September 21, 2025 • 35 mins
What’s really in your tap water?
This episode breaks down PFAS, lead, and microplastics and why tap water safety is a growing concern. Then FloWater CEO Rich “Raz” Razgaitis explains the science of 7-stage purification: RO at 0.0001 microns, advanced carbon, and remineralization for taste and hydration. If you’re evaluating a PFAS water filter for schools, an office water dispenser, or a gym refill station, here is a practical field guide, plus bottled water alternatives that reduce waste. (Also called bottle filling stations or water bottle refill stations.)
This episode covers:
• How contaminants get past aging infrastructure
• Why RO alone isn’t the full story (remineralization matters)
• Refill stations vs fountains: speed, hygiene, behavior change (~9s vs ~35s)
• Practical steps for parents, PTAs, and facilities to launch a pilot fast
⏩ Jump to your favorite parts:
00:00 - Welcome to Conscious Design Podcast
00:43 - Introducing Rich “Raz” Razgaitis and FloWater
01:16 - The Origin Story of FloWater
02:58 - The Problem with Tap Water
06:56 - FloWater’s Solution
11:24 - Advocating for Clean Drinking Water
24:35 - Future Plans for FloWater
30:28 - Conclusion and Contact Information
About Rich “Raz” Razgaitis and FloWater
Rich “Raz” Razgaitis is the CEO and Co-Founder of FloWater, a Denver-based company focused on tap water safety and better hydration. After early roles at J&J and Eli Lilly, Raz led several growth-stage companies, including scaling Univera from $35M to $100M in annual revenue. Recognized as EY Entrepreneur of the Year (Mountain West) and a TEDx speaker, Raz co-founded FloWater in 2013 to deliver clean, great-tasting water where people refill most: schools, gyms, hotels, and offices.
FloWater Refill Stations use 7-stage purification with RO at 0.0001 microns, advanced carbon, and remineralization. FloWater states its systems remove up to 99.9% of contaminants such as lead, PFAS, and microplastics, and reports saving 1B+ plastic bottles from the environment. Trusted by 10,000+ locations, including Google, Hyatt, Xponential, and Oakland Unified School District.
🔗𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 Rich “Raz” Razgaitis 𝗮𝗻𝗱 FloWater
Website : https://drinkflowater.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richrazgaitis/
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/@RichRazgaitis
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richrazgaitis/
𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻” 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KNMN9BT
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
They fall in love with tap wateragain through a flow water
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 theproblem.
Bottled water is a symptom of the problem.
The problem is people need to trust their drinking water and
(00:22):
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 Ihelp turn product ideas into
sustainable 7 figure businesses.Join me for another episode
where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy.
(00:44):
Today I'm really excited to haveRaz Raz Gaidis.
He's the CEO and Co founder of Flow Water and they're a company
dedicated to transforming tap water into ultra purified, great
tasting water while eliminating need for single use plastic.
Welcome to the show. Ian, thanks for having me on.
It's great to see you. Yeah, absolutely.
(01:04):
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
(01:28):
was when my daughters were about11 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 like1 was more notable than the
others that they were basically getting rewarded for doing good
(01:49):
things with the really crappy food and beverages, right?
So like, great job. Like you just won the game now,
like, you get to torch your bodywith 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
because that's where I grew up. And, you know, I was living in
(02:11):
Assaf at the time. And it kind of dawned on me
like, holy shit. Like all the kids in Assaf 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 thefood might be like a little more
refined. But at the end of the day, I
think it's like refined and labeling, but it's the same crap
that's in there that is doing really bad things, whether it is
(02:36):
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
form the creation of flow water.But from what prompted my
interest in this entire categorystarted with that moment which
led to, you know, exploration ofwhy are kids drinking more
(02:56):
water? 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 with
7080% of Americans don't trust their top 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,
(03:17):
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 theirtop water.
And it creates this endless loopof everyone winning, every
business wins. That is, in this industry, every
(03:40):
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 flocked.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.
(04:02):
They're like, well, you should. I don't know how much you know
about the Maha movement. Make America healthy, 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 little nuts
because it's like, well, who can't agree with this idea of
(04:24):
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 reallyadvocating 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, 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
(04:44):
actually the most non partisan 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
(05:07):
thing, you know, no contaminants.
No, that was. Amazing.
Do you have one? No, but I have some family who
bought property, you know, 50 years ago 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 likeone house out of my entire
family. When people ask me what's the
(05:29):
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'sone out of a million, but it's
definitely not one out of 10,000either.
