“You Can’t Please Everyone Forever”—How Riggs Eckelberry Took Full Ownership of His Business

Cut The Tie Podcast with Thomas Helfrich

Riggs Eckelberry, CEO of OriginClear, joins Thomas to unpack the broken water system, decentralization, and what it means to cut the tie to pleasing others. From rejecting broken industry norms to walking away from Wall Street pressure, Riggs shares a refreshingly honest look at entrepreneurship, leadership, and finding your own path—even if it takes decades.

About Riggs Eckelberry:

Riggs is the founder and CEO of OriginClear, a public company leading the decentralized water movement. A former corporate exec and nonprofit leader, Riggs now advocates for do-it-yourself water treatment systems for industrial users—bringing innovation and accountability to one of the world’s most neglected infrastructure sectors.

In this episode, Thomas and Riggs discuss:

• Cutting the Tie to Pleasing Everyone
  Riggs talks about the trap of building for investors, advisors, and outsiders—and the moment he stopped doing it and finally owned his leadership.
• The Myth of Centralized Infrastructure
  He explains why massive water systems don’t work anymore, and how modular, onsite water treatment is the real future.
• Focusing on the Core
  Riggs shares how he finally doubled down on OriginClear’s most scalable units instead of chasing every “bright idea.”
• Relearning Leadership in Real Time
  After years of trial and error, Riggs explains how he rebuilt confidence, trusted his gut, and stopped chasing solutions that didn’t fit.

Key Takeaways:

• You Don’t Need Permission
  Sometimes the tie to cut is waiting for someone else to say yes—leadership starts when you decide.
• Old Systems Can’t Solve New Problems
  From water to entrepreneurship, big outdated systems break down under pressure—innovation comes from the edges.
• Stick With It Until It Clicks
  It might take years, but when your business finally hits momentum, you’ll be glad you didn’t bail early.
• Don’t Underestimate What You’ve Already Built
  The thing you’ve quietly been building might be the future—it just needs your full belief and focus.

"Your judgment is better than you think it is—stop handing the keys to someone else."
— Riggs Eckelberry

CONNECT WITH RIGGS ECKELBERRY:

Website: https://originclear.com
Sign up: Legends of Water Monthly Broadcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riggs

CONNECT WITH THOMAS:

X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/thelfrich | https://twitter.com/nevbeenpromoted Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hovienko | https://www.facebook.com/neverbeenpromoted
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neverbeenpromoted
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomashelfrich/
Email: t@instantlyrelevant.com
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Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Riggs Eccleberry
• 6:55 The Decentralized Water Revolution
• 12:25 Finding Your Own Path to Success
• 17:30 When to Focus on What Works
• 23:17 AI's Transformative Potential
• 28:49 Connecting and Closing

