Hemispheres of Interest

I’ve racked up my fair share of professional accolades and honors in the past 20-odd years.

I suppose if I paid too much attention to all that stuff, I might be tempted to think that I know almost everything about my industry – but I wouldn’t dream of harboring that thought, because the amount of stuff I don’t know has always impressed me a lot more than the pile of stuff I do know.

That simple recognition has made me hungry for knowledge and new experiences and has influenced the way I’ve always approached my life and my work. In fact, I shudder to think of all the things I’d have missed along the way if I had ever decided to stand pat with my stock of knowledge.

WALKING THE TALK

What I’m getting at here is not just the value of education in a trade – an important concept I’ve written about before and have watched develop through the years. No, what I’m talking about is an idea that precedes all of that: The notion that to become truly educated, to open up fully to the potential for learning, we all must first accept and explore the notion that there are many things we do not know.

That may sound like an absurdly basic idea, but it sure seems to be tough for some people to accept. In my own experience, I’ve known lots of people in the watershaping business (and in other walks of life as well) who honestly act as though they know it all. Or, at least, they seem to believe they know enough.

When it comes to professional knowledge, I guess I can understand why some people might feel that way. When you spend a lifetime working at something, have made good money at it and keep receiving positive reinforcement of your creativity and excellence, you might be tempted to think that you’ve mastered the game. When you’re told that you’re an expert over and over and over again, it’s tough not to start believing what you’re hearing.

But as my brother and I always used to say when I was growing up, “If you’re not moving forward, you’re dancing backwards.” Even when I was a kid, that made sense to me, but I didn’t completely appreciate the power of the statement until I was an adult.

A key moment for me came in the early 1980s, when I had been hired to do an AM-radio talk show called “All About Pools and Spas.” It was exciting and a little bit scary: I’d never set out to become a radio personality, but I’ve never shied away from being the center of attention, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Early on in the process, however, I saw that I didn’t have enough ready-made topics to carry a weekly radio show. I quickly exhausted my store of knowledge – and I realized that if I wanted to continue talking to an audience, I’d have to find new things to discuss. In other words, I had to expand my set of parameters, and learning new things was the only pathway I had that would let me stay in a spotlight I was beginning to enjoy.

So I started learning about things like water exercise, synchronized swimming, entertaining by the pool and outdoor cooking. I met experts from other fields, including Dr. Jane Katz, a physical fitness expert who since has gone on to make several presentations at pool-industry trade shows.

Once I opened up to my own ignorance and began using it as a springboard for areas of inquiry, we started having some real fun on the program. I brought in barbecue experts, authorities on ponds, landscape designers, chefs – and we even talked about ways you could cover your pool to use the space as a dance floor.

I quickly recognized that these forays outside my comfort zone not only saved my bacon on the air; they also fueled a desire to learn even more. All of a sudden, the things that were previously blanks to me became sources of tremendous interest and excitement. In short order, I became hooked on learning.

GREAT ADVENTURES

I ended up doing that radio show for four years. After a time, however, I had the growing sense that I was burning out, so I asked the station manager for a hiatus to let me recharge my batteries.

I stepped away from the microphone and figured I would wait to see if the urge to go back ever hit me. It was only a few months later when the station manager called to ask me to come back – but this time to do something completely different.

