Dr. Jason Wersland - Therabody Beauty and The New "F" Series

Hey everyone, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over four years and running. I'm your host, Eric Balzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurofitness.co to subscribe and get our interviews with summaries delivered straight to your inbox. Thanks for listening and on to the show. There is one thing that fires me up. It's elevating the personal training and coaching industry. For that, the Workout app is an absolute game changer. No more promoting top brands without compensation or dealing with confusing social media links. In just a few clicks, Workout's user-friendly app lets top trainers and coaches curate and share the world's most sought-after fitness brands like HyperIce, Vega, and more. Product lines covering everything from fitness equipment to supplements and apparel. Save time and boost your earnings with generous commissions and bonuses every time your client purchases the products you already endorse. Do not wait. Maximize your income and streamline your business with store by workout. Discover more at workout.com. That's w-r-k-o-ut.com. Just one-o. W-r-K-O-U-T. Go get it. All right, we are live. Dr. Jason Worson, welcome back to the future of fitness. Thanks. Good to see you. Yeah, you as well. You know, I want to kind of kick off this interview. First of all, I haven't had you on the show since um January of 2022. So it's been well over a year and a half. Uh but I got to meet you in person, um, IRL, as the kids say nowadays. Um at uh I think it was idea. And uh thanks to Tony and the guys from NASM on making sure that we got um we got paired up. But it was really it was cool for me and funny. It was a funny story because we were you brought me back and it was by the TRX room. There was, you know, people were just coming off a session and you had this tent set up with all this, you know, all of your cool new, you know, their body gear. And these these two women come up and you know, one was like, gosh, you know, I'm I got this elbow issue, and um, you know, can you help me with that? And I was like, these people don't know that they're talking to the founder of Fairgun. And you were so you didn't you didn't bat an eye. Like you just took inside, you're like, oh yeah, of course. Like, what's the problem? Like, tell me more. And you just went right into like practitioner mode, and you generally wanted to help these people. And I thought that was just a really interesting anecdote into like the type of guy that you are. Um, you know, a lot of people who would be founders or CEOs would be like too busy for that, you know. Maybe, hey, let me hand you off to somebody else. Thanks for your interest. But you just got right in, and uh, and then I kind of lost a conversation, so I was kind of bummed, but I was like, anyway, I'll scroll back. Uh so it was just it was a good thing. I think it was a good highlight of you know how you interact with the industry. So kudos on that, man. Um so it has been a year and a half. What's uh maybe give us give us a little bit of an update, uh, Doctor. What what's been going on in in your life over the last 19 months?

