Always Full - The Pet Bowl That Never Runs Dry

Ramon Vela (00:00)
Welcome back everyone. This is going to be a great show. I have with me Steve Buer who is founder and CEO of AlwaysFull. Welcome to the show.

Well, I appreciate your time, Steve, you're building a business and, ⁓ and so I appreciate any time you can give us. I'd love to introduce my audience to your product and kind of dive in and learn a little bit more about the company and about the product and just help people understand, all the value that it brings. And we've already had a conversation. So I think this is going to be a good one. and I love your product already just from the get go from my experience. it has a lot of, a lot of really cool.

things in it. So let's start off with my favorite question, which is sort of like my signature question. And I ask it for a couple of reasons. One is I just I'm a big believer in gratitude. I think gratitude is a great way to relieve stress and anxiety. So whether you pray, whether you journal, whether you meditate, whatever you do, it's there and it's available to you. And it's really helpful just simply to give thanks and to put things in context, especially when things are feeling stressful and anxious. But I also feel like

This is a great way to get to know someone. And what I like to do on this show is I kind of like to make sure that we bring this on a very human level, person to person, because it's very easy for people to see products on the shelf or online and simply think it's just some faceless corporation. They don't realize that there's some real people behind these brands who care about the product, who spend a lot of time and energy and money and resources.

and really bleed sweat and tear over bringing a product to market. And so I want them to get to know the people behind the scenes and a great way of doing that and by getting to know someone is by understanding what they're grateful for. So if you don't mind, Steve, share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that just made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision or your potential.

Steve Booher (02:05)
I'm going to go back ways. It was back in 1987, so almost 40 years ago. First job out of college at a Fortune 500 company called Boer Gwerner Automotive. I had been there three years. And one of the gentlemen that was in my group had been there 42 years. And he came up to me and he goes, know, Boer, once you get a job here, you're here for life.

And I went home that night and told my first wife, said, I just don't think I want to get caught in that trap and I can't do that. And she goes, well, maybe you ought to quit. I went in the next day and I resigned. And that was the best thing I ever did as far as starting my entrepreneur career.

Ramon Vela (02:48)
Wow, that's really interesting. mean, at that point, did you have any inkling, any ideas, any concepts that you were working on or you were just committed to the idea of like, just not going to get, I'm going to, I'm going to work for myself and not for others.

Steve Booher (03:06)
You know, since I was 13, Michael really instilled on me to start my own companies and my own business. He always said, if you want to make a lot of money, you got to work for yourself. He was a consultant in California, had 40 acres on a hill with a vineyard and a nice house. And I lived with him for the summer after high school. And that really instilled on me to go hard and do my own.

⁓ When I did resign, I didn't have a job. I was trying to do some repping of companies and I knocked on a lot of doors and talked to a lot of people, but it's a slow process and I didn't make a lot of money, but I didn't get stuck in the trap either.

Ramon Vela (03:49)
Well, that was motivating, obviously, because you had, you were married, so you had to figure something out to bring in money. And I'm wondering, you know, well, one, one is it sounds like you, probably have a gratitude story for, for your, relatives there who, who kind of instilled in you some of that as well. But how long did that whole process take? Because, you know, some people would have said that that's pretty crazy. And the fact that you're

wife didn't want to kick you out right there and then, that's pretty amazing too, right?

Steve Booher (04:22)
Well, I did my own thing probably for six or seven months and made a little bit of money. Then went back and got back in engineering at Kimball International, then went down to Whirlpool Corporation. But back in the day, was with mainframes, so I was able to work on night shift and use their mainframes and then do sales during the day. So I'd always had something in the works of trying to grow a business, even when I was part-time.

Ramon Vela (04:47)
Mm-hmm.

And at what point in time, you know, by the way, when you talk about mainframes and so forth, most people who will listen to this probably don't even know what that is and so forth. I remember it as...

Steve Booher (05:00)
It's like

a cloud, they call it the cloud now, but really it's a mainframe somewhere.

Ramon Vela (05:06)
Well, I remember, you know, I remember floppy disk. I remember, I remember as a kid when my ⁓ older brother and sisters were in college and they were learning about computers and I guess they for a business degree, had to take a computer class and they had those cards with the punch outs and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. So what was, what was your, you know,

Steve Booher (05:24)
⁓ whole bunch of cards,

Ramon Vela (05:30)
you're doing the mainframe stuff at night, doing sales during the day, where was that point in this journey where something finally started coming together?

Steve Booher (05:45)
So I was working full time at an engineering service company. So they had multiple clients around the country. And I was working on ⁓ a client that was local. And I found out that a friend of mine was also working on the exact same project on a different shift, on night shift.

