Connecting the Dots by The Collective

𝗕𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗛𝗢 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗻.
Joanne Groves started out as an actress and has spent the last 30 years working every part of the gym floor. She is a master trainer, educator and one of the industry's most persistent challengers of myth and pseudoscience. Today she builds education for trainers and helps clubs around the world build better businesses.
This conversation is about the people we ask to make everyone else healthier, and what happens when they run out. We define what burnout is and what it is not, why disengagement is the breadcrumb trail that leads to it, and how to spot the early signs in yourself and in your team.
Joanne walks through two real cases. One where curiosity in a room full of staff solved a rota problem nobody had felt safe raising. One where a manager listened for three weeks, then asked for one more client, and lost his best trainer along with her book of clients.
We also sit with the uncomfortable part. Fitness professionals hold all the information and still do not apply it to themselves. Joanne and Jen unpack the role model expectation the industry built on aesthetics, why it has never been a wellness model, and what it costs the people carrying it.
𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀
00:00 Welcome and why this conversation matters
01:14 A mouse on stage and a sewing machine business
02:41 From drama school to the gym floor
05:01 The moment certainty fell apart
06:12 Fitness as a live behaviour experiment
08:30 How prevalent is burnout in fitness
09:54 Disengagement, and what the data shows
11:37 One in four, and how it shows up on the floor
12:21 What burnout is, and what it is not
14:13 Why Sweden treats it differently
14:54 What fills the cup
17:26 Threshold, emotion and the six seconds after
20:35 Autonomy and the feeling of not being heard
22:52 The shift swap that changed everything
25:23 Building safety when trust is not there yet
27:38 The trainer everyone relied on
29:52 The boundary she could not hold, and what it cost
32:44 Why coaches do not take their own advice
36:27 The role model trap and the industry that built it
40:01 Language, expectations and the stories we tell
42:17 Doing the work on boundaries
44:10 Listening as a trained skill
47:23 The quiet quitter
48:24 Shout-outs
𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗝𝗼𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joanne-groves-61045287/
Website: https://www.joannegroves.com/

Boxology: The Business Behind the BarbellGemma Webster spent 20 years in the fitness industry before working out that loving the job and running the business are two different jobs.She started as a sprinter, moved into judo, and found CrossFit in London in 2011 when there were barely three boxes in the city. In 2015 she opened her own. Then she lost the building, moved from 7,000 square feet to under 2,000, found out she was pregnant in the middle of the worst of it, and was back at her computer the day after giving birth.What she built out of all that is the reason for this conversation. Aphobos CrossFit runs on systems rather than goodwill. Coaches are developed in-house through a 12-week programme she ran free. Staff stay five years and more because they are paid properly. Retention is a 30, 60 and 90 day process, not a hope.Gemma now runs Boxology from Dubai, a consultancy built on four pillars: systems and operations, sales and retention, coach development, and marketing. She takes Jen through the two questions she puts to every client before they do anything. Is it scalable? Is it sustainable?We also get into why Hyrox found a lower entry point than CrossFit ever had, why the fitness profession is still treated as a plan B, and what a gym should look like when people work from home three days a week and their doctor and their coach have never spoken to each other.Connect with GemmaGemma on LinkedIn:   / baileygemma  Boxology on LinkedIn:   / about  Book a discovery call with Boxology: https://boxologysolutions.com/signupCollective spotlightGemma's shout-out goes to Evelyn Mair, Director and Co-Founder of FitIQ Education, who delivers UK regulated health and fitness qualifications across the UK and UAE. Evelyn's work is on what happens after someone qualifies: staying with new personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches through the first years of their career, and holding the employers who hire them to account for developing them properly.Evelyn Mair on LinkedIn:   / evelyn-mair-29380ab1  FitIQ Education: https://www.fitiqeducation.com/Chapters00:00 Intro00:59 A career built on three sports02:13 Connect the dots: judo, and a stepdad who coached07:54 Silver is gold in waiting11:21 Two boxes in London, 201112:46 Ireland, Burgener Strength, and what community is worth15:15 A broken rib in Tipperary16:55 Why CrossFit was the gateway for fitness as a sport18:34 A 24-minute Fran21:35 A lower entry point: what Hyrox unlocked23:33 The Hague, and a box that broke us24:35 CrossFit Bromley, bootstrapped25:54 Run it like a business from day one27:36 Losing the building: 7,000 square feet to 2,00029:21 Seventeen-hour days, and a pregnancy31:34 Building coaches instead of hiring them33:36 The professional standards gap37:07 Is it scalable? Is it sustainable?39:15 Acquisition is loud. Retention is quiet.40:27 The four pillars41:55 The month we lost 20 members and raised prices44:25 Small fish, big pond: landing in the UAE46:42 A country that pushes fitness from the top49:22 Boss of the world: what good looks like52:24 When your coach and your doctor never speak57:44 Blue sky: pools, F&B and a slide58:47 Bringing your kid to the gym floor1:01:50 Collective spotlight: Evelyn Mair, FitIQ Education

