Dive Into Wealth: A Pool Pro’s Guide to Investing

The work is honest, the sun is relentless, and the clock on your knees is louder than you think. That reality sparked a straight‑talk conversation about converting today’s pool service income into tomorrow’s durable, low‑friction cash flow. We dig into three realistic paths—scaling your route into a managed operation, investing in the markets, and building a real estate portfolio—and break down the mindset, mechanics, and tradeoffs of each, without hype.

We start with a Rockefeller‑style principle: reinvest in what you understand. If you love building systems and leading people, a multi‑truck, manager‑led service company can move you out of the field and into an owner’s seat where cash flow compounds. 

Then we get practical about real estate, the lane many service pros naturally excel in. Rentals offer a potent trio—appreciation, monthly cash flow, and significant tax advantages—while turning your local knowledge into an investing edge. You already read neighborhoods, solve problems in the field, and navigate city rules; those same skills transfer to finding solid properties, managing turns, and hiring vendors. We talk candidly about vacancies, repairs, and what “passive” really means, along with why buying within an hour of home often beats chasing distant deals. The through‑line is simple: start sooner, keep it simple, and let time do the heavy lifting.

• why pool work is finite and planning matters
• Rockefeller’s reinvesting mindset applied to service routes
• pros and cons of scaling a multi‑truck operation
• crypto, gold, and market returns in plain terms
• how compounding works and when it pays out
• why rentals fit service pros’ skills and lifestyle
• appreciation, cash flow, and tax advantages explained
• what “passive” really means in property management
• using local knowledge to choose neighborhoods
• starting early and building momentum with systems

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Chapters

• 0:00 Why Pool Work Is Finite
• 2:24 Coaching Program And Resources
• 2:44 Rockefeller’s Playbook: Reinvesting
• 6:03 Wear And Tear And Safety Gear
• 7:41 Building A Pool Service Empire
• 11:29 Consolidation And Big Buyers
• 12:37 Timing Bets: Bitcoin And Gold
• 14:26 Market Returns And Compounding
• 16:28 Why Real Estate Fits Pool Pros
• 19:37 Appreciation, Cash Flow, Tax Benefits
• 22:32 How Passive Is Property Management

