This is the full transcript for Episode #297 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Dr. Jason Wersland – Therabody Founder, Theragun Creator. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:00
Oh my god. I can make that.
00:17
Yes, you can. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode 297, and today’s guest is Dr. Jason Wersland. Dr. Jason is the Founder and Chief Wellness Officer
00:46
of Therabody, one of the most iconic and world-leading companies in the wellness space. What started with Theragun has turned into so many additional incredible products and lines and in this episode we talk everything from the crazy, pretty scary motorcycle accident that started this business journey for Jason, the biggest challenges he and team have had to face growing the business.
01:15
and some of the A-list celebrities slash athletes that Jason has met through this journey. That’s pretty pinch me. Pretty pinch me. That just rolls off the tongue. It is Dr. J. Enjoyyyyyy the showwwww!
01:41
Aaaaaalrightyyyyyy we are here with Dr. Jason Wersland, Founder and Chief Wellness Officer of Therabody, one of the coolest, most impactful companies that if you haven’t tried Theragun or any of the Therabody products already, it’s, I’ll just call it life -changing. So I’m really, you know, just butting you up right away. But Jason, Dr. Jason, Dr. J, as some would say, thank you so much for joining. How are you doing today? Thanks. I’m great.
02:09
Yeah, yeah. Happy Friday. We’re recording this on a Thursday. No, I’m just kidding. I warned you I was going to be corny. But no, this is an interview I’ve been looking forward to happening for a really, really long time. We’ve connected on Instagram, I kind of joke that you’re Carmen San Diego, you’re kind of all over the world, most interesting man in the world. So lots of stories to get to. But before we get to all things there, body, can you share the message that your mom put on your bathroom mirror growing up? Oh, wow. Did your homework?
02:39
was something like, you can do anything. Believe in yourself, you can do anything. Was there for a long time. What do those words mean to you then and then also later throughout life? I’m sure at one point I probably thought, ah, my mom, was she, no, or just thought, you know, she’s just being a mom. But there was many times where I would, I remember looking at it and seeing, you know, I can still see my mom’s cursive writing.
03:08
It means a lot more now, obviously. And when I say that, I mean more about being a parent. You know, now I understand more from that perspective, what it means. But then also, you know, having gone through life, you know, wisdom, I think is expensive both physically, mentally, you know, economically, but it also teaches you, you really can do anything. You know, I really believe that you put your mind to it and focus on it.
03:39
I really believe that. Yeah, what an incredible message to have from an early age. And yeah, I’m sure I would be the same way with any inspirational message at that day of like, okay, you know, save, save that for 20, 30 years from now. But what do you know, I gotta go to work today. Yeah, exactly. But so that’s incredible thing to always always look back on. I also heard in your childhood that you’re a pretty big family. I think I heard seven, seven kids. Yeah, yeah.
04:08
What was it like growing up in that animal house? It was amazing. I had a chance just recently to go home for a quick trip and just driving around in our community. And it’s so suburbia. You know, there’s stop signs and sidewalks. And it was really cool growing up like that. You know, I had basically had six best friends. We fought like crazy. I mean, we had it out, you know, like.
04:36
full on fist fights and then hugging each other after. And it was cool. I was telling my friend when I saw him the other day, we were both there and we said, both of us said, so such a great place to grow up. You’re in the mountains, you can take off on your four wheelers, rip down the street and go up in the mountains, not have a problem. It was a lot of fun. You got me thinking about all it. Six best friends. That is an idyllic, if that’s the right word, way to grow up, I’m sure.
05:06
Never bored. Well, like any kid, I’m sure you’re bored sometimes, but how are the, you know, like Thanksgiving football games, like playing in the yard, stuff like that? Like you, you had full squads. Yeah. We used to play knee football in our basement, depending on what age we were, whatever time we’d sort of divvy it up based off of size. So you kind of average the same height, two on three, three on four. Like it was pretty intense. Yeah, we had a lot of fun. And we all played different sports and had.
05:36
You know, my mom had us playing different instruments and you know, a lot of our culture was the real Mormon culture. So you did boy scouts and you know, all those different things. So taught me a lot of things that I still use today, just the confidence of talking with people and you know, the principles of communication you’d learn at a really young age. What was your instrument of choice growing up? Well, first he started with piano. My mom’s
06:04
my mom’s thought was if you can play the piano, you can eventually play other instruments. So I started with piano. I played that for, I don’t know, a couple of years. And then I went to guitar, played that for a couple of years. And I ended up playing, started playing soccer and I really liked soccer. And so I stopped playing the guitar to my regret, by the way. Hey, there’s always time to pick it up.
