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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today Dr. Jason Wersland. He’s the founder of Therabody. Dr. J, welcome to the Impact Podcast.

Dr. Jason Wersland: Thanks. I love that name, The Impact Podcast.

John: [inaudible]. It brings back tremendous, great memories. It’s one of the greatest players in all of NBA history.

Dr. Jason: Can’t smile when you say that name,

John: You got to smile. He’s a lovely human being, that’s been one of the greatest ambassadors of sports since he retired. Great name, great product. I have it here. Our family uses this. I was chatting with you offline before we started this recording. I saw this product, your great product, when it was released back in the mid-15, 16 era. But before we get to talking about the journey with Therabody and the original Theragun, I want you to give your backstory, Dr. J. Where’d you grow up, and how’d you get on this fascinating, but very important journey that you’re on?

Dr. Jason: I grew up in Utah. I’m a first-generation American. My dad’s from Norway. There’s a little bit of grit in there growing up that happened to make it happen, and being raised by a bunch of crazy Norwegians. I’m the oldest of seven. Our family had a farm. I became super resourceful when I was younger. I’ve always worked. I had mowing lawns and working at a farm near my house when I was in eighth grade, ninth grade. I’ve always had this entrepreneurial, get-it-done attitude. Several years later, I was a chiropractor in Los Angeles. I was driving a motorcycle, which I would never recommend anyone doing in LA, splitting traffic on the freeway. A car came out of nowhere. There was a delivery truck that was hiding it. I t-boned the side of this car. I was going about 50 miles an hour. Headfirst into that car, that was the first time I’d ever really been a patient. Up until then, I was pretty healthy. I played all sorts of sports. I had little things like sprained ankles and sprained fingers, but nothing that was, “season-ending”. This was season ending. This was legit. I suddenly now had to think, “How am I going to get myself better?” To be honest, I didn’t have insurance. I had just started a practice about a year earlier. I was just trying to make it happen, zooming around LA, trying to be a concierge chiropractor and build my practice and do all these things. I just was faced with an issue. I tell people this all the time, but necessity is the mother of invention. I needed something. I couldn’t find it. It made so much sense to me what this should be and what it should do. My brother’s a chiropractor as well. He had an experience earlier that brought this to the surface again. I was like, “There’s got to be a better way to do this.” So, long story short, I made the first Theragun in 2008.

John: Let’s go back. Season ending in terms of you riding around, young guy in LA on the motorcycle, I get. Season ending, did it affect also because being a chiropractor, there’s tremendous not only mental acuity that’s needed, but physicality. Was it [inaudible], potentially intermediating your career?

Dr. Jason: Yeah, great question, John. 100%. I couldn’t feel these three fingers. The nerve to these three fingers had been completely cut off. Not only was there pain associated with that, but I couldn’t close my eyes and touch and feel heat, cold, something that was sharp. That scared me. When I say season ending, it was like, “Okay, these are my eyes as a chiropractor. I use these to understand what’s going on with the body. If I can’t feel, I can’t see.” That was definitely a motivation. I said necessity. [inaudible].

John: It’s always fascinating to hear the process. Therapists have fancy terminologies about the process. First, obviously, you were in shock. Then you were angry. When did it tip over to self-pity and sadness at all? Did that ever happen [crosstalk]?

Dr. Jason: 100%. You want me to dig into that a little bit? We can talk about that. The accident was October 17th of 2007. By December of 2007, by Christmas or so, I couldn’t think. The pain was so bad, I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to talk on the phone. I couldn’t do anything. When the nerves are damaged, it does the same thing that a light switch or an electrical wire does. It shorts out. It starts to fire a lot. That short-circuiting firing causes the muscles to splint. They flex. They’re constantly cramping. Going through that day after day after day, you start to say things to yourself like, “Am I ever going to feel better? Should I stay alive?” The things that really start coming to you in those moments, that’s one of the things that I was completely blown away by with Theragun, that it actually was calming my mind. It was shutting those voices down as I was going through this experience. [inaudible] side effect that was unexpected. Yes, I was going through those moments. To be fair, between October and December, I was cramping and having issues, but I thought this will go away. I was just trying to be positive-minded, think it away. Man, I couldn’t sleep at night. I was up a lot. As it got closer to January of 2008, when I made the Theragun, it got to the point where that’s all I could think about all day long. Like, “I’ve got to find a solution to this.” By the time I found something and started using it on myself in January, those first 2 months; January and February of 2008, was just pain relief. Just shutting down the splinting in my body, speaking to my nervous system. I realized how important the frequency of Theragun is. All of you that have a Theragun, that are listening, and you yourself, John, you do it because of how it makes you feel. There’s something about the way this thing makes you feel that resonates. That’s why people proclaim. I felt the same way. I still do. When I used it, it was like, “Oh, my God, what is this thing? This thing is really helping.” The first part of my injury, it was pain relief. Just keep me out of pain. Because I know those are listening as well. Inflammation comes from that. Negative thoughts come from that. Horrible diet comes from that. You can’t hydrate. It’s just this cascade of issues if you’re stuck in your head about the pain you’re in. I needed to get out of that and keep myself out of that. That was the first thing it did. Then, unbeknownst to me, not knowing that this also had magic in the fact that it would release the tension, scientifically releases tension in muscles. If you have a calf cramp, if anyone’s had one that wakes you up at night, you want to punch it; you want it to stop. That’s an instinct you have that Theragun does. Theragun’s frequency and amplitude shuts down that nervous system twitch. The pain relief, then the nerve, I call it neuromuscular speaking. After that came the performance. It wasn’t for a year and a half later that I started realizing, “Oh, wow, this can help me be stronger, be faster, sleep better, shut the stuff down in my mind so that I can get through my day without stressing out.” I was like, “This relief thing that I could lean on.” Just 2 or 3 minutes would calm the mind, would calm my spirit. My nervous system was regulated. I spend a lot of my time right now talking with athletes about nervous system regulation. That spills out into the everyday person like you and I. That all came from those early days, John. A lot of people skip right over that part of the interview because they get into the product. The drive, the focus, the necessity of what I needed to get out of that situation is what really birthed this.

