Conquering Pain and Building a Business: Tim Porth's Journey with FiixBOD

Brent Peterson (00:02.542)
Welcome to this episode of Uncharted Entrepreneurship. Today I have Tim Porth. He is the founder and president of FixBOD. Tim, go ahead, do an introduction much better than I did. Tell us your day -to -day role and maybe one of your passions in life.

Tim Porth (00:19.816)
Yeah, well, thanks for having me Brent. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm one of the co -founders actually. I've got a couple of business partners in this venture, but at Fixed Body, what we do is we have a solution for tennis and golfers elbow, which is a nagging condition that it's actually a terrible name for the condition because a lot of people don't, most people don't get it from playing tennis or golf. It's really an overuse situation with the elbow. So it's a tendonitis.

tendinosis situation. So over the years I had, I struggled with tennis elbow and golfers elbow off and on for like seven and a half years before co -founding this company. When one of my physical therapy friends said, it's not the treatment that we give that's the problem. It's that I'm not a good patient. I'm what they call a non -compliant patient. So I did a bunch of research. I got a product development and marketing background, was intrigued.

by the situation and the opportunity and found there's about 14 million people with the condition, but they're really not good, so easy to use solutions. So we set out to change that. And we like to say that we take the pain out of physical therapy. So we make the whole process easier.

Brent Peterson (01:36.078)
Awesome. And passions?

Tim Porth (01:38.6)
Passions, I'd probably break it into three things. Family time, I'm kind of a fitness and health nut. So I like to do a lot of active activities with my kids and my wife. Fitness is definitely a passion for me. And then the last one would just be business. I love entrepreneurship and that whole journey and really learning.

Brent Peterson (02:03.214)
That's awesome. So Tim, before we get started, you have volunteered to be part of the free joke project. I'm just gonna tell you a joke and all you have to do is say, should that joke be free or do you think some point somebody should charge for it or should we have some invention that helps us get over our funny bone problems? Yeah, that's not the joke. All right, so here we go. After spending an hour unclogging the bathroom,

Tim Porth (02:09.608)
Yes.

Tim Porth (02:26.984)
I'm ready.

Brent Peterson (02:33.646)
Sink. I felt pretty drained.

Tim Porth (02:38.472)
We're in dad joke territory there. My kids wouldn't pay for it. Other dads might pay for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Brent Peterson (02:44.526)
Yeah.

Oh, yeah, maybe I found a market in the dad market. I should have had a dad bod joke now that I think about it. Well, next time we'll do a follow up. All right, so let's talk about, first let's talk about your background and how you got into it. Tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and how you got there.

Tim Porth (02:54.056)
There's riches in niches. So focus on.

Man.

Tim Porth (03:16.328)
Yeah, I think like a lot of entrepreneurs, I started young, you know, doing side jobs, making money, trying to do different things, inventing. I'm a, I have a degree in product design, industrial design, and that kind of evolved into marketing and then evolved into really business. But I started out, I wanted to work in a category that I really enjoyed. So I found a job designing fitness equipment, which I did for eight years for some of the big companies and then started a fitness.

company with another gentleman that I worked with called Octane Fitness. We ran that. It was really the American dream. It was a great market opportunity that we stepped into. Ran that for about 15, 16 years and really enjoyed it. And that's where kind of I fell in love with business. And then from there, the opportunity came up when I continued to struggle with my tennis and golfers elbow when, like I had mentioned, one of my physical therapy friends.

told me it was my problem, not his problem. And I looked at the whole compliance factor and just saw an opportunity with healthcare as it continues to get more complex. People are more starved for time. And it really seemed to be one of those opportunities where we could step in and make a change and kind of rethink the traditional physical therapy process.

Brent Peterson (04:42.19)
All right, yeah, so I'm gonna rank myself as the non -compliant user as well as you. And I know, so I'm a runner and I often have injuries. I'm an everyday runner, I have a streak. So oftentimes I'll say, yeah, you know, my knees are sore or whatever, or something is sore on my body. And somebody will say, well, did you see the physical therapist? Yeah, yeah. How are their exercises working?

Tim Porth (04:49.64)
Yeah.

Tim Porth (04:56.904)
Mm.

Tim Porth (05:07.816)
Hahaha.

Brent Peterson (05:10.286)
Well, I don't know. I haven't done any of them yet, but hopefully they'll work at some point.

