One woman’s desire to fulfill a personal passion also ended up helping her start a successful business. Payal Kadakia just wanted to dance. But thanks to her high-powered consulting job with Bain & Company, making it to regular dance classes was proving difficult. She noticed that there wasn’t an easy way to find classes she could drop into based on her schedule.
So, she created one.
ClassPass is a subscription service that allows people to find and attend individual fitness classes without having to purchase expensive long-term memberships. The service could be useful to those who might be interested in different fitness classes but would like to try them out first. And it could also help those who, like Kadakia, have trouble making it to the same classes at the same time each day or week thanks to busy schedules.
The ClassPass network includes fitness studios in nearly 30 cities around the U.S., along with a few international locations. Prices vary by city, but for $79 to $99 per month, members get unlimited access to classes at the studios in the ClassPass network. Members can try out as many different classes as they’d like, and visit a single studio up to three times in each monthly membership cycle.
It’s a concept that could certainly be useful to many people, since regular fitness classes don’t always fit with people’s schedules. ClassPass even has a one-week trial period and a mobile app for people who want to find classes on the go.
But the whole idea simply started because Kadakia wanted a way to work more dancing into her schedule. It’s pretty common for entrepreneurs to create businesses just to solve problems in their own lives. But in this case, Kadakia’s solution is also solving that same problem for people around the country.
And as it turns out, dance might have actually been part of what helped her solve that problem in the first place. She told Inc:
“When I dance, I go to a different side of who I am. I feel like I can solve a problem without knowing I’m solving one.”
Image: ClassPass
