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This week on The Millionaire Choice Podcast, Tony talks with Riggs Eckelberry, CEO and cofounder of OriginClear Water. Tony and Riggs discuss his time working at a non-profit and how to use wealth to help benefit the world.
Growing up in a well-off family, Riggs decide to forgo the opportunities provided by his father and delved headfirst into the realm of nonprofit. At age 40, after 20 years of living paycheck to paycheck, Riggs decided that he needed to make money to better help the people in the world around him.
About Riggs Eckelberry
Riggs Eckelberry is the founder and CEO of the innovative water technology company, OriginClear, which is delivering water solutions for industrial customers worldwide. Riggs came to the water industry from a quarter century in high technology, specializing in commercializing breakthrough technologies. During the dotcom, he worked on a series of tech successes, such as Quarterdeck’s CleanSweep, security software vendor Panda Software, and the sale of companies to EarthWeb, BeFree, and BellSouth. Just prior to founding what is now OriginClear, he helped drive security software company, CyberDefender, to an IPO on the NASDAQ as its President and Chief Operating Officer. The son of an international businessman, Eckelberry learned management in the nonprofit space and as a commercial ship captain and officer. He enjoys skiing and sailing and transforming the water industry to deal with the growing water challenges of our time.
Learn more about Riggs Eckelberry, https://www.originclear.com/
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Show Transcript
Tony (00:00):
Welcome back to the millionaire choice show, we're gonna have some fun on the show today, cause I'm gonna learn something today from Riggs Eckelberry. He is the chairman CEO and co-founder of OriginClear water. And, before we get going and hear, Riggs' story, I really want you all to listen because he's doing something very unique and interesting in the water space. I'm not gonna give all the details away because I'm gonna be learning on this call as well. And, welcome to show Riggs. I'm really excited to hear what you've got to say. It's always fun to learn about not just new investments, but new things that people are doing to make the world a better place.
Riggs Eckelberry (00:38):
I really appreciate the opportunity. Let's let's have some fun.
Tony (00:43):
So, this whole show is about inspiring people to believe. We give them the mental power. We help them reprogram their mindset to what we call "a millionaire mindset." That's the big thing going around in the industry right now, and I was a broke guy. I've gotten some calls. I love getting calls from single dads or young ladies at 25 years old and grew in a broke family. A lot of people think that millionaires are born with silver spoons in their mouth, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
Riggs Eckelberry (01:13):
I would say that it's very hard to succeed with that silver spoon. You're gonna have to remake yourself to actually be- I pity people- you and I have known trust fund kids and they are lost. It's not their world. It's their daddy's world.
Tony (01:27):
Oh, absolutely. And, so you didn't grow up in a rich family or a wealthy family. You had to figure this out, but before you figured out finances and a better way to live, what was it like for you growing up?
Riggs Eckelberry (01:39):
Well, really what it really was, riches to rags to riches. I grew up, son of an international businessman at the time, in the fifties and sixties when the dollar was king. And, I remember my mom saying to me, when I was like 10, "Riggs, your dad makes $40,000," which was a lot of money back then. That was like 61.
Tony (02:09):
That was a lot.
Riggs Eckelberry (02:10):
And, of course, my dad did not mind the French ladies and all that fun stuff that came with that. He was like John Ham in, Mad Men. It was a lot like that. In other words, nice guy, but not nice. But, one thing that I got out of that was a rootlessness. We moved and moved and moved and moved. And, I came out of that with a sense that I wanted to do something about the world. My dad was pulling strings to get me into Harvard and this and that. But, I said, "no, no, no," and I took a different path altogether. I went into the nonprofit space, I was making $10 a week.
Riggs Eckelberry (02:54):
Which, "that was a lot of money in 1969." No, but seriously, even then it was not a lot of money. But, I loved it. And, I worked there for about a decade before I started really becoming interested in, "okay, what's gonna change the world outside of working on a cause?" I started getting interested in how you can change the world in business while also making money, like, "do both. Make money and do good for the world." And, I saw that technology was really what it's all about. So, I landed in New York city and started doing technology work. I ended up in the .com, and basically from nothing- I had no resume. I'd been a nonprofit dude for years- so I worked my way up from nothing, no college, and no business experience.
Riggs Eckelberry (03:59):
I made tremendous mistakes, to this day I cringe. The saying goes, "experience is a great teacher, but she sends in big bills," right. That's a kid. Oh my God. So, I ended up in the early nineties with experience; landed in the .com. I fell in love with .com. The idea of using computers, not for accounting or to run manufacturing, but to communicate with; that was super cool. And, it was revolutionary for me, and I got involved with all kinds of interesting plays. That's when I started making some money. But, I started getting quick exits, "Hey, guess what? Riggs, we sold the company. Woohoo! By the way, everything you built, it's going away. Nobody cares." I'm like, "okay, I'll take the money," and it's good for a little bit.
