what do you know? with satic inc.
B.D. Erickson II has a conversation with local entrepreneurs Arnie Sherman and Scott Richman, to talk about the dangers of dirty electricity, how solar energy is one of the biggest culprits and how SATIC is one of the local companies that is working to make Missoula, Montana a better place.
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Arnie Sherman and Scott Richman sit down with Founder and CEO of SATIC Shield, B.D. Erickson II, to talk about the effects of electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, on human health, on our local communities, and our homes and offices. They also talk about personal connections that they have to local businesses in Missoula Montana and how SATIC has built itself to give back to the community. Another topic of conversation is how solar energy is the largest growing type of renewable energy but yet it is one of the biggest culprits of dirty electricity. Yes, it is a great investment for your home and utility bills, but it is the greatest harm to human health due to over exposure to EMFs.
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heating bill is astronomical!"
Scott: "Totally!"
Arnie: “Totally! And today we have B.D. Erickson on who’s going to talk a little bit about how you can conserve to some cost-related to energy and how you can clean up your energy, I mean, things like dirty energy and stuff like that that we don’t even know about in the regular world and stuff that the average person doesn’t know either.”
Scott: “Exactly, EMFs.”
Arnie: “And if you could give me any tips on how to save money on it, 600 dollars, you know, heating bill, I want to hear it!”
Scott: “He definitely will! B.D. Erickson, local entrepreneur here in Missoula with SATIC and SATIC Shield. And I know that you worked with him way back in the past, right? Back in the days where you ran the World Trade Center?”
Arnie: “Back in the World Trade Center, he was a member, I believe he still is, and those were the early days when he was working on the electrical savings with a device that you connect to your plug and you pug it into the wall and so it would modulate and reduce electric costs. So I want to find out how that went, what happened with that and, you know, he’s working on new things now so I want to hear what his company is doing!”
Scott: “Arnie, it’s funny because when you were with the World Trade Center, and certainly in your role now is kind of working as a consultant with different companies. Missoula has more than its fair share of entrepreneurs, right? And there are a lot of pieces..”
Arnie: “There are a lot of people that come here for whatever reason, a job that doesn’t work out, or they graduate school and they don’t want to leave, they figure out that they love the place so much that they’re willing to figure out some other way to earn a living to live here so we have lots and lots of small businessmen, I mean really small business. The small business administration defines a small business as a business that’s under 500 employees. I think over 90% of Montana businesses have under 10 employees!”
Scott: “Sure.”
Arnie: “And, you know, we’re the mecca with food trucks and small restaurants and, you know, all of these little “Ma-and-Pa” entrepreneurial main street businesses, we have tons of them and we work with a lot of them, many of them weren’t export-ready, most didn’t have the experience or the capability to work with a large international partner which is generally required, you know, it’s very rare when a three or four person company exports and has a market over there, and it’s been fascinating over the years to hear about how many of these small companies have made it, how many of them have transformed into other kinds of business, some of these companies in the last 10 years have gone through four or five transformations.”
Scott: “They’ve grown, and it’s funny because it’s reminded me of the conversations we’ve had in the past with folks like Grant Geer and we’ve talked to Bergita at World Trade, and, you know, I am curious, small businesses are well-supported here in Montana, right? This is a friendly environment.”
Arnie: “Right, you have two things going on simultaneously: one is how businesses grow and transform normally, and then with the adaptation of technology, a good example of this is Townsquare Media, what is was 10 years ago is not what it is now.”
Scott: “That’s right.”
Arnie: “You know, you’re much larger and you’re offering different kinds of services here, you know, the Townsquare operation is doing a lot of digital work and, you know, online work and changing the whole nature of what media exposure it is and that’s not what it was when you came in 10 years ago!”
Scott: “Right! It was just starting, it’s great. Well I’m excited for our conversation with B.D. Erickson, he’s the founder of SATIC, SATIC Solar, SATIC Shield. Back after this.”
“B.D., we’re excited to have you on ‘What Do You Know?’! Tell us a little bit about the product line of SATIC USA and SATIC Shield.”
Scott Richman: “Arnie Sherman, a good Sunday morning to you!”
Arnie Sherman: “Good Sunday morning to you, Scott! Are we ever going to see the ground again? Or is there going to be snow on it continuously on it for the entire winter time here?”
Scott: “You’re right, Arnie, I’m getting a little tired of the freezing chilling days and also I’m getting tired of the black ice!”
Arnie: “The black ice is a problem! I’ve heard many many people have had bad experiences with the black ice.”
Scott: “But happy 2023 to you!”
Arnie: “Oh yeah, happy 2023! May it be better than 2022 in every way!”
Scott: “Exactly.”
Arnie: “Well one of the consequences of all of this winter, early winter, is, and I know because we’ve talked about it, is my electric bill, my
B.D. Erickson: "The product line is really focused on an efficient use of electricity for a couple of outcomes. The main outcome, believe it or not as I put my foil hat, is physical health. A byproduct of that is that you have cool running equipment, cooling running equipment lasts longer, everyone wants that because we have these very expensive tech devices that we don't want hot, right? And another byproduct of efficiency is lower utility costs. So by cleaning your power, you get this healthier living environment for you, longevity of your equipment and lower utility bill."
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Arnie: "So for our listeners, you just said cleaning your power..."
