We cannot believe we made it to our 100th episode. So we decided to say thank you while we were together in our booth in Atlantic City during the Northeast Pool & Spa Show. Shaun Mulhall joins us as we say thank you to our growing audience.
00:00 - Introduction, and introducing Shaun Mulhall, our Southeast regional manager
00:52 - Introducing Kathryn Varden, our Western regional manager
02:01 - Our top 5 topics on this podcast all have a common theme
05:49 - We got to teach two classes at the NESPA show, and 2 more in Spanish
07:21 - Jarred admits the podcast is actually worthwhile (but he still doesn't listen to it)
09:04 - Please give our podcast an honest rating on whatever platform you listen to it on.
10:36 - We have big plans for 2023
10:51 - Thanks for listening!
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100. Live from Atlantic City (w/ Shaun Mulhall)
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[00:00:00] Jarred Morgan: Hello Pool people. How does this work? I don't know.
[00:00:04] Eric Knight: Well, we have the microphone set up. We are in Studio 1529 at the Northeast Pool and Spa Show, standing next to each other for the second time in the history of the Rule Your Pool podcast.
[00:00:15] Jarred Morgan: But you know what, Eric, this is a very special episode. Because it is episode number 100.
[00:00:21] Eric Knight: Yep. This is our hundredth episode. We are live at the Northeast Pool and Spa Show in Atlantic City and we've got a third guest with us. Just like the last time we did a live one, we had Miguel. Well, now we've got Shaun Mulhall with us, our Southeast regional Manager. Shaun, say hi to our audience.
[00:00:35] Shaun Mulhall: Welcome, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:37] Eric Knight: In Southern, that translates to welcome, thank you for joining us. We sometimes need subtitles for Shaun. So anyways, we literally have a mic on top of our startup barrel. Standing here on the corner and there are people looking at us like we're weird because we are.
[00:00:52] Jarred Morgan: Not just that. Kathryn's looking at us. Say hi, Kathryn.
[00:00:56] Kathryn Varden: Hi, y'all.
[00:00:56] Jarred Morgan: Kathryn Varden is west coast girl. She's a rockstar, but she's holding a phone...
[00:01:01] Eric Knight: My phone. Yeah.
[00:01:03] Jarred Morgan: We're not sure what she's doing. Maybe she's trying to make fun of us for recording this.
[00:01:06] Eric Knight: Taking the pictures. Not sure. Well, anyways, this is the hundredth episode of The Rule Your Pool podcast, and we wanted to record this here in Atlantic City. Here we are doing it live on the show floor. And we just noticed as we were going through our most popular episodes, we just broke a hundred listeners. As far as we know, or we have at least a hundred listeners and we were having a goal to get into triple digits by a hundred episodes. Think we did it. So thank you to all of you who listen to our podcast.
[00:01:31] Jarred Morgan: We might have 101 with somebody walking by here soon. So
[00:01:34] Eric Knight: Shaun, are you the hundred and first listener?
[00:01:36] Shaun Mulhall: I actually signed up under three different emails, so I'm actually three people.
[00:01:41] Eric Knight: So we're under a hundred basically.
[00:01:43] Jarred Morgan: No. Maybe if I subscribe to our own podcast, I could be number 101.
[00:01:47] Eric Knight: Jarred, you've never listened to our podcast. Don't, don't be anything but true to yourself.
[00:01:51] Jarred Morgan: Well, either way, let's get this show rolling so that we can give our audience at least something worthwhile to listen to.
[00:01:56] Eric Knight: Yeah, well, no promises, but this is the hundredth episode of The Rule Your Pool podcast. Let's go.
Our top topics
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[00:02:01] Eric Knight: Okay, Jarred, we just looked at our analytics for this podcast, and we discovered what the top episodes are and they are like clear cut and listens above everything else. And there's a common thread. So why don't you read off the titles of each one of these episodes.
[00:02:38] Jarred Morgan: As Eric was reading these off 10 seconds ago, I got pretty excited because as he mentioned, the common thread here is going to make absolute sense when I start reading them off.
[00:02:48] So here we go. In order our top five blogs?
[00:02:52] Eric Knight: No, no podcast. No, I'm sorry. Podcast.
[00:02:53] Jarred Morgan: Podcast. I'm sorry, I forgot we do a podcast. Uh, is how to suppress pH from naturally rising. Two, calcium flakes in saltwater pools. Three, how to use less acid: stop chasing your pH. Four, understanding pH. And five, introduction to the LSI.
[00:03:12] Shaun, what is the common thread between all of those episodes?
