Corporate Wellness Program
The shortcut: Stop selling wellness to employees. Sell it to the HR director who has a 4 PM board meeting on Thursday and needs to walk in with a number for "what we're doing about absenteeism." That meeting is the entire sales cycle in one sentence.
Industry: Fitness & Sports
Investment level: Small — $3,000-$10,000
Time to launch: 10-16 weeks (the wellness coach cert is fast; landing the first paid HR contract is the long pole — expect 8-12 weeks of pipeline before the first signed proposal)
Best for: Someone with a fitness or health-coaching background who can sit across a conference table from a benefits manager and talk through a one-page proposal without flinching at the words "PEPM," "ERISA," or "engagement rate." What you'll likely make: month 3 $0-$1,500, month 6 $2,500-$5,500, month 12 $6,000-$11,000. Math is in Section 4.
Market Opportunity
The HR director who buys your program has never used it personally and probably never will. She is buying a story she can tell her CFO at the next budget review — that the company spent $18,000 last year on a wellness vendor and absenteeism dropped 6%. Hand her that story in a one-page proposal and you win the contract. Talk about chakras or "engaging the whole employee" and you lose to Wellable in the first ten minutes.
The U.S. corporate wellness market sits around $51 billion in 2023, projected near $100 billion by 2030. About 80% of companies with 50+ employees already offer some form of wellness benefit, but only around 23% of employees actively participate. The gap between "we have a program" and "people use it" is the entire opening for a small independent. Big platforms like Personify Health (formerly Virgin Pulse) win the Fortune 500 deal. Nobody is fighting hard for the 75-person accounting firm that just had two senior partners go out on stress leave.
At companies under 200 people, the buyer often isn't HR at all — it's the COO, the head of people ops, or the founder's chief of staff. Title matters less than the pain. Find the person who got yelled at last quarter about retention or healthcare premium hikes, and you have your meeting.
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