Free Water! CEO Josh Cliffords

What if water could be free? 
https://www.freewater.io/
What if all food could be free? 

They have already shipped 350,000 bottles at no charge to the customer while building water wells in areas that didn't have access to water. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-cliffords-3155247a/

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https://ororapackagingsolutions.com/

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is my friend Josh Cliffords, the FreeWater founder and CEO. How are

Josh Cliffords: 0:40

you, sir? Great, and it's great to be back, and I'm really excited to do

Cory Connors: 0:44

this show. You've had a lot of changes since we, we first had you on, and congratulations on your growth and all these exciting new ventures that you're having. I'm really happy for you and all the things that you've done. But real quick, let's do your background. Just one more time for people that maybe hadn't heard the first episode.

Josh Cliffords: 1:05

So free water is a free beverage company. It's free because we print ads directly on aluminum bottles and paper cartons. and, we're that crazy company that at scale, we created 100 ways you could earn more than 1, 000 from a free bottle of water. but most importantly, we donate a minimum of 10 cents per beverage to fight the global water crisis. When 10 percent of Americans drink 1 free water a day, we donate 1. 25 billion. And this is just the beginning of free supermarkets. When 10 percent of Americans eat our first 100 free groceries, we donate 125 billion a year and free food will cut USA food waste tremendously. It's just a very eco friendly initiative. Incredible

Cory Connors: 1:45

idea. The concept is brilliant. Never been done before, as far as I know. but there's been a lot of things that have happened since our last interview. Can you catch us up as to your progress?

Josh Cliffords: 1:57

I think we barely had our 1st, paying advertiser back when we did the podcast last right now. We've distributed like 350, 000 bottles. and that allowed us to build a 2 water projects and Kenya 5 or 6 in India. We're also mentoring teams around the world with their own negatively priced projects. So 1 team in Pakistan. They're building their 2nd water right now. Water well. there's, just people all around the world from negatively priced tampons and pads too. And so now we've proven the model on 4 continents and, I'm really excited. And so last year was our first year to get like major companies behind us, like NBC, placed 3 orders in 100 days or 4 orders. just a lot of big things. And then, next step is a free 24 packs. to go to your house for free shipping, free 24 packs. And so it's cheaper than the junk mail in your mailbox.

Cory Connors: 2:54

And it's something that you want. It's something that you literally need, physically.

Josh Cliffords: 2:58

So, it'll start like junk mail at first. You don't order the 24 packs. And when you open that box, there'll be a 24. Individualized ads just for you. And then, any social network, when we hit that, X, Y access of enough investors and ad agencies, then anyone in America can order the free 24 packs. It'll come in 4 weeks, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, 1 week, then another product, 4 weeks, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, 1 week, and then eventually the free grocery store.

Cory Connors: 3:25

That's incredible. So as a company, I call or I email or I message you on social media and say, I want to invest this much money. or will you have like plan levels or how does it work? Or

Josh Cliffords: 3:39

for companies to advertise, you fill out the form. Someone gets back to you. We're also automating the ad buying experience. and it's just a. Things take time, right? And so we all work for free for a slice of the future pie, so it always takes more. But in this initial, 24 pack beta launch, we'll make a couple hundred. And, that ad space isn't for sale. It's only for influencers and people, really trying to make a difference. And so what I would like to do, if you're interested, is we'd like to gift you a third of a bottle in one of them. Because there's only 50 or 60 spots available. And we're only sending them to the press, tech, the tech open boxer people and some of our biggest fans, and you're all about sustainable packaging. And so I'd love to get you on one of the bottles and then also, if you're willing, and then also give you some free ad space in there, and then we'll send you one and you could do an open box experience. I'd be honored. Yeah, just by having 24 different labels. It's already the most advanced 24 pack in the world. But now with QR codes, you could connect to anything on the internet. And so what we want to do is we want to showcase people that are really making the world a better place. Oh, And then we'll get You know, a 10 million plus impressions on the digital 24 packs, and then that's how we'll kick off that sort of launch. Kind of like how we originally did with the free waters, but next. And so really excited because the future is direct to your home, because, let's say, if you really like ice coffee, and you buy coffees in a can, well, a lot of the food that has a 2 year shelf life, as it sits in a warehouse. Maybe for 6 months, 12 months, 15 months before it gets to your shore store shelf, right? That contributes to expiring before it's sold. But if we make a special, 6 pack of ice coffee, just for you, Corey, and it's individualized on the wrapper, the QR code and the augmented reality. It does us no good to keep it in a middleman warehouse for 14 months, right? So you remove all those warehouses in the future. We make the iced coffee, we send it to you right away and your pantry becomes the warehouse and you have the full two years. So hopefully the food doesn't expire, right? The advertiser gets what they want, which is the billboard. And we get what we want, which is to donate from that. And it's a win for everybody.

