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[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast for water treatise by water treaters where
we’re scaling up on water treatment knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems hi everybody I am trace
Blackmore I am so happy to be here with you today and today’s show we’re gonna talk about
the most exciting topic that you could ever imagine yes we’re talking about insurance hey is
this thing on so think about it why would we talk about insurance on scaling
up not just about water treatment and chemistry and all that stuff but what
are all the things that have to come into play for us to have a successful water treatment business and
unfortunately folks there’s liability out there and we cannot protect
ourselves from all the liability out there so that’s why we have insurance so
you might be thinking as a business owner all right this show is going to be awesome I can’t wait to listen and go to
the show notes page and get all the questions and items there and for those technicians out there you’re thinking
okay this is gonna be boring I’m not going to listen to this I wonder what’s on the radio I’m going to ask that you
give me the benefit of the doubt and you change your paradigm and as a field
force technician you will think you know if the company does well I do well if I
know more about the company and what they have to go through then I can do a
little bit better job so as we interview my time of McGowan insurance today I
want you to think in that mindset and think about how can I be a better water
treater tomorrow than I am today knowing a little bit more about my company’s
liability risk insurance is not the sexiest topic however it is something
that every business out there needs to have and I think it’s one of the things
that as as a business owner you know I know a lot about chemistry I know a lot
about how to work with people and get new business and all this various stuff but insurance
isn’t really something that I stay up-to-date on so no secret about it Mike
hi um is actually my insurance professional and I’ve been working with him for years and I’ve received several
questions on insurance through scaling up h2o calm and I can probably answer
those questions but again I am NOT an insurance professional funny story I
actually was an insurance professional at one time I think I told the story to
all of the scaling-up nation out there that my father and I were working together as I was growing up and when I
got out of college I tried to get out of the water treatment industry and I became an insurance salesperson as well
as some financial products and I could not have hated a job more I did it for a
little less than two years and it just did not click with me my dad invited me
to come back to work with him and I’ve never looked back since so I have an appreciation for insurance and by the
way I got to tell you that that was the absolute best sales training that I have been through in my entire life and I’ve
been through a lot of sales training courses so for those water treaters out
there that have come from the insurance industry I think you’ve had an incredible sales training experience and
for those of you that know somebody in that industry you might want to ask for some of their materials because they
really do a good job about that but that has nothing to do about the topic today we’re going to talk about insurance
we’re going to talk about the liability I want you to put your company cap on today and think about what are the
things that I should know and what can I do better when it comes to insurances and my
practices how I communicate with my customers so without any further ado let’s get on to our interview my lab
partner today is Mike hi um of McGowan Insurance and Mike is actually a good
friend of mine but he’s also the person that I rely on in my company to tell me
what I need to know about insurance Mike does a great job with that since I know more about water treatment
than I ever will about insurance and honestly I really don’t want to know that much about insurance Mike gives me
the information that I need when I need it and he has agreed to come on the show and let all of the scaling-up nation
know what we should be thinking about when it comes to insurance how are you
Mike I’m doing great today Tracy thanks for having me I appreciate the opportunity well absolutely and we very much
appreciate you coming on the show and I think I did a teaser show earlier somebody had actually asked me a
question about insurance and I have gotten multiple questions about insurance so I don’t want to sell the
insurance industry short when it comes to water treaters because I’ve gotten several questions on my website about it
so I thought rather than me making something up it would just make sense to have you come on and tell them actually
what was going on that makes sense I think it’s an important thing to talk about and we’d be happy to help
excellent well Mike for those listeners out there in the scaling-up nation that
do not know who you are do you mind introducing yourself to the audience sure I’d be happy to so I’ve been in the
insurance business for now almost 30 years and worked for an independent
agency brokerage here in Indianapolis Indiana McGowen Insurance Group I’ve been a part of McGowen for about the
past 15 years and through that time really have devoted my attention to some
key niche areas most importantly water treatment and to the broader level
chemical and environmental so and at this for about 30 years like I said live
and reside in Carmel Indiana with my wife we have three sons enjoy I enjoy
our lives and but most importantly enjoy being a part of a WT and the friends
that we’ve made well excellent well you brought up a WT and on this show we talk a lot about the association of Water
Technologies now your firm has decided to you know make an entire practice
