Jiu-Jitsu Instructor Pins Down Mobile Workout Tool

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

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A Brazilian jujitsu instructor gets a vision to manufacture a workout tool used by fighters, acrobats, ninja warriors, and other hardcore fitness enthusiasts who want to be able to train wherever they are. He follows a path of designing this tool, getting it in the form of a template that manufacturers can use, finding the right overseas factory, raising money, and well, there's more, but the story ends with him doing really well. In fact, bringing in $20,000 a month. That's what we're going to talk about in today's story. That's what you're going to hear about.

He's also really smart in how he responds to challenges, flying to China to meet his outsourced manufacturer when something goes wrong, et cetera. I'm excited to bring it to you today. Jujitsu instructor pins down mobile workout tool. Lots to take away, lots to learn from this one. Stay tuned.

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Jason Gulati still remembers the first time he saw the ultimate training tool. As a teenager in gymnastics class, his coach wheeled out a contraption, a flat wooden base with two metal poles, each topped with thick wooden blocks. Balanced on those blocks, the coach flowed through handstands, dips, levers, and v-sits. Simple gear, huge capability. When Jason finally tried it, he was hooked, but too broke to buy a set.

Years later, working as a Brazilian jujitsu instructor, he had a little money and a better idea. Rather than buy handstand canes, he built his own and improved the design for home and park workouts. Lightweight, collapsible, and easy to stash under a bed. YouTube videos gave him a head start on his DIY process. He tinkered in his spare time, iterating to a clean prototype.

Eventually, the backyard project started to look like a product, a small scrappy product with serious upside potential. Step one, or perhaps the next step, was get a real blueprint. Jason found an industrial designer to turn napkin sketches into production files he could shop to factories. That kept control with him, no bending the design to whatever a factory happened to offer. He hit up Alibaba to source manufacturers, aiming for an affordable, high-quality, minimum viable product.

He sent the design out to multiple factories, tried to weed out outliers. One tip from him is to verify you are dealing with a factory, not a broker. So ask for facility videos, headcount, process details, and read on-platform reviews. After weeks of back and forth, one factory agreed to build a sample for $600 and ship it to his home. The quality impressed him, time to test demand.

Jason chose Kickstarter to validate product market fit. If the campaign funded, he'd have proof and cash for an initial run. If not, well, he would still own a great $600 trainer. He set a $12,000 goal, which would be enough to cover the first production order plus shipping and handling, no profit. He spent $4,000 on videos, $5,000 on Facebook ads, and using a tool called Unbounce, he built landing pages and email sequences to see which buyer personas responded.

And guess what happened? $84,000 was pledged, well past the goal. With a market signal in hand, Jason requested a production sample. This is important. The first sample you get in this factory process is usually hand-built, and the production sample comes off actual machinery.

So this is really important because that's actually what buyers are gonna get. And for Jason, the second one, that production sample arrived looking terrible compared to the first. Feeling desperate and with backers waiting, Jason booked a flight to China for the next day. On the ground, he carried his blueprints to as many relevant factories as he could find, visiting addresses from Alibaba and taking referrals. He finally found a plant with the right machinery to produce his design at the same unit cost and saw the capability firsthand.

So he then placed the order with a February completion target. He also hired a fulfillment center, one he found on Google, to handle storage, pick and pack, and shipping, allowing him to drop ship without turning his garage into a warehouse. Well, February came and the product wasn't close to being ready. The timeline slipped to April, Jason flew back to China to watch the first units roll off the line, only to find parts unassembled on the floor, and one component delayed. Another push, but eventually production finished.

He shipped 500 units directly to the fulfillment center, which sent rewards to backers. Remaining inventory went up for sale at $170 retail price. The struggle was real, but the struggle was worth it. Today, he sells roughly $20,000 a month through a Shopify site at about a 40% profit margin. So that's around $8,000 in monthly profit.

Orders with his Chinese partner are now routine, the lead times are predictable, and the quality is locked in. He's also testing international demand, offering cheap shipping abroad, and if a particular region shows strong pull, he's gonna figure out how to make the unit economics work long-term. From a teenager's first handstand on wooden blocks to a brand called Base Blocks, which now ships worldwide, Jason earned every rep. He faced bad samples, blown deadlines, and jet-lagged factory tours, and built a durable business. Now he's focused on scale, better processes, broader markets, and a training tool that brings serious body weight strength work into living rooms, garages, and parks, all with minimal setup, and then slides under the bed until the next training session begins.

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Well, listeners, you can check out baseblocks.fit. Since we first featured Jason many years ago, he now has several products as well, several additional products available for sale. It looks like he is still selling actively, building up that website, building up a broad customer base, and I also really loved how he kept his eye on manufacturing. A lot of stories we've heard about manufacturing that goes wrong tends to happen when somebody is not paying attention or not taking more active, direct action like he did. If you're starting a major project commissioning this manufacturing work where people have pledged $80,000, you might have to fly to China like he did, and obviously it was worth it for him.

Both financially but also just in terms of the investment he made and the commitment that he made to his business. Listeners, thanks for tuning in today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I hope that you hear these stories and get inspired to take action on an idea of your own. The complete archives of Side Hustle School, nine years of consecutive daily episodes, are available for download or stream at sidehustleschool.com.

That's all for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]