How It Started
I didn’t start out wanting to own a pool company. But in 2018, I saw an opportunity in a broken industry—and decided to build something that could scale, acquire, and eventually exit. Here’s how it all went down.
I was in my backyard drinking a beer one morning—because it’s Florida—when I heard my neighbor arguing with his pool guy. After the guy had left, my neighbor started brushing the pool himself. Curious, I asked what happened.
He told me the pool guy said brushing wasn’t part of the job—he only handled chemicals and filter cleanings.
That didn’t sit right with me. I’d owned a pool before. Back when my kids were little and cute, they convinced me that if we got a house with a pool, they’d clean it. I got the house with the pool; they cleaned it exactly zero times. Nobody loves cleaning pools—not adults, not kids, definitely not Dwight, and sure as hell not me. We’re happy to pay someone else to do it. And yet, there Dwight was, doing the hardest part: brushing his pool.
Dwight was a retired Navy sailor. It was clear he didn’t love brushing the pool. And it was even clearer he didn’t love the pool guy.
A dust cloud rising in my front yard drew my attention away from Dwight. The lawn guy was scalping my grass again. He said he did this because the grass grew too fast during the growing season.
It looked awful.
I suggested he leave the grass a little longer to help it grow in healthier—maybe cut it more frequently during the season. He looked at me and said, “Son, Big Earl been cutting grass 40 years. Don’t need no one telling him how.”
I should’ve just said, “Yes, sir.”
That was the last time Big Earl mowed my lawn. I can’t remember the details—it was a weird conversation. Maybe I fired him, maybe he walked off. But I got some new toys that afternoon. First guy on the street with an all battery-powered mower, trimmer, and blower.
Cutting grass in Florida isn’t fun. The sun, the heat, the humidity, the biting gnats—it’s brutal. The novelty of new battery-powered tools wore off fast—by the end of day one. Before long, I realized I didn’t want to be out there doing it myself.
Search for a Scalable Service
So, I started looking for a new lawn service. But as I searched, something clicked: home services in Orlando were wide open. A company that simply acted professionally and gave a damn could clean up. It was a parade of unprofessionalism across home services in Orlando—and a goldmine for anyone who could deliver.
The pool guy, the lawn guy, even the contractor who walked off my renovation project to chase more profitable Hurricane Irma restoration work—they were all the same. The market was flooded with people who didn’t care.
It was broken. It could be better. I could make it better. I started imagining ways I could fix it—do it better—and make money doing it.
I started exploring the idea of buying a landscaping company. But the numbers didn’t make sense. The equipment was expensive, and the margins didn’t justify the capital required.
Still, I was intrigued. I started talking to people in the industry.
One conversation stuck with me. A business development guy from a national landscaping group explained their roll-up strategy. Their parent company was targeting landscape businesses with $2 million in revenue and a 50/50 split between residential and commercial customers.
If the owner didn’t want to sell, they’d flood the market with aggressive pricing until they owned it anyway.
Ruthless. Smart. Effective.
I saw their trucks everywhere. The model worked because it was simple and repeatable: recurring revenue, a balanced customer mix, and centralized operations for efficiency at scale.
That’s when it hit me: why not pools?
I started running the numbers on a pool cleaning business acquisition—less overhead, recurring revenue, and way less equipment than landscaping.
Pool service was a simpler model but had the same recurring revenue potential. I already knew the customer pain points. And I’d seen the industry firsthand—beat-up trucks at every stoplight, prices slashed to the bone, everyone racing to the bottom.
Pools checked every single box.
That was the moment I made the decision. I wasn’t just going to start a pool company—I was going to build a platform.
One that could scale. One that could acquire. One that I could eventually exit.
I didn’t know exactly where it would lead. But I knew exactly where it started:
With the pool guy who wouldn’t brush, the lawn guy with too much pride, and a market begging for someone to take it seriously.
The First Acquisition: Dave’s Pool & Spa
On June 1, 2018, I bought Dave’s Pool & Spa Services—a commercial pool service company in Florida, based in Clermont. At the time, the business generated just under $600,000 in annual revenue. It had four full-time employees, three service trucks, and focused solely on labor-only service. There was no repair division, which left plenty of room for growth.
