It’s pretty cool for us writing our latest blog post in our cosy new official Gym+Coffee office, or our headquarters as we’re now calling it. It’s the first step on our way to the Gym+Coffee campus! :) Moving into an official office was just one of the big changes at Gym+Coffee recently that signifies positive developments, gives us more focus and allows us to do bigger and better things.
The goal for us starting Gym+Coffee was to create a brand and community that encourages people to make life richer. We hoped we could play a part in motivating and inspiring people. Seeing the big rise in athleisure clothing, we thought this could be the way we could connect to an active audience and that there was an opportunity here for an Irish brand.
From day 1 the dream was to make Gym+Coffee into our “full-time jobs” and although we wanted to jump all-in straight away, we decided it made sense for us to keep our day jobs and run Gym+Coffee on the side. We pretty much took turns being the “sensible one” and that helped us all keep our feet on the ground and not jump too soon. Despite this being a little frustrating it was a good decision for us. Firstly it gave us time to confirm there is an audience for us before quitting our jobs. Thankfully our brand, message, and products seem to be resonating with a growing audience and this has given us a big confidence boost to build on.
Secondly by keeping our day jobs it took the worry about income out of the equation for us at the start. Finance can be really difficult for new companies, so not having to worry about wages allowed us to put any money being made back into the business. While sales are important to us, we’re focused on the bigger picture to build a global brand and community and we want to work on initiatives to do so. Our #SummerStretch series was a good example of this. The feelgood factor of seeing a Gym+Coffee community of people meet up, work out and hang around together hugely outweighed the effort and costs involved.
We thought that in 12 months from launch we’d have an idea what to do and if/when we could quit our jobs and focus 100% on Gym+Coffee. Luckily and scarily this moment has come around sooner than we expected! Although we were doing our best to juggle everything we just couldn’t get around to all of our plans without a full time focus and we have really big plans. By the end of 2017 we want to have expanded internationally, properly launching Gym+Coffee in the UK and the US. We plan to launch a new range and develop a new series of high quality content. We also have a really exciting events plan for the Autumn/Winter. It was pretty terrifying leaving our jobs but we figured let’s practice what we preach, let’s stretch ourselves!
So we now are 100% focused on growing the Gym+Coffee community and making it a success. We have a HQ to work from! :) and we have a detailed plan of our next few months and beyond. And while we don’t know exactly what will happen, we are confident in our ability and in our plan. If we can accomplish our goals then hopefully we can inspire a larger global community of people to make life richer and build a sustainable business too. There’s no turning back now! :)
