Pool Inspections and The Importance of Public Speaking

In this episode of Talking Pools, hosts Steve and Wayne delve into the world of community theater and its impact on personal development, particularly in public speaking. They discuss the evolution of community theater, the decline of dinner theaters, and the intersection of their theater experiences with their work in the pool industry. The conversation shifts to the importance of safety in pool maintenance, navigating pool inspections, and the role of insurance in protecting pool professionals. They also touch on the challenges of balancing work and personal life, emphasizing the need for outlets outside of work.

takeaways

• Theater has been a lifelong passion for many, providing joy and personal growth.
• Community theater has evolved but remains a vital part of local culture.
• Public speaking skills are greatly enhanced through theater participation.
• Dinner theaters have declined significantly since their peak in the 80s.
• Safety protocols are crucial in the pool industry to prevent accidents.
• Pool inspections require thorough knowledge and attention to detail.
• Insurance is essential for pool professionals to mitigate risks.
• Balancing work and personal life is important for overall well-being.
• Engaging in hobbies outside of work can lead to a more fulfilling life.
• The pool industry faces unique challenges that require adaptability and knowledge.

Sound Bites

• "Theater is my love."
• "I've been in over 700 productions."
• "Dinner theaters were big in the 80s."

Chapters

00:00
Theater as a Lifelong Passion

02:41
Memorable Performances and Roles

05:37
The Evolution of Community Theater

08:29
Theater vs. Other Hobbies

11:34
The Importance of Public Speaking

14:24
Navigating Pool Inspections

17:12
Insurance Insights for Pool Professionals

31:53
Navigating the Challenges of Content Creation

34:34
The Importance of Quality in Pool Maintenance

38:35
Safety Protocols and Equipment Management

42:13
Addressing Structural Issues in Pool Design

46:16
Client Communication and Liability Management

50:30
The Evolving Landscape of the Pool Industry

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:53

And a happy Thursday to everybody. Welcome to Talking Pools Podcast. Uh Thursdays with Steve and Wayne. Hope you all had a great and safe week out there. Got a bit of a mishmash to talk about today, starting off with something a little personal on my side, and then we're gonna roll right into something Steve uh had happened last week. But for those of you who don't know, I know some of you do, uh because some some of you follow me on Facebook, but I've been doing community theater in the Baltimore area since I was 16. I will be 70 in February. So it's been a while. So I'm I'm I'm one of the long, you know, old guard kind of kind of people out there. But uh I I do it as a as a as a hobby, you know. My wife golfs, I've golf sometime, but my hobby is is my I have a t-shirt that says theater is my sport. I love it. Uh friend of mine gave me that. And so it's something to do. Not all the it's not an all-the-time thing. It's like once every few months a show will come out. Right now, I'm in a production of Meet Me in St. Louis, which is based off of the movie that was done in the 50s with Judy Garland. And it's one of the odd ones because normally the musical's first and then it's the movie, but in this case it was the other way around. They did the movie first and then the musical, which is kind of an odd oddity, but it is what it is. But it's got a lot of familiar songs in it, and you know, the clang, clang, clang with the trolley, that kind of stuff, yeah. And and and it's a cute show. And I do it up at what's called the Cultural Center at the Have the Degrace Opera House. And what that all means is that there is a small town about 20 minutes north of me, right on the bay called Have the Grace, and it's H A V R E D E G R A C Have the Grace, and and it was established like 1720 something as a port, and it's a really cute little community, very artsy, very um the all the houses are like old Victorian mansions kind of deal. You know, it's like probably worth millions now, but I don't think the prices are that bad. But they have in there an opera house, and this opera house was was built as a theater in the in the early 1800s, if I remember. I'm gonna say 1830.

SPEAKER_05 2:58

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Yeah, and like there's pictures inside the lobby of like when um Lincoln's uh when Lincoln was assassinated and his train came through. It slowed down and people were taking pictures of the of the train where the casket was and all that. That's how old this thing is. And it's been around forever, and it it started off as an opera house. People would come down from Delaware and Jersey and Philly and you know, come on over here. It was really, really nice. The theater holds about 80 people-ish. But it's uh it's a nice small theater and it went through some renovations about 15 years ago to to expand the downstairs in the back area. But it it's nice. And so yeah, I sing, I dance, I tell funny jokes. Uh in this one, I get to waltz. Yeah, he could waltz. But it's fun. And like I said, it's it's my it's my it's my thing. And uh I remember one time somebody asked me, How many productions have you been in since you started doing community theater? And and I I I think I get between what my wife could remember and what I could remember, it's something close to over 700 public. Whoa, whoa! I thought you were gonna say like 100. Come on.

SPEAKER_06 4:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know. But like you think, like you know, a couple a year or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Yeah, no, I do well when I was younger, I used to do three and four and five a year sometimes.

SPEAKER_06 4:12

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

And while I was working, obviously, I can maybe only do one, maybe two a year.

SPEAKER_06 4:17

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

And then since I've retired, I like this is my third show in a row.

SPEAKER_06 4:21

Sure. So what was your favorite one?

SPEAKER_03 4:24

My favorite one.

SPEAKER_06 4:25

Ever, yeah. Ever was And did you ever get to be the lead in any of them?

SPEAKER_03 4:31

I've been a lead a couple times in a couple shows when I was younger. I was Daddy Robux in the production of Annie.

SPEAKER_06 4:36

It can't be those, though. It can't be where you were the lead. Because those not too easy.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

That that where I was not the lead, the best show I ever did. The the most fun I had out, and and my ultimate role was um in a show called Something Rotten. And you probably have never heard of it, but it's been on Broadway, it won a couple Tonies. Uh, the character I played was Thomas Nostradamus, the nephew of the Nostradamus. Essentially, the musical, it's hysterical. It's about a group of two brothers, the bottom brothers, who are rivals to Shakespeare. So that's the time period he takes place in. And the older brother just can't seem to get his act together to write a play that will beat Shakespeare. That's what his goal is. So he decides to contact a soothsayer, that would be me. And uh through visions that I have, I tell him to uh that that Shakespeare's greatest hit will be something called Omelette. Not Hamlet, but Omelus. Let's just say this guy's a soothsayer, is not really good. You know, he can go up with things like uh Little Whorehouse. No, no, what was it?

SPEAKER_06 5:39

Little Whorehouse. Was Little Shop of Whores, which is one of my favorite movies as a kid, too.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

So he comes up weird things, and in the very first act, I have an eight and a half minute musical number in which I rattle off about 37 different musical titles and act like three seconds to act out the the show, like Annie's in there, oh god, Katz is in there. I'd have to sing the whole thing, but we did it, we were the Maryland premiere of that particular show, and I was and I originated the part for the first person in Maryland to do it, to do an Astrodomist. And this was how many years ago? It was uh I think it was.

SPEAKER_06 6:23

Oh wow, okay. So pretty pretty fairly rec fairly recent.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

Yeah, yeah, and you know, eight years later, I still know that eight and a half minute musical number.

SPEAKER_06 6:32

When you yeah, I I feel like with plays, you guys are so engulfed in the lines and and the the songs and stuff because it's live theater, right? Like with uh, you know, when you have a camera or even with this, like if we if we screwed something up that bad, we could be like, hey, we could scrub this, you know? Right? Right. Where with the live the live theater is live theater, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:53

So Oh god, yeah. I've had I've had scenery fall on me, I've had people faint on stage, I've been injured on stage once, not badly, but enough that they had to drag my body off the stage.