And I went to the owner. said, why are we doing this? And he goes, boor, it's not the fact that needs done twice. It's the fact we can build a customer twice. And that just took me back. I went and called ⁓ my, you know, the customer and they came down immediately. And the next day I was terminated. So at that point, my wife was getting her masters at a private school. We getting ready to have our first son in two months and we just bought a

our first house and I come home and say well I was fired today but I'm going to start my own I'm going to put those guys out of business and it took three years but I took all their good people and they they went bankrupt

Ramon Vela (06:44)
Wow. And so you might, so I'm assuming that the client that you told, you told about double booking and so forth, they became a client for you?

Steve Booher (06:55)
They did. They did. They became a client. You know, I learned also if you hire away the project leader of an account, that account will usually follow the person. And that was probably one of the best strategic things I have ever done was hired a guy that I knew I couldn't afford, but I couldn't afford not to. And that's when we picked up additional clients. Yeah.

Ramon Vela (07:15)
Well, also, ⁓ go ahead.

Well, I also think though that, ⁓ in that particular client's case, by being so honest and open with them, you, you engender some trust there. Right. So, mean, they, you know, telling them, telling them what the inside baseball of what the company was doing. all right. So you had this, so it sounds like you had this consulting firm,

Steve Booher (07:33)
Exactly. Yeah.

Ramon Vela (07:43)
As time went on, I know we talked about a couple different types of business that you had before you started Always Full. What were the next ones?

Steve Booher (07:53)
So I had that company five years. We weren't large. We probably had 25 people and a public traded company out of Boston came in and acquired the company. I learned real quick what our earn out was and learned even quicker that 90 % of earn outs are zero. And my earn out was zero. And I could see that coming. So I had a two and a half year commitment for the earn out. I left after one year. I knew I was.

wasted my time there. were elevating expenses to get the profits down, which meant no multiple of anything. Got into manufacturing and bought a Dana Corporation product line, sold that to private equity group, got into engineering again. My no compete ran out. And I remember the day it ran out, I called the CEO and said, hey, for a fee, I'll extend my no compete. And he said, I'm not interested. So

Ramon Vela (08:30)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Steve Booher (08:51)
did

the same thing I did prior. I called my buddies and they refused to sign a no compete and I hired eight of my past employees that same day. But all those accounts that they were running came with them. So it's like I just took a year and a half off. And when I got back, had all the good customers again.

One of the products we designed won the Ag Innovation of the Year Award. It was for a John Deere project. And it was at that point that I knew that when I sold that company that I wanted to start doing my own technology or my own products. Because we did a lot of cool designs and different clients. But they get all the rewards for doing those in the sales and everything.

Ramon Vela (09:18)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Booher (09:36)
I want to do mine when I sell this. That company got up to 160 people. We won Ink Magazine, top growth company three years in a row. Great business, four locations. And it's like 12 years later, I woke up and said, wow, this is a bigger company than I thought it was.

Ramon Vela (09:53)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Booher (09:54)
and we had a public traded company out of Boston once again acquire that business and that's when I was able to start a company called it was a smart guided systems and we got a contract with Kubota to develop a real high-end tablet driven auto steer program.

for their market, which is ground maintenance and horticulture. That kind of puts us on the map for being an ag tech company. From there, we developed a product for golf course spraying. Then we did one for spraying fruit trees and nut trees using a LIDAR to look at the density of the foliage and spray based on real time density. And that was a tough company. We had to raise money from venture capitalists. had to go always

knocking on doors to get more money it seemed like but you know we had really heavy overhead but we got up to 450 dealer locations with John Deere and it was shortly after that that they acquired that company

And that's kind of how I got into Always Full. My wife would say, looks like to me if you could develop a laser guided spray system for fruit trees and nut trees, you could come up with a way to keep the water bowl full. And I didn't think much about it because she was the one that took care of the pets. And we had the two gallon jugs. You turn upside down and you spill half on the floor when you're turning them.

Ramon Vela (11:01)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Booher (11:22)
And every other day you had to filled up. had, you we have two Labradors and it's once you broke her arm, thought, you know, I should probably really look into this because it is a pain to keep that bowl full. I was actually at a, having lunch at a little deli and I always sit at the bar just because it's handy and there's always people next to you can talk to. I was telling a gentleman next to me about it and he had three of the little robot.

cat litter boxes that are $800 a piece. And he goes, well, I'd buy one of yours in a second, but I want it to be clean all the time too. And that really sparked with me of, you know, not only always full, but always clean. And it was the clean part that took most of the engineering. Yeah, we went through tons and tons of rapid prototypes.

Ramon Vela (11:52)
Yeah.

Steve Booher (12:13)
but we finally developed a system that would keep it full using a laser and then flush every hour in vortex with no drain. And it was all really because of a need that my wife said was out there and that I had to take care of now that she ⁓ had a broken arm.

