A 90s fitness guru who once had a multi-million dollar empire became a food delivery driver to make ends meet.
Susan Powter, now 66, rose to fame as a nutritionist, personal trainer and motivational speaker three decades ago, earning $50 million a year, but almost all of her money disappeared after her finances suffered from mismanagement.
Now the fitness guru calls a low-income senior community in Las Vegas home and receives two free meals a week, Powter revealed to People.
After selling his iconic fitness program ‘Stop the Insanity! For $79.80 in the ’90s and earning millions of dollars a year, Powter filed for bankruptcy in 1995.
Although he still had some funds left, Powter said he was not in control, as financial advisors, business partners and his managers took over.
‘I have known despair. Desperation returns from the welfare office. It’s the shock of: “From there, now I’m here? What in the name of God?” he told the outlet.
Susan Powter, now 66, rose to fame as a nutritionist, personal trainer and motivational speaker three decades ago, but after losing almost her entire multimillion-dollar empire, she left the industry and relied on food delivery services to survive. (Pictured: Powter in 1995)
Now the fitness guru calls a low-income senior community in Las Vegas home, and has for six years, receiving two free meals a week.
He admitted that he “never checked the balances” in his account and regrets not taking control of his hard-earned money.
‘I should have questioned him. I fully recognize it. I made a mistake.
‘I knew how much control I had given up. I didn’t know what they paid me and where, but I had no property. There were no funds left for my children,” Powter said.
Just before losing almost all of her fortune, Powter was involved in a syndicated television show that she called “complete garbage.”
‘They put pearls on me. They produced “I” from me. “Those segments… I can’t even watch them now,” he said.
She then made the decision to leave the fitness industry, which led her to a new career path while also focusing on being a mother.
‘I was teaching in the basement of an elementary school, photographing underwater home births, driving my little Volkswagen Bug with my baby, just being a mom.
After reading his novel ‘And Then He Died… Stop the Madness! A memory,’ her children told their mother that they had no idea what was happening.
Now her story will be told in a documentary, ‘Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter’, created by filmmaker Zeberiah Newman. Jamie Lee Curtis has joined the project as executive producer. (Pictured: Curtis and Powter photographed a couple of months ago)
“I’m a very basic hippie girl,” Powter said.
In 2018, Powter confessed that her life became “scary as shit” when she became a driver for UberEats and GrubHub to earn at least $80 a day to eat and pay rent.
‘It’s very difficult. It’s terribly shocking. “If sadness could kill you, I would be dead,” she told People.
Last year he had a health scare and had to resort to collecting a Social Security check.
“That $1,500 check really surprised me,” he shared.
‘Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness lied. Liar. It wasn’t happiness. It was bigger than happiness. I took a deep breath. And this isn’t just a “you used to have millions and now you don’t” story. This is something very real that many, many women go through.”
He now saves his money “obsessively” and spends frugally.
‘I don’t spend money. I’m not going anywhere. Not like it was. These are the sweatpants I wear all the time. “Seven dollars on Amazon,” he told the outlet.
Although he has struggled financially for so long, Powter initially decided to keep it a secret from his family, until he wrote a book about his journey this year.
After reading his novel ‘And Then He Died… Stop the Madness! A memory,’ her children told their mother that they had no idea what she was going through.
Just before losing almost all of her fortune, Powter was involved in a syndicated television show that she called “complete garbage.” She then fled the industry, got jobs and took care of her children.
Powter has since become empowered to tell her story on the big screen after filmmaker Zeberiah Newman contacted her and asked if he could create a documentary about her journey.
After years of feeling like society had forgotten about her, Powter said, “I never thought that was possible,” regarding Newman’s request.
She told the outlet: ‘I’ve learned that women are invisible and invaluable after a certain age. It’s usually the fucked up age.
Shortly after contacting Powter about the documentary offer, Newman decided to contact one of the biggest movie stars and his good friend, Jamie Lee Curtis.
“She (Curtis) called me two minutes later and the next day she said, ‘Go back to Vegas and start filming right away,'” Newman recalled.
The Freaky Friday star, 66, has since become the executive producer of the upcoming documentary, ‘Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter.’
“As one of the world’s first true influencers at the beginning of what we would now call the social media era, Susan Powter was brash and brave, and she woke us all up,” Curtis told the outlet.
“Like so many women’s stories, Susan’s power and light were diminished, denigrated and dismissed.”
Powter met the actress just a few months ago, while they were posing for a photo together.
‘I was crying. And I said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. I had lost faith. I had lost complete and utter hope,'” Powter said.
After finding her voice again and giving her career a second chance, Powter now plans to go on an RV tour across the country to sell her self-published book and talk to people going through similar struggles (pictured: Powter with Will Smith in Episode 11 of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air)
Newman said she chose to tell Powter’s story because she believes it can ignite other women who believe they have been forgotten as they get older.
“Anyone who was frustrated because the system wasn’t working for them connected to her felt seen by her,” he explained.
Speaking of the growth he’s already seen in Powter, Newman added: “She’s blossoming as a person and not as a celebrity or a thing in the world, just as a human being.” “It’s really amazing to see her regain her power again.”
After finding her voice again and giving her career a second chance, Powter now plans to go on an RV tour across the country to sell her self-published book and talk to people going through similar issues.
“Those women will hear my voice and say, ‘Well, damn, she hasn’t changed one bit,'” he said.
‘What I feel now is the possibility of possibilities. There were days and days, months and months and years when I didn’t feel that.
‘I lost hope, but now I’m full of it. “I’ve never been more excited.”
