7-Stage Purification That Beats Bottled Water

They fall in love with tap water again through a FlowWater device. Then they quit drinking bottled water, so much soda and caffeinated, carbonated energy drinks, whatever it is. So we kind of solve the problem at the source of the problem rather than just symptoms of the problem. Bottled water is a symptom of the problem. The problem is people need to trust their drinking water and they'll drink more of it and they'll use it. And that's what we're solving for.

Hello and welcome to Conscious Design Podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I help turn product ideas into sustainable 7-figure businesses. Join me for another episode where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy. Today, I'm really excited to have Raz, Raz Gaitis. He's the CEO and co-founder of Flow Water. They're a company dedicated to transforming tap water into ultra-purified, great-tasting water. Eliminating the need for single-use plastic. Welcome to the show.

Ian, thanks for having me on. It's great to see you.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm really excited to dive into this. This is— single-use plastic is one of those things that we should fix. So great to have somebody else attempting to get rid of that problem. Everybody loves a good origin story. So let's talk about a little bit, how did this come about? How did you decide to tackle This, this problem?

Well, for me, what really struck was when my daughters were about 11 and 12 years old and I was taking them to a soccer game, you know, and I started to see after every soccer game and like one was more notable than the others that they were basically getting rewarded for doing good things. With really crappy food and beverages, right? So like, oh, I remember that. Great job. Like you just won the game. Now, like you get to torture body with Twinkies and like energy drinks and sodas. And you know, I used to think growing up, well, this is just like what kids in Ohio do, 'cause that's where I grew up. And you know, I was living in Asaf at the time and it kind of dawned on me like, holy shit. Like all the kids in Asaf are kind of the same as the kids in Ohio and in Texas and everywhere else. And, you know, the drink might be a little more refined and the food might be like a little more refined, but at the end of the day, I think it's like refined in labeling, but it's the same crap that's in there that is doing really bad things, whether it is neurologically, physiologically. And so that kind of led to a whole series of like, for me, explorations. And so there were kind of a variety of different paths that formed the creation of Flowater. But from what prompted my interest in this entire category started with that moment, which led to, you know, exploration of why aren't kids drinking more water and why aren't adults drinking more water? And holy shit, 70% of Americans are actually chronically dehydrated. Why do we have faucets everywhere and everyone's dehydrated? Well, then I like found out, well, 70%, 80% of Americans don't trust their tap water, so they don't really like to drink it. And then they reach for these alternatives. Which are bottled water, or they reach for sugary, carbonated, caffeinated drinks. And then you get companies that are big beverage companies, big bottled water companies, big beverage companies that are profiting off of the fact that people don't like or trust their tap water. And it creates this endless loop of everyone winning. Every business wins that is in this industry. Every constituent, every lobbyist, except for the person that's actually the consumer. They're losing. They're losing money. They're losing health. They're losing hydration. They're getting totally flummoxed. And so, you know, here we are 12 years later. Flow Water is focused on transforming America's drinking water and really restoring it. And I was with some college buddies over the weekend. They're like, well, you should— I don't know how much you know about the Maha movement. Make America healthy again.

I've heard a little bit, but not.

It's it's a little polarizing, right? I mean, because RFK is driving this. I think it's actually though, for all the polarity of this thing, I think it's a little nuts because it's like, well, who can't agree with this idea of let's make America healthy again? Like, let's get contaminants out. No, and so we lose we lose people along the way on various sides of it. But one of my buddies was really advocating. He's like, look, she's like he's like you should like really. streamline off that and have it be like, make water healthy again and kind of create your own movement. And effectively, that's what we're trying to do, though. Like, we're, you know, and this is actually the most nonpartisan of issues, which is everybody deserves access to clean drinking water that they can trust. It's a fundamental human right. You shouldn't have to be wealthy. You shouldn't have to have a certain skin tone to be able to have access to clean drinking water.

And you shouldn't have to own a well.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, if we all had deep rock wells or springs in our backyard. That's the ideal thing. You know, no contaminants, no herbicides.

Oh, that sounds amazing.

Do you have one?

