Interview of Annie Lu, CEO and Co-founder of H2Ok Innovations

Episode Transcript:

Sharon Lee
Welcome to the Inpowered Women’s Podcast, where we tell the stories of unstoppable female leaders who excel, uplift and secure a clearer path for female leaders in the future. And I’m your host, Sharon Lee. Welcome to the Inpowered Women podcast. This is Sharon Lee. I am with Pinnacle Strategic Advisors and this podcast is all about sharing insights, great stories from female business leaders from all over. We all have great stories to tell as we have gotten scrapes and bruises along the way. But when it comes down to it, the success stories win out. So I’m really excited about that. And today I am interviewing Annie Lu. She is the co-founder and CEO of H2Ok Innovations. Hi Annie, how are you? Hi, Sharon. Good. How are you? I am great, thank you so much for coming today. Annie and I met a few weeks back. We’re working on a pilot project with a major beverage company here in the southeast, and as I was talking with her sales team and her brother co-founder, they mentioned Annie being the CEO.

Sharon Lee
And I thought, oh my gosh, I have got to talk to Annie and bring her on this podcast and let everyone hear this fantastic story. So glad that you’re here. You have an interesting background because you grew up in the world of manufacturing. I know that that influenced your career path. So let’s just talk a little bit about you being from that area.

Annie Lu
As you mentioned earlier, my co-founder David is also my older brother, so he’s my CTO, my co-founder, my older brother, and we actually come from a generational manufacturing background, grew up with a lot of exposure, seeing a lot of the shop floor, large manufacturing plants, and it’s always been in our blood and a huge passion of ours to work back to this industry. Absolutely. We did grow up in this space. Fast forward over a decade later or have technical backgrounds. And we’re passionate especially, you know, when Covid happened, seeing a lot of the opportunity and also challenges facing this industry that, in my opinion, is one of the most foundational sectors of society, right? Manufacturing and industrials make everything we eat, we use, we wear. Everything needs to be made. Seeing a lot of the opportunities for improvement and disruption in this industry really galvanized us to start innovating in this industry. Coming from our deep passion, this space, our background, growing up in this space and this opportunity and this time right now, it was a no brainer for us to start in this pushing this industry forward and paying it forward.

Sharon Lee
Why water? Why did you focus on water?

Annie Lu
We’re called H2Ok Innovations. You see first started in water. Now we work in industrial liquids and fluids as a whole. The reason we really focus on this space is because we saw a particular white space in this area. In manufacturing there’s a lot of IoT data technologies in other aspects of manufacturing, such as predictive maintenance or machine health, for instance. But liquids and fluids are really at the heart of our manufacturing process across a wide range of industries and sectors. Whether it is water, for example, used to clean equipment, or maybe you’re changing different products that you’re making in the line. You need to use water and liquids and chemicals to clean out your equipment. For instance, it’s water used in semiconductor manufacturing for wafer cleaning or ultrapure water use as an ingredient in pharmaceuticals, for instance, or even making paints, for example, or using dyes to dye textiles. It’s really used everywhere. The way that these critical fluid and liquid systems are really at the heart of our operations.

Annie Lu
Again, manufacturing plants across a wide range of industries are currently operated and oftentimes relying on manual grab sampling. So having people and operators go out to the field and taking samples off lines and then running tests on those samples. But what it really means is that the way that we’re running these critical systems are oftentimes done in a static and a time-based way, a prescriptive way. We said a certain formulation or a recipe or a time, and we always run these systems the same way. And that leads to a lot of inefficiencies. Also lost revenue on the table as well. And excessive resource usage, excessive capacity or lost capacity, for example, there was a particular white space in this industry. There’s a lack of data, a lack of useful real time data, a lack of actual decisions being made off the data that was being unlocked. It was very also critical to your production process. That really was what drove us to go particularly into industrial liquids and fluids as a focus area for us, because it’s really important.

