S9 Ep23: Customized Carbonation: Popping the Lid on Personalized Hydration with John Thorp & Buzz Wiggins
“There are ups and downs through all of that. You have to be prepared for those days when things don't feel like they're moving ahead. And you have to bring the same type of passion, the same drive on either type of day.” —John Thorp
“You're never trying to get a yes out of anyone you're talking to when you are an early founder; you are trying to get a not, no… If it's getting bad feedback, fix it immediately and go right back. You have the ability to change someone's mind after they've made an opinion.” —Buzz Wiggins
Sparkling water has become a beloved beverage for its refreshing fizz and health-conscious appeal. Yet, the environmental impact of single-use containers and the lack of customization options have left many consumers seeking a more sustainable and personalized solution. How can we rethink the way we enjoy carbonated drinks?
John Thorp and Buzz Wiggins, the co-founders of Aerflo, have dedicated themselves to revolutionizing the sparkling water experience. With their innovative portable carbonation system, they are empowering consumers to take control of their hydration while minimizing waste.
Tune in as Justine Reichman sits down with John and Buzz to discuss their entrepreneurial journey, the challenges of building a sustainable product, the far-reaching benefits of their approach to sparkling water, the benefits of having the right co-founder, the lie we were all made to believe about recycling, and more!
Connect with John:
With over a decade of experience as an alternative investment professional, John Thorp brings a strong business acumen and strategic mindset to Aerflo. John is passionate about designing sustainable products that improve the lives of consumers while also reducing environmental impact. Under his leadership, Aerflo has developed innovative carbonation technology and established a unique refill model to move beyond single-use waste. John is committed to building a company that creates positive change through thoughtful, consumer-centric design.
Connect with Buzz:
As a skilled designer and problem-solver, Buzz Wiggins has been instrumental in the development of Aerflo's innovative product design and packaging. Leveraging his expertise in product design and optimization, Buzz has led the team in creating a seamless user experience while also ensuring the environmental sustainability of the Aerflo system. Buzz's creative approach and attention to detail have been crucial in bringing Aerflo's vision to life.
Episode Highlights:
02:07 The Inspiration Behind Aerflo
16:33 Challenges and Prototyping
22:10 Business Building Lessons
31:50 Focus on Environmental Impact
34:30 The Lie We Were Made to Believe
Resources:
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Get 10% off on your purchase when you shop at: https://aerflo.co/
Use code: ESSENTIAL 10
Tweets:
Sparkling water has become a staple, but at what cost? Discover how one company is rethinking carbonation to minimize waste and empower consumers as @jreichman sits with Aerflo Co-Founders, John Thorp and Buzz Wiggins. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season9 #Aerflo #portablecarbonation #sustainablehydration #customcarbonation #refillablebottles #startupjourney #entrepreneurtips #environmentalimpact #drinkingwellness
Inspirational Quotes:
06:37 “Startups are not a job.” —Buzz Wiggins
08:29 “It's really, really, really important that co-founders have extremely complimentary skill sets and like the ability to speak in each other's language no matter what the project is.” —Buzz Wiggins
09:27 “If you can find somebody who's able to allow you to be you and help you get the most output out of yourself, it's the best partner you could possibly find.” —Buzz Wiggins
13:06 “There are a lot of founders who have it in their DNA, and that's what they do.” —Justine Reichman
16:27 “One of the biggest costs is the emotional failure of ordering a bunch of prototypes, getting them on shore, and nothing works, and you're back to the drawing board.” —Buzz Wiggins
19:55 “To go from zero to one on the facility and refilling side was definitely a totally separate but very interrelated journey with the product development piece.” —John Thorp
25:40 “Do the work and feel prepared to go into that. You're not allowed to think you don't deserve to be there, or can't do that thing.” —John Thorp
25:54 “Be ready to do it yourself, take it as far as you can, learn as quickly as you can, but at the same time, have the humility to need some expert guidance.” —John Thorp
26:33 “You're never trying to get a yes out of anyone you're talking to when you are an early founder; you are trying to get a not, no… If it's getting bad feedback, fix it immediately and go right back. You have the ability to change someone's mind after they've made an opinion.” —Buzz Wiggins
28:57 “There are ups and downs through all of that. You have to be prepared for those days when things don't feel like they're moving ahead. And you have to bring the same type of passion, the same drive on either type of day.” —John Thorp
33:40 “If you look at it with a critical eye, there's so much room for improvement without asking the consumer at all to sacrifice or compromise.” —John Thorp
Transcription:
Justine Reichman: Welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. Please welcome Buzz Wiggens and John Thorp, Co Founders of Aerflo. We're super excited to have you here today. Welcome guys.
