Field notes and earlier writing.
Product updates and notes from the road. For the founder essays on AI native service, read Perspectives.
How we measure time given back, fairly
Break a task into steps, time each one, multiply by how often it happens, compare before and after. The method in plain words, worked through on a five-club gym, and why every figure is a model estimate until you measure it yourself.
The Kula story: how four years of removing friction became Kula Ops
Our creation and build story: how a team that started out paying yoga teachers ended up building for the people who run a business, and why every step along the way became part of Kula.
The four parts of a Gen 2 fitness business: Intelligence, Tribe, apps and AI workers
A Gen 2 business puts one shared understanding of the business underneath everything else. Here are the four parts that sit on top of it, what each one is for, and an honest line between what you can use today and where it is going.
One level at a time: how a studio actually becomes Gen 2
Nobody moves a studio to Gen 2 in a weekend, and nobody has to. The order studios actually take, what each step needs, and why you can stop at any level and still be ahead.
Level four of a Gen 2 studio: give AI work
AI is moving from answering questions to doing work. Level four is where a studio hands a job to an AI worker that works from the same understanding as the team, inside the same policy and permissions. Here is what that means, and what it does not.
Level three of a Gen 2 studio: build what you need
I have run studios for twenty-five years. I am not a software engineer. Now I build the software my studio needs, because the business context already exists underneath and AI writes the code.
Level two of a Gen 2 studio: put intelligence with the team
The business brain is only useful when it reaches the person at the moment it matters. Level two puts the same shared understanding in your instructors' hands, before class, through Tribe.
Level one of a Gen 2 studio: ask your whole business
The first level of a Gen 2 studio is the one that takes thirty minutes and changes the most: connect the systems you already run and ask the whole business, in the AI you already use, from anywhere.
Today, the owner is the business brain. Gen 2 is what changes that.
Bookings, payments, payroll, accounting and marketing each hold a piece of the truth, and the owner joins it together. Here is why studios are moving to a Gen 2 business, and why it is a path rather than a migration.
Ask your whole business: Kula Gen 2 at AusFit 2026
This week at AusFit 2026 we are introducing the Gen 2 fitness business: keep the software you already use, use the AI you already use, and ask your whole business from anywhere. Here is what to see at Stand 65.
You are the glue
Your studio runs on six systems that never talk to each other, and you are the one joining them. Here is the same morning with the glue removed: a spoken briefing, a drifting member caught, and a teacher who sees her future in the two minutes after class.
The filing cabinet finally does the work
a16z's conversation with Lassie's founders is the best hour on small-business AI this year. Here's what a dental billing agent proves about the substrate thesis and where Kula made a different bet.
Your business doesn't have an AI problem. It has a meaning problem.
Six systems, six ID schemes, no agreement on what a customer is. Here's the method we used to fix that, and why the fix isn't a better model.
Chasing new clients is one strategy. Going back is the cheaper one.
If you consult to fitness businesses, the most valuable list you own is the one you stopped calling. AI just changed what you can do with it.
Yoga and boutique fitness in 2026: Australia, the UK and the US, and the one thing they all get wrong
Three markets at three different stages of the same story. The winners in each are converging on the same two problems, and neither of them is marketing.
Nobody's watching the gaps in your studio, and that's where the money goes
Your booking system and your payment tool each do their own job and can't see across each other, so a few students slip through the gap. Here is the biggest leak, what it costs, and how to close it without confrontation.
The audit you never ordered, already ran
The lake gathers your studio's history; the ontology tells it what everything means. Here's what the map found — rotating-identity fraud, an intro plan capped below the habit threshold, and gaps that read as zero.
You get paid for leads. You get judged on members.
Fitness studios hire agencies on cost per lead and fire them over churn. Here is the retention gap agencies get blamed for, and the fix that costs nothing.
From three years of expensive lessons to day one
The barrier to opening a studio is a knowledge gap, not nerve. A Gen 2 studio hands a first-time owner expert operational help from day one.
Behind the desk, not in the room
AI does not make a studio less human. A Gen 2 studio runs the back office and keeps the room human: intelligence behind the desk, people on the floor.
Forty decisions, time for three
Running a studio is forty decisions a week with time for three. A Gen 2 studio ranks them so you act on the three that matter most.
The team a single studio could never hire
A big chain runs on a back-office team a single studio could never afford. A Gen 2 studio gives one owner that team behind the front desk.
The Gen 2 studio: when every decision finally has help behind it
Gen 1 software recorded your studio. A Gen 2 studio gives a single owner expert help on every decision, the team a small studio could never hire.
The analyst you can't afford, already hired
People ask which AI model is behind Kula Intelligence. The model is the least interesting part. The real work is the data lake underneath, the thing enterprises hire a team to run and a boutique studio never could.
The business is the barrier, not the yoga or Pilates
Four hours with a room of teacher trainees made one thing clear: nobody's scared of teaching. They're scared of the business underneath it. That's the part that's finally changing.
Someone just resigned. What do I do? We asked the AI — live.
A live first look at Kula Intelligence with a Bondi studio manager. Mid-session a teacher resigned — and within the hour she had a costed replacement, a retention play and a marketing campaign.
Becs didn't get a dashboard. She got a leadership team.
A Bondi studio manager spent half an hour with the executive team her business could never afford, a CFO, an HR lead and a yield manager on tap, and turned a stressful resignation into an exciting new chapter for a teacher and the studio.