When you first meet someone, it’s always a good fallback to ask about their history — where they came from, how they got where they are. But in the pool and spa industry, this isn’t just a small-talk strategy, it is legitimate anthropological research.
Humble Beginnings
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Industry luminaries share the early jobs that helped them reach their current heights.
Play slideshowPool and spa professionals come from all over, whether they started brushing pools in high school, or entered the industry as a second career, equipped with an Ivy League education and Fortune 500 credentials.
But even the most highfalutin among us started small. Some bussed tables, others trimmed hedges, but no position should be discounted in the potential it offers. You never know where the most valuable lessons will come.
And those seemingly peripheral first careers? They always carry over into the next.
In this year's annual PSP Expo issue, a group of pool and spa professionals discuss their past lives — first jobs and earlier careers that helped place them in the positions they now enjoy. In most cases, our subjects found that these jobs affected their long-term careers in surprisingly profound ways. We'll be revealing those stories next week but, in the meantime, enjoy the slideshow, which shows fun nuggets from a few industry folks who you'll no doubt recognize: Larry Caniglia, executive director of NESPA
Brian Quint, president of Aqua Quip
Donna Williams, CMO/general manager of PoolCorp
John Oldfield, president of Oldfield Inc., and current IPSSA president
Michael Beach, Assoc. Director of Healthy Water at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Patrick Walls, CEO of United Aqua Group
