tonyshelton

Alright, I was just being a smart alec in the previous post. I still don't understand how you could come to us asking for advice on the BMP's while adamantly declaring that you were NOT going to shop them and then can come in front of the same people and make a post like the one above. It's just completely confusing.

This is now MLS. Similar to Multi Level Marketing, but it's multi level shopping. Sounds like they were telling the truth. They aren't shopping the BMP's, They're selling them to us so we can shop them. I suppose if you sell to 5 municipalities you move up a level.

John, a guy who stood behind the fining of Doug ********** for a non-existent is not the guy who I want to be looking to for advice in how to run my business affairs (Walsh). Maybe he should learn his own job before he tells us how to do ours.

Why is that Robert? Why is there so much interest in regards to our industry now? It reminds me of a job I had when I was still in high school. It was at Stauffer Chemical plant. They mined phosphorus. They took the easy and more profitable product first, then dug into the less profitable sources. Then, as a last resort they had me, standing there with a high powered pump making mud from dirt all day. They took the mud and through some chemical process were able to squeeze the last remaining drop of phosphorus out. That's what we are Robert. Of course there was a lot of strong interest. Now that we are on the radar the interest will only increase. I don't believe the interest is following a natural increase curve, though. We work nights, we are low impact. We WERE totally off the radar of enforcement. All one has to do is look at who is exhibiting at St&rmcom and it doesn't take much to determine where the interest is being generated from. 706-708 AbTech Distributor/Waste Management 710-712 AbTech Industries Inc. 505 ACF Environmental 705 Ackerstone 728 Advanced Drainage Systems 415 AECOM 430 A-Lok Products 724 AMEC Earth & Environmental 225 American Academy of Water Res. Eng's 420 American Fiber Rolls Inc. 209 American Peat Technology 406 AP/M Permaform 602 Applied Polymer Systems 802 ARCADIS/Malcolm Pirnie 410 Arvis Consulting Inc. 807 Asphalt Pavement Alliance 625 AquaShield Inc. 307 BaySaver Technologies Inc. 803-805 Belgard 826 Ben Meadows 711-713 Bio Clean Environmental 531 Bio-Microbics Inc. 533-537 Brentwood Industries 633 Campbell Scientific Inc. 414 Catch-All LLC 630 CBI Systems 422 CIF Composites Inc. 830 CISEC Inc. 801 Clean Way Environmental Partners Inc. 811 ClearTec Global/Haz-Mat Response Technologies 709 Clearwater Solutions Inc. 503 Coanda 511-513 CONTECH Construction 419 Contractors-Services LLC 620-622 CULTEC Inc. 611 Dandy Products Inc. 424 DHI Water & Environment Inc. 636 Dungeness Environmental 825 EarthGuard by Terra Novo Inc. 607 East Jordan Iron Works 725-727 EcoRain Systems Inc. 632 Elastec/American Marine 726 Elgin Sweeper/Vactor Manufacturing 837 EnviroCert Intl. 806 ESRI 730-732 Fiberweb 408-410 Filterra 306 Filtrexx 507-509-606-608 Firestone Specialty Products 613 Fresh Creek Technologies 525 Global Water Instrumentation (ITT Corporation) 222-224 HaloSource/StormKlear 309 Harco Fittings 210 HESCO Bastian USA 811 Haz-Mat Technologies 603-605-702-704 Hydro International 501 HydroScreen 624-626 Imbrium Systems 323 Inland Pipe Rehabilitation LLC 307A Innovative Turf Solutions 828 InterClean Equipment Inc. 308 IPEX USA LLC 521-523-525 ITT Corporation (Global Water) 736 J.W. Faircloth and Son Inc. 214 Jensen Precast 313-315 JM Eagle 228 Kanaflex Corporation 813-815-817 Kristar Enterprises Inc. 833 Landmark Earth Solutions (Scourstop) 324 Layfield Group 834-836 LRM Industries International Inc. 802 Malcolm Pirnie / ARCADIS 804 Mar Mac Construction Products 223 Miller Pipeline 711-713 Modular Wetlands 916 Myron L Company 310 National Precast Concrete Association 311 Neenah Foundry 604 Neptune Automated Wheel Wash 207 Oldcastle Precast Inc. 406A ORCO Block Company 527-529 Park Environmental Equipment Ltd. 635-637 Penda Corporation - Smart Ditch 210 PermiTrack 703 Press-Seal Gasket 600 Presto Products 206 Prinsco Inc. 319 RBF Consulting 329 REM Inc./Revel Environmental Manufacturing 627-629 Rinker Materials - Concrete Pipe Division 609 Roscoe Moss Company 729 Rotondo Environmental Solutions 321 Saertex multiCom LP 831 Soil Retention Products Inc. 808 St. Anthony Falls Laboratory 735-737 Storm Water Systems Inc. 734 StormChamber 821 StormTrap 428 Stormwater Equipment Manufacturers Association 405 Stormwater Magazine 733 Stormwater USA 835 StormwateRx LLC 810-812 Suntree Technologies 628 Superior Gunite 707 SYMMLOC Company 211 Syracuse Castings West 829 Tec Inc. 218-220 Teledyne ISCO Inc. 331 Texas A&M University–Kingsville 426 Torrent Resources 731 Trelleborg Pipe Seals 809 TYMCO Inc. 824 UltraTech International 827 UNI-GROUP USA 212 United Stormwater Inc. 808 University of Minnesota - St. Anthony Falls Laboratory 412 Vieux & Associates Inc. 631 Water & Wastes Digest 413 Water Environment Federation 325-327 WDD Engineering and Construction 832 West Coast Storm 322 WesTech Engineering Inc. 427 Wheelwash Inc. 417 XP Software 418 Yardney Water Management 429 Zweigwhite I posted this so everyone would know what "StormCon" really is just in case some were fooled into believing it is anything more than a bunch of people trying to convince their customers and the government to buy their products out of fear. STORMCON is NOT some kind of government boot camp on how to SAVE OUR CHILDREN. I had already called Ron and decided to go with or without him till I did a little more research on what Stormcon really is and then realized I'd be wasting time there. Robert, with the universities that were represented there were you able to come back with any potential sources for studies to show the truth of our positive impact on the environment?

