Transcript 

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn the principles, strategies, and tactics to grow their businesses, top line, bottom line, and finish line. I want you to discover the secret to applying biblical truth to business growth for the greatest kingdom impact, so in the end, you hear from your Heavenly Father, well done. Welcome to the 100-Fold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn how to grow their businesses, top line, bottom line, and ultimately the finish line. 

I'm your host, Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures, and today we have a special guest. We have Kurt Avery. Kurt is the founder, owner, and president of Sawyer Products, a company he established in 1984 to provide clean water and insect repellent solutions globally. 

Kurt is known for his faith-driven leadership, famously donating over 90% of the company's profits to charities and non-profits across 80-plus countries to combat waterborne disease and malaria. Kurt is also the author of a recent book titled, Sawyer Think, How a Small Company Disrupts Markets and Changes the World. Welcome, Kurt. 

Thanks for being on the show. Well, thank you. It's an honor to be here.

Yeah, I'm very excited to be here with you, Kurt. We talked a little bit beforehand, and really my excitement is to share how your relationship with God has shaped, how you've grown, scaled, and really impacted the world with your business, Sawyer. So to start, Kurt, why don't you share with the audience how God has directed your path to get where you are right now? Yeah, well, the first thing you have to do is decide God is God. 

So, I mean, you got a lot of religions to choose from, so why do you pick this one? So I'm big on creation. I mean, if you see what's out there, and I would direct you if you want to go to YouTube and look up the science dilemma and watch those videos, clearly God is in charge of creation. And if he's in charge of creation, we have to deal with that. 

So that's an underlying fact. You can't change that God did creation, and that empowers you to, obviously, drives your faith, and then you got to listen to what he said, and then comes Jesus, and all that falls in the line once you've established the fact that God's in charge. So then you follow his formula. 

So, yeah, I've been there from knee-high to a grasshopper. I did explore all the other religions, even after I was a Christian, just to make sure to confirm that the choices were correct. And he's had a hand on me, all the way from get-go, but he's had a big hand on the company. 

You referred to the book. If you do read the book, there's some of God's stories in there that can be explained no other way than God had his hand on it. I mean, it's just unbelievable stuff going on that couldn't happen without God intervening and directing it. 

So, I got our attention, and then once he has your attention, then what do you want us to do? Why did you put me here? Life is short. Eternity is a long time. So, we're investing in the whole thing. 

So, what is the task that he wants us to do while we're here? So, that's the mantra. So, with that mantra, 1984, you first started the company. Did you already understand, hey, this is God's business. 

I'm going to do it his way, right from the beginning, or was there kind of a journey or evolution that happened where you realized, okay, I need to make some shifts and align with his ways? No, I've always been on the Christian path. Remember when I went to a Christian college and always have had the faith and raised up through the church and got my MBA, and then I had a very storied career working for some companies you would know, and some big names that you would know were people I worked for. So, it's always been there. 

I mean, whether I was working for somebody else or working for ourselves, it was a little tough in the beginning because I always like to say we lost money 23 of our first 25 years until we became an overnight success. So, we were struggling through, but I knew it was there. We knew we were going to get there because we had the stuff, and I always had a safety net for career-wise. 

But no, we slugged it out because we knew we were going to make it. So, no, it's always been an underlying thing, whether it's our company or where I worked corporately. So, what made you decide to break out and remove yourself from the corporate environment and start your own business? Well, without naming any names, I'd done some pretty good stuff and built a pretty good resume, and I'm standing outside one of the president's office listening to him take absolutely credit for everything I did. 

No bones. Didn't throw me a bone, whatever. So, I said, I get how this little corporate game works. 

You do the work and the boss takes the credit. So, I said, all right, I'm out of here, and that's when we started Sawyer. And what was the first invention? I'm assuming you guys have certain patents and inventions that you made along the way. 

How did it first begin? Yeah, we started with a friend of mine from grad school, brought me a product from the Pasteur Institute. It's a little suction device, and a quick suction device is actually a pretty big medical thing. And so, we started, they did it for bee stings. 

