Born and raised on the same Ontario farm he now runs with his parents, Lance Matthews was fixing the barn roof one November day in 1997 when he slipped, fell two storeys and fractured his heel on the frozen ground. After hobbling around on crutches for a few days, he decided there had to be a better walking aid.

In his basement workshop Matthews designed a hands-free crutch. The device featured a small shelf—on which to rest a flexed knee—sup-ported on a stick attached to his upper leg with Velcro straps. With his weight supported on his knee, he had both hands free, could carry out daily tasks, and was spared the aches, pains, and falls that often accompany crutches.

He wore his invention at his next checkup at the Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences Centre’s trauma unit in Toronto. “You’ve got to develop this!” enthusiastic doctors and technologists told him.

With their help, Matthews refined the crutch, now made out of aluminum and plastic, raised nearly $1 million from family, friends and venture capitalists, and today is busy marketing the iWALKFree.

“I did everything—made cold calls, drove everywhere, made tons of presentations,” he says. “I don’t have a business degree, so I had to wing the whole thing.”

His big bet is paying off. At $599 U.S. ($349 in Canada), he’s already sold almost 2,000 to happy customers around the world, and hopes to set up a charitable foundation to provide the iWALKFree to amputees in war-torn countries.

He admits that if he’d known just how much work it would take, he might never have begun. “But once I start something, I stick with it. And you have to stick with it if you want to succeed.”