This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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One of the core principles of Side Hustle School, opportunities are everywhere. Opportunities are everywhere, just wherever you look, there's always all kinds of new ways to create a market, to offer something for sale, start a new service, whatever the case may be. So let's get specific today and look at the world of fitness and wellness. I often mention as well, this is one of the industries that has a lot of potential because anyone who's into fitness or wellness tends to invest money in those areas. Now, these are broad areas, of course, fitness and wellness.
So that's why specialization is important and that could be software or apps, training or coaching, online courses and physical products. It is the last one of those categories that we're gonna look at in today's story. When a grocery store manager hits a weightlifting plateau, he creates micro weight plates through hard work and heavy lifting. And what's the result? Well, I'm gonna tell you the whole story, but in less than three years, it becomes a six figure business.
So that's a pretty good outcome. I think you might wanna stick around and hear the story. That story is coming right up. [Music]
Michael Reed works as an assistant manager for Wise Markets, a popular grocery store chain in New England. On any given shift, he might be motivating staff, helping customers or lifting heavy boxes while also packing shelves.
For the most part, Michael enjoys his job, especially the latter of those tasks, that would be lifting the boxes, packing shelves, et cetera, because you see in his spare time, Michael is a gym junkie. He likes to lift weights specifically. He really, really likes to lift weights. It's one of his favorite things to do. And in particular, he enjoys barbell training.
This gives you a measurable way to progress by keeping track of how much weight you're able to lift. If you put in the work this week, next week, week after and so on, you're gonna be slightly stronger, then slightly stronger again the week after that. Now, this is at least how it is when you're first starting to lift weights, because eventually lifters reach what's known as a plateau. Kind of self-explanatory, right? The point at which they stop making rapid improvements and the work doesn't produce the results it used to.
And this is because, well, it's a few reasons, but one, because most barbell weights come in five pound increments. When you first start lifting, you might have 10 pounds total. You add two five pounders, you've got 20, you could go up to 30 and so on. The problem is this type of improvement doesn't continue forever. If it did, every weight lifter would be lifting cars over their heads.
But since that's not what happens, as the overall weight gets higher, improvements known as gains get harder to come by. Lifting an additional five pounds on a very heavy barbell is much more difficult than a light one. So when Michael hit his plateau, he looked for ways to remedy the situation. Before long, he came across weight plates. Weight plates are small sets of weights that lifters add to their dumbbells to increase the overall weight in smaller increments.
So instead of adding five pounds, they can add a quarter, half, three quarters, or a full pound. It allows them to make the incremental increases that help bash through those weight lifting plateaus. Now, Michael knew this was exactly the product you needed. So he hopped on over to Amazon to see what was on offer. The options there were limited, expensive, almost all were made in China.
Being a handy kind of guy, Michael figured he could make something cheaper himself right at home. And he also thought he might be able to sell a few on the side. He called his project MicroGains with a Z at the end, or a Z if you prefer, MicroGains. Micro for the small plates and gains for the inevitable gains weight lifters would have using them. To do this, he went to a local steel laser cutter and had 25 of each size cut from a quarter pound to one pound.
That was enough to make eight sets. He then hung the plates up in his shed and used a spray gun to paint them black. Once the paint dried, he put a sticker of his logo, I guess he made a logo at some point, and then listed the corresponding weight on each plate. It was a slow process, but within a couple days, he had his first batch of MicroGains plates ready to sell. Then just two days after listing them on eBay, his first customer loaded up, purchasing two sets.
Michael was overjoyed. That sale was validation and a weight off his shoulders. It was proof this idea could actually work. Michael chose to invest the proceeds from his small profit into buying more steel plates. After a few reps, basically doing that over and over, he realized his process of making the plates was far too time consuming.
In weightlifting, the real gains happened during your recovery after a workout, not the workout itself, and starting a business is similar. You know, you work hard, sometimes frantically, then you process and refine in the downtime. But in this side hustle, Michael had hardly any time between sessions to make improvements. So on the advice of his steel cutter, he decided to powder coat the plates. This was a little more expensive, but cut his production time considerably.
Now all he had to do was put the stickers on each plate and he was done. With that first version, he sold $30,000 worth of plates in the first year. But Michael was not done. He wanted to bust through his business plateau just as he'd done with weightlifting. Over the next year, he refined the plates and process even further.
Consequently, he sold more than four times what he did in year one, $130,000 worth. For his next trick, he listed micro gains on Amazon and the sales exploded again. A huge uptick, in fact. Before the year was halfway done, he was already at $160,000 in revenue. So with that sort of money on the weightlifting bench, you might imagine Mike has quit his full-time job, but that's not the case.
At least it wasn't at the time of our original story, our original feature of micro gains. He poured most of the profit back into the business with maximum intensity. In fact, he was working on the next line of micro gains plates, which are now color coded. He's also got ideas for another couple of product lines he wants to make in the same space. Hopefully with enough sets and reps, he's gonna go from micro gains to macro profits.
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We first talked about Mike and micro gains quite a while ago, but I was very happy to see that the website is still up and running. He's actually added a bunch of products, dumbbell plates, weight plates, accessories, something called vintage gains, Christmas ornaments even, not sure how that works, but he's got all kinds of stuff, basically. Check out microgains.com again with a Z at the end of it. I believe these products are still on Amazon as well. So Mike, good work listeners cheering you on as well.
I'd love to hear your story. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. There's something you can do as well. There's a business you can start, a side hustle idea you can pursue, a way to make extra money without quitting your job. Okay, I hope you get it, but it's just really important.
That's why we talk about it every day. That's our mission, our sole mission here on the podcast to help you do more of what's important to you. I hope you'll continue to listen. The show is always free, comes out every day, seven days a week. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
