Eric is joined by Teresa Berry to discuss the new Orenda Calculator integration with PaythePoolman, a pool business software that has been helping pool pros since 2015.
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00:00 - Introduction
01:05 - Teresa Berry
05:29 - The origins of PaythePoolman
08:19 - Problems addressed
11:35 - What constants can you rely on?
25:05 - Closing
161. Integration with PaythePoolman (w/ Teresa Berry)
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Welcome back everybody to the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host, Eric Knight with Orenda and HASA. And this is episode 161. It's good to have you back. Surprised that you are, but you know, that's your call. We appreciate you tolerating us for this long.
[00:00:13] Today, we've got a special guest. We have another software company that has integrated with the Orenda Calculator as part of our mission to extend this to all of the pool professionals in the world. To have a consistent standard, certainly for chemical dosing, which is very important to be accurate. But also to implement the LSI in what they're doing. Because it's important for everybody that services pools to be aligned with physics.
[00:00:38] And the software partners that we're working with really up that game because they're capable of doing things like recording history and implementing it into the broader picture of your business. And that's something that we're really pushing for in 2024 and beyond. And we hope that our guest today is able to explain what they're doing at PaythePoolman, and we're going to talk about that integration and what they do and what they offer pool pros.
[00:01:01] This is episode 161 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. Let's get into it.
Teresa Berry
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[00:01:05] Eric Knight: So Teresa Berry, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:31] Teresa Berry: Thank you very much, Eric, I appreciate it. Love to be here.
[00:01:33] Eric Knight: First of all, we'll start off with you. What's your background? What got you into the pool industry? And how did you find PaythePoolman?
[00:01:41] Teresa Berry: Yeah, that's great. It's actually a silly story. I was a public school teacher for a long time. One of my titles at PaythePoolman is educational specialist. They brought me on for support and then I just saw a real need to train up our users with all of the great features we have.
[00:01:59] And so I was really a great fit for that. I kind of left education in the public sector and moved into the private sector and really enjoyed that. uh, Been friends with Jeff and his family for a while. And they had an opening. Reached out to me and the timing was right. It was a real blessing. I'm embarrassed to say I knew nothing about the pool industry. My entire prior knowledge was 1980s flicks with guys in flip flops and pool shorts.
[00:02:25] Eric Knight: Right. Right.
[00:02:26] Teresa Berry: a net. So I was pretty ignorant and that changed really fast talking to guys and realizing I've kind of fallen in love with the industry. It's like a family. I appreciate that. So I started out kind of as a noob learning the platform, learning the business studying it like a learner and kind of came in pretty humbled. Still I'm often humbled by what I don't know.
[00:02:51] Eric Knight: In fairness, all of us start as noobs. People find this surprising, but when I came to Orenda, I didn't even know how to use a test kit in 2016. I mean, I had used, I had used one back in my days as a lifeguard, but we had instructions written on the wall of what to do. And then when I came here of, oh boy, it was learning fast. And it feels like I've been accelerating and what I've been learning the further I've gone into it. So kudos to you for going through that process of understanding the industry.
[00:03:20] And you're right. It is a small industry. It does feel like a family. You know, in a way you just kind of feel part of their ability to earn a living. You help them do something that they weren't able to do before or help them do it more profitably. It's a good feeling. It really is.
[00:03:36] Teresa Berry: I do really feel responsible for what we put out there. But I also feel really proud that we can empower whether it's a guy starting out just brand new to the industry kind of going out on his own or people who've been around for a long time. I think that's why it feels so close and why it feels like a family is like, you're right. You can't see these people every day in and day out and not be like, man, you're just a real person trying to make a living. I would say most of the people love what they do and that kind of passion you catch it.
[00:04:06] Eric Knight: It's contagious for sure. And I think it's very hard trade. Certainly everybody's a hard worker if they're going to be successful in this business. But it's a really tough trade. A pool pro has to be a plumber, an electrician, and a chemist. And they have to work outside. That's not easy. And I would take it a step further in that they've been looked down on for too long. And I think that has to do with the barrier to entry is very low. But part of what we try to do is up that game. There are certifications. There is a lot of education that you should be investing in and a lot of companies are taking it.
