are you crazy or Are you early?
Paul Dio sits down with SATIC's CEO, B.D. Erickson II to talk about the importance of legacy within a business and how building a legacy is not only an individualistic act but something that you do as a team to build corporate culture.
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Transcript
Paul Dio: "Welcome to the Legacy podcast! This podcast is a series of conversations centered around understanding the values, beliefs and intentions behind leaving a legacy. You will hear from successful business owners just like yourself who want to leave an impact for generations to come. Let's get started."
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Welcome to the Legacy podcast! I'm your host, Paul Dio, and I'm with a very special guest, B.D. Erickson who is the President and CEO of SATIC USA. Welcome B.D.!"
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B.D. Erickson II: "Hi Paul! Thanks for having me!"
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Paul: "So B.D. for the people who don't know you and for the audience members who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're up to."
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B.D.: "I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a business owner and founder of a company called SATIC. And what we do is that we are electrical engineers and manufacturers of a line that we hope will be disruptive in our space that cleans, filters and regulates power. We design the products here in house, we manufacture the products here with great love and care in Missoula Montana, for national import for sure and one of the things on our goal posts is, for this year, is expanding to more of a world market."
Paul: "Origin story? How did you figure out, like, that you wanted to do this? How was this overall discovered?"
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B.D.: "Ah yes the origin story. It's interesting how, you know, how we find ourselves on our life's path. Did you always want to do this as a kid? Is this actually what you went to university for? How many people actually work in a career path that they went to university for, right? It's exceedingly rare, right? I was living in Hawaii selling really high quality lighting, very expensive lighting to the Middle East, most of my customers were the Middle East because their electricity costs were so high that if this lighting was truly more efficient and could save money long term they would advance the money. My wife was in a car accident and passed away, so my son and I moved to Montana where our families were from, her parents and my parents, so that he and I could rest and recover a little bit and also so I could have some family support in raising this guy. Well interestingly we moved back in haste and bought a lovely house, but interestingly enough, Paul, right under the biggest power lines in our whole entire town, the biggest by some margin. And you know in your
mind you don't want a house under power lines, you don't want the cell tower on the roof of your house, you don't know why but it's just naturally that you don't want it because it's not good for you. ONe day he adn I were on the deck and I turned to him and I said 'did you notice these?' and neither he nor I noticed them, that was just the trance that we were in. Well he had great attendance in school, he was a straight-A student, well-like by kids and teachers, you know that year that his mom passed was hard on us emotionally, he;s still a great can-do, positive, wonderful little son and boy to have. Well about a year into it, his grades started to slip, his attendance at school started to slip, he's more sickly, more anxious, and so I began to Google it, you become your own doctor since it's your kid, and you want to help them and you want to see, you know, what is causing some of these symptoms and some of this suffering? And believe it or not I landed on EHS- Electrohypersensitivity, which is a condition that effects millions of people in the US where teh Wi-Fi, the power lines, the Internet, the dirty electricity etc., have a greater impact on their biology- making sleep restless, anxiety, anxiousness, etc., and those were really his symptoms. So I had this background in manufacturing and selling these high quality lighting, and one of the key attributes of this lighting was a very high conversion of the watt, which is the measure of the electricity that you buy, in the light because that's what you want, right? You don't want heat, you don't want fuzz, you want light..."
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Paul:" You want it to be as efficient as possible."
