The following transcript is provided by YouTube, mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode click HERE.
[Music]
today’s episode is sponsored by the rising tide Mastermind the rising tide Mastermind is where people just like you
get together every week to help each other with issues let’s face it issues
are hard so why start from square one when somebody can tell you what they’ve
done with a similar issue if this sounds like something that’s interesting to you
go to scaling up h2o.com Mastermind to see if the rising tide
Mastermind is right for [Music]
you welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our
systems I’m Trace Blackmore the host of the scaling up H2O podcast and Nation
merry Christmas happy New Year oh my gosh we have just almost finished up
2023 and we are getting ready to welcome 2024 where did the year go oh my
goodness how does that happen it seemed like last year went by quickly and each and every year even more quickly the
good thing is it looks like we are learning how to not only live through a pandemic but learn past a pandemic and
Things Are getting back to normal we are uh all going to conventions again we’re
getting to see each other we’re we’ve learned some things of course from surviving the pandemic a couple of years
ago but it looks like things are getting back to normal and thank goodness for
that well Nation this episode is kind of special this is where I’m just going to
do a year in review it’s just going to be you it’s just going to be me and
we’re going to talk about all the things that have happened this year some things
that uh I have done this year I’m going to give you the scaling up H2O and Trace
Blackmore report card because I think it’s important that we hold each other accountable and I am always trying to do
new things and learn new things and have new experiences throughout the year and
I have had lots of those throughout this year and a lot of them you’ve experienced with me on this very podcast
so I thought we would just take this episode and go down
recognition memory lane for 2023 and I want to start off with going
all the way back to 2018 when Mike SSH who of radical
polymers came up to me on the trade room floor is that what we call it the showroom floor the trade show where all
the where all the exhibitors are whatever we call that and Mike said that
the number one thing that was being talked about was the scaling up H2O podcast and had I ever thought about
allowing people to sponsor and help us with our mission and I basically told
Mike that I was worried that that might lessen the quality of the show and Mike very quickly allowed me to look at a
different perspective that so many people were getting enjoyment out of this show and so many people wanted to
help it be more than what it was currently and he was one of those people and he said look at potential sponsors
for getting you to the next level getting the show to the next level maybe getting the show to The Listener that
hasn’t heard it yet and Mike I sure appreciate that because I heard that
loud and clear I actually did a poll with the scaling up Nation if you listen to the show back then you might remember
I had you vote on what you thought about that and it was overwhelming that uh the nation pretty
much said hey no margin no Mission if you run out of money and can’t host this show we don’t have a show so um
obviously we’ve got to pay for all the tools and people that help us with this show and uh having sponsors definitely
helped that so I want to personally thank all of the sponsors that have
helped us with the scaling up H2O podcast we are far better because of
your support and I know there are lots of people out there that are considering sponsoring and I will say that this show
isn’t right for everybody to sponsor my rules are it’s got to be something that I’ve personally used or something that I
see that can help the lives of the members of the scaling up nation and if it fits one or both of those categories
then we by all means want to create a partnership uh I I will say we’ve had
some people that have asked to sponsor and they didn’t fit those categories and that’s okay there’s a podcast for them
out there so if you know somebody or if there’s somebody out there that does want more information let us know we’re
happy to get you information on the sponsorship but I just want to take a moment and thank all of the sponsors out
there that help us pay the bills here around this scaling up H2O podcast we of
course want to make sure that this is always a free resource to raise the bar in the water treatment industry and all
of our sponsors help us do that each and every week somebody else I wanted to
think is somebody that you hear each and every week on the scaling up H2O podcast
and that of course is James McDonald and James McDonald of course he brings us
detective H2O we get to hear those each and every industrial water week he was
the one that originally brought us water water week he was the one that filed the paperwork to make that an official
holiday of course that’s the first full week in October each and every year
James was the one that started that and it has just become such a great holiday
that we get to celebrate this awesome career that all of us share within the scal andup nation and of course James is
the one that has been bringing US Weekly installments to all of his challenges
that he gives us so we can become better in what we do in our day-to-day and of
course this year James was doing his periodic water table with James and that
was 52 chemistries allowing us to research things that we use every day in
our job but maybe we haven’t thought about the specific chemistries maybe we haven’t thought about it in the way that
James posed the question so he presented questions for us to go out and answer
and so many people have really enjoyed that so many people have stayed up to
date with that and learned each and every week so James you put in a lot of
work on the scaling up H2O podcast I will say that this podcast is a lot more
fun with all of the things that you add to it and Nation I’ve shared this before but when I was thinking about doing a
podcast James was one of the first people that I called and he didn’t even hear me all the way through he just said
