84. Dick Greenly – Water4 - Solving the Global Water Crisis

Dick Greenly:

And the revenue that we're going to get is going to be ours, and we're going to build more infrastructure with that revenue in these areas. And they said, "Okay." So we started doing that. And so then the counties around started becoming 100% operational, and now they're asking us to do the entire country.

Aaron Ackerman:

From HoganTaylor, I'm Aaron Ackerman. And this is How That happened, a business and innovation success podcast. On each episode of the show, we sit down with business and community leaders behind thriving organizations to learn how business and innovation success actually happens.

Welcome to another episode of How That Happened. I have a very special episode today, one that I've been thinking about for a few months, and I'm so happy that we're getting to do it. Before I introduce my guest, I want to lead off with just a few statistics. The World Health Organization says that 2.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe clean drinking water. 2.1 billion people. So for context, when the US was founded in 1776, there were less than 1 billion people on the planet. So in the last 200 years, global population has crossed to the 1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion, 5 billion, 6 billion, and 7 billion mark. And today over 2 billion people lack safe clean drinking water. UNICEF says 32% of the world's population lacks improved sanitation facilities. Studies show that the global water crisis claims 3.4 million lives every year. And the World Health Organization says that 842,000 deaths each year are the result of disease that could have been prevented by improved water, sanitation and hygiene.

According to the United Nations, every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. These are not happy stats, this is a problem. But we're going to talk today about some really exciting solutions to the water problem. My guest today is Dick Greenly. Dick, thank you so much for taking time to be here.

Dick Greenly:

Thanks, Aaron.

Aaron Ackerman:

So Dick and his wife, Terri, own Pumps of Oklahoma, which is a wholesaler distributor and manufacturer of water well drilling, pumping, and water treatment equipment. They're very successful in their business. We could probably spend a whole episode talking about Pumps of Oklahoma, but we're going to focus today on another organization that Dick and his wife, Terri, founded in 2008 called Water4. Water4 has the really small and timid mission of eradicating the world water crisis by bringing clean water access to every home, school and clinic. Is that right?

Dick Greenly:

Yeah. Piece of cake. Yeah, no sweat.

Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. No, I love it. I love the bold, aspirational mission and really excited for our listeners to hear you talk about Water4. And I've heard you talk before, tell the story of really the first seed of the idea for Water4. And so, if you don't mind, just kind of talk about why and when and how Water4 formed as an idea.

Dick Greenly:

Yeah. Great. Well, thanks a lot for having me. This is a fantastic podcast. It's really good to hear about how people are going through their life stories. So in 2005, Terri, my wife and I bought our pump company Pumps of Oklahoma from her parents. Terri has worked there, 52 or three years, I've been there 40 years. So it's kind of a family thing. We were pretty much happy working there and then had the opportunity to buy it out. And it's pretty much a gut check when you haven't had debt in a decade and now you're going millions of dollars in debt. And so, we bought the company, we knew we could do some good with it by putting some processes in place. So we doubled it a couple three times in revenue, and we were rocking along pretty good. A fellow came into my office from the old Carnegie Corporation, a PhD engineer, and part of what Pumps of Oklahoma does is environmental cleanup equipment.

So we were working on a titanium dioxide remediation in Alabama, somewhere like that. And this guy just kept yawning. And I'm like, "Am I keeping you up, Leon?" He's a Chinese American, born in Taiwan, and he goes, "Oh, I'm sorry, I just got back from Taiwan." I said, "Just?" And he goes, "Yeah, from the airport, I'm out of vacation." And I'm like, "What were you doing in Taiwan?" And he said, "Well, I was planting churches." And so, me being a church goer, thought of the most sanctimonious answer I could think of. And I said, "Well, I'd like to go on a mission trip sometime," knowing I didn't never want to go on a mission trip, because in my world, it was going down to Juarez, Mexico and doing a vacation Bible school and painting the 50th coat of paint on a pastor's house.

And that was not me. And he said, "Well, you have solar pumps. Let's go to China. You install solar pumps in these really rural, poor areas of China, more like the Indian reservations of China and I'll plant churches." And I said, "Okay." And he goes, "Okay." So he stopped talking about titanium dioxide remediation, and we started talking about going to China. And he goes, "Okay, so I have to make contact with the underground church and I have to get an official invitation from the Chinese government." This is 2005. And I said, "You don't know anybody in any of those?" And he goes, "No." And so I started breathing the sigh of relief because I said I wanted to do the mission trip thing, I get the credit.

