Andrea The Pool Girl (00:00.046)
Listen, do you see my phone? I just, so I have the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Welcome to the Talking Pools podcast where we talk about what phones we have. I'm team Android, I refuse to buy an iPhone. But anyway.

rudy (00:14.593)
And I have an iPhone because I prefer phones that work.

Andrea The Pool Girl (00:19.038)
It works perfectly fine. It's brand new. I just got it. But what happened was Uh, I don't know. Why am I, you know what? It beeped again. Oh, sorry. I'm here with Rudy and I'm Andrea.

rudy (00:25.393)
I'm Rudy Stankowitz, by the way. Hey everybody, welcome to the Talking Tools Podcast.

So here we are, we have a phone issue going on Andrea's end.

Andrea The Pool Girl (00:33.846)
Well, it's not a phone issue. It's just that the phone kind of fell off my chair onto the floor, which is fine. I, it fell on, you know, it's not broken or anything, but my S pen popped out. Which is annoying. And then you got to make sure it like goes back in properly. Otherwise it will fall out. That happened to me at the Aqua live show back at the hotel room. The S pen had fallen out of my phone, but I found it under the bed. Shits are 50 bucks.

rudy (00:57.137)
out

Okay, I gotcha. That's important stuff. I think we did that. Team iPhone. Regardless.

Andrea The Pool Girl (01:01.602)
So anyway, welcome to Talking Pools. Hashtag team Android.

Andrea The Pool Girl (01:12.446)
As my daughter would say, brr, brr.

rudy (01:17.348)
I hope everybody's doing well today. I'm happy to get a chance to talk with you seasons coming up really quick

Andrea The Pool Girl (01:24.674)
just started raining really hard. Season, pool season? I never, my pool season never ends.

rudy (01:27.815)
Season. Full season.

Well, that's not true. You go through different phases of it. You definitely have a slower time, a time where the pools are easier, where people use them less, less often. So there is a there is a difference, not much, but I know all the New Yorkers are still down there swimming. Right, that's a fact. See, so you have that to contend with.

Andrea The Pool Girl (01:36.958)
Okay, we'll call it a slow season.

Andrea The Pool Girl (01:51.854)
They are.

rudy (01:56.301)
But I wanted to, did you have anything pressing at the moment because I wanted to touch base on two things, but I do wanna make sure that if you had something. Now, okay. Well, first I wanna talk about something that's a problem and it's always been a problem. And I wrote an article about it in Aqua Magazine this month that talks about the reputation of the pool service person. And basically,

Andrea The Pool Girl (02:06.527)
No, no, I'm good.

Andrea The Pool Girl (02:25.614)
how we're like the bottom of the, the bottom of the bottom of the bottom. We're like rats. We're like, hold on, what was how's the line? We're like, we're like rats on mice. We're like rats on mice, fleas on mice. Oh, it's from Greece. They're the scum of the earth. They're like, they're like the fleas on rats on dogs. Something like that, I don't know.

rudy (02:26.721)
the public's opinion.

rudy (02:39.109)
Bratz on mice.

OK, we're like a flea on the ass of a mouth.

rudy (02:51.778)
This is looked at as a catch-all position for people who failed at everything else. And I reference the Bad News Bears in the article, Morris Buttermaker, if you guys are familiar with that movie, because he was a major league ball player that became an alcoholic down on his luck, so took a job cleaning, you guessed it, swimming pools to make ends meet.

So you can read that article in Aqua Magazine, but that's not what I wanna talk about, not specifically the article. I wanna talk about this. I got a message from a pool professional two days ago. And I get a lot of messages, I get a lot of phone calls, I get a lot of texts, I get a lot of emails, folks asking for different advice on this or that, and that's great, I love that. So if anybody out there has any questions, please, even if you don't want it on the podcast, send it to me.

Andrea The Pool Girl (03:19.95)
I will.

Andrea The Pool Girl (03:30.042)
When sorry

rudy (03:46.485)
happy to help. That's one of the things that I offer to the people who take my CPO classes because I don't think two days and see you later in five years is good enough for somebody. They're gonna run into a lot of different things and even if you are an experienced pro, a second set of eyes is never a bad thing. So included in the fee for my CPO class you get me for as long as you need me.

