Justin Santamaria - Scaling the Human Touch: AI The Future of Fitness Coaching

Hey friends, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness and wellness industry podcast for over five years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the honor of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. If you like the show, we'd love it if you took three minutes of your day to leave us a nice supporter review wherever you consume your podcast. If you're interested in staying up to date with the future of fitness, go to futurofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now onto the show. Spanning over 4,000 clients in 40 plus countries, Teamup has a vast global network with its roots right here in North America. Whether it's AI, new features, new partnerships, and new markets, TeamUp's sites are set on raising the bar of the industry to enable their customers to perform and operate at the highest level locally, nationally, and overseas. However, the most reliable APIs in the market, you can deliver premium customer experiences and scale your fitness enterprise with the strongest technological infrastructure our industry has to offer. Empower your staff, engage your members, and unlock your next chapter of growth with software design for you. For a limited time, get a very generous 50% off your first month. To redeem the offer, simply contact the TeamUp sales team and use the promo code the Future of Fitness. Head to go teamup.com. That is G-O-T-E-A-M-U-P dot com. Hey friends, this is Eric Malzone, and this episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by the Podcast Collective. Since our inception in 2023, we have emerged as the fitness, health, and wellness industry's premier podcast placement agency. We're honored to work with many of the industry's most prominent technologists, thought leaders, startup founders, and business executives. Why? Because they recognize that being on podcasts is the most effective way to authentically connect with their specific target audiences and rapidly grow a lucrative professional network. From podcast placements to speaking engagements, go-to-market strategies to investor relations, and media kits to press releases, the podcast collective brings a level of professionalism and deep industry expertise that can only be achieved by spending decades in the trenches. If you are a startup founder, business executive, emerging thought leader, or simply a savvy operator that understands the power of authentic media, learn more at podcastcollective.io and feel free to book a 30-minute strategy session with yours truly. Traditional media is dying on the vine. Podcasts are rising quickly to fill the void. Do not miss the boat. That's podcastcollective.io. Santa Maria, welcome to the future of fitness. Thank you for having me. Yeah, super excited. You and I were just chatting about, I think the the last time I had someone from future onto the future of fitness, which sounds a little redundant, was Josh Bunatal. And that was like three, four years ago. And you know, things were very different back then. Uh we don't have to go into why, but they were. And uh, you know, I I've I've I like the model you guys are doing. I've I've been in a coach, I've saw kind of the inception of remote coaching very long time ago, and how just Neanderthal it was. It was like spreadsheets and emails and like, you know, just and now, you know, having experienced it just this week with one of your coaches, I got on with Lee, very nice man, and got to see how futures, you know, the the it's felt so personal, right? It felt really good and it was all within the app and the communications are tight. And I know you're you're the technologist of the company, so you're gonna give us a lot of insights into how that's working, but I think coaching is is core, and we could talk about you know artificial intelligence, which is now part of that, but I think still the human-to-human accountability is critical to what we do as an industry, and scaling that to some more people who may not have access to it is really important. And uh, so that that's why I love talking with you guys. So I'm gonna shut up for a second. Justin, give us your background, you're one of the founders there. How'd you get into this whole thing? And and yeah, let's start with that.

