It’s official…
Last week I launched a new company called A*List Personal Fitness.
A*List Personal Fitness develops and operates private fitness service programs for country clubs and their members.
At the beginning of last week I closed my first country club here in Central Florida, anticipating many more to follow.
And, at the end of last week I hired my first employee, a director for the program.
I did the right thing and hired someone with more knowledge of the health and fitness industry, and more sales and operations experience than I have, to handle the day-to-day operations of the program.
The interesting part will be figuring out how to keep him on the team as long as possible.
We will begin accepting applications for new clients beginning this week and my director is ready to begin meeting with clients as early as the day after Memorial Day.
This company is being bootstrapped and with the exception of a small personal loan I took from a friend to keep things moving because the legal work became more expensive than I anticipated, it is costing me almost nothing to fund start up.
Rent for the brand new, 2,400 sq. ft. fitness facility is based on a percentage of net revenue and all the fitness equipment is already there. Plus, we have a budget for additional equipment from the club if we deem it necessary.
The clientele is built in because the club has a membership base of 600 that has been anticipating the availability our services for several months now.
Ultimately…this is a very low risk, high return proposition.
A book recommended to me by Brad Feld, one of my favorite bloggers at www.Feld.com, called Boostrapping Your Business by Greg Gianforte, really primed me well for this bootstrapped, entrepreneurial venture.
Books as enlightening as this one only come along once or twice every year for me, and I read a lot of material on business and entrepreneurship.
Read this book regardless of where you are in your entrepreneurial adventure and send me your comments when you’re done.
Good luck on your exciting adventure. Just remember that customers and the customer experience are center to your success. Too many startups forget this and get got up in pushing sales and product. Are sales important? Yes they are as long as you put the customer first and you have identified and fulfilled their need.
I've worked in the health industry for a number of years and customer first is usually a foreign concept. As a result health clubs and programs have a very high failure rate. It should always be a focus of what can I do for you not what can you do for me.
Posted by: Tim Whelan | May 23, 2006 10:18 PM | Permalink to Comment