Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 1: How can you find amazing candidates fast easy? Just use Indeed.
Speaker 1: Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other
Speaker 1: job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to
Speaker 1: the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so
Speaker 1: you can reach the people you want faster. According to
Speaker 1: Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty
Speaker 1: five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
Speaker 1: any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 1: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 1: to Indeed dot com slash pod katz thirteen right now
Speaker 1: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is
Speaker 1: all you need.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 3: Earnest Welcome EYL University, the number one place for business
Speaker 3: education shotty telm what we be bringing Yes.
Speaker 4: EYL University already has over one hundred past webinars from
Speaker 4: all areas of business. It includes weekly webinars from industry
Speaker 4: leaders It includes access to our investment Facebook group.
Speaker 5: Movie club, our book club.
Speaker 4: It also includes access to monthly financial planning calls with
Speaker 4: yours truly.
Speaker 5: But what has been added has access to.
Speaker 4: MG the mortgage Guys home Buyers Blueprint over fourteen hours
Speaker 4: everything you need to know as far as the home
Speaker 4: buying process is concerned. And also what has been added
Speaker 4: is access to our monthly group chat call. So once
Speaker 4: a month, Me, Troy and the whole team is going
Speaker 4: to let you in on our personal plays, our portfolio,
Speaker 4: what we're doing, and more so all of that, we
Speaker 4: are running for a special promo code of seventy percent
Speaker 4: off for limited time only. So at the Eyluniversity dot
Speaker 4: com right now and take advantage.
Speaker 2: You know its works, don't wait, don't have to take it.
Speaker 2: We'll see you on the other side.
Speaker 6: My graduates from my school being forced bad drop drop,
Speaker 6: Mike drop, bad drop drop.
Speaker 4: All right, guys, welcome back e y L. So this
Speaker 4: is exciting. This is gonna be an exciting conversation for
Speaker 4: a few different reasons. The industry that we haven't covered yet,
Speaker 4: and also it kind of ties back to the early
Speaker 4: stages of e y before we had EEL so we'll
Speaker 4: explain the story. But first and foremost, Paul McCarthy an
Speaker 4: entrepreneur out of Queens Queens please get the money, Queens,
Speaker 4: get the money Brooklyn.
Speaker 7: Correction, I love Queens, however, has raised me.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, be connection.
Speaker 4: So this is interesting because so Paula owns a water plant.
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm a water manufacturer.
Speaker 4: A water manufacturer. We'll explain the whole story. But she
Speaker 4: was teaching financial literacy originally before you did that. Yes,
Speaker 4: And it was crazy because you said, like, you know,
Speaker 4: just going on Instagram while financial literacy, you saw me
Speaker 4: teaching financial literacy at the same time.
Speaker 7: Yes, and I followed you. Then I following.
Speaker 2: We'll get into that.
Speaker 7: I was so engulfed in what you were doing.
Speaker 5: Okay, I couldn't.
Speaker 7: I couldn't do what I needed to do because I
Speaker 7: was like comparing what I was doing to what you
Speaker 7: were doing.
Speaker 5: Blockout, block out the noise.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I appreciate that. I am.
Speaker 3: All those those those hot summer days paid off.
Speaker 5: I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: So, so it's an interesting story where she she found
Speaker 4: a water plant in upstate New York, and she purchased
Speaker 4: the water plant, and now she has a water company.
Speaker 4: So it's an interesting dynamic because you're talking about, like,
Speaker 4: you know, natural resources, and it's not something that people
Speaker 4: think about a lot. And even when they do think
Speaker 4: bout natural resources, most of the time it's like oil
Speaker 4: or gold, gas, but it's not something like water, which
Speaker 4: is the most essential part of life we need every day.
Speaker 5: It's essential. You need water. You don't need gas to live, right,
Speaker 5: but you need water to live.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's no life for that water, and it's a
Speaker 2: scarcity of it. There's a scarcity of it, which makes
Speaker 2: it even better.
Speaker 5: It's a trillion dollar industry.
Speaker 7: Yes, it is a trillion dollar industry.
Speaker 2: Let's not brush over that.
Speaker 4: So it's crazy somebody in this space is an entrepreneur.
Speaker 4: That's actually you know in that in that space.
Speaker 2: This is rare.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've done over one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 3: episodes and we've never even in my mind, I've never
Speaker 3: even thought of this as an industry. So to hear
Speaker 3: that there's somebody that looks like us, it's from neighborhoods
Speaker 3: that we come from, and that's in a space. This
Speaker 3: is a This is a pleasure and honor to be
Speaker 3: honest with you.
Speaker 5: For sure weout further Ado. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 7: Appreciate it, No, thank you for having me. I'm excited
Speaker 7: to be on the platform. I think what you guys
Speaker 7: are doing it's just amazing. You have provided a platform
Speaker 7: where and a seat at a table where we would
Speaker 7: not ordinarily have and you are bringing information to not
Speaker 7: just young people because initially it was young people, but
Speaker 7: to our community. And with that access we are I
Speaker 7: think like we're doing amazing things right, so people can
Speaker 7: now plan for and plan to build generational well through
Speaker 7: this platform. I think you guys are doing something extraordinary.
Speaker 4: I appreciate it. So let's let's get into it, all right.
Speaker 4: So let's start at the financial literacy stage then and
Speaker 4: moved to the water. So how did you start in
Speaker 4: the career of teaching financial literacy?
Speaker 7: All right? So twenty seventeen September, my twin boys were
Speaker 7: going into high school. With that I went to the
Speaker 7: school and I was like, you know, I need to
Speaker 7: get them into a mentorship program. The school told me
Speaker 7: they had no mentorship programs. I went on a rant
Speaker 7: and I started to tell them, you know about the
Speaker 7: prison to jail pipeline, and I'm like, this is why
Speaker 7: our kids can compete. If they can't compete locally, how
Speaker 7: are they going to compete globally? And I just went
Speaker 7: on a rant. The assistant principle was like, look, we
Speaker 7: don't have a program, but if you want to volunteer
Speaker 7: to teach a program, you may. So I thought to myself,
Speaker 7: absolutely not, I cannot. I did not have time for this.
Speaker 7: I'm a single mother. I work twelve hour shifts. I
Speaker 7: have no time for this. I just finished reading the
Speaker 7: book A Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela's book, Yes,
Speaker 7: and it was so annoying because in my head it
Speaker 7: was just like be the change you want to see.
Speaker 7: And I was like so mad at myself. And I'm like,
Speaker 7: you know what, give me a month. I'm going to
Speaker 7: study and i'll come back. I need to know what
Speaker 7: I'm going to teach. So I went home and I
Speaker 7: started doing research and I just started finding I made
Speaker 7: like fun games on budgets and I did fun just
Speaker 7: finding fun things to do and trying to make the
Speaker 7: class fun. I go back a month later. I stole
Speaker 7: someone's name offline. It was like financial Sense. That was
Speaker 7: the name of my business. Initially, I'm like, okay, we're
Speaker 7: going to steal this. I went in there, started speaking
Speaker 7: to the kids and we did the program, and we
Speaker 7: did the first workshop and they were so engaged. At
Speaker 7: the end of this first workshop, I left and the
Speaker 7: little girl was like, Ms McCarthy, I wasn't going to
Speaker 7: sell candy, but now I'm going to sell two boxes.
Speaker 7: The school had a candy drive. After that, a little
Speaker 7: boy came up to me. He was like, Miss McCarthy,
Speaker 7: you changed my life. You really inspired me, and that
Speaker 7: changed the trajectory of my life. It impacted me more
Speaker 7: than it impacted them, because I saw how because I
Speaker 7: saw how much it changed them, it changed me.
Speaker 2: At this time, you were actually practicing. You were a nurse.
Speaker 7: I'm a nurse by profession, so it was on my
Speaker 7: days off that I was doing these financial literacy class
Speaker 7: excuse me. So I would do my three hours, try
Speaker 7: to do my three hour shifts, and then do my
Speaker 7: classes around my shift.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the reason I'm bringing it up because I just
Speaker 3: had this conversation the other day with a dear friend
Speaker 3: of mine and I'm like, the next time I talked
Speaker 3: to you, I want to hear about what you created.
Speaker 3: And even though you've had a full time career. Like
Speaker 3: you said, you're a single mom, it's still find a
Speaker 3: time to create. You saw that there was a need
Speaker 3: and you said, I have to make the time to create,
Speaker 3: and creating change your life.
Speaker 7: I really want to.
Speaker 2: They want to.
Speaker 7: But I did it again. I fell into it right.
Speaker 7: So I came back, we did the workshops. Other schools
Speaker 7: found out about what I was doing in the building
Speaker 7: and what I thought was going to be a class
Speaker 7: about just financial literacy, my first class actually was about
Speaker 7: the transition. It was more about the power of thought.
Speaker 7: I read Think and Grow Rich, and I started reading
Speaker 7: these books and I started bringing those elements into the classroom.
Speaker 7: So my first class was about the power of thought
Speaker 7: and that I honestly started doing these other little things
Speaker 7: with budgeting and stuff like that, but I had them
Speaker 7: thinking differently. And if you see, like my whole entire
Speaker 7: tagline is transition begins with the renewing of your mind.
Speaker 7: And I know that's pretty much what you guys believe
Speaker 7: as well, because I know that to be true because
Speaker 7: I've heard you say something very similar. You have to
Speaker 7: change the way they think, right, And for me, it
Speaker 7: was how can I create a system within a system
Speaker 7: that set up against us, and that's what I was
Speaker 7: really trying to go in and do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that thing we had the same with that commis.
Speaker 3: It was like we were working inside of a system
Speaker 3: that we knew didn't.
Speaker 2: Really help or prepare.
Speaker 3: There are kids for anything that we could see that
Speaker 3: was substantial long term, and so are we complicit in
Speaker 3: the failure? And so it was like, all right, well,
Speaker 3: that's the reason we did the summer program. It was
Speaker 3: because we know that the kids need this, it's not
Speaker 3: being taught, and so we'll build out from there. The
Speaker 3: only problem was that we were in this one place,
Speaker 3: and I knew that the kids in the inner city
Speaker 3: needed it too, and so it was like, how do
Speaker 3: we scale it?