Man, how far back do you want to go? As far as you want. You know, so like you said, I'm I'm the technology guy. And so I got my start not on the fitness side, but definitely I grew up loving computers and the power of the internet and all this stuff, and ended up getting a degree in computer science on the code stuff. And and I think that's really important to start with because at the end of the day, I think I've realized I like to build things to help people. And that's kind of my if I'm doing that, you've got a happy camper in me. And I ended up getting a job at a little company you might be familiar with. It was called Apple, and it was like a dream job where I was a software engineer working on communication software for the Mac when I started. And I got invited to join a top secret team in the mid-2000s, and it turns out that was the iPhone team. And it's like, you're gonna run, you're gonna build our communications app, our messages app. I was like, okay, and ended up leading that team. And so got to work with Steve Jobs and got to work and see how great products like iPhone get made and be a part of that, and launched iMessage and FaceTime and you know, things we just see as ubiquitous today. And for that to be kind of your first job, I don't think you know it's special, but as time has passed, you really appreciate it. So my background's really in that kind of virtual communication space. I was at Apple for 10 years and then went to Airbnb, where I led guest experience. What's really interesting about that and how it builds into this story is Airbnb at the time, this is 12 years ago, I remember telling my dad, hey, I'm gonna join this company called Airbnb. What is it? He's like, so like you sleep on people's couches? Like, what you're at Apple, man, what are you doing? You know? And and that was the kind of reputation Airbnb had. And within two years, you know, they really crafted a narrative around kind of this kind of hospitality you get with Airbnb and this idea that what I was responsible for was how do you have people get comfortable with booking something? Maybe it's the only vacation they're going to take, and feeling, you know, somewhat confident with that, not ever having seen the place in real life, not necessarily having any idea who these people are that are hosting, all these things. How do you get someone comfortable with the digital connection and deliver digital hospitality essentially to guests of Airbnb? So I did that for a couple of years. Let's start at the beginning and work at the smallest company in the world, and that's one that you start. And fitness, this is where I meet one of our co-founders. You know, I remember sitting at at the table with him. This is Rishi Mandel, and saying, you know, when I was in my best shape, I had a coach because I ran cross-country and track in high school. I ran miles every day, and I just put down my school bag and went. Right. And and for Rishi, he's like, I'm all about fitness. Fitness is my life, it defines me, right? I played soccer in college and and said, you know, I I recognize how important my coach has been to my passion for fitness. And I was kind of going, well, since high school, I've been kind of a stereotypical engineer, uh, you know, this is like a very data con, you know, having fourth meal on the way home from work and and kind of, you know, very kind of sedentary life. And I realized I've I was in the best shape of my life when I had a coach. And so it was very interesting to have two very different personalities come together, sit at the same table, and be like, you know, the thing I need is the same thing you need, despite the fact our approaches to fitness and our attitudes around it are completely different. And it's around that that an idea sprouts. And it's around that where it's like, hey, how do you, what is this really about? And what it's about is the power of having someone who understands what your needs are, having someone who can take this load off of you, having someone who understands the complexity of your life and the chaos of it, how routinized are you versus how you aren't in your mindset toward fitness and health, and figuring out what's going to work for you. And it turns out that someone like me who's like, man, I just need to get off the couch and get going. This is this is a tough, this is a tough ask, you know, to him, who was like, How do I get that delta, get from the level I'm at to an even higher level? How do I, you know, and pick up basketball to play a better game? How do I do that? And I think that's where future starts. And that's, you know, eight years ago. And since then you realize that you build a product around an expert that's going to do three things for you. They're gonna provide you expertise. Without expertise, you you don't, you just have you just have a friend that provides the opportunity for flexibility. So a lot of what people lack is consistency, right? Just plain on consistency. And what you can say is like you need to commit to something, and the minute, and the problem with that is it's brittle. The minute you break it, you're starting from zero. So Fuji takes a slightly different approach, which is we're gonna understand you, and if you have a commitment to this, we're gonna make it work for you. We just need to stay in communications to make that happen. And then the third thing is motivation, genuine motivation, and that changes over time. But when you have a human, a big part of that motivation is a personal accountability. And it turns out that for a lot of people, that's a really key piece of the puzzle. It's not the only piece, and it's not always the most critical piece, but it's it can be a real driver for people making that that switch. And and you know, when you fast forward eight years, and the reason I'm talking to you, Eric, today is because we've seen that kernel, that understanding, that insight be true at the end of the day. And so I'll stop there. There's a lot of places to go with that, but yeah, yeah, there is.

