Founder and CEO Of VacMobile: Jennifer Sparks AKA The Vaccination Boss – S3E18 (#114)

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Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. So this episode, I think, is going to be a very fruitful episode for business owners in the sense that the person that I’m interviewing right now, I would make it easy for me to give them a particular nickname. So I’m sitting here and I’m looking at her bio, and I’m looking at the history, and I was like, what the hell am I going to name this woman? So I thought maybe I could call it a multilingual boss because she speaks four languages. I was okay, maybe I can call it a historian boss, because that’s what she went to school for. Then I was okay, marketing boss, PR boss, producer boss, the political boss, right, the health care boss. And then finally I decided I’m going to call her the vaccination boss. And by all those bosses, I’m sure the listener is kind of like, what the hell are we about to listen to? So Jennifer right. I want everyone who’s listening. If her last name does not spark something in you to be motivated and do more with your life. Jennifer, the floor is yours. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what we’re talking about today?

Well, thank you so much. I am so honored to be here today with all of you. I am Jennifer Sparks. I am the CEO of Vac Mobile Corporation. And it’s true the road to get here has been a little circuitous. But you know what? I think that is actually what makes a great leader is people who’ve had a lot of different experiences. So I’m happy about where my journey has taken me. But what I’m doing right now is actually transforming Vaccination records digitally. Vaccination records are really stuck in the 19th century, and I say the 19th century because they’re still accessed predominantly on paper and in person. And you really can’t say that about very many things in our lives anymore. We live in a digital world. So it really is surprising when you think about the fact that when you get a vaccination record, often you are getting it from a doctor and they give you a piece of paper. And then even if you upload that through a portal, like, say, for a school or something, both you started with a paper record, and the person on the other end is printing it out, and then they’re looking at it.But there’s nothing really digital in terms of the whole process. And that struck me as really needing a change. So that’s what I’m working on. The digital transformation of Vaccination records. All Vaccination records, not just covert records, but the pandemic came along, and suddenly we had to focus specifically on the COVID Vaccination record, because that particular record, we handled differently in this country than other records for the past several decades. Since we’ve been giving shots routinely, since the late 60s, early 70s, we’ve been giving like 1617 shots routinely for zero to 18. And then all of a sudden they did it differently with this Vaccination record. So we had to come up with some special technology just for that card, that handwritten paper card that everybody’s been getting if you got the COVID vaccination.

So I think for the listener is listening. She talks so profoundly about Vaccinations because that’s like the space that she’s in. But on this show, I like the time travel back. I want to be able to tell your story, tell your journey. I want the listener to be able to be like, I can do what she’s done if I just do a little bit more. So just take it back. How did you even figure out or decide to become I think it was European history. How did that even come to fruition?

Well, I’ve always been passionate about history. I’ve always loved history. I don’t know how or why, but as a small child, I stumbled into the library and found that to be one of my most favorite places to be. And I have always loved history. So that was actually just a no brainer when you would go on those field trips and everybody else would be goofing off and playing around and everything. And I was always the one that was like a couple of rooms behind because I was actually reading something and didn’t stay with the group, you know what I mean? What happened? So I always loved history. I loved just digging into what drives people, what motivates people. And I think that’s actually been really relevant in terms of understanding how to create products. Right. Because it’s the same thing. Right. We just keep repeating, we go through cycles. Right. And history repeats itself. And so I think it’s important, honestly, to look forward, you got to be able to look backward.

Wow. That’s definitely insightful to even hearing you speak about it. It seems like if you were time traveling, you were able to talk to yourself in the past and say, okay, everything that you’re doing right now is going to come 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road. You’re going to be able to use it. So. Soak it all in. So let’s go back a little bit further. Like, we know that that was more like your College days. So what kind of kid were you? Were you the kid that was walking around picking up rocks in your pocket? Were you the kid that was more TV? What kind of child were you?

I was definitely the kid that was the class clown. I was a kid actor. So I was doing performances. And that continued all the way through childhood, high school, College at the University of Chicago, was performing in the Chicago professional theater scene. So I want my Fulbright for my movement and creativity. So I definitely have been a very creative person and a person that was into performance so I’ve been communication has been my thing. Storytelling, that’s my thing. I always had one.

So I guess that’s pretty much how you got into production to a certain extent and becoming a producer and TV as well.

