The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[00:08] Welcome to scaling up h2o. The podcast where we Scale UP! on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems. Hello, Scaling UP! Nation trace blackmore here and I am so excited because the awt annual convention and expo is coming up on September 26th through 29th in Orlando, Florida. Now I know we’ve been talking about this on the show, but folks, this is such a good show. There’s so many great papers this year. We’re going to talk about a couple of them just in a second, but there’s so many things that you can see that are going on in the water treatment industry. It’s a great way to talk to people for products that you need to have in your industry. It’s also a great way to stay abreast of all the stuff that happens in our industry. Folks, have I sold you on it yet?
[01:00] Are you gonna be there? I’m going to be there and I hope to see you. I’m going to be there in a couple of different capacities. One, I’m going to be there so I can find out the information we just spoke about for myself. I also am going to be recording, scaling up at the convention and we’re going to be doing several things to help the scaling up nation with getting into the convention. One of the first things we’re going to do is on Thursday at 10:00 AM immediately following the keynote speaker, we are going to head over to the exhibit hall in Chillers Lounge and we’re going to have a quick meetup. This is where you get to meet me. I get to meet you, but more importantly, you get to meet each other. And folks, I got to tell you that convention is so much more fun when you can do it with people you know and that’s the whole point around this.
[01:57] I want you to get to know your fellow peers in the scaling up nation and I want you to talk about things that you’re going to do at the convention because now you are a team and you can go out and assimilate all of that information and if there are two opposing papers that you want to see, no big deal, you can divide and conquer and compare notes. So that’s going to be at 10:00 AM on Thursday, immediately following the keynote. Now I have the privilege of participating and several events at the AWT expo this year. So how I want to introduce this is I want to bring on some of my friends that I’m going to be working with at this year’s convention to tell you a little bit about what we have prepared for you at the AWT convention. Well, scaling up nation, we have a returning guest and friend of show, Michelle Farmerie of GLA water consultants joining us once again. How are You Michelle?
[03:01] Doing Great. How are you?
[03:03] I’m doing wonderful. Now that I am speaking with you and I got to tell you I got so many positive comments once your show aired, the scaling up nation loves Michelle Farmerie.
[03:16] That just makes me so happy. It makes my heart smile.
[03:20] Well, Michelle, we’re here to talk about what we are going to be doing. I have a very small role, but what you are going to be doing with some other panelists at the AWC show, Friday, September 28th, between 3:30 and 4:30. What do you have for us?
[03:37] We have actually decided to put together a panel of young professionals so that we can interact and take some q and a time with awc members and try and fill everybody in with how to best deal with young professionals in our industry, how to attract them, how to keep them. That’s a big thing is keeping them loyal and keeping them happy and just how to find that right fit for them in your organization.
[04:05] So Michelle, is this something that everybody should attend or just young professionals who needs to come to this?
[04:11] Honestly, whenever we first put together the abstract, that was the exact question we asked ourselves, who do we want to appeal to? And the answer was everyone. We want young professionals to come. If there are some young professionals in the industry or who are student members and they’d like to learn more because we’re going to give like an overview of different roles. Myself and Brian, Katarski who is the chair of the stem taskforce. We worked on a project where we came up with all the different career options that are available for young professionals coming into our industry and there are so many because it doesn’t matter if you’re science background or if your sales background or business background or engineering background, whatever type. There’s a place for you in this industry and so we encourage the young people to come to this panel and and interact with us because you could get a firsthand insight into, you know, what opportunities you have in the industry.
[05:07] But then we also really encourage and more so encouraged the business owners or senior members of an organization to come and interact with us and ask us questions because the big purpose is to sit there and try and help you guys to maintain the, the young professionals on the staff and know how to best recruit young professionals, uh, what to say to them to appeal to them and get them to come work for your business. Want to stay with your business and stay loyal, be around so that you actually have somebody that I don’t. If, if you’re a small business, you know, you could have somebody to become the next in line, right in line for succession.
[05:47] Great Point. And I understand that this is going to be a panel discussion. So it’s going to be driven by audience questions.
[05:54] Yes, yes it is. It’s going to be by audience questions and the questions will all be directed to myself and our other panelists. Um, and we have some great panelists lined up and it’s, um, I actually, I think I’m the background of it because I love my panel that’s going to join me up on stage and it’s going to be John Shaw from advantage controls. He’s a member of the young professionals taskforce with myself and he kind of covers the equipment side of the industry. Then we have Brian Kucharski who is, as I mentioned before, the stem taskforce chair. He’s with Aqua Phoenix and he kinda covers like the chemistry chemical side of the industry and then we have connor parish, uh, from FCT water and he kinda covers the service side of the industry. And then myself, I cover the business side. So we, we tried to branch out and have almost every different aspect of our industry covered in represented.
[06:48] So Michelle, obviously it’s not a prerequisite to be a young professional because you’ve asked for me to moderate this panel like that. I’m nervous now, how am I ever going to hold a candle to other people?
[07:00] You’re not a young professional. Oh Man.
[07:03] Unfortunately, I think that ship has sailed, but I’m so much looking forward to this panel discussion folks out there in the scaling up nation. This is definitely one that you want to sit in on because we need to make sure we are all working correctly. Whatever generation that you’re in, and this is a great way for you to learn the perspective of the millennial generation. Anything else you want to add, Michelle?
[07:31] No, I think you covered it pretty much spot on because it just, we’re, we’re all really passionate about this, this panel and getting up there and sharing the information because we want our industry to grow and thrive and it is difficult. We are all facing such difficulty, I think at times in recruiting the right talent into our businesses and so any way that we can help each other out and continue to get the right people into the job and then keep those people there so that you’re not investing your time and energy into growing somebody and then have them turn around and leave you two years later, three years later. Heck, maybe even just six months later. Um, you know, if we can get them to stay and just really help our industry grow and thrive because it’s such an awesome industry, it’s all the better. We all help each other out so we all win.
