Redefining Our Relationship with Water
We're 70% water by mass and 99% by molecule, we could effectively call our species Hydro Sapiens.
Stuart Rudick, an advocate for water, emphasized its central role in life and his journey from a windsurfer concerned about pollution to an investor in water-focused firms like HydroDAO and Ever Blue Venture Fund. He stressed the significance of viewing water as a connector, the value of team dynamics in water companies, and the urgency of addressing water challenges.
What you'll hear in this episode:
- 🌊 Water Connection. Stuart highlighted our deep connection with water, describing humans as 'Hydro sapiens'.
- 💼 Activist to Investor. He discussed his transition from a beach-cleaning activist to a water industry investor, emphasizing the significance of water in multiple sectors.
- 🧑🤝🧑 Team Importance. Stuart emphasized the role of a strong team in successful water companies.
- 🚰 Water Challenges. He stressed the need to tackle pressing water challenges, including desalination and infrastructure.
- 🌍 HydroDAO Vision. Stuart introduced HydroDAO, a global platform for water professionals to unite and collaborate.
Listen on:
Meet Stuart
Stuart Rudick is a dedicated water advocate based in San Francisco. Beyond his advocacy, he enjoys water sports like windsurfing and skiing. He's affiliated with the San Francisco Bay Keeper, focusing on water conservation, and collaborates with experts like Robert Slovak. Through his non-profit work, Stuart aims to deepen our understanding of water and champion its sustainable use.
The book, movie, or show
We ask everyone for their favorite book, movie, or show. This is what Stuart had to say!
Universal Water explores water through scientific, naturalistic, ancient, and modern non-scientific lenses. It delves into the notion that water might connect planetary and universal events, drawing on diverse and sometimes contentious historical philosophies and theories.
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Transcript
00:00
Stuart Rudick
What I really want to hear is, when you're in trouble, when do you have problems? Where do you have challenges? With an employee, with yourself, with your family life? You've got some problem at home? That's where I want to know. Because that's where you need the most help. And that's what most entrepreneurs never talk about, because they're afraid to talk about it. And that's where they fall down very often, because it's personal. You bring your whole self to the business. You don't just bring your brilliant marketing and finance and sales. You bring all of you.
00:31
Ravi Kurani
Welcome to Liquid Assets. I'm your host, Ravi Kurani. Liquid Assets is a podcast where we talk about the intersection of business, policy and technology, all as it looks at water. Today, we have an awesome guest for you. We have Stuart Rudick.
00:44
Stuart Rudick
My name is Stuart Rudick. I am a messenger and a steward of water. I humbly bow down to water and all the gifts that it provides to us in our lives. And I have a number of entities and groups that are focused on water solutions, from our youth leadership group called watercore to our extraordinary water community called Hydrodal, to our innovative investment fund called Ever Blue Venture Fund. And I welcome you to join us in all of our water activities, business, and our playing in the joy of water.
01:27
Ravi Kurani
And Stuart, I want to go ahead and just hand you the mic, because what were talking about earlier, before I hit the record button, was absolutely amazing. What's the point? We want to drive home today.
01:38
Stuart Rudick
Thanks, Ravi. And I'm grateful for you and your passion and your work in water and connecting us in water. And that is the central theme, is that we all are water. We are water beings. We're known to be 70% water by mass and we're 99% water by molecule. And we call ourselves Homo sapiens. I think when we're aptly named hydro sapiens, we are true water beings. And the key here is sapien means wise. It is time for us to become wise, learn from our past and to become water wise, because water is the element that is the essential element of all life. It's also the element that unites us. We all are similar in our water, where water not only sustains our lives, it is what we are. And so that is the unifying element for us to come together, for us to connect with each other, and for us to use that water which is so sacred and precious to all life, to value that and to see its critical role and to see it's what connects all of us.
02:53
Stuart Rudick
It is the uniting element. And in that it allows us to open up our hearts, to be kindler and more generous with each other, so we can live this life that we all desire and wish. That is such an amazingly rich, abundant life that's offered to us that is so profound.