Transcript

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Cut the tie to anything holding you back from success. Welcome to the Cut the Tie podcast. Hi. I'm your host, Thomas Helfrich. And in each episode, we bring you real entrepreneurs that really overcame challenges on their journey to become successful. We look at the impact, the moment, how it affected everything in their lives. Follow us on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Now let's meet our guest on Cut The Tie podcast.
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Today, we're joined by Riggs Eckelberry. Riggs, how are you doing today? I'm doing as well as could be expected for somebody who's in Florida in the winter who wishes he was skiing right now. It's an inner turmoil deep inside you that I'm sure, like, there's no mountains, no snow here, only beaches, sunny weather. It's so bad. Alright. Introduce yourself and tell me what you do. Okay. My name is Riggs Eckelberry, and I have a public company, OriginClear,
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that's been public for a long time, and that has been really at the forefront of trying to do something about water. And it turns out there's a lot that has to be done about water. There's a lot of there's a lot lot to be fixed. The problem is where to start and also how to move that that big water giant, like
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so that's what I do. In your company, I always ask the power statement. Why why do people why are you the person to fix it? Okay. Good. That's a really good question because most of the water industry,
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the big players like Veolia and American Water Works, focus on working with the municipalities, the utilities. Why? Because that's where the money is. Right? You play golf with the with 10 people, you pretty much own the marketplace. The problem is is that that market has been draining itself out to the edges in a new phenomenon, which is self treatment of the wastewater by local businesses. And it's it's been going on now for twenty twenty years or so. I became a huge advocate about ten years ago and pretty much was, you know, like,
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hello. Pointing the pointing the finger at a trend that nobody really was seeing, but now has become huge. Just explain that a second. So almost like, the business itself does its own recycling of the water, and it doesn't have to hit kind of a grid, so to speak? Yeah. And that's in part because
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despite I'm told that there's a lot of money being spent in the government, but it doesn't get to the water industry, which is chronically underfunded. As a result, utilities, and it's not their fault, are really not doing a great job with industrial waste water. And guess what? That's ending up in our drinking water. Right? So all the forever chemicals and so forth. And so you have a problem which is, now class action lawyers are starting to sue not the utility, but the original polluter that sent that bad stuff to utility. And the the polluter is like, I thought you guys cleaned it. No. We didn't. Sorry. Oops. So now those polluters have to do their own treatment by necessity. And countless stories right now, we're working with a major, housing developer, operates in North Texas, which is in a big land boom. And guess what? That land boom is happening without any sewage treatment plants. Nobody's building you sewage treatment plants because it takes ten, fifteen years. So what are they doing? They're taking pocket treatment plants wherever they drop in a house in development. And why not? It makes a whole lot of sense. Treat it where it's made dirty. I mean, it's the philosophy of the earliest part of the twentieth century and by the way, I was not alive then. That's a myth. I'm the second part. I'm a boomer. Anyway, the greatest generation thought that it was great to centralize everything, you know, make everything mainframes and and giant sewer grids and all that stuff. It turns out that's a mistake. That idea of building giant rivers in LA to get rid of all the fresh water as fast as possible was actually not a great idea. Now they're turning around like, oh, wow. We gotta try and keep it, etcetera. So part of that trend is to take that water that I just polluted, I just made it dirty, and clean it on the spot. Now what can I do with it? I can reuse it, saving me money. I can also I'm paying less for water because I'm using it more than once, but also, I don't have the giant inflation of my sewage rates because I'm doing it myself and it happens to be cheaper. And finally, I'm not being harassed by the local government. You'd be surprised how many businesses are like, we're gonna do our own water treatment just so that we can just be left alone. And that's a big trend. Let's talk about you a little bit. What kind of, like, the major tie, the metaphorical tie you had to stop doing or start doing? You had to let go to become successful. I've had a realization when you asked me that question. Like, wait a minute. I spent most of my career helping people with their great ideas. I was in a a nonprofit space in the early years and I and amazing and fantastic again, but really, you know, helping a really, a cause that was not initially mine, but it became mine. And then as I, worked my way up through the corporate ladder and so forth, it was always, you know, how can I help Jim, John, Bob? That did well. I mean, it did well in that process, but it's pretty clear to me that that I needed to have something that I owned myself. And and that, strangely enough, did not happen immediately when I became the CEO of this public company because I was still following other people's advice, specifically the people who fund you. Right? You start out with this very benevolent venture capital fund, and they're gonna they're gonna help you walk you through it. And then you realize that they too are human. Oops. And now you have to start to, like, wait a minute. Why don't I take charge? So, it really happened pretty recently. I'll give you a good example. As late as 2020 late twenty twenty