John: [inaudible] I’m fascinated, and to your credit, you did that in what is, I think, a very truncated period. When you hear sometimes people having career-ending, as you said, or life-threatening injuries that create all sorts of pain, that creates that horrible cascading issue, which I’ve lived through myself, where you question your own sanity, your life, and am I ever going to wake up and have one day without pain again? You did that in a three-month, four-month period, whereas other people talk in terms of years. I’ve even met people that talk in terms of decades. Relatively speaking, you seem to come through it. You went through that whole process of grieving your past self and moving on to whatever your future self was going to be, hopefully a better future self, in a very tight timeline. How did you come up with the first prototype of what was then called Theragun? Now [inaudible], and by the way, for our listeners to find Dr. J’s great products, please go to www.therabody.com. It will be in our show notes as well. If you’re driving or in the gym, you don’t have to sit there and write it down, but therabody.com. How did you come up with that first prototype?

Dr. Jason: I was sitting in my office waiting for my chiropractor partner to treat me, because that’s what you do. You’re injured; you got to have someone else work on you. That part right there, to me, didn’t make sense. I’m like, “Wait a second,” because I’d never been in that situation. You’re telling me I’ve got to sit here in pain and wait for this guy to hopefully take the pain away for moments. And then, this whole thing was like three or four days, and I got to come back and see this guy. I’m like, “This isn’t going to work.”

John: [inaudible].

Dr. Jason: Now that’s not going to work; what’s the solution? I’m sitting in a room. A particular room we had, had a vibrating table that we would use to do spinal traction. You lay people on a table, hook them up, a lot of people have probably had this. It decompresses the spine. If you add vibration to that, it takes away the body’s ability to splint. I’m like, “Wait a minute, what? That’s what my body’s doing. Let me try and see if it works.” I switched it on, rested my arm on this table, slid up next to it. Sure enough, I got goosebumps. The pain immediately went away. I was like, “Whoa,” but then it snuck back after about 30 seconds, because I thought I found heaven. I’m never going to leave this table. Then I realized, as I’m sitting there, our body accommodates to stimulus. You got a jacket on, the air in your room, I’m assuming a lot of that stuff you’re not aware of, because it’s comfortable enough, your body receives it, your nervous system recognizes it. You may have a watch on, earbuds, whatever you have, you’re not aware of that, because the nervous system takes that information in, accommodates to that, and then stays focused on what’s most important. This thing wasn’t strong enough. My nervous system was like, “Okay, that’s really cute, helped for a second, but you’re in a ton of pain, this isn’t going to help that.” But I realized I’d scratched something. I was like, “Wait a second, what is that?” I found another tool in our office. It was a vibrating tool that produced the same frequency as the table, but I could take it with me. I took it home, and I was realizing that my body was accommodating to this stimulus the same way. It was working for a minute and a half, maybe a minute, and when I say working, it was taking the pain away. It was tolerable. I could breathe; my body relaxed, my shoulders kind of dropped, but then within 45 seconds to a minute, it comes back. John, what caused Theragun was that that wasn’t working, but I sensed that it could. I was like, “Okay, wait a second.” I’m sitting there, it’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’m like, “Vibration’s never going to leave my body. It feels good for a moment, but if I could get something that didn’t stay on my body the whole time.” As I was doing this, I was like, “Oh, wait, I have tools in the garage that I could do that with.” At that point, I think what’s important for people to understand is, and I talk about this, is, at that point in my life, I didn’t care what you called it. I didn’t care what it looked like. I didn’t care how loud it was. I had no boundaries. What can I do? I went to my garage, I grabbed some tools, brought them in, sat in my family room, and started tinkering around with these tools. I was like, “Okay, maybe that one will work, maybe this one will work.” I find a jigsaw, bend the blade; I wrap a dish towel around the end of that blade, and then I wrapped electrical tape around that part, so it protected the blade. I turned it on, and I was just using it on my arm to see if it worked, like, “Is this going to work?” As I was doing that, the sharp edges of the electrical tape was hitting my skin, and I realized that that was causing the pain to decrease. All of a sudden, the light bulb went on. I was like, “Oh, wow. We have fast-acting neurons.” If you put your hand on a flame, your body knows immediately to pull away. That’s a really cool thing that our body has. If the temperature changes, if something’s in your shoe, you have a little rock or a thorn, that comes to your brain really quick. That’s what we call fast-acting neurons. That information travels to the brain at 268 miles an hour. Pain travels to the brain at 55 miles an hour. I’m putting this math together. I’m like, “Wait a second. If I start using this part of my tissue to speak to my nervous system, then I can maybe override this for a little bit longer, but it can’t be this vibration. You’re crazy.” I thought I was insane. I’m like, “Is this really working? How am I doing this?” I just started working with that tool. Over the next couple of days, I had some practice foam golf balls that I glued on the end instead of the dish towel. Then it moved to something else. Then the foam golf balls were too soft. It was too smooth to my skin. It went away, that tingling feeling. So I made something else. There are some attachments we’ve made that I’ve designed since then that are made for that. That’s how it happened. That’s the cone, that sucker. It’s a good one.

John: Brutal. It is brutal, but it feels good. I’ll tell you that.

