The Wisdom and Success of ‘Larry the Pool Guy’

In 2008, Ranger Kidwell-Ross began the practice of interviewing and featuring a power sweeping company each month for the website WorldSweeper.com. These have ranged from small contracting companies to very large ones. Some of the contractor companies have been specifically chosen because some aspect of the featured organization would provide unusual ‘food for thought’ for readers. Examples of this have included Iowa-based Crown Maintenance, which cleans parking lots but owns no sweepers. Another was the feature story on Nationwide Environmental Services, the largest street sweeping operation in the United States. This month’s Featured Contractor offers one element shared by none of the others: It’s not a sweeping company. However, the information provided to the author on how this now-retired contractor was able to become supersuccessful — becoming a legend in his market area, in fact — holds a vital message for today’s American sweeping contractor community. Beset by high equipment costs and downward price per sweep pressure by third party vendors, a growing number of sweeping contractors are being tempted to cut corners in how they do business, sacrificing their reputation and ethics in order to get contracts that are barely sustainable, with little-to-no margin and even less margin for error. The following story of ‘Larry the Pool Guy’ is presented in hopes it will inspire better business methods and understanding of the power of building a company on the cornerstones of professionalism, quality work product and ethics. by Ranger Kidwell-Ross

On a recent trip to visit my sister, who lives north of San Jose del Cabo on the Baja area of Mexico, I met an unforgettable contractor. The following are some of the highlights of how he became not only successful, but also a living legend in theSouthern Baja region.

While on the lower Baja of Mexico, several friends and I journeyed to a new water park called, in English, Wet Fun Aquatic Park. It’s the first and only water park in the entire area. While walking around looking at some of the many interesting structures on the property, an older man came up behind me and asked how I liked his building and facility. Larry Yannayon, who moved to Mexico from California some 28 years ago and is the owner of, in Spanish, ‘Parque Acuatic Wet Fun,’ spotted me as someone who he could converse with in English. Once he started telling me about himself, and how he had accumulated enough money to build the first aqua park in Baja California, I soon realized that his was a tale I wanted to bring to the sweeping contractor community. Thirty years ago, Larry lived and worked in California. He first journeyed to the Baja area of Mexico on a company-sponsored vacation. Because he was one of their star employees, Larry was invited to come to the posh vacation retreat house owned by his California-based employer, who was in the refrigeration business. “I knew as soon as I saw the opulent way these guys lived,” said Larry, “that I wanted to be successful like that. I also fell in love with this area of Mexico.” Though fascinating, the details of how Larry got into the business of building swimming pools and other concrete-based types of construction is not the information I want to transmit in this article. Rather, the crux of this story has to do with Larry’s business methods. “At the time,” said Larry, “the business scene in Cabo San Lucas and its companion San Jose del Cabo was wild and woolly. “There was a demand for people to build swimming pools and decks for the wealthy individuals who were just starting to populate the area around Cabo. Because of that, there were all types of contractors saying they could do the work, even though many of them were no more than handymen trying to figure out how to make a buck. “When I entered into the business of building swimming pools, the temptation was to cut corners so that I could win more bids. However, that’s not ever been my personal style. Instead, I determined to make mine the best pool-building company possible. I decided to build my business around the top-tier of potential customers, the ones who wanted to have a professional job done for them, who would recognize professionalism when they saw it, and who would be willing to pay me what it took to provide a quality outcome for them. “I knew that to be successful in that upper level market niche I would have to learn how to do everything right, and to make sure all my employees were well trained, as well. That meant paying top dollar for quality American-built tools and equipment. I also paid above the typical wage for employees and then spent more money to send them to the United States for training by the equipment manufacturers. It also meant specifying top quality materials. “Looking back on it, I’m not sure I was ever the low bidder on any of my many hundreds of projects. And, my very strict policy was to never re-bid a project unless the scope of work changed. Many times I had prospective clients come to me and say ‘ I would really like for your company to build our pool because you have such a great reputation. However, your bid is $15,000 more than the low bidder. Can you rework your bid for me to become more competitive?’ “At that point, my standard response was to explain to them that I couldn’t do so because to do so would imply that I wasn’t honest with them in the first place. We strive to be the best, I would tell them, and that’s why our reputation is stellar. Top quality work is the only kind of work we know how to do or are interested in doing. If I were to re-bid your project, I would be telling you that I cheated you in the first place by padding my bid so we would make more than a normal profit on you, and we don’t do that. “The bid I gave you reflects the cost of us doing an excellent job for you, on which my company will make a normal profit. Our policy is to not take a job unless we have a normal profit margin, because without that we can’t keep our equipment in top shape or keep our personnel trained in the most up-to-date, efficient and professional ways to perform their work. “The only other alternative available would be to somehow reduce the quality of our work by taking less time than needed to provide a professional outcome, or by using substandard materials. Doing something like that might tarnish the reputation of my company and we would never do that: the company’s professional reputation is our biggest asset.” Through the more than 25 years Larry operated his company, he told me, he became by far the largest swimming pool contractor on the Southern Baja. Although his company was named Cabo Pebble Pools, he says that through the years, when someone asked around for a recommendation it somehow became “If you want the best, get Larry the Pool Guy to do your concrete project for you.” The company had so many projects, and so many large-scale projects, that Larry had to purchase two concrete production machines. The crews were going through so much volume of material, Larry reminisced, that they couldn’t wait for cement trucks to arrive. As you might imagine, this is especially a problem on the very spread out Baja landscape. Today, like all other pool contractors in the Cabo area, Larry’s company, which is now operated by one of his sons, has fallen on hard times. The disposable income that fueled the boom days of the Cabo building scene dried up a few years ago, along with the recessionary North American economy. However, Larry made enough money through the last two decades – because he insisted on making a profit on all he did – to allow him to invest for retirement in a variety of businesses, stores and real estate property. “I never could see the reasoning in working hard all my life and then not having anything to show for it,” said Larry, with a particvular emphasis in his voice. “And that’s inevitably what happens when you try to chase all the low bids. Plus, those low bid customers are always the ones who aren’t pleased no matter what kind of job you do. They complain because they’re used to getting substandard work and so they’re used to complaining about everything. “Another advantage we had with working for the people who wanted a professional job and were willing to pay for it was that they could recognize quality when they saw it. They appreciated what we did, they provided great references and they told their friends what a great company we were. They also paid their bill on time and rarely found anything that wasn’t to their liking. I think a lot of contractors don’t figure in all of that when they’re out trying to be cheaper than everyone else. Who would want their name associated with a low-ball company like that, anyway?” Now, at 68 and having survived some serious health issues. Larry mostly does whatever he wants to do. At the moment that’s overseeing the expansion of his beautiful new aqua park, which he says was mostly built via training new employees on various concrete surfacing techniques, including pathways, stamped concrete, exposed aggregate, rock-and-mortar, and more. And, on this particular April day in 2013, Larry clearly enjoyed capturing the ear of this rare visiting gringo, someone who he could talk to in English and, more importantly, someone who was actually interested in the story of a contractor who had become wildly successful because he insisted on running a business built upon the foundation of quality service. You may reach Larry Yannamon via email sent to wet-fun@hotmail.com. Do you think a sweeping business can survive, in today’s business climate, by emulating the business model espoused by Larry Yannamon? If you have thoughts on this topic, please provide them as comments to this story.