The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
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one of the highest pass rates time is running out to register for the last class of 2022 this class will be
october 3rd through 5th group discounts are available to learn more go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash special once again that’s scaling up h2o.com
forward slash special welcome to scaling up h2o the podcast
where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems i’m trace blackmore the host of the scaling up h2o
podcast and you are joining us today right in the middle of legionella awareness month each and every august we
talk about the topic of legionella to try to give you better information so
you can have better conversations with your customers and today we are
finishing the interview with russell baskin of tower water who lives in new
york his company’s in new york he has customers in new york and as you probably know the laws are
different up there when it comes to how they deal with verifying legionella
bacteria and we learned a lot about that last week we’re continuing to learn from
russ this week but before we do i’ve got a couple of things that i want to remind
you of the first one is my favorite thing to talk about it’s awt’s annual
convention that’s going to be september 21st through 24th in vancouver
i’m going to be there so many of you are going to be there i can’t wait to see you there and i also
want to remind you that as you register for that if you are a business owner you want to make sure that you register for
the business owners conference which is taking place one day before the annual convention so if you are a
business owner register for that because you are going to get so many extra items that you wouldn’t
have gotten just from the convention because people are coming together as business owners and sharing best
practices and best ideas and you’re going to meet people that are going to be able to answer questions that you
have about running your company now we do stuff like this all the time in the rising tide mastermind that’s why i
built the rising tide mastermind but i know not everybody’s in the rising tide mastermind so this allows you to start
getting some best practices outside of your company and if you have not adopted
a philosophy of looking outside of your company to figure out how you can do
things better how other people have built the mouse trap that you can bring back and rebuild your mouse trap you are
spinning your tires and you do not have to so i urge you to experience this
through the business owners conference which is one day before the awt conference and if you’re wondering all
these dates because you didn’t write them down don’t worry my staff did that for you you can go to our events
calendar and we have all of this listed and it will even take you where you need to go to register for anything that we
mention on this podcast something else you might want to put on that calendar is the water pro conference that’s
taking place in national harbor maryland september 26 through 28th and that is
all about networking technology and education around water to find out more of that
please go to our show notes page and we will have all of that there and then finally the association of metropolitan
water agencies is having their conference october 30th through november 2nd in savannah georgia that could not
be a better place to be and if you are in the drinking water industry this is
probably a conference that you want to check out so go to our show page and we will have all of that information for
you and of course when you are learning from other agencies when you’re learning
from other people when you’re having conversations about better business practices
about legionella you are getting better and that’s the whole point of being in this industry if
you were ever bored in this industry you are doing it wrong you should never be bored there is continuous improvement
available all around you you just have to look for it and those are some ways
that you can start doing that another way that i know you’ve already started is listening to our friend james here he
is [Music] welcome to thinking on water with james
the segment where we don’t give you the answers we give you the topics and questions for you to think about drop by
drop now let’s get to it in this week’s episode we’re thinking
about choosing a cycle as a concentration set point for cooling towers and boilers
or as trace likes to say concentration ratio back in march we thought about how to
calculate the cycles of concentration in this series now let’s think about how we choose the
set point what will limit how high we can concentrate water in a cooling tower or
boiler what is the basis for these limits how do you know what the limits are
what guidelines do you use how does the chemistry you apply to a system impact what the upper limits may
be what water analysis should you run on a system in the future to ensure you are
staying within your limits with no problems take this week to think about choosing
the set point for cycles of concentration or concentration ratio be sure to follow
tow 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 thanks for that thinking on water you really get us thinking and that gets
us better and as we get better the whole water treatment community gets better well let’s get right into our conclusion
of my interview with russell baskin
so with that russ so you you learned bill pearson pleaded with everybody this is coming this is coming this is coming
and everybody said yeah right and of course we’re all enjoying a long
hiatus after 188 came out you got a month after it came out correct
so had you read ashrae’s 188 by that time no did not even have a copy of it
yet so you got a letter you probably went online and you bought a copy i’m imagining exactly
