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How Therabody Turned a Homemade Tool Into a Global Recovery Brand
00:48:32
Dr. Jason Wersland turned a 3 a.m. garage experiment into the number one percussive therapy brand in the world, with more than 6.5 million Theragun massage devices sold. In this episode, he breaks down the unglamorous eight-year grind behind that overnight success: five prototypes, three bad partners, and a one-to-one credibility-building strategy that eventually landed him in Cristiano Ronaldo’'s training room.
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- [00:00]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
People are going to line up to give you money if you have a great idea. I know that from experience.
- [00:06]
Shopify Masters Host
Dr. Jason Wurslund's story started with an injury and turned into a global phenomenon, selling over six and a half million theraguns and becoming the number one brand in the category.
- [00:16]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
You don't get to walk into Real Madrid's training room if you're not legit.
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Shopify Masters Host
Behind each viral product launch, celebrity partnerships and staggering numbers are real sacrifices and relentless resilience.
- [00:27]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
We're integrating science and protocols into something that really helps people. Man, I'm starting to get emotional. I think about it because it's like that's our goal today.
- [00:37]
Shopify Masters Host
We're pulling back the curtain on the mental game, lessons learned, and what it really takes to lead a category defining company. Jason. Dr. J. Hi. As they say in the biz, thank you for being here.
- [00:47]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Thanks.
- [00:47]
Shopify Masters Host
I want to go back in time. At the root of therabody is a very personal story for you. Can you tell me a little bit about the accident in 2007? That split sparked this whole thing.
- [00:58]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
I lived in Venice at the time and my school was in Hollywood. And so every morning, chiropractic. Chiropractic school, Yep. And every morning I would get up and zip up the 10 and the 110 and then the 101 and get over my school over in Hollywood. And this morning it was cold, and I typically wasn't, but it was an October morning in. In la. Went out to my bike, started my bike, and I realized, like, it feels a little cold. I never wear my kevlar gloves or my jacket or anything because it's always so hot. But that morning it was chilly. And I only tell this to you because it's these little details that were so important at the time, but I didn't wear them because I always had. I had to get off my bike and go do things. And I'd have to take everything off and put it in a bag and then carry the bag with me and my helmet. And it was just too much. Right, so. And I like, should I. Yeah, it's cold. I don't want to be freezing. So I went in and grabbed it, put it all on and took off on my bike. And I was splitting traffic, right, with a 10 and the 110 split. And a delivery truck was kind of hiding stuff in front of me and a car, they let a car through and it just came out of nowhere. And I t boned the side of this Volkswagen going about 50 miles an hour, 55 miles an hour. And I had a. You know, I woke up on the freeway. It's unconscious. And I realized I was unconscious. And I kind of started coming to, and I just instinctively sat up and grabbed my helmet, and it's kind of like to grab my head and could feel my helmet was broken. And I was like, oh, wow. I must have hit something really hard. Stood up and kind of looked around. I cut my arm open and it was bleeding. I could feel it in the jacket and the blood running into my hands. And I got up and pushed my bike off the side. And the ambulance came. It was just. It was, you know, like, typical. I didn't have insurance.
- [02:50]
Shopify Masters Host
Oh, no.
- [02:51]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
And when the ambulance pulled up, I was like, I'm not getting in that ambulance. So I talked to the tow truck driver into giving me a ride to school because it was on the way. But as we started driving, he radios ahead to dispatch and says, hey, I have this. The driver in my car. And they're like, get him out of the car. It's illegal for him to be there. And so he dumps me out in Figaro on 9th. And I had to get to school for a test. I ran to the nearest hotel. I had $84 in my account. And I pulled out 20 from the ATM, thinking that that would get me to school in a taxi. So I jump in this taxi, get on the 110. Anyone that knows the 110 and where it turns into 101, it's just like we're crawling and I'm watching this, the timer tick, you know, like it's going up and up. And we get just to my off ramp, which is Vermont, and the 101, and it clicks to 20. And I said, excuse me, sir, All I have is a 20. He's like, get out of my car.
- [03:51]
Shopify Masters Host
Oh, my God.
- [03:51]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Somebody's kicked me out of the car. So I had to walk all the way around. I ended up jumping a fence to get to my school. It was a whole thing. Anyway, I ended up having to get stitches in my arm that day. And I had a 9 millimeter disc bulge in my neck from hitting that car. And that's really what triggered all of this that we're here for.
- [04:08]
Shopify Masters Host
Thank you for taking us into the texture of that story because it really does paint a picture. And also, the irony of you being in school to be a chiropractor, a healthcare professional, but then you not seeking medical care is like, there's something poetic in that.
- [04:26]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah.
- [04:27]
Shopify Masters Host
This kicked off a long journey of recovery and debilitating pain for you. How did you start tinkering around with putting something together, some kind of mechanism that could potentially help you shortly after that?
