The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
scotland nation have you signed up to take your certified water technologist designation exam
if you have you’ve received a mock exam copy and i have answered each one of the
questions in that mock exam letting you know which ones are the best answers i
share tips and tricks about the exam making sure that you sign up easily and
confidently and when you go in to take the examination you have got certain
things working for you because you’re prepared to find out more go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash cwt prep
once again that’s scaling up h2o.com forward slash cwt prep
[Music] welcome to the scaling up h2o podcast the podcast where we scale up on
knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems i’m trace blackmore the host of the scaling up h2o podcast
and nation i apologize about last week’s intro i can’t tell you how many people
contacted me in one way or another saying that they did not enjoy that
april fool’s joke for those of you that did not listen to last week’s episode
i had an april fool’s joke where i came on and i said we were going off the air
and i have to say from all of the people that contacted me to say that was just a
cruel joke i know that you guys really enjoy the scaling
up h2o podcast and i can’t tell you how much that means to me so sorry about the
cruel joke i thought it was funny and i really hope that you got some humor out
of it as well but i tell you by doing that i realize how much you all love
this show i promise that i take that as an honor
to be the host of the scaling up h2o podcast i look at myself as the tribe
leader of the scaling up nation we are all part of a community and it’s
all about community it’s all about us doing what we can to make this incredible profession better each and
every day that we are in it and again sorry for the april fool’s joke you know
speaking of community one of my favorite things to do
is to actually connect with all the people in the scaling up nation and we
have a couple of opportunities each and every year to do that of course that’s at events that i am attending
and normally that’s an association of water technologies event or some other organization where i am either teaching
hosting presenting or maybe just attending i love it when people come up and let me
know that you do get something out of this show i especially love it when
people tell me what they want to hear on this show after almost 250 episodes
making sure that i’m talking about the right stuff and getting new material is
something we’ve always been able to do but i am terrified that eventually i’m
just going to say i’ve got nothing left i can’t think of anything else and then that april fools show that will
be a reality let’s not allow that to happen and the way we can do that is for you to let me
know what you want to hear on this show do you have an idea of something you want me to explore on the
show well let me know about that is there something that you want
answered on this show let me know about that is there somebody that you want me
to interview please let me know about that as well
super easy to let me know any on all of those things that’s by going to
scalinguph2o.com and then two ways you can get that information from me once
you’re on our web page very easily there will be a pop-up button that says send voicemail on the
right hand side of the screen you simply press that and you will be able to record your voice on whatever device you
are on and let me know exactly what your question is or whatever you want to let
me know a lot of times i air those on the podcast so you can hear your voice
on the podcast the second way is to navigate over to our show ideas page
fill that out let us know exactly what you want us to know and we will do our
best to accommodate thank you in advance for all the people that are getting ready to do
that and also speaking about community coming up in the very near future next
week we are going to have our second hang of
2022 the hang is where we all get together on a zoom call
and we just have fun i’ve got a few announcements in the beginning and then i break you up into breakout rooms and
this is where you get to meet new people in your industry you never know who
you’re going to meet on a hang and you never know how they’re going to be able
to solve the question you don’t even have yet they’re going to be the key
to solving the issue that you haven’t even experienced yet
and today it’s harder and harder to get together with our fellow water treaters
so this is just one easy way from the comfort of wherever you do your video
calling you can meet some new people and have some fun doing it that’s going to
be on april 14th just next week and to register for that you can go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash hang something else we’ve been talking about
on this show and if you listen to episode 244 we talked to steve speer of team world
vision and one of their missions is to try to end the water crisis
there’s so many people out there on the globe that do not have good access easy
access to clean drinking water so each and every year
they put on a 6k to bring attention bring awareness and also get people to
help and you can help in so many ways the way we’re asking you to help this
year is participate in the 6k you might be asking why is it a 6k normally things
are a 5k well that’s a great question and it’s six kilometers because that is the average distance