You know, it's somewhere betweenthose 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
(05:52):
The, 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, OK, you can getwater out of this is drinking
water. But that's still it took them
(06:16):
and they had to educate themselves because when I was a
kid, this is not something that everybody was talking about
constantly. A lot of people were like, I'll
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
(06:36):
how just how not good the tap water is.
And that's true. Like I think you're making a
point is driving everyone to go,OK, well, I guess I have to buy
bottled water. That's kind of the one of the
only options people see because it's the one with all the
marketing money behind it. So it's the one you constantly
see in ads and everything. So let's talk about your
(06:58):
solution. Where can 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 that's different. It's way better when your when
your machine's done with it. Well, you OK if I kind of just
(07:20):
pour it back those 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, they're like, you don't know
what's in there. There's something bad in there.
Smells bad, tastes bad. I heard once I can make this
(07:42):
really, really clear for people,and it's not because I'm some
gurus, partly just because I've studied this for a long time,
partly because the data is very plentiful, partly because you
can just go to ewg.org and they have a tap water database in, in
its environmental working group.It's a nonprofit in in that
database. It has just a partial listing of
(08:03):
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 510-2030
different contaminants in your backyard or your nearest
(08:23):
municipal water. That shows five times the EWG
limit, 30 times the EWG limit, 2000 times the EWG recommended
the 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
(08:45):
little bit better. The issue with drinking water in
the United States is a serious 1.
And so this is now systemic across the board, everywhere,
and it's driven by a few factors.
Number one, we've been toxifyingour environment with met with
10's and 10's and 10s of thousands of chemicals over the
last 50 years. So toxicology division of the
(09:08):
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 today there's about 80 to 90,000 in the US and the US
alone, registrants that have been made for chemicals.
There's about 50,000 that are believed to be in use in the
(09:30):
United States. OK, That's just the chemicals.
And then, you know, this goes inthe agriculture,
pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, you know, it's just all of the
stuff that we consume. And there are fewer than 100 of
contaminants that are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
There's actually 94 to be exact.So P Foss is in.
(09:53):
P Foss is a great example. There were supposed to be a
federal mandate around maximum allowable limits of P Foss
taking effect. I think P Foss should be, yeah,
I think it should be regulated, but I think it's a little bit
like picking and choosing what'sthe worst chemical in a
cigarette out of the 6000 chemicals in a cigarette.
It's like picking and choosing, like, oh, let's make it only
five 5900 bad chemicals. We have a restoration era
(10:16):
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 youknow, lack of regulation or
deregulation. And it's also because we are on
super age infrastructure. So today's municipal water
treatment plant was never, ever designed to withstand 50,000
(10:41):
chemicals and being able to extract all that stuff out like
it was good for 5080, a hundred years ago, 30 years ago.
Now it's a problem. And so that on top of super Asia
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 fiveyears.
(11:01):
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 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.
The going back to kind of your question specifically about flow
(11:23):
water, we solve that problem andI 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, likethat must be like super
left-leaning all policies. No, I'm actually personally very
nonpartisan, but organizationally it's it's, you
know, we're really more around advocacy of clean drinking
(11:44):
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 how free?
Enterprise Who doesn't want clean water?
Exactly like there's an appropriate level of work that
needs to be done so that we all benefit from that.
And So what Flow Water does is we built a six foot tall, 18 by
20 inch wide and deep, super potent purification system that
(12:07):
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, we're
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
(12:29):
trusted water. And so there's seven stages of
filter and purification basically extracts everything
bad or almost every like down to.0001 microns, puts good things
in there to help your body absorb the water and make it
taste great. And then that result is people
love it. They fall in love with top water
again through a flow water device.
(12:50):
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 just rather than just symptoms
of the problem, bottled water isa 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
(13:11):
we're solving for. Awesome.
Yeah, I, I love that you broughtup adding things back in because
if you're going back to the wellwater 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
(13:31):
supposed to be in there that come with that your, your body
can actually use. So it's not just removing, it's
you can't just remove it and have it be the same or even
close to the quality that you know with well waters the gold
standard, you got to put some stuff back in that's been
stripped out through various processes and just time and
(13:54):
cleaning ready cleaning it, but you got to put that stuff back
back in. You're right, a lot of people
don't know that. So sometimes I think people go
to the store and they say you'rejust 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 it all similar
(14:17):
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 todistilled 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,
(14:39):
you're it, it tastes. No, 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
(15:02):
through like our own ambitions and with our own ideas.
And kind of what we've done withflow water is we've basically
tried to use nature as a formative way of restoration of
bringing people back to the top,which is we do want to utilize
local top 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
(15:23):
credit cards worth of plastic a week through either the food
that we eat or the beverages that we drink.