- [04:45]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
So my accident was in October of 2007, and by December of that year, the inflammation and everything had gotten so bad. I was actually flying back from Utah the first week of January after having been in Utah with my family and my kids and stuff. And my brother's a chiropractor, so I got treated every day, and I was really trying to be careful with it and stuff, but I fell asleep on the airplane coming back from Utah in early January, and I had my head dropped when I fell asleep. The plane landed and it woke me up, and I started to sit up, and it was like someone was stabbing me in the neck. I couldn't even move. I started sweating, and everyone had to get off the airplane, and they brought the wheelchair in and put me on. In those, like, wheelchairs. I somehow got home and I realized that I was a patient, and I'd never been a patient, but I treated a lot of patients. So suddenly I realized, like, from a patient's perspective, wow, this is real. Like, I'm. What am I going to do? So, you know, you talked about denying healthcare at the ambulance, but I started thinking, like, who can I call? Where can I go? What would I do? That sort of triggered this idea of, like, wait a minute. I'm dependent on someone else's time to treat me, but I know what I need, so why do I have to wait for someone? And that didn't make sense to me. And so I just sat with that for a while. I'm like, so you're telling me I'm just going to go home and sit at my house and ice it? Like, what? That's not. And I knew what I needed. I needed warmth, I needed a massage. I needed something to just soothe the muscles. So I'm sitting in my practice one day waiting for my business partner, my chiropractor buddy, to treat me, and I'm sitting next to a vibrating table. I'm in an extra room waiting for him. And we had a vibrating table where we do traction on the table. Vibration makes your body relax, basically, so you can't splint or guard. So you put someone in. You're going to do traction on their low back or their neck, and you flip the switch on and it starts to vibrate, and they relax, and the machine senses that and it does what it does. So as I'm looking at the table, I was like, I wonder if that'll help my shoulder. So I just reached down and flipped it on and I rested my arm on the table and the pain went away. And I was like. I mean, even talking about it right now, I can almost get goosebumps because it was like it went away. And I'm like, oh, 30 seconds later it came back. And I was like, wait a minute. How did I do that? So we have a thing called accommodation. You have earrings and a ring. Our body's not aware of those things because they're not important, they're not threatening. And you and I are talking right now, so your nervous system is really focused on what we're doing. It's not focused on those other things. That's called accommodation. And I knew that. I knew what that was. So I realized, oh, I'm accommodating to this. How can I not accommodate to that? So that was the answer you said. What made me start tinkering? That was it. How can I find something that my body cannot accommodate to so that it distracts the pain? Pain travels to the brain and at about 50 miles an hour. And when I put something on my skin, hot, cold, pokey, texture, whatever, that information travels to my brain at almost 300 miles an hour. It's called the pain gate theory. So all of these things are now starting to come to me and I'm thinking, wait, I need something to take care of myself. So I was sitting in my house one morning and three o'clock in the morning, and I was like, trying to solve this problem. Vibration never leaves the body. It stays connected to the body. And so I'm thinking, well, how can I have something, like, come off and on the body? And I was like, oh, I can make something. So I just went to the garage and I grabbed a jigsaw and I brought it in. I sat down and I made the first there again. And I figured it out.
- [08:40]
Shopify Masters Host
What was that first version made of?
- [08:44]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
It was a Makita jigsaw. I still have a photo of it. I can show you. I took a long blade and I kind of rolled the blade up with the pliers and I wrapped it with a dish towel. And then I wrapped the dish towel with some electrical tape. That's all I had. And I just tested it out and it was amazing. So I just kept doing it. And as long as I had it on my body, I thought I'd have to have it near the pain. But then understanding the nervous system and stuff, I just. I could have it anywhere. And the fact that it was electrical tape and it was kind of sharp edges, it wasn't smooth, that was hitting my skin, and it was stimulating my nervous system in a way that it was taking the pain away. And I never accommodated. So I'm like, how has no one thought of this? This is amazing. I still remember thinking, like, I can't be the first one that thought of this. And sure enough, when I started asking around, people didn't know what it was. And so I made that first one. And I think probably the next most important thing about that is I got myself better. I had a goal to get myself better. And I knew what this thing did. And I kept myself. This is part of our brand as well, is I kept myself out of pain between my treatments so that when I was getting treated, we were treating the injury, we weren't treating pain. A lot of times you're after the pain, you chase the pain, but you're not actually helping the body heal. So that was the process that I went through.
- [10:10]
Shopify Masters Host
You solve this problem that is fueled by a deep personal need. You're also a healthcare professional yourself. You're a chiropractor. Do you immediately think to yourself, oh, I gotta start using this modality on my patients?
- [10:25]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Great question. No, I didn't, because I thought, this is a Makita jigsaw. I'm a chiropractor. That's already kind of weird. So if I'm like, hey, come in here, I'm going to pull this Makita out and use it on you. I thought, I'll find something like this. There has to be something in the market, and I'll just buy one of those and I'll use that on my patients. But as I was asking around different medical sales reps, you know, different people in the business, and they had no idea what I was talking about. So that's when I started thinking, like, wait a minute. Patient came in one day. My. My secretary handed me his paperwork, and I was going through his paperwork, and it was the first time that I'd run into someone who was so similar to my situation that I really started feeling for this guy. And I thought, man, do I want to bring that in? And I was like, okay, I can't wait anymore. Like, I gotta show this. So I had him come back the next day. We took his X rays and everything. I had him come back the next day, and I sat him down and I turned this thing on and I showed him what it did, and he just melted. And I remember feeling that way. I said, dude, listen, I'm gonna show you how to use this because there's no way I'm gonna get you better in 12 visits, which is what his insurance would allow for. But I think I can keep you out of pain so that when you do come back, we can actually really do some, make some progress on healing your injury. Cause he had this similar thing. He was a bus driver and did a head on bus collision and went into the other bus and it was a mess. So that was the first time that I actually used it on someone else. I never let him take it. I didn't want to have it in my practice. And at the end of his care, we had a moment and you get close to patience. He just challenged me, you know, he's like, I know you've been wondering what to do with this, but you need to take this, you need to figure this out because it saved our lives.
