Podcast Episode 96

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Resiliency Road Trip Recap: 13 episodes, 9000+ miles, & 4 Million Impressions

Resiliency Road Trip Recap: 13 episodes, 9000+ miles, & 4 Million Impressions

Episode 96 | 18 min

With Guests:

Harris Duininck, College Sophomore, Texas A&M
Griffin Duininck, College Senior, Grand Canyon University

Jamie catches up with some special guests on this episode of The Water Table Podcast. College students Harris and Griffin Duininck sit down to talk about their summer road trip and video series about the water management industry that now has nearly 4 million impressions on social media. The guys traveled across the US and learned some valuable lessons about why their generation should care about plastic pipe. Find out how the trip has impacted them and why it might mean a job for one of the guys in the very near future.

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I’ve heard from countless people that this has impacted their view of water management, their view of storms, their view of the future. Going to Texas A & M, there’s 20,000 engineering students on campus, and it’s really important for them to see this hands-on.

— Harris Duininck

Guest Bios

Harris Duininck

Harris Duininck is a sophomore majoring in Economics at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Harris plans to travel, go to grad school or enter the business world after graduation.

Griffin Duininck

Griffin Duininck is a senior in Business Management at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. After graduation, he plans to caddy for a summer in Vail, Colorado before embarking on his business career.

Jamie Duininck (00:00):

Well, welcome back to The Water Table podcast. I’m Jamie Duininck, the host, and wanted to go back and have a couple of previous guests back with me, my son, Harris Duininck and his cousin Griffin. And these guys did a fun trip last summer in the summer of 2023 called the Road Trip to Resiliency, and What’s Buried Beneath? And if you haven’t followed The Water Table real close, you may not know what this is, but the road trip was something that we decided at Prinsco was a good idea to get two college students to go out and just explore our industry, explore what happens with plastic pipe and water management, why plastic pipe is good, there’s a lot of negatives to plastic, and what is a good plastic, what happens underground, how we are as an industry and as a world attacking water quality problems.

(00:57):

And these guys did a great job with that. And I think why I want to interview them is just to see where they’re at now, where their head’s at now with what happened, what they’re hearing from their peers, how they think about things and what their messages would be to people about water quality, those kind of things. But before we get started, I just wanted to share why this episodes in this series has been so impactful. It has been viewed over 300,000 times now on social media, almost 4 million impressions, which has really far exceeded our expectations. And an impression for those that don’t know what that means is that just means that almost 4 million people, 3.9 million people have now seen this on their social media feed, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, things like that, where when they open their computer, this has popped up. Doesn’t mean they’ve watched it, but 300,000 people have watched it.

(01:59):

So these young men and the series have really impacted the water management industry for the better and telling the story about what we do and telling it through a way that was fun, that they learned a lot. And I think we just wanted to share that again, because one of the things that’s come out of that is how young people are thinking about this and what they’re saying to these guys. So welcome, Harris, Griff, back to The Water Table. I’m glad you could join me. It’s always fun to have you here. So let’s just get started. And I already talked about the impact, but what do you guys see as the impact of the road trip that maybe surprised you? When you finished up in August and then we released this in October, what surprised you about what you’re hearing and what the impact was that the road trip had?

Harris Duininck (02:57):

Yeah. Thanks for having us again on The Water Table. It’s a special opportunity to check in here over break back in Wilmer and back in the studio. I think it was quite the special opportunity for Griff and I this summer to spend it together and to just learn more about the industry. I’ve heard from countless people about how this has impacted their view of water management, their view of storms, their view of the future. Going to A&M, there’s 20,000 engineers on campus and it’s really important to a lot of them to see stuff hands-on. And a lot of classes they say are much different than what you learn from a conversation like we had this summer a lot of times.

Jamie Duininck (03:44):

Sure. Anything to add to that, Griff?

Griffin Duininck (03:46):

Yeah. When I was back for break, I saw a lot of friends from the area and they didn’t know a whole lot about what Prinsco was or what it did. And most of the time you just tell them it’s the little black pipe on the bottom of a small tree and now there’s guys telling me that they learned a ton and watched every single episode and are pretty interested in the industry and think it’s really cool what they’re doing over there at Prinsco.

Jamie Duininck (04:13):

Yeah, yeah, great. You kind of answered this next question, but the viewpoint of your friends and how they’re thinking about this, but Harris, I know you had a couple of people that are thinking about their career and what they might want to do and how the interaction that the video created has made them ask a lot more questions. And we’ve actually had some dialogue at the Prinsco level with, “Hey, is there opportunities for internships or careers?” And so can you speak more to that?

