The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
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welcome to the scaling up h2o podcast the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our
systems i’m trace blackmore the host of the scaling up h2o podcast and nation
happy birthday to me today is my 47th birthday i have seen this world go
around the sun 47 times lucky me i’ve seen so many things in my
47 years if i was more creative i would have come up with the top 47 things that
i’ve experienced in my lifetime but folks i’m just not that creative and unfortunately i don’t have that for you
but i will tell you that i have enjoyed every single moment of my life
and part of that life is definitely water treatment i was introduced into water treatment when i was very young i
didn’t understand what water treatment was until i got older and then i definitely didn’t understand what a
great opportunity water treatment is until i got even older
than that today i have so many gifts in life because
i found water treatment i didn’t find it my father introduced it to me but i made
sure that when it got hard i stayed the course and i stayed in
industrial water treatment and i’m sure glad that i did there’s so many people that i’ve met there’s so many
experiences that i’ve had there’s so many great wonderful people that i work
with and the list goes on and on it’s my wish for all of you here’s my
birthday wish that you all love the industry that you are in that you love
your job you love your career as much as i do
and every single day you don’t have to work you go in and you do something that
you love if you are not feeling that way i want you to ask yourself is there something
you can do to get to feel that way and take it from me every day was not
kittens puppies and rainbows there are definitely some hard things that i’ve had to deal with but by and large i
truly love having the job of an industrial water treater if you do not
see yourself feeling the same way i promise there’s something out there that will make you feel that way i hope
that you have the freedom to go out and find that speaking of things to find here are some
things that are going on that might interest you on may 12th awt is having
their crime control and best practices webinar we’re going to have a link to that on our show notes page so you can
register and see that webinar and for you awt members out there they record those webinars so you can
watch them at your leisure if there are several people out there that haven’t
seen some of the webinars and i haven’t seen them all there’s a bunch of them out there there’s an entire library that
you can go through and there might be something out there that gives you some
more information on something that you want to know so by all means check that out
something else you might want to know about is the water environment federation is having their residuals and
biosolids conference may 24th through 27th in columbus ohio check out our show
notes page for more information on that and also coming up the american water works association is having their ace
conference in san antonio texas june 12th through 15th all of that information will be on
our show notes page and nation i hope you have already signed up for this next one that i’m going to tell you about and
i’m so excited about this because i participated in this last year i’m talking about team world vision global
6k it’s happening saturday may 21st you do not have to go anywhere to do this
you can walk you can run you can do whatever you want to do
but you need to sign up and by signing up you will allow clean water to come to
parts of the world that does not have readily available clean water and you
get to tell the story while you’re doing this 6k so many people asked us why we
were wearing a race bib with somebody’s picture on it why the shirts were orange
so everybody could see them why was it a 6k and not a 5k and by the way the average distance somebody that does not
have clean drinking water readily available to them has to walk is six
kilometers there and back you are representing how far they have
to walk to get to a drinking source and i said clean water i’ve seen some
pictures where these people have to get their water from it is everything but clean and a lot of the problems that
they have health-wise come from these contaminated water sources we can help this and we can actually
have fun with each other doing it you can sign up by going to scaling up
h2o.com forward slash 6k and you can join team scaling up we
would love to have you or you can create your own team with your own company and
it’s such a great way for you to bond with your team while doing such a worthy
cause and you can find out more by going to scaling up h2o.com forward slash 6k
scouter nation today i am going to introduce you to one of my best friends
in the water treatment industry i hope you enjoyed this interview
my lab partner today is bob lee of r2j bob how are you doing
trace i’m doing fantastic good to be with you it is good to be with you i’ve
got so many bob lee stories some appropriate for the podcast most not
but i have got such a memory full of things that we are going to hash out on
today’s podcast i may be concerned we probably should have gone over that in your contract i’m thinking
ah yes i think we’re you’re right i should have an attorney look at that more closely
your fault but here we are we’re going to do it bob do you mind introducing yourself to the scaling up nation
well i’ll keep it brief my stepfather and i founded rtj in 1982
and i was fresh out of college i had i wasn’t even out of college yet but he had taken an