[08:20] Well folks, make sure you make it to the general session that’s taking place on Friday between 3:30 and 4:30. And Michelle, thanks so much for coming on. Scaling up and let the nation know what you’re doing.
[08:32] Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Trace and I look forward to seeing you in Orlando and everyone else as well.
[08:39] Michelle Farmerie probably one of the most delightful people in the water treatment industry. Really excited that they asked me to moderate. They had the bar very low. I think that I was there. Forty second choice. I’m not exactly sure with that, but I’m really looking forward to moderating that. By the way, Michelle was on episode 12 and then Connor Parish who was also a panelist on there, he was on one of my very first episodes, episode eight, so maybe you want to go back and listen to those to prepare for that. Definitely not needed, but it might be fun, but I’m not done yet because we’ve got even more to bring you coming forward on that show. Nation. You already know that I have the privilege of working on several papers and being a moderator on several papers at this year’s AWT Expo and one of my good friends, Russell Baskin of tower water is doing the education committees paper this year. It’s going to be a great paper. It’s going to be about Legionella. Russ, how are you doing?
[09:45] Great, how are you, tracy?
[09:47] I am doing wonderfully. I want to thank you for coming on, scaling up and letting the nation know exactly what we’re going to be talking about. Before we do that, I want to tell a bedtime story to the scale and automation. Do you mind if I do that, Russ?
[10:02] I would really appreciate it. Great to see a trace.
[10:05] Likewise. Likewise. Alright. Alright, so nation, if you will get in the mindset with me. We’re all getting on the carpet here. We’re getting ready to have a bedtime story. So imagine you wake up in the entire way of how you do business. Has Changed, the local government imposes almost near impossible regulations that you have a very short time to get completed and every customer you have is calling you with all of these questions that you don’t know the answer to yet. Some are angry, some are confused, but they’re all looking for you to give them the direction that they need to go. And then your schedule, as you know, it is just thrown out the window because business as you have known it up until this point no longer exists and then you wake up and you realize it was just a bad dream. But Russ, you didn’t wake up from that dream, did you?
[11:02] No, I’m still living the nightmare.
[11:04] So Russ does business in New York and as we all know in the nation that New York was the first municipality to adopt parts of ASHRAE 188
[11:17] and you’re going to talk about that aren’t serious. I’m really excited to talk about this. It’s been near and dear to me for the last three years.
[11:26] So Russ, the presentation that you’re giving is going to be on Friday, September 28th between nine and 10:30 and it’s no secret. We’ve had legionella presentations before at the Association of Water Technologies Conference, but this one’s different because it’s from the water treaters perspective. It’s from your perspective, what are some of the things that you’re going to be talking about?
[11:48] Well, Trace, three years before the 2015 outbreak, I always attended a few seminars. I listened very intently on what was going to be coming up in the future and ASHRAE 188 literally I put my head in the sand. I waited until this is not affected me yet. They didn’t even come out with the standard yet. Why should I start working towards ASHRAE 188 until at least there’s a standard out the door. And what I realized is that anything can happen at any time and when the government walks into your business and really takes over, you don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to react. You don’t know how to do anything. And I really learned this when I was at one of the AWT seminars and they had all the experts, they’re the CDC, they had SPL labs and Janet Stout there. All the great experts and they were talking about what was going on in New York City and you know, it was coming from an expert point of view and labs and every point of view, except for what does it really mean, what does it mean to the people in this room, in this business.
[13:00] And I stood up for about 10 minutes and gave a 10 minute dissertation of what happened to my company because of this. And literally the whole entire room turned to me and I had everybody’s attention. And after that seminar and after that was over, I had a flock of people come to me and they wanted to know more and more and it gives me questions. Can I email you and can you send me something and this and that. And I was just like, wow, this is really important and nobody understands what’s going on. And nobody’s talking about what this will actually do to your business. So when I was approached by the AWT to present at a convention about this, I immediately got excited. I immediately saw a way to give back and a way to help people that are in our industry prepare for something like this.
[13:56] Really take your head from inside to out of the sand. Maybe you want to get out of this business, maybe you’re 60 something years old and you’re about ready to retire or you want to sell this business, should you sell before this, should you sell after it? Um, some other aspects might be, am I running the business to lean? Maybe I have to fatten up the business. There’s a lot of different things. And then it’s from the water treaters, actual employees and perspective. Is this what I signed up for? My job is going to change dramatically. Is this water treatment is anymore. These are the questions that, you know, got to be answered. Somebody needs to know what, what to expect when something like this happens to you. So that’s really why I’m so excited and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to really express myself and let people know what’s going on. I think it’ll be one of the most influential presentations at this upcoming ewt convention.
[14:59] I have no doubt that this is going to be a standing room presentation only. So Russ, I can’t wait to see it. Of course I’m going to be monitoring it. I’m going to do my best to make sure that if we have questions I can get a microphone to those people so we can hear everybody’s questions. I’ve had the privilege of seeing your presentation. I know how awesome that it’s going to be, but unfortunately through the magic of radio, we have not developed that device yet so I can show it to people in advance. So take my word for it. You’re going to want to get there. You’re gonna. Want to get there early and this is going to be an incredible presentations. Thanks so much for sharing with us.
[15:37] No, I really appreciate it. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be on scaling up. I’m so excited. I hope I get a chance to do another one of these soon and listen, it’s always a great time when we’re together and I really hope you help me with this presentation.
[15:53] I have no doubt that you need no help for me, but uh, we will, we will tag team it altogether and you better believe I am tapping you in for a real interview. Thanks so much for us.
[16:04] Much appreciated. Can’t wait to see you again.
