Steve Booher: Founder & CEO Always Full

Episode 763

On today’s episode, Kara welcomes Steve Booher, Founder and CEO of Always Full — the company revolutionizing pet care with a smart hydration system that keeps pets healthy and pet owners worry-free. Designed to be fully automated, the Always Full Pet Water Bowl uses advanced laser sensors and a triple-filtration process to automatically refill and clean your pet’s water — all while tracking hydration in real time through an easy-to-use mobile app.
Steve shares how he came up with the idea for Always Full, the product development journey, and how decades of entrepreneurial experience helped him turn a simple problem into a breakthrough solution. We dive into the importance of proactive hydration for pets, the challenges of building smart hardware, and what’s next as the company looks to expand in the fast-growing pet tech category. Whether you're a founder, a dog parent, or just love hearing how smart ideas come to life, this episode is packed with practical insights and inspiration. Don’t miss it!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up, that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Justwant to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Super excited to have our next guest here. Steve Booher is a founder, the founder and CEO of Always Full, the company behind the innovative smart hydration system for pets that’s making waves with pet parents everywhere. And Steve is no stranger to startups. He’s a serial entrepreneur who’s had five count it five successful exits, crazy, most recently selling his ag tech company smart. Apply to John Deere in 2024 now he’s turned his focus to solving a simple but universal challenge for pet owners, keeping water bowls clean, full and fresh effortlessly. I love it, so as a pet owner myself, with two Labradors who love to drink a lot of water and eat a lot of food too. It’s definitely a problem solver for that I’ve been able to add to my house. So Steve and his team have developed a set it and forget it system using laser sensors, triple filtration and a mobile app that tracks your pet’s hydration. I cannot wait to get more into this. I I love all that they’ve that I can see so far. But also just hearing about his experience being a serial entrepreneur, I begged Steve, you’ve got to come on and talk a lot more about your journey of BI lot a lot of fun. Okay, so let’s start with, I guess the brand Always Full first. What makes your smart pet water bowl different from everything else on the market?

Steve Booher 2:31
So I think, you know, there’s really two main features that that set the bowl apart. The first is connected to a water source, and that can be either a pump. Do you put on a, you know, like a five gallon jug or two gallon jug of water if you don’t want to plummet to your household? And the other unit we have is called wall unit that has, like a bread of filter that connects up like a refrigerator line, same line size, quarter inch outside diameter, and then the bowl will the laser will sense the water level has gone down approximately five millimeters, and then the bowl will refill automatically, using that laser to look at the water depth. And the water depth is in a separate chamber than where the pet drinks. So it’s not interrupted. It shielded. So Always Full. And that’s where the, you know, the name came from. And I was actually talking to an individual at a restaurant, at a bar, about the bowl. And he goes, I’d buy one in a minute. I’ve got three little robots from my three cats. He goes, Well, I’d want it to be clean all the time too. And I went back and I thought, you know, that’s, that’s a pretty that’s a pretty good feature. Having it fools one thing. But if it’s always dirty, What’s it matter? And sit down at night and I sketch on AutoCAD. I don’t sketch on paper. I sketch on AutoCAD. And kind of laid out. Here’s what I think it you know, how to keep it full and clean, and so that’s, that’s the main features, is that it will keep full, and then every hour it flushes like a toilet without a drain, it vortexes and pulls all the debris through the filtration, recycle, circulating That water so it’s not no drain required, which is important. And I, I use it every day with two labs, and I can go two to three months without touching the bowl. And I go longer than most, because I like to see what it does when it gets dirty, which is not good for the pets. But we they have two bowls. If they fill one’s too dirty, they go the other if they want. But that’s that’s the main feature, and I use it every day, and I wouldn’t change anything about it really works well, and you don’t have to worry about your pets ever having water.

Kara Goldin 4:55
So is this a product in addition to. To being able to use it inside. Can you use it outside? Is there any difference in and where you’re going to use it? It’s it’s

Steve Booher 5:07
not set up for freezing environments, and you can’t let rainwater overfill. So if it’s under a protected, you know shelter, you know where you live in California, you put it under a porch, no problem, won’t freeze. But, you know, we’ve considered doing a stainless version and add heaters, but that’s a whole new level of complexity that, you know, we don’t want to do at this point. Let’s focus on the main the main product, and the main user base, which is, you know, in pets for rent homes,

Speaker 3 5:40
I love how you’ve launched your company with just this one SKU and you’re a serial entrepreneur. So I I’m sure there’s some thought behind that. But when you think about Always Full I mean, so many times entrepreneurs think I’ve got to have a bunch of products in order to launch, but I love that you just had the one to launch with. I would imagine maybe there’s others in the future, but when you thought about it, did you think that I’m just going to go do this and see what happens? Or like, what was the thinking?

