Purposeful Marketing with Laci Davis, Phosphate Mysteries & Chlorine Lock

In this episode of the Talking Pools podcast, Rudy Stankowitz interviews Laci Davis from The Grit Game, discussing her journey in the pool industry, leadership, creativity, and the importance of purposeful marketing. A listener question on why phosphate removers often cloud water. Another where we lay it on the line - ALWAYS follow the advice of your local Pool Pro. Chlorine Lock is NOW called CyA Slackass!

Lacey shares insights from her experiences at Disney, the significance of customer service in sales, and the future initiatives of The Grit Game aimed at supporting pool professionals. The conversation emphasizes the value of personal growth, community, and the evolving landscape of social media in business.

takeaways

• The Grit Game helps pool professionals by partnering with innovative manufacturers.
• Leadership involves personal growth and understanding how to treat others.
• Creativity from the arts can enhance business practices and marketing strategies.
• Lessons from Disney emphasize the importance of treating everyone with respect.
• Purposeful marketing adds value to social media posts and engages audiences.
• Sales should focus on customer service rather than aggressive tactics.
• Understanding pricing and business management is crucial for success in the pool industry.
• Social media strategies should target local audiences and showcase work effectively.
• Celebrating small wins fosters a supportive team environment.
• Elevating the industry involves continuous learning and adapting to new resources.

Sound Bites

• "You decide what you do with that."
• "Put your locations in your bio."
• "Be good to people."

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to The Grit Game

05:41
Creativity in Business

10:16
Purposeful Marketing Strategies

15:57
The Role of Enthusiasm in Sales

20:43
Redefining Sales in the Pool Industry

23:34
Effective Social Media Strategies

29:01
The Power of Repetition in Mastery

30:19
Rebuilding Knowledge After Amnesia

31:14
Business Fundamentals for Pool Professionals

32:46
Understanding Business Growth Potential

34:12
Mentorship and Learning from Others

35:24
Time Management Through Block Scheduling

37:46
The Importance of Customer Communication

39:17
Navigating Negativity in Business

40:34
Celebrating Small Wins for Big Breakthroughs

42:36
Training Through Creativity

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Transcript

Rudy Stankowitz (00:01.388)
Hey everybody, welcome to Fridays. This is the Talking Pools podcast. I'm Rudy Stankiewicz and I am here today with Lacey Davis, one of our top 10 mentor nominees.

for 2025 for the pool industry. Good stuff. Let me start. Lacey, you work for a company called The Grid Game. What is that? Hello, first of all, I'm sorry. Hi. Hey. There you go. I know, right to it, just jumping right in. So.

Laci Davis (00:25.113)
The correct game is...

Laci Davis (00:30.157)
Hang on!

I feel like when you do business for as long as you and I have been doing, you just kind of get to it. The nice things are cool and I get in trouble often because I'll do exactly what you did. I'll get to the point and I'll be like, oh, I'm sorry, good morning. Good morning.

Rudy Stankowitz (00:40.92)
Yeah.

Rudy Stankowitz (00:48.278)
Yeah. How was your day? And now, what is the great game? What is it?

Laci Davis (00:57.199)
The great game is a super cool group of people that helps pull pros and we do that because we partner with manufacturers in the industry that we believe in their product. We believe that they're either innovative or they have something to offer and maybe they don't shine as brightly as some people with bigger budgets, right? So they'll partner with a rep group like the great game and say, can you get in front of more people and just let them know that my product exists and this is how it helps them. We keep a really limited product line. We only partner with one.

that we've either vetted, we believed in, we've worked with before. So it's a really great resource for pool pros in general to say, hey, what do you have that may be able to solve some problems I'm facing right now?

Rudy Stankowitz (01:40.846)
Cool.

We're gonna make this sound so pretty when I'm done. you could, here, let me ask you this. If your younger self could shadow you for one week at the grid game, what do you think would surprise her the most about how Lacey Davis leads people now?

Laci Davis (01:52.832)
Laci Davis (02:02.995)
there's, there's probably, probably surprising that there's less glitter involved than there actually is.

Rudy Stankowitz (02:13.837)
Okay, we need to expand on that.

Laci Davis (02:17.487)
I was always the person who was making handmade things for people and so, you know, glitter was stable on everything and it kind of is to an extent here, but it's more shifted into more clothing than in things we give away. We found that glitter is like the herpes of craft projects. It just sticks with you forever and we best not.

Rudy Stankowitz (02:41.045)
Wow. Okay. Yeah. You'll find it weeks and months later. There it is again.

Laci Davis (02:47.733)
It's it's the gift that keeps giving, right? So the fact that my office is nice and clean and organized and not covered in paint and chaos and glitter and is kind of like, good job me.

Rudy Stankowitz (03:03.851)
Where are you?

Laci Davis (03:05.519)
I was a fine arts major for a while. It was all art in all all things and it was creative expressiveness and so I think I think they'd be I think younger me would be kind of surprised for up for this because I I'm everybody's friend, right? I'm not anybody's better. I'm not anybody's Greater so to be up for something that kind of has this condensation to it of you've reached a

Rudy Stankowitz (03:07.944)
Laci Davis (03:35.473)
certain level that people want listen to what you have to say. That doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't reach the top for me.

Rudy Stankowitz (03:42.093)
you

Rudy Stankowitz (03:46.124)
What did you bring with you that we might not notice? And maybe you, I mean, just give it a thought for a second. Something that you brought with you from your background in art into this position that has helped you that even you might not have realized it.

