Kurt Avery Shares How This $20 Filter Has Saved More Lives Than Most Governments

Kurt Avery built Sawyer Products from a snakebite kit into the most trusted water filter on the planet. His tech is in 80 countries, used by the Red Cross, World Vision, and the U.S. military. He lost money for 23 of his first 25 years — and kept going anyway.

In this episode, he tells us everything.

What We Cover:

💧 How a 30-cent filter gives someone 10 years of clean water — and why villages that used to wait until age 3 to name their babies now name them at birth

🦟 The JAMA-published study proving Sawyer's fabric treatment cuts malaria in babies by 67%

💰 Bidding 69 cents when everyone else bid $5 — and landing a 6.2 million bottle military contract with only 24 products ever shipped

📉 Losing money for 23 straight years and funding the company through Gulf War contracts

🧠 The "Decision Matrix" — Kurt's framework for making better decisions by killing emotional bias

⚽ Why Kurt hires based on the sport position you played (and why he loves midfielders and point guards)

🏛️ Why Sawyer will never be sold — it transfers to the Sawyer Foundation so the mission lives forever

✝️ How faith drives every layer of the business — from naming the company to scaling globally

Quick Hits:

• Sawyer filters are used by 140+ charities in 80 countries
• 3–5 million people get clean water for the first time every year through Sawyer
• One filter serves 100 people for 10 years. It never wears out.
• Sawyer treated a third of Puerto Rico's water supply after back-to-back hurricanes
• Kurt went to Northwestern (Kellogg) for his MBA and played baseball at Hope College
• His book Sawyer Think has 25 business lessons and is being used in college entrepreneur courses

Connect: 

🌐 sawyer.com 

📖 Sawyer Think — available on Amazon (ebook ~$7) 

📧 customerservice@sawyer.com (reference the podcast)

Transcript

Rob Pene (00:01.398)
Alrighty, welcome everyone. Thank you for tuning in. This is Rob Penne. Nice to meet you. The podcast where I, yeah, man, have a ton of interesting people to talk to and I'm grateful to have Kurt here. Now, I usually start with this one question that will then kind of kick off everything else. So here's the question for me. If you were to look back in the last six to 12 months and

reflect on it, and then turn that into a Netflix movie. What would the movie be about?

Kurt Avery (00:40.993)
It'd be a documentary about changing the world. There's kind of one out there. One of our NGOs actually did just do a documentary that'll be in theaters. Yeah, we go in and we change a village and it's just unbelievable how the lives are changed.

Rob Pene (01:01.422)
So changing the world, okay, I like that. I know sometimes, you know, when we're young, we're like, oh, what do you wanna do? End world hunger, know, help people. Yeah, world peace. And it seems like you're actually doing this, right? Now, is that part of Sawyer? Or tell us a little bit about Sawyer.

Kurt Avery (01:10.946)
World peace.

Kurt Avery (01:19.297)
We have probably more impact than really, and we're really just about taking off now. So we got our last product in place that will really change the world. So we were in the camping industry. So we have really advanced insect repellents. We do the military. We're brand number four, but we're the techie brand. And then we do water filtration. We totally...

changed the water filter market by coming up with hollow fiber membranes, which is from kidney dialysis. You can clean blood, you can clean water. But we have the highest technology out there in that nothing can get through this thing that's gonna make you sick. Viruses could, but they're not in the water. They're airborne and body fluids. So we were very big in the domestic market. And we're by far the number one brand of water filtration, Appalachian Trail, all that kind of stuff. We're at every disaster.

because, you know, hurricane comes in, everybody's got to drink water the second day. So we have people that bring these in. If you remember Puerto Rico, when they had the double storms and all those water were wasted on the tarmac, we didn't need them. We were there. We went in before the hurricane and we did, at least a third of all Puerto Ricans were drinking out of our filters. And it's whatever flow you have that comes through. So now we've got it down to where...

for just as little as 30 cents, one time investment of 30 cents, we can give somebody 10 years of clean water. These things don't wear out, you just keep cleaning them. Yeah, that's the magnitude that we're at now. So we're now doing countries. We're going in and my goal is within two years, nobody in Honduras or Guatemala will be sick again from water. And we eliminate boiling water, so it's really greenest thing out there.

People are healthy, they save medicine, they go work extra. We increase their income by 10 to 20%. It's absolutely life-changing. Women don't have to spend half their day getting water. It's now a five-minute deal. And now our latest one, we just put it on the faucet. Whatever comes out of the faucet, like that, it's clean. Not gonna get sick anymore. And if that's not enough, we're also wiping out malaria in babies.

Rob Pene (03:40.172)
Yeah.

Kurt Avery (03:41.921)
JAMA just published a project we did with a North Carolina Chapel Hill professor that if you use one of our insect repellents, the fabric repellent, which is on every military uniform, and you put that on the wrap that the mother carries the baby in, we reduce malaria in the children by 67%, two-thirds. So now we're going to probably take that to 90%. So now we're going to go out for all the little babies and just eliminate malaria.

Rob Pene (03:56.398)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (04:02.007)
Whoa.

Rob Pene (04:11.512)
So yeah, now how did all this, so the water filtration is huge. How did that start? Like did the company start as a water filtration or did it morph into that?

Kurt Avery (04:11.583)
Other than that, we're not doing anything.

