A Pool Pro’s Guide to Sanity

Episode Highlights

This lively episode dives into the challenges and strategies pool service professionals face during peak season, focusing on weather-related scheduling, managing customer demands, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. With their signature humor and camaraderie, Peter, Lee, and Shane share personal anecdotes and practical advice, making for an engaging and insightful listen.

Key Topics Discussed

1. Weather Challenges in Pool Servicing
   • Shane recounts dealing with relentless rain, sharing how it affects daily operations and customer expectations.
   • Strategies for addressing bad weather, such as focusing on chemical checks and deferring non-urgent tasks.
2. The Importance of Flexible Scheduling
   • Peter and Lee discuss the benefits of keeping Mondays and Fridays open for emergency jobs, equipment installations, and public holidays.
   • Lee explains her system of dedicating non-service days for flexibility, technician vehicle maintenance, and team-building exercises.
3. Learning to Say No
   • Peter and Shane share stories of setting boundaries with demanding customers, including charging premium fees for last-minute or out-of-area jobs.
   • Emphasis on the value of maintaining a balanced schedule and avoiding burnout.
4. Handling Customer Emergencies
   • Lee introduces the concept of an "ID10T Tax" for clients who call with preventable "emergencies."
   • The trio discusses the importance of educating customers on planning ahead and charging for rushed services to discourage poor planning.
5. Christmas Party and Team-Building Ideas
   • Lee and Shane suggest creative ideas for staff celebrations, such as escape rooms, comedy nights, and team sports.
   • Peter reveals his unique plan to attend a barbecue masterclass with his team, tying it to their shared interest in grilling.
6. Balancing Regular Servicing and Specialty Work
   • Peter shares his business model focused on troubleshooting and equipment replacement, contrasting it with Shane and Lee's emphasis on regular servicing.
   • Lee highlights the importance of leveraging existing customer relationships for upselling opportunities.
7. Cultural and Linguistic Fun
   • A humorous debate ensues over the word "furtherest," with Peter playfully proving his point about correct usage.
8. Listener Interaction and Wrap-Up
   • The hosts invite listeners to share their Christmas party ideas and topic requests, fostering community engagement.

Conclusion

This episode is a mix of humor, practical advice, and real-life anecdotes that resonate with pool service professionals navigating the busiest time of the year. The hosts’ lighthearted banter and deep industry insights make it a must-listen for anyone in the field. Whether you're looking for tips on handling last-minute customer demands or planning the perfect staff party, this episode delivers.

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Transcript

G'day folks. Peter here. Welcome back to Mondays down under on talking pools. G'day, Lee. G'day, Shane. How you guys doing? Hey Peter. Very well, thank you. How are you Shane? I'm pretty good, thank you. I'm nice and dry now. It's been a terrible day today just raining cats and dogs. It's been nasty and I pretty much look like a wet dog when I was coming in in through the front door earlier. But yeah, we're all nice and dry now. How you doing Peter? Good. At least, I mean you might have looked like a wet dog but at least you didn't look like a dog that had been attacked by a bloody shearer. Lee just showed us a photo of her dog after they decided to go at it with the hair clippers and yeah, it's Poor dog. You're a meanie, Lee. A meanie, yes. She looked very worse for we. She looked like a. Oh, I'd say a lion. She had a very shaved body and a very fluffy head. And needless to say we didn't let her out of the house for about three weeks because we were so embarrassed about how she looked. But the good news is there's only a couple of weeks, as they say between a good and a bad haircut. So yeah, it wasn't too bad. Egg rose back. Sorry to bring that up but I couldn't resist seeing two minutes ago that's exactly what we're talking about. And Shane said he. You must have been biting for a comment on that. Sure, probably. Do you have many much bite back from the customers when you're servicing the pool in bad weather, Shane. I know it's something that we used to get occasionally like people can't you come back after it stopped raining? So a couple of points on that. If, if it is a very busy day and say it's outside of the season we would usually just go there as a chemistry check, backwash the filter, check the equipment over and most of the time they're fine until the next visit. This time of year, I mean we are, we are in the season. Today has been a shocker. If today was a day for regulars then yeah, we would have said to them all we can do is a chemistry check. I mean the last thing you want to do is stand out in the middle of the rain with a pole vacuum in a vacuuming a pool. One, you can't see it. Two, you know you're just going to get drenched and it's not good for anybody. So yeah, I'd say the Majority of the time people are fine with that. It's no problem unless they're having a party the next day and we all get them every now and then. Yeah. But yeah, given this is we're recording on a Friday, my schedule every week, I keep my Mondays and Fridays free from my regular clients. A couple of reasons for that is public holidays, they usually fall on a Monday and a Friday. So if we have a full week and then I've got Mondays and Fridays with my regulars, it means there's going to