Hello and welcome to another episode of Coffee and code. I'm so excited to have a very special guest on the show today, Amy Hedrick of clean box tech. Amy is the co founder and CEO of clean box technology Inc. and Amy's background as a content creator and thought leader in the application of new technologies as industry disruptors, provided the building blocks for clean box as a business. And over the past decade, she has led multiple teams from Project inception and funding to planning and execution. Clean box technology is focused on providing the tools businesses need to operate safely and give customers peace of mind. Its biggest innovation and motivation is to provide products that actually work. As public safety and business health is always top of mind, especially as we are coming out the pandemic and starting to open up back into real life. But without further ado, welcome to the show, Amy Hedrick.
Thank you, Ashley, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And I appreciate all of your time. And thanks for having me on this wonderful show.
Yeah, I'm so excited. Thank you. Well, I give a bit of an introduction. But I'd love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself.
Well, I think you gave me a lot to live up to. And I appreciate that I am the CEO and founder of clean box technology. Clean box is a smart tech hygiene company. We specialize in surface decontamination of frequently used shared or touched items. And we've we have we use proprietary engineering in the use of UVC light. So UVC light in an LED all of our engineering, we started our patents a number of years ago, and we built it to really have core engineering that we could build into different form factors to serve different business needs. Our goal with all of this has been to have maximum efficacy and a shortest cycle time. So basically, we make cleaning of devices such as VR headsets, very, very simple. With high efficiency, high effectiveness and user friendly. So anybody can do it in 60 seconds. And and that's what our products do, we solve business pain points, and we do it in a way that we try to we try to make our products look really beautiful and attractive, at the same time, easy to use for anybody.
Amazing. And I actually got to see clean box tech in action recently at a conference and it's beautifully designed, has LED lights on the inside and in a beautiful lake see through structures, you can actually see it being cleaned. Even though it's just the light, it's cool to be able to kind of see the layers of the structure of the technology itself. It's fascinating.
Thank you. And we did that intentionally because of course, you know, germs are invisible and and so as led UVC LED light. So we wanted to have people be able to watch what was happening, we do have other lights that are in there and you know, really have a visual countdown of that 60 seconds, it's only one minute, but be able to watch something happening as is kind of important psychologically, for people to be able to see. And then of course, you know, looking in and seeing what's going on is always a lot more fun than just having a box there that something's happening inside that you can't see.
Yes, and it's actually much better for an HMD headset to be cleaned. And one of these than it is to take like a Clorox wipe to it. Because that can be really abrasive on the materials over time. And especially if it gets on the lens, you know, it can really cause some disruption. So I think this is a great innovation that solves a lot of challenges.
Absolutely. And one thing that in addition to Clorox wipes or something bleach or abrasive, you're correct that can cause degradation over a short amount of time, to both fabrics and plastics and lenses. The other thing to think about though, which a lot of people are not aware of, in the use of wipes for an example, it takes, you need to leave a surface wet for two to four minutes for it to actually be effective. And of course, that's really not what most people do. And it's pretty impossible to do that on certain surfaces, fabrics and lenses. For example, no one's going to do that. And it's very hard to do. So what we're able to do with our product is completely reach hospital level of decontamination in one minute cycle time. And we do it with basically removing the element of human error that's intrinsic to manual cleaning. So you know, if you have somebody else who's taking a wipe, and let's say they actually do take four minutes to clean something, for the most part, you're going to still be subject to what what what areas they reach and maybe the areas that they might miss. So what we wanted to do was solve a problem very efficiently, very easy and let it be sort of back of mine, for anybody who chooses to use our products, we don't use any heat, we don't use any toxins. Our wavelengths of UV light don't operate at a wavelength that emits ozone. So there's no ozone, no chemicals, and it's completely safe to use.
That's amazing. And I'm very curious, what was the aha moment that you had, where you realize that this was an essential product that needed to be on the market considering how prevalent XR is becoming in the world of hybrid work?
