[bright music] - In doing stuff for others, is really kind of where true happiness is.

You can be the most successful person in the world, but if you're not doing something for somebody else, what does that matter?

Kind of like I woke up one day, I was like, "Oh my God, this is my mission in life, is to do something about this."

I mean, how many more signs do I need before I realize like, "Well, I think this is my calling."

[bright music] I am someone that does a lot of different things.

I'm a dad.

I'm a son.

I'm a husband.

Started this nonprofit, Right2Breathe, eight years ago, and musician, and professional race car driver.

I've had this love of car racing and all things motorized since I was very little.

I actually borrowed my parents' lawn mower and cut neighbors' lawns when I was 10 years old to buy my own go-kart.

Growing up, loving cars, loving racing, got that from my dad.

And from my mom, that's where the love of music comes from.

[gentle music] Music to me is kind of magical.

I relate it to car racing as well.

It's like driving a race car, and improvising a guitar solo or playing piano.

In that moment, you're in that moment.

Oh, you mean we're playing?

[band member laughs] - [Band Member 1] I thought we were just gonna stand here.

- [Band Member 2] Let's sing.

- I started a landscape business in 1994 and used that as my, quote-unquote, "real job" while I continued to pursue a music career.

Despite having a lot of success and being in a lot of different bands and having a great time doing it, my dad and a mutual friend of ours bought a race car and they needed a driver.

And my dad said, "You know, you really should put Joe in the car."

I think one of the main reasons why my dad really wanted me to do what I loved to do is because he experienced not having a choice.

[gentle music] I kind of felt like I had no purpose.

I was kind of lost.

So the car racing thing, it just kind of reignited that love inside of me, and I don't wanna say another chance at having a dream, but that's kind of what it was.

I watched my dad do everything he was supposed to do to be a good dad.

Part of that included giving up his passion for car racing after my grandfather passed away, at a fairly young age, from lung cancer.

So my dad was kind of forced into taking over the family plumbing business and had to put aside his love of drag racing in order to be a good dad.

[gentle music] To follow in my dad's footsteps in that way and to carry on kind of that family love for car racing, and to be able to bring it to the professional level where my dad never got to, it's something that I treasure and it's something that I'm grateful for every second.

[gentle music] Car racing, it's insane, it's intense.

It's wild, it's crazy.

It's loud beyond belief.

And it's over too quick.

[car engines revving] [brake screeches] [crowd chattering] [gentle music] From what we learned all those years with my dad, with his passion for racing, it's kind of a light bulb went off in my head.

Right2Breathe is the nonprofit we have that started based on my dad's journey with COPD.

Diagnosed in 2006, and he passed away in 2016, but we got a lot of great racing together.

You guys get a chance, stop over at the Right2Breathe booth.

COPD is a umbrella term that covers several different lung diseases.

As we start racing, my dad, just starting to deal with this breathing problem, he was trying to support me in our efforts to race together.

My dad didn't get diagnosed until he had already lost about half of his lung function.

Once it's gone, it's gone.

So the fact that we were racing together kept him moving, and it gave him that motivation.

The problem is, oftentimes, people living with COPD hesitate to advocate for themselves.

[gentle music] How do we help people living with lung disease still love their lives and still do what they love to do?

As time goes by, there's gonna be a higher and higher percentage of people with COPD that never smoked.

So what Right2Breathe has done, the additional questions of "Have you been exposed to secondhand smoke?

Have you worked in environments where there's a lot of dust and pollutants and or fumes?"

We really felt we needed to do something more to address the fact that this is way bigger than most people think.

- We have just a couple of questions survey.

Would you mind?

- Of course.

- Go ahead.

- For answering our screener, you can have a hot and cold pack.

- Oh, that would be amazing.

- Here is my dad, we're using racing as a way to keep him motivated and keep him healthy.

Here is a group of people that collectively, the racing fans and participants, who are in that 12 to 14 million Americans that are either at risk for it, or the 16 million Americans that have it.

We felt like it was important to reach this audience with a message that they can understand, with a story that they can relate to personally in a way that connects with them in a meaningful way.

And we felt like we could have the most impact by starting with this audience and then branching out beyond.

Right2Breathe does not diagnose anyone, which is why some of the things that we've developed along the way are what happens afterwards.

We have this great community of patients who comes together online.

You can join our pulmonary chat meetings, which allows patients to understand how to continue living with COPD.

Why don't we start out with some of the pulmonary chat stuff and we'll wrap up with the preparations for the Maple Grove event.

Are you speaking there, John?

- [John] No.

No.

I'm just attending as one of the patient advisors.

- Okay.

Gotcha.

In anything in life, having a community of people that kind of understand you, and kind of know what you're going through because they're going through it themselves, can really be helpful.

To me, the band, the racing community, the Right2Breathe community, it's like different branches of family.

I think that where you live very much affects how you live.

The power of environment can't be overstated.

[gentle music] My dad, he passed away three days after his 70th birthday.

If he would've been diagnosed earlier, he'd probably still be alive today.

So that's where the urgency of our mission is, because someone else will get more time with their loved one than I got with my dad.

Having actually impacted people's lives, that doesn't feel like work.

And that's what keeps me going more than anything else, is just the fact that there's a lot that needs to be done in this world.

And if not us, who?

[bright music]