- [12:16]
Shopify Masters Host
Was that the moment for you that you realized, okay, this is not just a personal cure, this is not just a modality that I might use in my own practice. This is a business.
- [12:25]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Not a business. That's a great question. I didn't see it as a business. I saw it as a journey. Like, I realized like, oh, I got to figure this out. And I didn't even know how to talk about it yet. Like, I didn't know what it was doing. I wasn't able to describe scientifically and technically what it was doing.
- [12:47]
Shopify Masters Host
You just knew that it worked.
- [12:48]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
I just knew that it worked. And I was. When he said, I have to figure it out, I was like, okay, I got to figure this out. And so the first few steps was, what's it doing? You know, why is it working the way it works on the nervous system? And once I got that piece, then I was like, okay, now I gotta make something that I can deliver that with. That doesn't look like a Makita jigsaw.
- [13:08]
Shopify Masters Host
You know what is a Makita jigsaw?
- [13:09]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
It's a Makita is a brand. It's like dewalt or, you know, snap on or just a tool brand. And it's a jigsaw. Like it, you know, has a blade and dials and so it looked terrifying. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's just what I had and ended up being. That's the piece, that's the tool I used.
- [13:26]
Shopify Masters Host
You realize that there are some legs to this thing. You dig into the understanding of what it's doing for your nervous system. We'll talk more about the nervous system A little bit later, my favorite topic of all time. But what happens next? Like, you know, now it's like a sort of legendary story of you making these inroads with these famous athletes.
- [13:46]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah.
- [13:46]
Shopify Masters Host
How did you get there? You're a guy showing up with a kind of terrifying looking piece of tech. How are you getting people at the top of their game to take a chance on you?
- [13:55]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah, well, that didn't happen overnight for sure.
- [13:58]
Shopify Masters Host
Clearly.
- [13:58]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Like from 2008 to 2016, I made five different versions over that time period. Just iterating and changing and tweaking. And I'd get it into therapist's hands and I'd get feedback from them and I'd take that and I'd do something different. And I. The goal all along was I wanted to be able to give it to someone and have them have an experience without me. Because a lot of what I realized was me plus the gun provided this experience, and they were associating me with that experience. And I wanted people to recognize you can do this on your own. Like, this isn't. That's why. That's how I discovered it. It was, I do it on myself. I wasn't having someone else treat me. That sort of helped me understand, like, okay, how can I get this into the hands of people that know how to use it and help me talk about it? So I was with my cousin in Norway just last week, and we were talking about this. I realized there was this pattern that I went through, and it was one to one a lot. It was me with an athlete, me with a physio, me. Me with a trainer, me with someone. And it was this really intense, like, you know, what is this? And tell me what this is. And then it became one to many. So suddenly now I'm standing in front of a group of therapists or a group of athletes, or then it slowly became many to many. So now we have trainers in Rome and Serbia. And like, I could give you all the different places they have people out there doing that. So, you know, was my goal to get one to one, one to many, many to many. In order to do that, I've got to get this in the hands of people that can use it. Ronaldo. So who's the very. Who's the most famous person in the world? Ronaldo. Okay, well, we ended up getting Ronaldo, but it didn't happen overnight is because we had the right tech, with the right science, with the right protocols to get me into these spaces that are vetted. You don't get to Walk into Real Madrid's training room if you're not legit. So by that time, I'd had all the science enough, then I had enough of the product, the pricing was right, and that was the very early days with our G1. So it was. It was a journey. The 10,000 hour rule, for sure did the 10,000 hour rule. I treated everyone, everywhere, as much as I could, and gathered as much information about what it was doing to the body to validate some of the claims that I was making. And then, you know, we sort of kept developing from there.
- [16:27]
Shopify Masters Host
You can't replace the value of that one to one connection and that one to one feedback. Especially in the early days, you were also the first entrant into a category that previously had not existed, which means there's a ton of white space, right? There's a ton of opportunity there to exploit. But it also means that, like, you have to do a lot of convincing of people and. And it's bound to have its tractors, right? Like, what were some moments in the early days where you felt like, oof, I might be pushing into territory that people aren't really comfortable with yet?
