From Personal Struggles to Wellness Success
Many successful entrepreneurs transform their greatest challenges into unique strengths, and Senada Greca exemplifies this beautifully. Once grappling with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, Greca has risen to become a leading voice in wellness, training high-profile clients like Kim Kardashian, amassing over 10 million followers across social platforms, and founding influential wellness companies including Aonic and WeRise.
Her journey underscores the power of a critical mindset shift—trading fleeting motivation for steadfast discipline—which propelled her from personal crisis to professional acclaim.
Turning Hardships into Expertise
Born and raised in Albania under a communist regime, Greca’s early life was marked by scarcity and hardship. At 14, she moved to the United States, where the cultural shock and new responsibilities intensified her struggles with mental health and eating disorders.
“I was stepping into womanhood during that time, so I went from scarcity in a communist country to now plentitude of different things, and responsibilities changed,” Greca recalls. “Now I was the only one in the family that spoke English and had to kind of carry the family at 14. And that started eating disorders, depression, anxiety.”
Rather than surrendering to these challenges, Greca discovered fitness as a healing outlet. She shifted her goal from being as skinny as possible to becoming as strong as possible, replacing motivation—which she describes as “transient”—with daily discipline.
“Motivation is a feeling,” she explains. “It’s transient. We feel like working out today. We might not feel like working out tomorrow. But when you build that discipline day in and day out, that’s what carries you through when motivation is lacking.”
Greca applied this philosophy not only to fitness but also to building her career. “I very much liken building a strong body to building a strong business, but on a much bigger scale,” she says. “It’s pushing through those tough days, making those tough decisions, showing up when you absolutely don’t want to.”
From Hobby to Industry Leader
Initially, fitness was a personal pursuit and a hobby for Greca, who holds an MBA and had a background in finance and sales. As she shared workouts and fitness insights on social media, her following grew rapidly, revealing a wider audience eager for her expertise.
Curious if her training methods could help others, Greca founded her first company, WeRise. The app began as a standard fitness platform but quickly evolved into a comprehensive transformation partner, combining strength training, personal coaching, nutrition guidance, and community support to keep users accountable.
WeRise embodies Greca’s mission: helping women overcome trauma, imposter syndrome, and career obstacles to become their strongest selves—physically and mentally.
The Kardashian Connection
Greca’s growing social media presence caught the attention of Kim Kardashian, who was impressed by Greca’s discipline and story. This connection led to Greca becoming Kardashian’s personal trainer, a highly visible yet behind-the-scenes role in Hollywood.
“She appreciated my discipline, my story, and what I’d accomplished, so that’s how she found me,” Greca states. “I like to say that you can’t control who discovers you or your work, but you can control what they find when they do. So when that opportunity came, I was ready for it. I didn’t chase it, but it happened, and I’m glad it did because it introduced me to so many opportunities that I’m incredibly grateful for.”
Greca trains Kardashian using the same methods promoted through WeRise, a fact Kardashian shared during a popular September workout challenge on social media.
Building a Science-Driven Wellness Brand
Inspired by her work with Kardashian and her own wellness journey, Greca launched Aonic, a supplement company focused on simplifying health and wellness through education and transparency.
“I kept seeing people who wanted to take care of themselves in a much better way through supplementation, but without the confusion and stress,” Greca explains. “There’s so much confusion when it comes to health and wellness, especially with healthcare optimization. I think sometimes that confusion is created so people can sell you something. With Aonic, we wanted to simplify that.”
Aonic’s motto, “end the markup,” reflects Greca’s mission to counteract the wellness industry’s trend of inflated prices driven by marketing and unnecessary ingredients. Instead, Aonic offers an annual membership model, allowing customers to purchase high-quality supplements at cost, eliminating traditional markups associated with premium brands.
Artificial intelligence plays a strategic role in reducing operational costs for Aonic, enabling Greca to pass savings directly to consumers. She notes, “If we utilize [AI] smartly, I think we can use it with Aonic to cut costs across sourcing, operations, manufacturing, finance, and branding, and bring those savings to the consumer. AI is being used in Silicon Valley to make companies loads of money, but nobody is really thinking about how it can reduce costs for consumers. I think we’re leading that effort, especially when it comes to supplement brands.”
Vision Beyond Personal Branding
Unlike many influencers who center brands around their personal image, Greca aims for her companies to thrive independently of her personal identity.
“I want the brands, whether it’s WeRise or Aonic, to grow beyond my relevance,” she shares. “I want them to encompass everything wellness while staying true to the standards of quality we’ve established in these early stages. I want to keep those standards as we grow, keep the products affordable and accessible, and continue using innovation, AI, and technology not to enrich our own pockets, but to pass those savings on to the consumer and help people take better care of themselves.”
Reflecting on her broader mission, Greca becomes emotional: “It’s not, ‘How can I make as much money as possible?’ It’s, ‘How can I help as many people as possible in the best way possible, in the most accessible way possible?’ Because, again, like I’ve said before, if you try to capitalize on the trust of people with every single thing that gets thrown at you, you’re eventually going to deplete that trust fund, as I call it.”
