Ep777: Riggs Eckelberry – Don’t Go into Any Industry Unprepared

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And I want to thank my listeners in sunny Florida today for joining that mission. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Riggs Eckelberry, Riggs are you ready to join the mission?

Riggs Eckelberry 00:39
I am ready and love to jump right in.

Andrew Stotz 00:44
Well, I think I'm gonna kick off by introducing you to the audience. So just give me a second here. And audience. I want to introduce you to Riggs he is a nationally renowned entrepreneur who deploys his personal break to build process to help rebuild the water industry, which has reached a critical breaking point in recent years, despite being essential to the planet survival. As the founding CEO of origin clear, Riggs has developed innovative solutions to help businesses face rising water bills by tapping into new investment markets. He is even pioneering the development of water stable coins, a cryptocurrency backed by water assets. With a diverse background in nonprofit management on ocean going navigation and technology disruption, Riggs is uniquely qualified to bring change to an outdated and overrun industry Riggs, take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Riggs Eckelberry 01:45
Well, thank you, Andrew. And it's a pleasure. So we've gone through about three decades of essentially exporting our industrial base to much cheaper and sometimes more efficient manufacturing by the Chinese and others. But the one thing we could not export was our own water treatment. We had to do it on site. Unfortunately, we have not been funding it properly. Right now. The estimated unmet requirement for water infrastructure in this country is $100 billion. And last I checked, that's still a fair amount of money. So what's to be done, in fact, it's getting worse because most recently, the EPA started imposing new rules for cleaning out the for chemicals. And there's problems with dioxane. There's the stuff called Roundup, which is called chemically it's called glyphosate. All these things are toxic to humans, and yet, the MS, the cities just don't have the resources to get to it. As a result, we have poor tap water. And, of course, the water table is getting polluted. recent review of our rivers showed that for the past five years, their state has not improved at all has been zero improvement. They're all choked up with the results of fertilizer runoff. So what's the problem? What's going on? Well, it's very simple 90% of all water demand is by industry and agriculture. And frankly, it's not very smart, to just have this philosophy of have them send all their dirty stuff to a central point. Now maybe that was true in the 40s and 50s, when water treatment, technology wasn't there. But today we have the technology to treat in place. And so now the solution really is to unburden the cities, by having businesses do their own water treatment. And that is going to return the cities to their primary mission, which is clean water for you and me.

Andrew Stotz 03:50
And that's interesting to point about treat in place as opposed to just dumping into a system that then goes to a central location. What is it that's made that breakthrough possible to do you know, economically viable treat in place?

Riggs Eckelberry 04:06
Well, there was a need to downscale the giant, you know, those huge sewage systems. You see, if you go, you know, anywhere, really, you'll see these enormous systems and they had to be downscale so that they fit in a corner of a brewery, for example. And so that had to be developed, but also financial systems to make it possible for these users to not have to bet very big capital expense. So they'd be able to just switch meters essentially. And that's what we've made possible with our water capital breakthrough called water on demand. So it's really on one side technology. But on the other side, a FinTech, financial implementation that takes away the entire problem for the end user. Now they love it because number one, water and sewage rates in America are inflating faster than college tuition. and health care services. They're so underfunded to try to pay it with increased water rates, which, of course, is counterproductive, because then people fall off the system, and they're not being served anymore. So when a business does its own, it's got predictable, you know, it's got a machine predictable and knows what, what expenses. Number two, they can recycle. America has terrible recycling rates. Israel's achieved almost 90% recycling the number two in America in the world is Spain at 20%. We are at 1%. And structurally, we just don't, we can't do it when we send water to the central system. It's not built to send it back. And so when somebody is treating in place, they are able to do their own recycling, thus lowering water rates and alleviating droughts.

Andrew Stotz 05:49
And you mentioned two areas, health care, and education. And those two areas are famously inflated from the government pumping in tremendous amounts of money into those industries. But I'm guessing that when you're talking about the inflation of, you know, water treatment, let's say that that's actually probably real inflation not driven by a huge influx of demand that stimulated by government funding, anybody who wants to, let's say, go get an education, and therefore pushing up prices, or is there a lot of government intervention that's causing that price rise there?

