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 though podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems i’m trace
blackmore the host of scaling up h2o nation welcome to a brand new episode
episode 250 and just amazing that there’s
256 episodes out there in fact they’re actually more for those of you that have
stayed with us through the entire five years of producing this podcast you know
i tried to get creative in some of our numbering if it was on a particular topic i would have a episode 10.1 and .2
and i don’t know what the heck i was doing but anyway we try to keep it simple now and each new episode gets a
brand new number so if you were to count i’m willing to bet that we’re probably at least in the 280s probably even a
little bit higher than that and when i look at all the things that i have
learned on this podcast it’s just been amazing i mean just talk about how to create this podcast i
didn’t know anything about podcasting before i started doing this podcast
started learning a whole bunch about how to produce a podcast
learned a bunch about the technology and then there’s so many things that i
learned on how to interview people how to make sure that i was giving the scaling up nation what it needed how i
was making sure that i was staying relevant all of these things was to uncover the fact that i didn’t
know what i didn’t know and that was a question that somebody posed to me i
want to say at least 12 15 years ago his name is tim fulton
he’s a really big part of my life i call him my business coach and i met him at a conference
and then that became a class that i took from tim and then today
tim actually coaches me on a regular basis with trying to encourage me to learn things that i didn’t know
i didn’t know but he asked me that question well over a decade ago and i just love that question with the
podcast i didn’t know what i didn’t know so i started going on the internet trying to figure out what it is i needed
to know so i could give you a podcast that you wanted to listen to
in water treatment i do that all the time what don’t i know i don’t know
maybe i’m running a new test never run it before don’t have any experience with it i
don’t know what the different reagents are blended with i don’t know how they
react to a possible interference i don’t know what are some of the things
that they might do maybe they turn different colors if there’s different interferences out there whenever i’m
testing for something i’m not familiar with maybe a customer asked me to test something that we don’t normally test for
i asked myself what do i need to know about this test so i can expect some
things maybe i don’t plan on expecting so when’s the last time you’ve done that what are some things that could possibly
go wrong what are some ways that some interferences could happen when you run
a test the first time and i also apply that to pretty much anything that i do so here’s my question
for you do you ask yourself how do you know that
you don’t know something and then how do you find out what you need to
know it’s a question that just really energizes me because there’s so
much information out there so i would encourage you to ask yourself how do you know when you don’t know
something and how are you going to find that something out you know one of the
ways that we try to find things that we don’t know or maybe we just need to
expand what we do know a little bit further is with our friend james
mcdonald so here’s a brand new thinking on water with james
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 what alternative water sources can potentially be used for cooling tower
makeup city water and well water are often the first two makeup water sources that come
to mind for cooling tower but what are some others one person’s waste is another’s treasure they say
are there any waste streams going down the drain right now that could be recycled to the cooling tire for makeup
do they require any pre-treatment what challenges would these alternative makeup water sources pose once in the
tower would the current water treatment program need to be altered in any way to accommodate them
are these alternative sources reliable what volume of water can they provide
take this week to think about the possibility of using alternative water sources for cooling tower makeup be sure
to follow hashtag tow22 and hashtag scalinguph2o share your
thoughts on each week’s thinking on water i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to learning more from you
well thank you james you know james is one of those people that is always helping out our industry
and if you ever tune in to one of our hangs you are sure to see james mcdonald
james mcdonald is almost on every single hang and our next hang is going to be on
july 14th at 6 p.m eastern time
we have people all over the globe that join us and we get to meet new people on
the hang it’s only one hour of your time and you never know who you’re gonna meet
on the hang that can help you with a problem that maybe you don’t even know
you have yet go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash hang to reserve your spot
today and it will not cost you a dime just an hour of your time and you will
be so glad you spent that hour meeting some new people in the water
treatment industry nation in addition to the question what don’t i know i know
i also like to ask the question whenever i meet somebody new is who do i know
that you want to meet and i’ve introduced so many people that way well
if you were to rewind many years i want to say this was 1995
maybe i think i’m pretty close but that’s the first time i met our guest that’s coming on today
and i know you are going to enjoy this interview here it is