and then you read it and you started coming up with a plan you kind of outlined it but what did you have to do
to get in compliance and then what do you wish you would have done if you knew
this was coming to make getting in compliance easier right so the first step was to quell the
emergency right everything was emergency order at that point they didn’t actually
jump into the plan yet they let you know that there is a law coming that’s going to require you to
make a water management plan but the step one was do this emergency order then they put a temporary law in police
to move that to that was august of 15 they said there’s emergency order and you will have an
ashrae 188 cooling tower water management plan by march of 2016. so
they did give you a little time to get a water management plan but uh
you know there weren’t very many people that were building water management plans in 2015 when this thing came out a month
before so literally i had to get a hold of a lot of different people people that
knew about water management plans and how to put them together you need to get your resources in order
you need to start um there’s plenty of things that you should start doing today so that you’re
ready for an emergency tomorrow and we can discuss those going forward
but there’s a lot of plans that i would have done differently had i known that
you know something was coming within the next you know six months i would have been totally prepared for
that right i remember you sharing a story and you said what i’m getting ready to say would
have been so easy if you would have correlated the data because you probably
already had it or it was easy to get but then because you had just a such a finite amount of time to get it it made
things so stressful and what i’m referring to was tower serial numbers they wanted all of those
yeah model numbers as well and guess what you’d be surprised how many towers you have that don’t have
model and serial numbers at all not an easy thing to get they wanted to know operational times
they want to know a lot of operational data how many connected tons guess what if you have a package unit building
you’d have to add up all those small package units to figure out what the tonnage is and a lot of places there’s
more connected tons than there is tons of the cooling tower there’s definitely an array of data that
we always get now and we put in a database for you know if they ever need it again
plus it helps us out right if uh you know we’re describing a problem to some mechanical contractor
and we have models and serial numbers they can help our customers quicker as well so what are the top things that we
should be recording that if we do get a law that’s passed in our area that we
have quick access to so yes definitely models model number serial numbers number of cells
operational data volume recirculation rate whether there’s some
type of filtration or not how it backwashes with city water or
tower water any kind of areas that would cause
stagnation um so that would be your trouble areas within your cooling system
those were the basic basics parts there you want to know what floors the cooling towers are on
and what floors the machinery or pumps and so forth is on because inevitably
you’re going to have to make a drawing of those systems and it should be enough that if somebody
were to pick up your drawing they would know where to find your water treatment equipment find the tower find the pump
stations and you know have at least an idea of how the water flows through
the system rust do they care at all about the chiller or is it all about the cooling tower
they care about chillers that are stagnant that’s what they really care about they don’t care about the model or
serial number of the chiller they don’t care if it’s shell and tube they don’t care if it’s heat exchanger
they don’t care any of those things what they do care about they do care about
biocides and use they do want to see an oxidizer they do
care that you’re having some type of corrosion control they know at least that iron legionella likes iron so they know
that sds sheets even some way to contain a spill should a spill happen and you got to realize
that the department of health comes into buildings for a lot a lot of other things not just legionella
and i’m guessing just like any other entity when one department finds an
issue people magically show up from other departments to see if they can find other issues
correct so you gotta treat these people nicer than you would treat anybody else
it’s all about the experience without bribing somebody obviously but it’s all about that experience that
they get you give somebody a hard time they’re gonna give you a hard time that’s the way it goes
so speaking of the experience what is it like to treat a cooling tower to have an
account in new york city right now what are some things that you have to do that are different before that letter
well in some ways it’s made water treatment a little bit better because it’s forcing water treatment companies
to go up and actually look at the cooling tower it’s forcing water treatment companies to fix alarms on
water treatment equipment and to test that pumps and controls are working uh
as far as water treatment companies goes it’s forcing the legionella test within every
90 days not at 91 days but within every 90 days it’s forcing a full inspection of the
tower not just look in yeah there’s water in it no algae disappear but they’re looking at phil they’re
looking at misdemeanors looking at overflow looking at water leaks right it also talks about operation so if if a
cell goes down for any period of time you have to clean and disinfect the system so
it’s also talking about twice a year cleaning so no more once a year cleaning
you must do at least twice a year cleaning so in some ways it’s good for water treaters but you know and i know that
