Author Description

It was 20 years ago when Al Curtis, "Ask the Pool Guy," became owner of a swimming pool construction/service company. At the age of 26, Al already had seven years of experience in the business and was technically skilled at the work, but was woefully unequipped to handle the business end of things. By sheer grit and determination, Al said "yes" to most anything, handling every lead and trying to turn every phone call into revenue. Customer service was disorganized, and the crews ran from job to job based on who was complaining the loudest. It was no way to run a business, let alone create long term satisfaction. A few years in and Al had managed to put together some solid and friendly crews, and the business was doing okay. But there was something lacking; there was no "special something" that set Al's company apart from any other competitor in his market. After nearly a decade of this, Al was ready to let it go and try something new. Around this same time, I came in as a partner, through a series of coincidences that seem improbable in hindsight. We continued to work to grow the company for a few years, then decided to step away from the pool business for a while and create Insights Group, a business networking community of like-minded people all focused on finding "a better way" to work, to live and to be happy. Then something funny happened. Turning our attention away from the pool business allowed Al to set aside everything he knew and felt about it. And he found that he truly did love the work he was doing; he just needed to find a new way that would be more manageable, more profitable and, yes, more fun. So we began asking ourselves: WHAT IF? What if we could build a company strictly doing the work we love to do? We decided that was the path we would take. We didn't have a map, so we invented one. Through our process that came to be known as Organic Marketing(TM) we began to discover how all the pieces of this new way of doing business could work together. We