my lab partner today is bruce ketrick senior of guardian csc bruce i can’t
believe it’s been five years and you’re finally on the scaling up h2o podcast welcome well thank you i’m obviously on
top of the list so i really appreciate that we have been trying to do this forever i think and we finally got the
stars to align bruce i i don’t know if there’s anybody in the water treatment community that has not heard your name
but just in case there’s one person out there how would you describe bruce
ketrick to the audience bruce catrick is an individual that got into the water treatment industry in 1974
and turned around yesterday and said well now i know how to afford lake now know
how to sell i’ve built a company i’ve worked for a number of different majors and none of it was planned
it just happens you just take one step at a time and you end up there you wake up in a blink of an eye it all
went by it all went by bruce i’m curious how did you originally
get in to the water treatment industry while i was in college i was working summers in norfolk harbor industrially
cleaning villages fresh waters of navy vessels and one of the vendors worked for a company called gambling and we
were talking and he knew i was graduating and recommended i interview with gambling
chemical which i did and they hired me originally to be a trainee one of their
first sales trainees uh both industrial and marine and the idea was on road ships i did
cleaning underway i did rest cleaning i did product formulation and testing i
did everything they asked me to do with the idea when a sales opportunity opened up that’s where i’d be and it
happened in new jersey so i ended up being an industrial sales instead of marine and in 1973 when i got out of
college the vietnam war ended there was a flood of people coming back from vietnam
not a lot of jobs so you took the first of those offered so bruce did you did you always want to
own your own company was this something that you just said you know i got to do it
no not really i liked working for the companies i worked for i went from gambling to bats when gambling
got first got purchased and realigned i worked for beds for a few years
had the opportunity to go with a company called paralyn and within three years i went from a
salesman to the u.s operations manager and ran their u.s operations production
sales the entire gambit until 1987 when they got purchased again
and when they got purchased again the company that came in had a president that didn’t think
a 37 year old man that knew how to run a national company should be kept around so i got fired for producing too well
and at that point in time uh one of my distributors was looking to start his own water treatment company he was an
equipment supplier and we kind of worked out a deal which as i look back on it now i must have been extremely desperate
and started from nothing basically with two accounts harley-davidson and york
hospital were the first to add that was it and you still have those accounts don’t you yes i do
that is saying something we don’t lose a lot but we’ve yeah we’re like everybody else we try
bruce what do you think the biggest difference is from working with somebody to owning a company other than the
obvious worship for somebody means you do the best job you can and you hope you read what they want
owning your own company is taking a look at what do i need to survive and make the paychecks next week
it’s a totally different concept when you’re on your company you work for your employees people don’t
think of it that way they someone that has it on their own company will think well these employees work for you
you are for your employees because your employees are the reason you succeed those people are your family
if you don’t work for them and worry about them being taken care of every day you won’t have it and if you don’t have
them you don’t have a company knowing everything that you do now would you do it over again
probably i would probably do it a lot smarter i say to people all the time they say
how do you know these things i said well when you make a mistake you never forget
and i said i’ve made enough mistakes now that i even hear the two by four coming at me before they start to swing because
over time experience is what it is you learn and there’s a lot of things that i’ve done different from when it
first started but you’re younger you’re naive you think things are going to go the way you want them to go and they just tend
to go the way they go what’s one of the biggest changes that you’ve seen in our industry since you’ve
been in water treatment i don’t think we have four days
product development the way people sell we’ve gone from selling by the pound
to being energy engineers where we’re actually looking how to maximize the energy of a facility
uh we’ve gone from in the 70s we sold chemical boilers blew down to 10 cycles so
fuel was cheap after the oil embargo fuel wasn’t cheap so that’s when we started energy savings blow down savings
we still sold by the pound we chemical didn’t talk to equipment equipment didn’t talk to chemical in
today’s world it’s a marriage you have to condition the water as best as possible
with equipment pre-treatment equipment reverse osmosis the ionization whichever you use and
then polish it with chemistry to give the customer most economical program in the best
energy savings and it’s really all about energy it’s not about the product
is there something you say that we’ve lost over the years did we do something better back in the 80s than we do today
back in the 80s we were more of a fraternity than we are today there weren’t that many of us it wasn’t as big
as it is now and you know you had your competitors you liked the ones you didn’t like like
