How Strategic Marketing Drove Fontus Blue’s Value

Episode Transcript

Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in M&A, private equity and growth. I have a very special guest with me today, Chris Miller. And I'm going to read this because there's a lot here. And then we're going to get into it. Our guest is Chris Miller. He's the Vice President of Digital Services at USALCO, where he's leading the digital transformation of the water treatment industry. Chris is focused on combining digital decision support solutions with specialty chemistry to help utilities achieve the highest standards of water quality, efficiency and sustainability. And, this role is a culmination of a career spent at the intersection of water data and engineering. He recently retired as an associate professor emeritus from the University of Akron after three decades of teaching water resources, engineering, and optimization. And before joining USALCO, he spent ten years as an entrepreneur, founding and serving as the president and CEO of Fontus Blue, a company dedicated to improving drinking water quality through its advanced data monitoring and AI driven software platform. Chris, thank you for joining us today.

Chris: Pleasure to be here.

Bill: I had to read all of that because you have had quite a journey, here over the past several decades to arrive at this moment. Maybe talk to us a little bit about that.

Chris: Yeah. So, my grandfather owned a construction company. So it's that, kind of a lot of people say, why civil engineering? So I, so the plan was to go into the family business, run the construction company. Really was the extent of, of why civil engineering to start. But as that journey grew and see, I'm going to hit the mic already. Yeah. As that journey, progressed. And then I thought, well, I'll be one of those transportation guys sitting on the road drinking coffee. Joined the army, got in a construction unit, knew that construction was not for me, as my wife can attest that I do no home projects. Even though I'm 51 hotel formally trained in the army. So, but I was fortunate enough to get a job at the university drinking water plant and where my mom had actually been a secretary 20 years, you know, when she was 20 years old and, they were just college students. So that was my first introduction. Was fortunate from there, there were a lot of grad students, and I knew I wanted to teach. Ended up in Akron, Ohio, and, eventually led to founding Fontus Blue.

Bill: Well that's amazing. Thank you for your service. We appreciate that.

Chris: Thank you.

Bill: And, so you tried construction and, found water? Yeah. That's kind of an interesting transition. Let's let's talk about that founder experience of Fontus Blue. Every founder has that moment that they can think back to. Or often we have several moments, but one we're willing to share. It was that white knuckle moment that we’re on the precipice, the point of the knife of either success or failure. What was yours? What did you learn from it? How did you get through it? What would be words of wisdom to those of us, or those who are founders, who are trying to get through that moment?

Chris: Okay, I think I'll share two. I think one, it was specific to the technology or product is that this is in the real, like within the first two years of the company, we were at the time, selling an Excel sheet. I mean, not and I didn't see that there was much future and continuing to, you know, sell an Excel sheet. So it's like what was going to be that major product advancement? Fortunately, there was what was called the Glide Innovation Fund in the Ohio area, and it was either 25,000 or $100,000. You went through, a vetting process. You did interviews with, and a presentation. So classic kind of startup pitch, but for, you really had to focus on the fonts, had to do my first pro forma. And so, that ended up being they ended up for the first time ever jumping us to the second one, which would normally be 100,000, but they split it with somebody else and we got 50,000. Well, that $50,000 really was that quantum, like took us from a spreadsheet to being able to hire some people that got us into the cloud, eventually a cloud product.

Bill: Nice.

Chris: So, so I think that, I mean, the words of wisdom to founders is that, you know, really seek out what those, you know, every the community's different in terms of how they support the entrepreneurial. But Ohio had invested a decent amount in having kind of cluster. And so there's Cleveland, Akron. And so tap into, you know, those small resources. I wasn't a big fan of the startup pitch because, this allowed us, like I said, we actually had to do a pro forma. We had to do, you know, there was definitely some, more gates that and it accelerated us, you know, hardening our, our business. I think the second one is, is kind of the classic. We had hired some people. It was about four years and and we were burning cash faster than we could. And I had two amazing shareholders that stepped up and and wrote checks. It was $100,000, $50,000 each. And, they're happy as we'll get into what those culminated in. But you know so but so having people that believed in and were willing to write some checks and go through a long process. So, I think the lesson there again, obviously you can surround yourself with people that really believe and do have at least, some funds that can get you over some of those, those bumps that where unfortunately, it's. Yeah, it could be meaning the business continues or doesn't continue. So.

Bill: I was listening to a podcast this morning on the way in and it talked about founders need to do as much due diligence on their investors as they, whether it's private equity, whether it's private individuals, whether, whatever it is. Because if you run into those bumps in the road, like you had a situation, you had a bump in the road, you had investors who believed in the vision. So it wasn't purely a financial transaction. Because if it was purely financial, they would have just been like, oh, I have to cut my losses and move on, right? They had to believe. So how important was it like? It sounds like it was like super important that you had those type of investors who believed in you and in the business more so than just the financial performance at that time.

Chris: Yeah. So I intentionally didn't choose those amazing people that had both. Yeah. So I was just very fortunate that that's what we, we attracted. So, certainly I think that is, like you said, the due diligence on and that's not what's usually emphasized. Right. It's more or less who will write the check. Yeah, and they also were very active board members, experienced business people. So that I'm sure we'll get into some of that. That helped also play a role besides, you know, just getting us through that hump.

Bill: When you think about what you, how you built this company and we're going to get into it, you have had a successful transition, you were acquired, what were some of the biggest takeaways, like the biggest learnings that you had from that experience, like, and maybe, maybe more of a macro like founder life, experiences or learnings that if you go back to Chris version 1.0 or 2.0 and now you're at Chris version 4.0, what were some of the things that you would never have thought of that just surprised the heck out of you?

