154 Transcript

The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.

today’s episode of scaling up h2o is

proudly sponsored by the association of

water technologies

awt has been the backbone of the water

treatment industry for over

35 years awt is your place to learn more

about water treatment with opportunities

such as wastewater training

sales training basic water treatment

training

and technical training awt’s publication

the analyst provides tips tricks and new

technologies to help you enhance your

water treatment programs

to find out more about awt or become a

member

go to awt.org

[Music]

hello scaling up nation trace blackmore

here the host

of scaling up h2o of course we

all know this podcast is the podcast

that helps us scale up on knowledge

so we don’t scale up our systems

and i have to tell you one of my

favorite things

is when a member of the scaling up

nation contacts me

either through the website or the many

ways that we have to contact on the

website you can go to scalinguph2o.com

and you can go to our show ideas page

and you can type something to me you can

click on the right side of the main

page and you can leave your voice

telling me something

lots of people ask questions and of

course i always

ask for your questions because that is

just

so helpful with my show ideas and a lot

of times as you know

i will play your voice on the air as we

are answering that question but the

thing i really want to thank everybody

for

is for those of you that have reached

out to me and said that this podcast has

made a difference

in your life many have said that their

work was just the same thing

over and over and over again wash rinse

repeat and it was kind of boring

but they heard something on this podcast

that made them try something new

and that led them to trying something

else new

and several of those people have written

in to tell me because they’re trying new

things

it has just breathed new life

into their career and maybe before it

wasn’t a career maybe it was a

job before and now it has become

a career so i love those stories those

are

so motivating to me and i appreciate you

sharing that with me because again i’m

just this guy

in atlanta georgia that happens to

no water treatment since ever

since my father and mother had me of

course my

my father was a water treater and

kind of snuck water treatment into

things that we would do

i’ve shared on the show that i remember

being

a young boy and i would do titrations

had no idea what i was doing but i was

counting how many drops were going in

to make one color change to another and

and from that eventually i became to

love this industry

and i started this podcast well i

started this podcast to raise the bar

in the water treatment industry and

again

i’m just in atlanta georgia behind this

microphone

and i don’t know if that bar is getting

raised unless you tell me and

so many of you out there have shared

that with me

and i personally want to thank you

because that just warms my heart

and makes me know that all the work that

we do on this podcast

all the work that the staff does on this

podcast

is worthwhile so thank you very

much for that and of course last month

we celebrated legionella awareness month

the scaling up nation declared

the month of august legionella awareness

month

and we did that because the nsf normally

holds the legionella conference

during the last week of august well

because of everything going

on they weren’t able to do that so they

rescheduled it for

january of 21 so if you’re interested in

going to that

you can go to our show notes page and

we’ll have a link that will take you to

information on that conference

but we figured as the scaling up nation

as a community of water treaters

what a great opportunity to learn more

about legionella so i hope you enjoyed

legionella awareness month and i hope

that

is just the start of what you

learn about legionella and legionnaires

disease

i always believe that when we have

better

information we can make better decisions

and of course we can always have better

conversations with our clients who are

ultimately responsible for making

decisions around legionella

now speaking of conferences the

association of water technologies

conference is just right around

the corner and that’s actually what

we’re going to be talking about today

amongst some other things my guest today

is tom branvold of premier water

and tom is also this year’s associations

of water technologies

president and he is going to let us know

everything we need to know about

this year’s conference because if you

have not heard

it is a virtual conference and i know a

lot of people

think oh my goodness it’s a virtual

conference i can’t

get what i need out of a virtual format

well folks there’s actually a lot that

the virtual

format has to offer i personally am

going to miss

seeing all of you out there in the

scaling up nation

like we do each and every time we all

assemble at an awt event

but the fact of the matter is with

everything going on that just can’t

happen this year

so this is the next best thing and

tom is going to share what that

experience is going to be like

and he’s also going to share his

experience as being a water treater

for well over 30 years so please

welcome our guest tom brand bulb

my lab partner today is tom branvold of

premier

water and this year’s association of

water technologies president

how are you doing tom hey trace fine

thanks for having me

i feel like i’m among royalty here given

