Sandy Gives Brick Woman Push To Launch Wellness Product

BRICK, NJ — BJ Dowlen remembers going out in her front yard to do gymnastics stretches to help relieve the persistent pain.

"I stretched constantly," the Brick Township woman said, trying to relieve the pain that had existed since she was born. "I was born with my legs backwards."

Back then, leg and foot problems in children were corrected with braces, "and those red corrective shoes," she said. "In kindergarten I was Forrest Gump."

Over time, Dowlen cast off the shoes and pulled on her determination.

"I just focused on walking straight as best I could," she said.

And 40 years later, that same determination has kept her moving forward in the face of not only the challenge of starting a new business, but doing so while also trying to rebuild her home and recover from the destruction of Superstorm Sandy.

Dowlen is the creator of the Bodyworks Ball, a portable self massage tool for instant relief of neck cricks, shoulder knots, back pain, and for sore aching hands, wrists and feet. She and her company, Bodyworks Enterprises, are in the running for the Independent Small Business of the Year for 2016, presented by Independent We Stand, an organization that supports and celebrates small businesses and their impact on communities.

The award contest is an internet-based voting contest. You can vote for Dowlen by going to her profile here.

"I lost everything in Sandy," Dowlen said. Her home in the township's Baywood section was inundated when the Atlantic Ocean came rushing through the breach at the base of the Mantoloking Bridge on Oct. 29, 2012.

"It was a tsunami," she said. "We took a direct hit." Dowlen was outside with neighbors trying to secure a boat that had gotten loose when one of the neighbors saw the water.

" 'There's a wave coming,' she shouted," Dowlen said. People scattered. Dowlen took refuge in the top floor of her home, which sits on a lagoon. Water had been seeping into her house already, and the wave brought several feet of water in. Her neighbors next door were faced with worse conditions.

"The water exploded up through the floorboards," she said. "They had to swim over to my house" in a current that she feared would sweep them away.

As the storm raged, Dowlen and her neighbors huddled in the top floor of the house, their pets and what few items they'd been able to save with them, focusing only on surviving the storm and what they would do if her house collapsed.

Thankfully, that didn't happen, but the damage was significant. Nearly four years after Sandy hit, Dowlen is still fighting her way through the red tape of the RREM program and a variety of roadblocks and administrative errors so she can raise her home.

"It's exhausting sometimes," she said. "You can't fight on every front all the time."

But that is where her company, Bodyworks Enterprises, comes in. It is the pursuit of a goal that nourishes her soul.

"From time I was little I was obsessed with getting people out of pain," Dowlen said. "To be able to get someone out of pain was a huge gift for me."

Dowlen, who has a degree in strategic management from Cornell University, had been a partner in an export company before Sandy hit. The company shipped a variety of materials overseas, where they were then turned into products and sold in the United States. It was a fact that bothered her greatly.

"It was driving me nuts that it cost less to make things overseas than to make them here," she said. "It upset me that there was no investment in the U.S. It was frustrating."

At the same time, Dowlen, who also has a degree in massage therapy, had been working with athletes, helping them deal with pain of injuries and working on mindfulness techniques. Among her clients and one of her earliest supporters is Ray Lewis, the recently retired defensive star of the Baltimore Ravens.

"He was the first pro athlete to give me a break," she said. As she earned his trust, he involved her in wellness events he holds in the Baltimore area for youngsters that aim to address a number of the issues that are affecting youth in that city. Once other athletes saw that Lewis trusted her, her clientele expanded.

She also had been working on a mobility device to help her athlete clientele relieve pain from their workouts when she was unable to be there, and the Bodyworks ball was growing in popularity.

"Athletes are notorious for having bad feet," Dowlen said. But it wasn't just the athletes who were using it and ordering it. Their wives wanted them. And so did their managers.

"I couldn't keep up with the production (demand)," she said.

In the aftermath of Sandy, the export company was having a meeting to evaluate what its next steps would be in the wake of the storm. Dowlen, who had stayed on to help with a transition after the company was sold, realized she had reached a turning point.

"I had to walk miles to get to the meeting to discuss the future of the company," she said, because roads were still closed. When she arrived, there was damage to the building, but only one of the offices was ruined: her office.

"I realized I had already served my purpose at the company," she said. So she decided to pursue sports performance and wellness full-time, instead of just weekends and vacations.

"Life is too short to not be pursing getting people out of pain," Dowlen said.

She also was determined to make sure her products were made in the United States, because doing so means creating jobs in this country.

It has been a challenge, but over time she has developed connections that have helped her achieve that goal — even though it meant she had to forgo licensing because, she was told, no company would take it on if they couldn't send it overseas to save 50 cents on the cost of making it.

