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[Music] foreign [Music]
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[Music] welcome to scaling up the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t
scale up our systems my name is Trace Blackmore and I am your host for the scaling up H2O podcast Nation it’s hard
to believe that an entire year has almost gone by just a few weeks left and
then we say hello to 2023 how in the world did that happen it
seems like just yesterday I was talking about best practices and things that you
should be thinking about going into the new year well the new year is now old
and we’re getting ready to bring another New Year in and the time just always flies Nation you just heard from Aqua
Phoenix scientific they are one of the many sponsors that we have on this
podcast I just want to take a moment and give a shout out to our sponsors those
are the people that help us pay the bills that allow us to continue to
bringing you this podcast and hopefully it’s a podcast that you can continue to
learn while you’re driving from account to account now I’ve said this to
sponsors I don’t know if I’ve said it on the podcast but if anybody was ever wondering how we select sponsors for the
podcast I always make sure that they fit one or two criteria the first one is it
has to be a product that I have used before and I see the benefit in the
second one is if I haven’t used the product I see that it can change make a
water treater’s life a little bit better in one way or another if we can fit one
of those criteria then that allows a sponsor to come on the show and again I
want to thank all the sponsors of the scale and up H2O podcast and if you are thinking about if the scaling up H2O
podcast is right for you to advertise what you do on the podcast you can reach
out to us or simply go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash sponsors and you will have all the information
you need to help make that decision I look forward to speaking with you and
again I just want to thank everybody that helps us bring this podcast to you week after week let’s talk about some
current events I get a lot of people that thank me for telling them what’s
going on in the Water Treatment Community and they use the scaling up H2O podcast as their One-Stop shop for
everything that’s going on in the water treatment industry so a few things you might want to look into is January 20th
through 23rd boma’s 2023 water business meeting is taking place in Scottsdale
Arizona so this is open to all Boma members Bulma stands for building owners
and Managers Association and it’s event that offers a chance to network get involved and purchase participate in
interactive discussions on emerging Trends and best practices in commercial real estate when we’re talking about
water I myself was very involved locally with Bulma they were a great
organization and still are a great organization so if you’re a Bulma member and definitely if you’re around the
Scottsdale Arizona area you want to look in to that another event you might want
to look into is taking place January 23rd through 25th in Austin Texas and
that’s the water for Texas 2023 conference this is where the conference
tries to bring together all industry experts innovators influencers and leaders to discuss water issues
impacting us for years to come they then take those discussions and they try to
work solutions for that so if this is something that you are interested in go to our show notes page and we will have
all that information for you also also coming out February 20th through 23rd in
Indianapolis Indiana is the water and wastewater equipment treatment and transport show this is a premier event
for municipalities plumbers portable water professionals septic contractor sewage contractors Wastewater
professionals and all people that touch water so if this is something that
sounds like you want more information about again that will be on our show notes page and folks I do want to bring
your attention to the events section of the scaling up H2O web page our team has
done a great job of curating all of the things that I talk about on the air and putting them in one place so you don’t
have to search Episode by episode and you can make calendar events simply by
clicking on our events section so if the water for Texas conference is something
you want to go to you can go to our events page you can click on that it will send you to all the sites you need
to go to learn more about it even register and then from our site you can put that on your calendar we’ve got such
a great team here at the scaling up H2O podcast staff I just want to give a
shout out to them for all they do to try to make it a little bit easier for you to keep up with all the information we
have on the show and folks when I say all the information we have on the show
we just have so much content from guests from things that we’ve done on shows that you can just devour this Treasure
Trove of water treatment knowledge and business knowledge and all the different
topics that we talk about I think if you have not been on the website in a while
you would be very pleased with how easy it is and all the information that is up
there we’re trying to make a water treaters life better one water treater
at a time and we truly believe believe that by educating ourselves we all get
better and as we get better individually we make the water treatment industry better one water Trader at a time well
speaking of a water Trader that is trying to make our industry better one
podcast listener at a time here’s James McDonnell with a thinking on water [Music]
welcome to thinking on water with James the segment where we don’t give you the answers we give you the topics and
questions for you to think about drop by drop now let’s get to it
in this week’s episode we’re thinking about the heat exchanger filing Factor
what is a fouling Factor what does it tell about the efficiency of heat transfer across a heat exchanger
how is a fouling Factor calculated what assumptions do design engineers
make about fouling factors when designing a new heat exchanger and how might these assumptions impact
the water flow rate what can impact a fouling Factor over time
why is understanding fouling factors important take this week to think about and learn
more about the heat exchange fouling Factor be sure to follow hashtag tow 22
and hashtag scalingup H2O share your thoughts on each week’s thinking on water I’m James McDonald and I look
forward to learning more from you thank you James in scaling up Nation now
it’s time for our interview my lab partner today is Adam Seitz of
capital Technologies Adam how the heck are you I’m doing great today how about you you know I was looking so forward to
this interview we had a mastermind call yesterday and we talked about it and I I just feel like you and I have done this
before I know you’ve been uh like a guest um what do we call that you you
send in items to the podcast maybe a pinks and blues episode or two that I’ve I’ve thrown some ideas out there kind of
issues I was running into and I want to thank you for that because we depend on
all of those questions you are one of the people that has really embraced that and allowed us to have a show uh you
were one of the people that we had on to the voicemail function I can’t think of
