Billy Blanks Jr. walked into Shark Tank in 2012 asking for $100,000 for 20% of his dance-fitness business, Dance With Me. Mark Cuban and Daymond John offered the same $100,000, but wanted 50% of the company, with the deal tied to Zumba distribution. Blanks initially rejected it.
Then Daymond John followed him out of the Tank.
John convinced Blanks that the partnership could work, and Blanks came back and accepted the offer. Sony's contemporary press release confirmed the unusual post-pitch negotiation and the final $100,000-for-50% deal. (broadwayworld.com)
The interesting part of the story is what happened afterward. Dance With Me did not become a major Zumba brand, and the company is no longer the straightforward DVD-and-fitness-class business that Blanks pitched on television.
Instead, Blanks built Dance It Out, took the fitness concept onto television and digital platforms, and eventually moved into a very different market: adaptive fitness and programming for people with disabilities.
As of 2026, the clearest evidence of what Blanks is doing comes not from the old Shark Tank update sites, but from Kibu, the company where he now works, and from Blanks' own recent professional activity.
Billy Blanks Jr. really did get the Shark Tank deal
The original pitch was personal as much as commercial.
Blanks and his then-wife, Sharon, presented Dance With Me as a dance-based fitness program built around multiple styles, including hip-hop, country and Bollywood. He wanted to make exercise feel more like dancing than a conventional workout.
The $100,000 investment was supposed to help turn that concept into a larger business.
The deal itself is one of the better-known Shark Tank stories because Blanks first walked away. Daymond John and Mark Cuban had offered $100,000 for half the business, and John was unhappy enough with Blanks' decision to follow him after the pitch. Sony's May 2012 release specifically described John meeting Blanks outside the Tank and persuading him to accept. (broadwayworld.com)
That matters because some later retellings make the deal sound as though it simply closed onstage. It didn't.
The more complicated question is whether the investment developed into the business relationship viewers expected.
Dance With Me became Dance It Out, but the Zumba partnership did not become the story
After Shark Tank, Blanks' original Dance With Me concept evolved into Dance It Out, usually abbreviated DIO.
The company's own biography says the Shark Tank investment ultimately led to the Dance It Out business. It describes DIO as a high-energy cardio dance program incorporating more than 20 styles of dance. (danceitout.com)
But there is a crucial distinction between the Shark Tank deal and the later business.
The often-repeated claim that Dance With Me became part of Zumba is misleading. Contemporary reporting described the offer as being contingent on distribution through Zumba, while later accounts state that the expected Zumba partnership did not happen. A 2017 report on Blanks' business specifically said the program had been renamed Dance It Out and that the Zumba partnership did not materialize. (2paragraphs.com)
So the $100,000 deal was real. The long-term Zumba outcome was not the blockbuster expansion that a casual reading of the episode might suggest.
Blanks instead continued developing his own fitness brand.
Dance It Out became the more durable version of Blanks' business
For several years, Dance It Out was the center of Blanks' professional identity.
The company promoted live classes, instructor training and events, while Blanks continued appearing on television. Dance It Out also became a television property: the official site describes Dance It Out as a fitness talk show hosted by Blanks that aired on Lifetime. (danceitout.com)
The brand also moved online.
In 2021, Dance It Out entered a licensing agreement with Touchpoint Group Holdings for a dedicated fitness app. Touchpoint said the app would offer live and on-demand classes led by Blanks and DIO instructors, allowing the program to reach subscribers outside physical fitness studios. (touchpointgh.com)
That was a logical evolution of the original pitch. Blanks had started with DVDs and instructor-led classes. By 2021, the business was trying to put those classes into a subscription-style digital product.
But the current evidence gets thinner if you try to establish exactly how the original Dance It Out corporate business is performing today.
The Dance It Out website remains online and continues to describe DIO and promote online classes, but much of the site's material is older. Its homepage still prominently references a 2022–2023 tour, for example. (danceitout.com)
That makes it difficult to responsibly claim that the original Dance It Out company is currently a large, rapidly growing fitness franchise. There isn't enough current public evidence to support that conclusion.
There is, however, strong evidence that Blanks himself remains very active in fitness.
Billy Blanks Jr. found a new business in adaptive fitness
The bigger development came through a company that originally operated as HomeField Fit.