the list of

the list of guests you’ve had on your

show over the years well there’s no

doubt about it the

the people that come on the show

absolutely

make that show and i want to thank you

for being one of those people

my pleasure so tom as we get started and

i know a bunch of people out there in

the scaling up nation

know who you are but there might be one

or two

out in outer mongolia or somewhere that

might not know who you are so do you

mind telling

the nation a little bit about yourself

not at all thanks

uh yeah i was um born in nina wisconsin

to the

son of a nalco rep at the time and

not long after that my dad took a job

with

a little outfit called bets and best

laboratories actually

and moved my older brother and me

and my mom to uh jacksonville florida

where he kind of started vets labs

in the southeast i’ve ventured around a

little bit since then

a little bit of time in the chicago area

some time in iowa

and now we’re back in jacksonville and

gosh i’ve been president owner of

premier water and energy technology

for uh shoot 30 years now

and we’re just having a great time i bet

now

my dad did water treatment as your dad

did

i’ve got to ask did you always want to

do what your dad did

you know uh as he when i was very young

i obviously didn’t

really understand what my dad did other

than the fact that he

usually left on monday and monday or

tuesday and came back on

thursday or friday and was gone probably

40 weeks a year

and i knew he was a salesman but i

really didn’t understand what he did and

i was certain when i was younger that

i would do something in baseball

or golf or something to do with

automobiles i never saw myself as a

water treater when i was younger

as i got a little older and my dad

started

the predecessor company to premiere

i had the opportunity to make 25 cents

an hour when i was

9 or 10 years old emptying garbage cans

and washing out

sample bottles and that was right up my

alley so

that was kind of my introduction to

water treatment well obviously

that turned into you doing more and

learning more

about water treatment so basically what

you did you turned

learning a few skills into a lifelong

career yeah that’s essentially true

what i came to learn about water

treatment is that

if you apply yourself to our industry

and you become competent at it you’re

part of a fraternity if you will traced

of not a whole lot of people

that have a skill set it’s a lifelong

skill set and it’s a skill set that

not every other person on the street

that you meet has and

i think that’s one of the really

attractive things about our industry is

if you get good at what we do um it’s a

skill set you carry with you anywhere

and you become part of a group of people

that

know a bunch about water and they’re

they’re just not a lot

of competent water professionals when

you talk about

how many folks there are in the world

and how many water problems there are in

the world

yeah friend of show colin frain i

remember

he was speaking at an awt conference

years ago

and out of all the people that he had

met

he had come up with a statistic that if

you were in the water treatment industry

for at least two

years and you were fully committed

meaning you were always learning new

things

you were going over and above what the

minimums were

that you were in the industry for life

would you say that’s about what you’ve

seen yeah maybe a little more that i may

i may go more than two years i may go

three or four or five years but

certainly

after a few years especially if you’ve

applied yourself

and and you’ve gone all in

in our industry um you become

so immersed in it if you will that uh

you realize that they’re

they’re you’re part of a select group of

people

and it and it really because if you’re

good at it

um it’s hard to leave it’s hard to uh

to leave our industry once you’ve gotten

some proficiency

and had some success in our business you

realize that your skill set is in such

demand

that it becomes extraordinarily

attractive to stay in our business to

stay in our industry

yeah you mentioned it being like a

fraternity and i can’t agree with that

uh not that many people know what it is

that we do

so it’s hard to go to a party and

explain what it is that we do because

they just don’t

have the general context to know what it

is that we’re saying but when you get

in the same room with people that do the

exact same thing that you do you just

have an immediate connection with them

yeah it’s funny you say that trace

because when we’re together

when my wife and i are together socially

and someone’s talking about what they do

and they ask what i do she almost always

says she won’t understand what he does

pay no attention exactly

so uh yeah what you’re saying is very

true very true

so how did you become the president of

premier water

when i was 16 i started servicing a

group of accounts that

not overly sophisticated closed children

hot water loops and things but when i

could drive i started

to have responsibility for a book of

business for my dad’s company and then

that book of business grew and that

responsibility grew and i ended up

working through college and having a

sales and service territory

that i took care of in kind of the mid

80s i made an offer to my dad

to free him up to do some of the other

things that he wanted to do

and i bought his partner out and bought

him

into a minority position and started the

our new company premier water and energy

technology that was 1986.

