The Business of Giving

Kevin Krall 0:00
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Speaker 2 0:37
The world, people live in the whole world addicted to the drama. Hello, everyone. And welcome to the business of giving podcast. My name is Guy Dawson and I am the Executive Director of the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce. And we are an organization that brings for profit businesses and nonprofits together to create synergistic relationships that benefit the community. And we develop the business of giving Show podcast to highlight successful businesses and nonprofit organizations in the community. And to also accentuate the natural connection that both of these communities which I call pillars, in any community, both the nonprofit and the for profit world, making better connections and really showing people the value of of causes and also to support the success of of businesses as well. And I have my permanent co hostess with the most dis now. Maria Perez, who is also on the air with me, how are you Maria?

Speaker 3 1:40
I'm doing well today. How are you doing? Guy?

Speaker 2 1:43
I am fantastic. How are things in the cars world you have any exciting projects or anything that you're working on right now?

Speaker 3 1:51
Oh, always, always working on wonderful strategic alliances and partnerships in the car space. So yeah. But here, we're here today to talk to some wonderful folks about their involvement with causing social issues marketing, I'm happy to to reveal.

Speaker 2 2:12
Yes, I really appreciated Maria reached out to me recently. And she says I've got these people who are what we are all about when it comes to really valuing being pillars of the community by making contributions, both in business as well as working with worthy nonprofit organizations. She had mentioned this company multi pure, and we have two representatives from the company that are here that we're going to be talking with over the course of the next half hour today. Kenton Jones and Amber SEMO. With multi pure, it is a business that's focused on water and many different aspects. And Maria, maybe you could do a segue into how you connected with this wonderful company and these great people.

Speaker 3 3:00
Yes, actually. So it's interesting story. I was watching television during the beginning of the pandemic. And notice that this firm was advertising on CNN and their messaging really sort of touched my heart. And I started to do a little bit of research. And I have I had been representing a another organization here in town that flies, children that are medically compromised for care. And one of the most important aspects of their travel is staying hydrated. And I was able to align them in a in a partnership, which continues today. And that's how I met them. And it really is a wonderful when when healthful water is super important to medically compromised children, anybody for that matter. And so we were able to put something together. That's pretty fantastic.

Unknown Speaker 3:53
Kenton and Amber, welcome to the business of giving show.

Unknown Speaker 3:56
Well, thank you for having us.

Unknown Speaker 3:58
We're excited to be here.

Speaker 2 3:59
Yeah. Tell us about multipeer The company itself.

Speaker 1 4:04
So multipeer has been in business for 52 going on 53 years now. Started in Southern California by a couple of brothers. H Allen and Alvin rice. And we moved to Las Vegas in the late 90s 1997 moved our corporate offices here as well as our manufacturing facility here. We are in the business of getting people clean water, we manufacture drinking water filtration equipment. We like to think of ourselves as the best in the world at it. And I think that I think we do a pretty darn pretty darn good job of protecting people.

Speaker 2 4:43
As we were walking over to the studio today. Kenton we were talking about how water has become such a huge topic on a lot of levels, especially maybe in the last 20 years and being in the water business. What what changed Have you seen I know You, yourself have been a part of this company for a long time? Why is water so important to people now?

Speaker 1 5:08
Well, water has always been important to people. I mean, you know, it's, interestingly, it's one of the things that we look for, when we gaze out into the stars looking for life. In other worlds, we first look at Worlds that might support water. And so it's absolutely essential to life. And so that's, that is not something new. But what is new for us, of course, are the rising temperatures and lowering supplies of water, which has kind of turned into a bit of a water crisis, especially for us out out west here in Las Vegas. You know, this whole region. I mean, right now, as we record this, it's what 110 degrees out today, water is forefront on a lot of people's minds.

Speaker 2 5:54
And water is such an essential thing. All human beings need water, most of our bodies are composed of water, I guess, the business itself that the two of you are in is really a service to humanity, because you're helping people to, to ingest things or to you know, you're connecting them with something that really isn't essential to life. Do you ever look at it like that really the value of connecting people with water, you would think well, there's water, you know, we drink it, and we shower in it, we use it, but what an essential aspect of life. Water is Amber, you, what do you think? What do you think about being someone who is providing something that's so essential to people? Well,

Speaker 4 6:37
I think is very important. And I'm glad to be part of a company that plays such an important role in not only providing, you know, clean water to people, but we're also playing such an important role in providing them with our helping communities in providing no filters for communities that wouldn't necessarily have access to clean water.

