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Chung Tze Khit took a gamble when he took the $40,000 his father had saved for his university education and bought a Volkswagen Caddy van instead, reports AsiaOne via The Straits Times.
With his father's support, the budding entrepreneur, then aged 23, stocked his van with a workout bench, dumbbells, exercise mats and other gym equipment, and plastered a white decal on the vehicle's window that read: "Singapore's 1st Mobile Gym".
The novel fitness concept saw him travelling around Singapore, setting up work-out spaces at his clients' homes or parks nearby. Making clients push the van along a flat road - with Mr Chung at the wheel - was even part of the work-out.
In fact, his clients have been the force pushing his business a much longer way than just a short stretch of tarmac.
The 29-year-old now runs Gold's Gym, the largest home-grown chain of personal training gyms, with 17 outlets across the island in places such as Tanjong Pagar, Upper Bukit Timah, Upper Thomson and East Coast. He owns and operates one outlet, and manages the other 16 outlets with 10 franchise partners.
He achieved this in under five years.
With an eye on expanding his business aggressively this year, he will be launching a spa and wellness arm, called Gold's Wellness Spa, in a few weeks.
The spa outlet, covering more than 2,000 sq ft, will be located at NTU Alumni Club in Slim Barracks Rise, off North Buona Vista Road, offering a range of services that include massages and facials.
Speaking to Life! at his Upper Bukit Timah outlet, Mr Chung says of that $40,000 helping hand from his father: "I like to think of that money as my education fund that I put to much better use. It wasn't a loan per se. I contribute to the family and make sure my parents lead comfortable lives."
Before his parents, Mr Chung Chee Keong, 86, and Madam Tan Ong Ah, 70, retired, they owned and operated two photography studios in Bedok and Geylang.
His interest lay away from photography, though. He began taking health and fitness seriously in his second year at Temasek Junior College, when he started working out with his secondary school buddy and current business partner Dan Teng.
In his first year of training, Mr Chung, who jokes he used to look "like a stick", bulked up by 10kg through a training programme he and Mr Teng devised.
They later set up a website called Results! Personal Training in 2007 which helped link clients up with personal trainers, which still exists today. It was the start of their long business partnership.
In between working as a freelance personal trainer operating the mobile gym, Mr Chung paid for his university education, obtaining a degree in sports science from Australia's Edith Cowan University via distance learning.
Not everything was smooth-sailing in business. Mr Chung says it took a failed venture in 2009 to make him realise how he wanted to run his business.
On the back of the success of his mobile gym, he teamed up with three other partners, including Mr Teng, to open Unleash Fitness, a 1,700 sq ft gym in Turf Club Road in Bukit Timah.
The venture folded after nine months due to differences among the partners in how the business should be managed. One partner wanted to focus more on sports training, while another partner was more focused on bodybuilding, he recalls.
"The whole training, even equipment and philosophy, it was all over the place. We knew things weren't working out because of the business direction we had in mind, but it was an amicable parting," he says, declining to say how much money he lost from the business venture.
The experience taught him the necessary business know-how to be prepared for his next venture, from choosing locations and negotiating leases to coming up with a marketing plan and finding the right partners to work with.
