Name and title or job description: Jon Jouvenaux, president
Business: BBB Septic and Portable Toilets, Bentonville, Arkansas
Age: 61
Years in the industry: 32
Services we offer: Cradle-to-grave septic. Soil test, design, install, repair, replace, pumping, inspections, pump controls and lift station services, ATU installation and services, portable toilets (both construction and event), holding tanks and hand-wash stations.
Association involvement: Member of the National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association and NOWRA conference presenter. Member of the National Association of Wastewater Technicians. Member of several state associations like Oklahoma Onsite Wastewater Association.
Benefits of belonging to the association: Connections to help move all of us forward.
Biggest issue facing your association right now: All things disposal. The wastewater plants are not accepting our waste or going up on fees to make it impossible for us to do reasonable business.
Our crew includes: Taelor Ladd is our general manager, Norm Ladd is our operations manager, Tony Townsend is our lead installer and pump controls tech, Jamie Whisenhunt is an installer, pump tech and pumper, Ryan White is a pumper and pump tech, Bethany Hoover is our office lead, Rachel Weldon is our portable toilet customer service representative, Amanda Worthy is our septic customer service representative, Kevin Black runs our CleanWater Farm. We have great portable toilet techs, helpers and other support crew.
Typical day on the job: I am our visionary and lead our marketing team. I also head up our R&D division on vertical integrations with the CleanWater Farm, VibraWaste and NetZeroWaste. I am always available to assist our leadership team as needed. I spend a lot of time teaching real estate agents about septic systems. By learning about septic systems, the agents are better equipped to advise clients who are buying property where septic will be installed or property with an existing septic system. By working with these agents, I introduce our company to a lot of new property owners who need us to maintain their septic systems.
The job I’ll never forget: I was pumping a septic tank out from a street behind a house because that was the closest point. Another company was there rooting the mainline clean-out from the house to release a clog. The man that owned the house was standing on the back porch watching us all work.
As we are all working, the rooter guys pulled a wad of condoms out on their rooting cable. The customer didn’t say anything. He just went back into his house. A few minutes later, we all heard a ruckus happening out in front of the house.
Later, the homeowner came out where we were working. He stood there for a few seconds and then explained how he and his wife built the house, they didn’t have any kids or guests visiting, and he didn’t use condoms.
The ruckus was him throwing his wife and her stuff out the front door. Epic day!
My favorite piece of equipment: I love equipment, trucks, pumps, cameras, etc., but I think my favorite piece of tech is the internet. We have so much more intel on what our entire team is doing and how effectively we are doing it.
Most challenging site I’ve worked on: With over 30 years of experience, there have been several challenging sites. The most challenging was a Walmart home office lift station failure. They couldn’t figure out how to fix the problem. After they hired three other companies to fix it, we were able to rebuild multiple lift stations that worked properly. We haven’t had to do any more repairs. That was 200-plus years ago.
Oops, this didn’t work out as planned: We had a guy that went to one of our suppliers and said, “If I wanted to get into the septic industry, which company should I apply to?” They told him BBB, and he came and applied. The dude was a manager for a local roofing company and wanted to level out his income through the winter months. We were excited. He had a CDL, and we trained him and promoted him and helped him get his installer’s license, only to have him quit. He had always planned to be our competition. It was an “aha!” moment for sure.
The craziest question or most insightful comment from a customer: Wow! Your team makes poop sound so sophisticated and elegant!
If I could change one industry regulation, it would be: Own your own disposal solution. Don’t wait on someone else to handle your stuff.
Best piece of small business advice I’ve heard or came up with: Read the books E-Myth Revisited, Blue Ocean Strategy and The Go-Giver.
If I wasn’t working in the wastewater industry, I would like to: I love our industry. I was a mechanic in my previous career. This industry is way more exciting, and now that I have achieved enough success to have time and resources to work on R&D, I love every day.
Crystal ball time – This is my outlook for the wastewater industry: We are facing multiple challenges as wastewater treatment plants continue to restrict how we are able to dump, how much they charge us and only allow waste from their specific area codes. We can’t dump anything from outside their area, making it impossible for us to do good, logistic business.