Kurt Avery (04:26.057)
No, I had the vision long time ago, 15, 20 years ago that once we got in the repellent business and, we're in the camping stores. So we knew what the problems were and the water was a problem. They'd bring these heavy clunky things with them to get water. And then I realized that half the world dies of either bad water or mosquitoes. So I said, you know, Hey God, why don't we just solve that? You know, we can do it. We got the two products that can do it. And,

Rob Pene (04:51.16)
No.

Kurt Avery (04:55.585)
Obviously that was a pretty bold statement on my part and I have very little to do with it. I took care of it. But yeah, that's why I mean, because we have the two products that could solve both those problems. How do you not share it with the world? So our first launch point was the earthquake in Haiti back in 2010. And we put our filters in there. I mean, like almost 175,000 filters went there and

Rob Pene (04:59.166)
no, no, connection, connection problem. Okay, it should come back here soon. It could show, okay. This is pretty fascinating though.

Rob Pene (05:14.538)
I am very intrigued, but let's...

See where we can come back.

Kurt Avery (05:23.435)
so that the Haitians were really drinking out of Sawyer filters as opposed to whatever else they could scrape together. And then they had a little after action report, whatever, the minister of health went around, there were 20 companies in the room, 20 different solutions. And he went and he asked them what they were and it came to ours. And then he asked everybody.

Rob Pene (05:25.216)
In the meantime, soyer, like in lawyer.com, it's soyer with an S.com, is where you can check out the products.

Rob Pene (05:44.024)
We have been stalled. and now we got kicked out. what is going on here? Bummer.

Rob Pene (05:56.642)
Okay, maybe there's a pause or something.

or I'll keep it running. Let just edit it.

Yeah, I think you can edit.

Rob Pene (06:26.158)
Hmm.

Rob Pene (07:21.676)
Yeah, that was really interesting. Very, very interesting.

Kurt Avery (07:43.941)
We're back.

I don't know if that's my one or your end. I have full bars here. I got good reception, but I don't know.

could be wind storms too, in there.

Rob Pene (07:58.006)
Yeah, bummer, bummer. I think we're still on though. So I'm gonna edit it in that blank area, well, yeah, it'll be yeah, nonstop. we were at the, you guys are in the outdoor stores in the outdoor space and you recognize the need and the problems with lugging clunky things for water.

Kurt Avery (08:24.517)
Right. So we came out with this new technology. I can show you what they look like. They're little fibers and the water, water can get through these little hoses and come out, but the bad stuff can't. So we went to the stores and we first introduced that REI and everybody was selling these clunky things for a hundred bucks and they're making 50 bucks each. And I said, well, we're going to sell ours for 1995. So there's no way we don't want that. We only make $10. I said, yeah, but you're going to sell a whole lot.

Rob Pene (08:53.902)
Mmm.

Kurt Avery (08:54.149)
So when we first introduced it, the market was buying 70,000 of those a year. Now it's in the millions. So would you rather catch $10 bill on a million or $50 bill on 70,000? So it totally changed the whole industry. Now we have a lot of knockoffs, but nobody's been able to match our technology. We're down a little better than everybody else. So we can go into Africa or anywhere in the world and say, you can't get sick with the water that comes through us.

Rob Pene (09:00.577)
Ooh.

Rob Pene (09:07.618)
Okay.

Kurt Avery (09:21.765)
Nobody can match that technology. Nobody else can make that statement. So that's why we're the standard. We're the standard domestically. We're the standard internationally. So all the big ones use us. Red Cross, World Vision, Samaritan's Purse, I mean, you name them. We got them all. 140 charities in 80 countries. We're everywhere. We're in North Korea. We've been in Gaza for a long time, Yemen, you name it, Iran, anywhere. 80 countries that need water, we're there.

Rob Pene (09:36.92)
off.

Rob Pene (09:51.682)
Did you imagine it to be this huge?

Kurt Avery (09:52.901)
Well, unfortunately for the rest of the world, yes, I did. I'm just that way, you know. To be honest, I have a big God and you know, I don't put them in a box. saying, well, if you can do all this in creation, you certainly do this. Let me get out of the way and you just go for it. So yeah, I do think big. Why not? You got one life, right?

Rob Pene (09:58.028)
Yeah I it

Rob Pene (10:18.542)
Man, that's so good. That's very encouraging. Are you?

Kurt Avery (10:23.619)
Yeah. Well, we don't have debtor prisons. Why not? Go for it. know, if you have a good... That's why I wrote the book, by the way. The book is to help you make sure you have a good plan, that you're not just being crazy, Bill. So if you have a good, solid plan, why not? Why wouldn't you? Go for it.

Rob Pene (10:44.448)
Now, this is such a noble cause. And whenever there's a noble cause, there's always a strong opposition, just because. Now, I'm curious to hear what some of those oppositions were for you and how you overcame it.

Kurt Avery (11:02.445)
Yeah, we don't have too much. Some countries, we ran into where the bigwigs didn't want us replacing bottled water. so, but that's okay. We're really not, the people we're serving can't buy the bottled water anyways, but they can buy, you know, improved water trucks and stuff like that. So, would still need to be treated. We save lives. We save hundreds of thousands of babies a year. We went into one village once and

Rob Pene (11:12.59)
Okay.