03:16
Ravi Kurani
It hits at the heart because a lot of the conversations that I hear are around a very transactional in nature, right? And it's transactional in kind of today's world. But what you're saying is water is us. Right. If we all kind of look inwards and we understand that's what is inside of us, we can go ahead and actually connect with everything else around us. Including the Earth, including the other people around us. Which, once you have that unity, then you have the power to kind of change whatever you want to change in the direction you want to go in.
03:47
Stuart Rudick
Yeah. As you're saying, there are no limits. Water has no limits. Water has this power that is so amazingly powerful and yet it embraces all. It embraces the softness and the hardness and it has that duality. It has the ion and caton polarity of hydrogen and oxygen and it is the ultimate source of life and power and energy. And we just need to come back to revering water. That's what we've lost touch with. We've taken water and we treat it, or more aptly, mistreat it in a way that truly changes the water. It changes the electrons, it changes the photon energy of water by the way that man treats water or as I said, doesn't treat it so well or so lovingly and so caringly and so respectfully.
04:49
Ravi Kurani
And what kind of brought you to this understanding? Let's kind of walk through the story of Stuart. What brought you through this realization? Because I think for the audience, it would be great to hear about how you got here.
05:01
Stuart Rudick
Well, we all got here in the same way. We came from our mother's womb. And what is that? The womb and the amniotic fluid is essentially seawater. It's the closest thing to seawater and the closest thing to our blood. So we all were birthed in that womb. The indigenous people call the womb the first ocean because it is the sea in which we have been birthed and all life started in the ocean and with water. Water is a hydrological system. The ocean, which represents 70% of the geography of the planet, 97% of all of our water is saline water. So it is source of all of our drinking water which most people don't think about or connect. And it's so critical and vital, the oceans and in, let's see, early eighty s I started Windsurfing in San Francisco and when I was windsurfing there, which I love, there were signs posted at the beach saying don't enter danger.
06:09
Stuart Rudick
And I think it probably said bacteria. And what happened was in San Francisco, the storm drains and the sewage system are connected. So whenever it rained there would be an overflow and sewage would flow into the bay and the outHall pipes and people were getting sick and so they would post signs for this. Well, as you know, you surfer wind surfer. If it's windy or big waves, you're.
06:30
Ravi Kurani
Going, you're going out there. Yeah.
06:32
Stuart Rudick
And I did the same and I said I got to figure this out, I got to understand what's going on. So I ended up calling the water department and Citizen for a better environment. And I learned about the system together and it made me say, wow, we need to learn about this because we can go on the water, but we need to stay either upwind or downwind of where the tide is at that time and the wind, et cetera. So I started a group called Wind Surfers for Cleaner Water back in 1981 and we did beach cleanups. We actually started before Surf Rider did and a few years later we started doing collaboration with Surf Rider in protecting waters and beach cleanups. And that started me ravi on a path of learning about water in a whole new world and dimension that wasn't just about having fun.
07:20
Stuart Rudick
Because not only was I a Wind Surfer, avid skier and just love water and all water sports and based upon that, as I started learning, I learned about a group in San Francisco called the San Francisco Bay Keeper as a keeper in the country behind Bobby Kennedy Jr's. Hudson river keeper. And I joined that board, ended up eventually yeah, I know you're excited. Eventually became board chair and was on that board for twelve years and was so actively involved and it got me involved in understanding water from a whole new perspective and a whole new dimension of not just enjoying this water but drinking water. And had me looking at industrial uses of water and what were the sources and then looking at marshlands and how do we protect them and how is real estate and development impacted. So I just got this window into water that made me start going deeper and then I ended up joining the board of a group called Blue Planet that was focused on clean, safe drinking water in the developing world and has supplied over 2 million people in the developing world.
08:31
Stuart Rudick
Clean, safe drinking water and sanitation, hygiene. And I was on that board for six years. So each of these experiences as I started becoming educated and learning about water had me understand water's critical role and its complexity. It is so extraordinarily complex, as I'm sure you well know and many of your other guests have shared and it's really beyond our mind and our knowing. It's magical. Water has so many properties that we can't explain and we don't need to explain because they're there and they exist and they're magical. Let's keep them magical, let's keep them in that mysterious sort of like wow, that's incredible way of being. So that's been my journey and path and I've been in the investment business all of my life for 40 plus years and water has been an area I've been interested in and in the early 80s looked at buying spring and bottling water.
