Rick Stollmeyer, the CEO and co-founder of MINDBODY and host Mark Sylvester had a fascinating discussion about wellness, building a business, why the Central Coast is so easy to attract people to and some background skills you might not imagine would be helpful to a major public SaaS company's leadership.
Topics covered include:
- How Mindbody became so focused on going onsite to understand their customers, early on.
- Functional fitness and fitness trends
- How health and wellness is a megatrend
- What it's like to work at MINDBODY - practicing what they preach. ps. they're hiring
- Recruiting locally
- You've heard this one before, getting started in the garage
- The MINDBODY origin story - from outer space to inner space
- Learn about Rick's empathy for small businesses
- The experience you get from working in high-impact software environments
- How boutique fitness is transforming lives, and Mindbody's role in that ecosystem
- How they came to their mission of Building the world's leading platform for wellness
- How they help thousands of businesses manage their client - relationships
- Regarding software development: "The product will never be done..."
- Branching out from fitness and how their model expands
How Design Thinking is woven into how they work
- How to maintain empathy with your clients as you scale
- Rick's background: Graduate degree in Nuclear Engineering from the US Naval Academy and worked at Vandenberg Air Force Base on satellites and studied Russian. Yes. Great story about why.
- Learn the difference between nice to have and mission critical as it affects how you positioning the company
- Regarding the Central Coast and the 805 region - why Mindbody sees their role in the ecosystem as important
- Glassdoor and what that platform means to the Company and investors. Note: They are one of the top places to work in the country!
- How the way you treat your team is your ultimate competitive advantage
- What's the Holy Grail for Mindbody? Helping small businesses succeed in running their company and attracting more customers. Note: 50% have excess inventory, and 50% lose 50% of their clients a year
The conversation was rich in detail and an excellent background for anyone that has dreams of growing a business from their garage to a publically traded international operation with more than 50,000 clients and millions of their customers using the Mindbody app every day.
MINDBODY is a sponsor of the 805connect project and we want to thank Rick for their continued support.
