Marco Benitez - Mining Gold from 300+ Wearables: How ROOK Unifies Scattered Data

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 futureofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now onto the show. In an industry full of noise, with more features, more screens, more promises, eGim is focused on something far more meaningful, progress that counts. EGM is a global fitness technology leader, building the infrastructure behind real results. Their open ecosystem connects smart strength equipment, AI-powered software, and data-driven services to turn fitness into measurable, repeatable progress for members, trainers, operators, and communities. Now what really excites me is how EGM brings its ecosystem together with Wellpast, their corporate wellness platform. By combining their strength equipment with AI-powered software and their corporate wellness platform Wellpast, they're leading the shift to proactive, preventative health. Isn't that what we all want? That's why we're here. The result? Members feel more confident and motivated, trainers have better tools to support people, operators see stronger retention and growth, and employers benefit from healthier, more engaged teams. This isn't innovation for show. It's progress you can see, measure, and repeat. To learn more, please visit eGim.com. All right, Marco Benitez, welcome to the future of fitness, my friend. How are you doing?

Doing well. Again, thank you very much for having me here. Very excited to see you and talk with you.

Yeah, I really enjoy our conversations whenever we get an opportunity to connect. You know, you guys at Rook are working very hard to keep up with the pace of what data, artificial intelligence, and how it's changing everything. And, you know, I'll just give you know some context around. So you are the CEO and co-founder of Rook. Rook provides unified wearable data, harmonizing data from 300 plus devices for fitness, healthcare, and insurance companies. You were a biomedical engineer at large pharma companies like Roche and Navartis. And you're also a former Taekwondo champion. So that's pretty cool. Don't mess with Marco. He'll mess your word up. Just kidding. He's super nice. So one of the things you and I were just discussing was I was on a panel just a few weeks ago from this recording date at the Connected Health and Fitness Summit. And someone pointed out something really it was it was all about data, right? It was a 24-hour fitness, Garmin, Google, David Lloyd, large, you know, health club chain in Europe. And we were all talking about data and how the world is changing. And uh here's the thing like we think our industry is changing really fast, and it is. I mean when we talk about fitness and healthcare and wellness. But you zoom out a little bit, the whole world's changing really fast. And it's due to mostly artificial intelligence, right? And it's it's as you and I were just joking about, it's like you can live like almost one of two ways as far as life goes now. You can kind of bury your head in the sand, everything's great, right? You know, you just things don't change. Maybe you get affected a little bit here and there, you don't really read the news, and that's probably a better way to go. Or you're paying attention and you're completely effing overwhelmed with how fast artificial intelligence is taking over. I mean, just recently there was the announcement that who was it, not pure teal, but some other major company laid off 40% of their workforce due to artificial intelligence, right? Super scary.

It's uh it's scary. We are in a scary world right now in terms of everything. It's like AI. I'm very surprised. I I I just bought a Tesla. My goodness. It's a completely different shit. I mean, I'm very surprised. I I'm someone who lives all my life with technology. You know, I'm a biomedical engineer, I love I love the technology, I love everything with the wearables, I love, you know, uh machine learning, AI, everything. But it's like crazy that you can go to your car and I was driving, I was not driving. I was in my car in from my home to the event in Miami, which is like two hours from where I live. I never, never touch nothing. I was just hearing my music, maybe sometimes texting something, but I was not doing anything. So I was talking with my wife, like, what's going on? My parents, when they saw that, was like, whoa, that's really crazy. And I'm I'm I'm like, this is the new world, and I mean, everyone is talking about it, and everyone knows that Tesla exists, but when you are in that car and the car is driving and taking the decisions, because also that happened was like there was a car, like I don't know, five, six cars in front of me. I didn't saw that that was on um uh was a stop at the the car, and my car took the decision to move very quickly to the to the right and and you know cross all these these cars. So the decisions that the car can take are even better than myself sometimes. So I'm pretty impressed sometimes, yeah. But generally speaking, I'm very surprised that I didn't touch nothing on my car when I was driving. And also my kids are very exciting, you know, because they feel like this the supercar, and but they are living this new world. My my kids want to have 10, the other one seven. And now I can't imagine what's going to happen in five years from now, in 18, in 10 years, the next year. And as you said before, it's like I wasn't in this event yesterday, and it's like when you learn something from AI, the next day, if you want to learn the same thing, it's like it's a completely different thing and have different meanings. It's really scary. It's it's it's scary. It's crazy, it's crazy.

