In this on‑stage interview at a Mindbody event in Sydney, host Richard Toutounji chats with Mindbody CEO and co‑founder Rick Stollmeyer about the company’s origins, rapid growth, and the principles that have driven its success. Stollmeyer recounts how he and Blake Beltrum moved from a late‑1990s health‑and‑wellness web‑portal idea to launching on‑premise business‑management software for boutique fitness studios in 2001. He details the expansion to 64,000 customers in 120 countries, a staff of about 2,100 across 14 offices, and a target market of roughly 300,000 fitness businesses in eight English‑speaking countries. The conversation highlights three leadership fundamentals: deeply knowing the customer, building a differentiated product that customers will pay for, and maintaining genuine passion for the business. Stollmeyer explains the 2005 shift to the cloud with MindbodyOnline, noting both the scalability benefits and the new technical challenges of cloud delivery. He offers practical advice for new fitness entrepreneurs: be passionate about a mission larger than profit and clearly differentiate by understanding a specific target persona. The interview closes with remarks on Mindbody’s strong presence in Australia and the broader Asia‑Pacific region and an invitation to join a fitness‑marketing Facebook community.
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Here we are at the Mindbody event, and I've got the CEO and co-founder of Mindbody, Rick himself. Welcome, welcome to Sydney.
Thank you, Richard. Pleasure to be here.
Good to have you here.
Great to be here.
I know you're a really busy guy. You've been here for 24 hours. Yeah, that's right. And I just wanted to— so you're probably still a bit jet-lagged. So I thought I'd give you some fire questions to start.
Sure.
You've got thousands and thousands and thousands of customers using your amazing platform.
64,000 actually.
64,000?
Yeah, in 120 countries.
And I heard that you've got a possible potential reach of 300,000. Is that correct?
Well, we think that's the target market in the English 8 countries, US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong. That's where we're most mostly focused. That's about 95% of our customer base. The other 5% are scattered all over the world.
Okay.
And there's lots of opportunity there as well. But in that immediate focus in the English 8, about 300,000 businesses.
That is absolutely phenomenal because we're in a nation where we just want to, you know, our mission is to make Australia healthier. Your mission is to make the entire world healthier using your platform. That's right. So it's a good connection. But I heard a story where you started, and I always like to understand where you actually started. Where was the actual passion and the dream?
Yes.
To actually create this amazing platform. So my best friend from high school
Blake Beltrum and I used to get together in the '90s to talk about what we want to do with our lives. In the late '90s, we started thinking about a health and wellness portal, and that is a place where people could come and find the information they need to live healthier, happier lives. Yep. In the process, we got connected to the boutique fitness industry, which really had its inception in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Those are 3 places where it was happening, and we started developing software for these yoga, Pilates, and spinning studios. And in the process of trying to create this dot-com sort of web portal, we realized actually the most important thing we could do first was help these businesses run more effectively. So we made the decision in late 2000 to dive into the business management software side of the house, launched officially in January 2001.
Wow. And so from here, that amazing launch— because we're a lot of small business owners that they launch their business, they launch their yoga studio, and it's just like, you know, you're doing it on a shoestring and you're just launching out.
That's right.
And then You know, from that moment you've got 2,000 staff, is that correct? Is that—
About 2,100 now, yeah. 2,100 staff. 14 offices on 4 continents, yeah.
And how does that feel now from the starting point? What was the— to get you through that whole journey, what was the 1 to 2 items that you needed as a leader to actually push you through to what it is today? What were those 1 or 2 things that you needed to do?
Well, the fundamentals are really the same for any kind of business. Number one, you really have to know your customer. Okay. I mean, not to think you know them, but to actually know them. So the first thing I did after Blake showed me this fundamental software he was building in the late '90s for these guys was go out and spend a lot of time with them. And so I spent a lot of time in these little fitness studios, learned how they operated, kind of got into the mindset of those small business owners. I came from a family of small business owners, so it was natural for me to understand their point of view. Secondly, of course, it's about crafting a differentiated product. that they actually will pay you for. So the first time we got customers to actually pay us, you know, at the time this was on-prem software, on-premise software, installed on the PCs. Wow. And, you know, a contract would be several thousand dollars to install it. And the first time that they would actually write me a check for that much money for that software was pretty thrilling. It's like now you know you have an audience that you understand and a product that can meet their needs. And then the third is really just about scaling it. Wow. And, you know, in that mix, in those 3 things you have to do, are just an infinite array of challenges. So you need to start with a true passion for the business.
Yep.
And I know it kind of sounds like old hat, but that's— it's fundamentally true. Any successful business is going to be profoundly difficult, much more difficult than the entrepreneur imagines. And if you don't have that true love and passion for the business, you're probably not going to build a business that matters.
And that's the passion that gets you through the hard times?
That's right.
Wow.
That's right, because there's— I mean, there's got to be 100 different times in the story. You know, this is a 19-year overnight success story.
I love that, 19-year overnight success story.
That's right. And because sometimes people think, wow, what a great idea Mindbody was. What it was, was it was a great idea, but also an enormous amount of passion and tenacity. We weren't the only ones with the idea. We're not the only ones today that do what we do. We're certainly the largest though.