Dr. Jason: Yeah. You know why I made that? I made that for quarterbacks. Since you pulled it up, their supraspinatus, which is the area where your shoulder muscles have to roll through over your shoulder, they get really tight. What I would do is I would take my finger, and I would put my finger in this notch in their shoulder. Then I would put the Theragun on top of that. My finger was just getting jammed, but I was digging into these big guys’ shoulders to release that. I thought, “Well, I’ll just make something for it.” So I made the cone. That’s where it came from. Anyway, to get to your question, it was solving a problem. It wasn’t coming up with the Theragun. I was solving a problem. I got to say that’s been part of our ethos since the very beginning; solving problems. When my dad comes to me and says, “My low back is killing me, I have to have surgery,” and I see the stuff that’s out there, I’m like, “That stuff’s crap. Why don’t we put this and this together? It’s solving a problem and listening to consumers.” As a chiro, I’m always trying to pay attention to what are your lifestyles. What are your habits? What do you do? What is your behavior? How can I change that a little bit to get you into a place that you’re healthier? You don’t have so much low back pain because it’s the little things over time that wear on us. We solve those problems. Most of our products were innovated from solving issues. Solving problems goes all the way back to Theragun.

John: Let’s go back to bifurcating your brain, though. Half of your brain in January, February, as you’re up in the middle of the night with the tools and the golf balls, then something different. Half your brain is saying, “All I want to do is get myself well again and out of pain so I can get back on the playing field.” When did your journey turn into the aha moment of, “Wait, I’m not the only one. I treat these kind of people all the time. There might be a commercial opportunity here besides getting back into my practice and running my business again.” When did that tug of war start, and then when did the commercial opportunity take over from your personal goal, your sole goal of getting out of pain and getting back on the playing field?

Dr. Jason: I love where you’re taking this. This is really fun to have this conversation with you. I assumed that there was something out there in the world. I’m not going to bring a Makita jigsaw that I’d jimmied together at my house to my practice. I was intrigued by that. Is there something out there that I can buy that doesn’t look like this thing I just brought out of my garage? I would ask people, and they would just look at me and not have a clue, like, “What are you talking about?” I just kept thinking, “Sure, there’s no way I was the first one to think of this.” You talked about how truncated it was. The injury was October of 2007. By October of 2008, one year later, I was back to practice. I was doing my thing, which is [crosstalk].

John: Mission accomplished.

Dr. Jason: Yeah.

John: The first mission is accomplished.

Dr. Jason: I was using it, taking it to the gym because I realized the performance aspect of it, but I never thought about using it on a patient. I was still trying to learn what this did, assuming that I would find one. Now it’s October, November of 2008. I’m in my practice. My secretary hands me some new patient intake forms. You get them all the time. I’m going through this guy’s story. I look at his injury, and it’s a similar injury as mine. It calls it out, like that’s the first injury. Then I look at what are his diagnostic studies. Has he had any? Yeah, he did. He had a very similar injury. He had a six millimeter bulge at C5, C6. I had a nine millimeter bulge. Then I’m looking at his insurance. I’m looking at his income. His mechanism of injury was very similar to mine. He was a bus driver, and he had an accident in the bus lot and had a head-on collision with another bus. He went through his windshield, through the other guy’s windshield, landed in the guy’s front of the other bus, jacked him up really bad. As I’m putting this together, the voices in my head are telling me, “This guy’s not going to get better. I get 12 visits to fix this guy. There’s no way I’m going to fix him in 12 visits.” That’s the first time that something came to me and said, “Well, why don’t you just show him how to use this thing?” It wasn’t a Theragun at the time. I don’t know what to call it. A Makita. I wrestled with that in my mind. I had to take X-rays of him. At the end of the X-rays, I said, “Hey, listen, do me a favor. When you come back tomorrow to review your X-rays, bring your wife with you. I thought of something I think might be able to help us through this process. He was in a ton of pain, similar age, and everything. The next day, I bring this Makita in a Ralph’s paper bag to the office. First time I’d ever done that. I’m a chiropractor; I’m a little sensitive about how people look at us already. I can’t struggle with this power tool. I came and asked him to bring his wife. We sat down in the room, and I went through my injury. I shared with him, “Look, I’d done this. It did this to me. This was me. I was sitting where you were sitting. I’m going to show you something that I used that really empowered me. It helped me a ton to be able to deal with my pain. I don’t want you to sit around and wait for me to be ready to fix you. I need you to take part in this, to be able to really have this take effect.” That conversation led to a cool relationship. Over the next several months, we slowly got him better because I didn’t have to see him every day. He was able to take away the pain. He came back. It was the end of his treatment plan. I had him bring the Theragun back. I walked in my office, and I could hear it in one of the rooms. It was going. I was like, “Oh man, I haven’t heard that forever.” I walk in the room, and he’s sitting there using it on himself. We had a really cool exchange. He looked at me and he was like, “Doc, this thing saved my life. I know it saved yours because you get close with patients when you work with them over time.” He said, “I know it saved yours.” He looked at me almost with the power of the universe. He looked at me and was like, “You have to figure this out. It saved our lives.” Man, I still get emotional thinking about it. That was the moment when you ask, “When did it happen?” I was like, “Okay, wait a second. I’m going to have to figure this out. I know the frequency works. I know this amplitude thing is working, but I’m not happy with the gun itself that’s delivering this. How can I start fixing that? “So for the next five versions and the next 8 years, that’s what I did. I took it to NASCAR. I took it to movie sets. I took it to athletes’ houses. I used it on everyone from my mom to Ronaldo.

John: You were your own version. You were making these yourself.

Dr. Jason: Making them myself, yes.

John: And so what you realized is that you were sitting on a huge secret, an invention, really. You said there’s got to be something out there; turned out to be, there really was nothing. Those two factors together, you realized it was up to you then to get it out.

