Angelique Denneman on How Air-Vote is Changing the Game for Portable Restroom Operators

Pete: 00:00:15

Hello, and welcome to season two of Get Flushed, the Sanitation podcast. My name's Pete.

Over the past two weeks, I've spoken about cleaning regimes and looked at the challenges that restroom operators face when they try to gather feedback from the people who actually use their bathrooms. This week, I want to take that further. Since I started the show, I've been pretty active on social media under the guise of Pete from Get flushed.

I'm a member of several portable sanitation groups, and I maintain a presence to help me promote the show and network with operators, suppliers, manufacturers, and anyone else with an interest in the industry. Earlier this year, I noticed an advert on social media for a product or service called Air-Vote.

To begin with, I really didn't pay much attention, but after I clicked on the ad, I realized that Airvo may have the potential to get the feedback I've been talking about in real time while the toilet user is still in the bathroom. And so after exchanging a few messages and emails, I arranged to talk with Angelique Denneman, one of the creators behind Air-Vote.

So I'm joined today by Angelique from Air-Vote. Good morning. How are you?

Angelique: 00:01:24

Good afternoon, Pete. Good to see you.

Pete: 00:01:27

Lovely to meet you, too.

Angelique: 00:01:29

Yeah, likewise.

Pete: 00:01:30

It's probably easiest, Angelique, if you explain who you are and you introduce airvote rather than me trying to explain it.

Angelique: 00:01:35

All right, well, thank you, first of all, Pete, for having me at your show, and I would love to share something about Air-Vote. Initially, Air-Vote got started, or the idea came up more through traveling and visiting other businesses.

You would love to leave feedback, but the question is always, how do you do that when you have a negative feedback or you need to go to Google or Yelp, or you need to talk to the business owner. Also, others know when you're at the airport, you have those stations, you push the button.

But for a business owner, that's very expensive to invest in that. The idea actually came up.

You have a device with your phone, and the idea came like, hey, why not create a QR sticker, ask any question you want to your customer, and go from there. That's how the idea actually got started.

Pete: 00:02:30

Can you tell us a little bit about Airvo as a company? Angelique sure.

Angelique: 00:02:34

We started August: 2019

February, beginning of March: 2020

If they implement it on their tables, in their restrooms, and just ask the question to their customers, how is our service, how is our waiting time, et cetera, et cetera. So that was our first introduction. We kind of got feet on the ground in some of the restaurants. Our first customer is a zoo, actually.

They placed the stickers as like, how do you like my habitat? At that point, we were already in the Covid-19 so right away it just really helped that the customer of the business doesn't have to touch anything.

You scan, you cast your vote and you're done. It's anonymous. And instantly the feedback goes to the business owner. So that's kind of short. What happens?

Pete: 00:03:55

That's actually the nuts and bolts of the system, isn't it? You display three QR codes. A red, yellow and green one.

Angelique: 00:04:02

Exactly.

Pete: 00:04:03

The customer holds their phone up and it reads it and automatically pins it to the user or the customer to give them the feedback. And you can use it in absolutely any application.

Angelique: 00:04:12

Yes, wherever there is customer traffic. And that's also got us thinking, what is our perfect customer? We did a pilot project here in Austin airport, and we even did little bets.

Like each restroom stall, we placed a sticker in the men in the women's restroom. And we like, would they really actually vote, men or women? And they did. And it's amazing what the numbers came in. And it doesn't matter.

Male or female, they're all voting because that's really what we found out. I on the restroom is the place where people sit down and take the time and have their phone with them.

And even in other industries, like in hospitals, we still see feedback coming on the restroom about the service, how long they had to wait in line. In the zoo. Somebody sits on the restroom, takes the time and said, well, you know what?

Actually my food was a little bit cold and it didn't even that point. The question, for example, is like, how clean is the restroom?

But that was really the spot where people take the time, have their phone, sit down, etcetera.

Pete: 00:05:21

Do you know, it's such a simple idea and good on you. The conversation in portable restroom circles is that the client of the restroom operator is usually somebody in an admin office.

It's not the user of the toilet. And you've cut through all of that because you've got a direct channel to the person who's using the toilet.

And I can't imagine that that had ever happened before. In the portable restroom industry.

