Creating Water-Rich Communities
It’s crazy what is happening with water all over the globe, not just in the US, as Ivan showed us. Which makes it vital to take action and do something about it. But what can YOU do? Join our crusade and Invest in Water. Our portfolio calculator demonstrated it on the show… Water On Demand can rescue your portfolio while benefitting water! As a private program, underwritten by a public company it has unique advantages… Find out about them here!
Transcript from recording
Opening
Riggs: We have a killer app. We ran into this last couple of years where all of a sudden segments that I call human communities, really these are communities that are forced to make sure that they have their own water self sufficiency, like housing developments, like trailer parks, motor home campgrounds, freeway travel stops, hotels. We already have a number of customers already in these areas who are paying. What we’re going to do with this is simply putting the icing on the cake by adding Water On Demand™ to accelerate the adoption. Make it simple. So it’s a full acceleration.
Welcome, everyone and Water is the New Gold. October 27th and Water Like an Oil Well™, is the emerging income asset.
Of course, we have the usual Safe Harbor statement and disclaimer on the fundraising that we do.
I thought, first of all, I’d just say hi, not be the little thumbnail in the corner, but actually be on screen for you. We have a very, very good show lined up. I think you’ll enjoy it very much.
$25 Million Equity Line
So with that, I’m going to jump into the news of the week. So we announced that we opened a $25 million equity line. What does that mean? Well, it does not mean we’re going to get $25 Million soon. It is gosh, it might take two, three, four years to get it. So let me explain how that works. First of all, let’s go through the announcement. This was an equity financing agreement to purchase up to $25 million in stock with timing and amounts of the purchases to be determined at the sole discretion of Oakland, OriginClear That’s very important. So who is GHS? Well, they’re a really excellent investment bank. And let me explain a little bit how it works.
Cap Table
First of all, what’s it for? Well, the primary purpose here is to clean up the cap table. We have, I like to call Alphabet City, because every time you do some special offering, you start a new preferred share. And I think we’re up to like X or something like that. We’re about to go into the A’s. Well, you know, Nasdaq doesn’t love that. And so we’re going to be just cleaning these out and reducing them dramatically. So that’s number one, because we do want to uplift eventually.
M&A
Secondly, we are planning to do mergers and acquisitions again. Why? Well, it’s very simple. As you know, we’re raising capital in Water On Demand, and that’s money we can spend on getting systems built for water as a service. That’s great. But our operating divisions are completely slammed. They’re maxed out. They’re just completely wall to wall business, which is great. But it means that they’re not resources for these waters as a service assignments.
Partnerships
Now, what we’ve done in the short term, and it’s always going to be there is partnerships with other water service companies. We have one right now with a company called Envirogen®. European Based, but they are both in Europe and in North America and they are completely qualified to do the whole operations and maintenance thing. But the optimum thing would be if we had more companies because then we would pick up that revenue and so the network would be ours. So that’s kind of what we’re developing is a plan.
Accretive Acquisitions
You’ll be hearing more about it because A, it’s accretive. What does accretive mean? To accrete means to add on, right? It adds revenue without doing it the slow way. Remember that Modular Water Systems™ started, we started Modular Water Systems in 2018 and it wasn’t really until 2022 that we really started moving into high speed. So four years, that’s the organic growth of a business from scratch.
Whereas when we acquired a Progressive Water Treatment, you know, 2015, three months later we were counting the revenue. They’d been in business already for about ten years. And so that is definitely the way to go. Now there’s this pitfalls, which again, I’ll be discussing. We’re going to do another CEO briefing on this because this is very important.
Pitfalls
The pitfalls are you don’t want to buy a company where the management is now going to retire. We don’t want to be managing a bunch of separate companies. And number two, they should be in the service business. We don’t really need to buy technology companies. We have a great technology for these Water Systems in a Box™, so that just covers it briefly. Again, much more to be discussed about M&A in the weeks to come. It’s going to be so exciting. Now, again, I can’t guarantee we’ll do it, but I definitely can tell you that, because I’m not allowed to, but believe me, we are planning that direction.
How it Works
Now, how the financing line works is basically GHS buys shares at a small discount to market, 20% discount, which is very fair. But they, they only buy when we tell them we want them to. So they can’t just go in and buy. It’s entirely at our discretion. We could literally, for four years, just do nothing at all. Secondly, there is a limit to how much they can do per the market volume. So the idea is this is not going to weigh on the stock. It’s designed so that it goes with the success of the company. As the volume increases in the stock, this will be very healthy. So it’s highly limited in the engagement agreement.