Speaker 2: And so when you started with one program, how did
Speaker 2: it go from one school to the next. It was
Speaker 2: at the vendor license piece, so.
Speaker 7: No other schools, so you know how they're breaking up
Speaker 7: all the schools like four and more and ones. We
Speaker 7: had four school in the one building and it went
Speaker 7: from like one school to two thousand kids in this
Speaker 7: one school. Other schools heard about what we were doing,
Speaker 7: and I went to this other school was a private school,
Speaker 7: and more affluent schools throughout the City and I went
Speaker 7: to this one school and their eighth graders were going
Speaker 7: to Morocco for their senior trip. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 7: they don't need me here. If you're going to Morocco
Speaker 7: for your senior trip, this is not where I need
Speaker 7: to be, right, So I ended up sticking to underserved schools.
Speaker 7: So I went to Brooklyn and I was trying. I'm
Speaker 7: literally knocking on doors, trying to make appointment with the principals,
Speaker 7: and no one wanted to really, no one was really interested.
Speaker 7: When I went to these schools, they were telling me
Speaker 7: that their tertiary tertiary schools and they can't afford it.
Speaker 7: What is a school a tertiary school meaning like they're
Speaker 7: Tier three school so that their budgets are so small
Speaker 7: that they can't fit me into their budget. Right, So
Speaker 7: I was like, you know what, I'm going to start
Speaker 7: a foundation. That was like a wash. So we do
Speaker 7: have the financial literacy and we also have a nonprofit
Speaker 7: leg but I thought, oh, you know, money's just going
Speaker 7: to come and funnel into this nonprofit. But that didn't
Speaker 7: happen either. So once other schools heard about what we
Speaker 7: were doing, we ended up in a school in Harlem,
Speaker 7: an elementary school, middle school in Brooklyn, and a high
Speaker 7: school with the twenty with the two thousand kids in Queens.
Speaker 7: So that was pretty much our pilot program. Dooe reached
Speaker 7: out to me. I did a lot of workshops for
Speaker 7: their teachers and stuff like that, so they were like,
Speaker 7: come out, show us what you're doing. So I got
Speaker 7: a lot of interest in a lot of schools. We're
Speaker 7: supposed to be in a good amount of schools in Brooklyn, Queens,
Speaker 7: and Harlem. In September, January comes, our pilot program starts.
Speaker 7: We're in all our schools and then COVID hits.
Speaker 2: This is January twenty.
Speaker 7: Twenties, twenty twenty. Wow, January twenty twenty. In the middle
Speaker 7: of our pilot program, COVID hits and we have do
Speaker 7: you know our program stops is at a hall. So
Speaker 7: I'm home working as a case manager, doing nursing from
Speaker 7: my kitchen table, hating every minute of it, but making
Speaker 7: the most money I've made in nursing as well. Really, yeah,
Speaker 7: sitting home, I was not in the midst of everything else.
Speaker 7: I was literally just hating my job all the same
Speaker 7: because I could not move from my table at that
Speaker 7: point of what happens next My boys again, my boys,
Speaker 7: My boys start New York Water Boys. On March thirty first,
Speaker 7: which is their birthday, they start a water distribution company.
Speaker 7: I think one of my sons was like going through
Speaker 7: depression at the time, and I went to a church
Speaker 7: and so crazy. I go to this church and this
Speaker 7: lady goes, you know, there's a prophet and he's prophesizing
Speaker 7: over all the kids, you should go to this church.
Speaker 7: I go to this church and I meet this guy
Speaker 7: in well, he's a pastor, not necessarily a guy. So
Speaker 7: I meet this pastor who starts working with my kids,
Speaker 7: and he started the largest recycling plant in South Africa.
Speaker 7: And he leaves South Africa to come to New York
Speaker 7: because God told him that he should do twenty four
Speaker 7: hours worship centers. So he comes to New York. I
Speaker 7: meet him in this church and he start. He becomes
Speaker 7: my friend, and he starts working with my son. And
Speaker 7: he comes from this water distribution background. So he starts
Speaker 7: working with my son and he's like, why don't we
Speaker 7: sell water. They go out on the street. I call
Speaker 7: everybody I know, Oh, the boys are starting a water company.
Speaker 7: Everybody that I know buys and then after that we
Speaker 7: kind of exhaust, you know, exhaust everyone we know. They
Speaker 7: start selling to the local bodegas and then twenty one supermarkets.
Speaker 7: They get a contract with twenty one supermarkets. Once they
Speaker 7: get this contract with the twenty one supermarkets, I'm like,
Speaker 7: this can fund my nonprofit.
Speaker 5: Well what water were they selling?
Speaker 7: It was selling Poland spring.
Speaker 5: But like to supermarkets, Like where they're getting.
Speaker 7: From, We've got it from DJs. I gave them sixteen
Speaker 7: hundred dollars, had access to a church van because now
Speaker 7: I'm friends with this pastor. I paid one hundred dollars
Speaker 7: a week for the church van. And they started selling
Speaker 7: palettes of water like BJ's knew them as the New
Speaker 7: York water boys. They would let them in. Lines were
Speaker 7: down the block. People couldn't get water. We were getting
Speaker 7: palace so BJ.
Speaker 4: So the grocery stores couldn't get it cheaper than what
Speaker 4: BJS was on it for.
Speaker 7: They couldn't get water right.
Speaker 2: It was like the this is like the first three
Speaker 2: weeks of COVID.
Speaker 7: This is like COVID period because we did this well
Speaker 7: into May.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got you. So they start this business.
Speaker 3: They come up with the idea we get the sixteen
Speaker 3: hundred to get the DJ's water. At this time, they're
Speaker 3: making home so they're.
Speaker 7: Doing home deliveries local bodegas and then they get the contract.
Speaker 2: How are they funding the people?
Speaker 7: Like pretty much word of mouth. We did a couple
Speaker 7: of Facebook ads. I paid for that and they that's
Speaker 7: how they initially started getting people. And then people were
Speaker 7: just calling us for water. But then as we got
Speaker 7: water in the trucks. I also rented a truck. After
Speaker 7: the van thing, we needed a bigger vehicle, so I
Speaker 7: got a truck. I rented a truck that was in
Speaker 7: the neighborhood and we would just stop at the local bodegas.
Speaker 7: Not we they would because that wasn't my thing, but
Speaker 7: they were doing it. Once I saw how much money
Speaker 7: they were making, though, I was like, I can fund
Speaker 7: my non for profit. They were making like I don't
Speaker 7: even want to I want to tell you they were
Speaker 7: making a few thousand dollars a week selling selling water,
Speaker 7: but they were again twenty they were cases cases. They
Speaker 7: were selling palates to water. I want to say upwards
Speaker 7: of that because it was so scarce that people were
Speaker 7: paying higher. So if we've bought okay, and then it
Speaker 7: was like sometimes it depends on who we sold it to. Right,
Speaker 7: So if we sold it to you and we sold
Speaker 7: the case, the profit margins were way smaller and it
Speaker 7: was sometimes like a dollar even, right, Well not when
Speaker 7: we sold it to you though, So if you bought
Speaker 7: to if we went to BJ's and bought a case
Speaker 7: for say, what are they like six dollars and change
Speaker 7: or something like that and two dollars bottle deposit, we'll
Speaker 7: sell it to you for twelve dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, that's one hundred percent. Yeah profit margins, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that I guess. The people how come the store only
Speaker 4: just thing go to BJ's themselves. They just didn't have
Speaker 4: enough time, time access.
Speaker 7: They couldn't get in. If you remember the lines, so
Speaker 7: everyone has to stand on the line.
Speaker 5: They let your sons in priority.
Speaker 7: Because because we were buying so much water. I went
Speaker 7: in there, spoke to the managers.
Speaker 5: And worked out the deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah I'm getting flash bands. I remember how it was.
Speaker 5: It was a scarcity toilet paper.
Speaker 2: That was the first thing exactly.
Speaker 3: Then you had to wait, like I remember my mom
Speaker 3: wanted to go to Sam's and it was I told like,
Speaker 3: you got to go at six and there's no other time.
Speaker 4: And I don't know, if you didn't live in New York,
Speaker 4: you might not fully appreciate how bad it was like
Speaker 4: at that time in Marshall April, Like I remember going
Speaker 4: to the grocery store and it felt like doomsday because
Speaker 4: it was like, well not even that, but you had
Speaker 4: to wait like ten feet and you had to wear
Speaker 4: masks gloves, and it was like it was going it
Speaker 4: was like a movie and it was like they could
Speaker 4: only let twenty people in the grocery store at the time.
Speaker 5: And it was bad.
Speaker 4: Like it was just like I don't our cloud over
Speaker 4: the whole New York like at that time.
Speaker 5: So that's interesting.
Speaker 4: It was continuent in real life, it was. It was
Speaker 4: that's crazy. So you worked out a deal with the manager.
Speaker 4: You got in probably like early like what.
Speaker 7: We did.
Speaker 2: We were see now it makes sense, this is Brooklyn.
Speaker 7: Yes, you know. What happened was they were letting them
Speaker 7: wait online, but we were purchasing that. You know when
Speaker 7: you can buy it on on online and then just
Speaker 7: go and pick up. So we were doing that so
Speaker 7: you didn't have to wait on the lines if you
Speaker 7: were pre ordering, right, So I would buy hundreds of
Speaker 7: cases from different phones and different accounts. So we would
Speaker 7: set up a bunch of accounts and he would pick
Speaker 7: up one hundred pallets, he would pick up a hundred pallets,
Speaker 7: he would pick up a hundred pallets. So we were
Speaker 7: getting hundreds of pallets a day. But they were making
Speaker 7: so much money. Twenty now they're twenty. At that time,
Speaker 7: there was on the eighteenth birthday, nineteenth birthday.
Speaker 2: Thanks, that's coming up.
Speaker 7: They're twins. They're gonna be twenty one on the thirty first.
Speaker 2: The New York Quarterboys a little different.
Speaker 5: Atlanta water Yeah, oh no, Atlanta Water Boys with that situation,
Speaker 5: that's a whole different, a little bit different, a lot
Speaker 5: a lot. I got a chill.
