Eric and Jarred recap the 2023 Int'l pool and spa show, the Pool Nation Awards, and do what they can when they can to reach 200 listeners by the end of the year.
00:00 - Introduction
01:10 - Podcast growth
02:11 - Int'l Pool & Spa Show
05:13 - Watershape University Essential Plaster class (C3611)
09:26 - Pool Nation Awards / HASA Afterparty
14:06 - Honest education remains our top priority
18:06 - Closing out 2023
19:36 - Routing Softwares
21:18 - Closing
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130. Recap of the 2023 Int'l Pool & Spa show
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Welcome back everybody to the rule your pool podcast.
[00:00:02] If you're watching this on YouTube. We figured out video. The last episode we did actually record it on video and unfortunately when Blue used to walk across the keyboard this time we had Scarlet which is Jarred's puppy and she was on video but the audio didn't match up with the video so we had to do it audio only but we figured it out.
[00:00:21] Jarred, welcome back to the podcast.
[00:00:22] Jarred Morgan: Happy to be back and just so everybody knows, Scarlett is hardly working over here next to me again.
[00:00:28] Eric Knight: Show us. Show us. We're on video. Come on. I can't get this
[00:00:31] Jarred Morgan: dog to do anything.
[00:00:33] Eric Knight: Wow. That is a lazy dog in her bed. But last time she was sky pawing, she had her paws up and her head was hanging out at the end of the bed. It was amazing.
[00:00:41] Jarred Morgan: Well, anyway, I'm happy to be back if that's what you're really trying to get to here.
[00:00:45] Eric Knight: And since you're wearing a hat, I guess I'll put on my Orenda hat as well.
[00:00:48] Jarred Morgan: Oooh, that red Orenda hat is fire.
[00:00:51] Eric Knight: Pretty good. Really good. It's pretty good. Okay. So this is episode 130. And as our commitment to our listeners, we try to make sure that every episode has some value. This is probably not going to be one of those episodes because we're just going to be recapping the international pool and spa show.
[00:01:07] So let's get into it. It's episode 130 of the Rule Your Pool podcast.
Podcast growth
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[00:01:10] Jarred Morgan: Number one, I can't believe we're actually at 130 episodes here. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Uh, number two. We've had to have passed 200 listeners by now.
[00:01:43] Eric Knight: I know we're close and it is wrapping up 2023 here. We are trying to get to 200 by the end of the year. But as I said in the last episode, we had a rough few weeks there. I wasn't putting episodes out every week. I made some music. We lost some fans.
[00:01:57] Jarred Morgan: As I say, did we lose some subscribers?
[00:01:59] Eric Knight: Well, we gained some criticism. I know that, but a lot of people feel better about themselves. They're like, well, at least I'm not him. But apart from that, no, I think we're doing okay. We might actually get to 200 and that's the goal.
International Pool & Spa Show
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[00:02:11] Jarred Morgan: Sweet. Well, back to the topic at hand. The international pool show kicks off trade show season for all of us in the manufacturing world. People should have more time to figure out what's new and hopefully get some training under their belt.
[00:02:26] And that's really the focus over the next four to five months in our industry is going to trade shows if you can, spending some time to educate, take classes, make yourself better. And that's what the show provided, at least in my experience.
[00:02:41] Eric Knight: I thought it was actually really good. It was kind of refreshing. Now, I personally did not spend a lot of time on the show floor because I was in and out of classrooms, but what was your take on it?
[00:02:50] Jarred Morgan: I thought the foot traffic was great. People showed up and it was definitely worthwhile. You want to give people a little insight to what you do when you go to a trade show like that? Because yeah, you're right, we don't have a booth there. Let's just start there. So we don't really have anywhere to go, but hopefully you were offering value in other places.
[00:03:09] Eric Knight: Every single show that we go to is an education opportunity. So most of our time is in classrooms. You will see us at the booths between classes sometimes. I do try to take other people's classes and I, because I like learning. But there's not a lot of opportunity to do that if it's a really packed show.
[00:03:28] So I like this one because we didn't have a booth. I was able to go into a bunch of classes. That was refreshing. I haven't been able to do that in a few years. I saw Terry teach in person for the first time. I've read a ton of stuff from Terry. As listeners know, he's been on the podcast quite a bit. We now work with Terry. It's awesome. He's a wealth of knowledge. I liked his class. He teaches very differently than I do. I'm more of a blunt, brash kind of person
[00:03:52] Jarred Morgan: I was going to say A-Hole, but yeah, to each their own.