Speaker 3 7:04
Yeah, and you guys do all kinds of products. I mean, it's not just water filtration for drinking water. You also i, if I'm not mistaken, can support wonderful clean water for plant life for pretty much anything. Is that correct? Yeah, that's

Speaker 1 7:19
right, Maria. Although drinking water is our core competency, we do provide clean water for people showers, bathtubs, for the gardens, some places where people might not be thinking of clean water as being quite as important. And, you know, guy you'd asked Do we ever think about this, the importance of what we do, and absolutely every single day, that is at the heart of what we do is trying to protect people from whether it's environmental toxins, or whether it's manmade toxins. You know, that's one of the things that is continually evolving in our industry is what is the next toxin going to be? What is the next category of things that we should be worried about in our water? Right now, it happens to be forever chemicals, things that I'm sure most of your listeners have heard of, these are the things that go into is are the chemicals that go into the manufacture of like nonstick cookware and stain resistant carpeting and water resistant fabrics, and flame resistant fabrics. And I mean, the list goes on and on. There are literally 1000s of these chemicals out there. And we're just now beginning to kind of peel away the layers of the onion, of how dangerous and toxic these things are, and how pervasive they are. Not only in the environment, but unfortunately, in all of our bodies. I think the stats are of something like 95, or 98% of all humans have these in their bloodstream, just from exposure in the environment. And water is one of those waters, one of those conduits of getting this stuff into our bodies. And so we'd like to think of ourselves as kind of the barrier in between, and doing what little weekend, which I don't want to undersell it, but doing what we can to protect people from these things in their water.

Speaker 3 9:09
So Ken, let me ask you, you do an extraordinary amount of community outreach, and in particular to young people. And I'm assuming that to educate them about these these important things as they grow and to apprise them of what to look out for. I know you partner with the Girl Scouts and with some stem groups and what what type of things do you bring to the to the young people when you do your outreach? What do you talk about,

Speaker 1 9:38
you know, going back many years and Maria, you've been a friend for years and thank you by the way, I wanted to make sure I said thank you for inviting us on. So going back several years when multipeer really decided to ramp up its efforts in terms of community outreach and in terms of giving back to the community. We recognized in This was due in no small part. In fact, I would say almost entirely due to the owners the rice family, Jennifer rice, Zachary rice, Alvin rice, HL and rice, their desire to really focus our efforts on children and helping children. And Amber's gonna be here to fact check me out because my mind gets muddled sometimes on all of the different organizations that we've helped. But yeah, the Girl Scouts, boys and girls clubs across the country. Let's see who else let's see, we recently partnered with the Las Vegas science and technology Festival, which was geared towards Clark County School District, the school district helping students get an interest in STEM and STEM careers.

Speaker 4 10:43
Faith Lutheran, we did greenhouse installations with them to help with well, they have a whole setup in their greenhouse with growing food for the school. And they provide food for their own cafeteria there. And so we provided Wow, filtration. Yeah, we provide a filtration for the greenhouse so that they can learn the importance of removing chlorine from the water and growing their own food and sustainability, and different growing methods and stuff like that. So we we did a whole installation with with their school, we really went under work with Girl Scouts, and we'd have a couple of different programs with the Girl Scouts to teach them and expose them to STEM careers in STEM. We have female scientist on on premises, in the chemistry labs and the microbiology labs, not only to get the girls interested in, you know, STEM careers and learning science, but to be able to see actual females in these careers and expose them to working in labs and seeing labs that they might not actually see, in real life. We worked with boys and girls clubs across the country, just to expose them to, you know, this science that they might not actually experience in schools. So it's been a lot of fun and miracle flights. Yeah,

