In this episode of The Last 10%, host Dallas Burnett engages in an impactful conversation with Kurt Avery, CEO of Sawyer Products, a company celebrated for its lifesaving innovations and extensive humanitarian efforts. They delve into the company's journey, from a rough start to becoming a leader in providing clean water and essential gear globally. Kurt shares insights into his leadership philosophy, creative destruction, and the importance of vision in driving business success. Additionally, he discusses Sawyer's impactful initiatives in slums across Africa and their unique business model that balances retail profitability with substantial philanthropic contributions. Tune in to hear about Kurt's new book Sawyer Think and the transformative power of innovation and the remarkable impact Sawyer Products is making worldwide.

Learn morre about Sawyer Products: https://www.sawyer.com/

Purchase Sawyer Think: https://www.sawyer.com/product/sawyer-think

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Hey everybody.

We're talking to Kurt Avery today.

What an amazing guy.

He is the CEO of Sawyer products, a company known for its lifesaving

innovations and humanitarian impact.

He has some incredible stories about leading initiatives that bring

clean water and essential gear to those in need around the world.

He's a great new friend of mine.

You don't want to miss this incredible conversation.

Welcome to the last 10%.

Your host, Dallas Burnett, into incredible conversations that will

inspire you to finish well finish strong.

Listen as guests share their journeys and valuable advice on living in the last 10%.

If you are a leader, a coach, a business owner, or someone looking to

level up, you are in the right place.

Remember, you can give 90 percent effort and make it a long way, but it's

finding out how to unlock the last 10%.

makes all the difference in your life, your relationships, your work.

here's Dallas.

Welcome.

Welcome.

Welcome.

I am Dallas Burnett sitting in my 1905 Koch brothers barber

chair in Thrive Studios.

But more importantly today, we have a great guest, Mr.

Curt Avery brings a wealth of experience in leadership, innovation, social

impact, and actually has a new book coming out named Sawyer Think, which I'm

very interested in getting and reading.

We're going to be unpacking some of those topics today.

It's going to add a lot to the conversation.

Welcome to the show, Curt.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Thank you.

Glad to be here.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Well, so I nerd out on

water and I think you do too.

So we have that in common.

I'm a former, recovering water chemist.

in past, past life.

So we've got that in common and be the work that you're doing around

the world is just very inspiring.

So wanted to have you on to talk and share the leaders about some of that.

So tell us a little bit about your products, but.

how you, how saw your products came to be, how this kind of came to be.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: yeah, I had a, what you would call a pretty

storied career, worked for people like Jack Welch and I was at, got my

elevated MBA and all that kind of stuff.

And I said, if this is so easy, I should do it for myself.

And then I forgot one thing, change, shifting from corporate

marketing to guerrilla marketing when you're a little entrepreneur.

So we had a little bit of a rough start.

raised a lot of money because of my resume, but, managed to

go through that pretty quickly.

And then we had to kind of start over again.

So we were in the outdoor camping industry.

So we're in any place where they sell camping gear, you'll find us.

we started, with a snake bite kit actually, and then went into first aid.

And then went into, sunscreens and insect repellents and then got into water.

So we've evolved, in, in the book, I'll show you sell more things to your existing

customers as a way to grow your business.

So we kept saying, what do you need?

What do you need?

What do you need?

And, not just, retailers, but also to the end customers, other things.

Problems they need to solve by then the outdoors.

So that's how we got there.

And then somewhere along the way I had a stupid idea right idea big.

I have a big God by the way, so it comes into play here I said if half the world

dies of mosquito bites and bad water Why don't we just go fix that that's a big

idea Of course, the we doesn't really mean me or really my God So we have the highest

technology and insect repellents were the only thing the military uses we do the

clothes You know, so when you were in the military, all that stuff on your clothes,

we invented that, uh, and then the topicals are all us now, the only thing

they put on their skin is from Sawyer.

So we have the techie stuff.

We're kind of the number four brand.

It goes off cutter repel.

Then you got us, but.

We're pretty small, but we're techie.

We have all the techie people.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yes.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: and then we got into the water because half the

world dies of mosquito bites or bad water.

So we chased that for a while, a lot of different technologies.

And we settled on hollow fiber membranes, which is from the

kidney dialysis type technology.

And there's some pretty interesting stories in that.

But anyways, we have the best technology on the market.

Port one micron absolute can, you can't get sick with anything

biological when it goes through our filter, we take it all out.

