Anton Marchanka (Zing Coach CEO) on AI Personal Training and Gym Member Retention

I think AI coach is that term comes with a certain amount of weight. It's not looking to replace like any trainer or coach. It's like, okay, you get more insights, you're guiding people, you're accompanying the member, because it's it's the other 23 hours of the day, and you only get people for an hour if you're lucky.

Everybody needs a coach, everybody needs a personal trainer, even like the greatest athletes out there. I mean, like Chris Baumstead, he still trains and trains when he became Mr. Olympia with his trainer. And this is not because he doesn't know what to do, but he needs a person who will keep him accountable even at his level. You literally have like up to maybe three, four hours in ideal situation connected with your personal trainer in the gym. And whatever amount of hours left, you're just by your own. If somebody was on a muscle-building or fatless journey, you knew that 90% of work happens out of the gym because you need to maintain your diet, you need to maintain your exercises, you need to do something like healthy walking.

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Yeah, sure, sure. Super nice. So we'll spend it on like just a very brief introduction of who I am. So um my name is Anton. I'm CEO of Zing coach. I've been doing this for uh almost a year and a half. Before that, I spent about 10 years working at different businesses, mostly under the IEC umbrella. So I was like roaming kind of general manager, was leading you know mostly mobile businesses. Uh the closest one to the video was Daily Burn. Uh, I don't know, like maybe it's a pretty interesting brand. I know that this is partially pretty famous in the United States. And we were doing this literally during the COVID time. So I was general manager from 2019 to 2022, I think. So on the peak of that. And uh in terms of AI, I'm a very, very big fan of that since I was a kid. I was really, really into the kind of Gibson you know novels like Neuromancer and all the things about like AI, artificial intelligence, cyberpunk, etc. etc. So when I came to Zinc like a year and a half ago, my main idea was like, okay, those guys are doing a pretty interesting thing. They are doing AI, they're doing AI for fitness. And based on my experience at Daily Burn, I was very, very how does it like into understanding that consumer fitness specifically is a very tough niche to work into. So it's it's it's pretty tough because not only about the technological competition, not only about the different types of content competition, because a lot of people are producing it, but also because people don't really want to do fitness because fitness is not a very pleasant activity. You need to, you know, like no pain, no gain. This is literally how it goes. Yep, yep. And it's hard, it's hard. It's literally hard specifically when you are not on the floor with a person as a personal trainer or you know, like as a staff member of a gym to keep that people you know accounted for what they're actually doing. And we faced it through the Daily Burn Times. We saw this a number of times when we're doing a lot of like mobile applications around the different you know things, including like fasting, fitness, etc. And when I came to Zinc, I was literally thinking, is it is it could it be a different type of product compared to what I've previously saw on the market? Could that product be, you know, not just a fitness thing, not just a content distribution thing, not just something which you know tells you what to do, but something which can change your behavior and can keep you accountable to make sure that you're maintaining your fitness journey. Because in my understanding, this is the main problem of whatever digital product is, is that you cannot just you know grab a person and just make him to do things. So you you are not there. And that was the reason why we tried the different things uh for the first maybe half a year. I understood that the product itself is pretty good, and I just got an insight that maybe it's not about the product, maybe it's just about the distribution model. Uh and that was the main reason why we decided to kind of you know check if there is like a B2B path for zinc, because the distribution model for consumer apps, you literally just go into an App Store, Google Play, you need to pay thousands, sometimes millions of dollars to Facebook, uh, TikTok, Google to advertise it. And after that, you just you know see how people is churning from your app because it's that like fitness is hard, no pain, no gang. And we decided that okay, if there is a bunch of users, if there is a bunch of people out there who downloaded the app and still, you know, retains there, still uses that thing, what is different? Why they're doing that? And we understood that two-thirds of our active users who are literally using the product, they are active gym goers. And that was literally the moment of insight. We decided, okay, if that product is needed on a gym floor, maybe we should just you know stop pretending that we're a consumer fitness and uh we should just focus on building partnership with people who own the gym. Because in this case, it sounds like there is a situation out there when we could deliver a product which, in a combination with an actual gym floor with a combination of personal trainers, could literally develop and deliver this motivational part and this you know accountability for the user.

Yeah, well said, man. And I I like the BB. And the data that you guys have, um, you know, it's especially impactful when you talk about, well, you know that so many of your when you're in the consumer model that you guys have shifted from, like so many people already in the gym, right? That's where fitness happens for the most part, right? I mean, you know, the most more in now what I think's interesting about this, and I I you and I talked about this, is that I think AI coach is that term comes with a certain amount of weight. Like, you know, it's not looking to replace like any trainer or coach or anything that. In fact, the product you guys are um evolving into is much more of like a um, you know, my words, not yours, like a membership intelligence layer, right? Where it's like, okay, you get more insights, you're guiding people, you're accompanying the member, you know, uh at every stage, but it's also providing so much value to not only the operator and the management of the gym, but also the actual coach and trainer who may be working with them, right? Because it's it's the other 23 hours of the day. You only get people for an hour, if you're lucky, twice a week, right? 100%. 100%. Yeah. And I think that's really critical. I think when people are listening to this, like think about it that way. Because that that's a much more effective way to integrate this technology. And um, especially if you're going to communicate it to your team within a gym, you know, that's one of the hardest things I think I've just have is like, okay, we have all this great technology, right, Antoine. But it's like getting everybody on board from the top to the bottom of an organization to incorporate this. And uh, you know, Carl Foster from Sport Alliance calls it change management, right? This is a change management challenge. So anyway, so I'm talking about like, you know, when you look at gym operators, you know, in what ways are they kind of flying blind with their membership and the people that are working with their trainers and their coaches?