Sharon Lee
There’s a lot of opportunity. There’s a particular pain in the industry right now, and I know when we were first talking this term, internet of Things, this IoT, you guys were throwing around the IoT word and I was like, whoa, slow down, explain what that means and how that is a part of your system.

Annie Lu
IoT stands for Internet of Things as sharing. You just mentioned in layman’s terms what that really actually translates to is technically connected devices or connected sensors. It basically means that you have a sensor that’s generating data, and that data is being sent somewhere. For us, IoT looks like not only our own proprietary sensors that we deploy in factory lines that are generating and unlocking new data, and that data is sent to our edge gateway. Like a mini computer sitting on the shop floor, and our machine learning models that live in the edge gateway. That data is being sent to these machine learning models. We’re integrating with the factory system, and we pull in greater sensor data. So other sensors or other machines, other data generation devices in the facility, that data is sent to our edge gateway. That’s really where IoT comes into the picture. It’s how do we unlock previously untapped data, how do we access existing data, and how do we send that somewhere? And why we say a IoT platform is because that’s where I comes in.

Annie Lu
We have the machine learning actually process that data, read it, and then output an authorization or an analytic or an insight. For example, our machine learning that’s in that edge gateway is basically reading all of its data, analyzing it, and outputting back end analysis to back to the factory system. Hey, this is the most optimized action to take right now based on the performance of your system. And so it’s running a full authorization loop based on the performance and the efficacy and the quality of the process that you’re running itself.

Sharon Lee
And if I am going totally on the layman’s side of things, I would say, let’s see your solution. It helps the facility save water. And that translates to energy saving, less downtime. And all that leads to bottom line, right? I know all of those words. I can understand all of that. But I guess that puts it into a nutshell, right?

Annie Lu
Also improving quality as well, efficiency and reducing waste manufacturing. Why we’re so passionate about it is because it’s one of the most foundational sectors of society. It also is one of the biggest users of our global natural resources. And time and time again, one of the most overlooked, underappreciated industries is traditional technology. We are really excited to be in this space because not only are we helping our partners through technology be able to help them meet their sustainability goals and their sustainability targets. So making social impact as well as driving efficiency, ultimately improving the bottom line, generating financial ROI as well, that’s hyper important. Our thesis is sustainability and business sense never is mutually exclusive. And unfortunately, that’s oftentimes the case of what people see when they think of clean tech or sustainability, sustainability and bottom line or top line or investment. They don’t make sense. But because we’re saving resources, using less time, using less operating costs were also improving our bottom line. Because we’re reducing waste, we’re able to output more yield because now you’re losing less.

Annie Lu
You’re able to sell that as finished product and be more efficient. They go hand-in-hand together. That really is our perspective of things that make sense.

Sharon Lee
I’m going to change is a subject just slightly. It’s really impressive that H2Ok Innovations has garnered interest from global companies. How did that come about?

Annie Lu
It really started with this hunger of ours to uncover unobvious problems in the industry and create solutions to solve these unobvious problems, these problems that have been traditionally overlooked by other players in the space or by traditional solutions in this space. But real pains of real individuals. Really, how we got started was by asking open ended questions what are your biggest costs? What keeps you up at night, what are your biggest pain points, and then developing solutions to address those problems? It was really through a problem led discovery process. That is a reason why this has resonated with major best in class manufacturers dominating the industrial space. Multinational companies like Unilever, for example, one of the world’s largest beverage companies globally, to companies like Ball Corporation, Ecolab, Cargill, for instance, Constellation Brands and beyond is this relentless hunger of uncovering real problems and developing solutions that actually solve problems, that hunger, that empathy of how do you actually uncover those problems is something we approach every single conversation with, no matter if we’re talking to an executive of a fortune 200 company to a site operator on the shop floor, we come in every single conversation with respect, with empathy, and with an open mind of really uncovering true problems that exist in this space.

Sharon Lee
Tell me how long H2Ok has been in business, and let’s talk through some of the challenges that you’ve experienced along the way.

