Kurt Avery
18 min read ⭑
“If your God is big, you’ll do incredible stuff. If you’re God’s small, you’ll still do stuff, but you won’t do nearly as much as he gives you the ability to do. God is big — don’t make him small.”
For years, Kurt Avery has led the way in innovation across water filtration, insect repellent and other life-changing products. By God’s grace, his company, Sawyer Products, has helped eradicate waterborne diseases and improve the quality of life for millions around the globe, including entire countries. In his new book, “Sawyer Think,” he demonstrates how small companies can disrupt markets and impact the world for God’s glory using 25 key business principles.
Today, Kurt is opening up about his deep-rooted passion for saving lives through clean water, why he never misses a companywide lunch at the factory and how studying history and Creation has shaped him into a better thinker — and a stronger Christian.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So how does a “go-to” meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
It’s a very unusual answer. I’m a homebody, so I eat most of my meals at home. I very seldom go out. I’m just not that big on going out, but twice a week, we serve all the workers lunch at the Sawyer Products factory, where we make state-of-the-art water filtration products for hikers and campers, as well as for disasters around the world. We’re changing people’s lives by giving them clean water. It’s a pretty cool program, one that the military uses. We also make high-end insect repellent called Picaridin that serves as a replacement for DEET. It’s much safer and very effective. We have clothing treatments, too, where you can spray your clothes down, and the bugs will leave you alone. It’s a big military item, but we also serve hunters and hikers and teach them how to use it.
So at the factory, we serve semiweekly lunches where we like to sit down with everybody in the company as a family. I make everybody mix it up — Office and Factory have to sit at the same tables once in a while. It’s a family meal. It really binds us together. We move people around within the factory so everybody knows everybody, and it’s just a big bonding experience. I try to never miss the Tuesday and Thursday factory lunches. It’s a really cool time to spend with them. Factory meals are sacred.
All told, it’s about 50 people or so, and we feed them good food. I mean, this is not bread and water; this is Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Chipotle Mexican Grill. We try to use some local restaurants. We have a Greek buffet and an Italian buffet. We like to support the local restaurants, not just the big chains. These are not wimpy little meals — it’s good food, and it’s fun.
When it comes to going out to eat, my family has a favorite restaurant. My wife flies up to see the grandkids frequently, and she always lands just about at 6 o’clock, and we go to Logan’s Roadhouse. Because I don’t really give a rip about eating out, I order the same meal she does. She usually gets a nice rib-eye. I’m not a beef eater, but I order the same meal so she can have it again at home. I’m happy with the salads and the bread (unfortunately, the bread). I would prefer to be at home — give me a PB&J or a homemade meal from my wife. She cooks well.
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QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?
I played a lot of sports in my day, so my body’s pretty beat up. I don’t get to do much of that anymore. Instead, for an hour or an hour and a half every day, I do yard work. We have a good-sized property, but I’ve run out of room, so I’m actually going down past the neighbors and the city and everything else. I do not have a green thumb, but I do have the ability to chop things down and make them look nice.
I enjoy just being out in the woods, cleaning stuff up, making it look nice and looking at all the intricacies. Looking at a piece of wood or how the grass grows and photosynthesis, and then at night, looking at the stars. It’s mind-boggling stuff. God is with you all day long.
I love being out in nature because it’s God’s handiwork. Whether you’re looking at an ant or a giant oak tree, it’s so fascinating. Science is God, if you really break it down. I just love being out there, because that’s God, and it’s so meaningful.
I’m into Creation, and we help support a program called The Science Dilemma, where we walk you through the evidence of biblical Creation. You can’t deny it. I’m a mathematician, and statistically speaking, you can’t deny Creation. There’s no other way to explain it. The math runs out on every other theory.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power head-on?
I’m an introvert, so that kind of makes things tough. I would love to work for the CIA, where I sit in the back of the room, scoping the place out, knowing where everybody is and what they’re doing before I open my mouth. I really enjoy people, but only after I get familiar with them. So it’s tough for me. I’m very happy just sitting there watching and being very quiet.
I live in my head more than I do in the physical world. I’m a thinker. I was a good athlete but obviously not at a professional level. My body got beat up. Now I have that thorn in my side that I can’t get rid of. I have plenty of aches and pains now, so I’m really quite limited, but God’s there. I never would have written my book, “Sawyer Think,” if I weren’t a little less mobile than I used to be. I’d have been out on the basketball court or softball field. Those are blessings. You have to look at it that way.
I’m going to get a new body here before too long. I don’t know when, but I’ll get a new one, and we’ll be able to dance. I might even be able to sing someday. I’m so bad at it now. I’ve been asked to quit singing in church because it’s that bad, and I don’t want to ruin the experience. In heaven, I’ll be able to sing.