hey you got to do it this sounds awesome you got to do it so James you have always been my number one cheerleader
out there so from the scaling up Nation from the bottom of my heart thank you
for all that you do and you might be wondering what is James doing this year
well let’s find out [Applause] together the next James has challenged
as we grow as an industrial water treatment professional well welcome to thinking on
water with James hello and welcome to the periodic
water table with [Applause] [Music]
James so what’s next for the weekly series with James what will we explore
think about imagine and learn together in 2024 you’ll just have to wait and see
drop by drop well it looks like James is going to
keep us in suspense we’re going to have to tune in next week to find out what his new installments are going to be but
I’m sure they are going to make us a better water treater each and every week
Nation when I first started this podcast I used to always watch what our ratings
were and how many downloads We got per episode and where they were being
downloaded and when they were being downloaded and it became a slight Obsession in the beginning oh my gosh
they didn’t like this episode oh they did like this episode what did they like about this one and not like about that
one and I remember I was trying to learn everything I could from the metrics and then finally I just realized that I
needed to make sure that we put a quality show out there on a consistent basis and made sure that we were always
trustworthy we were always informative and it looked like that was the magic
formula and I stopped looking at all of the ratings because you really can drive
yourself crazy with all of that I assure you my staff does look at the ratings
and they are always looking at what I was trying to do in the beginning they do it a lot more scientifically I think
I had more emotion involved in it which is why I get their reports instead of
looking at them myself and we’ll look and see what we can do better but one of
the things we look at is how many downloads that we get and uh we are well
over 10,000 downloads and we are in I believe 96 countries so our top
downloads are of course in the United States but then we are followed by Australia the United Kingdom Canada
Vietnam then New Zealand then Ireland South America then Netherlands and
Mexico and like I said there’s 96 countries out there and I just think
that that is fantastic I remember when I started this podcast in April of
2017 and I remember thinking is anybody going to listen to this am I doing this
for any real purpose and of course I wanted to raise the water treatment
industry and raise that bar one water treater at a time but was anybody going to listen to me and that is just really
cool to see so thank you everybody out there in the scaling up nation and I know you are probably wondering what are
some of the top shows of this year since you’re saying you look at this information or actually I revealed I
don’t look at this information but the great staff here at scaling up H2O keeps track of all of this so here we go here
are some of the most popular shows that we have had this year of course uh we
broke episode 300 this year and episode
3301 were from our friend chrisie and chrisy talked all about best
multi-generational Workforce strategies that was part one and two uh so that was
our number five rated episode our number four episode was episode 321 Dr Alberto
kamazi our Legionella friend that episode comes in at ranks number four
the number three rated highest download episode was episode
320 that was Dr Janet Stout talking about new insights and updates into
Legionella and all things infectious disease that came in number three number
two was 336 that was uh Dr SWAT Sharma and she
was talking about all things Wastewater in the paper that she wrote so here you
go the top rated episode the number one downloaded episode of
2023 is episode 319 that was with yours truly and that
was where we were kicking off Legionella month so this was in the beginning of August this year and I just went to the
scaling up mailbag and I answered all of the different questions about Legionella
so look at that one two three shows are all dealing with Legionella there’s no
doubt about it the scaling up Nation loves Legionella and there you have it
the top five shows of 2023 you know speaking of top rated
shows this humbles me every time I look at this but out of
3,227 600 podcasts that’s how many podcasts they are ranking globally we
come in in the top 3% how cool is that so they look at
things with uh the popularity of the show how often people download it how
consistent the episode is and getting out we of course bring you a brand new episode each and every Friday so out of
over 3.2 million podcasts in the world we
come in at 3% of the most popular and celebrated shows out there that is just
amazing to me so thank you for everybody that allows that to happen and how do
you allow that to happen well you listen to it you share it you let people know
that there is a podcast out here for industrial water Traders and you leave a
comment and you rate US on your podcast player whatever podcast player that is I
can’t tell you how much that helps us in the world of podcasting it allows us to
find more people because it raises our search ability so there you go there’s
uh some information about the show and we’re going to do another Legionella
month of course this coming August so if you have some ideas or possibly some
guess for that you can be sure to go to scaling up h2o.com go over to our show
ideas page and get all that information over to us so we can go ahead and start
booking what we need to do for August of next year a lot of people have not gone
over to our Legion resources page so that’s scaling up h2o.com
Legionella and this is so cool we have interviewed so many people about
Legionella we have been given so many references so many sources the great
team here at scaling up H2O and I say team I’m going to go ahead and give you
their names you’ve heard them before so we have Margie Davin and Karen Drury and
they make sure that we get the best of any podcast out there each and every
week and they’re doing things for you like putting together all the different resources that we’ve combined for
