We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Austin Ollis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Austin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
When my brother and I started helping couples lose weight and get in better physical shape, we realized that many of the wives of the couples we were helping happened to teachers for their local schools.
Our parents had been teachers for High Schools and Elementary Schools for over 35 years each, and when we asked them if they had ever been offered workouts at their school, they said they had never experienced that type of offering at the schools they had worked for.
Since most schools have gyms and/or weight rooms, we decided to ask the Head of School of a private school if we could offer HIIT workouts to his faculty and staff. In the very beginning, we offered in-person workouts in the morning before school, and we also offered workouts right after school. We wanted to understand if teachers preferred one time versus the other.
The workouts were a hit!! Teachers loved having the opportunity to workout on campus.
We decided to hire a mobile app software developer to build an app that helped us track workouts as well as steps/mileage.
One of the main reasons why a company/gym/entrepreneur has probably not pursued providing wellness services for faculty and staff is, because there is not a lot of capital spent on educator wellness in the education space. Most of the focus, if not all of the focus, is placed on the children at the school. So it will take a long time before our business is very profitable.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’ve always loved the health and wellness space, because I’ve seen how much of a positive impact living a healthy lifestyle can benefit my career and decision making.
I love helping others in the health and wellness portion of their lives, because the things they learn and experiences they have stay with them for a lifetime. Educators are so helpful for anyone helping them because they provide so much help to the kids that they teach and take care of.
I truly believe that anyone who wants to make progress towards a health and wellness goal can do so with a little bit of help and guidance.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
When we first started Fly Bodies, we thought we would be able to grow the business incredibly quickly, because we wanted to grow the business with a mobile app and our customers were incredibly happy with our product/service. The problem that we ran into was not having the ability to create a community and continue to provide value for that community after they experienced our core product/service.
The thing we had to unlearn was believing Fly Bodies would grow massively in just a year or two. It takes 5-10 years to build a great business that is sustainable over a long time.
The second lesson we have learned is that creating the community is incredibly difficult, which is why many businesses are not able to build a long lasting community. It takes a long time and asking people who love our core product why they love it gives us the ability to continue providing value for our community for a very long time.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
We cold called and cold emailed potential customers for the first two years we serviced educators. Now we have focused on working with insurance brokers to help us get our name out to many more customers than we could have reached ourselves. Insurance brokers also have a great relationship with the customers we want to work with, so it is incredibly helpful when insurance brokers vouch for Fly Bodies.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.fly-bodies.com
- Instagram: @flybodies_
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-ollis-524474165?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
- Twitter: @FlyBodies
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@flybodies7341?si=DosDpA5FsECIbdZb