we do today there’s no question about that but on the whole we acted on a different
level it’s become much more commercialized today we’re seeing the change from we used to call it the
six-pack there were six major companies and they pretty much dominated the industry with a few independents they
purchased each other they spun off people they’ve been purchased back and forth and now they’ve churned
into very large entities and there’s not six of them anymore uh and independents have filled that gap
in doing so we lost a lot of humanity we had and there’s a very
definite separation between different groups and the way to look at things a lot of communications have been lost
even though we’re in the basic era of communication where everyone can talk to anyone at any
time like we’re doing now people in major companies we see this when you interview people have no idea
what awt is doing or what we do or the technical training but the only one that
uh seems to have any concept of that is chemtrail the rest of them it’s amazing the
difference uh there used to be very good training programs in the major companies
they trained their people very well technically but when they started purchasing each other and started getting people spin off they with major
competitors so they changed from technical training to sales training and moved the
technical inside so it’s controlled by a few people and we find we hire people from the majors and they are very well trained in
a specific area but they have no clue about general technology product application
what a phosphonate is they just know a product it’s changed dramatically
that personal touch is really gone and now it’s all about apps on your phone or
on your computer but as you have seen when you teach math
the basic concept of math and the formulas is almost like magic to people today
when it used to be that’s what we did well bruce you alluded to the association of water technologies uh i
believe you were one of the founding members is that correct not exactly i was one of the first
couple dozen 10 people started that company originally and the next year
after they started it they started recruiting people to bolster it and i was in that
shall we say the second phase one of the first two dozen if you want to say so you got a phone call
somebody i’m guessing it was chuck branvold he pitched you on this wait denny clayton danny clayton i was
handling a paper mill for danny clayton because he knew me from past experiences and called me up and
said we formed this company uh or this i’m sorry organization and we’d like you to join and of course i was pretty much
a two-man outfit at the time barely keeping my head above water it’s like hey i don’t have time to do this he says
you don’t have time not to do so we always went to the iwc in pittsburgh because that was the water conference
and the majors had their sweets and the rest of us were kind of at the table waiting for crumbs to fall off
and you went there anyway so we went there and after the meeting we meet in an auditorium
20 people and we’re forming this organization so that we can
offer insurance but we got to do more than just offer insurance we have to do everything else so danny said to
myself and rusty hill who was there at the time uh i’d like you guys to be in the technical
department because you both came out of technical i said okay what does that mean don’t worry about it we’re just starting
out just do it to which i was then introduced to everybody as the
chairman of the technical committee which didn’t exist so that’s kind of how it all started
well i met you because you were leading that technical committee and i did the math i want to say it was
in 97 when training was in atlanta and i sat down at an empty table it was my
first awt function ever didn’t know anybody and then you sat
down on the other side of me and j farmery sat down on the other side
and you talk about an intimidating lunch i was like how am i ever gonna hold my
own with these two water treatment jedi that was that was the first time we met
and you asked me i think i’d just take a bite of sandwich and you said so what do
you think and i had no idea how to respond i don’t know what i said hopefully it was halfway coherent do you remember that
conversation at all i remember that conversation i don’t remember what you said but it must not have been too
incoherent because we’re still talking [Laughter] so and then it was uh it was that
conference that i saw all of you guys speak of course uh jim lucanich i just thought he was just incredible with how
he’s able to entertain and teach and i remember thinking i really want to do
what these guys do i want to have a command of this information in a way
that i not only understand it for myself but i understand it in a way that i can explain it to other people so they could
understand it and it was that day that i decided that i was not worthy to do it but i wanted to become one of your
trainers well you’ve done really well at that so congratulations so i’m trying to
remember um i believe there was uh i i want to say
that i said i wanted to do this and you said well you need to get involved in the committee right and it was working
on the sidelines through the committee and i want to say you came to me one day colin was starting to do sales training
so he wasn’t able to do calculations anymore and you said well hey i’ve got an opening you’re not going to want it
but it’s math and i said yes and you said yes and i found out later you actually like matt so
i got lucky you couldn’t have asked me to teach anything uh more than than i think i i
would have wanted to do that allowed me to take the information really make it my own and and the