I also figure my job in heaven is going to be a crossing guard. We have crossing guards who slow traffic down even though nobody’s crossing. I figured God’s got a sense of humor, so he’s going to put me in charge as a crossing guard when nobody crosses. I like thinking about bizarre stuff like that. I get a kick out of it.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
First is my book, “Sawyer Think.” I’ve had a pretty good career. I got my top-of-the-line M.B.A. at Northwestern Marketing. I’ve worked with some pretty big companies and had some very good experiences. The book offers 25 lessons regarding how to build your business and how to use it to glorify God and change the world. People have been on my case, saying, “You have to put your lessons in writing. You have to put them in writing!” So we did. It’s a little operating manual for small-business people, teaching them how to be more profitable and how to use what they have to further the kingdom of God.
Right now, we’re profitable because of the repellents, but we also have a unique product called the water filter. We can clean water to a level nobody else ever has. It’s smaller than a Coke can and never wears out. We can go into a village, and within two weeks, nobody’s sick — to the point that they close the medical clinic. We get rid of most of the waterborne sicknesses around the world, creating an unbelievable change in people’s lives. And we do it for less than a dollar per person, maybe as little as 10 to 20 cents per person for life. These filters never wear out. So you go in there and you put a filter in place, and for the next 10 years, nobody’s getting sick. You can do it for a whole family, villages, orphanages or churches. What an incredible thing God has handed to us! Nobody else can do this, so we track it and measure it, which is what we spend our time on. We’ve done this for villages all over the world. We’ve done it for whole countries, too — five countries total. We did the biggest slums in Nairobi, and people there literally are not sick anymore, which is totally life changing. This saves their income. Anywhere from 10% to 20% of their annual income is saved because they’re not buying water or boiling water to treat it.
We recently started in Honduras. We’re going to do all of Honduras within a year, maybe two years at most. We’ve worked out a program with the school systems. The teachers will teach the kids, then the parents will come in, and they’ll teach the parents and send them home with the filters. We’re going to go through the church, too. One $20 filter can do two to 500 gallons a day for 10 years. We take out anything that makes you sick, and we’re the only filter that can make that claim.
So that’s what we’re busy with right now. We have QR codes with GIS tracking systems so that if you scan the code on the filter while in Brazil, instructions will come up in Portuguese. It’ll tell you how to install it and fix it. You can WhatsApp questions back and forth to us. It’s really phenomenal. And it’s not me. I got a team of people who are mind-bogglingly good. What a place to be right now at the end of your career. It’s what God wants us to do. I’m not taking the credit for it because my arms are too short to box with God. We’re having a lot of fun right now, and it’s really meaningful. We share the gospel through it. In one slum in Nairobi, I think we’ve had 27,000 baptisms so far. It’s pretty impressive.
My book is called “Sawyer Think” because that’s the way we think at Sawyer. As I mentioned, there are 25 lessons — everything from the five Cs to the four Ps, life cycles, bell curves and creative destruction. We also teach readers to think ahead, see what the world’s going to be like five years from now and get there before other people. There are a lot of little lessons in there, too, like GMROI, which involves managing by the denominator, not the numerator. We offer math traps and a decision matrix that helps you take the emotions out of your decisions so you can avoid what people call “unintended consequences.” You can eliminate a lot of “unintended consequences” by thoroughly thinking things through. We give you some tools to do that.
I gave the example of the guy who invented Sriracha hot sauce. He made five huge mistakes. If he had read the book, he would have avoided all five of those mistakes, and he’d still be the king of hot sauce today. By helping readers avoid those mistakes, we’re trying to help them grow more successful businesses.
Next is purpose. Each chapter ends with a story of what we’re doing around the world to inspire people. If you have a more successful business, what do you do with it? You came in with nothing; you’re going out with nothing. There are no U-Hauls in heaven. So why not change the world? You can do it just locally. Or you can follow the biblical model of “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the other most parts of the world” (see Acts 1:8). We try to work in all four, but you can, too. For example, what does a restaurant do with its extra food? What about purchasing power? You’re buying your food wholesale compared to somebody who has to scrape the money together and buy it at retail price. So you have the power of your purchase to help people in a food bank get more food than they could otherwise get.
