The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
scandal nation you have heard me mention scranton associates before on this
podcast and they are one of the partners that i trust with my company to make
sure that i have some of the best products in the industry i trust them
because of their track record and they have that track record because of their experience how much experience four
generations of experience and that spans over a hundred years scranton associates
can help you with all of your water treatment products so if you have a question especially in this hard to find
raw material economy give them a call today and i’m sure just like me you will
be glad that you did and be sure to visit them at the awt conference in
vancouver at booth 239 for more information about scranton associates go
to scalinguph2o.com forward slash scranton
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 h2o podcast and nation whenever i get ready for a
show i always look at what we’re going to talk about what’s going on in the world what people are telling me that
they need help with and as i’m doing all of that as i’m getting ready for today’s
guest i just have to stop and acknowledge what an amazing industry that we are all
in we are in industrial water treatment and it is just an industry that has
never failed to amaze me we’ve got so many people that are willing to help other people
to get them further faster to get them to a higher level and ultimately i guess
that’s a selfish act because we’re helping the entire industry and when we can make the industry better
we all get better because the industry gets better and i just see so many
examples of that i just got an email from a scaling up h2o nation member
and they were telling me that they started mentoring somebody in their
company and they were somebody that was doing okay in water treatment but now they love it
and they just announced that they want to get their certified water technologist designation so that is just
amazing that somebody taking the time and working with somebody else has
sparked an unfound interest in that other person that now they truly don’t
just do a job they love what it is that they do and they love it so much that
they want to achieve what we consider excellence in the industrial water
treatment world and attain their certification now if you’re in the same type of water treatment that i am the
certified water technologist designation is the one that you want to go after however if you practiced another type of
industrial water treatment i am sure that there is a certification that you
can go after and when we’re talking about an industry that everybody’s helping everybody this is my utopistic
view of water treatment when everybody’s helping everybody get better when we are getting better our customers
are going to expect more the bar is going to get raised so incredibly high
that it is going to right so many wrongs in our industry and i can do a whole
show on that but i’m sure you can reach back in your mind and think of some things that i’m probably thinking of
those things just get corrected because our customers expect more from us when our customers expect
more from us we start out at a higher bar and we can do so much how do we get
to this idealistic water treatment dream well we do just that we dream and then
we figure out how to achieve that dream and i truly believe it is all of us
coming together and helping people get a little bit higher than where they are
right now so is there somebody that you know that could use a boost
is there somebody that you know that maybe might know a topic as well as you
know it and go share that with them when you do that you’re going to learn the topic even more and then is there a
topic that you need some help with maybe you can ask somebody to mentor you
when you get together with somebody that is helping you or you’re helping somebody else and by the way i think you
should have both roles when you’re doing that you’re making sure that you’re constantly
getting better you’re constantly challenging yourself and we are raising the bar in the industrial water
treatment community hey some conferences and different things that you might want to put on your calendar that are coming
up here they come the water pro conference september 26 through 28th in
national harbor maryland for more information on this conference go to our show notes page and we’ll have that
listed out for you another conference is the ida world congress and exhibition
that is going to be in sydney australia october 9th through 13th
this is an event specifically for water treatment and if you are in the
desalination and water reuse area this is something that you will want to check
out ida stands for the international desalination association more information on that is on our show notes
page something else you might want to put on your calendars is green build which is taking place in san francisco california
november 1st through 3rd of course green build is where professionals all over
come together to try to improve wellness resilience construction design
all things around building and there’s just so many cool things that happen in
green build if you’ve never been to a greenville conference you are missing out there are so much new technology
that is revealed at green build it’s just a lot of fun my friend charlie cicchetti is in this market and he will
not miss a green build and i always get lots of great stories when he comes back to that again november 1st through 3rd
san francisco if you’re in the area by all means go and for more information that will be on our show notes page
speaking of making the industry just a little bit better here’s our friend
james mcdonald [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 azoles
i’m talking about benzotriazole and telyl triazole and don’t forget the second l in
triazole first why are these easils used why is one used instead of the other at times
what is the impact of oxidizing biocides on each of them such as sodium hypochlorite
what are the recommended concentrations of benzoyl triazole into little triazole in a cooling tower or in a closed loop
when might you use a supplemental feed of azole to a system take this week to think about benzoyl
triazole and telling triazole be sure to follow tow 22 and hashtag scaling up h2o share
your thoughts on each week’s thinking on water i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to learning more from you
well thank you james always giving us something to think on well let’s go
