San Luis Obispo Non-Profit Climbing Gym Featured in Best Selling Author’s New Release
April 29, 2012 – San Luis Obispo – Chris Guillebeau, bestselling author of The Art of NonConformity, has included SLO Op Climbing in his new book, The $100 Start Up. Set to release nationally on May 8th, with international release to 12+ countries two weeks later, the book
features uncommon business models from entrepreneurs starting from the ground up.
SLO Op Climbing is the country’s first non-profit climbing gym. It started ten years ago in a storage facility and has grown through the years to a full-scale facility at its current home in San Luis Obispo. A 501 c 7 nonprofit social club, SLO Op is the brain child of Yishai and Kristin Horowitz. “It’s amazing how just a good idea to keep our dozen or so friends busy has grown into 850 members with very little
marketing to speak of,” said Kristin. “We’ve been contacted by aspiring gyms all over the world about our business model, and the secret is,” she said, “we found a niche we didn’t know existed!”
The book models the experiences of the Horowitz and other entrepreneurs worldwide who found a way to make a passion work. SLO Op is specifically mentioned because of the method it used to start up the latest facility. “Yishai and I were just out of college, working jobs that barely made ends meet. We’d put years and years into SLO Op
for no money, but we knew we had to grow,” said Kristin. “So we put out the call to the community for help.” Two dozen members of the gym (and even non-members) heard that the gym needed money and trusted the
pair enough to invest as much as $15,000 per person on a personal repayment program that offered interest over a three-year period. The end of that period coincides with the release of the book.
“We’re going to be expanding the gym and giving it a facelift in June,” said Yishai. “We’re just so blessed to have built such a wonderful, supportive, and encouraging community with this project, and that we have the money to basically sit back and go, ‘What would make this place awesome?’ and just do it.”