Connecting the Dots by The Collective

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Connecting the Dots by The Collective is a podcast exploring business-to-business strategy through the lens of sport, science, and innovation. Each series focuses on a different theme, pairing guests from diverse sectors to uncover insights, tackle challenges, and share what’s driving impact across industries. Our latest series dives into longevity and regenerative health, spotlighting science-backed B2B solutions shaping the future of preventative care.

  1. 1d ago

    Worth Beyond Performance: Anna Yulusova on Body, Mind and Midlife Leadership

    Anna Yulusova grew up in a family of swimming coaches and was in the water by the age of two. She moved from swimming into pentathlon and then kickboxing, where she won three Russian titles and an Asian championship before stepping away from competition at twenty. She completed a double degree in psychology and international relations, moved to Barcelona without a word of Spanish, and went on to spend twelve years at an American agricultural multinational, latterly as a senior treasury executive covering fifty entities across EMEA. A restructuring brought her into an outplacement programme and her first experience of executive coaching. Today Anna is an ICF-certified executive coach and mentor working with accomplished women in their forties and fifties as they move through perimenopause and menopause. Her approach treats body and mind as one system, bringing together training, nutrition, stress management and nervous system regulation with the mindset work she developed through her own transformation. In conversation with Grace McNamara, Anna explains why the strategies that served women for decades often stop working in this season of life, and why eating less and training harder can make things worse. She describes the “I want myself back” moment that brings most clients to her, the 360-style assessment she starts with, and the change that follows once women see the full picture. She also shares a candid story from her time as a manager, when she did not understand what women on her team were going through, and makes the case for companies to support women leaders through menopause so they stay in their roles. The most personal part of the conversation returns to her father, who was also her coach, and the belief she carried into her forties that love had to be earned through performance. Anna talks about how she unlearned it, what recovery means for an athlete and an executive alike, and why pushing all the time leads to burnout. In this episode Why what worked in your thirties may stop working in perimenopauseTreating body and mind as one systemSupporting women leaders through menopause at workRecovery as part of performanceSeparating self-worth from achievementChapters00:00 Welcome00:49 A childhood in the pool02:50 From pentathlon to kickboxing04:46 Choosing a future beyond sport07:04 Studying, loss and a move to Barcelona09:18 Building an international corporate career10:56 Restructuring, outplacement and a first coach13:29 Founding her coaching practice14:39 Body and mind as one system16:22 Why she works with women in midlife18:25 “I want myself back”20:13 Why pushing harder stops working24:40 Taking the conversation into corporates29:24 Teaching in business schools30:27 Performance, worth and her father’s words37:02 Collective spotlight38:58 Close Collective spotlightAnna celebrates Mel Robbins for the way she brings everyday, relevant topics to a wide audience with humility. She credits the Let Them Theory and shares how she applied the same idea as a parent before the book was published. ResourcesConnect with Anna Yulusova: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-yulusova-coach/ Hosted by Grace McNamara. Produced by The Collective.

    Worth Beyond Performance: Anna Yulusova on Body, Mind and Midlife Leadership

  2. Oct 4

    MIT Top 20 AI Startup Founder Dania Valladares Unpacks the AI Coaching Opportunity

    Elite coaching has always been limited by the coach's calendar. Dania Valladares, founder of Agora Fitness and one of the top 20 startups selected at the AI Powered Women 2026 conference at MIT, is building AI agents trained on each coach's own methods. Her aim is for that expertise to reach clients who would never get a slot. Jen Halsall co-hosts with Nathan Hyland of The Collective. Their guest is a software engineering leader whose career began with a computer science degree in Havana. Dania traces her path from Cuba to Mexico to engineering leadership in the US. She describes how her father's terminal diagnosis, arriving as she was expecting her first child, led her to Ashtanga yoga, meditation and breathwork, and to the mission behind Agora. The conversation looks at why static PDFs and pre-recorded programmes have been the only way coaches could scale. Dania explains why she sees AI as the next digital surface after websites, social media and apps. She describes how a coach's agent is built from their client notes, programmes and ebooks, and how the agent questions the coach to find gaps in the method. Training, nutrition and biometric data then flow back to the coach, so the method keeps improving. Jen and Nathan put the questions coaches and operators are asking. What does this mean for gyms where most members never buy personal training? How is quality protected when so much general guidance underserves women? How does a client's context carry across a team of coaches? Where does the agent stop and hand over to a human or a medical professional? Chapters00:00 Introduction01:10 From Havana to engineering leadership in the US03:42 A turning point: family, yoga and the mission behind Agora05:45 The calendar bottleneck for coaches and clients08:00 Why coaches rarely treat their offer as a product09:54 AI as the next digital surface for coaching12:04 What the experience looks like for the client13:57 Personalisation, cohesion and how a coach's agent is built17:50 Closing the feedback loop when life gets in the way19:34 Building a team of coaches with one shared client context21:16 What it means for gym operators24:01 Quality control and the gaps in women's health guidance27:53 Early feedback from coaches31:28 Rethinking the hours-for-income model and trainer churn33:48 When you can't make your session34:22 Adherence and daily conversations with your coach35:56 Scope of practice, guardrails and handing over to humans38:05 Building in AI as a woman and Latina founder40:35 Collective spotlight41:56 Closing thoughts ResourcesDania Valladares on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dania-rosa-valladares/Agora Fitness: https://agora.fitnessThe Collective: https://wearethecollective.worldAll episodes: https://wearethecollective.world/podcast Connecting the Dots is the B2B podcast from The Collective, covering women's health, leadership and innovation across fitness, health and wellness.

