Unscripted Podcast Interview: Téa Phillips on the Metaflex Glove Innovation

Jeremy Rivera: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Téa Phillips, and she's going to introduce herself, and we're going to learn a little bit more about her history and business.

Téa Phillips: Hello, Unscripted Podcasts. I'm Téa Phillips. I am the founder of ATS Innovations and the inventor of the MetaFlex® glove. MetaFlex is something that I created when I was trying to help people manage arthritis at home in their hands. So I found that people weren't able or willing to do their grip strengthening exercises. So I made a wearable grip strengthener and combined it with a compression glove.

So it's a really gentle compression glove with adjustable resistance bands that work to keep your fingers open. So at rest, you're stretching your fingers. In motion, you're working against those bands to strengthen your grip. And then it always has that really gentle compression to reduce pain and improve circulation.

Expanding Beyond Arthritis Treatment

Jeremy Rivera: Is that aimed mostly at arthritis or does that help with like carpal tunnel?

Téa Phillips: It does. So I made it for arthritis, but we went to market at the beginning of 2022. And we've been helping way more people than just people with arthritis, which has been really rewarding for me to see it being used in so many different ways. I've got people with Parkinson's who wear it to sleep to keep their fingers extended. It's being recommended at Vanderbilt Surgery Center for use in rehabilitation and helping people recover from surgeries.

I've got people in their 20s who do landscaping and wear it to recover and people in their 70s that wear it during strenuous activity like working outside so that they can do more throughout their day than they can without it.

From Concept to Market: The Bootstrap Journey

Jeremy Rivera: Interesting. So what was the journey like of going from the concept to getting a prototype to actually realizing I have something I can go to market? Was that all bootstrapped or do you have investors? What's your game plan there?

Téa Phillips: It's been a really long journey. So I made this in 2018 while I was studying mechanical engineering at Tennessee Tech University. I had two other co-founders that kind of identified the problem and then brought me onto the team to figure out how to make the solution. And as soon as they described it to me, I could see it in my head and I drew it out and I'm like, "this is how we're going to do it."

And then my grandma, once I was starting to do more like customer discovery, I realized that it was a problem close to me. My grandma had really bad arthritis and I started to really pay attention to her. She was always, when I was growing up, sewing and crafting and gardening, and she was doing less of those things. And I talked to her about it and it's because her hands were hurting. So I realized how big of an impact this could have on people. And I felt like I was responsible for bringing it to the world.

So I graduated in 2018 also with a job offer from Y12 National Security Complex. So I didn't have any money as a college student. So I took that job. I worked there for three years. It was a great place to work. I saved money. And then at the end of 2021, I quit and started focusing on ATS full time.

And it took me longer to get to market than I thought it would. And I got to market finally in 2023 after getting FDA registered and doing all of the things that it takes to bring a medical device to the world.

Navigating FDA Regulations & Medical Device Classification

Jeremy Rivera: It sounds like there's some regulation there that you had to hop through. My father-in-law was in medical device approvals and processes and I know that for him it was a one to three year process, but his devices were like inside people's bodies. Other pain management medical professionals face a lot of regulations.

What was that regulatory journey like? Just a lot of paperwork? Were there studies that you had to schedule and approve evaluations?

Téa Phillips: Yeah, first I was like, "this is not a medical device. This is a compression glove. Are you kidding me?" Like, there's no way. And so I emailed the FDA and they're like, "yeah, compression changes the way the body functions." So it was mainly me doing a lot of research and figuring out what I needed to classify as because I was bootstrapped, self-funded. I couldn't hire a consultant to do all the work for me. They charge a lot of money. And so...

It's a class one medical device. It's 510k exempt. So I just had to find the category that it fell into and then pay the FDA a stupid amount of money that keeps going up every year. The fee is more and more. And I'm like, "you're really limiting innovation here." It's a little frustrating for me. And for other people, I assume that are doing medical devices and trying to help people improve their health.

