Be Willing to Get Punched in the Face | Brett Vokey of BreatheSuite

[Music] Hi, I'm Carol Barlow, and welcome to Creators at the World's Edge, the TechNL podcast, the show that takes a deep dive into Newfoundland and Labrador's thriving texting. Today I sit down with Brett Fokie, the CEO of Breathe Sweet, somebody who's helping people breathe a little easier, while also propelling the province's booming texting onto the global stage. [Music] In the ecosystem that is here, if you look around at the other CEOs and other people, there is a little bit of a common trend of competitive sport. Is that in your background? Yeah, so it's interesting you bring that up because I think competitive sport plays a huge role in developing you as a person. I always relate back to when I was playing Midget Hockey, and coming up through I was one of the better players on some of the teams, so I didn't really get the shorter end of things of not getting the ice time and fair play rules. Obviously you don't really face that until you get a little bit older. And I remember my first year playing Midget Hockey, and it was competitive. We were in the Atlantic Finals down at Jack Bernarina, and it was big. There was a lot of people there. A lot of my friends came out to watch and that sort of thing. I got two shifts, approximately a minute of ice time, throughout the whole game. Because I was a fourth-line player. I wasn't one of our best players on the team. And you want to be out there so bad, and you want to be contributing so bad, that you're frustrated on the bench. I think what that teaches you is that things aren't always going to go your way. And sometimes there's things that are out of your control. And you can't tell the coach to put you on the ice. But that teaches you a level of patience and determination that your time will come to be patient with things and always to have a level of drive that I don't think is taught elsewhere. And I think commonly you see a lot of the tech founders here have that sport background as well. I think it's interesting. I'm Brett Fokie, founder and CEO here at Brie Suite. We are a connected health company empowering the lives of respiratory patients worldwide. Some of my passions are sports, love playing golf, love playing hockey. Love to spend lots of time outdoors and yeah, spend lots of time with friends. When you say that you only had two shifts out there, what else was your role? Do you think on the team at that time? Well, it's all about morale, right? You can either sulk and you can give in to the whole thing of, you know, I'm a small contributing factor. But having that team oriented mindset, I think, is really important. And that's what that teaches you is no matter if you're getting two shifts or you're getting 25 shifts, you're all part of the team. And at the end of the day, if you win a trophy, you still get your chance to raise that trophy because you were a part of that team, right? And I think the same goes for business, whether you're a co-op student, whether you're a CEO, you're all working towards the same goal. It doesn't matter what role you play on that team. In the follow-up year, what did you do to become bigger or stronger or more skilled? Yeah. Is that a driving factor? Yeah, well, interestingly enough. So the year after, obviously I trained pretty hard throughout the summer to put on some weights, I wasn't this skinny kid anymore. But the year after, and then after that when I was in my third year, I actually became the captain of the team when I was in my last year. So this interesting transition from, you know, fourth line guy, barely playing at all, to the captain who's leading all these younger guys as well. And oftentimes, you know, when I talk to the coach about it, they reflected back to, you know, one of the times we were at a tournament. And again, I barely got any ice time and I went to the coach's hotel room after the game and said, you know, I really want to contribute, I want to help. And essentially what they said is, you know, your time will come type thing. And you stick with it, eventually, obviously put on a bit more weight, got a little bit better, and then contributed at sort of the leadership level as well. So I think that was an interesting development. Do you think that's human nature? Do you think that's an eat in you and your family? Yeah, I think absolutely. Like I think never being satisfied is a very common trait. I think that you'll see with a lot of entrepreneurs, and especially people in the tech industry as well. You know, you can be proud of what you've accomplished, but now always be looking to, okay, what's next. And I think that, you know, when you look at my family specifically, it's the same thing. It's, okay, you know, I've got this degree, I've got this master's degree, okay, what after that? Where am I heading tomorrow? And, you know, one of the values that we try to put in place here at Brie's Suite is just to always be, you know, getting better in some sense. And to be an entrepreneur, to be a founder, I like the term, you got to be willing to get punched in the face. Because it's going to happen, you're going to face obstacles, you're going to face, you know, massive failures. But you need to be able to transition that into, okay, how do we learn from this and then do better the next time? And I think, you know, the same is said for sports, as well. Where does it all begin for you, the asthma thing? Tell me about that. Yeah, interestingly enough, like, there's no, I guess it didn't start from like a personal story. So I have like exercise induced asthma. Like I take a puffer before I run in the cold. But I was, it more so started with like healthcare. And I, when I started engineering, you know, in 2014, I thought that my path was oil and gas. Like I was just like, okay, I want to do engineering. I want