be a lot of adjusting and moving clients here, there and everywhere, which we didn't really want to do. So we had, yeah, I had this mindset when we started the business and it seems to be working very well. So our Mondays and Fridays usually are for leaking pools, equipment installations, you know, any of the jobs outside your regular servicing. Yeah, because most of us do run a pretty tight ship or should run a pretty tight ship when it comes to logistics. So if you've got a business that's well established and you've got quite a, a full service schedule, it is very difficult to move jobs around, whether it be for wet weather, public holidays or anything like that. So we did something similar, though not to the same degree. So we had a team of three full time service technicians. My husband was our installer, so he did the majority of the big installs, the big repairs, the commercial jobs, that sort of thing. He did have a couple of days a month that he just did regulars that were more difficult jobs, I suppose, or more advanced installations or maybe that they were the furthest away from our business. So like if there were an hour travel to get there, you want to make sure that you can get back or that you can fix anything that needs to be fixed while you're there. Sorry, can I just cut you off for a second? You said a word, you said a word then that I had only ever heard in New Zealand before. It's furtherest. Yes, and one of the first time I heard it was actually, it was my first job in the pool industry actually. One of the guys said, he said furtherest. It's like what are they furthest? No, furtherest. It's like is, is that, is that a word? No, it is not a word. I like it more accurately in a New Zealand thing. An Australian and a New Zealand thing then. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep my furtherest. Peter Shine bufferzone Systems are the pool and spa industry specialists with a complete range of software for pool shops, service companies and commercial aquatic Facilities with more features and integrations than any other pool industry software. You really need to reach out for a one on one demonstration. Contact bufferzone today. Yeah, furthest. Furthest away sounds weird. So. No, they can keep that in wa. I'll keep my furthest. We'll continue to speak the King's English. Yes, no, so but. So my husband was pretty much a floater and so his jobs could be easily moved around with public holidays and wet weather days and whatnot. But my service technicians had quite full schedules so we made a point of two days a month were down as and that was one day a fortnight was down as a non work day. When I say non work day, no scheduled regular services. And then that allowed us room to move for public holidays for rdos. Like if the guys wanted needed a day off if they had a sick day. Wet weather days like all of. Yeah, public holidays like God, we get to Christmas and we've got two in basically in one week with Boxing Day and New Year's Day we've got two public holidays to contend with. So it's actually can be quite difficult. But having that one day a fortnight gave us a great room for movement. And I found also that through the winter season they, it was also handy to maybe if there wasn't anything to fill that day with or that day went past without needing to well the staff member was still there, let's say we would pop that staff member on with somebody else. Gave them it was a good team building exercise, built camaraderie with them working together so they weren't always alone but also great opportunity to get the car serviced, tires changed, whatever needed to be done to the vehicle. So yeah, you can do lots with those days but if you don't have those days allocated in your calendar it can make things really hard to try to juggle. How do you do it, Pete? Well, we, we've never focused on regular servicing. Most of what we do is troubleshooting, fixing problems and a lot of that involves equipment replacement, repair, things like that. I very rarely ask a customer would you like regular servicing? They often ask us, you know, do can you stop this happening again? Can you do regular servicing? I mean I've said it before, if I replace a saltwater chlorinator that'll bring in as much margin and you know, half hour job brings in as much margin as half a day of pool servicing. So I'd be mad not to. If I could just replace two or three chlorinators a day I'd be happy Just be on my own. I completely get that. But by having them as a regular service client, you're already in their backyard. So when that guys, they're more likely to call you. Yeah. If you notice that they need, they could do with a barrack like a robotic pool cleaner and they could do with a pool blanket. There are things that you could easily then upsell or on sell to them because you're an existing, they're an existing client. You would hope that they would trust you and respect what you, the opinion that you have, the product suggestions that you have. So you'd like to think that they'd give you that work. Now I know that doesn't always happen, but most of the time it does 90, I'd say a good 90% of the time it does, yeah. But as we put more staff on, capacity increases and I mean I, I'd need to look at the numbers but a lot of the people that we do do these one off jobs for do ask us for regular and we take a lot of them on but that's never been the focus. So maybe if I end up with 10, 10 technicians out on the road one day then maybe, yeah, we'll really push the regulars hard. Even if you say allocated two and a half days a week, half of their week's work to regular services, then that's going to help pay their wages. It's