the official word for it and you asked your question so we asked your question with you using your own voice and then I
think I spent an hour and 15 minutes talking about it yeah maybe so it was a good time
So Adam if you don’t mind the nation has heard you before on those questions but
let’s go a little bit deeper into Adam’s sight so who is Adam Seitz can you introduce yourself to the scaling up
Nation sure thing I am uh from the the Pittsburgh area I’m a father of five I
have kids ranging uh 25 23 17 12 and 8. I love being a dad slash stepdad to
those guys I guess I get mixed feedback from them on whether I’m doing a good job or not but I I think I’m doing
pretty decent at it I’ve also been married to my my beautiful wife Julie for over a decade probably some mixed
feedback from her as well um to be expected you know she’s she’s really an important part of my life I
constantly learn things from her um and it was supposed to be about me but I’ll make it a little bit about her too you know she always has a different
perspective on things and I definitely cherish her her opinion and different opinion when when I run into that so
just give her a little bit of a shout out also uh assigned to some really great parents and
um a brother a friend a leader and I guess why I’m here is a I’m a water
treater we’re definitely going to talk about water treatment but before we do I know
people from Pittsburgh have their own language can you key Us in on some of
the words that you all use in Pittsburgh that we have no idea what they mean well I think I think a lot of people
might know about yin’s like I’m a big fan of yin’s some people say y’all or
you guys or you know other things but I like yins and actually I think Pittsburgh people are generally referred
to as yinzers I guess and that also comes up as a as a funny one that I like
to go back on and what does that mean and that like and that but it’s just put
them together who’s got time to say two words fashion together and and make it its own word so we went to a wedding in
Pittsburgh and apparently this is a tradition I like the tradition but I’ve never heard about it before but there
instead of a cake there’s a cookie table it’s amazing I’ve been a part of that
um I have an aunt that is a a baker not not as a profession but like she loves
to bake and she’s constructed some amazing cookie tables at at some family weddings that I’ve been to we had the
honor of going to Michelle Farmery now Michelle Lund’s wedding and they had a
cookie table and and that does not sum it up I think there were nine there were actually three or four tables because
they couldn’t fit everything on one table and I want to say there were 90 different varieties and the best part is
they had bags that you could take to go cookies with you it’s expected to take them with you at the end we don’t have
that in the South I think we need to get that started we need to adopt it so tell us about water treatment so it’s always
interesting how people find themselves in the water treatment industry one day
they’re not a water Trader the next day they are what was your story that is the case I mean you know I’ve so I’ve been
with capital Technologies for a little over 15 years right now I’m on my second generation owner so uh you know I can’t
say enough about how you know the opportunities provided to me by both Warren and Joel yackel they’ve been
great guys to work for but anyhow like you know they brought me in as their actually as their office manager I bounced around to a couple different I
don’t even know if I call them career years you know I was just kind of bouncing around jobs prior to finding my
way to these guys and um I have an accounting degree so I did some accounting work I was a mechanic I was a
I ran some Excavating equipment a delivery driver Stone Mason for a couple
years and then I was kind of looking to like get back to my accounting you know that’s what I went to school for so I
should probably use my degree so they brought me in as their office manager even in the interview they kind of like
looked at the list of things that I’d done you know so you’re going to be an accountant we think we might make you a chemist before we’re done with this too
and lo and behold like eventually like here I am you know playing chemists out there too anyways I mean for a few years
I I did the office actually it was just a few months I did strictly office work uh bookkeeping accounts payable
receivable order placement and then we had a pipe pickling job in central
Pennsylvania and at that time it was just there’s three of them you yeah there’s three of us in the company and
they were like all right all hands on deck grab some steel toes and a hard hat where we’re going to do this job and I
spent spent a week out in the field doing this pipe pickling job and um that was really my first taste of field work
and I loved it and just ended up sticking with that so you know for a
couple years after that I I shared responsibility and juggling the office work and then you’re slowly picking up
more and more service work and learning water treatment and um eventually we grew to the point
where I couldn’t sustain doing both of those positions full time as I was so I just became a
service guy and we brought somebody else to help in the office and I’ve kind of grown through that role since
there’s so many people out there that would be great in our industry but they just don’t know about it how did you
find out about this industry it was through a recruiter or a staffing agency
I guess and and they they picked me out just to do the office like I said I wasn’t looking for a water treater
position is I was I was the office Guy and um I guess once I got there and was kind of
learning about what this industry is about and it seemed like you know what I I don’t need to just stay in this office
I could probably be six be successful doing water treatment too and I would definitely say you are a
successful water treater you’re also a member of the rising tide Mastermind two years ago you answered a call to action
where we were starting a new group of course your group seized the day we didn’t have a name when we were talking
about it in the very beginning and uh you are one of the original members in
that group and it’s just been fantastic to watch everybody in that group come
together support each other grow together um and I just I just want to commend you
for you’re one of the people within that group that really rally everybody and I have no doubt that that’s what you do
with your team as well I think it’s just part of your nature would you say that’s right yeah it sounds like an accurate
description um and thank you thank you for noticing and The Mastermind group really is it’s
such a good support group you know whether it’s work related or you know we bring up personal issues issues pretty
regularly and um I know I know I bring my personal issues into it and and just such a good
group to count on as you know they really have my back and I know I have my
back the same way too so or I have their back the same way that’s something that’s always difficult
for me to explain to people people see that it’s a mastermind about water
treatment or people in The Mastermind or in the water treatment industry so all it is that we do is talk about water
treatment problems and that’s not the case when you say yeah definitely not I’d probably say it’s 50 50.
