The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
scaling up nation there are so many things to worry about in today’s economy
we are not thinking about insurance and you know what that’s okay i know it’s
okay because when i thought about insurance i chose the best and that was
mcgowan insurance and i know they are thinking about my insurance when i’m concerned about how much our raw
materials are costing or even if we can find those raw materials and get them shipped to our facilities and worrying
about all of the things that we have to do in this current economy i can rest
easy because they are thinking about me and making sure that i have the best
insurance for my company i get phone calls from mcgowan letting me know that
i need to do something different does this sound like the relationship that you have with your insurance carrier if
it doesn’t trust me you are too busy to worry about insurance find somebody you
can trust like mcgowan insurance to find out more about mcgowan insurance
go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash mcgowan that’s m-c-g-o-w-a-n
[Music] welcome to scaling up 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 podcast
and we are right in the middle of legionella awareness month a couple
years ago we weren’t able to go to our conferences and of course one of the conferences we go to is all around
legionella and we figured since it’s normally held in august why not make that august legionella awareness month
well little did we know that would stick and we are back again with legionella
awareness month and of course the more you know about something the better you
can handle it so this month is all about legionella getting you to know more
about something that is very important something that we probably don’t do the best job of explaining to our customers
and we can do a better job explaining it we can let them know what they are supposed to do and arm them with some
tools that they can do it with it’s all about education and that’s what i hope
you are getting from this scaling up h2o podcast something else i hope you get is a
knowledge that there are so many things going on out there in our world that if
we get involved we can devour more information and that’s why i always
bring to you some current events that are going on so you can decide if this
is something that you should attend so here are a couple of things that you might want to put on your calendar the
first one is the one water summit that’s going to be in milwaukee wisconsin september 12th through 15th the u.s
water alliance’s one water summit gathers the most diverse group of water
stakeholders in the united states and it is all around the future
of water if this sounds like something that interests you go to our show notes
page and you can read all about this event something else i want to add is
the great team here at the scaling up h2o podcast has updated our website and
there is now a calendar of events so we made it even easier for you
to see what is going on in our industry now here’s something i hope is already
on your calendar but if it’s not go ahead and get that on there by the way if you go to our calendar of events and
you click it will actually put it on your calendar for you that’s how awesome my team is what am i talking about i’m
talking about the awt’s 2022 annual conference and convention that’s going
to be september 21st through 24th in vancouver canada i will be there almost
90 of the rising tide mastermind members are going to be there and then so many
other of my water treater friends are going to be there as well i cannot wait to see you if you were there please come
up and see me i want to know that you listen to this podcast and i’d love to hear your ideas
i love meeting members of the scaling up nation now if you own a business go
ahead and get in a day early because awt is putting on their business owners
conference and this is where experts in the industry are getting up
and telling you some best practices around business how they’re handling some of the issues that we are experiencing
owning a business today so if you run a business you definitely don’t want to miss that you of course can go to our
show page and you can find out all about that we will send you to a link straight
over to awt and also we will have that calendar of events that you can put that directly in to your calendar with a
simple click the last thing i’ll mention is the international desalination association is having their convention
october 9th through 13th in sydney australia so if you are in the desal
industry or water reuse this is a conference that you want to look into
there’s so much going on in our industry that’s why i want to make sure i keep you aware of what’s going on during our
episodes i’m hoping you can use the scaling up h2o podcast as your one stop
spot to find what is going on in our industry well nation before we get to
our guest let’s hear another 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 corrosion coupons do you use corrosion coupons in all of
your accounts why or why not do you use pre-treated or pre-stressed
coupons why or why not why should you avoid touching fresh new
coupons with your fingers when installing do you consider the orientation of the coupons when installing
do you install them so the flat side is vertical or horizontal or have you never thought of this
we previously thought about the order of the coupons but now is another good time to think about that too
how many days do you leave them in the system what would be the impact of removing
them sooner rather than later what can be determined by visually observing the corrosion coupons upon
removal how do you communicate the results do you save the old ones for annual
review take a picture or scan or dispose of them take this week to think about corrosion
coupons and how to most effectively use them 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 james as always
thank you for making us think well i’m really excited to introduce my next
guest we’ve had her on the podcast before she is definitely the expert when it comes to legionella
here’s our interview my lab partner today is returning guest
dr janet stout janet how are you well every day that i’m with you is a
great day so i’m terrific i saw that we were recording today and i was so excited i was trying to count how
many times you’ve been on the podcast do you have a count i was going to say four