It's it's just happening like way faster than I thought. I, you know, when I think about I'm a Gen Xer, so we always thought about this future, futuristic time when there would be like flying cars. We haven't seen flying cars yet. Well, I guess, yeah, I don't know, maybe a helicopter is technically a flying car, but the uh like we always thought, and so it hasn't exactly panned out like we thought it would, but it's actually already here. Like self-driving cars is pretty amazing. I I did my first Waymo when I was down in LA for at the conference recently. And I it blew my mind. First of all, it wasn't that great. Like it does, it screwed up a lot of things, right? But just the fact I was sitting there and I came back and I was on a chairlift here in Montana skiing over the weekend, and I was talking to my friends, and I was like, oh, I do this thing, Waymo. And they're like, wait, what? So it's like it's in certain areas, it's becoming normal. Like in the metropolis, metropolis areas, it's very, you know, Phoenix and LA and Miami and Miami, lots of different areas, right? It's it's becoming very normal, but there's still a lot of people out there who find it completely foreign and strange. And, you know, when we look at our art industry too, everyone's talking about I'm I've moderated so many panels now or had so many conversations about data and what that means. It's almost becoming, I don't know if it's losing its punch, but it's like it's more like this constant noise. That's what it feels like. It just feels like constant noise that we have to do something in data, we have to configure the data, we have to do all these things, like from the member experience to retention to projections, like all the things we can do with it. So I guess when you look at our industry and specifically in fitness and wellness, like how are we doing compared to other industries? Like, are we are we keeping up or are we kind of falling behind because we're still focused on the same old shit?

That that's the that's a real question. I think that or that's my perspective because I came from the health industry. I my background is in the big pharma industry, in the healthcare space, where it takes a lot of time to do something when you have a lot of information because you have to do so many analytics, and for example, a clinical trial probably take 10 years to complete some trials and make the FDA approval to start using medications. So it's it's a long, a long game, and it's it data is really serious uh when we are talking about that type of information. What is crazy is then the fitness and wellness, it's it's simple. Because at the end of the day, it's like you have to do what you have to do every single day. It's everything around prevention, you have to it's everyone will tell you that you need to sleep well, you need nutrition, really good nutrition, don't stress, quote unquote. Do your your workouts, try not to stress, right? Whatever that means. Uh do workouts every single day. Try to do weights, run if you want, or do bicycle, whatever you want to do. It's quite simple. But at the end of the day, when you have more information, you can improve some things that you want to get better. Because now is where you can start to see different segmentations of end users, let's say like like this, where some of them are just want to have a really good, nice life, but then with the social media, now you have the in the when you have social media that everyone is like every the everyone has to be strong, you have to eat so many protein, protein, protein here, protein there. Please take out everything. You only have you need protein because if you are not eating protein, it's like the caveman, the cavemans only eat meat, you know. So it's so much noise outside. And at the end of the day, again, what you said you are saying, it's a lot of data. Are we using in the right direction? I don't think so. That's the point. You need someone who can make a filter of all this noise and start to focus on the on the important thing, which is your health. So taking some taking data from laboratory information, from your device, your wearable device, from your instructor makes a lot of sense. That's when someone starts to make something with your your your health. It's taking all the things that you have around. But again, now with the social media and all these types of things, we overcomplicate so many things. And I think that's the problem at the end of the day.

You know, I feel like the world, you know, I'm I'm turning the mid-century mark here soon. And this is definitely by far at this point in my life, I feel like the world is just yelling at you all the time. From like everything, right? Like from social media to traditional media to, you know, even this small little town I live in, I'll drive down the street and there's protesters, and you're like, Jesus, like there's everyone's just yelling at you, right? It's just constant yelling. It's like you have to find this sense of peace somehow. But that's a whole nother conversation that we get on, maybe over a beer sometime. But this today for this, I'm wondering, like, Mark, when you look at, and we can kind of maybe narrow it down a little bit more to even just operators within our industry, where are the real opportunities with data? Because you have membership data, you have wearable data. I don't know what other kinds of data you have, but there's a lot. But we're we're like when you boil it down to like the tangible opportunities, right? So you you kind of drown out the noise. Like, what can we really do with data that can make an impact on, you know, how we improve our communities and their health, to our businesses being stronger and more vibrant. Like we're what's real?

