Meet fitness-focused sisters Brianna and Natalia O’Toole, who share a passion for empowering women through health and fitness to become a confident and healthier version of themselves.
Born out of a business plan brainstormed on a road trip to the Daintree, Minoma Health & Fitness launched in Townsville in 2016. Since then sisters Brianna and Natalia O’Toole have expanded to Sydney and now have over 150 happy clients.
“We’ve always loved being active and decided we wanted to help females in the community better themselves through exercise and nutrition,” Brianna says.
“Growing up in Townsville our whole lives meant we had a large network of friends. We decided to send out a message to 10–15 girls to see if they would be interested in working on their fitness with us and they all said yes!”
Having completed seven marathons and 15 half marathons between them, the O’Toole sisters have developed a ‘mind over matter’ mentality, so it’s fitting their business name, ‘Minoma’, is an acronym of their fitness philosophy. Their other halves are also into fitness, with Brianna married to Cowboys player Michael Morgan and Natalia’s partner Valentine Holmes set to pursue his dreams in the NFL this year.
“Having a strong mind is the key to achieving any health and fitness endeavour,” Brianna says.
“Running didn’t come easily to us. Like all things fitness, it can be hard. We believe mindset is what has gotten us across the line.”
With complementary skills, Brianna and Natalia work well as a team.
“Bri is the organised one – she keeps me in line when it comes to the administration side of the business,” Natalia says.
“Bri’s also been a physiotherapist in a musculoskeletal clinic, so she’s able to offer that expertise to our clients as well.”
Business and computer-savvy, Natalia, does much of the behind-the-scenes work. She designed and runs the business website, organises the Minoma merchandise and is the first point of contact for the clients.
“She also happens to be the funniest person I know and the person I laugh the most with,” Brianna says.
“When your business partner is your best friend the challenges are minimal and the list of benefits are long.”
That’s not to say the duo don’t irritate each other occasionally, as siblings do.
“If one of us frustrates the other we’re not afraid to say it,” Brianna says.
“At the end of the day, we’re both passionate about working towards a common goal – offering Minoma clients a healthy and sustainable way of life. We strive to deliver innovative, exciting and challenging training programs, together with an eating guide designed by our nutritionist.
“We’re fans of resistance and functional training and we’re passionate about sharing our knowledge with females to not only sculpt and build fit, strong women, but to foster a healthy mind.”
Adopting a holistic approach, Brianna and Natalia acknowledge that health and wellbeing stretches far beyond the gym. And DUO Women readers are in for a treat with the sisters set to write a regular column on hot topics in the health and fitness industry.
“We’ll touch base on a variety of interesting topics, debunk the myths and confirm the facts,” Brianna says. “We want to make understanding healthy living as simple as possible.”
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