Connecting the Dots by The Collective

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 perimenopause
Treating body and mind as one system
Supporting women leaders through menopause at work
Recovery as part of performance
Separating self-worth from achievement
Chapters
00:00 Welcome
00:49 A childhood in the pool
02:50 From pentathlon to kickboxing
04:46 Choosing a future beyond sport
07:04 Studying, loss and a move to Barcelona
09:18 Building an international corporate career
10:56 Restructuring, outplacement and a first coach
13:29 Founding her coaching practice
14:39 Body and mind as one system
16:22 Why she works with women in midlife
18:25 “I want myself back”
20:13 Why pushing harder stops working
24:40 Taking the conversation into corporates
29:24 Teaching in business schools
30:27 Performance, worth and her father’s words
37:02 Collective spotlight
38:58 Close
Collective spotlight
Anna 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.
Resources
Connect with Anna Yulusova: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-yulusova-coach/

Hosted by Grace McNamara. Produced by The Collective.

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?
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:10 From Havana to engineering leadership in the US
03:42 A turning point: family, yoga and the mission behind Agora
05:45 The calendar bottleneck for coaches and clients
08:00 Why coaches rarely treat their offer as a product
09:54 AI as the next digital surface for coaching
12:04 What the experience looks like for the client
13:57 Personalisation, cohesion and how a coach's agent is built
17:50 Closing the feedback loop when life gets in the way
19:34 Building a team of coaches with one shared client context
21:16 What it means for gym operators
24:01 Quality control and the gaps in women's health guidance
27:53 Early feedback from coaches
31:28 Rethinking the hours-for-income model and trainer churn
33:48 When you can't make your session
34:22 Adherence and daily conversations with your coach
35:56 Scope of practice, guardrails and handing over to humans
38:05 Building in AI as a woman and Latina founder
40:35 Collective spotlight
41:56 Closing thoughts
Resources
Dania Valladares on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dania-rosa-valladares/
Agora Fitness: https://agora.fitness
The Collective: https://wearethecollective.world
All 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.

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 members
why fitness departments are often under-resourced compared with operations and sales
which operators are getting it right
The 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

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 availability
why introductory sessions should be paid
how a portable, skills-based profile could open up hybrid roles combining group exercise, personal training and new work in recovery, travel and healthcare
On 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.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome and episode framing
00:57 Rosanna's path from personal trainer to tech founder
03:08 Who counts as a fitness professional?
05:09 The red flags: a disconnected career path
08:12 Hybrid roles and the gig economy of group exercise
11:11 The licence model, selling pressure and trainer churn
13:24 Operators can't optimise what they can't see
14:18 The legacy sales playbook
16:58 When should a trainer meet a new member?
21:31 Matching member needs to trainer skills
23:22 Defining personal training and the cost-cutting trap
27:10 Staff churn and competition from longevity and preventative health
28:48 Fixing PT pay in employed and licence models
30:49 Member choice, quality and ratings
33:29 The influence of the freelance team
34:45 Group exercise: cover gaps and invisible preparation
39:57 A KPI for the value of a class
40:39 The hidden cost of cancelled classes
43:24 Boss of the world: designing the role end to end
47:31 Spotlight on women doing great work
50:14 Close
Resources
CoverMe: covermeapp.co
The Collective: wearethecollective.world
More episodes: wearethecollective.world/podcast

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.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:47 From accounting to strategy
04:46 Staying organised without a perfect system
06:58 Urgent, important, or neither
10:01 Much too much muchness
11:59 Brain dumps: notebooks, voice notes and AI
14:01 What to drop, delay or delegate
16:08 Where to start on a very long list
19:08 Wellness, energy and being more than your output
22:06 The next chapter
23:24 Trusting that the dots connect
26:01 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/