it’s about the level of legionella in the cooling tower that can be really really disruptive and
you know even today there’s no set amount that says you’ll have an outbreak at 100 colonies per mil or a thousand
colonies per mil and you know the doh kind of makes that up and just a
simple greater than or less than sign can cause a huge problem so in new york
it’s basically you have to do something if it’s greater than or equal to 10 colonies per milliliter which in
europe it’s one so we maybe we shouldn’t complain all that much but realize that a lot of testing
companies can’t test below 10 10 is presence and non-detect is absence
so you have to find laboratories that can test below that 10 range and we found out that 25
of our rushing back to customers can be avoided because they have a reading
under 10. so russ you mentioned some of the the guidelines some of the mandates i guess
that the department of health wants you to do and of course it’s weird with new york because you’ve got the state and
then you’ve got the city so i want to ask you about that but before we get there what do you wish
the legislators knew about legionella that us water treaters know
so the legislators really yield to the department of health
and if you know anything about the department of health or the cdc or any of those entities
they’re kind of looking for every way possible to not
have a problem and just like in covet times and maybe i don’t you
don’t want me talking about covet but you can talk about covet i think everybody’s familiar with it sure it’s
just like some of these things are not practical they’re almost impossible to avoid
and yet we understand their best practices but first of all legionella can come in
through the drinking water and infect your tower it can come from another tower and infect your tower
and you can do everything possible and there’s ways that you might not be able to get under 10
ever no matter what you do so you have to really understand that
there’s a practical nature to it and you know
rather than just talking to the department of health they need to talk to industry leaders
and i’m not just talking about consultants i’m talking about the people that actually do the work and actually
understand that water treatment sometimes is as much of an art as it is
a science and what works here might not work properly across the street
so you know those are the things that are missed when you say when you disinfect you have to have a
non-detect there’s places that you can’t get non-detect and no matter how hard you try
because it’s constantly being re-inoculated by something or someone so you really need to get the practical
practical knowledge into it and fortunately for other states that are starting to go
through this there are some practical people that are talking to legislation and they are sitting in the awt and they
are taking ashrae 12080 classes to understand that
this is not a perfect science and you know there’s going to be there’s going to be breakthrough cases and there it’s
about control not about eliminating well let’s talk about the asse 12080
that you just mentioned some people aren’t aware of it a lot of us have already gotten that certification
who needs it and why do we need to be aware of it so you know in canada they just passed just
recently within a month they they are making people cooling tower certified
to treat water and i don’t know where i just got that information but i did just get that
information and i was totally shocked but realistically speaking this is something
that you should have and will need to have to write water management plans um you want to be an expert in your
field right because if you’re not going to be one of the major companies out there is
gonna be and they’ll be in you’ll be out and also it it elevates your status
as of being knowledgeable in the field just like the cwt does does the same thing for you in the
legionella realm uh it certainly doesn’t make you an expert
it really doesn’t but it makes you be aware of where the problem is going to be when it’s going
to be what you’re going to do about it who should be notified how do you get the right people to
assist you in the problems you’re going to have and it really puts a more practical spin
on the legionella itself so i think it’s really necessary
i would encourage everybody to go in it and i actually taught part of the first class at the awt it it was really well
received there was probably 30 people in that class and although it was a little bit
difficult because it was our first time through it i thought it was really practical hands-on
and uh the people we got really good reviews over doing it so i totally recommend it for any
professional water treater well i’m pretty involved in the awt’s training program and i can tell you that
it was very well received and people really enjoyed it so you guys did a
great job you were asked with just a couple of months to put it together and it was fantastic what you did and i know as uh
the education uh committee person that we’re going to make sure
that we offer that at least once a year at awt and there are also some other
companies that are doing that we’ve got some people that advertise on this podcast that uh that actually have some
classes that you can take online so if you’re not aware of asse 12080
we’ll have information we’ll have links on our show notes page as russ said eventually you’re going to wish you had
it otherwise you’re going to be out and somebody else is going to be in i love how you put that russ let’s back up just
a little bit because you were meant or i mentioned and i wanted to ask you about it that you got different laws with the
city and the state what the heck do you do with that so just like every law you have to go to
whatever’s more strict and new york city is stricter than new york
state so for instance new york state the legionella requirement is less than 20.