SPEAKER_06 7:04

I was gonna say, has there ever been something where they had to actually stop the show?

SPEAKER_03 7:08

Not no. I've I've heard about some things happening, but nothing that I've ever been in, you know, not not on wood. But uh it's it's uh it's fun, I enjoy it. It's nice to see the younger people now getting involved in it because the cast in the show that I'm in now has about 23 people in it. And there are one, two, there's three of us who are retired, who are over 55.

SPEAKER_06 7:29

Now, in this in this industry that you're in, because I don't have my I don't have my finger on the pulse of this at all, like live theater, right? Like I never did anything like that. Would you say that from when you were 16 it has grown a bunch? Or is it something where like because like with tackle football, which was my thing, right? It's a lot less now. Like in Texas and in Florida and you know, New Jersey, it's okay. But in some of the other states, because of the concussions and CTE and all of that stuff that's come up, I think parents are a little bit more aware and you know, they start kids in flag football, and then a lot of them don't move on to football. So, you know, my high school, Cliffside Park in New Jersey, they actually melded together with Rich with Richfield, which was the next town, because they couldn't field enough kids to play. So they they joined for just for football. Every, you know, soccer, they have their own teams, track and field, they have their own teams, dance, they have their own teams. But, you know, football on a whole, even though it's getting more popular to the fans, and that you know, they're so saturated that they want how do we get the 12-year-old girls to love football? That's what they're that's their target market right now, you know, the the females. Football's kind of dwindling a little bit in a sense for for children and they're starting to play older. So is this something that you feel like you guys are having to harder to get more people or to get quality people, or is there so many people that it's bet that it's bit that it's actually harder to get apart?

SPEAKER_03 8:54

It comes in waves, but I can tell you that the actual theater world is pretty much the same as it was when I was 16. Now, the bun big and what I'm also doing at the same time is as we're talking, I'm looking for the one picture of me I want to show everybody, but uh on stage in this one. But uh the big thing for me was back in the 80s, dinner theaters were big, big things. Which means you you'd go to a venue, you'd have dinner, and then you'd have a shop.

SPEAKER_06 9:19

And they do that at strip clubs now. Steve, we know this because I've seen it I've seen it on TV where you go get like a you go get the you go get the lunch, you know, where you get the rose beef lunch and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

But no, it it dinner theater was really, really popular in the eighties and the early nineties.

SPEAKER_06 9:40

They have a bar too as well.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Yeah, there was a bar and and and there was probably four or five in the Baltimore area, and I did dinner theater for a while, and the the advantage to dinner theater was is that the actors were also the servers. The actors got paid. You got you're getting tips too. Right. Now granted, um the the the pay you would get was based on what character you had. So if you were leading, you got like maybe twenty-five or thirty dollars a show. As a character actor, I maybe got anywhere from ten to fifteen a show, which doesn't sound like a whole lot, but if you're also serving tables, you're getting those tips.

SPEAKER_06 10:18

And then also you're probably doing uh like a matinee show, like an earlier show for an earlier dinner, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Dinner theaters were usually Thursday night, Friday night, two shows Saturday, and a Sunday matinee. So you're making some coin and back in the late 80s. I remember paid for a couple sets of tires, a couple semesters of grad school. You paid for things around the house.

SPEAKER_06 10:39

Are people getting paid? Yeah, bring me into today.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

Okay, jump to today. There's one dinner theater left, and that's down in Columbia. And for those of you who don't know, Columbia is a is an area that's like halfway between Baltimore and DC. And it's a very I won't say ritzy area, but it's a it's a upper class, very much so. And it's called Toby's Dinner Theater. Shout out to Toby's. In fact, Maggie and I just went there and saw a show a couple weekends ago. They do a good they do a good production, and their theater is in the round. So you're you've got all everybody seated around the stage. And it theater in the round is completely different than a stage stage production, but that's the big thing. You just don't see dinner theaters anymore. And I wish I found that picture. I'm I keep on looking for it. But uh it's it and it's fine, but dinner theater is a lot of work and is is actually too much work sometimes. And I can't do dinner theater anymore because of the schedules and and and just you know the the the amount of time you have to devote to being there and and doing everything. It's just it's too much for you. Let let the younger kids try to find it. And why can't I find that picture? But uh yeah, so so it's it's fun. I want the one picture of me hugging the two girls, but you don't have no idea what that means. I'm looking for it.

SPEAKER_04 11:56

Were you at were you at the strip club?

SPEAKER_06 12:00

Okay, so all right, as Wayne's looking for this picture. So, like like I was saying before, we I went to New Jersey the last couple weeks. So I actually went back a few weeks ago and I went to go see one of my clients, and it's uh like it's a city, and you know, I went to a few different of their pools, and like I show up, and like one of the guys that's doing swim classes there, like hadn't taken my class. He hadn't taken the CPO class, and part of the deal with the city is that you know we were gonna be their CPO, but we had to have everybody who was gonna be either being a swim teacher or doing swim classes or whatever, you know, like even the custodians were gonna. Oh wow. So Wayne's showing us a picture.

SPEAKER_03 12:40

Those two those two girls, the shorter one, she's Lexi, and the other one is Olivia. They were also in a production of Gypsy with me, which is what I just finished. Which I also played their grandfather. So now I'm playing their grandfather, the same two girls in this particular production, which is kind of weird and freaky at the same time. But uh, yeah, it's it's fun, and and I will shut up now for a while and get back to pool business.

SPEAKER_06 13:06

No, well, we always like to hear a little bit about you know what we do on the sides, because you know, yeah, but this is the Talking Pools podcast, right? You know, and it's uh one of the crazy things about you know what we do is that I, you know, I worked for the Jets and the Giants for 15 years, right? And I did the play-by-play announcing for the media and the press box during the games, and then I had a show on ESPN radio, which was actually in Maryland on the eastern shore of Maryland for a for a bit. But when I stopped doing that, you know, and it was such a big part of my life, and you know, 20 weeks, you know, 10, 10 to 20 weeks a year for 15 years, you know. So it was what I did from August to you know December every year, basically. Um, and then once you kind of it's great that you get to still do what your passion is, you know, that you said theater was your sport because when I stopped doing it, I was kind of I wasn't playing football anymore, you know. Now I'm not broadcasting football anymore. And it was kind of like, wow, I put like a lot of this time into and effort and a lot of my money, you know, because I wasn't getting paid for a lot. I mean, you did get like game day staff stuff, but it wasn't very significant. Again, it wasn't even paying for tires. Um, maybe one tire, one tire a game, you know? I use time too right now. Exactly. So, but there was kind of a void that I had a little bit, and I, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back, you know, you try and fill your time that you have, the free time that you have with things that you want to do. And it's not that, you know, it's not that I don't want to do pools, it's just who wants to do something, you know, 24 hours a day every day. So everybody has to have an outlet outside of what you do for work. So, you know, you guys out there that are listening, whether it be that you get to go to your kids' football game or their baseball practice or your girls' softball practice or the volleyball match or whatever. And that's something cool too that you get to share with your children. But don't forget that you you still need to do something for yourself. And that whether that outlet be the gym or that you go running or you go surfing a couple hours a day, or you go play pickleball with your friends, that you have some sort of an outlet that, you know, isn't pools. And for years, I was like, wow, like I really wasted my time with that broadcasting shit. Because what you know, how am I ever going to get back into broadcasting? And you know, a decade I stopped for a decade, and a decade later, here we are doing the Talking Pools podcast. And I don't think that I'd be able to do it at the level that we can do it at if I didn't have that, you know, experience because I have a lot of pool experience, but you know, coming on once a week and doing an hour show, that that's a lot, you know. And I used to write for Aqua Magazine, you know, shout out to Scott with Aqua Magazine, and I had felt kind of like I had let him down a little bit because you know, when I first got back into the pool industry, I really wanted to write. And I I do a lot of journalism stuff. So I used to write like poems and I used to write, you know, uh college football articles and NFL articles and stuff. And a couple of them actually got published on ESPN.com, which was awesome. But again, like you you go to do this stuff and it kind of just leaves a void in there, you know, with with what it is. So again, that's why, you know, it's cool to talk about these things that you're you're doing on the side that you love to do because those are the the interesting things in life. And don't get me wrong, pools are great, and we're here to educate and we're here to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Yeah. But there's a lot of other things that go on in life other than I know the one takeaway, people ask me this sometimes that I probably have mentioned it before, and you've probably experienced it too, is that the one thing the theater has taught me or allowed me to deal with is the fear of public speaking. I have no fear of public speaking whatsoever, period. And a theater did that. I mean, you're in front of a uh you're on a stage sitting in front of a hundred or so people, and you know, you're doing stuff and you're acting out and you're doing lines and singing. You're so you're making a fool of yourself sometimes. Yeah, so and people were always asking me, how do you get that? How do you do that? Get up in front of a you know, uh an auditorium of 200 people. I mean, you've been to some of my classes at the Atlantic City Show.

