Dr. Breanne Everett: From the lemonade stand to founding Kinetyx
Transcipt: Dr. Breanne Everett CEO and founder
Gary McCoy: [00:00:03] We all have people who change our lives either through their words or their actions. Medical professionals change lives daily, but there are some who are mission driven that make impactful differences in the lives of individuals, but also change the narrative for the masses. Dr. Breanne Everett is one of those people. She is the inspiration behind the Human Kinesome Project to upgrade human movement. She is the founder brand spirit, as well as the CEO of Kinetyx. And her story is amazing. From the first time we met through each interaction we have. I learn, I grow, and I am thankful. Dr. Everett, it's a pleasure to have you on The Human Kinesome Project podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Breanne Everett: [00:00:57] Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here, Gary.
Gary McCoy: [00:01:01] Yeah. So, we've talked a lot since I got to know you over the last, I think, 14 months now. We've talked a lot about data streaming. You knew that I kind of came over from an AI company that was looking at pattern recognition for athletes and all this data that's coming off of sports human movement was really critical. But that pattern recognition thing kind of stuck with me. Now, if I had to do a pattern recognition of your achievements and growth all the way to where you are today, I think two things stand out to me. One is resilience. And the second thing that stands out to me is your ability to solve a problem. Where did those things come from?
Breanne Everett: [00:01:45] So first of all, I would say I think that those those characteristics define our team in general. And I think that that's a common thread amongst everyone that we've been able to bring on board the Kinetyx team. As for myself, I think, looking back at everything that I've been involved in, you try to get to know yourself better over time and understand your own strengths and your own limitations. And for me I think there's a few things that I, I know about myself and that I've learned, and I think that I have managed to play to those strengths in many situations and find people to support where I don't have strengths. I think one of those things is that I am highly driven by a delta that exists between where we are today and where we can be. And sometimes that I would say it's sort of a mix between motivation and anxiety. And it's that that I think really helps me to move and to continue to put work in, because, you know, when you're starting from something from scratch, you're not following a mould. You're kind of creating a new category. You don't have a template there. And it can be hard. And there are lots of wins, but there are lots of losses. And so having something that drives you to motivate you to kind of keep getting up. Even though you do get to do keep getting knocked down, I think that that's one thing that is a strength of mine. I have a ton of ideas. Most of them are really bad. And I think that the just the continued shots on goal and coming up with potential paths forward and always trying to find a path like being like water and some of those ideas are going to just die on the vine and other ones are actually going to be the unlocking path.
Breanne Everett: [00:03:53] So just always trying to think through problems and create space to think through those problems is another element of what's made this possible. I think tied to that that idea of being motivated by that delta and what's possible is this impatience and impatience to kind of get to what's next. Not impatience in the process, but just I think it's there's a there's a motivation there to feel that drive, you know, not and to the point of not feeling like you're working but feeling like you've committed to something and you've got the energy to see through, like it never felt hard in that way. And then I think the other thing that makes this easy, in a sense, is that if you bring on experts, people who know their space better than anyone in the world, that team approach and the energy that's created with having a group that that kind of lifts everyone else up. And even if you're having a down day, you feel the lift of the people around you. You know, you obviously included in that where, you know, every conversation I have with you is motivating in some way and energizing. And if you surround yourself with the right people, you don't have to be 100 percent all the time. So I think those would be the biggest things.
Gary McCoy: [00:05:11] Yeah. And it's really interesting, too, because you mentioned that kind of that anxiety and that impatience kind of coupled, right? Those emotions. Do you feel like you're always at the bottom of the mountain and once you've achieved something, do you feel like, OK, now I've got myself another mountain? Do you keep looking forward? Is that how it feels? Or are you taking the time now to go: stop, breathe, let's enjoy this.
Breanne Everett: [00:05:40] Yeah, it's a great question. I think that's one of the things that is not my strength is looking around and saying, wow, what a great milestone and taking the time to really bask in that because
Gary McCoy: [00:05:52] I'm laughing because we're the exact same on that, it's so hard.
Breanne Everett: [00:05:56] And but it is something that that is very important to think about when you're working with the team, you're leading a team. Celebrating those wins for the benefit of the team is very important. But personally, for myself, it's like you get past one thing and it's on to the next. And there's no time to slow down in a way, because there's always so much more that can come. And the way that I think about it is this analogy of a shark. There's always improvement. There's always that delta that can be closed. And if a shark stops swimming, they die. If a company stops innovating, you die. You have to always be on the edge. And so, yeah, that is something that I work on because it's hard to not keep looking forward, but it's very important to look around and be like, wow, look at where we are. Like, look what we've been able to do as a team.
Gary McCoy: [00:06:47] I get it. And it's kind of I see it as a functional part of your DNA. Right. So, from what I know, take us back. So, I really understand a lot about this. Take us back to your first business and what that business was. I think if I remember correctly, it was jewellery related.
Breanne Everett: [00:07:04] It was. You're correct. All right. Well, okay, wait, I'll maybe I'll say there were a couple of smaller businesses that were started along the way.
Gary McCoy: [00:07:16] So this is this pre-lemonade stand or is this post-lemonade?