- [17:01]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
I was at the UCLA track working with some Paralympians for the Brazil Olympics, and the US Track team was there, and a couple of the US track players would come over to my table. I'd start treating them. Their coach came over and said, what are you doing? What is that? And I sort of described it to him, and he said, yeah, I don't want my people over. I don't want my. Don't treat any of our athletes. And I was like, what? I just couldn't understand, like, what are you talking about? I'm working on. Yeah, but those, they need it. The Paralympians need it. There's a Blake, a guy who has a double amputee, he doesn't have lower legs, and he sprints on his. On his prosthetics. So I'm working on him. And he's like, yeah, you can work on those guys, but don't work on my athletes. Those moments were tough because I'm like, what are they not seeing? You know, I just got. I was in Indian Wells this weekend and I. Walking around the grounds, I was having this memory of working with an athlete. And we were in the training room, and the training room was like a big room and it was separated by curtains, so it wasn't walls. Super quiet and you could hear people whispering. And tennis is a really interesting sport when it comes to that kind of stuff. Like, they don't want anyone seeing what's going on. You know, the curtain's shut, and if someone's working on their knee or their elbow or their shoulder or their back, whatever, they don't want anyone seeing that. So I shut the curtain, and I grabbed my two theraguns and I turn them on in this room, and it was like I was jackhammering cement. It was like this guy came over and said, what? Ripped the curtain open. He said, what are you doing? And I was standing there with my two thera guns. He goes, you can't do that in here. You got to go outside. So I'm, like, standing there trying to talk to this athlete. I'm like, well, can you come outside? I'll put my table out there. So we had to go out on the drive out in the parking lot, put my table up, treat them out in the parking lot.
- [18:48]
Shopify Masters Host
Oh, my God.
- [18:49]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
I know.
- [18:50]
Shopify Masters Host
The road to success.
- [18:51]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah.
- [18:52]
Shopify Masters Host
2016 is when Theragun first makes its way to the consumer market. It's also when your still current CEO, Ben Nazarian, joined. Right, as CEO, this was your baby, as you've just told us. Like, you had already spent years developing this thing. Blood, sweat, and tears. How did you know that he was the guy to trust?
- [19:17]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Through experience. I had three business partners before him, and they'd all kind of hosed me. The first one was a friend, and he ended up not doing what he said he was doing, and I found that out, and so I had to buy the company from him. And then I went and found another. My brother and another person, and I realized that other person was screwing me, for lack of a better term. With shipping costs getting theraguns from China to the US I approached her about that, and it ended up being not a good situation. And so I had to buy my company back from them. And then I got in halfway in with a couple of NFL players. And, you know, I feel like theragun had angels that would watch over me. That sounds funny, but I really felt there's this divine sort of, like, guidance, and I. Something about that situation just didn't feel right. And then through just a really weird coincidence, I meet someone who was working for Ben at the time, and I went and saw him, and when he walked in his conference room, I knew him. It was like a cousin or something. It was so weird. And he sat down, and the more we talked, the more we just immediately got along. And I realized the reason when you said, like, why was he the one? He was Saying all the right things. And he knew. He already kind of knew what to ask. And he was. My experience had told me, oh, wow, this is what it looks like. Not those things, but this is what it looks like. And we did a handshake deal. Honestly, we didn't sign any documents until three months later. It was March, actually. It's our anniversary this month.
- [21:02]
Shopify Masters Host
Happy anniversary.
- [21:03]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Thank you. It was that, you know, and we were so. We're so different. We see the world through these such different lenses. But we knew that we both had the same goal. It was fuel to the fire. Just. It made so many things just ignited from that, from product development to marketing. And we gotta finally had someone come in and manage the money and, you know, just real things to make it a business. You asked me a minute ago when I knew it was a business, that's when I knew it was a business. It wasn't until then when he joined. When he joined, and I was like, oh, wow, I think this could be big.
- [21:35]
Shopify Masters Host
He came in and was able to give it some operational rigor that.
- [21:39]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah, you know, we sat down in a room and he was like, tell me about this thing. What is it doing? And so we really designed. I'm doing this because we actually wrote on a wall in his office. They have those dry waste walls in his office. And we just wrote all the way around this wall. And that's just that whole experience. I realized, like, oh, wow, he knows how to build a business. You know, I'm a chiropractor. I know how to build a practice and how to help people, but, like, to scale something like that, that was. Yeah, that was magic.
- [22:08]
Shopify Masters Host
I think it requires that the ability to also not let your ego get in the way to be able to recognize as a founder, hey, maybe I'm not the right person for the CEO role. Was there ever any part of you that thought maybe that was the hat you should be wearing?
- [22:23]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
No, not for a minute. That's what made it so easy for both of us. I don't want to be CEO. That's not. That's not. I'm not. That's not my specialty. You're that, like, that's so much easier for. So, no, it wasn't ego. And I think people that know him, that have heard of Ben or know Ben's name or what he. Where he comes from, they may think there's some arrogance to him, but there's not. He's never been that way with me, ever. I never took that from him. I don't feel like, he got that from me either. We've had heated debates, trust me. Like, we go at each other like brothers sometimes, but it's always like, I love you. I love you too. Like, let's make this happen. What can we do? So.
- [23:00]
Shopify Masters Host
Well, a good relationship isn't the absence of conflict. Right. It's like knowing how to move through conflict. Well, yeah. A good co founder relationship. I was just talking about this with another guest. Like, a good, good co founder relationship is like a good marriage.