a guaranteed income, a regular income that's coming into the business instead of you waiting for install work. So yeah, on average I'd say it's around three days a week of regulars. Yeah, we'll see that works. But that leaves plenty of time for the other stuff. Just try to avoid Saturdays as much as possible. Oh absolutely. Firstly, I, well, I'm getting too bloody old for this six, seven day a week thing because for a while there we spoke a couple of weeks ago, I think it was about when I had technicians leave and I got lumped doing the work of three people. And that was a long day. Seven days a week, never again. But also getting the staff out to do jobs on Saturdays, I have to tell customers, look, if it needs to be Saturday, you're going to be paying overtime rates. Yeah, because I have to pay the staff extra to be there on a Saturday. So yeah, I never had my service team work Saturdays or Sundays and they got public holidays off. Yeah, the same doesn't work for my husband. I know he works Saturdays and sometimes public holidays, but that's a whole nother story. But also this time of year the weekend Work if they, they want some extra hours, some extra overtime I'll keep an eye out, see if something can come up and they make a bit of extra money and I charge the customer for it. We've never got a shortage of customer inquiries right now I could fill up the entire team plus more with 7 day a week work it wouldn't be a problem because supply so sorry demand so far exceeds supply. Yeah. Oh well that's a great position to be in. Yeah but it is always hard at this time of the year because especially if like for businesses not like you but probably more like how I ran run a tight ship and there is less room for those jobs that are calling in and God knows we all go always get those ones that ring on Thursday or worse yet ring on Friday and what they're pool serviced for the weekend for the party that they're having that they haven't planned on. They haven't made plans for their pool to be serviced even though they knew they were having a party. So what's that saying lack of planning on your behalf does not constitute an emergency on mine. So I think in that sort of case I wouldn't say like by all means if you've got the space like clearly Peter, and you too Shane, you're keeping a couple of days a week clear so that you can accommodate emergency work or have a little bit more leeway I suppose but I think it's important to it's a bit like you don't discount because you train people to the discount. It's the same as if you always try to accommodate people who have got an emergency without them being disadvantaged and I say an emergency lightly because it's an emergency on their behalf, not on ours. There needs to be a penalty for it like there needs to be a cost incurred to deter them from doing it again so because otherwise you're training them and going oh yeah sure I, they'll say I call Peter every time and he always fits me in. It's like yeah no, no yeah I'll fit you in but it will come at the expense of Now I used to do it where I would say to the client look I really need to squeeze this in, I'm going to have to talk to the service technician someone's going to be working overtime here and because of that because I can't remove customers that have pre booked from the list to accommodate you so I would need to be adding you onto that list that means my staff will be paying over time or needing to be paid Overtime and I need to make sure that it's okay with them. Now if I can organize that, this will come at a premium because of the cost. So it will be the labor at one and a half times the labor rate or there'll be a emergency call out fee of $100, something like that to add to. Or you could say either or whichever is the greater or whichever is the lesser. I don't know whichever works with your business, how your business works. But there needs to be some penalty in it to deter them from doing it next time. But also to regardless of whether you do need to pay your staff overtime or not, because maybe you can fit it into your schedule. You don't tell them that you make out your car and you get them to pay a premium for it. If you were ringing a plumber or an electrician they would do exactly the same thing. Yep. And we need to treat ourselves with exactly the same respect and professionalism and do it. Yeah, no, it's. I mean yesterday I got was another poor guy. He is not doing well personally and he will occasionally, when he gets an inquiry, he'll occasionally give the jobs to some of the rest of us and it's appreciated. But I rang this one yesterday and she wanted a spa service and I said look for that in that area, I'm looking at two weeks away. Oh no, I need it done today or tomorrow. I said well it's currently, you know, quarter to five in the afternoon. There's no chance of today, tomorrow we're absolutely fully booked. Next week we're booked. There's rain forecast for next week. So yeah, two weeks is what we're looking at. And I mean to go and just basically do a basic service on a spa. I'm not going to make a special trip to that area, that suburb. It's going to wait till I've got regulars in the area or another big job in the area. So yeah, I had one guy ring me up once and he wanted a little diaphragm for inside one of the suction cleaners, you know the type with a big rubber skirt around it. Zodiac 1 I think it was. And he expected me to drive, fit that part and return. It's in a suburb that's about a 50 minute drive from where I am. And I said I'm sorry, that's not in my service area. Oh, the abuse I got from him. So well, no, I can charge you two hours of travel time but he said I'm not paying