B.D.: "You want it to be as efficient as possible! And then ideally if it runs cooler it will last longer. Because that's the other way you save money, you save money on A- less watts that light the room and B- less replacement, which is also less landfill and all these other things. We do care as custodians of the planet, we can about that, right? So I knew that it was possible to interfere with electricity's movement to distort it, to have dirty electricity and so that was what really took me down the progression of power lines, okay, so where does it come from? What is it caused by? How is it measured? And now, good gravy, how do we fix it? And I saw a huge market gap here where there was so clearly a need not just to save money and not just to have your phone charge cool and fast, not just to lower your bill, but if someone in your family is suffering from EHS, I mean health conditions are debilitating and when it's somebody that you love, where do you stop to hopefully stop that or cure that? That was when I saw this gap in the market where nobody was building something specifically to address this and that is when I
saw this gap in the market where nobody was building something specifically to address this and that is when I went to to work. I had some bucks and raised some money from friends and family like you do, I gathered my team of engineers who I'm very proud of and we now today make the finest line of energy management and dirty electricity filters on the planet available anywhere at any price, and I say that wholeheartedly because I've searched the market myself. I searched the market as a consumer, and now I search the market as a competitor to see who's doing what in our field and there have been huge leaps made in energy management by industry
leaders, certainly not me, I'm just someone who uses all of these components from the giants, you know, Panasonic, Texas Instruments, Banf & Olifson, Yamaha, right? The guys who laid out in front and then we get trickle down, even some patents from NASA to tricle down and that we get to use in our products to deliver something that's really complimentary to what our customer really needs, to achieve the goal that our customer is seeking. So we've made huge leaps. Some of the competitors products that are out there, their product was old 10 years ago and not to bash them, there's other things you can buy, there are other ways to get here. We in our 14 years are about to launch Generation III. We believe in constant never-ending improvement that the customer will tell you 'it would be nice to have this', 'it would be nice to have this feature', 'have this benefit', or if we see that a new component set came out that could make it better, we don't rest. We are constantly trying to have the best thing that's out there for profitability, of course, but also to service the customer, and if you serve the customer, as you well know Paul, that's how to become successful. That's how you become a profitable business by delivering something for your customer that has value."
Paul: "I can imagine as your son is going through this, these symptoms, there could have been four or five or multiple directions that this could have gone, either prescription drugs or just different wats in methods, were you in some way, shape or form deterred in a different direction? Or how long did it take before you actually found out that this was your cause?"
B.D.: "That's a great question. So he'd been student of the month and got an award and the teachers had me down and one of the first indicators I got is that when you're close to the teachers and they said 'Is everything okay at home?' and I was like you know his mom past and we're suffering and all that and they said he's not as chipper and he's not as dun, he's not as gregarious as he's been. And he wasn't in trouble, he wasn't being naughty, he just wasn't being himself. And so the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of educators and doctors in pharmaceuticals, right? To get your child on prescription drugs, and I thought if we have to go there that's fine, I'm open to that, but what I would really rather do is instead of treat the symptom I would much rather fight the cause, right? And that's kind of Eastern philosophy medicine versus Western philosophy medicine that it's one thing to lower the symptom, like hey my nose is running so lets dry the nose rather than maybe finding the infectious cause of the cause of this disease. So yes that was certainly on the table, it just wasn't my first go-to, I just thought is it emotional because of mom's passing? Am I just not the best parent? I mean am I failing him? You ask these questions,
you do, and your brain goes a million miles an hour, is it something else in his environment? Is it food? Has he gotten toxicity from something else? Is there something in our water? Right? Because there's a lot of other ways too that you can get pollutants in, and I also believe in psycho-soma, I believe that a lot of consistent fear or a lot of consistent negative thinking or a lot of consistent dread can manifest in the physical, and that's what I believe oftentimes what disease is is your body communicating to you 'I'm not okay'. You know, this is me in the only way that I can speak to you and tell you that I'm suffering. And so that was also a part of my journey to discovery in finding is it mental? Is it emotional? Is it physical? Is it biological? Is it a pollutant? And that's what I really kind of rooted it down to, I believe that it's at least partially caused by toxicity to a pollutant in his environment."
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Paul: "Now given that you've seen the rapid growth in wireless technology, 5G, everything that's going on, how do you not get paralyzed by the amount of dirty electricity around you? Like how do you mentally coup with it or what does that process look like for you?"