Well, uh, I think the first part of it was you know, sort of adjusting to the same thing that the rest of the world was, the economy, um, you know, just the the economic environment was different. And um and then, you know, we were we dove into product development, um, and we we usually have a 12 to 18 month cycle. Um, so what do we say? You said January of 22. Is that what you said? So wow. So last year we launched 12 new products in September, and uh we did them all at the same time. We did we launched cupping, goggles, um, uh recovery therm, these like things for your back and your knee, and we just threw it out there because there was such a need for it, it felt like, especially in the spaces where I'm at with teams and physios and things like that. So it's always a whirlwind. And you know, here we are shooting this today on the end of September, and I just I'm going right, I'm right in the middle of launching new products again for this year. So um Christmas last year was good for us, I think, in general as a company. Um, and then coming into 23 was really positioning ourselves for uh a really big growth in 24 and 25. You know, the World Cup's coming, the Olympics are coming to LA. There's a lot of energy being sort of driven into this kind this city right now as it prepares for that. So um, you know, we kind of went up and down in in in numbers with like employees. We had we had some layoffs just because the economy was tough and we had to sort of streamline, which unfortunately I hate uh because we lose good people. Um, but I'm thinking like positively you look at it and it it makes you better. You know, you have to really analyze roles and focus uh and messaging and how uh people perceive who we are, both internally with our own employees and externally, how people recognize our brand. So I think it's really taught us a lot. Uh we've brought on some new people. We have a new CEO as of January of 23. We have a new CFO shortly after that. Uh Ben, who was the CEO before, slid over to become the chief strategy officer. So he's helping with strategy. And we've launched a new beauty line. If anyone's paying attention, we have a mask that we launched that now supports Therapace Pro, the little Theragun for your face. There was a big opportunity there. That was one of our learnings last year. Was like, wait a minute, there's there's no one's really doing these things in this wellness beauty space. And then, you know, if you think about what we were in 2018, 19, 20 almost, we were one product company. And to grow from one product now to 28 different SKUs, and that doesn't include the attachments and all the different things that come on the different SKUs. You have to learn, we had to learn really how to communicate that to our public. And recognizing as the leaders in this space that it's our responsibility to put context around all these products. You know, suddenly now we got like 25 products. You go to one of our retail locations, whether it's in Vegas or wherever they are, we've got 20 of them, 23 of them around the US. You go in there, it's just a sea of products. And so we recognized color coding them and putting them together in categories was really important. So I think when you say, What have you been spending your time on? Learning, number one, um, and that's basically from listening to consumers. Uh, you know, one of the things I've sort of prided myself on over the years as we've grown is really paying attention to what's going on in different communities, in the physical therapy world, in the sporting world, in the athletes world, in the consumer world, and now the number of things you have to get insights on consumers buying and how they perceive different brands. And I mean, it's crazy now. So we've been able to apply a lot of that. Uh, and now when you look at our brand, I'm hoping our goal is that you see these three buckets. You see wellness, performance, and beauty, and that you recognize that you know, we all fit in the wellness bucket, no matter where you are, what you're doing. But there's some that are a little bit more on the on the performance side. So that would be, you know, athletes and maybe you and I, you know, we're getting ready for a race or something, go skiing. Just that's the performance side of things. And they're a little bit heavier duty, the protocols are a little bit more involved, the app connection is is necessary to get the right uh protocols. And then the beauty side, the beauty, we're just barely scratching the surface. You know, that someone asked me the other day, like, why did you get into beauty? And we kind of accidentally got into beauty with the Therapace Pro. Like, we didn't know that that was the case. And we were working with DeAndre Hopkins and you know, a bunch of different athletes who loved the product. So we weren't looking at it as a beauty product, we were calling it facial health. But it's, you know, the scale tips and it just falls into beauty really quickly just because of top heavy the product. And I don't mean that no pun intended. So now suddenly we're in this beauty space, and it's like, now what do we do here? So we start looking around, we realize wow, there's a lot of need for the technologies that we have that we're working on that we're innovating with. So that's kind of what's happened. I know it's a long answer, but now the company, if you look at Therabody, we have several different brands and several different products. We have retail locations, and then we have our reset centers, which is recovery centers. We have six of those across the state. We're opening a new one in New York. By the time you launch this podcast, it will be open. It's in Manhattan West. It's amazing. Um, it's our it's gonna be our flagship reset, so it's gonna have the biggest, best of everything. So we have those things, and then we have our brand, ourselves, that we've now segmented into categories wellness, beauty, and performance. So, you know, I spend most of my time educating. Uh, you you mentioned the story about the idea world and seeing those women come in. I love that. I I don't want them to know who I am. You know, I that's not what it's about. It's really about listening to them. I learned so much from injuries and issues and what people are looking for, and then watching them use them. You know, how do they use them? Does it make sense? Is it intuitive? Are they scared? Is it are they asking me questions? So that, I mean, you understand this, I'm sure, and probably many things in your life, but I learn so much when I'm right there on the front lines. You know, wow, it'd be better if I had an on-off switch or if this was green instead of red. Or like I just get a lot of insights from people. My my my innovation team hates when I go into their room because they're like, oh no, this guy again, you know, bring us a thousand ideas. I think you're on mute, Eric.

Yeah, sorry about that, Jay.

Uh that's okay. I'll I'm gonna do that probably twice while we're doing the same.

Um that's a good comprehensive uh, I guess, summary of the last 19 months. I mean, and it's there's a lot going on, especially in your world. And you know, some things to that I want to unpack too is like the beauty. I mean, it was really that beauty category seemed to at least the articles that I saw coming out seemed to be really well received. Like um, I'm curious, like, how did it start with someone like DeAndre Hopkins? And then how did it get into like a you know, an actual beauty category, which is I've never worked in that that category of business, but it sounds hyper competitive. Um, there's a lot of money going around in that that sector. So yeah, give me some insights. How do you get from that to where you are now? And then how do you feel about how it was received initially?

