Background
Michael Benso spent two decades on the gym floor before he spent a single day writing software. Three health clubs in Chicago. Over 100 partner locations across the country through Fitness Management Group. 300 staff. 100,000-plus members. He sold PT programs, called no-shows, followed up on dormant members at 9 PM on a Friday, and personally plugged every gap that a front desk or sales team left open.
That time on the floor is why he built what he built. Not because someone told him AI was going to be big — but because he knew exactly which problems were worth solving. The lead that never got a callback. The dormant member nobody called. The no-show that never got a second chance. He has lived every one of those problems from the inside.
On the technology side: Michael co-founded BuzOps, a gym management SaaS platform built inside his own 90-plus personal training studios before it was offered to other operators. He has worked in NFTs, Web3, and crypto infrastructure. He has navigated enterprise-level security requirements with some of the largest gym operators in the country, which informs directly how HireAiGO is architected — not just what it does, but how it protects data, handles AI-specific security risks, and meets the compliance standards the industry is moving toward.
He is also conducting a formal research study on gym lead response rates, currently pre-registered on the Open Science Framework at osf.io/w7jev, with peer-reviewed journal publication forthcoming.
Companies
Articles by Michael Benso
Research
Michael is conducting a formal study on gym lead response rates — measuring what the response time gap actually costs gyms in conversion rate and lifetime revenue. The study has been pre-registered on the Open Science Framework as of July 17, 2026.