that so we'll get it locally. Yeah. Learning to say no is a very, very powerful thing. Absolutely. And not feeling guilty about it, I think that's a big thing. We, we try to do too much and we try to be too much. We try to be everything to everybody. You end up being nothing to nobody. So it's really important to have your limitations, to protect yourself and your business and to stand your ground. Like what you did then, Pete, was extremely fair and reasonable. Yeah. And hey, you turned around and said, look, I'm happy to do it, but I'm going to charge you two hours of travel time. And he didn't think that was fair enough. Well, he can't have it both ways. He can easily go and buy that part from someone else. He can drive to you and pick it up. He could even probably drive to you, bring the barracuda with him and give it to you to fit on the side of the road somewhere. I've done that for people before. Yeah, but to expect you to go there for nothing, like for no extra and do it at the drop of a hat is really an entitled position. It's arrogance, absolute arrogance. And yeah, like you should have said no and I'm glad you did. Oh, I had one another job, it was about a three, about a three hour drive away. It was for a house being sold. And yeah, that was a big equipment replacement job. And they said, look, we just need this done. So I actually went out there on a public holiday, but that was worth it. And I said, look, you're going to be charged, sorry, two hours each way. I said, you're going to be charged four hours of traveling. That, that has to be in there. I can't absorb that. And I'm not going out there, you know, spending four hours on the road free. So that's, it's an important thing. It's got to be that limits, isn't there? I mean, when you're an established business, like when you're a start of the business, I'm sure everybody is over, a yes man or a yes woman, and you're looking for work and whatever work comes in, you want to take it. But there's that line of what you are at your limits, or once you've, you're at capacity or you're happy with the number of jobs that you've got on, that's when it's time to be picky and choosy. We're having this conversation with a couple other guys in the same industry as me and we kind of started the business at the same time. And they're in their west Auckland. We want to service more east and south. So if there's any inquiries coming through out west, I usually pass the work over to them. But in the last couple of months, you know, they've gone, don't want it, I'm at my limit, you know, and you've got to be sensible at the same time because you don't want to get burnt out coming into the season, you know, so you've got to be, you've got to be working smarter and not harder. Yes. And logistics is, plays such a big part in that. So I think where you were talking before Pete, about a spa job and not being in that area, what I tried to do with our service area is I actually, I separated them all the different service areas, but then I tried to separate when my staff were going there, I separated like made sure that the service technicians were never going to the same area on the same day or even the next day. I tried to make it a couple of days apart. So they might go to area so technician A or our first technician might go to area A on Mondays and our second technician might go to the area A on Thursdays. So I tried to separate them so that they're only ever a couple of days apart but they weren't, both weren't there on the same day the same week. We tried to separate them and just made it much better because if there was something that we needed to go back for or maybe something we needed to deliver from that first service day then it, the second technician could do it and it just, it really helped the flow of things much better. Do you do something similar, Shane? Yeah, I mean Auckland is landmass size, it's, it's very spread out and I'm sure it's like every major city. I mean the population is very small over here but the infrastructure isn't, isn't that great. So going to A, going from A to B, you've got to plan it as best as you can because you don't want to hit rush hour day like today where it's hammering down with rain. You can guarantee there's going to be an accident on the road. So logistics play a huge role and for ourselves, yeah, if we can only focus on those certain areas of Auckland, it's going to be beneficial, more beneficial for the company at the end of the day, like at the start of the business I was taking jobs, you know, an hour and a half drive away just to get working, you know, and you do that at the start of the business and you think you charge accordingly. And you look back at it now and it's like, Jesus, like I was probably making hardly any money just in travel time. You know what I mean? Yeah. And there's ways and means of doing that. Like we had a similar situation. We covered quite a big area. So we would have our core area and then outside of that there was an what we called an out of area service charge. And so we would actually charge additional to go out of that area. Now that might be charged per km or it might have been a flat rate. So it just depended on the. On the area or on that client. So we. But we would still work it out so that we were servicing jobs on the way to that area and then on the way back so that it just made it. Or actually probably on the way back we would go the furthest away. Sorry Peter, I'm using that word again. But we would go out as far as possible and then work our way back because it's always easier to go back to the jobs at the. That maybe if you run short of time and you don't get the last