Dr. Jason: Yeah. Not until 2014, when athletes started adopting it, four and a half years later, five years later, did I start to see athletes adopting this. I was like, “Oh shit, I didn’t even think about that side of it, because that’s why I still use it. I use it in my clinic for pain. I help patients be able to increase the range of motion on their hamstrings or their shoulder, whatever that is.” These guys didn’t care that it was $500, and they wanted one for their wife and their buddy. I was like, “Whoa, hang on a second.” That’s when I realized this is for the world. This isn’t for chiropractors. This is for everybody. That’s when I had some moments in my life, one particularly in Christmas of 2011, where I had this out-of-body experience, where I realized this is going to be really big. This is way bigger than I am. This is a message that has to get out. I’ve got to find a way to get microphones in my face to be able to do what I’m doing with you. Like I realized back then, I didn’t even know what that meant. I’m a chiropractor. I wasn’t like a…

John: Social media influencer. You didn’t have an Instagram page and all that nonsense. That wasn’t part of the deal.

Dr. Jason: You say that. I call them Theragun Angels. In 2013, 2014; I remember Ashton Kutcher came into this gym I was working at. A bunch of people started talking about it because Twitter was out. A bunch of people started talking about this new Instagram thing. There was going to be pictures. I remember the people that were in the room, and it’s pretty influential, we were up in Hollywood. They were like, “That’s never going to work,” and I left. A friend of mine, who actually was the founder, his name’s Mike, of Instagram, said, “Dude, I need to get you one of these accounts. You got to sign up and get an account.” I was like, “I’m never going to use that.”

John: [inaudible].

Dr. Jason: I could tell you much more of the story. It was a real fun story. Basically, I tell people, we were lucky enough to grow up with Instagram. Athletes immediately started posting it because of the way it looked on camera. The way it moved the body because it couldn’t catch that full impact.

John: It felt great, it’s beautiful. It really is a beautiful tool. It’s really elegant. It feels so good in your hand. It’s so easy to use. You don’t have to be a mechanical genius to use this. I use it, and I’m definitely not a mechanical genius.

Dr. Jason: One of the things, since you said that, I have to tell you, we put a lot of time and pride into what you just said. It actually makes me feel good that you said that. That it feels good in your hand. There’s some things that people don’t realize. These are our eyes. Our body has a shape in our brain of our body. If you looked at the size of our hands compared to other parts of our body, our brain sees our hands as 7 to 10 times bigger than anything else in our body because of all the information that comes in. If you reached in your pocket and you’re looking for a quarter, not a penny, you’d be able to pick it out without looking. Understanding that, when we made the Theraguns in the early days, the texture was super important, what was touching your hand, the balance, where the balance sits in that. So if you actually hold that gun up.

John: Yeah, I’ll do it with this one.

Dr. Jason: I can hold it like this with one finger, kind of slippery, but I can hold that with one finger, and that balance is right in the center, right up here by the front, by the motor.

John: Right. Got it. That’s amazing.

Dr. Jason: And it’s slippery, so it doesn’t really work with the Prime. What I wanted to do, John, is I wanted to be able to hold this on a body like that, and have it do the work, instead of me having to use it and grip it. Yeah, there you go.

John: There you go.

Dr. Jason: So instead of me having to hold it, and the therapy all come from me, I wanted the therapy to come from the Theragun, because if that happened, then John could use it in his office, and I don’t have to be the one that’s teaching him how to do that.

John: That’s awesome. Where did you say, “Okay, now the bus driver’s well,” you have the aha moment 12, 13 months post your accident. At what point of the journey, when you were iterating prototypes, did you bring in other experts? My gosh, the whole feel of this thing is both smooth but also grippy. On the inside, it’s unbelievably smooth. The outside has this very light textured rubbery grip, so you never drop it. I’ve never dropped this. My kids use it. My grandkids even play with it, and with no abuse, because it’s so easy to hold, and it feels so good in your hand. When did you start bringing in others to help you, expertise, to nuances and subtleties that go into something like this, which is an amazing product; not only that works, but it looks like a piece of art, frankly

Dr. Jason: It was early on in the stage of Therabody or Theragun, but it was late in my evolution. So from 2007-2008, let’s say, until 2015, I was on my own. And I realized in 2014-2015, I can’t do this on my own. I’ve got to have people that are way better engineers than I am. I’ve got to have some good people. So I’d been through three business partners, and they were horrible experiences. We could talk about that. It was all of the nightmares, people stealing money, and all that. But I ended up meeting my current business partner and my seed investor. So I ran into this guy, crazy story, told him what I needed. He was like, “You know what, I think what you’re doing is awesome. Let’s do it.” So he invested, and that was in March-April of 2016, when we started the company. We brought on a person named Jaime. And I would broadcast this to the world: He was our saving grace. He was our engineer that could take what I was trying to describe to him, and the way it needed to look and feel, and sound. He was able to translate that into hard products. So the relationship that he and I had was so powerful.

John: Symbiotic.

Dr. Jason: Yeah, it was like he knew what I was trying to do. He also recognized that there was a big opportunity for him because he bought in on the idea this is way bigger than us. We have something that’s pretty magical. We got the ability now to really shape this and make it what we want.

John: So from 2008 to 2016, you were both managing your practice, but also managing this [inaudible] entrepreneurial journey. [inaudible] doing the toggle. You were the high-wire act at that time.

Dr. Jason: Man, in 2013 and ’14, I had seven 1099s that I had to do. That’s how many different jobs I was trying to pay the bills.

John: Well, that’s the journey of an entrepreneur, though. You’re on the hustle and the grind. So now you meet Jaime, you have your business partner. When do you launch it? What was your expectation? And how did it go?

Dr. Jason: So we launched our G1, which was a prefabbed product that I didn’t like from a company in China. We committed to 10000 of them. A year later, so we’d launched that in June of 2016, it’s the first time our first G1s hit the market. In July of 2017, we launched our G2. So the G2 Pro was the ground-up up that we designed. One second.

John: Sure.

Dr. Jason: This is the G2 Pro.

John: Wow.

Dr. Jason: And I think it might turn on. Nope. Battery’s dead. It was so loud. But this one, we talk about the balance and the different textures.

John: Look at that.

