Meet Nick Carter. Carter spent most of his youth growing up in Meridian, Idaho, but moved to Weiser and graduated from Weiser High in 2008. Remembering fond memories of the small town of Weiser, Carter knew it would be a good place to bring his new business. Carter is the owner and operator of Snake River Star Jumpers, where he offers Power Tumbling classes.
Power Tumbling is a niche area of gymnastics that has recently grown in popularity. A popularity that has grown so much that in 2021 the NCAA sanctioned it as a sport and it is now offered in some colleges in the United States. Carter explained the opportunity this sport offers stating, “There are like twenty something District 1 colleges in the nation now offering full ride scholarships for Power Tumbling specifically. It’s a pretty good way to get a ride to college and then from there you can take it anywhere.” Power tumbling is strictly floor based gymnastic skills, such as front and back flips and round off backhand springs. In competition participants compete on what is known as a rod floor. “It’s basically like a runway that is extremely bouncy that lets us do a lot of tricks in combination with each other,” stated Carter. He shared that this sport has helped participants get into positions such as the circus, cheer, and even can pave the way for Olympic avenues. “Companies like Red Bull will cherry pick Power Tumblers and turn them into cliff divers and extreme sports enthusiasts. There’s really all kinds of routes that they can take with this sport,” he explained.
Carter began Snake River Star Jumpers in 2020 as a side job with only one class and three students. He began teaching classes in Weiser in the Dance Extreme studio, but quickly outgrew the space. In a search for a larger space for his growing classes Carter was unable to keep his classes in Weiser. He recently partnered up with Hot Shot Gymnastics in Ontario, Oregon where he has plenty of room for classes as well as more gym equipment. “We came over to Hot Shots and made a deal and now we are a full blown gymnastics facility.” Speaking of Hot Shots Carter shared, “They have a very long standing with the community.”
In early June of 2022 Carter started the application process to be a participant on an entrepreneur reality game show called The Blox. The game originated from an educational program to help new startup companies. According to BetaBlox website, “Tulsa and Kansas City startups admitted into the program congregate for a twice monthly lecture series hosted by one of the BetaBlox mentors. The Mentor Lecture Series is an opportunity to network with fellow entrepreneurs, meet successful influencers from the community, and learn business from real-life, local case studies. This is an incredibly easy way to beef up your rolodex, that happens to be simultaneously very educational.” The Blox game uses a portion of the curriculum during a single season to educate startups and entrepreneurs.
According to Carter there was a four stage interviewing process. The first is the initial application. The second, if the show was interested in the business, would then send out a questionnaire email for the participants to fill out, “I had to answer questions about my business in a few sentences and then I had to write a paragraph answer for each question, I think it was like five questions. I don’t recall what they were, but they were mostly about my business,” stated Carter. The third stage was a video submission, “The way they set this up was through a third party app. It was a controlled scenario. We would hit the record button on our phone and then they would put up a prompt with a question. We would have to basically answer that prompt on the fly. We got one redo, so you could mess up once and redo the question, but once it was done it was locked in and you could not redo anymore. They wanted to have very candid and real answers,” stated Carter. The last stage was a phone interview. Carter shared that during his phone interview the show executive he spoke with loved him and told him that she couldn’t guarantee he would be on the show, but it was a pretty good bet he would be getting the call. A week later Carter received an email asking him to appear on the show. On August 25th of 2022 Carter hopped on a plane and flew to Kansas City to attend the five day intense business boot camp game.
The Blox Season 5 Nick Carter Introduction:https://www.facebook.com/messenger_media?attachment_id=227891866619163&message_id=mid.%24cAABa88S6W4COhlQE22IVQ64jahNH&thread_id=1719368033
Carter’s Snake River Star Jumpers was one of sixty businesses that attended the show for Season 5. Some were single business owners and others were there with their business partners. Carter shared, “We competed in these little mini competitions that they would set up for us to test out who had the most entrepreneurial creativity and wit.” The competitions were judged by a panel of entrepreneurs who have themselves started where the contestants have and are now successful in their fields. “They had very strict rubrics that they were given to grade us and rank us on,” stated Carter.