early retirement from uh oil and water services so we formed r2j and i started working
about 1992 he retired and i became president of r2j
at the same time i discovered awt got to involve with awt because i needed as a
small company i needed help knowing what i didn’t know 1995 got my cwt i got involved with the
technical committee what happened and i started meeting people at awt and eventually somebody convinced me jay
farmer to run for the board which i remember him saying i said i don’t have time to do that he said don’t
worry you won’t win anyway and i did that’s what you want to hear ah i did and i ended up serving i think about
eight years on the board became president and had a great experience with that and uh we just continued to
to grow and now we’ve made it through a terrible recession and pandemic and we
continue to grow and employ folks down here well bob you mentioned the association
of water technologies and that’s where you and i got to know each other and we really started to appreciate each other
when we both served on the board together and you were president the year before i became president and i don’t
know if i’ve ever shared this with you but i learned so much watching you lead
you have an exact opposite style to myself where
you can process things internally i don’t have that ability i have to say everything out loud and a lot of times i
get myself in trouble but during your presidency we were dealing with issues
with the certified water technologies exam and there were some issues with that and we wanted to make sure that that always
stayed above board we ended up taking the cwt so you could not take that test while we
were working out some issues with it and the issue was resolved and we were rebuilding
another test and i remember i was getting excited over all these issues
and and you were very even keel and you allowed me to know that i was being
heard and i could ramp myself down a little bit turn the knob down a little
bit and you were just so good at giving everybody what they needed on the board
it was so helpful as me being president-elect that year and learning so much from you i don’t know if i ever
told you that i just wanted to thank you for such a great example of leadership
well thank you i hope all my employees are listening to this conversation well
they should everybody everyone should listen to scaling up h2o and you
know while i’m thanking you there’s there’s something else that i don’t think i’ve ever told you and it was
something that happened at my very first awt convention so i was 20 something
years old i decided that i was too insubordinate to work for anybody so i had to start my own company and i got
the advice from somebody if you’re going to be in the water treatment industry you have to join the association of
water technologies i didn’t know any better so okay i wrote a check probably couldn’t afford it at that time but i
did it and then they said and if you’re going to be a member you have to go to the annual convention you have to
there’s no choice if you’re a water treatment company you got to go there because everybody that you’re ever going
to buy any products from they’re going to be there and you’re going to meet so many people that are going to help you
with your business didn’t know any better i went there well i got there and
everybody knew everybody else except for me and i remember
that i would go to the minglers that they had and i would start talking with
somebody and somebody would talk to me until somebody better in my words came
along and they’d say oh excuse me i got to go talk to jack and then i’d talk with somebody else and
the same thing would happen well then you actually came over and you spoke with me
and you asked me about my company you asked me about how long i was in business and you started asking
questions and you and i had a dialogue and then somebody walked by and you turned your head and i was
waiting for you to leave saying oh i’ve got to go talk to sam you didn’t do that you said oh i’m going to go talk to sam
let me come with me i want to introduce you and i now became part of that conversation and you introduced me to so
many people during that first meeting people that i didn’t have the courage to walk up to at that point in my life and
say hey i’m trace i just started a water treatment company i want to know more about the association
and then later that night you saw me standing alone again and you offered to
buy me a drink and then at the bar you again introduced me to people all around you
i don’t know if because of what you did i became president later of that organization
but i honestly don’t know if i would have gone to another convention had you not done what you did so thank you for
for giving me that for that act of kindness it really did shape everything that happened after that
wow well thank you it’s gonna say great guy syndrome that’s me you know but i think probably
my first three or four conventions i went to i knew nobody and stood around
didn’t know anybody just so out of place and you’ve had uncle john on before but
he was the only guy who knew john’s brita so anytime i saw him i ran over to john and i know he got sick and tired of
that best part of going to the convention being part of the awt is the people that
you end up getting to know and that’s what makes it so valuable right and you experience this i’m sure now it’s hard
to walk through the trade show and actually see anything because you’re constantly stopping and talking with people that you haven’t seen for a year