Dr. Jason: The blue is sticky. I wanted it to really feel like it was meant to be in your hand. This was the G2 Pro, and I’m so proud of what we did, but this led to the motor we have today. We had this rotating head as well that we did back in the day. So, this idea of removable batteries, what does this attachment piece look like, and how does it work? We had to design all of this. I’m not saying this to boast; I’m saying it because I’m super proud, but I’ve got over 500 patents.

John: Again, these are some of the different heads. So the patents involve the different heads you’ve created.

Dr. Jason: All of it. Yeah. The texture on the end of this thing is really important. It’s got to be soft enough that it feels like a piece of skin touching your skin. But it’s also got to have a little bit of density to it so that it creates what we call mechanotransduction, which is heat in the tissue.

John: So, the first 10000 units you bought from China.

John: Oh yeah. We realized we were going to burn through those, so we hurried and started making the G2 Pro. Before we even launched the G2 Pro, we were making the Gen 3. And the Gen 3 was the new triangle, the new design. So we’d been innovating at a rocket ship pace since 2015, when we assimilated that team, 16. So the team came together. That’s when I met Carter. Carter was there in 2016. We were scrappy, bootstrapping this thing, but the great thing about it is we never had to raise money. We were profitable from the very first day. So we didn’t raise an A round until September of 2022. A lot of people might like this, but we did a celebrity round in the end of ’18, the beginning of ’19, only because we realized how many celebrities use the product and wanted to talk about it.

John: And now if they invest, they’re a strategic investor, really, instead of a celebrity round; they’re an influencer who’s driving sales.

Dr. Jason: A hundred percent. From James Harden to Daniel Craig to 2 Chainz, Jay-Z. These companies invested in us, but it was more to say, we support them. Justin Timberlake, I have to give him a shout-out. He was the very first investor. He would not leave me alone. It’s like, “I love this. I want to be there. I want to support you.” Him and his family have been so amazing, but we did that strategically, because if they were invested, then we didn’t have to work out the nitty gritty, and you posted this, and we did that. It was just more like, “Look, let’s get a safe note or do however we want to do this, and you guys come in.” It was one of the best things we did, from Karlie Kloss to so many people that wanted to be a piece of it. At the time, I was humbled. Some of the people I knew, were clients of mine or patients, and I would tell them, “Hey, I don’t want you to hear this from anyone else, but I’m not asking for it. I just want you to hear,” and I get that far and, like, “No, I’m in. I want to do this.” It was kind of crazy. And Carter had a a big influence in that as well. He had a big part to do [inaudible].

John: It was wonderful. I remember meeting him back at some of the health shows that we were both at together, and he was a great representation. And boy, he told me straight up, “You got to believe this is going to be something really big. This is going to be something big.” He said that with total conviction, just total conviction [inaudible]. Talk about, you call it celebrity, which, of course, they are celebrities, but brilliant strategic investor [inaudible] in 2018, then formally round in ’22; where’s the rocket? Let’s metaphorically give our listeners and viewers the rocket ship from ’16 to ’18, ’18 to ’22, ’22 to now. Trajectory of the Theragun rocket ship, which is now called Therabody. And for our listeners and viewers to find Dr. J and his great product and products, please go to www.therabody.com. It’s going to be in the show notes. You don’t have to pull over your car, write it down, or do anything dangerous. Are you where you want to be right now? And where do you think you’d be when you went live with this in ’16? And explain that last 9 years and the journey. If 30 seconds or less [inaudible].

Dr. Jason: There’s no way. No way.

John: I know.

Dr. Jason: From 2016 to the beginning of 2020, we were a health and wellness company. We were talking about healthy habits and what your wellness practice was in a day, and what longevity meant. I’m a chiropractor for health sakes. That’s what I do. So that was in our ethos. That was who we were. This is before it was popular.

John: That’s right. [crosstalk].

Dr. Jason: We sort of were pushing this boulder up the hill. If I could tell you how many meetings we had on how we define wellness in a way that doesn’t make people feel like they didn’t brush their teeth that day. How can we make people be excited about what wellness is, not like, “I forgot to brush my teeth.” We thought about this backwards, and all of a sudden, COVID hits. Now the entire world is asking themselves, “Am I healthy? Am I the guy? Am I the person? Am I going to get it?” So we suddenly had the thermometer turn way up, and it was like everyone was thinking about this. And so our message landed. I remember when COVID first hit, I was in New York, and I was going to do QVC. It was the first episode we were ever going to do. And my business partner, Ben, calls me, and he says, “Hey, we got to do some shifting and changing. This is really going to cause a problem in our business.” I’m literally getting makeup on to go on QVC, and he’s telling me we’re probably going to have to cut some people. And to be in that sort of situation where I got to go on and act like everything’s cool, but yet I know it’s not; those types of situations we’ve had in Therabody all along. I call it a slingshot effect. This resistance was pulling us back. It felt like there was something that was not working with us. It was working against us. But then, all of a sudden, COVID hit. We started donating products to hospital workers because we were going from our Gen 3 to our Gen 4. So we had a little bit of extra inventory we couldn’t move because of COVID. So it was actually my wife that came up with this idea, a genius idea, to start, “Hey, let’s donate to hospitals.”

John: Brilliant.

Dr. Jason: “Let’s donate them to hospital workers,” and we didn’t know how it was going to land. We didn’t realize that the people were looking. And then, all of a sudden, you can’t see a massage therapist, you can’t see a physio, you can’t see your chiropractor. And now people’s bodies are starting to hurt because they’re sitting in different positions, working from their kitchen table instead of working from their house. They’re doing these new exercises because they can’t go to the gym. Now people’s bodies were hurting. And our message just floated right to the top. So the rocket ship was that the world realized, what can I do to be healthy for myself instead of relying on someone else? Which goes back to the ethos of me and the first patient, like, “Let me help you help you.” So that’s what happened. It was like a spark and fuel, and then it lit up.

