The pandemic upended the fitness industry and my business. Here’s what the future looks like.

?This article is part of LinkedIn's Business Reimagined series, where entrepreneurs and business owners share their toughest challenges and how they made it through. To see more articles in this series, follow hashtag #BusinessReimagined

The first two months of 2020 were some of the best in my company’s short life. Our first wellness studio was performing well, we had recently raised additional funding, and we were about to execute an aggressive expansion strategy. After two years of laying the groundwork, we were riding high. I thought 2020 was going to be our year. 

The seed for my company, Hydra Studios, had been planted during my time working at Goldman Sachs. Like most professionals, I was trying to fit a lot into each day—work, fitness, client events and social gatherings. The gym and locker space at the office became my hub between my work, social and fitness lives. When I left Goldman to work at a start-up, I realized that access to these types of amenities is generally limited to employees of larger companies. I saw an opportunity to reach a broader demographic and founded Hydra Studios to give modern professionals access to the same amenities. 

In March we broke ground on constructing our flagship studio on Wall Street. We were getting sign-ups on our waitlist every day and could not open soon enough. Then COVID hit NYC on March 13. 

We immediately shut down our first studio and paused construction on our flagship studio. We decided to pay our team until the end of March and applied for the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided some temporary relief. Overnight, our company’s future became uncertain. Our core business was providing wellness amenities for commercial real estate, but offices nationwide were sitting empty. 

To go from accelerating to a sudden stop gave me whiplash. It felt like we were moving backwards. But the job description of an entrepreneur is building through uncertainty. With no studios to operate and additional time on our hands, our team got back to building. And since we had barely begun construction on our Wall Street studio, we had a chance to innovate and adjust our business to meet the times. I began to think of COVID as a challenge coupled with an opportunity.

What does the future of wellness and fitness look like? We noticed two key trends: a shift from communal spaces to private experiences and an embrace of connected fitness devices. At our first studio, we had reservable nap and meditation rooms. They were quite popular with usage beating our projections. What if we applied this model to fitness? We redesigned our studio to create private fitness suites stocked with high-end equipment like bikes, TRX, weights, connected fitness devices and more. The suites can be reserved individually and are cleaned between each use. 

We brought in a hospital grade HVAC system, put HEPA air filters in every suite, and incorporated anti-microbial surfaces throughout. We redesigned our operations to have an appointment booking system and overhauled our branding to focus on a private wellness experience. And with office populations hovering below 10% capacity citywide, we changed our marketing to target the residential communities in the Financial District. 

Almost a year later, we opened the doors to our Wall Street flagship studio on January 4, 2021. It certainly wasn’t the launch we had planned, but members started coming and we started slowly but surely growing. New Yorkers are desperate to get out of their apartments and go to a safe destination. We’ve found our members like having an appointment-based system. In adjusting our business model to be able to operate during the pandemic, we inadvertently hit on a concept that could apply post-COVID: Some people like to workout solo. They don’t want others looking at them, share or wait for equipment, or simply savor the privacy of their own dedicated space. 

Like most, I was glad to leave 2020 behind. But I don’t believe there will be a complete return to ‘normal’ pre-pandemic life. Without the pandemic, many of us wouldn’t have been challenged to adapt in order to survive. And some of the innovations to come out of the industries most affected by the pandemic pushed us into the future more quickly. This gives me hope as we deal with challenges to come.