Steve Booher 6:21
So really, the story behind me engaging to get it completed, my wife would take care of the water jugs. We had the two big jugs that you turn upside down. They leak water everywhere, and she was in charge of well when she left, you know, it’s my responsibility, and it’s a bad day. As she comes home, the water’s not in the bowl. So that was a lot of it. But then she had broke her arm, and I had to start filling those jugs. And that’s when I said, you know, we’re going to have to get this completed. And the first step I did was, was doing a engineering evaluation and enough study to determine what we think electronics would cost to develop and use in production, and that’s kind of how we got going. And I didn’t know anything about the pedestrian industry. I didn’t know anything about spring and fruit trees and nut trees with smart apply. But you know an old advisor, he was 91 when he retired, he would always tell me, you know, business, 80% of Business is business. The 20% is understanding the customer and the product itself. And having used lasers in the past company and all electronics and really, really brutal environment, I think that was a big thing too, that, you know, I didn’t even think, well, we might need more products. Now I’ve been asked to do it for chickens, for pigs, for horses, and my response is the same, how many households in America have chickens, pigs or horses? How many have pets? Well, I know where I’m going to focus now we are making some options, you know, like an ear guard, so the pet has long ears. They won’t get wet. You know, I did develop a seven inch bowl, which actually took more engineering to flush than the the nine inch bowl. But, you know, we recognized pretty quick on that it was too large, the nine inch for small pets. So we did develop the smaller version, but still basically one skew, other than filters and stuff.

Kara Goldin 8:28
So you had sold an ag tech company, smart apply, developed and then scaled it and sold it to John Deere in 2024 you just talked about lasers. Can you talk a little bit about smart apply and kind of what that was, and why do you think it was so unique and successful?

Steve Booher 8:51
Yeah, be happy to and one note on that too, that was our third technology, and our first contract was with Kubota Tractor Corporation. It was a very high tech system that would handle ground maintenance and horticulture environments for steering automatically learned we weren’t going to make any money develop a golf course spray system. And it did okay. We made money. We sold several 100 units. But then the spray system for fruit trees and nut trees would take a laser, and it’s LiDAR, but it was scan those trees in real time, and it would get a point cloud count of the density. So if one tree had 100,000 points of density and the next tree was a smaller tree had 50,000 points, and we would divide it into 10 different zones, but we would spray that tree based on the density of the foliage in the zone that the LIDAR picked up, and on average, it would reduce chemicals by 50% for the grow. Were. And every time it sprayed, it would inventory a tree by height, within density per tree. So you could literally zoom in on the Google Map Overlay. We used touch a tree and tell you who sprayed it, the weather conditions, what time it was sprayed, how many cubic ounces, per liters per cubic meter. And if you wanted to see, you know what trees have not grown over the last year, or what trees are five foot tall or six foot tall, and show you. And it was really easy for the operator, because we did boundaries. So when you pulled in that boundary, it would know the spray rate for that particular spray cycle based on the tree and what the you know, the the manager would input the spray the rate to be so very high tech, we got up to 450 deer locations around the world with John Deere, and we integrated that digital data into their their row crop system called Operation Center, and we were the first company Ever to take that digital tree data and put it into a John Deere digital system. And I remember my software engineers were like, why are we doing this? I said, Trust me, the CEO said it’s all about the data and and we did it, and that’s what got us to so many different locations around the world. And then I announced that I was going to do that with Case New Holland next, and that’s what made John Deere real interested in coming in and acquiring us before that happened.

Kara Goldin 11:31
So interesting. So hardware is notoriously hard. You’ve you’ve been able to do companies around it over and over again. When you think about Always Full, what were the most challenging parts of bringing this product to life? I think maybe some people think, oh, because it’s smaller. You touched on this a little bit with the smaller bowl size. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be easier.