couple of jobs done, at least they're close to home. So that's, that's the way static standardly that we worked. But you raise an important point there, Shane, about trying to do as much work as you can when you first start out. And I would say to you, my cautious caution there for those that are in that position is there's a saying where you start out how you intend to finish. Because if you start taking on work that's outside of your area and then all of a sudden you get busy in your area, then how are you going to manage that? Yeah, you're going to then really be disadvantaging yourself. Is your time actually better spent or charging those people initially more because they are out of your area. So keeping that in mind, not just saying yes to everything, but saying yes, but as you're outside of my service area, that's going to be an additional $20. Whatever it is, you're more than $20. Mark my words. Yeah, well, it depends on how far away and how many you've got out that way. But you're conditioning them, you're preparing them, and then you're not changing the ball game halfway through. You're not changing the rules halfway through the ball game. But yeah, I. You're also, by taking on work outside your area, you're actually stopping yourself from developing yourself inside your area. So keep that in mind. Yeah, like I say, no, know your limitations, whether that be space, size, but yeah, definitely pricing. You always want to price accordingly. We don't want to race to the bottom, we don't want to be working at a loss. You're much better off not to do the job if it's going to cost you money. Yeah, we all know that one. I've also over the years had a few customers who want to change the day of service. So you're booked in, in that area and that's Tuesday for you and you've got a tech there. So every Tuesday, boom, boom, boom. You've got your route planned, nice and efficient and then there's a customer who, you know, they get the message the night before saying, you know, confirming service. And then you sit, they send you a text, often at 7, 8, 9 o'clock at night. So you get this text, oh no, I'm not home tomorrow. You need to make it Thursday. And I just say, look, we're not in your area Thursday and we do it the following week or a week and a half on Friday or whatever it may be. But just know. And if they then start with the whole argument of, oh, but I need it changed to then, well, I'm sorry, we can't change our entire schedule for that. We can't cancel other customers who are there on the every day and they tend not to last long as our customers. I've got, I've got very little time for people who want to push us around. No, that's one thing that we kind of make a client aware of at the beginning, usually when they take them on as a regular. So you know, you have your specific day. We're in this area this day, if a day, if the weather is like today, then yes, we are going to have to move it if needed. But there does need to be that bit of flexibility. Yeah, no, we were exactly the same. And I know what you're saying, Peter, there's nothing more frustrating. So I always say paint it in the customer's favor. Like, we run a tight ship. We service all the people in your area on a certain day or on certain days. That allows us to keep our costs at a minimum, which means we can do your pool servicing at a much more affordable price. If we were running all over the place doing people's services willy nilly, then our cost would be exponentially more. So for us to keep our prices down for you, we service every an area on a particular day and we'd really like to accommodate you, but we can't End of story. We'd like to help you, but. No, that's it. Yeah, it's a nice way of doing it. Yeah. The one time it does become a bit tricky is especially in the lead up just before Christmas, because there, if we've just done some major jobs, you know, greenpool recoveries, or I've mentioned before, the honing, dust cleanups, where people have ground their concrete smooth around the pool and that goes in. You cannot predict how long these jobs will take. No, there's all sorts of factors in it. So you'll start and you think, okay, this looks like it'll be three trips out or two trips out or in some cases, yeah, we had one once. It was five trips out to site and there sometimes you do need to go out just to finish the damn job so it's ready before Christmas or a due date that you'd already arranged. Another thing I do not put up with is when a customer gets you out to do a job like this and you say, right, I'll be there to start on Thursday. I'll then assess how long it'll take. It will be into next week. You go there on the Thursday, you start it and they say, oh, no, no, we need to finish by Saturday. Well, that's just not going to happen. It's about, yeah, keeping your customer informed and educating them on process. However, sometimes customers just don't listen. It's not what they want to hear. So they don't hear it. I've got one job we're on at the moment. The guy's finished part of it today, finished all the pipe work and equipment. A couple I do a fair bit of work for, they flip houses. So buy an old rundown house, do it up and sell it at a profit. And they get us to do the work on their pools. And this was a concrete shell that they bought. Hadn't been finished, hadn't been rendered, nothing. So they got a guy in to basically change it to a fiberglass skin, fiberglass surface. Now he had delays because of weather and so forth. So I couldn't start for about a week and a half after we'd agreed on fair enough. Delays happen, we get that. Especially fiberglassing in the rain. You just can't do it. But then the husband