In this interview, host Richard Toutounji talks with Marisa Street, co‑founder of Fit Professionals, a recruitment agency dedicated to the fitness industry. Marisa shares her personal journey from teenage gymnastics coach to personal trainer and business owner, explaining how frustration with finding qualified staff led to the creation of Fit Professionals. She describes the company’s national expansion, the market research that uncovered a surplus of 4,000 fitness‑industry graduates each month, and the development of a proprietary seven‑component screening framework that filters candidates for gyms, studios, and corporate fitness teams. The conversation covers the three service models offered – a 12‑month retainer (minimum four placements), an ad‑hoc placement for single hires, and a branded job‑board solution for in‑house recruitment – and highlights the cost structure (as low as $2,000 per placement for sub‑$50k salaries) compared with traditional job boards like SEEK. Throughout, Marisa emphasizes the time‑saving, quality‑focused, industry‑specific nature of their service and how it differs from generic recruitment agencies. The interview ends with a teaser that the seven recruitment strategies will be shared in a future episode.
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Hey, how you going? It's Richard from Getting Raw, and today I want to speak to Marissa Street from Fit Professionals. She's one of the major sponsors on Fitness Marketing, and I want to find out who she is, what she does, what her company does. At the end of the day, they're a recruitment agency for specializing in the fitness industry. So I want to really take the myths out of why use a recruitment agency, what are the benefits, who— why aren't we using it? And so let's just chat and let's just see where So, you're in the fitness industry, I think, which is the most important thing.
Absolutely.
What's— where'd you start in the industry?
Oh, look, I've come from a personal training background, owning my own business, being mobile, to working out of a facility, a 24-hour model.
Yep.
And then subcontracting trainers on top of that as well, so.
You've been in the trenches.
I have been. I've been right in there and I've been— got my hands dirty, so to speak.
How long have you been in the industry for?
I've been in the industry, actually professionally, I started when I was about 14. I was a gymnastics coach when I was about 14.
I see.
And I was training the men's gymnastics. That was challenging. So, and then I think since then I've gone into it professionally. Since 2005, I actually got my qualifications and started working from that. Yeah.
Okay, so now you've obviously found something missing and now you're really focusing on the recruitment. And I believe this is the first time, I don't know, I could be wrong, this is the first time a specialist in recruiting is in the industry. Absolutely.
It actually came about, there was a client that I was training who's now my business partner. Yep. And we were doing a training session one day, we used to talk about business ideas all the time, and he's also come from a fitness background as well. And I think we just got frustrated trying to find the right people, even when I was subcontracting for a trainer. Yeah. I found it really hard to go through that whole screening process of what I wanted to look for, and ideally somebody that's looking after the health of my clients was really important. Especially with, in terms of the clients, I used to think of them as if they were training my brother or my sister or— Yep. or my family, you know? So that was really important for me. We got really frustrated to try and find that and work on that process. So that was sort of where the idea came up. It was born out of frustration. Well, frustration and passion behind it, it really makes you drive into something, doesn't it? You know, if you've got that option of creating something amazing for this industry, and this is where we found the niche was missing. There's 3 directors. There's Melissa, David, and myself. Okay. And we've spent many, many hours, days, weekends, travelling up and down both coasts of Queensland and across through Australia as well. And after 8 months of really solidly putting in this concept and working on this model, we went national after 8 months, which is fantastic. So that was evident there that this industry really needs the recruitment aspect.
Well, I met your team at the recent Brisbane Awards night, and they were bubbly, they were personal. I was like, who are these guys? What are they doing? What's Fit Professional all about? So that's where I came to sort of know more about Fitness Professionals. But I have seen you around industry, Facebook or something, doing different things. So I've seen you around, which is really good. And I think that's really important for the fitness industry because I think the fitness industry is a bit of a close bunch and a clucky bunch. Absolutely. And we're very like certain people and certain opportunities. We like to sort of keep things in-house, I believe, as much as possible in this industry. But what I want to know is like, okay, my background's not gyms, more corporate, more personal training, but why would I choose a recruitment company over going and paying $200 and getting on a SEEK? That's what I think the big question would be out there that Greeting Raw would like to sort of figure out why. What's the pros, what's the cons?
Yeah, look, absolutely. It's a question that we had to do a lot of market research before we launched the idea. And what we found was there was a couple of things. One is that there's about 4,000 candidates that we have, or students that are coming out of RTOs nationwide every month. 4,000. Where are these 4,000 people going? And that was our biggest question. We found that every second person was a trainer or working in sales or doing MC or any type of role that we look after within the fitness industry. When we went actually and saw these business owners and we asked the question, you know, where do you find your staff? And a lot of them did say they went to the major job boards. But what happened was anybody was sort of clicking on that apply button and they would have 1,000 resumes. And when you break it down—
Especially the more experienced as gym owners or personal trainers owners.
That's right.
You get bombarded.
