Season 2 opener, brought to you by Zing Coach. Only 22 percent of people ever try a personal trainer, says Zing Coach CEO Anton Marchanka.

Personal training is the most effective retention tool a club has, and almost nobody buys it. Anton Marchanka puts the lifetime trial rate at around 22 percent, and says the reason is structural: there are not enough trainers to meet the demand, and the ones who exist cost more than the membership. He runs Zing Coach, which built a consumer AI coaching app and now licenses the model into clubs including New York Sports Clubs, and he ran Daily Burn before that, so he has operated both sides of that line.

In this conversation:

• Why he charges operators per active member rather than per location, and why the price per member falls as usage rises
• What Zing Coach had to unlearn from the consumer business before the first club deployment worked
• Why high-value-low-price clubs and boutiques buy the same product for opposite reasons
• Who the product does not work for, in his own words
• What integration actually costs an operator, in a number he gives on the record

Chapters:

00:00 The 22 percent who ever try a personal trainer

00:52 Why Daily Burn pushed him off the mobile-only path

02:43 What 850,000 paying users showed about retention

03:50 Not enough trainers, and too expensive

05:18 What selling into gyms forced him to unlearn

06:59 Who this does not work for

07:18 Charging per active member, not per location

09:03 Why budget clubs and boutiques buy this for opposite reasons

12:04 The consumer app as a testing ground

13:02 Strength training, AI adoption and community

15:27 What integration actually costs

15:58 What operators get wrong on day one

18:08 The gym floor as a guided experience

Links:

• Anton Marchanka on LinkedIn
• Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn
• Tomorrow Health website
• Apply to join FitTech Club