Legionella that we’ve gathered for Legionella and put it on scaling up2.com
Legionella so you can educate yourself on all things Legionella so how cool is
that we’ve got such a great team and of course at the end of the year where we’re celebrating things we are
definitely going to celebrate Margie and Karen thank you both for all that you do
and of course since we are talking about the best team in the whole podcast world
I want to make sure that we talk about our audio engineer sha duly Shan makes
me seem halfway intelligent each and every episode you know that is Magic
editing if he is able to do that sea just does an amazing job with making
sure that our sound is consistent uh it sounds great and we get a lot of
compliments on how good our sound quality is in fact when we get a guest
that is having problems with their connection we normally get some complaints because the scaling up nation
is so used to the high quality that you hear on my microphone and all the things
that we do when they don’t quite hit the mark because they had a connection issue
or something along those lines normally we hear about it trust me we know about
it way before you know about it and if we could fix it we definitely would and nine times out of 10 Shawn is able to
work his magic and make it sound just great and for those of you that have not been a guest on the scaling up H2O
podcast and there are quite a few out there you probably don’t know all the things that happen in order for us to
make sure our guests are comfortable and well informed to come on the scaling up
H2O podcast so we send them out instructions we even recommend that they get a particular type of microphone so
they can sound their best and some people do and some people don’t and sometimes that creates an issue with
some audio quality but I really think those episodes are very few and far between so there you go the great staff
at scaling up H2O they make such a great podcast each and every week and I
definitely could not do it without all of them several of you already know about this but we have launched the
scaling up H2O Academy and the scaling up H2O Academy is all about how do we
raise the bar in the water treatment industry one water treater at a time and
one of the things that we started with was how do we get people confidence in
sitting for the exam to take their certified water technologist examination
it is my belief that when we started this there are so many people out there
that are ready to take that exam and would do very very well on it but they didn’t have the confidence to let people
know hey I’m signing up for this test exam evangela Pikes listening from awt she doesn’t like it when I call it a
test it is an exam sorry Angela forgive me for that so with all of that we knew
that if we could give people just a little boost of confidence they were going to be able to not only take the
exam but pass the exam so last year early this year excuse me not last year
yet we released the cwt practice course and there’s two
different versions of this and you can find both of them by going to scaling up2.com
cwt prep and there’s a free version and there’s a paid for version now the free
version is me working through the handbook that you get to learn everything you need to know about your
certified water technologist Journey from sitting to take the exam all the
way up to renewal I work through that book for you and that is 100% free
because I want to give you the confidence to do something towards your certified water technologist designation
hopefully after you see some of the things that we do in the free section you will then invest in yourself and
sign up for the paid for section and that is me running through a 100
question fake exam that that we’re trying to see what your knowledge base
is on all sorts of things that they could test you for with the certified
water technologist examination so you get to see how you do then if you need
to see how I got a different answer than you did I have a video for each one of
those questions where you can see me work through each one of those questions there’s some math on there there is some
Logic on on there there is just some go look at the references and and reference
the references and find your answer so I show you all of those things to get you in the right mindset and the right
habits to go take the cwt exam and then you get to take that exam all over again
at the very end and most people do tremendously better at the very end now
say there’s a question there that you just don’t know a lot about well we’ve got resources on the SC screen where you
can go learn more about say water softeners or maybe phosphate programs or
whatever that question is asking for just to help you study now the cwt it’s
a unique exam every time that you take it so there’s no way that I can prep you
for the actual exam but what we’ve been able to do is give people confidence so
they know where they stand they know what they need to study and we have had
a lot of people people come back and say that it gave them the little push that
they needed to sign up for that examination and I have been able to shake so many hands at this year’s awt
convention that they said they took the course and they were able to pass the
exam now they were giving me credit for helping them pass the exam that is not my credit at all I might have given them
a little bit of support and A little nudge to go do something but everybody out there that is earn that
certification that is 100% you so if this sounds like something you want to
do next year and I hope everybody that listens to this podcast that’s in the
same type of industrial water treatment that I’m in at some point in time plans
to get their certified water technologist designation you’ve got to be in the industry for 5 years depending
on if you have a certain degree and different experience you can actually shave some time off of that I actually
go through all of that within the free portion that I mentioned earlier on that free course so all that’s waiting for
you once again that scaling up h2o.com cwt prep but I’m giving thanks during
this episode and I want to thank all the people that signed up took their cwt and
received their cwt this year that is something that