06:30
I know, I believe I could if I had time to sit down and practice, but place and it’s really weird to carry a guitar around the world. People do it. And I think your story is the old joke, you can tune a piano, you can tune a fish that you know, that’s kind of how your musical journey started as well. So that’s probably how it was crafted. But by the way, you took me way back when you said knee football playing in the basement. I hadn’t thought about that in years, but
06:56
Shout out my cousin Jeff in Cincinnati. He’s a big hockey fan and player back in the day. We used to play, my brother and I with him, and we would play knee hockey in the basement. And he had this mini goal, mini goalie. We used to think it was so cool to wear the little goalie pads really, really young. So yeah, there’s a whole subset. That should really be an Olympic sport than knee sports. I know, right?
07:22
So let’s get to Therabody. So obviously like really powerful upbringing. You had words of wisdom literally on your bathroom mirror from an early age. Like you knew that you could do big things. You had the confidence and great family around you to do so. But on a dark note, well a dark note that became a light note, can you share the motorcycle accident that ended up being a big part of your journey? Well, I lived in Venice and my school
07:51
that I was going to to do my clinic hours was up in Hollywood. And so if you’re familiar with LA, it’s basically going from the west side to the east side. You kind of go through the city. Which is just like a couple minutes, no traffic, right? Yeah, right. It’s like five minutes. In LA, in California, you can split traffic on your motorcycle so you can split the cars. You don’t have to stay in the lanes.
08:17
I jumped up in the morning, I had to run to school to take care of something and I was going to go to my office. So I jumped up, walked outside, started my bike and it was cold and I was like, man, I don’t… Because they typically wouldn’t wear gloves and a jacket, you just put it like whatever. I wasn’t very smart when I think back and many times I’ve told this story, I sort of out myself by… It was too many head injuries playing knee football. Yeah, right.
08:46
So I went out, I just realized it’s just a hard to, in LA you gotta park your bike and lug your stuff around cause people will steal it off your bike if you leave your jacket or anything. Anyway, jump on my bike, ripping up the, up the 10 and I just hit traffic where you usually do. If you’re familiar with LA, it’s right where the, the old Staples Center, I don’t remember what they call it right now. Crypto something I think, but it’s probably gonna change by the time we release this. Yeah, right.
09:12
downtown, it splits 110 and the 10 split right there. And so I was kind of coming into where that split is. And it gets kind of weird, but the traffic had stopped. So I thought I was safe. And I was just flying through and a car came out of nowhere, just off from the right side to the left. And I just T-bone this driver’s door. Head first threw me into over the across over his car and into the other lane. I was just laying on the freeway and I kind of came to and sat up and I
09:42
Just as quickly as I sat up, I thought, you know, immediately you think, oh my God, I’m alive because I was out. And then I came up and my helmet, the shield on my helmet was cracked. And so I kind of lifted it up to see what was going on. And as I did that, my helmet kind of, I felt my helmet was cracked. And I immediately thought, man, I must have smacked that car hard. And then, you know, I stood up and you’re kind of dizzy. I run back to move my bike off the freeway. And by then the freeway had stopped.
10:11
the guy who had, the door who had hit was sitting in his car with the door kind of open and I went over there to have words with him. And he had one leg was much shorter than the other. So he had one of those shoes that was, and a cane sort of sitting by the side of his leg. And I just said, man, you ran in my lane.
10:38
And he said, and he wasn’t from LA, so he didn’t know you could do that. And he’s like, you hit me. And I said, no, this is my lane. So we had an argument discussion. Anyway, I stood there and my arm was bleeding, um, in my jacket and it was, the blood was coming down into my glove. And I didn’t want to take my jacket off cause they know how bad it was. So I just stood there and waited for an ambulance and the fire truck showed up. And anyway, I ended up having, you know, a lot of soft tissue damage in my neck and my shoulder, let alone, you know,
11:07
serious concussion. But I think the interesting thing for me about that is what I learned about the body’s response to trauma, to physical trauma. It taught me a lot having gone through it myself, and it helps me understand sometimes where the people are that I work with, what phase they are in. There’s a mental phase, there’s a physical phase, there’s different phases. So yeah, it was
11:38
It was pretty traumatic, the actual accident. But I thought I was resilient, jumped up. I wasn’t smart about it. It didn’t hurt that bad. That’s kind of the way it was. And so I just kind of went about my life for the next couple of weeks and then it started setting in the pain was really starting to come on. The accident was the 17th of October and by the middle of November, it was really bad. I was having a hard time. So yeah.