Yes, absolutely. I had a lot of fun creating producing pieces called The Family Travel Minute, which was all about family travel and recreation, which was what actually brought me to Taekwondo, a family Taekwondo class that I was covering. I was doing a segment about it, a family Taekwondo class. And my son really loved it because the kids used to come with me when we would shoot some of these episodes, and the kids came with me. So we ended up enrolling all of them into Taekwondo. And then one day it was my birthday, and he was having a competition, and I said, his name is Benji. I said, Benji, go get a goal. Go get Mama goal. And the Taekwondo master turned to me and he said, you don’t tell him to go get a goal. You go get your own goal. Matter of fact, you go get your own black belt. I’m like, oh, I feel so bad, so embarrassed, ashamed. So then I did I did go get my own black belt. And that was another really important part of my journey that I want listeners to know, like, if you want to dig deep, do some martial arts and go all the way to the end, because a lot of people quit, and a lot of people quit.I learned either at the Orange belt, which is pretty early in the cycle where they quit at the red belt, which is the belt right before the black belt. And I was like, what the heck? Why would you go that far and not finish? But apparently a lot of people do. So I do encourage people who are thinking about being an entrepreneur to think about doing martial arts because it’s a very good analogy for what it takes to you have to have resilience. You have to be okay, getting smacked down, getting a little hurt along the way. You have to be able to take criticism. You have to be able to take some blows, get back up, get back on the mat, keep going, keep going, keep fighting, keep moving forward, and keep that end goal in mind. And that’s something that I would definitely recommend to any entrepreneur. And plus, oh, by the way, it really feels good to break a couple of boards when you have a bad day.

So for the listening, obviously, I think she’s living up to her last name. And again, if you’re not getting that spark, if you’re not getting that motivation, you must not have a heartbeat at this point in time. Right? So let’s dive into this some more. So with that, I mean, obviously, you’re telling us all these different facets, but again, your story kind of ends with all of these things coming together. So if you can define yourself in just three to five words, which for you is going to be extremely difficult, but three to five words, what would you select?

I would say passionate, I would say driven, and I would say resilient.

I could definitely see that. So let’s just take that. Right? So you’re talking about resilience, right? And any business owner understands, like there’s going to be highs and lows and there’s going to be heart aches and pains and drama and things that you have to find solutions for that may not even exist. And prime example is a product that you’re talking about right now. So I want to talk about on that journey, what hurdles did you have to overcome in this phase of your career?

A lot of them. Among other things. I’m sure that you are well aware that the statistics around female entrepreneurs and VC funding is very small, very tiny, tiny amount of money gets given to female entrepreneurs. So when I learned about those stats early on, I was like, oh, I can take them on. And then you’re out there and you’re doing meeting after meeting after meeting, and you see it, you feel it. It’s like, wow, it’s like squeezing blood from lemons. It is really, truly not an exaggeration. And it actually went down the percentage of money, it was like 2% out of all the VC money goes to female entrepreneurs, only 2%. And that went down. It was up a little bit higher than that in 2020. It went down in 2021. That has been an obstacle, right. Having to keep going. You do pitch after pitch after pitch. And when you’re pre revenue, everybody wants revenue, right? All the funders they want to give people. But when you’re building something that is actually technology that is responsive to a pandemic that you’re in the middle of, you’re building a plane while you’re going through it.Right. It was like, okay, well, I know you want traction, but there’s a certain amount of time it takes to birth a baby. Right. And so there’s only so fast that you can make something go, something that’s quality. And the reason I say that is we have multiple patents pending, but we had started work in 2020 on a particular technology, which is the basis of our first patent, which we actually put to the side because the government came out with the CDC white card. And when the government came out with the CDC white card and they announced they were going to have these mass vaccination sites rolling out all across the country, we realized that the first patent, because the first patent allowed a person to go in inquiry multiple different Immunization registries, different jurisdictions that they’ve lived in, have all that information sucked into their account and then spat out in the right form for the jurisdiction they were currently living in. Which was my problem when we moved from New Mexico to Georgia. And my kids shot records from New Mexico weren’t a valid proof of immunization to register them for school in Georgia.So I set about fixing that problem. But when the government came out with this white card that was handwritten, I was like, oh, no, this is going to be a disaster because I knew that if everything was handwritten. Right. That means somebody else has to fat finger that information somewhere along the way to get it into the registry where it’s supposed to end up. Because when you get a shot within 24 to 72 hours of when you get a shot, that information is supposed to go into the jurisdiction wherever you’re at that registry. Okay. And there’s 64 registries in the United States, not 50. So it’s like you’re in New York City, they have their own registries. Big enough jurisdictions have their own registries. So if you get my drift. I knew that when you start talking about people writing things down and it’s not your regular doctor that’s giving you the shot. Right. It’s a mass vaccine. I just knew we had to come up with something else because the idea that you could use the traditional infrastructure, I knew it was going to be challenged. And I was right. We’re a member of the American Immunization Registry Association, AIRA throughout the Pandemic, the sheer volume these registries were built in the mid 1990s and the sheer volume of records being uploaded in the course of one year for registries that were built for predominantly pediatric use.A lot of these registries actually crashed during the pandemic, and the infrastructure itself wasn’t there. And then obviously, they’ve gotten more funding and they’re continuing to fix them. They’re working, they’re operational. But it means that the data is not perfect. Right. So you might try to go to a registry and maybe one of your shots got in there, but not the other one. Or maybe there’s no record at all, because in some instances, at these mass facts sites, when you got handed that card and you walked out the door, that was it. You are the sole holder of that record. People don’t realize that we’re talking about human systems. Right. And whenever somebody has to keep track of things, that’s all on paper, things can get lost in the shuffle.

Wow. So I’m just going to take one thing that you had said, and it was talking about patents. Obviously, patents are difficult things for people to kind of grasp versus trademarks and copyrights. So do you have, like, a utility patent? Is it a procedural patent? What is the actual patent? And then how does that process go?