Laci Davis (04:05.495)
outside of the fact that everything is color coded. I think there's a sense of creativity, right? I think anytime somebody does something in the arts, whether that's actual fine arts, like myself, I was charcoal, I was painting, I was drawings, to singing, to theater, which I also have a background in, you have...

some expressiveness about you and that could be maybe in the way you present yourself verbally and in front of people. That could also be in, you know, we do a lot of creativity on social media with creating visuals, with creating videos, and it's always this aspect of how is this somewhat entertaining? Whether is it visually appealing to look at versus just throwing things on a page and hitting post? Is there an element of entertainment to it?

So I do think that between the fine arts and the theater background We get a little bit more of an interesting cocktail in the grit game Just because we do look for those kind of things in people too We have folks on the team when we interview people and if you're looking to join us I apologize for ruining now, but I had the last question I ask everybody when they get to my round of interviewing is what did you want to be when you grew up? When you were in elementary school or younger, what did you want to be?

Because that tells me a lot about who that person actually is and we've gotten folks that have the creativity background We get folks that they wanted to be in the military because their dad was and you know, okay So you're probably organized you're probably this you probably have more discipline, you know and we talk about the route that they ended up taking but Knowing what somebody wanted to be when they were growing up

I can kind of find why that clicked with them then and how that still translates today and then put them in positions to still get to live a little bit of that. Now, it's not military and it's not, you know, I wanted to be an actor and all these things, but I can put somebody who wanted to be an actor, I can put them in front of a camera more.

Laci Davis (06:09.313)
I can put somebody who wanted to go into the military, hey, can you help us maybe formulate some better processes and procedures for how we're doing X, and Z? And I think because I still value my inner child that's not very inner, I love to find that out about people as well.

Rudy Stankowitz (06:31.989)
When I was younger, when I got out of high school, this is just a sad story. Not really sad, it's kind of interesting. No, it's kind of sad. So I got out of high school and I was doing theater around Long Island. And back then, my accent was very heavy. Sounded a lot like Carrie from King of Queens, as far as the Long Island accent goes. And was doing different theater things all about Long Island and at certain point then I decided, well, you know what, I'm just, I'm gonna join the military. So I did.

I went into the service and in basic training I had received a letter that my mother had forwarded me that had showed up at my house, which was a request to audition for Crocodile Dundee 2 because they needed a kid that had a strong New York accent.

Laci Davis (07:18.291)
no!

Rudy Stankowitz (07:19.821)
And of course now, excuse me drill sergeant. No, it's not gonna fucking happen. So anyway, so yeah, so Onward I marched as a soldier, but that was I don't know if I would have got the part or not I know it was interesting and it was just one of those mother father type of moments in your life where you're just like, okay Maybe I should have just waited a little bit longer Before committing to a job. I couldn't quit but

Laci Davis (07:29.6)
Yeah

Laci Davis (07:43.535)
Definitely not.

Rudy Stankowitz (07:48.397)
So, but I loved my time in the service. have no regrets. I did some of the most amazing things I did in my life and met some of most amazing people. speaking of which, let's go back in time. When you left Disney, because yes, I do my homework, and stepped into the pool and spa industry, what was the smallest thing you carried over from that experience that ended up having the biggest impact?

Laci Davis (07:48.686)
Hahaha

Laci Davis (08:20.015)
I think truly, I think it was how other people at Disney treated me.

I came into Disney in a very unique way. It was a last minute thought. I had had a very rich career background already. I was a children's photographer for over a decade with a company that I was essentially a partner in. And I had done public speaking in Ireland for an anti-trafficking nonprofit, speaking in front of a parliament, speaking in front of universities.

Laci Davis (08:59.055)
I was established. Well, I wanted to finish my degree and my degree required that I have an internship and I said, this is silly. I need an internship and they're like, yeah, okay, well, Disney's always hired. I'll do an internship at Disney. So I came into Disney as an established professional, but I came in at the internship level.

And some people treated me like a human being and some people treated me as lesser. There was a coordinator. So in the Disney's corporate, it goes intern, assistant, coordinator, et cetera. And there was a manager, senior manager. There was a coordinator that I was standing speaking with a manager in my office. And she came in and outside the door,

Laci Davis (09:49.23)
Me?

Rudy Stankowitz (09:49.739)
Yes.

Laci Davis (09:51.728)
and had me follow her into the break room and point at the vending machine and say, can you get those chips for me? Bend down and get the chips out for her, right?

Rudy Stankowitz (09:58.838)
No way.

Laci Davis (10:02.371)
But then on the flip side, I had some managers and I had some senior level managers kind of take me under and not necessarily mentor, but gave me their time and said, hey, have you tried this? Have you talked to this person? This is kind of how we operate here. We do meet and greets to get to know other departments and kind of led me and gave me that open door for communicating. And...

I had never been in a position where somebody, I've been very fortunate, where somebody treated me poorly in my career. So I think that it was this underlying thing that happened because now when I converse with people, I'll say something and, I hear that manager because that's something she would have said to me or I hear him because I learned that lesson from him. And so that's something that I think

can apply to everybody, no matter where you're coming from, is how people treat you in your role. You decide what you do with that. And people have a much bigger impact than you think they do in the moment.

Rudy Stankowitz (11:16.823)
That is a fact and you never know when that stuff is going to come up. It's almost like, I don't know, if you, like a scent, scent carries memories, they have it attached to it and you get to that point where you're just in a situation and then something clicks and it just brings you back. But what's a skill you've mastered that you once thought was completely unrelated to this industry, but now you find yourself teaching it to others all the time.

Laci Davis (11:45.806)
that's excellent. Okay.

Laci Davis (11:52.751)
of social media now because I always knew that was relevant.

Rudy Stankowitz (12:09.293)
can get back to that one if you want. Okay.

