The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music] foreign [Music]
as an industrial water treater you have to do so much you have to know about so
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[Music] welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast
the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems my name is Trace Blackmore happy
2023 everybody happy New Year wow where
does the time go I’m always amazed when we welcome in a new year and then I’m always amazed when we do a recap like
what we did last week sending a year off it seems like it goes
very quickly each and every year it goes quicker and quicker and the unfortunate
truth is life is short so I hope you’re doing something new each and every day
to make sure that you are getting the most out of life folks life can get away
from you and it does that when you stay stuck in the day-to-day of course we’ve
got to do the things that we have to do in order to complete our jobs but it
doesn’t mean that we have to do it the same way each and every time that we do
it so if you’re out there and you’re servicing accounts each and every day the same way each and every time I’m
going to suggest that you are missing out on opportunities for you to make
your life better for you to learn more and for you to have more fun if your
brain is getting bored challenge it and I promise it will change everything
about the day-to-day now you’re probably saying Trace I don’t have time to do new
stuff I’m so busy doing the things that I do each and every day well you’re
listening to this podcast and this podcast is chocked full with items to
test you to encourage you to learn to encourage you to try something new so
maybe something you can do this year is whenever we have a suggestion whenever
we have a topic you work more on that so
we always have a segment with James McDonald we always do something with our guests when we have our guests challenge
us to do something more I’m always in my intros and my outros giving you things
to work on so my challenge for you is to work on those things and maybe it’s not
an intensive study on each one of those items but just think if it’s one thing
that you do that’s one step that you’ve gotten closer to being better to not
being bored to having more fun great mentor of mine Bruce ketrick
senior told me many years ago that every time I serviced don’t just do a regular
service do one thing new and it didn’t have to be big it could have been
something extremely small but it got me out of the repetitious day today an
example of that is using a laser thermometer and checking steam traps
that doesn’t take very long but now you’re learning more about the system and in the following week maybe you
clean a valve or you learn how a valve works so you can clean it or maybe
install it in a better location I’m just making things up here but you see where
I’m going what is something that you can do that might not take a lot of time but
it allows you to do something differently so you can enjoy it also what it does is it ingratiates your
customer towards you because if you do something small that’s up and above each and every time you’re there that’s 12
new things that you did for your customer and when that other competitor
comes by and they say that they can do what you do cheaper and you know that there are people out there that say that
by the way they probably can’t and if they can they need to share it with the
rest of us because we would all do that so by the way here’s my plea to everybody don’t sell on price
sell on your value and folks if you go out there and you say I can cut your
current water treater’s cost in half and you are not keeping the value and you
were just simply selling off a price you are hurting all of us because let’s face
it our customers do not understand what it is that we do and when we cut our
prices it makes it even harder for us to get our customers to Value what a true
water treater does now let me be very clear if you find something that the
incumbent water treater is not doing correctly or maybe they are over charging and they are under valuing then
by all means go after that but if simply how you get business is say I’m going to
cut 50 off of your bill you are not giving this job what it demands what
Allah allows us all to have this job and again customers are confused already
about what it is that we do please don’t help that confusion so all that to say
that if you can do 12 extra things that’s just one more reason that your
customer knows that you have their best interest in mind and most people aren’t
going to do that well that’s a side effect that your customer now looks at you differently but the main reason
we’re doing it is for you to have more fun in the job for you to get better as
an industrial water Trader so that’s my ask what are you going to take from each
episode what are you doing to put yourself out there to learn new things and how are you going to do at least one
new thing every time you service a particular customer it’ll make your job
so much more fun Nation as I said last week we went ahead
and put the final chapter out of thinking on water with James
well this year he’s doing something new he is challenging us to learn 52 new
water chemistries maybe new to us so here is the very first installment of
