If asked, most entrepreneurs will tell you that their business was their destiny. It was something they always felt compelled to do. While I always wondered what it would be like to own my own business, my journey to co-founding Dermadry started a bit differently than other stories: with a secret. This is how I went from banking to medical tech.
Key Takeaways
- The journey of going from banking to medical tech began with a friend’s struggle with hyperhidrosis.
- Maxime Calouche invented an iontophoresis device to combat excessive sweating after finding it too expensive and unavailable.
- The key to successful entrepreneurship includes solving unsolved problems and being empathetic towards others.
- Dermadry grew from a personal challenge to a company that’s helped thousands manage hyperhidrosis.
- The driving purpose of helping others keeps entrepreneurs motivated, even through difficult times.
The secret that sparked an idea
In 2016, I was working in the banking industry. It was your typical 9-to-5. I was probably on the trajectory to a senior position. It was then that my friend Maxime Calouche confessed to me that he was suffering from a condition called hyperhidrosis. Hyperhidrosis, or excessive sweating, impacts the lives of more than 365 million people around the world. It is often characterized by wet palms, wet soles of the feet, sweat that consistently soaks through clothing, and frequent sweating.
Those who experience hyperhidrosis, like Maxime, sweat more than is needed to cool the body. While the effects aren’t physically harmful, they can cause severe social anxiety, embarrassment, depression, and isolation due to the taboo nature of the condition. In fact, people who sweat too much are four times more prone to have severe anxiety or depression. For my friend, hyperhidrosis had plagued his childhood and was now impacting his professional life. So, I decided to help him. This is how I went from banking to medical tech.
But he had an idea. In his journey to find a cure, Maxime stumbled upon an iontophoresis machine. This medical device helps to stop excessive sweating by delivering small and mild electrical currents through the skin. It disrupts the communication between sweat glands and nerve endings to temporarily stop excessive sweating.
The trouble was that this machine was expensive—too much so for the average person to purchase. It was also not available in Canada, where we live. Maxime set out to build his own. In just a few days, he stopped sweating excessively for the first time in his life.
How sweat or a lack of it launched a business venture
There are two big ingredients to starting a successful business venture. The first, and most commonly understood, is that you have to find a problem that hasn’t been solved and solve it. For me, perhaps the more important ingredient is being empathetic. Being somebody who wants to go out and help other people. Thus, my story from how I went from banking to medical tech.
Maxime and I have always shared that second ingredient. When he came to me and asked if I wanted to start a business with him to help combat this huge pain in his life, something inside of me clicked. This was an opportunity not only to support my friend through an immense struggle but also to work with him. We could potentially help millions of other people who were suffering in silence with the same condition.
I quit my day job and Maxime, and we set to work building and marketing the Dermadry Anti-sweat Device.
Since then, we’ve helped free thousands of people from hyperhidrosis, giving them a chance to live their lives to the fullest. To support this on a long-term basis, we have continued to invest and reinvest in creating an affordable, efficient, and practical solution. We aim to help people who suffer from this condition. That’s part of what keeps Dermadry successful. In the world of tech, you must always stay curious. That is the best way to both stay ahead of the competition and to ensure that you’re always making a useful, accessible product.
Maxime and I are always thinking about new ways to help those with hyperhidrosis. We know that the best way for Dermadry to actually help as many people as possible is to keep the price as low as possible. That means we have to know the latest production techniques for the machine and its parts, and also the latest technologies.
Entrepreneurship isn’t ever easy, but there is a way to make it stick
Entrepreneurship is exciting—every day we have the opportunity to help people, to solve problems, and to learn new technologies and methodologies for making healthcare solutions more accessible to people all over the world. But it isn’t always easy.
We all have those days when we wake up, and we don’t want to go to work. That definitely happened back when I had a 9-to-5 in the banking industry and in the many years before that. The way out of that, I have found, is to focus on the meaning behind your job. The purpose that drives you. When your job has a deeper meaning and a very intense purpose, it makes everything, even the obstacles you face, so much easier. You’re motivated to stay focused. It also makes the lows—and believe me, owning a business comes with many more difficult days than easy ones—much more bearable. So you can make it to the next adventure.
In the case of Dermadry, that driving force and purpose has been and always will be helping people. It started with helping Maxime five years ago and has grown into the opportunity to help millions of people. That gives me the extra motivation every day. Even in the hardest moments of this amazing adventure, to get up, get moving, and make a difference. And so there is my story of how I went from banking to medical tech.
