This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to the podcast. It's called Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. And this is our Throwback Thursday segment. Every week, we take an in-depth look
at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. We've been going for more than 1700 episodes now. We've got lots of great stories in our archives. And of course, a lot has changed. So last week, we heard from Rachel Park. She's the creator of The Park Puff, a go anywhere
seatbelt pillow for cancer and surgery patients. Today in our latest feature, we'll hear from Mike Reed. We first featured Mike back on episode 997. Store manager makes micro gains for micro profits. Basically, he's created a product or a series of products now that help weight lifters, bodybuilders, anybody lifting weights in the gym to break through plateaus and see improvements, also known as gains. Thus the name micro gains his business. So what's happened since? Well,
let's hear directly from Mike. I'll come back at the end with some brief comments to wrap us up. My name is Mike Reed. I am from Pennsylvania. And my side hustle is the company MicroGains.
And I was previously on episode 997. MicroGains is a weightlifting equipment company that specializes in fractional plates for barbells and dumbbells. All of our stuff we make is made in the USA. And we help weight lifters build strength and break plateaus with our products. A couple years ago, I was struggling with my own weightlifting program. I was having trouble going up by
those five, 10 pound jumps over time. And I thought there's got to be something a little bit easier. So I started looking around for smaller plates that you'd find at a gym. So typically a two and a half pound was the smallest plate that you find at a gym. And that means you're always making a minimum of a five pound jump. I thought there's got to be
a smaller plate out there. So I started looking, found out that most of the options were kind of expensive or made overseas. So I thought, you know what, I could probably make these myself. And I went to a local laser cutter and we had a few of the original MicroGains microplates made. And those were quarter pound, half pound, three quarter pound and one pound plates for Olympic barbells. So now you could go up on your bar by one pound or two pounds or two and a half pounds
or three pounds instead of those five pound jumps. This is my main hustle. Now, when I was last on the podcast, I was working full time at a grocery store and I actually quit that grocery store job last year on July 4th. And I started doing MicroGains full time. The pandemic was actually pushing a lot of weightlifting equipment out like tremendous volumes of weightlifting of what was being bought. And with MicroGains, we were actually able to stay in stock while a lot of other
companies went out of business, not out of business, but out of stock because they couldn't get their stuff from overseas where a high percentage of weightlifting equipment is made in China or overseas. Our stuff's all made in the USA. So we were actually able to still get our weightlifting equipment and sell it to everybody. And we got it pretty quickly because our American partners, distributors did not go out of business. And then we also were able to add new products.
Since the last time I was here, we added bigger plates too. I just talked about those fractional or micro plates, but we actually added new products, 2.5, 5, and 10 pound plates as well, all made in the USA. And that helped me to be able to quit my job just because of the volume that we had coming in at the time. One of the biggest challenges we're currently facing is the influx back of a lot of those foreign products. So since the market is being flooded again, it does make it a little bit harder to stand out. We're not the cheapest brand out there.
We're not the most expensive brand either. We're somewhere in the middle. And sometimes that's not the best spot to be in. Sometimes it's okay, depending on who your customer target base is. So that has affected us and we're trying to find new and innovative ways to communicate to the customers that do want the higher quality product. They do want a laser cut steel plate instead of a
cheaper cast iron version where they do want our dumbbell plate because we have a patent on it and no one else is actually going to be able to make it. I think you have to find something that you really love to do and you can definitely turn it into a business. The internet has made that pretty easy to at least get started. And whether or not you're interested in Ninja Turtles or talking about Kool-Aid, I don't know, you can start a podcast about that. It's really possible with the internet. And I think the best thing to do is to see what's out there already. Let's say
you like those Ninja Turtles and there is a podcast or maybe you want to go online and maybe just sell the toys or something like that. Maybe go on and see how well they're selling and look at some other competitors in your market. If you want to come out with a unique product like Micro Games, see what else is out there. How much are they charging? Where do they get theirs made? Look
at customer reviews, start to compile a list of like, okay, how can I make my product unique and different? And then start to market it to those individuals. You don't need a huge bankroll. You don't need loans to get started. You can get started for relatively inexpensively just to slowly get it out there, start a social media around it and start to build that. And it can take a couple
years for sure. I mean, it's with me several years to quit my job while I did this on the side. Mike, thank you so much for those updates. Really appreciate that. Listeners, isn't it cool that he has been able to go full-time and he was also well positioned at the start of the pandemic when everybody's like, "Hey, we can't go to gyms. We need to get
some weightlifting equipment in our homes." And because he was making that locally and not having to import it, he was able to ramp up quickly. Mike also mentioned in our interview that not all overseas made stuff is bad. Just to be clear, some of it is well made. But the challenge is that it's hard to oversee the process from a distance. Whereas in his case, he's something like 10 minutes away from the people who make his products. So it just makes things so much easier.
Check out microgains.com. That's gains with a Z, microgains, gain muscle one pound at a time. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of well over a thousand stories. If you have a question, if you have an update for us about your Side Hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. This has been episode 1741.
Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