periodic water table with James hello and welcome to the periodic water table
with James where we think and learn about water chemistry drop by drop please use your week to search online
ask your colleagues or even pick up a book to learn more about each week’s
periodic water table topic if you do at the end of the year you’ll be 52 water
chemistry smarter so let’s raise the water table of knowledge together and get started
today’s topic is pbtc first what is pvtc stand for what
is its chemical formula what is it used for what systems is it used in
how does it compare to other phosphonates what does calcium tolerance have to do
with pbtc what concentrations is it used in industrial water treatment
is it synergistic with any other water treatment chemicals do you use any
products with pbtc in it right now which ones remember knowledge is power and taking
the time to learn more about water chemistry each week will help make you a force to be reckoned with
be sure to post what you learn to social media and tag it with hashtag watertable 23 and hashtag scalingup H2O I look
forward to learning more from you [Music]
hang on a second I’m not done with you yet you’ve just heard your very first periodic water table with James for the
year this year we’re focusing on chemistry water chemistry so what am I hoping you
do with this information I’m hoping you store each week’s Topic in the back of your mind I’m hoping you mull it over
and think about it think about what you know about the chemistry and what you don’t know
what is it used for how do you test for it what is the molecular formula what
problems can it cause or benefits can it provide pick up your phone or computer and
search online for more information when you have a moment ask your manager technical director and
colleagues crack open a book and look it up the goal is to learn just a little more
each week drop by drop even better would be if you shared what you’ve learned on
social media but you don’t have to this is a self Journey so that by the end of
the year you’re a 52 water chemistries wiser as you join the flow of each
periodic water table with James [Music] foreign
[Music] as I said this podcast is chocked full of things for you to learn new I should
probably say that new things for you to learn anyway now I’ll learn how to speak in some podcast with that I’m hoping
that you take full advantage of all the opportunities that you have to make yourself better out there like I just
said it is going to make your life a lot more fun have you ever done a SWOT
analysis maybe you’ve heard of SWOT analyzes before I want to go over what a SWOT
analysis is and we did a previous episode with Jill cavano where she does
a great job of explaining how to do a SWOT analysis so if you want more
information about that you can go to episode 249 and Jill tells us so much about the
SWOT analysis I’m just going to do a very high level approach of a SWOT
analysis so a SWOT stands for strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats and
the reason we’re talking about a SWOT analysis is our son Hayden who’s 16 is taking a marketing class and he learned
about SWOT analysis and analyzes is that how you say that well anyway as any kid
you know I’m never going to use this stuff and I told him that we use this all the time time and I actually showed
him some of the SWOT analyzes that we have done in our company and because of
that he really took off to it and now he’s got this entrepreneurial mind where
he’s doing SWOT analysis every time he’s got this idea now he’s not doing it formally but he’s doing it mentally and
that just got me thinking that this is a tool that we under utilize so how many
ideas do we have that never fly that
never get off the drawing board and they’re probably ideas that if we spent
a little bit of time with them it might change everything so I wanted to go over
what a SWOT analysis is and you can do a deep dive in the SWOT analysis by
listening to episode 249 but for today we’re going to do a high level look so
again strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats so here’s the interesting
thing if you can think of a grid and in quadrant one is strengths and quadrant
two is weaknesses in quadrant three is opportunities and in quadrant four is
threats now above the middle line are internal things things that are are
internal strengths and weaknesses and then below the middle line are
opportunities and threats and those are external so if you think about that
internally what is it strength wise that you do better than anybody else and if
you don’t know those things how is anybody else going to know them so
mentally right now and then if you can fill out a little grid later what personally are your strengths most
people do this with their company so if we look at at it company-wide what does
our company do better than anybody else we list out what those strengths are
the next item are our weaknesses weaknesses are things that we know we
can do better and if we fix them we are going to close the door of potential
issues coming into our company so what are the things that you know your
company or you can also do this personally so what are some of the things that you know you can do better
what are some of the things that you need to turn into Strings and just write
those down now here’s the cool thing about a SWOT analysis at the first pass you’re just brainstorming you’re not
