How I Built This with Guy Raz - Therabody: Jason Wersland

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

The Theragun was born out of a late-night experiment with a Makita jigsaw, by a man searching desperately for pain relief in his arm. Jason Wersland was studying to become a chiropractor when he got injured in a motorcycle accident. While casting about for solutions, he discovered that the percussive massage from his jury-rigged power tool helped ease his pain and increase range of motion.Jason soon discovered the device worked on his patients, so he MacGyvered hundreds more jigsaws, initially using fence posts and cat toys as add-ons.  Over time, with endorsements from top athletes and celebrities, Jason grew his business into Therabody, a wellness brand with revenue in the hundred of millions of dollars.This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei.Edited by Neva Grant, with research from Melia Agudelo. Our audio engineers were Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Airbnb.ca.ca. slash host. Hey, really quick before we start the show, we have an announcement about a really exciting new thing we're launching. A newsletter. And like our show, the newsletter is designed to be interesting, informative, inspiring, and most importantly, fun. It's 100% free. And to sign up, just visit guyraz.com. That's g-u-y-r-a-z.com. You can find an image of this on your website, and it's amazing because I am looking at a Kawasaki jigsaw with a cat toy ball and a fence post. Now that I see this, I'm like, there's the fence post, there's the rivet, there's the cat toy. Like, it's crazy. You really, like, you really juryrig this together. Yeah. Think about this. It was the cheapest jigsaw you could find, the vents on the side of this Kawasaki jigsaw, when you started it and

you stopped it, you let go of the trigger, sparks would fly out. So that was my first iteration. But, Guy, people were buying them as fast as I could make them. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, an injury from a motorcycle crash and a late-night experiment with a jigsaw led Jason Worsland to invent the Therogun, a massager that uses percussive energy to ease pain. What you are about to hear today is not a story about a methodical and strategic path from idea to execution. This story is more of a jagged path, and it's about an unlikely invention that was inspired by accident. Actually,

by a real accident. But to back up for a moment, when Jason Worsland started out in life, he was planning to be a carpet and flooring salesman, just like his dad. And for many years, that is how he made a living with a carpet and flooring store in Utah. But just as Jason was about to turn 30, his world started to collapse. He lost his marriage, and then he lost his business. And so at an age when most people are starting to hit the... their stride, Jason Wersland was starting over. He decided to move out to L.A. to become, of all things,

a chiropractor. He thought it might be a more reliable way to earn a living. But just as he was finishing up his studies, Jason got into a motorcycle accident. And so after training for years to help rehabilitate other people's back and neck injuries, Jason became a patient himself. And he started to try different therapeutic devices that could help. Now, to digress for just a moment, a lot of founders I've interviewed over the years created their products because there was a problem they wanted to solve, a better thermos or a more comfortable sweatshirt or makeup without chemicals. In Jason Warsland's case, he didn't start tinkering to solve a simple problem. He was desperate because he was also in constant debilitating pain.

And so late one night, alone and unable to sleep, Jason did something drastic. He grabbed an electric jigsaw, he bent the blade, wrapped a dish towel around it, and then wrapped all of that in electrical tape. He turned on the jigsaw and pressed it against the pain points in his body, and it started to work. The percussive and vibrating up and down motion of the jigsaw blade, now, seriously. safely wrapped in cushioning was relieving his pain. And that crude jigsaw turned a massager, believe it or not,

became the first prototype for what would become the Theragon. Now, it would take another seven years before Jason would figure out how to turn that idea into a business, with several mishaps and bad decisions along the way. But what Jason had was an unshakable belief in the value of the product and a willingness to go out and sell it relentlessly. Today, the Therogun is the center of Jason's larger business called Therabody. It sells all kinds of therapeutic devices, including compression boots, foam rollers, and even a massage chair.

And if imitation is a measure of success, well, Jason's hit the jackpot. Since the introduction of the Theragun, countless other similar products have entered the market. Jason Wersland grew up in a family of seven kids in Utah. His dad was an immigrant from Norway and a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. Around 6 p.m. every Monday night. It was time to come in.

My dad actually had a whistle. And he'd stand out on the back porch and whistle that. And he'd have us line up right by the banister of our stairs. And then we'd sit down and it was you'd open with a prayer, have a scripture. Sure. And then there'd be a lesson. And the lesson could be about humility or character or confidence. I remember many times when I was growing up, my dad used to get the wooden spoon and you'd hold the wooden spoon like a microphone. And he would teach you how to talk. And then as you got to be 12, one of the sort of ice breakers into the church is that you would get in front of the whole congregation and you'd give a talk on Sunday. So giving your talk when you're 12, 13, 14 years old, that was a big. deal. I mean, those are really fond memories. My family and my brothers and sisters are my best friends. Yeah. I tell people all the time, growing up, I wouldn't change the way I grew up. Yeah.

You know, I went on a mission. Where did you go? I went to Norway, which was crazy, because that never happened. So you did a mission when you were 18? Yeah. Oh, so you were actually riding the bike and wearing the suit. Yeah. Yeah. I had a badge on, said Elder Worsland. I wore a white shirt and a tie, which I try not to wear anymore because I think I got my fill. But the fun thing for me is I got to be around my family. My grandpa was still alive at the time. He lived in Norway. I had a lot of cousins, aunts and uncles and things over there.

So it was an amazing experience because I got to really learn the culture of Norway. But it was hard because their culture there, man. They are not open to Western American sort of thinking. And here I am this Norwegian heritage. I was so proud to be there. and I walk up to the door and they're just like, you're a Mormon, get off my doorstep. Wow. But see, this is the thing.

I know regular listeners to this show have heard a version of this exact conversation with other founders we've had who were members of the church and did missions. And David Nealiman of JetBlue or the founders of Cotopaxi and Kodiak's and several others. And one of the things that has come up is that mission, that two-year mission, that's like amazing practice to becoming an entrepreneur. Because you're basically getting 100 people a day telling you, no, I'm not interested in hearing your message. Literally, we'd do what we call street contacting. And I'd stand on the main street in Oslo, Norway. And if you got one person to talk to you or one person to take a Book of Mormon, that was a good day. Wow.

And you're talking to hundreds of people. Wow. And they're just walking by you like you have the plague sometimes. Yeah. But when I got back is when the real challenge started. Because I realized the commitment that you had to make required a very strong belief in those principles. And I just, I learned at a young age that just wasn't for me. There was something more for me.

But like I said, I wouldn't change it for the world. You know, I wouldn't take that away. So you come back, you're in your early 20s, and what did you do? Did you, because I don't think you went to university initially. No, I didn't. So when I came back for my mission, I was in the flooring business. So when I was growing up, my dad worked at a really good friend of his that was a, had a, a flooring store. And my brothers and I would roll remnants in this flooring store.