Speaker 1 12:04
Miracle flights, one of our one of our premier partners. here in Las Vegas here in Southern Nevada, what a great organization they are, and the opportunity to provide them with some assistance in helping with their mission of transporting it's mostly children, right Maria, in need of in need of life saving care, life saving hospital visits, or surgeries or doctor visits a guess and getting them there. And so we were very happy to help out with with doing that. And with providing a little bit of water on the way they've got this cool thing. They've got this ambulance, Miracle flights does that they so they bought a surplus ambulance and they wrapped it with their own branding their own miracle flights branding. And then they go to like aviation shows or other community events. And they bring this ambulance and they've got this big, giant walking bear miles, right, you'll see. And so he goes around and meets the kids and talks to kids and and then what we recently did is we outfitted this ambulance with a water treatment station so so you can fill up the ambulance with this huge container of water. And then there's water dispensers on the side of the MO so especially right now in the summer when it's hot. It's kind of an additional traction to this miracle flights, ambulances. Oh, yeah, you can go and you can fill up your bottle with nice filtered water there for multipeer. Just, you know, again, it's a small thing, but we think it's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 13:36
Well, and one of the reasons why I, you know, I approached you to put an alliance together is I had a mother of a child that was traveling. And you know, when you get on the airplane, you have to dump your water when you go to Security. And she said to me, You have no idea, the first thing we have to do is find a Seminole lemon or someplace to shop and get water. And then you know, they're they're there for three or four days and maybe even a month for treatments. And so multipeer has a portable water filtration system for trout when folks travel. And to me it was just a marriage made in heaven to be able to have healthful water wherever you go with your child on their treatment journey. So it's a wonderful partnership.

Speaker 1 14:21
And again, what what little assistance we can help in providing clean water, which also hopefully doesn't interfere with any of their any of their treatments.

Speaker 3 14:33
And die. You know, we talked about the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce is as putting folks together to do good and to walk the walk and talk the talk and some of the work that multipeer is doing. It's just a stellar example of completely genuine actionable, you know, outreach. It's really neat.

Speaker 2 14:57
Yeah, just listening to the two of them talk Talk about what they do with multi pure, there's a culture that multipeer has in this element, I can completely tell just by how knowledgeable both of you are about philanthropy and the way that it works with your business model. And yes, I mean, we interview and talk to lots of people in this space. And you definitely can tell when a company has that actual culture. It's one thing to do a cause marketing campaign, right, Maria. But it's another thing to embody cause marketing, and that's the type of energy that I get from the two of you is that you guys really understand culturally as a company, the importance of what it is that you're doing.

Speaker 1 15:41
Yeah, and I think that, that, I think that that trickles down in our company from the ownership again, it being so important to them, not only the education aspect of it, but the philanthropy aspect of it, and, and a lot of what we do things like with the Girl Scouts in the Science Technology Festival, and miracle flights, kind of bringing those together, because, you know, as, as you know, kids love to learn, I mean, they're, they're little sponges, and they're, they're picking up on things, and they'd love to know things, you know, when you talk to a kid that just learned something, and then they, they kind of recite it back to you, or they or they, or they demonstrate some understanding of what they just learned. They're so excited, and you see it in their eyes. And so when we talk to them about dirty water, or amber does this really cool thing with the Girl Scouts have to tell them about this, where they set up this like CSI kind of crime scene and the Girl Scouts come in. And they have to solve this, you know, this quote unquote, crime where somebody was murdered with something that was underwater was underwater. And, and so they have to, they have to kind of unravel the mystery. And the kids love it. And they learned so much about this. And I think that that's kind of the root of most of our traditional marketing, is educating people, educating adults about contaminants that are in the water, or hydration and the importance of hydration, that it just seemed kind of a natural extension to educate kids about this. Because if they get in the habit of drinking water, and being aware of clean water, and that's going to carry on for the rest of their lives. Again, getting back to the ownership and wanting to reach out to the community to organizations that are especially impactful on kids. You know, because they're their little bodies are so vulnerable to, you know, the horrible things that are in the environment, whether it's pesticides, or lead or these forever chemicals or oh my gosh, microplastics I mean, the list goes on and on. And you just you just want to kind of stand between them and the danger and and be there to protect them. And that's always been really important to multipeer

Unknown Speaker 17:52
Yeah, teach habits, good habits.

Speaker 3 17:54
multitier awesome. Also has a mascot, right.

Unknown Speaker 17:59
Do tell us about the mascot ever.