I think for for them, at the end of the day, one of the most important things is engagement. That's something that everyone is talking about during all the events. It's how you engage with the end user, how you customize the experience, how do you get something, you know, have healthy people that want to engage even more, and they invite more people to your facility or to your app or to your whatever. And data that's the type of thing that can give you correlations. Everything is about correlations. Everything is about the data that you are receiving, and how do you want to use the data? In my perspective, I'm a collector, I collect data from everywhere. I connect data from wearable devices, medical devices, laboratory information, from different, you know, administration platforms. So we recollect data from everywhere, and then we can give you something for you. So that's the point, I think, for them is try to understand the end user, try to understand your like an startup. It's like you're trying to identify your ICP, your ideal customer, what type of customers you want to attract with your in your facility. And that's what we can help them. Not only us, it's like when you have data, but also you have to be very careful with the data because you need clean data. You need data that you can really use. That's the big problem right away. It's like any AI tool, if they don't have clean data, is is it's garbage. Is you will not use it for nothing. And for me, that's that's the whole point. It's like the other day we were talking about this, and everyone wants the gold. But to get to the gold, you need the how do you call it? The pick and shuffles. I I'm not pronouncing it there in the right way, but it's like you need the tools.

Yeah.

You need the tools to to go to the to the gold. And and that's exactly what we do. We bring to those companies the tools so they can extract the gold, the oil, the data, so now they can analyze, and now we can help them to analyze the data. That's the important thing. It's not only receiving the data, because at the end of the day, data is good, but then what? What can you do with all this data? Is what that's the reason if you go with Whoop, for example, or Aura, they are trying to make something different with the information. They are trying to try to give you an score, an age score. They are trying to help you with specific behaviors, they are trying to help you with your workouts. It's like they are not anymore just a wearable. It's like they are trying to bring in something else, something more to you. The extra step, the extra mile. And even though that you have Polar and Garmin, they are really great with the hardware. It's impressed the hardware that both companies have. But at the end of the day, when we want to consume all this information, it's really difficult. It's like the Apple Watch. Believe me, Apple Watch, the the information or the data that we are receiving from Apple Watch is great. It's amazingly good. It's like a medical device, great, believe me. Apple Watch is doing really good. The problem is uh use that data. If you go to your health app, it's like make sense of everything. It's really difficult because it's so many, so much information over there. And then if you integrate your e chart or whatever with my chart or whatever, and you try to mix everything, it's like now how can I use this information? So that's that's a big problem. It's like again, everyone is telling you that it's yelling you that you have to use the data, but it's like how can I use it if it doesn't make sense for me. It's like does that what patterns I need to be uh looking for? I don't know. It's like sleep data, okay, it looks good. It it is is is good the data? I don't know. That's a problem, I think.

What what do you when you look at like uh you guys work with a lot of different companies, brick and mortars, pharma, healthcare companies, and you help them unify this data so they can extract the gold, right? I think that's a really good thing, is like, you know, we have literally a lot of dirt and rocks and you know, useless shit as far as data, but we got there's gold in there. We just gotta go in and find it, right? So maybe you could give me some examples of you know, either clients you guys work with or companies that you admire that are are really doing a good job extracting that gold per se.

Aye, there are so many. Big pharma is one big one. They are using for two purposes. One is for real-world evidence. That's really difficult to have, honestly. It's like once you have like a vaccine or I don't know, a drug, whatever, once they are in the market, they don't have so many tools so they can start to receive more information about specific patients. So they are building these real-world evidence trials where they want to extract real-world information. Because when you are in a clinical trial, everything is really it's so customized, it's perfect. The trial is perfect, but when you are outside in the real world, that's when you can find adverse events and you can find so many things. So, for example, they are using some of them, we are doing something with them on wearables information so they can track real data. Now they are identifying adverse events, they are identifying if the drug works. For example, we work with one company for narcolepsy. That's interesting because you can see the improvement. And they are using aura rings and they are using Apple Watches and they are doing using whole art, they are using everything. But then when they take the drug, now they can analyze the information and see the end user, the patient, the patient can see the improvement. And that's beautiful. That's beautiful.