and wife pair and she's very reasonable, he is all gung ho, get it done, get it done. And he rang me yesterday and said, oh, but we, we agreed you'd have it finished by this date. I said, no, that was the target. But I've been held up. I couldn't start for a week and a half later and he started cracking the shits with me. So I said, look, if you're not happy with that, find someone else, go for it. And the look on his face I can imagine would have been one of absolute shock. I could hear him gasping over the phone. And yeah, he very quickly backed down from that. But he said, oh, but paving's due, you know, the following Monday, whatever it was. I said, well yeah, that's fine, they'll have to be postponed as well because I can't make up for others delaying me a week and a half. So it's all settled now, finished off the first part of it today. And yeah, now just wait for the gel coat. Enough to settle, set enough cure enough that we can walk inside, fit the lights, then the rest will be very quick and easy. But it is the season for this, isn't it? Like we all get those phone calls of all of a sudden the weather turns hot and everything has to have been done yesterday or they ring up on the Friday because they've got a green pool and they've got a party on the Saturday, like we, we all get them. So I think it's important one, you guys are both smart and you leave room in your schedule, which is fantastic. And I strongly recommend that to other people, even if they do like I did and it's just one day, a fortnight. Those days always got filled with jobs without any issue if there wasn't a public holiday or a rain day or something that ate them up. But yeah, making sure that you charge accordingly, that you charge that out of area fee or that you charge that emergency call out fee and you can easily justify it and get that, get that job on your terms. I think this is the important thing. It's on your terms or a PETA fee. P I T a pain in the ass. I call it an ID10T tax. Yeah, IDT you write it down for those who aren't so visual, Write it down ID 10 and then a T. It's an idiot tax. But yeah, you quickly find out by telling people that there's an emergency call out fee or there's like going to be an emergency fee attached to it whether it truly is an emergency or not. Because if you say to them, oh okay, well yeah, we can come out and do that, but it'll be at one and a half times the labor or it'll be at $100 emergency call out fee on as a surcharge whatever that might be. Then you'll very quickly get a response from them that will be, oh, what you mean I have to pay for that? And it's like, well yes, you've rung up at the last minute. I have to move jobs around. I have to make sure a technician's available after hours. I'm sure you don't work extra time for nothing. I can't expect my staff to and I can't be penalized for your mismanagement of planning. Maybe we don't say that last bit, but yeah, we can easily paint it to them now. They will very quickly decide whether it is actually an emergency and whether they're prepared to pay that surcharge and maybe, just maybe, it might actually make them plan in advance next time and they won't ring you 24 hours beforehand. Got to tell you one I shared this with Shane would have been probably a couple of years ago on the podcast. I don't know if I've mentioned it to you, Lee. I had a phone call. It was a Sunday morning about 7:30am and I thought what the hell? I was up, picked up the phone and guy's there and he says look, I've got a real emergency with my pool. My wife's having some friends over for a party this afternoon and she can't get the pump running. He said, I'm up working in the mines up in the north of the state. So I'm in the mines. I can't do anything about it. We really need that fixed today or this morning. I said, well look, we're not actually working this morning and you started begging and oh, it must be done. I said, well look, I'm going to have to charge you 100 bucks for a minute, 100 bucks for the first hour or part thereof and 100 bucks an hour thereafter. But also, this completely ruins my plans for the day. I'm going to have to charge a $200 emergency fee. Oh, I'm not paying that. I said, okay, all the best. I hope your wife can get it going. And he finally agreed, okay, yes, I'll pay it. She'll have the cash when you get there. I said, no, my truck won't start until the money's in my account. So if you've got a credit card because you know you'll be whistling for your money in that situation anyway, went out there and rang the doorbell, knocked on the door, whatever it was. Door opened, woman there was absolutely stunning, wearing a men's shirt. Clearly I don't think she was wearing anything else, but I thought that's a big red flag. Anyway, I introduced myself and she goes sh. And starts gesturing downwards with her hands to, for me to be quieter. And I noticed her eyes were all bloodshot. I said, I'm here for the pool. And she nods and leads me through. As we're going through, as a guy's voice comes out of the front bedroom. Who's that, honey? Her husband had called me from the mines that morning. Right. You've made an extra couple of hundred there, Pete. Oh, I tell you what, that was a second red flag in, in a matter of 30 seconds, went through the back door of the, the house into the patio area. There's an outdoor table covered in empty alcohol containers. And I looked at her and I said, that's why you want me to be quiet, isn't it? And she nodded sheepishly, went over to the pump, turned it on for 10 seconds, turned it off. Well, five seconds, turned it off, took the lid off, straightened the basket, put the lid back on, boom, off it went. I