Right? Well, both of them are patent pending. It won’t come as a shock to you that among everything else with the government, they’re behind, too. So we’re still in the queue to have our examination with somebody from the office. But the process is basically taking known technologies and stringing them together in a completely new way. Basically, that’s how we did it. That’s what we’ve done. In the case of the one patent, in the second one, it actually is a completely, entirely unique invention. It’s an algorithm. So it’s what we’re commercializing right this minute. And it’s an algorithm that allows us to score a CDC card looking for evidence of fraud. So basically, when somebody self reports and shows you their CDC card and says, I’ve been Vaccinated, how do you the person who needs to verify this information. If you cannot locate that record in a registry, then what do you do? So we’re the then what do you do? Right. Because I told you things got a little messed up during the pandemic. We think this is incredibly important because right now you have certain professions out. There actually 17 million employees across the country that are basically covered by the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the CMS rule from November 4.So the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rule that any entity receiving Medicaid or Medicare funding, any of those employees have to be Vaccinated. That had to happen by the 15 March. And those organizations, hospitals, health systems, behavioral health places, fusion centers, just any place that you can think of clinics, rural health clinics, any type of location that’s receiving Medicaid or Medicare dollars. Those particular institutions have to have a system in place for tracking the Vaccination records for their employees. I’m talking about COVID Vaccination records. And so that’s 17 million employees. That’s a lot of people in this country. So it’s definitely important to us that if, for some reason, one of those employees had a record that couldn’t be located in a registry, that we would be able to supply another way for there to be some validation of that record, because that’s important. Right. People jobs depend on it.

Yeah, I’m just listening and listening to that. I mean, you’re spinning off this data, and I just want to kind of help listen to comprehend to what she’s saying. So in one aspect of it, you have a new business venture, and this new business venture is an app. But this app is essentially at the point to where, when that bubble explodes, you’re talking about a global platform to essentially integrate all Vaccinations. Right. And then. So that’s why you have your patent pending, because once that thing hits international, you got to have protection, because again, everybody, their mom is going to want to get piece of that pie.

Absolutely. It being globally scalable was something that we’ve been focusing on since the beginning. And it’s something that I frequently tell investors. And in interviews, I try to make sure that everybody understands that the world we live in, a global economy, the world cannot wait for there to be an API into every known Vaccination repository on the planet. We’re not even going to get that by fourth quarter of this year here in the country, in the United States, far less the whole world. But we need a way for someone to tell you if they’re an international student, for example, or you’re traveling internationally or somebody’s coming into this country internationally. We need a way to be able to assess if somebody provides you a Vaccination record. Is that a valid Vaccination record? What we’re seeing right now is it’s either one end of the extreme or the other people are either just not even really looking when somebody shows them a card, like, oh, yeah. Okay, good. And then there’s actually no checking whatsoever going on, or they’re requiring it that it must be third party validated through some kind of a government entity. If it’s either one or the other.And you have all this Gray area in between, that’s where Back Mobile says, let’s try to bring some sanity to this. Let’s try to fill in the gaps and try to have a way, because AI and machine learning is really smart. And so the more data that we have, the better the algorithm is going to get at spotting outliers. So what I’m trying to tell you is there’s an algorithmic way that we don’t have to necessarily get it validated through a registry to figure out if it looks and smells like a good Vaccination record. There are ways we can do that with an algorithm. And similarly, there’s ways that we can out and out to see some things that we know are fraud and say, you got a bad one for sure. So we definitely fail them in addition to scoring them. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes total sense. And I mean, I download the app, and I was just processing some of your InPoint data points. Right. So I think some of it. Right. Obviously, there’s the algorithm behind the scenes that’s doing the verification. But on the front side, you’re front Loading and allowing the individual to do some of the data input. So you’re going to have to put in a passport or you’re going to have to put in a driver’s license. You’re going to have to verify your face is also doing facial recognition to scan the card and match the card with the person that’s actually putting the data in there. So my next question is about your systems behind the scenes with the security. Again, for the average person, they’re getting a brain freeze right now, literally thinking about all the different information that we’re talking about. But I want you to kind of break it down to as lean and as humanly possible to kind of talk about these verification points in the system.