SPEAKER_06 17:11

So you got 300 people doing TPO.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Exactly, right. Yeah, and and I tell them I said it it started when I was 16 and just kind of developed into what it is today. So, you know, no fear of public speaking whatsoever. And yet I know people that are absolutely terrified of public speaking. And even those people who go through like the instructor's place for CPO, they're really you can tell they're very hesitant about speaking in front of the people, but they got to get over that kind of deal.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

And the load that back card up.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

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SPEAKER_06 20:20

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the insurance interlude with uh me, your host, Steve Sherwood. Host on Thursdays, usually with Wayne, and this is where you're gonna hear this put this uh little segment. And as always, I'm with Pat Grignon from uh California Pool Association. So, Pat, thank you so much again for coming back on. Everybody loves having you on weekly here, and the segments uh they've been really helpful. So, like I said, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but the feedback that we've been getting is really positive. So that's why we keep doing these things, yeah. That's great. Yeah, appreciate you having me on, Steve. Thank you. So we've touched upon a bunch of different things. We've touched upon, you know, my business, we've touched upon your business, we've touched upon, you know, the listener's business. Uh, but today I want to talk about something a little bit specific and a little bit dear to my heart because we do do a lot of these and it is a really important part of the business, but it is actually a separate part of the business, right? So it's not like that, it's not something, and you know, the one thing that I love about my job is I talk about this on the show all the time, is that like every day is never the same day, you know, like every Thursday that I have, like even though I come on and do the show, like after sometimes I got a doctor's appointment, after sometimes I got to go see a pool, sometimes I gotta do a pool inspection. So, you know, what I really want to talk about today is pool inspections. And we do a decent amount of pool inspections. And, you know, you know this because obviously you are my insurer, but there's be there'll be weeks or months where I'll go and we'll have like five or six pool inspections in a month, you know, when it's the busy time. And then there'll be three months that'll go by and I won't have any pool inspections. So I remember at the beginning, and this is kind of why one of the reasons why we got hooked up was I was having some of my guys do when I was out of town, like do the pool inspection. It almost came to bite me in the ass one time where I had this client, and the kid that I had the pool doing the pool inspection for me, like wasn't my normal kid. I didn't really know him that well. He had just hired him, but I was kind of in a position where I was like, shit, like I we gotta get this money, man. So he went out, did this pool inspection, and everything was fine. But he did note that like the pump fast, there was something wrong with the pump and something up with the filter. And then I wrote the report, and the guy, before I even sent the report, sent me this like nasty email, and he called me and he was like, Hey, like you guys broke my filter. And I was like, Okay, cool. I'm like, so show it to me, you know? So show me some pictures and stuff. And he's showing me pictures of the pump, and he's like, you know, this thing like burnt out. Whatever, and I'm like, okay, well, first of all, I'm like, this isn't the filter that we're talking about. Like, let's let's get our uh identification of the equipment properly, right? Like, this is the the pump. And I was like, I identified and told you right after the inspection that there was a problem with the pump and that you were gonna need to replace it and that it was running super, super loud and super, super hot. So, you know, this isn't really my fault, not really my problem, but he did try and press the issue a little bit, and that's when I called you and I was like, shit, Pat, let's talk about this a little bit. And I didn't have an extra coverage for it, so let's just talk a little bit about the different types of coverages that are available out there, you know, what a pool inspection should and shouldn't cover, and uh you know, how you can kind of get yourself in in some hot water here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 23:40

Yeah, it's it's it's a great way to grow the business, right? You get into some, especially with you know, the past uh, you know, five, six years, cooling off certainly in the past year or so. But you know, when real estate's booming, you got a lot of pool inspections, a lot of realtors that that need to bring in someone to inspect the pool as part of the sale. And so, you know, generally speaking, you can get in there and inspect the pool, and that's gonna get another, you know, another pool added to your service route ongoing. So it's common, it's a great way to grow your service business and a great, great foot in the door. You know, but if something goes wrong, just like your scenario there, you know, there's gonna be folks out there, you know, residential homeowners, that there's gonna be people out there that are gonna want to blame you and want to get a a remodel or equipment pad replaced, you know, because just because you were in the backyard. So you gotta make sure you've got coverage for the inspection, not so much for the regular service or repair work.

SPEAKER_06 24:32

Exactly. And the biggest, the biggest thing that I always say to everybody about pool inspections that differ from any type of other thing being in someone's backyard is this is usually always the first time that you, the pool professional, are actually seeing the pool. And sometimes it's the first time that the prospective homeowner is also seeing this pool. Yeah. So a lot of times, and everybody just they don't think they, you know, in terms of cars, there's some people that'll be like, oh, like my car is brand new. And you're like, oh, like cool, like when did you get it? Like two months ago? And they're like, no, like in 2000, you know, 21. And it was fucking four years ago, but like to them, they're like, Oh, this thing's brand new, you know? And it's the same thing with these pools. They're like, Oh, we got it with you know, the homeowner will come out and they'll be like, Oh, like we got it redone, you know, it's brand new surface. Yeah. 29. I'm like, well, you know, like there's rebar coming through here, and he's like, Oh, yeah, but you know, it's it's it's fine. And the homeowner always wants to, there's a negotiation that's going on. So let's just say for ease of use, it's a one million dollar house, right? So I come in and I say that there's, you know, possibly 40, 50, 60,000 worth of damage in this, you know, the things that the prospective buyers are gonna ask for is they're they're gonna try and negotiate. And here's the thing this is when people call me, I always try and steer them, you know, right. And I always say, hey, you know, if what's the deal about this? Tell me a little bit more. And if they say to me, like, these people are selling this house hands down, like as is, there's no way that we are getting any sort of credits, there is no negotiation, then there is no reason to bring me out to do a pool inspection. Yeah. Because what am I gonna do? I'm gonna come and tell you that, oh, there's 10, 20, 40,000, 60, 200,000 worth of work that needs to be done, but you're gonna have to do it when you get in there. Really, what these people want to know is how much is it, how you know, what's wrong, how much is it to fix it, and who's paying for it? Yep. And it kind of breaks down to, I break it down into like liability issues and liability issues. I've talked about this on the show before, is like bonding and grounding issues, light issues, the light not working, different things where like uh hazards, where the the deck might be lifted up so much that it's a trip hazard or something like that. Those are certain things where like the homeowner really needs to take care of those immediate because like somebody could get hurt, somebody could die. And then it goes into the aesthetic things, where now we're talking about what you were just saying, rebar coming through the surface, the some tiles are cracked or missing, or the expansion joint is all kind of messed up, or the decking isn't even or something, you know. And you know, the deck is a weird place because, like, again, if the deck is so shifted that it's a trip hazard, then it could fall into liability issues. But normally it's just aesthetics, like that looks bad, but like uh maybe we'll fix that, maybe we won't. But a lot of times the homeowners, they're just trying to get the hell out of Dodge and sell this, sell this pool for as much as you can. So, what are some of the intricacies in in that that you've seen? Where have you ever seen anybody try and like pull a fast one or something like that? Or yep, I'm sure I'm sure maybe even more than you.