Laci Davis (12:10.671)
No, no, that's okay. I think that it's really around purpose. Having a purpose in what you're doing from a marketing standpoint. And that may sound silly. When I first got into the industry, I eventually took over the social media for the pool company that I was working for. And I followed a lot of their strategy because I hadn't done social media before. didn't have a back...

in it, didn't have experience outside of my own personal online diary, right? So they gave me, said, hey, know, hit the holidays, post about, you know, happy Fourth of July, happy Labor Day, post a sale, post, you know, and because this playbook that they had.

Rudy Stankowitz (12:50.988)
Mm-hmm.

Laci Davis (12:55.649)
And I started thinking through why does anybody care about this?

Why does anybody scrolling this feed care about? mean, they see 20,000 happy Fourth of July's. You know, how can we make this something that adds value to them? And so that's something that I teach pretty heavily on. I know that we talked to Ipsa in one of your open houses. Thank you for having me on this. Yeah, my pleasure. And we talked about, you know, make sure when you hit post, you're bringing something to

Rudy Stankowitz (13:21.621)
You did. Thank you for being there.

Laci Davis (13:31.07)
the table. You're not just spamming somebody's scroll feed and that's going to be the case for a lot of things. That's the case with podcasts, that's the case with a blog, that could be what you're posting on LinkedIn, Meta, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. If you're just spamming it that used to work, you could do a lot of high quantity, but the value that you add brings up your quality and you can post a lot less.

Rudy Stankowitz (13:46.134)
Hmm

Laci Davis (14:01.115)
Not like I would know anything about posting less. my gosh, you'd be...

When we first got started Rudy, we were posting three times a day, three times a day, just to get our name out there. And once we started, the first time I lost somebody, I lost a follower, I knew it was because I posted too much. And that was about a year in, and I said, okay, we hit it, it's time to reel back. It's time to reel back. And now we post a handful of times a week, but they're higher quality, and it's always at how do we give value to the pool professional? You know, know your audience.

Rudy Stankowitz (14:23.915)
Right.

Laci Davis (14:34.961)
And so that trickling down through, you know, always being a spot to add value, I didn't think that that was going to come into the social media play in the pool industry.

Rudy Stankowitz (14:46.849)
We are a very passionate group. that's the key to anything that I've not, that everything I post has that passion. doesn't, because there's a lot of things that just are there, which I shouldn't post. But the things that take off are those things that hit us in the feels. And we do feel a lot. We have a lot of opinions. We have a lot of...

Laci Davis (14:49.675)
my gosh.

Rudy Stankowitz (15:15.615)
love for what we do and anytime anybody can tap into that it's sure to be a good post I think.

Laci Davis (15:25.411)
Yeah, right on the head.

I heard you say on another podcast, nobody grew up wanting to be a pool pro. It just always fell in our laps. We all got here. See, I listen. We all get here through happenstance. But we stay because pool people are legitimately the coolest. I didn't know they were my people, but they're my people. And Johnny used to tell me, my husband used to tell me, people come and they leave.

Rudy Stankowitz (15:37.869)
That was last week. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Rudy Stankowitz (15:50.049)
think so.

Laci Davis (15:59.586)
Nine times out of ten they come back and once they're back, it's like cement shoes. They're in for good. And I was like, that's funny. Okay. No, I left. I left after that dealership. I didn't like I wasn't treated very well there and I did leave it and and I came back because Fool people are my people, man.

Rudy Stankowitz (16:15.669)
It's Hotel California. Behold, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. That's the... Yeah, and it's, you know, it's just, it just works for some, it's this whole stealth island of misfit toys with this huge dysfunctional family and we just have a lot of love. And it just works. And I think once you're exposed to it, it's somewhat contagious. It's like getting a tattoo.

Laci Davis (16:22.829)
Ha ha!

Laci Davis (16:44.353)
It's a, yeah, yeah, it's amazing. The energy, I think it's the enthusiasm. I think it's the enthusiasm everybody has for their craft. Whether, no matter whether it's the retail store owner, the pool service, the pool builder, like everybody has this really healthy amount of enthusiasm for what they do that I haven't seen anywhere else.

Rudy Stankowitz (16:46.861)
I gotta get another one.

Rudy Stankowitz (17:02.807)
Mm-hmm.

I agree. agree. If you could take every new rep or every pool pro and hand them a single invisible tool for success, something that they can't physically hold, what would it be?

Laci Davis (17:21.827)
Imagine here.

Rudy Stankowitz (17:24.395)
Say again? A magic mirror. Okay, let's expand on that.

Laci Davis (17:25.495)
A magic mirror. Yep. I wanted to be a magic mirror that when they looked into it, it would show them what was possible if they'd stop getting in their own way. What if? What if you did that thing, that idea that you've had for months? What if you posted that?

Rudy Stankowitz (17:39.607)
I love it.

Laci Davis (17:49.476)
that you really like it, but you're scared about what your family's gonna think or your friends are gonna think when you start posting about your business. What if you did expand? What if you made that kind of weird hire, but you like them and you think there's something there in your gut? What if? With me running a team of technically salespeople, this is what they do, I tell them if you knew you were only 20 no's away from a yes,

I ever know you get you like, great.

I'll see you later. Perfect. Next. You know, but at the same time, you've got to have this personal, you know, you've got to, it's kind of like what we said about the industry. Everybody's very enthusiastic. It's it's this weird family that works, but everybody's got their back, you know? So if you're in this industry that kind of has that mentality anyway, start linking up with people that's got your back that you can ping pong off, that you can create a mastermind of communication around, but listen to your gut and start doing a little bit

Rudy Stankowitz (18:23.201)
Hmm.