Yeah. Well, you know how when you go to a doctor’s office, you walk in and the first thing they do is ask you to produce your driver’s license and your insurance card, right? That’s the first thing that happens. Well, this is just like that. This is the digital version of that. We’re having the person, not the insurance card part. We’re having them produce their driver’s license so that we can know or passport some kind of government issued ID so that we can basically know that the person who’s in there creating the profile is the same person that’s on a valid government issued ID. And when I tell people that part of our process at Vac Mobile is about detecting fraud, it starts with that moment where you upload the government issued ID. Our partner in that is Jumio. And if Julio does the scan and it tells us that you just uploaded a fake ID, but that’s the end of your relationship with Mac Mobile all over from there. So that’s the first step. Then after that, then we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to do the biometric scan and we measure the facial geometry.We look to make sure that the space between your eyes and ears and things like that measure up in the exact same as that picture that’s on that government issued ID. So we know, okay, it’s the same person and it’s really sensitive software. So it knows like you have glasses on in this interview, but if you, for some reason maybe in your ID picture didn’t wear your glasses, it would still be able to do it. Or you had a beard in one picture, but you didn’t when you shaved your beer that day, when you’re doing yourself in the app, it can see through all that stuff. So that’s really important, right? Because we got to make sure in this day and age that we got the right person when we’re going to go and we’re going to be retrieving Vaccination records. This is really HIPA protected information Health Information Portability Act. So we got to make sure that we are safeguarding this highly protected information carefully and that you are in the driver’s seat. This is your account, this is your data, it’s your Privacy. You consent to use the Vac Mobile app. When somebody wants to verify that information, you consent for that mobile to share your health status with that person.So these are the things that we’re doing is we’re passing back and forth a token with an entity that wants to understand, does SA Grant meet our criteria for doing this particular activity? It could be getting on an airplane or it could be going to College or going to a school or going to work, right. Whatever the job is. But in each use case, there will be specific criteria. Maybe you have to have had a covered negative test result within 48 hours. That’s often very common for flying right on the Airlines throughout the Pandemic, people had to do that. And in some instances, maybe you have to nowadays, maybe they’re going to start saying that you need a booster just getting one shot of a J&J or two shots of a fizer or Moderna sequent, you now need a booster, depending on what your role is, depending on what the vertical is. So what we do is we say, okay, what are the criteria? And does this individual match what those criteria are? If they match, we pass the token, they get the green, or if they don’t match, then it’s a fail.But even before all the matching happens, like I said, we got to make sure that we think that the credential is good, that somebody is offering up.

Yeah. I just want to listen to her to realize, like the technology that she’s talking about. Prime example, like with my iPhone, if I take off my glasses, my phone is not going to recognize me, plain blank, period. And I wear hats so much, it’s like literally I have to put my glasses and my hat on from my phone to recognize me. So what she’s saying is that particularly her particular software is going to go down to whether I have a beard, what I have glasses on. Again, I did the verification earlier today, so it may bounce back, right? Because again, I always have a hat and everything, but I think I may or may not have a hat on my driver’s license. So it’s even going to verify that data, which is phenomenal. And obviously that’s why you have a patent pending on it. So like moving this down the road a little bit right here and you speak I mean, everyone can kind of say, okay, obviously you’re successful of where you are, and we kind of alluded to kind of like your history earlier on. But how long did it take you to kind of get the app and get this concept off the ground to where you’re actually doing equity raises?

Obviously, we founded this company in 2020, but we’ve been working on it since well before that. The very beginning of the idea of Vac Mobile started in 2017. And in 2018, I got a lot more serious about starting to really research and look into this whole issue of Vaccinations and what was going on with that. Sadly, I lost both my parents in 2018 and 2019. And so that was kind of a big pause because as you know, if you’ve lost any relatives, close parents in particular, if you’ve lost a family member, like a parent, that will just put a big pause on everything in your life. And so Ironically, it was actually their passing that made me decide definitively that I needed to do something really important for the planet, that both of my parents were people who made a massive difference in their lifetimes. And so it was kind of a real up close and personal check with myself about what had I done to make the world a better place. So that was when I said, okay, we’re going to do this because the big companies hadn’t solved the problem and they still haven’t solved the problem.So I said, okay, I guess it’s me. I guess I’m going to do it. So that’s when I really got serious. And that was in January of 2020. So again, we’re not a copy company. So that was when I was really getting serious about it. Now, fast forward to tape to now. That’s what it’s taken that long. So basically 2017, 2018 to now for five years.

Yeah. I would take anyone that understands business would by default know that you’re not a corporate company just because the fact that your patent is pending and it’s like a trademark. Trademarks take anywhere from like six months to two years. Patents take longer than that. So just keep that in perspective.