We had bee stings, snake bites, launched it in 1984. It's still in Walmart today. So, obviously, 42 years later, the product proved itself to be a valuable product, and it's used for other things, hand therapy, other medical things. 

So, that's what we started it with, and that got us into the camping industry. And then, once you're in there, like the book will point out, the way you build a business is sell more things to the same customers. A, they trust you, and it's the channels are open, and they'd rather buy more things from you. 

So, we just spent a lot of time sitting in the stores, the Bass Pros, Cabela's, REIs, and listening and saying, what problems do you have that we could solve, you know? And so, we went from there to first aid, and then we got into the repellents, and then we got into the water. So, it was just a natural progression of solving problems for the same customers. Yeah, all makes sense. 

And like we talked ahead of time, I've used some of your products, hiking, backpacking the Appalachian Trail, and so, I can testify that they work, right? I didn't get sick drinking water. So, it's very good. So, in terms of, you know, running your business and doing it faithful, what kind of impact would you say that's had on maybe customers, or employees, or vendors? Because I'm assuming that you maybe stood out as different than their ambitions.

Yeah, well, for one thing, you know, every product we sell has to be state-of-the-art. We won't do any me-tos. That was a lesson I learned in grad school. 

So, everything that it goes out the door, there is no better product for its application than what you can have with the name Soyon, and you can't compromise that, because once you compromise it once, it takes the whole line. So, we've been able to do it. Now, I'm not that smart, okay? I don't know science. 

I can't spell it without spellcheck. So, I'm a marketer, and so, I'm the interpreter between the consumer and the engineers, and the engineers solve problems, and they don't know how to communicate, or you gotta go back. So, I'm the middle person that lines the engineer up with solving the consumer's problems, even if the consumers don't know what their problems are. 

I always likened it to, you know, Henry Ford said, if I asked the customer what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. No, you gotta think past that and really say, what's the solution? And we've done that. We've come out with novel technologies, you know, so you don't think of an insect repellent being on the clothes instead of the skin. 

You don't think of a water filter coming from kidney dialysis. We replace these big clunky things with something that doesn't hardly weigh anything and can't get sick. I mean, we, 20 some years, nobody's copied our technology. 

We're the only ones that we can tell you nothing that makes you sick is going to get through this thing, and which was important to us. And when we go into Africa and we put it in a village, you can say, oh, you know, some of you are going to be okay, the rest of you are still going to get sick. No, you gotta go in there and say nobody's going to get sick. 

We gotta do this. So, you gotta have the high standards. So, that's how we built it, piece by piece by piece. 

Then you find out, okay, so we got this incredible retail product, and we're doing really well on the retail side of the business, and I'm sitting there going, wait a minute. What really started was this, we were just adapting it to international. So, you had this big earthquake in Haiti that wiped out 250,000 people and all the water sources, whatever. 

So, we sent a couple hundred thousand of these filters down there, and it got to be that was how they got their water, was, you know, you can dip it in the stream, whatever you want, you can drink the water at your feet. So, that put us on the map, and once we were on the map there, then all the other NGOs, like I said, we have 140 of them now, all the big ones, Samaritan's Purse and World Vision and Red Cross. Red Cross keeps them in the warehouse for any emergencies, you know. 

That put us on the map, and then you just keep building from there. You go in and you find out the little, well, it works this way. We now basically have it in four different formats. 

So, it's the same technology, but, you know, they're adapted for different situations. So, just one by one, you knock these little things off. So, what's the future for Sawyer? I mean, as you're continuing to solve these problems, do you have other new problems you're solving, or is it more about a distribution problem and an expansion at this point? Oh, both. 

Now, I'm going to qualify this by saying everything I'm about to say will sound like I'm crazy. Well, I am, but this is all everything I'm going to tell is verified medically and printed in medical journals. So, we've had this filter. 

For those who want to see it, it's a little thing like this. The water comes in. We filter out all the things that make you sick. 

The largest hole we have is a tenth of a micron. Your hair is 17 microns. So, the biggest hole we have is 170 times less diameter than your hair. 