And I I think of a lot of things when you're describing the world of coaching, it's something that I I love. I mean, at the end of the day, I still consider myself a coach in so many different ways. And I always promise my wife, I don't coach people I don't know at the gym, even though I see them deadlifting incorrectly and I'm dying on the inside. But the the coach client, the coach athlete, the coach, whatever you want to call it, relationship is so important. And that human function, I think also when I look at what you guys do, there's so many people out there that are so intimidated by the gym. They feel so alone when they go in. And that's been talked about in numerous ways on this podcast. And I think having someone who's like, okay, you know, I can confide and trust this person. That that takes a little bit of time. It doesn't happen out of the box, right? It's not like the first time you're gonna meet your coach, you're gonna be like, well, I trust you explicitly with everything in my life, but it happens over time. And I think that's really important to guide someone, be like, hey, we can start with these things in the gym, or maybe you can do this stuff at home and we'll kind of build up, you know, it's like, hey, this is your your your personal guide. And that's really important. I agree. Like, I the best shape of my life. I was just talking to Troy Taylor from Tonehall about this. Like, the best shape of my life, I still have this picture on my desktop computer because someday I'm gonna get back to it. I was 35, I had a coach, right? I was doing everything. I was ripped, I was in great shape, all of hitting all my markers. And I'm like, well, that was because I had accountability and I had someone who, as hard as I was training at the time, I knew he had my back and he was gonna get me to where I wanted to go. So I guess the big question is when you when you take that coaching relationship, and this is what you guys work on, is like, how do you scale that out? Like, you know, typically a coach can only work with 10, 20 people. But yeah, you know, not everyone knows how to access a coach, not everyone understands the relationship of what a fitness coach should do or what that agreement is. We as an industry were like, well, of course we know we're gonna give them programming, we're gonna give them accountability, we're gonna have that, but not everyone knows what they need. So, like, how do you start to scale that out? And I'm sure that was the mission that you guys originally Yeah.

And this is a really, you know, when I really rewind, you go back to kind of first principles. And I think it's important also to realize that I've never been a fitness coach, right? And no one on the team when we started had ever really been in the kind of industry. We've been recipients of the service, but never on the other side. And I think, you know, you get this very Silicon Valley approach, which is like, okay, what's the best way to learn about this quickly? And how do you set this up? And what you do is you go, okay, let's get some great coaches and shadow them, follow them. What do they do? What works for them? Because at the end of the day, the premise of future is super simple. Is like everyone who's successful and in the top 1%, whether they're CEOs or celebrities or athletes, they have coaches. They have coaches in fitness and in other aspects of life, they have people, they have a support team. I do okay, but I can't afford a support team. Can we do something with technology to bring that to more people? Right. And so you follow, you don't need to invent. You you go look and see what is a relationship like, and then how do we adapt that to something that can be brought to more people that can scale, that can do these things, because that's the challenge and that's the promise and potential of what technology can unlock. And in 2017, 2017, 2018, you're like, you know, I think this like mobile thing is a big deal. Yeah. I think having like the world in your pocket is something we could probably leverage. I think the ubiquity of communications and recognizing that people are very comfortable with remote communications and you can develop intimate, close relationships remotely is a thing. And that's why you know my Apple experience was something that really kind of felt like a green light. And then you can emotionally connect and really deliver on the idea of hospitality, having never met someone in real life, right? That's a thing that we were doing at Airbnb. And so you take those ingredients and you apply it to like looking at great coaching. And this is where you know you talked about Josh. We met Josh, who's you know, a monster in the personal training industry. He got it right away. And he's like, Oh, let me introduce you to people and let's talk to them and let's do that. And he's got the energy of you know, five of me. And so, you know, you get into this and you start looking at it. And what you realize very quickly is we're not building a company that centers around reps and sets, we're building a company that centers around connection and relationships. And what I mean by that is what you're saying, which is a coach's first job in the first on the first call, on the first week, on the first month, and forever is constant calibration. Understanding what your needs are, recognizing that oftentimes what you say isn't what you need, but a good coach bridges what you're saying with what you need and and and builds that understanding and understands that the actual the best workout for you is the one you're gonna do. And then how do we push you within that framework? It's very easy to say, Eric, here's your plan. Actually, you don't need anything for that. If PDFs solved this problem, we wouldn't be talking, you wouldn't have a podcast because it would just be simple. You just follow the directions. This isn't in an industry, this is just what happens. It's a far more psychologically complex problem than oh, if I have if I just had the right inputs for how to move in the gym, I could get the right outputs, right? And you bring up the idea that there are people who know they need to do this, but the gym can be an incredibly intimidating place for them. And I think there's this fallacy that people who are successful at the gym are successful because they've made fitness a centerpiece of their life. Because you go to the gym and there are people who are so passionate about fitness and so successful about fitness that you're like, oh, in order to be in here, I need to be like them. And the key, the unlock is recognizing how do you create the social safety for that person to be successful in your gym and for that to not feel like they have to be like that person who's made fitness a cornerstone or centerpiece or passion, so to speak, of their life. They're just here to brush their teeth. You know, they're here to get a job done and go on with their life because they know this is good for them. They know it's gonna help them feel better. It's they know it's gonna be something where it's like they're gonna live a better life, but it's it's not about the fitness, it's about all that stuff. And how do I come in here, do the best job I can, get the most out of it, and come out and not feel like I'm not good enough, or I don't belong here, or I don't know what I'm doing. One of the ways Fit Future has tried to bridge that, not just through the coach, but through how we deliver exercise, which is you know, you have a video. This was revolutionary years ago, but you know, you have a video that shows you the workout on your phone, but we also let you we pump audio voice cues into your ears, and you have you have a watch or wearable, you can see the movement, the number of reps, this sort of thing. And so you, you know, a quick glance and whatnot, you can kind of move through the gym and not be like, you know, I don't know what I'm doing, and kind of at least get that initial bit of confidence. And like you said, Eric, our coaches too are very flexible to like let's start at home. Most people, or not most, many people work out from home, and there's nothing wrong with that, you know, like that's fine.