Speaker 2: Thought one hundred percent markup was crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Atlanta Water boys like twenty and not get a bottle.
Speaker 5: At different ATM different. That's a different story.
Speaker 7: It's a little different.
Speaker 4: So you're doing this and you're not doing this hand
Speaker 4: in hand like on Fordham Road, like you actually got
Speaker 4: a system in place where you're selling cases of water,
Speaker 4: like Frank Lucius, like you're on the bundle.
Speaker 7: Exactly what we did. Once they did that when they
Speaker 7: went to the Supermarket Association, what they did. Was was like, look,
Speaker 7: we have water, you don't have water. We can sell
Speaker 7: it to you at it like even a dollar market,
Speaker 7: but we can bring you hundreds of cases a day
Speaker 7: because we had those relationships, right, so we would go
Speaker 7: out to.
Speaker 5: So supermarket the same. So what's the thing with that context?
Speaker 7: So yeah, we did. So I'm yes, So I support
Speaker 7: everything that they do. I'm supporting everything that they're doing, right,
Speaker 7: So it's my money, it's it's there. They're doing the
Speaker 7: labor pretty much, right, but I'm helping them while they're
Speaker 7: doing it. So I call the supermarket Association. I'm calling
Speaker 7: everybody and trying to figure this out.
Speaker 5: So what is the supermarket Association? I even know that
Speaker 5: that existed.
Speaker 7: Yeah, supermarket associations a couple of things that I just
Speaker 7: learned too, Like supermarket association, like they all belong to
Speaker 7: Like you know, I had a neighborhood Watch or neighborhoods
Speaker 7: association where you have all the supermarkets belonging to one
Speaker 7: even like a union. Okay, right, so they belonged to
Speaker 7: one association. So all the supermarkets in our area belong
Speaker 7: to this, Like I belonged to the National Water Association,
Speaker 7: So all of the water companies subscribe to this one
Speaker 7: asociation and they'll give you like the up to date
Speaker 7: regulations and stuff like that. Right, so I subscribe to
Speaker 7: that so same thing. Okay, So we called the Supermarket
Speaker 7: Association and they're like, yeah, we love this story. Well,
Speaker 7: I called the Supermarket Association next once I saw how
Speaker 7: much money they were making. Would you carry a private
Speaker 7: label water to funder a nonprofit? So they loved our
Speaker 7: story and they were like sure, Well, but what I've
Speaker 7: learned since then that you actually have to pay for shelf,
Speaker 7: pay for space.
Speaker 4: Master p jeans and he told us that. Shout out
Speaker 4: the rap snacks, they told us. And that's the first
Speaker 4: time I heard that. Where you have to actually pay
Speaker 4: to be in a grocery store.
Speaker 7: I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: And the location inside of it, right, So you could
Speaker 3: be in the out thirteen way in the back, or
Speaker 3: you could have some of these snacks right at the register.
Speaker 7: For thirty five thousand dollars and upwards?
Speaker 2: Is that what it is at the register?
Speaker 7: Upwards?
Speaker 5: Wow?
Speaker 7: If you want to have a space on a shelf,
Speaker 7: is about like say, if you go down like a
Speaker 7: water aisle. I said about thirty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 7: Right, So and I had to learn that I had.
Speaker 7: I learned that through water though, so I didn't even
Speaker 7: know that when we first started. They were like, yeah,
Speaker 7: they'll just carry it because it was more so they
Speaker 7: liked what the water would represent and do for the community.
Speaker 4: Right, So you had private you So this is when
Speaker 4: you're starting a water company.
Speaker 7: This is when once they told me yes, I was like,
Speaker 7: all right, let me start sourcing some water companies, right
Speaker 7: to do a private label water brand. I didn't have
Speaker 7: a water brand at that time. I had nothing. It
Speaker 7: was just like, all right, they'll do it, right. I
Speaker 7: had the I had the company before I had the product.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's like I'm not we're doing this for
Speaker 2: this company, right, let.
Speaker 3: Me try to do it on my own because I
Speaker 3: mean even when you said the private label, the last
Speaker 3: time we heard that was Amazon. Josh Chrish out to
Speaker 3: him and it was like we would they would find products,
Speaker 3: whether it be a comb or a hairclip, and that
Speaker 3: that was private label.
Speaker 2: But never thought whe'd you come up with the idea
Speaker 2: like water?
Speaker 7: And that was my friend, my friend who was a pastor.
Speaker 7: He used to do water distribution in South Africa. So
Speaker 7: this was him doing it with the boys. And then
Speaker 7: in turn, I'm like, hmm, could I do this?
Speaker 4: Like so way to get the private label. It's just
Speaker 4: this company that just sell water.
Speaker 7: So what we did was we found this, we started calling.
Speaker 7: We went on the Department of Help and we found
Speaker 7: companies based on their quality of water. So we started
Speaker 7: calling people based on how great the water was.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: Review it tells you, it tells you in the Department
Speaker 7: of Health and reviews. Right, so it tells you what
Speaker 7: kind of water, tells you what's in the water. They
Speaker 7: all have lab reporting that you have to do so
Speaker 7: you can see the content in water, right, which we
Speaker 7: don't really pay much attention to, but.
Speaker 2: I think New York has one to It was like
Speaker 2: Greater number three. It's like the state about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, please don't averaging tap water.
Speaker 7: Oh man, we're going to get into tap waters, still
Speaker 7: water and all these other waters.
Speaker 4: Yes we shall so all right, so this so let's
Speaker 4: bring this back a little bit for people. Private label
Speaker 4: and like I said, shot that Josh Wills, he's the
Speaker 4: first one that told us about this. This is important
Speaker 4: for people to understand what you're talking about. So there's
Speaker 4: companies that sell and his thing he does Amazon. So
Speaker 4: he was saying, like, you know, you just see random
Speaker 4: things like nail filers, staplers, lint rollers. It's good to
Speaker 4: sell on Amazon because you can nobody. Nobody's looking for
Speaker 4: a Gucci lint roller, unless you're like a rapper.
Speaker 5: That's a different it's a different story.
Speaker 4: But you just buying a lint roller, right, So I
Speaker 4: could just putra shav Allow lint rolling company. But there's
Speaker 4: there's a company in China that just makes lint rollers
Speaker 4: in bulk and then you privately, so you buy it
Speaker 4: and now you can just put your thing and now
Speaker 4: it's like nobody knows that you didn't make it. It's
Speaker 4: just this private label. And when he said that, it
Speaker 4: was so genius because there's like thousands of items like
Speaker 4: that where a label does not matter.
Speaker 7: No, So like we do, we could do manufacturing right
Speaker 7: now our factory. We can do private labeling. So again
Speaker 7: we will kind of get into that too, but we
Speaker 7: can do private label water. So if you want earn
Speaker 7: your leisure water, we can do.
Speaker 5: Derek Grace, shout out to Derek Grace. He got great
Speaker 5: essential water.
Speaker 7: You know him, No Essential water.
Speaker 5: Shout out to him. So all right, all right, so
Speaker 5: now how.
Speaker 4: Do you find a company that you can get the
Speaker 4: private label for most the process for that.
Speaker 7: So I literally just call these people up. We find
Speaker 7: their number and we're just randomly cold calling.
Speaker 5: From the Department of from.
Speaker 7: Healthy, Department of Health, and I'm calling their numbers on there. Right,
Speaker 7: So what's We're in the midst of COVID as well, right,
Speaker 7: So most of the water companies number one are owned
Speaker 7: by larger companies like Coca Cola owns like the Something
Speaker 7: and Aqua Fina, right, Pepsi owns smart Water. So a
Speaker 7: lot of these big companies own these smaller companies, right.
Speaker 7: So I found like some independent companies. So they do
Speaker 7: about eighty six thousand gallons of I mean eighty six
Speaker 7: thousand gallons of water per hour. Pepsi, Coca Cola, they're
Speaker 7: not going to take stop their production line to do
Speaker 7: one hundred bottles for you for earlier leisure water one thousand,
Speaker 7: They're not doing that. So I called companies after companies
Speaker 7: that are like, no, thank you, that's not what we
Speaker 7: do that. Those orders are way too small, right, So
Speaker 7: I find this one company They're called Maxie's Lama's water works.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: I go out there and I'm like, all right. I
Speaker 7: call her and she's like, I'm in El Salvador. She's
Speaker 7: stuck in Out Salvador. She can't come back because there's
Speaker 7: no flights coming in out in and or out in
Speaker 7: or out of the country. So she's like, call me
Speaker 7: back in May. So I'm like, all right, I'm waiting,
Speaker 7: but I'm thinking, let's call other companies because I don't
Speaker 7: know if the water tastes anything like what I'm used to,
Speaker 7: and you and I just spoke about what our standard is, right,
Speaker 7: so I'm comparing it to this one water. And I
Speaker 7: call her back in May and she's like, you know,
Speaker 7: I still can't come back, but you could come if
Speaker 7: you want to. My parents are at the factory. You
Speaker 7: can go to the factory. Because my thing is I
Speaker 7: need to taste the water. We're waiting on this water company,
Speaker 7: and we don't know if we like the water because
Speaker 7: I am a water snob, like water tastes different, right, true.
Speaker 7: So I go out there, I pack my family in
Speaker 7: the car, and I'm like, let's go taste water. We
Speaker 7: have nothing to do. We're looking at each other let's
Speaker 7: go taste water. We go out there and the company
Speaker 7: is being ran by a seventy nine year old and
Speaker 7: an eighty one year old, and I'm like, look, I
Speaker 7: want to do this from my financial literacy court.
Speaker 5: Where would you go?
Speaker 7: I went Upstate New York. Okay about it's twenty minutes
Speaker 7: outside of all that.
Speaker 2: I want to say to town, but I know I'm
Speaker 2: a batch.
Speaker 7: Of skill and kill and kill yeah, posting kills, right.