Actually, that's a great question. And to be honest, I mean, like, that was the main reason why we've decided to go to the gyms, and that was the basic conversation we have, gym operators and owners, and CEOs and fitness managers, is that the idea of the personal training is a great idea. I mean, like everybody needs a coach, everybody needs a personal trainer, even like the greatest athletes out there. I mean, like Chris Bumstead, he still trains and trains when he became Mr. Olympia with his trainer. And this is not because he doesn't know what to do, he knows what to do, but he needs a person who will keep him accountable even at his level. When it comes down to the gym floor, it's still kind of the same. The only difference between Chris Bumstead and his trainer, and for example, like me, you, and just an average dude out there who is going to the gym and even training with a PT is that that PT is not with him 24-7. He's not with him from the morning till the evening. He's not asking him questions about what he eats, what he lived, etc., etc. etc. So as a stuff like the point of contact is very, very narrow. So you literally have like up to maybe three, four hours in ideal situation connected with your personal trainer in the gym. And whatever amount of hours left, you're just by your own. You're doing whatever you're doing. And here is like a couple of things missing. First is definitely you are doing things by yourself, so you do not know what to do. And for example, if somebody was on a muscle building or you know, fat lose journey, you knew that 90% of work happens out of the gym because you need to maintain your diet, you need to maintain your exercises, you need to do something like healthy walking, et cetera, et cetera. And the trainer is not coming to you every single day, every single moment. The second part is that when you're coming back to the gym, you're not bringing all the data you can to your personal trainer. The personal trainer will need to spend, you know, like half an hour just interviewing you of what happened for the previous week in order to make sure that he can adjust your workout plan, et cetera, et cetera. So that was the two main reasons which we I think managed to solve with this idea of AI personal trainer, because the main things which we're actually delivering is that we're delivering literally 24-7 support because our coach, he lives within your phone, which in most cases, in more world is 24-7 with you. And the second part is that we gather all the possible data. So based on our B2C experience, like we have nine out of 10 users who is actually proactively sharing the data, their heart rate, their recovery, their slip, their eating habits, etc. etc. And in this case, that data is being accumulated, that data is being used and adjusted. And what is even more interesting for GM owners and PTs is that they could have access to this data. So when a person comes to you, you could just literally, you know, same as you were doing, for example, when you're reviewing PDFs of ChatGPT, you could just ask for the digest and just make some decisions. And without that system, this is impossible. So even if when your you know trainee has a wearable device, you still need to ask him to share the data and you still need to manually process this data. Because I know, like if if you go there, you will give him the access to your Apple Watch. He still needs to kind of browse, he still needs to take a look, you still need to make an assessment, it's still you have a lift-in work, which is not training, which is not human connection, which is literally data processing. Even if you will give him access to some you know more advanced systems, which is also maybe high power, it still has no connection to the gym floor, it still has no connection to your workout activity. And that was the thing which we actually did. We created this kind of smart player which connects and gathers all this data, which you know consumes it as a sponge, and after that it digested it and working in a two directions. So, one direction we're delivering this to the actual customer, to the member. So we are producing this and delivering this in a form of a workout, and we're delivering this data in a form of insight to the PT and gym operator to give him access to what person is doing. Is there any kind of a risk of churn whatsoever? And I think this one is really missing right now because gyms they do have a lot of you know intellectual machines. They do have a lot of intel, but all those intel they're coming from the gym floor. So even if you're using like the top grade, you know, best machinery in the world, which costs a ton of money, that machinery only works on the gym floor. Then person leaves, you don't know what to do. But I also think that I would say people are not choosing the product to be just a product. People choose the product to be part of their ecosystem, part of their lifestyle. And if you are not aware of that person's lifestyle, you cannot offer them a good product, which means that when he comes to the gym, you don't know what to offer. You don't know that person, you don't know what's going on in their life. So uh in our case, we're just trying to create that system to make sure that all those dots are connected and we're given this thing, which brings value as like both to trainee and personal trainer and a gym operator sharing data insights and actually producing some meaningful action.

Yeah, well said. And so maybe let's take a step towards explaining what this consumer experience looks and feels like when it's tied in with a health club. Like I know you guys are working with some big names at this point. I don't know what you want to divulge at this point, but you're gonna talk about like, okay, you know, what is the consumer experience? How does that relate to the actual health club experience? And then how does that back into what the operator can do with that experience? A lot of experiences there.

