11/09/2026
Grab a cuppa. This is the story of how a girl with a horse and a machine the size of a car battery ended up here and why it’s still the two of us who answer your calls.
Long before PainPod, I was riding and using TENS technology on horses under our vet’s supervision. You could see it work in something as simple as whether a horse trotted up sound after using it. That was the first time I watched this stuff genuinely make a difference.
Of an evening we’d lug this big clunky unit inside, pop the pads on our abs and watch Melrose Place. This is just a lookalike to give you the idea - ours was that same era of chunky dials and big analog needles. I’ve trusted this technology since well before it was ever my job.
Josh and I met in Darwin, had our baby, and made the move to the Gold Coast. When it came time to get back to work, my old world, hospitality, didn’t fit anymore. So I went looking for something different.
With my history; the horses, and using it through my own pregnancy and labour, I gave it a go. I became one of those people who stop you in the shopping centre, and honestly I loved it. Strangers would wander over to tell me they had one and how it was helping them. Genuinely satisfying work.
In 2013, our little crew made the call to build our own brand - PainPod. Joao was the mastermind behind the branding, and Tom founded it and believed in it from the start. My background’s in event organising, so I moved into the office, looking after our distributors and the customers who called in.
I saw someone I cared about being taken advantage of, and I wasn’t going to walk away. So I stayed, and we worked through it until things were steady again. We came out smaller, but real - and built on trust.
There was a real pull to do something easier, I looked at starting up in another industry with my dad. But every time, I chose this. The couple we’d talked to about taking over are still with us today, selling PainPod at events, right alongside other people who’ve been here since the start.
In 2021, Tom and I became partners - he’s now building PainPod in the USA, from Hawaii. Around the same time, Josh joined forces with me in the office, which was brilliant
