[00:00:04] Greetings all, I'm Joe. I'm here with my colleague and friend, Dr. Jeff Keyfaber. Welcome to Inflow. And in this podcast, Jeff and I will be discussing all things related to zoo and aquarium aquatic animal life support systems from water treatment equipment and design to operations and construction. We will be talking to operators, engineers, architects, curators, anyone and everyone who works on keeping
[00:00:34] our zoo and aquarium water clean, our animals healthy, our exhibits natural, and our systems sustainable. Welcome to Inflow. Jeff, I know you're out there. I can hear you breathing. I'm here and I'm hot and heavy on some topics today, Joe. I was thinking, you know, that life support system operators have been organized in all kinds of different departments across zoos,
[00:01:04] aquariums, aquariums, marine parks, you know, whether it's water quality or a zoological area, general services, maintenance, plant engineering. We've got a witch's brew, right? Of departments and the way they're organized across our industry. Right, Joe? Yeah. You see, that I think is one of the coolest things about working in the LSS, you know, in the LSS
[00:01:34] world because your job touches so many facets of zoos and aquariums. I mean, you know, mechanical, HVAC, obviously the animals, water quality, chemistry, rock work, theming, exhibitry. I mean, I've worked with guys like Marty and Greg at Brookfield Zoo.
[00:02:03] I worked with Joe Martinelli at Albuquerque. I mean, these guys were like tradesmen. They were welders, electricians who became life support operators and did it all. They did it all. And it's really, it's a fun thing about LSS. That's right. And, you know, the mechanical side at indoor facilities, you've got the air systems that you're responsible for or the lighting. You know, it's got all these other trades and disciplines.
[00:02:33] Yeah. So this is actually a great segue into who we're talking to today, our guest, you know, because he's done a lot. I mean, he's worn many hats, you know, in the different facets that touch LSS. And so we'll talk to him about that. This is George Tenhagen. He is a regional manager for Asahi Valves. Hi, George. How's it going? Good afternoon. Going good, guys. How are you doing?
[00:03:01] Hey, George. Good to see you. You too. Yeah. So I've known George for a long time through different channels because he's done a lot of different things and we're going to get into that. So, George, tell us a little bit about just as a background, how you got into the LSS world. Yeah. So I worked at Bush Gardens for 36 years, started from the ground up. I actually worked in the parking lot, my first job, if you can believe that. Oh, really?
[00:03:30] Yeah. And after a few years, I got into technical trade. I was in the pest control department there. Kind of an interesting job. That's a good one. That's right. I forgot about pest control. And then I decided, you know, I can't really do this the rest of my life. Well, and George, pest control really isn't life support, is it? No, it's the opposite of life support. We're trying to take the life out of the support. That's all we're going to say. That's right.
[00:03:58] No, I decided I couldn't kill things for the rest of my life, you know, had to make a living. So I went to school, went back to school, attended USF in Tampa, Florida, went to school eight years, part-time, and got my environmental engineering degree from the University of South Florida. And this is while you were working at Bush Gardens? I worked full-time and then went to school at night, worked almost every weekend for eight years just to get my degree. When you graduated, you got your degree.
[00:04:26] Did your role change at Bush Gardens? How did they move you into a new area? Yeah, so, you know, kind of an opportunity came up in facility maintenance to start, become a facilities manager that managed all the mechanical systems at Bush Gardens. So, you know, if you didn't ride it, paint it, plant it, or put a nail in it, it pretty much came through me. So that's it. I like that.
[00:04:53] Yeah, it was, I mean, all the mechanical, all the air, water systems, irrigation, wells, water quality, HVAC, plumbing, fire systems, control systems. I mean, just had a plethora of different things that I had to do. Yeah, so this is, so give us, I mean, not to date you, but I mean, you know, we're all young men, obviously. So what year is this around? I started at Bush Gardens in 1978.
[00:05:24] Wow. Okay. And then, and then probably late. I passed to PE in 96. So probably 91. So eight years, 83, 84. I started going to college. Okay. A long time ago. And George, you said you, you, you mentioned your PE, right? Your professional engineer's license. Correct.