Definitely a lot. And I think like our main idea is we literally want to make sure that that experience is very, very similar to how you're actually working with a real human. So this is, I think, one of the main things because in-house, in a product team, we do have one of the principles to build the system, which is empathetic. We want to make sure that that person feels like he's interacting with some something real, something fills, something filling, etc. And the whole experience is very similar. So we're literally going for the some triages and you know, questionnaires to understand like the people's needs, their goals, what that person actually, you know, why he actually came to the gym. Like, what do he need? The second part is that we're consuming all the possible data. And the more data we have, the better coaching will be. Uh, and this is, I think, also very similar to how real human personal training works. After that, we're transforming this data into the actionable ballet advice. And in this case, those actional ballet advisors are actually going into the, I would say like a two main direction. So the first direction is their activity, which includes actual gym floor activity, I mean like heavy activity like workouts, uh, recovery activity, stretching activity, walking activity, which he can do like out of the gym, and we're also providing this. The second part is nutrition advice and overall kind of fitness support. So in this case, our customer, he could literally talk with the coach about the different things like do I need to eat sushi or pizza this morning? Yeah. Do I need to drink cola? If I drink cola, will it be like zero, not zero, whatsoever? So there's a lot of questions people normally have, which we could potentially ask a person, but they could do it right now that they have. For the gym floor actual experience, I think this is maybe one of the most important things is that we were thinking about that and we were researching how other products of the market work in a B2B you know niche. How, for example, our consumer applications is partnering with gyms. And for example, uh, if you ever downloaded the Planet Fitness application, they do have like the whole bunch of affiliate partners, including MyFeet and Spell and more and other applications. And we talked about that, we take a look at this, and we noticed that even in the bigger names, like a bigger brand names, there's not a lot of traction. So, I mean, like people are never talking that the relationship of Gym Floors becomes their kind of you know core revenue streams or like very, very important partnerships. And the main reason is I thought, and it was confirmed by the number of people from the market, uh, including actually we talked with the guy, his name is Frank Napolitano, he's I think like partially well-known guy, and he also told us the same thing that you know, guys, I I want this thing part to be part of my brand. I don't want like a third-party brand to be present on my gym floor. If a person comes to my gym, I want him to stay within my gym. If a person comes to my brand, I want him to stay with my brand. I'm more than okay to have partnerships, but in this case, he said I will never invest so much time, effort, passion into promoting something else outside of my own business. And we're like, okay, this is not even an insight. It's a very straightforward direction, to be honest. So that's why we decided that we should potentially create this SDK experience when we will just embed our technology as a white label solution to the existing digital ecosystem of the brand, which means that when you come to whatever gym is possible, you're not getting another app you need to download. You're literally staying within the same ecosystem. You're not need to go out of that brand. And I think this is literally a pretty good idea because I think we're just solving two problems. So the first problem is that the person who actually goes to the gym, the trainee, he doesn't need to get three, four applications. Because, like, you know, like modernly you need to uh have your training workout app. If you're working out with like some bigger brands, you could download the application from some equipment provider to just be connected. You definitely have an application of a gym because you need to pay the bill, pay the membership, enter the location. Sometimes you need to have a specialized application if you're training with the PT. They also have their own infrastructure. And in this case, like the average person, he has like four, three, five different applications, which are not interconnected. What we're actually doing, we're telling you that at least a couple of those things could be you know combined into one single experience. And that experience could lead within the same infrastructure and the same ecosystems you're already being a part of. You could talk about the membership, you could talk about the amenities, you could talk about the personal trainer, and all this being being connected and exposed to the gym owner. So that system kind of works win-win for both of them. So that's the main experience. On top of that, there's other people have a lot of interesting features, including like workout generators, you know, some computer vision features, including body composition scanner. I also think this is an interesting thing, specifically for the gyms who are uh, I would say like not very, you know, reach, because in most cases you also need to have additional data. And one of the best things I know that a lot of gyms are offering this as a starting point, uh, like DAXA scanning or in-body test. So in our case, we could literally deliver this to the person's iPhone or Android phone, whatsoever. You're just doing it two photos of yourself, and we're giving you like the same information as we are getting from like an in-body test or taxa scan, which is pretty accurate, to be honest. So, based on our internal benchmarks, we have like um two to four percent point discrepancy compared to the medical career access, which I think is great. So the whole experience is is is is literally as if you're training with a real PT. The only thing is that that PT lives within you, and it actually guides you through the gym floor, guides you through your out-of-the-gym experience, and is being a part of the same brand you're already being a part of. So if you're going to the gym, you're adopting that experience and that brand essence, and you're staying within it, you don't need to adopt whatever else. So I think that that was the main hypothesis. We are how do you say like currently verifying, and I believe that this is to be honest, like a pretty win-win situation for everybody.

Yeah. I I agree. So if I am, you know, like let's use my the gym, I go to the whitefish wave. Larger health club, more like a YMCA version. It's got its own app. And I use the app to scan to get in. I can book some classes on it, I can check my billing, you know, things like that. Just basic, basic shit, right? So now you guys could white label into that, right? Integrate into an app like that, and now that app is essentially smart. It's an intelligent gym guide. So in this case, yeah. So then I would do like, let's say initiates and I'm a new member, then it would ride me through like a an onboarding process, like a questionnaire. I could do my DEXA or my sorry, I could do my body scan, get my body fat, talk about my goals, it give me some nutrition guidance, maybe hey, here's your first workout plan for the week. Would it check in with me as well throughout the week to see how I'm doing and like, okay, yeah, great.