So I would unload pad trucks and I would load guys up with carpet. And so that was just my world as I grew up. And I started realizing that you could make like four or five hundred bucks a day doing that. So when I got back for my mission, I started laying carpet. And, you know, people talk about this in that industry where if you start doing that, it's kind of addicting because you get up early in the morning, you go out and knock it out and you're done by two and you got, you know, a thousand bucks in your pocket. So to back up just a little bit, too, my mom's family had a farm. and being around that world, you had to be resourceful. You had to learn how to do things and make things.

You're out in the middle of nowhere in a field and you need a tool. You can't run a Home Depot. So learning that as I grew up, when I got into the flooring world, I had a contract of Motel 6. We did up and down the West Coast Motel 6 is hundreds of them. I could lay carpet in a Motel 6 room in less than five minutes. Wow. And this was a business that you essentially, So you started on your own?

Yeah, yeah. And I learned at an early age what an LLC was and what a business was and had you out a bank account was different than your account. Those are all things I thought were a nuisance. I'm like, gosh, dang, it's just what I have to do. Looking back, it really helped me understand. It's really not that hard to set those things up. Yeah.

And I guess you worked, you ended up working in the industry for a bunch of years doing like installation and sales. And I think around this time, you also go to college to get a degree, right? like a, I think a BA in sales or business. Yeah. And then, from what I understand, after that, you, you decide to open up your own store, your own, like, flooring and carpeting store where, you know, where you're not just installing it, but you're selling it as well, right?

Yeah. And think about what was happening in Utah in the late 90s. It was booming. People were moving from L.A. They had tons of cash. So there were hundreds of homes. And a friend of mine said, hey, let's open a flooring store together.

So I thought, okay, let's do that. And my niche was custom flooring. I had access to these really amazing carpet options. And people were spending a lot of money because they had the money and they wanted custom floors. And so there weren't many people that did that. And it was successful.

My first year, I did a million dollars. Wow. It was crazy. And you probably were clearing a nice profit from that. And I put it all right back. I would buy more inventory. I'd buy a trailer. I'd get a new truck.

I just tried to put it back in there, hoping that I'd have a good... Yeah, I'd have a... I'd just remembering some things as you're telling me these things. I have to tell you this. So I had... This is a really good experience, I think, for anyone listening.

I had gotten married in 97. Yep. I had my son in 98. He was actually adopted because I was told they couldn't have kids. So we adopted my son, Jesse. And then my wife at the time got pregnant with my daughter, which was a miracle. It wasn't supposed to have kids. And then she got pregnant.

Right after she got pregnant, we were having some real struggles. And we were contemplating divorce. And I had a business partner of mine that was a builder in the community who, I was doing some work for and we were sitting in my office one day and this guy came in and I was upset. I think I may have been crying. And he said, what's going on? I said, I think I'm probably going to have to get divorced. You know, that's another story. And he said, hey, listen, why don't you write a letter of relinquishment to me? We'll date it as today. I'll put it in your drawer. We'll never take it out unless your wife comes after us for the money. And then you just say, I relinquish this to him. I don't have anything. Oh, I see. So because you were worried about getting a divorce, this was a way for you, this was his suggestion for you to protect your assets. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, okay, that's a good idea. Not a good idea. Not a good idea. Yeah.

So I'm focused on my business and I got a call from one of our suppliers. And it was a company that I used to be a sales rep for. So I knew the person at the accounts receivable. And he said, yo, Jay, you're, you're getting behind on things. I was like, oh, really? Let me go look at that. So I go to the office. And as I walk into my office, my business partner's wife's computer screen faced the door. And I walked in the door and I saw the balance on the screen of the QuickBooks she had. And it was a lot. It was like $300,000 or something. And I'm like, that's weird. So I went over to his wife and I said, hey, have you been paying these bills? And she got really nervous. What had happened, guy, is he'd taken that letter, gone and opened a bank account in the

same name, and was depositing all of the checks into his account. So he was literally embezzling money from me, and I realized this in a day, and he turned on me, had the sheriff come, made me get out of the office, I had to stand outside while he loaded all the carpet rugs, drove my forklift down the road. I went to court six different times to try and get that back. And every time he showed that letter. This was a letter that you wrote essentially handing the business over to him as an insurance policy. Did you lose all of your money from the business or were you able to recover some money? 180,000.

I lost it all. So yeah, it was tough. I put so much money into that. So it sounds like chalk it up to just being young and inexperienced and naive. For me, you know what? For me in my life, as I look back on it, I'm really glad that happened. You can't learn that stuff.

Sure. You know, there's nowhere to go to learn these things. And so it just taught me how to deal with heartache, how to deal with deceit, how to deal with people that are not living in the same frequency that you are. It's taught me a lot of that and not to get down into it with them and just be a bigger person. Yeah. Essentially, you lost your business. I lost everything. Divorced.

I was living in my parents' basement. And you guys had one kid at the time? Two. Two. By that time, yeah. So you come out of this experience losing your flooring business and your marriage. But kind of to your point, I mean, it sort of opens you up to an opportunity to make a major life pivot, right? One that is going to affect the entire course of your life, right?

I mean, you basically decide to completely change your career, right? Yes. All of that led me to think to myself, okay, if I'm starting life over, what do I want to do? I'd always wanted to be a chiropractor. My neighbor growing up was the chiropractor for the Utah Jazz, Craig Bueller, an amazing band. And I'd watch him work on Carl Malone and John Stockton with his hands, and I'd see him do these things. And I thought, I want to do that. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to be a chiropractor.

In the meantime, my brother, my second youngest brother, became a chiropractor. He had a successful practice. So I'm sitting in his practice. I'm like, his name's Kirk. I'm like, bro, this is awesome. Like, could I do this? He said, yeah, you may have to do some science things, but you could probably fast track this and get done in three and a half, four years. But I wonder, given your experience in flooring and you had had success as an installer and running a shop,

why didn't you just go back to doing a version of that? Because you knew you could make money doing that. I didn't like what the future looked like. I saw the people in that industry, including my dad, and I just didn't like that world. Yes, I knew how to work. I wasn't afraid of that. Yeah.

But I didn't like that I worked for this company, and they could fire me whenever they wanted to. Yep. The lifestyle, the grind, the how quickly someone could take something away from you, As much time and effort as I put in and all the relationships I had, I didn't like that. And they were guys that were my dad's age who were getting let go. And their 50s, now they have to go out and reinvent themselves. I didn't want that.