Riggs Eckelberry 06:33
Well, the assumption when these systems were built, in this first part of the 20th century, long before you and I were around was that government funding would be plentiful. And in fact, until about 1970, it was, then it started tailing off, and eventually even turned into loans versus grants. So the federal government stopped helping it all. And then local cities just didn't have the ability to carry because what's happening at the same time is, we have more and more toxic waste because of industrialization, that was not counted, you know, accounted for in the early when we were treating infrastructure, water. In, you know, the early part of the 20th century, it was a more organic mix, typically, much simpler compounds. So the problem was less, but also people just weren't aware, right. So it was kind of like smoking back, then it's like, well, maybe it's not so good, but it's not so bad kind of thing. So the problem is now recognized as acute, we have a serious industrial toxic waste problem. In addition to all the problems with the dumping into the rivers, and so forth. And it's even worse, by the way in other countries where nearly all of the sewage is dumped, not just a large fraction. So what the problem isn't United States sticking to that for now, is that it's just simply an unfunded mandate. And the cities just don't know what to do next. You see, these articles show up. And then of course, they get blamed like Flint, Michigan when things go wrong. But it's not their fault. They really just aren't. There was an instance, for example, in Compton, California, where one day the water started running Brown. And the President says, So what's up with that, and, and the local water treatment district said, well, it won't hurt you. It's fine. They said, No, no, we'd like to have the water run there. If it's okay. They said, well, it would have been helped if you had funded us for the last 15 years. And what had happened was a competent City Council, which has not been able to allocate the funds was not a wealthy district. In the end, they got absorbed into the larger Metropolitan Water District. But the point I'm making is, the alarm bells have been there for a long, long time. The good news is that when we came along, and were one of the key players and differentiated in that specific financing thing, but that's not the here nor there. But those of us who are working in what we would call decentralized water treatment, ie, helping businesses do their own treatment. When we came along, we were welcomed, like, great, and in fact, the cities are glad to see us show up.

Andrew Stotz 09:14
Right. And you mentioned, you know, the industrial and it seems like agricultural, as the main source you said 90% of the issue. And you mentioned about fertilizer runoff. And when I think about a factory as an example, which I have a factory in Thailand, and we have a certain amount of waste, whether that smoke coming out of the factory or whether that's water coming in the factory and we have obligations to treat that and we treat that to the requirements set by the government. But when I think about a field or a you know, you know what is happening with and nowadays you know, America really is truly, you know, absolutely dedicated to the mono culture, type of mass Agriculture? How do you? How can you is there any way that that can be treated on site? Or is that going to naturally go into the water table or into the water system? I'm just curious about that.

Riggs Eckelberry 10:11
No, everything can be treated, the technology is there. So one thing about the water industry is that there's lots of good technologies coming along, that make things better, but the basic technology is solid. And we know how to take the nitrates and so forth, they do a pretty good job in Europe, by the way, I used to summer in, in a part of Italy, near Rome, where there was a crater lake. And the entire all the slopes were covered with crops. And yet the lake itself was the limpid clear. In other words, they were not letting any of the fertilizer get into the water. And that's proper stewardship. They, you know, I would say they have higher standards than us. But also, you know, they're not perhaps dealing with as industrial scale as we are either.

Andrew Stotz 10:58
Yeah, and it's kind of terrifying, because when I came to Thailand 30 years ago, so, you know, there wasn't industrial farming, and we'd still have small scale farming. And that's, it hasn't gotten to that industrial scale, mainly because I think the government is terrified of the idea of kind of people losing their plots of land. That's Social Security in Thailand. And you've already got an emergency where you've got a very aging populate very quickly aging population. And we saw it during COVID. What happened during COVID time, everybody fled back to their home plots, their home, pieces of land where they can grow food, you know, so there's that connection with the land. But now, as I see what's happening with the chemical companies, the global and US chemical companies and fertilizers and stuff, it's it's just a matter of time before Thailand is completely overrun with all of these furnaces for fertilizers, but more than fertilizers, the chemicals like, like Roundup, as you mentioned, and other things. And I just think, you know, there's just nobody that's here protecting, you know, very hard to protect the waters. I'm just, you know, curious what you're seeing in like, emerging markets versus the US. Obviously, there's there's issues, but I could just imagine that some countries are just completely overrun.

