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Batten House Podcast
Batten House Podcast
Batten House Podcast
Ep 17 Breaking the Silence: Men's Sexual Health Revolution
Drew Klein is revolutionizing men's health care with his Focus Wave Clinic, tackling sexual dysfunction and chronic pain through advanced electromagnetic shockwave therapy. This isn't your standard medical treatment – it's a painless, side-effect-free approach sending waves at 1500 meters per second directly to affected tissues, promoting new blood vessel growth and reducing inflammation with remarkable 70-80% success rates.
The reality of men's sexual health presents a troubling paradox: half of men over 50 experience erectile dysfunction, one in ten develop Peyronie's disease (curved penis), yet most suffer silently due to stigma and embarrassment. Drew's mission extends beyond treatment to breaking down these barriers of silence that prevent men from seeking help. "Women get sicker, men die quicker," he notes, highlighting how men's reluctance to see doctors impacts their overall health outcomes.
Drew's path to founding Focus Wave Clinic weaves together his University of Waterloo biology degree with decade-long careers in both finance and high tech. When COVID hit, he seized the opportunity to build something combining his scientific knowledge with practical business experience, addressing a critically underserved market. Now with locations in Ottawa and Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto on the horizon, Drew continues expanding while maintaining balance through family time, sports, and DIY cottage projects. Discover how electromagnetic technology is changing lives – visit focuswaveclinic.com or call 888-558-WAVE for a free consultation with their professional nursing staff.
I got married young For my generation. My wife and I met at 23 and three months later we were married. We eloped to Las Vegas. Everybody told us we were insane.
Speaker 2:This is the Batten House Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbours come together. Here's your host, sean Batten.
Speaker 3:Well, hello everyone and welcome again to another episode of the Vattenhouse Podcast. I am very excited about our guest today who's helping a lot of men in our city and actually newly in Waterloo as well. So welcome, drew Klein, to the show. Nice to be here. Why don't you tell our listeners and our viewers about your business?
Speaker 1:So Focus Wave Clinic is a focused or linear shock wave a clinic. We treat men's sexual dysfunction and chronic pain using this amazing technology that's relatively new in the space and we have clinics in ottawa and in kitchener, waterloo and hoping to open in toronto in the coming months wow, that's, that's awesome and that's quite a specialty.
Speaker 1:To say the least. Yeah, we're educating the public on a relatively young modality in shockwave. Shockwave sounds scarier than it is, but it's really truly amazing medical technology that has the potential to treat a number of different conditions. Our focus has been on men's sexual health and we're also treating various orthopedic chronic pain conditions. You're probably well aware of shockwave in these clinics, in physios and chiros.
Speaker 1:Ours is a little more specialized and much more powerful than a typical shockwave device that you'd find in a chiro or physio. It's using focused or linear electromagnetic shockwaves applied directly to the area, whether it's the penis or the knee, and it sends very, very powerful shockwaves up to 1500 meters per second true shockwaves into the body and promotes a number of different biological and physiological processes, namely neovascularization, angiogenesis, new blood vessel formation to improve circulation, reduction of inflammation, breaking up of calcifications that are the cause of Peyronie's disease in men, for a curved penis condition, a disease, and for calcific shoulder tendinopathies or plantar fasciitis. So Shockwave is amazing medical tech and the most important part about it is that it's painless for almost everyone. There's no side effects and there's no downtime. So it's truly amazing medical technology.
Speaker 3:That is absolutely fascinating. I need to know. Tell us about your journey. How'd you get into this? I'm sure it's a story.
Speaker 1:So I've been in a number of different businesses in my life. I was a graduate from the University of Waterloo. I had a Bachelor of Science, a biology option, an honours degree from the University of Waterloo, and then I moved into a couple of different businesses. I was more interested in working than being an academic. I couldn't follow through and go to med school. It just wasn't for me. So I moved into finance. I was doing finance for 10 years and then I was in high tech for 10 years. So combining all three of these my biology background, a little high tech, a little sales in the finance world when COVID stupid COVID started, I wanted to create a local business. So I had a bunch of different opportunities and this was the most interesting one to me because I felt like it combined all my tech background and my biology background. And it's a growing problem. Men's sexual health is a huge, huge issue. It's underserved and this is amazing medical tech. So combining all of those sort of led me into this unique niche, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Wow, well done. Good for you, finding a business that you're super passionate about and combining all your skills and all your education and experience doing right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really unique and it's a real learning curve for me. I mean, what do I know about medical clinics when I started this place, so I've learned a lot. It's been an amazing experience to be able to treat these conditions for guys who have been kind of given the you know, run roughshod over by our medical system and given very few options as to how to reverse their chronic conditions. So to me it's been a great journey. I hope I'm continuing to learn and we're continuing to try to educate the public on how to improve their overall sexual health.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so how long have you been open now?
