Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Louis Deveseleer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Louis thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.

As a kid, I was naturally lazy and I would have felt happy spending most of my free time in my PJ’s at home, playing video games and reading comics. While I did do some of that, my parents always pushed me and my two sisters to do many activities outside of school. They did not have the chance themselves to learn music or do sports when they were young and they thought these things would be good for us. So over the years growing up, I learned music theory, drums and classical guitar, judo, ping-pong and climbing, English as a second language (I grew up in Belgium) and went to the scouts every Saturday. I also did many camps to learn things such as drawing, circus arts and languages.

I believe that my parents pushing us had a profound and positive impact on the rest of my life. In this day and age, where endless, cheap entertainment is always within reach and available at the push of a button, it’s easy to fall into a habit of constant consumption. We  need creative moments to develop properly and it’s important for kids to be active, socialize and try out many activities, to learn about the world and themselves, and keep expanding their minds and abilities.

Louis, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m the creator of Calistree, an app focused on Calisthenics and Bodyweight exercises.

It has an incredible database of 800 exercises and powerful algorithms to facilitate the training progress. No more wondering what exercises you should do and whether you’re progressing or not: the app takes care of that for you. All you need to do is set your objectives and equipment available. The app will estimate your current level and refine it as you log workout sessions. From there, it generates workout programs entirely tailored to your parameters. These programs will gradually evolve with you over time as you progress, so that you never get stuck.

As a young adult, I was often depressed and generally unhappy. I didn’t really have things to look forward to in the future and I did not know how to make life better. Fortunately, around 22 years old, I started traveling and working abroad. During those travels, I tried out many different physical activities, from hiking to biking and from kickboxing to Taichi. I also read a lot about the body, nutrition and health. Over time, I made very clear connections between those activities and my mood and I understood that being active is an integral part of a balanced and fulfilling life.

Another breakthrough happened when I was 26 and discovered calisthenics. With its emphasis on wholesome strength, flexibility and balance training, working through the full range of motion, and its infinite variety of exercises, I had found a practice that I enjoyed so much that I would be able to follow it for the rest of my life.

Logging and tracking workouts is an important part of training, and I spent a long time trying out different tools and apps to track my workouts, but I never found exactly what I needed. Without a good tracking tool, my progress was going up and down and lacked consistency. It was easy to lose motivation because I could not be sure that I was progressing at all. After extensive research and lots of reading and experimenting, one day I realized that the only way was to build my own app. It would have all the features I needed for my own training. I knew that I was not alone in this situation and would also be able to help the Calisthenics community with this new tool.

I spent one year brainstorming how it should behave and be structured and then another year developing it to the point where I could use it to start tracking my workouts. That’s when I made it publicly available on the App Store and on Google Play. Since then, I have received a lot of user feedback that I happily integrate to continually improve the app. Now a total of 3 years have passed and every day people around the world use the app to log their workouts. Many have told me personally that they consider it as the best calisthenics app out there, which makes me feel really proud of that achievement!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

From 2018 to 2021, I worked at a very small Belgian company, and that job started out really great and ended with me getting suddenly fired and completely changing my career.

I had been hired as a mechanical engineer, to revise the designs of the existing products and add new ones to the portfolio. In just 3 years, I improved all the products, as well as created and launched 15 new ones on the market. But that’s not all: as I was also learning more about the inner workings of the company and seeing what needed improvement outside of the engineering department, the manager even had enough confidence to let me impact most aspects of the business. So I made major improvements in the administration tasks, the production pipeline, the marketing, the customer service and the financial management.

Despite all these positive changes, the company’s manager had chronic stress issues and was creating a toxic work environment; some people got depressed or burned out and the turnover was high. Eventually, his negativity got directed at me and I gradually lost all motivation. I started looking for other mechanical engineer jobs in my area, but I had zero luck with the interviews and honestly,  was not excited about the idea of getting another mechanical design job anyway – I had always felt a bit like a fraud in that career, and I was enjoying the business management tasks much more than the engineering.

One day, I was called into the manager’s office.  He announced that he was putting an end to my contract. Although our relationship had gone from really good to pretty bad, I was shocked that he decided to end things this way, without a smooth transition, after everything I had done for his business; and also concerned that I wouldn’t be able to find a new job in time to support my family.

That’s when I took the risk of focusing my job search on my new-found passion: mobile app development. By that time, I had been working on Calistree on the side for a year and, although it wasn’t much experience compared to my 5 years of professional mechanical engineering, it was still something. I started sending many applications and I was very surprised to be getting interviews much more easily than I had during my search for mechanical engineering jobs. I credit this to Calistree, which was already at an impressive state to present at that point. Eventually, a local startup by the name of Rella decided to put their trust in me to help them develop their idea, and I’m still happily working with them today. Having gone through relational hardship makes me appreciate great people and culture even more than before.

I feel like that career switch was a close call, but it worked out really well in the end.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

I absolutely love getting messages from my users – connecting with them and seeing how the app I designed is positively impacting their life is my biggest source of motivation.

I encourage them to write feedback and leave reviews by giving free 3-months memberships in exchange. That system has worked really well; most people give very constructive reviews and the app has evolved a lot thanks to the users’ suggestions.

I think it’s important for people to get genuine answers and to feel heard; too many customer-service messages are pre-formatted and impersonal. People need genuine human connections, and that’s what I try to provide. I spend a lot of time writing thoughtful emails back, and I make sure to prioritize feature requests that come from users. For those who have more to discuss, I also do video chats, which are always a great way to connect even better and get to know them personally. People often appreciate such a personal and reactive service.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://calistree.com/
• Other: App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/calistree/id1558561315 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.calistree.calistree