two, we were told it was a wonderful idea to to merge with a SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company, a blank check company, because that would get us on the Nasdaq, get us a bunch of cash, except that SPACs are pretty much done. They're they're toast. And so we spent a lot of time and energy and money on that merger only to finally go, this is bullshit, and we had to abandon it. From that day forward, Thanksgiving of last year, when I realized, wait a minute. This is BS, and it's it's not serving me as somebody serving people on Wall Street, but not me, is when I I think I finally started to, exert my own judgment. And I think, really, your judgment is better than you think it is. I think that's the the lesson really is is. But I don't think it was bad that I that I that I was in the in the pleasing of this mode for so long because you kinda you you gotta experience you know, you gotta dance with the devil in order to know God, shall we say. Right? You you gotta have that. So, I learned a lot of lessons along the way. How do I do direct mail, working with a direct mail guru? How do I do film working with a film producer? Blah blah blah. And but I never made my own film. I never made hadn't found direct mail agency. I never had my own PR agency. And so that is where I think the breakthrough has happened is we are now carving our own path, and it's working. Because here's in fact, literally on the February 16, I was in fully self drive mode on my Tesla going to my workout, and my workout is thirty minutes away. So I have plenty of time in fully self driving mode to just stare ahead because Tesla won't let me do anything but stare ahead. And but I had my phone mounted ahead of me, and I would did a full turnaround of the company where I decided that what we had was pretty damn good. And instead of pursuing the new new thing, we got something good going on at home, and I reputed the entire company to build what we've got, which is doing incredibly well. And I think that was the moment after we got rid of this whole SPAC idea, after we got sort of washed out all of these bright ideas, who were right down to it. You know what? We're gonna do the basics, and we're also going to do things to fund those companies in a innovative way. And this is territory that we own. So it's quite recent, actually. Yeah. My my my conversion on the road to a thesis was very, very recent.
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Well, it's great because I it's nice you have the moment that's stacked upon the tie cut. Like, I realize I need to kinda just own my own space, not please others. Just do what I think is best because that's my job. And when you realize that, you probably I think the the realization sometimes happens of, well, this is what successful people do. They don't care because they know their space 51% better than you. Doesn't matter. A little bit better is all I need to say. I'm probably the right answer here. I'm gonna go with it. Good decision. And you have a moment, like, you know, sometimes it's when you're walking to take the trash out. Others, it's when you're driving me. And others might be when, you know, turbulence hits your plane. You're like, I thought I was gonna die. It happens when it happens. I love the idea that you said we do something already great. There's no need to keep chasing new. Mhmm. And and maybe as a follow-up here, that's a hard thing to know when to do because I know my own personal journey. I'm like, oh, we're gonna chase this. And sometimes, like, why are we doing that? Just just do the basics of what we do well with marketing or we do well with, you know, the podcast or whatever else. Just go to the basics. Like, don't have to always kinda complicate the shit out of it and just keep doing it. Like, let's do it. Give some advice. Like, so I always go for, like, a lesson for listeners. But in that thread, what advice would you have first around, you know, choose your own path. I got that. But knowing when to just focus on the right thing. I think that's the advice I would love to hear.
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Okay. So, I think part of it is is that we make less of what we've got. Right? So what we've got is there's it's like, well, I need to do this, this, this. Wait a minute. How about if I enhance what I have? Now the underlying businesses that we've built around this whole idea of decentralized water, DIY water, we now have two market leader, business units. One of them deals with very large power plant type setups, and the other one is these pods that go into housing developments and so forth. They are just on fire. The real problem was that they weren't really on fire initially because we were early. So in a way, it would have been really, really, really hard to push those units faster than their organic development, but accept that that's what we should be doing. Right? In other words, it was like, oh god. This is this I can't move this immovable object. Let me go over this this thing over here. Squirrel. Squirrel. I think that sometimes that immovable object, you gotta find ways to move it. So the good news is that we have, you know, like, for example, that pod business modular water is literally seven times for the first two months of of this year is seven x year over year of January, February '20 '20 '4. So they blew up. That now is an easy thing to go. Oh, guess what? I think I'll support what I that's become easy. So It's easy to put fuel on that fire. Yeah. It was much harder before. So I think number one is you may have to let's generalize it. Let's say that you you're doing one thing and you it's not blowing up, so we do a bunch of other gigs in the meantime. Legit. It's when you do what you gotta do. But keep building that that core thing that you own, that is yours, that you like. Right? Mhmm. I was just listening to, a guy with Bill's email, to do his letter list. Right? He's gotten to a hundred thousand, and it took him, like, three years. I mean, it took it takes time. And each little thing you do adds under the hundred subscribers, and it's a process. Right? I think the, Beehive is what it was at at b h I v e, Very interesting podcast and, and