Founding Investors
So, but here’s the thing. I love GHS Investments, but they’re Wall Street people. And what do they care about? They don’t care about water. They care about buying shares and making that little risk. The little arbitrage between 100% and 80%. And they make a little money on the difference and that’s their business. But what we need as founders for Water On Demand, for the new pump station business, for all these other rollouts is founding investors. Why? Because founding investors care. They are loyal. We’ve had some investors have been with us since the very, very beginning, and we’ve taken good care of them, which is why they’re still with us.
Secondly, they spread the word. They are champions. And in fact, today I had a big meeting with a bunch of ambassadors that have been recruited by our partner, PhilanthroInvestors®. I’m going to feature that meeting in either next CEO briefing or the one after. And this is what it’s all about, is spreading the word. So they’re wonderful for that. So that’s the story there, and we’ll be happy to answer any questions that people bring up in the chat. So feel free because I’m going to keep on going. But as you know, we have a policy of always answering all questions.
All right. Well, I have a video. This is a report from the field. Our strategic partner, Ivan Anz, is touring South America and he’s got a report.
Now, just to show you what’s going on down there. There he is. This is a Facebook post that he made and this is totally unexpected. Argentina is not a desert. It’s got the Andes. It should have lots of water. What’s going on there? What you can see in the bottom, Right. That’s what’s going on with the Hoover Dam as well, right? So this is not a it’s not just happening in Nevada and California. It’s happening all over the world. And the stories are, there’s many of them, and let’s hear what Ivan has to say.
Start of video presentation
Mr. Ivan Anz, I see that you are deep in well, you’re in your office, but I also know that you’re in Argentina somewhere, right?
Ivan: Riggs, I am moving on expanding the PhilanthroInvesting world in Latin America, because I feel that the Latin American investors needs to solve issues in the planet, as you are doing with with the water.
Riggs: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. So you first went to Colombia, is that right?
Ivan: Yes, I first went to Colombia and we had a that was two weeks ago or two or three weeks ago. We did a press round where we highlight as one of our philanthroinvesting endeavors that we support. And then we went from there to have a meeting with investors privately, we had around 40 investors coming from, from Colombia to Bogota, and we even had people that flew from Cali just to listen to PhilanthroInvestors presentation, which is like 2 hours flight.
And now they are meeting with Omar Pallone, who is our PhilanthroInvestors Latin America, Latin American founder and representative. You know, he’s walking them through the process of now onboarding. And we are, you know, in the challenges of the multi languages. And the great thing is that OriginClear created all the documents in Spanish. We have the subscription documents in Spanish, you know, the onboarding form and so on, and that’s very helpful. So our PhilanthroInvestors from Colombia can onboard, I think we have like around five people that is on the process of onboarding and becoming Water PhilanthroInvestors, yes.
Riggs: That’s wonderful. And then you went to Argentina, is that right?
Ivan: Yes. And now we are in a plan for the expansion and expansion in Argentina. We are, at the same time we just finished to onboard our founder in Colorado, and then one of the Thursday briefings. He is going to be doing an event on November nine in Colorado for PhilanthroInvestors. And we are onboarding also our founder in Utah. In the next three or four weeks, we just closed this week the founder for Santa Fe, which is an area in Argentina, and she’s putting an event on November 17. So I will be in Santa Fe doing an event for 100 plus people, and she’s opening an office in that area with PhilanthroInvestors and having the, I don’t know how it’s in English, but the el cartel, cartel.
Riggs: Oh, yes, Yes. A poster, basically.
Ivan: Yeah. A big poster. Like the Office will have OriginClear posters inside the office. And when people come have communication with OriginClear, Water On Demand and so on as well as the other PhilanthroInvestors. And so that’s happening in Santa Fe. Then we are doing an event in Buenos Aires and we are doing a press round in Buenos Aires. And the number one, that happened, that’s happening November ten Riggs, the event in Buenos Aires. Then November 17 is Rosario, which is Santa Fe’s, it’s one of the, it’s one of the financial centers of Argentina. It’s like, if you have New York and you have Chicago, Chicago is like below New York, right? In size. So Rosario is below Buenos Aires. It’s the second one in the Argentinian markets.
Riggs: Well, that’s fascinating. So it’s probably more based on agricultural and so forth, because it’s.
Ivan: Yes, based in agriculture. Yes, that’s totally right. That’s the center for that.