- [23:13]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah.
- [23:13]
Shopify Masters Host
Do you have any advice for other founders out there in terms of finding somebody who's going to be the right fit to the puzzle?
- [23:23]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
My mom used to come and sit in my cars when I'd buy a new car. She'd get in the passenger seat and she'd know right away. So I'd drive my car up to my mom's, get in the passenger seat, then she'd sit down, she's like, yep, this is the car. Or she'd say, nope, it's not the car. I think there's a feeling there's something that happens, and if you ignore that, you're going to run into problems. And so I think listening to other people's opinions about this person, good or bad, is not good. You need to balance that out with who this person is, where they're coming from. But people can ignite things. You know, they can come in and be like, what if he's doing this and what if they do that? And, you know, Ben and I talk about it, you know, he's given me a lot of autonomy before private equity and stuff came in. He just kind of let me do whatever. When I say let me, I mean, he'd just kind of go out and build the brand, do whatever you want to do. And some of the comments he would hear is, you're letting him do that as a founder, are you afraid he's going to cut you out or something? And that was never the deal. That's not how it is. So I think my advice would be, you need to know the person. You said a second ago, it's like a marriage, you really need to know the person. When it comes right down to it, what are they gonna choose? Like, what are they gonna do in a situation? Do they have character? Can they tell the truth? Are they avoidant? There's a lot of little things that are gonna matter, and most of the stuff doesn't, to be honest. But it's those moments that really matter, where you're sitting in front of a manufacturer and you've gotta be really clear with them about something. And you don't want someone scooting around the, you know, the issue or whatever. You want someone that can come in and tell them and then have character stick to that until it's the see it through the end. And those are things I saw in him, you know, that really made a big difference.
- [25:09]
Shopify Masters Host
The character pieces.
- [25:10]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah.
- [25:11]
Shopify Masters Host
Not just the tactical expertise.
- [25:15]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
No. Because I think you can find people that are like that and I think you can find money. You know, I. To be honest, money's not hard to find and so it isn't. I don't think people are going to line up to give you money if you have a great idea. I know that from experience. So it was finding the right person, the person that knew what we were trying to do as a brand that had the same traits and characteristics that I did. That. That's really where we melted together, Ben and I, closely. We had a no policy. You know, there's no backstabbing, there's no talking about this or that. And we, he and I, are really clear about being super honest with each other. So that those are just little things, you know, it's like a marriage.
- [25:55]
Shopify Masters Host
It's like a marriage. Theragun today, which, you know now has expanded into Therabody, is your company. Right. Because you've expanded your product line, which I want to talk about. But Theragun has become so ubiquitous, it's almost like Kleenex. It's like now it has spawned, you know, a thousand competitors out there and it feels like no matter what percussive instrument you're using on your body, people are calling it a theragun. Was there an inflection point in the business where you were like, oh my God, like this thing has a total life of its own now.
- [26:34]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
It still happens, to be honest with you, it still happens. I was in the uk, in Wales and we were announcing a partnership with a team and just being there, seeing Therabody products in the training room, everywhere in the physios room and out in the weight room and just those moments are still like. I mean, I could cry, I could smile. It's just. I just can't believe it. It's like not real. When I think that all that work did this, you know, it just, it's. Yeah, it's. It's really hard to believe it.
- [27:14]
Shopify Masters Host
You spent eight years.
- [27:16]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah.
- [27:17]
Shopify Masters Host
Before like the first consumer facing version of the Theragun came out. But when you're scaling a company, you can't work on timelines. Like that anymore. How has your process in terms of product development had to evolve?
- [27:32]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
We have more people, you have more turnover. You got to get, you got to make more products. So it's not like you, you know, you don't have time to sit back and wait a year. You got to immediately start working on something different. It's the people, it's getting the right engineers that can communicate, that understand our ethos, our mission and what we're really trying to build. We're not just building products, we're building solutions. So as we scale this, finding the right people that can lead the right way, that know how to talk about our products, understand we're integrating science and protocols into something that really helps people. So it's, it's all of that and it, it's wearing that, it's saying that, it's preaching that every day. It's talking about it in meetings, it's, it's iterating, reiterating it over and over again about who we are and this is what we're doing and we're helping people. Man, I starting to get emotional. I think about it because it's like that's our goal.
- [28:30]
Shopify Masters Host
You still feel that connected to it? Yeah, it's beautiful.
- [28:38]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
It came out of nowhere. Sorry.
- [28:39]
Shopify Masters Host
No, it's beautiful. And I think it's, I mean, I think it's something that can be really difficult to stay connected to. Right. Success is a double edged sword. Right. Like we live in a society and a culture that is so external, success obsessed and we often don't think about what you're having to give up in the process. You've, you've somehow managed to stay this connected to the mission and the thing that's driving you forward. But it's really easy to get lost in the details and the stresses of day to day. Have you ever lost your way and needed to find your way back?
