Ryan and Tippy Wyatt are a married couple as well as a pair of local entrepreneurs who have developed a new app called Wyatt Wellness. Ryan is a former business executive and Tippy recently sold a company. Photo contributed
Written by Frank Lopez
For entrepreneurs Tippy and Ryan Wyatt, staying on the move isn’t just a philosophy for mind and body — but also for business.
Both long time Central Valley residents, Tippy and Ryan have each had their own business successes independently and as a married couple.
Last month they launched Wyatt Wellness, an online health and wellness app that focuses on eating nutritious and delicious food, physical movement as well as mental and emotional health.
With a monthly subscription, the app will provide users with custom or preloaded workout programs, community engagement, basic meal plans, custom meal plans, a recipe video archive, guided meditations and other features.
The app was in development for seven months before launching in January and already has around 20 subscribers.
Ryan, who has served as president for HVAC company Lee’s Air in Fresno and most recently as general manager at Dustin Pest Control in Fresno, has a six-year background in software.
“Software is never complete. There’s always a new iteration. It’s always refining. Just getting a product off the ground that is usable is tough, so during the entire process, there were times that it was way more difficult than we thought. But it really paid off in the end,” Ryan said.
Tippy, who emigrated from Thailand with her father and sister, is a health and cookbook author. She’s also a health and lifestyle creator on her YouTube Channel, Wyatt Wellness, formerly Tippy Tales. The channel has nearly 84,000 subscribers and her most popular video has more than 1 million views.
In 2020, she sold Icona Lashes, a false eyelash company that she founded in 2016.
Tippy said that health and wellness has been their focus for over a decade, and they wanted to develop something that could help people with their health goals.
“We talked about launching some sort of meal-plan program, working out, a mental health type of thing, and we wanted to deliver it in a non-antiquated way,” Tippy said.
She said that many programs use PDF digital documents for instruction that are less fluid. They wanted to provide a more interactive and convenient platform for a “one stop shop.”
They hired an app developer on an existing platform that would work for both Apple and Android products.
Along with featured recipes curated by Tippy and Ryan, there is also a community feature, akin to Facebook, that allows subscribers to see other subscribers’ activity — workouts and diets — and allows them to interact.
Subscriptions are month-to-month, with three different packages — a starter pack for $29.99, an Enhanced package for $44.99 and the Ultimate package for $59.99.
To get the word out, Tippy and Ryan teased the app on their podcast, the Wyatt Wellness Podcast, which launched in late 2021. They also hit other social media platforms.
Currently, they are going through a testing phase to see what subscribers like or don’t like. They will rely on more organic, word-of-mouth growth before they invest in advertising.
Parents to a 1-year-old, Tippy and Ryan spearheaded the new business venture while raising a newborn. That made the app development much more difficult.
But even then, Tippy said there was no stopping. Hopes are that the app grows and helps people improve and maintain their health.
“It’s never a perfect time to do anything, ever. You do it and you figure it out. And you refine it as you go,” Tippy said.