Not

Kurt Avery (11:32.163)
they didn't name their kids so they were three years old. And we asked them why and they said, because we're not sure they'll live, but if they make it to three, they'll live. Put the filters in, they name at birth now, because they've never lost a child. But there is a group out there that says, why save the baby? I mean, there's a population control group out there, but we haven't messed with them too much. Our biggest opposition is the customs tariff people. They want a lot of money to get our filters in. These things are not expensive.

Rob Pene (11:39.469)
Wow.

Rob Pene (12:00.941)
No.

Kurt Avery (12:00.943)
They'll go on Amazon and they'll see, well, you're selling it for $60 in the stores. We're going to tax you at that rate. No, no, no, it's only $15 to the charities, you know, but they won't tax you at the 15. They want to attack you at the Amazon retail price. So, which isn't even the same product. It's just similar. So that's probably our biggest hangup now. I'm right now we're trying to get 50,000 filters into Honduras and they want six bucks a filter. I mean,

Rob Pene (12:11.118)
Mmm.

Kurt Avery (12:31.567)
That's a lot. That's $300,000 they want just for us to put in something that's going to save their people's lives. That $50,000 is enough to serve at least a half a million people. But that's a lot of money. We abandoned filters from time to time. I just abandoned a thousand in Pakistan because they wanted too much money for it. And I'm sure they take it and sell it.

Rob Pene (12:38.51)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (12:55.724)
Wow. Yeah. Now do you manufacture here in America or?

Kurt Avery (13:01.059)
Yeah, we're in Safety Harbor, Florida. So, yeah, we can do mosquito research in our backyard, you know, all year long.

Rob Pene (13:05.08)
Okay, that's good.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now you're getting into all these mega nonprofits and charities and then also the countries. Do you have a pretty good team that's well connected or is it just manual picking up the phone and networking and all that stuff?

Kurt Avery (13:28.415)
we have a very small team, by the way. It's not very small. I do have the best of the best, the people I have really good, but we're the answers. I mean, they'll call us. mean, I don't think you'd do a water filter overseas without coming to us. I mean, we're, at, we're the standard, you know, so the phone calls come to us. yeah, I mean, we're well over 90 % of all the filters installed around the world are ours, you know, so for, for charities. It, well.

Right now we do three to five million people a year get clean water for the first time, but we're capable of doing 30 to 50 million people. So it's, it's now just gathering. we, we do have people now, some of the big donors are kicking tires. have somebody through our network as an office in the white house. So, I mean, these have been shared. I've shared this with Susie Wiles and her family and

Rob Pene (14:08.141)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kurt Avery (14:27.191)
They were trying to get to, you know, replace USAID. So all that's kind of cooking, whatever happens, happens. I can't control that. I just got to get out of the way and let it happen. But yes, people are kicking the tires now because it's so demonstrative. It's cheap. I mean, 30 cents for 10 years of water. Mind-boggling.

Rob Pene (14:34.53)
Okay. Yeah.

Rob Pene (14:44.844)
Yeah, that's crazy. And then the malaria, how did that come about?

Kurt Avery (14:52.197)
I had done a study years ago with Tulane and then nothing came out of that. But then we supported this guy from UNC Chapel Hill, Dr. Royce, Ross Boyce. And he did a study and proved that this treatment of the fabric is very inexpensive and it reduced the malaria by two thirds. That got written up in JAMA. JAMA is Journal of American Medical Association. It's the medical journal.

Rob Pene (15:17.442)
We will take.

Kurt Avery (15:22.211)
And once that got written up, it's off to the races. And it's very inexpensive. So they wrote the articles and then this person saw the article and this person passed it on and here comes the snowball. yeah, we're going to, it's, fairly inexpensive. We can do, we've been doing it for the military for 25 years, same treatment, same identical treatment. They put it on all the uniforms and Canadian army and whoever else is in NATO. So.

The original uniform in the military gets come pretreated, but then they have to retreat it with ours. And we've been doing that for years and years and years. So it's the same identical process, nothing new. Just applying it to baby blankets, baby wraps.

Rob Pene (15:55.821)
It's

Thank

Hmm.

Rob Pene (16:05.848)
Hmm. Why do you think that type of treatment and protection hasn't hit the third world countries sooner?

Kurt Avery (16:16.953)
Hard to say, a lot of politics involved. You know, even now, I don't know, I had a conversation with WHO, maybe they'll approve it, maybe they won't, got a lot of hoops. There's a lot of politics, and you know how big the charity world is? I mean, all the food and medicines and all these things. The UN, I mean, it's a huge, huge reaction. I won't even let them approve our filters.

Rob Pene (16:19.725)
Yes.

Kurt Avery (16:45.593)
because the bar is so low that if we had our name attached to it, everybody would say, we're approved by WHO just like Sawyer. No, our standards are way too high to let that bar come down to let anybody say they're like Sawyer. So you're into that kind of stuff. And I don't blame them, okay, until we came along, that was the next best thing, but we've changed the standards.

Rob Pene (16:47.982)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (17:10.146)
Yeah, and your offices are only in Florida and then you just distribute all over the world. Do you have satellite offices?

Kurt Avery (17:16.857)
Yep. We have a plant in Panama serving Central America. But no, no, it's very light. This thing, the whole filter, it's a couple of ounces. So it's very easy to ship.