Chris: Probably how much I did need other people to, to make it go. I mean, I think I would say if you have the entrepreneurial spirit and kind of a self-starter and, you know, you think, well, I can probably do this a lot on my own. And I think you'll hear a lot about obviously hiring the right people. But I think that I was very fortunate. I mean, surrounded by in the, we were in, it was called Bounce Innovation Hub. Initially it was the Akron Global Accelerator, but so there was a, a place that, so not only they provide, a economical rent, but there are actually people there that were interested in being mentors, advising. They signed, you know, an entrepreneur lead. These people were with us the entire ride up until even even the exit. So, I think those key mentors, advisors, because I didn't realize that I needed a lot of them in the many different areas of marketing, sales. And so we quickly kind of corralled those. And I think I probably did it because I had the bootstrap mentality as well, is it, like I didn't want to fundraise and hire all those areas. So but so I think that recognizing and probably and not just employees and people that you hire to help build your business, there's a lot of, you know, even board members, I didn't really fully understand and appreciate the difference between good board members and not so good board members. And I had amazing board members. So, and that had been through business cycles and, and through growth in those things. So I think I would, I would definitely spend energy building that network. And you know, I think that that's probably one of the key, certainly in the early, early stages. And again, we were very fortunate to do that.

Bill: No, I think that's amazing because, as founders, we think we can do it all. And early on you have to do it all because there's no money, there's no, you know, scaling. You're just trying to get through the day, get through the week, get through payroll. And then it's hard to identify when and how to make the transition to where you're bringing on those other experts or a players who you can, in some ways delegate or hand off or partner with to execute those functions. And that's very, very difficult, especially whenever you're, I mean, like when you started Fontus Blue like you guys started it from zero, there was, you didn't acquire something and roll it up or scale it up. You add an idea and you build it and you developed the MVP and you tested it and started to scale it. So I think that's a great perspective and kind of, realization that you've observed and, and internalized as you've looked at this process.

Chris: And I think, and probably one thing I would add is that that one of the qualities certainly of probably at least 3 or 4 of those key people, was they had done it.

Bill: Okay, nice.

Chris: So they, well, well. And when I say done it, they had either been in a key position of leadership for a startup. So they understood, you know, that five employee to 15 employee whatever you want to define, you know, but that that kind of piece or they actually had an exit themselves. And another key quality is that they were not afraid to say, hey, Chris, you know, get your act together and, and be like, you know, quit falling in love with the technology and focus on the financials and, you know, do all those other things that, you know, create a sound business. So, yeah. So there's mentors that are supportive and there's mentors that aren't afraid to to push you and tell you the truth. And we had a couple key ones on that front. So and again, I remember those conversations to this day.

Bill: Some of them live with you well and some of them probably gnaw at you, like how did I have to be told that? Why couldn't I…

Chris: And they remember them though now, when, like one, he retired to Florida and we hadn't chatted for a year and have so and I text him about about, yeah the successful exit, he was, you know he remembered, he would actually referred back to the conversation to where we were and was like, yeah, Chris, you need to get off like pretend mode. That was the words he used. Yeah. You can pretend to have a business or you can actually build a business.

Bill: I love that, pretend mode. Often, and we run into this a lot because we work with a lot of like, startups, founders, early, like seed rounds, series a, they have to have a moment where they stop following in, like they fall out of love with, like, maybe it's that honeymoon phase with the thing, and whether it's software or a process or a product or whatever, and recognize, okay, I do have to get out of pretend mode. And this is a business. This isn't romanticized. I'm going to have to make really hard decisions about this, and some of that I might have to kill so that the other part can grow and flourish. And those aren't fun moments, right? Because you want to believe you can make them all work. And every idea can't be optimized and scaled.

Chris: Well and I had like this overhang in there, like, well, you are a professor, you have this full time gig and so is this a hobby? So that's usually, that was kind of the superficial way, well, not superficial, but definitely what if you were having a conversation like they could easily if they were going to be a hardcore business, looked at it, they’re like, well, you're subsidizing basically your business and doing all this stuff. So a lot of the conversation is even about how is this company going to grow. And with my board members was, okay, Chris, when are you going to make the leap? And so that seems to be one of those like forks in the road. And, I never did make the jump and yet still so it was, and I don't think it was that. I think it did at least allowed us to focus on yeah, is this a viable business and get away from whether or not I'm full time? Because again, ask my wife, you know, she's like, yeah, it was, it was full time. Yeah. Didn't, couldn't tell. You know, the trustees of the university. But I blended so much of what I did, I brought it into the classroom and all that so that it was very, very comingled, but still legal, you know?

Bill: Certainly. Yeah. That’s awesome.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that. So that's what I thought engineering professors are supposed to bring real world problems into the classroom. So that's what, that's, you know, what I did.

Bill: So let's talk about what is the problem that Fontus Blue and that you started to try and solve. And then how did you kind of walk that journey out as you built the company?

Chris: Yeah. So the, so I started at the University of Akron in 1995. So it was, I had been there about 5 or 6 years. I came across this Environmental Working Group report. My dog died of cancer, and had only had Akron water. I mean, so just all of a sudden these little bulbs going off. So even though it was my formal area, like water treatment and, was in that I hadn't been exposed to, like, both at a personal level and then just even all of a sudden now at a local level, like, wait a second, the magnitude of there’s 300,000 people in Akron, and they're drinking this water and they have no clue. And so, so there's definitely a water quality aspect. There were regulations that were coming that are always 10 to 15 years behind. They, you know, one of my favorite sayings in the classroom was average is for losers. And maybe it came from is that. And it sounds harsh, but it it just means we shouldn't aspire to average, right. Or as engineers, we should always just run the calculations. It’s like the average is a good, you know.

Bill: Sure.