Riggs Eckelberry 12:13
Yes. Now, obviously, I don't drive policy. But when I look at the lack of infrastructure in places like India, you know, we're literally you have people dying every year who are sewers, sewage, workers in their sewage gases and so forth. Why? Because there's just no infrastructure. And they're having a hard enough coping with the headwaters problem, which is a giant hydrological project. But in meanwhile, what about the cities? Well, the solution again, is treating place. Why build giant central systems, when you can just put in place these compact systems, which also enable recycling and improve water quality. Now, whether or not Thailand are the places are going to be invaded by conglomerates that will enforce roundup and so forth? It's my dear hope, it doesn't happen. But then again, we kind of know how the monolith works, right?

Andrew Stotz 13:08
It's happening, but trust me, it's happening. Well, I mean, it's a fascinating discussion. And I remember my father, in his later years, moved to North Carolina, and my mom and my dad retired in Charlotte, and my dad really, really was interested in the rivers, and he volunteered in many different, you know, ways to try to preserve the quality of the rivers and the quality of the water and the whole, you know, the whole environment thing. And I think that that's such a critical thing. I just wonder one last thing, just to understand your business. So here's this huge problem, sure. And how, maybe in the simplest way tell us like the type of person or company or organization that engages you, and what you help them you know, achieve, you know, and how that how that all comes about.

Riggs Eckelberry 13:58
Thank you, I had to lock my printer tray because it kept printing, but and very annoying. So what was the market is segmented between, of course the very largest players, and then the sort of mid mid level businesses and then the consumer. At the very highest level, you have players like PepsiCo, for example, which is committed to at to recycling 80% of their process water, which is excellent. You have a unicorn, for example, gradient which is services, those high end companies, and generally they don't need financial assistance, they know what to do, and they have teams and so forth. But so that's a trend that's occurring at the high end. At the low end consumer Well, that's that's difficult for a company like ours to really get into because it's very commoditized in the mid level, which is where all the action is you know what Jesse James said, you know, when he was asked what why do you rob banks, that's where the money is, well, why do we service these Some middle class companies is because there's so many of them. And it is the bulk of the of the industry. But to do that, you have to get into a rubber stamp approach, you have to have highly standardized, you have to create an assembly line approach where like what color do you want any color including black, right. So, in this case, we have developed a pod approach, which is how to sanitize the last 400 years, but put them to work and, and just change the filters. So, that is been a technology breakthrough for us. And that is, I think critical is to have the right modular approach. So you can come in, drop the equipment on a pad, plug in the water and electricity and you're up and running. And that is driving a lot of adoption. For example. In America right now we have a big up migration trend where people and businesses are moving from the big cities, to Serbia, because of the work from home thing, but also because land is cheaper and sometimes more political freedom, a bunch of reasons why, but it's happening. Unfortunately, they're moving into districts where the water infrastructure is very limited. And we have 150,000 water districts in America, some of which serve as few as 3500 people. So it's very fragmented. And when people move into those areas, you know, I like to go skiing in Whitefish, Montana, well, they just had 40,000 families move in to this to a bucolic place. Well, guess what? The water treatment gets overstressed. And so with that, it's important to have this pod capability. And that's what we're doing, where housing developments are being rolled out on prairies where there's no sewage, and they will to have their their units and beasts, you know, the sludge tank gets serviced once a year, and everybody's happy. So a lot of water independence going on right now, a lot of you know, pulling the plug, which I think is a positive thing. In fact, this, you know, this fears of cyberattacks, while the less dependence you have on the giant mega systems, the less danger there is, from the cyber attacks.

Andrew Stotz 17:15
The decentralization concept. What just out of curiosity for a midsize company that says, We want to bring in this type of solution? Is it? What is the? Is it very expensive, extremely expensive? Can they get financing for it? Do you do financing for it? How does that all work?