Ramon Vela (12:31)
I love that story. And I want to continue that, but I do have some questions about your previous businesses. One is, you know, with all of that experience, I am curious, did you, when you sold your companies, did you use outside help to sell it or did you sell them on your own? Did you have a team inside, your CFO or your financial person?

Steve Booher (12:53)
The first company I had outside legal only, no representation. The last company that I sold Smart Apply, we did hire a high-end ag tech business broker, investment banker.

And they brought value, you know, because you hear horror stories, you pay all those fees and you don't get value. The engineering companies, you know, I was able to know who my competitors were and know that they would probably be looking for acquisitions to grow based on their structure that I knew about. And so I reached out to those companies, the manufacturing plant, same thing, you know, went to manufacturing companies I thought could use that product line.

Ramon Vela (13:11)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Booher (13:34)
and suck out my own buyer. I learned the very first time don't do earn out. So everyone since then has never been earn out. It's all cash. You can retain some of the money for unknown liabilities, but it's an all cash deal. No earn out, no stock.

Ramon Vela (13:42)
You

Yeah, no, that's part it. And what year was this when you were doing the last business?

Steve Booher (13:58)
The last one was two years ago. It was July of 2003 or 23 when John Deere acquired that company.

Ramon Vela (14:08)
So I am curious, these businesses seem to be in solid industries. I know that agriculture has its ups and downs sometimes, but I mean, these are solid industries. But in the last 20 years, 30 years, I know like since, I mean, I was in technology myself back in the late 90s, early 2000s.

there's a lot of competition for engineers and so forth. You everyone wants to do like the sexy businesses, the popular ones, the fun ones and so forth. Did you ever have any trouble with that? Like people wanting to do more and why did you, instead of going into some of these more, you know, I don't know what you call them, more popular manufacturing industries, why did you stay in ag tech or why did you stay in some of these, you know, in the golfing areas?

They sound a little boring, but at the same time though, these are all solid industries. I you know, some people, I've heard people quote like Warren Buffett, like, you know, some of the best businesses are the boring businesses, you know, that, you know, that bring in the, some of the best revenue. What's your take on that? I mean, cause I know it must've been hard to keep some engineers, people wanting to try all this new stuff.

Steve Booher (15:18)
You know, I say the software side of the last company was a little tough because software guys are hard to come by. The mechanical side, you know, I had employees have been with me for over 20 years and they followed me from one company to the next. You even now I've got a bunch of people that are becoming over when their commitment is up with John Deere. I think they like the way I manage. I let them do their thing. You know, we set direction, but they

really excel and you know it's funny you have somebody work for me over 20 years and they keep following me around my chief engineer has been with me for since 90 97 I think or 90 94 you know I'm I think four companies total now but

Ramon Vela (16:00)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Booher (16:07)
You know, to me it's a compliment. I've always believed that 80 % of business is business. It doesn't matter if I sell shoes or if I design shoes, know, 80 % of the running the place is knowing how to run the business and the rest is the product. And, you know, I never have been in consumer pet supply products. And, you know, so far I like this market a lot better than farms and ⁓ engineering and that kind of thing.

Ramon Vela (16:09)
Yeah.

Thank

Steve Booher (16:34)
So really it's been really interesting to jump into a whole new product and category of stuff.

Ramon Vela (16:43)
Well, so I want to talk about always full in a second, but before we move on, what lessons, I mean, you kind of gave us some right now, but is there any, if someone's out there and wants the kind of life that you've created, whether it's, you know, running, being able to run these businesses or start these companies and then sell them and so forth. And I don't even know if that was your intention to exit them, you know, within a few years, but

What lessons would you give another fellow entrepreneur who is like maybe, maybe that young engineering kid who, who like you started off, you know, where, know, you decided to quit and start your own, try to start your own thing. What would you tell someone, at that stage? Is there any words of wisdom?

Steve Booher (17:27)
You know, go slow and steady. You know, I've always gone as hard and fast as I can, but you know, it's all based on cash flow. And if you've got a lot of cash to put into it, you know, that means one thing, but if you've got a cash flow as you go, you know, it's okay to take those slow steps and not give up, you know, but that's a fine line because at some point you got to realize you're beating a dead horse is what I call it. And you just can't keep doing that either.

Yeah,

our golf course technology was high tech. It was wonderful. But we knew that we weren't going to sell out many systems overall because courses, your plays go down and plays go down and they quit spending. And we got rid of that technology and it's like, how could you just stop that? I'm like, you know, if you can't make money, you got to eventually stop.