    MIT Top 20 AI Startup Founder Dania Valladares Unpacks the AI Coaching Opportunity

  3. Sep 28

    What Good Looks Like: Rebuilding the Fitness Professional Career Path, Part 2

    In the second of two episodes on the fitness professional career path, part of The Collective's What Good Looks Like series, Jen Halsall continues playing boss of the world with Aimee Barry, Chief Operating Officer of Les Mills UK. Aimee began on the operator side, working in women-only clubs in Australia, before moving to the UK and the supplier side of the industry. Her focus today is bringing more instructors into fitness and building better career pathways for them. She describes a disconnect at the heart of the problem. Operators say they cannot find enough instructors, while instructors say they cannot find the right work. The conversation covers how people now enter the industry, from freelance routes to the academies that larger operators are building to train members and front-line staff from the ground up. Aimee sets out the foundation every new instructor needs, which is safety and quality, with continuing education built on top. Jen makes the case that education should be matched by progression in pay. Aimee argues that the industry undervalues group exercise because it rarely measures the return a great instructor brings through retention and referrals, and that measuring it is the route to fairer pay. Jen and Aimee then turn to personal training and make the case for a hybrid fitness professional who teaches groups, trains clients and welcomes members at the door. Aimee describes a class she visited in Japan, where the instructor greeted more than a hundred participants by name and the experience continued over tea afterwards. They also discuss: how to make qualification levels meaningful to memberswhy fitness departments are often under-resourced compared with operations and saleswhich operators are getting it rightThe episode closes with Aimee's plan for a new talent pipeline built with colleges and employers, and her spotlight on a young founder in her team. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and episode framing 01:06 Aimee's path from operator to supplier 02:06 Why the career path is broken for every stakeholder 03:59 Group fitness vs personal training: what should instructors be paid for? 05:15 New routes in: operator academies and awareness 06:39 Is entry too easy? Safety, quality and continuing education 08:13 Linking education to pay 09:46 Fair pay and the shift to coaching and mind-body formats 11:22 Fitness as a side hustle for Gen Z 13:03 Measuring the return on a great instructor 14:46 What happens when group exercise disappears 17:36 Personal trainers at the front of the class 19:27 Breaking down the silos: the hybrid fitness professional 21:12 Hospitality and the first welcome 23:01 Lessons from a Japanese health club 25:21 Making qualification levels visible to members 29:08 Choice across mid-market and boutique 30:08 Resourcing the fitness department 32:42 Employed and freelance markets 33:43 Flipping the resourcing ratio for retention 34:21 Operators getting it right 36:35 Boss of the world: building a new talent pipeline 39:00 A people industry in the age of AI 39:41 Connecting the dots 41:40 Spotlight on women doing great work 42:33 Close Resources Aimee Barry on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/aimee-barry-94278128 The Collective: wearethecollective.world More episodes: wearethecollective.world/podcast