Breanne Everett: [00:07:20] This is pre-lemonade stand. So, basically everything that we thought we might be able to get money for, this is me and my siblings. We would try to sell it. So, we were on one of the main roads in a hamlet called Bragg Creek. And if we thought we could set up a booth and sell something to cars driving by, we would. So, there were rocks that were sold, just interesting shaped rocks that we found. We did a lot of rock painting. So, we started actually putting effort into the products we were selling. The lemonade stand came next. So, we were sort of upping the ante through this because then then there was like procurement supply chain involved. It ended up being like a bit of a thing. We would bring in like one to two thousand dollars a day on the weekend. But I was always really interested in the concept of businesses. My aunt bought me a book as a kid called Fast Cash for Kids. And it was like kind of interesting in terms of providing ideas. How you could make money without really having no skills. And then. When I was eight for Christmas, my parents bought me this whole kit to basically make beaded jewellery and it never was about just making jewellery for myself. It was about, "let's create a business out of this." My mom was an artisan growing up, and so she was always making floral arrangements, wicker furniture, so she would go to to art sales and then I would set up my booth alongside her with the jewellery.
Breanne Everett: [00:08:49] And it kind of grew from there. Learning to do different types of jewellery. I took a silversmithing course when I was about nine and started to actually use like the equipment to make silversmith jewellery. So, expanded what I was able to make and then at about that time, I got approached by one of the wardrobe designers for a CBC show called North of 60 and was also actually doing wardrobe design for a number of made for TV movies. And so she hired me to create jewellery for all of those shows. So, and it was great because for the movies you need to have two to three of everything in case something is being lost or gets lost because you need to have continuity on the set. So, any time I'd order something they were ordering like double or triple or whatever, so I would it would automatically increase the order. So, I started doing that for several years. And then once I got into high school, I started becoming more interested in in science. I got really involved in science fair in the jewellery side of things, sort of tapered off after a while. But I would say I think you're right, Gary, that was the first actual business. I don't think taking loonie's on the side of the road really, really counts as a business. So, but the jewellery business was like a legitimate business for a kid. The reason I want to bring
Gary McCoy: [00:10:02] That up and chat about a little bit, it's a fairly significant shift from being an artist to becoming a doctor. Tell me about that transition and at what point did you say, “hey, it's medical school, that's the direction I'm headed?”
Breanne Everett: [00:10:16] Yeah, it's a great point. And I would say that my upbringing, it was very much art, like my family was artists. My dad is very entrepreneurial. They've always been super supportive of anything that I wanted to do. They don't question decisions. They just basically support interests. And were there one hundred percent for all three kids in the family to make sure that we were supported in doing things that we love to do? It really wasn't a focus on money and what would be lucrative as a career or not. It was about making sure that we were happy in what we were doing and so they would put whatever resources they could possibly put behind us in anything that we took on. I was always really interested in science and medicine, and I would say that it was probably in like middle school, high school that I had kind of committed to that path that I wanted to be a doctor. And I always kind of had in the back of my head that that was making this as a career decision and that I would do something artistic on the side and that I had to kind of separate out those two worlds. But then when I actually went into medicine and started understanding what types of careers are available and started really understanding what plastic and reconstructive surgery was, I saw that there was an opportunity to actually take that STEM side of things.
Breanne Everett: [00:11:41] And marry it with the artistic where you're trying to find this balance between form and function in everything that you do, and instead of going into an operating room with a set procedure like this is how I do an appendectomy, it was you come to the table with this armamentarium of different techniques that can then be applied to very unique and different situations, depending on what the reconstructive what the reconstructive needs are in a particular situation. So, I thought that it was finally a way where I could basically bring these two worlds together and then also be using my hands, like I always really enjoyed working with my hands as a kid. So, I finally saw that there was a possible way to converge these two worlds. And then I ended up being more true to myself than I actually expected in that I started a company and then started going along the path of bringing up medical innovation and dedicating myself more to to that side of things then the clinical world.
Gary McCoy: [00:12:41] Right, no, it makes a lot of sense. And I mean, sort of, you know, and that's that the medical/artistic combination is really interesting to me because I think it's overlooked in many, many aspects of medicine rehabilitation. It's got down to, especially in North America, just simple, you know, what's reimbursable, what's not. Let's go from A to B and the patient gets lost in that part of the equation. So, yeah, it's really interesting for me to hear that, because I think most people would look at medicine and science and art as being binary pathways, like there a fork in the road. And you've managed to bring those together. So, that's a really interesting place, I think, for someone to understand you and know where you sit that that art is probably a continuous part of your process and for things you look to do.
Breanne Everett: [00:13:32] Yeah, I think that's actually and an opportunity in all domains. Where instead of basically committing to a very narrow path, becoming an expert in adjacent, not connected areas where you can bridge to spaces, that siloing only goes so far. And in medicine, it's particularly sharp because you have people who have really dedicated their lives to being in medicine, to being physicians. And it's incredibly gruelling to be in that world like it's all encompassing. And you have very bright, many very, very creative minds going into it. But finding the time to actually be part of the innovation or improvement of the system is extremely difficult. So supporting people who are kind of wanting to make that transition and bring that clinical bent to solving a problem is something that I think in general we're doing a better job of as a system. But there's so much more to it because you have these people that really, truly understand what it's like to work on the front line and understand the problems deeply. They live them every day, but they need to be given the capacity and time to be able to. Help shape that for the better, because it's really hard right now. It was really hard to create that time.
Gary McCoy: [00:14:57] So walk us through Breanne the time from operating table to the iteration of the first Orpyx sensorized insole for diabetics. Where was the gestation of that original kind of idea? Had you got to a point of saying, "tech is evolving and we've got to be able to do something to offset a lot of what I'm saying medically?" Walk us through that period in time and that process from idea gestation through to, OK, I've got to make a decision here. Either I'm going to be a CEO of this company or I'm going to stay on in my practise.