Harris Duininck (04:50):

Yeah. One specific example: I have a friend who’s graduating a year from now with a construction science degree and he doesn’t really know what he wants to do, but watching The Water Table and seeing the contractors and seeing the future of what’s going on in water management and the opportunity that is there, he’s been super intrigued: “What’s Prinsco? What’s this industry? What are they doing? How is it evolving? Why is it growing so much and why are these two guys traveling around the country making videos about it?” And it’s really intrigued them to look into the future of that.

Jamie Duininck (05:27):

Yeah, yeah, good. And that’s part of why we want to do this today and what we’re thinking about as we move forward of how do we… That wasn’t the sole purpose by any means of doing this road trip, it was just one of them, to engage your generation. But I think that’s exceeded our expectations. And so we’re thinking about how do we continue to do that? I won’t say we have some exciting news, but that’s generating in our minds on how we’re going to approach the future now that we’ve had this kind of impact on the first year of this and it wasn’t supposed to be a sequel or anything, but we’re thinking about what that could look like.

(06:15):

Another question I think that just dovetails into this a little bit is thinking of people that are my age and my generation, how does my generation help your generation going forward when we think about water quality? And that may be a tough question to answer, but is there anything you guys can think of? You met with a lot of people on the road that were more my generation and through those interactions, how do we bridge the gaps in thinking between our generations and how can my generation help you guys to just learn more about it?

Harris Duininck (06:55):

I think one common question Griff and I asked this summer a lot was, “What’s a piece of advice you have for our generation?” I don’t know how to exactly answer how you guys can help us in understanding water management, but I think we learned a lot about relationships this summer. And I think the most special moments, the moments I remember were the ones that were off camera, just sitting having a meal with the sales guy or staying a little extra longer with the contractor when the cameras were off and talking to them about why they do what they do, why they’re excited about it.

(07:30):

Really helped Griff and I to understand that you have to be excited about what you’re doing and a lot of being excited about it comes down to relationships. I think that was a major theme of the summer that doesn’t have a lot to do with water management, but there is a lot of cool relationships that are built over solving problems, over making something more resilient, plastics, like going up to Duluth and learning about how this can be better for our environment and be more sustainable in the future.

Jamie Duininck (08:00):

Mm-hmm. And I like how you say that because it’s part of, I think without knowing the total why, this seemed like a great idea to do and having great people behind me to help me develop this, but was some of the opportunities I had when I was your age to connect with summer jobs with people and how you realize at your age that you spend a lot of time of your life at work in your career and how important those relationships are that you build there because they can become so rewarding and so impactful to your life.

(08:43):

So it’s exciting for me to hear that you guys will both remember, you won’t remember 500, 600 mile driving days, but what you will remember is the relationships that you built and the people that you met along the way. So Griff, what would you say is just maybe the biggest or one aha moment that you had from the trip on… Maybe it’s about plastic pipe, maybe it’s about water quality, or maybe it’s just about what you want to do with your career or something like that. Just something that you learned that might’ve been something you totally didn’t see coming.

Griffin Duininck (09:21):

Well, adding on the last question, a lot of kids in our generation that I talked to after watching some of the videos, a lot of them were very intrigued by the chamber systems. They more thought we were in the fields and everything and they didn’t even know a chamber system was even a thing at all. So watching those videos down in whether it was Arizona or I think we were in Kansas City with the car wash, a lot of kids thought that was cool learning about that. And when I explain it to people, they’re like, “Wow, that makes total sense and seems like something that’s going to be very useful for the future to come.” Touching on the aha moment, I felt like I got along with a lot of the sales guys pretty well and feel like that might be somewhere that I might end up someday, just feel like I have some of those qualities to be able to do that and don’t know exactly where I’ll be for sure, but Prinsco might be a spot that I might land.

Jamie Duininck (10:29):

Yeah. That’s part of all this when we talk about how we connect to your generation is exactly what you’re just saying. You got an opportunity to do this, which made you then say, “Hey, I see that this is a career from the people that are in this career for 10, 20, 30 years, and that could be something I could be passionate about and enjoy.” And I think that’s what we’re saying earlier too, is others are seeing the videos that you guys are doing and saying, “Wait a minute, maybe that’s something that I could find rewarding for a career too, is just to engage in that industry.” If it’s on the construction side or if it’s on the sales side or engineering side, all of that applies, so good answer. I appreciate that. Harris, anything to add for you on an aha moment?

Harris Duininck (11:24):

I think, like I said earlier, just the times, looking back now that I remember that I was like, “Man, that was such a fun summer. That was so cool” was the time spent off the camera, hands-on, learning with the sales guys, having a dinner with them or being in the car with them, not necessarily sitting there looking at the chambers, but just talking about them, about the relationships they’ve built, the career that they’ve built and what that looks like for us.