Yeah, well, I think you have to kind of look at the way that I have navigated my life for the last 20 years. And just like I was sharing with you those people that we met at Idea World, those two women, DeAndre Hopkins, um, Paul George, uh, I could go down the list of athletes a lot in the UK, all the way up to Ronaldo. I I have conversations with those guys about products. And when I showed, I was working with Maria Sheropova to get a woman's perspective and DeAndre to get a men's male perspective because we weren't thinking about it as beauty. We were thinking more as like self-care, facial health, wellness, and that type of thing. So DeAndre gets it, loves the blue light that's on there, and he loves the lift. You know, he's he's sort of into fashion, and I mean, he's a good looking guy, he's he's successful. And so I learned a lot from DeAndre. Um, and there still are a lot of men that want to buy the Therapace Pro. So I think the the dovetail or the the transition from DeAndre into beauty, and the reason I bring him up is he's on the cover of GQ magazine. He's in fashion, and those that's sort of inherent in that space for people to pay attention to their crow's feet or you know, their neck. Or for DeAndre, he was super excited about the blue light to be able to deal with the bacteria that he gets from putting on his helmet, having all the sweat and all the things that he has. So that to him was like, oh my God, that's great. And it and then also to use the percussive um modality on the Therapace Pro on his head and his forehead from having that helmet strapped on super tight. So that to you and I makes a lot of sense. Oh yeah, I bet that's great. Feels really good to him. But then you transition into, you know, Carly Kloss or Maria Sharopova, they immediately see that through a beauty lens, like, oh my God, this is gonna help with my nighttime routine, my morning routine, my makeup routine. You know, Carly uses, she has a Therapace Pro with her all the time, and she has her own, and her makeup artist has hers, and they use them differently in a little bit different way, depending on what they're trying to get out of it. So like that the transition was was inadvertent. It was kind of like, oh shoot, here we are. We had to kind of figure it out. But our messaging didn't change, it was really about facial health, taking care of your face. And, you know, this concept, it sort of, I hope lingers around our brand is that it's this idea of consistency. You know, there's these, what do they call them, vampire facials and all these different facials you can get? And that's a once every six months, maybe once a quarter thing, and it's kind of expensive. But what are you doing in between those visits? And my goal, our goal at Therabody has always been let me give you the tools to help bridge that gap between facials or you know, whatever you're doing, or your physical therapy or your massage therapy. So suddenly now we found ourselves in this space with our messaging that was about facial health and not beauty. And then we found ourselves talking to Sephora and Ultra and all these different companies that are in that space, and we recognize, wow, that's a different language. Like we have to kind of adapt to that language, and then we recognize there was a big opportunity there, like I said a second ago, with a lot of our science that we're innovating on. Um, and then suddenly now we're in beauty, you know. I wouldn't consider myself a beauty guy, but uh I'm having some amazing conversations with with great people, you know, some of the people I just named. And I I don't like name dropping, but I do with specific people because it shows the it shows the the firepower that that these products have with the effect it has with you know people like Carly and and Maria. So that's how it happened. And we're super excited. I mean, the Therapace Pro, Eric, to give you an idea, is our second best seller next to Theragun. That was an eye-opener. We're like, whoa, wait a minute. Like, where's this happening? We had 20 million views on TikTok, uh, several purchases, affiliate codes. It just was blown up. So we just obviously, when you have something like that, you got to turn your attention to that. Be like, okay, what's happening in that space? And what can we bring to that space that has value, that has a purpose, that's not just a product. Um, and that's what led to the mask. Um, and you know, I some of the people might be nerdy about this, so this I'll speak to them. LEDs, which is um light emitting diodes, uh, those can be changed a lot nowadays. And you know, just three years ago you couldn't do that, but you can now get a little disc, little diode, and you can run eight different frequencies out of that, and you can put it on a gun, a Theragun, where just two years ago you could run four and you couldn't bend it. So if there's a lot that's happened in that space, and and with our engineers and our innovation team, we're constantly looking at how do we, is it right for us to step into those spaces? So beauty, I feel like we're just scratching the surface. Really, we really, I think there's a lot there, and it's a big world. Yeah.

I mean, there's um, you know, uh aesthetics, beauty, however you want to call it, you know, certainly is finding its place in like the greater wellness economy. Um, you know, especially like in longevity. You know, that's obviously a big, a big trend right now. Um, everyone seems to, you know, want to live longer. It's kind of weird, right? Um But you uh I want to get into we're we are gonna get into, I think it was the F series. Is that how you talked about the new the new line of products? Before we do that, I want to um I'm really excited for that. I want to talk about um the reset centers. You had mentioned that, I've kind of seen some stuff about it online. But what's the um what's the goal with with the brick and mortar model? Like what are you guys hoping to get? And then what is that experience like um that you're designing for the consumer?

