Side Quest Podcast

Don Brown has been inventing fitness equipment since the 1990s. He fell in love with fitness in no small part thanks to fitness icon, Jack LaLanne. His first chain of fitness centers was called XERCISE,Inc in Northern NJ. And it was in this gym that one day he ran into a problem with one of his clients. Don Brown had always been a problem solver, so when his client who had a neck injury couldn't do a simple crunch without pain, Don knew he needed to create a solution. After some thought, Don had a eureka moment when he bent a paper clip into a "funny" shape and he knew in that moment how to create his first fitness equipment idea. He left work, went to a Home Depot, and built the first prototype for the Ab Roller that day. In its first 3 years on the market, The Ab Roller exceeded 100 million dollars in sales. Well over 15 million people have purchased AB Rollers making it one of the most successful consumer fitness products ever. Twelve years after he invented the Ab Roller, he co-invented the AB COASTER w