In this episode of Pivot or Perish, Steve Distante interviews John Berlingieri about his entrepreneurial experience and his new, timely product, The Sanitation Station. To learn more about the Sanitization Station, Visit: www.Nshcc.us To learn more about Impact U, Visit: www.Impactu.me

Transcript:

Welcome to this episode of pivot or perish I am joined today by john Berlin Jerry of the sanitizing station. He is the president and founder of this amazing company that has shifted their business model in order to be able to respond to the pandemic john Welcome to our show today.

00:47

Thank you for having me. Steve, I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. So, you are a person who has responded to this pandemic in a unique way, creating a company that will help people to understand better how to stay clean when they're when they're coming to an event or bolding. Is that about an accurate statement. That's a very accurate statement to tell us a little bit about the sanitizing station.

01:19

So our goal with the sanitizing station is to have a machine or a station that will be able to check anyone's temperatures entering a building so to make sure that they have a normal temperature that's within range, and are not feverish. Then there's a wall mounted hand sanitizer that the person would get a portion of hand sanitizer. And then we have a sanitizing mist, that the person employees student would walk through after they got their temperature, taken and hand sanitizer and then they're sanitized all of their their clothes any backpack luggage. Pocket Books, that they walk through the sanitizing myth, or the fog. They're sanitized as they could possibly be on their exterior pretty interesting stuff so. So this is not your first venture in business.

02:15

No, it's not. So what would you say I think we were talking before and it was like your 10th, yes yeah by the business Yes, and you come from a long line of entrepreneurs generations.

02:29

Yes, that's correct.

02:31

So you've kind of learned from Grandpa, Grandma. Your dad you know all those people in your life is that right yes yeah just you know shadowing them summer jobs after school jobs, and you know as a young adult just working with with family members and other members of the team that work at the small businesses that that my various family members own. So you have a piece of different, different industries. got very cool what were the industries, if you don't mind sharing.

03:05

What are the industries was aircraft defense manufacturing. That's my father and his side of the business when they came to the US, they started a machine shop, and they manufacturer aerospace parts for the military and commercial applications so commercial airliners such as the 747, the triple seven, and also fighter jets, like the F 18 and the new f 35, the Joint Strike Fighter multiple bombers the P two, and the meantime we do a lot of work for so just learning aircraft engineering design manufacturing quality control, and all the paperwork that goes along with that, which is quite extensive. With the ISO 9100 certification is unique business that they created they created a place that manufacturers parts on an emergency basis.

04:02

That's right yes we do work with a program for the military. If, say for example a fighter jet or transport airplane is down in there, they see that the consumable parts because say for example some parts that are are under extreme amounts of stress only last for 50 hours or 100 hours for example, they know if they only have three left in stock and they're going through parts because of the strain of combat that we are approved vendors under emergency programs who emergency manufacturer, say 10 or 20 parts that need to be shipped overnight to Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria to keep the planes up and running.

04:47

So you're shipping these parts under emergency conditions over to other parts of the world and that was your family that was your experience growing up your family was doing that for living. Part of that that's pretty cool.

05:02

Thank you. We all started with one machine in a basement in Glen Cove. In the mid 70s.

05:11

A little by little, in your first generation.

05:15

Your dad came from Italy was born in Italy, I guess. So his parents were from Italy, and then after world war two they moved to Argentina. So my father was born in Argentina. So, and then my father they came in in the mid 70s from Argentina to the US to New York.

05:35

So let's fast forward right to one of your businesses that you had when you were I believe was 22 years old. And yeah, this green idea. Could you share that with us. Sure. So actually I was in Italy, visiting a friend that was studying abroad, and I saw a breathalyzer vending machine. That was on a, on the wall at a barn in Rome. And I thought that would be a great idea to bring back to the US. You know I was in college at the time also. So, as were my friends. So I.