John: As you said, because you’re a doctor, Dr. J, of course, and you’re a chiropractor, and you’ve had that part of your DNA, health and wellness part of your DNA with the Theragun, now Therabody. That was all pre-Huberman, Attia, Hyatt, Valter Longo, all these massive. Basically, now, Buechner, all these stars have now taken longevity and health and wellness to a whole different level. Now the world has caught up with your messaging and your vision. How was that collision of long-term trend because longevity is not going away? The genie is out of the bottle, PRP and the biologics. And now, with Florida passing law with stem cells and stem cells coming to America in a real, legitimate way, and all the bad. The 25-year-old false narrative that was given to stem cells are all starting to become something of the past. The world has caught up with you. Talk about the convergence of your great brand with this trend. That’s only going to keep growing.

Dr. Jason: It’s what you said. Its essence is: we create products to help you do more of what you love.

John: Perfect.

Dr. Jason: And we’ve got protocols. We’ve got specific products for both women and men in their certain stages. So we’ve broken this down. Most people know a chiropractor, and most people that have a chiropractor love the guy, the person, the woman, whoever it is.

John: A strong relationship with them all.

Dr. Jason: Yeah, because you sense their sincere caring for your health. The disconnect is in the compliance, and we’re just not compliant unless it’s really painful or it’s really a necessity. We’re just not compliant. So we as chiropractors are that conscience in your head saying, “Do the stretches, do the breath work, take care of your body, make sure you do this wellness.” That’s what I do. I’ve been doing this as long as I can remember. That’s our brand. We want to be that thing that’s sitting on your coffee table. You pick it up and be like, “I got to do this today for a couple of minutes.”

John: Doc, at what point did you and your partner decide to take it from Theragun? I’m on your great website now, therabody.com. It’s beautiful, and it’s so simple to understand and navigate, but let’s talk about the moment you decided to take it from Theragun to Therabody. And then I want to start talking about beyond this beautiful, gorgeous Theragun in my hand, or some of your other bestsellers: your Theramask, the JetBoots, and the PowerDotDuo. My sister-in-law and my nephew told me about what you’re doing now with some of this other stuff; they’ve used it. I haven’t used some of these other tools. I want you to go into that a little bit as well, please. Name change.

Dr. Jason: Thank you. I was in Europe, and I was working. I’d gone over there. I was there for about 8 months. I’d been there for a while. I started realizing, as I was going from training room to training room, it started in the U.S., the L.A. Kings, the hockey team. I was super close with that team, that group, the Dodgers, the Atlanta Falcons, the teams that I would go into these training rooms. I realized, John, that there was a large collection of these products, but there wasn’t any organization. Everyone saw when a physio was involved or a physical therapist, that meant there’s something wrong. There’s an injury. And I saw this change happening where guys are taking care of their bodies in a different way now. They’re actually thinking, “What can I do to not have a sprained ankle?” So I started seeing that, and I call my business partner. I’d be like, “Yo, this is bigger than Theragun. There’s something, I don’t know what that looks like, but it’s bigger than that.” So I came back; we sat in a room, and we were discussing, “Okay, what does that look like?” His goal was to acquire more businesses. I wasn’t thinking that big. I just wanted to get Theragun into the world, but because of his background in business, he’s like, “No, this can be bigger.” So from [inaudible] perspective, he saw it; from my perspective, I saw it. We were like, “Okay, we have to build something that’s bigger than Theragun because we can’t call a heating pad Theragun.” So that was this idea of, “Let’s not lose the equity we have in Thera.”

John: [inaudible] Brilliant. Got it.

Dr. Jason: “And let’s think about what that looks like.” I’m not going to throw anyone under the bus when I say this or in front of the bus, but we worked with some really big agencies that brought us ideas, and they were horrible.

John: And no one had it as right as you.

Dr. Jason: And no one had it like [inaudible]. Every product we have should be called Thera something. It should be Theragun, not PowerDot. It should be [inaudible]. So that’s where it came. I’ll tell you. You have to hear this because this is a great story.

John: I want to hear this.

Dr. Jason: Ben, my business partner, and I, my wife is there, Carter was there, there’s a bunch of people in the room, all who cared extremely for the brand. We were talking about what this could be, and we were down to two words, two names. We were down to Theraone and Therabody. And Ben, sitting next to me, Googles Therabody, and it doesn’t pull up. And I’m like, “That’s weird.” So then we pull up Instagram, and there was a guy, a massage therapist in Ohio, who had 630 followers or something with the name Therabody. And we were like, “Okay, he hasn’t posted recently.” So we’re kind of looking at each other like, “Whoa, this is crazy.” So he calls our attorney and says, “Do a search on this name right now.” On the phone, the guy says it’s available. We’re like, “No way. What are the chances?” So we snagged Therabody and we snagged TheraOne the same day, but we ended up feeling really good about the name Therabody and [crosstalk] the concept of what it does.

John: Such a [inaudible]. Well. [inaudible].

Dr. Jason: And that led to 2019, when I discovered this idea of Theramind and connecting the mind and the body together. So that’s a little bit deeper, but that’s where Therabody came from, as we both realized from our different perspectives, that was our superpower; he saw from his business side, and I saw it from the physio, physical therapy treatment side. This is bigger than what we think it is. And it just sort of happened.

John: So, some of your best sellers here, the TheraFace Mask. What is the TheraFace Mask? What is JetBoots Prime? And what is the PowerDot Duo? I want to hear about those [inaudible] the others are just different sizes of your beautiful Theragun. I want to hear about some of these that are a little bit more out of the box.

