Why we’re rebuilding LONED
We still call it LONED. But what we’re building now reaches beyond education. Here’s why.
We still call it LONED. But the thing I want us to build no longer fits neatly inside the word “education”.
If you run a business, lead a team, or work for yourself, you probably don’t divide your day into learning and everything else. You need to prepare for a difficult conversation. Make sense of a new idea. Reply to someone who has been waiting since yesterday. Sometimes you need a teacher. Sometimes you need practice. Sometimes you just need a task taken off your plate.
That’s the starting point for the next version of LONED. I want it to be useful across more of that day.
We’re bringing live courses, AI learning tools, and AI employees into one subscription, alongside a platform for teachers. In-person events will remain a separate part of the experience. These things belong together because the person using them is the same person, with the same limited time.
I still want a person in the room.
When I think about what should survive as education changes, live teaching is near the top of the list.
A good live session can change direction. Someone asks a question the teacher wasn’t expecting. Another person describes a problem from their business. Suddenly the discussion gets specific, and an idea you thought you understood becomes more complicated — and more useful.
A recording has its place. I want to be able to go back to an explanation, pause it, and listen again. But the reason to show up live is the chance to take part. You can ask, “Would that work in my situation?” and get an answer from someone with experience.
As AI makes explanations easier to get, I think that kind of access becomes more valuable. Our job is to make the live time worth turning up for.
And I want the learning to continue afterwards.
There’s a gap between understanding something in a class and being able to do it under pressure.
Sales is an obvious example. You can understand how to handle an objection and still struggle when a customer interrupts you. The same is true of speaking another language: knowing the words doesn’t guarantee they’ll arrive when you need them.
This is where I see a useful role for AI. You can rehearse a sales conversation with LONED Sales Coach, or work on speaking with LONED Language Coach. You can try again without having to wait for the next class.
AI feedback needs judgment. It can miss context and it can be wrong. But a place to practise, make mistakes, and repeat the difficult part is worth building. A teacher gives you something to work on; practice gives you a chance to make it yours.
Bring a question.
Get a different perspective.
Rehearse a conversation.
Work through the hard part.
Use what you’ve learned.
See what still needs practice.
Some problems don’t need another course.
A full inbox is one of them.
You might already know what you want to say. The work is opening the thread, finding the context, writing the reply, and getting through the next one. Teaching you more about email won’t necessarily help.
That’s why AI employees belong in the LONED we’re building. By that, I mean AI tools given a defined job, with clear limits and a person responsible for the outcome. Calling something an employee doesn’t make it capable of running unattended.
One project we’re developing is an email assistant: something that can help you work through incoming messages and prepare replies, including from spoken instructions. It’s still in development. I’m including it here because it explains the direction better than a broad promise about “the future of work”.
If we can help you learn a skill and also give you back time to use it, both are part of the same job.
“I want LONED to be useful after the class ends, when the working day carries on.”
Teachers need a better place to work, too.
There’s another side to this. If we want good live teaching, we should make it easier for people with something valuable to teach to actually do it.
We’re building a platform for teachers with AI support. The aim is to reduce the work around teaching and help teachers spend more attention on the people learning from them.
I don’t want every teacher to sound the same because they use the same tools. Their experience, their examples, and even the things they disagree about are part of what people come for. The platform should give that more room.
One membership, with a clear boundary.
We’re bringing the digital side of LONED together under LONED+: live online courses, AI learning, AI employees, and the teaching platform. As we develop new tools, including the email assistant, that’s where we intend them to belong.
Some of this is already available; some is still being built. The membership page is the place to check what you can use today. I want us to be clear about that difference.
In-person events are sold separately, with a discount for LONED+ members. They matter to me for a different reason: there’s value in leaving your usual surroundings, meeting people, and having a conversation that wasn’t on anyone’s agenda.
So yes, this is becoming bigger than an education company. I’m comfortable with that. The name can stay while the work grows.
The standard I want to hold us to is fairly ordinary: did this help you do something you needed to do? Have the conversation. Understand the decision. Finish the work and close the laptop a little earlier.
That’s the LONED I want to build.