Riggs: Fantastic. Well, now, what’s what’s interesting, of course, it’s wonderful that you’re bringing Latin American investors in on Water On Demand, because I don’t know if you caught this last week, but I presented a calculator that would show somebody could input his investments. These are just sample investments in different things where they stand today, which is a little bit up, of course. But then one year from now, the way things are going, they might have some losses.
But the Water On Demand investment is so rich because we’re these people are founders that at the predicted price, this is at the predicted price of $0.30, which is ten times where we are today. Then it actually takes the portfolio from -19% to plus 29%. Now let’s say the price stays the same. It stays $0.03. They’re still ahead 1%, even though they were 19% below.
Ivan: Wow.
Riggs: These values are delivered mostly instantly, because, as you know, the way we treat founders is with a lot of shares. And then they also get the royalty from Water On Demand. There’s also another piece of good news is that because it’s taking a while to get the first Water On Demand pilot program, we are putting the money to work on secured debt basis. That earns a lot of money for the investors. So they’re going to start seeing checks pretty soon and this is going to be good news for them.
You know, it’s just these Water On Demand projects, as you know, you’re working on one in Utah and another one in Florida, that it’s going to take a while. It’s just like building housing, right? It’s the same kind of concept. So this will allow us to deliver some royalties. But the main thing, as I was saying, is the value of the stock. So this is an interesting calculator. We’ll be, we’ll be creating it as a web calculator that people can put in their own numbers and completely confidential. They see how it can go for them and they can change numbers. So let’s say they only want to do 10,000. It has to be put in here and change the amount and it will show exactly how they will do. So that is.
Ivan: That’s that’s amazing Riggs. You know what? What we been finding in the Latin American people, specifically in Colombia, that I already went deep and had all the presentations and so on, is that they are like, is this real Ivan? Can, can I really save water? And how is that 165%? No, no. We are making 15, 20% in Colombian pesos, which is, with the inflation, it’s like making like 3% a year in U.S. dollars. So is this is like real?
And one of the things that I realize is that, what the amazing thing that we have in OriginClear and Water On Demand Riggs is that, you know, the viewpoint from Warren Buffett: If you want, if you want an investment to be good, you need to be thinking investing in long term because in companies that have the potential of having the the fundamental improve in long term.
And then on the other side, you have the Elon Musk viewpoint, right? Which is like, boom, you know, let’s blow money now to the top. So it’s kind of you have you have both possibilities, both inside the great offering that we put together with OriginClear and Water On Demand. You have the long term, wait and you have the possibility of the now, by the stock going from $0.03 to $0.05 or $0.06, which is like boom, you know, it’s like it’s just the Elon Musk viewpoint.
But then you have the Warren Buffett, together with where we are, the housing developments are coming, Utah, Florida and the, and for the future, right? So, it’s just the perfect place to water philanthroinvest, you know?
Riggs: Well, exactly, because everyone wants to be early in an investment, to be the early player. And frankly, retail investors don’t usually have that opportunity. Well, here is an opportunity to be early. Now, while we were talking, I added line 12, which was cash, because you have a problem with cash in Argentina, right? So they say, okay, well, I’m holding some cash, I’m just doing some ups, maybe down 10%, another 10% in one year from now. So that’s cash. But it might be much more for somebody who’s trapped in Argentinian currency, right?
Ivan: Yes, exactly. So for Argentinian currency, but Argentineans that do use dollar that they have used dollars, the only possibility they have is they either buy cars, you know, that’s a possibility there. And cars hold the value in the kind of compared with how the U.S. dollar is doing. If you don’t use it much, or real estate. That’s the only two things that historically the Argentinians have been doing. But now they have the possibility of learning about this and they will learn between November ten and November 17 of this. And the portfolio calculator will show them that this is a no brainer.
Riggs: Wow. Well, that is really, really great. You and I are going to work to make this much sharper, but I think it really gives a good idea that an early stage investment in a public company has a tremendous amount of leverage. In other words, it’s a private program, but it’s underwritten by a public company. And so it’s the best of both worlds. So anyway, we’ll be discussing that further. But I think it’s a very graphic way to show how people can do now.
Ivan: That amazing Riggs. And for Argentinians and for Latin American people it’s becoming more real and real. Because I don’t know if you saw in my Facebook, I think you saw in my Facebook post I did this week, that is not only Vegas, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, that is having the lakes draw down. It’s happening in Latin America, it’s happening in Argentina, that is very, very rich in water!
Are you kidding me? Like and it’s becoming more real for them and I now see Argentinians, so your vision Riggs, that you started like five or six years ago that you had that you know, your cognition as an earlier founder and visionary on this world. Basically now Argentina is getting affected and what are we talking about? This is a very resourceful country for water.