HomeField was created as an online fitness and wellness platform designed for people with different abilities. In 2022, the company said it had more than 100 on-demand classes and daily livestreams covering areas including dance, martial arts, yoga and mindfulness. Blanks joined as President and Head of Content, responsible for building the catalog. (newswire.com)
That wasn't simply a new version of Dance It Out.
The audience was different.
HomeField was focused on people with disabilities and others who had difficulty finding appropriate fitness and wellness programming. Abilis, a Connecticut nonprofit that worked with the platform, described HomeField as an online health and wellness service designed for all fitness abilities and noted that Blanks was part of its instructor team. (abilis.us)
The company later rebranded as Kibu, expanding beyond fitness into recreational activities, life skills and job-development programming. Kibu's own account of its history says HomeField began with Zoom classes, brought in Blanks to lead content, and expanded into a broader platform. (kibu.com)
This is where the current Billy Blanks Jr. story is most clearly documented.
By 2024, Blanks was presenting Kibu as his next chapter
In January 2024, Blanks was publicly promoting Kibu's adaptive fitness programming.
People reported that he was overseeing live and on-demand fitness content for people with disabilities, including cardio, strength training, yoga, dance and martial arts. TheGrio likewise reported on the launch and quoted Blanks explaining that he had started adapting his classes after people asked whether he had programs for wheelchair users and people with autism. (thegrio.com)
This was a notable shift from the original Shark Tank pitch.
The pitch in 2012 was essentially: make fitness fun through dance.
The Kibu proposition is broader: make fitness and participation accessible to people who have historically been underserved by mainstream fitness programming.
Blanks' father, Tae Bo creator Billy Blanks, also became involved in promoting the platform. In May 2024, the father-and-son pair appeared on Tamron Hall to demonstrate Kibu's fitness programming. The show's official distribution information confirms the appearance. (detpress.com)
Billy Blanks Jr. is still working with Kibu in 2025 and 2026
The most useful current evidence is Kibu's own reporting.
In July 2025, Kibu identified Billy Blanks Jr. as a Kibu Coach & Content Director at the Best Buddies International Leadership Conference in Bloomington, Indiana. The company said the conference had more than 3,000 attendees and that Blanks led a full-venue dance routine alongside the Indianapolis Colts Cheerleaders. (kibu.com)
Kibu's 2025 year-in-review also describes Blanks leading a Dance It Out party for participants at The Arc of Greater Brockton and taking part in the company's programming and community events. (kibu.com)
His own professional activity points in the same direction. Blanks' current LinkedIn profile identifies his work with Kibu, and recent activity includes collaboration with disability-service providers and a Dance It Out Japan project. (linkedin.com)
So the simplest answer to "Whatever happened to Billy Blanks Jr.?" is not that he disappeared after Shark Tank.
He changed the business.
The original Dance It Out company is harder to assess than Billy Blanks Jr. himself
This is where the usual Shark Tank update formula breaks down.
There are websites that list Dance With Me as "still in business" or attach large revenue estimates to the company. Those claims should be treated cautiously. The current public evidence does not establish a reliable figure for Dance It Out's annual revenue, valuation or post-Shark Tank return to Daymond John and Mark Cuban.
The $100,000 investment for 50% is well documented. The later corporate performance is not.
The original Dance It Out website is still live, and the brand still exists. But the strongest recent evidence around Blanks is now connected to Kibu and inclusive fitness rather than a conventional national franchise built around the original Dance With Me pitch. (danceitout.com)
That distinction matters.
If the question is whether Billy Blanks Jr. is still working in fitness, the answer is clearly yes.
If the question is whether the original Shark Tank company became a huge franchise worth millions of dollars, the available evidence does not justify saying that.
And if the question is whether the Shark Tank appearance produced anything lasting, there is a more interesting answer.
The deal gave Blanks capital and exposure at a moment when his business was still trying to find its shape. Dance With Me became Dance It Out. The fitness concept moved from DVDs to classes, television and digital content. And eventually, Blanks took the same basic idea, movement that people actually enjoy doing, into a market that mainstream fitness had largely overlooked.
More than a decade after the pitch, Billy Blanks Jr. is still dancing. The business around him just looks very different from the one he brought into the Tank.