As long as I can answer your question on the phone or in an email, there's never any extra charge for that. If you need me to come out to your facility, that's a different story, obviously for obvious reasons. But I've even gone on FaceTime tours of facilities to look at different problems. So this one though, not necessarily a maintenance question, but well, let me read it to you because this is the best way. And then I just want your reaction that I'm sure you're gonna have a lot. It starts out, let me.

Andrea The Pool Girl (04:38.378)
Yeah, just read it. My mic was off. Sorry.

rudy (04:41.049)
Let me vent to you for a minute. I had to put a customer in his place yesterday. Guy's talking about how he's getting ready to retire after more than a decade as a mailman. He's retired previously from the military. He says to me, geez, you've been here a long time. This is a person in a pool store. And I replied, over a decade, same as you. His next comment was, oh, I guess your spouse

Must have a really good job then.

Andrea The Pool Girl (05:12.239)
Oh my god.

rudy (05:14.381)
It goes on, wait, what does my spouse's job have to do with anything? And then it says, well, you didn't give up your prior career for this. Did you? I mean, obviously that means that your spouse is the breadwinner. So it goes on. It goes on. I politely, isn't it horrible? I politely told him that his opinion is demoralizing and disrespectful.

Andrea The Pool Girl (05:31.438)
Ugh. Sorry that happened to you, anonymous person. Yeah, sorry that happened to you.

rudy (05:44.057)
that him asking my employees what they're going to do next in life in their career sends the message that what they're doing isn't good enough. I asked him, I'm not gonna name his name, let's just call him Dimwit, how much money do you think I make because you'd be surprised? He didn't answer and just immediately started apologizing. Then he actually asks what my spouse does.

who holds a high level position somewhere, blah, and he says, oh, good for him. We need more people like that. There's so much opportunity. And I said, yeah, you're looking at somebody who took advantage of opportunities. I make more in my position than I would have in my last career, even with the master's degree I have. I make more money than the average American household by myself.

regardless of my spouse's income. So tell me again, why my spouse's job has anything to do with me or the potential for my employees to grow in their positions and a great career. Quit telling them this is just a stepping stone and acting like this isn't good enough because I don't need your business bad enough to tolerate your bullshit. Stupid people. That's the end of it. I did reply to it, but I wanna get your thoughts, go.

It's a lot.

rudy (07:16.09)
No audio.

Andrea The Pool Girl (07:19.486)
Aha, how about that? Is that better? I had some green beans that I was eating. So I muted my mic for everybody. So my thoughts like, wow, like just the audacity, if people have nothing, they'd certainly have the audacity. They'd certainly be able to find that, just pull it out of wherever.

rudy (07:23.045)
betterer.

Andrea The Pool Girl (07:46.314)
I don't know, I kind of, you didn't tell me who it is, but I kind of feel like I know who that came from. I'm not asking you to, but I'm saying. But yeah, no, it's just, I don't know, I can't picture myself in that scenario and what I would do. Like, I don't know if I would even have said as much as that because I probably would have just been like, whatever, and then just like continued on. And then like being mad about it later.

rudy (07:50.809)
I'm not going to tell you who it is. So. Okay.

rudy (08:15.793)
I give kudos, kudos to this person.

Andrea The Pool Girl (08:15.798)
so good on you for saying something to the person is what I was about to say and trying to get at because yeah, that's just like, that's just something crazy that you don't say to people. First of all.

rudy (08:28.209)
good on you for maintaining your cool during this interaction because I would have lost my shit.

Andrea The Pool Girl (08:40.266)
I mean, I don't know.

rudy (08:41.285)
There's no benefit for me losing my shit. It's just what would have occurred as this person stood in front of me, telling me that I had a position that wasn't good enough. Right?

Andrea The Pool Girl (08:52.81)
I mean, you're here in my store, you know, whatever it is. I don't know.

rudy (09:00.725)
It's it's. No, I think it just ended at that point in time. There were other customers in the store, so that was probably. Correct, but still. This is the mindset and this is the mindset of a lot of people. I've shared with you before I had an incident where I was actually at an event. For one of my wife's.

Andrea The Pool Girl (09:00.971)
they ask him to leave?

