We recently connected with Sasha Zerin and have shared our conversation below.
Sasha, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
The defining moment in my career was definitely deciding to go out on my own and create my own brand. In the beginning of 2020, I was teaching 4-5 fitness classes a day and a lot of times fully depleted at the end of the day. In June of 2020 I started SashaFIT which is a virtual small group training platform. It allows me to coach my clients all at once no matter where they are and allows them to either take the workout live virtually or do the workout on their own time via a recording.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?
My name is Sasha Zerin. I am a certified personal trainer and yoga teacher, and I own a virtual training program called SashaFIT.
SashaFIT comprises workouts programed by me (a personal trainer) and allows my clients to follow a program (lower, upper, and full body days alternated with yoga classes) rather than them doing random workouts led by different instructors every day. This allows my clients to train more efficiently and with lower risk of overuse injury as I program their workouts intentionally.
Before I started SashaFIT, I also was jumping into random fitness classes led by different instructors every day and struggled with a lot of overuse injuries. I now follow my SashaFIT program almost to a T and have never been stronger or felt better.
Starting my own business rather than relying on studios and gyms to supply my clients was scary. It’s something I’d wanted to do for a long time but hadn’t worked up the courage to do. If I could go back, I would have started sooner, because I absolutely love running my own business and getting to put my clients through intentional workouts I truly believe in. I encourage my clients not to focus on aesthetics or how they look, but rather focus on getting stronger and more confident, both mentally and physically, to help them be the best versions of themselves that they can be.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
For me, the majority of my new clients come from my current clients telling them about my workouts. Word of mouth is something I think a lot of people think might be a thing of the past, but if you make an impact on your current clients’ lives they are going to tell others about you. It’s also so much easier today, with social media, for clients to share my info/ workout challenges with their friends and encourage them to try my workouts. I am so grateful to have so many amazing clients that have shared SashaFIT with their friends and families.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
About five months into starting SashaFIT, I found out I was pregnant. I was so excited, but also terrified as I had just started my own business.. As excited as I was to be pregnant, I couldn’t help but be worried about how I would navigate running SashaFIT during my maternity leave. It was scary to think that I might lose clients who weren’t willing to stick around while I was on leave and that my business may fail because of this. I ended up hiring an amazing trainer and wonderful yoga teachers from my fitness community, to teach my classes while I took six weeks off with my new baby. Thankfully, my members were very supportive and understanding and stuck around with me through one of the most challenging times of my life.
Having Baylor (my daughter) and returning to workouts after giving birth was something I was able to relate to with a lot of my clients. It was nice to have so many clients that had kids themselves or that were also pregnant that understood what I was going through. My at home workouts made it so much easier for me to get my workouts in with a baby. I honestly don’t think that I would have been able to work out half as much as I did if I hadn’t had my program to follow at home.
Working out through my pregnancy and postpartum journey inspired me to also get certified in pre and postnatal fitness through NASM to help serve any of my pre and postnatal clients.
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Image Credits
Brenna Lightfoot Bethany Aleshire