thinking about how to fix it and matter of fact that is key when you do a SWOT
analysis it’s just the stuff that comes in your head you’re jotting it down in
one of those quadrants and then you have it later to work on and figure out how
you’re going to improve that all right so that’s our strengths that’s our weaknesses and those are all internal
now we’re going to look external what are the opportunities out there so if
we’re looking at our company what are the things that need to be met that
aren’t being met by other people and that creates an opportunity this is the
whole premise of Shark Tank if you watch Shark Tank somebody comes up with a
solution an opportunity and with that they solve it and now they’re able to
capitalize on it and a good shark will recognize that and that’s why they invest their own money because they want
to capitalize on the opportunity that somebody just solved so we’re now
looking externally the next one or the final one is threats
what are the things externally that could create an issue going to the Shark
Tank metaphor they’ll always ask do you have a patent on that well if you don’t have a patent on it somebody’s going to
think it’s a great idea just like you did and there’s no barrier for them to create it themselves they call that a
knockoff that would be a threat so you think about all the things externally
that can threaten and again you can do this for your company you can do this personally
and now you have this list of strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats
internal and external factors that you can work on again you haven’t done
anything to improve this yet or bolster the strings you’ve just identified that
if you want to learn more about the SWOT analysis again you can go to the episode
that I mentioned with Jill which was episode 249 but here’s the neat thing and this is
what I saw our son do he would just take an idea and he would do a mental SWOT
analysis and I have to admit this is an underutilized tool especially for myself
and I work with other companies and I’ll teach other people how to do this but I’ve never used it when I think about an
idea and there’s a great book out there called will it Fly it’s by Pat Flynn and
he basically wrote an entire book and also an entire course around will your
idea fly will it ever get off the drawing room table and does it have legs
does it have wings so it can fly and I have to say a really quick way to just
see if it’s a good idea is to do this SWOT analysis now I have been taught
many techniques around the SWOT analysis and one of them is to do it backwards so
typically we start with strengths then weaknesses then opportunities and then threats and that creates a mindset where
you are internally focused because you’re starting with the internal
if you’re doing a strategic planning session here’s a tip here’s a trick that
I’m going to show you that will change your entire mindset it’s not that
difficult but it is amazing how it changes the dialogue instead of doing
SWOT do toes we’re going to do the exact opposite of what we did before so we’re
going to start with the threats what are the things that are we’re most
vulnerable to looking externally if we start there we are now external focused
and we are much more strategic in solving the problems that are out there
in making sure that we are thinking more strategic instead of how do we protect
what we already have I know that sounds overly simplistic but it is amazing
how that works so the next time you’re doing a strategic planning session
instead of doing a SWOT do the SWAT but do it in the backwards order do a toes
and you will have a different conversation if you have a previous SWOT analysis and
you want to try this out don’t show people your previous SWOT analysis and by the way I don’t recommend you ever
bring out a previous SWOT analysis I recommend that you do this from scratch
and then after everybody has completed what they’re doing in each one of those sections then bring out the previous one
and a great other conversation to have is what has changed why did we think
about this item last year and it wasn’t even on our radar this year was it
because we forgot was it because it really wasn’t an issue or an item for
last year and compare yourself and then each time you do it you are going to get
better out of it but then when you figure out what you’re going to do this
year what problems you’re going to solve you’re going to go to this SWOT analysis
and you are going to start picking items off so you’re either bolstering your
strengths you’re correcting your weaknesses trying to turn them into strengths you’re capitalizing on the
opportunities and you’re eliminating the threats those are the things that you’ll
work on this upcoming year you might not get everything done this is how you’re
going to develop possibly your rocks which are your 90-day goals you know I’m
a fan of the 12 week year that is a book that shows you how to plan but moreover
it explains how to properly execute most of us don’t have issues planning all of
us have issues with execution and this is one of the best books that I found to
help with that it goes into what are your 90-day goals well folks a great
source to find what you’re going to tackle each and every 90 days is to take items from this SWOT analysis so again