Riggs Eckelberry (04:53):
But, after a while what I really would like to do something that lasts. Fast forward to the two thousands; I help take a company- by then I'd work my way up through marketing, product manager, a job that I loved, VP marketing. And then, finally, I was a second in command of a company on its way to the NASDAQ. I was president and chief operating officer. And, of course, when you're the number two, you're sure you can be a better CEO than the guy in charge. "I can be better than that guy." Well, I happened to say that to a fund and they said, "Riggs, we can make you a CEO." "Really?" "Yes, we can. And we're gonna launch you, but by the way, it's not gonna be high tech.
Riggs Eckelberry (05:41):
It's gonna be this different space." And, it was this space called Algae; in 2007 it was the hot item for biofuels. And, I ended up on all kinds of talk shows, Stuart Varney, he said, "I'll call you Algae-man," and all that cool stuff. I was on CNN and MSNBC- everything. It was a lot of fun. So, fast forward to the oil price crash, which happened because oil decided to have its own technology revolution with fracking, and all of a sudden you couldn't make algae for biofuels because the price of oil's gotta be around $120 a barrel. And, that was back in 2007. So, we managed to do a pivot. We took the same technology we had for algae, and we took it into water. Water treatment; purification of water.
Riggs Eckelberry (06:40):
We learned something very interesting; when you're in water, you're invisible. Nobody cares. I mean, people say, "oh, water's super important. Gotta have a lot of clean water," but nobody wants to know about sewage. Like, those concrete cisturns down by the river. That's that sewage thing. So, I had to really understand, "how are we gonna A) make a difference because water companies are huge and slow moving. And, B) how are we gonna get publicly noticed?" Because as the public company- ticker symbol; OCLN- we had to get visibility to have a stock that mattered. You don't wanna trade by appointment. It's one of the big lessons you learn about public companies; don't be the best kept secret. And, that's been our quest ever since, "how do we accomplish meaningful change that excites people?" And, I think we've arrived at that point.
Tony (07:35):
Well, that's wonderful. So, originally you said you had a riches to rags to riches. So, you were born in, obviously your dad making 40 grand, which, it's funny because, you said, I think you said it was 61. He was making 40 grand. When I got outta school in 94, that was my first year's income was $39,000; right at that 40 grand range. So, it went from being a rich dude in the 60s to, "Hey, this is kinda, not bad, but not great," in the nineties. So, what was the pivot for you where you went from the riches of your family; your dad's doing well; down to the rags. What happened there? And, then how did you bounce back?
Riggs Eckelberry (08:17):
Well, it was self-inflicted. First of all, as I said, right outta high school, I went straight into the nonprofit space. Didn't make much money, but it had lots of adventures. I became a ship captain and sailed the Pacific. But, I didn't make much money. Went into technology in New York city and made a huge big, splash, but my company was under capitalized and it was a very difficult experience. It was basically a business failure. And, out of that I just went off sort of, on retreat, so to speak. I ended up in the mountains of Colorado, and I remember my birthday year, 40th birthday, 1992. And, I looked at what I'd made that year. It was $16,000 that I made that.
Riggs Eckelberry (09:10):
That barely paid for my health insurance at the time because foolishly, I continued to pay for my health insurance. So, at that point I was like, "okay, do something." And, it was good because I was ski bumming and it was the best, had the best time ever, never slept, just skied, like a madman and partied and behaved like I was 20, but I was 40. And that was good. But by 1994, I was like, okay, "I gotta get off the mountain. I gotta marry somebody good. I gotta make a family." And, I went back to LA and, found a lovely lady. From that point on, just started building a business. But, by now I had the nonprofit experience where I'd actually been in command of an ocean going ship, which teaches you a lot.
Riggs Eckelberry (10:04):
I'd been in New York business and really had a horrible time of it in the end. But, the guy that took over the business, made a good go of it, but I didn't. And, then this sort of intervening period, when I made, $16,000 a year from that point forward, I was in a tech company. I finally learned something that I had not done before. Apprenticeship to me is the most important thing you can do to succeed in life because you'll learn the ins and outs of it as opposed to coming in from left field. Like, "I can do this, no problem!" Like, I paid somebody off and I got a seat license and now I'm driving a truck kind of thing. So, don't do that. You want an apprentice, you wanna work your way up. And, in prior years, I was too impatient to do that.
Tony (11:02):
Any arrogance going on there too?