Yeah, great question. You know, the in 2018, especially 2018, and then obviously several years building up to that, I've had the opportunity, probably like you and many other people, to find myself in some of the best training centers and training facilities in the world, from Dubai to Man City to you know the Patriots. I mean, you think about Jacksonville Jaguars has an amazing facility that spent a bunch of money on recovery. So I've had an opportunity to go into these places. And one of the things that stood out to me from the lens of Therabody, which is how can we democratize these solutions for people to use on themselves on a consistent basis? I walked in and I'm like, wait a minute, you don't need to be a licensed physician to use these. You don't have to be licensed to do red light or cryotherapy or hot cold plunges. And I'm like, but it's perceived that way because it's behind these doors, metaphorically and literally, before you can really get to these things. And so came back as a team, we started talking about that. What would that look like? What if we built something that was a community recovery center where people could go and get these treatments, not necessarily an hour-long massage, but they could get in IVs, they could have some of our therapies, our sound therapy technology, red light therapy. What does that look like? So we built the first experiential therabody store in Century City here in Los Angeles. And it was booming. Like suddenly now we had the what was kind of cool, Eric, because I don't know if I ever told you this, but we had it was a little kiosk. I mean, it's like 700 square feet, it's tiny. And in the back of the thing, we had a uh a massage table, and we we I trained all of the people that worked there to do a double gun sweep. It's a technique that we use to kind of loosen the body, and it it's amazing, it feels amazing. So we had that being booked on a 15-minute increments, and it was packed for like seven days. So you couldn't book for like six or seven days out. And then the front of the store was our retail location, and it was popping. Like there was so much happening there. So we were like, wait a minute, we got to do more of these. But we recognized we needed to split them out. So we have about 20 or so retail stores that are just therabody retail stores. The goal with that is we want people to experience these. You know, when I'm on Instagram or other people on Instagram and they're like, oh my God, this is the best thing in the world, and whatever you say, I want to be able to give people the ability to go somewhere and try it out themselves. So that's really why we created the Therabody Stores is to experience the product. The reset locations is a full recovery center. And the goal with that is that you can consistently treat your body for recovery. So if you're working out as much as a lot of people are, you know, a Barry's bootcamp membership is around $400 a year, or sorry, a month, uh, and you know, you get a discount. So we're thinking, well, let's just build a membership type of model where people can pay $200 a month and they can have unlimited cryo, unlimited theragum treatments, unlimited red light, and they can pop in whenever they need to. That's really the goal. We want people to take care of their bodies, and that's not a weekend thing. Like that's an everyday thing. Now, we realize that you don't not a lot of us that have responsible lives have time to pop in to a reset every day, but we're open crazy hours from seven in the morning till eight at night. So we want to be able to capture those people that have time in the mornings and the afternoons. So the goal really is to have that be where we where people experience our brand at its very most. They experience the people. We spend a lot of time picking the right people, certifying them in in certain modalities. We want them to experience what it feels like to be treated, have our sound therapy chair, our power dot, our mask. You go into reset and you can experience all of that. So it's really that's the goal. And it's uh it's one of the stepping stones that we've used as a brand to get our name out there. You know, you look at a lot of the copycats on Amazon and on e com and stuff, they they're just writing our coattails. They're putting something out there with a price point, hoping that people will bite on that. And we know that we're different, but we want people to see why we're different. And the experience at a research. Retail store, I get pictures all the time from Vegas. Dude, I didn't know you had a store in Vegas. Um, and then you know, people popping in out of our reset locations. I got a call this morning from uh an NFL player. I was like, Hey, can I run into reset? I just have a few hours. I'm like, Yeah. The NH the Kings, the NHL team, uh, they they work out of uh and practice out of El Segundo here in California. And our Manhattan Beach location is literally less than 10 minutes away. And those guys are in there. When they're in town, they're packed, they're they're in reset all the time. So we just want to bring wellness to the communities, you know. I mean, that's really what it is. And wellness isn't about getting cryo or hyperbaric chambers once a week. We want to make it make me make it available to them as often as possible. So that's our goal. And obviously, we want people that the aesthetics are important, the smell is important, the experience when they go in is important. So we thought of, we've tried to think of everything. We have a great team that puts that together.

And what is the uh for the reset center specifically? Um, aside from the retail, what's what's the vision for that? Like, do you are you seeing like a vast rollout across the country? Like, how many do you think you want? Or is that something gotcha?

Well, the the Therabody stores, we have that model, that business model. Um you're never perfect with those things, but we have it pretty tight. We kind of understand what that is square footage, um, location, whether it's in a mall, has to be strategically placed in certain areas near a gym. So we kind of have that down. The reset's a little different. Uh, it's much more expensive to kick one of those off. I mean, you're talking three, four million dollars to get one of those set up completely, and that's a big expense. So, to answer your question, I think we will probably have half a dozen more of our retail locations. Um, and that they could be in London. We're looking in London, we're looking in different cities in Europe. Um, and then the reset, we gotta get this one in New York kicked off and open. Um, it's gonna be open in by the middle of October. Um, and we have the business model of that kind of set up, but the economy, to be fair, Eric, is a little tough. So people spending an extra two, three hundred bucks a month on you know these ancillary treatments, it's unfortunately the easiest thing to justify you don't need, you know. So we have to sort of be careful about that. So the goal is to grow the therabody stores. Um, they do well. Uh and the reset, we just need to, we're kind of letting things catch up with us a little bit. Uh, we've got certain locations we're looking at. Love to have one in the UK. Um, love to have one. There's certain areas of the world that just makes a lot of sense. Um, but we're also working with um some big name hotel hospitality locations to have these inside of their locations for the for their patrons that are staying. So there's some conversations going on there, nothing's to announce.

Yeah, it's uh I I love the wellness like um recovery center models. Uh I'm just waiting for somebody to open one in my area because I'll over it. Uh I've thought about it a couple times. I'm like, hey, and I'll go to my wife, like, hey, what do you think about opening like XYZ franchise model or something? She's like, You remember being a gym owner? Do you remember those days?

That's right.