said, there you go, problems fixed. And she, she looked at me and said, but you're charging $300 for that? I said, no, I'm charging $200 for ruining my day, day off. Secondly, I'm charging $100 for having the experience of where to look first. And she wasn't happy. She said, I'm telling my husband about this. I said, oh, was he the guy who rang me from the mines or the guy who called out from the front bedroom? She went white as a ghost and said, do you need any more money? I said, no, I need to leave now. And that was that story. You could have doubled your money there easily. Oh, I just wanted out of there. That, that's too many red flags all in one one. Not what you need last Sunday morning, is it? Sorry? Not what you need on a Sunday morning morning, is it? No, the, the wife was quite surprised when I told her what happened and she said what, that really happened? I said, oh yeah, we people don't realize trades who work in your yard or in your house. We see all sorts of stuff. I could write a book. In fact, I've just started making notes to write a book about some of the crazy ass stuff I've seen on jobs. No, yeah, we do see some crazy ones that might be another episode. Maybe, maybe we can compile them all, share notes. But the this time of the year does bring out all the crazies. And of course this time of the year, the festive season Some businesses are looking at or thinking about their staff Christmas party. So we said the other week that we might run through some ideas for people of what they can do with their staff to celebrate. Now I think, Peter, you said you do Christmas after Christmas. Yeah. End of season, closer to Easter. Because Christmas, first of all, bah humbug. Secondly, there's the man with the beard. Yes. Secondly, everywhere is packed in in December and lead up to Christmas. Yeah. So it's just madness out there. Also, we do every couple of months, like I've said before, we do the lunch at the pub with the guys and they enjoy that. But yeah, end of season at Easter, that's something a little bit. They're planning to have a bit more of a party feel to it. So at your end of season, what do you, what do you do? What sort of activities or celebration do you do? Liquid lunch. Lee, you should know that going up the pub, another pub, make sure it's always make sure that it's a pub with very good food though. Yes, obviously it's a must, of course. And of course we do throw the caution out there that you need to consider work, health and safety situations. When you are drinking in a work group, you do have a responsibility or duty of care as the owner of the business or as the manager of the business. So please make sure that you look after your staff who are drinking, that you make sure they get home safely. But yeah, we tried to. We sometimes did ours at end of season or especially after the crazies. We did occasionally we've done them the middle of the year because I think it's nice to, as you say, Pete, acknowledge the end of season. Plus also we're all so exhausted, staff included, that to give up a Saturday afternoon or a week night or something is like, oh, we're all so tired, we just want to go home and go to bed, crack a beer and go to bed. But we try to do things, few different things. So some of the things that we've done over the years that might give some ideas are we've done barefoot bowls. So that was, that was really good. They did catering and we, they did like food platters and that for us. So which was really good. We did ten pin bowling and pizzas or actually no, I think it was burgers at the place next door, which was, which was really good fun. We did a comedy night one night. We bought a table of tickets for the staff and their spouses and took them all out for dinner beforehand and then onto the comedy night. So that was a big success and I was the designated driver that night because everyone did have a few drinks. So I was the safe, responsible employer. And the other one that I would love to do that we don't actually have in our area which I think would be really a really good thing was escape rooms. I was thinking that yeah, yeah because there's some great teamwork involved in those. I've done one with my family before where they sort of split us up half in one cell and half in the other. We had to get out of a jail cell and you had to work together between the two jail cells which was really good. So that was a, that was a lot of fun and a lot of laughs and. But one of the best I've ever seen is. And I was privileged to be invited to a business in, in the, in Queensland when I was up there at one point and we went to Topgolf. Now Topgolf in at the Gold coast is a multi story golf driving range but it's lit up and they've got music and they serve drinks and food and like it's are really a lot of fun. And this business had quite a number of staff. They had seven service technicians I think and about eight shop staff and then they also had them, their spouses so they were all invited. So it was a big group. So one little extra me didn't, it didn't matter but it was fantastic. It was a great setup. They all had a terrific time. The staff were all really appreciative as they were with the nights that we threw. Our staff always appreciated it and I think if you can create, if you can have an activity that's some fun for everybody to get involved, whether it's a team thing or like two teams or three teams or four teams against each other or whether it's just a small group of people doing something like an estate escape room. Yeah, a lot of fun. Create some camaraderie, build, build some teammanship. I think it's a really good thing. But it's hard because some businesses