How a 2nd Generation Pool Builder leveraged Certifications to perfect Pool Installations

Audio Transcript

Mark Lamberth
Okay, welcome to another episode of the Contractor Grow Show put on my Rokket Science. My name is Mark, and today I have a guest, Ali Felcshow from Crystal Pools in Charleston, in Columbia, South Carolina. And she’s got a great story to tell. I’ve taken a look at your stuff. Ali, I see that you have been in business for quite a long time. You guys have got a lot of amazing credentials, kind of a big footprint in sort of the online space, and so welcome to the show, Allie. Thank you for being here.

Ali Felschow
Well, thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Mark Lamberth
Yeah, fantastic. So you’re a pool designer, you do sort of high-end pool installations, gorgeous work. Looks like you’ve got a wide area that you operate in. Maybe you can tell us just a little bit about the history of the business and how you got into this.

Ali Felschow
Well, I actually kind of fell into it. My father started Crystal Pools in 1972. He was actually a veterinarian and he decided to get a pool built and the guy started building it, took his money and ran away. And he actually hired a friend of his out of California that owned Anthony Pools, and he sent some guys down in a couple of months and he hired some people. And that’s how the company got started.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting.

Ali Felschow
And I had no interest in it, didn’t pay a bit of attention to it. I went to school in Atlanta for advertising and art and came back and worked a summer for ’em, and I got to do my art and I got to sell, and I didn’t really know I was any good at selling. And so it just kind of fit. And the pool business either gets in your blood or it doesn’t, and it got in my blood. So that was it.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting. And that’s been over 30 years ago now that you came into the business?

Ali Felschow
Yeah, I started, I worked for ’em mostly in the veterinary clinic when I was young, but in 1990 is when I came on board full time. That shows my age. Don’t talk about age.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, we’ll leave that off the show. Good. Fantastic. Great. And then your service area, I mean it seems like kind of a wide area that you work in. Is it a couple of hours outside of Columbia that you work in that zone?

Ali Felschow
Yeah, we’ve actually gone a little further than that depending on what the job is. We’ve done some work on Bald Head Island. We actually did the commercial pool over there and a couple residential pools. But yeah, if it’s a particularly interesting project, we’ll travel a little bit further. But most of the time we’re in about a two hour range where we work. Okay.

Mark Lamberth
Okay. Interesting. And how many people do you have on your crew these days? Probably fluctuates some, but

Ali Felschow
Yeah, we have 14 in-house on our crew. And then of course we have some subcontractors that have been with us for a very long time, so we have a good base.

Mark Lamberth
Okay. Amazing. And then do crews go out? I mean, how many folks do you have on a particular job at a time?

Ali Felschow
It depends on exactly what we’re doing. Our specialty crews, our three, they do our tile and coping or detail work, that’s the time that takes, well, it takes the most amount of time to do those portions of the job, but typically it’s three to five guys on a location.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, amazing. And something that we’ve seen with with some of our clients and with folks that we talk to contractors, something they struggle with some is recruiting and keeping people on their team. I mean, there’s kind of a shortage of specialized talent out there these days. I mean, you’ve got a nice crew, 14 folks on your crew. What do you do to replenish and or keep retention of folks on your crew that works well for you?

Ali Felschow
Well, the biggest thing I think is treating the people that are there. They have a family, kind of family first. We try to work four tens, so the guys have three days off and again, more time with family, that kind of thing, just being conscientious so they have a life outside of work and then just trying to make it a place. Work is work, but trying to make it something that is not a task to do. They want to come in and they want to work. But the biggest thing is the training. We’re an IWI member and getting them the education, the more knowledgeable they are about what they’re doing, the less I have to babysit per se. And that gives them an elevated status in our industry, which is highly uneducated, the swimming pool industry. So only in the last, probably since 2002 or 2004 was there really a good educational base where you could learn from people that were extremely knowledgeable in their industry, whether it be pneumatically, applied concrete or plaster or steel installations. So now we’ve got people from the American Concrete Institute, just a good base of knowledgeable institutions behind us that have taken an interest in the swimming pool business and realized it’s a billion dollar industry. I think we were overlooked prior to that and then Covid just exploded. That Interesting.

Ali Felschow
Unfortunately was good for the pool industry.