06:09

We bought one of the machines that I saw in Italy and then we we reverse engineered it and added a bunch of features and made it suitable for the US, and we went into production with my knowledge of manufacturing. And we, we sold thousands and thousands of machines setting up distributor ships throughout the country in major cities for example in Las Vegas, Miami. La. and we, like I said, we have thousands out in the marketplace and we're able to, to help mitigate the risk of drunk driving, which is still a huge problem nowadays. But that was one of the first systems out there. So a person would buy some vending machines and have a route, maybe bars I would assume, and they would pay to a person would pay to have their breathalyzer done, and they know if they were able to drive or not is that the basic idea. Yes, that's the idea. Correct. And then you created these and then you created a gas distribution geographies for people, and they would buy a certain number of machines and that sort of thing. Yes, so for example if they bought 50 machines they would get the exclusive rights to a territory, so no one else could could place machines in that specific geographic area. Great. So how long did that venture last for you. That lasted about four years. So for about 2122, to 2526, so my, my early to mid 20s.

07:43

And, were there any lessons learned there along the way.

07:47

Yes.

07:49

lessons to be learned that was my first venture. And you know just the organization. You know I should have created some more systems and, and I learned a lot about managing staff, and creating training systems. So I'm using all that knowledge, you know the successes the failures in that business and other businesses to parlay on to my current venture.

08:14

And so now we fast forward you have another business that you you was multi generational as well I believe it's in the snow removal industry. Yes, in snow removal my great grandfather and grandfather after World War Two, after they got out of the service. They started an excavation company and naturally in the wintertime, they perform snow removal with their heavy equipment and trucks, and my other family members, continue the business and then I took over the reins, about six years ago and have expanded it quite rapidly throughout New York and other parts of New York State. And right now we have over, 5 million square feet of parking lot that we maintained was about 120 acres. And the goal is to get to 200 acres within the next two years. Nice so you're scaling and growing that. And then the pandemic happens.

09:14

Yes.

09:15

And you send back you know your your your your county money because it's you get paid whether it snows or not, right. Is that how it works on a contract basis. Yeah, on some on some contracts that I'm trying to get more of those that summer per occurrence you only get paid when it does snow but it's good to ideally have a 5050 mix, so you can pay all the expenses on it so you get your recurring revenue and then he gets your hopefully your your big snowfall to be really be rolling in the snow and and and here comes this opportunity for the sanitizing station. So, just for people to understand what this is, this is a unit that you could bring to any public event, or have in front of your business or so, and people will get identified, and then you know they're there, they will have a scanner their face, their temperature will be taken. And then they'll ultimately go through a bit, make sure that they don't have a temperature they go through, they get sprayed with fog, which the fog is, is, is relatively harmless right they actually spray vegetables with this fog I think that's right it's sprayed on produce at the grocery store so if you ever see the produce get missed it, which I always thought was getting watered, or showered to keep the, the produce from drying up. It's actually a saving sanitizing myth that just affects all of the the produce and it's similar product and the same product that we're using. So we know it's food grade. We've all eaten it before, even if we haven't didn't know it, and it can be sprayed on your skin your face your eyes, and that was the main concern. It was difficult to find such a solution.

11:07

So, the sanitizing stations are built really for the public to, to be able to to get sanitized when they're going into an area and feel comfortable more comfortable give them confidence I suppose right i mean that's the goal here.

11:27

That's the, the main goal is the psychological factor behind, keeping everyone safe because so many people are nervous they have extreme anxiety about going back into public places, not knowing who's been sanitized who has it who just sneezed on someone's jacket or or backpack. And if you know if we can take everyone's temperatures which is very hard to do on a mass scale, especially if you have school opening. So you have 1000 or 2000 kids coming into a building within 30 minutes.

12:01

Also with the stadiums, you know, thousands of people entering. So if we could have a proper regulated system to take everyone's temperatures in a timely manner, while also getting sprayed with the sanitizing mist, we feel it's a great combination and to help quell everyone's anxiety of going back to work and getting back to normal life. Amazing. So So how did you come up with this idea how did this come about.