Aaron Ackerman:

Now you're off the hook.

Dick Greenly:

And then I'm off the hook because there's no way. Well, four months later, I wake up at 2:00 in the morning in a hut, in a village in Southern China, about 100 miles north of Hanoi, Vietnam, in these really rural areas with pigs next to me because they bring the pigs in at night. And we ended up doing it. We ended up putting in solar pumps in these rural villages where little girls can't go to school because there's no sanitation, there's no water. And so, we put in solar pumps in these kind of caverns and protected the cavern with fences and so forth, built tanks up on the hills and they had water running to their village for the very first time. So we saw this how this was just revolutionizing these people's lives. Did three trips there, spent 30 some odd days in China doing this and just revolutionizing these small villagers lives because they don't have electricity in a reliable manner, so these are solar pumps. And so Terri and I thought, "Well, maybe this is the reason we have a pump company now is we can do some good."

We were doing some good around the edges where there was a orphanage or a women's center or something that needed a pump, we'd always provide like that, but this was kind of in a new way. So, that project kind of fizzled out, so I started asking all these non-profit organizations around the world to do water projects, "Hey, I've got solar pumps. You tell me how many and where I'll go set them up. Just put me on go and I'll go." And I asked probably, I don't know, a dozen of them. I got no answers back, zero. And this is what these people do, these are Christian water organizations, and I was just flabbergasted. And so, through all that, I got asked to speak at President Bush's council on Water and Emerging Nations in San Antonio. So I did the dozen or so villages that we put solar pumps in China. And I did that talk.

Well, at that talk, there was another talk that said drill a well in the Amazon for $50. So I attended it because I'm down there for two days and it was just this kind of haywire backyard welded this kind of dark bit together and you beat a hole in the ground. So I went back to our fab shop in Oklahoma City, built one, we drilled a well in the back of our building on 3rd Street, drilled a well down to 35 foot and made a well. And I'm like, "Well, this is cool." So now I can drill wells manually. So Terri and I looked at how we can do this in a more professionalized manner, utilizing our gifts, geology and engineering and pump company and stuff like that.

So we basically set out to, could we train people in Africa how to manually drill wells and put in solar pumps? So because we knew that if we were just going to drill a well in Africa by paying somebody, it'd be $10,000 to $20,000 and we wouldn't be able to have much reach if we did that, but if we could train people with this manual method. Well, we got asked to go to Sierra Leone in 2008 in West Africa to try it out. So we brought our tools with us on the airplane and basically went to this really remote village with hollowed out log boats and on the coast in these marshes where kids were dying, literally, the week before, and we drilled well, put a solar pump in and that pristine clean water.

And we knew we were onto something at that time. So people in our life, they kept hearing what we were doing. They're like, "Well, I want to give some money to this. This is a really great thing." And I'm like, "Well, guys, we're just doing this. We just grab some friends that want to go on adventure and we go." So this one church up in Chicago wanted to give us $100,000. And Terri, my wife, the accountant, our CFO, she's like, "You can't take that money. You're not a 501(c)(3)." And I was like, "Well, but I want to take the money." We could do some really good things with it." And she's like, "No, they're expecting donation, stuff like this." So the really smart people in our life said, "Look, people keep trying to give you money, Greenly, that's whacked out."

Aaron Ackerman:

That hasn't happened to everybody.

Dick Greenly:

No. So make it so they can give you money. And I'm like, "Well, what's that?" And they're like, "Well, you need to start a non-profit organization." And I'm like, "But I like profit." And they said, "No, you need to start a non-profit." So in 2008, we started a non-profit organization Water4. And what the statistics that you read are just gut wrenching to eradicate the world's water crisis. And we had no employees, we had a piece of paper that was a 501(c)(3).

Aaron Ackerman:

This is '08?

Dick Greenly:

This is '08. Yeah. And so we thought, "Well, let's just see how far this goes." The attorney that did our 501(c)(3) stuff said, "I don't want to be an attorney anymore, why don't I just run this thing for you?" And I'm like, "It's not a thing. What are you talking about?" He goes, "Guarantee me two years of salary, just salary only. And we'll just see where this goes." So for $80,000, we started in '08 with the idea, could we train people in Africa to manually drill wells themselves? So in '08, we drilled no wells, in '09, we drilled two, and this year we'll top right around 9,000. So it grew fast and we knew the need that we saw.