around the AWT tell us a little bit about that now that started about 20 years ago prior to my even coming to
McAllen we we were fortunate enough to pick up what is now our longest term water
treatment customer here in central Indiana and from that we gain some great
experience and knowledge develop that relationship and grew that relationship into other water treatment companies
around the country yes that continued we saw an opportunity here really a calling or a need for
greater value greater education in really greater intelligence in terms of
risk management and allowing water treatment owners and operators to
control some of their own risk management so we set out to become
students of the industry we’re not engineers we’re not chemists but what we
are are good insurance and risk management people and we have the ability to take what we know and align
it with what we have learned through folks like you but with through the
association as well to craft programs that meet or exceed the needs of our
clients and it’s taken time to do that it’s taken time to develop the trust and
the confidence of members of the water treatment community we think we’ve made progress in that area AWT has been a
significant part of that we dedicated ourselves early on to becoming involved
not just to be members but become involved with that association and that
came in the way of presentations sponsorships certainly being at the
annual convention and exhibiting and this interacting in any way we can and again underscoring that with the value
that we think we bring to the Association in its membership well excellent and I know I know you’ve been
very involved in the Association and as an association member I want to thank you for that talking about insurance and
liability what is something that every water treater listening should be aware of well I
think that what water treatment personnel and owners have to be aware of is the value of the assets the
employees and their business reputation that needs to be protected we all operate today in different regulatory
environments there are challenges both on opportunities that affect our
businesses in different ways and the focus on how we perform our business and
the documentation involved the control of our people and the training of those
people and then certainly our business reputation how do our customers view us
that all comes into play when we’re talking about effective risk management
certain parts of that can be transferred certain liabilities the insurance
programs but at the end of the day it’s really up to the business owner along with hopefully good consultation from an
insurance provider to effectively manage those risks all right so let’s say I’m
now a salesperson and I am delighted because I just signed a contract with a new customer and then I go back to the
office and oh my goodness I’ve got to do all this paperwork and I probably didn’t get a contract sign maybe I now have to
go get a contract signed and they want certificates of insurance they want all this various stuff that I don’t know
what they’re asking for so what exactly is a certificate of liability and why do
we need it the certificate of liability it’s representation of the insurance
program that an employer the water treatment company has in place it doesn’t provide on its own any form of
coverage extension to the party requesting but rather is representation
really a snapshot in time of the program and the coverage that’s in place very
much oriented towards the liability areas of insurance protection but it
allows the certificate holder the customer in this case to know and
understand the level of protection that you as the water treatment company have in place in the event
certain things might go wrong property damage bodily injury any kind of a
situation for which the water treatment company may be held responsible because
of their negligence that our oversight so it’s a it’s a methodology within the
insurance industry that provides the ability and the communication link between the employer water treatment
company and its customer is there a standard for water treatment companies
to have when they’re dealing with a particular industry whether it be commercial or industrial there’s really
no set standard in place we like to talk about our clients really purchasing
insurance for a couple of different reasons number one because somebody else is told to do it and how much you have
to have and maybe a customer maybe a supplier maybe governmental entity and
that type of thing the second reason would be and probably the more appropriate reason would be the owners
or the managers own risk tolerance what they perceive through a good consultation again to be the appropriate
levels of insurance and the kind of insurance to be held in reality we do
see trends that would guide and dictate the kind and level of coverage that is
expected by customers and that more than anything helps us align the programs and
the structure of the coverage with what the needs are for the customer base all right so let’s go back to I just sold
the account the customer wants the certificate of liability and then I hear back from my office that the
requirements that the customer has do not meet the requirements of our actual insurance what do we do then well let’s
assume with that question that we have gone through a diligent analysis with
the owner and the management of the water treatment company to determine the appropriate levels of coverage to be put
in place and we acted on that and we done that and then the customer comes back and says you don’t have enough you
don’t have enough limit you don’t have enough of this kind of insurance and so forth what we would recommend at that
point is to engage with the potential customer or the active customer a
healthy dialogue in explaining the scope and the nature of the interaction is to