Riggs Eckelberry (11:05):
No arrogance whatsoever. None, no arrogance. So, that was my, really my downfall. By like 95, I was paying my dues in a software company. And, I learned a trade it's called software and product management, which is a great job. It's the best job because everything's now. You are master of no one; responsible for everything. You basically, you're a ninja warrior for your product. It's kind of fun. And, I had a product success was seriously good and that built my reputation from there. That's when I started really going up the ladder. Yet, each step of the ladder this time I learned what to do. And, that's where the change happened.
Tony (12:07):
I love that. I think you just hit a place that is interesting. You said you started your turn around at 40 cuz a lot of people I talk about in the financial space, either, as they get older, they're like, "oh, it's too late for me. I wish I had done that, 10 years ago or 20 years ago." What I find from the people I talk to and hang out with; it doesn't matter how old you are. You just gotta get going. You just gotta get started. It's not too late. I talked to a wonderful guy the other day, his show will be coming out before too long, probably out before yours. His name's, Taylor Welch.
Tony (12:43):
He's a 33 year old multimillionaire. He know his net worth, I believe it is over 25 million. And,I'm like, "Hey, how long does it take for somebody to get to financial independence in your estimate when you work? And, he's like , "seven to 10 years." What I find is most people that I'm talking to, once they decide they wanna build some wealth, it's a 10 to 15 year process to become a millionaire. Some people do it a little faster. Some people take a little bit longer, but it's pretty common for people to do it in a 10 to 15 year window. I did it in a 15 year window. I probably should have done it a little bit faster, but I got married. I had six kids, lots of diapers-
Riggs Eckelberry (13:20):
I love that you had the kids.
Tony (13:22):
Yes, private school, those are not things that were in my original plan or my original formula. I didn't plan on spending, $70,000 a year on private school, for six kids. But, it worked out, and I'm happy. My youngest is 10. My oldest is 21 right now.
Riggs Eckelberry (13:39):
I'm super proud of you. That is one of the finest things a man can do in my opinion.
Tony (13:44):
If you do it right. I think my first 10 years- I wouldn't say I was very good at it, but I'm getting better. First kid is an experiment.
Riggs Eckelberry (13:55):
First one is, definitely.
Tony (13:56):
Absolutely. He'd say that too. He'd say I'm still experimenting on him, but then being able to shift at 40 and go, "Hey, it's time." I think that's what people have to have that mindset shift. That's like one of the first things is like what I call a 'financial awakening,' which it sounds like you went through, "Hey, the old way was fun, but that's not getting me where I wanna be. It's not getting me where I wanna go, let's turn this around. Let's start moving forward, doing something different." So, that's really cool. Now, let's pivot and switch gears. So, you went through, and by the way I got, when the internet came up and got started getting big in 1998, that's when I latched on, because when I realized you could take data and put data inside of a keyboard and a computer and then spit that data out to somebody else that you've never even met across the city or across the country.
Tony (14:44):
I'm like, "whoa, that's power. That's some real power that I can communicate with people like that and collect information." And, that's when I started building databases and learning how to build web apps and things like that. I knew just enough to be dangerous though, but that carried me into the next phase of my career. But, I love tech and it's so powerful. And so, what's interesting; in the pre-show when you and I were talking, was this whole thing about water. And, I just bought some land. It's got a natural spring on, it runs 365 days outta the year. The water's just beautifully clear. I probably have to do a little testing on it. I'm really excited about that. But, we mentioned, like Flint, Michigan. You've got water issues in a major metropolitan area in the United States.
Tony (15:28):
And, you started naming off like dozens of places because you're more in the business, and it's kinda scary. It's like, "whoa, we expect this water to be clean." And, I've run even water tests at some of our houses where we would bring people in and, test to drinking water. And they would show the differences in the quality of the water between what you're drinking and what it should be or could be. And, I'll leave that to you to explain all that to us. But, we've been drinking bottled water for a long time, and now we have water filtration; both whole house water filtration on the house and through filters. And, we don't have the big treatment vats that some people use. We don't have one of those, but then we have a secondary filter at the faucet for our drinking water. So, We filter the house water that comes in, but we also filter the drinking water that we use. It's more of like a three stage filter system, but jump in, let's educate some people on this whole concept and especially your business and how it works!
Riggs Eckelberry (16:26):
Well, by the way, your solution's very good. The picture you see behind me, I'm actually traveling and I'm at a hotel, but this is the front view of the condo where we purchased, late last year. And, we put in exactly that system, which is a 0.2 micron whole house system, just to get the stuff out and then a faucet system for the drinking water. So, it's perfect. Now, it's too bad that we have to do that, right? I mean, "why?" And, in a way, you are part of this decentralization trend where people are increasingly doing their own treatment. Now, we don't work at the individual home level. That's a mass market scale that we don't play in. We play in the industrial space. And guess what? Something like 78% of all water use is by agriculture and industrial.