Breanne Everett: [00:15:35] It was a process for sure. So, there were a combination of things that I think led to that. One is, you know, the characteristics that are just I am motivated that kind of underlies this and then seeing many problems firsthand in the health system. But one of the ones that just felt that there was just huge opportunity for improvement was how we better care for people living with diabetes and specifically diabetic foot complications. In the reconstructive world we would see people who had developed wounds on their feet from diabetes, and they would present to a health care setting, in this case, usually a hospital. And whether or not that was bringing them into the hospital or was another issue, we would see many complex and chronic wounds on the feet of people with diabetes. And a lot of that came down to the fact that most people with diabetes will lose feeling in their feet. And that part of the body, which is seeing most of the force and impact throughout the day, is very important to protect. And if you don't have a protective sensation to tell yourself when something hurts and you should stop doing it, you basically can wear a hole in your foot like someone would wear a hole in a sock.
Breanne Everett: [00:16:54] And so when we were addressing this problem and trying to stop people from having wounds that would progress and lead to surgical intervention and sometimes amputation, often amputation, we didn't have the right tools in in our toolbox to empower those people to stop those complications from happening in the first place. So we would literally apply Band-Aid approaches in terms of trying to provide wound care, reconstructive options and trying to sort of slow down the inevitable. But we could never really give the patient the tools that they needed to stop to basically stop that wound from happening again, or better yet, stop that from happening in the first place. So in in my mind, the solution really lay in what if we had a solution that was sensor based that could do that, sensing where somebodies’ neurological system is not providing them with what they need to succeed. So, the concept came from there. There were a number of initial ideas that I had for what that could look like in terms of how somebody interacts with it. Could it be a sensory substitution system where you take that data in real time and you transpose it to another part of the body so you can effectively feel your feet but in a different way and retrain your brain to feel your feet through another part of your body? Or could you send alert based feedback to basically just prompt when someone needs to get out of a certain state that has been identified as being dangerous? So, I had come up with the ideas, I as part of my residency programme, I did need to be involved in on an ongoing basis in research.
Breanne Everett: [00:18:34] And so the original idea was that this would be a research project and then I would do it sort of along the course of my training, and that would be it. And there was no plan for a break in my clinical path. And so I got a lot of support from the program in basically being put in touch with the right mentors who had been involved in medical device development and entrepreneurship, as well as consumer electronics development and commercialization, and started assembling, and this was in 2010, started assembling a really powerful group of first starters. I had no background in creating a technology. This was totally new, but it started becoming pretty clear with the bringing on of those mentors that this was not a research project and this was a company.
Gary McCoy: [00:19:18] How did you sell it to them Breanne? Were you at a point where you could approach somebody who was an expert in the domain and say, "hey, I've got this idea," or was it more that you are able to stand back and paint an entire picture saying, "we desperately need this and we need it now." And what was their motivation to join you on that journey?
Breanne Everett: [00:19:38] I think it was related to that there was a very specific problem that had a very specific potential solution and the outcome could be massive, given how many people live with this problem. So, if you look at the number of people that are living with diabetes, it's in terms of diabetes, prediabetes and diabetes itself. It's a third of the North American population. And then two thirds of them will lose feeling in their feet over time. And then for people living with diabetes, one in four of them will actually develop wounds on their feet. So it's a it's so big and the consequences are so detrimental in terms of loss of limb and loss of life that I think people were initially very drawn to it because you could have that level of impact, which you can't do all over the place. So it was really related to that. And it was it was easy in a way to get people involved because that possibility for what you can contribute to is so big. So then I realised that very quickly that it was really untenable. As I was getting this business up and going to be a surgical resident working a hundred hours a week trying to do business like in the middle of the night when nobody else is doing business and trying to coordinate with my lawyer who... It just was not tenable to be doing the two at the same time. So, I did realize that I needed to make a decision on committing to one path.
Gary McCoy: [00:21:15] So that is not an easy decision. For most clinicians that I know, many of them would say, "ah, you know, to go into a commercial enterprise is different than my kind of altruism that I signed up medically for." And, "you know, even though it's a great idea, I'm going to stay focussed here in this channel where I live today." Was the need so big that that was the primary impetus for that decision, did you think you could have a bigger impact globally than you could just regionally in your own practise out of that decision come about?
Breanne Everett: [00:21:53] Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head with that, because that was an internal battle that I had of myself for a really long time. Just that, you know, it felt like there were these two very disparate worlds of medicine and business, altruism and sort of, you know, self-benefit. It just felt like there was a very big gap between the two. And it felt like for a long time that I was doing something wrong in making the decision to for this to be a business and not a research project. But there were a few things that ended up helping to shape that decision that I have never looked back on. And one was that it was really clear in looking at just comparables in people who have innovated in the medical space before. That in order to actually do this well and have the opportunity in the possibility of impacting people's lives, you needed a certain amount of resources to see that through and in. There needed to be a level of urgency in getting that pushed along. And what was not going to allow that was a traditional grant funding cycle and the limitations of what you can actually achieve with a grant. It was very clear that if we wanted to develop a product that had to happen outside of the walls of an institution, but that it was very important for me to always have that strong bridge to evidence, research, and that it was always very rooted in science and clinical evidence.
