The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
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[Music] welcome to scaling up h2o 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 how did this happen it is almost the end of april it seems
like we were just celebrating new year’s just a few days ago you know that’s what
happens we’re industrial water traders we’ve got so much going on we have so
much that happens to us in our day today it just makes the time fly and that’s
definitely a good thing that means that we’re never bored that means that we’re never looking at the clock
it’s just not enough time to do things that’s why if there is something that
you need to accomplish you need to hold yourself accountable to
get that done if we just think i want to do whatever
and that whatever is going to magically get accomplished folks that’s not going
to happen in any profession but it’s certainly not going to happen in the profession that we have and it’s my hope
that you follow along with us every year when we do goal planning and we figure out what we want to accomplish this year
and if you do that we’ve already accomplished our first quarter goals hopefully we’re one third down of our
second quarter goals and we’ve got two quarters left in the year after we
finish quarter two so i hope you’re keeping up with that if you’re not it’s not too late
i encourage you to figure out what you want to accomplish if you don’t you’re living life by default and by default
you’re always going to end up in a different destination than the one that is ideal for you so where do you want to
go and then plan to get there none of us plan to fail and
i know you’ve heard it before but if we don’t plan that is definitely a plan for
failure so take a moment write down what you want to accomplish
and then figure out how you’re going to get there if you don’t i don’t think
you’re going to like where you end up nation i always want to let you know about things going on in our industry so
you can advance your knowledge and whatever practice of industrial water
treatment that you are in so here are a few items that are coming up that you can mark on your calendar
bulma the building owners and managers association is having their medical
office building and health care conference may 4th through 6th in nashville
tennessee so many of us service these types of buildings
might be a good idea if you learn a little more about that also the
association of water technology is hosting another webinar and this one’s on crime control and best practices
that’s going to be on may 12th you can find out all that information and
anytime we mention anything on the podcast you will find information on our
show notes page that’s scalinguph2o.com and you can navigate over to find more
information in our show notes also the swan conference swann is smart water
networks forum they’re having their conference in washington dc may 24
through 26 and this theme it’s connecting innovation to impact so more
information on that on our show notes page and as always we are going to have
events that maybe pique your interest maybe you’ve never heard of before
and that’s the whole point you can learn so much by events like these i want to make sure
that they are available to you and i hope that you are making an effort to
extend your network to extend your knowledge so you are always getting
better remember that tomorrow is the opportunity to take the lessons that
we’ve learned today and make sure tomorrow is an improvement you know somebody that wants us to
improve each and every week is our friend james mcdonald and here is a
brand new installment on thinking on water with james [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 purpose of the brine seal in an ro system
what is a narrow brine seal what does it do how does it work how may it impact the direction
membranes are loaded into the membrane housings how can they fail and what will happen
if they do what are the various brine seal designs take this week to think about reverse
osmosis brine seals in the road they play be sure to follow tow 22 and hashtag scaling 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 if you have heard this podcast before you know i absolutely love being
in this industry and one of the things i love more than anything about this industry are the
people that work in this industry because i’ve gone to some of the
meetings that we mentioned earlier in the show because i try to volunteer because i try
to give back because of all the things i try to do to give to this industry that
i so very much love i have met some fantastic
people people that i consider some of my best friends today people that i can
call and i can ask questions to and just because of the relationship they are going to give me the answer
they’re going to help me with issues that i have that maybe they’ve already experienced and they can tell me how to
solve them so i don’t have to suffer through all the things that they had to
do to find a solution these are all people that help me
realize how great this industry is and i’m going to be interviewing one of
those people my lab partner today is jill cavano of
scranton associates joe you and i kind of sort of knew each other before the
mastermind but i gotta tell you since the mastermind i have truly enjoyed
getting to know you i’m excited to i would say introduce you to the scaling up nation but you’ve been on before so
maybe reintroduce you and just talk about all the things that are jill but
before we do that how the heck are you today i’m good trace how are you i’m excited
to be on the show i’m excited to have you on the show and i’m doing very well anytime i get to
do anything with this podcast i just get so excited so uh thank you for asking that i want the scalenum nation to know
who we’re talking to so if someone were to ask like me because i’m getting ready to ask it
who is jill cavano what would you say well i’m jill cavano or cavano half of
my family pronounces it cavano the other half pronounces it cavano okay well let’s let’s set that straight because i
think i’ve said both what do you want to be called and forever fourth in the water treatment
industry it shall be well bob was a cavano and his brother
who is also his best friend with a cavana so since we’re on a scaling up nation