The answer to that question guy probably is there was nothing in the future of those paths that I was excited about. Yeah. So you decide, okay, you want to do this. And you, this is your like in your late maybe 29, almost 30, you decided to move to L.A. to go to chiropractor school. Why did you decide to leave Utah and go to L.A.? Because your whole family's in Utah. Your support system is there. Like, you had kids in Utah. That's a big decision. Yeah, there's a lot in there, actually, guy. You know, talking to my brother, I said, hey, what schools can I go to? And he said, well, there's only a few in the country. And they're not in Utah. So I'm looking at

around, I'm like, oh, there's one in L.A. I didn't want to move to L.A. And this is a really profound moment in my life. I was living in my parents' basement, in the room I grew up at, getting ready in the shower. I showered as it was going on. And I shut the lights out, got ready, and I turned to go up the stairs. As I'm halfway up the stairs, someone behind me says, get ready to say goodbye to your kids, because you're going to leave for a long time and you're going to do, you're on a mission. I stopped in the stairway and I had goosebumps and I turned around and I was like, what was that?

And I walk up the top of the stairs and I kind of stand there for a second and I'm like, oh shit, I have to leave. Like I got to go. And honestly, guy, I thought, you know what? Whatever that thing was that talked me in the stairway, I'm just going to keep moving forward in faith. and hope that something works out.

I want to just kind of ponder this for a moment, right? Because inner voices are real. And whatever they might be, a spirit or faith or God or religion, or just your consciousness talking to you, it's real. Like these things happen and there are moments that many of us can point to and when we hear these messages. And I'm curious because you grew up in a very, strong faith community. And yet you still were kind of moving away from your faith at that time.

So how do you, how are you reconciling those two things? Like on the one hand, you're kind of moving out away from faith. On the other hand, you have this kind of God epiphany road to Damascus moment in your life. Yeah. You know, it's, I love that you're asking these questions because they're real to me. There's something about it that was so strong and profound. that it felt like, I don't know, looking back on it now, it's, it's, it was, it changed my life. That voice became, uh, a thing that I checked in with a lot. Because that day in the, you got me talking about this. I'm getting emotional.

But that day, it set a standard. Yeah. So that was my yardstick. Yeah, it was profound. I, I, I'm sure. I'm sure it was. Sorry. No, no, no, please.

I'm an emotional person, and I've gotten used to that, and I'm okay with crying. I think being exposing yourself to those types of things and being vulnerable is strength. It is. Within weeks, I'm now leaving my kids, and that was, I don't want to talk about it too much because I'll probably ball my eyes out, but that was probably the worst experience of my life. Yeah. And you can imagine I have two young kids that are young kids. longer than two.

Yeah. I had them come to my parents' house so that I could say goodbye to them. I had my Jeep. It was a 1987 Jeep wagoneer. Packed with everything I had, literally all I owned. And I drove away from that house, and I cried the entire way to Los Angeles. I bet. As a dad, I'm feeling this.

It was tough. I learned in the church, too, this saying that sacrifice is giving up something good for something better. Yeah. And I had to believe in that. Like I had to believe in that. I put all my chips on that. And I bet on myself. Yeah. So you drive out to L.A. to start this new life. And how did you find chiropractor school? Like did you, did you enjoy it? Was it hard? Was it harder than you expected? It was super challenging. I went to my first day of chiropractor. school. First class, they're taking role. I'm in there for five minutes. This kid opens the door and says, hey, is Jason Wersland here? I raised my hand. He brings me out in the hallway. And he says, I'm sorry,

I miscalculated your hours. You have to go to school for two more years to get your bachelor of science before you can start chiropractic school. So I have to pull you out of this class. Can you imagine? I tell this all the time. I'm joking, but I'm kind of not. There was a window behind him, and I visualized me throwing him out the window. So I called my ex-wife and I was like, hey, listen, I don't know that I can do this. And she said something to this day that was one of those things. But she said, you are not coming home. You're going to stick this out because my kids are not going to have a failure for a dad.

Wow. And I was like, thank you very much. So I had to get a lot of my early BS stuff done before I could get into that program. but I was going to the same school. And this was like, what, like organic chemistry and things like that? Yes, yes. All right. Things that at age 29, you're not fresh on.

So you imagine how challenging it was. I had to pay for a tutor. But I was going to make this happen. Hmm. All right. So you, I guess you wind up taking a lot longer to finish school because of all these requirements that you had to do. But during that time, from what I understand, you also got a job as an assistant to a chiropr like an apprentice to a chiropractor, right? Yeah.

And he was a great guy. He had a great place. What was this guy's name? His name was Rob Pomahawk. Okay. And he was there to teach me technique. He was there to teach me the flow of a patient. He was there to teach me how to read x-rays.

And like in my world, I realized that the school was one thing, but out in the real world. was another thing. And he was teaching me these real world experiences. And he also let me build a practice. So you help me build a patient base. And I had my own patients coming in. I had my own schedule. As my schedule increased, his schedule would decrease. So I'm not working on his patients so much anymore. I'm kind of building my own practice. All right. There's something that is just confounding to me about a lifestyle choice that you made at this point in your life because you're a chiropractor. You're focused on alignment. You're focused on a healthy spine. And you're And you wrote a motorcycle.

Now, I've ridden motorcycles before. They're fun. It just seems like a really risky and bad decision to make, given the line of work you were in. Well, that sounds really smart right now, doesn't it? At the time, I lived in Venice. My school was in Hollywood. And the practice was in Beverly Hills. So if anyone knows L.A.

Traffic. That's a commute. That's crazy. Up the 10, down the one. one through the city. And I'm just like, I, this is driving me crazy. And I'd see these motorcycles flying by me because you can split traffic in L.A. So I was like, huh.

So I went and bought a motorcycle. And it was, I was overconfident in my ability to drive. And everyone rides a motorcycle at some point has some kind of incident at some point. Everyone. Yeah. You would have a pretty bad one. Yeah. To October 17, 2007, what happened that day?

I had a test that day at school. It was a physical therapy test. So it was one of my last PT tests, which I think is ironic. I woke up, jump on my bike. I'm flying up the 10. Pass the 405, get into downtown. I'm just where the 10 and the 110 split in front of the old Staples Center. Yeah.

And I'm flying through traffic and I'm gaining speed as I get into that corner. out of nowhere, a guy comes off the 10, and he just shows up in my lane out of nowhere. And I hit this guy head first right into the driver's side door. And you fly off? Flew off across two lanes. Oh. And I'm unconscious.

And I wake up. And the first thought was, am I dead? I'm bleeding. Broken helmet, backpack, shit all over. People were getting out of their cars. And I stand up and I'm like, I'm looking at myself. I'm like, what the heck? I'm not even really hurt.