Angelique: 00:05:49

And that's what we also just found out, because from one industry we kind of rolled into the other. Like when the zoo initially started. The zoo most of the time is part of a certain city. The city has a park.

In the park there are restrooms and there were portable restrooms. And that's how we actually came into the portable restroom industry.

t us. And we're talking about: 2000

It is dirty because you cannot be always be on sites. And then the person who has that route can say, oh, you know what, tomorrow I change my route a little bit and stop by at that particular restroom.

But also a practical comments like, you know what, we don't have toilet paper. And that particular restroom was getting comments more and more often.

So the backends, the office found out that too many people were actually using that particular restroom so they could go back to their customer and say, you know what, you need to rent another one. So right away they earn back their investments in us.

Pete: 00:07:07

And that's a really good point because it's immediate real time feedback, I'm guessing.

Angelique: 00:07:11

Yes, exactly.

Pete: 00:07:13

From that, can the toilet user who answers the QR code leave comments as well in support?

Angelique: 00:07:20

So let me just exactly explain the process. So the sticker is placed on the inside of the door. So you, as a user of the restroom scan, will scan with your phone.

And in this case, the question is, how clean is the restroom? If it's clean, you scan green. You have the option to leave a comment and say, for example, I like the smell.

Also, you have the option to go to social media and the company decides what connection that will be, Google or their Facebook page. And there you can leave a review on social media.

If you scan yellow or red, you can also leave a comment, but not leave a review on social media because we want to promote, of course, the happy votes and the positive votes.

Pete: 00:08:15

I really like that. And one thing I've noticed in the industry is that people are really quick to call you out on social media if something's not right.

Angelique: 00:08:22

Exactly.

Pete: 00:08:23

They'll leave a slamming review even for the smallest thing.

So there's a lot of sense in your approach there of filtering the positives to social media and the negatives to the owner who can actually deal with it and not be embarrassed in public.

Angelique: 00:08:37

There. If some of these scans only read, we want to know why. Because that's what we now found out from the portable restaurant business.

They say, I love these red votes, but what's going on? So we really try to promote that. People do leave a comment, why, for example, it's red.

So, yeah, it's a very simple, one touch solution, not 100,000 questions. What will follow?

Pete: 00:09:03

How did the conversation with that first wallet company, how did that conversation go?

Angelique: 00:09:07

Well, we started with a smaller portable restroom company. They had about, I think it was about 30 to 50 units.

And they really profiled themselves in the market, like, you know, we might be a little bit more expensive, but we guarantee that it's clean. With them, it was an easy sale pitch to say, well, how can you guarantee that it's clean if you do your weekly route?

Because somebody can come in, and after that, the first day, it might not be clean. Yeah, but, you know, our standards, procedures, you know, we clean it a certain way.

So we just told them, I said, you know, why don't we just try it out? We send you some stickers for free. And we are convinced it helps because that's what we already saw out in some of the other industries.

Wherever it's in the bathroom, the feedback will come.

They were a little bit hesitant in a way that they said, well, you know, people are getting bored and they're going to send us all kinds of weird messages in the middle of the night. And he said, that's all up to you. You can change the settings of the reports. You can get notification by text message or by email.

It's not that they call you in the middle of the night.

The company you implemented said, well, you know, I rather want them to put all kinds of negative things or just if they're bored to write in the comments than to have all this gravity on the wall. So in that sense, it covered that, too. And you never know what people do. Of course, you cannot guarantee guaranteed ads.

Pete: 00:10:45

You can't. And honestly, toilet users are just the strangest. You find all sorts written in and on toilets. It's just.

Angelique: 00:10:53

Yeah, and, well, and that's what's what, really.

I quote a comment of one of, and I send it over to you, like, I would rather read some useless comment in a report than scrub gravity of my unit's walls. A win win. And I'm literally quoting one of our customers, you know what they said? And I'm like, hey, that's the best advertisement for us.

Pete: 00:11:15

Yeah. So, you know, if they're occupied using their phone, they're not going to be using a sharpie to write graffiti on walls?

Angelique: 00:11:21

Yeah, exactly.

Pete: 00:11:22

It's really good. Can we talk through the mechanics of the stickers? I'm guessing they're a vinyl sticker and it's one sticker with the three symbols on.