[16:07] Well folks, I’m sure you can tell that Russ and I are very good friends and I remember when Russ was going through this transition, Russ was not russ. He had to totally reinvent how he did business. Folks, this is going to be a great presentation and I’m sure if he could have gone to a presentation like the one that he just described before, he had to endure what he endured that would have set him so many steps above starting from scratch, which is what he had to do. So I know this is going to be well attended so I can’t wait to see you there. And I’m really looking forward to being involved with this as well, but I’m not done all my gosh, I’ve got so many jobs that are going on during the week of the Association of water technologies. I have the pleasure of presenting my own paper on Saturday at eight.
[17:03] A M to 9:30 AM to general sessions, are going to have the big room and I’m joined by my friend Nathan Hardy, and we’re going to be talking about filming amines. So rather than me talking about this, why don’t I invite Nathan on the show and we can tell you about it together. Well, nation, you know, I’ve got a lot going on at this year’s AWT convention. Not only do I get to attend the convention, I get to present at the AWT convention, but I’m not alone. I’m actually presenting with a good friend of mine, uh, Nathan Hardy of US water. How are you, Nathan? Doing Great. How are you Trace? I am doing very well now. It’s, it’s fair to let the scaling up. Nation. No, you and I did not set out to do this presentation together, but they were similar topics so it just made sense to do it that way.
[17:56] We did and I’m lucky enough to be presenting with you.
[17:59] Well, you have a very low threshold of what you consider to be luck, but I appreciate that.
[18:05] Hey, as a, as a novice in this industry, it’s definitely nice to be paired with someone like you. Well, I appreciate that.
[18:11] Nathan. I thought we would tell the nation a little bit about what we were going to be presenting now. I think the order is I’m going to present what I’m doing and that’s going to take about half an hour, 45 minutes or so and then you’re going to do yours and then we’re going to do q and a. is that pretty much how we decided to do it? As far as I know, I think that’ll work out pretty great. All right, so hopefully it goes off perfectly, which I’m sure it will. So our paper is actually on filming amines and they entitled it the filming Amine Panel and it’s going to be on Saturday, September 29th and folks, what I have done is just basically I’ve put to the test what we’ve been hearing for years from the filming a mean manufacturers in systems that we’ve been treating for years and I want to add their systems that we’ve been treating for years that have had awesome results, very good corrosion rates, very few issues if any at all on our regular treatment programs. So what we did is we’ve secretly replaced our secret sauce that we were using with these filming amines and my presentation is all about what we learned during that process. So Nathan, you took a little bit different angle and you looked at it from the laboratory approach.
[19:27] That is correct. As a member of an R and d lab here we did. We put this in some of our pilot scale systems and we similar to you are looking at this specific for aluminum and multimodal systems.
[19:39] So our two presentation should be a good a ying and Yang. I agree. I think some things that I might leave out, you’re going to talk about and I think the magic in these presentations is going to be in the question and answer section, so we got to make sure that we’re not either of us long winded so we can have that q and a.
[19:57] I’ve never had that problem
[19:59] promising that I don’t think. I don’t think people can say that about me, but that’s why I’m a podcast hope. Absolutely. So Nathan, if there is somebody on the fence about staying for Saturday because it’s another hotel night and then they’re going to get home late and all that stuff, what do you want the scaling up nation to know that they need to stay on Saturday to see this presentation?
[20:24] At least from my vantage point, I think it’s valuable and that I compared filming amines to a variety of traditional treatments and I think it shows pretty good how it stacks up. It’d be very beneficial to a field personnel. If they’re on the fence considering using this product in the future, it’s likely going to replace something that they’re currently using.
[20:42] There you go, and we promised to entertain, right? We try. We try. All right, well folks, I’m sure this is going to be standing room only, so get there early. Make sure you claim your seat and Nathan, I look forward to seeing at the show. I can’t wait nation. There is no doubt in my mind that this year’s awe convention and expo is just going to be fantastic. I don’t. I’m going to be running around like crazy with all the things that I’m going to be doing, but I’m looking forward to it. I hope you are too. So if you do want more information about the Association of water technologies, you can go to scaling up h, two o.com forward slash awd 2018. That’ll take you right to the convention page and you will learn everything you ever wanted to know, but we’re afraid to ask on that website.
[21:35] So now let’s go to the main part of our show. As most of you know, I like to advertise what we’re doing with the scaling up nation on social media. I try to use linkedin mostly, but we’re also trying to use some of the other social medias and I’m going to be honest with you. I am not an expert at those by any means, but I have people that I work with that are helping me tremendously. No secret about it. My audience I think mainly has come from social media and that’s not just from me. That’s from you find folks out there in the scaling up nation sharing posts that I’ve done or writing your own post to share with the people that you’ve connected with and that’s how new listeners find their way to scaling up h, two o each and every day. So I want to thank you for that and in an effort to keep learning not only about social media but about the water treatment industries.
[22:35] There are always some great articles that people in the industry are posting about water treatment and I’m always looking for what is the next show topic that we’re going to do on scaling up. So I’m always looking at all these areas to figure out what the next show is going to be. And that is how I ran across our next guest. His name is Jim Loria and he is also a linked in master. Actually that’s one of the articles that we’re going to be talking about that he wrote, but it wasn’t the first one that really caught my attention. He wrote just an incredible article about Leonardo Davinci and water and the title just caught my attention and I read it and he’s such a good author. I asked him to come on the show to talk about that and then also share some tips around social media and how we can all do that better. And I started talking with Jim. We learned that we had a lot of things in common. You’re going to hear a show that starts one way but covers a lot of ground. There’s a lot of things you’re gonna. Learn in this show. Heck, we’re even talking about mind mapping on this show. It just goes all over the place, but I it is going to be worth your time and I know that you are really going to enjoy this interview with Jim Lauria. My lab partner today is gem Lauria of maisie. How are you today, Jim?
[23:59] Great. Trace, I really appreciate being here today.
