The Yard.
Work, move and belong - unfiltered.
When my husband and I moved into our place in Horsham, the garden was a bit of a junkyard — gravel, a saggy washing line, building works constantly. One summer we started filming our workouts out there. We called it the junkyard. Not sexy. We weren't especially sexy to look at either. But we were doing it anyway.
That's more or less where this started. Show up as you are. Get moving. Stay in the room.
I'm a marketing strategist and a certified personal trainer. The Yard exists because I couldn't find a single place that held both — the work, the movement, the community — without asking me to split into different versions of myself to access it. I'm not building this from a gap in the market. I'm building it from a gap in my own life.
Not a separate gym. Not a separate office. Not a separate community. One room. All of you.
What it actually is
There's a proper name for what I'm chasing. In 1989, sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote The Great Good Place and gave us the phrase third place. Home is the first place. Work is the second. The third is somewhere neutral — the café, the pub, the library — where you set your worries down and enjoy the company of other people. No invitation needed.
The Yard is that, on purpose. For remote workers, working parents, founders mid-shift. For the Tuesday lunchtime, mid-deadline, sleepless night, real life. For people tired of editing themselves to fit a different box every hour of the day.
The long-term vision is a physical space in West Sussex — a spin studio, a dance studio, an in-house coffee shop, a place where you can work in the morning, come alive in a movement session, and leave energised rather than flattened. Fully funded and permanently built.
Right now, I'm proving it first.
Phase 1 — Pilots
The first pilot ran on 3rd June 2026 at Fuel Roadhouse, Horsham.
11 people came. 5 stepped outside for the bodyweight movement session I led. They left productive, buzzing, tired in the right way. One person said: "It's just nice to feel like a person, isn't it."
That's it. That's the whole thing, in one sentence.
Since then:
- A WhatsApp community is up and growing
- Pilot 2 is running 19th June — same location, different time slot based on what the community fed back
- Pilot 3 is at a new venue, Love You By — a full working day followed by a DJ-led fitness session, the closest yet to the full vision
Each pilot teaches me something. I adjust and keep going.
Phase 2 — Community funding
Once the pilots produce enough signal, on who's coming, what's landing, what the community actually wants, the next stage is raising initial funding through the community itself. Membership models, local backing, proof of concept before approaching outside capital.
Phase 3 — The permanent space
The full vision. A built-out space with spin studio, dance studio, coffee shop, working space. A home for The Yard community and a place where Connect Studio can also operate. Backed by venture funding once the concept has the data to support it.
Why this is on a marketing strategy website
The strategy pack below didn't start with market research. It started with values — mine. What I actually believe about how people need to live, work and feel in their bodies. The five brand pillars came out of the same diagnostic I run with every Connect Studio client. I asked myself the questions I ask founders. What do I actually stand for? Who is this really for? What won't I compromise on?
The answers became the strategy. That's how it's supposed to work.
Below are two pages from the working pack — the positioning framework and the brand pillars. Not a polished deck. A real document still being tested as the pilots run.
This is what it looks like when you build from the inside out.
From the working strategy pack. Version 4, March 2026.
The asking is half the work
During my first retainer, I sat with three founders who'd been building together for years. I asked them all the same questions: what do you each value, who is this really for, where do you want it to go?
Three quietly different answers. Different enough to matter.
Most businesses never ask. They assume they're aligned because they've never tested it. The asking is half the work. It's true in a strategy session. It's equally true building this.
If your work is good but something's drifted between what you stand for and how you're showing up — that's exactly what Insight to Action is for.
Follow it live
The honest version of this build — including the messy bits — is in Gravel Notes, the fortnightly letter I write from inside both The Yard and Connect Studio.
Read Gravel Notes on Substack →