in new york city it’s greater than or equal to 10. so you know in new york i will tell you
outside of new york city we run to the 20 rule and in new york city we run to the 10 rule
there’s also different reporting requirements so in new york state you need to report
legionella on a quarterly basis to the new york state portal in new york city you don’t necessarily have to but
because it’s in new york state new york city is in new york state you have to do it right what’s interesting
also is new york state has a domestic water requirement that new york
city does not have for healthcare industry so you really have to be kind of sharp
on that it’s very loose and vague and it’s it’s just around pretty much around
testing but you need to know it exists because there is a thought out there that if you
know what ashrae 188 is and you know it because you’re certified to know it or you know it because you built a cooling
tower water management plan there is thoughts by lawyers that you are now
responsible to let your customer know that ashrae 188 is not just for cooling
towers it is for the entire building so just some
food for thought is that you want to make sure in some place in your literature that it says something like
that so at least you put them on notice that this is not just for cooling towers
russ if somebody wasn’t familiar with legionella and they want to just start
talking to their customers about writing a plan is that a good idea
yeah if you’re not well versed in it my first step would be to
a we never ever tested legionella without knowing what exactly we’re gonna
do if we find it so that is a no no off the bat if somebody just wants legionella tested you’re going to say
sure i’ll test this for you but realize if you get a positive reading over whatever range
you decide it’s going to be and it and it should be some pretty low range in the two-digit
range right is that we’re going to have to disinfect clean sanitize raise your bias i do
whatever whatever the protocol would be to do you’re going to have to do it but getting back to your original question
you really need you know as a first-time person out you really want to reach out to one of these
consultants that actually write plans and pay them the first time to go through the whole
thing with you and then you can decide yourself is this something i’m going to be doing or is
this something i’m going to hire somebody to do and maybe you hire them a couple times and then you do it yourself
in our company we went to the attorney the attorney said you can’t write these plans you’re not
an expert and i was kind of shocked by that stance and saying wait a minute i’ve been water treatment for
27 years at the time 25 years whatever it was i’ve gone through all this he
goes but how much legionella stuff have you done i go you got a little bit of a point
there so i put it out to a couple consultants and said we’re
going to use you for the plan we’ll do the services that go along with the plan and then once new york city decided that
they know better than the consultants and put a template in place and the consultants don’t want to work
the template the way because they know better than new york city you have a push-pull relationship here
and finally we had to bite the bullet and actually write our own plans so i
actually purchased 180 plans from one of our consultants that supports this
program and within a year and a half i had to convert them all over to
what i knew was the was the right thing and believe me you want to use whatever documents
the your department of health wants you to use because that’s what’s going to get the inspectors in and out of your
facilities quicker russ i love the statement that if you test for something you better know what
you’re going to do if you find something and i think that is the underscore that i want to make
sure everybody heard on this podcast because that’s where the fear comes from oh my gosh i don’t want to test for it
because i don’t want to know if i have it because if i know if i have it now i’m expected to do something
and then everybody wants to know who’s responsible for saying what it is that you’re going to do everybody’s pointing
fingers at each other so let’s talk about that a little bit let’s start with you said and i know we
have them too there are certain locations where you can do everything in your power but it’s just plumbed in such
a way there there are situations that you cannot clean everything or it’s getting in the system in a certain way
that you’re not going to get zero so the goal is not to get zero
but i know you’ve had these conversations with customers as well if you can’t get this legionella to zero
we’re gonna get somebody in here who can what should we be saying to that
i think it starts with education number one explain to them why you know i
always put it in terms of having a cold right so no matter what you do you’re going to
get a cold every now and again so no matter what a cooling tower does it’s eventually going to have a legionella
spike right you you take antibiotics you take medicine
you get better you still may have some symptoms lingering around you may get eventually get rid of all of
them just like you may eventually test non-detect and you put it in a way that the
customer can really understand what you’re talking about and i always look at water treatment and
