We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful April Liang. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with April below.

Hi April, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

Being a business owner is tough, it’s frustrating, it’s overwhelming, there are so many highs and so many lows, but I would never trade it for a regular job.

Prior to being a business owner, I had worked full time at a regular job that I used to love in the apparel space. I loved the trade shows, I loved being able to create with the team, I loved designing, I loved being able to see a garment from design to final production, it was all new and exciting as a 20 year old. Then being in the space for 8 years and climbing into a higher position I realized that no matter how exciting things were, I was never truly satisfied with what I was doing. I was always putting in more work than others and cared more. I just thought to myself “If I put this much effort into running someone else’s business, what would I be able to do with my own.” It just never sat right with me.

When starting PAINKLLR, my now fiance and I gave us a runway of 6 months to build something – it was short and definitely wasn’t enough time, but somehow we survived. We had to take risks and go through the trenches together. Creating a startup with your partner is not easy especially when finances are shaky, There were times where we did not know if we could afford our dogs food for the month and in those moments you sit back and think to yourself “why am I doing this” or “it would be so much easier to go back to my old job and have that steady income again.”

The thought’s of going back to a regular job was the easy choice, I knew I had it in me to make it work. We couldn’t just back down because things are hard. In these moments, you take a step back and really analyze everything and ask yourself “Did I do everything to make this work?” and that is when you start thinking creatively. Being in these uncomfortable moment’s are learning opportunities, they challenge you and you’re either going to thrive or back down.

Entrepreneurship is a constant roller coaster and there will always be tough moments, but I would never trade it for a regular job. Even if what I was doing now hit a pitstop, I’d probably start something else.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was in the apparel industry for 8 years so my background was in domestic manufacturing. When starting PAINKLLR, that is where we began because it’s what was familiar, but we knew we wanted more for the brand.

As we grew, PAINKLLR became more than apparel we have shifted and become a resource for people to unlock human potential through experiences and movement. This can be through a digital component or physical event. We have created different types of competition’s, community events and more that challenges people to progress forward.

I am proud of where we have shifted the brand and where we are going. Understanding that apparel wasn’t the big picture of the brand was extremely important, it allowed us to grow and work with people/brand’s we couldn’t imagine. With the experiences, it allows for collaboration and coming up with ideas that push the envelope – this is where we really thrive.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

PAINKLLR was something we kept on the side, but never really ran with it because of the safety net of our jobs. We definitely conceptualized the idea, the name, the story and had a brand vision. We stated off by posting inspiration of what we felt the brand represented because we didn’t have our own photos at the time. We tested to see if people caught onto the name and what we were putting out.

We made some simple printed shirts with the name on it and would ship them out as people ordered so we had ZERO inventory. We figured out how to purchase blanks and work with a local print houses to print on demand for us. The cost was higher due to printing one offs, but at the time it made the most sense versus buying loads of inventory.

Conrad and I both had full time jobs at the time, but we were both in a place where we wanted a change. We had a serious conversation about transition and making PAINKLLR our full time and gave us a 6 month runway to make it happen. We continued doing the apparel as one offs and eventually started to do full cut and sew. We made that transition pretty quickly since we knew if we wanted to stand out we’d have to develop our own styles and not just print on blanks.

Being a new brand most athletes don’t want to support newer brands so we had to make a change. We decided to host our own competition and bring athletes to us (this was a marketing play on our end so they would want to wear our product, we just didn’t’ know it would be the whole shift of our business). It was a small in house competition, about 50 athletes, but we received positive feedback and athletes started to support us. One of the main comments that stood out was that there were no competitions that put that much care into this experience. We knew we had something. We did another one, then grew into doing a third one in San Diego which eventually led to our partnership with the US Air Force Special Warfare – who we work closely with and develop experiences along side the brand.

Eventually outgrowing a gym led our throw downs into becoming PAINKLLR Venice which we now hosted on the iconic Venice Muscle Beach where we takeover 150,000+ sq ft and turn it into a single day of celebrating fitness, community and movement. This will be our 3rd year on Venice beach and in conjunction with the city of los Angeles. This was a huge moment for us as our goal is to make this one of CA’s go to fitness experiences every year. This year it will be on August 19 which we are extremely excited for! We have leaned into something we never knew was going to be our main focus, but we love what we do and thrive in the creativity of this. We have completely cut back on our apparel and only focus on curated capsules for our events.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I wanted to touch on this question because I think at times it is ok to pivot and change your business if the opportunity is there. We were so focused on apparel because that is what we knew and what we were comfortable with, we both never imagined doing/creating events, but we were good at it.

Because of our pivot we have been able to work with incredible brands/people and closing 6 figure contracts. It is different than what a “brand” normally does, but if we stuck to what everyone did we wouldn’t be where we are today. This year marks 5 years since starting PAINKLLR and I am excited to see where we go.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.painkllr.com
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