Exploring Life & Business with Anwar Rayyan of Sculpted Fitness

Today we’d like to introduce you to Anwar Rayyan.

Hi Anwar , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
In 2021 i received a health scare, i was told if i kept living my current lifestyle that i will develop type 2 diabetes. Receiving that news at 24 years young, i knew i had to make huge changes in diet and exercise. From that day moving forward, i slowly made changes to improve my health. I started off by walking around my neighborhood for cardio. My first day walking, i only had enough energy to walk around the block once. Day by day, i worked my way up to walking a full 2 miles before work. I also bought a walking pad to help me get my steps in while I was working from home. in addition, i began strength training and teaching myself to eat right. just like walking, i eased my way into lifting weights and slowly taught myself to eat well balanced and healthy meals. It took a while to unlearn the habits of my old lifestyle and even to this day i still struggle with binge eating. through my journey, i realized health and fitness is intertwined with mental health. Understanding the psychological aspect of our relationship with food and why we have certain habits is what truly helped me lose 100 pounds and keep it off till present day. I am no longer considered pre- diabetic and only wish I started my journey sooner.

i did all of the above from home and with the help of various educational sources like science based articles and research, fitness influencers, and registered dieticians . Through my journey, I was never really comfortable to join a public gym and workout. I was always worried of how I would look if I did a workout wrong or be embarrassed to try something new. Most public gyms are huge with a lot of people around. For a beginner, its easy to be intimidated and put your goals on the back burner if you are not comfortable or if you dont feel safe.

Being overweight for most of my life, people were very surprised when they would see me next and realize that I lost nearly half of me in size. Women would slowly start to open up about their own health struggles and weight issues with me. To no surprise, a lot of women felt the same way i felt about public gyms in our area. I would soon start to share my health tips and tricks as well as workouts to anyone looking for help. I found it very rewarding to be able to be part of other peoples journey. Instead of women having to struggle by starting from scratch with their lifestyle change, i was able to provide beneficial guidance and support by being able to relate to their personal struggles. That is when the idea occurred to me to open up a female only gym to help women achieve their own health and fitness goals. I wanted to create an environment for women in any stage of their fitness journey that is safe, not intimidating or judgmental and where women can learn from each other and support one another through their toughest times. I also wanted Sculpted Fitness to be different than other gyms. I wanted to be affordable and accessible to all women regardless of their financial situation. The gym offers flexible monthly memberships and no penalty or cancellation fees if they did not want to continue because health and wellness should not be a luxury that only some people can afford.

We have been open for a little over 8 months now, we have helped hundreds of women achieve their own goals. Sculpted Fitness and its staff has been able to provide excellent customer service to the community of east dearborn and we are continuously listening to our customers to improve our gym to meet their needs

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Opening up a business has been a struggle met with lots of road blocks for majority of the way. While preparing for opening, i was still working my stressful full time position at a corporate company. I went from working with severely injured victims of car accidents to being my own boss and the fate of my company in my own hands. I had to pivot from having a team member perspective to being the sole decision maker and since this is my first business it was a huge learning curve.

In my corporate days, i rarely asked for help from others, however, I found myself leaning on family members and friends to help me start the business. I found it difficult to reach out to people when i was met with tasks i couldn’t complete myself like getting my HVAC system up to code in order to pass my inspection from the city. I quickly learned, one person is not able to do every single task themself and its okay to reach out to professionals to complete tasks that are out of my area of expertise.

Just like my major weightloss journey, i slowly eased myself into my journey of entrepreneurship. I became a student of branding and marketing, bookkeeping and financial management, human resources, operations and logistics and most important – designated handy women to fix random things that break. I continue to face new obstacles daily that forces me out of my comfort zone when trying to come up with creative solutions.