take place perhaps you’re only going to be on-site once a month it could be less
frequent than that time could be limited your involvement with and location
within the facility may be limited all minimizing the risk that you present to
that customer so a healthy mission can take place and allow for allow for there
to be then an outcome that would be hopefully mutually beneficial to both parties that happens probably 60 to 70
percent of the time in our experience there will be cases though when in order to earn that business we’re going to
have to be the liver on the higher limits that are being requested have you had instances where customers
water treaters have said you know it’s just not worth buying this extra insurance to get this business so we’re
going to say no to this business most certainly yeah I think that there’s definitely been situations when the
revenue when compared to the cost of the additional coverage being requested this
doesn’t make as a sense it really doesn’t and I think when openly communicated though that analysis to the
customer again our experience would say that the majority of the time the customer understands that and to the
best of their ability would be willing to find the compromise well Mike I had a
customer one time that wanted a certain box checked and I was like oh yeah well we can probably check that box and then
I checked with you and you’re like what you sure we can get that box checked on the certificate of insurance but it’s going to be about an extra ten thousand
dollars a month so I think we negotiated that out so I learned that those boxes getting checked are pretty expensive
yeah there’s a lot of a lot of development and a lot of features today they’re to be being actively requested that to some
degree we’ve not seen in the past and and it really comes from legal counsel
mainly of the customers making recommendations about proper risk transfer so it’s quite common today that
features like primary gun non-contributory additional insured wording for sure 30-day notice of
written cancellation and per project aggregate requirements are not out of
the ordinary in certain cases that requires the carrier to alter the policy
and/or the policy and costs can come about an analysis also of the kind of
extensions of coverage that are being affected by checking those boxes needs to be done but for the most part those
are regularly required items and can be accomplished without too much difficulty
well excellent well we’ve got water treatment company owners listing and we’ve got people that are out working in
the field so let’s address both of them first let’s start with I’m a water treatment company owner what should I be
aware of and super careful with when it comes to this topic that’s a good question I really think of it in three
different key areas first being it’s really about your people it’s really
about the human behavior that we all deal with with a group of employees because we’re hoping that we’ve trained
them you’ve educated them and we’ve prepared them to a level that we feel
comfortable and confident that they’re gonna go out and carry out our mission and our culture deliver the service and
product to our customers is necessary so really understanding as an owner the
makeup of your of your employee force the communication the documentation
expectations their actions in the field their decision-making their instinct and
so forth when do they stop what they’re doing when do they call back for assistance
and guidance all of that becomes critical to know and understand and so
managing the personnel within our op is critically important and we’ve seen
that play out in very positive situations and unfortunately we’ve seen that play out in rather negative
situations as well the second thing that we think about would be all of the
agreements and the contracts represented pretty much every day and I think it’s
easy for business owners to become too accustomed to what those agreements
might contain and just simply sign on the dotted line in order to get the
business then only to find out that they may be taken on more risk and more liability than what they first bought
and perhaps me even more cost so I would caution owners who take time to read
through those documents share them with your insurance professional to review
and analyze and provide feedback on the indemnification clauses and the certainly the insurance clauses within
the contracts and then the third area really is the overall commitment to
safety it really happens at the top of an organization and it’s the development
of the culture that will define how your people behave and we talked about it
before the behavior in the field behavior with your customers and the kind of communications that are going on
if all of that begins certainly with the top people within the organization’s as
it developed and refined the culture all right so now as a water treatment technician same question what should I
be aware of that’s also very good question I think technicians really need
to be self aware today and that means being honest with yourself to know what
your capabilities are know what your limitations may be and the possibility
that you’re going to encounter unforeseen situations while you’re alone in the field and you need to know how to
handle that how to communicate challenges with your customer contact
how to document properly and really what to say and maybe what not to say
in the field and it’s really the management of yourself and your own
abilities and capabilities while you’re interacting with your customer your actions really not only impact you but
they impact the entire company so if technicians have that perspective
when they’re on the job in the field engaging with their customers that
they’re not only acting on their own behalf but they’re really acting on the behalf of the employer that really