Rudy Stankowitz (18:27.533)
you

Laci Davis (18:52.547)
a visualization of what if it all worked out.

Rudy Stankowitz (18:57.375)
That's the goal, right? To end with no what-ifs, right? To give them all a shot. No more what-ifs. You've tried everything. Whatever came up, go for it. Because in the worst case scenarios, it didn't work out. I mean, you never know unless you try. And it's a damn shame if you go your whole life without doing that. What's one piece of bad advice you've heard floating around the industry that you quietly or loudly...

rebel against when you're guiding people.

Laci Davis (19:25.935)
I'm go.

Laci Davis (19:29.549)
I had somebody interview recently, they did get the job, they got a job offer at least, and in my line of work, right, it's a little bit different because I'm hiring people as a sales role. And they said,

I need to be a hunter. I'm not a very good hunter. I need to be able to smell the blood in the water and be a shark and go after the kill. And I said, tell me more. Why do you think you need that? And well, that's sales, right? You need to be able to pinpoint where there's a discrepancy, where you're kind of getting to somebody and you just need to push them over the edge. And I said, why don't you think you're like that? Well, I'm

personable. I'm worried about their business and I want to make sure that I'm doing right by them and kind of hemmed and haul around the fact he's a good dude. He's not trying to screw anybody. He's not trying to get a sale for a sale. And I think that's a common misconception because I know

Rudy Stankowitz (20:22.751)
huh.

Laci Davis (20:31.285)
salespeople can kind of come across as door-to-door salesmen, right, of the early 40s, vacuum cleaner salesmen, and used car salesmen. These were not highly thought of personalities. However, your sales team, your reps, whether it's a manufacturer rep for your big name manufacturers, or it's your outside sales rep that cover a lot of smaller lines,

If they're there to support your business, to grow your business, to solve your problems, that's not the salespeople that we know of from the movies. That's not the same people. And that's okay. The industry has changed. I was reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and I love it because it's much older book. It's not up with the times, but it predicted a lot of what success was going to look like in the coming decades. And it was gone are the hard brass.

Rudy Stankowitz (21:21.452)
you

Laci Davis (21:30.097)
salespeople, high pressure, it's going to be the people who are kind, who have empathy, who have an open door of communication. And you've seen the transition across the decades, how that's become true. So part of it, a very long-winded way to answer your question, is I think that something that I go to bat for is the image of what a salesperson is and what they are not.

Rudy Stankowitz (21:48.243)
That's fine.

Rudy Stankowitz (22:01.741)
always looked at it like, I always looked at it as a customer service, you know? And if you're good at customer service, the sales will come out, the sales will come. You need to build the rapport, build the relationship, and really take a look at your customer's business and see what you have that could solve some problem that they have. And then work that in because here's the solution, and that's customer service. I'm giving you something that you need and your customers need.

And from there, you stay on that same line, you work for greater product inclusion, but you just keep building off of that and you build with that same idea set that here, I mean, this is helping you to do A, B, C, or D or whatever and ultimately, you know, more profit and also helping us to build a relationship and unshark like where you're just there for the kill. Now...

You see that all the way up and through delivery and afterwards and you hang in there for every step of that sale and that's what makes somebody a great salesperson. It's not sales, it's customer service.

Laci Davis (23:08.115)
that my dad was in sales pre-me and he was telling me that he was about to land this really big account. He was going to land Kmart for whatever he was selling then. And his buddy brought him in, he was going to speak to all the major executives and his buddy went up to introduce him and said, I'd like to introduce you to Kes. This is the greatest con man on the planet.

Rudy Stankowitz (23:09.741)
Ahem.

Rudy Stankowitz (23:34.839)
around.

Laci Davis (23:36.352)
Right like buddy. I we were friends, you know, said now that I have your attention I want you to know the reason he's the biggest con man on the planet is because he will never lie to you and He will always be upfront and honest about anything you ask of him about the products and because of that you will buy Anything this man suggests to you knowing that it's gonna work out because he's got the data to back it up

Rudy Stankowitz (23:39.447)
Right.

Rudy Stankowitz (24:01.837)
So there you go. I love it.

Laci Davis (24:03.193)
So it was fantastic. Yeah.

Rudy Stankowitz (24:07.511)
Well, and that's the thing. You know, you look at something like, okay, you have a catalog of product. So, sales. Salesperson goes in with everything. It's like sitting in a boat, constantly switching lures to see what you get a bite on, just whaling it out. There were no rhyme, no reason. But from a customer service point, you find that foot in the door product and you focus on that and you don't hit them with your entire catalog. Because if you hit them with an entire catalog, quite honestly, it's overwhelming.

Laci Davis (24:30.212)
Mm-hmm.

Laci Davis (24:36.943)
You just blossom over because you can't be helpful with everything, right? You know, what's the problem? What's the problem?

Rudy Stankowitz (24:37.099)
I wouldn't know what to say yes to. It'd be like, bleh. Exactly. So.

Rudy Stankowitz (24:47.123)
You've done presentations on purposeful posting. What's your go-to story for getting a complete social media skeptic to suddenly get it?

Laci Davis (25:02.767)
I can show them graphs and data for days because I've talked to so many people that say social media doesn't do anything. Well, when you don't do it correctly, you're right. You're just throwing spaghetti against a slippery wall. But when you can say, here's this post, and it did OK, and here's this post.