no it’s more than that it’s more than that well i i’ve interviewed you at the awt at least four times well right right
um i want to say you’ve had appearances on at least four or five or six shows where
we’ve asked you to come in and speak on something you did some things when we were reopening all of our buildings
i it’s a lot more and and i’m glad you came back you must be having fun well it’s never dull that’s what i say and
i’m always a glass-half-full person and uh and like i said it’s always a pleasure to be with you and
all of your listeners how many did you say you had you know i am very humbled to say this number but we’re north of 12 000 now i
mean that’s just incredible so kudos and we’re in the top 100 in sweden
ireland and italy so i have no idea how that happened but it’s amazing yeah well
you know it’s just wonderful the reach that you have with all these people and and you know i’m i’m always interested
in education and so this is to me just another opportunity to share what i know
and help your listeners to deal with legionella and other things actually whenever we talk about legionella people
tune in and people share it and one of the things that my team does is see how much of our content gets shared and
people just want to know more and more and more about legionella by the way happy legionella month oh thank you and
i love that you have a month dedicated to my favorite bacteria well and it’s
it’s more legionella awareness month knowing what it is and what we as industrial water treaters should do
about it and when you and i talk you know sometimes it feels like we’re saying the same thing but people are still curious
is it that a lot of people haven’t heard it for the first time when you educate what are you finding
how people are taking all the information that you have well it’s a really interesting question
and the way that i think about it it’s sort of like that you know bell-shaped curve and they’re early adopters people
in the middle and people that are late adopters and the late adopters are kind of the folks that are like you know i
think i should know more about this but i’m not getting pressured to do that there’s no there’s no law there’s no
requirement you know and that’s that’s an area where we’re trying to get that changed but i think that that’s really
explains it and and so wherever people are on the curve there’s either new
information for the people that were early learners and then you know a recap of things for the people that are coming
along later so this is just a great opportunity to really put that all together
thinking back where you and bill pearson were doing all the work for the awt with
ashrae and um it was almost every year hey this is coming this is coming we’re getting a standard coming and we were on
year 10 and we were like yeah right and what was it 2015 or july when it
actually came out yes 2015 after you’re right it was 10 years i went and this is
where i always ask people for sympathy i had to go to those meetings twice a year for 10 years
and it finally happened and and then we were all like i wish somebody told me you’re like i’ve been telling you for 10
years and and then i know i myself were thinking okay is this going to sit on
the shelf is anybody going to do anything with this and it was almost a month to the day
that something happened in new york and they adopted a part of ashrae 188 as law
and what are we seven years after that now yes what’s happened seven years
after the first piece of legislation of 188 became law in new york
well you know i was a little disappointed actually after that 10-year period of
what came out was a an important standard you know the united states had lagged behind the rest of the world
really there were requirements law in the uk spain
you know all over the world france germany and and so finally you
know we had something in the united states that was an industry standard but the the little fine print said that it
was a voluntary standard so when the outbreak occurred and sadly trace you
know people have to die before something happens you know then we had public health law
as a result of those more than 100 cases and multiple deaths in the bronx in new
york city so that’s just really important that we cross that barrier and
then you know there have been additional changes to 188 over those ensuing uh
seven years and one of the things actually that i put on my list to say to the audience is that you know
you need to be aware that 188 is on continuous maintenance
guideline 12 2020 is on continuous maintenance and now we’ve got a new
proposed standard from ashrae standard 514
p for proposed and i want everyone to stay abreast of
those changes and what’s happening and the best way to do that is to enroll or
sign up for ashrae standards action so if you google that it’ll take you to a
page to register and what happens is they push everything that’s going on with ashrae
standards to your inbox and then you look to see you know 188
anything happening guideline 12 2020 and 514 and so i want
people to be aware participate i really put a call out to
people to to submit comments to the ashrae first public review period which ended may
30th for that proposed 514 standard and many have i’m sure many of your
listeners don’t even they’re like what there’s another ashrae standard so that’s
ashrae standard 514p risk management for building water
systems physical chemical and microbial hazards so be aware that that’s coming
you know to a theater near you so to speak and there’s a real need for input from your listeners and people in water
treatment and others to comment on this standard and i’m sure there will be
another public review probably won’t happen until the fall but be aware that that’s out there as
well and so i think we need more teeth like the public law in new york and it’s
happening and i’m really excited to say that what that teeth means is
legislation and and i actually got frustrated when the center for medicare
and medicaid services backpedaled on their requirement for legionella testing in their legionella
memorandum in 2017 reissuing it in 2018 saying it’s at the discretion of the
facility so if any facility should be testing for legionella it should be healthcare right well
it’s still at the discretion and so we need to say no you shall you must do
this and so you know law legislative bills are going into various