Not only terrible for the environment, but we want to be
able to get people back to the top, 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 bio mimic.
(15:43):
It's not technically bio mimicry, but it's kind of the
same concept of bio mimic 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.
(16:05):
So if you're serious about building a brand people love,
like our guests and clients too,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 useto help entrepreneurs like you
turn purpose into a powerful, impact driven brand.
Brand that stands out, tracks loyal customers and drive
(16:27):
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
(16:50):
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 you're re rebioing. I don't know, I'm sure there's a
good word we can use for it. Come up with something that's
amazing. And, and so you're, you're
focused right now on your devicebeing in these large, large
(17:15):
spaces where you have a lot of people or you might typically
have a water fountain, which I also avoid those.
They're not filtering anything any better.
It's just municipal water. And so you're going, that's
really what you've been focusingon for the last 12 years is
getting these large area maximumimpact kind of replacement
(17:38):
cracks. Yes.
So kind of working backwards, starting first with a 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, a portion of our
business where, you know, we getcalls frequently from a business
that's seen us and they're like,hey, like we had an experience
with flow water. We saw at Google ad or we saw
(17:59):
one of the videos of like the outcomes that people are having.
We want to try this and get thisand 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 thatyou know, it could be 30-50
hundred person organizations up to many 10s of thousands and all
(18:20):
over the United States. So you know, it's not we're not
relegated to 1 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 four Democratic presidents, five Republican
(18:43):
ones. So they both, I always get
annoyed when both sides start like pointing the finger at each
other. Over the last 50 years, 4:00 and
5:00 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, it's literally, it's literally playing Russian
roulette with their neurologicalsystem because lead is, you
(19:06):
know, I think it's 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
(19:26):
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 had 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 a pervasive problem today?
(19:46):
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 like251020 years away, in some cases
50 years away in terms of layingnew pipe.
So we have to do something today.
That's how big the crisis is. And for example, you and I
(20:06):
sitting here, if we haven't beenfiltering our water and eating
really clean food, the chance isthe data shows that you and I
have a plastic spoons worth of plastic sitting in our brain in
like little pieces, microplastic.
That's a huge issue. And the plastics are not, you
know, people think, oh, like, well, what how big of a deal is
(20:27):
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 four fold 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
(20:48):
designed to filter lead. They're not very good at lead.
It ends up having permanent. New logical issues.
I mean, that's those, that's those old.
We know the Romans used lead in their pipes and it was a known
issue in our thousands of years.We know lead's bad.
It's not a, it's it's. Been yeah, that's like another
podcast episode of like, how didthis happen, like 2000 years or
(21:10):
however many thousands of years later?
Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind ofstaggering to me.
Yeah, that's, that's crazy. It's crazy to think and I didn't
realize that there wasn't any regulation against lead not.
Federally not Not federally. So some states have some
regulations requirements, some cities, some municipalities.
(21:30):
But if there was something across the board, over half of
Americans in the last five yearswouldn'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 record like I 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?
You think that's that? There's no there's no way to
(21:51):
have 0. Exactly.
And in fact, I mean, there's unfortunate data, but the data
shows that the more marginalizedyou are like kind of in a
population, the more marginalized the population is,
though generally speaking, worsethe water quality is.
So it's this double whammy, which is, well, if you're, if
(22:13):
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 highwayor whatever it is.
(22:33):
And so you know, this, this ideaof 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
(22:55):
don't know how anybody would argue against it.
Like what? There's no real argument as to
why this shouldn't 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 declineof American drinking water in a
(23:19):
broken infrastructure. And so it's 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 multi billion dollar companies
that are embedded in this, you have to have, you have to
capture some tailwinds. And part of that, you know,
(23:40):
hopefully is good luck. Part of that is hopefully just
showing up, working hard, doing a job, having a great product.
Part of that is having consumersand advocates that are
evangelizing, saying no, like I'm sick of this stuff.
Like I'm not going to tolerate XY 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
(24:00):
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.
Glad that you are, you have a solution.
I think that's one of the one ofthe 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
(24:21):
the solution and it's kind of inthat order that has to happen.
So it's great to see that you know, you've been around for 12
years taking time, but you are actually you are actually making
an impact. Before we wrap up, I wanted to
talk a little bit and get your thoughts on like moving forward.
