Elliot Kallen: Well, good morning and good afternoon, everyone. I’m Elliot Kallen, and welcome
to another exciting episode of Meet the Expert with Elliot Kallen. Again, we’re going to do this a
little differently today. We’re trying to mix it up, make it more exciting. We’re going to talk with
Chris Hare, who is in the tire business. And I don’t mean selling tires. I mean taking tires that are
used and old, and basically there’s a new one every second in this country that’s old and retiring
tire, and converting it to all types of wonderful things. And we’re going to talk about how that
works. But it’s not cogeneration. We’re not burning the tires and creating energy out of it. We’re
going to create things like carbon and steel and oil and gas, and we’re going to have a really
cool conversation about that. If you need to reach me, I’m at 925-314-8503. And my email is
Elliot, E-L-L-I-O-T, at Prosperity Financial Group. And of course, it’s
prosperityfinancialgroup.com. That’s the best place to reach me. And if you’ve got questions
about any other of the 70 plus episodes that are on the Meet the Experts site there when you go
to it, give a call, give a shout out, let us know what you’re most interested in. And if you know
people that have interesting stories that they could tell in a business world and a climate, we’re
all ears because we’re trying to bring interesting topics to the market. And we are the top one
and a half percent in the United States doing this right now in the world of podcasts. So Chris,
welcome to our show.

Chris Hare: Thank you. Appreciate the invitation.
Elliot Kallen: Chris is the chief CEO of PRTI. It’s a waste to energy data center technology, but
it’s not energy really. We’re going to talk about that. Why don’t you tell us first what you do and
how you got into this world of tires to products?

Chris Hare: I think the reality of kids leaving school and college today is that they know they’ll
probably have a bunch of different careers in their life of work. And at their end of life of work is
probably not going to truly be an end. And it’s going to meander into Retirement. I think, when I
was growing up, the thought that the we were still of a generation where people thought you had
a job, you joined a company, and you probably stayed there for a long time, or at least in the
same industry. You know, I ended up doing a degree in a couple of masters in management in
the industrial world in the UK, I grew up and worked with a company that was a British company
at the time called Lucas Industries. Lucas Industries was then bought by TRW. TRW was then
swallowed up by Northrop Grumman. So they’re big industrial, defense aerospace company. I
thought that was something that I would be in that space for a very long time. That meandered
into getting involved heavily in telecommunications. And then also building a couple of startups,
one which was an MIT spinout that we sold to a company called Nuance that was ultimately
bought by Microsoft. And then after that, I ran the supply chain, particularly the sourcing
organization globally for what was Sony Ericsson. So in the old days of telecom, where
everyone had phones that had buttons on them, my original life, we made all the buttons. And
then over time, I got involved in making the phones themselves. So I was proud to be part of a
really cool team of people worldwide, that at our peak, we made about 100 million phones a

year. From there to tires is I don’t know how that happened, but it did. What we’ve done together
is this team at PRTI that we’ve built, they’ve all had fairly diverse backgrounds, too. So we’ve
got, one of our founders came out of the space program and out of building semiconductor
companies. Another two of our team are very heavily into healthcare as their background, both
research and operating. And then we’ve got other folks in automation, engineering, and
obviously myself in telecom. And, we’ve got together and realized that no matter what type of
business you run, there are some common elements. And I think that’s a really fun part of our
journey is to realize that even though we’ve got diverse backgrounds, we, there are things that
are common. In our case, it’s modular business building, it’s intellectual property, it’s being able
to run an automated company, heavily documented. And, and these threads mean that we have
a bit of a common language, which is helpful when we’ve got such weird and wonderful
backgrounds.