And so you didn't have, like, you didn't break any bones, but you did get injured. You had some, like, issues that started to come up in your neck and part of your back, right? Yeah. What happened? So I ended up realizing I felt like it was okay. I had a massive concussion. And then the pain started to come on. Where did you feel the pain?

In my trap and my rhomboid on the right side. It was like someone had a knife underneath. my shoulder blade. Wow. And I kept thinking, like, I'm in chiropractic school. There has to be someone here that can fix this. And I'm trying to practice. So I have to go to school.

I'm going to practice, working on patients, and I'm dealing with this pain. And it's like unrelenting. I never experienced pain like that. So I started looking for things that could take the pain away. I had to sit around with my right hand on the top of my head because it would take the pressure off the nerve and it'd take it from a tantal out of 10 to like a 5 so I could at least breathe. And this went on for days and days.

So like you said, the accident was October 17th of 2007. By Christmas of 2007, I was incapacitated. Couldn't move. I couldn't sneeze. I didn't want to talk. I don't want to eat. I talk about how much I care about my kids. I literally, when they had called on the phone, I couldn't talk to them.

I just didn't have the energy to fight the pain and engage. So presumably you use medication, right? Well, I tried it, but when you have nerve pain, nothing, nothing, not the best drugs in the world deal with nerve pain. And in my mind, I think this is really important for people understand. It wasn't computing. It wasn't making sense. I'm thinking, I sacrificed my life to do this thing that I thought I could help people in this exact situation and there's no help for me. Yeah.

Like, that's a problem. And nerve pain is, is it almost always connected to compression, like spinal compression? It's nerves always get compressed. Mine was a 9mm disc bulge, and it pushed on the nerve. And I didn't realize that nerve pain isn't on a time clock, and it doesn't care about anything. Yeah. So when someone has sciatica, a woman is pregnant, and she starts talking about the pain in her legs, there's no way you can understand that pain unless you've had it before.

All right. So you're trying to work through this and also, by the way, still working at this clinic, right? Yeah, yeah. So working through your own pain while you were adjusting other people? Yeah. And it was, I'm looking around my practice. Like, what can I use? Yeah.

I'd have different people adjust me and try and do traction and just never went away. the only thing that I could find in my office that helped was this vibrating table that we would lay patients on to do traction. So I started just laying on the table. Like I'd just go to the practice and lay on the table. And I'd have to get up off the table because the pain would come back. I'm going through this cycle guy and I'm thinking there's got to be something better. I almost have it. So I was thinking like, what if I'm sitting in my apartment one night?

And it was like three in the morning. And I'm just problem solving, problem solving. I'm leaning on all the resourcefulness I'd learned in my life. We talked about the farm and all the power tools. In my mind, I'm searching for a solution. And I'm looking at my hands. I'm doing kind of rubbing my hands back and forth like this. And I'm thinking, what is this?

I'm like, oh, my God, that's a jigsaw. And a jigsaw for, you know, people who don't know, they're just, it's a knife that's a blade that goes up and down. You can just, you can cut through wood, essentially. Yeah, yeah, if you've ever been, you ever seen anyone cutting wood, they use a circular saw, which is around, looks like a plate, or this up and down thing. Yeah. This is the up and down thing. Right.

I ran out, grabbed a jigsaw, brought it in my apartment. A handheld jigsaw. A handheld McKita jigsaw. Yep. I'm looking at it, and it's three in the morning, so Home Depot is not open. I don't have anything. I'm just kind of like, oh, I know what I'll do. So I bend the blade.

I wrap a dish towel around the blade as tight as I can, and then I wrap some electrical tape around that to protect myself from the blade because I just wanted to see if this worked. You want to see if more intense vibration, more concentrated vibration on your trap or wherever you were feeling pain, could do the trick.

Because you knew that there was some relief from that vibrating table, but not as much as you wanted. Exactly. So I turned that on and as I'm moving it around, just back and forth really slow up and down my arm, my nervous system starts to slow down. And I start to get really tired.

I hadn't slept for days. I think it was around 40 days. I'd got naps here and there, but I had never, I hadn't had a night's rest. And as I was doing that, I thought, okay, someone had to think thought of this. Like I can't be the first one that's done this. Someone had to think of this. This has got to be out there in the world somewhere. But for right now, this is working and I'm going to make it work.

I did that through the night, woke up the next morning. I didn't like how barbaric that looked. So I was thinking to myself, huh, what could I do? I had a bunch of practice foam golf balls. I love golf. And I made a hole in the ball with a pen, sort of pried it open a little bit, so it would fit over that distile. And now I could just, it wasn't stabbing me. Now it was just hitting me.

And I would sit there. And the, Makita had a dial on the top that went from zero to 10. that was speed easy right like okay i want slower on fast yeah so i'm moving it around and i stop and i found a spot and i'm like oh god that feels so good breathing just moving it around in my body until i find a place that it feels good i open my eyes and i look and it's on the number four i'm like oh that's interesting there's something about that number and i don't know what it is yet yeah i found out later that that's actually frequency and four was 40 hertz. And if you look now, if you Google 40 hertz, it will come up with the reset

frequency. There's a lot of things woven into that number. And I learned by firsthand experience what 40 hertz can do for the body. I was sort of problem solving in my head thinking, okay, I went through all this, sacrificed away from my kids, started practice, All these things, and now I'm sitting here, and I have this tool in my hand, and that number four changed the way I feel. There is something to that, and it will reveal itself to me later. When we come back in just a moment, Jason discovers that this jury-rig jigsaw can also help his patience. So he goes out and buys hundreds more. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's early 2008, and the jigsaw that Jason has jury-rigged into kind of a massage gun is actually working to relieve the nerve pain in his arm. So January, February, March was just to keep me out of pain. And I learned that experience. March, April, May. Now I can kind of lift my arm, and I'm realizing what it does for the range of motion of a joint. And then the next thing I started doing was getting myself better.

I started using this as a recovery tool before foam rolling was even around. Yeah. And just to be clear, you weren't just using this and doing nothing else. You were also stretching. You were doing mobility exercises as well. Movement is medicine and that I had to move. Right. By October of that same year, I had been to Utah, came back, walk in, patient, the new patient. Sit down. My secretary hands me the paperwork. And I'm going through this guy's store. story his injury how old is he well he's same age as me that's weird um what does he do he's a bus driver he was in a head on bus collision with another bus and it threw him through his windshield

into the other guy's windshield wow so he had it i'm not kidding you i could have put my name of the top of his intake form wow seven millimeter dis bulge no insurance yeah so i i i was doing his initial exam and i'm looking at him and guy this thing was screaming in the back of my head he needs this He has to use this. But I'm like, how do I tell this guy to use a jigsaw? So I asked him to come back the next day to bring his wife. I said, I have something I think that'll help you. Comes back the next day.

