Fitness influencer, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of SweatPack, Umama Kibria has built her fitness brand around community. Through SweatPack, she connects fitness seekers to teams of like-minded friends or strangers, forming “Sweat Packs” or teams around shared activities and keeping everyone accountable on their fitness journey.
Alongside her work with SweatPack, Kibria has connected with a global community of hundreds of thousands fitness fans via her personal brand, smallandstrong.fit, on Instagram and Youtube.
Hayat spoke with Kibria about the changing landscape of the fitness scene, keeping up with her communities’ needs during the pandemic, how to stay fit from home, and much more.
Nicola Young: Obviously a lot of your brand and the things you do are location based – either in gyms or local to Atlanta. How have things changed since the quarantine, and how are you adjusting to working from home?
Umama Kibria: I think it starts from the foundation. With any business, especially Sweatpack, we’re rooted in community and commitment. So what we do typically is connect people to workouts and sports leagues with our technology platform. But in light of everything going on and the safety of our members, we had to quickly pivot, and think: “ok, how to we continue to serve this mission of bringing people together, holding them accountable, and offering all these outlet for staying active?” But doing that in a safe way. And that’s where our engineering came in and we pivoted over to our virtual workout challenges. This was in the pipeline for our technology, maybe one to two years out, but it was like, “we gotta switch gears and just get going now.” And that’s the beauty of technology, if you’re truly passionate about solving a problem it doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world, we’re going to find a way. And that’s why I love this team so much and we’ve helped so many people during this time just by launching this new initiative.
NY: Have you seen a lot of growth during this time, now that you have this new infrastructure?
UK: Yes! That was the amazing part – we grew 200% during the quarantine – revenue-wise, membership-wise – because at first yeah, we were just limited to Atlanta. We had scoped out events and done events nationwide, but we hadn’t planned to launch that until next year. So it’s amazing, taking advantage of these situations and being able to help even more people, that helped us. So we’re very grateful for everything.
NY: Absolutely. You’ve mentioned that in your career you’ve visited over 400 gyms – like, 400 actual, physical gyms?
UK: Girl, yes. It was 4 years ago, I started this little hobby that was a little like “dating myself” – getting uncomfortable, trying new gyms, trying to meet new people, I had just gone through a breakup…so it was really trying to empower myself. Every weekend I would go out and find a new gym, every month I traveled out to a new city by myself, so sometimes I would hit two or three gyms in one day. I went to over 436 gyms before quarantine happened, and now I’m “virtual gym-hopping”, which has also been a super fun experience. but during that time I learned a lot more about the fitness industry from both the B2B standpoint – from the gyms and studios and brands – as well consumers and their main problem, which is that people have memberships and don’t use it. Then on the gym side, they’re just trying to make sure people stay committed. The industry trend has now turned more to “class hopping”, but that doesn’t benefit the gyms as much. But that’s why I made sure I was very intentional, accidentally creating this business by just doing it for myself at first, trying to meet new people, then realizing “hey, I actually have a solution for this problem.”
NY: How many different countries have you been to a gym in?
UK: I think the number would be six. I definitely haven’t done as many international trips as I’ve wanted to – that halted this year, but I’m looking forward to that being the next step for both Sweatpack and for myself. For me going to a gym is the way for me to feel as comfortable as I can in an uncomfortable space. So it’s a great way to learn about culture and people, but in a way that empowers you.
NY: If you had maybe 3 big pieces of advice for people stuck at home but wanting to stay – or get – fit, what would that advice be?
UK: Number One is to think like an athlete. Athlete mentality is all about being agile, being able to pivot and pick up new tricks. For me, running is something I never enjoyed or wanted to do but it’s a new uncomfortable challenge. So we just have to take advantage and look at our environment and reframe it as an opportunity for growth.
Number Two is to be selfish before we’re selfless. I know even though we’re stuck at home, it’s even harder to carve out time for ourselves when we have no separation between work life and relationships, so making sure we prioritize that time.
Then Number Three is to find a way to meditate. That doesn’t have to be, you know – “om”, just sitting around – maybe it’s just going for a walk, maybe it’s listening to a podcast. I use the “Simple Habits” app. So something that helps get perspective and keep focus. And I think those three things will help us not only become better leaders and thrive in quarantine, but also help us outside of it.
Fira Gasimova: For some backstory, I wanted to explain our project – what we do is inspired by my personal experience coming from a predominantly Muslim, but secular country, and assimilating into BU, this huge campus. It really made me consider my background and identity in a way that I had not before, and how other people’s perception of me doesn’t always track reality. So I wanted to start this project to show how individuals can share this identity while doing so many incredible, different things – like in your case, founding this fitness empire. So coming from that, you have mentioned that you come from a Bengali Muslim family – how did you navigate the relationship between your family and tradition, and pursuing your passion for fitness, becoming an influencer, all of that? Did you find ways to mesh your Muslim identity with the things you were pursuing?
UK: That’s such a great question, and thank you guys for starting this project and empowering people by showing these stories, because that’s exactly what I needed when I was getting started. Because, no – this was hard for me from the beginning, when I chose fitness. I grew up in America, but still I felt like after 2001, the attacks, I had a hard time identifying as a Muslim because of those assumptions of what people said I had to be, and putting me in a box that way. But for me, I actually regained a relationship with God, and the religion, and my Muslim identity through fitness – because through fitness you learn about empowering yourself, your strength, having faith, not having expectations – that’s what leads me to following the Five Pillars. But sometimes that communication is altered through culture and structured religion, and how people practice, these rules. So I felt like I was actually a better Muslim after I got involved with fitness. But in fitness, you know, you show off your body, you show your transformation – so because people saw that, they said “oh no, you can’t be – you’re excluded.” So for me I excluded other Muslims because I didn’t want my parents finding out [about my fitness career]. But eventually, I found fitness, and I was able to go back to the root – we’re rooted in community. That’s what our religion is all about, and that’s what I built this business on, and because of that I now have a better relationship with the religion, with the culture, and now my business can help solve this problem for Muslims globally.
FG: Yeah, exactly – that’s really inspiring. Success stories like yours help us show how independent and individual we can be, sharing this identity without being limited by it.
UK: Yeah, exactly. And to add to that, we have to understand that there are more of us, that are trying to re-define and create a new narrative, and so there are so many more opportunities for us, because now we’re shifting the narrative and creating more opportunities for us to come up together.