should guide and dictate you know how they carry out their business so Mike in
the instances were those items weren’t carried out if obviously if they were things would have gone better in what
you alluded to but should all of that training and the practices should they be documented in some sort of policy
book yeah the training and the ramp up to preparing a technician to be on his own
in the field certainly needs to be documented in standard policies and procedures that are adopted and accepted
by the employer you know there’s a lot of good training out there again back to
a WT recommend more the CWT curriculum
and the other training opportunities that exist within an association but
that has to be supplemented as well by in every water treatment company out
there because each and every water treatment company is operating in a different region of the country they’re operating in different
environments regulatory regulatory wise and they need to develop that own internal culture to a level where
there’s really more of a team approach than necessarily an individualistic
approach so after somebody was originally on boarded and trained in the
beginning we should have regular safety meetings or regular meetings just to
make sure everybody’s up on all the information they need to do we need to document those and make sure people sign
in – – that all of that is very helpful and but reality would dictate that
there’s a lot of side conversations there’s a lot of impromptu meetings that occur that are very important and serve
a purpose but I would also recommend that there’s a more formal approach to
training and communication and meetings going on within each and every water treatment company for those those kinds
of meetings definitely should be documented minutes taken so that not only can we show that those meetings
took place but we can refer back to them technicians and otherwise to pick up and
from important information that might have been shared so in other words if we don’t have it documented we can’t prove
that it ever happened that would be correct all right well you mentioned AWT and CWT are there any benefits for being
a member of a AWT or having your certified water technologist designation when it comes to insurance yeah we think
that there’s an awful lot of benefit that goes along with the curriculums standing the personnel that AWT is
brought in to provide that training has been excellent so we’ve seen real
benefit out of those that we interact with have happened to be so disabilities there’s certainly reasons within our own
career development and enhancement of our opportunities to pick up education
like that specifically within the insurance market though our underwriters that we work with are very knowledgeable
and very educated themselves about the industry associations and designations that we have relationships with and
they’re not taken lightly so we actively talk about with our underwriting community the kind of
training that is being undertaken and what a CW team really means and stands
for and what it does for the individual not to mention the employer overall when
we communicate that with the underwriters they take note of that and they incorporate that into their program
structure and certainly into the pricing of their programs so I would tell you that it’s
it’s a great value to be able to be to go to our underwriter and say we have
half of the company so it actually pays
to become a CWT literally because insurance can be cheaper it can be
cheaper it can affect our long-term insurability and it can really affect the the outcome I think of how different
situations are handled in the field and when we boil that down that means the
difference between having a claim and not having a claim are we able to
negotiate and talk through and walk through certain situations with our customers because of our education and
because because of our knowledge or do we not know how to handle that and we’re
just going to turn it over to the insurance company to pay the claim all right well let’s let’s reach deep down
into your vaults of items that did not work out well so what do you wish
everybody listing knew that would have made that situation go much better for
whatever company it was yeah I would say just in general at the beginning of that
I really wish everybody knew the kind of opportunity to have with your insurance
provider you’re truly your risk manager to receive the kind of guidance and
consultation that’s available we think that there’s an awful lot of value in
that package and it’s not just insurance related but it’s really all of the
things that we’ve touched on and talked about already that serves as an opportunity to improve business
specifically we have had certain situations where our water treatment
clients have unfortunately kind of looked the other way and maybe fallen
back to the insurance is that safety net and that backstop which certainly it is
and that’s why we ensure and that’s why insurance is necessary but again we
would hope that there is an active dialogue and work effort to mitigate the potential
for our claims or problems before they rise to the occasion of a full-blown
insurance claim well Michael what are the different types of insurances out
there that we should be aware of well first and foremost I would turn to the
liabilities area of our program our core program would contain three essential
parts general liability pollution liability and professional liability
each of those serving a different purpose and need but each of those most
often aligned under one policy with one carrier to take the opportunity for any
gaps and gray areas out of the occasion that’s essential and that’s central to
what our program is designed around to that then we have the ability to add
really any other area of insurance product that might be necessary so certainly workers compensation for your