So, no bad bacteria can get through that, and nobody else can make that claim, and we test it three times to make sure that we meet that claim. So, we have that, and we've been using buckets and whatever, but now we just went to the next level, where you take and you put this on your tap. So, you get this little piece out of here. 

You take this piece, and you screw it right onto your tap. There's bushings, so you get the right fit no matter what size you tap. Then, you put this little thing on here, and what this is, this is the regulator. 

So, if you're pushing too much water through it, it'll pop off, and it's done that so you can protect the fibers in here. So, you just screw this on, and you put that on your faucet. Anywhere from two to five hundred gallons per day for the next 10 years for a filter that cost you $20 or less. 

So, if you round that off, that comes down to water is free, and because so many people around the world, they do have tap water, but tap water is not safe. You wouldn't go to a lot of these places and drink out of their taps. You'd get sick. 

Now, we've made it safe. So, we're down now to where like for 30 cents, we can give somebody 10 years old clean water. Just 30 cents. 

It's all cost. No infrastructure, whatever water they have, and we have our old standards, you know, the bucket filters for the rural people that don't have taps. So, that's the next frontier. 

This product is just coming down the production line right now as we speak. So, and that's not enough. We have the answer to malaria. 

So, we did a study with University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Dr. Ross Boyce, and he took our, people are familiar with our permethrin, you know, you put it on the clothes, keeps the bugs away. Well, we treat the baby wraps that the mom holds the baby in for the first two years of their life so she can walk around, the baby's on her back. If you treat that wrap with the same chemical that you're going to find in the stores for your hikers and hunters and everything, we give them a little bottle, they pour it into a bag, they soak the baby wrap for six months, that baby won't get malaria, and then you retreat it, keep going. 

Wiped out two-thirds of all the malaria in babies ages zero to two while they're in the wrap. Now, you lose 6% of the babies who get malaria die, and the other ones who get it have cognitive issues for the rest of their life. So, you really don't want these babies to get older. 

You start building immunities, and you got other things, and there's a lot of vaccines out there, but the trick is to stop from getting it in the very first place when they're very, very young. So, you combine that with clean water so the kid's immune systems are better, and then you put this in the wrap. I mean, you talk about the solution to baby malaria, it's so simple. 

And it's been the same thing we've been doing for the military for like 30 years. We treat the military uniforms. They take their shirt, and they put it in a bag, and they put the chemical in, and then the shirt works. 

So, nothing new, but a whole new application. So, that's just, I mean, that hasn't even come down the production line yet. It was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine maybe two months ago. 

So, those are the two things that are brand new. We're ready to go to the next level. We do three to four million people a year get clean water for the very first time. 

With this new thing in funding, we'll do 30 to 40 million people a year. We can go in and take a country and say two years from now nobody's getting sick. So, it's pretty exciting, but that's what we're up to. 

That's what we're up to. That's amazing. What an impact. 

And through that, do people get the chance to hear about Jesus somehow? Is there a way to do that working with these different NGOs and other government agencies? Are you able to slip that in as well? Oh, absolutely. Well, first of all, people need to understand Christians do 80% of all the charity work around the world. We call them sandals on the ground. 

So, they're the ones that do it. These all come with testimonies and baptisms. You go into the villages, and it's staggering. 

Gangs quit fighting. We've had child sacrifices stopped because the people through the filter became Christians, and they just stopped all that stuff. Yeah, a lot of baptisms.

Almost all the charities will share the gospel. It's a great testimony. It's like living water. 

You give a demo where you take the dirty glass and you run it through the filter, and it comes out clean, and you say, well, that was your life before Jesus. This is your life after Jesus. So, it's a huge testimony. 

Top line, bottom line, finish line. If you're not growing all three, we should talk. Too many business owners are struggling alone, stuck in the same cycle, going nowhere fast. 

Scripture says that in an abundance of counselors, there is victory, and I want to be that resource for you. For over 15 years, I've helped hundreds of small business owners break through their limits, build a solid plan, and multiply their impact. 

