Juggling work and family can leave little time for the gym, but now there's an app that will bring a personal trainer right to your front porch.
Send Me a Trainer is a Tysons Corner-based company that matches users with trainers who will bring their service to wherever the client is. Founded by Bary and Muhssin El-Yacoubi, the app is a subscription-based service. The two also created Bounce Fitness together, which manually paired clients with trainers.
"It was basically a concierge service for clients," Muhssin El-Yacoubi said. "We were looking to scale the business, so we decided to make a marketplace app to make it a smooth interaction."
In the beginning stages of Bounce Fitness, Bary El-Yacoubi worked as a personal trainer at a local gym and noticed that his clients would often make last-minute cancellations.
After a bout of curiosity and frustration, Bary El-Yacoubi asked a client why they frequently canceled the training sessions, and learned the trek to the gym was sometimes too much of a hassle. He decided to change his business model.
"There were about 8,000 members in the gym, but only 8 percent went on a regular basis," he said.
Bary began to go to his clients' location for training sessions, which decreased the number of cancellations.
"It's really just us reinventing the business and keeping up with technology," said Muhssin El-Yacoubi. He said the team was able to transfer its personal trainer network from Bounce Fitness to Send Me a Trainer with ease.
Bounce Fitness also helped the team fund a portion of Send Me a Trainer, while the rest of the funding was provided by outside investors.
The app's users can select the fitness training they would like to receive and how often they would like to train, and choose from a list of local personal trainers. The average cost per session is $85 and users can work with any of the personal trainers on the app. Trainers are also given the freedom to impose cancellation fees on clients.
The company offers hourly rates to personal trainers based off of the sessions they complete. Send Me a Trainer also provides incentives for trainers to get high ratings and feedback from clients.
The team plans to expand to other cities in the near future.