Chris: Represents a mean right? So anyway, there were samples here, this huge distribution system and they'll sample 300,000 people. How many locations do you think that they would sample to be representative of this whole huge area and 300,000 people?

Bill: So the central limit theorem would tell us we have to have 30. Right? And my, professor of statistics, Ron Walker, who made us memorize that, that definition. And we're not going to talk about how many years ago that was. We'll just say it was in a different millennia. That so we need 30, but 30 out of 300,000 is great for a test in a college classroom to start approximations and standard deviations and all that. Right? Not good enough for.

Chris: But so what's amazing is that, see, professor had an impact. But that was it’s actually, but so because of cost and other factors it's only 12.

Bill: What?

Chris: Yeah. Yeah 12. Yeah. And and here's it. They when they sample those 12, they will average. So the compliance number is 80. Well you could have, you would have from 30 to 120. And they would just be like so as long as the average came under 80 you were in compliance. Well guess what. I didn't want to be the one drinking 130 or you know. But so US EPA recognized that they couldn't have this averaging. They actually had all 12 sites have to meet the 80. So that was the big regulation change. So well, that caused all kinds of dominoes because now you had 3 or 4 sites that were in violation, which meant the whole system’s in violation. And so, that's what shows up at your tap. And I had expertise in modeling water quality in these big systems all that. And it just led me back to the source, which is, hey, if we treated to a higher level at the plant and then when we distribute, it we’ll be, we’ll be fine. Kind of basic hypotheses. So I knew I need to get in treatment optimization. But so really a nice regulatory shift, obviously a health impact that was was real. These are known carcinogens. It's not like they're suspected or all that. And so, and then you had, finally the piece like, who's the core customers? So you have water operators that are legally responsible for making these chemical adjustments and keeping the compliance. Now they don't go to jail if they're in violation or whatever. But, their system, you know, they're the ones responsible. And they have to make these tough chemistry based treatment decisions. And I'm sitting there going, I've got a PhD in engineering, I've got all this expertise, and I wouldn't want to be making those decisions.

Bill: Because those decisions have real impact.

Chris: Impact and they're complicated. I mean, there's chemistry, there’s hydraulics. And I'm like many times now, you know, they'd be high school educated. So I'm just saying and I'm like, I wouldn't want to be on the hook for making these decisions. So and there was not a software tools to help them make those decisions. And, and with the regulations on the move, I knew it was only going to get worse, you know, that are more complicated for them. So that really was hey, let's build an Excel sheet first that could could help meet that.

Bill: So this is more of a comment or a question on the water world that we live in. No reference to the movie implied or expected, but the, when we think about something that every person on the planet deals with, air and water and food, and it feels to me like as I'm more exposed to the water community, it is so archaic the way we deal with water on a consistent bit, especially drinking water. And because of, if and what you're saying is completely true, we're supposed to have folks who work at these water facilities without PhDs in chemistry, without all of these tools at their beck and call and experience and education and making fairly complex decisions, and also making them based on sampling protocol that is not going to give them the right parameters. Like I mean, so you have multivariate analysis. You have so many variables that are not controllable in any of those calculations. The potential for disaster there seems to me to be really large.

Chris: Well and, I mean, Flint was simply removing one chemical from the mix, the corrosion inhibitor. And then you had, I mean.

Bill: You went from.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You and. Yeah. And so, so no and you know, Toledo had the harmful algal bloom sort of crisis where again, it was really, they they have a multivariate approach, usually with treatment, so that you're not relying on one thing. And that's usually how they're built. Well, we've realized that even the multi barrier sometimes, you know, those will go in tandem and go the wrong direction. And, and all of a sudden those barriers are gone, or all of a sudden there’s a direct conflict with that. And if you get a perfect storm of certain things, you're, you're basically, you know, trying to minimize the, not eliminate, you know, the risk.

Bill: Sure. So with Fontus Blue, you've identified the problem. You're at a point where you see this regulatory shift and you're starting to see an analysis tool take form and, for those younger listeners, Excel was like Google Sheets or something you used before everything was in the cloud, right? It, so some of them will be like, what's Microsoft?

Chris: Yeah, Google Sheets. Yeah. Yep, yep. Exactly. A spreadsheet.

Bill: Yeah a spreadsheet. So you have this pilot. You're going to market with a solution to deal with this regulatory issue, to hopefully make more efficient and consistent processes for these operators. And now it's time to put on the business hat and say, okay, how much should we expect out of this company? What should we invest in it? What's the total addressable market? What like what's the roadmap forward? Maybe talk about the transition from problem identification solution to now we're going to try and scale this up and make a business out of it.

Chris: Yeah so while very concrete things, having that space that you're paying rent for, like to me this really was the simple sort of transition was and I remember exactly when I was on June 1st of 2017, we actually got 300ft² in the Bounce Innovation Hub. And Caleb Sprague was employee number one who is still still with me. We open that office. And so, and prior to that, we had a few clients. So we had enough. We at least had enough bootstrap that could support support Caleb and support support rent. So having somebody working on the business truly full time, that also was one of those key milestones. So, you know, I was again, 70, 80% better having another person than when I wasn't working and thinking about the business. I knew that that was critical. But so, one of the persons that had helped develop the pilot was, worked for me at university is named Chiklith, who's employee number two and still with us. He he was literally 30 days from his visa expiring, was going back to India. And I was like, wow. So we actually took on Chiklith at that same time. And, you know, started now. So now it's three of us, you know, on a regular basis, starting to think about client acquisition success, sales, marketing. It was extremely overwhelming. For sure. But so I lost a little bit of the train of thought, there though, Bill, you know in terms of, that was that was a key transition. And so again, as simple as yeah, making payroll, paying rent. Yeah, it got real and and so, you know, I think, you know. Now, I guess what led up to that, though is that we did have enough sort of traction from these first adopters that were like, hey, you've got something here. So I think we needed a little bit of wind at our back that was like, so we could spend the energy thinking about, yeah, okay. How do we actually now build out build out a team? And, and we used that Glide funding to take us to the cloud, which certainly, one of the things I don't know how much we'll get into depth on this, but early on I was like, I want to have a product that can support especially small utilities. So we talked about large utilities have may have a water quality compliance manager and may have, you know, so they have some levels of expertise in these things. You get down to even cities under 15, 20,000 people. So we needed to have something that didn't require a big, huge project and sort of, you know, enterprise software kind of mindset. So we decided obviously cloud, but we also decided we want to be able to deploy it without having to even go visit and meet people in person. So, which was actually, I said, 2017, which is actually a good business decision once Covid hit in 2020. Yeah, we were already in that model and it actually made it more adaptive that to building relationships and trust in software at a distance.