Rob Pene (17:31.532)
Wow, wow. Now you mentioned knockoffs. That's obviously bad, but does it hinder? Because it's a knockoff of a product that would serve a good purpose, right? But not to the same... Right, okay.

Kurt Avery (17:44.773)
Yeah, except there's won't. There's won't because people are going to get sick. See, we test every filter three times because you can have manufacturing flaws, not many, but they can be there. So we literally have the cost of our filters testing it to make sure it meets our claims. Well, other people don't test there. So I can't go into a village and say, you know, 90 % of you are going to be okay. The other 10, you're still going to be sick. Well, that's what the others would have to say. I can't do that.

for the little bit of money it cost to make sure we're there. Yeah, we've had people put product out with our name on it. So the lawyer said, well, congratulations, you just entered the Gucci level. But we were fortunate because their products do make you sick. Even like Amazon, we put a transparency tag on it so that you know it is a Sawyer, a must, not anybody. Even if the other name is like us, it's not us. And so Amazon...

Rob Pene (18:12.343)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (18:22.935)
Yeah

Rob Pene (18:35.736)
Mmm.

Kurt Avery (18:42.013)
won't let anything go in their warehouse pretending it's us. I mean, that's another level of endorsement. So maybe because they can't let people get sick and sue Amazon, you know, because they had a fake. So we've settled that down a little bit. And people just come to us. They know if they come to us.

Rob Pene (18:46.573)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (18:53.422)
Great.

Rob Pene (19:02.828)
Yeah, you're the ones. Now, talk to me about you. What's your background? Did you go to school for engineering or something?

Kurt Avery (19:11.683)
No, I'm from a small town. I'm an old country boy, lived out in the wilderness, big country area. Had a good education, went to a Christian undergrad college. And then I was fortunate to get into Northwestern Business School and I majored in marketing. So I'm a marketer. you know, I apologize to the engineers, but the marketers make the money. The reason is...

Rob Pene (19:27.363)
Mmm.

Noooo

Kurt Avery (19:40.963)
You have an engineer and you have a consumer and neither one knows how to talk to each other. We're the interpreters. Okay. Yeah. And so we start with the consumer. What do you need? know, and we use the analogy, you know, Henry Ford always said, if I asked the customer what they wanted, they'd want a faster horse. So you got to look beyond the problem to see what's a different kind of solution.

Rob Pene (19:45.582)
Yeah, that's good.

Rob Pene (20:06.382)
Mm.

Kurt Avery (20:06.947)
And that's where we came in, then take it to the engineers and they figure out how to do that. So we're the connector. We're the interpreter between the two and that's why we do well. So that's, that's my background is marketing. I worked for some of the pretty prestigious names. would know them, both the people and the companies. And I said, listen to my boss one day take credit for everything I did. And I said, I see how this corporate game works. Yeah. So I said, I'm going to go out on my own. And of course,

Rob Pene (20:11.895)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (20:30.102)
Yeah, yeah.

Kurt Avery (20:37.189)
didn't do so well in the beginning. I had a great product. The product is still 40 years, 42 years later, it's still in Walmart. So I had a right product, but I didn't switch to guerrilla marketing. was still marketing like I was at the big company, blew through the money. I had a good resume. I raised a lot of money. It was gone within a year. So I always say we lost money 23 of the first 25 years till we became an overnight success. we stuck with it because we knew we had the right stuff and we

Rob Pene (20:44.589)
Mm-hmm.

Kurt Avery (21:07.055)
dug it out, dug it out and kept going and then boom, off we went. So we did have the right stuff, took a lot of stick to it and had to go get some outside consulting jobs to keep it going for a while. we did all the sunscreens for the golf war one and we did the repellents for golf war two. So those are the two pillar years that sustained the other 23 years of losses, but we made it.

Rob Pene (21:15.555)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (21:32.364)
Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I went to a private Christian undergrad, is in Michigan. What school did you go? Spring Arbor University. man, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay, that's good. Not that far. I played on the baseball team, but yeah.

Kurt Avery (21:40.121)
Which one?

yeah, I went to Hope College.

Kurt Avery (21:52.951)
I played on our baseball team. We probably played each other.

Rob Pene (21:56.076)
Wow. Coach Hank Burbridge was my coach. was coaching the Spring Harbor back. Even yeah, in the earlier days. That's funny. That's good. So would you say a lot of your faith is part of how you operate your business?

Kurt Avery (22:12.425)
absolutely. And everybody in our corporation agrees. I mean, how can you not when you're doing this? OK, so you know it's bigger than you. know, we're not. I'm OK, but I'm not that smart. So there's so many God stories. If you read it in the books, if you want one story, they'll blow your mind. I'll tell you. Golf War 1 comes around and they need sunscreens.

Rob Pene (22:19.543)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (22:23.149)
Okay.

Rob Pene (22:33.634)
Yeah, let's do it.

Kurt Avery (22:38.597)
Now we had just gotten into the sunscreen business the month or two earlier. So we're hand cranking out 2000 bottles a week. They want 200,000 a week. So of course I said, we'll do it.