Andrea The Pool Girl (09:09.898)
And they said he apologized.

rudy (09:29.457)
companies that she worked at. I was at this event and a lady walks up to me, happens to be a teacher.

and says to me, you know, introduces herself and asks me what I do for a living. And I said, Oh, I own a swimming pool and service and repair company here in town. And she pauses for a second. And then she looks at me and she says, that's so nice. Some people just really shouldn't go to college. Should they?

BITCH! Dude.

Andrea The Pool Girl (10:01.776)
I said people always find the audacity, you know? Like you wonder what goes through some people's heads as they're saying that shit to you.

rudy (10:11.444)
I just...

Andrea The Pool Girl (10:11.886)
I experience it in the car when I'm driving in a pool truck. People just like think that they can drive in front of me and drive around me and cut me off and I have to let them go first. And it's like, no, I don't like you still have to follow the fucking rules of the, you know, traffic rules. Like they still apply like just because I'm in a pool truck.

I'm going the speed limit. I'm not going under the speed limit. You're trying to do fucking 90 down US one. You know what I'm saying? Like that happens all the time. People zoom around you. And then especially like in some of the more fancy communities, people expect you to just like let them go. So you got to stop and oh my God, it's just ridiculous driving. But I, yeah. To add to your point. To just ram people.

rudy (10:54.021)
So what's the solution? I mean, part of the problem is that there are people that probably do start doing this because they've run out of things to do. They are the bottom of the chain, the food chain, the bottom of the evolutionary chain, whatever.

Andrea The Pool Girl (11:20.746)
the bottom of the erosion feeder.

rudy (11:22.889)
Exactly. They've failed at position after position because it's their own fault and they end up without anything and then the pool industry It's such a low cost Fee to enter into it that we do end up getting a lot of people who don't know what they're doing We get a lot of people who aren't qualified to do what they're doing We had a lot of people who break the rules and don't get the licensing or contractors Licensing that they're supposed to have the insurance that they're supposed to have

Andrea The Pool Girl (11:38.126)
especially in Florida.

Andrea The Pool Girl (11:50.594)
especially in Florida.

rudy (11:53.601)
Especially in Florida. It happens everywhere Especially everywhere. There's a splash and dash somebody who woke up this morning decided to throw a pole in his truck and boom mama pool guy in every state in every county in every town and That's part of the problem part of it

Andrea The Pool Girl (12:00.374)
everywhere.

Andrea The Pool Girl (12:13.614)
Do you know what is, do you know what is actually required, do you know what is actually required to get, because, so for example, as far as I know, in Florida, there's one, I think there's one county that's different. You don't need any type of license or anything except for a tax ID. So you don't need to take any kind of class, you don't need to get,

certified for anything, you don't need a license for anything, to just go and clean pools in people's yards.

rudy (12:49.989)
That's not just Florida though. That happens everywhere. No, it happens everywhere. And I know the county you're talking about, Sarasota ups the bar quite a bit because they're .

Andrea The Pool Girl (12:52.543)
Okay, well that's what I was asking.

Andrea The Pool Girl (12:59.23)
Yes, Sarasota, that's what I was asking you, is that it's not just Florida because I kind of assumed that it was, okay.

rudy (13:06.513)
No, not just Florida. It happens everywhere. And there's a lot of folks out there that don't know what they're doing, and they are giving the industry a bad name, but are they entirely the problem? I don't think that they are. They're there, that's where the stigma comes from. They do exist, and they exist in every vocation. That's a fact. They're shitty doctors. They're shitty lawyers.

There are a lot of shitty people in a lot of positions that are out there. It doesn't have to be cleaning pools. It could be mowing lawns. Why aren't the lawn people the dregs of society? I don't know. But here's the thing.

There is a solution and it's not been done. And now in the magazine article, one of the things I talked about as a solution was mentorship. If you go and look at the article that I wrote in Aqua, it talks about mentorship and actually bringing these people up a level, helping them to become more educated, helping them to become more a part of the industry. And I do believe that that's true. But the big, big solution that should have been happening all along that doesn't.

is the trade associations that we belong to should be advocating for their members, promoting them as professionals in the public eye. That's a fact. We pay dues to belong to these different trade associations. Trade associations should reinvest their money in the needs and education of the members. This is a need.

