You may be surprised to find out that Custom Built Spas will be starting its 18th year in business in just a couple of months. Our humble beginnings started in SC in 1999 with a plan and a goal to provide guys and gals like me who love to create things with their own hands, a DIY project that surprisingly had no real information available anywhere on how to do it correctly.
I spent hours, weeks and months, doing research on how hot tubs were built and what it would take to put together a hot tub that would perform as good as anything you could buy from a retail store and look just as nice if not better.
The first DIY hot tub we built was out of necessity to have a unit that would fit in a specific area of a large screened in porch, but nothing was available for purchase to fit where it was needed to fit at a cost that made sense, so I said, why not just build one and that’s what we did.
Progress was a little slow because we were going through a learning process as the hot tub was being built, and minor mistakes had to corrected as we continued. However, what I was beginning to realize was that this type of project was by no means rocket science and was very doable for just about anyone who had some basic DIY skills and a little ambition. It was never about speed, but it was all about producing a quality project that someone would be proud to say, “I did this myself”.
My first hot tub in SC My own hot tub in CT
To make a long story short, that first project was a success and people who saw it began asking if I could build one for them, and thus the journey began. One of our friends mentioned that they knew people in other states that would love to do a project like this. However, I made it clear that I wasn’t traveling to different states to build spas and hot tubs, but when this friend said well why don’t you write an outline of all the steps to do this project so others could follow along too. That was the light bulb moment which led to my first DIY book on how to build spas and to start Custom Built Spas.
My first Custom Built Spas book
was meager 55 pages of information, (one side) with a few pictures and drawings, (it’s now 99 pages, comes with several other publications and a video)! Around that same time I was reading about how people were selling information online and that it was a great way to make some extra money. I put two and two together and created my first Custom Built Spas website from how to information I found in a $12.95 book bought at a Barns and Noble book store. This first site was really cheesy and had blinking lights, flashing arrows to get people’s attention etc. It really was quite pathetic, but the site actually generated a few information book sales shortly after it was posted and went live. That’s when I knew I had something that people wanted, and I would have to learn as much as I could on how to sell products online. Online marketing was gaining a lot of momentum at that time, and I wanted to ride the wave.
I continued to learn all I could about online marketing, I wrote a couple more DIY spa books, revamped and refined my website. I made arrangements with a major spa parts company in Tempe AZ to drop ship parts to my customers who were going to build a spa or hot tub. I learned how to set up a “shopping cart” where people could buy my books with credit cards instead of sending me money orders or checks and sales began to take off.
Custom Built Spas
was starting to get recognized online and was ranking very well with Google and other search engines. This was all very exciting, but I wanted to be number 1 in this DIY nitch area. I found an Internet marketing company that became instrumental in creating a whole new professional look for my website, taught me about keywords and search engine optimization and invited me to enroll in their mentor program. It was a lot of money for this program, but it was the only way I could see Custom Built Spas getting to the next level without me spending months learning these things on my own, when they could teach and help me learn how to do things in just a few weeks.
After completing this mentor program, sales took off big time, and I knew that the money I spent on having a mentor was money well spent. Custom Built Spas started making sales every single day, I had customers in every state of the union and I was getting customers in a number of other countries as well. Besides my series of spa and hot tub building books, I was now able to produce a 2-1/2hr step by step video of the spa and hot tub building process, this was huge!
Spa and hot tub building customers were sending me pictures of their projects and thanking me for support and for helping them through their build process. The amount of money they were saving over having a contractor build a spa for them was incredible. 80% savings or more was common place! Take a look through the hot tub gallery of my website, and see what some of these customers have built. Custom Built Spas was now starting to get industry recognition and I was interviewed by a few well-known industry publications. It became clear to me that people thirsted for the information I provided, but even more important truly appreciated the service and support I gave them during the build process for their projects.
Some of these customers had no previous experience whatsoever building something like this, but they were really good at following directions. Not only that, making myself available for help to my customers throughout their projects, right up till the project is done and running is all but an unheard-of service. Who does that these days? Read through some of the many, many testimonials I’ve received, that should give you a good idea of who I am and what I do for my customers.
The journey to reach my goal of having Custom Built Spas be the #1 DIY spa and hot tub information provider not just in the country, but the world has been long, exciting and very rewarding. A number of my customers also become friends, how much better does it get than that. I get invitations from customers to come visit them if I’m ever in their area, all the time.
So what do you say, isn’t it time we build a hot tub in your backyard together, you can get everything you need to know on how to do it right from my website and from me, “your personal spa building coach”.
Thanks for the visit!
Gene Trumbull
Custom Built Spas