Hmm, well, it's an interesting story. And I kind of took the road less traveled. In many ways. I started actually clean box was one of many patents that were filed a number of years ago. And the goal and goal was to take immersive technology as a whole, several different applications of it and use it in an educational setting. And so I had developed a big plan around a certain rollout, this rollout would basically be in a location that would reach about 50 30 million people each year. So when thinking about how to make this successful, I had to think backwards and think about the barriers of entry, and all the logistical issues that could come up at some point in the future. And one of the first ones to think about is of course, hygiene and safety, health and safety. So you know, any kind of headset or anything that fits on your face, or your head, or is in proximity to your eyes, nose, and mouth, which is basically your your major and contagion transfer points, if you cough, you sneeze, you will have an eye infection, all those kinds of things that we don't like to talk about, but but are very real, you know that that is really where your highest risk was. So, clean box is a result of thinking ahead and trying to solve a problem before it really was a mainstream problem. And then, of course, looking at the XR industry as a whole and seeing that hygiene and health and safety was sort of being overlooked, which is understandable, because it's such a, you know, immersive technology is such a sexy world in so many ways you're really creating, you know, the meta versus is is amazing and phenomenal. And so the last thing you really want to have to think about is, oh, how do we do this safely? How are we protecting people? And how do we make them want to do it again, because you know, the successful XR program, whether it's entertainment, or education or training, you have to have people want to do it again. And one of the first things you know, you think about is is how does this feel on my head? And do I want to wear it again? And am I worried about risk? So to really to be honest, it was a really looking at the needs of the industry as a whole and a way that we could actually solve a real world problem. That could be a small but really critical component to successful you know, global scaling and, and awareness around immersive technology.
Wow, that is absolutely incredible. What a journey, right?
Oh, yes, it's been quite the journey. It still is.
Yes. And I'm curious. That's a good segue into I want to hear more about how you got involved into the world of XR. And for those that are listening that don't know what XR is. XR stands for extended reality. It's an umbrella term used to describe augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality. So if you hear XR, that's what we're talking about.
Well, I so so that's a great question. And again, when I said before I took the road less traveled, I really meant that in many ways. I think sometimes we find the best best path to our success, maybe when we're working on something else. And so that's really how I got started. At the time, when we first started thinking about clean box, or well, not thinking about clean box, even before I was working for a think tank. And we were exploring changes in technology. This was a think tank headed by a global CEO of a very large international company that, you know, they were trying to think ahead about how technology would influence consumer behavior. And as a large sort of unwieldy form factor of, you know, a multinational that doesn't they're not very agile. The idea for this think tank was to say, how can we shift our business models to address you know, how people will start changing their buying buying patterns. And so I had been somewhat familiar with with a lot of different technology before. So as part of this, you know, it was a very small Think Tank Group. I started attending events in scene where immersive technology applications were kind of starting to show real world promise, at least from my point of view, trying on VR headsets and seeing, you know, an image or images that were high enough quality that I was impressed by them, or I felt like hey, something actually interesting, could be done with this and there's more Maybe applications now that have quantifiable ROI, which is, of course, the most important thing for a business to be able to show in order to justify the investment in. And so I started with that concept. And then of course made me immediately think about this, this other opportunity that I mentioned before. And it was about a large federal institution that I had strong relationships with. They had an endless supply of content, but very few ways of showcasing it, I thought, well, this is a perfect opportunity to take, you know, this content, develop amazing stories with it, that would be available in like a form factor, like virtual reality, for example, that was much more tangible, and therefore had a bit more sticky component. So if someone was using it for education, you know, you might learn faster, and you might retain more knowledge and more information. And I got very excited about that. And thinking about content from sort of a Hollywood point of view as well, saying, hey, content can, you know can be created in many ways. But if you want to make it exciting, there are certain certain, I suppose, if you will, Hollywood, well, tricks is the wrong word. But there are methods to the madness, of creating really amazingly designed content. And then I thought, you know, if you have all that magic together, what better way to share information to learn new things, and to get people excited about, you know, history and stem. So that was kind of how I segwayed myself into thinking about bigger opportunities. And then looking at what I could do to contribute to that ecosystem
are very well said. And that kind of leads us into a topic diversion here. But you mentioned a little bit on STEM, I know that one thing that brings you great fulfillment at clean box is in your mission statement. And that's the goal to provide opportunities to women. And I want to talk a little bit more about that, because you are an entrepreneur, you are a woman in leadership, and you're a woman in tech. So no, those are three things that can be difficult, especially in the current environment that we live in. So I want to hear more about your journey to entrepreneurship and that intersection. And maybe for those who are listening that are considering taking that same path, what kind of advice would you have to them based on your lived experience?
