know, personality types and be able to handle them, and I went, bingo. That's what I'm looking for. The fact that you've got all these, you know, these degrees, great, or whatever, that's great. But that's without this, you can teach the rest of it.

That that is something that takes longer to learn. Yeah. That's why, you know, I don't like people to just Google it because you're just gonna get somebody's opinion. That I I always say, you know, I use the example of civil war. Give me five reasons we fought the civil war. Not one. Give me five. Nobody can get to five. There are five, but you can't get there because you've been Google it, you're gonna get one, you know, or two. So It's good. I encourage them to think. Yeah. That's good.

So talk a little bit more about Sawyer and about some of the the work that you do, the the products that you offer. You mentioned about the water filter, the tap filter you mentioned, but you also like, you that's just that's just a new product that you've not just, but that's a new product that you've come up with, but you have a whole list. So talk a little bit more about it. Well, we we do very advanced insect repellents. Everybody uses DEET. We're moving into the picaridin, which is better

and less aggressive. It's not gonna, you know, ruin your watches and all that kind of stuff. So we're always on the cutting edge. We do we do fabric treatments where we put the repellent on the clothes, it dries, and and the bugs leave you alone. Military goes nowhere without Sawyer. We we treat the uniform. We treat the skin. And because we have formulas that you can wear every day for a year and not mess up your skin. You wear some of this other stuff. It's got way

too much alcohol, and it gives you burns your skin, all kinds of stuff. So we're way out there on on the repellent side of the business. We do have some very advanced sunscreens. We we again cater to the outdoor people that can't bring a gallon of sunscreen with them for a two week trip. You know? So we gotta gotta get them there. And then water filtration. So we are so far beyond what anybody else does, and

I'm I'm not that smart. I got a smart engineer behind me, but, there's a lot of god things that we ended up with this technology, and and nobody's been able to match it. So, then you get there, and we're now finally after the twenty three years of suffering, we're successful. And we have the very thing the world needs, water filters. Our with our filter, it's based on kidney dialysis technology, and we're the only ones that the filter is

so strong that you can really backflush it aggressively. Nobody else would you'd blow theirs apart trying to clean it, so therefore, we last basically forever. You You know, we say ten, twenty years, whatever. But if

you maintain it, there's no reason to do it. But more importantly, we're at point one microns absolute whole. So your hair is, is 17 microns. We're 170 times thinner. That's the biggest hole we have. So nothing that biologically makes you sick can get through there except for virus, which is not in the water. Viruses are airborne and body fluids very, very seldom in the water, and they don't survive

in the water anyways. So we're the only ones that can really make the claim that if you filter your water through our filters, you cannot get sick from anything biological. No parasites, no bacteria, no anything. We're we're good. So when we go into a village, I mean, you gotta go in there and say, listen. Nobody's gonna get sick. You can't go in and say, okay. Ninety percent of you are gonna be okay. The other 10, you're still gonna get diarrhea. Sorry. So sad. Too bad.

Now we go in and we do and and we have lots of studies to prove that within two weeks, we write about ninety five percent of all the waterborne sicknesses. Amazing. The rest of it the rest of it comes from, you know, fecal matter or they're washing their vegetables or whatever, but we take it right out of the water. We're in places. They start shutting down medical clinics because there's no sick people anymore. I mean, it's

phenomenal. Yeah. About two to five may maybe about five million people a year get clean water for the very first time, and it's it's life changing. I mean, we we go in villages where they didn't name their kids for three years. The filters show up. They name them at birth now because they're not gonna lose a third of their kids. Wow. So when you have that, how do you not share it? You have to share it. So we set up the business model. I I use the

example. If we sold cupcakes, we'd have to sell the cupcakes, make the profit, pay the taxes, and then we could be philanthropic. We don't have to because I'm we're a % sub, sub s company. I own it all. I don't have to make a profit. I can give these filters away before they even become a profit. I would rather K. I would rather control where our resources go than just give it to the federal government and say, do what you want with it. So we have the ability to write it off