You nailed it! Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

The nationwide campaign to "buckle up" was not law either......at first.

This is a pretty simple process really. All you have to do is follow the history. Here's how it goes: 1) Make rules and incite the municipalities to make rules where there are no rules. 2) Offer certification classes to teach those rules. 3) Convince the municipalities that contractors without certifications shouldn't be allowed to work. 4) Sit back and collect all the training fees for certifying contractors so they can work. For reference please research "kitchen exhaust cleaning" - or "PWNA" or "Delco". If you think kec guys are rolling in the dough now that all the regulations are in place then by all means support the BMP's and more power to you. If the kec industry isn't booming then maybe that approach didn't work. You guys decide.

Robert what is the hurry at this point and time. It would have made more sense to try to hurry up with something like this back in 2006 when the economy was booming and the municipalities had more money than they knew what to do with. Now most of them can't even staff any enforcement. It would seem that now would be the time to back up, reassess the situation and come in from a different angle from the one that has produced situations like Houston. I'll ask again. Why isn't the PWNA spending it's resources testing our runoff so we can go in with proof that our impact is less than that of the construction industries that currently enjoy complete waivers on many projects less than an acre. I've never seen a sump pump at a construction site. I see water running directly into the storm drains through the hay bale type socks and that's it. How is it that they can work without the encumbrances of more electrical equipment, more energy use, more weight on the rigs and more equipment to maintain while producing more contaminated runoff than we do? I wonder how a national org that champions the contractor and gets much of our industry exempted based science and common sense would be received? I'd join that org in a second. Apparently you feel strongly that you are doing something good for the industry. But isn't it possible that you are having the opposite effect? If the construction industries are ALLOWED by the EPA under the CWA PHASE II Final Rule to use their own judgement in what goes directly into the point source (pipes or ditches) then that proves that "something besides rain is allowed down the drain". Yet you have almost singlehandedly trained everyone from officials to contractors that the mere idea that anything besides pure rainwater could go into a storm drain is ludicrous. Why Robert? I know you know better than that. You know there are exemptions. You know our impact is minimal, yet you are approaching municipalities with the idea that we, being polluters, need to have a nationwide standard to keep us from destroying the planet. Why? You asked for suggestions and I gave them. I showed you where many municipalities allowed plaza runoff without soap to go into the storm drain. On paper you made that change. Unfortunately almost all commercial surface cleaning requires hot water. You kept the part in the BMP's about hot water being considered the same as soap. By doing so you negated the change that you made regarding allowing the runoff from plaza cleaning without soap to run down the drain after a sock! How can you clean without soap if hot water EQUALS soap by your own definition?????? So the change you did make didn't really change a thing. You or Michael still never showed me where hot water is considered by the EPA to be an emulsifying agent. The only place on the EPA's site that even resembles that is your own BMP. Under your BMP's it stands as it always has, we can't clean anything and filter it like other industries and let it run into the storm drain. We are forced to use some other pieces of equipment that we have to maintain, fuel, secure and stock to do what should be a simple and inexpensive job. My son does quite a few mini shopping centers and storefronts that take 15-30 minutes. Having to fiddle with ANY more powered equipment could increase his time by 50 to 100% on these bi-weekly jobs. Most of the time his runoff is bone dry about 10 minutes after he leaves. How many of those storefronts do you think would cancel if they had to pay 50 to 100% more for his time? Or is he just supposed to suck it up and absorb the time loss because he's such an environmental criminal otherwise? I'm keeping an eye on Las Vegas. I don't really care what they do because they are too broke to enforce anything anyway. However, I predict that you and the PWNA will infiltrate what is currently a near perfect situation for plaza cleaning contractors here and within the next two years some bureaucratic moron going to a seminar somewhere in Texas or South Carolina will see your BMP's and come back and try to save our valley by changing our sensible BMP's. Those Bmp's allow for all plaza cleaning regardless of the temperature of the water to go right down the storm drain through a mesh. They will stumble across your BMP's and we will suffer for it. Our business will suffer, our clientele will shrink, our sidewalks will become filthy just like the ones in Houston. Because we will have to either lose money through the time involved in dealing with reclaim or raise our prices and lose money that way. Either way it is a losing proposition for the contractors here. You can argue till you're blue in the face about higher prices being good for the industry, but we are in a volatile time and Julio with a Lowe's cold machine to spray off the stickiness for $40 already beats our surface cleaner and hot water for $80. What do you think will happen when we have to charge $120? More customers will go to Julio. That's what will happen. Because Julio doesn't give a darn about BMP's or the environment or fines. Is that the legacy you are shooting for? And I'd like for you to please provide the definition of "shopping" the bmp's to municipalities. I must need to go back to school because I always thought "shopping" was taking something around for consideration. Enlighten me on the definition considering how you and the Pwna claimed that you weren't going to "shop" the Bmp's. Meanwhile your emails behind the scenes were updating the PWNA BOD on where your next planned meeting with xx municipality was to present the BMP's! How can that be unless my definition of "shop" is wrong? I just don't get it. Robert, you are one of the smartest people I know. It shows through in your writing and your speech. That's what's so frightening about all this. You know the effects this is going to have on many contractors yet you keep pushing it through. I can't find any positive feedback on these BMP's other than the PWNA patting themselves on the back for it. There certainly aren't any contractors cheering it on. Yet you keep on going with it like the energizer bunny regardless of the negative effects that I and contractors like Jeff Lecours point out will be the result if these are adopted as is. And you know they will be adopted as is. You know as well as I do that the municipalities love to cut and paste and your BMP's will go in virtually untouched everywhere they are accepted. I hope you aren't the one who told Mike Tessaro that the BMP's were "flexible". You know that in reality that's not going to happen. You have the time and the PWNA has the resources and the end result will be that your BMP's will become the minimal national standard. Eventually it will morph into more restrictions as government regulations always do. Alternatively you could represent our industry by proving that we are not polluting and that we have a net positive effect on the environment and lobby to remove any restrictions that cause prices to go up in a market that is already in turmoil from the influx of part time home depot washers that have been laid off their real jobs. Those are a few of my suggestions Robert.