to get awesome work terms and oil and gas is probably the path that I'm heading on. How did you get exposed to? Well, so there's actually a biomedical stream at month. So if you're doing a mechanical, you can do certain courses in the biomedical field as well. So there's this one opportunity through Moral Center for Entrepreneurship when I got to essentially be a designated problem solver. So I would go into different parts of the healthcare system and say, okay, what are the inefficiencies of what you're doing right now? And how can I create something or implement something that, you know, could solve that problem? A lot of times it was, you know, sticky notes on the wall when you could be using a software, like rather obvious things like that. There's also experiences where I, you know, was involved in surgeries, seeing like how these tools were working and potentially how they could work in better ways. Didn't necessarily have the stomach to stay into that aspect of things, but. And then, you know, this whole respiratory thing, one of the things that we were seeing is patients commonly coming in and saying their inhaler is not working. When in fact, it was either that they weren't taking it at all or they weren't taking it correctly. So that's sort of how the journey of a breezeweed kind of started and that's it. And this was one of those things where, you know, looking at inhalers and the way they're being used, these inhalers were made like 50 years ago. And there's been virtually no change to how those medications are being delivered aside from, you know, the implementation of some new different types. But the puffer, which you're seeing here, it's essentially the same. It's been the same since, you know, the 50s, the 60s. So when looking at existing solutions on the market, it's a big hill to climb to completely change the way that puffers work. But adding things on top of that and, you know, not changing the way the whole industry works. I think that that's when I was like, okay, this is a really interesting opportunity that could actually scale to something significant. So that's kind of the thought behind it. [Music] It does two things. So the first of all is adherence. So patients taking their medications on time, according to the prescription that's been prescribed by the doctor, that's what our device tracks. It's inhaler adherence, the date and time at what you're taking it. But it also goes a step further, like I mentioned before, about patients not taking their inhalers right. So inhaler technique is defined by four metrics. So inhaler shaking, inhaler orientation, how long you're actually inhaling for and pressing down on the canister while you already start inhaling. So essentially establishing a flow path to get the medication to your lungs. So all four of those metrics are very important to make sure that you're, even though you're taking your inhalers at the right time, you need to be taking it the right way as well. So that's essentially what the device does. It's tracks when, it also tracks how well you're taking your medications. So we give a score in the application. Every single time you take your dose, you get a score from zero to 100% on what did you do right, what did you do wrong. And the next time you take your dose, what can you do to get more medication to your lungs associated with that? Ah, so it's like a grading. Yeah, so like gamification is huge, right? And we've seen instances where people have come back the next time and gradually improve their score over time. Like they start taking their inhalers, have no idea that they've been taking it incorrectly. Get scores between zero to 25% and then when we watch the gradual increase of, um, their technique scores, they get better, and then they maintain that over time. So I remember the first time that that happened with the patient, we were so excited to see that all of these assumptions that we'd be making on gamification actually came true. So I think it's been really exciting. (upbeat music) - In Newfoundland, we're on a remote island, no different than being offshore. So I spent many years working offshore. So I did pursue the oil and gas realm, mainly 'cause there's a blood in the other, things that you had mentioned, so a whole surgery. So we're remote. And then in that, there's a little bit of a culture that exists here that we help out one another because we have to, right? Not to mention the weather that we get. Like a store of again and lots of snow and all those types of things, but the remoteness creates a unique connection. How are you trying to develop that in the ecosystem here or what does it look like? - I always say that I think we have one of the closest like ecosystem, not even really intact, but across all industries, like all the industries and the key industry partners here are so close together. For the tech ecosystem, for example, we have a group of probably 10 or 12 founders here in Newfoundland, and we have a Slack channel and we talk all the time. Like we share learnings about different softwares we're using, talking about, okay, when did you hire this specific role at your company? How are you guys thinking about financing? Like those types of things, it's like a support group almost that you have to learn from. And the good thing is that we're constantly adding people to. So when I joined the group, I was the lowest on the totem pole, meaning that our company was the smallest. We were the youngest. We had the most to learn out of everybody, but now since then there's been probably five or six additional people. And obviously, I'm paying forward some of the things that I've learned across as well. And I think that that's been again, so instrumental in driving this entire ecosystem here, but just that willing to share and that willing to learn from one another, I think is a really