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B.D.: "That's correct."
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Arnie: "So we have dirty power now?"
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B.D.: "Yes!
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Scott: "Talk to us about dirty power. What makes the power dirty in your home, in your car, on your person?"
Arnie: “So for our listeners, you just said cleaning your power…”
B.D.: “That’s correct.”
Arnie: “So we have dirty power now?”
B.D.: “Yes!”
Scott: “Talk to us about dirty power. What makes the power dirty in your home, in your car, on your person?”
B.D.: “You got it. So I’ll start with this- dirty electricity is real, it’s measurable beyond any contestation, it usually just doesn’t come into our sphere so we usually don’t think about it, if you don’t think about it then you’ve got to be educated a little bit, but a lot of people have known about dirty power is someone that’s maybe an audiofile, and when the fridge comes on and you hear that little tick or pop in the speakers during Avatar, it drives those people nuts! Somebody that’s trying to operate a HAM radio, he’s got to have that clean power because he’s looking for something so sensitive, right? Somebody who uses sensitive equipment, okay. So how does power get dirty? Dirty electricity has a few definitions and I suppose it depends on who you ask and somebody will give you a different answer and it doesn’t mean that they’re wrong or they’re nefarious or they’re trying to trick you, they’re maybe looking for a different aspect of this dirty power. So, electricity has to be within some parameters. So an outlet on the wall is 120 volts, well what if it wasn’t? What if it was 240 volts? Well it would probably blow up whatever you’re trying to put in it! It’s got to be within that parameter. Also there are things that we notice in our everyday lives, and we talked about them, when maybe the refrigerator comes on or you hear a pop or tick in the speakers, maybe a big load like the air conditioner comes on and your lights dim for a second, right? And so that, right, everyone has experienced something like this! Or your phone normally charges pretty fast and cool, but this time it’s really hot, it’s charging slow, it doesn’t do that every time but it does it sometimes! And you don’t have to be working at NASA to realize that that’s odd, that’s abnormal, right? And then there’s other silly things like interference. Have you ever heard your sister’s blow dryer on your radio? As kids, we did! My mom would come in and vacuum and it would put lines in the TV during Gilligan’s Island! We’ve all experienced those things but we didn’t necessarily know what they were. These are aspects of dirty electricity.”
Scott: “So in terms of dirty electricity, there’s also interference because all of these things are pulling from the same energy source, right? Is there competition in terms of why one gets more energy than the other?”
B.D.: “Well, that’s, you know, technically speaking there’s two types of loads- a resistive load that resists it, it’s a burner on a stove it doesn’t want it, it turns it into heat and pushes back! Then there’s the inductive load, something that pulls like sucking on a straw, like an air conditioner. So as those two compete, but interference is more like, so cars don’t have antennas anymore, growing up a car had an antenna, you could undo it and you could have a saber fight with your little brother with the antenna, right? Now they’ve got a fin or something cool because waves, fields, land on antennas, right? So, you know we’re older guys, and when we’re in town we’ve got FM in the car and then you head out of town and you’ve got to switch to AM because that FM signal didn’t go as far and it got interfered with. Okay, well today you’ve got 4G, 5G, LTE, Netflix, DirectTV, DISH Network, your printer, my Wi-Fi, you turn on your phone and you say what network am I going to get on? There’s 25 printers in the FBI van and your neighbor’s cell phone or whatever, you just see all of these networks. So, so may networks are competing, as you said, there’s so many fields, frequencies, signals out there. The antennas on our cars were made of maybe two feet of aluminum, now your home wiring is now what? It’s high-quality copper. You don’t think that makes a better antenna? Of course it does! It’s a better conductor! And then there might be a mile of it! So now you’re living in what? You’re living in a super antenna that’s not getting AM, FM, UHF or UHF for TV, it’s getting this huge plethora of signals that we’re talking about. It would be impossible for them not to interfere, to answer your question, it would be impossible for them not to.”
Arnie: “So putting aside the pops and groans and all of those things you hear, what is the negative impact of all of this?”