employees automobile no matter how many owned or not owned vehicles may be involved excess liability or umbrella
liability is another area we then get into the management liability area which
is becoming more and more of a common discussion point and this would be employment practices liability that
relationship between the employer and the employee such things as
discrimination harassment wrongful termination all of that can be insured
for fiduciary liability speaks to the sponsored plans of an employer such as a
401k and then finally a very active area of conversation would be cyber liability
and that takes on many different phases today because the bad guys are out there
and they figured out a lot of different ways to extract information or to infiltrate systems and networks and to
otherwise caused and create as much havoc possible so we stayed a lot of that
activity we see that being probably one of the more active areas of insurance purchase today so cyber liability
affects not only water treatment companies obviously but a wide variety of different industry types throughout
the country well Mike maybe you can confirm this but I think I remember reading a story about the target
incident with the credit cards and they actually found a way through their firewall through the HVAC company is
that am I saying that correctly that is correct their infiltration was as a result of Ashley a refrigeration
contractor that target had hired that was allowed to have access to target
systems so the systems were speaking to each other there was an infiltrator of the network
of the refrigeration contractor which then allowed for an open door access right into target with what we know
today the damage that was done so we have all these policies in place and
that’s no small feat so we have that done how often should we be looking at them and making sure they’re the right
limits we’re paying the right amount of premium all of that stuff well we would
tell you and this is probably not realistic but we would tell you continually really though looking hard
at insurance policies and talking about the particular coverage and the program
design and structure should be done no less than a couple times a year and
really initiated by your insurance provider so taking a time out of your
business day just to regroup and review and take a look at what we have in place
and the need for any kind of modifications or adjustments in actuality the home we’d also recommend a
more continual dialogue and that doesn’t have to be about the insurance policy
itself but we are fielding phone calls and questions and communication from our
clients every single day about a variety of different topics and sometimes there
are very particular questions related to the insurance coverage that we have in place
more often than not there are general business questions and their general risk management questions how should I
deal with this employee have any resources how should I deal with this customer challenge and I have you have
any information or insight into that so that’s really the kind of relationship
the kind of communication and dialogue that we hope for we really try and
create with all of our clients because when we have that ability to truly serve
and act in the capacity of a business resource then we think that we’re truly
bringing value to that business so let’s say we’ve done this due diligence we’ve
gotten several quotes out and they’re they’re like insurances but they’re different costs and different coverages
within those how do you compare one to another well you have to be making sure
that you’re dealing with a provider that knows and understands the water treatment business that would be first
and foremost we think that the water treatment industry is a very niche area
of business today there’s a high degree of technical need in education and
training that has to go on but there’s equally a need for relationship building
a need for the ability to interact with others and develop the kinds of working
relationships with customers and suppliers that’s an essential for operating their business likewise the
agent in this case should really know and understand the water treatment business and some of the pitfalls some
of the opportunities and some of the challenges both in a micro level and a
macro level that exists for the industry once that decision has been made
then there’s an analysis of coverage cost limit structure but really the
devil is in the details in this in this area because we believe an affirmative
coverage grant we should be able to point to and see the specific language
within the policies they’re going to provide and effect the necessary and critical components of our
business if not then interpretation is left to the open and in the event of a
claim what we don’t want to have is adjuster interpretation being made at
that point want there to be definitive language to guide and direct how the claim is to be processed and handled and
finally certainly we would recommend evaluating the capacity of the provider
again and this is not only the agent but the carrier as well what kind of resources they have what kinds of
training aids can they provide that will continue to kind of develop and enhance
the business so is it better to keep everything with one company under their
umbrella or maybe pick and choose a couple for three or four different companies well the reality would be that
today the involvement of a variety of companies and not – meaning Oh too many
but three to four carriers would not be unrealistic in today’s environment the
reason for that is because certain carriers excel at certain things and
they have no problem with partnering with other carriers to accomplish the
end result likewise though we would recommend that all of that coverage be
managed by one agent if at all possible understanding that there are