um I mean we definitely talk about water treatment issues and and things that we experience
um in the industry but you know it’s it’s a sounding board for all ideas and there’s really a trust level that
everybody seems to be willing to share whatever is going on in their life that they need help with and ultimately
that’s you know that it’s helping us do better at our job if we’re doing better in life so I appreciate it for that and
thank you thank you for you know bringing me in it’s been my pleasure uh I’ve been a member of a mastermind group
for a long long time and I always wondered if that concept would work in the water treatment industry and your
proof that it’s more than working thank you so we mentioned we talk about personal issues but we also talk about
some technical issues as well and you had a pretty interesting technical issue
happen to you not too terribly long ago do you want to read the scaling up nation in on that one
yeah I’d be glad to so I recently picked up a new customer I was pretty excited
my role within Capital Technologies is you know Business Development
um service and sales manager so picking up new customers is a good you know that that’s my primary function and so I
picked up this new customer it was a local College they had systems you know
wide variety of systems they had steam boilers cooling towers closed Loops it was actually my first service visit
there I was going through my routine of you know inspecting the the new equipment
that I was tasked with and you know getting some baseline testing done and
uh actually collecting some samples to be tested for Legionella out of the cooling systems and um first couple
Towers looked like uh there’s a little bit of algae growth but they look they look like they were in
pretty good condition and then I get to the third building with a cooling tower and you know I go up to the roof and
these towers were just totally overrun with algae and of course they’re up on
you know up on a pedestal there and I climb up and I look into the Basin and yeah there’s a lot of algae but there
was also this really vibrant purple color along the the Basin right at the
bottom of uh where the fill comes down and like a bright purple kind of like a an iris I guess if I was trying to give
a you know some a visual to the people out there and actually actually last week during um industrial water week one
cooling Wednesday I shared pictures on my LinkedIn page of of this purple growth or deposit or whatever it was in
these towers uh just so everybody can kind of enjoy in some some cooling mystery that day
so anyways I I mean I really had no clue what I was seeing I’d never seen something purple in a cooling tower
before I wiped my hand along you know where where this deposit was and and it kind
of sloughed off and ends up floating in the water a little bit and then resettling next to it a
little bit of a slimy feeling to it but but really I guess I I did place my finger on it but I couldn’t place my
finger on what this could possibly be and actually looking around at like all the algae and the cooling tower I didn’t
even know if that was like my highest priority there either like there was definitely some other things going on
that I needed to focus some attention on but but this really just kind of piqued my curiosity and I needed to find out
what it was so water treatment triage yeah for sure so I I collected a sample
you know of what I could of of this purple deposit I ran a few tests on the
on the water just kind of standard cooling tower testing um I did notice that like my pH was a
little bit low in that area compared to other areas of the system but but I don’t know if that was leading me to an
answer just yet well let me ask Adam when you were thinking about what to do
next before you got there did you get excited that she had a problem to troubleshoot I definitely did
um I mean that’s part of like one of the cool things about our job too is you know we run into things that are are
Mysteries are new to us and uh this was definitely one of those times and I wasn’t quite sure how deep of a dig I
was going to go to figure out what it was but uh I I I knew that there was some answers to be had
when I think about that you know I think of days when I was servicing and I loved
issues like you described because oh that’s a mystery we now get to solve a mystery but then at the same time too I
think oh darn it’s going to take me longer and I’ve got so much to do during the day I really don’t have time to
troubleshoot how do we get over that so I mean in this instance since it was my
very first visit at this client location I had the whole day kind of block off to
investigate whatever I needed to I didn’t know what I was going to be running into so I really
wasn’t feeling the pressure of that time constraint but I there’s been other times or
yeah it’s tough to tough to throw that wrinkle into the mix of a day that you just have loaded with other things to do
luckily this wasn’t one of those times well that’s good advice so when we’re starting up a new account we should
schedule a lot longer than a normal visit to make sure that we not only set it up properly but we understand
everything that we just took responsibility for yeah I guess in hindsight maybe maybe it
would have made more sense for me to do a better job during my surveying process and kind of see some of those things
even before I got to the point of completing a service visit but that’s hindsight so well that’s what we learned
from right so you’re excited you found something that you’re going to get to the bottom to what was your series of
execution to try to figure out what the root cause was um good question so kind of step one for
me was you know digging through my own memory banks of all right what what do I run into on a routine basis that you
know in water treatment that has a purple color to it like I’m just going off the visual purple I thought of some
tests like a hardness test and um you know bromine test or
organophosphate I’m just kind of going through my test kit of looking like what what’s going to give me a reaction here
that gets that I see purple and I ran tests around those kind of ideas but nothing seemed out of place there I
guess then I went to like well what are some other purple reactions that I know of and I was drawing a blank so at that
point you know reaching out to other people I mean there’s a lot of people smarter than me that that might have had
more experiences so I I started to kind of toss my net out there and see who could um
if anybody else had run into something like this and quite honestly I started with the guys at the at the facility I
sent out a group text to all the contacts that I’d been introduced to throughout my time of trying to win this
business and um I guess as a new customer I was expecting some kind of response but I
really got none from them so you know I’m still kind of grasping at straws and and I decided I’d I’d reach out to my
team and I know that some people you know within CPI have been there longer and some have not been so uh but but
everybody’s got a different different experiences and have seen different things so I wanted to give that to my