B.D.: “Great question! There are several, number one-not all of that power is useable. You don’t want to buy and pay for electricity you can’t use. And so where does this non-useable electricity go? Does it go into pixie dust? No! It turns into heat! I challenge anybody, go put your hand on your DVR, your video recorder, the thing we all call TiVo, right? That thing is hotter than blue blazes right now. In fact, you’re playing a game of Tetris with it so it doesn’t melt the receiver right above it, right? The back of your fridge is hot, of course it is, right? And as we’ve talked about your phone might charge hot and slow. And for an air conditioner or a freezer, what’s its job? To make things cold, right? That’s it’s job in layman’s terms. That thing is hotter than blue blazes! How could it possibly be efficient? And so now let’s say you live somewhere warm, your air conditioner is running to beat the band, to cool down this environment that you live in but your TV is so hot you almost can’t touch the back of it. Your DVR, the back of your fridge, that’s called BTU’s, right? That’s called heat! So we’re flooding this space or trying to cool down heat, and heat wasn’t free, there’s no free stuff, right? So you get these big utility bills, you get this lower life of equipment and now they’re saying, I mean it’s really well documented, dirty electricity is harmful to the biological. Now I say the biological because you have to be careful when say something is bad for someone, right? But it’s exceedingly well documented in a couple of areas, number one-what does the grass look like under power lines? It ain’t bushier, let’s say that it’s bushiless. So I live in upper Miller Creek and the power lines go through the back of our yard and I’ve never had to mow under them! I’ve never in 14 years had to mow under the power lines, why? Because it’s dead. Now, is that the electricity? It could’ve been that maybe that the vehicles that were there crushed it down, or a leak in some kind of poisonous thing, that’s possible, but up this huge line up the mountain it’s all bushiless. Dairy cows, dairy is a multi-million/billion dollar business. Milk, cheese, butter, sour cream, ice cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, you name it, right? You don’t think that DairyGold and Merigold and all these guys know how to get the most good milk out of their cows? They’ve been doing it for 6,000 years of recorded history, and we know they do! It’s well documented fellas that dirty electricity has an effect on dairy cows. The quality and production volume of their milk all the way down to the Hutterites and Amish that we’ve interviewed, they know specifically. Cows are so sensitive. So, the way an electric fence works is that you just have the one wire, and it’s not a huge thing, and I’ve always wondered as a kid, I thought as a child that the cow bumps it, it bites them, he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t go near it. No! No dairy cow has ever been hit by electric, ever! They get within four feet and they don’t like it! They get even close to it and they can sense it, they can feel it, they don’t like it and they move away, that’s why it only takes one strand. I’ve had dairy farmers tell me that if there is stray voltage or dirty electricity at a dairy, the cows won’t even step in puddles. They’re that sensitive to it.”
Arnie: “Really!”
B.D.: “Yeah! They’re that sensitive to it. They know!”
Arnie: “They know better than me!”
B.D.: “Yes! So it is well-documented in greenhouses and grows. Do you want a big strawberry or a little strawberry? Do you want a succulent juicy strawberry or a wimpy one? The marijuana or cannabis growing is very big right now and so they want, you know, the most produce from their product that they can, it’s all well-documented guys. Dirty electricity is harmful to the biological. I’m not a cow, but I am biological.”
Arnie: “So in your house you have dirty electricity and it is harmful in some way, shape or form.”
B.D.: “To the biological, beyond contestation.”
Arnie: “Right. So you’ve got heat issues, you’ve got all the energy costs, and then you’ve got the biological piece of this. So what do you do about it? What is your company doing about it?”
B.D.: “That’s a great question! So when you start a company, what you’re trying to do is identify a problem that you can solve or a market gap, and we really saw both. We saw a lot of similar products out there addressing each of these things one at a time. Okay, so I’m going to go to the computer shop, the BestBuy shop and I’m going to get myself a stereo, right? And you see the 500 or 600 dollar Yamaha, I ride Yamaha motorcycles, and I’m going to buy it, right? And then I’m at some bougie mall in Seattle and I see the Bang & Olufson store. Now that Yamaha receiver is 5-600 bucks, the Bang & Olufson is 5-6 thousand. Why? The Yamaha sounds good, the difference in many cases is the absolute crystal clear sound with no pop or tick during Avatar, and to get that is a ten-fold price tag on that piece of equipment. Another aspect, maybe a surge could be called dirty electricity by some of that is over voltage, right? So we all know what a surge protector is, we’ve all got, I mean there’s three Belkins in the room I’m standing in, because you plug the stuff into it to protect it, right? Air conditioners and things
I have these things have something called capacitors to help their motor, right, and then the dirty electricity people out there have harmonic rectifiers and filters for EMFs, electromagnetic fields. An electromagnetic field is a result of dirty electricity, and the result of an electromagnetic field is radiation. Is radiation good for you? No! It’s not good for you. So what we said is how come there is five or six genres of dirty electricity and dirty electricity that is outside of a parameter and five different component sets to address it? Somebody needs to put all of these things into one thing. So our technology is not bleeding edge, it’s not clear out in front, what we did was that we took the very best components that we could find by cracking open each one of those things that we talked about, really looking at what made it tick, and then asking ‘Can we build a better mousetrap? Can we put all of it into one box?’ And that’s really our trademark.”
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Scott: “And why wouldn’t the electric company, why wouldn’t they automatically build this? Right? Like why don’t they pay attention to this knowing that there is so much technology that’s interfering creating these EMFs?”
B.D.: “So there are about three conceivable answers to that. So you have the difference between a co-op owned by the customers and a for-profit utility company. The co-ops are usually a little more forward-thinking in saving money, saving power, because they are also customers. What’s anything for-profit corporation have to do? It has to show a profit for the bottom line of shareholders, it has to raise the value and the dividends. It’s the antithesis as their job as CEO, right? They really get put into a pickle. And oftentimes we ask them to do it when that’s the opposite way to get there by a normal way of thinking when they have to make a profit to stay in business and they have to stay in profit to keep their share price up, and yet we ask them to save electricity? That’s a wicked double-googly that they get stuck in, so that’s part of it, where the co-ops are usually more open to it. Also, in most cases, they try, they actually try. So, okay, our energy usually in Missoula Montana usually comes from energy keepers, the dam at the Flathead River, right? When that electricity leaves that dam it’s in beautiful phase quality, it’s not dirty! But what’s it got to do? It’s got to come 100 miles, how many car washes and beauty schools? How many blow dryers does it go by before it gets to your house? So what they do is that it does stop along the way, they clean it up, it does boost that signal, but like we talked about in your house alone, you don’t just have one TV, you’ve got four! You don’t just have one tablet or phone, everyone in your family now has two of them! I’ve got two in front of me, right?”