SPEAKER_05 27:51

I bet. Yeah, you know, look, there's a couple of differences in in the in the insurance. And I mean, you know, there a little a big reason why why a realtor or someone will want to bring in and get this inspection is to have another layer of someone who can pay money if you know there's there's liability or or or alleged property damage or whatever down the road. I mean, you do an average pool inspection, you're not you're not generally going to identify like a slow trickle leak that's way, way, way down, you know, underground somewhere in the in the plumbing. But you know, they they end up having the homeowner has something like that happen, come back after, after you and after everyone, they can because they're looking at a hundred thousand dollar remodel. They want to they want to go get someone to help pay the bill. And this is another thing.

SPEAKER_06 28:35

This is another thing that you know, before the inspection, I make it very clear because two of the questions that I always get is hey, do you also do leak detection as part of the pool inspection? And then the other question is if there's something structurally unsound with the pool, it's on a hill or it's like got a retaining wall or something like that. Like, will you speak on the the foundation itself? Is it good? You know, and those are the two things, guys out there absolutely do not ever, ever, ever include, you know, leaking and don't you are not a civil engineer, you are not a uh, you know, a ground engineer or anything like that. You know, those people are they went to school for that, they are engineers for that. That is a specific thing. And, you know, I will always say that we do not cover, and this is the you know, the sheet that we send out before that we make them sign is gonna say, like, hey, we're gonna leave every we're gonna touch some stuff, but we're gonna leave everything the way that it was. This is specifically not a pool inspection, and it's specifically not gonna talk about structural integrity. But I will say that I've been in the pool industry for, you know, almost 20 years, and I will notice red flags, you know, which we can talk about in the next episode, but like uh, you know, there are certain red flags that we'll talk about, and I'll say, hey, I will let you know that this is uh this is bad or not bad, that there's a red flag here and that you should have leak detection. But what are some of the other what's one what's one instance where someone tried to you know pull a hoodwink?

SPEAKER_05 30:03

Well, look, two things that I'll say, you know, I in uh kind of to put a bow on this, you know, you made mention of having a one-pager, a two-pager, a whole harmless agreement. These this is what this is the work that I'm gonna do. This is what I'm expecting. I'm not a geologist, I'm not doing leak detection. I'm I'm not, you know, gonna verify your retaining walls in the right sp in the right spot on the hill behind the pool. So it's really important that you have a solid document, a hold harmless, you know, aside from your insurance, you know. And not only that, but that's one, and then two, you know, the dip the difference between a regular general liability policy and a professional or EO policy is it's different if you're back doing your service work or you're doing your construction work and there's damage or injuries because you're there working or you've been working in the backyard.

SPEAKER_06 30:52

And EO stands for guys out there, it stands for errors and omissions insurance. Well, just to just to keep bring everybody up to speed on that. Yep, yeah, thank you. Perfect.

SPEAKER_05 31:00

You know, and so the the professional liability slash commonly called errors and emissions, ENO, you're warranting someone else's work. And so it's different than a standard general liability policy. So, yeah, certainly talk to your insurance uh agent, carrier about this. It's it's a separate policy. Sometimes you can get it as like awesome.

SPEAKER_06 31:21

And I got a bun, a bunch of follow-up questions on this, obviously, but we're gonna we're gonna take it into the next sensor lew. So, Pat, thank you so much for coming today. And we love having you on. And if you guys want to find out more about Arizona Missions Insurance and just insurance in general, please reach out to California Pool Association and you know, with their general liability that they give you, they'll actually give you $100 off if you mention the Talking Pools podcast and the promo code from us. And if as always, if you guys have any questions, you can always hit us up as well, even for Pat if they have questions, and that is at talkingpools at gmail.com. So, guys, thank you so much for tuning in, and we will hit you next week with another insurance interlude. Thanks so much, and see you next week. Thanks, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Make your voice heard. Join the council for the Model Aquatic Health Code. Lend your expertise to the Mac, science-based guidance from the CDC, and the only all-inclusive national pool code that addresses current aquatic issues. Learn more at cmac.org. That's cmah.org.

SPEAKER_06 32:32

Of course. And that's a great way with you with theater to be able to do that. And it's just one of those things where it's it's really hard to do. So I, you know, I do applaud you and I applaud Rudy and I applaud the whole team because us putting out a quality product every week is is really hard. And that's what I was saying before. Actually, I'd lost my train of thought, but I was saying about with Aqua Magazine, that I said to Scott, I was like, hey, I want to start writing articles. And he was like, Wow, he's like, you know, we would love to have you. And he was like, What do you think you can do? You know, and I was like, one article a month, easy, you know, like let's let's start with one article a month, and I can probably, you know, dump out more than that. And he was like, Oh, fantastic. And I had just started my pool business here in California. So I had started from nothing again. You know, I went from running a you know multi-million dollar pool business in New Jersey to you know, coming to California and uh, you know, starting from scratch. Jen wasn't in the picture then, so I was wearing all the hats. I was doing the billing, I was doing everything, and I like did a couple articles and we really, you know, he really liked them and you know they got great feedback. And then I just I clammed up and like I just didn't have the time, and it became a job that I wasn't getting paid for. And then now you're like, this isn't really fun, you know. So I had to say to him, like, hey, like, I gotta pump the brakes on this a little bit, like I apologize. And I actually said to Rudy, I guess probably like six months ago, I was like, wow, like I really would love to get back into you know writing articles because all the stuff that we talk about here, it's just so much material that can materialize in a different way. And you know, on air, it's great because you have these points that you want to talk about, and sometimes our conversations go into talking, you know, about about Jupiter, you know, and outer space and shit. Um which is fine too, because there's there's nothing that's there's nothing that's out of bounds here, you know, on the Talking Pools podcast. And that's what we love about Rudy that he lets us, you know, gives us free reign to really talk about what we want to talk about. But when you're writing an article, you can sit there and you can kind of like plan out like Sarah does on, you know, you if you've ever seen Sarah's show and you watch it, she's got like a blackboard, like a whiteboard behind her that she's got and she's got all these points that she talks about. And not that you have to hit on all of those points every time you have a show, but it lays out the ground that you know the groundwork for you. And people always ask me, one of the one of the questions that I always get about the show is, you know, do you guys prepare beforehand or you know, do you have a bunch of topics, or do you guys just kind of shoot from the hip? And I think that sometimes we come in and we have three or four topics that we could talk about, and we're like, oh shit, we're gonna do two or three shows today, and we'll bang out three shows at once, which is great. And then there's other times where we come in and I'm like, what do you got, Wayne? And you're like, nothing. And you're like, what do you got, Steve? I'm like, I shit, and you know, but you know, the great thing that I love about being in the pool industry is like, like I said, I just went to New Jersey, and you know, part of what I was doing there was making sure that all the safety equipment was good. Like I put six, you know, we had to buy 12 different test kits. So I bought 12 test kits, you know, six months ago. I dropped them off. I came back a few weeks ago, and how many of those 12 do you think were still there? It's been less than it's been less than six months.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

All of them.