Go to 4thSoilVentures.com, schedule your free discovery call, and let's build your business by the book. Life is too short and eternity is way too long to build it any other way. 

That's amazing. What an impact that your business can make in sharing the gospel and the distribution of, and the connection between actually helping people with their physical needs and then going right to their spiritual needs. If you don't solve a physical need, you won't get to the spiritual need. That's usually a high correlation there. 

Well, I wanted to get to some of the philosophies that are built into your book and just the way you've managed, and one of them that I keep reading about is this why not mindset and believing in a big God, and when did you start thinking that way, and what made you kind of be bold in that way as a business owner? Well, this is the crazy part. I've always thought that way. I mean, I'm a believer in the, I just, you go outside, I don't care if you're looking at the little ants or if you're looking at the stars and you're looking to get into bacteria and all. 

I mean, it's so big. I mean, come on, give God credit for being big. So, I always say, you know, your God will be as big as you let him be, and if you want a small God, you'll have a small God and you'll do small things. 

Not that that's not important because God does need everybody, but if you have a really big God, he'll equip you to do big things because he's got big things to do. So, I think that's just a mindset, and if you have a hard time having a big God, just study nature. You'll get there.

Yeah, no, that's a great encouragement, and I'm going to play the other side just because in my role as a business coach, business consultant, I deal with a lot of problems, right? People come to me with problems. That's all I do with their companies. They have issues, and they're always trying to make decisions. 

They're trying to make decisions, wise decisions, careful decisions, plan on decisions, and so how do you, because you've made a lot of decisions over the years, decide between the careless or reckless or foolish decisions that maybe are bold versus courageous, thoughtful risks that you believe God is in. How do you deal with that tension? Well, I don't mean to be boring here, but chapter six in the book is called the decision matrix, and if you need to make decisions, you need to read that chapter because what happens is usually in a decision, you're hung up on one or two variables, three at most. You're just focused on those things. 

We make you come up with 10 variables, hopefully 20 variables, and so there's more to that decision than just the one you're mentally, emotionally stuck on, and we give you a little chart, and you weigh them, and you come up with points, and all that kind of stuff, and you may end up with the same decision, but at least in the very end, by working through that, you find future trip points, if you will, or I don't believe in unintended consequences. You should have thought about it before. I'm professionally trained to think and make decisions, but you can be too. 

Follow that diagram, and you'll learn to think of things that, oh, you know what? I didn't think of that. No, I don't have any excuses for that. You should have mapped that out and thought of it. 

Now, it may not change the decision, but at the very least, it's going to keep you from falling into little holes along the way, and sometimes it will change your decision, so I do that in everything. I'm sorry I don't think about just the little immediate question I'm into. I'm also big in creative destruction. 

I'm always trying to think three to five years down the road. What's going to change? How's the culture going to change? We are all over the generation alpha right now. We were the millennials, and then we went to Gen Z's.

We studied these generations before they become purchasing power, so you always have to be looking at what technology is going to change. I mean, come on. Look at how fast technology is changing now. 

You've got to think that stuff through to the best you can so you're not surprised when it happens, so that's a discipline, a thinking discipline, and I think God rewards that. I mean, He gave you the skill set to make those decisions, and that goes back to your argument. What's this mean for other people? It's the why not. 

Why not? God, everybody has a skill set. You wouldn't make a living if you didn't have some skill set, so God gave it to you. Your family, you built it up. 

You got all these opportunities. What are you going to do with it? How can you use that skill set for the kingdom? So hopefully the book, we're helping you make your business better. We're giving you all kinds of 25 tips, things to watch out for and make your business more profitable, but if it is more profitable, what are you going to do with it? I mean, come on. 

You're not going to need the money. I mean, you might now. You think you do, but you really don't, and I have the rocking chair theory that says when you get to your porch when you're retired and you got a cat on your lap and a lemonade over here and an iced tea or whatever, what will you wish you had done? Don't wait for the rocking chair to say, I wish I had done this. 

Do it. Just do it while you can, and I can assure you everybody has something to give. It could be Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the world, but you have something to give, and God says, go for it. 