Yeah. And we actually trademarked the name of the algorithm. It’s called Vasar, and it’s an acronym, and it’s like FICO scoring, but it’s Bazar scoring, and it stands for Vaccination Authenticated Self Reporting Bazar scoring. And I had to make it an acronym. My mother was Assistant Secretary of the army for Manpower and Reserves, and so everything is acronyms in the military. I also thought it was kind of catchy based on scoring. So we trademarked that and we did get them. Basically. We’re very proud. We got the Mark for back mobile. And we’re clear eyed about the fact that we’re living in a world now where we need different health security protocols moving forward. And in terms of trying to help your listeners really understand, I still don’t get what Jennifer’s company does think of it like this. When there was a certain point in the evolution of this country when automobiles were happening, where we decided at some point that we needed to install traffic lights at intersections because we couldn’t keep driving into each other and crashing. Right. And that’s really what this software does for businesses. It allows businesses to better manage their ecosystems, to avoid spread of infection, to avoid somebody walking into your ecosystem that is a vector of disease and is going to get everybody sick.That’s really what it comes down to. What health safety protocols are you going to have in place to keep your employees, your customers, your visitors, and your vendors safe? Because we cannot have happy ears and happy eyes and Whoopi everything is over. We can’t just keep living this way because we just keep turning around and it’s just whacka mole. We’re just playing the same old trying to pretend there’s no virus. When the virus doesn’t care, the virus is going to keep mutating. That’s what viruses do. We’re of the opinion that just the same way after 911, physical security was forever changed, right? Those magnetometers came into airports. They didn’t tell us at the time, like, hey, we’re just going to put these magnetometers in for the next couple of years. And then after that, don’t worry, you’ll be able to watch your loved one to the gate. No, security was forever changed after 911. And that’s what we think about health security protocols, that they will be forever changed. And the vision of the world that we see is a world where everybody has their smartphone with them all the time. And everybody just scans.Just scanned to go into work, scan to go in the grocery store, scan to go in the movie theater, scan to go to the plane, scan to go to wherever your Church, wherever you can scan, scan. Because it’s just that simple. If you start actually keeping track of the data and be accountable, decide what the criteria are. You the entity, not the government. Right. Because the government actually already made it pretty clear that you really with this virus, you can’t come up with a one size fits all plan, right? New York City at the height of the pandemic, right. Early on, if you were in Idaho, it was a completely different story. But then as the months went by, then New York was much better. And you remember when South Dakota was in a world of hurt. Do you remember that? So it just moves around, right? The virus just moves around. So you can’t come up with a one size fits all and you can’t come up with a one size fits all because you also have to look at what is the business? What type of business is it? Is it a baseball Stadium or is it a cancer research and treatment center?Is it a school? Who’s there? Can you even get vaccinations for zero to five yet? You can’t, right? So if you are a technology company and you have a bunch of people in their late 20s, early 30s, they have little teeny, tiny babies and toddlers, right. With a great designation, right? A lot of people said, hey, I’m out of here, man. I’m not doing this. So we’re trying to be clear that what’s needed is a digital platform that people can just decide. These are going to be our rules. This is how we’re going to work it’s. And then they can just monitor the success of their own protocols. And if they need to tweak things, maybe if it’s an ICU nurse, maybe they need to be tested, Cobid tested every 48 hours, on top of being vaccinated and boosted because of the risk factors for that particular environment in an ICU. Does that make sense?

Makes perfect sense. So to translate some of that, and I want it to be like a visual thing. So right now, what you’re talking about, like when we walk into the airport, we have a Delta app. Delta app has a QR code, and that allows us to not only board, but to get past security. So imagine taking that. I would probably think down the road, you probably have some API integration to where the Delta app then merges with your app. And then you’ll get two codes in one, and you’ll scan, say, this is this person’s flight and also, this person is vaccinated, and they’re clear to get on board that plane. Take that at scale. You put that on boats, you can put that in churches, put that on stores anywhere. It’s a fascinating concept. Okay. Just play Devil’s advocate with that. So obviously, the pros are definitely there. But on the negative side, you have some people in society that’s kind of like hell bent on not getting vaccination. Right. So how is that going to work if a grocery store has it and you can’t get in the grocery store?

Because again, remember, we don’t take a position. Some people might use the app only for testing, right? So our position is, hey, you don’t want to get vaccinated, don’t get vaccinated, but get tested. Right? Get tested. Because I wish that they had never come up with the word asymptomatic. Right. I wish they would have just called it the invisible invisible, then people would understand it a little better. Because when you say something is asymptomatic, its like, I don’t know what is that when you say it’s invisible, it’s an invisible virus. It’s out there, it’s a sniper. It’s just waiting to be going to get you. That’s a different story. That’s a different image. That’s a different idea for people to wrap their minds around that somebody can look okay, they can seem fine, but they cannot be fine, and they can get somebody else incredibly ill. And what I think is going to be the big story, by the way, of 2022 is not going to be Covid. It’s going to be Long covid. Long covid. One in three cases of Covet is turning into Long Covid. And you might be saying, well, what does your app have to do with long covid?My app is going to become incredibly important. It’s not just the app, it’s the app. It’s the platform, the back end platform that has all the dashboard reporting for an employer or a business of any type and a scanner app. So we either have a standalone technology that the scanner app lives on an Android phone, or we can integrate. We have an API. We can integrate, like you said, into anybody else’s app. We’re designed to white label into other platforms, like a physical security thing, like people badging into work type of situation or like an HR platform. But in our world, it’s just incredibly important because of Long Covid and the devastating impact that that’s going to have on employers ability for staffing shortages, for think about situations where the supply chain gets interrupted like it did earlier in the pandemic. But it’s going to get a lot worse if one in three of these covid cases, because we had so many cases of AMacron in January and February. But the World Health Organization says it takes about three to four months before the symptoms appear of long covid. So you have lots of people who may have gotten a very mild case or even an asymptomatic case an invisible case of covid, in January and February that three or four months later suddenly may be having some serious problems.And the top three symptoms of long covid the ones that the World Health Organization is paying the most attention to right now. The first one is blood clots that are leading to heart attacks and strokes. The second one is what they’re calling brain fog, which is very similar to early onset dementias type symptoms. And the third one is extreme fatigue, where you just get winded, just emptying the dishwasher. You could barely get out of the bed. These are things that are going to absolutely degrade work performance and result in shortages for employers trying to stop shifts. So I just want to be clear that those three things that I just mentioned, I wouldn’t wish that I’m a worst enemy. Right. Any one of those that’s awful. And we don’t know how many folks are going to end up with that. There was a story that appeared last week, a CNN aired it, and the stats are pretty scary. The numbers are talking something. I’m going to pull it up here. It’s like $563,000,000,000, and it’s really a big number. This is real. Yeah, sorry. It’s 386,000,000,000. That’s the number. 386,000,000,380. billion in lost wages having savings and medical expenses in the US alone as of January.