states in the united states new jersey florida uh the most recent one was california
and so i’m i’m really excited about that and and i actually reached out to my own
senator in pennsylvania and that bill has been reintroduced this year so i
want everyone you know if you’re in those states google legionella bills
and if you’re in those states contact those those sponsoring senators and say i
support this bill well janet i’ll make sure to put the link that you mentioned on our show
notes page so that way nobody has to google anything nobody has to wreck their cars by trying to take
any notes they can just go straight to the scaling up h2o.com website and do
that i remember how important that was when i was on the awt board and you and
bill were doing such good work within writing or being a voting member for 188
and every time that came out for public review you said please please review this we want to know what you think and
it was amazing you know i always thought okay i’ve got a couple of comments maybe they’ll read them but they’re not
going to do anything with it but i i’ve seen comments that i’ve made be addressed and that that meant a lot so
just imagine if we have a lot of people that know the industry pouring into that yes and and you know the association of
water technologies awt did submit comments on behalf of the membership but
you know we really need to hear from practitioners you know people who would be directly impacted by the proposed
standards so really really important to have that input as you mentioned earlier it’s all about
education and we’ve got all different waves of people that are educated a lot
of people were early adopters well probably not as many as we wanted and now there are people that are
realizing okay i don’t have a choice anymore my customers are demanding this
and they need to know what they let’s face it should have already known about legionella and some of the other
bacterias out there you’re really strong on education you’re trying to lead the pack when it comes to
education so what are you doing right now to help those people i love that you use the word help and
it’s it help in the best way possible so when you know ashrae came out originally
now there’s actually a sentence in ashrae standard 188 that says no training is necessary to do this
standard and and certainly that was important at the beginning because we want to know obstacles for people to
do water management risk assessment things like that but what i saw happening is that you know like
everybody and their brother and sister said i can do that and and they were the
spectrum of knowledge was really wide there were people that you know really knew what they were doing and there were
people that were just saying you know i’ll do it but you know i really don’t know anything about this and so i really felt that that gap of
knowledge needed to be filled and so i reached out to an organization called assc
the american society of sanitary engineers it’s a standard making body
their sister organization is iatmo which is an education and training
body and i said you know would you be interested in creating an ansi standard
professional qualifications standard that sort of you know basic knowledge
about all things legionella and they said yes and so it took him a year and a half to do it
in the spring of 2020 it was approved by ansi and so we sort of stepped into the
role as one of the first instructors to deliver training so people could sit for
the certification exam and and get that credential as a certified legionella
water management specialist and so at this point in time since uh august of 2020 we’ve trained over 400
people and so they passed the certification exam and now have that credential and so that that education is
you know legionella kind of you know what’s the epidemiology the disease it’s transmission prevention
construction related risks associated with legionella disinfection other waterborne pathogens all of and
also how to how do you handle an outbreak investigation like hopefully that never happens to you and all of
that is packed into three days of virtual training at the end of which you can sit right away for the certification
exam or or for two weeks later and all of that is orchestrated through iapmo so
you can get information about that and information to register on our website
specialpathogenslab.com and i you know i just highly recommend it and and you’ll appreciate this choice because i know
you’re a fun guy not fungi fun guy that we make it fun you know so there’s
a lot of peer-to-peer interaction between the participants so there’s people from infection prevention
facilities water treatment public health sharing the knowledge that they have in
the various breakout sessions and q and a sessions so it’s just really we make it fun you can’t see me
but i have my legionella party crusher hat on we send everybody a party crasher
hat and a legionelle party crusher button uh and and the guidebook that we’ve
written so that’s one of the things sort of the big thing on education that we’re doing but the you know it’s the little
stuff too it’s ongoing education and so we do that through a what we call the
puzzled by legionella wednesday webinar series and what that is is it’s lunchtime it’s
12 noon eastern time for about 20 minutes the speaker gives a talk
and then there’s live q a afterwards and i’m really excited about the june 22nd
one it’s about sphingomonas i bet you haven’t
yes i bet you haven’t even heard of sphingomonas well sphingomonas is sort of a distant relative of
pseudomonas and i read a paper about an outbreak
it’s in water an outbreak of this waterborne pathogen at the national institutes of health and i reached out
to the infectious disease physician who reported on that and they are giving the talk on june 22nd
and then the next one’s uh the american society of drinking water administrators
talking about you know certified operators and and past webinars are
available on our website and and the last ones were on codes and standards you know the impact of plumbing
materials on legionellan waterborne pathogens growth and we had one on you
know the microbiome of plumbing and so we try to make it interesting and
exciting for for everybody to keep learning and and you know i know you’re a lifelong learner right
it’s one of my goals well i think you accomplish your goal on a daily basis
you know i’ve always looked at a day that i did not learn something new was a wasted day