really helps our industry that makes sure that you you are upholding the
highest standards you are making sure that you have the highest designation in this industry and when people hear that
you have that designation hopefully they are inspired to go get their designation
and let me tell you when more people get their cwt customers are going to start to
demand it and when people don’t have their cwt they’re going to have to go
get it because customers realize what a valuable designation that is right now
we have the luxury of getting it whenever we want I hope you want to get it sooner rather than later because it
is coming to a customer demand near you mark my words Scout Nation another thing
another feature that we have that keeps getting better and better is our events
section for professional water treaters and you can get to that by going to scaling up h2o.com
events now we’ve always had something on the page for events over the years but
let me tell you it has changed dramatically this is everything that you
could ever think of within the industrial water community and if you
see something that should be on there that’s not let us know and we’ll get that on there it is amazing all the
things that the team here at scaling up H2O corate for the scaling up nation and
that is one of those things they make sure that they know what events are coming up of course I list a couple each
and every podcast but let me tell you that is nothing compared to all the
events that are on the events page again you can get to that by going to scaling up2.com and going over to our events
section or just doing scaling up2.com events and thank you for all the people
in the scaling up nation that helped us get that entire database it’s a allowing
us to uh support a lot of these communities that are needing some help after covid and there are so many
associations out there that people just aren’t aware of and now that you are there might be something in your
backyard that you are able to attend and network and just get a whole different
elevation of your career and how do you know about it you go to scaling up2.com
events so those are some things going on with the podcast and I just think it’s
amazing all of the accolades that we have all the amazing people that are
getting the podcast out each and every week of course all the amazing guests the fact that we’re over 300 episodes
the fact that so many people download us every week the fact that we’re in 3% of
all the podcasts which is 3.2 million it just does not get any better than that
and I want to thank everybody out there that is part of the scaling up nation that allows things like that to happen
that just makes everybody here on the scaling up team so proud because we are getting so many accolades with the
podcast but I’m going to shift gears slightly and I’m going to share some
things with you that I consider personal victories for me in the year of
2023 now you might remember back on EP episode
325 we shared an inside look of what we do at the live event of the rising tied
Mastermind and we had the finalist of the Ted Talk candidates we did a TED
Talk contest at the live event and you get to hear each one of those members
giving their finalist Ted talk or Ted type talk I should probably rather say
and that’s episode 325 and in the very beginning of that I inspired or I tried
to inspire the entire Mastermind by giving my Ted style talk and that was on
what I called the butterfly line and you can listen to that but it was all about
how am I doing things and now how are you doing things that get you out of
your comfort zone and I know you know what I’m talking about we do things each
and every day that are just comfortable for for us to do but occasionally we’ll do something that’s either right on that
butterfly line which is that line right in between comfort and discomfort and I
know when I’m working on that line and I start getting butterflies on my stomach I start getting nervous instead of that
nervous feeling I get excited because I know on the other side of that line my
circle of influence my comfort level is getting larger and and I get excited
about that and I’ve had several opportunities this year to work on that
butterfly line one was giving that Ted style talk in front of the entire Rising
tide Mastermind and setting an example if you will since I was the very first
one to go in front of everybody so if you want to learn more about that that was episode
325 but speaking of the butterfly line I had such a great honor to work with the
International Water conference this year and I was their keynote speaker and that
was just such an incredible experience they asked me to do that I graciously
accepted humbly accepted and they told me why they selected me and some of the
things that they thought I brought to the conference and uh they used some great words and uh it really made me
feel like this podcast is really doing what I had hoped it would do so many
years ago and because of that I got to speak in front of the entire
International Water conference on opening day and I was the keynote speaker so I will say above everything
that I did this year that was 100% one of the most fantastic experiences that I
had so thank you for everybody at the IWC that was just a great experience and
it’s my hope that I get to do some Keynotes in 2024 I enjoyed it I had so much great
feedback from people that were in the audience I can’t wait to do that again so who knows maybe you will see me at an
upcoming conference that you are attending well another thing that I’ll mention is uh we launched our seventh
group for the rising tide Mastermind of course we started the rising tide Mastermind a little over four years ago
and I hope it would be a success now with almost 80 members and a waiting list for group number eight oh my
goodness it has grown past my wildest dreams and I don’t just mean in individuals I mean in success folks this
is a group of people that get together on a regular basis to support each other
and they’re all in the same industry and they help each other get further faster while having more fun and we do all of
those things and it is just just amazing if you’ve been to an association of
water Technologies conference or an International Water conference um you have seen Rising tide Mastermind members