industrial water podcast and uh bob’s kind of one of the og’s of the industry let’s just say cavanaugh
there it is henceforth it shall be i own scranton associates we’re a custom
chemical blender we’re located in strongsville ohio right outside of cleveland i am the fourth generation the
company was started in 1919 by my great grandfather so it’s a definitely a
multi-generational company i’m currently the chair of the business resources committee for awt we are busily planning
the uh 2022 business owners meeting in vancouver the day before convention
starts it’s grant associates is a former awt supplier of the year and i’m also a
founding member of the young professionals task force awesome we’re going to talk about all of
those things but the one i want to touch on first is fourth generation so my dad was in water treatment but he didn’t own
a water treatment company so this is a company that i started i wasn’t expected to be a water treater
it was something my dad did it was something that i learned from my father and then when other things didn’t work
out i came into water treatment but your fourth generation was it just that this is what you were going to do tell us that story you know yes and no
i never got to meet my great grandfather that that started the company but bob started in 1951 lee started in 1982 and
i started in 1999 but for the longest time i was always like you know i’d go
into the office to visit my grandpa or my dad to think you know what smells bad in here like i don’t want to do this
you know water treatment was bob’s life and i i remember you know spending summers with him i even accompanied him
and his wife my grandmother down to florida for a while and i thought you know this is great this is going to be
like a vacation you know bob says he’s going to homeschool me for a couple months this is going to be easy peasy i
didn’t realize that homeschooling to bob meant we were going to do a couple hours of school work and then like 10 hours of
water treatment because that’s what he wanted to talk about you know you asked me how i got involved
in the business well like i said you know i never planned on it it was what you know i always saw my grandfather do
what i always saw you know my father do bob was in the business since 1951
i thought you know i’m going to do something different like i liked science and i think i got that from from bob and
from lee and i thought well i’m going to be a chemistry teacher so i went to school for uh education and for chemistry
and then i decided after i had taught for a little bit that i didn’t really like teaching and then i got the call
from my great uncle jack bob’s brother and his business partner and he said you know have you ever
thought about coming to scranton and i said uh well i thought about it and then that just kind of one thing led
to another and you know in 1999 there i was but it was it was nice because you know
i had prepared for the business through all my you know growing up with lee and growing up with bob i had the right
education for the business in our family the way it works is that they pick one family member per
generation that has run a company the same size or larger for five years and
has an applicable at least four-year college degree i just thought i would be doing
something different but when i came into the business you know we do that so that nobody is in the business just for a job
you know my dad says nepotism is a good thing when it works so
we also don’t want the company you know the company is there to serve our customers
provide a good job for our employees and make up you know profitability the company is not there just to provide
jobs for family members and we’ve always been very cognizant of that and i think that you know our honesty and one of our
suppliers calls us the can do cabanos kind of is is the reason why you know trace you know
how the the odds are very low as you get through the second generation onto the
third generation and then into the fourth generation i think it’s like what two percent or something
it’s down there yeah that lasts that long but i i think you know knowing what we’re good at
knowing who we are and just kind of having the heart and being in it for the right reasons has led us to kind of be
able to transition through the generations how we pick family members to transition
through the generations has kind of led us to be a fourth generation company
with plans and and i guess we’ll talk about that a little bit later but with plans for hopefully if my son feels that
you know industrial water is for him plans for the fifth generation i think customers also appreciate continuity as
well yeah there definitely are not that many fourth generation companies out there
and and i love that you all have thought about okay not just anybody can
steer this company we have to have certain parameters we’ve had a lot of people on the show to talk about that
and a lot of times people don’t have those conversations and that’s why companies fail so i love that part of
your story and why scranton is so successful so we’re all going to take a
page from your playbook thank you well you told us what you like to do
professionally or what you do professionally what do you like to do personally
well my husband matt and i we actually live three blocks from scranton the scranton building so i guess that’s a
blessing and a curse do you walk to work you know i could but we don’t because we
have too much stuff to carry every day and kind of a pack rat with the things that i bring into work every day i used
to do a lot more things before we had our son he turns five on sunday he’s very excited about starting kindergarten
in the summer one of our big things that we like to do is swim one of my goals when i was younger was i
always wanted like i feel like i had arrived in life if i had a house with a pool so three years ago we put a pool in
at our house and you know most of the time in the summer when we’re not here at scranton matt my husband works at
scranton we work together we’ll be in the pool with alex just kind of floating around and relaxing
i crossed off one of my bucket list items last week which i’m very excited about one of the things i always wanted
to have like as an ultimate bucket list is growing up my mom had a 1962