So in that particular case, it is beautiful. In that particular case, is the data that they're pulling from wearables, is that like medical grade data? Like, is that stuff that they can rely on? Because I actually just recently saw a post that said, like, it's actually went the other way. They considered wearable data more wellness information, which actually gives us more freedom to use it, right? Because it doesn't have to be treated like medical data. So, yeah, like how is this data categorized and I guess prioritized over other forms of data? It depends on the other.

Yeah, it depends on the protocol because they can use that information as an alternative information from the patient. So it's it doesn't matter. Could be medical grade or not. If you specify that type of why do you want to use and how do you want to use that information, is it's it's perfectly fine because it's part of the hypothesis that you can have from one trial. So they can use it, they don't care. Of course, it's better if it's medical grade, but at the end of the day, it's like it doesn't matter because when you have so much information, you can start making correlations. Again, correlations is very important. When you have when you can normalize the data and you when you can standardize the data from different devices, that's the important thing. And try to make something again. It's it's it's more about the way you are recollecting the data and how you are using that information. Yes. Yeah.

It's what about what about the the fitness industry specifically? Like pharma, pharma and healthcare are always been light years ahead, right? Yeah. They just they make a lot more money, they invest a lot more into this, they're way more profitable than than our industry. I don't think anybody, that's not a shocker to anybody. But what about, you know, when you look at like the fitness and wellness industry specifically, like what examples do you have of companies that are extracting gold? What do you what do you see there?

I can see a lot on the longevity space. Longevity, trying to make something with peptides, with uh also with uh with the I forgot the name, supplements and different types of things. So they are trying to make, well not trying, they are doing up sales when they can extract the data and then they can show them that they are improving on sleep or stress or this type of things. That's really that's great because you can see the the trends when you start to use the specific uh supplements, and you can see the the difference between, for example, and sleep information, which is the normally we we have more sleep. It's it's you know, sleep during the last probably what about seven years, ten years. Everyone is talking about the sleep information, which is one of the most important metrics. And stress levels, of course. So now we we can see a lot of upsales on that with that information. In the fitness general speaking, with fitness clubs and everything, it's more about the engagement and how the end user is using or they are making workouts outside. And maybe they are doing something correlations with nutritionists and then with the with the coach and everything, so they can have the full service with them. So it's part of that type of environment. They create their own environment with everything connected, right? It's like you have your wearable, you have a nutritionist, you have your coach, you are doing workouts, you are doing ABC, and then you have the complete picture of one person. And that way they can improve, I don't know, depending on the goal of the end user. So you can customize everything with the information of these devices. That's how we see more, or at least they are using this data.

You know, there's a part of me when I hear about how the fitness industry specifically uses data. I'm like, well, it lacks imagination, right? Like we're not just, we're just not that creative with it. But then again, I'm like, but really engagement and retention is the most important thing because if we can engage and retain people, they get healthier outcomes. Like that's just it. Like people can stay in the gym for years versus months. We're gonna have a healthier population, we're doing our job, we're getting a deeper penetration into the market. So it's uh I don't know. I go back and forth all the time. I'm like, I want to see something really cool and that. And I'm like, but we gotta stick to the fundamentals, right? We gotta stick to the fundamentals of what we do as a as an industry.