team where they could kind of see what was going on and let them know that some of those guys look up to me to have
answers but I want them to know that I don’t have all the answers so uh when you don’t know it’s it’s always a good
idea to ask I guess we hear that all the time you know if you if you don’t know the answer ask and find out and that’s
you know a good approach to you know when a customer asks you something and you don’t know you should you should ask
so I want to put that out there to my guys and it’s okay to ask too actually you know my boss Joel he came
back with a couple other ideas I mean we talked about like potassium permanganate has has some purple you know reaction to
it and maybe some different oils or greases it could be in the system so so there was some some ideas that came from
that I guess as we already alluded to like The Mastermind group we have like a group chat that goes on and I I sent the
same pictures out to those guys and you know it was kind of the same thing a couple ideas came up like oh maybe maybe
it’s paint or you know one guy had mentioned that he had seen a purple reaction when he overfed some inhibitor
so that gave me a couple other ideas to kind of explore but I don’t know if any of that was the answer yet so I I
continued to cast my net I guess and um reached out to some former and uh
current mentors of mine and I guess this is my opportunity to really give a a shout out and some kudos
to to one guy in particular that was I think he shared in my curiosity more than anyone else and kind of helped push
me further towards getting an answer um that guy’s Dave Ritz of pro Aces a
lot of the scaling up Nation may know him from he does some Wastewater uh treatment training through the awt does
a great job there he dies but but his his knowledge extends throughout the entire water treatment industry he’s
he’s really a great guy he’s been a technical resource for me through my entire career I don’t know if I’ve ever told him that I consider him a mentor
but like if he’s listening today uh Dave you are one of my mentors and he’s a
good friend anyhow he really pushed me towards through a series of texts and like you know I shared the I shared some
of my pictures with him and some of my ideas and and we kind of worked worked through some things texting back and
forth I think it ended up being like throughout the entire course of a weekend just different ideas on well
could it be something microbial or he actually suggested some kind of reaction with acid and uh we fell back on the Old
Reliable Google machine what did we do before Google in the water treatment industry I don’t know
but it it definitely shed some light on this one for me too and and like I said that that was with with Dave kind of
pushing me along the way there too so we found that there’s actually uh a specific acid reaction that gives a very
similar purple color to what I was seeing it’s a reaction between copper and cyanoric acid seen a lot in swimming
pools and actually if you look on Google images for purple
chemical reaction swimming pool like there’s a lot of really cool images of
of purple swimming pools that I don’t think they’re intended to be that way but they end up being that way well that
would make sense because the cyanuric acid is used as a stabilizer for the chlorine yeah exactly so some copper
reacting with that that stabilizer is is exactly what we were seeing at least that’s what I was reading about so then
I couldn’t figure out exactly where that cyanoric acid would would come to play in in this cooling tower system and I
don’t know maybe a lot of the listeners know maybe you know but at the time I did not but I learned through this
process that on a lot of our stabilized bromine products that’s what the stabilizer is it’s cyanoric acid so I
guess that was like you know my biggest my biggest lead in the case here so I
decided to well you know here’s a couple things that I didn’t test for before that I should test for now copper and is
there a way to test for cyanoric acid I wasn’t quite sure about that either so you know I talked to you know our
reagent supplier and you know there was some tests for cyanuric acid I actually
ended up just going to my my local pool store Adam it used to be a turbidity test and and you you had like a little
Bullseye that you would put in a flask and you would you would just keep lowering it until you couldn’t see the
bullseye anymore is that still the cyanuric acid test it’s just on a strip it’s like the catch-all strip with like
four or five different like color splotches and and everything ends up like you hold it up to the back of the
bottle and it tells you what’s in there well that sounds a lot easier than what I just described uh yeah maybe I think
that’ll be my retirement gig too is uh pool boy and I’ll just run that that testing my
test kit will consist of one little jar and strips so anyhow like so I I have
all these all this data that I’m collecting and I guess I wanted to verify on site if if that’s what I was
actually seeing so I scheduled another another service visit to this client and
when I got there I was greeted by a couple of the maintenance guys that I didn’t get a response from when I had
asked previously and they’re actually holding a jug of a
product from new Calgon called season start and very clearly on the label it
said if this product is not in the sufficient dose then there will be a purple color visible I guess it turned
out to be a pretty anticlimactic answer to what I was looking for but uh it was
kind of a cool process to get there and they had mentioned like oh we usually put this in at the start of every season
it helps clean something they didn’t know what to clean something and I don’t
know we just we were told to put it in at one point and that’s what we do and we just didn’t tell you and we were late in getting it in this season so it must
be what you were seeing anyhow that product is basically sulfamic acid you know designed to clean scale in the
beginning of the season so I guess I kind of gotten to my answer
um I did take it a little bit further afterwards too I mean we had some so so since the product had sulfamic acid in
it I we had some of that back at our office I took a small sample of that played plumber a little bit and had some
copper sitting around my house so I you know set up my my science experiment in a jar and you know in my garage with uh
you know some sulfamic acid in a jar with some copper and uh let it sit there for a couple days I don’t know that I
got the same vibrant purple color but I got a there there was some purple going on so I I think that’s that’s kind of
the reaction that that whatever product they were using was providing you know I’m forgetting all my different color
indicators but I want to say that’s bromel cressel purple does that sound right what they put in sulfamic acid
honestly I don’t know I’m just learning that right now too all right scale on a nation if you know what it is you can
write into us and um that’s what I’m thinking I can’t remember all the different color indicators but I’m thinking that’s what it is