At first, when unexpected obstacles would occur, I would get so upset and discouraged. At one point, I started to ask myself is having my own business worth the stress? After all I ventured out to entrepreneurship to leave a highly stressful job that i was not completely happy in and when things would pan out in a way I did not expect them to be, it was hard to continue to be motivated and continue to work towards my goals. I remember reaching out to Abe Dawi, a family friend who I consider a mentor in the world of business, after coming back from vacation and walking into the gym a week prior to opening day and realizing while i was gone a huge portion of the ceiling in the bathroom fell through and melted snow and water was trickling down into the bathroom. At that point, I felt defeated I did not want to delay opening the gym anymore. I asked my mentor if these unexpected problems is normal in business or was I having a string of bad luck. My mentor talked me out of giving up by sharing his wisdom. He advised that my job as CEO is to solve problems and everyday a new issue will occur that would need my attention- so I HAVE to get used to it! After our conversation, my perspective shifted from negatively thinking “what else could possibly go wrong?” to “i wonder what new problem will have my focus today?” it truly is a privilege to be able to start a new business from just dream. The most important lesson i learned was to be patient and to face all challenge head on with a clear mind and no emotion that may sway your judgment.

Two months into opening, I found myself not being able to balance my responsibilities at my full time job while trying to ensure everything was running smooth at the gym. My end goal was to eventually leave my corporate position that i had been working at for 5 years and to be a full time entrepreneur when i had a few months or a year worth of steady income from the business. I tried to hold onto to both jobs as long as I could, i did not think or plan to leave so soon. I did not want to leave a high paying position with benefits; a position that took years to work up to and with coworkers that I had built valuable friendships. But with a very new business and the sole owner of that business, I knew it was crucial for me to be present almost daily to ensure the staff was operating to the standards that i set for my gym and the environment stays clean, safe, non-judgmental to ensure the highest customer satisfaction. I spent days and countless sleepless nights weighing the benefits and opportunities of me leaving a steady paycheck. However, the day came where I could not be at two places at once and in order for my business – something I spent months working on to open and pouring tremendous amount of money in – to succeed, i had to take the leap of faith and quit my corporate position to focus all my attention and energy to building and scaling my business. We have been open for a little over 8 months now and I do not regret my decision of leaving my fulltime job; i have been able to put all my efforts in developing myself, my staff , my business and prioritizing providing the best possible services at an affordable price for women looking to change their lifestyle.

We’ve been impressed with Sculpted Fitness , but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Sculpted Fitness is a female only boutique gym located in the heart of East Dearborn. We offer flexible and affordable memberships, nutritional guidance, as well as personal training services. For our memberships we have no cancellation fees, no contracts, and no annual fees! This sets us a part from most of the fitness industry. We understand that life happens, and sometimes a person will fall onto hard times that will put them in a situation where they cant afford their membership. members are able to pause their membership for any length of time if they need a break or they are going on vacation. They are able to cancel their membership with no penalty because we know we wont be everyone’s preferred place to work out – AND THAT IS OKAY! We want our members to WANT to be part of the Sculpted family. Our environment is extremely supportive from staff to members – we want to see everyone win and achieve their goals that they set out to complete.

I am most proud of our company and staff and their ability to adapt based on our customer requests and needs. When we first opened, the least expensive membership option was $50 monthly for 24/7 access. Within the first couple of days, the feedback from the community was that the lowest option is too expensive. In order to meet their needs we created a more affordable membership for those not wanting 24 hour access. The SMART membership is $35 a month and at this moment, a majority of our clients are part of the SMART membership. In hindsight, if we did not create a more affordable option – then we would not have been able to help as many women as we have.

How do you think about luck?
Luck is an interesting concept. You cannot measure or obtain metrics on luck, you cannot obtain key demographics to help you identify trends and consumer behavior, you cannot obtain market research or competitive analysis on luck or even obtain a step by step guide on how you may be able to cash it in. Relying solely on luck would be a disservice to any business owner. My belief is to pour as much as i can in my business that the only option is to succeed. The idea is to work non- stop that failure is not an option. If maximum amount of effort is put in then there should be no reason to not succeed.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sculptedfit_ness/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Sculpted-Fitness-61570822087941/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sculpted-fitness-dearborn-2