The Customer is Always Wrong
In the corporate world, I grew up on the mantra: the customer is always right. But when I entered the world of back pain, herniated discs, and endless “solutions,” I quickly learned that in healthcare and fitness, the opposite often seems to be true. The customer is always wrong.
Almost ten years ago, I threw my back out. That moment changed my life. My pain became my passion.
At the time, I hadn’t dealt much with the healthcare system beyond the basics. Suddenly, I was thrown into a maze of specialists, doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, and gurus—all of them telling me what was wrong with me and what I needed to do. And some of them talking down to me when their methods didn’t work.
A 50/50 Diagnosis
I’ll never forget the surgeon who told me my herniated disc surgery was “50/50.” Half the time it helps, half the time it doesn’t. His advice? If you can figure it out with non-surgical solutions, do it.
So I did.
I tried everything: plasma injections, chiropractors, multiple doctors, PT programs. I held out against surgery, partly because the information was so conflicting.
And every time I met with a new expert, the same cycle repeated itself.
When the Cues Don’t Work
In the gym or clinic, it often went like this: someone would tell me to “just shift this hip here” or “just engage that muscle there.” I would follow the instructions as best I could, but the reality was simple—the cues weren’t unlocking the movement. It wasn’t that I wasn’t listening. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. It’s that what they were telling me to do wasn’t working for the state my body was in.
That distinction matters.
And yet, the frustration often landed back on me. Coaches or physical therapists would ask why I wasn’t listening, as if my lack of progress was proof of my lack of effort. But I knew how to work hard—I had done CrossFit long before my back pain. I had trained for Ironmans. I wasn’t insecure about effort. I knew what it meant to grind. The problem was that my left side simply wasn’t firing the way they assumed it should.
When the Mindset Creeps In
Over time, I noticed a mindset that crops up in parts of the health and fitness world. Not everywhere, not with everyone—but enough that it became clear:
If a client doesn’t get better, the assumption is that the client didn’t listen, didn’t try, or gave up too early.
I’ve even seen some gurus joke publicly about their “noncompliant” clients, as if the failure lies only on the person in pain. That mindset—that the customer is always wrong—surprised me. And when money is involved, it somehow gets worse.
Two Camps: Those Who Know Pain and Those Who Don’t
Over time, I started dividing the world into two groups:
Those who have experienced debilitating back pain.
Those who haven’t.
If you’re in the second group, you simply don’t get it. You might think you do. You might believe you can deadlift your way out of anything. But you’ve never felt that bolt of electricity shoot up your spine when you bent over. You’ve never collapsed to the ground because your back locked up. You’ve never crawled into the ER, only to be treated like a homeless drug seeker—something that actually happened to me in the Bay Area, and I’ve since learned has happened to countless others.
And the irony? After treating me like a criminal, they offered me opioids.
My Message to Others in Pain
If you’re fighting through pain right now, I want you to hear this:
Don’t let a guru, PT, or coach talk down to you.
Don’t let anyone tell you it’s your fault for not getting better fast enough.
Don’t give up.
You may have to go through ten different approaches before you find something that clicks. But ultimately, nobody will care more about your body than you. Nobody will fight harder for your health than you. And nobody will put in the work for you.
Your job is to keep learning, keep experimenting, and keep moving forward—even when it feels like progress is impossible.
Why I’m Building Something Different
This journey is why I’m on the path I’m on now. My pain turned into my passion because I realized there’s a massive gap in the system. Quality advice shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. It shouldn’t take years of trial and error to find the one thing that works. And it certainly shouldn’t require being belittled along the way.
My vision is simple: make movement education, diagnostics, and quality guidance accessible to everyone—without the shame, without the guru complex, and without draining your bank account.
Because the truth is, the customer isn’t wrong. The system is wrong.