people in third world countries have to travel in order to get clean drinking water and
when i say clean drinking water it is not really that clean it’s just access
to water period so we walk or run or however you want to do it six kilometers
on may 21st it is a saturday you can do it from wherever you are
just to bring awareness to this valuable cause now i’d love for you to do this with
your team with your company and if you do not have a team to sign up under
we’ve got that taken care of too because you are part of the scaling up nation and you can go to scaling up
h2o.com forward slash 6k and it will take you directly to a team
page that we’ve created so we can all do this as part of team scaling up
again we’re a community and we’re going to do this as a community and we are going to bring awareness to this so
important topic and we are going to get involved and share what we’re doing with each other
so we can bring even more awareness now for those of you that want to give to
that cause we are trying to raise a small amount of ten thousand dollars this year so you can do that by also
going to that same page which is scaling up h2o.com forward slash
6k it’s going to be fun we’re going to be talking about this for the weeks to come we’re going to make sure that we’ve
got some social media hashtags so we can all share in the fun as we are participating in this very valuable
experience one nation i want to bring on our next
guest so if you will here’s our interview
scaled up nation my lab partner today is jerry angeli jerry welcome to the
scaling up h2o podcast well thank you i appreciate the invitation and it’s glad to be here and
be in contact with you uh jerry you and i have been bumping into each other for years at the
association of water technologies and i i can’t think of a better time to bump into anybody but this past year at the
providence rhode island convention we were all so ready to get out with each other and see each other again wouldn’t
you agree i definitely agree i felt like i was in quarantine even though i never got sick
yeah but hold up in our home isolation’s probably a better term than quarantine
i think that is a good way to put it and uh it was just so good to see you all the
other people there we were well overdue for getting together in person again
absolutely well jerry i’ve got so many questions that i want to ask you but i want to
make sure that the scaling up nation knows who we’re talking to so do you mind letting the scalenup nation know a
little about yourself that’s no problem i’m born in a suburb of pittsburgh
pennsylvania raised in a small little town mckees rocks directly west of the city i attended a
small high school and uh eventually went to the university of pittsburgh and i was a pre-med
student majored in biology i minored in chemistry and psychology was another one
that was part of a possible career path in either psychology or psychiatry
but right around my junior senior year i kind of felt disenchanted with with academia and
the thought of another four years that extra schooling and just didn’t appeal to me i decided to actually go into the
real world so started working uh at right after college since got married
and three children and we now have they’re all grown and independent we have four grandchildren
my wife linda and i and uh i think we’re gonna probably get into my work experience
at some point so i’ll just leave that part out well that’s actually where we’re going next jerry we’re going to go to uh to to
you as an industrial water treater so you said you were you were in school you got fed up with academia decided to go
out into the real world why on earth did you choose water treatment
well i i got there through a roundabout way that once i decided against a medical
career i was kind of open to anything and the first job
opportunity i could do to support myself was answering an ad to from an insurance
company and i actually sold the life insurance for a year and uh i just discovered that was not my
career fast so uh my father who was in the steel
industry his whole life said well they’re hiring management trainings at the mill once you try it at the job
so i did and i went through that year program at ltv steel in aliquippa
pennsylvania of all places that’s again that’s outside of pittsburgh
and uh spent three years in the steel industry and eventually uh got laid off
that’s when foreign imports were really hurting the u.s steel economy and steel treatment
so being married with two kids is like you can’t just sit around so through an employment agency
you got a lead for a pharmaceutical sales job and sometimes
things happen for a reason we had a major snowstorm and the recruiter the
the for the pharmaceutical company that was scheduled to come to pittsburgh couldn’t make it see and he wasn’t going
to be back for a couple months i said i can’t wait and the recruiter said did you ever hear of a company called best
laboratory and i said as a matter of fact i had they were one of the companies that
serviced the area the plants of the steel industry i was in their coking operations for
water treatment and actually treating coconuts and i’ve heard very good things about this
and he said well they’re interested in hiring somebody in water treatment and i said hey i got a degree in biology
chemistry and i i like water i drink it almost every day
it’s like i’ll give it a shot and uh they asked me if i wanted more heavy industry or cni
which is commercial institutional and i said well what’s the difference well one you’re going into steel mills