Um easy we forget, right? Yeah. Let's get into the uh we'll just call it an unveiling of the new products. I'm really excited to see them. And um for people too, like we do have a YouTube channel, so if you want to see the video of this, you can click over there as well. But yeah, tell me about um, you know, what's what's the um any major uh initiatives with the new F series? Um, you know, what's what's what's the goal here?

Yeah, there was so you know, if you kind of think about our story, we started earlier with one Theragun. And then you couple that with my goal of having a Theragun in every house, as we've grown as a brand, we have a lot more products. So it's easier to say a therabody product in every household. But when you start looking at the theragons, we've we've we've learned over the last 10 years with our science and innovation that specific specs on the therragon can be changed based off of the tissue of the person that's being treated, and they will get the same effect. So, for example, amplitude is a big one of our big three. So we have amplitude, frequency, and torque. And amplitude is 16 millimeters, that's the distance it travels in one revolution. The frequency is 40 hertz, that's the ideal frequency, it's 2400 rpm, and then our torque, which is the power that you need uh to be able to get in deep on a tissue. My mom doesn't need 16 millimeters of amplitude or you know, 80 pounds of torque. Like I'm not, she's not doing that to herself. So we've stepped back and taken a look at those numbers and we've done a lot of research. I mentioned to you uh consumer insights, we've done a lot of you know, sitting behind the mirror and watching how people respond to products. And then we also had our science team doing studies and research, and we so we found that in order for us to get into every household in the world, there's a price point and a little bit of the science that we had to tweak. So we started out with this, which is what we're calling relief, and it's basically general relief for everybody. And I know that you and many other people have heard how loud some of our earlier Theraguns were. Yeah. I'm gonna turn this on.

Oh, it's dead quiet.

Can't even hear it. Yeah, dead quiet. I mean, it's so quiet. And we we did the same thing we did with our mini, it's just a simple push the button, and you get three different speeds. So this is the high speed. Listen to this.

Yeah, that's crazy.

And it's just basic, super basic. It you know, it has the attachments that pop on and off that are compliant that work with our other attachments, so you don't have to buy 30 new attachments. It has our patented triangle that balances, and I like to do this so people recognize that's a really important aspect feature of our products because you're just being able to let them float on your body. And now my mom can use these different handles to diff to different parts of her body. This is gonna be 149. Wow, that's a great one. So you think of the demographic and the price point that this is perfect for. So that's the relief. Simple and easy. We have two colors. We have the blue, then we have a tan. And we, for those who might be thinking about the business model of this, we gave the one color to Walmart and one color to Target of the relief. So and they bought them all, so we don't have any more inventory of this for the holidays.

Yeah, congrats.

Crazy. They're like, we want those. Then the next then we realized that we wanted to give people that enjoy our products with more features. We wanted to take a step up. So we call this F5. That was our special code, but it's now the relief. Okay. And now we have this, which we call sense. And the reason we call it sense is if I tilt this this way, you can kind of see up in here, there is a biometric sensor. So when you rest your left index finger on that sensor, it will read your heart rate. If your heart rate's high, I'm gonna see if I can turn it on and do it right now. So I'm gonna double tap. Yeah. Can you see how that heart just came off?

Yeah, yeah, it's got a heart rate.

So now it's it's vibrating in my hand based off of a heart rate. So if I rest my hand on there, you want to share the load. If anyone's taking your pulse in the hospital, it's that little clip that ticks the clips on your finger. It's really soft. So I'm gonna hold this against my with my index, left index finger, and it's taking my heart rate now. I don't want to waste a bunch of time. If my heart rate's high, it's automatically gonna kick into a breathing exercise. So it would go a box breathing, four seconds in, four seconds out, four seconds in. Through the reason we put the yeah, it's and on here. You'll see it on here as well.

Okay.

And you'll get the hepatics, so it'll vibrate. Sozz. So you're following the breath work. The reason we did this is our heart doesn't lie. Now, you and I could be standing in front of a thousand people and grab the microphone, and we act like nothing's wrong with us and we're super calm. But inside, our heart might be pounding out of our chest. Oh, completely. The same thing happens with athletes, same things happens with my patients. So a patient comes in, they sit down, they dealt with traffic, they're stressed about their family or finances or relationship, whatever, and they're running at a little bit higher pulse rate. So they're 70 beats a minute, 75 beats a minute, and that over time isn't good for the body. I need to recognize that because if their heart rate is high, no matter what I do, no matter how amazing our treatments are, I'm not really gonna get the best effect, the most, it's not gonna be super effective because the heart rate's high. They're not in a parasympathetic state, they're in a sympathetic state. So that's basically why we wanted to do this. It also has an amazing screen. So you can see it's got these preset protocols. Let me go on here. There we go. So you got, I don't have my glasses on, so I can't see.

Yeah, don't ask.

