Transcript
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Foreign. Let's do this. I think it's take three or four. We're gonna get it right this. Hey there, everyone. My name is Eric Triplett, but my friends call me the Pond Digger. You see, I've been in the aquatics business for over 25 years. I'm a professional water feature construction and instructional specialist. I'm passionate about aquatics, and I'm talking from ponds to koi, goldfish, waterfalls and fountains and turtles and frogs, aquariums, and quite frankly, anything that relates to ponds and. Or water in your garden. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I seriously have to pinch myself, because the crazy thing is, I actually get paid because of my passion for aquatics. A funny backstory here is about 35 years ago, when I was in high school, I took a career assessment aptitude test that would help me pinpoint the future of my professional career. The seriously funny thing about this was the test identified that I would be a teacher when I grew up. And that was straight comedy to me. It was laughable because, you know, quite frankly, I didn't even really enjoy school, and I thought how ridiculous this test was to identify me that way. And I thought, like, what's the future of all these students when the test is actually pushing people in the wrong direction? You know what I'm saying? And yet here I am, 35 years later with the leading channel in the world on YouTube, specializing in tutorials and instructional videos on water features in koi. And that's why I say I'm a water feature construction and instructional specialist. It's funny because I thought I was going to be a rock star when I grew up, you know, playing guitar, lead guitar for a rock band I thought was gonna be a rock star. I. I guess, kind of, in a way, because of my YouTube channel, I became a rock star in a sense, but, you know, using granite boulders to build waterfalls instead of, like, playing these crazy riffs on guitar. The cool thing is, my journey in aquatics has led me into becoming a contractor and a businessman, a pond equipment manufacturer, an entrepreneur, and it's led me into a beautiful marriage with a woman of my dreams. I realized many, many years ago in communicating and working with my clients, designing ponds across the country and communicating with these people and teaching people how to do things like, you know, from videos and. Or Skype messages and telephones and stuff. The people that I was communicating with were so interested in my job, and they basically would tell me, like, hey, I do this for a living, but what you do for a living and building ponds is like, this dream. And it took me a little bit of time to realize, like, wow, what I'm doing is really cool. And people aspire to do that. In fact, I have a lot of really close friends now that are in the business that were just clients in the beginning. They wanted to build their own pond. They watched the video, you know, they had me help them design them with a pond, and then they built it, and then they started their own company, and they would call me and ask me questions about how to start their business and so forth. So it's like, that became really cool to me. And so since that time, I've worked really hard to just share my experiences on all the different social media platforms and so forth. But with that being said, my goal on this podcast is to share my experiences in both successes and failures in not only the construction, maintenance, and installation of all the different types of water features, but also share some insights of the highs and lows of running a family business in a field that's ultimately my hobby. And did I mention that my wife and kids actually helped me run the daily operations of my company? So while you can regularly expect Pond Pro tips and tricks from this podcast, the tips won't always be about, you know, specifically about ponds or water features. Sometimes you're just going to get some tips from me as a. As a pond Pro, sharing my experiences about being an entrepreneur or a cancer survivor or the trials and tribulations and the rewards of running a business with my wife and kids. I plan on sharing some crazy, ridiculous, funny stories about some of my clients and my employees over the years in my career that we all, we can all learn from these stories. And I have no doubt that I'm going to organize some interviews that are going to provide some serious learning experiences. One thing that I'm going to guarantee you is I will always, and I mean always, respect your time. And I'm working really, really hard to drop the content with context and value. So hit that subscribe button, hit the notifications tab, and let's get this audio experience it.