[00:03:15] Shaun Mulhall: Sounds like everything we've talked about this week.
[00:03:18] Eric Knight: Well, that's true. We do. We talk about it all the time. But what's the common thread between all those episodes?
[00:03:22] Shaun Mulhall: pH and LSI.
[00:03:24] Eric Knight: Nailed it. The same stuff we talk about all the time, because these are the things that have been mistaught in our industry. Misunderstood, whatever you want to say. Taught wrong or not told the entire story. And here we are talking about what these things actually are. I mean, pH versus total alkalinity.
[00:03:38] You would think that these things would be well understood, but they're not. We get questions about it all the time. And then you know, the dogma of pH, you have to have 7.4 to 7.6, and of course we conflict with that. One of the other more popular episodes is why our advice differs from pool stores and pool industry standards and textbooks. And it's really because range chemistry.
[00:03:57] Jarred Morgan: It is. And we put this information out there just as a tool for you the listeners or whoever is listening to use as kind of a... It's something you could share with a homeowner or share with your customers as to why you might be doing things a little different. Because we know we're not preaching range chemistries.
[00:04:14] Trust me. Everybody knows that. But you guys get questioned sometimes and we want to make sure that we have your back. And that's really what this comes down to. Or if you're a homeowner and you want to try it this way, we want to put as much thought and information behind it so that you feel comfortable doing it.
[00:04:28] Eric Knight: Well, we like informed decisions being made. So, Shaun, I'm going to ask you, since it's your first time on the podcast, a lot of people have come to our booth, whether they took our class or not. What are the questions you've been hearing this week at the Northeast Show?
[00:04:40] Shaun Mulhall: Mostly what we just talked about there. Uh, I've heard about Orenda, I've listened to the podcast or, I've used the app, but you know, what else can you do to help me be successful in my business? And I'm having these issues in these pools, and what can we do to fix those? And the common stuff, the stuff we'd like to talk about, the stuff we'd love to talk about.
[00:05:00] Jarred Morgan: One of those questions that we get pretty common, especially right now this week, was what do you guys actually do?
[00:05:07] Which is a great question to hear and other people might listen to that and say that's pretty dumb. Why don't you make it obvious?
[00:05:13] Eric Knight: Yeah. Your branding isn't so good if they don't know what you do. But I love that question because they come here and they're like, okay, so what's the catch?
[00:05:19] They don't actually know we're a chemical company. And that's kind of the point. We want to give education. We don't want to give you product pitches. And so it's a really cool thing. Now come to our booth and yeah, we'll pitch our products when you're at our booth, but not in our class, not in our podcast.
[00:05:31] Jarred Morgan: And you, you came here on your own. You found your way to our website. You found your way to our podcast. Or a blog or whatever it may be, and it piqued your interest and then you start asking critical questions. And hopefully we answer them. But if we don't, we'll try to find a solution or an answer.
[00:05:45] And that is really the premise behind why we do what we do.
Teaching classes at the NESPA show
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[00:05:49] Eric Knight: Yeah. I had a really good opportunity this week to teach two classes. The first one was sold out. That was awesome. Kind of, uh, shattered some paradigms for people that have never heard this message before, which was great. A lot of people had.
[00:06:01] A lot of the feedback that came to this booth afterward were, where were you guys 20, 30 years ago when I was starting? Why are we just hearing this now? And then, then people try it and it works. It's a pretty amazing thing.
[00:06:13] And then the second class I was teaching about company culture. And I think we'll probably do another episode or two on that about what is the difference between a good pool company and a great pool company. That's the class I've been wanting to teach for a while. I'm very grateful we got to finally teach it here. Got a lot of good feedback from it. So we will be back next year at the Northeast Show and a bunch of other shows.
[00:06:32] Jarred Morgan: We're going to be all over the place for the next few months, and we're kind of using this time right now at the trade show because the last days are always a little slower, a little more quiet. So if we were trying to do this the first two days, this would not be possible. Our booth was just absolutely slammed, everybody. It's just time for us to kind of give you an idea of what our life is like right now.
[00:06:52] Um, hotels, trade show floors, standing all day. Mrs. Kathryn didn't buy a chair because she thinks it's a good idea that we stand and be available to our customers all day for eight hours standing on our feet. Um, so really it becomes a jockeying game of trying to find the most comfortable couch around this trade show. Which I did a pretty good job yesterday, but, uh,
[00:07:12] Shaun Mulhall: is that where you went?
[00:07:13] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. So trust me, if you find somebody in your booth that's supposed to be there and they're not there, find a couch or a chair. Thanks to Kathryn.