so now with all that information what do you do well at that point like the the system was already up and running and on
that subsequent visit there was still a little bit of that purple in but definitely not as much as was there previously I was in the process of doing
a heavy duty cleaning to try to get rid of some of this algae too so that purple
went away during my cleaning process as well it sounds very nice you have some green
you’ve got some purple I I did dub these cooling towers my Incredible Hulk towers
for a time being I love this story because you know most
people just like I don’t know what it is and they walk away but you and many other people are like oh wow this is my
opportunity to learn something yeah and and you know what I guess when I when I go back and think about it there was a
there’s a previous experience that I had that another client I mean it was a plastic Extrusion plant and I got a call
on a Sunday where the the operator had said hey we have one of our process
systems here is turned totally red now I didn’t really want to investigate that on a on a Sunday but it was definitely
afternoon because I had to put down my my Sunday afternoon beverage and and I head out to this this plant and I and I
look in this system and sure enough the entire water system’s red and they were concerned like it’s going to stay in our
product what should we do with this where to come from and they were left to believe that it was one of the workers
there did not want to finish out their shift so they had put some pool dye or some kind of red dye into the system and
so I cut I guess at that point I just went along with their Theory like okay that that must be what’s happening here
and then a couple weeks later when I went back for my routine visit there I ended up at a different end of the plant
and there was a drum of kerosene with a red puddle on the ground next to it it
had some kind of red dye in the kerosene which maybe that’s a regular thing but
it sat right next to a trough that led back into this system so somehow like there I I came to a an answer of like
what happened that day but it took me a couple weeks like I I wasn’t as interested when I was there because they
told me what they thought the answer was and I kind of went along with it I don’t know if I didn’t have that experience of
like discovering what that mystery was if I would have pushed as much into you
know this purple mystery as I did but it was definitely something I learned from and you know like if I see something
that doesn’t look right because I really get to an answer of that I think it’s a great lesson for
everybody I’m reminded of a story we were doing some work with the company that developed the phosphonium biocide
and at the time they gave it to us as a 50 blend because of what I’m getting ready to share they now sell it in a
five percent blend but we had pumped it through just regular plastic head pumps
and we got there the next day and it looked like somebody had taken a bat and
just destroyed this pump and the funny thing was the day before a guy got let
go the engineer got let go and he was very disgruntled so we thought maybe he took his aggression out on one of our
pumps well no it wasn’t that it was a compatibility issue and uh and the high
concentration of that product but I remember we’re like what the heck is going on here and then you your mind
goes to the most simplest thing and what’s that called Occam’s razor the most simplistic reason or explanation is
normally the the right one and I think the example they give is when you hear hoof prints think horses not zebras so
you start out there we were thinking we had a disgruntled guy but no it was this biaside that we were feeding and they
didn’t know to tell us that it wasn’t compatible so we found that out for him sounds like an interesting Tale in
itself so what did your customer think about all this extra work that you did for him I don’t know that they appreciated it
quite as much as I did or or kind of the people that I brought in and involved in
in my my research process here they’re more thankful like I said there there is
higher priorities there they were more grateful and thankful for me to work on cleaning the cooling tower up in general
yeah I don’t know that they totally appreciated all the extra work that went into that well let’s talk about that for
a second because you you are very happy about the process and what you’ve learned and what you can now share with
all the people listening I can think of a lot of people that will say Mr customer Mrs customer I’ve done all this
work aren’t I great don’t you appreciate me and uh you didn’t get that but you still
think it’s it’s a high note it’s it’s something that you learn so how do you
make that shift because I know there’s so many people out there that just get their validation off of what the
customer recognizes them for I don’t know maybe maybe you’re telling me I should go back and ask them for some
more appreciation no I don’t know I I don’t know that I I needed that validation that’s a tough
question I I don’t know all right well I think it’s a good mindset and I I think you you became a
better water Trader throughout the process and maybe that was a big enough reward maybe we need to focus on us
being better us learning more instead of just being recognized more I don’t know
I think there’s something there I think you know the answer you just haven’t come up with the words yet but I think
those scaling up Nation needs to hear it so make us the promise when you figure out what it is you’ll share it with us I
will maybe it’s gross I mean maybe that’s ultimately what we’re looking for is is an ability to grow your own
knowledge and grow to the knowledge around you know those people that are around you and and I I definitely felt
the reward in that so maybe you led me to an answer there that’s probably the
right answer we help each other that’s what we do sure um well with I really think there’s
something there because I can think of uh you know we talk a lot about the the temperaments on this podcast and there
are several episodes out there that we’ve interviewed the author of I said this you heard that and one of my big
needs is appreciation so maybe that’s just what I need maybe uh maybe in your
temperament that’s not that’s not something that you focus on and maybe I just need to learn how to get over it that sounds about right I think I think
maybe in my temperament I would be looking for peace and calm and maybe like just having extra knowledge as to
what was going on gave me that you know peace of mind so to speak that okay I know it’s not a disaster and we can move
on so you’ve been in the water treatment industry for quite a while and you were
very good at finding new business what’s your process for that a lot of my new
business comes from referral work I think I think everybody will kind of agree that that’s probably the most
successful and easiest way to bring on new business so I know as a company
we’ve kind of pride ourselves on doing good work and that leads to people saying good things about what you do and