Mark Lamberth
Right, interesting. So I mean, folks are staying at home I guess for obvious reasons. I mean, they want to entertain themselves there. They want to stay safe. So the pandemic was great for you guys business, probably a huge event for you guys, huh?

Ali Felschow
Oh yeah. I mean it was frightening, but then it was like, wow, the phones just, we couldn’t keep up. We were had a year plus lead time on jobs. And so for the swimming pool industry, COVID was a good thing. Made people look inward rather than where were they going to travel to next? They’re going to travel to their backyard.

Mark Lamberth
Right, interesting.

Ali Felschow
And it increased the budgets. That was nice too. It’s very rare in South Carolina. I get a client that says, okay, let me see what you got. And it’s like, well, I got a lot.

Mark Lamberth
Right.

Ali Felschow
How much money do you have? Right,

Mark Lamberth
Right, right. Interesting. Okay. And so now that, I mean Covid is over, have you guys seen, is it back to normal or back to sort of how it was pre covid or is it still kind of elevated and folks are just more in tune with their backyard and wanting to spend more time there?

Ali Felschow
Yeah, sure. It is slowed a little, but I don’t think it’s gone back to what it was previously. I think the south is a little bit far behind the west coast out there, people, it’s a necessity to have the outdoor space. It’s part of the house. You don’t get the house without the outdoor space. And so we’re starting to see that in South Carolina, which is sweet.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting. Okay, fantastic. So I noticed here on your site, you guys have got a ton of certifications. So I mean four CPO, certified technicians, general contractor, keystone certified installer, service technician certifications, Genesis three SWD, registered credits. I can tell this is really important to you to have these certifications and you’re proud of them. Why do those matter to you? Why do those matter?

Ali Felschow
When I first started working for my, one of the problems we had was when we were applying our shotcrete, we have a spa and you have a pool, and we would get a crack between the two of them.

Ali Felschow
And it was like, why is this happening? So I started taking Genesis classes, which was the first university the swimming pool industry ever had available. We had the pool and spa industry and that kind of thing. And they’re good institutions, so I don’t mean to put them down, but as far as the education, we didn’t have the leaders in the different industries involved in that. The A CI, they didn’t have a hands-on involvement in our industry. It was like, yeah, and a swimming pool. We deal with everything. We deal with soils, we deal with cement, we deal with lumber, water, every aspect we have to learn how to control. And we were just doing it the way daddy told us to do it.

Ali Felschow
And so I went to the class to check it out and realized, okay, well I go in there and now I have Bill Drake Lee, who was Drake Lee Industries. He does the tunnels in New York, he shoots them, he’s an aci. I certified nozzle, man. We started learning about how the pneumatically concrete is pneumatically applied, how it shouldn’t be applied. We just learned about what we were doing. And then I came back and my husband got a CI certified and we bought a pump and we got our crews and we got them certified and we started shooting our own pools. And voila, we’ve got no cracks between the pool and the spa anymore. We just weren’t, our compressor wasn’t strong enough, we weren’t applying the material properly. And so that was it for me. It was like, okay, I’m taking every class I can take and I’m going to build the best product I can build.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting. Yeah, and I get that. I can see that quality is absolutely critical for you guys at the top priority. So taking those certifications and going out and learning from those experts and getting the kind of badge of approval, graduating from those classes has been a huge piece of getting the level of quality that you guys want to be able to stand behind. Huh?

Ali Felschow
Yep. Big deal ing.

Mark Lamberth
Okay. Fantastic. So Ali, I see that you’ve got a robust website. Our listeners are growing their own contracting and remodeling businesses and always interested to learn what’s working to grow them. I imagine you get a lot of word of mouth. Does all of your business come from word of mouth or does some from advertising or how do you guys source new client work?

Ali Felschow
Well, I will tell you radio is a big part. We do a good bit of radio advertising. And it’s funny that we’re on a podcast because right after the election it was like, okay, well we need to start doing some podcasts because that works well.

Ali Felschow
And that’s I think where a lot of people are getting their information now. So I think that’s a huge way to target more advertising dollars going forward from this point. But we’ve done radio over the years. Billboard advertising has always been good. It’s extremely expensive and you got to get the good spots, so that’s helpful. But most of our referrals are just that. They’re referrals from repeat clients, and a lot of times we’ll do one or two pools for the same client. They know if we build it, we’re not perfect. If we make a mistake, we’ll go back and fix it. Interesting. And my son’s now joined the business, so we’re going for the third generation and we’re here for the long term.

