Kaleen Canevari of Flexia On The 5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry

An Interview With Luke Kervin

Prioritize self care. As a passionate professional, it’s tempting to work late hours and sacrifice just one more hour or day or week or month for your business or career. This kind of self-sacrifice is glorified in our society, but is counter-productive to actually doing good work. I’ve been there. I’ve sacrificed my relationships and body and energy for this business because I thought it was what was required, and what I ended up with was a massive head cold, no energy to make even basic decisions for myself or my team, and a really pessimistic outlook. It actually hurt the business in the end.

The global health and wellness market is worth more than 1.5 trillion dollars. So many people are looking to improve their physical, mental, and emotional wellness. At the same time, so many people are needed to help provide these services. What does it take to create a highly successful career in the health and wellness industry?

In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry” we are talking to health and wellness professionals who can share insights and stories from their experiences.

In this particular interview, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kaleen Canevari.

Kaleen is the founder and CEO of Flexia, the world’s first smart Pilates reformer designed to be used at-home with innovative technology that tailors workouts and quantifies the health benefits of mind and body movements. As an athlete, Pilates instructor, and mechanical engineer, she recognized a need to reinvent Pilates and give anyone (and everyone) easier access to a reformer and an instructor who could guide their practice. Kaleen believes every person deserves the opportunity to feel unstoppable and that mindful movement is integral to making that happen.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you grew up?

I grew up playing competitive soccer, and up until I tore my ACL (for the second time!) in high school, I thought I’d go to college to play soccer. But, the injury forced me to consider my academic focus a little more seriously.

In high school my favorite subject was math, and I spent all my non-required class time in the shop classes, much to my school counselor’s dismay. I learned mechanical and computer aided drafting, won some state-wide drafting competitions, and, fun fact, led a team of my fellow students to build a city planning department approved shed in a weekend shed building competition. Because I loved math and building stuff, I decided to study mechanical engineering in college.

I studied at Kettering University in Michigan, surrounded by the automotive industry. I collected two years of internship experience before I graduated to go work in product development at an orthopedic implant maker.

Through engineering and product development at a few different companies, I found my way to the Pilates world where I’ve been since 2013. I’ve been a Pilates instructor, a design engineer, a self-employed Pilates equipment technician, and now founder and CEO of a company that makes the world’s first smart Pilates machine.

Was there a particular person or event that inspired you to live a wellness-focused lifestyle? Can you tell us about your main motivation to go all in?

When I tore my ACL playing soccer, my life turned upside down. Even though I had surgery and did physical therapy, I struggled for ten years to be active with my friends without pain. If I went dancing, hiking, or played pickup soccer, I paid for it for days after with a swollen knee that could barely support me. My body was literally holding me back from doing the things I wanted to do in life.

A few years and a few jobs after graduation, I began working as a design engineer for a Pilates equipment manufacturer. I started taking Pilates classes with other employees to learn more about what I was designing, building, and testing, and within the first six weeks of taking class my chronic knee pain was gone. It seemed like magic.

Pilates was the first time a form of fitness really resonated with me and my body. I loved the precision, the concentration, and the challenge, and it was the first form of exercise that left me feeling more energized after a workout instead of depleted.

I started my Pilates teacher training journey right away so that I could help other people learn to love to move their body and help them overcome pain to live the life they want.

Most people with a wellbeing centered lifestyle have a “go-to” activity, exercise, beverage, or food that is part of their routine. What is yours and can you tell us how it helps you?

Pilates is my go-to fitness method (duh!) It keeps my body feeling tall and strong so that I can participate in all the other stuff in life I love, plus it leaves me energized for the rest of the day. It’s like a moving meditation.

To live a wellness-focused life is one thing, but how did it become your career? How did it all start?

I started as an instructor while working for a Pilates equipment manufacturer, and then eventually left the company to work for myself. I split my time between teaching in a local studio and traveling the country as a Pilates equipment technician, going into homes, studios, and gyms doing repairs, installations, and troubleshooting on Pilates machines of all makes and models.

In both of these experiences, I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. I saw first-hand how Pilates changed people’s lives. I saw how scared some people were to try it. I saw how clients and instructors struggled to help their clients move their bodies more outside of the studio setting. I saw how Pilates equipment design let down more than half our population by not fitting their body size. And, I saw an opportunity to bring Pilates into the 21st century with technology.