09:29
Stuart Rudick
And I'm happy to say I didn't do that. It didn't happen, thankfully, because I would have been a contributor to plastic bottle waste, which I would not want to be yet be very involved and have funded lots of water companies over the last four decades. And eight years ago, I had a revelation. And the revelation was, the rest of my life is to be dedicated to water. For me to be a steward of water, to be a messenger and to be an advocate of water and to have water speak through me. And that's what I do today. And that's the commitment of the rest of my life is to be dedicated to water.
10:07
Ravi Kurani
That's amazing. I want to go back to some of the companies that you funded because we have a lot of entrepreneurs that actually when you kind of think about what makes a successful water company, what do you look for, both in terms of potentially business model and or from the investment side to help folks get connected to the water world?
10:29
Stuart Rudick
Great question. It's no different for water than it is for AI or healthcare. It all comes down to one key aspect of a business. And it's all just people. The reason that companies succeed or fail is always traced back to the people, the team. And that is the secret sauce. So when we invest in companies, we are investing in the people, the founders, the team, and their ability to be sapient. And that means knowing where they are strong, where they are not so strong, where their holes are and how they bring in the right people that have the expertise, that have the skills, that have the knowledge, that have the experience to be able to grow and scale a business. Because not every founder is not good at everything. No one is right. We have our niches, which we're really great, and we need to then hire the team that is really great, and we need to empower them, we need to entrust them.
11:37
Stuart Rudick
So we have a very unique process. We have a fund called Ever Blue Venture Fund. And in that fund and our investments, we focus people first. And clearly, it's about the product, the service and the market opportunity, the need, and all the typical fundamental financial margin, profitability, competitive analysis, we do all that as well. Yet it's all about the relationship, Ravi. And we have incredibly deep relationships with all of our companies and founders because we care, because that's what matters to us, is the relationship and the business. And the success of that business comes from the trust, from the ability to have a founder. Tell me as I say to them, I want to hear the good news. What I really want to hear is, when you're in trouble, when do you have problems? Where do you have challenges? With an employee, with yourself, with your family?
12:34
Stuart Rudick
Life, you've got some problem at home, that's where I want to know, because that's where you need the most help. And that's what most entrepreneurs never talk about, because they're afraid to talk about it. And that's where they fall down very often because it's personal. You bring your whole self to the business. You don't just bring your brilliant marketing and finance and sales. You bring all of you.
12:56
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, and it's just amazing that you say that, because I've been on a few podcasts myself for my company, and people have asked what makes a successful company? And it is the people. Because you raise money from your investors who are people, you sell to people who are your customers, and you hire people, and your colleagues are people. And so, as a founder, you have to make sure you're selecting people kind of in actually all of the right areas. Because you can also get, not only can you get bad investors, you can also get bad customers. Right? Not every single customer is the same. And so there is this singular point of making sure that you surround yourself with the right people or good people for what you're trying to build and what you're trying to make.
13:38
Stuart Rudick
And with your own story, Ravi, from what you told me, with your company, you Pivoted, you started the company, you had a vision, you had a passion. And the marketplace said, well, that's not really what the marketplace wanted. And so you figured that out and you were humble and wise, sapient enough to say, oh, okay, here's the opportunity. And you did that and you made that Pivot, and it created great success for you. That's often the biggest challenge in failure for founders is they're so bested in what they believe and they believe is truth. And they believe the market wants that. They don't listen, and they just keep forging ahead with their own way. And it's not what the market wants. And so I call it a heinous disease that's founders, it's called founder myelitis, okay, where they're so myopic in their passion that they can't see beyond it, and they can't open up, they can't shift.
14:40
Stuart Rudick
And as you know, I don't know what percent, but well over 50% of every early stage company has a Pivot and has a shift that leads to their success.
14:50
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, 100%. Because you have to be aware of the game that you're playing, right? And market conditions are changing, the people are changing, the world is changing as all around you. And the majority of it, you really can't control. And so the only thing you can really control is kind of the direction you're headed in. And if you're not Pivoting, you're actually doing yourself and your product and your team a disservice 100%.
