DENVER -- It's an $8 idea turned into a multimillion-dollar company -- an invention of young Littleton entrepreneur Matt Hyder, who says all it took was believing in himself.
After barely graduating high school with a 1.9 GPA, Matt Hyder's future didn't seem bright.
“I had a lot of people who tell me I wouldn't amount to anything,” said Recoup Fitness Founder Matt Hyder.
He attended CU Boulder and despite majoring in political science, he found his true passion to be entrepreneurship.
“I just didn't like all of the typical recovery methods, like a foam roller or an ice cup,” he said.
One night after playing sports he came up with the idea of creating a recovery tool that would be simple to use.
“I contacted some places in China that did iron balls and I got those, drilled a hole in it and filled the syringe with cooling gel,” Hyder said.
He rolled it onto his body and the soreness was gone. It cost him eight dollars to make and he decided to make a living out of it. He decided to drop out of college his senior year.
“My college professor failed me. He told me my business wouldn't work,”
But his professor was wrong and so far Hyder's sold more than 14,000 units.
“We have over 260 reviews of people just saying what a life saver this product is,” Hyder said.
After fine tuning his older product, he decided to name his invention Recoup Fitness, a stainless steel ball filled with cooling gel.
“When use the ball, you unscrew the lower hand, you place the ball in the freezer for two hours and it will still be cold for six hours,” Hyder said.
He closed a deal with the San Francisco 49ers, then the Broncos got wind of it. One specific Bronco was linebacker Brandon Marshall.
“Obviously, football is a rough game so it helped me out a lot,” Marshall said.
Hyder asked Marshall to be the face of his product. It’s a request Marshall hasn't been getting lately after losing most of his endorsements last year for kneeling during the national anthem.
“Knowing that they believe in me regardless of my views and beliefs is kind of refreshing,” Marshall said.
Marshall believes in the product not just for what it does but because he sees himself in Matt.
“He failed a bunch of times. I failed a bunch of times. I wasn't the first-round pick with the silver spoon in his mouth. I had to work for everything that I had. I got released a couple of times,” he said.
But now he's the Broncos' leading tackler defying all the odds, a success story similar to Hyder’s, who is now running a multimillion dollar company at just 25 years old.
“I work anywhere between 14 to 18 hour days so when there are days I want to quit, I just remember that people are betting against me and I'm here to prove them all wrong,” Hyder said.
Recoup Fitness can be found online and is sold at the Boulder Running Company.
