Jun 29, 2022

Founder Spotlight: Kickoff

Kickoff is a wellness platform that connects people with coaches for one-on-one remote personal training. Users love it because they find the support they need to build healthy habits at a fraction of the cost of joining a gym, but what makes it unique is that it gives health and fitness professionals the tools to build their own lucrative businesses. Since the New York-based company launched in January 2019, more than 20,000 coaches have joined the platform. Here, co-founder and CEO John Gardner discusses his plans for the company’s immediate future and the most important lessons he’s learned working with Expa.

What is your elevator pitch?

Kickoff is a wellness coaching platform at the intersection of the future of work and the future of wellness. Our technology enables coaches to drive extraordinary impact, helping them go from minimum wage to six-figure incomes and helping clients achieve results they never thought possible.

What is your proudest accomplishment to date?

We’ve paid out more than $5 million to extraordinary, hard-working coaches.

What is your most immediate challenge, and how will you tackle it?

Delegating responsibilities to extraordinary product, growth, design, and engineering leaders. I’m personally investing 40% of my time in recruiting, with the highest possible bar, and investing a ton in OKRs (setting up the process, defining the future state we’re working toward, and aligning on the goals with our team).

What are your top three goals for the next six months?

Drive more healthy habits (i.e. engagement) ever more consistently for clients.
Increase take-home pay per hour for coaches.
Stand up an amazing wellness-content-producing machine.

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned from the Expa team and/or community?

Working every day in the Expa NYC office with passionate, brilliant, exciting founders and investors constantly reminds me to enjoy this wild ride and how lucky I am to be on it.