podcast and newsletter guy. And I think the point is really he had to take time to build us now. Was he able to live off of it during that time? Probably not. Right? He was probably, you know, whoring himself out as a press agency or whatever. Right? But so I think you you gotta sort of, keep keep the lights on and keep the keep people excited and view vision and so forth. And then what you've been working on along starts to blow up, and turns out you're right. This is not a conventional, success story. Why? Conventional success story is I got this bright idea. I develop it. I go to Y Combinator University. It blows up. Y Combinator takes me on. I get a bunch of money from, Sequoia and Ashton Kutcher and boom, I'm Airbnb. It's not how it happens. It's a long, harsh cycle. And along the way, you will have to reinvent your way self. I I, a friend of mine has, she she is a coach for couples, and she's fine. She does a great job. But we kind of my wife and I are like, you know what? She's actually kinda boring. Until she realizes she kinda boring, it'll be her limit. Right? Because you can't listen to somebody. God, I hope I'm not boring. But, anyway, the, the point is the point is is, you wanna you wanna have the ability to introspect as a way not to destroy what you got, but to make it better. Right. Well, I I think you said something important. So the the counseling
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is a really good example of expectations of what you can do. So if you're a counselor, you're trading time for money. Mhmm. It's unlikely unless you start branching out with courses and other things you're going to make more than whatever your time it's a job. And it's no it's a great job. And it's I'm not criticizing it. I because choose what you will and be happy with what you do. But if you have higher expectations, don't don't be unrealistic. For you, you're solving, you know, the idea of help a billion make a billion. So you can help a billion people with water. You'll make a billion because you'll have a value. Right. You can impact a billion people or more. And in in being the company that leads the charge for industrial water recycling, that's applicable to everyone in the world. Water recycling, that's applicable to everyone in the world, for sure.
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My idea goes, you better get some patents in it and let China rip them off. Fortunately, we do, but the the ripoffs happen no matter what. Right. What we found, we were at a at a at a water conference, couple weeks ago, and our booth was mobbed. Just mobbed. And, you know, funny thing is we don't have a single picture because engineers don't take pictures. Like, it was mobbed. It was messed up. It was crazy. And the one picture we had was the empty booth before it started. It's like Well, that's that's the engineer. And also, you know what? When it rings, they put you on there, you are man meat and people just kinda show up to feast. So that's I wasn't there. I wasn't there. So despite that despite that. You had other man meat there. So here's the point. We have hit you know, we are in the tornado. We're we're happening. We're the du jour, but we weren't always that way. And we had to build, build, build, build, build. And meanwhile, kind of the thing that goes beyond what we're doing, the future, frontier,
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it kinda we had to sketch out for people why we built the slow and steady, and now the slow and steady is blowing up. And I never anticipated that in a million years. I'd love that, the slow and steady. And and I think part of the things I'll take away from one of the lessons is sometimes you have to build the core until it becomes obvious what to build. And I'll give you an example. So my company is incident relevant. Right? And so we do a lot of LinkedIn marketing, a lot of just traditional marketing stuff and our own flavor of it. I look at it going, hey. I think I'm gonna pivot this whole thing to a humanless company that helps the marketing agency. So completely AI driven and it's upgrades, it's services, it's check, and try to remove the humans from the equation and get away from serve and the reason is because I believe that's a better company for the problem we'll go solve. And it's a complete one eighty from where we are today. We're gonna go from being a marketing agency to becoming this servicer of verifying that you could be doing what you're doing really well as a marketer. And the reason is because I think it's a better company, and I see a lot of pain with it. I like that. And so and so, you know, so you hire the AI person to do the you know, and you go down that path, and I'm like, would I still wanna do Y Combinator? Probably not. I I don't know if I want an investor boss, to be fair. Oh. I don't think I want that. But I'll I'll build it whatever we are, and we'll go sell it to somebody who wants to go resell it. That's our goal. But the point of it is you do these pivots and you but it it's some I wanted to do this two years ago. I'm like, yeah. The AI is just not there. I don't think we can do it yet, and I think it's there now. And now I'm like, hey. Let's go do this. Let's go actually give this thing a shot and position our new core. So five years from now,
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wow. This thing really works well. Well, you're the kind of the QC for marketing agencies, and this is really important because we are faced with marketing processes that I'm like, it's not working. It's not working. But we don't know why. We don't you know, what what's the missing element? And if somebody could drill down and go, okay. Here's your landscape. Here's a specter spectrometer, blah blah blah blah, and here's a good part, bad part, you know, kinda like personality analysis. I think that is really interesting, and you're right. You can automate it, and it's also very needed. So, I like it. I like the idea.