which is awesome but yeah we’ve come a long way from the first conventions we went to
and i know there’s people out there listening that are experiencing the same thing and the advice that i would have
for all of you is is one you’ve got to put yourself out there if you’re not introducing yourself to other people
it’s difficult to break the ice and you’ve got to be the one to to break the ice for all the other people that
they’re getting introduced to i would encourage you to lean into that person just like bob did with me
bob i don’t know how many years we’ve known each other it’s got to be over 20. and i can’t come up with all the things
that i’ve called you about that you’ve helped me with the the things that we’ve gotten each other through because of
that initial conversation and it all starts with that initial conversation so
the first conversation is hard it is difficult when you don’t know people but that will soon end if you try to get
to know people and and because of what you did for me and you might have heard me ask people this that i meet new at
the convention i will say who’s somebody i might know that you want to meet that i can
introduce you to and i’ve connected so many people with that phrase and a couple of them have
actually written back to me on an email or given me a text or a phone call and said thank you for doing that i was able
to do this because this person was had the right answer for me or they introduced me to somebody with the right
answer so all is to say why treatment’s a lonely profession especially when
you’re the owner of that company but even if you work in it we know that we can become an island there is absolutely
no reason for us to be islands you and i are members of the rising tide mastermind we help each
other all the time by getting people further along an issue
that they’re just starting that we’ve already suffered through life’s too short to do it alone right
you know while we’re on the topic another way to get introduced to people is to if
you’re fortunate enough to get to a convention but you don’t even have to do that you can serve on a committee right
and that’s a great way to meet 10 12 20 people what the hell or maybe on committee so there are other ways to get
to know folks bob i think you have been elected you don’t know this but you have been
elected out of all the water treaters you are probably the kindest and the
person that just everybody likes nobody doesn’t like bob lee and i used to tease
you about happy gilmore and on that of course everybody loved bob barker everybody loves bob barker
but on happy gilmore the movie happy gilmore hated bob barker and it was so weird that you know he hated bob
barker so i think you’re the bob barker of water treatment really well let’s get to the bottom of
this why is that i think you’re very disarming i think
people can come up and have conversations you lean into those conversations you ask questions about
those conversations i don’t know i just uh everybody i talked to asked me why haven’t you had
bob lee on the podcast before and that’s because you’re the bob barker of water treatment
well yeah now i’m getting a big head that’s really nice to know i mean it’s pretty easy
and i don’t know if this is a smart thing to say but i never feel like i’m the smartest guy in the room everybody
is always i’m always more interested in what what they’ve got to say i think than what i think they want me to say
so um but it’s nice to know that’s nice to know i didn’t know that in the mastermind especially on the
board you would not always be the first person to talk you would always listen to other
people i had no problems being the first person to talk or talking over people that’s one of one of the things i’ve got
to work on when you were leading you did a great job with that but i always remember when it finally came your turn to speak
the way you spoke you would validate what everybody said and what you would say about the
particular issue was always a turning point it was always very profound
and it was normally a a different viewpoint that wasn’t opposing what
other people say but acknowledging that and you just brought so much calm
in a board that had a bunch of people like me into it well again when you have a lot of smart
people you need to listen well i didn’t say smart i said loud well now they were smart and loud some
of them were loud some were both you’re right yeah when you have smart people around you you should listen a lot more
than you talk and typically i’m trying to clarify make sure that i understand what
it is we’re talking about and sometimes it’s just because i’m trying to understand what the heck you guys are talking about
but building consensus is what you’re doing as a leader trying to make sure that you’ve listened to all the different viewpoints and then come to a
conclusion of what is the best direction to go the best path to take
you’re far too humble a lot of things that we do in the mastermind i share here on the scaling up h2o podcast and
something that we did was the temperament study and we learned
that we all have different temperaments and i’ve had kathleen edelman on this show twice so if you haven’t heard that
i always encourage people to go back and listen to those shows every time i talk with kathleen i learned something new
but we learned that there were different temperaments and what i just described for myself i come from a red temperament
and i speak the language of power and control and bob i think yours was the green
temperament was that right yeah i’m heavy green heavy blue actually and green speaks the language of calm
and harmony and that’s what you always brought into that situation