Originally listed at $590,000, I negotiated the price down to $475,000. I used an SBA loan for small business acquisitions—$368,000—along with a $95,000 seller note and a small down payment. The lender required $58,000 in working capital, which was rolled into the loan and deposited into my account shortly after closing.
This acquisition became the foundation for my pool service roll-up strategy under Outsource Option, LLC.
Later that year, Walker Deibel published Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game. Great book. Wish I had read it sooner. It would’ve saved me a lot of trial and error.
During due diligence, I learned commercial pool companies bill clients at the beginning of the month. I understood it in theory—but the reality hit fast. Two weeks into June, I had already collected $48,215 in revenue. The $58,000 in working capital was still sitting untouched in my account.
That first month, I netted around $15,000. As it turned out, buying a pool company was a smart move.
The first year was all about learning—completely and intensely. I worked in the business full-time, seven days a week.
My mornings started at 5 a.m., inspecting and cleaning pools. Afternoons were spent meeting with clients. At night, I handled the books. I had to learn everything: cleaning, payroll, chemical ordering, insurance, scheduling—every single piece of the puzzle. Believe it or not, there is a right way and a wrong way to brush a pool—and when it’s a 150,000-gallon resort pool, it matters.
It was exhausting. That said, it was necessary.
Keeping customers happy through the ownership change wasn’t easy. Dave—the founder—was experienced and deeply respected. Customers got nervous when they heard the business had been sold.
Dave and I first met at a Panera Bread. The business broker, Mike, had set up the meeting. Dave and his wife, Karen, were both there. After introductions, Mike kicked things off with, “How hard could it be? It’s pools.”
Mike was wrong.
As four strangers sat staring at each other in awkward silence, Dave brought the meeting back on track. What he said next stuck with me—and I credit it for a lot of my success in the service business:
“If they like you, they’ll look for reasons to keep you. If they don’t like you, they’ll look for reasons to replace you.”
It was true—for pools, and for everything else in life.
I looked for reasons—and ways—to keep Dave.
When his formal transition period ended, he agreed to stay on and help keep the business running.
People in the industry—chemical suppliers, the guy behind the counter at the local pool store—they didn’t just know Dave. They called him the King of Clermont. No joke.
I made him a promise: lots of golf, peaceful lunches, and uninterrupted weekends. In return, he trained me, he calmed nervous clients, reminded them nothing had changed, and vouched for the team.
I was lying about the golf—but I owed him. Back at our first meeting, he told me he gets up early and is home before lunch every day. Said it should be the same for me. It wasn’t at all like that.
Weekends were far from relaxing. I waded into pools to fish out soggy diapers, drowned animals, patio furniture, hairpieces—every kind of nastiness imaginable.
Every emergency and after-hours call came to me.
Every. Single. One.
One day, a customer showed me parking lot security footage of one of my employees doing drugs in a company truck. Another time, a retirement community manager said a resident claimed one of our female techs had been in the pool—in a bikini—flirting with her husband. I checked the footage. It was true.
Wild, but true.
What Commercial Pools Taught Me
We grew 30% that first year. My secret? Show up.
New customers kept telling me the same thing: I was the only contractor who actually showed up and gave them a real proposal. So that’s what I did—I showed up, and I made a show out of it.
If someone called for a quote, I’d make every effort to meet them at their pool that same day. I brought my measuring wheel, asked for copies of their permits, took a ton of photos, and asked even more questions. Then I’d go home and build a proposal that included take-offs, pictures, an equipment inventory, answers to their concerns, and a price—all sent back the same day.
Meanwhile, my competitors were sending a price via text—sometimes days later—after Googling the pool or doing a quick drive-by.
We won almost every job. There was a waitlist for us to pick up new accounts. We were limited by how fast we could get new techs trained.
Those experiences—and a thousand others—taught me more than any book ever could.
By the end of year one, everything had changed. I knew the business inside and out. I had confidence in the model. It worked.
I was still working in the business every day. I used to drive a first-generation Tesla Roadster. One Sunday, I got a call from a community manager about overflowing garbage cans on their pool deck—my tech had forgotten to empty them. I ended up hauling three completely full trash bags on the rear deck of my Roadster because there was nowhere else to carry them.
It was time for a change. It was time to stop working in the business and start working on it.