15:11
Stuart Rudick
So, as you say that, you at the beginning talked about what your podcast is about. A lot of Is technology and that we all know that technology is changing at accelerated rates. And the whole world is now looking at AI and how AI will be used and affected in all of our lives. And like anything, AI is not the issue. It's the people that are programming and coding the AI that I think if we have to be worried, that's what we need to be worried about is the people. The AI isn't going to suddenly become this intelligent agent that's going to want to take over the world. So I don't have fears about the tools. I have concerns about the people with it. And from the water industry standpoint, you know well, that the water industry is at a really wonderful opportune time. It's one of the oldest industries on the planet, and that's a positive, and that's a challenge.
16:15
Stuart Rudick
We all know that the infrastructure as an example for water and whether that's wastewater treatment, sewage plants, or whether that's water purification is average, is 60 plus years. So we have an industry that has been around for eons, and yet it hasn't really evolved and it hasn't caught up with today. So we're at a time where we're going to be both invited and forced to have the water industry step into the current time and current innovations and technologies. And that's where we're focused with our investments in our fund are incredible innovations that many of them have technologies and solutions that are not limited to water, yet they're being applied to water, and they touch other aspects of life. Because water touches all aspects of life. Yes. So we believe that the innovations that we're beginning to see are going to come from people outside of the water industry.
17:19
Stuart Rudick
They're going to come from engineers and coders and software programmers and machine learning AI experts and public health. And they're going to bring their domain expertise and solutions into the water industry. And that's going to transform the water industry. It's not going to come from inside the water industry.
17:40
Ravi Kurani
What are you seeing in the kind of near term and I guess as a kind of messenger and medium for water, what needs to get built right? If there's a handful of ideas or even a problem statement, we may not have the solution yet. But what do you think that is kind of from what you're investing in today to kind of the North Star of where we need to go to?
18:01
Stuart Rudick
That's such a big question, and I'm a little embarrassed to say it's pretty much everything. So when we look at water globally, 70% of all water is related to agriculture and food. So that is the number one source of water use. California, largest state in our nation, the greatest user of water, the biggest source of food and agriculture. Well, the laws and rules that exist in California for water use are so antiquated, once again, and they're not changing. So as a farmer, you have a allocation of water and an allotment and if you reduced your water use, then more than likely your allotment will go down. So there's a complete disincentive to be economical and to reduce your water use because of fear that you're going to get less water. No one wants that, but that's the way that the laws are. And I can tell you I've talked with lots of political leaders in California about changing this not going to happen anytime soon.
19:10
Stuart Rudick
So in looking at what are the solutions, as I said earlier, the waters, we think of it and see it in all these fragments and segments. Yet the water that is in San Francisco, that's in where I am, in Kauai, and that's in Japan, it's all part of the same hydrological process. And by the way, it's 4 billion years old. So it's all the same water that existed. It's just a question of where is the quantity of water which is potable water. And we are in a dire situation today based upon increasing population, 8 billion people and increasing use of water in all forms of business. Now, not just agriculture, but all the businesses that use water, semiconductor, plastics, pharmaceuticals, data centers are huge users of water. And AI is exacerbating. That enormously. So you have all these industries that are dependent upon water. The price of water is going up, the quantity of potable usable water is going down.
20:17
Stuart Rudick
So it brings into the number one solution is DSAL. We've got so much salt water on the planet and we will figure it out. The complaint is the energy demands are too high and it uses a lot of fresh water. And then how do we dispose of the salts or otherwise? All we do is look to Israel. Israel is a country that has very little fresh water. And they were forced to figure out how are we going to get more water? 90% of all their water is D cell. Wow. And they recycle over 90% of all their water. Gray water, reuse, recycled, is reused. And the rest of the world is going to catch up to that because it's not a question of if, it's just a question of when. So DSAL is a fundamental critical solution and they figured it out and they made it work.