Breanne Everett: [00:23:24] And so we ended up just creating a situation where we were able to utilise what's best, what a private company does best, which is that rapid pace of innovation, bringing in private funds and supporting that that growth and development and then leaning on the institutions for what they're good at, which is research, academia, data, data excellence, all of those things. And so we created a really good set up in that way that helped to create that. One of the factors was certainly just that it wasn't going to be possible to do this without creating that division and creating that space. And then the other side of it is that I just noticed over time is that we have to make sure that we're actually translating what's learnt in an institutional setting or a university into the real world or else why are we even doing it? And so that kind of like gross feeling of jumping onto the dark side and starting a business I had to really let go of, because this is what we have to do. We have to take these ideas of people that are or working in these settings and create a better future. And so it was really hard for me at first, and I've totally gotten over it.
Gary McCoy: [00:24:34] So, you ditched the smock and the Crocs, from what I understand. And you move into, OK, now I'm a businesswoman and I'm going to head up and run and energise this business that bridge time between those two kind of somewhat competing identities. Were you pulled back often? Continuously? Are you still pulled back there today?
Breanne Everett: [00:24:58] Yeah. I mean, it's always there because it's always something where I like that path has not that path has not been gone down directly. But I don't like the way that I think about this is that I, I made the decision here to start this business and in starting this business and now Kinetyx as a business, those businesses, basically they have have a life of their own. They have this, like, vitality to them that needs to be supported and grown. And once you've committed yourself to that, there's really no looking back like you need. It's here to build. There's people to build it. And we've got to work on this as a team. And it's not something that I really don't think a founder can just step away from. Like you need to see it through. You've got a level of commitment to it. That is it's hard to recreate. So, I feel very responsible and excited about this.
Gary McCoy: [00:25:55] Yeah, no. And you've now got a whole group of people who look to you for leadership in this domain, too. So it's got a life of its own, both Orpyx, the medical side and also Kinetyx, which we'll talk about here in a moment. But for everybody who's listening to the podcast, I mean, everyone has an idea at some point in time, I can't tell you how many times my kids would come to me. "Hey, Dad, got an idea for this. Got an idea for this." I try to nourish those things and create that idea. But most ideas die in the mind of the dreamer prior to any sense of execution whatsoever. They shoot their own ideas down quite often is what I've seen. Oh, that'll never happen because of this. Or I don't have the skills to do that. What is it? If you tapped into it and said this is something my persistence is driven not only by that sense of impatience, that sense of wanting to contribute, but how do you continue from dream to execution? Is that a snowball? Once you achieve a little bit, does that motivate you to achieve more? And you think, OK, if step one is doable, step two is doable as well. Now let's go to step three. Or is it something that you look at and say, you know what, I've had setbacks. I was at points where I wanted to stop. And what pulled you out of those?
Breanne Everett: [00:27:21] I think a big driver here is that it's not just the the initial idea and concept that's creative. The entire process is creative. And you have one initial idea. And then to actually execute on that, there's ten million decisions and ten million points where there's an opportunity for additional creativity in shaping the direction of something that makes the whole process interesting and and that's the hard part, the first idea is the easiest thing ever. Like it's that how do you get from there to everybody's using this and loving it like that's hard, right? Ideas are a dime a dozen.
Gary McCoy: [00:28:08] And it's a roller coaster too right. I mean, it's not all... I think a lot of entrepreneurs or the ones who succeed, have really thick skin. You know, they hear the word no more often than they hear the word yes.
Breanne Everett: [00:28:21] Yeah. And I would say, so, I would just clarify something, because I don't think I have really thick skin. I just think I rebound. So, I get over things quickly, but I don't think I'm not immune to the nos. I certainly over the course of this business, it, it has had its trials and tribulations and I've learnt on the job and there have been times where it has been exceptionally challenging and to the point of, you know, you need to bring in the capital and the funding to see this through. There have been times in the funding journey where this has been super challenging. And, you know, when I think back on like the lowest lows and the kind of dips that you have to come up from, there's always been something that kind of helped pull me through that. But my memory is short in in those low pits, like it's like I get over it and then I keep moving forward I don't stay in it for very long. But one of those times that was really exceptionally challenging was I think we were at the point of getting like 213 noes from different investors. And I was really struggling with like, what is my next step here? What leaf do I? What rock do I turn over?
Gary McCoy: [00:29:39] You know, what's what's really interesting there is he knew the number 213. That's really interesting to me. But keep going.
Breanne Everett: [00:29:47] I had a spreadsheet. It was counting it for me. I wasn't really trying to rub that back in my own face, but Microsoft was doing a good job of that for me. So, I had talked to many investors. I had really thought that, you know, there's something amazing here, but this was just sort of devastating at this point. And there was a there's a point in time where there's a really big switch for me where I was on a plane on the way down to San Francisco. And I was supposed to be going to a bio biomedical informatics course. And attached to that course, I had set up a couple of meetings with different VCs, one VC that was very prominent, a very, very large VC. And I should have been excited about this meeting, but I was just feeling very deflated at that point. And I got onto the plane, and I sat in the window seat and my husband was sitting beside me. He was going down to the biomedical informatics course. And this woman came onto the plane, and she was wearing this very flowing outfit and she just sort of floated into the aisle seat and started talking to my husband. And I was overhearing what they were talking about. But I really didn't want to engage with anybody. I was kind of done at that point. And I was so frustrated that I was back on another plane going into what felt like it was going to be the same conversation. And I was trying to avoid engaging with any stranger at that point. I could hear them over talking to each other. And as it turned out, this woman was a self-described modern-day shaman who specialised in helping stuck women. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, oh, man, I can see where this is going. And I really didn't. I really didn't.