12:07
Hopefully that’s kind of what you were looking for. I’m not sure what part you wanted me to focus on with that. It actually wasn’t. Could you restart? No, I’m just messing with it. No, thank you for sharing that. Um, well, first of all, I mean, really sounds like you’re lucky to be lucky to be alive. So that like had to be quite the inflection point or pivotal moment in your life. But what came next was, was the business, which obviously tied to the pain and tissue pain and
12:36
discomfort that you started to have. What was the bridge there between that pain and discomfort you’re having to actually creating the first, if you even called it, theragun back then? It was desperation, you know? I think I’ve said and people have said this, but what’s the word? Mother of invention. Necessity. Necessity, that’s the word. Yeah, that’s what’s on my bathroom mirror.
13:05
Necessity is the mother of invention. I’d heard that many times. And I also feel like the level of your necessity is relative to the innovation that comes from it. So for me, that was the last thing I would have ever thought that I would have done. I had made a conscious choice to move away from power tools. I spent a lot of my life around that world. And when it happened, dude, it was like just…
13:32
You know, I was just looking for an answer. And in my world, that was my, you know, I’ve learned a lot about how the brain works. And that was, that’s the only answer my brain knew. You know, I wasn’t from the dental world or a, you know, I could name a bunch of different industries where, so when it happened and I, the process went, I’m in pain. Okay, what out there do I have as an option to deal with my pain? And, you know, I live in LA.
14:02
It’s the most first world city in the world, right? So there’s got to be options here. So I’m calling friends and I’m looking around and it all kind of comes back to the same two things, surgery or medications. And I’m thinking, like, but what if I don’t want that? You know, what, is there something else that I could do? And so I really took it on myself. I’m like, I’m a chiropractor in Los Angeles. Like if I can figure this out, there has to be someone. Is it acupuncture? Like, what is it?
14:30
we had all that stuff available in our office. I had a guy do an electric acupuncture on my arm where I had a blunt trauma and split my arm open. So I had all access to all this stuff, but nothing was working. Nothing really took the pain away. And the pain was getting gradually worse and worse and worse. So by December, what’s that? Two months later, two and a half months later, like I didn’t wanna eat. I didn’t wanna talk to my kids. I couldn’t think of breathing. Like just the movement of my sheets made my body hurt.
15:00
So I think that’s that necessity part, you know, now I’m really getting desperate. So I go to my office, I’m sitting looking around my office and there’s nothing in the office. You know, I kind of know what that does to the body. So I’m like, that’s going to hurt. That won’t feel good. And I’m looking around, I’m sitting in this room. We have this vibrating table. If anyone’s in this world, they’ll know what I’m talking about. You have a vibrating table you do traction on. So you would hook up cervical traction, thoracic, or lumbar traction, and the vibration on the table.
15:29
makes the body relax. So the nervous system calms down and it allows you to actually do a little bit more traction, you know, than you could if the body was splinting against that pressure. So I’m looking at the table and I’m like, huh, I wonder if they’ll do that to me. Like if it’s my nerve, my body was such, it was so cramped, like all the muscles were splinting, guarded. So I just laid against that table and the vibration was like so soothing, but the soothing sort of good feeling didn’t last very long.
15:58
I didn’t understand why. So I do it again and then I start realizing in real time what accommodation is. And our body accommodates to these really cool things like your earbuds. They were made so that your body would accommodate to them so you don’t feel them. That works with the nervous system. My hat, I probably don’t even think about my hat until I… So this vibration that I was touching, because I was in such pain, my nervous system would recognize that for a few seconds.
16:27
and then come back to the pain side. So I started realizing pain goes to the brain, ironically at 55 miles an hour. You slam your finger in the door, or you get a muscle pain, that’s traveling on a pathway to the brain, typically. Generally, when you have another stimulus that touches your body, and it could be a light touch, a feather, it could be something else, that information travels to the brain at 268 miles an hour.