Aaron Ackerman:

Is this primarily Sub-Saharan Africa?

Dick Greenly:

We've been to 45 different countries, including North Korea, but we've been to 45 different countries, India, all throughout China, in South Asia, Central South America, but it really took root in Africa. And we were actually training people how to drill wells over in Africa, bringing drill kits to them, and they would go and drill five or six wells. Well that's $50,000 or $60,000 that cost us $5,000 or $6,000 to drill. And so, it was 10 to 20 fold savings on these wells. And we're feeling pretty good about ourselves. So in '13, '14, we're knocking out 800 wells a year and we're something pretty special. Look at us, we went to go do a victory tour on how great we were and we'd go back and visit some of these villages and they were back drinking on the creeks and their kids are sick and dying.

And we're like, "What's going on with your well?" And they said, "Well, your well broke." And we said, "No, no, no, that's your well." And they said, "It's not our well, we didn't pay for it. We don't know how to fix it. It's your well, it broke." And this thing hit us, Aaron, that if we're going to be responsible for every well that's drilled out there for its maintenance, we're going to choke on our own success. Every one of these wells that we drilled that were yahoo moments with all the cheering kids on Facebook and things like that, they became liabilities, every single one of them.

Aaron Ackerman:

So yeah, I want to ask about that. I don't know if you know this off the top of your head or not, historically, the way you guys started in pre-Water4, how long does a well last?

Dick Greenly:

Yeah, so Oxford had a really great study. We took a deep dive into this. So the average well in Africa is $10,000 to $20,000 depending on its depth. It lasts 11 months and something on it breaks, and it stays broken on average four years. So consequently, as we sit here today, there's 400,000 broken well points, 400,000 at the low end is $4 billion worth of broken infrastructure that well-meaning people gave to African nations, villages, countries, people like that. And so, how are we going to fix this? So, how do you make it so the Africans would take care of their own wells? Well, the first thing that came to our mind was agricultural. If we could loan small scale farmers money to hire our drillers, which are all African, hire our drillers to drill them wells, put in a small scale solar pump and they could plant better crops that would earn them money, they would take care of that asset.

Aaron Ackerman:

Because there's a motivation.

Dick Greenly:

Oh my gosh. So we thought we'd try it with 50 farmers. And so, we loaned 50 farmers money down in Zambia and it just kept growing, we have 250 right now. We just put a cab on it because we were like, "That's not us. We're doing just water delivery." And all 50 loans were paid back without default in one year. So instead of just dry farming, one crop of corn per year, they were able to grow three crops of tomatoes and carrots and melons and things like that. And we didn't know we were going to have to start a co-op and buy a truck and haul this stuff to the market and help them. One guy planted onions and he made money and everybody started planting onions and the onion market collapse.

So we had to kind of crop rotate. So we had to form a co-op, and so it worked. And every one of these farmers, when they're well broke, they call one of the companies that we had started over there to do these wells maintenance and drilling, and they did it and it was a success. So the second way was, would the poorest people on the planet pay for their water like a water utility? So the only place where there's water scarcity on the planet, these 2 billion people is where water's free. Everywhere else where you charge for water, where there's a utility in place, where there's money to repair, there's no water scarcity. So this is '14, '15, '16, we did a lot of research, would people pay? Aaron, we were shocked. People were slamming their hand down on the counter saying, "It's our right to help us emerge. No one has ever asked us this. If we'd pay for our water, of course, we'd pay for our water if it was always there."

And so we were like, "Okay." So we started some pilot projects about putting in water utilities, small scale water utilities in the form of a kiosk. So put up a little kiosk in the center of the village and we'd do a survey on how much could they pay. And it's usually 1¢ to 3¢ per day for their water. So they bring their bucket, their jerry can, they fill up their water, they go back home. And as things happen, people would say, "Hey, would you bring that to our home?" And we're like, "Huh, well, that's how the rest of the civilized world does it. You didn't go out to this [inaudible 00:17:31] this morning, grab your water, you turned on faucets." So we're like, "Okay, well, this is where this has to go with water utilities."