before it even get we we give away more than 90% of our profit. It's just not hard it's hard to explain, but we give it away so it doesn't even become a profit. Yeah. And that's the really cool part. So the book is so how can we make your business more profitable? And now that you're more profitable, how can you be more philanthropic locally, in, you know, international, whatever? I mean, you know, plumbers can plumb

houses, and bakers can, you know, set up food banks. I mean, there's always something you could do if we can help you make your business more profitable Mhmm. And show you how to avoid taxes legally Mhmm. By doing this pretax, doing your charity work pretax. Yeah. Interesting. We have a lot of service oriented people,

listening, entrepreneurs, like knowledge base and so forth. You know, in terms of how how do you think that would apply to them, I mean, in terms of writing off their service in kind, that kind of thing. Well, here's think we were gonna talk about this. So I don't know. Here we go. Here we go. Never know where you're going. Right? I yeah. No. I just I just think it would be very interesting because I could hear people going, okay. Well, how do I how does that apply to my business?

Well, there there's several things. First of all, you can always donate your services, but there's also internationally what's called BAM, business as ministries. So you can go down and teach them how to be accounts. You can go down and teach them how to run a factory. So these emerging economies need the technical expertise, which is just natural to you. Mhmm. So the rule of thumb is, you know, don't go down and tell them how to do it till you've been there three times and understand

their culture. Yes. But they need accountants. They need people who fix machines. They need people who can make decisions. They I I know somebody who's who's down there, and he's built a whole photoshopping thing where they can they can literally do real estate photoshopping in Michigan, but they're doing it in Nairobi because all the skills are transferable. And now we have the Internet. So there's a lot of things you can do with your skills are needed in emerging economies. So you can do that.

There's always like, it's like they say if there's a will, there's a way Yeah. To to do it. Yeah. So what's your favorite example of Sawyer think?

I I what I what I do, the one chapter in the book that can there there's two in the book that really set you apart. One is decision making, decision matrix. Usually, when you're making a decision, you're hung up on one or two variables, and you're not thinking through all the rest of the things that end up being unintended consequences because you haven't thought about them. So in the matrix, we

walk you through it, and we say at least 10, Some maybe 20. When our kids picked college, we had 20 variables, and it shows you how to rate them. So the value of that is you you uncover the things that you're not thinking about right now. There's always 10 there's always 10 variables to a decision at least. Mhmm. But you're hung up on the top two. So we're gonna force you to uncover those unintended consequences, which actually can add up to flip a decision.

You see say it ahead. The other one is what I call math trap. And in business, there's core decisions that you get to make. You know, I I, you know, I I work under the auspices of Jack Welch with GE. Now how did he make decisions on a napkin? It's because he knew how what was important and what wasn't important. So if you're number four in the industry, does it really matter whether you have a 12% market share or a 15 market share? No. It doesn't matter. Your decision's

gonna be the same. So don't spend too much time trying to figure out whether it's 12 or 15. You know your range. You know your decision's gonna be the same. You know, the number three in the industry doesn't have to have all the serve the whole entire mark bell curve and the whole thing. You can find niches. So that's math trap. You you don't need to get hung up on the data too long to make what will end up being the same decision,

and you go quick. I mean, that's where in in business, I was making decisions like that because I understood the math was put you in a certain range, and that's all you needed to know. So you could go very quickly. So that's in there. We'll give you some examples of that. The other one that surprises everybody is profits are in the denominator, not the numerator. So yeah. So think think of, like, Walmart. I I I give examples in our industry, retailers and and that kind of thing.