the SWOT analysis is something you can do at a strategic meeting or you could
be like our son Hayden and every time you have a business idea you in your mind go through a very abbreviated SWOT
analysis just to see if it’s worth thinking about and if it is you take
action and maybe you will be on the next Shark Tank scale nomination last week we did a
recap of all of the great things that we did on the scaling up H2O podcast in
2022 well here is a preview of all of
the great things that we are going to bring to you in the year of 2023. of course as expected we’re going
to have new guests and our guests are experts on the topic that they are
speaking on and the whole goal with that is for these guests to pour into you
their knowledge so you can become better at whatever it is that you are doing so
our guests are meant to inspire you and to be the Catalyst for you to learn more
and I love it that you listen to the podcast but I love it even more when you do something with the information that
we talk about on the podcast so lots of great guests scheduled this year I know
you are going to enjoy each and every one of them and hands down our favorite
segment according to the scaling up H2O Nation are our pinks and blues segments
now this is where you The Listener write in and you give me a topic that you want
me to explore and I will tell you these are the most difficult episodes for me
to put together because we do so much research around these topics and we want
to make sure that we give you not only the best information but also additional
information so you can learn more about it pinks and blues comes from what my
father used to call titrations most likely the hardness test it goes from
pink to blue and he would call things pinks and blues and I figure okay well
we’ll just call this segment pinks and blues so any technical question question that you have we will try to get
answered now if you have a technical question don’t keep that locked up inside your head go to
scalinguph2o.com and there’s two ways you can get that question to us the way
I absolutely love because a lot of times we will play your voice on the air is
you can go to the record voicemail button on the right hand side of the
screen and just record your question we will then play that on the air and then we will answer your question the other
way to do it is you can go to our show ideas page and you can list any idea
that you have if you have another guest that you want to recommend come on the show that’s how you do it if you want a
pinks and blues topic covered that is also how you do that if you have anything you want to share with us about
the show scaling up h2o.com go over to our show ideas page and you can use that
to tell us anything thing you want about the show and I’ll tell you that we are
honored to be in the top three percent of all podcasts and the reason for that
is because you are letting us know what you want to hear and because you’re hearing those things you’re telling
other people that they need to listen to this show so we want to make sure that we keep that going so whatever you want
for this show let us know what that is some other upcoming items that I want
you to make sure that you participate in we’re going to be celebrating World
water day on March 22nd so stay tuned for that we’ll of course have
information on that on our show notes page but we are industrial water Traders and we want to make sure we celebrate
any holiday around water and what are you going to do for industrial water day
a lot of you might not have even heard of it before well if you listen to this podcast you heard of it because we like
to keep you informed but here’s what I want you to do I’d like you to mark your calendar and it’s probably marked already if you have some sort of app
that has all of the preset holidays there not that it’s uh observed don’t go
to work holiday it is uh this is why we work holidays that’s going to be March
22nd so mark your calendars for that another item that you want to mark your
calendars for is the global 6K that’s going to be May 20th I spoke at length
of about the global 6K on the previous episode the episode last week so if you
want more about that you can go to the previous episode you can also go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash 6K that’s
going to be May 20th it’s a Saturday mark your calendars you can do that anywhere you are and I encourage you to
let other people know about it and do it with other people because it now takes
such a noble cause of trying to solve the world global Water Crisis world and
Global I guess are the same thing but it’s big folks we want to make sure that everybody has access to clean drinking
water and just imagine just imagine a world like that imagine if you didn’t have clean drinking water imagine if we
didn’t have water we wouldn’t have a job and we probably wouldn’t even care that we didn’t have a job because we didn’t
have water so this is something that you can do by doing something fun and
knowing that you are promoting such a great rate costs so mark your calendars May 20th it’s scalingup h2o.com forward
slash 6K also each and every year we do
Legionella Awareness Month in August and it is just amazing how many people out
there don’t understand Legionella and how much information out there changes