challenge was there the topic that nobody wanted to do that nobody wanted to sit through during training how can i
actually make that fun how could i make that entertaining how could i make it so people actually had handles that they
could bring home when they left the class so it was it was a great challenge i still aspire to
do that i get some good feedback uh after i do present i don’t think i’ve mastered it by any means but i really
want to thank you for the opportunity because it is something i look forward to each and every year well no i want to
thank you because you do an exceptional job colin and i did the math before that and i didn’t want it back and you do
exceptional at it so i appreciate that bruce that’s that’s fantastic uh thank you for that i
remember i only missed one technical training and that was when my father passed away
right and then i remember you were going through my slides and i of course when we talk about
boiler calculations i use the reference of dr evil where he’s he’s doing the one
million with his pv in his mouth just to remind people that that’s not the right answer if your boiler is not producing
one million pounds of steam you still have to do a percentage off of that and
we both know that there are cwt test question answers out there that if you
forget that step there’s still that answer available for you to pick so i put that up there as a result
and uh you click the next slide and this dr evil popped up you’re like what the heck is blackmore teaching you guys i
did think that yes but having not seen the script i looked at that and went i don’t know what to do with this
[Laughter] so several people reported back that you handled it very well i really wish that
i had a recording of that well the stuttering was probably the best part of the whole thing
so bruce you and rusty were charged with creating the original technical
committee obviously people know what it is today is what is it 30 years in the making now
oh more than that okay so so 30 plus years in the making it is the crown
jewel that awt does twice a year people go to the training uh they keep
coming back because there’s just so much valuable information it didn’t start there how did that start
well it started a couple of years in from what i joined and again was danny clayton he was president i think at the
time or just been president and he said one of the problems we have is
we have very talented people who know what i recognize is that we have a lot of people need training and training requires some ability and
some monetary capability to be able to put together well the independents most of our small companies individually
couldn’t do it but a handful of us had been trainers in the past had worked for major companies
so we put together a group in chicago to do the first one we all showed up with
our transparencies because this is well before powerpoint you might have to explain that technology to our audience
uh it was an overhead projector where the light showed through a transparency and put a picture
on a screen well the nice part about is you could write on with a magic marker if you wanted to and show people things without
using a whiteboard but there was no automation it was basically talking to a group with a lot
of transparent slides and to say that it was a complete
disaster was probably being kind many of the speakers that were in the first one actually the only speaker left
in the first one many of them were very intelligent uh spoken a monotone spoke at a level where everyone
sat there going i have no idea what we’re doing here and we gradually transitioned through there and got the
farmers the luck images and you know the people that are now a main part of this colin franklin and much later
but it started with a need to teach the industry and to close that gap
between the majors and the independents which i feel now with the cwt and the training we have we’ve closed that gap
and i don’t see the majors except for their size having anything
technically better than where we are right now bruce people have asked me how i’ve
decided you know what math equations we’re going to use and of course i teach the ones that are on the cwt examination
but how did i decide to go down certain routes how did i decide to use certain
analogies and basically how did i design my course so i’m curious with you
you’ve done so much of the awt architecture for the training course how
do you decide what you’re going to teach and how you’re going to teach it well
i was educated in the majors originally and also with a international marine company so i kind of when i went from
the international company to the major i looked at how differently they did things got the same answer
and we looked this the same way i look at it from the standpoint of i’m not teaching suez i’m not teaching
echolabs i’m not teaching country uh i want to look at the overall industry
in general generically which is why the trtm was built that way generically and
say how can i get this information across to people in a generic means which case you notice we don’t talk
about products we talk about raw materials we talk about different types of boilers and the problems they have
different types of cooling towers and the problems they have different types of water and what to expect
how you can calculate the proper level of corrosion not the guest that was the way the drew book did it or
whichever it’s really just sitting down with the people who come from a diverse background because if you look at their
trainers we come from every major company that was out there and saying okay this is how i present this how would you