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B.D.: "Okay so that's another great question, you're a great interviewer! So we know that you should probably not live your whole life eating fast food. But does a couple of fries kill you? No, come on now a couple of fries are delicious, that won't kill you. We know that you should not smoke two packs a day, but if you smoked a couple of cigarettes in high school I think you're probably going to be okay, right? So that goes for a lot of things. So this toxicity is one that first of all you can't see it, touch it, smell it, taste it. But like carbon monoxide or radon gas, you can't smell, touch, taste it either and they'll kill you dead! Maybe not immediately like backing into a propeller, but this cumulative effect of toxicity builds on you. So first of all it's hard to suspect. And second of all since it doesn't
just drop you dead right there, it's a little harder to detect that way too but it's a cumulative effect. Like if you were to smoke too many cigarettes for too long, if you were to eat unhealthy or fatty or innutritious foods for too long, after a while that begins to build up and then you have that disease effect later on, right? So what's happening to us is 30 years ago, you did not need my product. First of all, we all used the incandescent lightbulb that Thomas Edison invented 135 years ago that just turns electricity into heat and a byproduct of that heat was light, right? It's a byproduct of fire or combustion or heat, heat oftentimes is light. Well those actually cleaned their electricity. It would turn the abnormalities, the things out of parameter, into heat. No problem! Well everybody. according to the Department of Energy, you've got 20-30 lightbulbs in your life, is that number right? I don't know, I didn't fact-check it, I just Googled it, Paul, but that's what they say! So if everybody, let's just take a microcosm of America really fast, has 20 or 30 electricity cleaners, well what happened to that lightbulb? Well they took that lightbulb away and they brought out the CFL, the compact fluorescent lamp, the curly-q bulb, now that ran at about a power factor of 50 with a very high electromagnetic field, harmonics and distortion number, so rather than cleaning electricity, this
is really dirtying it. This is adding harmonics and distortion, things that we call dirty electricity that we don't want. So it went from 20 cleaners to 20 un-cleaners, dirtiers, of whatever the proper vernacular is to say that, things that added distortion, and that was really the beginning of dirty electricity being at a high enough level in your home, let's say that you don't live under the power lines, okay so you've avoided that one, there wasn't so much in your home that you're probably going to be susceptible to it, but first of all the change in lighting that was number one, and then number two all of these DC devices, your phone, your tablet, your iPad, your laptop, anything with a computer is DC. So now we're changing the alternating current into direct current, that creates dirty electricity and now all of these wireless signals, you pick it, 4G, 5G, Wi-Fi, DISH Network, DirectTV, your printer, my printer, you know, the FBI van, you pick it! It's just that all of these signals now, where do these signals land? They land on antennas! So when we were kids, your car had a 20-25 inch antenna on the hood, cars haven't had an antenna like that in 30 years! There's too many signals! So now the copper wiring in your home is also acting like a super antenna and this plethora of signals landing on and radiating on your lines. And so what's happening nowadays is that more people are presenting with EHS, more people are having a hard time sleeping, more people are having anxiety, is that in some way or in some case due to the proliferation of Wi-Fi and dirty electricity? How could it not be? I think that's a better question. So not everybody just walks into it and drops dead, right? But more and more people are being susceptible to it or being harmed by it because it is increasing at such a rapid rate. That's also why we've had to re-engineer our products a couple of times to face the continuing growth and challenges associated with all of these causes of this pollutant, but we really call it e-pollution, right? Because you can get stuff in your water and you don't want it, you can get stuff in your food and you don't want it, even if someone eats cattle they don't want antibiotics in that animal, they don't want steroids or something, they don't want the hormones, that's makes sense because that's something extra bring put in it. So that's something that's happening to us wirelessly etc. that's again hard to see or hard to measure but it's growing exponentially and more and more of us are going to be negatively affected by it, how can we not be?"
Paul: "It's fascinating. In a previous video or interview that I recall, you had equated it to lead paint and where lead paint was the mode of operation for, I mean I think even in this building we have lead paint and, you know, it's fine if you don't touch it, or asbestos. Another one I think about is the low-fat diet. So everybody was on board with the low-fat diet and then 20-30 years from now, we'll find that that probably wasn't the best thing for us. So it's really fascinating because I don't heat about it often, you know, rather than thinking that you're paranoid, you're probably just early at this point. So it's very interesting. Now, were you always like this, were you always a problem-solver? Or did your family grow up entrepreneurs? How did you get his type of mindset?"