my dad continued to work for us as a

sales rep which is what he really liked

trace you and i would be so lucky as to

have my dad’s gig

the last 10 or 15 years he worked

because he had no responsibility he took

care of

his buddies and their accounts and he

and my mom were able to travel and

it was just a great gig for him and it

was good for us as well so that’s kind

of how

i ended up owning premier water so as

the president of premier water what’s

your day-to-day life gosh that’s a great

question

as we’ve been blessed and fortunate

enough to grow over the years

i find that more and more of my time is

involved in

personnel issues and financial issues

and if i had to

kind of segment my day i would say it’s

not uncommon for

85 percent 80 85 of my time to be

involved in those things

but it seems like every day there’s a

technical component where

helping a customer or helping one of our

team with a unique technical issue i get

involved some product development things

and then there’s always the oddball

administrative thing that i

i get involved in but i’d say at this

point

way more than i want to admit is

involved in personnel

and finance and a lot of that trace is

involved just strategically on

you know what we need to do to be in a

really good position

a year from now or two years from now or

three years from now so

my my role has become more and more

uh strategic and less and less execution

based if that makes sense

i imagine you’ve experienced some of the

same

yeah it’s definitely different when you

go from

working in the in the field uh

servicing your own accounts to to

running your own business

and uh and you learn very quickly the

job that you love

going out there talking with customers

running pinks and blues

diagnosing issues you know it’s almost

selfish when you’re out there doing that

yourself

you’ve got to go out there with your

people and help them hone their skills

and and give yourself a little bit to

everybody so one of the rules here at

our company i don’t know if it’s at

yours is that

you know i’m not allowed to have my own

accounts anymore for that reason

yeah i don’t i have no direct account

responsibility

and sometimes i rue the day that that

happened because some of those days were

the simplest days

that i ever had compared to some of the

challenges that i run into

now compared to that because you know

there’s always satisfaction at the end

of day where you’ve

helped a customer solve a problem or

you’ve sold a new piece of business

or you’ve progressed on a project that

you’ve been working on

and that’s not a big part of my day

anymore

and then of course there’s the awt

component you know over the last

few years as a board member and now as

president of awt there’s

not a week goes by that there’s not a

number of things that

i have to get involved in with the

association

um to help our membership and and help

move that

deal forward so uh yeah it’s just

different today it’s different than it

was it’s not it’s not necessarily good

or bad it’s just different

well let’s talk about awt for a moment

and there are a lot of people that are

listening

that have been involved with awt but

there are also some people out there

that have

not awt is a volunteer organization

you have volunteered now your president

so can you

you speak a little bit about you know

what awt

does who they are and if somebody out

there wants to get involved

where should they go well trace i tell

everybody if you’re involved in water

then you probably ought to be involved

in the association of water technologies

awt is made up of member companies and

supplier companies to our industry

of people who get involved in water

problems and

they may be scale and corrosion and

microbiological

issues in water systems but they can

also be

potable in domestic water and wastewater

almost without question if you’re

involved with water there’s a place for

you in awt

we have members from all over the

country for sure and more and more

members

internationally but awt strives to be

the global voice of the water treatment

industry

tom i don’t know if a lot of people know

this but your dad was responsible

for getting awt going yeah he uh

he was and um interesting set of

circumstances

it’s funny i trust you saw the the

explosion in beirut

the a couple days ago some of the

imagery some of the videos are amazing

but it’s interesting awt had its uh

birth if you will

out of a similar event that happened in

bhopal india

where a union carbide plant had a

similar explosion and a bunch of folks

lost their lives and a bunch of injuries

and

not long after that our industry the

water treatment industry people involved

in boilers and cooling towers

all started to experience either

cancellation

or rapid escalation of product liability

insurance here in the states

and so in light of that my dad and a

group of other guys got together and

said

we kind of need to form a captive

insurance company

if we’re going to have a market to be

able to

secure liability insurance for our

companies

and so that was the uh that was kind of

the genesis

of the association at that time you had

to be a member of the association and

then

if you remember the association one of

the member benefits was that you could

buy liability insurance so

it helped a lot of us stay in business

frankly but that’s yeah my dad was

involved in that effort he sure was

i was president back in 2011 and of

