The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Hayes Kanyike, Gainsapp Creator & Founder at SXSW 2023

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Hayes Kanyike, Gainsapp Creator & Founder at SXSW 2023 Mygainsapp.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. All right, folks, we're visiting today. We're covering South by Southwest 2023, and we're talking some of the booths and some of the amazing entrepreneurs and people

that are at the show. They're sending their products out there and saying, hey folks, come and look at it. So if you're at South by Southwest 2023, these will be the companies you want to go and look at. We'll be talking, this is from booth 1642 in the Creative Industries Expo

at South by Southwest 2023 and we're talking with Hayes Kanike. He's the GAINS app creator and founder. Haynes, did I get your last name correctly there? Yes, you did. Yes, you did. There you go. And welcome to the show.

We certainly appreciate you coming on. Thank you for having me, Chris. I'm happy to be here. There you go. Like you said, I found it. Yep. You're the founder and creator of the Gains app. Give us a.com so people can look that up while we talk about what that is and what you're up to there. Yeah, sure. So the site is mygainsapp.com.

And right now you can just, you know, go to the site, get some more information about it. You can leave your information there. As soon as the app goes live, we send you all the download links and you'll be able to access the application. There you go. And so what is it you created here? Yeah, so I created some sort of fitness marketplace to just keep people engaged, incentivized, and active, right? So back when COVID had a shutdown, I was a gym owner. Prior to that, I owned a gym.

Oh, wow. And yeah, the industry took a hit. So I had to come up with creative ways to thrive., to, you know, to, to, to thrive. So pivoted. And I came up with this concept that will keep everyone engaged, but not just in a brick and mortar. I wanted to do something that, you know, can reach the masses. Um, well, let me tell you a little bit about how the app works. Gains app allows, uh, users to create challenges. So it all starts With the person creating the challenge

And that challenge is going to be anywhere From a minute to five minutes whatever they Want to do they create a challenge Challenges are based on time or max Reps they create a challenge They set an entry fee And they set a time where that challenge Is going to go live it could

Be thing within the five minutes in the future. Next week, next month, create it, you post it, and other users are going to find the challenge to compete with other users all over the world. They pay an entry fee. They get into the challenge. It streams live because everyone has

to see this happening live that's the differentiator right there we do everything live and the creator is going to judge and determine the winner and as soon as you win the money in the pot is going to go to the competitor and the judge is going to receive 15 of the pot for judging that competition oh wow so you basically make your own workout competitions using your fitness challenges and you can live stream from anywhere and then you can win cash. You can win cash. Yeah. You turn your routines into a challenge that's going to make you some money and make others

money. And, you know, and if you went to a little bit of betting and you want to place a wager, you can do that as well. So this is pretty interesting. So you can basically create your own sort of competitions. Can I do a competition for doing the dishes or anything like that? Or does it have to be fitness-related like working out at the gym, that sort of thing? Oh, that's a good one.

That's a good one. Fitness-related. It's limited to fitness-related, but be anything in the in the fitness realm so from calisthenics to using equipment you know anything fitness related we also have an api strava api integration so for runners the swimmers the bikers uh they can participate as well so is this. So is this a bit of gambling or is it a bit of like a reward system for people to work out, kind of encourage people to work out and do their fitness challenges? Yeah, that's a great question. So one thing I want to point out is that we don't fall in a gambling category

because in order for it to be considered gambling, it has to be based on chance. This is based on skill. And you know, so yeah, exactly. So even though we are betting, we qualify for an exemption that does not put us in a gambling category because everything is based on scale. So you're really betting on yourself. You're saying that I'm going to put this $20 here and I'm betting on myself that I'm going to beat everyone. Now, other people that are watching you, they are making wages among themselves. They're not betting with the house. They're betting among themselves. So yeah, so that's how that works. So if you wagered and said, I'm going to bet on Hayes 20 bucks, somebody else said, I'm going to bet on Steve 20 bucks. Now you have a match bet.

If Hayes wins, then Steve's money comes to you. You get back your stake and then you get the other person's stake as well. There you go. So on the app, can anybody, you have three types of users, competitors, judges, and spectators.

Can anybody be any of those? Do you have to be anything special to be a judge? Yes. Anyone can be any user. However, in be anything special to be a judge? Yes. Anyone can be any user. However, in order for you to be a judge, we have to qualify you. So you have to take 10 questions on the application so that we need to know that you're not just going to throw just anything out there. We need to know that you qualified and you know how to judge. Most people may not know how to count a rep properly. Some people may not know how to put,

you know, an exercise in a correct sequence. And so these things are very crucial because people are putting their money here and they're working hard to compete. And you don't want anyone that's just going to not be able to judge that competition correctly so yes in order for you to be a judge primarily personal trainers are the ones that are the judges you upload your personal training certificate you take a quick uh test 10 questions you answer seven correctly now you can be a judge on Gaines app. There you go. Can I – I probably can do one push-up. Can I make a bet that I can do one push-up and that's my bet? Does that work or – Listen, sure.