present that and have them feedback and then eventually over time that feedback has developed the real framework of what
this program is well we’re talking about training let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about
the governance of the awt you and i were both presidents of that
great organization very humbled to to to be a past president when i look at all the people
that are on that list bruce why did you become president what was that journey like they tried to get
me to become president early on when it was just starting out and i refused to
because basically i couldn’t afford the time away from my company i wouldn’t have survived when i got to the point where i
could survive i got a phone call from mr maloyd and james said
it’s only an hour a month and i finally said well i’ll try and i was
voted in got on the board and that’s when we started the trtm and
a lot of the other things uh and at the end of your first year you decide if you want to move on to the
chairs as you know and the governance and i wasn’t asked to do that but i was given other projects and i found out
later on that mr mcnamara and mr malloy had decided since i was a uh how could i put
a mule and work very hard if they could stall me going into the chairs one year they get six full years of making me
work my backside off versus five once you get into the organization
especially when you get into those levels you learn more than you give and it
helped me tremendously with my own company with my own life
uh i met some fantastic people that again networking is what we really do in
our lives and the six years went by very quickly yeah thinking about it the awt board was
probably the first mastermind that i was ever a member of we would get together
afterwards and we would talk about each other’s issues and we would just lean into each other and and give each other
advice and then when you’re off the board that kind of went away
um i never thought about it before now but i think that was my first mastermind experience i just didn’t have that
language around it i would say so but when i joined the board it was very
cut and dry you showed up for the board meeting it was done by strict rules
and it lasted 10-12 hours and he went home and so when i became president
i looked at that and said this is not working for me once you start the official meeting it’s
got to be an official meeting why don’t we sit down before the meeting go through all our issues with dinner
couple beers whatever discuss it we’re going to relax so that we’re prepared for the next day and then
we get the work done which is again a mastermind concept what i proposed it our management group
which is not the one we have now uh looked at me like i had four heads and was out of my mind but evidently
that’s what they’re still doing and it worked out very well because we took the actual board meeting down to
about six hours get it done work on the real issues not two hours of
discussion or something we could talk about friday night and work out instead of doing it at the board meeting
well when i was on the board we still took that concept and we would get together i think we called it the pre-board meeting
and when i first started we had binders and then they would ship cds out and that had all the pdfs and
different documents on it and then we started using electronic where you could just go up in the cloud and get it but i
remember my very first board meeting i got a cellophane wrapped binder
and of course i’m reading that as diligently as i i could and then we go to this pre-board meeting
and the the president at the time who was chuck had just outlined all the
things that we really needed to make sure we understood before going into that meeting
and i can’t imagine us ever having anywhere near the same conversation had
we not prepared in that way it would have all been about talking about what we needed to talk about instead of
weighing in on what we already knew based on our findings that was all idea behind it
well thank you for doing that i am pretty sure they are still doing that today you know bruce what are what are some
big things that you’ve seen change with the the awt you know you’re one of the second round of members so you’re
probably member number what nine or something like that well not that that good probably like 18 or 20. okay when
we first started the only reason we started is bullfall india caused the
loss of liability insurance that prices were astronomical independents were
operating without a liability insurance and this was
a problem that we all feared so the original group got together to do offshore insurance
they brought us in for the same reason we were looking at getting liability insurance that we could afford
and other than that we knew we had to build a structure for an organization to
justify what we were doing a bunch of people just trying to figure it out day to day
we had nothing you have today we had no website we had no books we had there was no training there was nothing
and you look at it today today we have one of the best training programs in the industry and it’s not a training program
there’s six of them today we have a website that has more information than probably any place else in the world we
have the trtm which is constantly being updated and it is the first generic
training and technical manual in the industry not written with my point of view but everyone’s point of
view and the original four authors came from four separate majors which makes it even more cohesive
we have reference material assets people numerous people with talent and and
experience if you went for an uh to talk to an independent 34 years ago
they either had a couple years with a major company or just kind of fell into this