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B.D.: "You know, is it taught? Is it born? I don't know, but my family did manufacture solar panels in the 70's and 80's and then my dad's job, my dad was not an engineer or a manufacturer, my dad was a sales guy, his job was to go to a new city and set up a dealership and get people out selling solar panels in that town. Now when Ronald Reagan became president, I love Ronald Reagan he's one of my favorite political figures,
I'm not a political person I just think he was a really neat president, he stopped the tax credits which made solar make sense at the time and so that set it back. You know, it's one thing to have solar panels on your house, you know, in the 80's that was a big deal but these were solar panels that were made at my family's factory. So my dad wasn't an engineer or on the manufacturing side, he was a sales guy so we would move to new cities, which was very hard on me I went to nine schools in 12 years, we'd move to a new city and then set up a solar panel distribution center, and so is that what made me an entrepreneur? I don't know, Paul, you also have to be brave because it's pretty easy to go and get your W-2 and you know what your wage is, so you know pretty close what your check amount is going to be, and so sands something pretty catastrophic and so you have your check and so you base your life around that. And when you decide to be an entrepreneur, there is this forward looking hope or vision of a potential good cash-out or good pay, but in the interim, there's no guarantee on that paycheck. And so you have got to be brave to enter this scope and so did I get that from my family? Did I inherit it genetically? I don't know! But that simply is a skillset or a way of thinking that I possess, I do not come from fear, I really do try to make my decisions from faith, it seems like most of the decisions that I've made from a place of fear were not the quality of decision that I've made when I came from a place of strength or faith."
Paul: "Yeah, and that duck tales right into the question that I ask all of our guests is looking back now, what would you consider your best business decision you've ever made?"
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B.D.: "You know, this was a lot of work! This was really hard! You know, we're very successful now, we're selling our product truly as fast as we can make it, we're building a new 15,000 square foot facility right now that's going to be flagship and beautiful, we've arrived! Looking back at it though it was really hard, I could've taken other career paths and gotten to wealth sooner. Some of the best decisions I've made were really in building my team and surrounding myself with people that I love as human beings and respect as engineers and people with the comrotatory that we've built because there were times, not when the pay was bad, oh no no no, then there was no pray, truly. We had months where there was just no revenue and so how do you get someone to stay? How do you get somebody bought in? And if they stay bought in do they begrudgingly and now have a crapola attitude that seeps over into everybody else in the operation? Or do they actually shore you up? We know where we're going, we've got this,
it's hard today but we'll see where we're going. Building a team of loyal, can-do visionary people was probably the single largest reason why we're here today and that's the people that I've surrounded myself with."
Paul: "What would you say in contrast to that? What would you say is your worst business decision?"
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B.D.: "I didn't know who my customer was. I went into business really not knowing how to service them. When you service a customer, you've got to deliver something that they understand what the features and benefits are, they understand how to use it, they understand the value proposition because you're exchanging money for a service or a really prominent solutions and I didn't communicate that well. So the first few years of business were very hard because I thought my customer was a little bit different then it turned out they are. So what you really have to do in business is find out what your demographic is, why are they buying it, not why you think they should buy it, not why you hallucinate why they buy it, ask your customer what was the compelling reason why they bought it. Then you have to be able to articulate that and tell other people like them that it's going to do that for them and then finally, Paul, where do they get their news? Are they old or do they get it on Facebook? Or are they young and use Pinterest or Instagram? FourSquare? MeWe? TikTok? Snapchat?
You name it! And I'm certainly not an expert on those things, and so not really knowing my customer and taking the time to find who my customer is, what problem I'm solving for them, how to communicate that and where they're going to receive that information was absolutely life-changing once we figured it out, and that was a leap then not from good to great, from dismal from going out of business to great beyond our ability to manufacture in this facility."
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Paul: "In going through that process of understanding your customer, what was the biggest surprise? Like how they made decisions, where they found you, was there any major surprises that stick out?"
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B.D.: "Yeah, and I got a lot of pushback! So people thought that my product, our product, would be sold to save people money. They really thought that that would be the driving force. It's not! It's health! It's health! People buy or products for health! Yes your phone will charge cooler and faster, we guarantee it, your DVR, the back of your fridge, back of your freezer are all going to be cooler, that less heat is going to equate into less bill, less HVAC and less wear-and-tear on the equipment, that's nice and they will accept those other benefits, but if it's harming your health, what will people spend on gym memberships? What will they spend on vitamins? What will they spend on nutritious fuel and the farmers market and the good grocery stores are usually almost twice as expensive! If you don't have your health you don't have anything. So what's happening as more and more people are either being affected by EHS or becoming aware of e-pollution, our sales only go on way, they only compliment this new awakening, and there is really is a great awakening happening in a lot of sectors, and I won't conspiracy theory or rabbit trail you, there are a lot of awakenings to our neighbors, to our friends, to our family, to America, to the world on a grater scale and this dirty electricity and the onslaught of 5G and e-pollution is a part of that awakening, and we are just so positioned that we are out in front able to deliver something that truly relieves it, blocks, it, filters it, relieves it, and something that we get to make right here with pride and create good jobs and feel good about something, I always told myself that I would never sell, promote or make a product that did harm. Not to pick on alcohol, not to pick on cigarettes, not to pick on junk food, we all have our path that just wouldn't be my path. My path would always be something that served us as a corporation, our customers as human beings and the greater good. And the greater good can be however you look at it as the planet, the economy, the ecology, that spiritual part of us, it's got to make sense for us, the customer and the greater good. So when you make products that align with that then I think that helps you everyday belief in what you're doing and what you're doing in your love for fellow man."