[00:04:41] And I was just doing a training this past week and I had dozens of customers come up after and said, our teachings changed everything for them. They've been doing it for 20 plus years and that feels really good that we're able to help just, it's not even new ideas. It's just explaining what was always going on.
[00:04:57] And part of what I really like about you all, and softwares in general, is we're now using technology further enhance the ability to make a living in this industry. Because it is a small industry. And we're way behind other industries. You know, when I had an HVAC technician at my house, he had an iPad and he had this whole robust software built out. And I mean, it was all so dialed in compared to what a typical pool professional has in their hands. And you're part of that change.
The origins of PaythePoolman
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[00:05:29] Eric Knight: So before we get into PaythePoolman and what it does you said, you've mentioned Jeff several times, what was his background and why did he create it?
[00:05:36] Teresa Berry: Oh, yeah. Thanks. Yeah. So Jeff was uh, he started out Southern California. He was a pro for 13 years. He was involved in IPSSA, he was pretty active. Although an introvert, which is funny. He was realizing it was more of a people job than you would suspect. Because you know, you're out on your own, you're running your business, you're doing your thing.
[00:05:57] But there's a lot of interactions with people. And then depending on how you run your business, if you are good, word of mouth, it spreads fast. and so you grow. Even if you don't want to grow, I hear guys who tell me like, I just want it to be me. I don't want to grow. And I feel like you almost have to work hard not to grow.
[00:06:13] And so as he grew, um, the administrative load grew. And he's one guy, so he leaned on his wife, Rebecca quite a bit. And he really cared about his family and his marriage and the business side was hurting his family and his marriage. He hated it, honestly.
[00:06:30] Eric Knight: He's not alone.
[00:06:31] Teresa Berry: Yeah, I
[00:06:32] Eric Knight: You know, I also work for a noted introvert or I've worked. Harold, noted introvert. And his crippling social anxiety made it very hard for him to just get out there and tell people how he really felt. I'm sorry. I can't say that with a straight face because I know he's listening to this and he's going to be like, you smart ass.
[00:06:50] Teresa Berry: Yeah. Well, and you know, Jeff, it's funny, he's, he's actually great with people, but and he, he enjoyed working with his customers, but there's always that like, you're still performing a service and you got to get paid and you got to stay on top of that stuff. And there's just a lot of administrative tasks.
[00:07:06] And then, you know, end of the month when he's trying to get his billing together, leaned heavily on his wife. She couldn't read his writing. There were fights, things happened and he was like, this is, this isn't working. Like, I love what I do out in the field and I can't stand trying to run the actual, pluses and minuses of the business.
[00:07:27] And so though he's an outdoorsy guy, like he loved being outdoor on his own, he, he went ahead and taught himself coding and computer stuff, like
[00:07:36] Eric Knight: That's just amazing. That that is incredible. That's a skill set that I wish I had, but I feel I'm too far into what I'm doing to go and learn that because we can hire people who can do that. That's amazing you did something about it because I've heard that same story from so many pros that struggle. And one of the fastest ways companies go out of business is they grow too fast.
[00:07:56] Teresa Berry: Yeah,
[00:07:57] Eric Knight: It is one of the fastest ways to go out of business. Because if you can't scale it properly or proportionally, and you don't have the systems in place or the infrastructure to handle it, you're going to be stressed to the limits. And not just business wise, but personal life. You're going to be working too many hours and it's going to tear apart your family or whatever it is. And so I have nothing but respect for that. Try to make a change.
Problems addressed
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[00:08:19] Eric Knight: So let's talk about the software. What were the kind of problems that it seeks to solve?
[00:08:24] Teresa Berry: From the start, he had a vision to solve the problem of collecting payments. Of doing it in a way that didn't feel like he was the bad guy all the time. Cause you kind of do. And you know,
[00:08:35] Eric Knight: Automate it.