SPEAKER_06 35:39

So I had to get six more.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Oh, really? They used them all.

SPEAKER_06 35:43

Okay, that's no, they didn't use them all, Wayne. Somebody stole them. Yeah. I mean, this is the type of play. I mean, it's just it's a school system.

SPEAKER_03 35:51

New Jersey. Okay, go ahead.

SPEAKER_06 35:53

They have 40 different schools in the district. It's a pretty big district. Yeah, only about 10 of them have pools. Um, so I don't have to deal with all 40 of the schools, but you have to you have to realize that there's probably like uh five or six custodians at each of these schools. There's a couple hundred teachers. A lot of people have backyard pools, man. So now we what we do now is we put, you know, on everything that goes there, we like write in marker all over it that it's you know, this, this, you know, PS whatever, PS 12, PS 16, PS, you know, 17, whatever. But while I was there, we I had I had you know demanded that they had get their five-year electrical bonding and grounding, and that's not something that we take care of. Um, you need an electrical contractor to come out and they do the equipent equipotential, you know, bonding and grounding of the pool itself. And that means that anything that's in the pool or anything that's around the pool, they have a lot of weird situations where some of the pools are really old and they have like gutter systems that are metal grates, like old steel grates. So each if there's a 70 of them around this 150,000 gallon pool, that's 70 different places that you need to put a bonding and grounding love, you know, and you need to connect that to the rest of the pool. It's a competition pool, so there's diving blocks. So all of the diving blocks where it goes in is metal. So that has to be bonded and grounded. And then what really bit them in the ass was, you know, the lane lines. Each of the lane lines have to connect and they hook on to something in the wall. So there's six, six lanes. So there's one, two, three, four, five, five lane lines, which is 10 different pieces. And the pieces on the wall are these little cups, and the cup itself was metal. And whoever did the bonding and grounding five years ago, I guess they had done like a minor renovation, and they had like taken these cups out and replaced them with new cups, but they didn't bond and ground them. So the pool kept fail, the pool kept failing. And this is why we do it before the season, because the season starts in the middle of November. That's when the swim season starts there in New Jersey. So we're doing all this stuff now to prepare for it because they haven't started practices yet, and it keeps failing for the for the bonding, and it keeps failing from these cups. So it wasn't only just the cups, it has like a little, it looks like a D-ring, but it's a triangle ring. So it's a triangle, and then it's got a threaded quarter inch piece on it, right? And it screws in, and that's what the hook actually, that's what the thing hooks onto. It's the lane line, right? They connect. So that was metal too. So we had to go and find plastic pieces, and then we had to fucking drain the pool. Well, luckily I was there because there's nobody that would have sat there and watched it and you know, watching pool water, watching 150,000 gallons of water drain through a uh through a pit. And the problem, I could have just left. You know, I would have just been like, oh, let's just open the backwash line, put the molt the four filters in backwash or waste or whatever, and we could just gravity flow it out. The problem is the pit probably held like maybe a thousand gallons of water. It was a pretty decent sized pit, but there was two sump pumps that were like hard connected into the bottom of the pit. And there was, you know, two-inch plumbing that came up, two lines, they came together, and then it went straight into the sewer line. So I couldn't leave for more than an hour at a time. Like there were other things that I could had had to do that day. I had to go see some other sites. So the electricians were there until about 3 p.m. And they're like, What do you think? This thing's gonna be drained by tomorrow. I was like, Absolutely not by tomorrow morning. I'm like, maybe by the end of the day. So I went and did my stuff. I had gotten there at like uh 10 a.m. and I went and did my stuff and I got back at 3 because they were leaving at 3. And the custodians, they're there until 9:30 at night. So we had a pretty decent time, you know, that we could be there. And uh I start draining the pool and I come back and it's three o'clock, and it's 10, you know, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3. So five hours have gone by and it has gone down like uh a dozen inch tiles or 15 inch tiles, and there's like a couple, there's like over a hundred to go from to the bottom of the pool, to the bottom of the shallow end. So I'm starting to do then. That's this is how you can figure this stuff out. I just measured a tile and I just waited 15 minutes, and then I would know how many tiles it would because you just do times four, because 15, 30, you know, you'd multiply that times two times two is four, you know, two times, you know, two plus two is four. And uh, you could figure, I was like, oh man, like this isn't this this isn't gonna this isn't gonna happen today. This might not happen tomorrow. So I came up the next day at 7 a.m. and we turned, you know, we restarted because we couldn't have it draining while we weren't there. So we start to drain it again at 7 a.m. And I went to go see my high school football team go play, play a game because they were like up the street a few miles away. Um and I went there and I looked at that, you know, went there for a couple hours and came back, and I was it wasn't gonna make it. But what I could do is since it was draining through the main drains, I could take the pump and turn the pump on, and it would fill up the pit like really quickly, and then I could turn it off, and then the pit would slowly fill down. So I sat down there for the last two hours and I I did that. So, and it was like seven, I had gotten all of the water out of the pool. It could not have like it, it coincided like right at the same time. But again, like I got paid to, you know, to literally sit there and watch water drink. And you know, we did we had to do the same thing when we when we filled the pool back up, like it took them a few days, then we got the bonding and grounding certificates. So everything was good with that. But what wound up happening is now somebody's got to turn on the pool. And this is the pool that remember if I told you a few years ago, it has a fire hose connection, like in the deep end of the pool. And when you turn it on, it is like you can't stand in front of this thing. It's you know, it filled up the pool. They started filling it at uh 7 a.m. and it was full by 40,000 gallons of water. So, and during the day, I'm like calling the swim teacher. I'm like, hey, every 30 minutes you gotta go over there and check it. And then one of my partners in New Jersey, he went over there and he was like, Wow, I thought it was gonna be like 6 p.m. He's like, I can't 3 p.m. I can't even leave, you know? So it was uh it was a big deal, and it was a lot of time and effort that a lot of people had to, you know, put in. And then I there's so many pools there that every time I go, like my main concern is like what you know, what safety stuff do we need to worry about? So I'm always like, are the backboards there? Do we have a first aid kit? Everybody's good with all the testing equipment, we have brushes and you know, all that stuff, because I want it to be where if I called a person that doesn't normally go to that site, they could just drop what they're doing and go and not have to have a vacuum and a brush and a pole and chemicals with them. So it's a lot of logistics to make all of this this happen. So one of the kids who he does a really great job, he called me yesterday. And this is a pool that I went to last week when I was there. And I went three weeks ago when I was there. But when you're looking, and these are like really complicated systems, and in the in the equipment room, there's usually a rapid sand filter that's sitting in the back because like they're so old and so big that like there's just crap all over the place, you know, that they haven't gotten rid of because it's so big. It's more expensive to get rid of them. So you go into these pump rooms, but there's most of them don't have multi-ports, they have they don't even have push-pull valves, they're all sand filters, and it's usually duly connected. So there's two of them, and then they'll have a four-valve manifold, but they're the manifold is not right in front of you where there's a valve here, a valve here, and they're all close. This is on the one side of the room, there's two valves over there. On the other side of the room, there's two valves over there. They come in together into both of the filters, and then you have like a waistline or like a bypass and for the heater and different things like that. So it could be up to like eight or ten different valves, and it gets confusing because you know you have to trace it, and now it comes in through the top and then out through the bottom. So every time I backwash, even though there's there's instructions and it says, like, I still am like, okay, like that one goes here and this one goes here, and then I follow it, and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's that's right. Like, we're good. So the kid, he we're on the phone, and I'm like, I don't remember, man. Like, there's a lot of pools there. I'm like, let's FaceTime. So we FaceTime, and I'm like, all right, I'm like, show me. Over here, I'm like, show me that valve. I'm like, nah, that valve's wrong. I'm like, change that one over here to that. And then I'm like, pan to the left real slow. You know, like let's see the whole thing. And he's panning to the left. And I'm like, stop. Stop. I'm like, go back to the right. So he goes back to the right. I'm like, get closer to that valve that has a T on it, that vertical valve that has a T. I'm like, is that a wing nut plug in there in the in the opening of the T? And I was like, are those zip ties around? I was like, what is that? So he's like, I don't know. He's like, I've never noticed that before. And you know, it was on the waistline. So it's not something that like you would have normally seen unless you trace the waistline all the way down. And I guess they had had something different and they had cut it off and they just stuffed in a wing nut plug. And a wing nut plug is a winterizing plug.