Annie Lu
We’ve been around for three years. Running a startup is never easy. I talk a little bit about customer obsession. In my last point, there were hyper customer obsessed. Customer obsession is not easy. That has always been a challenge, especially as a startup in manufacturing and in clean tech, in sustainability, in supply chain. How we have overcome or work through these challenges along the way is by finding truly.

Sharon Lee
Great partners within these corporate enterprises, multinational companies who share that visionary mindset with us, finding greatly collaborative partners for us to uncover unobvious problems and then develop solutions that address these problems. Coming in with that sense of empathy really allows us to overcome a lot of the traditional blockers in the way, and I think that’s really important in terms of how we continue engaging future partners, as well as our current existing enterprises that we’re really excited to work with and how we will be continuing from here on as well. It’s a deep core value of ours.

Annie Lu
As we have talked along the way. We have talked about this whole concept of Industry 4.0. Can you talk about what that really means?

Sharon Lee
Industry 4.0 is a term that is basically the fourth industrial revolution. And what the fourth Industrial Revolution means is, hey, you have these digital technologies. It’s going to transform the industry in how we operate all of our products, goods that we use every single day, clothes that we wear, the food that we eat, the medicine that we take, buildings that we build, the data centers that are running are powering our world’s internet. It’s about technology transforming the way that we make things in the way like products get from raw materials to our hands. That’s really a main vision of ours. How do we unlock previously untapped data and now drive data driven decisions off this new information for customers and partners that really comprise the most foundational sectors of society to love and to gain a competitive advantage in the way they operate, both being more sustainable and also more efficient. That’s our take of Industry 4.0. How do we use digital technologies but make it make sense? How do we take digital technologies but make IT solutions focused to transform the way that we operate, transform the way that we make things from a traditional, time based way I mentioned earlier to this precision automation way.

Sharon Lee
And so we’re really excited about Industry 4.0 and especially over the past few years. It’s really picked up a lot of momentum. We’re excited to be at the forefront pioneering that as well.

Annie Lu
I’ve got a manufacturing background and I start hearing all the conversation about all of the technology, and I know that that manufacturing mindset starts thinking about security. When you start thinking about all of that in your solution, where information is stored. And if you have found that to be a concern from the manufacturing community.

Sharon Lee
Security is one of the most important factors to think about. You see this growth in AI like you see this growth of digital technologies. Security goes hand in hand with all of these growth technologies as well. For us, it’s something we take incredibly seriously in our technology, our innovations, the optimization, the real time controls that machine learning. Doing that full closed loop optimization on the shop floor automatically is completely on premise. So it’s completely sitting in living in the factory. That’s really important to recognize, because that significantly reduces a lot of the security concerns because it stays within the factory. The real time optimization, the algorithms that conduct the real time optimization, where we see this coupling on the factory to the cloud is incense, which is our factory analytics software, and that is cloud based. The data that is stored in the cloud is more for analytics, for insights and for trending, for example, to create a visual trace of quality, for instance, to support operations, the severity of what’s stored in the cloud.

Sharon Lee
It’s much as important than what is conducted in the factory, which is that real time optimization controls. We have best in class security practices that we implement inside our product development. We’ve deployed in some of the world’s most critical infrastructure is security environments. For example, data centers, for instance, are literally powering the world’s internet. It’s something that we have a key strength in, in terms of our engineering team. It’s something that is very important to think about, and that’s something that we’ve fundamentally baked in into our product development. And our engineering is security as well.

Annie Lu
You may kill me for making you bring up this example, but breaking this down to having someone really understand that you used the example of washing dishes, go through that example so that for people like me that need something visual to help them understand that, I think that that might help.

Sharon Lee
One of our flagship use cases with our partners is cleaning optimization. In any industry where quality is important, think food and beverage, for example, think pharmaceuticals. Any industry that is basically making batches, you change different flavors or different types of products or different colors of paint. For example, you will need to clean equipment for safety and quality reasons because if you’re changing products that you’re making in a line, of course you’ll have to clean that out as well. In the middle, cleaning is one of our flagship use cases, and how cleaning is done today is, I mentioned earlier a timer based methodology, and so you can kind of think of it like the analogy of washing your dishes, how cleaning processes in these large industrial manufacturing plants are run is imagine you’re washing a plate in the sink. You set a time saying, I’m going to wash this plate. For five minutes and I will just wash this plate for five minutes all the time. Every single plate I wash for five minutes, and maybe your plate is pretty clean.