Riggs: It’s crazy. When I saw that Argentina itself is becoming drought, it’s it’s horrendous. So I think we are here at the right place because people want to know what to do. And your philosophy is always to do to do well by doing good. So in this case you are, they’re doing a good thing, but they’re also going to do very well. And people need to know that all these existing investments, they’ll come back. But the key is in the meantime, you want to have some gains to offset this. And that way your spouse is not going to be angry at you.
Ivan: Exactly.
Riggs: Well, I love all these things you’re setting up. Fantastic both in South America and also in America. You are basically creating reach for our story and I really appreciate that. So, keep up the good work and make sure you eat that amazing Argentinian food, Oh.
Ivan: Exactly, exactly. And exactly, and then when we do the next stage or we need to set some goal Riggs that then we both come together and ski in Las Linnaeus in Argentina.
Riggs: Las Linnaeus, I love it. I can’t wait, this next summer. Meanwhile, this winter, I’ll take you, we’ll go to Utah or something. We’ll have some fun.
Ivan: Yes. When I am there in January. Let’s do it.
Riggs: All right, my friend. Best of luck. Buenas hits .
Ivan: Thank you amigo. Have a wonderful day.
Riggs: All right,
Ivan: Bye bye.
Riggs: Bye bye.
End of video presentation
Ask the Investor
Riggs: All right. Now we have another show here. As you know, we get with investors who’ve invested and we ask them why they did it. So here’s an interview with a wonderful lady, Victoria, who invested actually recently as a result of Ken going to London for the Family Office Forum. And she works for a very long time investor of ours, and she jumped in. Let’s see what she has to say.
Start of video presentation
Riggs: Hello, Victoria, and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed on our continuing series of Ask the Investor. So welcome.
Victoria: Thank you.
Riggs: So you work for my good friend Adam Koller at his educational company, am I right?
Victoria: That’s correct, yes. That’s how I first encountered OriginClear.
Riggs: Tutors, International Educational Services, as I understand it.
Victoria: That’s correct. Yeah.
Riggs: What is your role there?
Victoria: Oh, my goodness. I wear many hats. My official job title is COO, so chief of operations. But I mean, that can range from anything from the minute details of day to day running of the company right through to sort of really larger scale projects.
Riggs: What part of England are you speaking from?
Victoria: I’m from the very south coast. I live near Poole, which is sort of south and in the middle ish. So yeah, I’m about 200 meters away from the sea.
Riggs: What’s what’s your impression of what we do and how we’re doing it?
Victoria: Yeah, I think, you know, you’ve got this piece of tech. You’re doing really good stuff with it. You’ve got really good ideas for for where you want to go with it. I can see hundreds of applications for it going forwards. I’m excited to be part of the journey. I think that’s where I’m at with it. I don’t know the specifics. I’m one of the hats I definitely don’t wear is scientist. I’m not even going to try and explain the science behind it. It’s just very clever people doing very clever things and I like to kind of ride on the coattails.
Riggs: Well, like you, I have scientists. I, you Know. I try to choose the right ones, shall we say. And you’re right, we’re we’re very pleased with it. Took us, we started June of 2018 launching this Modular Water line. And it’s been a lot of hard work, but it’s exploded. And as you know, we also have this interesting way of financing the systems for companies that don’t have to pay upfront.
It’s been really interesting. Most recently people are starting to realise that as a brand new asset, water is all upside, It’s all upside and there’s very few things you can say that about these days. I mean. I don’t dare invest anymore in regular things. I have no idea what to invest in anymore. It’s. I don’t know about you, but I…
Victoria: Well, we’ve just started our investing game, so, Originclear, I think you were the first investment that we made.
Riggs: Wow.
Victoria: Yeah, I know. It’s exciting, isn’t it? What an accolade. But it’s, you know, you’ve got a product that we believe in that we, we like the science behind it. This is me and my husband. We like science behind it much as I don’t, I mean, I understand it when it’s explained to me. It’s just obviously not my field. So you’re doing all the right things. We’re quite environmentally minded as well, and I think that’s going to be a huge concern for for a lot of people.
But the great thing about OriginClear is if you’re investing in it, it’s a case of people who want to invest in things to do good for the planet are going to come away happy from that transaction because investing in water is a really sensible way to to kind of help the planet. You know, you’re not investing in oil, you’re not investing in guns, you’re not investing in automobiles.
But also people who want to invest in products to make money can invest in OriginClear and be doing good at the same time. So even if their motivation isn’t from the green side of things, you’re still capturing that market, still getting the people who are wanting to invest to make money and they’re doing something good, they’re doing something positive. It’s a really great feeling, I think.