That's a such a big topic. And you're right, it is really, it's always been very important to me for a number of reasons. I have a lot of really amazing, strong women in my family. And I've seen some of the sacrifices if you go back, even, you know, one or two generations, some of the opportunities that I have today that my grandmother great grandmother, a great great grandmother wouldn't have had and didn't have. And I see, you know, I feel in some sense, like, I owe a future generations opportunity that I can if I can contribute to creating some I should and I will, it's always been important to me. And also, I've seen so many women that I've known personally, friends and colleagues that are just brilliant. They have such amazing, amazing skill sets such capability, but are often pigeonholed into a specific task or a specific careers. Sometimes that's because they have children. Sometimes it's not. But really, it's always been important to me to think about, you know, the skill sets required and say what, what, it doesn't matter what you it doesn't necessarily matter. Sometimes it does. But, you know, let's just let's just say that it doesn't always matter. What you have done before, what are you capable of doing? And how can I create opportunities that Max allows somebody to maximize their potential? I have I have constantly and consistently hired women, I will still still always work toward that goal of providing support in that way. And I, you know, I have great respect for men as well. And I work with a lot of men. But I just think, you know, there are certain opportunities that if you're in a position where you can make a difference and help balance, balance things out, then you should and I continue to try to do that. In terms of advice, wow, it's, I will just say that it's always harder than you think it's going to be. And if that deters you, then maybe you should think of another path. But if it doesn't, then just go in strong knowing that if you're determined, you'll always find a way. There there is a way if nothing else, the challenges of being an entrepreneur, female or not female, that being irrelevant. Those challenges force you to think outside the box. I'm already a very creative person. So I feel like I naturally think outside the box. But I will tell you that in in the course of the last few years, you know starting a company and finding financiers and then building a brand and building in demand and building products, and then, you know, hiring people that that is required more of me creatively and mentally than anything else I've done in my life.
Wow. Wow.
So I mean, that is a positive thing. But, you know, I feel like I could give us a real question. And it's a genuine question I would I wanted to give an honest and genuine answer.
I love that it's such a good answer. And I love what you said about, it's always going to be harder than you think that is so, so true. I'm reading Brene Brown's book on Atlas of the heart. And she talks about how comfort and growth number coexist together, your advice is really, on the nose there of you're going to grow, it's going to be hard, it's probably going to be harder than you know it. But if you have that strength and competence and support system, and you know, other methodologies of getting you to where you want to be, it is possible, but it is going to be a challenge.
I think it's important to understand the challenge up front as much as you can, because you have to. Because if you don't, when the first obstacles come your way, you're going to wonder did I make the right choice. But if you already know that the obstacles will be there, even if you don't know what they're going to be, if you already know that they're going to be there, and you've already sort of come to terms with that and calculated that in your head, you're not going to be dissuaded in the same ways that you would otherwise. And because you're not going to be dissuade you're going to more readily be able to find solutions that you don't think are easy to find. And you'll find them because you will have to find them. And I think you know, also I just think it's good for preparation. So yes, things are hard. But honestly doing nothing is also hard. So if you're looking for the easy, I don't think the easy actually exists in too many places.
That's very true, especially in today's world. And I love that there are jobs that are being created out of xr that didn't exist 510 years ago, even like three years ago, and that will continue to develop. So I think there's another path of opportunity for you know, people in general, but specifically women to align their current skillsets in consider what the opportunities are in XR, from a product management perspective, project management, development, you name it, there's something for everyone, it seems like.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And I'm very excited to see more women in tech and and just more welcoming more opportunities. And I do think that the you know, the metaverse if you will of the whole ecosystem has so much to offer in terms of opportunity. I really hope that women out there and men as well, but you know that there will be people who start to think okay, well, maybe I think I can do something that is not necessarily necessarily in those traditional buckets that I thought were my only choices. Because I think there are certainly so many so many interesting opportunities being created right now. I completely agree with you.
Yeah. And for a little start here, looking. And it seems that there are 30% 33% female representation in the workforce and 2022 that aligns with a STEM career, which is pretty low of a number, and it's up from 19%, I believe in 2020. So
we all progress, you know that that's a little bit of progress. And I think, you know, progress is encouraging, because you can see some trends and you and they're the and I think the more more women that are successful and have successful opportunities and create more, then you know, then that progress will be established. And I think that's also the goal.
Yes, yes. And as my friend Miro likes to say progress over perfection.
Yes. Well, I'm a perfectionist. So I know that that's a really hard cross to bear sometimes. Yeah, but But you're right. And you take sometimes one step forward to back but you keep taking steps forward, you actually do make progress. So again, that kind of is just it's just part of the course of life.
Yeah, yeah. And speaking of progress, shifting the conversation back to clean box tag, I want to highlight that in 2020, clean box grew from one product line with clients in 10 countries to three product lines in over 36 countries and 41 states in the US. And I want to talk through what are you currently working on a clean box that you can actually talk about because this is just incredible growth?