And we're the only ones that can make that claim.

Nobody else can get everything.

They can get a lot of it, but never everything.

So when you go into a village and you're trying to.

Take waterborne sicknesses away.

You got to get everything.

You can't say, 90 percent you're going to be okay, but the other

10, you're still going to be sick.

You know,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: right,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: wipe, we wipe out everything.

They close medical clinics, even in the slums after we've been

there for a little while, because there's no customers anymore

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Oh, wow.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: and no more diarrhea.

Wiping out the kids.

the kids live now, hundreds of thousands of kids every year living that way

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: let me stop you right there

because you just said something and we watched in show prep.

We watched a video about your company and it was talking about a

place that you were in Africa and it was this slum in a city in Africa.

and it was like one of these, you would see in the movies,

it's tin, tin, walls and roof.

I mean, it was, sewage in the street and it was rough.

And it was actually someone else that was shooting a video about

your product being used there.

And they said it was this one city had a slum.

That was over 400, 000 people that lived in this slum in Africa.

And you guys were working with, them and another organization to literally give

clean water to the entire, entire place.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: and it's finished now.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: and it's finished.

So that was like, that was just that slum was 400, 000.

So you, your company provided filters to give over 400, 000 people

in that one city, clean drinking

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Yeah.

That was 97, 000 households.

by the way, the 400, 000 people are living in three square miles.

And there's only 79 toilets, okay, 79 toilets

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Oh, man.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: for 400, 000 people.

So you can imagine where the fecal matter went, right?

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Oh, yeah.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: you're stepping over it all the time.

So within two weeks of getting the filter, 95 percent of all sickness is gone.

So it's gone.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: gracious.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Half the people have diarrhea and that's gone.

Remember they still, you got to wash your hands.

There's other elements to how you get sick.

and so now, three years later they've consolidated and closed almost all

their medical clinics because they don't have enough sick people.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Wow.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Yeah,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: incredible.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: yeah.

And another neat part of this is we increased 15 to 20 percent.

So they now have money

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: medical because they're

not spending it on medical

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: or buying energy To boil water, to make it safe.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: I didn't think about the boiling of water.

Yeah, they're having to buy fuel to boil the water to drink.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: We're one of the greenest products on the planet.

each filter saves the equivalent of 200 trees a year or fossil fuel.

yeah, we cleaned the whole place up.

So they, he's in 20, that's a bucket ministry.

They're just starting another one with 150, 000 homes.

That's just not too far away from it.

This is all outside of Nairobi.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Right.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: there's actually three slums.

So we did the first one.

Now there's a little one already in process, and now we're going

to be ready to start the big one.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Wait a minute.

The 400, 000 wasn't the big one?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: no, that was only 97, 000 homes.

This one is going to be 150.

So we provide all the filters.

we do GIS.

We provide that.

That's where we track it all and put it on the cloud.

we've even got it now where each filter is uniquely identified with a QR code.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Okay.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: you track it and so we get all these

measurements, how often are you sick?

How many live births have you had?

How many kids do you have?

So we can measure how many kids they lost, which we wipe out now.

Kids aren't dying anymore because it's usually water that wipes them out.

One village was, they wouldn't name their kids until they were three years old

because then they knew they would live.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Oh,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: So

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: goodness.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: of them, come back a year later, all

the kids are named at birth now because they've never lost a kid.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: my goodness.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: So it's pretty impactful.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: that's incredible.

Yeah.

So, so Sawyer sells products.

so your business model though, because you're not charging,

obviously this, the slums in Africa don't have money to pay and they're

working with you and nonprofits.

So how does that, how does the Sawyer product get to Africa?

Who pays for that to happen?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: we, we do, we, we give money and product.

we have a very nice retail business.

So our insect repellents during season are number one and number two on Amazon.

So the Amazon presence, the Walmart, we're in Walmart.

We're in REI.

we have, and we sell international, we're actually getting pretty big in Asia.

They love our stuff.

So we have a retail business that kicks out more than enough

money to fund all these things.

So we have 140 charities.

We're in 80 countries.

We're even in places like North Korea.

Or Yemen or Gaza or Iran, because they want water.

They need water.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Sure.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: the cheapest way to get you

to no infrastructure required.

You just point of view.

So we're the cheapest way to, get people clean water.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: So as you've gone through this, you've

got products that all over the world, you're selling to all these different

countries, you've got nonprofit kind of, and you've got a for profit business.

I would love to know what your leadership philosophy that

drives this saw your engine?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Well, first.

