Work done once, where it comes up
Instead of being carried to the end of the shift, to the desk, or to the owner’s phone. The team finishes the day with less in their heads.
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A model case: fitness A model gym group, four clubs, about 6,000 members.
Four clubs with long opening hours, about 6,000 members and about 145 people, run on the booking, roster and accounts systems they already have.
Book a conversation → Modelled on industry research
Modelled
About 370 questions a week
from staff: what do I do when, can I, where is. Each one a walk to find the manager today. The biggest single time-waster in the model, about 25 hours a week, answered on the phone under your rules instead.
Modelled
7.4 minutes to 2.2
of a club manager’s time to follow up the 6am door fault: did the contractor come, was it logged, were members told.
Modelled
About a day a week
back for each club manager, the person the club cannot run without.
Modelled
About 158 hours a week
back across four clubs, about 39 a club, about 8,200 hours a year.
Where the figures come from. This is a model business, not a customer. Every figure is modelled on industry figures and published research. Once we model your business, your own data replaces every one of them. The time is capacity for your team.
A day today
The work no system does.
The systems each do their job. What none of them does is the work around them: the question, the chase, the handover, the redo. It is done on foot, by phone and from memory, and nobody counts it.
With Kula
Your team says what happened or asks a question on their phone, wherever they are. Kula answers from your own procedures, or does the task under your rules: the fault raised with a photo and the contractor attached, the delivery docket checked against the order, the invoice read from a photo and queued for approval, the question answered without a walk, the handover written from what happened in the shift. The owner can see where the door is up to without texting anyone.
6:02am, the door
The front door will not open. The shift lead finds the fault, finds the contractor’s number, rings, tells the manager, tells the team. Three people, and the manager is awake.
9:40am, the delivery
The delivery has not come, and nobody can say who ordered it or on what terms. The order is in someone’s email.
10:15am, the question
“What do we do when a member’s card bounces twice?” A staff member leaves the floor to find the manager, who is at another club. The member waits.
2:30pm, the invoice
The contractor’s invoice is typed into the accounts, into the job list and into a message to the owner. Three times, by hand.
3:00pm, the floor walk
The duty manager notes a torn bench, a spill and a cable machine fault, then walks back to the desk to log each one.
4:45pm, the owner texts
“Where are we at with the door?” Nobody knows whether the contractor came. The morning’s 7.4 minutes happen again, because nothing was written down.
9:15pm, the handover
The note for the morning shift is half written in the desk notebook. Tomorrow’s 6am door happens again.
What the research says
The loss is real before the model is.
The size of the losses in this model comes from published research, not from guessing. These are the findings behind it, with where each one came from.
About 370 questions a week
Staff questions are the biggest single time-waster in the four-club model: what do I do when, can I, where is. About 370 a week, each one a walk to find the manager or a call to another club, and about 25 hours of the 158 the model gives back.
The four-club gym model, 20262 of 44 staff
At a gym with 44 staff, two said they would use a plain AI question box. The other 42 said it would not know how the club works. So the answer has to come from the club’s own procedures, and it cannot wait to be asked at six in the morning.
Kula’s own conversations with a multi-site gym, 202637.8 hours a week
The average gym owner’s working week. About a third of it goes to running the club rather than the floor: payroll, supplier bills, the bookkeeper, the bank, the questions only the owner can answer.
Two-Brain Business, State of the Industry: Owner Hours, 2021; admin share from the American Express SME Barometer, 20264 times the walking
Doing it later costs more than walking. The handover, the fault and the delivery note carried to the end of the shift come back as rework and forgotten items that cost about four times the walk itself. In the model, about 150 handovers a week across four clubs are written from memory today.
The four-club gym model, 20267.4 minutes to 2.2
A club manager’s follow-up on the 6am door fault, worked through step by step in the model: recall it, find the person, wait, get the status, note it. With Kula the shift lead says what happened once, the job is raised with the contractor attached, the people affected are told and it is logged, so 7 follow-ups in 10 never reach the manager.