- [29:27]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah. Yeah, I have. Yep. To be honest, that's one of the hardest things. Through the growth of this and myself, that's been a real challenge because you have, you go through these phases of like in order to grow, you have to share the product. You can't, I can't be the one that's taking it to the world. And if my goal is to have a theragun in every household in the world, I can't be the one that does that. So what does that look like? Well, I need more people. So if I'm going to need more people, then they're going to tell their story about this. It's not going to be my story. It's going to be how they share what they share. So going through those transitions of, like, wait a minute. Why are they saying it that way? And then realizing, like, wait, the ultimate goal is that we get a product into people's hands and they understand it, and it benefits them if that's how it happens. So that's been the sort of, like, you know, wait a second, Let me pull you aside, and we teach you how to say this and what to say. But ultimately, what's best for me is, like, that people can say it in their own way. They can explain it in their own terms. I realized at some point that that's the magic, is that, like, I shared it, and now someone else is sharing their own experience of that. I got a message over the weekend from a woman that had a liver transplant. It's such a special testimonial. I get these all the time. And her sister is in the hospital with a theragun on her feet. And this woman is saying on her phone, like, if I didn't have these, I'm in so much pain. And the minute she puts that on my feet and you hear crying. You mean crying again. You can hear crying in the background. And just, like, thanking me. Oh, my God, thank you. So that's why I think it's still. There's still such a strong connection, because it doesn't stop.
- [31:22]
Shopify Masters Host
Yeah.
- [31:23]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
You know, it doesn't stop. So I think if. If I had. If we had a product that was like, shoes or tires or a hat or something, it loses its energy. It loses its, like, magic, you know? But this woman in florida somewhere who's having a liver transplant had pain, and her sister knew what theragun did, and they. That ended up being the solution. So, like, how can I, like, not be connected to that?
- [31:50]
Shopify Masters Host
So much of that connection to the power of healing was predicated on you creating this, like, really powerful hero product. You could have just stayed in the theragun universe forever. When you become known so deeply, for one thing, and when you know it has this transformative power, how do you approach thinking about expanding into other product lines?
- [32:16]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
It wasn't intentional. It wasn't like I. We were sitting there. Ben did it more than me, to be honest. I mean, he would. We'd sit in meetings. He'd be like, what other things are out there? What else can we do? I mean, he just had this sort of insatiable desire to grow and acquire businesses and stuff. And that wasn't. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to make sure we provided solutions. So when we started to grow, that's the lens that I was looking through. Like what's out there that really works that can be autonomous. Meaning like someone can take it and have their own experience with it. If you're using ultrasound and you know what you're doing with ultrasound, then you can use an ultrasound unit. But it's not something I would give you to take home. So what is something I could give you that you could take home, that you could do on your own? Those were some of the things we were looking through. Is it scientifically validated? Do we have research that shows the right protocols? Can we scale that? So those were a lot of the questions we asked. And you know, at the very foundational element of all of it was, does it work? Is there science backed? And we also listened to our customers. That's another thing people would ask for things, you know, like, hey, we need a better foam roller. We'd hear that over and over again. So finally we're like, well, let's try and make one. So we looked into making one and we made our first wave roller and now we have a whole series and people love that thing. And I don't think we would have made it, I know we wouldn't have made it if we didn't get so much feedback from. From trainers saying how important a foam roller was.
- [33:45]
Shopify Masters Host
When you also have a product that has some like real. We're too theragun family at home. We each have to have our own. When you have a product that has like some real force behind also seems to me like it opens up the potential to as much as it can heal, potentially do damage. How have you ensured that you're engaging in the education to make sure that people are using this in like a safe, a safe way that's A, not harming them and B, not opening you up to liability.
- [34:14]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Well, we still have legal teams and stuff like that's still part of a big part of what we do. Is it FDA certified? If it's FDA certified and what claims are we making? And you have a 510k. If people don't know what that is, it's how you. It's a list of things that you make claims on that it helps with sleep or tendon repair. Whatever it is you're making the claim of, you have to post that. So it's something you put out there. So for us it was like, can we make those claims? Can we make these things do what we're saying they're going to do. It's so funny to think about all the products that we've developed over the years. Cupping, for example. You know, when we first started talking about that, we were like sort of picking at something like, should we do this? What does it look like and what are the parameters? When would you use it? And then we sort of whittle it down. We're like, oh, wow, I think we could do something. And so we try it. Let's try this and go put it in some Cairo, some people's hands. That's also something that I think was really special is I had relationships with physios and kairos and sports teams and athletes. And so anytime we had a prototype, I had five. You were talking about a couple of guys we know earlier. I'd take it to Dr. Dan and be like, hey, tell me what you think of this. It's like, I don't like that button. This thing on the bottom doesn't work right. And man, that's so much better than from some engineer sitting in a room that doesn't know how to use the product, doesn't know what to look for. That was a big part. It still is to this day. It's a really big part of our product development process. I mean, I'm taking. There's a place out here in Westlake Village that I go to and I'll take things out there all the time, new products, pull someone aside, have them sign a non disclosure that they won't tell anyone about it. And then I put it on or have them try it and what's your feedback? And sometimes I'll just hand it to them and not say anything. And I learned so much from how people think and how they apply the products. And then we take that back and we try to scale that.
