#46 : Free content that became a massive business

 
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We’ve talked to several people on the show about turning their expertise into an online business, but today’s guest has a particularly amazing story. This episode is another example of what we hear over and over from successful entrepreneurs - that when you know and do something really well, other people will be willing to pay you for your help!

Jitendra Chouksey is a founder from India. His company Fittr started as a WhatsApp group 6 years ago where JC helped people get fit for free. When he realized he could make many more people fit, he started Fittr in 2016. Since then, Fittr has transformed the lives of 100,000+ people, provided jobs to 350+ people, and is now a $13m company without any marketing. They are totally bootstrapped and have a community of 800,000+ fitness enthusiasts.

In today’s episode, JC and I talk about the birth and growth of Fittr and the story behind its huge success. He discusses starting the business while working full time in tech, why he never planned to make money from getting people fit, and how Fittr has grown almost entirely from word of mouth.

In this episode, we’re discussing…

  • Why JC started offering fitness advice to friends and family while working his full time job in tech.

  • How his fitness coaching got more and more popular in a really short amount of time.

  • Why JC was hesitant to turn his fitness coaching into a full time business and how he decided to take the leap and start Fittr.

  • How Fittr has grown so rapidly through word of mouth.

  • How Fittr uses a freemium business model to provide the right level of service to all its member.

JC’s Top Tips:

  • Word of mouth is powerful advertising – do what you do and do it really well. If people get great results from your product or service, they will help spread the words and sing your praises.

  • Solve a problem for yourself first – you don’t need to seek out a novel problem to solve or create a brand-new solution. Focus on a problem that is bothering you, solve it well, and other people will be interested in getting you to help solve that problem for them, too.

  • Build a positive community – positivity and community support are at the core of Fittr’s success. Build a community around your work where people feel like they can belong and get help whenever they need it.

Resources:

 

+ Read the transcript

What if you could be doing something smarter with your money that creates income right now? If you're an IT professional who's wanting to get ahead financially and enjoy greater freedom of choice, and if you wonder who else in tech is creating ways to make their money work for them? You want actionable ideas, honest pros and cons and no fluff. Welcome to The Richer Geek Podcast. We're helping IT professionals find creative ways to build wealth and financial freedom. I'm your host, Nicole Stohler and in this podcast, you'll hear from others who are already doing these things and learn how you can too.

Welcome back to The Richer Geek Podcast. Let's piggyback for this episode on episode 45. In that episode, Shey Harms talked about her online business where she is helping people get all the tech set up for their online businesses. Today's guest did not start out to build a business. It's really a fascinating story. He worked full time in tech in India, and he started a whatsapp group where he was basically helping people get fit. The group grew by word of mouth to 200 people, which then hit a max group size on WhatsApp. So he said, Okay, fine. I'll take all this content, write a book, publish it, then in a Facebook community, he did all of that it was free. This was not an intended business, but rather a way to motivate and help people. The community grew. And then he started adding in extra support levels. And in six years, he now had a business and a community with 800,000 members. He's provided jobs to 350 people, and he's now doing 13 million in annual revenue without any marketing. absolutely fascinating story. Welcome, JC to the show.

Hey, thanks a lot. Thank you so much for inviting me on the show. It's a it's an honor, it's a pleasure.

I love your story there. We were chatting a little bit before we officially started recording. You have such a great story of accidentally building this business while starting and working full time in tech. So tell us a little bit more about your background itself.

Right. So what was being into fitness and I was a software engineer. So before starting for Actually, I was working as an ER B consultant, I worked in several different companies, IBM lnt, and a couple of others. And that gave me a little bit of technical expertise, which allowed me to, you know, build fit or from a small whatsapp group to what it is today. I mean, I'm the kind of guy who you would expect least to start something like fair because I was never really interested in starting any sort of business. And the way it actually happened was that a couple of my friends and family members, you know, they were, they wanted to get fit. And they reached out to me and they said, hey, how do you maintain yourself? You're working in it. You work a night shift. Receive you all with the six pack abs and how you do it. As I said, it's really simple, you know? And all you have to do is just wait train, you have to quantify your food, do a little bit of cardio and that's it. They couldn't believe it. They thought, how could it be so simple? If it was that simple, everybody would be doing it. And I was like, yeah, it's that simple. So didn't believe me. And to make them believe I actually started helping them. I asked them to calculate the total daily energy expenditure, calculated the calories I asked them to start following the diet. And within three months, when they started getting results, they told everybody else and before I could gather what was happening, I was being chased by hundreds of people from all over the world. And so I started adding all these people on Whatsapp group, and that's when fear actually started. And it was free.

Okay, so let's unpack that a little bit. When you originally were you were giving people advice your friends and family that immediately knew you You were talking them through how to calculate and with the exercise and the types of things they should be doing. At that point, where were you? Were you just emailing them? Were you having phone calls? What were you actually doing to get the information out?