No, but I have some family who bought property, you know, 50 years ago.

Yeah.

And they happened to be able to put a good well and they have amazing spring water. So every time I visit, it's like, oh, this is, you can drink their tap water. But that's like one house out of my entire family.

When people ask me what's the ideal situation, I tell them that is it. So if everybody had access to that, Then we wouldn't have any problems. But the problem is that that's one out of— I don't know if it's one out of a million, but it's definitely not one out of 10,000 either. You know, it's somewhere between those two. So it's rare.

It's very rare.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, so let's talk about—

right.

And I love you brought this up. The people don't trust the tap water because I even remember growing up, my parents were like, don't drink tap water. You don't know what's in it. Like, you don't know what it is. And they, they were one of the people, they bought like a filtration system. And so there was like the one spigot in the house. So they're like, okay, you can get water out of this. It's your drinking water. But that still, it took them an invest— they had to educate themselves.

Right.

Because when I was a kid, this was not something that everybody was talking about constantly. A lot of people were like, oh, just deal with it. Like, just, just drink the tap water if you have, if you're thirsty. And then you had to buy the equipment, right? So you had to know. And I think that people are becoming more and more aware of just how not good the tap water is. And that's true. Like, I think you're making a good point. It's driving everyone to go, okay, well, I guess I have to buy bottled water. That's kind of one of the only options people see because it's the one with all the marketing money behind it.

Yeah.

So it's the one you constantly see in ads and everything. So let's talk about your solution. Where can I talk to— what's the process? I know you remove basically everything bad out of it. 99%, I think, is what I was seeing. So can you talk a little bit about what are you able to remove? What is that water? Obviously, this difference, right? It's way better when you're— when your machine's done with it.

Well, you okay if I kind of just port back though to like your parents and what your parents were telling you? Because People don't like, don't trust their tap water, but they don't really know why. Like, it's kind of how you described it. Most people are like, oh, like, you don't know what's in there. There's something bad in there. It smells bad, tastes bad. I heard once. I can make this really, really clear for people. And it's not because I'm some guru. It's partly just because I've studied this for a long time, partly because the data is very plentiful, partly because you could just go to ewg.org. And they have a tap water database. It's Environmental Working Group. It's a nonprofit. In that database, it has just a partial listing of the chemicals and contaminants that are in your backyard drinking water. And it's just a partial list. It's not like current as of the month. It's an aggregate data listing of data that is not all-inclusive. And you're going to see 5, 10, 20, 30 different contaminants in your backyard or your nearest municipal water that shows 5 times the EWG limit, 30 times the EWG limit, 2,000 times the EWG recommended limit. And so, that's just like one way that you can look at this. But let me just explain and contextualize it a little bit because a lot of people think, oh, well, I just prefer bottled water. Like, I like the brand or it's cool or like it just tastes a little bit better. The issue with drinking water in the United States is a serious one. And so this is now systemic across the board everywhere, and it's driven by a few factors. Number one, we have been toxifying our environment with, with tens and tens and tens of thousands of chemicals over the last 50 years. So Toxicology Division of the EPA and manufacturers and companies that bring chemicals into the US have to register those with the EPA under this Toxicology Division. I believe it sits under the EPA. And to date, there's about 80,000 to 90,000 in the US, in the US alone, registrants that have been made for chemicals. There's about 50,000 that are believed to be in use in the United States. Okay. That's just the chemicals. And then, you know, this goes into agriculture, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing. You know, it's just all of the stuff that we consume. And There are fewer than 100 contaminants that are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act. There's actually 94 to be exact. So PFAS is in—

Oh, wow. Okay.