Mark Lamberth
I love it. Fantastic. Great. And then regarding what does your sales process look like? So I mean, somebody contacts you, let’s say for instance, off radio, maybe they’re a stranger and they’re not a referral. How will you go through and scope out the project? What does the process look like if someone were to call you and say, Hey, I’m interested in a poll. I heard you guys advertising on the radio. What are the steps that you take to ultimately sort of turn that person into a customer?

Ali Felschow
Sure. The first thing is just kind of chat with ’em, get to know ’em. One, we want to make sure they like us and we can work with them. It’s got to be a symbiotic relationship kind of thing. And the big thing is getting the client to open up and tell us. A lot of people are afraid to express what they really want because they’re afraid. There’s a couple dollar signs behind that.

Ali Felschow
So you got to let ’em know you got a dream. Now’s the time to dream. If we’re going to design, let’s design the dream. You can always revamp your dream, but I never want to go out and say, well, why didn’t you give me that option? I’m going to give you the option. I want to give you the dream. And then most of the time I go to the house, we’ll walk through the house. I want to see how the client lives, what their lifestyle are, they’re comfy, how do they live and what are their textures and what are their colors and what’s their egress in and out of the house and how do they use it and what’s their line of sight? What do they see from inside the house? And then talk to ’em about how they’re going to use the backyard. Do they have big parties? Is it just them and a couple of friends, real kind of intimate feeling. So got to get a real good idea of how they want to live. And then I start with tissue paper and we get soils testing, and we get the GI IS imaging, and then we start putting everything on AutoCAD and Revit and we start building it and get all the hydraulics done. And then hopefully we do a reveal that knocks their socks off.

Mark Lamberth
I love it. That is so awesome. And the reveal, meaning the finished product or the design of it?

Ali Felschow
Usually we will take it into 3D imaging. Most people are visual now, and it lets you see the textures and the colors and the water, and it’s an amazing sales tool. Really interesting. If you can get them to put on a pair of glasses and look out there and see what their backyard’s going to look like finished, you take away that concern because it is all there. So when you’re done, you can take that image and you can look right at what you built in the backyard, and they should be identical. Amazing. A finished product before you ever

Mark Lamberth
Start. I love it. So it sounds like some expensive tech. I mean, we’re talking about what type of goggles do they use and how does that work to go out and actually be able to visualize the 3D image of it?

Ali Felschow
Well, we can do the goggles. Some people get a little, I dizzy.

Mark Lamberth
Dizzy with the goggles. Right, okay.

Ali Felschow
So that’s an option we give ’em. The other one is doing it on a computer screen just like we’re doing with a Zoom. And of course with the software that we use, we can make a video forum, so we’ll put it to music and they’re walking through the job and swimming down in the pool and coming up and seeing everything that they’re going to see when the job’s complete. So you get immersed in the project just through the

Mark Lamberth
Video. Amazing, amazing. And this is obviously before they’ve made a commitment to do this. So you guys are investing this, doing the soil testing, hydraulics, looking at all of this and mean, this is before someone even says let’s go. I mean, this is just all the prep that you do to talk to ’em about what’s possible.

Ali Felschow
Yeah. Now we do charge for our time. We put a lot of hours into it. An average project is probably at least 40 hours of time between Topo and just the design process itself before you start getting it onto the computer. And we actually have three different computer systems that we’re using. We’re learning Revit right now, so we’re in the baby process of that. But so currently we take it to AutoCAD and sketch up and sketch up as a 3D modeling, and then we go into a software called Lumion and Lumion just makes it look real. Now you’re there.

Mark Lamberth
Love it. Okay. Something you had said a few minutes ago. Interesting. I mean, when you first talk to someone, especially if they’re a stranger and they weren’t referred from another customer of yours in the past, sometimes they don’t want to open up because they see dollar signs and they’re thinking, okay, if I dream this and talk to everything that I could hope for, it might be a 10 million pool or whatever, expensive. So what do you do to help folks open up and be able to kind of dream and not be worried about, I dunno, censoring themselves so that they keep the budget down?