[00:05:48] And what does that allow you to do that you could not do prior to getting that certification? It allows me to review drawings and stamp them and provide certification to the owner or whoever we're working for that what they're asking be designed has followed standard engineering principles and procedures and will meet the design criteria. Basically is what that does. Right.
[00:06:17] It also carries weight when you go into a facility and you have a professional engineering license. It means you can think, right? I think that's the biggest thing that, that little two initials after my name means that I think logically and globally about projects and issues. Yeah. Critical thinking. Critical thinking. Yes. So you were a facility manager at this point? I mean, that PE must have moved you up a little bit.
[00:06:44] Well, if I was willing to move around, I probably would have. But I had a family and decided to stay where I was because of my family roots. So I moved up and took on more responsibility, like I said, all the different trades and Busch Gardens. And then eventually I had a short stint with the corporate engineering team, with John Lynn and a few other people.
[00:07:08] But economics being what it was when that happened, there was a VP out west that needed a job. So they kind of bumped me back to the parks, which I was OK with, you know. So and so how many people were you were you were under your control at, you know, at this point? I had about 45 trades people that I worked with across the many different plumbing or mechanical trades.
[00:07:37] And then I had a group of contractors, mechanical contractors that I dealt with, electricians and other people, fire system people. OK, so during that time, you obviously had dedicated life support people that you were managing as well. I had five. When I started, there were five life support personnel at Busch Gardens Tampa supervisor and four technicians, seven day a week work.
[00:08:02] We ended up doubling that work staff and adding a couple mechanics because we the trade actually grew at the park. The ability to manage the water better, to manage the systems better and to have better water quality. Right now. Now, George, when you were at Busch Gardens and Edge of Africa was coming online,
[00:08:25] this was really the first larger scale life support systems that were in what was a terrestrial zoological park. Right. I mean, Hippo, for example. Correct. We had 30 some odd different, 30, 35 different small systems and large systems throughout the park. Hippo was one of the largest ones and probably the best.
[00:08:53] I think Hippo display I've seen in the country. Beautiful exhibit. Beautiful exhibit. I love that exhibit. Do you like all those colorful cichlids in there now? Yeah, when they survive. No, yeah, I do like them. You know, things happen sometimes. But no, it was a beautiful facility, beautiful exhibit. I used to drive by there every morning when I do my circle in the park, looking at all the systems and the one hippo. They'd leave in there overnight. And she would follow me as I drove by the window in the golf cart.
[00:09:22] She would follow me down the window. I'd turn around and go back the other way, but she'd follow me back and forth. So we had like a little morning mind melt. You know, hey, how's your day going? Oh, I'm good. See, I have actually, I'm a little bit upset with you, George, as a matter of fact. I maybe never told you this, but so I worked at San Diego Zoo. We had a very nice hippo exhibit that we worked very hard on. And, you know, but it was up and down.
[00:09:50] It was a tough exhibit to take care of. A lot of hours spent on it. You know, cleaning, cleaning pre-screens and backwashing filters. Anyway, of course, when my bosses would make their trips around the country and look at zoos, they'd be like, they'd come back and say, you know what? I was over at Busch Gardens, Tampa, man. That hippo exhibit looks awesome. You know? And I would just, I would just grind my teeth and say that George Tenhagen. You know? Hey, good engineers, right?
[00:10:20] And there's quite a few engineers that love taking responsibility for that exhibit. I laugh at that a little bit. But it's a great design, a lot of flexibility, a lot of, and it's managing it, right? They build it, but they build it for growth. And you had to manage that growth in the system. And that's stuff we learn, right? Over time. Yeah. You know what? This is a question for both of you, maybe for you, Jeff.
[00:10:44] Jeff, so what was the relationship with Busch Gardens and SeaWorld? And I mean, just to sort of educate people on how many parks are out there and who's, because George is talking about John Lynn. I mean, it's a SeaWorld thing, right? I'll try to give you the distilled down short answer to all of that.
[00:11:09] But, you know, SeaWorld Parks Entertainment, now United Parks and Resorts, is a big company that has all the SeaWorld parks and the two Busch Gardens parks in Williamsburg and Tampa, as well as many water parks and the Sesame brand as well. And so Busch Gardens was, you know, dating back to the Anheuser-Busch days, one of the portfolio parks.