The four-club gym model, a model estimate. The working is on How it works Who gets the time back
The same people, a smoother day.
Club managers
About a day a week back. Fewer interruptions, and the questions a procedure or a rule can answer stop reaching them at another club or at home.
Duty and assistant managers
The floor walk becomes photos. Faults are raised with the history attached and followed until they are closed. The handover writes itself from the day.
Front desk
A new starter asks Kula on day one instead of the manager, and gets the same answer as someone who has been there ten years.
Admin, bookkeeper and payroll
Dockets and invoices read from a photo, lapsed memberships closed by your rules, and timesheets that arrive already approved, so the pay run is right first time.
Beyond the hours
What else changes.
Knowledge that stays
When a casual leaves, their answers, handovers and fixes stay with the club.
A club that runs without you
How the club runs is written down and working, not carried in a few heads and a group chat.
Where the figures come from
Modelled on research, replaced by your own numbers.
This is a model gym group, not a customer. The volumes are modelled from industry figures and our own work with gyms, and how long each task takes is a working estimate from published work-study values until we time it in your club. The 6am door follow-up is a worked example, and it is a model estimate too. The time is capacity for your team, not a saving: nobody is let go.
Every model is built the way an industrial engineer studies a factory floor: list every role and every task, count how often each one happens, put a time on it as it runs today and as it runs with Kula, and multiply out. For these model businesses the volumes and the times come from industry figures and published research. When we model your business, your own data replaces every one of them before it is used for anything, and the time given back is read from what the team actually moves onto Kula, not from asking anyone to log their day.
| One club, about 1,500 members | About 39 hours a week |
| Two clubs, about 3,000 members | About 79 hours a week |
| Eight clubs, about 12,000 members | About 315 hours a week |
Straight-line scaling of the model. Timing it in your business settles the detail.
Every loop, the minutes behind it and the sources are in the full model. We walk through it with you in a conversation, and then build yours from your own systems and a short walk-through with one of your managers.
Book a conversation → Kula Fitness
Shaped around how gyms and studios really run.
Kula Fitness is Kula Ops and Kula Intelligence shaped around classes, teachers, covers, members and every site you manage, with the Tribe app for teachers. It works on top of the booking system you already use, and it is where Kula started: Phil has run studios for 25 years.
Covers without the scramble
Briefings, handovers and duties for every class and every teacher, so cover staff and new starters know what to do before they walk in.
Members who feel known
Less time chasing information means more time for the people in front of you. Kula Intelligence shows which classes are filling and which are going quiet.
Every site, the same way
For multi-site gyms that need every site to run the same way, with head office able to see where a hand is needed.
Built from the inside
Phil has run studios for 25 years. The shift changes, cover teachers, new starters and small things that slip are the reason Kula exists.
Works on top of the systems you already use: GymMaster, Mindbody, Wix, ClassPass, Stripe, Deputy and Xero.
About Kula Intelligence → The Tribe app
The teachers’ app, included.
Tribe is the app a teacher installs from a link their studio sends and links to every studio they work at. Schedule, messages, covers and compliance in one place, so the people on the floor are never on their own.
Schedules
Every class they teach, in one place.
Whispers
The right nudge, before they walk into class.
Messaging
Studio to teacher, teacher to teacher, in one thread.
Covers
See what’s open, claim it in a tap.
Compliance
Certs and documents, tracked.
1:1 sessions
For gyms, personal training and one-on-ones, not just classes.
Multi-location
One teacher, every studio they work at, one view.
Other model businesses
Call-ups, claims and defects
run from a photo sign-off instead of by phone and from memory. In the model that is about 5,900 hours back across the build.
See the model →Call sheets, reports and bookings
drafted from one record instead of rebuilt by hand each night. In the model that is about 1,776 hours back across the production.
See the model →Job status, proofs and handovers
answered at the station instead of on foot. In the model that is about 300 hours a week back to the same team, for fewer interruptions and more time with clients.
See the model → Start here
See what Kula gives back in your business.
Tell us a little about your business and we will model yours. Replies come from Phil or Peter.