today you’ve got people with that are independents have been doing this for over 30 years and they’ve got
an established company established reputation it’s it’s very very very different
what does the future hold for bruce ketrick senior oh i’m running out of future i’m getting to the point where i
want to travel and i want to say you know what it’s your turn now i’m very quickly getting to that point
i’m 71 years old i’ve been doing this since i was 22. the future is
i’ve had a good transition with my company i’m i’m still here because i guess they feel the old guy should be
stuck in a room and just you know feed him and don’t don’t hurt him but uh i’m getting to the point where i’m i’d
like to just start backing off some and and go see what i can of the world now that covet has become a little less
toxic than it was before you mentioned transitioning your company
right now there is a lot of that going on a lot of people are passing the
company to either their children another employee maybe they’re selling it to somebody else
you’ve gone through this process very successfully i know it’s successful because bj your son says it went great
and he wouldn’t have said that if you guys didn’t figure it out how did you figure it out what what advice do you
have for people that are going through that process right now well
the first thing is you have to know that there’s someone coming in that is confident obviously
because for independents these are our babies these are our children we grew them from nothing so there’s a real
investment into this company and you don’t want to give your child to anybody
i was very fortunate to have two of my three children had an interest in this early i got
involved i made them start at the bottom they worked their way up they’re very talented uh thank god for their mother
that’s probably why they’re very talented and uh they had an interest in running the
company and i’d always told them you have to decide what you want to do
before i’m 60 because i’m eventually going to want to get out
and there’s only three options to get out one transfer to your joke two sell it to an employee three sell it
to somebody else and you need a few years to position your company for that
to get the most out of it so i said you have to make the decision if you don’t want to do it that’s fine i didn’t do
this for them to come in and have a second generation i did this because i needed a job
and started something so i had a job and then eventually ended up with 70 people
that worked for me now i have jobs that was the first step the second step you have to recognize
they are not going to do it the way you do it the biggest failures and transitions is
the person that starts the company feels i made it here because this is how i did it
and the reality is probably true but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it and the most
difficult thing to do is to step back you have to when you transition to
somebody allow them to be the leader you can’t constantly step in and
reassert your power you can’t step in and say well i wouldn’t have done it that way in front
of employees kind of like raising kids you never argue in front of the kids
you are doing private and you work it out the kids see a solid front it has to be the same way
my son is not me he does a lot of things far better than i ever would dream to do
and some things that i consider important he does not okay so how do you do that you fill it in
with a competent person to do that part that he doesn’t want to do and again the hard part is to sit back and allow them
to do it and it’s been five years and he’s grown the company dramatically so we’ve been successful because we had
the right person and i was able to swallow enough ego to step back and let
him be that person and that’s very hard very very difficult at times and i think that’s where a lot of these
transitions fail if you have an employee that fits that and you want to sell it to your employee
it doesn’t have to be your child it has to be that person that fits and you still have to go through the same transition
the other option is you sell it you get cash you walk away that would have been my last resort
because my people are very important to me and i want them taken care of i’ve got people inventing me for 25
years 30 years and if i just sold it to someone i relinquish my
ability to protect them if i sell it to a good employee or i sell it to my children as we did
they see the culture they see how it worked they protect those same employees and those employees then who benefit for
a while just transfer the loyalties to that new president
and bring that experience with them to help that president go along and that’s worked very well for us but scott
stewart our sales manager has been with 31 years and he’s he’s got another five or six years
in him at least if not then and his transition to vijay because he knew him as a teenager
has been not only do i recognize you as my boss but i’m here to support you and protect
you and that all that experience he uses to make sure bj succeeds so
we’ve been very fortunate that’s great advice i know you’ve helped a lot of people just telling that story
so bruce thinking all the way back to the beginning of your career in 1974 to now what would you say your biggest
lesson learned is the biggest problem you have
is you feel you’re not adequate so you go out and you try too hard
people recognize you try too hard and people recognize you’re comfortable and confident
yourself if you come into a situation you don’t know be patient listen
tell that individual i don’t know that right now but i will the next time i see you and then bring it back
if you over commit because you don’t have patience you will fail so i i think that’s my