[00:03:55] Eric Knight: Wow, if I had feelings, you would be hurting them right now, but we're going to move on. Um,
[00:03:59] Terry is a very good teacher. I liked how his style was very different from mine and that was cool. I took a few other classes. I had a lot of meetings. We are meeting with a whole bunch of people regarding all sorts of stuff. Our app, and where we're going to go with that in the future.
[00:04:14] So we had a lot of things to do. Met with our reps. We were in and out of that trade show floor a lot. I don't think I spent more than 30 minutes at a time there because I was in and out of meetings basically. So I did see a lot of people, you know, just kind of in passing, say hi.
[00:04:30] It is kind of funny though, when you walk into a trade show, everybody has a lanyard with their name on it.
[00:04:35] But this year, Almost everybody's lanyard was like clipped in the middle and so more than half of them were turned backwards and it's just a white piece of paper so you can't see their name. And they're like, Eric, great to see you again! Yeah, you too. You know, if I haven't met you in person, I may not know your face.
[00:04:54] And I don't know who you are. And so, you know, the, the name thing got me, I'm not the best with names anyway.
[00:04:59] Jarred Morgan: My name said Jarrett. So there was that.
[00:05:02] Eric Knight: That's true.
[00:05:03] Jarred Morgan: Thanks, Kathryn. I know you're listening because you're falling asleep right now. But
[00:05:07] Eric Knight: Yeah, we are putting Kathryn to sleep. That's true. I hope you're not driving Kathryn. Stop listening to the podcast behind the wheel.
Watershape University Essential Plaster Class (C3611)
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[00:05:13] Eric Knight: But anyways, let's keep moving. Um, most of it was in classrooms and I was actually there for a whole week. Even though the show started Monday, I got there Thursday night. And the reason for that was I, I'm sorry, Friday, uh, Friday, I got there Friday night because I taught Saturday and Sunday.
[00:05:30] And that was for the water shape university. Maybe it was Thursday night. Maybe it was Friday, Saturday. I don't remember. It's a long week, but we taught the water shape university C3611 essential plaster class.
[00:05:44] Last year we taught that for the first time. And I hadn't taught that material in a while, but I got to say that class got a lot better and it had nothing to do with me. So kudos to Bill Drakely. You may have heard of him, he was on our podcast in episodes 80 and 81. He's kind of the guru on pool shotcrete. And uh,
[00:06:04] Most of the class was taught by Jon Temple, from Tempool in Jacksonville, Florida. He's a very cutting edge plaster applicator. We need to have him on this show at some point.
[00:06:13] And it went through a hands on approach of pretty much everything plastering. From mixing, to prepping the pool, waterproofing and bond coating it, uh, troweling, um, exposure was a big one. Exposure took several hours, and it's a 16 hour course, so it's two days, eight hours apiece. And then did a lot of hands on, like, troweling little plaster samples.
[00:06:37] And then my segment, you know, was like two and a half hours the last day out of 16 hours. We talked about cement chemistry, water chemistry, startup, that kind of thing.
[00:06:46] But... I got to say, having been a part of it for two years, it's really stepped up. Again, I had nothing to do with it because it was not my segments that really improved, but kudos to the Tempool guys. And that's not just Jon, that's Robert Abinuman and Johan, who put a ton of effort into that class. I can tell, and it really showed.
[00:07:06] So they came out guns blazing. They're making that a really worthwhile class. That essential plaster class, if you are a builder, I would strongly recommend you take that class. If you're an applicator, I would recommend it even more. We will be teaching that again at the Northeast Pool and Spa Show in Atlantic City, and at the Florida show in Orlando.
[00:07:26] Jarred Morgan: I think they call that The Pool and Spa Show now in Atlantic City.
[00:07:30] Eric Knight: They've coined it? Yeah, that's probably good. The pool and spa show in Atlantic City. I think that's going to be really well attended. It's a bigger show than the international show. And the more times we teach this material, the better it's going to be.
[00:07:43] On that note, one of the cool things that we saw in that class, we took a tray of water, just tap water from the sink in the bathroom there. And we put three plaster tokens in. Basically like four inch squares of plaster that were made that day in the class.
[00:08:00] One of them was actually made a week earlier by the Tempool guys. Then we did one that was made that day, and then another one that was made that day, but this one had that product that we've heard about called MicroGlass on it. And they put the MicroGlass on as kind of like a, a curing agent that helps accelerate the cure.
[00:08:19] So we put those three things in water, let them sit overnight. The next morning, we came back and we showed that the plaster sample that had nothing from the other day was dusting like crazy. Now this is a dark black onyx, um, it's black plaster, a lot of dye in it. The dust was pure white. The token that was a week old also dusted, but a little bit less.