If you want to start with me, I have some marketing skills, but I'm a

visionary I see around the corners.

this is, I'm really big on what's called creative destruction.

There's a whole chapter on that.

And they're being able to say, what's the world going to look like

three, four or five years from now?

And how do I get there before everybody else?

I call it the very depth.

My definition of marketing is the study of human behavior.

That's all it is.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yeah.

Yeah.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: And you boil it down.

and I'm a big nut on history.

I've read all the civilizations and I read enormous amount of information.

So you start with a vision of where you want to go and how you're going to

get there and how you're going to get there before other people get there.

Obviously you're solving problems.

So the job of a marketer is as much to listen.

I would go sit in those stores for 12 hours.

And listen to what they needed and then go back and figure

out how to satisfy that need.

So I spent a lot of time beyond that.

I hire the best of the best.

It's not hard for us to get the best people in the industry

when you do what we do.

I mean, all these people want to be part of what we do and I pay very well.

I believe in paying everybody 20 percent more than they're worth

because that way I don't have any arguments and I can sleep at night.

and we can afford it.

margins are good.

But you got to have the best people.

And then I delegate.

I mean, they're better at what they do than I am.

So I've got the best people.

We fill in the holes.

on the manufacturing side, we only do what we have to do.

I don't want to be a manufacturing company.

We're a marketing company, but we do quite a bit of the

manufacturing, but the profits are in marketing, not in manufacturing.

You can get people to stuff band aids in a bag all day long.

That's not the magic.

The magic is being able to sell it.

We, anytime anything becomes, well, we always do our own repellents

because we're very flexible.

we've had times we've got a call on a Friday night from Fort Bragg and they

say, there's an earthquake in Haiti, I want every repellent you have in the

building and drive it up here by 10 a.

m.

tomorrow morning.

And we do that.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: gracious.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: we can, we built our factory to be very flexible.

I can, I'm not a contract packager.

We're making it for ourselves.

I'll spend the extra pennies per bottle, but I can turn on the dime.

15 minutes later, we can be making something else.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Wow.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: flexibility.

But if we have long runs, I farm it out.

I got three good partners.

That would love to run their little manufacturing and do all the, I have a

phrase, I'd love to be God if it weren't for the people, so I don't, I got rid of

those hundred people doing the repetitive stuff and I got, you know, we sit

down, we have lunch every twice a week.

I mean, during COVID we had lunch together every day as a factory,

so I'm invested in everybody.

I know all their stories, I hang out with them.

Absolutely.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: time with your people in, in, in the

shops and in the factories and stuff, you're spending that time eating, you're

eating lunch with them and carrying on with them every, you said every week.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: twice a week we have lunch.

Wait, if it's critical, like during this hurricane, we had to do a lot

of filters to get up to Helene.

we had lunch together every day and we would just bring in

lunch and we have a lot of fun.

everybody loves it.

We, I got good people.

There's not a lot of turnover at Sawyer.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yeah, no, it sounds

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: And even the factory people, I'm probably paying

them 40, 50%, maybe even twice what they would make if they worked somewhere else,

but I get loyalty and I get quality.

They're so invested in what we're doing and I'm an international,

I mean, they're all US citizens.

We won't hire illegals, but they come from all over the world and they,

we're going to some of the countries that they came from putting in.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: wow.

Helping them out.

Yeah.

so they have, they have, multiple reasons to be, invested in the mission of

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Yeah.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: That's

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: a family.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: So you mentioned delegation and how

you hire great people and delegate.

And I know that some of our listeners are leading teams, they're leading

organizations and maybe coaching, individuals, there's a lot of

ways you can do it wrong and , you can definitely do it right.

So in your experience, what have you seen in terms of delegation,

people get right and get wrong?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: first of all, that one of the benefits of

the book is it's pretty much an owner's manual of how to work at Sawyer.

So

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: No,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: you get good people, but they still have to

develop some of their business skills.

So I'm bringing them along.

We like this afternoon, I'll get everybody that's not in the factory.

All the sales marketing people will be on the phone together,

having an hour of Grasshopper U.

Walking through these principles.

We go, we've gone through everything in this book.

I've gone through this.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: and tell the listeners what Grasshopper U is

because for the, for anybody that just missed that, you said you're getting

everybody together, what is Grasshopper U?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: I have always felt, gotta, God gave me some

business skills and some marketing skills.

I got to share them.