That’s crazy. I’m just listening to like, I mean, obviously you’re a profound entrepreneur in many different ways and just hearing your passion on this particular topic. And I think earlier on you was mentioning about the loss of your parents, and I want to kind of dive into that a little bit. Right. So you’re an entrepreneur, you’re on this path, you’ve always been on a particular projection. Right. Is that coming from one of your parents? Like, was one of them entrepreneurs in any shape or form?

Neither one was an entrepreneur. Like I said, my mom had a very long career working on the civilian side of the military. She started working as an assistant Secretary and then moved her way over to general counsel of the army. And then finally her highest boast was assistant Secretary of the army for Manpower and Reserves under Clinton. So she was a lawyer before she had these posts within the army. My dad was also a lawyer, but he clerked for the Supreme Court. He was a road scholar. He had grown up in pretty impoverished circumstances in Miami and ended up winning a scholarship to Harvard and took the bus up to Harvard. But he always was doing pro Bono work throughout his career and cared profoundly about making sure that he was helping people along the way. I just was hugely influenced by it. And my mother also served on many nonprofit boards and was always helping people. And that was a big part of the culture of my household was, are you a person who’s making a difference in this world? And that came through loud and clear for me.

Wow. So, I mean, finishing on that last note about making a difference in the world. I mean, obviously you’re married and you have a pretty decent sized blended family. So let’s talk about that for a minute. With all the things that you’ve done, you figured out some way to create a family, get married. How do you currently juggle and manage both sides of your brain? Because obviously you have to turn that switch on and off to be able to juggle these things.

Well, I think I have a teenage son who’s about to turn 20. My stepson, actually, he’s grown up. He’s out of the house. He’s working, actually. He’s chill. He’s good. I have twin daughters and they’re 15, about to turn 16. So teenagers, I will say this, if you’re going to be an entrepreneur, having teenagers, that is such a bad thing because they tend to do their own thing. So it’s not as bad as it could be. I think as far as they’re not, I don’t know how entrepreneurs who have little toddlers do it because I just know what it was like when my kids were smaller and don’t know how my respect to those people all the respect. But for me, I don’t have any particular magic words of wisdom other than my kids are watching me work incredibly hard. Like I will sometimes work until 10:00 at night and have gotten up at like 4 or 5:00 in the morning. Okay, that’s not unusual for me. But this is not unusual for entrepreneurs. Right. People work hard. In the first few years of a company, launching a company, you have to work hard, especially when you’re building a plane in the middle of while it’s flying, which is what we were doing, trying to create solutions that were applicable for the moment we’re living and meeting the moment.But what I do know is this when you stop, really stop and be present. And one of the things that I’ve done in the last couple of months with my kids is we’ll do a game night, we’ll play games with each other. And it sounds kind of hokey because I’m talking about board games and card games. But to me it’s the best thing ever when we just stop and we play, I think play creative, play being present in the moment for each other and just laughing and joking and goofing off and how it is when you’re with your family and you’re ribbing each other and you’re choosing the other person of cheating and all that kind of stuff. That’s the stuff that really those are the moments that you cherish. Those are the moments that just make the time and take trips. Take short trips. Take a day trip. Take a day trip with your kids on a Sunday, drive somewhere. Go somewhere. If you break the routine. I think those things are incredibly important. Play with your family and take a trip every now and then, take a break. Really break. Because little bitty breaks.But you’re still kind of looking at your phone. For me, that doesn’t work.

So you’re talking about board games like Monopoly, monopoly has to be like

They love Monopoly.Monopoly and Clue and all the old school. Sorry, I’m showing my age right now. But all the old school games that we grew up with. Right. And Uno and those kinds of things.

Nice. So with your wake up Regiment, you’re talking about four, five in the morning. So obviously you’re well versed in what you’re talking about and obviously everything else you’ve done in your career. So my next question is essentially what books have you read to kind of help you get to, like, each section of your journey? Like if you could recommend one primary book that stands out that is timeless for you to kind of help an entrepreneur, which book would you recommend?

