Be Ridiculous

Good Faith Business Practices: WeDrink Bottles for America's Economic Health

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:13:00 +0000

In 2005, Americans spent $9.8 billion on bottled water, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation analysis.

Image Source: Google

That's right, I'm gonna go ahead and use the CNN/NBC/FOX tactic to let the weight of big numbers really fall by reiterating that this is 9,800 Million dollars we are wasting on a product that isn't even any better than tap water.

Yeah I said it, Tap Water! It costs $0.002 per gallon (up to 10,000 times less than bottled water), and has stricter safety and health standards than bottled water!

If there's anything that's gonna pull America out of the economic rut we've found ourselves in, it's by thinking of ourselves as one big family unit, with money coming in and out amongst other countries. And the more we can trim from our family budget, the better off we'll all be.

This is one of the main reasons that Dan and I founded WeDrink. We didn't want to start a business that would ultimately just move money around between folks, creating little net value.

I'll spare you all the rant full of econ jargon by keeping it short and sweet: We wanted to build a business that would also have an immense positive net impact on the economic health of a great many Americans.

By choosing to boycott the waste of plastic bottled water, and instead drinking tap water and taking it to go in a reusable stainless steel water bottle, you could be saving $1,000 to $2,000 per year on bottled water costs for a family of four.

And that's just the beginning. We have yet to discuss the environmental impact of choosing stainless steel bottles over plastic (see: The Great Pacific Gyre Garbage Patch), or let alone the immense charitable benefits of WeDrink (the sole characteristic that lets us stand out from all the other stainless steel bottle companies).

But those are all stories for another day. For now, let's just think about all the money we could be saving.

Best,
-Andrew

Goals for the New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:09:00 +0000

Never really have been one for absurd and ultimatum-esque New Year's resolutions (ie "I'm gonna eat X servings of veggies, do X pushups, give X dollars to a homeless dude, and hug a baby; EVERY DAY this year") . I think we can all admit stuff like that doesn't last into February.

No, no. I'm more of a Goal kinda guy. Realistic heights to jump for. So let's see what we've got.

WeDrink Goal: Establish a concrete marketing strategy. Not just some promotions, I'm talking a variety of channels that drive continuous quality traffic to the WeDrink website, helping to spread the good word of the stainless-steel water bottles that raise money for water-relief charities.

Physical Fitness Goal: Be able to do the 30-muscleup (no that's not me) Crossfit workout in 4 rounds or less. OK I admit this one will be tough, probably gonna come down to the December 31st wire here... If this ends up being not humanly possible, I'll settle for by the summer being able to do a good iron cross.

CMP Goal: Launch the CMP Campaign. Collaborative Micro-Philanthropy. This really is the heart of all that I do and think about nearly every day. The problem is, it takes a good 2-3 hours to even begin to explain all the philosophy, economics, and even religion that goes into CMP. The past 9 months I've been working on bringing that down to a 3 minute conversation. I've saved up enough money to only work my day-job for 3 days a week, and devote the remaining 2 and weekends to putting this all together for the next 2-3 months. Be expecting some CMP posts in the near future.

Talent Goal: Reach the point of playing piano fluidly with both hands. Broke out my late-90's Casio keyboard not long ago and started playing whenever I had the free time. I know it'll be something I'll need to dedicate a little more to, but having a roommate in love with guitar should make the overall music learning process easier.

I suppose I can think of a few other things I want to accomplish for the year, but these are definitely the big ones. And I'll definitely be posting updates whenever a milestone is reached, so keep an eye out!

-Andrew

4th Annual Lafayette River Santafest

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:35:00 +0000

Santa Wakeboarding YouTube Video

It started as somewhat of a dare. Well, sort of.

Chris Molligan, stubborn a-hole as he can be, has been one of my best friends since we were just 4 years old. He's actually saved my life. No joke, but that's a story for another day.

Wakeboarding has always been a serious hobby of ours, and every year we'd stretch our limits on dealing the cold, starting sooner and refusing to retire the boats later and later each season.

