Description

Joey Ferry was the first person in his family to graduate high school. An entrepreneur at heart, he became a nurse for job security, but he never stopped building things. Then he met Taofiki Gafar-Schaner, another nurse who'd spent months prototyping a solution to a problem they saw every shift: inadequate seizure padding on beds.

Instead of complaining about blankets and tape on bed rails, Taofiki showed up with a Ziploc bag prototype. Joey saw it and knew immediately what he had to do. They spent six years building Safe Seizure while working full-time, then used paternity leave as a trial run for entrepreneurship. Joey’s last day was the worst shift of his career, and he’s never looked back.

👋 In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Joey chose nursing over business school (and how he never stopped doing both)
• How being clinical gives you a massive advantage when selling to hospitals
• How they built for six years before going full-time—and why they waited
• The "looking down for quarters" mindset: positioning yourself to get lucky
• Why solving problems has to become a way of life, not a one-time thing

Joey Ferry, RN, BSN, is co-founder of Frontier Innovations and co-creator of the Safe Seizure Pad, which won the 2020 American Nurses Association Innovation Award. He believes the best way to get lucky is to never stop looking for problems to solve.

GET CONNECTED:

🔗 Joey’s Linkedin

🔗 Safe Seizure

🔗 Kayla’s Linkedin

🔗 Kayla’s Instagram

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Are you a clinician pushing the status quo? Reach out!