relationships that come into play their loyalty history and so forth which is perfectly fine but selfishly if we’re
able to manage as McGowan a lot of treatment company’s entire portfolio of
risk and insurance coverage it positions us to be able to consult that owner and
he’s in his or her employees in a more practical and functional way part of
that program is missing with another agent we’re only really left to guess
what that might be so how would somebody know if they have
the right or wrong insurance coverage well we think that that comes in the
area of really understanding and analyzing your own business first we talk about don’t position your business
to accommodate insurance rather the opposite of that you position your
business in the best way possible so that you can grow and sustain and add to
your customers and add to the revenue and that to your employee base and then we’ll wrap insurance programs around
that specifically we would recommend looking at your operational risk looking
at your contractual risk we talked before about analyzing the agreements
and the contracts that we’re engaging in and then finally the administrative risk how do you work with your employees how
do you manage internal processes within a company and all of that should
culminate then really in determining what coverages are appropriate and necessary and what coverages might we
want to consider down the road a little bit and as a offshoot of that we seek to
develop strategies with our clients as well so it may be from a cost standpoint
or a risk tolerance standpoint today not every single insurance coverage is
desired or even perhaps even needed but we’ll build a three to five or even
seven years strategy with our clients so that we can prepare them to grow into
this additional protection as their company continues well you mentioned earlier that one of the best forms of
liability protection is to have best practices in your company so I know
you’ve worked with a lot of AWT companies and there’s some out there that maybe have not started this
endeavor yet so if somebody was going to get started today what’s the first thing
they should do to start getting those good practices down well I think that there’s probably a number of resources
that they can reach out to begin to lay the groundwork for that I think approaching that and a realistic
format it’s probably a good recommendation because it’s a big bite to chew off if a particular business has
not even started working towards that but if they have then certainly the AWT
association that we’ve talked about a bit here would be a fantastic resource within AWT there are some smaller groups
of like kind quality water treatment companies that have joined forces in an
informal way to share experiences to share information and to have open
dialogue about how to create best practices and how to move their businesses continually along that
spectrum I’m not certain that it is that there is an end game with that I think
it truly is a case of building continually upon the base that you’ve
created and it’s a spectrum that will always need to be more debt and achieved
and then finally the other resource selfishly would be your insurance agent
again assuming you have a confidence level providing working with and that
person has the resources and information that can be helpful that would definitely be a place to tap into one
thing is clear if you are just simply sending premium payments to your agent
you’re not getting out of that person the professionalism that you deserve as
a business owner as a water treaty I would echo that all day long trace I think that we’re falling short you know
we haven’t an insurance community put those types of resources and that value
in the hands of the ownership of the water treatment companies just simply paying the premium is simply buying the
policy and putting it on your shelf when it arrives in your office is doing
really nobody any what we can offer beyond that is the kind of partnership and the kind of
relationship that we want to develop year after year after year again to the
point where we are certainly viewed as a business resource that brings definite
value to growing a company well we definitely covered a lot of ground today and you have definitely been a great
resource for me working with my company and and really allowing me to not have
to worry so much about knowing every single thing about insurances that are out there because you bring that
information to me so if somebody did want to learn more about insurance and liability risk and items like that where
would you recommend they go well I’d recommend that they give us a call quite frankly and and I say that not
from the sales standpoint really from a consultation standpoint we’re invested
in this industry we’re not going anywhere we have a long history now developed that we’re very proud of and
we want that to continue to evolve and develop as the industry continues to
evolve and develop and we think that the only real way to do that is to be that
trusted advisor for not only clients but for prospective clients or maybe even
for businesses that may never be a client of McGowan Insurance Group we feel we’ve got a duty and we’re
dedicated to that duty to provide any and all information possible so folks
can feel free to contact me specifically to have that kind of conversation and to
feel comfortable that it’s not going to turn into a sales pitch Mike here on scaling up I’ve made the reference to
Kennedy speech where he says a rising tide lifts all boats and that’s pretty
much what I think you’re saying that even if somebody doesn’t do business with you if they get the right information they’re doing the right
things the industry is doing better and that’s going to make sure that everybody that you ensure is actually having
better rates and better premiums and the underwriters are looking favorably at us is that pretty much what you’re saying it really is and that’s a great way to