Ramon Vela (18:15)
I get it. mean, and I think you and I, I think touched base on this before. So when I was really getting into the direct to consumer area and the consumer products, which includes pets and everything else,

And I was working with these companies. It really struck me. This was back in the mid 2000. Well, it was right after the 2010, like 2011, 2012, 13th, 14, those years. And it was just booming. mean, the Facebook was, was just, was really launching or taking off ads. A spend was less expensive than it is now. It just felt like if you put an ad there, people would just responded. It was like the.

the gold rush days, I guess. And out of that came a version of a business model that I think really kind of helped some companies and others, think, I don't know. I think the jury is still out, but a lot of it was based off of growth. So you took the VC money, you spent all of it on growth, and you didn't worry so much on profitability because the money would just keep pouring back in.

And that, you know, that that was well and good for the venture capital folks, but a lot of people who did not have all that cash in the world, but had to leverage, they were trying to follow the same model because again, it was just all about growth. And so when I started working with these companies, it just boggled my mind because I had worked in services businesses and others in the tech field and manufacturing where you have to be profitable. Like you had to like make some money off of that. So

To see people run companies with no regard to profitability, really kind of just, I felt like I was in an alternate universe for a while. Now it's kind of going, you know, now people are obviously care about their profits and now it's about a little bit slower growth, but wow, I just felt like I was in a different universe or something.

Steve Booher (20:12)
You know, it's amazing to me. I had had a great track record of building companies and sell them. You know, great multiples my engineering service group. I sold it 10 times. Epida for a service company. You know, you just don't get multiples like that. But even with a great track record and you know we had a John Deere banner to hang on our company because we had an agreement with them. A cooperative marketing agreement.

It was a lot of work to raise money, you know, and I don't see how these people go out and raise, you know, 30 million on an idea and you've hardly heard of the person other than, you know, they got a good resume from going to college.

I don't see how they do it because it hasn't happened to me. My son's trying to raise some money for a company he wants to start and he put a big number up there and I said, I'm just going to tell you, you may find it. You never know. But I have a track record and it's hard to raise money. When it's hard to raise money, you don't spend money like it's somebody else's, you spend it like it's yours.

Ramon Vela (21:11)
Yeah. Well, I don't know either.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. mean, I've seen people get funded and I just sometimes I just scratched my head. I'm like, I don't know what that formula is. And, um, you know, um, there was a, there's a term that I started hearing, uh, called, uh, what was it? Narrative economics. I don't know if you've heard of that term, but it's basically, it's basically the, know, like, um, like for instance, like Elon Musk, right? Not to say that those cars aren't a

Steve Booher (21:26)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (21:46)
cool engineering feat, but his companies are not doing the kind of revenue that like a Toyota is, they're multiple. mean, their share price is really crazy. mean, it's like three times the amount of Toyota or more. And that's an example of like narrative economics because people aren't investing in it because of the current.

you know, balance sheet or the problem in the law statement or the financial statements, they're, they're, they're buying it because of the narrative of the future, know, AI, robotics, whatever it is. And that's when I started realizing that some of these companies like for instance, like WeWork, you know, I like WeWork and it was a cool place, cool thing to have where you can just stop in any city and go to WeWork and work for a day or whatever it is.

Steve Booher (22:24)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (22:39)
Kind of cool. but that guy, wow. mean, he just, he raised so much money and it all kind of fell apart. but it was the narrative, right? It was the narrative, that really, think bought, ⁓ that the investors fell for. Yeah. don't know if to fell for is the right term, but you know, bought or whatever, but not to say that these guys were shysters, but I mean, it just feels weird. Like, you know, the, this, ⁓ all this money that we're getting,

Steve Booher (22:54)
Yeah, interesting.

Ramon Vela (23:06)
This is fascinating. Let's get into the product. Because like I said, what I, I've had a little bit of experience with, taking care of my daughter's cat and she had this, one of these like devices, it's like a bowl, but it's more like a fountain. So it didn't, it worked very poorly. Sometimes it didn't work at all. Sometimes it was very fussy. Like I had to keep connecting and plugging it back in and so forth. And then all of a sudden it would just start working.

And I'd have to check it periodically to make sure that it was still working and the streams were very, very soft. I just, anyhow, I just was not impressed by this product at all. I don't even know the name of it, but I wasn't impressed with it at all. when I started seeing videos of your product, I was just like, wow, this is an amazing product. It looks like it works great. And I like...

I didn't realize it at the time, but you were absolutely right. I love the function of ⁓ it always staying clean. So I thought this was, this is a product that a lot of pet owners, which I know a lot of the audience do have pets. I think this is a great product. So why don't we talk a little bit about, and for just for everyone out there, you can go to alwaysfull.com. Alwaysfull.com is a website. You can check out what we're talking about and what we will be talking about. So.

Steve, why don't you tell us a little bit more about this product that you came up with? I know you said the clean part was the hardest, but tell us more.

Steve Booher (24:38)
So.