Tension relief, you can scroll down and it gives you a bunch of different topics. Now, the cool thing about this, Eric, is you can connect this to our app and you can change those settings. So if I want if I was gonna go on a trip or I was going to the gym or I was going to a track and I didn't want to have to have my phone with me, I can download those protocols to this device, and now this will run autonomously from the from the app, but you have all the same features in here. So that's this is the sense.

So essentially the first one, the relief, you've simplified it down, made it more accessible, right, at the price point. Yeah. And this one you beefed it up, like more tech, more tech. Is that more for the practitioner, you think, or is that more for the consumer user or both?

It's that's a really good question. It's actually for the weekend warrior, people that are a little bit more sophisticated with their recovery, understanding how important breathing is. You know, there's a lot of research now that says breathing is actually more effective than meditation, but you need to understand what that is and how to do it, breathing in through your nose and in your abdomen. But yes, this is for I would say the weekend warrior, the little bit more sophisticated buyer, uh, some of the people that want a really good product but don't need the best, and this connects to the app, so it gives you everything. And again, they're all compatible with our attachments, so you don't have to change those. Awesome. And then last but definitely not least is our Pro Plus. And I call this thing the Mac Daddy for a lot of reasons. So if I turn it on, I think the first thing you'll notice is red light. Oh, yeah, it's got some red lights on it. So we've got red light down here, and like I was telling you a little bit earlier, the power that this is putting out, that these red lights are putting out, is different and stronger than the power of the mask. The mask is right next to your face, so we don't have to put out as many milliwatts per centimeter squared. This has to have between up to 600 milliwatts per centimeter squared so it can penetrate deeper into the tissue. Now, one of the things that's kind of cool about this, Eric, is what you see is red light, but what you don't see is the infrared light. So if we put on an infrared camera, you would see this is spreading out in a really broad pattern, and it's that's the infrared, which goes much deeper into the body. Now I can turn this off. Maybe. But the cool thing about it is this attachment is actually getting hot.

Okay.

So now I have red light with a heat attachment. I'm gonna stop it really quick. I'm gonna open this up so you can see. If you look inside of there, that's a little that's a much different component than what we were doing with our first original therapon.

It looks like a cigarette lighter from back in the day.

So they they communicate. So now the Theragun recognizes which attachment is in here. Do you know why? Because we have several more attachments. So we have you see the hot one up there in the corner, and we have a cold attachment and a vibration attachment. So as I'm putting these in, I want to put the vibration attachment in. This is amazing. You barely even hear that. This is amazing for joints. So I have a shoulder issue, and you you and I were talking about that. My AC joint is super sensitive, so you can see those diodes, how they're getting more and more convergent. The closer I put that to my body, or are they getting further away? But I have that right on my AC joint, and it feels amazing. So it's generating heat. That's what vibration's for. We've said before in the past that pheragun is not really good for joints, but now it is. This is great for replacements or knees, that type of thing. And you can I don't know if you can kind of see the texture on there. It's ribbed, so it has a good grip so it doesn't slip off the joint. And then another thing that's super helpful is having a cold attachment. Now, what you're gonna notice is this does not have amplitude or frequency. It's solid. Because when you're using ice, you don't need the amp, you can't use the percussive therapy. The percussive is gonna create heat, which now nullifies the ice. But if you think of a protocol like tennis elbow, I would use one of our first attachments, the most recent ones we come out with, which is called micropoint, and that creates pain modulation. So now I'm working on my elbow and it's creating uh a stimulus on my tissue of my skin that's actually helping with the pain cycle in my brain. Then the next thing I would do is probably work with the vibrating attachment, get right on that joint, right on the elbow, and just work that area, and then I take it off, throw on the heat attachment. Now I'm gonna work the muscles that attach there, and I'm heating that out, and I'm really getting some blood flow. And then when I'm done with that, I'm gonna throw on the ice, I'm gonna put the ice right on that area to shut down the blood flow and decrease the swelling. So you think about all the different things that are available in this, it's super cool. The screen again has all these different modalities. You can scroll through on these and you can upload the same things from the app. So once you're in the in the in the program, you can scroll through sleep, back pain, low back, warm-up. So you can see all the different uh protocols. I can I've we've got 15 of these in the app. So you can just scroll through, save new ones, whatever you want. And then this also has the heart rate biometric sensor. It just picked up because I tapped it twice.

There's a lot of technology packs in that thing.

And uh yeah, you know, I I was telling our engineers, I don't know if we can get better than this. Like, really, I don't know if we can do better than this. This has everything.

Yeah. And you know, for those who uh may not know too much about it, because I I know, you know, very surface layer, but what what are the benefits of red light? I mean, it's it seems to be, you know, it's it's comes up quite a bit. Um, you know, I probably started, like many things, kind of in the biohacker space and seems to be moving out to more to like the gen pop area. But yeah, if you could summarize, like what are some of the benefits of that?