Riggs Eckelberry (17:19):
So, that's most of the water use and what's happening unfortunately is that the America's central water infrastructure is falling apart. It's not funded. That's why flint became a problem. That's why, South Bend, Indiana, Compton in California, where the water started running brown. And, then when they asked, so what's up with that? The city said, "well, we've been asking for money for 10 years, but you never gave it to us. Now, the water's brown," that kind of stuff has been going on. So, we tend to take water for granted until it's broken. And, but businesses have had this, shock this water shock for some time. There's cases- for example, look at, Russian river brewery in Sonoma county, Northern California. And, they're a case study by a very good company that is in our space called the innovation, great company.
Riggs Eckelberry (18:13):
And, what they found was that they were expanding the brewery production. They were being very successful. And the Sonoma county water rates were just sky high. And, they realized they had to treat their own water in order to survive. The problem with that, and this is happening across America in the world is you then get into a real problem with how do you finance something like that. Russian River Brewery is not interested in water treatment systems. They're interested in brewing systems. They wanna make beer. And so, you'd say, "well, you're gonna have to spend a million dollars on your own water treatment." You go, "well, okay, I'll get to that." And what we do, companies like me like us and CBRI and a few others is we shortcut the whole issue by saying, "don't worry about paying up front.
Riggs Eckelberry (19:04):
We'll be your private utility." And, you just pay on the meter and they go, "okay, that's a no brainer. What do I sign?" Because now it's just in their operating budget. It's just like your water bill at home. Nothing to it. If you had to pay for a piece of the water system, then that might be a different story, but you're only paying, whatever it is for $50 a month, for your water. And that's okay. You're like, "fine, whatever. It's okay by me." And by the way, that number is much, much higher in places like LA, but still people don't mind paying on the monthly because it's gradual pain as opposed to sudden pain. So, that's what we do. It's a program. We call water on demand. And here's what we learned.
Riggs Eckelberry (19:47):
There's a huge success story in the oil industry called Master Limited Partnerships. In 1981, Apache corporation invented these clustered oil or energy projects, oil production, gas production, and pipelines, and they packaged them up and they created these partnerships. And, then you would have a royalty; it's generational royalty. It just goes on forever. That oil well does not stop producing. That pipeline does not stop running unless a Biden administration decides not to do it. But, you've got yourself a piece of revenue. That's one of the problems by the way, with oil; it is very, very political. So, you do great until you don't, but, it's very, very criminal. Well, that's the other point is like, we went, wait a minute. We can offer the same thing, but for water. You can invest in a basket of water projects, which they are water on demand.
Riggs Eckelberry (20:47):
We create subsidiaries and we put capital in there and you're gonna get, 25% of the net profits from that, from your investment for the life of the project, which can be 25 years or more. And, you get a bunch of stock and everybody's happy, but you are getting water like an oil. Well, but instead of it being a fossil fuels, which we know the problems with that, I mean, right now, it's- I challenge anybody to drive very far without fossil fuel. And, even the people driving electric cars, they're charging from a fossil source. So, it's still very much embedded in our society, but we'd like to move away from it, but we don't wanna move away from water. We like that. We wanna do more water treatment. There's millions of people dieing every year from bad water; 6,000 kids a day in the world, die from bad water.
Riggs Eckelberry (21:39):
It's something that we need to fix. So, there is unlimited potential for water investment. What we did is we said, "wait a minute, why are we just waiting for the government to pay for the water systems? Why don't we bring in ordinary investors and connect them up with water projects? Like these oil limited partnerships, and now you've got a new way for people to invest." Now, here's what we wanna do. You've noticed maybe that the elites are cornering the market on a bunch of stuff. Bill gates just became the number one owner of real estate in America.
Tony (22:10):
Farmland and real estate.
Riggs Eckelberry (22:11):
Farmland too. Exactly. But let me tell you this; there's a real estate crash coming, right?
Tony (22:17):
Everything's gonna crash eventually.
Riggs Eckelberry (22:20):
But, real estate will crash. Why real estate crash is always when they raise interest rates. Cause all of a sudden people stop buying people, stop doing mortgages.You get up 10-15% it's over. And, then at that point, the no more real estate industry because it's all floated by debt. So, the people who get in at two or 3% like you and me maybe are happy. Like, "okay, I'm good, but you when wanna resell you won't have somebody to buy. So, it kind of erases the value of something is not it's tangible value. It's liquidity value. Can it be sold? That's the value of something, right. While I got a big old gold coin, well, I take that gold coin down to the 7-11. They go, "what do you want from me?
