We recently connected with Charles Biset, Cory Miranda, Maricruz Carrillo and have shared our conversation below.
Charles Biset, Cory Miranda, Maricruz Carrillo, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
It was August 2021 Maricruz had just finished yet another Zoom call when Charles asked her to help get a knot on his back using his massage gun. But not just any massage gun… You see, Charles had converted his jig saw to a massage gun by gluing a lacrosse ball to the end of a saw blade. It was loud enough to want earplugs while using and it was super heavy thanks to the extra large size battery. Reluctantly, Maricruz agreed for what felt like the millionth time. That’s when Cory called. He was at home recovering from a car accident and said bro we need to find a way to use the massage gun on our own. My PT (physical therapist) uses it on my back for me and its great. But can’t use it when I’m by myself. Boom, the problem was identified and we were determined to solve it.
Charles Biset, Cory Miranda, Maricruz Carrillo, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Once we had the problem identified we started designing and 3D printing prototypes to work with any massage gun. For months we tried all kinds of solutions including using old rollerblade straps and sticky silicone bong pads. In January 2022 we were accepted into SDSU’s Zip Launchpad, an entrepreneurship accelerator that helps students launch successful businesses. There we gained access to so many amazing resources. We were coached on proven methodologies introduced to a network of domain experts and received some funding.
Feel Good Collaborative is a curated marketplace for health and wellness products that are sourced with sustainability in mind. Today we are excited to present our first product Wallee, a massage gun holder that mounts to just about any wall or surface so you can relieve pain in hard to reach areas like your neck and back. Wallee extends the range of your favorite massage gun so you don’t have to ask your partner or roomie to hold the massage gun for you. What sets us apart? Besides responsibly sourcing our product, we’ve completed almost 100 in-depth customer interviews and printed dozens of prototypes before landing on the heavy duty suction cup system that transforms your massage gun into a portable, hands free pain relieving tool.
We are most proud of give back program. We believe it is important to help others Feel Good too. We give back 5% of profits to local Southern California non-profit organization PT For All. PT For All’s mission is that all persons, regardless of their economic status, receive medically necessary physical therapy services.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
Since we are a pretty new company and at the time of writing this we are wrapping up our pre-order campaign, I think the best guidance we can give is how to get funding to start your business. Different businesses will need different types of funding, however there is a ton of money out there that people are actively trying to give away! Some of it does come with strings attached, however. In order to get funding, first, you’ll need to determine which way is best for you. For us we didn’t want to give up equity and we certainly didn’t have enough to bootstrap it ourselves. But, we have contributed some money out of our own pockets.
One thing that has worked well for us is to enter pitch competitions. At the L’ATTITUDE conference here in SD in September we entered the pitch competition hosted by Inicio Ventures and won 2nd place! A prize of $5,000 and more importantly exposure and networking opportunities. You can look for these types of opportunities that give undiluted grants and are great practice.
Through the Zip Launchpad and Lavin Entrepreneurship Center at SDSU we have had the opportunity to apply for various different grant opportunities including seed funds and success funds of up to $10,000. They have also provided us with student interns to help with certain tasks. Besides these very generous opportunities, the network connections and mentors we have made through the Zip have been absolutely priceless. I encourage you to go to your local college or university and talk with their entrepreneurship center to see what connections or opportunities they provide.
Additionally, we successfully secured over $1,000 in preorders and likely could have done more if we didn’t change our pre-order strategy mid way through.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Well we have a small audience but we are trying to grow. There are many ways you can probably do this but we don’t have a team of content creators… yet… so we have to come up with everything ourselves. For people who don’t like to post or make content we can totally relate. So what we do is provide content which we are interested in that is relevant to health and wellness just using our cell phones. We offer tricks and tips. Provide value. Even share other peoples content. And most importantly its social media you have to be social!
Contact Info:
- Website: feelgoodcollab.com
- Instagram: @feelgoodcollab
- Facebook: Feel Good Collab
- Linkedin: Feel Good Collaborative
- Youtube: Feel Good Collab
Image Credits
Raymond Phan & Austin Mullen