16:58
So that’s called the pain gate theory. If you’re experiencing pain and you just brush something, eyes cold, heat against the skin, that information travels to the brain much faster. So I’m now experimenting with that. I’m seeing how long that takes for my body to accommodate to this. And it’s really happening really quick. So that makes me think to myself, what if I had something the body could not accommodate to? What would that look like? So now I’m starting to think to myself, what would that look like? Hey, in the meantime,
17:27
Rob, my business partner, do you have something that vibrates here in the office that I could take home with me? My brother told me something called a vibrocuser. My brother’s a chiropractor in Utah. He goes, yeah, I have one in the closet. You can take it home. So now I have this thing in my hand that’s a vibrocuser. It’s about the size of, I don’t know, there’s my little coffee cup, about that size. I would kind of hold it against my body and it would vibrate. And it was basically the same thing as the table. So now, Max, I’m sitting there thinking, this is the same thing the table’s doing. This isn’t helping.
17:57
It’s almost annoying me that it doesn’t work, meaning it doesn’t last. So, okay, it’ll do for now. So I would just hold it and fall asleep. I had to keep my hand above my head. There’s all these weird positions and things I’d had to be in just to take the pain off enough that I could like get some sleep. So I’m sitting there one day. It was like late in the morning, late night, two, three in the morning. And I was like thinking to myself, just what I was telling you, vibration, oh, never leaves the body. The body can accommodate to that.
18:26
Like what if I had something that bounced back and forth and then I was like, oh my God, I can make that. So I went to my garage and I grabbed a jigsaw, I brought the jigsaw in. I had a long blade on it and I bent the blade, just rolled the blade down, wrapped a disc towel around it, made a little ball and then I wrapped electrical tape around the disc towel. So now I’m using this thing and I’m against my body and now it’s doing what I wanted it to do. It’s like, it’s coming up and down off the body. The…
18:53
Jigsaw that I had at the time had a dial on the top. There was a speed dial So I I was just experimenting with the speed so I’m back and forth and I’m watching what’s going on And as I’m doing this I make note that my pain is not coming back So that that first experience I was like wait a minute what happened Like this is really doing what I’m thinking it’s gonna do So I set it down and I just kind of let the pain come back because it always did I’m in such inflammation
19:22
I grabbed the therapy, that machine again, and I just started using it on my body. And I thought I’d have to go right in the area where the pain was. So I’d try and hold it up there. And then I just kind of came down on my arm and then I put on my legs and I realized as long as I had that on my body, moving it around at a certain speed, I could tolerate the pain. Like I could breathe, I could eat. And it would give me these windows of opportunity, give me like eight to 10, 12 minutes.
19:50
where the pain wasn’t so bad if I got up and had to shower or make some breakfast or something. Like I could do that without being in such pain. So I just started experimenting and then I just realized like, holy crap, this thing is like working. And there had to be something like this in the world, you know, like there’s no way I’m the first one that thought of this. Like this is so good. So that just kind of led down this path of like.
20:16
is there something that I can find out there has to be something similar to this. So back to your question, it wasn’t like I was looking for something like a theragun. I just was trying to figure out my pain and find a solution like anyone else would that’s in the communities. And because I had access to all these things, I just thought, oh, of course I’ll be able to find something. And I couldn’t find anything. I was asking sales reps and doctors and people were looking at me like, what are you talking about? So when I finally made the first one.
20:46
It kind of felt right to be honest with you because of what I’d been through my understanding of power tools and the position that I was in that I didn’t really care what it looked like. It was just for me. I wasn’t going to try and sell it ever. That wasn’t ever the thought. I think that’s the sign of like a really strong entrepreneur and a really strong business is that like you didn’t, you weren’t like, wow, I really want to start a business one day. Like you, you, you went to solve your
21:15
personal problem and surprisingly found out, wow, this really works. And then it was like, Oh, I could solve this problem for other people too. Like nobody else is doing this. So it’s like aha moment on, on aha moment. How does it feel to you that like to look back at that initial quote unquote there again, to like the newer, like incredible versions that you have out now. What, what does that mean to you? Like how far this little mockup idea has come?