[24:02] Absolutely. I appreciate you coming on. Scaling up and talking about the wide range of topics that we’re going to talk about today.
[24:10] Fantastic.
[24:12] Jim, you and I connected on Linkedin and we’ve had a great dialogue since we’ve done that and that’s going to be one of the topics that we talk about today is really how to position yourself on social media, not only to reach out and find new connections, but also to get yourself out there as a leader with bringing new information to the masses. So like I said, we’re going to be all over the map today. We’re going to talk about social media. You’ve written a couple of pieces that are very interesting and I want to make sure I have some links to those. We’re also going to talk about a skill that not many of us use anymore called mind mapping and how you use that and then you of course are an expert with Venturi injectors, so I would be missed to my audience if I did. Not Bring that to the scaling up nation. So we’re, we’re going to be all over. Are you ready for an action packed interview?
[25:09] Sure. Trace? Yeah. I’m looking forward to it. We will be all over the place.
[25:12] Well, let’s get started by introducing you to the scaling up nation. So if you don’t mind, who the heck are you, Jim?
[25:22] Sure. Trace. So, uh, you can tell from my accent. I grew up in New York City. Uh, I joke and tell everybody I speak the queen’s English and got my chemical engineering degree from Manhattan College. I always had an interest in water growing up. New York City has been recognized, especially when I was growing up as having some of the best tasting drinking water in the world. And it just seemed that I’ve always gravitated towards water process chemicals and I’ve been in the water industry are most of my career. Uh, but, uh, probably dedicated myself strictly to water. Maybe about 15 years ago when I became involved with the World Health Organization. I presented some ideas about drinking water and passaging control and actually had myself put in doing peer review for the World Health Organization’s publication on pathogens and drinking water filtration around that. So filtration spent a large part of, of drinking water or wastewater has been a large part of my career.
[26:23] And then I, I’d say I joined a Mezzie about three years ago. Very much involved in different aspects of water, irrigation, water swimming pools, big municipal drinking water projects with ozone injection and wastewater aeration. So been around a long time. Uh, also had an interest in writing about water as noted. I’ve been writing for about maybe 10 years, started writing on Huffington post about water management practices around the world as I traveled around the world, visited Israel, Australia, Singapore, and wrote about these benchmark practices that I thought people would be interested in and found that no one has all the right answers. But if we look at all these different aspects of the way people are doing things around the world, we can all learn from them. And then I took that from the Huffington post and I thought linkedin platform was a better platform for me to get it out to my 5,000 or so, a network connections there. And, and we can talk a little bit about more of why I chose Linkedin as, as the place for me to really get out there and get the word out about water.
[27:32] Well, I think that’s a great place to start. So there are a lot of social media sites out there you can choose from facebook probably or our linkedin. Those are the two big ones. So why did you specifically say Linkedin is where I need to be?
[27:46] So good question. First of all, Linkedin is the number one business networking site. They’ve got about 400 million members, about $100, million active users around the world a lot, I’d say the majority in the United States, but all over China, India, Europe, Latin America. I’ve got connections to all those places. And it’s also something that, uh, has a number of specialty groups, probably a million specialty groups. So you can join these specialty groups, quite a number of water groups. You can join up to 50. I think of all the groups I’ve joined, maybe 80 percent of them are, uh, of those 50 groups. I’ve joined our, our water related and you can get the word out. And I think the way to network on Linkedin with this business bent is much better for me. And I think for business people than facebook, the way I look at the difference between facebook and Linkedin is the difference you would say between a backyard barbecue and a business lunch for facebook, a backyard barbecue. You show up wearing your Tom Brady, jersey, Pittsburgh steel hat. You’ll probably bring your spouse, your kids, maybe a dog, but in business lunch you’d dress a lot more appropriately. You, you’re most likely wouldn’t bring your family or your dog. And so that’s how I kind of look at the two of them and I really feel that there’s a different way you present yourself on linkedin compared to way you present yourself on facebook.
[29:18] I’m going to tell you that’s one of the best analogies between the two. I think I’ve ever heard.
[29:24] Well thanks, I appreciate that. You know, it’s Kinda how I’ve looked at it for awhile and, and that’s how I tell my friends and colleagues how to, how to look at it as well.
[29:33] I know in my endeavor to reach more people, I’ve also chosen linkedin and I was going for that 100 percent rating that everybody aspires to get and I just wasn’t getting there and I’ve, a friend of mine, James Mcdonald told me what she had to do is you had to start writing content and that’s what I did and my rating immediately boost and of course you already know that because that’s what you’ve been doing for awhile.
[29:59] Right, right, right. So there’s a couple of things I tell people about how to present themselves on facebook. Content is always important for whatever platform you’re on, but I also tell people that, number one, so have a good photo, have a photo that people say, I want to do business with that person. And you have a good one. I think I have a good one. The other thing is the headline and a lot of people put their business title as their headline and I suggest that you not do that and put more of a general profile of yourself of who you want people to see yourself as. One of the ways that I suggest is if you’ve got some recommendations or endorsements, take a look at what people are endorsing you for. Are they endorsing you for water treatment? Are they endorsing you for your leadership skills, for your business development skills, and kind of used those, you know, almost like a crowd source of your title and use that as a way to build a following.
[30:57] Endorsements are pretty important. My Dad used to say, grown up a gym. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, but I, I’ve, I’ve seen that in this new world. It’s different. It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you and who’s willing to say that they know you and that you’re good at something, so a good way to get people to, to follow you is for them to see who knows you and what they have to say about you. And I’d say that’s pretty critical and of course you want it in your, in your summary, you want to kind of put down what’s your unique value proposition. Kind of spell that out in your summary of who the people are dealing with.
[31:36] What would your advice be if somebody was trying to figure out how to create that value proposition?
