Krissy CelaFounder & Creative Director

I was going through significant personal and family trauma. Coming from an Albanian household, women did not historically have a voice and were expected to marry, cook, and clean. The gym was the first place where I felt I had absolute control over my own body and mind, which laid the foundation for my entrepreneurial journey.

I started posting workout videos during university to make my ex-boyfriend jealous after he cheated on me. I was also waitressing thirty hours a week to pay my bills. Over time, I grew a community of three hundred thousand followers before I stopped waitressing, and I did not make my first brand deal until reaching six hundred thousand followers.

People had a massive demand for my workouts. I used my university laptop to compile a PDF with basic online gifs and personal training guides. My fiance built a simple website to sell the PDF for twenty-five dollars. I launched it hoping that at least one person would buy.

The website went live with a countdown, and we generated nine thousand pounds in a single hour. It was life-changing money. I immediately called my mother in excitement, and she told me to keep my feet on the ground because it was just the start. Her advice kept me from stopping or getting complacent.

I launched my app EvolveYou without a formal contract in place. When the contract was finalized five months later, it stated that I owned the fitness content but did not own the coding infrastructure or the database. It was a massive mistake that taught me never to start any project without clear ownership terms on paper.

When we had to migrate EvolveYou to a new server, the app was down for a month and we lost ten thousand subscribers. I give myself exactly twenty-four hours to panic and have a breakdown. After that, I accept the situation, focus on problem-solving, and rely on my childhood resilience to find a solution.

My family moved to the United Kingdom in the back of a truck when I was four, facing immense financial and cultural hardships. Growing up around physical abuse and instability taught me that there is no safety net. For me, there was no option but to survive, which fueled my drive to win in business.

I hate the term family in business. In a family, you accept bad behavior and turn a blind eye to failures. A business is a team built on a financial transaction. We have a duty to perform. If an employee is not delivering what we agreed on, they are not your family, and treating them as such hurts the company.

I had worked with my partners for eight years as an influencer on their athlete roster. I pitched them an activewear brand built specifically for women who strength train. I demanded fifty percent ownership of the business and utilized their existing logistics infrastructure to incubate the brand.

We set up the business under Austrian law during the pandemic because my partners had built businesses that way before. However, Austrian governance includes complex clauses that make equity distribution difficult. It created unnecessary complexities for global investors who prefer UK or US corporate structures.

We designed our activewear to align with a woman's cycle. We start with lifting products for when women feel strongest. We then move to hybrid designs for high energy, stretch products like our Soft Motion leggings for when the body needs comfort, and living products for rest and recovery.

I set every price myself because pricing is a game-changer that brands often ignore. I refuse to charge women one hundred dollars for leggings. I engineer the products backwards from a target retail price, ensuring high quality remains accessible without forcing customers to spend excessive amounts of money.

You cannot run a community-based business if you do not put the community first. I check TikTok and Instagram alerts daily to keep my finger on the pulse of customer satisfaction and disappointment. I want to understand their direct experiences with our product, which is something I cannot outsource to anyone else.

We pivoted by shifting our marketing away from social media influencers to global campaigns, such as partnering with Lori Harvey for Sunset Boulevard billboards. We also committed to ten-year leases for physical stores in New York and Los Angeles to show that the brand is built to stay.

I never wanted to be the CEO because it is not a creative role. I am brilliant at product design and branding, not day-to-day operations. I mentored under Zach for two years before appointing him. Having a professional CEO allows me to focus on creative direction while he manages strategic scaling.

The United Kingdom does not support entrepreneurs. There is a culture of tall poppy syndrome where people want to pull you down. In contrast, America pushes you to win big, and the press, peers, and market are much more abundant and open. Moving to America allowed me to be far ballsier in my ambitions.

People-pleasing is a plague that damages your brand. Early in my career, I allowed my team to run a campaign because I was worried about looking too controlling, and it was a complete failure. You cannot people-please and be a leader. You must be assertive, transparent, and firm to protect your business.