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Talking Pools Podcast | Thursdays with Steve & Wayne
Hosts: Steve Sherwood and Wayne Ivusich
Insurance Interlude Guest: Pat Grignon
That commercial pool account looks impressive on your client list—but is it making you money, or slowly eating your business alive?
Steve and Wayne dig into the realities of commercial pool service: unpredictable chemical demand, marathon equipment-room visits, failing valves, and bids that leave customers wondering why you charge so much. Steve explains why pricing a hotel pool like a backyard account can turn a big opportunity into a very expensive mistake.
In this week’s Insurance Interlude, Pat Grignon joins Steve to discuss pool pop-ups, chemical spills, acid-wash damage, and what happens when a claim exceeds the coverage available. Steve also shares a balancing-tank disaster from earlier in his career—a story involving a missed valve, a flooded equipment room, and one deeply uncomfortable meeting.
Then it’s back to leak detection, a historic hotel’s relentless equipment problems, and the business skill that keeps showing up in every conversation: communicating before a frustrated customer starts shopping for your replacement.
In this episode:
- Commercial bidding: Accounting for labor, travel around large properties, chemical use, and the residential work you could complete in the same time.
- Facebook’s useful side: How answering a stranger’s questions helped Steve build one of his biggest client relationships.
- Insurance limits: Pat discusses coverage examples, sublimits, and potential exposure when repair costs exceed available insurance.
- Leak-detection training: Why buying a hydrophone doesn’t automatically make you a leak detector—and how confirmed leaks can become training opportunities.
- A hotel equipment nightmare: Elevated water, equipment far below, substantial pressure, hot water, and recurring valve failures.
- Owning service mistakes: How Steve handled missed visits, algae, and the cost of making things right.
- Mentoring without stopping production: Supporting students and technicians while giving employees room to do their jobs.
- Route efficiency: How repeated trips to the truck quietly steal time from your day.
The guys also discuss Leslie’s store-closure news as understood at recording and give a shout-out to the standout pool projects featured in AQUA.
The takeaway: A busy route doesn’t guarantee a profitable business. Price the actual work, understand your coverage, train your people, and keep your customers informed.
Questions for Steve and Wayne?
Email talkingpools@gmail.com and direct your message to either host. Your question could become part of a future episode.
Contains explicit language.
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