21:09
Stuart Rudick
And we in California have, I think it's two or three plants, d cell plants. But they try to get one proposed unapproved recently, last fall. And the voters shot it down because of really the lack of knowledge and understanding. So that's one of the critical solutions. The second that Israel has done, 80% of all the water that is used in business and agriculture is put back into the land or rivers or ocean untreated. We're poisoning ourselves. Yeah. One, we need to wake up to that. Two, we need to see, my goodness, we can reuse that water. And yes, and we will be forced to do that. And that's just a matter of time. And then, once again, it's like kindergarten to think that, why are we using our fresh, clean, pure drinking water in our toilets? Really? And to solve that is so easy and economical.
22:10
Stuart Rudick
It is not hard to be able to create an in home water reuse and recycling system. So most of these challenges, it all comes down to one thing, Robbie. It's money. It's just people complain. They just complain. It's too costly. But you know what? The cost of our lives and our health is much greater. And soon enough, it's not going to be a money issue. We have to have this. And, okay, so we're going to do all these changes that need to occur.
22:42
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, it's awesome you say that, because actually, those three things have come up time and time again in the podcast of number one, why are we using clean water to flush our toilets? Gray water and blackwater systems exist. You don't have to drink that water, but you can very well use it to water your plants, to use it for XYZ other purposes, and then kind of further down the line of around freshwater. Where do you get the freshwater from? And talking about DeCell is another interesting thing. Like you just said, it is energy intensive. How do we solve the brine issue and how do we solve the freshwater issue? But again, solvable problems within. If you give a handful of engineers enough money, it'll definitely get solved. We'll figure out a way past that.
23:29
Stuart Rudick
Yeah, well, as I said, Israel has solved it, and Australia uses a lot of diesel. There's lots of places in the world that use but we have a very old mindset in the water industry, and that mindset will be changing. We have what's called the silver tsunami coming, where 50% of the workforce in the water industry will be retiring in the next seven years. And I'll say amen, thank goodness. Because we need to have young people, we need to have women, we need to have people of color and minorities who are the ones who usually get the shaft and the least quality of water around the world to be leaders and to be represented and to have a voice here. And that's what we see happening. And you and I were talking earlier about we have a nonprofit, water Innovation Foundation is a nonprofit that we've created.
24:20
Stuart Rudick
And one piece of that is a youth leadership group called the Water C-O-R-P-S where we have a program where we educate high school and college students about water and water's connection to climate change. And we, one, educate them about water for them to understand it. Two, we have them look at their careers because they may be in engineering, they may be in public health, they may be in design. How do they look at bringing that discipline into the water solutions? So we really believe that the future is in our youth and it's critical that we invest in them, that we engage them, and then we empower them to create the solutions that we need because the mindset in the water street is just not there. They're the very old thinking and conservative, and they're an impediment to the solutions and the change.
25:15
Ravi Kurani
Stuart, I want to talk a little bit about, actually the work that you do, because I think you do powerful work with the nonprofit that you just mentioned. And I know you have various different parts of it. I don't know kind of how the HydroDAO fits inside there, but can you kind of walk me in the audience through the umbrella of what you're now working on with how you're educating youth? What is HydroDAO? I also went to this amazing talk about two or three weeks ago that was absolutely amazing. But I'll let you cover that.
25:41
Stuart Rudick
Yeah, well, as you're talking about that last, I'll take that first, we have monthly Oceanside chats instead of Fireside chats. And we have it where it's an interactive event where it's live. And we have a very brilliant, provocative guest that we have a chat with them. And it's open chat, not just me chatting with them, it's chatting with the whole community and engaging the whole community, because that's what we're building, is we're building community. And so we've had Philippe Cousteau on as an example. We recently had Dr. Jerry Pollock, who is the author of The Fourth Phase of Water, which, if you all have not seen that, I invite you to read that because he discovered a new phase of water. So we had Jerry on and many others. They're all on our website, which you can see. So that leads us to the hybrid Dow community.
26:36
Stuart Rudick
We've all heard about Blockchain and Dows. And probably four years ago, we looked at creating a water Dow and we got very deep into it, and we're looking at creating everything from a water token. And as we got into it, there was just so many issues and legalities and challenges that we said it's too early, so we have the intention and the vision for creating this in the future, but it just wasn't ready for it. But we created this community, and a Dow is a community that is a community where everyone has a voice, everyone has ownership and shares. And so it's not controlled by anyone, it's empowered by everyone. So we created this HydroDAO. IO is the website, and this is a community of water experts around the globe that are in every vertical aspect of water. D, cell, agriculture, wastewater, sanitation, hygiene, composting, toilets, everything in water where we come together.