well who doesn’t like harmony that’s right who doesn’t like it in harmony yeah i’m not a big fan of confrontation
so yeah the blue green personality is certainly i’m all over that
bob let’s go back to something that you said in your introduction you said that you have been a water treater for nearly
40 years i’m curious what’s that like 40 years what are some of the things that you’ve
seen what are some of the do-overs that you wish you could take tell us a little bit about that 40 years
do-overs yeah there’s a few do-overs first off i can’t believe it’s 40 years
have gone by that’s unbelievable because i view everything in in lifetimes 18 years because i was like
the first 18 years was high school and you’re getting ready to go to college and then the next 18 years
you’re 36 and that goes by in a heartbeat you’ve got kids and usually we’ve been married and now i’m on my
no i’m past my third 18 years right that’d be 54. so now i’m in my fourth 18-year set it’s ridiculous but i did
have some do-overs i was thinking about this the other day it comes up all the time when i send guys out to do chemical cleanings but one of my big do-overs was
uh early on in the early mid 80s probably he’s doing a descaling job on a
condenser at a high rise it’s friday and it’s four or five o’clock in the
afternoon as always and uh for some reason you know i hooked up my hoses to the inlet and outlet on
one side of the condenser and the other side there was a vent vent valve and i for some reason left
that open and this was a heavily scaled system and i started pumping
acid through that thing and it reacted like acid does on scale and uh of course the vent valve was
aimed right at the main electrical panel for the building by the time i realized what was going on
and got over to the valve water was water gas acid foam was spewing onto that panel and flames were coming out oh
my goodness and then it then everything just went dark so i friday night i shut down the power
to a condominium fire department’s common it was a mess wow what a story i would
like to do that over again and shut that damn valve well bob i think you’ve inspired
everybody because as bad a day as somebody’s having i guarantee it wasn’t that yeah that was a bad night
what did you do i think i snuck out of there maybe they won’t notice no i hung around
got everybody around that i could and keep in mind i was 20 something years old i was
really green and scared to death and i’m sure i made some phone calls not so long ago
but i ended up leaving i don’t even know if i got a bill for it i don’t remember but it was a bad deal
so you’ve had a lot of people in your company your company’s very successful
what’s something that you make sure you do when you bring somebody new into your
company well we are looking for somebody who’s going to be a hard worker a dedicated
worker who is shares our values and is looking for a career really
what we have been successful at is that typically when somebody comes here they
maybe have bounced around had different jobs but once they start working here what typically happens is they stay we
have people here who have been here as long as 33 years a service manager has been here 33 years we’ve got 20 plus
year employees many that are 10 plus years so
i think they do and like you say it’s always it’s like the best job in the world and i think it’s a pretty damn
good one friend of show colin frain has said this and i think he’s right i’m curious what
you think they say when somebody new gets into this industry
and they make it for two years they’re in it for life yeah it’s probably true a lot of hard
things happen in the first two years what’s something you think that everybody needs to do when they’re early
on in their career that will help them set up for success i can tell you what i did even though i
kind of was raised in the business but i didn’t really know the water treatment business when i started it so
i would i would take the books you know now go book or bets that’s probably back then that’s what i would do at night i
kind of browse through the book trying to pick up on topics and now there are so many
ways to learn about your industry to learn about the job that you’re doing you just
google water treatment and there’s a lot of just free information that pops up and it’s all correct well there is that
but the point being you have to take personal initiative on your time to get better
at what you do and you’ll get more out of it it’s like anything else the more you participate the more you’re active
in something the more you get out of it the more you enjoy it and the more self-fulfillment there’s i
think a personal fulfillment factor that comes with getting better at something
whether it be sports or your job or your career but that’s kind of what we’re trying to do
here is is make this a career path for somebody as opposed to just a job until
i find something better i’ve heard people say especially the younger generation
that they’re taught or they’re expected in order to get ahead they’ve got to
move from job to job to job that’s not what you’re saying so
how does somebody that maybe in college that’s taught that you’ve got to jump around in order to improve yourself how
do you tell somebody like that that no if you stay where you are there’s a lot of good things ahead
i’m sad that that’s what they’re teaching in college i didn’t know that i don’t know that you can trace i i think
the people that succeed here with us they’re looking for stability they’re not looking to pop from one place to
another and i know they’re going to give me grief about this i don’t think it’s always
