Local Market Monopoly

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Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to local market monopoly. I'm Clarence Fisher. And I'm so glad you're here. As we wrap up our small business spotlight series with Joe Hart from Purteq okay. If you've not heard of Purteq, you will love them. After today, they go across town across the state, and you know, we've been in his COVID coronavirus stay for quite some time. They use a UV light to disinfect an entire home and entire business, and it lasts for a long time. So after this, I had never heard of it until Joe explained it to me. And I'm like, I have to get you on the show. You're going to love this. Stay tuned. We've got Joe Hart coming up right after the intro,

: You're listening to local market monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools tactics, and strategies. The most successful small businesses use to dominate their local market and own the block.

Joe Hart: Client. Good to chat with you. Thanks for having me on.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. Thank you for taking the time. I know you have been busy, busy, busy. We've already had to reschedule once for sure. But I totally understand with what you're doing, tell everybody about Pureteq Oklahoma, and how you're helping your clients here. Well, ever since the whole COVID pandemic started, we've been, businesses extremely ramped up. I mean, it makes sense because what we do is we actually sanitize people's homes and businesses. And of course, right now with the pandemic around, that's an extremely important thing, Purteq, when we come into a business to sanitize it, what's different about us versus a competitor out there is our product will once be applied will actually stay around in the last. A lot of the products out there that are used to sanitize in our environment once you spray it, it sanitizes at that moment. But if the environment gets recontaminated it, you have to re sanitize. So the difference between our product and what sets us apart is that when we sanitize an environment that lasts for a minimum of 30 days and depending on the traffic of the area can last up to six months.

Joe Hart: So it actively kills bacteria and germs in the environment that we apply it. So the active ingredient in there that allows that to happen, it was called titanium dioxide and the titanium dioxide is what allows it to stay around and keep actively killing germs or bacteria. The titanium dioxide is something that's been around. It's safe, it's green and something. It's a mineral. So that's the other biggest benefit with our product is that you can actually be in the environment when we're applying this, you don't have to leave. You don't have to worry about your dogs, street cats, any of your pets, your kids, even people with asthma, you don't have to worry about with this product being applied. You can go in, apply it in your environment, whether it's your home or office, even warehouses, we've done 80,000 square foot warehouses. And the biggest thing for most of the customers is they're trying to protect themselves and their employees so that they can maintain business continuity, especially in times like now where people might not even know that they're infected, but they could be carrying something. And as they come in contact with different services, it makes it to where those germs and viruses or transmitted. So with a product like ours, when you have something that actively fights those things in your environment, fights them on the surface level, then you've got something that can really help protect you and your workforce so that you can continue to have, you know, keep your business running and not have to worry about people getting sick.

Clarence Fisher: So it continues to disinfect without re-application right?

Joe Hart: Correct. I mean, that's the titanium dioxide. So the company Purteq who developed this product actually developed it so that, the guy that invested in developing the product, actually he caught Mercer. He came out, uh, fell down some steps, scraped his leg and caught Mercer. And from that point on, he started disinfecting everything all the time, constantly using bleach on all of the surfaces. And what he was finding was that bleach was although effective in killing things, it would start to damage the surfaces. So he was, he began to look for a new, a different solution that would still disinfect and clean the surface, but also minimize the amount of the frequency with which he has to apply the product. And so he does some investment, got a scientist involved and they developed this titanium oxide. Now the next problem was okay, well, how do we apply to titanium dioxide across all the surfaces?

Joe Hart: So this is where the patent lies with the Purteq product because it's the only product out there on the market like this. And it's patented. If they developed a solution that would allow them to apply the titanium dioxide as a film across all of your surfaces so that you have a protective layer. And what happens in how it protects is that the titanium dioxide actually gets interacts with UV light. So somewhat it's the best because it's the highest concentration of UV light. However, most common lights in your house or business are going to put off some UV anyways. So the UV light actually responds with the titanium dioxide and that's how it actively kills. What's called a consumers ATP, which is the food source for germs. Of course, I'm getting kind of off into the weeds as far as the science goes, but we've got a ton of that information on the website. If you guys actually want to read into more detailed science.