[31:43] Well, one of the things, as I said, the first thing is, okay, what are other people saying about you? And you’ll get an idea about that. You know, people saying you’re good at business development, are you good at management leader water treatment to stop? I’m sure have your list of top of my list for sure. And so build it around that. What are people actually saying about you? So that, that’s kind of where I’d start. Build it from there and you know, make it unique. You don’t want to be the same as everybody. What do you really feel that you are bringing to the table?
[32:13] Great Advice. Well Jim, I really enjoyed the articles that I’m familiar with that she wrote, and two in particular. So the, the first one I want to talk about is called positioning your company as a thought leader by using linkedin. So why did you put that on? Because obviously you’ve got a niche, you do this very well, you’re now sharing that with everybody in the world saying, Hey, you can do this to one. Why you give away that to what did you learn by applying the items that you mentioned in there?
[32:45] Sure. The first question, why did I do it to share it is so I have, as you well know, I have a passion for water. I’ve always had a passion for water. Uh, both in terms of my dedication to the industry. What I do for a living were puts money in my pocket. What’s helped my family a thrive and, and also I have a passion for water that I think it’s an important topic. Water’s life. It’s, it’s well stated. I mean everybody says that and it’s connected to everything. So I want water professionals to be out there promoting the value of water. So it’s not just my voice out there promoting the value of water. It’s every business professional that’s out there that can talk about it and inform the general public about why water is so important, why it’s connected to everything, a health or food supply, our energy, our business, our recreation. I mean there’s nothing that it doesn’t touch and so that’s the reason I want people to really be out there. The other thing about it is that I wanted people to understand that by writing about it and creating content about it that we really ended up letting people know how important it is and so anything I can do to help them, the water professionals to water practition is that we all are involved with every day. Get the word out. It’s all the better for us.
[34:11] Jim, I got to tell you, I really appreciate that attitude. That’s the question I get asked more than any other one is why am I giving this stuff away? My why am I training my competition? And you hit it right on the head. You know, I always say a rising tide lifts all ships and and you’re, you’re an example of that. You’re putting stuff out there and not only are you getting better by putting that content out, but others are getting better because you’re doing that so that. That’s awesome. Thank you.
[34:37] Right. And, and, and from a business perspective to trace, I mean you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it and look where we’re here because of what I wrote, right? I mean our connection, we were connected on Linkedin, but the reason I’m doing this interview today is because you read something that resonated with you, you reached out to me and now we’re connected because of something that I put in, in writing. So this is a perfect case in point. Hopefully I’ll make some more connections based on this. I’m sure I will. And you as well. So it’s not only about to do with around the right things, it’s also a good business practice. So you know, for both reasons we’re doing this because it makes good business sense as well as being altruistic.
[35:19] There you go. Well, what does the article specifically speak to you? Can you tell us a little bit about the article itself?
[35:25] Absolutely. So it speaks about a little bit about, you know, the difference between facebook and Linkedin is a already described. It also talks about content where I find content and you know, I kind look at water through a lens that anything I see, anything I do, I kinda related to water. So I go to the movies, I think about water. I go read a book, I think about water. I listened to a song, I think about water. So, you know, I hate to use the metaphor, but it kind of just flows to me and when, when you’re in a war world yet, you use a lot of puns and, and, and humor around water. So. So, uh, that, that’s Kinda how it is. One of the things that I say, the first thing you want to do is if you really want to write about what do you almost have to be like an investigative reporter and my friends in New York, they joke about it.
[36:17] Hey Jim, you’re a water reporter, Queens. I accent Queen’s English accent to, to call me by that name. But the first place I started was reading the books of what I like to call hydro luminaries. And then there’s a lot of books out there about water these days. There’s the big thirst by Charles Fishman. Uh, there’s blue deaths by, uh, Robert Morris, his unquenchable by Robert Glennon. I mean, and, and, and the thing that I see is that if you, if you look at the names of the titles of these books, they’re pretty grim, you know, unquenchable the big thirst when rivers run dry running out of water. It’s kind of scary if you think about it, but these people have some really good insights about water. And uh, so I started there and uh, you know, kind of started doing book reviews around them. And that’s what really got me into a writing further about water.
[37:14] Well, let’s talk about another article that really intrigued me and it was lessons from Leonardo. What Leonardo da Vinci taught us about water. I just thought that that was just a really neat concept and to put that person together with, with water. I don’t know if I would have made that leap, but you did and it sounded really good. So I’m curious, how did you come up with that and then if you could also tell us a little bit about what that article talks about.
[37:42] Sure. So I’ve always been a Leonardo Da Vinci Fan, you know, growing up I always was drawn towards engineering and studied Leonardo where early on in my career a read, read quite a few books and recently book came out by Walter Isaacson biography about Leonardo Davinci. Really a wonderful book. And as I started reading it, I started highlighting. I use my highlighter on all the books I read and made some notes and I started seeing the connection between water. And so after I finished the book, I took all those notes, I’d put them in a mind map, which we’ll talk about a little further later on. And, and I started looking at some of the lessons I thought we can learn from them. So the first thing that I saw about Leonardo Da Vinci was that he really. And, and I guess one of the things you, if you start out looking at his paintings, you know, a lot of people know him as a painter, not only as an engineer and anatomist, but a painter, if you look at his paintings from the start of his first painting, a painting of the Arno River to his last paintings that he did just before he died, which were the called the deluge drawings, which really showed water in its most turbulent active state.
[39:00] You got a sense that, you know, even with his art, he looked at water as a medium. And even with the Mona Lisa, if you look at the Mona Lisa, probably his most iconic painting, if you look in the background, you can see the Trebian river. So, you know, water as part of his art was there, but also the way he looked at water and studied water, he, he did a lot of scientific experiments around water. So the first thing I noticed was that, you know, he said, really understand the science of water and to understand the science of water, you really need to look at the hydrological cycle. So he really had a good feeling about the flow of water in the environment, the way you know, it went into clouds, it rained it, it created rivers and so on. So, uh, that was lesson number one.