Way too expensive, way too expensive for something as simple as a compression glove to get to market and have all of the registrations that it needs. And my manufacturer has to be registered in a certain way and be held to a certain quality standard, which is good for the product. The product is, you know, just fantastic. But it took me a long time to find. That's what took me so long was finding the manufacturer that could make this product.

Multi-Channel Distribution Strategy

Jeremy Rivera: So now that you have the manufacturer, is your goal to find and have it on actual physical store shelves? Is this an e-commerce play? Is this a direct to market? Or are you going B2B trying to find businesses that will take it on as part of their stock? Like what's the next play there for you?

Téa Phillips: All of the above. So I started by building my website and what did I do? Squarespace, because it's easy to build a website and I'm a mechanical engineer, not a software engineer. So I built my website, I went directly to the consumer and people were buying it. I built a following on social media and I drove traffic to my website that way.

Eventually I started getting into local stores, local pharmacies. I'm in pharmacies and medical supply stores. Then I got onto Amazon. And then I started finding distributors who are taking me into places like the VA Medical Center. And I'm talking to distributors now that can take me into hospital systems and PT and OT clinics. I recently got approved by insurance. So it's reimbursable to buy the MetaFlex. You can also find MetaFlex gloves in stores near you or on Walmart.com.

Now it's the play is being prescribed—the MetaFlex being prescribed and it's available on our website. So yeah, we're kind of all over the place, but I think what's going to work best is more of a focus directly on the consumer and then into these hospital systems, but finding a distributor to bring us into those hospital systems because I don't want to hire a million sales reps and manage all of them. And I'd rather the company ATS be, you know, the intellectual property powerhouse. We've got different versions. We've got a lot of things that are coming out and I want to do R&D and then have a partner to do the distribution of it.

Vision for Company Growth & Structure

Jeremy Rivera: So you really want to keep—like your vision for this is to keep your company small. You're not looking to like add a lot of salespeople to try to scale it really aggressively. Is your long-term goal to have a lot of employees or to find roles and expand your capability there? Or are you looking at it more as like a lifestyle decision for the company of like, hey, we're going to have a fantastic product we're just going to be a boutique. We're going to continue to develop it, but we're going to continue to grow at our own pace?

Téa Phillips: That's a good question. I've got a really open mind about it because this is the first company I've ever run. I have some ideas on what I want to do, but we're just going to figure out what works best. And I think that's probably the best skill for an entrepreneur to have is to be flexible. So I try to keep an open mind.

But I think my hypothesis is that we're going to grow the fastest and help the most people if I can partner with people who are doing something really well. Like, find a distributor that's really in the hospitals, in the PT clinics, in the OT clinics, and they already have this wide reach, and I partner with them for distribution, and then partner with someone else for advertising, and keep—because what I like to do as an engineer is develop new products.

So my notebook, and what fills my cup, is just creating new things. So personally, I wanna be doing R&D and setting the vision and like the goals of the company, because I see where we're going. And so I just need to find an all star team and I feel like that team can be external partners and don't have to be internal resources.

Business Development & Networking Strategy

Jeremy Rivera: That makes sense. There's a lot of business development skills and chops of finding the right people to talk to who have completely different models of business from what you've done that you can then realize, hey, that's an opportunity for me to explore and tap into. So has it been a process of going to different conferences, working with other groups or teams to get introductions, or has it been kind of pounding the pavement, sending those emails, or on social media, or is there any hybrid marketing play where you're trying to reach out and create these connections?

Téa Phillips: It's both. I've done a little bit of everything. What I find works the best is going to conferences and pitching and presenting my technology. I found my chief clinical officer because someone that he worked with knew of what I was doing and knew he was interested and they had seen me pitch at like 3686, which is Launch Tennessee's Organization. They have a conference for entrepreneurs every September in Nashville for the whole Southeast.

And so I've been going to that pretty regularly and I pitched there in 2023 and someone from Vanderbilt saw me and saw my technology and then brought it to the person, Justin Stehr, who's now my chief clinical officer. So...