- [36:06]
Shopify Masters Host
It sounds like then there have potentially been some products that you were developing that you ended up abandoning.
- [36:12]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah, our first knee device that we made, we realized we were going down the wrong path and so it wasn't the right fit, it didn't do the right thing and we didn't have the motors in the right area and so we scrapped it. But every week we'd kind of bring it back and talk about it. We had this really cool thing on Thursdays where we would put on a whiteboard and we would challenge. Let's write, this is the product. Now let's tell, let's all of us in the room think of reasons we shouldn't do this. So you'd write them all down. Now let's think of reasons why we should do this. And we write them down. And you sit in a room with people like that that don't have an ego, Their goal is the same. Some really cool things came from that.
- [36:53]
Shopify Masters Host
I think one of the big themes of being an entrepreneur is the pivot. You had countless experiences, even in the early days, where you could have been really discouraged, people kicking you out of places and whatever, but you had the conviction. Do you have any kind of framework for how you assess when to stay the course, when to recalibrate, went to abandon ship?
- [37:19]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
That's probably part of my sickness, to be honest with you, is that I don't, you know, I, I. Consistency, persistence, and delusion. Those are really the things that I really try to practice every day. Delusion, delusion. It's a big one. I think that's part of it. You need people to tell you you're crazy. That's part of the recipe of success, in my opinion. And typically, it's people that are closest to you. Your mom, your dad, your brother, your husband, your wife. Like, what are you doing? Are you crazy? How can you think that that's gonna work? And I love that because that means I'm being delusional. That means I'm pushing the boundaries of these things. Like, I wanted to be with Red Bull Racing. What? How are you gonna do that? We ended up with Red Bull Racing.
- [38:09]
Shopify Masters Host
How did you do that?
- [38:10]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Right. It was just. By that time, our brand had grown enough that. And we had a commercial team, and we'd really. During COVID we really. That part of our business really grew a lot was the commercial side and working with teams and sponsorships and stuff like that. So it wasn't as. It wasn't as hard as it sounds, because we knew people that knew people, and we'd done a lot in the UK with premier leagues, and a lot of those people know each other, so it just. It sort of happened. And, you know, it's just like anything else. You reach out, hey, do you know anyone that knows? Yes. Let me introduce you to this guy. And suddenly we're on the phone with this guy, and he's like, oh, my God, we have the perfect spot for you guys. And really, how much is that? And then, you know, it just ends up happening. So it was. It's. It's special, though, when it finally. You see it on TV and, you know, you see the drivers wearing it on their. On their jerseys and stuff.
- [38:56]
Shopify Masters Host
It's one thing to be called Delusional in the early days when you have something that's unproven. Right. But then it kind of reminds me a little bit of the trajectory of celebrity. Right. As somebody becomes more famous, people maybe stop saying no to them. Right. They're surrounded by yes men even if they don't think that they are. Therabody has become this massively successful company. How are you still maintaining that commitment to some degree of delusion, to some degree of crazy?
- [39:27]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah, it's a little bit like a drug because you kind of seek that if everything's a yes to people, then I'm not doing the right thing. And that's part of it. If we're sitting in a room with engineers and I'm telling them we need it to do this and this and that, and they're like, you can't do that. Perfect. That's what we're going to do then. I remember when I wanted red light on the first theragun and they were like, you want what? We can't put red light on a theragun. We have red line on a theragun. Now we're working on a product. And that one was again, I brought it in and put it in athlete's hands and told them what it does and they're just like, what? There's no way this. And I love that. To me, to me that's like, where's that crow pie again? Let's start eating crow. It's a key element in product development. It's a key element in growth. It's delusion is a really important part, just as much part as the other ones.
- [40:23]
Shopify Masters Host
On the flip side, have you ever had delusions that have actually proven to be just that or you've had to give up on something?
- [40:31]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah. Yeah. Therabody University. I made that in 2019 and created some courses around it and stuff. And I didn't realize, like, oh my God, this is going to be almost impossible. And I'd had people tell me, well, if you do that, you're gonna have to do this and then you have to do that, and for that to scale, you're gonna have to do this. And I'm like, I can do that, no problem. Like, we'll figure this out. But it takes a lot of manpower to do some of the things I was trying to do inside that vertical, I guess you would call it in our company.
- [41:00]
Shopify Masters Host
What made you recognize that you needed to cut your losses?
- [41:03]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
The work that it took. Yeah. Just the challenge of the time, the man hours of getting it into the system and then sharing it into the world as the company was growing. You have to pick and choose what you're going to spend your time on. You can't spend your time on everything. That was one of the subjects, I guess is the best way to say it, that we decided like, okay, let's just set that aside. It is what it is. People that know what it is will appreciate it. So I still use it at USC and a school in Portland and Indiana State University. So they still implement some of these courses that I designed a long time ago. But it's not therabody university like I wanted it to be.
- [41:44]
Shopify Masters Host
You are a chiropractor by trade. Chiropractic work is by nature slow, methodical, one to one, right. Then you become a sort of reluctant entrepreneur. Right. It's not something that you set out to do and at a certain point the company really accelerates. And now you're functioning at a totally different speed than maybe you're even like you constitutionally want to be. How did you get your system comfortable with that kind of speed and also with the kind of success that you were having?