ahead and get to our interview here it is
my lab partner today is jeff garrett of garrett callahan jeff we saw you on a
hang not too long ago and i reached out and i said we needed to get you on the podcast you so graciously said yes and
here you are i’m very happy to be here and thank you for having me absolutely we’re going to have fun
during this interview i mean your company is is impressive everybody’s heard of your company and you’ve had a
long history with your company four generations is that right yeah we have five generations right now
because my sister’s son has just started working for us in dallas well let’s let’s start with that i’ll
tell you what we’ll back up just a little bit so let’s say somebody’s never heard of garrett callahan they don’t
know who jeff is give the scaling up nation a brief introduction to yourself
i am a twin i’m a fourth generation owner of a business it is a privately
held water treatment company my dad and his three brothers did it and then my grandfather did it before that and my
great grandfather did it before that so i’m carrying on a tradition i’m i kind of say that i’m kind of steering
the boat i’m taking control of the boat over this time period but i’m gonna pass it on to the next generation and uh you
know we’re we’re just uh we’re an independent water treatment company that is a national water treatment company
and uh last year we did about 100 million dollars in business so nothing to sneeze at yeah we’re we’re
pretty fortunate got got some really good employees we love this industry we really do love
the people that are in this industry including our competitors all the people that we run across in this industry
there’s some really great wonderful people in this water treatment industry across the united states so you know the
water treatment industry is i don’t know if it’s different or if you really get involved as we are in other industries
they’re the same but my experience has been even though we compete
i’ve never run across a person well maybe a few but most people they want to help you they want to give
you advice they want you to get to the next level i don’t know is that common with all
industries or is that something that we just have here in the industrial water treatment one unfortunately i don’t know because this
is all i’ve done pretty much my entire life you know me too and i feel exactly the same as you feel i’m proud to be a
member of this you know this industrial group of people you know you’re absolutely right there’s people in this
industry that want to help other people which is you know what we should all be doing look customer first right we’re all in
business because for the customer right and how many times have you started a conversation with a customer and if you
started it and they didn’t know anything about water treatment it would have been such an easier conversation but now
we’ve got to overcome the damage that somebody else has done so if we can just
eliminate that if we are all working together and and try to make it so we do all
start out at the point where we know what regular water treatment is we sell
it properly we sell it honestly we communicate it properly and honestly it
just makes it easier all around yes there’s so much business to go
around for these companies you know like i say anywhere we do well
really well we only have 10 to 15 percent of the business so there’s 90 85
to 90 percent of the business we don’t have there’s going to be some of it we’re not going to be able to get and some of it we don’t want but there’s a
good chunk of 50 60 percent of the business that we still could would love to have
and so there’s opportunities for everybody i mean we’re we really are in a in a great little period of time in
the water treatment industry where we’re seeing the larger competitors not do training there’s a lot of weakness as
far as you know it used to be that the companies like garrett callahan or other companies like us the privately held
companies would be hiring people who were olin or from calgon or mogul or who
knows you know there was all these companies and they were really doing some really wonderful training we we
hired a bunch of dearborn people who were incredibly brilliant and the same with we had a
bunch of people in our technical department here from calgon you know that had that had worked at calgon and
those people were just dynamite that’s where my dad’s from oh it’s just you know i mean just dynamite companies and
all those are gone they’re all of them are gone yeah it was the six-pack what was what was the six-pack well it was it
it was drew right it was probably drew and and nalco and betts and
olin calgon and mogul back then back in
you know when i was in dallas and when my dad moved to dallas in 59 from california to open up the southwest uh
for our company and when he moved out there mogul was the player i mean there was a
little bit of nalco there was dearborn and there was olin there was calgon but the real player in the field was mogul
you know and all through the 90s mogul was pretty strong at least in the
southwest because they had a they had a really great district manager there you know and that’s and that’s the key to
just about anything and and we all know this is in the water treatment companies
you really are really good when you have a good rep or a good manager there i mean that’s the key to the whole thing i
mean it’s just it just makes it happen you know and and that’s what they had for many years
well-trained really good managers taking care of the customers and you
know those were the days of chromate and the acid you know the impeneflor phenates you know they went my dad said
they didn’t even hardly use biocides because they you put chromate in the cooling tower and then you put acid in
and you get the ph low and the chromates or you know it’s like boom you’re good i
remember going and i wasn’t servicing accounts i was i was small but i remember following my dad around as he
was servicing accounts and he would say not yellow enough we need more chrome mate
so it was definitely uh different back then well speaking of back then let’s let’s go way back then what what was
going on when your great-grandfather decided that he needed to start a water
treatment company well he had moved up to seattle and then he was working for like gorham rubber
company so there he was a salesperson and then he he met up with this gentleman named john callahan
and john callahan had a formula it’s called magic and that’s kind of we’ve kind of based a lot of things off the