Sharon Lee
Coming in two minutes in your plate is already darkening, but you still wash it for five minutes just because you said that way. Or maybe the plate is really dirty. You need to watch for six minutes, but because you set for five minutes, you’re just going to wash for five minutes. And even if it’s dirty, you’ll still put it on the drying rack. That’s why you see a lot of inefficiencies that exist, because anytime you’re studying cleaning or for example, washing plates, you can’t be using those plates. You can’t be using those dishes, right? You can’t be using your pots and pans. You can’t be using your equipment to produce your actual product. There’s a significant over washing that exists where you’re done washing that plate in one minute, but you will still wash it for five minutes as you set a time. Or you also have risks of under washing and quality deviations if you didn’t clean enough. What we do at a showcase is we unlock real time visibility into hey, no, this plate is clean.

Sharon Lee
When you’re washing, you can look down. For example, you could see, hey, my plate is clean. I can now put on the drying rack instead of keeping washing it or like, hey, it’s still dirty. I need to scrub this area a little bit more essence. What we’re doing with the large factory, it’s being able to see a real time. Are we done cleaning or not? And if we’re done cleaning, we can move on. If we’re still dirty, we automatically extend the clean.

Annie Lu
Well, I think that does help give that visual, because when you talk about this whole process, I mean, it sounds like it’s complicated, but when it comes down to it and you just break it down, you do have an ease of implementation. And it is not a complicated process. It’s just complicated, maybe to understand, to kind of break through that.

Sharon Lee
Right. We have a guide where really to implement the actual technology. It takes four steps in six weeks, very easy to implement. You install it. You know, we have a training period where we’re building models and then there’s a validation period. And then you can just turn on and leave and forget in the aspect of leaving and forgetting is really important because in the industry, this concept of closing the loop that flows loop is very challenging to achieve right now, because a lot of optimization done in factories, in manufacturing is still required to have an operator, someone on the site still, if meant that action and makes it often really challenging to actually adopt authorization or make real improvements because it just takes so much work. Manual work. What we’re doing in factories is pioneering closed loop precision automation. So you leave and forget, and it’s always running in the most optimized way due to our sensors reading, performance, efficacy, quality, the ML, combining it with greater factory operational data, the analysis and the outputs, it’s always running in the most optimized way automatically.

Annie Lu
That helps a lot. Backtrack in the conversation just a little bit. Because I was talking with your brother David, he mentioned that you have the team culture of customer obsessed. You mentioned that earlier. What made that get started? So tell me a little bit how that originated.

Sharon Lee
It really started from one of our customers. We were working with one of the largest tech companies, or one of the top tech companies in their hyperscale data centers. They came to us and actually said, thank you for customer obsession. You have these snippets of experiences along the way, founding a company and then really building a leading company of these aha moments. And I think that was certainly an aha moment for us. It was really a customer telling us like, thank you for customer obsession. We took that as a core value of ours. It’s one of our core values of this customer obsession. We do anything it takes to drive value for our customers and deliver for our customers. That’s great to say, but the reality of that is customer obsession isn’t easy, and that’s why it’s not everywhere. I think that’s something that is really important and also a new core value bars. I envision.

Annie Lu
You also think about technology being at odds with that, because a lot of these technology solutions, this is the solution and you need to adopt it. But what I have experienced with your company has been more of this inquisitive. It’s not just what I want you to do, it is how can I help you get better? And the spirit from your whole team has had this culture of that. So, you know, you all are definitely doing something right from that standpoint, having that being noticed by that outside person. I think that there’s just the spirit and the culture of the company is starting off right. And it will stay on that trajectory, because that’s just the spirit of the culture that you’re within. So that is fantastic. But let me ask you this. You’ve had a lot of growth as a startup, and I know that can be challenging. Tell me what strategies or approaches that you have found most effective when you’re scaling or you’re managing the business itself.