[00:08:36] Teresa Berry: Yeah, exactly. Automate it, make it faster, make it easier for everyone. And then he built it into routing. And then I think once he realized, honestly, how it could really serve his second family, the pool industry, he kept building from there. Jeff has always had a growth mindset of not perfection, you , but excellence.
[00:09:00] Eric Knight: There was a need to help pool pros who are very good at what they do, do what they're not good at necessarily, or most of them are not, which is keeping the books. And routing, and optimizing, you know, things that are on the business side that a business person might do, but a business person is an office person in most people's minds. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant. I like that you're using technology to augment . Ability to make a living.
[00:09:28] Teresa Berry: This integration was requested from our companies and we have a board. And every time someone else requests it, like that stuff moves up.
[00:09:37] And I'll tell you, like, we were super, super excited to team up with you guys. Because it's an incredible tool for maybe a guy who's like, I'm not a chemist. I don't have a white lab coat. You know, I got my hat and I got my embroidered shirt and I'm out there every day. And it's a really accessible tool to maintain, like you said, LSI. Which is it's been around, but it has been revolutionary. Because the spotlights on it.
[00:10:04] And you guys provide access. Even prior to your integrations, you guys had the dosage calculator, you had so much out there to put tools in people's hands. I respect that. I love that they were free. I think that says a lot about the integrity of your company and what you're trying to do. And that's the same with us. Like you one click and you turn that feature on with us. We're not looking to make money off of it because we think it's an incredible tool for the pros out there who A, you know, maybe they're not super comfortable with LSI, right?
[00:10:33] Like it does the hard work for them or guys have been out there forever. And maybe you're a little leery. Sometimes I've been in meetings where they're like, you know, there's two sides of the room. And they don't understand LSI or in their minds not proven. But the more I look into it, the more I see how it changes everything. Having access. Access is everything.
[00:10:57] These are tools that really empower people to do what they want to do with their lives. And you can really up your game, your customer service. Like you said, even tracking with our tools that we already had in place, you can track the history of all this stuff and look back at your pool water health and say like, Oh, you know what, LSI is making a difference.
[00:11:19] This was when I started the Orenda and started using LSI, I had the dosage calculator. And then they can see the health of that customer's pool over time. As opposed to like the wild, right? Those range changes sometimes that can happen pretty quick.
What constants can you rely on?
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[00:11:35] Eric Knight: You mean chasing? Chasing pH, chasing alkalinity, chasing chlorine, can't hold chlorine. So I'm going to throw this algaecide in there to try to stop a problem. Well you bring up a lot of good points in that and there's a lot to unpack. The first thing I'll say is when we first spoke with Jeff, I really wanted to work with him.
[00:11:53] The problem was we were not there yet. We didn't have the technology. We didn't have the capabilities that we do today. And we were talking about it and gosh, it was such a good idea. And it, that bug never went away in my mind. We had to stall it because it was one of those things like we could not handle the pivot at that time. We actually had to completely scrap and start on a new screen of code from scratch, and we completely rebuilt our app in version 3.0 into a reactive language. And that changed everything because we used to be in multiple different coding languages and bugs were a nightmare. And we've cleaned up our code substantially.
[00:12:31] That was a big move. And I never forgot the conversations that we had. And you could tell the integration was going to be a good thing. It was going to be a good fit. The love for the industry was palpable in our conversations back then.
[00:12:44] And I think we share it too, because Orenda's mission has always been to purify more water by empowering people who treat it. Whether that's a homeowner or a pool pro, it doesn't matter to us. We are going to empower people who treat water, and teach them the truth about water. Not how to impose your will upon water, but how would you treat water?
[00:13:03] And I teach this in my class when I, let's just replace the word water with spouse. When I say treat your water, think of it like, how would you treat your spouse? Does that mean you impose your will on it and force it to do things that it doesn't want to do? That's not treating. When we treat water at Orenda, and when our customers treat water, they are treating water based on what water needs.
[00:13:26] And then in return, we are able to do what we need , which is disinfection. But water cannot disinfect itself. We have to do that. That's wholly unnatural to water. Because natural water looks more like a pond. I've never seen a disinfected pond.