So I know right now you're aimedat these really high impact
(24:43):
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 to be able to have a easier to use smaller, a smaller
thing? I mean, I could even think of
like a portable one, right, of something that you go if some of
(25:05):
your traveling a whole bunch andyou're at hotels like you're
only you don't trust, you know, the hotels 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 us down into can you
even go after all those spaces? Is that is that possible?
(25:27):
Yeah, I would. 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. And we have so much data that
shows that when someone has a flow around installed, they
drink less, you know, bad stuff,they drink more good stuff.
(25:50):
And in a world where people are chronically dehydrated, if we
can show that consumers drink two to five fold more water
every day after they have accessto flow water, it's really
dramatic. So right now we're scaling this
B to B side and that's going really well.
I mean, you know, every verticalacross the United States is
really progressing beautifully. The next 10 years of the company
(26:14):
end up being making product modifications and product
enhancements or modified form factors to provide, you know,
greater access to drinking flow water wherever consumers work,
rest and play. And so that means maybe smaller
offices, home offices, like maybe a miniaturized or a
(26:34):
reduced size flow water refill station at some point.
That means probably a countertopflow water that might be both
commercial as well as residential.
And then that could extend flow water on the go, you know, in
the form of of, you know, a bottle that filters, for
example. The thing that I always wrestle
(26:55):
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 aswell as resources as well as
people and distribution channelsand all that stuff.
So it kind of becomes a questionof like, well, how marginalized
can you end up yielding your focus without capsizing the core
(27:19):
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, what I'd like to
like just. I had that thought too.
Like this. This could be used everywhere
you can be. 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
the whole way. I just tell them I'm a plumber,
(27:40):
which I kind of feel like I am because I started out like
selling and stalling and doing stuff.
But I did, 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 flow water frequently.
Like right now, I still run intoflow water frequently when I'm
(28:01):
in the road, but it's, it's frequently for me as CEO for
flow water, 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.
(28:23):
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 I told friends, family,
business prospects, hey, here's some other.
Like if you're in this category or you need to do the XY and Z,
this is a great product for that.
(28:43):
Flow Water is suited for AB and C, But yeah, we do need to keep
focusing on scale. But the idea of getting flow
water 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 flow water, and then you don't realize how crappy your
water tastes until you actually have good water.
(29:03):
Then you get home, you're reallyunhappy and you really want to
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 waterat home.
Yeah, I, I think they, you know,I love, I love that you brought
up the kind of the focus rate ofbecause I think it is a trap.
(29:25):
It is a very easy trap to fall into where you have to not you
can't say yes to everything at especially at the beginning,
right? If you if you were like, Oh
yeah, we're going to do a home version and an office and these
big versions and we're going to ship worldwide, it would I
probably would have overwhelmed you guys just to attempt to do
(29:47):
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, you now maybe you have the right
enough customers that are going,we want it in our house, we want
(30:07):
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 crushyour 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.
(30:28):
Awesome, awesome. Well, you know, for anybody this
has been really great for one islove what you guys are doing.
The impact is 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
(30:50):
they need to have this installed.
What's the best way to find you guys and then reach out?
Just couple things go to drinkflowwater.com, drink Flo
water.com and also on socials we're at drink flow water go in.
You could submit a request for aproduct demo or you could just
(31:12):
say, hey, like you said, hey, I want this in my gym.
Like I don't want to be drinkingthis crappy water fountain water
anymore. Like, and then if we call the
gym up and we're like, hey, someof 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
(31:34):
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 in school boards are already
(31:55):
focusing on that. I mean, I know the school boards
have a lot of challenges in their hands these days.
So I, you know, I've sat in front of many school board
meetings and I feel like they'reall just trying to do the for
the most part, most of them are trying to really do the right
thing and but but that's sad consumers, parents PT as can
really accelerate that or help ensure the prioritization.
(32:18):
And I think the idea of clean drinking water in a school is
just like the first level, like first level stuff that we got to
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 yes, you should be saying yes,
just just do it. It's and especially with your,
(32:38):
you know, if it seems like yoursis a pretty easy install, you
plug it into the water source and you turn it off.
It is. So that's AI mean literally 30
minutes, 40 minutes and it's there's no amazing.
We don't need a contractor that's like like it's like
certified in anything in particular.
You don't need to, you know, plumbing to be done.
(33:00):
It's a very simple hook up line.You know, people tend to think
like particularly a school. Oh, like water fountain.
That's a nightmare. It kind of is a nightmare
because then you have like possibly asbestos, you know,
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 flow water right next to the old
water fountain hook it up and like 30 minutes later it's up
(33:23):
and running so that does make itreally 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 a an
example of something that I think has just gotten like way
(33:43):
over designed is that every appliance, I do not want every
one of my appliances to have IoTconnectivity.