21:45
You know what? It goes back to to what you said about my mom’s thing I had on the on the mirror, you know, like till I mentioned earlier, I was with my friend who I grew up with, my best friend growing up and seen him in several years. And we were standing on his front driveway in Utah the other day. And I gave him as a gift, I gave him our newest Theragun that has the red light and all the bells and whistles. And he didn’t know I was going to do that. So I said.
22:12
Dude, do you have one of these? You have to have one of these. You’re like my best friend, you don’t have one of these? He said, oh yeah, yeah, I have your first one. And I’m like, there’s no way you’d have my first one. Said, yeah, then he started describing it. And I looked at my daughter who was with me and I’m like, I can’t believe he has our first one. So then my mind went back to that. Like I thought immediately of his impression of what that is. He’s still stuck on G1. I got G6 in my hand. And so I’m like, hey, check this out.
22:40
And as I’m going through it, just the look on his face for me, it, it’s like, you can do anything, you know, but it’s not easy. Everything has a price. Yeah. And literally, but if you’re now you have the luxury of being able to look back and see like what worked and what, what didn’t along the way, and obviously the journey is still evolving, but what would you say, like, in terms of looking back from like, when you first started.
23:09
selling the product to the public, to where the business is today. What’s like a key decision you made or you and the team made that has been like foundational for the success you have today? I mean, there were many along the way. You know, it’s important to point out that we had such an amazing team in the early days. There was like there were these foundational sort of roles that we had that really helped us check each other.
23:39
a little bit. But I think one of the most important decisions we made, again, it wasn’t because we went to business school and it wasn’t because we were the smartest entrepreneurs. We had a problem. We had to make a decision. And I think in life, the business school and things help you on the day to day. But when you have a crisis, there’s…
24:07
nothing better than wisdom and experience that can help you. I’ll tell you a quick story. We launched the G1 in June of 2016, which was nine years in the making for me. And immediately, actually before we launched, we started working on the G2 Pro. And the specs on the G2 Pro came from our experience and some of the contacts we had from the G1, our learnings from the G1. So we started creating the G2 Pro and some of the…
24:37
requests on our demand sheet was that the noise was quieter. And so we spent some time on that. I mean, there’s probably people that don’t know this story, but we spent quite a bit of time on that. We were trying to figure out how can you make, there were brushed motors and brushless motors. And that’s just what you think. Imagine brushes rubbing together, that’s noisy and brushless. So there’s no brushes. They don’t have brushes rubbing together. So it’s not noisy, but the
25:07
are weak and the brushed motors are strong. So that’s why you get a chainsaw that sounds so loud and because it’s so powerful, but you can have a little hairdryer. The challenge was making a brushed motor because we wanted a powerful motor, making a brushed motor quiet. And all the engineers would look at us like, you can’t do that. They could spend this way for hundreds a year. Well, how many years? You just need a mute button if there was a way to just mute it like that.
25:38
Yeah, that’s a pretty good one. I’ve heard that. Long story short, we used a bunch of different versions. We tried it and doing this was over Skype. So this was long before the Zoom days. And we were just trying to figure that out. And we finally got to a point where the decibels were tolerable. But we had our spec, which we thought we made clear. There was amplitude, frequency and torque.
26:06
and there were numbers for each one of those three things that made a spec for the motor. So we gave them the spec, we got to a point where we thought that was quiet enough, great, that’s awesome. We fly over to make sure everything’s cool before we say ready, set, go, and we’re gonna start mass producing the Gen 2, the G2 Pro, which is our design, our first engineering, all that stuff. So I’m sitting in the room, turn one on, and it sounds like a bronze shaver. I mean, it hums like our Theraguns do now.
26:36
started using it on my body. I got to a point where I added some pressure and I broke the gun. I kind of thought for a second, that’s weird. So I grabbed another one and I did it again and I broke it again by adding pressure. And I realized immediately they forgot about the torque. So I picked another one up off the table and I just, to experiment, I just turned it on and pushed really quick and it broke. And I looked around the room and I’m starting to get really upset. Like, how could you not think about that? And then
27:06
you know, there are a dozen people in the room from different countries. So there’s a lot of chaos and commotion, people yelling back and forth, what’s going on? Why is he breaking those? And I’m like, why am I breaking these? So we figured out that we didn’t have, they forgot the torque, or they at least thought that wasn’t as important as the other specs we gave them. So I’m ready to lose my mind, you know, after the journey that I’d been on, I’m sitting in that chair thinking, is this the end? Does it end here? And I really was, you know, I think,
27:35
In life, we have those moments with those voices in our head tell you the absolute worst possible scenario. And learning how not to listen, how to observe that, but then also recognize that 60 to 70% of our thoughts are lies in a day, and recognizing that, like those are things I really learned. And when I look back on that moment, had I listened to those voices, I would have given up.