water as if it’s the blood in somebody’s building and the blood of the building or the blood of the facility
and that all your organ your pump is your pumps are your heart and i kind of i kind of put it in those
perspectives so educating the customer first is the first response
um the second response is to get some get some backup get some backup from a
legionella expert that lets you know that this this is not something that i’m just
saying or my company’s just saying this is what the experts that wrote ashrae
188 actually say so that’s really helpful
and then you know be the expert you’re supposed to be so find the problem why they can’t get
non-detect right so find out where that extra pump is that’s not running or that
stagnant area that they need to eliminate and listen if you tell them
you’ve got to eliminate this bypass here in order to get even think you’re going to get up negative or non-detect
response they have to do something in order for this to happen and once they know they have to do something
and they have the education behind it and they have the training they’re usually much less apt to
you know be worried about it be worried about non-detect let’s keep it under a certain level
uh when you explain to people that there’s nobody up at the cooling tower there’s no fresh air intakes that close
you’re talking about you know the engineers of the facility or you know an occasional
whatever person that’s working on something and that you have to let them know that they should wear some n95 mask
or something when working around it it’s really helpful or you you know booster up the cleanings
maybe you have to do three cleanings a year instead of two so there’s there’s definitely ways to talk around it um
at the end of the day there’s some people you cannot convince and you can do multiple disinfections
you can do multiple pipe changes smart controls continuous chlorination or bromination
and if it doesn’t get to where it’s got to get to or you have valves that are shutting off that don’t allow the buy
side to get there you’re gonna have a major problem and so will everybody else it’s just if the other company
knows better one thing i will say that you have to be careful about and i hate to say that but
there are people that are unscrupulous out there and they will
take samples just to prove negativity and non-detect and you have to be aware
of who those companies are who those individuals are and
it’s sad it puts a it puts a stain on our industry but
let’s make sure we’re being realistic here right even a company as great as mine
we always hover in that 10 positivity rate and you know what it’s murphy’s law you
always get a legionella hit where you can’t have one it’s just the way it goes and if anybody tells you they only get
one percent positive legionella either they’re lying
or they have some unique system that none of us have right now
russ how do you protect your water treatment company without throwing
the client under the bus well obviously in in all of our documents and
all of our contracts and agreements we have statements in there that you know
this water treatment program is best practices to reduce the chance of
legionella but we by no means ever say that we’re gonna eliminate it a hundred percent
again it’s that training piece it’s again in our marketing material
and that’s really what we need to do we need to prove that we’re doing best practices all the time and
there’s going to be no there will be no time that you’re going to get away with one biocide anymore you need an oxidizing
and non-oxidizing if that’s what osha and the epa and the cdc and everybody else says that you need
then realize that either you’re going to use that or you’re going to use something alternative
but when you know something hits the fan you might be liable for not following
one of those guidelines the reason i phrase my question that way is because that’s why i think people are
scared to have the conversations they need to with their customer they feel like they’re throwing them under the bus
or they feel like that they’re not able to do something and that’s probably the
case they’re not able to do something because the customer’s not doing something and i try to coach people you know let
your customer know exactly what’s going on through education better decisions are made but i got to tell you i’m sure
you know as well a lot of the water treaters out there just aren’t having the conversations that they need to have
and you know what new york is a great platform because new york has what are the responsibilities of the building to
do right so the building has to has to take bacteria tests on a weekly basis
the building needs to check that the ph the conductivity and the temperature of
the water and the chlorine or orp or some biocide edition parameter monday
wednesday friday or actually within every two days so now the customer has to do this stuff
they have a requirement to do it they also have to inspect the cooling tower
on a weekly basis and they have to record all these things and they’re going to be out for inspection when they come so
if you can bring the regulations from new york to anywhere
and say coming soon to a client near you
and you you can get get them scared that they’re gonna have to do this and get
them being proactive hey we’re a proactive company we want to make sure that you’re protected