Cory Connors: 6:07

I think it's brilliant. I think people will be, excited, about this idea. I know I am. And, again, thank you for including me in that 50 that I'm honored to be a part of your initial group, man. This

Josh Cliffords: 6:21

is awesome. No, you've always been a. All your content is about socially conscious manufacturing and that's what we want to showcase. We want to show people that

Cory Connors: 6:33

care. Yeah. Well, that's exciting. And I'm really stoked and a little overwhelmed. So thank you very much, Josh. I really appreciate that. So, Yeah, so I guess that kind of answers my next question. Will the 24 pack concept allow smaller purchases? So let's say you have a startup and maybe 500 or 1, 000, what would be a initial investment?

Josh Cliffords: 6:58

So if you wanted to advertise with free water 2 years ago, when we first got going, the minimum add by was a pallet 70, 24 packs. So 1680 bottles. Now, what's cool about the launch of the 24 packs is. Then you'll be able to just be one bottle per 24 pack. So now the new MOQ becomes 70 bottles. But as we start getting into more pieces of the supply chain, and we get enough advertisers, just like any platform, now you could order one sixth of a bottle of just one bottle per pallet. One bottle per pallet. And so it just, things take time, right? Facebook is now 20 years old. The junk mail industry is 40, 50, 60 years old. It just, so everything always takes a little longer and we're the new ad medium on the block. But what you will see is that in 24 months, our ad medium will be more affordable. But more individualized than Facebook and Google built on the back of free groceries and, the ad medium that still has the highest return on investment in the USA at industry is still the junk mail in your mailbox is it really insane to me 29 percent social media influencer marketing is also 29 percent Facebook Google's 15 or sorry, 15 is for Facebook and Instagram and Google's like around 10 and. And so 1 day in the future, whether it takes 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, when you're sitting at the dinner table with your family and friends, and everything is available for free, right? And you're like, wow, like 10 years ago, this meal was expensive. Who's responsible? And like Nike, I promise that you will buy a Nike shoes next time. For your kids or family, you're going to support the brands who supported you. And the phenomenon is just that the advertising costs more than the groceries. And automation and everything, just cleaning up the efficiency. It's only getting cheaper and cheaper to manufacture our favorite groceries. Meanwhile, marketing's only becoming more and more expensive. Fascinating.

Cory Connors: 9:11

I think you're, you made a great point that these brands that are in your hand, the things that you've, you touch and feel and you say, Oh, wow. Even if you're not consciously paying attention to this, you see the swoosh. you see the logo, you see the recognizable, I have people stop me because my logo looks like my face and they say, I know you for some reason, mostly at packaging shows, but it's ingrained in our minds. this is very interesting.

Josh Cliffords: 9:41

Yeah. And so, that's just the future. you and I are a little older than most people on tick tock, but remember when we had a blackberry or palm pilot, do you have a blackberry back in the day? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So remember we used to buy minutes, and you could only buy a minute once. and that's why Steve Jobs went to the iPhone, not only because it was a superior system, but they went from a single transaction selling minutes to an infinite string of transactions. Now I've got photos in my iCloud, which I love from a decade ago, purchases in the app store. Well, with food and beverage, it's a single transaction. If you buy a can of Pepsi, it's a single transaction. And right now, if you buy advertise on free water, it's a single transaction. But when I could put the CTO hat on in the near future, what we architected is. All food and beverage now becomes a minimum of three transactions because people are going to bid on the physical wrapper, the QR code and the augmented reality on every product. Now, we toggle the algorithms to, we get a minimum of a buck, let's say, for a can of soda, but just like all costs per click, the most expensive cost per click is 1, 000, not to buy anything, but just to visit a website. Those are the rare, there's 12 cost per click. There's 7 there's and so. With the same way that cost per click works and I've re-architected it. We could get up to a thousand dollars just for printing a label. Yeah. We could get a thousand dollars just for scanning a QR code just for deploying the ar. Awesome. And in between three layers, anything on the internet. And so today we donate 10 cents. We promised 10 cents. We're averaging 15 ish 'cause 10 cents. It's not enough if you ask me and, when we have those crazy circumstances where we make 10 here, we're going to donate another 10 to 20 percent of that to the cost too. And so the goal was just to take a already profitable industry segment food and beverage and to make it a way bigger pizza pie. And let's try to give as many of those slices as we can to charity.