It's crazy because everyone is doing different types of things and AIs and AI agents and everything. And it's but everyone is trying to engage with the end user because they the big problem that the industry has is that fitness is not something that you can keep all the time. It's something that you have to acquire. It's it's it's different. It's different, it's it's really complex. Well, it's not complex, but at the same time, it's complex because probably you do five times per week, four times per week workouts, and but then you have, I don't know, a flu, and then two weeks you're out, and then try to go back again to the fitness club. It's difficult. Take time, or maybe our holidays, or maybe you know, every single end user have uh uh a different incentive. Some of them they are just looking to be healthy. I think that's that's the problem, incentives and how because also not everyone is very disciplined. Discipline is the is the word, yeah. Yeah, so that's the big problem, also, too. It's like you need to keep your habits, and that's something that no one does a lot. Habits are real difficult to acquire, and when you're talking about fitness, it's even more difficult. So the struggle between fitness clubs and everything, it's like how can we create habits to everyone? It's like that's why they create challenges, and that's why they create these memberships of one year. It's trying to help them to create a habit to go to the gym every single day, or at least to create a culture between on all this, you know, industry, which is really difficult. It's really, really difficult from my perspective. So that's why everyone is trying to yell something like, hey, we have AI tools, hey, I have the best fitness club ever. It's really nice and beautiful, and everything is black with colors and the music and the people, and everyone is trying to yell something.

Um I want to ask you about Marco, is like so wearable data, sleep, resting heart rate, heart rate, HRB, you know, kind of the fundamental wearable data. But there's a lot more other sources of data coming out now, too. There's continuous glucose monitors are becoming more prevalent. I mean, gosh, even your toilet gives you data. If you get a fancy toilet now, right? It'll tell you all kinds of data about your poop. And then there's, I don't know, there's there just seems to be a lot more hydration data. You can get like a NIC sensor, right? You can see how well you're hydrated. So it's just like this, this war, this wearable like revolution that we're seeing of all different types of data. And like it's really just the quantified self 3.0 movement, I think that's going on right now. So like when you look at all these other, like you mentioned sleep is probably the most valuable source of data, right, for health. Like what other what other kinds of data are you seeing from a health perspective that are generating a lot of gold too?

I mean, there is CGMs, blood pressure, glucose levels, I think, are the the most important things, blood pressure, because it's it's a chronic disease here in the US. It's it's something that it's happening, and it's because we have one of the communities more, you know, a lot of fat people basically. Not only here in the US, also in Mexico. In Mexico, it's like the second country in the world that has the worst obesity ever in child. And here in the US, it's in adults, so we have to change behaviors, and and that's why blood pressures and glucose levels, CGMs are very important, and they are trying to change the way we measure patients. Because now, if you have 24-7, now you can identify different events in in one day or in the week, and you can start changing behaviors or you can start changing different types of things. So, probably those ones are really, really important. And it's like a how can you be less invasive? So, for example, CGMs, they have, you know, it's it's it's it doesn't hurt, hurt, but it's like at the end of the day, every every two weeks you have to change, or every two weeks or so, you have to change the CGM. It doesn't make sense, and also sometimes hurt, and then you have blood, and then you have different, and not everyone wanted. So I probably I can I believe there is going to be a wearable outside that it's going to be non-invasive, like the Apple Watch is looking for this type of things, or at least there's a lot of rumors about that. But I think temperature is the other one who is really interesting. Temperature, it's good uh to measure things, to predict things. Now, talking about neuroscience neurology, I think there is a big, big gap over there. Everyone is trying to identify different uh, you know, with the with the it's not uh CCG information. So I don't know, maybe in that area is where we can we will find more and more wearables eventually. And today I can see more on that on those areas. But I think that will help a lot for stress information, also when you are sleeping, have this information from your brain and the activity in your brain, everything will help you a lot to improve your your sleep information or your sleeping, generally speaking.

Yeah. Yeah. And there is, I think we have a mutual friend. I just met her at Connected Health and Fitness, Gabriela Cordero. She's talking about what they're doing with MedWatch as a non-invasive product. Yeah, yeah. It looks interesting, right? It looks interesting. It's super interesting. Super interesting. Yes. You know, we we've talked about this for decades now, but the integration of the fitness industry and the health industry or the medical industry. And I and, you know, I've I've I've always had a stance that it really comes down to data. Like we got to have data flowing back and forth between, you know, the medical profession and the fitness community where we can show, you know, that what we do is actually improving health outcomes. Like that's a big deal. So we kind of have this bridge forming right now. And of course, when you start to get to that thing, like, well, then there's opportunities for insurance companies to get on board. So I know you guys have worked with some. I mean, maybe there's like the clarity partnership that you guys have. But how what does like a gym as a health data provider business model look like? Is that is that possible? Are we doing it now? Is it on the forefront? Like paint a picture there.