Ali Felschow
It’s a very fine line. I try to get people to look at other projects that they’ve seen. Everybody usually when you’re looking for something or interested in a car or whatever, you go online and start looking at stuff. So

Ali Felschow
I encourage them to do that and say, I don’t care if you see an image and it doesn’t even have a pool in it, you just like what you see in that outdoor image that’s going to help me. I see patterns, colors, textures, whether it be landscaping grasses or a certain color pool. They’ll pick the same color every single time and they don’t realize that they’re doing it. And then I try to start talking to them about actual numbers. There’s a different type of pools that you can get and that are going to be in different ranges of pricing. So vinyl, then fiberglass, and then what we do with shock creep being the most expensive where you get on HGTV and they can redo a house and a kitchen for 50 grand. It’s like, I can’t do that in reality. So it’s like I hate when they watch their shows like, no, I can’t do all that for 50 grand.

Mark Lamberth
Sure.

Ali Felschow
That upfront conversation about money is really hard. But again, that’s getting to know ’em and talk to ’em. But that is always a discussion with me upfront because I don’t want to do a design for anybody and then that not be anywhere near the budget that they can spend. And there are those people that aren’t going to, they’re not going to let it go. And then I feel like, okay, I’ve walked you through my process of, okay, this is what you’re looking at. This is what you want. This is where your budget should be, whether it’s 200 to 500 or 500 to a million. If they then say, okay, go. I go. I feel like I’ve educated upfront as much as I can, and if you don’t tell me to stop and you’re ready to go the design process, then we’re going,

Mark Lamberth
I love it.

Ali Felschow
Jumping in.

Mark Lamberth
Love it. How long does it take to build, say from very beginning to very end? One of these major pool projects?

Ali Felschow
On the higher end, there’s usually a lot of changes with those clients see new finishes, they travel somewhere in the middle of the project and they saw this, and so now we’ve got to

Mark Lamberth
Add change orders.

Join myself and Andy Moya of Moya Painting and Decorating on this podcast.

Ali Felschow
Yeah, we try to eliminate those. But usually on those higher end projects, that’s just the way they roll. So you’re probably a six month to a year. And again, that depends on changes. Obviously the less changes, the faster we can go. There’s no slowdown on a two 50 to 500. You’re probably a four to six month

Mark Lamberth
Process. Great. I’m taking a bunch of notes here. Learned a lot here. Amazing. And is the permitting process for everything you guys do fairly straightforward? I mean, where do you guys find, are there any specific areas that you guys have hiccups with getting permits or parts of the city that slows thing down around a specific part of things?

Ali Felschow
There’s a couple municipalities that, I mean, I just had to sign a beach erosion in county that doesn’t even have a beach. So it was like,

Mark Lamberth
Great,

Ali Felschow
Really not sure why I’m signing this document, but I will. But to be honest with you, we have some counties that have absolutely no permitting at all in our area. Nothing. They don’t.

Mark Lamberth
Oh, interesting. Okay.

Ali Felschow
Yeah, I’m not a fan of government. I think sometimes the permitting process, and I will relate this to my industry only because I don’t know about builders and that kind of thing, is that what the public has a perception that the county is out looking behind us to make sure that we’re doing the things we’re supposed to be doing, and that’s not what they’re doing. Interesting. I think the homeowner has a misconception of what’s being provided for that permit.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting.

Ali Felschow
Which is why we take the certification. So we’ve got the information to say, we’ve got the blueprints and we’ve got the hydraulics, and we’ve got everything to back up what we’re doing. So if we get in that situation, this is why we did what we did, we’ve got the calcs to back it up. But no.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting. Okay. And then just regarding sort of the business, we’re the contractor growth show here, we’re always talk with folks about growing the business in different ways. We talk with some businesses that are really kind of at a stable place and they’re, we’ve got our team, we’ve got our thing down. And I mean, you guys have been at this for a long, long time. I mean, would you guys fit into the category of we are like it just like it is with the crew that we have and the business that we have? Or do you guys have plans to grow over the next few years?

Ali Felschow
Absolutely.

Mark Lamberth
To grow. I

Ali Felschow
Think if you’re static, it’s not good. And we are actually going into a fiberglass division for our company, which we’ve never done before. And it’s a good market in our area. Just finding the proper manufacturer that we wanted to deal with to make sure that we had a good product coming to us, then our responsibility is making sure it gets put in properly. I would tell you that our biggest challenge, and particularly over covid, was employees and getting the bodies in to do work that want to have the training and want to educate themselves while they’re working, which to me sounds crazy. Why would,

Mark Lamberth
Right. Of course.