Well, I just created a smaller WhatsApp group for these guys and I was having Google Drive. So they were, I was keeping a track of folder information on an Excel sheet, you know, like, we have Google Drive. So I was keeping an Excel sheet maintaining all those things, and, you know, giving them diet and training charts on Excel sheets again, it was kind of a hassle, because, I mean, who likes maintaining Excel sheets, right? So that that was how initially it was and over a period of time and it got too much. I said, You know what, guys, I can't do it. So I started writing a book called get shredded. And I said, you don't want everything that I know. It's all in this book. And I'm just going to upload it on this Facebook group. And just read it and transform. If you have any Credit comeback. The book got downloaded by almost 25,000 people. And I thought I was trying to solve a problem. But it created a bigger problem because now people were reading that book. And they were asking a lot more queries. And so when they were asking their queries, I realized that it's kind of a moral obligation for me to go there and answer those queries. And I did that. And some people saw me answering their queries and the total Kayla's trying to help and they started doing the same so instead of me now, there were a lot of other people who were helping other people. And so it became a thriving community on Facebook. So from whatsapp group, now we are on Facebook group, and instead of having a couple of hundred people now we have 25,000 more people.

Wow. Okay. So backing up again, because it because every time there's this leap forward, there's so much that's happened. Let's talk about the timeframe you started. And I can't even believe that you were tracking diet and exercise for the folks in your whatsapp group. How many people when you first started, how many people were in that group?

So when I started, it was just three people from my gym and my family. And that's it. So those three people, and this is our own 2014. So 2014, I started training these people, and within three months, once they got results, they started talking about it. And within six months, I had roughly 200 people on my whatsapp group and whatsapp group has limitations. So that's why we had to move to Facebook.

Okay, so when your friends and family they saw the results after three months, they told other people who then sent you messages to say add me to the group. Now when you had 200 people, surely you weren't tracking all of those folks on Google Drive, or were you?

Yeah, I was tracking some of them. Not all of them. I was getting difficult and that's why I started writing everything in a book. Because I was taking a lot of my time my daughter was newborn and general, like my wife was getting really, really pissed off because I was spending too much time dealing with these guys. So it wasn't really a great scenario for me. And so I had to figure a way out. And that's when I started writing the book, you know,

Okay, and when did you write the book?

Well, it's a, it's 2014. But probably towards the end of 2014, maybe around November 2014. December 2014. Yeah, something like that.

Okay. And you put the book in the, in the Facebook group, you invited your WhatsApp folks over to Facebook, they joined there. Other people started joining. And then what you found is the community started helping each other as well. So answering based on their experience and following your program, then they would say, here's what worked for me. Right. Wow. Okay, at what point did this become something where you said, Wow, I could actually do this instead of my full time job. When did that happen? How did that happen?

Yeah. So again, the intent was never to create any kind of business. And, you know, there were a lot of people. So the community, the Facebook group ran successfully for a year and a half, and people were constantly joining. I also started enjoying it, you know, because people were getting results, they were thanking me. And somehow it felt nice. But there was a recurring theme between all those people in the group. At some point of time, they would come back and say, Hey, this is great, you know, the community's really helpful, the book that you've written, it's very nice, but somehow we lack accountability. So would you just shut up and take our money and trainers Personally, I was like, I've given you all the information for free. Why do you guys want to pay me up? And, you know, that's, that's when I realized, okay, this is happening a lot. Maybe there's something I know something interesting here. And clearly, I didn't want to train people personally because I just didn't want to you know, I just I just felt like I deserve to take money from people for you know, doing something like that. But people kept asking me for training them. And so I figured that maybe if instead of training people if I could just educate them, and then these people can train other people. So indirectly, I can reach out to many more people make them fit. And at the same time, I can create multiple jobs. So for instance, there was this guy, his name was the punker. And he was from Kolkata, again, India. He was going through a midlife crisis, had a heart attack, had lost his job. So he reached out to me via Facebook, and he said, Jesse, I really, really need your help. I need to get back in shape. I have a heart problem. I have stents in my heart. And if I don't do something, I'd probably die. And I just started helping him out and he, he turned out okay. I educated him. So he went ahead and did some international certifications. So similarly, we had many more people are of those people. We selected 14 people And we launched a website called squats.in. back then. And in January 2016, I remember we launched a website with 14 coaches, and we were an immediate hit. And the first month itself faded a business of roughly $15,000 with 14 coaches and we had 140 clients. And that's that's when we officially launched Federer. Previously it was called squad Stodden. And today, if we look at the business four years later, we have 200 plus coaches all over the world. This year we are doing a business of 6 million USD, and so far we have collectively done a business of 15 million USD. We are bootstrapped organic, our community is roughly 800,000 people all over the world and we want to make 50 million people fit.

Such a great story. I am smiling because, like you said, it made you feel good and you help people and they You help some of these people even more, right? Like the guy with the story that you just mentioned. Now tell me how does fitter actually work? You talk about the coaches, is it a membership site? I don't think I know those details.