Her efforts to promote her product have had her rubbing elbows with movers and shakers of all kinds. Chief among them? Sen. Cory Booker.

Dowlen met Booker when he was preparing to run for the seat held by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

"I had a meeting with him and with (Gov.) Chris Christie the same day," she said. A couple months later, Booker came back and she gave him a private tour — no media, no cameras — showing him street after street where people were struggling with the overwhelming damage.

After the tour, "I had an hour and a half lunch at Jenkinson's with him, and he just sat and listened to what was taking place," Dowlen said. The issues of insurance payments being woefully short and issues with FEMA were beginning to heat up then. But she also talked to Booker about the issues she was facing with trying to get her business off the ground, particularly with trying to get the products made in the U.S., she said.

Booker's staff helped connect her with a variety of programs, and the connections snowballed into meetings and myriad opportunities. In the months since, Dowlen has attended events with the CEOs of major companies — Exxon, General Electric, Harley Davidson and many others.

It has especially gained notice as useful for people who spend hours sitting at a desk "hunched over electronic devices," she said. Bain Capital had her give a presentation encouraging workers to use the ball and get up every hour, "even for just two minutes to work the kinks out."

In 2015 Dowlen won a STEP Award for Women in Manufacturing. for the ball and for her efforts to ensure it was made in America. The award (STEP stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Production), presented by the Manufacturing Institute in Washington, DC.

"I was the only person from New Jersey," she said. "It was a huge event," with 1,000 people, honoring women from a wide range of fields.

"Here I am in a room with physicists and nuclear engineers, and my mom and I are invited to sit at the president's table. I've created something that's a self-massage tool, not new energy sources."

"It was surreal," she said, but the event also was very collaborative.

It has been voted one of the top new office design products by Inc. Magazine, and picked by Oprah for her "O List" in Oprah Magazine. It won the Seal Of Approval contest held by Barbara Corcoran of "Shark Tank" fame and has been featured in a number of publications.

Dowlen works daily to continue building the brand and its exposure. Currently, the Bodyworks Ball is nominated for the 2016 Independent Small Business of the Year Award, which carries a $10,000 prize, and she recently signed a deal for the Bodyworks Ball to be featured on QVC.

Her most prized placement has been earning a spot on the Made In America Co. listof manufacturers whose products are 100 percent made in the U.S.

"They verify everything, down to the ink on the bags," she said.

Meanwhile, she continues her efforts to fight to get her home raised and receive the proper settlements for the damage to her home. Her discussions with Booker, Sen. Robert Menendez and even with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (when she was unable to get in to see New Jersey's attorney general) helped them push FEMA to reopen thousands of settlements and review the what insurance adjusters said homeowners were due.

She also continues to fight through the RREM process, battling with the state Department of Community Affairs over the costs to raise her front-to-back split level home (estimates project it at $180,000; she received a grant for $50,000, while neighbors with similar home received $150,000), resubmitting pages upon pages of paperwork that has been repeatedly lost, and more.

She just recently was able to resolve a convoluted battle with the bank holding her mortgage and the servicing company they assigned the mortgage to so she could finally deposit a grant check received to cover the work that needs to be done.

"I still try to shine the light on what's going on," Dowlen said, referring to the bureaucratic nightmare and hassles she has faced day in and day out.

But if there's anyone who has learned to keep fighting no matter how many times she trips, it's Dowlen.

She quit wearing the braces and corrective shoes when she was in third grade, refusing to deal with them any longer, and she said learning to walk without them, wearing sneakers instead, was difficult.

"In third grade I got my first pair of Tuffskins and my first pair of denims," Dowlen said. "My mom had to keep sewing patches on them because I kept tripping and tearing the knees."

But she never gave up.

She's putting together a guidebook that she intends to distribute at no cost, most likely online, so others faced with natural disasters will have some help in knowing what steps they need to take, pitfalls to avoid, and where to turn when things go wrong.

And while she works to build her business, she never stops giving back, helping at Lewis's Ray's Summer Days camp for kids, supporting charities including Wounded Warriors, Warriors for Healing and Bikers Against Child Abuse, and trying to help others trying to build a business or fight a problem get access to those who can assist them.

"I call it growing my circle of goodness," Dowlen said.

"I have no fear of approaching anyone," she said. "I have a different perspective on life. If Sandy hadn't happened there are so many things I wouldn't be involved in. It's not about things, it's about how we can elevate each other and help each other."

"It shouldn't take a giant tidal wave to make these changes, but it did for me," Dowlen said.

"I just hope I can give someone hope or empower them, so they don't have to go through even one thing I have had to go through."

NOTE: This article orginially was written in 2016; the headline has been updated to reflect the article's profile nature.

Photos courtesy of BJ Dowlen