SPEAKER_04 45:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 45:45

With the wingnut on it.

SPEAKER_04 45:46

Right, right.

SPEAKER_06 45:47

And I just said I was like, okay, I'm like, keep everything off. I'm like, don't touch anything else. Get out of there. You know, because in my mind, even if you backwash, like what happens if this thing hits somebody in their eye?

SPEAKER_04 46:01

Right.

SPEAKER_06 46:01

You know, this is this is like uh 911 hazard, right? So I call the swim teacher, and this is, you know, classic what they do in this in this school system. I'm like, hey, I'm like, have you ever seen this before? And he was like, oh yeah, the board of education did that. Like the plumbers did that. And I was like, You mean the plumbing contractors who are a third-party company would come in and open themselves up to this much liability and put a wing nut plug in there? I was like, okay, yeah, sure. So I call the school district and I'm like, hey, I'm like, everything needs to stop here. I'm like, you need to get the plumbers there and cut out the the pond, cut out. And it's simple like a cut here, a cut here on the same line, you know, about about a foot apart from each other, coupling on here, coupling on there, and you put a two-inch pipe in there and you eliminate it. But the moral of the story here is every time I'm I'm I'm not there all the time, and I have so much to do in the week that I go and I I go there that like this is a pool that like I've been there three times in the last year, and I didn't see it, you know, and and that's something that that's why it's so important that my guys, and I got told I got super pissed at my guys the other day because I went and it was I was doing pools for one of the guys, like we had to move some pools around and it was fine, like it wasn't a big deal. I went out and I did the pool, and I get into the backyard and there's these like hanging lights over the pool. And I'm just like, I called the guy who services the pool because one of the kids went and serviced the pool last week who wasn't the regular service person. Yeah, the kid who regularly serviced it was there the last, you know, 15 times or whatever. So I call both of them and I'm like, hey, I'm like, have you noticed that there was, you know, and they were like, Oh yeah, that's been there for like a long time. I'm like, okay. I'm like, I haven't been to this pool in like a really long time, probably like six months or so. You know, and we try and get to all the pools and I try and go out and do the guys' routes, but like we got married, you know, like there was a lot going on where like I wasn't these the guys were taking care of a lot of this stuff. So fine. I, you know, I make a note in my my app that hey, alert the office, like we need to tell the homeowner, you know, he needs to remove these immediate. Then I go and I backwash the filter, and as I'm backwashing the filter, there's like a an old penthair single speed whisper flow pump.

SPEAKER_04 48:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 48:27

And on the back, I don't know if you remember, they used to have like a plate that would just cover the electrical part, and it had one little nut on it that would like hold this really thin, really thin, like a steel aluminum plate, and it had like a covering on the one side, and you just when you took it off, it just came off. And this thing is on the floor, and there is electrical wires that are they're not out, but they're open, and like it's not super close to where we're backwashing, but like it's close enough where like the water is over here and it's a few feet away. And I pick it up, and there's electrical tape on it, and you know, at this point, I'm like, I don't even give a shit who did it, you know. I'm like, this is this is what you guys are actually getting paid for.

SPEAKER_04 49:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:18

Every time that you go, and guys, you listeners out there, don't ever feel like if you have a boss and you're the one doing the pool, like this is actually what your boss wants you to do when you're out there. Anytime you go to the equipment pad, you have to just stand there. I just I go to the equipment pad, the equipment room, and I just stand there and I look and I listen. And I just stand there for a couple minutes. And like when I while I was in New Jersey, I found three different pumps that were leaking from the pump seals. And it wasn't like crazy, but like if you looked and you noticed, like on the floor, there was like a little puddle like this big, and it was super crusty coming down the one side of the you know the pump. So I'm like, okay, I'm like, let's wipe this away here. And now all of a sudden you see out of the, you know, the side of the filter, you see this little bead of water coming out every you know, five seconds, seven seconds. And again, it's not the end of the world, but if you guys are looking for more work, like you don't have to get new clients to do to do new work. Right, you know, there's an infinite amount of work that's sitting in these backyards. It's just you have to identify it. And that goes with, you know, the main drains, whether they might be dislodged or you need to put on a VGB cover. I can't tell you how many backyards, especially here in Southern California, that I go into, and there's an anti-vortex drain cover on the pool, you know? Um, and then when you go to the equipment pad, we talk about this all the time, but you have to, you know, you have to look at the bonding and the grounding wires, make sure that it's a number eight gauge wire, which is a pretty thick wire. Right. And in some states, you they're bare, they need to be bare copper. In some states, it needs to be sheathed with green. But it's just one of those situations where, you know, you go to backwash this filter and the electrical is open, and God forbid your ankle touches it or something's wrong with it. And then also the bonding and grounding line on this same pool, it was like a like a threaded wire. So I was like, guys, did you know that this is not the correct bonding and grounding wire here? And of course they they didn't realize it, but you know, this is when then I came back and I was like, Jen, I'm like, I need to start making it a point to getting out there. And I do do this with more commercial clients. It's just we have so many commercial clients. Like we do commercial accounts every day of the week, except for Sunday. So we have accounts that sit next to each other we do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then we have accounts that sit next to each other that we do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Those accounts I go to a lot. Like I was just up in Santa Monica last week. There's just a lot of different moving parts with this stuff. So I have my eyes and my ears on you know the pulse of what's going on over there. But with the residential clients, I live in Long Beach. And like we're Jen and I, when we're done with the show, I actually have to go pick something up in Torrance, which is not it's not an easy drive. It's 45 minutes away. We're gonna go have lunch at this place that we like to have lunch at, and then we're gonna go meet one of my guys who's in Palos Verdes. But that's it's gonna be a four-hour round trip, five-hour round trip. Like it's not something that, oh, we're gonna be back in an hour and every everything's 20 minutes away. So it's hard for, and this is not an excuse. I have to get out into these backyards. And you listeners out there, if you're the owner of the company and you are fortunate enough, you know, like myself, that you get to work on your business and you don't have to work in your business so much anymore. You need to make sure that every once in a while you you go down to the trenches and you visit the guys that are that are down there doing your dirty work.