I bring my McKita jigsaw to the office in a Ralph's paper grocery bag. Think about that. Walk in, sit down, and I'm telling him, listen, I went through what you're going through. I just kind of came out of it. And I think this is going to help you. So I should take it out, plug it in, turn it. it on. His wife's looking to me like, what are we doing here? I put it on his shoulder. And in seconds, his shoulders drop and he lifts his chin and looks at me. He's like, oh, wow. But what was the idea?

Was the idea, like, you would give him this jigsaw or he would buy it from you or something? Because, like, what did you think you would do with it? My intention was to use this as a team. Okay. He would come in. I would show him how to use it. Okay, do this. And do this. And do that and I was seeing him have the same experiences that I was having and so I just went down the same path and I kept having to exchange the attachments because I ran out of practice foam golf balls so I went to the pets are us and I bought these cat toys the rainbow color foam. Oh yeah I got those got tons of my house I know exactly you're talking about so I would go and buy a bag of those and I'd just tell him hey just replace this as you're poking as the as the thing pokes through because by then I'd

actually got our wooden dowel and kind of made it a little bit better. But I went through the same experience with him. I mean, this was sort of your patient zero, right? I mean, you were, and I wonder, I mean, I wonder, Jason, at this point, were you thinking, I'm just going to see what it does for him, because maybe I can actually start using this on my other patients? Or were you thinking, maybe I'll turn this into a business or not quite yet? Not then. I mean, my goal was to do what my brother and Dr. Rob did was have a practice and, you know, patients and maybe have this weird tool, this McKita drill. And people are like, oh, you got to go see Jason, Dr. Jason, this guy's got this like

McKita drill tool that he uses. It's awesome. That's what it was. I kept thinking to myself that someone's made this. I'll run into it somewhere. But in the meantime, I'm going to keep this thing low key and use it when I need to. But what if your fellow chiropractors think of it? I mean, were people like, dude, that's a jigsaw.

What are you doing the jigsaw? Exactly. I mean, the number of times I heard literally that statement. Yeah. Bro, that's a jigsaw. What are you doing? But watching this guy get better was fascinating to me. And now it's December of 2008, and I fly home to be with my family for Christmas.

I taught this guy what to do. I said, hey, I'm to be gone for a few weeks. Yep. want to, you know, come back, walk in my office. My secretary's at the front desk. She's like, hey, your patience in your room. So when she said that, I was like, uh-oh, like he may have digressed. Maybe he did something he shouldn't have.

I've been gone for a few weeks. Maybe he exacerbated the problem. I'm walking down the hallway, and I hear the jigsaw going. And he looks up at me with this biggest smile in his face. And he holds it up and looks at me and goes, Doc, you have to figure this thing out. It saved my life. Wow. It was like that voice from the stairway was coupled with the universe and it just open hand punched me in the chest.

And I realized I got to figure this out. Okay. So this guy's like, dude, he's like, you have to do something. And so you knew you were on to something, right? And so what did you do next? Did you say, all right, let me make more of these. jigsaws and see if I can like sell them to my patients? By the time I'd used that on him, there were a handful of people that were interested in it.

Because they saw, probably saw him using it. Yeah, in my clinic and there were other chiros that were coming in to that clinic from our school and friends. So I'm like, I'll just start. Like I just need to get some of these and start experimenting with them because I'd only had this one. Yeah. So I was like, well, where can I buy jigsaws for really cheap? So I go to Home Depot and the cheapest one I could find was like $39. And I'm like, man, and it was a Kawasaki.

And I thought, in the carpet world, there's wholesale retail. I thought there's got to be wholesale. So I literally looked up Kawasaki jigsaws and there was a warehouse, like a, I don't remember what it was, but they were in Long Beach. But I just picked up the phone and I called them. And there was a customer service girl on the other phone, and she was so cool. I said, hey, listen, I wanted 10. Like, I wanted to buy 10 of these jigsaws that I see on your website. What's the wholesale price?

And she said, the wholesale price is 1999. I was like, oh, wow, can I get 10 of those? And she's like, no, you can't. You have to have an account. Like, oh, what do you have to have an account? So you have to have a credit line. I'm like, well, I'm not going to get credit. What do I have to do to order these?

She said, well, if you place an order for $2,500 and you pay for, for that, then you have an account and we'll give you a credit line. I'm like, wow, where can I get $2,500? You were still working towards your final degree, right? Yeah, yeah. I was still, like, this was going to be a side project, a side hustle. Like, I might sell them in my clinic. I didn't know what I was going to do. I had to figure it out. Yeah. So I call my brother, and I'm like, hey, I know it sounds crazy, but I think this jigsaw thing I'm working on is going to turn into, I want to figure it out. Can I borrow $2,500 from you? I'll pay you back, as quickly as I can. He's like, yeah, sure. It gives me his credit card. I call this girl. I order

them. And because I ordered $2,500 worth of product, my cost went way down. So now I had, it was almost $11 for each one of these jigsaws. Wow. So I get 250 these jigsaws. And they're all around me in my life. Yeah. All right. So what did you do with these 250 jigsogs? Did you start to retrofit them with, you know, these like, hard phone? home, you know, cat toys? Yeah. So I went to Home Depot and I bought 250, 3-inch bolts. Then I went to the rivet section in Home Depot.

And I bought these little screw-on rivets that fit that bolt. And then I went to the fence post cap section in Home Depot. And I bought a bunch of fence post caps. And I measured a ball, a foam toy ball, and it fit inside of that upside-down fence-post cap. I'd literally put super glue around it and I'd stick the ball in there. After I put a rivet in it, I had a guy out in the valley in L.A. Powder coat them, so they were black. And he welded them into the piece of this jigsaw.

And then I would put them back together and I would sell one jigsaw, retrofitted, with two of those ball attachments that I made. And by the way, this was a plug-in? Was it a plug-in jigsaw? Or was it like a rechargeable, like, you know, like, it was a plug-in that had a shorter cable than your iPhone cables. I mean, it was, I couldn't get more than three or four feet away from a plug. So you had to sit next to the outlet, plug it in, and put the Kawasaki jigsaw thing on your body. Yep.

And it was the cheap, think about this. It was the cheapest jigsaw you could find. The vents on the side of this Kawasaki jigsaw, when you started it and you stopped it, you let go of the trigger. sparks would fly out. So that was my first iteration. But, guy, people were buying them as fast as I could make them. How much were you selling it for? $250.

That's great. So you were buying them for $11, putting a considerable amount of time in each one. And you had clients. So those were your first customers. Yeah. I would tell the guys, look, I can sell these for probably $400. But I'll sell them to you for $250. but I want your feedback.