Clarence Fisher: No, that is really interesting because that's what I was wondering. So, because you know, for a crazy, you know, a lot of people don't know that I am this much from all-out germaphobe. And I am like, really like I'm squinching my, my fingers because I'm that person that right now we're going shopping and it's like, please just put them in my trunk. I'm not really even rolling the window down. And then I get home and we are washing the containers and dump the stuff out of containers, you know? And just like being super because of, you know, you hear, you know, who knows what's wide, you know, just being super sure. But what were you're saying is this basically, so you guys come in and you do your thing and then you leave and everything's got, everything's got like a super-thin microscopic coat,

Joe Hart: Protective barrier. Yeah. So Purteq, how I got involved with the company you actually started probably about six months ago, we were talking about getting involved with them and working on bringing them to market in this way, you know, working on homes and businesses originally, and for the past 10 years, Purteq has been in the automotive industry, car dealerships under the name of dr. Pier. And they use it to disinfect cars and because of cars dirty, dirty places, stairwells, and all that stuff. So it's been in the automotive industry for 10 years. For dealerships, you want to take care of their customers and customers who have a concern about how clean their car is. And they will actually fog the car. And the protection lasts in a car for six months because the traffic flow in there is much, much less. So when we started talking to the critic, we were like, people, people would like to have this in their home because they want to know that they have a clean home, but they can't use the harsh chemicals all the time to keep it sterile.

Joe Hart: One of the interesting tests that I first encountered it, and you can actually see some of these that we've done online. There's a tool called the luminometer. And it's a tool that the health department uses to come to a restaurant and test for the cleanliness of the surface. So let's say you have a prep table in a kitchen and the health person coming in to do their inspection. We'll actually take this device out, swab the surface with a Q-tip, put it into the luminometer tested to see how much bacteria is on it. And this thing will go from zero all the way to 10,000, depending on how dirty the surfaces in terms of germs and bacteria and such. We've taken stuff from as high as 8,000, all the way down to 25 and lower, and the benchmarks that you have to meet as far as for food safety on a prep table, you'd need to get that score below 125.

Joe Hart: And you're targeting surgery, suite clean in terms of, you know, decontamination of germs or bacteria. So this product being that effective in being able to see that on a regular basis, you know, testing different surfaces all over the place, it's almost become a game to see, okay, well, what's the dirtiest place that we've found. And the worst place that most people don't think about is the pedals in your car. And so what happens is how this happens is you you're driving your car, you go stop at a gas station. You go to the restroom, come out of the restroom. You've walked on that bathroom floor. Now you're getting in your car mess, transferring over to your pedals and it's transferring over to the floorboard of your car. So then think about not only are you transferring it there, then you go home and you track that into your house and all that guess travel around throughout your house.

Joe Hart: So if you think about that month, how it's really gross thought to think, but in order to really protect yourself from all of those germs, you'd have to have some kind of solution that can really stay in the fight all the time, because you're going to come home and you're going to walk in your house every day. And you're going to go to different places throughout your day that is going to that you're going to come across and come in contact with germs. So the only way to really protect your home and your environment are to have something that is actively working for you over the long term. And that's where Purteq comes in because it allows you to have a product that protects your environment so that you can feel safe and not have to worry about the bugs that are out there to get you. That's become ever so ever more important now with, with the COVID-19 pandemic, because they still are figuring out how this thing's transmitted and you don't know who you're coming in contact with and who they've been in contact with. If you've ever thought about the six degrees of separation, just thinking about that on a, on a pandemic scale. And that starts to make you realize how exposed you are when you go out and why they want us to all stay at home. So every little thing you can do to help yourself is going to help keep you safe.

Clarence Fisher: It sounds, I never thought about that going into the store then coming out and then putting that on my pedals. And then how many stops do you make in a day? Right. Never, ever thought about that, but you know, I was, I went to have dinner once at and different cultures. I had a rude awakening. I walked into a couple's house and they were African and I walked in and I just started walking to the dining room. Right. And I did not know what you're supposed to take. Taking your shoes off, right?

Joe Hart: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Clarence Fisher: He had fit. He was like I disrespected the house. I'm like, I didn't know. He was like, you got to bring, you got to track all of that. All of the world into our sacred

Clarence Fisher: Pretty major. And you know, thankfully he forgave us and we were able to eat. But from that point on, I thought, huh, I never thought about everything that we tracked into the house that we don't see.

Joe Hart: Yeah. It's all the things that you don't see that they can really affect you. And especially now, it's like you said when you go to get your groceries picked up, you do the order online ahead of time and you go and pick it up. You have them just put it in the trunk. Cause nothing against the people that are putting this stuff in your trunk, but they've come in contact with how many people all throughout the day, who've come in contact with how many other people throughout the day. So you don't know who's done. What, how well they've washed their hands. And it's become really visible now because you'll see people walking around with gloves and like a facility it earlier this week, they were telling us about some of the employees that wear gloves or wear the gloves of the bathroom and then wear the gloves right out of the bathroom.