biggest lesson when i was younger i wasn’t as good at i got a lot better at after like i hit the head a couple times
with 2×4 well bruce you’ve done very well so far
in the interview but it’s anybody’s game because we are going to the lightning round where the point values are triple
so are you ready for the lightning round oh absolutely not but let’s do it all right you’re gonna do great so if
you had the ability to go back in time and talk to your former self on your
very first day in 1974 as a water treater what would you
tell yourself to listen a great deal more to look at the people that you were
surrounded by which i was fortunate to be with some very talented people and asked more questions
i was very fortunate to start the technical department with some experienced very talented people and
being young i just wanted to do things i really wish i’d asked more and listen
more bruce i know you’re an avid reader what are some of your favorite books to read
and then specifically what are some of your favorite water treatment reference books
well my water shooting reference books are probably what you don’t have i have uh the original formulation books that
we put together uh with berlin one of my favorite ones is pads of formulation by
bob cavano which i’ve been told is being updated but i’m not sure but it gives all the basics of all the raw materials
and i still use the trtm that is you know by far my favorite i’ll
go back i’ve got the bets book and then alco book and the true book and all i have the original permuted book on
permuted specs and bruner space oh wow which i’ll use because they have data in
them engineering data that isn’t printed anymore so those are a couple of my favorites
i asked jay farmery that question and he referenced the leo pinkus book which i
had never heard of before and i can’t tell you how many times i’ve referenced that since it’s become part of my
library that is a tremendous book i have that i’ve got a lot of the cooling water
books that were done by many of the legionella people today and one of my favorite books is the
corner dioxide by simpson well there you go nation a totally selfish question i want to know what
needs to become part of my library so thank you for helping me out with that bruce next question who plays bruce
ketrick senior in a movie i have no idea i really i looked at that
i said you got to find a tall fat bald guy but i don’t know who it would be
yeah i don’t know if i have one too um no i don’t know if i would say body body
status i don’t know that’s a tough one did you ask around the office oh no i wouldn’t ask that the response time to
get back since we have a very relaxed situation here i
i enjoy the fact that the people that work here in the office can express their opinion to me without
any fear because that’s the only way they can be accepted so i’m a little afraid to ask that question
because what i might get back because it would be free about explaining yeah i don’t know why but
john lithgow comes to mind okay i wouldn’t argue with that one so i’ve never done this before but we’re
going to do uh this on social media so we’re going to post something in our
social media channels we’re going to have a picture of you we’re going to reference this episode
and we are going to ask people what they think who should play
you so we’ll see how that plays out i have insulted you that badly have i [Laughter]
never done it before we will see how it works out all right my last question bruce if you could talk with anybody
throughout history who to be with and why someone you’ve probably never heard of paul maron senior
which is my wife’s grandfather he was a self-educated engineer that created the golden eye which was a bomb
site used in world war ii that made the u.s air force or army corps of air force
uh much more effective he was uh an inventor and creator and unfortunately died before i i had a
chance to meet pat and uh for all the stories i’ve heard about them and different things like that you know i’m a creator and it just
would fascinate me to have been able to meet him well bruce i’m fascinated that i was
able to meet you you’ve helped me more than i can tell you with my career
personally professionally you’ve always been there for me you’ve helped me with issues that i’ve had
throughout my in my career personal issues questions that that i’ve had you you’ve always been
there for me and i want to thank you not only for coming on this podcast but for always being there for me
well i i appreciate that but you deserve a lot more
learn how to take a compliment that’s hard it’s hard thanks for coming on the show bruce it
is absolutely my pleasure scoring up nation i cannot tell you how
much i owe that man he has just been an incredible mentor to me
when uh i started training with the association of water technologies bruce
definitely took me under his wing i really think he wanted to get rid of math and that’s why he jumped at that
chance to get me to start teaching math but it has just been incredible
to be working on the education committee with bruce of course bruce has taught me
so many things about organizing that about making sure that all the presentations stay relevant
something that bruce and i do is we review every single training presentation every single year we also
try to coach all the other trainers and make sure that they have everything that they need
we even try to give them some extra tools so they feel even more comfortable as a presenter as a trainer and then
when we’re on site we are working behind the scenes to make sure that the trainers have everything that they need
uh equipment’s working properly of course there’s an it team there but we’re kind of the intermediaries between