leads to some business opportunities we do a lot of work with mechanical contractors that provides referrals as
far as finding like cold calls I mean there was early in my career where I
felt like the company was giving me this great opportunity to do really to do good work
um it was paying me well to do so that what way could I give back to the
company and that was to go and knock on doors and try to find more business and sure that’s a way for me to help
customers but it was a way for me to help the company too so I definitely took the mindset of finding new
businesses my way to give back to the people that are employing me and I still
carry that on so I I’ve not done plenty of doors I’ve you know picked up the phone and called a lot of places I did
do some sales training a few years ago and and that really helped to get me in the mindset that you know I’m not
necessarily focused on being a sales person but
I’m looking for an opportunity to help somebody that has a problem and I could
have Solutions too and finding that Mutual benefit of okay I’m gonna do a
job for you and I’m going to get paid for it so we’re both winning so that win-win mentality is definitely how I
approach it and I think that makes people get nervous about making a phone call or walking into a new place and
just asking to speak to somebody to you know to kind of lead them to some water treatment business and that that mindset
of win-win has has allowed me to get over that and and really just look for a
win that’s a great mindset to have how have things changed with how you go after new
business since the pandemic so I know I’m not alone in thinking this
but there were there was definitely uh a Hiatus on being able to walk into a new
place or people that were willing to to even speak to you throughout that you
know the early stages of the pandemic what that time period did for me I mean
I’m just going to speak on my my own case I don’t know if who else this applies to but it gave me an opportunity
to kind of work on my messaging um and even though I’m not I wasn’t able
to go out and talk to people as much I was able to work on what I wanted to say
and build up my knowledge in other areas and kind of get establish a better plan
of like who I want what what’s the right kind of business and who do I want to be out there talking to and so as you know
restrictions lifted and we were allowed to you know kind of open that that chain of communication back up with some folks
I think I was better prepared for that I think you know I’m better prepared to talk talk to a potential new customer
now than I was three years ago Adam what would you say your biggest
water treatment success has been the most successful thing that I’ve had
occurred in my water treatment career is I guess kind of twofold number one exactly what we just talked about is you
know kind of developing the ability to talk to new customers and go after that
um I guess I I’m inherently an introvert and I’ve definitely grown into being
able to break out from that introverted nature and you know the other part of
that is you know within our company I think my success within our company has come from and I think this might come
from being the office manager for for a time period there but I got a different perspective as to you know kind of how
our business worked at that time so once I started doing service I I was
able to implement a lot of processes and standard operating procedures that didn’t exist before
um we had a lot of customers that were just kind of pay as you go but also Service as you go and not a lot of
routine to it and I definitely saw that there were things falling through the cracks I was able to convert most of
those customers to contract agreements and you know for my company I think
that’s my my biggest contribution to the company is you know things don’t fall through the cracks anymore we’ve we’ve
been able to shift everything where we give a unified message out there everything has you know procedures to it
so I don’t know if that’s necessarily water treatment success story but that’s a business success stories that I’d like
to share well when it comes right down to it water treatment companies are companies and we have to run on those
best practices or we’re not best practice run companies all right I don’t do this often but I’m going to open the
mic up to you so this this is a boiling point question so what are people in the
water treatment industry doing that you just want them to stop I would like for people to stop not
looking at systems that they’re in charge of taking care of which is really what this whole story comes down to that
I just told was you know I didn’t have to climb on that roof and I didn’t have to look in that cooling tower and I
didn’t have to try to find out what was going on so I guess I know that there was an incumbent
water treater at that location that probably didn’t look at those things and
man I wish they would have I wouldn’t have had so much cleaning work to do if uh if somebody else was looking at that
so you know I know that that exists out there that people aren’t paying enough attention to the equipment that we’re supposed to be taken care of
well at the same time you got that business probably because of that reason yeah maybe so so scratch that go back to
not paying attention Adam if there was just one thing you can
leave with our audience today what do you want that to be so this is not a water treatment related
thing that I wanted to talk about but more of a public service announcement and that’s for people to take care of
their mental health over the last year I’ve had some encounters with people really struggling with mental health
and there’s many resources out there in-person therapists video therapists
televisions with therapists support hotlines for people and one in particular that I want to kind of just
toss out there as a reminder the National Suicide and crisis hotline dial
988 on your phone and they’re there to help people you know that might be struggling mentally or are around people
struggling mentally just something that I I wasn’t aware of and a year ago at this time that wouldn’t be the message I
want to put out right now but but right now it is and I wish I would have known about it earlier so hopefully some other
folks could benefit from that College well Adam thank you very much for sharing that that’s something we don’t
talk about enough and I really appreciate you and I know the scaling up Nation appreciates you for just allowing
us to think about that there there might be somebody out there that’s going through that there might be somebody we
know that’s going through something a lot of times we feel helpless to help those around us or even ourselves so
thank you for mentioning those resources and we’ll make sure to put those on our show notes page as well great I
appreciate that well now let’s go ahead and transition and go into some
lightning round question so you’ve heard these questions hundreds of times now
you’re in the hot seat are you ready I was born ready here we go so the first question if you
can go back in time and talk to your former self on your first day as an industrial water treater what advice
