How an Engineer and a Belly Dancer built AOT

Five years ago, my wife took a risk.

After years performing on stage and winning accolades at Belly Dance competitions around the world, she took a leap of faith and started her own business.

What started as a tiny, one-person studio soon grew into multiple locations and over 600 members. The online booking software we set up was handling several hundred bookings and cancellations every day, without us lifting a finger!  Awesome, right?!

The only problem was, we had outgrown our software, and I was the only IT support.

THE AOT ORIGIN STORY

None of my wife’s studio managers could understand, much less operate our booking software.  After a while it became clear – we needed a simple (but powerful) appointment scheduling, class booking, and membership management solution for our business.

And after months of searching, we realized the best solution only existed in our heads.

Thus, AOT was born.

WE PUT OUR HEADS TOGETHER

No system on the market could deliver the things that were indispensable to our business, at a price we could afford – after all, we’re just a small company.

We scoured the market for the best solution, analyzing more features than I could care to count, and realized that the ideal system for us came down to 3 key things:

1. Effective appointment scheduling for group classes, 1:1 appointments, and class series + membership management for packages and recurring subscriptions

OK – I realize that’s more than 1 feature, but this was the baseline. Even this fundamental set of requirements was only fully available in a handful of solutions, most of them out of our price range, at anywhere from $350 – $800 per month (and per location)!  For systems we could afford that offered all these features, they were lacking other key features – most notably #2 and #3.

2. A sign-in kiosk that works

We also needed a sign-in kiosk – to ensure our students arrived on time, and that our employees actually showed up for their classes or appointments.  No solution on the market provided both – even the ones that would have charged us thousands of dollars a month!

3. Reliable payroll and commission reporting

Every month we would pull our hair out trying to combine multiple reports, as well as manual tracking, into something that worked for our payroll and commission.  Why couldn’t we have a system that was flexible enough to combine everything into one?  If our appointment scheduling software was able to do this, it would save us at least 8-12 man hours of effort every week – that’s over a week per month in time that we could spend focusing on our business, rather than administrative hassle.

SO WE BUILT IT

But we didn’t just build something that would worked for us – whether you run a yoga, fitness or Pilates studio, a dance school, massage shop, health, or beauty spa, nail salon, and more, we built an appointment scheduling, class booking, and membership management solution that is powerful enough to transform almost anybody’s service-based business (without breaking the bank).

From the minds of an engineer and a dancer, AOT became the key ingredient to exponentially grow our small business. We think it can do the same for yours.

AOT enabled us to boost online bookings by more than 500% for our own business, and keep track of everything from appointments, classes, scheduling, memberships, packages, sign-ins, sales, payroll, commissions, and more.  It’s user friendly, and it just works!

WE WILL MAKE SURE AOT WORKS FOR YOU

Your appointment scheduling and membership management solution should offer a personalized experience and scale to meet your business needs.  We built AOT from the ground up, keeping small service-based businesses in mind.  We won’t rest until AOT works for you!

At AOT we make it easy for you to get started – you can be up and running in less than 5 minutes.  If this sounds interesting, click here to give AOT a try (for free).  We hope you’ll enjoy using AOT.