Well, well, let's do this. I think the best way is maybe uh walk me through the user experience. I mean, I started a little bit yesterday. Uh, you know, I was telling you I met with Lee and we scheduled a call, he got to know me a little bit, but yeah, like through through the start to finish or start to you know, consistency, let's put it that way. Yeah. Like what does that look like?

Absolutely. One of the great things about future is once you sign up and join, you select a coach and then you schedule a strategy call with them. And this strategy call is like, you know, meeting a coach in real life for the first time. It's where you're the two of you get to know each other and where your coach really starts their job. And that is to figure out what makes you tick, what you think your goals are, and what your goals are, and how to bridge that into how we make that an actionable success plan. And then builds rapport with you because it is all about that constant calibration, that trust. How do we create the bubble of safety so that you can give feedback so that we can you can feel the trust that we're actually here for you? We're your advocate. The reason your coach is there is not because of them, it's because of you. But we have to have a two-way relationship for this to work, right? If it's just one way, it's far, it's far harder to see the value of coaching because it's just information flowing in one direction. And so you start off with your strategy call, you agree on a plan, get to ask any questions you want as a real person, you know, and then you get set up with a a custom workout plan and hey, I'm gonna work out three days a week. And where future really we've really emphasized is the flexibility of that. Hey, I'm gonna do two days in a gym because I go into work on those days, and there's a gym in the building or whatever, and then there's a day at home where it's like I don't have a bunch of equipment, but I have time because I work from home on that day, and then I go for a run on the weekend. And like we can build that plan for you and around that. And so a coach does that for you, and it's all in an app and it's all got step-by-step instructions and a video for every movement and the number of reps and the number of sets. And we go even a step further. And if it's weighted movements where you, you know, have a barbell, dumbbell, we prescribe the weight and progress you on that weight through your journey, right? The idea here is how do we just make this something you just can go do? You don't have to be thinking about, you don't have to kind of, you know, uh guess. How do we take the guesswork out of this? And how do we just make it something you can put on autopilot and feel confident in? And so that's that's the idea of that workout experience. Your coach, you know, depending on your style and your needs and whatnot, reaches out to you, motivates you, tries to do whatever they can to get you if you need to get there or keep you consistent. Because what we see is most people have the intention, are very high intent when they reach out for a service like Feature. They're very high intent when they go and say, I'm gonna sign up for a gym membership. I don't think anyone's like, and now I'm done once they're past that. They really are, and it's really how do you take advantage of that and jumpstart that and try to keep people in the consistency bucket, though they're Is a natural cycle there. And so all the future is built around how do we do that while also recognizing that people miss days, people get busy, kids get sick, meetings go long, and then you know, I'm tired. It's a very common, common reason why people might lose consistency. And so a coach will text you and motivate you, move a workout, change a workout, and say, hey, I noticed you know what I workout right now that we didn't get that in. We can let's do a stretch here at the end of the day. Five minutes, just stay consistent, do something. And so that's baseline of consistency, is where our coaches start. And if you have that baseline, you can start getting into the detail to the level at which you want to. If you're someone that's like, look, I don't, I don't care about, you know, the structure of my workouts or the you know body composition or what like muscle grouping, like I don't care. Just give me a good full body workout and and keep me motivated and keep me keep it interesting, you know. Fine, let's do that. That sounds great. But then if you're like, hey, I want to get into the the technical detail and the kind of the the the nitty-gritty of this these reps or these sets or whatever, coach is there for that. And and so it's really about that relationship. Yeah. So I mean I think, and then you kind of the relationship takes over from there. And it's really about how you connect with your coach, how you progress on your own journey. And so every future experience is very different.