thunderbird and i used to drive it during college to my part-time job and i always thought you know when when i’m a
real adult and and have you know space to put it and and some extra time you know i’m gonna get the same thing that
she had well i actually was one of my goals with the mastermind group that i’m in which is the rising tide mastermind
we started talking about this with a couple of my you know colleagues from the mastermind at the last live event
and i committed that if i found the right car i was going to do it so i i that should be delivered in a couple
weeks so i checked that off my bucket list so i guess you can add jill in the pool and uh driving around in my
thunderbird i love that i love that we get weekly reports on if the ducks are
in the pool or not we’re about to put the duck net out um the in between time the time that the
ice melts to the time that we’re actually ready to open it to keep the ducks from you know kind of making a
mess in it and then as as far as business advice i definitely think your son is directly
ready for taking over the business when it’s his turn because he gave you the
best advice for that car what did he tell you when i went to go look at it um at the showroom
i facetimed him and my husband and i said okay guys i you know i drove up there to look at it and i said what do
you think and alex gets on the the facetime he says mom you want it or not
there you go there you go the future president of scranton associates you
mentioned your grandfather and you’re right he is he is an og of water
treatment uh i recently purchased a company called wacon and the gentleman’s
name is rusty hill just a great guy he saved everything he has got so many
archives in water treatment past and it’s all great information stuff
that we just don’t have anymore if you don’t have archival data like that i don’t think it exists anymore
and my love of recent is to go through that material and just see all this
stuff and about every third document is something from your grandfather your
grandfather gave so much to this industry and i want to talk about him a
little bit but before i do i actually want to tell you a story about your grandfather because you and i are having
this conversation today partly because of your grandfather on the very first year when i started my
firm i didn’t know what to do i knew water treatment because my father taught it to me but i didn’t know how to run a water
treatment company so i sought out advice just like we do in the mastermind and people said well trace if you’re
going to run a water treatment business you have to join the association of water technologies and if you join the
association of water technologies you have to go to the annual convention
well i didn’t know any better so i went to the annual convention i knew nobody i
was a little nervous probably couldn’t afford to go on my first year but i i figured out a way to
do that and we had to make a connecting flight so i i we’re on a real plane from
atlanta to phoenix and then from phoenix to palm springs
i think when it grows up it will be a real plane but it was a small plane and um it was just one seat on each side
and and i sat down right next to your grandfather and he said something like
young man where are you heading and uh obviously we were all going to palm springs so i told him i go into
this thing called the association of water technology because that’s where i’m going and then the next 45 minutes i
had the most awesome conversation he was so encouraging he was telling me how i
was in the best industry and all the things that i could do within this industry people that he seen become
successful in this industry and i had no idea who i was talking to and then once we departed the plane and
i then was participating in the convention i could see that this guy that i was talking to
on the plane was an extremely big deal in the awt and of course later i learned
all of the things that he’s given the water treatment industry but he was so kind to me on that plane
and i think he just he created a a mindset he created a feeling for me that
i could do this that it was okay that i was nervous but to stay the course
i can’t thank him because he’s not around here but he was so encouraging it allowed me to have a great first awt
convention but i do remember thinking i had this thought and i had no idea what a podcast was back then but i remember
thinking i wish i could record this conversation to share it with others so out of that i really think came the idea
that eventually this podcast would come to be and that was your grandfather you know it’s it’s it’s great to hear that
you know i feel like you know i when i talk to people a lot it seems like everybody has a story about bob and it’s
really nice to to get to hear that when scranton associates had their first booth at the awt convention in
providence i brought along with me a picture of bob that he had taken one of
his first years in the industry in one of our very first facilities and as well
as his uh ray baum award just to kind of you know so that he could be there in spirit
yeah it really is amazing all the things that he’s done and nation if you search some of the archives that are on the awt
website for some of the original analyst documents you will see just about every
issue has an article in it from bob cavano so joe i’m curious what was it
like growing up in the water treatment industry do you have any stories for us you know i have a lot of stories like we
were just talking about it seems like everybody in the industry has a bob story but it was it was
unique growing up in it you know and and i have a a bob story i had to cull
through them all to figure out which one i wanted to talk about today but one of the nice things about growing up in the
industry with him is that i feel like although i started here in 1999 i really
started long before that you know if there was one thing that bob loved it
was water treatment and if there’s one thing that bob loved even more than water treatment it was talking to people
about water treatment and then of course the thing he loved the most was his family and that’s kind of where my story
comes from but boy did bob love to talk about water treatment that was really his deal so you know all through high