Elliot Kallen: So pretty exciting. But I want to talk about the tire industry. I got the road that
you’re on, which is great. And if you’re still listening, this is pretty good. We manage portfolios,
we help clients make Money, we help clients retirement. So which means that people are
interested in this type of world of, as we talk to entrepreneurs across the board, and that’s what
Meet the Expert is, lots of entrepreneurial conversation. We want them to know to come to us as
we’re experts on Investing. And if these types of things are important to them, that’s important.
So we know that in tires, there are what 317 million tires a year that need that are just hanging
around.

Chris Hare: It’s just in the US.
Elliot Kallen: Wow. Well, I contribute to them and everybody listening contributes to that
number.

Chris Hare: Right.

Elliot Kallen: Are you just in the US, North Carolina,

Chris Hare: we are at the moment, we’ve protected the technology overseas as well in literally
40 countries. But presently, our main focus is in the US. So despite my accent, I’ve lived in the
US for 25, nearly 30 years, but we’re based just outside Raleigh, North Carolina.

Elliot Kallen: Okay. So as we talk about, let me just say again, what PRTI does and what Chris
Hare does, and then we, of course, we prefer portfolio builders, is Chris takes tires. And at the
end of this process, that tire is now oil, gas, carbon, and or steel, and or any parts of those
without divulging secrets. How does that happen?

Chris Hare: Yeah. So what we’ve really developed and perfected, and then automated, and
then ultimately protected in terms of intellectual property, patents, trademarks, things like that, is
a method that really uses a very small amount of energy, thermal energy, to really break down
tires. And if you think of a tire, you think of a very illogical piece of material. It’s a big donut,

right? So it’s a circle of material, there’s a mixture of petroleum and fabric and fibers and steel
wire and natural rubber. That recipe has been stuck together using a process called
vulcanization, which is in the presence of sulfur. And that’s how a tire gets made. Now, it stays
together really well, which is important for all of us driving on them. But when the tire is at its end
of life, it’s really hard to take that recipe and undo it and basically unpack that tire. So what
we’ve developed is an automated process that breaks that tire down, basically melts the tire and
recovers a gas, a liquid oil, a solid material, a fuel or a carbon, and also recovers all of the steel
wire that went into that tire. And we’ve been really working hard to perfect this because even
though, as you say, there’s over 300 million tires a year just in the US thrown away, there’s
really very few viable, economically viable ways to get rid of tires. In many cases, they’re thrown
into landfills. Some percentage are incinerated, some percentage are chopped up and put onto
sports fields. There’s all sorts of things that have been tried, but they’re very inconsistent
worldwide. And in some cases, some of these methods just don’t last very long because they
didn’t work well, either technically or commercially. So we’ve been at this journey for a while
trying to make this thing work and not only work, but do so repeatedly. And at this stage, we’re
now getting ready to start scaling up to multiple locations because, as you say, the 300 plus
million tires a year get thrown away across the whole country. So without adding to the logistics
problem, it makes more sense for us to build multiple locations than to have one big location
where all the tires have to Travel after they’ve come off of vehicles. So at this point, it’s about
modular business building.

Elliot Kallen: Great. Which brings me to the next point that I want to ask you, Chris. Again,
we’re talking to Chris here about tires converting old used tires that we think get thrown out, but
they don’t. And we all contribute to that across our country. And it can convert them to oil and
gas and carbon and steel and so forth. Every company and all the entrepreneurs and there are
tens of thousands of entrepreneurs listening to this as this episode comes out, they all face
challenges like you do. They face marketing challenges. They taste fine. They incur Finance
challenges. They certainly incur employee headaches and challenges. So what have you
experienced with PTRR, PTRR, PTRTI, and then how have you overcome that, that you could
give a lesson to entrepreneurs?