They look like similar topics. Why did this one fly off the wall? Why did this one get a million plus views? Why did this one get leads in my funnel? Why did this one have people reaching out asking me for more information when I didn't ask them to reach out to me? It's these little things that you can teach, but people only respond to data. A lot of folks for social media specifically,

they, it was this passing thing. It was this something that, you know, the kids are getting on TikTok and doing dances, which I to send you an email. I know. I'm so proud of you. I was so proud of you. So, you know, it's this thing like, well, it's not my audience.

Rudy Stankowitz (26:01.165)
I did one. I did one.

Laci Davis (26:13.239)
I think we know now everybody spends their time doom scrolling, right? And so the whole f***ing in social media strategy is how do you stop the scroll? How do you stop the scroll? You know, you've got to hook somebody in the first three seconds and then in the first seven seconds you have to do something that tells them why they should wait until the end. Because it used to be that algorithms cared about how many likes and comments you got. The number one algorithm triggered now is watch time. How long did they stay on your post?

Rudy Stankowitz (26:18.637)
Yeah.

Laci Davis (26:43.153)
That's why on Instagram you're seeing carousel posts where it's just a single image and people are scrolling through and it's telling a story. Those are flying right now. Those are very, very popular. Those are getting a lot of views. Why? Watch time. People are staying on your post longer. It triggers the algorithm that it's more important what happens if somebody stays on your post longer. One, they're seeing more of whatever it is that you're posting. But two, the algorithm says what this person's posting is interesting. I'm going to push it out to more people. More people see your product. More people see your service. And I'm going to say it.

because you didn't ask it, but I want to tell the entire world of the pool industry, if you could fix one thing about your social media presence, about what you're posting online, put the areas that you service on your bio.

in your post caption because I follow more pool companies than I can count and I'll go in and I'll be like, I don't know where in the world they are. I think they're in the United States. They might be in California, but I don't know that. So if I don't know that, you're posting all these beautiful pictures of your before and afters and your hard work and everything and your ideal audience doesn't even know that you're in their area. Put your locations, please.

Rudy Stankowitz (27:37.474)
BOOM

Rudy Stankowitz (27:57.335)
You're absolutely correct. You see a lot of folks too where they set up their social media accounts and they post pictures and things and such, but you can kind of tell they're not really shooting for their customer and they should be. They're there for fun, which is great. You should be there for fun, but they're posting things for their peers, not for their customers. And they're becoming, I guess they're getting a lot of likes, but it's...

Laci Davis (28:10.606)
Yeah.

Rudy Stankowitz (28:24.629)
a pool guy in California likes something a pool guy in Florida does, who cares? It doesn't help my business grow. I need people who live in Gainesville to like things that I do. And it's making that shift and focusing on your community. Yeah, belong to the Facebook group, have fun in there. But on your page, blow up your town. You got to.

Laci Davis (28:44.719)
blow up your.

blow up your town anywhere that you service, if it's surrounding areas, put that in your caption. You don't even have to, hashtags are dead. Hashtags are dead, there's no reason. You can put the words in your caption, you can write the words on the screen and shrink them down way low and pull them off screen so you can't even see it, but put the towns and the state that you service so that that can get in front of your people. And then when you are posting, yeah, it's fun to post a cool gif or a cool meme over something you saw and like,

Wow, I saw one the other day, it was a gator in a pool. Yeah, that happens down here, right? So it's fun to show those things, but keep in mind, if you're gonna start posting your location, your customers, and you want to use your social media for your business to grow your business, hey, this is Grip Pools, we took this swamp thing's habitat and we turned it crystal clear. It took this many days. You can tell a story and show your work.

things start to change is when you start using your social platform to become your online portfolio of your work instead of your online diary. It's your online portfolio showing your work, showing your craftsmanship and you can have fun. You can make it your own and because maybe those pool people, the pool owner, they're like, you know, Rudy makes me laugh. Rudy's great and he does great work and he's in my area. Rudy's got to be my pool guy. Like that's what I want. So start posting your location. Start posting as

Rudy Stankowitz (29:55.501)
Thank

Laci Davis (30:15.995)
It's a show off of your work and what you're capable of. And start thinking about why does my customer care about this? When you're pitching a customer, when you're getting somebody new considering hiring you, what makes their eyes light up when you say it? You can see the light bulb go off. yeah, I need that. Tell that story. And you don't just tell it once. You tell it over and over and over and over and over again. If it worked once, it had worked 50 more times.

Rudy Stankowitz (30:41.183)
I think everybody should strive to be seen as the expert in their market no matter what that market is. That should be the goal. You should be the guy or the gal. That should be you. And if you work toward that, nothing but good things will come. Nothing but success.

Laci Davis (30:49.049)
Yes.

Laci Davis (30:52.897)
you

Laci Davis (30:58.831)
You want to be the trusted voice. You want to be the trusted voice.

Rudy Stankowitz (31:03.049)
Absolutely. So with that said, if tomorrow you woke up and found that the entire pool and spy industry suddenly had amnesia, what's the first principle or habit you would reteach to get everyone back on track?

Laci Davis (31:26.881)
If everybody had amnesia,

Rudy Stankowitz (31:29.483)
Yeah, we're all just nobody. Yeah. What would you what would you teach first?

Laci Davis (31:36.717)
I think it leans back to one, how do you become that expert in your industry? Are we talking about what we teach on social media? Or they forgot how to do their pool jobs? Or they forgot, what did we forget? Everything.

Rudy Stankowitz (31:48.577)
They forgot everything. What do you think is the most... Everything about pools. They function. They're functioning individuals.

Laci Davis (31:54.232)
Okay, well first of all they need remember that Rudy can go in.