Dr. Jason: So, the TheraFace Mask came because we were looking at red light in 2018, 2017. I was working with a company out of Toronto, they told me they were able to bend red light. And I was like, “Wait, what? You can’t do that.” Because red light was typically in tubes, and the way it was emitted, the biggest challenge you had was capturing the refractory, like the reflections. what most people would know it as, get away from the ray. You want that shooting straight into your body. So they’re like, “No, we can bend it.” I’m like, “Timeout, what?” So they got us onto this idea that now they were making red light in these light-emitting diodes. So, as we were building another product that I’m super proud of called the TheraFace Pro, it’s basically a Theragun for your face, but it has red light and all these other modalities. When we were building that, that’s when we realized you can bend light. We immediately started thinking, “Okay, what can we do?” I was looking at how we can deal with headaches, and what I do when I treat someone in my chiropractic office for headaches. I usually start with releasing the trigger points on the head that come from both just above and below the eyebrows, because the muscles in your head come from the back of your head and attach on your eyebrows. So we’re doing this a lot and squinting and pulling. Sometimes we get headaches there, and people don’t realize that. So I had this thing that I would do to release this. We started putting these modalities together, and we realized, “Okay, the protocol for the face mask with the three lights, it has red light, blue light, and infrared light; all at different wavelengths for different things.” So red light is for the skin, blemishes, it brings collagen to the skin. It makes you look younger. Legal might be mad if I start being too loose with some of these claims, but it makes you look younger.

John: I got you.

Dr. Jason: Blue light is for bacteria. Blue light is for acne, blemishes, and things like that. So athletes that wear helmets and chin straps, get a lot of bacteria on their face, both men and women. So we were like,”Okay, let’s throw the blue light in there for that.” And then the infrared light works on the muscles of the face. So now you got skin, bacteria, and muscles, TMJ, face muscles. So we put massage around the eyebrows, we put specific massages on the sutures of the head, because those contact points to the body tell the nervous system to calm down. We’re not only giving you light therapy for your face, but we’re giving you a calming nervous system regulator when you put this on. And it’s a nine-minute protocol, so it’s super easy.

John: How about the JetBoots Prime? That’s a cool name. They’re on the website. What’s JetBoots Prime?

Dr. Jason: JetBoots are the best. We were the first company to come up with wireless pneumatic compression. Pneumatic compression is squeezing the body with air. So when you put these boots on, they’re like pants. They come all the way up to the inside of your leg.

John: Got it.

Dr. Jason: So they’re like really tall boots. We call them JetBoots because they kind of look like you’re going to take off like a jet. But they squeeze your legs from the toes all the way up to your groin, and then it releases. When you wear that for 30 minutes, it’s like your body walked two miles. It increases circulation, so it increases your body’s ability to heal. It increases the oxygen levels in your blood because it’s moving the blood around in your body. That is probably my second-favorite product. If you ask anyone, any athlete that’s worn them, you have the same, “Oh my God, wow,” when you wear that, that you get when you have Theragun. So the JetBoots are wireless pneumatic compression that are amazing for blood flow and anyone that does anything, but especially people that are on their feet.

John: I’m on your website, and there’s a great video of it. So for our listeners and viewers, go to therabody.com. There’s a great video and great photos of the JetBoots. I just recently heard about this PowerDot Duo from my nephew and his mom, because we’re like singing. Actually, my nephew’s girlfriend were all singing the praises of this. They sound like you’ve invented fire here. What is the PowerDot Duo? I’m definitely going to buy this.

Dr. Jason: I’m glad you said it that way, because the power behind PowerDot is that it is NMS treatment. So you’re actually getting neuromuscular treatment. It’s not the little TENS units you can buy online for $10.

John: Really?

Dr. Jason: This is as powerful as what you would get from me in my clinic, and that’s not common. So there’s only a couple of us out there that have that. But from our pads that you get with the PowerDot, to the protocols, our app is super easy to use. It’s basically giving you the neuromuscular treatment. It’s called ENMS: Electrical Neuromuscular Stimulation. It’s what you get when you go to a physio, when they put those pads on, and your muscles jump all over the place. They’re releasing the lactic acid and the toxins in your body. So when you put that on your shoulders and your traps, it’s going to do that there. You put them on your hamstrings, it’s going to do that. You put it on your shins for shin splints; I have tennis players that put this on their arm before they play tennis. So it’s basically those units. It’s electrical stimulation. I don’t like that name because I think some people are afraid of that, but it causes the muscles chemically to release the toxins so your body can move in the way that it should without pain.

John: When did you launch that?

Dr. Jason: We acquired PowerDot in 2019. I have to tell you, since you brought this up, a really good friend of mine was the president of Recovery Pump, which is Recovery Air. Recovery Pump was the first company to bring pneumatic compression to the U.S. from a medical supply company, a medical company out of Israel. They had years and years of research in a medical space for pneumatic compression. And Brian, my friend, realized that’s the real place to be. We need to be with the medical protocols and the quality of the products were medical. They weren’t these cheap ones you see now in the market. So he brought that to the States. I’ve known Brian since 1996 or something. Just when COVID started to hit, they were having some issues, and he called me. We ended up buying that company. So we bought the JetBoots. The JetBoots was Brian’s idea 3 years before, because he was thinking, “We got to get rid of these hoses and tubes. This is annoying.” So that was Brian’s idea that he brought to the company. And when we acquired them, he just didn’t have the money to do it at the time. So it was like this two plus two is 10. So we bought him. While we were doing that, I was working with my friends at PowerDot to put together what we call the period pain protocol. So the pain you get from periods and cramping is the same thing you would get if you have a really full muscle that’s been inflamed. We have ways of treating that. So we were putting together a protocol using Theragun, heating pad, and PowerDot to help women that are in that couple-of-day window where it’s super painful for them. On the phone one day, he says to me, “Hey, I see you guys just bought Recovery Air.” And I was like, “Yeah, Recovery Pump.” And he goes, “How’d that go?” And I said, “Dude, it was like piece of cake. They have the same brand. They have the same ethos. They had a warehouse in Philadelphia. They’re selling to the same consumers. We’re not even competing. It’s the same story.” And he goes, “Well, dude, why don’t you buy us?” I was like, “What? I didn’t know you guys are for sale. What are you talking about?” And he said, “No, we would love to do that, because our product is more of a consumer product. It’s not really a medical product. Doctors want the big ones that are on the stands, and they roll around with longer cords. This is really for athletes that need movement. So we put together this protocol.” So that’s what happened. We acquired them. We acquired Recovery Air, and then 3 months later, we acquired PowerDot. This goes back to what you were asking earlier. We weren’t Theragun anymore. So it made sense that we had these new products that fit under this umbrella of Therabody.

