When Olivia set out to heal her own mental health through movement, meditation, and journaling, she never imagined she'd spark a city-wide wellness movement on the beaches of Chicago. What started as a casual Instagram post turned into community Pilates sessions with over 1,800 people showing up at sunrise. 

Fueled by her passion for accessible wellness and the unexpected arrival of community, Olivia turned to Movement's Done For You service to help create Within—an app designed to bring those same healing tools directly into people’s hands. In this conversation, Olivia shares her journey, how she launched her app, and the lessons she’s learning along the way as a first-time founder building something bigger than herself.

Can you share a bit about yourself and your business? 

So I struggled with my mental health—I still do, quite simply—for 10+ years now, and I chose to try to heal it the natural way. Through movement, through meditation, through journaling, through introspection. All of those tools have helped me by a million—I have transformed my life with just those simple tools.

I wanted to offer those tools to my community, but for the longest time, I thought, Okay, I have the tools, I have the practices, but I don’t have the community. Who am I going to give them to?

Then, this past summer, it was a miracle. Quite literally! I put out a little Instagram snippet—I was about two years into teaching Pilates at this point—and I really wanted to get better at my mat practice, because it’s the most accessible way for people to move at home. Before that, I was mostly teaching apparatus Pilates.

So I put out this post, called it Rise Pilates Club, and my first two sessions were just me and my 12 friends. That’s what I expected for the whole summer.

But then, the next session, we had 50 people show up. And then the next, we had 500. And then for the following four sessions, we had 1,000+ people—the biggest one hit about 1,800—on the beach at 6 AM in Chicago, all doing Pilates together.

So you can imagine me sitting there thinking, Where’s the community? And it was just quite literally handed to me. And I was like, Okay, well, this is God, this is the universe, this is something telling me—go, do it, run.

"It was from that moment forward that I knew I needed to put all of these tools in a single place—an accessible place for this community. That’s what brought me to Movement. I knew I wanted to call the app Within, because everything that we need comes from within. All of these tools are already accessible—we just need to connect deeper to ourselves."

Will you do more large-scale, in-person Pilates sessions like the ones that helped spark your community?

Yeah, so this was actually created as a funnel for that. I thought—what better way to help all these people who are loving accessible wellness on the beach get that same accessibility at home? Especially since we live in Chicago, and winters are dreadful—we’re not doing Pilates on the beach at 6 AM in the middle of January.

We just got approval for the summer sessions, so we’ll be doing 10 this upcoming summer on the beach. The goal is to really offer that accessible community—because it’s a free Pilates class, it’s an accessible platform.

That’s when I’m really expecting the growth to happen, which is why I gave myself enough time to work out the kinks and just roll with the app until then.

What made you choose Movement over other platforms?

I was not that many years out of college, and had some savings, but definitely not tens of thousands of dollars to put into developing my own app or website.

So I started searching. I thought, “Okay, I can DIY this”—which I had done before—but obviously, it wasn’t the level of quality I wanted for launching my passion project.

"I started looking at what my favorite fitness influencers or coaches were using for their apps. I checked out their platforms, saw what they looked like, and that’s how I found Movement! I don’t remember who I originally searched, but I saw an app I loved the layout of, and I noticed that Movement only takes 2.5% per transaction, compared to most of the other platforms I was seeing that took 15%."

That was my big driving factor. I didn’t expect this to be super cash-flowing from the start, so the more money I could keep and reinvest, the better. I think that’s every business owner’s goal—to make as much of their earned revenue back as possible.

Originally, I planned to build the app myself inside Movement. But after a while, I realized, “You know what? The Done For You service isn’t that much, and it’s well within my budget.” It was way more accessible than the other options I had.

Did you look at any other platforms when you were first doing your research and approaching this business?

Yes, I looked at Playbook. They were one that was taking 15%, and I had seen some of the apps they created—I thought they were good. But again, that price difference was something I was really drawn to.

And I looked at another, but you didn’t have as much ability to customize it your way. Every app I saw looked exactly the same—with little circles at the top and their content underneath. I cannot remember the name of the platform, but those were my two other big options.

"What I loved about Movement was that I could get the best of both worlds—full customization, full ability to design my app the way I wanted it, and the lower percentage taken out of every transaction. So it was kind of perfect."

What features or benefits of Movement stood out to you the most?

I think the 2.5% transaction fee—being only 2.5%—was a huge feature. The second was that it’s technically a web page that you download as an app, so I didn’t have to go through the whole process of actually creating an app and putting it on the App Store. Because every time I’d want to update it, we’d have to push out an update, right? 

"It's so easy to update with Movement, because you simply log on to your web page and update it. That was a huge feature—that it was so simple to update and continue to add to it."

I think once I dove into it, and once we were in the Done For You process, I realized how easy it really was to set it all up. Like, adding in the tags and being able to categorize everything exactly how I hoped.

"I love that you can add a community to it, because a lot of the web pages you find don’t link to a community. So I loved that you could have a community feature actually in the app."

What made you decide to use the Done For You service instead of building the app yourself?

I was originally planning on doing it myself—hopping into Movement and creating from there. But I realised it’s really not that much to have some help, and it was well within my budget. It was definitely more accessible than a lot of the other options I had looked into, so I decided to move forward with Done For You—and it just made the process 10 times easier.

"Quite simply, if I had to actually create all the design, all the setup, and all the content on top of the actual development, I think I’d still be working on it right now."

How did the timeline play out? Did it help with your launch?

It was the driving factor that forced me to launch.

I originally stepped into the call with a three-to-four-month timeline in mind. I wanted to launch before this upcoming summer (2025), so I thought I had plenty of time to create what I needed. I think our call was in October and I launched on Black Friday… solely because I didn’t give myself time to procrastinate.

"When the team said ‘we can have it done in 30 days’, I was like, ‘Oh… I guess I need to be ready in 30 days.’ 😅 I wasn’t expecting it to be done that fast!"

So it kicked everything into high gear. I had to have the amount of videos I needed ready to launch when they finished the app design. And if that wasn’t the case, then it was very clearly my fault that I hadn’t launched yet—and I didn’t want to take on that responsibility.

Did you have a clear vision of what you wanted the app to look like?

That was my strong suit! I knew exactly what I wanted in terms of the colors, branding, the vibe, and the overall feel of the app. I went really heavy on the branding because I wanted it to feel unique to the story that I was trying to create.

My favorite part of creating is the design aspect so I made sure I had professional photography and videography ready for the team when they started designing, and I think that that helped really formulate the vision, so that they could see where I was looking to go. They could pull from those colors, from those images, and it was pretty streamlined from there. Then as they built it, I’d check in to tweak small things.

Did the final result match your vision?

Exactly. It’s literally exactly what I wanted.

I wanted a place for all of those libraries to be held—but separately—so that people could go individually into movement, meditation, or journaling.

There’s also a feature that I didn’t even expect us to be able to get in-app, which was in-app journaling. I was so excited when I brought it up, and they said, ‘Oh, we can do that. It’s easy!’ 

So yeah, it turned out exactly how I was hoping. And the homepage flows really nicely, with new content right at the top. They were able to handle all of the back-end for me.

Have you seen any tangible benefits since launching?

I have! It’s been slow but steady, which is my goal right now because I was giving myself a good six months to launch.

Launching wasn’t originally in my business mode plans because I didn’t imagine being able to launch in a month, but now I’m able to see real impact while continuing to develop my social plan, impact plan, and marketing strategies. And after launching, I can add new content, refine features, and if there’s a small glitch, I can fix it before it impacts the bigger picture we’re working toward.

Friends have already messaged me saying, ‘I popped into the app and listened to one of your five-minute meditations in my office, and it made a world of difference.’

"And even a small message like that is enough to remind me—if just one person is benefiting from this, that’s all I need to know that it will continue to grow and help even more people as we develop."

Have you hit any milestones you’re proud of?

I think we're definitely growing toward those milestones, which is great, but just launching—that has always been a dream of mine. To launch my own app, have my own fitness platform, and curate a community—it’s something I’ve wanted since high school.

So taking that step back and realizing, ‘whoa, I asked for this. I asked for community, I asked for the tools, I asked for healing, I asked for this platform. And now, here it is—and it all happened easily.’ I didn’t have to burn myself out or work a bajillion hours to make it happen.

It all flowed naturally, which makes it feel even more fulfilling—because that tells me I’m in the right place. Not that struggle is always a sign of resistance, but if this had been an uphill battle the whole way, I think it would have thrown me off a little. Instead, it all came together so seamlessly that it just feels aligned—like a dream come true in the moment.

What kind of feedback have you received from your customers and community since launching?

I’m still in the process of gathering feedback, but so far, people love having accessible wellness at their fingertips.

Right now, I’m giving out as many free months as possible to collect insights, and I think we’re still in the phase where people are trying it out. I actually just started a broadcast channel on Instagram to connect more closely with the community and encourage engagement within the app itself.

Everyone says the videos are easy to access, and I use it several times a week and I love it. It works for me, so as long as that customer journey is going well, then I'm happy!

What’s the best advice you’ve received as a first-time founder?

Being delusional about what you're putting out—honestly—has been the best advice I’ve gotten.

"Just having that wholehearted belief that everything will be okay. Be as delusional as possible, thinking ‘you can do it, you can create it,’ because there’s probably someone with less experience or less of a community doing it before you."

And if they can do it, you should wholeheartedly be able to do it too, right?

So being as delusional as possible up until launch—and continuing to grow as you go—because ups and downs will happen. You’ve got to roll with them, learn from them, and keep moving past them as you grow.

Because I think if I overthought it too much while it was happening, it could’ve been halted a hundred times. But just telling myself, ‘Nope, it’s happening, it’s great’—that helped move it along.

Do you think female founders face unique challenges?

Yes, our ability to care so much and to overthink can lead us into places that don’t feel good in our minds. I think our habitual nature—especially as women—is to care, to want things to go well, to make sure everyone’s enjoying everything, in almost a people-pleaser type of way.

That’s a huge thing I’m still working to overcome: Am I good enough? Is this platform good enough? Is my content good enough? Do people want to be here? Those are thoughts I’m working through right now, because it’s something that’s so internalized in our society—to not feel like we’re naturally deserving or worthy.

So finding that healing, and using it to amplify the fact that—it is good. I know it’s good because I use it. I enjoy it. I know these tools work because they’ve helped me. I know the platform functions. I know my cueing is good enough. My teaching is good enough. I have a community in Chicago that shows up monthly, weekly, to these classes. And if it wasn’t good, they wouldn’t be there, right?

So even though all those milestones feel right to me, there’s still that little voice that questions it. And I feel like maybe it’s not just women, but as a woman, those are the habitual thoughts that come through—and ones I’m still working to overcome.

I always go back to my why. I go back to the community I already have to support me through it. And I think those are things I’ll keep working on—hopefully not forever—but I’m learning the tools and lessons to keep moving through it.

What’s one thing you’ve done recently that’s had a big impact on your business?

After I launched, I signed up for a six-month spiritual business coaching class. I thought, I need guidance. 

I’ve always heard in seminars and other classes, and all the research I’ve done, to feel like I could step into spaces like this—that the second you get a coach, your life will change. And I was like, Okay, good, because I need it.

"So actually, she has an app with Movement as well—Amber Leon, The Magnetic App. I had no idea she had a Movement app until after I clicked on her page and saw it was linked. But I signed up for her six-month program. I’m in it right now—her spiritual business program—and it’s been incredible. Worth every cent!"

And it was even more beneficial that she also has a Movement app.

What advice would you give to someone looking to create an app?

Have somebody do it for you!

"Stick to your budget. I used some of my savings to help develop the business but if I had drained all of my savings just on app development, and didn’t have anything left to create more content or pay people to be on the app and contribute their content—I’d be a lot farther behind."

So, stick to what you know you can actually do with the amount of money you have. It doesn’t have to be some fancy $10,000 website that costs everything you’ve got. Take what you have, build it, and then keep refining it as it grows. It doesn’t have to be perfect right away.

And having somebody at Movement to chat with behind the scenes was so helpful—especially in those early phases. Right when we started talking, my head was in 700 different places.

If I listened back to the recording of that first call, I’d probably think I couldn’t run a business.

"But it all worked out because I just put my trust in the team, and they helped take half of those thoughts off my plate. It made everything feel so much more streamlined."

What does the future look like for your business and the app?

So, I’m hoping by the end of this year to hit 1,000 subscribers, where you need to level up and get more access on Movement. I love that you can break it into sections as I think it helps you hit those milestones and think, Okay, let's strive for 1,000, then let's level up. Then let's strive for 2,000, right? Then let's level up.

I’m wanting to expand not only users but content as well. Content in the app will expand beyond Pilates—we’re looking to add yoga soon, so I’ve been in chats about adding more forms of movement.

I also want to bring in more instructors, as I want Within to be separate from me and for it to hold as its own platform—so people download Within as they would Peloton, where they can access different instructors who are teaching different things. They can pick the instructor they love to use or they can pick the sound baths they love most.

"So, I really want the app to live independently—right now we're pretty linked because it’s so fresh and new. But the goal is to slightly break that link. I’ll obviously always be owner and creator, but I want it to stand wholly on its own as well."

What began as a small idea on the beach has grown into something so much bigger—a platform, mission and a movement. 

Olivia’s journey is a powerful reminder that you don’t need perfection to make an impact—you just need belief, purpose, and a little bit of (delusional) courage. As Within continues to grow, so does Olivia’s vision for a platform that lives independently, supports other creators, and helps more people reconnect with themselves. 

Her story is a celebration of what happens when passion meets community—and a testament to what’s possible when you trust the process, launch before you’re ready, and get the right support behind you. 

With Movement's Done For You service, Olivia was able to bring Within to life faster—and with more clarity—than she imagined.

Ready to launch with ease? Our team has you covered so you can focus on the why, while we take care of the how.

Check out the Within or find Olivia on Instagram.

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