My mom is a physical therapist, and she does not have to be convinced that Pilates is good for her. She knows! But, she’s never found a studio or instructor that she connected with, much less wanted to commute to and pay for multiple times a week. I loved teaching her, but that wasn’t sustainable. Her at-home Pilates practice was a struggle.

One day, she confessed that she had a hard time feeling that she was getting better at Pilates. “Look, I’m an uncoordinated person. I know doing Pilates is good for me, but I can’t tell when I’m doing it better over time. It all feels the same to me. My Peloton gives me a number every session that tells me roughly how successful I was. Why can’t Pilates have that?”

It seems so obvious!

Can you share a story about the biggest challenges you faced when you were first starting? How did you resolve that? What are the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

When I first started Flexia and pitched the idea to investors, every single one of them asked where my traction was. How did I know what I wanted to build would work? My extensive expertise and background wasn’t enough.

Of course, most founders fall into this trap. You need traction to get investment money, but you need money to build something and get traction.

So, I decided I was tired of people questioning my instinct and ran a presale to prove that there was demand. I had less than 300 instagram followers, spent about $500 on ads, built my own website, enlisted a friend to help me write the marketing copy, and paid an artist I found on upwork $800 to take my chicken scratch and make a few illustrations of my idea.

With this community marketing effort, I generated $140k in sales in 19 days.

It sounds simple, but it took months of preparation. And, it paid off.

I then had a talking point! I went back to these investors, and now they wanted to know where my prototype was. So I took the presale dollars and used them to build the first reformer myself using my dad’s woodshop and a local metal fabricator. Once I had a complete design and some revenue, I had enough to convince a prominent tech accelerator program to accept me and my team, which opened the doors to even more investors and helped get us to where we are today.

The key takeaway in my situation was to use what I had at my disposal to claw and scratch for any piece of traction I could get. My secret weapon was that I had the skills and expertise to design, build, and document a piece of hardware that would normally cost millions to develop over the course of a year or more.

My superpower enabled me to be capital efficient in a way that propelled Flexia forward. I didn’t let a few no’s stop me from figuring out how to address their concerns and bring my vision to life.

Of course, more funding was critical to get a complex business like Flexia off the ground, and there were limits to how far I could go without outside investment. My lucky timing, family privilege, and personal skills combined to get Flexia to a point where I could raise that money.

Everyone has a superpower or secret weapon to tap into. What’s yours?

Can you share with us how the work you are doing is helping to make a bigger impact in the world? Can you share a story that illustrates that?

Let’s be real, the fitness industry has an image problem. It’s predominantly white folks with six pack abs, and the message is that if you don’t work out, much less workout hard enough, you’re lazy. No pain no gain! Sweat is your fat crying! Pilates has those problems, plus can also be elitist and intimidating. Non-ballerinas need not apply, kind of thing.

I think that is wrong. I think that kind of message is a bad business decision. It perpetuates the health crisis in our country by keeping people away from places that could help them move their body with joy and confidence.

In the studios I taught at, I had countless clients whose goals were things like being able to play on the floor with their grandkids, or walk 18 holes at the golf course with no pain, or avoid surgery, or not feel so tired and stiff after a day in front of a computer screen. Forget a six pack, what about all the little things we want to do throughout the day that make us feel whole?

I had one client who came to my Pilates Basics class, which was a slower paced class for people who were new to Pilates or had some form of physical limitation that meant they wanted a less intense experience. She was a firecracker. Always smiling, outgoing, and the kind of client that makes the class so much fun. This wonderful woman also happened to be over six feet tall and wider than Pilates equipment was designed to accommodate.

Anyway, after several weeks she “graduated” herself from my class and started going to higher level classes I didn’t teach very often, so I barely saw her. However, one day, we happened to cross paths between classes and she came up to me and told me something that brought everything home for me.

“You know, I almost didn’t come to class that first day, but I’m so glad I did,” she said.

I asked her what she meant, and she explained that she had never seen anyone that looked like her do Pilates. Tall, big, beautiful tattoos, and laughing their butt off.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t fit on the equipment. Or, that I wouldn’t be able to do something and have to stop in the middle of class in front of everyone,” she explained. “Pilates has changed my life.”

All I could think about was how many other people were out there who didn’t overcome their initial fear and anxiety to come into a studio. I knew I wanted to do something to help those people feel welcome and experience Pilates the way she did.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

Prior to Flexia, the Pilates Method had zero data or metrics associated with it. There was no way to even know how much weight you move on a reformer because resistance is provided by extension springs, which means they get heavier the further they stretch.