We eventually reached the point where December and January were the only months we had yet to get in the water.

Four years ago we decided to bridge this gap.

"Come on man we gotta do it. It's December, so I'll wear like a Santa hat, it'll be sweet," I told Chris. Not 10 seconds later: "Wait no, no forget that. I'm buying a Santa SUIT."

And thus, the Lafayette River Santafest was born.

Yes, I admit, there is a wetsuit hiding under the Santa Suit to keep me from dying if I fall in the water. But that doesn't do jack to save my hands and feet from ending up in terrible, terrible pain...

After a couple years of doing this we decided "Hey, we could really make something special out of this. Really do it right."

So last year we turned it into a charity fund-raising event. We'd do it every Christmas Eve at 2PM~ish, and we would leave fliers at every single house on our section of the Lafayette River, letting families know when and where it would all go down, and what charity we were helping.

Last year we raised money for The Park Place School, a small privately-funded school for high-risk youths. This year we supported The Elizabeth River Project, an organization that works on multiple fronts to restore the quality of the Elizabeth and Lafayette Rivers.

We don't personally collect any money for it, just give the organizations' web address, so I have no idea how much, if any, money we've actually raised. But the crowds of kids on the docks get bigger every year, and I have an absolute blast doing it, so it won't be ending anytime soon.

-Andrew

When Faced with both No Options and Unlimited Options: Where to Go?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:24:00 +0000

So, I don't know if you all had noticed this, but apparently theres been this weird, inexplicable decrease in job availability. Something about consumer confidence and credit-markets not looking as fit as they used to... (but seriously, if I hear one more commerical start off with the tagline "in this economy...", I'm gonna lose it).

Long story short, the post-college job and both backups I had lined up all fell through. The last two months have consisted of me scrambling to pull together a decent day-job and place to live, while squeezing as much time in as I can for WeDrink.

But it isn't all so bad. As long as I make enough to feed myself and have a place out of the rain, and I can put time into WeDrink, I'll be happy. With so little required, my options are wide open.

The question is: Where will I go, and from where will the journey begin?

My only limitation is that I need occasional internet access to run WeDrink; and with internet cafe's gracing even the streets of Mongolia, I don't think that will end up being much of a limitation. So where to go and what to do? I've considered working in body-shop learning to fix motorcycles, then biking across America, or even the Silk Road through Asia. The Peace Corps is looking rather promising as well. I've also thought about hiking the Appalachian Trail, or even just straight up copying the guy from Into The Wild.

Cliche? Yes. Still awesome? Totally.

The furthest front-burner adventure idea, however, involves not open roads or mountains, but oceans.

Basically, 4 buddies and I are thinking about restoring a 50 foot sailboat, sailing down the East Coast doing various jobs and giving back to each community as we go. And here's where it gets interesting: once we pass Florida we'll make stops at various ports in the Carribean on down to South America to build low-cost, high-efficiency houses for those less fortunate.

"But Andrew, this sounds like a rather inefficient method of getting charity work done." A valid point, and one we're sincerely evaluating. I'll elaborate more on our plans and goals in a later post, but I just wanted to give you all a taste of the idea.

I warmly welcome any thoughts or suggestions for the sailing craziness or, even better, other ridiculous lifestyle suggestions for me to undertake.

Best,

-Andrew

How to Eat a Scorpion: and why it makes for great revenge

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:40:00 +0000

I'd been planning on doing a post about eating scorpions for some time now.

Long story short, a couple months ago I had a really bad reaction to a spider bite. I also just so happened to know a local tapas bar(Bardo in Norfolk, Virginia) with a scorpion dish on the menu. So I figured, what better way to exact revenge on the spider population than to eat one of their arachnid cousins?

Apparently it's really not that bad. They're served all intact, just like a crab or lobster, and taste almost like a shrimp (or at least that's what you're supposed to convince yourself it tastes like).