John, you didn't need any notice. It's not your org. It belongs to Robert and the PWNA BOD. Now, step back in line and quit making waves.... :)

John, enjoy the feeling you get for doing something good. Don't fault any of these guys for giving you crap, everybody has different expectations with an announcement. Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

We pulled two of these trailers from Sioux Falls to Las Vegas. One was loaded big with lightweight bulky stuff and weighed in at 1460 the other one was loaded tight with heavy stuff and weighed in at 1780. We didn't reinforce anything. They both made the trip fine but the 8 inch tires only lasted 50 miles. We upgraded to the 12 inch and the rest of the trip was gravy. This was high speed interstate runs. I like your setup. It's great for running around town. Here in Vegas you wouldn't even need a license plate for that.

That's a sweet latter slot on the flatbed. Hmmmmm.. Thanks, I think I'll use that idea!

Maybe there's a sacrificial lamb org somewhere in need of an experienced ED. Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

So what was unethical? Doing the investigation? Encouraging it? Funding it? Using the results to intimidate and deride? Or was the unethical part just the posting of it? I don't get it. But I'm glad I was able to capture this last picture in San Diego before Mike was "allowed" to resign.

I like it.

John, this is business. I guess our founding fathers would have simply stayed out of it because they didn't have the rights enumerated to them to interfere with private business affairs. Are you happy now John? :) If Ron called the entire BOD over for a slumber party next month I couldn't care less. We are both our own man. Ron tries to counsel me and let me know when I've done something wrong and I do the same for him. That's what friends do. As I said before, if I had announced fully what Mike did (and I knew about the majority of it right after it happened) you and many others would have crucified me and called me a liar and a troublemaker. What does that say about the level of deception that can be so easily perpetrated on unsuspecting contractors? You mentioned some of the things Ron has done. I think I've been pretty vocal about my disagreement with some decisions Ron has made and we both try to keep each other in check so our emotions don't rule our lives. But, as I told Mike in San Diego, Ron has an advantage that Mike doesn't have. Ron is not acting as an official representative for our industry. Maybe there's a reason he's always working behind the scenes. Maybe he wants to keep that advantage. I don't know. But I do know this - What Mike (and the others involved) did was an unprofessional and unauthorized abuse of the titles they hold. They will never see it that way though. To them Ron is the root cause of all their problems. It appears from your posts that you are putting forth the same conclusion.

John, if you saw a butterfly shedding it's cocoon would you lecture him about what he's losing by leaving that cocoon behind. As an industry we need to purge individual personality conflicts that overwhelm attempts to better the industry. We need to purge ourselves from any "leader" that "leads" us into their bank account. This is a long and painful process. Hang in there!

So no other board members had any involvement in this other than Mike? No one encouraged him or knew what he was doing and and failed to tell him it was inappropriate? The sad thing about this whole thing is if Mike hadn't made that post I or Ron could have complained about it the "investigation" till we were blue in the face and no one would have believed us. As of last night some were still claiming I edited the post to make Mike look bad! Good grief! I've been on these boards for three years now and while I do have a hot temper and I'm a bit of a renegade I'm not a liar. Ron, (a private individual - not an elected board member) sometimes comes up with some crazy ideas when he's mad about something. (Much like the way Mike was mad about Ron when he set off on this expedition) But many times Ron is stopped by me or another of his friends who let him know that what he is about to do is inappropriate. It's not easy to see one's actions in context when one is angry. Sometimes it takes cooler heads to talk sense into a person. (myself included and many times Ron has talked me out of doing something stupid myself when I'm mad) It doesn't always work, but a friend would let the other person know they are about to make a mistake. So I ask again. Are there any board members who knew what Mike was doing and encouraged that kind of act on a PWNA member who are willing to step up, identify themselves, so we can at least move on knowing their character so we can judge our associations accurately in the future? Or maybe it doesn't matter to anyone but me. If I'm the only one who cares about this I'll just shut up and go away quietly. EDIT: Mike emailed me and informed me he was going to make the post once he had permission from the board. I emailed him back and encouraged him to post the whole thing unedited. It seemed appropriate that if he was going to share that information with the board and if people were going to taunt Ron about the "findings" then at least EVERYONE should know about it and "judge for themselves". The deed had already been done. I had already confronted Mike about it and tried to explain that he was wrong and that the whole thing was inappropriate but he was still going around spreading the misinformation. If anyone thinks I was wrong for telling him to post it feel free to let me know. I thought it would be better to have it out in the open rather than just going around behind Ron's back and spreading untruths.