You know, to me, it was a project, you know, and having ran two engineering groups, you know, consulting, you're always doing projects and you're always getting the right people on the bus to do the project. And so I sketched an AutoCAD. I don't use a napkin and a piece of paper. I use AutoCAD. So I kind of sketched, you know, drinking a glass of wine one night. Here's what I think, you know, we need to do. Luckily, I've had some really good designers and engineers work

for me in the past and reached out to one of the guys I've worked with for years and years and years and he's followed me around a lot. But kind of mistakenly or accidentally, my professor in college lived in my hometown because after he retired from teaching, he went to Cummins Engine in Columbus, Indiana and...

talked to him about what I was getting ready to do and hanging up being my main design engineer on that project. And I think having the right people was key. My chief engineer is a flow engineer, probably the best one in the country if I had to guess almost.

And so I sketched how I thought this bowl would work. And the design engineer started designing. And we 3D printed parts. And it would keep it full OK, but it wouldn't remove the debris completely.

And I said, guys, if it doesn't remove at all, we're not going to do it. even before that, though, I hired an outside engineering group that does electrical engineering to do all the electrical components. They outlined the circuit and the cost of the circuit before I said, hey, let's go to the next gate and start doing the product development side of the mechanics.

because I didn't want to invent something that was way off, you know, too expensive. But, you know, we developed prototypes, we test them, and it just wasn't getting clean enough the way it was. And one night I was just sitting there and I said, it needs to kind of flush like a toilet, but it can't have a drain. So I kind of sketched how it would recirculate the water, pull it through a filtration system, but create a vortex.

or that next day I showed my chief engineer and my design engineer what I'd come up with. And they both said, basically we're throwing everything away that we've worked on this last six months. And I said, well, not really all of it. We're still using the same pump. That was probably the only component that we did use again. But.

Ramon Vela (27:02)
Thank you.

Steve Booher (27:12)
So we went ahead and laid that out and designed. I review every component. He'll, you know, I sketch it in 2D, but he'll put it in 3D and assemble. And I've got viewers and I cross section and I go through it very, very thoroughly. Cause you know, I knew how I want it to look and function.

But when we came up with the current design then, and it took a few times to get the current design to work. First we had like a ring you see on a toilet that pushes the water around. Well, that didn't work. But we actually had a tube on the hose that was pulling the water through the bottom of the bowl. And I just stuck it on the edge of that bowl shape like a vessel kind of.

Ramon Vela (27:52)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Booher (27:53)
but

kind of like a funnel a little bit. And it vortex like crazy. I said, guys, think we found it now. We just need to get a nozzle that can push that water and pull it from the bottom. And it took probably 10 more prototypes, but we got to a point where we felt it was really performing well.

had a ⁓ lot of work with the laser to get dialed in. First we had to look at the main pool where the water is, but when the pet would drink it'd get waves in the water and the laser wouldn't cooperate right. So we ended up developing our own chamber to measure the water depth, which was a good thing to do. You got ambient light you got to worry about. If there's too much light the laser won't look right.

but it was the Vortex that took the work. then, you know, we were ready to really start producing. We produced, I think, 20 or 30 silicon molded units that I gave the people to try. They all worked great. We went to China and visited a lot of suppliers, potential suppliers. And it was then that we, you know, we picked our supplier to be the manufacturer. And...

That really started the process of them refining what we had to be production ready.

Ramon Vela (29:08)
Wow. And I'm looking at it right now. I'm on alwaysfull.com. And so walk us through from a practical side, what is needed from the consumer? it, so does it need to be plugged into some water source? It obviously needs to be plugged into some electrical source, correct?

Steve Booher (29:26)
Yeah, it does does run on 12 volts so does low voltage DC at the bowl and the plumbing source We have two options one is what we call the bottle pump is where you can get a two to five gallon jug of water and Just put the pump on top of it. You got to have power to run to that I think the cord is six feet long. I don't like short cords

And then from there we have what we call a braided stainless steel data water line and that was probably the hardest component to source. It's like the tube you see on a sink line or a toilet line that's braided stainless, but we had to put a USBC data line through there as well. And that took a lot of work. You know, then we overmold the ends to terminate. But so we that's how we get water then from the water source to the bull.

and the data communication between the water source and the bull itself. The bull says, hey, I'm low, tells the plumbing unit to turn on. The other option we have is a wall unit, we call it. And it has a very similar to a bretta filter you see on a sink. know, those are the patents wore off. So we have a knockoff bretta filter that we changed and made more robust for the tooling to hold it in place.

But then that plugs into your water line like a refrigerator. It's a quarter inch OD. It's a quick connect. You push it in and you get water source from your washer. You can wire it off under your sink. You can do it from your cross base or your refrigerator. Just put a T on your refrigerator line.

But the good thing about a water source is it's going through a filtration system, the Brita filter, and we do have dual solenoids. So if one solenoid for some reason will get calcium buildup and fail, we've got another solenoid. And every time they fill the bowl, they check each other for leaks. So we'll have one open, one closed, and we check for water level increase.