big strength that we have in the Newfoundland ecosystem. - What is Silicon Harbor? - So it's this momentum that I can't remember who coined the term exactly, but wanting to be the next Silicon Valley. If you look at how many places have coined Silicon, like the next Silicon highway, Silicon, there's a lot. But I think Silicon Harbor represents what we can be here in Newfoundland and be viewed as an actual tech hub and not just a location that there's a couple of small tech companies. And we talk about this at our founder meetups that we have. This is one of the, we say only, it's not the only, but we believe that the tech industry is a significant way to climb ourselves out of this hole. And obviously we don't need to mention barifin and the success that they've had. But if we had 10 barifins, all of a sudden we are a different province. And what you're seeing now is people from barifin who have been with their, you know, with barifin since the early days, they're looking to pay that forward now. So they've learned a ton as they went through that process of now obviously in acquisition. They're looking to join some of these smaller companies and help again build that from the ground up. And that's so powerful because, you know, the Newfoundlander ability to learn is bar none. Like, you know, I think we've, anyone who we bring in through our doors just has this open ability to realize, I don't know everything, how can I learn quicker? But the only way to teach them to be better quicker is to have that experience on the other side of the coin who's actually teaching them. And again, I think barifin's a great example where if you have a lot of these senior leaders and that sort of thing who are now paying in forward, joining smaller companies and helping build them from the ground up, all of a sudden you've got a different industry here in Newfoundland. So I think that's an exciting way to look at it. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Can you talk about the support that you're getting from people who are in the ecosystem, but maybe slightly outside, they're not a tech company, but the support that you're gaining from the community outside? Can you just speak to that? - Yeah, I think like there's been a couple, you know, CBC stories posted about the tech momentum that we've seen here in St. John's. And even like reading some of the comments and how many people believe that it's feasible is encouraging because barifin has kind of paved the way of believing that it's possible here. That was one of the most common misconceptions before is that you have to be in Silicon Valley or Toronto or Vancouver to be successful. But obviously barifin has proved that that's not the case. It's just all it is is people. Like, you know, people think about Apple and Amazon and all these huge companies. But at the end of the day, like driving those machines is people. And if you can train people, you can encourage people to first of all stay here in Newfoundland and grow your skillset and then eventually pay your skillset forward. That's an industry and that's an ecosystem. And I think, you know, the excitement of new grads and all the things that are happening in high schools and that sort of thing today about technology, it's a game changer and it's the way that we're heading, I think, is really encouraging. - What do you think is the brand of Newfoundland now and how do you want to shape that into the future? - Well, I think, you know, the Newfoundland brand is very, you know, friendly, very welcoming. And I think that that can be viewed as an advantage if we're thinking about building a tech ecosystem. Because if you think about Silicon Valley, the brand from a personal standpoint is very different. It's very, get the job done or you're fired. But here it's much more patient. It's much more, again, encouraging to grow and that's sort of thing too. So I think using that positive, friendly brand image and then translating that into tech, using that as a driving factor to, first of all, bring people in but also keep people here. I think that's a really good place where we can be. You know, our goal is to be a billion dollar company. I think as is every tech startup that starts and, you know, doing that doesn't happen overnight and doing that doesn't entirely happen just by doing. You've got to get lucky in some ways as well. But I think, you know, where we're headed is much more than just devices. It's, you know, digital experience is how do we leverage, you know, behavioral change and also the way that people are addicted to their phones and use that in a positive way to actually change the way they think about asthma, they think about COPD and ultimately, you know, live healthier lives as a result. - When you talk about the next 20 to 30 years, how old are you now? - I'm 25. - 25. (laughing) 25 and already mentoring another company and giving back valuable information. That's phenomenal. - Thank you. - That's phenomenal. Good for you. - Thank you. (upbeat music) - Brett Foke, CEO of Breathe Sweet. Thank you. - Thank you. - If you have tech stories of your own from Newfoundland and Labrador to share, we'd love to hear about them. Send us an email [email protected]. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast, creators at the world's edge, wherever you get your podcast, to get notified for each new episode. Creators at the world's edge is produced by David Lank and Stefan Dandenow. Edited by Stefan Dandenow. The executive producer is Marlene Harden. Sound Engineering by Marco Dula and original theme music by Elliot Dix, featuring Mick Davis. - Special thanks to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Industry, Energy and Technology and the entire team at Techanl for bringing this podcast to life. I'm Carol Bartlett. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music)