Chris Hare: I think, look, that the reality is, my career and those of the team that we are
fortunate to work with here, we’ve all been part of very large companies. We’ve also all been
part of startups. And I think what’s really gratifying is that because we’ve all run big things and
small things, most of these challenges are ones we’ve dealt with before. And most of them
aren’t too much of a surprise. In fact, sometimes, you wish you’d got more reaction when there
was good news, but equally, you don’t get too excited about bad news either. I think you’ve got
to have, you know, one of our team, our chairman, Jason, talks about taking your pulse. And
he’s a medical professional by background. And I think that’s important. You’ve got to stay the
course. You’ve got to be calm. You’ve got to make thoughtful decisions. You can’t shoot from the
hip. You can’t respond negatively if someone’s throwing rocks at you because, getting yourself
into a Twitter war or a Facebook war or whatever is not going to achieve anything other than
bad news. So I think, as far as a lesson to anybody, I think the lesson I’ve learned through my
career is figure out how to have a long-term plan, but be flexible in its execution. There will be

course corrections needed. There will be challenges. What I say to the team here is, look, it’s
okay if you’re having a bad day as long as we’re not all having the same bad day. Because if
we’re all having the same bad day, go home and we’ll figure it out tomorrow. But if someone’s
having a bad day, pick them up, help them. So I think that’s important too, is to make sure that
you’re going to have setbacks. You’re going to have challenges. You’re going to have meetings
that don’t go well. You’ve got to figure out how to, put a pin in it. Stop. Okay. Reset. Move on.
Elliot Kallen: Chris, that’s why I wrote the book over my left shoulder called Driven by Elliot
Callan because it’s about leadership that you’re talking about and challenges. And, not
everybody’s Mark Zuckerberg that starts something in college and five years later he’s a
billionaire. It’s just most of us don’t experience that. We experience the day-to-day challenges
and money.

Chris Hare: The 30-year overnight success, right? I think that, as you go through your career,
you reflect on the steps that you took, the opportunities that you had or didn’t have, and you
have to take all of that as your background, right? One thing I like to say is that there’s nothing
as uncommon as common sense, right? And I think the reality is whatever journey you’ve had,
that’s informed your decision making. So whatever your journey has been allows you to have
whatever perspective you now have and to make decisions accordingly. Recognizing that and
recognizing that other people around you will have had a different journey helps you have more
understanding and empathy, but it also helps the team do better together.
Elliot Kallen: Great. What’s the long-term approach for a company like yours? Is it to sell out to
a waste management? Is it to go public? Is it just ride the horse as long as you can? What’s the
long-term plan, Eric?

Chris Hare: When you’re on a business journey as we are, I think there’s some benefit of
having a long-term strategy, but there’s also a recognition that you don’t design an exit because
the exit, you can’t design to that output. You have to make sure that you remain flexible. I think
logically, I would expect us to build a number of sites, and then at that point, an IPO is feasible.
It’s a lot more likely that we would see a trade sale into either a sovereign family or sovereign
fund or into a large, very large private equity fund. The waste processing companies in the US
are in the US. There are very few that are global, and so there’s a global opportunity for this
capability. It may be that it’s broken up and you have a version in the US and a version in
Europe and a version of somewhere else, but it’s more likely, I think, this would end up being
mobilized by a large either oil and gas or a sovereign or large private equity group more so than
an IPO. To be honest, I don’t think that would necessarily maximize the value of the company.
Elliot Kallen: That’s right. Bring that up, Chris. 60% of our clients are entrepreneurs. 40% are
not, and so we really talk the talk when it comes to entrepreneurs, and I look at leadership in
three phases. One is you’re getting it started. You’re in startup mode. You’re scratching every
day. You’re creating something out of nothing. You guys appear to be in the second phase,
which means you’ve gone past the startup, and now you’re beginning to enjoy some of the fruits
of your labor. Then phase three is I’m now 60, 63, 65. Maybe it’s time for me to leave. What’s

my exit strategy? That’s why I ask that because entrepreneurs, you don’t have to begin with the
end of mine. I don’t buy into that, but I do believe that at some point, you don’t want to be doing
this when you’re 80.