[00:07:21] But either way, we just want to give our gratitude for having 100 episodes, quite honestly. And when we started, I was a naysayer to the whole podcast thing because as Eric already mentioned, and I proclaimed, I don't listen to podcasts. I thought it was dumb. And boy was I proved wrong. And it really came down to Eric. Eric had the idea and obviously Harold backed it up. And I'm going to just go ahead and admit that I'm the idiot here that said this was a bad idea because it was just going to be more work for me.
[00:07:49] But as it turned out, it's working. You guys are enjoying it. At least, I think, at least with Eric, not me. And it's, uh, it's paying off and we, we really do appreciate it.
[00:08:00] Shaun Mulhall: Well, I want to thank Eric and Jarred for having me on the hundredth episode here. It's a big deal. Centen, big century Century note, and, uh, And look forward to maybe being on one in the future. So thank you.
[00:08:12] Eric Knight: Yeah. And I'd like to chime in and just say that just because you said these nice words doesn't mean you're not still the worst co-host ever, but you are working your way up towards being less of a worst co-host. We didn't have any show notes.
[00:08:23] Shaun Mulhall: That's because I'm in it now, so....
[00:08:24] Eric Knight: Yeah. Well you're bringing off the pressure, which is great. Shaun,
[00:08:26] Jarred Morgan: I'm trying to pass the buck to you and Kathryn's, so that...
[00:08:29] Eric Knight: Hold on. Shaun was at Lynyrd Skynyrd without earplugs. What, what I was saying, Shaun, is that Jarred is usually the worst co-host. But, but now he's like, not as bad.
[00:08:41] Jarred Morgan: No, we enjoy it now. That's really what it comes down to. I don't know what else we can say besides, Hey, those, those are our top five episodes or top five things.
[00:08:48] Clearly pH is one of those things in our industry that is misunderstood and needs more clarification. And we are happy to bring that information to you guys. And, uh, you know, the analytics just proved that. So please reach out, give us a five star review on whatever you're listening to.
Please rate our podcast
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[00:09:04] Eric Knight: That brings up a topic that I'd like to bring up that we just found out about. The internet would not be the internet without some trolls and some naysayers.
[00:09:12] Jarred Morgan: So we have naysayers. Everybody knows that. All I can say is that we would appreciate it if you do enjoy this give an honest review. If it's one star, that's fine. We can accept that
[00:09:21] Eric Knight: As long as it's honest.
[00:09:22] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. And if it's five star, please just stop what you're doing real quick. Give it a review, give it a quick note, and we would truly appreciate it.
[00:09:29] Eric Knight: Yeah. Especially those of you listening to Spotify, if you can pause this, give us a real review, not asking for what star that is for you, whatever you think this show is worth, just give a real review.
[00:09:38] So let's dilute out the people who intentionally gave us one star reviews. They don't even know us. They don't listen to our message. They just don't like it. And there's a lot of pushback in the industry right now from traditional pool care, man. Like there's a lot of, uh, I would say antiquated views of, well, it's always been this way, therefore it must always be this way. And that doesn't make it right.
[00:10:00] And the truth is out there. You're witnessing it. If you are ruling your pool our way, you already know this to be true. So let's not let the naysayers drag us down. Thank you all so much for being the best podcast audience you can imagine. And I say that because you actually give us feedback.
[00:10:16] So we know you exist. We joke about how few people we have that listen to this. But we're glad that that number continues to rise. So Shaun, anything you want to say to the audience before we go?
[00:10:25] Shaun Mulhall: I think I'm good. You know, looking forward to hitting another trade show. Looking forward to meeting you. Come up and tell us if you listen to our podcast at the trade shows, we'd love to get that feedback, and give us suggestions.
[00:10:36] Jarred Morgan: And we have big plans, big goals for next year. That, uh,
[00:10:39] Eric Knight: this year? This year.
[00:10:39] Jarred Morgan: Oh, this year. We're already in this year. Yeah. That we're going to break 200 listeners. Oh yeah, 2024.
[00:10:44] Eric Knight: Let's do it.
[00:10:45] Jarred Morgan: So thank you all. We appreciate you very much and please give us feedback, give us reviews, and hope to see you at the trade shows in the field.
[00:10:51] Eric Knight: Podcast@orendatech.com is the email and the website is ask.orendatech.com for our help center. And if you don't see your question answered, Submit a question at the top. It goes into our system. We will get back to you.
[00:11:04] Signing off here. We would do a long episode, but honestly we did this because we just wanted to say thank you. So thank you. Take care.