Bill: Did you determine that you wanted to go to the cloud not only for those other like, financial reasons, but from a usability and adoption standpoint, because it sounds like, okay, if we want the enterprise route, we need the support of possibly IT from the water organization and that, like you said, that's going to be a very small total addressable market, right? Probably a smaller percentage of all of the water, facilities in the country. So how did you determine that? Was it voice of customer research, like were you interviewing or was it your experience in the industry that you knew these were characteristics of these organizations at the different levels throughout the country? How did you go from, okay, we're solving a problem, but now to understand the TAM and customize this solution to the total addressable market, this is the path we need to choose because of these inputs or these validation points from the market. How did you get there?

Chris: It, probably very fortunate that being a professor and being in environment where things are transitional. So I saw, going from, you know, your PC like even education was like, wait a second, how do we support students in their learning? And like so, I think part of that is I then I just translated to be able to see that, wait a second, people are going. I mean, we were already going from the individual student licenses where they put Excel on their computers to cloud-based. So I think I think, so it was a totally different environment for sure. I saw enough cross connections to be like, yeah, wait a second, there's something here. Software is going to go to the cloud. And like you said, not because, yeah, you don't need IT, you know, I mean although yeah, IT was always the biggest pain in the you know what at the university in their control structure. But yeah. And they started to lose control when the things went to the cloud. But yeah. So I think that that helped is seeing how again even though it's a different and I'm supporting students in their learning, we're supporting operators in their learning and decision making. So how you deploy those tools and yeah, I think it just saw that connection and was like, okay, yeah, things are going to go that direction.

Bill: Well and for the younger listeners, who will I'm sure like my eldest son will ask me about this. And he gets it. The idea of not being in the cloud or making a decision about going to the cloud in 2017 was not as, like, straightforward as it is today, in 2025. Like now, in 2025, everything's in the cloud. We can use all of these new AI tools. And like, these kids can vibe code and in three days they can build what it would have taken us two years to build back then and millions of dollars in 2017. So like that decision was very forward thinking in that space, because it's my understanding, I don't deal with a lot of the water operators, but a lot of them are still working on computers that everything is native on the Microsoft Office license with Excel, which is a spreadsheet tool, that isn't cloud based or can be if it's in 365. But the point is like, it's still almost like the old filing cabinet system, not in the cloud, applications, log in, the whole nine yards.

Chris: Yeah. And a lot of, it’s kind of common to go in and see on their whiteboard where they'll put, so first off that's where they'll put like the latest chemical set points to remind them. But they'll have a sheet that's basically like, hey, if the water quality coming in today is this, this is where we should dose and that's that's not uncommon.

Bill: Somewhat frightening. As a consumer.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And again they, they still make compliance but it, yeah it certainly shows that. Yeah. The, and there's also the cybersecurity concern, you know, there's some of those things that have happened that they don't want to be connected to the cloud. But I think they've they've hidden behind that because of course there are secure ways to, you know, consume, you know, because I would love I'll go in and they'll be like, you know, we're totally cybersecure. We don't want to. And then meanwhile, the operator will have a computer open and they’re on you know, Google. Right. You know I'm and and doing something you know and I'm like that's connected. And and there's that.

Bill: Yeah. They're checking their fantasy football team.

Chris: Yeah exactly.

Bill: And nothing can come in through those channels and they're clicking on emails and they don't have good filters. And oh yeah. Well that's interesting. I think the thing that I'm finding with the most successful founders and those who've had incredible exits is there is an insatiable desire and focus on the customer and their problem and making sure, like the fact that you have anecdotes of seeing those whiteboards, you weren't sitting in a glass house somewhere, like cooking up this idea, and then trying to impose your idea on the market. You were, you identified a problem. You recognized the people who would be using the solution and their day to day activities, how they behaved, the tools that they did or did not have available to them, and then like brought those two things together. That to me, it feels like the story or part of the story of the success of Fontus Blue is making sure that you brought those two things together. And that's where I see a lot of these fall apart is where, like, they have an idea and they don't understand the market and then, you know, they miss. So that that to me is just, and whether you got that feedback back through like some people who, like, go into it without a lot of background in an industry, do that voice of customer research. You had so many touch points through your, teaching career and dealing with those folks that that gave you that information to make those decisions and really guide the development of Fontus Blue.

Chris: Yeah. And yeah, it's of course like getting hindsight's 2020. Right. So my journey as an engineering student, you know, and then like I said through PhD, then all of a sudden becoming on the other side having to guide both undergrads and – so a lot of that empowering individuals and it was fundamental even in the accreditation process, when I look at engineering programs, is how are you using modern tools? Well, I was ahead of accreditation and doing all this. And so like I always was like, well, how are we using modern tools and how could we do a better? And yeah, and so a lot of that, that just was on, you know, I mean part of my day to day job and then just kept seeing those cross correlations to wait a second, these operators. So again I think engineering students are, producing a good engineer isn’t just going through the curriculum to do it. Like there are a lot of nuanced aspects. And I was like, wow, wait a second. Developing an engineer, developing a water operator using modern tools, like a lot of that is just like, wow, there's really good alignment in that. And people come in at different levels. They kind of yeah, I mean, all that again. Yeah, like an adapting, software as well as even the how do we support them with our people as well? Like so there was you know, I said sometimes I call it we’re water therapists, sometimes with these operators. So we listen to them, you know, and then you know...