I'll back you up. I'll keep you on. No naked sparrows. 

You'll be okay. That's right. With that, you and I were talking a little bit ahead of time about this idea of currency and business and the way you will measure their success on their currency, and you're at a different take on currency. 

What do you think owners should really be focusing on with that? Obviously, you have to measure your success in dollars and cents, but not your eternal sense. You're not taking anything with you. No U-Hauls in heaven. 

What is your eternal currency? At Sawyer, it's lives changed, lives saved. People come back and look at our factory and go, all that comes out of that place? We don't always repair the holes in the wall when the forklift hits it because our mantra is for every dollar we spend, that's one person who's not going to get water for life. We do everything correctly, and all the things are clean or whatever, but we don't make it fancy, and we don't put in all the amenities and have fancy furniture because you just can't. 

How can you do that and know that somebody in Africa or Guatemala or whatever didn't get life-changing water because you wanted to do this instead? We're pretty frugal, and the whole company's in on this. I don't think that we have a worker there that isn't totally in line with what we're doing, our philosophy in life. Our currency is not the dollars. 

Our currency at the end of the day is how many lives we can change. How did you build a culture like that? As a leader, as you're recruiting the best team to to solve this huge problem, how did you lead and build a culture that agree with that? It doesn't take long. First of all, we are profitable, so I am able to pay very well, so we get the best of the best of the best. 

I would put any of our workers up against any of their counterparts in the industry, and I'll guarantee you we had the better people. Who wouldn't want to be part of what we're doing? It's so easy to recruit when you say, okay, you meet the Sawyer standard, you're really, really, really, really good, and by the way, you're going to help change the world. We're very fortunate. 

Not many people can have the impact that we have around the world. One $20 filter can change 20,000 lives. It's just staggering what we can do or saving babies' lives. 

We'll just show you some videos. Go to our website and watch some of the videos. If you can keep tears out of your eyes, I'm going to be amazed. 

How can you not do this when it's so important to those people over there? Everywhere. We're in 80 countries. We're in North Korea. 

We've been in Gaza from the beginning. We're everywhere. We're in Iran, and sharing the gospel in these places. 

We're very fortunate. Not all companies can do what we do. God has particularly blessed us. 

I sat down, it's got to be 20 years ago or so, and I said, you know, God, half the world dies of either bad water or mosquito bites. Why don't we just go fix that? We got the products. Why don't we go fix that? Of course, we meaning him, but that's been the charge. 

That's what we've been chasing is to solve the two biggest problems, and oddly enough, we're right there. So again, I sit back every once in a while and say, okay, God allowed bacteria to be a part of our lives for how many years? And now he's very close to taking it off the table. We literally can take people dying and getting sick of bad water off the table for pennies.

To me, that's a big change. God's about to change the way he deals with human beings. So I know that's a little out there, but these are the kind of things we think about.

I think that spending time in prayer and knowing God's heart to care for people who are in need is directly aligned with your mission, and hopefully is inspiring everybody here, regardless of what they do, whether they're an accountant or they are a home builder, they're impacting people's lives. And with your book, what are some of the maybe surprising principles you think most people haven't thought about who are, again, these owners who are watching this, that maybe they never considered or thought about with their own company? Well, the first thing is, what do you have that you can share? So again, I kind of mentioned some of the big ones. Decision matrix is big. 

That's going to help you make better decisions, long-term decisions. Creative destruction is huge. Three things change the world—technology, laws, or changes in culture. 

And so, I know it's not going to be doing the same thing five years from now. The question is, did you do it by reacting to the changes, or did you anticipate the changes? Did you get there before the other people got there? So that's huge. That was Schlumpeter in 1953 when he wrote his book about that. 

So I'm really big on that. I have shortcuts to making decisions. I call them math trap. 

I got it from doing baseball batting averages and stuff like that. I mean, you don't always have to know the decision three decimals to the right. You know, sometimes you got to get—there's certain business principles that, you know, doesn't matter whether you have 15 or 17 percent market share, the decision is going to be the same.