Robert, with all due respect, I'd like to ask for a clarification. What did the board consider out of line, the post or the investigation of a member in that manner?

That still leaves the question open about the ones who did. Was it wrong for Mike or wrong for all.

Beth, How do you feel about the one's who knew about the investigation and encouraged it? None of them are stepping up. They are letting Mike take the heat. What does that tell you about their place in all this?

For anybody who is reading this later we're going to look like a bunch of nutcases who are just in love with Ron with Mike's post no longer available as a reference. Mike is taking this upon himself and throwing himself on the sword. Mike's part in this was because he was (justifiably) mad at Ron for making a youtube post and singling him out for ridicule. His actions were based on simple anger just like Ron's actions are many times. He's human. We all are. But the board members of the PWNA who knew about this and allowed it to go on played Mikes anger and pushed him along to do this. One of them even spoke with Ron on the phone effectively taunting him about it while the "investigation" was going on. Now they are going to claim deniability as a whole because one or two of may have actually been left in the dark leaving the floating question as to which ones knew and which ones didn't. These guys are millionaires? These guys are industry leaders? I submit to you that Lada Gaga is a millionaire and millions don't necessarily mean success as a human being. When I first became a PWNA member I was excited about meeting and speaking with successful contractors. They were friendly. They were supportive. Once I paid my measly little $400 or so I no longer heard anything from them. One of them is pretty smart though. I'm not certain which one, but one of them wants the PWNA to remain small so that no outside influences can come in and upset the cart. One of them has decided that the way to control the market is to have an org make up the rules and standards tailored to their own method of operation, then quietly push it as the "'clear" voice and as the "industry standard" so that in the end they control the market. Think that sounds crazy? Take a look at the "other" side of pressure washing that is highly regulated and determine for yourself. This is what happens when you start giving over your rights to the government and inviting them in. ONE or two contractors win it all at the expense of all others. Ron was the wildcard. He couldn't be controlled so he had to go. All it took was for him to p*ss off the right person and the PWNA then had their hitman to take him out. But it didn't work. The people who really know Ron called BS. I'm disgusted with the BOD. I don't want to ever again here anything from any of them about something Ron did that was "offensive" to them. I'm sure I'm opening myself up as their next target. If you park down the end of Hastings street you can see everytime we leave for work (Sometimes 2-4 days pass and all we're doing is sales). You can peek over the fence and count our rigs (3). You can call my direct competitors (2). One of them will tell you I'm the biggest piece of crap on the earth. (Ask him about the other competitor and he will tell you the same thing- that's just the way he is) The other one will tell you we're a great company and we enjoy bidding against each other and trade account frequently as customers are fickle. Look up my property. I'm behind on my payments as I've been trying to get an interest rate deduction for a long time. I owe $640k on a house that once appraised for $825k but now is worth $166. But my taxes are paid up to date- you can find that on the county website. I don't make millions. I'm lucky to break even. I've spent the last 6 years or so opening up a market that didn't exist before we came along. I'm pretty proud of the advancements we've made. I've shared, many times freely, information that cost me over $250k to obtain and may even eventually cost me my home. I might be living in a fifth wheel by this time next year if I can't get something worked out with our house, but you can bet it will be a fifth wheel that I own outright just like the rest of all of our equipment. But I've opened up a market where there was none and I sleep like a baby at night. I have helped many members here and on the other boards make thousands on their way toward millions. I charged when I had to charge to break even and hopefully get something out of my work in the future. If there's more information you need, just call me. I'll save you guys the cost of the hotel. But what little I've contributed is minuscule in comparison to what Ron has done for contractors.