Riggs Eckelberry 17:38
Well, great question, Andrew. So what we've been doing for years now is been the conventional, you buy it, and you know, we'll help you maintain it, but it's your property. And that, really, because we're servicing the people who absolutely have to do it, they being fined, or they're stuck remotely or whatever it is, and they just have no choice. The next segment up in the marketplace really is the end users who would do it, who might think it's a good idea, right, but they don't have to. And for them, the financial part is really, really important. So to move beyond the dire necessity level where you can just charge and you're done, we had to invent something we call water on demand, which is a water as a service concept that enables people to do just a transparent switch over from the city to a private meter, which we maintain, and the equipment remains a property of one on demand. Now, somebody's got to pay for those machines, right. And so that's where investors come in. And so we've created and this is where we're unique, because it's other waters, a service providers, but the only player out there who actually works with regular investors is water on demand. So it works kind of like a if you've heard of master limited partnerships in the oil and gas industry, they, you know, they return royalties and so forth. But we have a single link share where investors get residuals for the operation of a basket of water and equipment and conveyance systems. And they also get, you know, equity and all kinds of fun perks like that. And people like it, because it's fodder, you know, they invest in oil and gas because it's profitable, but don't love it. But they liked the idea of why.

Andrew Stotz 19:25
And for someone like me or my listeners who may not have deep knowledge in that a master limited partnership is where people are coming together, pooling their money buying a Serie A group of assets that are then deployed in different places and they're getting a return. There's a charge, for instance, you know, there's a fee that's coming back to compensate for the use of that capital. And there's obviously a fee that's being paid also for the use of the machine and you know, the service and all that. Is that correct?

Riggs Eckelberry 19:57
Absolutely. So in this case is very much like what the oil industry calls a throughput contract, meaning you're being paid for the actual flow. And in this case, it's the flow of water. So it's up to the end users just, it's the same, it's comparable, they're on the same meter, nothing much changes, except now they have control over their own water. And they can do that recycling bit, which is that's the biggest biggest change. And they also have a contract, long term contract that shelters them from the worst inflation that's occurring in the water industry. So it's good for them. And it's good for investors because here's the problem for regular guys, like you and me, Andrew is, is that we seldom have access to the really tasty deals, right? You know, if you look at the rounds that were done in Airbnb, Ashton Kutcher was early on, and he did incredibly well. Yeah, something like 400,000%. But we didn't have access to those deals. Now, I nothing wrong with Ashton. He's a great guy, I'm sure. But the rest of us don't have that access. And here's the second problem is that most commodities are highly manipulated. You know, like oil and gas, gold, most precious metals. And dare I whisper that Bitcoin might be a little bit manipulated, I don't know, I essence, and I'm not going to stick treason here, but it's a highly unprotected market. So all these all these mature commodities are highly manipulators, they have had an interest and so forth and so on. And water, it's still early, it's the early stage of the water, water monopoly breakup. So it's a relatively stable commodity. And we know that there's constant, steadily rising demand, right, that the demand just keeps going up. So it's, it's a good solid asset, and we are just pleased as punch to have made it an investable asset. And in fact, that company that we've put together, that origin clear has built is now on its way to the NASDAQ as part of a blank check, acquisition Special Purpose acquisition company that has now has now decided to wire water on demand, which is great, because assuming that the merger succeeds, it's currently registration with the SEC. We will then have access dramatically better access to capital to make work even better.

Andrew Stotz 22:30
And so is that it's a SPAC is that what that is? That's, that's buying it? And is that back listed now?

Riggs Eckelberry 22:36
Yes, it is. So the ticker symbol for the spec is F, R LA, fr, Fox Foxtrot, Romeo. Lima, alpha, F R L. A.

Andrew Stotz 22:52
Okay, I'm gonna have to look at that. I'm not seeing it yet. Hold on, let's say SPAC I'll take that in. Right. Let's get that we'll get that spank insider fortune rise acquisition, that's