large chemical plants the other one you’ll be wearing aside most likely and going to
hospitals universities office buildings like a after three years in a dirty place with a steel mill
i’ll take the cni so i interviewed with beth zentek and got hired and that was my
initiation into the water treatment industry in 1978. well jerry i want to ask you about that
so in 1978 you got hired it was your very first day as a water treater tell
us about that yes i flew into harrisburg the first day
of living in pittsburgh with the job opening and the one i was hired for was in harrisburg which would have entailed
a move first days are you know just orientation kind of getting to know everybody
uh introducing doing all the paperwork getting everything signed and then uh it was more the second day
where i actually started to get into meat and potatoes and my boss at the
time joe wallace in central pa was very very strong technically he put a lot of
emphasis on technology of the business and he took me to a one of their local
customers and showed me around at what they do and that’s when the it was like thin this is
this could work because it was hershey medical center i know i can say that now because i don’t have that been long gone
that business as far as anybody i know so uh i just thought it was fascinating
they were actually had a little travel lab and they were they were plating with
you know heating up agar putting up petri dishes and pouring the agar and then injecting
the cooling power water samples into the agar from different dilutions
and i was like biology here i come chemistry no problem so that was the
introduction and what was your first year like the emphasis was on again learning
technology first we’ll teach you how to sell stuff you know that comes
you have to have a working knowledge of this business so the first year was doing mostly training for the
technology they handed me when i felt like they could at several accounts that were very strong stable accounts that i
could start to serve so the first year was involved mostly with servicing and learning about the business
they had a very interesting system that best impacts you had to pass a test
and get score above 80 on this test to be invited to come to the home office
for higher level technical training you had to qualify to come to technical
training school instead of just piecemealing you sending everybody so i said my boss says that what you
really need to do in the next six months is concentrate on learning everything you can about this
the technical ends of it all learning memorizing formulas how to set up and design programs
for boiler systems it’s giving you a set of parameters design the boiler program
with products how much what’s the cost going to be and the same thing with cooling so my first year was spent
learning and servicing existing customers then moved into the sales process
and how long were you with bets and tech i was with them about 14 and a half
years almost 15. my career with them was split
maybe he did a little too good of a job because after a couple years in sales and
servicing more close to four from like 78 to almost 82.
you you may not believe this if you’ve never worked for a larger company you would have a heartbeat there seemed to
be a communication gap that’s to put it mildly between internal engineering and
salesmen on the ground or the actual representation surely not surely so
thought you know what might be a good idea is if we bring some people in that had actual sales and service experience
and showed a really good aptitude for the technology to bring them in as staff technical
engineers deal with the field people and i was selected
along with one of two or three other gentlemen to come in and try that role
and it proved to be extremely successful because we had a empathy not just the
sympathy for what they were doing we knew what they were going through and so we would help them through
any problems they were having on the phone or in writing and it just
worked wonderfully and i spent about five years internally in that role in their home
office in orson and then of all things they had a i guess it would code a disruptive event where you lose a
district manager and two reps in the territory in new jersey all within six
months and they said we need to stop the bleeding we need somebody experienced to
get out there and solidify these accounts and you’re the guy
you’ve been selected you’ve been selected so you’ve been you’ve been volunteered
but it worked out really well it was extremely uh fruitful did some of my best sales efforts and
sold princeton university which was the big feather in my cap at the time princeton medical center
and rca technical center and american cyanide plant so and a couple other different
nice uh when you’re dealing with commission and salary the more new sales you can make obviously that never hurts
your your bottom line and plus it was just rewarding just stealing from a position of confidence
knowing the technical end and also being familiar enough with sales process to be
successful jerry what would you say one of your most memorable experiences is when you
were with bets one of the ones was not just in the sales process but i think in helping
when i was the staff engineer i was responsible for the west half of the united states from chicago down to texas
all the way to the everything west and uh for the period of time that i was their engineer
