EP6: Successful Entrepreneurship with Studio 503’s CEO Michael Walters

Seth Waters (Host): Well, welcome to the Purposeful Prosperity podcast. My name is Seth Waters and I am here with Jack Smith, andyou know Jack Smith. Jack is a founder. He is an entrepreneur, investor, and a world-changer. And Jack, excited to be with you today.

Jack Smith (Host): I'm excited to be here too, Seth. Thanks so much.

Seth Waters (Host): Today we have a great interview with Michael Walters. Excited to have him on the program.

Jack Smith (Host): The hot tub shaman himself. Absolutely. I'm really excited for you guys to get to know who Michael is. He is an entrepreneur. He is the CEO of Studio 503, which is really just an incubator for entrepreneurs.

He is the guy who knows how to take an idea from concept to getting it into the shelves of Walmart, Target, and all of the major chains. And I'm really excited for you guys to get to know him. He's got a big heart and a brilliant mind, and can't wait to sit down with him.

Seth Waters (Host): Wonderful. Well, let's dive right in. Here's our interview with Michael Walters.

Jack Smith (Host): Welcome to purposeful prosperity. It's my pleasure to be here today with my friend, the hot tub shaman himself, Michael Walters – CEO of Studio 503, Ink Baja Master, and lifelong friend of mine. How are you, Michael? Come on in.

Michael Walters (Guest): Good, yeah. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here with this. It's good.

Jack Smith (Host): I'm excited as well. We're going to have to wake you up a little bit, my friend.

Michael Walters (Guest): Oh, it'll happen.

Jack Smith (Host): Get you excited. Well, this is Purposeful Prosperity. Tell me a little bit about your purpose.

What is Studio 503? And maybe some of the projects that you're working on that really empower, embody purpose for you.

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah. So Studio 503 is really born when I was young – really young. So I've always had a hard time with the concept of “or” and “no”, or having to choose between things, right? Just as a fundamental point of being where life's too big to be put in tiny boxes.

So, it started when I was really young. I think I've told you this story before, but I had to choose, or normally I have to pick a candy bar for doing chores. I was in kindergarten, I believe, and I had two favorites: Skittles and Starburst. And I wound up figuring out that there were two smaller ones. And I brought those to my mother and I said, “Can I have these two instead?”

And she was upset because she thought I was being greedy. She thought I was being a bit greedy, yeah. A little ungrateful or egregious, right? Like, “Hey, I want two,” and I said, “No, look it, they're actually less expensive for the two of them. I would just like to have one of each instead of having to only choose one.”

So she was kind of frozen for a minute, and kind of looked back at me and she said, “I don't see why not.” And it kind of started there. Ever since that, I've kind of set out from, you know, all the way through high school and college and everything. It was more, “How much can I do” and figure out how to do it versus, “What are all the reasons conventionally that we can’t?”

Jack Smith (Host): So, that Coke commercial was for you.

Michael Walters (Guest): Exactly. So that's also why I started Studio 503, really, I was in college, and I said, “You know, one day, I'm going to create the company, and that if I can do it, if I'm able to do it, I want to be able to build a business that can do whatever it is that I want to do or can do.” As long as you can figure out how to do it, and you fit within the big lines, right? You pay your bills, you pay your people, you pay your taxes, you don't break any laws. As long as you can do that, there's nothing that says you can't do this and that.

Jack Smith (Host): I agree.

Michael Walters (Guest): So, I started Studio 503 and it started in like sports marketing and then it moved into large account retail. And then it turned into full distribution and operational excellence, all the way through mass retail, into wholesale. It just kind of evolved and started importing product, became a beachhead for a Swedish company called White Lines. And we launched that here in North America and kind of blew that up in a big way. And it just kind of evolved. And the more relationships I built, and people I met, the more we realized, wow, there's crossover and it's kind of just what it's been. So I put my head down and 20-some years later, I picked it up and here we are, working on all kinds of different stuff.

But that's what Studio 503 is. And that is one of my core passions, really, is facilitating that not just in my own life, but in other people's. Like, helping people, changing paradigms, and reframing the way you look at conventional thinking to unlock and change that shift, that tiny shift in your paradigm, can unlock an entire different perception of your day, your life, your world. And just by enabling that and inspiring that, you can really also help people get unstuck when they’re, not just professionally, of course, “Hey, there's ways you can do this and this, or you don't have to sacrifice for that because of that.” But more than that even is the personal side of it. You know, as it even relates into their mental health, and the way you live your life, the way you look at how you face obstacles.