Tim Porth (05:14.248)
That's exactly it. You are not uncommon. And I fit in the same boat. A lot of us don't want to go to a doctor. You don't know who to go to, you know, because there are good doctors or bad doctors or good PTs, bad PTs. You know, do you go to a chiropractor? It's complicated. It's complicated. It takes time. And if you find the wrong one, then is my insurance covered? And then doing the exercises. There's studies out there that show that 30 %

of people complete their physical therapy. So you're not alone.

Brent Peterson (05:48.942)
Yes, tell us what problem are you solving and how are you solving it? We know what the problem is, but tell us how you're solving it.

Tim Porth (05:56.584)
Yeah, so what we did was we replicated a treatment called scraping and you might've had it done as a runner. They'll do it on quads and hamstrings to break up scar tissue and adhesions in tendons and muscles and tennis elbow and golfer's elbow. Golfer's elbow is on the inside. Tennis elbow is on the outside of the elbow. And there's just small tendons in there that attach to the bone that then connect to the muscle and those get stressed over time.

And once you hit like 40 years old, seems to be kind of a tipping point for people where you don't heal as well. And I'm sure you've experienced that as a runner, that, you know, that all of a sudden it takes another day to heal or, you know, even longer. So what our process does, we didn't invent the process. It's been around for over 500 years in Asian medicine called Gua Sha. And then it's called scraping and physical therapy where they basically take like a butter knife.

and they run it over your tendon or your muscle. And that naturally breaks up the scar tissue and adhesions and stimulates the blood flow so that they can heal naturally. The challenge with scraping is you have to do it multiple times over a long period, especially if you're chronic. So we make it really easy. We designed a device, like I said, that replicates that process. You strap it onto your arm. It's a little big and heavy. I lovingly say it's about the size of a Chipotle burrito.

or a little bit bigger, but you sit down for 10 minutes a day, three times a week for eight weeks. You let the machine do its work. And then we give you simple stretches and exercises to do that take four to five minutes. And so you use a device 10 minutes a day, three times a week for eight weeks, and then you do the stretches. And then we have an app that goes along with it that is like our digital physical therapist that keeps you on track, tells you exactly what to do, tracks what you're doing. So.

it makes it really easy and the compliance factor is really high. When we surveyed a buying group from 2001, 93 % said they completed the eight week therapy. So if we can just get people to do it, our success rate's really high.

Brent Peterson (08:07.918)
Yeah, so that's, I mean, that's a great solution to tell us a little bit about the product development and and how you set about doing that.

Tim Porth (08:18.44)
Yeah, it was really a fun journey. I started out designing consumer products and medical products. And then I went into classic fitness equipment, treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, weight equipment, you know, Smith machines, all that kind of stuff. So I have a background in designing and making stuff, but this was a new venture just on, all right, how long does, how long is the scraping motion? How deep should it be? What's the attack angle? So we designed over 50 different prototypes.

took us about three years from the first business plan to selling the product. There was a little bit of a delay there, probably about six months due to COVID to get product done. But it's just a lot of tweaking, making a product, tweaking it, making another change, tweaking it. And with 3D printing and stuff, we were able to make a lot of different devices to try. And fortunately, I'm the guinea pig and have used the device more than anyone.

I've had tennis and golfers elbowing both arms. It's come back to me a little bit, you know, soreness not pain since I've designed the device and since I've been good, but my elbows have been really strong for the last four years.

Brent Peterson (09:28.654)
And you mentioned you have some future ideas. I've had scraping, it's only been, it's on my heel, I guess, mainly. Yeah, I've had every single problem from the foot all the way up to the hips. So what's in the future for that?

Tim Porth (09:36.296)
Yeah, yeah, Achilles tendonitis maybe.

Tim Porth (09:43.848)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah, it's still to be determined. I mean, we're working on stuff in the background. We're really focused on maximizing the elbow to start. But you know, the greater vision is if we can simplify something, a process that people have to go into the clinic over and over again, we think there's opportunity. So we're excited about the future. Short -term future is really direct to consumer and we have clinics and.

offices buying our product and using it. So we want to make sure we have that engine down and figured out before we launch the next thing. But there's, there's stuff where we've got our eyes on.

Brent Peterson (10:26.894)
Yeah, the other thing I've had to have done is dry needling. And there is a doctor that used electricity in the dry needling. I don't imagine that's going to be something that you can do as a product. It'd be kind of...