of course i can’t take any of the credit but i can take some of it that we we led the company and increased
sales for those four years with over 20 sales growth every year
and uh again i think a lot of it was to deal with the fact that i provided them with
assistance without any kind of being denigrating if that makes sense
tried to lift people up rather than if they were doing something wrong we work through it
we’ll help you through this you don’t need to know everything but we can work through this together
and i think that attitude really helped out and then there came a time where you
left bets tell us about that yeah interesting uh it was a personal
family situation where at that point we had moved to new jersey my family was back in pittsburgh
and i expressed the desire to go back to that area of the country and i would
have preferred to stay with them to see if there was any way that i could be transferred to that area
and and after a year i said that you know if that’s not possible
we’ve made a family decision we’re going to go back to that area with or without vets and i’d be
preferred to be with ben my brother-in-law told me at the time well that’s
career suicide they’re not gonna they’re probably just gonna fire you
well that’s how i feel i’ve always been upfront and honest with them and that’s not this isn’t the time to change
and after a year they cried and it had to be approved through my district manager at the time and the
one in pittsburgh and they decided that they didn’t feel it was their in their best interest
so i found a job with another company which was at the time baker performance
chemicals or chem link as they were known at the time and the neat thing was
not only was i changing territories and i explained this to them i was also now changing my area of work and i would be
going from cni into heavy industrial with ken lee that i will not be competing with you at
all even though i’m not in my territory and they appreciated it
and made a very smooth transition in two years with ken wink and i got recruited by uh
aspen chemical drew at the time and then uh in a couple years with them
that when the drew star award for increased sales and then uh
after that was recruited to uh my last position with kim aqua in irving texas
interesting part of that story was the president of the company was steve haberly and
he was one of those district managers when i was a staff engineer that i had helped through their process
and so he appreciated my work back then and thought it would be a good addition to their team
well that’s when i met you when you were working for kim aqua and were you volunteering for awt before you were
with them actually the year before and i when i was with croft that was when i first got involved
with awt the the connection there is we worked closely
with national colloids company and we did a lot of work with sue ray who’s
there basically their product manager and so i he was very strong in cooling
but not so much as boilers so i would help her out with the boiler product questions
so she told me well you know awt really need some help in their technical committee
i think you should join and be on that in the boiler committee and that’s how it started
so tell us about that you you got information from sue and sue’s great i’ve served on a couple of committees
with her she said we need help as an association of water technologies in the
technical area specifically with boilers yes how did you reach out how did you get involved with that and then where
did you go from there so the first one was the uh you probably remember
this when they had it at colorado springs i think that was in 2007 and i
actually was going to do a presentation on boiler inspection technology using video
with uh and for small companies that those those machines that the big companies
and the majors brought in to impress everybody on doing visual video boiler inspecting
tubes with boroscopes that was available to smaller companies because there was a the companies that
rented the equipment for a reasonable amount of money so you could provide the same service
as a small local water treatment company that the majors could provide to your boiler customers and so that was the
transition of how i got involved unfortunately right at the time when i made the career change to kim
aqua so i could not put that presentation on but i did manage to join the boiler committee and
now eventually became the i was a co-chair with john zabrida for a few
years and then took the position as chair of that subcommittee we refer to john as uncle john here on
the show there you go johnny’s dead that angela calls him yeah john’s been great
he he and i live in the same city and we used to see each other more when we were
at awt functions across the country than we did just living seven miles apart so
we’ve tried to improve upon that and john and i get together just about every month for a lunch just to see how things
are going i think this is important for people starting out in this industry
one of my first area managers well the first area manager i had in central pa
told me that you were sitting there you’re in a whole new area of business i’m going to give you a piece of advice
i said what’s that he said get through a year whatever happens don’t quit
struggle through do whatever you have to do but get through one full year if you can succeed one year in this
business you’ll never have to worry about having a job again the rest of your life
because the water treatment business is here to stay it’s that important