Scott: “It’s amazing how energy-dependent we are actually.”
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delightful human being, if you know Bill Nooney Sr., he’s one of the nicest rascals you’re ever going to meet, where he said oh I’m not buying nothing but I’ll test it, you know, you can do my house, you can do some of my stores, I’ll play along and stuff like that. When we started to get schools, once it started to work we had school districts, we had some good folks in City Hall in Post Falls who loves and uses our stuff, right? So then you begin to build your story and you find different cases where it works better and then some applications than others, like Pacific Steel here in town,
their result was so outstanding that we actually did a study on it. So it’s a blend of things like how your utility bills for power, what kind of raid and tear system that you’re in, and then what kind of equipment you use and things like that, and you know, maybe in a commercial setting you’re trying to save a piece of equipment like Aspen Granite down in the Bitterroot, they just had dirty power and a very big, electric, really fantastic machine that cut stone and anytime that it would glitch, it was hours of resetting this thing up! And so for them, you know, their usage, their need was keeping this big piece of equipment running. Maybe you want to keep something cool, maybe you want to lower your bill, or you’re a health spa and you want this zen feeling of peace, calm and tranquility, right?”
Scott: “You’re tapping down all the EMFs..”
B.D.: “You’re getting rid of it! You’re filtering it out! So how does the product work? Well kind of like Britta filter, you know, when I was a kid what was the best drink of water in the world? From the hose, man! Summer time yo, you’re running around with your friends, you’re hot, and you crank that hose on, sure it tastes like rubber but it’s delicious! And now you would’nt dream from drinking from a hose, right? You’re drinking bottles of water, you don’t even drink stuff from the tap anymore, right? Because we have learned that there are things in it that are true, imagined or realized, we want really clean water. So electricity is the same way, so it is dirtier because of technology, and we can explain that a little bit, is made far dirtier then it ever has and it's gotten to the point where it’s become a problem, to the point of needing a solution and there being a business model in that solution.”
Arnie: “So is your product different for residential use versus commercial use?”
B.D.: “Slightly different, yes, because they might be three-phase power rather than single-phase power and there might be high voltage and stuff. So the outcome is the same but the product itself is slightly different.”
Scott: “Well let’s just take a quick ID arch here, this is B.D. Erickson, Founder of SATIC, SATIC Shield, SATIC Solar. B.D., how do folks measure and determine whether they’re swimming in a pool of electric pollution? How do you figure that out? Because I know, because when I first thought about this I kept on saying to myself like geez I hear a hum, there’s something in my bedroom and it’s like in the bathroom where it feels like there is just so much going on electricity. And then don’t we have a way of monitoring that? Don’t we have a way of testing that?”
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B.D.: “Absolutely! And I’ll add to that, who sleeps well anymore?! I challenge you, I’ll throw the gauntlet at you, find me a person who gets good restful sleep these days if they’re not in a tent! I mean, out camping or something you do! There’s a pine cone under your left shoulder blade, there’s a rock always under you, you know what I mean? It’s the most uncomfortable place you’ve laid in years and you sleep like a baby. Or you don’t sleep like a baby because they wake up every two hours and cry and the whole thing, but you get good restful sleep even though it's not the most comfortable thing, right? Sleeping in your bed, I don’t care if you get eight hours, I for myself I’ll speak for myself, I don’t feel as restful after eight as it seems that I did maybe off six when I was younger, maybe. But that can either test interference, the high levels of THD, total harmonic distortion, electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic fields on the wiring let’s say or just in the air, in just moving around, so it’s like we talked about it being harmful, okay. So it’s harmful beyond contestation and I’ll stand on that, but so is smoking and so is bad food and stuff like that and so do you want to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day? Probably not. But if you had two cigarettes in college, I think you’re going to be okay, right? But you wouldn’t want to live on fast food and sugary food, but if you occasionally have a milkshake, I think you’re okay. So as you ask about metering it, how much is it in its accumulative effect? Like walking into a propeller is immediately dangerous to health and it has an immediate health effect, but bad diet and lack of exercise or something is more of a cumulative thing. So this dirty electricity is more of a cumulative thing, we need to measure it because we need to know how much, and ideally you’re not getting over-exposed and you don’t need to buy anything! But if you are, if you’ve got a smart meter, and you’re living with all of these devices and keeping them on when you should turn them off, you’re keeping your Wi-Fi on at night when you should turn it off, now we need to measure it. So we make a meter, but there are several meters if you just went online and you Googled EMF meter, dirty electricity meter, and then you’re going to see a plethora of brands that are two major categories: Corded, which means I just plug it in and getting a reading directly from my wiring which is a super antenna, or Ambient, which means I can walk around, like a TriField meter, that shows just in the air the electric field, the magnetic field and the RF field. And so you’ll know that, for example, if you put it by your phone, what’s it going to do? It’s going to go nuts. Going to go put it by a computer, it’s going to go nuts. The farther away you get from those things the more it goes down so why would you not test your sleeping area? Go into your kid’s rooms and test their bed. Well once you know about it, you want to have an idea. It’s like if you didn’t know before, you’re not a negligent parent, you just didn’t even think about it before! I didn’t think about it before! I didn’t lay in bed worried about dirty electricity, but now that I know about it, I don’t want to sleep in it, I don’t want to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day accidentally and not know about it.”
