Some businesses start with a product. Fitcarma started with a problem — one that Barry and Shay Kostabi had both lived from the inside. Across nearly two decades of combined experience in group fitness, studio leadership, brand consulting, and coaching, they kept encountering the same gap: the knowledge that made global fitness brands operate beautifully was almost entirely inaccessible to the independent studio owners and instructors trying to build something of their own. That gap is what pulled Fitcarma into existence, though the path there was anything but straight.

The Building Blocks to Fitcarma

Barry launched the Fitness Career Mastery podcast in 2017 while living in Beijing, supporting a boutique brand expanding from Taiwan into mainland China. At the time, there were almost no dedicated resources for boutique fitness professionals, and the podcast became one of the first platforms built specifically to share practical, strategic knowledge with instructors and studio owners worldwide. Shay, meanwhile, was carving her own path — from professional acting training in New York to becoming a master trainer and eventually the East Coast Regional Director for Flywheel and FlyBarre, then consulting for studios on team building and experience. 

When she and Barry came together, their personal and professional work found a natural home under one roof. Fitcarma took its clearest shape during the pandemic, when studios needed brand clarity, differentiated experiences, and leadership capable of holding a community together through uncertainty. Barry and Shay responded with courses like Secrets of Brand Building and The Art of Coaching and Cueing, helping hundreds of studios adapt without losing what made them worth returning to.

Building Studios That People Come Back To

Fitcarma runs across two pillars—brand strategy and experience design. Brand strategy is the work of clarifying what a studio believes, what problem it solves, and what journey a client feels they’re on from the moment they walk in. Experience design is what makes that promise feel real inside the room, from the coaching and cueing, the music selection, the pacing, to the emotional arc of a class working together, so that clients leave feeling something specific. 

Most studios struggle with consistency, with one instructor delivering something electric and another delivering something forgettable, and clients end up attached to a person rather than a brand. When that instructor leaves, attendance follows. Fitcarma helps studios codify and systematize the experience so it is consistent across instructors and, eventually, across locations, allowing a business to grow without sacrificing the quality that made it successful in the first place.

They’ve also built the Group X Conservatory, their instructor development arm, where coaches learn to use what Barry and Shay call “invisible levers” — the neuroscience-backed elements of coaching, cueing, music, and intention that help participants enter flow states, feel more capable mid-class, and leave feeling empowered. The belief underneath all of it is that fitness is not the destination. It’s the vehicle. What people are really seeking, often without being able to name it, is a better experience of themselves — more energy, more confidence, a felt sense of belonging that carries into their lives.

To inquire about becoming Fitcarma’s next case study client, book a complimentary 15-minute Fit Call here!

Final Thoughts

Barry and Shay have spent the better part of two decades watching studios open with incredible energy and quietly struggle to sustain it because the experience was never designed to be consistent, and the brand was never clear enough to build loyalty. That pattern is exactly what Fitcarma was built to interrupt. They’ve seen it from angles as instructors, studio leaders, consultants, and now as the people other fitness professionals turn to when they need someone who has been in the room.

Their methodology comes directly from the problems they’ve watched unfold across hundreds of studios worldwide, and the solutions they’ve tested, refined, and delivered at scale. They understand why studios stall and what it takes to build something people enjoy and will come back to time and time again. That combination of lived experience and strategic clarity is rare, and for studio owners and instructors trying to build something that lasts, it’s exactly the kind of guidance that makes the difference.

About Elisa Edelstein
Elisa is a curious and versatile writer, carving her niche in the health and wellness industry since 2015. Her lens is rooted in real world experience as a personal trainer and competitive bodybuilder and extended out of the gym and on to the page as a writer where she is able to combine her passions for empowering others, promoting wellness, and the power of the written word.