Bill: You’re sitting there, polishing the glass, listening to their woes.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. So there's, there's, there's a component of that that's, you know, empathy and sure. But yeah. So.

Bill: Yeah. So Chris, in the pre-show, we talked a little bit about, the journey and you mentioned one of the things you mentioned. And, so this it the Missing Half podcast. We're trying to discover what's missing and what you've learned from mistakes or from missed opportunities. And you had mentioned that you feel in and this is primarily about marketing and growth and sales. You mentioned that you didn't invest in marketing soon enough. And in hindsight, you wish you or would if you were counseling someone else who was going through a similar journey to invest in that more quickly. Could you maybe unpack that and talk a little bit about where you think you could have maybe achieved better performance if you had, or what? What caused you to say that? And why did you identify that gap?

Chris: Yeah. So, and even since we, we talked, I definitely reflected some more and I'd forgotten about. So I think there's just kind of like this parallel part to investing and, and I'm thinking about the investing part of, you know, some cash out of the bank, hiring people, like we we oftentimes again, that whole do you hire or do you get consult piece? And so we we definitely were in the in the let's get a consultant. Let's do, you know, and and part of we did it not only was to manage budget was so we could learn because we were very green to the whole concept of marketing, which gets to my other part about like really learning core principles of marketing and the terminology and like and again, it's that sounds kind of textbook, but at the time that you're going through, well, if you make an investment, you don't have at least some core background. I don't think you get the full benefit of going through those different stages of like, okay, let's create a product sheet or a core message or like, you know, so you hear those things, but, you know, again, that's kind of like you learn engineering better by doing some real stuff rather than examples. So, so we had a couple of those small engagements that I think were good catalysts for our learning. I mean, so which I think in the pre-show, I hadn't, but, we really, the first big investment, we committed to a retainer type and had like, basically a fractional. And that was that's something I wish I had done that piece sooner. So where I knew it wasn't a specific job, it wasn't specifically like, let's, you know, do the V1 of the website or whatever, like it was actually somebody that was going to be like, hey, I will, push you need through those different stages and getting. And so I wish, Heather. Surname. She was amazing. And Heather actually got us into, we were finalists for one of the tech awards up in Cleveland, and, so she would do all these kinds of things that were multifaceted and, so, so I think that obviously and that was not, an unbearable amount of funds and so that, but so again, somebody that was doing it full time or, you know, at least, pushing, pushing us through those stages and, and herding us through those stages, because that was certainly not going to be me. And it wasn't going to be Caleb or Chiklith.

Bill: And you had things you had to attend to.

Chris: And a mentor. Again, mentors were good, even we had one of our best, Mark was with us all the way through was a VP of Marketing with… and ironically, an electrical engineer by formal training for Keithley Instruments. But, I wasn't gonna expect Mark to run our marketing. Right. He could advise and, you know, help support those certain aspects and be like, yeah, I think that's gone right. Or here’s the thing. But yeah. So I think, getting somebody that's doing it on a regular basis. And yeah, I think there's, you know, I think, what you do what I, there are some really good people that can do that, that and that was, you know, it was it was huge beyond just client acquisition. It really, you know, marketing's more than just generating leads. Right. And so, you know, and I appreciate that because I, I never was like I want this person so that I can get ten leads. And I was actually worried about that. Cause I was like, how the heck are we going to deliver this software to five new clients? But yeah, but that definitely, all those aspects of marketing that are important and critical and having somebody, shepherd all those was and I guess I just wish we had done it sooner.

Bill: So one of the things we see that's missing with a lot of startups and even larger corporations is they treat some of these things as point and shoot and they're over. Okay, let's get the website done. Well, especially when you're a startup like the, there's changes on the ground every day, and you can be able to test and react and move and make something happen. And whether it's, you know, if you're working on a brand and you're really trying to get that next investment round. So like the the stakeholders are more the investors or if it's, new client acquisition or both or all of those things that these are dynamic levers that have to be pulled and capital has to be deployed like it in marketing, just like it does in product development, and just like it does in staff, because we're trying to create value, we're not there to just oh well, you know, we have a light bill, we have an insurance bill and know we should probably spend X percent on marketing because that's what everybody does. No that's that's for big companies that whatever don't really participate in the same bootstrapping and startup space or, PE space that we operate in. And we see that whenever you have that, like fractional CMO, the one who can really guide those things and stick with you through the wins and the losses, because there will be many of both and also then get the tactical delivery done, that seems to be a more efficient path. But it is, one of the things we see that's missing is it's very difficult to make that financial investment and believe in that, because it's, one, it's not going to happen in thirty days, and it's a core function that has to be invested in, just like product or, engineering or R&D or whatever. So, no, we hear that a lot. I don't know what the answer to that is. I don't know how to solve that for founders because I get it. You're you're at that moment where there's this much cash and there's this much month left at the end of the cash. If you do all the things you want to do, right. It's kind of like that Walmart analogy of there's, you know, too much month left at the end of the money. That's why Walmart says their share price is down. Anyway. That's way above my pay grade.

