Latest / Daily Influence / 712. From Idea to Impact: Building Solutions That Actually Matter

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712. From Idea to Impact: Building Solutions That Actually Matter · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IA Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Be sure to follow, subscribe, and share Daily Influence with someone who could use a little extra positivity today.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And make us part of your Daily routine, whether it's during your commute, on a walk, or an quiet momentous for you, because you're influenced matters.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, Brian Smith here with the I and team series and your daily influence.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And today's conversation is with someone who's business didn't start with a plan.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, it started with a moment.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ryan Durlu is the founder of
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Frog Creek partners and quite literally woke up in the middle of the night with an idea, a better way to filter stormwater and protect our watersheds.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is many of you know stormwater is a huge part of our mission and our foundation here at the Iron Team series and at IA through many of the organizations that were involved in.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when I met Brian I was like, wow, there's this bridge already built.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: is what happened after he woke up in the middle of night, he within minutes in his garage working on a prototype.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: What does that sound like?
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are you know building a small business solving problems?
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: By morning he's buying materials.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Within days he's got a patent application.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And not long after he's doing real world testing with municipalities and support from the EPA.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: What we like here is that's not just innovation, it's not just goals, it's action and
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: as you all know, actions really important.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You need tactics to move yourself forward, not just goals and planning.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Brian, I'd like to explore all of this.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the idea, the discipline it took to turn your amazing idea on the something real, so welcome to our show.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Brian.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate it, nice to see you.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Before I get started, is there anything else you'd like to add about
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: from Creek or where you landed.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, Frog Creek was a culmination of 20 years of corporate work, and like you said, it came to me in a dream, which I can talk a little bit more about later.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And as the president of Frog Creek partners, I started this company in 2016, based upon the invention I called the gutter bandstorm water filtration system.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the gutter band is a catch-based and filter insert.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It goes into storm drains.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: and it has like a coffee filter for storm drains.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's an adjustable frame that's functional adaptable and sustainable.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we put dozens of them and even hundreds of them in communities.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: So when it rains, it's capturing cigarette butts and trash and tire treads around that.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it doesn't pollute our rivers and oceans and it helps keep our environment cleaner.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: The average
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, we're seeing massive, uh, we're seeing insect population rebounds in communities that we're doing this, um, uh, we're showing, uh, catchers of nutrients and, uh, you know, another emerging contaminant is tire treads, like they've just proved that not, not just been the past few years, that these millions of pounds of tire treads that are falling off of our tires every year.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: are causing cancer in salmon and trout.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so that's the main species, but it's also probably causing cancer and countless other organisms as well.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that's why I do what I do.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've got responsibility for this earth that has taken such good care of me.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And now I want to give a voice to the fish and frogs that I can enjoy in my backyard as well.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well at the end, we are going to share with how people can go visit your website, learn about there's so much out there on your website.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: articles that have been written podcasts that you've done, and we'll share that at the end so people can go and learn as much as they want to and care about you, your organization and your mission.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to start actually on the business side a little bit, Brian, I'm going from idea to action as something that we talk about here, you know,
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are a smart management company and that came from smart goals, but to get to a goal, you've got to have tactics.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've got to have action and a lot of people have ideas, they have goals.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: But very few act on them, it especially, very few act on them immediately.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: What drove you to move so quickly?
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: from that initial dream that moment to actually building something tangible like frog creek necessities the mother of invention and I think necessities also the mother of action as well I was currently a US country manager for an Australian energy company I worked on there for a while before being transferred back to America and because of the energy prices at the time and my boss telling the CEO telling me to
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: at about a hundred people to lay off which was not fun, but necessary, the writing was on the wall.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: I saw my impending lay off coming.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: So,
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I had been thinking a little bit about what is my next phase in life, do I stay in the energy business, which I was really good at, do I go international or do I follow a dream that it can, you know, one of my dreams as a, as a young man, I remember wanting to invent something that would be helpful to mankind and, and the, the earth.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I learned in my 20 similar along the way that procrastination was killing me, whether it be on homework or a letter I had to write or anything like that,
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so there's there's things that you can allow yourself to procrastinate on.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, the creative juices can flow because of procrastination.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: But as a 42 year old man at the time, with impending layoff and all this stuff, I knew that if I didn't act quick, I may never actually make it happen.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I want to live a life with no regrets.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of I've had a lot of bad decisions in my life, as I think everybody has.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe one or two, I might have some minor regrets here there, but overall, I don't, I think failure is the best teacher.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I know if I didn't take action on this right away, my idea, then it may never come.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: The idea of a stormwater filter came to me in my dream at 237 a morning on my daughter's eighth birthday.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: I literally shot up in bed with the idea, and by 3am I was out in my garage building a prototype by the cardboard and duct tape, and I never looked back from there.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I did have some misgivings, they didn't end my crazy, should I do this?