yeah i get really excited so so you’ve learned something new today already now
you know there’s a bacteria called sphingomonas i’m not going to remember how to say it but yes i know it exists i know you’ve
you’ve really helped me with my biology of vocabulary uh so i’m a chemist by
trade and i got through biology but my hat is off to you and i wish i had a hat
like yours i don’t know biology just wasn’t uh what didn’t come to me as naturally as chemistry so i’m glad i
have people like you in my corner well we gotta have multi-disciplinary connections right so you can teach me
chemistry and and i can teach you microbiology and then we can we can beat legionella down i love it i love it i’m
going to let the scaling up nation blame you for this because you just reminded me of one of my worst dad jokes
you talked about a fungi so a mushroom walks into a bar and asks the bartender
for a beer and the bartender says no and the mushroom replies why not i’m a fun guy
i apologize it’s janet’s fault please don’t send your letters to me send them directly to her well i have something um
to share that i hope will make you laugh so it’s a little bit of a riddle
why did legionella cross the road why did legionella cross the road to get
away from dr stout of course [Laughter] there you go
there you go can i ask you a couple of questions about the uh the exam for assc
1280. so we always talk about the cwt exam and people want to know how to sign up for
that what it’s like can you explain the process for the asse exam
yeah so well first of all where do the questions come from so a group of experts i wasn’t part of that part of
the process but they came together and designed those questions much like the certification exam
delivered by awt assc delivers the test it’s a proctored exam
it’s through your computer and so somebody’s watching you as you take the exam it’s a 100 question
exam you have to pass it with 80 or higher in order to be certified and so
they they make it very easy when you register for the training they register you for the exam uh and as i said you
can take it immediately after uh the training or within two weeks it’s kind of nice that that that cost
for the exam is included in the training costs and as well as the guidebook uh
and so they make it very very easy for you and and you know everybody sort of gets nervous and starts sweating when
you know they have to take a test so i can tell you that our pass rate is about 96
wow that’s great well i’m pretty proud of that actually and i i attribute it to
the the instructor team that we have and the format and you know if you make
people have you know make them laugh make it enjoyable it you know the information
sticks better so you know people don’t have to be too nervous at the end of the
training and they can have great confidence in their ability to pass that certification exam
if somebody already has their certified water technologist designation is this something that they should do
yes yes and this is there’s two ways to do it or the two ways that i think about it one is
as i mentioned you know everybody and their brother or lemmings to the sea said i could do this well how do you differentiate yourself
you know you know that you’re better and different than the rest of the pack well
this uh having this credential you know at your signature block and you can tell
people i’m credentialed and a certified legionella water management specialist through assc
makes you different and and i’ll just share real quick i i just came back from the national infection prevention
conference apec and i went to a a session on water management and in the
bio sketch of one of the speakers it said that he was assc certified to 1280
as a legionella water management uh specialist and you know these things differentiate you from other people the
other thing that’s going to happen especially in healthcare much like there’s a requirement for training
called icra infection control risk assessment and whenever they contract
with people they want to see that they are icarus certified and and the
carpenters union does that assc and the ua do that so that’s a credential that will be
required that is required for people working in construction in hospital
hospitals and i predict that that will be people looking for hiring people that have the
certification let’s shift gears just slightly is there anything new going on in testing
there’s some saying about everything’s new but it’s not and so there’s a lot of discussion about polymerase chain
reaction and i think it’s just you know although marketing is extremely important a lot
of the times this sort of thing is is sort of marketing and what i want people to
understand about polymerase chain reaction is it’s been around a long time the first study i did with pcr and
legionella was with osha actually back in the 90s because they were doing going out and
doing case investigations and they wanted results quicker and so they
teamed with us to evaluate at that time a commercially available pcr test
and one of the things that was true then and continues to be true today is that
there was great concordance matching in terms of results presence and and if
you’re doing quantitative pcr amount between legionella demofula testing
and by culture and legionella and amophala testing by pcr good concordance
in every study that we’ve done from the beginning to now so i have great confidence in that
what’s new on that front is that now we can we can sort of parse out presence of
legionella demophilus syria group one with a different probe so now you’ve got legionella nemophila they channeled him
off of surgical one that also showed great concordance right the one that hasn’t shown great
concordance is the is the probe that’s for the family the legionella family all 60 species in
the family there’s a probe for that that is often positive when culture is
negative so there’s not concordance and i saw that back in the 90s and continued
to see it going forward and in fact one of our phd graduate students really identified the reason why
it’s because that probe reacts with things that are not legionella things
like pseudomonas non-tuberculous mycobacteria proteus so it’s picking up
other things but it’s saying it’s legionella so my caution to everybody is be careful
about interpreting the genus probe that says it’s one of the legionella species