And if not, we know there's no leak. And if it does happen to leak somewhere, it would probably be solenoid one because it's not filtered water. And we would be notified on the cloud that, hey, know, both so and so, just keep an eye on it. Doesn't mean it's ever going to leak because we still have another solenoid. And you never really hear refrigerators leaking from the solenoid, which turns the ice maker water on.

So we're seeing that the survey said 70 % would do a bottle pump. But we're seeing conversions already where they started with a bottle pump and a jug of water. And they want a more permanent solution. So they buy a wall unit so they can not worry about filling the jug up or going to the store to get it refilled or using tap water you would put in it.

Ramon Vela (32:12)
Yeah, and I see this here on alwaysfold.com. You have a little section there towards the, you just scroll down a little bit and you can see the different steps and the step one, can, it has the image of a washing machine under the sink, behind the refrigerator, under the crawl space. So you've got different options for people. And I can imagine that someone starts off with one.

or maybe like the basic level and then decides, okay, this is pretty cool. Let me see how I can further automate this. And the reality too is that this is, I mean, I don't know if you've looked into this, but this is as you were describing this and as I'm looking at these videos that you have on the website, alwaysfull.com, this reduces a lot of work.

not only for consumers, but I would imagine also like kennels and things like that would probably find this very interesting as well.

Steve Booher (33:05)
Yeah, we kicked around a version for kennels and it would be similar concept but made to be able to stream multiple bowls together into one. You know, we've been asked to do it for reptiles, chickens, ⁓ horses. And my answer is always the same. What percent of homes have chickens or horses? Well, I can tell you about 80 % of homes have a dog or cat. ⁓ So I do try to focus, you know, just in that area.

Ramon Vela (33:18)
you

you

Steve Booher (33:33)
But.

Yeah, I go two months with two Labradors and two cats and I never worry about the water bowl. I love having LEDs on things because you know it works. So there's a green LED on the bowl when it's working. There's a green LED on the plumbing kit when it's working. And if you don't use the app, there's air codes that LED will turn different colors. So say the pest not drinking enough, it'll flash a color. If it's time to change the wall unit filter, it'll turn blue, solid blue.

So, you know, I try to make it easy. One of my bulls, I have two in my house. One is in the laundry room as I leave, go to the garage. Just by habit, when you walk by, you look down, you see LED green and you know everything's fine. I even wonder if the dogs have water.

And the worst thing is people assign their kids to give them responsibilities to the full, keep the bowl full. But how many times the pet owner come home and there's no water? And I know growing up with my kids, nothing worse than get home and the dog didn't have any food or water. You're like.

Ramon Vela (34:32)
Yeah.

Steve Booher (34:40)
Okay, that's not healthy. Even worse though is when you come home, your wife comes home and there's no water for the dog or cat. that alone probably would motivated me to develop this.

Ramon Vela (34:52)
and this is, mean, you're, you're absolutely right. mean, the, the, ⁓ you know, the percentage of people who have dogs and cats are huge. And then obviously people have to work. Most of, most people have to work, you know, during the day. So you're there, especially like, for instance, I'm in Los Angeles right now or outside of Los Angeles, but in Southern California, we're having a bit of a heat wave right now. You go outside, it's just like very, very hot.

and I'm upstairs and I don't have the air conditioning on. So it's pretty hot here, but I have to have a fan on. But if you're gone all day and you have pets, and something happens to that water bowl, whatever they run out, then you know, your pet is there all day with no water. I mean, that's, that's pretty harmful to them. and so this is like a godsend in terms of, you know, being able to have,

have your pets well hydrated, especially during the warm days. So I can see a lot of really cool, there's a lot of benefits to this. just to kind of read off some of those benefits for the listener, so you go to the website, alwaysfull.com, the homepage has a lot of really great info. And basically your pet will always have crystal clear, debris free water.

triple filtered insurance, every sip is clean and healthy, it empties and refills automatically and requires zero effort from you and no drain required. For a consumer product, we just want a product that works, that does what it says it's gonna do and works. But I really appreciate hearing you because it feels like there's a lot of stuff going on in the product that...

As a consumer, some people care about it, some people don't. But I like to hear it at least because it makes me feel like, wow, you put a lot of time and effort into this product and that's why it works so well. You know what I mean? There's a lot of things going on. Go ahead.

Steve Booher (36:49)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So

what one thing we've added is you don't have to use the app, but if you use the app, I think there's 12 notifications so you can set your daily what your pets ought to drink or historically been drinking. If they don't drink that amount of notify that the day the minimum has not been reached. You can you can set a maximum. So say

You know, for some reason you don't want your pet to drink too much water. Well, you can turn it where it will refill after a certain max has been set. The filtration in the bowl, we have cotton or cotton carbon filter. One of each is included. Some pets are fanicky about the cotton or the carbon in the bowl. I don't know why.