Rob Pene (22:53.612)
Yeah

Kurt Avery (22:55.877)
Okay, now you're starting to see how crazy I am. So we did it, you know, so we get everything and I had a partner that dropped like 800 grand in 15 minutes to get the equipment, get the thing, get everything going. And I, of course the next lowest people were bidding four or $5 a bottle. Next lowest bid was $1.99. We've been 69 cents. We pushed the pencil and we said, I know we can do it. Why are, what are we missing here?

Rob Pene (22:57.986)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (23:18.914)
Oof.

Kurt Avery (23:25.007)
But we did, we got the bid, obviously, and ended up making 6.2 million bottles. So we made us whole. But here's the tricky part. We already got the trucks flying on down to McAllen, Texas. And then they say, by the way, one of the contracts says you have to be a commercial brand. Now remember, I'm only in business for 30 to 60 days. I ship two cases. I've only shipped 24 products, two cases of 12.

Rob Pene (23:48.78)
Hmm.

Kurt Avery (23:55.051)
One went out to California, the other went to Broadway Hardware in McAllen, Texas. So the inspector gets in his car, drives a mile and a half down the road, looks at the product on the shelf at McAllen, Texas and says, yeah, you get the bid. I mean, come on, what are the odds of that?

Rob Pene (24:12.096)
Wow.

Kurt Avery (24:13.987)
Yeah, so there's been quite a few of those things.

Rob Pene (24:17.312)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no coincidences. No, no, Now, what's the plan moving forward? Are you going to tackle another major issue or are you going to try to really max out the water and the malaria?

Kurt Avery (24:31.801)
Well, the malaria is a new issue. That just started. So that one's exploding. Yes, we actually are getting close to introducing a revolutionary new insect repellent, which I can't say any more about that because that's about a month, month and a half away and I really shouldn't be. But yes, I got three big ones on the horizon. The water filters are huge. I mean, it's just huge. You know, when one filter can serve a hundred people for 10 years.

Rob Pene (24:34.402)
Yeah. Okay.

Rob Pene (24:53.314)
Yes.

Kurt Avery (25:00.865)
It's a $20 filter, never wears out. Cause you just back flush and clean them. So, you know, it's very simple. Just pop it on your faucet and then you can take it away. know, most of the people on the hiking attach it to like a smart water bottle, just screw it on top and drink. And we have bladders, we have all different kinds of things. So, no, our hands are full with, with those three projects.

Rob Pene (25:23.36)
Yeah. Yeah. So let's say that you're camping, you got the filter, you can collect water from the river, run the filter and drink from that.

Kurt Avery (25:32.261)
Oh yeah, in Africa it doesn't matter if the cows are pooping in the water. It doesn't matter. That's all made safe. Nothing biological that hurts you could get through that thing. So yeah, obviously, Hika, that's a piece of cake. Now the one thing we don't take out is forever chemicals. So when we get into the world part, if you have forever chemicals, we'll treat it biologically, but we won't let people switch from bottled water

Rob Pene (25:37.39)
No!

Rob Pene (25:50.925)
Mmm.

Kurt Avery (26:01.903)
to biologically contaminated water. But we do have a solution for that coming out with activated charcoal. We're gonna show everybody how to make your own activated charcoal so you can take out the forever chemicals and still drink the water. So yeah, that's a little project. That's not bang to the others, but yes, that's a big game changer too. So yeah, it doesn't matter what's in the water. We're gonna clean it for you.

Rob Pene (26:19.052)
Yeah. So I.

Rob Pene (26:24.942)
Yeah, I have a personal kind of question, theoretical, maybe theological in nature. As a

this is a big operation, right? But then you have a ton of tiny little details and decisions that need to be made. And you mentioned your faith and how that helps. And you've seen God kind of work in mysterious ways. How or what does it look like when you make those granular decisions and applying faith? Like, where's God involved in that decision-making process? Or is he more just like high level?

involved.

Kurt Avery (27:08.173)
No, he's expecting you to have the skill sets to make the decision. So don't forget, you know, all along the way you've been building your training skills. I went to the top grad school and I worked on things and I have analytical skills that the average person doesn't have. So no, he's expecting you to be able to make those decisions. That's why he trains you, got you all these opportunities along the way to be able to do that. There's also, again, I don't mean to keep pushing the book, but

Rob Pene (27:30.167)
I'm gonna go home.

Kurt Avery (27:37.039)
there's a chapter in there called Decision Matrix. And the Decision Matrix helps you define so many variables that the two emotional ones don't cloud your thing. You get to look at all the other things. So like when kids are picking colleges, we'll make it come up with 20 different things. Yes, the food matters, and yes, how many friends you have matter, and yes, the...

But you're just thinking of one or two things. Now, the rest of them, now, even if the rest of them don't change your decision, they've shown you where the tripwires and what could be unintended consequences, except I don't believe in unintended consequences. You should have already thought it out before you moved in there and ready for it if it happens. That's strategic planning. So that's the kind of thought process. I'm also big into creative destruction. Creative destruction says the world's gonna change.

Rob Pene (28:15.127)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (28:28.686)
Mmm!

Kurt Avery (28:30.447)
for a number of reasons. It could be political, it could be economic, it could be cultural. mean, look how fast the internet's changing. One day everybody's on Instagram, next week the kids are all on TikTok and whatever. So look three, five years down the road and try and figure out where the world's gonna be and get there before everybody else. That's creative destruction. So if you're trained to think that way, put those two together, I'd better not be making too many mistakes, but I do.