Right. So fair is basically, at its very core, it's a community. And the way it works is it provides you an ecosystem, wherein you have all the information available for free. And so if you join the community, for example, if you join the flutter app, or if you join the fair, our Facebook group, or you will get tons of information, including how to start, how to calculate your BMR, your TD E, what is quantified nutrition, why should you exercise, tons of content? And so you have two choices, either you start doing everything by yourself. And if you're having doubts, I suppose queries in the app or on the community and everybody is going to help you. And if you don't want to do it yourself, and if you're somebody who lacks accountability, you can pay us more Premium to one or for 200 plus coaches, and the coaches are going to help you out. So it's more of a personalized, very, very customized kind of a solution. That's what we offer. But if somebody joins Federer, we would never ask them to go for a coach. We tell them to do it themselves. But somehow, let's say 100 people join and fitter 10 people end up going for the coach, while the rest of the 90 people would help themselves. It's pretty much like how Google works like Gmail is free. But g suit is a premium feature. So that's that's essentially what Ferris and a nutshell. So we are a freemium model.

The coaches are they doing weekly check in calls or or are they actually showing exercises and weight training? How does that part work?

So fritter also has inbuilt tools. It has a collection of 600 plus exercises. It has over 8000 recipes, data Have around over 1 million food items. So we have all of this and the feeder app. And so yes, the coaches do weekly check ins, they do video calls, they do Skype calls. And, you know, they assign videos, they assign recipes, they assign meal plans and training plans. And on top of that, if the clients need anything else to transform the system and that like it's everything is done online, through the app, so there is no offline connection. So there's a coaching in the US training people in India, and there's a coach shooting in Australia training people in UK so that's how it works.

I love it. I It's so inspiring. And I like how you offer the different options. People get started and they feel like hey, I need that accountability. I'm not seeing the results, but I know all these other people have. So I need someone to check in with me. What advice would you give someone because you you put a lot into this before you saw it Like you said, you, you did not start this to build a business, and you invested a lot of time and effort. What advice would you give someone looking to get started in in some kind of business where they want to share their knowledge with others?

Right, I think one of the most important thing that I have realized is that in any kind of business, you know, what you're essentially doing is you're solving a problem. And sometimes these problems are not big problems. You know, these are small problems that are your problems, you know, so don't go find a big problem outside, just find out what's bothering you, and try solving it because there's a good chance if it's bothering you, it's bothering millions of people out there. And if you just solved that your problem, you would be able to solve a problem for those millions of people.

So what you did is you solved a problem for yourself, and also thought, hey, having a supportive community would have helped you as a kid and you built this entire environment, solving that problem and then helping others solve their problems. And it's it's such a great story. And it's a great experience that you're sharing with us. What are you looking to do next with fitter?

Well, the idea is to continue to expand the community. I think social media as a great, but social media also has its downsides. We are trying to build a social media platform, which would just promote positivity, and it's free from political and religious bias, free from issues. And, you know, negativity is just a platform where people come and they feel positive, you know, because I've realized that there's so much of negativity out there and people are getting tired of it. You know, and the negativity just just brings people down. There's there's nothing good that ever comes out of this negativity. And so you have to build a community where people just feel like they belong there. And so many people join fear. And after a few months, they come back and thank the community, saying how this community has positively impacted both at the physical as well as, you know, mental level as just amazing. So we just want to keep growing this community to an extent but and then we have 50 million people or maybe even more, you know, becoming a part of this community and feel proud that they are also changing lives, and ways that their lives were changed by the same community. So it's like we want it to be a community which believes in paying it forward.

I look forward to seeing your community and your positive focus continue to grow. how can listeners get in touch with you or learn more?

Well, I'm always reachable at jc@fittr.com. And apart from that, if you guys want to join and experience what our community is all about, just go to Facebook and send a china request, read the rules. And I encourage you guys to also go through all the units because there's a lot of content, it's all for free. And if you want, you can also download the Farah, and see for yourself. And once you transform property, tell others about it.

That's fantastic. Thank you so much JC for coming on sharing your story, and these awesome resources for listeners as well.

Thanks for tuning in to The Richer Geek Podcast. For today's show notes including links and resources, visit us at the richer geek.com. Don't forget to head over to iTunes, Google Play stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts and hit the subscribe button. Help us spread the word by sharing with others who could benefit from listening and leave a rating and review that'll help us get the podcast in front of more people. I appreciate you. Thanks so much for listening.

 
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ABOUT JITENDRA CHOUKSEY

Jitendra Chouksey is from India and founded a company called Fittr. Fittr started as a WhatsApp group 6 years ago, where JC helped people get fit for free. When he realised he could make many more people fit, he started Fittr in 2016. Since then, Fittr has transformed the lives of 100,000+ people, provided jobs to 350+ people, and is now a $13m company without any marketing. They are totally bootstrapped and have a community of 800,000+ fitness enthusiasts.

 
 
 
Online BusinessNichole Stohlerpodcast, season 1