Riggs: Wow. Well, you certainly echoing our enthusiasm. One thing you brought up earlier was the vital importance of treating the dirty water, which many people don’t realize. I can’t tell you how many times people say, well, you know, we’re a water company. “Oh, you purify the water.” Yes, we have that. But but people aren’t really aware of the fact, and especially in places like California, where they have a dire scarcity and they’re not recycling, it’s all being dumped into the ocean.
I’m like, did you realize that was water that you actually brought all the way to the municipal plant and then threw away? And that is, you know, very revealing. You know, you’ve probably heard that Israel has very high recycling rates, whereas we are abysmal. So it is a mission that that is urgent. And, you know, I think the real revolution is not going to be in the super Pepsi-Cola getting a water treatment plant or Coors beer or any one of those people. It’s rather the smaller ones which are the majority, right? I mean, the smaller businesses are the ones that are in a way neglected.
Victoria: In England, we have this thing where we pay for the water coming into our domestic houses and use the water and then you pay for it to be taken away again. And if you can sort of break that cycle and disrupt that a bit, I know you’re looking at sort of micro power generation for small communities, like a village with a tiny power plant through a stream or something. Why not do the same thing with water?
Why not say, okay, maybe we buy our water from a main provider, but we reroute the used water, the grey water or brown water and put it through one of your systems that is situated around, you know, in a communal area shared by 20, 30, 40 houses and reroute that back into the houses. And then you’ve got this sort of cyclical system that gives you an awful lot more power. As a as a user, I just think it opens up a huge number of possibilities like that.
And storm drains in England is a big thing for me, you know, because you could plug one of your systems into the storm drains when they can’t cope with the excess water coming down. When we have a cloudburst or something. Pop one of your units into the system somewhere along the line and run the dirty storm, drain water through that, and then you don’t get any of the nasty sewage water dumped into the rivers. You know, aged infrastructure with one of your systems. What a great way to fix the problem.
Riggs: You’re so right. There’s a the stat in the United States that is tracked, which is SRO, storm runoff overflow. And there’s a lot of those events. You know, I used to live in LA before I finally escaped to Florida and watched, the first rain of the season would just bring this deluge of dirty water that would all go to the ocean and then nobody could swim in the beaches because, now that’s, that’s sad, really, because we are a technological civilization.
But one of the things that I’ve noticed is that we tend to consider water, we take it for granted. And it’s like, well, you know, I open the tap, water comes out, I flush the toilet, water goes away. And yet there is all these canaries in a coal mine like in Great Britain, you privatized all the reservoirs and now those reservoirs are in terrible shape because of short term profit incentive. And, you know, similar things happen in the United States.
What we realized, and we constantly get calls to go rescue Jackson, Mississippi. I’m like, I’m going to rescue Jackson, Mississippi? No, but what I can do and what we are all working on is to offload the industrial burden from these municipalities. And now they can treat water for the people. And I love the fact that in Ireland, water is free, people get water for free.
And that can be done if you don’t have industrial users poaching the capacity. Right? They’re sitting on top of the capacity and they represent in the United States 89% of all usage. And the 11%, which is the people who are supposed to be served by the municipalities, are really disfavored and they’re being hectored like, you must save water. I’m like, excuse me, we’re only 11%. So how about looking at the nine percenters?
And that is it’s a problem of, well, you buy a few lobbyists and all of a sudden you can do what you want. So that’s unfortunately the case with today’s system. But what I like about what we’re doing here is, is business by business, it’s growing. We’re also sharing this. So we don’t want to sort of be the dog in the manger because I think there’s an opportunity for big change and I’m so happy you get it. Wow.
Victoria: Yeah. Well, I mean, not maybe the technical side, but the possibility is, yes, I can, I can see that they are many and varied and and you might have to tweak a little bit here and there to make it fit within the systems. But, you know, I can imagine a world where Thames Water don’t lose some ridiculous capacity because their pipes are leaking, but they probably still will because of… Oh, don’t even get me started. They probably will still make losses through underinvestment because you know, reasons.
But but to give some of that power back to local communities, you know, small villages, you know, places that gosh, I mean, I don’t know so much about the lay of the land in America, but certainly in England, we’ve got little pockets of villages sort of all across the south. You know, some of them are quite remote. And again, the further north you go, the more remote it is. Some of, getting water to some of these places. I dread to think of the state of their pipes. If you can take your water consumption into your own hands and, you know, treating of it the waste water and everything. And if you can do the same with energy, you’ve got these, you know, the ability to live and not be dictated to by these massive corporations. It’s just, you know. What a world that would be.