Speaker 7: So we go out to Post and Kill and we
Speaker 7: meet the seventy nine year old and an eighty one
Speaker 7: year old and they're like, yeah, we're in the mountains,
Speaker 7: and they're like, we would love to do this, but
Speaker 7: we don't have the capacity. They don't have They have
Speaker 7: one person who comes in who volunteers to help them,
Speaker 7: and they don't have the capacity. We needed two track
Speaker 7: the trailers to support our order with us with the
Speaker 7: Supermarket Association. So I'm like, okay, fine, We literally go
Speaker 7: back up there for weeks on end to help them.
Speaker 7: To start with my kids and I started going up
Speaker 7: there and helping them to bottle because they just had
Speaker 7: no help. At this point, we knew that they couldn't
Speaker 7: support our bottling. We just knew that they needed help, right.
Speaker 7: Their business was suffering and they were having their own issues.
Speaker 7: So we started helping them with that. Once we go
Speaker 7: up there, they're like, look, we can't do it, but
Speaker 7: we could sell it to you. And I'm like the plant,
Speaker 7: the plant. I'm like, I don't want to buy a water.
Speaker 5: What's in the water plant?
Speaker 7: So they sold. They were selling fifty acres of land.
Speaker 7: An aquaifer is an underground lake, so to speak.
Speaker 5: Right, Our water that grows underground.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it doesn't worrow, but water underground right, So water
Speaker 7: water that flows underground, right, that's the word. Yeah. So
Speaker 7: what happens is we're in a valley, so the water
Speaker 7: from the tops of the mountains come down and it
Speaker 7: goes under this you know, just like these underground caves
Speaker 7: so to speak. They're underground, like you don't know they're there.
Speaker 5: Don't blame me, blame the school system exactly. I'm just
Speaker 5: a product. So earth science.
Speaker 2: I definitely failed the.
Speaker 7: Visions earth science. I don't know. I was really good
Speaker 7: at science, but more anatomies. That's that's my thing.
Speaker 2: I was body physical therapy major.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: So water grows they comes it comes from the mountains yep,
Speaker 4: and it comes not valley valley.
Speaker 3: How does they go underground down down the valley.
Speaker 7: It goes through the soil through the goes down and
Speaker 7: it's like a big reservoir. It's just a natural reservoir underground, like.
Speaker 2: When people swim in fresh water caves.
Speaker 7: Yep.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 7: I've been to Mexico, you know, whole Mexico, the whole
Speaker 7: cha Na right around those those Mayan ruins. The whole
Speaker 7: entire city was built around the water sources. And if
Speaker 7: you know anything, like most civilizations were built around water sources, right,
Speaker 7: so very important. So, and you can tell a lot
Speaker 7: about the economies usually flourish around places that have really
Speaker 7: well established water sources.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: So even America, our water sources started out in New
Speaker 7: York and on on on the coast, right and then
Speaker 7: right so on the port.
Speaker 2: Here the coast lake.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you could tell a lot about a country
Speaker 7: based on its water source.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: It's essential to everything that we're doing, right so, if
Speaker 7: and that's interesting in itself because as I got into
Speaker 7: this water space and I started to do research, that's
Speaker 7: when I found out about the scarcity of water. Because
Speaker 7: I knew nothing about water. Just like many of us,
Speaker 7: we're not talking about water. We drink it, we use it,
Speaker 7: and that's it, right. We actually abuse it and that's it.
Speaker 7: We don't even understand that most of the planet is
Speaker 7: ninety seven percent water, right, but it's salt water, right,
Speaker 7: most of the planet is I'm incorrect, it's seventy percent water, right,
Speaker 7: seventy percent water. But of that, ninety seven percent of
Speaker 7: it is salt water. Two percent of it is in
Speaker 7: glaciers and ice caps, so it's not usable for us.
Speaker 7: But less than one percent of water is fresh, drinkable, attainable,
Speaker 7: accessible water, and that in itself is crazy because of
Speaker 7: that one percent, seventy percent of that goes to agriculture,
Speaker 7: twenty percent of that goes to industries, and the rest
Speaker 7: is human consumption.
Speaker 4: And this is why it's like people in America have
Speaker 4: such a disconnect with the rest of the world because
Speaker 4: it's like we just like having random water slides in
Speaker 4: our rice bucket challenge, so reckless size, ice working, super
Speaker 4: soaka fier.
Speaker 5: But there's people that's really like starving for water.
Speaker 2: Like it's just six miles to get a bucket. It's different.
Speaker 7: Yeah, two thirds of the world don't have access to
Speaker 7: clean drinking water. That's more than one point two billion
Speaker 7: people not having access to clean drinking water. So when
Speaker 7: I got into the space again, I didn't recognize how
Speaker 7: valuable what I had was. I thought, hey, I'm going
Speaker 7: to taste water. I keep saying this. I did not
Speaker 7: go to buy anyone's water plan. I went to taste water,
Speaker 7: and when they told me about buying the plant, I'm like, look, miss,
Speaker 7: I am a nurse. I had no money to first
Speaker 7: buy your plan, Like, there's no way. This is not
Speaker 7: nothing that I thought that I could even attain, right,
Speaker 7: And I've never even heard about anyone purchasing or buying
Speaker 7: or owning a water plant, and nobody black to that, right,
Speaker 7: So I'm not think I'm not thinking anyone in our
Speaker 7: community could own something like this because we're known as consumers, right, So.
Speaker 3: How long did that process from you helping to them
Speaker 3: far from you to buy.
Speaker 2: Was it a couple of weeks?
Speaker 3: Cause I mean I'm thinking to myself, I'm from Queen's
Speaker 3: I'm driving an Albany that's like a three hour drive,
Speaker 3: three hour drive every week almost I mean dark Corona,
Speaker 3: So I mean it really wasn't much to do anyway.
Speaker 7: But we're the only ones on the road.
Speaker 3: But how long did the process take for them? Was
Speaker 3: there like a trust built with you now that you're
Speaker 3: helping and you're volunteering.
Speaker 2: To say, you know what?
Speaker 7: So when I went there, they offered to sell it
Speaker 7: to me the first time. They were like, look, if
Speaker 7: we love what you're doing, if you want it, we'll
Speaker 7: sell it to you. I'm like, there's no way could
Speaker 7: I could even afford this, So it wasn't a thought.
Speaker 5: So I was just going to want to sell it for.
Speaker 7: It was a couple of million, okay, all right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: So that's right. So it's coming with the plant and
Speaker 2: the land as well.
Speaker 7: Again, this is where you kind of gotta So when
Speaker 7: I first went there, it was fifty acres of land,
Speaker 7: an aquifer and this water plant. The minute I agreed
Speaker 7: to purchase it, and went from fifty to fifteen acres
Speaker 7: of land, the aquafer and the water plant.
Speaker 4: So they cut back on the acres of land. They
Speaker 4: kept everything else, but they cut back on the land. Okay,
Speaker 4: they meaning the owners owners, So you agree to that.
Speaker 7: I agreed to it because at that point, so my
Speaker 7: kids and I. We moved up there in July and
Speaker 7: I worked with them for five months for free. We
Speaker 7: literally helped. I would bottle, my kids would do all
Speaker 7: their deliveries and they had no help. So me thinking
Speaker 7: that I'm helping, it's it's like.
Speaker 2: What's happening in Queens?
Speaker 3: Are we still doing the supermarket deliveries out there since
Speaker 3: we moved up Are you still a nurse at the time?
Speaker 2: Okay, we're full in.
Speaker 7: So I'm fully in the leave of absence. Don't tell them.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's about that.
Speaker 7: I took a medical Uh, so I'm doing that and
Speaker 7: I'm up here and I'm helping, right, So I'm fully in.
Speaker 7: I'm doing the administrative things. My boys are doing their deliveries.
Speaker 7: And my friend who's also a pastor, moves up here
Speaker 7: with us, and I brought them him and his family again,
Speaker 7: his family, I didn't, I don't think.
Speaker 2: I said.
Speaker 7: His family was just got here like three days before
Speaker 7: they shut down for traveling Corona. So I got them
Speaker 7: apartment upstairs. We got an apartment, we started renting out there,
Speaker 7: and we all started going out there and helping.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: So the plan was at this point, let us learn
Speaker 7: the business to see if we can do this. While
Speaker 7: we're in the process, I'm trying to get the money
Speaker 7: to start this business. So eventually I used my house
Speaker 7: as collateral to put a down payment on this property.
Speaker 5: So you refinanced your house.
Speaker 7: I've refinanced my house something like that. Not really, OK
Speaker 7: So I.
Speaker 5: Took what did you do? But that was my question.
Speaker 5: How did like, did you get a bank loan?
Speaker 7: Like nope, I did all of this without a bank loan. Okay,
Speaker 7: So this is the dope part. I went to people
Speaker 7: and I'm like, look, I was able to raise one
Speaker 7: hundred and thirty thousand dollars in two days.
Speaker 5: From people from people, friends, friends, and family.
Speaker 3: It's not with all friends, man, every time somebody they
Speaker 3: got friends buying, No, yeah, we got good friends.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm just saying, like ten years.
Speaker 5: Ago, Well it's not ten years ago.
Speaker 2: Your oh yeah, got new friends?
Speaker 7: No new friends.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 7: I literally went out and I was able to raise
Speaker 7: one hundred and actually it was more like one fifty
Speaker 7: because I tried to keep twenty for working capital.
Speaker 5: Did they become owners of the company just like a loan?
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 7: I got one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in two
Speaker 7: days and I came back to them and I'm like, look, okay,
Speaker 7: I'm going to do this. I'm going to buy it
Speaker 7: from you. But at that point he changed the deal again. No,
Speaker 7: that's when he changed it to when I got.
Speaker 5: There, he thought you was.
Speaker 3: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
Speaker 3: A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring,
Speaker 3: and sure they definitely can be, but understanding of professionals
Speaker 3: routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little,
Speaker 3: day after day. It's like banking with P and C Bank.
Speaker 3: It might seem boring to save, plan and make calculated
Speaker 3: decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is
Speaker 3: what helps you live or more happily fulfilled life. P
Speaker 3: and C Bank Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly
Speaker 3: Boring since eighteen sixty five is a service mark of
Speaker 3: the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. P and C Bank
Speaker 3: National Association Member FDIC Ernest What's Up? You ever walk
Speaker 3: into a small business and everything just works like the
Speaker 3: checkout is fast, the seats are digital, tipping is a breeze,
Speaker 3: and you're out the door before the line even builds.