Riggs Eckelberry (23:08):
I can't deal with this." So, it's all a saleability of liquidity in everything. So, the real estate market is gonna crash. And just like 2008, vulture capital and elites are gonna swoop in and buy on the 5 cents on the dollar and gather up even more. So this is happening all the time, but guess what? Water, this new water, like an all well is a way to democratize it, that we don't, it does not have to be elite. It can be, our company and others. We won't be the other, the only players, cuz this is a trend. Our company will welcome investors in these systems. And, instead of having one Jeff Bezos, you have Jeff Bezos divided by 10,000, which is still a lot of money. Now we've democratized water investment. We've made it something for everybody and it's beneficial. And, that's what excites us so much about it and why we're doing extremely well with this. We're accumulating capital so that out of every dollar we raise cents goes into this capital fund. And, since November we started and we're now past a million dollars in it's rolling and we're putting money into these water systems and people are gonna get their royalties. And, that is a new day for water. We are so excited about doing that.
Tony (24:24):
Well, I love the idea of innovation that you're bringing into that place. I see that with one of my couple other guys who've been on the show, Michael Silvestrini, and he's doing some similar stuff with solar power. But, you're the first one I've talked to that actually talked about water. Very interesting. You talked about the elites, they look at the world as their planet. They look at us as more like occupants that are kind of in the way and that they own everything. So, when you look at Bezos buying up land, I forget, he's probably over 350,000 acres. He's one of the top 30 land owners in the country, private land owners, and gates is on the farmland list.
Tony (25:06):
But, you're going, "Hey, why are these guys dumping stocks and moving stocks secretly, and buying up land?" Well, because they know something's about to happen. JP Morgan, Chase bank, which I've mentioned owns about 600 million ounces of silver. China's been buying up gold. Russia's been buying up gold, lots of other countries buying up gold for last 10 years cuz they know that, the program is for the dollar to go away and for the Petro dollar to die and for the United States economy to take on a new direction. Not being the sole power and they're waiting. I think, was it Warren buffet? I saw that Warren Buffet has like 165 billion in cash just sitting around.
Tony (25:53):
Why would you with inflation so high? Why would you keep that much cash around? The only reason would be like, you're gonna see some kind of level of deflation hit at some point, that's gonna outweigh the inflation that's been coming and waiting on that. So, I totally agree with you about what you're saying. The value of something is not the true value. It's what somebody's willing to pay for it or give for it. In Nashville, we're a little bit isolated on real estate cuz everybody's trying to run away from California and try to run away from New York and Chicago right now. And seems like, Nashville's one of the places they wanna be. I keep meeting new people every day, but I loved what you said earlier in the pre-show and I'm gonna say it the same way.
Tony (26:32):
I don't think you've said it this way on the show yet, which is water systems right now are a centralized system. So if you wanna get water from Nashville, you go to the public utility for Nashville. That's where you go for the water. What you're talking about is decentralizing that water treatment. Decentralizing putting the power really back into the individual's hands or in, you said 70% of all water usage is agricultural and or industrial and just make it that. So, they kind of become their own utility again because now it's affordable to be your own utility. I read an article, I think it's a book called switch. We talked about that same concept cuz back in the old days. Plants used to have their own, power sources. They would have their own power plants on site at the facility.
Tony (27:17):
So, if you went to like a general motors, production facility, they would've had their own, power plant. And, then when that got a little too expensive, then they were able to centralize power into one, local area. And then, as you're talking about is it becomes, you go through the cycle all over again and you're going okay. Now we have technology that allows it to be more affordable, to be your own necessarily power plant. But in your case, you're talking about your own water treatment plant and now decentralize it again. Is that generally the concept?
Riggs Eckelberry (27:46):
Well, let's take a look at energy. The one big reason why energy is being privatized is because the energy grid is out of date and it only works one way. It does a feed. It doesn't do a conversation. It's not interactive. So, it doesn't talk, it blindly sends out energy. If you wanna manage your energy use, you wanna have a two-way conversation. So, it's constantly being optimized. Similar problem in water, we have water systems which they just treat the water. When I was living in Los Angeles, we'd flush the toilet. It would go all the way down to the ocean and they would treat the water. They weren't, they were dumping it treated, but they were dumping it.
Riggs Eckelberry (28:32):
It was not coming back up to Beverly Hills to be reused. So, this is why we have very, very bad recycling rates, Israel recycles, almost 90% of their water. We recycle 1%. And the reason is we have this big old centralized system that's out of date. So, in energy, what they're doing is they are just bypassing the grid, they're using the grid, but they're for the smart stuff, they're just creating separate grids like nest and things like that, or the solar stuff. These are separately managed, overlays on the existing grid. They're just bypassing it. They're not trying to update the central grid; they're just bypassing it. And, the similar thing for water, the central water system, in this country, the 150,000 water systems in this country are not really gonna be updated. What we're gonna do is we're, we're, we're now building this ring of treatment systems around it that are private, that then do recycle, do get multiple turns on the water, treat it to better quality and then give it to the cities treated.
