Jordi Fernandez of BeneTalk on Innovating Stuttering

Jordi Fernandez, Founder and CEO of BeneTalk, joins the show to discuss the mobile app that provides a community for people who stutter.  Jordi is a person who stutters and growing up, his parents and teachers didn't understand how to approach it. At a young age, he engaged in various forms of speech therapy. When he moved from Spain to the UK, his therapy took an alternative approach. It focused on getting him out of his comfort zone and provided him with a community to be a part of. This community focus greatly helped Jordi and inspired him to eventually found BeneTalk.  The Importance of Community People who stutter often struggle with social anxiety and other mental health issues. As a result, many choose to limit their speech. In the realm of speech therapy, this is called 'masking'. Because of this, Jordi says there are a lot more people who stutter than the studies typically show. Having a community that shows it is all right to stutter can make a world of difference. It allows people to embrace their stuttering, instead of running away from it. This is where the BeneTalk app comes into play. The focus is not all on fixing the stutter, but rather on enabling those who stutter to feel more comfortable speaking. This allows them to build confidence and improve their speech over time. The BeneTalk app Jordi's vision for BeneTalk was to build a stuttering device similar to how a Fitbit operates. The hardware would be placed on the user's chest and used daily. When COVID-19 broke out, Jordi and his team decided to pivot to a mobile app. The BeneTalk app allows users to learn about themselves, connect with others who stutter and track their speech progress. The app contains courses on stuttering and teaches speech techniques. The team is currently working on creating personalized speech therapy programs. Additionally, they are building a separate app for parents to help their children. Today, they have around 2,000 monthly users, from 165 different countries. In the future, Jordi hopes BeneTalk can be a digital therapeutics platform utilized by all those who stutter around the world.  Check out Jordi's LinkedIn here.  Check out BeneTalk's website here.  About our Guest:  Jordi Fernandez is the founder and CEO of BeneTalk: a mobile app that combines digital speech therapy and community to help people who stutter, and their families, reduce the negative impact stuttering has on lives. Jordi was born in Barcelona, Spain, and worked as a Chartered Mechanical Engineer in multi-billion-dollar deepwater projects for 15 years in the UK. Jordi is a person who stutters, and in 2021, he quit his job to help millions like himself through BeneTalk.