That is like, to me, one of the world's worst ideas.
Well, you don't want to smart 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 flow water having simplicity, speed, soft touch
(34:07):
buttons that are really easy to clean.
Like one of the reasons people like water fountains is it takes
35 seconds on average about to fill up a bottle like this or
water fountain, it's about 9 seconds in a flow or a 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 linetoo long I.
Would imagine especially especially if you're in school
(34:28):
rushing between even college. I remember college rushing
between classes when you have 5 minutes to get across campus.
Yeah, literally kids, like 5 kids which five kids are going
to get to drink water today? Yeah, exactly who, who, who's
going to get there? Because I'm not going to wait in
line for 3 minutes to get to thewater.
I'm going to go to class. I don't, I can't do it.
(34:50):
So I I love I love that we you would mention that because that
is a huge, huge thing is speed, making it easy, convenient for
everyone, for the 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 we're
(35:11):
at time here now, but I really appreciate you taking the time
to jump on here, talk about whatyou guys are doing a love love
what you guys are doing and hopeyou 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 pleasure to see you.
Absolutely. And that wraps up another
(35:31):
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.
They fall in love with tap wateragain through a flow water
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 theproblem.
Bottled water is a symptom of the problem.
The problem is people need to trust their drinking water and
(00:22):
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 Ihelp turn product ideas into
sustainable 7 figure businesses.Join me for another episode
where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy.
(00:44):
Today I'm really excited to haveRaz Raz Gaidis.
He's the CEO and Co founder of Flow Water and they're a company
dedicated to transforming tap water into ultra purified, great
tasting water while eliminating need for single use plastic.
Welcome to the show. Ian, thanks for having me on.
It's great to see you. Yeah, absolutely.
(01:04):
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
(01:28):
was when my daughters were about11 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 like1 was more notable than the
others that they were basically getting rewarded for doing good
(01:49):
things with the really crappy food and beverages, right?
So like, great job. Like you just won the game now,
like, you get to torch your bodywith 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
because that's where I grew up. And, you know, I was living in
(02:11):
Assaf at the time. And it kind of dawned on me
like, holy shit. Like all the kids in Assaf 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 thefood might be like a little more
refined. But at the end of the day, I
think it's like refined and labeling, but it's the same crap
that's in there that is doing really bad things, whether it is
(02:36):
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
form the creation of flow water.But from what prompted my
interest in this entire categorystarted with that moment which
led to, you know, exploration ofwhy are kids drinking more
(02:56):
water? 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 with
7080% of Americans don't trust their top 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,
(03:17):
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 theirtop water.
And it creates this endless loopof everyone winning, every
business wins. That is, in this industry, every
(03:40):
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 flocked.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.
(04:02):
They're like, well, you should. I don't know how much you know
about the Maha movement. Make America healthy, 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 little nuts
because it's like, well, who can't agree with this idea of
(04:24):
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 reallyadvocating 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, 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
(04:44):
actually the most non partisan 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
(05:07):
thing, you know, no contaminants.
No, that was. Amazing.
Do you have one? No, but I have some family who
bought property, you know, 50 years ago 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 likeone house out of my entire
family. When people ask me what's the
(05:29):
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'sone out of a million, but it's
definitely not one out of 10,000either.
You know, it's somewhere betweenthose 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
(05:52):
The, 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, OK, you can getwater out of this is drinking
water. But that's still it took them
(06:16):
and they had to educate themselves because when I was a
kid, this is not something that everybody was talking about
constantly. A lot of people were like, I'll
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
(06:36):
how just how not good the tap water is.
And that's true. Like I think you're making a
point is driving everyone to go,OK, well, I guess I have to buy
bottled water. That's kind of the one of the
only options people see because it's the one with all the
marketing money behind it. So it's the one you constantly
see in ads and everything. So let's talk about your
(06:58):
solution. Where can 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 that's different. It's way better when your when
your machine's done with it. Well, you OK if I kind of just
(07:20):
pour it back those 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, they're like, you don't know
what's in there. There's something bad in there.
Smells bad, tastes bad. I heard once I can make this
(07:42):
really, really clear for people,and it's not because I'm some
gurus, partly just because I've studied this for a long time,
partly because the data is very plentiful, partly because you
can just go to ewg.org and they have a tap water database in, in
its environmental working group.It's a nonprofit in in that
database. It has just a partial listing of
(08:03):
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 510-2030
different contaminants in your backyard or your nearest
(08:23):
municipal water. That shows five times the EWG
limit, 30 times the EWG limit, 2000 times the EWG recommended
the 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
(08:45):
little bit better. The issue with drinking water in
the United States is a serious 1.