So some friends and I call to make a reservation the other night, only to discover that Bardo took scorpion off the menu a couple weeks ago.

I was devastated.

The hostess felt bad though when I explained how stoked I had been about the scorpions. She explained that they at least still had the scorpion cage up front, they just weren't cooking them anymore.

After a failed attempt to convince her to cook it up anyway (I'll chalk it up to some health code...), I decide to compromise by returning home and firing up the old SNES.

That's right, I went there

Until next time, join me in the movement to get scorpions back on the menu at Bardo, and I'll put up some video-how-to of this unique treat.

Best,
-Andrew

Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009, Day Four: At This Point We're Sleep-Deprived Zombies

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:17:00 +0000

Well, this was to be it. The last day, the last chance to spread the word of our charitable stainless steel bottles.

Saturday Night we saw Green-Man running around, so we just had to give him a free Green WeDrink Bottle.

I had gone to sleep somewhere between 4 and 4:30AM after the Umphrey's McGee concert, it having been the first time I'd left the booth since Wednesday. Woken up one final time by the heat and bright morning sun after just two hours of sleep, it was time get things cranking.

Sunday was to be huge. Primarily because it was the last day, and people didn't have to play the stretch-your-budget game anymore.

My new buddy Adam said it best, "well, with this leftover cash, I could either get a shiny rock or a t-shirt from over there, or I could get one of those steel bottles that, wait a second...10 years of clean water to a kid in Africa?! Done."

The charity aspect of WeDrink was finally starting to set in on a large scale. We'd had growing support all weekend long; but on Sunday, people really came through.

"It just makes sense, you know? Why not get something so useful, especially when it gives so much to charity," remarked my friend O.

Not let me tell you about O. This isn't a nickname, initial, or anything of that sort. 20 Years ago he legally changed his name to "O". It's a long, and interesting story as to how this came about, and the exact details of which I can't remember (I blame the sleep deprivation, and don't wanna publish my fragmented version of the story, in case it turns out to be misrepresentation), but it had something to do with his Native-American heritage and the spirit energy of a particular animal.

All Good ended the weekend with Dark Star Orchestra and their world-famous covers of the Grateful Dead.

Suspenders-Man apparently liked Jayne's shoes

I'd been working 20+hour days since Wednsday, and WeDrink ended up losing money on the weekend, but we're still donating the $2922 we promised to our partnered charities PlayPumps International, The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Heal the Bay! (FYI, this is more money than Ethos Water contributes after selling over 58,000 of their bottles).

It was an amazing experience and an outstanding success in spreading the word of WeDrink: our stainless-steel bottles with serious donations to charity. I met so many wonderful people along the way, each with their own unique stories and input for helping the cause. But most importantly, I couldn't have done it without the help and support of my friends.

Sam, Jenna, Jayne, and Steve (in the picture at the top) I am in your debt

I look forward to seeing you all at the next WeDrink adventure,
-Andrew

Related Posts:
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009, Day One
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009, Day Two
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009, Day Three

Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009, Day Three: Why You Shouldn't Fear the Weatherman

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:17:00 +0000

I had been trying to not think about Saturday as it approached. All weather reports pointed to Saturday being a downpour. And not only that, apparently when it rains at Marvin's Mountaintop, it really rains. I'm talking complete ground saturation and instant mud sinking halfway up to your knees.

"Yeah man, last year was terrible. The rain was brutal for about four hours, but the wind man, the wind...people's tents were blowing around, getting picked up into the trees. We had pretty much been hit by a tsunami."

Damn, a tsunami? The passerby relating this story to us must have meant monsoon, or some other rain-related squall, because the thought of a tsunami in the mountains just blew all our minds for a few moments there.

Pretty sure the last time a tsunami hit West Virginia, Bruce Willis was in space, and Frodo Baggins was still just an amateur astronomer.

However, someone must have been looking out for us, because contrary to every radar continually telling us we were "just about to get dumped on", the rain never came. It got cloudy for a little while, but stayed fairly warm and nice throughout the afternoon and into the night.