And as the I mean, uh, you're obviously very in tune with the technology of it. How is how is the platform enhancing those, those kind of like the blocking and tackling of coaching, right? Which is like communication, trust, experience, meeting them where they're at, like all the things that the art and philosophy of coaching, like how is the technology better supporting having a better platform than what we had eight years ago?

So many things, Eric. So many things across. I, you know, a point of pride and the beauty of our of our coaching product is that to a client, it's kind of simple. There's like a chat interface, you have a FaceTime, and there's workouts, and that you kind of step through them, and there's great music, and again, the headphones, the watch, all this stuff just kind of works. And there's just an incredibly intricate dance around an app that you open that's actually your app. No one else is seeing or experiencing what you're seeing or experiencing on this app because it's built for you, it's like your personal app for fitness, and what goes into the simplicity is an incredibly complex system of things. The way we like to divide it up is into kind of the IQ of coaching and then the EQ of coaching, right? And the IQ of coaching is the things like okay, what's the plan that's gonna work for you? What are those reps and sets? What are your goals and your movements and your preferences and your limitations and your injuries? And just what's the formula for what the workout plan needs to be from a uh a physiological perspective? And you know, these coaches have in many cases are more educated than I am, they have higher level degrees than I do. They really understand the science of the body and of movement, right? So there's the IQ piece, and our tools can do a lot there because there's so much, you know, that's more of a scientific system, right? There's it's inputs and outputs, it's it's you know, there's formulas associated with these sorts of things, for lack of a better term. And so a lot of what our tooling is able to do is to really supercharge the coach. And to date, our technologies, how do we make our coaches look and feel superhuman? How do we allow our coaches to have dozens or even a hundred or more clients, but have every client feel like I'm their only client? How do we how do we scale? You know, scale is a factor here, and then how do we help a coach keep dozens of relationships in their head? Right? How do we help a coach understand that when I go to Justin, we talk about one set of things and he really does connect with his family and he cares about his life and whatnot. And then we go to someone else. It's really about like this is fitness, give me the straight stuff, you know, I don't need the fluff. Let's go, you know, and a great coach can do both of those things, right? And so, how have our tools developed in that? And what we've done is we've, you know, for years taken machine learning AI technologies to help surface anything from, you know, workout sets and suggestions to, you know, analyzing chats and suggesting next steps and doing these things, and then ultimately saying, you're the expert coach, you have the agency, let's let's you make the final call on these things. And that's that's a model we've been running. That's a playbook we've been running for five years now. But we've always had a really hard thing where it's like this is a premium product, you're paying for a coach and their time and their brain. And so at the end of the day, the coach is the is the buck holder, is able to take whatever our systems are building and put their touch on it, adjust it, make it specific to you. And so what we've largely done is try to have an 85-15 rule where it's like if we can get 85% of the stuff that's super uninteresting, that's the table stake stuff that every workout needs, that you just need to do, and is kind of just uninteresting to a coach, frankly, and and doesn't actually impact things. It's just administration and and handle that and then allow the coach to focus on, okay, let's let's calibrate, let's form the connection, let's have that. And that's where a coach spends their time and then does the kind of, hey, I'm gonna do this for you, or I'm gonna talk to you about that, or this movement for you is the specific thing I want you to focus on. If a coach is spending their time on that, that's very high value. That's why you have a coach, right? It's not because of your warmups, you know, and and while the coach still has complete agency over the entire thing, that's how you get to scale because you're you're allowing the coach to express what their most, you know, why, why, why do you have a human coach there? Why you have a human coach there and deliver on that with every client every day.

There's, you know, I've had several people that I've talked to either on this podcast or you know, individually in person in the the Kensa, and I think this is across so many different industries now with AI is like, you know, developers, right? You probably know that space really well. It's like, is it gonna replace developers? No, but it's probably developers who use AI successfully are gonna replace those who don't. And I think the same with coaching and training is everyone's worried, like, is artificial intelligence gonna replace the trainer and coach? And I think that's a really hard thing to replace. Now, do I think AI, you know, trainers and coaches that use AI, are they gonna be able to handle a hundred clients versus a dozen? And that maybe is gonna take away from people who don't use AI. Yes, I think that's very real. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on that. And like, how are you guys like, how is this this convergence of artificial intelligence and great human touch and coaching meeting together? What's what's your vision for that? How are you guys working towards it?