B.D.: “Forget about it! It’s a part of our everyday life to the point of addiction, right? And now just in the neighborhood let’s say you have 100 homes and each home has, I don’t know let’s pick a number, 50-60 devices, it’s impossible! With our products, you really didn’t need them like you do today, you didn’t need them.”
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Arnie: “So are new home builders putting in or packaging them when they’re building their house?”
B.D.: “So the beginning process of any business or whatever is that you have to get the efficacy testing, the safety testing, seems too good to be true, you know, why did you rascals come up with this, why didn’t somebody at NASA or MIT come up with it sooner? And our lead engineer did go to MIT, you know, you have to get through that first phase and then your first customers are early adopters. Anything makes you an early adopter, and for us here in Missoula it was Bill Nooney of High Noon Petroleum and those guys because he is just a
Arnie: “So let’s say that I’m sold and I want whatever you’ve got, what do you got? I mean, is it one thing you plug inside somewhere in the house or what do you come in and do?”
B.D.: “So our filters come in two major categories: Plug-In or Wire-In. Let’s say that your breaker panel is full or you’re thinking about moving or you’re renting, you probably wouldn’t wire something rather expensive in at the panel, you’d buy the plug-in units and you’re going to sprinkle them through the house, and there’s two ways to know how to sprinkle, right? So one way is just reading the instructions that come with it and following our very basic, you know, works 95% of the time works pretty well pattern to follow, or get yourself a meter and then put them in the hot spots!”
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Scott: "I have a meter, Arnie."
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B.D.: "They're fun, aren't they?!"
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Scott: "They are! It's crazy! I mean it's funny because our engineers
here at the radio station use similar types of equipment when looking for interference and stuff like that, same exact thing.”
B.D.: “Of course they do!”
Arnie: “Okay so I got it, you plug it in, what do you do commercially? If you were coming in here where we have all of these racks of computers and air conditioning running and heat in the winter because it gets hot, what would you put in here?”
B.D.: “And server rooms! Server farms, oftentimes the big electricity bills, it’s the computers keeping them cool. That’s why they all come to Montana! If you want to keep cool you open a window! Right? You let nature keep it cool. So we would come in and sell you like this, we would come in and look at the breaker panels, and it’s very simple, you identify first of all if it’s single-phase of three-phase, that’s easy, and then what’s on the load? Is this one, you know, just the offices or, you know, a mini-fridge and some outlets? Or is it the air handlers, right? Or do you have some kind of pump for circulation or something, or is it maybe the lights in the parking lot? Those are four very different load signatures. So we have to match the load’s signatures. We have a plethora of models in single-phase, three-phase, low voltage, high voltage, we just match it and off to the races you go.”
Scott: “Who installs these?”
B.D.: “Any electrician can install it, you don’t need a master electrician or anything, it’s very easy to install, it’s three or four wires that lands on its own breaker. It takes just 20 minutes, 30 minutes depending.”
Arnie: “And for your house the ones you plug in, you just plug it in, right?”
B.D.: “You just plug it in.”
Arnie: “Right, so say you have a 2,000 square foot house, how many of these units are you going to need and what do they cost?”
B.D.: “So there’s two answers to that question and number one is ideally you don’t have lots of dirty electricity. I mean, yes we want to sell you lots of stuff and business and for profit, but we’re also healthy human beings living in a community, you don’t want to sell someone more than they already need. So probably four plug-in units if you don’t have something very odd happening, it’s going to get your levels down 90-95%, and you’ll probably feel it immediately. So, you know, male and female biology are slightly different in that usually when we do the tests in a home it’s the female biology that can instantly feel it, or calm her.”
Arnie: “Well it’s like the noise, like this background noise and then it maybe disappears.”
Scott: “I mean, I notice it, maybe I’m in touch with my feminine side. I notice the humming, the buzzing, the things get quieter like B.D. just said and you feel like, you know listen, we’re here in this studio and there is so much going on. If you go into our rack room, there is so much going on, that’s where all of our computers are.”
Arnie: “Everybody in their life has a story about this, with my clock radio, or when I plug my phone in and it’s charging the clock radio makes static.”
B.D.: “Thank you! This is exactly what I’m talking about! That’s it! We all have some experience! I don’t care if it’s your sister’s blow dryer on your radio, we all have an experience of dirty electricity, that maybe we didn’t know exactly what it was or how to describe it but we knew it was off.”
Arnie: “Right! When I have a power surge in my house or the power goes on and off real quickly, my speakers vibrate and they start going boom-boom-boom-boom and I have to switch it off of the circuit breaker.”
Scott: “Is that right?”
Arnie: “Yeah!”
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Scott: “It’s amazing how much more in touch we are with this type of utility management then we were maybe 10 years ago because of the fact that so much more is being brought into the home. B.D., switch gears for a second-we have identified EMF, we have identified the dirty electricity, we’ve identified the way that we motor it and how we tamper with it. How are you promoting it, well not promoting it, but selling these? Because I know that, you know, solar and people that are installing solar into homes across the country is probably one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing, I know that you work closely with groups like that. Talk to us about your distribution model and your sales model for SATIC.”