Speaker 4 18:01
Oh, we recently we recently got Dewey. He? Well, I'm not sure what do you want me to mention about him? He's he's a little do drop of water. He's a drop of water. Yeah. We recently got him in house. So he'll be going out to our two events here shortly. We have a tour coming up for him to to have his Yeah, his public. I don't know I suppose public unveil unveiling. I guess that's a good way to put his introduction to the public eye. But yeah, he's our way to make hydration exciting for kids and teach them good habits while they're young. And it's actually in such a hot climate here to try to get them to get into that habit of carrying a water bottle where they go and knowing that filtration is an important piece of that. Yep, dude.

Speaker 1 18:49
He's hilarious. He's got this whole online persona right now. Where his superhero now? Oh, yes, he's he's battling the forces of dehydration and overheating. And our social media specialist Travis is awesome. He's this is his brainchild, and

Unknown Speaker 19:04
yeah, and the kids, the kids absolutely love him.

Speaker 2 19:06
Yeah. We have great water advocacy. You know, who would think that again that the culture of a company could be all about the advocacy I mean, this is cause marketing at its at its finest what you guys are doing because water is so important. Getting the habits that's something I hadn't even thought about is finding ways to teach people to have better habits when it comes to water, drinking more water, understanding the importance of having clean water. We're really blessed in this country. You don't think about it, right? Because of every once in a while you hear about some some circumstance where the water isn't pure, but boy, we have some of the best water probably in the world and country. How fortunate we are and then a company like yours is taking it to an even higher level with the app As you can see, and really encouraging people to be respectful of water and its importance in our lives. Yeah, you know, I

Speaker 3 20:08
remember, sorry, I didn't want to step mean to step on you go ahead, kins. No,

Unknown Speaker 20:12
Maria, go ahead, please.

Speaker 3 20:14
I just remember your commercial. And the thing that is so memorable to me was that the when people were hoarding water during COVID, I think the message was, the shelves are empty, and people are hoarding water, you could have clean water in your own home with multiperiod. And that's, that's, I'll never forget that that that really caught caught my attention that you should take responsibility for your own clean water.

Speaker 1 20:39
Yeah, you know, that was one of the things that that just, you know, obviously, nobody planned on that happening. But as soon as the pandemic hit, and for some weird reason, toilet paper was flying off the shelves, but so was bottled water and batteries. And bottled water, it's suddenly I think, made people realize what a precious and fragile resource water is, is that suddenly when it's threatened? But yeah, when when people started seeing these empty store shelves, we knew the timing is right for us to get out there and educate people. And so we did something we've never done before. And that is bought television advertising time. And you know, to get in front of people, because everybody's watching the news, right? What's the latest, you know, COVID update today, and everybody's watching the news. And so we saw it as a great opportunity, again, to educate people, that there are different ways of getting clean water you but still, yeah, it was great opportunity, again, for education. And that's been the heart of our marketing is educating people. And then again, I feel like I'm repeating myself here, but educating people and then by extension, providing service in the community of of actually giving some kind of tangible solutions for people to get clean water.

Speaker 2 21:58
Really quickly, I wanted to make an announcement related to the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce. And then I want to come back to the two of you to talk more about your business that's making such a contribution. But the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce is hosting an event on September the 14th, called businesses with heart. And we call that our revival. It is our yearly or sometimes semi yearly event that we host, and it is the origin of the cross marketing Chamber of Commerce. It's a business expo event, it's going to be from 4pm to 8pm. That day, it's going to be at the space, which is a really interesting facility here in town that hosts a lot of nonprofit oriented events, also a lot of musically oriented events. But businesses with heart is going to be all about learning more about companies such as multipeer, excuse me, I don't know I was thinking about another. It's amazing how marketing can leave an impression on your mind. And you say the wrong thing, can't you. But this event is just a it's a great way to connect with people in the nonprofit space. Lots of for profit businesses, we're going to have speakers there will have a feature nonprofit organization, we're looking for potential vendors, we'd love to have you as attendees at the event, we're going to be making regular announcements on this radio show about our upcoming event. And if you want to learn more about it, you go you can go to the cause marketing chamber website, cause marketing chamber.com To register for the event and learn more about it. So again, we'll be making ongoing announcements about our big event that we host either once a year or twice a year, this particular year, we're only going to do it once. We're also going to name a nonprofit cause marketing chamber nonprofit of the year, non philanthropist of the year. Just really looking forward to seeing all of you again, this will be on September the 14th from 4pm to 8pm. Stay tuned for more announcements about this event that's going to be coming up then. And we are here with Kenton Jones and Amber cmo with multipeer. A company that I feel embodies cause marketing. And Maria, you you just bring these water advocates on the show where you really can't pick them, can't you?