12:30

So I have the this company the sanitizing station, I started with the partner and him and I were were googling late one night to see what the other international response has been because New York and the US, we unfortunately he said received or became infected with the COVID-19 virus months after other Asian countries were infected. So they already had a few months headstart on their, their response and their preparedness so we were googling that in Thailand China, other parts of Asia, because they are smart and quite innovative in Thailand we saw these university students came up with this looks like a tent a carport that you would store car under to get it out of the weather, and they put UV light UVC lights specifically, and they also had a some type of mist pumping system. So that's how we got the idea. You know that seems like a good idea just seems you know a little like too much of a honestly like not sophisticated or, it looks like a first prototype, but that was there. And then my partner and I AJ Carol, we started building prototypes, because he's actually very handy and you know my engineering background were quite handy together, and we just started building prototypes out of PVC pipe. And then at a PVC fencing, and then it just evolved and I went back to my manufacturing contacts, through sheet metal and other metal components, and we just kept evolving the prototypes, we're on our fourth actually fifth prototype now. And this is the end product with constant improvements coming along, of what you see today. Amazing. So, how is the public been responding is there, great interest from various places.

14:34

Overwhelming interest that's I needed help with an administrative assistance we just brought on and also the sales team is expanding and just had nonstop phone calls, calls for interviews, actually, later on this week, ABC in New York is coming down to for an interview to come check out the machine. So that's exciting we get a Newsday articles and other business news articles so you just, it's been overwhelming, the school districts. That's been the main concern of school districts of how are they safely going to open in September. It's only two months away, and is rapidly approaching. So, multiple school districts on Long Island and Florida, we're in negotiations with them, and giving them as much information as they need so they can make a proper decision because they will have COVID-19 Task Force and reopening task force that they've just been gathering information from as much of as many people as possible and we're at the top of their list.

15:34

Also stadiums, they're starting this free training as you know the Yankees mats and other MLB teams, stay with the minor league teams so we had our local minor league team, the Long Island ducks come down for a demonstration. The president of the organization came down, as did the, the actual owner of the stadium.

15:54

And they're committing to six, they're just waiting for the green light of when they can open because they know what's going to happen, you know, they know it's a shortened season so we made a special program for them and we have machines allocated for them, and they're possibly next week or the following week they're gonna get the green light of when we can enter phase four and stadiums can open.

16:17

That'll give people great confidence.

16:20

Being able to go through something like that at least they know. I don't think it'll mitigate the need for mass, but, but at least you know the people have been sterilized and before they came in, you know, against all these potential things that could be on their bodies from other people or so, or on their clothing or, or such That's amazing. So you've got lots of people who are now, planning, orders or have you taken any orders yet, or. Yes, we have. Yes. Have you delivered any machines yet. We're at the end of the week we plan on delivering our first orders. Amazing. Amazing. Well, I don't know if you know much about my business but I own a financial services business. And I'd like to order one as well I want to I want to make sure my people are comfortable when they join us, when they come in and they feel good, I'd like to actually put one in front of my building so sign me up I'm very interested in this, we have one for you. Absolutely. You have a beautiful building the LEED certified, green, green building and this would fit in, it'll fit right in right it will maybe put some plants in the bottom so we can have like the green walls and such that would be kind of cool. Absolutely. So where is this company going where do you see it going over the next you know year two, three years How do you see this thing scaling growing I mean, you had your. What was the name of the company where alcohol testing or Yes, satellizer company Alcoa buddy, so use alcohol buddy. That's what's the name of it. Yes, got it and they got sanitizing station.

18:03

I mean if your past history is any indication of your future success. Where would you see this scale and grow, how would it be done are these, you know these going to be at every place you go is Is there any competition.

18:19

The goal is to have them at all, say, schools movie theater stadiums in front of any business, you know, we're in negotiations with a few buildings in New York City. Actually one of the landlord owns 200 buildings so we're in negotiation with them. Scaling to say five or 10,000 units sold in the next year or two. Unfortunately, with the pandemic it seems like some states are closing or closing bars and other aspects of their economy like Florida, California, Texas. so we thought we were out of the woods. The first wave now it seems like we're going into or in the midst of the second wave, and then no one knows what's going to happen in the autumn when everyone goes back to school, you know the kids carry germs a lot I'm sure if we have kids, you know, the kids always bring some type of sickness home, unfortunately, and think about when people have the flu or have the cold there everyone's gonna think they had COVID, even though they may not.

