We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amal Hantash a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amal, appreciate you joining us today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

Who doesn’t love vacation? Studies have shown that taking time away from the job can have physical and mental health benefits. People who take vacations have lower stress, less risk of heart disease, a better outlook on life, and more motivation to achieve goals.

I’ve been to many places in the world. I’ve been to all of Western Europe, Middle East, the Caribbean Islands, Egypt, and Thailand. I’ve visited parts of the USA and of course locally here in Canada.

I love travelling. It exposes me to different cultures, food, and adventures. It creates pleasant memories to remember and fun stories to tell.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For folks who don’t know me, I’m a software engineer with a masters degree in Artificial Intelligence. I work in telecommunication. I am also a fitness fanatic. When I was in Jordan, I noticed a lot of women at the gym were misinformed and miseducated fitness wise. So I felt the need to share my knowledge with them. So I created the AHF Meta page (not long ago it was called Facebook). It was lit, people were telling me. In fact people were saying things like “come to Amal’s page, it’s got the real information”. So this motivated me to expand the page. So I teamed up with MP and started selling their bodybuilding program, designed for men and women, online. I was making profits from day one. So, I thought of surveying the page fans to whether they are interested in purchasing fitness and bodybuilding apparel. So, it happened, and I created the site and searched the products that would make a deal and started selling online.

When I was setting up AHF eCommerce site, the primary focus was on the business itself. Having a good product to sell is the most important thing. Not even a perfect website will sell an inferior product. At least not for long.

I’m most proud of the positive influence of AHF on people worldwide. When a woman tells me that she reads my educative posts, followed them religiously, and that helped her lose a lot of weight, and made her happy, that makes me most proud. When bodybuilders text me and tell me your page is hella dope, it makes me proud. When clients comment things like “your content is great, really authentic”, “I just saw your profile. It’s really amazing”, “Awesome clothes, keep making new stuff. Finally someone understands that people in shape can’t buy off the rack we need clothes that fit differently but much more than that we wanna look good in them cus it takes a lot of hard work to look this way so why do we have to put on pants that don’t fit the waist just so our legs fit in or wear a shirt down to the knees to get our shoulders chest and arms in it.”, it definitely makes me proud. Last but not least, when people refer others to me in their own site as an option for best products to buy online, or refer me to magazines to interview me, I am absolutely most proud. I’m in the news. You are my 4th interviewers this year.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

I don’t manufacture my products. I deal with factories worldwide. Here is how I do it:

1. First I browse suppliers for trending fitness and bodybuilding clothes for men and women.
2. I select the models that I believe would make a great distinctive look on the client. So basically I put my taste on it.
3. I optimize for best supplier who makes these selected fitness and bodybuilding clothes.
4. I add these fitness and bodybuilding clothes to the site in their categories, and start selling them.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I was spending money to get traffic. Paid traffic is very expensive. If I want to sell my product in a reasonable price, and I have to pay page host percentage of sales, and pay the 3rd party payment processing platform a percentage of sales, To add to that paid traffic that doesn’t get me sales to bring to profit state was a pivot for me. I started focusing on getting organic free traffic instead.

Contact Info:

• Website: amalhantashfitness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amalhantashfitness/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmalHantashFitness
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/amalHantash
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AmalHantash
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@amalhantashfitness