Theragun: Hacked together in 10/10 pain - the $400m garage invention

0:01I'd been gone for, I don't know, six, eight days or something, and my secretary said you should go see your patient. he's waiting for you in your room. When your secretary tells that to you, that's usually not a good thing. Is he in more pain? Turn the corner, walk in my office, and he's sitting there with the Makita jigsaw, and he looks at me and goes, Doc, you've got to figure this thing out because this saved my life. That moment, the universe did an open hand punch to my chest, and I realized this is where my journey started.

0:29That's Dr. Jason Wursland, creator of the Theragun, a therapy device that put his company, Therabody on the map. Theragun is backed by some big names. Justin Timberlake claims to be the company's first investor, and the likes of Jay-Z and Daniel Craig also have a stake. I'd love to go to the AGM, but arguably the most exciting celebrity user is me. Yep, that's right. Move over Cristiano Ronaldo. I have a Theragun. It was my favourite pandemic purchase. I absolutely love it. Jason created the first Theragun after getting into a dark place. He was in chronic pain, 10 out of 10 pain, after a motorbike accident in 2008.

1:12So he took his chiropractic background and built a tool he needed from his garage. This is a nuts story, and I think you're going to love Jason. I'd let him work on my back for sure, but seriously, I learned a lot from him and how to manage people, including the real trick to getting celebrity clients for your business. Not many children grow up dreaming of becoming a chiropractor, but not many people are like Jason or have neighbors like he did. My neighbor when I was growing up was the chiropractor for the Utah Jazz. I would watch him, literally his door to his home office, he had an office in his house, was right outside of our house.

1:52So I could see what's going on there. And if he brought in one of the basketball players, I'd run over there and ask if I could see and watch what he does. And I've always been really intrigued by the fact that this guy could do so many things with just his hands. Like he could do so many. He was so talented. These guys would come in in a mess and they'd leave just praising him. And I thought, what is that guy doing? I'm so intrigued by that. It seemed like that was so far away from me. You know, I'd have to go to school for four years and then I'd have to go to school for another four years. And it just seemed being the oldest, my family wasn't wealthy by any means.

2:26Always had to work. I started when I was super young. I started working when I was 12 years old in the fields of a farm, picking peas and strawberries. And I would get paid by the weight of how much I put in that bucket. So it wasn't very much. But at the time, you know, I'm so grateful that happened. And my parents loved that I say that because the work ethic that I got. Just have to get up early in the morning because in the summertime, you didn't want to sit out in the sun. It was 100 degrees or 40 in your case. Just I had a really cool work ethic and I was really proud of the fact that my parents did that to me.

3:01I was a lifeguard for a little bit of my life in my late teens. I opened a flooring store when I was 25, 26 and my business partner three years later embezzled money and I had to file bankruptcy. So all these years I'd worked so hard to get to this place. And now suddenly I couldn't, I wasn't able to work myself out of that. And so suddenly I was, I had to file bankruptcy at the same time I was going through a divorce. You know, you kind of fail your way to success. And in my opinion, failure is quitting and I just never quit. So I would have, I would have losses, but I would just pick up and go figure it out.

3:41So after I had to file bankruptcy and went through a divorce, I realized, you know what? I have a chance to start my life over again. And how, what do I want that to look like for the next 50 years of my life? I'd always wanted to be a chiropractor. So I called this guy, his name's Craig Buehler. And I said, Hey man, I want to do this. And he goes, you know, a funny thing. I know the president of the school in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, the reason I chose Los Angeles was because it's a one hour flight away from my kids, hour and 10 minutes. And I have two children and they were young and I didn't want to miss them growing up.

4:13So I just wanted to be able to jump on a plane and go back and see them. So it just worked out. He knew the guy. He wrote a letter of recommendation. I got accepted. So I started chiropractic school when I was 28. And learning science, chemistry, physics, all of those things later in life when that's not was never really my strong point. And having it become a love of mine, like I really love that stuff now. It's so interesting to me. I spent a lot of my time on geometry. So you decide to go in to become a chiropractor. What's that process like? You know, you start at 28. You start, like you say, learning these subjects you've never learned in your life.