They need to understand first and foremost, you guys have amnesia. You got knocked out. I think there was something in the water. Believe me, I don't know. But what you need to know is Rudy Stankiewicz is the president of All Things Pool. His word is law. And whatever he says goes. Outside of that, let's get you guys CPO trained. Let's make sure that you guys know what you're talking about. Let's have some customer service classes, right? I really actually prefer that we

some basic business classes for pool pros. How to manage your prices in a way that you actually make money. How to know when it's time to raise your prices. I think that's probably one area that whether we have amnesia as a group or not, we could all do a little bit better on is basic business. Because there's, we have a pool guy, we travel, we travel too much to maintain our own pool. It's embarrassing, but it is true. And so when we spoke with him, we got his pricing and

And Johnny looked at me and like, how much? How are you making money? Because we know the cost of the chemicals, right? We know how much it takes to run. How are you making money? And we talked him into raising his prices. First of all, we're like, we're not paying that. We're going to pay this. But.

We talked him into raising his prices and his main concern was, you know, if I raise my prices, I'm going to lose a customer. Are you going to lose more customers than the more money you're going to make?

Laci Davis (33:37.794)
your maybe five customers that are already a huge pain in the ass and you lose a lot of chemicals on their pools anyway because they refuse to take care of it in between. Are you gonna lose those customers and then do less, have less on your route and make more money overall? Because that's not a problem. So I think some general, let's understand how to make your business successful and profitable for you and then teach what are those next steps to if you want to

grow if you want to bring somebody else on to run routes with you if you want to increase the number of pool stores that you have what does that look like because what I think is too many people they get into it and they think wherever they're at this is normal this is this is where I'm at this is how it's been and this is where we're gonna this is how I'm gonna run it if you start to show them what's possible again that magic mirror of well you know if we did just a little bit of this you could have a second location

next year potentially. If we did a little bit of this, why couldn't you bring on two or three more guys under you? And they start to realize the potential of the business that they and their families can have. And it's very, very powerful. I would say amnesia or not, that's where we start.

Rudy Stankowitz (34:58.231)
think you nailed it because if you think about it, most of us, the majority of us, start the other way. We're doing pools and we're good at that. We have a router, we do repairs, and we decide we're gonna branch out, we're do our own thing, and then we get out there, and then we learn how to run a business. Wouldn't it be cool if we had it all on an Etch-A-Sketch and we could just shake it and make it all blank out and then just start with...

learning how to run a business first and then working that into pools. I love it. I think that's really, really cool. So who's someone you mentored who ended up teaching you something that you still use today?

Laci Davis (35:53.775)
Stay with me.

Rudy Stankowitz (35:54.893)
Now you're ready for supermarket questions.

Laci Davis (35:58.352)
I was. I was. I was like, got it this time. I'm in. I'm here. You're throwing me off with all the real meeting stuff already. I don't know. It is. Ask me one more time.

Rudy Stankowitz (36:00.817)
Man.

Rudy Stankowitz (36:08.949)
It's good stuff. Sure. Who is a person that you mentored that taught you something that you still use today?

Laci Davis (36:26.723)
There was a young lady when I did photography and

She was my assistant, was my go-to for everything. And she taught me how to block schedule my time.

I use that like a fiend to this day. And for those who don't know what block scheduling their time is, and maybe that's just the term I use, but it's when you treat your to-do list, your calendar, like every item you have to do is a meeting, and you put it on your calendar and say, you know, from this hour to this hour, I'm...

working on my business's books. And you schedule the things that maybe you want to put off. You schedule the things that you want to procrastinate on. And you end up scheduling it for a certain amount of time on a certain day. And you treat it like it's a meeting. And the trick with this is you have to do it. It takes some level of discipline not to just move the meeting or cancel it or move it around. It takes a level of, no, I'm doing this for a reason. I'm doing this for purpose. This is going to make me better. This is the hard

I'm courting off that's gonna make me be a better business owner, be a better human being, whatever your goal is, block scheduling your time that you're procreate, the things that you really don't wanna do, and just saying, second up, this is my time, I scheduled this time to get that done.

Rudy Stankowitz (38:01.311)
Okay, I love it.

Rudy Stankowitz (38:06.381)
When I was in different lives, different careers I've had in this industry, there would be positions I held where the phones honestly just rang non-stop. Between phones and emails, I could honestly do nothing but answer phone calls and emails if I let it get away. And I actually had to just schedule time to do that as well. I was like, okay, this is when I'm return calls. This is when I'm gonna answer emails.

And once I broke it down that way, I was able to get everything done. But if I just grabbed every phone every time it rang...

Laci Davis (38:37.155)
Mm-hmm.

You're not efficient.

Rudy Stankowitz (38:42.217)
It just didn't work. mean, that's, you know, we have voicemail, have email, we have things like that. Not everything has to be answered immediately, despite what some of the customers think. That's when you get the sniper calls one after the other. for the most part, people are pretty understanding about that in business that, you know, they might have to call me back.

Laci Davis (38:57.966)
Yeah.

Rudy Stankowitz (39:07.229)
It depends on the level too. mean, I know one of the things, do make sure you call those people back. I know one of the best business plans for growing a pool service company is to answer the phone. But when I say answer the phone, that doesn't mean you have to drop the poll and risk juggling it into, I mean, call the people back. I mean, even if you're missed calls, call those people back, especially when you're starting out. And you know, that'll help as well because...

Laci Davis (39:12.355)
Yes.

Rudy Stankowitz (39:32.289)
That's brilliance by contrast. That's not something everybody does. A lot of people just blow all that stuff off and never hear back. you'd be amazed at how just doing something correctly, it makes you shine in a world where a lot of people don't. if marketing, let me ask you this. If marketing strategy were a pool party, what's the one guest you'd never invite back because they ruin the vibe every time?