- [42:20]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
It's a little bit like a workout. If you've had a trainer or you've worked out with someone and they push you, the. The voices in your head are like, I've never done this before. How am I going to do this? There's no way. I've never walked on my hands across. There's. It's very similar to that. I've had days where I'm like, I can't do this anymore. Like I literally can't do this anymore. And I go to sleep, I have a good dinner, I wake up, I go to the gym the next morning. And then for some reason I just feel like renewed. And it's that one step back, two steps forward. I just feel like there's really a lot of truth to that in my experience. So as the company's grown, there are things that I deal with today that there's no way I would have been able to deal with. I remember we were right in the middle of some of the thickest, most important things were going on. And my brother dies. And I was like, what? Nothing is more important than that. And to suddenly have something that was everything to me, suddenly mean nothing to me, that also gave perspective. Like, okay, wait a second. And then I had to come back. It just happened to me the other day. I mean, we're being super authentic and real. I was in Europe, I flew to London, we were in Our London office for a couple days. Then I went and spent some time with my family in Norway. And I got so lost in that experience with my family. I was just, I love Norway. I'm so far away from anything. My phone still works, but it's not, we're not on the right time zone. So I just kind of lost my. I got lost in it and I got on the airplane and we flew back and I was watching movies and I wasn't really doing emails. I was on doing a lot of social media stuff on the airplane. I landed and I woke up the next morning and I had to get to a meeting right off the bat, like at 9am the next morning. So I'd land at 7 or 8 from Europe. So tired, passed out, woke up the next morning, hit the ground running. And about halfway through that day I was like, f this, like this just happened. I'm like, I was doing all of this and I started looking like, wait a minute, how can I spin all these plates and keep them going all at the same time? And so even then I had to kind of step back and be like, okay, hang on a second. It's not all a mess. Let's just take away the things that aren't super high priority right now and let's just focus on the things that are priority. And that's taken a skill and a talent, you know, to believe in myself, to focus on the things that are
- [44:57]
Shopify Masters Host
important
- [45:00]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
and not let it get to me.
- [45:01]
Shopify Masters Host
Do you have any practices that really help solidify that for you and help bring you back when you start to spin out?
- [45:10]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
I need at least one hour for myself in the mornings and I didn't get it that morning. I jumped up and had to, you know, jump in the shower and I do get going and suddenly I'm in my car and I'm thinking about the day and I just didn't really get a chance to kind of ground myself and I, pun intended, you know, like, I didn't. I'll usually go down to the beach, I'll go running, I'll do something to just kind of ground myself and kind of like, okay, it's all going to be good. But when I don't do that, suddenly I feel like I'm kind of behind the eight ball and I gotta run faster or hurry more or take more phone calls or just do a lot of silly things. If I don't have my morning, my, my morning hour, I, I probably will end up cracking at some point in the day.
- [45:52]
Shopify Masters Host
The therabody story For a lot of people is like a dream story. Do you have any advice for founders out there in terms of titrating and acclimating to success so that they don't end up just knocking themselves back down to the starting point?
- [46:08]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah, it's gonna be hard, and it needs to be hard. I was talking to this kid, one of my son's friends, and he was going through a situation with work, and he was running this by me. He was kind of, here's my scenario. This is what I'm doing, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And he got to the point where he's like. And so I just thought, you know, I might as well just do this. And I was like, hang on a second. In my experience, anytime I've said I might as well, I was compromising something, Those decisions always came back and bit me. So I told him, don't ever make a decision that's. Might as well do the hard thing, the hardest thing, and the right thing are the same thing. And so in situations where I'm faced with something, I don't want to do this, I just kind of sort of slow close my eyes on where is that resistance coming from. I need to step into that. That's where I need to step into. Is it my kids? Is it my mom? Is it relationship? Is it my health? Is it the company? Is it this person? Is my wife? Like, what is it? And then that's where I'll step into. And just kind of that thing is something that I realized was a law. For me, it was like, the hardest thing and the right thing are typically the same thing when it comes to certain situations like that. And so I just choose the hard thing. So I think anyone that's in business that wants to be a founder, it's not easy. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do, and you'll have things hit you that put you in despair that really make you think, like, I can't. Do you really question yourself? And I've gotten to the point now where I'm not afraid of that feeling. It's on my checklist of things that I have to do to be successful. So I just check it off. I don't live in it. I don't take it personal. I just recognize, like, oh, this is crappy, but I gotta do this thing.
- [48:02]
Shopify Masters Host
And the despair indicates to you that something good might be on the other side.
- [48:05]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Right around the corner. Yep, right around the corner.
- [48:08]
Shopify Masters Host
That's a beautiful note to close on. Jason, thank you so much for the candor today.
- [48:15]
Dr. Jason Wurslund
Yeah. Thank you. Been great to be here, and thanks
- [48:18]
Shopify Masters Host
to all of you for tuning in. Make sure you're subscribed to Shopify Masters so you never miss an episode. I'll catch you next time.