Lessons from Local Leaders:

Fenati Pennoh

From Homeless to Handsome Soldier: How Navy Veteran Fonati Pennoh Built Family First Fitness on a Foundation of No Excuses

He slept in his car during COVID with a newborn daughter and no plan. Today, Fonati Pennoh is a fitness motivator, Navy veteran, and the driving force behind a brand built to prove that if you have 10 free hours in a day, you have no excuse.

There’s a version of Fonati Pennoh’s story that sounds like a movie. First-generation Liberian-American. Navy veteran of two combat deployments, including 9/11. Lost his mother to cancer at 22 with two younger siblings to look after. Experienced homelessness during COVID while his newborn daughter entered the world. Pulled himself out with nothing but a library card, a playground pull-up bar, and the same discipline that got him through the military.

He would probably compare it to Forrest Gump — and he’d laugh while doing it.

“If you watch the movie, he went through different transitions in his life,” Fonati says. “He’s been to war. So have I. Twice. He had deaths in his family. So did I. My life has been a roller coaster, and nothing comes easy in this world. What you have to do is fight for it.”

That fighting spirit is the whole engine behind Family First Fitness — the brand Fonati, who goes by FP, built alongside his partner JP, two veterans who met in Afghanistan in 2012 and never stopped working out or pushing each other forward.

West Africa to the U.S. Navy: A Foundation Built on Education and Discipline

Fonati was born in the United States, but the culture that raised him came straight from Liberia. His parents — his mother in fashion, his father a mechanical engineer — immigrated from West Africa and instilled something in their household that money couldn’t touch.

“My favorite dish is fufu and soup,” he says with a grin. “And then after that you go to school and eat hamburgers and sandwiches. Best of both worlds.”

But beyond the food and the culture, what his parents gave him was a philosophy. Education first, always. Work hard because the world is unpredictable, and the only thing it can never take from you is what’s in your head.

“That’s what I do,” Fonati says. “I educate myself, I try to learn, and I just shifted that energy into the fitness lifestyle.”

His parents weren’t fitness people, but they were disciplined, hardworking, and relentless. He absorbed all of it. When he joined the Navy, that foundation only deepened. Two deployments, work alongside multiple branches, years of service that took him around the world and shaped how he sees movement, health, and what human beings are actually capable of when they stop making excuses.

The Worst Year of His Life — and What He Did With It

In 2020, Fonati was moving from Connecticut to the DMV area when everything fell apart. He lost his apartment, his belongings, his sense of stability. His daughter had just been born. He had a car and nothing else.

“I told the mom, you’re gonna have to stay with your parents for a while because I have nothing,” he says. “And it was nine months of couch surfing trying to figure out what the game plan is gonna be.”

For two of those months, he cried. He’s not embarrassed to say it. By his own account, losing his apartment during COVID, with a newborn daughter depending on him, was the worst stretch of his life outside of losing his mother. He was sleeping in his car. His beard was growing out. He wasn’t sure which direction to go.

Then he made a choice.

“I said to myself — either I give up or I gotta fight. And I can’t just sit there and feel sorry for myself. Who is gonna help me? Nobody.”

Every morning, he walked to the elementary school playground near where he was staying and worked out — pull-ups on the equipment, push-ups on the ground, laps around the yard, because the gyms were closed. Then he went to the library and studied. He was transitioning careers, moving from law enforcement into cybersecurity and networking, grinding through certifications — Security+, CYSA — one at a time. He took the tests. He passed them.

Nine months later, he had a path forward.

“Some people would have given up,” he says. “I slept in cars. I was dirty. I know what that lifestyle was like. And I took myself out of it. Nobody helped me.”

Losing His Mother at 22

Before COVID, before the car, before any of it, there was a harder loss.

Fonati came home from his 9/11 deployment to find out his mother had been hiding her cancer diagnosis while he was overseas. She didn’t want to worry him. When he returned, she threw him a welcome home party and then sat him down and told him the truth.

“I spent a lot of time with her taking care of her. That was my vacation.” He pauses. “Then I got a call saying I needed to go back. I was 22. It was 2003. And I lost her. She couldn’t even say her last words.”

He was a self-described momma’s boy and doesn’t apologize for it. What followed her death was a period of grief and some wrong turns — he’ll admit that openly — but also the beginning of a quiet resilience. His brother was 17. His sister was 13. No one was going to guide them through it. That responsibility landed on him.

“I had to make decisions by myself. Some were good, some were bad. But I didn’t have any guidance. I had to learn by myself at 22.”

His brother, inspired by Fonati, eventually joined the Navy too. He’s living in Japan now, doing well. His sister is nearby. The family made it — because of the education their parents drilled into them, and because of the way Fonati quietly stepped up when it mattered most.

“We made it somehow without a mom.”