That's right. And you want the best. You want the best for your gym, your environment as well, and you wanna make sure that that person is going to drive that business forward. So the way that we designed it is that we went and asked the question, what are you looking for in a business? You know, what type of person are you looking for to suit this type of model? The demographic is all very different as well. And we came back and we actually put together 7 key ingredients that we found from business owners, which was great. So it was like personality, you know, but we got really specific on the personality and the knowledge and the processes even. So we really broke it down in these 7 key components now that we actually use in our recruitment process. Yep. So after getting this market research, we actually put the software together to be able to combine a general sort of templated system where we could filter through resumes, but we also adapted the component of fitness industry because it's really specific. Yeah. And between the 3 of us, we're very diverse in the type of roles that we've been in, like our background in personal training, group fitness management. So we put those together and we actually filtered the 7 key components. So instead of having 1,000 resumes coming for you for one job, we take the top percent of Australia's fitness professionals.
Okay.
And we place them in your business.
Got you. So all the work's done for you?
Absolutely.
So you can actually run your business. And then I guess the big question people are going to ask, what are the costs?
Absolutely, yeah. And what we've done is we've actually— we've got to be industry-driven. So we have 3 different types. We have a retainer process. And the retainer, just to break that down very briefly, is basically, you know, you've got 12 months that we sort of spread those costs out. We understand what it's like to have a business, so we try and keep those costs low per month. The reason why we have that retainer over the 12 months as well is that it starts from 4 placements for that 12 months. So you may need 4 people within the 12 months. This industry is a fast-turning industry, not necessarily because of the high churn and burn, because we're trying to regulate that. Yeah. It's more that, you know, you're expanding, you need some more sales consultants, you might need some more personal trainers on the floor. That's why we have that retainer and process. The other 2 is that we have our general ad hoc. So if you're a small studio, this might be suited towards you, where you just need that one person because that someone has left unexpectedly. Yeah. So you can give us a call and just do the general ad hoc. We also have the third service as well, Well, for anyone that has like an in-house recruitment. So if they have their own type of little in-house, we want to support that service to provide good candidates. So we actually have something where we can put them on a job board. The job board's branded with Fit Professionals purely because it takes away perception as well, and we send you the top candidates from that as well.
So they can select.
Right.
Okay, so you've got 3 different styles, but I mean, in regards to recruitment, I mean, what I know about recruitment is it could be $20,000, $30,000 it's going to cost. Is that where we're getting to? Is it the same cost as normal recruiters here?
Not at all. The most that you'll pay will be $2,000 for a person that's going to earn under the $50,000 income. You know, like, we've had to drive this price purely based on industry. We aren't in any way or form— you like to use the word discounted or cheap or anything like that because we want to give you quality. But we can't price ourselves out of the market of the industry. We understand the industry
as well,
and so we like to ensure that, you know, your costs are kept down as well as the service and the quality that we're delivering is really
Well, I think it's really good because I know firsthand that if I'm looking for staff and I've got one job on Seek and I put another one on Seek, I've got like— I spent $600, $700 just on Seek and I still haven't found my first one I need.
Of course, yeah.
And then if they leave, you've got the same process again. But I think the key that you guys have is the time factor.
That's right, we give you back time.
That's right.
And that's valuable, you know, time is valuable.
That's right, and those plans you've got on to make it actually even easier, cheaper, and sort of go straight to your cash flow, it makes it— Very simple. So I think it's really key and, you know, recruitment agencies, you know, we know them as they're hard, they're ruthless, they're always on the phone, they're always chasing. But it sounds like you guys are different. No, no, we love you to death.
That's how we are.
And understand. And I met— where are we? We're in Brisbane today. Marissa popped into the fitness biz, Justin Tam's fitness biz today, and there she was networking, getting involved in the industry. So I think it's really— you'll see her around, you'll see Marissa around your team, and I think it's a good fit for this industry. needs is we need something a little bit different, not just a third party coming in, but actually someone that's in, that knows us, that knows what we want about personal trainers, been a personal trainer, knows about sales managers. So you guys can cater for everything fitness here?
Absolutely, everything.
Okay, so we're talking about CEOs from clubs, we're talking about personal trainers, low end, aerobics instructors.
Subcontract, salary, you name it, everything.
The works. Okay, that's pretty cool. So we're— this is the first year for Fitness professionals, is that right?
It is, yes. We're coming up to our 1-year birthday next year, start of next year.
Great, excellent. And so we should be seeing you guys everywhere shortly.
It's very exciting, yes, absolutely. Especially now on Meet Your Marketing.
And I want to also too, I know you said about 7 strategies, so I'm going to stop shortly and then I'm going to squeeze the 7 strategies out of you because I think business owners, even if you don't want to go down the recruitment path, I think you've got 8 months of 1 year of research and development into this. I think you could teach a few people a few things about recruitment and the best processes for it.
So
we'll do that also too. But, um, thank you a lot, and we look forward to having you on Fitness Mastery.
