We recently got the chance to sit down with Eric Abrom, the founder of the new and exciting platform Fight Patron. Eric is a BJJ brown belt with almost 9 years of experience in the sport and he has created a way for Jiu-Jitsu athletes to connect with their fans and develop a revenue stream. It’s a fantastic idea and although the platform is just a little over a month old, it already has over a hundred athletes and backers using it. We wanted to find out a little more about Eric’s background and how he developed the platform, along with his goals for the future.
Hi Eric! I think the first thing most people will want to know is how you actually got into the sport, and how you found your way to this point:
“My friend Marcus Brimage, he used to fight in the UFC, and he kinda put me on to it. He was like ‘hey, you mentioned that you wanted to learn self-defense and protect your family, you need to learn Jiu-Jitsu!’ I was going to check out an MMA school, so the school I looked up was American Top Team in Orlando but when I got there, it wasn’t there any more! So I found somewhere else and ended up going to a Gracie Barra, and that was my first introduction to Jiu-Jitsu.”
Did you fall in love with the sport from day 1?
“It was super scary but exciting at the same time! I was learning things and I would go home and try to practice on my wife, and she’d be like ‘don’t do that at home!’ and that’s kinda how I got started. I really love Jiu-Jitsu in it’s whole because it taught me how to be confident and not be scared, and now I get to teach that to other kids and adults. I can give them that confidence that I got from Jiu-Jitsu.”
I think that will resonate with a lot of people! So how did Fight Patron come about?
“It was an interesting thing. We were in class one day and one of our 16 year-olds wanted to compete a lot but his family couldn’t afford it, so we were trying to figure out how to get this kid some money so he could do some competitions. Competing costs money, it can cost like a hundred dollars just for one division some times! When that happened I thought that there should be some kind of platform that helped Jiu-Jitsu athletes pay for competitions, either professionals or amateurs. Then Craig Jones started talking about fighter pay, and it got me thinking that I should make something for Jiu-Jitsu athletes that works similar to Patreon but it’s for us instead of creators in general.”
Eric references Patreon and similar platforms, but the key thing about Fight Patron is that it’s built by a BJJ competitor for BJJ competitors. He knows exactly how difficult it can to be succeed in the sport:
“I wanted to help solve a problem. I want to help athletes pay for their competitions, help them do what they love so that they can end up getting paid to do it themselves in the future.”
Patreon is something most people will be familiar with, but could you explain a little about how Fight Patron works?
“It’s pretty straight forward. You have backers that sign up and athletes that sign up. An athlete comes in and puts all their credentials in, they just need to sign up with Stripe because you can’t get paid if we don’t know what bank account it’s going into. They have their own back-end where they can track all the payments they’re getting and see who’s backing them. Backers can then click on their profile and see their photos and their achievements and all those things, then pick athletes to support. We made it super simple and easy, so you can just log in and do your thing straight away.”
How did you go from the initial idea to what you have today?
“I would say the idea sparked earlier this year and I worked with a developer to build the platform very quickly. I got it made in, I would say, about three months? It all happened this year. Good ideas only come so often and you’ve really gotta capitalise on it to make it a reality. I spent my own hard-earned dollars on this, I’m a solopreneur and I just bootstrapped this whole thing.”
That’s fast! Do you have a background in development yourself?
“In my day-to-day job I’m a UX designer. In my job I have to identify problems and figure out how to solve them using design and psychology. So I thought ‘why can’t I use all the skills I have for something I actually really love?’ So I designed it, hired a developer, we worked back and forth and got it done!”
It’s only been a month and you’re already successful, so do you know what’s next for Fight Patron yet?
“I really haven’t thought about the future too much, but I really wanna add a few more features to help athletes make a little more money. Maybe like a way for them to host and promote seminars, or maybe a way for them to provide one-on-ones and a way to interact with their backers even more. I would love to have the whole experience on Fight Patron and do a few different things. Maybe we could even host a seminar and hire some of the practitioners on the site to teach, that could be a good idea.”
A Fight Patron seminar sounds like a great idea! What about for you personally, do you have any goals in Jiu-Jitsu for the future?
“I’m actually working on something right now! I’m a certified instructor in the Pedro Sauer affiliation and I want to start doing seminars in the corporate world. Since the whole return to the office a lot of people are uneasy. Maybe they’re parking in a creepy garages or going home when it’s dark and if someone attacks you, you’re done. So I wanna teach corporate people how to do self-defense but centred around Jiu-Jitsu. That along with women’s self-defense and teaching more classes is something I’d love to do, I just love teaching!“
Click here to sign up to Fight Patron as either an athlete or a backer!