Yeah, 100%. So everything you're talking is true. And I think in this case, that also kind of makes, to be honest, this is interesting thing. I also think that this type of amplification makes the actual white label gym applications and basic digital gym applications much more useful and much more valuable for the user. So in this case, you're not just you know like scanning QR code to enter location and just get out or enter your credit card information to be your monthly membership. You're literally getting something which is valuable with which you can interact every single day. And and and and which is not just you know uh you know, push notifications about discounts or something, which is literally meaningful advice and then meaningful interaction with some valuable action which has been provided, like truly personalized workout plans, uh support, et cetera, et cetera.

And what is the uh from an operator standpoint? You guys have have worked through this, I'm sure. Well, what's the business case here? Right? That's all great, right? Members have a good experience, it's cool, you know, it sets you apart. Uh it's good to talk about in a sales process, but like what's the actual business case for operators here? Um actually a couple of them, to be honest.

Uh the the first one is definitely that we're not limiting our partners in terms of how they distribute that product. So, for example, a couple of uh you know, bigger gym chains we're talking to, they do have a little different membership tiers. They do have like a basic tier, like you know, you know, like silver, gold, bronze, platinum, whatsoever. And and they are can offer that type of product as a premium for their users. So they literally could use it as a paid feature, like incremental you know, revenue and incremental margin. The second part is that the main problem we talked about with I'm only almost every single gym operator, at least in the United States, is that this is not about you know attracting more people. This is retaining those who already you know like go into your gym. And this is, I think, the biggest. Problem, at least in the United States right now. The market is already very, very big. I mean, at least as I remember, based on the HFA stats, like about 20% of the total population of the United States is at least somehow going to the gym or fitness location. This is a huge amount of people. It's literally like every every fifth person in the US is doing that. Which means that it will be pretty hard to kind of, you know, move the needle to just attract more people here. But it definitely means what? If a person stops going to your gym, that doesn't really mean that he stops going to the gym at all. Most likely that person started to go to another gym, to your competitor. That's why you definitely need something to make sure that those people being retained and those people not just being retained, but they're being retained in your specific location, your specific ecosystem, your specific brand. So that's why we're offering this, you know, personalization, which works as an engagement tool. Because what is actually happening and the the the highest churn reasons based on all the surveys we've done at least is that people are not feeling support. People are feeling abandoned. People don't know what to do. At some point of time, they're you know like hit their educational single in the gym, they don't know like how to evolve, they're stolen their progression. And the only way how currently gym operators are solving that things and those issues is they're bringing personal trainers. But definitely this is not enough. It's 18 million people across the United States who are going to the gym. And I don't think even if we will assign, you know, 30 people to every single personal trainer, there's just not enough of qualified personal trainers in the country. Which means that definitely there will be churn, definitely there will be dissatisfied people. And what we are actually bringing in in the business case is that we can deliver the very, very human grade alike system uh with at least like 80% of that knowledge, 80% of that empathy to 100% of people, because we're not limited by you know human factor, we are digital. We could just clone it millions of times and deliver it to whatever number of people it's possible. And this is literally the business case because if you will make sure people are staying engaged, if you make sure that people stay engaged, not just with a random app, because that is also an important thing, because if they're engaged, for example, with phreolytics, they could just take their pharaohytics and just go to another chain. Today I'm training in the planet fitness, tomorrow I will go to AOS Fitness, the next week I will go to Ekinogs because I have a raise in my work and right now I could afford some fancy stuff. But when you're actually connect those people to something which is meaningfully connected to your own brand and ionic system, you're investing into those retention which is connected to your specific business. And I think this is also a pretty good business case. So I said like the first one is pretty straightforward. You're just, you know, edit as a premium and just get additional margin, and this is great. I also like this. The second part is that you're not only just adding this as a premium, but you're potentially adding something which generates value and engagement and retention within your ecosystem, which is not connected to whatever brand is out there, but only to your own brand, and you build long-term relationship with your customer.

Yeah, it's a differentiator. You know, and one of the things that's been like the go-to, and it's it's a terrible way to do it, like surveys. Like, well, you know, I'll get a survey once a year from a gym, or I used to survey my members, right? And you try to get as much information you can about who these people are, what they do. But now I feel like this is a much more sophisticated and reliable way to get feedback on the community that you're serving. Like, okay, who's on GLP ones, right? Who's on HRT, who travels a lot, who's interested in wellness services? Should we get another sauna, right? Like, you know, all these things that surveys, no one really likes to fill out a survey, right? Even with an incentive. You can give as many Starbucks gift cards as you want, but people still don't want to give out a survey, right? So I feel like getting the intelligence into like who your actual members are, what they're interested in, getting them talking in a way that, you know, um they probably wouldn't do to any kind of survey or just off an initial conversation because you actually start to build a little bit of trust. Like, I tell my Claude, my coach, my Robodoc that I have in Claude that does all my stuff. I tell it everything, dude. Like it gives me, I'm sure there's privacy that you have to, you know, preserve in in this circumstance. But yeah, and give me some insights, like when you in your Vigran vision of this, like how can we get to know our members better and then you know offer the right things at the right time and you know, produce the the experience they want?