course that came with its own set of

challenges as as every year does

but nothing like this year of course

uh you’re having to deal with changing

our regular format because we’ve got

coveted 19

so what has that been like

well trace that’s a great question um

you’re right this has been a year like

no other for

all of us and um shoot

not just our awt events but everything

in all our lives

it seems like a lot of a lot of us are

shooting at moving targets

and from week to week sometimes what

we’re faced with

changes but the board very progressive

board

very forward thinking a lot of talent on

the board you mentioned that awt is the

volunteer organization and

gosh some of these folks that have

volunteered and just give a ton of their

time

and their expertise trace it’s what

makes the association function

but um i would say months ago in the

spring

as kobe became a reality we started

talking about what ifs

and one of the what is what if we

couldn’t meet in person

and then as as uh as the spring

progressed into the early summer

it became more and more apparent that we

better have a pretty solid backup plan

so with the help of msp which is the

management company that

the association works with we started

planning kind of a dual track

approach to this year’s convention and

msp

started evaluating some some virtual

platforms while at the same time we were

planning for an in-person

meeting the tipping point for us came

when

some civil unrest in louisville which

was our host city this year

resulted in damage to the host hotel

and the convention center and we we got

to the point where

we weren’t sure that the host hotel was

going to be open we weren’t sure that

the convention center

was going to be able to host the event

we weren’t sure if the state of

kentucky or the city of louisville was

going to allow gatherings

and so tracy we reached the point

frankly where the only thing we could

schedule that we absolutely knew we

could have would be an interactive

uh type of event so under the leadership

of michael bourgeois who was a

convention chair this year

the convention committee made the

decision to

head in that direction and that’s kind

of how we arrived at

this platform that we’re going to use

this year for what i think is going to

be a phenomenal

phenomenal meeting let’s talk a little

bit about that because many of us have

been to

an awt exposition or

another trade show and we can mentally

picture

what that’s going to be like but

nobody’s really

experienced covet 19 and not being able

to gather before

so what is a virtual platform look like

well

trace we obviously won’t be the first

people to have virtual meetings

a lot of us before covet 19 had heard of

go to meeting and things like microsoft

teams

and zoom and so all of us whether we

whether we realized or not we all were

kind of participating and dabbling in

what i’ll call the virtual world well

um there were companies who became

subject matter experts at what

a virtual or interactive experience

might look like

for a convention a trade show an

exhibition hall

speakers presentations etc the platform

that awt has selected is a platform

called

v fares and what a robust selection that

the v fares is completely interactive

it’s completely immersive

and allows us to continue to have the

things that people are

familiar with when they’ve come to

convention we’ll still have commercial

corners we’ll still have our tracks

we’ll still have our training

papers and presentations and the most

i think the kind of the most amazing

thing is the virtual trade show floor

this v ferris platform is just really

really cool

when uh when it comes to that everyone

who’s a member

has probably gotten a couple of emails

anyway where there’s a demo

and i would encourage everyone if they

haven’t already to take a look at that

demo

you literally can make your way

virtually

through a trade show and you’ll be able

to go up to people’s booths our

our vendor suppliers and uh interact

at their booth much as very much as if

you were there in person

so uh really immersive very interactive

just a really really robust platform

i’ll make sure to put

the link to the demo on our show notes

page so people can do that very thing

some questions that i have is if i go to

a trade show

i make a schedule i know where i need to

be at 10 o’clock at 11 o’clock and so on

and i’m making appointments with various

vendors that i want to talk to

then i might want to make my way out and

network and try to meet some new people

how do we do that with a virtual

platform

well that’s a great question and the v

fares platform

actually allows for that and traced i’ve

done a little bit of that

i mean i probably worked the convention

if you will the same way you

do in person and in looking at the v

fares platform and what we’re going to

offer membership this year

i think it actually will be more

efficient than being there in person

uh i certainly don’t discount the value

of being in person and look forward to

next year being in

providence rhode island for the for the

in-person event

but i am looking forward to being able

to this year

actually scheduling a time at a booth

trace i don’t know if you’ve ever

experienced

going up to a booth where you have a

certain amount of time and you need to

visit with three people at three

different booths about some business

regarding

your company and when you get there