Ramon Vela (37:30)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Booher (37:34)
but I'd say probably half use the cotton carbon, the other half use just cotton. You one thing we learned with the cotton filter, we had too much density. Some of the pets in our test market.

you know, they just slobber a lot. And we found this dog slobber would clog it up more than debris would. So we had to go to less dense filters. Flush time was set for 30 seconds. And then we learned that it cavitates, which means it starts pulling air because it can't get enough water fast enough through the pump. So we had to slow that down to the 25 seconds.

Just a lot of things. And then of course, as you get bulls in the field, you get feedback from people saying, I want it to flush after it fills because I my pet drank then. Okay, so we made it so if you subscribe to the app, you can change the flush cycle. You can snooze it at night. Only flush after filling. So.

probably as high tech as my laser spray system if I had to guess. The accelerometers, if it tips, it'll notify the bull's tip. Say the pet self-corrects the bull, it'll notify that it's been self-corrected or corrected now. Power goes out and notify, a lot of good information.

Ramon Vela (38:40)
you

Steve Booher (38:56)
And there again, if you want to just not use the app, one of my guys in my focus groups said, I hate apps. I don't want people to know what I'm doing all the time. You don't have to use the app. And that was good advice because a lot of people don't use apps.

Ramon Vela (39:06)
Hehehe.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so you've mentioned this to me during our pre-interview. So you've had some pretty good feedback from the trade shows that you've been to or the conferences, right?

Steve Booher (39:24)
Yeah, yeah, so we we won in Super Zoo last year, 2024. We won runner up for best new product of the year in dog category and then at Pet Expo in Florida. This past March, we won first place for new product of the year for cat category.

Ramon Vela (39:42)
Yeah. Well, I'm telling you, to me, like it's an amazing product. It's automated. Obviously it's so helpful for people who, know, most of us have to work during the day. So we leave our pets at home. And so whether there's a heat wave going on like right now where you're really concerned to make sure that your pet has water in it, but also just making sure that it's clean and it really is extremely helpful. It's one less thing that you have to worry about.

And as we talked about during our pre-interview, I love this market because from a business standpoint, I love this market because these people who own pets, pet parents, pet children, however they talk about their pets, they love them and they treat them as family and they want the best for them. to me, is just such a, it's simple, it's foundational. You want to make sure that your pet has water.

And this makes it easy for you, but also makes it easy for the patent and gives it a great experience. So in my mind, I think this is a great product. I'm wondering now what's next.

Steve Booher (40:49)
We did develop an ear guard and I thought it was crazy, but my design engineer says my dog's got long ears. Every time it drinks, it gets its ears all wet. So we designed a little opening that snaps onto the bowl and it keeps their ears out of the water. And we took that to show and I couldn't believe how many people liked it.

Ramon Vela (40:59)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Booher (41:11)
So not a high tech product that goes with it, but it's an add on. We had developed some mats that the bowls can sit on. We are doing a food bowl. The food bowl is not going to be high, no high tech at all. It's just going to match the water bowl and it'll be in stainless or plastic if you want it to match 100%. We have talked about doing some AI things with cameras, but right now I'm just focused on this.

successfully were launched in all of Europe at the same time. It's a little bit delayed, but say in two months we'll have all Europe keyed up for the holiday season for sure. I think we got enough on our plate right now to not start doing more. Now we are working on a stainless version. We have it, we have it ported out.

Ramon Vela (41:51)
the

Steve Booher (41:57)
But it's gonna add quite a bit of cost to the bowl. And I'm like, know what guys, let's just focus where we are. And then we can do that down the road because all that takes money, it takes attention and you can lose your focus on the main thing which is get this out to the market to everyone as quick as you can.

Ramon Vela (42:14)
Yeah, no, I get it. So, all right, well, that's a good segue. ⁓ When is available and or where is it available and where do you want people to go?

Steve Booher (42:24)
So alwaysfull.com, that's our site. Amazon, it's on Amazon. It's also, we're doing our first shipment to Chewy tomorrow.

So it will be live at Chewy in a couple weeks, probably at the most. We do have some retail chains. One of them we're just starting a pilot in. It's called Rural King. It's a farm store here in the Midwest. And it will be available at one of their flagship stores. I think personally, it's more of an online item versus you walk through the store and you see it and you buy it. But you never know. So you never know. We'll have a working demo there.

that shows the flush. It'll be protected. You can't have kids throwing ⁓ corn in it whatever.

Ramon Vela (43:06)
Yeah.

Steve Booher (43:08)
So we're

getting out there. I haven't really approached retailers. I've been approached by some retailers. I've been approached by distributors. But right now, I'm focused on online sales and this one pilot that we're doing at retail store. And then it'll be on all Amazon Europe and UK. So that's kind of our focus right now.

