Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Basilio.
Ashley, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I spent over 20 years in the corporate world as an engineer and product design manager. I was good at my job but I knew in my heart it wasn’t where I was meant to be. My passion was people. Specifically, women. And helping them feel strong, capable, and truly supported in their bodies and their lives.
I actually started Get Fit With Ashley back in 2012 teaching fitness on the side while still working full time in corporate. I loved it, but life kept pulling me back to my desk. When I finally made the leap and left my corporate career in 2021, I relaunched Get Fit With Ashley with everything I had. No more side hustle!
Since then I’ve grown it into something I’m incredibly proud of — group fitness classes in my community, personal training clients, a YouTube channel packed with free workouts for women, a podcast called StrongHER Voices, and StrongHER Together, a private wellness community for women navigating perimenopause, menopause, and everything that comes with their second adulthood.
The engineering brain never went away though and honestly, it’s one of my superpowers. I believe that when you truly understand how something works, you can change it. That’s how I approach women’s health. So many women in midlife are doing everything right and still feeling like their body is working against them. I help them understand what’s actually happening and give them a real, practical plan that finally works for this season of life.
I’m rooted right here in Schwenksville, PA, where I teach classes, train clients, and host the StrongHER Voices podcast. I was a featured speaker at the 2026 Pennsylvania Menopause Conference — and honestly? I feel like I’m just getting started.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest challenge has been myself.
When I relaunched Get Fit With Ashley in 2021 I thought the hardest part would be building an audience or learning the business side. And those things were hard. But what I didn’t expect was how much I would struggle with the emotional weight of entrepreneurship like the self-doubt, the comparison, the fear that what I was building wasn’t good enough or growing fast enough.
I’m a doer by nature. Give me a task and I will execute it with everything I have. But building a business requires a different kind of thinking — strategic, patient, long-view. That hasn’t always come naturally to me and I’ve had to work hard at it.
I also launched StrongHER Together my online membership community in the middle of a very crowded wellness space. Getting women to invest in themselves, in a recurring membership, when they are already stretched thin financially and emotionally is a real challenge. Women in midlife are often the last people to prioritize their own needs. I see it every single day.
And then there’s the reality of being a solo operator. I wear every hat – coach, content creator, community manager, podcast host, event organizer, marketer. There are weeks where the exhaustion really gets to me and the self doubt creeps in pretty loudly.
But I keep an “Inspiration” folder in my email inbox. And every time I think about quitting I re-read a message from a woman who says something I did or said really changed things for her. That she finally feels good in her body, or is stronger and more capable now, or just that she doesn’t feel alone anymore. That’s what keeps me going.
I know my work matters, even if it’s to a small number of women. And that makes every hard day worth it.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m the founder of Get Fit With Ashley and StrongHER Together, based in Schwenksville, PA.
My work lives at the intersection of fitness, menopause education, and community. On any given week I’m teaching group fitness classes, working with personal training clients, recording podcast episodes, filming YouTube workouts, speaking at events, and showing up daily inside StrongHER Together my private online wellness community for women in their second adulthood.
StrongHER Together is the heart of what I’m building. It’s a membership community where women navigating midlife (and beyond) come together for monthly challenges, expert masterclasses on women’s health, wellness plans, daily support, and real connection with women who understand exactly what this chapter of life feels like. Because information isn’t really the problem for most women – showing up consistently and not doing it alone is. That’s what StrongHER exists to solve.
I’m also a certified menopause health coach specialist and personal fitness trainer, and I was a featured speaker at the 2026 Pennsylvania Menopause Conference. I host the StrongHER Voices podcast and publish free workouts weekly on my YouTube channel because I believe every woman deserves access to real, honest information about her body regardless of her budget.
My mission is simple: help women in midlife finally feel strong, informed, and supported in their bodies and in their lives.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I think what looks like luck from the outside is usually just showing up consistently for a long time until the right moment finds you.
But there’s one moment I have to mention here because at the time it felt like the worst day of my life (but I don’t look at it that way now).
During a major corporate restructuring (a year after the pandemic hit) I lost my team and was demoted. Just like that, the career I had built for over two decades fell out under my feet. I spent the next year searching for another corporate role and found nothing. Going on interviews where I wasn’t chosen, applying for jobs that I never heard back from, not really seeing the right fit, and not being able to take the next step that I thought I wanted.
At the time I was devastated. Looking back now I can see it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. That door closing hard and without warning was what finally pushed me all the way through the door I’d been standing in front of for years. The one that led to relaunching Get Fit With Ashley. The one that led to a YouTube channel with accessible quick workouts, a community for women StrongHER Together and a podcast StrongHER Voices. The one that led to the work I was always meant to do!
It took me years to see it that way. But I see it clearly now.
I also feel lucky to have been building in the right moment relaunching in 2021 just as the national conversation around menopause was finally starting to get the attention it deserved. I’d been laying the groundwork since 2012, so when the moment came I was ready.
And I feel genuinely lucky to be rooted in a community that has supported me, and to have found work that actually matters to me. Not everyone gets that. I don’t take it for granted for a single day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://getfitwithashley.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getfitwithashley2012/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/getfitwithashley2012/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-barnes-basilio-528682108/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/getfitwithashley
- Other: https://getfitwithashley.com/podcast