This was a huge morale booster for all of us at the WeDrink booth, as a rainy mud-fest wouldn't really have helped our attempts to promote stainless-steel water bottles.

By Saturday we had also really gotten to know some of our frequent-flyer customers. Apparently offering free refills of ice water throughout a hot weekend-long event is a good way to see people a lot. Great people, and their great contraptions:

Wonderful. Just wonderful. I never got tired of seeing Dave and his hand-made WeDrink tote roll up to our tent for refills. He was also one of the most enthusiastic for the cause, telling everyone he could about our charity bottles.

Saturday night was also the only time I left the booth since we'd arrived Wednesday night: Umphrey's McGee was playing the main stage at 1am. They ended up jamming till almost 4am, and I stumbled back to my tent to crash until 6:45 when I'd wake for the last day at All Good...

Best,
-Andrew

Related Posts:
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009: Day One
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009: Day Two

Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009, Day Two: Why You Should Always Take Extra Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:53:00 +0000

6:45. Woken up by the heat and morning light. My air mattress also had a pretty legit leak, and by the morning I was practically laying on the rock-hard dirt.

I didn't even want to get out of my tent.

You know when you wake up in the middle of the night from a scary dream, afraid to return to it in your sleep? Friday morning was a mirror image of that. I couldn't bring myself to face another 20 hour day of slow tormenting failure. 'Cause you see, Thursday, we had sold less than 30 WeDrink bottles...

At this rate we would raise a minuscule amount for our charities, and WeDrink itself would lose heaps on the weekend. But Friday, things were different. Just as I'd hoped, as more people learned about our charitable stainless-steel bottles, and more people told their friends, everything started to turn around.

"Andrew, don't worry man, I've been to these festivals before, people don't buy stuff the first few days. Like to browse and see what each vendor has to offer."

Sam did have a pretty good point. Also, only about half the crowd had even showed up by Thursday evening. In fact, there ended up being a steady stream of cars coming in to set up camp well into Friday evening.

As I mentioned earlier, the most important souvenires I took home were the personal connections I made with so many great people along the way. It isn't that easy communicating the full message of everything WeDrink stands for, but when people run with it, they really run with it. I can't count how many folks came by expressing immense support for the environmental health, personal health, money saving, and (most importantly) charitable aspects of WeDrink.

It was all thanks to the continual support from everyone I met at All Good that kept me going through wave after wave of sleep deprivation from working those 20-hour days.

Today I'd like to talk about one person in particular who really helped us out a lot. His name is Robey, and he is without a doubt a heavy-hitter in both the music and charity scenes.

Having been working the concert circuit for years, his current main focus is on helping Conscious Alliance; a non-profit that makes collectible posters for concerts, each costing 20 bucks or ten cans of food. I could hear his passion for the cause in each word he spoke about this charitable poster company; and I could tell he felt the same way when I recounted to him the story of WeDrink. If you have a moment, I sincerely encourage all of you to check out the Conscious Alliance website, or keep a look out for it at the next concert you go to.

Over the weekend Robey and I became great friends, and he went more than out of his way to make sure we got all the help we needed throughout the festival. I look forward to seeing and working with him again in the future. My only regret is that I botched the only photo we took together...Note to self: Double-Check to make sure everyone was in the picture when you hold the camera yourself

It had been a long couple days, the festival wasn't even halfway over with, and I had only begun to feel the onset of sleep-deprivation...

Keep an eye out for Days 3-4

Best,
-Andrew

Related Posts:
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009: Day One
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009: Day Three

Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009, Day One: On the Importance of The Ground-Score

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:19:00 +0000

Ground-Score - verb - finding useful/badass items on the ground discarded by others, usually at a large festival. ex: "Dude, check out these wet glow-sticks I just ground-scored."

Of course, many would say that ground-scoring is just a euphemism for stealing, but in most instances the ground-score is entirely legitimate, and it usually evens out to a zero-sum game for everyone. But more on that later...