Tim Porth (10:30.664)
Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Tim Porth (10:39.56)
Yeah, we really like non -invasive stuff at this point. So there's a lot of things I think we can address. Dry needling is a big concept. Yeah, acupuncture, all that. That's part of the challenge is that we call it buffet therapy. Our customers wind up being told, try this, try this. There's all sorts of air quotes solutions that are really repurposed techniques for other conditions that aren't necessarily.

Brent Peterson (10:41.55)
Yeah.

Tim Porth (11:08.296)
tennis elbow or golfer's elbow, but they're marketed that way. So we're super focused on how do we solve a problem and how do we prove that that problem is fixable and that our product addresses it.

Brent Peterson (11:21.806)
Yeah, and I guess I could see that you could do a foam roller. So most of the time knee problems are your tendon, your IT band that's pulling or your muscles that are pulling on your knee. You could do a strap on foam roller that automatically does your legs while you sit and watch Netflix.

Tim Porth (11:37.704)
Yeah.

Tim Porth (11:41.704)
Yeah, you bring up a great point because diagnosing is one thing and we're not going to replace a physical therapy clinic for sure. But there's the diagnostic side of saying, okay, this is exactly what you have. And then there's ways to address it. So we love it when people go in. One of the first things we'll do is ask them, have you seen a doctor? Have you seen a PT? There are a couple of simple tests that we can give people to say, yeah, you probably have tendonitis, tendinosis.

and then we can hone in right on that solution.

Brent Peterson (12:13.326)
Good, so I want to switch gears a little bit to EO. So you are a new member in the Entrepreneurs' Organization Minnesota, and I'm also a member of Entrepreneurs' Organization. So tell us a little bit about how you found it and why you chose to join.

Tim Porth (12:22.92)
Yeah.

Tim Porth (12:29.384)
Yeah, how I found it, I was kind of scratching my head because I was asked that question when I signed up. And it's, you know, like everything today, you get hit in so many directions from different things. And I don't know if I can nail down how I found it, something, you know, it might've been the traction book series EOS and they talked about EO and maybe that's how I stumbled across it or that's gave me a little validation on it. But I went to a couple of events over the last couple of years and I was really intrigued and the people that I met, you know, it's like.

If you're an entrepreneurial nerd, it's like the best place to go. So, you know, I had just fantastic conversations with people on, you know, what they're doing. Some, you know, I like to say I'm banging my head on the same wall. It's just a different side from a lot of people. And I love rep just learning about how other people are attacking it because my, my past has been, uh, B to B to B and this is a D to C.

product. So it's a little different for me on that front. So I'm really excited to share learnings and understand how other people are banging their head on the same wall.

Brent Peterson (13:40.078)
Yeah, so what is your expectation and well, I should back up. Have you gone through form training yet? Okay, so you have some expectations on what to do when you join. Are you in your planning on joining a forum? Great, so tell us a little bit about what you're expecting and what are your thoughts in your head?

Tim Porth (13:47.528)
I have, yeah.

Tim Porth (13:54.568)
I am, yeah.

Tim Porth (14:03.144)
Ah, you know, I'm excited. I'm opportunistic on this, you know, to, I, I'm hoping that people in my forum, you know, I know it's a, it's a diverse group and different backgrounds and categories and everything else. So I'm just excited to learn from people and be able to share my learnings and then also my concerns and what my challenges are because, you know, an outside opinion from somebody so valuable, this just understand how.

you know, other people are doing things, whether it's, you know, direct to consumer or not. There's so many things that are applicable, you know, resources who people are using. There's just so many things. Every time I've gone to the meeting, I walk away completely refreshed.

Brent Peterson (14:42.734)
Yeah, awesome. So you've been in your first forum, you haven't been in a forum yet. Okay. Got it. Perfect. All right. So, and I'll just add on there that you probably shouldn't be getting a lot of opinions, you should be getting experience sharing from your other forum members, but that's all semantics and I think that you'll learn a lot in that. My biggest thing that I get out of it, and it's...

Tim Porth (14:49.032)
I have not been in a forum yet. So I just went through my training a couple of days ago.

Brent Peterson (15:12.974)
Forum by far is the best value I get out of EO. But just having some balance as well as from business personal family, you know, a lot of forums really do balance out those different aspects of your life. And I like to say it's a holistic approach to your entrepreneurial journey. There's not a lot of people that are spending 100 % of their life in their business.

Tim Porth (15:29.512)
Yep.