put it you know we certainly feel what we give how we will get back tenfold and that really comes
to us in terms of the success of the clients they’re working with but really
the success of this industry and the Association overall is critically important to us so although it’s a
competitive environment it’s a business environment and we need to keep that in mind open sharing assistance that we can
provide each other it’s quite critical well I will be sure to put your contact information on my show notes page and
the last question I have is the lightning round question if you’re ready for that oh yeah all right so if you
could talk to anybody throughout history who would it be and why I don’t want it to sound corny but I would have to say
my dad my dad represented somebody that was full of integrity and character he
was a phenomenal sounding board for me as I grew up unfortunately I lost him
about 15 years ago but previous for that and during the time that we had
opportunity to be together it was a great deal of comfort and he really
instilled in me what I hope we are delivering I hope I’m delivering to the
clients that we have today and that’s doing business with a high degree of character making sure that we put the
interests of clients ahead of anybody else than anything else and do that
consistently I think we achieved that we always could probably do better at that and will continue to do better at that
but I have him to thank for that and certainly wish he was here to see
this today but that would be the person I would just like to well my I really appreciate you coming on today and
letting people know a few things about insurance cleaning not the sexiest topic
out there in water treatment but it’s something that if we didn’t have definitely we probably wouldn’t have a
company to enjoy practicing water treatment so I want to thank you for coming on scaling up and talking with us well thank you for having me it’s been a
pleasure and I appreciate the opportunity well I want to share a secret with you when I receive several
emails asking me from listeners to talk about insurance kind of thing I was a little
bit nervous with that but I thought about it and I thought about the relationship that I had with my Khayyam
and I also knew that he was not going to come on the show and try to sell insurance he was going to teach about
what we needed to know about insurance and I think he did a great job for that
so let’s get into pinks and blues so I picked three questions out of the
scaling-up mailbag and I see the first one here is can I get continuing
education points from my CWT you know that’s my number one question and I don’t know if I mentioned that on the
show er before or not and the answer is no however we’re working on it is really
the right answer so I did based on your interest in getting continuing education
points and by the way let me back up for those of you that don’t know the certified water technologist designation
is the highest designation that anybody in the water treatment industry can achieve and once they achieve that they
have to do so many continuing education units in order to keep that
certification current so everybody’s listening to scale it up and thank you
for that my audience keeps getting bigger and bigger and I really appreciate that promise I’m not going to take that for
granted I’m going to keep giving you the information that you’re asking for but what this person is asking for is
they’re saying I’m listening to this show I’m getting great information about it I feel that I am a better water
trader tomorrow based on some of the things I’m trying from the show then I was today so can this count as CEUs
continuing education units and again the answer is not yet I did speak with the
certification committee and the issue is they really don’t know how to track it
so how can they prove that the listener actually listened to it I will say that
this is a newer format the podcast format so the certification committee may not be totally familiar with
so I’m gonna ask you to help me help you with this question
and maybe the scaling-up audience can come up with a way that the certification committee for the CWT
feels comfortable with issuing these points for the scaling-up nation that RC
WTS listening to this podcast so if you have any ideas for that let me know if
you want to write me back on scaling up h2o comm and let me know what that is by all means if you know somebody on the
certification committee got some ideas let them know as well I’d like for them to know that this is a popular show and
you guys are indeed listening to it and moreover you’re getting items from it to
become a better water treater tomorrow than you were today all right so on the next question it says on an earlier show
you mentioned resin cleaning I believe that was the show idea with Bruce Catterick and the intro to that I spoke
on water softeners and did a very brief operational and then I went into some
brief troubleshooting so resin cleaning how do you do that is what the question
says well there’s not really a simple
answer to that but I guess nothing is in water treatment so probably the simplest way to do that is to use some sort of
resin cleaning product and hopefully you have that in your product line and what
you would do is actually put that into the brine tank so you have so much of that going into every brining cycle and
that will help clean up the resin and to back up even more what I’m talking about
here is iron fouling and if I remember that episode I was talking about the
valence and that sodium has a plus one charge calcium magnesium has a plus two
charge and the way we get the calcium magnesium off of the resin with a plus
one charge as we put so much sodium in there that the the resin says hey
there’s so much sodium out there I want to get rid of this calcium magnesium because we faked it out with the
