After Hitting $1 Million In A Solo Business A Fitness Entrepreneur Embarks On A Second Act

The System by Stacy

Stacy Berman became a New York City fitness icon in her bootcamp business. Now she is launching The System by Stacy, a line of whey protein drinks.

A lifelong learner, Berman became a certified Reiki master in 2015 and earned her Ph.D. in natural medicine from Quantum University in 2017. She also studied meditation with guru Baskaran Pillai, whose focus is on enhancing human intelligence.

As her knowledge of health and wellness deepened, Berman found herself determined to apply it to a new challenge. “I want some growth from what I am doing professionally,” she says. In January 2015, she gave her customer list to a loyal instructor who had never let her down. Since then, Berman has worked on launching a new business, The System by Stacy, a line of organic whey protein powders that has a subscription-box model. She also does nutritional counseling.

For many long-time New York City residents, Stacy Berman is a familiar figure. Berman was the force behind Stacy’s Bootcamp, which ran fitness classes in Central Park and other New York City parks for 15 years. She started the bootcamp as a personal trainer in 1999, an early pioneer of such classes before they were ubiquitous.

Having studied taekwondo alongside her father growing up, Berman saw that using one’s own body for resistance, instead of weight machines at the gym, could be a very efficient way to train. She invited a handful of long-term, private clients to join her for ultra-challenging, small-group classes in Central Park—which she ran no matter what the weather.

“That came partly out of passion, and partly out of just noticing there was a missing link in what I was seeing in the fitness industry,” says Berman, who received her certification as a personal trainer while studying health education and psychology at Hunter College and later worked at several well-known health clubs in New York City. “What I noticed at the gym was I would either see the New Year’s and summer rush to the gym. People would sign up and come to the gym all the time, and after a month or two, would fall off. Then I saw the other group, dedicated to their workout but, sometimes over months or years, didn’t really see any changes in their bodies.”

Berman was determined to give them a reason to keep coming back with her rigorous bootcamp class. The first class she offered was at 5:30 a.m. on a Friday in Central Park. Although she did not know of other classes like it at the time, she had a hunch it would be successful—and turned out to be right.

“That business grew very organically,” recalls Berman. “It started out with three or four of us training in the park. People would see us walking by. I would give them my information. Then it grew to 10 people to a class, then 20.”

In response to the growing demand, Berman gradually expanded to other times of day and spread out to parks such as Battery Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. As she expanded to hiring other instructors as contractors and increased the number of classes, she hit the $1 million mark. “In terms of having a business go from ideation form to profitable to hitting the $1 million mark, for me, mentally, was a huge achievement,” she says.

The System by Stacy

Stacy Berman became a New York City fitness icon in her bootcamp business. Now she is launching The System by Stacy, a line of whey protein drinks.

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