The Longevity Economy: Built on Ecosystems
with Ekatherina Pajic
The longevity market is maturing, and the companies scaling fastest are not the ones with the best product. They are the ones with the best ecosystem around it.
Ekatherina spent a decade structuring capital before building one of Europe's most complete longevity clubs from the ground up. She joins Jen to connect the dots between capital, health and business strategy, and to argue that longevity is the ultimate compounding strategy.
We cover:
Where capital is moving in longevity, and why investors are shifting from deep biotech towards consumer diagnostics, wearables and women's health
Why good products fail without the right ecosystem around them, and the six domains she uses to map one
GLP-1s and peptides: separating who needs access from the experimentation, and the adjacent economy the category still lacks
Partnerships as relationships rather than transactions, and why resource-poor companies underinvest in the thing that would scale them
Her two gates before deploying capital: is the concept fit for purpose, and are you
About Ekatherina
Ekatherina works at the intersection of longevity science, capital and business strategy. She advises next-generation wellness, tech and longevity ventures, hospitality brands and members clubs, alongside founders and executives building for decades rather than the next quarter.
She began in asset management in Toronto before completing a master's in International Affairs, Finance and Security at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She then spent five years in impact finance at Symbiotics in Geneva, where she grew the fintech team and oversaw a structured debt portfolio of more than $70M financing some of Africa's fastest-growing technology companies, building partnerships with over 30 VC firms and ecosystem operators across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Mexico. She is also an angel investor in female-founded companies.
In 2024 she became Founding COO and Head of Wellness and Longevity at Powercube in Geneva, a 360 performance and longevity club spanning diagnostics, science-backed classes, a biohacking suite and a longevity nutrition café, plus the first Ultrahuman wearable membership of its kind in Europe.
She now advises businesses and founders in wellness and longevity through EP Advisory, across long-term strategic positioning, product-market fit, brand strategy, ecosystem building and partnerships, capital guidance, and operational expertise as a fractional COO. She also built The Architecture Method, a proprietary framework for founders and operators, which includes The Architecture Score, a 27-question diagnostic across nine dimensions. She currently advises longevity skincare brand Adipeau (NYC) and wellness brand MIAFIT (Paris), among others, and acts as a super connector, linking her portfolio network to opportunities globally. She also curates Wellist Week in Miami, a yearly B2B gathering for the wellness and longevity industry.
Her route into longevity was personal. Over roughly three years she worked through gut and hormonal issues, including PCOS, using nutrition, biohacking and Eastern medicine. She shares that as lived experience rather than medical guidance.
Find her at ekatherina-pajic.com
Mentioned in this episode
Powercube, power-cube.ch: Geneva's first fully integrated 360 performance and longevity club
The Sabi: founded by Anna and Hilary, changing the trajectory of women's health and wellness
Sofia Tulupova: sourcing financing for technology and AI companies
Jacqueline Kennard: longevity curator and connector
Yeugenia Kazantseva: Ekatherina's mother, a coach guiding women through transitions
Helene Chammas: co-founder of Mousse, a Swiss biotech skincare brand
Wellist Week, wellistweek.com: a yearly B2B wellness and longevity gathering in Miami
Adipeau, adipeau.com: longevity skincare
MIAFIT: wellness brand, Paris
The Architecture Method, ekatherina-pajic.com