Other organizations have done it. Civil liberties union, NAACP, all of those boosting the image of their members. I think that we're in the same boat. That's what should be happening. And I don't know what the identifier is for somebody who's a dreg versus somebody who's not, but there could be something.

rudy (15:10.029)
Look for the Golden Pool Pro certification label on your truck, on your pool guys uniform, on their business card, and you can verify it because we have it all on record. These are the members, these are the people, and they have to have specific requirements to be part of this, otherwise we boot their asses out because we don't want the dregs. Promote that.

Andrea The Pool Girl (15:31.07)
Is that not, was that not how things work currently? Oh.

rudy (15:34.797)
No. No, what? Let me ask you this as. Yeah, but you are.

Andrea The Pool Girl (15:39.082)
I'm not a member of anything, so I don't know. I only just recently became involved with Ipsil, like just recently, just recently. So I, within the past couple of months, I've been paying my dues.

rudy (15:44.401)
president.

rudy (15:49.765)
The only person in the history of Ipsa to step in immediately as president of a chapter.

Andrea The Pool Girl (15:58.091)
is to wait what?

rudy (15:59.961)
You're the only person in the history of trade associations to step in immediately as the president of a chapter.

Andrea The Pool Girl (16:06.634)
I didn't step in immediately.

rudy (16:11.949)
You came in as a president, correct?

Andrea The Pool Girl (16:16.102)
Oh yes. Okay. Nepotism is alive and well. Um... Okay.

rudy (16:17.209)
That's what I meant. So, but no, that's not what happens. Listen, you're a person though, you're a human being. You have a radio, you have a television, you have access to social media, you have access to the news. What have you seen that talks about cool people being professionals from any organization when there's a problem? Yeah.

Andrea The Pool Girl (16:39.734)
when there's a problem. Oh, from organizations? No.

rudy (16:47.245)
Not from any of them, not a one of them, right? I see a lot of things about investing in learn to swim. That's fantastic. There's a lot of great learn to swim programs out there. I'm not knocking it. It's super, super important. I see that all over the place. I wanna see the other just as much.

There's a lot of money going into these trade associations. I think we need to see something that directly benefits the pool professional and.

advocates the pool person as a professional.

Andrea The Pool Girl (17:25.814)
And not just something, not just a, not just someone that you can go and have like a store check, the chem, I mean, is that what you're getting? I mean, it's stuff like that.

rudy (17:36.982)
Homeowners should know. How do you tell the difference between a professional and a fly by night?

Andrea The Pool Girl (17:42.73)
Are you talking about getting like certain certification, like not CPO or anything like that? Oh.

rudy (17:46.853)
No, I'm just saying it doesn't matter. I don't care what certifications you have. I'm not talking about spending money. I'm not talking about attending any of my classes, nothing along those lines, anybody's classes. I'm not even saying that you have to be a member of the trade associations to appreciate that the trade associations do this because that would benefit everybody in the industry. There are over 76,000.

rudy (18:16.977)
Cool service companies in this country set up as a business that does not include all of the people that are under the wire stealth that are not set up as a legit business. 76,000 of us and there's nobody saying, hey, you know what, these people, they are pros. What they're doing is not easy, it's hard. They have to know science, they have to know hydraulics, they have to know...

all of these different things in order to make this work and to make your backyard pool safe. They're not the people who think taking care of pools is just too easy to test strip in, put some chemicals in and move on. We are well beyond that. These are the people that are really trying to master what they do and they are out there and they are in people's backyards and they're listening to us.

rudy (19:10.721)
In fact, I would say anybody who takes the time to listen to any of the podcast is probably in that boat because one of the big things that we all promote, I don't care if it's pool chasers, pool nation, rule your pool, hoop dee doo, what have you, you better be listening to us by the way.

Andrea The Pool Girl (19:30.422)
What's the Hoopty Doo podcast? I'm interested in that one.

rudy (19:31.182)
I hope.

rudy (19:35.401)
So I'm just saying I've says whatever the point is those folks are interested in education and people that are interested in education tend to be more successful and be more success minded and more customer centric meaning that they care more about their customers and that's what they're working on is becoming a better benefit to their customers. And we need.

an organization, one of them, all of them, I don't care. Maybe we need a new organization that promotes the pool person as a professional to the public.

rudy (20:19.673)
What do you think about that?

Andrea The Pool Girl (20:22.847)
I think that sounds great.

rudy (20:24.485)
That was one of my best soap boxes in a long time.