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: But every day I made a lease 5 to 15 minutes of action every day, even on the weekends, and before I knew success, success breeds success, it's like pancakes, just building on top of each other,
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is awesome.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love how you shared and I believe the same thing how failure is probably one of the best places to learn and it's a good it's a responsible way to learn too because we can learn about the mistakes we have and we become responsible to ourselves and to whatever that issue was and I love that you just keep moving forward through that and I also like how you frame you don't have many regrets.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: because of that.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a good positive way to look at failure and the lessons we learned from it.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for sharing that.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your work is centered around protecting water sheds.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's not really something that most people think about every day or even, you know, sometimes even ever.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we take it for granted.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You turn the tap on and there's water.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: We take that for granted as individuals.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you think
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: about the responsibility there is when your building solutions that have long term environmental impact.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Was that something that actually something you had in your heart before you started it?
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is it something that drives you forward?
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you explain that a little?
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a good question Brian.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, I think
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people come up with business ideas with dollar signs in their mind.
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: They come up with an idea and like, hey, I could make a million dollars off this or a billion dollars and I'm no different than that.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: My first my first idea was my pet it was born from a pet peeve.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, cigarette butt litter.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can't stand cigarette butt litter on the ground, but I've done it too.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I've smoked thousands of cigarettes.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've tou'd thousands of cans of coke and bacon and thrown them all, not all, but many of them on the ground.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: But somewhere along the line I was, I remember sitting in Boston looking on the ground outside the oldest tavern in America, the bell in hand, I think it is, and or maybe it's the green dragon.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's one of the two.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I was looking at the cobblestones around the storm drain.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I saw literally hundreds of cigarettes butt sitting around the storm drain.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wonder, as I'm sitting there smoking and cigarette, what are all those go?
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Can I get a little Google research?
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Either at the time or later that day at the where I was staying and I found out that most stormwater when it rains, all the stuff on our streets and sidewalks is blessed directly to the rivers and oceans.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And certainly we have combined sewer overflows, so this has filtered out a water stream of plants, but not all of it.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, a vast majority, 80% of the,
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Pollution in our rivers and oceans comes from stormwater pollution the stuff that's run from there So I just kept pulling on threads like well, what does that mean and my pet pee was cigarette butts and I invented my first patint is Is a magnetized cigarette filter so we can pick up cigarette filters with a magnet From the ground.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought this is a great idea
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: But during my research, I found out that one smoke cigarette butt placed into a leader of water with 10 menos will kill half the fish in four days.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: So once cigarette butt killed five fish, there's over four trillion cigarettes littered around the world every year and growing.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's more than there are trees, there's only like three trillion trees, and this is happening every year.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And nicotine is one of the strongest insecticides known to mankind.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's why we spray soybean crops with it.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: And corn crops is the keep insects off of it.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we're decimating our insect populations around the world.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean nicotine is the reason tobacco plants grow to produce nicotine to keep insects off their leaves.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Coffee plants also produce caffeine to keep insects off their leaves.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And same with morphine.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So these three highly addictive chemicals, caffeine, nicotine and morphine, humans are highly addicted to, and it's being thrown out of the universe or out into our ecosystem time and again.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, as I was building upon a creation, I thought I was going to make a bunch of money on.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: My shift moved from, oh my god, we got a responsibility here.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not just me about Brian making some money and building all this stuff.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like,
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've got to do something about this and I'm a part of the problem.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've been throwing these things on the ground and no, I've thrown a bunch of them in storm drains.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought I was doing the world of favor by not causing fire hazards.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then I've come to find out that gosh, I'm killing frogs and turtles and fish and insects by just this one little toxic bomb hitting it.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's when I had a mentor tell me a caro school mine's my alma mater.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: I told him this cigarette, a magnet idea.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he said Brian, that's a great idea.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's a terrible business idea.