Gender balance at the top is still stagnant, and three skills decide who breaks through: conflict, negotiation, and assertiveness. Executive coach and accredited mediator Pinky Ghadiali returns to Connecting the Dots to make each one practical.
Her reframe: the problem is not that women do these things wrong. We were trained to keep the peace, ask politely, and absorb tension for our reward, and then we wonder why we hit a ceiling. In this episode she breaks down what holds women back in each skill and what good looks like, all running on her four B's framework: body, breath, belief, bridge.
In this episode:
Why conflict is the tension you absorb long before anyone raises their voice
The four B's: a checklist for walking into any hard conversation regulated instead of reactive
What to do when a conversation turns personal or abusive
How to state your number in a pay negotiation, with no ranges and no question mark
Why assertiveness gets mislabelled as aggression for women, and how intent draws the line
How culture shapes what lands as direct versus aggressive
Pinky's conflict blueprint for teams, and catching friction before it becomes a legal problem
Chapters
(01:19) Welcome back, and reintroducing Pinky
(02:28) From optometry to executive coaching
(04:09) Net Women and Mindset by Pinky: the gap she saw
(05:39) Mediation as prevention, not just repair
(06:06) Learning to "speak with pencil"
(07:15) Why we are not at gender parity, and the three skills
(08:19) Conflict: what we were trained to do for our reward
(11:40) How conditioning sets you up to fail
(14:05) Setting up the conversation: direction and non-negotiables
(16:59) The four B's: body, breath, belief, bridge
(17:42) A real scenario: the senior coach who went behind your back
(22:23) Owning your stories and testing them with curiosity
(24:06) When conflict turns personal: pause, don't react
(27:00) Negotiation: the gender pay gap and asking for your worth
(28:01) Negotiating against your own inner voice
(29:00) State it, don't ask it: statements over questions
(31:35) Building the business case and your walk-away number
(33:34) A fixed number, said with confidence, no question mark
(35:36) Assertiveness: the word that gets mislabelled as aggression
(37:39) Assertiveness vs aggression: the difference is intent
(38:31) Stop apologising and stop over-explaining
(40:24) Clear is kind: resentment is the real risk
(41:45) How culture shapes directness
(44:13) Are leaders already doing any of this on their own?
(45:31) The conflict blueprint and team workshops
(48:20) How to get in touch with Pinky
Resources
Listen to the full episode: https://www.wearethecollective.world/podcast
Pinky's first episode on conflict and negotiation: https://youtu.be/u_QsTTEQmws
Connect with Pinky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bypinkyg/
Pinky's website: https://www.bypinky.com

We spend so much time looking after our bodies, our strength, our nutrition, our fitness, and we completely forget the organ running the whole show. This week Jennifer Halsall sits down with Tanja Guigon-Rech: adventurer, polyglot, mother, twin, and self-taught neuroscience nerd who turned her curiosity into a business.
Tanja calls herself a translator of the science rather than a researcher in it, and it shows. From why multitasking is an illusion and what cognitive residue does to your afternoon, to why burnout means you've been too strong for too long, she makes the research feel like common sense you can use tomorrow.
Along the way: the difference between a good break and a bad break, what short videos are doing to your dopamine, why motivation is an emotion and structure is the answer, and how her new offering, Brain at Work, helps companies restructure the working day so people finish with energy left over for the lives they go home to.
Plus Jen opens up about ADHD, hyperfocus, and the daily structure she built for the way her brain actually works.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome: the organ running the whole show
02:45 Connecting the dots: hospitality, headhunting, nutrition, the brain
07:47 Busting the multitasking myth
09:13 Cognitive residue and why rest is a performance tool
14:19 The neuroscience of procrastination, and what to do about it
19:08 ADHD, deadlines, and working with your wiring
25:16 We'd never treat athletes the way we treat desk workers
27:43 The workday is broken: what companies get wrong
34:49 Good breaks vs bad breaks
36:28 What short videos do to your brain
40:38 Jen on ADHD, hyperfocus, and designing her own workday
46:02 What brain fitness actually means
48:17 Too strong for too long: the truth about burnout
51:40 Motivation is an emotion. Structure is the answer.
55:44 Action over perfection, and permission to be shitty
1:02:26 Introducing Brain at Work
1:03:58 Balance as tension: finishing the day with energy left over
1:09:47 Revenge scrolling, sleep, and the vicious cycle
1:11:38 Spotlight: Anna Milani
Connect with Tanja
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanja-guigon-rech-49943534/
Brain at Work: https://brainatwork.carrd.co/
Her book, Unstuck: A Real-Life Guide to Clearer Thinking, Bolder Action, and Better Communication: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7XHS49J
Mentioned in this episode
Dr. Wendy Suzuki: https://www.wendysuzuki.com/
Angelique Joan: https://www.instagram.com/angelique.joan/?hl=en
The Wheel of Life exercise: https://students.hud.ac.uk/media/assets/document/studentservices/WheelofLife.pdf