John: Got it. How are the PowerDots selling? Are you happy with the adoption rate of the PowerDot Duo?

Dr. Jason: I’ll be honest. I think we’re doing like a single-digit growth. So let’s say between 6% and 8% a year. It’s a steady growth. People are understanding it. It’s getting out there a little bit more. People are thinking more about treating themselves than going to their insurance and all that kind of stuff. So I think it grows. But I’ll tell you, I wish people understood more about it. I wish they understood more of the applications. Sitting in your car through traffic for 2 hours a day, and your low back super tight, having something you can put in the car and have it running while you’re sitting in the car. There’s so many really cool applications that you could use. And then you’re not getting out and having to play with your kids or bring the garbage cans in, and you’re jeopardizing hurting yourself by just being immobile. This increases blood flow, increases the nervous system. It engages your body in a way that it can keep the pain and inflammation away. So I wish people understood that a little bit better. That’s what we’re trying to do as a brand is expose people to that. I think I said this earlier, but I feel like what causes people hesitation is that it’s electrical. They’re not really sure, like, “Is that really going to shock me? Or what is this like?” So we’ve got a tall task to have it feel comfortable visually when you see it online.

John: Well, you have this. You set the standard very high with this great product. Doc, where do you want to go from here? Obviously, as we both discussed, the cultural and societal wind is at your back in terms of longevity, self-care, wellness. We’re living in the era of I’m 62, annual grail test and annual DEXA, annual PRENUVO. This is the new world that we’re living in. You are now still a young man, an entrepreneur with a growing brand right in the middle, the heart of this storm here, this wonderful storm, and the wind at your back. Where do you want to take it the next 2, 5 years? What’s your dream now?

Dr. Jason: Outside of the U.S., I would like it to be more of a wellness message.

John: How is it doing outside of the U.S. right now?

Dr. Jason: It’s doing great. We’re in 70 countries, we’ve got salespeople in different parts of the world. It’s still seen as a performance product. So, I’m in an elevator in London, a guy jumps in, sees that I have a Theragun, we start talking. He’s like, “Oh, I have one of those.” I’m like, “Really?” He says, “Yeah, but I don’t use it a lot because I don’t run anymore.” And I was like, “Dude, do you have pain? How are your feet?” I was there so I could deliver the message. That’s why I’m saying I hope people can do the same as what’s happened in the States, where they start to see it like, “Oh, wow, that actually helps me go to sleep,” because we have a sleep study, and people don’t know. So, outside of the world, I’d like them to see it more of wellness. Inside the States, I would love to have people understand how to bundle things together that they get at Theragun. So, you just said TheraFace Pro, the mask, JetBoots, and PowerDot. If I could take a picture, a quick video, or something to have people understand why they would have all four of those things in their life, and how they’re not doing the same thing to your body, but they are doing the same thing to your nervous system, and understanding that, that would be the thing. So, I think I would love if you popped on our website and you saw a bundle for John, and you put some algorithm in age, body pains, sport you participate in, and some of the other issues. I don’t sleep a lot. My HRV is super high or whatever, low. And then I could be like, “Bam, here’s the three products you need. Here’s the protocol. Get after it.” I think that’s where we have a big opportunity with the U.S., especially. Because my mom uses it now, all the time. And she uses the boots, I got her in it. But it took her a while to be like, “Wait, why do I use that and not this?” So, that trickle down of information, you’re getting some of these kids that are 16, 17 years old. They were raised with this. They don’t know any different. Of course, I wear jet boots. Of course, I have boots. So, I feel like people need to understand how a bundle would apply in their life if you have low back pain, menstrual cramps, heat flashes, all the different things. If you could put that in and have it build out a specific product line and protocol for you, that’s where I feel like we have a huge opportunity.

John: There’s not a day that you and I could turn on the TV or read any of the major news portals: Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg, or New York Times, where they’re not talking about how AI and robotics are going to change our life. How are AI going to help drive the future of Therabody and the success that you’ve already had, but now that you’re continuing to scale? Will AI play a role in it at all?

Dr. Jason: Right now, it’s basically going to do what I just told you.

John: It’s going to do cross algorithm. It’s going to take all of the notes of each patient, and it’s going to create specific personalized protocols for them using your great products across the line of, as you said, the boots, the mask, and also the dots with, of course, the Theragun. And there you have self-care at home; democratized health care at home.

Dr. Jason: Yeah, when we built our first app, people would say they were building a Dr. J to have in your pocket. And so that’s a lot of input. It’s a lot of interaction. It’s a lot of touch points of me capturing as much as I can about you and then spitting something back to you. That’s where AI is going to come down. It’s going to cut that down to a split second. You put your name and information in, and it can spit it out. Of course, there are people who have talked about AI a lot. I believe AI can help us customize and personalize the products and the protocols to people, and it really works.

John: Doc, your journey is fascinating. We know it’s far from over, so I just want to welcome you always back to the show to share new products and new developments that you’re doing at Therabody. For our listeners and viewers, to find Dr. J and his great and amazing products, which we use here in the Shegerian family, and all my colleagues here at ERI and my partners all use his great products, please go to www.therabody.com. Dr. J, not only thank you for joining us today on the Impact Podcast and giving your time, thank you for making the world a healthier and better place.

Dr. Jason: That’s nice. Thank you very much for having me. I love this. This was fun. Made me smile all the time.

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