How Brett Beck built Bellabooty: from gym floor to global product

Brett Beck has been inventing, patenting, and commercializing consumer products since his twenties. His company, Bella Booty Fitness, operates under Believe Pursue LLC - a product development company he runs with his wife out of Venice Beach, California. Brett is also a personal trainer with decades on the gym floor, which is exactly where the idea for Bella Booty's flagship product was born.

The product is the Bella Booty Hip Thrust Belt: a patent-protected, travel-friendly weight-bearing belt designed to make the hip thrust movement safer, more accessible, and usable with dumbbells, kettlebells, or plates - without a seven-foot Olympic barbell and a commandeered bench press. Brett bootstrapped from zero, built demand on Meta before touching Amazon, fought off 190 counterfeiters in a class action suit, and is now scaling toward an $8M revenue milestone while building out two additional product lines in neck pain and lower back pain recovery.

Why Hip Thrusts Matter (and Why the Belt Solves a Real Problem)

Hip thrusts are one of the most effective compound movements for the glutes and lower core - the two muscle groups, along with the lats, most responsible for stability and strength as you age. Properly trained glutes reduce lower back pain, knee pain, and improve range of motion across virtually every other movement pattern. Pelvic floor strength - which hip thrusts directly develop - is as important for men as it is for women, though most male gym-goers have never been told that.

The problem Brett observed on gym floors was logistical: the standard hip thrust setup requires an Olympic barbell placed across the hip bones (with improvised padding - yoga mats, knee pads, shoulder pads - to reduce bruising), performed lying perpendicular to a flat bench in the middle of open gym space. It's awkward, inconvenient, uncomfortable, and impossible to do in a small apartment, hotel room, or corner of a crowded gym. The belt eliminates all of those frictions. It attaches directly to the body, accepts dumbbells, kettlebells, or plates, and is compact enough to travel.

The Product Development Process: Prototypes, China, and Customer Testing

The initial concept was simple - Brett and his wife grabbed a leather belt, strapped two dumbbells to it, and made a video. That proof-of-concept validated the idea was worth pursuing. From there, Brett flew his design partner Eric Peterson (head of design for Believe Pursue) to their manufacturing engineers in China for a two-week sprint of rapid prototyping. Prototype after prototype - different materials, attachment mechanisms, and form factors - until the design satisfied three non-negotiable requirements:

First, compatibility: the belt had to work with a kettlebell, a dumbbell, and a plate - not just one format. Second, portability: compact enough to travel with and store efficiently. Third, commercial viability: sized and priced so that gyms from boutique studios to big-box chains would want to stock it, because the B2B angle was always part of the vision alongside direct consumer sales.

Testing happened continuously on the gym floor at Brett's Venice Beach facility, with real clients across a genuinely wide range: athletes at 6'4", 260 pounds to clients at 5'2" with small waists, older clients managing joint pain, clients in recovery from heart attacks. That testing revealed the need for a second SKU - a mini belt for smaller waists - and ultimately drove a cost increase that Brett's partners resisted but he pushed through because the customer experience impact was worth it.

The Patent Strategy That Protects Physical Products in 2024

Brett holds both a utility patent and a design patent on the Bella Booty belt, and the lesson from years of fighting counterfeits is that the strategic weight has shifted. Utility patents used to be the primary protection - they cover the functional mechanism. Design patents cover the visual appearance. On modern e-commerce platforms, design patents are now faster and easier to enforce because infringement is visually obvious: you can see it without engineering analysis.

The China-specific protocol Brett follows is not widely shared even by IP attorneys: always file your Chinese patent simultaneously with your US filing. China will typically approve both a design and utility patent, and approval is faster than the US process. But there is a second step most attorneys fail to mention: pre-litigation filing. This is a government verification process where Chinese authorities review your patents and apply their stamp of approval - without it, you cannot effectively pursue infringement actions inside China itself. Brett files pre-litigation on every product before launch.