So I have for many years, maybe a decade or more, I bring in summer

interns and I do our own employees and sometimes I've done outside people.

So the premise of Grasshopper U is came from the movie, the show Kung Fu.

You have much to learn Grasshopper.

So I am.

Teaching them everything in this book.

We have gone through with all these people.

There's 25 lessons in here, low sub lessons.

And I literally over the course of the year, the summer, walking through every

business concept that's in this book.

And because they have their skill, I didn't hire them to be the CEO.

We hired them to do what they do better than anybody else.

And we do things better than anybody else.

so then this is showing up there.

Thought process to be thinking like Sawyer thinks.

we're pretty successful.

So obviously we've done a few things right along the way.

And this is me making sure they see the bigger picture.

I'm taking them to the 30, 000 foot view of things.

And so they can integrate that into their daily stuff.

whatever that skill set is and why we had them, they still

ought to have the bigger vision

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: that's awesome.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: and the bigger skill sets,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: speaking of vision, like you're giving

away a tremendous amount your profits to all these charities and nonprofits, what

was it that was the catalyst for you to.

what caused you to say, you know what, we're going to shift the business model.

What was the shoes that, uh, that do, make a pair and they give a pair away.

It was a Tom's Tom shoes and, and Bamba socks.

I know they do that to you.

You're doing that same model.

What was the, was it, did you start with that vision or did

that vision emerge as you grew?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: first of all, it goes back to my faith.

there's no U Hauls in heaven, so I'm not taking it with me.

So what do you do with it?

and I'm an old country boy, you know, this shirt's 10 years old.

I get a new pair of shoes every four or five years.

so what?

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yeah,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: So what do you do with it?

I give the example of, I don't, I feel like I should give away the

money, not the federal government.

Okay.

I've always tried to minimize taxes.

So if we make cupcakes, we'd have to sell the cupcakes, take the profit,

pay the taxes, and then I would have whatever's left to give away.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: right.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: So we're not only giving money away

before profits, we're giving the profits to the foundation to give away.

So we can really maximize it.

But see, so we donate filters.

But even more than that, I'm still putting this mosaic together

of why our filters can change countries and why it needs to be.

So we do research, until we did the research to show you that we wipe out

95 percent of all sickness in two weeks.

I had to prove that to you.

So we spent a huge project.

We did all the country in Liberia.

We went in there and we found 300, 000 people that didn't even

know lived in their country.

We are so far out in the boonies.

And we wiped out all the sickness and we measure it and we measure the economic

impact that we can in many countries, 15 to 20 percent of their annual

income is saved by not buying fuel to boil the water, not buying medicine.

They can work an extra 30 days a year.

The kids can go to school.

People's brains are alive, so they're thinking better and they're

not dehydrated and they start businesses and all that kind of stuff.

So we have a huge, and we measure all that.

So now we get there and we're talking with countries now.

We're talking with countries like Brazil and Peru and Guatemala.

We can go into Guatemala with one year, raise the GDP by 15 percent

and we just do it that fast.

And so we're now negotiating with Organization of American States.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: It's amazing that you have not only the

ability to impact a country, to that level, but it's also amazing that that

impact going in and you can actually with analytics and data say, this is

because of our experience, we can come in and we can do this for you right now.

And.

And it's flipping a switch and getting 15 percent GDP, but it's

like, Oh my gosh, that's insane.

That's

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: and it's fascinating.

We've now built the filter that has a QR code on it.

Every filter is unique, can be traced, can be tracked, can

get the measurements on it.

We bring it into GIS.

We download it.

But we're to the point now where the countries don't even question it

because we've put so much data together.

They know.

So OAS, which is 37 nations.

they will never do a project without us now.

They've already seen it.

They know it.

And so now we go back to USAID and we get funding.

Hey, let's go flip Guatemala for you.

Let's go flip Panama for you.

So we're getting ready to go back with projects with them to the USAID.

Cause those companies, those countries still have a lot of corruption.

they want to use somebody else's money, i.

e.

U.

S.

's money, even though the payback is months.

Just think if we went to a country and two months later, nobody's sick.

We can do it that fast and they still won't pay for it.

And these are things that cost less than 20 a filter to install

even to the remote areas.

yeah, we're down now where for one penny, we can give somebody

clean water for 10, 20 years.

One penny.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Oh my gosh.

That's insane.

That's awesome.

at that rate and at the numbers that you're seeing and how

much you're impacting, the of.