why don’t we get this in your budget for next year and start with a plan if my clients had a plan
before a regulation came in i’d be like you guys are good you guys are fine
don’t worry we’ll make the modifications and everything will be just fine so what if you have to test an extra two times a
year no big deal but because we had zero and we had to go into complete panic
mode so you guys have a great opportunity to start this process now
and even if everybody doesn’t jump on it guess what when they’re start talking about regulations
they’re going to remember that conversation and now they’re going to jump on it the one thing you should realize is that
there could be talk in your legislator legislative branch in your state right now and you don’t even
know it you don’t even know what’s going on you don’t even know that there’s a law pending to be passed so that would
be one of the number one things that would find out is there a law on the books or being worked on a draft
in the state legislator because if there is you better get a copy and you better
take it to an attorney or take it to some somebody that can read it and figure out what you’re going to do
about it that’s really really great advice russ i think we’ve all heard after we’ve
explained what could happen with legionella legislation a customer will
say when somebody makes me do it that’s when i will act what do you want to say to
that well i say that you have to at least document
that conversation okay and you know maybe it’s a once a year conversation or
once somebody changes their conversation but you wanna you do wanna document that
conversation so what we’ve been doing lately is we pick out our ideal customers
and literally tell them about ashrae 188 remind you is not just for
cooling towers and we actually asked the question you know if there’s no regulation would you still
be interested in doing this and we’ve heard the same exact answer that you’re saying well it’s not a regulation i’m
not ready to do it i’m not ready to entertain it and then i also spin it a little bit
differently and say if you knew that because you know about ashrae 188
that somebody if somebody god forbid got sick on your hot water system do you know
that you might possibly be liable for that they don’t like when i bring that situation up and then i say you know
what why don’t we discuss this in a couple months and you know when the new budget comes out right
so again you want to push that proactivity you want to document that conversation
and this is a big small world that we live in once somebody acknowledges it and starts to do it
people like to jump on that bandwagon wait a minute this guy’s doing it maybe i should look at this and when you get a
champion client that wants to be proactive and everybody wants to be that
that proactive guy that’s that’s how i see it spreading to be honest with you
russ we’ve covered a lot of territory today what is the absolute one thing you want
to make sure everybody leaves this interview with that’s a really good question
and i’m saying that whether you think it’s coming to you or not
you need to know about this okay i strongly recommend you talk to
somebody that knows we have great people in the awt world here that have written these plans
get one under your belt however if you have to steal somebody’s plan to get it i mean get it any way you can
that’s number one so you know you know what you’re doing get ashrae 188 the newest latest
greatest version 2020 i believe it is because they’ve changed it twice since 2015
and also contact your legislative branch and find out if there is an actual law pending in
draft in your state you do those three things you get a hold of a water management plan and go
through it a hold of ashtray 188 and no something is on the books in your state
that would be that would be a great jump start on this whole process and if i
would have done all three of those things and i saw was able to see in a crystal ball that something was going to be
coming i would have been well way more prepared and i would have gotten through this a
lot easier than what we had to well dust your crystal ball off 10 years
down the road what do you think legionella regulations look like in new york city
oh i 100 percent believe that legionella in new york city
and the surrounding states will all encompass ashrae 188 completely and naturally
there’s another rule coming out that’s going to encompass even more uh bacteria it’s going to cover more
bacteria than just legionella i think it’s 504 or 509 something like this
and i think it’s going to spread to domestic drinking water and
the revenue is high so the doh are finding finding people so they have
plenty of money to actually employ people to inspect things
bigger government seems to be a trend these days so add more people to the government
and it’s all buried under a giant health requirement and you see what happens when health is health is
you know big business really big business so they’re putting tons and tons of
money into infrastructure right now and water um you know they’re going to want to keep
it safe and health is on the forefront of everybody’s mind in 2022 right so
i would think that if kobit wasn’t here in 2019 2020 i guess it was 2020
i would probably think that both new york would have adopted domestic water
legionella and probably new jersey as well because uh it’s