After you use it, it's mandatory that you tell me what you would change on it. So the feedback I got from that experience was I can't have a cable. I don't like have to

screw the attachments on and off. Like that takes too long. Other than that and the noise, it's great. Okay, that's awesome. How much would you... If I perfected all of those things, how much would you pay for that?

This is what got me. Everyone said I'd pay $1,000 for that. Wow. That's the first time I thought to myself, wait a minute, there's something here. Like, I can make a couple thousand bucks a month doing this. Yeah. You can see, you can find an image of this on your website and you can find it on the internet. And it's amazing because I am looking at a Kawasaki jigsaw with a cat toy ball and a fence post. Now that I see this, I'm like, there's the fence post. There's the rivet. There's the cat toy. Like, it's crazy. You really, like, you really jury rigged this together. I knew it wasn't perfect. I knew I wasn't even close to perfect.

But I needed input. I needed feedback. And it worked. Clearly, it was like there was a percussive vibration that people felt was helping their pain. Absolutely. So tell me about how you first were approached by somebody or decided to turn this into something bigger, more formal. Like, you kind of struggled through this for six years, right? I mean, the odds that this would succeed, I still think, were low.

Yeah. So in 2014, I had six 1099 tax forms because I had six different jobs that I was doing trying to keep the money coming in while I was doing this on the side. So one of the 1099 jobs that I had was doing medical billing in the workers comp and PI world. And that's kind of another story. But I ended up meeting this guy named Todd. And Todd had a business that he was creating a software platform for medical billing in the work comp and PI world. And I thought that was a great idea. So that was what I was kind of doing at night.

And I treated Todd one day in his office. And he was like, oh, my God, dude, that thing's amazing. So suddenly now Todd had the brains, the capital, and potentially the relationships in that work comp space, where I thought, hey, maybe this is like the path. Yeah. So Todd and I, we were doing some billing late one night. We'd gone down to Maria calendars and had a couple of drinks. We came back upstairs and it was like 132 o'clock in the morning.

And he's in his office, 50 yards away from me. I'm in my office and we're kind of yelling back and forth to each other what this thing would be called. The thumper. The rabbit. Like, we're thinking of all these things it could be. And he's like, therapy gun. And I hear him saying it and he finally yells out. dude, I got it.

And I go in his office, and I'm standing in his doorway, I can remember this. I'm leaning against the door. I'm like, what? And he goes, Theraguns. I'm like, Theraguns.

He's like, yeah, Theraguns with a Z, because your name's Wersland with a Z. And I'm like, yeah, but my name's Worsland with an S. He's like, yeah, but people say it that way. So I think Theraguns. So that's what it was called for a while.

I actually have T-shirts made that says Theragunz with a Z. All right, but so because you have a name. at this point, which is great, right? Even though it's temporary. And obviously the next step is like manufacturing these things, right? Like you're not going to keep building them out of a jigsaw and a cat toy, right? I mean, and you can't have like a wire connected to it. So how did you go about getting these made?

So at that same time, my younger brother, youngest brother, was working for a woman that owned a distributor, a flooring distributor. Her and my brother and my dad knew her. and she was from China. And I was like, hey, there's a link. Yeah. So my brother says, hey, let me introduce you to Angela. So I go and I meet Angela. Right.

And then I moved into the first Theragon that I mass produced came from a connection that Angela met, introduced. Introduced me to the guy's name was China Bob. Not joking. That was his American name. His business card said China Bob. And Angela paid for China Bob to come over and sit with me in a room in her office. he didn't speak in it word of English. So now I'm sitting here talking to Angela

and she's translating to Bob and Angela doesn't know amplitude, frequency, like she doesn't know any of those things. Yeah. And I don't know what she's saying to him. So he leaves with his big smile on his face and I'm thinking he didn't have a clue what I'm talking about.

So I literally thought, guy, that that was it. I'm like, this is the end. I can't go any further. I really can't mass produce these. But why? Why did you have that? Why did you feel that? I mean, he was the guy who had the factory.

You were just telling him your specs. I didn't think it translated. Okay. And I think I really believe now, as I look back on it, we all have a bully in our head. Mm-hmm. And that guy was coming at me. Like, what are you doing? This is a waste of time.

Why are you doing this? And I would kind of succumb to that. You know what? You're probably right. Like, I don't know why I'm doing this. It's not going to work. When we come back in just a moment, Jason finally gets more Theragons out into the world and then into the public eye, like really into the public eye, during one of the most watched sporting events of 2017.

Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2014, 2015, and Jason has entered into a partnership with his brother and his brother's colleague, Angela. Angela knows a guy named China Bob, and China Bob has connections to Chinese factories, where Jason is trying to find a manufacturer for theragons. And when we left off, Jason didn't think China Bob was going to deliver. But then... I get a call for my brother, and he's at Angela's office. Dude, I got a gun from Bob. I'm like, what?

Yeah, I got this thing from Bob. I said, show it to me. So he, he, he, it's FaceTime. So he facetimes me and I'm looking at it. And it was still real grainy FaceTime at the time. And I said, turn it on. I want to hear it. And he turned it on and I could just hear that it was too high.

The frequency wasn't right. So I'm like, hey, of course they didn't get it right. That kind of an attitude. Tell her to tell him it's got to be slower. Three weeks later, we get another one. My brother calls, hey, we got this thing. And he turns it on. I was like, whoa, bring that home.

So he brings it home. And it's this orange, ugly-looking thing that had this attachment that Bob made. And I turn it on and I'm like, oh, my God, this is it. This is it. Yeah. All right. So now you've got this prototype. And presumably, I mean, you already knew people, right, who would be interested in buying it.

I mean, by this point, I think you'd built out a pretty nice network of patients. And you were also working with a lot of professional athletes, right? Yep. And so you're thinking, okay, with Angela and my brother, I'll make these things in China, and then I'll just kind of sell them through my existing channels. Is that right? Yeah. So what happened was I was working with a guy, a friend of my name James Anderson,

who played for the New England Patriots at the time. And he was so fascinated by what this did, he's like, I'm going to get this in the NFL for you. So I said, what does that look like? He said, well, the trainer at the Patriots is one of the best trainers in the league. And I know him really well. I'm going to connect you with him. So he goes back to camp, talks to him, and that guy calls me. His name's Jim.