Yeah, I think I think that we have to move more more that area, definitely. Health, generally speaking, the healthcare industry is very fragmented. Is at the end of the day the I think the problem is that we have people involved and different types of interests. Everyone is interested in different types of things. Money, we have some of them are really interested in the health, otherwise are in the processes, so it's like it's really complicated. That's that's why I think AI will help us a lot because it's impartial. It's impartial, the AI. And probably I can, I believe so, that eventually the AI will help us to take better decisions about the processes that we have in the healthcare industry, and also to improve people's lives. And that's why we need all these data so they can take those decisions without any type of you know, money monetary problem or money problem or insurance problem or anything. It's it's gonna be more realistic. So we need to create more papers, we need to create more, you know, these type of things that can help us to tell them that this information is really important. Because the other situation is that doctors at the end of the day, doctors they they they see like, I don't know, 20 patients per day. And if they receive the data from wearable devices without any type of you know, insights or something, it's like it's a liability problem. It's like also what kind of decisions they can do with all this data, they need to someone help them to understand that information. That's why the things are not moving forward with the with the wearable data in the healthcare space. We have someone, we have some remote patient monitoring programs, which makes more sense because it's like chronic disease management. Probably they have diabetes people and they want to identify if someone has a blood glucose-level situation, whatever, or maybe that information will go to the to this to any family situation so they can receive that information. So the the problem is that again, it's data, it's too much data. It's like I, as a doctor, I can't imagine yelling me all the time information about Eric, and then from Marco, and then from Jonas, and then from in one minute. And it's like, what can I do with all this data? And also, we have he has to be, you know, talking with the patient and everything. So it's really difficult. That's that's where I can see the big struggle. That's why not everyone is taking all this information. It's too much. It's it's yeah, it's too much.

So, you know, to have AI be a solution for that problem, that quagmire of data, like there's just uh it's overwhelming, right? And how do you actually make it useful? Do you think it's gonna be like is it gonna be ChatGPT Health that does that? Is it gonna be anthropic that handles all that because they're the big use, or is there gonna be a very specific application of AI by a very forward-thinking company outside of kind of like the big AI players right now, or at least the LLM players? You know, is is who's who's who's suited to win in that category? Because I do think it is one of the biggest opportunities for artificial intelligence is to take data, create better health outcomes, communicate better with the medical professional, empower the medical professional to do greater work, right? You know, more preventative work, hamstring by the current medical system here, especially in the United States. So, like who's gonna win in that AI race? Is it gonna be one of the big guys? Is it gonna be someone we haven't heard about yet, or maybe you've heard of that we haven't heard about?

I mean, it depends. For example, Google, uh, also ChatGPT, they have their own new versions. It's beta right now, and they are doing a lot with health. You can subscribe with ChatGPT with OpenAI, and they will start making, will help you to make insights around the data if you want to share your wearable data. Also, if you go with Grog, the the ex the Elon Musk AI, yeah, it's it's really interesting because now they have a psychologist over there. So you can chat with a psychologist, and the grog will change the behavior. I was trying yesterday with so an AI psychologist. Yeah, yeah. Well, it it doesn't say psychologist, but you know, is well it says functioning as if something uh but it's it's impressive, it's really impressive the information that how you receive the you know, it's not a recommendation at the end of the day, because they are not any any psychologist will give you a recommendation.

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My belief is that they are hearing and then they can help you with different tools to understand your situation. But they don't recommend nothing. Or at least my psychologist didn't recommend me something, they helped me with different tools so I can identify my own situation. So for me, it was very impressive because yesterday I was with Rock and he was acting as a psychologist, and he helped me with that specific tools to try to understand my situation. So to your point, who's gonna win, I don't know, but I know that there is gonna be a lot of agents outside, and they need to run different, you know, algorithms to customize because the big problem that we have with AI is that if you ask something and I do the same question, probably it's gonna be very different. So that's a problem, and also the hallucinations. The hallucinations that AI have, it's really big. And that's where you have to take really carefully the information that you are receiving from those tools. But eventually we are going to be in a very different moment. If we continue growing as we are so far, this is going to be oh my god, this is going to be a very scary world where we are going to talk more with these AI agents and robots than than nothing. So who is gonna win? My that that's a question.