would you give I would tell myself that I’m gonna stick with this you know I walked into a
family-run business where I saw a definite ceiling to where I could go
and by far surpassed that ceiling at this point and so yeah it was I wasn’t
quite sure if I was going to stick around because I didn’t know how far I could take it and now that I now that I
know that there’s there’s opportunity out there like I would definitely want to encourage my my earlier version of
myself that yeah stick around on this and and you’re gonna have a good time what are the last few books that you’ve
read so in The Mastermind we recently completed this is day one by uh Drew
Dudley you’ve had him on a few times and he was the keynote speaker for the awt convention in Vancouver just a few weeks
ago very awesome of him to do the synopsis of that is like you get to treat every day like it’s your first day
and everybody has like this excitement and nervousness and and Just Energy on
that first day and to like approach every day like with that same kind of energies is really the kind of story of
that that book I also recently read and by read an audio book the body keeps the
score by Bessel a van der Coke and that that book’s kind of about those that
have experienced trauma throughout their lives and how it emotionally and physically takes a toll on them just
really a great insight into kind of what some some people go through on a daily basis and and how they process that it
was uh very helpful for me to kind of dig into that book I guess the last book that I actually
turned pages in and it was just for fun but uh The Walking Dead Invasion by Jay
bon bon Cigna I think I got that name right um there’s just some fun reads about some zombies
they filmed that here in Atlanta so we always have fun things going on in the city uh that would be a good time
Adam let me ask there are a lot of people out there that might hear me talking about audible or maybe they feel
like they just don’t have time to read tell us about audible tell us about how you know is it an easy transition to go
from reading books to listening to somebody read books for me it’s great I mean part of our job
we spend so much time behind the wheel and sure it’s great to to really rock out to some tunes but you know it’s also
an opportunity to just learn and I guess for me I I enjoy that learning aspect
enough that you know there’s a good mix of of some punk rock and and some
self-help kind of books and business help kind of books that I can all mix in there very eclectic next question when
somebody makes a movie about your life who plays Adam I’m gonna reach out to Kanye and see if he can do it
I’m sure he’s got plenty of time I’m sure he’s going to take that off I mean there’s times where like he’s recognized
he’s doing some like really remarkable things out there but a lot of times you just gotta think that that dude is
messed up um that seems fitting yeah maybe he’ll run for president again you never know
all right my final question you now have the ability to speak with anybody throughout history who would it be with
and why so I’m going to answer this a little bit differently I’ve
I’m somebody that likes to look forward so my DeLorean also travels into the future okay I’m not going to talk to
somebody historic but I’m gonna go into the future and talk to Future versions of my kids I think that would be really
awesome to kind of talk to them about how their lives have have gone and how
they’ve been successful well I give you points no one has ever answered the question that way and uh what a cool way
to answer the question of all the times of listening to lightning round questions I think we all sit in our our
truck or wherever we’re listening to the the podcast that and and probably try to answer some of these questions or um
that’s that’s the one I’ve had an answer to from the first time I heard it there we go there we go it’s a great answer I
don’t I appreciate you reaching out to us and wanting to share your story with us I appreciate you bringing us uh some
extra awareness to making sure that us ourselves are taking care of our mental
health and those around me are around us rather I just want to thank you for coming on the podcast and thank you for
being a listener since we started yeah thank you I mean this is definitely an honor and a privilege and I appreciate
the opportunity glad to be a part thanks scaling up Nation
Nation Adam is one of the nicest guys I know he’s one of those guys that will do anything for anybody and if you’re in an
awt conference and you have an opportunity to meet him I would definitely recommend that you go and
shake his hand and introduce yourself to him so Adam thanks for coming on the show and and sharing your enthusiasm
about how fun it is to run into something that you don’t know what’s
going on and I really meant it when there are times when you feel like you just don’t have time to learn something
new you’re so busy in the day-to-day and I want to warn you about that because there’s always going to be stuff that
you’re going to have to do if you neglect the things that make this job
fun then you’re going to get burned out and when you’re burned out this job is anything but fun and I love where Adam
said he made time to learn more about this specific account so he already had
the built-in in Freedom to think about what was going on to kind of dream about
what it could be instead of having to get something done as quickly as possible to get to the next task so I
think that’s a huge lesson that we can all learn let’s schedule a little bit more time in our day to learn about the
things that we don’t know and figure out how we can make each individual account better so here’s what Adam said his
procedure was first he stated the problem what is it that he was trying to
solve and then he came up with all different possible solutions to what could be going on and then he involved
other people in that discussion to give him information that he didn’t have and
direct him in places that he could get more information then Adam began to test
what he thought the issue was and then then after testing many different issues
he found out exactly what it was and then he documented what he did so you’ve
heard on this podcast before if you don’t write things down in service reports it does not happen now of course
nothing was wrong this was all exploratory but again document those things so you can get credit for them
and if there’s ever anything you need to reference in the future you have that
there ready for you so again Adam thank you for that and I say on this podcast every episode almost that I need your
help with ideas of what I should be talking about next and Adam has just
done a great job of peppering us with different questions to ask and possible
show ideas So Adam thank you for keeping the scaling up H2O podcast going to all
the other people out there that are doing that thank you for doing that by the way if you want to hear the episode
where Adam asked a question about boiler surging and then I created an entire
episode around it it’s episode 110 and that episode would not be in existence
