Link to article here.
Meet Autumn Ryan.
Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Autumn Ryan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Autumn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
My Dad asked me at 5 years old what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said, “a maid.” He said, “no, you want to own the company that cleans and has maids.” A week after I graduated from college, I could not find the right job that got me excited to wake up each morning and go to work. My mom said, “you like to clean! Start a cleaning company!” I started my own janitorial company, cleaning homes and commercial properties. That was over 20 years ago, and I grew that company to $1.5 million before co-founding Clean Beyond, a cleaning franchise. Within a year I had added seven franchisees. But there were personality differences and I sold out. That’s when I really started thinking about how to develop a safe cleaning product that works.
I laugh when I look at my hands. They look 10 times older than they should because of all of the toxic cleaning chemicals I used when I started in business. I didn’t wear gloves because I couldn’t clean the way I wanted to with gloves on. There’s no telling what my lungs look like. There’s a statistic from Newsweek that breathing bleach and other cleaning chemicals is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes per day.
While cleaning commercial businesses, I was using a disinfectant that I liked a lot, that was less toxic, but it had a horrible name and no marketing materials to speak of. So I approached the company about sub-registering the product as Aseptic Plus under my brand of Aseptic Health, LLC. I developed sound marketing materials and began distributing the product. When the pandemic reached the U.S. our sales really took off and that helped fund my long-term goal of creating a safe disinfectant that would kill germs faster.
A lot of people don’t understand how to kill germs properly. First the product needs to be able to cut through biofilm on surfaces. And then the product has to dwell on the surface for the recommended time to kill. Bleach for example has a 10-minute kill time. But if you’re like most people you spray, wipe and go on to the next thing instead of keeping the surface wet with the disinfectant for a full 10 minutes.
After six long years in development and testing, Aseptic Health is introducing a fantastic, patent pending product called SoRite that has been registered by the EPA and we start bottling in December of 2022. It kills some of the hardest to kill bacteria (such as MRSA, E.coli, Listeria and Strep) in 15 seconds. It kills SARS-CoV-2 (the Covid-19 virus) in 15 seconds. And it’s safe. You don’t have to wear gloves or masks. It can be irritating to the eyes because it breaks down to salt, so we recommend appropriate eyewear if spraying heavily to remove odors, for example.
SoRite is an odor eliminator, a degreaser, a multi-purpose cleaner, an allergen eliminator and a mold remover as well as a disinfectant.
I’m truly passionate about cleaning to make the world a safer place. As a matter of fact, because of the way the product works through oxidation, I was asked by a customer if it would neutralize fentanyl. Our chemist said “absolutely,” and I had the product tested by an independent lab. It did indeed eradicate fentanyl and heroin in 60 seconds. This is huge for first responders and anyone who encounters illicit narcotics. Just last week an officer who made a drug arrest had to be given two cans of Narcan nasal spray to counter the fentanyl he ingested while making the arrest. If you know anything about fentanyl, it’s 100 times stronger than morphine and the amount necessary to kill you if you accidentally breathe in some of the powder is equal to a few grains of salt. We have several police departments testing SoRite DECON in police cars with traces of the drug and finding that the product works. We will begin selling SoRite DECON in December, 2022 as well as SoRite Hospital Disinfectant.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Aseptic Health’s company mission statement is: to drive the new generation of environmental infection prevention cleaning through safe, effective, innovative products and to develop educational standards that improve the well-being of all. My personal mission is to change the world of cleaning by educating people on how to clean properly and to provide safer cleaning products. It’s not just my mission. It’s a divine calling.
As a janitor, I witnessed so many instances of people cleaning the wrong way, and it’s harmful, possibly even deadly. From the wait staff in a restaurant using a dingy rag to wipe multiple tables to the janitor in a hospital going from room to room with the same filthy mop bucket. Both of those instances cause cross contamination. And in the case of a hospital where
MRSA and C-Diff and all sorts of other deadly pathogens exist, that kind of cross contamination can infect the patient.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Oh, SO many stories along the way. I’m very trusting of people and that hasn’t always served me well, but probably the most telling story is one that’s not very pretty, and I won’t name those involved. In a meeting I was told that I’m “an f-ing idiot who will never amount to anything, and I should just go over there and sit down and let the men do the talking.” So I eventually fired one of those men and bought out the other one. And now I’m launching the fastest, safest disinfectant on the market without their help.
There’s one other story that made the news! On my way home from a run, I was walking near my house, and a car pulled up next to me and a man told me to get in the car. I said no, and he got out and started coming at me. I went into full mama bear mode. (I had two daughters at home.) I raised my arms and fists and fought back and started calling him every name in the book. And he got back in car and sped off while I got his license plate number. My eldest daughter, hearing the commotion, came out and I started yelling for her to write down the license number which she did. The police eventually caught the guy. I agreed to tell my story on the news because I wanted other women to be aware. I was shocked by how many women commented online after the news story that they would probably be unable to fight back. That’s so hard for me to believe.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
A third party independent contractor will be manufacturing SoRite Disinfectant and SoRite DECON for Aseptic Health. They have a great reputation! When it came time to manufacture SoRite and SoRite DECON I reached out to my 3 rd party. They were excited to hear that I had developed a patent pending disinfectant with such a fast kill time, not to mention a safe and effective decontaminant and they were agreeable to manufacture both for Aseptic Health.
Definitely having that prior relationship was helpful. But the real struggle along the way was getting EPA approval. Oh the hoops you have to jump through! Plus, I got bad advice from my first EPA consultant and had to redo EVERY SINGLE TEST. And those are not cheap tests…well over $900,000 and a delay of a year. But as I said, this is a calling, not a race. So for whatever reason that delay happened, I thank God each and every day. There is always a reason why everything has happened to me along this journey. It is all making sense and laying out a beautiful playbook. I see the light at the end of the tunnel and that light is getting brighter and brighter. I was called on a higher purpose to assist humanity and Mother Earth by creating a cleaning solution that is a safer, healthier, Non-toxic cleaning option for food, water, air, soil, etc. Removing toxic and dangerous chemicals that has plagued humanity.