that and it’s just non-stop as soon as that technical training
starts that we’re working behind the scenes and i’ve just thoroughly enjoyed being in the trenches with bruce at
every single technical training and being involved like that it really allowed me to learn so
much i’ve been involved with technical training for well over a decade i have seen so many of the other
presentations by the other presenters and every time i see something
i learn something new i’ve seen these presentations dozens of times i have
reviewed these presentations dozens of times and every time i do that i learn
something new i might learn a different nuance of something i might learn that
there’s a different way to look at something there’s a different way to explain something
so if you are ever in a situation where you think you know everything there is to know about a topic i don’t think you
know the topic well enough and i can’t tell you how many people told me that they went to a technical training
that the association of water technologies put on once been there did that maybe they even owned the
t-shirt folks that is not something you can go to that is one
and done this is something that every single time you go you’re gonna find out something
more that you didn’t know and because of the extra experiences you had between the last time you went and
this current time that you went you’re going to be listening to the information in a totally
different way so my advice is is that you go as often
to any training that you can and continue to go
i know for myself i continue to learn every time i hear any of our presenters
speak so with that always check the awt website or if the awt is not the type of
water treatment that you do i’m sure there’s an association that has some sort of training
and i will say that if you really want to understand the industry that you are
in figure out a way that you can train others within the industry when you
become a teacher rather than just a student it
changes your whole mindset you’re now able to take the information that you’re responsible for
learning and turn it into being responsible for teaching and it just changes how you
look at everything that you are trying to learn and a tip that i can give you that
i learned a very long time ago is if i’m trying to learn something new i try to get an opportunity to teach that
something new as quickly as possible so for those of you out there that are
sending people to a training and you’re wondering is my money really going
towards something worthwhile are they actually sitting in class are the people actually getting something
out of it well don’t wonder assign them they’re going to train something when they come
back to the rest of the organization and i promise that that will change
their entire view of being at that training now if you’re trying to get somebody
to be convinced to pay for you to go to a particular type of training then throw
that out there say i want to train this item that i am going to learn and i
really want to find out more information on this item so when we come back i want to schedule the
entire company to get together and i’m going to train them on this i promise that would be a much easier conversation
to try to convince somebody to pay for you to go to whatever training it is
that we are considering nation take it from me that has worked and so many times when
people have come up to me and said my boss just won’t pay for something they don’t see the value when they approach it from that
standpoint that i want to teach what i learn more than often that person will come
around and says yes you can go to that training so figure out what training you want to go to and prepare yourself to
come back and train hey folks if you have something that you want to hear on this
podcast please let me know go to our show ideas page at scalinguph2o.com
and let me know what that is you can do that in one of two ways one you can go to our show ideas page and you can type
out what your idea is or you can select the send voicemail
function and you can record your voice asking your question to me
and i will get that answered on the air folks make sure you pull out
your calendars and mark down the first full week of october that’s going to be
october 3rd through 7th and that is industrial water
week this is year six of industrial water week it is really taking off we
have an entire week to celebrate how awesome industrial water treatment is
we’re going to celebrate with you by offering an episode each and every day
of the scaling up h2o podcast for you to enjoy of course we start out with
pre-treatment monday followed by boiler tuesdays cooling wednesdays
waste water thursdays and then careers on friday folks if there is something that is out
there that deserves celebration it is the industrial water treatment world and
i hope that you mark your calendars and we can all celebrate that together i
also hope that you mark your calendars for next friday when you’re going to get a brand new episode of scaling up h2o
have a great week folks [Music]
scouting up nation so many people that i talk to want to join the rising tide mastermind but they’re concerned about
being able to commit one hour a week for the mastermind calls folks i have to
tell you when you experience that hour you realize that that is the power hour
that changes every other hour that you will experience that week if we keep
doing the same things we will keep doing the same results and that one hour a week allows you to get out of the
day-to-day so you can work on your day-to-day do something different find out about
the rising tide mastermind by going to scalinguph2o.com forward slash
mastermind