Cory Connors: 11:45

That's a fantastic way of putting it. It's, we're all after pieces of the pie for our organizations, our charities and, our individual, pieces of pie are fluctuating these days greatly as the economy changes, but that's a really fascinating way, of. Of putting this. I did want to ask you a couple things about, social media. So you mentioned TikTok and you have just been crushing it on social media and growing so fast. And I think it's because you are so consistent. I always see you on there. you were going live all the time and, it, what do you think was the reason why FreeWater has done so well on TikTok and other

Josh Cliffords: 12:27

social medias? Before we ever launched, we worked on the mission and, it's a big mission. Let's end global famine while, let's make saving, money on your, let's make ending global famine as simple as saving money on your groceries, and, Big. And so, it's mission based, but the most important thing is that our product is free or negatively price, depending on how you look at it. But, so if I hand you a free water, you're sold for the rest of your life. You want free water, soda, beer, groceries, T shirts, transportation. Anything, but if you see a video of somebody getting a free water. You're equally as old and so when you have a product or service, that's free or negatively price social media is great. do a lingo link. It now has Duolingo Germany, Spanish, Japanese, and because Duolingo is a free app. And anyone could use it from the age of 5 to 100, because it's language social media is brilliant. And so it's just been really important for us to get the word out. And we're approaching our 1 billionth , organic impression 350, 000 beverages and sail water brand had to sell 1, 000, 000, 000 waters to get that sort of a liquid death had to sell 1, cans to get that. And so what about when we have 10, 000, 000 beverages distributed? And what about at scale when we are doing so many good deeds that we're rivaling Mr. Beast and beyond. And that's what, what's Mr. Beast video helping people, giving people free things and we're giving people free things that donate to charity. And so social media is just a big part of that.

Cory Connors: 14:09

I agree, I think, Maybe Mr. Beast would be a great partner for you someday. I think that would be, make a lot of sense.

Josh Cliffords: 14:16

And, right now we're at 1. 5 million followers across all platforms and it's you've got a 1. 5 million person team and we're pulling the rope from the same way and nothing's possible without the followers help. Yeah,

Cory Connors: 14:33

on your videos, I always see people say, Hey, aren't you the guys from tick tock? Or aren't you the guy I've seen you on instagram or whatever the social media insert social media here? and I think you're exactly right. And they're so excited to see you in person and to get a free bottle of water or several. You guys are very generous. Sometimes I see you give a case to people and that's really cool.

Josh Cliffords: 14:57

Yeah. And it's not the business model, because ultimately it's going to your house. And, but you got to get it out there somehow. and we want to be a very, we want to be the most transparent company of all time. And so that's why we do, I do the lives because people should be skeptical. I wouldn't believe it. I just want to answer everybody's questions and yeah, that's really it. We've been doing a lot of university talks. And universities have questions because you're taught there's no free lunch and we all were saying our free lunch will pay you to eat it. And so. If you're doing something that's that controversial, you just got to be available. People call. Anytime I answer the phone, just random numbers from wherever in the universe. And, my wife gets mad at me sometimes, but I'll give anybody, 10 or 20 minutes because maybe they want to apply the model to their country and they have questions and want to help them and. we all got to do this together. We can't help the environment unless we work together. We can't end these big issues unless we work together. And so that's just the main goal of the project bring people together. I think a great way to do that. It's over a free pizza in the future or a free dinner or free, whatever it is.

Cory Connors: 16:13

I, I totally agree. I could envision a pizza box with 30 logos on it. And, yeah, no charge.

Josh Cliffords: 16:21

So easy. Cause what does it cost to manufacture the frozen pizzas at scale? Like a buck? What's that ad space worth way more than a buck?

Cory Connors: 16:29

I agree. I think this is going to be the beginning of something enormous. And, I, it's really fun to, to watch the impetus of it and the just, exciting to see where this future will go. what. What is the best place for people to get in touch with you? Is it on the website or

Josh Cliffords: 16:49

social media? Through the website or social media. If they want to chat personally, LinkedIn is always a great place to reach me. Just because it's really hard to manage all the social accounts. We try our best. And, and just please, if we don't get back to you, just keep reaching out. It's just, we're understaffed and we're trying our best. Are you

Cory Connors: 17:10

hiring? Should we put that out there?