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:03

Hey, welcome to the Pool Game Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm gonna deviate a little bit from the regular pool topics I talk about and talk a little bit about investing for your future. I always talk about this industry being finite, which means that you have a small window to make as much income as you can, and then utilize that income to create passive income for your future. So I'm going to go over some things to kind of consider and think about while you're out there working and to put your money to work for you later. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the Pool Guy Coaching Program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. From me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. I recently finished a pretty fascinating book on Rockefeller, and Rockefeller, of course, was the richest person probably on earth during his time period. It is a great book. It's called Titan, and it goes over his life and kind of how he made his fortune and how he spent his money, how he invested. Ironically, he didn't really invest much in real estate. He actually did something that you can do in your own pool service business, which is he reinvested all his money into his own company, Standard Oil, which by the way was broken up into different companies later on during the government's um antitrust monopoly trials. He actually quadrupled his income after that happened because he had shares of Standard Oil which were sold off into these other entities, and the price of his shares skyrocketed. But ExxonMobil is one of them that's still here. You have Chevron, and of course, these are all companies that you're familiar with, and it really just started from one person. It's a really fascinating book on how he became the richest person in the world. I recommend it. It's really thick though, it's like 600 pages or so, or maybe more. So it's definitely quite a read. It's one of those books that you can use as a weapon. But it really got me thinking that a lot of pool pros aren't really kind of future-oriented like he was. And to be future-oriented, what I mean is you're out there working, you don't really think about it when you're in your 20s and 30s as much as when you're in your 40s and 50s, but you can't do pool service forever. It's just a fact. I mean, if you look at sports, you know, the f the most anyone plays or the age they reach. Maybe if you're a kicker or quarterback, you can get into your 40s. I think Tom Brady was like 43 or 44 when he retired. Very rare. I think the average uh tenure in the NFL is like three or four years, whatever is really short. And so your body kind of wears out and you start to feel the effects of being out there. For example, about 10 years ago, I had to just wear knee pads out there every time I knee down because my knee just got damaged over the years from kneeing down on the cement to where every time I knee down without knee pads, it would cause me sharp pain. And so I wear one knee pad at least. I can kneel down on one knee, and it looks it looks fine. I think people understand that you have to have protective gear out there. I also wear my nitrile gloves because the chemicals really have an effect on your hands over the years, so you definitely want to protect yourself. If you're looking for any of this gear, by the way, just go to my website, swingingpoollearning.com, go to the bottom, you'll see the pool guy gear, and you can click on the links to the gloves that I recommend. But I I definitely think you should be protected. A lot of pool pros get skin cancer out there, they get cataracts, there's a lot of things the sun can do to you, and so you don't want to be out there for 40 years doing pool service. With that said, how can you transition at a pool service? I did mention that Rockefeller reinvested in his own company, and you can do that yourself. You can build up a pool empire where you have 10 trucks, two managers, three repair techs, and you kind of step back into the background and you can kind of run it somewhat passively. Now, true passive income is kind of a myth. I mean, it can happen, but there is something that you have to do every so often, even if you're investing in you know anything in the market, you do have to make some pivots sometimes and some changes. So it's not entirely just passive in most regards, unless you have someone managing your money, then of course it's totally passive. But there is something, some level of involvement in one way or another of all these investments I'm going to talk about in a minute. But you can reinvest in your company, build it up to be self-sustaining with the management team and employees, and kind of just run that from the background, and you're not in the field anymore. You're mainly in the office doing little things to keep things running. That's perfectly fine, and that's a great way to be successful in the industry and kind of get yourself out of the field. I think this is something that some people are are ideally geared towards. Others wouldn't be able to handle running an empire, it's just not their personality. Nothing against anyone doesn't want to do this. I don't want to do this myself, I wouldn't find this enjoyable. Some people love it, they don't mind dealing with all the friction that comes with employees and you know having a large customer base. But to me, that's not the direction that I went. And again, it's just your personality. If you are like a Rockefeller and want to build up an empire, you could definitely do that, and there's nothing wrong with that formula to create passive income because you can actually generate a huge amount of money in the background with everyone doing the pool service that you built up. Not a problem. That's why these giant companies come in here and buy up all these pool routes because they know that the bigger they get, the more revenue they can generate, the more they can offset losses and other things. And so you have you know national pool partners, you have the SPS pool care buying up companies and getting bigger and bigger across certain states here because it is lucrative and it does make a lot of money. Now, I don't want to make anyone sad right now, but if you didn't invest in certain things and you're trying to jump in now, some things are gonna be a little late, I would say. Other things you may be able to create more growth, like for example, Bitcoin is a good example. If you jumped in in like 2018 when it was at 3782 Bitcoin, if you don't know much about Bitcoin, it's super interesting and super