Angelique: 00:11:30

Yeah. So each sticker has three unique QR codes. When you're ready to get started with airvote, we have a self service website.

You just log on, register your business, and can create any question you want through experience. We found out, keep the question short. For example, is this restroom clean? First we had, how do you experience the cleanliness?

Is something missing, but you want to keep the attention of the person who sits down. So be clear on your question. At that point, you create your question. You can print it yourself or you send the order to us.

And we work with several companies to have the stickers printed in three x six or four x eight. And you are correct. In the portable restroom industry, the quality of the stickers is very important. So these are the vinyl, high tech stickers.

So especially with cleaning, we want to make sure that they stay on.

Pete: 00:12:30

And is it one set of unique QR codes for every toilet?

Angelique: 00:12:34

Yes.

Pete: 00:12:34

Or one for every provider?

Angelique: 00:12:37

No, it's one sticker with three unique QR codes per restroom. So in the field, when you get your feedback back, you know exactly from which unit it comes. Some businesses number their units.

Some give us the location. We're now working with the geolocation to bring it up a step. That's our latest development.

So basically, what the person does who puts in the sticker, they scan it themselves the first time, and in the comments, they leave the geolocation or the unit number, and then on the back end we can do it, put it in the business panel. So it's the right connection to the right sticker to the right location, or the business owner can do it themselves.

Pete: 00:13:24

Yeah, geo location would be brilliant because toilets move around and being able to track it is an excellent idea. I use that in the audit tool that I use. The phone automatically records the location when you start the audit. And that's so valuable.

Angelique: 00:13:40

So, yeah, that's kind of a new development for us now.

And like I said, we started with one of the customers of our customers, the bigger ones that we said, hey, you know, what value will it add to your business? Every business works different. As you know, some have standard routes, some change the route based on the area the driver works in.

And some drivers work on commission based, and some, you know, are employees. So there's also a different motivation for the driver.

Student, you can bring it up a step, because if a certain driver in his or her area has more red votes, maybe he or she is not doing the right job. So right away you can connect it.

Pete: 00:14:21

To your staff performance, the feedback loop to the driver. That's really powerful. Angelique.

I've worked with lots of drivers, and they all think they're doing an a one primo job, and it's only when you go on site. I have a lot of talk with people about, do you need to do the inspections or do you need to do the air vote as soon as it's been cleaned.

And my experience is it doesn't matter when the toilet was cleaned, you, as a user, can tell whether that toilet has been properly maintained.

Sure, someone may have made a mess in the toilet, they may have left paper on the floor or spilled the sanitizer or all of those things, but the user can tell that the walls of that toilet are clean, the back of the door is clean. It smelled nice. The cleanliness outlasts anybody who's made a mess in the toilet.

Angelique: 00:15:07

Yes, exactly.

Pete: 00:15:10

From a toilet provider's perspective, can you talk us through the terminal or the interface that they see as a user?

Angelique: 00:15:17

I assume you refer to when you are logged on to the website, and then you come to the business panel.

At that point, you can see each individual question, which each individual unit, and you can select the timeframe from a period of a week or a day and see how many votes come in. We also then export the information to excel. That is an option. Monthly you get reports.

We have developed, we call it an airvote index, that gives the average of the performance how many green, yellow and red votes you have overall. If you use us for a longer term, you can get a little bit of a more better idea how your performance is overall.

All the data is available, like I said, from the raw data. What comes through Excel, with each individual comments, through the nice graphics, which you can pull up on our business panel.

This is all accessible. Just log on and place your questions out there and you're good to go.

Pete: 00:16:24

I know drivers who would go and give themselves a green vote ten times a day. Does the airvote system track the identity of the user or the phone that's logged the vote?

Angelique: 00:16:35

The latter. It is anonymous, but we gives an automatic user id number, and so we can see if that number comes again and again and again.

So, for example, what you just mentioned, we saw that in one of the hospitals in Laden, and there the explanation was later that they wanted to measure the customer satisfaction for waiting in line. But not all the people there had phones. They could scan the QR code. So one of the ladies who's working there said, well, how would you vote?

I'll vote for you. And we couldn't really figure out what was going on. We thought that employee just wanted to vote that they were doing a good job.

But there was also red votes and comments. So in that case, you are correct.