Chris: But I think that, I also, you know, I stumbled across like, you know, getting happy clients to kind of moving backwards from, like, you know, sometimes if you think traditionally oh so you market to generate leads, those leads are passed to sales, sales close the business, give it off to success. You know, like that's kind of the linear way. But in terms of building the business and I kind of adhered to it. All right. I adhered to it was working backwards. So we, we or at least we jumped to the product part, client and we figured out what we price on. So, I think that, you must no matter what. Yeah, you must invest in the marketing. I was okay with how we we knew, though, that it was where we, the pain of our clients not understanding our value prop and our core message. And like, that was the triggers to be like and that's not sales, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so I think we used that feedback loop. And then finally the pain just reached enough of a threshold that, you know, and, we knew it wasn't those, those incremental projects that you talked about wasn't go get a product, get a case study, get a website. We knew it was it was deeper than that. And probably one of the themes we’ll also talk about is once I realized that I knew I needed we needed that, and I would say it act like a big company where we have. Yeah. And so I think it's one of the key themes and why we were able to do eventually what we did. Is that we did that with we bought Salesforce when there were only four of us, and people were like, why are you getting Salesforce? I was like well we need to build the infrastructure. And yeah, we vetted, we looked and we did like, you know, it wasn't just because it was the most expensive.

Bill: It’s the most scalable.

Chris: Yeah. That was like, yeah long term. I mean you knew the interoperability and a lot of these other things, you know we vetted it through. And so yeah, likewise I was like, hey, we need to have consistent, you know, and all the good marketing benchmarks of a really solid company. And you know, even again, learning that terminology of like, you know, inbound and outbound. Well, okay. Well, we still have not, really crushed inbound. That's our one of our focus next year. But so we're and so I know what it is and I know what like can but that's also matching up that you have to be able to execute on any lead whether it's outbound or inbound. And so now I trust our ability, you know and I trust. But the sales team can handle handle those things. But. Yeah.

Bill: No I think there's a couple of things you said that are just so spot on. One, we are platform agnostic, right? We just want to find the right tool for our clients to use to help them. But I do believe in buying the tool you need a year from now and two years from now, not the tool you need today. Because I've run into so many situations, both internally in our companies and with our clients, where, okay, let's get the cheapest thing we can do to hit that nail on the head today. Like that. Jobs to be done, like, okay, let's get that job done. But then six months from now, we're stopped in our tracks because we have to make a platform move. And we can't just like add on features. So like our project management system is Wrike. Wrike could put people on the moon. It's got so many features we probably use like 5% of it. But when we started we were using 1% of it and we've gotten up to five and gotten really efficient. But we didn't have to then vet a new platform. So your Salesforce decision, I love that, I'm having some of those conversations on renewals with like HubSpot right now with some of our clients where they're like, well, we're not really using this to the fullest capability and for what we're paying for. I'm like, yeah, but if you call me next Tuesday and say, oh, we want to go after ABM and, okay, we don't have a tech stack problem, we can say that that's already solved. We just spin it up. We maybe rent another component or whatever, and like we're moving forward as opposed to, oh, we're gonna have a 3 to 6 month conversation with IT and all the other decision makers to figure this all out. So I commend you on Salesforce decision. Love that. And that I'm sure has paid dividends.

Chris: Yeah. And whether again, seeing other startups again, I think like a good CEO is very obviously aware of their surroundings. So being in an environment where other startups sharing stories, then also again back to the university where they're always doing that, do we build, or do we buy the enterprise of Blackboard? Right let’s go through all the educational platforms, right, that have come and gone and, you know, Brightspace or D to Learn, you know, that. And so I even was on some of those committees. And so I think yeah, that some of those scars and seeing, you know, how that, that those decisions are made and the short term versus long term a lot of what you said. Yeah. And so we, we definitely where again would say we want to in the more technical way is to build a foundation for scaling. But we we joke, we want to act like we're a much bigger and that at least create that culture of thinking again. And then even though we're five, how will it be when we're 50 or whatever it may be, right? You know, and not.

Bill: You just won't be able to hit that button. And then there's another one as opposed to a whole shift. The other thing you mentioned there, and this shocks me to this day, as I deal with a lot of founders looking for that series A round and, like getting really ready to try and scale up and attract investments. You hit the nail on the head, and so many people are missing this. When you have a marketing problem, you need to look at the whole everything. Brand. You need to look at your tech stack, you need to look at your go-to-market. You need to look at inbound. You need to look at outbound. You need to look at your content marketing. And we get a lot of inquiries like, you know, we're not happy with our website. And I'm like, okay, let's talk about what kind of company you're okay and what are you doing? Oh, we want to we're approaching series A and we're talking about your website. Okay. We can start there. But, my guess is that's not the problem. That is a symptom that you're seeing. But there is a much deeper problem because you're you haven't identified your TAM. You haven't like, segmented your market. You aren't, your messaging is off. Your branding is a problem. And not that we're advocates of spending millions of dollars on big idea brand like, you know, that big logo and slogan and treatment and all that because I personally think a lot of that is wasted. Like we need to get down in the weeds and make something happen and drive value. Use marketing as a capital lever that can generate value, not just spend it for fun. So the, your recognition of marketing as a problem or opportunity as opposed to we're not on social media, our YouTube channel is behind the times. Our website isn't performing appropriately or and then recognizing that confusion of the value proposition in the market. How did how did you arrive at recognizing that marketing was a problem, not just like, oh, the website or those little tactics that so many people focus on?

Chris: You know, I have to give next a shout out again to Mark. So he Mark, like I said, was and actually he always likes to put down civil engineers. Because he’s an electrical engineer. He's like, that's how we got the space. That's how we’ve done everything you know? That’s what Mark would say, so.