So we started doing these water utilities all using mobile money because we're trying to understand the pain points, the points of inefficiencies and corruptions and things like that. So it's all mobile money, they're all contractors that work for us, we're trying to keep our headcount low. We have about 700 contractors and employees that sell water every day. We have about 600,000 customers per day. We've gotten water to about 2 million people and we'll bring it to their home, so for $100 we put a pipe into their home and a tank on their roof and they text us 65¢ and they fill the tank up. And last year we generated $1 million revenue at a penny a day per person from the poorest people on the planet that goes back into building more utilities, building more water utilities using their own funding. Imagine that, everyone else does it in the world.

Aaron Ackerman:

So these contractors that are running these utilities, these are local people in these countries and they're taught and trained on the maintenance as well, is that right, which eliminates these broken wells everywhere?

Dick Greenly:

100%. So it's their job to make sure this group of wells is always chlorinated safe water. We do water testing monthly and that the water is flowing, if they're out of chlorine, they deliver the chlorine. So it's their jobs. So these are all really well paying jobs in an area where there's 80% unemployment. So these are really well paying jobs. It's all rural Africa, about 13 different countries that we're starting these water utilities right now. So we're getting hated on by a lot of other water organizations because it's the donor model and they say it's immoral for us to charge people for water, yet every one of our customers is cheering us to go to their uncle's village next and their sisters' village next.

And so, when we started doing this, we screwed up every way. You can screw up getting our experience that costs nothing. And so, as we found out, if you get water to somebody's home in their neighborhood and then they're drinking bad water at work or at school or at their healthcare clinic, well, it doesn't do any good. So we started looking at, "Okay, could we do it the whole county? Could we do a whole county?" They call it a district over there, 100,000 people. "Could we get water to every man, woman and child in the district?" So we teamed up with the Dutch government in 2017 and basically started doing it county by county. And we were able to do this county in Ghana, West Africa, the entire county, 40 healthcare clinics, 60 schools that didn't have water, can you imagine a healthcare clinic that doesn't have water?

And we got water to the entire county and it started catching on. So instead of attending these world forums in the United Nations, now, we're speaking at them and we're holding whole seminars on what we're doing. Still, getting hated on by the water organizations because they're screwing up their donor model. We fully believe that charity needs to have an exit strategy where it can. Obviously there's charities that will never be able to do that, but on a charity like this, there should be an exit strategy. Charity should be used to end charity. One of our former partner, Big Water organizations celebrated a huge anniversary, 60 some odd years and they sent out all the bulletins and let's have a party and all that. And we looked at each other and said, "My gosh, if Water4 is here 65 years from now, we have totally screwed up." Because this is a market-based approach that absolutely works, it's a product everybody needs and everybody wants.

So a lot of these organizations start calling BS on us that we weren't returning capital, we didn't collect $1 million free cash flow. And we said, "Yeah, we did." And they said, "Okay, prove it." some of these big European organizations said, "Okay, well, here's $100,000 loan." And they said, "Well, it'll be a no recourse loan because we don't take on debt at our non-profit. It'll be a no recourse loan. We'll give you a $20,000 head start. We'll give you 18 months terms before you have to start paying it back. Pay us back." And within six months we were making payments and they're like, "Well, are you sure you're not taking Peter to pay Paul over here? We want to see." So they go over and see our projects and look at our books and we're full transparency, everything we do is wide open. And they couldn't believe it.

This has never been done in the history of Africa before in rural Africa that you can return capital to the point of paying a note back. So what happens there is they said, "You know you guys at Water4, that you're really doing this, now we have access to bond money and we can get $50 million, $100 million, $500 million bonds in return capital because you figured out the system to do this." And that's how you fix the water crisis in a short period of time, 20 some odd years where business activities are all around these activities.

Aaron Ackerman:

Man, I think that is awesome. There's some really important stuff there. I love what you said about a charity should end the charity or you said it better than that, but the mission is to eradicate situations where there's not clean water. Well, if you do that, then you're out of business, which is the goal.

Dick Greenly:

That's the goal.

Aaron Ackerman:

I mean, that is amazing. So this is in the world of charity, non-profit organizations like the approach that Water4 has taken is really unique, really smart, and I think it's really, really important. We talked a month or two ago and I shared a story that I think you already knew, but I'd read it in a book and it's the donor model. I've got excess, I've got more than I need, somebody else has needs, so I'm going to just go and dump my excess on the person with need, and how successful is that long-term?