That able to eliminate every year is it's going to be exponential.

it's just continuing to grow.

where's the next, where's the next focus in projects?

Like where do you go?

Because you're knocking out hundreds of thousands of people now a year.

So

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Oh, millions.

Millions of people a year.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: people a

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Yeah, about 5 million people a year get

clean water for the very first time.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Oh man.

Oh, that's insane.

That's awesome.

That's

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Yeah, but I'd rather it be

50 million or 100 million.

we, but see, the point of the book though is, and the point to these

people in your audience is, we got there by proving all this stuff.

So we were able to write it off as R& D.

And get a tax credit because we just didn't get here.

It took us 10 years of collecting data to get here.

And for those whole 10 years, we were building a database, which

we could write off as R and D.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Ah,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: So we donate the money, take a

hit on the cost of goods sold, and then we could take and get the tax

credit for losing money on R and D.

And then all of a sudden we've reduced the profit already before

we even got to the profit line.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: right,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Then you get to the profit line

and with sub S you turn around and donate that to the foundation.

Or I can personally donate it.

So we, the government doesn't make a lot of money off of Sawyer.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Well, a lot of people that are getting clean

water around the world because of it.

So I think that's a, that's being wise about your taxes is obviously

helping you provide clean water.

And humanitarian relief in all the areas.

And you sent many filters up to Western North Carolina, with Helene.

And we appreciate that as well, because obviously we're close by and, and have

seen firsthand the impacts of that.

So thank you for working with them and through the Red Cross as well on that.

We were talking about that before the show.

I would love to know because you are leading a team Of high

performers that are engaged.

And you've said some things in the conversation that helps you help

you create engagement on your team.

And you're saying saying we, our employees are really engaged.

They're mission minded.

We have a strong mission and vision and values, and they're

very competent and capable because we hire competent and capable.

and there's not a lot of turnover because we pay our people.

more than enough to, so that they're satisfied with their level of income

or where they would get anywhere else, they would be paid more here.

And so you've just checked a lot of boxes.

you're looking to build a high performing team with an individual,

what are you looking for?

Like when you go to hire someone for Sawyer, what are characteristics of

that person that you're looking for?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: we actually have, we do

refresh and we keep growing.

I'm very big because of the retail business drives the

profits that we can give away.

I'm really into understanding the difference between Gen X and

millennials and now the Alpha's coming in and they're all different.

So we're spot, we keep our finger on the pulse.

We change all our communications.

so that we're in touch with the next generation, how they use their

videos, how they use their formats.

we're in a big pivot right now, cause we're introducing, we've always

done the high end hiking camping.

Now we're going down to the preppers.

All you need is one little filter.

You can buy it for 15 bucks and get a hundred thousand gallons.

And so now it's a new audience.

And so we're going on to new formats.

We're doing new types of videos to appeal to that new audience.

my job is to say.

We're here, but here's where we have to go.

we're looking around the corners.

We're looking at creative destruction.

what can we do?

And so we just did a big pivot.

We got everybody together and we did a monster pivot.

So now we're changing where we're going to market international plus this other

market going after what we call soft preppers and all the people that have

a hurricane, why wouldn't you want a 15 filter to give you all the water you want?

As much as you can drink, you just screw it on a tap, on a pop bottle and

just drink to your heart's content.

You're standing in it and now you can drink it.

so now how do we communicate with them?

Because we haven't gone after that market before.

but, you know, our point of difference is our feature benefits are so superior

to the filters they're buying now.

We're ready to go ahead and service that market, but we hadn't been there before.

So you got to have people who get that, they are skilled in their

social network, whatever they have, they're better than I am.

Okay.

I get them for their skill set is the best in the industry.

Now, how do you get them to move with where we need to

go and what we need to do?

now we're ready to sell countries, filters.

And we had to do all the videos.

We had to do the QR code.

So how do you shift them?

So you have to keep providing the vision to them.

They have the implementing skill sets, but you have to keep taking them where

we need to go and pushing them to apply those skill sets to a different area.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yeah.

I love how you spoke about.

Focusing on the differences between the generations and how much work that

you're putting into making sure that your communications as a company are in

alignment with the way that the different generations are receiving content.

And I think that's really important because at the end of the day, If

you're sending messages that are not being received, then the value

of the message drops dramatically.

Right.

And so

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Yeah.

, dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: and I think a lot of companies focus

on outbound messaging to, and like you were saying, how important marketing is.

I think a lot of companies get that and they're pouring money into

marketing and communicating with their clients and customers and all that.