Bill: The pecking order of engineers.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. All I have is, you know, Hoover. There was a president, right? You know, and we know how that, you know, but so. But so Mark had both that technical chops and, but he had those core principles that he would definitely hit us on. And the five whys and those things. So, yeah, you know, it, it, somebody that we could keep bringing us back to what was important and not that superficial noise of like, yeah. How how good is your logo? How good is your website? A lot of that shiny stuff that does attract early, you know, founders and and again, recognizing that it is a fundamental component of the business, as you said, not a necessary spend. And I think even like Google AdWords and all that, like even a lot of stuff, you see, reinforces almost that like, you know, if we spend $500 or we spend 5000, we'll just make, you know, ten times as much. And, you know, it’s like, wait a second. Yeah, that's not marketing.

Bill: Yeah. Every, digital platform goes through a life cycle and Google's there. Meta's there. TikTok and YouTube, all of them go through a a life cycle of, you know, scrappy, effective, cutting edge to the ultimate outcome is if you spend more with me, your life will be better. Because I have never seen a recommendation like in Google AdWords that says spending less is the right answer, right? It's always more and like, oh, hit this button and more. And it's easy. Like you just click on it with your mouse. 500 more dollars is gone. Does anything happen? Who knows. But yeah, that is not marketing. That's just ad spend. And it's this whole movement of AI impacting that may actually, they may eat their own. Like I'm not worried as a marketer about AI because we still have to solve problems. We're going to use the tool. The platforms may be at greater risk and there may be more efficiency. I believe there will be more efficiency we can extract from the market with the tools in just like the internet killed newspaper, radio and TV and the monopolies they had. We're going to see AI drive additional efficiency and extract value for companies out of those monopolies. Let’s call them what they are. Well, let's pivot here a little bit, Chris, because, let's kind of, we started in the middle of the story, and now we're going to, and we've referred to the end of the story or the next chapter, and you’ve had a successful exit and you are now part of the USALCO family. Maybe talk about that, talk about USALCO. Like we're all for shameless plugs. And providing where we are in our companies. So maybe talk about that exit and then what you're doing now with USALCO in your role there.

Chris: Yeah. So as you mentioned, now the VP of Digital Services. USALCO has even themselves, they started out in the late 70s, family owned, Baltimore. Making coagulant, one of the core chemicals in drinking water treatment. Fast forward 50 over that entire they've been many acquisitions since and, a lot of times more regional. But so from one facility to now, 33 facilities, like predominantly east of the Mississippi, but two in California, one that's going to go online in early 2026. So, one third of the country drinks water treated with, USALCO coagulant. So, yeah. Not trivial. So, you know, was pretty good. Some of that is through distributors. A lot of it's direct. So, that was the core business. Five decades. And, they knew that they wanted to expand into services and digital. And so that was really the driving force for acquiring Fontus Blue. And and so now that's my core role is take this business that's been at that and help, help lead and work with an amazing group of people. Awesome leadership. That was one of the things that attracted us to the, to merging together. It actually was Ken Gayer that would always say, I don't like the word acquisition. He's like, this is a partnership. This is a merger. Even though, yeah, we're like, yeah, yeah... And that's the kind of yeah, how Ken really views it and how and so and that just kind of permeates the entire leadership team. So now we’re, yeah, we're looking basically matching or mirroring everything we talked about that Fontus Blue's vision and mission was, is creating these tools so that operators could produce high quality, sustainable, you know, water operations. And so no deviation whatsoever in the the vision and the mission of the, of the companies. Yeah. Almost seemed too perfect, honestly for, for the, for the match. So, so where some of the things we've talked about that are afoot just in the world in general. Agentic AI and how are operators going to do that? And so so yeah, building making hopefully that digital match at least become maybe a bigger piece of that pie. So now I've been exposed to being owned by, you know, TJC, who are actually amazing partners. I've even realized they have a whole group that supports their portfolio companies. So the dynamics of even more resources with the company. But even of, you know, the, the firm that that that owns them. So there's I think we, we built over eight years to be ready for this moment so that we're not overwhelmed with, wait a second. You know, you need to deliver. We want to deliver this now. And do all these things. And, you know, they were a Salesforce organization. Yeah. So, and by the way, they actually one of the things that attracted was that we were doing things, more systematically than they were. And we were ten and they’re 550 people and so, so they've actually, we started adopt some of our, processes.

Bill: Yeah. So you're a disruptor, you're a challenger brand that's like, you know, kind of forging new pathways in bringing digital solutions to the water community. You have a large, very large organization that is supplying that community with materials and that marriage of bringing that product plus the, you know, the digital product plus the coagulant product together to form better outcomes. It seems like a great marriage, like it seems like there's a value proposition that you and the folks at USALCO thought about this. And it made a ton of sense. This wasn't like a side project. This was a completely aligned and available to be integrated rapidly with the vision of both companies.

Chris: Yeah. Spot on. And one of the things I didn't even.. because there are other coagulant providers. So one of the things that through their acquisition and through, actually Jim, who's going to retire soon, actually has the patents on some of these coagulants, their blends and their ability to customize because a lot of coagulants view it as kind of a commodity business. You can buy alum from this competitor, buy it from USALCO. Right. So well they have the ability to be like, we can actually provide a custom blend that matches your source water and your challenges and the things you're trying to do and now provide this digital tool, you know, so, they, it really, not only that kind of the synergy, but this there's nobody that can compete, with that, that kind of comprehensive offering. And again, back to the regulatory challenges. Getting to, the coagulant is one of the key levers in and all these current challenges and even the ones that are on the horizon. So, it's basically fundamental to, to be able to do that. So we actually I think are going to increase coagulant use because it's a cost effective way to target these things. So, when originally built our software, it was oriented towards thinking of optimization as reducing. You know, what I mean, it’s like, it's kind of like we think our gas mileage means we're going to, you know, our gas will go further. Well, we're actually going to flip that script. It’s that the level of service that our clients have to provide has gotten more challenging. So it’s good old marketing messaging. Right. You know what I mean, it's. And and so the bar is higher. So the issue is how much more do you have to spend or how much more do you have to treat the water well. We'll help make sure that it's it's the right amount. So it's going to be more.