around Legionella and I have to say every year when we do Legionella awareness month I think haven’t we
already covered that but there’s always something new out there and there are
always new people out there that need to hear it so many people misunderstand
Legionella and they don’t understand what they need to do about it they don’t understand who is responsible for it and
we want to make sure that we are continuously giving you the tools that you need so you can do your job better
and the number one thing that you do in your job is you educate people to make
better decisions so are you making better decisions by learning things to
help people make better decisions I hope you are and one of the ways we’re going to do that is we’re continuing
Legionella awareness month and that will be August each and every year and a
water treater’s favorite holiday is industrial water week so we’re
hashtagging already industrial water week 2023
iww.2023 that’s going to be starting on October 2nd through October 6th it’s
always the first full week in October and we are going to be of course
observing that we always bring you a brand new episode each and every day
that week it’s industrialwaterweek.com if you want to learn more we’ll have information on our
show notes page as well but here’s what I want you to do especially if you run a
team I want you to plan something I want you to celebrate the fact fact that we all have this fantastic job together we
have an entire week to celebrate us doing that job it is something that is
very easy to do it’s something that helps promote good team health so mark
your calendars October 2nd October 6th through October 6th and make sure you do
something special even if all it is is you listen to a brand new episode each
and every day of scaling up H2O I mentioned Legionella awareness month and
we got so much feedback when we did Legionella Awareness Month in 2022 and
people were wanting to find a lot of the resources that we were mentioning on
those episodes so the great staff here at the scaling up H2O podcast have put
together an outstanding resource list of pretty much everything that’s been mentioned on various podcast episodes so
you can go to scaling up h h2o.com and you can go over to our resources page and you can see all the Legionella
resources there you can see the calendar of events I know last year I mentioned a
whole bunch of events that were going on and so many people said I just didn’t have time to write them down and then I
couldn’t remember what show it was on to go to the show notes page well folks we heard you by the way thank you for
letting us know how we can make your life easier because we knew that we improved the calendar well we didn’t
improve it we created a calendar so now you can simply go through the calendar of events and you can see everything
that’s going on in the industrial water world and you can set up your calendar
so if you were to go there right now and you should scaling up h2o.com go over to
our events page you can start setting up your calendar for all the different things that you want to be a part of
this year and I hope you take this week to plan your next year life does not get
to where you want it to be by default most of the time sometimes we get lucky
but a lot of times if we know where we’re going if we’re forcing ourselves
to do things that we know are going to make us better and we plan around those
it’s amazing how much we can accomplish and you guys right now at this moment in time have an entire year to accomplish
those things so start it off right know what this year looks like put the things
in your calendar that you want to attend the goals that you want to achieve when
you want to achieve them by and make sure you’re using your calendar as a
tool and it is amazing how much you will get done Peter Drucker says what gets
measured simply gets better because it’s being measured well folks if we keep track of things it’s going to get better
because we’re now looking at it so don’t live life by default make sure you’re
working towards goals and you know where you want to end up at the end of this year
folks this is going to be an exciting year we are so fortunate to have you as
a listener all the people out there in the scaling up Nation the so many people that listen to us on a weekly basis
we’re in 92 different countries it’s just amazing how many people are
listening to the scaling up H2O podcast so I want to thank you for that I want to thank you for all the advice all of
the show ideas that you have given me that you’re going to continue to give me and I will bring a brand new episode of
scaling up H2O right to you next week in the meantime take care everybody
[Music] Nation almost two years ago I started
the rising tide Mastermind we have over four groups and a waiting list for a new
group folks it is wildly successful and what I mean by that is that we are able
to process issues together and get new ideas about how we solve the issues that
we all face day to day in ways that we might not have come up with on our own
folks look into the rising tide Mastermind to see if it is right for you by going to scalingup h2o.com forward
slash Mastermind if what you see looks interesting schedule an appointment with
me and we will see if the group is right for you and you are right for the group