school even in junior high i just remember him talking to me about things and and learning things and you know
when i was too young to really start thinking about a career path i remember to you know i’d be going out to lunch
with bob and and there’d be these you know giants of water treatment there and i’d just be kind of like talking about
high school or whatever it was but so i actually had kind of a indoctrination
into the business long before i even started in the business you know bob loved water treatment it
was one of his you know passions it was not only his job and his you know career but it was also kind of his hobby but i
i guess if i had to pick one story about my grandfather to share with everybody
it sounds at first like it’s a sad story but it’s really not bob passed away right before his 88th birthday he lived
a really long and healthy life and he worked up until six weeks before he passed away he’d gone in for a procedure
and the procedure had gone okay but when he came out of the procedure because he was you know 87 at the time he was going
to have to do some rehab so during the course of the rehab they told him that he wouldn’t be able to drive anymore
which would mean that you know his freedom i guess would be limited and he wouldn’t be able to come into the office
unless somebody came and picked him up and i think at that point his morale kind of wavered so you know six weeks
later you know he passed away but during those six weeks i would come and
visit him every day and i would you know at first i came in with the mindset you know grandpa’s really going to want to
hear what happened at the office today he’s really going to want to hear this or i’m going to bring him you know the
analyst that came in the mail today or all of these things and for as important as the water treatment industry was to
bob and as much as that was his life you know one thing about bob is that his family was always first
you know he was a family guy above all else you know my dad is one of five and my grandmother passed away
about two years before he did my grandmother always used to say that for all of the reasons that she loved
bob one of the reasons was is that she considered him to be the smartest person she’d ever met
and she used to tell me that and i and i thought that that was really really nice they used to travel a lot they were
members of the cleveland print club so they used to go on art tours all over europe and such every year to go
actually see all of these places and look at works of art in in different places they had so
many things they like to do but you know i digress those six weeks that i was you
know visiting bob in the skilled nursing you know i came in there prepared to give him a full rundown of everything
that happened and you know talk to him about that and he told me he said i
don’t want to talk about that anymore you know last six weeks that he was alive we didn’t talk about water
treatment one time and that’s not taking anything away from water treatment but it it gave me my
first example and i really aspire to be like bob and i think we all do um and
i’ve got a long way to go to have that work-life balance you know water treatment was bob’s career it was
his life it was also his passion but his family and his free time and his
time with my grandmother and his time with his kids and his grandkids and traveling you know those were always more
important so the last six weeks that i talked to bob we picked a different topic every day
one of the topics that we had which was a funny story is the time because you know bob is just as good as you think he
is bob was always straight as an arrow and when he was dating my grandmother
he had a a car that him and his brother who was his best friend bought together called the blue bomber that had a rumble
seat and it was uh when tires were hard to get so this car was a good deal
because it had newer tires and that was a big thing so he always drove the blue
bomber to come pick my grandmother up for dates so her father my great grandfather started the company
would always know when bob was dropping my grandmother off because the car was so loud well the blue bomber broke down
one day so bob borrowed his father’s car to drop my grandmother off for the date
so the story goes that my great grandfather was down real late at night just so angry you know how could that
bob keep my daughter out so late you know this is so unlike him and i haven’t heard the car so i know that
she’s not home well lo and behold my grandmother comes down the next morning and and her father is angry like where
were you you know how how you were out so late it turns out that because bob didn’t have the
noisy blue bomber she’d been home for hours bob actually had her home early
sleeping the entire time wow one of the things i asked bob about as i
said out of your whole life what was your favorite decade and he said that hands down which makes
me feel a little bit better about getting older um hands down he said his 50s were the best decade because he said
that none of the kids his kids my aunts and uncles and father you know needed a babysitter or whatnot anymore and he
said that you know he’d gotten to a place in his career that you he had really strived and put the work in
towards where he felt that he could spend more time doing projects and authoring papers and such you know he
was able to go and travel with my grandmother without having to worry about who’s going to watch the kids he
said you know his all of his decades were good but he said during his 50s he said if he had to pick like a golden
time of his life that would have been it so i i think that you know although he you know obviously passed away at the
end of these six weeks you know he passed away almost 88 and bob was kind of an example to the water
treatment industry and i think to people in general as kind of like a renaissance man of a life well lived i mean you know
will i miss bob we actually kept his office here at scranton associates as a
technical library every paper and every topic and every patent and every
anything you could ever want to know every project he ever worked on
every consulting he ever did every formula every everything
those are all in a library here at scranton associates and one of my projects when i first started here at