Yeah, red light, I like to say, is like a warm hug to your to your skin. It's a just a warm hug. It generates blood flow, it it um stimulates collagen. And for those of you who need to understand, collagen is that the chemical in our body or the element in our body that creates elasticity. As we age, we lose the collagen in our body, and that's why you see the the wrinkles in your face or different areas because it's not it does it's not snapping back. So you want to increase collagen. It's important for people to recognize too, though, that you have like a maximum dosage and it happens in a short period of time. So if I put red light on my crow's feet on my eyes, if I left it on for 12 hours, it's not gonna get any better than if I did it for five minutes. People just need to understand that the wavelengths and stuff like that. So red light's really good for surface appearance and blood flow that gets to the skin. Infrared light goes deeper. So I like to tell people that's like your personal day spa for your body. Like you're actually generating heat at an outside layer because red, infrared uses red light to penetrate, but then it gets into infrared light, and now you're working on the healing properties of the muscle and the tissues. And you can't do that with other products. Um, we have we also have blue light that's not on this, we have a blue light on some of our products that deals with bacteria. That's why I was mentioning DeAndre Hopkins. It's really important for him to deal with to deal with his bacteria, that the buildup that they have, because they're not replacing their chin strap every day. Um so red light that you saw on here is great for the outside surface. It warms the area, it feels really good. Um, but that's about it's about surface level, pun intended. And then you throw in the infrared, now you get deeper than that. Now, if I'm working on my shoulder, I want infrared on my shoulder while I'm doing the vibration because I'm gonna work on the healing properties of that joint with the infrared light.

Awesome. So you have the the relief, right? That's kind of the um, like we we stated, I think I said the most accessible price point, right? And then how does the MSRP increase with those other two um increases?

So $149, okay, $299.

Okay.

So it's not crazy, right? And you know what? This is $599. The Mac Daddy. The Mac Daddy. We don't our business model, and we talk about this a lot here, we don't want to increase the price of the top-tier product in the market. It's not fair to our consumers, and that's not our business model. So when you buy this, this comes separate. Two reasons. This included puts us over $5.99. And the second is we have a cube that I mentioned to you that gets hot and cold. And sometimes the regular consumer doesn't need this, but they could use a cube. A lot of people have arthritis, old injuries, and some people don't realize that heat is the very best thing for old injuries, not ice. So to be able to have a cube that has both of them is actually a lot more practical for people. Um, so that was sort of our thought process when we were designing the pricing and what attachments come with the with the Pro Plus.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, congratulations. That's gonna be uh I think it's gonna be very well received. And it's um, you know, I think people who are really enthusiastic about you know the uh recovery technologies, like they're always I'd imagine there's kind of like an iPhone aspect, right? Like there's gonna be the people waiting outside the store to get the newest one. Um, you know, the the nerds uh within within the practitioner world. I mean, yeah, uh tell me about that. Do you have like those, do you have those? I'm sure you do, like the absolute screaming fans that will just can't wait to get their hands on this stuff.

Yeah, and it's surprising to me. I mean, there's there's um I I feel I'd like to think in my little brain that the ones that are super enthusiastic are the ones that I communicate with, like Kelly Starred and like people like that are like, oh my god, I have to have that. But there is like dozens of people that are like that that I don't have relationships with. So that's the part that's sort of crazy to me. Uh we we I did a I did a uh a WebEx uh webinar uh yesterday. No, what is today? Wednesday, Monday, uh for a bunch of physical therapists and chiropractors. And I I sort of previewed this. I'm like, hey, this isn't out yet, but I wanted to show you guys, get you a sneak peek. I got hit up by so many people. When is it coming out? I'm gonna save up. I want to make sure it it it's I love it because it it's sort of confirmation of the the wave we've created. Um uh, but it's yeah, there's there, I I it's funny, I see people. You just got me thinking about this, but I I was checking into a flight uh in Toronto, and the woman that was checking me in, I had my, you know, that's how I dress all the time, not just for TV. And I was standing there at the gate and she goes, she looks up and goes, I know you. It's like really, and she goes, Oh my god, I love your products. I and then she started bragging about how many she had. I have the first one and the second one, my boyfriend has the third one, and I'm just like, whoa. So it still takes me back. Uh it really does, it's sort of overwhelming, to be honest. Yeah.

When when did you start the company?

When was what was the uh I started doing this in 2007? So I created my first Theragun in 2007. Um, I was on my own until 2015, and then I met Ben, who was who was my business partner, CEO, and now he's the chief strategy officer. We launched Therabody or Theragun as a company, e com in 2016. So I think that's like when people started recognizing us. But I've been working with teams and athletes for eight, almost nine years before we launched as a company. But I had the company, it was it was actually called Theraguns with a Z. Um it's I have people send me photos of that sometimes. But I I love to tell people like we've been out for since 2008, we've been learning, understanding, figuring out products. This is my fifth. Theragun that I've been involved with. You think about how much you learn over the years of creating different products. So uh yeah, 2007, 2008 was when the company started, and then 2016 we went e-com, we went live, different packaging, and then we started creating different products.