and i followed that advice and he was absolutely correct i think that’s very sound advice jerry
was there ever a time you wish you went to medical school
wow that’s a great question i think there was some initial
uh periods where i thought it would have been that i missed a career
there’s obviously there’s a lot of prestige associated with medical school
but what really solidified it was i had a cousin and a friend of their families
that both went to medical school and became doctors in the detroit area and i attended a wedding after they were
both through medical school into their careers and i got to see them together
and they said they looked pulled me aside and said i don’t know what you knew at that time but i wish you had told us
because this is not the career we thought it was going to be and uh the whole system is
kind of messed up i just that was a vindication because at the time uh
i was happy doing what i was yeah that’s definitely a vindication to hear
a doctor say that that maybe i should have gone into water treatment how about that jerry this can be a lonely field we’re
driving to customer to customer and a lot of times we’re running tests in a
mechanical room that’s probably not the the most lavish surroundings
and sometimes we might wonder what the heck did i decide to do with my life i agree with you i think it’s the best job
ever and if we can get over those little things it really is rewarding but my
question to you is we do spend a lot of time by ourselves
what is something that you did to make sure that it wasn’t alone time or it wasn’t
wasted time that it was allowing you to learn something or get to the next customer what were some of the tips that
you did with all of the alone time that we have again you know they have to go back
there’s a lot better opportunities today to spend alone time in the car
uh with the technology that’s available you have a cell phone with a hands-free
operation you can talk to customers you have all that when i started none of that existed we didn’t even have
pagers we drove to one place to another and three times a day we were supposed
to call the office to see if we had any issues but the time you’re in the car driving
by yourself there were no electronic books available you could get some things on tape
tapes were important so other than listening to music positive motivational tastes
and anything like that helps you when you’re in your car and that got me through the alone in
long drive time i put approximately 3 500 to 4 000
miles a month when i was in central pa i think that’s the key is find something
that you can listen to when you’re in that alone time that builds you up and
doesn’t tear you down there was no scaling up h2o how did you survive
i it was tough but we managed to work you know soldier
through it but like i said with what you have available today like scaling up and
and different things you could listen to in the car and then fill your head with as much positive information
and motivation as you possibly can because you know there’s enough negative you hear enough no’s it’s great to hear
that that’s only one step closer to the next yes that has gotten me so far when i’ve
gotten rejections that hey i’m just one step closer so hopefully nation you’re out there using that same tip
jerry i got to ask you have had to have seen a lot of changes throughout your water treatment career what are some of
the biggest changes that you’ve seen from when you started to now one of them was what we just talked
about the technology that’s available today just for helping you service
people the the technology of having a phone with you all the time that you’re in constant communication
that’s one but the other part is the technology in the application
of water treatment program to see a conductivity boiler controller
back in my day was was rare and a lot of times to see a cooling
conductivity controller was even more rare generally you if you were fortunate
enough to have a customer that had a conscientious operator that would actually run their tests
regularly and make adjustments then you had better chances of success
with the technology now that we have automated systems automated speed and control systems
the technology of moving to like solid chemicals it was a joke when i first started one
of the sales meetings national sales meetings we had at best impact one of the
district managers made a joke about the future of water treatment we’re going to sell and he pulled out a little kitchen
sponge he said we’re going to put all our chemicals on a sponge and then just throw it in an empty drum
and fill it with water and then you can pump it into your system well he was making a joke
but but he actually came up with a brilliant idea which i think was the beginning of solid chemistry for for
water treatment so i think those two things the the changes
and obviously they always say oh everybody sells the same chemicals it’s the same thing in the drum it’s who puts
it in well it’s not always true there are always research being done as
for better and better chemical technology for water treatment and
when you look at it over 42 years that i did it’s amazing how how much it’s changed
i mean i we were still allowed to use chromates when i first started so you know how far back that is
i believe it was the early 80s yes when they banded absolutely
all the advances in the technology for personal things but also in our industry
just been amazing to watch and exciting so jerry tell me about you had your
