The COVID-19 pandemic has business owners and public service providers worrying about infectious diseases more than ever. Lisa Tecklenburg, Chief Marketing Officer at R-Zero, wants to help ease some of those concerns.
R-Zero’s flagship product is the Arc UV-C system, which uses ultraviolet-C (UVC) light to kill pathogens in the air and on surfaces in just a few minutes. It sounds like science fiction, but according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), UVC light has been used as a disinfectant for decades. It’s been shown to disable the SARS-Coronavirus, which is similar to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Lisa is aware that one of R-Zero’s challenges is education around the potential of UVC. The company was founded in April 2020, so identifying the brand as an authority is crucial, especially given all the snake oil salesmen benefitting from the pandemic.
“Getting third-party testing that said, ‘This kills 99.99% of coronavirus and MRSA and influenza’ was critically important, especially in the UVC market, because some of the products aren't up to snuff,” she says. It helps that in addition to having a chief scientist with infectious disease experience on the team, Lisa herself has a background in microbiology.
“I was really looking for an opportunity that did two things: fundamentally changed healthcare and saved lives,” she says. “I came across R-Zero and immediately thought, I have to be connected to this company.”
Featured Challenger👱♀️ Name: Lisa Tecklenburg
⚙️ How she challenges: Lisa is the Chief Marketing Officer at R-Zero, a company founded during the COVID-19 pandemic. R-Zero’s Arc UV-C system uses UVC radiation to kill pathogens on surfaces and in the air.
☀️ Company: R-Zero
💎 Noteworthy: In 2016, at age 35, Lisa was diagnosed with advanced-stage breast cancer. Her initial response was to accept the diagnosis and make the most of whatever time she had left. But when her brother pleaded with her to at least try treatment, she changed her mind. “I promised him that I would fight, and it really changed my attitude from [seeing cancer as] something that was thrust upon me to something that I had to fight through,” she says.
🔍 Where to find Lisa: LinkedIn
🔍 Where to find R-Zero: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
Challenger Wisdom 💡 Go Hoosiers!“I studied microbiology: I actually wanted to do an MD-PhD. But I was on the Athletics Committee, and we got to rebrand the entire athletics department at Indiana University Bloomington. I asked someone, ‘Can you do this for a job?’ I applied directly to business school, and that started my journey down this marketing path.”
💡 Setting a goal and scoring it“My soccer coach in high school said to me, ‘You're never going to be a varsity soccer player. You should just go run cross country.’ Being brash and 14 years old, I said, ‘I'm going to prove you wrong.’ Four years later, I was a high school all-American with a soccer college scholarship. It's those things that inform how you address your life and challenges, and figure out how you're going to go forward.”
💡 The science behind the Arc“R-Zero’s flagship product is the Arc. It’s a UVC device, and it's about six feet tall. You roll it into a room and it will disinfect all the surfaces and all the air in a 1,000 square-foot space in seven minutes. It leverages UVC light, which is a type of light that doesn't come through the atmosphere. It changes the DNA or RNA of pathogens, so that they're totally inactivated. You can eliminate all the chemicals and the processes that it takes to disinfect things, and do it really quickly.”
💡 UVC is tried and trusted but its potential is just getting started“Hospitals started using UVC in about the 1930s. It's been used much more dramatically since 2010. Hospitals that were implementing UVC saw a reduction in infections, but these systems are really expensive. What is awesome about R-Zero is that we can make these to a higher quality that puts out more light, creates a much better ROI, and allows us to use this amazing technology much more broadly. And what better time than when there's a pandemic where we have an increased need for disinfection?”
💡 Sticker slogans stick “We have found that some of our customers are leaving the Arc out, and they're using our stickers and our placards that say, ‘Protected by R-Zero hospital-grade disinfection.’ That's making people feel a lot better, because they know that their company or their local store has been really taking care to protect them.”
💡 Small means speedy“One of the things that's great about working for a small company is that we are able to move very quickly. We can jump on an all-company call once a week and be very nimble in the way that we operate. It allows us to adapt to customers and to the marketplace, and test and try things and make it better literally on a daily basis.”
💡 Infectious diseases won’t end with COVID-19 — neither will R-Zero“We believe in serving our customers and we believe in our vision for healthier, safer spaces. And even if COVID ‘goes away,’ there are still infection threats out there. So we're going to continue to innovate.”
Top quotes from the episode
Lisa Tecklenburg:
Quote #1
“I had this attitude of, ‘You think I can't do this? I'll figure out how to do it.’ That's been the way I've always approached things.”
Quote #2
“From a marketing perspective, it's not helpful to spread yourself super thin across every market. One of the markets that we've recently focused on is education. We want to make sure that’s good enough before we go on to another market.”
Quote #3
“The system is super simple to use. It is worth it, even if you have to redo your plans, because it is a sustainable solution. I feel good about the different ways it provides value to any organization.”
Quote #4
“We don't just launch a customer and leave them. We have a full training program, we're working on their marketing and communications. We have remote monitoring to see how the Arc is working, how often they're running it, so we can talk to them about that.”