Speaker 3: Odds are they're using Square. We love supporting businesses that
Speaker 3: run on Square because it just feels seamless. Whether it's
Speaker 3: a local coffee shop, a vendor at a pop up market,
Speaker 3: or even one of our merch partners, Square makes it
Speaker 3: easy for them to take payments, manage inventory, and run
Speaker 3: their business with confidence, all from one simple system. If
Speaker 3: you're a business owner or even just thinking about launching
Speaker 3: something soon, Square is hands down one of the best
Speaker 3: tools out there to help you start, run, and grow.
Speaker 3: It's not just about payments, it's about giving you time
Speaker 3: back so you can focus on what matters most ready.
Speaker 3: To see how Square can transform your business, visit Square
Speaker 3: dot com backslash go backslash eyl to learn more that
Speaker 3: Square dot com backslash go backslash eyl. Don't wait, don't hesitate.
Speaker 3: Let's Square handle the back end so you can keep
Speaker 3: pushing your vision forward.
Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 1: How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use
Speaker 1: Indeed stop struggling to get your job posts seen on
Speaker 1: other job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps
Speaker 1: to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,
Speaker 1: so you can reach the people you want faster. According
Speaker 1: to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have
Speaker 1: forty five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't
Speaker 1: wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 1: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 1: to Indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen right now
Speaker 1: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is
Speaker 1: all you need.
Speaker 7: He thought I was playing right. So when I came
Speaker 7: back and I'm like, okay, I could do this right
Speaker 7: now again, It's really hard for me because I'm like,
Speaker 7: they were really gracious and at the same time very
Speaker 7: I don't know, they were very vicious business people. I
Speaker 7: was I am always going in and thinking the best
Speaker 7: of people, and these were shrewd business people. And because
Speaker 7: they were older, I was pretty much like, oh, they're
Speaker 7: so nice. I think everyone's so nice, but they were
Speaker 7: shrewd business people. And at the end, when we got
Speaker 7: to the closing table October first, we closed, they changed
Speaker 7: again to what so a couple things. I bought everything.
Speaker 7: I bought the trademark, I bought their license in I
Speaker 7: bought everything. I bought a twenty five year old company.
Speaker 7: I bought two hundred and fifty customers and a truck. Right,
Speaker 7: so that all came with fifteen acres of land, an
Speaker 7: aquafer and a factory.
Speaker 5: Right. So you bought the company, You didn't start a
Speaker 5: new company.
Speaker 7: No, about a twenty five year old Company's the name
Speaker 7: of the company, Moxie Lama's Waterworks. But when we got
Speaker 7: to the closing table, they told me that one I
Speaker 7: don't look like a CEO.
Speaker 5: Are you white?
Speaker 7: Yes? And two I don't look like a good representation
Speaker 7: of the brand that their family has built for the
Speaker 7: past fifty years.
Speaker 5: Okay because you're black. Okay did they say you because
Speaker 5: you're black? I would have.
Speaker 7: Actually, they just said, my children and I don't look
Speaker 7: like a good.
Speaker 5: But did you actually did Actually I did it.
Speaker 7: I was hurt because I rolled up my sleeves and
Speaker 7: I helped them.
Speaker 4: So they flat out said, like, that's that's hard, Like
Speaker 4: that's that's kind of crazy if you think about it,
Speaker 4: Like they ain't even sugarcoated.
Speaker 5: You don't look like you don't look like it. That's crazy.
Speaker 7: But it was their daughter more than them.
Speaker 5: The daughter said it.
Speaker 2: She made it back from the top of doors just
Speaker 2: because I'm trying.
Speaker 7: Everything changed when she came.
Speaker 5: She came back, so she's like, what whoa what's the Oh?
Speaker 2: No, how she get because they didn't live in travel then,
Speaker 2: so they did and June.
Speaker 7: He came back in June.
Speaker 2: So she came nine.
Speaker 7: So I think, what are y'all doing? They did not
Speaker 7: want to tell tell the family that they were selling
Speaker 7: the water.
Speaker 5: Plant to a black person, so I don't.
Speaker 7: Even know if it had anything to do with black
Speaker 7: or white at that point. I think the family wanted
Speaker 7: to keep the water plant, but they wanted to sell.
Speaker 7: And I guess the relationship that them and I had
Speaker 7: foster and I was helping them. They were trying to
Speaker 7: sell this company for ten years, and no one could
Speaker 7: see the value in what they had because on paper
Speaker 7: it didn't make sense. On paper, it looked like a
Speaker 7: seventy nine year old and an eighty one year old
Speaker 7: were running a company. They were self employed. They were
Speaker 7: not in business. They were self employed. And I think
Speaker 7: people need to understand there's a big difference between being
Speaker 7: self employed and running a business, and many of us
Speaker 7: in our own in our communities, we're self employed. Even
Speaker 7: when you have a business, we're self employed. When you trade,
Speaker 7: when you trade your time for money.
Speaker 5: No systems in place, that's a fact.
Speaker 7: When you trade your time for money, your self employed systems.
Speaker 2: Yes, save your time, save yourself time, energy.
Speaker 7: And money, energy and money.
Speaker 5: Right, save yourself time, energy and money, save yourself. Yourself
Speaker 5: is going to work. This is another school system.
Speaker 3: This is this is I know yourself is gonna work.
Speaker 2: It's one of those.
Speaker 5: It's one of those.
Speaker 2: It's one of those. As was like, all right, well
Speaker 2: you remember that, you remember that create system?
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, yes, what.
Speaker 5: But it's not correct.
Speaker 7: I know, but it's alwayard a member.
Speaker 2: You never heard that.
Speaker 5: Yes, but it's saved.
Speaker 4: It's saved you stress, time and energy.
Speaker 5: He's a teachers, you.
Speaker 7: Know the E B E B I L squadrant that
Speaker 7: Robert Kawasaki from Rich Dad. Yeah, so really good book.
Speaker 7: I have my kids reading in our program, like I
Speaker 7: think the cool thing to do is give them literature
Speaker 7: that they would not ordinarily read. And that's what I
Speaker 7: did in the financial literacy program. It wasn't necessarily about
Speaker 7: teaching them about money. It was about this very thing
Speaker 7: is teaching them how to manage their resources. And that's
Speaker 7: that That was super important for me. So when long
Speaker 7: story short, we closed finally on October first?
Speaker 4: So how did all right? So they said that they
Speaker 4: universen't a new representation. How did they get over that?
Speaker 7: They needed my money and they took it. That's how
Speaker 7: my money was great?
Speaker 4: But I mean, how would that call? Like you say, okay,
Speaker 4: well I'm not buying and they think, okay, we changed.
Speaker 7: So when we were at the closing table, it's a lot.
Speaker 7: There's a lot that I don't want to like expose
Speaker 7: because it's their personal stuff. So I don't really want
Speaker 7: to get too much into that. I want to be
Speaker 7: respectful of that. But they needed the money, okay, okay,
Speaker 7: So it was just.
Speaker 5: Something when they thought about it, it's like, you know what,
Speaker 5: it's not.
Speaker 7: They took my money, they needed my money. They took
Speaker 7: my money. And then after they gave me a very
Speaker 7: hard time, after you took your money, how did it
Speaker 7: Why I didn't want to sign over the LLC which
Speaker 7: I paid for.
Speaker 5: What they say, we're not given to you.
Speaker 7: They just drunk their feet, right, they I have to
Speaker 7: wait on them, so legally they held onto those documents
Speaker 7: and I just had to wait.
Speaker 2: And you can't even operate the business even though you
Speaker 2: have bought or but.
Speaker 7: We were doing everything. I knew which way right. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so because technically in my clothing, the minute that I
Speaker 7: ad for it, they have to effectuate it and they're
Speaker 7: supposed to sign. So that was That was just very
Speaker 7: interesting and the hardest part of this whole thing, because
Speaker 7: what I did was foster relationship with them. It wasn't
Speaker 7: even so much. I didn't go there to buy a
Speaker 7: water plant. I didn't I didn't know that their water
Speaker 7: plant was for sale. I didn't go there for those purposes.
Speaker 7: But I understand that the God that I serve is
Speaker 7: also a purpose. I'm very much in this space where
Speaker 7: I understand that I was being positioned and it was
Speaker 7: for purpose much bigger than me. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, okay, so all of that's done you but so
Speaker 4: you put your house? Can you talk about that? Like,
Speaker 4: what does that mean? You put your house for collateral?
Speaker 4: Did they take your house.
Speaker 7: Or I took a loan out?
Speaker 4: I guess took a loan against your house and then
Speaker 4: you paid the loan back over the course of time.
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, so you have you have the situation. Now
Speaker 5: you're up and running.
Speaker 7: Yep.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 7: Now, so we closed October first, twenty twenty and in
Speaker 7: the state of New York, I'm the first black woman
Speaker 7: to own and run a spring water bottling plant. So
Speaker 7: I'm thinking this is great. This must be, like, you know,
Speaker 7: going to be easy. He stays on contractually for six
Speaker 7: months to help us through this transition, and then he
Speaker 7: decides not even he I go to the bank and
Speaker 7: try to get a loan. I purchased this company. It's
Speaker 7: twenty five years old, and I'm thinking I should be
Speaker 7: able to get a loan. It has been the hardest
Speaker 7: thing ever. Number One, it was in the midst of
Speaker 7: Corona when they if you didn't have a business prior
Speaker 7: to Corona, the banks were not loaning or lending money right,
Speaker 7: so that became an issue. Secondly, they would not give
Speaker 7: me the LLC, so I had to I had to
Speaker 7: get a lawyer.
Speaker 4: Yeah that was that. Do you have now, Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 4: did the bank ever give you a loan? No, we
Speaker 4: still haven't given.
Speaker 7: So everything we've been doing. We've been doing on my
Speaker 7: on my own.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So all right, so what's the day to day
Speaker 4: operations of running a water water company?
Speaker 5: Water company?
Speaker 7: So cool thing is, so when they were in business,
Speaker 7: they were only working at five percent capacity this business.