Laci Davis (40:03.759)
My instant answer was the guy who shows up just to bash in the comments.

doesn't add any value whatsoever and is just there to shit on everybody and everything for no other purpose, right? They don't have proof of what they're saying. It's literally just word-vomiting negativity. And there's just no place for that. There's no reason for it. I've never seen a situation where that happens, that that person got something positive out of it, right? It's that old thought process.

process of you can't litter negativity everywhere and expect to have a positive life, right? And so if you have a problem with something, you know, there are tactful ways about going about and dealing with that. If it's you have a problem with another pool company, if you have a problem with another business, if you have a problem with a manufacturer, with a customer,

then maybe deal with that directly or maybe deal with, maybe it doesn't need to be dealt with directly. Maybe you gotta do some soul searching and that's okay too. But there's just no place for it, especially the people who get in there and it's more so to tear somebody else down.

Rudy Stankowitz (41:10.347)
Hehehehehe

Laci Davis (41:20.183)
Right? That's always going to make you look poorly. I did. I took a break from anything career related for nine months in my adulthood. I went and did social media. This is where I learned much of what I learned today. And I tested a lot of things on my own personal social media brand. Surrounded it was in the fitness space. And what I found was the posts that always did the best.

always skyrocketed to multi-million views was where there was something controversial in there that people could pinpoint with the goal of tearing me or the space I was in or what I was promoting down.

Laci Davis (42:36.451)
Rudy left.

Laci Davis (42:44.121)
you see this later, I want you to know what was happening in your absence.

Rudy Stankowitz (43:04.387)
back. Okay, I guess it's still recording. It shows that it's recording. Weird. Anyway, I just decided I just wanted to switch sides. I got bored. So now I'm sit over here. If that's okay with you.

Laci Davis (43:15.471)
I left you something just in case it was still recording. Because you left me alone in your space. So just let you know.

Rudy Stankowitz (43:20.239)
I think it was, so I'll find it. I just, well, you know, I understand that's cause there's no one worse than that than me. So, what's a small win you love seeing in the people you work with that tells you they're about to have a huge breakthrough?

Laci Davis (43:29.527)
Bye.

Laci Davis (43:41.425)
I love...

that our team is very supportive and very enthusiastic. We celebrate big wins and we celebrate really big wins. It's in our core values that way because there are no such thing as a small win for us. And so they'll get in there and we've got an entire Slack channel dedicated to shout outs. You can shout out different team members when something happens and we'll start to see

other team members kind of giving shout outs to one of the new guys for doing something, right? And it's we, we as leadership, it didn't make its way to us. We didn't hear about this, but you know, the other team members, they heard and so they'll go and they'll, they'll shine a light on, on the new guys. And it's like, okay, they're getting it. They're, they're starting to feel confident. They're rowing the boat. We're, moving along and it's, it's really nice. And the only reason that happens is cause we have such

cool supportive group.

Rudy Stankowitz (44:47.371)
If you had to train a brand new sales rep entirely through song lyrics,

Laci Davis (44:52.271)
Yeah.

Ooh.

Rudy Stankowitz (44:56.815)
How would you do it?

Laci Davis (44:59.033)
Look at this stuff. Isn't it neat? I mean, would be all Disney-like. It would be...

Rudy Stankowitz (45:06.191)
You're letting your Disney show.

Laci Davis (45:10.767)
all Disney lyrics because you know what? Almost every single one of those stories is about pressing through some kind of adversity. mean, Princess and the Frog, when she's talking about starting her own business in the very beginning and all that song is, you know, we'd lead with that. We'd go with Little Mermaid. It would be 100 %- Rudy, you just gave me a whole new training idea. I'm going to take this and formulate a training plan. You wait, like-

Rudy Stankowitz (45:32.396)
HAHAHA

Rudy Stankowitz (45:37.473)
If you search YouTube in the darkest corners, and I know you're gonna find it, but there is an actual video of me teaching people breakpoint chlorination in a CPO class through song.

Laci Davis (45:53.455)
Stop it.

Rudy Stankowitz (45:54.201)
For real. It's called We Will Shock You.

and it exists and it is out there. If you go back even further in the darkest corners of the internet, you can find that in, it might've been 2017, that I auditioned to be the new Mr. Clean.

Rudy Stankowitz (46:18.123)
and and did quite well as far as views went i think i was like number four or five in the country so i know look at all the content i just gave you

Laci Davis (46:26.521)
This is amazing. Have you? I took notes because I'll be on team later. I promise you. Have you seen they there's these two guys and they're all over social media and they take songs like you did like we will shock you. But they put it to HR. Topics for human resources.

Rudy Stankowitz (46:52.309)
No, haven't. I have to look. Yeah, find it. Send me a link. That sounds cool. Okay. I love it. All right. When you, when you picture the next generation of leaders in this industry, what do you hope they never unlearn from the mentors they've had?

Laci Davis (46:56.783)
I'm making a note now. They're up your style.

Laci Davis (47:13.741)
Be good to people. If you are genuine and you are sincere and you want the best for other people.

You're gonna get so much further. Yeah, you may get burned you may get screwed along the way But that's more on them than it's ever gonna be on you if you're a good person Don't let coming in and people's negativity or you know the business down the road being upset that you're new or Just just hold on to that continue being a good person because it will always always always come back to you

Rudy Stankowitz (47:49.995)
What new things are on the horizon for the great game in the upcoming months? I know you have something new, I can tell. It's just a given, there's something brewing. Can you share it?

Laci Davis (47:58.646)
Always. We move too fast.