Speaker 1:So four and a half years now four and a half years and hopefully a third clinic in Canada's largest city by the end of this one, and continuing to grow. There's a big market for us. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So now that you've been in the industry for a good four years over four years can you tell us about any myths or misconceptions that you've noticed as you've been growing and seeing more and more customers?
Speaker 1:Myths. I mean I guess you know it's more the anti-myth. But you know, the gender health paradox is a real thing, and what the gender health paradox is is that. And what the gender health paradox is is that men tend to avoid seeing physicians, avoid going to the doctor and getting regular checkups. That's been the historical norm, at least for multiple generations. It's a machismo thing, or it's. There's a number of reasons for it. But the old saying is is that, you know, women get sicker and men die quicker. And so there's some you know logic that would state that men avoid going to the doctor because they don't want to know that they're sick, they don't want to know that there's a problem and then so we die quicker. But women tend to see their physicians more often, get their problems diagnosed earlier, and so yeah, so, so that. So that's an interesting issue.
Speaker 1:Now I have seen, at least in the years that I've been here, a steady increase in men trying to improve their vascular wellness and their overall sexual health, and they're more open to discuss the problems that they have been so hesitant to discuss over the last multiple generations for a number of reasons. There's a lot of stigma involved in men's sexual health. You know, admitting you have a problem, but you know, for erectile dysfunction. You know, 50% of men over the age of 50 suffer from some form of ED and it's a very common problem. As our population ages, it continues to grow, and so reducing the stigma is what I'm really trying to accomplish with our clinic is just being able to discuss these problems.
Speaker 1:Whether it's Peyronie's disease, which most people don't know about, it is very common. It's just a crooked or curved penis as a result of some form of soft tissue injury or trauma. Some people are more susceptible to it, but one in 10 men at some point in their life will deal with Peyronie's disease and you know painful erections, curved erections, some anomaly on the penis, and it's embarrassing I mean, you're not talking to your buddies about these things. A lot of guys are very hesitant to talk to their wives or their doctors about it. Even so, you know, reducing the stigma is the major hurdle that I think we have been trying to overcome.
Speaker 3:And there's help out there, clearly, and there are ways to address these things right. So that's great Good for you. So when you're not I mean having a clinic here in Ottawa, having a clinic out in Waterloo and opening up another one you're clearly a busy guy and working in your business as well as on your business, right? And so when you're not doing that stuff, what are you doing for fun?
Speaker 1:Oh man, I have lots of hobbies. I have lots of things I love to do. It's just a matter of time. You know, when you get to our age I mean I'm 47. You know, I have a wonderful group of friends who I, you know, I don't even have time to really see them. So when we make time to see each other and hang out, it's really important to me is maintaining those friendships that I've made over the years.
Speaker 1:My family is my priority. I love spending time with my wife of almost well, 25 years this coming summer, or sorry, next summer yes, 25 years next summer. We have two boys, 21 and 13. So a 13-year-old keeps us busy. But I love being with my family and my brothers and my nephews and nieces and my sisters-in-law we're all very close family here and nieces and my sisters-in-law we're all very close family here. We're all in the area.
Speaker 1:But you know, I love cooking, big cook, I love to cook barbecue. I love to play sports, golf, tennis, throwing a lot of football with my kid now he's got a crazy arm, so we're really encouraging that he wants to. You know, he's focused on javelin right now, so it's been a very interesting, uh little shift for us to work with our, our son on his sports, so a lot. But I have lots of hobbies love to play poker, I love to uh work at my cottage at the lake, uh, trying to build stuff. It's a new hobby for me, a new passion, something I've been doing for only a couple years now, working with my hands and you know, putting floors in and changing electrical sockets and learning all kinds of new important uh, you know, basic handy man things. I'm trying to do that. So, uh, I don't know about retirement, but I have lots of things that would keep me busy. Uh, if, uh, if that ever should come about.
Speaker 3:Well it's. It's nice having so many hobbies, though, cause when you're, when you're in business mode so much it's nice to step away from the office and be able to use your hands, especially if you're so interested in the handyman stuff. Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's great and you know men need that. You know we need to step away from, you know, the chaos or whatever, even if it's considered orderly, the monotonousness of our daily grind, and whether, for you know, plumbers or electricians or business people, you do need to step away and pull away and have that outside stimulation. It's good for the hearts, good for the minds. One of the most important things we can do for our overall psychogenic wellness, you know we want to maintain that. That's a big part of sexual health too is having intellectual and mental stimulation. We talk about emotional and physical stimulation from our partners or from, you know, the opposite sex, but we also need to continue to, you know, open our minds and do all kinds of different things, and that that keeps us young and healthy, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So on your journey, can you describe a hardship or something that you had to overcome that's really affected? You know you rose above that thing, that journey, that time in your life or whatever, and now it's helped. You now become stronger and better at being a business owner or a father.