Jim calls and says, hey, James says you got more of these. How many more of these do you have? I said, how many do you want? He said, I don't know, can you bring me like 20 of them? And I was like, what? My dad had these big carpet sample bags that you could, like, fit a Volkswagen in. They're huge. And I packed two of those full of theroguns, loaded them on an airplane.

and I flew out to the New England Patriots at the beginning of the 2014 season. I met them at their hotel. Belichick and the team let me set up in the lobby. I sold 20 Theragons in 20 minutes. Wow. As fast as these guys could buy them, I have photos from it,

was the most amazing experience. Wow. So I walk out and I'm sitting in my car, empty bags, and I've got a wad of cash in my hand. And I'm like, that's what I'm going to do. Not one of them asked me how much,

not one of them tried to negotiate, and they knew what it did for them because of what James was saying. So that was like a huge aha moment for me. Yeah. So I go to the bank, literally load it in an ATM, come back to L.A. I go to Angela, I go to her office, super excited about this, and she hands me a check. And she says, here's your commission. And I was said, what are you talking about?

So, well, that's what you make. And I started looking at it. It didn't make sense to me. I was asking a lot of questions. And she's like, well, that's, you know, You know, we have this business partnership. I'm going to run the bank account and you'll just make a commission. You were not an owner.

I was an owner, but she was paying me a commission on the sales of the product. I see. None of that made sense to me. Yeah. So I call my brother, his name's Alex. I'm like, Lex, what's going on? He said, I don't, what are you talking about? So I called Davis, the guy in China.

I said, can you send me the bill of lading for that last order? Because the bill of lading will tell me how much we paid for those products. Angela was telling me we were paying $150. So I'm like, something's fishy here. Davis sends me the bill of lading, and he was charging a $71. So I went back in Angela's office. I sat down and I said,

I just got this bill of lading, and I need you to tell me what's going on. And she said, you need to leave my office. And I said, I'm not leaving until you tell me what's going on. And she just stared at me, like didn't say a word. It was the most, it was like a movie. She just, it was like a stare down. And I said, look, you not telling me what's going on is telling me what's going on.

So we're done. Went, got an attorney. I had to go. She had 250 jigsaws in her warehouse and she would not give them to me until I bought the company back from her. Those are the only 250 I had left, literally. Yeah. So I rented a U-Haul, got a sheriff, got a warrant, went out. gave her like $24,000 in a check, bought my Theragans back.

So you bought her, you entirely, you bought her out entirely? I bought her and my brother out. And how did you have, how did you have the cash to do it? I didn't. I didn't. I had to go borrow the money. Like I literally had to go to a bank and borrow the money. So you basically paid $25,000 or whatever, which is, you're lucky.

It wasn't more than that. Yeah. Thank God. That's funny at the time. I was like, man, I hope this company is not worth a lot. All right. So after that partnership ended, you eventually did find a business partner that did work out, a guy named Ben Nazarian, who you work with today. And I think you met him through some of the connections you had in the NFL, right?

But how did you end up partnering with him? So Ben Nazarian, Ben's family owned Qualcomm. Ben's dad was an amazing person in the business world. So their family had quite a bit of money. And so I was like, I got to go meet Ben. So I called his secretary, set up an appointment. Now, they're in the Rolex building downtown Beverly Hills. He's on the top floor of the Rolex building.

Imagine where I've come from. This Utah kid, like scrappy. and I walk into this dynasty of a family's building, and I'm meeting Ben, and I set up my little chiropractic table that had a hole burned in it, and I'm sitting there with two theragons waiting for him to come in the room.

Because he was the guy that you needed as an investor, like those were the stakes? Yeah, if you think about this, and I hope people that are listening realize, imagine the journey that I went through, and now I'm sitting in a billionaire's office going to present him, with something that I think changes people's lives.

All stakes were there. And he walks in the door, he swings the door open, and he had this positive energy and this big smile. And I immediately felt like I knew him. So I'm like, hey, my name's Dr. Jason, and I have this there, I'm going on. And do you have anything that I could work on that you particularly have with your body of issues with?

I couldn't have planned it better. He looks at me and goes, actually, I have scoliosis, and I get massages on my upper back all the time to relieve the pain. I'm like, of course you do. So he lays on the table, face down, and I treat him. And you can imagine I treated thousands of people at this point. Yeah. I did the very best treatment I could on this guy.

And he sits up off the table and he said, oh my God, what is that? So I kind of tell him in 30 seconds what it is. And we sit down at this conference table and he said, What do you want to do? And I said, honestly, I want to get this out to as many people in the world as fast as I can because I feel like someone's going to steal this idea for me. Literally reaches across with his hand, shakes my hand, and said, let's do it. Wow.

That was a Friday. He said, what are you doing tomorrow? And I said, nothing. He goes, can you come here in the morning? I said, yeah. So I show up Saturday morning. We sat in that room from 8 o'clock Saturday morning until 3 o'clock Sunday morning. building out this company.

I mean, I have so many questions about this meeting, right? Because, I mean, I think it's clear that this was also another, like, gift from the gods. Like, Ben coming into your life was another moment. It was like that voice, you know, and we've all had that. You know, I've had people who've come into my life that have changed my life fundamentally. My wife is one of them. And so, I mean, if Ben was going to put in the money and was going to help you build this out what did it mean for your stake in your company that you started?

Good question. Yeah. So in that conversation, he said, well, listen, if I'm going to do this with you, I usually like to have a majority shares. And I said, I'm fine with that. Because I, look, I needed someone like Ben. And I think what's really important that I learned is that I'm really good at what I do. And I'm not too good at some of the things he does. I needed someone to run. run the business side of things. And he's like, listen, I'm going to put in half a million and we'll use that half a million and we'll see what we can do with that half a million. But I get 51%. I'm like, done.

Like, oh my God, thank you. That's amazing. So, like, this is 2015 when you meet him. And with that half a million dollars, you guys were going to really make the first official, well, there was a previous version, but you were going to make a better version. It was the G1. Tell me about what his, when he said, you know, when you agreed that this was the right partner, what was the first step in creating the business that could then sell this? Like what was he, because your strategy up until that point was like, let's get this to the NFL. Let's get this into the, you know, but that's a limited market.

Yeah, I think Ben will tell you the same thing that he thought the same way you did. He's like, okay, hang on a second. How many NFL players are there? 1500? How many baseball players are there? How many college? He's like, even if I go all the way down, that's like 30,000 athletes.

That's not a business. Yeah. But he was, I think he, he was okay with what we'd done at that point. So we literally sat down and started drawing these out. We got an engineer. We started creating the G2.

We started selling G1 in June of 2016. By July of 2017, we launched the G2 price. and that was our first product we made that we had control of. We actually designed that whole thing. Where were you selling them? Was it a direct-to-consumer? Was it a website initially?

Uh-huh. Yep. It was a direct-to-consumer. It was teams and athletes. It was gyms and physiotherapists and chiros. And I think a big breakthrough for you also was Kyrie Irving, right? Like you got that in the hands of Kyrie Irving, who then used it on the same. sidelines during the NBA finals, like on the bench or something, right?