I think fewer companies understand the value of that

internal marketing and how that.

Relates to their employees and how they're sharing those visions, how they're sharing

the stories, how they're sharing the massive pivots that they're doing and why

that's important and where they're going.

So I like how you described that, focus on the different generations.

there been any hiccups in that as you've tried to morph, to be able

to speak to all these generations?

is there any area that you've seen it's been more difficult

to do that in than others?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Well, of course, because you're never perfect.

if you want an example, we own the influencer market in our area because

we're the best, and if you're going to be an influencer, you gotta talk about

the best, but if you want an example of how we switched our communications

from millennials to Gen Z's a few years ago, so we brought in, we, I always have

summer interns who are always younger.

and now we're bringing in the alpha, just getting close to the alpha.

So I always task them with researching this for us, but so years, a few

years back, this is an example that most people will relate to, we, our

messages were built for millennials, but now the Gen Z's are coming.

So what is the difference between a Gen Z and millennial?

First of all, they use more platforms.

They got computer open to more things than just the low, but more importantly.

They, we'll give you an example.

Amazon, we were one of the very first companies on our side of Amazon to switch

from monitors to tablets and phones, because there was a two year period

where Amazon switched from 70 percent of their sales being from a monitor to

70 percent of their sales being in a.

A mobile platform.

We were the very first company to shift all of our homepages and

whatever to relate to the new platform.

That's how you stay ahead.

So now we walk into the Gen Z's are coming.

they're on portable platforms, so they want to be able to listen

if they want to listen, but.

Turn that off if they're in class and they want to be able to, watch a video,

but not let the professor hear the music.

So

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yeah.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: to go back to every one of our

things and put subtype, put, closed captions underneath it,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Ah,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: you can watch the video and

watch all the content, and then.

But then not have to listen to the music.

have both options now.

So we moved all that and then you have to shorten it up.

Their attention spans.

They, first they want to change, the millennials want to change

something every 12 seconds.

Now the other ones are eight seconds.

So you have to move it along quicker.

So you have to shorten up your videos.

Now you got, you can't do half hour videos.

You can't do 30 second videos.

You have to do, one minute videos.

You're now down to 30 second videos at best.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Right.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Everything changes with with the Gen.

Now you come to the alphas, alphas are very different.

they have all the technology capabilities.

But remember, they were locked up during COVID, so their social skills stink.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yeah.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: But they're very curious.

Okay, so we're now coming into a generation who wants to research,

because that's what they were doing while they were locked up at home.

So we now have the most curious generation coming.

So how are we going to shift our messages to intrigue them, to get

them to keep digging deeper and deeper because they're curious?

So that's what I'm saying.

You have to keep moving.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: that's really cool.

That's awesome.

That's, thanks for that

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: I just see that, but they, my people have to do it.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Right.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: video people.

I got social media people.

they have to change formats.

now you have to be on TikTok, no matter how much I philosophically don't trust

TikTok, but that's where the option is.

So you got to do that.

We got to go into to social, which my people, some of them don't like it,

but that's where the preppers are.

So you have to keep moving with the audience.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: it makes total sense.

very much So as it relates to some of your initiatives globally and working with

multiple teams and nonprofits,. What's been some of the hardest challenges

that you've had to face as you've grown, saw you're in, into this space

and now you're giving so much way, but you're providing all this, what's some

of the biggest challenges that you've had to work through in your career?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: actually we're in a phase now where we're trying

to teach NGOs how to be better and an NGO typically started with a passion.

We're also an incubator too, all the new, if you want to have your mission overseas,

it's got to be water, food, or medicine.

Those are the three entry points before you can do anything else.

We're obviously water.

So we get people who are just starting up.

So one of the things we do is we teach them how to get better.

People with passion typically don't do the metrics.

They're going to here's a picture of the kid and here's, food and whatever.

But we have mastered the GIS metrics, asking all the questions, going

back to the same site, updating it, how the kids are getting healthier,

how sick, so we teach NGOs how to be more successful using metrics.

So if you're, if you want to get into the big bucks from the big

philanthropists, they want ROIs.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Of course.

Yeah.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Exactly.

But typically your NGOs don't understand that they're going with,

here's a nice picture and whatever.

So we

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: helping

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: literally run webinars.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: this stuff.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So you're training them on data collection, data management, results and

being able to capture those results and put them together in a very, digestible

way for larger philanthropists to,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Exactly.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: see the work, cause they may be

getting an impact and having an impact.

