Interview with the Founder of WorkOutBox: Simon Turner

in Entrepreneurship Interviews Tech News by Francis Simisim — March 9, 2009 at 12:09 PM | 0 comments

Tweet

I’ve had a great opportunity to be able to interview the founder of WorkOutBox, Simon Turner. I found that he has great passion for health and fitness and is really doing whatever it takes to get WorkOutBox on top of the health and fitness websites. I have reviewed this website before, here. So here’s how the interview went:

The man behind WorkOutBox : Simon Turner

A 26 year old self-employed Web entrepreneur and fitness enthusiast with a passion to succeed.  He studied Electronic and Computer Engineering from the University of Nottingham

So Simon, What made you both pursue a Tech career?

After being introduced to programming in my degree, I knew instantly that IT and computing was the career for me.  I spent a few years working for a UK based software house, before taking things into my hands and going solo.

Are you working with a team? if so, What is it like working together as a team? Challenges in doing so?

The core WorkoutBOX team consists of myself and  Paul Johnson.  Paul is a fully qualified fitness instructor and he’s been responsible for creating all the fitness related content on the site.    I’m a big fan of outsourcing and have utilized many different programming teams to create the WorkoutBox site. Everything is done virtually so using the right tools to increase productivity is a must.  I like Google Apps / Docs and we all use them a lot. I also highly recommend DropBox for online file sharing,  it simply couldn’t get any easier.

What other Web ‘businesses’ are you currently involved in? Are they still functional? How are they doing?

I’ve learnt the hard way that taking on too many projects at the same time is simply a bad idea.  Working at 50% on two projects will never give you the traction you can achieve through working full time on one. I have plenty of other ideas for successful online businesses but I’ve put them to sleep for this reason. Contrary to popular belief, I actually see multitasking as a bad thing…

Who came up with the idea of WorkoutBox?

WorkoutBOX was born through my enthusiasm for both the web and personal fitness.  In my mind the internet was just full of really ugly looking fitness sites, that were written by body builders who made things far too complex for the average guy looking to tone up and get in shape.  WorkoutBOX is all about keeping fitness simple and accessible to pretty much everyone.

How long did it take you to do so?

Development started over a year ago, it’s been a long road in which we have changed direction a few times.

How much investment have you invested in Website (From Scratch)? (Time and monetary value)

Time – that’s very difficult to comprehend since so many people have been involved.  As far as my personal time, I would say 8 solid months (9 – 6).    Investment – around $8k

Rough estimate of your earnings from Website (yearly)?

Currently were still in pre monetization phase so I can’t comment on this.  However, I have the aim of being a millionaire by the time I’m 30 and I really feel that I can achieve this with workoutbox.  The online health and fitness market is huge and I don’t see what changing as people will always need to stay in shape.

Are you currently working Full time for Website?

Yes

Who are your direct competitors?

Sites like, www.muscleandstrength.com ,  www.intense-workout.com, www.exercisegoals.com

How does WorkoutBox rank against competitors?

We think very well, it provides simple yet informative content that is accessible to all.

How would you monetize workoutbox? (Adsense? Affiliate marketing?)

We will soon be launching a WorkoutBOX Pro members area which contains the more advanced workouts on the site.  Access to WorkoutBOX Pro will be through a monthly subscription of $3.

How much traffic do you get each month?

Currently its increasing by about 75% each month.  As of March 1st were at 9.5k monthly unique visitors.

Where do you see Website in the next 3 years?

Leading the way in personal fitness online.  We have big plans for WorkoutBOX and this is really only the beginning.

How do you see web startup’s perform during this time of recession?

From my personal perspective, I don’t see the web being affected anywhere near as brick and mortar businesses.

How much funding does a web startup need to build a website?

If you have the technical skills in house and you utilise an open source content management system things can be done very cheaply. Don’t try and do everything all at once though, keep things simple to start with and build upon them over time.

What Lessons have you learned when starting up websites?

Personally I would recommend making all high level architectural decisions yourself, only outsource to others when there are no decisions left to make.  Also…. I can not emphasis enough how important SEO is, the majority of webmasters fail to understand it properly and their businesses will suffer massively.  I spent 2 solid months working on WorkoutBOX’s SEO strategy and now 85% of our vistors come from organic search results.

What’s your advice / suggestions / recommendations to other tech entrepreneurs out there who are wanting to start something online?

• Your number one asset is your motivation, do whatever you can to ensure you keep it.
• Anyone can have an idea for a website, but being a successful entrepreneur boils down to the execution of that idea.  Making the correct decisions at both the technical and business level are vital. The most difficult problem you will overcome is trying to work out what mistakes you might be making, when you don’t know what they are.   Always aim for the ideal solution, and spend a long time thinking about what the ideal solution really is.
• Spend serious time researching your competition, understand exactly what they’re doing before you even start designing your site.
• Quit your day job.  I left a high paid job in London, moved back to my parents and worked on WorkoutBOX full time.  Trying to focus on a serious web business around your day job means you cut corners and make bad decisions, this leads to more problems and possibly failure.

—-End of Interview—-

Having an website idea similar to their website, WorkOutBox immediately struck my attention. I always wanted to have a website like this for my own personal workouts, as I’ve always seen those really plain and basic workout routine websites. Simon and Paul have done a wonderful job creating a Health and Fitness website that really makes looking for exercise contents easy and fast (Loved the ajax elements). I think there’s a huge market for this and with the focus on SEO, there seems to be a big chance of success for WorkOutBox. Many thanks to Simon and Paul for a great website and content,  and thank you Simon for the interview. Hope you guys all the best with WorkOutBox!

Similar Technology News:

1. DailyBurn: Fitness With Challenges, Motivation and Workout programs; WorkoutBox Competitor
2. Interview with the Founder of BustAName and HostSearchr: Ryan Stout
3. Interview with the Founder of BraveDaisy.com: Dmitri Bandiluke
4. Interview with the founder of SwapaSkill: Nicole Wehden
5. Interview with the Founder of FarAwayFish: Nick Annetts
6. Interview with the Founder of Stimator and MeoZon: Pedro from Portugal

Tags: Interviews Simon Turner Website