    What Good Looks Like: Rebuilding the Fitness Professional Career Path, Part 2

  4. Sep 28

    What Good Looks Like: Rebuilding the Fitness Professional Career Path, Part 1

    In the first of two episodes on the fitness professional career path, part of The Collective's What Good Looks Like series, Jen Halsall plays boss of the world with Rosanna Tucker, founder and CEO of CoverMe, the workforce operating system built for health and fitness. Rosanna has worked across the industry as a personal trainer, in sales, as a studio owner and now as a technology founder. She argues that the current system fails instructors, members and operators at once, and that the root cause is disconnection. Fitness professionals move between gyms, brands and roles with nothing that travels with them. Meanwhile, operators who can quote their cost per acquisition in seconds struggle to say who is teaching on Thursday. Together they take apart the personal training model, from licence fees and commission-only pay to the sales playbooks that sent trainers to wait for members at the changing room door. Rosanna shares CoverMe's research into when members want personal training, which pointed to later in the membership than the traditional first fortnight. They also discuss: matching members to trainers by skill rather than availabilitywhy introductory sessions should be paidhow a portable, skills-based profile could open up hybrid roles combining group exercise, personal training and new work in recovery, travel and healthcareOn group exercise, the conversation turns to cover gaps, the unpaid hours behind every 45-minute class, and what cancelled classes do to a member's sense of value. Jen proposes a KPI that links class attendance to customer lifetime value. The episode closes with Rosanna's end-to-end design for hiring and developing fitness professionals, and her spotlight on four women shaping the industry. Chapters00:00 Welcome and episode framing00:57 Rosanna's path from personal trainer to tech founder03:08 Who counts as a fitness professional?05:09 The red flags: a disconnected career path08:12 Hybrid roles and the gig economy of group exercise11:11 The licence model, selling pressure and trainer churn13:24 Operators can't optimise what they can't see14:18 The legacy sales playbook16:58 When should a trainer meet a new member?21:31 Matching member needs to trainer skills23:22 Defining personal training and the cost-cutting trap27:10 Staff churn and competition from longevity and preventative health28:48 Fixing PT pay in employed and licence models30:49 Member choice, quality and ratings33:29 The influence of the freelance team34:45 Group exercise: cover gaps and invisible preparation39:57 A KPI for the value of a class40:39 The hidden cost of cancelled classes43:24 Boss of the world: designing the role end to end47:31 Spotlight on women doing great work50:14 Close ResourcesCoverMe: covermeapp.coThe Collective: wearethecollective.worldMore episodes: wearethecollective.world/podcast

    What Good Looks Like: Rebuilding the Fitness Professional Career Path, Part 1

  5. Sep 14

    The Art of Flow- A Playbook for Time Management and Prioritisation

    Rhea Serna trained in management accounting and spent her early career in bookkeeping and tax. When remote working opened up in 2020 she started picking up operations, systems and communications alongside the admin she had been hired for, and ended up in strategy. She is now a core team member of The Collective, working across several time zones at once. In this episode she walks Jen Halsall de Wit through the system that keeps it all moving. She writes everything down. She breaks large pieces of work into smaller ones with room left to revise. She sorts a full list by deadline, by impact, and by who else is waiting on her before she touches anything. She also shares the three questions she asks before taking on a task. Does this need to be done? Does it need to be done by me? Does it need to be done now? Jen shares her own method for clearing a crowded head, and the two compare notes on what gets them from overwhelm back into function. Chapters00:00 Introduction01:47 From accounting to strategy04:46 Staying organised without a perfect system06:58 Urgent, important, or neither10:01 Much too much muchness11:59 Brain dumps: notebooks, voice notes and AI14:01 What to drop, delay or delegate16:08 Where to start on a very long list19:08 Wellness, energy and being more than your output22:06 The next chapter23:24 Trusting that the dots connect26:01 Collective spotlight Connecting the Dots is the podcast from The Collective. New episodes every Tuesday.https://www.wearethecollective.world/podcast Connect with Rhea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rheagserna/