19:22

I could see the staying around for at least a year, possibly two, and it also seems that every two or three years, another pandemic happens so we just had SARS mersa, the swine flu, every couple of years something else pops up early looks like we're here to stay and people are much more sensitive or hypersensitive of thickness or if they could be spreading in, you know, making themselves contagious to others, where even a year or two ago you'd say come to the office you know see how you feel for a couple hours and then go home. Now if you have the sniffles or cough, everyone's going to tell that employee or that person to stay home tonight in fact any others.

20:06

Amazing. Yeah, and flu season it'll be a lot easier for flu season knowing that people went through this machine. That's actually part of it right. Yes, can help mitigate the spread of flu and other you know right now people have hay fever and other illnesses. See, so we're streaming your website address which is n HCC s h cc.us.

20:34

So if people want to know more, they'd go to n s hcc.us, and we're actually showing a picture of the unit right now from your website. Looks like it's about 88 inches high.

20:49

43 inches wide and 75 inches long. It's not a very big unit.

20:56

It looks like it comes with wheels or not, I guess.

20:59

Yes, it comes with wheels yep so you can move it around. And I guess could wheelchairs fit into this unit as well. We made sure we kept that in mind, it is ADA compliant so the requirements to become ADA compliant is you know the width of the wheelchair, which is 32 inches, and we always want to meet or exceed those expectations so we're at 37 inches so if there's a larger wheelchair. The machine will be able to accommodate that. And ramps to go up and down with the wheelchair. And then it's got a motion sensor emergency set or shut off thermal temperature sensor.

21:36

Optional face recognition facial recognition, which I think is amazing, because then you could know who was in your building and who wasn't exactly, and then an optional ID scanner. This is pretty amazing. It looks like it takes almost no electric very low. Very little. Yeah. So this seems like it could be a winner for anybody. I can imagine people even having like a party at home.

22:01

And having people show up in those, you know, and having one of these units. Hmm. I mean, amazing and then there's also a version if you go down the page. She has a version that has the stadium version which is 24 feet wide and has six sanitizing station stations in there. Yes. Amazing. So, have you sold any of those yet Are you in the process of. So actually with the number one two and three, the, the single unit the triple hybrid and the stadium. Those are actually all individual units that can be placed side by side. So, what we put this this graphic up we wanted to illustrate to potential customers that you can line them up side by side and essentially you can put 50 next to each other for a stadium situation or Madison Square Garden, put 10 next to each other. So you can be able to process a large amount of people in a short time. Amazing. And they've had a significant number I think it was 400 people an hour, what was the number of people per hour per unit, we're about 400 people an hour. Yeah. And as people get used to going through the machine they'll get quicker throughout the process of going through the temperature scanning and sanitizing.

23:20

Fantastic. I mean, I do hope that we see these in a lot more locations and, you know, I just see, I just see this, allowing the public to get out of that fear that they're in and feel more comfortable knowing that you know great station like this is available for people to walk through and not pass along any the germs that might be carrying them or you know that the virus that might be on them from other places, again doesn't take the place of a face mask, but it does, it does at least give us some assurances that that they're not carrying around a virus that they were aware of.

24:01

That's right, it's part of the multi pronged approach of wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing, getting your, your temperature checked and sat you know sanitizing your hands and also your clothing, and we also suggest that, so employees or students don't carry any germs home that they also pass through the system as they exit the building. Hmm. Does it work both ways or it's, it would be, I guess you could walk through and then just sanitize your hands as you're leaving. Yes, exactly. Yes, it only works one way, but you can either spend the machine around so for the rush hour coming in you can spend it in one direction and then the at 5pm you can spend it the other way, and have people go through the opposite direction, or you need to, you go that's right we'll get one for the front door and one for the back in our building we have a entrance and then exit out the back so people aren't passing each other. So then I do I have to increase my order to I don't know I have to think about that one. We shall see. So any other iterations of this product for the future that you're thinking of right now or in development or you're in pretty good space that this is pretty close to final, we're confident that we're, we're pretty close to final, we're ready you know we've been launching, like I said delivery for the orders that are in process they're having happening in the next few days. But there's always constant improvements, you know, engineer background of always tweaking the product and trying to improve it you know we're possibly adding some lights to it so if for example at a stadium if you had six machines lined up next to each other that an operator, or say a nurse CNA that's there, they can see the light go off on top of the machine, so be a green light if you test positive or not positive with COVID but if your temperature is within range and if your, your temperature is out of range and you're feverish that the operator will see a red light go off right and pull that person aside and either have them cooled down, because possibly they may have. it may be very hot outside they may have been exerting themselves to have them pull down for five minutes and check it manually or have them go through the sanitizing station again. Interesting. So this is a savings for people who currently may be employing healthcare professionals to monitor their employees, when they normally don't. Would you agree.

