Later graduation, a question invariably arises for ourselves, "What's next?".This was the question we asked ourselves. Hi, I am Muhammad Shahid, from Kannur. My wife Hafsa Shahid hails from Kozhikode. We were both B-tech students at the college of engineering, Vadakara under CUSAT. I was in the EEE stream and Hafsa was my junior in IT.
We got married at the end of our beautiful college life. In 2015, I became a site engineer for a company in Dubai. At the same time, Hafsa was doing a job as a webpage developer for a company in Ernakulam. As freshers, we had no significant income. We do not know that the jobs we entered liked us, but we were not satisfied with them.
After a lot of hardship, we finally started physical training at our family gym in the country. I was impressed by the love, closeness, and respect that clients show me during training at the gym. It inspired me to switch from physical training to personal training.
At the same time, Hafsa joined there as an aerobic trainer. The biggest challenge we faced when we started physical training in 2018 was a lack of confidence. We overcame that by practicing in the gym alone and learning as much as we could to learn more about the fitness area. We both did certification from the American Council of Exercise(ACE). Hafsa also did a Nutrition Certification Course at the Indira Gandhi National Open University and certification in Sports Nutrition. The more we knew, the more our confidence increased. We began to like the fitness area more.
"If you can’t figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For your passion will lead you right into your purpose.”
The world was stunned by the epidemic of covid-19. When the whole world was closed and at home, fitness centers were one of the first to close. The gyms were closed for about a year. We were allowed to work only at short intervals but did not even get enough for our daily expenses. This is the first time we had been thinking about online fitness training.
As soon as I spoke to Hafsa about this, Hafsa said, "Yes, Shahi, we can do it, I am with you always" Hafsa was with me not only with the energy of words but also with her deeds. So the two of us started an online fitness business called Fitreat Couple. We needed to give the client a "fitness treat" as our name implies.
I could not go to the gym or train my clients. Even so, people started approaching me by asking for fitness training. Because many people wanted to achieve their fitness goals. In this situation where one can not even go for a walk, we thought seriously about how to get fitness from home. In the beginning, there were no significant clients. We were confident that we would be able to carry on with it. Our first client was our neighbour. He lost significant weight in his first week.
Along with the happiness of the club, our confidence also increased. Gradually, we got more clients and we structured a program after so much research. In the first days, we were alone in contracting and consulting the client. Hafsa initially had a Facebook page called "Fitreat by Hafsa". Most of them were Hafsa's fitness tips and health tips. Gradually, our YouTube channel and Instagram page started to go live.
To start with, we happened to schedule the workouts that google gave us and we are extremely grateful for the same. And the turning point of our fitness journey was when the entire universe stood still because of Coronavirus, people started to worry about their health and diet. We had their back as always and made them believe in us with long-duration phone calls of convincing them about our program. They made it to their friends and relatives and hence our family just got bigger. We always have a special place for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and zoom for helping us reach our fitness training to the world in the form of advertisements and webinars..
We wanted people to have a smile on their faces even though most of them couldn’t make it to the gym, therefore our program is purely home-based training. At earlier times, it was “Fitreat by Hafsa “ which eventually turned to Fitreat Couple as we as a couple are out there to help people to lead a healthy life. We always wanted to approach the world accurately and make everyone’s life fit and healthy. By 2020, we hired 1 sales staff and 3 nutritionists. After one and half years our team evolved to 15 members. We were really happy when they and their family showed us love and gratitude for supporting them in such a difficult time. We started approaching celebrities as they can share their experiences with their followers, and hence we are approached by more of them. We thank the almighty for showing us a way to help people beautifully and healthily.
Feedback always made us grow better, hence after every successful batch, we try to gather feedback from our clients and improve our training sessions. We made an end to google workout videos and started to shoot the same on our home premises and in gym surroundings with special permissions given in hand own video equipment.
Since our family had a strong and healthy relationship with fitness we used to share digital equipment for capturing our training methods. It’s been 3 years since we started our online career, which is turning successful with all our passion and hence we enjoy what we do. From 15 staff members, our team has become 65+ hardworking and sincere team members. All these could happen only with the Almighty’s blessings and the passion in us.
From an official perspective, we have 5 departments core team, the Admin team, the Sales team, the Feedback team, and the Nutritionist team. We are really happy to provide our service to 38+ countries and satisfy 20k+ customers. One way we feel special is that it’s with the natural home-based food and home-based workouts we can lead people's healthy life.
Our vision is to ensure from generations to generation. So here we are on the journey of accomplishing our dream and helping people to stick to the healthy version of their lifestyle. Point to be remember “Fitness is not something you achieve and forget, it’s something you attain and maintain”
Online Transformation Journey