Riggs Eckelberry (29:33):
Now the cities don't have a problem anymore. They can deal with it. They're a much, much smaller problem. And that I think is the future. Look at cyber attacks. I just got interviewed by Forbes on this. The Biden administration wants to do a hundred day, project to proof up water systems against cyber tax. Of course it's an unfunded mandate. So once again, it's another thing that municipalities dunno how to pay for. But, the real problem is that it's very antiquated and hacking a water system is ridiculously easy. Well again, decentralize it, right? Take that water treatment and put it in the hands of the users. It's much harder to hack; decentralization is one way to prevent, cyber attacks because you can't hit one thing. The other thing that I think is to be thought about is, "what about the water supplies themselves?"
Riggs Eckelberry (30:28):
That is a whole other thing. And, I think, one of these days- you've got a place with a well, and that is huge. I think that's a real asset. Probably one of the most important assets in the next 10 years is gonna be a secure supply of personal water. I hate to say that, but, it is what it is. I think we're gonna see a lot of upheaval, in water systems and some places are gonna do okay. Some places won't, but it's kind of a role of the dice, isn't it?
Tony (31:00):
Oh, absolutely. I think, just more self preservation, self prepping. You see a lot of that down here, especially in Tennessee. And, I think more and more people are doing that. Even like getting an acre or starting to plant their own food supplies. We started doing farming a couple years ago, just small things, I'm not great at it, but for the record, anybody listening to the show, if you wanna plant something, I highly suggest you plant kale because it's easy to grow, and it renews really quickly. It's amazing how fast that stuff grows, and it's durable. It made it through the winter too. So, plant some kale; try it out. But, it is very interesting- I was saying earlier, I had read some articles, and I think it was quoted by Hillary Clinton about these globalists and their strategies and what they're doing.
Tony (31:49):
And, one of the things they said was- and this is what I was alluding to earlier about- They see the planet as their planet. Like, that's the next gold; water is the next gold. They wanna control it because when you control their resources, which is what you said, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezo control land, they're not making any more land. What we have is what we've got. So, it's just like for thousands of years, land has been wealth or structure of wealth. That's why they're buying it. It's real money. It's not play money like the American dollar. It's real money, through every empire, every dynasty, every civilization, land has been real money and so have resources. So, that's interesting. I wanna, look at a number, cause I do wanna drive that home, for people that these things matter to, and it's kinda shocking. It's kinda depressing too, but you mentioned, every day, 6,000 kids die from bad water, and I'm a numbers guy. So, I translated that while we were talking. That means that roughly about 2.2 million kids per year die just from bad water supply. That's about 250 per hour, which this show is about an hour long. So, that means somewhere in the world, 250 children died during this show while we're doing this recording from bad water, that's, mind-boggling. It really kinda wakes you up.
Riggs Eckelberry (33:09):
It's horrendous. Now, this here's another mindboggling stat, 80% of the dirty water. The sewage is not treated in the world. Now, in America, it's flipped the other way. I mean, most of the water is treated in America, but you got places like Bangladesh where almost none is treated. And, so you have really, really bad water. And a lot of people say that, you know, all these illnesses in the early 20th century were cured by vaccines. And that's probably true, but even more important with sanitation, right. Sanitation was key. And, I just saw an article today that the real heroes of illness eradication in the early 20th century were not the doctors; although, they played their part. It was the sanitation engineers who cleaned up the water.
Tony (33:58):
Oh, that's good.
Riggs Eckelberry (33:59):
That's key. So, if you have clean water now, Andrew Young, who was mayor of Atlanta at one point, said, "you build a pipeline through the Sahara. You eliminate 50 world illnesses, right there, bang just with one water pipeline." Because, now you have clean water. The level of water quality is horrendous in the rest of the world. Now here's the good news. Remember how, when we went to wire up Africa for cell phones, we didn't build landlines? We just went to cell towers. There's no landlines in Africa, but they have cell have phone service. So, when you don't have infrastructure; You can go straight to the new thing. We're not gonna build big central plants to treat water and places like India, Bangladesh, and Africa, it's gonna be a lot of small stuff.
