It wasn’t the fact that she is a woman that caused Kayla Itsines to scoff at the suggestion her business might one day conquer the world. She scoffed because she lives in Adelaide.

“I said, ‘It’s not going to work, we are from South Australia, no one is going to take us seriously’,” Itsines, a personal trainer at the time, recalls when her boyfriend (now fiance) Tobi Pearce suggested she break out of her small city orbit to go global by heading online. Itsines had been inundated with requests for fitness tips from women around the world who had seen her Instagram posts showing her clients’ transformations. They all wanted their own bikini bodies.