Actually, this is a very, very kind of good question here, to be honest, because there is literally a very good business case. We have this conversation with one of the gym chains from Europe. And they are, I would say, like, they're not like a high value, low price uh gym chain. They're specifically boutiques, so there's like a 50-60 locations, but they're premium. So they cost like 300 bucks a month. And their problem is not that they, you know, don't have enough service, the problem is they don't know how to offer that service. So they have a ton of things to offer. They have massage rooms, they have barbershops, they have nutrition plans, some medical advisors. So what it's it's a lot of the services. The problem is that they don't know the the request, they don't know the necessity of their members. And in this case, they're what what they're actually telling about is that can our system deliver the information in the inside based on which we could target the right people in the right time? And the answer is yes, because what is actually happening if if we know that that person is doing a pretty heavy lifting, and he could tell his AI coach that specifically, for example, after today's lifts, I feel a little bit of a crumbs in my leg or something. Yeah, like it was a pretty heavy session. And we even don't need to disclose that information to the gym owner specifically. AI could just be connected to all the amenities which is currently present in that location and tell that crumbs potentially sucks, but I have a massage session available to you within the next 45 minutes, and I could just, you know, send the note to the messages and they will just take you after your training and just make it better. And this thing happens automatically. So it's had like no human involved. You're just telling your coach in AI, which is just an artificial intelligence, that something's happened, that AI has access to the internal CRAM systems and ARP systems, and he knows that this is literally a good reason to offer that service, and he gets like an MCP connection or API connection to the booking part of the MESUS coming in. He gets the free spot and he delivers that free spot and offer to the actual trainee. And in this case, that thing happens automatically because we know the context. And the only way we could know this context is first, we definitely tracked his training, and second, we actually ask a question and get a feedback. And in this case, if we're removing the EI part and we're moving the zinc part out of this, this is almost impossible to connect all the dots together. Because in this case, a person needs to, first of all, just need to know that there's a massage cabinet out there. He needs to understand that this is the thing happening, he need to go there. So there's a lot of traction happens. We are just you know compressing the whole journey here in one single interaction. And what is more important is to set, like in terms of data revelation, we do not need to disclose anything because if you have a crumbs in your leg, I mean, like it's an easy example, but maybe there is something more sensitive and you don't want to share it, for example, for you know, a real human, or you definitely don't want to share it with you know a wide variety of marketing managers of a gym to make sure that they're giving your personalized advertising. But AI is completely anonymous, so nobody has access to your chats, but that chat specifically could help you with your problem because he's connected to all the internal systems. And I think this is also one of the most interesting ways how AI amplifies the user journey engine. And this could become, you know, like literally more and more interesting because, for example, even if you don't have images within your gym, you could have a partner relations with some, you know, coffee shop nearby, with some salad station or or whatever. And in this case, it could also be interconnected. You could get some discounts, which could be offered to you. I mean, like, you've done a great workout right now, it's time to get some proteins. That's why we can give you like a 10% partner discount for, I don't know, like a keto salads across the road. And and this is also like an important thing. And what I said, like it is happening context-based, and this is happening without a human being involved. And this is like, I think, very, very interesting way because you're not just trying to, you know, sell something to a person, you're literally contextually being embedded into the journey and you're expensing and exposing this ecosystem around the person with the relevant offers, which to be honest for me sounds great. I know that maybe it's sometimes sounds freaky a little bit because it's a little bit uh those you know, cyberpunk stuff. But uh, you know, in most cases, if you are just you know taking this as a as a service, this is okay. Um I think it's a little bit less creepy comparing to the advertising which sometimes we get on Google or Facebook when we're not giving content or something or we're gonna like going near Alexa and tell him that I looks like I need my new pants. And after that, like you have like a lot of advanced advertising.

So it's so creepy. So, you know, if I'm let's use that example. So I do a heavy heavy leg day, right? And you know, uh, I report that next morning I'm like, oh my legs are sore. It'll be like, hey, well, we can suggest a massage for you, right? Would you like me to book it? And then it'll just tie in, give you some times. Okay, you're good to go. No, you know, tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m.

Yeah. Slick.

Yeah, 100%. In this case, even if even if you don't want to go to you know, like a massage room, you could tell like, okay, I have no time for this. So for example, I don't want to go. I mean, I have no cash. He could tell you, okay, there is like, you know, like a roll stuff, and you could do your rolling at home. I could just, you know, set your recovery workout. If you don't have roll, you could potentially just get an advice, okay. You just need to have like you know a pretty steady and like walk around your neighborhood because that thing will also, you know, like pump the blood to your muscles. This will help you to do with you know, like sore legs, etc. etc. And in this case, this is also like an important thing because what AI bringing to the table is not just algorithmic workout generation or some you know like advice which you could get from YouTubers or from the internet or from Wikipedia or whatsoever. It actually goes, first of all, on the context of which you your your specific personalized context. And the second part, it gives you an option because comparing to the you know internet, you need to know what you're looking for with the AI, and I know like right now everybody uses ChatGPT or or Claud or whatsoever. You could actually ask some open question and it could give you options. And I think this is one of the most important parts, which was not really available pre-AI era, which is available right now, and we're trying to bring this also to the gym.