there’s two other people in front of you

and you’re looking at your watch or your

phone and you realize gosh i want to be

at this commercial corner

and you don’t get to see or do what you

planned on doing during that time

well with this v fares platform you can

literally make an appointment

to interact with somebody at their booth

so if you needed to

see the folks at radical polymers you

could make an appointment with

chelsea standish or with mike and at a

specific time

you could either interact with them via

zoom via a chat

gosh you could even i suppose face time

on your phone

so that’s going to be more efficient i

think that is more efficient for all of

because i’m like you during those

convention days they’re very busy and

there’s things i don’t want to miss

and so being able to schedule time when

i can encounter

folks at their booth is going to be a

super efficient way to do it compared to

kind of what i’ve experienced in the

past i’m looking forward to that

tom let me ask because one of the great

things about going away to a convention

is that you’re

getting out of the office so you can

work more on the business and not

necessarily be in the business and

let’s just be real you know we’re going

to be at our desk we’re going to be

looking at our monitors the phone’s

going to ring

and a lot of people they’re going to

have to take that call people are going

to come into their offices

so let’s say i wanted to attend a 10

o’clock

presentation but somebody needs me in my

office

i’m not able to make that so what are my

options

well the great thing about the virtual

piece is everything will be recorded

so if you missed a specific time

that you wanted to be in a commercial

corner or hear a presentation about

you know interpreting applying scale

indices for example is going to be one

of the presentations

and you get tied up and you don’t make

it one of one of the great things

about the virtual world is that that

will be recorded and you’ll be able to

access that at your convenience

that’s a big win compared to being there

in person getting tied up and missing

something

and once you’ve missed it that’s it you

can read the paper

but traced as you know it’s not the same

hearing the presentation from the

presenter the other neat thing

is uh this is going to be an interactive

event

so just as if you were in the room with

a speaker

this v fares platform will allow you to

live chat and ask questions just as

you know we frequently have q a after a

presentation

that won’t be any different you’ll be

able to live chat

and ask questions of the speaker

there’ll be a moderator

just as there is um in the room live

that moderator will relay questions and

you’ll get your answers just as if you

were in the room so

again this v fares platform is very

robust i think people

this is not going to be sitting on a

zoom call or watching a webinar

think think way more interactive than

that

let’s shift to the people that are going

to be

exhibiting they’re used to having a

booth where

they can usher people into the booth and

show them the wares that they have for

the show

how are they going to be able to do that

this year so here’s the great thing

about the

interactive trade show portion or

exhibit hall portion

of this platform vendors are being able

to customize their booth

they’re able to load video content at

their booth

so for example if you and i walked up to

master’s booth

we could click on video content where

gary garcia might be introducing a new

test kit or a new product that he has

they’ll be able to they’ll have a

literature

section where you’ll be able to click on

literature about

product let’s say you’re at a pump of

controller manufacturers

you’ll be able to click on literature

and trace is super cool

that literature will be automatically

emailed to you

later that day so you don’t have to

carry anything anything around

which is kind of nice you don’t have to

be collecting

papers and presentations and copies of

things you just click on what you want

at the booth

and it’ll automatically be emailed to

you they also can have

live chat sessions set up where

someone can be there to answer your

questions

they can also have a zoom platform in

their booth so

you could literally zoom with them and

interact

one-on-one face-to-face real-time so

not that different than um having a

booth

in person than it is with this virtual

platform given its robustness

the other thing i’ll say that people

have talked

about that it’s kind of exciting no

one’s going to have the expense of

travel

and no one’s going to have the expense

of hotel rooms

so some of the positive feedback we’re

hearing about this

trace is that i’m going to be able to

send more people

because the registration is very

attractive

and no airfare no hotels no meals

and your folks don’t have to be out of

their

marketplace for three or four days at

convention

so there’s some real benefits to this

i’m not saying that it’s

that we’ll never do in person again but

there are some benefits

that we think are going to be exciting

for the membership trace the other thing

i’d like to point out

that i think is a tremendous testament

to the acceptance of this

format is all of our speakers

are on board everybody isn’t is fully

engaged

and with some trepidation maybe

but is excited about the opportunity to

to participate

all of our speakers are going to be

presenting the robust lineup of papers

