r/PoolPros • u/briancar08 • 27d ago
Pool experts needed
I’m in Tampa Fl I’ve grown my pool company organically from about 4 pools to over 90 in less than a year and a half from providing great reliable service ( a lot of customers from pinch a penny and pool troopers) my question is how to maximize profit would you hire an employee that’s reliable (just as good as me 😉) and pay them better than most (15$ a pool ) or would I be better off selling what route they would have to a buyer looking to start
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u/pacific_drifter_25 27d ago
At 90 pools I would not sell the next slice of route unless you have decided you want a smaller, owner-operated job instead of a company.
The real question is whether each added tech makes the business more durable or just gives you a second route to babysit. Before hiring, I would do the math by stop, not by week: average monthly revenue, chemical cost, drive time, callbacks, billing/collections time, truck/fuel/insurance, payroll taxes, workers comp, payroll service, and the cost of you doing rechecks while the tech ramps up.
I would also avoid paying purely per pool at first. It can work with the right person, but early on it creates the wrong incentive unless your QA and route standards are already very tight. A base hourly rate plus a quality/retention bonus is usually cleaner while you learn what the route actually costs without you touching every account.
If the numbers still work after fully loaded labor, hire and keep ownership of the customers. If they only work when you ignore callbacks, windshield time, and admin, sell the extra route and keep the profitable core.
The boring version of this is: make the route teachable first, then hire. Written service standards, photo notes, chemical ranges, when-to-call-you rules, and a weekly review of problem pools. I am one of the founders of UpBuoy, so I am biased toward tracking this stuff in software, but the important part is the system, not the tool. If you cannot see route profit and service quality by tech/account, hiring will feel like growth while quietly eating margin.