Steve Booher 12:01
One thing, one company I own, we did engineering services. We had 160 people doing design engineering work. And so we always, it was always a project. No matter what customer it was, it’d be a project. Okay? We got a project from Ford. Well, we got to get our team that’s going to, you know, form and complete the project. So when I had the idea of the water bowl was just a project to me. We need software. We need, you know, electrical guys, and we need mechanical and luckily, being in the industry, you know, a long time, you know, I know the people to go to for the electrical I know who to go to for the design. And it was actually my professor from college that did all the design work on this bull, because I’d been in contact with him for 40 years now, and people find that kind of amazing. But I knew he was a good designer because he had worked me, like all professors, mostly worked somewhere during the summer, you know, off hours. So he had a lot of experience. And what really helped me, too was I reviewed every single part to every detail, using viewers of solid models so I could review and evaluate. And I think that really helped too. But my chief engineer, he’s been with me. This is the fourth company he’s been with me, and he still is under contract with John Deere, and he’s able to help me on the side because of its non competing operations. Gal, she’s part time. She’ll be coming over full time by the end of the year. So it’s like I’m getting my old team back, my old controllers back now and and that helps, you know, you hear about get the right people on the bus. Well, I mean, we work with these people for 30 years or 20 years. If I have an email come in and my name’s not on the top, I don’t even read them. I just don’t care, because I know that the people can take care of it, who respond. And I think that was a lot of the reason why we’re able to do it quickly and develop I think it’s a rock solid design.

Kara Goldin 14:07
Yeah, you guys have done a great job. So what is the hardest part that you’ve had to deal with in explaining to people about hydration? Do you think people under consumers. I should say, Do they understand that? I mean, before you were selling to, you know the B to B sale, versus now you’re doing B to C, you’re doing you’re doing some, yeah, you’re dealing with, I’m sure buyers, or will be dealing with buyers for Always Full. But in addition, you’re dealing with the individual consumer. How do you educate people around the importance of hydration and what the bowl is going to look like if they don’t change the water? I mean, yeah, all that.

Steve Booher 14:56
And I will say, you know, AG, tech is. Sounds sexy, you know, while you’re an ag tech, well, farmers don’t like to change. And even though we had dealers, we were the ones the company level that had to present to the farmer, and the dealer would be standing there, but he didn’t know the system like we did. So yeah, we and they’re, they’re tough cookies to crack. I will say that a lot tougher than I thought. But you know, my wife is a pet lover. I’ve been remarried, and we kid about the questionnaire. It should have been on the questionnaire, is a pet, family, or is it a pet? Well, it was always a pet to me. I didn’t worry about it. And if it ran out of water and go to the lake or find a puddle. So, so she’s really helped me to understand the importance of, you know, their family, and that’s going to be what sells it. In her studies on, you know, it could hurt if they’re not drinking water. It could be kidney problems, you know. And in my problem that has always been, even with my kids growing up, their jobs of feed more to the dog, well, is that a 50% success rate of that happening every day, probably on a good day. So you know, just knowing that you don’t have to worry about the pet not having water is a big deal and they can go without food, but it can’t go without water very long. So, yeah, we try to communicate that. I think the atmosphere of the pet lovers know that, you know. So I think the hurdle of educating them on the importance of hydration is pretty minimal because they know that it’s important for their their pet to have a good water source.

Kara Goldin 16:44
So the Always Full product has an app attached to it. Can you explain how that works for the consumer and why it’s important?

Steve Booher 16:56
Sure, so. So the app, I think we had 12 notifications that you could you could, you could set, you can set the max water per day. And I don’t know why you would want it to not have water other than a max per day. Will also tell the system, okay, is there something wrong? I’m going to stop, and you can hit reset, and it overrides. You can set a minimum water per day. So for some reason it’s not drinking, it can notify. The bowl has accelerometer, so if it tilts at all, it’ll notify. If it, if it self corrects, it’ll notify. So just a lot of things that, you know, I don’t think people really think about until they’re like, Huh? I didn’t think about, you know, if, if the if the bowl tipped, you know, is it going to quit working or not? And I’d really think there’s probably more tech in this bowl than there was in the laser guided spray system. It’s a high tech unit, and the app monitors that and saves that in a database. We’re able to go on the portal where that data is saved, and, you know, and you don’t have to use the app to use the bowl, and that was one of my focus groups. Said, I hate apps. I don’t want people to know what my bulls doing. I want I don’t want anybody to know anything, but you don’t have to. It’s got error codes and colors that the LED will show but, but the app makes it easy just to check to make sure the pets are drinking that they’re not, you can get notified. And you know, like every app, it’s new. You get 100 people, 200 300 using it. You get suggestions and changes, and you find errors you didn’t find, and we’re working through those. But you know, for the most part, most people are pretty patient. You know, part of that’s because the bull works so well. You know, it’s not like, you know, the app runs the bull, the bull runs itself and notifies the app,

Kara Goldin 18:54
yeah, definitely. And it’s, and you guys have done a great job in building this out. So what have you learned about consumer behavior and habits? I guess you know because you’re you’re really like one to one with consumers with this. So what have you learned?