But think of why Walmart was so successful. They got rid of the denominator. They sell their product 42 for they turn it 42 times. They paid the baker long before you know, long after you've already taken out of the store and given them the money. So they had zero investment in it. Mhmm. So when they could, you know, if they could open a store for basically free because they don't have to carry the cost of the inventory because they turn it so fast Mhmm. That's where

the profits are. The margins are set. People only gonna pay so much for a product. Yeah. You you can't squeeze the margins, but you can reduce the investment by turning it and being smarter. So I I give the example of, you know, we got two plumbers. One can open a business for a hundred thousand in inventory, the other for 50. The person with 50 has got the same margins, but he's got two stores for

the same 50. Mhmm. So his hundred gives him two sources in. The margins are the same, but the investment has been cut in half. So profits are made in the denominator. That's more important to think about your investment than your margins. It's really hard to raise your margins because people are gonna pay what they pay. Well and this comes back to what you said in the book about the, raising capital and, you know, how you said, like, don't don't go with investors,

equity investors. You know, don't give away your stock is what you said. You don't give away your stock. Hold on to it. You mentioned about vendor vendors, and and I look at, like, Walmart. That's what Sam Walton did. Right? And so he makes I mean, the company now makes a a lot of money between the time when they sell the product and they pay it out, there's a delay. Was it forty five days, sixty days, something like that? Hundred and twenty with us. But yeah. They're a 20.

So yes. So they're in that time, they have that money that I I didn't have to. I did that because I can borrow reasonably cheap compared to the margins. Mhmm. But I would rather have them turn it and be happy. I'm trying to improve their profit on our products, which makes them keep us on the shelf. Yes. Which is wise from your

perspective. Yes. And on their side, yeah, they're they're making that money. They're I don't think most people realize that is that they're actually using that, reinvesting that, doing whatever, you know, to multiply that money before they actually pay it out. And how can we use that on a smaller scale? You know? When you talk about using vendors arranging for thirty, sixty, ninety day, you know, credit rather than going and, obviously, you've gotta set that up front with your vendors.

It's not about being late on with vendors because I've I have I'm a business coach. I have clients that are waiting to get paid from, you know, that that wasn't the arrangement, and they're waiting to get paid. And they're not a financial institution. They don't have that money to float their you know, for for a while. And so they're on the other side of that. Yeah. So, you know, talk a little bit about that that Scott

Two two lessons in that. First of all Mhmm. On the Walmart one, people forget twenty, thirty years ago, they really struggle should they get in the grocery business because grocery margins are really small versus selling TVs on the merchandise side of the business. And they and they were afraid their stock was gonna take a big hit because the margins were going down. But then they realized you sell all your groceries before you pay for it. So it's an infinite

return. Even if the margin is small, the investment is virtually zero. Yeah. But it took them a long time because they were afraid the market wouldn't understand margins versus turns. And now look where they are in the grocery business. Yeah. On our side of it, customers are hard to find. So we we have good vendor part people who give us supply us, love us. And and they love the mission, but they also know we we will pay. I've never not paid a bill

ever ever. Even when we were struggling, I've always paid bills. Not on time, but if I was late, I would give them a little interest or whatever. But they're, you know, it's hard to find customers. They're not gonna give up on customers. But analyze their margins. Okay? So let's say they're selling you a widget and they make a 50% margin. Mhmm. And you ask for an extra thirty days. What's that cost to them? They're borrowing even if they're borrowing at 6%,

that's a half a percent. So instead of making 50, they're making 49.5. You don't think they would take that deal versus zero by not selling you at all? Mhmm. So you can reason with your vendors to say, I'm gonna pay you in a hundred and twenty days, and it's gonna cost you 2%, but you're making 50. If I don't buy if they don't sell at all, you won't make that. Now you're gonna make 48 instead of 50. But if I don't buy it from you, you don't even get to 48. Right. So you have to walk them

through the math because usually, the behind the salesperson is somebody in the finance department. And, you know, it depends on whether they can get capital or not get capital. The other part of starting a business, why I say don't give up your stock, it's not good for the investor either. So you can give them some decision making, but don't give it to them in voting stock. Always do it with a loan because here's how the taxes work. If they own stock, you have to make the profit,