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I figured out a different way to pick up cigarette butts, because you only have three customers, Philip Morris, Laura, and RJR.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this is a long-winded answer to your question, but it's to remain to the question.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was upset when he said my idea was good, but bad, and that's when the real answer to my the failure, one of my first failures is a good idea of a terrible business, and that's when the dream, I was like, oh my gosh, and I'm a big believer in subconscious thinking,
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Before you go to bed, if you have a problem, whether it be relationship or trying to invent something or whatever it, throw the real to find the problem very well before you go to bed and let your subconscious chew on it all night.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you do that three nights in a row, you're going to come up with a solution to it.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: The best solution, God speaks to you at night and your subconscious.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's where it came to me, but as I was introducing this, when this filter idea came to me and I was introducing it to my local stormwater manager and public worst directories like that's great.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, I don't give to boots about cigarette butts.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I care about sediments and the pipes.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: I care about fats and the pipes.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I care about all these things that are complying with regulations.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So then I had to craft the value proposition and invent the product and not only get cigarettes
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: all these different things, and the responsibility came as like, I really, as a youth growing up in Wyoming, I've been a hunter all my life in a conservationist, but also I've done damage to the environment, and I kind of feel a responsibility to
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: making Earth a better place, as I leave it, and every gutter bin, so every gutter bin that I put into the ground is a way to make the planet better, once it's harmed in its time.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: What you are, it sounds to me like, is a company that, yes, can think about fiscal responsibility to you and your family.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And people that rely on you, but also have a similar responsibility to your mission, to the planet, to the communities that you want to serve, which is all communities.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's the other thing I heard is that, you know, part of your mission is to serve all communities that contribute to any storm water pollution issue.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: to be, you know, if you can marry up what you earn your living out to also positively benefiting the environment and the communities we live in at the exact same time, we're in a pretty good spot.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I love that you shared it that way.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know,
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: one of the difficulties though in that space which you heard from the professor which is that's not good business is taking something from a garage prototype or an idea in our head or you know a passion that we have and taking it to municipalities or EPA supported projects
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: or into the real world, those are very different challenges, creating solutions to problems and taking them to market our different challenges.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: What did you learn about growing or scaling something that has to work in the real world, not just on paper, what this journey that you've had over the last decade or so?
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is it taught you about what that's like?
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: What works on paper does not always work in the field is probably the main takeaway on that and persistence is key.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I would say it kind of come back to what I said earlier is, I'm in a manufactured product business right now.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when people come to me at good ideas, I always tell them, my best advice to them is, I've got this invention.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want to make the million dollars, I want to go do two things.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: One.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, three things.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: One, you've got to write down what it does, how it works, how you build it, to draw a picture of it and three build a prototype and test it immediately.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Even if it's crappy cardboard one, get one out there and build one immediately as fast as you can to fit because you're going to find really problems with it right away.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're going to think it works just perfect.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I've invented dozens of products since then, almost all of them centered around
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: But you've got to, and with the advent of AI right now, you can talk in your computer and it can draft up something very quickly for you to even build a business model, which you and I have done as taken hours if not days to write a business model around an idea.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now you can do it in 10 minutes, which is fascinating to me.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's no excuse for anybody that doesn't take their idea.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: talk through it with their computer and come up with how to build it, how to make it.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: But you've got a stress test, your idea.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I found out very early on that what I thought was going to be the end of the BL was a product that, why don't you buy this?
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is really important.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I don't have the money for it.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't care that much.
• 17:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: But if you brought the price point down by
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: 75% and did this with it then yeah I consider it but you also haven't you know figure out how to capture this kind of pollution probe.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So even today I'm having to make modifications to my product to make it super simple like I call it idiot proof.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm the first idiot I test any product on it but I'm cussing while I'm installing it then I know it's not I know it's not right yet.
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: But
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: get that prototype in the ground in people's hands, beta test that if it's software, get your friends to test it and eat some humble pie, be willing to accept the feedback that it's not great.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's failure.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I've, um,
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can somewhere along the way I've heard or came up with the same fail fast.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it's mine.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it borrowed it from somebody.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: But you've got to be willing to fail fast if you're going to be an entrepreneur.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: And learn from those failings and adjust and be very nimble.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And your skin is going to thicken up.
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'd be careful on how much
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, you've got to weigh the risk to the reward, um, um, like I have a product that there are many times my first prototype is in the ground working.
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like I still have them up and shared in Wyoming.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I was out there in a sewing machine at two o'clock the morning, sewing filter hangers before the night before we install these things for the EPA project.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thinking that boy, I hope these work.
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think they will.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've got high confidence in my, myself,
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, have, you know, learn to trust yourself, learn that you're worthy of success.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that I think that's one of the biggest, one of the obstacles that I ever came is is just feeling that you are worthy for success because some people, um, uh, fight that battle.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: But lo and behold, it is 10 years later and actually nine years later and those prototypes, there's some of them are still going strong and shared and I've had to replace
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Don't get that prototype out there as soon as you possibly can and test with your friends or clients.
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is great advice.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: You haven't heard this story by many people who listen to us out.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: The first prototype of one of the companies we're involved in, I still drive by that prototype every day on my way at home.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's still up on the roof protecting the environment from
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fat oil and grease that come from this restaurant and it's been there for 26 years It's still working the only thing we change is the filters and it's really cool because one of our business partners invented it And I get to see it every day and it's just kind of a cool testament to what you just said Put your prototype so I'll get your ideas out there let people you know let people in your area of influence that you trust and that you can rely on You know help you to work through
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: whatever it is you're trying to do if it's passion or if it's economic, whatever drives it, get help.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the other advice I love was, you know, fail fast.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would add fail fast and allow yourself to fail often.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And just use that as your education to improve and be better.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Most people who have passion, driven businesses,
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: have a huge, huge goal.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think you do too.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why don't you share with us that huge goal?
