Michal Vrátný spent a large part of this year in the Canadian town of Canmore at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. With an eight-hour time difference compared to Prague and great slopes behind the house, he could not deal with the daily business agenda, on the contrary, he could devote more time to strategic planning, for example. “And it turned out to be very good. It benefited both the company and me, we distanced ourselves from each other,” says the thirty-five-year-old founder of the fitness group Železná kule, which includes an e-shop, three gyms and a mobile application. “Since I stopped running the company, it has been doing great. I was a lousy boss,” laughs the dark-haired man, also known by the nickname Radar.
Michal Vrátný has not been at the head of the company, which today is aiming for annual sales of 50 million and employs seven dozen people, for almost two years. But it was only when he traveled to Canada for six months at the end of last year to see his girlfriend that he learned to live without his company. What’s more, she learned to live without him. “When I came back, my colleagues basically forbade me from digging into things,” shrugs the Liberec native, who was brought to exercise by sedentary work as an ajťák and subsequent overweight and fatigue.
That was more than fifteen years ago, then he went into himself, started (almost) fanatically lifting weights, took martial arts and self-defense classes, and started preparing afternoon and weekend workshops on how to properly take care of his body. “Well, that’s how I got the idea to start a gym where I’ll train other people,” describes how he opened the first gym under the brand in 2012 Iron ball. The name is inspired by the so-called kettlebell, a ball-shaped dumbbell with a large handle that plays a central role in his exercise plan.
Radar did well, his Amazing 12 program was particularly successful – twelve weeks of hard work including a strict diet, which was also very popular among well-known startups. For example, Jakub Nešetril, who after an intensive stage of building and the subsequent sale of his company Apiary to the Oracle concern, realized that he was at the end of his physique and his health in general. “It was going well, I was helping people, but in 2019 I had a terrible crisis,” recalls Michal Vrátný.
That was the first time he thought about leaving the Iron Ball or selling it, he felt like he had nowhere else to go. “I wanted to send her off the rock,” supplies. But covid came, which in his case acted as a motivator: “It was actually a unique restart for me.” The pandemic and the shock it caused whipped him up, and he also felt a sense of responsibility for more than a dozen employees. That’s also when the plan was born to bring the Iron Ball more into the digital environment and allow people to practice practically anywhere.
However, Radar, who today openly says that he was a lousy manager and an even worse CEO of the company, caused further problems. In the summer of 2020, he and his colleagues started publishing instructional videos that celebrated success, so they decided to create an entire online ecosystem, including an application: “From the beginning, I bet a lot on content marketing, I wrote a blog, we started recording a podcast… But of course this was a different level.”
Because he and his colleagues did not have enough money or experience to take a proper step into digital, they launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Hithit platform, which met with an extraordinary response – they officially wanted to raise 555 thousand crowns, but in the end they reached almost 6.8 million crowns. “Today I can already say that we have fulfilled everything we promised to the contributors. But the way we used the money uneconomically in retrospect really annoys me, it was just another moment when I realized that I needed someone to hand the leadership over to.” emphasizes Michal Vrátný.
Michal Vrátný, founder of the Iron Ball
The campaign on Hithit took place at the turn of 2020 and 2021, it was a success, but it threw the Iron Ball and Radar into another carousel of internal troubles: from 30 people there were suddenly almost 70, an e-shop was added to the gyms and videos Coulonial and the application was created. Result? The mood in the team dropped to zero, employees complained about chaotic steps, at the same time many of them did not like the changes in the organization of work, there was criticism that the Iron Ball was becoming a corporation… “And in the fall of 2021, we drove to the edge economically, the return of people to gyms was not as strong as we originally calculated,” recalls Vratný, who is also a passionate skydiver.
He handed over the director’s reins at the end of 2021, which completed both his personal reflections on the need to give himself and the company a new impetus after more than ten years, and on the other hand, it was basically a necessity. “It really dawned on me that I am essentially an incompetent manager. It is completely different to be the founder of a company and to be its CEO. Each of them has a different role and they are not always compatible.” describes an awareness that is well known to many company founders.
From December 2021, Martin Kříbala, two years younger than him, will be the boss of the Iron Ball, who originally started as a student in the gym, but gradually became close to Vrátný. And since he had experience in project management (surprisingly, transport projects), they agreed that he would be the one to give the fitness group the necessary order. “I am now the CVO, that is, the chief visionary officer. I am a corporate visionary,” laughs Vrátný, who for the whole of last year dabbled here and there in the day-to-day management of the company he founded and which he still owns 100% to this day.
Also Read: The Iron Ball is the second most successful project on Hittite. The Prague gym raised almost 7 million on it. The iron ball is the second most successful project on Hithit. The Prague gym raised almost 7 million on it
But this year’s stay in Canada showed that the Iron Ball no longer needs his supervision and that it is actually better off without him. At the same time, he was given space to devote himself to the strategic development of the business, so work on the new, third version of the application called Online coaching that has balls, which will also be available in English in spring 2024. Hand in hand with this will also go a new nutrition program that will gradually guide clients through a complete change in their lifestyle: “Similar to exercise, we want to do it non-violently, step by step, no changes from day to day.”
Well, what about gyms? Will there be only three in Prague and one tiny branch in Mladá Boleslav? “In Prague, we have an excess of about 150 people interested in membership in each gym, and it takes several months before we can accept them. Which really annoys me. So yes, something is brewing in the physical world as well, but the digital world takes precedence now. We can’t do everything at once, we have to go systematically. I already know that.’
2023-10-23 04:30:10
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