And do you think you're largest because of the passion and because of the timing in the market and because you actually Were listening to your customers. Is that— was that the secret?
Yes, and a whole lot of hard work. A lot of other people gave up too soon. You know, we just, we're just very tenacious and we dug into this and we, you know, we would get knocked down. We'd have an initiative that didn't succeed. We'd have a customer that didn't work well. We'd learn from it and get back up again and keep moving forward.
Amazing. I love how you said at the early days you had to actually install the software.
That's right.
And go on site.
We'd ship a CD-ROM.
Yep. I remember those CD-ROMs you put in there.
Yeah, in the early years, in the early days, 2001, we had customers almost right out of the gate. We're still in the garage, customers reaching out to us from Australia, from Asia Pacific. We had our first customer in Hong Kong in October of 2001. That became Pure Yoga, Pure Fitness, one of the largest brands in Asia Pacific in fitness. And so we had to learn how to ship CDs overseas, you know, and like, how do we actually do this and support these people remotely?
Wow.
Yeah.
And now obviously with the cloud and everything, just click of a button, it's phenomenal because you had to have such drive and determination to actually do all that before you actually can deliver your product.
That's right.
Where now it's the simplicity of a click of a button. How has it changed now? And it's probably one of my final questions. How has it changed now? Is it more marketing now? Is it more operations now? How do you actually now get your message out to more people? What is that?
The greatest challenges are still technological, so certainly the cloud made us much more scalable. And we were the very first in this industry to take the entire platform to the web. And this was in 2005. And that's when we became MindbodyOnline. And we chose MindbodyOnline because we wanted it to be non-scary to these small business owners. And so America Online was a brand that they understood. QuickBooks had a QuickBooks Online. So we thought, well, let's just use this very understandable, approachable terminology. We used to say it's kind of like online banking. You just go onto the website. Wow, 2005. Yes. Amazing. That was transformational because we could scale the business much more easily. We could serve these rapidly growing multi-location chains much more easily. And, but there's also with cloud technology a whole new set of challenges. I mean, yes, with a click of a button you could activate a new customer. Also with a click of a button you could crash the whole system.
True.
Or you could—
So every area and every kind of like timeline has its own set of challenges you've got to face. That's right. And understand if you want to get your product out, you have to actually push that to the marketplace.
That's right. Yeah, it takes an enormous amount of technological discipline to deliver a cloud software solution. And while it's true that, you know, a group of kids in a garage could start something up more quickly today, whether it's a mobile app or some kind of other cloud solution, making that scalable, delivering that to thousands of customers worldwide is not trivial. To this day, it's one of the hardest parts of the business.
Amazing. I could sit here all day and talk to you, but I've got one final question. Yeah. Because I know I've got to present and you've got to present.
Yeah.
So if you've got a business owner who's just thinking about— they wanna move into a yoga space, or they wanna be that personal trainer, and they're brand new to business, what is the one or two pieces of advice you'd give them at this point in their career or their business journey?
Well, I would start with, you know, you gotta be passionate about a business that's bigger than yourself. It's not just about making money. You're actually doing it because you truly care about what your practice, whether it's yoga, fitness, or some kind of integrative health or wellness practice, what that does for the customer. And so most people in this space, they've got that in spades. That's how they started. They're really passionate. But second, how are you actually going to differentiate yourself in your market, in your local market? You know, as you look around, there are going to be dozens of other competitive businesses in your neighborhood. What is it about you that's going to be different? And the way to do that is to understand your target market. So for example, we've seen in the States spin studios that focus on older women.
Yep.
Because most spin studios focus on young millennials or Gen Z.
Yep.
Gen Zed, excuse me, I'm over here. And so They— when you understand a specific audience, what is that persona, how do they act, how do they think, get inside their heads, that's the number one thing you've got to do to be successful.
Excellent. So that really finding that uniqueness and then matching that with your— I like to call it the secret sauce.
That's right.
And then combine them together.
Yeah.
Excellent. Thank you so much and thanks for coming into Australia. My pleasure. Hope to see you more in Australia.
It's exciting here. The wellness market in Australia is just fantastic.
Wow.
The level of energy you guys have here.
You feel that, do you?
Oh yeah, we're rapidly ramping up the Mindbody team. It's actually just a couple blocks away here in Sydney, and our customer base here is about 5,000 businesses Asia-Pacific. About 4,000 of those are in Australia and New Zealand.
And that's a large chunk for your whole business in Australia. What's your thoughts on that?
I think that there's lots more growth here for us and the industry itself, and this is a really robust economy. And of course, the whole Asia-Pacific region itself is dynamite. It's the fastest growing region of the world.
Amazing, guys. You heard that off CEO and co-founder of Mindbody. Thank you so much again.
Thank you, Richard.
And actually get on their platforms if you're not already and go check them out. Thanks so much. Thanks, Rick.
Thank you.
If you are a fitness professional and you want to learn more about how to make sure your business has a better perception online, my suggestion, go to our Facebook group. It's called Crushing Fitness Marketing. It's totally free. And you can start engaging and having conversations there and getting involved in making sure that your business looks amazing online. Thanks so much.