SPEAKER_04 52:54

Right.

SPEAKER_06 52:54

You know, and I've told my guys, I was like, you need to take more days off. You know, they're during Christmas, they're all leaving. Like my service manager, Carlos and his son and his family, they're going back to El Salvador. And that's something like they wouldn't have done five years ago. You know, they would have just worked 365 days a year, but they've really bought into the you know, the notion that this job is like anything else, and it'll eat you up if you let it, you know, and if it become if you guys are at a point where this is starting to become a burden and you're not having fun anymore, you need to just hit the reset button and you know, maybe, you know, have somebody else do your pools on a Friday and take a three-day weekend. And you know, because from here in California, like we can get anywhere for the weekend, you know, like we can we can fly, you can fly the same day. You can fly to Dallas, you know. It's uh you can fly to Northern California, you can go to San Francisco. Uh you could drive down to San Diego in a couple hours, you know. Phoenix is uh an hour and a half flight away. It's it's everything's really close. So take the, you know, take the time. And I know, look, it's hard when you have kids and it's hard when you have these lives that are going on. But again, like kind of bringing it back to the point that we were talking about at the beginning of the show with what you like to do. And, you know, it's sometimes it's hard because your life is so filled up with this pool shit that you don't have time to do other stuff. So now, Wayne, what you know, you worked a nine to five. And that for me, like would have there's nothing wrong with it, but for me, like when I worked a nine to five, it drove me crazy. Um, and I didn't work in I didn't work a nine to five in the pool industry. I worked a nine to five in like the mortgage industry and in sales and stuff. And for me, it was just my biggest gripe was like I'm done with my work at one o'clock. And I cut now I feel like I have to sit here for the next four hours and kind of fill my time, right?

SPEAKER_04 54:48

Right.

SPEAKER_06 54:48

Where with the pool industry, I go out and I do my stuff, and I'm when I'm done with my stuff, I'm done for the day. So that's the one thing that I loved about being in the field. And I was like, wow, like I really enjoy this type of work where I kind of make my own schedule and I'm doing all that stuff. But what are some of the things other than theater, obviously, that you did to fill your time when you were working your nine to five. And now, now that you're you know, a retired fella, what do you do to fill your time now? Because obviously you got a shit more time now.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

Well, let me do the retired stuff first. My uh domestic duties have increased. So a lot of laundry, a lot of uh house maintenance, lawn maintenance, you know, that kind of thing. That believe it or not, takes up a good deal of time.

SPEAKER_06 55:36

Do you like do you enjoy doing that stuff or no?

SPEAKER_03 55:38

Yes, it's very cathartic mowing a lawn, let me tell you.

SPEAKER_06 55:42

Like, I don't mind mowing the lawn, but I do have really bad allergies now, and it comes from that. So, like the fresh grass stuff, like I I get in and my eyes are like all puffy and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 55:53

I I don't have that.

SPEAKER_06 55:54

Where with laundry, I'm so bad at laundry that Jen, she at the beginning, she like was like, Oh, like help with the laundry, you know? And I would like fold clothes, and she would sit there and watch me fold clothes, and then she would come over and be like, just go away.

SPEAKER_03 56:10

I just not with my wife, she's my my wife God love her. Love her to death. We've we've been together for uh you do the laundry, you just leave it for her to fold. Well, no, no, I'm I'm just trying to emphasize the fact that we've been together a long time. We got married in May of 83, so that's what 20 42 years, it'll be 43 years next year. We've known each other 45. To this day, I will not let her fold towels. She just uh is incapable of folding cows, she's incapable of closing a drawer or a cabinet door. Uh it's it's also known as a Maggie thing to the point where I have taken pictures of our kitchen where every solid cupboard door is open because she was there doing something and she just leaves them open. And I've taken pictures and show it her friends. It's a running gag for all of us. So you know, so I go behind her a lot and that kind of stuff. I'm sure she does the same thing to me.

SPEAKER_04 56:59

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 57:00

But but uh it's it when I was working the nine to five, it was I did a lot of other stuff too that that kind of I was able to turn it off at five o'clock and and do whatever's.

SPEAKER_06 57:12

And you didn't really have to bring your work home with you too much, right?

SPEAKER_03 57:14

I did not have to bring the work home with me.

SPEAKER_06 57:16

That's cool because I I don't I don't ever get to shut it off. I actually last weekend Jen and I went out to San Diego to a concert, and our friend was there, and he he he's actually he's retired and he's in his 30s because he worked for Apple for he was an executive for Apple for a little bit, uh like a big time software engineer, so he cashed out. Um and it was cool. He didn't mind, but we had something going on the whole morning where we just were on the phone with different people all morning, and like we couldn't shut it off. And that's the one thing that I don't like about you know what I do now is it's sometimes I have to say, like, Jen, like we're on a we're on a date, you know, like let's shut this shit down.

SPEAKER_03 57:51

But with with with me, that kind of started around 2000, 2001 when we got our own personal computers and email addresses and cell phones. My nine to five turned into 24-7. And well, a lot of it had to do with the fact that, you know, I'm on the East Coast and people would would send a text message or or an email that were out in California or Hawaii or something, and you know, I felt guilty not answering their call just because I'm a three or a five-hour difference or whatever it is. So it it turned into almost a 24-7 situation, especially when I would do trade shows. Because our our big thing with trade shows was that trade shows are not an you know a nine to five or a ten to four, whatever the show floor was, but it's it's a 24-7 because you're on all the time. The only time you're not is when you're in your hotel room taking a shower and going to bed. You know, it kind of that and even then sometimes I'd get the buzz on the phone, but you just turn off the phone. You you gotta turn it off. You gotta, like you said earlier, you reset yourself. And and it got though, well, that's kind of one of the reasons I think that I retired when it did, because I probably could have stayed there for a few more years, but I just got tired of the of of knowing people knowing that I was somehow available or accessible 24-7. Now, for those who knew me, people like you and a small handful of other people knew, you know, I'm not gonna call him here, I'm not gonna call him at this time because I know he's asleep or I know he's doing something, that kind of deal.

SPEAKER_06 59:14

Yeah, I mean, if I if I'm gonna call you, it's gonna be, you know, sometime, you know, from your morning to, you know, I have hit you up at like seven o'clock your time, but those were for sort of ones where I was like, hey, Wayne, this is uh I got so I got I'm gonna shit stream here.

SPEAKER_03 59:28

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I get that, I understand that. But it got to the point where it was kind of being abused by people and there was no support, let's put it like that, from the companies.