So I'm also very passionate about mental health, you know, being somebody who struggles with major depression and diagnosed a number of years ago and didn't understand why I was so rageful, and why I was so short-wit and kind of unbearable. I was really kind of a jerk.

Jack Smith (Host): I wasn't going to say anything.

Michael Walters (Guest): And I finally got to this point where I'm like, “Man, why is it that I'm really close to people, but I also really wind up alienating people really fast?”

Jack Smith (Host): Thank you for that.

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah. And why do I have so many holes in the wall?

Jack Smith (Host): No, I too, had struggled with that myself, so I appreciate that. And, you know, a counselor was absolutely how I am the human I sit before you today, so I appreciate that. And I think part of these conversations are to normalize the things that help us be successful int he world. And maybe they aren't so sexy, but they're necessary – the mental health and the taking care of yourself.

So I really appreciate that. That's one of the things I always appreciate about you, is you're a giver and you're an enabler. If I were to say, from an observer's perspective, your purpose, you're a servant. You want to enable and empower change to happen in the world. And I appreciate that about you.

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah, thanks.

Jack Smith (Host): So, prosperity. This is purposeful prosperity. As we talked about your purpose, enabling and making change in the world, we were just talking a little bit beforehand about a project that you are working on that will absolutely change the world. You want to tell us a little bit about that?

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah, I've been working on this. I was fortunate enough, as not always things were, got introduced to people who knew people, and they said, you guys have to meet. We could blend really well with what they're doing, and then what our kind of focus is. And it's been four or five years that I've been doing this with this group. But, basically, if you imagine so understand this:

All right, so there's 70% of dogs, 80% of cats, have some form of periodontal disease by the age of 3.

Jack Smith (Host): Wow.

Michael Walters (Guest): Periodontal disease is the leading cause of death, ultimately. It's a systemic piece that leads to all kinds of major issues in that-

Jack Smith (Host): -Period of degenerative disease.

Michael Walters (Guest): Right. Health starts in the mouth, so does disease. So it's the leading cause, ultimately, of death of pets in the world. It also can take up to five years off a pet's life. Once they have periodontal disease and it becomes significant, they also live their entire life in a lot of pain. So pets, are really good animals, are really good at masking pain, way better than we are.

So we know how it is. If you have a severe cavity or you need a root canal or something, it's unpleasant.

Jack Smith (Host): Right.

Michael Walters (Guest): And we show that. Pets, if you imagine if they have something similar, they go through their entire life potentially dealing with that without it really necessarily being repaired like we get our teeth. You go through cleanings, and you scrape off the stuff that you don't brush because, by the way, 95% – the golden standard for pets. And plaque and tartar and all that, that creates this plaque and tartar is really where it starts; you're supposed to brush your pet's teeth – 95% of veterinarians don't brush their dog's teeth or cat's teeth.

Jack Smith (Host): I have three dogs and a cat myself. I can't say I've ever brushed their teeth. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Michael Walters (Guest): So it's a real thing, even when the veterinarians don't do it. So it can't be a golden standard if nobody does it. It's not a solution if no one actually does it. There's a bunch of these chemicals that are out that you add to your pets' water and it helps their breath and it kind of helps fight some of the things that create plaque and tartar.

Jack Smith (Host): Kind of a Listerine kind of thing.

Michael Walters (Guest): Exactly. So you don't drink Listerine. You might swish it, but you don't drink it. I don't drink Listerine, but our pets kind of drink Listerine-ish type stuff. It's all still chemicals and it's all still like, the better of the evils, right? The lesser of the evils.

Jack Smith (Host): Just one other complication.

Michael Walters (Guest): Right. So, what I came across and what we built was, imagine this now:

Imagine if there was a type of plant that was grown in very small places in the world that had unique properties like tea. That, if all you did was harvest it, dry it, and compress it, and then put that into the water, if it would activate the water to make it so that plaque and tartar can't grow in your pets’ mouths.

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Jack Smith (Host): Sign me up.

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Michael Walters (Guest): No chemicals. It's all organic, all-natural, sustainable, renewable.

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Jack Smith (Host): That's awesome.

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Michael Walters (Guest): Right.

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Jack Smith (Host): So where are you at in that process?

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Michael Walters (Guest): So, get this, though. Let me take you even further back. This has been around forever, by the way. So the Vikings used to carry this, this dried, it's a type of moss, actually, but they would carry this on their longships because if you pack the wounds with it, it would make it so the bacteria wouldn’t grow.