Or let’s say you’re a plumber or an electrician. You can buy your parts at cost and offer your services to help. So there are a lot of ways, whatever you’re doing, you can serve the community, either here or around the world. That’s the purpose of the book. We want to make your business more successful and then encourage you to reach out with those extra bonuses and benefits.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I’m a big student of history. I’ve studied all the different civilizations, and I know they come and go. In the end, people are people. They’ve been the same people for 10,000 years. Marketing is the study of human behavior. That’s really what marketing is if you boil it down. God made these people. You have to look at each person as a child of God. Maybe they’re in the kingdom, maybe they’re not, but God still made that person. You learn to appreciate every person, whether they’re your friends or not.
I always say it would take Jesus forever to get down Main Street. He’d be stopping and talking to everybody. He couldn’t do three blocks in a day because he understands the people. So do the same thing. Understand and appreciate them.
Everybody has been given talents by God. They’re here to be used. Ask yourself, “What is that person’s special talent?” It doesn’t have to be a huge, earth-changing thing. It could be a small gift of encouragement. You know all the gifts in the Bible. What do they have, and can you appreciate that?
I think every person should ask themselves, How did God gift me? What spiritual and physical gifts did he give me, and how can I use them? Why did God create me? My gifts are not from me. God is the One who gave me the ability to think and be pretty good at math. But more importantly, what does he want me to do with it? That’s the way I think we should look at life and people. Everybody is different. Everybody has certain skills. Appreciate them. I often joke that, even though I love accountants, they drive me nuts — but I know I need them. If everybody were an accountant, what kind of world would we have? None. We’re all different and need each other, and we can all build off each other. Each person should say, “Why am I here? What does God have planned for me? Why did he give me those skills?”
I’ve got a lot of business skills, and I’ve been gifted in the way I think. I’m so far outside the box that I don’t even know where the box is. If you get into a Bible study with me and read a verse, I’ll read what’s between the lines. I’ll put it in historical context, and I’ll say, “But did you know …” That’s my gift — looking at life totally differently. I do have a good history perspective, and I do have thinking skills. That’s my contribution to kind of shake things up. I wouldn’t have had the guts to do some of the things we’ve done at Sawyer if I didn’t have a big God. If your God is big, you’ll do incredible stuff. If you’re God’s small, you’ll still do stuff, but you won’t do nearly as much as he gives you the ability to do. God is big — don’t make him small. Let him be as big as he is.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
There are a lot of things that do that, such as Bible studies and church. But another is doing what we do in communities. For example, we went to Uganda, and the missionary said, “I noticed you don’t name your kids until they’re 3 years old. Why is that?”
They said, “Well, because if they make it to 3, we know they’ll live, but we basically lose a third of the kids before they even get to age 3.”
We went back and put in the filter. A year later, we returned and found out they started naming the kids at birth because they haven’t lost a kid since the filter showed up. It was bad water that was killing the kids. You can’t be part of that and not be blown away by what God can do with the things that we have.
I have many stories like that. I could go on all day long with how God has used me, our company, the products, our engineers who designed the products and so on. We’re very fortunate in that I don’t pay a lot of taxes because I don’t have to. I own the whole company, and nobody tells me I have to make a profit. I lose the money before it even gets to the tax line. I don’t get a lot. I think we should give our wealth away however we can. We have the very thing people need, and it can change people’s lives. People end up starting businesses or families, or their brain comes alive because they’re not dehydrated anymore. They get back 20% more of their income or go to school since they’re not sick. Parents can work extra. We already identified at least 30 extra days a year that they can work, which increases their income by a month. No medicine and no sickness means the quality of life gets better.
Humans have been dealing with bad water for 10,000 years. And it’s even worse now because of how people mess up the water system. But now we have the ability to clean that water, and God allows us to do that — because he can wipe out bad bacteria with a snap of a finger. It’s phenomenal. How is that not a spiritual thing?
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?
I’ve been a believer since I was knee high to a grasshopper, but I did think it all through. I studied all the other religions because I didn’t just want to take what my parents gave me. You have to be able to justify your beliefs. And when I studied the other religions, none of them made sense.
That said, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to understand history. I’ve studied probably every civilization and every time period. I don’t think there are many I haven’t looked at. For instance, I just finished reading a book on pirates. Now, you might say, “Big deal. Pirates.” But when you read the history of the pirates, you understand colonialism and even the origin of Latin America. Our company works within Latin America, so by studying history, I understand the influence of the Catholic Church, which is the predominant faith down there. We do a lot of church planning through our projects, more on the evangelical side.
It’s so important to understand human beings and their experience with God. I don’t care if it’s the Mongols or another civilization, but ask, “How did it play out?” People don’t do that now. They don’t teach history anymore. I don’t think many people have any understanding of World War II history or Civil War history. Why did we fight the Civil War? Slavery was a piece of it, but there were four or five other very valuable lessons to learn when you understand where we were as a nation, where we were as people. To me, if you want to understand life today, you need to understand the foundation, and that includes all of history and how God works through history and how the devil works through history, too. This can help you understand the battle going on every day within the country.
