Founder
My Buzz
FitMixPro.com is Europe’s largest music download site for fitness professionals. Powered by our patented Auto DJ, customers choose their tracks, pay, then download them mixed together seamlessly.
We're proud to announce that FitMixPro™ has been selected as the official music supplier for Bokwa(R), the new fitness class combining boxing moves and African war-dance choreography. Already a hit in the UK and the States, Bokwa® hope to be as big as Zumba® – we hope so too!
My Bio
I came up with the idea behind the mixer DJing at University, and then later when I was working as a patent attorney I managed to get a patent granted to protect it. I had to see if it had potential, so I left the patenting career and began seeking investment. When my second application to be on Dragons' Den was accepted, I'd raised enough funds to develop a demo version of the AutoDJ. So I entered the Den with some of the technology, but none of the music, needed for a music download site:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_nj2is_A7k
The original idea was to launch a site for all dance-music consumers, but whether it was competing against online piracy, or the market (this was 2006, when there were severe compatibility issues with legal downloads), or just the product, it wasn’t working.
But we knew the system really was great at mixing (you can hear demo mixes for free at FitMixPro.com), and we’d had a lot of requests from fitness professionals to tailor the site for their needs. So we adapted - MixAlbum.com got rebranded; we developed extra features for the fitness industry; more content licensing, and FitMixPro was launched in 2009. We’re now the most popular download site for pro-fitness in Europe!
My Business Tips
1. Attention to Detail – This is everything! I thought I was pretty good at checking details, and then Theo went through FitMixPro just after it launched, from the splash page to downloading a mix, and I ended up with 2 pages of things to fix. This explains how he turns around failing businesses!
2. Know Your Customer - If a customer doesn’t come back – why not? Find out!
3. Plan to fail, a lot (and I'm an optimist!) - “Success represents 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is called failure” (S. Honda). Will you have the cash-flow and ability to make changes when you need to?
4. Stick to Reality – If you’ve already spent time and money on your product it can be sorely tempting to cling to a wishful idea about it. But if it’s not accurate there’s no point, it would just waste your time. Be honest with yourself and go through your product's weaknesses. Fix it, or move on. (And if you’re looking for investment -if you do this and know you've been thorough, that confidence and knowledge will shine through).
5. Get on with it! Get started, make mistakes, adapt – the sooner you do, the sooner you'll succeed. “The moment you definitely commit yourself then Providence moves. All sorts of things occur that would never otherwise have occurred. Begin it. Boldness has genius, power, magic to it.” (Goethe)