Yeah. So tell me about the the personal trainer, the coach, right? What what is this is inevitably this kind of stuff causes a little bit of hesitation, right? A little bit of shit, is this my job? Right. So tell me about how does this so let's just talk about it. Like, how does this support the personal trainer? How does this support, you know, um personal training uh departments? Like, yeah. What what is it, how does it affect that aspect of of the business? Hey friends, artificial intelligence is moving faster than most of us can keep up with. That's no secret. We can all feel it. The pressure to keep up is very, very real. And no, I'll get to that next week is not a strategy. So I am proud to say that our presenting sponsor is Perfect Gym. The people building tomorrow's infrastructure for gym and health club operators. I have sat down to talk to thousands of leaders across the fitness industry, and one theme keeps coming up. The right tech can make or break your business. Perfect Gym isn't just another management system. They are part of the Sports Alliance Group that is Europe's leading fitness software company. It's now all in on the US market. So in the age of AI, being data ready isn't just a buzzword. It is critical for survival. This, my friends, is the disruption we have been waiting for. Member management, billing, scheduling, reporting, one platform, zero duct tape. Single studio or multi-location franchise at scales with you, zero growing pains, and their open API connects to over 50 technology and payment partners. No closed ecosystem, no getting boxed in, just better data, better decisions. PerfectGM is trusted by international fitness chains because they focus on what actually matters. That's operations, retention, and growth. The European market has spoken. Now it's America's turn. Check it out at us.perfectgim.com.

To be honest, I mean, like, this is a very, very common question, mostly from investors. They're also asking that question, and definitely like CEOs of gym chains, etc. My philosophy here is that we are not aiming to substitute a human person. Like, never. So I only think that AI is just a tool. It's it's literally the similar thing and uh as as an L. Like in back in the days, there was horses who were driving us around you know the blocks. After that, there was cars, etc. The same thing for me happens with AI. So previously we were doing our work with that amount of tools. Right now we have AI as a tool, and I'm literally treat this thing as a tool for a personal trainer. So, what does it mean? It means that personal trainers still have to do a lot of work and definitely a lot of homework. So you still need to create a personal plans, you still need to ask questions, you still need to um, you know, dive deeper into the different types of insights which is being delivered from from a trainee. And actually, I think in most cases that that took even more time than actual training. So, for example, if you have one hour training, in a real world, if you're to really want to deliver a personal life training, you need to spend at least one hour as a preparation. You need to ask questions, take a look at what's going on. Normally, a lot of trainers, they're just you know spending maybe the first 15 minutes during like you know a warm-up asking those questions. But after that, you need to be very quick in your mind to just you know substitute things, change it, et cetera, et cetera. What we're actually telling is that AI could deliver the actual programming and the insights before even you're asking questions. So, how it works, for example, for us. So we do have a system which we call it in personal trainer copilot, uh, which I would say is very similar to how software developers using course or or whatever AI tool they're using. It's actually not substitutes you as a person, it's not substitute you as an architect, it substitutes you on a have a lift-in and manual work part. So the same thing is happening with a copilot. Copilot actually creates the personal training for your trainee, uh, and you have access to preview it, to adjust it, to ask questions, to give some commands, etc. etc. It also delivers to you insights. Like that person yesterday had you know a pretty heavy hike. So that's why if you're planning like leg day today, reconsider this. Or for example, that person missed his his activity strict this week. So he goes to you like one time a week to train with your personal trainer, but he was previously training three times a week for the past week he trained only once, which means that something's maybe happened, maybe he's going on vacation, so you just need to check in because that's increases his churn risk. You need to pay attention to this. And that's actually how it works. So, how I see this and how different personal trainers see this, if you're not fear and you're not afraid of technology, that actually gives you a ton of information about your trainee, which is being automatically covered, and it actually removes all those heavy lifting when you need to pay attention to every single detail on the workout, to you know, remember all the progressions, what he's done before, what type of exercises we did, like do I need to increase it by two and a half, or like, you know, five pounds or something. It actually happens automatically. And you, as a human being, you could focus on the things which is very, very human on building a relationship, because I think this is one of the most important parts in retaining your client is not only just deliver the results for trainings, but also building a relationship. And the second part, you could also work on the parts which is not available for AI right now. I mean, like the touches and the assessments. Uh, because in this case we do have our computer visual support, but definitely if you were ever training with somebody, there is a very, very wide range of compound movements which could not be assessed for just the camera of the phone and still not very you know important. So sometimes uh a personal trainer needs just to touch specific muscle in your body to see is it working or not. I mean, like specifically when I was doing it, like you know, my lead rises or something, it's a ton of options how I could you know screw it up, literally. But a personal trainer could just you know literally come to me and tell, okay, I just you know push this part or just give you this type of thing, and okay, this is this is how it works. But that doesn't really mean that you need to do all the heavy lifting before. So it's not like it's just very, very human work. At some point of time, we're also hearing, I think, like one of a strange cases, but I think it could be very common on the market, specifically if you're running a big chain and there's like a lot of personal trainers. For example, you have like 200 locations and you have like a five people, five person or every single location, which is almost a thousand PTs, which you are managing. Uh, in this case, you need to deliver some management players. You have like uh fitness managers, maybe some chief fitness officer, and and uh what is actually happening there, which I noticed at one gym chain, is that the line PTs, they're submitting their training plans to the fitness manager, and fitness manager needs to sign them off before they're being delivered to the client because they want to make sure that the training is consistent. Because as you understand, like PTs are not even in their grade in their you know training level, which actually costs you a ton of money because you spend a lot of time reviewing that. You spend you know money on the managers, etc. etc. With the AI system, you could deliver workouts which at least be on a you know like B plus level or A minus level for everybody, which means that you will need to spend much less time on reviewing every single workout, which means that you could embed new trainer if somebody's churning from your team much faster, which means that the consistency of the delivery of the training services to your customers to your members is always on the same level, even if trainers are you know, shifting or changing or churning or something. And I'm not even talking about the mega chains, for example, if you're planning on fitness scale at 3,000 locations around the world, that's with a five trainer per location, it's 15,000 people who need to work there. And it's almost impossible. It's like a whole army. You need like the whole, you know, like thing, including like millions of dollars spent on it on t-shirts with the personal trainer ordered on it. Uh, in our case, we're easing that burden on the gym operator and actually helping the PT to scale. And one more thing, which is literally going to exact PT uh experience, is that personal trainer is is is very limited in in the way how he could make money. So, for example, if I'm APT, I do have eight hours a day I could work. I definitely cannot deliver training for eight hours straight. It's it's very physically hard. Yes, I've done that. Very exhausting. So maybe you could do four trainings a day. And this is, I think, already like a very, very hard work. Uh on top of that, you need to spend some time, you know, 18 doing your own training. So it's hard. It's very hard work. And what does it mean? It means that there's only two ways for you how you can increase your pay as a personal trainer. You could either increase your pricing, but definitely you cannot increase it, you know, to the most there's a limit when people will just not to pay you. And the second part, you potentially could try to get more people, but in this case, it means that you will need to do a less frequent training. So, for example, if you're having a client who's training with you three times a week, that means that you cannot train the same time additional people or something. In our case, what we're actually doing is that we're giving you a tool which could deliver the same great trainings and the same great, you know, like communication, etc., etc., to more people in this case and to more trainees. So literally you could potentially triple the amount of people you're training with the help of AI, because AI will do the heavy lifting for you. And for you, that means that you could have three times more clients. I don't think you will have literally, you know, linearly three times more money, but it definitely increases your your payroll in this case because you are literally talking with more people and that's that's how it works. So yeah, so to keep it short, it's it's just a tool. And uh we should just treat it as a tool.

