Start a Pool Company

Especially if you have experience working on pools and a truck already, starting a pool company can be a very profitable industry to get into with fairly low competition. This section will go over exactly the steps you will want to take to learn the skills you need, get all the tools you need, and find customers for your pool company.

Before even thinking about finding new customers for your company, you will want to make sure that you know how pools work and how to perform the basic maintenance and repairs. The best thing you can do if you have not already is get a job at a local pool maintenance company and go through their training so that you can acquire all the skills you need quickly and get paid to do it. Also remember that YouTube is your best friend, and you can learn most fixes on there as well. You should know how to balance the 5 main chemicals (chlorine, PH, total alkalinity, calcium, and stabilizer), fix filters, change motors, fix seals, and know the formula for volume to determine pool sizes and chemical amounts. Diagnosing problems will be the hardest part of this job so try to become as familiar as you can at troubleshooting a pool.

Once you have all the skills you will need to service your customers, you will want to set up an LLC and get a business bank account set up. You can check out how to do this in our how to start a business section. You should keep all company income in this account and charge expenses to It as well track everything you will need when tax time comes. If you have good credit, you can also open a business credit card that you can purchase expenses with and take advantage of points and cashback. During this stage you will also want to get quotes and start a policy for business liability insurance.

Now that your business entity is all set up, it is time to make a brand and a website for your pool company and get some business cards with your site and phone number on them. To get a good name for your company you can go to Chat GPT and ask for business name ideas for a pool company in your city. You can then ask it to give you a prompt for an AI art generator to create a logo for the name that you chose. You can take that prompt it gives you and paste it to an AI art generator like Mid Journey to get your logo. To get business cards you can simply go to Vistaprint.com or staples.com and design them online. For your site, you should start by looking at some of the most successful pool maintenance company’s sites to get an idea of a good site layout and service descriptions. Your site should show beautiful picture examples of pools you have worked on even if it was with another company. You should also clearly list services like pool maintenance, pool repair, pool building or whatever it is that you plan to offer and have clear call to action buttons that will allow customers to fill out a form to give you their contact info. You can learn more about how to build a site for your pool business in our how to build a professional website section as well.

The next thing you will want to do is find a great pool supply store in your area that you can use for all your chemicals and parts. You can check Google to find Leslie’s, Pool Builders Supply, and Pool Corp as well as any local shops you may have near you. I recommend starting with a big brand supply store like Leslie’s which will actually give you leads once you open a commercial account with them, which you can do as soon as you set up your LLC and business insurance. If you stay loyal and become known around one place, they will start to show your business some priority, will give you good leads, and they will be more than willing to help you if you ever have any questions. Be friendly to the workers at your pool supply place and get to know them by name and you will be amazed at how much they will help you.

Now that you have a pool supply store in mind, you will want to get everything you need to start working on people’s pools. The most expensive thing if you do not have one already, will be a truck. If you have a car already, you may want to consider trading it in for a small truck like a Toyota Tacoma which is reliable and affordable. You can search for trucks on Facebook marketplace and Offerup and even get a loan from a bank or credit union if you need one. Once you have a truck, you will also need a pool vacuum head, a pool vacuum hose, a net, a pole, chlorine, acid, baking soda, calcium, a stabilizer, and a pool testing kit. Not including the truck, this should cost you about $2,000 In total and then you will be all ready to service your customers. You should also invest in some car magnets for your truck that have your company logo and phone number on them. You will be amazed at how much business even this can bring in this industry.

Now that you have everything that you need it is time to start finding customers for your pool company. The best places to start are with Yelp ads and Craigslist posting. You can also make an Angie’s List account, but it does not tend to be as cost effective as these options. Make sure that you use amazing pictures of clean pools for your posts and be sure to check them regularly and call leads right away. Also be sure to post to Craigslist every week to keep your posts relevant and at the top of the list for pool maintenance and repair. Just keep in mind that many of the people looking on these platforms are on their last resort and are dealing with big issues. Typically, you will be able to solve their problems though with some research and you can then turn them into recurring customers that you service every week!

You should also join all the community and neighborhood Facebook groups in your area and start by replying to and adding value to other people’s posts. Once you make a name for yourself in these groups, you can post about your pool service and even offer a discount on first time service for people that are in your groups. If they have come to like you in the group, you will be sure to get some customers this way. You can also post your pool service on Facebook marketplace and Offerup frequently and try to keep it in the recently posted sections.

Another thing you will want to do is to set up accounts for Google My Business and Bing Business. This way you can have your business posted on their maps platforms as well as when people search for pool service in your area once you get some good reviews. Service some family’s pools at cost or do a little work for friends and have them post some 5-star reviews to build some social proof. Once you get enough good reviews you will start popping up higher on the list for search results too. Also be sure to look at our section on SEO marketing to learn how you can search higher on different search terms for pool service. This alone can be all you need to grow a customer base if you work on it consistently.

You can also pay for pool leads with services like houzz.com or you can find leads to go talk to just by looking on google maps in nice neighborhoods. If things ever get slow spend a day writing down a list of addresses in a couple of nice neighborhoods that have pools and go knock on their doors. If you knock for a few hours, you will be sure to get someone who has a problem they are dealing with that could become a recurring customer. You can approach them by telling them you already service one of their neighbor’s pools and you would be happy to add them to your route at a discount because you come out there all the time anyway. You can even try offering a discount for first-time service that still allows you to pay yourself for your time. You can also write down a list of street names in nice neighborhoods that have pools and run a mailer campaign with a service like themailshark.com. Be sure to get creative and try different marketing methods frequently until you find one that works best for you, at which point you can simply scale that method.

Another type of business that you will want to keep in mind is commercial properties. You can try writing down a list of hotels, condominium complexes, and apartments in your area that you can inquire about servicing their pools. You can then spend a day calling and trying to get contact info for the management or owners, or you can even go in which tends to give better results. Show them that you know the business, you can solve a problem they are having with their current service or save them money from what they are paying now. Show these businesses that you can be a relief to any headaches they are having with their pool company and that you can pay more attention to their business individually since you are a smaller local company where business is important.

No matter what marketing strategy you end up sticking with, one method that you will not want to forget about is referrals! Once you have serviced a customer a couple of times and they seem happy with your work, you should ask them if they have any family or friends that might need your services and give them an incentive for bringing you new business. You can offer them 50% off their next cleaning, a gift card, or anything else that will get them excited to find your customers. Most people that have pools also have neighbors around the corner that they know who also have pools to service. If you can get good at getting referrals from people, you can grow some very tight knit pool routes that can make you a fortune and save you a lot of time driving to new areas.

If you follow these steps consistently, you will be sure to have a successful pool business in no time that you can scale until you are happy with the level of income and freedom you have. Once you find yourself busy and at a point where you can afford to pay a worker on top of paying yourself, then you can start outsourcing some work and start building a new route for a second employee. Just make sure that when hiring in this industry that you are doing background checks since they will be working at people’s properties. Also make sure that you are able to give a new employee enough work so that they can feed their family and stay on board for the long term.