Episode 222: "What I've Learned" with Eric Knight of Orenda and the Rule Your Pool Podcast

Episode Summary: 

Today, we sit down with Eric Knight, a sales and marketing leader for Orenda, a company which offers a line of eco-friendly water treatments. Orenda also provides free industry-leading tools to pool professionals such as The Orenda Calculator™, and educational resources like Orenda Academy™ and the Rule Your Pool Podcast. 

Listen in as Eric discusses what he has learned from hosting the “Rule Your Pool’ podcast and the importance of approaching water treatment from water’s point of view. In other words, the practitioner will always get more insight by asking, “What does water want?” rather than mindlessly dumping your run-of-the mill chemicals just because that is the unfortunate norm in the industry. 

He also talks about what separates “good” pool companies from “great” ones. It’s not about skill nor intelligence. Rather, truly great companies have a culture which respects and obeys physics instead of trying to fight it—by accepting that they can’t defeat water. This is a company which embraces the reality of problem pools being the norm, and encourages its technicians to speak up about them, all so as to be able to standardize their approach to pool chemistry. 

Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Learn: 

• 04:50 - About the Rule Your Pool Podcast 
• 11:36 - Using Orenda’s learning resources 
• 17:01 - How Orenda looks at water differently 
• 23:04 - Why to view LSI first, range chemistry second 
• 28:28 - What separates “good” from “great” 
• 33:03 - Getting the team on the same page 
• 38:04 - Achieving LSI balance 
• 53:46 - Summarizing the standardization process 
• 58:03 - Incentivizing your team to adopt this culture 

Sponsors: 

• Leslie’s 
• Primate 

Connect with Guest: 

• Rule Your Pool Podcast 
• Website 
• Facebook 
• Instagram 
• Twitter 
• LinkedIn 
• YouTube 
• App 
• Academy 

Connect with Pool Chasers: 

• Website 
• Instagram 
• Facebook 
• Facebook Group 
• Twitter 
• YouTube 
• Patreon 

Key Quotes from Episode: 

• We look at water from the perspective of, “What does water want?” Because I promise you, water never read those textbooks. 
• Water is water. Water doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care how good you are and how long you’ve been doing this. Water cares only about one thing, and that’s equilibrium. 
• Water is best when it’s as pure as possible with as little in it as possible. We want the most raw “naked” water as you can have. At Orenda, we want to remove things from your water. We don’t want to put more things into your water. 
• There are only two types of pool professionals out there: those who have some problem pools, and those who refuse to admit that they have some problem pools.