There's this story about a big family farm here in the States that had eggs and they decided, "We want to donate a bunch of eggs to this village in Africa." So they started just flooding eggs over there into this village. Well, what they didn't know is there was a villager there that had five or six hens that laid eggs and he had a little table set up at the market and he was selling eggs. Well, when this company brought their eggs over there, this guy's out of business. Well, after a couple years, they get bored of sending eggs to Africa and they go do something else. Well, now that village has no eggs because the only guy that was selling eggs, he had to go figure out some other way to make a living.

Dick Greenly:

He ate his chickens.

Aaron Ackerman:

Exactly, he ate his chickens and now there's no eggs. So I'm just totally inspired by the way you guys have done this and I think you're really humble and you say we made every mistake and stumbled into it or whatever. But I think it's brilliant and I've got some very limited experience doing some things in Africa and I know how challenging it is. But I also saw what you alluded to that the people we were working with, they didn't want us to just give them money, give them stuff, they wanted to do it themselves, and they just need a system that allows that potential to just open up.

Dick Greenly:

Yeah, they've never really been given the chance because the whole model is, oh, these poor Africans and then the guilt comes on us because we have so much, so let's give them things and their whole economy becomes a handout type economy. And obviously, when the chicken guy quits giving eggs and that line of giving is gone, the whole economy is back to zero. And so, we're trying to build through capitalism, which is the jet fuel of charity. Something that's different, and it's shocking how we're getting hated on by a lot because we're disrupting their model of donor. So a water project will get started in Africa, it might be $100,000 project to drill a well and put in some infrastructure, big solar system like that. By the time everybody got their kickback, there might only be $20,000 worth of money to build this project. So all the corners are cut and that's how in 11 months it's broken and there's nothing left to fix it.

Well, we go into Zambia, we have a big presence in Zambia. It's the first place I drilled a well, flew in a single engine plane over the Congo River to get to this remote village and the government was coming and doing their surveys and we always are dubious of the government coming because they're usually want to tax you or want something from you if there's anything to get. And so, they were doing a survey on how many broken wells there were. And they come to our area and we're 100% operational, 300, 400, 500 wells, 100% operational.

Aaron Ackerman:

Not one broken down.

Dick Greenly:

Not one broken down. And they're like, "Wait, there's something wrong." Because we gave them the information first and they've said, "Ah, it's BS, there's no way." So they come and visited us, and sure enough, the region had about 40% operational rate and then they come to our low oasis in our county and it's 100% operational. So they said, "Well, would you operationalize our wells?" So that's starting to happen now. And we said, "Okay, well, we're going to charge and the revenue that we're going to get is going to be ours and we're going to build more infrastructure with that revenue in these areas." And they said, "Okay." So we started doing that and so then the counties around started becoming 100% operational, now they're asking us to do the entire country. So it's starting to catch on. We're doing a project in Sierra Leone, which we have a very big presence that's going to be about 6% of the entire country's population. 6%. So this is how it works.

What just floored me is I was doing a talk at Liberty University a while back and I was doing some statistics like you dug up, which were great. So in Africa, there's 750 million people without access to clean water, in Africa alone, 750 million. There's 750 million cell phones in Africa. What are we doing? This is 2022. And nobody has the plan to fix it, it's all this nibbling around the edges to make you feel good instead of actually putting a plan out there that puts Africans to work, gives them economic opportunity. And so, most of our contractors or 700 and some odd that are operating these water utilities, most of them are women. They're just killing it over there. They're getting it done.

And so they'll ask us, "Hey, would you loan me some money for a freezer? Because if I can have a solar freezer or a little freezer, I can freeze these little bags of ice and I can get 10 times the price because people want ice, they want frozen." And so we're like, "Yeah, sure." Of course, the loan gets paid back in three months because their sales go up.So what these are becoming that we're seeing, these are becoming little on cues, little 7/11s. These entrepreneurial women are asking for us loans, they're stocking soap and soda pop and food and frozen water, and they're doing water delivery and they're becoming little economic commerce centers and we're cheering that on, because the more money that they can make, the more the village will emerge.

Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Talk a little bit, if you don't mind, about just sort of the technology, because I think your wells are pretty innovative in a lot of ways. And also, I think when I was over at Water4, you toured me around and you pulled up on your phone or your iPad, you could see all the wells and if any of them had a maintenance issue, you could see that in real-time. So talk a little bit about just the innovation you guys have worked over the years.