John Thorp: Thank you, Justine, thanks for having us be here.
Justine Reichman: Yeah. I'm super excited to dig in and talk about a solution that goes beyond single use for those that are interested in carbonated water. So before we get going, for those that could not see this because they're not watching the video, can you talk a little bit about what Aerflo is? So that as we dig in, people know what we're talking about?
John Thorp: Absolutely. Aerflo is a portable carbonation system. So as we developed it over the years, we wanted to design something that goes with you on the go, and that allows you to turn still to sparse in five seconds wherever you are, and with any source of water.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. That's a perfect intro. Is there anything you want to add?
Buzz Wiggins: It is as sustainable a way as possible, which I think has been a huge goal of our company from day one.
Justine Reichman: We love the way that your company intersects with both better for the individual and better for the planet. And the other thing that I just want to say is, tell me if I'm wrong on this, but I was able to control just how busy I wanted it.
Buzz Wiggins: Yeah, exactly. Very, very much. By design, I think we've got a couple of firsts there. One is custom carbonation. We call it so you can control your preference. I think the other thing that we really love about it is the ability to re sparkle something if it's lost a little bit of fizziness, but also to preserve bubbles so you've made something to your liking. You drink half a bottle, and tap the button that will keep it that bubbly for the entire day. It's really cool.
Justine Reichman: I think it's great. Before we get going and dig into how you built this and everything, I'd love to hear the story behind it. What inspired Aerflo?
Buzz Wiggins: I'll let John talk about the true inspiration. But for me, it was John putting meetings on my calendar. I was taking a little time off after work. I wanted to take a year or so, and just kind of sit back. I was really at this crossroads of, what do I want to do next? John, I think, caught wind of that like, I know what you're doing next. You're gonna work with me on a bottle project. And I think, annoyingly, I would just show up to my apartment and ring the doorbell. And I wouldn't even know he was coming. And he's like, all right, we're gonna talk about water bottles today. But I think John, you can share a little bit more about the origin.
John Thorp: I'd show up at Buzz's apartment and be like, what are you doing here? I'm like, Buzz, I sent a meeting invite. It's on your calendar. We're here to talk about work. But yeah, Buzz and I have been friends for over a decade now. We were sitting down in those early meetings to talk about starting something together. And we built a checklist of, if we're going to do something together, these are the things that are most important to us. I think the top thing on that list was we both felt very strongly in designing a model where we felt in our own way, that just by earning that next dollar of revenue, this business was making the world a better place. That was paramount to us. And so as we talked off of that checklist and worked through, okay, what are some things around us that we're finding interesting? We noticed the incredible rise in popularity of sparkling water so quickly became the number one growing beverage in the US. So we said, okay, people are passionate about sparkling water, spending a lot of money for sparkling water. And as we look at the ways that they're getting it now, single use or countertop systems largely, there are a lot of limitations there. And both of those.
So I think very clearly on the environmental side on single use, on containers and so on. I think one thing that doesn't get talked about a lot is that you're also shipping water all over the place, which doesn't make a huge amount of sense. At least single, right? And then on the countertop system side, most definitely not portable. And as we looked at trends, people really want convenience and portability when they're consuming sparkling water. And then some really strong pain points on the refill process. So then we took a step back. We said, okay, if we're going to design a new way, what is another trend that we're noticing around us that we think could be helpful for this? And we quickly looked around and saw almost overnight our whole peer group were carrying around reusable bottles. And I think very importantly, people are passionate about that bottle so they take it with them everywhere. So over the course of an afternoon, we sat down and hashed out this idea of thinking about bottles as a platform, and turning the bottle you're carrying around into a carbonation system. And I'll turn over to Buzz here. We then kind of couldn't figure out why no one had done this before. Just on paper feels like a really good idea. And Buzz put up his hands like we should build one first, and let's make sure that this is possible. So that was one of the first steps.
Justine Reichman: It's clear that you guys had a passion around doing something that was better for you and better for the planet. Are you also passionate about sparkling water in particular?
Buzz Wiggins: I was not. John was. Am now 100% addicted to sparkling water.