Well, here's here here's the truth, right? Is that if you're in the personal training business and you're not accepting the fact that a substantial and growing percentage of your members are already using ChatGPT, Claude, whatever, to write workouts and get advice, then you're you're you're not paying attention. And if you're also a good personal trainer and a coach and you're not leveraging AI to write programs and everything already, then once again, you're really not paying attention. So it's like the it's already here. It's not a matter of like if this is gonna happen, it's happening now. And, you know, I think finding the best tool, and I think one that's integrated with the actual member experience where you get that data and it's also integrated with like what equipment do I have at the gym, right? It's all one system makes a lot more sense. Like you might as well have the best tool possible to get the job done. And I think that's what we're talking about here is you can use these ones. Like, you know, the question I always ask people in this realm was like, well, why wouldn't someone just go to ChatGPT or Cloud, right? Like ultimately that's the competition. Like, you know, is Cloud gonna have a personal training coach, you know, specifically? Like, no, if the market's too small, they're not gonna want to do it, right? They're looking at, you know, trillions and trillions of dollars of revenue. So, you know, having something that's a very specify uh specific tool for what we want to do in the industry is really critical. So yeah, when people say, is it gonna take jobs? It's like, hey, just wake up. Like people are using it, you should be using it, and just learn how to use it the best. Or you could sit here and whine and cry and think like and just you know, get run over by the bus. But uh anyway, that's a little harsh on my part. But I I it's true, it's true, right? I just want people to listen up like, hey, this that's this is true. This is happening. Yeah. So that's completely true. That's completely true.

And you know, like in this case, it's it's literally it's been true previously because previously a lot of people were taking advice from you know like YouTubers, TikTok bloggers, etc. etc. Right now, ChatGPT is I think like on 90% of the phones in this country. Everybody is using it for whatever, starting from fitness advice, ending up with you know how to open the can of cola, uh I just you know hard my finger, whatever. People are not using Google anymore. People just literally go into ChatGPT. And I agree with you. If you are not kind of using the new tech, if you're not using the new tools, it's it's very similar as if you were trying to still be, you know, like a guy who is riding a horse in a street where everybody's riding a Tesla. Uh it's it's very similar. And you could, as I said, like you could argue about that, you could whine there why everybody's using those strange things, the horses are best, but yeah. The history is not running backwards. It's it's always will be people who are when you're whining about old good days, but everybody's just you know constantly going forward. And uh if you're not adopting I agree, if you're just literally being behind.

Yeah. Well, I'm curious about this. Do you have any insights into uh what some of the most common questions or topics are that get asked to your app from consumers?