Brent Peterson (15:40.462)
If they do that, they have to sacrifice their family and their personal life. And it sounds like you're also an athlete. So unless you're a professional athlete, it's hard to be an athlete and an entrepreneur. I see it as a channel to help me to find or to escape from that doldrum of sitting in this chair and doing something that's non -physical. So I think that that mental aspect,

Tim Porth (15:58.984)
You know, I think I'm just really passionate on, like I said, I'd love to learn.

Brent Peterson (16:09.902)
is also an important part. Tell us a little bit about how you make up your business life and what motivates you.

Tim Porth (16:28.2)
and this direct to consumer and new category and helping people has been, it's probably the number one driver. We talk about at fix body, you know, people, our employees need to really want to help people. You have to have a deep desire. So that really returns a lot of energy. And then I'm just interested in measurements and how we continue to move forward, setting up dashboards. I really like building things. I mean, that's kind of my background is.

how do we improve and outpace our numbers and really set the objectives and how do we surpass them? I mean, it's just, I've always been excited by that kind of stuff. I've never had an issue of, well, I guess in school I had an issue of being a procrastinator, but at work I enjoy it enough that I love doing it.

Brent Peterson (17:19.854)
So you did mention EOS earlier. Are you running EOS?

Tim Porth (17:24.616)
We were running EOS originally, and then we had a couple of people on the team, and then we kind of skinned things down, because we figured out, all right, we got to rethink some of the things we're doing. And it's my business partner from Octane Fitness, and then one other employee. So we only have three people at this time. And so we are not running it, but I read all the books. I'm addicted to it. But we were on 90, the software platform, before EOS 1 came out.

So I'm very familiar with it and I think it's a great system.

Brent Peterson (17:58.35)
As an entrepreneur, do you think there's something that's within you that drives you to do things that somebody that would be depending on a paycheck wouldn't even think about?

Tim Porth (18:14.824)
Yeah, yeah. One of my sons said that to me and he's just finished college and he said, I don't think I could ever start a company. Just he wants the security. And I never even really thought about it. You know, I've been designing fitness equipment for other people for eight or nine years. And then when I stepped out to do it on my own, I really didn't think it was a big deal. It was just, I was going to do it for myself instead of for somebody else. And then some of my friends said, man, you're crazy. Like you've got one.

one kid and another one on the way and you're going to do this. I'm like, well, it's not that big a deal. I just kind of demon think about it. So just kind of keep moving forward.

Brent Peterson (18:51.47)
Do you feel as if there's a different level of risk that you're willing to do or you don't even see it as a risk for other people would say, you know, I can't leave my job because I can't, I don't know where the next money, the bit of money is coming from or whatever.

Tim Porth (19:08.904)
Yeah, I don't know if it's, you know, risk tolerance or if I'm just dumb. You know, like when I did it, I said, okay, this is the downside when we decided to start Octane. I said, my wife and I sat down and I said, I think this could really happen and I think there's a great opportunity. And here's like, if this wins, this is what happens and it would be great. And if it doesn't win, let's say two years down the road, we're gonna be out this much money.

you know, we're going to be set back. I'll be looking for a new job, but I'll get a new job and I'll have an amazing experience and story to tell that I think in the long term isn't really a loss. So that was my approach. That was my sales pitch and it worked.

Brent Peterson (19:53.102)
Yeah, that's good. So without telling any secrets that you're you're manufacturing a product, is that right?

Tim Porth (20:01.832)
Yeah, we don't ourselves, we have a third party vendor that manufactures it. Yeah, but we did all the design work. We did all the prototyping.

Brent Peterson (20:09.966)
And this all started during the pandemic and now you've launched post pandemic or you went through the pandemic while doing this.

Tim Porth (20:17.16)
Yeah, the pandemic was good and bad for us. So we started, I did the first business plan in March of 18. And then we wound up having a pilot run, which is our first production run in Asia in December of 2020. So right before the world got shut down. So we were over there, we ran everything was fantastic. And then we came back and said, we'll be in production in like three months. This will be great. And the world shut down and nobody could go into the factory and you know that.

whole story. But the positive side of it was there were a bunch of people that we were calling that wouldn't call us back, you know, like professional tennis coaches and golf instructors and stuff like that, that were very busy and they would never call us back. Well, all of a sudden they had nothing to do, so they would pick up the phone and talk. So that time we continued to pound away and work at it and made a lot more connections. So I guess it was a little blessing in disguise.