Maybe. I don't know what I'm allowed to and not to, so we'll just assume I'm allowed to say it all because, you know, it's my company. I think I can do that. We've got a lot of cool new things that we've launched, but we haven't announced that we've launched. They're on our website under our resources tab. We didn't have a resources tab a month ago, but right now it's got not only an industry events calendar where you can go and find any industry event in your area. You can, you know, find it

Rudy Stankowitz (48:12.793)
Yes.

Laci Davis (48:35.483)
for local, can find it international. If it's training, pool pro related, it's on there. It's got all the top industry magazines. It's got links to all the top industry podcasts, who they are, who their podcasts are dedicated to, why it makes sense to listen to this one, if it makes sense for you, right? We've got branded grit gear that is from a revved up apparel. They're real big in our space and we love them. I love them.

Rudy Stankowitz (49:02.457)
love them.

Laci Davis (49:05.403)
wholeheartedly and so we've got new grid apparel there we've got

certifications and additional on-demand training courses. So maybe you don't fully understand specialty chemicals. Why would we need those? What value do they add? We have online training that you can take at any time now and it teaches you not only the benefits for you, but how do you sell that to your homeowner, right? It's gonna do this, it's gonna do this, it's gonna do this with the goal of improving your business. Maybe you want to learn about auto levelers. We have a how to install an auto leveler walkthrough course.

you get a certification at the end of it. And we're going to continue to add these. We're going to go down, you know, helping you connect with CPO instructors, helping you find logo courses. So we are leaning really heavily into not only being that trusted voice with the products we represent, but being that trusted resource for the Pool Pro to go when they're like, I just want to improve my business. Where should I start? Here's some podcasts. Here's the magazines we recommend. Here's and it's not Lacey recommending it. These are the top rated

magazines in the industry. I have no say in this. don't say who goes there. We go to a listing and ranking and we just pull all the resources in one place for you. So that's the industry events. Pool distribution centers, they can register their events. Retail stores, if they're having a customer appreciation, they can submit their events and then it's like they have a place to share and tell people, my event's happening. Please come. You got a taco truck coming into SCP? Let's do it. I I want to know and I want to share that.

We have all these new resources coming out. We said in 2025, the grit game, we wanted to add four to six new team members in 2025. It is middle of August. We've added 13.

Rudy Stankowitz (50:58.497)
overachiever.

Laci Davis (51:00.045)
We've added 13. I've got three more offers letters out. I'm still interviewing. So we're growing. We are hiring.

Rudy Stankowitz (51:05.261)
You are still interviewing, what are you hiring for? What positions?

Laci Davis (51:09.903)
Sales managers in either territory or regional, we're looking for Nashville, we're looking for Phoenix, we're looking for Minneapolis. I'm looking for a ton of souls in Southern California. The Carolinas, I'm always interested in. I'm still looking to grow more in Texas. So we're looking for people who have, they want to help people, they want to help grow people, and they're not afraid to get on the road. I look for road warriors. So we are still hiring. But one of those hires was a recommendation

you made and I cannot imagine my business not being with this person anymore. I feel like they came with the building. They've just been tremendous in every way. They were out of the office last week and I'm like, I'm happy you took vacation, but when are you coming home? Because I miss you. Just because I miss working with you. And everybody was like sending them things. I'm like, leave them alone. They're on vacation. And they pop in like, no, get out of here. You're...

Rudy Stankowitz (51:46.275)
Good.

Rudy Stankowitz (51:56.751)
hahahaha

Laci Davis (52:07.708)
be back next week and I'll here but like it's just been it's just been so fantastic.

Rudy Stankowitz (52:10.541)
I am very glad for both of you that that has worked out so well. It just made sense. It just did. So that is super cool. So how do we find the Great Games website?

Laci Davis (52:23.407)
It's pretty easy. Uh, great game dot com. The great game dot com. I guess I should say it right if it's gonna be easy.

Rudy Stankowitz (52:29.123)
Yeah.

Laci Davis (52:31.215)
TheGripGame.com There's so much there, so much to explore. There's some cool videos and it's just kind of a neat place to hang out and it's just if you go on there today, it'd be a little different tomorrow. We're constantly updating, we're constantly adding new things and if there's something that a pool pro is like, hey Lace, know, have you thought about this or we really need that. Get it on our radar because our goal is to help elevate the

industry. Our goal is to help make the industry a little better today than it was tomorrow. And if I know that pool pros really see a gap somewhere, you know, I may not be able to solve it, but I may know people that we can start working in that direction and get the industry something that it needs that maybe there's a blind spot on that we're not seeing ourselves.

Rudy Stankowitz (53:21.272)
How do people get that to you?

Laci Davis (53:24.215)
I'm real hard to find. I'm real hard to find. Lacey at thegritgame.com.

You can find me on LinkedIn, Lacey Davis, The Grit Game. You can find me anywhere that you social. I get copied on anything that gets messaged to our social media. We do have a sales and marketing coordinator that will be in the messages sometimes, so it's not guaranteed you'll talk to me. But it's guaranteed that if it's something that she can't answer, it will get to me.

Rudy Stankowitz (53:59.279)
of it. Lacey, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you. Congrats on being one of the top 10. I really organized but didn't really have much to do with it. And I was so excited when I saw your name there. I mean, as the other nine, you are in a tough group. That is a group of mentors. That's for sure. Everybody there is a winner. And from this top from the 67 that were nominated, they were all fabulous as well. Everybody was wonderful. It's just that

Laci Davis (54:17.845)
It took more.

Rudy Stankowitz (54:26.767)
It's crazy, but I love it. So thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate you everybody This is the talking pools podcast. I'm Rudy Stankiewicz until next time be good be safe

There you go.