Jamie Duininck (11:54):

Yeah, for sure. Now that you’ve been back in school for a semester and you’re just thinking about your careers and you can reflect on this better, what would your message be to people in the water management industry? How can we do better from the perspective of a college age kid that’s been out and gotten a good enough knowledge, now that you understand the basics of what we do, but do you have anything there on what your message would be to people in this industry? Anything that stands out to you on that?

Griffin Duininck (12:34):

When you were talking about possibly doing more stuff in the future with kids our age, I think that that would be a great opportunity for a lot of people that were interested in our videos if they wanted to take a next step and get more hands-on and learn even more. I think that would be something huge, because I’ve had a lot of people talk to me and just wondering what’s the start, like, “If I want to do sales, I know nothing about this product besides just the videos.” So maybe a summer internship doing something like that would be huge for a lot of people.

Jamie Duininck (13:10):

Yeah.

Harris Duininck (13:11):

I think just being open to what actually is Prinsco? Like Griff said, most people just thought it was pipes going in farm fields and that doesn’t make very many people excited, but when you can understand that it is sustainable, resilient, environmentally friendly, that’s a really good way to tune into our generation, I think.

Jamie Duininck (13:34):

Yeah. Yep, for sure. I think that is the right answer. And back a long time ago, wow, long time ago being in the last two years, I interviewed Dr. Michael Castellano from Iowa State University and he talked about the value of underground pipe systems, whether it’s a farm drainage system or the network of stormwater piping systems in a city that go to collection areas, that go to chamber systems, all of that. And it’s not just a plastic chamber system. There’s all kinds of different ways to store water underground, whether it’s vaults, there’s other products. I’m not going to give them any love on The Water Table podcast, but there is a lot of different ways to do that.

(14:27):

And he talked about the network of our underground water conveyance system and how valuable it is, and his comment was that to him it’s more valuable than the underground transit system in places like New York City and big cities that have this. I’d just be interested to see if you guys have any comments on that. I don’t think either of you have a lot of experience with underground transit systems growing up in the Midwest and where you guys currently reside, but after what you’ve seen, what do you think about that and the asset that we have in America with these underground piping systems?

Harris Duininck (15:15):

Yeah, I don’t have any experience in the subway of New York, but I think if you think about it logically, waterfalls, gravity, a lot of the systems that we saw this summer where gravity flow and if you can’t get the water underground out of the subway system, it can’t even work. So you have to take care of the water first or that system isn’t even going to work. Same thing for a house. What’s the use of a basement if it floods every time it rains? Not much use. So I do think that is very important, and we saw that with the Proform product this summer in Columbus. They put that in in order to protect the basement. If they didn’t, why would they put a basement in?

Jamie Duininck (15:58):

Mm-hmm.

Griffin Duininck (15:59):

Yeah, I was going to bring up the example of the Proform. And where were we? Somewhere in North Dakota. I can’t even remember. What was the city we were in?

Harris Duininck (16:06):

Devils Lake.

Griffin Duininck (16:07):

That was Devils Lake, yeah. I was just going to bring up that and just with how the basement, and then they had the Proform below and all the water flowed into the Proform, and that was cool, seeing that new product get put in. That’s all I have to add on that.

Jamie Duininck (16:22):

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good. Well, guys, again, just thanks for what you did this summer and for really, I want to thank you from, not from Prinsco, but from the water management industry that you guys actually had a significant impact at currently just under 4 million impressions, and that’s only going to grow as we continue to market this. You had an impact that I don’t think our industry has been able to duplicate in the past on just telling our story as an industry, telling the story of why plastic pipe is resilient and why it’s actually good plastic with the recycle and how we store water and how we treat water and the impacts that we can have to positively affect your generation and future generations. So from me to you, thank you for that. So thanks guys for joining me and let’s stay connected as things unfold with the Road Trip to Resiliency and how it’s impacting our future and your generation. We’ll keep this in front of people. So thank you.

Harris Duininck (17:43):

Thanks for having us.

Griffin Duininck (17:44):

Thanks, Jamie.

Jamie Duininck (17:50):

Well, thanks for listening to this episode. I have so much fun recording these. I hope you have as much fun listening as I do recording. These episodes are available on all major podcast platforms as well as YouTube, so find them and download them when you can. Thanks for joining us.

Podcast Episode 96

Resiliency Road Trip Recap: 13 episodes, 9000+ miles, & 4 Million Impressions

Episode 96 | 18 min

With Guests:

Listen Now

Guest Bios

Harris Duininck

Griffin Duininck

Transcript

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Podcast Episode 96

Resiliency Road Trip Recap: 13 episodes, 9000+ miles, & 4 Million Impressions

Episode 96 | 18 min

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