little magic thing it’s like and it’s a magic where you put this and basically it was like
lignisol and you know and caustic and you would put it in the boiler and it would shave it would take off the scale
so and really scale was the problem back in those days more than anything and then they just had little men shoveling
up wheel barrels full of scale out of the boilers so they had a product called magic and then they had a product called
fluffo you know it was used to coagulate all the stuff in the boiler to blow it
out so then they started with that and then he moved back here in about 1914 so
we started the company in 1904 and then about 1914 he moved back to san francisco where he was from
and then the corporate office has been here ever since and basically we’ve been doing mostly a lot of it started out as
locomotives and things like that but basically you know it just built on that i mean
light industrial stuff was what we were doing at first a lot of laundries and things like that and schools and things
that had boilers you know ever it was all boiler stuff so obviously you grew up in this industry was your childhood
like mine did you go out and were you always familiar with that there was a water treatment world out there and
that’s what your family did yeah yeah i did you know it’s funny i don’t know how it was for you of
course you know but that wasn’t specifically taken out and said well these are you know this is a certain
type of cooling tower but i knew what cooling towers were because they were back then there were there were these
huge things and and the little ones you never saw because they’re on top of the buildings but the big ones the baylor universities and all that stuff you
could see you know we we could see those cooling towers and my dad would point it out and say yeah we take care of those
and we do those and uh you see the steam coming out of the building so yeah there was a lot of that stuff so i mean i
don’t know what it was like for you but when i got out of college basically my dad said okay so you’re coming to work
perhaps and i’m thinking what am i gonna do you know what am i gonna do after i get out of college i got a business
degree i got a business management and marketing double major and and i really loved marketing i just
really liked it and i thought well am i going to be good at managing doing things and running a business and i
didn’t think i was going to do that and even when i got hired you know i didn’t expect it i was 20 you know five
years old or whatever and and i’m expecting my older cousins are going to run this company and i’m just going to
work for for these guys you know i really started full time in 1986 and then then in 1996 i came out to
california and then in 2001 my dad kind of just flipped it on me
that i was going to be be the president of the company so and then later that year he passed away
so and he didn’t know you know he had no idea that that was going to happen and then matt and i my brother and i are
just like what in the world are we going to do what role does he play matt is an executive vice president so
he’s he’s just basically my right hand person i mean i’ve got actually a few right hand people out here really great
people in this office and i’m blessed that really do take care of me and and
help me out but matt is you know he’s my second he’s my second in command he’s in dallas he’s
in the office in uh in the dallas office with the where my dad was and it really is nice to just have all
the people that surround me here you know just some really great people that work at garrett kellyanne and i know at
all the companies that you know you’re dealing with you know all the people that you deal with you see the same thing you’re you see the people in these
water treatment companies and they’re great they’re they’re wonderful people absolutely we’ve got such a great
industry that we’re a part of and you know you go to awt or another industry
like that and our association like that and you’re not just seeing people that do the same job you’re seeing your
friends yeah jeff let me ask what was the conversation like when your dad sat
you down and he said hey i want you to run this thing i can’t tell you how strange it was it
was there was no conversation what happened was at
1995 he came to us and he said hey i’m going to buy your uncle bill out you
know i’m going to buy his stock and he doesn’t want to work anymore he don’t he wants to quit so they want one of you to
come out to california and uh he goes and i want one of you go to atlanta because we weren’t we never
we really hadn’t been in atlanta we weren’t that you know hadn’t had never had a garrett presence in the southeast
and we wanted to have more of a present we had a great presence in the southwest and a great presence in the west because
of my dad and my uncles were out there but and really strong in the midwest but not
so strong in the southeast or the northeast and so basically my dad said well what is what’s gonna happen and uh
you know where are you guys going and matt says well i’ll go to atlanta and i said i’ll go to millbrae so i went i
came out here and i again i had no idea i thought my cousin was gonna be running this company
i didn’t really understand what was going on and then that year of 2001 my
cousin he resigned he already just you know he quit he was he was 66 or something and he said i don’t want
to do this anymore so then that’s when it all came and then we were at a board meeting in september and
my dad said actually matt colvin made the recommendation that i i become president and i think that
they were talking about it on the side and they just hopped it on me and i didn’t know how to respond so i just
agreed to it and then i’m thinking what did i agree to but it was good timing i think it was probably the best thing
that could have happened because otherwise i would if i thought about it too much i would maybe i would have backed out you know
so jeff let me ask there i’m sure there’s several people out there that are really leaning into this conversation because
they’re getting ready to go through it or they are going through it right now i i want to say the majority of the
companies that you and i know somebody there is looking for retirement they’re looking for the next chapter
so now they’re thinking do i now pass that along to one of my kids to one of the employees do i sell that to an
outside person so for all those people leaning in to the conversation what