It's shareholders, shareholders and AI companies.

Absolutely, absolutely. Go Tesla and invest and invest in the street.

Yeah, have you heard of have you heard of the dead internet theory? So this came up on a podcast last year here, and I went down that rabbit hole. And basically, just to sum it up for my my understanding of it, is like even now, even if you just take a small snippet of like LinkedIn, which is like really the only social media that I engage in. You can tell. And this is it goes for me too. Like I'm all my first drafts now are done by AI. I go through it, I usually use Claude, and you can see it in everyone else's post, right? And at some point, it's just gonna be AI talking to AI, right? And that goes, that's just a small, small snippet, but imagine the entire world of social media and the internet. So eventually it's just AI is talking to AI, producing AI content, and then no one's actually there. There's no human interaction, which just kills the internet. I'm like, okay, that's an extreme case, but you can kind of see that happening. And you can kind of see the same thing happening in multiple ways across different applications of it. There's a I'll push people to this and credit to Sean Patrick Ironside from EGIM for sending it to me, but it's by Citrini Research, C-I-T-R-I-N-I. And it's it's an article called the 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis, and it talks about a possible scenario that could bear down on us in two years. And if you take the time to read it, you're gonna be highly alarmed, right? Now, people get attracted to articles like that versus like this utopian, right? If you point things by it's gonna be utopia, people are like, uh, all right, maybe. But they we we're just attracted to these, these like, you know, everyone's developing futures, right? Yeah. I mean, look how many zombie movies there are out there. People love exactly. So it it's it's a really interesting time, but I think we do have to go in it with, you know, uh a good amount of skepticism, right? Because you're right. Like ultimately in a capitalist country, people are here to make money, right? And the corporations are built to make more money. They have to be more profitable, create more revenue. Like, how many people are really out there looking for the future of humanity? Very few. And they're not armed with the same amount of capital as ones that that are really there to generate revenue for their shareholders. So it's it's let me let me ask you this. Uh get off all that dark stuff for a second. But I love it. Yeah. I mean, I could talk about this. This is this is why I like I get the elbow in the ribs at dinner parties, right? It's like stop it. Stop it. How are how do we learn to use AI better? Like I was I was talking to a friend and client yesterday, and he's like, dude, we are black belts at using AI. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, well, we're using it for everything. Like everything's automated. Like, you know, we do this one little thing and this cascade of things happens. And, you know, we've trained it so well that, you know, we we like, yeah, he said we're we're black belts. I'm like, I want to be a black belt. How do I become a black belt? But I don't even know where to start. Like I use it for the general stuff. So, you know, I use it to help me write, I help it to research, think creatively about things or plan trips, like all these things that I feel like are just kind of white belt stuff. So when you look at like, how how would you suggest people in our industry start to learn to use AI better? Um, and I don't think anyone has a great answer for it. Like, there's no courses I don't know that I know of of how to do it, right? It's just like people are figuring it out.

You can find some courses outside, but it's like from my perspective, all of them are bullshit. Because it's like you have to go through those tools and start to understand them and try to do something for you that makes sense. Start with something because you have to be in that wave, and everyone has to use it because that really helps you to be more productive. I agree with you with all the things that you said about LinkedIn and the post and everything, but there is a new world, and I can see that coming. I I saw how much Netflix and Amazon is paying to this new let me one do one setback. Seven years ago, eight years ago, everyone was looking for developers and they were very expensive, super expensive. someone everyone was looking all Latin America from every all the places India you call it very expensive now they are not so expensive now it's like everyone can build something with AI tools and you can start with an MVP or maybe you can build a billionaire company just with these AI tools that you can do an app or whatever. Now everyone is overusing a lot of the AI tools. Now we need people that can communicate things from all these scripts now Netflix, Amazon, Google are hiring people that can speak and can have their own ideas and can use the context from the scripts that you are using from the AI, which is good, but then communicate that part. I think that's where the humanity is going is how can you use your soft skills, use the tools from AI, improve yourself, improve everything, and then you have the way to communicate everything to your point is how do you start start using it for something that you need to be I don't know analyzing something about your industry asking something about your how can I engage more with my clients? How can I engage more with my investors? How can I engage more? And then from one question will lead you to another question and that with another another question. And then you will start very involved with the AI tools but you will need it because it's one way where you can really communicate something that it's in you but you don't want to share with anyone and it's like and then you can start ping ponging and then you go with your best friend and start talking about something and then it's more like you know it's it's much better. It depends again every situation every person it's a different world but definitely I encourage that everyone start using AI tools everyone.