scranton was organizing and labeling every single thing in that room so they have remained in that order because i
did not want to do it again and we still have um i guess a very detailed technical library here at
scranton that lee and i use even to this day that is amazing i i love that stuff
in fact i’ve got a business idea for you you’re going to turn part of your business into a bed and breakfast and
somebody like me can pay you money just to get up every morning and for the entire week just read that data i’m your
first customer you yeah you will wheel a cot in there tracy you’re welcome to
come visit anytime you like i love it joe you mentioned all the things that you do for the association
of water technologies obviously you and i are very passionate about that association what are you doing right now so you said
that you were chair of a committee what is the committee what does the committee do and what do you do as the chair
i recently became the chair of the business resources committee one of the things that we do is we put on you know
business tracks webinars some of the ones that we’ve had in the past recently
will be we had one on attracting and retaining talent we had one on the
employee retention tax credit um things for business owners and their key people
to learn how to you know navigate business situations um answer questions
tools to kind of help you run you know your business more smoothly or just give you ideas um things you know where you
growing your technical knowledge but with the business resources committee content to kind of grow your business
knowledge as well and something that you put on every year through that committee is the business
owners meeting can you tell us about that yes the business owners meeting is going to be the tuesday the week of awt the
day before the convention it officially starts this year in vancouver um and what we do is it’s a day for business
owners it’s just one day where we talk about all of the things that we feel are
the most pressing topics for business owners and the goal of the whole day is for the owners to feel that this was
the most worthwhile way for them to spend their day we want people to have a takeaway from that day of things that
they’re going to use and maybe go back to their businesses kind of reinvigorated with like a checklist or
ideas or or things that they want to implement or or maybe change or research
so it’s just getting people excited and i think you know not only is it you know networking but i think it’s kind of
almost the premise you know trace if you will kind of like the mastermind group where a rising tide raises all boats i
think by the business owners coming together and kind of collaborating and it being a you know a group
almost like a large group learning exercise i think that it’s it’s one of the most
important things he’ll be on coming to the convention and training and and things of that nature
that people can really take things away about running your business because at the end of the day you can be the best
water treater in the world but if your business isn’t running smoothly and your profitability and your cash flow aren’t
where they need to be you know that goes hand in hand yeah every week you and i get the
privilege of uh being in the mastermind and learning from each other and supporting each other and trying new
things out and getting people a head start on issues that maybe i experienced that you haven’t or vice versa so
instead of starting from step one we get to start from step five from the mistakes somebody else made the business
owners meeting for a lot of people is the first time they’ve ever experienced anything like that so who should be
attending the business owners meeting all business owners the business owners
meeting you know is closed to non-owners just so it’s kind of a safe space for people to really you know ask questions
and you know speak their mind but yes it’s awt business owners and i feel you
know of course i’m partial for you know being the chair of the business resources committee but all of my
committee members do such a good job and i’m so fortunate that i have a lot of awt members owners and non-owners alike
because the the business resources committee we do webinars we do you know all sorts of different things together
but i really feel that i’m lucky to be with such a great group of volunteers and i think it’s very very worthwhile
both the committee and the business owners meeting for the owners by default as a water treatment company
owner or somebody that serves the water treatment industry we’re all islands and
for some reason by default we don’t work together we make our jobs harder it’s a
lot more fun when we can do it with other people when we can learn with other people so i highly advise if you
own a water treatment business and you can attend this business owners meeting
i think it’s a great sample of what you can expect when you start working with other people and you’re going to get a
lot of ideas of things that you can do that you might not ever have thought about maybe books that people are
reading all these resources that are available to you that make it so you don’t have to be the only one that’s
figuring this stuff out on your own i agree completely well joe we’ve been all over the place
and and there’s so much i need to have you back for probably 10 other episodes to cover everything but i’m really
curious there there’s so many people out there that are in family businesses there are people that
are possibly in a position today that are thinking that maybe they can one day
run their company so you said you studied to be a chemistry teacher you didn’t like that
you had this opportunity at scranton associates i’m curious what was your
first day like there my first day was very anticlimactic i
remember my dad telling me and me thinking that he was joking he’s like yeah it’s gonna be like five years
before you really ready to like be up and running on your own and i was like what is he talking about and you know i
mean he was kind of tongue-in-cheek saying that but you know there’s a lot of training and a lot of things you know
that you’re able to do but to be a business owner you know the 64 000
question is when are you ready to lead and you know it takes time in this industry especially you know being a