advice can you give them from your experience i mean you have to imagine that we’ve been through all of those
situations before we’ve had people in our family who own stock but they don’t really want to
be part of the company and so you have to figure out how do we want to do this do you want to just keep the stock do
you want to buy the stock from them do we do want to do all this stuff i mean it’s a decision you have to make with your kids are the kids going to want to
do this or or do you want somebody else to do this we’ve got so many people here
that are capable of doing this that aren’t garrett’s if these kids don’t want to do it i’m
perfectly happy with that but we’ve got about four or five nieces and nephews
that are pretty interested in this company and that excites me i’m happy to
have that happen and if they don’t want to do it then i’m happy to put somebody here in place that’ll be able to do it
you know so you know we’re fortunate in the sense that we’re that we’re big enough so where we have a
lot of options i would tell everybody you know i mean i would say to
anybody if you have any questions i’ll be happy to talk to any anybody who who has some
questions about that um privately because there’s a lot of stuff that a lot of ways that they would ask
questions that i’m going to give them a different answer you know so sure sure and that’s very gracious thank you for
that your phone’s probably going to get lit up no i mean i mean it too i really do
really want to see this industry get better and our reputation in this
industry is going up especially because of like you were talking about this awt group of people these are the sharpest
people out here i mean we go to the awt meetings every year and they’re the sharpest people that i see and and and
they’re and some of them are people from other these other water treatment companies uh you know some really great
experienced people and some really great young people who are coming into this industry that got lots of ideas you know
so it’s an exciting time to be here you know we you know you’re not getting much innovation out of raw materials we never
we’re really not you know there’s raw material manufacturers aren’t going to do a whole lot for this small water
treatment industry they’re going to do it for some other industry the talitrizal or trizol’s they’re doing that for the
metal hardening or whatever you know water treatment is just a very small portion of the business so the
innovation is going to come in technology and equipment more so than anything i see in the future and that’s
really what we’re seeing right now is some really great equipment stuff and and things like that and those are the
things that are going to make us more valuable to the customer well let’s start with that i’ve got a
couple i’ve got lots of things i want to ask you but i’m a back to the future fan so if you were to borrow my flux
capacitor equipped delorean and we were to go 30 years into the future what would we see for this industry
i think you’re going to see a lot more pre-treatment more filtration a lot more
care and concern for the higher value water you know the ros and the you’re going to see more polishing you’re going
to see more more recapture of the bleeds and i i was reading some article and it
said golf courses are going to probably be going away you know and they’re talking about things like that you know especially out here in california they
just require too much water you know they’re water thirsty so we’re going to have to figure out a way
to recapture reclaim and reuse our water you know or do ways where we can use it
where it’s at a such a high quality that we’re able to reuse it a lot more
those are the things that i see i’m hopeful that the chemicals will get better and i’m assuming that we’re
probably going to see people using less chemicals as trying to use as less chemicals we we have a very large
customer that’s basically told us we are actively looking for ways to get
rid of you i mean that’s you know that’s i mean that’s how that’s what they’re saying to us so they they’re looking at ways to
not use chemical they’re looking at ways that anything they can do and we have to be all
cognizant of that in the industry if we’re not we’re going to you know if we just keep doing the same old stuff a lot
of it’s going to have to do with technology and equipment there’s some great equipment out to i mean the great
the manufacturers are getting really good at the equipment now too well speaking of chemistries raw
materials supplies really interesting times we’re going through right now
uh what do you think you think that uh that we will get back to normal is this
the new normal do we need to look for totally new ways to do things what do you think
no you know what we need to do is we need to support these companies in the
united states that are that are made the u.s and means and things like that you know and we and we need to do a better
job of protecting them so the the the polls or the checks or
whoever can’t you know set up a an amine facility over there and make it half you
know half of our price you know and what i see is i see a big move back into
this country for uh manufacturing of raw materials it’s not even really that hard it’s just setting it up and the good
thing is now we’ve got the ability or at least these these uh the producers have
the ability to get up-to-date equipment and you know things that are going to make their
processes much smoother we we have a couple of really some really great
vendors out here who are truly capable of manufacturing pretty
much anything and that’s the key right there you know getting it made in this
country um we have we had a discussion yesterday with our
supply chain manager and our factory manager over our five factories and
we’re we’re back on track we’ve got you know we were having a problem getting 30 gallon drums i think everybody was
having a problem getting drums that seems to have been resolved for the
time being the the triazoles and the amines and all that stuff seems to be resolved we are getting we are back up
we’ve got the stock back you know and and from what our factory manager says he says no problems getting
anything anymore so that’s not a guarantee that we’re not gonna that’s not gonna happen in six
months but we buy a lot of our raw materials here in this in this in this country you know we do all our business
in this country so we feel like we should buy all our image and plus we trust the raw materials in our country more i mean we’ve we’ve used