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Jack Smith (Host): Septic kind of thing.

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Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah, it was a deterrent for bacteria to grow in the wounds.

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Jack Smith (Host): Like they used on the worms in Gladiator.

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Michael Walters (Guest): So it goes all the way back. Like, nature created this solution, but we haven't really figured out how to activate it.

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Jack Smith (Host): Nature has all the answers, we just aren't asking the right questions.

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Michael Walters (Guest): Agreed. So with that, then, even in the World Wars, our medics carry this on the battlefront lines and they packed wounds with it. So this has been around for a long time and we've known what the properties of this particular strain of moss does. And so the company I partnered with, they actually have all these patents and have built this out on all the applications of this moss when it gets put in or used in water, to turn the water into the delivery mechanism. But they're doing this on commercial pool, and spa, and industrial.

So if you think about water towers, water treatment facilities, all that kind of stuff, but it's not necessarily for consumption, it's for treating water and making it safer, cleaner, more pure, 100% filtering it naturally. But it's more so as it either as an industrial use to reduce the amount of scale that builds in piping and things like that, or on your body on the external side, like in a swimming pool.

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Jack Smith (Host): It’s available today.

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Michael Walters (Guest): It's available today. It's been around for decades. There's a lot of pools and there's a lot of really big theme parks that are actually using this.

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Jack Smith (Host): Oh, that's awesome.

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Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah. And it reduces the need - so, for instance, there's a major theme park, actually here in Texas. It's a major theme park that a number of years ago, had a hard time finding neutrality with the chlorine that they needed in order to make the pool, the whole park, safe. So they got a hold of these guys and they put the moss product in the system, which was actually very easy to do. They didn't have to retrofit all of the piping or any of that. There's a way to apply it pretty easily into the system as a pass-through, almost like charcoal. But instead of charcoal, you just-

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Jack Smith (Host): -Put it into the piping.

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Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah. Kind of run it through and it filters it through. What they were able to do, they not only were able to make it neutral and safe, but they were able to do so and eliminated the chlorine need by 75%.

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Jack Smith (Host): Wow, that's a cost savings and a health savings.

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Michael Walters (Guest): Huge health savings. Mended chlorine is really not right. It's not good for you. The byproduct of it, you know, chlorine eats everything. But what it also gives off then is actually toxic as well. So it's also like the lesser of the evils, right. So we have this product that we know, it treats water, it filters water and it makes it so that all the bacterial stuff can't colonize and grow. Pretty amazing. So I partnered with them to see what they did on the consumer product.

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Jack Smith (Host): Or the humorous artist for you.

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Michael Walters (Guest): 100%, right. CCG and bringing product to the market for mass retail or branded. So they weren't doing anything. So we partnered up and fused, kind of what we're doing together. So my company is incubating a new one, right?

So it's in 503, but then we incubate these businesses, and then we birth them out and they take their own shape and their own ownership and raise capital. Like, they birth and become their own thing, like a child.

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Jack Smith (Host): I love it.

Michael Walters (Guest): And then we'll do it again or whatever. But this one, I've been spending the oven for like five years as we're getting ready, and we've gotten it all the way to the point where now we're just finalizing the studies that we need to do. There's a feline study and a canine study with the FDA.

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Jack Smith (Host): Nice.

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Michael Walters (Guest): We're looking right now on working with actually an FDA laboratory that's built inside one of the major universities. So that we can help fast-track this through the normal process. It's not just about getting out of market to make a good product and profit and whatever. This is actually something that changes the quality of life for families and their pets, which most people, most families who have pets, they're part of the family. It's like a child, if not, maybe more so.

So for us, if we can do this and bring this to market, we know it works. It's been around for a long time, there's all the studies of how it works. Now we just have to work with the government to get it through regulatory, just to get it recognized as safe. And then at that point, it launches. So it's pretty amazing and it's affordable. So the other whole part to this whole thing is it's also not this whole purpose of this is to solve a problem or truly solve it at the beginning, at the root, before it takes hold in a natural way, utilizing nature for what it's already provided for us. And it's scalable and systemic.

So our capacity isn't limited to, well, we can only make 1000 of these doses or whatever. This is something that can scale very quickly. And the more we harvest it actually the healthier it is for the plants themselves. It's like pruning. So there's nothing about this that isn't fully sustainable.

There isn't a drawback to it.

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Jack Smith (Host): Doing good and making money. That's what purposeful prosperity is all about. I love it. We support you. How can our listeners support you?