28:05
Again, because I’d had those voices come to me so many times, but I trusted what I was doing. And I’d have to fight those voices. So my business partner, thank God, grabs me and he takes me out of the room. And now I sort of emotionally let go. I’m crying and I’m thinking, how did the world, did we get to this point? I thought we covered everything. And we had a discussion. This was what I was saying a second ago. It wasn’t necessarily a business decision, but we had to make a decision.
28:33
And so we’re talking back and forth and Ben says, well, what are our options? Can we just say not to press hard? I’m like, no, you have to have that. So he said, well, they, and this was before a lot of the other models are in the world right now. This is long before anyone even knew what we were doing. A company had brought us this brushless motor that was really quiet, but it changed all of our specs. It changed the torque, amplitude, the frequency, changed all of that. And I…
29:01
So my business partner, Ben says, what if we changed it to that? And I said, no, you can’t. And you know, the 2000, the 10,000 hour rule. Yeah, of course. I had done this so many times to so many people that I knew those specs were perfect. So I said, no, we have to stay with these specs. So he said, okay, let’s go back down there and tell them they got to pull those out and put the new ones in the old ones in, and it’s just going to be noisy. And we’re going to have to figure out the science. So we decided that day that we were okay with making the G2 pro
29:31
noisy and people don’t know that. That was a real challenge. I was on the roof of this building in China like fretting over it. Like, oh my gosh, that was the most important thing. So we had to sacrifice and you know, sacrifice is giving up something good for something better. So we sacrificed this idea and now suddenly we’re like, hey, you know what? We got to make our own components. Enough of this crap. Like we have to have our own motors. We have to have our own specs. We can’t buy these off the shelf components anymore.
29:59
So that drove us to who we are today. We make our own motors with our own specs. I mean, there’s one sitting right here by me. This is our motor. Like we made this to solve the problem of having the power and the noise, which engineers said you could never do. So, you know, you add, that’s a really good question. And I’ll, I gave you a really long answer, but those, that was a moment in time that I thought was the end. And had I listened to those voices, for me, that’s as big a lesson as
30:29
what came out of it physically was the G2 Pro that led to what we are today as a company because the specs on this motor and the capabilities we have to do the things we do to that motor allows us to do what we do with different design types, different applications and things like that. So it really taught us a lot. Appreciate that. And you’re very humble, but it’s a good looking motor. It’s a really nice looking motor. Yeah.
30:58
Exactly. Perfect. We’re getting all futuristic here. You alluded to what TheraBody looks like today and it’s really impressive. Like if you check out your website, you know, like many of us, we probably first heard about your company through, you know, Theragun, one of the original Theragun models. And now you look and it’s like, oh, wow, like the change to Therabody really makes sense from you. You have more and more products that work on different
31:26
parts of your body and it’s like a cohesive company with so many different solutions. What went into the decision to start to consider other products and even get into the acquisition space when it comes to some of the products you have? Ben, my business partner was, that was one of his goals was acquisitions. So in the early days, I, you know, he said, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to do, you know, I sort of mapped out what I would, and he said, I think this is, there’s going to be some opportunities for us to do acquisitions. I really.
31:55
didn’t think that was possible. I mean, I just wanted to get the Theragun into the world. So to answer your question, what happened is you start, Theragun starts having success and we started seeing through a dip, seeing a different paradigm. Suddenly we were in spaces that we hadn’t been before. So this technology was suddenly now like exposing us to other technologies, economics, COVID hit a very good friend of mine. His name is Brian was the, he was working with a company called Recovery Pump.
32:25
And it was these pneumatic compression, the, the, those big air boots you see on the legs, it was a, that he was working for, they were a company out of Israel. And I knew that company really well because they had all the science they had. They came from a medical background. This company was, I don’t know, 30 years old back then or 40 years old. And it was all their products were used in the medical field out of Israel. So I knew what he had was legit and we would see each other in locker rooms and training rooms and.