Sharon Lee
Really making sure that you’re prepared is something that is very important, and you have the infrastructure and that you’ve built a machine. And when I say a machine I refer to as you have structure, you have a process as founders and as leaders in your organization. Oftentimes you spend so much focus operating in the actual company during day to day operational work. But you’re working in the company, but you’re. Also working on the company. I think that aspect of working on the company is really important to make sure that you’re able to properly grow and have the structures to be able to grow. We have focused on the innovations and will continue to do so. It’s creating the proper infrastructure and processes to do that. Secondly, what’s really important is creating an environment where people feel empowered. Your teammates feel empowered as leaders in this organization. We have been here the longest out of everyone in our team, and so David and I have seen everyone from when they first joined the company to where they are today. First of all, I’m so privileged to be working with such a brilliant team.

Sharon Lee
It’s never a one person effort. It’s really important to have such a great, creative, brilliant, dedicated, hungry, high energy team that is able to create creative solutions to solve problems that have been plaguing this industry for decades. There’s that aspect of building a really strong team, and I think that’s definitely something we certainly have a showing innovation. But secondly, not creating an environment where people feel empowered. The longest that we’ve seen, everyone from where they first started to where they are now. The difference between day one to where we are today is so phenomenal to see, and people really grow so much in this organization and being part of this team, the aspect of, again, empowerment. So people really tap into their true potential, but also with this aspect within our team where this value of never complacent, we’re always pushing to be better. These are different aspects that are so important when you’re growing that you have to conquer and this never complacency and this infrastructure to actually do this as well, and the empowerment to be in this space in an organization where you can be challenged to solve this problem, built this technology, push out this new feature, for example, support this customer, for instance, when we come in, like having that confidence in our teammates, they’re able to also have confidence in themselves.

Sharon Lee
It’s truly phenomenal. Let’s just see where they start to where they are today.

Annie Lu
Yeah talking about empowering your team. So let’s talk about the empowered women part of your team. Female CEO I mean, you were in a very male dominated tech sustainability manufacturing I mean the layers just continue. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the unique challenges that you’ve had to overcome just in your role.

Sharon Lee
It’s not a secret that we come from a very different background than almost everyone in our industry. That looks like the folks on our team, for example, but especially David and I and especially me as a leader in this organization, as a female, as a person of color, as a younger person as well. In 99.9% of times, I am the only person who looks like me in the room. I remember this experience back in 2021, where I had one of my mentors tell me, this is when I was raised in my first fundraising round, that any like venture capital, is predominantly a male dominated industry and they favor male founders. And so you can either change yourself and present yourself in a more masculine way to appeal to investors, or appease investors or the people you have to change yourself for the people you don’t even want your team. Anyways, I really took that advice to heart and we had an incredibly successful fundraising round. We also had an incredibly successful next fundraising round. We have this aspect of authenticity and creativity and empowerment in our team that yes, we are different.

Sharon Lee
We come in with an immense amount of empathy and humility in every single conversation we have with any person, whether that is a customer, a investor, naysayer, or even because we care about people’s lives and true experiences, and we care about people’s real problems, and we care about people’s real headaches and what keeps them up at night. We also come in with this unique perspective of taking a new approach to solving problems that have been plaguing this industry for decades. What makes this different is an asset, and what allows us to continue innovating and being at the forefront of this industry. This aspect of authenticity is extremely important to not only me as an individual, as a CEO, but also to our entire team as a whole. If I were to give out any advice to any other woman founders is embrace who you are and what makes you different because it’s an asset, what you bring to the table. There’s no shortage of challenges that come with it, but also an immense amount of opportunity as well.

Annie Lu
Well, that segways to my next question about mentorship. You gave some good advice there. Everything about your authenticity and your way that you’re going about this screams that you should mentor females or entrepreneurs that are coming in. So tell me if that is a part of your passion.