And then I also found my operations manager, operations officer at a women's conference in Cookeville, Tennessee. So I think going to conferences has been good for building my team and networking, even if it isn't immediate. Like when I was at 3686, I didn't know that I was going to eventually the next year be introduced to someone who would be such a valuable member of my team. But it's just getting the word out, getting as much press as you can.

So that's most of my job right now is just getting press, getting on podcasts like this one. I've been on a lot of podcasts and trying to spread the word about what I'm doing. And then the right people have kind of been coming to me.

Digital Marketing & Social Media Strategy

Jeremy Rivera: That's interesting because we're at a time and place in history where there's more channels available for marketing than ever before. There's social media, there's paid social media, there's direct emails, there's podcasts, there's YouTube channels, there's influencers, there's real world stuff and conferences still going on. There's kind of this digital layer on top of it that you kind of have to choose a game plan of where because you can't be everywhere.

Téa Phillips: But I feel like as many places as you can be, just put feelers out and see what works best for you. Because LinkedIn is also pretty good for me. And I go through periods because to really be relevant on LinkedIn, you need to post minimum once a week. And I don't always have something that I want to say.

I try to take pictures and sometimes I'll post on LinkedIn and that gets people in my inbox wanting to schedule calls with me. Most of the time they want to sell me something and I ignore them. But sometimes they're like, "we want to collaborate. Let's talk. I'm interested in what you're doing." And it does help to build hype.

Jeremy Rivera: That's true. There is each of the different channels—there's something you expect, like the audience there is expecting something different. I used to recommend like when you're evaluating a social media channel for your company, go and just engage, just experience and see how people engage because how people use Pinterest and the audience that's there is completely and radically different than Threads and Threads is different from Instagram and Instagram is different from Blue Sky and Blue Sky is different from the abomination known as X.

Téa Phillips: And there's just more and more coming out and it's hard to keep track of all of it.

Building Authentic Relationships Online

Jeremy Rivera: It's true. So I usually like there's the observe, participate, engage, network. I have the open metaphor. So you observe how people operate, participate in conversations without the objective of gaining anything, just liking, sharing random stuff that's in the random interest, then actually engage in conversations that are adjacent to what you do. And then the last piece is network. And so it's the difference between like, this person is like a medical distributor and dropping straight into their DMs versus taking like a week or two to follow them, like their stuff, have at least two different conversations about stuff that isn't pitching. So that when you do slip a DM, when you send them that direct message or start a chat or move it to that next level, you can have those two anchors.

One of my previous guests, Keith Bresee, like he has a people first framework where he's like, okay, you have to have, if you're going to start and pitch them something in their DMs, you may have two anchors to other stuff so that the conversation isn't just the cold pitch.

It reminds me too of, you got feedback for the product from your experience with your own grandma, and he recommends for your product, go and find an actual client and ask them, how would you pitch this product now? How would you pitch it to your grandmother and see how they change the way that they describe it? Because in that relationship and that understanding, there's something that shifts that changes that care, the way that you phrase things. And so that's also relationally how you should think of your digital marketing, of taking that time and perspective to understand, okay, who am I actually pitching this to and how can I shape the messaging?

Téa Phillips: Seems like a great system.

Community Building & Content Strategy

Jeremy Rivera: It's not any more about keywords. Even though I'm in SEO, I'm looking at these things all day and I look at the volume of keyword search for terms and phrases. But if you're not putting out content that actually in the end connects you to your ideal audience and sparking a conversation, then it doesn't matter if you get a thousand people clicking to your Adventure Time GIF post if you're selling them medical devices.

Téa Phillips: You want them to be engaging with what you're posting and talking about it and starting a conversation so that you can build a community on your platform.