Riggs: Wow. Well, I really share your vision and I’m so glad you get it. And I’m so glad you’re on board as an investor. You’re the army and it’s so necessary. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. I wish you the best of luck. Carry on. Thank you for being on board and keep up the good work. Okay.
Victoria: I’ll keep spreading the word. Don’t you worry.
Riggs: Oh, I love that. Thank you.
End of video presentation
Riggs: So. She is super cool. The World Economic Forum is in the news a lot these days, but actually there’s a World Economic Forum article about Africa that is very interesting that I’ve gone ahead and analyzed and it really makes the point of why decentralization is inevitable. Let’s take a look.
So as this World Economic Forum article says, it was written about a year and a half ago. Population growth in Africa is huge and they basically lack access to all kinds of services. Now this is a real problem.
Michael Jones The next meeting is each every Thursday, 8:00 PM. We do it like clockwork. We’ve done 184 of these on well, a lot more than that. But those are the 184 we’ve done on Zoom. So you’d be welcome next week as well, of course. And if you’re already registered for this zoom, you’re registered for the next one and you’ll get reminders from Zoom.
Service Gap
So let’s take a look here. Here’s what’s an amazing story as service gap. Piped water versus the population. Now, this is crazy because how are we going to catch this up? It’s just it’s out of control, right? We don’t have the trillions for this.
Infrastructure
Now. What they suggest, the three things they suggest, of course, change how cities are built. Okay, fine. It’s not a bad idea. Consider systems change throughout entire city regions.
Priorities
Prioritize vulnerable communities. That’s obvious because we see this a lot in America. For example, the poor neighborhoods get the worst water. Well, it’s a long story, but they do.
Finance
And then finally get the finance right, because as I’ve been pointing out for America, there’s a huge infrastructure backlog in Africa as well. And that financing gap, guess what? For some reason, it doesn’t doesn’t get done. But here’s at the very bottom. Investment in water related adaptation has benefit cost ratios that range from 2 to 1 to 10 to 1. So you invest a billion, it’s actually it gives you back 10 billion in health and commerce and wealth, right? A water rich community is a wealthy community when the water is clean, of course.
So what does that mean for us? Well, it means that there has to be a better plan for how these, because the backlog isn’t being filled. It’s you know, you can say all you want about this, but it’s not happening. And instead, money is being spent on other things. Don’t get me started, on wars, but it’s certainly not being spent on water. So the solution again is to do on site, small is beautiful. Go with the small scale and expand our Water On Demand program over time to handle that stuff.
Freewheeling Discussion
So with that, we are going to jump into the free wheeling discussion. Baddah-boom.
Ken: I wanted to create a little suspense, baddah-boom. How is everybody? Good evening, everybody. Very interesting. Looked identical to what was going on in Nevada. What was going on in Argentina, like that ring.
Riggs: The bathtub rings.
Technology Making it Possible
Ken: Yeah. That’s scary. I actually really enjoyed that last statistic. I’ve been saying that $1,000,000,000 of infrastructure can create billions of dollars of longtail revenue. I had no idea that, and I should, it should have occurred to me that the benefits really should start. It’s the ability to be able to calculate the tertiary or the kind of like the intangible benefits. That they were able to put a number. You know what I mean? That they really put a number on that is phenomenal.
And I’m going to be pulling that little data piece down later because I think, I know, I do believe that that is a big that, you know, now that we figured out the mechanics, now that we figured out, “It’s the money, stupid.” Right. Because that was the, so, the barrier to, when it said, the ad said, the article said decentralization is inevitable. It wasn’t inevitable till the technology existed to allow it to happen, right?
Like cell phones weren’t inevitable until they were right. Financial technology allows these systems that are funded like oil wells, to now be networked, right? That network didn’t exist. And fortunately, guys like Bezos and these others spent billions figuring it out so we don’t have to. Right. You know, they crawled, they crawled across the broken glass, if you will, to figure out how to make it work. And now it’s just, as I tell people, what’s fun about it is it’s a well-worn path now.
Rescuing Portfolios
Riggs: It’s so true. So true. So that was interesting. What’s going on, and then as you saw, we’re restarting the Investor interview series. And, which is great, lovely lady who you, of course, met in London. We’re going to do a lot of these because do a little clips of them and all that good stuff. Also in the Ivan interview, we went over that portfolio calculator.