Speaker 1:I mean I got married young, I mean for my generation. My wife and I met at 23 and three months later we were married. Wow. And two years later, you know, we eloped to Las Vegas and got married and you know everybody told us we were insane. And you know, two years later, you know she was pregnant and you know we had our first. And so you know, doing that, I think, at a young age.
Speaker 1:You know that's not for everybody. I think that was much more common maybe two generations ago. You know, call me 50s guy or something, because that's kind of, I think, maybe the traditional, you know traditional roles that my wife and I have settled on as matriarch and patriarch. I think we were different in that respect and that was kind of a. I mean, having a family young really gets you started early and you never really think you're ready. But I, I encourage you know.
Speaker 1:You know anybody who has ever listened to me is, you know, get married young. Love starts after marriage and you know I don't want to say that it was an obstacle or a real hardship for me to overcome, but it definitely changed the second half of my current life, you know, and for wonderful, you know, I mean I'm very lucky in that I have found somebody who I can live my life with and have an amazing life with, so that that, I think, was definitely not an obstacle. You don't want to call your wife an obstacle or a hardship, but that was very interesting development in my life for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, the situation's challenging at times, right, especially being so young, especially in our culture, right, a lot of people wait so late to later to get married. I wouldn't call it late, but but yeah, no, absolutely, and it definitely changes the trajection of your, of your life, right?
Speaker 1:So if you, if you have kids also, like you know today I mean you know you're probably similar age as me in mid forties, right, and you know we grew, we, we grew into the internet, so we didn't really have the internet until we were young adults or late teens or something. Our kids are growing up with the Internet, which makes it a completely different beast and we're going to have different problems and different issues and we have to, as the generation ahead of them, kind of help them adapt to that and adapt ourselves. I mean it's a different world out there, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Absolutely no, you're right, it really is. What's so so far, listeners, what's one thing you wish they knew about your business?
Speaker 1:this. Oh, it's hard. The biggest challenge that we face in our business is advertising, because we are in a business that is not a word of mouth business. You know, you have a good carpenter, you have a good masseuse or a great handyman. You're going to help promote them. You're going to talk about it with your friends. We have patients who have done exceptionally well with our treatment. We're about 70% to 80% efficacy for our patients quite high. But getting referrals from them just doesn't happen because, like I said before, there's a lot of stigma involved. Guys generally don't want to talk about this. So it requires us to be constantly and persistently advertising, educating and trying to reduce the stigma involved with this medical condition. So the cost for us? We haven't quite figured out exactly what's the best way to do this to get into as many people's eyes and ears as possible. We're trying everything we can to be successful at that, but it's a major problem in that we aren't a referral type business and so we have to rely on constant advertising and marketing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, but I mean, as you, as we continue to educate, you know, then maybe it becomes well. I think it. It men's health, is like you said at the beginning, it's, it's becoming more, it's becoming something we talk about more men's health and wellbeing, and it's, it's a whole package, right, and this is part of part of that, right yeah for sure so how can our listeners contact you and find you?
Speaker 1:So focuswavecliniccom is our website. Focuswavecliniccom, they can visit our website. They can give us a call at 888-558-WAVE, that's 888-558-9283. Book a free discovery call. Patients will come in for a consultation. We have wonderful nurses who do both the consultations and the treatments, and so come in to visit us. There's no obligation, and so we want to work with as many men as possible who are dealing with these conditions that are challenging, whether it's ED, peyronie's disease, chronic pelvic pain syndrome, premature ejaculation or bladder incontinence and BPH. These are, all you know, conditions that can be effectively, safely, painlessly treated with focused shockwave therapy. Don't accept any substitutions sitting in a chair or some other form of shockwave. This is the absolute best kind that's been used in almost every medical study that's been promoted. Electromagnetic, focused or linear shockwave applied directly to the part of the body that's afflicted is an amazing tech. So focuswavecliniccom, 888-558-9283. We're in Ottawa, at Carling and Woodruff and in Kitchener, waterloo, on 109 Herb Street West, inside a beautiful naturopathic clinic, and Toronto location will be advised soon To be determined.
Speaker 3:Good for you. That's great. Well, listen. Thank you so much for your time. I love what you're doing. It's needed big time for men's health and I feel like we should talk again. There's so much we can dive into to get more of the word out, so I'd love to have you back when we can get together and maybe in studio next time.
Speaker 1:Sounds great.
Speaker 3:Appreciate it, Thank you Anyway. Thank you so much and we'll be in touch. Thanks, Sean.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the Batten House Podcast. Thanks, John. Thanks for listening to the Battenhouse Podcast. To nominate a favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to battenhousepodcastca. That's battenhousepodcastca.