[00:11:39] It evolved to be, you know, a terrestrial, zoological, habitat-based park, which continued to grow and a lot of great roller coasters and rides. And it was a different take on, obviously, any SeaWorld park across the country or in Abu Dhabi even. So that's kind of the short version.
[00:12:08] George and I have known each other for years. And, you know, John Lynn keeps coming up. And, you know, he's, John, John is a central figure to which we've, you know, George and I worked hand in hand with. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I do want to point out one thing, though. So Busch Gardens and Busch Entertainment Corporation was the parent company and we bought SeaWorld. So, you know, you guys are like our stepchild. So I just-
[00:12:37] Ah, interesting. Okay. Good. Good to know. Thanks for that. Yeah. No problem. So that, you know, you talked about water quality with SeaWorlds and, you know, Busch Gardens Tampa was really rides and water elements and some animal exhibits, freshwater, alligator, otters, other animals. We did have a dolphin show, which was our foray in the saltwater. And we learned, we, me being myself and the team, learned a lot from SeaWorld, right?
[00:13:07] Learned how to do water quality better, going over there and visiting with that park and other parks. And that kind of led me into how we all got better. Yeah. So how was the synergy between the parks in those days? It was, from a management standpoint, it was good. But I think from a technical standpoint, as far as the people, if you bridge the gap, it was a very good relationship, right?
[00:13:37] I could call Greg Case or Henry Johnson or any of those guys at SeaWorld and say, hey, I got to, even my curse when he was there, right? I could call these people. Hey, I got this problem. What should I do? What's your opinion, right? And they had years of experience and seen a multitude of different water quality issues and provided feedback, right? I went over there and visited many times to look at their facilities, look at their filtration, look at their automation, right?
[00:14:05] We were 30 some odd facilities with no automation, zero. They had a great automated system by RCK and some, you know, it was kind of, you know, the big brother, little brother deal, right? They were the, you know, even though we bought them, but they were still, they did a better job than we did. But we learned, right? We learned. And that was the big part. We got better. So. Yeah.
[00:14:30] Yeah, that's, that's pretty key in this, in this, in this industry is to have somebody to, to, to bounce things off of, you know, I know when I started at Brookfield, you know, we didn't have any sister park. We don't have it, but, but because EnerTech was our consultant, when I had questions, they said, you know, call Greg Case, you know, cause he's, he's our client and, and Greg, Greg,
[00:14:56] you know, was at SeaWorld Orlando and knew everything about everything. So, so he was a great, a great resource and it's key. You have to have somebody to, to, because somebody's definitely experienced that problem before, you know, and they can definitely help you out. Right. We also had, I had relationships across the, the park portfolio. So Michael Tucker in San Diego. Right. And even in Texas was our heart, right?
[00:15:24] I knew those guys, I could call on them. We could talk. It was, it was a great relationship that we developed over years. Yeah. Yeah. So, so George, going back to, so, so here you are at Bush Gardens, you've got, you know, 45 plus people that, that are reporting to you. You know, some of those are LSS operators. So how much was a two part question?
[00:15:53] How, how much overlap was there between your facilities guys and your LSS guys? And the second part of the question is, is how, how did those LSS operators change or, or how did you see your LSS, the things they had to do and the systems they had to work with? How did that change over the time you were there?
[00:16:23] So the, it was a great, because I managed all those different trades, we could, we could kind of work together very easily. Yeah. So our, my HVAC team and the plumbing team would, would support the water quality team if we had heat exchanger issues or plumbing issues. Right. And then I had a, I had a subcontractor, a small two, three man outfit that I would use for big repairs. You know, if we needed them and that was an amazing trio of employees that the contractor
[00:16:53] was, but there was a lot of, again, we reutilized resources across the company, but that led us into training our own staff and hiring our own water quality life support mechanics. Right. So pump mechanics, pipe, piping mechanics that could do our stuff and understood what we needed. Right. Right. Understood the pump systems and the piping system that we needed for life support.