Riggs Eckelberry 23:07
the one. Okay, that's

Andrew Stotz 23:08
the one. Fantastic. That's excited about

Riggs Eckelberry 23:11
my company origin clear is has been a penny stock for many years, we are the 13 year overnight success. And but Well, we were not going to the NASDAQ, we're remaining that and our role is to continue to incubate more of these, our superpower is really working with the everyday investor on crowdfunding, as well as accredited we do both. And so people can get involved with this particular relay X exciting project of ours, either as unaccredited through the upcoming called regulation, a offering, which is which is planned. And secondly, through investment as an accredited investor, where you get a royalty action. So as I say, people, people are very excited about it. And you know, here's what's amazing, Andrew, I, I came up through high tech, and I was accustomed to a lot of disruption, you know. And this whole idea of breaking the build is a great idea. Well, I came along to water and it was I fought as like, you're not going to break me you're not going to change me, we're going to stay the same. And it's been a long, long way. We had to find where was the point of leverage? What made the change happen, and trying to work with big water just wasn't happening, trying to. We also had a long for a long time. We did pure technology. But what industry is technology phobic, because they're like everything's fine. So in the end, we really had to attack a two to spot this new trend and help it happen. And we think that's the most exciting thing going on and certainly the water industry.

Andrew Stotz 24:50
Well, it's fascinating talking about in we definitely talk longer than I usually talk about people's business but I think that you know the water issues The big issue and it should matter to all of us, you know that we have clean water and all that in. So it's really exciting to learn about how you're opening the floodgates. But now with

Riggs Eckelberry 25:11
a splash, yes.

Andrew Stotz 25:12
Hey, there you go. So now it's time to show your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to an intelligent your story.

Riggs Eckelberry 25:25
Yes, well, I of course, like everyone, I had high hopes what? When I arrived in New York City coming out of the I spent a decade in the nonprofit space in between all that I had these wonderful adventures, the South Pacific that I remember fondly? Well, I had in the early 80s, I just had this realization that technology was going to be the linchpin for all change, that that really, it was gonna accelerate. So I got, I found my mission, I was like, I really want to make public this happen. So I arrived in New York City. And this was the period when companies were moving from that old safeguard ledger, you know, bear down hard to many years or microcomputer type accounting systems. And it was happy, it was a big trend. And there were various competing operating systems, which doesn't matter. But really what was happening was that a lot of people needed help to make that migration. And so I created a company, actually a series of companies that tried to help these companies. Well, where did this go discovered very quickly, is that when you're when you're trying something new like that, and you undercapitalized I have zero capital, and you have 12 employees in Manhattan, that every two weeks is a terrible, terrible thing. You know, you hit that dead payroll date. And I'm proud that during the whole time that I did this, I was always able to take care of that. But here's, here's what happened. were, you know, and you know, the saying that your greatest expense is the money you don't make, right? That the opportunity cost. And at the time, I was single, and I met a young lady who was an heiress, she was extremely wealthy, and she had a money manager weighed

Andrew Stotz 27:16
him. And I've been looking for a rich, rich woman all my life, and you just found one like that.

Riggs Eckelberry 27:24
Unfortunately, I didn't it. For some reason, I'm not an anti gold digger. I actually prefer a girl who's got a lot of gumption and scrappy. I like him scrappy. But anyway, there I met this wonderful lady. And she was interested in me and things kind of got to a certain point, not very serious. But then she said one day, I want you to meet my money manager. So back then, of course, the hideous you put on your monkey suit every single day bomb. And so I went off with my, with my suit from Paul Stewart and showed up at this money managers office and, and he said, Rick's This is a great thing you got going here, why don't you go public? And I said, Oh, well, sir. You know, I'm not profitable yet. Don't worry about it. And he said, Well, he didn't Gary said, Okay, goodbye. Well, it didn't work out with the girl and, and later I was kicked myself like, what were they thinking? Because the, this industry, computerizing companies typically back then and even now is not very profitable at the outset you're doing a lot of work to get people to write programs and and customize them and listening to the thing and then but the real money is the annuity is that monthly payment and they if you service them right, they will pay that forever. And I wasn't calculating that I you know, I was all bravado but I wasn't really financially smart. And so what I would have been great to who said well sounds great sir let's get a good at going and then somebody some fast talking investment banker would have gotten a hold of me and we would have done some interesting stuff. And I would probably be have master ego today. No, it probably be we'd have because that was the beginning of the giant revolution where all these businesses I mean, I used to show up and drew in the Bronx and he's terrible part of the town in this little place, little concrete block house and inside with this gem of a business, you know, selling buttons or something like that. And they were all over the city. And they were just waiting to be helped and had a good relationship with a TNT which was getting all these all these leads and so forth. So what was my worst investment was really turning down this A sweat equity opportunity of a lifetime. That, you know, I was, you know, I was still in my 30s and it was a perfect time to to jump on it. So, um, you know, what happened is as a postscript is that I worked on it for a long time after that, but eventually got discouraged. I was like, You know what, this was horrible. And I gave the business to my best salesman. And he came back to me years later, he said, Rick's, I've still got some of the accounts that we opened together, they've made me a mint, and he became a millionaire off that recurring monthly revenue, right, the MRR and and that was a big learning lesson to me. And you've got to look for that that monthly recurring revenue. But more importantly, was realizing that, you know, Wall Street bets on futures. And I hadn't yet realized that I thought I already had to have achieved something. Well, that's the whole point of, of getting Wall Street financing isn't was to get things going. Right. And so that, you know, I had many adventures after that, including the.com, which I loved and had some good exits and so forth. But that was an telling you, this is the first time I've ever sold told the story right here now.