Gary McCoy: [00:31:40] And I’ve never seen that as a job description anyway. Like, if you looked that up on and Indeed, I don't think it's there.
Breanne Everett: [00:31:47] Yeah, I think you're right. And so my husband immediately is like, "whoa, this is amazing. You should speak to my wife." And I was like, if looks could kill at that point in time, like I was, I was just like, oh, you've got to be kidding me. So, he offers to switch seats with her so she can sit beside me, which was just like a nightmare. We're going to be stuck in this tin can for two and a half hours. So, she moves into the seat beside me and she's asking me what I what I do when I'm giving, like, the worst elevator pitch, because I just didn't I didn't even want to go here. I'm like, why are you doing this? Oh, well, just do this. I have this company, blah blah blah, it was the, it was the worst. Like, I would just, I had no energy for it. So she every time I tell her a little bit more, she'd be like, "that's amazing. Wow. Think about what you've done." I think at that point in time, cumulatively, we had raised some somewhere around 5 to 6 million for the company. But it was like it was like drip feeding the company over time. Yeah. And and so she would say, "oh, that's amazing." And I just say, "no, no, no, that's not really it's like it's not that amazing." And so she just kept she just kept kind of like trying to amp me up over this and then she said, "do you want to do you want to do an exercise?" And I really did not want to do an exercise, but here we were. We're stuck in the plane. And I think we were 15 minutes in at this point. And so I felt, you know, I might as well just go for this. So she takes out her phone, she sets the timer on her phone to to two minutes. And she's she says to me. "OK, I want you to talk to me like a money."
Gary McCoy: [00:33:31] Wow, OK,
Breanne Everett: [00:33:34] I didn't know what that meant. It was very confusing, but I have said yes.
Gary McCoy: [00:33:38] Talk to me, like, I'm money? like she's a pile of Canadian dollar bills sitting right there? Yeah?
Breanne Everett: [00:33:43] I guess so. Probably US dollars.
Gary McCoy: [00:33:47] All right. OK.
Breanne Everett: [00:33:51] So, I think I spent about 12 seconds being like, "listen, money, you are not here when I need you. I mean, this is a great journey we're on. You should be a part of it." And this very awkward few seconds goes by. I ran out of things to say to money. She looks down at her phone, she says, "you've got a minute and forty-eight seconds left."
Gary McCoy: [00:34:15] Wow.
Breanne Everett: [00:34:15] So, it was another minute and forty-eight seconds of frustration and letting this anger out on this stranger who is now money. So that ends timer goes off and she just stares at me for a second and says. "Can I respond as money?" So, she resets the timer and I'm like, "of course, please do" like pressure's off. Now you can perform. So she sets the timer to two minutes and then stares at me like 6 inches apart, tears well up in her eyes. And she says, "you treat me with frustration and I'll treat you with frustration back. I have always been here for you, think about a time when I was not here for you, I'm here for you, and I'm here in abundance." And so, this extremely emotional two minutes goes by of her being money. Timer goes off. We have a debrief about this. It was a very weird experience, then tarot cards got pulled out. There were a bunch of things that happened in the remainder of the remainder of the flight. But I it was like this. It was such a bizarre moment for me because it really made me kind of, you know, take a step back and think about the emotion of a pitch and the psychology of a pitch and the emotion of a founder.
Breanne Everett: [00:35:44] And if you if you... She was right, she was right. Like, you can't go in and you can't treat a situation that you are inherently very excited about, and you have an opportunity to actually completely change the world. And if you're going in and acting like the world owes you something or you're frustrated that things aren't just falling into your lap, that's on you. And so I left that flight totally invigorated and kind of like, it sort of reset me into thinking about, you know, I've got this massive opportunity in front of me. And if I just take this approach, I'm squandering that opportunity like not everybody has the opportunity to stand in front of front of people like this and actually have the have the possibility of bringing people on board and great people on board and growing a vision. And so, I actually went into that meeting the next day and it was like one of my best meetings ever. And I felt like I had found myself again in it. And I realised that, you know, this the whole process can be exciting if you focus on that and if you find that energy in it and. So, in that situation, that kind of that really pulled me out of a hard situation, a hard spot that I was in, but it's always been something like that, like finding that external momentum and drive and support when things are challenging. And that was just like a, you know, particularly interesting example of that.
Gary McCoy: [00:37:14] No, it's an incredible story in when I worked historically with athletes, I always say the foundation of everything is emotion, right, how do they, how do they process? Cognitive kind of sits on top of that. All decisions are made with some kind of emotional from some emotional basis. Right. As they move forward. And then then we work through the physical systems, the technical, the tactical, the strategic, all that kind of pathway. But emotion always seems to be the baseline for everything. And there's a lot of kind of sports interest now in EQ (emotional quotient or emotional intelligence) and understanding that emotional foundation for the athlete. It sounds like she identified for you if she thought there was a right limiting factor for your growth, it was something about your relationship with money there.
Breanne Everett: [00:38:01] It was definitely a learning experience for me. And I often go back to that. And I think if I'm tending towards like a more negative perspective on things, it kind of keeps me in check because you're not doing yourself any favours by going down that that path. You know what motivates you. You know that you can achieve something. How do you get the resources in place to achieve it and convince yourself all along the way that you're going to do it? Because if you don't have that vision, how can you expect the people around you to be a part of it as well? Maintaining that laser focus on what is possible in the excitement around that is key.