B.D.: “It was exceedingly hard. So now that we’ve got 20 employees and we’re profitable and all this stuff here in Missoula Montana, people ask me sometimes and you can joke around with your pals and they say I saw you suffering through it, if you knew what you know now being successful now, would you do it all again? No way.”
Arnie: “Right! It took you a long time!”
B.D.: “And man it’s been a long time! I’ve aged 28! I was just riding a bike right? The sleepless nights, the angst, that was a really hard road to climb and when you get called a conspiracy theorist and you get called the Sham-Wow guy or whatever, that hurts! Don’t think it doesn’t! But I was reading all of these studies about the dairy cows, I was seeing all this, I mean they’ve got these pictures of these greenhouses and grows where the plant is growing to the light, the food, the water, and it’s growing away from the dirty electricity. I’m not making it up! I don’t care if you think I’m nuts, it’s real!”
Arnie: “You move away from it.”
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B.D.: “It’s naturally in you! Nobody wants the power lines over their house, that’s just an inner feeling, nobody wants the cell tower on their house just by inner feeling. So one of the things on my vision board for years was that electrohypersensitivity, my son suffers from it terribly, what really drug me into this kicking and screaming was EHS, he suffers from it terribly, it’s debilitating, was that I knew something was hurting my personal kid and I was being marginalized by it, I was being called a kook, it’s in your head, it’s in his head, and what do they want to do? They want to put him on drugs, right? I didn’t want to give my kid drugs because he wasn’t like this yesterday and now he’s not well so we’re going to put him on a drug, I would rather not band-aid the symptom, I would really rather find what the root is and go there. So, I know that this is a long way to answer your question, but it's hard. But now EHS, electrohypersensitivity, is as mainstream well-known as, you know, autism and fibromyalgia and these things that were very rare years ago but are now things that are pandemic now today. Things have changed. So it’s a lot easier now. So one of the ways is online, we have a good website, www.saticshield.com, S-A-T-I-C shield.com where you can go and look at our store. But because they improve in efficiency, when someone is going solar, you’re really looking for efficiency now, you’re looking now not only to use as little electricity as possible but produce that energy yourself, not requiring the grid.”
Scott: “What is the rate of conversion of people adopting solar these days?”
B.D.: “So just looking at the metrics, solar is the single fastest, growing, booming category, sub-category, construction, you know, green new energy tech employer, net revenue, gross-revenue, you know there’s these measurements that we can’t use, you know this well, Arnie, there’s these measurements that we use in commerce and in business to measure something, and if eight or the major categories, it’s number one, it’s clearly out in front, I mean it’s employing so many people, it's making so much net and gross revenue, right? There are companies that are installing, but this is not all solar companies. There is one solar company that’s in the thousands for residential solar installations per month in Texas, and that’s not all of them, that’s one! It is growing astronomically! I know of a solar company that does 1,000 installs a month just in Orlando, and this is just one company.”
Arnie: “You know, in places where it’s sunny a lot and they’ve got…”
B.D.: “Or the utilities! The utility bill is for revenue!”
Arnie: “Isn’t it true that the new solar technology allows you to store it so you don’t necessarily have to be in a place where it’s sunny all the time?”
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B.D.: “So there is some misnomers, so sunny is not always better because sunny often means hot. Well, electronics don’t like hot! Solar works great in Montana because it’s cool. We live in Big Sky Country, we get beautiful sunshine and it stays cool, the electrons move better when it’s cool, they don’t like it to be super hot. You can put a solar panel out in the middle of the desert that’s black and it’s glass and it’s super grumpy because it’s too hot, right? Solar works good in Canada. So part of it is solar works good for the most part in the US if you have good sun exposure, but how your utility bills for you is the deciding factor. If you’re paying four cents a kilowatt hour in Northern Idaho, that’s some of the cheapest power on the planet, Kootani Electric, it's
four cents, don’t go solar you ding dong, it’s never going to pay for itself, that’s 25 years! But when you’re in California, you’re paying 40 cents, oh so we’re talking three or four year ROI now, forget about it! It’s a financial decision. Now let’s say I don’t want a financial decision, I want a green community decision, then solar can work for anybody if you’ve got good exposure. Now if I want to store that, that’s a different story because what we do right now is called Net Metering. So let’s say May, June, July, August you’re over-producing and the utility company allows us to do that, so we’re spinning that meter backwards, we’re putting our watts into a bank account, you put dollars into a financial bank account and you put watts on your net meter account. And now in December, January, February where the days are short, my panels are covered in snow, I get those watts that I banked into that account so we can usually get you to zero, you don’t have a bill anymore, so you store enough in the summer months.”
Scott: “So then are the filters then put on those solar systems to create once it’s distributed to the home it’s cleaner?”
B.D.: “So I’m going to finish Arnie’s question. If you want to store it yourself for the zombie apocalypse, you need batteries, and battery technology has taken a leap because of the cell phone industry. When we were kids, batteries went into your game or your flashlight. And flashlights were storage places for rusty batteries, right? That’s what it was, a storage place for rusty batteries.”
Arnie: “Right because every time that you picked up your flashlight it didn’t work because of the batteries!”