32:53
spring training and NFL combines and stuff. And we would talk to the same people, but we complimented each other. And so it was always fun to be around with Brian. As we grew and started developing, we created our rave roller series. We created a roller and what we call the duo and the solo. And as we were doing that, we started kind of expanding our thoughts like, hey, maybe there’s other things we could do in this space. COVID hits and suddenly Brian lose contact with Brian.
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Wondered what was going on. I knew they were going to have a challenge. And suddenly out of nowhere, he calls me and he’s like, Hey, Jay, what’s up? I’m like, B, what happened? And, you know, we kind of caught up and he said, would you be interested in working together? Like maybe acquiring our company. And I was like, what? And it took me by surprise, but long story short, we did. We acquired the company. It worked out perfectly. Their distribution centers, the language they used as a company, recovery was part of their sort of mission.
33:51
And it just, Matt, we still have a lot of their employees today. I mean, that was one of our first acquisitions prior to the acquisition though, we realized that Theragun wasn’t the right word for the company, it didn’t describe what we were doing. It was a device, but it wasn’t really this purpose driven company. So we decided, went through a really cool story and experience to come up with this idea of Therabody, that Theragun and our products are for every body. As when we evolved into Therabody, suddenly now we had
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this umbrella to put things under. And within months, we had Recovery Pump that we now call Recovery Air. So we acquired them and we had this really cool rollout, a five to six phase rollout. And what you’re seeing in the market now is something we had designed and talked about back then. PowerDot, the eSTEM company that happened right after that, because I’m also friends with the president of that company and we were having a conversation about how well that acquisition went with Recovery Pump.
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And I told them, same thing I said to you. I said, it was great. You know, we, we had the same ethos. It was the same desires to do good in the world for helping people. So he’s like, Hey man, what if he did that with us? I was like, well, I didn’t, you know, that wasn’t why. So they just sort of happened. They were serendipitous. It was the right time. You know, I think what we’re trying to do as a, as a company is give people the ability to take care of their own bodies. And these other companies are seeing that and we can, we’ve been able to get to a place where, you know,
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70 plus countries, we’re in some of the largest retailers in every country. We have the ability to get in front of a lot of people. And you know, these other modalities really work. They’re just they’re just not getting the platform they need. That’s probably what what we look at when we think about an acquisition is, is this modality something that could really help someone? You know, the interesting thing about all this stuff, Max, is it’s all about wellness. And wellness is what you do every day. It’s a habit. It’s a consistent habit.
35:47
But that leads to a better life. So when you look at those types of things through that lens, then there’s no reason why we wouldn’t want it out into the world. And different versions of different things because not everyone has the same body. We all have different body types and ages and needs and those types of things. So the question that you asked about how that happened, it was serendipitous, it was relationship, it was networking, you know, leaning on the network that I had. But…
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all looking at the, if I was coming to see Max, how many things could I bring Max that would give you what you need? Headaches, do you sleep well? Do you recover? Are you exercising? And how can we implement that into your life on a daily basis to make you be able to live better? Less pain, more sleep, healthier body. That’s kind of the way we think. And going back to…
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to that thing on my mirror from my mom. I believe you can do anything. And when you start, when you set intentions, you start creating relationships and opening your mouth and talking to people and leaning on your network, crazy things happen. You’d be surprised how many people are thinking and synergistic ideas with you. And in this case, two plus two is like way more than 10.
37:06
It all goes back to the mirror and as if there was a two way mirror and we’re going to go through the mirror. Let’s wrap up with some rapid fire Q and a you ready for it? Yep. All right. Let’s get wild. Uh, what was your second favorite writing on a mirror? Now I’m just going to, we’ve hinted at a lot of the success and growth of TheraBody as a company overall. If you had to narrow it down to like the single biggest, like pinch me moment for you that, okay, we obviously did something right here.
37:36
What would that be? You know, it’s really gets back to, to seeing someone’s first impression when they had, when they first feel a Theragun that never gets old. You’d think it would be something like, you know, seeing our name roll across the banner at Manchester United, Old Trafford Stadium, like that’s a moment. You know, like that is so cool.