Gary McCoy: [00:38:40] Yeah, it's incredible. So about 14 months ago, you came up with an idea to bring this technology from Orpyx Medical into the sports and consumer space and called this company Kinetyx. Tell me a little bit about how that transition came about.
Breanne Everett: [00:38:58] Yeah, absolutely, so as Orpyx has evolved from the very, very early days, we knew that there were massive opportunities for extending the platform from that medical space that we were focussed on into other spaces and specifically athletic performance optimization and injury prevention. And really what that comes down to is that you have this incredible opportunity by owning the real estate between the foot in the ground to do a job that you can't compare to any other part of the body in terms of understanding human movement, what generates that human movement? What generates the force that generates human movement and quantifying how much, how well, and what it is that somebody is doing. And so, we've actually always dedicated a certain portion of our resources to making sure that we are developing out this space and are now senior director of Sports Science and Applied Research, Sam Blades was actually focussed on translating that initial Orpyx Medical product into a sport and performance world for his PhD work. So, we had been putting resources into it and then we ended up actually involved in a number of conversations with investors around the possibility of of spinning this out into a separate entity.
Breanne Everett: [00:40:21] And I have to give a lot of credit to Michael Smith, the former decathlete, and Lionel Conacher, who were really instrumental in helping to shape what that is and the timing of it. And so we ended up spinning Kinetyx out as its separate company with the goal of really starting to create a focussed effort, a focussed team, on expanding out the technology for all of the opportunity that exists in other areas that weren't the primary focus of Orpyx, but are, you know, arguably just as massive, if not larger, given that the size of the population that you can actually approach with that technology. So, January 2020, we spun out the company. We had received a term sheet from NEXT VENTŪRES for them to lead the seed round in the company and then ended up closing that seed round in June of last year. And since then have grown a world class team in getting that, you know, pushing that vision towards a, towards a reality.
Gary McCoy: [00:41:24] How do you recruit people? I mean, one of the things that you look for, Breanne, when you're out there like it is a world class team at Kinetyx. I've said this to so many people who will hear it on this podcast and they've heard me say it directly every day, kind of I feel like I wake up with a group of people that are dedicated, focussed, driven and motivated for each single day's success in bringing this product to market. How do you find these people?
Breanne Everett: [00:41:55] Yeah, so I think part of it is just about making sure that your funnel of people that you could bring in as large is as large as possible. And one of the things that Cory Paddock, the president of Kinetyx and myself talk about often is the concept of ABR or always be recruiting, always be recruiting, always be recruiting, always be, even if you're not actively hiring a position, always be thinking about who could join the team. And, you know, sometimes you have somebody who's just exceptional in your network that, you know, you want to be part of this. You don't have a defined role today. But thinking about how do you put together that stellar team over the long term requires kind of always thinking about things in that way. So, always be thinking about it and then creating that pipeline, making sure that that the team itself is aware of that and that you're encouraging the group to also be recruiting. So, you know, putting programs in place to encourage employees, for example, to be referring people within their network and making sure that it's everybody's job to make sure that we're shaping this family and this team to be as exceptional as it possibly can be. So, that's one of the things that's like more on the funnel side of things and just awareness of of who's coming on board.
Breanne Everett: [00:43:14] I think in terms of the types of people, there's so much of this that that comes down to Gestalt about a person. And pretty quickly into an interview, you can tell, do I want to work with this person? And the worst thing I think that you can do is focus on a resume over that actual human interaction and ignoring that you might not want to work with somebody because those other features are there. So, I think that's like a big part of it. The other side of it is like trying to find the absolute best person for every single role versus trying to fill a seat. So, one of the core values in the company has been right people right seats. And it's about making sure that we've defined the roles appropriately, and we're finding the best person, not just a person for that role, that other people that are going to be conflicted along the same lines as everybody who's there that, you know, has a very strong degree of self motivation, that they're intrinsically motivated. They don't need to be told to work like they're just going to show up and be their best.
Breanne Everett: [00:44:17] And then in certain areas, it's about, you know, expertise in a specific area that the more senior you go, having that that specific expertise and domain expertise is critical. But just generally being able to learn something from the people that are coming on board, what are they going to teach us? What are you going to learn from this person's involvement? You know, I'm under no impression that, like, I could do all of the jobs in the company. Like, people are here for a reason. They have expertise and domain experience and knowledge that allows them to grow and and do amazing things with the work that they do. And so, you know, always be focussed on who can who can pull us up, who can bring us up versus, it's not about ego, like you want people who are better than you all the time. You want to bring on the best of the best. And sometimes you know that it really is about having that team, not about a specific org structure or power structure. It's about having the right people in the group and then treating them like humans and not cogs in a wheel.
Gary McCoy: [00:45:26] No, or zoom caricatures I guess would be the other one. Right. I mean, we're all looking forward to getting together live at some point so we can see that it's not just a digital image that I'm talking to. You know, it's yeah, that's incredible. And I remember back to our first conversation and, you know, my career process and my arc where I've been and I will get calls, if not every other week or an email every other week from a new technology that's coming onto the market because of works that I'd done introducing new technologies to the market. And when I first heard of this one, I thought, OK, it's another technology. I'll just listen to this one through. I thought it's just another piece of sports tech. You know what real estate is left we can get for the athlete. And then when I heard about the real estate and I think you were on that zoom call too you would have seen the light bulbs just going off and exploding over my head. What you can do. What? Where? Can measure what? How.