[00:17:19] And George, you know, we have automation technicians now is in the mix along with the pump mechanics and filtration mechanics. And you had an all manual operation over there. And so what on the OPEX side, I mean, from the expense of labor, having people always out in
[00:17:40] the field on a day-to-day basis, turning valves, backwashing filters, you know, having eyes on the systems all the time, doing rounds. I'm assuming they did all of that work, right? They did all that work. And we eventually progressed because of my ability in the teams that I managed. We actually started our own automation group within the company.
[00:18:07] And we started automating our life support systems with our HVAC control system. So just took the hardware of the HVAC control system and tied in our key filtration systems, key life support systems into that program. We could manage ozone generators at the HIPPO display. I could backwash. We ended up automating the backwash of the HIPPO with this HVAC system.
[00:18:34] Not to get too technical, but would you use ORP to manage ozone dosing automatically? Yes. We'd measure ORP coming out of the pool. We'd measure ORP going back into the pool. We'd measure ORP at our contact chambers. And we could blend where we needed to do the blending. We'd manage flow rates through the filtration system.
[00:19:00] In the end, we ended up taking some natural spring water that we had and we created an automated loop that as this spring water would come into the, we would pump it into the HIPPO filtration system. And then every time we made enough water up that we would constitute a backwash volume, we would backwash a filter. So instead of backwashing a filter once a day or once every other day, depending on what we do, we can now do it based on flow and maintain a much more even flow through the HIPPO system.
[00:19:30] Water quality went up, water clarity went up. It was amazing that little bit of automation, how much that helped that system. And did you have VFDs, variable frequency drives on your pumps at the time? No, yes. Not on the filter pumps. They were just always on. That was, we had VFDs on other systems that we would manage.
[00:19:54] I had an otter system that I actually did the LSS design to change it to an automated system with a contact tower and ozone. And ended up tying VFD in through the automated system to manage the degas tower, to maintain a constant volume in the degas tower. So, and again, it was a great exhibit that turned into really nice. Now we have penguins in there or they have penguins. I don't work there anymore.
[00:20:22] But yeah, that's, you know, I asked this question to all of our guests and I guess it's because I worked as an operator and then I worked on the design side and I know how much goes on on the design side without the operator knowing about it. But to you, George, in your experience, how important is it for an LSS operator to be involved
[00:20:51] in the design? I think it's really important. The problem that we have as an operator is we don't know what buttons to push. What are the important points that a design team needs to hear from us, right? So everything on a design thing is qualitative, right? You spend X number of dollars and you want an X number of dollars, some kind of return, right?
[00:21:16] So when an LSS operator asks or wants to change something, he needs to understand that the design team has to understand there's a value to that. Sure. How do you qualify or quantify that value, right? Absolutely. But sometimes it's just a matter of fact of, hey, you guys are designing this. We did that and it doesn't work, right? Sometimes you got to say that. But again, as an engineer, as a manager, you got to qualify. You can't just say it doesn't work, right?
[00:21:46] So the LSS operator has to be able to articulate their concerns in a fashion that the design team will understand what you want, right? Quantify it. Quantify it. I think it's important that they get involved. It's important that they understand, but also they have to understand the whole scope of what's being done too, right? That's exactly right because there's so many factors involved. I mean, I remember as an operator, we would get a system and we'd say, why?
[00:22:14] Oh my goodness, why would they ever not have a pump here? Or why do we not have a vacuum system? This is crazy. But I know as a design engineer, sometimes those things are just VE out. Not in this company. Why don't we have an isolation valve that you know you're going to need, but the design team doesn't see it, right? Right. That's right. I have a perfect example.
[00:22:42] I was on a design team for a child, a children's exhibit with some jumping jets and stuff. And the filtration area, the mechanical engineer drew it up and there was a wall in the filtration area. And he had the pump sitting right up really close to the wall. And I looked at it and I said, you got to move that back 30 inches. And he's going, why 30 inches? I said, well, because that's the size of a five gallon bucket and a mechanic sitting on it. When he's pulling that pump motor apart, he's going to sit behind it and pull it, right?
[00:23:13] That's right. And he's trying to say, well, he'll just lift it up from the side. I'm like, no, they don't. And that's the piece, right? That's the little pieces that you as a life support operator can help the design team understand. You know, moving the pipe 30 inches or whatever the dimension was, wasn't a big deal on overall design. But from a maintenance standpoint where you have to manage that system, we can now do it in the fashion that we were going to do it. Not how they designed it, but how we have to maintain it, right? Yeah.
[00:23:43] Also on valve positions and where they're placed and how all of the piping associated with the pump, you know, is it ergonomic? Can you work on it? Yeah. Can you remove something and replace it if you need to? So let me make a quick change here, George, because you are as a life support person and a facilities person and a vector control person.
[00:24:14] I love that. So, but you moved from, this is a unique story, I think. And not a lot of people have done it, but you moved from basically the facility side, the operator side, the owner side to the vendor side. So talk a little bit about why you did that and what exactly you're doing now.
[00:24:42] So 36 years of Busch Gardens, ready for a change, ready to do something different. I was involved, but also for, I don't know, 18, 20 years at that point. And we're going to, we're going to get to that as, as another hat you wore, but continue with this. In that group, you know, I've met a multitude of, I've met all the manufacturers and suppliers for all industry, right? Sure. From pump guys, to valve guys, to pipe guys, to ozone companies, right?
[00:25:10] So I had one of, I had a sahi rep call on me at Busch Gardens, right? So months later, I'm at an also show and I'm sitting down with the VP of sales and the VP of engineering. And, you know, I'm very quiet and shy guy. So I, I flat out, I said, Hey, I had so-and-so calling me at the park. And when you're ready to hire somebody who knows what they're talking about with your stuff,
[00:25:36] let me know, you know, and I, it was after a couple of hours of adult beverages. I'll just leave it at that. So six months later, they called my bluff. They said, Hey, if you're interested, we might have a job opening. You know, you, would you be willing to come work with us? So, you know, life support doesn't always pay the best money. Right. And I was at a point in my life where I really was ready for a change.
[00:26:05] So I, six, seven, eight, nine months later, back and forth, I, I took the opportunity to go work for Asahi America and be a regional sales manager. So be the guy that called on the customers like I called on to. Did you have a territory you were responsible for? I covered Florida, Georgia, and Alabama is what I covered. So I covered three states. Now, when I worked at Busch, I traveled 12 minutes back and forth to work. I lived 12 minutes from my job.
[00:26:36] So, so I now traveled three different states on the road. I did 36,000 miles a year in my car in the state of Florida alone. That's how. So, so do you, is your job with Asahi focused on Aquarium Zoo LSS? In my territory at that time, Florida and Georgia, we had some of the most major water quality, life support park, theme parks in the world, right? Sure.
[00:27:03] Georgia Aquarium, the SeaWorld Parks, Busch Gardens Tampa, you had Miami Sea Aquarium. I did focus on that, but my history with Busch Gardens Tampa facilities and my life support allowed me the opportunity to go to water treatment plants, to landfills, wherever. And I could talk equipment toe-to-toe with everybody at any facility. I could walk almost anywhere and, hey, I know that pump. Oh, you deal with, you know, hydromatics.
[00:27:32] What do you think about Danforth? So all the stuff I learned at Busch helped me become a better district manager for Asahi. Yeah. But, but Asahi, they, they, they service lots of industries, correct? Yes. The zoo and aquarium market is a small portion, but a vital portion to the company. With Asahi, you know, I kind of one of the lead point persons for the entire company on all aquaculture programs.
[00:28:00] So any aquaculture, whether it's RAS tech or, or recirculating systems or open water, I'm, I'm the guy. I kind of help drive the market, talking to people, understanding, because I can understand their job, right? You know, that's, that's the key. So yeah. But there's, I'd cover a wide array of industries. I had the trifecta. I went from a water treatment plant to a wastewater treatment plant to a landfill all in the same day. That must be interesting though.
[00:28:30] I mean, something a little bit different and I mean, kind of the same, you know, it's, it's a valve, but, but certainly in a, in a different application. Correct. Different applications to valve is to butterfly valve or a gate valve or a globe valve. And all those things I learned from Busch Gardens and through other, through also taught me how to, how to relate to people. Right? So I don't see myself as a salesperson. I see myself as a problem solver, just like I was at Busch. Right?
[00:29:00] I don't go in trying to tell the guy you need to buy this. I go in and ask him, what's your problem? Right? What do you, what do you need to solve? And because of my work history and education and everything else, I can, I have the ability to do that, to answer those questions and drive answers. George, all these different process streams you were working with, whether that's saltwater, freshwater, wastewater, landfill flow.
[00:29:28] How, how were the valve materials different and, and corrosion and all these issues with materials? It's, that's the toughest part really to learn as to what elastomeric and what body material, disc material to use on those different products. Right. You know, predominantly PVC, CPVC and poly pro on the valve and disc material and then EPDM and Viton for the seat material.
[00:29:55] But there's, there's some interesting elastomerics out there, you know, AFLASD or FKMC. There's other stuff that I've now learned that apply to all that. Right? There's always, there's a good, better, best, right? This will last this long. This will last twice as long. This will last indefinitely. So that's the kind of stuff I had to learn once I left. See, see when Jeff says, when Jeff says, I don't, I don't want to sound too technical here.
[00:30:22] That's that just throw that out the window because he always wants to get into the technical stuff. It goes right off the rails when I do that. See, see, but this, this is interesting. I'm going to change the subject here because we need to time wise, but George, for sure. We are going to have, cause I want this podcast or Jeff and I want this podcast to, to evolve
[00:30:44] into not just talking to someone, but we want to focus on a piece of equipment, a process. And so we'd love to have you back. I'll tell you, right. I want to have you back and talk about valves in a very, very in-depth and technical way. Perfect. Love to. So, but to change the subject now, I do want to get into another hat you've worn in your career.
[00:31:10] And that is the professional organization of ALSO, which is Aquatic Animal Life Support Operators, which we're all members of. And we've all been involved with in, you know, since, since the beginning, but you, you can talk about this, but you, you led the, the organization for, for many years. And, and I know you're still involved on some levels. And so tell us about how you got involved in ALSO.
[00:31:36] Back when I first took over water calling at Tampa, Greg Case was an active member of ALSO, and he suggested that we go. So, so my very first ALSO, we got in my boss's minivan, myself, my water quality manager and myself, and we drove to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. What a trip that was. Yeah. Ripley's. Ripley's. That's right. That's right. So met a bunch of people, learned a lot of stuff about ALSO and kind of, I mean, really
[00:32:06] piqued my interest on how to get better at doing our job, right? There was amazing the different people that showed up and so that was the first year. The next year, I can't remember. We went to Denver, I believe. And then it was in San Diego. We went out to San Diego and Henry Johnson was the president at the time. And there were some issues and I was afforded the opportunity to take on a role as treasurer for the group. I mean, this is around 99, probably.
[00:32:35] Something like that. Yeah. 99. Yeah. So long story short, I was an executive officer for the group for 12 years, 12 to 14 years, president twice, treasurer twice, a bunch of different things and kind of marshaled the group, so to speak, into a profession, more of a professional leader training type of organization.
[00:33:00] We started, and Joe, you were part of that, the kind of push force, the certification process, right? Kind of self-certifying ourselves to know that we know what we have to do to do the job. I got involved because I just, I like the group. I like the camaraderie. I like the openness, right? You learn so much from that group. And we learn from their successes and we learn from their failures, right?
[00:33:29] The group is very open about, hey, this worked or this didn't work. Hey, I tripped up on this, right? Yeah, it's key. That's very key. And we also learned that everybody does the same thing differently. I remember in Baltimore, we're at the National Aquarium, and we did a whole segment on denitrification. We had three different PhD doctorates come in and lecture the group on denitrification. I don't know any of them, do I? Maybe.
[00:33:59] And then we had Dr. Stuart McDaniel come in as a moderator. And then the hundred and some odd operators just tore those PhD guys a new butt because they're like, hey, that may work in the lab. But let me tell you, that doesn't work in the real life situations. And what the goal of the whole thing was to teach people there's a way to do it. There's processes you have to follow. But those processes, how you do those, everybody has different resources. Everybody has different assets.
[00:34:28] But as long as you get to the end result without doing any harm to the animals or to the environment, do what you got to do, right? Open your mind and think through the box, right? And that's what that group does. It does better than I think anybody else. And George, real quick, just a thought here with respect to also under your leadership and the way it's transitioned over the years. But education is key, right? We had lectures, workshops.
[00:34:54] We had the big ass water loop, you know, hands on processes, which led to certification and ultimately a career ladder for operators to work through, get promoted, get higher pay rates and all of that. Right? Yes. It's all about qualifying your experience and your knowledge base, right? There really wasn't a metric out there to do that.
[00:35:22] And creating a level one, level two, and level three operator was basics, right? You know the ABCs of it. The level two was you more of a supervisor level. You understand hydraulic flows. You understand pump curves. And level three was all about you were, if you passed level three, the thought process was you could manage a facility, right? You have the whole package or at least the basics of the whole package. And there was a lot of efforts put forward.
[00:35:51] The field guide came out after I stepped down. It's a great resource even today. That field guide, also field guide, covers those fundamentals. It's a hard paper copy of something you can go back and reference all the time, right? That's what also is all about. Teaching people to do their job better as a group, right? And holding each other accountable to do things better, right? Yeah.
[00:36:16] And it's a great, great open family type organization where, you know, welcome new people in all the time. I do a lot of stuff with students now from across the country, from University of New England, Oregon Coast Community College, Texas A&M. There's a Cincinnati State. Students are now coming to also to learn what they're going to do when they get out, right? These are the jobs out there.
[00:36:45] And I try to work with those students as much as I can, meet them, talk to them. And when they're getting ready to graduate, I say, reach out to me because I know a lot of people. If you need a job, I can maybe help you introduce you to a facility that's looking for a level one intro operator. Yeah. I'll tell you, I've been involved in all. I was involved in also from the beginning, but then I wasn't.
[00:37:07] And the stuff you've done, I mean, we took it so far, but you and the people now are, it's just, it's blowing up. I mean, the popularity and the amount of things that you guys are doing. And if anybody wants any more information on that, you know, it's also.org, that's A-A-L-S-O dot O-R-G.
[00:37:35] And there's a website and all kinds of information for the symposiums, for the certification program. It's just, it's super interesting. It's all volunteer too, right? So all the time people put in, nobody really gets paid. We don't get paid. Right. And that's, so these are real life operators, real life managers training other people across the country. Great, great group. Yeah. It's definitely worth looking into.
[00:38:05] So we're going to wrap this up. I want to give you one question here, George. If you had any advice, you've sort of answered it, I think, with the also part of it. But if you have any advice with, for a young person starting out who's interested in aquarium, zoo, water, life support type stuff, what would be your advice for that person? Well, my advice would be have an open mind, right? Never say no to a challenge.
[00:38:34] Never say no. Or if you fail, pick yourself up, right? Be willing to travel. Like if you don't have a family, travel, go somewhere else and do the mundane job, right? Somebody has to do it. You learn so much from, you know, backwash of the filter. You can learn so much on the flow rate or whatever. But accept every challenge readily. And then if you fail, reach out and try to figure out why you fail. Have somebody help you and pick yourself up and move on.
[00:39:01] There's not one person in this group, in this industry, who has not failed in some fashion at one point or another, right? Yeah, I've done it spectacularly, really. So, you know. I didn't want to go there. But the other guy in the podcast, you know, let's not even talk about him. Yeah, well, you know. But, you know, always accept a challenge. Always, right? You'll learn. You'll learn. And be humble, right? We know what we know. We know what we don't know.
[00:39:30] There's a lot of just, you know, but accept the challenges. That's what I was told to do. Well, good advice. And I appreciate talking to you. I liked to focus on the many hats that you've worn in your career. And it really is. It's an interesting and a very original thing that you've done. So thank you so much. Always a pleasure.
[00:39:57] And we will have you back to talk more about, well, lots of things, but to talk more about valves for sure. Okay. Maybe vector management. Yeah. There you go. Thank you, George. I appreciate you. Appreciate you. Love being here. Thanks for catching up with us. Appreciate it. All right. Yeah. So thanks, everyone. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inflow. Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. And don't forget, you can stay connected with us at inflowlsspodcast.com.
[00:40:28] Thanks for listening.