"Howdy everybody. The name's Tim, Turtle Tim, and I've got the best job in the world." That's how the new Primary Pool Services intro starts, narrated by a cartoon turtle on the side of a wrapped truck. Ten years ago, that turtle didn't exist. Neither did the trucks. Neither did the 175 pools we keep crystal clear every week across Ventura County. There was just one guy named Dillon Brooks, a chip delivery truck, and a Google search.

From a Chip Route to a Pool Company

Dillon was delivering bags of chips to convenience stores when he realized he was ready for something new. He had a truck. He had restless ambition. He had absolutely no idea what to do with either. So he Googled business ideas. Pool service kept coming up. He liked the math. He signed up for a CPO course, passed the test, and walked out knowing essentially nothing about how to actually clean a pool.

What got him the real education was shadowing a working pool pro for a few months while still running his chip route, stocking shelves at Trader Joe's, and picking up catering shifts on the weekends. That's not a business plan. That's a guy hedging his bets while he figures it out.

The Bet: $40,000 and 42 Pools

Eventually he found a 42-pool route listed for $40,000. He didn't have $40,000. He negotiated $20K upfront with the balance financed, then asked his girlfriend (now his wife) to take out a $25,000 personal loan to help make the rest happen.

Growth Is Not the Same as Profit

For a while, more pools felt like the answer to every problem. COVID hit, the home services industry exploded, and Dillon grew the company to about 230 accounts. On paper, that looked like success. Inside the business, it felt like drowning. More pools meant more employees, more trucks, more chemical costs, more breakdowns. And the books weren't clean enough to tell what was actually working.

The Brutal Pivot

Once Dillon could see the numbers, he had to make decisions he didn't want to make. He moved everyone to a "plus chemicals" pricing model: a base rate for the weekly service, chemicals billed separately based on what each pool actually used (a question that comes up enough that we cover it on our FAQ page). He let go of bad-fit accounts. He raised prices.

The route count dropped from 230 to about 170. The business shrank by a third before it could grow correctly. By every traditional metric, that was a step backward. It was also the moment Primary Pool Services became a real business.

The Turtle Wins

The early Primary Pools logo had a cartoon shark. Customers commented on it. People remembered it. Then Dillon swapped it for something cleaner, more "corporate," more like what he thought a professional pool company was supposed to look like. Nobody noticed. The compliments stopped. The brand became invisible.

So he went all in on a turtle. Bright green, blue, orange. Impossible to miss on a truck rolling down the street. That recognition runs through neighborhoods in Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Camarillo, and every other corner of the county we run routes through. The team started joking about being the "Ninja Turtles" at industry events.

The turtle also made the price tag make sense. Primary Pool Services charges more than a lot of competitors, and that's deliberate. But you can't charge more without backing it up: wrapped trucks, matching uniforms, a real website, the full slate of services living up to a higher standard. A cartoon turtle isn't the lesson. The lesson is that being remembered is a competitive advantage.

Today: 175 Pools. Better Business.

Primary Pool Services now runs about 175 residential accounts across Ventura County with a seven-person team. The trucks are wrapped. The uniforms match. The turtle (Tim) is on everything. And the company is more profitable now than it was at its peak of 230 accounts. That's the punchline: fewer pools, better business.

The Advice He'd Give

Most founder interviews end with motivational fortune-cookie advice. Dillon's doesn't.

He means it. And if you do it right, you come out the other side with a company that makes sense. 175 pools. Seven people. A turtle named Tim. And the kind of week-after-week consistency that turns a customer into a customer for a decade. If you're somewhere in Ventura County and you'd like that kind of consistency on your own pool, we're easy to reach.