And so this is now systemic across the board, everywhere,
and it's driven by a few factors.
Number one, we've been toxifyingour environment with met with
10's and 10's and 10s of thousands of chemicals over the
last 50 years. So toxicology division of the
(09:08):
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 today there's about 80 to 90,000 in the US and the US
alone, registrants that have been made for chemicals.
There's about 50,000 that are believed to be in use in the
(09:30):
United States. OK, That's just the chemicals.
And then, you know, this goes inthe agriculture,
pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, you know, it's just all of the
stuff that we consume. And there are fewer than 100 of
contaminants that are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
There's actually 94 to be exact.So P Foss is in.
(09:53):
P Foss is a great example. There were supposed to be a
federal mandate around maximum allowable limits of P Foss
taking effect. I think P Foss should be, yeah,
I think it should be regulated, but I think it's a little bit
like picking and choosing what'sthe worst chemical in a
cigarette out of the 6000 chemicals in a cigarette.
It's like picking and choosing, like, oh, let's make it only
five 5900 bad chemicals. We have a restoration era
(10:16):
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 youknow, lack of regulation or
deregulation. And it's also because we are on
super age infrastructure. So today's municipal water
treatment plant was never, ever designed to withstand 50,000
(10:41):
chemicals and being able to extract all that stuff out like
it was good for 5080, a hundred years ago, 30 years ago.
Now it's a problem. And so that on top of super Asia
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 fiveyears.
(11:01):
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 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.
The going back to kind of your question specifically about flow
(11:23):
water, we solve that problem andI 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, likethat must be like super
left-leaning all policies. No, I'm actually personally very
nonpartisan, but organizationally it's it's, you
know, we're really more around advocacy of clean drinking
(11:44):
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 how free?
Enterprise Who doesn't want clean water?
Exactly like there's an appropriate level of work that
needs to be done so that we all benefit from that.
And So what Flow Water does is we built a six foot tall, 18 by
20 inch wide and deep, super potent purification system that
(12:07):
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, we're
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
(12:29):
trusted water. And so there's seven stages of
filter and purification basically extracts everything
bad or almost every like down to.0001 microns, puts good things
in there to help your body absorb the water and make it
taste great. And then that result is people
love it. They fall in love with top water
again through a flow water device.
(12:50):
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 just rather than just symptoms
of the problem, bottled water isa 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
(13:11):
we're solving for. Awesome.
Yeah, I, I love that you broughtup adding things back in because
if you're going back to the wellwater 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
(13:31):
supposed to be in there that come with that your, your body
can actually use. So it's not just removing, it's
you can't just remove it and have it be the same or even
close to the quality that you know with well waters the gold
standard, you got to put some stuff back in that's been
stripped out through various processes and just time and
(13:54):
cleaning ready cleaning it, but you got to put that stuff back
back in. You're right, a lot of people
don't know that. So sometimes I think people go
to the store and they say you'rejust 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 it all similar
(14:17):
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 todistilled 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,
(14:39):
you're it, it tastes. No, 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
(15:02):
through like our own ambitions and with our own ideas.
And kind of what we've done withflow water is we've basically
tried to use nature as a formative way of restoration of
bringing people back to the top,which is we do want to utilize
local top 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
(15:23):
credit cards worth of plastic a week through either the food
that we eat or the beverages that we drink.
Not only terrible for the environment, but we want to be
able to get people back to the top, 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 bio mimic.
(15:43):
It's not technically bio mimicry, but it's kind of the
same concept of bio mimic 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.
(16:05):
So if you're serious about building a brand people love,
like our guests and clients too,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 useto help entrepreneurs like you
turn purpose into a powerful, impact driven brand.
Brand that stands out, tracks loyal customers and drive
(16:27):
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
(16:50):
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 you're re rebioing. I don't know, I'm sure there's a
good word we can use for it. Come up with something that's
amazing. And, and so you're, you're
focused right now on your devicebeing in these large, large
(17:15):
spaces where you have a lot of people or you might typically
have a water fountain, which I also avoid those.
They're not filtering anything any better.
It's just municipal water. And so you're going, that's
really what you've been focusingon for the last 12 years is
getting these large area maximumimpact kind of replacement
(17:38):
cracks. Yes.
So kind of working backwards, starting first with a 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, a portion of our
business where, you know, we getcalls frequently from a business
that's seen us and they're like,hey, like we had an experience
with flow water. We saw at Google ad or we saw
(17:59):
one of the videos of like the outcomes that people are having.