The Three Pillars of Family First Fitness

Family First Fitness runs on three pillars: healthy eating, family fitness, and fitness first. To Fonati, none of them are complicated — and that’s entirely the point.

Healthy eating means cooking at home more than you’re hitting the drive-through. It means three real meals a day, fewer processed snacks, and understanding that you can train for 20 straight years and see nothing if you’re undoing it at the dinner table. “You can’t get a great training session and then go back to McDonald’s,” he says. “You look the same. You didn’t change. You’re just paying a trainer now.”

Family fitness is personal. His daughter has been swimming since she was three — laps in an Olympic pool by the time she was seven. They’re talking about boxing next. The whole idea is that fitness isn’t something you disappear to do alone; it’s something you build into your life alongside the people you love.

And fitness first means treating your workout like brushing your teeth. Non-negotiable. If Fonati is on a flight and misses a day, he calls it rehab. He finds a gym near the hotel. He makes it up. The practice isn’t something he squeezes in — it’s something everything else works around.

“No excuses. I don’t know how else to tell you.”

The Math Problem Nobody Wants to Solve

If you tell Fonati you don’t have time to work out, be ready for a response.

“24 hours in a day. Nobody sleeps eight hours anymore. Let’s say you get six or seven. Add eight hours of work — that’s 14. What is going on with the other 10?”

He’s not trying to be hard on people. He genuinely wants them to see what he sees: that time isn’t the real barrier. Belief is. The story we tell ourselves about why today isn’t the right day, why next week makes more sense, why we’re too tired or too busy or too far gone to start.

He’s heard all of it. He’s lived most of it. And he’s still standing in the gym.

“It doesn’t even have to be the gym,” he adds. “A quick walk around your complex. A basketball. A bike. Brooklyn — people out there doing pull-ups on traffic lights. Miami has parks with pull-up bars everywhere. You just have to move.”

He’s seen it around the world too. Deployed across multiple countries, he noticed that places without fancy gyms still produce incredibly active, healthy people — women in Greece pushing four kids in a stroller through narrow alleyways, looking like models. Street markets where people actually smell and select their produce. Communities where walking is just what you do because there’s no other option. No bougie gym membership required.

“They don’t have what we have,” he says, “but they’re very active. They’re doing something. And they look good.”

Two Veterans, One Brand, Born in Afghanistan

Family First Fitness didn’t start in a boardroom. It started in a tent.

Fonati and JP met in Afghanistan in 2012. Neither of them had kids yet, no wives, no serious obligations. What they had was focus — and they worked out together in whatever space was available. Years passed. Life moved on. But every time they checked in on each other, the answer was always the same: yeah, still working out.

“I’m gonna be in my dying bed one day and ask for a weight,” Fonati says. “Just to do my last curl or something.”

When Fonati visited JP and the two started talking seriously about the future, JP said he wanted to be a fitness model, a fitness star. Fonati said let’s make it happen. They found a manager who believed in them, started building the brand, and the name came together through back-and-forth: Family Fitness, Family First Fitness, until it clicked.

“Shout out to JP,” Fonati says. “I think he’s the one who landed on Family First Fitness. And we got it patented. Nobody can take that from us.”

Six months in, they’re producing content, doing photoshoots, building their podcast — the FP and JP Show — and working with two 18-year-old gym members, Dom and Evan, who look up to Fonati the way his own brother once did. He’s sending them Family First Fitness gear. He’s watching the circle expand.

“One of their dads is 51,” he says, smiling. “Not too far from me, believe it or not. And the kid looked at me and was just in shock. That’s what fitness does. It’s not just weights. It helps your health, your mental being. I feel like I’m 25.”

What’s Next

The road ahead for Family First Fitness involves apparel — Under Armour collaborations, branded gear, clothing that gets worn in the gym and out in the world and starts conversations. It involves growing the podcast, building the audience, and continuing to show up for the people who are just beginning to believe that change is possible for them too.

Fonati isn’t chasing celebrity. He’s chasing impact. He wants someone listening to his story — wherever they are, whatever they’re carrying — to hear it and think: if he can do it, maybe I can too.

“My goal is to motivate and inspire people,” he says. “That’s what Family First Fitness is all about. Just try. Do something. You’re not benefiting anybody by sitting on a couch.”

He pauses, then adds: “And yes — I am pretty funny too. My best friend says I’m funnier than Kevin Hart. He said it twice.”

You’ll see that side of him eventually. For now, he’s got a workout to get to.

Fonati Pennoh, known as FP, is the co-founder of Family First Fitness alongside JP. He is a Navy veteran, fitness motivator, and host of the FP and JP Show. You can follow him on YouTube at the FP and JP Show, on Instagram at fp_fff_fitness, and at hansumsoldier.

Reach Fenati Pennoh Below