Rob Pene (28:50.744)
Mmm.

Kurt Avery (29:00.163)
make them? I'll make them. But that's where God gave you the skill sets to do that. And yes, then he is above making all these things happen. Like I kept trying to make this thing go big and he finally said, out of here. I'll bring the people to you when you're ready. So this new product has just came down the production line last week. So yeah, and we say we're not just giving you water, we change your behavior. We have

Rob Pene (29:14.542)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (29:20.685)
Wow.

Kurt Avery (29:26.693)
We have QR codes on these things. You can go to a video and see how to install it. We have WhatsApp so we can communicate with you. We have GIS tracking so we can get measurements for the donors that want to make sure that, you know, it's nice to send me a picture of a kid that you've helped, but I'm going to tell you what we did to that kid's life. We're going to tell you how much sickness went away, how much they can work, how much they can go to school in the next 40 days a year. We track all that.

Rob Pene (29:34.424)
Wow.

Rob Pene (29:44.833)
Yeah.

Kurt Avery (29:52.995)
So we have the metrics to let a donor know this is the best ROI you're ever gonna get.

Rob Pene (29:59.692)
No, no, no, no stalling. Come on, come on. Come on, stop. Okay, there we go. All right. We're back. Good. Okay, we're back.

Kurt Avery (30:12.133)
So anyways, it's more than just a filter, it's a whole system. Behavior change, contact with you, we can go WhatsApp back and forth, we have GIS tracking down to the six inches of where the filter is. know if you want us to know, we can help you and track you. So it's not just the filter, it's the whole thing.

Rob Pene (30:32.718)
Yeah, yeah. What's the name of the book? I know you mentioned the book. That's pretty exciting. Did it is the book complete? And is it has it been published?

Kurt Avery (30:39.365)
Yeah. Yeah. It's been out for about a year. It's called Sawyer Think. It's the way we think Sawyer Think. Schools are using it for their entrepreneur classes and stuff like that. know, so there's 25 little business lessons. That's good for any young person. mean, you know, think through, there's a lot of little tricks of the trade in there. A few things I've thought of, math trap and stuff like that. Making decisions quickly.

Rob Pene (30:43.063)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (30:49.965)
Okay.

Rob Pene (31:05.176)
Yeah, I love it. Where does the name Sawyer come from? What's the meaning behind it?

Kurt Avery (31:09.251)
Well, I first started out with the name Safedah, which is, we started out with a snakebite kit. Okay, so I wanted a biblical reference. The only one really that fits is Paul on the island of Malta when he gets bit by the viper and they say, you must be a God. And he says, no, I'm not a God. I'll show you one. So I did it backwards, X 28, four, five, and six backwards is Safedah. But it was by America. So I go to the trade show and it's...

Rob Pene (31:16.845)
BOOST

Kurt Avery (31:37.241)
buy American, I said, this is not gonna work. So I went back to the studio and give me the most all American name you've come up with. So we named it after Tom Sawyer.

Rob Pene (31:45.8)
wow.

Kurt Avery (31:46.925)
And the original logo was Tom Sawyer with a backpack running through the woods. So that's where Sawyer came from.

Rob Pene (31:53.372)
that's interesting. That's good. I like how, again, it's pretty encouraging that in every part of the process, there is a footprint of God involved, you know, from the naming to just some of the things that he orchestrated. That's pretty awesome. It seems like there's a lot of really smart people around you that...

Did you get introduced to them as referrals or were they people that you met along the way or childhood friends?

Kurt Avery (32:26.425)
You mean the ones that work for me or just the ones we know? no, it's pretty easy to get the best of the best because who wouldn't want to work for Sawyer? mean, seriously, our margins are good, so we pay very well. So I have the best of the best. I'm a delegator. I find good people. like just yesterday, I said, don't even tell me about it. You just go do it. I trust you. So I don't even want to get into the details. Leave me out of it. I'm the visionary. You know, I'm thinking of things.

Rob Pene (32:35.821)
Hmm.

Rob Pene (32:43.97)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (32:49.346)
Yes.

Rob Pene (32:54.168)
Hmm.

Kurt Avery (32:56.549)
I did what I call Grasshopper U, which is the book. So I would bring in, it's called Grasshopper U, you have much to learn Grasshopper. So that's what the book is, it's my Grasshopper lesson. So I would bring in summer interns from the colleges. And if I saw one good enough, I'd keep them. And so I really get really good ones. So I've kept a couple out of the 15 or 20 that went through it. I also do it online for our workers. every other Wednesday.

Rob Pene (33:04.959)
Yes

Kurt Avery (33:24.749)
all of our workers gathered on the Zoom meeting and we go through a lesson or something. So, no, they come to us. I get to pick the litter.

Rob Pene (33:27.374)
Okay.

Rob Pene (33:35.822)
That's awesome. You said you're a delegator. Do you consider yourself a teacher or more of a mentor or a coach?

Kurt Avery (33:43.705)
Well, I was what you'd call an individual contributor. I wanted to do it all, you know, I considered it. But then as I got older, I said, you know, this gonna last. So then that's when I went into the teaching mode. So, and that's what the book is. The book is really all my teaching over the years. I mean, at a time, you get old, you know.

Rob Pene (33:53.773)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (33:57.238)
Okay, good. Yeah.