always if you’re going to use it always use it together with culture to be sure
the other takeaway about pcr is that there’s something called negative predictive value
so if my pcr is negative am i really pretty sure that the culture would be
negative and the answer to that is yes so many people are saying you could use pcr with
confidence if it’s negative and so i can know for sure that or have
great confidence that the culture if it’s done would also be negative so those are my two really important i
think take-home messages when using pcr and most of the time we use it in case
investigations and that’s really the only time that speed really matters when you’re doing water management
you’re using testing for legionella to validate and this is the language of water
management to validate that the plan is working that you are controlling legionella so it’s a check mark you know
to close the loop on that process that you don’t have the urgency there so
we can tell you within four or five days if legionella’s present or not you have the piece of data that says my
my program is working or my program needs to be tweaked or my water treatment
of the cooling tower needs to be tweaked so only you know the speed sort of
benefit of pcr is really mostly germane in case investigations
i’m sure they’re listeners out there and they’re thinking you know i’m supposed to test for legionella so i do it once a
year just to make sure i can check the box and i’ve heard you speak on percent of positivity do you mind
letting the nation know a little bit of more about that no i’d i’d love to actually and and when
you you mentioned earlier the new york state and um you know regulations that
came out of the bronx outbreak so for new york state there’s new york city
regulation new york state and you will actually see the 30 metric related to
the presence of legionella in building water systems you’ll you’ll actually see them use that as a cut point and it
actually comes from our work at the pittsburgh va medical center back in the 19 yeah i’m going to have to reveal how
long i’ve been doing this back in the 1980s and so what we did is every month we would test the water
and we would test the patients and we were looking to see when a case of legionnaire’s disease popped up
well every time it went the the testing of the water went above 30 percent and
that means if just for easy math if more than 3 out of ten faucets or showers are
positive for legionella particularly legionella and amophyla syrup one bam we’d see a case
and then we’d do at that time we were doing heat and flush we’d knock it down we’d follow follow the environment we’d
follow follow the patients as soon as the percentage of positivity of those faucets and showers went above 30
percent bam again we’d see a case and so that paper was published in the 1980s so that
tells you when the risk goes up to an unacceptable level
the other piece of this with the 30 metric is and you can appreciate this trace i
think you can’t completely eliminate legionella whether it’s from a cooling
tower or a potable water distribution system you can knock it down you can
hold it down with water treatment but you can’t eliminate it you’re never going to sterilize a water system or a
cooling tower it’s just naturally occurring bacteria so we’re not asking
people to get to zero legionella we’re asking people to get to zero cases of
legionella right so that’s the real goal zero cases of legionnaires disease not
zero legionella in the water janet something that i get the privilege of doing is some water treatment
companies ask me to come in and look at their accounts or look at their service reports and before somebody finds a
mistake can i find a mistake so they can learn from it and just recently
there were some high tests on positive legionella and they said they did a
sterilization on numerous reports what should that report have said
disinfection not sterilization because sterilization means you’ve eliminated
the bacteria completely you can’t do that it’s impossible
so and what is a typical disinfection so we we did some tests we found some
positives they were high enough that there was an action step that was needed
is it one size fits all is it just what we’re used to doing what it’s easy to do
how do we determine what the best course for disinfection is so it depends on
which type of water system you’re talking about so in your example where you were auditing which kind of water
system was it that was a cooling tower okay cooling towers so
again we’re not looking for zero legionella in the water and you’ll see
some metrics for example and i’ll just do a plug for the cooling technology
institute guideline 159. i would encourage everybody to get a copy of that from cti it’s very
inexpensive but it’s one of the best examples of managing cooling towers
and specifics not only of targets but also putting the testing into context so
one of the things i’ve always sort of hammered is that this testing is not a and the results are not health-based
metrics it’s not that these numbers mean you’re not going to have a legionnaires disease case or you are going to have a
legionnaires disease case these are performance-based metrics they are telling you how well your biocide
program is performing in controlling legionella i am perfectly fine with
anything about you know like if you if your results are 20 colony forming units
you’re good you’re maintaining and if they start to go up logarithmically
tenfold increases 10 hundred thousand so at each one of those increments now we
have to have a corrective action that isn’t dump a whole lot of bleach into
the tower because for a long time people were just doing so much damage to their cooling towers by doing what used to be
called the wisconsin protocol you know any positivity made people very nervous and they just hyperchlorinated the heck
out of it you don’t have to do that you can have incremental changes in water treatment with logarithmic changes in a
cooling tower of legionella so concentration based metrics in a cooling tower where you’ve got a body of water
and you can test it is fine in a in a water distribution system
as we just talked about that 30 percent metric you’re looking at how extensive the distribution of legionella is
through the entire system and it also depends on who occupies the building so
if you’ve got a commercial office building i don’t get as nervous about