raw materials and then after the third batch you get if you’re not testing it yeah it’s not consistent and so
the more we can do to support manufacturing inside the united states the better
yeah definitely uh to underscore something that you said you know if all these companies do ramp back up and they
do allow us to control domestically what’s going on with our supply chain
we have to have the what’s the word i’m looking for the fortitude
not to go get it half price overseas because we’re going to create the same
problem that got us in this situation and i’m assuming if we’re not taking all
of these products from the countries overseas that’s going to help their economy as well absolutely and you know
there’s there’s a huge cost in green stamp of the shipping across you know
the pacific ocean or wherever it’s coming from you know and that’s another way that they’re getting you i mean
we’re we were we were sending out containers for fifteen hundred dollars they ended up costing us fifteen
thousand dollars to go across over to asia i’ve heard numbers even higher than that
i’ve heard that the average water treater is paying upwards of 60 cents a
pound just to cover the shipping i would not doubt it we include shipping
in our product and i and i think that most of the companies like us do but i
know that some of our big competitors they charge shipping it’s a separate line they get a bill from the from the
shipper they don’t they’re not paying for the shipping of their materials so
it is an added cost and the way that it can be used internationally is the shipping is used as a as a block you
know to a certain extent because if if you want more money you just charge more for shipping you know so it’s used as an
excuse for why that we’re having some of these supply chain issues so that’s not going to happen as much as if you get it
out of indiana or wherever it is you know jeff let me ask you because i think you and i have the same pet peeve
when somebody comes into one of our accounts and you know if we’re messing the
account up they deserve to take it i think we both agree on that but let’s say we’re doing everything right and
they say i’m gonna get you a better price what do you say to that
we used to fight it we used to say we’ll sharpen our pencil and
now we’ve stopped doing that and we have found that that really actually works
you know i mean when people pay a little bit more there’s a confidence that they’re going
to get a little bit more out of it and what we try to do with the with the
customers we try to show them the things that maybe they aren’t getting from their from their present you know
supplier and one of the things that we can do is just show our expertise show them you
know go around talk to them include them in conversations and it’s not always easy
you know but the more you can do that stuff the more valuable you make yourself you know you all want to be careful about the word
consultant you know because you know but we are consultants we’re water
consultant we’re their consultants we have to help them even some of these engineers i mean some of these bright
people that are in these facilities don’t really understand the true cost of scale on on chillers and and
they are the true cost of an you know one less cycle of concentration they don’t understand this
stuff and and sometimes they just need it just needs somebody to explain it to them and part of that is just the
relationship you know the one thing that i that that i found i know you’ve you’ve found this out too
it’s all about relationships you know if you build a relationship with somebody you’re not losing the business for 10
you know for 20 percent less you know they’ll find another way to to save that money if they like their water
treatment person you’re probably not going to lose that business if you do a good job and and and you take care of the customer
and they know you’re working hard you’re not going to lose the business they’ll find other ways to do that the the
reason that people lose business is either a change with the cheap engineer or it’s a
personality conflict i mean you know pricing is just used as an issue pricing is just used as an excuse well you’re
too high you know that means i don’t like you you know i mean i don’t know that that that’s
necessarily what it means sometimes they like you and they still go for the low ball what i found is
customers tend to put these things out for bids and bids and bids and bids and all of a
sudden and every year they get a bid for 24 000 a year a low bid for 24 000 and
they take that bid and then they get frustrated when the chiller scales up or when they’re or when they have to take
the cooling tower down because it’s all loaded up with scale or whatever it is or corrosion or whatever and what they
don’t realize is it is it really costs 40 000 to do the job right but you’ve
convinced yourself be because of all this low ball bidding over the years that that somebody can do it for 24
thousand dollars and they can’t well here’s the issue that we work ourselves into because we do a good job
we take that 26 thousand dollar account and they do give us 40 or 45 000 so we
can do it right we correct the issues they’ve lived without the issues for years and then
they forget they ever have them they say no we got to go back to 24 000 pain has a short memory
it really does we’ve seen this over i went i went to some one of my customers one time and they did this exact same
thing to me and i went back to him and i said how could you do this i mean you know we
we’ve done there’s no you had no problems for the last five years and and they they they just threw their hands up
and they didn’t and then like a year later the guy was gone because he probably got in trouble you
know he’s probably not in trouble but i mean he probably you know he’s probably like oh man you know the system’s messed
up again and i want to deal with this and i know it’s tough for us to walk away as salespeople
you know we’re we are conditioned to win we want to we want to we want to compete
and win but we have to compete and win at a level that does everybody a favor you
know that you know one of the things that uh you know obama said is that both people have to walk
away wanting something in a negotiation and i agree with that it’s true
everybody has to walk away kind of like wanting a little bit more you know and it’s not and it’s not a bad
thing you know but if you get all the if you get everything you want and i don’t get anything i want then that’s not going to