4:48And you have to start understanding the chemistry of the body really, and how things fit together and how they work. How many years were you doing this? And what was your routine? I would try and fly home every other weekend because my kids were so important. And that sacrifice of being away from them gets me emotional sometimes. You know, the fact that I missed out on, you know, daddy daughter days and scouting camps and stuff with my son. About three or four years into it, I realized that my relationship with my kids is different, not better, not worse, just different. And the reason I say that is obviously I have a bunch of, I have 28 nephews and nieces.

5:24So like I've seen my kids, my brothers and sisters grow up with their kids and the relationship they have. So one of the valuable things that I've taken away from that experience is when I'm talking to my children on the phone, they can't ignore me. They're not playing on their phone. They're not talking to their friends, which is typically what happens if you're in the house. They're watching TV, sit down and talk to me. But if my son calls me after a basketball game, I hear play by play what happened in his mind, what he wanted me to remember. And that connection we have is still super strong.

5:57My routine was basically going back and forth every other week based on birthdays and holidays and things like that. The first two or three years, funny story, I got into chiropractic school with my hours that I thought were enough to just jump right into chiropractic school. So I would have the four years of chiro school. Sitting in my first day of school, first day of class, knock, knock, knock, person opens the door, ask for me. I'm in the room with 30 other people. I step out in the hallway and he says, we miscalculated your hours. You have to go back and do night school for what's essentially three years.

6:30And I'm like, if you could only imagine, I was looking at this guy and he suddenly turned into like an ax and I wanted to throw him out the window. I was so mad. But so I had to start over and that's when I went back and I had to start doing physics, chemistry, you know, organic chemistry, labs, all of that. So I was going into this, Dan, thinking it was going to take me four years at max. Now, suddenly I just tacked on another three years at its best. So my routine basically was working at my dad's flooring store in the morning. I'd get up first thing in the morning, 8.30, 9 o 'clock, go to the store.

7:03I'd work till three or four. I'd go to school till about 11. And I just did that for about two and a half years. Got my bachelor's in science, transferred now into chiropractic school. So now it's full time. You're going full time from eight in the morning until three or four in the afternoon. In 2006, I realized that I could have a practice in California and I needed to get out of the flooring business. It was such a, it was such a, you know, one leg in different worlds. I just wasn't successful in doing that. So I started a chiropractic practice working with another chiropractor in Los Angeles.

7:37And that's really what changed that. Yes, it was challenging to learn those classes and have to be as such a different routine that I was so used to in my life as a entrepreneur. I could decide whether I wanted to lay carpet that day or not. But one of the most fascinating things that I learned, and I still practice it today, is how I learn. How do I learn? What's the easiest way for me to assimilate information and be able to transmit that back out? That's how I look at my experience in chiropractic school. My experience in life is what am I learning and how can I help people around me learn from that.

8:12I'm in a quantum medicine program right now. I'm always trying to learn. I think there's so much more out there for us to understand. And I don't want to be stagnant. You know, I see chiropractors and other people, they get in their practice and, you know, they live in caves. They live in their house. It's a cave. They live in their car. It's a cave. And they live in their practice. It's a cave. They don't get to get out and do things. And I'm blessed because I get to, but I also feel the responsibility of making sure that people understand the values that I have that have got me to where I am.

8:39So my routine was, it sort of shifted depending on what was happening in my life. But my kids were always number one, as much as I could be physically or on a phone. And then I spent most of my time just studying, trying to figure out how I learned. And once I learned how I learned, then it was like, just started coming. It was super quick. So you've spent the years, you've done your time, now you're doing the crime. So what happens? You're a practicing chiropractor where? In LA? Back in Utah? Where are you? I tried. I went once I graduated. I tried to go back to Utah for a year. I wanted to be near my kids and it just didn't work.

9:17I just it wasn't the same mentality. It was just I couldn't. I was a fish out of water. And having been in California for that many years, I was like, I can't do this. I was practicing from 2006, all of 2006, almost all of 2007. And then I got in a motorcycle accident and that's when my life changed. It literally, now I'm 38 and I got in this motorcycle accident and it literally changed the course of my life. So I was practicing in LA and I had a decent practice. And in LA, if you're in the right circles, you get celebrities and athletes and that sort of thing. And that's the area that I was kind of focusing on.

