Meet Kale Panoho | Managing Director at K&J Growth & Rugby Bricks

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kale Panoho and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kale, how do you think about risk?
I look at risk as the opposing side of the coin of opportunity. The two come hand in hand but one needs to be mitigated when assessing what is in front of you. When you act on opportunities some turn of fate will inevitably strike creating a negative outcome. In my field, this can be a marketing campaign going astray, a client not paying a bill or something entirely unforeseen such as a pandemic.

I assume risk and the events that follow from the risk taken will adversely impact me at some point I just don’t know when. So my goal is to act on enough opportunities and understand that when I’m impacted by taking risks with them that I need to have enough in the bank to deal with the potential downside that can come from it.

Most of the time this means understanding:

– I may have months where I earn less as a founder
– I will have periods of stress and worry that are disproportionate to the causes of the event (e.g a pandemic)
– I will have staff or people who eventually leave or do not perform as I expected
– I’ll have clients cancel because of unforeseen events on their end and how they’ve handled their own risk

I know most of the time favourable outcomes will come around again but I need to be able to withstand the things listed above as the cost of being involved in any opportunity. This means I need to have mechanisms to allow me to deal with the risks mentioned above so that I can be around when the next huge opportunity comes around for us to act on.

Understanding that risk is inherent in any opportunity and that this can strike at any time gives you the ability to handle it when it arrives.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
K&J Growth places emphasis on the word growth. We’re focused on being the growth engine for businesses, not-for-profits and governments all around the world. We helped TikTok gain hundreds of thousands of users back in 2019 and more recently we helped the NZ Government have over 45,000 people sign up for a public initiative to educate small business owners on the benefits of digitising their businesses.

The way we do this is we work as a performance agency. We get compensated for the sales or growth goals of those who hire us. That means our whole team is aligned and has skin in the game, rather than a retainer model where client results aren’t incentivized. Instead, we guarantee that clients get the results they need. As I mentioned earlier we take on greater risk than others but we also have the potential to have a far greater upside.

This model is obviously riskier but it naturally garners better results because everyone is under pressure to perform at their best.

The lesson I try to share with everyone is that it’s going to take longer than you think to see the results others are getting and the ones you expect to get for yourself.

Articles like these are the highlight reels of the authors so remember that for every piece you read about “how X did Y” they had a huge list of books read, people met, risks taken and failures encountered before they got to be the person who could be featured in an article like this.

Efforts applied in a certain direction that can be iterated upon when we fail or make assumptions that are wrong are the fastest way to grow. K&J Growth has been around for 5 years having a crack at growing to where we are (21 people) and we’ve pivoted multiple times to get to this point.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
LA for me is still an incredible novelty for me as a New Zealander who has spent a good chunk of time here. If you come to LA with me here is what we’re doing:

1. Going up Runyon Canyon for a hike. You’ll get some snaps in front of the world’s most iconic sign – Hollywood.

2. We’d then head to Venice Beach so you can get some iconic snaps and grab some food at Great White (Here’s their tagline: New American classics (burgers, sandwiches) get a California treatment (avocado toast, kale salad).

3. Afterwards we’d head outside of the LA city for a moment and get down to Orange County. You get another version of what it would look like to live in LA as we’d hit the Huntington Beach Pier.

4. We’d then head back into Hollywood and hit Hollywood Boulevard to see the stars and everything else that changes your view of the world.

5. Lastly, we’d hit Mama’s Shelter bars both downstairs and upstairs for a brew or a cocktail.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are too many people, books, events and strokes of luck for me to shout out in one answer but here are my top two resources.

1. Ryan Holiday who is the author of the book “The Obstacle is the Way”. This book has single handily changed the course of my life and everything he has written subsequently has had a similar impact.

2. There are five people who have significantly impacted my career. They are Jonathan Maxim, Adain Summerfield, Sarah Hill, Peter Breen and Rhys Jeffrey. All of these people have created moments for me to succeed in my career personally and professionally and their impact can’t be measured in a monetary value.

Website: www.kjgrowth.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kalepanoho/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kale-panoho/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kale_panoho