You know, if there's anything I think about and talk about all day long, it's this exact topic.

Yeah.

Um because I think, you know, some of this I think you can take any industry and have this conversation and swap fitness for law or fitness for health or fitness for basically, like you said, developing developers. And I think, you know, the overall sense, you know, and AI has the potential to be so big that, you know, I think people are, you know, I used to say, you know, imagine talking about the internet and being like, should we use the internet? You know, but I think AI is actually bigger than that. I think so. It's akin to kind of the industrial revolution. Like, what's gonna happen to like hand crafted goods? Because now we're gonna have mass-produced goods. You know there's a there's a I think a healthy tension, right? And and a justified kind of what's gonna happen question mark. And the approach that we take is you have you can't ignore it, or else you're going you're gonna be obviated. It's not going to be gonna work out well for you because this is such a powerful force. And if you interact with AI today, it's funny, my mom's in for this this weekend. I we were talking about AI, because I mean, how can you not? And she's like, What's this, you know, Chat GPT? And I pulled up Chat GPT, and she had used it before, but like for fine, you know, fact-finding. And I was like, just talk to her. And she starts talking to it, and you see a light bulb moment, you know. This is my mom, my mom's in her, you know, I'm not gonna reveal her age, but it's older than it's older than 44, okay, which is my age, and and it clicked for her, which is like, oh, oh, you mean I can just talk, you know, I can just have a conversation. I'm like, yeah. And and it's interesting, Ria, just like six months ago or a year ago, that wouldn't have been how you thought about this. You'd be like, oh, that's very clunky and silly, and like have a conversation, like it's it doesn't feel right, it doesn't sound right, but that's the pace of development that AI has had. And so our we've had to really accelerate our pace and understanding like what's this doing to the future, what's this doing to the industry, what's this doing to the workforce, what's this doing to the world? And I think everyone's having that conversation when it comes to coaching. I think you hit the nail on the head. It's the same thing as like software development, which is the the people who understand this power and how it's going to enable that much better delivery of an experience are gonna do it at another level, and then the people who don't are going to struggle more and more and more with their ability to deliver the value for the cost, and it's a simple equation, right? And so our approach is how do we help our coaches deliver at that level? But also, is there a tier, is there a version of coaching that is even more affordable for people, right? Because with future, we took personal training can be thousands of dollars a month if you use personal training in the gym every session, right? And we said for 200 bucks a month for 199 a month, or if you're on a yearly plant for 149 a month, you know, you can have someone program workers for you seven days a week who's always on, who you can talk to, who will adjust your workouts, who will be your expert, who answer any question, you know, all of these things. And it's you know, it is 10x cheaper than having a human come to your house or meet you at the gym. Okay. That's still too expensive for like 90% of people who just need to move more. Like 70% of Americans don't move enough. How do you take what is an emergent technology and fit that into a portfolio that allows you to bring forward your mission of bringing this idea of anyone who needs a coach should be able to have a coach. It shouldn't just be available to the top 1% or top 10%. It should be available to everyone because this is a problem. Like we're trying to solve a problem here and not just vend a new solution to a group of people who don't need one. And I think the power of AI is twofold for fitness. One is allowing a coach to deliver way more than they were ever able to deliver in the past. And then also, is there something that can really help people get started or get consistent on their fitness journey on a level that hasn't been doable before because it was just too expensive?

