Kale Panoho: “We Didn’t Have Equipment, So We Cut Out A4 And A3 Pictures”

Kale Panoho is a personal trainer, entrepreneur, business owner and start-up advisor to a number of different business ventures and individuals. He is currently a contributor to a number of publications including the Huffington Post, Prsuit and Influencive on entrepreneurship, productivity, mental and physical fortitude. I took the time to chat with Kale about how he discovered his niche and how he has driven through challenges along his path.

Determination

Q: What are some challenges you faced when developing your venture?

Essentially our goal was to find out if people wanted a gym in their town. The downside of that is you need a space, at least 50 K of equipment and trainers. We didn’t have the type of money to test whether or not the gym would be successful, so instead we had to improvise.

So what we did is we took our idea and applied all of the things we needed and borrowed them from other people. So the potential venue for the gym was a location up for rent that we negotiated to have for 2 weeks with the owners who said if you’re going to look at renting our space you can use this space for two weeks.

We didn’t have equipment, so we cut out A4 and A3 pictures of the equipment and stuck it to the ground so that people could see what we wanted to have.

The other crux was we needed at least 200 people to sign up before we could even open. We put together this space with no equipment, no trainers, no lighting and sold it to people as a brand new gym. All we need you to do is sign up and we’ll have the space ready for you in 6 months.

Luckily for us we improvised our way to building a client base of $202,000 of annual revenue in 14 days.

Q: Was there any point when you thought it was over? That you were going to fail?

I never believed we were going to fail as that was outlook from the beginning. Let’s assume the worst case scenario I.E “nobody wants a new gym” and work our way back from there.

Essentially we only spent $200 to test our market and if it was going to fail, well we were happy for that to happen as we had programmed it to be the default. That way we knew anything above that bottom line was a win.

Flexibility

Q: As an entrepreneur how important has flexibility been in developing your venture?

Flexibility and pivoting is what allowed us to open our gym. Our idea wasn’t particularly unique but when people came in to see our space of A4 and A3 pieces of paper were able to give the feedback they wanted. This meant our potential customers dictated exactly what they wanted to see and our whole gym became the concept of our potential clients.

Imagination

Q: What was was your spark, where did it come from?

My spark for this idea or concept came from an article by Tim Ferriss: http://tim.blog/2012/12/18/hacking-kickstarter-how-to-raise-100000-in-10-days-includes-successful-templates-e-mails-etc/

I wanted to clone his project with minimal funds and then do this in a real world application.

4. What are your non-work habits that help you with your work-life balance?

My morning ritual is what I believe allows me to achieve more in a day than others. I wake up at least an 90 minutes before I need to be anywhere. In that time I talk to my partner as she gets ready for work.

I then focus on having a high protein breakfast, I take a cold shower, I read a chapter of either Obstacle is the Way or Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday and then follow this up with meditation. I follow this with setting 3 goals that are based around tasks that need to be done urgently and then spend my day doing those tasks.

I then aim to exercise at some point throughout the day based on the programming I am following at that point in time.

Finally I remove all means of communication at 7 PM, no phone and no laptop. That way I can focus on spending time with my partner or reading.

5. What is your best tip for entrepreneurs?

My best tip is to set at least 1–2 actionable goals per day that are causing you the biggest grief and solve them. Whether it is business, personal or relationship based. Once you’ve solved that issue you’ve alleviated a huge burden of your mental stress which in turns frees up the rest of your day.