confusing. And I've done a lot of research on it. I don't invest in it myself, but I do know pool pros that have and do invest in it, and they've had some bad years with it, especially 2022. But if you held on to it and you have it now, it's like$84,000, you know, for the Bitcoin. It's pretty crazy. So that's an increase of astronomical amount if you invested in 2017 or 2018 when it was$37.80. So definitely that's a good investment in some regards. I don't know if you would want to buy it at this point, but if you bought it back then, you did pretty well. I think the stock market is always something, and I'll touch on gold, I guess, but I don't invest in gold either. But I do know people who have invested in gold. I actually know someone who sold his gold at like 2,000 an ounce. He was like, this is the highest ever gonna get. It's like at 4,000 right now, so it's crazy that it's even higher than he thought it would get to. Uh, I don't really do that either. To me, it doesn't seem like it you're gonna grow the money as fast, although it has grown dramatically, of course. So I kind of missed that boat, I guess. But let's just go to the stock market. If you in 2008 invested, if you bought stocks in 2008, the market was like at 8,000 points, and now it's at like 45,000 points, 46,000 points, so that's quite an increase there. Averages about 10 to 12% a year in growth, which is a pretty good amount of return on your money. And if you do any kind of compound interest chart, you're gonna see that you know, when you turn 65 or 68 or 70 when you draw the money, you're gonna have a pretty good nest egg to draw from if you invested early enough. NASDAQ, same thing, it pretty much skyrocket. It's rocketed from you know 2,000 points to I think it's like 15 or 18,000. It's pretty high there too. I have very little invested in the market myself. I have some Roth IRA money, but I don't have a lot of money in the market, and it's something that I haven't really leaned towards. And of course you can do that, and it's a perfectly safe investment. I just feel like for what I'm geared towards and kind of what most pool pros I think would be s have a specialty towards would be real estate. Because I feel like the stock market, yes, you're getting money and you're getting retirement money in a Roth IRA or just mutual funds or however you want to invest it, but you can't really draw on that money until you're much older. And to me, I would like to have income coming in now as well as later. Now there are a few stocks that pay dividends, but there aren't that many of them, and you can do that as well if you want some money coming in every year, but I find that waiting for that nest egg later on is not the way that I like to invest. Everyone's different, I understand that. So I'm not gonna say that one investing method over another is better than one. And by the way, I'm not a financial advisor, I'm just talking here as a regular person, and if you really wanted to seek financial advice, get a financial planner. Most of them will, of course, be heavily leaning towards investing in the market because they get some money from you investing in different products that they have for you in the stock market. But to me, real estate has something has been something I've been doing since 2001 when I got my first rental property, or we got our first rental property, I should say, me and my wife, and it's something that I've kind of stuck with. And the appreciation in real estate in California, I mean, if you look at just the median price, and the median price, the median price, I'll pronounce that correctly here, is basically half the home sold for less than this amount, half the home sold for more than this amount. So it's kind of like the middle price of houses in your area. So in Los Angeles County, which is my county, the median price back in 2000 was 198,000. Now that's you got to also factor in that things were cheaper back then, minimum wage was lower, the cost of goods were lower, and so it's all relative to the dollar. This is why real estate, in my opinion, is the best investment because your investment usually goes up with inflation, you don't lose any ground because you know, gas back in 2000 probably was what two dollars a gallon. I'm not I'm just guessing here. Now it's like 480 a gallon, so it's doubled. So back in 2000, let's just go back to 2000. I'll go to 2000, I'll skip ahead because there were some pretty rough years here, but I'll skip ahead to 2013 when things started rising in California. So in 2013, the median home price was 430,000. That means that half the homes sold under 430, half sold for over 430. Let's jump ahead to 2018, it went up to 620,000, and then if you go to 2022, it's at 850,000. That means that half the homes in Los Angeles County sold for more than 850,000. That's pretty crazy. Then we get to 2024, which was the last year that of course it's 2025 now, it's at 910. So it keeps going up. I mean, it can't keep going up with these giant leaps all the time, but I would think that it's gonna pass a million dollars this year if it hasn't passed a million dollars yet for the median price. That means that half the homes sold here were over a million dollars, and that's pretty insane. But if you bought houses since 2001 like I have, and I've even bought houses recently, because you get good deals sometimes and you can snatch up a good deal, you're gonna make out pretty well because there are three things in real estate, and I'll just cover this briefly that give you an advantage over the other investments. One of them, of course, is appreciation. You have the house, if you don't do anything for 30 years, it's gonna be paid off, and so you have whatever that house is worth 30 years from now, you can sell it or transfer it in a 1031 exchange for something bigger, and you have a huge amount of equity that you've earned over the years. Of course, capital gains is gonna take a big chunk of that if you don't reinvest it, but you're gonna have this nest egg to pull from. So if you bought a house for$500,000 and it's worth a million in 30 years, you've made$500,000 after capital gains. If you wanted to sell that house, you probably would net like$300,000 roughly. So that's a pretty good amount of money. If you had five of these, what is that like five times three,$100,$1.8 million you would have in the bank if you sold all those and paid capital gains? Quite a lot of investment. But over that 30-year period, you are also doing number two, which is getting some rental income. Some areas you get more rent than others, more income than others, but you'll generate