Couldn't have planned that. Like it was on camera. He was using a theragon during the NBA finals. So, Kyrie's back started to spasm, and people don't know this, but you cannot take a product onto an NBA floor unless it is sanctioned and authorized by the NBA, unless the athlete specifically asks for that tool. So Kyrie said, I need you to bring that out on the floor. but the rule is they have to cover it. If it's not sanctioned or doesn't have the NBA on it, they have to cover it with something.

It can't be seen. He covers it with a towel. Kyrie's over there because his back spasming up and he starts using this blue theragon on the back of his back, but he tries to cover it as he's moving it around. The towel falls off. ABC zooms right in right at that time. I was driving to San Diego to a trade show

and I look at my phone and it's my son and I'm like, I'll call him back in a second. Yeah. Why he calls me again. I'm like, what is going on? I answer the phone. He's like, dad, dad, are you watching TV? He's like, no, he's like, it's the finals and Kyrie just used the Theragon on TV.

We sold out that weekend. I'm sure. There's an article I came across at the time. It was like a blog post. What was the machine the cabs trainers were using on Kyrie Irving's back? And then this is like all over the internet. But still, it was at that point kind of a. product seen, I'm assuming as a product for like athletes, professional athletes.

It wasn't, you know, yeah, you'd worked with some of your clients and patients, but it wasn't, you know, in sort of the popular imagination, it wasn't seen as a mass product yet. Not even close. So when did you, how were you able to make the transition from getting this in the hands of professional athletes to like making it a mainstream product? Like how did it just happen naturally because it was filtering down from the celebrities and athletes? Or was there a plan? I mean, was COVID? Was there a COVID element like people at home? Oh, my God.

Yeah, COVID was huge. I mean, our company went hockey stick. I mean, it was like just shot out. Our message hadn't changed. Take care of yourself. Increased blood flow. Take away pain. Take care of yourself.

You don't have to go to someone all the time for things. your body. Think about how that resonated when COVID hit. Oh my gosh, I can't see a massage therapist. How can I take care of myself? And I think that messaging just started to build this underswell. What's amazing to me is that you guys were profitable from year, really your first full year in business, 2017. And you didn't raise any, I mean, you had the $500,000. You didn't bring on, what was the first time you actually raised outside capital? What year? So we did a strategic round. We raised between 20 and 25 million, end of 18, the beginning of 19. That wasn't necessarily to do anything other than just get the, it was about voices.

I needed voices. And I wanted people that had a larger voice than I did to tell our story. Yeah. And that was some, I think, celebrities and celebrity athletes. Yes, that's when the Justin Timberlake thing started. He was a customer or a client of yours? He was a client and he was also a client of a friend of mine that was his trainer. And Justin loved the Therogun.

And he was the first person that said, I want to invest. So Justin came on. And then I started having celebrities that I worked with like two chains and Daniel Craig and Jay-Z and his group. Yeah. And we signed a deal with Rinaldo. We signed some other deals with like Carly Clause, James Hardin. And what we ended up doing with these guys, we said, hey, do you want to be an investor and an ambassador? So we had a little bit of investment and a little bit of payout for the ambassador side of things.

So that model worked for us. You basically give them some equity. They would promote the product. And then you would pay them a small fee. But essentially the value was their equity in the company. Yeah. And we ended up raising our final, our A round in September of 22 with North Castle partners. and they were a godsend because they knew what we were trying to do.

They knew the industry. And over the last couple of years, I think I've learned more than I have in my entire life. All right. So you have one of your fears when you met Ben was, if you don't get this out there quickly, you're going to get copied. And that happened. I mean, what was really the first of its kind. and in this kind of percussive therapy inspired a lot of competitors, right? Because you can't, I mean, to make a sort of a handheld gun that, you know, you can put against your body,

there are only so many parts of that that you can patent. But it meant that all of a sudden you probably saw things that looked pretty similar to what you were doing. And that would mean litigation. Yeah. So right now I think we have almost. 600 plus patents. And so that's one of the ways we've protected ourselves. Companies like Amazon were amazing.

They were shutting people down. So there were months in 19 and 20 and 21 where we'd shut down 500 resellers or sellers on Amazon because they're copying us. And we have a full-time team now in our office that that's all they do is they enforcing cease and assists. They're scrubbing, looking for things on the internet of people that are copying us. So yeah, that was the the engine behind our protection is as important as our manufacturing. Just to clarify, like the division of labor, you were not, once Ben came aboard, you were not the CEO, right? Your role, you had a different role. What role did you take on? So I was founder and then eventually we called it Chief Wellness Officer. But in the early days,

I was just founder and product development. I was helping with ideas and stuff. But the business aspect of this company was Ben. This is the secret that I think happened with Ben and I. I knew at what point to hand it off to him. But he also knew at what point I needed to be involved. So he sees things through that lens that I don't. So to be able to create the relationship, the essence, the soul,

and then hand it to Ben to be able to build business model around it. That's really what made us successful. Jason, when you think about your life story and all those years grinding through chiropractor school and coming up with this weird jigsaw thing and failed partnerships and then meeting Ben and like how much of where you got to now do you think is because of all that work and grind and how much do you attribute to luck? I think that in my life, there were life moments that prepared me for that luck when it hit. But I have a deep belief that when you do hard things, it always pays off. Anyone that does that, whether it's getting up in the morning and working out or going to school

or taking a job, cleaning out oil tanker, whatever the job is, it's just gross and ugly and it's hard, it always pays off when you invest in yourself. But I also go back to that voice on my stairway when I was younger where like, this is bigger than me. And I think I knew that early on. You have to create missions and purposes that are bigger than you. I'm not going to see the full fruition of this. I don't know. There might be someone's not even born yet that might benefit from this.

And I think that's what keeps me humble and driving for the growth of this company and the story. That's Jason Worsland, co-founder of Therobody and inventor of the Therogun. By the way, remember when he was first coming up with the name and landed on Theraguns with the Z? Well, pretty early on, Jason decided to take out the Z and change it to just Therogun. And because it was still early days for the company, guess who helped him change all the labels? I had my kids take some scissors, and I told them you have to cut all the Zs off of these things. And we still laugh about them, like, complaining, I'm so tired, my hand hurts, of cutting these ease off. So they've been involved since they were little.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. And don't forget to sign up for my free weekly newsletter filled with helpful insights and ideas from entrepreneurs and founders. Sign up at guyraz.com. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with music composed by Ramtin Arableu. It was edited by Neva Grant with research assistants from Malia Agadello. Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez.

Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Alex Chung, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, Carla Estevez, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.