It's hard to draw conclusions with an empty pen. I'm trying to fill in the blanks with my own "observations". Another little tidbit I'd like to add - At the Myrtle Beach Roundtable in 2009 Ron and I shared a room. He was trying out something new where he got a text everytime a job was complete. He fell asleep heavy and I listened to his phone go off literally every 5-10 minutes all night long with short texts of completed jobs and/or notes. Two rigs would be hard pressed to do jobs every ten minutes at different addresses and he'd have to be a true evil genius to get somebody to stay up and punch in addresses to his phone all night just to make me believe he had crews working! If he's that good at making up fake details he deserves to be making millions! Further, almost half the time when I mention a property management company here in Las Vegas Ron already knows the best contact before I can even say their name. Must be a heck of a hobby he has calling Las Vegas and finding out all that information just to impress me. When I was working on a problem with C*stco here locally I needed the right person to get in touch on the regional level and was having no luck. I casually mentioned it to Ron and he immediately gave me the regional guys' cell number right out of his phone. That's handy to have if you are pretending to be a pressure washer. There have been countless times where Ron has given my son cell numbers for district managers of chains so Chris could get bids in. No Board member of the PWNA has ever given me a phone number for any contacts of any sort. No Board member of the PWNA has ever taken my son out till past 3am to train him on how to work fast. For Free. No Board member of the PWNA has ever bought me a plane ticket home just so I could stay another day at an event. While at least one board member has graced my home with their presence, not a single one of them has made a special flight here just to play a round of golf and hang out with my family for a day. (or slept on my daughters twin bed because I insisted they not spend any more money on a hotel room) I could go on and on. I've met most of Ron's family. If there's one thing they all have in common they all like and respect Ron. He's got a LOT of financial responsibilities family wise and apparently is meeting them just fine. I have yet to meet a family member who has anything bad to say about him. (And that is saying a lot when we're talking about even teenage kids!) Ron has never asked me for a dime. Ron's never asked me to train his guys, or show him how to make money cleaning coils or air filters. I'm actually starting to feel a little bad just thinking about all this because to be honest, I've never really had much of anything to offer Ron except friendship. I'm not a millionaire. But then again, I guess the PWNA already knows that. Surely there are other guys besides Thad and me who can shed a little light on who Ron really is.