B.D.: “Once every two years when you needed it, is was just full of rust, right? But the cell phone industry has put a good battery in everybody’s pocket. So the big batteries that even run cars and stuff are basically the same thing as cell phone batteries, it’s the same technology, it’s lithium ion. So they’re quite expensive, you can wire those in at your system, get what’s called a hybrid-system now or you can get off-grid which is the battery storage. Okay, now solar panels make direct current but your outlet is alternating current. It’s AC & DC baby! So you cannot use direct current for most of the things in your house. Now your cell phone or anything like that that has a battery, it’s DC. So your cell phone, your tablet, your laptop, these things are DC, that’s why you can’t just plug them in, that’s why you have to have the little adapter. You’ve got to have the thing because it’s taking it from AC to DC. Solar panels are the opposite, you have to go from DC to AC, that’s called an inverter. So when you go solar you’re really getting three categories of product: you’re getting the panel that’s going to absorb the sun’s light and make it into direct current, you’re getting the racking system that’s going to hold this to your roof without leaking your roof or blowing your roof off to Kansas with Dorothy, and then you’ve got your inverter which takes this direct current from the panel and turns it into alternating current so you can use it. That very process just by how it scientifically and mechanically works creates electromagnetic fields, huge ones! So that electricity, and you know that I’m one of the biggest solar dealers in the state, we’ve been doing solar in Missoula Montana for 14 years, I love it, I’m personally an early adopter, yes I have solar on my house, that electricity is not what you would call clean electricity by the parameters that we have been using and discussing in this interview, it's clean in that it’s green, it’s clean and it’s renewable, it’s clean and it’s not coal but is it clean by the parameters that we’re talking about? No! It’s got EMF, it’s got distortion, it’s got interference. So when you add our box to it, two things happen-number one the power coming in from the utility if you’re still on the grid is now cleaner, the power coming off of the inverter is now cleaner so more of that can be useable and less of that is not going to turn into heat in the sense that we don’t like because it’s bad for our stuff, bad for our wallet, bad for us, right? More of it is going to be useable and you can now reduce and produce because if your air conditioner use is a little bit less, if you’re getting four or six cent power and your air conditioner used a little less, who cares. They can barely measure it, oh I guess they spent eight dollars a month, who cares?! You don’t care! That’s not even a Netflix subscription, right? You have to rally to care. But now I’m going to spend 60 grand making that on your roof? Oh you care baby. You care big! So a 5 or 10% difference on 60 grand is 6,000 bucks! It’s huge! And so in the beginning trying to convince these solar guys it would work was very hard, solar guys are early adopters, they think they’re the smartest guy in the room every time, they’re very challenging like oh I’ve already seen this, I’ve already tested it, oh really? Come on now, no you haven’t. So what we started doing is putting them on these guy’s houses for free. So he owns a solar company or he works at a solar company, he’s watching every watt, this guy is Jedi; so what I say is that I’m not going to sell you, I’m going to put it on your house for free. And you’re going to watch it. Well guess what? They do work! I’m not here 14 years later with 5-star reviews and 100,000 installed over 14 years later if it doesn’t work! You don’t get to sell snake oil for 14 years! You don’t get to sell vaporware for 14 years and sell more each year then the previous year! We’ve got over 100,000 installed, I’m sorry, they work.”
Scott: “And they are produced and manufactured here..”
B.D.: “Right here in Missoula Montana! Absolutely!”
Arnie: “Okay, I got two follow-ups, two things. One, okay, so what do they cost a unit that you put in the house, and I know that you need three or four of them or whatever and how much are they? And then secondly, what does the box actually do? How does it make this cleaner?”
B.D.: “It’s kind of like, I don’t want to get too technical, it’s a harmonizer! It just cleans, it filters, it regulates, it’s a really robust surge-protector, it puts everything in really good phase quality, it removes the interference, removes the distortion, removes the electromagnetic fields, it improves power factor, regulates voltage, regulates frequency, all of these parameters that you want within this narrow parameter, it does it all within one box. It does it all in one box.”
Arnie: “And one box costs?”
B.D.: “A retail on a whole-home system is about 1,200 dollars. That’s if you wire in, there might be an installation fee depending on, you know, what your personal situation is, how full is your box and blah blah blah, like am I mounting it on cement or sheet rock? So there’s some variables there, right? The plug-in’s would maybe be 400 dollar, depending on how many you need, and you really should see a difference on your first bill, it’s not like you have to wait six months to see if something is working, you know what your bill is!”
Scott: “You’ll know when it’s gone higher! Arnie, you had another follow-up question?”
Arnie: “Yeah I had another question, what’s in the magic box, right? And what does it cost? Those were the two questions. Now you had a question.”
Scott: “I did have a question that I wanted to ask, but we’re butting up against a break. So let’s do this, let’s take a quick break. Our guest is B.D. Erickson, he’s the founder of SATIC and SATIC Shield. Back after this.”
“Arnie, we are back with our guest, B.D. Erickson.”
Arnie: “And you had a follow-up question. So lay it out there.”
Scott: “So I want to know, B.D., working in Missoula, moving and growing up here in Montana, is this a community that supports entrepreneurs like yourself? Like do you have the resources and the people resources, the material resources, you know, to build a sustainable growing business? Talk about that.”