So here goes. All Good Festival 2009. Four days of music and camping. WeDrink's big push into the open, our first major face-to-face exposure with these charitable stainless-steel bottles. I'd been preparing for this weekend for over two months...

Wednesday was an adventure in itself. After an 8 hour trip into West Virginia, we soon found ourselves being given shoddy directions, leaving us in some twisty hilly back-road. After the shenanigans involved with turning around a Tahoe towing a U-Haul, all on a road not much wider than kiddy-pool, we finally found our way to the the All Good festival site. We got our camp-site in order, checked on the WeDrink Bottles, and got some good sleep for the weekend ahead...

Woken up around 6:45 by the light and heat, Sam, Steve, Jenna, Jayne, and myself all began the preparations for the next four days of promoting Wedrink's stainless steel water bottles. After putting up our tent, we realized something: our banner was pretty big, and it hung low over the front of tent. This was a problem as it blocked the inside, and choosing to drape it across the back or in front of the tables would just diminish its visibility.

After a quick look around, we noticed that nearly every other vendor had ways of rigging their banners above the tent; usually done with 10-foot PVC pipesWe were in a jam. We didn't have any PVC pipes. And the festival gates were opening in a couple hours.

We immediately split up to find anything we could use to rig up the banner. After 15 minutes, Steve returned with some large sticks from the woods. Wow we're scrambling. I proceeded to have a small conniption while we determined a way to rig the banner to the sticks to the tent.

Then it happened. Jenna returned with the most sopping wet ground-score of all time.

"Hey guys, I found this trashed up rebar discarded over there." The gods of ground-scoring had smiled upon us. (side-note: we weren't introduced to the wonderful term itself until later that afternoon).As it turns out, the rebar was the absolute perfect width, length, and weight to rig up onto the tent to raise the WeDrink banner. To make matters even more amazing, the ridges along the sides of rebar were perfect for zip-ties to strap down with.

Our second crisis had been averted, the Coleman grill sizzled an aura of bacon and eggs around our tent, and we proceeded to sell WeDrink Bottles all day and into the night.

All Good officially started at 7PM Thursday night with performances by Keller Williams and Lotus. My favorite was without a doubt Lotus's late-night jam that segued into a cover of the old-school Zelda theme song.

I'm currently trying to find a higher-quality version. This song was unbelievable when you could really hear the bass and drums.

It had been a long and stressful two days, and the weekend hadn't even begun...

I'll be uploading the day-to-day adventures from the weekend over the next few days, so keep an eye out!

Best,
-Andrew

Related Posts:
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009: Day One
Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009: Day Two

Good Faith Business Practices: Intro, and Clean Pricing

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:12:00 +0000

If there's a single underlying principle in running WeDrink, it's to always follow Good Faith Business Practices. Simply put: always having the best interest of others in mind. We offer this promise to our patrons and supporters, other businesses we work with, and to each other within WeDrink.

For a while now society has idolized not exactly the best of idols, be it the most lavish athletes, musicians, actors, or other celebrities. At the same time we have repeatedly praised the un-praiseworthy in the business world, where cutthroat and deceptive tactics brought them everything; everything we saw and wanted for ourselves.

But times are changing... I can feel it, and I'm starting to see it in a number of new businesses as well as some celebrities.

From time to time I'll be sharing the details of a different Good Faith Business Practice of WeDrink or another noteworthy business. Today I'd like to talk about our choice to use Clean Pricing.

American businesses love their 19.95's, their 199.99's, and their 17.65's. Nothing sells better than tricking customers into thinking they're paying less (just ask anyone from the real estate loan industry).

WeDrink will never do this. These are deceptive mind-games, and they make purchases frustratingly complicated.

This didn't even dawn on me until a trip overseas. From restaurants to retail, it was always 20 euro, 50 euro, 5 euro; never any change to bother with. It was convenient, and I didn't have to stop and remind myself what I was actually paying. Until then I had never even conceived the possibility of a business giving me a simple, clean price. I remember promising myself "if I ever run a business, I'll stick to clean numbers".

