News / Fitness trainer wins latest in a string of awards
A WOMAN from Shetland who was unable to take part in much sport when she was growing up due to asthma has gone on to establish a multiple award-winning specialist fitness business with global reach.
Dianne Teo is the founder of T30 Fitness Training, which recently won a £50,000 Scottish Edge accolade – the latest in a string of awards the Glasgow-based company, which has clients in 14 countries across the globe, has won.
The company runs two specialised fitness programmes – one called “fatburn extreme” based on hormone balance, which promises to help people lose weight rapidly and proclaims to take as much as three to four inches off participants’ stomachs within just 30 days, and another called “gameFIT” which is geared towards amateur sports clubs.
Dianne said the Scottish Edge award “came as a fantastic surprise” given over 250 businesses initially entered before its whittled down to the final 25. As previously reported, Shetlander Evonne Morrison also won recognition in the young age group of the same award scheme for her health food business.
“We’re very lucky that two Shetlanders were in that,” Dianne said, adding she was “very proud” that her father Hamish Cutt – now in his mid-80s – was able to make it down to the central belt for the ceremony.
She first took a real interest in fitness when she moved abroad to Malaysia in her early twenties, before returning to the UK and doing a sports science degree at Strathclyde University.
Dianne then represented Malaysia in the world rowing championships for dragon boats, before returning to Scotland. She was carrying out a personal research project when, all of a sudden, she found herself acquiring clients and “realised I was starting a business!”
T30 Fitness has now won six international endorsements including export business of the year and has a host of clients including football, lacrosse, netball and hockey clubs. The Brunei national football team adopted the programme and went on to beat China and Hong Kong 4-0 and 4-2 respectively.
“Japan has taken a licence out to run it too,” Dianne said. “I think that contributed to us winning the award. I formed the company in 2013, but we really started working on it in 2015 – in the last two and a half years we’ve really grown it.
“The laugh is, all my life I was in Shetland I was asthmatic and I never took part in sports. So people say ‘I dunno how Dianne is involved in that – she never did any sport’!”
She said T30 Fitness planned to use the £50,000 prize money for a video marketing campaign to stay ahead of the competition, having “done everything on a really tight budget” up to now.
An app will be launched for the fitness programmes – which are taught in gyms, schools, hospitals, sports clubs and police forces globally – in the spring and a third fitness concept will be unveiled towards the end of 2018.
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