Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kai Boyer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Kai thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Successful businesses aren’t built overnight, they are a combination of hard work, dedication and usually a lot of blood, sweat and tears for several years before they become big. I’ve learned  building a good reputation & consistently having happy customers/clients is the biggest key in whether business fail or succeed.

When I started my business I had just a handful of dedicated clients and I worked mornings, nights and weekends to try to accommodate everyone. Within 2 years I had more clients than I could handle and had to start hiring trainers to build a team to help me with clients I couldn’t fit into my schedule. I soon realized the busier I was the less time I had in front of a computer to do marketing, social media, emails and I needed help and hired a social media manager, it was life changing and took so much pressure off of me. I highly recommend outsourcing any tasks that you can, this will help you will staying on top of the important tasks and not feeling overwhelmed all the time

Ultimately have a solid, consistent team behind you is extremely crucial to success, having a team you can trust is a huge factor to scaling your business. Your employees ultimately represent your business so if they don’t show up, are late, unprofessional etc, it all reflects you and ultimately hurts your business and reputation.

Kai, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

In 2016 I founded Kai Boyer Fitness while attending undergrad at UCI. Since then I have run one of the Top Rated Programs in OC specializing in Women’s Weight Loss & Physique. We are renown for helping clients transform not only their bodies but their lives overall. We teach clients about healthy and mindful living through the process of ‘Kaizen’ which focuses on small daily improvements of one’s self. This methodology is one of the reasons our clients have such a high rate of success.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

In mid/late 2019 my business had hit its peak, we were signing more clients than we knew what to do with, more money was flowing in than I knew how to handle, I sighed a breath of relief, we had finally made it. One day in March 2020 one of my trainers came to me and asked what we were going to do once the government shut us down, I scoffed at the thought. I told her I had ‘real’ problems to attend to that day. The government shutting down gyms sounded about as likely to me as aliens taking over at the time. Sure enough maybe a week later we were shut down due to COVID, we had no clients, no gym and I was officially unemployed.

It was a wild few next months, we did everything we could to keep clients connected and happy, zoom sessions, online work outs, outdoor socially distanced work outs but it was not the same. People were dropping out right and left and we had no leads coming in. Soon we got news our gym would be going out of business for good, I was devastated.

A few more months down the road we go our own gym space but we had no equipment so i put together a go fund me page, luckily many of our long time dedicated clients were willing to donate to help us build our new home. That process has taken us 2.5 years and we are still in the rebuilding process but we never gave up and kept moving forward.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I definitely read a lot – I’m a huge fan of self development books and podcasts some of my favorites have been:

The Science of Self Discipline – Peter Hollins
How One Small Step Can Change Your Life –
Compound Effect- Darren Hardy
Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I think its incredibly important to be well read, up to date and knowledgable in your space of expertise, for athletic training knowledge I follow Ben Patrick and the Athletic Truth Group who are essentially rewriting everything we know about physical therapy and rehabilitating injuries. Their entire program has been life changing not only for my business but for my own training as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kaiboyerfitness.com/
• Instagram: @kai_boyer_fitness
• Linkedin: Kai Boyer Fitness
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/kai-boyer-fitness-irvine-5