[00:13:42] So some fundamentals, and this is another thing we teach in the class that I think software can really help with is it has to be grounded in an understanding that we don't have a lot of constants in our businesses. Pool pros listening to this, think about this and just be honest with yourself and maybe pause this podcast while you're driving or working and think through this question and then unpause and we'll discuss it.
[00:14:05] Okay. How many constants do you actually have in your business? Whether that's things you can control or just things you can rely on. You can't control prices. You can't control gas prices. You can't control traffic times, the weather, customer attitudes, contamination in the pool. You can't control hardly anything.
[00:14:29] You can't control the tap water. The city's changed their mind on that. So Everything's a variable. And how are you supposed to compare yourself to what you were doing in the past, to what you're doing today, if everything's always moving? I mean, for instance, prior to 2014, when the Flint, Michigan water crisis happened, phosphates were hardly ever in drinking water.
[00:14:48] But now, they're in drinking water almost everywhere because of an EPA mandate. That moved the goalposts, Teresa. That's a game changer when you're talking about issues like algae. So, that wasn't there before. Because If you change what comes out of the tap, if the pool pro is not testing it, they have no way of knowing. So we recommend testing at least once a season, but usually once a quarter just to see if it moved. Just to see what it was. And I come back to this question, What constants do you actually have? And I can offer three of them.
[00:15:22] The well, actually four. The fourth one would be your attitude as a choice. Okay.
[00:15:27] You can decide how you want to tackle all of these things. You can go in with an attitude of gratitude that you have reliable work, that you can make a living, that you can always grow your business. You control your destiny. A lot of things to be grateful for in our industry. Your attitude is always your choice. That is a constant.
[00:15:43] But the three constants that you can always rely on are gravity, Henry's Law and the LSI. And the LSI is really not the constant, it's just the way we measure that constant. And that constant is that water will always return to its natural state and it seeks balance. We quantify that balance using the LSI. At least that's the best thing that we know of. But Henry's Law is not going away. Gravity is not going away. And when I teach this in classes, Teresa, people will think, well, that's kind of esoteric. That's weird. Like, what do you mean gravity? Well, Teresa, have you ever seen a pool startup?
[00:16:18] Have you ever seen like when they're done plastering and the water turns on?
[00:16:22] Teresa Berry: Yeah. I've watched videos on it.
[00:16:24] Eric Knight: You ever seen one fill from left to right? I haven't. I always see that for some reason, pools always fill from the bottom up.
[00:16:33] Teresa Berry: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're
[00:16:34] Right?
[00:16:35] Eric Knight: Well, that's gravity.
[00:16:35] Teresa Berry: Yeah. Of course. Yeah.
[00:16:36] Eric Knight: Right? And when we put acid in pools, acid, if it's not diluted is denser than water. Where does it go? Down.
[00:16:44] Teresa Berry: Yeah. It's going down.
[00:16:45] Eric Knight: It's gravity. What about plumbing? Water always seeks its own level. If you plumb a pump two feet below the skimmer line, elevation wise, you're going to flood that pump. Which may be an advantage, but you better put a valve in front of it because otherwise water is just going to flow right through it like my old pool.
[00:17:01] And that's okay. Like in commercial pools, they deliberately dig them down, you know, seven or eight feet so that they do have hydraulic pressure. That's a constant. Gravity is not going anywhere, and you could build a strategy around that.
[00:17:13] Same with Henry's Law. The pH is going to rise. It is going to rise to that pH ceiling. All we did with our calculator is we did the math for you and we display it. We show you in real time where that pH is going. It was always happening, but nobody ever bothered to quantify it. Nobody ever bothered to do this math and we've had help. And we're very grateful for that help, but what a cool thing.
[00:17:36] Now you can see exactly where your pH is going. And so if we extrapolate that through the power of partners like yourself. PaythePoolman can now add history and you can forecast out your future way better than we ever could at Orenda. And so I love this because you're taking something that we've built and you're expanding it.