[39:47] Lesson number two was take a systems approach. And one of the things about Leonardo was that he kind of looked at everything around and compared everything as a metaphor to the human body. And I’ve written other things about this as well. How if you look at the human body, you can see, you know, you’ve got the heart as the pump, you’ve got the kidneys as the filtration systems. You’ve got the eyes as of sensors, the brain as the central processing control logic for, for a water system. So that was the second lesson I took from that. The third one was infrastructure matters. He was big about understanding cities and how they worked and his concept. He actually came up with an idea for Milan to separate the residence from the industrial and the waste portion of the city. So he added in to tears. He had the residents living above and industries and waste created by industries and the waste created by the residence to be below and a way so that they didn’t live amongst that, you know, to contamination.
[40:57] The fourth thing he, he really saw was harnessed the power of water, so he devised all kinds of different types of screw conveyors and, and pumps and different mechanisms to harness that power, to spin silk, to grind flour, to do all kinds of useful purposes. And then he also, even though he was so pretty peaceful guy, he was kind of a Hippie, vegetarian, you know, very peace loving, but he also recognized that water could be used for military purposes to actually use it in military strategy. In other words, cut off water from a enemy arrival state. So he understood power of water in both ways. His fifth lesson that I think we picked up was, uh, invested in research. He could have made a lot more money as a painter, but he took a lot of time to go out there. You know, he didn’t necessarily pick up patrons for the painting jobs that he could have.
[41:54] He decided that he needed to do some research and study water and study all the things he thought were important, and then finally the sixth lesson I, I picked up from the book from, from Leonardo was that we really should share knowledge and that’s a particularly important for us in one industry. I right now, you know, you read about the baby boomer generation starting to retire in these jobs, operator jobs and the people that are actually running the water treatment plants around the country and a lot of that tribal knowledge, so that resonated with me as well. So those are pretty much the six lessons that I wrote about in that piece.
[42:34] It was a very interesting article. I’ll make sure I have a link to that for everybody in the scaling up nation to easily access that on my show notes page. Thank you for riding. I, I really enjoyed it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Now you’d mentioned a skill that I was taught when I was in school, but I don’t think people use it very often. You said you use it whenever you’re going to write an article? I use it when I’m lining out, if I’m going to do a podcast or not and if I’m going to do it, what are the topics, what I’m going to write, any sort of article like you, I also use this and of course I’m referring to mind mapping. I don’t know how that came up when you and I were talking earlier, but it did and you and I immediately connected on that. So for those people out in the scaling up nation that have no idea what I’m talking about when I use the term mind mapping, do you mind sharing what it is and how you use it?
[43:31] Not at all. And it’s interesting because, you know, we talked about Leonardo Davinci and he’s kind of somebody that the way he took notes, it’s almost like a mind mapping lesson and a gentleman from the UK, Tony presents a number of years ago, took that concept from Leonardo Davinci and developed this idea called mind mapping. Tony Roseanne is kind of the godfather of mind mapping. Early on I started doing it on paper, just drawing things. It basically is radial thinking. So you take a central topic, you put it in the middle of the page, and then you spread out ideas from there. Usually one word ideas that you know, it’s kind of free flowing, it’s not linear, which is good and you can kind of see your ideas develop. You don’t have to develop the ideas all at once. You can go back and forth. It’s kind of how my brain works.
[44:25] A lot of other people’s brains work and it’s really good for creating brainstorming things that. And so I was using it for a number of years and uh, at the time, back in the late nineties, my fiance, Laurie now, she’s Laurie Lauria was funny. Yeah, she, she noticed how I was drawing and writing and she found an airline magazine that talked about a computer program, a number of computer programs that actually enhance this capability of, of, of mind mapping. So I immediately started using one of the mind mapping programs from accompany coal mines yet use a program called mine manager. And I’ve been using it ever since. And it’s really been helpful, as you said, you know, to line out articles to do business presentations, to strategize about market development. I mean, I use it every single day and it, it’s, it’s really helped me a lot.
[45:27] Whenever I have a, uh, a problem that I think is too big to tackle, I immediately go to a mind map and I generate some ideas and it’s amazing, you know, it’s almost like a whiteboard. And you and I were talking earlier about, you know, the way I see it is you’re seeing the forest and the trees so you can get a big picture and you can understand it. The, the mind mapping programs, they have a really good now because not only can you see the ideas, but you can actually attach an excel spreadsheet. You can attach photos, you can attach pdf articles. I mean, and in one place you can capture a ton of ideas and a ton of data to make some decisions because that’s what it’s all about. I mean, we’re all in this to make the right decisions as we go down all business and personal life.
[46:19] Why? Just realized how low tech I am, I get out pen and paper and sometimes when I want to get high tech I’ll use different color markers to do my mind map, but I’m not using anything digital for that. So I guess I need to get on the technology boats.
[46:33] Yeah, I’d say it’s quite good. I mean, I, I have fun with drawing mind maps, uh, you know, and it’s almost like an odd form and the more colorful you make it, the more your brain is receptive. I mean, there’s a great book by Tony Susanne called the Mindmap Book and uh, anybody that’s really interested in going further into mind mapping, that’s the book to read. It really gets into things and it kind of starts you out with the basics.
[47:00] Yeah. I use mindmapping when, uh, like you said, I’m trying to figure out what’s the best solution to whatever I’m trying to create and it really does allow me not to hold my thoughts back because it’s not the right time to write that down in a paper. If you’re using the paragraph format. Oh, I don’t want to talk about that yet. I need to wait until I get to that point and by the time you do normally I forget about it, so that’s why I really love that medium.
[47:28] Sure, sure.