B.D.: “So when you start out in business, you don’t know what you don’t know, right? You don’t know what you don’t know. And, you know, what does it really take to manufacture something? Have you manufactured an electronic before? I had not! I tooled up and got an Underwriters Laboratory and lab testing and the efficacy testing and all of that stuff, where do you find these labs? Setting up your production line, sourcing your materials, hiring, HR, all these things, you know, I don’t care if got a degree in business school, all that business school taught me was I need somebody for the insurance, I need somebody for HR, I need somebody for legal, I need somebody for management, you know, just your eyes are at least open to all of these challenges that you’re going to face. And there are so many great resources in Missoula and in Montana that I had no idea even existed until I started asking around. Arnie, I met you at the World Trade Center, that’s a resource for businesses that teach us how to export, right? Teach us currency, I learned so much from you guys! I went to your class like three times, right? The District Export Council where their job is to help connect manufacturers or like-businesses that you can share the wins and the trials, right? The Department of Commerce has a ton of grants if you’re trying to grow your business, if you want to take it international, if you’re trying to do trade shows, there are a lot of things. Now there are challenge is that until you need them you don’t really know they exist so you’re not just spending your money on marketing. But if you want to be an entrepreneur and you want these things, I mean MCDC, I don’t think they’re called that anymore, they helped me write my first business plan. I probably got a 25,000 dollar business plan for free because I went in and asked. Montana Manufacturing Extension Center awarded me an 18,000 dollar grant, they lined out my production facility, Kanban, LIEN Manufacturing, all my guys are now LIEN-certified and Kanban certified, I paid for some of it but a lot of it they do because they love business, they want to help you, and there’s a lot of help out there but you’ve got to know! You’ve got to ask!”
Arnie: “Tell me about the culture in your company. You’ve got 20 people working there. What’s the environment like?”
B.D.: “So for me, corporate culture is what made my business, it’s what sustained it and it’s maybe our biggest identity right now. So in the beginning, you’re barely making it, you’re putting a second mortgage on your house, your borrowing money from friend’s families, are you bankable yet? Probably not because you haven’t spun a profit. So you’ve got your team there but you can’t pay them what they’re worth. What keeps them? Love, belief in what you’re doing, belief that you’ll make it, belief that you’re changing the greater good or having some impact and love for you. So how do you do that? You’ve got to be loveable, right? And I always told them that if it happens for me then it happens for you. Now there’s a chance that we’re going down in flames, we’re going to step into the propeller, this is just entrepreneurship, but if we do then we’re going to share it and you’re going to be apart of it and we’re not making or selling something that harms people, the planet, the greater good; we’re making something, you know, whether we’re close to it and drinking our own kool-aid, you know, we want to make something that serves people, serves the community, serves the environment, and serves the greater good. And so keeping that out in front that we’re actually doing something that
matters really helped making it fun. I’m a very gregarious person, I love humans, I love to visit, and I love fun! I’m actually a fun hog. And so if my career path is hard for a really long time, it’s not a very good life choice for me and I’ll cry, I’m a huge baby you guys! I’m a huge wimp! It’s got to be kind of fun, and if stuff is hard then you have to find some fun in there, and one of the things is who you surround yourself with. Okay, so let’s say you’re going to go to Disneyland or some place really fun but you’re with a grump. They’re grumping about the lines, they’re grumping about the chow, they’re grumping about the ride, I don’t care how fun that place is, if you’re with a grump you’re having a bad time! One grump will suck all the fun, all the life, all of the joy out of the room, right? Now let’s say conversely that your buddy called, he’s a good buddy and he’s out of town and you have to go to his storage shed and you have to clean the stuff out of it because he can’t pay the rent, they’re going to lock it up and half of it has to go to the dump and half of it has to go somewhere else. That’s the worst thing that you can do as a friend, right? But there’s somebody that’s going to go with you and they’re going to help. And this person, they’re a hoot! They’re a tall character, they’re laughing, you know when the mannequin comes out this joker is dancing with it and he’s making you laugh and, you know, every time you find something he’s got a funny joke, you end up going to the dump he ends up pulling out two lawn chairs, he’s got beebe gun and you sit in the back and he opens a can of sixers and you’re laughing, it’s one of the funnest days of your life, right? It’s a terrible situation! Are there things at work that are less fun? Yes! And if you’re around a grump and it just piles on, you’re already doing something called work, it’s not called fun. You don’t get up in the morning and put your fun boots on, you put your work boots on, right? But their negative attitude can also suck the fun out of it. But let’s say we’re doing something hard but we make it into a game, we make it into a song, we’re got music, we’re going to take breaks, we’re high-fiving, we’re cheering each other on. When we error, we own it. When others error, we forgive freely, and that culture permeates our company. And you’ve been there, it is a fun place! We’ve got the ping pong table going, we’ve got the fish tanks going, the hot dog machine is going because since it is work, let’s make it as enjoyable of an experience that we can.”
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Scott: “Are you hiring?”
B.D.: “We’re always hiring!”
Scott: “How do people find out? How do they get in touch?”
Arnie: “Yeah, how do they get a hold of you?”
B.D.: “So our company name is SATIC, S-A-T-I-C, and our phone number is (406) 493-1861.”
Scott: “So the website is called www.saticusa.com. Thanks, B.D.! Arnie, I’ll see you next week!”
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