Gary McCoy: [00:46:27] Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I was just starting to think this through, but something you said to me was really, really interesting. And it certainly elevated the conversation and has elevated us to this point of designing a podcast around this concept of the human kinesome you said to me, "there's a human genome, why isn't there a human kinesome where we can see how people move individually, their individual response to the environments they're in, the way they produce force from the ground, the way their foot interacts with whatever surface they're on?" When you mentioned that and put that together in that, conceptually for me was like, OK, we're having an entire new discussion now, this isn't just about sports technology. It's about... It's another level. It's a new place. Where did that come from? What was your what was the genesis of that discussion point? Was it just looking back to your medical side and then going, OK, I can why doesn't it exist over on the performance side of the equation? Where did the concept for the human kinesome come from?
Breanne Everett: [00:47:45] That thinking evolved over time. There was a point in time where I actually labelled it as being the Kinesome. But as we worked with the technology and as we were working with this, you can imagine what was happening in the world of the quantified self outside of us, where some of the first wearables were Fitbit, many wrist-based applications and it just astounded me that there was this big focussed on measuring movement at the wrist. And you've got so many joints in between the wrist and the point of the body that's producing force and actually producing human activity. How good of a job can we ever do if we're extrapolating so many things? And if you try to go back from it, try to think about measuring the foot and trying to trying to deduce what's happening at the level of the wrist. It's just like they're so disconnected that the opportunity for quantifying human movement at a 20X, 100X level is only possible if you're actually measuring the point of the body where that force is produced. And then as we started thinking along the lines of, OK, this is, if you're going to pick one place on the body, this is the place that you want to measure it at. If you're going to sense it, you want to sense what it's doing in space and time and then how the foot's hitting the ground, and if you have that locked, how many things does that unlock for the general consumer? For somebody who's working in a lab with the technology, literally, it opens up almost every single gate and balance metric. And then it also unlocks this ability to create a unified language across all terrestrial sport and have this this system that speaks to itself, regardless of what type of activity somebody is actually participating in.
Breanne Everett: [00:49:30] So, being able to quantify things really well at that level, that just has not been able to be done before, but then also being able to intervene and understand how you can improve that movement over time. You can't do that. You can't provide at 10-100X improvement in human movement or guidance to improve human movement if you've never measured it in the first place. It's like garbage in, garbage out. So, there was a huge opportunity there. And then I started thinking about, well, you know, we measure many physiologic parameters and metabolic parameters and genomic parameters for individuals and we have done a good job of quantifying in other spaces to intervene. But one of the biggest markers of human health/wellness is how somebody is moving not only how much for an individual or how that might be different for somebody versus a population, but also looking at how that might change for somebody over time, like it actually may be a huge indicator of underlying other conditions if you can actually quantify human movement and physicality really well. So, it seemed to just be this obvious gap in quantifying omics of a human. So, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, where was the part that actually measured the physical movement and wellbeing of a person? And that was the that was the gap and then that was how the name came to be. It just seemed very obvious at that point in time.
Gary McCoy: [00:51:03] Yeah, no, it's an incredible term and it paralleled something that I've known for a long time. So, in doing lectures and presentations to performance coaches around the world, I'd look and see where I was going in to understand the certification so I can understand their biases about how they train an athlete, how they work with them, whether they're certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association, the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the USA Weightlifting, they all have their own biases. But those biases tend to be focussed around how do I fit the athlete into the exercise, not what exercise is appropriate for that athlete. Right. And that was always a big get for me. But I would begin lectures with, "the human body was designed to buy a locomotive within a gravitational field. Can we all agree on that?" And there was never disagreement, never, ever disagreement around that. And having that concept to begin with. There were factors when you mentioned the foot ground interaction to me and when you mentioned the development of a profiling system that we're looking at from human movement, that to me put a lot of the puzzle pieces together. And to that end, part of my exploration into this was looking back, I think there was even like 1950s. If we went back that far, there was this concept of mechanical medicine that was around for a long time, which the better we move, the better our physiology, the better our sleep, the more apt our nutritional selection will be correct for our bodies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, we're made to move. So why not measure that in the most important place and the most direct and applied place we can? Which is at the foot.
Breanne Everett: [00:52:45] Absolutely, I mean, and it's so interesting how that concept in that quantification allows you if you can allow somebody to move better, it improves their health. But it also is an indicator of health if there's decline, is there something else that's going on? And so, there's just so much information that can be gleaned from that data set. It's just a huge opportunity.
Gary McCoy: [00:53:10] Yeah, and it's our president, Cory Paddock and I had this discussion the other week. Should we be opening up a project to begin looking at the quality of human movement, beginning with your ability to consistently and accurately apply force through the foot into the ground? I think that is the first ordered metric in that analysis.
Breanne Everett: [00:53:34] Absolutely. Yeah, there's so many pieces to the puzzle in terms of making this what it needs to be. And one piece is, is absolutely that the best possible remote, imperceptible quantification of human movement. And the other part of it is how do you inspire that? And how do you motivate? You know there's... We're supporting elite athletes in what we're doing, but how do you actually motivate and improve movement across the entire spectrum for humanity in general? So, how do you how do you actually motivate and provide the tools to people all along that continuum? And that's where there's just incredible opportunity. But the solution is very different, depending on where you are on that line.