Without a doubt for for whatever you know whatever it is, whatever problem you have like, you know, we're remodeling my bathroom or our bathroom here at our house and like you know it's been amazing how much we've used AI and like how it's reconfigured the bathroom like there's little things like that like maybe you're not redoing your bathroom but you know you you want to plant something new come that spring's coming around you want to plant a new tree or something like that. Try AI, right? Try it, try it, see what happens and start asking questions. What am I some of my favorite times in the day now or when I get a little bit of dail time I'm like, okay, my to-do list is looking pretty good. And I'll just start chatting with with one of them, right? And be like, hey, you know this particular here's a thought I had and then next thing you know it's been like a half hour I'm like whoa like that was that was interesting. I learned something new and or just ask it like hey how can you improve my business systems right? Here's what I do. And it'll start pinging you with questions. It'll start prompting you with questions most of the time and then it goes somewhere else. So crazy world we're living in man. It really is I I I I don't take it for granted I try to you know and here's the thing I encourage people to because I do think there's a lot of things that we're gonna atrophy as we get really good. Like I I I'm really worried about my writing skills sometimes because I used to write so much. So I I I write every morning I write 500 words in my morning pages journal and I'm like I I gotta do that because I'm really freaking worried that I'm gonna forget how to like communicate in writing and I don't know it's it's it's just you got to be aware you got to be self-aware.

It it's it's impressive I'm I'm really impressed with everything. It's like it's it's for example um it this is for me I read the Bible every single day right so when I have a couple of questions I ask to I have a like an agent with it it I did it my by myself and I'm impressed of the answer because they have the complete context of everything and they can give me and now this I use ChatGPT and ChatGPT send me the information as they recollect and it as a summary as how can that apply to my life and I'm like oh my goodness oh my god literally literally my goodness yeah get out of my head yeah are you are you talking with me I don't know man it's it's it's it's it's scary but crazy but good maybe um hopefully I don't know it's good I I don't know it's good yeah all right man well what what's the last question I always ask here is you know what do you need help with Marco if people are listening and staffing you guys raising particular types of partnerships or clients you're looking for yeah where what what would you like to hear from people about I mean I I love always to have good conversations on data for me that's my I'm I'm spending so much time about that is like what type of information you will you need to engage more what type of information you need to what questions you are looking for to answer. Also it's like always looking for partners partners that want to join us could be someone growth we are looking for someone in growth business is going well but always need someone who can help us and see different you know thoughts ideas and everything on what we are doing because we need someone who can challenge also our own you know behaviors and ideas and everything. So I'm very open always to have these deep conversations about what we are building and the next steps that we have on our roadmap. So yeah looking for someone who wants to join hire we are hiring always hiring always also looking from good investors to create relationships deep relationships I love to create those relationships with my investors so looking for that for the next round.

Great right on man and try rook uh try rook.io where where else would you like people to go?

They can go try rook try rookio you can use our API with lovable with base 44 so everyone that wants to use very simple very quick and lovable they can now use and it's very they need only to put a script about wearable devices and your I don't know wellness platform and immediately lovable will do all the hard work for you.

That's crazy. Yeah we just started using lovable quite extensively over the last 90 days and it's it's crazy. Wow it's wow I know I know I know I know wow well Marco thanks for joining me man it's always a pleasure talking to you I enjoy our conversations and uh yeah it's been it's been great.

Ladies and gentlemen Marco Benitez thank you very much hey wait don't leave yet this is your host Eric Malzone and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minace. 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 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 and 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 dot 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