Well, a timeless book that I think is just such a great read as this one. Pour your heart into it. Howard Schultz Starbucks story. I mean, this is a classic. This is a classic. I go back, I’ll reread sections of this all the time because if you haven’t read it, then you’ll find out when you read it that this is a miracle that we have Starbucks. Because this guy had the door slammed in his face so many times, hundreds and hundreds of times, he had the door slammed his face. People thought he was a nut job. So to me, it’s always so refreshing to read these stories of people who experienced. So you got to be resilient, man. And he just believed and believed and believed and persevered and where we are now. I love this book. And plus, it’s just really well written. It’s really fun. So I love that one. But if you’re a female entrepreneur, I would recommend Shelley R. Chambos Unapologetically Ambitious and Carl Goldens Undaunted. Both of these are really good, pretty current books published in the last couple of years. Both of them, I think they’re great because for female entrepreneurs, you definitely need to the world just going to give you a little bit harder time.I hate to say it and you just have to be ready to just stand up tall and like Shelley Archambo says, be unapologetically ambitious. But there’s another book that I really like and it’s Built on values. And this is by Anne Rose, and she was the chief people officer for Southwest Airlines for many years and founder of JetBlue, one of the original founders of JetBlue. And her book is all about how you create a culture that outperforms the competition, but it’s all about your values. And she has a whole system for how you hire people and how you’re able to identify have them identify for you what their values are. So you can really understand, hey, this person share my values because once we’re all United on values, then the skill set skills can be taught. But values, that’s got to be in, right? That’s in the person.

Yeah, definitely going on that topic of values.Right.I mean, obviously you’re establishing a company now that I think with it being fully built out, maybe ten years out, five years out is going to stand the test of time. And you’re talking about probably having this product hundred years down the road. But in scope of work, where do you see the company or the platform 20 years from now? Ideally.

I see it in use. I see it as really ubiquitous. I see it like think about like Visa. Right. Think about like the product Vera Foam, where every single time you go to a grocery store and you stick your credit card in and does the processing and everything. I think I see it as ubiquitous as VeriFone. I see it as something that’s just everywhere, that people just are very much in the habit of doing a scan to go someplace. And I’m not talking just about Colbert. Right. I’m talking about digital transformation and vaccination registers, where we started this whole conversation. I’m talking about when you are doing anything. There’s all kinds of use cases right now where they do ask for vaccination records. Right. Whether it’s for sports for your kid, going to sleep away, camp for obviously going to school K through twelve and Matriculating for higher Ed. There’s all kinds of places where we need vaccination records or if you’re going to travel internationally and there’s places right now that we need them. But I envision a world where we have really, really easy access to our records. We know exactly what we have, what we don’t have, what our minor kids have, don’t have.And it’s very easy to pull up. It’s very easy to use QR codes to transmit this information. And it’s like second nature. But in doing so, it allows us in the future, if there’s a future pathogen that we have a system, we have a platform in place to be able to very quickly while a vaccine would be developed. Obviously, you’ve got to have extra precautions. But as soon as the vaccination is in place, you just don’t lose the beat. You just keep on going. Right. And that’s to me, what we cannot do, we cannot let what happened during this pandemic happened in the future. And by that I mean of the million lives that were lost here in the US, fully 200,000 of them were in assisted livings or skilled nursing facilities. We’re talking about our elders. To me, this is just unacceptable. We cannot do this to our elders. Right. They just would shut down and then you couldn’t go see your loved ones in a nursing home or in an assisted living. And having just lost my parents, I know what it’s like. And I can’t imagine a really close family friend of ours, she lost her husband.She’s 94 years old. She lost her husband to cope with a few months into the pandemic, and then she lost her daughter to breast cancer. She’s all alone in there, and I couldn’t go see her for many, many months. And it just broke my heart. And I just think we have to leverage technology to prevent that and back mobile. Absolutely would prevent that. In the future. You would be able to have anybody going in and out, whether they were an employee, a family member, or some sort of vendor in the facility. You could be able to scan and make sure that they weren’t a vector of disease. I mean, obviously there’s going to be a few little things here that might get through. But if everybody’s using the system, it’s going to definitely increase safety dramatically. So does that kind of makes sense in terms of what I see in the future as a world where we work smarter, not harder? We can be smart about this?

Yeah, I think definitely. So that leads me to the good gateway to this next question. Right. So with that in mind, that future tense that you’re talking about, ideally, if you could leave like this, 30 seconds to 60 seconds worth of inside words of wisdom, you’re talking to your ideal avatar here, right. And you’re letting them know that this project is in existence. And whatever hurdles that they’re dealing with right now, that potentially you’re going to be able to take them forward. So what words of insight would you give to that individual?

I would tell them that, do not give up. If you have a dream, if you have a vision, if you know that the world is going to be served by what you’re doing. Because I think that’s really what’s at the core of things. Right. It’s helping people. It’s actually doing something that is going to meaningfully impact people’s lives and make them better. If you know that, then stay rooted, stay calm, because it’s all going to come, it’s all going to come together, and those obstacles can be overcome. And there are people out there that get inspired, get motivated, and want to see change happen, and they will help you. I know it’s happening for us, in fact, mobile. But I would encourage any entrepreneur who’s listening to just keep going, because everybody has tough days. Everybody has moments where they think, what did I do? Why did I do this? But just take a deep breath, take a walk, smell the flowers, get out there, take a break and come back, come right back to it. Keep going.