PFAS is a great example. There was supposed to be a federal mandate around maximum allowable limits of PFAS taking effect. I think PFAS should be— yeah, I think it should be regulated, but I think it's a little bit like picking and choosing what's the worst chemical in a cigarette out of the 6,000 chemicals in a cigarette. It's like picking and choosing like, oh, let's make it only 5,900 bad chemicals. We have a restoration era problem, an area to solve for. And so just going back to this problem, and I'll go to the flow water and make sure I answer your question. But the problem really is we are drinking chemical cocktail in the United States, and that's because of contamination and, you know, lack of regulation or deregulation. And it's also because we are on super aged infrastructure. So Today's municipal water treatment plant was never ever designed to withstand 50,000 chemicals and being able to extract all that stuff out. Like it was good for 50, 80, 100 years ago, 30 years ago. Now it's a problem. And so that on top of super aged infrastructure that has cracks, fissures in it, lead, some of these are lead pipes. That's one of the ways you get lead contamination. 56% of Americans are drinking water with lead in it in the last 5 years. That's a huge issue.

It's starting to crack more and so it's leaking then.

Yeah. And then it's leaking and then that invites bacteria. So like you get the chlorine that's supposed to be the delivery agent that keeps the water clean, but like you can get, you know, high concentrations of bacteria or viruses through these cracks and fissures. So we have an infrastructure issue. So there's a bunch of solutions to it. Going back to kind of your question specifically about FlowWater, we solve that problem and I advocate for policy reform, regulatory investment, And then by the way, these are not like right and left issues. Sometimes people hear those words and they're like, oh, like that must be like super left-leaning, all policies. No, I'm actually personally very nonpartisan, but organizationally it's, you know, we're really more around advocacy of clean drinking water. So that doesn't mean regulate the daylights out of everything so no work can actually get done or no one can like create, have free enterprise.

No, but who doesn't want clean water? I mean—

Exactly. Like there's an appropriate level of work that needs to be done so that we all benefit from that. And so what FlowWater does, is we built a 6-foot-tall, 18-by-20-inch wide and deep, super potent purification system that connects into any water line, any municipal water line. And we put these in hotels, schools, gyms, businesses all across the United States. We've got almost 15,000 or approaching 15,000 total deployed units throughout the entire United States. And what this does is it completely transforms that drinking water that comes in into What we believe is the world's best-tasting, most trusted water. And so, there's 7 stages of filter and purification, basically extracts everything bad, or almost every, like down to 0.0001 microns, puts good things in there to help your body absorb the water and make it taste great. And the net result is people love it. They fall in love with tap water again through a Flowwater device. Then, they quit drinking bottled water. Then, they quit drinking so much soda and caffeinated carbonated Energy drinks, whatever it is. So we kind of solve the problem at the source of the problem rather than just symptoms of the problem. Bottled water is a symptom of the problem. The problem is people need to trust their drinking water and they'll drink more of it and they'll use it. And that's what we're solving for.

Awesome.

Yeah.

And I love that you brought up adding things back in because if you're going back to the well water thing, it's not just H2O. Well water is not It's not—

Right. Yes.

Pure hydrogen oxygen. It's not just that. There's actually minerals and there's salts and there's things in there that are supposed to be in there that come with it that your body can actually use. So, it's not just removing. You can't just remove it and have it be the same or even close to the quality that, you know, if well water is the gold standard, You got to put some stuff back in that's been stripped out through various processes and just time and cleaning, right? Cleaning it. But you got to put that stuff back, back in.

Yeah, you're right. A lot of people don't know that. So sometimes I think people go to the store and they say, I'm just going to drink pure reverse osmosis water, which is, you know, we use a proprietary form of reverse osmosis called advanced osmosis, which is basically RO. We believe far better than, but all similar structure and platform. And if you don't put any minerals back in the RO water, you're basically left with something that's really close to distilled water. Or sometimes people go to the store and they say, I'm just going to drink distilled water because it's the purest form of like literally pure H2O. And you're right, it's not good for your body. I mean, you need those minerals and electrolytes for optimal absorption. It also doesn't taste right. Like if you ever drink it, you're— it tastes—

No, it's not good.

It tastes wrong because it is wrong. There's no minerals in it. There's no electrolytes in it. So Yeah, well water, like good spring water, you know, like it's again very rare, but the really good spring water has like— nature is kind of the best.

It did it right.

