Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
COVER STORY
Strength finder
Essentials 4 Fitness owner uses experience
in Liberia to motivate
by Andrew Tellijohn
NYANTU BOLO started his personal trainer career as an independent operator in a studio in Edina. He worked one-on-one with clients. Business was going okay, but it really started to take off when he met Allen Miller.
Miller, then an executive with UnitedHealth Group, was in his early 40s, coming off of a heart attack and back surgery, and he needed to lose weight and drop cholesterol or face a lifetime of pills.
?I?m like,?if you just work out regularly and lose some weight that?s going to take care of half of your issues,? ? Bolo says he told Miller. ?He thought about it and said ?OK.? We started working together and he lost 50 pounds and eventually got his cholesterol down so he didn?t need to be on medication and all that junk.?
As the two worked together they found they had some common interests. One day Bolo asked Miller if he would be interested in a business partnership. Miller did not return calls seeking comment for this story, but Bolo says it didn?t take long for him to provide an answer.
?In five seconds, he was like ?OK,?? Bolo says. And that was the beginning of Essentials 4 Fitness, a one-stop fitness shop on the second floor of a Northeast Minneapolis office building.
The 5-year-old company has about 900 members, a figure Bolo plans to triple through word of mouth advertising and better marketing in the next 24 months. He also aspires to open up additional locations over the next several years.
?I would love to stay here but I am always keeping my options open for a better location in terms of convenient parking and the convenience of people getting to my facility,” he says. ?One shop for now, but eventually I?m going to open multiple locations, so that?s the long-term goal ? over the next five years.?
That growth will be possible, he says, because of the growing fitness issues in America.
?The beauty of what I?m doing is there?s always going to be a need for people to get in shape,? he says.
Though not a large man, when Bolo rolls back his sleeve he reveals a massive bicep. As he speaks of his goal ? sparking people to change their lifestyles and get in shape ? he leans forward in his modest office chair and his voice starts to rise with excitement.
?Seventy percent of Americans are overweight,? he says. ?My objective being in the fitness industry is to spark people to make a change because if America is the greatest country in the world ? if we have the best resources and we have the best equipment and we have the best food, then why are we overweight? It?s because people don?t have the drive to do it. My objective is, ?how can I spark you to get off the couch to make a change?? That?s my main objective and goal.?
And that is how he says he?s different from the big-box clubs where people sign up and rarely see a health club official. He trains people himself and he trains his trainers to provide that personal service.
?Based on research and what I?ve seen, you go in there, they sign you up and you?re just a number, that?s it,? he says, adding that he takes the time to find out what makes people tick ? what their goals are and what buttons he needs to push to get them to reach their goals. Witness his tagline, ?Shaping your body by design.?
Basic membership at the club, which offers access to workout equipment and changing areas, is between $30 and $45 a month. Individual training sessions run between $59 and $75.
?If you can afford to drink one can of pop a day you can afford to belong to this gym,? he says.
Adjusting personality
Growing the business this far hasn?t come without challenges. Among the biggest, he says, is the difficulty of dealing with multiple personalities ? not only in employees, but in clientele as well. But he?s a people person and he adjusts his personality to match whoever he is around at any given time.
Besides, it?s not like getting to the point of opening his own business was easy either. While the competitive natural body builder?s biceps and pectorals now bulge and his body fat stays at 4 percent year-round (which he emphasizes he accomplished drug-free), he was once a skinny, 18-year-old kid working at a pizza place in Texas. He was making a pizza for a woman in the neighborhood that co-owned a gym. She saw some promise in him and encouraged him to start working out.
?It was a humble beginning for me,? he says. ?From that day I never turned back around.?
Bolo was born in Chicago, but his parents had met and immigrated to the United States from Liberia for school. When he was 6, his father, a theologist, became the Minister of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia.
Bolo lived there for a decade before civil war broke out and the U.S. Embassy evacuated his family. Pre-war, there was still poverty, but it was a decent place to live ? even a vacation spot for some ? before civil war tore it apart, Bolo says.
When he was evacuated, Bolo?s mother stayed behind. He later learned that she died, though he?s unsure whether she was a victim of war or natural causes. He plans to return for the first time later this year in an attempt to find some answers.
Giving back
The initial culture shock and the loss of his mother were difficult adjustments. But he now looks at the overall experience as a positive.
?It was a great experience,? he says. ?Here is a kid born in Chicago, used to getting up in the morning and saying ?Daddy, lets go to McDonald?s,? then you wake up the next day and you are in a third-world country for 10 years.?
His time abroad taught him toughness, respect and determination. It also gave him a determination to give back to the country and some perspective that he brings forward as an entrepreneur.
For example, if employees are upset over a broken air conditioner, he?s quick to bring them back to Earth.
?Let me explain to you what a real issue is,? he says, with a laugh. ?I use my experience and my will in terms of strength to try to help everyone around me. A lot of entrepreneurs need to do that.?
Upon his return to the U.S., Bolo lived in Texas, then moved to Minnesota with his father. He immediately liked the diversity and the personalities ? but he also quickly noticed that much of the population was overweight, which led him to begin training people.
While he?s become successful in business and has ambitious goals, h
As the name suggests, Owatonna-based Kamp Automation looks for customers with a process they’d like to automate. It could be a small, inconvenient, tiny part that people can’t assemble. It could be a high-volume product so needed that the customer can’t find enough labor to produce it in the necessary quantities. “We’ll work anywhere from medical device companies to the seed industry for corn and soybeans,” says Kent Patterson, co-founder, president and CEO. “We just jump all over wherever there is custom automation.” The company started in his garage. Patterson and his partners built a machine. The company started to grow to the point where now it has 48 employees — and had a bunch of people and stuff in different locations. “We went from a garage to a shop to a shop and just kept moving to new places and signing leases,” he says. “We got to a point where it’s like, OK, this is getting big enough and sustainable — we felt that we wanted to look for our own space.’”
