Meet Don Porter, Bryan and Carlee Barnes of LA Pool Guys

Today we’d like to introduce you to Don Porter, Bryan and Carlee Barnes.

LA Pool Guys was started by Bryan and his college roommate back in 2001. While Bryan was on his Honeymoon with now business partner and wife Carlee his college roommate sent Bryan an e-mail about starting a pool business. With zero experience and a couple entrepreneurial spirits LA Pool Guys was born.

They started in the aftermath of the dot com recession. It’s funny looking back and thinking that they almost named the company lapoolguys.com. They luckily dropped the redundancy and stuck with LA Pool Guys and never looked back. The name has grown as a staple for pool service in Los Angeles, Orange County, the San Fernando Valley, Long Beach, South Bay, Pasadena, and surrounding cities.

When Carlee and Bryan got back from their honeymoon they moved in the same apartment complex as his new business partner. This apartment complex happened to have a pool and became the first account that LA Pool Guys serviced. Future Director of Operations Don Porter and long-time friend of Bryan’s also lived in this apartment complex. They always joke about how Don had an opportunity in 2001 to join LA Pool Guys when they had one pool. But in time Don would become an integral partner in LA Pool Guys.

Bryan’s business partner left the company about 1 year and 1/2 in to pursue other interests, but Bryan wasn’t ready to let LA Pool Guys go. Shortly after that arguably LA Pool Guys best asset Carlee joined the business. Carlee has been absolutely crucial in making LA Pool Guys the company that it is today. She has dedicated her time and energy in keeping LA Pool Guys on track while also raising and home schooling the Barnes 3 boys. She’s pretty much superhuman!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Getting started just after the dot com crash was actually a really good thing. LA Pool Guys enjoyed some really great growth over the next 7 years. The dot com era saw the birth of a lot of new platforms for businesses to grow with. We took advantage of all of the new marketing strategies available through google, yahoo (at the time) and Microsoft’s paid advertising platforms, as well as website seo and growing social platforms. This was a time when other service companies weren’t taking advantage of some of these opportunities.

This time was also a huge time for home buying. LA Pool Guys saw exponential increases in business from first time home buyers looking for a pool guy. Times were great for everyone in business it seemed until the great recession struck.

Pools, spas, and fountains are interesting in a downturn because they are still there and they still need to be serviced. However job loss and loss in equity at the time was so prevalent that people started servicing their pools on their own, or went in house for commercial pool service. As the recession got worse people began losing their homes at an unprecedented rate and the global economy seemed to be on the brink of failure. These were scary times. LA Pool Guys like other businesses lost 30-40% of our clients. But as I said, the pools, spas and fountains don’t go away.

In a funny twist we started getting calls from banks with pools that were green and needed to be managed. Sometimes an entire portfolio of swimming pools would need to be serviced for banks as asset managers became the new property managers. Those were weird scary times, and the pool business was giving us some good insight as to just how hard our economy was hit and how much people lost during those times.

I am glad we made it through as a company. I believe that we got stronger by staying resilient and pushing through. LA Pool Guys was “stress tested” as were all business at that time, and we survived. We’re very proud to know that we have built a company that can stand the test of the second largest economy crash in history.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with LA Pool Guys – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
I think I touched on this a bit in the last section in that we are proud to have made it through the great recession.

LA Pool Guys us unique among pool service companies. We have always built our company around the expectations of our commercial properties (or multi-unit Residential). This means that we have built a company that provides high end quality service for HOA’s, apartment complexes, and business centers. The Los Angeles Health Department has requirements that need to be met in order to provide services at properties like these.

#1: you must be certified with the Los Angeles Health Department as a professional pool service technician.
#2: Los Angeles Health Department required detailed documentation for services performed each visit.

You would actually be surprised by the number of service technicians in Los Angeles who are not certified professionals. All of the LA Pool Guys service technicians are either certified through the Los Angeles Health Department, or are in the process of certification. We have had this requirement from day one. It is very likely that if your service technician does not have commercial properties in their portfolio, that they are not certified.

Our technicians are also required to fill out a log sheet each visit. We hold our technicians accountable to this and consider this log sheet as verification that services expected have been performed.

The great thing about LA Pool Guys building their business from a commercial portfolio perspective is that single home residential clients get the same service from our company that is expected from the high end luxury property in Los Angeles.

LA Pool Guys is also one of the first companies to use automation as part of our scheduling process and customer update system. We pride ourselves in keeping in tune with enterprise solutions in the ever changing and growing technology age. We are always striving to see how we can implement technology in ways that create more efficiency and better communication in turn providing a better service to our customers.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
The future is always fun to think about. That’s where an entrepreneur’s mind can usually be found. We are always looking into ways that we can incorporate all of the new technology into our business. I can see app development and integration for our technicians and clients. We have also been researching the block chain technology and how this will be integrated in several business over the next couple years with regards to smart contracts, payment methods etc. Being born out of the dot com age I think we are always forward thinking and open to how the changes of the future might be integrated into our company today. It’s exciting to think of all of the possibilities that might be available even by the end of this year.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lapoolguys.com
• Phone: 213.999.7665 (POOL)
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LAPoolGuys/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lapoolguys?lang=en
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/la-pool-guys-long-beach-2
• Other: www.lapoolguys.com

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