Dustin:  Yeah, so proboardz started because of proformance and our 8 to 11-year-old group workouts. The kids have a tough time focusing, and so we wanted to create something to keep them in one place. That we can have different sets of dumbbells, or some kind of squat rack.

And so you start putting the numbers together and you’re trying to be smart with your money because it’s a small business. It’s sports training, so there’s not a ton of money to be made in it. And so you’re sitting there going, all right, well if I buy this, this, and this, and have a station for 25 kids, and next thing you know, you go, man, I can’t afford to do that.

And I just had this idea. I said, I’ve been using bands for a while for my resistance. Think more like the pull-up bands, the really thick ones, you can get them in different widths. And I said, what if I just built something that they attach these bands to and they just stand on it?

We have them attached to the wall where they can do stuff to their shoulders. What if we did that? What exercises could we do? And so it started there. It was just a couple pieces of plywood. We cut holes in it and put a little wire in and you could clip your little, carabiner or your clip on there and connect your bands. And I had some handles I bought on Amazon and some straight bars that you can connect with ends on them.

And then, parents are asking me, what is that, man? That’s pretty cool. And, one day we needed some extra sleds, so we put some weights on one of them. It didn’t have a back on it at the time. And we could push a sled, we could pull it. And I thought, there’s something to this.

You can do every exercise with this. It almost looks like a skateboard where there’s two different sizes. And one day we built one a little bit bigger and we put some weights on the side to keep it on the ground, and we were doing vertical work like a Vertimax, which cost like four grand and I’m like, wait a second, we’re onto something here.

We train with the college summer group. And we had them use the boards and got their feedback from it. I’m using the bands, I’m getting stronger, my body’s feeling better. I had four surgeries.

All of these things are happening. And then I said, man, I think I can find a little shop that can engrave these. I need to come up with a name. I thought what, about proboardz. I got on this website called 99 designs. And, I had all these people create logos based on some ideas that I had.

And we came up with the logo. I found a CNC shop. They were able to engrave my boards. I then moved in, I rented some space from them, so I’m not having to transport boards back and forth to finish them. And then I was like, well, I can stain them colors. I can put people’s logos on them and I can really personalize these things and I can make it pretty affordable for people where they literally have a gym right there in their board they can take anywhere.

We could be doing curls and shoulder press and squats and lunges and anything you can think of right now while we’re doing this podcast, standing on this board and your body weight keeps it down and that’s how it took off.

We sold 150 last year from August on. It’s something that’s taken off and we got pro players getting them. We’re putting their autographs on them. We’re doing the color of their teams because we don’t have any licensing agreements yet.

And it’s grown into something out of nothing, and become its own little business.

Chris: Dustin, it’s really cool. I’ve been following on Instagram and I remember when you and I met, you had just moved back to Little Rock and you were thinking of your next move, and you hadn’t even come up with proformance yet, and definitely hadn’t come up with pro boards. I’m so impressed with what you’ve accomplished after retirement.

Where can people want to check out your proboardz? Do you have a website or is there a phone number they could call if they want to buy one?

Dustin: Yes, Chris. It’s pro boardz.com so P, R, O, B, O, A, R, D, Z. Everything’s with a z.com. We have pro boardz and we have pro bands. We have pro bagz, which are these bags you fill with sand and there are different weights inside of the little bags so you can make them lighter or heavier.

You can go on there and you can see everything that we have. We customize the colors for you. And then if you want to do more than that, we can do whatever you want and we can get as expensive as you want to get it. I’ve got a high level artist who’s, my brother in law, who is one of the best in the country, if not the world, in my opinion.

You’ve probably seen some of Tyler Arnold’s work. Chris.

Chris: I have. It’s unbelievable.

Dustin: Tyler made Coop one, a major league baseball board, so we wanted to look like the front of a baseball, on the board. Tyler hand painted that for him. The best way to do it is go to the website proboardz.com and you can check us out.

Our facebook, twitter and instagram is @pro__boardz. Any of those ways you can communicate with us and we’ll send you to the website or if we need to call you and talk to you and we can handle it that way as well.

Rob: Chris and I talk about going to the gym, way more than we actually go to the gym. I think we need to just pick up one of these boards and work out.

Chris: What I need is someone like Dustin slapping me around going, “get in the gym, get in the gym!”