government takes a chunk. You give them a dividend, government takes a chunk. So they've they've lost two chunks of your profit before it gets to where they can go buy a new car. But if you give them a loan and you pay the they give you a loan, you pay interest Mhmm. That's tax deductible to them. So they only gonna get hit once. Mhmm. And then when you pay back the loan, there's no capital gain, so they'll get their money back. So it's cheaper for an investor to give you loans than take your

stock. It's better for you to keep control. You can give them decision making. That's up to you. It's a relational thing. Or you could put them on the board or whatever, but it's not even in their best interest to have stock financially. Yeah. So where did you come up with, like, some of these things? Obviously, knowing math, understanding rather than just leaving it to someone else to do it,

understanding how things work. But you mentioned earlier, and I know faith is a really big part of who you are, and it's built into the fabric of Sawyer. How much of that was just, like, revelation, or how much of that was just being in the numbers? Where did that come from where you kind of just started to think differently and discover some of these things? Yeah. I'm a little wired that different. I I'm so far outside the box. I don't even know where the box is anymore. You know?

So I'm I'm I'm different. So part of it was wired, but but I did what I tell you to do. I put the phone down, and I just sit there and think. Think these things through. Think through the math. I mean, the math is the math, but if you take time to think it through and put it into practice. So it's it's a lot of well, you know, I I am wired that way, but but also I'm a very big god. So I don't let anybody tell me we can't do anything. I mean, you know, twenty years ago, half the world died of

bad water and mosquito bites, and I said, okay. Let's go fix that. We got them advanced insect repellents. We've done the mosquito nets that kids sleep in or under. We invented the whole treated mosquito net thing. And then we got the world class water filter. So let's go do it. I said, yeah. We'll do it. We're meeting him, not me, because I'm not quite that smart. But he but he really blessed that. I mean, we are we are so close, so close to doing 50,000,000 people a year, not

5,000,000 people a year. We just got we we now have

QR codes on these filters, so you can just take your phone. We'll you can go to video animated videos in whatever language you wanna re listen in, and we'll show you how to install it, how to maintain any other problems. We do WhatsApp now, so we can actually communicate with you. Did you remember to do your filter clean your filter today? Are you having any issues? Get a hold of us. You know? Do you need

thing? So we we don't just have the filter. We have the whole package because we got you know, it's it's not just the product. You know? It's the whole thing. And we've done a lot of GIS. We're really advancing GIS, so we can prove to you what we did. A lot of these studies are published. They're on our website. They're published in medical journals Mhmm. Peer reviewed. So, you know, we prove that we can do what we say we can do.

And so now we're ready. We're ready. And, ironically, some people with big money are finally showing up because we can show them the ROI on their investment. We're down now where even our most inefficient product is a dollar 48 per person per year water, or another one is 37¢. This new tap filter, when you put it on there, I mean, you get 500 gallon today for the rest of your life. I mean, that's, you know, onetime investment of 10 or 20¢ for twenty years of clean water per person. Amazing.

So it's taken a while to get there, but all the pieces literally in the last month or so have fallen into place. So it's now we're entertaining the billionaires to say, okay. We can prove you the ROI. Are you ready to change the world? Amazing. That is But we had to work on it. It took ten years to get here and millions of dollars of investing in the technology. And and thinking differently and finding the right

people. And how would you describe your leadership style in your company and how you, like, you obviously must have an amazing team that you work with. I have an incredible team. First

of all, I get the best of the best. I we have good margins, so I'm willing to pay top dollar. But how would you not want to work for a company that's doing what we're doing? Okay? So they're all in on on the mission. I'm a big delegator. I I I well, I used to be everything who started this company in a probably the room not bigger than what you were, and I was everything. I was making the product, shipping the product, whatever. But we're pretty we're we're pretty

significant now. I delegate. I got good people. You decide. I'm my job is to keep pushing the boundaries, think of the vision, you know, that kind of thing, and teach them to do the same thing. So, you know, that that's my role now. I I got it pretty easy. I I am so loaded with talent. It's not hard to recruit good talent when you're doing what we're doing.