and presentations that everybody’s used

to at an awt meeting

will be there just as they always have

and uh we’re excited about that

it’s going to be a really really great

really really great show

what are the registration fees this year

so from

any given company for the first two

registrants

is 420 and then everyone after that

is 150 so in the past you’ll recall that

frequently that registration is six

hundred dollars

for a person in to come to the

convention

um on top of that you have airfare and

hotel room

well this platform this version of the

convention is going to allow us to

offer a more affordable registration fee

and then on top of that our member

companies are all going to save

all the travel costs associated with

getting people to louisville

so we’re anticipating member companies

being able to send

a lot more people than they would

typically send to an in-person event

and if somebody hasn’t registered yet

what should they do

well the easiest way to do that traced

is go to awt.org

and register online for the convention

it’s a

really seamless quick process awt.org

and register online

tom earlier you mentioned that we can

attend one of the sessions

and it seems like the benefit is now

we’re able to ask questions

uh get those questions answered but if

we can’t attend

you said they were going to be recorded

how long do we have access to those

materials

so as it stands right now everyone who

pays the registration fee will have

access to all of the recorded sessions

for 30 days

so that gives you 30 days post

meeting and trace the event is

begins wednesday september 30th and goes

through friday october 2nd

but that gives you 30 days so

essentially the whole month of october

if you missed something to go back and

review that recorded material

again kind of a nice thing that we

didn’t we don’t have the option of doing

when we’re in person

so yeah for 30 days you’ll be able to

access to that material well tom this

was very informative i know

it’s it’s just easy to think about all

the things we

don’t have because we’re dealing with

covet 19

and and other issues right now but there

are also a lot of benefits that you

pointed out

well that’s true and trace don’t forget

that one of the things that this is

going to

help with the board feels very strongly

that this provides a unique opportunity

for some of our international members

to attend who would never

especially given these these times who

would never be able to travel in person

from their home country and come to

louisville they might not anyway

but this format gives them the

opportunity to participate

when they might not be able to and it

allows them to participate at a much

more reasonable

investment than would typically be the

case if they were coming in person

so uh we think the board the board

anticipates that our

international attendance will be

significantly higher than it is for an

in-person meeting

and that’s that’s great for the

association because it exposes a bunch

more people in a bunch more countries

to awt and what we have to offer well if

there’s something that

coven 19 has definitely proved to

everybody is we are a global economy

gosh isn’t that the case tom absolutely

one of my favorite parts about

coming to uh the convention is

meeting people i haven’t met yet and and

it’s the networking so how are we going

to do that with this format

well trace the rate the way the format

works is

everyone will set up a profile when they

and you’ll have access as an attendee

you’ll have access to

the profiles of all the other attendees

when you see our friend mark lewis is

registered

you’ll have the opportunity to chat him

up on this platform

as if you were face to face so the

networking opportunities will exist just

as they always have

um they just won’t be face to face

they’ll be in a in a

live chat or a virtual format but

they’re going to be opportunities and

time set aside for those networking

situations

and so yeah i’ll at convention

virtually i’ll be able to click on you

and say

hey trace how you doing let’s talk about

scaling up and you should

yes absolutely absolutely now you

mentioned mark lewis mark lewis has

become

one of my closest friends we met at an

awt

convention in palm springs maybe back in

2004 i think when we when we went there

and i got to ask because i know mark

very well mark used to work for you

what was that like so

mark and i go back a long time you’re

correct mark was 18 years old when he

came to work for us and he um

our sales manager at the time had moved

to jacksonville

and he knew this kid mark lewis whose

wife babysat for them well the wife

obviously as you know was kathy and so

kathy mark had moved to jacksonville and

mark had

been an electrician’s helper and was

just this enthusiastic big kid that was

a lot of fun

and came on board with us and worked in

the plant

and shipping receiving manufacturing

that kind of thing

did a great job learned our business

traced and as you know

worked his way through eventually

becoming a cwt

and gosh was our uh business development

manager

before he and kathy moved to the

charlotte area so yeah mark i think mark

was with us for

gosh between 15 and 20 years so we go

back a long way as well

well i had to ask because uh i i know

i know being mark spring has just been

interesting

we’ll say that he’s a he’s a heck of a

guy and

i’m sure you’ve got lots of stories that