Yeah, nature did it right. And then like it didn't work so well when we tried to scale it through like our own ambitions and with our own ideas. And kind of what we've done with Flowater is we've basically tried to use nature as a formative way of restoration, of bringing people back to the tap, which is we do want to utilize local tap water. People shouldn't be drinking water that's just wrapped in, baked in plastic, because that plastic is literally entering their body to the tune of one credit card's worth of plastic a week through either the food that we eat or the beverages that we drink. It's not only terrible for the environment, but we want to be able to get people back to the tap, but then also kind of have this restorative effect that nature intended of adding electrolytes, natural electrolytes, and trace minerals back into the water. So, there's Biomimicry. It's not technically biomimicry, but it's kind of the same concept of biomimicry as biomimicry.

Hey, it's your host, Ian. I'm really glad you're enjoying this episode. I absolutely love highlighting amazing brands and founders for the awesome things they are doing. I've helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and businesses like yours turn their boldest ideas into powerful, purpose-driven brands. So if you're serious about building a brand people love, like our guests and clients to, and one that you're proud to stand behind, I invite you to dive a bit deeper with our book Conscious Design. Inside, you'll discover the exact framework and steps we use to help entrepreneurs like you turn purpose into a powerful, impact-driven brand. A brand that stands out, attracts loyal customers, and drives sustainable growth with social and environmental responsibility woven into its DNA. Grab your copy today. You can find it on our website, consciousdesignhouse.com, or just find the link below in the show notes. Enjoy the rest of the episode and don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. You are creating, recreating something that, well, it's basically we stripped out the bio part and then we're, you're putting it back in is where you're re— re-bioing. I don't know. I'm sure there's a good word we could use for it. Come up with something. That's amazing. And, and so you're, you're focused right now on your device being in these large, large spaces where you have a lot of people, where you might typically have a water fountain, which I also avoid those because they—

Yep.

I know they, they're not filtering anything any better. It's just municipal water. And so you're going, that's really what you've been focusing on for these last 12 years is getting these large area, maximum impact kind of replacement, correct?

Yes. So kind of working backwards, starting first with the consumer, you know, someday we'd like to be in the consumer household and we will be. And then small, medium-sized businesses. We do have a portion of our business where, you know, we get calls frequently from a business that's seen us and they're like, hey, like we had an experience with FlowWater or we saw a Google ad or We saw one of the videos of like the outcomes that people are having. We want to try this and get this and deploy this into our office. We'll do that. Most of our business ends up being hotels, schools, gyms, and corporations. And when I say corporations, that, you know, it could be 30, 50, 100-person organizations up to many tens of thousands, uh, and all over the United States. So, you know, it's not, we're not relegated to one market, one city, one region. We have Flow Waters throughout all 50 states. And again, primarily, you know, what we're trying to solve for are the biggest pain points and the biggest problem points. So for example, today you send your kid to the school across the United States, there's still to this day, and we've had 4 Democratic presidents, 5 Republican ones. So like both, I always get annoyed when both sides start like pointing the finger at each other over the last 50 years, 4 and 5. And we still don't have a federal mandate on lead testing throughout the United States. So, you could be literally sending your kid to school—

With lead pipes.

And yeah, it's literally playing Russian roulette with their neurological system because lead is, you know, I think is one of the biggest issues that we face in the country today. American Academy of Pediatrics says the only acceptable amount of dose for adolescents to receive of lead is 0 parts per billion. Zero. That's the only effective— that's the maximum, like, kind of—

Maximum is nothing.

And so this idea that we don't even have a federal mandate, and so one comes into play, and then when it comes into play in the next couple years, it's already way too high in my opinion, and I have many other people's opinions. So we look at this where we say, look, if we have this dire issue, where are the greatest pain points for which we can immediately solve or pervasive problem today. You know, it's not— we don't have to wait for policy. So I advocate for policy and regulatory and investment, appropriate investment in, you know, technology for municipality. But those are like 2, 5, 10, 20 years away, in some cases 50 years away in terms of laying new pipe.

Right.