Yeah, to be honest, I mean like the number one topic is definitely nutrition. Uh that's that's the first thing that so people normally ask sometimes weird questions, and they're asking how to say, I would say like the number one weird question people is asking about nutrition is they're trying every single day to bargain with themselves, and they're inviting Chad GPT to connect to this and and Zing Coach to connect to this bargain is that can I eat this then if I'm during my muscle gaining or like a you know weight loss journey? And normally this is like a thing when somebody's asking things about can I eat pizza? And after that, there's normally conversation about like, okay, if I eat not a pepperoni from you know, like Pizza Hut, but if it will be like a good, great Italian pizza or something, uh that is goes to down to you know like ingredients or something. So people are normally trying to have say like get get get around the corners in this case, and this is the number one thing that we saw. The second part we saw is is about the intensity of the training, because people is normally asking how can I get results faster? And and they're also trying to get the things like what if I will train not three times a week, but five times a week, seven times a week, etc. What if I will train not for one hour but for five hours? And this is a very common question because that people want to get to results faster. Definitely GLP1. This is also a very, very popular question. Right now, a lot of people are trying this, and definitely a lot of you know doctors are out there, they're recommending the resistance training to them. To be honest, we're talking with some manufacturers and some you know pharmacy, pharmaceutical companies about that. And they're also knowing that this is an important part. So this definitely at least like 10-20% of the questions come into that. And after that, there's just a request, sometimes super weird, about creating a workout. We do have sometimes very strange workout requests. So one of them was I am training at home and I do have only one five-pound dumbbell. Can you create for me a full body workout? So this is this is also the things which normally people are sometimes asking, uh, but normally they're just you know asking a lot of questions like can you replicate the workout? Can we do the same thing as we did like previous you know, week, but exchange some exercises, or they're actually also asking for um complementary exercises or some you know changes. For example, I get used to bench press, what else I can't do. But yeah, nutrition and definitely some weird nutrition questions, it is it is number one thing.

Yeah, it is or not in this. I was early on in my coach and gym older days. I had mentioned during uh a workshop I was running that you know, during anaerobic exercise, you burn out your glycogen stores. And if you're gonna like I'm like, if you're gonna eat a donut, the best time to do it is to you know eat it after a very intense or anaerobic workout, because you know, most of the stores. So then that turned into, well, Eric said we should eat donuts. And like I just kept going, oh look, Eric said we can eat donuts, so we should just go do that. I'm like, uh I can't say anything around these people because everyone wants to bargain, right? Everyone's like, well, I heard donuts. And it's yeah, you just yeah, anyway. Donuts are okay. You just don't eat all the donuts, right? So uh this is really good, Anton. Um I'm excited to see what you guys do in the marketplace. Uh last question I always ask is uh uh what do you need help with, right? If people are listening, you want to hear uh you want to hear from our listeners about specific things, what what can we help you with?

Yeah, you know, like in this case, I would say that as a sound like it's definitely happening right now. So what we need help with as a kind of business as a company is that we want to deliver that information and the possibilities and the capabilities of the modern technology to the more and more people around you know, like the globe and definitely around the industry. Because for us and I treat it as like I treat this as a tool, I treat it as a just a digital, but still equipment for the gym. And similar as if you're presenting the new equipment to the market, you just need to explain how it works to give the exact advice and just show how how that thing helped you on the gym floor, how to work out with that with your uh you know, trainees, with your members, etc. etc. And in this case, what what I can say for for everybody where we need help, you know, like as a business on our journey to deliver this to the wide majority of people, because I said like the the actual mission here is that we believe that personal training is a thing which moved the needle in in the in the industry and which literally helps millions of people already to be uh healthier, to be fitter, to just reach your goals, etc. We just want to make sure that that thing is scalable and that thing is accessible for everybody. So that's why we we literally as I like need help with an education. We we need help of people not to be afraid of it. We need some you know courage uh to just you know step up and tell, okay, guys, let's just test it. And uh we also help try to help this from our side because uh like comparing to like a plain B2B business, we came up from B2C, which means that our product is already tested on millions of users, which means that you don't need to buy some raw product which has just appeared on the market. It's still on the market. We are doing this for the past five years. We're just offering that in a different package. And uh sort of like the main thing is like you don't need to do that. So this is it. More exact ask here. If somebody who is listening to this podcast uh is is brave enough to test it and want to test it and is a gym owner, don't hesitate to get my contact from Eric. We will be really happy to give you a pilot run. We'll be really happy to give you all the demo and you know do the whole ad lifting uh for you. So like we're really, really love to make this win-win situation for everybody.

Right on, right on. And Anton, is there any place uh you want people to go specifically? Obviously, your website, right? I think it's zing.coach. Zinc.coach. Uh LinkedIn, anything like that?

Yeah, uh, you could find me on the LinkedIn. Uh my surname is a little bit hard to pronounce in this case, but you definitely can look for Zinccoach at LinkedIn. Definitely Zinc.coach. This is the website where you could find all the information. Book the demo and see all the showgrounds, etc. etc. Or just Google Zinc Coach and you'll definitely get there. There's not a lot of Zynx out there, except of us. Uh so yeah, uh, feel free to do that. Feel free to reach me directly from LinkedIn.

We'll be happy to chat, we'll be happy to explain, we'll be happy to, you know, like partner. Right on. Well, Anton, thank you so much for doing this. It's been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, thank you. Super happy to be here. Yeah, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Anton Marchanko.