Carter placed fourteenth out of the sixty businesses in his show’s season. He was the only one in Season 5 that was in his field of business. “There were lots of other creative types of businesses. Like there were some Mediums, Physic type businesses, Massage Therapists, there was one guy who was a voice coach, there were also food truck businesses, those businesses were the most closely related to mine and they’re really nothing like mine. I was very much alone in my category as far as business type, but since then I know they have had at least one more gymnastic coach appear on a show.”
Carter shared that the criteria for the businesses when he went on the show was that the businesses had to be making anywhere from zero dollars up to a million dollars per year. Carter shared about a business he competed with saying, “There was a guy there whose business was selling Pokemon and Magic Cards. He sells his cards on an auction app. He live streams and auctions off these highly valued cards. He told me he bids against famous people all the time. Like NFL players and musicians. He said one time he won a card collection in a bidding war against Post Malone. He told me he makes anywhere between $200,000 and $750,000 a year. It just depends on the year. He probably was the business making the most money that was on the show for my season.” Carter went on to share that the expert panel also had to meet a financial criteria in order to be on the panel and judge. He shared that their businesses had to be bringing in more than two million a year.
The Blox isn’t just a game, it’s education for entrepreneurs. Carter said that in the mornings the group would meet and sit down for a lecture where they would take notes and learn about business. After the lunch break they would then be broken into groups or pods of ten with one of the judges and sent to a different room. “We would go over the plan for the day and they would give us an assignment, a prompt. We would have fifteen minutes to come up with an answer. One of the days our prompt was how we were going to revamp our website in such a way that we would bring in new clients. They wanted us to take our clients through that experience of our website and how that was going to look. Another day another prompt was, if you were given $20,000 tomorrow how would you spend it to make your business better, and so we had fifteen minutes to come up with what we would do with that money.” Each day contestants were given a prompt and fifteen minutes to put together an answer and they only had two minutes to share their answer to their judge. Carter shared his thoughts on this part of the process stating, “I felt for me everything was straight forward. It was hard to be creative with what I was doing, which hurt me, because the judges wanted to see creativity. They wanted to see a little polish on your answers and I definitely choked on that. Not being able to be creative on my answers because everything for me was super black and white. I needed a bigger gym and I needed more equipment. I needed a website, but I didn’t have any of that in place, so I didnt even know what it would look like. But a lot of the businesses already had a website so they knew exactly what they needed to do to tune their websites to make them better and I am like, I just need a website. So I didn’t do as good as some of the businesses there, but I didn’t do the worst. I had good answers, I just didn’t have answers quite as exciting as other people’s answers.”
Talking about his experience and what he gained from the game Carter shared, “It was all purely educational for me. I know some of the other business owners didn’t feel like they learned a ton. They already knew this information or heard it somewhere else, but the thing that makes The Blox cool is they teach a philosophy that isn’t widely accepted. So if you went to college or a business school for a degree in business management they’re going to teach you one way. The Blox kinda teaches you the opposite. It’s totally different from a traditional educational setting. They approach it from a mindset that makes you start from a point of taking action. So you can essentially start building your business from nothing. I think that’s one of the things that helped me score better points on the show is because I virtually started with nothing.”
Seasons one through five are available to watch on The Blox app. They are currently airing Season 6 as well on The Blox per episode. You can also check out more information about The Blox on their Facebook page. Carter said there is a lot more on their app and stated, “The show itself has entertainment value, but there is also educational value there for anyone who is looking, or thought about running a small business, or is running a small business. Even before I went on the show I watched the first three seasons and learned so much for myself. From watching those seasons I was implementing some of the things I was learning from the show and seeing results.” The education and community Carter gained he says was well worth the experience, “The community I got from it is unmatched. I am now part of a FB group with alumni from BetaBlox. It’s like having a Google dedicated to business. Like any question I have, or dilemma I have, any thought I have or anything, I can post them in this group and use it like a sounding board to solve problems. It’s a nice community and a unique thing.”
Carter is currently finishing up summer classes but registration is open for the next session beginning September 1st and runs through December 31st. Hot Shots will be running their artistic gymnastic program and Snake River Star Jumpers will be offering Power Tumbling Classes (7 & Up), Ninja Classes (5 & Up), as well as a Mini Stars Class which is a class for kids ages 1-7. More information about registration can be found on the Snake River Star Jumpers website, Facebook page or you can contact Nick Carter at (208) 914-1604.
