Be inspired by this young Australian Startup story and the struggles they faced to bring their online health software to life!

It was a crisp Winter’s day in August, 2010. We were driving through the twisting, winding roads of Mount Tamborine in Australia, a tropical rainforest escape. It’s such a beautiful place so it was only natural that it would spark inspiration for an idea that was to take us on an exciting chapter of our lives. It was here, on this day, that the concept of Mystro was founded.

It didn’t take us long to get stuck in. We were eager to get started on our new project and, by the next day, had began documenting our ideas and putting pencil to paper. Luckily, we were able to combine our skills – Sheree’s first-hand experience as a health professional in the massage industry and my experience as a graphic and website designer.

A few weeks later, we’d drafted our ideas onto over 100 pieces of paper. These were our first mockups – the first steps en route to turning Mystro into reality!

The version of Mystro that we released in January this year far exceeds our initial visions some 5 years ago. We’re so excited for what Mystro currently has to offer businesses in the health, wellness and fitness industries. But, more importantly, we’re excited for what’s in store and where we plan to take Mystro from this point onwards.

How the idea came about

When Sheree ventured into small business as a Remedial Massage Therapist, she not only realised how important it was to look professional after spending a decent sum of money on getting herself qualified, but also how difficult it would be to achieve this with a small budget and the lack of tools available. So we decided to team up with a view to expanding the business together.

I took care of the website and marketing material, allowing Sheree to focus all of her energy and attention on treating her customers. Unfortunately, most business owners don’t have this luxury. They’re forced with the juggling act of setting up their new business, paying for a professional to create and manage their website, marketing, and building their customer base – all of this while conducting appointments to earn money. To top it off, at the end of a long day, they have to generate and send out invoices and health receipts. Sound familiar? It’s a lot to take in for anyone, let alone someone fresh to the industry. And let’s face it, unless you’ve got superpowers and go by the name of Wonder Woman or Wonder Man, this will seem daunting to anyone.

After teaming up, the business began to grow and we soon needed software to help automate those tedious daily processes.

The trouble was, after searching high and low, we couldn’t find the kind of easy-to-use, industry-specific scheduling and booking software needed to simplify the online booking process for our customers and ultimately take our business to the next level – nor did they cater for businesses that worked on a mobile basis. Everything we needed to run our massage therapy business was spread out across multiple tools – CRM, accounting, and scheduling systems, not to mention pen and paper – and did a poor job of helping us move our businesses online.

Everything we needed to run our massage therapy business was spread out across multiple tools – CRM, accounting, and scheduling systems, not to mention pen and paper – and did a poor job of helping us move our business online.

So we decided to build our own software.

We spoke to other businesses in the health, wellness and fitness industries and realised we could also share this platform with others all over the world to help them focus more on their customers and less on their business.

Hello, Mystro

We were delighted to announce the long-awaited launch of our software and introduce Mystro to health, wellness and fitness professionals in January 2015.

From designing and developing to testing, testing, testing. Lots of late nights, double-shot coffees, blood, sweat and tears have gone into the development of Mystro. We were so excited to finally be able to remove our landing page and unveil our beautiful new website, ready for our users to explore all of the features that Mystro has to offer and sign up for a Mystro account.

Mystro attracted a lot of interest over time with over a thousand businesses worldwide eagerly awaiting the launch of our software in January. If you were one of them, we’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you for supporting us!

Overcoming challenges and setbacks

I’m not going to lie, we’ve had our challenges and setbacks along the way, but our passion and belief in Mystro has driven us to keep going. As we like to say, the only time you come across a challenge is when you’re moving forward. We’re not like most startups. We didn’t get funding from investors. We didn’t raise money through crowdfunding. We didn’t take money from family and friends. And we were rejected for a business loan from all of the major banks.

The only time you come across a challenge is when you’re moving forward.

When it came down to it, we knew what we wanted to achieve and we knew that the only way to achieve was to get there on our own. We simply had to find the right team, fund the software build ourselves through old-fashioned hard work and dedication, and ultimately build the kick-ass software we had formed in our heads so that people like you can benefit from it in your business.

Admittedly, the process could have gone a lot faster had we have made different decisions, like getting an investor. We probably would have been able to release Mystro earlier. But we knew that the vision we had for Mystro would be obscured by getting an investor on board and we had no plans to simply build the company and sell it on.

We’re here today because we genuinely want to help you connect with your customers and skyrocket your business. We want to provide you with a platform that centralises your business processes into one seamless solution. And we want to help you grow and manage your business more profitably by providing you with the tools you need to do so.

The team

We initially got the help of a web development company to assist us in building version 1.0 of Mystro. After many challenges, we decided to cut those ties and instead bring two dynamic and motivated co-founders onto our team to run the technical department. Luke and Bryce saw the potential of Mystro right from the start and their eager ‘anything is possible’ approach is what we needed to help drive Mystro in the right direction.

They’re the guys that keep Mystro going. They code, they engineer, they’re innovative in the way they think, motivated, enthusiastic, and they’re responsible for making sure the platform is as fast and secure as it can possibly be. Okay, they’re just damn right cool and we’re lucky to have them on board!

Our team of dedicated go-getters share these things in common:

1. An on-going commitment to helping health, wellness and fitness professionals achieve overall business success.
2. A knack for problem solving.
3. A love for fast, super secure software with beautifully designed user interfaces.
4. A strong desire to offer unparalleled customer support.