Yeah. Well and you coming back to this book, you, you mentioned that you have been teaching your people how to think this way and and, that you you you kinda put this book together because they convince you to do it so that it would be something that would be there long after. So talk about legacy. Where do you see Sawyer going, and, how does Sawyer think fit into that? Well, this is the operating manual for when I'm not around. I I actually built into my

will. I'm not a spring chicken anymore. But we're starting in a couple years. I have to get COGNIT flu tested every year to make sure I'm still capable of running Sawyer and it'll screw this thing up. We have built Sawyer to where because we do what we do. We could sell. I get offers almost every day. We're not interested in selling because it's too big of a gig. We're making too much change. It's not about the money. There's no U Hauls in heaven. It's not about the money.

So we have Sawyer when I'm out of there, my stock will go to the Sawyer Foundation. So it's kinda like modeled after the Hershey Foundation. Mhmm. Sawyer Foundation will own Sawyer. Mhmm. And it's staffed. And, you know, right now, the Sawyer Foundation is five zero one c three. Mhmm. So people can donate to that if they want to. Sawyer covers the overhead. Every outside donation goes a % to overseas projects. And and that's where I once when we say we give away our profits, that's

where the profits go. They go into the foundation who can then give give give the money away, and they they give away quite a bit. But sooner or later, they loan all of Sawyer. So and, my daughter is a great administrator. She's gonna be in charge of the, well, she isn't. She's the director of the foundation, but she knows I've given her a list. These are the people that you're gonna listen to. These are the superstars at Sawyer that will keep it on track. So she

she knows who to rely on, and they're all good friends. They they love her. And she she's really good. So that's how it's built to to stay. I mean, the whole idea is, you know, so you cash out, but why? What do you want the cash for when you can do what we're doing? Because somebody would just wanna make the profits. Yeah. So no. We we we got a bigger legacy to follow than that. Well and

I think and and that's important because there's, there's a lot of talk right now about selling out and selling your business and cashing out, right, building it to sell it and all of that, and and which is great. That's fine. And there's also legacy is if you're gonna take the time and, you know, you know how much it takes to build something. I know how much it takes to build something that it that why not pass it on and have it continue to do the

work great work that it does? But in order to do that, it has to not be reliant on you to be the one to do it. You gotta be able to pass it on, and it's, like, comes back to the whole idea of, like, great leaders build leaders that build leaders so that it continues to pass on. The the Bible talks about, you know, giving an inheritance to your, you know, children's children. Why is it not just the children?

Well, because it needs to go beyond that one generation onto the next generation, and then it's like it's constantly going to the next generation and two generations. You're always planning that far out. So Well, that's the beauty of being a delegator. I don't micromanage. I got people who can make decisions correctly, and I just say, well, okay. Tell me what you did. I'm I'm beyond the point where I'm they are so much more talented than I am in their area. Mhmm. I'd be a

fool to sit there and try and tell them stuff. I'm giving the big picture. Yeah. And and I'm big on channels of distribution changing and all that stuff. So we're constantly you know, where where are we gonna sell next year? Who's gonna be the retail outlets? Whatever. But, who's gonna be the charities we work with? I mean, we're everywhere. We're in North Korea. We're in Yemen. We're we're in Gaza long before that had a problem.

I mean, we're 80 countries. We're everywhere. Everybody has to have water, and I think it's about to explode. But they're doing it. I'm not doing it. I don't get on a plane and fly to Africa and watch them. You know, we we sit there. We do the models. We keep adapting. I mean, we built this business way back when I was younger. My wife and I, we'd sit in the store for twelve hours just listening to what the hikers and campers wanted.

What do they need? What problems can we solve? Well, we're doing the same thing now. I mean, what we do in different cultures is very different. That's why we have different systems. Mhmm. So, now we're it your your skill set you need is listening. Mhmm. You know? Don't go tell people what they need. Listen to what let them tell you what they need and see if you can solve it. Yeah. Kurt, this has been so great. There's so much more. I'm gonna encourage

their listeners to go get a copy of Story of Think. Of course, it's on Amazon. Your filters and your products, your insect repellents, and all of that are all in camping stores, Amazon. They can find them there. You mentioned that. Also, sawyer.com, of course, is your website. So if anyone is interested, supporting and you the Sawyer Foundation also will make sure that link is in, the show notes so that, if somebody wants to contribute to what you're doing and, or connect with you as a as

a nonprofit. So anything that we we miss Yeah. I I might own a % of the company, but it's not going to me. You know? This shirt's ten years old. I get new shoes every four years, a new truck. So it it's all gonna go. Whatever whatever we get, it's going over. So we're happy to have the spark. You're And you're gonna get good products. And and it you're such a great example of what it means. I I posted recently. There was a reel talking about

paying your people well. You mentioned about that. You pay top dollar. You can get great people. And, and I had some comments that people were saying, well, good luck. You know, that's been since the you know, the idea has been around since the beginning of time, but nobody does it. People don't get paid well and so forth. But you're doing things. You're understanding the big picture, and you're you're you're that example of when you do this, like I say, when you when you do

business God's way Yeah. You prosper, and others prosper as well. It's a win win win all around where everyone everyone thrives. Whenever we get audited, boy scouts, Walmart, or whatever, they come through the building, they go, this is the happiest set of workers they've ever seen. We treat them well. We have we sit down, have meals together. Like, right now, when this is over, I'll go sit and have meals with everybody in the factory. We all eat together twice

a week. We, I try to pay 20% more than the job is worth so I can sleep at night and not worry about taking advantage of people. We've been blessed. We can afford that. Good people keep us from having recalls. They care. Yes. They they make sure the labels are right. The products are right. The DMPs are properly found. So it's a good investment because recalls start at huge dollars. Yeah. So I would rather invest in the people and make sure they're they're they care. They care about the

product. So Yeah. They get good. It it's it's a good investment. Yeah. And they're fun. We have a lot of fun here. And that's important. That is so important. So yeah. That's where we're gonna spend most of our time is is doing the work that we do. And, so you ought to do it with people that you like, that you feel where you feel appreciated and valued, and you can have some fun and make a huge impact at the same time. So, I love that. Kurt, thank you so

much for being here. I appreciate you. And, I'm excited to share this conversation with with people so they can be inspired by your story, and get a copy of this book because this is a this is a really good book. And it is a no nonsense, inspiring, but very right to the point. Here's what you need to know. And so I just so appreciate you putting it together and sharing it with all of us so that we can learn from you. And, and then we can go out and also change the world and

and make an impact as well. So thank you so much, Kurt. You're just a vessel. It's his job. Amen. Like my like my wife said, it's our job to bring the loaves and fishes. It's not our job It's the world. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I always say leaders of transformation take action. So for those of you that are listening and watching, I encourage you to get a copy of Kurt's book. Go check out what they're doing. Go to sawyer.com.

Really investigate like this as a case study as to how they're actually doing business and how you can apply that to your business. And, I'm sure that, you know, if you have questions and so forth, you can reach out. You can reach out to us on leaderstransformation.com as well. If there's anything we can do to support you in bringing your idea to market, we'd love to be able to support you or help you to think differently about what it

is that you're you're looking to do. We'd love to support you. So and we'd also love to hear your stories and how this has inspired you and what you're up to. So you can, again, go to leadersoftransformation.com. Find us there. Of course, we're all over social as well. And, hope you enjoyed this, conversation. And, God bless you, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you.