He also uses an AI-powered monitoring service on a monthly retainer that scans all platforms and international markets for infringing listings. Despite this, the fight is continuous - he won a class action suit against 190 Chinese companies in one case. His observation: when Bella Booty pushes hard on marketing and sales, competitors' sales go up too because they ride the demand wave he creates. He controls the category; they follow it.

Go-to-Market: Meta First, Then Amazon

Brett deliberately waited to put Bella Booty on Amazon until after building demand on Meta. The logic was straightforward: Amazon rewards existing demand. If you arrive with proof - a waitlist, viral TikTok videos, demonstrated consumer interest - your Amazon launch skips the slow ramp-up phase. His Amazon agency looked at the existing traction and told him they were ready to move immediately, no introductory period needed.

The spend philosophy throughout: start with small test budgets (as low as $150), prove a signal, then scale incrementally - 20-30% increases - rather than front-loading spend on unproven creative. TikTok was part of the early organic push; a video going viral before patents were approved created a stressful race to get the design patent finalized before counterfeiters caught up. It was close. Brett's advice: never start a TikTok push without your patents in hand, because manufacturers in China watch viral product content and can be tooled up and shipping before your crowdfunding campaign ends.

Why Human Touch Will Always Matter in Physical Training

Brett trains clients one-on-one every day and has no plans to stop. His take on AI in fitness is pragmatic rather than defensive: AI will serve the portion of the market that wants convenient, self-directed training. That's a real and growing market. But the clients Brett works with - founders under stress, people fresh out of recovery, executives with high anxiety, clients managing post-cardiac rehabilitation - don't need a smarter algorithm. They need someone who knows whether they walked in differently today.

The trainer-client relationship is clinical as much as physical. Brett adjusts workouts in real time based on heart rate data from Apple Watches and Oura Rings, keeps cardiac clients within safe heart rate zones, and calibrates intensity based on where a person's head is at on any given morning. The 15-minute wind-down before training that gets an anxious CEO out of their own head is a specific skill that takes years to develop and can't be parameterized. His prediction: AI accelerates access to fitness information and accountability, but does not replace the judgment that makes training safe and effective for the people who need it most.

Visionary and Integrator: The Founder Tension

Brett identifies as a visionary by nature - product ideas, category strategy, brand vision. But as Bella Booty has scaled through team transitions and toward a fundraise, he has had to step back into the integrator role: on the weeds of Amazon strategy, production decisions, belt color selection, content creation, customer service feedback loops. He does it because he knows the business at a level that keeps quality high, and because he doesn't want to hold any single team member responsible for an outcome he wasn't part of building.

His leadership philosophy: he is not above any of his team. The customer service person who talks to buyers every day knows things he doesn't. Half the time what looks like a founder decision is actually the team's idea that Brett listened to, sat on (his team calls him a turtle for deliberating), and decided to run with. He attributes two of his harder business lessons to being too loyal in certain partnerships and too slow to act when he already knew something needed to change.

Tools & Resources Mentioned

• Bella Booty Fitness - Brett's company; hip thrust belt and glute training products; bellabooty.com
• Launch Boom - one of the largest Kickstarter launch agencies; Brett is connected with the founder and describes their proprietary buyer list model for meta targeting
• Amazon APEX Program - Amazon's brand protection program specifically designed for utility patent holders; required for effective counterfeit takedowns on the platform
• AI IP monitoring service - Brett uses an AI-powered monthly retainer service that sweeps all platforms and international markets for counterfeit listings
• Apple Watch / Oura Ring - biometric tools Brett uses with clients to track heart rate and guide training intensity in real time
• The Daily Stoic - Ryan Holiday - Brett reads it every morning; uses it to frame whatever challenge the day brings
• Amor Fati (Stoic principle) - tattooed on Brett; means “love of fate” - the practice of not just accepting circumstances but embracing them
• TikTok + Meta - primary demand-generation channels used before the Amazon launch

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