26:31

Absolutely. I mean, employers should be monitoring their employees coming in, so they don't spread the infection and possibly, you know, knock out say half of the staff, because it is an ongoing thing you never know who was in contact with who and who could be spreading it. So a lot of companies and employers have been implementing health care workers to scan temperatures manually with one of those thermal imaging cool thermal guns that everyone's been getting their forehead scanned with and they're expensive the the nurses can 4050 $60 an hour. And if you have a large location you may need multiple nurses, so you can be running into the thousands of dollars per day and staffing needs. And we with our sanitizing station, you can pay for the machine in two weeks or four weeks to get rid of, or to downsize the staff that you need for temperature scanning amazing so you're able to reduce costs for people to be monitored, make it a little bit, you know, make it more simple and feel people who will feel better about, you know, coming to work, and not being in an environment that potentially could, you know, they could get infected by something that they don't know about. And, you know, it's interesting, john I you know, you'd mentioned that I have a LEED building leadership for Environmental Design, they had done a study with the postal workers, where they had put in a factory in one of their warehouses, I should say, LED lighting. And they had the normal fluorescent lights and he would do midnight shifts, and they expected their return on investment to be, I think it was seven to 10 years, something like that, it ended up being more like 18 months. And the reason was because there were less people calling in sick.

28:31

And it was because they had better light, and there were less issues when they looked at the mail, they could read the address because they had better lighting. I compare that to this product that people who may get sick from their fellow employees because we've seen that in our, you know in our businesses people being in close proximity to each other. Now they won't, because they'll that we'll be able to diagnose early, that they have a temperature. If somebody's got a runny nose or whatever we're making them stay at home.

29:05

So I think this actually we'll have a better return on investment than people might anticipate just with the, with the ability to be able to recognize things early as they start to start to happen.

29:19

Absolutely. That's very insightful. Sure.

29:22

If they can mitigate the spread is nice and nip it in the bud before everyone in the office gets sick.

29:29

That's that's a huge benefit. Yes, that's very smart and you're always being proactive with your, your green and environmentally friendly building an atmosphere. And this could definitely complement that. Yeah, no, that's what I'm excited about. Wow so john I'm so excited about this product I think it's obviously extraordinarily timely, I would have probably laughed if I've seen it, if I saw it before, let's say, March of this year, I would have said What the heck would anybody need that for, but now I'm looking at this going yeah I'm in. It's something I'd never imagined being in on before because, you know, I didn't have a need, but like you said psychologically, physically, it just seems like the right thing to do for your company. If you're looking to make a difference and I you know, I wish all the luck I hope you have so many orders that you just don't know what to do with it and you know you can scale and grow like you did with your with your alcohol buddy, no breathalyzer buddy something like that, yes yes that's that's the plan sure to helping keep everyone safe and help reopen New York and the United States and the world.

30:41

We have to get back to normal. We have to get back to work and and try to return to some type of normalcy. Yeah, exactly. Well, amazing. Any closing words before we. Before we end this wonderful interview.

30:58

I mean well I appreciate your time and having me on the podcast and being able to explain to your listeners about what we're doing and how to help keep everyone safe and reopen the United States. Amazing.

31:14

And that's the end of our pivot or perish episode john village, Berlin Gary, with the sanitation station, really kind of an interesting, very timely invention, and and product, and you know I just wish you all the luck in the world in making the world virus free. Yes, we're trying Thank you Steve, I appreciate it. All right, take care john. Thank you.