Our latest guest on the Love Your Career podcast is Marina Thomas — MD of Marina Solutions, former National Sales Manager at Precor, Head of Training and Development at Alliance Leisure, and one of the most experienced and genuinely inspiring operators our sector has produced. Marina's career spans 30 years, two complete reinventions, and a philosophy about people, performance and purpose that shines through every answer she gives. There is something in this conversation for everyone, whether you're early in your career, leading a team, or running a business.

A Career That Started on Stage

Marina's story begins somewhere unexpected. From the age of four, all she wanted to do was act. She fought for it, trained for it, and pursued it against her father's wishes, until her thirties, when the financial reality of a life on stage made it impossible to sustain.

What followed wasn't a retreat. It was a reinvention. Teaching exercise to music classes to pay the bills, Marina discovered she was naturally gifted at standing in front of people and that the performance skills she had spent years developing translated directly into training, coaching and sales. The confidence, the voice, the ability to read a room none of that had to be learned. She already had it.

That thread runs through everything Marina has built since. Her current business, Marina Solutions, helps organisations and individuals across the fitness sector improve their customer experience, commercialise their operations, and develop their teams. It grew organically from a career that never once stopped moving.

The first lesson from Marina's story is one she demonstrates rather than states: passion, even when it doesn't pay, is never wasted. Every skill you build in pursuit of something you love will find its moment.

The LIGHT Framework: Knowing Your Why

When Marina was asked about her purpose, she didn't hesitate. She had done the work, literally, at four in the morning over weeks and months and arrived at something she calls LIGHT.

Learning. Inspiration. Growth. Healing. Touch.

Each word carries specific meaning. She wants to keep learning and help others learn. She wants to be inspired and to inspire. She wants to grow every day and encourage growth in the people she works with. And through all of those things, she wants to heal and be healed, and to feel and evoke genuine emotion.

It's an unusually honest answer to an unusually important question. Most people, if asked about their purpose, give a version of their job description. Marina gives something deeper and in doing so, models exactly what she encourages in others.

For anyone at a crossroads in their career, or feeling like something is missing, Marina's framework is worth borrowing. What are the five words that sit at the centre of what you do and why you do it? Getting clear on that, she suggests, changes everything that follows.

The Secret to Internal Development

Asked for her advice on how to progress within an organisation, Marina gave one of the most practical answers of any episode so far: make your manager look good.

It sounds simple. It is simple. But she unpacks it beautifully. When you orient your daily decisions around what will make your manager's job easier, what will reflect well on the team, what will advance the goals of the business everything else tends to fall into place. You do the job well. You build trust. You become visible for the right reasons.

She pairs this with a point that consistently separates high performers from the rest: take every opportunity to learn that you're offered, and then ask for more. In Marina's experience, the number of people who don't take up training, don't follow up after a course, don't ask the questions they could ask, is striking. The people who do ask, who reach out, who seek mentorship, who treat every interaction as a chance to get better are the ones who move fastest.

Her final piece of internal development advice is bold but practical: if you can see something the business needs, and you know you could deliver it, pitch it. Don't wait to be asked. Go to your manager with a proposal. Show what you can see and what you could do. In a sector where great people are genuinely hard to find, that kind of initiative gets noticed.

The Feedback Conversation Everyone Needs to Have

Marina's perspective on feedback is one of the most nuanced and useful in the series so far. She is a believer — completely — in telling people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Some of her most significant career development came not from praise, but from someone pointing out precisely where she could do better.

But she adds a critical layer that most people miss: you have to ask permission before giving feedback.

Her brother is a therapist, and the phrase he uses is this unsolicited advice is abuse. It's a bold line, but the neuroscience supports it. When feedback lands without invitation, it triggers the brain's fight or flight response. The person you're trying to help goes defensive, and nothing lands. When you ask first, can I give you some feedback?, the brain shifts into a receptive state. People say yes, and then they can actually hear what you're saying.