if everybody knows out there only 28 of the cases come from actual cooling towers 56 percent of the cases come from
hot water so they have buildings that are sick in new york city that do not have cooling
towers so they know it we know it and we’re just keeping our heads in the
sand and that’s the way that’s the way i see it well russ if it’s okay with you i’d like
to get a copy of the presentation that mark and i were supposed to help you with but somehow you did it all on your
own and share that with the scaling up nation maybe uh maybe i’ll put that on my show notes page if that’s all right
with you it’s fine with me no problem russ this has been very informative
again you are you are giving the gift that you wish you had so many years ago
that would have made your life so much easier and uh of course that’s just the kind of guy you are you you like to pay it
forward so thank you for all of your wisdom having to live through this but
i’m not quite done with you yet i do have some lightning round questions so my first one
is if you could go back in time and talk to your former self on your very first
day as a water treater what would you tell yourself i probably would tell myself that
relax it’ll be fine if you can’t do it there’s nobody else that
can do it so that’s it i will tell you on a side note
i did stop eos for a few weeks during that it was my worst decision
that i could have ever made that would have helped me get through the this problem a lot quicker i just felt
that this was the number one problem that we had and i wasn’t ready to tackle one other issue
during this time and that was we probably shoved eos for three months
during this time what are some of the books that you’re reading so
i’m not a avid reader but this year joining the masterminds has
pushed me to read which i’m very very grateful for so the last
books that i’ve read um the gap in the game was a great book i’m
found myself in in the gap way too often so that was a real helpful
book russ if you will because it’s a great concept how would you explain the gap in the game
so the gap is the difference between what you ideally thought
an outcome was going to be and the actual outcome you got so i’m one of those super high achievers
and i’m so idealistic that i probably can never get to where i’m supposed to go
and i never look at how far i’ve actually gone and so that’s the actual gain is
from where wherever you were to where you are today versus where you were to where you
wanted to be so you know i have to force myself to look
at look at the game rather than the gap and it’s uh something i struggle with every single day but the book really
you know it’s kind of like is your cup half full or half empty yeah i think it’s a great concept dan
sullivan wrote that book and it was so simple i wish i wrote it i mean it was just just just so simple and then of
course the gain mindset is hey i didn’t have any of this when i started look what i accomplished
and i was just talking with somebody the other day and they said trace you’re gapping stop doing that so it’s become part of our vocabulary it seems like i’m
always gaining when other people are gapping and i’m always gapping when they’re gaining that’s how it works so i
interrupted you what are some of the other books you were going to mention so the other one was procrastinate on
purpose um and as you know from our masterminds meetings i totally gravitated to this book the focus of me
delegating tasks is one of the hardest things i have to do i’m great at procrastinating things
and now i understand there’s actually a purpose to procrastinate some things i’ve made really good decisions in my
life in spite of this book and i’ve always thought of my time as being more
valuable than money and that’s you know that this book actually spoke
to me and it it really gave me permissions to
eliminate things in my life and automate things that i i always knew should have been automated
and you know maybe maybe really prioritize things
and and do what’s the most important thing first yeah the terminology roy vaden the author of the book uses is
multiplier so what can you do that’s going to multiply your time and that’s
just ridiculous because we’re never going to get any more time but what we can do is we can do something today
so we never have to do it again tomorrow or we can train somebody so they can do it so we don’t have to do it or we can
automate it so we don’t have to do it and it’s just a fantastic concept
correct and i’m the kind of person that always says i’ll do it myself it takes
too long to train somebody and when you find that it takes 1 18 the amount of time to train
somebody then to do it yourself it’s very eye-opening i bought literally bought one of those books for everybody
in my family i thought it was so important and the last book was the um
revenue growth engine which is kind of like the eos of
sales to me that’s how i looked at it it’s a perfect outline for setting up your business for success and
for growing your business both both tall and wide and you know daryl amy
we actually got to meet him for a little while and answer my questions and if anybody knows when i’m on once i’m on
the call i’m going to ask every question there there possibly can be in in my mind and sure fire he answered every single
