How to Add Extra Work Without Losing Your Sanity

A packed pool route can feel like success until you realize there’s no room left to grow. We walk through a practical way to add high-demand pool services like green to clean, one-time cleanups, filter cleaning, and acid washes without sacrificing your evenings or giving up your weekends. The big idea is simple: extra services should create more weekly pool service accounts, not create burnout.

We also get specific about pool service marketing that actually generates calls. Instead of pouring money into a truck wrap too early, we explain why clear magnetic signs can outperform expensive branding when you’re trying to land urgent, high-intent work. A homeowner with a green pool wants one thing fixed fast, and the best message is the one that names that exact service.

Then we get into scheduling and operations, because margin is everything. Green pool cleanup takes multiple visits, acid washes require careful timing, and draining rules can get you fined if you do it wrong. We share how to balance your pool route, stack stops during the week to free a day, team up on labor-heavy jobs, and even offer a small discount to close the deal when a customer agrees to ongoing weekly maintenance.

• using magnetic truck signs to advertise one specific service
• why blank trucks stop leads and growth
• why truck wraps look professional but rarely drive urgent calls
• building margin with a balanced pool route before adding extra work
• scheduling green to clean jobs as a multi-visit process
• planning acid washes with a second person for speed
• avoiding illegal street draining and finding a sewer line
• timing acid washes to reduce plaster risk in hot weather
• stacking pools earlier in the week to clear a dedicated day
• declining one-time jobs that will not convert to weekly service
• using filter cleaning as a low-time foot-in-the-door service
• offering a small discount to close a weekly service agreement