Adding a load sensor to a reformer is one thing, but the reality is that the magic of Pilates doesn’t lie in how much weight you move. It lies in more intangible things like control, consistency, and mobility. So, I created technology that quantifies the essence of Pilates on our reformer.

Here at Flexia, our sensor technology enables our software to give our customers real-time feedback during class, track their progress over time, and help make smarter recommendations on what to do next. This helps people like my mom know if they’re doing it right and making progress when they aren’t with an instructor.

Beyond that, our technology has the capacity to change the way in-person, instructor-led classes are taught, too. We can augment what an instructor is teaching with quantifiable numbers that give students more nuanced and personalized feedback even when the teacher isn’t looking at them.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

There are three things that have been critical to my journey as a leader. First, my growth mindset and insatiable desire to learn and improve. Second, my humility and ability to listen. And finally, my warmth.

As a product-centered founder and CEO, my expertise lent itself to designing and building the hardware product. I knew our audience, I knew the demand, and I knew how to build the product they wanted. But, there are thousands of aspects of getting a business off the ground that I had never done before, and no money to outsource them. That meant I had to glean marketing help from a friend, I had to go through several manufacturing companies to find the right one, I had to read and fumble and learn how to grow a business and manage a team to get where we are today. And I know I will always have more to learn.

One of the mainstays of being a startup CEO is making mistakes. Yep! I make mistakes, big and small, every day. That’s not to say I don’t try. I try really hard! But, the ability to admit my mistakes and learn from them has saved my butt countless times. I remember when I originally spec’d out the reformer, I omitted a small feature because I thought it wasn’t used that often. However, I heard from some customers that disagreed with me and so I considered the alternative. I ended up taking their advice and changing the design, and then got a lot of positive feedback from even more customers who had wondered the same thing but didn’t speak up.

I thought I knew better than my customers, but I was wrong, and the ability to consider their contradictory feedback and take action turned out to be a great thing.

And finally, I believe in running a business with warmth. My team means the world to me. One thing that was really attractive to me about starting a business was to have control over the work culture. I had been a part of far too many toxic workplaces that I knew there had to be a better way that made the top performers feel valued. A key part of the culture I cultivate is warmth in our interactions. It’s not always easy, but that warmth opens up possibilities for more productive collaboration and sharing of ideas. That kind of environment is awesome for the team to feel a part of and critical for business growth.

OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition of terms so that all of us are on the same page. Wellness is an incredibly broad topic. How would you define the term “Wellness”? Can you explain what you mean?

To me, wellness means your body doesn’t hold you back from doing the things in life you love. This might mean you can get up and down off the floor to play with your dog. It could mean you can do your dream job at a computer without crippling neck, shoulder, and wrist pain. It may mean you can stand comfortably and dance through a whole rock concert. Or, it could mean that you have enough energy and optimism to be the family member you want to be.

As an expert, this might be intuitive to you, but it will be instructive to expressly articulate this. Can you please share a few reasons with our readers about why focusing on our wellness should be a priority in our lives?

Wellness enables us to pursue things that matter to us. Our bodies and minds, when well, are not standing in the way of living the life we want full of the people and activities we love.

At worst, our bodies and minds are the obstacles that keep us isolated, depressed, and pessimistic.

Wellness in itself isn’t happiness, but it removes one of the most basic of obstacles that holds us back from achieving our goals.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increasingly growing understanding of the necessity for companies to be mindful of the wellness of their employees. For the sake of inspiring others, can you share steps or initiatives that companies have taken to help improve or optimize their employees’ mental and physical wellness?

I think there are four layers to facilitating employee wellness, all of which are built upon the foundation of ensuring employees are paid a competitive wage and have good health insurance. Without those two basic building blocks, no other benefit really matters. If someone is struggling to pay their bills and afraid to get sick or see the doctor, nothing else you can do will make them well.

The next layer of the employee wellness pyramid is company culture. Ensuring that employees are working in a safe, collaborative, goal-aligned environment with other people who care helps make the stressful times more bearable and brings out the best in your workforce. This is, admittedly, really hard to cultivate. It’s not something that you can just throw money at. It’s deliberate and slow and confusing and sometimes tough to balance with hard numbers. But, it plays a huge role in how your employees (your talent!) show up and contribute each day.

The third layer consists of things like flex time, the ability to work from home, providing a 401k program, and a generous vacation package.