Well, yes, it is. And that reminds me to of just you know, even what we've grown since then, I mean, we're in spring of 2022. And we're in well over 50 countries, every state, we work in multiple verticals and we have five products currently on the market. So it's a lot of progress, and it is very exciting. One thing I think that I can talk about and I think I'd be interesting to your your listeners is the fact that we had, of course, we're a hardware company. But we're smart tech hygiene and the smart part of it is in the, in the SAS platform that we're building now, we had a our first foray into it a year ago with one of our products that we introduced. And the purpose of this platform really is to be able to provide end to end hygiene tracking, so confirm that the chain of custody of that product from start to finish to guarantee so you can track the hygiene history of any object. So we started with one product that was purpose built for XR headsets. But now we have other products that can do, you know, can clean controllers, adapters, and then non XR products, such as cell phones and tablets and stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, lavalier, mics, so we have all sorts of, you know, all sorts of business pain points that we can meet, we can solve. And so being able to track the hygiene history of each of those products, is something that I'm excited about we have because we're first a market company in the Mersive. tech space, we have a very unique position, meeting and addressing client needs in multiple industries. We work in healthcare, education, government, entertainment, manufacturing, automotive, and these are all really great repeat customers of ours. So we have some of our customers in a couple of those different verticals are working with us to develop this product that is a business need that meets some of their business needs, right. So that's something I'm really excited about. It's a functionality that will be built across all of our products. So no matter what your business is using our products for, you will have access to that functionality and be able to track that data. So that's something I'm very excited about.
That is fascinating. I love that I never thought of that being a valuable tool. But thinking of it, I can see a lot of practical use, and a lot of those industries that you're working on those who have high growth, high demand jobs. So I feel like the need is going to continue to increase for that type of tracing to make sure that the devices that you're working on or are clean.
Yeah, that's it. Absolutely. I mean, and one thing that's interesting, and and I think it's exciting to is the conversations that are happening around best practices, right. So there have been conversations about this before, but I do think that we're starting to see at least a shift in conversation toward more standardization. So what standard operating procedure, what is your protocol for its health and safety and hygiene, being able to build into that is critically important to industries, for example, healthcare, healthcare uses, there, there are so many use cases of virtual and augmented reality in healthcare, it would be hard to just talk about all of them, but some of the basics are training and and then either surgery prep or, or, or post for the patient. So there are so many applications where you would want to know, both for risk mitigation as well as insurance purposes and other liability purposes, you'd need to be able to verify what hasn't hasn't been done. Another use case, of course, if you're looking at Entertainment, where the end end customer is often just the general public. You it's it's kind of a different scenario. But at the same time, if you're operating something where you see 1000s of people using that same headset every day, you're gonna want to know that you have not exposed them to some risk, right, that you will ultimately could come back to you. So I think, you know, it's interesting that this is a it's built on customer need and customer and us talking to our customers and saying, Hey, is this would this be useful for you? Is it something you'd like? And being able to collaborate our costs with our customers to build it, I think is really critically important.
100% that collaborative relationship is is essential. And I realize this would have been a great thing to have on hand. I used to run a makerspace at the University of Oklahoma, that we had virtual reality in different ways. But we would have people that would come in and use beat Sabre for like three hours. And by the end of the time that they were playing, the headsets would be soaked in sweat, they would be disgusting. And they would take the headset off and put it like on the table and then someone would come in and put it on. And we just cringed because we were like, Oh my gosh, that is gross. We need to find a better solution that isn't just you know, Clorox wipes and this would have been the perfect thing to have on hand for making that safe for everyone.
You painted such a terribly beautiful picture with that. And it's exactly right. And you know this so we actually and we do we do clean headsets, your phones at Are we clean even in our CX series, we address business needs for broadcaster headsets, fast food headsets, pilot headsets, and respirators and so on. So there the use case is broad. But exactly that you think about the fact that that's something that's an a piece of equipment that you've invested in not just the investment of the hardware, but thinking about the experience, you want that end person to have for whatever business purpose, you might have, use it for that that thought right there, whether they had it, or they didn't realize it, because it was, you know, dried off by the time they put it on. It's still there, and it still it actually matters.
100% Absolutely. Well, we kind of touched on this a little bit, Amy, but I want to talk more about you, your innovation and your creativity, what drives your creative inspiration, since you are a innovator at heart?