9:57I was being a concierge chiropractor to some people at different times. I was on movie sets and different things. So I really got exposed to a lot of different things, but it was all in LA and I loved that. It was different. It wasn't the same monotony every time. And the patience I had was just, you know, 15 year old girl, female gymnast to Larry David, you know, like it was like from one end to the other so it taught me a lot about how to communicate with people but it also kept me on my toes i loved it okay and just uh like quick interlude because larry david is like my all-time favorite so did he just always complain how much complaining did larry david do because you just like bottle that complaint and just want it you become addicted to his complaints did you want more of them or were you like larry just be happy yeah he's not much different than you see on tv and a lot of the sets that you see are actually his like his office is his office um his house is sort of similar to his house the funny thing to me is he's a skeptic like i was working on his elbow one time and i was sitting right next to him working on his elbow and we were having this conversation and i said ld isn't it hilarious that i'm working on larry david's funny bone and he was like ah that's all i got out of him the one strong ah he was he's a great guy that is a great joke.

11:12I'm sorry. That is a great joke. You deserve some respect for that. But when you say he's a skeptic, like what, like, you know, as a patient, was he like dubious whether you could work your magic for him? Yeah. Yeah. Like one time he called me and I've got to be careful too, because there's HIPAA laws and stuff over here. But one time he called me, he had an issue and I told him where I was. I said, I'm 10 minutes away. I can swing by your house. He's like, it's late, but I'm like, that's okay. It's, I know I can hear what the problem is. I think I can fix it. So I show up, I'm there for 10 minutes and I get him better.

11:44And he's like, that, that can't be, that can't be. How did you, and he just, he was stuck in his, how, he's moving around. He's like, how did you do that? I, I'm going to call you tomorrow. He was, he's, he's just that guy. Um, and, and I made a bet with him one time that I was going to fix a certain thing that he had by a certain time. And as it got closer, he was like, I don't know. oh, I don't know. I think I'm going to win this bet. A lot of people, when you work on them, they're really, really open and accepting. And you could almost hit him in the head with a piece of wood and they'd get better because they believe in that so strongly.

12:21I wouldn't say Larry's a non-believer, but I just think he's really skeptical. He grew up in a different time. And having a chiropractor work on you and crack bones to make you feel better, that's just has been sort of quackery in his mind. So it's just a different mindset. And that's up to me to navigate. You know, I've got to make sure that he's comfortable with what I'm doing and that our relationship is such a way. But, you know, with people like him, it's, I feel like where I'm good at is just telling him to shut up. Like, you know, shut up, be quiet. I'm working. And I have this motto. I think it's kind of cool to share with people, especially someone like you think right now.

12:57I've learned that through my life, whatever the situation is, that I have a three-step process. BRT, support, educate. BRT stands for build relationship of trust. And I tell people that can take a year or a beer because if you can create that relationship of trust, then you can now support that person. If you were my patient, I would create a relationship with trust, understand your life, your movements, your habits, what you do with your body. And then I would start supporting you. And I'd not change what you're doing, but plug in, hey, do this and fix that. And that's what I really do with a lot of athletes from Ronaldo to some of the artists I work with is I'm their coach when it comes to implementing these things in their life to be able to be a support to them.

13:43A lot of them don't pay me. That's not why I do it. And then the last thing is educate. And educate could be in some cases, it could be sales. I always feel like I'm not selling anything to you. I'm just educating you on something you should have and you decide whether you want it or not. So BRT, support and educate. And that's the kind of process that I go through with Larry David. You know, at some point, he's going to ask me, how can I do this on my elbow by myself? And then I get to educate him. So that's been a successful formula for me. And the first part is most important. If you don't have a relationship of trust, it's not going to go anywhere.

14:17It's interesting because you notice, obviously, we have different crafts here. And, you know, my craft in this sphere being interviewing. And the first thing that we do is, you know, establish a relationship of trust, you know, making sure it's really clear, like, you know, how I'm going to behave so I don't catch you totally off guard and that you should feel free how to reject my questions or how to push back and stuff so that we actually have a respectful, trust-based conversation. Because if you were in London, we'd be doing this over a beer. Yeah, we had a metaphorical beer. Who was more of a diva than Larry David or Ronaldo?

14:53next question very good okay i mean i feel like we're getting to the meaty part here i mean how do you as a chiropractor there's there's i'm assuming thousands of chiropractors that get trained out of la and then hundreds of them presumably go work in la because there'll be so much business there right so much sports personality living there no matter where they play in the country probably a lot of them reside in la so you're not going to be short of competition So how come you were in the Envy Ball position to find these kind of clients? Can you tell us a little bit about what happened next in your career?