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Michael Walters (Guest): Oh, man. Well, you could write all of your local government officials and say, “Hey, we really want you to endorse getting this fast-tracked through the FDA so that you can help, you know, give Fido five more years.”

But I don't know. I mean, once it's launched, obviously just becoming aware of it, but we expect that to happen pretty quickly.

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Jack Smith (Host): Where will we be able to find it?

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Michael Walters (Guest): So the plan right now is we'll launch it as a D to C piece. It'll be subscription based. It's very simple.

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Jack Smith (Host): The brand is ready to announce?

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Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah, right. So the brand for this is called Petiva.

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Jack Smith (Host): Petiva? Does this already have a website or no?

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Michael Walters (Guest): No. The idea for this has to bend a little bit under the radar on purpose because of the transformation. The disruption it's going to cause is going to be equally positively epic and equally competitively, destructive to a lot of really big brands out there that quite honestly, are going to not want me to release this product.

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Jack Smith (Host): Fair enough. I appreciate that. Well, that's exciting. Talk about change in the world. So we've talked a little bit about purpose, we've talked a little bit about passion. Studio 503 is really about prosperity. You're enabling prosperity for others. Can you tell us how maybe our listeners might be able to reach out and what services kind of you provide to other entrepreneurs? Like this product that you were talking about.

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Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah, studio503.com is like the website. My phone number, my email is all out there. LinkedIn is a really good way to find me and connect with me as well. I think I almost check LinkedIn more often than I check my email these days. So on LinkedIn, it's just Mike Walters. My handle for LinkedIn is Idea Pilot.

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Jack Smith (Host): What would be a good looking project for Studio 503? If I'm listening today, and I've got a project that I kind of need some incubation or maybe a little bit of push, especially in CPG or manufacturing, what does that look like for you?

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Michael Walters (Guest): It really ranges anywhere in the spectrum from concept, from the ideation phase, like, “Hey, I've got this great idea, this great product, but I need help figuring out the strategy about how I'd get it ready for CPG that definitely fits what we could do.” And that's everything from just understanding the different retailers, the requirements for those retailers. I'm not even talking supply chain. That also is what we do.

But even from the packaging, the brand, the GS1, parts of the G10s barcodes, the regulatory stuff, private label, if you're depending on your retailer. So we've done that over and over for many of our own brands with numerous different retailers, and they're all different. So, understanding and knowing the space they're trying to be in or the retailers that are interested, we could kind of help shape that and figure that out.

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Jack Smith (Host): So if I had a product I'm trying to get into retail or get into consumers' hands, it might be a great time to call you.

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Michael Walters (Guest): Could be, yeah, I mean, for sure.

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Jack Smith (Host): We can at least call it an exploration.

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah. We can help at least give some feedback or some guidance on where they can go and how to help them be successful at that. The second part is we also incubate and do fulfillment for other brands. So what we realized over the years is we're a small mid-sized business, right? But we're in the space with really big players.

Jack Smith (Host): The Inc 5000. You're playing with the big kids while we're still growing.

Michael Walters (Guest): True. That's right. So what we learned over the years, though, so being a vendor to a Walmart or a Target or Costco or whomever, there's a lot of really good products, really good brands, really good D to C brands especially that have launched. But here's the challenge that's coming, and this is what I've been speaking a lot about or talking a lot about is, it's going to become increasingly more difficult for small mid-sized businesses to do business with big business, especially big box, big retail. So the demands, so think about like the high jump. If you're going to be a Walmart vendor, they don't care if you're Nike or Coca-Cola or Studio 503. There's a bar you have to jump. And if you can't cover the bar, you don't play the game. You can't clear the bar in the high jump, you shouldn't be a vendor there. That's just kind of the way that goes. There’s no “Let's lower the bar because you only have 50 employees” kind of thing at a Walmart or at a Target. That doesn't exist, you have to execute.

So imagine the infrastructure. If you created a D to C brand and you did very well and you hired a traditional third party, there's a number of them out there that can ship to Jack Smith or Michael Walters to our home. There's a lot that can do that. If now all of a sudden you've built that and it's grown especially through COVID like D to C brands, really grew. Now, imagine now you've actually built a brand where the demand is coming from a large retailer to say, “We really like this, we'd like to look at bringing you into our stores,” the main concern they're going to have every time is, but are you capable? Do you understand you have the infrastructure?

Jack Smith (Host): Can you fulfill it?

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah. Can you do business with it?