You Never Know Allow me to share a brief story about one of our Genesis 3 students as an illustration of some key points I make in the accompanying column. In this issue on page 74, you’ll find an article by Paul Benedetti. Paul is a graduate of Genesis 3’s Level One and Level Two Design Schools and has always been tremendously generous in letting us know that his experiences at the schools have changed forever the way he approaches watershape design and construction. At the Level Two school Paul attended earlier this year, we featured a presentation by a Feng Shui master knowing full well that this was going to be way off the beaten path for many participants. We were anxious to see and hear their reactions to the discussion. Paul was definitely one of the skeptics – not rude or anything like that, but he certainly let us know that he didn’t see the relevance of this ancient Asian art of spatial relationships, shapes and spiritual forces as it applied to building pools and spas. Fair enough, we thought. One of the things you look for in staging educational opportunities is this sort of honest feedback. Recently, however, Paul seems to have had a change of heart: He sent me an e-mail describing an experience he’d had with a client who’d recently relocated from Asia to Northern California, reporting that while they were discussing various design details of a big residential project, something clicked: The discussions evoked memories of the Feng Shui master’s presentation, and Paul offered the thought that one of the features being discussed strengthened the Feng Shui of the project. The client was impressed – but probably not as much as I was by Paul’s change in thinking. It’s important to point out that he did not present himself as a Feng Shui expert, but it’s certain that his acquaintance with the subject had an impact on the clients and elevated Paul and the value of his ideas in their minds. As he put it in his e-mail, “You never know when something you learn will be put to use in the future.” – B.V.B.

He told me that he wanted me to host a program on food and wine. I quickly pointed out that although I love eating good food and drinking good wine, I was by no means an expert. That, he said, was what he was counting on and that the station wanted to do an “everyman’s” guide to food and wine. They didn’t want some well-known authority on the subject; rather, they wanted someone just like me.

So I teamed up with my brother, and we did “The Good Life,” a show that gave us liberty to explore the world of fine dining from the perspective of two guys who didn’t know a lot more than the audience.

The show was a success – and a whole lot of fun because we were able to share with the audience our love of great edibles and potables and the joy of discovering the richness of the culinary world. It all worked because we began with the premise that we didn’t know everything (or, in some cases, anything), and that the journey itself was fun and interesting.

This was exactly the spirit that drove David Tisherman, Skip Phillips and me to form Genesis 3, by the way. We came together with the realization that we all were ready to go on a voyage of discovery. It wasn’t so much that we wanted to teach what we knew as it was that we wanted to learn ourselves and share that experience with other people in the watershaping business. So we formed an organization and stage schools where we bring in all sorts of experts and dive into the richness of thought and information that’s out there just waiting for us all.

Not without some bias, I think our schools are a great place to learn – but they’re just one example of the resources you can tap into. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if your receptors are open, the pathways to knowledge are both infinite in number and limitless in scope.

HOOKED ON EXPLORATION

Everything I’m talking about here certainly applies to professional education, but it’s much more than that. In fact, what I’m discussing is really a way of life.

In that respect, curiosity and exploration are sort of like exercise: It can be tough to get started, but once you do, you want more, can do more and will strive for more. And it builds, so it’s always gaining momentum. I hesitate to say so, but it’s like an addiction – just let me add quickly that this is a fix that’s safe to experience over and over and over again.

The desire to learn and have new experiences does mean that you have to become comfortable with being in uncomfortable situations. That is, new experiences are often very unsettled and unsettling, and adventures require you to put yourself in situations in which the outcome is not entirely predictable.

There is no better place to find this kind of stimulation than in a foreign country.

My first big taste of this came two years ago, when I went to Lyon, France, to give a presentation to builders and designers of swimming pools. My good friend Bill Kent of Horner Equipment had arranged for me to lead the seminar, and I must admit that I was a bit intimidated. I’d always heard that the French could be cool toward and even dismissive of Americans, and I thought I had legitimate reasons to be anxious about standing up in front of a bunch of people from a different culture on their home turf.

I’ve mentioned this trip before in this column, and I bring it up again here because it’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. For starters, I learned a ton by being exposed to European ideas about hydraulics and equipment-set layout and design. I reciprocated by sharing what I knew, and, judging by the response, I managed to expose the audience to some new ideas.

For example, the French use sand filters almost exclusively, which seemed somehow behind the times to me. By the same token, they were way ahead of the curve when it came to details such as vanishing edges, perimeter overflows and integrating water into hilltop settings.

I also found out that many people over there would rather let a pool turn slightly green than fill it full of chemicals. That was news to me, this French notion that a little algae is a lot better than too much chlorine. I can’t endorse the approach, but I must say that being exposed to their perspective has certainly helped me moderate some of my views on water treatment.