work out stephen covey would call that a win-win contract
so and then the the next level of that is for the person to have the courage that if both parties aren’t getting a
win to say no deal so if i’m getting one over on you eventually you’re not gonna like that
and you’re gonna seek something else vice versa for me so why don’t we just at the very
beginning do exactly what you said and we both get a win out of it and now we can sustain that agreement
i couldn’t agree more with you the good companies are doing a lot better job than the than the companies that are
doing it for the low ball stuff they really not they’re not doing the customer any favor and they’re not doing our industry any
favor because then the industry goes all those water treatment guys all they want to do is sell water to sell a drama
chemical they’re just drum kickers you know you’ve heard that and then just that irritates the heck out of me you
hear this stuff about bankers and everybody goes oh bankers are you know they’re all just a bunch of greedy people you know
what about all those little independent banks all around the midwest and all around the southeast that have given
loans for people to buy their houses to run their businesses to do all these great things and then you got a couple
of big shots at bank of america or citibank or whatever that are there are a bunch of scumbags and everybody blames
all the bankers for being scumbags and that’s what’s happening that’s what happens to our industry you have these
people who go in all they do is sell stuff and then they walk away they don’t take care of
anything then the prospects all say the same thing they go oh you water treatment people are all the same all you do is just walk in and you you sell
me something you walk away you don’t do anything you know and it and it hurts our industry we have walked away from
some recent stuff lately that we would never walk away from and one of them we got a call back on
and they said well come on back we had a big customer out in colorado and we were
cleaning their cooling towers every month we were going and scrubbing the the and these are huge cooling towers
and they had open air distribution decks they left them open so they were always had green
on them so our people were out there once a week brushing them with these hard brushes just get this huge amounts of biological
stuff down into the cooling tower so we could get it with the chlorine dioxide and we came to him and said we were
going to have to raise your prices because we were we were going over agreement and i think we were like
we we ended up raising prices like 30 percent and as soon as we took that number to them they said no
that’s we’re we’re done so they said they gave us our 30 30 day
notice and before the end of that 30 day they called us back and they said um you know what we’ll take that
we’ll take that deal that you just gave us and uh it was kind of refreshing because
it was like you know they went out in into the market and they couldn’t find anybody to come in lower than us you
know even with our increase in price so we should not be afraid as
vendors to go in and ask for the price increases if we’re doing a good job yeah and especially nowadays because
what we’re buying today is at minimum 25 more expensive than it was this time
last year absolutely and everybody knows it these these these people in the
purchasing know it and nalco is giving multiple price increases i mean we’ve seen
15 we’ve seen you know another 10 we’ve seen another 15 i mean the huge amounts
of price increases from nalco ecolab and i’m assuming some of the similar things are happening with other the other
companies too yeah by no means are we talking about price of fixing or anything like that
but if you’re not keeping up with inflation with the cost of goods you’re
not a profitable business if you’re not a profitable business people don’t have a job agreed and nobody wants to work for
somebody who’s the lowballer you know your people want to work for a company
that sees themselves as a little bit higher there and it gives you the other options but it is like you said the
company has to make money you know you’ve got to make money if you’re going to give raises if you’re going to do
bonuses and do all the stuff that you do i mean every once in a while i sign the checks that go out of here and just the
stuff that goes out to vendors you would not believe i mean i’m you know i mean it’s just
and i’m glad i don’t do it every month i hear you well let’s shift gears just slightly uh
because another thing that you and i really believe in is mentoring people
i’ve been mentored i’m assuming you have had mentors in your life and we probably
if we compare notes we wouldn’t be where we are today had people not given part of themselves to us
how do you pay that forward well by continuing to mentor you know by doing the things and by reaching out to
people you know part of the success that i think that that i’ve had most recently
is by communicating with our people you know and and calling people um
i even get my district managers and regional managers will call me and say hey jeff
you know do you mind just giving this person a shout out you know they they got this new piece of business or this
or that and you know i i think it’s really important to be recognized it’s
important also to feel like you’re working for something that’s that’s you know that’s that’s making a difference
you know you want to make them proud for who they’re working for and
what they’re working for towards and making things available for learning
making things so they can better themselves all boats rise with the tide right
i also say one of the things i have to say is the happier you are the happier i am so
make people happy you know be a part of of bringing people joy in their lives
and people people know people note that and they notice it you know so
if we want to continue this company if we want if we want to keep doing this for another 50 years or however long we
can do this we’ve got to have good people you’ve got it you’ve got to have a mentorship program you’ve got to have you know i’m
i’m mentored every day by two people down this hall every day one of them’s younger than me and one of
them is older than me so you open your mind up to it and you try to help people do the things that
are going to do every you know make themselves better can i get you one step closer to the
close of this piece of business about five years ago i just started making