first probably analog controller on a cooling tower did that just rock your
world did that just change your life yes it was like wow
i don’t have to worry about a operator doing all this we can go in and see the
in the system and it could be monitored he can make changes just by walking past this controller reading the conductivity
and seeing if something’s grown and i’m betting it was a more one controller it absolutely was
and there’s still some out there today and they’re working strong oh yeah and the boiler one that they came up with
with the trap sample and we had we had many of those and they worked well if you took the time to learn how they work
something you and i both experienced that i’m willing to bet most of our listeners
i just had no clue that this ever happened but it was 1999
and everybody was terrified that all the microprocessor controllers that were out
there were going to stop working because
exactly we who would think put four digits in no we’re going to save time and just do two
digits and of course everything was going to stop working what was your world like back then
everybody was panicking and uh it turned out to be a lot smoother transition than
anybody realized but i think that’s why they made such an awareness of it
people went out it’s almost like the moon landing i mean once they had that goal
we have to fix our computer programming to do a fix for this coming up and so
what they did was packs first they packed the program so that they could extend it another 10 years and
they figured by that time they could turn over all the new technology would be make a transition that they can bring
in the software to correct it yeah i was only in the industry for a few short years before that happened and
i remember thinking what’s going on every single one of my accounts is going to shut down and i remember we had to change microprocessor chips out and that
was my new job we changed hundreds of all these chips out it was crazy
and that was the fix with the temporary fix was changing the chips and like you said
until you can get the point where you had to change the controller and it would come with the newest that were
already set up the four digits rather than two jerry you’ve got some experience in an
area that many people have have never even thought about before but you hold a
couple of patents can you take us through what that is all about how how did you
decide okay i’m going to invent something that isn’t around and i’m going to be the first person to to make
it come to be and then how do you go through the process to get something patented and
what’s it like after you get a pad i think to preface this though i need to explain a little bit about how that
works now i always thought it was a disadvantage having a last name that
started with a because i always had to sit in the front row when they speeded up alphabetically as kids and you’re the
one that’s called on first and suddenly there’s some advantage but a lot of disadvantage
the one advantage when it comes to patents when you get a joint patent with several people that are involved in
projects they list their name alphabetically same thing’s true with any type of
publication to give you an example my son was who eventually became a doctor or my son
he he was doing a kind of a medical internship university of pittsburgh working with a
cardiologist before he got into medical school when he was still in college in the summer
physician and so he worked on this genetic paper with this doctor who had been working on
it for years and while my son was there they finished the research project and wrote
the paper well the paper then became angelini at all
even though he was the student working on the project they listed everybody alphabetically well the same
thing happened with this path i was part of a group that applied for this patent
when i was with him aqua and so the patent is listed both patents
are listed as angelili at all now the other names are there and they all
contributed and not just to being humble they contributed a lot more than i did
but the initial application was for oil field that’s how it started and
we were called i was called into an office because when i first started with chem aqua they
we were going around giving assignments and chlorine dioxide came up and in our
engineering group she said anybody have any experience with chlorine dioxide i was the only one
that raised my hand because i did with asthma chemical and they said well you’re our new chlorine
dioxide guy so i became the man for any kind of chlorine dioxide
application so i got called in with the president and of the company in this oil field company
they own and they said can you put carbon dioxide in these uh water impoundments in the oil
industry for fracking and could that be something that you can settle solids and
disinfect water i don’t think it’s going to help settle solids unless it’s iron-based it might
but as far as disinfection absolutely so i got involved as a team
to work on chlorine dioxide applications and water empowerment spending
a couple of long days and evenings in arkansas in some water ponds
feeding chlorine dioxide and see what would happen and running tests eventually it got to a point where
they brought a group together and came up with a system portable trailer
to treat water for the fracking business mostly for
the initial frac the uh what they call the you know the water used in the hydraulic
fracturing process and that has to be disinfected they were using upwards of