Brent Peterson (21:15.918)
have to ask because so many people are are fascinated by pickleball now that has to be one of the the overuse in pickleball has to be another another potential avenue for you they'll probably end up calling it pickleball elbow or something like that

Tim Porth (21:21.448)
Yeah.

Tim Porth (21:30.632)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we love pickleball. You know, I like it personally, I love to play, but I love it even more because it drives some people to have pickleball elbow. But it's a great activity. It's got a lot of people coming off the couch that haven't been moving much. And we like to say that tennis elbow hibernates. If you're not using your elbow, you can have that scar tissue in there. I think I mentioned that before, and then it comes out. But we definitely help people with pickleball elbow. But there's fishing elbow, there's typing elbow.

There's bowling elbow, there's construction elbow. It's just, it's all over the map.

Brent Peterson (22:09.422)
Yeah, that brings up an interesting point. My golf score and my bowling score are the same. So I'm not sure what that says about me. Yeah. So your future now, like fixed body is growing. What do you see in the horizon for the next couple of years?

Tim Porth (22:17.992)
You can sell that joke.

Tim Porth (22:33.768)
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. We had a really good 2023. I mean, we were up over 22 and 2024 has started out really strong. So we're really just kind of massaging and honing in our website, our conversions, our advertising. I mean, we're super focused on that. We're also making a few little changes in the product and how we tell the story. It's a lot deeper than I ever thought it would be. There's all kinds of little things that we.

realize customers need and need to understand and our processes. So we're adding in a lot of different things like that. So that's really our focus on 2024 is to improve that marketing engine. Number one, and then number two, we're starting to look at, all right, what's next and what kind of products do we, what's the next product to come out?

Brent Peterson (23:26.606)
And you mentioned D2C, but do you also see a strategy by partnering with other clinics or, you know, StretchLab or something like that to help get those people involved and saying, here's a great product for you that would help you with your recovery?

Tim Porth (23:45.48)
Yeah, you know, we spent a lot of time in 2021 and 2022 and part of 23 in testing out different places. This is kind of a unique product where a lot of companies start out DTC and then want to go retail. I don't, we haven't found the right retail partner for this yet. And I don't know if there is one yet. I think there's some opportunities down the road, but.

It's kind of a complicated story and we found that we need to really hit people when they're in pain. So when they're searching, there's like 14 million people in the U S with tennis and golfers elbow, there's a million people searching on Google and Bing. So we hit those people and we do well with the people searching. And then there's lookalike audiences on YouTube or on Instagram and Facebook. Then we're looking at YouTube and.

and TikTok potentially to expand to, to see if those work to get in front of these people with a lookalike audience strategy. Retail though, there's just not enough people that come in. We've tried tennis tournaments, pickleball tournaments, golf shows. We've partnered up with like the professional coaching associations to get in front of tennis coaches. And it really hasn't had the payback that we see on the direct to consumer side.

paid search and paid social. But clinics, you know, clinics are something we have proactive clinics that, that are, that buy the product and use it. We have doctors that refer it. So they're just, it's a, it's a long way to convince some of those guys. And it's more of a one Z two Z sale versus mass.

Brent Peterson (25:29.134)
Right. Tim, what I'd love to do is get you back in six months and learn about your, how we started with some expectations around EO. I would love to have you back to see how those expectations have been met or not met in a sort of a format that we can be honest and open about.

Tim Porth (25:48.104)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (25:54.542)
As I close things out on the podcast I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you'd like. What would you like to plug today?

Tim Porth (26:03.208)
Shameless plug, it's got to be about elbows, doesn't it? I mean, it's really about, for me, it's about providing a solution for people that is simple. We say there's kind of two pains to tennis and golfers elbow. There's the pain of the pain in your elbow and there's the pain of fixing it or finding a solution. So we have a really simple solution that doesn't work. We give you your money back. So I gotta plug my business.

Brent Peterson (26:30.766)
That's awesome and I'll make sure I put your contact details. Tell people how they contact you if they're just listening.

Tim Porth (26:39.112)
Yeah, I mean, they can go to Fixed Body and it's F with two, it's F -I -I -X, so it's two I's, fixedbody .com. And then we're on Facebook, Instagram, and then on LinkedIn as well.

Brent Peterson (26:51.822)
That's awesome. Tim Porth, thanks so much for being here. It's been a great conversation.

Tim Porth (26:56.775)
Yeah, thanks, Brent. I appreciate it.