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Transcript

Welcome And Growth Goal

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about adding extra services to your business without really killing you or making you work seven days a week. And this is something that has to be done very strategically to be effective and worthwhile to your business. 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. If you're starting out and you're new to Pool Service, or you're trying to really increase your kind of market share in your territory, you may want to take on extra services to do this. Now there's really a simple way to advertise that you're looking for more services out there. The primary way, of course, is to have something on your vehicle. Now there's a lot of what I call blanks here in my area. These are pool guys that drive blank trucks. And this really means to me when I see a blank truck, is they're not looking for any business, they're not trying to get any business, and that's why they drive a blank truck. It's pretty clear that no one can really contact them, and it's something that if you are trying to expand in your territory, not having a blank truck is really crucial. Now you don't have to really go out and spend$2,000 to wrap your truck. You can get simple magnetic signs for your doors. These are really cost effective. It would probably cost you about$100 to get a tailgate magnetic sign and some door magnetic signs. And you can advertise on there. And I suggest you advertise specifically what you're trying to generate, what service you're trying to generate. So for instance, on a magnetic sign, you can put green to clean or one-time service or filter cleaning. And that way the person that's reading that sign will know exactly what you're selling, especially if they have a green pool and you're driving down the freeway and someone has a magnetic sign in the truck that says green to clean and has the phone number or QR code. And that's going to get you a lot of business. Believe me, I've done this before with vinyl letters in the back of my truck window where I put green to clean, one time cleanup, and my phone number. And I can't tell you how many calls I've gotten and how many leads I got from the one-time cleanups. Now the one-time cleanup may not be a green pool. It may be someone who bought a house and they haven't really looked at their pool since they moved in, and they need a clean, and then you can capture that account very quickly and easily by having your foot in the door basically. So again, these signs should be specific to the services that you're offering at that time and that you want to expand. You want to get, of course, weekly service accounts. This is a great lead-in without spending$2,000 to get your truck wrapped. And to be honest with you, the truck wraps aren't really effective marketing tools, in my opinion. I mean, I see trucks wrapped all the time for plumbers, HVAC companies. And if I'm looking for a new HVAC company, would I necessarily call a truck on the freeway when I see the advertisement? I would say no. I actually go to Yelp and I look at the reviews online. I mean it may lead me to take a picture of the truck and then look up their reviews online. That may be deleted. The truck wrap actually is just to make yourself look more professional. And so your truck, so your business stands out. When you pull up in a wrap truck, the customer already knows you're professional, regardless of anything you do, because you your truck looks professional, like you're a pool service company, rather than a blank truck or a truck with magnetic door signs on it. I understand that the wrap does have that effect. You know, if you hire a plumber and they show up in a blank white A-team van, or they show up with their company name and everything on there, and logos and maybe a picture of a toilet or whatever, of course, you're gonna gravitate towards the one that looks more professional. So I get it, the wraps do have that effect. But as far as marketing and getting new services, I wouldn't say that would be something to invest in right away because it is expensive, at least$2,000, and it may not lead you to the clients you're trying to get, which are the green to clean and one-time cleanups, and those magnetic signs actually are going to be much more effective for those lead-in services. So now that you're advertising openly to get these services, how do you balance your pool route and bring on acid washes, green to cleans, one-time cleanups, filter cleaning service? Well, the answer is you have to have some kind of balance already in your pool route. What I mean by that is that you can't have, you know, a Tuesday where you're doing 18 pools, a Wednesday where you're doing 15, Monday when you're doing 12, a Thursday when you're doing 18, and a Friday when you're doing 16. You can't add anything at that point. There's no margin. You'll be working Saturdays. And one reason why you got into this business is so you're not working 50 or 60 hours a week. And if you wanted to work Saturdays, by all means pick up these jobs and put them on a Saturday. But I would say that you only want to do these extra services when you have a balance route and margin in your day for that. So here's what it would look like if I were wanting to get these services. And by the way, I don't get these services anymore because once you're established, a lot of times you can pass up green to greens and green to cleans and all these things because you don't really need to do them anymore for the extra money. But when you're starting out, you know, an acid wash is really a great way to get extra money. A green to clean is a great way to boost up your monthly income. But if you're established, a lot of times the established companies, the blank trucks, will pass up all these services because they don't really want to do that extra work. You want to, of course, have maybe one free weekday that you can do these services on. So let's say a Friday. Now you can't really schedule the green to clean on a Friday, it doesn't work that way. So you would want to have a more balanced pool route, which means that maybe Monday you have 10 pools, Tuesday you're doing 12, Wednesday you have nine pools, Thursday you have