Sharon Lee
I wouldn’t be where I am today doing the work that I do. We’re not for a very close knit. I can count on just my fingers of some incredible mentors who have really changed the game in supporting me along the way, and have been absolutely instrumental to my journey as both an individual, as a founder, and also to this company overall as well. I’m personally incredibly grateful for the mentorship and the support I’ve gotten from these individuals that have changed my life. It is. Absolutely so powerful of a tool. Mentorship is to any small change to you can be a massive career impacting advice or career impacting help. Something small that you think is small might have changed someone’s life. That’s something that is really important to you. I’m a mentor for an organization called Strong Women Strong Girls in Boston, where I mentor college women and college women, mentor, intern, mentor, elementary school girls in Boston. So it’s this chain of mentorship from professional women to college women to then elementary school students. I continue to mentor different aspiring women founders.

Sharon Lee
For example, I open doors and make connections for women founders of color looking to start their own companies. Whether it’s in my industry or not, it’s like, how can I really pay it forward and make the impact that these people have made in my life for someone else? And so you’re continuing to help other people, and collectively we can continue, like pushing the needle forward. Mentorship is so incredibly powerful, and it’s something that I’m personally really passionate about.

Annie Lu
I was going to ask about philanthropic efforts. Does that go hand in hand with that organization, or do you have other philanthropic endeavors that you’re involved in?

Sharon Lee
We’re part of an innovation community called Greentown Labs. It is the top innovation community in North America, Inc retail labs. I constantly strive to mentor and support other women founders as well. Unfortunately, there are a very small amount of women founders in this space. I think it’s really important to support each other. One of my personal passions is women’s empowerment. I support this organization called the Girl Campaign, which really is a for Girls by Girls organization that is the United Way Foundation, supporting girls across the world and different regions in different causes from education, for example, access education all the way to reproductive rights, for example, or beyond. It’s a personal passion of mine. In addition to strong and strong girls, anything I can do to be able to support other women in need, it’s something that I really strive to do personally.

Annie Lu
Shifting gears yet again, this is kind of a softball question, but I’ve got to throw it out there. So sustainability is a central theme for the organization for issue. Okay. So what role, in your opinion should businesses play in addressing environmental challenges and how can technology help softball. Right. Or maybe not, I don’t know.

Sharon Lee
In the face of our global climate crisis, we all have a role to play, whether that is individually, as consumers to businesses, we all can make our own impact into address the global climate crisis. I think an issue, a reason that there’s been unfortunately, not as much movement in this space and sustainability globally as we hope to is because when we think of sustainability, we oftentimes think of governments, right? Like, oh, we rely on governmental leaders to be able to do this. But really the public sector, the private sector go hand in hand in terms of the ability to make impact. And oftentimes the private sector has more immediate ability to make impact. Now, it’s a mistake that sustainability is oftentimes thought of something that doesn’t make this a sense. And I think it doesn’t have to come all that way. If you even look at basic physics, matter is always conserved, energy is always conserved. And what that means is that any waste that’s created, any loss energy, any lost matter is directly impacting your top and bottom line because you wasted this product and now you didn’t sell this as real product and now you create waste or hey, we overuse energy.

Sharon Lee
Now we lost out in our output because energy is always conserved matters always conserved sustainability which is using less resources, creating less waste. Wasting less energy should directly translate to top line and bottom line. That’s something that really is our perspective at H2Ok Innovations. How do we make solutions that make sense, and how do we allow our partners to be more sustainable along the way, while making it make sense? Coming from that perspective, where it’s not mutually exclusive is a really important mindset to keep. When we’re thinking about sustainability, it helps us improve our top line and bottom line, and it also allows us to be more sustainable.

Annie Lu
You were talking about collaboration, as it applies to sustainability, but really that seems to be a direction that H2Ok innovations takes in general, collaborating with your partner. So tell me how that collaboration has just been a part of your makeup?