about the money necessarily i think it’s about the money’s important but it’s also
feeling like you’re part of something that’s kind of bigger than yourself and that you are
providing a value and a a service that is needed to your
customers and your clients just looking back at my own career the first two years were really hard i grew
up with my dad and i didn’t know water treatment i knew how to make this bottle
and so many drops turn one color from the original color and then i would
count how many drops and i would multiply that and i would write it down on a sheet but i really didn’t know what i was doing when i was growing up other
than that then when i started getting a little bit older when i got my license my father
started teaching me how to do some service but again i didn’t understand a lot of the why
later he did share a lot of that there was still a lot of mystery that i just had to find out on
my own he never taught me about business he didn’t he didn’t have his own business so we never had that conversation
i’m just thinking as i asked you a question i know it’s tough to answer i’m just thinking in my own career if i
didn’t stick it out in that first two years i would have not experienced all the
wonderful things that i’ve been able to in my life i wouldn’t have met all the incredible people you and i wouldn’t
have met and i just think what a shame that was and there’s so many people out there that don’t give it a chance and it is a
hard industry and it is hard to learn all that stuff and everybody’s not going to tell you everything that you need to
know but the payoff if you stick in it and you do try to learn everything and you try to
get better each and every day we have a career like yours that’s going on 40
years and just getting better brings to mind there’s a couple times when bob my
stepfather and i we would go at it because even though he was always the smartest guy in the room
he was my stepfather basically my father basically and you know you always think you’re smarter than your dad
even though you’re not so there are many times when i thought ah dude i gotta get out of here i’m gonna
find another job and i remember going through the abs looking for a different just a different
job and i’m so glad that i never pulled the trigger on that because that would have been such a
catastrophe because yeah like you say my best friends now are all people i’ve
met that are that do what i do because there’s nothing that will shut down a conversation quicker
than if somebody asked me what i do for 11. right it’s oh and off they go
so at least with my awt brethren you know we you know we have that bond we
know we know and understand what it is we do so we have developed great friendships
yeah bottom line this is a hard industry it’s a hard job but if you put into it
everything that you can it will pay itself back to you absolutely
bob over the last 40 years what are some of the changes that you’ve seen in industrial water treatment
well when i started we were still using chromatin acid so that was a major change
i will tell you the biggest change for us and i think you probably have a lot of
younger younger than me a lot of your listeners probably have grown up in a world that
there’s always been a computer but that was a huge change for us when the computers came in as far as
technology goes in spreadsheets the ability to put together a spreadsheet that allows your
uh your sales team to generate quotes and what they’re needing
that was huge for us you mentioned chromate my dad used
chromate as well he used to say that that was the best corrosion inhibitor ever it was a great biocide nothing grew
in there so he would tell me that he would look at a cooling tower system or especially
a boiler system and by how yellow it was know if there was enough treatment in it
or not and of course we didn’t have biological issues back then because nothing can grow in chrome so
the good old days right those were the good old days unless you were a fisherman which my stepfather was
and all that chrome ended up in the in the bays and killed all the grass so now it’s a good
thing it’s gone but it was an excellent treatment program i could use it in a couple places down here right now
actually i don’t remember when the movie came out i think it was late 90s erin brockovich
yeah and i remember stacy my lovely bride wanted to go see a movie and she
wanted to go to erin brockovich okay that sounded like a chick flick i did not want to go to this movie
we go to this movie and it’s all about cooling towers it was the best movie i ever saw and it was all about how the
power company was putting chrome in their cooling towers they were releasing it out and it was having some bad health
effects on a nearby town best movie ever is scaling up nation if you haven’t seen
it i’m sure you will pick up a lot from that movie and why we don’t use chrome
anymore is actually the real story behind that movie so bob i’m curious have you seen that movie
i have seen that movie several times because it’s a young julia roberts and of course you had of course the same
experience that i had they’re talking about cooling towers how cool
yeah any movie where i see the cooling towers or chillers because i think die hard
there’s a there’s some pumps lmi pumps in one of the scenes
i think it’s a lakewood controller and some lmi pumps yeah yeah and i always
mention it i don’t know why nobody really cares that i’m with oh that’s i know what that is i know what that’s
that is the best part of the die hard movie and i don’t care what anybody out there says die hard is a christmas movie