The final layer, at the top of the pyramid, contains perks like gym reimbursements, on-site catering, nap pods, and other “fun” initiatives.

Each layer of the employee wellness pyramid builds upon the other. There’s no point in providing benefits from the top of the pyramid if the middle or foundational layers are missing.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

First, don’t be a carbon copy of someone else. I’ve received a lot of advice in my time in the fitness industry, and the worst advice has been from the voices that tell me to conform. “You have to be fit to sell fitness.” Or “Don’t put fat models in your marketing.” Or, “Make your reformer smaller.”

Just because it has “always worked that way,” or works for someone else, doesn’t mean it’s the best way for you. In fact, I’d say that what makes you different is one of the most powerful things about you. (Of course, there is nuance to this advice because there are many things in the business world and in the health and wellness industry that are best practices supported by evidence or law.) What I advocate for is making sure your personality and values shine through your work. For me, this meant fighting for the decisions I made in marketing and product design, trusting the customers would support my decisions with their pocketbooks, and smiling politely and thanking people who didn’t share the same values I did when ignoring their advice.

Second, along those same lines, you can’t please everyone. Afraid that you might say or do something that means someone won’t buy from you? That’s normal! But, on the path to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. Neutrality makes you or your business uninteresting and prevents you from making deep connections with customers who are looking for someone just like you. Yes, it takes courage to show a part of yourself that you think won’t resonate with some people. Instead, try to think about all the people that you WILL connect with.

For Flexia, this meant stepping in front of the camera myself and talking to customers despite the fact that I don’t look or move like a ballerina and don’t always know exactly what to say. Pilates stock images are filled with slender, graceful, women with perfect form. So many wellness pros are so perfect they’re unreal. But I knew I don’t fit that mold, so I put myself out there and was real, vulnerable, and imperfect anyway. To this day, customers consistently say that they value knowing the person behind the company they’re supporting and it plays a major factor in their decision to purchase.

Third, get a mentor (or a few!) I would not be where I am today, and Flexia would not exist at all, if it weren’t for the people who advised me along the way. My very first sale was done with the help of a friend of mine who is a fitness marketing expert. I knew my customers, I knew the feelings I wanted to convey, but she helped me write the website and email campaigns to convert to sales. I learned the structure of sales copy from her, and that knowledge has served me well across all my business activities. I have mentors and advisors like her for almost every aspect of Flexia.

Fourth, prioritize self care. As a passionate professional, it’s tempting to work late hours and sacrifice just one more hour or day or week or month for your business or career. This kind of self-sacrifice is glorified in our society, but is counter-productive to actually doing good work. I’ve been there. I’ve sacrificed my relationships and body and energy for this business because I thought it was what was required, and what I ended up with was a massive head cold, no energy to make even basic decisions for myself or my team, and a really pessimistic outlook. It actually hurt the business in the end.

My best work comes from a place where I’m a more balanced human being, and it’s my goal to strive for that every day. Am I perfect at it? Not at all. But I improve week over week and that’s what matters.

And finally, give yourself grace. When you are growing you are bound to mess up. The best path forward is to acknowledge the mistake, apologize if necessary, and file it away as a lesson learned. It is one of the hardest things I do, but arguably one of the most important. I mess up so often on big and small things that if I beat myself up every time I’d never have the optimism or courage to try again. Trying again is what you must do, and every time you learn something new the hard way, you give yourself better odds for success at your next attempt.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would promote the most wellness to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I am passionate about separating fitness from aesthetics and helping people repair their relationship with fitness and their bodies. I was thirty years old before I was consciously aware that I had never worked out just for the sheer joy of it before. Once I discovered that I liked to move and that Pilates facilitated that experience for me, I found myself more motivated to put on my workout clothes every day.

More powerfully, I found I was giving myself grace when I didn’t look a certain way because I actually felt better than I ever had before. Because I felt better, I had more energy to pursue other health-positive activities. I stopped focusing on working out to get a six pack and kept working out because I just felt better when I did.

Imagine if instead of being told that you’re lazy and it’s supposed to hurt to work out, that you were encouraged to move in a way that was supported and built strength? It could be a foundation on which to transform someone’s health, happiness, and life.

We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would have some french fries and a diet coke with Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, who is an inspiring champion of women in business.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can follow me on instagram @kaleencanevari or read more on my blog https://www.medium.com/@kaleencanevari

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!

Thanks for having me!