Jonathan Bender was the fifth overall pick in the 1999 NBA draft, and many thought he was destined to be a superstar. But injuries plagued his basketball career, limiting his potential. His troubled knees, however, set the stage for his entrepreneurial career as the inventor of JBIT MedPro and founder of JB3 Innovations LLC.
Bender is innovations CEO and product inventor at JB3 Innovations, and the creator of MedPro, a wearable device that acts like external hamstrings. It’s intended to strengthen muscles to relieve back, knee and hip pain. Bender built the device from drugstore supplies and tested it himself, in part to relieve his own knee pain. The device stood up to scientific scrutiny by researchers at Purdue University and has been credited as the reason Bender was able to rehabilitate his injuries and make a brief return to the NBA three years after leaving the league.
This trial and error approach, and fearlessness in the face of failure, continues to drive Bender as he looks to double down on his fledgling business, which is informed by the lessons he learned as a professional athlete.
Just keep practicing
Making the switch from professional sports into business was hectic for Bender.
“You learn to respect time,” he says. “Even in the game of basketball it took a decade plus to get to the highest level, so I don’t care what type of resources or money that you have, getting into entrepreneurship, it’s a learning process.”
Bender picked up some lessons from watching successful entrepreneurs, but he says trial and error has been the most important teacher.
“The biggest chunk of it is going out and doing stuff yourself, and dealing with the fact that you’re going to look ignorant. It’s just like starting to play ball for the first time,” he says. “You look a little out of place, so you just keep practicing.”
Getting into retail was Bender’s first challenge. Not knowing what else to do, he walked into a store, talked to the manager and let him try the product on.
“That wasn’t the correct protocol,” Bender says. “But that was the first thing that came to my mind and I just went and did it. Now I know how to approach that. So going through and trying different things, and failing, and learning the correct way is the way that I have taken so far.”
It takes a team
It’s been a little more than a year since Bender launched his product nationally, but he spent more than five years developing MedPro and determining the best way to bring it to market. One of the early lessons he learned is that he can’t do everything himself.
“I come from a team-orientated environment,” Bender says. “I knew that it takes a team to be successful, but also I wanted to take the responsibility of at least trying every position that I thought I would need in my company — trying to do a little bit of it myself so I could see what it entails, see how hard it is, see what the challenges are even though I may not have been that good at it. But at least I know kind of what it entails so when you bring a person in you know if they’re sort of BS-ing you or not.”
He says doing things himself has helped him realize the value of each position in his company.
“I think that’s a huge thing for entrepreneurs because there’s a lot of guys out here that say they can do this and say they can that. At the end of the day, it’s about results and you can’t really tell if they’re throwing you in the wind or not unless you’ve tried it yourself,” he says.
JB3 employs only a few people in part because Bender says he’s more interested in partners and people who can have a big impact on his company. To this end, the company uses a direct sales model that employs a team of franchisees and independent sales contractors, which he calls affiliates, paid on commission. Paying people just to move product, he says, benefits his company and the affiliate.
“If you’re going to take commission, you have faith in the product and faith in yourself that you can sell,” he says.
In addition to independent contractors, JB3 sells its products through e-commerce and nationally through its lone brick-and-mortar partner, Relax the Back.
Have faith
In the first half of 2014, the company sold some 9,000 units. This year, Bender is looking to double that. He’ll do so in part by bringing on more affiliates to be able to reach more people. He’s also readying a version of MedPro tailored toward athletes, as well as a line of nutritional products that address joint issues.
“Entrepreneurship is all about faith,” Bender says. “Sometimes you can’t see the next step, but if you step out there it will show itself. So just keep moving forward, and don’t make any excuses for yourself.”