Speaker 7: They were working on a Monday for four hours, sixteen
Speaker 7: hours a month, and they were grossing about one hundred
Speaker 7: and thirty thousand six month. Yes, but they were seventy
Speaker 7: nine and eighty one. But they were living off of
Speaker 7: the money that they were making.
Speaker 2: What's five percent capacity? What's that the equivalent?
Speaker 7: So what do you have? Our factory is about twenty
Speaker 7: five thousand square feet. Yeah, we have two production lines.
Speaker 7: One production line does five gallon bottles, four gallon bottles,
Speaker 7: three gallon bottles. It's adjustable, right, that's that one line.
Speaker 7: There's another line that does one gallon bottles, your one leaders,
Speaker 7: your sixteen ounce bottles, your eight ounce bottles. So they're
Speaker 7: two production lines. They were only utilizing the five gallon bottles.
Speaker 7: So those are your five gallon reusable bottles. You'll see
Speaker 7: them at your local doctor's office. And you know, like
Speaker 7: if you go to your range Rover dealership, it's where
Speaker 7: you go press your hot and cold, get your coffee.
Speaker 7: You know those big jugs. They're in that business, right,
Speaker 7: So we were delivering and picking up those waters. We recycle,
Speaker 7: we re rent, and we reuse those bottles. It's a
Speaker 7: very lucrative business because you get to recycle the bottles.
Speaker 4: You recycle used water bottles, the water bottles. What does
Speaker 4: that mean? You recycle it to make new bottles?
Speaker 7: No, no, no, no, So our bottles go onto a conveyor belt,
Speaker 7: they're washed, and they're reused refill. So a lot of
Speaker 7: times when you drink water from those those big jugs,
Speaker 7: they're five gallon jugs. They go through our factories, they
Speaker 7: go in through a machine and then they're sanitized and
Speaker 7: then they're all those jugs.
Speaker 5: So you don't drink from those jugs.
Speaker 2: So you not, We should? We should.
Speaker 3: So when you when you get that, so you're I'm thinking, now,
Speaker 3: since those people were already and this is those customers,
Speaker 3: did you get all the customers that.
Speaker 7: They one hundred and fifty customers? We have some really
Speaker 7: big customers. Walmart's our customer. Toyota for Ford Fish Farm.
Speaker 7: We have a fish farm, so like a lot of
Speaker 7: the fish that we consume are in our supermarkets. They're
Speaker 7: farm raised, so they're not unless you buy wild caught.
Speaker 7: Their farm raised. So we have huge, huge fish fish.
Speaker 5: So what does Walmart buy from you?
Speaker 7: The same tank, the same thing, like what five gallon bottles?
Speaker 5: Five gallon, it's not labeled anything.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they're maximam water water.
Speaker 5: They buy your they buy your water.
Speaker 4: The customers, do you do you have can you like
Speaker 4: if we want to do earn your leisure water, can
Speaker 4: you give us.
Speaker 7: Absolutely could do earn your leisure water? Because what we
Speaker 7: are as a manufacturer, right, so I do have custom
Speaker 7: Like through Way Beverage is one of our customers. We
Speaker 7: simply just fill their water bottles. They come in, they
Speaker 7: bring their water bottles. They'll come with the tractor trailer,
Speaker 7: drop their truck, their their bottles off. We do the
Speaker 7: same thing. They'll come up and pick up. About I
Speaker 7: want to say about ten palette you.
Speaker 2: The labels on?
Speaker 7: Yeah, our machine, not me a machine, Yeah, our machine.
Speaker 7: So what happened, Well, that's for if you come in
Speaker 7: with a five gallon bottle, I would purchase the bottles
Speaker 7: for you, and our bottling company will have them pre
Speaker 7: labeled so they could be silk screen or we'll put
Speaker 7: them on. So it depends on what we're doing for you, right,
Speaker 7: So I have this one through Way Beverages. They do
Speaker 7: about two thousand bottles a week, so they'll bring two
Speaker 7: thousand bottles, drop them off on a Monday, we fill them,
Speaker 7: they come back on a Tuesday Wednesday, and they'll pick
Speaker 7: them back up. So we have a lot of beverage
Speaker 7: warehouses that do just that.
Speaker 3: So when you at the closing table, we'll come back
Speaker 3: to this for a second because this originally started with
Speaker 3: the New York water Boys.
Speaker 7: This originally started.
Speaker 5: Are the New York.
Speaker 2: Water Boys at the table? Are they owners of this
Speaker 2: as well?
Speaker 3: Or is this mom and now my sons are working
Speaker 3: here with the potential to have equity down the road.
Speaker 7: So this is me. I owned the factory, the water plant,
Speaker 7: and the land the business. My partner and I went
Speaker 7: in fifty to fifty on the business, but I've since
Speaker 7: bought him out, and my boys are in charge of distribution,
Speaker 7: of course, but my boys are in charge of distribution,
Speaker 7: so they're in charge of logistics and roots. So every
Speaker 7: time water goes out, that's what they're in charge of.
Speaker 7: So okay, there's still new York Waterboys the the distribution
Speaker 7: leg of our company.
Speaker 4: So now you're sitting on water, so the water keeps
Speaker 4: re furbishing itself.
Speaker 7: Right exact, right, Well, we have and we had a
Speaker 7: hydrology report that was done about twenty five years ago.
Speaker 7: We're kind of due for a new one that gave
Speaker 7: us a three hundred year lifespan. And we get about
Speaker 7: eighty nine million gallons of water in this aquafer that
Speaker 7: passes through every year. So we never deplete our aquifer,
Speaker 7: which is pretty interesting because most aquifers, Like again I
Speaker 7: was telling you about the different way that waters dispersed
Speaker 7: and access to water. So we have about three percent
Speaker 7: of water that's underground, zero point three percent of water
Speaker 7: that's underground. But with this aquafer, ours are is always
Speaker 7: replenishing because of where we are a lot of places
Speaker 7: just have reservoir with reservoirs and these aquifers and they
Speaker 7: dry up over time, but hours because of where we
Speaker 7: are in New York, where we get a lot of rainfall,
Speaker 7: and where we are we get our water just continues
Speaker 7: to fall. We also have an artesian well artesian stream,
Speaker 7: I should say, on our property. Artesian water is water
Speaker 7: that has minerals in it, so it's just a regular
Speaker 7: stream water, mineral water. So you know, is Ourtesian water,
Speaker 7: your Fiji water, s Artigan water, okay, right, and what
Speaker 7: I have is spring water. And in order for us
Speaker 7: to be spring water, that this aquifer has to naturally
Speaker 7: spring up to the top into the surface. And that's
Speaker 7: what I have. So these this couple had this land
Speaker 7: for fifty years. Then you started hurting lamas. The lama
Speaker 7: kept going to this one spot and he couldn't figure
Speaker 7: out why this lama kept going to this one spot,
Speaker 7: and then he figured out that the water was springing
Speaker 7: to the surface. So that's how he found out he
Speaker 7: had that spring.
Speaker 2: So this is incredible.
Speaker 4: What's the process of all right, you have the water
Speaker 4: in your spot and then it goes you have to
Speaker 4: clean the water to actually get you know, it just
Speaker 4: goes straight into a bottle.
Speaker 7: So the water does go through an ozonation process, and
Speaker 7: it does go through you know, like the ozone layer,
Speaker 7: So it does that kills nine of bacteria and viruses.
Speaker 7: It's not a chemical actually, but there is an oznation
Speaker 7: process that happens. It goes through so the water. I
Speaker 7: just did a video on this too yesterday. I'm going
Speaker 7: to put it up. So we have a well that
Speaker 7: pumps to the actual spring. What they did was cemented,
Speaker 7: so it can be contaminated. Right, So it's actually cemented.
Speaker 7: But they ran a pipe and the pipe then pumps
Speaker 7: the water back to the factory and then we have
Speaker 7: a thousand gallon uh you know container that has the water.
Speaker 7: Once the water goes in there, it's then filtered through
Speaker 7: a coal system, a charcoal system, and then it goes
Speaker 7: through an ozonation process.
Speaker 5: What is the ogenation process.
Speaker 7: It's just the ozone is a chemical is oxygenated in
Speaker 7: ozone and it's like a gas. Nothing inside the water,
Speaker 7: So it's like a gas the water goes through. I
Speaker 7: don't know even how to know to explain it better.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to visualize it. So it's going through a process.
Speaker 2: It went through the cold. Now it's really just because
Speaker 2: it's a pure of.
Speaker 7: It's so purifying, right. But our water quality is a
Speaker 7: high premium. Again I found them because of the premium.
Speaker 7: The quality of the water.
Speaker 2: Was it rated you said that you were going to
Speaker 2: taste it.
Speaker 7: It was rated a five out of a five, right,
Speaker 7: so it's really high quality. So it's what that it
Speaker 7: means is the TDS level. It has very low TEDS
Speaker 7: total dissolve solutes, So there's a lot that's not much
Speaker 7: in the water. Naturally because of where it is, it's
Speaker 7: naturally filtrated through a sand and gravel pit. I also
Speaker 7: have a gravel pit too on my property, so it
Speaker 7: is naturally filtrated through the sand and gravel. So by
Speaker 7: the time it gets to this aquifer, it's so refined, right,
Speaker 7: but it does go through a satitation process, very minimal, right,
Speaker 7: So we don't add any chemicals, no chlorino so nothing,
Speaker 7: you're ready, so pure, but we do like hit it
Speaker 7: with this gas to just just to make sure there's
Speaker 7: no viruses or bacteria in there.
Speaker 3: And so from that point does it go into the
Speaker 3: bottles And so they will run it at a five
Speaker 3: percent capacity?
Speaker 2: Ye, what is it?
Speaker 3: What's the number when it's at I guess are you
Speaker 3: running it at one hundred percent?
Speaker 2: Yet? Not yet? So where are we at?
Speaker 7: So we're at we're not even nearly up to capacity.
Speaker 7: We've just been servicing our clients, right, So while we're
Speaker 7: in the position, we're rebranding because I am not going
Speaker 7: out in the world as MAXI. So we're rebranding. We
Speaker 7: need to update our machinery. There's a lot that needs
Speaker 7: to it's super antiquated.