27:42
Stuart Rudick
Because what I found when I first started really digging deep into the water industry is that no one was talking with each other. They were just in their own tiny little world and they didn't understand. They had no idea that people in, let's just say in the water purification industry had no idea all this wastewater was going back in and it was affecting them. And almost no one thinks about the ocean being the source of all the water and doesn't make that connection. So we're creating this community, I like to call it Switzerland, where it's safe. You come together, we don't have any agenda. We provide it free for everyone. And it's there for people to meet each other and connect in their water, connect in their passions and connect beyond that. Who knows? They find out that they love skiing or they love painting or they happen to live in the same town or went to the same college.
28:38
Stuart Rudick
So we have fostering those relationships. We've done with hydrodale and continue to do that. And it's so magical. As part of the event, as you saw, we take part of the event and we have people go into virtual rooms together and get 15 minutes with each other and really connect deeply. That's where the magic really happens. So that's another event that we create that we feel is so important in bringing people in water together and find ways that they can collaborate and create solutions together instead of being off on their own and being separated. And the other piece that we've got is, I've said, is the investment side. We need to have capital to fund the solutions. And the water industry heretofore didn't attract a lot of capital because of the economics of the water industry. Wastewater and utilities being low margins, low returns, sort know, almost like a government controlled entity that's beginning to shift.
29:39
Stuart Rudick
And the water industry has expanded. And in the last year and a half ravi, there's a lot of money that started coming to water innovations. We actually had the first company that had a billion dollar valuation as a startup in a few years out of MIT, that has raised over $250,000,000. And we're seeing larger companies being funded of ten to $50 million fundings that are occurring. So it's starting, the wave is building, and we're going to see a lot of money, a lot of interest, a lot of brilliant minds and passionate hearts bring themselves and their solutions to the water industry. And that's what we're funding. And those are the people we're funding and investing in through ever of ventures. We're not investing in seed stage, early stage companies. We invest in companies that are early growth stage, where they have a product, they're in the market, they have revenues, they've raised anywhere from a few million to 20 million.
30:32
Stuart Rudick
And they're now ready to really scale and raise another five to $25 million and grow and scale their business. And most importantly for us, not the capital is important. What's really important is the people. And so the hydrodal community, we have over 200 people around the world with water domain expertise that are in the business. They understand this in a way that I. Never have and never will be able to because I have not been an operator of a water business. And the team that we have is just exceptional and they understand the challenges, the solutions and they have empathy for the challenges that are occurring for companies. And so that's really our magic is this incredible community we have of water experts.
31:20
Ravi Kurani
Beautiful. I want to kind of unpack your vision on actually HydroDAO of what actually you wanted to make it before all of the regulation and kind of different things got in the way because I think it's just so interesting to understand. How can you tokenize water? What does ownership and for the audience out there, a DAO stands for a Decentralized Autonomous organization. How are you thinking about this? What was the organization, what was going to be the tokenization? What was your vision?
31:50
Stuart Rudick
Yeah, it wasn't really as a DAO, it was a DAO and DAOs have their structure and so it wasn't to be anything any different than the typical Dow structure. And once again issuing a token. We pointedly were not interested in creating a I'll call it monetary volatile token that would be just going up and down price crazy. And it wasn't for speculation. We were really looking at using this as a token that would be used for water and it could be used for any aspects of water and being a coin and an economic value in the water industry in all the domains of water. So it wouldn't be just for buying water, paying your water bill, buying a water bottle. It was for industry and for the industry to be able to use this and tokenize it. So as I said, we believe there's a future for it, but it's just not ready yet.