Dick Greenly:

Yeah. So we had to professionalize it. We went from 2020 techniques of using million dollar drill rigs back to the 1800 to using human labor to drill 150 foot wells where they could earn the money to do it for 10, 20 times less money. And then invariably when we get in an area, the governor will say, "I got 50 broken wells over here, you can just have them." So we're given these $10,000, $20,000 assets that we will take the broken equipment out of them, test pump them, and then we'll put in some of the highest tech equipment, solar powered pump equipment that can pump 40, 50 gallons a minute and get water to 3,000 people. At the same time, we want to leverage, as you say, the digital technology the best we can.

So I told the guys and I just volunteer over there as a board member and whatever I can do to promote the organization, I said, "Look, this is great that we've got 8,000 wells or 9,000 wells. What about when it's 90,000? What about it when it's 900,000? Because that's where this is going, it absolutely has to go there. How are we going to keep track of this?" So we partnered with a group called mWater, which takes big blocks of data and organizes it. So they put it on a Google Earth platform and we have longitudinal latitude coordinates for every well that we drill, who drilled it, how many people it serves, the last time it was serviced, and it's all real time. How much water is distributed from there, if there's any issues, it flashes in red where people know that, "Okay, this person's job is to go on the milk ground and see that flashing red and fix that problem."

So we're using that type of technology. We're not doing technology for technology's sake, but it is really cool that we have 15 companies, we're a 501(c)(3), but we have several companies, commercial enterprises operating inside of our 501(c)(3), so everybody stands on their own merit. These are all profit centers and we expect them to make profit and yet the board of directors has instructed the organization, "We need you to take radical risks and flame out big. Learn from that mistake, never do it again and do something different." And that's how we ended up with some of this innovation is because we're not the typical non-profit adverse to risk, we want risk, we want to push the boundaries.

So when we have 15 companies that are doing vertical electric surveys, they're actually doing geophysical surveys to see where the best water is. And that's their job. And they're sitting there with computers and the highest tech equipment out there riding their little motorcycles out and that's their business, and it gets a charge for that. It is gratifying to see us using some of the highest technological advances on geophysical surveys and our digital data acquisition and collection. It's fun to see that with utilizing some technology that goes back 300 years.

Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah, that's right. That's what I was going to ask about because you've got this blend of absolute state of the art, GPS, all this stuff. But then I can't remember the exact story, but you told me one of the drilling techniques actually came from this several hundred year old drawing or patent or something.

Dick Greenly:

That's one of the pumps that we invented. One of our friends that worked really closely with Water4, we said, "These pumps are $1,000, that's nuts for a hand pump. That's crazy. This should be cheaper. I mean, a solar pump is $3,000 and stupid hand pumps $1,000?" And I said, "Invent a new pump for it." So he goes and finds a Leonardo da Vinci drawing from 1550 and combines it with a patent that he found from England from 1675, combines the two and builds a pump that's $20 that can be built over in Africa.

Aaron Ackerman:

That's awesome.

Dick Greenly:

And so it's that type of thing, it's not being scared of using old stuff because the old stuff, these weren't dummies back then, da Vinci wasn't a dummy. And so, utilizing old stuff to try to push it forward where it's appropriate and then when it run its course, move on to the next newer technology that's there. We'll hire million dollar drilling wrecks to drill our wells if we're going to get water to a 10,000 people in a village, it's not a problem.

Aaron Ackerman:

So what's next? So Water4 has gotten a lot of attention, good and some bad from people who you're disrupting their sandbox, right?

Dick Greenly:

Yep. Yep.

Aaron Ackerman:

So what's next? I know we talked about organizations are going, "Okay, you've proven this works." What if you got $50 million or $100 million? I mean, that's kind of overwhelming probably to think about, but what's on the horizon? What are you guys looking at?

Dick Greenly:

Well, I challenged the guys over there. I said, "Look, people are going to ask you if I gave you $100 million, what would you do with it?" And Matt, our CEO said, "Hey, I got to ask that twice last year from people that had it." And I said, "Would you tell them?" And it's dead. If you get given $100 million, you can't at the end of the year say, "Well, we spent $5 million and have $95 million in the bank," and you can't have just burned cash. And so, it's always that seesaw of needing money than needing personnel and equipment, and then needing personnel equipment than needing money. So we're starting to work with vocational schools over there because if we're going to do this right, we're going to need tens of thousands of people operating in these companies and these autonomous companies over there.

