Pamela Basham
39
Account manager and service tech
Royal Pool Service & More, LLC
Charlotte, North Carolina
RPoolService.com
Pamela Basham’s parents instilled a strong work ethic in her from an early age. Her mother started a pool service business from her garage in West Virginia in 1979, while her father worked nights in the coal mine and spent days building pools. Her parents’ business grew to three retail stores and pool sales, and from age 14, Basham was involved.
Basham and her husband, Patrick, moved to North Carolina in 1999, where they both worked for a pool company. In 2009, the Bashams decided to start their own company.
“It was scary and exciting all at the same time,” Basham says. “We had nothing really to start. Our local distributor gave us a line of credit, since they’d known me for years. We had a few pool cleanings that were people I’d known for a long time.”
Now, 10 years later, Basham says the company is stronger and bigger than they’d ever imagined. “She does most of the sales, finances and works in the field cleaning pools and doing repairs,” Patrick Basham says of Pamela. “She is very knowledgeable and loves her job.”
Along with their son, Dylan, the Bashams do everything except build pools, working out of their home with two trucks and each cleaning about 60 pools a week during the season.
Basham says she would love to see more women in the industry. “Sometimes it’s frustrating as a woman to call tech lines for help,” she says. “I feel we get treated like we don’t know what we are doing, when I can do about anything anyone else can do on a pool.”
