Come for a ride with me on my container pool journey! I will be 100% transparent, the good and the bad.

When I started this company, I was looking for an exit from my spray foam insulation business that I ran for 9 years and was just getting burnt out on. I had seen a few container pools online in the past and with my previous background in welding/fab and building pools I thought I'd take a stab at it.

Pool #1 I built in the same way as the original competition, all steel, with a coated interior to make it waterproof. We used a specific pool epoxy for metal pool walls. I sold the pool locally and while it sat in my driveway waiting for the customer to pour a footing it filled with rainwater and the epoxy delaminated.

Regroup- I started looking into doing a fiberglass shell for them. Big money, I finally hired a company in Charleston to build our first mold, and run the production of shells. They were 16ft shells and a seperate stair mold to incorporate exterior stairs into the container. This turned into a nightmare as they took 3 months longer to finish the mold then stated, and during production never completed more than 2 shells a month, sometimes none. This caused a chain reaction all last summer that led to me losing a lot of money. I fired them that september and moved the mold to my shop where it needed a lot of work. There is still some minor issues with this original mold but it is still usable if needed.

Regrouping- Last winter we stopped all sales to focus on building our own molds in house. Starting with our 40ft mold, then turning around and making the first of two new 20ft molds. in May we were finally in production, infusing our first 20ft shell in house and starting our season. Now we don't outsource anything and control the timing and quality ourselves.

Since May, myself and my son have been building pools, 8 so far, with a few more confirmed, with an average price around $57,000 each. We see around a 50% profit per pool, although I don't have much profit to show this year as I have hustled to pay off the debt that we got into last year and am now flush. From start to finish the two of us can build a 20ft pool in a little over a week, and 40ft in 2.

This summer we took a 40ft pool to the Ozarks Shootout for a VIP area and created a great relationship there. Now the IHRA and the Shootout team want a container pool at up to 6 boat races across the nation this year starting with Havasu in spring. So there is a great marketing opportunity there.

Where I'm at- After the nightmare of the first year and fighting back to get out of the hole this year I am getting burnt out. I could 100% continue building for another year and show a great profit but my heart just isn't in it anymore as I have a couple side projects that are taking off and for me personally would be easier to scale. I am not organized enough to scale this with multiple employees and let it grow into what it is capable of. It's an awesome company, and I'm really proud I was able to get it to this point.

Where we have the competition beat is the fiberglass shell and spray foam. That is a HUGE selling point when talking to potential customers. With the spray foam they are very efficient also so most customers add a heater to the build as well. We typically don't do any installs, unless they are local. When a pool is done it is considered a plug and play unit like a hot tub, once it is shipped and set in place the only thing needed is electricity ran and it is ready to fill up. We can also do a full solar option that makes them 100% off grid.

I have some things drawn up as far as expansion and new options that I have never had time to pursue that I can pass along to a new owner also.