For me it was just in time as things began to grow.

In 2019 I began recruiting fitness professionals to teach exercise classes to seniors around the country. Within a few years we went from 1 teacher to more than 10.

Recruiting, onboarding and day to day management, all with different systems. This made sense up to a point.

I had Google Drives, Basecamp notes, Trello boards, Evernote folders and even a Shopify “Store” with a PDF for teachers to “buy” for free then download, complete and get back to me at some point via email, txt, WhatsApp or telling me in person when they saw me at the gym. 

It did work.

But it wasn’t as smooth or as effective as it could be.

So in 2022 along with a developer, we built our own app to house everything. From on-boarding processes, education portals, exercise libraries, quizzes, attendance, inventory keeping, dashboards and health and safety.

The goal was to have it all under one app for us and them.

And after 4 months we launched it.

And it worked, is working and after my last count this week we’ve just crossed the milestone of building 24 different apps to do similar things at a cost that small businesses can afford built in a timeframe of weeks not months.

We didn’t build the next Facebook or Spotify and we’re not planning to.

To be a small business owner and solve our biggest challenge has meant we operate smoother, more efficiently and are so much effective with our MO of Recruitment, on boarding and management for Cerebellum.

After our proof of concept in 2023 we began getting enquires from organisations on whether we could build something for them.

The conversations were wide ranging deep dives that always included questions like:

“It’s in my head, and I want to get it into a system that works for me”

“This is a brain dump, hopefully you can piece it together"

"I want to do X, but I don’t know if it’s possible”

“I think I need something like this for my business but I don’t even know if what I’m saying is making sense”

You’re not alone,

I hear your brain

And I’ve already drafted a plan in mine.

Give me one week to build you a concept.

Also, do you ever wonder if we’re alone in the universe?

______

So where is tech going?

At a glance we’re seeing a runaway train speeding past a bunch of level headed people muttering “maybe I should just have a flip phone”

My feeling as a business owner is that we are in a time where your idea for an app, which does many things for your SME really well at a reasonable price is much more feasible.

And that it is still going to involve people, because a) You want to talk to humans about your idea b) Creativity and a deep understanding of a person’s challenges is yet to be replicated well enough and c) Your business is for people and involves people.

Enter Tree House Apps. Custom-built App solutions for small to medium sized businesses.

I’d love to hear from anyone that wants to talk about their app ideas. We can hold space whilst you think out loud, jump around topics and go on tangents.

If it’s something we think we can help with, we’ll build you a concept app in 1-2 weeks for you to test drive and see what's possible.

Then we'll sign you up for a lifetime subscription that you can only cancel by emailing our overseas support team which are only available during hours that you are not. Of course I’m joking, however many companies aren’t when they offer similar services 

So whether you’ve come up with an App idea whilst out running, in the shower or just as you’re about to fall asleep, flick me a message or book in for a call to tell me all about it.

Taking Zoom catch-ups from this week -  Book Here

In-person appointments from 13th May - Book Here

Catchy Tree House tagline coming soon

Daniel Hardie

TreeHouse Apps' Founder