We could see the same device, and we can see that on the back end of the person who puts the sticker in, because that same number keeps popping up and then puts in the comments. This is the location or the unit number of the portable restroom, for example. That's a good question.

Pete: 00:17:41

Well, that's a really good illustration as well, because there are times when it's a legitimate expectation. I worked at an event where we were told to approach people when they'd use the toilet and ask them what they thought. And we had a clipboard.

Is that a thumbs up or a thumbs down? It wasn't any more sophisticated than that. It was, yeah, that person gave us a thumbs up.

But that example you've just given would work perfectly there, that you could do exactly the same thing. Just scan the responses.

Angelique: 00:18:08

Exactly. Yeah, but because sometimes in some areas, as you know, in the hospital, you cannot use your phone.

So if there they put the air votes poster sticker or, you know how you like in the zoo, they made like signs. So you can make it in any format you want. But if you don't have any reception. And some people, they solved it by taking a picture and scan it later.

And we now are also talking about, maybe we should just leave the URL. That URL will send you directly to that QR code too. So it also depends on our customer, what their needs are.

And like in the portable restroom business, like one of the customers here, they really want to promote that. People give a review on social media. So if somebody like I shared with you, when they vote for green, they have the option to do that.

They even say, if you leave us a review, you make a chance on our monthly drawing. So we built this in for this particular company to promote their social media reviews. And that's what we've been trying to do for several companies.

We have another company who said, you know what, I am not interested in if it's clean or not. I want to know if my units or trailers in this case are broken because I rent them out for six months.

I do not clean, but I do get them back and then they're broken. I want to know during that time.

So we created a special sticker for them with their logo, and then also with the question, like, how was your experience with us? And then underneath the reds, the yellow and the green, we said, green, we're happy. And then yellow needs cleaning, and then red needs fixed.

Something's broken. We would like to adjust the answers in this case.

Pete: 00:20:03

That's really useful because a lot of units will be on remote locations.

Angelique: 00:20:07

Yeah.

Pete: 00:20:07

And it's a long way to go. The common one that you get is, I've run out of toilet paper. Sometimes it's a really long trip for the sake of a $1 toilet roll.

Angelique: 00:20:18

Yes. That's the biggest dilemma. Sometimes.

That's what we hear in the Netherlands, that customers there, the rent price is very low to rent a unit out to a customer. So if they have to make extra trips, they really have to charge the customer. And they say, you know, is it really worth it?

Of course, it's added value. But then you have to look at your competitor. At that point, I would say, hey, you know what? Just invest in the stickers. That's your only investment.

And just give it a shot. If you really get too many complaints, you know, that there's something wrong.

Pete: 00:20:54

I think it's just such a fantastic idea. It's a real game changer. Angelique, I can see lots of pros adopting the system, because why wouldn't you?

Angelique: 00:21:02

Yeah, well, that's what we feel, too. And like I said, it has been for us an adventure along the way, too.

Like starting in restrooms at airports, going to restaurants, and now in the portable restroom industry, like, now we're inventing machines, somebody started to say, oh, you know what? Hey, this is also something like remote, if we have a question for that. And that now starts picking up, too.

So we are even coming in areas that we didn't expect from the beginning ourselves.

Pete: 00:21:31

That's really cool. So internationally, is airvo available anywhere and everywhere?

Angelique: 00:21:36

Yes. Correct. Yeah, in the Ukraine, our development team, and they actually got all excited, too, just to go out and about.

They joined also one of the shows they started developing in the park with the doggy bags. One of the cities there really wanted to promote that.

So there, we changed the question in just green and red, and the question was like, are there any doggy bags? And then they put that on the doggy bag sign, and if they're out right away, they get notification and they filled it up.

They are also in a small petting zoo. When I was talking with the espresso company there. Like the espresso machine in India. Now we got a request also in the hospital.

And it was funny because in India we couldn't read it. You know, you get the sticker request and we were like, okay, you put.

Pete: 00:22:27

It in Google in Hindi or Sanskrit.

Angelique: 00:22:29

Exactly. So, yeah, definitely. The world is on our feet.

Pete: 00:22:34

Is there anything else like this? Is anybody else doing anything similar to Air-Vote?