the presence of legionella as i do in a healthcare facility you know that has a bone marrow transplant unit or an
oncology unit or an icu or a nicu neonatal intensive care unit no babies
should ever get pseudomonas or legionnaires disease right and so those are the times when you want to
either in response to case or a suspected case or constantly being in
excess of 30 percent you need to start talking about disinfection approaches so
it’s easier to apply chemistry to a cooling tower because you don’t have to worry about exceeding drinking water
regulations but you know the the tool kit for potable water you know chlorine chlorine
dioxide monochloramine uv is not that great maybe in a small
area ozone not so great because it dissipates so quickly so those are the
typical tools in the toolbox to address the presence of legionella in water
distribution systems of buildings they all have pros and cons and that’s why you need professionals trained in what
those pros and cons are what the limits are and how to sort of navigate that regulatory maze for permitting is really
important as well i’m thinking back a couple of years ago and of course we’re still experiencing
it but there was this thing called covid and the world shut down and the water in
our buildings just stagnated then we came back online there were issues i’m
curious as a microbiologist as a legionelogist what did you learn during that time
well i was really really worried and this is the reason why i was really
really worried is because with all that stagnation and lack of you know treated
water coming into the building you know what the bacteria were doing trace i
imagine they were having a party they were having a party in the pipes and so
i was like very very concerned about this and i and actually there was a
front page new york times article about legionella being found in schools
during the covet shutdown and so there was you know not just schools but other buildings that have been shut down you
know commercial office buildings uh schools you know parts of long-term care
facilities hospital units and so it was a a confluence you know the perfect
storm for legionella to have the party in the pipes because the growth of those
other organisms create uh growth factors that legionella needs there’s no disinfectant in that water
so what happened was a lot of people in water treatment and microbiologists and others got together and they sort of
devised some protocols for how to approach those shutdowns how
to do chlorination of those buildings flushing protocols all of that to try to make
sure that the water that’s in those shut down buildings doesn’t cause disease so
you know i’m still sort of waiting for the other foot to drop as buildings come come online but i think you talked
earlier about you know people learning about legionella and the risks i think
one of the things that makes me feel good is that when the shutdowns happen people were thinking about legionella
they were thinking about the fact that this situation increased the risk for people going into those buildings after
a shutdown so so that did my heart good made me feel like we have really come a
long way in our understanding and people responded to that risk pretty quickly
well let’s shift gears just a little bit and if you don’t mind i’m going to let the scaled up nation know of a
conversation you and i had it was probably a couple of years ago and you learned that i had an assistant and uh
i’m very particular about how i like things done i like to be high performing i like to do things for people and i
like to make sure that i can get things done and i just couldn’t do them all myself and my secret is i don’t do them all
myself i have got a fantastic team that helped me do everything that i do
including produce this podcast and you were asking me a little bit about that
and uh i’m just curious what did you find from that conversation and what did you end up doing and was that helpful
and what does the nation need to know right and so everybody i think knows this intuitively but also needs to be
reminded from time to time that you don’t get to a certain level of
accomplishment by yourself and and you know i like to take the opportunity
lots of times to give kudos to the people that that not only helped me to
achieve the goals that we have of ending legionnaires disease and crashing the
party in the pipes so we have many many people here at special pathogens laboratory working together to
accomplish those goals and so there’s a couple of things that come to mind when you ask me that
question trace the first one is i asked you about a virtual assistant
you know actually it really wasn’t my idea it was the people around me going hey
janet you can’t get all this done uh you need help yeah they care about you they want to
get you some help well yeah and um and i was i was like great idea
how do i find an assistant and so that’s when i called you up and i said you know
what do you do and you gave me a great recommendation because i was trying i was struggling with a a warm body in the
office versus virtual and and you really helped me kind of lean towards virtual
and it was it’s been a godsend and the person that you recommend recommended is just terrific so i would say you know
for people that uh you know the images i don’t know if you’ve seen these jugglers where they’ve got the
plates on the sticks and they’re trying to keep them all in the air and if you’re like that if
you’re one of those people and you you definitely need an assistant and they can increase your productivity and
effectiveness by taking those things off your plate and then the other thing
that we did here that you and i have talked about is two things one is the
organization vistage uh for ceos ceos and then there’s a level for
sort of the manager supervisory level within your organization to teach them share learning empower
them very valuable and then from that actually i was introduced to eos which
you you also these are things that you and i have shared both in terms of our knowledge and also
experience and the benefits of having done that and so i i just think if you
want to be a high-performing individual and a high-performing business you need to look outside of your
expertise and get people that are uh you know have systems have programs that can
fine-tune your organization so you know i i can’t say enough about the benefits of that i’m pretty sure you
