- Banned
- #1
- Dec 30, 2012
- 50
- 49
Hey guys its been 5 months since I last posted - quite a long time. I just wanted to update everyone on how my company is doing and was hoping to maybe get some great feedback from a community that I think is one of the best! Besides, so far you guys never disappointed.
Anyhow, for those who are interesting, here is a link to my last post from which you can find my original posts on this forum.
(1) Link
Quickly on some of the lessons I learned
It's been quite a journey and I most admit there are some things I would of done differently if I was to start all over again. I started building my fitness company almost two years ago. In the process I learned everything from scratch including marketing, web development, mobile development and all the other amazing things you can learn in the business world. But what I still haven't done which I would of done differently is test my idea sooner. Basically I invested an immense amount of time and energy into this company for the past two years, the entire time relying on faith and my belief that this idea will work. If I was to start all over again today, I would do things slightly differently. I would build a minimal product in a few short months and I would only include enough functionality that would allow me to quickly get my product out into the market, see if it works and then adjust my hypothesis based on the market's feedback. I realized this is the best way to go from a great book I read called The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. If you haven't read it I highly recommend it to everyone who is building an online company.
Where the company is today
I finished building my original idea a few months ago. Basically it was designed to allow anyone to sign up and get a complete fitness program (workout and diet plan included) customized to their specific needs for a small monthly fee. Immediately we had 100s of people sign up within the first week! I really didn't expect it and what ended up happening was that we simply couldn't keep up with the demand and create people fitness programs fast enough; plus not everything was working as great as I wanted it to. So I had to close the doors and rethink my idea. Then one day I thought to my self: what if instead of us creating the fitness programs, we could get other certified personal trainers to create their own, upload it to a marketplace and then use our fairly advanced platform to distribute their fitness programs to people around the world. This way, personal trainers would be able to create their own business using our platform and sell their programs on a monthly subscription basis. The benefit the customers would get is that they would be able to get a fitness program created by a certified trainer plus all the support and motivation they would need for a small monthly fee such as $10-20/month. So instead of paying about $360 a month for a personal trainer, they could get something in between having a personal trainer and no personal trainer.
So this is where we are today! We are going to start looking for personal trainers who might be interested in trying this out. If this idea works the first 100 or so personal trainers would have the greatest advantage since they will be the first and will have the most leverage.
What is the main benefit for personal trainers?
This is actually a very fast lane approach. The personal trainer would create a fitness program using our tools, creating a good one can take about a week or so. The program will have to be very specific to a certain group of people, For example: weight loss for women over 40. Then the personal trainer will put the program on the marketplace and the only other work they will have to do is answer client's questions regarding the program and give them useful tips and advice. Then lets say 100 of people buy the program in one month. If the program goes for $20 a month, that's 20 x 100 x 0.7 = $1400 a month for the trainer. Now imagine tens of thousands of people visit the marketplace, the personal trainer is likely to get much more sales and their earnings are likely to really increase. If nothing else, its a nice addition of income to their regular personal training jobs.
I would love to hear what you guys think about all this and would greatly appreciate your feedback. This is the first time I'm putting this out there and I thought what better place to start then this amazing community!
Also if anyone can please give me suggestions as to where I can look for personal trainers who might be interested in this, I will really appreciate it.
Here is a link to our site:
Link
Thank you!
Anyhow, for those who are interesting, here is a link to my last post from which you can find my original posts on this forum.
(1) Link
Quickly on some of the lessons I learned
It's been quite a journey and I most admit there are some things I would of done differently if I was to start all over again. I started building my fitness company almost two years ago. In the process I learned everything from scratch including marketing, web development, mobile development and all the other amazing things you can learn in the business world. But what I still haven't done which I would of done differently is test my idea sooner. Basically I invested an immense amount of time and energy into this company for the past two years, the entire time relying on faith and my belief that this idea will work. If I was to start all over again today, I would do things slightly differently. I would build a minimal product in a few short months and I would only include enough functionality that would allow me to quickly get my product out into the market, see if it works and then adjust my hypothesis based on the market's feedback. I realized this is the best way to go from a great book I read called The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. If you haven't read it I highly recommend it to everyone who is building an online company.
Where the company is today
I finished building my original idea a few months ago. Basically it was designed to allow anyone to sign up and get a complete fitness program (workout and diet plan included) customized to their specific needs for a small monthly fee. Immediately we had 100s of people sign up within the first week! I really didn't expect it and what ended up happening was that we simply couldn't keep up with the demand and create people fitness programs fast enough; plus not everything was working as great as I wanted it to. So I had to close the doors and rethink my idea. Then one day I thought to my self: what if instead of us creating the fitness programs, we could get other certified personal trainers to create their own, upload it to a marketplace and then use our fairly advanced platform to distribute their fitness programs to people around the world. This way, personal trainers would be able to create their own business using our platform and sell their programs on a monthly subscription basis. The benefit the customers would get is that they would be able to get a fitness program created by a certified trainer plus all the support and motivation they would need for a small monthly fee such as $10-20/month. So instead of paying about $360 a month for a personal trainer, they could get something in between having a personal trainer and no personal trainer.
So this is where we are today! We are going to start looking for personal trainers who might be interested in trying this out. If this idea works the first 100 or so personal trainers would have the greatest advantage since they will be the first and will have the most leverage.
What is the main benefit for personal trainers?
This is actually a very fast lane approach. The personal trainer would create a fitness program using our tools, creating a good one can take about a week or so. The program will have to be very specific to a certain group of people, For example: weight loss for women over 40. Then the personal trainer will put the program on the marketplace and the only other work they will have to do is answer client's questions regarding the program and give them useful tips and advice. Then lets say 100 of people buy the program in one month. If the program goes for $20 a month, that's 20 x 100 x 0.7 = $1400 a month for the trainer. Now imagine tens of thousands of people visit the marketplace, the personal trainer is likely to get much more sales and their earnings are likely to really increase. If nothing else, its a nice addition of income to their regular personal training jobs.
I would love to hear what you guys think about all this and would greatly appreciate your feedback. This is the first time I'm putting this out there and I thought what better place to start then this amazing community!
Also if anyone can please give me suggestions as to where I can look for personal trainers who might be interested in this, I will really appreciate it.
Here is a link to our site:
Link
Thank you!
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