random random calls to people some of it was birthday calls and some of it was anniversary calls and stuff
and it’s made a difference with me it’s mentored me it really has
yeah and i don’t necessarily get feedback directly from the people but i get feedback maybe from their their
co-workers or their managers they’ll say hey i heard you called so and so the other day and
and i would recommend that all the people who run these water treatment
companies and have staff and especially when you don’t have a huge amount of staff call your people and talk to your
people really all people want to do is just they just want you to hear what they have to say and our people out
there are lonely they’re driving around in their cars all day going to customers
or going to prospects or you know being told no all the time and they need interaction with somebody who
understands how they you know what what kind of day they’re having and what they’re going
through you know so and that’s why i try to reach out and try to be a little bit empathetic with that
that’s great i think that’s great advice for everybody that’s listening people what’s the adage people don’t care what
you know until they know that you care yeah that’s a great one well jeff you’ve got probably a good
amount of water treaters listening to this podcast we’ve got the scaling up nation of course so your next words are
going to speak volumes in our industry so no pressure at all but if you could
get one message across to the water treatment industry something that you either want to see change in something
that you want to fortify what do you want to tell the scaling up nation
you know the real message that i want to deliver is that we’re all better than we think we are we really are
for years and years i underestimated myself i did not give myself the credit
that i did have i learned these systems i learned how to do them and i learned water treatment and i was pretty good at
it and i always questioned myself i always said oh these you know these
nalco guys are better these bets people are better and they weren’t they weren’t we are
the the group that that i’m talking to here are the best people in the water treatment industry and
this group is just getting better and better because we are doing the things we’re staying in this industry longer
there’s a lot of great new techniques and there’s equipment and technologies that are out there that are allowing us
to really do our job a heck of a lot better and we need to
know how good we are we really need to have confidence in ourselves as these
water treatment companies and know that we’re better than these big companies all these big companies are focused on
is sales they’re not servicing the customer they’re not doing the little things that add value to the customer
the customer is looking for things that are going to benefit their business what i’ve always said to our people is
we want to be the little side part of their business that they don’t have to worry about i don’t want them worrying
about their cooling tower i don’t want them worrying about their boilers i don’t want them worrying about wastewater or ro or anything
let us take care of that stuff you’ve got enough stuff to worry about with your elevators or your you know
janitorial supplies or whatever the heck you’ve got to deal with don’t let us be that person
don’t underestimate yourself know how good you are work a little bit harder than everybody
else read books read tech read technical information read the stuff that’s online
there’s a lot of stuff out there just get into it all right jeff let’s get into our
lightning round so these are questions that i ask of all of my guests just to
try to get to know you just a little bit better so the first question you now have the ability to go back in time and
talk to your former self on your very first day at garrett callahan
what advice would you give yourself to know that you will get this
if you do the right things and if you treat people fairly and you you just be
yourself you’re going to be fine what are some of the most recent books that you’ve read
i’m kind of a music guy and my brother-in-law gave me a pete townsend book who i am and i read that
and i love bill evans i’m a big piano jazz piano stuff so i just read
joel barbaro’s time remembered book from about it’s about the kind of the last
the last little section of bill evans life and then the one that i really love is
the owls of the eastern ice and uh and it’s about these russian owls
these huge uh fish owls in russia and this guy is uh
he went out and tracked him and uh and did all this wonderful stuff it was
about five years ago and and the book just recently came out but it is a really really fascinating book
about it’s this this lower southern peninsula of russia that kind of jets into the sea
of japan and it it’s it’s pretty amazing when they make a movie
about jeff garrett who do you want playing jeff um i mean it could be some handsome movie
star but i was thinking maybe jack black or something all right i don’t know i think jeff bridges would
just do an awesome you yeah jeff ridges everybody says jeff ridge is i guess jeff bridges would probably
be that that would be the answer but uh i i think uh jack black could definitely capture your sense of humor
better last question you can now talk to anybody throughout history who would you
choose and why you know i i know it sounds ridiculous but i would love to talk to my dad again
he went so quick i never got to talk to him and i got down to dallas as soon as i could
and by the time i could he couldn’t speak so you know and i know he was trying to talk to me and i i just i’d
like to know what he was what he was what he was going to say and i know that that’s not really the
probably the answer that you know that’s the that’s a great answer just kind of feel like uh
he was taken from me you know i had a very similar situation with my
dad uh my dad smoked more than he should shouldn’t smoke at all yeah uh but uh
his lungs were so bad he had actually gone into uh the hospital he had broken his hip
and uh he aspirated on a bowl of soup and a bowl of soup killed him because his lungs were in just
such bad shape and i immediately went up to richmond virginia where we were from and uh by the time i got there my dad
wasn’t able to speak and he was trying to say something and i was just able to be there for him and watch him pass to
the next life so yeah that’s a very s very similar well i want to really thank you for