I’ve read so many history books that I couldn’t pick out any one of them. So studying history in general is my thing because it’s critical to understand man’s relationship with God over the course of human existence. And yes, that’s my favorite part of the Bible — the history. I think the Bible is a history book.
We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?
First, put the phone down, turn it off, and just sit there and think. My pet peeve is people not thinking. We don’t do inductive reasoning anymore. It’s Google this, Google that. Well, I don’t want their answer. I want my answer. Technology is great, and it’s an easy way to get to commentaries and similar resources. The Blue Letter Bible and John MacArthur’s commentaries are great, but people don’t think anymore.
We’re losing the ability to ask, “Why?” We just Google it or ask Alexa. When our kids were young and asked, “Daddy, why did we do this?” I would tell them, “Why don’t you tell me why? You figure it out.” I always tell people, “Put that phone down and just sit in your chair, think, and ask what God is doing in that situation. Just think. Your mind will take you someplace, and then put it together.”
Our lives are a drop in the bucket or a flower that will bloom and then wither away. Life is a binary choice. What is it about? What’s my role? Technology is great, but you’ve got to walk away from it, too. You’ve got to sit there and not have somebody tell you what your life experience is. School systems use standardized testing and make everything A, B, C, or D. But life is not that simple. We need to figure some things out for ourselves.
That said, I use technology. It’s very important. We use AI here, along with state-of-the-art GIS and QR systems and tracking for our filters around the world. We know where every filter is at any time. So we’re using technology, but we can’t let it control us. We need to spend time thinking and putting life together. I make all my people put the phone down, sit in a chair and ponder.
That’s why creative destruction is an essential lesson in my book. It forces you to think about what the future is going to be like, and you can’t do that by Googling, “What’s life going to be like in three years?” You have to think through what’s going to change over the next three years. We break it down to government laws, culture and technology, and you think those through. Look at the changes — because they’re changing so fast.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
We’re basically at the cusp of my life’s work. Not just mine because, again, God gets the credit for it, and I have incredible people around me. We are right now at the point of putting everything together. We can eliminate waterborne sickness for hundreds of millions of people over the next five years with the research and products we have.
We have everything on the launch pad. However, it’s going to take some money, so we’re saying, “OK, who wants to get in on this?” When you can give somebody 10 years of water for 10 cents, how are you not ready to change the world? That particular product has only been ready for a couple of months. We’ve had other products that have allowed us to serve 30 million people over the last 10 years, giving them life-changing water. But now, we could do 300 million a year. We’re right there with that technology, and it only costs pennies per person.
So that’s what’s going to happen with Sawyer. You’re going to see it explode. The trick is to keep it about God’s glory, not ours. I’m not going to turn it over to some big foundation to take credit for it. It’s got to go back to God because he’s the one who put all these pieces together.
We use nongovernmental organizations that are Christian-based, and so there’s a lot of gospel sharing. But now, we’re about to do it on a mass scale because we have the QR codes and the ability to teach people how to use the filters without needing someone there to show them. Because of that, we’re leaning into the Chick-fil-A model, where people will know we’re Christians, but they don’t have to be a Christian to come and use our products. So that’s kind of the model where we’re heading, but we can’t let somebody take the credit away from God. After all, he put it all together. Now, let’s make sure he gets the glory for it.
A recent study found that people who regularly used ChatGPT to write essays experienced a decline in creativity and critical thinking over several months.
Granted, the study was small and had several other limitations. Even so, it highlights a key point Kurt mentioned earlier: the importance of thinking for ourselves.
In and of itself, AI isn’t to blame for whittling away at our critical thinking skills. Neither is technology as a whole. Even the analog act of relying on the beliefs and opinions of others can keep us from thinking independently.
Ultimately, what impacts our thinking skills most isn’t whether we use AI or not — it’s whether we’ve practiced asking foundational questions, weighing the evidence at hand and mulling over potential answers.
In what may have been his final letter, the apostle Paul wrote, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Tim. 2:7, ESV). May we do the same today.
Kurt Avery is the founder of Sawyer Products and currently serves as president and owner. Before founding Sawyer, he served as a marketer for globally known brands. Avery is passionate about and committed to creating disease-free water for life in communities throughout the world. He’s the author of the new book, Sawyer Think: How a Small Company Disrupts Markets and Changes the World. He is a graduate of Hope College and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He and his wife, Barbara, reside in Florida and are parents of four and grandparents of five.