a christmas movie absolutely bob being in business for a while
what is something that you look for that there might be a potential issue
with one of your customers that maybe you’re getting ready to lose it or maybe something if it’s not corrected
could allow something else to happen for them to seek an additional water treater
how can we learn from your experiences well what i try to stress around here is
perception is reality and we’ve lost accounts
when not the guy we deal with on a regular basis but when his boss comes in from
miami or wherever and sees things that really are insignificant as
far as the actual application of the treatment program but they’re visual the labels are torn or
ripped there’s you know the tank tops have are sticky because
there was a leak and it wasn’t cleaned up light algae somewhere on the tower where it really doesn’t get enough water to
get treated properly but it’s there it’s these things that are easy for us to take care and fix
but if we don’t there are potential areas where a customer will come in and say i’m going to get somebody else
so i really try to stress to make sure all of our facilities all of our treatment programs
are organized and neat and clean because dirty system
in in some customers eyes well in most eyes it isn’t working as well
so i kind of stress that the water treatment part of it i think we’re pretty good at that
but it’s the little things it’s a little details you got to really keep an eye on because if if you’re not paying
attention to those details then in the customer’s eyes the treatment isn’t working as good as it could be or should
be that is great advice it reminds me of a story we had a property management company that we took over because they
were having some issues with another water treatment firm and they were having to clean their
chillers every single year because they just weren’t efficient they were getting scaled up now bob we have
very different water in atlanta than what you have down in florida it is very hard to scale water here in atlanta you
got to be pretty talented to do it but yet these people they did manage to do it we asked and clean the chiller and we
never had that issue again but that’s not what they noticed not at all not the
fact that they were paying less money to operate that chiller not that they didn’t have to pay
a fee to shut the chiller down and have somebody come in and clean it that was not what they noticed
they noticed one of our technicians sweeping the floor
what had happened he was doing some sampling we’ve got that flick that we do with powder pillows and occasionally
those things get away from you so he flicked a little bit too exuberantly and it went behind all of our mix tanks so
he didn’t want to leave it there and maybe he didn’t have enough for his entire route who knows but he cleaned
that area up and uh just by going for that packet he noticed that there were things that fell down
there that that weren’t his so he started cleaning that area well then he had a clean spot and it stuck out like a
sore thumb in this mechanical room and he said well heck i’ve got the broom why don’t i just sweep the entire floor
well right then the head engineer walks in sees him with a broom sees him with a
dustpan and he about falls on the floor he said i didn’t even know contractors knew how to use a broom
to this day and that had to have been at least 10 years ago to this day he still reminds me of that and we went from one
building to 14. keep your stuff clean yeah keepers definitely yeah you
mentioned the flicking of the powder pillows we just took over an account this week and as we pulled the container
out competitors container out the guys notice down at the bottom of the drum
dozens and dozens of powder pillows opened that’s where they’re tossed them
for their instead of putting it in the trash well bob we’re now to phase two of the
interview we’re about to commence the lightning round are you ready
oh my god so it’s anybody’s game at this point
uh lots of people are betting for you so there’s uh there’s an over and under going on so it’s anybody’s game right
now bob your first question if you could go back in time and talk to
yourself on your very first day that you started this job what advice would you
give yourself i was kind of puzzled on this so i asked my wife this morning on the way into
work and she said well you would use pounds instead of gallons because for our inventory i made the decision early
on to go by gallons instead of pounds well the problem is you buy everything in pounds so there’s always this
conversion to get it into the books and then you always screw up how much you’re really putting out in
the field so our inventory is always off so that’s what i would change
because other than that i was a excellent employee from day one no doubt
bob what are some of the books that you’ve read the books i’ve read or books i’ve finished now books i’ve read i got about
20 of them going at any one time because there’s this guy who’s got a podcast and kind of always promoting audible so i
have like 20 audible books now and some somewhere in between but i recently completed
the tattooist of auschwitz which turned out to be a love story and
oh i reread the lessons from the mouse which was a speaker we saw once at a
owner’s meeting somewhere and that was really good uh and procrastination on purpose
finished that and then finally finished reading um the art of war oh i sung soon
it sat on my counter for years because it’s it was thick it’s big
but it turns out it’s only like the book itself is only like 45 minutes all the rest was commentary i didn’t know that