seven, and then Friday you're off. To me, that's pretty balanced, or Monday you're off, and Friday you have 10 pools or whatever, and you don't have a full route basically at this point. And so you have plenty of room on your schedule to schedule a green to clean on a Monday, go back there on a Tuesday, hit it again on a Thursday or Friday, and it's not gonna kill you, it's not gonna put you behind too much. You can go there after you're done with all the pools on your route and do the green to clean, maybe have even two of them going at the same time, and it's not something that is going to affect your daily route. It's gonna, of course, you're gonna be working longer hours that day, but you're gonna finish your pools and have that margin. The problem is if you are trying to do this and you have no margin in your day, then you're really doing a disservice to, of course, your regular customers, and you're not gonna be able to do the green the clean effectively because you're gonna be rushing or you're gonna feel pressed, or you might miss the follow-up day. And margin is really critical when you're doing these kind of services, so you have to have that. Now, as far as acid washes, I really believe that you should team up with another pool company to do acid washes together, or if you have a relative that has some free time, utilize them because the acid washes go a lot smoother when there's two people doing them, it's much faster. Now, there is some time involved in going to drain the pool. When you're doing an acid wash, you have to drain the pool first, of course, and then go back the very next day to do the acid wash. Now, there are a few cautions here. Drain the pool directly into the street during the middle of the day. It's gonna get you a pretty big fat ticket from the city. They don't like that. Someone's gonna call, the neighbor's gonna call saying there's water in the street. They're gonna send the fire department out looking for some kind of leak. They're gonna send the city out to look for it, and you're going to get fined, at least in California and most counties. You can't drain a pool directly into the street, down into the sewer line or the uh storm runoff line, I should say. You have to drain it into a sewer line. So find the sewer line in the backyard if you can and drain it into there. And it's one of those things where sometimes locating the sewer line is tough. Sometimes it's by the kitchen, there's a P trap. Sometimes the newer homes is actually in the center of the garage. I have one where it's in the center of the garage, sometimes around the side of the house, but regardless, the sewer line is a perfect location. So, of course, that takes time to go there and put this some pump in there and drain the pool. And of course, let the customer know not to turn it off because I've done this before and the customer like turned off the pump for some whatever reason, and I get there and the pool's still halfway full of water. So, of course, it's important that they you let them know you drain the pool and let the pump run until it shuts itself off by itself and don't you know short circuit it by stopping the pump at any point. And then you have to go back the next morning and do the acid wash. So, one thing you have to keep in mind is that if the air temperature is above 90 degrees and the sun's gonna hit the pool right away in the morning, that's a bad thing because you it could lead to some damage to the plaster. So you have to time these acid washes when the weather is perfect, you know, under 90 degrees, and you have to do it the very next day you drain it. I wouldn't leave the pool empty. I wouldn't drain it on a Friday and go back on a Monday to do the acid wash because that's way too long with the pool empty. And you also remember sometimes if you drain a pool and the plaster has chips and cracks, it's gonna get worse after an acid wash. So do all your research, understand what an acid wash entails. And I have actually an acid wash waiver I can send you. If you email me at David at some poollearning.com, I'll get that over to you. But you definitely want to make sure you're capable of doing the acid wash. And then, as I mentioned, team up with another pool company or with a family member or friend. Teaming up just makes it much more manageable. You'll you can have one person pouring the acid, you can have one person hosing it off, and it does make it much easier. I remember doing an acid wash one time when I was starting out, I was in Renchukamonga as a helper, and the winds picked up to like 40 mile an hour winds, and it was a brutal acid wash. We had to finish it because we had to fill the pool up, but luckily there was two of us and we were able to race through it, and the winds were just we just kind of had to time it, you know, pouring the acid, made sure there was no huge gust, and then hosing it off, and two people together doing that acid wash was really, really great. And I think teaming up with another pool company or with someone else is the best way to do that, and then finish the acid wash in a timely manner. So if you have a Friday off, definitely you could drain the pool on a Thursday, and then you could do the acid wash on a Friday morning, and then if you're doing something else later that day, you can of course finish that. It's really hard to do the acid washes when you have 14 pools that day. You get there at 7 in the morning, you start the acid wash with someone you teamed up with, and then you finish maybe around 10 or 11, and then you gotta do 14 pools. So remember you have to have the margin. So one thing you can do if you have to do the acid wash and you have a full route that day, why don't you stack the pools during the week? This is like a no-brainer. If you wanted to clear off a Thursday and or a Friday, you have 14 pools. Start doing those pools Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and that way your Friday is actually completely cleared. Finish the acid wash and then go home. You're done for that day. I like doing that because then you create margin, you're not really worried about it. If something were to go wrong, like the customer didn't drain the pool all the way, and you have to stand there for another couple hours or go somewhere and