Um, you know, I want to get your insights on, and this is probably more than just a few minute answer, but when you look at the wellness economy and that that industry, I mean, it's it's ambiguous the term wellness, right? It can be so many different things. Um but you know, going through post-pandemic and the effects that it had on, you know, maybe consumer health or um whatever effects it may have had on wellness, how do you see that industry now in a post-pandemic world? Like what do you think has has changed? Um you know, I presume you're still very bullish on on wellness and and health as a as a as an industry. Yeah, give us some insights at a high level. How do you see it now?

Uh from my perspective, people and and uh I'd like I've heard heard this a lot, but COVID brought people's wellness to the surface. And since COVID, people have become more uh uh educated and sophisticated about what things they want in their life to be well. Um the biometric world has blown up. Being able to track and find out if you really are healthy. You know, I think that was one of the fears everyone had is like, oh shit, am I gonna get COVID because I'm not healthy? And how do you know you're not healthy? How do you know you're susceptible to these types of things? You don't really know. Um, but now, since then, we're we have tools that are available to us to monitor those things a little bit better. Meditation is a way bigger thing now than it was before COVID. I mean, I I'm I've been a meditator for a long time and I've had several conversations pre and post, and it's a totally different thing now. People are recognizing that. Uh there's podcasts that talk about how important breathing is. I think what happened is COVID was a wake-up call and it's shifted the way we we view wellness. And before it was eating right and going for a walk every day, but now we're recognizing it's really about the mind-body connection. It's about having the heart and the mind coherent together. And that's a personal journey. That's not something you can go to a place and get. You have to do that yourself. So I think what's happening now, if you look at the very tip of the spear for wellness, it's people being able to go inward, connect with themselves. I think with AI and a lot of those things that are coming out in the world, how we feel about things, literally what our sensations are about particular things, are eventually going to be our guide. You know, there was something the other day on TV where I was like, wait a minute, is that AI? I got an email that I could tell was done by AI just by the way it was sort of framed. It's gonna take a while for us to adapt to that. And I think wellness is understanding your heart and mind, the the the the health part of it, how they're connected, what you stress about, what you don't stress about, how to deal with stress, how to deal with relationships, how to love. And that's what's really gonna lead us to a healthier community with all of this other outside, these distractions happening. Um so I think with bare barometric uh biometrics, light therapy, uh, I think women are gonna be a bigger player in every industry. I think just listening to them and following their needs. Um yeah, I think that's that those are probably the things that stand out to me. And we're innovating on all of those things. We're constantly innovating on in every one of those aspects. So um it's still scary, you know. This new I was at an event last night that was tentatively going to get canceled because the get the the feature speaker was was diagnosed with COVID, so he couldn't come. And you know, I'm like, what? Aren't we past this yet? Right. You know, but there's so that's that's kind of how I see it. Um there's still a lot of people out there that don't have time or money in their mind for wellness. And I think if we start paying attention to the way we breathe and how much time we spend meditating and connecting our mind and our heart, um, you'll realize that's free. Like you don't have to pay for that.

Yeah. I agree. Wellness is a personal journey. Like you can't just uh you can't outsource that, right? It's gotta be done. It's gotta be done and it's an inside job. Um I think it's really kind of a good point to wrap it up because I know you also probably have to go. But um when does the F series come out? Remind us again, what's the date on that?

Uh October 3rd.

Cool. Um Yeah. And uh, you know, as an industry, um, Dr. Jason, what how can we help you? What do you need right now?

Testimonials, you know, honestly. I think if if if you asked me what I could have, I would get testimonials. A story from you, your wife, your son, daughter, family member, mother, sharing what is making their life better is so much more powerful than an Instagram post that I make. So I think people out there that are using our products, if you want to DM me, send me something on Instagram, that's honestly the most powerful thing for me is getting testimonials because it talks to people in their language, it talks to people at their level, and it really resonates. If I'm talking to people about migraines, but I don't get migraines, I can't really speak that language. So I think you know, to answer your question, I would love testimonials. The more the merrier. Awesome.

Awesome. Well, Dr. Jason, it's been an absolute pleasure. I love catching up with you. Um likewise. You have a very cool demeanor to you, which I I appreciate. Um, but yeah, I thank you for for coming and joining us. Congratulations on all success. You know, the the beauty stuff, the Therapace. I mean, that that sounds like a winner in this F-series, I have no doubt will be very well received. So keep up the great work. And uh yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Jason Worsham.

Thanks, Eric. And and thanks for doing this. Yeah, again, like I just talked about testimonials. Your platform, your viewers and listeners, we may not have access to them. And so I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Give me a platform, let me run my mouth for a little bit. Hopefully, it hopefully it attracts people to our brand a little bit. So I thank you for doing this.

Oh, it's my pleasure.

Yeah, really appreciate it.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it and we want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the futurofitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.