so i put that one away finally uh so that was like the last three or four that i actually completed
when they make a movie about bob lee who do they cast
god who wouldn’t want that job right right i’ll be fighting for that one
yeah and i had time to think about this too because i knew this was going to be a question
i uh i don’t know tom hanks i remember you and i were at a board
meeting and leslie nielsen just passed away okay and you and i secretly to the
annoyance of all the other board members decided that we would make every motion as if leslie nielsen were there and we
made airplane references we made naked gun references i don’t know i could just see leslie
nielsen playing you you know what i mentioned tom hanks only because he’s
i don’t know he’s average looking but it would probably take a great actor
a thespian yes no john lovetts that might be acting brilliant
all the younger people have no idea what we’re talking about so look up was it the thespian i’m starting out live what did he call himself
master thespian brilliant brilliant brilliant i was acting
all right bob last question you now have the ability to speak with anybody throughout history who to be with and
why hey don’t you think benjamin franklin would be awesome to talk to 100
i’d be i mean i wouldn’t be talking i’d just be listening long line such a life lived right that’d be really
interesting just to just sit and listen to him hang out i think he drank so that would be good
yeah oh a story that i found somebody gave it to me it said that ben franklin
was had one of the first formal masterminds and he called it huntus and
they had it around a tavern they would drink beer and talk about issues and why that makes sense
bob thank you for coming on the show again you have meant so much to me throughout my career uh you’ve become a
great friend a great mentor and it’s just been an honor to introduce you to the scaling up podcast
trace goes both ways big admirer of you and
thank you for this opportunity and looking forward to seeing you in vancouver
nation i’ve never told bob lee that story before that i had a better experience at my first awt function
because he leaned in a little bit more he introduced me to other people
he wanted to spend time with me and that’s what i remember when i was having
such a rough time not knowing anybody i didn’t know anybody but i knew bob and then bob made sure that i knew more
people i don’t know if i would not have been president of the association of water technologies had it not been for
bob lee but i’m pretty sure that i would have had a very different outlook on
what the association of water technologies was so bob thank you so much for that i’m glad i was finally
able to tell you that i don’t know why i never told you that before and let that be a lesson to all of us
we go to events all the time and sometimes we’re very popular and other times we are just not feeling like
anybody cares that we are there nation if you can just take one person
and say hello to them and i love the question when i do this with people and if you
have met me at a convention you have probably been the recipient of this and by the way the reason i do this is to
pay it forward from what bob did for me i will introduce myself we’ll have a
conversation i’ll see if there’s anything that i can do for you but when we leave after our conversation is
complete i will ask you if there’s anybody that you want to meet that i might know
and if there is and i know them i will walk you over to that person and i will
introduce you just like bob did for me and i encourage all of you to do
something like that when we’re kind to people it’s just amazing all the great things that
happen we enjoy being there a lot better so next time you see somebody just standing
around get to know them see what you can do for them somebody that i’ve gotten to know and
somebody that does something each and every week for all of us is james
mcdonald and here is 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 how polymer inhibits scale formation
is it a stoichiometric 101 relationship is it a threshold effect or something
else what are the types of polymers used for scale control and do they function differently
are some polymers better for scale forming species than others there’s a lot to learn about polymers
take this week to think about this aspect of polymers and scale inhibition be sure to follow
tow 22 and hashtag scaling up h2o share your thoughts on each week’s thinking on
water i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to learning more from you scared nation if
you have not wished me a happy birthday yet now is your opportunity go ahead
just shout it right in your car right at your speaker happy birthday
there you go i heard it thank you so much for that nation i love that you
tune in each and every week i love that we have an audience that we
call this scaling up nation i love that we one water treater at a time are
making each other better and i love that i’m gonna have a brand new episode for
you next friday and until the meantime have a great week
[Music] so many people ask me what a mastermind
is does that mean in six weeks i am going to be the best water treater that i can be through a training class folks
that’s not a mastermind that is a master class what a mastermind is is when
like-minded people get together we process issues we form common bonds of
friendship around each other and we celebrate and push each other towards
success it is the key to so many people unlocking their potential to find out
more go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash mastermind