income usually, could be$200 per unit, or you know,$100, even$100 per unit. If you have 30 units, that's$3,000 a month times$12. That's$3,000 times$12,000 would be$36,000 a year. Of course, there's more money to be had there. I'm just giving you a low number. But if you had 30 units and you're making$400, there's$120,000 a year, you're making an income. So there's income being produced over that 30-year period as well, as well as debt pay down, as well as appreciation. And then you have that asset that's yours again after 30 years. If you don't do anything, the 30-year mortgage will be paid off by the people living in your property. And of course, the third benefit of real estate are the tax deductions. The government kind of rewards you for providing housing. The government can't provide enough housing across the nation. In fact, like in LA County, when they try to provide housing, it's a total disaster. They'll spend like$500,000 for like a one-bedroom studio apartment and put someone in there. It's a total loss, and it they'd rather not do it. They'd rather have you do it. And so they reward you with some benefits on your taxes. Now, of course, you can't avoid paying property taxes. So if you have as much as many investment properties as me, I pay a ton of property taxes, and I'm okay with that because that's part of investing. But as far as your income taxes, it's a great way to offset any of your self-employed or W-2 income. And it's a great way to offset that because all those deductions, your mortgage interest, your property taxes, your insurance, your depreciation of each each unit you have, all the repairs you put in there, anything you do to that unit, any kind of modification or improvement, all gets deducted on your taxes. And if you have enough of these rental properties, you can potentially not pay any income tax, but you are paying the property tax. Mind you, so you are paying something, but you're not paying your income tax on your earned income because of all the offsets that the real estate investing offers you. Because the government, again, is kind of rewarding you for providing housing, something that they can't do effectively, and they there's not enough of it. And so they rely on these investors to provide housing for Americans that need housing, and therefore you have these tax benefits, and they're pretty lucrative. If you have an investment property, you know how well that offsets your income taxes. So to me, you can't really beat that. Now, as far as passive, you can hire a management company to, of course, manage your rentals. That's that makes it more passive, but you still got to manage the manager of that management company, or you can do it yourself. And the only time you're going to really be investing your time and energy in is when you have a vacancy. And currently I have two that I have to fill, and then I'm gonna have three more coming up by the beginning of the year. It does happen, it's something that you have to kind of handle, and then of course, remodeling the property or getting it ready is another thing that you probably want to supervise the people doing the work. But other than that, the money will come in passively most of the time, except for those instances. Of course, you have repairs that happen. I just had a mainline leak under a driveway. That was a pretty expensive, pretty expensive repair to do. I feel bad about it because I feel like I just buried, you know, 3600 bucks that I could have used for something else, and it's buried under my driveway, one of my rental units. But, you know, what can you do as as part of having the properties? But I think the benefits outweigh the any kind of headaches, short-term headaches. And I mentioned that pool service pros are ideal for rental properties, and I think because of the way we deal with customers, we have great customer service skills, at least a lot of us do. And that translates really easy when dealing with tenants and vendors and contractors, and I think you can deal with the city no problem. I even dealt with the city twice, two different cities when I did a full remodel, taking a house that was built in 1887 and making it very modern. The city was really tough on that one. And then another one where I had an ADU that I finished the permitting on and the contractor gave up on it, and I was able to deal with the city, and you have to have that personality to where you know when the Barney Fife shows up, hey, I got this insulation, it's not right, and you need to have this, and you can handle that kind of person because you handle them every day in your pool route, not a problem. Tenants you can also handle pretty easily. And then the second reason, and I'll end with this, that you are ideally suited for this, is that you know the neighborhoods and the area you're investing in. You know what areas, what pockets are good, and what pockets are bad, where you wouldn't leave your truck parked there with the riptide on the back without chaining it and locking it. So you have that ideal advantage of driving around your city and knowing those good areas and those bad areas. So ideally, you would want to invest somewhere within a 50-minute drive to your home so you can you know manage the rentals closer is better, but sometimes you can't buy close because it's really expensive. But if you can drive within like 50 minutes to an hour to a rental property, not a deal killer for me, I do it all the time, and it's a great way to maximize your investment by buying a little bit out of your area, but knowing the areas, and of course, ideally, you would want to get to get started on investing in any of these things I mentioned. The sooner the better. The great thing about pool service is that you're getting an income that gives you the opportunity to invest and invest rapidly because the time, the clock is ticking against you, your body can't sustain working out there doing 70 or 80 pools a week for the rest of your life. So realize that passive income is something that you are working towards building. And if you don't start immediately, if you're in your 30s, you should have started when you're in your 20s. But if you're in your 40s, you should have started in your 30s. You get what I'm saying here, and the sooner you start, the better. Looking for other podcasts, of course, you can go to my website, ZoomingPole Learning, and on the banner, click on the podcast icon. That'll take you to a drop down menu of other podcasts I have there as well. And if you're interested in my coaching program, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a great week and God bless.