I'm reading a book on how to argue your points by the famous attorney Gerry Spence. In it he talks about prejudices. Many times you cannot win because the person on the other side of the table has prejudices that return minutes after the argument has been won because the person has already made up their mind and have "pre-judged" the matter. I applaud Mike for his open discussion of this matter, however I am in complete disagreement with the whole affair. This is not a surprise to Mike because immediately upon our seeing each other in San Diego I told him it wasn't right for him to do such a thing anymore than it would be right for Ron to do so. Further, I explained that calling one's competitors to find out factual information is like calling an ex-wife to ask if he was a good husband or not. Also, calling competitors opens the door up for a saavy competitor to extract information and use it against the person being investigated. I was a private investigator in the late 80's and early 90's. When you are looking for accurate information you always take in sources that don't have a vested interest in leading you down the wrong path. It's obvious the AZ Powerwash guy told Mike some BS because he immediately got on the phone with Ron to tell him about it. That's just not a good way to investigate. I told Mike he may have been able to get better information from those who know Ron personally or even from his customers by calling and asking for a referral. Ron did something like this before with Jeff. I wasn't in agreement with that either, but at least Ron went to Jeff's customers and to his dismay (at the time he was furious about something) found out that Jeff's customers were happy with his service. There's nothing wrong with vetting, but this kind of thing is not right no matter who does it. Living in the Southwest I'd like to counter with a few facts. 1) The largest power washer in Las Vegas has 35 units. They are all unmarked plain white box trucks. During the day most all of them are parked in a row. At night most of them are gone. The times they are gone and the number that are gone is variable. In over 5 years of working on roofs at night and two years of Chris doing concrete at night between the two of us we've only seen ONE of those trucks working, on ONE night. ONE. We know they are working because they load up and take off every night except Saturday but yet, as small as Las Vegas is we've only ever seen ONE working. 2) Last year Ron switched from company trucks to employee owned trucks and gave them a stipend. He had a full time maintenance truck that just kept the trucks running and was tired of it. It was cheaper to pay the employees plus they take better care of their own trucks. 3) My son went to Phoenix to train with Ron's employees on how to get the job done fast. Chris expressed to me that (he thinks) at least 9 units pulled up within 5 minutes of each other at the gas station where they all filled up on company cards at around 9pm. He described everything from F150's to Toyota's to Ford Rangers pulling up at once. He went to various types of job sites and trained with them AND with Ron who personally drove him around in the truck till past 3am. 4) When I went to the PHX roundtable in 2008 Ron took me to at least 4 restaurants at 10am where his guys were cleaning. (keep in mind, this would be an entirely different shift from the guys that come to work at 9pm) I met four different guys working their butts off and FAST! Also, there was one guy who we went to watch clean a dumpster. He was supposed to already be there. Ron called the office and his girl said the guy had checked in over 10 minutes ago. A few minutes later he showed up. Ron got out and "confronted" him about checking in before he was on the scene and if I understand correctly I think he fired the guy on the spot and had someone else come out and take over. It was confusing. I had just met Ron. 5) Tim, Ron's "floating" sales guy came to a demo with a leaky trailer. Ron told him to run back and get another one so the customer didn't see a leaky rig doing a demo. He was back in about 25 minutes with what looked like a brand new rig. Spotless. These rigs were for demos he explained. 