Rick Stollmeyer, the CEO and co-founder of MINDBODY (MB) 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. We wrote about them in January of 2015
