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.
Over 20 years he has founded and exited multiple companies in the fitness space. Fitness Management Group (FMG), founded 2009 and exited 2022, partnered with and operated 100-plus gym locations across the US. Eco Gym, founded 2011 and exited 2021–2022, was the world's first human-powered 24/7 gym concept. Both companies built the operational foundation that now lives inside HireAiGO. Early video documentation of the Eco Gym concept and the FMG growth period is available on YouTube.
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. HireAiGO is purpose-built to run alongside BuzOps as the AI communication and intelligence layer on top of the management platform — both companies co-founded by Michael, designed to complement each other. He has also worked in NFTs, Web3, and crypto infrastructure, and has navigated enterprise-level security requirements with some of the largest gym operators in the country, which informs directly how HireAiGO is architected.
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.