one of them yeah it was a great conversation of course whenever we read a book we try to get the author of that
book to come on and we call them a full cup to share on what’s uh what we’re
learning in the book and ask them questions and find out what the publishing company said it was too long
and they had to cut out and daryl amy was just fantastic it was it was a great
great interview a great q a so so moving on from that there’s no
doubt hollywood is going to learn about the life of russell baskin
when they do they’re going to start writing the script and all the different studios are going to fight over who’s
going to produce it when all that settles out and they start hiring actors
who do you want to play russ baskin i’m going to ask you this question do
you have anybody in mind that you would want to play wow you’re you’re turning turning the
tables um i would say who i don’t know actors very well um that’s why i asked
this question so i can learn more pop culture so i can play trivia better i don’t know i can i think i can see like
ben affleck playing you maybe um maybe um
i don’t know that i don’t know that just popped into my head for a second i don’t know where that came from so
the funny thing is i’m not crazy about this actor but he’s like the closest thing to a
superhero that i can think of i always have these visions of being a superhero
and uh i picked tom cruise to be honest with you okay very you know he’s short i’m short
he’s funny with the dry sense of humor that’s kind of me and then he’s got a lot of energy and a lot of
drive in a lot of these movies and he has some wit to him so
you know i i think that would fit me pretty well i think your answer is far
better than my answer russ my last question you now have the ability to speak with anybody throughout history
who to be with and why so again i’m not a big history buff but i
think in these times right now i would love to go back and meet jfk
that’s who i would want to meet them i think he would know how to get us out of the mess we’re in right now
and you know i think he could straighten a lot of things out and make things a lot clearer than they are today
and that’s that’s the closest person i can think of my history doesn’t go back too far
so 60s is pretty good my one of my favorite speeches is when he announced that we would be on the
moon before the decade ended i i just get chills when i hear him say that and
i think it’s the best mission statement and report on how we’re going to do
something with expectations and everything built in and of course a rising tide raises all
boats where we have the tagline for the rising tide mastermind that came from jfk so i love that answer that’s uh
that’s awesome russ i can’t thank you enough for sharing everything that you wish you
knew just a little bit earlier and giving everybody who is listening that doesn’t live in your state the
opportunity that you never had well i i really enjoy coming on here
i really hold the scaling up nation in very high regards and
again this makes me feel like i’m giving something back and i really appreciate the opportunity
as you can tell russ and i are great friends russ and i have shared a great
detail of information and issues with each other russ is a member of the rising tide mastermind
and we have just got a relationship where we know life is hard and running a
business is hard and we try to not do that alone so russ is one of the people
that i call on for advice and he calls on me for advice and we try to make our
lives a little bit easier by not having to redo work that one of us have already done and then in return i might take
something that he did and refine it and then return it to him and what he just gave me comes back better to him and
vice versa that’s the kind of relationship that we have and i hope you
have a relationship like that when you have relationships with people life’s just more fun and you get more
done nation i’m always looking for new ideas for this show
i couldn’t have done the beginning of this month’s episode episode 263 the introduction to legionella awareness
month has it not been for all of you out there in the scaling up nation sending in your questions that gave me
the kickoff for legionella awareness month of course if you have somebody that you want me to
interview or you’ve got some other questions or show ideas don’t keep that to yourself go to
scalinguph2o.com and navigate over to our show ideas page you can also leave us a voicemail of you asking your
question and we might play that on the air and if you don’t mind something you can do for me is you can take two
minutes and leave a review on your favorite podcast player that helps us in ratings and that helps us find new
members of the scaling up nation nation i hope you learned this month some
things that you can do to help yourself to help your company to help your customers around the topic of legionella
for those of you out there that maybe didn’t have any information around legionella i hope now you have a whole
list of items where you can read up on and it’s now part of your regular conversations with your customer
educating them on what they need to do and now they can see you as an even more
valuable resource than they did before you started this month off nation thank
you for listening and i’ll have a brand new episode for you next friday of scaling up h2o
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