Steve Booher 19:15
I want to say this correct, politically correct, or whatever you call them, but some people are clueless, you know. And, and, and I will say about the Ag tech farmers are smart, and they know their crops. They know their crops better than me, you know. And I quick story. First system we sold was orange grower. He looked at me, goes, What the hell you know about growing oranges in Florida? You’re from Indiana. I looked at him and I said, I know absolutely nothing about oranges, but I know I know how our system works, but it’s tough sometimes to deal with people that that have issues setting that up be my own daughter called said, That doesn’t work. Do. Didn’t read the instructions, and she’s, you know, and she was at a friend’s house setting one up, but, but I guess I probably set it up for in her past, but she didn’t read the instructions, and I made the instructions. So you just look at the pictures and know what to do. But that’s a challenge, you know, when you get and all our tech support initially, it’s, it’s answered by AI. We monitor the AI, we make it smarter each time. And I actually took a class at MIT on AI because I wanted AI to drive the support, because we can’t be everywhere in the world, and it really makes it easier to get the support we need when a person has issues.

Kara Goldin 20:40
That’s so interesting. So you’re running all of the consumer, the customer service through

Steve Booher 20:46
AI now, yeah, every anything we get on any platform comes to one platform. The answer is generated by AI. We control the document that gives the answers. And, you know, it’s kind of funny, because I have a test site, and I can say, you know, what’s the bull dimensions? Well, if you don’t have a format right in that document, it will give you all the information. So, you know, it’s little things like that. And we want to make sure that when it does answer, it’s not some, you know, make sure the power is plugged in and a light screen. Yeah, usually it’s a little more technical than that, so it really helps lower the, you know, the direct interaction with people

Kara Goldin 21:28
I love that you mentioned, AI, I think that it’s something that you know many are talking about. Many don’t know what to do with it. Many are like, it’s dangerous, not going to have anything to do with my company, but you seem like you’re figuring out how to embrace it. Where has AI outside of customer service really helped you to grow the company?

Steve Booher 21:52
So I wouldn’t say help grow yet, but, but we are looking at some some new enhancements coming up, and I am not electro at all. I’ve been always in mechanical engineering, but you can get detailed questions, and then drill down even farther, and all of a sudden you’re like, Okay, I know how we can do this. It’s not as difficult as I thought, because AI outlined it all. And so that’s been a big plus. We haven’t really implemented AI in the sales process yet, and that’s something that I’m getting ready to start working on. You know, we have data on how many visitors to the site every month and all that and click rates, but I think we can get AI to make sure that our message is clear that we can say, Okay, now we employ improve the the number of people that went to the shopping cart by 5% because we use AI to help drive them there, versus just hoping they go there. So,

Kara Goldin 22:53
yeah, definitely, definitely, when you think about innovation and maybe bringing in additional products. Is that something that you believe as a leader you have to do? Can you build a company sustainably with just one product? Or do you think you do you think the market will force you, I guess, to launch other products?

Steve Booher 23:20
I think the market will push us to do more products. And you know, one thing we have designed, we just haven’t released tooling, but it’s a food bowl that matches the water bowl. So, you know, I’m particular if they’re both laying there together, I want them both to look about the same. And so we’ve developed that. We’ve got a map that you can put down. So if you know, the pet drinks, we got to stand to elevate it, yeah. So a lot of accessories, I would say we had talked about, you know, AI type feeder system. You know, I just don’t want to deviate from the core focus. We have talked with companies that have other products that we might, at some point, license and integrate. But, you know, right now, there’s one focus that’s this, let’s do the very best job we can on the water bowl, make sure people are happy and it works well. And, you know, we are kicking off Europe and the UK. And, you know, that’s a whole new set of issues. So, but, but it’s just going to be Amazon originally. So it’s initially, so it’s pretty straightforward in my mind. But, you know, it’s back to the AI. There’s no way we could sell a bowl in Italy unless AI could say, I’ll translate it in any language you want. You know? So that’s definitely a good example of using AI. But not sure about, you know, I mentioned chickens and and pigs and horses, you know? I It’s hard enough to learn. Turn Some dogs are really sloppy and make a big mess. And how do you protect the system from failing in that case? Well, I don’t know anything about how horses drink and what they do, you know. And you know, it’s kind of back to, I’m going to focus on the pet owner and just water initially. Then maybe down the road, we’ll, we’ll expand that, and there might be acquisitions. You know, I’m not afraid of doing acquisitions. If that helps you to accelerate the growth, if we can get a brand that’s well known,