It was time to grow—expand into residential routes, offer repairs and renovations, and build something bigger. I wanted to build the biggest full-service pool company in Central Florida.
In October 2019, I thought I had pool cleaning figured out. Commercial was running smoothly, and I figured—how hard could residential be? It’s pools.
Mike… had I become Mike?
Residential is a Different Beast
So, I acquired All Pool Service & Supply—a well-known residential pool company that had served the same Florida community since 1971. At the time, it had about 500 residential accounts, $58,000 in monthly recurring billing, 11 field techs, and two office staff. They had 12 service trucks on the road.
The price? $1,795,000. I financed it with a $1,346,250 SBA loan, a $269,250 seller note, and about $150,000 in cash. The deal also included $78,000 in working capital.
That’s when I learned: residential customers pay at the end of the month. And you have to chase them for it. Collecting from homeowners is a full-time job.
Despite the headaches, this was a big strategic play. The acquisition gave us serious route density, experienced team members, and over 40 years of brand recognition. We leapfrogged a few key steps in the roll-up process. Overnight, we became a mixed-service company and kicked off our repair and renovation division.
But I was wrong about residential pools. Very wrong. The model wasn’t just different—it was a completely separate universe. Everything about residential service was the opposite of commercial service—Dave had warned me about this but I didn’t listen.
In commercial service, techs visit the same pools every day. If something’s off, it’s caught within 24 hours. Residential pools? Techs show up once a week. If anything goes wrong, it sits there for seven days. That demands consistency and laser-focused attention to detail.
The work culture didn’t match either. Commercial crews were out the door by 5 a.m. and usually wrapped up before noon. Most commercial pools are unstaffed, so whether a tech is there for 15 minutes or an hour, no one really notices—as long as the pool is clean.
Residential techs didn’t roll out until 9 a.m. and often worked until 6 p.m. The expectations were higher, the oversight more intense. And while 60 commercial accounts produced the same revenue as 500 residential pools, the complaints were on a whole different level. Commercial clients only spoke up when something serious went wrong. Residential customers? They called about everything.
My inbox went from a few polite emails to a full-blown storm. I was fielding 1,500 calls a week—with just two office staff and myself. Eventually, we split the teams: separate techs, separate office support. But we still ran it all from a single location.
That helped a little. Still, the cultural divide between residential and commercial never really disappeared.
I adapted. I managed. And I swore I’d never bring any of this up in front of a potential buyer. Let them believe: “How hard could it be? It’s pools.”
By 2021, we had absorbed technicians and accounts from competitors who shut down during COVID. We launched an aggressive sales program and adopted ServiceTitan to bring structure and visibility—to try to get control over the growth.
Within months, we hit the revenue mix I’d been aiming for since day one: 50% commercial, 50% residential.
At that point, we were bringing in about $2 million from maintenance, $2 million in repairs, and another $2 million from renovations. COVID turned out to be a huge win for pool companies.
I’d been in the industry for three years.
And I knew it was time to sell.
The Exit
In October 2021, I sold my pool company—the combined operations of all the businesses I had rolled up. It was a stock sale. The deal included all assets, staff, and accounts. The buyer praised our operational quality and cultural fit.
On paper, it was the perfect conclusion to a 3.5-year strategy: build, scale, and exit a professionalized pool service platform.
No Pony For You – Turns out, winning the game doesn’t mean you feel like a winner.
The buyer was a roll-up subsidiary of a national service brand, owned by a multinational group. I chose them because I was operating at my limits. To become the largest full-service pool company in Central Florida, Outsource Option LLC needed people with experience at that level. This buyer had the resources, the reputation, and the track record to get us there.
I’ll leave their name out—because, frankly, I wasn’t impressed.
I didn’t have to, but I agreed to stay on as President to help with the transition and continued expansion.
I believed in the company. I trusted the buyer. I wanted to see what Outsource Option could become.
I lasted a year.
It didn’t take long to realize we were wrong about the cultural fit.
Three years later, I dropped by the office. Only a few of my former employees were still there. Revenue had dropped significantly.
Maybe someday I’ll share what I think went wrong.
How hard could it be? It’s pools.
No. It was never about pools.
It was about taking something broken and building something better.
So yeah, how hard could it be?