SPEAKER_06 59:40

Yeah, I I have a weird I had a weird situation happen earlier this week where a guy called me and like he was like, Hey, you know, uh my pump went out, it was a variable speed pump, and he I was like, Okay, send me a picture of the pump. I also need to know the horsepower. And he sends me a picture of the pump, and like Wayne, when I tell you that it was a it was an old pent air, it was a whisper flow with the that had the back that like you can open and stuff, right? It was one of the first variable speed pumps. And whoever plumbed this thing, there was like black glue all over the white PVC, and it wasn't like they spray painted it or you know, it was like a shitty glue job, you know. And I was like, look, I'm like, these pumps come in a bunch of different horsepower, you know, there's like a smaller one, there's a 1.2, there's a 1.67, there's a three horsepower one. Like they all cost different money. Like, which one do you have there? And he proceeds to call me four different times or six different times during the day. Uh-huh. And the first couple times I picked up and I was like, hey, I'm like, uh, and he's like, yeah, like still looking for help with this quote. And I was like, I can't quote you until you send me the nameplate. I showed him where it was. I was like, it's on the left-hand side, like on the opposite side of the pump. And then I started looking around the area where the pump was, and there's like a million leaves all over the ground and stuff. And it was just like a backyard where some of these jobs, like, I just, you know, and he was making jokes on the phone that were like, like, oh, like that's what I did with my ex third ex-wife, you know, like, and I was like, ha ha ha. And he's like, Oh, you're laughing at my jokes, that's funny. And I was like, Okay, cool. Like, you know, and I was nice to him, it was not, it was, you know, it was fine, but it's just I'm at the point where like we don't have to take every job, right? You know, so if somebody kind of leaves like a weird taste in my mouth, there's actually where my gut tells me, like, hey, like, I don't I don't want to help that person. Where I think with the situation that you were in, you kind of have to help everybody.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:44

You know, and there are certain people where I'm sure over the years you dreaded seeing an email from them because they were such a pain in the hand. Yeah. Right. But well, I've I've had people where they send you an email, you write back to answer their question, and then they write back with five more questions. Like nothing to do with that, what we were talking about. Like, I needed I asked them a question, you know what I mean? And then they, I was like, hey, but I need to know this. And then they write back, and it's it's somewhere over in left field about what whatever it is that they wanted to talk about. And I'm like, this isn't what we were discussing. And I always tell my clients, like, if they have an issue, you know, let's figure out that issue. And I've taken this into my personal life as well a lot, too. Um, and this isn't gonna turn into like a self-help group here, but you know, as I've grew older and I learned myself and like the things that kind of set me off and like made me angry and stuff, and you know, you argue with people and you get into like these fights or you know, these alter verbal altercations that you're going back and forth. And I find what a lot of people do when you have like, let's say you and me had an issue win, and I wanted to talk to you about it, and I brought it up to you. I feel like a lot of people, because they get defensive, they will you'll be like, oh, well, what about that thing that you did, you know, three weeks ago, Steve? Like, I didn't bring that up. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like we can talk about that after we talk about what I want to talk about right now. So it's very important that, and this goes into the whole scope of work thing. And I have this going on right now with one of my clients where the top of their heater, the display is gone. Like they need to get a new controller for the top that sits on the top of the of the heater. And I had to explain to her, like, this is just the first step. So, like, this part costs a decent amount of money for what it is. We might fix this part, and we find out that there's actually something else wrong with the heater. And a lot of people don't understand that, like, you go and you you do this and you fix this, and you know, you go and change the high limit sensor, and now the pressure switch. You didn't know that the pre, but because the heater wasn't working in the first place, yeah. So now you might have to change out three different parts in the in the heater, you know. And then I also have some crazy stuff going on, and what you know, we're probably gonna finish up pretty soon. But I have, and these are some things that we can build on in the next shows. But I had a client and she purchased the house from this guy, and the guy's gone. Like he was not flipping the house, but he, you know, he built a pool and he fired the first pool company, and the pool was already shot, so like was already pretty much halfway done, but like they didn't finish like the tiling around the spa on the outside, the like decking wasn't done, the copings weren't really done, but they shot the pool, and the pool color came out like shit. Like it looked, it was like the weird bluish color, like the light blue color, and like immediately there were streaks of white all over the place. Like, we hadn't even like it was bad news, right? It was a bad job. So I come in, I'm supposed to start the pool up, and I'm like, I I'm not touching this with a 10-foot pole. I'm like, you you you bring these guys back and you have them redo it. And he was like, Well, no, they're not answering my calls, so he brings in another company and another company does it. And the way that the pool is, it's think of it like an L and then another L.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:13

And on this side of the L is like an ADU, and then the house is over here, and then there's deck all the way around the whole L of the pool.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:24

But on the other side, there's nothing behind the coping, and nothing behind the spa on the other side of the L. So behind the spa, there's dirt. And then you go around the other side, it's dirt, but then the pool starts, and there's dirt behind the pool, and then you go and there's a skimmer. The skimmer's just in dirt. Like there's no, they backfilled it, but there's no deck around the pool. So now, three years later, he sold the house. There's this nice lady that lives there, and we get a crack in the pool, like a pretty significant crack. So I bring my leak guy out there, and he's like, shit, Steve, he's like, this could be structural, you know. So he actually, you know, up he fixed it and he patched it, and within a week, it had opened up even more. So yeah. So I don't even know what to do with her at this point because this is out of my wheelhouse. So, but again, if this pool cracks and opens up, I'm the last pool professional on site. So I gotta, you know, I kind of have to figure out something with her where I send her an email and say, Hey, like you're gonna be in charge of, you know, figuring this out. But right now, we are still servicing the pool. Then I have another situation going on where there's a pool in this lady's backyard and she lives in Silver Lake and it's on a hillside. And it's a small pool, but it was leaking, and all of the leaking and all of the rain over the years like washed out underneath the pool. So now it's kind of like on stilts.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:48

And there's like four houses underneath it and stuff. So we told her to drain the pool, but I got her some quotes to demo the whole thing because that's what the you know, the endless swim people came out. They're like, we don't want to touch this. They were like, demo it. So the demo is like 200k, you know, and she was like, I can't afford that. And now it puts me in a situation where again, I'm the last pool professional on site. What do I do? And this is something where I had called Pat from you know, California Pool Association, and I was like, hey, like what do I do here? And you know, he said that you know, you should send some sort of a certified letter to them saying you per our conversation on this date, you know, you're releasing all liability, if anything, any future problems from this that arise with this pool. And I said, Well, okay, but I already sent an email that kind of said that basically said that. And he was like, That sh that really should be good enough. But, you know, what what worries me about it is she's not gonna get it fixed right now. She was like, she was like, I have to leave it. She was like, if it was 20 or 30k, maybe I might be able to do that. But she was like, that would, that would be all of my money. So she's like, I can't do this and I'm not gonna do it right now. She was like, What do you think? Like, do you think it's like a and I'm like, I'm not, oh new, like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna speak on that at all. Because what if I say, okay, if I give it a couple years and in two months it breaks, it breaks. You know, I'm the one that's on record that says, Oh, everything's gonna be okay. And it's and it's you know, certainly, certainly not. But these are some of the things that are kind of you know going on with us, and it's these are things that I've been in the pool industry for for almost 20 years. I've known you since 2008, and I've never, ever, ever, you know, in three weeks, I came across two different instances that have never happened to me before, you know. So that's the one thing about the pool industry where you go out and see enough backyards, like uh, and you hire enough employees, like you're gonna see a crazy different amount of things that go on. And there's just so much that goes on with the pool industry because you're working with electricity and you're working with plumbing and masonry, and you know, do you do all of these things? You know, and if and if you don't do all of these things, you need to find people who do these things well and partner with them, and you also need to make sure that you cover your ass with insurance.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:05

Yep. Yep. Shout out to CPA.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:07

Yeah, thanks, CPA and Lamotte for being our flagship sponsors. We always appreciate you guys.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:11

So, gang, that's it for today, I think, because we've talked enough and I'm tired. I know Steve is, and it's just early in the day for him. So just half your day. And you've got a four or five hour drive deal going on. So, gang, thanks again for listening. Uh, we will talk at you next week. Our email address is talkingpools at gmail.com. If you have any comments, thoughts, suggestions, critiques, want us to freeman yell at us, that's fine too. If we happen to use your suggestion on the air, we'll send you a nice little thank you gift.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:38

Until then, Steve Send us all the places for the best brunches.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:43

Take care, guys. Bye bye.