Kara Goldin 25:29
yeah, definitely, that could be really interesting. I would imagine that making the app public too, on Tiktok and and watching, being able to watch the different pets and how they consume anyway, so you never know, right? That could, that could be there. Could be something there as well, but you’ve bootstrapped and built multiple times. What would you say to founders out there when you’re looking at companies and ideas. Obviously you have to have a problem that needs to be solved to when you’re creating products as you have. But when you look at, you know, the financials, the all these components of a company, what, what’s kind of the big advice that you give to people, you

Steve Booher 26:21
know, the biggest is, you know, cash is king. And I used to think in my early career that meant, oh, you love money. No, you don’t love money. If you run out of cash, or a source of cash, like financing, mean, you go out of business, and you know, and you know. And I’d say, probably every company I’ve had, it’s when you’re you’re younger, and you don’t have many resources, meaning money, you know, you you kind of cash flow it as you go and you go slower, you bring more friends in, but as you have more resources, you know, it’s easier to scale up faster. Definitely easier, you know. You know, I spent money on the tooling and getting the initial orders and all the prototypes. And, you know, it took a lot of cash, but, you know, going slow, it would just extend that timeframe. And I’m big on, you know, we got an opportunity to get a window here. We’ve got to go hard and fast as we can, because what two years from now? You know, there’s going to be a competitor a year from now. And you know, we have filed patents in Asia and US and Europe, but you know, when they’re issued, they know exactly how to get around it. You know, right now they’re pending, which helps us, because they don’t know what’s going to get through and not get through. But you know, speed is key on this, I think, but I tell people to, you know, if you believe in something, it’s easy, why call beat a dead horse? And one of my engineering companies, I franchised everybody. I thought, you’re crazy, and we charge $50,000 for a person that took her on retirement, is what we’re looking for, like VP of engineering, you know, say, Alice and transmission, for example, would buy a franchise because they could get in and that and, you know, have systems and stuff in place. And I remember one of the first things my advisor said is, you know, we charge a 5% royalty. He goes 5% of zero will always be zero, meaning these guys don’t sell very much stuff, and if they don’t sell, you’re not collecting revenue. But it took a lot of support. So, you know, after probably half a million dollars, I pulled the plug on that. And you know, that’s painful, but, you know, you I’m like, it’s just not going to make money. Now, it’s funny that that couldn’t survive, because there’s still some franchisees still doing engineering work under the same name that I had but at the time. But, you know, good advisors. You know, there’s places like score, they’re retired execs, that’ll give you free advice. Yeah, I always recommend get people that are smart to help guide you. And I, you know, and also don’t give away the farm. You know, I give 1% options, 2% options to keep people. But, you know, I always say when I give a speech, it seems like when you start a business, you always want to go find a friend and bring them in. Well, if it’s your idea, why are you giving them half the business for, you know, or 30% or whatever? And I say too that have a Buy Sell agreement if you bring a partner in and and it’s painful to negotiate, but I say, You know what, if you can’t negotiate a buy sell when you’re friends, wait till the business goes really good or does really bad, and then it’s too late to get a buy sell at that point. I mean, then you’re fighting your way out of it. So, so just a few key things that you know, and. Last company, we had a lot of venture capitalist investors. It sucked a lot of cash for a long time. I mean, quarter million, 300,000 a month, and then it’s just like, Oh, my land. And I wasn’t afraid to turn down some big deals, and we needed the money, and I thought was going to die on the vine because we were running out of money, and this group out of Chicago offered two and a half or 3 million, and we needed it so bad, but the terms weren’t good, and I said, I am not going to get stuck with a bad term. And that’s tough to do. I mean, it’s it’s tough, but you know that really helped us buy respect from other companies that wanting to put money in, because not many people will turn money down when when you get offered.

Kara Goldin 30:48
Yeah, definitely. Well, Steve, such great thoughts and advice, and your story is such a great reminder that real innovation could just start in your house and maybe even somebody, some family member, has been thinking about this, and you’ve got this idea and interest in trying to solve this problem for your pets, too, as you have it’s very, very cool. And for everyone listening head to Always Full.com to learn more about the smart hydration system for pets and definitely purchase it. And thank you so much. Steve, I really enjoyed this conversation. Absolutely appreciate it, Kara. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit, and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now.

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