Look­ing for a job is very com­pet­i­tive. If you are only apply­ing to jobs online you will encounter sub­stan­tial com­pe­ti­tion. At MediaJobs.com our objec­tive is to make it as easy as pos­si­ble to find a job at a great com­pa­ny and with the least amount of competition.

At MediaJobs.com we have estab­lished our mis­sion of Find­ing the Great Com­pa­nies First. In keep­ing with our mis­sion we have cre­at­ed this inter­view series with some of the newest star­tups in the New York City mar­ket area.   We encour­age you to learn about some of the newest com­pa­nies and think about what might be a good fit for you.

What is the name and loca­tion of your com­pa­ny and who are the founders?

My com­pa­ny is eFit Con­nect, it is a SAAS plat­form with head­quar­ters based out of High­land Mills, NY. eFit Con­nect was found­ed by Jor­dan Hauge, of High­land Mills, NY and Dar­ius Strong of Queens, NY.

How did the idea for your start-up come about?

I (Jor­dan) devel­oped a deep inter­est in fit­ness my sopho­more year of col­lege, and quick­ly real­ized through expe­ri­ence, that the demand for health and fit­ness pro­fes­sion­als is high. While there are many pro­fes­sion­als work­ing to make a liv­ing help­ing oth­ers achieve their goals, it can be very dif­fi­cult to find the pro­fes­sion­al that suits the client’s spe­cif­ic needs the best.

eFit Con­nect is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of that rev­e­la­tion. It acts as a resource for those look­ing for health & fit­ness direc­tion and aims to close the gap between those who need guid­ance reach­ing their goals, and those who can help get them there.

Of the key peo­ple involved, what is everyone’s expe­ri­ence and background?

Jor­dan Hauge holds a BFA of Fine Art from SUNY at Buf­fa­lo. He began work­ing as a free­lance web devel­op­ment and design pro­fes­sion­al fresh­man year of col­lege. He has expe­ri­ence work­ing with cor­po­ra­tions as large as Cit­i­group, Inc. as well as expe­ri­ence with medi­um to small star­tups. He has done high pro­file web design and devel­op­ment work for Geico, Esurance, Ameriprise, Cit­i­group, etc.

He was a state lev­el com­pet­i­tive swim­mer in high school and has always had an inter­est in phys­i­cal fit­ness and liv­ing a healthy lifestyle.

Dar­ius Strong has done work for many com­pa­nies as a free­lance web devel­op­er. He is an avid bas­ket­ball play­er, coder and tech geek. He has expe­ri­ence in web devel­op­ment, appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and a lit­tle in video game pro­gram­ming with resources Autodesk Maya and Uni­ty 3D.

How do you see your com­pa­ny cre­at­ing val­ue or dis­rupt­ing an exist­ing market?

eFit Con­nect comes to the health & fit­ness mar­ket at a time when one of the biggest trends as a soci­ety is to live life healthy, and main­tain a high lev­el of phys­i­cal fit­ness. Through con­nect­ing health & fit­ness pro­fes­sion­als with those that are look­ing to hire them, eFit Con­nect is cre­at­ing a more cohe­sive mar­ket­place in an indus­try that is expect­ed to grow by 31.7% through 2020. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

When was the busi­ness found­ed and how are you being funded?

eFit Con­nect, LLC was found­ed in Late 2013 with MVP (min­i­mal viable prod­uct) reach­ing mar­ket mid-2015. Cur­rent­ly the com­pa­ny is not fund­ed by any exter­nal resource, and all invest­ments come from the found­ing parties.

If so, whom are you cur­rent­ly fund­ed by? 

eFit Con­nect is not cur­rent­ly funded.

What is the cur­rent size of your busi­ness, num­ber of employees?

Cur­rent­ly the only employ­ees of eFit Con­nect are the two peo­ple who found­ed the com­pa­ny, although resources are get­ting thin, and we need to begin growing.

If you are seek­ing fur­ther fund­ing, how much and for what pur­pose will the new funds be applied?

We are seek­ing fund­ing at this time for eFit Con­nect in order to begin bring­ing on more resources to help in mar­ket­ing and devel­op­ment efforts, and grow the com­pa­ny. We are look­ing for up to 250,000 in ini­tial resources to bring on some con­trac­tors and fur­ther accel­er­ate mar­ket­ing campaigns.

What is the prod­uct and or ser­vice you are providing?

eFit Con­nect pro­vides a resource for peo­ple look­ing for health & fit­ness guid­ance to find the resources best suit­ed to help them reach their goals. Clients can search for experts in many dif­fer­ent health & fit­ness relat­ed fields, sched­ule appoint­ments, and pay providers online.

Appoint­ments can be sched­uled for one-on-one or group ses­sions either in per­son or online via web­cam. This means that phys­i­cal dis­tance no longer plays a role in who a per­son seek­ing guid­ance can choose to work with to reach their health & fit­ness goals.

eFit Con­nect also pro­vides health & fit­ness facil­i­ty and employ­ee man­age­ment ser­vices that can help facil­i­ties gain new clients and increase rev­enue while allow­ing mem­bers to sched­ule and pay for indi­vid­ual and group ses­sions online, or on location.

Explain how you are seek­ing entry into your marketplace.

Since mid-2015, eFit Con­nect has gained 50 users (pro­fes­sion­al and client users) and expects that num­ber to grow by 150% by the end of the year 2015. Through social media chan­nels, word of mouth, and tra­di­tion­al sales tac­tics, eFit Con­nect is expect­ing con­tin­ued accel­er­at­ed growth in the health & fit­ness marketplace.

What seems to be the biggest strengths of the team so far?

The biggest strengths of the cur­rent team are con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing and devel­op­ing new unique fea­tures that cur­rent­ly don’t exist else­where on oth­er SAAS plat­forms in this mar­ket­place giv­ing us an advan­tage when it comes to mar­ket­ing the prod­uct to poten­tial users.

What was your great­est “Ah –Ha” moment to date?

The biggest ‘Ah-ha’ moment that we have had is prob­a­bly the deci­sion to inte­grate facil­i­ty & employ­ee man­age­ment fea­tures into our cur­rent plat­form which focus­es on sole­ly fit­ness pro­fes­sion­al sched­ule man­age­ment. Inte­grat­ing facil­i­ties will give us an edge on our com­peti­tors by allow­ing facil­i­ties to be dis­cov­ered by inter­est­ed poten­tial mem­bers, allow mem­bers to inter­act with the facil­i­ty and sign up for mem­ber­ships, classes/sessions on the go, and link­ing their employ­ees on the plat­form with the facil­i­ty — increas­ing expo­sure and max­i­miz­ing rev­enue streams.

What was the fun­ni­est thing that has happened?

To date, the fun­ni­est, or rather most inter­est­ing turn of events is the way the part­ner­ship formed. Jor­dan dis­cov­ered Dar­ius on freelancer.com while search­ing for a new part­ner after hav­ing sev­er­al that did not work out. Since meet­ing online, the two of us have been work­ing on and cre­at­ing an amaz­ing plat­form which is the prod­uct of col­lab­o­ra­tion and strong team­work. Fun fact: We still have yet to meet in person.

If you can only do one thing in your indus­try, what would that be?

I (Jor­dan) would con­tin­ue my work on research­ing and devel­op­ing solu­tions to bring clients the most qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­al for their unique needs, as I am pas­sion­ate about help­ing peo­ple reach their goals and this is an impor­tant step in mak­ing that happen.

I (Dar­ius) would con­tin­ue devel­op­ing the new unique fea­tures that will help peo­ple reach their fullest fit potential.