Angelique: 00:22:39

They are similar company, but they only use one QR code. Like for example, there are those stands that you push in the buttons like how clean is the bathroom, what you see at airports.

When we were in New York, you visit the museum and then you can check in just by reading the black QR codes.

Like when you go to a restaurant, especially now, they only have one QR code, a black QR code on the table and right away you connect it to your menu. So those are similar ones, but they're not like what we have, the three QR smileys. They are unique.

Pete: 00:23:16

I really like it. This might be a bit indelicate, but can you give us an indication of price?

Say, if there's an operator who's got 50 toilets, how much would it cost them typically to get on board with airvote?

Angelique: 00:23:26

Sure. The first month we give you for free and then we are subscription based and the minimum is $30 and that's for up to 100 units.

After that, it depends on the total of unit price we do per unit or we pro rank it. So that's basically what you're looking at.

Pete: 00:23:48

That's really affordable.

Angelique: 00:23:50

And that was one of the things why we got this started. Being a business owner yourself, you're so eager to get this feedback. Like I said, it started because we wanted to share as a visitor our feedback.

But it was always a complicated process. So we said, make sure we have something that is easy to accessible. So the self service website, you can do it yourself and not so expensive.

Like I said, the biggest investment is basically the stickers. Like for a portable restroom owner, you know, you're looking at $1 150 per sticker.

So like I said, if you have: 2000

Pete: 00:24:35

So angelic. How does the business owner physically get their stickers?

Angelique: 00:24:39

Two ways. They can go online, sign up themselves, create a question, and then you come to the option, I want to order stickers.

you. Are you talking about a: 2000

We'll just tell them, just give us a call and we set you up.

point you don't want to enter: 4000

So you can just go to the website, create any question you want, print it out or any way you want it, and you put your post or your sticker out there. And if you receive under 50 votes per month, we're not going to charge you anything.

So for example, what now happens with the zoo since, you know, some of the months they're closed, then we'll just give them another month for free because we won't charge. We don't want to charge if you don't have votes. That's the idea behind it.

Pete: 00:26:01

That's a really ethical approach and I'd congratulate you for that. A lot of people have been squeezed and are really struggling with COVID So good on airvote for having that sense of social conscience.

Angelique: 00:26:12

Yeah. And for us, that was one of the most important reasons.

Now going through Covid, and especially we noticed some of the bigger customers, the hotels and the hospitals, who have the bigger companies with the stands, they pay a lot of money for that. And now with COVID they cannot use it and they are stuck to a contract. And so it has both benefits for the large and the small companies.

Pete: 00:26:36

And if I signed up and joined Air-Vote, do you assign an individual agent to each customer or is it all done online?

Angelique: 00:26:44

Most of it is done online, but we do follow up, of course, by phone call or if you want to request a demo. It's case to case. We noticed, like some of our bigger customers, they want to do everything themselves. And they just said, how do we get started?

And we said, you know, just log on and create your questions. And the communication goes all by email. And I said, you know, I'll be happy to show you a demo. No, no, we're good to go.

And maybe when I generate all my questions, if you can just look over it with your experience, you know how to create the questions. Because over time, we did get quite some experience over that.

To give you an idea with the gas station, they said, oh, how did you like the gas price? So people scan and then you get a red answer or a green answer. It doesn't tell you anything.

So we helped the businesses there and said, you know what, if you want to do that at the gas stations, for example, let's rephrase it and say, how fair is the gas price? So then you really know some information if you are on the high end or if you're on the low end and if you want to change it.

So make sure you create a practical question.

Pete: 00:27:51

Basically, it's always really difficult to get the wording precisely correct when you're doing surveys. Often the biggest challenge.

Angelique: 00:27:59

Yeah, it's an art by itself.

Now, we noticed in Texas, you know, have at the UL and all this like little ad on being Dutch, you know, as my own native language, you know, sometimes I'm more like the English, the UK, English, Americans. So you really notice that, especially in creating questions that you're like, oh, what's the proper way?

But now the local way is a little bit different.

Pete: 00:28:23

So if you've got customers in a country where you don't speak their language, how do you get around that when you're writing the question?

Angelique: 00:28:30

A good question like this in India, we have no idea. We really had to put it in Google. We have to see how that's going to turn out. I have no idea.