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Yeah. And it would that that's a kind of a core we're looking at, right, is this idea that you have an agency providing stuff, and you say why did it work, didn't work, and you look at the overall package of the client. Like, hey. We have they have no web presence. They're, you know, founder looks like he's homeless or I mean, I mean, whatever it is. Like, these all become things why people buy or don't buy. Like, little things and and having that nuance of of validation of, hey. That service is coming. They actually did a really good job even though they didn't perform. That's what we're gonna try to build is this. Here's why it didn't work or here's why it did. And that data, I think, would be very valuable. I think that would be the the play we would go to is why why does marketing work for some and not others?
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It's a lot of incremental stuff, but it's also some there's some key, legendary elements. For example, the other day, we had a picture of our our guru engineer building a power plant at nuclear power plant a water plant at it. So he's working away on it on his modules, and behind him is the giant containment dome of a nuclear power plant. How emblematic. Like, we've arrived if we're doing nuclear power plants, and we're just these little people. Right? Because the biggest problem with, competing with big water is you're not big. All of a sudden, you start getting these symbolic, like, guess what? We're right there. It's like being being it's like Kid Rock being with president Trump in the conference. It was like, boom. You just got you just got brand new. Still alive? Oh, wait. Wait. Sorry. Not only that. He looks like he was in the press conference looking like Evel Knievel, but that's a whole other story. Here's the here's what I wanna get back to, which is really, I think, and I I thank you for that because I'm realizing that, we have a we have a core thing that's starting to get a lot of motion, and it's rewarding to do, and it's finally starting to happen. And with that, you can't have regrets. Right? Whatever it took is whatever it took, and here we are. And that's really the important thing. That's right. You have the I hope that was not too corny. No. But the path the path is it's not you know, there's some faith in something that happens, but you're here for whatever reason. Just do what you can with it to get to wherever you're going next. But know what to persist with, I think, is the point. Right? You can persist with the wrong thing for a long time. So understand what is the thing that is gonna be the long term benefit you bring to others and yourself. And, and then the other stuff you do, you gotta do because you gotta do it. Right? That's
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the thing. Yeah. I'll I'll give you some final advice before we go to these rapid fire questions. It just because you've invested money doesn't mean you stay with it. Right. And I think the better path when you're figuring out what Quora is is go ring the register. And so the more times you ring the register is the only indicator that you've built something somebody loves or needs or both. And then now you have the data to say pour fuel and fire on that because that is ringing the register. Everything else doesn't matter. Even if it's under marketed, it's still getting traction. That's huge right there. Right. Exactly. It's a it's a lover and need thing. And and if you can have both, like, AI right now is a love need thing and hate. But people it it it's, you know, the stat that people only, like, 50% of people have adopted it. We can and, like, well, because there's a whole boomer generation who's like, I don't give a shit. Right. I'm like, hey. You know what? Cool. Next Gen x, you figure it out first. After we don't care. We're about to go hit the golf course and pickleball. So
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it's true. True. True. And in fact, my wife is the early adopter. She's a she's a school principal, and she's using and she's now swearing at jet. She p t p GPT is great. Now she's swearing at it because, of course, it's not doing what she wanted. Well, it will okay. We're gonna we'll probably will make the cut for
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her. But education needs to evolve to be like, hey. How do you leverage this in education? Because the truth is you can accelerate education significantly. It is the best tutor on the planet, and you can make it give you questions and give you remediation. And the fact that we aren't using this with kids to learn is is is surprising because you could tell that thing I'm an ADHD person with these kind of issues with mild autism or whatever it is, and I'm trying to learn the subject. Can you give me a good plan based on, you know, peer reviewed journal work, how to do that and quiz me and give me remediation? And you would learn and talk to it. And, I showed my son this. He's like, wow. You know, from a other thing from you know, I wasn't describing him to be clear, but I was just saying in general, he has his own ways of learning, and I was like, it worked. Anyway, you know Wow. So they they knew they knew to evolve and they won't. So that that's gonna be a big problem.
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So fascinating. I think, in a year, I'd love to be talking about about what AI has done in the interim. Lot it is it is it is promising and annoying at the same time.
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It is. You know, it's, years ago, I I my first YouTube channel I monetized is called AI nerd. That was my background and of, of AI. And I'm like, I I kinda I kinda abandoned that too fast.
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Right? It's like, where do we get on top?
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I'll tell you why. So this is this is relevant to our conversation. AI nerd was ahead of its time. We had access to open AI's beta, like, three years before it was GPT. Mhmm. And I was talking about all these cool things AI will do, and YouTube kept flagging us as deceptive or misleading. And I'm like, no. This is actual stuff we're doing. Here's an image and video of it. And, and so I was just frustrating. I was just like, you know, I'm gonna go do something else. Should've stayed with it. Well, YouTube is the gestapo, really. They're they're the worst. They are the worst. Oh, see now. This is gonna be on YouTube. Look who you just did. We gotta cut that. It. You you gotta cut it anyway. Come on. Stop. You might I don't know. This isn't fun conversation. This is a good stuff. Alright. Let's go rapid fire because these I love these are kind of, they're rapid fire, but they're pretty deep. So the first one, who gives you inspiration?