38:01
that’s satisfying for the brand. You know, I see how many, what I see when I see that is I see how many people worked hard to get that up there. We have the graphics, that’s easy. Like we make the stuff, that’s easy. But the relationships and the conversations and the money and all that to get up there, like those are really cool. But it doesn’t, it’s just not the same as when you see someone experience this for the first time and they realize, oh my God, I don’t have to be in pain all the time. This feels so good. That’s my answer.
38:30
That’s an incredible answer. Well, I did get chills from the old Trafford thing. So that’s pretty, that’s pretty cool too. All right. You you’ve had the, the ability through everything with your journey and your business to interact with and meet and actually partner with some of the biggest athletes, I mean, ever like in history, professional athletes for all different sports, who’s somebody that it’s still again, as another kind of pinch me in the moment to this day of like, wow, like I’m in contact with this part, like I can’t believe I’m like kind of.
39:00
you know, like working with this person.
39:06
I don’t know how to answer that. I usually don’t kiss and tell. I find myself in situations where I pinch myself many times. I’ve had some just recently with people that are very influential people. An easy one would be Ronaldo probably. I remember we were meeting at the practice facility in Manchester.
39:34
Just situation that day made me realize how, what our relationship was like. And that sort of, that was a pinch me moment for sure. Who was that? No, I can’t resist. He’s, um, he’s, he’s not famous or anything. All right. And then you mentioned. Back with your upbringing, how much you loved, well, one, suburbia and all the stop signs and sidewalks. That’s a crazy thing, but now to all the, like the mountains and I know Utah is such a beautiful place. Uh, what’s the most.
40:04
beautiful mountain in Utah.
40:09
I mean, it’s the one behind my house, you know, that no one else would think that. They probably all have their own. You know, I can picture it. That’s the one behind my house. The Wasatch Mountains, Davis County. I mean, there’s so many places. There’s a canyon just behind my place. Yeah. I mean, if you have no one seen the Wasatch Mountains, you got to go see it. Perfect. And then last one. I just keep bringing you back to your childhood this entire interview, but you mentioned playing a piano. What was the song?
40:38
on piano that you got the best at. You could do blindfolded, turned around, one arm, one leg, whatever you want. This is gonna date me, but I could do a couple of bars of the man from Snowy River. Very nice. I knew exactly you were gonna say that. No. Jason, thank you so much. This has been awesome. Just been looking forward to this for so long and somehow this interview is.
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continued to over and over deliver, I think, any expectations. So I just really appreciate all you do and your story and being so open and such a great storyteller. And I know people to learn anything more about Therabody can go to therabody.com. Is there anything else you want to shout out, like connect with you on social media or anything like that? Yeah, I’m on Instagram, Dr. Jason Worsland. That’s where I’m most active and LinkedIn as well.
41:31
If there was one single message, it’s just take care of your bodies. Perfect. Thank you so much. And you actually read my mind because I always wrap up with final thoughts and you have somehow final thought it before the question was even prompt. So that’s a perfect way. We’ll, we’ll drop the mic there. Take care of your bodies and, uh, and you can do anything. Thanks so much, Jason. This has been a real treat. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.
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every body you heard the man. Thank you so much Dr. Jason for coming on the podcast, sharing your incredible pioneering game changing story. And thank you, Wild listeners, for tuning into another episode. Just a note on scheduling, if you were listening to this episode at the week that it drops, there will not be an episode next week because Dana and I are going on our Spain and Portugal trip. Woo hoo!
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I’m just an awful woo-hooer. But anyway, awesome trip that we are so excited for and taking a week off the podcast, but we’ll be back with weekly episodes every Wednesday, the week following that. And if you aren’t listening to this, the week that this episode drops, then this will all be totally meaningless to you. So thank you for still listening. If you wanna hear more wild stories like this one, make sure to subscribe or follow the Wild Business Growth podcast on your favorite app.
42:51
and tell a friend about the podcast. And in the meantime, if you’re interested in checking out the video versions, you can watch those on YouTube @MaxBranstetter. Make sure to subscribe there as well, even if I trip over my own CTA. You can also find us on Goodpods, where there are good podcasts and podcast recommendations and people. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com. And while you’re there, sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter.
43:18
It is every Thursday pretty much that day. Oh, this one’s an exception because of the Spain-Portugal trip. Every Thursday, short & sweet to your inbox. It is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship – and the worst puns known to man. You can sign up for that at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Hasta la vista…Let your business Run Wild!!