They may just not be able to share it

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Exactly.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: more returns.

That's interesting.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: So don't think if you wanted to give

away big bucks, would you, what we're doing, would that not be a worthy cause

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Of course.

Yeah.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: a penny, 10 years of clean

water for a penny, you know?

So we're teaching them how to communicate their metrics to raise money.

So we're training the NGOs, how to step it up.

And the more they step it up, the better it is for us,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: And so that's one of the most, that's the

one of the bigger challenges that you're facing right now is just changing the

NGOs in terms of helping them get better.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Yeah.

and of course we always went into the customs duties at the foreign places.

It took us, the minister of health usually loves what we're doing, but

then the custom duty wants to charge you sometimes a hundred percent of the value.

And the first thing they do is they go on the Amazon and they

see what the retail price is.

Well, no, we're not doing retail price.

A, we're donating them, but, oh no, we got to pay 10%.

So, I mean, like in Egypt, it took a year and a half to get those filters in there.

But now they're in there, they finally got the certificate, you have to work

your way down from the government to get that, get it duty free.

So we spent a lot of time on customs.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: A lot of time on customs.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Oh, yeah,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: And it would, it's obviously not intuitive

because you would think as a country, you're coming in and improving the quality

of their life for virtually nothing.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: okay.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: they're making it harder on you to get in

and improve the life of their citizens.

That is, that boggles my mind.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: think about it.

You want to improve the life of the custom agent?

Pay the duty.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: No,

right, right.

No, I get it.

That makes sense.

That's definitely, that definitely makes more sense.

So if we have leaders and coaches on this show, listening to your, story about

your business, about Sawyer and about how you're helping, how you're helping

bring clean water, To so many different places, what advice would you give to

people who are either business owners or business leaders or coaches in essentially

finishing well and finishing strong?

You've had a great experience with Jack and all of that, and you had, , you

know, MBA, and now you started your own company and you're giving all this away.

What advice would you give to leaders specifically on how and what it

takes to live in that last 10%?

All

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Okay, so I'm professionally

trained in strategic planning.

Okay, so I was a big hero in the corporate world and I went out and

started Sawyer and forgot, forgot about guerrilla marketing and so crashed.

I told you we're, we lost money 23 of the first 25 years of doing business

and then we're overnight success.

So the difference is, Know where you're going.

you gotta have that end goal planned.

I, so many times, how am I going to get, I'm going to, but I

always knew we would get there.

and so I kept pouring things back in until we were suddenly, to me, the biggest

problem is, I use the phrase, I know it was unpopular back in the Gulf War, but

Rumsfeld said, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you want.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Right.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: You always got to be looking, what do I need?

Too many people say, no, we just pivoted.

We have maxed out the success with our old strategy, now we're

going to go to the next thing.

Thing and the next thing and the next thing.

it's creative destruction.

There's a chapter in the book on that, but it's saying where do we need to

be, not where we are, but where do we need to be and what do we have to do

that too many people hang on to the current success, but the definition

of the future success is different.

The world is changing.

It's moving fast.

all your underlying assumptions.

are wrong for next year and the year after and the year after.

So it's being willing to see what you need to get to where you want to go

or where you want to stay, because.

Even if you're not changing, the world is, you

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: I love that.

It reminds me of several things.

It's like it's almost wanted to finish your sense when you said See what you

need, I almost wanted to say, see what you need and not what, you know, if

you just see what, you know, you know, what's always worked and you just keep

on seeing that, but what you're saying is you need to see past what you already

know, what you're already good at, what you're already doing, what's already

working to what you are needing or will need in the future because it's changing.

And it seems like that our technology is only changing, Faster at a fast rate.

It reminds me that book title of what got you here.

Won't get you there

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: know,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: this is that idea, you know that

you're constantly looking out to the horizon what you're going to need.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: plus the market's changing, the culture's changing.

what do you, how are you changing with it?

How are you going to meet the needs of the next generation or

the needs, it's just all changing.

you're on, unsettled sand.

So how are you going to do it?

Yeah, I always follow the other one that leaders eat last, so I will

never be the first one in line at the lunches or when we're together

in the planning conferences.

it's just.

It's about people you are nothing without the people

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yes 100

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: got to invest in your people I know the

personal lives of all these people We know how to I know which ones you can

joke with and which ones you can't

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: It's interesting that you say that because

you said you were professionally trained in strategy I'm, I love strategy and

that's another thing I can narrow down So we have a lot of common water now

strategy now So I love strategy, but I landed the plane in the same place.