This applies equally in sales, in leadership and in management. Marina frames it as constructive tension, the ability to create just enough discomfort that someone is motivated to change, without crushing them. Getting that balance right is a skill, and it's one she has developed deliberately over decades.

For anyone who leads a team or manages people, this is worth implementing immediately. Ask first. Always.

What Great Hiring Actually Requires

Marina's advice for hiring managers was direct and, in places, deliberately provocative. The point she returned to most forcefully: always include salary in your job advertisements.

When a role is advertised without a salary, she argued, it sends a message, whether intended or not, that the organisation values itself more than it values the candidate's time. For experienced professionals deciding whether to invest energy in an application or interview process, the absence of transparent pay information is a barrier, and often a red flag.

Beyond that, Marina's hiring advice centred on two things. First, be absolutely clear about what you're looking for and what the role genuinely involves. Vague job descriptions produce misaligned candidates and short tenures. Second, think seriously about what happens after someone accepts the offer.

The best hiring processes in the world mean nothing if the onboarding experience is poor. Marina described organisations where new starters are handed a handbook and left to read it in a coffee area and contrasted that with the approach she experienced at Alliance Leisure, where new team members spend structured time with every relevant person in the business, with a clear schedule mapped out in advance.

If you have worked hard to find a great person, the investment doesn't stop the moment they sign the contract. It's just beginning. How you bring someone into your organisation in their first weeks will determine whether they stay, whether they thrive, and whether they become the kind of team member who then helps you attract the next great hire.

Interview Advice: Breathe First, Then Perform

Marina's background as an actress gives her a perspective on interviews that most guests can't offer. Every performance she ever gave required her to manage nerves well enough that the talent underneath could actually show up. Interviews, she argues, are exactly the same.

Her advice: before you walk into an interview, get yourself into your parasympathetic nervous system. Breathe. Practise mindfulness. Meditate if that works for you. Two to ten minutes of intentional breath work before a high-pressure situation can shift your entire physiological state, reducing anxiety, sharpening focus, and allowing you to be genuinely present in the room.

And presence matters more than most candidates realise. The single biggest interview mistake Marina sees is people thinking about their next answer while the question is still being asked. They miss nuance. They give prepared speeches rather than responsive answers. They come across as rehearsed rather than real.

If you can slow down, listen fully to what's being asked, and respond to what was actually said rather than what you expected to be asked, you will stand out. Not because you're smarter, but because you're there.

For those interested in exploring mindfulness and breath work further, Marina recommends Headspace as a gentle entry point, and Insight Timer for something more substantive.

On Great Leaders

Marina's answer on the common traits of effective leaders was characteristically sharp. Great leaders, she believes, have a clear vision, and the bravery to pursue it even when it makes them unpopular.

The specific phrase she used: they have learned to mute their people-pleaser voice.

This isn't about becoming cold or dismissive of relationships. It's about being able to quieten the part of yourself that avoids discomfort, sidesteps difficult conversations, or holds back a good idea because you're not sure how the room will receive it. The best leaders she has worked with and observed were able to separate the desire to be liked from the responsibility to lead well. Those two things are not always compatible — and knowing that, and acting accordingly, is what sets the best apart.

The One Thing to Take Away

Marina's advice to her 21-year-old self was three words: believe in yourself. Take risks. And her illustration, do stand up comedy, or whatever your equivalent is, captures something important. At 21, failure costs less. The longer you wait to take the risk you've always wanted to take, the harder the fall feels. So take it early, take it often, and trust that the person you're becoming in the process is worth every stumbling moment.

For anyone in the fitness and leisure sector right now, whether you're building a career, building a team, or building a business, Marina's conversation is a reminder that the best outcomes come not from playing it safe, but from following your passion with discipline, surrounding yourself with people who tell you the truth, and always, always being present in the room.

The Love Your Career podcast is brought to you by Love Recruitment — helping fitness and leisure professionals find roles they love, and helping businesses find the people who will make the difference.