experience the same thing am i right absolutely and i’m thinking i had a very
similar situation where a good friend of mine in a group that we meet on a regular basis he was saying trace
there’s no way you can do all this i’m worried are you gonna have a heart attack are you taking care of yourself i
mean what are you what are you doing and i kind of brushed him off and and he cared about me and he kept
asking and he was the one that gave me the solution and i never even thought about
an assistant let alone somebody that was virtual and then i told him that
and really what it was at first i was ashamed that i couldn’t do everything and i didn’t want people to know i
couldn’t do everything because then maybe i’m failing but i was i can’t do everything and nobody can and he was
trying to help me and people around me were trying to help me and then i had to wrestle with the fact
that well if i had time to train somebody i would have done it by now so how could i possibly get somebody to
help me but of course you do something one two three four five times while
you’re training somebody you never do at the sixth seventh eighth ninth and on times and and that’s where the time
comes back yeah and um as you’re talking i i’m remembering too that you know not
only did these things like vistage and eos help the organization but you need
to also be helping the individuals within your organization and the busy guy that you are you know
you do this thing called masterminds and i really have seen a tremendous
benefit there’s two people that have been in our organization that have participated in that
have just grown leaps and bounds and it sort of touches on the both the
professional development but also the personal development that we all have to
go through if we’re going to be you know fully successful humans not only in our business but in our personal lives
family friends as well and and so you know you didn’t pay me to make that
commercial for you but it is part of what i have implemented in our organization to
really you know if you’re going to be a race car you know to really really tune up the race car
well thank you for that and and this is a very unique perspective for me because you’re a business owner you are not in
the rising tide mastermind but you’ve got two individuals that are what was the conversation like when they
asked you if they could join and why do you continue to let them be
members and and give their time and of course the the money that it takes to be a member well a couple of things you
know they obviously heard it from their peers and the value
that it brought to them professionally as well as personally and and i think you’ve integrated into mastermind some
of the concepts that you and i have learned through vistage and and and then taking it to another level
and so i was already primed to understand the value of that kind of
thing for for people both professionally and personally and so when they told me about it and of course i knew you
and i was like of course uh that’s a great idea and so uh they didn’t both join together one
did it first and then said you know i really think you would benefit from this as well
it’s kind of like in business the best thing is word of mouth uh people it’s having a positive experience and then
that’s sharing that with others and uh just coming away a better professional and a better uh
human and uh and as a business owner you know one of the things i always say to people
is you know we work so many hours you want to come to a place of work that
feels good uh that you’re valued that has that the the culture of the
organization has core values that are meaningful and and that you know represent the people
as well as the business and so all of that comes together uh to really make people i think feel
really good about who they work for where they the organization and then the people within that organization
and and so it fits just very naturally into that and then you know as a as an owner of a
business you want people to want to stay in your organization you invest a lot in
training them and you know kind of growing them as a professional and you want them to stay with you as
long as possible and so i think in this day and age especially you know with uh
that’s one of the post-covet things you know we’ve been talking about covet you know people leaving their professions
people retiring early having difficulty filling positions you know you just really have to pay
attention to the people that you know make that engine go i’m reminded by i think it was a wall
street journal cartoon it was two managers talking to each other and they said what if we invest in our people and
they leave and the other one said what if we don’t and they stay [Laughter]
that’s a great that’s a great one janet in just a short month not even that long
we’re going to be in vancouver together at the awt conference tell us what you guys are
doing there well you know we always come up with a theme and and so you know
it’s a big reveal so i can’t tell you but you you know it’ll be fun right and
i’ll just remind people of last year was the party in the pipes so we were the party crashers and so we did that 70s
disco look and then one year we did blt
i remember that best legionella test and we served little mini blt sliders and we
dressed like chefs and so and then you know we were we were just talking about you know fueling uh
your company and one year we did uh sort of the the indy 500 race car theme and
we had uh you know driver jackets on and that sort of thing so we make it fun we
talk to people about the educational opportunities with assc and other things
we’re working on an online version of that so we’ll have a lot of things to talk about i will say my favorite that you did was
the legionella lager and the stout ale i’m trying to remember what was the theme for that year i just remember the
beer well there was this place in pittsburgh that you could brew your own beer and then
they they allowed you to have a custom label and so the the stout ale had my
picture on it and the legionella lager had a picture of a culture plate with legionella
colonies on it and we had a little little competition you know which one would win the taste test you know
legionella lager uh or stout ale and it was a really it was a a tie uh and it was really really
fun fun to do that so it wasn’t so it was just like we were just having a good time every time i walk into my local grocery