You can – well, one thing is if you create the challenge, you can't compete in the challenge you created. You can only judge it. You can only judge it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you won't be able to compete in something you created, right? You can only judge it. But there's something for everyone. There's something for everyone. And you never really know who out there is going to do what, right? You might feel like you're the best here,

or you might feel like you're not the best here. you might end up, you know, performing very well. You never know. That's true. It's, and it's, it's interesting. And I like what you've created and people can kind of do this at home too. So they can do their workouts at home and, uh, or they can, I imagine work out at a gym and, uh, and, uh, really compete. I know a lot of people who are in the health and workout space are into competition. And one of the things I found with working out and losing weight and eating healthy was having

a system of fellow people who would help keep me accountable, accountability friends. And so is this kind of a way to keep that accountability sort of relationship where you can have people help cheer you on, help people push you, and help people keep you accountable? I'm glad you mentioned that, Chris. The beautiful thing about this, it's a community. It's a community of fitness enthusiasts. It's also a social platform because you get to create

friends you follow friends there's messaging on the platform so you guys can interact and stay in touch you can meet someone that is providing training let's just say you're not ready to compete and you want to connect with someone that can get you in shape you can do that over here you can meet someone and they can you know help you with that and give you some advice and just stay in touch. That community aspect is one of the best things that GainsApp

offers. It's just not regional. It's all over the world. Yeah. I think it's making quite a difference in the world with what you're doing. I like the idea that having accountability partners has been huge. Even writing my book, having accountability partners that were there to help me

and kind of be like, did you do your hour today? Did you write your stuff today? That really helps. Right, it does. Same with working out. Sometimes working out can be really lonely these days. Yeah, it can. In the gyms. I try to make friends at the gyms with working out. Sometimes working out can be really lonely these days. Yeah, it can. In the gyms.

I've tried to make friends at the gyms with other guys. Like, hey, man, you want some help? And it's hard to make friends. It is. And some people are so kind of in their own private thing. It's hard. So I'm glad that there's this competitive nature that's being built out there. And it's kind of interesting, the concept of putting your money where your mouth is, right?

That's what it is. Exactly. And I'll give you one more while we're talking about accountability. So there's a marketplace on GainsApp that allows other users to pick up other users' tokens. And the way that this system works is, Chris, if I invested in you, and I said, I'm going to pick up other users' tokens. And the way that this system works is, Chris, if I invested in you and I said, I'm going to pick up a Chris token,

you take in the income, I receive the token. What the token does for me is every time you compete and you make the money and win the competition, I'm going to receive a fractional dividend, you know, a form of a payment. So it kind of keeps you on your toes and say, hey, you know what? This guy has my token. I got to go out there and stay actively participating in competitions and winning some cash.

But it also gets other people to say, you know what? Chris is really a top performer. Let's pick up some of his tokens. So it's a revolving, it's a cycle. You know, it keeps your supporters supporting you, but it also keeps you on your game so that you don't let down your supporters. And it goes around and around just like that. There you go.

Gainsa, bank on fitness. Now, I'm taking a look at the website. Do you guys have the app in the app store yet, or is it still in development? No, so we're done with the development process. Right now, we're in the process of uploading and getting the approvals in the app store and Google Play. Awesome sauce. So people can get involved by going to your website and signing up for the release date of it? That's right.

That's right. That's what we want them to do. We want them to go to the website and sign up. And once we get the contact information, trust me, we're going to send you that application to download that link and you'll be the first because how we're going to do it is we're going to just give it to her. It's going to be exclusive initially. And we're just going to let those early adopters get on first. There you go. And so it's going to be on probably iPhone and Android. And so people can go search for it on your website, sign up for it, get the release date. Are you doing other things at South by Southwest?

Are you looking for investors or people that can help you with the app? Or are you mostly looking for the consumers to sign up? The consumers. We're looking to brand awareness. We're looking to let everyone know about what we have going on. Not so much looking for the investors. Six months down the line after we have launched, gain some traction. We'd love to bring someone on board.

But at this time, we want to show and prove. There you go. There you go. Well, this is really interesting. And I love the take on it. The accountability partners thing is everything for me. You know, I talk about what I'm doing with my weight loss or when I was exercising before my hernia. I would talk about, you know, what I was doing with my workouts

and basically using social media as accountability. But having a competitive group like this of people that are like-minded in the fitness space makes all the difference. Anything about the app we haven't touched on before we go out? No, I mean, we touched just about on everything. I mean, this is just the main points that I would like people to know about this application. You know, it's a social platform.

It's community-based. And everything is user-generated. It's a gift to the fitness community for them to come on here and, you know, not only stay in touch, not only stay active, but it's a new revenue stream for personal trainers and other like-minded individuals in the fitness community. There you go.

There you go. Well, Hayes, this has been really insightful to have you on and talk about your app. Give us the.com so that people can find you on the universe, please. Sure. One more time. So the website is mygamesapp.com. There you go. Thank you very much, Hayes. We really appreciate it.

It's wonderful, Chris. Thank you for having me. There you go. And thanks, Madis, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, and all those places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you guys next time.