Overall, it was a highly positive experience, and I was happy to find that my preconceptions about the French were misplaced. To be sure, I didn’t agree with everything I observed or heard, and I’m sure I left a few French builders shaking their heads at my quaint American ideas as well. But there can be no question that my experience in Lyon and, indeed, the temporary discomfort that came with the uncertainty of the situation, served to broaden my horizons. (It also helped that I was able to enjoy the great cuisine of France while I was there.)

UP ON DOWN UNDER

Just recently, I had the pleasure of attending another pool and spa show overseas, this one in Australia. It took place just before the Olympics – an amazingly exciting time to be in the great land down under.

I made the trip with David Tisherman and Skip Phillips at the invitation of Splash, a magazine linked to an Australian trade association and its show. Again, I made the trip not knowing what to expect.

The show was held outside of Brisbane in an area called the Gold Coast, and just getting there was a revelation. I’d never given much thought to the physical size of Australia. In fact, when we were planning our trip and considering some of the places we’d like to visit, it was obvious we were thinking of it as being about the size of Texas, maybe, and relatively easy for travelers. Well, we were wrong: The place is truly massive, and just planning our itinerary became a lesson in the vastness of the Southern Hemisphere’s geography.

When we finally arrived, we were greeted warmly. On our first day, my cohorts and I attended a cocktail party where we were immediately welcomed by several conferees who told us that their main reason for attending the event was to see our presentation. This made the organizers extremely happy, of course, but it definitely pushed up the pressure as far as our seminars were concerned.

Again, the discomfort led to learning. The Australian watershaping trade is similar to what we have in the United States, but there are lots of distinctions, too. As it turns out, the market that led the way with pebble finishes and saltwater chlorine generation also seems behind the times in other technological areas, and these were points we discussed at length.

In that way, it was a very different experience from the one I had in Lyon. Over in France, there was a definite reluctance on the part of some conferees to ask questions, interact and risk revealing any gaps in their knowledge. In Australia, however, those who came to the conference just couldn’t get enough: They asked question after question without end.

In fact, it was as though we had walked into a convention of fellow curiosity junkies: I’ve never seen a group so eager to learn.

Suffice it to say that our sessions were a smashing success and we’re already planning a return engagement. I’m not sure when that’ll happen, but I know that when I go again, I’ll be traveling to a place where the appetite to learn is as big as the continent itself.

OPEN EYES, OPEN MIND

The point of this travelogue is not to urge you to book a flight to France or Australia, but to point out that the world we live in is full of people, places, knowledge and ideas to which we seldom think about exposing ourselves.

Yes, opening yourself to what you don’t know will help make a trade show or professional seminar more valuable. (In fact, I’d say that if you’re not open, you might as well not bother to show up.) But far beyond anything to do with your job, accepting all things unknown as golden opportunities to learn makes the experience of being alive more satisfying.

Back in the ’60s, there was lots of talk about “turning on” and the concept of a “greater awareness.” Those ideas probably get shortchanged these days because of their association with people not engaged in practical pursuits. The fact is, however, that awareness is tangible. It can yield income, it can yield satisfaction, it can yield fun – and it can yield a desire for even greater awareness.

And you don’t have to travel halfway or all the way around the world or tour the country in a magic bus to find this kind of awareness. When I think of the information that’s available in libraries, museums and on the Internet, it’s just mind-boggling. We truly do live in an Information Age, and I believe we are among the luckiest people who’ve ever lived.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter where you indulge this curiosity about the world around you: Just go out and exercise it. It doesn’t really matter where or how you feed that curiosity: Just feed it! New avenues of discovery and unanticipated paths of inquiry both professional and private will reveal themselves to you as you move forward.

The first step, however, is up to you.

Brian Van Bower runs Aquatic Consultants, a design firm based in Miami, Fla., and is a co-founder of the Genesis 3 Design Group; dedicated to top-of-the-line performance in aquatic design and construction, this organization conducts schools for like-minded pool designers and builders. He can be reached at [email protected].