And so education and training, we're starting a ship CNC machines over, we've shipped two over this year, CNC plasma cutters that can build our kiosks. We don't want to ship anything from the state, so we want it all originating because that's all jobs, which is the fuel to fix this. So we're just looking at scale right now. I can't remember if next year it's 2,000, we'll do maybe 1,500 utilities. This year we're operating about 4,000 utilities. So we're at the point where it's 10,000, then 50,000, then 100,000 utilities that'll start generating $2 million, $5 million, $10 million, $30 million revenue that'll throw off from these utilities because it generates revenue from day one because we're using non-profit dollars as the private equity. Basically, we don't have to pay it back. But when we start getting this bond financing, which invariably will come to the county, to the country and they'll hire us to operate these things, we have to be able to pay these bonds back.

So it's just buttoning up our processes and then looking how to scale. And we think because we're in the center of all these villages that are growing, because they're saying Africa is going to be 2 billion people in the next 10 years or something. It's a crazy number. Well, they're still going to need water even if there's an extra billion people in Africa. And so, how is it that we're going to be able to get enough financing and revenue? And we think that since we're in the middle of these villages, in the primo spots with 50 year leases on these areas, on these utilities, we think we're going to be the 7/11, the ON-Q of the area where we're going to be selling everything. And I think that's where this goes, where then we can attract private equity that this patient capital, it's not going to be your 30% returns, but it's going to be patient capital that actually does good for humanity.

Aaron Ackerman:

Well, and the magic of it is that's a sustainable model, it doesn't require more and more donation until the end of time. I mean, it starts to fund itself.

Dick Greenly:

We always want to be donor-based because we think it's healthy for people who make money to give back to society. We think that's a good thing, but it can't completely rely on that.

Aaron Ackerman:

You and Terri, years ago, had this company very successful and you had this kind of pull or tug that you wanted to expand your meaning and your purpose, and you just start, you went to China and you just did this thing and then you didn't have this vision back then of what Water4 is now, you just kind of started. What advice would you give somebody that has that tug or that kind of pull on their heartstring that they want to do something? You guys identified, we've got this company that makes this thing and we've got these certain skills, you parlayed what you were already good at, but what advice would you give to somebody?

Dick Greenly:

That's a great question. So one of the things, looking at it from this side, looking back into it, I never wanted to go on a mission trip because it was painting a pastor's house and doing vacation Bible school. And God bless the people that doing that, it's just not for me. Every time I led vacation Bible school, when I was a younger guy with small kids, I always started insurrection and they never invited me back with the little boys. It drives me nuts that you have a CFO and we have him out hammering nails or painting or picking up garbage or whatever. And that's a good thing. And I'm not besmirching that at all, but when people will come to water for and they say, "Okay, I want to volunteer. You guys are awesome." And we had volunteer opportunities and I'd say, "Okay, well, what are you good at?"

And they're like, "What do you mean?" "Well, what lights your fuse? What gets you going in the morning?" "Well, really like organizational stuff and logistics." "Okay, we don't need you out turning a handle drilling well, we need you helping us figure out this logistics piece." So when the guy came to me and said, "Man, I want to go to China and I want you to install solar pumps." I love solar pumps, it's the coolest thing ever. And it got me going. And so, looking at it from this side, I think every one of us has something that excites us and it's usually around our vocation. Our vocations are kind of on purpose that you're good at it. You may not like the circumstance that you're working in, but you're good at it. So I think look for those opportunities where you can use some of your skill sets to do good for humanity.

And I think all of a sudden, you'll look up and see that there's no limit on what can happen because there's a lot of help that is needed throughout society and humanity right here in Oklahoma City, across the United States and all across the world. So water was a natural outlet for me, I get excited about all things water, I kind of geek out on it and that we get to do this is amazing. It is incredible that we actually are in a spot where we're stupid enough to believe we can fix the water crisis in decades, not millennium.

Aaron Ackerman:

That is so good. So if people want to get involved with Water4, what's the best way to do that, and what needs do you have? We'll put it in the show notes, but I know the website is water4.org. Is that kind of the best place to start?