15:30You know, I think it's, I honestly think it's luck. And, you know, they say luck is being prepared at the right time when the opportunity shows up. Preparedness meets opportunity. Yeah. And I think that's probably a lot of what happened. You know, I found myself, hey, can you stop by? And I'd stop by and there were so-and-so would be there. and I'd get a chance to interact with them. The biggest thing to these people that live that type of life is the trust. And I never asked for a photo. I didn't pull my phone out and say, hey, can I get a selfie? Never, ever did I ask for anything from them.

16:05Once I used to tell them, when you laid face down on my table, you're just another body. It doesn't matter to me how much money you make, how famous you are. I have a job to do. And that reputation starts to spread really slowly throughout that community. You know, I could list off a bunch of different really high top celebrities that I've got to know really well. And the reason that I do is I don't kiss and tell. And I also am very respectful of their time. I mean, there's times I've shown up and I don't even see them, but I went out of my way to make a diff change in my day to get there and it doesn't happen, but that's just their life.

16:45I'm not really starstruck because I look at them as a body. I'm trying to figure out, I was with an actor the other day and I was walking behind him and I was with, we were with a bunch of people and I noticed something with his gait. And so I started asking him about, hey, have you had this? And he's like, yeah, how'd you know? And then suddenly he opens up to me. I remember I walked into a movie set and I was on those little star wagons, they call them, where they're like little motor coaches and they work, they have their makeup and everything in there. And I was sitting down with this person and they were getting their hair and makeup done and they were talking to me and they were telling me things I didn't want to know.

17:22And I'm just like, ah, I don't want to know this. But I realized through time that when I walk through the door, I'm not a fan. I'm a doctor. I'm going to put my hands on them. I'm going to get in their space. I'm going to exchange energy with them. And they see that differently. And I have to honor that. The times that I haven't, which have been very few, it ends up not working out. You know, if I get awestruck or I'm frustrated or something happens and it's just not a good vibe, then it doesn't work out. So I think for people to understand, I look at it like I'm there to help them and I'm getting in their space.

18:02Whether it's physical in the wagon or I'm literally physically in their space with their body. I've got to understand where that boundary is and allow them to take that steps those steps toward the trust factor and they're going to tell me things that you know they probably won't even tell sometimes their physical their medical doctor if I could bottle something up and give it to someone I think that's probably what I would do is is give them that understanding of recognizing that these people want you to help them they don't they don't want to sign autographs they don't want selfies. They want you to help them.

18:37And when you do, it's so valuable to them. It's beyond dollars. And then they start referring you to other people. And suddenly I find myself with this person or that person in it, or on this movie set or on this video, like video shoot. So, and every single time I have to maintain nobility and character every time. And I tell myself that I have to walk in, make sure I look right. I'm not too crazy with my energy. I've got to make sure I flow in there nice that I'm when I'm with them, it's just crazy enough. Yeah, just crazy enough for some people. Yeah, this is, you know, this is some of the skills that you've had to learn in order to manage people's psyches and in order to work with them in their mental headspace by working on their physical bodies.

19:21All of those are super practical skills you learn on the job. I'm curious about, you know, where those skills actually help prepare you for a proper life of entrepreneurship that's coming up. So, you know, sort of next stage of your development. So what I'm really keen to know is tell us a little bit about this motorbike accident. What happened? I was 38 years old. It was October 17th of 2007. I was, I call it the triangle. I was home, school, and my practice. And so I was just going through this. That was my routine. And I was driving a motorcycle. In Los Angeles, you can split traffic like you can in Europe.

19:57And I was splitting traffic on the freeway. and a car realized it wasn't on the right path and it suddenly shot in front of me and I T-boned the side of this Volkswagen going about 90 kilometers an hour. It knocked me out. I was unconscious, laying on the freeway. It broke my helmet. It was a pretty strong impact. But what happened to my body after that was what really caused this sort of movement in my, and pun intended by the way, of what's happened in my life. I got up I was fine I felt like I was fine I knew I had a concussion I could feel it in my head I just wasn't right I'd cut my arm open I was trying to hide that from the doctors when they showed up I denied a ambulance ride to the airport to the hospital because I wanted to get I was on my way to take a test ironically I was on my way to take a physical therapy test the tow truck shows up and I said to the tow truck driver I'm out in the I'm in the middle of the freeway and I said to the tow truck driver, what way are you going?