Paul: "Yeah that's inspiring because oftentimes we have all of these products that are designed to be addictive, they are designed to be harmful and they don't have the best of human intent and this seems as very pure, honest and ethical. I can imagine the fulfillment that your team gets seeing that, seeing that occur and seeing that grow, so very inspiring, B.D. Thank you. Now when you think of legacy, what do you think of and how do you want to be remembered? What do you want your legacy to be?"
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B.D.: "You know I got asked this question recently by a female pal of mine, you know, how do you want to be seen? And she said as the engineering EMF, you know, problem-solving super genius, and I was like no, I want to be remembered for being nice! I want to be remembered for being a gentle spirit, for being a kind person that loves people. You know, I think our legacy is adding more than you took, adding value and adding love and I think a big meaning of life truly is to be happy and not in the selfish way because what's one of the best ways to feel happy, doing for other people, helping for other people there's more happiness in giving and receiving, right? If it's a snowy day and
you're out there shoveling your driveway and maybe the house to your right is a senior citizen and she's not as capable or able-bodied as you are and so you go over and you shovel hers too, sure it's sweaty in that moment but it feels so good! That is just such a fabulous feeling when you come in that you did something beyond you, you did something as small as that, you aren't macro-looking down and worried about you, rather you're worried about how your journey can impact other people, I love people, if I can be remembered for anything, it would be that I'm a loving, gentle, generous spirit."
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Paul: "That's phenomenal! And I think out of the many interviews, I think this is the first where it was inspired because of a family member being sick and solving that particular problem, I mean, I can only imagine how that feels to be able to see it in physical form and see it grow and thrive and to be ahead of things. And B.D., this is well worth the wait for those of you in the background, we've been trying to get this interview over the last three months but I'm glad we were able to start this in the new year right! So any last word to our audience? And words of advice of any things that you want our audience to know?"
B.D.: "Don't just think it in your mind, get your thoughts and get your dreams on your vision board! Start writing your goals on your mirror, start writing your goals in places you can see them, start to journal them. One of the things that we started to create and journal in the quantum field, I believe in the law of attraction, I believe that it's real beyond contestation, it is real! There are things happening that we cannot see, and some of the things that we've put on our vision board when someone accuses you of wearing a foil hat, they do a couple things accidentally, they suggest that you're not mentally there, or suggesting perhaps that you're a snake oil salesman dealing or trading in fear, and that is so contrary to everybody that's in this building working so hard that we really thought, you know, what would we like to happen? Number one- we would like EHS and dirty electricity and e-pollution to come out of pseudo-science and really makes its way into mainstream science. And so we begin to visualize that scene in our minds of how that would look, how that would feel and goal-plan it. And we also didn't want to just sell the small solar companies who are mom-and-pop, great people, that didn't want to add dirty electricity, but we wanted some of the biggest solar companies in
America to recognize that when you put solar on somebody's house, you're going to create more dirty electricity but it's really easy to defeat, it's simple, inexpensive to actually leave their house cleaner than before, and what we did as a company is that we visualized how it would look, how it would feel, how it would drag that and manifest that into the physical realm from the quantum field. And doing those things have consistently led me to that destination. So love yourself enough to not just think it, speak it into existence, write it down, game plan in and drag it kicking and screaming from the quantum field into your reality.
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Paul: "Thank you, B.D. We will definitely have a follow-up conversation! Thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure!
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B.D.: "My pleasure too. Thank you, Paul."
