I'd like to tell you guys a story of Billy Blanks, because it's pretty inspiring. I was his sparring partner for five years, worked his corner when he won the Golden Gloves in New England (novice division in the 80's) and he was the best man at my wedding. He grew up in the poorest section of Erie Pennsylvania, one of fifteen kids. I went there with him when he lived here in New England, and it was a really small house.
Billy is severely dyslexic, but it wasn't diagnosed until he was almost forty years old and living in California. Because he couldn't learn to read as a youngster, they put him in special needs class in school and he rode the little bus to school each day. I can't even imagine what that must have been like for him. He started martial arts when he was about twelve or thirteen. But he was completely uncoordinated and his hip structure was so narrow he couldn't raise a kick higher than mid shin. (If you've seen him kick as an adult, that's hard to imagine, but it's true)
His first Sensei wanted no part of teaching him, the school had a lot of good athletes and all Billy did was slow down the class. So they put him in a corner, with a different white belt every night, and had him do reverse punches. They told him to quit, but he wouldn't, he loved Martial Arts. He quit school at 16 and went to work in a chemical factory, working long hours, six days a week to help support the family. After work he went to class every single night. After class he went home and stretched, many times falling asleep while stretching. He did this every single day. He started to improve in the arts. (Gee, ya think?)
Let's fast forward a bit. He wanted to create an exercise program to help people. It was first called "Karobics". His goal was to help people who would probably never set foot in a dojo. He taught an aerobics instructor we knew, Michele, how to do, and teach, Karobics. (this was around 1985) It was first implemented in in my dojo, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at eleven o'clock. It lasted about a year before it quietly died. He realized he needed to organize it better.
In the late eighties he moved to L.A. where he and his family were dirt poor again. He taught part time in the garage of his rented house in Reseda. He did birthday parties, dressed in the costume of the teenage mutant ninja turtles, to make money so they could eat. His wife at the time, used to shop at a warehouse that sold dented canned food with no labels. She told me that after a few weeks she could tell what veggies were inside by the sound made when she shook them. Eventually he scraped up enough money to open a small school. Then a bigger one.
He started Karobics again, and it started to take off. I never saw anything like it. He eventually had six classes a day, with fifty people in a class.
So......a Hollywood power couple started to work out at the dojo in the Karobics class. They approached Billy and wanted to go into business with him to take Karobics national. He agreed and was pretty excited. A week later that power couple came in, and told Billy that they had just trademarked the name Karobics and he would now take orders from them. (can you imagine?) He threw them out. He did this politely, I'll never know how he kept himself in check. So now he needed a new name for his exercise program. We started to think up names.
A week later he called me and said he had thought of a new name. "Tae-bo". I said, "Billy, that's the worst damn name I ever heard. Don't do it, it's not marketable and it's just not a good name. (Boy, can I call them, or what?)
The country went nuts for Tae-bo. After a few years he sold the name/franchise of Tae-bo. They wrote him a check for forty million dollars, with a contract for a hundred million dollars over the next seven years.
Billy was the hardest working Martial Artist I've ever known. I'm glad for him. Especially how hard it was for him growing up.
