Side Hustle Feature: Kelly Ross-Dawes, Generation Fit

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, Kelly Ross-Dawes of Orange County, CA headed a successful personal training business, Generation Fit, named after the surprisingly versatile range of clients she worked with from all backgrounds—from young adults to seniors, professional athletes to patients with chronic diseases. In her free time, she worked on her passion project, also named Generation Fit as part of her brand, a fledgling company where she created fitness products.

Kelly Ross-Dawes

However, after the pandemic, jobs in the service industry were disproportionately hit the hardest as their need dwindled, and Ross-Dawes’s personal training business was no exception. In the blink of an eye, a lifetime of hard work was jeopardized completely beyond her control, but more importantly, she worried about her clients—particularly her seniors—many of whom had chronic illnesses and relied on regular training sessions for medical reasons.

Forty years ago, Kelly Ross-Dawes was diagnosed with Type I diabetes—in those days a death sentence, before the existence of glucometers or readily available insulin. At 12-years-old, she was given a mere twenty years to live, give or take. Her days became filled with various limitations—from daily injections of animal-sourced insulin, derived from the pancreases of cows and pigs, with no way to monitor her blood sugar levels, to her unquenchable thirst during school affecting her academics.

“I didn’t want to be a pain in the neck, but I was always raising my hand, asking to get water,” Ross-Dawes said. “I remember getting called out by a teacher…she said the word ‘flake’. ‘You’re such a flake, you’re always disrupting class’. There are many people I know who did not survive being diagnosed back then.”

She describes her lifelong journey, from a rambunctious twelve-year-old with a death sentence to a personal trainer, as an accident.

“It happened more out of rebellion, I think, just as a kid because of all the mean adults—all the blaming and shaming me. It felt like, ‘well, I’m just going to do what I want.’”

In the ’90s, Ross-Dawes became a full-on adrenaline junkie. “Come to find out, all the craziness of me living on the edge—dirt biking, skydiving, really stupid things that everyone else would have said, ‘You can’t do this.’ Well, tell me not to, and I’m gonna. I felt like, ‘well, I’m not going to live long anyway.’ That’s always in the back of your head.”

Eventually, she fell in love with boxing and became a registered fighter. When the first Hemoglobin A1C tests came out, to her and her doctors’ surprise, Ross-Dawes’s levels were around 6 percent, excellent numbers for a Type 1 diabetic, as the goal for most diabetics is 7 percent or below. Her adrenaline-junkie ways, which had hooked her onto exercise, had directly contributed to helping save her life. Observing the miraculous effects of exercise upon health firsthand, Ross-Dawes started her personal training business soon after marrying and having her son, specializing in chronic illnesses and senior fitness.

However, she began struggling more with her exercises as she became more brittle, experiencing issues with autonomic neuropathy affecting her heart rate.

“Exercise has become medicine for me,” said Ross-Dawes. “It wasn’t based on vanity—I’d learned to love exercise more for health. If I missed a workout, it almost felt like I’d missed a dose of insulin.”

Seeing a lack of fitness companies educated with the proper background and training of the science behind chronic illnesses and simultaneously gauging the necessity for workout gear that could be used at home, Ross-Dawes decided to start her fitness product company not only to help her patients but also people like herself, who sought out products that they could use at their convenience and leisure in their homes.

Prior to the pandemic, Ross-Dawes’s fitness product company existed in a limited capacity. For years, she’d sat on the idea, paralyzed by fear. When she finally decided to start the company, she began with her specialized protective sleeve bands, a flagship item. Her background in boxing and personal training led to a design of a nylon sleeve covering, to protect both the band, extending its lifetime, and the user. The bands are lightweight and easily transportable, a feature she wanted to emphasize for her senior patients. Now, the product line includes a wide variety, all of which Ross-Dawes designs and develops herself, and then make overseas. They are then housed in California, ready to be shipped out at any time. During the pandemic, her items sold out quickly, and she was repeatedly bombarded with calls and emails about restocks and shipping time.

“Everything’s so virtual now, but where are the products? That’s where I want to be,” said Ross-Dawes. “I want it to be affordable, but the best quality—again, I’m thinking of my clients. It’s personal. Because I’m not just a business, creating a product for profit. I’m the person who was there.”

As lockdowns have opened back up, Ross-Dawes has received numerous referrals for her personal training services.

“I’ve had a couple, but I’ve turned them down because I want to put 100% into this business.”

She’s trying to work on solely her company now, with the goal to completely leave personal training behind. Her business has grown significantly, and many of her products are now featured in hospitals, gyms, Pilates studios, and physical therapy clinics, even though her earnings are not enough to live comfortably on full-time just yet, given the high costs of manufacturing and marketing involved. Her days are filled with product design, running social media, writing her blog, shooting exercise videos for YouTube and writing product descriptions and exercise manuals.

“I barely sleep,” she joked. “My disease itself is a full-time job.” But it’s more than clear that it’s all worth it for Ross-Dawes. “I want to shed some hope for people, who maybe have some obstacles in their life. I want them to see that, with baby steps, they can overcome and get stronger...and maybe that’s with exercise.”

Check out Generation Fit here.