About
I have been the guy you are trying to sell software to.
That is the short version of why any of this exists. Everything I sell now is something I needed when I was running my own crews and could not find, or could not afford, or could not get anybody to explain in plain English.
Twenty years in the trade
I came to Arizona because family was already here doing pools and told me to come do it too. I worked a route for more than ten years before I owned anything at all, and that is the part most people skip. I learned this business from the passenger seat first.
Then I started my own company and bought my accounts out. That is the day the job changed completely. A route is work you can see. A company is payroll, insurance, equipment that breaks on the hottest day of the year, and a phone that rings while both of your hands are busy.
I built McCool’s Pools into service, repair, and a landscaping crew on top of it. Two crews, real payroll, real trucks, and every single problem that comes with both. I have made most of the expensive mistakes available to a small business owner, which turns out to be the most useful thing I own.
What I actually learned
Almost nothing that killed a month was dramatic. It was small and it repeated. A customer called, nobody called back, they called the next guy. A form came in on a Saturday and got answered on Tuesday. A perfectly happy customer never got asked for the review that would have brought in the next three.
None of that is a software problem to the owner. It is a Tuesday. But it is the difference between a good year and a year you spend borrowing.
So we built the fix, on our own company first
I met Carlo Pelosi when he built me a website. We ended up in business together, and BIZ Assist came out of pointing his side of the work at my side of the problem. It ran on my own company before it had a name or a price.
The rule we run it by has not changed since the first version. It is an assistant, not an autopilot. It drafts the reply, it reminds you about the follow up, it keeps the numbers in one place. Nothing gets sent and nothing gets spent without you saying so.
Football
I am the head tackle football coach at Anthem Ridgeline Academy, and if I am honest it is the part of the week I plan everything else around. Coaching taught me the business before business did. Getting a group of people to do something hard, on a schedule, when they are tired, is the same job in both places.
It is also where the school sports platform came from. I wanted live stats for my own program, the tools for it were built for big schools with budgets, so we built the one I wanted.