blender with all of the customers and the confidentiality and the nuances and
the just the skills to you know helping people you know formulate and such
you know that just really takes time i mean there’s no easy way to be like okay
you know read this book or this whatever and then you know you’re ready to go off on your own but i remember my first week
there one of my long longtime suppliers came in and said jill you’re coming into
the business at a very interesting time it’s going to be a global market from
here on out more than ever and i just remember him saying that and thinking wow he was right
was there ever a time jill where you said yes today’s the day i am ready to take over this business
you know it’s funny you ask that i remember thinking and and talking to my great
uncle bob’s brother and he says you know you’re ready to lead to lead when you
care as much about grant associates as you care about yourself i mean people always talk about work-life balance and
that’s not what he meant in this instance like everything that leaves out the door here i feel like it personally has my
name on it i feel like scranton and i are like inner meshed sometimes too intermeshed but i feel
like we’re we’re intermeshed where i feel like it’s a representative of me and i’m representative of it there is no
like i take that off and put it like a book on the shelf you know you’re ready to lead he said when you care as much
about the company as you care about your own self and your own reputation it is kind of become a part of me i remember
that day and it was funny because you know my grandfather and his brother who owned the company you know they were
such smart men and and they had you know they were older and they had everything worked out for
their personal you know stuff when you know the day should come that they should you know no longer be
around but funny enough we found out they never had anything about what happened to scranton
so when my grandfather passed away bob passed away in 2011 you know his brother
had said jill you know do you think that you know you’re ready to run the company
and i said uh yeah i think that i am so in in 2011 you
know obviously lee was here and you know he was running things but my you know great uncle felt that it was important
to have that continuity so he you know kind of had you know had me where we’re
gonna you know kind of groom you to for the future so for two friends starting in 2011 i kind of became like the the
manager i guess if you will of grant associates you know along with lee we both had our different specialties that
we did and then my great uncle jack passed away in 2014
and at that time i had again wrongly assumed as did lee that he had something
in his will about what happened to scranton nothing no one had anything about what happened
to scranton and i had thought that maybe i would own a portion of it later i
never thought that i would end up in 2016 owning all of it at that time there were many family
members since nothing was ever put in writing that it dropped down to not many of them knew what we did and most of
them lived out of state and only lee and i had worked at the company i think lee had figured being in his 70s
at the time that now was not the time to buy a water treatment uh chemical blending company and reinvent the wheel
so i ended up at 38 years old in 2016 becoming the 100 owner of scranton you
know i hired an attorney and did a buyout i was not given any portion of the company i had to buy it out but
that’s how it kind of became my role from you know being bob’s granddaughter starting at the company kind of coming
into my own you know being you know in a managerial role there to all of a sudden
owning a hundred percent of the company and you know lee is still here with me but i never thought that i would end up
you know being the 100 owner and the president of the company and that happened in 2016 because it was pretty
much like you know too many cooks in the kitchen you can’t have you know 18 people
pulling it in you know a million directions you know wanting all to take dividends you know a company is not
going to last that way so i bought it to protect it to protect the employees
protect my customers to have continuity one thing that i learned from that is
get it in writing and that you better have a good exit strategy and we do we
have an exit plan we actually have two exit plans we have everything in writing what happens if alex wants to take it
what happens if alex doesn’t want to take it everything is kind of you know hashed out by this point because i never
want to go back to 2014 and 15 and have to fight for something that had been in
my family since 1919 my immediate thought was you know what this can’t end with me
and it was determined that you know this was a good idea and we should keep it going so i kinda you know signed on the
dotted line if you will and uh made sure that we did that which kind of i guess
leads me with a multi-generational company how do you transition between generations you know and what do those
differences look like and you know the nice thing is is that all of us whether you’re talking about my great
grandfather my grandfather my father or myself have our strengths and weaknesses
and you know i think that we just keep the name out there keep the relevancy
keep the continuity keep the core values of what makes us unique and has made us
stay in business for this long and you know bob and myself and lee we all have
different strengths and weaknesses which is nice because we can build on those and kind of have them work together you
know it hasn’t been an easy road ending up you know having to you know purchase a company that i never thought a that i
would have to purchase or b that i’d be the only owner of but i guess the nice thing about that is
that i can look back through over a hundred years in history and uh one of my mastermind members and i were talking
about you know you can see all the ups and downs you know you’ve got the highest highest and the lowest lows and
everything in between but the highs don’t last forever but the lows don’t either and i think that’s one thing that
i like about being a multi-generational company with such a long history is that i can look back through that and it’s