John Thorp: Growing up, my father had a soda siphon and eventually countertop systems over the years. And to me, it was always kind of a magic corner where it still turned to sparkling. And so I grew up with sparkling water. I loved it, but always reflect back on that it just felt amazing that that could happen in the corner of our kitchen. But then I would say that my passion for sparkling water has just increased.
Justine Reichman: So you connected your personal passion with your passion for doing better in the world.
Buzz Wiggins: We distilled this down to taking a gas that we breathe out that's actually a little too prevalent on planet Earth right now, mixing it with something that falls from the sky, and we love it. It's completely unique, and it's cool. It's a different way to hydrate and all these things, but it's one of the most damaging things to our planet right now, those types of beverages and the most complicated supply chain of all time. We're like, that just doesn't make sense. How can we make that? How can make that a lot easier to get the end consumer what they're actually asking for?
Justine Reichman: I think that makes a lot of sense. When you guys came together, Buzz, you had just left a job, or you had a startup before. I guess? What I'm getting at is, is this both of your first startups?
Buzz Wiggins: It is my second startup. I had a job in between them that I had left and was taking a little time. I worked in advertising, and I really, really hated it. I want to do something else.
Justine Reichman: I have to say, I appreciate how you said you had a job in between your two startups. Your startups aren't jobs.
Buzz Wiggins: Startups are not a job. No, they're not.
Justine Reichman: Just to acknowledge them. I just thought that was the way that you said. It's really lovely.
Buzz Wiggins: I never even thought of it like that, but you're exactly correct. My mind completely dissociates startup from job. It's pretty funny.
Justine Reichman: And how about you, John?
John Thorp: My background was in alternative investing and worked for a venture fund, and then I ended up working for one of the companies that we had invested in, and led a division of that company. So wasn't a founder, but worked on that and led that business from the very early days. So I had a lot of experience in the growing pains and experience of growing a company from the young days.
Justine Reichman: When you had your other startup, were you a solo founder? Or did you also have a Co Founder?
Buzz Wiggins: I had two co-founders. In 2009, we were very young. It was a really nice lesson in scale. I think a lot of people would think, man, if you started one company and you went through what I went through in the first one, how on earth did you ever think of doing this again? It just ended up being a really great learning experience over a few years, and got to the point of releasing a product. We had a lot of great feedback in the marketplace, and ultimately ran out of money on the like one inch line.
Justine Reichman: So you both come from a little bit. You've both been in this world. You've had a startup before, Buzz. You haven't, John, but you've worked for around that space. I know you guys came together for a reason. You both had different skill sets. Talk to me a little bit about that, and share a little bit about how that works, and how you make the magic between you guys, make Aerflo.
Buzz Wiggins: It's really important that co-founders have extremely complementary skill sets and the ability to speak in each other's language no matter what the project is. And I'll say of John, I found a co-founder that complements my complete lack of organization and ability to hone something into an actual message or product. I just found someone who's able to come in and say, that's all fantastic. I built out something to organize the way that we're doing this. I put a couple of deadlines against it that I need to hold you to. And then ultimately, when it comes time for handoff, I'm going to go handle some of the customer comms and some of the back and forth as a supplier. If you're going to handle some of the creative side, it's amazingly refreshing to have a partner. And John, that is the hardest working person I know. I think hilariously, he's a morning guy. I'm a night guy. I think we cover 22 hours of every day with our sleep cycles. I would say to anyone, if you can find somebody who's able to allow you to be you and help you get the most output out of yourself, it's the best partner you could possibly find. Sure, John, you have some stuff to add there.
John Thorp: Well, thank you for those words. I would say Buzz is many things. But maybe across all of them, Buzz is a master problem solver and designer within that. We've done a lot of packaging work over the years. And for us, packaging is very much a part of a product, and also has some pretty intense kinds of regulatory dynamics as well. I'm just looking at a piece of our packaging right now. Buzz will spend days, basically not sleeping, designing and optimizing packaging for the myriad of things that it must do. He'll get out the cutting table. He will make a prototype of it. He will throw that away, make the next one two hours later, and refine, totally optimize this beautiful, genius solution to a very complex problem. And then it's my job to go get that piece of packaging made. One way to think about it.