Andrew Stotz 31:22
Interesting. Well, how would you summarize what you learned?

Riggs Eckelberry 31:26
Okay, the number one thing I learned from the overall experience, not just that one interview was don't go into industry unprepared, I was just bluffing my way. And the first computer I sold, I didn't know what the on switch was. Right. And I just, you know, I can just, you know, I can do this, we couldn't be that hard, right. And I worked day and night and, you know, managed to build a business that would that eventually turned over, but still it and it was financially ruinous to me personally, the thing that I learned from that is, get to know the space, you're in apprentice, find a lower level position, so forth. This is what I did. In the 90s, for example, in the software industry, and I really got to know what I was doing. And, for example, I knew that I eventually wanted to become a CEO. Starting in 1985, I started as a program manager, 10 years later, I had made it up to C, A to C level, and I'm taking a company public as a number two. And then I felt ready. So and I still had lots of lessons to learn. But I wasn't completely at sea, I was at least smarter than the people that I was hiring, which was good.

Andrew Stotz 32:46
Yeah, and maybe I'll share my takeaway, what I've been thinking about a lot of my clients in Thailand want to IPO. And I've been thinking and preparing to create a an IPO bootcamp here in Thailand and in Asia, just because I've been an analyst most of my career in the markets. And so I just understand that and have my own business and stuff. But the first step in the in the, in the is IPO bootcamp I've been thinking about is, really, in order to really become a member of the bootcamp, you've got to do a scale pitch, where you've got to explain the scaling up of this business, what is the potential, and you need to have a vision of that potential, whether you know, your confidence in getting to that, or that's another issue, but you've got to be able to paint a vision of the scalability of this, that there's a real need. And, and that's what I think, you know, maybe when I'm hearing when I heard you talk, I thought, when we're young, you know, we don't think about that, and we don't clarify that so well, we just kind of, you know, and then we also have a lot of insecurities about I don't know, this and that and all that. But as I think about it, after running our factory here in Thailand for 30 years, you know, when we were young member, we used to go in wagons, and you know, your friend, or your mom would pull you in that red wagon. And then when we went when we got a little bit older, we turn the the handle around, so we would hold the handle, and our friends would push us down the hill, and you try to steer the wagon, you know, which is pretty hard to steer a wagon, you know, with the handle behind, you know, like, Sure. And I think that that's what business always is. Every CEO is constantly racing down a hill. And it's constantly you know, you know, it's never in control perfectly. And so that's the two things that I'm thinking about is when you're when you're when you're into a situation like this, you've got to really visualize what is the market opportunity. And the second thing is you got to understand that it's kind of always a mess and you're always going to the next level that you're not necessarily qualified for. But you, you're gonna do it and the other guys that are building businesses, you know, yeah, there are some guys, men and women out there that are super qualified. But most of us are just trying to figure things out as we're going down that hill. Those are two things that I'm thinking about, as I hear your story. Anything you would add to that?