    The Art of Flow- A Playbook for Time Management and Prioritisation

  6. Sep 11

    Connection as Medicine: Discover Noēsis and the Unconference

    Thomas Weidlich is the founder of Noēsis, the Longevity Collective, a peer mastermind for people building in longevity. He returns to Connecting the Dots almost a year after his first appearance to talk about what the collective has become, what he has failed to hand over, and why he is putting 40 people in a room in Budapest with no stage and no keynote speakers. The middle of the episode is powerful. Weidlich describes spending five days a week alone with his laptop, spiralling on problems he could not solve, and how long it took him to tell his own community that he was struggling with loneliness again. He talks about co-regulation, about what changed within days of asking for help, and about the rational case for speaking up when you are stuck. He is equally direct about where Noēsis has fallen short. A year in, membership has grown from 12 to nearly 30, but he is still the main builder, the pricing model does not sustain him full time, and the shift from creation to co-creation has not happened. Jennifer Halsall de Wit pushes on why that handover is so difficult for founders. The Unconference in Budapest is his answer to a different problem. Every conference attendee names the same highlight, and it is never the keynote. So Weidlich has removed the stage entirely. Day one builds connection, day two turns that into work on live problems, day three is designed for integration. A clinician working on trauma healing measurement will take nervous system readings at the start and the end. The cap is 40 people, and he explains why the number is both a design decision and a room size. On trends, Weidlich points to longevity hospitality as one of the fastest growing sub-sectors, to biotech as the field most likely to deliver interventions that beat the basics, and to the social wellness movement that Othership helped start. He takes on the argument that longevity has already peaked and become a word emptied of meaning. He also makes the case for mental health as the next large opening, with somatic therapy as the bridge between brain and body. The episode closes with a high frequency human. Weidlich names Melissa Loseke Ablett, a Noēsis member working on peptide regulation and trauma healing. Chapters 00:00 Welcome back01:00 A village of 300 and what came after04:00 The empty space in longevity06:00 What Noēsis means07:55 What makes a community a community12:30 Loneliness, anxiety and co-regulation15:40 Asking for help when belonging is your business17:50 Stay stuck or change20:05 One year in: what has worked22:40 Creation versus co-creation27:40 The Unconference in Budapest29:45 Designing for the in-betweens33:35 Why the cap is 4036:35 The conference business model39:05 Who it is for and how to apply42:20 Hospitality, biotech and the peak longevity debate46:45 Making healthy living mainstream49:20 Overestimating the size of the market53:20 Designing for people who are not in the marketing56:25 High frequency human: Melissa Loseke Ablett Resources The Unconference, Budapest, 21 to 24 January 2027: https://noesis-longevity.com/unconference Thomas Weidlich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasweidlich/ Noesis, the Longevity Collective: https://noesis-longevity.com/ Charles Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging About Connecting the Dots Connecting the Dots is the podcast from The Collective, a network of independent consultants working across fitness, wellness, nutrition, technology and supplements. New episodes every Tuesday. All episodes: https://www.wearethecollective.world/podcast

    Connection as Medicine: Discover Noēsis and the Unconference

  7. Sep 7

    Scope Of Practice: What Fitness Can Borrow From Medicine

    A doctor can lose her licence for answering a question she is not qualified to answer. On a gym floor, the same answer costs nothing until someone gets hurt. Dr Ritva Mettänen is an obesity medicine doctor and the founder of the Obesity Coaching Academy. She has been watching conversations happen between trainers and clients that would end a medical career, and she thinks this industry is sitting on a liability waiting to happen. In this episode we start with the rules inside medicine, because most of us have never seen them up close, and then work out what they should look like for a fitness professional on the gym floor. Ritva walks through the three filters that define scope of practice and why you always work to the narrowest one. She describes the code of conduct as a silent book of rules she carries everywhere, even when nobody is watching. She explains what sits permanently outside a trainer's scope, what opens up as training deepens, and the six rules she would write for this industry, including the no shame rule and a hard boundary around what a member tells you in a session. She also shares what happened when her own personal trainer told her that starting a weight loss medication was cheating, and what she now sees handed to women in perimenopause who are losing weight quickly on a GLP-1. For operators, the closing stretch is a practical list. Write the scope down. Have every member of staff read it and sign it. Train everyone who speaks to a member, including the front desk. Build a referral network with real names in it. Document the training with dates. Check what your insurance actually covers. Chapters (00:00) A liability waiting to happen(01:37) Scope of practice through three filters(04:06) The code of conduct doctors carry(05:52) How do you learn to know what you don't know(10:36) Saying I don't know out loud, in practice(12:30) What sits outside a trainer's scope, always(15:07) Supplements, hormones and clinical literacy(15:53) What opens up as training deepens(17:05) Rent a friend, and the broken chain(20:32) No profession, no standards, no scope(22:23) Six rules for a fitness code of conduct(28:31) When her own trainer called it cheating(30:55) Keto, perimenopause and bone loss(33:31) Nutritional dogma on the gym floor(35:44) What an operator needs in place(38:44) Insurance, documentation and the paper trail(42:25) Wearables, claims and public consequence(44:14) IVs, contrast therapy and recovery(45:40) Defining the lane, and the upside Resources The whitepaper, publishing Thursday 24 SeptemberWhat Good Looks Like: Designing the Fitness Experience for Obesity and GLP-1 Journeys. A strategic guide for fitness operators designing for members living with obesity and using GLP-1 medications. Co-created by obesity physician Dr Ritva Mettänen, behavioural scientist Dr Lou Atkinson and Jennifer Halsall. Covers the member journey from discovery to retention: the message, the space, the people and the model, plus an operator readiness checklist. Add your email and we will send it to you on the day it publishes.https://www.wearethecollective.world/what-good-looks-like-glp-1 Ritva at the Health and Fitness Association European Congress, Friday 25 September, 12:15 to 12:45Prescriptive Exercise and the Integration of Fitness Into Healthcare Models, with Anton Severin, VP Research, Health and Fitness Association. How Sweden, Finland and Spain are integrating exercise prescription into healthcare, and what standards, competencies and partnerships fitness providers need to deliver healthcare level outcomes. Get in touch with RitvaObesity Coaching Academy: https://ocaofficial.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritva-mett%C3%A4nen-md-21b3a6188/Her article on the same subject: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-would-lose-my-license-advice-your-trainers-give-day-mett%C3%A4nen-md-qgeff/ Connecting the DotsAll episodes: https://www.wearethecollective.world/podcast