Gary McCoy: [00:54:23] Yeah. Mate, let me ask you this. If you could go back and tell your 12 year old self something that you didn't know back in the days when you were making jewellery and being very successful at it, having lemonade stands that made thousands of dollars on the weekend? Yeah. By the way, if that was me, I'd probably still be making lemonade. But anyway, with that said, what would you go back and tell your 12 year old self?
Breanne Everett: [00:54:50] Don't buy the sweater vest. Yeah,
Gary McCoy: [00:54:56] I love it.
Breanne Everett: [00:54:56] That still haunts me.
Gary McCoy: [00:54:57] So there's still photos of that around, I gather.
Breanne Everett: [00:54:59] I know there are and they keep coming back.
Gary McCoy: [00:55:02] OK. Very good, I'll have to find one of those.
Breanne Everett: [00:55:02] Um, no, I actually, actually I think one of the biggest things is that that's just, 12 is an interesting year to pick Gary because it's like I don't know about you, but that's probably peak awkwardness and peak self-consciousness.
Gary McCoy: [00:55:20] Today is peak awkwardness for me. But that's OK.
Breanne Everett: [00:55:23] Ok, but I think it was several years after that probably that I started really realizing that instead of trying to be it, instead of trying to fit a societal mould around what you should be. And everyone's aware of like how they're different at that age from people around them, trying to really I started having my mentors in different areas of my life where I realized that the people that I was really drawn to, were just really embraced the ways that they were different and they weren't trying to be somebody else. It was always about trying to be like trying to be themselves and be true to that. And I realized that. I think if I could that instil that in my 12-year-old self and not be so worried about that, then that that would probably be what I would say.
Gary McCoy: [00:56:15] It's really interesting. I have a real problem with the word should, because that's generally based upon a set of external values that somebody else is designed. So, for those reasons, I try to impart those same things when someone says I should do this so I can on time. All right. Let's you know, what's driving you, what's your passion? How do you how do you live through that? What or where rather, does your mind wander now in terms of what's achievable? Are you thinking, hey, you know, what's the effect of these insoles going to be on Mars when Elon gets there? Right. Are we going to have to do some corrections in our calibration gravitationally? Are you thinking out that far single product or are you thinking, you know, there's more products we potentially need to do? Right. There are more problems we need to solve. And if there is a channel or a frequency that you're on today to tap into for that future, where is that? Where does your mind wander?
Breanne Everett: [00:57:17] Where I tend to spend a lot of time thinking around. This is there's actually so many different threads that you can go down with the technology like this. And how do you how do you create kind of a single unified platform that encompasses all of that? That's where that's where the biggest challeng is, and in trying to make sure that you're moving the needle in innovation, but without spreading yourself too thin because the number and vastness of different applications is so large. So, it's about prioritization and moving, moving along that course, hitting milestones, continuing going on it, and then kind of spreading that out further as you go. So, it's always this balance between opportunity and the immediate. And what are the steps that you take today to get there? It's always a balance. But yeah, it my mind goes in very different directions all the time. I think you've learnt that of me, Gary.
Gary McCoy: [00:58:14] I'll tell you, this will be the last question I'll ask. You mentioned the word balance, you're a wife, mother, and CEO of two companies. How do you balance all of that.
Breanne Everett: [00:58:29] Oof. I'm not I'm not a master of balance. I'm always working at this. The only way that I've learnt that makes sense is to have this kind of as like an evolving project. When you've got two companies that are themselves evolving, the needs of those companies are evolving. My role evolves. The roles that we hire on evolve. It's really about continually thinking about how do you best shape this org and the org structure to ensure that there's people that are doing the jobs that need to be done in the most effective way, because that it if you if it's not a constant project of figuring that out and figuring out those gaps, then it is, it is unachievable. So, carving out that space, being available, but you know, actually having time where you're dedicating it to your family and in this case, my husband and two kids and our kind of immediate family outside of that, making sure that that's always a priority because the work's always going to be there, the work is always going to be endless and trying to make sure that there's a balance between that time away time with it in a different mental space is key. But to achieve that, it's always a moving target. So it doesn't feel like I've achieved anything because it's like every day it's different and every day I'm working at it.
Gary McCoy: [00:59:58] Yeah, it's like surfing. Growing up surfing in Australia would always say, you know, the waves are different every day. You know, some days there are no waves. Some days there are tidal waves. Right. And you can be out the back. You can be out the front and you're, both places, are horrible places to be. You want to be on the waves. Right. And you've also got to enjoy the journey of the paddle out, which is all part of it. But, Dr. Everett, we can't thank you enough, all of us here at Kinetyx for your foresight and your insights that are even leading us to have a discussion like this right now. So, I feel like the journey is just starting. And that's the really unique part of this, is like I am excited to see where your vision takes us next.
Breanne Everett: [01:00:43] Yeah. This is the founding team. This is it. It's there's lots to come. And I thank you so much for having me today and thank you for for the opportunity to work with you, Gary.
Gary McCoy: [01:00:55] No, no it's a lot of fun mate, but, you know, we've got a long way to go and we've got a great product and great team. And yeah, I mean, using the term, "hey we're going to change the world" I've heard that many times, but I think this one is. So congratulations.
Breanne Everett: [01:01:04] Thank you, thanks for having me.
Gary McCoy: [01:01:05] Thanks for listening to the The Human Kinesome Project. Our music is provided by the incredibly talented Joanna Magik. I hope you'll join our community at Discord.gg/Kinetyx. Team, the game is just beginning.