Jeremy Rivera: Exactly. And it's great if you can stage your site as a place for some of those conversations to take place in some way, whether that's a forum or whether it's a discussion or you have like a webinar series or you have like a newsletter that leads to a community group, because I view the website as kind of like the head or the mouth of the octopus and you reach out through social media and reach out through your social channels, reach out through SEO and you're always pulling them back. But you really got to do something to keep them there because it's way less expensive to have people come back to a website that they've already discovered, then get new people to come to your site.

What can I do to further engage or provide additional adjacent support for discussions about arthritis or discussions about carpal tunnel in the workplace? Maybe it's about finding and building alliances of organizations and teams that are trying to address the disease itself and or are impacted by the disease. And so that opens like multiple conversations and ways that you can put yourself into the conversation. And then they're like, "oh, yeah, you think your product does something to solve this" and "I don't have to wake up with my hands numb in the middle of the night because I've been scrolling on my phone too long."

Téa Phillips: Yeah, exactly. And that's what we want to do with MetaFlex is be more than a product. We want to be a resource, be a community, educate and give a place where people, whether they're customers of ours or not, can learn about hand conditions, learn about how to take care of themselves, what to expect, and engage with others.

The Importance of Support Systems in Entrepreneurship

Jeremy Rivera: Is there a figure, a person in your past, either recent or before, that you had looked to that gave you advice that helped you through a hard part of this process?

Téa Phillips: I have a wonderful team of advisors that have helped me a lot. Mainly it's just like uplifting support that helps me the most because being an entrepreneur is just failing over and over and over. You got to fail fast. I was talking to a class at Tennessee Tech a couple days ago and I'm like, I feel like I take a step forward and I fall on my face and then I get back up and then I fall on my face again and I just pivot each time and eventually like I take a couple steps but like entrepreneurship is just about failing and learning and pivoting until you get it right because there's not a playbook of what you need to be. I mean there kind of is but everybody's journey is different and you're gonna mess up and you have to be resilient.

And so having people around you that support you and that believe that you can do it and that are there for you in the hard times and saying "it's okay, take a breather. You'll get them next time, tiger." You know what I mean? I think those are some of the most beneficial people to have in your court when you're an entrepreneur.

And then, I mean, practical advice is also you just gotta surround yourself with people that have skills that you don't have. So for me, that was marketing and sales and finance and then being humble and saying, okay, yeah, if they tell you that you're wrong about something and you have to change something, you just have to say yes. It's part of failing is having hypothesis that don't pan out the way that you think they're going to.

The Art of Pivoting & Keep Moving Forward

Jeremy Rivera: I think that logic model too is key. I've created different entrepreneurial systems and crashed and burned on how much workload that I was taking on and it didn't work out. And also seeing as a freelance consultant across the board at all levels, from poop scoopers to HCA, you have to be able to pivot and take your L, learn from it and move on. Hopefully iterate something that doesn't immediately fail again, but don't do the same thing. Yeah. You got to learn. Yeah, you got to pivot.

Téa Phillips: Yeah, don't do the same thing. Don't fail and then try it. Yeah, yeah. Make a pivot. Change something in there, but don't stop moving forward. Keep moving forward. I think about the movie, The Robinsons. You remember that movie? Animated movie, like "keep moving forward." That's like their whole thing. And so that's like, I have a whiteboard in my bedroom where I write down my ideas. And at the very top of it, it's keep moving forward. And it's been like that for years because that's... That's all you can do. You just keep going.

Jeremy Rivera: I have a big head and little arms. I'm just not sure how well this plan was thought through. Such a good movie. Yeah.

Téa Phillips: It's such a good movie. Listener, if you haven't seen it or if it's been a minute, go back. It's so inspiring.

Jeremy Rivera: It is a sleeper among the Disney films. It kind of slid in there and people are like, what? And I'm like, it's the best villain that you've ever seen. Bowler Hat Guy is legendary. But there's really a good core at the heart of it.

You FAILED! and they're celebrating. He's like, you know, yeah.

Téa Phillips: They're celebrating it, yeah, because that's how you learn. If you're not failing, you're not trying.