So we have to do something today. That's how big the crisis is. And for example, you and I sitting here, if we haven't been filtering our water And eating really clean food, the chance is, the data shows that you and I have a plastic spoon's worth of plastic sitting in our brain in like little pieces, microplastics. That's a huge issue. And the plastics are not, you know, people think, oh, like, well, what, how big of a deal is that? New England Journal of Medicine just published something in the last year that showed that people that have microplastics found in arterial plaque or in their arteries had a fourfold increase of myocardial infarction, death, and stroke. It's dramatic once you have this stuff in you. So we have to do things like preventing lead from entering our bodies because they were not designed to filter lead. They're not very good at lead. It ends up having permanent neurological issues.

I mean, that stuff's, that stuff's old. We know the Romans used lead in their pipes and it was a known issue. Like, it's for thousands of years. We know lead's bad. It's not an—

it's, it's It's been around. Yeah. That's like another podcast episode. Like, how did this happen? Like 2,000 years or however many thousands of years later. Yeah. It's kind of, it's kind of staggering to me.

Yeah. That's, it's crazy to, it's crazy to think. And I didn't realize that there wasn't any regulation against lead in water. Not federally.

Not, not federally. So some states have some regulations or requirements, some cities, some municipalities. But if there was something across the board, over half of Americans in the last 5 years wouldn't have been drinking water with lead in it. I mean, that's the bottom line. And so, well, yeah, it's a huge issue.

As you said, it's a bit of like, do you happen to live in the right place? And if you're a kid, right, you don't, you don't have a choice where you live. It's like, well, where did you happen to get born? That's that. There's no, there's no way to have zero.

Exactly. And in fact, I mean, there's Unfortunate data, but the data shows that the more marginalized you are, like kind of in a population, the more marginalized the population is, though generally speaking, worse the water quality is. So it's this double whammy, which is, well, if you're, if you're in an environment where you're already part of a marginalized group or marginalized population, it just becomes harder to advocate for yourself. yet you have to do even more advocating for yourself because not even your drinking water is as clean as the people across the street or across the highway or whatever it is. And so, you know, this, this idea of water equality, everyone deserves access to clean drinking water and that, you know, every man, woman, and child should have access to clean drinking water is something that, you know, not just I, but my entire team, like this is, me and 80 people that are working on this mission are just super committed to.

Yeah, well, I think it's— I mean, I don't know how anybody would argue against it. Like, what? There's no real argument as to why this shouldn't be happening.

There isn't. It's just that there's a huge amount of economic incentive. There's no public argument against it, but like all the economic incentives around so many companies are profiting from this kind of precipitous decline of American drinking water and a broken infrastructure. And so that's one of the things that's been— it's been great and rewarding, but it's been difficult about the change, which is if you're changing status quo, particularly a really profitable status quo, and you've got incumbents that are multibillion-dollar companies that are embedded in this, you have to have— you have to capture some tailwinds. And part of that, you know, hopefully is good luck. Part of that is Hopefully just showing up, working hard, doing a good job, having a great product. Part of that is having consumers and advocates that are evangelizing, saying, no, like, I'm sick of this stuff. Like, I'm not going to tolerate X, Y, and Z in my office anymore, or I'm going to ensure that my employees or my students have access to clean drinking water and making decisions to support that, particularly also just with our voices in terms of advocacy and causes. Like, this stuff matters, right?

Well, I think it's, it's amazing what you guys are doing. I'm glad that you are You have a solution. I think that's one of the, one of the things, right, is you have to actually have a solution and then you have to tell people about the solution and then people could start activating the solution. And it's kind of in that order that has to happen. So it's great to see that, you know, you've been around for 12 years, it's taking time, but you are actually, you are actually making an impact. Before we wrap up, I wanted to talk a little bit and And get your thoughts on like moving forward. So I know right now you're aimed at these really high-impact areas. Are there— not everybody necessarily wants a big 6-foot thing in their house. Are you looking at moving at some point to be able to scale this down, be able to have an easier-to-use, smaller, smaller thing?

Yeah.

I mean, I could even think of like a portable one, right, of something that You go, if some of you are traveling a whole bunch and you're at hotels, like you're only— you don't trust that, you know, the hotel's not paying you, typically not paying to filter out all the water. You're going to have to buy bottled water. I guess kind of how are you thinking long term of getting trickling this down into— can you even go after all of those spaces? Is that possible?

