Growing my business

When I had the idea for Weightcircles, in summer of 2006, I thought I’d be striking it rich. Little did I know that those riches would come in the form of love and appreciation from the community I created.

The idea came from two national trends and my own experience. I kept reading about MySpace – social networking – the wave of the future. Other articles were about the obesity epidemic and how Americans need to lose weight. Combining those two concepts – into a social network for healthy weight loss – seemed a stroke of genius. I had just lost 20 pounds myself – so I knew how important emotional support is to weight loss.

I found a fabulous partner, Amy, and together we set out to build the site on a shoestring budget. Our first release was simple, if a little cheesy – but we got it out fast. We believed in releasing new features early and listening carefully to user feedback. We worked hard, and were careful with every penny.

Along the way we learned how hard it is to stand out, both in social networking, and in the weight loss industry. Our tiny budget didn’t allow for much marketing or advertising. But we also found that people were impressed with how much we had built with our small funds. Some of our competitors had millions in funding and weren’t much bigger than us. And our loyalty statistics are outstanding – people keep returning to the site.

I believe our success is due to the efforts we’ve made to create connections between members. They need support, and our community can give it to them – with some encouragement from us. We welcomed new members and showed them around. We talked to them and got to know them – and to love them.

In return, they love us back. We’ve made friends we really care about. Our members have given us a lot of our best ideas – our weekly challenges, our Weightcircles wristband, our articles section. Most important, they tell us how much they appreciate Weightcircles – they leave us comments like these:

“I am so inspired by all the positive things I am reading on this site!”

“Joining has made such a huge difference in my life. “

“You guys rock and I appreciate all of the support and encouragement more than you know.”

So we grew. Not like MySpace. Not like Facebook. But on our tiny shoestring budget, we made a thriving community. All right, it hasn’t made us financially rich – not yet anyway. But our community creates a lot of love, and we know we are making a difference in people’s lives. That’s riches in itself.

Advice for others

1)  Love your customers!  Your customers are your most valuable asset. Get to know them, listen to them, follow their suggestions, and appreciate them.

2)  Don’t overdo it. If simple technology will do the job, don’t spend a lot of money on fancy widgets that just distract from what your customers need.

3)  People want to make connections. If they connect with you, or your company helps them connect with each other, they’ll keep coming back.