like Shane's just, just them and you go well, should I bother? Well I would actually say Shane, you've got a great relationship with those other businesses on the south west side. Did you say you do north east and there on the southwest? I think that was what you. Oh yeah. But I'd contact them and say hey, do you want to do a combined Christmas party? Because there's a lot of businesses out there that are just a couple of people. Maybe it might be you and you and one staff or it sort of feels a bit weird that you're having this party with so many, so few people but you can make it into something business bigger. Maybe it's a business that's next door that you could roll it in together or a business that you do a lot of reciprocal work with. So there's those sort of things. Shane, with your previous businesses that you've worked with, did you have any good Christmas do experiences that you thought of? Yeah, yeah we did actually. I mean some of the suggestions that you were saying, Lee, is ones of the previous employment they, they hosted as well. Yeah, we have a place called Holy Moly over here which is a bar three level, two or three levels with like mini golf inside and ten pin bowling. It's, you know, it's, it's great fun. You know you actually see you get to speak to people outside of work as well. You know, everybody's relaxed and you actually get to know people. But yeah, in regards to what you were saying. Good because in the last couple of months I've recently started like a little group of pool professionals for single polers and we just kind of help each other out. So that's a really good idea actually lean just to post something like that and see if everybody wants to have a, have a little Christmas party. Yeah. Or even you could do it after Christmas once all the crazies have finished. Yeah, yeah, yeah and, and it's, it's great for building relationships both in the business and outside of the business. But yeah, actually making those connections with your staff on a more personal level and them connecting with each other because some of our service technicians are like ships passing in the night. They only see each other as they're stacking the vehicle in the morning or sometimes in the afternoon. So they really don't have a lot of time that they spend together and so people really like to belong and this will help build that belonging and whether you do it for Christmas, like we're talking about Christmas here and all the Christmas crazies but it's something probably you should look at doing a couple of times through the year to really help build your team atmosphere and family environment like Pete does, he takes his stuff to the pub every couple of months. Yeah. What could, what could you do? Could you have. My son is an apprentice carpenter, one of my sons is and they regularly go and play golf and they play the carpenters against the brickies. So they will go on a Friday at lunchtime, they knock off early, they'll head to the local golf club and they play a Stableford. So it's a bit of fun. They're all involved. Doesn't matter how bad or how good you are at golf, it's sort of all evened out and then they have a few beers and some nibblies at the end and it really, really good for building the business connections and the team camaraderie and yeah, they enjoy it more and people love to work somewhere where they're happy and enjoy. And enjoy the environment and each other. Yep. Well, I do have something planned for next year with the guys. I was thinking about an escape room. Then I found out the two of them just go on a, a Tuesday night, they'll go out to an escape room or something. I thought, well, you've probably done most of them in Perth, so as they start changing them, I'll book that with them. But, you know, I'm very keen on my barbecue and these guys are really interested in getting into it as well. So I bought tickets for a barbecue course locally. I've been to two of their courses before and there's a. An absolute legend in the barbecue world from Texas called Bill Dumas and he's coming over to Perth. I bought tickets for his class for us. So that should be an interesting one. That's, that's terrific. It's like I said, we did a comedy night one night that was brilliant. Yes. A lot of the comedy these days you've got to be really careful about what comedians are performing because some of them, all I do is swear and aren't funny. Yes. Finding someone that's actually intelligent enough to be good comedy, it's, it's rare. Yeah. I think we went and saw Jamon a couple of times. Oh, yep. It's good. So, yeah, then we just, yeah, went out for drinks before, like dinner beforehand and. And then, yeah, went to the comedy night which, yeah, was nice to have a, A good laugh with everyone. Yeah. So. And speaking of good laughter, Peter has just sent me a messenger for everybody out there to show me that I'm wrong with my furthest. So it's furthest. So yes, Peter, you are correct. Of course I'm correct. When am I ever wrong? I'm still going to stick to featherest. I don't care even. I wondered if you'd see that it says furtherest is a dialectical term and is not typically used in good writing except in dialogue that involves non standard speech. Well, I'm non standard. I always knew that. In your defense, you did never claim to be normal. Absolutely not. Yeah, but, yeah, whoever I'm out there. Send in your Christmas party ideas, talking pools, gmail.com. also, any questions or topic requests. But for now, you guys, have a bloody good weekend. All our listeners out there, have a bloody good week. See you guys. Yes, guys, see you later. Project Name Rudy's Video - Nov 17, 2024 00:02.8 50:22.8