[47:29] And then do
[47:30] something that I do. I’m curious to what you think about it is once I have my mind map and then I need to figure out what order I’m going to deliver things from, I’ll then move to posted notes and I’ll start writing all my section titles on the post it notes and then I’ll put them on the wall and then I’ll see how does that flow? Is that how I’m going to write this book? Is that how I’m going to teach this class and if it doesn’t, I just move the post it notes around and that’s how I do my outline if I. well, what do you think about that? Well that’s perfect, but that’s exactly what you can do with it. A digital program. I mean you just kind of slide things around and that’s exactly how my mapping works. You’re not expected to get all the right topics in order the first time, so you slide those around and you can do a lot of things. You can go from a mind map into a word document button. You can go from a mind map into a powerpoint presentation with a click of a button. So I mean that’s, that’s exactly how it works. Trace, it’s you’re exactly doing it the right way, but you, you could save yourself a lot of work by getting one of these digital programs.
[48:41] Gotcha. Well as soon as we finish this interview, I’m going to download one of the apps that you just mentioned. In fact, I’ll make sure I have your favorite apps on my show notes page so people in the nation can download those as well.
[48:54] Yeah, so go to mine, Jed, and I believe they still have a 30 day free trial and give it a shot.
[49:00] Sounds good. Well, like I said, we’ve got so much to talk about. I, I can definitely have you on for 12 hours and I don’t think we’re going to run out,
[49:10] but you are not
[49:11] expert in the field. When it comes to venture injector, so if we don’t talk about that, I would be missing a huge opportunity. I know we’re jumping all over the place, but I want to make sure that we do get to talk about that. So maybe speak a little bit about what you do with those and then maybe even a little bit further back, how they work and why we need them.
[49:33] Yeah, sure, sure. So venturi injectors, and it’s kind of interesting because the guy that really came up with this concept, another Italian engineer a couple of years later after Leonardo da Vinci, his name was Giovanni Venturi and he recognized that if you flow water through a pipe and it narrows down and you’re going to increase the velocity within that narrow section and you’ll create a vacuum if you put a hole in the tube there, right at that restriction. And so by using the force of the water, the motive force of the water, you’re creating some work. And Angela Maisie, the founder of amazing injector, he recognized that back in the sixties and seventies as they were trying to inject fertilizer into irrigation water down in the central valley. They were trying to pump it in any. We’re trying to overcome the pressure of the line and trying to put all kinds of different fertilizers and acids and and, and it created a mess and it really wasn’t working well.
[50:38] So he recognized that if you use the force of that water, that they were pumping in the irrigation line by using a Venturi injector, he could actually create a vacuum to pull in the chemicals and fertilizers into the line. He started the company in his garage and he, he started to become successful. And then he started finding other applications for it. He soon found out that not only could he inject liquids using this effect, but that he could also inject gases. And so we started injecting ozone for small applications like spots to put ozone in hot tubs and spas. And then from there to figure it out that hey, not only do put ozone in spas, but we could also put it into big systems like drinking water systems, you know, multimillion gallons per day systems and then found aeration in things like lagoons in basins, wastewater treatment basins.
[51:38] So the business grew up from there. Just the simple concept of using your already pumping the water. Why not take some of that force of the water and let it work on your behalf. And now the company’s been built around that and we’ve got all kinds of offshoots. We’ve got different types of nozzles because really if you think about Venturi, it’s two nozzles place then to end one coming in, one going out. And that’s what creates the vacuum to pull it in. But yeah, he’s recognized that those nozzles can do some work as well. So some of the things you and I talked about is we’ve designed nozzles to actually go on the bottom of cooling towers so that you can sweep a cooling tower, use that force for the water to push any solids away. And so you keep the basin of the cooling tower free from any debris that might build up.
[52:32] If somebody wanted to learn more about venture injectors, what would you refer them to?
[52:38] Oh, so just go to our website, www. dot [inaudible]. Nazz e I.net, not.com, dot net.
[52:47] Now make sure that’s referenced on the show notes page. You’ve been in the water industry for uh, for quite some time. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in water since you’ve been in the industry?
[53:00] Yeah, I think that technology, it’s advanced very well. I mean we have to look at, at, at the technology going forward, but that’s not going to be the only solution. I think it’s also the way we look at how we have to treat water, how we have to value water. And there’s no one perfect system, you know, people being in the industry, I’m sure all the time. Well why don’t we just desalinate the ocean. You know, we’ve got on the planet earth and I always joke about that. We call it planet earth, but it’s three quarters water. Right? So we’ve got a lot of that salt water out there and I have to explain to people that, you know, we have the technology to disseminate, but it’s energy intensive, it creates a brian that we have to dispose of. So I think one of the things that we really need to get out there is that there’s a lot of ways to treat water and we have to look at different parts of the world who were doing it right. The Israelis are doing some things right to Singaporeans at doing things right. Uh, if you look at Australia, they, they’re doing things right. It’s a combination of conservation, a combination of reducing and recycling wastewater. It’s a combination of looking at new technologies. So I think there’s no one answer. I think it’s a combination of a lot of different answers and combining them so that we can make sure that the value of water is out there, that we respect it and care for it.
[54:32] Jen, how do you learn new things about water? Where do you go?
[54:35] Yeah. So I talk a little bit about that. You know, I, I read every book that I can about a water and there’s a lot of them out there. Anytime there’s a new book, I’m kind of on my radar. I look at things that I can see. My focus is water, so anything I see or hear I kind of. Okay, how can I use that to help me? I use it as fodder for my writing so you know, to me it’s almost a game now that if I can find something to write about water, let me see how I can talk about it or relate to it so that I can. I can put it out there for the general public.
[55:13] Awesome. Well this has been a lot of fun. I know we’ve covered a variety of topics, but like I said, I think we can cover 12 more and we would not have any silence on this podcast, but I do want to ask you a couple of lightening round questions and then maybe we’ll have you come back and even talk about some more stuff if you good with that.
[55:31] Absolutely.
