From starting in the fitness tech industry, to moving into the digital marketing space where she helps other businesses scale up, Maria Kathopoulis has seen it all through her entrepreneurial journey.
She initially started her own business at age 24 in 2017 after realising the regular nine-to-five lifestyle wasn’t for her.
“I started each of my businesses because I wanted the freedom of entrepreneurship,” Kathopoulis tells Azzet.
“I've always liked to lead, so having that capacity of leading and having the right people around me and not being afraid to initiate took me at a very young age.
“Each of my businesses really starts from the desire to turn potential ideas that I saw could be valuable and portions of the market that could be addressed earlier on.”
Throughout her journey, Kathopoulis has learnt that being an entrepreneur is about learning and adapting to the landscape around her, especially as she works in the ever-changing tech industry.
“I've been in the technology industry, which looks very different back in 2017, where I started my first digital business that took off, to today with AI and with AI agents and with a workforce that looks very different post-COVID,” she says.
“I think for me the lesson has been to really never stop learning and never stop looking at what's coming next.”
Where it all began
Kathopoulis’s journey started in fitness tech, where she founded ‘OnTheBall Global’, a football training app featuring videos from professional players and coaches.
Her first venture reached 180,000 total subscribers in under a year, with 6,000 users in week one.
Following the success of her first app, Kathopoulis, alongside her husband, helped three-time AFL premiership winner Dustin Martin develop his own app, DRIP.
DRIP featured workouts from the Richmond icon and worked closely with Kathopoulis to create an app that grew from around 6,000 to 20,000 subscribers in just two months.
The fitness tech industry is an ever-growing industry, with the fitness app industry tipped to grow from US$1.5 billion in 2023 to US$4.3 billion in 2030, according to the Fitness Apps Global Strategic Business Report.
While developing the app, Kathopoulis said that the main differentiator between DRIP and other fitness apps is the range of workouts.
“We knew that one fitness program (as with other popular solutions on the market) couldn’t cut it for all,” she told SmartCompany.
“Users should always be provided with programs and workouts tailored to their goals and personal abilities.”
Kathopoulis also told SmartCompany that the app would continue to grow, adding new coaches and exercises in the future.
It did just that after Martin collaborated with Sydney-based gym and fitness community ACERO and its co-founder Jono Castano, rebranding to ACERO DRIP in 2023.
While still actively guiding the app's ongoing growth, remaining on the board as an advisor, she has now shifted gears to digital marketing through her business, UNTMD Media.
Helping other businesses scale up
Kathopoulis took her skills to help DRIP and OnTheBall rapidly grow and set her sights on helping other brands expand through UNTMD Media, formerly known as UNTMD Marketing.
Earlier this year, UNTMD merged with Chiquita and Co PR to position itself as a go-to growth engine for brands, where Kathopoulis serves as chief marketing officer.
Kathopoulis aims to bring together marketing performance and brand visibility as one strategy to help scale brands to their full potential.
In the merger with Chiquitad, Kathopoulis said she hopes UNTMD can be seen as a “partner for growth” rather than a marketing agency.
Despite every brand having the same ethos of growth, she alters her strategy depending on the business.
“There's always a commonality in all businesses, but the circumstances of every business are different,” Kathopoulis says.
“There might be a number of different things and what we look at in businesses from the very beginning.
“What we do differently is that we see them and we sort of talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly and we try to put their current metrics and KPIs on a piece of paper so we can identify quickly what areas are lacking and where we have to double down or what things we need to fix before we fix acquisition.”
One of her largest achievements was assisting Ezz Haircare to generate A$1 million in revenue from its Hair Growth Spray alone. For context, the hair care market in Australia is valued at around US$1.07 billion and hair care product businesses generate an average of US$1.45 million a year.
Kathopoulis said she was also recently part of an underdog story, helping aphrodisiac chocolate brand Jas Chocolate become profitable from day one.
“Within the day he launched, he was already profitable because we put the right strategy in place and now he's forecasting his first month of operation to have $40,000 a month in sales,” she says.
“Because he has the team right support, right content strategy, ride SEO strategy at the same time ride PR team, we are seeing him really skyrocket and I think you can keep an eye on him because he'll probably have a million-dollar brand a month very soon.”
Kathopoulis’ biggest pieces of advice for new entrepreneurs are to protect your ideas and have the right team around you.
“Never let go of their vision. Whatever vision you have for your business, there are ways for you to get the right people in,” she says.
“Stick to your guns and never let production or other bigger corporations or anyone undermine what you have in your hands.”