[00:08:44] But what blew me away was the one that had MicroGlass on it had zero dust. Like zero. I was pretty astounded by that.
[00:08:52] I'd heard good things and it's one of those things that chemically it makes sense, but it really helps to see it in person. So there's a lot of promise there. There's something there.
[00:09:00] Jarred Morgan: I was going to say and by no means are we experts on that product.
[00:09:05] Eric Knight: No, no we're not but we do understand cement. We understand cement chemistry because so many people call us and we talk about plaster issues and start up.
[00:09:13] What that product does, chemically, it makes sense. Like it checks out and then to see it work? That was a really cool experience. I think everyone in that class now understands like, Whoa, we are making some advancements in technology in our space.
Pool Nation Awards / HASA Afterparty
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[00:09:26] Jarred Morgan: There was also something else that happened that I was actually not expecting at the show.
[00:09:32] Eric Knight: What was that?
[00:09:33] Jarred Morgan: So there was the Pool Nations Award and the Hasa Pool Nations after party.
[00:09:39] Eric Knight: Oh yeah.
[00:09:40] Jarred Morgan: Obviously I was expecting them to happen cause
[00:09:42] Eric Knight: well, they were scheduled, but we'd never been to it.
[00:09:45] Jarred Morgan: We'd never been. And I was honestly, I was blown away. That thing was awesome. And kudos to the guys at Pool Nations for putting together a ceremony like that for our industry and celebrating these people. I mean, they care. You can see, you can tell, you hear it in their voices. There's people tearing up, there's crying, there's, it's awesome. Yeah, and I was blown away by just how much effort goes into that. Because I'm going to tell you right now, there was a ton of time and effort put into that ceremony.
[00:10:21] Eric Knight: And money.
[00:10:22] Jarred Morgan: Oh, absolutely.
[00:10:23] Eric Knight: I called, I called Edgar like two or three days later after the show to personally congratulate him. Because you and I know what it takes to build a brand from obscurity and nobody's ever heard of Orenda all those years ago to being where we are now.
[00:10:37] It is a really difficult thing to build a brand that is respected like that, that all these people show up to it. I thought it was great. To your point, an unbelievable amount of effort and coordination and event planning to put that thing on. It was like an adult prom really. I mean,
[00:10:55] Jarred Morgan: it was to celebrate the people in our industry, and our industry, which is awesome. We've known nothing of my knowledge we never really had that. There could have been something in the past that I'm not aware of, but
[00:11:05] Eric Knight: I'll be honest, I didn't, we've talked about it. I didn't really get it. I didn't really know much about it. I've been on the, the Instagram thing before, which is great. It's a chance to speak to customers and answer questions. No problem. I just didn't understand until Edgar made that speech at the beginning, which I really liked.
[00:11:21] What I got out of it was let's raise the tide so that all the ships rise and give appreciation and credit to the people that are sort of unsung heroes in our industry. If you think about it, so much of our industry... hardworking people who work long hours, they're constantly on the road, tons of time, you know, . It's just monotonous work if you're a pool service pro.
[00:11:46] There are some people that have never been recognized. And Hey man, that's awesome. I think of Abel, Abel de Loera. He gets recognized for salesman of the year.
[00:11:57] That was awesome. That was really cool to see that. Abby from Preserve Pools gets pool girl of the year. Uh, manufacturers got like product of the year, those kinds of things. Edgar was saying that the award categories were actually picked by their listeners. They were picked on, I think, Instagram or something, but I don't have Instagram anymore. So I wouldn't know.
[00:12:17] Jarred Morgan: Another award or recognition went to our very own Terry Arko.
[00:12:21] Eric Knight: That's right.
[00:12:23] Jarred Morgan: We cannot leave Terry out of this. Terry got the Hall of Fame Achievement Hall of Fame, uh, Lifetime Achievement Award, I guess.
[00:12:30] Eric Knight: No, that was the other gentleman. He got the Hall of Fame. And he presented the Lifetime Achievement, the Bob Lowry Lifetime Achievement Award. That's right. So he's on stage for both. So I understand the confusion.
[00:12:41] Jarred Morgan: Terry gave a great speech and back to Eric's point, just a lot of time and effort. And Terry has poured tons of time educating this industry and trying to uplift it to make it better.
[00:12:54] His wife was there. We had our team at from HASA there. We've known Terry for many years, a long time. Um, and until we were acquired by HASA, uh, we didn't really have a personal relationship with Terry. Terry was always a nice guy who we knew as somebody that was A authority in the industry that
[00:13:14] Eric Knight: I cited his work a lot.
[00:13:16] Jarred Morgan: Absolutely.
[00:13:17] Eric Knight: I read a lot of what he'd produced. I knew of Terry and we had met him, but you're right. We didn't know Terry. Like we know him now.
[00:13:22] Jarred Morgan: I feel like we know Terry now. And for those of you that don't know, Terry, Terry is one of the most kind, you know, he cares. And he puts a lot of effort into educating this industry, and researching, and doing the right thing.
[00:13:38] And it is awesome to be on a team with that guy because he's a resource that we are definitely leaning into. And just him getting that award was awesome. And he credited obviously, uh, Bob Lowry, who he was working with for many years and mentored with. And you could just tell the amount of love Terry had for that guy. And what he did for that industry that then turned into helping Terry. It was great to see.
Honest education remains our top priority
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[00:14:06] Eric Knight: Yeah, contrast that with us, uh, who all we do is basically tomfoolery and rib on each other. But you know, we, we try to try to be valuable to people.
[00:14:17] Jarred Morgan: But we already said we're not going to add much value in this episode.
[00:14:20] Eric Knight: Yeah. This is not an episode for value. If you're, if you came here to learn something, you're really not, you're just wasting your time and ours, frankly. But we're doing it anyway.
[00:14:29] I do think this episode is worth doing because I think we sometimes get the reputation of just charting our own path and not really given a crap about what anybody else says. And to be honest with you, that's kind of true when it comes to the educational space.
[00:14:52] I don't care what other people are teaching. I want to teach what's right. But we genuinely do care about the people in this space. We care about the homeowners. We care about our listeners.
[00:15:01] Jarred Morgan: We genuinely listen to our customers. Absolutely. We talk, people can be contrarians and they can have a debate with my, I love debating.
[00:15:09] You know, I love having conversations with people that make me think. And if I'm doing something right or wrong, and if we do something wrong, we are absolutely the first one's to say, hey, I screwed up.
[00:15:17] Eric Knight: Yeah, we'll correct it immediately.
[00:15:19] Jarred Morgan: Or, Hey, that's a different way of thinking about this problem. You're right.
[00:15:22] We probably need to tweak this statement or however you want to look at it. I like that. That provokes change. That provokes things that we're talking about across the board of uplifting this industry in our own little way,.
[00:15:34] But it's something we do take seriously. And Eric and I are younger in this industry. And there's a lot of older people in industry that there's a lot of opportunity here. And you can see it in that room. And it's great. It's refreshing.
[00:15:49] Eric Knight: I would, I would like to kind of expand on one thing you said.
[00:15:54] There are people who've devoted their entire adult lives to bettering this industry. Bob Lowry was one of them. Terry is another. Steve Barnes was the other inductee into the hall of fame. And there are a few other people that we know of in this industry that I think are probably destined to at least be nominated for that award.
[00:16:13] We are a long way off. I don't expect to be anywhere close to that for the next 20 years. When you compare what we've contributed to what some of these Titans have done, I mean, they paved the way they built the road. We're just driving on it.
[00:16:27] So kudos to Edgar and his guys. Kudos to everybody who participated in that. I was impressed. It's only going to get better and better each year. It's a good way to kind of celebrate the hard work that goes in year round from all aspects of the industry.
[00:16:39] Everybody from every walk of life in our space was sitting in the same room, suit and tie, nice ballroom dresses. It was really cool.
[00:16:49] And after that, um, our boss opened up the company wallet to celebrate that. And we hosted an after party at one of the most ridiculously nice venues I've ever seen at the top of resorts world. Overlooking the strip. Over, I mean, 360 degree views. Oh my God, I've never seen a lounge like that on like the, what, 56th floor or something like that?
[00:17:13] Jarred Morgan: Something like that. I know.
[00:17:14] Eric Knight: Crazy.
[00:17:15] Jarred Morgan: We obviously as Orenda would never have that opportunity. Um, which is the great part of being a part of HASA now is that there's more opportunities for us to do things like that. And shepherd and bring our customers into situations like that, that we just couldn't do.
[00:17:30] I'm by nature just a cheap person. I don't like spending more money. Uh, hence by not wanting to hire Eric. And I'm still questioning that ROI.
[00:17:40] Eric Knight: But so am I.
[00:17:42] Jarred Morgan: The checkbook was open at that event and it was to support pool nations, and it was an experience that I'm glad that I had a chance to partake in. I hope that, you know, next year there's more demand and that we can create this thing. And Edgar and the team, they're doing a great job.
[00:18:02] Eric Knight: Kudos guys. Well done. Uh, we do have some trade shows coming up.
Closing out 2023
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[00:18:06] Eric Knight: Just a few housekeeping items. We are going to probably have a very limited amount of podcast episodes in the next four months.
[00:18:15] I'm going to try to get one, out at least one a month, but we have trade shows like you would not believe. And not just trade shows, training events,
[00:18:21] we're going to try to
[00:18:21] Jarred Morgan: do one at a trade show in January. So...
[00:18:25] Eric Knight: yeah, that's, uh, that remains to be seen. We are going to attempt to record a live...
[00:18:29] Jarred Morgan: I don't know if it'll be live. It won't be live, but we'll record one there. I think we did one last year at the pool and spa show in Atlantic city, just so people could get the feel. I think we'll try and do that again. And maybe have some special guests and kind of show people around what our booth looks like and things like that.
[00:18:43] Eric Knight: It's just a booth, Jarred. Let's.
[00:18:45] Jarred Morgan: Oh, no, we're going to have a better booth this year. That's what's going to be awesome.
[00:18:48] Eric Knight: It's just a better booth, Jarred. I mean, come on, I've never seen it. I've heard it's good. But yeah, we're going to attempt to record a podcast on the trade show floor in Atlantic city. We won't publish it live, but we're going to record it live with people that can walk up and say, hi.
[00:19:06] Uh, so if you are in Atlantic city and you would like to see us, meet us. Say, hi, I guess. I'm going to be teaching a bunch of classes there too. So I don't know exactly what day we'll be doing this.
[00:19:18] Jarred Morgan: Yeah, we don't know. We'll, we'll put more information out whenever we get closer to, so if people want to come by or they have a question, maybe we take Q & A from the audience about, you know, asking Eric if he's a liar or an idiot, I don't know we could do that.
[00:19:31] Eric Knight: Well, I'm at least half of those things. I don't think I'm a liar, but I'm, I can confirm I'm kind of a moron.
Routing Softwares
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[00:19:36] Eric Knight: One final note is at the show, there were a bunch of routing softwares there. And as some of our listeners know, I did an episode on this, uh, I don't know, last year, earlier this year that we do intend on expanding our app.
[00:19:50] And one of the main ways that we're going to do that is by partnering with these softwares. We are going to remain neutral like Switzerland so that each of these softwares can actually embed the Orenda Calculator, which will remain free. But you'll be able to get it through their softwares in their own unique way.
[00:20:05] The calculations, if it says powered by Orenda, it's going to be our calculations. We want to make it a simpler user experience for all of our customers because we do not have the ability to save results. We've been asked for years. That really complicates things. It's not really our specialty to do that. But these routing softwares do it better than we could.
[00:20:23] So regardless of what you use, there are several of them that are going to be partnering with us. And there are several that may hear this that haven't thought about it yet. And they may reach out. Hopefully they do. We want to work with everybody because what we care about is we want our customers to get better at what they're doing and use a routing software. We want you to have that habit of tracking what you're doing.
[00:20:44] Jarred Morgan: It's a CRM. It's a customer relationship management software that does have routing in it. But it's basically, it gives you the ability to store data and dosing information and test results in that customer's file so that you can refer back to it as an E and O conversation.
[00:21:00] It is a good thing for our industry and there's obviously. Multiple platforms in the marketplace. Um, so it's just designed to, like Eric said, make it easy for you guys. So you're not having to toggle back and forth, hopefully. And our app will always be free, so you can use it and do with it as you see fit.
Closing
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[00:21:18] Jarred Morgan: Um, that's, that's our takeaway from this international pool and spa show.
[00:21:24] Eric Knight: Yeah. If this is the last episode of the year, we thank you very much for being here. I think we'll try to get one more out before the end of 2023. But we do genuinely appreciate all of you for, for some reason, still listening to this.
[00:21:36] In the next episode. I don't know exactly what the subject is, but I got a big list of customer requests. It will be valuable again. So thank you for letting us get this gratitude off our chest because it was Thanksgiving last week. And I am thankful for this industry and what it has provided us, what we've been able to contribute to it.
[00:21:53] And we wanted to share in that. We wanted to share recognition to those who have put in a ton into this industry as well.
[00:22:00] So thank you all for listening. This has been episode 130 of the rule your pool podcast. I'm your host, Eric Knight and our cohost, he's making it a little more regular now, Jarred Morgan, with the curved bill Orenda Academy hat.
[00:22:11] Jarred Morgan: That's right.
[00:22:12] Don't get carried away. But as Eric said, thank you all very much. We are very appreciative. And I hope you've had a great year and that I'm, I hope you're looking forward to 2024 as we are. And thank you all again.
[00:22:24] Eric Knight: All right. Take care, everyone.