Hand Grippers Make for a $60,000-Strong Hustle

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey there, welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School, continuing our celebration of independence, which really happens not just once a year, but almost every day on Side Hustle School. One way or another, a side hustle is about creating independence for yourself, even if you're totally happy in your day job. Now, by reputation, this show features a lot of quirky, interesting stories, and some of them might sound a little strange. If we go back to where we started, there was this guy who makes several hundred dollars a month writing a blog about fish tanks.

We've had all kinds of things since then. My goal is that at least once a week, you hear something and you're like, "Wow, I had no idea people could make money with that." You probably know what this is leading up to. Got an interesting story for you today. It's about a married couple who are really into fitness, specifically strength training, and even more specifically, hand grippers. Now, there's a whole industry of grip strength equipment, and this husband and wife duo that you're gonna hear about today make $60,000 a year.

That is 6-0, $60,000 a year on the side selling hand grippers, right? Pretty cool. You can get paid for all sorts of things. That's what the show is all about, in addition to independence, and that story is coming right up. [Music]

Husband and wife duo Matt and Chrissy Cannon are literally crushing it with their niche side hustle, which consists entirely of selling grip strength equipment, in particular, hand grippers.

These simple tools, which you may have seen or even tried to use yourself, are used to increase hand strength, and usually involve some kind of spring fitted with two handles. Now, five years along, their unique business, which they call Cannon Power Works, originally came about as a natural spillover from the couple's shared passion for fitness. Stay-at-home mom Chrissy is a competitive power lifter. She's been training with heavy weights for over 20 years and competes in USA powerlifting meets. She can squat about 245 pounds, bench 150 pounds, and deadlift 300 pounds, and she's only getting stronger.

Meanwhile, her husband Matt is a mortgage underwriter by day, a side hustler by night, naturally, but also a competitive grip sport athlete. Yes, that is a thing. Grip sport is not well known, but its popularity is growing, and competitions have been held in North America since about 2000. Matt has competed and held numerous world records in this sport. In fact, he was the first athlete in a competition to close a hand gripper rated above his body weight.

That means with one hand, he crushed a gripper that took more pounds of pressure than his entire weight. This all started back in 2005 when he and Chrissy attended a bodybuilding seminar. They were hanging out at the pool one night, and a fellow attendee brought out his set of grip strengtheners. Matt gave them a try and was instantly hooked. Now, here's why this is relevant to our story.

There is an entire community organized around hand strength, and as the couple got more and more involved, they saw an opportunity to serve this market. At the time, there was one other company that sold different grip manufacturer's products under one roof, giving customers the chance to order a range with one low shipping fee. That company ended up closing its wholesale store, and Matt and Chrissy figured they could fill this gap, and also improve upon the concept. The improvement was that they would rate or test the hand grippers to determine their exact strength. Normally, each hand gripper manufacturer has its own way of categorizing grippers into strengths, and Matt and Chrissy decided they would create this service to test the grippers so that they could be compared in a reliable way.

Customers could either send in their personal grippers to be rated and then sent back, or they could buy new rated grippers online. When they had this idea in 2012, they were the only ones doing this, and they made a consistent $3,000 a month in profit in the first year. By the second year, this had shot up to $5,000 a month. Five years on, they have maintained this level, and the couple now rakes in about $60,000 a year from this hustle. Their customers include rock climbers, power lifters, CrossFit athletes, and strongman competitors.

Most are repeat customers, and most come through word of mouth. Naturally, they bootstrapped this entire operation, keeping costs low, doing anything they could themselves. They went with the least expensive website template they could find. They did no paid marketing, and to photograph the products for their online store, Matt watched YouTube videos to learn to make a small light studio out of household supplies, such as cardboard boxes, lamps, and paper. Thriftiness continues to be their mode of operation, and they credit this as key to their success.

Christie and Matt manage operations themselves, each investing about five hours a week during their spare time. They now keep about $25,000 worth of inventory on stock, ready to be shipped out whenever people order. So far, Canon Powerworks has helped to pay for many of their personal expenses, to help them pay off their mortgage. They say it's also just been a great way to feed their interests and provide flexibility while raising their kids. Now, I mentioned that it's been at about the $5,000 a month level for several years, which is absolutely wonderful, of course.

However, that also means it kind of reached a plateau. They're now looking to shake things up a bit, maybe flex their product line and marketing muscles, perhaps do something different while they continue to run this project. But regardless of what's next, Matt and Christie have already proved they are definitely a power couple. [Music]

So as I said, literally crushing it. Great job, Matt and Christie, this is so fun.

I actually had one of these grippers or my dad had one of these grippers when I was a kid. I remember being like 10 years old and trying to squeeze one of these things. I'm not sure they've evolved much since then, but this whole thing about how there's a competitive sport with different manufacturers, yet no way to compare the relative strength of each. And then Matt and Christie, because they have experience in this sport, come along and essentially create a community and also a business around it. So smart, and that's why I feature stories like this because there's something out there for you.

You don't have to be a programmer, a marketer, an accountant. Whatever skill you imagine is key to entrepreneurial success. What I think is key to entrepreneurial success is the skill of paying attention. And then of course, the skill of doing something about it, also known as action, because inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. If you wanna order your own hand gripper, or at least see how it works, just come and check out today's show notes.

Those are at sidehustleschool.com/186. Come and say hi to me on social media. I'm @chrisguillebeau on Twitter or Facebook. That last name is spelled G-U-I-L-L-E-B-E-A-U, or on Instagram at 193 countries, 193 countries. This has been another strong production of Side Hustle School.

I hope to see you tomorrow. [Music]