And the whole idea of rescuing your portfolio is something we’re going to roll out because, I not going to depress people with more financial stats, but oh my God, what’s happening is a tremendous amount of uncertainty, right? For example, the Fed sent the interest rates up. Markets crashed then. Wait a minute. We’ve got an election coming. We need to not do that. So then they said, no, no, no, it’s going to go down. So the markets went back up.
Ken: But the inconsistency is also spooky, right? Because people like, well, we don’t even trust that it’s real, right? It’s fake. And that’s scarier than bad news. Like fake news is scarier than bad news. You know, it’s so of course it was, you guys filmed my coming down to Clearwater to buy those condos. Now that I’m closing, I’m getting price drops on everything that I looked at. Like I was like, Now that one’s a little expensive. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So price in Clearwater, which is not not Detroit, Right?
Riggs: It’s a good neighborhood. Florida is good.
Ken: Yeah, it’s one. And no, but it’s Clearwater. It’s not even Florida. It doesn’t. It’s just, it’s this own. It’s this little bubble, right? And it’s just, I’m just I, I don’t even look at my phone anymore because I got like 15 price drops today, and I was just like, oh, boy. But you know what? Here’s what I said to I spoke with Mary Cain Murphy today, one of our long time investors. And I said, you know what, Mary? I knew I was buying into, I was buying ahead of the dip. I said, if this thing drops, first of all, I got a good price and I beat these guys up a little bit on getting good prices on them.
I said, If it drops 20%, I’m still even. Because that’s what I was going to lose with my cash anyway. Exactly right. You know, And I went, Oh, my God, listen to myself. I was like, All right, You know, but here’s the thing. I am optimistic. I guess I’m optimistic because we know the reality of where we’re at. We know we have a mechanism to kind of create a harbor or a safety net for a lot of folks. I think the most valuable thing this save your portfolio program will do is it allow folks to time not to sell for the sake of selling. Right. Like because they’re spooked.
Riggs: Right, what we’re doing is we’re providing a bulwark against them having to sell. Right. It’s like, okay, you know what? Your portfolio is fine. Why? Because you’ve got this founding position in what you might call Apple 1984, which is Water On Demand now. And then you’ll be able to be more relaxed about the other stuff and go, you know what? It’s going to be fine. You know, it’ll all come back. And that’s, that’s where it’s at. I mean, look, markets do come back and retail investors always sell on the down and they buy.
Ken: I was going to say they buy on the way up and they sell on the way down. And the institutions, by the way, these guys went short a long time ago and that’s when they had their buddies at the wirehouses put out buy recommendations on things, right? So, so they went, they waited. They said they had these huge positions in Amazon. Oh, this no recession. No, no, no, no. Jim Cramer is still out there telling you everything’s fine. Jim Cramer Really?
Riggs: So did you see Jim Cramer’s abject apology today?
Ken: No. Did you tape it, can I watch it?
Riggs: Meta has gone from $5 Billion free cash to $1 Billion free cash. Their graph looks like a cliff.
Ken: Well, it’s because that’s his vanity project, right?
Riggs: Right. Because they thought the virtual, somebody sold them on virtual reality. But people don’t want to have those damned… Anyway, whatever. I’m not going to get into that. But the point is, Jim Cramer was almost crying. He was eating such humble pie. I’ve never seen that.
Ken: Well, and it’s funny because I’ve never seen him actually acknowledge reality before either. So that’s interesting. But here’s my point. The average investor, our typical accredited investor, they don’t have, they’re not hooked in with, hedge funds which play these games. The hedge funds, they were buying that at a third of what it is. They they sold it all at the top. Then they didn’t just load, unload their long position. I have a funny feeling they went short.
Riggs: Of course they did.
Ken: And then they call up their friends and they say, Look, put out these buy recommendations. I know that sounds cynical, but it happens too consistently for it to be.
Riggs: Money talks, money talks, bullshit walks, of course.
Ken: And then the rest of the guys watch TV and say, “You know, I’m going to buy that because so-and-so has, he’s been saying it for six months and he’s been right every week. Right?” And now.
Riggs: One of these days I’m going to go up to Teeka Tiwari and say, “Dude, what’s up with those cryptos?”
Ken: Do me a favor, don’t send me any more crypto.
Regulation A Offering
Riggs: Anyway. But I want to mention one thing because you had mentioned accredited investors and I want to say that the unaccredited investor offering is on the way. We’ve we had to live through an audit of the new startup and then there was rahr, rahr rahr rahr,. But it’s all finally, all the regulatory things are coming in and we hope to file soon and that is going to be really, really good because, you know, I just feel that people need to be able to invest even if they don’t, if they’re not accredited.