And for me, I realized that no matter how good the strategy if you don't

have people, then there's no ability to execute that strategy well.

and so it, it ends up coming, always coming back down to the people.

, was there anything that kind of shifted or your mind that really opened that up

for you to where I'm investing, I'm eating last, I'm having lunches twice a week.

Cause some people would say you're feeding your whole, manufacturing plan

or your whole company twice a week.

that seems excessive.

Like what?

has driven you to that end?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: yeah yeah, I'll go back to your other example.

One of the first things we learned at grad school.

I went to Northwestern so a venture capital to two groups come in one

is a got a great plan, but mediocre people and The other one plans not

really good, but got incredible people.

Which one do you invest in?

You invest in the people because they'll fix the plan.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yeah, that's right.

That's exactly right.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: So I had that, that was

ingrained in me in the beginning.

you can't do it without good people.

So you'll fix it if you got the right people.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: And in terms of the, from the strategy

to the people and leaders eating

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Well, first of all, you are what you are,

but you don't have all the skills.

God forbid you want me to do the accounting, we'd go to jail.

or the manufacturing equipment.

So all these people have skill sets and value that you need and you can't do it.

So you need to respect and cherish the people you have because

they're doing what you can't do.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: right.

That's

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: So you invest in the people.

and I'm just from the thing, I have respect for people, I just ingrained

from the way I grew up, you're nothing special, you're just another person in

the cog and, You need everybody else.

I grew up in teams, so no, no team is dominated by one person.

I don't care what sport you want to pick, maybe tennis.

It is, but no other sports.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Yeah, no, that's great.

That's great.

this has been a fantastic, fantastic, conversation.

Where can people find more information about you, about, Sawyer, the new

book, Sawyer think, or more information about Sawyer if they wanted to

find more about your products?

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: of course we got sawyer.

com, that you can go to.

I've been told by the few people that the book comes 19th on Amazon.

I think we have copies of it.

it's going to be in the bookstores, whatever.

I don't know.

I got some firms, as that are trying to, highlight certain people.

But, I've been told by the people who have read the book

that it really does reflect me.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Ah, that's

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: know if that's good or bad, but, if you read the

book, you'll know where I'm coming from.

you'll get inside my head.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Great.

Great.

And, we'll put a, we'll put a, we'll put a link in the show notes to sell your

products so that, people can go there.

Now, we always ask the guest on the show, we close out the show this way, and

that is, we want to know who you would like to hear as a guest on the last 10%.

Maybe somebody that, maybe somebody that you've read a book by,

maybe somebody that you've always wanted to hear or, all the above.

but who is someone that you, that comes to mind that you

would like to hear on the last

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: Yeah.

I go to the visionaries, because that's this, that I don't know

why, because it's natural to me.

I don't know why more people aren't visionaries.

It's just silly to me because that's really where it's at.

So if I were to tell you who's a visionary, it'd be Chris

Beth from the bucket ministry,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Ah,

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: who just started from one trip in the

Amazon with his daughter to building a 20, he's in 26 countries, mega thing.

He did the metrics.

He's raised lots of money.

You talk about frontline change in the world.

He's helped us perfect all of our, what we call best practices, so a

lot of our research has been through him because he's a visionary.

So to me, that's the missing link is the visionary part.

You got to get your listeners to practice being a visionary,

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: Okay.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: the creative destruction part,

thinking around the corner.

Studying the changes in culture, the changes in technology, changes in laws,

all the things that affect what's coming.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: I love it.

I love it.

We'll listen after the show, we'll connect and you can, maybe you can put us in

contact and we'll definitely reach out and see if we can get him on the show.

Cause I think that would be a fantastic conversation.

So that's great.

That's great.

Kurt, I appreciate your time.

Thank you for being a guest on the last 10 percent sharing about

Sawyer think and your company and what you're doing to help.

People get clean water all around the world.

So we just thank you again for being on the last 10 percent and we

look forward to supporting Sawyer and all your causes in the future.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: I thank you for giving us the opportunity.

you're, you yourself are pretty fascinating.

I read all that.

I should interview you for the next hour.

dallas-burnett_25_10-23-2024_105810: We just have fun and we have great

conversations and meet a lot of interesting and great people like you.

So thank you again for being on the show.

kurt-avery_1_10-23-2024_105807: thank you.