21:00And he told me which way he was going and he was driving by my school. So I said, can you just give me a ride to this exit? He's like, yeah, sure. Puts my bike on the flatbed, jumps in, we start driving. He radios to his people. Hey, I have the bike. I have the thing. I picked them up. And the guy, I'm going to drop the guy off on this exit. And his supervisor came on and said, you cannot do that. It's illegal to have him in your car. you need to you need to let him out as soon as possible so he literally pulls off the side of the freeway and I have to jump out so now I have my motorcycle bag my jacket on my Kevlar gloves and I'm holding my helmet bleeding standing on the side of the road and I'm like shit I've got like 20 minutes to get to school to take this test so I run down the old off-ramp I there's a hotel right there I run in the hotel I had$80 or so in my account I didn't have a lot of money and I thought$20 would get me to school.

21:56So I pull$20 out, run out front of this hotel. There's a taxi sitting there. I jump in the taxi, tell him where I'm going. We get on the freeway. Well, it's rush hour in LA. So we're on the 101. If anyone knows that's listening to this, the 101 heading into Hollywood is like ridiculous. The lust. Come around and I'm driving down the road and I'm looking at this guy's meter and it's tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. It's$18,$19. And I was like, crap, I don't have. So I said, sir, and we're probably a hundred yards from my exit. I only have$20. And he slams on his brakes and starts yelling at me, get the F out of my car.

22:35We're giving my money. It was so, I'm like, can you just take me? No, I'm not going to. So I jumped out of the car. I had all my stuff and I was so tight on time, Dan, that I didn't want to run around two blocks to get to the front of my school. I wanted to jump the fence. So now I'm at the back of my school. I'm throwing my shit over the fence. I climb this fence, jump over, land on the ground, pick my stuff up, and I go running into the school. And by the way, the windows to my entire school faced the parking lot. So I had an audience watching me do this whole thing. So I go running into the school.

23:10I go into the clinic. We had two medical doctors. One was an internist. The other one was a gastrologist or something. I think that's actually the same thing. They did two different things. Oh, no, no. One was a plastic surgeon. One was a gastrologist. I ran into their office and I said, guys, can you stitch this up? And I showed them what happened to my arm. And they're like, well, we're not licensed to do that here. We can't do that here. I'm like, just come on. I'll shut the door. Like, I know you can do it. Like, no, we can't do that. So I ran to my class. I talked to the teacher. I explained to him what happened.

23:42Hey, I just got in this motorcycle accident. I think I need to go get stitches. He says, come back and take the class with the afternoon class and it was like, I don't know, 11 or so in the morning now. Jump in the car. I have a friend take me to a clinic that was nearby my clinic at the time. Remember, I had a practice going on at the time. So I was working with medical doctors. I called a guy that I knew worked at an urgent care and I said, dude, do you happen to be there? He happened to be there that day. So can I come by and get some stitches? And he's like, yeah, yeah, come by. I won't charge you.

24:09I'll fix you up. Run in. He starts stitching my arm up and he gets a call. He's the only guy in the clinic. So he has to go out and he's, he's receiving someone coming in and I'm looking at the clock and I'm like, doc, I got to go. So he stitched it up the right way, about halfway through the scar. And then I just said, just hurry up and stitch the rest. So he spaced it out much bigger, which ended up causing a keloid on my arm. I had a big scar, went back, took the test. I didn't pass the test because I was in like, I might just not, I was in a different zone with my brain. but that day was definitely a sympathetic day.

24:47I was in a sympathetic state. I was in fight or flight the entire day. There's no way you can learn or even take a test when you're in that state. So I was trying to force through that and I ended up failing the test. I had to take the test over again but that started this process of pain. That started this understanding of what pain was. I'd never been injured in in sports I I tore a muscle on my leg but it wasn't anything that needed surgery so I'd never experienced what it was like to be a patient and now suddenly I was a patient and my lens that I saw things through was so different and the pain was unrelenting and and I still remember that to today it was on a different level you know I've I work with a lot of medical doctors that never had anything like that and so they just don't understand that a 10 out of 10 pain is literally a 10 out of 10 pain.