Shady pricing isn't too far from the Subliminal TV Advertising from the 50's, and the Family Guy episode making fun of them

That's why WeDrink uses clean, even numbers, like 16 and 18, with no change to deal with.

We're not hiding anything. And we thought it'd be easier to do the mental math for figuring how much is going to charity from our "50% of sales" promise. 'Cause nobody likes dividing an odd number by two, let alone a crazy number like 17.65.

I'm interested to hear any comments on how you all feel about this, and if there is a shared weariness with conventional pricing mind-games. Also, keep an eye out for more posts on Good Faith Business Practices.

Best,
-Andrew

This post is dedicated to the memory of Billy Mays, the great pitchman himself, and sole exception to the pricing game rule. May your oxi always be clean, your augers awesome, and your putty always mighty.

WeDrink Summer Wet Tour 2009: The Beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:11:00 +0000

Over the last week or so, you have probably been hearing about the Wet Tour from Twitter or the WeDrink home page. This is a huge project for WeDrink right now, so I thought I'd share with you a little bit more about what it is and how it came to be.

wet - adjective - indescribably awesome or breath-taking

As you all know, WeDrink isn't exactly a high-budget operation. It's run by a few guys in our 20's, and from whatever sales we do end up making, we give tons to charity. Doesn't really leave us with much discretionary spending. So of course, huge ad campaigns, corporate partnerships, and marketing blitzkriegs aren't really in the cards...

This doesn't really bother us though, as we'd rather have WeDrink continue to spread on a grass-roots level anyway. This way we're not bombarding folks with our message at every possible corner or retail outlet. And most importantly, we know we'll always have the most sincere, legit supporters.

Thus, The Wet Tour was born.

I originally envisioned touring around the country all Summer long, hitting different music and arts festivals every weekend.

But then I remembered I didn't have Coca Cola's expense account.

With such a limited budget, it would have to come down to a few of the choicest weekends. After looking through every festival and every artist lineup, we decided without question that All Good 2009 would be our flagship.
Like Bonarroo, but not over-commercialized, All Good Music Festival and Campout is an opportunity to hang out with some of the chillest people in the country, while listening to live performaces from over 40 bands, including Moe, Umphrey's McGee, Ben Harper & Relentless7, Dark Star Orchestra, Tea Leaf Green, SOJA, and Keller Williams. It's gonna be a blast, and I hope to see you all there.

I'll be posting blog updates throughout the Summer, as well as articles from the road once we're at All Good. Also, look out for posts from Steve and other friends of WeDrink along the Tour.

Happy to hear any comments from those of you who will be seeing us at All Good, or if you have any suggestions for other festivals we should check out!

The Entrepreneur's 30-Minute Morning Routine

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:08:00 +0000

Quick new morning regimen that works me even harder than these Japanese temple stairs did.
(and don't worry, I didn't dishonor the temple or anything, the locals use these stairs to exercise all the time)

CrossFit. Quite possibly the greatest workout ever conceived.

At no more than 30 minutes a day, this routine gets me as alert and focused as I need to be to take on the dozens of different jobs required of every entrepreneur, day in and day out. All this in addition to it's incredible effectiveness for serious strength training.

Created by fitness legend Greg Glassman back in the late 90's, CrossFit is a regimen of constantly varied exercises that focus on functional movements, all performed at absurdly high intensity. And this continual variation is key, because when it comes to optimal conditioning and strength training, repetition of the same exercises week after week is the last thing your body needs.

CrossFit itself works kind of like a blog (free, and don't have sign up for anything). Every morning I get up at 5am, check the workout of the day (WOD) and bike to the gym.

Now, the biking back afterward is the hard part. I usually takes about 10 minutes of being helplessly collapsed on the floor just to regain enough strength to get back to my place. Then I down a secret-recipe protein shake which I have nicknamed "The Senzu Bean" (that's right, I said it), and afterward I feel unbelievably awake, energized, and driven for the day's work. And all of this goes on before most people have even gotten out of bed.