6) Ron has 4 or 5 sales people at least. One of them (I forgot her name) drove me around in Phoenix for a while and described her job and that of the other salespeople. Her ONLY job was to hit individual high traffic shopping center locations. She had a method where she hits the same places every three months and adds additional locations as she goes. She explained that her goal was $20k per month in NEW sales and that she had made that goal every month that year. 7) This same girl explained the jobs of the other two girls I met. She said one of them just takes phone calls all day and helps the other do mailings all day. Tim floats and is on call to run and do immediate demos when they have a hot prospect. She said Tim does between 6 and 10 of these per day usually. (Take a look at the hundreds of youtube demos on Rons site) She told me about more salespeople and what categories their jobs included and explained how Tim gets paid part of their commission for doing the demos or something like that. 8) On another occasion Shelly and I went to PHX and spent two full days training on sales with Ron and one of his property manager only sales guys. After discussing this with Shelly here are some of the things we remember. a) we visited at least 20 property managers. Not small ones either. Most of them dwarfed the PM's here in Las Vegas b) At least half of them had numerous properties already cleaned by Ron. Some of them exclaimed that Ron already has had all their properties for years and indicated that they hadn't seen him in person in years and were glad to see him again. c) Those 20 property managers were visited in order, down the line, in the middle of a list of over 200 property managers on the salesmans monthly list. They were all in the GPS so he went from one to the other down the line. His whole trunk was filled with postit note holders and notepads and at least 200 $5 starbucks cards in a box along with more movie passes and other stuff like that. While we were with them they stopped to pick up another two boxes of notepads that cost $400 (I know because I order pads from the exact same printer) When Ron wasn't around we asked the salesman a lot of questions. He said it takes him about 10 days to do the whole route then he works the phones. He didn't discuss anything about money or commissions or anything like that, but he sure seemed happy and content. He indicated that he wasn't the only salesman working property managers too. 9) Another time when my son Chris was with him doing sales training a PM came from the back of the office and told Ron, "Here, I've got something for ya". Ron was given a list of properties from the PM and was told "go ahead and start these as soon as possible" Chris looked at the list in the truck and it was over $250k in annual contracts for shopping centers. Ron sat it off to the side and called it in to the office like it was just another day at the office. (It probably was for him) 10) I've seen Ron spend $1300 for a bar tab without blinking an eye. I've seen him rent a hotel room, find something he didn't like about it and move to another one that was over $250 a night and leave the first one vacant. I've seen him buy a plane ticket, decide to go at a different time and pay full price for the second plane ticket without blinking. On the other hand I've heard a millionaire PWNA BOD brag about searching the net to get a $40 plane ticket. (Does that mean he's lying about his millions Mike?) There's more and I might post more later, but I've got to work out and eat. I relayed a lot of this to Mike in San Diego, but he was undeterred. He had "pre-judged" his findings and was happy with the faulty conclusions he came to because they fit his pre-judgement. And this is not Mike Hilborn's "pre-judgement". Mike was not only encouraged and backed up in this endeavor but was given the go-ahead to present the results of this flawed "investigation" by the BOD of the PWNA as seen above. I understand that Mike had a problem with Ron and I can sympathize with him because Ron's video about him was uncalled for. But, as I explained in San Diego this was not a professional way to deal with his frustration and the PWNA giving it's blessing showed a lot about their professionalism.

How long will it be before municipalities require all of us to be "certified" through the PWNA to spray water or lose our "license". Is the BOD willing to guaranty that if it's "certification" becomes a requirement to work by any local authority they will discontinue the certifications? If not, why not?