Joe Hart: It's like, okay, well now your gloves are worthless, but they're still keeping the gloves on. So it's like, you don't know how well people are protecting not only themselves but everybody around them. So you really got to manage your own, your own environment as best you can so that you can, you can stay protected and not get sick.

Clarence & Joe: And nothing against Africans. No, I have friends that are like that as well, you know, from different cultures. And I'd never really put two and two together on it until now as to why, you know, I always thought it was just, they wanted to protect their carpet. My parents had friends growing up that they had plastic all over their house and carpet. So you have to take your shoes off and then stay on the plastic. You know, the runways all the way throughout the house. I was like, you're never gonna enjoy the carpet like that.

Clarence Fisher: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what are the biggest myths that you've come across when people, you know, in your customers with disinfecting their environments on their own and what does it take

Speaker 2: Biggest thing? The biggest thing that most people don't realize is that pretty much everything else out there on the market, besides Purteq, you have to reapply. If you got anybody coming in and out and you have to reapply on a regular basis. If you'll look at the lifespan of how long, whatever product lasts. So we'll say seven days or some will say this, that, and the other thing, but what they don't tell you and what's in the fine print. If you read into it, is that the product only lasts until the surface is recontaminated, which basically means if you wash it right now, and then somebody comes in after the product has dried and has gone, it's not going to protect after a time span. It's not going to actively work for you over a time span. Whereas Purteq with titanium dioxide in there will actually protect over that timeframe.

Joe Hart: And you can actually look up titanium dioxide in a lot of stuff as a preservative and other things you can actually, the product is you can drink it. The worst thing that will happen to you. If you drink it, if it will give you an upset stomach, probably get a case of diarrhea. That's about the extent of it. No, no. Having to go get your stomach pumped or anything like that, but that's how safe this stuff is And, but yeah, the most common thing that people don't understand is how often you have to reapply any of their other disinfectants. And does the damage that it does to your surfaces.

Clarence Fisher: I'm gonna need you to hold on tiger King and not be drinking the stuff.

Clarence Fisher: [inaudible]

Clarence & Joe: Oh yeah, yeah. It's uh, but that's how, I mean, that's how safe this stuff is. That's cool. So you don't have to worry about if you spill, it's not that big a deal. Yeah. Everything about it. It's a game-changer,

Clarence Fisher: Do business owners and property managers worry about like how far do you have to go into a day, worry about having a third party come in and disinfect their environment?

Joe Hart: Well, no, most of the time with businesses they don't. And the reason is that they've already had a cleaning service coming in and cleaning their environment. So you've got housekeeping, quote, unquote that comes in and it just the trash wipes on surfaces and that kind of stuff. And they just do normal cleaning tasks, but they're only hitting certain areas and they're not really doing a full wipe down of every surface, whereas with what we're doing, it's a, it's a fog system. And so we come in and actually fog the entire area. Let's say it's an office space. So we actually go to each workstation, fog the workstation, fog the chairs at the workstation. We will actually pull the chairs out, spin them around and make sure that we get the whole thing because the chairs got good germs and stuff as well. So that, yeah, as far as the comfort level for us going in, you know, we've done stuff in all kinds of locations from somebody's house all the way to, like I said, 80,000 square foot warehouse. So nothing's too big or too small for us to handle. We've done stuff in some of the major towers in Tulsa don't want. Yeah. Can't really, can't really say which ones, because for sure, for sure. It's been

Clarence Fisher: I don't want to have that letter either.

Joe Hart: Yeah. We've been, we've been all over, but uh, yeah. So people, people, you know, that was one of the things. So I've never, you know, I've never been to a company like this before. And when I first went to go on and fog a location, I was like, wow, there's just let you wander around. The trust. Are you here to do a job? And I was like, okay, well that's good. You know? And then that's what it is most, most of the time, like here lately, everybody's on a work at home kind of thing, but there are a lot of businesses still have there, of the nature that they have to have people come in. And so the nice thing about our product is we're able to do it while your employees are there working. So if you are a business that's in a central business and you have employees are actively still needing to work, we can still come in and your facility and you don't have to leave. You don't have to send employees away. We can just treat it while they're there. And if it's an office space, we just have them move out of the office for a hot second while we spray everything down. So we're not spraying them down. But other than that, they go right back into work as soon as we fog the room.

Clarence Fisher: So what does happen after you, this is just, I'm curious after you've come and you treated my business. And then I do have the cleaners that come in twice a week or every night or whatever, are they rubbing away my investment there?