Riggs Eckelberry (34:52):
The modular small self treatment system that we're pioneering here today, we have great technology in house that is these prefab systems called modular water systems. It's our brand. Well, we're doing it in America with these 'do it yourself' businesses, but in the future, it's gonna be the entirety of the water system in a place like the Republican Central Africa or Gabon or Chad. That's gonna be the entirety of it. And that is very exciting because we're gonna make some big difference in those horrendous, death tolls.
Tony (35:29):
I love what you said there. Cause, I think people that don't understand systems or business, you get what it's called a legacy system, which is what the U.S. Has. It's a legacy system. It's old, it's outdated. You wanna put something new in, you wanna improve it. You wanna go there, but it's just so cost prohibitive just cuz you gotta pull the old out and put the new in. Whereas in a place like you mentioned; Africa, there's nothing there to replace. So, you cut your cost in half. Cause, you don't have to do away with the old, you don't have to rip out the old, you just put the new in and everything's better. That's an interesting concept. It'll be fun following you guys over the next couple of years and seeing how everything develops.
Tony (36:07):
And let's talk for a minute before we wrap up, cuz we were talking about all the dirty water and all this kinda stuff. What have you found- I know through the water process and what was in my house, a lot of times people are just drinking tap water, thinking it's clean. But that can be further from the truth. There are so many things. And, when I go to clean my filter out, you are supposed to clean it out like once every 90 days, these household filters, six months in some cases and it's nasty; the stuff that comes out of the water, and I've got two stages. So, you said a 0.02, I think I've got a, a 10 micron and a 0.05. So, I catch it in two stages and it turned the water turns brown and it's got things floating in it. I'm like, "if I didn't have this filter on, that'd be in me!" So, what are you finding in water quality that needs to be cleaned up out there?
Riggs Eckelberry (37:07):
Well, by the way, there's a very good website called ewg.org/tapwater; environmental working group.org, and you can look at the water quality in your zip code, and you'll be fascinated by what's there. Now, what they do is they-
Tony (37:30):
Fascinated or disgusted?
Riggs Eckelberry (37:33):
Well, fascinated. Here's why, because the municipality you're looking at will probably be compliant with a law, but then they'll show, "okay. Point-something microns of arsenic," let's say. And, that's compliant. They say the actual level that's lethal; that science has determined is safe, is much lower. So, the law is permitting, much, much higher levels than are healthy and there's all kinds of things like cancers and so forth. You mentioned fluoride earlier. Now, these things are nasty, in the water. Glyphosate, which is Roundup, is a terrible thing. We invested in a shower head that is known to reducethe Roundup you get into your body because it's absorbed through the skin. It leads to brain cancers, farmers, in the Midwest have these brain cancers that come out of being exposed to extra high levels of Roundup.
Riggs Eckelberry (38:34):
So, all these things are just not great, and we need to do something about it. But, the problem is how it's always been and look at what happened in Flint. They had their big problem, and we're still hearing about it years later. Why? Because it some municipality and is all these 'too many cooks in the in the kitchen' and 'gotta do this, gotta that.' Meanwhile, even the water heaters got lead in them; everything's got lead in it, it just got messed up. And so, our solution is don't try to fix city hall; fix your own point of use. And, that's the philosophy of water on demand. As I said, we're currently, operating in the industrial, like a cultural commercial space. Housing developments are about as small as we get.
Riggs Eckelberry (39:26):
But, that's where most of the usage is. We believe we're engineering a water revolution. What's even more of a revolution is we found a whole group of investors who are delighted to invest in water systems; water rates inflate at three times the rate of inflation. So, that's definitely good because you're in, you're in an inflation friendly investment and you're a founder. So, you get a ton of stock. So people are delighted to get involved with this because it's the first new asset investment that's come along since Bitcoin. This hasn't been anything new and this is brand new. I would say it's much safer than Bitcoin. We saw the Canadian government, confiscate wallet addresses, of these protestors. I don't think crypto is quite as safe as you think it.
Tony (40:15):
It's absolutely not. But, that's conversation for another day. I keep telling people, everybody, all the crypto guys, which I'm a crypto guy, I invest in cryptocurrency too, but everybody tells you it's decentralized, decentralized, get away from centralized banks. But, I'm gonna tell you, it's the highest form of centralization there is because all money in the world is gonna be a one or zero. And, when every form of money is a digital piece of money is a one or zero and it's fully trackable fully monitorable. And, this is the thing, for you all listening; you can make money in crypto. I got a friend that made a million bucks last year in crypto, first time, first year investor in crypto. He latched onto some people and just did what they told him to do. And he ran with it. Disclaimer, I have not made a million dollars in crypto yet. I'm still working on it. I should have kept everything I bought back in the day. I'd be at like 3 million right now.
Riggs Eckelberry (41:03):
Preach to the choir.