store i’m i’m looking for those labels i can’t imagine that they have not made it out to a national level yet
well janet it’s always fun to have you on the show and it’s always fun to ask you lightning round questions but since
it’s your 12th time here i got to keep making questions up so here are some questions that my staff
wrote for so are you ready for the new new new lightning round session
let’s do it all right so as a child what did you want to be when you grew up
you know believe it or not i i really wanted to be a carpenter and and here’s the story they were
building a house next door and i was about five and i would go over there every day
i was like under foot with the workmen and then at lunchtime you know what eventually would be the living room
they’d sit around the unfinished walls and this guy would always have a kitkat
in his lunch and he would slide it across the floor to me and i just thought that was the greatest thing so i
thought i’d be a carpenter so uh everybody’s wanting to learn more
what should people have on their bookshelves to learn more about legionella
well our guidebook of course of course of course and you can go to our website
specialpathogenslab.com and you can purchase the guidebook by itself i wrote this book with help from others
of course like we were just talking but the design of it was intended to make it
fun colorful easy to read hitting all the most important points
about legionella and i think we did a great job you know there’s qr codes you know sort of is our qr codes the best
thing they are we’re using them on products it’s amazing i haven’t done a powerpoint in years without a qr code so
people can actually go somewhere and get more information right so we have qr codes in there that take you to videos about you know
how to sample cooling towers uh you know bacteria replicating inside of amoeba
movies i mean it’s just really fun so i would say if you need a book on legionella get the puzzled by legionella
book by the legionella experts well our producer here corrine wrote these questions and i know for a fact
she’s a marvel fan and she really enjoyed wanda vision did you see that
i didn’t well and the premise is is two marvel superheroes were trapped in a tv
show so if you were trapped in a tv show which one would you want it to be
you know that’s a there’s so there’s so much great tv now right
but lots of times i’m channel surfing and i’m they’re always playing seinfeld
episodes so i think i’d love to be trapped in a seinfeld episode because
it’s so hilarious i love seinfeld i’m curious which one would it be what’s
your favorite episode that you want to live over and over and over again well it’s got to be
elaine dancing right so many good ones as soon as i say that
everybody’s like you can see the thumbs going out and [Laughter]
that’s great last question what is one thing you think everybody should experience within
their lifetime international travel and i say that i mean there’s so many
great places to go but this is the reason that i say it i found when i uh you know my father was
career navy and they you know the saying was you know joined the navy see the world and well mine was study legionella
and see the world uh because i got invited to go to places like paris or or
berlin and what i remember about it is that it was incredible but it was
humbling because you don’t know the language and you learn about other cultures and we’re not
you know we’re so u.s centric over here it’s just really opens you up as a
person when you travel internationally janet thank you again for coming on the
scaling up h2o podcast we always learn so much when you’re here well it’s just always fun and i i’m so
grateful to you trace for inviting me and one of my favorite words is
gratitude and there’s this there’s this uh phrase in this book called the power of nice
where it says it’s not happiness that brings gratitude it’s gratitude that brings happiness and so
i’m really grateful to you for the opportunity and i hope i get to come on again sometime
janet we love having you on the podcast we always learn so much when you pay us
a visit horse janet has been on multiple times and i’m sure we’re going to have her on
multiple more times it’s so great when we can get the experts around a particular topic to
dispel some of the myths and folklore we all hear about certain topics and when
it comes to legionella i want to say that we’re all getting better at sticking to the facts but let’s face it
there’s still some misinformation out there so making sure we know the right
dialogue we need to have with our customers and we know the tools that we can help get to them so they can make
better decisions that means that we are being the best advocate that we can be for our
customers and if we can do that they are going to stay our customers for a very very long time if you want to get some
of the information that janet was talking about she does a great job of updating her web page she’s got just a
treasure trove of information all about legionella things you might not have even thought about asking so if you go
to scaling up h2o.com go over to the show notes we’ll have a link that will take you directly to that area on her
webpage and i think you will be very glad you made the trip over there because there
is just so much documentation it will allow you to really educate yourself so
you can do a better job with your customers nation i love that we are celebrating
getting to know a topic better together and together we will make sure that
we’re bringing good information to our customers that good information will help make good decisions and those good
decisions will make all of our companies healthy and make sure that we are making the
water treatment industry better one customer at a time one water treater
at a time one company at a time nation i will be back at you next friday with a
brand new episode until then have a great week folks
[Music] why do we call our mastermind the rising
tide mastermind well i know you’ve heard me say before a rising tide raises all
ships that’s one of my favorite quotes because it’s so true the better we do
the better somebody else can do and vice versa that’s exactly what the rising
tide mastermind is it’s our members helping other members to achieve success
and to get there further and faster to find out more about the rising tide
mastermind go to scaling off h2o.com forward slash mastermind