Personal Trainer Pumps Up Breakfast

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

>> Personal trainer pumps up breakfast. Hey friends, hey listeners community, welcome to another episode of the podcast. What are we going to do today? We're going to give you another episode of the podcast. This is episode 3182, and for this particular segment, I believe it comes out every Wednesday.

We're bringing you some remixes of our best stories from the early years of the show. I'm going way back to 2017, 2018. This is a fun one. It's all about pancakes. I like pancakes. Who doesn't like pancakes?

I'm sure there's somebody out there who doesn't like pancakes, but I'm just going to assume that we all know pancakes are glorious. Even if you're not into pancakes, well, hopefully you're into side hustle ideas and how somebody takes an idea and goes to often make a lot of money and not just make a lot of money, but there's usually a greater purpose beyond it. Like that money is going to help them to quit their job or fund their own entrepreneurial freedom, pay off debt, do something completely different with their lives, and ultimately also make other people happy as well. Lots of good things. We look at them all in combination.

This is the story about a personal trainer who makes and sells healthy pancakes that can actually give you better abs. If you want better abs, you need the abs pancakes. I'll tell you about them in this episode. Ashley, the featured side hustler here, she's taking the breakfast of champions to the next level with pancakes that put the pro in protein. I'll bring you her detailed story right after this.

Healthy eating isn't exactly sugar, spice, and everything nice. It's also kale, quinoa, and protein pancakes. At least according to Ashley Drummond, a Tampa, Florida-based personal trainer who spends her days racing between client sessions, her own workouts, and the grocery store, all while keeping her nutrition dialed in. Breakfast, the meal of champions, is her power source and as it turns out her secret weapon. For seven years, Ashley had whipped clients into shape and loved every sweaty minute, yet a nagging voice kept saying, "Do something bigger.

Find more freedom." She wanted to find a way to reach people who'd never set foot in her gym and maybe reclaim a few hours of her life while she was at it. A self-proclaimed foodie, Ashley believes that eating well shouldn't require cheat meals. Her personal kryptonite was pancakes. Unfortunately, almost every mix on store shelves was loaded with junk, so she created her own high-protein low-carb version. She even bragged that she got her abs by eating pancakes.

One morning while folding chocolate chips into her batter, lightning struck. "What if I could package this mix so anyone could get abs by eating pancakes?" A side hustle idea was literally sizzling in the pan. She decided to test the market at zero cost. The next day, Ashley scooped some extra servings into Ziploc bags, handed them out to clients after training sessions. They loved them and they started telling friends.

Pretty soon, Ashley was getting direct messages from strangers asking to buy the mix. Early production was scrappy. Orders came in via Instagram. Ashley sent PayPal invoices. She dashed to Publix for ingredients.

She measured everything on her kitchen scale. She printed stick-on labels, and she shipped from the post office. As I said, a scrappy operation. Soon, she was packing 15 orders a week and knew every clerk at the counter by name. The hustle caught local attention.

A Tampa news station invited her onto a summer health segment, but Ashley didn't even have a website, let alone professional packaging. Between grocery runs, late night mixing sessions, label printing, daily post office trips, she felt like a forgotten pancake, all burned out on one side. But the TV feature was a turning point. If abs pancakes, named because, well, you can get abs from eating them, was going to scale, Ashley had to hand off the whisk. She dove into the world of co-packers, spending weeks on Google and cold calls to learn food production regulations.

After searching what felt like the entire country, she landed a San Diego co-packer, willing to manufacture a first run of 500 units. The upfront cost was about $20,000. Now, of course, that was a big scary expense, but it was necessary, in this case, to grow. The factory production solved one problem, but exposed a dozen new ones. Ashley had to decode barcodes, nutrition facts, expiration dates, FDA rules.

She taught herself each step by answering questions suppliers ask and Googling what she didn't know. Next, she built an entire storefront on Shopify, no more fielding orders through Instagram comments at midnight. She also doubled down on social media, with targeted Facebook ads, Instagram hashtag campaigns, and partnerships with complementary fitness and health food brands. She would DM a protein shaker company, propose a cross promotion and trade shout outs. She also hosted contests, where followers reposted photos for a chance to win free pancake mix.

This strategy cost little more than time and samples, but delivered a steady stream of new customers. Four years after that first chocolate chip epiphany, Abs Pancakes had grown into a business generating $25,000 a month. Ashley paid for her initial $20,000 production and website investment by rolling profits from her kitchen made sales into the brand, and yes, a bit of strategic credit card debt. Looking back, she credits her success to trusting her gut and honoring the boring daily tasks. Only you know what's best for your brand, she says.

Take advice with a grain of salt, even if it's from successful entrepreneurs. It's the small things that add up just like grams of protein in a pancake. From frying pan to fulfillment warehouse, Ashley Drummond proved you can really flip breakfast into a scalable business. [Music]

Well, Abs Pancakes are still out there several years after this story, after we first recorded the story. Of course, we rerecord every time we feature a previous story.

And I think I said in the initial episode, there's a lot to learn with an undertaking like this. There's a lot of logistics involved. It's not as simple of a side hustle as selling some kind of digital product or something that you just kind of do that you learn in a month or so. There is a learning curve, but that learning curve also works in your favor in the long term because if you can figure it out, then you have an advantage over other people who might give up sooner. So anyway, Ashley Drummond, glad to know that you are still out there.

Good luck with Abs Pancakes. I'm gonna take a look for them 'cause I love pancakes and I like exercise too. So I'm gonna put these together and I'm gonna get Abs. Okay, can't wait, excited for that. Listeners, thank you for being out there.

Thank you for being part of the community. So excited to make the show for you every day. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School.

[Music]

From the Onward Project.