Dick Greenly:

Water4.org and come down, take a tour on 10th and Villa. The question that we would ask you is what are you good at? What are you good at that would help an organization that has all these needs from personnel training, logistics, capital, whatever? What are you good at? We have some people that like, "Man, I'm good at making introductions to people that have money." We need that. To somebody that's crazy enough to invest in one of these things, I mean, we're just figuring that out right now. So I think that would be the best place to start. Ping the website, get a tour, send the word out, put it on your social media and let's just see where it goes. And it's usually right around what you're good at. The CEO picking up paper on the beach is nuts. It may be a good photo, but that's not what a CEOs do.

Aaron Ackerman:

No, that's great. Okay. Anything that we didn't touch on that you want to make sure we talk about before we wrap up?

Dick Greenly:

Well, I can go on. As I mentioned, I can go on for hours and hours, but that's a really good overview of just taking the first step. I got invited to go to North Korea in 2010, North Korea in 2010, and I kind of sheepishly walk into my wife's office because we're growing a business. And I'm like, "Sweetie, I got invited to North Korea to go help the Ministry of Public Health put in these manual water wells." And she's like, "Well, you have to go." And I was looking for an out, I was like, "What do you mean I have to go?" "No, you have to go. You don't get invited to North Korea by accident. You have to go." And that happened in 2008 or 2005, I said, "You're out of 11 mind." But you know what, it was the next step, it the next logical step. And we were the only eight Americans in North Korea at the time. It just so happened to be the 65th anniversary of the Workers Party. And so, all the hate on America was happening, when we were there, it was very awkward.

Aaron Ackerman:

Oh boy.

Dick Greenly:

But we really did some good for these remote villages that don't have anything. But it's just taking that first step that's right in your life.

Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. That is so good. Thank you for sharing. I know we could go on and on, but like you said, I think that's a goo overview to give people an idea of where Water4 has been, but what they've accomplished, where they're going. A mutual friend of ours, David Woods, who's also been a guest on the podcast, introduced you at a group and said, "I want Dick to talk about Water4 because they're changing the world." And I don't think that's hyperbole, I mean, it's happening. I know there's a lot more work to do, but congrats and thank you for using your skills, your company, you and Terri, I mean, you guys are inspirational. So thank you so much and thanks for your time today. I appreciate it.

Dick Greenly:

Thanks, Aaron. Right back at you. This is a great forum you've got.

Aaron Ackerman:

All right. So real quick, before we wrap up, I've got five questions that we ask all of our guests, would just hit you rapid fire with those if you're ready. These are just kind of fun. What's the first way you ever made money?

Dick Greenly:

Delivering papers, eight years old.

Aaron Ackerman:

Okay, good stuff. What would you be doing if you had a completely different career? If you didn't own Pumps of Oklahoma, you weren't in Water4, what might you be doing?

Dick Greenly:

Oil and gas.

Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. What would you like to go back and tell 20 year old Dick Greenly?

Dick Greenly:

Keep your mouth shut. Quit being an idiot.

Aaron Ackerman:

Very succinct. What's the title of your book, your autobiography?

Dick Greenly:

Are You Freaking Kidding me?

Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. Why that?

Dick Greenly:

Well, looking at the water crisis, are you kidding me? We're in 2022 and people are still drinking out as streams and the kids are dying. Are you freaking kidding me?

Aaron Ackerman:

Shouldn't be that way.

Dick Greenly:

No, it's nuts.

Aaron Ackerman:

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Dick Greenly:

Well, probably stop and think before you act. I'm an on go kind of guy. I just got invited to a prison up in Hutchinson, Kansas to see how we could bring some of those in-prison manufacturing facilities to Oklahoma. And I said, "Yeah, sure." I mean, I'm on go. So, that got me into a lot of trouble early on being on go all the time. And a lot of it was pretty sporadic and erratic. So I think the best advice is just, come on, think about what you're getting ready to do, all the way to the end, the consequence, all the way to the end, and then say yes or no.

Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. So that's good. Awesome. Thank you, Dick, so much. I enjoyed the conversation and look forward to seeing where Water4 takes the mission.

Dick Greenly:

Yeah, me too. Thanks, Aaron.

Aaron Ackerman:

Thanks. See you.

That's all for this episode of How that Happened. Thank you for listening. Be sure to visit howthathappened.com for show notes and additional episodes. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Podcast, or Stitcher. Thanks for listening. This content is for information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Copyright 2022 HoganTaylor LLP. All rights reserved. To view the HoganTaylor general terms and conditions, visit www.hogantaylor.com.