150 250 parts of of glutar aldehyde for a disinfection
because they would get a lot of bacteria growth in these wells that they were putting in
so you’re pumping systemic poisons into the deeper ground so the idea of using
chlorine dioxide which would eventually dissipate and be you know reduced and
the chloride is not a problem and so we did a lot of experiments at work and
came up with this process of using chlorine dioxide in treating this
water that’s part of the one patent because that was the method
of treating this water the other patent had to do with the process where we came
up with a trailer where we controlled every parameter of the water process so
that we could treat it and every drop of water got to see that amount of chlorine dioxide as it was being done at a
real-time continual basis so the two things the process and the the equipment itself
and the method for the two patents and then once you get a patent what do you have to do
you have to work to a patent attorney and it was rejected our patent what they do then is they go through and see what
they call existing similar technology so if there’s something that they have
other patents that seem like they’re very similar or the same they will deny your application
well then this starts the process and you have to change what they
the patent office says are are too similar to previous patents and then you have to change the wording
to change the technology so that it’s dissimilar it took about four or five
different iterations before it was approved but once it’s approved it becomes a patent
jerry i have to ask because i know you are very strong on education and making sure
that people that are in this industry are all that they can be so for people
listening here today maybe they’re just starting out maybe they’re getting ready to take some sort of certification exam
what are some things that they should be doing what are some things that they should be reading how should they
prepare to be better what do you recommend i think at one time when i started it
was the best fan book the naoko handbook and then drew handbook and all those are excellent resources but
if you want a certification and the the industry standard has become the cwt
the association of water technology and their technical and training manual
is very excellent when it comes to a generalized knowledge of all aspects
of this business and it’s all practical some of the other handbooks can get into
the weeds at times get a little in depth into places that really aren’t
necessary but uh the awt manual is at temp aqua is what we use to train all of
our reps both domestic and international and so i would suggest going through
that manual cover to cover and wherever you’re weak spend more times on the sections where you feel your weak
and less time on the sections that you feel that you have strengthened so when you do take the exam
you’re going to be well-rounded and if there’s some area you know nothing about that’s the chapter you
want to read the book but don’t dispel those other handbooks i think that’s some great advice jerry i
think several of those are available online for free now aren’t they you can get the excerpts i believe you
can i think that would be my next advice one of the nicknames i got
at my last position was the google meister because
you know we all don’t know things like you have to admit that
i would tell people you know you’re an expert when you look and look somebody in the eye squarely
and say i don’t know with conviction so if you don’t know something
look it up and learn about it and google is a great technical tool
and one of the places they’ll send you to is suez handbook or naoko or one of
those jerry you mentioned saying the words i don’t know i want to talk about that for a second
because when i work with people that are new in this industry they are just terrified
of saying the words to a customer i don’t know
help me spread the word that that’s not bad to say no that is it
but you have it needs a follow-up is that is that but i will find an answer for you i mean it has to come with that
because they’re depending on you they’re asking the question for a reason because they need to know as well
but never dispel the question but if you don’t try to explain something you have no knowledge on
that you can learn and that’s what they want you to do they want you to provide the answer
it doesn’t necessarily mean immediately that’s an excellent point hey let’s move
on to the lightning round questions oh boy here we go you’re gonna love them
you’re gonna love them this these are questions that i ask of all of my guests okay so uh here we go
you now have the ability to go back in time and talk to your former self on
your very first day as a water treater what advice would you give yourself
i used to have a sign in my office said there’s two rules of stress management
rule number one is don’t quit the small stuff and rule number two is it’s all small
stuff and not to dispel and to just
be little belittle any the negative things or the stressful things that happen in your life
but you need to settle down and and realize that it’s not the end of the world and you in
worrying about something has no positive outcome
action is what provides positive outcome not worrying so be less stressful take
more action to solve the problem and don’t worry as much great advice
jerry what are the last few books that you’ve read well the book of matthew
i tend to uh have a daily bible reading so all kidding aside that’s that’s the book