walk through the convention hall and help each other with things that they know are going on in the other person’s
life and say hey you need to go see this booth because they can solve the issue that you brought to us it brings a whole
new dimension and they’re just such a great group of people so I want to thank everybody out there in the rise tied
Mastermind for having the faith to join the group and that is something you need a little bit of Faith to join a group
cuz you really you want to join but you really don’t know what you’re joining until you get involved in it and then
these aren’t people that are just involved these are people that give more than they take and every single member
is like that and that’s why it is such an amazing group now this is not meant
to be an ad for the rising tide Mastermind but I will tell you if you’re not a member of a mastermind group
become a member of a mastermind group and maybe the rising tide is not right for you but there are other groups like
that out there life is hard to do it alone life is too short to do it alone
and it’s very lonely to do it alone so The Mastermind group whichever one you
decide to join allows you a group of people that are just coming together to
make each other better and to have fun while you’re doing that so if that’s something sounds interesting to you you
can go to scaling up2.com Mastermind and read up a little bit more
about the rising tide Mastermind but just such an amazing group and uh could
not be more proud another event that I can’t be more proud of is my lovely
bride Stacy and I celebrated 26 years of marriage this year so you guys get to
hear me every Friday she gets to put up with me each and every day of her life and we’ve done that for over 26 years so
that was amazing and one of the things we are able to delightfully say on this
podcast is on April 13th of this year we adopted our son Hayden and that was just
an amazing experience and I got to share that not only with Mastermind members
but uh with a lot of you in the scaling up Nation so I just cannot think of a
bigger thing that tops the list than us adopting our son this year a couple of
other noteworthy items as you might remember on episode 292 Scott wnac He
challenged me to read more books and I read about 50 books a year and I thought
I was doing pretty well and I was looking at his bio he reads over 300 now if you haven’t listened to episode 292
it was a great interview but in one of the interview questions I challenge him
on reading 300 books a year cuz I’m always reading and there’s just no way that I felt that I could do that and on
the podcast episode he starts playing for us his Audible and it’s on 3.5 speed
and I couldn’t make out anything within that audible recording and he was able
to say every single word and he said he didn’t get there by going to 1.0 speed
to 3.5 speed he got there by going to 1.1 getting used to that and then going
to 1.2 and getting used to that so he challenged me this year to I was on 1.5
and I was happy with that well I am now at 2.5 and I’ll say depending on the author I might have to go up or down but
2.5 is the regular speed that I do listen two books on the audible platform
and I listen to 62 two books this year so not 300 but 12 more than last year
and here’s the other thing I only count books once and there’s a lot of books that I read again in fact that’s one of
the books I’m going to tell you about and the most notable book that I read
this year it has nothing to do with water treatment and you probably saw this documentary it was called Band of
Brothers it was on HBO it came out in the mid90s and it was just fantastic so major dick
winners which is the main character he actually wrote a book it was his Memoirs
and it was a lot of things that were not in the documentary they were all from his firstand experience and it was based
on the fact that he and Stephen Abrams had corated all these letters and all
these documents over the entire history of the 5 6 parachute Infantry Regiment
he calls it in the book 506 PIR and it was all of these stories he talks about
it and folks it is amazing he is one of the most humble leaders that I have ever
listened to I wish I got a chance to meet him unfortunately he passed away in
2011 uh but one of probably the best leaders of our time probably one of the
most humble leaders of our time and he was best known for being the commander
of easy company of the second Battalion again that was the 506 parachute Infantry Regiment which is part of the
101st Airborne Division talk about an amazing book and in the very end of the
book so he tells his entire story when he went to officer candidate school all
the way from when Germany surren rendered and he was possibly thinking
about going over to Japan to when he finally got out of the army so that’s
there that entire story and then he tells you what he thought being a good
leader is and I think this is just great information no matter who you are so
here you go here is Major dick Winner’s top 10 principles for leadership success
number one strive to be a leader of character competence and courage number two lead
from the front say follow me and then lead the way and I’m sure if you think
of great leaders in your life that’s exactly what they did they were leading
you to do something they weren’t telling you to do something they were leaders and that puts the leader in leadership
number three is stay in top physical shape he talks about all the exercises
that he he did in his service time and he said he saw many people get combat
fatigue and that is not a good thing he describes it in the book and if you were in the service you know what that is and
he said one of the reasons that he was not fall into that was because he was in
top physical shape and he says that physical stamina is the root of all mental toughness so that’s was from him
number four is develop your team if you know your people are fair in setting
realistic goals and expectation leading by example you will develop
teamwork number five delegate responsibility to your subordinates and let them do their job so many times in
his book he said I didn’t worry about the details these people were trained I
gave them an order and They carried out to do the end result so you can’t do a