kind of like how do you learn how to move forward intelligently well there’s many ways but one of those ways is
looking back on your history being the head of a fourth generation company i’m sure there’s a lot of things
that the company did that was very successful but then everybody sees a
better way to do things they might want to put their stamp on it for lack of better
terms that’s got to be difficult for you to see okay we can do something a little
bit better i’ve got more knowledge today just with the access that i have rather than what they had you know 30
plus years ago so how do you do something like that how do you change something that’s been done a certain way
for so long with lots of in the middles of the mastermind and a lot of talking to
people but that’s one thing where i didn’t want i mean i can’t say that i won’t in the
future like i didn’t want a board of directors and if i was gonna buy the company and in essence like i said sign
on the dotted line i feel like i’m ready to lead because i feel like the decisions that i make
are best for the company now and best for the company going forward and i’m confident of that i mean we all don’t
get it right 100 of the time but i feel like you know change is necessary and a lot of the things that
for example bob and lee did might have been wonderful and great for that time but i think part of it is
knowing when things need to change and grow and move with the times and being able to be reflective about yourself and
your business and take constructive criticism and be able to take all of those tools and insights together and
make the best decision the most timely decision to continue to always no matter what i do it’s always moving forward
always moving myself forward always moving the company forward so much wisdom in this conversation and
we’ve had several people come on this show we had tom hutchison come on and talked about this very thing and
that might be an episode that people are in this they they might want to go back and listen to but jill you lived it to
so many great things that you’ve shared with us i want to shift gears just a little bit
and you guys have been in business for such a long time i want to know what is one of the weirdest things a customer
has asked you to do you know i thought about that and we get asked that all the time however it’s not
necessarily by customers it’s people that are just have found us on the internet or people that have found us i
don’t even know where you know we get requests all the time for can you make face cream can you make hair dye can you
make all of these things so i don’t know if if like to me those are pretty weird because in my mind they
don’t know this but in my mind i’m picturing like i really wouldn’t want to put something on my face that had been
mixed in the vessel next to like something with cyclohexylamine
goes to that so we get asked to mix things all the time that really don’t
they’re not in our wheelhouse like you know you don’t make industrial water treatment chemicals and face cream
not twice anyway yeah really um so i’m pretty used to it but those are
things that that we yeah they’re just not something that we do jill is there a piece of advice that you
can share with all the water treaters out there in the scaling up nation since your company’s been around for 100
years you’ve been doing this most of your life what’s something that a lot of people have trouble with that you think
you can help them out with well i thought about this trace and and i have if i could give people advice i
would give them two things the first thing that i would give them is definitely get involved i sometimes
think that when people hear like me i say or you say or awt board members or
past presidents say get involved you know it’s like okay so you’re gonna volunteer your time and all of these
things and what do you get out of it it’s just like that to me is crazy like what you get out of it is
so much more than you’re giving you know people always talk about networking and building connections and getting
education for yourself for for your business or for your career or whatever it is i think one of the things that’s
changed me and my business the most is as i’ve gotten more involved
things have just kind of like a domino effect you know being in the young professionals group which was kind of my
springboard to getting involved in more awt you know positions to
ultimately now being the the business resources chair and joining the mastermind and you know um you know
being involved in all of these things i mean the the main thing that i’ve taken away is friends you know i’ve taken away
you know friends but also networking knowledge and also just getting the name out there so definitely get involved
whatever that means to you you’ll get back 10 times more than you have to put
in you know of your time i would say the next thing would be is that you know as a supplier especially in times you know
that they’re tough such as right now you know it’s so important to have a trusted network of of suppliers you know it’s
like i go the extra mile for people you know and i know that everybody that i talk to or everybody that’s with me
you know we do the best job that we can for them and they trust us and we trust me i think it’s having a trusted network
whether it’s suppliers or whether it’s advisors or counselors or just whoever it is it’s important to have you know a
network of people that you know that if you have a question or you need something or you’re not sure how to do
something that you have a network of people around you that will give you honest feedback and be there for you
again joe great advice making sure that we’re not doing this job alone we are helping other people
and by helping other people we are getting the help that we need and you also mentioned
people are listening to us and they say oh trace was a president of this association jill is a committee chair
that’s not me how would i ever get to that well i just want to remind everybody that i was a 20 year old
person sitting nervous going to my first convention on an airplane and your
grandfather poured into me he was very kind to me and because of that that gave me a
little bit of confidence and i met some people and then people told me to get involved i started getting involved and