Riggs Eckelberry 35:20
Well, yes, those are very, very true. The one big item that I actually realized relatively recently was the vital importance of team building. And because what I, what was going on right now is I have a great team and I, and as a result, I have a life. You know, next week, I'm going skiing, which is Thanks. Very nice. So what's the difference? Well, back then, for many, many years, I was trying to be hero, and I can do this, I can make it happen. And out, I was employing people, but I wasn't really enlisting them as team members. And as a result, I was kind of like, I mean, literally, with these computer systems, I would spec everything down to the surge suppressor, why? I don't know, because any one of a number of people would have been happy to help me with that. The point I'm making is, I was not letting people really helped me and people want to help, right? So be you need to, you know, the my substack says, you know, break to build with a team. It's got to you can't you can't just go okay, we're just going to blow up this industry and rebuild it. And it's me alone, I don't think so. It's not Superman, it's the League of Avengers, right? So I can't tell you how important it has been to finally get to this point, and have so many people really pitching in with me being super excited, having to send a submission and blown away that we're Wow, we found an S four. And we're actually you know, and there's an ASIC application. And, and it's shared, that's the beauty of it is and so it's not only more workable, but it's also more fun to work with a team. And the final thought I have is, you know, when you say a scaling, you mean, you're really talking engineering, scaling is an engineering problem. And so you got to pay, you know, put an engineers mind to the scaling problem.

Andrew Stotz 37:21
Yeah, great stuff. Well, based on what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn, let's imagine a young person in your exact same situation, right now. They're listening in, and what is one action, they can take three, one action that you'd recommend that that person takes to avoid suffering the same fate.

Riggs Eckelberry 37:46
Again, it comes back to first of all, let's just take one thing, not for granted, which is you need to like what you're going into, because you're going to be stuck with it. If you especially if you succeed, you're going to be stuck with it for years, so be sure you like it. The second thing is, have a really gain a really strong familiarity with every trade has its ins and outs, right? We think bras are sexy, but to someone, they are just a business, right? It's got its schmatta as the garment industry, you know, and this got lots of ins and outs, I learned about the garment industries, data requirements, IT requirements, and they're horrendous. And if you don't know that, you're gonna be learning on the job, and you're gonna be in pain. So take the time, learn how it works, especially on the technology enabling side, which is where it's at. And those are the two things like what you do and get to know well, yep.

Andrew Stotz 38:45
So what's the resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Riggs Eckelberry 38:49
One of the people I really recommend, really most and a big fan of his Clayton Christensen, who the late critical for Clayton Christensen wrote a book called The Innovators Dilemma. Great book. And the reason people need to read it is because it says that the seed of the destruction of every enterprise is in that enterprise. And it's being actively suppressed by the existing business model. You can liberate it, you can create a new business out of it. And this is ongoing, and we people think that they've, they've missed all kinds of opportunities, you know, and Amazon selling or whatever it might be. There's always the seed of the next generation, and whatever's going on right now. Very smart man. He, you know, the CEO of Intel, Andy Grove, actually listened to him and transformed Intel with the Celeron chip. And he did. Clayton with did many, many other you know, good. Turns like that. So it's one of my go to books. Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 39:51
The Innovators Dilemma when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Great. Clayton Christensen, I believe He was a professor at Harvard, I think. And I think I believe he's passed away. But that book came out in 2013. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's rated 4.5 out of five on Amazon with about 4000 reviews. So that's a pretty good one. I've read his stuff and definitely agree. Very good recommendation. All right. Last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Riggs Eckelberry 40:25
Well, it's very clear. We've Godfather this company now and achieved a solid valuation for it as it moves to the NASDAQ. We want to get it there, just like when I used to Captain ships, you know, gotta get it through the coral reef and not, not hit the edges, and actually pull up to the dock. So that's really our goal is to get it there. And having gotten there, we need to build it rapidly, staff it up at sea level, all that good stuff. This, this is our time, we, the next 12 months is gonna be critical for that. And then pivot, the mother company origin clear to this incubator role to do the next thing up, including, you know, the shownotes mentioned briefly the idea of a stable coin, we will get into that no time for that. But there's more to come.

Andrew Stotz 41:12
Exciting. Well listeners there you haven't another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude Riggs, I want to thank you again for joining the mission and on behalf of a Stotz Academy. I hereby award you alumni status returning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Riggs Eckelberry 41:36
Andrew, I think that today is the best of times as the world's the globalizes and becomes completely chaotic. That's opportunity. Grab it.

Andrew Stotz 41:46
Love it. That's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.