Josh Cliffords: 17:12

we are, but we're a startup in tech. And so it's all for equity at this time. I'm looking for a new CEO, someone who, obviously cares about impact first, but background in either ad agency industry or venture capital. And I want to step down in that role because I have to now architect, which I did and build out. The technology sides of the platform, and if I try to juggle the CEO job and the job, it's not going to work. And as I mentioned before this, I've been so busy lately. I don't always have time to post on social media. And that's dangerous because that's how people heard about us in the 1st place. And so I want to find the right person. Who could be a way better CEO than me, so that way I could do what I do best. And I think it leads a great example, which is, hey, we're all about the mission here, and we just want the best people in for the best job. And

Cory Connors: 18:06

I, I think I would love to do this again in six months or a year and just see, me too. Come on. Me too. Continue to update the group on where you're at and what you're doing, because this has enormous potential. And then,

Josh Cliffords: 18:20

in the meantime, I'll get you some free ad space and, and we'll send you a box. So you could be 1 of the open boxers, but big picture. And again, we're using an aluminum right here is. even if it takes 20 years, I believe that a lot of the products, the future supply chain is full loop and 20 miles. And the only way to do that is, because even this bottle, if you include the label, this came from oil in Saudi Arabia and inks, and this took 10 to 20, 000 miles to get it in my hand. And this is the greenest today. But 1 day, we want to make 100 percent hemp packaging. So you would, you'd grow the hemp at location A, vertical indoor farming, turn it into the packaging at location A, print up at location A, fill it with liquid at location A, deliver it within the city. and then pick it up a different day, bring it to location B, recycle it. And now the whole supply chain on many products, 20 miles round trip versus the greenest ones today can be 10 miles. and I believe that the future is free. The future is local. The future is delivered by locals to locals for local. And yeah, hyper local, hyper free, shareable, and yeah.

Cory Connors: 19:35

Do you ever envision a reusable bottle for free

Josh Cliffords: 19:39

water? A million percent. So, free water is just the beginning of everything that's currently for sale at Costco, Walmart, Target, TVs, computers, anything. The issue we find, Corey, is that Every new product requires about 50 grand. Why? Because we have a company thesis where we have to test the manufacturer three times out of pocket. And because we've had bad luck with manufacturers saying, Oh, I could do this. And so we tested out of pocket and they don't reach the deadline or the quality. And so, for us to do, let's say, soda next, which would donate towards sanitation. And so whatever we do next, we'll donate to sanitation and soap. And so, let's say, if it's that reusable bottle, we have to order 10, 000 of them or whatever 3 times out of pocket and just make sure that it's good. And then, because we don't want to. Just put our reputation on the line as an ad medium, take money from, let's say Toyota and then have it. Right,

Cory Connors: 20:39

but you're in a situation where you can't fail, right? Yeah. you can't let your consumer down. That's a good

Josh Cliffords: 20:48

right now or the advertiser or. And so, but would love to do the reusable stainless steel bottle immediately I don't know if it's true, but, and maybe this is up your alley. If someone on tick tock showed, and it could be fake, but they showed that the Yeti bottle at scales, 2 in China, and they believe they found the supply chain and that those bottles are then sold for 40. So, let's just say, if it was 5 bucks to buy, I don't know. Yeah, we can cover them ads. And would love to distribute that and that would donate 10 percent towards the other cause and

Cory Connors: 21:21

even if that packaging like the bottle that you have gets refilled once or twice, which is very feasible with that style. Yeah, that's really even better for your sponsors. So I think this is great. A great design.

Josh Cliffords: 21:38

We, the average person will have this for about an hour, but some people have scanned the QR codes more than two years later, which is interesting because that's beyond the expiration point of the water. And so we'll still be collecting data for years. maybe someone will scan it 4 years from now. We don't know, but most importantly, it, the ad medium makes you happy and that's what you should feel when you see an ad is I'm excited instead of a pop up ad that doesn't make me happy.

Cory Connors: 22:08

And you can see the light bulb go on when you interview people at these, in these social media clips that you tell them how it works and they say, Oh, what a great idea. Now almost every time, or they go the other way and say, you guys are, that's crazy.

Josh Cliffords: 22:22

And that's okay. If you invented a time machine and we went back in time 1 day before I ever started sketching and notebooks, I wouldn't I would ignore the time machine. I would ignore my gray hair and I would say, I don't believe you guys. Right? So, if I wouldn't believe it myself. And if you said, I invented these things, I would laugh because I can't even I cheated my way and slept through all school and I never pay attention in school and I would just. Bye. I wouldn't believe that I could do it or anyone could do even an Elon Musk or something. People are really excited and, really grateful for all the support, including yours. It means the world to

Cory Connors: 23:04

us. Oh, thank you, sir. And great way to end it. Thank you again for your wisdom, your passion. It's exciting. And I can't wait to see where this goes in the future. Me too. Thanks for having me.