IAM211- Founder Runs Health and Fitness Website to Help Others Get Fit Like That

Sharita Jennings is the founder of health & fitness website, Get Fit Like That. Formerly, Sharita worked full time as a health policy attorney, balancing Get Fit Like That as a side hustle, through which she led group fitness classes across the Washington D.C. area. Recently, Sharita left her full-time job to turn her focus 100% to Get Fit Like That and expand her ability to help others get fit like that. Now, she leads virtual classes, provides personal training services to ambitious go-getters and jet-setters who need help balancing their health and their hustle.

• CEO Hack: Hiring a business coach to help with the entrepreneurial journey
• CEO Nugget: Things are going to move at their own pace
• CEO Defined: Being incredibly creative and being in charge

Website: http://www.getfitlikethat.com/

Sweat Season – 8 Week Fitness Video Challenge: bit.ly/SweatSzn
30 Day Emergency Fitness Plan: bit.ly/fit911
Instagram: @getfitlikethat
Facebook: @getfitlikethat
Twitter: @getfitlikethat

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Sharita Jennings of Get Fit Like That. Sharita it's awesome to have you on the show.

Sharita Jennings 0:36

Thanks for having me. So excited to talk to the community.

Gresham Harkless 0:38

Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on and before we get started, I want to read a little bit more about Sharita so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing and Sharita is the founder of health & fitness website, Get Fit Like That. Formerly, Sharita worked full-time as a health policy attorney, balancing Get Fit Like That as a side hustle, through which she led group fitness classes across the Washington D.C. area. Recently, Sharita left her full-time job to turn her focus 100% to Get Fit Like That and expand her ability to help others get fit like that. Now, she leads virtual classes and provides personal training services to ambitious go-getters and jet-setters who need help balancing their health and their hustle. Sharita, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Sharita Jennings 1:20

I'm ready. Gresh

Gresham Harkless 1:21

Awesome. Let's do it. So first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Sharita Jennings 1:28

Sure. So basically, I started practicing law about seven years ago. And as soon as I started, I immediately needed something else like something a little bit more fulfilling. And it was one of those stories where I just started turning the thing that people always asked me about which was health and fitness. I just started turning that into a business when I first started with group fitness classes, because I love attending group fitness classes, and I love creating workouts. So I started teaching classes around the DC area working in various gyms from like LA. LA fitness to urban boxing to the new box.

And then it turned into letting me see what happens if I create my own classes through my own brand because I had so many more ideas and wanted to share so much more with my community and everyone at least in that area. So eventually, it just kind of turned itself into a business. And I started teaching a lot more while still working full time. And now I'm really excited to be focusing on it all the time. And I have like a lot of opportunities to be super creative and create a lot of digital products and reach out to a whole new community of travelers and nomads, my busy entrepreneurs who I think can really use a unique training style like mine.

Gresham Harkless 2:40

Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like that's, every person so at least I'm a little biased, cuz I love entrepreneurship. But I feel like it's every person's dream to be able to take what is a side hustle and grow it into a full-fledged business where you're able to work like you said, 100% or 200% of the time on it. Because a lot of times people don't realize that it doesn't just happen overnight, it is a process by which you're doing it on the side, then all of a sudden becomes a little bit more than it starts to grow and grow and grow.

Sharita Jennings 3:04

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 3:05

Awesome, awesome. And I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear about what I call kind of how you serve your clients. So can you tell us a little bit more about some of the things that you're doing? I know you touched a little bit upon it.

Sharita Jennings 3:15

Sure. So the two major things that I do are I have really intensive 1:1 fitness coaching, and it's all done virtually. So I sit down with my clients for a consultation. And I create customized fitness programming as well as nutritional coaching for them. So this means every single week, they receive new workouts a new nutritional target for some people, most people it's like, let's focus on reducing sugar, let's focus on increasing protein, something like that, would they get weekly workouts and a nutrition plan that they follow for 8 to 12 weeks. And my favorite part of that program is that we sit down once a week and have the accountability call. And that's where I hope that my client spills all, like this week was wonderful or this week was horrible.