job good if you don’t have a chance to use your imagination or your creativity
so you got to allow people the opportunity to use those items number
six anticipate problems and prepare to overcome obstacles don’t wait until you
get on the top of the Ridge and then make up your mind you’re constantly
anticipating the problems that you have number seven and talk about a gentleman
that embodies this is remain humble don’t worry about who receives the credit never let power or authority go
to your head eight is take a moment of self-reflection look in the mirror every
night and ask yourself if you did your best number nine is true satisfaction
comes from getting the job done the key to successful leaders is to earn respect
not just because of rank or position but because you are a leader of character
and number 10 is hang tough never ever ever give up he says so there you go
there are the top 10 success principles for major dick winner if you haven’t
seen Banda Brothers I cannot recommend a better World War II documentary and uh I
will tell you I got to watch that with my personal hero Lieutenant Commander
Raymond Herer Blackmore excuse me Lieutenant Commander Dr Raymond hor
Blackmore my grandfather he passed away when he was 98 years old he was one year
younger than dick winner and he was in World War II never talked about it when
he passed away I found awards that he was decorated that I never knew about
but I got to watch Band of Brothers with him and I got to share an experience
with him that I would not have if I had not watched that documentary so um I
know you are are going to learn something I know you’re going to enjoy it so there you go there’s my gift to
you for the upcoming year uh some other personal items I decided to go on a
health regimen this year I lost 22bs I’m able to run I’m less out of breath so uh
we always do New Year’s resolutions that we are going to do something like that and I’m happy to report here in December
that was actually one that came true this year now I ran a 5k about 5 years
ago and that was my last one because I didn’t schedule my second one so here we go scaling up Nation I’m going to commit
to all of you that I am going to run at least one 15K this year and I will say
that we of course do the uh Global World Vision 5K but I really wasn’t getting
good times on that I was more supporting the mission that’s something that we’re really proud of as well each and every
may we uh tried to let the scaling up Nation know how they can bring an end to the global Water Crisis and we do that
with participating with uh Team World Vision and uh we’re of course going to be doing that in
2024 as well Nation this year was pretty cool I got to meet three of people that
I consider people that I really wanted to meet people that have really helped me and either what they do or how they
do it and the first person was uh J cucher and she of course was episode
339 such an amazing woman and she is one
of those people that has forgotten more about reverse osmosis than I will probably ever know and she knows the
people that originally started making reverse osmosis what it is today and has
just had a hand in it for so long I got to meet her at the International Water conference she was the conference chair
she was so gracious to me and she actually brought a copy of her book it’s
now in Third Edition it’s entitled reverse osmosis and she not only gave it
to me she signed it for me so Jane thank you so much for that it was such a
pleasure meeting you and uh I can’t wait to see you again at the next IWC it was
a pleasure meeting her I also got to meet a gentleman that has helped me so much with how I speak how I talk with
other people and the messages that I hear from him each and every Sunday uh
of course I’m talking about our pastor Andy Stanley and you might say well he’s your pastor and you haven’t met him well
that’s one of those churches that’s really big and we go to a satellite location well I got to meet him at an
event earlier this year and not only that he met my son and the comments and
uh words that he spoke over my son were just amazing and I can’t thank him
enough for that I think he would be an amazing podcast guest so um whether you
are a person of Faith or not just studying the way that Andy Stanley
speaks and how he’s able to cut through any gray area and allow whoever is
listening to him to just get the message he is by far in my opinion the best
motivational speaker of our day and uh anyway got to meet him this year and uh
hopefully we will get him on the podcast so uh we’re working on that hopefully uh that’ll happen soon and maybe we’ll talk
about how do we make sure that we can speak on the same level that he does
what’s his strategy for that and the last person I’ll mention that I got to meet this year you might know him if you
are a Food Network fan so this is Alton Brown Alton Brown is an Atlanta native so we
are neighbors of course Atlanta is probably a 200 squ M radius so we don’t live anywhere near each other but I got
to meet him at an event that he did earlier this year and uh really enjoy
talking with him for those of you who do not know who Alton Brown is like I said
he was on the Food Network and during an interview I saw him describe his show
his show was called Good Eats and it was a combination between Julia Child which
was probably the original cooking show Mr Wizard which was a show that used to
come on uh when I was a kid the guy’s name was Don Herbert and he would just teach science to kids I used to love
that show and the final show was Monty Python he said that his cooking show was a mixture of those three influences and
I have to tell you that that’s a little bit my style as well I grew up watching
watching cooking shows I lost my mom at an early age and I worked a lot with my grandmother I was over there quite a bit
and she enjoyed cooking and she taught me how to cook and to this day that is one of my favorite things to do and just
watching those shows and how people would teach people I think that allowed me at a very early age to learn how I
was going to teach people and I always like to throw a little bit of fun stuff in there and try to be a little bit
quirky so maybe I don’t quite do it as well as Mr Alton Brown but he’s definitely an influence on me so those