Jack Smith (Host): If I write you a million product purchase order, can you actually get it when I need it, where I need it?

Michael Walters (Guest): Right. And a lot of that goes into stores, and it turns into weekly order and turnkey. So it's like usually don't even get like, “I'm going to give you a million-piece order, can you deliver the one?” It's we're going to onboard this into all stores, and now you have to manage turn rates, units per week, per store, per week. And can you actually receive purchase orders? Respond with routing within 24 hours. Have the orders pre-built in a system that goes with all of their supply chain guidelines, even down to the pallets you use and the gauge shrink wrap you can have.

Jack Smith (Host): It’s what you need in a business, right? You need to make yourself as easy as possible to do business with. And that's what the Walmarts and the Amazons of the world, they kind of force that. If you can't play and participate, you can't play at all. And that's, I think, where you can really help. Especially, I think, the entrepreneur's dilemma, right, as an inventor. Typically, they're good. You look at, like, Jamie over at Ring, right? He was a scientist.

He was an inventor in the back office, and he wasn't the best CEO. He learned that himself, and now he just goes and invents. And I think that those kind of guys would need somebody like yourself to say, “Hey, I've got a bunch of great ideas. I don't know how to get them in the hands of people who could actually put them to work.” I appreciate that.

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah, that's one way. The other way is we already have that, and we have the opportunity or we're already at large retail, but we're struggling.

Jack Smith (Host): Right. Fulfillment, manufacturing, all that supply chain you were just talking about, the automation.

MichaelWalters (Guest): Yeah. So now it's, oh, man, awesome.Yay, we got into Walmart. Oh, no-

Jack Smith (Host): -Oh no we got into Walmart.

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah. Now we're doing business with them, and six months later, it's like, we might go out of business because the fines, chargebacks, and requirements could bury you. And if you get all the products shipped back, now, you have this massive surge on inventory.

Jack Smith (Host): You don't have a warehouse.

Michael Walters (Guest): Exactly. So any of those phases we can come in and kind of stitch in. But it really is about trying to help people be successful as, like, small, mid-sized businesses and brands can win at large retail.

JackSmith (Host): I love it.

Michael Walters (Guest): And that's kind of where we help.

JackSmith (Host): That's a key right there. Anything elsethat you wanted to share with our listeners today about purposeful prosperity,or passion that you wanted to talk about we didn't get a chance to let youshare?

Michael Walters (Guest): I think the only thing that we covered in the beginning. But a lot of this stuff, I'm just living out my own philosophy, right? So I just created Studio 503 and these other businesses as my way of just being able to live, like, as chips as I eat my own dog food.

Jack Smith (Host): Love it.

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Michael Walters (Guest): But the real driving force behind that, besides my own wanting to live by my own kind of set of rules, that they're within the rules, but I don't do well working, you know, underneath like other people’s-

Jack Smith (Host): Yeah, we heard that.

Michael Walters (Guest): But there's a whole component. There's a lot of stuff that you see me pop up from time to time that has really nothing to do, like, there's an application in business, but it really has more to do with the way you can live, and improving your quality of life, and the way you look at or approach your life. Some of that stuff has led to pretty good partnerships with the folks at Inc Magazine. So, making the Inc 5000 is a big deal. Like, for any company, it’s a big deal. Then if you do really well, you kind of show up on the radar a little bit more. They want to learn a bit more about your business and what made you there.

Michael Walters (Guest): The ironic thing about Studio 503 is technically it's a business of one person. It's like a solopreneurship still. So I'm the only employee in the company. But it's like, how are you a Walmart vendor and doing all this fulfillment as a one-person company? So I don't do any of it alone. Of course not. But it's just the different way you think about how you construct your business. So it's about changing this paradigm that says, I don't have to be the best at logistics and supply chain and fulfillment and brand management and design and all the things that you would normally traditionally think if we're going to have this business, we have to build all this infrastructure. You don't need all that infrastructure. You need to have really good partners, really good partnerships, and people that are better than you are at all those things.

Michael Walters (Guest): My role is just to be like, I akin to be like the alchemist, right? My job is to figure out, or the chef, “What's the recipe to get the best dish here that we need, to do to be successful?” So you just have a vision, you have an idea or an opportunity, how do you assemble the right pieces, right? And that doesn't mean you have to go hire them all. That doesn't mean you have to go raise tons of capital to afford a massive infrastructure by which, the ability to learn how to execute takes time and the failure time might be too big to overcome anyway. So I built this whole business on curating real partnerships. And that's more so than and this is another piece. Networking is dead, right?