so i spent a lot of time there but i i have because of my the most recent
actual book that i read was called the bosses club and it had a lot of meaning to me because it was in reference to the
great johnstown flood in western pennsylvania and how that actually happened
so it was a very enlightening interesting book and other than that
again in my my love of music and industry my one of my favorite brands is the almond brother so there’s a book by
greg allman called my cross the bear which i’ve read and one by his brother dwayne’s
only daughter or adriel allman and that’s called please be with me because it was a tribute to our father
so those are the three jerry when they make a movie about your life who do you want them to cast jerry
as uh if we’re talking present day because i’ve been i have been
resemblance to richard dreyfuss he’s a great actor all right but i i would i would choose him
i would prefer it to be like al pacino but i don’t think that they can both audition you can judge
my last question you can now talk with anybody throughout history who to be with and why
i’ve heard this question asked of other people and a lot of people i i think uh
spiritually you say that they would prefer to spend at least that time with jesus and and i would agree with that
but i i think this is more of a practical situation of a human being that’s somebody you look
up to and i i thought about the great scientists from the past and because of the love for science and the one person
that i really thought about most recently is carrie mullis
he was the nobel prize winning scientist develop the pcr test
and i i would just like to sit down with him and and interview him in his process i’ve
read some things about him and his approach to science uh is the most pure i’ve seen in a
modern scientist for a long time that would be an amazing conversation
just like this was an amazing conversation oh thank you absolutely
jerry thank you so much for coming on the program and sharing so much about
your career and inspiring so many others well you’re very welcome i appreciate
this opportunity scouting up nation that was jerry angeli
one of the most robust water treatment careers that
i’ve been able to interview and folks if you know somebody that’s been in the industry for some time please
sit down with them maybe share a beer with them ask them what it has been like
throughout their career had you experienced that y2k thing that was so much a part of my life for almost
a two year period it consumed everything
and i experienced that and i can have a conversation with jerry because he experienced that
but when you have a conversation when somebody experienced something before you came into the industry you realize
there’s always things that are disrupting our regular day-to-day all the time
and the fact that we can have a conversation with each other and learn what the experiences were surrounding
that means that we can apply that to whatever the issue we are dealing with
so please have those valuable conversations with other people that have been in the
industry before you because i think it allows you to see that whatever you’re dealing with is not as bad and there’s
always something to learn from experiencing the process speaking of
experience we’re now going to go to james mcdonald for a brand new thinking
on water [Music] welcome to thinking on water with james
the segment where we don’t give you the answers we give you the topics and questions for you to think about drop by
drop now let’s get to it in this week’s episode we’re thinking about the order corrosion coupons are
installed what is the proper order what does flow have to do with order
if you have great corrosion rates why does order matter if you have terrible corrosion rates why
does it matter what is the science behind the order where would you find the proper order
when in doubt would there be a reason to install one out of the standard order
take this week to think about the proper order of corrosion coupons and why it matters be sure to follow
tow tow22 and hashtag scalinguph2o share your thoughts on each week’s thinking on
water i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to learning more from you
nation it is hard to believe but next week we are going to be celebrating our
fifth anniversary five years of the scaling up h2o podcast
imagine what was your life like before the scaling up h2o podcast i know mine
was a lot more boring and i know i had a lot less friends out there this podcast
has just allowed me to meet so many of you and share experiences and really
rally about this incredible career that we all share in industrial water
treatment i would not trade that for the world and i’m sure we’re going to have
at least five more years to come so nation stay tuned for that special
anniversary episode next week until that time take care of each other and i’ll see you next week
[Music] scaled up nation life is too short to do
it alone and that’s why i have been in a mastermind for over a decade it’s why i
started the rising tide mastermind and it’s why the rising tide mastermind is
so successful you do not need to face your problems alone you don’t need to face your issues
alone you can learn from others experiences so you don’t have to repeat their mistakes and you can get further
faster because others are giving you a hand to find out more go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash mastermind to see if this is the right group for you