are three people that I got to meet this year and somebody that I have just
enjoyed working with and and met several years back is Kathleen Edelman of course
she has been on the show multiple times and we are always trying to figure out
how can we use kind words to motivate each other and learn the best words that
we can speak and of course that is the temp temperments and if you search temperaments on the scaling up h2l
website you’ll see that Kathleen has been here three times and on those three times she shares a little bit more and
more about what we need to know when we communicate with each other but also how
we understand ourselves better and the analogy that she uses is that if you
don’t have oxygen you are not going to help very many people for very long on
an airplane that’s why you put your o mask on before you help other people in
a low oxygen event on an airplane so if you don’t have it to give you’re not
going to be able to give it so she teaches you the temperaments for yourself first and then she teaches you
how to give it as a gift to other people and she has taught me how to teach that
to other people and that has just been such an amazing journey because every
time I teach it I understand it a little bit better and I cannot think of
anything that I have done better for each one of my relationships than
getting to know her material and she has just launched a new book now she’s got a
workbook that a lot of you probably have already done and she’s come up with a part two of the workbook which is really
just a book so if you were wanting to read this as a regular book or you wanted to do this in your company or
with your family or maybe there’s a book club you now have a book for that so if
you want to get a copy of that book we made it really easy with an affiliate link for you and that’s uh scaling up
h2o.com slis hht 2023 and I know that sounds very
difficult how am I going to remember that but it’s I said this you heard that all the initials
2023 and we’ll of course have that on our show notes page as well something I
will mention that we have these affiliate links and and I want to thank you the scaling up Nation for this
because as you know we’ve got to pay people we’ve got to pay for services in order to put the podcast out and
whenever you order something from an affiliate link it doesn’t cost you a dime extra but Amazon gives us a finders
fee if you will for ordering that book or ordering something else and then here’s the cool thing anything else you
order while you are logged in to that since we brought you to that site you
might order a flat screen television they actually give us a slight Commission on that so how cool is that
and so many people have gone to our affiliate links and uh not only just
made it easy for you to find whatever we were talking about but helped support us with that so I want to give a shout out
to all of you trying to think some other items that we did this year uh well uh
I’ve got a best friend since I was 14 years old his name is Eric he is not a
water treater but he listens to this podcast and uh we would do an annual
scuba dive trip each and every year and we stopped doing that after covid and
our trip kept getting cancelled well I’m happy to report that he and I resumed
our annual dive trip this year and in September we went off to Freeport Texas
and did Reef diving yes they have Reef diving in Texas
so about 7 hours out was the trip that we had to go we were right in the middle
of the gulf and we were at the flower gardens National Park and there is just
all this amazing Coral right in the middle of the gulf I had no idea and we
actually went on a spawning trip so we actually got to see Coral spawn and I
have never seen that before I have well over 2,000 scuba Dives and I have never
seen that before where I can now Mark that off of my list and one of the
coolest things that we Dove there and by the way I am a scuba dive instructor I
have taught hundreds of people how to breathe underwater and I absolutely love
the sport but with all the things that I’ve been doing that’s one thing that I haven’t been doing as much of as I would
like so I’m hoping I get to change that in 2024 but if you are a scuba diver
consider flow Gardens National Park one of the coolest things I think I have ever Dove was an oil rig I had no idea
but underneath the waterline of those oil rigs out there in the Gulf are just amazing Coral growth and there’s so much
juvenile life out there it’s it’s just amazing uh one of my favorite places to go is in the Dutch Caribbean it’s called
Bonair and you go there because of all the juvenile life it was almost like I was in Bonair on an oil rig
so um check that out if you are a scuba diver it took a while to get to little
cramped quarters uh but it was definitely worth it one of my most memorable Dives of course one of the
things that I love doing each and every year I have been doing this for so long and I look forward to it each and every
year I’m talking about the association of water Technologies Technical Training and I got to participate in that last
year get to see so many of you out there in the scaling up and I want to make sure that you have on
your calendars for next year so on March 26th through 9th we are going to be in
Frisco Texas so kind of in the middle of the country and then April 17th through
20th we’re going to be in Cleveland Ohio so we’re going to be South middle and
top middle so depending on where you are hopefully you can go to one of those and
I will see you there I love doing that each and every year of course I got to
to meet so many of you at the association of water Technologies Grand Rapids convention go ahead and get on
your calendar September 10th through 13th next year we’re going to be in Louisville Kentucky and there are a
thousand ways to say Louisville whether it’s Lewisville Louisville however many
other ways so you will learn all of those ways if you go to Kentucky and uh
we’re hoping to do something special with the rising tide Mastermind right before then and uh it’s just an amazing
town so hopefully you can do some sort of the tours that are around there with all the breweries that they do I
mentioned earlier what an honor it was to be the keynote speaker for the International Water conference so you