Straight from King Kai himself

(Those who know me were probably just blindsided by the whole "get up at 5am thing". To be honest, I've never been one for getting up early. In fact, throughout college I made an art out of finagling may way into "the dream schedule", semester after semester, and for four years I never had any early morning classes and rarely got up before noon or went to bed before 4am. It's a big change, but sometimes you just gotta be ridiculous.)

So whether you plan to use CrossFit as a morning mantra to supercharge your entrepreneurial drive, take your strength training to the next level, or both, like myself, I strongly encourage all of you to check out the website/daily workout blog and let me know your thoughts or experiences.

I also plan on recording some personal metrics to see how I've done after a few months on the 30 minute morning routine, so look out for a follow-up post.

Related Posts:
The Adventures of WeDrink at All Good 2009: Day One

The Story of WeDrink: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 23 May 2009 04:21:00 +0000

So the goal settled upon was to solve the Global Water Crisis. No problem, let's do this.

As mentioned before, I found a lot of inspiration from previous social entrepreneurships that followed the "buy-one, give-one" model, such as TOMS Shoes and the One Laptop per Child Foundation (which is now a 501c3 though). The problem is, it's harder to sell and give a lifetime of water than it is shoes and laptops.

But I set out to find a way...

I first thought of selling bottled water at a 50-60 cents premium, and then donating that money to water charities (buy a bottle, give the monetary equivalent of a bottle). Thing is, companies like Ethos Water already had a pretty strong hold of the "charitable bottled water" image in peoples' heads (even though they only give a measly 5 cents per bottle). But that ignores the fact that plastic bottled water itself is a huge aspect of the Global Water Crisis, and I didn't want to contribute to that.

Then, finally, it came to me. Reusable Stainless Steel Bottles paired with a substantial donation to water charities. It was exactly the "buy-one, give-one" I'd been looking for. With the bottle, you're buying practically unlimited access to on-the-go water, and with the donation, you're giving one individual in Africa the clean water they deserve.

Next came the question of how much to give. I wanted it to be huge, unreal, something no other businesses had the guts to do. So I figured, why not send half the profits to charity? But that wasn't enough. Then there's the issue of transparency, because with % of profits the customers don't really know exactly how much they are giving. In fact, the amount donated could be next to nothing if the business has small profits.

So we did the unthinkable and decided on giving half of sales (half the entire the list price) to charity. No other business even jokes around with these kinds of ideas. Even non-profit fundraisers that sell stuff and give "all proceeds to charity" usually recoup all their costs before donating anything. Example: because we're just getting started, WeDrink is in the hole a good deal of money, but that didn't stop us from making our promised donations.

WeDrink is way to really make things happen. It's a way to solve the Global Water Crisis on all fronts, through raising money for wells in Africa, habitat restoration on both of America's Coasts, and promoting the disuse of plastic bottled water.

All that's missing is you.

80% of all disease in the world is caused by unclean drinking water. 80%.

Let's put an end to that.

I'll be making more in-depth posts about each aspect of WeDrink, so keep in touch for more coming soon. And I'm always open for suggestions, so feel free to let me know what you think!

Best,
-Andrew

The Story of WeDrink: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:39:00 +0000

80% of all disease in the world is caused by unclean drinking water. 80%.

It all began a couple years ago when I woke up to the realization that I hated my major. Well, I enjoyed finance and economics, it's some really useful stuff, I just didn't want to be some accountant or banker (and this was even before the collapse of finance and the death of investment banking). I also decided that nominal values, like the current obsession with inflated gpa's, were a complete waste of time; and I’d already played that game the first two years at college. So I abandoned any unnecessary studying, and began focusing on real values, the actual knowledge. Over the next year or so I read around 70 books on a variety of subjects and listened to as many lectures as I could on TED.com and BigThink.com. What I found changed everything.