When I think about I've always had this vision, right? Because I remember distinctly years and years ago sitting and programming for all of my clients. And I'm like, this is the most so it's like it became like just an hour on Sunday morning, and then it became my whole Sunday, and then it was like, and it was great because I was, you know, obviously seeing success. I was getting more clients and I was doing more in-depth programming. It was, you know, I thought I liked it, but until until it took up my entire weekend. But I've always had this image of like all this potential data on an individual, right? And I I play this, I run this stuff through my own chat GPT all the time. It's got my blood work, my genetics, and like, you know, and then maybe access to like my my wearable metrics, maybe a nice movement assessment, you know, a couple times a week to see how my body's flowing, if there's any improvements and, you know, potential risk, injury risk, like all the stuff that flows in goes nicely to a coach who then knows how to interpret it and then in a very human way, right, relate that to the person and why it's important and why it's gonna help them meet their goals and then also be understanding enough to to see that you know, their challenges and what they have in their life. But it's all like all that background stuff that would take hours and hours, if not days, to completely shift. Like, okay, if I'm if I'm doing workouts for you, Justin, like all of a sudden you're like, oh shoot, Eric, I gotta go off to New York for two days. Like, well, great, Justin, that just screwed up my whole plan, right? Like now I gotta go back and do everything. And then, like, and then like, well, then yeah, you're on there and you're getting four hours of sleep while you're there, and your HRB dropped to like, you know, 25, and you're like, well, I shouldn't be doing any of this training now. So it's like, as a coach, there's so much stuff that is so reactive. And like, and it all can be done, like, you know, with the genetic level, you can see what injuries they may be predisposed to, right? And then you get the blood work coming in, be like, okay, well, maybe this person needs you know some very, very specific supplementation or changes, like all this stuff can feed in and then have it interpreted by a coach. Is that something that's similar to what you guys are looking at for the future of coaching?

When it comes to high-level coaching, yeah. Why why wouldn't we? Is kind of my question. Like, yeah, yeah, the idea, the thing that this technology revolution unlocks is things that humans can't do. I can't hand my coach my genome and my HRV and be like, build me a plan. It's impossible, you know, that that's not gonna happen. But with AI, it's like, okay, sure, here. You know, there's the things that we would be able to that we are able to do and will be able to do at a very high level. That for for people all the way from people who are incredibly passionate about fitness and like I I know you know my resting heart rate, HRV, I track all that stuff, I care, you know, to people who couldn't, you know, care less, just go, I want to be the healthiest I can be.

I'm just trying to get through my day, dude.

I yeah, my focus is somewhere completely different. Well, you want these things here, have them so that I can just you know get through my day and then understand that you know I'm depending on you to make sure that when I do take that last minute trip, we're good. And it's like, if I had a tool that's like, hey coach, you know all that monkeying that you gotta do when that happens, you don't have to do that anymore. That'd be huge. You'll just do it, and you're there to kind of instead of being in the boiler room flipping all the switches, you're you know, you're in the top deck of the ship, kind of looking at the dials and going, okay, we need to we need to course correct, you know, and and being like, yeah, like now there's infinite switches to flip. A human shouldn't be down in that room. It's the same thing like as any other industry is like coaches have an opportunity to operate at a higher level than you know, it's almost a dream level, right? Where you're now you're not designing plays, you're the head coach, you're the you're the person that goes, okay, I can I can see things at a much higher level now and and and understand where we're headed, and and instead of the the particular logistics of everything, I can point and it'll go over there. And I can look at it and go, that makes sense. That's the mentality shift. And that's you know, I think the big picture when you say the coaches who embrace technology and AI and the coaches who don't. The coaches who embrace will actually be very strong directors of fitness and not implementers of fitness.

Well, I look at like so I've been I've been playing around with this stuff, Justin. I'm I'm on multiple, you know, GBT and sure, all of cloth and stuff. Yeah, I play around with them a lot. And you know, I I've made I have one specific that's like my personal health coach, right? So I gave it my blood work from a year ago to today. I'm playing around with peptides, I'm telling what I'm doing with that, all my supplementation, my exercise. I just fed it a bunch of data and I keep feeding it data. And it and I now has the deep research mode on ChatGPT, which is incredible. I'm like, I it spent like 15 minutes analyzing everything and all the research. It has links now to everything. I'm like, oh my God. Now I I was if I'm coaching still, right? I would want a different GPT for every single one of my clients. Right. And then like, and I just see this where I'm like, why wouldn't I? Like I'm if it's $30 a month. Like I can have all this in and it makes me look like a rock star, right? And I I think it's so interesting that like we have that capability. I don't think people really, very few people within the United States and maybe other countries, China, Russia, right, are in this AI world. Most countries, most people on the planet have no idea what's going on. Not to any fault of their own. Right. And then within these countries where we are aware of this stuff, very few people are even aware of it within the country, right? Are playing around with these things. So people are pretty aware. So, like, I guess the question is, and we're taking a step back here. When you look at the existential or the major impacts on what AI will do to this, and there's other things, and I just listened to a ritual podcast with the gentleman from Sabiens, the author, and they were talking about AI and its impact. And like, AI doesn't sleep, right? And it's gonna keep pushing us to a different pace. And there, there's a lot of things that concern me. And I think if you're you're paying attention, there are a lot of things that should concern you too, but you can still be optimistic. So when you look at like the future of where this is all going with people's, not just coaching, but people's health, what are you optimistic about? And is there anything that scares you just a little bit?