We want to try this and get thisand 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 thatyou know, it could be 30-50
hundred person organizations up to many 10s of thousands and all
(18:20):
over the United States. So you know, it's not we're not
relegated to 1 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 four Democratic presidents, five Republican
(18:43):
ones. So they both, I always get
annoyed when both sides start like pointing the finger at each
other. Over the last 50 years, 4:00 and
5:00 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, it's literally, it's literally playing Russian
roulette with their neurologicalsystem because lead is, you
(19:06):
know, I think it's 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
(19:26):
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 had 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 a pervasive problem today?
(19:46):
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 like251020 years away, in some cases
50 years away in terms of layingnew pipe.
So we have to do something today.
That's how big the crisis is. And for example, you and I
(20:06):
sitting here, if we haven't beenfiltering our water and eating
really clean food, the chance isthe data shows that you and I
have a plastic spoons worth of plastic sitting in our brain in
like little pieces, microplastic.
That's a huge issue. And the plastics are not, you
know, people think, oh, like, well, what how big of a deal is
(20:27):
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 four fold 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
(20:48):
designed to filter lead. They're not very good at lead.
It ends up having permanent. New logical issues.
I mean, that's those, that's those old.
We know the Romans used lead in their pipes and it was a known
issue in our thousands of years.We know lead's bad.
It's not a, it's it's. Been yeah, that's like another
podcast episode of like, how didthis happen, like 2000 years or
(21:10):
however many thousands of years later?
Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind ofstaggering to me.
Yeah, that's, that's crazy. It's crazy to think and I didn't
realize that there wasn't any regulation against lead not.
Federally not Not federally. So some states have some
regulations requirements, some cities, some municipalities.
(21:30):
But if there was something across the board, over half of
Americans in the last five yearswouldn'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 record like I 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?
You think that's that? There's no there's no way to
(21:51):
have 0. Exactly.
And in fact, I mean, there's unfortunate data, but the data
shows that the more marginalizedyou are like kind of in a
population, the more marginalized the population is,
though generally speaking, worsethe water quality is.
So it's this double whammy, which is, well, if you're, if
(22:13):
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 highwayor whatever it is.
(22:33):
And so you know, this, this ideaof 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
(22:55):
don't know how anybody would argue against it.
Like what? There's no real argument as to
why this shouldn't 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 declineof American drinking water in a
(23:19):
broken infrastructure. And so it's 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 multi billion dollar companies
that are embedded in this, you have to have, you have to
capture some tailwinds. And part of that, you know,
(23:40):
hopefully is good luck. Part of that is hopefully just
showing up, working hard, doing a job, having a great product.
Part of that is having consumersand advocates that are
evangelizing, saying no, like I'm sick of this stuff.
Like I'm not going to tolerate XY 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
(24:00):
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.
Glad that you are, you have a solution.
I think that's one of the one ofthe 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
(24:21):
the solution and it's kind of inthat order that has to happen.
So it's great to see that you know, you've been around for 12
years taking time, but you are actually you are actually making
an impact. Before we wrap up, I wanted to
talk a little bit and get your thoughts on like moving forward.
So I know right now you're aimedat these really high impact
(24:43):
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 to be able to have a easier to use smaller, a smaller
thing? I mean, I could even think of
like a portable one, right, of something that you go if some of
(25:05):
your traveling a whole bunch andyou're at hotels like you're
only you don't trust, you know, the hotels 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 us down into can you
even go after all those spaces? Is that is that possible?
(25:27):
Yeah, I would. 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. And we have so much data that
shows that when someone has a flow around installed, they
drink less, you know, bad stuff,they drink more good stuff.
(25:50):
And in a world where people are chronically dehydrated, if we
can show that consumers drink two to five fold more water
every day after they have accessto flow water, it's really
dramatic. So right now we're scaling this
B to B side and that's going really well.
I mean, you know, every verticalacross the United States is
really progressing beautifully. The next 10 years of the company
(26:14):
end up being making product modifications and product
enhancements or modified form factors to provide, you know,
greater access to drinking flow water wherever consumers work,
rest and play. And so that means maybe smaller
offices, home offices, like maybe a miniaturized or a
(26:34):
reduced size flow water refill station at some point.
That means probably a countertopflow water that might be both
commercial as well as residential.
And then that could extend flow water on the go, you know, in
the form of of, you know, a bottle that filters, for
example. The thing that I always wrestle
(26:55):
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 aswell as resources as well as
people and distribution channelsand all that stuff.