Rob Pene (34:02.498)
Yeah, yeah.

Rob Pene (34:06.67)
Yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah passing me

Kurt Avery (34:08.921)
Well, listen, the book is my operating manual. So when I'm gone, I know so I'm on it and I've set it up to where Sawyer will never be sold. It'll go to the foundation. have a Sawyer foundation. So if people want to contribute, everything goes overseas, a hundred percent. There's no overhead of out. But when I finally, we call it exit to market either physically or mentally. And I do have to have myself tested mentally. So I don't screw this thing up. I've built that into the will.

Rob Pene (34:14.378)
I am a man.

Rob Pene (34:21.987)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (34:36.312)
Okay.

Kurt Avery (34:38.711)
It goes, the foundation will own Sawyer, kind of like Hershey Foundation owns Hershey Chocolate, you know. So Sawyer Foundation will own Sawyer so we can keep doing what we're doing. There's no you-hauls in heaven. I don't need the money. So why not keep the gig going?

Rob Pene (34:43.928)
Gotcha.

Rob Pene (34:51.105)
Yeah.

Wow, wow. Advice for young entrepreneurs, just getting started, like they wanna take on the world, they wanna do good. What's the one thing you can share with them?

Kurt Avery (35:07.201)
I'm good at this. One thing, know what you're good at. Tell me in one, I try, when people bring me their resumes and what I say, give them away, tell me one sentence, most two sentences, what you can do for me. What is your skillset? What are you good at? And what is your passion? Now, if you know that, don't try to do stuff you aren't good at. That's where you delegate it to somebody else. Let them fill in the hole so that you can

Rob Pene (35:09.133)
Yeah.

Kurt Avery (35:37.251)
let loose on what you're good at and not get bogged down and make mistakes in the things you aren't good at. So number one thing is know what you're good at and fill in around you with the things that you're not good at. And obviously have a good idea, you know, so there's a lot of vice in here, like make sure you get rejected a few times so you can hear what the other side has to say and that kind of stuff. So.

Rob Pene (35:54.006)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Pene (36:04.002)
I like that. What if, how do you know what you're good at when you're good at a lot of things?

Kurt Avery (36:09.509)
You're not good at everything.

Rob Pene (36:11.182)
Not everything, but a lot of things, at least four or five things.

Kurt Avery (36:12.901)
Okay. Yeah, but that's okay. But the world's full of 20 things.

Rob Pene (36:19.052)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm assuming it's part of the decision matrix that will help them shrink from five things to just, here's my core competency, right?

Kurt Avery (36:20.696)
Okay.

Kurt Avery (36:29.753)
Yeah. No, I'm good at a few things, but not good at everything. So for instance, it could be like, I'm good at thinking, but not at the details. Get me somebody, you know, I'm a marketer. Okay. But I don't want to do the analytics per se. I want to think the big parts of it. You know, so no, you can never be good at everything. There's too many every things in a business. If you lay down, what do you need to have a successful business? I mean, it's a long, long list. You can't be good at all of them.

Rob Pene (36:50.307)
Yeah, yeah.

Rob Pene (36:56.558)
It's a lot. It's a lot.

Kurt Avery (36:59.694)
Not if you're gonna grow.

Kurt Avery (37:06.489)
There we go, now you're back.

Rob Pene (37:08.534)
Yeah, here we go. Okay, yeah, we're back. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So it sounds like, let's say you can't be good at everything, but if you are good at 10 things, you can trick it down to five and then be okay with taking the risk at saying, I'm good at this one thing for now. And then just all the other things can compliment that one thing that you decide on and then have faith and trust that God's gonna guide you in the right direction. Is that offer close?

Kurt Avery (37:32.805)
Yeah. No, that's there. So I'm extraordinarily good at marketing. Okay. I did marketing for big time companies. I also spent time in manufacturing. So I know quite a bit about manufacturing, but don't ask me to design anything. can understand how I know how plastic molding works. And I can tell you how many cavities we need and what it's going to cost, but don't ask me to design it. I know finance pretty well. You know, the accounts keep saying, how do you keep knowing more than we do on this subject? Yeah, but don't ask me to do accounting.

Cause I'm not gonna sit there and do debits and credits and I got the macro, not the micro part of it. I would fail my exam. So even if you think you're kind of good at it, are you good at the macro or the micro part of thing? Cause they're different.

Rob Pene (38:04.206)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (38:16.11)
in

Rob Pene (38:21.58)
Hmm and you're suggesting we choose one or the other and then dive in

Kurt Avery (38:28.441)
But you better have delegated somebody to back you up on the other because if you miss the details, I mean, yeah, you gotta have macro micro even within your expertise.

Rob Pene (38:33.122)
Yeah, okay.

Rob Pene (38:38.594)
I love it. That's good. Yeah.

Rob Pene (38:44.448)
gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. And then if you have one, then you find someone to fill in the gap for the other. And that's, I guess the metaphor there would be the body function, right? So your shoulder works well with your arm and then it throws right for baseball. Now, it all kind of works together to be one cohesive unit. Okay, this is good, man. I need to go fight. Your book is on Amazon, right?

Kurt Avery (39:08.739)
Yeah, actually you can get it pretty cheap on the ebook. It's like six, seven bucks or something like that.