probably aren’t appropriate to say on

this podcast

that’s true that’s very true i remember

as president

i brought so much back to my company

when i was on the board so i’m curious

what lessons have you taken away from

being

on the awt board that you’ve applied to

your company

gosh trace that’s a great question um

you know it’s interesting i think some

of the lessons some of the things you

learn some of the things that you

take away you don’t even realize

it’s just over the years of being on

calls

in the boardroom on committee calls

being a committee liaison

you just hear about i’ll call them best

practices

or things that other people are doing

and

it’s not with intentionality but those

things just

by osmosis kind of make their way into

the fabric of

your your own company your own

organization but i will say this that

for me watching you know the two or

three presidents

before me and their leadership style

in the boardroom was helpful you know

it’s uh

we don’t often in our roles or at least

in my role i don’t often get to see

i’m the leader right in in my

organization people look to me to be the

leader

and in that boardroom situation i’m just

a worker bee

and there’s a president and at a board

meeting they’re leading the board

meeting and

and seeing some of that leadership style

uh is

is really good the other thing i think

that working in

a group like the awt board typically is

very diverse personalities and people

come from very different perspectives

both because of the size of the company

they might represent but also

just the geographic region they’re in

and so i think that there’s some

excellent takeaways both in in

leadership

style and and learning how to work with

those diverse personalities

in a setting like that tom you’ve been

in water treatment for

quite a while what’s one of the funniest

stories

you have in water treatment well i have

a lot of funny stories that

just kind of like the mark lewis comment

wouldn’t be appropriate for your show

your your show would be canceled if i

told you some of them but

one that i can tell you that i always

just kind of chuckle about

we had a sales rep that was known to

kind of try to slip things in on his

expense account from time to time

and uh our controller who

approved expenses would come to me from

time to time with something strange and

we would get it worked out well there

was a there was a twelve

hundred dollar dinner at a very fancy

restaurant on this person’s expenses

one month and i called this person and i

said hey what’s up with this dinner

and he said well the dinner wasn’t that

expensive it was the bottle of wine we

had an

800 bottle of wine and

i said something like wow and i said

what was the occasion and he said well

we sold a new account and the production

manager and his wife

and me and my wife went out for dinner

and we were celebrating

and i said well yeah i guess you will

and i said i hope that bottle of wine

was

really good because a company can’t

pay for that we’re not we’re not going

to pay for that and

the funny part of that story trace

obviously is it is funny that somebody

tried to put an 800

bottle of wine on their expenses but the

funniest part was when i inquired about

the account i said how big was this

account

and our sales rep said well tom it’s

going to be 1400

a year by the time we give it up and

going

so it was just mind-boggling that left

me speechless that left me more

speechless than the 800

bottle of wine wow well i guess that’s

the way you get your commission up front

it was crazy it was crazy i remember

when i worked for another company

one of my sales reps turned in expense

reports

and i don’t know how i noticed this but

he went to waffle house a lot

and i noticed all of his receipts were

sequential so apparently what he had

done was gotten the pad from somebody

and and i questioned him on it and uh he

of course came clean

and then he of course suffered the

consequences of that but

um but yeah um it’s a lot easier to be

honest so i’ll just say that

well you know it’s funny we we had this

different guy

okay but we had on a uh on a receipt

from a guy one time

a salt and pepper shaker from a

restaurant and

not nearly as funny but he was on a date

and his date like the salt and pepper

shaker said they would go well in her

kitchen

and so he got the restaurant to sell him

the salt and pepper shaker

off the table and he put it on his

expense account

well there you go folks if you guys are

submitting expense reports

please be aware that somebody is looking

at them

yeah that’s for sure so tom a great life

that that you’ve had if you’ve have

the ability to do one do-over

what would it be well gosh i i’ve

learned more from my mistakes in life

than the things i’ve done right

so i don’t know that i want to give up

the the experiences and the things i

learned from my mistakes

but if uh if you know we’re just looking

not necessarily professional but just in

life in general

i had the chance i could have played

golf in college and i i probably should

have

said you know what i can work anytime

i’m gonna go play golf for a few years

in college and

uh that’s probably something i do

differently

so it’s obvious that you love being a

water treater what’s one specific thing

that you love about it

that’s an easy question um and i tell

our people this all the time

uh even for me as many years as i’ve

been at this

i can honestly say that i can’t think of