if Adam did not call in and record his voice now how did he do that he went to
the scaling up H2O website and then on the right hand side there’s a little pop-up that says record voicemail and on
whatever device you’re on you just record your question and a lot of times we will play that on the air and start
this show off with your question so again scaling up h2o.com folks we need
your questions we need to know who you want us to interview we’ve got a decent list but it will run out so we need your
help to help us populate that so we can keep this podcast on the air for years and years and years to come something
else Adam and I mentioned was the Kathleen Edelman book I said this you
heard that if you have not listened to those episodes I did kind of a part one
and part two they were about a year or so apart episode 117 Kathleen tells us
all about what I said this you heard that is about and we learn the 101
version of the temperaments and then on episode 179 Kathleen came back and she
told us more of a higher level of what was going on and that gave us the
opportunity to ask her some more questions about how to use this and of
course Kathleen came on just recently for World kindness day on November 13th
and Kathleen’s episode that episode was 281 so we’ve had Kathleen on quite a bit
she has been definitely one of the biggest influences in my life she’s
allowed me to understand how I see things isn’t necessarily how how other people see things and there’s nothing
wrong with that but realizing that you use different words so people can
understand what you’re trying to say better and folks let me tell you before Kathleen I never chose the right word
she has helped every relationship in my life and I highly recommend if you have
not listened to those episodes or read her book that you do that speaking of books she came out with a children’s
book now I say children’s book but if you listen to episode 281 you hear that she corrects me I asked her why didn’t
you write a book for adults because the first book she had was more of a workbook this is her first book that
came out and she goes well Trace I did I wrote it for everybody I figure that every adult was a child once and you
know what she was right and there’s just something about learning about children that allows you to learn better about
yourself and how to interact with other adults she knew what she was doing and
she told me about it on episode 281 and that book is called a grown-up’s guide to kids wiring and it is chock-full with
everything that Kathleen has been teaching me the first couple of chapters is how you figure out which temperament
a child is by the way that works for everybody that you’re talking with and
then the last chapters are specifically how to work with each specific temper
government what you need to know about yourself and your temperament but then also how to work with others in their
temperament can’t recommend that enough Adam mentioned during the interview that
he reads A Lot via audible audible is a service where most book titles can be
found and actors will will read the books to you and you’re able to read
while you’re driving from account to account and I tell you this is how I’ve
gotten back my ability to read because I am always driving somewhere and this
allows me when I’m not listening to the scaling up H2O podcast to listen to a
book and a lot of times they will even provide resources that you can download so a lot of people say I really like to
be able to see the graphs and things that they’re referring to on the book more often than not audible will give
you a link that you can download all those materials so you’re not in the
dark as people are talking about them I’m a huge fan of audible and at this
recent Association of water Technologies conference I had at least a dozen and people talk to me thanking me for
letting them know about audible because now they’re able to read again too so if
you want to check out audible I can get you a free month and a free book by going to scalingup h2o.com forward slash
Audible and maybe you can read Drew Dudley’s new book this is day one like Adam was talking about or you can choose
whichever one that you like now I will tell you it took me a little while to
get used to that format where somebody was reading to me and whenever I switch books and there’s another reader another
narrator on the book it always takes me just a little bit to get used to that
but it’s not long and then I’m able to listen to the book in fact normally I
can ramp the book speed up to about 20 percent higher some readers I can do 50
percent higher and I’m still able to retain the content but if I go much higher than that I can’t retain the
content tent and I just want to warn you that just hearing somebody speak isn’t
the same as getting the knowledge when somebody is speaking so there’s definitely a top limit to that I urge
you to find yours but some people don’t know that you can change the speed speaking of that at the rising tide
Mastermind live event this past year one of the members Bob Lee was saying how
you can make anybody seem drunk by playing them at half speed well who has a podcast they could play at half speed
so everybody had fun with half speed Trace Blackmore on scaling up H2O and it
sounded like I had a few too many beverages so thank you Bob Lee of r2j
you of course shared that with the entire Mastermind and for some reason I’m sharing that with the rest of the
scaling up H2O Nation so it’s all in good fun right well Nation I hope you’ve
enjoyed this episode I hope you’ve got some thoughts about what you want to hear in the new year so we can start
planning our schedule and if there is ever anything that you can do for
somebody else around helping them through mental health as Adam mentioned
you know know that’s a tall order and a lot of times we don’t feel comfortable talking about that there are a lot of
resources out there and we’re going to make sure we have some of those resources on our show notes page it’s a
topic we just do not talk about enough a lot of times we’re embarrassed to talk
about it well Nation let me tell you it is real and I’m willing to bet that most of us have had some sort of an
experience with that if not ourselves so it’s something we need to take seriously
our job is to help each other go through life and build each other up according to their needs so I’m asking you when
you see somebody that’s in need of some help you figure out a way that you can offer that help and again we’ll have
some resources on our show notes page folks I love bringing this podcast to you and we’ll have a brand new episode
for you next Friday of scaling up H2O
[Music] Nation where do you want to go what is
the next step for you and how are you going to get there those are tough
questions and they’re even tougher when you’re trying to answer them on your own that’s why I’ve created the rising tide
Mastermind because you don’t have to be on your own anymore we all take value in
you reaching your next level to success and we will help you get there go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash Mastermind to find out more