Rob Pene (39:13.058)
Yeah. Now, is there a course that that's like where people learn from? I know that there's other schools that are teaching it, but do you have an online YouTube that runs through it, teaches kind of know?

Kurt Avery (39:24.581)
No, no, but if people read it and have some questions about a section here or there, they can get a hold of me and I can, I'm open. I got time to maybe help them.

Rob Pene (39:32.472)
Thank you.

Yeah. Are you still full time with the company?

Kurt Avery (39:39.013)
Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm here to the end. Either I'm dead or I can't think right. So I told you I had my brain has to be checked every couple of years to make sure I'm not making wacky decisions and screwing it up. But I have great successors. got it. I worried about it for a long time and now I'm comfortable. got my, next person taking my, presidency and my daughter runs the foundation.

Rob Pene (39:45.198)
Wow.

Rob Pene (39:54.19)
Wow.

Rob Pene (40:02.286)
Okay.

Kurt Avery (40:06.915)
The value systems are there. The skill sets are there. I'm good. So I'm free. I'm having a lot of fun now because I'm just doing the podcast and sharing the book and

Rob Pene (40:15.31)
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it. I'm gonna get the book. I like it. I just it's funny because I just built a decision filter using AI as a mobile app to help student athletes to determine which opportunity is good for them or if they're a good fit for the opportunity. It's funny that you mentioned the decision matrix because I just built that filter on an app.

Kurt Avery (40:39.845)
Well, here I hire based on athletics. So let me, I'll give you an example of soccer. Okay. In soccer, the defensive players can't stand making a mistake. The offensive players are risk takers. They take 10 shots. make one. They're in the paper. The midfielders see the whole thing. So you can break down any sport and get to the psychology of that position.

Rob Pene (40:55.832)
Yes.

Yep.

Kurt Avery (41:07.885)
And then once they understand the psychology of that's your fit, that's your fit in the real world, because you pick that position because of the way you think. Now go find a job that wants that thinking process.

Rob Pene (41:13.166)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (41:20.686)
Oh my goodness, wow, that makes so much sense. Quarterback, center, everybody plays a role. And that's essentially how you intellectually pursue that particular task.

Kurt Avery (41:32.665)
Right, because you have athletic skills, but you got to understand the game. You got to have a game IQ. Absolutely. So that's how I hire. That's why I got a lot of midfielders and point guards, you know.

Rob Pene (41:36.844)
Yeah. Holy f***. Is this part of the book?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this in the book too? Because this is brilliant.

Kurt Avery (41:48.696)
No, that's not in the book.

Rob Pene (41:50.126)
dude, you're killing me, man. Yeah. Wow. So I guess that's the next book then. Wow. Wow. Wow. Good for you. Good for you. If people wanted to reach out to you and if they had any questions, is there an email or a website or Instagram that you're

Kurt Avery (41:52.621)
Well now you got an exclusive.

Kurt Avery (42:10.189)
Yeah, just go to customers. Well, I'm insulated, but you can go to customer service at soya.com and you know, they'll, get stuff to me. I'll make sure it's not, just want, I get so much. mean, somebody wants to buy the company almost every other, every other day. So, just make sure you know why you want to talk to me, you know, tell me I got a question from the book and it's da da da, whatever. They screen me pretty well because I don't know how my name gets out there, but it's out there.

Rob Pene (42:18.402)
Yeah, don't give a f***.

Rob Pene (42:28.226)
reference.

Rob Pene (42:39.864)
That's impressive, man. Well, I appreciate you. This has been great. Thank you for your time. think, I don't believe in coincidences. I know that God allowed this to happen for a particular reason. You've spoken to me and some of the things that you've said, so I'm grateful for it. you know, continued blessings that God's face continue to shine on the business and yourself to keep you healthy. And the posterity following behind you can follow that legacy. Yeah, it's pretty encouraging.

Kurt Avery (43:04.741)
Well, stay in touch, you know.

Don't forget me just because the recording stops. Stay in touch.

Rob Pene (43:15.704)
Yes, yeah, I definitely want to stay in touch for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'm going to go research and learn everything about the, yeah, your book, man, this is great.

Kurt Avery (43:27.033)
They should have sent you one. I'm disappointed that they're supposed to send one ahead of each of the podcasts, but...

Rob Pene (43:33.901)
I'll need to check my email. Maybe they might have sent the e-book.

Kurt Avery (43:36.453)
Well, they should have sent you, no, they should have sent you a hard copy. It looks like this. So I, I signed a bunch of them to go out. not that many. I'll do that many podcasts, but you were supposed to get one. And if you didn't, if you want one that I signed, you can just, go back to the PR firm and tell them, Hey, where's my copy.

Rob Pene (43:57.932)
Yeah, now I haven't checked my mail. they probably it's probably sitting in the mail because they're pretty good.

Kurt Avery (44:03.275)
Well, it should have been there a month ago when we scheduled. They're supposed to right as soon as we schedule it send you one. But they will do it now. If you go back to the PFG and say, hey, where's my book? They'll send you one.

Rob Pene (44:15.182)
Yeah, they're good people and obviously they're helping good people too. So that's amazing. Well, I appreciate you, man. This is a blessing. Yeah, we are going to stay in touch for sure. Yeah, I'm sure of it. Okay, I'm gonna press this.

Kurt Avery (44:23.213)
Well, thank you for the time.