Black in Business is a partnership between Afros In Tha City and The Calgary Journal to showcase some of the city’s Black owned business and the people who power them.

The following feature is by Jasmine Krawchuk of The Calgary Journal.

Jacqui Mmono left her oil and gas sector job five years ago looking for a new adventure. She never expected this change would lead her to start her own fitness business in Calgary.

“I was in a place where I just didn’t know where my life was headed. It was frustrating,” Mmono said. “One minute you had work and the next minute you didn’t.”

After leaving her career in oil and gas, Mmono tried something completely different and founded Rhythm Fitness in 2017, a business that originally ran fitness classes and personal training in people’s homes.

Her goal is to make fitness accessible to everyone and to help build her clients confidence in the fitness environment.

“When I created the company, it was based on creating that sense of unity,” Mmono said. “Whether you’re Black, white, lesbian, gay, anything under the sky.”

Prior to the pandemic a large part of Mmono’s work involved training people within the comfort of their own homes. However, during the pandemic she went completely online in order to make fitness accessible to everyone amidst the lockdown and changing restrictions.

Mmono says she realized quickly that shifting her business to a completely online-based platform could keep her clients active, even beyond the pandemic.

Now that the restrictions surrounding COVID-19 have eased, Mmono is slowly moving back into in-home training, however she has also decided to provide her clients with the option to train online as well.

“I’m happy that people are still wanting to do the online thing,” Mmono says. “It’s the new norm.”

Watch Jasmine Krawchuk’s full interview with Jacqui Mmono here