A book is really the story of an author's life; it's his or her death-bed advice, just for you. And throughout all these bedsides, I noticed a reoccurring theme. Whether the book or speech was about investing, vagabonding, applied mathematics, nutrition, or even chess, the authors always had a similar request near the end: for fulfillment in life, everything comes down to working hard, and helping other people. That’s all it takes, “everything else is just commentary,” and“chasing the wind”.

And that’s where I found social entrepreneurship.

Dr. Yunus

The great Dr. Yunus, father of micro-finance, actually coined the term “social entrepreneurship” back in the 90's, and it has since then grown to a sizable following of dedicated businesses. It’s based on harnessing the sheer potential and innovation of capitalism to truly benefit society, while also achieving one’s personal goals. It's what the world needs, the kind of end-game capitalism where everyone really does win.

Last summer while perusing BigThink.com, I stumbled upon a bunch of short speeches on social entrepreneurship by Blake Mycoskie, founder of the increasingly popular TOMS Shoes. They were immensly inspiring, and I immediately wanted to start a similar company based around this buy-one-give-one business model.

Soon after, I partnered up with Dan, and we spent the next few months brainstorming via GoogleDocs a nearly endless list of ideas for our social entrepreneurship. Then, in October 2008, we settled on doing our part to solve the Global Water Crisis.

WeDrink was born. But there were still Mount Everests of work to do before it could actually succeed.

{Edit: Continue with The Story of WeDrink: Part 2}

WeDrink's First Appearance

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sun, 17 May 2009 20:21:00 +0000

A few weeks ago WeDrink partnered up with Thirst Aid Live, a promotional company with similar goals of addressing the Global Water Crisis, and made plans for visiting a number of joint-effort weekend events. So, 7am Saturday I hit the road with my mapquest directions to the Atlanta Underground.

It was the Go-Green expo in downtown Atlanta, and close to a dozen other regional Green Businesses (most of whom I got to meet, and were all great people) also took part, setting up similar booths, all to the background of live music.

However, it also happened to be an outdoor-ish event located at the epicenter of a Vietnam-scene-from-Forrest-Gump sized monsoon that afternoon... After raining for the first 4 hours, the festival never really recovered, and about ¾ of the people that actually showed up were drunkards from downtown Atlanta. In addition, our manufacturer had messed up about half of our bottles, and our credit card machine decided to stop working.

I had good conversations with 4 people, and sold 1 bottle.

When I finally got home late that evening, I was definitely in one of the often-called "entrepreneurial low" moments. In fact, it was probably the lowest I've felt in the entire roller coaster of running WeDrink.

Dragging into my room, I noticed my roommate had left on the desk some mail I'd gotten that afternoon. It was a letter, from PlayPumps.

"Dear Friends of PlayPumps International,

We would like to extend our appreciation to you for supporting PlayPumps International's efforts to bring clean drinking water to children, families, and communities in Africa. Your generosity and support, in the amount of $290.86, in support of the WeDrink campaign, will help us bring the life-changing gift of clean water that will lead to improvements in health, education, gender equality, and economic development."

It continued for a few more thoughtful paragraphs, and was signed by Shudine Covel, the Program Coordinator.

We had sent PlayPumps their portion of our first charitable distribution a couple weeks ago. It wasn't much, being from just our first couple months of sales. (side note: it's still was more than Ethos Water gives to charity after selling over 5800 of their bottles)

But when I read the letter, everything turned around. I remembered why I was doing this, why I needed to make WeDrink a success. It was more than just one weekend, and I wasn't going to let awful weather and a series of other compounding misfortunes make me give up.

WeDrink will succeed. Collaborative Micro-Philanthropy will succeed. Even if it takes years, we will change the way businesses, and ourselves as individuals, think about charitable donations.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With Just One Step

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:27:00 +0000

Cliche, I know, but everyone loves a good Lao-tzu quote, and it seemed appropriate for my first blog post. Here's to the documentation of all the adventures we'll have with WeDrink and Collaborative Micro-Philanthropy.