32:45
Stuart Rudick
And I think we're still a few years off from that really being ready and coming to fruition. And by the way, we've talked with a number of other people like yourself that have thought about this, that have considered this and we're interested in partnering, collaborating with them because this is not about us trying to make money and corner to the market. This is about us. Let's do this together. Let's collaborate because we don't have a corner on anything in brilliance. Right? Everybody's got their own brilliance and their own passion and we want to work with them and bring their community and their groups together where we're all working on this united as one.
33:25
Ravi Kurani
That's amazing to hear because I think were talking earlier, one of the reasons that I did start the podcast was one for me to help explore the water space for just me personally. But then secondarily was I understood that there was this kind of mindset shift that needed to be had by the overall public. Right. And back to you saying that the dCELL project in California was shut down. How do I build a microphone and then build a platform to help people then better understand that these technologies do exist. These are the problems that we're facing and if we don't solve them relatively soon, we're going to be forced to solve them in very different ways. And so 100%, I mean, from a collaboration standpoint, maybe there's definitely something I think we need to talk about and I think after we shut the mic down, there is a lot more for us to talk about.
34:14
Stuart Rudick
Stuart good. Well, as I've shared with you when first were actually connected through a mutual friend that it's all about mean you doing podcasts are great and we do our oceanside chats great. I don't see you as a competitor. I'm happy for you to say, hey, you know what, I want to meet Philippe Cousteau and can you introduce me? For me to say yes, I'm going to do everything I can to support you and help you and believe you will do the same. And that way of being, of caring, being generous, not being afraid of having to control stuff that's going to bring us the solutions that we need. Yeah.
34:58
Ravi Kurani
And not to make a water reference, but rising tides raise all ships, right? So if you're too focused on your own little isolated piece, then you're really not helping the larger goal entirely. Stuart I ask everybody this question before we shut the mic off and it's do you have a book, a TV show or a movie that has just kind of had a profound impact in the way that you look at the world or the way that you look at the world of water?
35:28
Stuart Rudick
Great question. Well, on our website we have a library. As you said, we have many entities. Waterino.com is one of our websites and we have 75 books about water that are exceptional and it would be hard for me to pick out just one. That's incredible. I will tout one of our advisors. West marin, M-A-R-R-I-N has written a book called it's called the Universal Code of Water. And it's phenomenal because it has a scientific basis and it also has more of a humanistic and I'll say almost spiritual basis of understanding water from that dimension. So I think that's a brilliant book. There's a man, if you all haven't heard about him, victor Schalberger, who lived in the 18 hundreds 1880 to like 1985, who was named the Water Wizard. There's YouTube videos about him, number of books and he was the first person that really started understanding and studying water in nature.
36:36
Stuart Rudick
And when he studied that, he saw that water was alive. It was a living being just like are and our plants are. And based on that, he created some extraordinary tools and solutions for water which we're using today. Simplistically it's called vortexing or structuring water. So I recommend people check into Victor Schauber and his work and he's no longer with us. But there's a man who with us today, who is one of my dear friends mentors. His name is Robert Slovak and we've done an oceanside chat with Robert. Robert and his brother created and developed reverse osmosis, which is the primary source of water purification on the planet today. And they created that and came up with that in the 60s or seventy s. And since he has done so much more in the water area and Robert and I talk almost every single week and he brings and causes me to look at water and question water and to understand water in ways that I never even thought possible.
37:42
Stuart Rudick
And so he's extraordinary and I just look to him and applaud him and so grateful for what he has done for water and continues to do awesome.
37:53
Ravi Kurani
We'll definitely have to pull those and we'll put them on the show. Notes tagged to your Name stuart, thanks you so much for coming on the show. This has been absolutely awesome.
38:02
Stuart Rudick
It's my pleasure and honor and I just like to say to your community, it's worth considering how precious water is and to take some time to connect with your water when you hold that water up each day to say wow, thank you and be grateful for that water because it is what sustains our life. And so, with that awareness, we all can begin to connect to our water and think about it in a new way that can help us to preserve the precious sacred resource that water is. Beautiful. I'm sending you aloha from Kauai.
38:37
Ravi Kurani
And for all of those of you out there, if you want to listen to liquid assets, you can find us at liquidassets CC or anywhere else. You get your podcasts or on YouTube today. Stuart, thanks again.
38:47
Stuart Rudick
My pleasure. Bye.