We are covered with a lot of the languages, but that's something we don't know. Even if we're going to get the feedback. We'll see why that happens.

Pete: 00:28:47

That'll be the challenge for get flush listeners. If you've got a business in a country that we're not in, get in touch and see if they evoke can hook you up.

Angelique: 00:28:57

Yeah, but at least, you know, we have to benefit that. Most of the countries do speak a little bit of English and technology these days. You know, you can even put it in a translator.

So I don't see that as a challenge personally.

Pete: 00:29:11

How do people find out and get on board with Air-Vote?

Angelique: 00:29:14

The most easiest way is just to go to the website, and that is air vote.com or visit our Facebook airvote. And we are on Instagram LinkedIn. So all the social channels, we're out there ourselves. Just search on Air-Vote and you should be able to find us.

And like I said, you can send us a message and we'd be happy to follow up or just sign on on the website and try it out and see where you end up. And then, like I said, we'll be happy to help you, of course.

Pete: 00:29:45

That's great. I found you on Facebook. One of your ads popped up.

Angelique: 00:29:48

Oh.

Pete: 00:29:48

And then I kept seeing the ad and clicked on it after maybe I'd seen it five or six times and thought, that sounds really call. I wonder whether or not toilet users would use the system. But you've persuaded me that they do, and they do it happily and they do it regularly.

Angelique: 00:30:00

Oh, that's good to know, because that was actually one of my questions, because I do try to be active in some of the Facebook groups, but I already found out that more here in the US, more businesses are active on Facebook groups. In Europe, it's way less. And I don't know how it is in New Zealand. I don't see them too many in those Facebook groups.

Pete: 00:30:19

No, you don't.

And there's a really active community of restroom operators on Facebook, and there are maybe six or seven different groups, and some of them have up to 12,000 members, and some of them have just maybe 200. Yeah, but I get a lot of interaction through the Facebook groups.

And interestingly, the listeners for my show are mainly United States, probably 60% US. I have a lot in Canada, a lot in Australia, and then it's a real spread across Europe.

I have quite a lot in Holland, but the main sponsor of the show is in Holland, so I put that down to there. I have probably five or 6% in the UK, and then the rest really are spread anywhere and everywhere.

Now that you've made an inroad and you've got several providers on board, I think others will be naturally inclined to follow you, because if they're not doing it, they're being left behind. Angelique, that's really important thing in restroom industries, that if you're the first to market, you've already got a unique selling point.

And you've got an advantage above your competitors, because, let's face it, a plastic toilet is a plastic toilet. And the differences that you can make are the service, the level of cleanliness, and then add on functionality like this.

If I've hired a toilet from your company and placed it on my site, I want to know what my customers think of your toilet. That's really valuable.

Angelique: 00:31:35

Yeah.

And actually, it's nice that you mentioned that because we literally got the response from some of the businesses, like, wow, you're investing in the portable restroom industry. And we literally found out the same as what you just confirmed. There's nothing else out there.

And some people are afraid they do not want to get feedback. Yes, and that's okay, too, I would say. And that's what I hear from others, like, please give me a red vote.

I'm happy to get a red vote, because I know I can do something about it. But to be honest, when we started all air vote, we had no idea that something like this would come out.

Pete: 00:32:14

Yeah, it's brilliant. Do you know the same thing happened when I started the podcast? People were like, what? You're going to talk about portable toilets?

Yeah, but the industry is worth $17 billion a year. It's massive. Why wouldn't you be involved in portable toilets?

Angelique: 00:32:28

And it's one of the industries. During COVID it was growing and groaning, as you know, even better than I do, there's a shortage. The building industry still continues.

And now with the COVID that's what we see at some of the spots where they give the vaccinations. They can put out portable restrooms, they can put out wash stations at schools. We go on and on and on.

So like I said, not every industry has been so fortunate during the COVID No, it hasn't.

Pete: 00:32:55

And the one thing I'm always concerned around with restrooms when there's high demand.

My impression is that the standard of hygiene and cleanliness goes down because operators get busier and busier and they're time pressed and they're rushing to complete jobs.

And it's just really refreshing to see that there is an easy, affordable and accurate tool that restroom operators can use to keep an eye on toilets that they may not visit for a week or two weeks, or even more than that if they're in a remote location. So I'm persuaded. Angelica, I think it's absolutely superb.