Joe Hart: As long as they don't use bleach, you're fine. Most and most, most cleaners now. And we've had a lot of conversations with different housekeeping companies, janitorial companies, and most of them aren't using bleach anymore. They've stopped using bleach because it is so harsh on surfaces, but they are using other products that are fine and will work well with this with Purteq once it's applied, soap and water are sufficient and it will stay behind with the soap and water. So yeah. Yeah. As long as they're not using bleach or you're good to go.

Clarence Fisher: Good. Yeah. I think I'm the only person in the world who still had this remnant of my grandma putting a cap of bleach in my bathroom. I don't think that's, I don't think he should be doing that, grandma.

Clarence & Joe: I think that's bad. No, yeah. It's actually like you start looking at a bleach cap. It's a harsh chemical. If you look at the MSDS on it, it's pretty gnarly. I have no idea of my grandmother did that well. And just using it, if you've ever read the label on a bottle of bleach, it tells you use this in an open-air environment, you know, make sure that there's good airflow. And I mean, before, in my younger days, when I would go to clean my apartment college, make sure it was really clean. I'd use bleach. I make sure I use a lot of it. And because I wanted that clean smell and I wanted to make sure that everything was sanitary

Clarence Fisher: Or, but you have to make sure that you don't fall out when using it. For sure.

Joe Hart: The biggest thing with bleach that a lot of people don't realize is how bad the chemical is for you. If you're in a bathroom, cleaning with it, you're breathing in those fumes. Because the only thing you got is the little fan on the ceiling to pull that air out. And we all know how well those work. So you rely on yeah, you really just breathe it in those toxic fumes. They're not good for you. They're bad for your respiratory system. It'll leave a taste in your mouth. If you can taste it in your mouth, that means you're ingesting it.

Clarence Fisher: What inspires you to do this? To get into hygienic?

Joe Hart: Well, a friend of mine brought this product to me and he was telling me about it. And he, he said that you know, Hey, we've got this product, we're using this in the auto industry. They told me about what it was, what it was, and what it was like and what it did. They said, what we want to do is we want to be able to this to homeowners and business owners to do their place like their facilities. And I said, but you know, this is kind of the proof of concept because Oklahoma is going to be the first area to get this. And then they're going to move out from here and start franchising across the country. And they asked me if I wanted to be involved. And I said, yeah, you know, I wanted to see how it worked. But after doing research and I even reached out to a friend of mine, I worked with in college, who has his Ph.D. in chemistry, and asked him about the science behind.

Joe Hart: It said, Hey, you know, does this, does this make sense? He said, no, that's solid science. And once I had, once I talked to him about it and found out, you know, titanium dioxide and what it does on cellular or my microscopic level, then I was more comfortable. Cause I'm not a scientist. You know? And, and, and there are lots of things. I don't know. I'm looking at things. I wanted to be able to talk to somebody I trusted that was the third party completely removed and, and see what they said. So when he gave me this assurance that yeah, that, that actually would work. And that's when I decided, yeah, I want to get involved with this because it's going to be, it's going to help a lot of people. And then that was before all the COVID-19 stuff. And then come January, we're starting to hear about this COVID-19 and February, we're starting to see things started to happen

Joe Hart: And you know, next time, you know, in March we're locked down and just business has been going off the hook. So we hustled real fast, get a website built, you got all that stuff done for the facility treatment. And I've just been, keep trying to keep up with businesses as it comes right now, it's been a, a huge influx, but, uh, we've had, we've got teams out there, disinfecting places all, all day, every day and keeping busy. So it's a that's the nice thing is you're providing a lot of peace of mind, for customers. And I've done my house in my car. So when I go to Costco or I go anywhere else, I know as long as I take care of cleaning my hands, wash my hands, wearing my mask, you know, not touching my face, all those things, do the five and make sure I'm sanitary.

Joe Hart: When I get into my car, that my car is already sanitary and the products that I put into my car, once I wipe them down to put them into my car, they're sanitary. So then my environment going home, when I take this stuff that I've purchased out of my car, into my home, I've got a clean process all the way from leaving the store to my house. And then my home environment is clean. So I educate people about this stuff. You know, when they're, when we're talking about doing the sanitation disinfecting, that, you know, if you, if you are mindful of what you were doing and what you were touching and how you're interacting because a lot of people don't realize that the most common way they think that people are getting sick as they're touching the face after they've come in contact with some other surface. So when you're out of your protected areas, make sure that washing your hands. And then when you get into one of your protected areas, don't put your face into your hands are clean. I want your hands are clean. You know, that your environment that you're in is safe. So you're good to go. And providing that peace of mind for customers is, is, is rewarding. Cause there's a lot of fear going around and a lot of uncertainty. And if you can be a bright spot for some people, it is rewarding.