Speaker 3 24:21
Well, they're they're about as genuine as you as you can get. And as Kenton has mentioned a couple of times on this broadcast. The founders, the or the principles to the principles have a really genuine story of maybe can you can tell us a little bit about really the the essence of why this is their work is so genuine and real. I think I think it was their child had an illness that was cured by Goodwater. Is that correct? Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 24:48
So yeah, the principles. ZACHARY And Jennifer, have children of their own teenagers now. One of them as a very young child. weld had had some had some health issues. And they discovered through process of elimination, more so than doctors not to not to downgrade doctors advice, but that they were using the wrong kind of water mixing, mixing child's formula, and that once they kind of changed that around to, you know, child turned a corner and seem to do a whole lot better after that. And so I think that was just another kind of awakening for them. Knowing their whole life especially Zachary, our president, you know, he's, he's the son of the original owners of the company. He grew up with clean water, but just just kind of that moment of, that's right. What we do is really important, and what we do has a genuine effect on people's health, especially children's health. So, yeah, we've got we're partnering with another organization we haven't even mentioned yet. Candlelighters

Speaker 2 25:58
Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Please make the announcement. Yeah. Amber, do

Unknown Speaker 26:01
you want to do you know the deets here?

Speaker 4 26:03
Oh, well, we'll be the hydration station for the upcoming superhero 5k. And September 16.

Speaker 1 26:13
Yeah. So Candlelighters the organization, their their whole mission is the is the battle against childhood cancer. And so they've got a they've got a charity 5k coming up in September and multipeer is providing the water for it.

Speaker 2 26:29
Yes, that's, yeah. And we would love to learn more about your business and encourage everyone out there to support businesses such as multipeer because of, of the value of their advocacy and really their approach to business. And can you tell our audience how they can get in contact with you? How can they purchase your products? Learn more about your contribution to the community?

Speaker 1 26:56
Well, you may find us on the socials, of course, Facebook and Instagram, we have really good presence there at multipeer or hashtag multipeer at multipeer at multipeer. Amber's keeping me in line, and then r and then our website

Unknown Speaker 27:16
multipeer.com multipure.com.

Speaker 2 27:22
All right, well, to learn more multipeer.com to learn more about this company and Kenton Jones and Amber SEMO. Thank you so much for being a part of the business of giving podcast and we wish you continued success with your business. Because of the the culture that you're creating with the things that you're doing in the community. It's definitely in alignment with what what we're all about. Right, Maria?

Speaker 3 27:46
Absolutely. Walk the walk and talk the talk. genuine, genuine as you can get.

Speaker 2 27:53
Maria, do you have any announcements related to your business or any events or anything that are coming up that you think would be of benefit to our audience?

Speaker 3 28:03
Well, actually, I we do if you go and join, if you go to sponsorship seekers lounge.com We have both a for profit and a nonprofit free Facebook group. And we will be teaching folks the art of sponsorship which for nonprofits is an important fundraising opportunity. And for for profits that want to align with causes. We'll be talking about that. So we'd love to have you join our community.

Speaker 2 28:34
Thank you so much, Maria. And, of course we always want to encourage people to learn more about the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce at our website, cause marketing chamber.com We actually just hosted an event last night, which was our quarterly mixer at Mimi's cafe. In Henderson, the nonprofit that we featured was called heaven can wait it is a nonprofit that's involved in animal care and it was wonderful experience to learn more about their business. So we have lots of events and programs through the cause marketing chamber that will teach you about these principles cause marketing chamber.com For more information, you can also follow us on our social media sites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, we also have a YouTube page now for the business of giving podcast. And so we thank you all for tuning into our show. I'm loving this weekly format here at K u n v 91.5. FM. And I want to encourage you all to give and do business for good. See you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai