Eric interviews Niki and Jack from Skimmer to discuss their vision for raising the bar in the pool industry with technology. Skimmer's integration with the Orenda Calculator is part of developing customers into Modern Pool Professionals.
00:00 - Introduction
01:06 - How did Niki and Jack get involved in Skimmer?
06:08 - What's new with Skimmer?
09:56 - State of Pool Service Report
12:38 - Skimmer's Orenda Calculator integration
18:03 - The modern pool pro
20:06 - How does Skimmer want their customers to use this?
22:22 - The LSI quantifies water balance
25:42 - Tracking, Trending, and Forecasting
140. Tools for the Modern Pool Pro, with Skimmer + Orenda (w/ Niki Acosta and Jack Nelson)
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Welcome back everybody to the Rule Your Pool podcast. I actually need to get. on because we are recording on video this time, and we have some very special guests for you. I'm your host, Eric Knight, with Orenda and HASA, and this is episode 140 of the Rule Your Pool podcast.
[00:00:14] Today, we are interviewing another software company, and not just any software company. This is the largest software company in the industry that does routing for service technicians that service pools professionally, help them grow their business. And this is the one that we've probably had the most questions about from our customers. More people use this app than any of the others.
[00:00:34] And they have been asking, when are you going to integrate with Skimmer? And today we have Niki and Jack from Skimmer with us. Niki and Jack, thank you for being with me.
[00:00:45] Niki Acosta: Thank you for having us. Excited to be on. Thanks for having us.
[00:00:48] Eric Knight: You ready to go into it?
[00:00:50] Jack Nelson: Let's do it.
[00:00:51] Eric Knight: Remember, you can't just show me thumbs up on video people listening to this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like the facial expressions and the thumbs up, but for those of you who are just listening, uh, these are friendly people.
[00:01:03] So this is episode 140 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. Let's go.
How did Niki and Jack get involved in Skimmer?
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[00:01:06] Eric Knight: So Niki, how did you get involved with Skimmer, and what are you hoping to do with it?
[00:01:34]
[00:01:34] Niki Acosta: Skimmer and I have some mutual friends. I used to work for a technology company called Rackspace as a cloud computing evangelist. And, uh, we had some mutual friends. So when Skimmer was looking for someone to come in and help with marketing and product marketing, they asked around, got a referral and I was recruited by Skimmer to join the team.
[00:01:54] right on,
[00:01:55] Jack Nelson: Tell them how, uh, but how you did your diligence on Skimmer.
[00:01:58] Niki Acosta: How did I?
[00:01:59] Jack Nelson: In Arizona?
[00:02:01] Niki Acosta: Oh, yes, my childhood best friend owns a pool service company out of Arizona. And so I text her, I said, Hey, you ever heard of skimmer? And she's like, yeah, dude, we use it.
[00:02:09] And I was like, call me. And so I, you know, I wanted to make sure that if I was, you know, to me, coming out of, you know, high tech going into a very nichey pool software company was, was different. But I liked the team. I met Jack. And a few of the folks here, I think I was hired number 14? And now we're close to 60
[00:02:30] Jack Nelson: over 50.
[00:02:31] Niki Acosta: So that was just over two years ago.
[00:02:33] Eric Knight: That's incredible. That's a big company. You know, that's bigger than Orenda was to give you perspective. So it's a pretty incredible thing. Now, Jack, you came into Skimmer, and I remember this because I actually remember the founder of skimmer speaking with him years ago, Ron Hash. How did you come into it?
[00:02:48] How did you find it? And what brought you to the pool industry?
[00:02:51] Jack Nelson: Yeah. So kind of a similar story to Niki's. My business partner is a software investor and he was the one who actually found Skimmer. He was talking to his pool guy one day and asking Eddie, Hey, do you use any technology? And Eddie's like, man, I downloaded this app recently. It's called Skimmer. It's incredible. It does everything I want to run my entire business. It's changed my life.
[00:03:14] So Pete effectively stalks and cold calls Ron Hash and gets an introduction to him. Meanwhile, I had sold my last company. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. And Pete was like, Hey, I need somebody, if we can convince Ron to sell us this company, I need somebody to run it. Would you be interested?
[00:03:32] And we started doing a lot of research on the company, on the industry, and pretty quickly fell in love with everything. Everything we saw, including Ron and the Hash family, just wonderful human beings, great people. They had built a great product. We did a bunch of research on the customers.
[00:03:49] Ronnie had 1400 customers all through word of mouth, all referral business, never spent a penny on advertising. They just loved the product and they loved the, the company. And so we were able to convince Ron to sell us a company. And, um, so I stepped in. Ron was the only FTE at the time and, um,
[00:04:06] Eric Knight: hold on, hold on. We got a lot of, hold on. You can't just say acronyms without explaining them. What is FTE?
[00:04:11] Jack Nelson: He was the, he was the, he was the only full time employee at the time. So it was Ron, his little brother, Ryan, who's still with us, his mom, Donna, who just retired from the company. And then two developers, one of them who is still with us in the UK and, uh, they had just built a great little product.
[00:04:27] And our, our goal was, Hey, let's, let's try to try to really grow it and keep the great customer service and keep the great product.
[00:04:34] Eric Knight: That's awesome. Well, you definitely grown it. There's no doubt about that. I remember all those years ago, and we've talked about this on the phone. Back then, before he came out, we didn't know softwares that were doing routing. And then we talked to a couple of them over the next few years. We're like, wow, there seems to be a space here.
[00:04:53] It wasn't right for us in hindsight. It, I'm really glad we didn't try to create a routing software because you guys would have kicked our butts. We do not know what you do. And I'm, that's why I'm so glad to be integrating with you and the others that you can take what we've built this little thing, and I don't view it as a big thing.
[00:05:07] I view it as a very specific calculator that we built and it's popular probably because it's so simple. But you guys are going to take it to an entirely different stratosphere. And I'm so excited to be working with you all. How did you find us?
[00:05:24] Jack Nelson: We just listen to our customers. And our customers talk about you guys all the time. They're like, hey, these guys are the experts when it comes to water chemistry. When it comes to what we should be putting in the pools. So we very quickly realized, why would we try to recreate that? You guys are the gold standard.
[00:05:42] Let's, let's reach out to them. And, and I, I think I reached out to you guys a couple years ago. I was like, let's figure out a way to work with each other. We're, both doing great things in the industry and let's, let's partner up.
[00:05:53] Eric Knight: And in fairness, it was a couple of years ago, but back then we didn't have the capability to do what we do now, not to go into the technical details. But now we have that capability and we rewrote our app from scratch, so I'm very excited to get this going with you all.
What's new with Skimmer?
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[00:06:08] Eric Knight: Um, what's been happening to Skimmer? I know Skimmer has been growing like crazy. Our customers rave about it. What's the latest? Take us out of the equation. What else is going on?
[00:06:17] Jack Nelson: Um, we keep growing, like you said. We're very committed to growing our customer base, making the product better for them every day. We continue to. effectively double every year in terms of our customer size in terms of our employee base. We've got, I think, 20 folks now, roughly 20 folks working on the product and making it better.
[00:06:38] We continue to double down on our customer support. That's probably one of the best attributes of skimmer. People rave about the fact that they can pick up the phone and call us and we answer the phone. Um, we feel
[00:06:50] Eric Knight: I have heard that.
[00:06:51] Jack Nelson: Yeah, it's, it's cool. And it's, it's, it's a commitment we made to Ron Hash when we bought the company, like, Hey, look, we know your support is great, and we're going to continue to do that. And, and, um, we're very proud of it. In fact, I think we just won an award for that. One of the, our customer support. It's like one of the,
[00:07:08] Niki Acosta: the Stevie award
[00:07:09] Jack Nelson: Is what it was called. Yeah, it's really
[00:07:10] Eric Knight: Stevie award. Never heard of that.
[00:07:11] Jack Nelson: Stevie. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a customer support award.
[00:07:15] Um, so anyway, we continue to really build the team and, and, um, deliver new products. We're actually launching, I think today, we're launching text messaging. So when the tech is on the way to the swimming pool, the pool owner will get an alert saying he's coming, get an alert saying he just left. You know, these are features that our customers have been asking for for a while.
[00:07:36] Uh, LSI integration, obviously with you guys, that's coming. We've got a bunch of features that are being released. It's a fun time to be at Skimmer.
[00:07:43] Niki Acosta: And I'll add on to that too. One of the other things that we've taken the time to do, uh, inside of Skimmer is build out a customer success function, which is not typical of companies this size. But in addition to having support, we also have members of our success team and their primary goal and focus is to help our customers be more successful.
[00:08:03] So for our customers that have, you know, very specific needs or requests or need a little bit of extra handholding, or they have, you know, thousands of pools they need to onboard, and thousands of customers and they need help importing those into Skimmer. You know, every single customer that joins us is going to get a call from a member of our success team and be offered a path for onboarding support. Which helps our customers become more successful in a shorter amount of time.
[00:08:27] Eric Knight: especially when you're in a business like this, where most people don't have a computer science background. I know I certainly don't. It really helps to have that. And I use a lot of softwares when we're creating content for Orenda, as you can imagine. There's graphic design software, there's podcast editing software, which we're using right now.
[00:08:43] There's all sorts of stuff. And I will tell you the ability to get a human response is critical because there are some that are just so big, you just never hear from them. I mean, when was the last time somebody picked up the phone at Google? Realistically, they have tons of help center articles. They have tons of knowledge base information and all that stuff, but a lot of it's in acronyms. It's very hard to read.
[00:09:04] And yet I use some of these smaller softwares and a human being emails me back and they get on the phone with me and they walk me through it. It makes all the difference in the world. So that's a really, really good thing. And hopefully you don't scale past that too far. Fortunately, we're in a small enough industry that I think you're going to be able to handle it. Would you agree?
[00:09:19] Niki Acosta: That's yeah,
[00:09:20] Jack Nelson: that's the goal.
[00:09:21] Niki Acosta: Totally. And by the time this airs, I think it will be, you know, fair to say that and announce that we are we are creating the skimmer community as well. So not only for regional groups, but and people that already use our software, but for everyone in the industry.
[00:09:35] So if you're looking to buy or sell your route, or if you're looking for leak detection in your area, or if you're looking for resources on how to build a better business. We're going to be able to aggregate the collective knowledge of our team and our customers and people in the industry and people like you to participate in this community to help improve the industry as a whole.
State of Pool Service Report
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[00:09:56] Eric Knight: That's amazing. And speaking of that, before I get to my next question, I've got to give you major, major credit for this annual report that you put out. I've never seen anybody do that in the industry. That was phenomenal. The, the data. Can you tell me a little bit who came up with that? What goes into that? Because it clearly wasn't written in a day. Tell audience that may not seen that.
[00:10:15] Niki Acosta: Sure, so it's called the State of Pool Service Report and this is the first year that we did it. And we, we did some marketing around it and to get it out through our media partners to increase participation. And to our knowledge, it is the largest pool service and repair industry specific survey that's ever been done.
[00:10:35] We had Over 1700 respondents answer over 50 questions. The only personally identifying information we collected was a zip code. So we could dial into some data. But we asked everything from, you know, what are your buying habits to what are your concerns coming into this year to how are you paying your techs?
[00:10:54] Uh, we really wanted to kind of get a full picture of what people are thinking about in the industry. And it's been great for us because it helps guide the content that we create so that we can provide more value to our customers. Like we're not just a software package. We are a platform. And we are really committed to helping our customers build better businesses. And that's just one part of it.
[00:11:16] Eric Knight: I think the better the understanding we have of the industry, not just for us manufacturers. Of course, I want to know that the audience better. So do you, but it's better for pool pros to know the industry they're in. And I was reading that report and I'm thinking, this is absolutely phenomenal. I've never seen anything like it. So I really want to give you credit for that. Whoever came up with it, kudos that it was just great. Um, I want to segue...
[00:11:41] Niki Acosta: By the way, if anyone wants that, they can get it at getskimmer.com/stateofpoolservice. It's free so anyone can download it. If you're interested in downloading, getskimmer.com/stateofpoolservice.
[00:11:53] Eric Knight: Awesome. I do want to make mention of something you just said. By the time this episode comes out, such and such may be around. I want people to realize how hard it is to get us together. Because we are so busy and traveling and the schedules are very hard to align. And I want to thank you both for spending an hour of your busy day with me.
[00:12:15] I know I've been gone so much and we've been putting this off for weeks, not intentionally. It's just finding a time to do this. By the time this rolls out, it should be about three weeks from now. So this was recorded three weeks ago if you're listening to it. And that's because we don't have any other time.
[00:12:29] Whole bunch of stuff going on in between now and then. And we don't know exactly when the Orenda integration is going to come out, but we're hoping it's coming out around that time.
Skimmer's Orenda Calculator integration
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[00:12:38] Eric Knight: Why I'm bringing that up is our agreement to share our information with you. Our calculator is not a financial agreement. Skimmer's not paying us money. And nobody is. The reason we're doing this is because we built something to the maximum capacity that we know how to do. And we want our customers to be able to utilize it in a better way.
[00:12:58] Skimmer has the ability to take it to another level and that, to us, serves the customer better.
[00:13:04] And I want to talk to you particularly Jack, because as the leader of this company, you made a pretty solid financial commitment to integrate this. This was not an easy thing. So I want you to sort of illustrate so that we have it in perspective, what kind of commitment is Skimmer putting in to integrate our calculator?
[00:13:23] Jack Nelson: Yeah. Well, I'll start by saying, Eric, you guys have a fantastic brand. And thank you for all the kind words about Skimmer. The same goes to you guys. And that was one of the things all along we said is we love the fact that you guys not only have a great technology and a great product, but you're thought leaders for the industry. And you're truly committed to educating the industry to being a thought partner to them. And that's the exact same, yeah, it's, it's, it's legitimate and it's exact same mission that we have.
[00:13:52] And so it was a very easy choice. It was always a matter of when, not if, we were going to do something with you guys. We listened to our customers. We built a lot of the products they wanted and now it was like, okay, Hey, next, we need to integrate with you guys.
[00:14:05] We've got a team of, gosh, I bet there's like seven or eight folks that have been working on this integration between the product and the engineers and the QA. Um, we're really excited about what they're doing. We think it's going to be next level. I know there's a couple other. apps in the industry that that have integrations. I think ours will be much more comprehensive, hopefully a little more elegant, easy to use.
[00:14:27] But it's it's something that our customers want. Our customers need. I mean, when I tell I personally talked to some of them and They, they're giddy about this. Like, Oh my God, I've been having two apps at the same
[00:14:37] Eric Knight: I'm hearing too.
[00:14:38] Jack Nelson: This is incredible. Yeah. So, so it's really awesome. And, uh, we're really excited. And again, you guys are, are sort of the, the brand that everyone trusts and knows. And it was like, Hey, why, why not partner with these guys?
[00:14:50] Eric Knight: I think it's all about being consistent and transparent with the customers. We've had so many questions of people saying, when are you going to allow to save chemistry history? When are you going to allow us to remember what was put in the calculator last?
[00:15:01] It's like. Do you realize how hard that is? Like we are not a tech company. Like we can't remember all this stuff and we don't have the ability to do that. We just don't have developers on staff. We outsource that. And it's just a lot of work and I got a lot of other things to do.
[00:15:15] Um, I want the audience to know that in our agreement, we aren't telling you how to use our calculator.
[00:15:24] We do have a requirement that you show our logo so that people realize that the results are powered by Orenda. But apart from that, there's not really many guidelines that we have. You can change the user experience. You can change how the numbers are entered. We are basically giving you the cheese.
[00:15:40] We're giving you the formula to make something better than we've made. And I'm very excited to see it. I've seen some screenshots. It looks phenomenal. Um, But we're basically giving you the fuel to build what you want to build with what we've done. And talk a little bit about your vision for that.
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[00:15:56] Jack Nelson: Yeah I mean, look, it's our hope that obviously all of our existing customers that are already using you guys, this will be a better user experience. But it's our hope that all of the Skimmer customers, we have 5,600 companies using our product right now that aren't using your app will realize, Oh my God, there's a better way to do this.
[00:16:13] There's a way that's, that's better for the environment. There's a way that's better for our business to stop dumping so many chemicals, to understand what we're putting in the water. And so I think there's a real opportunity here to, to continue to educate the entire industry on how pool should be treated.
[00:16:28] And if they choose not to use the calculator and the dosage recommendation engine, that's their prerogative, but it's our hope that they will realize that, hey, there's there's something here.
[00:16:37] There's a reason that it's such a popular brand and such a popular product that you guys know what you're doing. You've been doing this for a long time. And we think there's a just a real opportunity to kind of lift the entire industry with this.
[00:16:49] Eric Knight: I think the rising tide raising all ships is a theme that resonates with me. Because we don't financially gain from people balancing the LSI. In fact, our parent company now, of course, we had this way before we were acquired by HASA. Our parent company now is major manufacturer of acid.
[00:17:06] And yet, So much of what we teach is how to save on chemicals. Save on acid, don't over chlorinate your pools. And you would think that we would have to stop saying that, and that's not at all what HASA wants us to do. Because HASA has the same principle now, if it's good for the pool pro, teach it.
[00:17:24] And it may be counterintuitive, but so much of what we teach is to use less. We don't want you overdosing pools. We want you to be more efficient on more pools, but we don't want you to be, you know, but certainly not overdosing acid. Which I just did a video and Rick Rolled the entire nation of pouring acid with food coloring into my pool.
[00:17:42] That video, by the way, is in the next episode that is going to come out next week. Of course, by the time this episode comes out on the podcast, it will be two episodes ago.
[00:17:51] There's a reason we teach what we teach. And it's definitely not on its face beneficial financially to us. If we just taught things to lead people, to use our enzymes or our phosphate remover, that'd be one thing.
The Modern Pool Pro
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[00:18:03] Eric Knight: But you all had something that attracted my attention two years ago when you first reached out to us. You said something, and I'm going to defer this to Niki. You said we want help elevate the industry to become what you call it, the modern pool pro. What does that mean?
[00:18:21] Niki Acosta: Yeah, look, I think digital transformation has transformed so many industries. But there are pockets out there like the pool service industry, which is a very, you know, blue collar, in the field, very manual sort of way of doing business.
[00:18:37] And so to the extent that you can give people technology to improve their lives and make them more efficient and provide better customer outcomes. It's huge. It's great for any business.
[00:18:49] We were, we were looking at the math on, you know, how much time are people actually going to save by having these two technologies, Skimmer and Orenda's LSI calculator combined? And it's substantial.
[00:19:00] Without having to go back and forth and enter readings and dosages twice, like let's say you save two and a half, three minutes per visit. That's
[00:19:08] Eric Knight: You doing 10 pools a day? Yeah that's quite a bit.
[00:19:10] Niki Acosta: Yeah. you're doing, if you're doing a hundred pools, a week, that equates to, you know, something like twenty five working days of time saved by shaving three minutes off per stop. That's substantial.
[00:19:26] Eric Knight: It is
[00:19:27] Niki Acosta: You know, that is time that can be used to reinvest in your business. To, you know, on board new employees to, and then on
[00:19:35] Eric Knight: Listen to the Rule Your Pool podcast.
[00:19:38] Niki Acosta: Haha, you can do that in the car on the way to the stops, right?
[00:19:42] Eric Knight: know, I know.
[00:19:43] Jack Nelson: Not if yourou route is optimized.You only get a minute or two,
[00:19:46] Eric Knight: Well played. Well played. I look at what software can do as a force multiplier. It is what tractors did to farming. It could do the work of 30 or 40 people or 12 horses and people. And one guy on a tractor could do all that work and it's more efficient. It doesn't get tired. But you do have to maintain it. And that's why you have such a staff.
How does Skimmer want their customers to use this?
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[00:20:06] Eric Knight: But it's kind of like a parachute. It doesn't work unless you use it. So how do you want your customers to be using this in your perfect world? Cause clearly you had a vision, you're pivoting your business around this, which is not a small task, by the way.
[00:20:20] How do you want users to use this?
[00:20:23] Niki Acosta: Well, for one, we, we want to help our pros grow their revenue. And a lot of that comes down to not overdosing pools. We want them to be able to provide, you know, service that's consistent. We want them to provide service that's not going to ruin the plaster or cause scale to form in the pools and to extend the life of those pools.
[00:20:44] And we want our pros to be able to make sure that they're creating a clean and safe environment for their pool owners. And so this is just one piece of that. I mean, chemical costs are substantial for pool pros, especially in the sunbelt where it gets really, really hot in the summer. if we can help shave off, you know, 20 bucks a month per pool by not overdosing, or 10 dollars per pool, that really, really adds up and it really helps our pros grow more profitable businesses.
[00:21:12] Jack Nelson: Yeah. And the other thing I'd add is, as it relates to this, call it partnership here, is you guys have done a great job building content for the industry.
[00:21:19] And we're obviously doing the same thing. We already talked about the state of the nation report and, and we've got blogs and, and just being able to work with you guys to continue to provide really relevant content. Not just to our customers, but to the entire industry, right? is, How to optimize your business, how to service pools most efficiently.
[00:21:37] Just being at the table with you guys, I think will really elevate the entire industry.
[00:21:41] Niki Acosta: Your commercial pool training was amazing. I checked it out a couple weeks ago when it launched.
[00:21:45] Eric Knight: You took it?
[00:21:46] Niki Acosta: It was great. Yeah. It was awesome.
[00:21:48] Eric Knight: Right on. It only took three years. But, you know, we play the long game. You kind of have to play the long game because if you just do quarterly thinking or monthly thinking, that stuff doesn't stick. We've got that I wrote in 2017 that are still some of the most popular stuff.
[00:22:02] It just depends on what people need. And there is, at the time, there was a big vacuum for education that made sense. There's plenty of stuff published how I could show you all sorts of scientific journal articles, but nobody reading those. So what good does it do if the pool pro doesn't understand that?
The LSI quantifies water balance
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[00:22:22] Eric Knight: The LSI is the closest thing that we've found to quantify something that's very hard to quantify, which is water balance. Is it perfect? I don't know. But it's the best thing we know of. If we have that understanding, our water is going to behave a lot better. Because water itself will always return to its natural state. Like anything in nature.
[00:22:43] Water doesn't care if it's disinfected. We do. We care that it's disinfected, but that is fundamentally unnatural to water. Look at a pond. You ever seen a disinfected pond? You wouldn't have fish in it. Right?
[00:22:55] So how do we do that in a way that gets water in its natural state on purpose on our terms, that's using the LSI, so that we can do things like limit pH so that we can actually chlorinate effectively?
[00:23:09] That's our whole thing. Some people will look at that and say Oh, they're heretics! Their heretics. And I'm so glad you're choosing to work with heretics like us, because we're backing it up. Like, of course we want pools to be disinfected. I'm a swimmer. You think I want people getting sick in pools? I am one.
[00:23:23] I've been sick in pools. I understand how bad it is. And I know that LSI is working very, very well for our customers. And there's a reason that your customers want it in your app as well.
[00:23:34] Jack Nelson: Have you guys found any, um, call it adoption trends in terms of parts of the country? Because when we talk to some of our customers, sometimes they'll say like, Oh well, you know, the LSI formula doesn't work as well in this part of the country versus that part of the country.
[00:23:51] Eric Knight: Adoption trends? It seems pretty universal when people are willing to listen to it. Uh, some people go in with a hard head. And I will tell you this, some of our most loyal customers are the ones who tried to prove it wrong. Didn't believe it, told us we were full of it. And then they go out and do it. They're like, damn, that's exactly what they said it was going to do.
[00:24:09] I was like, yeah, because I'm not guaranteeing anything. I can guarantee that if I jump up off this floor, I'm going to hit the floor very shortly after because that's gravity. That's not my guarantee.
[00:24:19] Maybe I disagree with gravity today. Gravity is technically a theory, but that doesn't make it any less real. These are laws of physics. They're just going to happen whether you like it or not. The question is, how do you handle that? What do you do about it? Because now we have tools that can predict where it's going to go. I say this in a lot of my classes and I've, I think I've said it in a recent podcast as well.
[00:24:40] Why are we treating pools for today when we have to be here seven days from now? It doesn't make sense. Oh, we pat ourselves on the back, we put our pH to 7.5. Great. By the time you're at your truck, it's not there anymore. Good job.
[00:24:56] So where's it going? Because a quarterback is going to throw the ball to where the wide receiver is going.
[00:25:02] And if we are planning seven days ahead, how can I treat this water today to disinfect it and get it right, and make sure that physics has my back for seven days so that when I come back, it's still clean, safe, balanced, all that stuff. That's what we teach.
[00:25:15] And I think with your calculator, you're going to have the ability to do things that we can't do. Yes. We, we show all this predictive stuff in ours. You have access to it as well, but you're going to be able to track it. We can't do that. People are going to see their history and they're going to see, oh my gosh, this is a repeated pattern. This is amazing. At least I hope they think that.
[00:25:33] I think people using this integration are going to get much, much better at swimming pool chemistry. If they're paying attention to it at all.
Tracking, Trending, and Forecasting
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[00:25:42] Niki Acosta: We worked with a couple of trade associations last year and one of those associations was UPA. And UPA was recommending Skimmer to their members for that reason. Like they wanted to have a log against insurance claims. If a customer came and said, you know, you guys damaged my plaster. And then the pool service company had to file a claim.
[00:26:02] Well, now you've got full record and history and photos that prove otherwise. And it's, it's a very, very strong sort of record keeping function that we provide that gives our pros some air coverage when things like that happen.
[00:26:18] Eric Knight: I don't know if you have anyone in your family who has had a blood disease. But I know somebody who has had Leukemia for a very long time. And they get blood tested pretty frequently. I don't know how often, maybe quarterly, might be monthly. I don't even know.
[00:26:32] They do that for a reason. They are looking for a trend. They are looking to see if progress is working, what is changing, what do we need to change in your diet? What do we need to change with supplements? If you don't have that history, you're not going to remember it from the last previous appointments, especially if you're not a doctor.
[00:26:48] But if I am a patient and I have that history for me, then when I go into the doctors, they take the next blood work, that doctor has a whole scope of exactly how to diagnose what's changing, I think it's the same thing with pools.
[00:27:00] Because pools don't have to be erratic and crazy. They can be very, very, very predictable. Now, we can't control pH, but we can contain it. We can use physics to contain it. That's what we teach at Orenda. Combine that with what you're able to do with what we've built and track the history of it as well?
[00:27:21] Now you start to have a very clear picture of how much you should be spending. I'm really looking forward to seeing how well customers start forecasting better, especially for companies with less than five employees. As soon as you start getting over about the 300 pool threshold, businesses start behaving differently.
[00:27:37] I don't know if you've noticed this, but they start working on the business and less in the business, and they start thinking about how do I purchase more efficiently. And they're, they're trying to, you know, increase profitability because there's more variables. There's more risk. A one poler, the backbone of our industry, by the way, a one poler doesn't typically have the time to be forecasting like the bigger companies can.
[00:27:59] And I think that's a disadvantage that you're going to democratize. I think you're going to make that a level playing field. Because now you're going to have the ability to predict the chemistry and over time develop a trend.
[00:28:11] , if these pros can start forecasting what they need, even in a sole proprietor business, I think this industry is going to start getting really, really good. There's some very good pool pros out there, but generally speaking, everyone wants to get better. I hope. I think everybody genuinely cares about their homeowners.
[00:28:28] I think they want to do the best thing. They just don't have enough data or they don't have a machine that can help them remember the data to know the whole history of it. And I don't that's your take on it as well.
[00:28:39] Niki Acosta: that's right. Yeah, absolutely. And look, we've got customers with thousands of pools that have constant turnover and they're constantly onboarding new employees. We've heard a lot of requests for Orenda's LSI from those customers in particular, because it kind of gives them a way to make sure that their tech is delivering consistent service and not overdosing as well.
[00:28:58] Eric Knight: Yeah. Oh, it's, it's real.
[00:29:00] Jack Nelson: Eric, I mean, as you talk about it, you're basically laying out the future roadmap of Skimmer, right? How do we use this data? How do we bring in artificial intelligence? How do we take all these things together? And be able to help these businesses predict and forecast how much they should be buying, when they should be buying, where they should be buying, et cetera.
[00:29:22] But just make more informed decisions. That's 100 percent where we want to be operating.
[00:29:27] Eric Knight: Right on. Is there anything else that you all want to share with our audience? Which is primarily your customer base that listens to this, uh, or potential customer base? Anything else you want to share before we wrap this up?
[00:29:37] Niki Acosta: If you're not using skimmer, head over to getskimmer.com, sign up. We'd love to have you. we've got a full team again of people who are ready, willing and able to help with a smile. Uh, and if it, look, if it's not right for you, you can cancel within the first 30 days and we'll give you your money back.
[00:29:56] Jack Nelson: Yeah, and I know you guys have a lot of pool owners who listen to your podcast. And I would say, you know, make sure pool owners are expecting more from your pros. And if your pros not using technology, like this is 2024. let's make sure we modernize the industry.
[00:30:12] And, and I think there's an opportunity to, again, rising tide lifts all boats. And so if you're a pool owner, I, as a pool owner need a picture of my pool after it's serviced, right? I need to know what you put in my pool. This is just table stakes now.
[00:30:25] Eric Knight: I am so grateful for all of your time. And if there's anything else that you have, now's the time.
[00:30:31] Niki Acosta: That's all we got.
[00:30:33] Jack Nelson: Yeah. We're, uh, we're excited to partner with you guys.
[00:30:36] Niki Acosta: Thanks for having us on.
[00:30:37] Eric Knight: When this integration goes live, we are excited to see what you come up with. And, uh, It means a lot to me that you're pivoting your business around this to serve the customers to a level that we've been unable to do. So thank you for doing the hard work for us.
[00:30:50] Jack Nelson: We're excited.
[00:30:51] Track 1: All right. Thank you everybody. This has been episode 140 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host Eric Knight. This has been Jack and Niki with Skimmer and you can see their app at getskimmer.com, just like Niki said. Thank you all.
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