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I think it's really important.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not just run business perspective, but from a human perspective for people to hear this.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thank you for asking.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: My, my big area of racist goal, my behag is to have millions of gutter bins around the world, diverting billions of pounds of pollution away from our rivers and oceans and starting off and say the Mississippi River watershed.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: finding working with a corporate sponsor or a high net worth individual, a philanthropist that has a billion dollars burning a hole in their pocket or tens of not hundreds of millions of dollars burning on their pocket, saying I want to give back tangibly to the earth that has given so good to me and where we put in say a hundred thousand or a million gutter bins from New Orleans to St. Paul Minneapolis, the length of part of the Mississippi.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Or the gutter bins are donated to these communities and we clean them and we take all the data so we're measuring this data.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're looking at insect population rebounds because we are seeing insects rebounding in certain communities that we're working with.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: But a lot of people don't realize of all this stuff on our streets is going to storm change of the rivers.
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: But did you know that there's the Gulf Coast Dead Zone?
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: They call it the Gulf Coast Dead Zone at that mouth of the Mississippi.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: 200 miles wide and a hundred miles deep into the Gulf of Mexico or America where we want to call it.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's an oxick hardly any life lives in the Gulf of Mexico down there because there's so much pollution coming down from the Mississippi River and depositing out there now a lot of its nutrients from fertilizers and leaves and grass clippings and all the stuff but also it's heavy metals, tire trades and cigarette butts and stuff like that.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So if we can
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mary-Up partner collaborate with somebody out there that is wanting to give back to this and Frog Creek partners is the implementer of this project and we work with these communities and set it up so last for decades.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is my big heritage skill.
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Starting with a large river watershed, whether it be the Mississippi, the Colorado, the Columbia, pick one and start there and show
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: how it can be done, and then we can, you know, work with the Rhine and the Yellow River, if we want to, but that's, that's what I want to be, make a big impact.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is awesome.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Before you share how people can get in touch with you, do you have anything else you'd like to say to our watchers or listeners?
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Brian, for doing this podcast.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I think what you're doing is important we're giving this message of influencers to people out there spreading the word of how people are doing it because it's people need a little bit of inspiration.
• 24:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I would say that don't wait too long.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Don't procrastinate.
• 24:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: There is, you have a passion, you have a touch.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: People have a passion in their life, they have a talent in their life, and some people go in autopilot, all their lives, and at the end of their life they end up with a regret to golly.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wish I would have taken that step a year ago.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Don't regret that, take that step, take even if it's five minutes a day, write down what you want to do, write down your projects, take a little steps every day, and you'll know when the time is to jump off that plank into the ocean.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some people can happily quit their job up tomorrow and go follow their passion if that's the way it is but some people have to sneak up on it.
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: So take those daily steps to follow your passion and sometimes just really meditate and marinate and ask that question at night.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: I find one of the hardest things to do, Brian, honestly, is figure out what is your passion in life?
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you found it early on and you're helping dozens of not hundreds of companies around the world, you know,
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And some people are very blessed to figure that out at the age of 19, but sometimes they don't figure out until they're 49.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some people never take that leap, so take that leap, and I just encourage you to live the life that you want.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how can people reach out to you, read about you, we're going to have all of this information in the details of the show, but if you could share it here.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, please.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, it's Howdy of Frog Creek.Partners is an email that you can reach us at.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And our website is Frog Creek.Partners.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to be updating our website soon.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a little sophomore looking.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, watch this space for that.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, um, yeah, the best way to be going to our website.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fill out the the form on there who you are, what you want to talk about.
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: or email us at how they'd up from, how they'd probably picked up partners.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's no.com, there's just not partners.
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Awesome, Brian.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I appreciate you very much.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate everything you've shared with us today.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because, you know, there's a lesson folks here that go beyond just product development.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ideas are everywhere, but action, real action can often be rare.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So,
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, what you've demonstrated, Brian, is that when action is paired with purpose, especially something as important as protecting our environment, the impact can scale far beyond where it started, which was a dream.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what we talk about here on daily influence, and theme, intentional, taking responsibility, and understanding that what we do matters.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Whatever it is, we have influence, no matter where you're at,
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: you have influence within your area of influence.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's important.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Brian, I thank you for being here and joining us today.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to everyone listening.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: The next time you have an idea, ask yourself.
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are you going to think about it?
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or are you going to build it and do something with it?
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I hope you have a great day.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again for joining us on daily influence.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will talk to you again soon.