    Scope Of Practice: What Fitness Can Borrow From Medicine

  8. Aug 26

    Leaning Into Complexity: How Ravān Personalises at Scale

    Moritz Wessely studied law for four years knowing he would never practise. Then COVID took him out for eighteen months, and the doctors told him chronic was his new baseline. He refused it, went looking for another answer, and found the gut microbiome. The protocol that brought him back became the company he now runs. In this episode Jen and Moritz get into what the microbiome does beyond digestion, why it is the most individual system in the body, and why two people in the same family can share as little as five per cent of theirs. Moritz explains how Precision Biome treats the microbiome as a data problem rather than a biology one, what the direct to consumer testing industry gets wrong, and why so many high performers with optimised sleep, training and nutrition still hit a wall at four in the afternoon. There is also a wider conversation running underneath it about what all the optimising is for. Moritz makes the case that better sleep and faster recovery are the means, and that a life lived in flow and aligned with purpose is the end. The episode closes with two questions submitted by the Collective community: where the microbiome sits in muscle building and healthy ageing, and how much chronic inflammation starts in the gut. Both answers stand on their own as short masterclasses. CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome and introduction 00:45 Connect the dots: from law school to microbiome therapies 03:35 Entrepreneurship as a creative act 05:12 Rebels, radicals and building rather than breaking 05:45 Precision Biome and Ravan: what is what 05:53 Long COVID, and refusing chronic as a baseline 07:31 Finding the gut microbiome by accident 10:00 Old wine in new bottles: what long COVID renamed 11:11 Standing on the shoulders of giants: the advisor and the algorithms 12:01 Why your microbiome is more personal than your DNA 13:36 How long recovery took, and what stability looks like 14:46 Digestive health and microbiome health are different things 16:35 What the protocol changes day to day 18:20 How you know what good looks like for one individual gut 19:40 Maintenance when the system regulates itself 21:40 Treating the microbiome as a data problem 25:02 Where the business operates and who it serves 26:44 The high performers who were hitting a ceiling 30:26 Chronic stress as the number one microbiome killer 32:05 Optimisation as a means to an end 35:00 What the Ravan process looks like step by step 37:37 Testing at home, and cooking for two people with different needs 39:15 Pricing, three month cycles and retesting 41:09 Inside the gut testing industry: 16S, shotgun and lab quality 43:30 Why standard reference ranges mislead 46:20 Community question: muscle, sarcopenia and healthy ageing 50:00 Community question: inflammation, the gut barrier and tight junctions 54:26 The next twelve to eighteen months 56:00 Collective spotlight 58:29 Leaning into complexity ALSO WORTH A LOOK Dr Andrea Gartenbach, physician working in longevity and lifestyle medicine, adviser to Precision Biome and a personal mentor to Moritz. Moritz describes her as someone who can light up a room and give people their belief in themselves back, alongside the protocol work she does for CEOs and high net worth clients internationally. Sham Jaff, independent journalist and the writer behind the What Happened Last Week newsletter. Moritz calls it the single source of news he consumes, for the way it holds a balanced and multifaceted picture of global events in a moment when very few outlets manage it. LINKS Ravan: https://joinravan.co Moritz Wessely on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-wessely/ More episodes: https://wearethecollective.world/podcast

    Leaning Into Complexity: How Ravān Personalises at Scale
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Connecting the Dots by The Collective is a podcast exploring business-to-business strategy through the lens of sport, science, and innovation. Each series focuses on a different theme, pairing guests from diverse sectors to uncover insights, tackle challenges, and share what’s driving impact across industries. Our latest series dives into longevity and regenerative health, spotlighting science-backed B2B solutions shaping the future of preventative care.

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