[00:17:56] You're taking it to that next level for the pro. And that's why we're excited to work with you and everybody else, frankly. We want everybody to be using a software in the pool industry because we want people to thrive. We really want people to thrive in this space and software is the way to go. I'm, I'm so adamant on this because you can't remember everything, but a computer can.
[00:18:16] Teresa Berry: Yeah. I've talked with guys who he's like, all right, well, I've been happy with pen and paper and don't judge those guys. I get it. We do what makes sense to us until there's a speed bump or something comes across. Like that cognitive dissonance hits. And then this isn't working. And one of the guys was like, we had a bad rainstorm, I left my book out. It got trashed. He goes, I lost everything.
[00:18:37] He goes, Yeah, he goes, I can't, I can't keep doing this. And again, you know, for him, it made sense until it didn't. And I think, aside from them really knowing their business well, I think it's the best thing we can do. It's the most kind thing we can do to help people dial in their business. And, I believe people care about people. You can't be in the service industry and be successful for long if you don't care about people, because it just doesn't go well. People pick up on it.
[00:19:05] Our platform, what you guys are doing, it provides just a next level of care and concern for people in the pool industry. And this integration, pushing it forward, really continuing to modernize our platform. Like it's exciting. And who knew like 20 years ago, I would have never thought like I'd be excited about software, but I am.
[00:19:29] One of the more common requests we got for feature updates was some kind of a dosage calculator. And to us, that's always been a little bit scary because there's some liability there, right? Jeff again, had you guys in the back of his mind for a long time. And, if you want to use it you just go right there into the employee center and turn on the permission for Orenda. It's that simple. It's
[00:19:52] and once your tech logs in, it's there.
[00:19:56] Eric Knight: Yeah, that's easy. That's great. And so they'll be able to see something that looks similar to what they're familiar with on our app? Or what's it going to look like?
[00:20:03] Teresa Berry: Yeah, absolutely. We modeled it very similarly to what you guys have just because it's actually a pretty simple interface. One of our high priorities with development is a really intuitive, simple. We just have to ask that question over and over. Does it make sense? Does it make sense?
[00:20:19] The way that you guys kind of built that out, it did make sense. You have your readings on the left, where do you want it to go on the right? And when it's green, green, good, right? Like you make those
[00:20:31] Eric Knight: It didn't know it, it didn't always have colors to it. When you go back, when it first came out it was all just blue. The dials were all black numbers. And then the LSI was just a blue number, no matter what it was.
[00:20:41] Teresa Berry: Okay. Okay.
[00:20:42] Eric Knight: yeah, we've evolved over time.
[00:20:44] Teresa Berry: I was going to say I'm not familiar with that. I, I downloaded the dosage calculator. I can't remember when I finally downloaded it to my phone and I was like, wow. This is great. I know very little and being able to use it simply without feeling like I had to get a PhD in chemistry is a delight.
[00:21:00] Once the admin turns on the permission for that and they start using it, it's really simple. We have a few, you know, little augmentations like quick chems were the stuff that you use most often, those will pop up first. You can automatically from Orenda dosage suggestions you can just click apply. And it'll pop up and then it'll go right to your billing. So you don't have to track that, like what the dosages was. And then your tech can just look at that, grab his gear from his bucket or from whatever cool, innovative setup they've developed to make their life easier out by the pool. And start dosing the pool.
[00:21:38] So it's pretty intuitive. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Like you guys did a lot of great stuff with the visual of it. We just kind of gave it our own little spin. Jeff is real particular about how things look.
[00:21:51] And so he, he wanted it to look good. If you don't particularly know how many gallons are in that pool, right there in the app, pull up the volume calculator there. And, you know, get a pretty close estimate of what that volume is and then save it so you don't have to do that every time you do the pool.
[00:22:10] So a lot of, cool tools for guys who are like, I've never done it before. I don't exactly know, you know, I'm kind of out there eyeballing it. I feel like on top of just the health of that water, you know, like really treating it well. I've listened to your podcast and it's actually one of our things we share is like when you're accurate with the amounts, you're saving money and you're not actually continuing to chase balance.