Yeah, I would say, you know, the last 10 years of the business have really been about laying the foundation and laying the foundation of building out a brand that people love, they trust, that performs, that changes behavior radically. I mean, we have so much data that shows that when someone has a Flow water installed, they drink less, you know, bad stuff, they drink more good stuff. And in a world where people are chronically dehydrated, if we can show that consumers drink 2 to 5-fold more water every day after they have access to Flow water, It's really dramatic. So right now we're scaling this B2B side and that's going really well. I mean, you know, every vertical across the United States is really progressing beautifully. The next 10 years of the company ends up being making product modifications and product enhancements or modified form factors to provide, you know, greater access to drinking FlowWater wherever consumers work, rest, and play. And so that means maybe smaller offices, home offices, like maybe a miniaturized or a reduced-size FlowWater refill station at some point. That means probably a countertop FlowWater that might be both commercial as well as residential. And then that could extend to FlowWater on the go, you know, in the form of, you know, a bottle that filters, for example. The thing that I always wrestle with and that I think every entrepreneur wrestles with, of course, is you have limited capital, you're fighting against incumbents that have way more embedded marketplace presence as well as resources, as well as people and distribution channels and all that stuff. So it kind of becomes a question of like, well, how marginalized can you end up yielding your focus without capsizing the core part of your business, right? And so we're really fixated. Sometimes people are like, oh gosh, you should go to like this country and that country. I'm like, gosh, well, I'd like to like just—

I had that thought too. Like this, this could be used everywhere. You can be—

Yeah, I know. It's so tempting. This is why if I'm ever in a Lyft or an Uber, this is why I don't tell them what I do because they want to talk about it the whole way. I just tell them I'm a plumber, which I kind of feel like I am because I started out like selling and installing and doing stuff. But I, that, you know, people are like, oh, you should have these on airplanes. And it's like there's an unlimited number. But for us to really stay focused where, you know, I want to be able to walk around Chicago and find Flowater frequently. Like right now I still run into Flowater frequently when I'm on the road, but it's frequently for me as CEO for Flowater remembering that time when we had zero in the market. It's still never enough. But, you know, we should see these like you see Starbucks everywhere, but, you know, not quite in the same metaphor. You just want to be able to see it in a lot of places wherever you're showing up outside the home is where we believe you should have access to clean drinking water. And I'm not just evangelizing and advocating, hey, we're the only solution that's out there. I am convinced that we are the best product for our intended use. If there's some other intended use, I tell friends, family, business prospects, hey, here's some other company. Like if you're in this category or you need to do X, Y, and Z, This is a great product for that. FlowWater is suited for A, B, and C. But yeah, we, we do need to keep focusing on scale. But the idea of getting FlowWater into the home is a really attractive one, and it's probably our single biggest request because what happens is you go to work and you fall in love with FlowWater, and then you don't realize how crappy your water tastes.

And then you want to know.

Until you actually have good water. Then you get home and you're really unhappy and you really wanna solve that problem. So we have a pent-up installed base of consumers that are, that are really thirsty, sorry for the pun, for Flow water at home.

Yeah, I think they, you know, I love that you brought up the kind of the focus, right, of, because I think it is a trap. It is a very easy trap to fall into where you have to not, you can't say yes to everything, especially at the beginning, right? If you were like, oh yeah, we're going to do a home version and an office and these big versions and we're gonna ship worldwide. It would, it probably would've overwhelmed you guys just to attempt to do that. So I love that you bring that up just from like the business standpoint of, you know, you have to really pick your lane, focus on it, be doing that, and then expand. And, and, you know, now maybe you have the right enough customers that are going, we want it in our house.

Yeah.

We want it in our house. And now you can expand or plan out safely expanding into that space without, you know, I would definitely not want you to crush your, destroy your current business because you're impacting so many people per machine.

Right. Yeah, that's exactly the dilemma.

Yeah.