Andrea The Pool Girl (20:27.55)
Yeah, and I was trying to mute my microphone. Um, now that you're done, can I take like two seconds please for the bathroom.

Andrea The Pool Girl (21:21.322)
Sorry, give me one more second.

Andrea The Pool Girl (21:54.83)
Okay, so I have a question about what you were saying and I didn't wanna interrupt you and derail. I guess I asked a little bit. So you're not talking about everyone, cause didn't we talk about this before? Didn't you ask me if I think.

rudy (22:01.688)
Okay.

Andrea The Pool Girl (22:22.678)
that your regular pool guy should have some kind of license or something like that. Am I confusing conversations?

rudy (22:30.325)
No, we did talk about that. And I do think, no, that's not what I'm talking about this time, no. I think licensing, if you're required to have it in an area, that's fantastic. You should absolutely have it. You shouldn't do anything that you're not allowed to do, no matter who you are.

Andrea The Pool Girl (22:32.194)
And this is not what you're saying in this. Okay. I'm sorry.

Andrea The Pool Girl (22:47.409)
So you're just talking about, that's not what I meant. So you're just talking about, I see. Okay.

rudy (22:49.537)
reputation Period just putting us out there as professionals Look for the Union label. Do you remember those commercials from back in the 70s? Probably 50s and 60s as well Do you? Well, you've heard of it right have you ever heard the jingle the look for the Union label jingle And you know what the purpose of that was?

Andrea The Pool Girl (23:05.302)
I'm not as old as you.

Andrea The Pool Girl (23:12.682)
No, but I have a friend who's a welder and he's in a union.

rudy (23:16.421)
But that whole thing, they had this huge campaign, look for the union label, because if you saw the union label, you would know then that you were getting a quality product, which got Americans to look more for that when they were out purchasing different things, to support the unions at that time. It was a fantastic campaign. It came to an end in the end of the 70s, I believe, maybe up and through the 80s. In either case, similar to that.

What's our union label?

What's the badge of professionalism for a pool pro? How does a homeowner tell the difference? We need that set up and we need somebody who talks about it. We need not Google reviews, not Yelp, not any of that crap because half the Google reviews come from the person themselves.

Andrea The Pool Girl (23:57.486)
Google reviews. Ha ha ha.

Andrea The Pool Girl (24:08.174)
There's that and there's also just crabby people that I saw a Google review, not a Google review it was a Yelp review. I saw it on Facebook and it was just completely petty. The person just left a one star because they were mad about something just completely silly. But anyway, now I say I totally see kind of like I mean I get where you're going. I'm just trying to understand.

rudy (24:28.741)
How do you know? I mean, I'm not talking about something you just pay for. I'm not trying to like the triple A accreditation, right? That you pay for to be accredited. I'm not looking for that or the blue check on Facebook that you pay for to be verified. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about something that you actually have to earn.

Andrea The Pool Girl (24:38.922)
or like the blue check on Facebook.

And Twitter too, you pay for that as well.

rudy (24:52.377)
It can be bestowed upon you because of your current reputation, business, and things you can prove, but it should be something that there's some standard that you have to maintain in order to be a part of this. Not something you can just buy. And then this organization should... I don't know.

Andrea The Pool Girl (25:05.39)
to like reports.

Andrea The Pool Girl (25:11.241)
I'm just trying to have a conversation, you know?

rudy (25:12.937)
Maybe, maybe it could be reviews. Maybe that could be a small part of it. Maybe there's a test of knowledge. Maybe they look for licensure and insurance and.

Andrea The Pool Girl (25:25.686)
Like you already have the license and you already have this certification and you already have this.

rudy (25:28.857)
That you're a legit, yeah, you're a legit business. Maybe those things, I'm not sure. But that's what we need. That's what should be happening, and it's not.

rudy (25:48.205)
moment of silence.

Andrea The Pool Girl (25:48.363)
I agree.

rudy (25:51.857)
So it's kind of scary. And everybody runs into it all the time. And you know what? How less leery would a homeowner be of choosing you as the service company they wanna go with when they know that you're the one that maintains that professional standard?

Andrea The Pool Girl (26:15.726)
Kind of like, um...