[00:22:35] And then once you've moved on, like, let's say you got everything done. You've got your dosage, you dropped your chems, and then you just move on to the next step. And so really simple. 10, 15 seconds out in the field over and over and over. It adds up really fast and time is money. So it is intuitive and it is fast and it is simple. And, and again, it's not to slow you down. It's actually to speed you up.
[00:22:57] Eric Knight: Now forgive me for not knowing when does this release?
[00:23:01] Teresa Berry: We're finishing up a beta round. We put out a request to our users like, Hey, we want a beta this. We want to make sure it's accurate and it's friendly to all of our users. We always cringe a little bit when we release newer, bigger features. Cause you know, new companies, they don't know, but our, you know, our, our good old faithful, loyal guys have been with us for a long time always cringe a little bit, like, why are you changing it? And we're always trying to like push the envelope. Like guys, we're changing it. Yeah. We're changing it for you. Like we're, it's a growth mindset. We're trying to like help you to continue to stay on track. So we've had a really incredible response from all of our beta users across the nation. Which was really encouraging to us.
[00:23:41] And we are looking to hopefully launch it within, I think weeks for our full platform. What we didn't want to do is build out this incredible integration, launch it, and then, you know, because we're kind of an all in one platform with billing, routing, payroll, we've got an app for your customer to log in. Because it's so comprehensive, like run your business in one spot. things get through, but we'll make those adjustments. So, uh, like I said, our, our tech team gave us a target date of just a couple of weeks away for, um, the full, uh, release to all of our users. So we're pretty excited about it. Thank you for asking. That was actually on my list. I'm glad you brought
[00:24:22] Eric Knight: So a safe goal is by Thanksgiving 2024, but certainly by the end of the year.
[00:24:28] Teresa Berry: Yeah, for sure.
[00:24:29] Eric Knight: Cool. Well, that's exciting. That's great. And customers, you're going to about to have a whole nother option. This is awesome. And so how can people find you? What's the website called? How do people look into what you have?
[00:24:40] Teresa Berry: We try and keep it real simple, PaythePoolman.Com. We'll be at the expos. If you've got chapter meetings and you want us to pop in and give a presentation, I love traveling and giving those presentations. We have a live call in support at 951 234 5166. Great team there. Wonderful support staff who want to help.
Closing
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[00:25:05] Eric Knight: Well, Teresa, it's been an honor having you and thank you for all the effort that you and Jeff and the team have put in. Because I do want to stress to the audience as I have in previous episodes. The integration these software companies are making for you customers is not cheap. It's devoting a massive amount of resources and time.
[00:25:22] And it takes months to put this into their software and they're doing it for you. And I know because I've been behind the Orenda app, it's not easy to make big changes. There's a lot of work. There's a ton of testing. There's communication with developers and user experience and user interface. And Oh my gosh. I mean, it, it's a lot of work. And so we greatly appreciate you doing it. And I think it's going to up the industry even more. So Teresa, thank you.
[00:25:54] Teresa Berry: And thank you, Eric. I'm grateful. was a vision launched a long time ago and it's in reality and it's so cool. And we look forward to continuing to team with you. Thank you for inviting us to be a part of what we think can be a real gift and a real amazing tool to the pool industry. We're grateful.
[00:26:12] Eric Knight: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been episode 161 of our tolerable podcast here. And I don't know what the next one's going to be, but we have a lot more to cover. Lots of questions that we've been getting, and this, for some reason, this cycle of trainings that I've been doing the past few weeks, They seem to be hitting differently.
[00:26:32] They seem to be resonating with customers in a different level than we have in the past eight years. And that's exciting to me. So we've got a lot more good information coming out and keep the questions coming. If you have a podcast episode request, the email is podcast@orendatech.Com. I personally read all of them. And yeah, if you have any questions or you need help with an issue, go to our help center, ask.orendatech.Com. Thank you everybody. And thanks again, Teresa. Take care.
[00:27:00] Teresa Berry: Cheers
[00:27:02]