Tony (41:05):
But, I'm back in, I'll figure it out. The deal is; if cryptocurrency had been in place back at Adam and Eve, you would have a financial record history transaction that was viewable to anybody all the way back to Adam and Eve, every transactio-, Louisiana purchase- I mean everything, everything, everybody would be able to see it. And, that is, in my opinion, not a very good thing if it's in the wrong hands. So, I think it's the highest form of centralization that there is. I know there's a bunch of crypto guys are probably gonna call foul on that, but the pin will drop and I don't know when it's gonna drop, but it will drop at some point. And, we'll just have to all stay tuned and see. Cause, that's a little bit above my pay grade.
Tony (41:49):
Now, as far as your stuff goes, let's get the people over to your site, learn a little bit more. Cause, I think this is really important stuff. Like I said, the elite are trying to buy up resources. They see the planet as their oyster; they own it, and we're just ants eating off the fruit and they see that resource as a way to make money and control and they have a plan for that? They're looking at that kind of stuff. And, we need to just be aware of it, it's not anything to be afraid of, but just be aware of it, do the best you can do. And, I love your strategies, rigs. So, how are people gonna find out about you follow up, and look at your investment opportunities?
Riggs Eckelberry (42:28):
Well, if they go to originclear.com they will see a piece that Newsmax morning show did on us, which tells about the story, and on the top right you'll see, 'invest now.' Right now it's a credit investors. We don't currently have an, an offering for unaccredited investors. So the best thing to that uncredited investors could do is simply invest in the stock itself on the open market. But, for credit investors, we offer this income flow just like an oil well, and that is super exciting. Simply go to 'invest now,' and you'll see it explained in great detail, and you'll get a chance to talk to my main man, Ken Barringer, who is one of the creators of water on demand. And, he will talk to you. We love this mission. We're making a change finally in water and we couldn't be happier to be finally doing this. It's been a long time coming, but like I say, when you're apprentice something, you eventually get what you need.
Tony (43:30):
I love it. Riggs, you got a lot of wisdom there. I appreciate being on the show today and sharing that. Let me remind you guys; that's originclear.com, go check out what Riggs has got and OCLN is the ticker symbol. If you wanna look at, if you wanna look at buying it on the open market, is that Dow, is that S&P, what is that?
Riggs Eckelberry (43:49):
It's the OTC. So, it's over the counter, any one of your brokers, Ameritrade, whatever you can buy it from. And, it's a penny stock. And, which means that, sometimes it's better to buy something in pennies than in thousands of dollars a share.
Tony (44:06):
I'm a big believer in buying something on the ground floor, getting into it. And, I think my new investment strategies personally is like, find where you can stick a $1,000-$10,000 different places and just stick it everywhere you can, for these opportunities, one of 'em is gonna pay off. The sky's the limit. My wife told me to buy apple stock at $3 a share in- I tell her it was 2003. She told me, she said to back in 1998. I don't know, but either way I missed it because, $3,000 is like, I don't know, 2-3 million bucks right now. And, I didn't listen to her. She had never made an investment in her life. And, she told me to buy apple stock and I passed on it. I thought they were dead and gone.
Riggs Eckelberry (44:50):
Listen to your wife. I've learned that lesson.
Tony (44:52):
I'll tell you, I need to write a book on like picking stocks, and letting her, cause she didn't know anything about it. And, I went through a process with her to see how she would do. And, she like nailed like 8/10. She picked and, would've made money on 'em in the last 10 years, like a lot of money. Beat the S and P index. So, the other thing I wanted to remind everybody listening is, Riggs mentioned to ewg.org.
Riggs Eckelberry (45:15):
Yes. Environmental Working Group, and just look up EWG tap water. That will take you to the tap water database, and you can put in your zip code and find out way too much about your water.
Tony (45:28):
I think everybody should pay attention to the health. There's so many chemicals and things in the water and the food today. And, when you look back just from a health perspective, these are things I've been learning over the last 3-5 years. But, when you look at cancers; cancers were like one in a hundred or something like that 60 years ago now it's like one in four. And, you go, "why is there a cancer epidemic? It wasn't like that 50 or 60 years ago." And the only thing you can really point to is the environment.
Riggs Eckelberry (45:58):
Environment.
Tony (45:58):
The environment, the food, the water, and the V word, which we can't say.
Riggs Eckelberry (46:03):
Not going down that road. That's the wrong podcast.
Tony (46:05):
Diabetes. Same thing. Corn syrup, man. It's in there somewhere doing something bad to us, but anyway, Riggs, I apprecate and, I'll have this out for you pretty soon. Thank you.
Riggs Eckelberry (46:16):
It's been such a pleasure. I hope we talk again in about six months, and I'll give you an update.
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