Clarence Fisher: That's great. Yes. There is everyone's coming up with their process. We have almost kind of a decontamination room like you have in the movies where, you know, you come in and that's the room where, okay,

Clarence Fisher: Stop, pause. Think about what do we need to do from here? So, so you've been in, I know you from for some years and you've been in business for a little bit. What is, if you can think back

Clarence Fisher: Is there a lesson that you learned early on that helped you in this business still today kind of impacts the way that you do business.?

Joe Hart: It's communication. Above all, communicating with customers, determining what the problem is for a person, and then providing a solution. And that's really a that translates across every business. If you see a problem and you have a solution and your solution makes sense, then you got a business. And right now, the biggest problem is disinfecting stuff. And there were COVID-19 and a solution for people to take themselves against that. And this is just a piece of the puzzle. It's not the whole end all be all. So that's one thing to make clear is that although your services will be disinfected, the biggest thing that the next big thing is your air clean. And so, as long as you don't have people coming in and out of your house, the air clean is not going to be a big thing right now.

Joe Hart: However, in the future, clean air will be an issue. You'll have people coming over and that kind of stuff, you don't know what they've got. And so if they cough into your, into your air and it sucks through your air system and then kicks back out, you pick up the air particles, that's a problem, but that's getting into the I'm with you on the whole germ thing. I start to think about, okay, well, how does this stuff transmit? How's it travel? All those things. But there are solutions for that too. So there are companies out there that have solutions for things to help with air mitigation.

Clarence Fisher: Their solution is.. I'm just going to need you to hold your breath when you come to visit me, but don't fall out. I don't want that. So what's the most important question that you think that these business owners, the property managers should be asking if they're going to consider having Purteq or some third party come in and disinfect for them.

Joe Hart: The most important question they should be asking is first they're gonna, they're gonna ask what can you do? And then the next, next thing is going to be okay, how often do I have to reapply? That's the biggest question is to ask, there are competing products out there that are cheaper than what we are. However, you started doing the math on how often you've got to reapply and how much of an interruption that is in your, in your, in your process. Because most of the other products out there are not green. You have to have your staff vacate the area. So somebody is either going to come in off-hours or if you're a 24-hour facility, then you've got to kind of work through that.

Joe Hart: But with our product, it's green, it's nontoxic. We can spray it well while your staff is there. And it lasts a minimum, like I said, a minimum of 30 days if it's a high traffic environment, but if it's a low traffic environment, you can get up to six months out of it. A lot of our customers. And they're just doing the once a month thing, just to be sure because traffic flows change and they're not, they're not sure. And so it's just the safest way to go every once a month. But you know, if you were to take a competing product and do it once a month, you're not getting that much protection. You're basically just doing a wipe down. And then after somebody comes through, it's affected again. So that's, that's the biggest question is asking how often do I have to reapply?

Clarence Fisher: Very cool. Cause you know, people have to live then that's downtime and that's money.

Joe Hart: Yeah. Well, right now with the COVID thing is one of your employees gets sick with the virus. Now everybody gets quarantined. If they come in contact with two weeks so I can drop a company down real fast. And so that's why a lot of people are starting to start to really seriously look at this stuff for sure.

Clarence Fisher: Hey, Joe, man. Thank you again. Like I said, for blocking out the time, I can just only imagine how many people are booking to get this done. How can someone find out more about you?

Joe Hart: So we're on Facebook and we get a website. The easiest thing is either. Yeah. Hit us up on one of those. The website is Purteq. Okay. And that's P U R T E Q. Okay. Dot com and the website or, I mean, Facebook is Purteq. Okay. On Facebook and that's Purteq that's one thing do you want to make sure is that it's spelled a little different, I didn't develop the name, but uh, yeah. So that's it. The, uh, definitely give us a definitely reach out to us and we'd love to come in and protect your environment for you.

Clarence Fisher: Thank you so much, bro.

Joe Hart: Yeah. Thank you.

Clarence Fisher: All right there, you have it. Joe Hart with Purteq Oklahoma. Be sure to give him a call. If you are thinking about it's really, it's really a cool idea having your business or even your home protected. And I'm going to talk to him more about it myself. I think that, uh, you know, may definitely save us some time and if it's going to last anywhere from 30 days to six months, definitely worth looking at, and he's a, he's a really good guy, the solid guy I've known for a while. So I want to thank you so much for tuning in and catch us next week. Make sure you go to local market, go to Clarence fisher.com/podcast. Or you can just go to the local market, monopoly.com. I believe that will forward you there. And uh, until next time, do what you have to do to own the block.

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