We were lucky to catch up with Justin Conway recently and have shared our conversation below.

Justin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My parents left me alone to figure things out. This is one of the most valuable things that you can do for a child because it makes them have to problem solve and make judgement calls and there is no more practical experience for living an adult life. Life as a kid was sometimes hard and because of that, I was not always happy with my parents. I even held resentment when I grew up and realized how little they did in comparison to what I would do for my kids; but then I realized that all of the things that I had to do for myself made me exceptionally qualified to live life – to problem solve, to self-educate, and to ultimately run my own business. A parent must show restraint not to do everything for their child and not to provide all of the things that the child may want because if a parent does, their child will not grow to be a resourceful and independent individual.

Justin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a Ninja for a living and this is my story:
13 years ago I saw a show on TV called, “Ninja Warrior,” which was a dubbed version of the Japanese show, Sasuke (which ultimately led to the show American Ninja Warrior in the US). From the second I saw athletes completing those obstacles I felt compelled to get involved, but very few people in this country had even heard of obstacle course racing. In order to train like those athletes and have the ability to compete on the show, I had to make my own obstacles. Gradually, I got better at making them and gym owners would let me bring them into gymnastics gyms. One day, a gym owner asked me to build them a ninja course for the gym, and World Ninja Sport was born. Today, we build ninja courses around the world for summer camps, gymnastic gyms, rock climbing gyms, full ninja gyms, and we build residential (indoor and outdoor) courses for folks to train at home.

At our heart, we are a consultancy – we use our expertise to help guide anyone interested in ninja to getting the most versatile, strong, and safe ninja courses possible. We also train staff with our Ninja Coach Certification SPOTTED.

I’m proud that our company provides the best ninja products available in the US and our staff’s expertise is unmatched. I’m also so grateful to go to work every day knowing that I’m helping others get healthier and live a life that includes the amazing sport that I have been drawn to since I first saw it. We make awesome obstacles and make people stronger – it’s a good job to have.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When you are the owner, you are responsible for completing the mission – no matter what. There have been countless times over the course of my career that things didn’t go as expected – vendors that failed or delivered late, broken products, employee no-shows… Every day as a business owner is a set of challenges to overcome.

Once, World Ninja Sport was chosen to provide an obstacle course for a family in Texas that included a Ninja Wall and our Steel Monster Ninja Rig. It was to be shipped by a professional driver for the show, “Shipping Wars” and shown on TV. We made the Warped Wall and rig, had them picked up, then I flew to Texas to meet my team there to install. In Texas, just about everything that was planned fell through!
– It was 30 degrees and I thought Texas was warm so I only had a light jacket.
– It snowed and at times there was freezing cold rain mixed with hail
– There was mud EVERYWHERE and the company that prepped the site, used the wrong material, so the mud would not hold any weight. Every step you took, you would sink several inches into the ground and your shoes would get stuck.
– There was no foundation to lay the course
– My team was a temporary staff that I hired from a local agency and they didn’t show
– The truck that delivered the the Warped Wall was too long to make the turn from the street to the driveway so we had to devise a way to transport a 2,000+ lb 12′ high structure over mud for approximately 150 yards to the backyard to be installed
– Some of the holes to bolt the rig together were missing so we had to drill them onsite, and since the temperature was so low, our bits were breaking
– The wrong hardware was sent for the rig and the Ninja Wall so we had to source hardware locally
– The equipment was sinking into the mud when we installed it so I had to design a floor frame, find material locally, and construct a support structure onsite
and countless other issues!

When I got back from this trip, I told the story from start to finish and it took over three hours. I know that I also forgot some of the problems we faced because there were so many.

In the end, I got it all done. I sacrificed sleep, I worked in the cold, in the rain, in snow, in the dark, in the mud, and I worked alone a lot of the time but I completed the ninja course and the family was happy. The show also aired so you can see a very small snippet of the course on Shipping Wars if you care to look it up.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I bootstrapped everything and kept our overhead as low as possible. If you sell a job and take that money in first, then you’re up – just try not to spend more than you budgeted to complete the job and you’ll be in positive numbers. This is the way I started and mostly the way I’ve grown – 1. Get the sale 2. make the product 3. keep the profit. I invest very little into recurring cost items such as warehouse space and stock equipment. This allows us to stay light and grow with the needs of our customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.worldninjasport.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worldninjasport/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ninjasportusa/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/worldninjasport
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@worldninjasport
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/world-ninja-sport-babylon