Well, I would say there are probably a number of things that that keep me inspired, I like to go out and see what's happening in the world. And sometimes it's something you know, it's information that I might naturally be exposed to already and sometimes I have to actually go dig for it and say, Hey, what what's what do I think is going to be happening next? Or what's, what's the, you know, what is education working on in, you know, early education, what kind of education programs are starting to happen for, you know, students who show a proclivity toward a certain, you know, skill set what's happening at grade school level, and, and being able to go explore something that I don't know myself already. That that inspires me, that inspires sometimes new clean box ideas, hey, we could meet this business pain point that would still be in line with our mission statement, or it might personally say, inspire me to, to think about the world in a different way, in a non business way. But ultimately, that will impact what how I how I, you know, fulfill my role is as CEO at the company. So the people around me inspire me seeing what what what creative companies are doing, what kind of new application, whether it's an existing established company, or sometimes a young kid that just has a great idea and figures out how to do something with it, those those are constant sources of inspiration for me. And then when I talk to people like you and and some of the other, you know, acquaintances, mutual acquaintances, we most likely have these women and their business endeavors inspire me all the time. Sometimes it's so and men too, as well, you know, so it's really looking around and seeing what other people are doing. reminding myself that. I'm not alone in the world. And there are a lot of people doing a lot of things just as I am. And sometimes, you know, say, Hey, who's doing this better than I am? How could I make my life a little easier, and my reinventing the wheel on on how my I'm approaching this problem, let me look at people who seem to have everything together. And, you know, see what I could be doing better.
I love that. I love it, especially love your approach of like seeing what's going on in the world. That's the best way to just expand our minds, and get out of our comfort zone and our usual routines and ways of thinking and just kind of embrace what is out there and what is potential. But I want to give a shout out to xr women, because that is a great community. And that's a community that I've met a lot of amazing women, you included, Amy, that has just been profound. So XR women was established in 2020 as a way to connect, educate and support women and allies. We're making waves in VR, AR and mixed reality. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes if people want to want to check that out as well as clean box tech as well.
Thank you. Yeah, the XR women community is wonderful. And again, another place where I've gone and been inspired by the stories of people, you know, that I chat with. Another thing is now that we're getting it, we're starting to be able to go back to live events, which is fantastic, which I love. You know, just being reminded being in the same room and hearing Hey, what did you do during the pandemic? How did that impact your business? Was it good? Was it bad? How did that impact you personally? Those are stories of inspiration, because those same people are you haven't seen them for two years. But now you're seeing them again, they're still there. They're still around. And some of them have shifted their focus their business focus or their personal life. And hearing those stories is is just amazing to me, just to see the things that you know, trigger change in people. That's inspiring.
Yes, yes. And I think we're living in a very interesting time that we'll continue to see innovations that have come out of the pandemic, and interesting stories that really leads us to think broader. We're on the cusp of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and I think we're really in a situation just to see some amazing growth next year ours So it's pretty exciting.
Absolutely agree with you. Well,
Amy, I'm curious, as we kind of round out our conversation here, what kind of resources would you have for those listening that want to learn more about Clean bots, tech or about you?
Well, we of course, always welcome any kind of information request. And you can go to our website, which is www dot clean box tech.com. We also have a YouTube channel where we have some a range of different videos that we've done. One thing that might be interesting, it's not up there yet. But we are in the process of building is a YouTube series that addresses some of the common questions about UVC light about, you know, how to get rid of diseases and kill contagions kind of super basic, basic and short, short and sweet kind of videos. So we'll have those up there for those who just want more information. Also, on our website, you can download a white paper, if you feel like a little bit more of a technical answer to some of your questions. And then of course, you can find us on all those social media channels at clean box tech. I'm on LinkedIn as well, Amy Hedrick and I, I'm really always happy to hear from people and you know, happy to have people reach out to me that way or by email.
Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. And I will link all of that in the show notes. So everyone has quick access to it. But before we wrap this up, are there any parting words that you'd like to leave us with? Amy?
Well, I first of all, I just want to say Ashley, thank you so much for having me again, just that in and of itself is is really supportive. And if we talk about specifically, women in business and in technology and providing support systems to each other, that is something I think actually women do phenomenally well. I was referred to you. And we're talking now because of another woman who's supportive of the work that I'm doing and the work that clean box is doing and the work that you're doing. And so I see this happen over and over, in big ways and small ways. And if I if I could say, you know, just partying in terms of, you know, supporting opportunities for other women. We're doing it right now. And I see it all the time. And I love it. And I think that the there are wonderful people out there creating opportunities, and I look forward to being able to help contribute to some of those.
Incredible, thank you so much plus 122, all of that. I like to think of community over competition. And that's what we're doing right here.
Absolutely. Yes.
Well, Amy, this has been a fantastic conversation. I'm so glad that we've been able to connect and I've learned some some new things today. But thank you so much for your time. And I look forward to hopefully seeing you in person ewe in June and looking forward to seeing the new innovations that clean box has to offer. So thank you so much for being on coffee and code.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It's been my pleasure and I look forward to seeing you in person very soon.