Speaker 5: Right, what's the what's the new name?
Speaker 7: So it's going to be yes Water, Yes Water, y
Speaker 7: s S. So it's Youth Saving Society.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 2: So that was the original name for.
Speaker 7: The Financial Literacy Courses Saving Society, So it'll be yes
Speaker 7: Water Okay.
Speaker 5: Uh huh okay. How are people working?
Speaker 7: So this was a dope part. So we need a
Speaker 7: day laborers. And I went to a local church and
Speaker 7: I'm like, hey, I need some guys. Can you send
Speaker 7: me some guys. I get to guys and I never
Speaker 7: I didn't do a background check. I'm just like, you know,
Speaker 7: we just need DAI labors. So they come in. They
Speaker 7: actually end up being formally incarcerated guys, and they started
Speaker 7: coming in to work with us. I'm like, I didn't
Speaker 7: know that. Even I asked him to pick up some
Speaker 7: furniture from New York City, they couldn't go. He kept
Speaker 7: giving me the run around. Then he comes and tells
Speaker 7: me that he has an ankle bracelet and he needs
Speaker 7: to get permission from his parole officer in order to
Speaker 7: go Once he does this, it opens up another can
Speaker 7: of worms. So we have financial literacy on the first end.
Speaker 7: The water is supposed to support our financial literacy. And
Speaker 7: now I'm doing something else with programming with the Department
Speaker 7: of Corrections to create a system where they can actually work.
Speaker 7: And I don't have a living quarter, so it can't
Speaker 7: be a halfway house. But we're creating programming so they
Speaker 7: can have substantial amount of money to transition back into society.
Speaker 7: So I'm in the process of working through do C
Speaker 7: with that right now too.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I'm a doer though, so even if I don't know
Speaker 7: how to do it, I'm that person who understands, like
Speaker 7: I need to put the right people in place to
Speaker 7: do Like that's just I'm the doer.
Speaker 5: So you got two people that's working there that's actually bottling.
Speaker 7: The water on our what it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's machines that's actually doing they just like
Speaker 4: doing the lake workers.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I would just saying so that the boys are distributing,
Speaker 3: what's the distribution, what's the radius of how far they're going.
Speaker 7: With upstate New York and they go as far as
Speaker 7: Lake Georgia. Are you familiar with Lake Georgia upstate New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the largest lake in the state.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So interestingly, like we supply most of Lake George, Lake George,
Speaker 7: we even have Great Adventures as one of our clients.
Speaker 7: So Lake George six Flags. Great Adventures own Great Escapes
Speaker 7: upstate New York, so we don't come down to Jersey.
Speaker 7: They own Great Escape upstate, so they're also are clients.
Speaker 7: So he had to really substanti show business. And our
Speaker 7: clientele was really great as well. It was just he
Speaker 7: was just not maximizing what he had and again for him,
Speaker 7: it was maxed, right, So they only could do so much.
Speaker 7: They Where we are it's very rural. We're in the mountain,
Speaker 7: so it's very hard to get people to come up
Speaker 7: and work and stay up there unless you live up there. Right.
Speaker 4: So so okay, so the natural resource play, All right,
Speaker 4: let's talk about this water. There's no types of water, right,
Speaker 4: Distilled water, spring water, what's the science behind that?
Speaker 7: Just basically the source of it? Right, So our teesing
Speaker 7: water just mean it has minerals in it, and that's
Speaker 7: usually from a lake. It has to be spring and water.
Speaker 7: For it to be spring water, it has to spring
Speaker 7: to the surface for it to be spring water. Distilled
Speaker 7: water is processed water. That means it's just boiled and
Speaker 7: they use a process of osmosis to separate your salutes,
Speaker 7: which are your solids, from your water, and then they
Speaker 7: take the solid. So you would hear a lot of
Speaker 7: companies say and and again, oh it's better because it's
Speaker 7: more refined. We would beg to differ, right, So our
Speaker 7: water should have some elements and some natural elements and
Speaker 7: and and in it, because that's we're made up of
Speaker 7: those natural metals, right, So you do need some sorts
Speaker 7: of metals in your water. So I would definitely look
Speaker 7: at that too. You don't want water that is so
Speaker 7: refined that you take out all of the properties that
Speaker 7: your body actually needs. And that's my nursing met telling
Speaker 7: you that same thing.
Speaker 2: Different.
Speaker 7: Purified is pretty much the same.
Speaker 5: The best water is spring water.
Speaker 7: No, there's no best water, right, So best water natural
Speaker 7: spring water is natural.
Speaker 5: Natural water is better than distilled water.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So again, okay, so it's like, yeah, like the periodic table.
Speaker 5: All the stuff is coming.
Speaker 4: Back to cool. I remember, yeah, I don remember, I
Speaker 4: remember what you're talking about. I should have paid more attention.
Speaker 2: I tried.
Speaker 4: So like in Texas when people like strike oil and
Speaker 4: it's like they can get brought out by like Egxon
Speaker 4: and get like one hundreds of millions of dollars, Like
Speaker 4: can something like that happen in the water business as well?
Speaker 7: I have been offered millions and millions of dollars for
Speaker 7: your from my factory already already.
Speaker 5: What those But how come to other people? Were they
Speaker 5: not offered that?
Speaker 7: That's right? So they were poland Spring tried to buy them,
Speaker 7: and so just Water tried to buy them. So some
Speaker 7: companies did try to buy them, but he didn't want
Speaker 7: to buy it out. So I'm we're one of very
Speaker 7: few independent water companies left. We have these large conglomerates
Speaker 7: that are buying up water sources and they're vaulting them.
Speaker 7: So what does that look like? December seventh, twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: Water is a commodity and it's being so traded on
Speaker 7: the Nasdaq.
Speaker 5: That's a fact.
Speaker 2: That is a fact, right, Yeah.
Speaker 7: So that's something to look at. Goldman Sachs in two thousand,
Speaker 7: I want to say eighteen said that water will be
Speaker 7: the new petroleum. That's very scary too, right, So there's
Speaker 7: obviously something that they see and they know, and we're
Speaker 7: always the last to find out.
Speaker 2: So this is a I mean it's a water story,
Speaker 2: but this is like a goban.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you're opposed to selling.
Speaker 7: I am not going to sell like we come from.
Speaker 7: I'm going to move and change this narrative that we
Speaker 7: don't own anything if there is going this so water
Speaker 7: so scarce. We saw what happened in Flint, right, we
Speaker 7: saw what happened in even New Mexico. We see what
Speaker 7: happened in Africa, in northern Africa, all parts of Africa.
Speaker 7: So again I was telling you before that the largest
Speaker 7: part of the clean water source goes to our agriculture
Speaker 7: seven percent. So if we don't have clean water, if
Speaker 7: we don't have clean life for our water essential it's essential.
Speaker 5: Is you hear what they're doing. What they're taking salt
Speaker 5: watering and then turned it into drinking water.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 7: But again that's an amazing, amazing right, but if you
Speaker 7: look at desalination, it's super expensive, takes a long time
Speaker 7: to do, and the amount of energy that it costs
Speaker 7: to do that. It doesn't make sense because they're taking
Speaker 7: their clean water to exact so industry is the second sector.
Speaker 7: So the first sector most of our money goes to,
Speaker 7: I mean, our water goes to is agriculture. The second
Speaker 7: sector industry. So your clothes, your technology, your computers, your cameras, ourself,
Speaker 7: everything goes through this and we oil, steel, all of
Speaker 7: these things. You clean water, and then what do they do?
Speaker 7: They in turn then dump that pollution back into our
Speaker 7: clean water systems, which even like so we have a
Speaker 7: real problem, we only have how bad is the problem?
Speaker 7: We have a real problem.
Speaker 4: I think people need to know, like how like if
Speaker 4: they can understand, like, okay, in one hundred.
Speaker 7: Years, we're dead, like all right, So they're predicting wars
Speaker 7: are going I've heard and I'm bred and you guys
Speaker 7: can look at it. Look this up yourself. The next
Speaker 7: war will be over water because if we cannot make
Speaker 7: food to sustain ourselves, we're going to start fighting for survival.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: So these are the things that we need to really
Speaker 7: look at and really take really really serious, very.
Speaker 4: Serious crisis outside of America, Israel, Palestine, that's a major issue,
Speaker 4: and that's why they're doing that with the salt order.
Speaker 4: But that's one that they have a lot of issues
Speaker 4: obviously with that that's one of the main issues. Palestinians
Speaker 4: don't really have fresh water, and that's an issue Africa,
Speaker 4: for sure, it's an issue. I watched these documentaries, I
Speaker 4: watched these things, and it's like, you know, it's something
Speaker 4: that Americans a lot of times get jaded because we
Speaker 4: don't have that issue, that issue, so it's like it's
Speaker 4: not happening to me an effect, I.
Speaker 3: Feel that there was at one point where they had
Speaker 3: the Water for Life campaign and we started we start
Speaker 3: to see it and paid more attention to it, and
Speaker 3: it was like once we didn't hear about Water for
Speaker 3: Life anymore.
Speaker 2: It was like people just kind of forgot about it.
Speaker 2: But the crisis has only gotten worse.
Speaker 7: Ye look at California right with the drought. So these
Speaker 7: are the things that create the scarcity, so drought, pollution, population.
Speaker 7: We have the same amount of water that we did
Speaker 7: one hundred years ago, and we'll have the same amount
Speaker 7: of water one hundred years from now, right, and we
Speaker 7: continue to grow as a people, and we consume a lot.
Speaker 7: It takes fifteen thousand liters of water to make two
Speaker 7: pounds of beef, and we consume a lot of beef.
Speaker 7: So when I say, agriculture is not just growing food.
Speaker 7: Its meat consumption is the highest. Wheat is about I
Speaker 7: want to say, one point five leaders. There's wheat, there's rice,
Speaker 7: is about three point five leaders of water. But the
Speaker 7: largest fifteen thousand leaders of water go into two pounds
Speaker 7: of beef.