And these investors are going to get a piece of Water On Demand, which our accredited investors are getting those shares as a grant, as part of their overall investment. But the unaccredited investors are going to get shares as well at a very good price of a company that is through the Reg A process becomes public almost automatically, but we don’t want it to go onto the OTC, we want it to go into the Nasdaq.
Ken: Of course. Now what I also think about Regulation A is we watched two companies, Boxable, and Knightscope. They both raised $120 Million dollars. They didn’t have to deal with PE firms. They didn’t have to sell their soul. Right. You got a lot of excite. Their average investment was like $2,800. It was not, they were not, it was not like, yeah, I know. So but here’s what here’s what allows us to do because we’re running these very effective regulation D.
This will allow us to really open up our our voice and speak to this larger audience. I have a funny feeling that we’re going to be getting a lot more of your quasi family office money accredited investors from the non accredited because of the size of the presence, you know what I mean? I think that the Regulation A is phenomenal because it allows look, if you the person who comes in at just below the accredited level, they’re still getting crushed.
They’re getting crushed worse than guys like us because they probably don’t get a lot of good professional advice. They basically get the folks that say, “Look, buy these mutual funds, which are based on market indexes.” Right? Well, all those market indexes are getting crushed right now. These folks have money that they need to save. They have money that they need to invest and save for the future. And what better way than to broadly support the birth of a brand new royalty bearing asset class that’s completely novel?
Riggs: Amen to that. Amen to that.
Ken: And the prosecution rests.
Call Ken
Riggs: And here’s, I put on screen the contact info to get the ken. You should schedule with Ken. He’s fricking brilliant. Okay, so first of all, Alejandro Villegas says, “We are aiming for the middle class, which is a great group.” And that’s 100% true. We, you know, a lot of the the big, big water companies, if it’s a half a million dollar deal, they won’t even touch it. It’s too small. But yet that is the bulk of the deals.
And so what we’ve done is we’ve really gone and you know what? We’re going to handle the middle class, not the single family homes, not the, we do have big, big clients, but over on our regular old school business, you know. Like we have a major power utility that’s a client and a certain car company, American car company, and, you know, a certain distribution warehouse company. You know, we do all those.
But in the Water On Demand, we’re really going to be targeting, more the $500,000 to 2 or $3 million range. And in fact, I have a proposal that has been proposed and it shows how we bid these things. We don’t have time tonight. I will be definitely showing it next week.
Ken: And you call me and I could get on a Zoom with you and kind of walk you through it.
Riggs: Well, for sure. But what I’m saying is this is the actual proposal to the client.
Ken: Yeah, the redacted one.
More on Reg A
Riggs: Exactly. So that one, like I say, it’s going to be next week. It’s going to be a great way to see how these things break out. And one more question. Tom Liakos doesn’t think he’s accredited, but he would like to get first opportunity to invest before public hears about it. Here’s the story. Regulation A, you price it a certain price. Now we’ve priced it the best we could, but of course, it’s not a public company.
But here’s what happens. Over time the price goes up. So, you want to come in at the original price if you love, if you love the concept, because you’ll get massively more shares. And what happens is, as the Water On Demand Inc spinoff starts to really get traction and generate revenue and so forth, it then, we pull the Reg A, reprice it and put it back out in the market. Takes about three weeks to do that.
So each time that happens, people are losing out. So the way to do this is to come in early on the Regulation A offering, and also if you ever wonder whether you’re accredited or not, we’re happy to walk you through it because we have investors, we have one investor who did $200,000 after he found out, “Oh, I’m accredited.” He had no idea. He was just busy making money. And it’s actually a lot more people are than they, than they realize.
Ken: Folks that aren’t dealing in like, a lot of stocks, they don’t use the term, so they never associated themselves with that.
Riggs: Well, they made some money on an Amazon thing or some online service or they have a construction company or whatever. And so as long as they’re making 200,000 a year, 300,000 with their spouse or co habitant, they’re accredited. And it’s really very simple.
All right. Well, with that, another good briefing. Thank you very much, young man. It was fun. And like I say, next week you’ll see an actual Water On Demand proposal. And another great clip has been done with a podcast that’s super cool that I think you’ll like to. So, join us next week and everyone, I really appreciate your coming. You guys are the best guys and gals. You rock. We’re on a we’re on a mission and we’re going to make it happen. Thank you all.
Ken: Have a great evening folks. Thank you. Goodnight.
Riggs: Goodnight.
Register for the next Insider Briefing: HERE