[55:32] All right, so lightning round question number one. If you could go back in time and talk to yourself on your first day where you started with water, what advice would you give yourself?
[55:42] Oh, that’s a really good question. I guess I would have started earlier about writing about it. You know, I started a little later than, than I would have liked, but that’s one of the things that I would say that, that I probably would’ve said I, I’ve always liked to write. You know, I kinda took a parallel course in college. I was in the engineering hall, uh, the engineering campus studying engineering and then I’d run up to the main campus and take some writing classes. So, you know, I probably would emerge those two earlier in my career if I look back about it because, you know, I did my corporate career or you know, up the corporate ladder and I did write reports. I did right call reports, business plans, things like that. But I didn’t really do it as I’m doing it now for the last 10 years.
[56:35] Jim, what are the last three books that you’ve read?
[56:38] Last three books. So the last, the last book I read was one of the last ones was was Walter Isaacson’s, Leonardo de Vinci, which was a really great one. Let’s see. I read a lot of books, so I read a really good book and for an engineer the great bridge about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough or that was on the top of the list for awhile and then do I make myself clear by Harold Evans? It’s a book about writing and how to be concise and be able to express yourself in a minimum amount of work
[57:12] words. Excellent. Jim, are you one of those people that can read like 15 books at one time and keep them all straight?
[57:18] I do, I do. I kind of have fun with that and it’s especially fun trace when I start to mix them together on a mind map. So I just, uh, I, I was working, I was working on a project over the weekend and I realized that there was some concepts that I wanted to pull out. And this is another excellent book. I’m a big Malcolm Gladwell Fan. I’m a big, I forget the guy’s name, uh, who does freakonomics. I think Steven Levitt maybe. Anyway, there’s a book out there called hitmakers by Derek Thompson and that’s a book I just mind map over the weekend because I wanted to pull some concepts from it and uh, that, that’s a really good book. And so yeah, I do read a number of books all at the same time and it’s uh, it’s fun trying to kill me.
[58:08] Been straight. Oh, I’m envious of that. I’ve got to stay with a book that I’m reading. Otherwise I get confused. I can’t remember which said what. So I, would you mind sharing one of your mind maps and I can put that on my show notes page?
[58:22] Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay.
[58:24] I think that will help people that are trying to get the concepts, uh, especially if they’re reading the same book that you are.
[58:30] I have a, a mind map that actually shows how to use linkedin more effectively and maybe that’s a remap that your listeners could use.
[58:41] That would be awesome. I think everybody will appreciate that. Jim, if you could speak with anybody throughout history, who would it be with and why?
[58:50] That’s an easy question. Obviously, Leonardo Davinci, you’d be right at the top of the list. I mean, he’s considered one of the greatest geniuses that’s ever lived. Uh, I think, uh, there was somebody that did a ranking of geniuses. Einstein was at the top of the list, Thomas Edison on Michelangelo, but if you look at all the things he really was ahead of his time on, he was an inventor. He was a painter. He was an anatomist, probably could have made a great doctor. I mean, as much as he did around looking at dissecting humans, horses, pigs to understand what they did. So, yeah, for sure. I mean, he would, he would definitely be the top of the list.
[59:32] Jen, this has been a very fun interview to have. I know I’ve learned a lot. I know people in the nation have learned a lot. Thank you so much for coming on.
[59:41] Oh, my pleasure. That trace. And just to let the audience know, one of the things that I’m doing right now is I’m taking my passion for water and I’m writing a book that kind of links all these things we talked about together and the title a book is to know water is to love water and basically show the connection between water and everything, as we said, food, a health, energy business, all that stuff. So I’m, I’m pitching it to several publishers and uh, it should be out shortly.
[01:00:13] Well when it’s out I will definitely let people in the scaling up nation know that it is available for them.
[01:00:19] Fantastic.
[01:00:21] I’m fairly certain that interview could have gone on a lot longer. We have so many things in common. He’s just a such an interesting guy to talk to. So you might be hearing back from Jim Lauria, but take it from me. You want to read some of his articles. So I’m going to have some links on my show notes page to the articles that we mentioned. So folks, be sure to check the website scaling up h, two o.com for the show notes page. And I will have all of those links available to you. Now, the other item we have coming up in the very near future, of course, we spent the whole top of the episode talking about the Association of water technologies and we’re all excited about that. But the very next week is our own holiday folks. We finally have a holiday for us. It’s industrial water week and it’s celebrated worldwide.
[01:01:14] I’m not sure if it’s a paid holiday. I think you should get time and a half, but take that up with your employer and see how that works. Be sure that James, Mcdonald’s, the name that you mentioned on that, since he’s responsible for that. But folks, I want to blow this up because this is our holiday. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to help me and I want to put on a show each and every day of industrial water treatment week, which is October, first through fifth. Each one of those days we’re going to be talking about a different topic. So on Monday we’re going to be talking about pretreatment. On Tuesday we’ll talk about boilers on Wednesday we’ll talk about cooling on Thursday, wastewater and then Friday about water treatment careers. Now this is going to be a show released each and every day and in order for me to pull this off, I need your help and that help is going to scaling up h, two o.com and on the right side of the webpage you will see a button that says send voicemail folks, I you to ask your water treatment questions and I will either answer them on the air or I will have somebody much smarter than me answer them on the air.
[01:02:30] So that’s going to be how we celebrate industrial water week. It’s got to be great folks. I’m so excited to see you in person at the Association of Water Technologies Expo and convention. So when you see me there, come up to me. I want to have some things to give to you. Last year I did buttons. I’ve got some buttons left. I’ve got some other things that haven’t come in yet, but I’m hoping they come in before we leave to go to the convention. So I have some items for that. Let me know what you want me to talk about on the show. I’ll make sure to write that down on my list and folks, as always, I would not have a show if you find folks out there weren’t listening to it. So thanks for listening and I’ll catch you next week on scaling up.