So, we really have that time to just drill down on what's working, and what's not working, and we can make adjustments to it. And it's my goal that anyone who works with me actually just builds habits. Of course, I want them to hit their goals, but for most people, it's going to take longer than 12 or 8 weeks. So it's usually I just want them to build habits and have something that they can take long after we finish working together. And then the second major thing that I offer is the virtual classes that you touched on. I just launched a recent online fitness series called sweat season, which is an eight-week program people get access to a sweat season video library and that's me and my Fit friends all created various workouts that people can follow along in a designated program across eight weeks.

And this way if somebody is not home or can't make it to the gym, they can always download or stream the workouts straight to wherever they are and get a great workout in and then those workouts are there for them to own forever and ever so they can tune in whenever they want. So I was really excited about that and looking forward to a future of more digital classes as well.

Gresham Harkless 5:04

Yeah, that's absolutely great. And, in the day and age where everybody is, quote, unquote, so busy, and you have so many things to do, sometimes you can't make it to that gym class, or especially that virtual aspect where you're able to do a kind of, I guess, on your own time, depending on however you can fit into your schedule seems like it'd be huge.

Sharita Jennings 5:19

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 5:20

Awesome. And I know you've touched on this a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call, your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you or sets you apart, or your organization apart.

Sharita Jennings 5:29

Yeah, well, I'm in a very saturated business. The fitness industry is huge. And even a lot of people haven't heard of virtual coaches, or online coaches, but there are quite a few who offer all sorts of services. And I just think my unique selling point or my secret sauce is that I'm able to really connect with my clients. And I actually, mean it, when I say customize everything, we're talking on a weekly basis, we really work closely together. And I actually just talked to a client this morning, she was just saying that she was so happy that I wasn't like a mean trainer. And she thought I was gonna yell at her.

She didn't do her workouts but instead, what I told her was, you just need to worry about the next day. Don't you know, this day you didn't work out? But you have tomorrow. So what are we going to do tomorrow to get on the right track? And it's those kinds of conversations and being available pretty much 24/7 to that one on one clients. That really sets me apart, and I think really helps people reach their goals.

Gresham Harkless 6:26

Yeah, absolutely. And I love the fact as well, that you talked a little bit about making sure you're building those habits because a lot of times you want to make those lifelong changes, not just two-week changes, where you're maybe losing weight for two weeks, but you're doing things on a regular basis that helps you to overall have a healthier lifestyle.

Sharita Jennings 6:44

Right, exactly, it's so important. Yeah, you need to do something for the long haul. Because either, if not, you're just gonna gain it all back or fall back into your old habits. So I hope that I'm helping people turn that around.

Gresham Harkless 6:56

Yeah, definitely sounds like you are able to customize it, and probably helps out a lot because it helps bring that uniqueness to what everybody is looking for as far as their fitness journey. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Sharita Jennings 7:14

So my biggest CEO hack was hiring what you might call a CEO coach. I hired a business coach, and she helped me plan, like literally, she called it an escape plan, leaving my nine to five, she helped me make sure I had revenue-building products, and just make sure I had all my dots dotted, all my eyes dotted, and T's crossed before I took the plunge. And I still work with her now and kind of run things by her as well. And it's been amazing. Because I'm not naturally an entrepreneur, I don't know if anyone is but once it went to became serious, and it was gonna be like my main source of income, I had to get very serious. And so I just went with a business coach from the Ambition studio. And if anyone's interested, she changed my life.

Gresham Harkless 8:00

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And I love that because a lot of times, as we kind of mentioned before, in the beginning, is that you have these big goals and these big dreams and ambitions. But to be able to break it down, like you said, to have your I think you call it an escape plan. But to say this, I gotta do x, y, and z to be able to escape, and then I gotta do ABC to be able to take that to the next level and break it all down kind of helps out a lot.

Sharita Jennings 8:21

Absolutely. It really does.