Andrea The Pool Girl (26:20.662)
Well, my thought kind of just went to doctors when you said that kind of like doctor referrals kind of thing, you know, like, I don't know. Maybe I'm not on the right track and I apologize.

rudy (26:33.729)
I wish I could think of something current, but what we're dealing with is a problem that's existed since non-current times, where that type of stuff was more popular. I mean, really, that's what we're looking at, and that's what it should be, and that's what these organizations should be doing, because to tell you the truth, I have no idea what the fuck any of them do with the money we pay them.

Andrea The Pool Girl (27:02.322)
Yeah. Except for like, I mean, you see them at the trade shows and stuff and then you, that's fine.

rudy (27:11.161)
Which brings up an important point because now I'm sure I'm going to get some.

Andrea The Pool Girl (27:13.162)
And they put, don't they have, they offer classes, I'm sorry, they offer classes and continuing education and stuff like that, right? Most of them, some of them, right. But you get discounts on them. I don't know, I have to renew my CPO certification by the way, so I'm gonna be, I don't know if I wanna go with you or not. I'm just kidding.

rudy (27:22.597)
They do, and you have to pay for them.

rudy (27:28.102)
Do you?

rudy (27:32.005)
What do you know?

rudy (27:37.741)
Nobody knows is that are those prices that you're paying discounted because you're a member? I don't know. How much does it cost to teach a class? How much does it cost to get all that stuff together? I don't know.

Andrea The Pool Girl (27:50.85)
We're gonna find out when I come to register for my CPO research and then, oh, all right.

rudy (27:57.505)
No, it's not the same thing. It's not the same. What you're talking about is two different things. Why isn't the education, if you're a member, free? You've already paid them money.

Andrea The Pool Girl (28:07.231)
No, I agree with you.

rudy (28:09.75)
I don't know.

Andrea The Pool Girl (28:10.899)
It should be free.

rudy (28:12.333)
Like I said, I know that some of the money, a good portion of the money goes toward lobbying and lobbyists and government agencies and that type of thing and working on getting those different laws and rules and things into play. So I'm not denying that a lot of them do a very good job there. They do. But is that where all the D'amuto's money goes?

I don't know. Where does all the money for teaching the class go? I mean, obviously, these are board-level things that people would look at, and I am not the member of a board of any trade association. So, but what I don't see is anybody actively looking to portray pool professionals as professionals to the public.

Andrea The Pool Girl (28:43.15)
I don't either.

rudy (29:12.493)
And I think we need that more than anything.

Andrea The Pool Girl (29:14.762)
Yeah, no, you're right.

Andrea The Pool Girl (29:18.878)
to the stigma there's just the whole you know like stoner barefoot like we're all spicoli and shit you know

rudy (29:26.657)
Exactly. All right, let's bring this to an end.

Andrea The Pool Girl (29:32.734)
All right, well, uh, so yeah, thanks for everybody for listening. Thanks to everybody. Thanks to everybody for listening. Thank you to our sponsors as always. And also follow us, you know, like us, share us, review us, do all of those things. And wait.

Weren't we doing, I was gonna say like, follow us on social medias too, cause Rudy's got a page, I've got a page, right? What's your page, Rudy?

rudy (30:03.173)
We all have a page. Every, you've got a page, she's got a page, we all have a page.

Andrea The Pool Girl (30:07.822)
Oh, we all have pages. We all have social medias. Follow the talking pools podcast page. There's that go to the talking pools, Facebook group. Rudy, what's your handles your at? What are your at? Aren't you talking pools on Tik TOK though?

rudy (30:14.873)
My handle is...

rudy (30:19.129)
@CPOclass on everything. I am at CPO class on everything.

rudy (30:28.761)
Well, I am, but you asked me personally. I'm at CPO class. Talking pools is talking pools.

Andrea The Pool Girl (30:31.81)
Well, there's that.

All right, do you have more than, do you have more than one TikTok? Oh, okay. I see. I am the, I am myself on TikTok. And since Rudy is not going to ask me, you can find me, Adventures of the Pool Girl, and also just me, myself, Andrea and Anini, cause that's just my name. So there, there you go. What was it Rudy we were going to say? Sorry, go ahead.

rudy (30:38.105)
No, I only have the Diving Pool's TikTok.

but look for us there. So, all right, everybody, until.

rudy (30:58.817)
Until next time, be good, be safe.

Andrea The Pool Girl (31:05.258)
What's your problem?