then that’s what led to me becoming president so don’t think that’s where you have to start because neither of us
started that way but we have gotten so much out of the fact that we both came with full cups we
wanted to fill other people’s cups and the friends that you mentioned so many
people they continuously fill ours jill now is one of my favorite times of
the interview we are going to go straight into the lightning round so i i
like you a lot so we’re going to triple all the point values are you ready
yes i’m ready here we go my first question you now have the ability to go back to your very first day
in the water treatment industry what advice would you give yourself get it in writing
you could apply that to many things if i knew now what i know then get it in
writing what are some of the books that jill reads um mostly just to mastermind books uh right
now i’m reading uh daryl amy’s revenue growth engine but beyond that trace i
think it’s raccoon on his own and spend it which is part of the dolly parton imagination library that we read
to alex every night before bed when they make a movie about jill who do you want
playing jill oh gosh probably nobody but um i i will
say that throughout my life people have told me that i resembled drew barrymore i do not see that but i guess if i had
to pick i would say her see i would say uma thurman because you
have a costume where you dressed up as poison ivy and you were spot on
thank you last question if you could talk with anybody throughout history who to be
with and why well i’ve already talked to you know i was lucky to talk to so many great water
treaters but one of my idols is dr howard gardner he wrote the book on a
theory of multiple intelligences and that’s always fascinated me and i’ve applied that to my business and personal
life well actually he’s still around so if i could talk to him i’d have to go to
harvard but i would like that jill this has been a fun interview thank you so much for coming on scaling up h2o
and i can’t wait to see you at the awt convention thank you trace
scout nation i’m hoping that i can find a picture of jill dressed up as poison
ivy i know you will agree with me that if hollywood saw her up against uma
thurman uma thurman may not have gotten that role in batman she was great in
that costume jill thank you so much for coming on the podcast i have enjoyed
getting to know you so much throughout the years we’ve got so much in common
my grandfather was my hero as well i learned so much from my grandfather and
here’s the thing i didn’t really know my grandfather of course i knew my grandfather but i didn’t get to know him until
probably 20 years before he passed away and i was so fortunate that he decided
to move closer to us and that’s where i started to learn who my grandfather was
and he was a veteran he was a leader of men he was a phd chemist
he was somebody that could just give some great advice and there’s so much that i learned from
him and unfortunately he’s not around anymore i had him for a long time he was
98 when he passed away and he was he was just great so i hope you have a
relationship like that if you do have a grandfather grandmother or somebody that
you’re not taking advantage of that relationship trust me you are never going to get that time back
and it is just amazing getting to know all the things that people did
in that generation how they appreciated things that we take for granted today
there’s just so much that you can learn so that that’s my call to action for all
of you get to know your grandparents if you have the option to get to know them a little bit better by all means take
advantage of that while you still can nation something that people have asked
me to do for a very long time and of course you’ve heard a couple of ads about it is how do i help people feel
prepared to take their certified water technologist designation exam
well when i go to technical training it does not fail somebody always comes up
to me and normally it’s a dozen people and they want me to work some of the questions on the mock cwt exam and i
love doing that and i love giving people support and helping their confidence to
let them know that they can take that exam and do very well on it what i’ve done to make it easier for you
to get help like that is i have worked each one of the questions of the mock
exam and i’ve explained on each one of those questions why a certain answer is
better than another i’ve also included a couple of resources which will allow you
to understand some of the concepts that they’re asking for a little bit better so if this sounds like something you are
interested in you can go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash cwt prep and you
can sign up for that online class you can do it at your own leisure and it’s
my hope that that gives you the confidence to get your certification i
truly believe a rising tide raises all ships that’s why i named our mastermind
group the rising tide mastermind and i truly believe that if we are serious about being in this
industry we can increase our level of knowledge we can increase
what the standard what the average is of everybody within the water treatment
community if we commit to getting the certified water technologist designation
so i hope that course helps you get a little further towards that goal when we
were talking about goal setting earlier in the episode i know many of you put down to get your cwt
is your goal i hope that this is giving you a little bit of a boost to get that
accomplished nation i love bringing this podcast to you and i will have a brand
new episode for you next friday until then have a great week
folks [Music]
nation almost two years ago i started the rising tide mastermind we have over
four groups and a waiting list for a new group folks it is wildly successful and
what i mean by that is that we are able to process issues together and get new
ideas about how we solve the issues that we all face day to day in ways that we
might not have come up with on our own folks look into the rising tide mastermind to see if it is right for you
by going to scaling up h2o.com forward slash mastermind if what you see looks interesting
schedule an appointment with me and we will see if the group is right for you and you are right for the group