So we'll get there.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, you know, for anybody, this has been really great. For one, I just love what you guys are doing. The impact is amazing to see what you guys are doing. For people that are interested in learning more, getting a machine, getting this, maybe telling their gym that they need, they need to have this installed, what's the best way to find you guys and then reach out?

Just a couple things. Go to drinkflowwater.com. drinkflowater.com and also on socials, we're @drinkflowater. Go in, you could submit a request for a product demo.

Okay.

Or you could just say, hey, like you said, hey, I want this in my gym. Like, I don't wanna be drinking this crappy water fountain water anymore. Like, and then if we call the gym up and we're like, hey, some of your consumers would love to have a demo of this unit. And like, we're in 15,000 locations across the United States, many thousands of gyms and fitness centers across the US. Here's the impact. Generally speaking, people are pretty open to saying, hey, I just didn't hear about you and we'd love to try it. Same thing with the school, you know, parents advocating for their kids and having access to safe conditions, clean food, clean drinking water. These things make a major difference. And School boards are already focusing on that. I mean, I know that school boards have a lot of challenges on their hands these days. So I, you know, I've sat in front of many school board meetings and I feel like they're all just trying to do the— for the most part, most of them are trying to really do the right thing. And but, but that said, consumers, parents, PTAs can really accelerate that or help ensure the prioritization. And I think the idea of clean drinking water in a school is just Like the first level, like first level stuff that we gotta do.

Who can, who can you really even argue? It's, it's clean water for kids.

Yeah.

Like that's something that should be a double whammy of, uh, yes, you should be saying yes. Yeah. Just, just do it. It's, and especially with your, you know, if it seems like yours is a pretty easy install, you plug it into the water source and you turn it off.

It is.

Yeah.

So that, and that's a, I mean, literally 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and it's done. There's no—

Amazing.

We don't need a contractor that's like certified in anything in particular. You don't need plumbing to be done. It's a very simple hookup line. People tend to think, particularly at school, oh, water fountain, that's a nightmare. It kind of is a nightmare because then you have possibly asbestos through some of these old buildings and you have to do certain Because that's good to have in schools too. Processes around this. So what we do is we love— we'll just put a FlowWater right next to the old water fountain, hook it up, and like 30 minutes later it's up and running. So that does make it really like ease of use. This is the thing, like going back to design, I know we're finishing up here, but like one of the comments that I just want to make real quickly about design is you can't just have it be cool. It's got to be elegant and simple for the customer, which is, you know, Like, I'll use an example of something that I think has just gotten like way overdesigned is that every appliance, I do not want every one of my appliances to have IoT connectivity. That is like, to me, one of the world's worst ideas. What, you don't want a smart house?

I don't want to have to— nope. Everything?

Yeah, exactly. Like, I just want to turn something on, move a button, go. Like in some cases, right? Other cases, it's a really good idea. And so FlowWater having simplicity, speed, Soft touch buttons that are really easy to clean. Like one of the reasons that people don't like water fountains is it takes 35 seconds on average about to fill up a bottle like this at a water fountain. It's about 9 seconds in a Flow water refill station. That piece of friction is actually a really big deal when people are deciding, hey, do I fill up or do I, is like the line too long?

Or is it— I would imagine especially, especially if you're at a school rushing between even college.

Yes, exactly.

I remember college rushing between classes when you have 5 minutes to get across campus.

Yeah, literally, like 5 kids. Which 5 kids are going to get to drink water today?

Yeah, exactly. Who's going to get there? Because I'm not going to wait in line for 3 minutes to get to the water. I'm going to go to class. I don't— I can't do it. Yeah. So I love that you would mention that because that is a huge, huge thing is speed, making it easy, convenient for everyone, for whoever's installing it and setting it up and the actual end user. has a good experience with it. So amazing. Amazing. Well, this is— I know we're at time here now, but I really appreciate you taking the time to jump on here, talk about what you guys are doing. I love, love what you guys are doing and hope you guys just keep, keep growing and love to see your in-home version when you guys can get that done.

All right, Ian, thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to see you.

Absolutely. And that wraps up another episode of the Conscious Design Podcast. If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to life and turn it into a sustainable 7-figure business, visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below. Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode.