The Zen Planner Story

Zen Planner is an online member management, billing, and scheduling service that empowers fitness instructors, personal trainers and athletic coaches to launch and develop successful businesses. We work closely with our fitness-loving community to design and develop reliable, user-friendly business management software that makes running a fitness studio efficient and productive.

Our software helps you manage all areas of your business including: marketing campaigns, customer relationship management, automated online payments, class and appointment scheduling, event registration, expense tracking, and detailed financial reporting across multiple studios or locations.

In 2004, Zen Planner co-founder Ben Pate was an instructor at a martial arts school where the school owner was frustrated with the lack of tools to help him run his business. As any good software developer would react, Ben saw this as a challenge and began building the first version of Zen Planner for that one school as a side project.

Two years later, Ben came home from work one day and told his wife, Filipina that he was ready to quit his day job and follow his passion of building technology to help martial arts instructors and business owners have more time to teach and train their students. Over the past five years, Zen Planner has grown to also include passionate fitness fanatics in CrossFit, Dance, Yoga, Pilates, and Cycling.  Our goal every day is to share our love of health and wellness with others.

Our Passion

Our company has three passions:

Fitness - Every one of our team members has a passion for fitness. Our interests include CrossFit, dance, yoga, Pilates, martial arts, and cycling. We understand what drives you, because that is what drives us.

Technology - The underlying principal behind our technology is simplicity and ease of use. Everyone can use Zen Planner software from a 9th degree Taekwondo Grandmaster to a new personal training coach.

Member Success - Whether you have many locations with hundreds of clients or whether you are just starting up, we know how tough the competition can be out there. Our goal is to help you grow both as an instructor and as a leading voice for health and fitness in your community.

Our Beliefs

We believe that:

You can make a living by doing what you love.

It may not always be easy and it requires hard work, but if you are willing to follow your heart and become an entrepreneur, Zen Planner and our growing community of 500+ other fitness studio owners are here to help.

You know your business best.

We believe that no one will ever know or serve your customers better than you do. And, we see ourselves as your partners to help you serve these people. Our goal is to help your run your business so you can spend more time being the teacher that you want to be.

Technology is just a tool.

While some people enjoy adding a lot of bells and whistles to their website, we think technology should be used to help you work smarter, not harder. If you spend more time making your software work than you do teaching your customers, you need to reconsider if your software is the right tool for the job.