Justine Reichman: Sounds like a good partnership to me. You both are either under the spectrum, making it work, solving the problem, executing on it, and so that sounds like a good partnership. Whether it's a business or otherwise, that's the kind of partnership you want. I am curious, as we talk about these things, and we're talking about entrepreneurship and you come from, you were at a job in between. And John, you also had a job, as I call them, jobs in between the startups. What would you say? What made you decide to come to this point to now say, we want to start another business. I don't want another job.
John Thorp: There are a couple of memories that come to mind just from those early days that I think crystallized for that. So Buzz has a yurt in the backyard of his East Village apartment, which was also our first office.
Justine Reichman: I'm gonna need a visual here. Where do you live?
Buzz Wiggins: We live on 11th between B and C. We have the first floor apartment, and then the yard is considerably larger than the apartment.
John Thorp: And so, this is the yurt in Buzz's backyard. That was our first office.
Justine Reichman: Are you in New York City too? Are you in the city too?
John Thorp: I'm in Brooklyn.
Justine Reichman: Okay, wow. Well, we used to be neighbors, Buzz, because I grew up in Manhattan. So about 10 blocks north of you. I can even visualize a yurt in the back of any sort of building. That's why I was like, I'm gonna need a visual aid to see.
Buzz Wiggins: It's important to me to have that space and a little outlet that feels like not New York.
John Thorp: Just wanted to paint the picture of what these meetings were like. So Buzz and I sat down. We're hashing through the core parts of this business, and I left one of those meetings to go do an interview. I was doing some actual job interviews at the same time. I remember that I left that interview and just had this overwhelming feeling of like, why would I do that if I get the job? Why would I even consider doing that when there's a possibility of building this business with a close friend? Those two things are just like, one is so much more interesting. And I think impact could be impactful for the world, and that's what I really care about. And it was a very poignant moment of like, stop interviewing right now. I'll focus on this. Let's make this happen.
Justine Reichman: I think that there's a lot of people that are founders and it's in their DNA, so to speak, and that's what they do. And I've never really been able to work for anybody since. I think my last job working for somebody was in 2000.
Buzz Wiggins: You're answering the way I was going to answer with a question, have you ever worked in corporate America? Man, what a drag. At the time, Verizon had bought Yahoo and AOL, and I worked at Tumblr, and I was running monetization there. I think that might have been, at the time on planet Earth, the hardest job in advertising. Period, full stop. I think it very publicly, you could see what happened with the mash up of Yahoo and AOL, and they had no idea what to do with Tumblr. And, oh, man, getting out of that was the easiest decision in my life.
Justine Reichman: I don't know how long ago it was, but one of my last corporate jobs I had was at a PR and ad agency in Soho, and then took over the PR and communications. I had a very hard time getting up in the morning. It was painful. It was excruciating, and all I had to do was walk two blocks to get to the office. But inevitably, I didn't feel well. I couldn't go. I was tired. There were 27 reasons. However, now I run my own business, and we do our own things. I wake up at 6:30 and I'm like, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to make an impact. I'm motivated by what I do. I hear that's similar with you guys.
Buzz Wiggins: And by the way, it has to be in your DNA, right? If you want to start your own company, you've got to have that feeling of buck stops here. I'm excited to work. I'm hilariously on the other side. I will wake up at 4:00 am and write some notes down on my phone, and draw a quick technical drawing and go back to sleep. This all encompassing, total focus, that's the priority right now where I agree with you.
Justine Reichman: Let's go back to when you guys started this company. You created the prototype. And as we sort of touched on before we got onto this podcast, I was curious a little bit about what it costs to build this from your standpoint, and what it took to enable you to be able to create these bottles to create those, the sparkling water canisters, because it looks very expensive. I'd love to learn and share with our listeners a little bit about what that process is. Because to me, it looks like it would cost a lot. It'd be really hard. As a startup, you might have to raise money, which is not a deal breaker, of course. I'm curious how you guys experience that, and what your thought process is for it?
Buzz Wiggins: I can start John. I'll let you fill in here a little bit. I think expense comes in a number of forms. We can talk about straight up costs. So raised 8 figures, and spent a lot of it with $0 in revenue. So that should be some indication of what it costs to get this thing going. So if we talk about our bottle, we talk about the actual device, we talk about a capsule. So they're all separate projects that all have their ups and downs. And I think one of the biggest costs is the emotional failure of ordering a bunch of prototypes, getting them on shore and nothing works, and you're back to the drawing board. So prototype number one, we built in the kitchen over two days. There was a bike pump, bike parts that would cut out of a tube, this little piece of brass going into a bottle. I learned after the second trial that we needed a pressure relief valve in a fairly explosive way. This little thing is sticking in my ceiling at my old apartment. And we thought, wow, this thing worked. It actually made sparkling water. We were able to get five bottles out of one little cartridge. We were like, oh, my God, there's a company here. This is so easy.