Sharon Lee
We were part of this program on the 100 Plus Accelerator, which is really an alliance of four large corporate enterprises. It’s Coca-Cola company, Unilever, AB InBev and Colgate-Palmolive coming together and selecting startups that provide sustainable solutions. That makes sense. And working with startups, we were really excited to be part of the 100 Plus Accelerator, and that has also changed the game for us. It’s programs like the 100 Plus Accelerator alliances that creates a funnel for corporate startup partnerships that are sustainable. After you get started, you can then pick up the momentum and pick up the steam. That was a collaboration and mutually beneficial partnerships that’s absolutely key. These are big problems to tackle optimizing our operations efficiency, reducing waste, sustainability. Hitting water targets. Hitting energy targets in greenhouse gas. Emission targets. These are all very large problems to tackle, and no one can do it themselves through mutually beneficial collaboration with partners. Can we come together and really co-create value? We have seen successfully with multinational, very, very large players in this industry.

Sharon Lee
We’re really excited to continue doing this, continue growing and expanding across multiple industries and then manufacturing.

Annie Lu
Fantastic answer. That’s a good way for me to segue into a question I always ask about, what do you like to do in your downtime? And I put downtime in quotations.

Sharon Lee
I am a huge Formula One fan, so I’m a huge motorsports fan. What I love so much about Formula One as well is basically you have these racecars racing. Also, you have these teams as well that build these race cars. You have these drivers that race the cars, but it’s a full team effort. During the middle of the race, the drivers come into the garages, called the pits and they have pit stops. The entire team changes the tires of the car. The tires wear over time and you have to switch fresh tires. Decades ago, we started off with really long pit stops. You try to get the subsidy as short as possible because you’re losing out time when you’re changing tires. Nowadays, you see pit stops being two seconds, changing four tires in two seconds. As a full team, you see this continuous improvement. Even the start of every season, the car starts off and by the end of the season, it’s so much faster than where it was in the beginning of the season.

Sharon Lee
You have this mindset of continuous improvement and never complacency, and I think that is something I really resonate with as a founder as well. It’s like, how do you keep pushing ourselves to do better as a team? It’s a team effort. How do we continue building a brilliant team, investing in empowering our teammates, innovating and becoming better, becoming faster? That’s something that I really love. I’m a super fan of Formula One, and also I actually used to compete in scholarship pageants as well, which is a alter ego of mine. But I was Miss Massachusetts Teen USA 2019. It’s a lot of fun. I still do it for fun, but it taught me so much about being authentic, who I am, authentic to, who we are as a team. These qualities that we bake into our core values, the team branding and marketing, and working with people with diverse backgrounds. And how do you connect with people with diverse backgrounds? We’re not for pageantry. I don’t think I would be where I am today or who I am today.

Sharon Lee
So two fun things that I love doing in my little free time that I have.

Annie Lu
That’s an interesting read on paper, and then you start explaining it, I’m going, okay, I didn’t want it to make sense, but it kind of does! But that brings us to the end of this podcast, and I have absolutely loved this conversation. I cannot thank you enough for joining me on here, but I do need to ask you to share. If someone did want to reach out to you, how they would do so.

Sharon Lee
You can definitely check out our website at H2O – the letter ‘K’ — innovations.com. Or you can also email us at info@h2okinnovations.com. So please reach out. Find us on LinkedIn as well. We’d love to connect and if there’s any questions from anyone, or if you also have any ideas or are interested in learning a little bit more about the work that we do, how this could apply to your organization, we’d love to connect further.

Annie Lu
Fantastic! We will put links to those in the Show Notes below. Again, thanks so much for joining us today.

Sharon Lee
Thank you so much for your time.

Annie Lu
Absolutely. We’ll see you soon. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to InPowered Women. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review and subscribe to the show. Wherever you listen to your podcasts and share with those you think can benefit from this information, please email all questions, suggestions and compliments to Sharon@PinnacleStrategicAdvisors.net. The InPowered Women podcast is produced by the Podcast Laundry Production Company and executive produced by Sharon Lee.