Gresham Harkless 8:22

Nice, nice, nice. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. If you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Sharita Jennings 8:32

I would tell my younger business self and only six months ago, that things are gonna move at their own pace. So you can set these wonderful goals like I'm going to achieve this many customers in 30 days. And I'm going to generate this many sales and XYZ days. But sometimes you have to let the business grow at its pace, you can do everything right, you can do everything that you're supposed to do, quote-unquote, but things might not happen as soon as you want them to. And in some cases, things happen much more quickly than you want them to. So it's just ready for extended timelines and also be ready for just out-of-the-blue opportunities and having to scramble to keep up with what's next for your business.

And in my case, I actually moved abroad as well when I went full-time with my business. So I thought when I moved here, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna get into call wellness tourism and start working with hotels, and I'm going to develop these programs. And that is moving a lot slower than I imagined but it's still moving in the right direction. And that's all that matters. So I would definitely tell my younger business self and anyone else who's starting a business to just know that it's going to happen at its own pace and just be ready for that.

Gresham Harkless 9:43

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it's funny like when I started a lot of the biggest things that I think I remembered I didn't necessarily accept but I understand a lot more now that it usually takes twice as long as sometimes you think if not longer. So a lot of times you're like I'm gonna hit this goal, I hit this target, 0 to 60 and you're gonna be able to do that. But a lot of times it takes a process to do that. But I imagine, definitely correct me if I'm wrong, like probably a lot of times like in fitness to where you're trying to maybe increase your bench and you've been doing the same weight for the last, two months, and then all of a sudden, you just hit this level where you're able to double your bench or do whatever. But yeah, happens out of nowhere. But it is because you've been putting in those habits.

Sharita Jennings 10:22

Exactly I was thinking about it. It's just exactly the same principles that you apply to fitness goals, but we don't listen.

Gresham Harkless 10:29

No one wants to hear that, myself included. So I definitely understand that. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Sharita I want to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you,

Sharita Jennings 10:43

To me being a CEO is being able to just be incredibly creative, like it is totally up to me what kind of products I get to offer, it's totally up to me what kind of partnerships I foster with brands and other businesses. And it's totally up to me what kind of clients I want to work with. And so it's just really kind of being totally in charge and having full creativity. And that's the part that I love the most. And my coach actually called me a visionary, which means I like to come up with ideas, but not so much implement them. But it just means being super creative, having that vision, and then being able to follow it through. And so I just love being able to try things, some things don't stick some things do. And then you get to try something else when something doesn't work. Or whenever you want to you can pivot and it's just totally up to you the creativity and being a CEO is amazing.

Gresham Harkless 11:34

Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you start thinking at that wavelength, I consider myself an ideas person as well. So a lot of times, they're once you start to get on that vibe or that level, I guess you can say you see them everywhere. So you kind of have to figure out what's going to work and what you can do now. And then oh, you have to figure out how to balance all of that within 24 hours.

Sharita Jennings 11:53

Yeah, still working on that.

Gresham Harkless 11:54

Yeah, me too. But Sharita, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know, then of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're doing.

Sharita Jennings 12:12

Sure. So thanks so much for having me on the show. Again, it's been a pleasure. And I want to remind all of your listeners who I'm assuming are interested in being CEOs or starting a business or if they're already in the throes. And I just want to remind them that there's no wrong time to do this. Like you could have been your career for decades, maybe a month, maybe you're in school and you want to quit, there's no wrong time to give this a shot. The worst that could happen is that it doesn't work out and you end up turning that energy into something else. So if you have an idea, if you have a passion, just go for it. And I know you hear that everywhere, but I really do mean it. There's just no wrong time for it. So why not now?

Gresham Harkless 12:49

Exactly, exactly. I definitely agree with that. And if they want to get a hold of you the best way?

Sharita Jennings 12:54

Sure. So everyone can find me on my website @getfitlikethat.com and then I'm across all the social media platforms at Get Fit Like That. So hopefully you guys will watch some of my videos and leave me questions and sign up for the upcoming video series. All of that I can't wait to work with you guys.

Gresham Harkless 13:13

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I truly appreciate you again Sharita and we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. I appreciate you for all the awesome things that you're doing and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Sharita Jennings 13:24

Thank you.

Outro 13:25

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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