might want to mark your calendars for Las Vegas Nevada next year November 3rd
through 7th go ahead and get these things on your calendar so you can
protect those these are just some great conferences and I can’t say enough enough about the International Water
conference for how supportive they have been to the scaling up H2O podcast
trying to think of there’s anything else that I missed um well I want to thank all the people out there one of the
things that I love doing is facilitating meetings for companies and there’s so many scaling up Nation companies out
there that I facilitate your annual or quarterly meetings or maybe we work on
your core values or even some conflict resolution those are things that I love
to do and I’ve worked with so many companies out there I want to thank you for that it is probably my favorite thing to do
in a working capacity and I’m always trying to get people to get their certification well I got a certification
this year I went and and got my asse 12,080 certification and there are just so many
ways that you can get that certification you can go on to our website and we’ve
got uh we’ve got several ways that you can do that one including going to the awt Technical Training Janet Stout has a
great program Matt Fiji has a great program and they are all great supporters of the scaling up H2O podcast
so we have plenty of information for you about that there nation that is the year
all wrapped up and I am just so incredibly humbled to be able to have
this podcast so I can do something like this each and every year of course this
would not be possible without you listening to this podcast without you telling us what you want to hear who you
want us to interview so if you ever have those ideas please don’t keep those to yourself make sure you go to scaling up
h2o.com go over to our show ideas page and let us know all about that of course
one of the great things about all the conferences that we’re now learning about is we are meeting so many new
people to share their industry expert knowledge with you on this podcast pod
and we are almost half the year scheduled in guest recordings for next
year that is something that I never imagine so that’s one the popularity of
this show I think people realize that this show commands a certain sort of respect that when you’re on it and so
many people value listening to this show so I just want to thank everybody out there the guest the staff people that
are part of the scaling up Nation thank you for all of that thank you for listening to me go on for over an hour
about this podcast and things that I have done this year it’s my hope that
this motivates you to go ahead and plan to go out in this year with a bang
what’s something that you can check off your list that you’ve done well celebrate that and how do you use that
moving forward so you can get propulsion to get your goals accomplished in
2024 well I’m not quite done yet because we all know that we listen to James
McDonald each and every episode so here is the very last installment of periodic
water table with James hello and welcome to the periodic water table with James
where we think and learn about water chemistry drop by drop please use your week to search online ask your
colleagues or even pick up a book to learn more about each week’s periodic water table topic if you do at the end
of the year you’ll be 52 water chemistry smarter so let’s raise the water table
of knowledge together and get started today’s topic
is Cobalt why and how is Cobalt used in industrial water treatment what products
do you use with Cobalt in them can cobalt ever precipitate out of solution
and cause problems under what conditions can this happen can cobalt and a product
become a Fant or degradation Catalyst for an oral membrane if used remember knowledge is power and
taking the time to learn more about water chemistry each week will help make you a force to be reckoned
with wait that was only the 51st chemistry covered in the periodic water
table of J series I promised 52 what gives well with everything happening
during industrial water week on the podcast we didn’t have room for that week’s edition but don’t worry because
the 52nd and last periodic water table with James topic is none other
than water or h2o or dihydrogen monoxide
or even oxidane the IUPAC compliant name for water there are many names for water
it has inspired art poetry music architecture Comics inventions love and
more it has helped both create and Destroy civilizations it is at the very
heart of what you and I do every day as we practice the noble profession of
industrial water treatment it is water how much do you know about water though
why is water a liquid at room temperature when other molecules of similar or even heavier molecular
weights are gases How does its density change with temperature how conductive
is pure water is water a stable molecule or does it ever
disassociate have you taken out a steam table lately and looked at the trends as pressures and temperatures change take
this opportunity to dig in and learn more about water drop by drop remember
knowledge is power and taking the time to learn more about water chemistry each week will help make you a force to be
reckoned with be sure to post what you learned to social media and tag it with #w t23 and # scaling up H2O I look
forward to learning more from you and that was James McDonald signing
out for the last installment of periodic water table with James don’t worry J
James will be back next year he is part of this podcast and he’s going to have
something new for you next week course he’s not telling us what it is we’re going to have to all learn together
until then Happy New Year everybody happy 20204 and I can’t wait to talk to you in
the new year take care [Music]
everybody do you wish you had your own private tutor to help you study for the
certified water technologist examination well now you do so many of you have
asked me to help you with the mock cwt examination and I’ve done that very
thing if you go to scaling up h2o.com cwt prep again that scaling up h2o.com
cwt prep you will see that I’ve created a course and I tell you everything I
know about each each one of those Mo questions it’s my hope that that helps
give you the confidence you need to sign up to get certified
today