Speaker 4: And it's like, you know, people like Elon Musk talk
Speaker 4: about colonizing Mars. It may sound like he's fantasizing, but
Speaker 4: he's dead serious. And it's like for a lot of
Speaker 4: different reasons, but we're we're already destroying earth and raping
Speaker 4: its resources at a vicious rate. So either we stop
Speaker 4: or we find somewhere else to live. So he's like,
Speaker 4: all right, we got to live somewhere else. I might
Speaker 4: fossil what else that has resource colonized this situation, take
Speaker 4: the resources, and by the time they get tomorrow, they'll
Speaker 4: already be the landlord.
Speaker 5: They have to pay me to just live here, be
Speaker 5: the real It's crazy until it happens. Yeah, that's a fact.
Speaker 3: No, I'm thinking about the agriculture because even if you
Speaker 3: look in some of these the Middle American cities and states,
Speaker 3: you just see that water just running and running all day,
Speaker 3: all day, just wasting water.
Speaker 7: But what we see is like so big business. I
Speaker 7: have been approached by these larger companies like Saratoga Water
Speaker 7: was brought up by I Wanta se Pepsi a few
Speaker 7: years ago. So we're one of very few, and like,
Speaker 7: my goal is to stay an independent, minority water source
Speaker 7: because we see what our future, well not even our future.
Speaker 7: We've seen what history has history has shown us. We're
Speaker 7: at the bottom of the totem pole. We saw that
Speaker 7: in Flint. We see what again. I bring up Flint
Speaker 7: because water is there, but it was the infrastructure, which
Speaker 7: is another issue. America's infantstructure when it comes to water
Speaker 7: is over one hundred years old, right, and they say
Speaker 7: there's five trillion dollars to upgrade that. We're never ever
Speaker 7: ever going to be in a good space if we're
Speaker 7: relying on them to provide us with something as something
Speaker 7: as natural as not even as natural, as essential as water.
Speaker 2: So being that it is a commodity, yep.
Speaker 3: Long term, do you see yourself potentially going headed into
Speaker 3: the stock organ with this?
Speaker 7: That could be a possibility. What we're doing super so
Speaker 7: what I couldn't sleep the other night. I was like
Speaker 7: up for like two days I couldn't sleep. So something
Speaker 7: dropped into my spirit and I'm like, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 7: to do a Kickstarter campaign, but I'm going to attack
Speaker 7: a coin to it. So for every something, yeah yeah,
Speaker 7: so for a water coin. So for every bottle, for
Speaker 7: every dollar that you go to our kicks, start a
Speaker 7: campaign and help us with right, for every dollar, you'll
Speaker 7: get a coin, not a coin, you'll get a token.
Speaker 7: For every ten tokens, you'll get a gallon of water.
Speaker 7: That's about eight bottles, right, so seven and a half,
Speaker 7: so I estimated to about eight bottles of water. So
Speaker 7: every ten dollars you'll get a coin. So for every dollar,
Speaker 7: you get a token. For every ten you get a coin,
Speaker 7: and then you'll get a gallon of water. So I'm
Speaker 7: going to pre sell three million gallons of water.
Speaker 2: It's a lot.
Speaker 7: I needed to figure out how I can raise money
Speaker 7: to keep this in our community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that's what I mean.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking to myself, right, they give it to me
Speaker 3: for or they didn't give it to me. I got
Speaker 3: it for one point five yep, millions getting offered within
Speaker 3: four months.
Speaker 2: That's not typical. Less less than four months yep.
Speaker 7: Yeap upwards of twenty upwards of twenty.
Speaker 5: Better person to me.
Speaker 2: Love with the water, y'all, I'm out of here.
Speaker 5: A Lisia has been earned. Gotts go horrible yourself.
Speaker 7: I honestly feel like God has made me a servant
Speaker 7: of water and I don't know what it is. Again,
Speaker 7: from the very beginning, I do not want to be
Speaker 7: in the water business.
Speaker 2: He just went to get I want.
Speaker 7: To taste water. But I feel like I was positioned
Speaker 7: for such a time and I feel like I'm a
Speaker 7: small piece of a big puzzle. Right because earn your leisure.
Speaker 4: I feel like we should do all a fundraising campaign.
Speaker 4: We gotta do something earn Alesia water, something like that too.
Speaker 4: I feel like I believe in this situation. I'm thinking
Speaker 4: of massive pied too.
Speaker 3: I know we like with like like Harley Kennon, but
Speaker 3: I'm if somebody's offering twenty mili, now imagine the five years.
Speaker 5: Imagine what really worse? What is that brain? They probably
Speaker 5: worth five hundred millions.
Speaker 7: And those are the numbers that they were kind of
Speaker 7: kind of telling me. So he thought I was going
Speaker 7: to be real simple and be like, oh yes, sir,
Speaker 7: please give me a box. Sorry, no, like I understood
Speaker 7: what I understand what I have. I did it initially, right.
Speaker 7: I came into this super blind. But I think because
Speaker 7: I think of because of who I am and why
Speaker 7: I'm in this space to help people. I know why
Speaker 7: I'm here. I know what I'm supposed to do. And
Speaker 7: we don't know what the next ten years is going
Speaker 7: to look like. We saw what Corona looked like, right,
Speaker 7: and we saw the lack of access, and we understand
Speaker 7: that people who are in poverty will suffer the most
Speaker 7: and they look like us.
Speaker 5: That's a fact. That's a fact.
Speaker 4: No our solution on that, because that's definitely something that's commendable.
Speaker 4: And yeah, you know, keep your eyes and your ears
Speaker 4: open because you know, they play all kinds of games. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they try to fagle a situation and take the land.
Speaker 4: Happens all the time.
Speaker 7: They try, they try, they try.
Speaker 2: So you do y'all live up there now?
Speaker 7: I moved up there. I moved up there in July
Speaker 7: so I could be close to the factory. So I'm
Speaker 7: about twenty fifteen, twenty minutes away, and I'm up there
Speaker 7: every day. I drive back and forth. I come down
Speaker 7: to the city on a Thursday. I'm back up there
Speaker 7: on Sunday night. So that's that's what I need to
Speaker 7: do possible. So I understand what the company needs at
Speaker 7: this point to make it great, right, to make it
Speaker 7: be able in order for us to compete. I understand
Speaker 7: what it needs at this point because I've been in
Speaker 7: the business, I've been working it, I've been doing it,
Speaker 7: and I've sacrificed so much to be in this space.
Speaker 7: Right so this when this came to me, I couldn't
Speaker 7: sleep for two days. I'm like, get it. I'm going
Speaker 7: to just pre sell water like that's it. I'm not
Speaker 7: going to ask another person for a dollar. I'm going
Speaker 7: to sell water because that's what I have, that's what
Speaker 7: i'm that's what I have, and this is what we're
Speaker 7: gonna do.
Speaker 2: Can change your life, shine, that's the fact. Six months
Speaker 2: to change your life.
Speaker 3: Month Corona change your lives and obviously it's just's changed yours.
Speaker 4: That's amazing, powerful, very enjoyable conversation. So how how can
Speaker 4: the people support? How can they find out more information?
Speaker 4: How can they buy the water? What's the social media website?
Speaker 5: All that information?
Speaker 7: So I'm at on Instagram, I'm at Paula McCarthy that's
Speaker 7: p a U. I guess you guys will put it
Speaker 7: on there too, right p a U l l A
Speaker 7: McCarthy m c c A r t h y. I'm
Speaker 7: at Paula McCarthy and then you can, I guess from there,
Speaker 7: we'll kind of funnel everything out of our instagram. My
Speaker 7: website is Youth Saving Society, and that's pretty much our
Speaker 7: I wanted to kind of keep these kind of things
Speaker 7: too a little separate, So Yes Water will have a
Speaker 7: landing page. It'll just be where you can go and
Speaker 7: see and get information about a fundraising. So that's yes
Speaker 7: Water dot com, y.
Speaker 2: S S y s S.
Speaker 5: Troy House keeping it on. Yeah.
Speaker 2: First, I want to give a huge shout to our Boyfriencis.
Speaker 3: He called me and said, true, I just met I
Speaker 3: just heard one of the most amazing people I've ever
Speaker 3: heard speak.
Speaker 5: Wait, he's here speak at Clubhouse.
Speaker 3: He heard on co House and he was like, a
Speaker 3: story is so dope. You got to hear it. I said,
Speaker 3: all right, man, sure. Two days later, Jamol calls me
Speaker 3: and says, Troy.
Speaker 2: You got I just heard the story you ever heard
Speaker 2: of your life.
Speaker 3: You got to meet this this this young lady and
Speaker 3: I said, all right, cool, I'm gonna call it, and
Speaker 3: then Jamoal called me four days ladies like you ain't
Speaker 3: calling I'm like, I'm gonna call it. So I want
Speaker 3: to give those two gentlemen credit. H So shout out
Speaker 3: to them and shout out to everybody on patreon dot
Speaker 3: com y'all know to start product pay program. Shout to
Speaker 3: all the earners out of T five that are part
Speaker 3: of E y L University, number one place for everything
Speaker 3: in business, finance and entrepreneurship. We are tremendously uh happy
Speaker 3: with all the growth that we're seeing from our earnest.
Speaker 3: They're not just taking information to actually implying it and
Speaker 3: putting it in the Facebook group. So we're actually watching
Speaker 3: these stories and watching people create businesses and create their
Speaker 3: own generational wealth. So we are tremendously honored to be
Speaker 3: a part of that. So shouting to y'all, shout everybody
Speaker 3: supporting the merch and yeah, man, we appreciate everything that
Speaker 3: y'all done.
Speaker 5: Yeah for sure, Thank you guys for rocking with us.
Speaker 5: We'll see you next week.
Speaker 6: Peace peace, My graduates from my school being forced back
Speaker 6: drop drop drop.
Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 1: How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use Indeed.
Speaker 1: Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other
Speaker 1: job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to
Speaker 1: the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so
Speaker 1: you can reach the people you want faster. According to
Speaker 1: Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty
Speaker 1: five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
Speaker 1: any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 1: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash pod katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 1: to Indeed dot com slash pod katz thirteen right now
Speaker 1: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is
Speaker 1: all you need