This may be your last chance to catch your breath before you jump with both feet into the wonderful chaos of summer. If you live and work in warmer climates, you probably are already multitasking, working overtime and skimping on sleep. If you haven't already started, you soon will be building pools, delivering spas, selling chemicals and accessories and servicing routes.
You can't possibly find time to do anything else, can you?
Surprisingly, you can. It goes against conventional wisdom on the subject, but most of you — over 80 percent of you — continue to read AQUA throughout the summer months, according to a Readex survey. In fact, 82 percent read half or more of AQUA during the summer compared to 84 percent for the rest of the year. The number is pretty consistent across the readership segments that Readex studied: 90 percent of Pool Dealer/Builders read through the summer months, while 77 percent of Pool and Spa Dealer/Builders did their summer reading. Spa-Only Dealers, Pool/Spa Supply Dealers and Service Professionals fell into the 80 to 85 percent range.
The question isn't, "How can these professionals afford the time to read?" It's, "How can they afford to not find the time to read?" The best time to acquire knowledge and skills is when you're able to apply what you've read or heard; when you're able to act on it. Plus, studies show that people who read, who have larger vocabularies, tend to be the most successful in their fields, whether they're plumbers, lawyers or pool builders.
The folks at Readex will be doing another study of our readership soon. It's very helpful to us to know what our readers find useful, what they like, what topics are important. It helps us decide how to best serve you, our customers. When we receive the results, I hope we'll find that our summer readership has climbed even higher. But whether you're reading AQUA or the Wall Street Journal or the latest Tom Clancy thriller, I hope you'll read.
Let me know what's on your summer reading list.