concentration and thinks it kind of has a higher charge than one and that’s how we get the sodium back on the resin by
if we have iron on there that has a plus three charge and sodium is not gonna go
in there and remove the the iron that’s that’s in that resin hole so how do we
do that we put the resin cleaner in there and that resin cleaner should help promote getting some of that iron out I
don’t think it’s gonna get all of it but it will help with some and my advice is is don’t wait for the resin to become
fouled you can actually start using that cleaner to keep resin cleaner longer and
that’s probably the best advice that I have and that’s something that I’ve learned by the time the resin sort of gets spent and iron fouled it’s really
too late once that happens you got to do an offline cleaning where you put a
whole bunch of cleaner in there and then you’ve got a educate everything so basically what you do you take a PVC
wand and you hook it up to a compressor and you bubble through a very long
tedious boring paint drawing watching boring process if you get my drift
so if he can’t get it to if you don’t get it to that point it’s probably more entertaining than watching the wall for
those things take like 12 hours or so so you can you can manually clean the resin
using that air Lance that I just described in a whole bunch of product or you can put a little bit of resin
cleaner in as an ongoing basis or or and or you can send the resin sample off to
be analyzed I’ve got to be honest I’ve sent a bunch of resin samples in over my
career and I really don’t remember that many coming back saying that their recommendation was something other than
replace the resin so you you may or may not want to skip that step and sometimes
you just got to replace the resin it’s just easier definitely a lot quicker than cleaning it depending on how large
the unit is but it might just be easier just to do the volume calculation figure
out how much resin you need and take the old resin out put the new resin in so thank you for that question and the last
question I’m going to answer it says you hear a lot about people job
hopping these days especially Millennials do you have any statistics that talk specifically about how long
people stay in the water treatment industry well I want to say I don’t have specific statistics that I have taken
myself but I’ve heard Collin frame talk on this topic and he has said throughout his career he is found and Colin Crane
is a consultant and a contributor to AWT and he has been in water treatment for a
while and he’s a smart guy so we’re gonna we’re gonna trust him with this so he has said that he’s found that if
somebody gets into water treatment and they stay for two years they’re kind of
hooked they’re there for life but if they don’t reach that two-year mark they’re more apt to switch jobs and do
something else and and I’m really thinking about it logically that makes a lot of sense because think about when
you were brand new in the water treatment industry and maybe you had a job where you understood all the
equipment and all the chemistry and all the various things that you have to know as a water trader and keep in mind it’s
not just your test kit you got to be you know you got to know how to test you got to be you got to know what’s in your
products you gotta know what’s in the water you gotta know a little bit about electricity you Nautica gotta have to know a little bit about plumbing and the
list goes on so for somebody brand-new that’s coming into this industry it’s
overwhelming for some but over months and then especially over years we’re not
learning everything new all at once the things that we’re learning we’re now able to apply to the new things we’re
learning because now we have good foundational knowledge that we can build
on so my advice is and this is a little bit above what the question is but for
those new people out there keep doing what you’re doing and this job is not
gonna come easy this job is very hard but there is a reward if you stay in this job so the harder you try to learn
and be the best water trader you can make sure you’re better tomorrow than you are today the more you are going to
a priest being here and I think that’s what speaks to what Collin has found out that
it takes about two years for people to really appreciate what they learned and
how to do the job and then they feel that this is a career that they really want to do they understand because
they’re familiar with the industry so for what it’s worth it seems like the
answer to that question is about two years and then people are hooked you can’t get them out and so hopefully I
answered that question correctly I do want to thank everybody out there the reason I have questions is because you
all are giving them to me otherwise this would be a lot shorter of a show so
thank you very much for that some action items out there please if you haven’t told someone about scaling up let what
of your other water treatment partners know that there is a show out there called scaling up and it’s for all of us
and by all means if you have not subscribed to scaling up whether you’re
using iTunes or stitcher if you would go ahead and hit that subscribe button that will make things a lot easier on you so
you don’t have to go to the website you don’t have to go looking for the show every time I doubt I guess that would be
an upload that I upload a new show so you can download it it’ll just simply go
to your device automatically so and I wouldn’t even be talking about this if I did not have so many great scaling up
listeners out there so again I want to thank you for that and I want to encourage you as I’ve said 15 times
already in this episode alone to please think about what you’re doing and how are you going to become a better to
water treater tomorrow then you were too have a great week folks [Music]
you [Music]