Don't spend all your time trying to figure out the difference, you know. How could Jack Welch make business decisions on a napkin? Because he knew the shortcuts. He knew the basic concepts.

So I walk you through that, you know, how you can not get bogged down in the numbers to make big decisions. So there's some things in there I think would be helpful. No, it sounds great. 

I'm definitely going to pick it up. Now, what was the hardest lesson for you to learn? What was one that you learned the hard way? Because I'm sure not all of it was simple to learn. Yeah, patience. 

I have given God so many suggestions over the years. I would, you know, I always say I'd love to be God if it weren't for the people. People drive me nuts. 

Yeah, it's fitting to his timing, not mine. I mean, I'm sitting there watching the biological clock keep going. I said, God, we got to do it. 

But, you know, who knows? Maybe it'll be like King David. We'll build a temple after I'm gone. I don't know.

But submitting to his timetable is very hard for me because I want to do it. You know, we could do it. But that's not his plan. 

And in the end, his plan's got to be the one that goes. So that's the toughest thing. Even now, I wrestle with it all the time. 

Well, I think it's great that you're still leading the charge and not passively just dwindling away, but instead even more eager to impact more people's lives as time goes on, which I think is awesome and inspiring. Well, I want to always end my interviews by asking this question, because a lot of people who have maybe parked their faith on the side and they bring it out Sunday morning, but during work they keep it quiet. And so the question is, what would you say to encourage someone who has not yet fully embraced integrating their faith into their work? Oh, you don't know what you're missing out on. 

I mean, if your God is big and he supported you with the skills and the opportunities, why not? You know, it's so rewarding. I mean, it's just you're doing things you didn't think you could ever do. You know, I was a little old country boy doing this stuff. 

So I would just say don't miss out. Don't get to your rocking chair and say, I wish I had done this. Do it. 

God will equip you. You're not going to starve. There's no debtor prisons, you know, a good businessman. 

I just think, you know, you're missing it. You're just missing out on all the joy of being part of God's plan. Yeah, and I think that's a great finish, and I don't know if it was before we hit record or not, but we're talking about—this is a line I use, and it's a line you use, too, which is that life is so short and eternity is so long, you know? So, you know, make your time count. 

Well, Kurt, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom on the show today. It's been an important message, inspiring message. I hope that people will take this and get excited about making a kingdom impact and doing things that will matter for eternity, solving big problems.

Where can the audience go to find more information about you and your company and your book? Obviously, well, the book is on Amazon, and all our products are there, but you can go to sawyer.com. You can peruse through our international thing and see all the things we're doing. A lot of stories that'll choke you up. We also have the Sawyer Foundation, and the Sawyer Foundation, when I—I'm a marketer, so I'm going to exit the market someday, physically or mentally, and it's set up that Sawyer will go to the foundation, just like Hershey owns—foundation owns Hershey, so we can get to continue what we're doing. 

We are so fortunate to have a model where we can give stuff away and not have to pay very minimal taxes. You know, we'd rather use it for God's purpose than the government's purpose. So, with the foundation, if they did want to donate, every single dollar, 100 percent, is going to go overseas. 

The overhead is very minimal, and it's all covered by Sawyer, so any outside funding will go overseas. You can even pick your continent. I mean, we're everywhere anyways. 

Well, probably not Antarctica, but any other continent where there's a lot of people living, you say, well, I'd like this to go to Africa. I'd like this to go to Asia. I'd like it to go to Central America. 

We got people everywhere. If they want to do that, come with us. I got a lot of charities. 

I'd be happy to take you on a trip and show you what we're doing, how we're doing it, how we're implementing it. So, come join us. Okay, there you go. 

That's the invitation. Be a part of the solution. Kurt, thanks again for being on the show, and stay tuned, everybody, for the next episode of the Hundredfold Business Podcast. 

We'll be bringing another guest like Kurt. We'll be going through the Bible to identify how we can grow our top line, bottom line, and finish line. And if you need help specifically with your business, you can always go to my website, 4thSoilVentures.com, and I can help you there. 

Again, Kurt, thanks for being on the show. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. And until next time, grace be with you, brothers.