Solid words of advice for sure. So with that being said, how do people get in contact you? Where do they download the app? How do they find you?

So if they are trying to get the Apple version, the iOS native version, they can go into the App Store and download it, put in Vac Mobile V-A-C-M-O-B-I-L-E Vac Mobile, all one word. They can get it that way. The Android version, they can go out to the Vac Mobile website, which is www.vacmobile.app, and they can download the Android version. The latest release is there at the website right now. And that’s the same place where anybody can contact us to get a demo. If they’re interested in getting a demo of this platform, we can set that up. They can submit a query through the website. And I’m also on LinkedIn. So find me on LinkedIn. Jennifer Sparks vacmobile you’ll find me. I’ll pop right up and be delighted to reach out to folks and talk to them on LinkedIn as well. So I pretty much always accept connections. So I appreciate anybody reaching out because I truly believe that we can be safer as we continue to move forward in this pandemic. And not only can we be safer, we have to be safer. We just have to. What is that, Einstein?The definition of insanity? Keep doing the same thing and expect different results. We got to do something different. Right. As we head into year three of this world we’re living in with this virus.

That’s a bona fide fact for sure. So going into the bonus route, I got a bonus question for you. I’m thinking for you again, it kind of blows my mind because your background is so diverse. I have no idea what you’re going to say. So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone, dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

It would be Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln. And it would be Abraham Lincoln, because 16 times he tried before he finally got elected. And I love these stories of the underdog that pulled through. But then not only did he get elected, but he worked so hard to get elected. But then the worst. Can you imagine what he overcame and what problems that came, the obstacles that he overcame? Pretty inspiring, right. And I think particularly now because you’ve done a really great job of being very politically correct during this interview in terms of my particular product that I’m dealing with. Vaccinations is very charged. Right. People get very emotional, and our country is very fractured right now. And so I would love to talk to him because if you go back again on the history buff, things were very fractured in his time as well. Right. So I think he would be an incredible person to talk to. And he was a lawyer. Right. He wasn’t trained to become a commander in chief in a war. He had to go into the Library of Congress and start looking at books and try to understand how to command Union forces.He had no idea. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. He had no idea. He was reading about Greek battles and different. He was doing anything he could to try to figure out how am I going to fix it was no small thing what he managed to do. So I think I would want to talk to him because sometimes I get down on the fact that I wish I understood technology better. It’s taken me a couple of years to figure things out and to understand things, and I’m still learning every day. But I think he’s inspirational because he just looked at these things head on and just kept marching. And even in the face of personal tragedy, he kept marching forward every day. He is the model of resilience and grit, and he had a really good sense of humor, too. So I would like to talk to you presently.

You answered that like a true historian, hands down, period, literally. So going into closing, I mean, I think I always like to give the microphone and give the show to whoever I’m interviewing. So now you’re the host of Boston Cage. Are there any questions that you would like to ask me?

Of course. So my question to you is you’ve been doing a lot of interviews. So who is the most famous person that when you interviewed them, they really were unknown. Nobody had heard of them. But you knew you were like, this person is going to go somewhere. I know they are. Who is that person and which company? And what was it that really took off from the time you interviewed them to where they are now?

I think it’s difficult because I have three different classifications of interviews. Right. So I have people that are budding and they’re up and coming, and then I have the successful people in the middle, and then I have the ultra successful people, the founder of Redfin a couple of days ago. So just hearing his story and who he worked with, and obviously he was like the right hand man to Jeff Bezos kind of just blows my damn mind. But then I have the middle classification of people that are like multimillionaires, that are like walking amongst us, but people don’t really know who they are unless they’re in that area of expertise. And you know that’s like Damon Burton, Ty Cohen, they’re just like industry Legends in the marketing side, but the average person doesn’t know who they are.

Right. So for you, though, of the interviews, like, of all your interviews, were there any that really stood out to you, where you were like, wow, this is supremely interesting. Something that you just didn’t see coming, something where you interviewed somebody and they opened up some topic, some way of looking at the world that you hadn’t really thought about before you interviewed them?

Yes. I think this is probably why I nickname everyone, because it’s just easier for me to kind of remember who they are based upon that nickname. And I would say the fearless boss. She was a force to be reckoned with. I mean, she was older but just her telling her story, growing up in Europe and putting her kids on a bus. Imagine putting your kid on a bus at age six. That was the equivalent of what she was doing overseas and to see her kids came out stronger, better, more motivated and eager to take over the world than a kid that’s being over sheltered. So she just gave me that insight to being completely fearless removing fear from the equation and to just step forward and do whatever you need to do to move forward.

I love it because that’s it, right? Just move forward, keep moving, keep your head up.

Well, I definitely appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be on the show today. I think that again, if she did not spark you into being motivated again I think that you probably need to get your heart rate check just a little bit because you did a phenomenal job of just motivating and just defining what you’re doing and being so passionate where you are in a space to where the technology could be used for years, decades, centuries down the road is a phenomenal thing to be on the front end of that.

Thank you so much and thank you for taking some time to be part of this mobile story as well.

Pleasures all mine S.A Grant over and out.