come back. You can of course do that without having to worry about doing 14 pools that day. So create that margin if you can by having a dedicated day off to do the acid washes on. You know, you do Monday through Thursday service or Tuesday through Friday service and do it on a Monday, or remove the pools or at least eliminate half of those pools from that day so that if something goes wrong, which invariably happens, something does go wrong. You can of course not have to worry about getting 14 pools done after you get out of there at noon and racing through all the pools on your day. The same thing with green to cleans. You know, initially the first day is going to take a lot of effort, so I would like to do those on a Monday. Usually, if I get to a pool and I bid it and they accept the bid, getting there on a Monday morning, starting the green to clean, and again, you can stack some of those Monday pools on Tuesday and Wednesday to free you up. You might spend about two hours there the first day getting the green to clean started, and then you have to go back there on a Tuesday, and typically on a Wednesday because you're doing the filter cleans, you're doing all kinds of things. So that's usually a three or four-day process, and a lot of cases it's really bad. So kind of make sure you have that time in your schedule to even attempt to get the green to cleans. Now, one thing that I would recommend you do is that if a customer wants a green to clean, let's just say that they you know they want to sell their house and they want a green to clean and they don't want service. I generally don't take that green to clean, even though it's gonna be$800 or so or whatever, or$900, I don't do it because I really want to capture that account. If I'm going to be spending all week going back to this pool and spending my time and effort and really working extra, I want to capture that as a service account going forward. That makes it worth it. And of course, you can if you need the money, if you need the extra$800, go ahead and do the green to clean. But in reality, I think you really want to do these only if the customer is like, okay, yeah, I have to get this cleaned up. I definitely want to come on the service because I can't handle this. Or I bought this house, I don't know what I'm doing. The how the pool was already turning green when I bought it. These are the people that you want to do the green to cleans with. Same thing with one-time cleanups. If someone calls you and the pool's full of dirt, maybe it's not green, but it definitely is a good cleaning. I would say, you know, I would give them my service rates and recommend they come on service. And if they say, well, think about it, I'll get back to you on the service, but can you clean it up? I personally would pass on that because I don't want to spend extra time out there cleaning up the pool. I'm not going to capture the customer. Now there are exceptions, of course, if you are trying to make extra money for your budget, go ahead and do it. But your whole goal for these extra services, as they started out, you get a magnetic sign, you want to get these green to cleans, one-time cleanups. The whole goal is to get them as regular service customers so you can build up your route. So if you're at 60 pools and you're doing all these extra services, you want to get to 80 pools, and then you want to stop doing these extra services. Take those magnetic signs off, and maybe consider getting your truck wrapped at this point so that you have that professional truck, spend the$2,000 on it, and then move away from doing these extra services at that point. And if you do like one-time filter cleanings, that's good extra money. And this can lead the customers, by the way, as well. You're probably not going to capture the customer right away with the one-time filter cleaning because they're going to try to do the pool themselves or whatever the situation is. But I like the filter cleaning service as well. It gets you in the back door. It does all also get you extra money if they want to keep doing it every six months, but that's your way in if they ever run into problems or need full-time service. They'll call you first. And so I've gotten some accounts also from doing the one-time filter cleanups, clean the filter, to make it look good, you know, maybe help them with the pool, give them some tips, and then they'll call you eventually to service the pool when they can't handle it. So that gets your foot in the door. Anything that gets your foot in the door like that, that doesn't take a lot of your time is worth doing. But again, I wouldn't waste a lot of time doing green the cleans and one-time cleanups. Now, an acid wash is a different story. Sometimes you can get that customer. A lot of times they're doing it because they're selling the house, or maybe they just bought the house and they want the pool to look good. And you can capture, of course, the account as well with an acid wash and offer your services and even offer discounts sometimes. So this is something also I'll end with if you're doing a green to clean or one-time cleanup or an acid wash, and the customer wants to come on for service, giving them a little discount at that point to kind of sweeten the deal is perfectly fine. You know, taking 10% off, whatever, or taking$100 off and they come on the service. I think that kind of closes a deal sometimes where you quote them an acid wash for$800, and you say, Well, if you're gonna come on service next week, I'll just knock it down to$700 and call it a day, and I'll start service next week. Perfect because you're going to get that weekly service account and you're gonna get that money and you're gonna make that money back pretty much right away in the first month. So offer that discount to kind of sweeten the deal and close it. It's a good way to make sure they're gonna actually, you know, keep their word and come on with service. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, swimmingprolearning.com, on the podcast icon. Click on that on the banner. There'll be 1900 podcasts for you there. And if you're looking for my coaching program, you can learn more at poolguidecoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have the rest of your week and God bless.