Chris Hare: No, I think there’s some succession planning. I think that’s practical and logical, and
it’s also the right thing to do for your shareholders too, recognizing that some people in a young
company, they get on at the beginning and they get off at the end. Most people actually get on
at a station that is not the first one and get off before the last one, so I think you’ve got to
constantly look at the whole team and be planning and thoughtful of that everyone’s on a slightly
different journey and that’s okay. You still need to be able to run the business and grow the
business, even if there’s personnel changes, even if that includes you personally. I think it’s
important to have that in mind and have an open conversation with the board, with your
management team, and with each other in the team, because just because someone’s journey
is going to be different doesn’t make that a bad thing. It could be a great opportunity for both
sides.

Elliot Kallen: Great. Is there a pet project you’re working on right now?

Chris Hare: So, as you mentioned, we’re able to take tires and make them go away. That’s a
big deal. That’s a good thing, but that’s not the only thing. What we’ve been able to do is, first of
all, break the tires down and recover a usable gas, a liquid oil, and a solid fuel, a carbon, as well
as recovering the steel. Now, we get paid for tires in as much that the market has a tipping fee.
If you drive a truckload of tires to the landfill, they will expect you to pay money because you’re
using up their space, so there’s a tipping fee. Equally, the steel can be sold back into the steel
market. In the case of the oil particularly, but also the carbon, we see markets that are beyond
using those materials purely as fuels. We’re working on some research and development now to
look at some of those aspects and some of those higher values. It’s not that well-known, but
when people think of a tire, they think, oh, it’s a tire. It’s made of rubber. Well, kind of. It’s
actually mostly petroleum, but there is a certain percentage that is natural rubber-based. As we
pull oil out, or as we pull carbon out, or as we pull out the gas, there’s actually natural
components there. We’re looking very heavily at what those natural amounts are and also how
that impacts the carbon footprint and allows us to create a carbon negative process. I said to
somebody on a phone call a few minutes before we started here, this isn’t about talking about
being green for the sake of being green. As a former supply chain guy, a lot of the reason to be
involved in renewables is to be efficient. If you have resources, don’t throw them away. Use
them again. Figure out how to reuse them or how to use less. I was fortunate when I was at
Sony Ericsson, which was a split heritage between Sony in Japan and Ericsson in Sweden. The
environmental stewardship of both countries is really high. In fact, we launched a project called
Project Green Heart, where we actually were making plastic cases of phones and chargers out
of vegetable plastics. I’m talking 15, 20 years ago. There’s different ways of skinning the cat.
There’s different ways of using materials. What we’re working on now is how to use some of
these things that we recover in a higher value use.

Elliot Kallen: Great. Very exciting. Again, we help people build portfolios and retire well. If
social awareness, green energy, green world is important to you or you want to have it in your
portfolio, you want to get in touch with us. We’ve been talking to Chris Hare, which has been
great. Chris, if people want to reach you and have a better conversation about this, you’re
obviously a well-read, fascinating person. How do they do that, Chris?

Chris Hare: Our website is prtitech.com. That’s the website. My email is chare at prtitech.com.
Feel free to reach out. To your point about financial management, we are a private company.
We do raise funds. We have a suite of investors that we’ve been working with for a long time,
but we are also looking for what I would call more and more partners, both smart investors and
active and educated investors because as we grow this business across the country and in
other countries, there’s going to be a lot of capital deployed to build this business. Our small
team is just that, it’s small. We not only need capital, but we also need to add more and more
smart people. If there’s someone with an interest in this space, I’d love to hear from them.

Elliot Kallen: Great. All right, folks, this has been a fascinating conversation with Chris Hare of
PRTI. Give us a call or www.prosperityfinancialgroup.com. I’m Elliot, 2Ls1T at
prosperityfinancialgroup.com, 925-314-8503. You can catch 70 plus episodes of Meet the
Expert with Elliot Callan with people like Chris Hare. Chris, thanks so much for being here today.

Chris Hare: Yeah, thank you very much again.

Elliot Kallen: Have a great day, everybody.