It was two and a half years, and four prototype complete failures later that we had the next working one that we could reliably use. And keep in mind, during that time, you're also burning a bunch of cash. You're having to go to investors and tell them bad news again. Didn't work. We have more stuff coming. There's other changes. And you know that what we ultimately learned out of that whole process was the way to start avoiding some of that is to just do it yourself. And that turned into a real mentality at this company, get in and solve our own problems. Don't let an engineering firm or something let us fail. Mule some of these things and get them working as a subsystem. But the cost of emotional failure is a huge one. I also think that we had no idea on the regulatory side on how long this was going to take. That was an absolute nightmare. I can let John get into that one a little bit, but that's three and a half years over multiple agencies alone.
John Thorp: Buzz covered off a lot on the kind of product development side, so the carbonation device, capsules and bottle. Each of which have been their own journey with rounds and rounds of prototyping, lessons learned. And then also through that, it wasn't just about getting it to be able to work, but also to be able to be made at scale. That's like a whole part of it as well, and be made at a cost structure that works and so on. So that was one whole set of journeys. And I think the other one was we had this decision to make in the early days of, do we go single use cartridges? Millions of them are available and so on. Or do we go refillable? And to us, the decision was clear. It was almost not even a choice. But this must be refillable. You can't tell a story about moving beyond single use if you're using single use cartons. So we're like, okay, great. We're going to make refillable capsules. Okay, let's go find someone to refill them for us. So did this whole sprint to try and find basically like a 3PL equivalent for gas filling.
Found one company, and then they hung up the phone on our first call. So we're like, okay, so the answer here is that we need to build a refill facility. And so then, that was its own journey. I think visuals are helpful for this, but just to kind of paint a picture of where that led us. First, it led us to a process flow diagram of what needs to happen at each individual step of a capsule coming back from a customer, getting cleaned, inspected, purged, refilled, and then going out to the next customer. But it led us to find a facility in New Jersey, commission design all of this custom refill equipment that was installed, do a build out of a clean room around it, learn what all of those things were. Buzz built out this whole facility in Minecraft so we could do a walk through before we took it to an architect and so on. And so to go from zero to one on the facility and refilling side was definitely a totally separate, but very interrelated journey with the product development piece.
Justine Reichman: Wow, that's amazing. That looks amazing too. And to be able to have done that, figured out that and solve that problem, so you're solving multiple problems here. Is there a world where a multi use carbonation can be used or sold to other people and partnered with other kinds of companies? And if this is not something you want to talk about, I'm totally happy to skip it.
Buzz Wiggins: John and I talk about earning the right to get to do that. That is definitely the plan, right? We're getting everyone to sign on to us going and building that refill facility, saying we're going to break ground in 2021, and we're going to make our first dollar at the end of 2024. Also, we need 5 million bucks to do that. You have to have a pretty compelling reason as to why people are going to want to invest in that. Ultimately, what we feel we've made in the capsule is a new way to deliver small scale, compressed gasses spinning up another one of our facilities to do more. CO2 or another gas at this point is now trivial, and what that really does for our business is it removes the entire single use supply chain from needing to really exist to drive a product forward, and it increases the margins on the Businesses that utilize those projects. We're talking like 3, 4, 5x increasing margins. So it's pretty easy for us to sell that. We had a lot of faith that we could go and actually execute that. I think something John touched on there, building the thing in Minecraft and showing that to people, I'm amazed that people didn't just sprint out of the room. They're like, wow, that's really scrappy, and that's a great way to plan this out before a real expert comes and gets involved. It's just the way that we thought of, if we're gonna go deliver this plan to someone, what is the absolute best way that we can make sure that we are 100% sure that this is the thing we want to build? And I say this all the time, if you're holding one of our capsules, if you're holding the first one, you're holding probably a couple million dollars. If you're holding the next one, you're holding like $1.50. We always think about the way you deliver that message to those who are helping you along with funding.
