Chapter 3: The real work begins now

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February 10, 2017 3 min read

It’s been 3 weeks since our launch and there is certainly a lot for us to reflect on. The build up to launching our site was pretty crazy but on Wednesday 18th of January we sat there at 6am and watched our site go live. We anxiously waited until about 7:30am, we figured this would be a good time for people on their phones while commuting, and we sent out a few posts on Instagram, FB, and Twitter. We then stared at our google analytics page hoping to see some action and see if people would visit our website. 1 visit, 2 visits, 8, 10, woohoo! Our first sale went through about 8:30am and we were buzzing from it! Everything was new for us, so everything was a “first” and everything was celebrated like a ground breaking achievement! :) While I guess there is an element of immaturity to this, it’s also important to celebrate the little milestones, the little victories. This is how momentum starts, and that’s what you need to get things going.

It’s been a real rollercoaster since our site launched. It has been absolutely amazing to get so much support on social media. We’ve found ourselves spending hours lost in Instagram and texting each other saying “so cool,did you see that comment??”. We also couldn’t believe how many emails we received from people we didn’t know saying “we love the brand, good luck”. It’s hard to express just how much emails like this mean especially as we are trying to grow, not just a brand, but a community. Then there are days when you get worried and wonder is that it, have we peaked?! I guess through the last few weeks what we realised is that thereal workbegins now. Getting to launch was a big achievement and we’re very proud of that but we want to go onwards and upwards from here.

So what’s next from here? What else have we been doing? As you probably have noticed we have mentioned the term ‘community’ a lot and it is something we really believe in. We want to build a network of people and brands who are connected, who motivate each other, who guide each other and have fun along the way. To start this off we will highlight people on our website who really live the Gym+Coffee values - to #MakeLifeRicher and to #StretchYourself. These people will be highlighted as 'guides' to help inspire us all to do the same. We hope this collection of people will continue to grow over time and allow us to meet and be inspired by incredible people and stories along the way.

Over the next few weeks we’ll start to introduce the first wave of our community. We have contacted, and been contacted by, amazing people. When we told them what we wanted to do we were blown away by how excited they were to be part of this. Enthusiasm feeds enthusiasm and as you can imagine we got a lot of encouragement from these conversations. This initial wave is a unique and diverse group of people but all are doing incredible things to make life richer. Some have been following their passions for a while, and some are just starting out (like us) but all are people we want to highlight and promote as much as we can.

So keep an eye on our social media and website over the coming weeks. We look forward to introducing some exceptional people to you.