You know, at the end of the day, and this is a this is a realization I've had to have, you know, being 25 years in technology, at the end of the day, AI is a tool. It's a tool, it's a human-created tool. And like any tool, it can be used. It's it's on its surface, it doesn't have a moral stance, but it's how we use it that determines the things that we can be optimistic about and the things we can be pessimistic about. And in a world of grays, I'm gonna use black and white terms, it can be used for bad, it can be used for good, right? Certainly I'm optimistic that AI is going to provide links and correlations and understandings about how humans work, you know, how disease is cured, how our bodies can be optimized, how but at the end of the day, all of that amounts to I believe in the power of AI's ability to help humanity live happier, healthier, more fulfilled lives because it's able to kind of cut through a lot of data and a lot of things that are gonna take humans hundreds of years to figure out. We're gonna find out in our life. On the other side of that, it's very easy to say AI is going to just take over everything. And what does that leave me as a human? Where does that leave me? And I think when you've gone through every one of these kind of revolutions, and I do think this is our industrial revolution, humans have this, we're in a transition, and we'll probably be in a transition for many years. And I think humans ultimately are adaptable creatures. And I think humans, I think we underestimate ourselves as a species. We have an uncanny ability to adapt. And that's kind of what's, you know, led us to where we are today. And so my belief is we're very poor predictors of what the future holds. We prove ourselves that time and time again. But I do believe we'll adapt into a new way of work and a new way of life. And just like there was the promise of, hey, now everyone's going to be able to never work and always be eternally on vacation, which has been a promise of technology since the dawn of man, what it probably means is we will reach a new level of a new way of working, a new way of interacting, a new way of seeing our world. And that's scary. That's absolutely scary because we don't know what that is. Not knowing is a scary thing. But what I do believe is at the end of the day, humans are going to want to connect with other humans. And that is just the fundamental need. And that's going to become potentially more of a premium and more of something that you're willing to pay more for because so much of what your day-to-day needs are may be met by technology that the actual need to connect is something that isn't going to be a given in a given day. And I think we've seen that with how things have played out even in you know the last five years, you know, that people, you know, were in their homes and doing their things and were very immediately, you know, it was kind of cool and fun. And it was like, I need to get back out into the world. I need to see other people. I don't think that's changing. I think how we do that, when we do that, where we do that, I don't have good answers for you because no one knows. And that's what makes it scary.

Well, you know, I I like this analogy of like a hundred years ago when the Wright brothers created their first version of the plane, right? They had no idea that we would be where we are now, where there's planes, flying. Katie Perry went to space, but drones also drop bombs on people. So it's like they had no idea there was good and bad, right? Like we don't know, and I don't think we have any idea where this thing's gonna go, but it's gonna go there a lot faster than 100 years. This thing's gonna accelerate. And I think in 10 years, maybe 15, I don't know, our lives are gonna be pretty unrecognizable to what they are today, and it's gonna be wild. Anyway, I could talk about this stuff forever, Justin. This is like the type of things that you know, this is this is where at a dinner party my my wife is squeezing my knee underneath the table. Like where you stop, where you just stop. Just I I really appreciate you coming on. I know you got to get on with your busy day as a CTO, but thank you for joining me. If people want to reach out to you or people want to get in touch with you or follow you or whatever, sure. Where where would you like them to go?

Oh, I'm so quiet these days. I am I'm definitely I'm on X at J S Maria. So J S A R I A. And you know, I I keep a low profile, but I'll see you.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, Justin, thank you very much. And it's been a pleasure, and we'll we'll catch up with uh future and what you guys are up to, probably another another year or so. So Justin Santa Maria. Thanks so much, Eric.

It's been a pleasure.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futurofitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.