Justine Reichman: John, you can chime in here because of your background. But I think that oftentimes, investors are investing in the founders, and they want to see founders that are scrappy, that you know are scrappy before they're strategic in order to be strategic, even sometimes, right? And very willing to get their hands dirty and do things themselves. And so from my perspective, showing something through Minecraft is really very smart. One, it shows creativity, it shows ingenuity, it shows your ability to think out of the box. I mean, I could go on. I think that sometimes, people get a little scared of doing things that are a little different, or they think there's one narrative in their head. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that, but that was what came to mind as you're talking about that.
Buzz Wiggins: It's a theme from our company, from the very get go. So we started this in 2019. We didn't really go full time until February of 2020, and I think we all know where the world went starting towards the end of February 2020, and suddenly we're sitting in this world where we're trying to get this company off the ground. Supply chain has just been completely, absolutely crushed. You can't go visit people in person. I can't go to a machine shop and say that I want a part built. Supply of metals and things all over the world just went crazy. So we found ourselves in this very dire need for innovation in our company very quickly with a lot of like, hey, we'll make that part for you. We need exact designs. It's gonna take six weeks. It's $2,000, and you're in a queue. And I remember the conversation that John and I had where I said, honestly, I truly think we could buy our own metal lathe, buy our own stock, and make that part ourselves faster and cheaper than that timeline without ever having touched a metal lathe in our lives. We're gonna learn how to use it on YouTube, and maybe have a friend come over that's done this a little bit before, and we saw how effective that was.
We actually did that. That actually worked really, really, really well for us. And we're talking about cutting weeks and thousands and thousands of dollars off timelines by doing, we'll call them rough drafts first, and then sending it to an expert with a very good idea of exactly what needs to be done. I would say it's one of the most effective things that we've done and kept as a company as part of our core culture. Same thing with the Minecraft thing. When I'm sitting down with an architect, I'm not going back and forth on 2D drawings and all these things. We walked around. He said, that door should be here. I changed it in 30 seconds. We said the stairs should really do this. There should be a rail here. And he and I left with a full vision of exactly what was going to be built and exactly what was going to go into plans. I was like, that probably saved us a month worth and $20,000 of this person's time and effort to go and build these things. Every company is a little cash trap, and every company should be responsible there. And that's the way that we felt was the most responsible.
Justine Reichman: John, was there anything you wanted to add to that?
John Thorp: I think Buzz kind of mentioned it, but it's just such a core part of our company culture. And I think something that we've really experienced over the years is that there are so many parts of this business that we almost had no business going into, like a big regulatory meeting with a team of engineers on our valve design and capsule. But to the two of us, it's do the work and feel prepared going into that, you're not allowed to think that I don't deserve to be there, or I can't do that thing. But at the same time, this is how we've tried to approach a lot of these things. be ready to do it yourself. Take it as far as you can go, learn as quickly as you can. But at the same time, have the humility to be like me. I think I've taken this as far as I can, and really need some expert guidance. So there's this duality of like, be ready to do it. Be ready to learn along the way. Make a few mistakes and get as far as you can, but then also have that humility at the same time.
Justine Reichman: So for those founders that are beginning their journey and listening, and tuning into this podcast or videocast, what are any lessons that you've learned going through this that you might share with them? Maybe two or three.
Buzz Wiggins: I think one of my biggest ones for anyone is you're never trying to get a yes out of anyone you're talking to. When you are an early founder, you are trying to get a no, no. Very, very, very important distinction and difference between those two things. We probably got told NO 120 times in our second raise. And for us, we're like, great, not a fit. Please provide as much information as you can as to why you ingest that information. You either go right back to that same source because you fixed it and you said no for this reason, and we just fixed it. So now, it's not a no anymore. Give us a new reason for the NO, or you take that, and you take it to the next one so that they don't have the ability to use the same excuse for now. And it's kind of funny in that way. We've been very tenacious, I would say, with everyone we've talked to in this company from a regulatory perspective to fundraising, to partnerships, all the way down the board. Whereas for us, if it's getting bad feedback or something along those lines, we're like, fix it immediately and go right back and say, I fixed it. I told you, I was going to do that. That would be my number one piece of advice for somebody who is early in a company and maybe discouraged or something, you have the ability to go change someone's mind after they've made an opinion.
Justine Reichman: I like that. I think that's a really good tip. John?
John Thorp: I think for me, I'll caveat by saying that I'm definitely a productivity junkie. I thrive off of feeling like a standard checklist, those things give me energy and so on. But I think with any young company--
Buzz Wiggens: That gives you energy, I love that.