Ramon Vela (43:29)
Yeah, well, like I said, it sounds like a great product, looks like a great product, and I appreciate you coming on and kind of giving us an idea of what's behind the scenes because there's just so much going on within the device. It's not easy, and it doesn't sound easy to put together, but sounds like you guys made it work. And like I said, it looks great. And especially from the versions of the things that I've seen out there, this is like a hundred times better.

just by the looks of it. So I wanna be respectful of your time. This has been fantastic, Steve. Anything else you wanna leave with the audience in terms of the bowl or even in terms of business?

Steve Booher (44:07)
You know, it kind of ties into the bull end business.

You know, people tell me, you make it look easy to start up a company. There's nothing easy about it. It's a tremendous amount of work. It can take a toll on your family life. It can take a toll on you personally as well. I like doing it. That's all I think about is business, what's next. I've got ideas for like two other companies, but I'm running out of time to do them, I think.

But I you know, I love being in business. I love developing something that's so it's so handy to have and there's not a thing that I would change on that bowl. It just it works really, really good and not because it's my company. It's because I use it every day and I took it away. One of the test bowls I had here at my house. I took it at the time I had one, but I took it away to do some work on or something and my wife she goes you ever take

that

bowl away again we're gonna have a real problem because you don't realize how handy it is until you don't have to mess with the water bowl ever again.

Ramon Vela (45:04)
You

Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny and

how this all started because your wife had broken her arm or sprained her arm. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Booher (45:18)
broken up. I to go

change the water, put the water in every day. So, yep.

Ramon Vela (45:24)
Yeah,

I love that. I love that story too. So this has been amazing, Steve. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. Everyone out there, go to the website, alwaysfull.com. You gotta look at the video. It's actually kind of fun. I would imagine that the dogs love to stare at the flushing of the vortex when it to turn.

Steve Booher (45:48)
You know

the cats like to watch it flush I've learned but the dogs when they when they hear the solenoid kick on they know it's cold water coming in and They both get up and run to the bowl because they deserve it up when they know it's cold water fresh cold water coming in there So it's kind of fun to see

Ramon Vela (45:51)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah, I would imagine. And I would suggest everyone out there, go to the website, alwaysfull.com. They have a newsletter that you can sign up for. You can sign up for updates. Sign up for that because that way you know what's happening, know what's going to come down the pike, know when new retailers are added and websites and marketplaces and things like that. So go to the website, check it out, sign up for the newsletter. That way you keep up to date. ⁓

Steve Booher (46:32)
You do get

15 % off when you sign up to.

Ramon Vela (46:35)
nice. All right. So that's even about another good reason to do that. So go check it out and and then send us some feedback. Let us know if you end up buying one. I'd love to hear what your feedback is. You can go to the story of rent dot com. We have a little section on the right hand side with a little microphone. You can leave a comment there. A little voicemail for us. I would appreciate it because this from my experience, I think I mentioned earlier, I had to take care of my daughter's cat.

She had some sort of like little bowl fountain looking thing and I had a terrible experience. was kind of like, it made me kind of anxious a little bit because it kept turning off and I thought, okay, you know, do I have to keep checking it? Do I have to keep looking at it? I was worried about it during the nighttime and it just wouldn't really work very well. And the stream of the water was very low and it just didn't seem to be very, I mean, you know, it's night and day, a properly engineered device versus

one that's just cheap and put together really quickly, it's night and day. And what you want is you want something that's gonna be beneficial to your pets. And this is gonna save you lots and lots of time and energy, but also just make it really good for your pets, your dog, your cat. So go check it out. I highly recommend it. And I think it's a product worth buying and a brand we're supporting, which is our tagline. And so go check it out. And beyond that, everyone, we're gonna have the links to

what he just mentioned. We also have the links to their social media site on our podcast description, which you could find at Apple, Spotify, and pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts. Simply type in the story of a brand show and you should be able to find it. And then again, Steve, thank you so much for being on the show and telling us a little bit about your product and your company.

Yeah, you're very welcome. Yeah. And I enjoyed hearing your background as well. So I think the valuable stuff. So everyone out there, had just have, we have just had Steve Buer, who is founder and CEO of AlwaysFull. You go to the website, alwaysfull.com and you get more information. Beyond that, everyone stay safe, stay sane, stay healthy. In this case, if you want to keep your pets healthy, go check out the website.

Beyond that, everyone, one last thing. We've all been going through a lot of stuff, the economy, geopolitical wars, politics, pandemic, all this stuff going on, makes a lot of people anxious, people feel stressed out. And what I would just suggest is that let's just be a little kinder to each other. And I know we can make this human experience a better one. Beyond that, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.