coming on the show i’m pretty sure we’re going to have you back i think we just scratched the surface of things that we could talk about hey i’d love to be back
that’s i agree yeah so uh hopefully you’re you’re uh you’re gonna be on the next couple of hangs that we have i
always enjoy seeing you on those and uh just from the bottom of my heart thank you for sharing uh all the stories that
you had and um for for caring about the community that we’re part of so much
thanks very much and i’m happy to be back anytime with you trace [Music]
nation i gotta tell you jeff really reminds me a lot of jeff bridges so i
think i think if you can picture jeff bridges talking to you that’s going to be a pretty accurate image
i love doing those lightning round questions if you’ve ever heard me interview a guest a second or third time
i normally ask new lightning round questions but i always like asking the same questions because you get a real
good feel of the person that i am interviewing and you can kind of compare
those with other answers that you’ve heard from other guests and again just gives you a little bit
more insight of the person that you are meeting on the podcast i’ve known jeff
in passing at different awt conferences but i love having this podcast for so many
reasons but one of the top reasons is just the ability to meet people on a different level and he’s just an amazing
guy and as we were talking you actually heard some of our similarities especially with uh with our dads and
what happened towards the end of their lives so you never know what you share with
somebody and i want to say that that’s probably the biggest issue that we have in our country right now
is we don’t look at what we have in common with each other we simply go to what we don’t have in
common and in a lot of cases we choose our news that way if we’re not getting
our news from what we agree with we’re changing the channel if we are not getting our social media
with what we agree with we’re unfriending people and folks that’s just
not sustainable it it really isn’t for us to really improve the world that we’re living in
we got to get past that social media mindset we need to talk to people we need to have conversations again
i mean if somebody doesn’t agree with you don’t write them off get really excited because guess what
you now get to learn a different point of view and i’m not saying jeff and i had a different point of view about
anything on this podcast but it just got me thinking that so many of us might not have even started the conversation
because they’re a competitor and look at all that we had in common and when i look at the rising tide
mastermind we’re all competitors but we’re all helping each other through life we’re all getting each other to a
destination a lot quicker than we could have gotten to on our own and we’re having fun while we’re doing that that
could never happen if we just stick to sound bites and if those sound bites
don’t match what you think you know we hit the off button so i know this is
probably not you but if this is connecting to how you are
interacting with people then just think you know an opinion is just that and people are okay to have
opinions and it’s okay if it’s different than yours and if it is get excited don’t get upset
you might learn something you might change your mind about how you see something
and when you listen first with the intent to learn i promise whatever you say after that
person is going to do the same thing so stay out of social media concepts when
we’re talking with people and get to know the people you’re going to learn something
nation i hope you learned something on today’s podcast i sure love bringing
them to you of course a brand new one is going to come next friday we release
every single friday a brand new episode of scaling up h2o and you’re probably
wondering trace how do you deliver amazing content each and every week well
it’s because of you it’s because of the scaling up nation and you all have a job up there as members of the scaling up
nation that is to let me know what our next shows are what is something that
you want to hear who do you want me to interview let me know these things by going to our
scaling up h2o.com webpage going over to our show ideas area or you can leave us
a voicemail and we will get that information and trust me my amazing staff will do something with that we are
always looking for what we’re going to do next we’re always looking for what we’re going to bring the audience a
little bit extra if you’ve been to our website lately you have seen that our staff has totally redone our website
with suggestions that you have made to make things a lot easier to search
and i’m just amazed at the amount of content that we have on that web page there is so much information out there
if you have a topic that you’re trying to find more information out with over
250 episodes out there chances are you’re going to find the topic that you are looking for and then you can listen
to the expert teach you on the topic that you want to learn
more about so many great things that our staff is doing and that is because you are pointing us in the right direction so
please don’t stop that go to scaling up h2o.com and let us know exactly how we
can help you on the podcast you can help us by leaving
us a review on your favorite podcast player if you can take at least two
minutes and leave a review that does so much for us in podcast world because that’s how
every player ranks podcasts and the higher ranking that we get the easier it
is to find new members of the scaling up nation and of course as the nation grows
we’re going to be able to raise that water treatment bar just easier because
we’re going to have so many people that are listening to the podcast and they in turn are helping the bar raise
themselves nation i hope you have a great week and i will be with you next friday
[Music] scouting up nation so many people that i
talk to want to join the rising tide mastermind but they’re concerned about
being able to commit one hour a week for the mastermind calls folks i have to
tell you when you experience that hour you realize that that is the power hour
that changes every other hour that you will experience that week if we keep
doing the same things we will keep doing the same results and that one hour a week allows you to get out of the
day-to-day so you can work on your day-to-day do something different find out about
the rising tide mastermind by going to scalinguph2o.com forward slash
mastermind [Music]