The average person’s image of a pool servicer is some teenager, a boy typically, who comes once a week, does a couple hours work for some pocket money, drinks a glass of lemonade and goes on his way.
But, some want to bring a level of professionalism to the industry.
Pool Scouts is a pool cleaning franchise service based out of Virginia Beach, Virginia that is making a splash in Dallas-Fort Worth.
The company offers cleaning and minor repair work such as skimming, brushing and vacuuming the pool, in addition to cleaning out equipment and checking and adjusting chemical levels as necessary. More services than the typical “pool boy.”
The company sent out a targeted campaign in the D-FW metroplex, looking for industry small business owners to convert to the franchise model — that’s when they found Mike Blake, then-owner of Little Elm-based Sapphire Pools and Spas.
Blake had a varied career that ultimately led to him running a signage business that he had to close down after the 2008 economic downturn and crash.
A friend of Blake’s was in the pool business and turned him on to the industry, which he has now been working in for four years.
“It’s low capital, it’s fairly easy to get into, but I had kind of grown to a point where I stopped,” Blake said, explaining he wasn’t acquiring new customers beyond the 40 accounts he’d kept for a couple years.
He knew he needed to do something.
“There’s plenty of pools. I wasn’t marketing well enough to get new accounts,” Blake said. “So I had kind of been looking around for something to help me with the marketing, and that’s when I came across Pool Scouts.”
Blake said Pool Scouts’ marketing skills and growth potential made converting from a small business to a franchise company an easy choice. Pool Scouts had the ability to help him recruit new customers via direct mail and social media marketing, in addition to assisting him with back-end technical needs.
“The fundamental reasons why a conversion is a good idea … is we bring a couple core competencies to the mix for the pool service industry, and one of the fundamental things we do is marketing. And so that, really, is all-encompassing,” Pool Scouts CEO Michael Wagner said. “It includes the branding side of the business, public relations, website development and updates, and complete digital marketing support including pay-per-click and search-engine optimization.”
Blake was Pool Scouts’ first franchisee to convert from an independent business owner rather than starting fresh, and so his journey was a little different. While he still had to receive training on the Pool Scouts’ system and app, he came in with a lot of industry knowledge that the brand new franchisees don’t usually have.
“As far as the conversion, it was a matter of going in and getting the training, getting the vehicle, and then informing my existing customer base that they’re going to be getting a better level of service,” Blake said.
When he used to go around cleaning and servicing clients’ pools as part of Sapphire Pools, Blake says he simply left handwritten notes on the back door for the client to explain the work he did. Now, however, through the use of Pool Scouts’ app he can email his clients before and after pictures of their pool, as well as update them on the chemical levels, all in addition to letting them know, in detail, the work he completed.
For Blake’s Sapphire Pools clientele, he says most everyone was happy to hear about his transition, especially with new services like the online reporting coming along with it.
Pool Scouts currently operates in 26 territories across nine states — New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas and Tennessee — and has mapped out a potential 31 new territories in the D-FW area.
Blake operates three metroplex territories, the maximum for each franchisee, on 10-year contracts. He also has one full-time employee in addition to his wife, Michelle, who is helping him with administrative duties, networking and customer recruitment while he gets up and going.
“The goal is to be at two employees and two vans by the end of the year,” Blake said. “I basically got Frisco and North Plano, and a little corner of Allen. In each franchised area, they’re basically targeting over 6,000 pools with a household income of over $75,000. My first territory that I’m focusing on this year, Frisco, has 7,912.”
Blake’s other two territories have about 5,900 pools a piece, he said.
Wagner explained that there are anywhere from 50,000-56,000 pool service companies in America, most of them mom-and-pop businesses operated by one person who’s out there doing all the work.
“With Mike, he’d been in business for a while and had hit a plateau as far as his customer acquisitions at this point,” Wagner said. “And he really looked at us and said, ‘You guys can get my business to the next level and really create value and scale into a business that didn’t have that, necessarily.’ ”
Pool Scouts targets new customers through direct mail, door flyers and yard signs. While Blake says the pricing for Pool Scouts’ service depends on the size of the pool, the cost is typically in the $40-50/week range. Not much more than an average homeowner will spend on lawn maintenance, Blake said, adding it’s also typically cheaper than an average maid service.
For now, as Blake works on getting his franchise up and going, his role is employee training so he can stay in-office and handle management, customer service and back-end administrative duties, while his employee(s) do the field work and generate reports to send back to him.
Forty-seven-year-old Blake holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Texas Tech. After graduating in ‘88, Blake spent 10 years in the telecom industry, though about 6-7 years into his career is when he went back to school and obtained an M.B.A.from the University of Texas at Dallas to allow him to take on a more managerial role.
Blake started Sapphire Pools four years ago and because the enterprise was really capitol-low he was able to self-fund. He officially became a Pool Scouts franchisee March 5, 2018.
“The main motto for Pool Scouts is ‘Perfect Pools. Scouts Honor.’ So we’re really focused on making sure we do a really good job for the customer, and my background through all of my career has been customer service of some sort,” Blake said.
“I’m really excited about the transition and being able to offer a higher level of customer service,” he continued. “And I’m really kind of excited about the franchise overall because I’m the ninth franchisee and I’m the first conversion, so this is kind of a new experience for all of us.”
Blake is currently running his franchise out of his home in Little Elm but hopes to get to a point where he can purchase a local business location next year in the town of Hackberry where retail commercial space is a little more affordable.
Information about Blake’s franchise is accessible through a Pool Scouts microsite, northplanofrisco.poolscouts.com.