Justine Reichman: I think we kicked it off with him scheduling meetings for you. That gave him energy. It gave him reason to go across the bridge or over in the subway to get to the East Village to go meet with you.
John Thorp: We're really just trying to paint a picture here for those who are listening. Especially if you're oriented that way. But I think even aside from that, everyone always talks about how entrepreneurial journeys are not linear. That's known, right? That's obvious, and we don't talk about that. But I think there's a sub piece to that, which is that there are going to be days where you work as hard as possible. You work 16 hours and you feel like you've made no progress. There are going to be those days then. There are also going to be days where you move five steps ahead, and you feel like, wow, I just made a month's worth of progress in an afternoon. There are ups and downs through all of that. I often fondly reflect on those early days where every single day felt like that because we were uncovering things, we were solving problems, we were mapping out what this business would be. But you have to be prepared for those days where things don't feel like they're moving ahead. You have to bring the same type of, try not to use the word conviction because we hear that word so often, but you have to bring the same passion, the same drive on either type of day.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think about the days where sometimes you're just behind the scenes doing the things you don't really like to do, and it takes so much longer to do them half the time, and I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. And then the other day, I did something in like two hours. I was like, I feel like I did a whole week's worth of work in the first 20 minutes. I don't know how I got all those. I ticked all those things off my list so quickly, but I think it's those. It's that seesaw that goes like this, and it's sort of like creating a balance so that sometimes it's down, and sometimes it's up. I don't know if this is working for everyone. I don't know if you guys have a pretty well balanced life. I work really hard, I get really productive. And at the end of the day, you're creating this amazing product. So that's what the big win is, and that's why I feel like it's balanced for me, unlike in a job.
Buzz Wiggins: John touched on this a little bit before. You know, in the creative process of building the bottle that you just held up, or creating this packaging that's sitting here right next to me, you're going to have very frustrating days when nothing's working, and it's important to go through the iterations to get rid of the bad ideas. And then suddenly, you get no meetings for five hours and just jamming some tunes. I've failed on this thing six times. I really don't like the way it's looking, but I know why. And then I leave that and I'm like, I just did all the work. Air quote, all the work in that time, and it's all the way done. It's like, well, no. You did all of the work for the two weeks before, and this is the culmination of a bunch of things finally coming together into the vision. I think that the most rewarding I've ever felt in my career ever is those times where you're like, okay, it's all coming together, and I get to run upstairs and show this to everyone and say, I figured it out, which I do quite often. It's probably a little annoying, but probably not.
Justine Reichman: People like the wins with you. They want to go through the process with you.
Buzz Wiggins: This is the most satisfying part of doing this. I know it's so cheesy to say, but you do have to have a bunch of failures to be able to go, oh, we persevered. We got through it. It feels so much better knowing where it could have been and where we ended up because we approached in a better way.
Justine Reichman: I know our podcast and our time is coming to an end, but just one thing I want to ask is, what do we see in the future of Aerflo? Are there going to be other products that, I don't just mean the products that make up the Aerflo, like the cartridges, etcetera, are we going to see other kinds of iterations on this?
Buzz Wiggins: Absolutely. I think we'll go pretty heavy on the beverage side. I think there's quite a few more things that need to happen on the beverage side. Too early to talk about names, but a couple partnerships that John and I are in the midst of. And then I think as well, obviously working in flavoring and some of those things that we know users are going to want. And then you also said this before, these two different businesses, there's the product you're holding, and there's the gas side. And I think there's some pretty exciting stuff we're talking about there as well.
John Thorp: You know what drives us? The big picture vision, I think, is very much rooted in thinking about the single use model as conventional wisdom. So it exists. Obviously, it depends on how you want to measure it. Been successful. People drink a lot of sparkling water, drinking beverages from single use. Our kind of perspective and view on that is that's just the option that consumers have been given. It doesn't need to be that way. When we look at that model, we see a lot of flaws. I think the environmental flaws are pretty clear, right? The containers, and also shipping water all over the place like that just doesn't make a lot of sense. It is doing a lot of damage at the same time. Even if that part maybe isn't super important to you as a consumer, we obviously feel like it should be. But even if that is not, that's okay. You're still paying for those things. You're still paying for that container. You're still paying for the shipping of that water all over the place. So what drives us when we first think about sparkling and carbonation on its own and potentially future things is that same problem statement that the way that it's happening now, if you look at it with a critical eye doesn't make that much sense. There's so much room for improvement without asking the consumer at all to sacrifice or compromise.