Bill: But how.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And it's not because, obviously we want to sell more coagulant, which by the way we've gotten that question from a few of our clients. Like, are you going to change your algorithm so that it that it, you know, so and I was like it'd be really hard, right. And I was like, you know, ours is just, since it's fundamental chemistry, we just actually now, now we have all the blends. We can just plug it in, but yeah.

Bill: And I think the proof is. So this is a point I was going to bring up. And this is, I think the right time. To answer that question is the proof is in the outcomes that Fontus Blue is generating for their clients. When you look at the proof points on your marketing material, currently of time saved, chemical costs saved. And I think the reality is, what do we all want? What is the outcome of everything we're talking about here from just from a market standpoint, is everyone wants really good, clean, affordable drinking water. How we get there, whether it's, and you'll probably see this variability on the curve. Right. We'll go back to it. Some places will need more of X, others will need more of Y. But if we're actually testing more than 12 samples and we're testing consistently, and then we're applying these materials consistently to the water, we are going to have better outcomes for... And hopefully, you know, in our lifetime we never have another Flint. Hopefully we, like we are developed. We are the shining star in the world as a country. Hopefully we could get things like water right? Right?

Chris: Yeah, exactly.

Bill: We haven't yet, but we're trying. So I think that's amazing. And I think the beauty of answering that question to your clients is the market is way too efficient to ever allow that to occur because there's too, like too many competitors, there's too much information out there, all of those things. So making the right recommendation, we find this with our business. I always have conversations at some point in time, usually a year in or a year and a half in with a client, where I'll say, this maybe get me fired, but I'm going to tell you exactly what we believe to be true and give you our best recommendation. And you might not like that, and it might make you mad enough to fire us. So be it. But we're going to tell you the truth and Fontus Blue is telling the truth about what's happening in these water facilities and these samples and how to make water better. As long as that mission is job one, you'll you'll never fail.

Chris: Well and marketing principles actually helped me not feel rejected when I knew it was, they were saying no, but it really, I tell you no, it’s not yet. Right. Because that's coming to your door where they're all of a sudden, you're going to get a new utility service director that's like, wait a second. Why, you know, like you can stay in your silo, you know. And see but like this. Yeah. It's going to be, it's unavoidable that, these core challenges are going to come knocking or, you know, the senior operator that you've relied on forever retires. And all of a sudden or whatever, like it. And so, so awareness. Right? I mean, all those things are, and Mark was like wait, that's cool. They're not they're not at that right part of it, but they're aware of us now that we've educated them and, you know, so again, sorry to bring it back to Mark. You know.

Bill: But that’s exactly right.

Chris: I understand those things now. And it's like, yeah, we've. And so that was not a wasted effort. I was kind of binary in the early days as a founder by you win or lose. And it's like, no there's a there's a lot of winning that happens that you just don’t sow, yeah you don't sow that. And again sales cycles and you know all of those things.

Bill: Well and adoption is hard. And I think one of the things we're seeing not only in water but across our entire economy is as we see the baby boomers move on and all of that intellectual capital is, that is not being replaced. And, you know, young people don't want to spend 20 years in a career. They don't want to spend a long time learning something. We have to find solutions like this that can help us achieve outcomes. And and I'm sure there's a distribution on that too, because you have some of those folks who are really good performers and then some who are not. So hopefully, if we can raise the entire bar by a single solution or a group of solutions that make it equal across. So we're getting more samples. So we're doing it the right way every time, consistently. We can actually have those better outcomes.

Chris: But I won't name the company. But I know that they they've made part of their standard exit process when people retire is that and I forget the exact details, but they literally are putting them through like 8 to 10 hours of interviews. And guess what they're doing? They’re videoing it, they’re transcribing it. They're like trying to at least do some, like get it into it. And they've actually now built their agents to, you know, and they didn't crafted them for different. You know, I would say whatever those functions and jobs are, but like to even think about that and making it part of, again, a standard exit is pretty forward thinking for that company and makes a ton of sense.

Bill: Yeah when you have institutional memory that you're trying to capture and and make that part of, and now we can capture quickly, we can build it in with the AI. Those are those are quantum leaps that are going to be amazing. Well, we're at it an hour and 15 minutes and I feel like we started about two minutes ago because this this has been a fantastic conversation. We'd like to give you the opportunity to, just kind of promote yourself and where people can find you online and all of these details will be shared in the show notes, all the posts and that type of thing. Is it primarily LinkedIn and your website? How can we find you?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. So, and again, we didn't actually talk too much, but USALCO gone through this wonderful rebranding, but so it's USALCO. So just like it sounds, you saw usalco.com and I would say soon, January. So we'll have, some pretty cool rebranding, but yes, LinkedIn. Chris Miller, USALCO, I put all my contact info, which is why I think I get some so much spam on my mobile phone. Right. You know, the scrapers have, you know, whatever discovered. But yeah. And certainly founders, others reach out, more than welcome to, try and give back a little bit on the on the founder’s journey.

Bill: Well, Chris, congratulations. It has been an amazing story to talk about. I'm sure you're very pleased to have lived it and in some ways, look back on it. Not experience every step of it again. But congratulations on what you've done with Fontus Blue and now with USALCO.

Chris: Thank you.

Chris Atwell | Ep 64

Carlos Hidalgo | Ep 73

Chris Atwell | Ep 64

Carlos Hidalgo | Ep 73

Chris Miller, USALCO

How Strategic Marketing Increased Fontus Blue’s Valuation

Episode 74

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