Angelique: 00:33:27

Oh good, that's nice to hear. How many portable restaurants do you have to eat? Let me sign you up right away.

Pete: 00:33:38

I'm asked that all the time I talk about it, I don't do it.

Angelique: 00:33:42

No, I love listening to your show and like I let me have some connection before, you know, I really enjoy also the Facebook groups, how the business owners of the portable restrooms communicate and help each other. I'm also a member of some other like restaurants, coffee shops because those are also our target groups.

And I really have to compliment the business owners in the portable restaurant, how they communicate and help each other out of like, you know what, I'm looking for this or I'm stuck with this, or how can I prevent for the winter? I think that's an amazing thing, how open business owners communicate to each other.

And you adding that with giving information, I think it's also great.

Pete: 00:34:25

You're spot on there, that although providers in the same town will perhaps be in competition with each other my take is that you don't need to be enemies, that there's a big market and there are always more customers, and there's generally room for every provider. And you can help each other and learn from each other.

And sometimes you need to have friends because you just don't have the resources to supply the job that you've quoted for or you're run out. It just makes a lot of sense to work with other providers. And you're right, there are some great contributions in those forums online.

There's some great sharing of information, whether it's about how do you stop your toilets and your hand basins freezing in winter? To what's your cleaning regime? To what truck do you recommend? Yeah, it's really good.

And the whole point of my podcast was to share information about the industry, for the industry. And what I'm finding now, having done 33 episodes in the first series and now started season two, I've planned season three.

I'm getting listeners who aren't in the industry. I'm getting general podcast consumers listening to the show and giving me feedback that they really enjoyed it because it's something different.

It's not true crime. There are too many true crime podcasts, and it's really good that information is so freely accessible nowadays.

It can only help to improve standards for everybody.

Angelique: 00:35:42

No, absolutely. I agree. And probably lots of people have told you, too. You know, listening to an accent, I really love that.

And that's really, you know, you have a very pleasant voice to listen to, and that also helps. Just thumbs up from my side when I listen to the program.

Pete: 00:35:58

Thank you. One of the best comments I got in feedback.

Washington, I really like this show because Pete talks quickly, he doesn't leave any pauses, and there's no waffle.

Angelique: 00:36:07

Exactly, exactly. And I think everybody at the end this time is money. But you have your moments that you sit in the car or have a moment to listen to.

And so, yeah, good job.

Pete: 00:36:18

My original plan was to do short episodes that people could listen to between jobs because I was thinking about the girl driving a toilet truck.

Angelique: 00:36:26

Yeah.

Pete: 00:36:26

And it's evolved over the course of the past year.

And I've got a couple of episodes over an hour long because I've interviewed people like yourself who've been really interested and have added huge amounts of value. And then there are some episodes where I've just got a few things to share and they're maybe ten or twelve minutes long.

I like to keep it a quick and clean listen, and I've never used the shit word I've never sworn on the show.

Angelique: 00:36:50

Please don't, because that's a big thing. Oh, yes.

Pete: 00:36:53

Yeah. I've kept it really professional. I've tried to keep it really professionally focused. And I've had a few comments.

People have said, oh, I was expecting it to be a comedy show. I did an interview with Jack Sim, the president of the World Toilet Organization, last year. He's a lovely man from Singapore.

And he said, this affects everybody. Everyone in the world is an expert in sanitation. Why would you make it a joke? And he's absolutely right.

We all go to the bathroom every day, and nobody likes going to a dirty bathroom, surely. And well done, you. I'm really impressed with it. I'm sure a lot of pros will be impressed with it.

Angelique, and it's been lovely to talk to you about airvote.

Angelique: 00:37:31

Well, thank you.

Pete: 00:37:32

It really has. Thank you.

Angelique: 00:37:33

Thank you also for having us at the show, Pete.

Pete: 00:37:38

I really enjoyed talking with Angelique. She was great fun, and there's no doubt that she totally understands the needs of the restroom industry. In summing up, airvote gets my vote.

And if you'd like to know more, simply visit Air Dash vote.com and get to work. I'll also put a link in the notes for today's show. If you're enjoying get flushed, please visit our Patreon page for a small monthly donation.

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