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Really, I've got a, coworker, Ken Behringer, who helps who is a fundraiser, but he's also just he is pure drive. And that pure drive is something I can lean on to because you can't be the sole motor. You know, you you can't be Superman. It's gotta be League of Avengers. So him and I got a a nerd marketer that that and then I got a CFO we we we have a core team that's pretty hot. Right? So that core team so starting with Ken, then AJ, James, Prasad. So we we we have this, like I love that because it used to be just me.
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That is good. And and now that gives you inspiration because now you have these other smart, capable people who got their space, and you can see really see each one's like their own rocket engine vaulting you forward as opposed to dead weight you're pulling up. It's good. I love that. Best business advice you've ever received?
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I would say that, Clayton Christensen, to me, was a god. An amazing thinker, wrote the book, The Innovator's Dilemma, which talks about how disruption never comes from within large companies. It come comes from them by through a revolutionary process that destroys the big companies, and it really gave me, an idea. It gave me the the core of my own disruption philosophy. Great
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guy. Alright. The,
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the book, is that the book that the entrepreneur must read? The Innovative Dilemma is a it was I remember I went to a meeting in the Marina Years ago, and I go to the meeting and the guy goes to me, and I didn't know him from Adam. I said, here. This book. You must read this book. I'm like, okay. Okay. I'll read it. And turned out it was super important. So Yeah. I I forget his name even, but he was he was critical. And, there's others, you know, you know, there's, Inside the Tornado is an amazing book, Inside the Tornado, because that's how the high-tech life cycle works. So I I really love these sort of things that are 30,000 foot, a step that look at long term trends and I can think with that. Right? Because I can do the short term. What about where is things going? That's important.
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Yeah. And what's your kind of favorite technology right now?
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I'm really, really interested in how x is developing into these content threads. You know, these things that suck you in. You know, what was the secret room inside Gibraltar that, seven men were gonna entomb themselves forever? Oh, and turns out somebody put somebody is it's a sneak sneak ad. It's a whole new space. It's already blowing up. It's gonna be by the time I'm done with this podcast, it'll already be, like, cooked and over with. But that's the current thing happening.
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Yeah. I I I mean, you can say what you want about Elon Musk, and he bought x. And this is, like, you know, to stroke a check for how many billions it was. Like, it's no big deal. That was OPM, dude.
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$48,000,000,000 of bank money.
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Well, whatever it was, he has it with some kind of controlling brand issue with it. But the truth is they will lean it out. They will do something with it because it is an amazing messaging platform and and mass distribution for we'll call it information. I won't say propaganda, but information, but it could be used in any many ways. Propaganda, by the way, can be benevolent, even though it's propaganda. Right? It can be. Yes. It depends on who. But however you interpret it, I'm I'm not taking a side on that because that's I try to stay in the middle on this stuff a little bit for the purpose of the podcast. But the the idea being is it isn't it's a smart purchase because it is truly one of the best messaging information distribution I think it swung the election. I think x swung the election. I mean, that that's not by chance where he is now and the influence he had to get there. It did definitely it definitely helped. If you had to start over, what time period do you start over, and what do you do different? Of my life, you mean? Any point. Yeah. You could pick and say, yeah. I would go back to, you know, '9 Yeah. Okay. So,
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you know, 1996, I was in a company that was exploding. It was, like, completely going to hell called. Great company. And they had some great technology. And and one of the persons who was there working with me was Subra Iyer, who was the head of business development. And he says, Riggs, I've been told I can take any one of these technologies for free. I can just walk away with it. And I said, take Futuresoft. Futuresoft became Webex. And so he went and created Webex with it. And he asked he actually invited me to be on the founding team of Webex. If I'd done that today, I'd be insufferable, too rich. I wouldn't be, like, wasting my time. But in fact, I wasn't ready. But if I'd been somehow in the place where I could have gone, yeah, Subrah, I just you know, there's a bunch of reasons why, and one of them was actually I was having a lot of fun doing what I was doing. But that would have been really fun. That that alternate track would have been really interesting.