So it kind of becomes a questionof like, well, how marginalized
can you end up yielding your focus without capsizing the core
(27:19):
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, what I'd like to
like just. I had that thought too.
Like this. This could be used everywhere
you can be. 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
the whole way. I just tell them I'm a plumber,
(27:40):
which I kind of feel like I am because I started out like
selling and stalling and doing stuff.
But I did, 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 flow water frequently.
Like right now, I still run intoflow water frequently when I'm
(28:01):
in the road, but it's, it's frequently for me as CEO for
flow water, 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.
(28:23):
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 I told friends, family,
business prospects, hey, here's some other.
Like if you're in this category or you need to do the XY and Z,
this is a great product for that.
(28:43):
Flow Water is suited for AB and C, But yeah, we do need to keep
focusing on scale. But the idea of getting flow
water 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 flow water, and then you don't realize how crappy your
water tastes until you actually have good water.
(29:03):
Then you get home, you're reallyunhappy and you really want to
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 waterat home.
Yeah, I, I think they, you know,I love, I love that you brought
up the kind of the focus rate ofbecause I think it is a trap.
(29:25):
It is a very easy trap to fall into where you have to not you
can't say yes to everything at especially at the beginning,
right? If you if you were like, Oh
yeah, we're going to do a home version and an office and these
big versions and we're going to ship worldwide, it would I
probably would have overwhelmed you guys just to attempt to do
(29:47):
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, you now maybe you have the right
enough customers that are going,we want it in our house, we want
(30:07):
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 crushyour 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.
(30:28):
Awesome, awesome. Well, you know, for anybody this
has been really great for one islove what you guys are doing.
The impact is 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
(30:50):
they need to have this installed.
What's the best way to find you guys and then reach out?
Just couple things go to drinkflowwater.com, drink Flo
water.com and also on socials we're at drink flow water go in.
You could submit a request for aproduct demo or you could just
(31:12):
say, hey, like you said, hey, I want this in my gym.
Like I don't want to be drinkingthis crappy water fountain water
anymore. Like, and then if we call the
gym up and we're like, hey, someof 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
(31:34):
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 in school boards are already
(31:55):
focusing on that. I mean, I know the school boards
have a lot of challenges in their hands these days.
So I, you know, I've sat in front of many school board
meetings and I feel like they'reall just trying to do the for
the most part, most of them are trying to really do the right
thing and but but that's sad consumers, parents PT as can
really accelerate that or help ensure the prioritization.
(32:18):
And I think the idea of clean drinking water in a school is
just like the first level, like first level stuff that we got to
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 yes, you should be saying yes,
just just do it. It's and especially with your,
(32:38):
you know, if it seems like yoursis a pretty easy install, you
plug it into the water source and you turn it off.
It is. So that's AI mean literally 30
minutes, 40 minutes and it's there's no amazing.
We don't need a contractor that's like like it's like
certified in anything in particular.
You don't need to, you know, plumbing to be done.
(33:00):
It's a very simple hook up line.You know, people tend to think
like particularly a school. Oh, like water fountain.
That's a nightmare. It kind of is a nightmare
because then you have like possibly asbestos, you know,
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 flow water right next to the old
water fountain hook it up and like 30 minutes later it's up
(33:23):
and running so that does make itreally 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 a an
example of something that I think has just gotten like way
(33:43):
over designed is that every appliance, I do not want every
one of my appliances to have IoTconnectivity.
That is like, to me, one of the world's worst ideas.
Well, you don't want to smart 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 flow water having simplicity, speed, soft touch
(34:07):
buttons that are really easy to clean.
Like one of the reasons people like water fountains is it takes
35 seconds on average about to fill up a bottle like this or
water fountain, it's about 9 seconds in a flow or a 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 linetoo long I.
Would imagine especially especially if you're in school
(34:28):
rushing between even college. I remember college rushing
between classes when you have 5 minutes to get across campus.
Yeah, literally kids, like 5 kids which five kids are going
to get to drink water today? Yeah, exactly who, who, who's
going to get there? Because I'm not going to wait in
line for 3 minutes to get to thewater.
I'm going to go to class. I don't, I can't do it.
(34:50):
So I I love I love that we you would mention that because that
is a huge, huge thing is speed, making it easy, convenient for
everyone, for the 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 we're
(35:11):
at time here now, but I really appreciate you taking the time
to jump on here, talk about whatyou guys are doing a love love
what you guys are doing and hopeyou 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 pleasure to see you.
Absolutely. And that wraps up another
(35:31):
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.
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