Guest Riggs Eckelberry is the Founder and CEO of OriginClear, https://www.originclear.com/technology

I love it.

And this is— what is this? Is this a sandwich? Is this an Adrienne and Pat sandwich we've got going on? Hi everyone, I am so excited. I am actually going to step down off the show today because Pat Nauer is— you see her on the corner, she's got— I love her face. Mr. Eckelberry, I love Pat's face, I just want you to know straight out. And then this handsome man in the middle is Mr. Eckelberry, and look at me, I'm going off and Pat's running the show. So here we go.

Hi, I'm Pat Nauer, and I am delighted to be interviewing today Biggs Eckelberry. Oh my gosh, he is, he is responsible for really changing the way The water is delivered commercially, and what I mean by that is through businesses and through municipal water systems to the world. I mean, they have real cutting-edge technology that's done in like modules. It's modular system, which makes it easy for businesses and for governments to be able to implement these and give pure clean water to the residents and to people of all ages and all ethnicities around the world. Mr. Eckelberry, I'm so excited. I'm so excited to talk to you, I can barely stand it. How in the heck did you get into water?

Well, that's a really good question. And by the way, Pat, I think you're a great spokesperson for us, so we should bring you on, right?

I'm so excited. I do it on the homeowner side, but to be able to make a bigger impact and to be able to impact water systems around the world is a big deal. And, you know, as we know, the water on the planet is getting dirtier and it's getting tougher for people to find clear water. And water is going to be the real commodity. I don't even call it a commodity. It's going to be more precious than oil in the future. Wouldn't you agree?

Well, it's got a ways to go for that. But the fact is, is that dirty water is killing more people than war in the world. And, you know, 6,000 kids a day die. I mean, it's, you know, when you really dive into the numbers, it's terrible. Now, I came out to answer your first question. I came into water out of high tech. So I'm accustomed to rapid disruption, you know, and, and then I hit the water industry. It was like hitting molasses because it's very big. It's slow. It's— they have a lot of public health concerns. And so it's very hard to move the needle. And so think about this, a trillion-dollar industry worldwide is only treating about 20% of the water, right? So theoretically it should be a $5 trillion industry. Now, to be realistic, let's say that we can get to $2 or $3 trillion. Well, that's a huge amount of money. And how's it gonna happen? Well, it's gonna happen, as you said, by going decentralized to go to the point of use so that you're not relying on those big central plants that are falling apart. Not keeping up, you're doing your own treatment. And that is actually better for the environment. You get to recycle more. It's, you know, just like Africa just went straight to the cell phones. They didn't even bother going to the landlines. We're going to see that happen all over the world with water more and more. So we have a revolution, but it needed the right technology. And that's where these— we hit the water systems in a box that we have that are so cool. You know, have come along to basically make it easy to just drop a system in place. We just sold a system for a very high-end hotel that's launching in a major, major metro hub. And to differentiate themselves, they went for premium quality water. And when they first contacted us, you know, over a year ago, they said, yeah, we want that thing, the thing that's so just a box because business people don't want all the details. They're not water people. They just want the thing that solves it. You know this from the home thing, like give me that thing in the closet that does the water. Yeah, good, good, right? Yeah. So it's not, uh, we're no longer marketing to the high priest of water. We're marketing to everyday business people.

Fantastic. The last study that I saw said that the average person or the average water coming into a building, into a home, has over 350 contaminants in it. Is that what you've heard as well?

Well, yes, and there's a great place that your viewers can go to. It's, um, EWG, Environmental Working Group, ewg.org/tapwater, and they can put their zip code in and it will tell them what's in their water. Now, most places are legal, but EWG points out that the legal levels are way, way more forgiving than what it should be. So let's say in Los Angeles, let's say for example, arsenic is completely compliant with the law, but it's about, you know, 200 times over what it should be for your health. And so that, you know, you learn right away that you better get, like, you know, in your home, you better get a good water treatment system. We're having a lot of success right now telling hotels, that we can help them with COVID peace of mind by delivering clean water and clean air for a disinfected hotel. And that's got hotels really excited because they got to do something to bring people back, right?

They do.

That's huge.

It really is. So where, where is your primary, your primary customer base coming from? You know, you're talking about hotels. Because I know from doing research on your company, you also do like small municipal water systems as well.

Well, there's different layers. Okay. We started out 10 years ago with a core technology, and we learned over time that it was very hard to— we learned over time it was very, very hard to get the water industry to adopt new technology. Right. So we had this wonderful technology. Hey, this is great. It's filter-free and it's chemical-free. And the water industry basically yawned. And so then what we did in 2015 is we acquired a water company. And that was fantastic. They, as you say, they serve the municipals, the large utilities, businesses, everybody there in Texas, incredibly. Versatile. And but the problem was that the speed of, you know, everybody's like building in concrete, it takes forever. Then we acquired in 2018 a technology for these modular systems, systems in a box. And then in 2020, along came COVID and we went, wait a minute, we have a problem with this, you know, huge amount of time it takes to get these deals done in the first place. And then we started this year focusing on funding. How do we get systems funded rapidly to get people going? So technology capability in Texas, modular systems, and finally the funding is being put in place. We're building a finance company just like GM Finance, you know, or Toyota Financial, and that's going to finance it so that we can go to you and you've got a brewery, you want to put in a system for a brewery, you find no problem. We're going to go ahead and install that for you and just pay on the meter. That's all you got to do. Let me tell you something, that speeds up deals tremendously.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's really interesting on the funding side of it how wary some of the companies are in funding, you know, these systems for either for residential or for commercial. They're very, very cautious about it. So it's wonderful you're starting up, you've got a funding company going.

Well, I'll tell you, you know, for us the coronavirus was a wake-up call. You know, we had to either because there's this chronic problem, chronic problem, chronic problem, chronic problem. And then we had to, you know, find out what was the bug. And the bug really, when it comes down to it, is it's always about the money, right? So if you can bring the funding in, then the rest of it follows.

So is your market primarily the United States, or are you going outside of the United States?

Well, we're focusing on the U.S. right now. Now we have a wonderful partnership with a group called Philanthro Investors. And they got there. They created a real estate venture that is now in the Inc. 500. In fact, they're number 83 on the Inc. 500, grew 4,000% in the last 2 years, putting people in homes that they could not otherwise qualify for, right? A wonderful underserved market. And then they turned their attention to water. Now they're in something like 26 countries. Their founder is in Argentina, so they're bringing us a whole international network that we wouldn't have otherwise. So it's a wonderful partnership. They're bringing us, you know, the key investors that are going to create this finance group are coming from experienced investors that they have already in real estate. We're getting a lot of people coming over from real estate because this is weird times in real estate. You got to, you know, recognize it's like you could be in great shape or you could be in real trouble. You know, so a lot of real estate investors are trying to diversify and they're jumping into water.

Yeah, it's brilliant, really. So every week you have a conversation with your investors and with the community about what the company is up to. How is that being received?

Oh, well, it's very popular because first of all, we have a lot of production values We have clips that we show, like every week there'll be a clip about a different aspect, a different interview with somebody who is key to the company in some interesting way. And then I comment on the economy, where things are going. I pretend to know what I'm doing, but I do it from the point of view of what about, you know, you as an investor, what should you be doing with your money? It's clear that keeping cash is not the smart idea. Look at inflation is just skyrocketing. Despite the fact that there's a terrible economy, prices are going up. That's kind of weird, but I'm not going to get into it. But, uh, and so every night, you know, 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific, we jump into it about half an hour, some video clips. I might interview somebody in the show, one of our incredible engineers. We keep it simple. We don't get into all the weird, you know, internal stuff, and then I really talk about the big picture. And people love it. It's a— we get return attendees every time, and I love doing it. I'm already gearing up for what I'm doing tonight, and, uh, you know, I'm setting up my green screen in a few minutes.

That's awesome. So let's talk about the big picture of water, where— what water is like right now in the United States. And what is causing the water to degrade so quickly?

Well, the biggest issue in the United States— first of all, the water you drink is not going to kill you immediately, so no worries about that, because let's face it, the water districts in America, they deliver generally decent water, but you don't know what it's going to do over time. So there's issues with that. Number 2 is while you as a consumer might get halfway decent water, businesses are increasingly underserved. Since 1960, we have not properly maintained— that's a long time, it's 60 years— we have not properly maintained our infrastructure. And every year, just like when you keep that old Toyota Corolla another year and the maintenance costs rise and you don't replace it, and so after a while, the operating costs rise higher than the cost of just getting something new. But the water industry is not getting new equipment. It's not— the federal share of contribution to water systems is dropping every year. Municipalities can't keep up with it. And so what they're saying to businesses, you treat it. Oh, there's a big new arsenic requirement? You meet that requirement. They're saying, we only want treated water. Well, they're basically handing off their responsibility to— and by the way, charging more money in the process. And so businesses are stuck. And this is a silent revolution. A lot of consumers, they go, what's the problem? I flush my toilet, the water goes away. Yeah, but if you had a factory or a large commercial operation or agricultural, like an animal farm, you would have a different story. And so there's a breakdown in infrastructure that means that you're going to have to start treating locally. I mean, look at Miami-Dade County. It's got over 100,000 sewage septic tanks. Why? Because they built that whole county without sewage because it was a big rush. Well, now all those septic tanks are overflowing because of rising water table. And now they say, well, we're going to put sewage lines out there. No, no. Now it's $6 billion in 20 years. Can't do that anymore. But for a tenth of the price right away, just give some rebates to homeowners to put in, you know, a closed-loop blackwater system. As you know, you know what blackwater is, it's the poop, right? So you could do that for a fraction of the price and do it right away without tearing up all the roads. That's the new solution.

It is a solution. And yet, you know, our governments are kind of resistant to doing doing it because, you know, money is tight. How—

they don't have to. But the point I'm making is it's going to happen anyway because they got to do something, and they might as well just let the homeowners do it. Just let them do it.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, here in Florida, there was a story that came out a couple months ago about septic tanks aging and how the waste is seeping into the water system. And Yeah, and I'm sure that, you know, on an individual homeowner basis, that's one thing. But when you consider that people spend 8+ hours a day in their job, of course right now a lot of us are working from home, but when you consider that most people when they're going to their job are spending more than 8 hours a day in the job and drinking the water that's there, I mean, the impact becomes great because now you've got not just one person or one small family that's affected, you've got, you know, hundreds of people that are affected at a time. And I foresee an issue in the future where businesses may be liable for the water that their employees are drinking. Do you see that as well?

That's— well, not only that, they'll be liable for, for example, if you have an animal farm, you'll be liable for the nitrates being dumped into the local river, right? We see it in the Carolinas. Hurricane came along, it all overflowed into the neighborhoods, think about all that horrible pig manure, chicken stuff. I mean, you know, there is going to be a day of reckoning. Now, I never market with an idea eye towards regulation, because guess what? The American system is fight it in Washington, right? Get some lobbyists, fight it, push it off. So you cannot rely on that. What we rely on instead is the commercial opportunity. Look at that hotel that we sold that water system to. Now they're going to market that every single shower, faucet, the kitchen, everything is going to have super premium crystal clear water. They're going to use that as a marketing tool, and for them it's, it's commercial benefit. Now that is better than saying, well, you're forced to use the good water, because everybody's going to just try and get around, right?

And once one hotel starts doing it, the other hotels will follow suit. And that creates better water because then now you've got other local businesses looking at it and saying, oh my gosh, well, if they're doing it now, I've got to do it because restaurants have got to get it done. Everybody who's doing anything commercial will have to do it in order to kind of be up to speed. Otherwise they're left behind.

Exactly. So it's a— if you appeal to the business reason for improving your water systems, that's when you start winning accounts. You know, and you don't have to deal with incredibly long government process because— and here's the other thing, we do a lot of municipal business, but every once in a while somebody swoops in the very tail end of a bid. We've been working on it for 14 months and then comes a big, big company comes in and swoops in and grabs it. And because they're big, everybody's impressed and they deliver a worse product. And so we don't really like dealing with municipalities that much. We do it, There's whole cities that we manage ourselves, and it's great, but it's not a fast-growing business, and that it's a base load for us. The fast-growing business, we think, is two parts. Number one is, you know, taking care of the businesses, and number two is we're starting to finance waterpreneurs. These are people, a lot of them coming out of the COVID crisis, having lost their businesses. I mean, 20% of US businesses are closed forever, right?

I know.

And so what does that mean? That means these are wonderful entrepreneurs who through no fault of their own are stuck with— they had a restaurant, whatever, and there they go. Well, we can pick them up, put them into, you know, finance their water equipment, they can go out there and work with it. And that's a whole new industry as well. So we're having a lot of fun just doing the business demand for good water. And that's the action that I love. I love really disrupting water and making it, you know, you want to do good while doing well, right? I want to return incredible returns to my shareholders. People who invest in our company have a wonderful high-yielding instrument. They love it. Everything's great. But we also like that we're doing some good for the planet.

Absolutely. So say I own a small local hotel or a local restaurant, and I, you know, I'd like to do this, but I have no idea if it's even cost-effective for me. What would you say to that owner?

The best situation is one where you're being forced to spend money where you shouldn't. For example, there's a case study of a brewery in the San Francisco area that kept growing, growing, growing. And they, the local municipality wouldn't handle it. They were having to truck their effluent water, the wastewater to another county to dump it. So now they were spending money every month on trucks. They, so then a very wonderful company called Cambrian, which really proved this model, came to them and said, and they had, they had this finance company just like we do. Like we will, we hope, they came to them and said, we'll finance the system for you, just start paying as you go. And all of a sudden the brewery had its own on-site water system and everything was fine. And Cambrian got bought out by Culligan. So it's definitely a great business model.

Very interesting. So who and how did you come up with the idea of modular systems?

It wasn't me. Dan Early is a guru of the decentralized movement. He started doing it long before it was a thing. 15, 20 years ago, he was delivering these onsite water systems. And then he had the bright idea of taking sections of these big 18-foot pipeline, 18-foot-wide pipeline, last 100 years, right? This is pipeline material, cut sections, and put all the water material, water equipment inside the thing. So you've got maybe a 25-foot-long piece of pipeline that's huge, stuff all the stuff in there, and now you just strap it to a pad and you're up and running. And he filed patents. He's got 5 patents that we have licensed for 10 years. And he is, he's a revolutionary. He does webinars that the entire industry watches. People get so excited. So Dan Early is just an amazing, amazing guy, totally changing the world with water. Totally.

Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. So what do you see to be really the future of your company, and where is your company going in the water industry?

Well, where we're going in the water industry, uh, we believe is that, um, you know, the support we're getting from investors means that we are— believe we are going to be building a financing capability, and we are going to, you know, I believe ultimately end up as the next big water company, but the new kind, right? And that's, that's the game that we plan to play. So it's very exciting.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. So if I, so if I decided that I wanted to get a water system again, you know, I'm a small owner, I've got maybe one restaurant or two restaurants and I want to get water systems in it. Is there an easy way for me? Should I consider going like with the home style or should I consider going with the commercial style?

Well, it depends. Do you have a very big home? I mean, or do you have a commercial? I mean, what, what kind of buyer are you?

Yeah, right. Let's say that it's an owner of a restaurant that serves 70 people.

Okay. Well, let's think about what your problem is, right? Typically you'll be interested in incoming water, because probably the city is going to take your outgoing water, right? That's what it's going to do. So that's when you should invest in a good commercial grade water purification system. Depends on your size, but home systems are not really rated for the kind of duty cycle that a restaurant might need. So there's some good commercial units out there. As I say, we market them. We're not the only ones. But the ability to deliver it, and it's the usual thing, it's UV, ultraviolet. It's got the triple carbon filter, the RO, reverse osmosis. It's got the pH adjustment. All those things are built in and it's pretty standard type deliverable. And I think more and more people want to deliver better water, right?

Yeah, they do. You know, when somebody goes to sit in a restaurant and they go to order their meal and they get a glass of water, it's, you know, it's really nice when they taste the water, if it actually tastes like water and not like other stuff.

Well, or else they sell you this incredibly expensive water. It's like, you know what, the water you're cooking with needs to be treated, right? Absolutely.

And the water you're drinking with needs to be treated and everything, because it all comes into your body. Yeah. Yeah.

Not only that, your, your, your, your water pipes will last longer, your equipment, your, your, all your dishwashing, everything is going to last longer with good water. So it's becoming a commercial decision for people and that's important.

So what do you see is the next stage for your business going out to, to meet with other business owners to get more of the market taken?

Well, what we're learning is that it's very simple. We, we created a capability stack. It took a long time. So now we have this capability of doing custom work and also creating standardized products. Now, when we go out to animal farms, we go, okay, here's a standardized product. It's not going to cost you an arm and a leg yet. We'll start you easy, just take care of things like ammonia that the EPA is all over you for. And then over time, we're going to get into better and better things like creating great fertilizer from that, all that manure. But down the road, people don't want to take big steps. They want to take small steps.

Yes.

And also work through, as I said, entrepreneurs. And we have a whole waterpreneur program. We call it Water as a Career. We invite people to get into the water industry. They can come to our website. We've got a great initial program called the Pool Preserver. It recycles the water in the pool. Things like that are a lot of fun. So we have an expansion program. We're having fun with it. And, uh, we invite, you know, people to come to my, you know, just go to OriginClear.com, click on CEO. Signing up for the briefing. First one's in about, you know, 3 and a half hours, and I can't wait to, you know, have you on board.

Absolutely. So if somebody has lost their job or they decide they want to go into the water industry and work with you, what is the process for them to get involved?

There's a form right now. There's the, the first product is Pool Preserver. If you go to poolpreserver.com, there's a form to sign up. And obviously we don't, you know, the best is if you have the ability to lease, et cetera, but we're building a program for people who aren't lease-worthy because guess what? There may be a lot of money floating around, but banks are being very, very tight with that money.

Yes, they are.

So it's what happens in recessions, right? So that's where we're going to give people a chance to get— what we're building is finance capability. And we believe that next year we're gonna be able to provide financing for get-up-and-go type entrepreneurs. So poolpreserver.com is the first step. And then we'll educate. We have a whole water— water is a career university. It's got a lot of marketing modules in it, everything. And we, we, we built it working with our first Waterpreneurs. So we know it works.

Very nice. You mentioned Pool Preserver a couple of times. It's a very innovative product. You want to talk a little bit about that?

Yes. Well, Pool Preserver is— it was a bright idea of a gentleman called Darryl, and he came to us 3 years ago now to get something built that was his bright idea. He said, you know, instead of pool owners, you know, eventually the water in a pool gets too much salt and so forth, uh, and you have to flush it out. You can't just keep shocking it. And in Arizona, California, Texas, it's expensive because of the cost of water. Instead, this system is kind of like a kidney dialysis machine. And it just runs the water through the trailer-based system. And now you've got yourself a pristine pool. You didn't have to dump all the water. So eventually he decided he wanted to retire. He went into semi-retirement. So we basically did a deal to take his unit, refinance it, and give it to a waterpreneur, quote unquote. Ryan Koestra, who's done a wonderful, I mean, he's, there's a great testimonial by him. He's super excited. So he loves doing this, working with this technology. And he's actually gonna get more units because here's what's good is pool cleaners have to be, you know, a guy or gal has to be cleaning the pool to make the money. Well, this machine, It, you've set it up to run all day and you go do something else, you come back in the evening, you collect $600, $700, $800, and you didn't have to be there. So it multiplies the benefit of your business and that's what's exciting.

Yeah, it's a really brilliant product when you think about it. You're very lucky to have that product because I mean, when you think about the amount of pools that are out there, And the amount of care that pools really take, it's very cost-effective to have this. It's really brilliant. Very, very brilliant.

That's just the first. So lots more coming, you know, and we, we, we welcome people to come to OriginClear, check it out. Um, we have people can invest in the company. There's, there's one offering for anybody. You don't have to be, you know, one of the 1%. There's also an offering for the people in the 1%. And this, this enables us to really develop these programs because, you know, we're, you know, just like what Elon Musk went through, you know, Tesla, he was creating something new for the longest time that, you know, people will just stop profitable. Yeah. But you know what? It's kind of taken over. And now, of course, he turns out he was a visionary. Right.

Right. Definitely. So what are you most excited about right now?

I'm most excited about this financing of water systems. I think that has got the potential to transform the way things go. And I believe that a lot of water companies are going to carry that. It's going to be very, very standard in the years to come. Right now it's very exceptional. Water as a service, as it's called, but it's where it's going to go. Why? Because instead of building a widget and you sell it and you go away, you create a relationship where they they're your customer for life. You know, it's kind of like your, your computer support company has been with you for a long time. You're not going to get rid of them, right? They're doing a decent job. Well, they get that monthly fee from you every month. And so that's, that's kind of the same concept is just get to create a lifetime relationship, solve the business's problems, take care of the finance for them so they don't have to have a big capital investment. And I think that's the future.

That's fantastic. And if you haven't, go to OriginClearRightNow.com and sign up for CEO Briefing #1. Also, make sure that you bookmark the page because there's so much going on in the water industry and this page has so many resources on it. You know, everybody has to be really aware of the water they're drinking, whether it's at home or whether it's at work. It's really important because nobody's going to take care of you except you.

That is the truth, Pat. Oh my gosh, I wish you luck with your business because I think it's very needed in the home as well.

Yes.

And Mr. Riggs, Mr. Riggs, Mr. Riggs, Pat, you are so fantastic. Will you just— I know you talked about the water, but will you take a minute, Pat, to actually introduce yourself and your other business that you have? Because I think that Mr. Elkelberry will get it would like to know who you are. Who is that beautiful woman, Pat, that just interviewed you?

I'm so excited. I'm Pat Nauer. I am an executive and business coach, an international executive and business coach. I've been in the industry for over 18 years. This year, a business partner and I started a water business because we saw— he'd been working in the water business, in the water industry, for about 4 years, and we saw the need for water purification in Florida. Florida has the fifth worst water in the country. It's absolutely terrible water. And yeah, I mean, the amount of stuff that's in our water is scary. Anyway, so we launched this business and yeah, but I'm still doing business coaching and executive coaching and totally having a ball. Life is good.

Wow, that's exciting. Well, I'm so happy you're doing that. And I'm sure you're going to bring dynamism because Florida really does need the help. I agree.

Yes, they do.

So thank you both. This is really wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. I've learned so much. I'm glad, Pat. I am so happy that you took over because I wouldn't have been able to add— I don't even know what I would have asked. So thank you both so much. Have a great rest of the day and thank you. Have a great Thanksgiving too. And enjoy your, your water.

Thank you guys.

I'm gonna close it out now.

Thank you.

Both are—

miles are beautiful.

Wow. You— thank you, Pat. You're marvelous.

Wow.

Very good.

All right.