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Yep. Well, I think we all have stories like this. I know I have one that's like this guy was at PwC around that ninety nine ish time frame. I didn't really trust him. And he I just he's just he was he's just I don't know why. And so I just kinda I was like, alright. And he was like, oh, do you wanna get on this the Red Hat IPO? I'm like, nah. I don't care about that. And he's like, you know what? There's this thing called Bitcoin. You should go buy it. And I'm like, I'm not doing this Silk Road currency. Right? I'm not putting myself he's like, yeah. It's like a hundred bucks. You should just buy, like, a thousand dollars and keep it. You know? Anyway so, he was right every time. So But you you would all you would all you would only have made 7,000 times your money. Okay? So I but it it's you know, that's it. I mean, the point being at any point like, even let's go back five years ago, and I just was bought Bitcoin when I sold it when I got the AK. I'm like, it's fine. I should just kept that too.
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But here's where we okay. Here's where we get into number one, the gambler's lament woulda, coulda, shoulda. Can't get into that. You cannot rewind time. The best thing you could do is objectively go, okay. This, this, this, these are learning experiences. Because, I realized a couple weeks ago that it's I have, you know, at my age, you can look back like, well, these are I had various screw ups. No. I finally realized these were learning experiences. They got me to the point where I am who I am. So what the hell with all those previous things? Those were opportunities to learn, and I felt better. And the fact that my son does not speak fluent French is no longer a failure. He's a wonderful kid and has a French accent even though he doesn't speak French. I think it's so you gotta you gotta run with it. And even if it was a stupid mistake, it was a learning experience. Right. It will. Exactly. And I, you know, I tell people, you know, it's a the thirty year high school reunion
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last summer, and that's thirty. Right? But I just realized, I don't drink, don't smoke, stay in shape. I probably got thirty years of solid cognitive function ahead of me. I'm basically just graduating high school again right now. So what am I going to learn from the thirty years prior? I mean, it's really that's it. I mean, so I could probably keep going for about another thirty without running out of patience. Patience is what I'll run out first.
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That's what Remember out of patience before money. Remember to get things done and complete them. Don't, you know, don't leave things, there's, a term called Irish pennants that's in the, ships, and that's, frayed rope. It's called Irish pennants. It's actually a very racist term. Brett it's a British term. Right? So the British call it Irish pennants because they look down on the Irish. Anyway, don't have Irish pennants in your world. Loose freight ends. Don't have that. Right? Wrap things up. Be done with it. It's good advice. Hey. There's one question
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I should ask you today, but I didn't. What's that what is that question and how do you answer it?
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The question is, how did I achieve peace in marriage?
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Oh, we should just start the show over. Go ahead. I'll figure that one.
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I learned to not criticize my wife.
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You mean you just stop talking is what you I would be quiet now. Was that step was that step one? For example,
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if I as opposed to criticizing, it would be, you know what? Let's think about doing this next year or this let's perhaps we should be, you know, doing, more, I don't know, trips to ski. My my theory is I want a full month skiing every year and, like, my wife's like, I don't think so. So how do you there's ways to to, bring about change in a in a family or in a group which don't involve criticism. They involve more like hypnosuggestion, like, more like, gaining consensus. And we have a wonderful marriage as a result, and it happens to be my fourth. So I think I finally succeeded there. Well,
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if I'm making four shots at, I think I'll hit one out. I mean Right. I'm trying to make four putts out of 10 foot putt. I'll probably make at least one of those. So Thank you. Except they were long drives. They were long. I mean, I'm I'm more accurate probably with the driver than I am the putter to be fair. But seven iron that I'm like I need to work on. Alright. Anyway, Barry, congratulations. I'm glad you you have finally found it. I'm good enough. You can see it's certainly good enough. Who who should get a hold of you, and how do they do that?
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Okay. Well, very simple. OriginClear is the company, and if you go there, there's an opportunity to sign up. We have a monthly broadcast called Legends of Water, and it's mostly self referentials. We are the legends. Okay? But we also have clips. You know, once you publish this, so we'll use clips from it. And but more importantly, four execs of the company candidly discuss what's going on, what's happening. And it it really is a, first of all, a great opportunity to sort of review things, but also I believe very strongly that company management should openly talk to its audiences even if they've only got 50 people they're talking to. The stuff gets replayed, gets reused, gets re clipped, etcetera. Really, really important. So they should sign up for Ledges of Water. Take a look at our investment thing. You should get in water now because it's an asset finally, and you'll win at it. So join us. Love it. Thank you. I appreciate you joining us today. As always, a pleasure. Let's prognosticate many times.
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Thank you for joining us on this episode of Cut the Tie. Let's stay connected. Please hit that follow button on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. And if you're ready to advance your entrepreneurial journey even further, join our free community at facebook.com/groups/cutthetie. Cut the tie to everything holding you back from success.