Episode Transcript
0:00 Hey everyone. <unk> And welcome to my new podcast, fit Founders. As the name suggests, I'll be using this podcast to interview and speak with founders in the fitness industry, people who are building interesting businesses, amazing businesses whether that be coaching, consulting, training, gym chains apparels brands supplement brands, software companies, you name it.
0:23 If they're building an interesting business, doing amazing things, helping people adding value and have value to share, that's going to help you.
0:30 Then I'm gonna try to speak with them Before I go any further, please do subscribe to the podcast. It helps us as a new podcast to grow and reach more people.
0:39 But also make sure that you don't miss out on any of the interesting interviews and conversations that we've already launched, let alone the ones that are to come.
0:48 There are a few podcasts launched at the time of launching this episode, which is episode zero, including interviews that are gonna help you grow your business using Twitter, collaborate with people in the industry, better build teams, work with hundreds of online clients and much more.
1:03 So, hit that subscribe one. For those of you that don't know who I am. My name is Sedu. I am the CEO of Stratus.
1:09 I've been in the fitness industry for around 15 years. Start as a personal trainer. Did okay well enough to open a gym, and that gym went pretty well and I managed to open another gym around the same time as opening my first gym.
1:24 I actually started working with clients online, and this is 20 12, 20 13, in fact where nobody else was doing it. And that went really well to the point where by 20 14, 20 15 we generated huge amounts of revenue working with thousands of clients online.
1:41 We had hundreds of people every single month signing up to our group programs as well as our one-to-one online coaching.
1:46 And it got to the point where owning the gyms just didn't really make sense from a financial perspective or for me from a lifestyle perspective.
1:54 So I ended up selling my gyms in 2016, going all in online. And around the same time I started mentoring and just helping informally all the trainers and coaches to build their own online businesses.
2:06 I formalized that at the beginning of 2017, I launched a business called Online Fitness Business. And since then we've graduated over 3000 other trainers and coaches through our mentorships programs, courses, events in in person intensivess, and help them to go on and build their own online businesses, working with clients all over the world.
2:29 One of the most common questions we got myself and my team whilst working with thousands of other trainers and coaches, and we got this question every single week, was what option I used to work with my clients and we were never confident in any of the options out there to recommend any.
2:45 We weren't willing to risk our reputation recommending the other apps. They just weren't good enough. We figured that one of them would eventually figure it out and we'd be able to recommend one.
2:54 Well, that just never happened. And then in 2021, I'd began acquiring a number Of small internet based businesses. I began doing a lot more angel investing and I stumbled upon a business called Stratus.
3:08 I spoke to the founder, Mike who had built this amazing online coaching platform but didn't have a plan for marketing it, growing it, and was looking to sell it.
3:19 So I completed that deal myself, my business partner Steven, we acquired Stratus. We closed the deal December, 2021, and we relaunched the platform in the beginning of May.
3:31 I think it was 2022. And it's been a wild ride since then. At the time of recording this podcast, which is episode zero it's been eight months and we've grown rapidly and we've also been accepted into one of the most prestigious startup accelerators in the world.
3:48 Tiny Seed because they believe in what we're building so much. Ultimately, our mission is to empower and champion amazing fitness and nutrition professionals who can genuinely help people and help them to build amazing businesses for themselves too.
4:03 And I launched this podcast because I wanna speak with other interesting people who have similar missions, who are keen to forge their own path, build amazing businesses, have insights and value to share with other people who can also have an impact on the lives of the general population.
4:26 You guys and girls listening to this podcast. So that's what I'm gonna be doing. Hopefully bringing you a ton of value entertainment, maybe some laughs and helping you grow your business or just entertaining you at the same time.
4:41 So if you haven't already, please hit subscribe and go and check out our initial episodes that we've launched at the same time as this intro episode.
4:51 If you've got any suggestions for guests you'd love to hear me speak with, or just suggestions that can help us improve the podcast or grow it, please do let me know.
5:01 But in the meantime, just subscribe and I'd love to hear from you soon. Take it easy.
