Today we’d like to introduce you to Qunoot Sharafi.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Qunoot. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Growing up in a Pakistani household, good nutrition and exercise was simply not at all part of my culture or lifestyle. The food I grew up on was quite rich and gluttonous, aka very unforgiving. Being a first-generation American, I just had to learn about health on my own. I was not encouraged to play sports, in fact I was discouraged to do so by my conservative family, so I didn’t even bother. But I couldn’t hold back my desire to want to learn about nutrition and exercise. Being the first American female in my family, I also had an overwhelming desire to simply be strong. I always felt a correlation between being physically strong and empowering myself as a woman. My college education was actually in business and I had a concentration in accounting. I worked in accounting for a year and a half and passionately hated it. During the same time, I got into lifting weights and quickly fell in love with it. After working in accounting for 18 months and getting enough experience on my resume to potentially get the jobs that I wanted the market crashed which then would have forced me to go back to entry-level positions. Anywho, long story short I decided to do self-study to become a trainer and after passing the exam I literally made flyers at kinkos and went door to door. The rest is simply history and here we are ten years later.
Amazing how a market crash can turn out so well sometimes! Since then, has it been a smooth road?
To be perfectly honest, working for myself has always been very natural to me. Even as a kid, I remember being a good salesman. There are some struggles though that you don’t realize about having a service business until you are in one. Like for example, the markets and trends of consumers. Every summer and holidays people are terribly busy enjoying their lives that personal training is the last thing on their minds. Working for yourself always has some kinks in the road that you need to figure out though. After all, you are the one making up the game plan. There is no instructional manual or roadmap to success when it comes to working for yourself.
There’s definitely no instructional manual, that’s for sure! So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Real Results Inc story. Tell us more about the business.
My forte in work is really understanding and implementing nutrition well and enforcing the importance of strength training, particularly with female clients. You can never stop learning about nutrition or strength training. They are both an endless rabbit hole and I love evolving in both categories. I actually enjoy recording and editing videos of some quick food tutorials. People constantly seem to ask me about more good ideas for healthy snacks and meals.
Somewhat of a niche I have is working with women in the Muslim or Indo/Pak community. This wasn’t something in particular I was aiming to do when I first became a trainer, but it just made sense and happened naturally. I have a women’s only bootcamp in Skokie and that’s been my baby the last six years. I am very proud of the bootcamp that I offer, but more importantly, I am proud of the women that have taken the dive into working out and committed to it. Again, growing up in an Indo/Pak culture exercise just wasn’t on the radar. I never saw my mom or other women exercising, it wasn’t “a thing”. So I am tremendously proud of our community for acknowledging the importance of health and diving into fitness with me. What makes me the proudest is when mothers bring their daughters to class with them to workout together. They are setting the examples for these young girls that they all deserve. It’s inspiring and honestly just a privilege to be a part of it, let alone think I had any impact init.
Something else that I have started and am tremendously proud of is my corporate wellness programs. I’ve recently started working with companies to implement weight loss challenges and nutrition challenges. It has been uber exciting to see company cultures shift and businesses getting healthy one employee at a time. Thus far just in 2019 I have helped 20 employees from one local company lose 440 pounds.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
For one, the fitness industry isn’t going anywhere. We have more healthy options available than ever before and yet the obesity problem and the health of our nation is still an epidemic. There will always be a need for fitness. There is also now an abundance of exercise options. Group fitness is tremendously popular now and the variety of classes available is really great for consumers. Schedules are more flexible than ever and finding a class or group setting that might work for you is a lot easier. Online nutrition and training is also huge these days, and it’s really cool to see more affordable and remote options available for people that are just willing to do the work on their own with a bit of expert guidance.
Pricing:
- Women’s Only Bootcamp – $90 for once a week – 6 week programs
- Personal Training – $75 – $65 an hour for private sessions
- Corporate Training – Depends on company size
Contact Info:
- Website: www.realresults-inc.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/realresultsinc
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/qunootsharafi
- Phone: 847-845-7866
- Email: rresults@ymail.com
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