Ali Felschow
But yeah, it’s hard finding those people that really want to do that.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting.

Ali Felschow
Our biggest hurdle is making sure we’ve got the base behind us. If we sell it, we got to be able to deliver it now. So that’s the concern with the growth, I think, for most people in my industry.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting. And do you have one or two tips? I mean, you’ve talked about education, you’ve talked about culture and really kind of focusing on folks’, families. Do you have another tip for our audience here of how, if they’re running into the same thing and most contractors remodel, their folks that we talked to are how do we grow our team? Do you have a tip on how to do that?

Ali Felschow
I wouldn’t tell you I got the secret sauce. I’m looking for the secret sauce too.

Mark Lamberth
Okay. If I find it, I’ll tell you. I’ll let you know.

Ali Felschow
I read a lot of self-help books, make sure that I’m growing and I’m looking at my people. I’m looking at myself of things that I need to correct and that kind of stuff.

Mark Lamberth
Oh,

Ali Felschow
That’s awesome too. But yeah, I’m looking for the secret sauce too. So Mark, when you find that person on your podcast, that’s Got it.

Mark Lamberth
Okay. Lemme know, look for the recruiting secret sauce talent to get on the podcast. Great. And then here, I think kind of drawing towards the end, Allie, this has been fantastic. One thing I wanted to ask you about, we did a lot of research and I noticed that you are a fellow dog

Ali Felschow
Lover. Oh yeah.

Mark Lamberth
I noticed quite a lot of posting and helping orphan dogs get find a new home. Tell me about your love of animals and how you help out in your community with that.

Ali Felschow
Well, I have a foster right now, typically we have a real issue in state of South Carolina with breeders and overbreeding, and most of the shelters are full. The shelter I’m currently working with is a no kill shelter, but I do work with several rescues and most of the dogs are taken up north because they have much more stringent laws than they do down here on the east coast for it. But yeah, I’ll take a couple of puppies and bottle feed ’em. We had four over last Thanksgiving, but yet we bring ’em in and they go to work with me, and I have, all my dogs are rescues at home. They’re all crashed out around me right now. But it’s a love, like I said, my dad was a veterinarian, so I grew up cleaning kennels when I was walk home from elementary school across the street to my dad’s office, and he put me to work. So

Mark Lamberth
That’s

Ali Felschow
Awesome. That’s how I keep that going. And when I retire, that will be what I will do for my days till I can’t do it anymore.

Mark Lamberth
Well, fantastic. I love it. Well, fantastic. So if folks are in Columbia and want to have a new pool build or just want to reach out to learn more about what Chick are doing, if they’ve heard some things here on the show, they’d love to ask you a question too about what are a couple of good ways to get in touch with you?

Ali Felschow
Well, they can email me, which of course my email is listed on our website, but it is Ali a l i@crystalpoolsllc.com. They can always give us a call. We’ve got somebody on staff Monday through Friday from seven 30 to four, and our phone number is eight six five one two zero zero. And I think my cell phone’s also listed on our website, so they can always give me a call on my cell phone. But yeah, we also have access through our website where you can go directly onto our website and reach out to us with any questions or that kind of thing that you’ve got. If we don’t do that or we can’t help you, there’s a bunch of good businesses that we work with in different areas around town, and we’re happy to refer you to those people that specialize in whatever type of pool that you’ve got that we might not currently work on.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, perfect. And I mean, you do not only new installations, but also maintenance of pool, is that correct?

Ali Felschow
Yeah, we do new installations. We do remodels of existing pools from just basic things to ripping into it and adding to it. And then we have a service department where we go out and service broken parts, replace pumps, that kind of thing. Then of course, we have a maintenance department where we maintain those pools when people don’t want to.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, perfect. Okay, great. So your website, crystal Pools llc.com. It’s C-R-Y-S-T-A-L, crystal pools.com, LLL C, crystal Pools llc.com. Perfect. And Allie, thank you so much. Provide a lot of great information here. I’ve got some great notes of everything we talked about here today. I’m going to look through these and this will go live here in the next few days. So thank you again for sharing all your valuable knowledge and wisdom with our audience here. I got a lot out of

Ali Felschow
Myself. Awesome. Thank you for having me.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, thank you. Okay. Alright, bye-Bye

Ali Felschow
Bye.