a week that goes by

that i don’t learn or relearn something

and i think that’s a really fascinating

thing about our business that

in any given week i have the opportunity

to learn something new or

relearn something that i’ve forgotten

and that’s kind of the great thing about

our industry for me

is that it’s not a static stagnant kind

of industry

there’s always new things to learn and

there’s always innovation and there’s

always different things going

on and so i i won’t say that every day i

learned something new

but trace i don’t know about your

experience but for me there’s never a

week that goes by that i can’t look back

and say

gosh that was a unique experience

yeah that is my favorite thing about

being part

of this industry i’ve seen so many

things

may be made that i wouldn’t have had the

opportunity before

i’ve gotten knowledge from people that

are just proud of producing the product

that they do and they give me personal

tours and then of course you know being

involved with the association knowing

people like yourself

and finding a problem and not knowing

what the solution is

and using that network and learning

something new from that and that of

course spins something else that we

learn

yeah this is definitely an industry that

that allows us to to learn something new

every single day

yeah i couldn’t agree more tom there’s

no doubt about it being a water treater

is a difficult profession uh we’ve

really got to be on our toes we got to

stay up on new information we got to

make sure our customers

understand something that they don’t

inherently understand but when you own a

water treatment business

that becomes even harder so

my question is what do you want

somebody to know that works for somebody

that owns a water treatment business

that might help them

understand a little bit more about the

person who’s sitting in the president’s

chair

well i don’t know trace that’s hard to

distill that into one single thing but

what comes to mind very quickly

especially in our industry

is how burdensome regulations can be

whether it’s environmental regulations

or just dot regulations or osha

regulations but just staying compliant

with regulations

and then on top of that are kind of or

tied to it are just the

cost of licenses and fees and things

that you have to do

to be able to operate all that stuff can

be really burdensome to keep up with

both from a time perspective and a

financial perspective

i think a couple other things it’s

it’s really important i don’t think

people always realize this but it’s

really important for a company to be

profitable

if a company isn’t profitable they can’t

reinvest in their business and if they

can’t reinvest in their business they

can’t reinvest in their people

[Music]

and certainly the right people are the

key to

any of our business not just water

treatment businesses but in any business

you have a successful company you’ve got

great people and

i know that’s the case to premiere that

the people are what make us

tick makes our our machine run

and then you know the necessity of

making a profit is really critical and

i’m not sure people always realize that

and i guess the last thing is the

importance of culture

um and and i’m sure from where you sit

that

you know you realize that you have to

cast culture uh

for your company and um that’s something

we’re always trying to do better at

premiere

and i think some of that burden falls on

people like you and me that

that culture is really important and if

you don’t oh if you don’t if you don’t

own the business

you don’t realize how important that is

tom you’ve seen a lot of things in your

water treatment career

what’s something you just want water

treaters to stop doing

well gosh where our competitors are

concerned i don’t want to tell you that

because

if they’re listening as part of scaling

up nation they’re going to stop doing it

and sometimes we we’re able to take

business from them because they’re doing

things

but i guess one of the mistakes i see a

lot in our industry is

is over promising creating an

expectation with a customer that’s not

realistic

and then when they don’t achieve that

promise it kind of gives everybody in

the industry a bad name have you ever

experienced that

have you ever seen that absolutely in

fact

we’re coming right out of legionella

awareness month

and so many times customers will have an

expectation that just because they have

water treatment program you know they

are led to expect that they shouldn’t

have any

issues or ever get a positive legionella

that’s a great example that’s a great

example but yeah i’d say that over

promising piece because

when when you create an expectation

that’s unreasonable

it affects all of us it affects anybody

who ever calls on that person whether

they’re at that company or whether they

move to another company

and you’re calling on them in a

different company if we all did a better

job of

outlining the expectation in other words

what’s

the uh what’s the destination of this

investment they’re going to make in

water treatment

and then we met that expectation or

exceeded that i think it would help the

industry a lot

that’s great advice well i have a few

The podcast where we scale up on knowledge, so we don't scale up our systems.

THE HOST

Get Your FREE Discussion Guide Now!
(EP 418)

Get Your FREE Discussion Guide Now!​(EP 418)

Get Your FREE Discussion Guide Now!
(EP 418)