Michael Walters (Guest): Networking, to me it's dead. It's been dead forever. Everybody hates networking. And this is the reason why: networking, if you go to an event, which I spent all day yesterday networking with these new people here in the area, but I wasn't actually networking. Networking would have gotten me more contacts. Contacts are static. I don't care if I have another 500 connections on LinkedIn. I don't care. It does me nothing if I don't understand who they are, what they do, what they're all about. And not just in the work sense, but character-wise, I call it like flavor too.

So now if we akin this, think about a recipe, right? So I equate it to, instead of networking, I build my pantry. So I speak about the concept of the pantry and building it out as a different way to think. We talked about this, that one. So that whole piece of being highly deliberate and intentional about when you have an opportunity to meet somebody, to actually really get to something of more substance to understand.

Michael Walters (Guest): So if you were building a recipe, the flavors have to blend. So if I want to really build the right successful team of people or companies to execute on an opportunity or a new business idea. If you threw super spicy stuff in with things that don't react well with super spicy stuff, it's not going to be a good dish. So just because they're good at logistics, and they're good at logistics, and they're good at logistics, you got to actually build the right team culturally and from an energy level that resonates together at the very beginning that has even similar beliefs about business or about leadership. And as you said, I'm very big in servant leadership. So I'm not going to go build a new business with a team that others don't subscribe to the concept of servant leadership, we're going to have an issue even though they don't work for me, we're partnered in these things. If I don't curate the right harmony amongst the team, it's not going to work out well.

Michael Walters (Guest): We're going to have discord later and anyone who's been in business long enough has dealt, probably if you haven't yet, at some point you're going to have a legal deal you're going to be dealing with.

Jack Smith (Host): It's inevitable.

Michael Walters (Guest): The longer you're in it, the greater the chance it happens.

Jack Smith (Host): It happens. You want how you recover from mistakes, right? It's not about preventing them from happening.

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah. But if you can be deliberate on the beginning to try and set yourself up to have less chance of that happening with your own group initially or in the project itself, right?

Michael Walters (Guest): I do things that way. So you'll see me pop up from time to time with these different, like, building the pantry, what's that all about? Or the concept of momentum, or, like, the fallacy of the work-life balance. And a lot of these different things, which a lot of people, quite honestly, they usually get, half the people are like, “Wow, this is awesome, ”and the other half the people are like, “I hate this guy.”

 Michael Walters (Guest): And I also find that rewarding for me, because if you're not pushing a dialogue that actually creates a little bit of uncomfort in people, you're not actually helping facilitate growth. Those are the things that I do all this as kind of a way to pay my bills and create opportunities for myself and other people. But what really kind of drives me is that underlying stuff, this just kind of happens to be the way we all have todo something in order to pay our bills and move things forward. I just choose to do it my own.

Jack Smith (Host): I mean, that's what entrepreneur is all about, right? It’s seeing a change you want to create in the world and having the courage to act on it. I think that's the difference between an entrepreneur and a wantrepreneur. I love it. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you coming on. I had a question I was going to ask, but you kind of already covered it. Is there anything else our people can do to support the causes? We're going to look out for it. We'll tweet out and share about the pet product when it comes out and is available. What was the name of the company again?

Michael Walters (Guest): Petiva.

Jack Smith (Host): Petiva. Thank you very much. I appreciate you coming on, my friend. Yeah, always a pleasure to see you.

Michael Walters (Guest): Yeah, likewise. Thank you.

Seth Waters (Host): Well, what an outstanding interview. Jack, that was amazing.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely. No, Michael's a fantastic guy.

Seth Waters (Host): Yeah. A couple of the great takeaways that I heard from Michael as he was talking, one was believing that we can make anything possible in business.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely.

Seth Waters (Host): And another was him talking about the entrepreneur's dilemma, how to scale from inventor to launch, and the process and the journey involved.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely. And I think that's something that Michael does exceptionally well is understanding how all of the ingredients of entrepreneurship work, how it all works together. I know he's an alchemist and likes to kind of put together the right ingredients that help a company or an entrepreneurial adventure be successful, and I think he does that better than most. And that's really what Studio 503 does. It was really exciting to see what he's able to do and some of the cool projects that he is creating and bringing into the world.

Seth Waters (Host): Yeah, that's great.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely. Thank you, everybody. We appreciate your time here on Purposeful Prosperity. Tune in next week where we'll bring you another amazing entrepreneur.

Keep doing good in the world.

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