Justine Reichman: The other question that comes to mind is, with these bottles that you can now take with you, and you can have multiple uses, and have bottles all day long of sparkling water, what impact can we see on the other spectrum? How is this impacting the environment? How is this impacting Alzheimer's? People are no longer using aluminum, right? So all these different things that I could throw out a zillion other things, but I'd love to know, and I don't know if you have any of this research, but what that would look like potentially if we talk about three years from now, or five years from now, or even 10? Because it seems like it's going to exponentially improve.
Buzz Wiggins: I can cover off on some of this pretty quickly. I don't want to sound like conspiracy theorists, but recycling is the answer. It's definitely not using a can one time that's been shipped all over the place that has maybe a BPA liner in it as well. Crushing that, putting it back into the recycling work stream that's got to go ship and be shipped back over the ocean to be turned back into its core components, and shipped back over to be filled with a heavy beverage, and shipped back to you is not a good source of getting a beverage at all. That's on aluminum that actually has about a 50% recycle rate. Plastic that makes it into your recycling bin has a 5% recycle rate. I say this all the time, think of the fact that you take scissors out and cut up the little holder for your six pack. That's you as a consumer going, good chance this ends up in the ocean. And if and when it does, it's at least not going to choke a fish. I'm like, that is absolutely crazy that we have been trained to accept that as a solution that's viable for moving forward. Glass has just as many issues. Can't be recycled back into itself. The carbon costs to make a glass bottle bar outweighs its use as a container in terms of being reusable or any of those things. Those things are a supply chain that's on the global scale, right?
That's where we think about putting things on a USPS truck rather than even using a different shipping partner because of the truck that's already on a route. So your additional carbon is the weight that adds onto the truck, rather than a point of order for a truck. So trying to think through all of that for a user is not ever going to be with this company. Point the finger at the end and say, if you didn't recycle it, shame on you. We thought of it. Here's the impact you've had over a year. Are you drinking two and a half cans a day? That's thousands cans per year that you are taking out of that entire waste stream. So really, I think there's a really great offset when we talk about waste and single use, and plastic, and all of those things that we think are awful, and then all of that comes with a giant carbon footprint as well that we are greatly reducing and minimizing by doing this the way we do it.
John Thorp: There are a couple of quick things that come to mind how often I visualize this. So one of our capsules will make the equivalent of about six cans of sparkling water. Think about what this is making or offsetting. That means those six cans don't need to be made, shipped all over the place with water in them, and then potentially recycled. The best stats we've seen, I think, from the EPA is about 50% are recycled. And as Buzz mentioned, that's not the answer to this question. One part of it is thinking about what this offsets. And then I think the second part, and maybe just switching a little bit from sustainability to wellness is, I think there have been some really alarming reports over the last eight months or so of other things that are in, especially sparkling water. So PFAs in particular. And so to us, what we're focused on is that this solution puts the control for end customers in their hands of the water that they're drinking. We've done so much compliance testing on all of our piece parts to facilitate that. But at the end of the day, our consumers are in control of what they're drinking.
Justine Reichman: I completely agree. I think both of you as people learn more about and think about, because I don't even know if it's about learning, it's about thinking about where these cans are going and what they're carrying, and what it takes to make that happen? And how much are they spending? Like you said, if it's two and a half cans a day, what's happening to the environment? But it is, as you said, John, they are wellness. Because whether they're in cans or whatever, there's so many other implications for our health by drinking out of a can. So I think this is a great solution. I'm really excited that you guys have done this, and I'm wishing you lots of success with it. We can't wait to continue to follow Aerrflo. For those that are interested in trying the product, where might they find it? Is there anything special for our guests that we can let them know?
John Thorp: It's available for purchase at aerflo.co. And then if you use the code essential 10 at the end, it'll give you 10% off. So really excited to connect with your community. And thanks again for having us today.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, so great to have you guys. Thanks for sharing. I appreciate seeing your first office, the yurt as well. Very inspiring for other entrepreneurs, whether they're in the middle of New York City or in Wyoming. Anything can be your office. So thanks again, guys. And for those that are tuning in today, don't forget, if you are watching the videocast here on YouTube, you can also listen wherever you listen to your podcast on iHeartRadio, iTunes, Spotify under Essential Ingredients. Thanks again, and have a great day.
