DANIEL GINSBERG – CO-FOUNDER OF UTRAIN, THE #1 BOOKING APP FOR BASKETBALL TRAINERS – EPISODE 868

Website – https://www.utrainmobileapp.com/

Email – danielginsberg@utrainmobileapp.com

Twitter – @UtrainApp

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Daniel Ginsberg is the Co-Founder of Utrain , the #1 booking app for basketball trainers.  Previously, Daniel was an assistant varsity basketball coach at the Blue Ridge School in Virginia from 2019 -2022. 

Prior to starting Utrain Daniel also worked as a basketball trainer in China with Stronger Me, a Stephon Marbury and Ganon Baker collaboration.

Daniel played professional basketball both in Isreal and the United States after completing his college career at Green Mountain College in Vermont in 2017.

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Be sure to take down some notes as you listen to this episode with Daniel Ginsberg, Co-Founder of Utrain, the #1 booking app for basketball trainers.

What We Discuss with Daniel Ginsberg

• The pain points for basketball trainers that Utrain helps to solve
• Reconnecting with his former teammate Darryl Smith who helped develop the tech side of Utrain
• Asking trainers what their issues are and looking for solutions
• Creating a third party platform between a client and a trainer’s cell phone
• How Utrain streamlines the payment process for trainers
• The scheduling and booking features on Utrain
• Utrain is a virtual assistant in your pocket that’s letting everyone know that there are new sessions available the second that you make them.
• Eliminating the back and forth between trainer and client when booking a session
• How Utrain uses location services to help trainers pick up new clients
• How Utrain links with a trainer’s instagram account
• How Utrain stays free for trainers to use
• How Utrain works with multiple trainers in one organization
• Booking packages of sessions to save money on fees
• Making Utrain easy to use with a simple interface

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Utrain’s mission is to provide a free all-in-one business management solution for basketball trainers everywhere. Utrain is the fastest rising basketball training app on the App Store today and provides a safe and secure marketplace for athletes and parents to find trainers anytime, anywhere. Likewise, Utrain gives trainers an opportunity to introduce themselves to a comprehensive basketball community of up and coming athletes. This mutual opportunity provides dedicated athletes a chance to elevate their game to a new level while enabling talented trainers to expand their reach. A Win-Win!

THANKS, DANIEL GINSBERG

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TRANSCRIPT FOR DANIEL GINSBERG – CO-FOUNDER OF UTRAIN, THE #1 BOOKING APP FOR BASKETBALL TRAINERS – EPISODE 868

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by Daniel Ginsberg from Utrain. Daniel, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:12] Daniel Ginsberg: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on.

[00:00:17] Mike Klinzing: We are thrilled to be able to have you on and looking forward to learning more about Utrain and what it can do for basketball trainers out there.

We all know that the basketball training industry has exploded. And there are tons of great people out there doing great work with their clients and helping players to get better and you guys have created a solution that can help them in their quest to not just be great basketball trainers, but more importantly, to be able to run a basketball training business, which many of us who get into basketball training aren’t necessarily business people. And so I think as you found out, and as I found out when I was doing more training back pre podcast, that managing a training business is a little bit more of a challenge than sometimes people think when they get into it. So let’s start with what is Utrain and why can it benefit basketball trainers?

[00:01:11] Daniel Ginsberg: Yeah. Thank you. That that’s all spot on. And simply put, it’s the all in one booking app for basketball trainers. So, it’s an all in one app that we put together for basketball trainers specifically so that they can easily manage their business in one place. So, my background, after I finished my playing days, I started my own basketball training company.

And after we scaled over about five clients we ran into the same issue that most basketball trainers run into, which is I’m starting to spend a lot more time communicating with parents and athletes and tracking down payments and changing schedules and writing all my drills in different places.

Trying to figure out a website and I end up with things all over the place and I’m pretty much spending all my time doing everything but basketball training. By the time you get to 10, 15, 20 clients plus. So I did what most people do and I hopped on Google and I typed in the basketball trainer booking app, and this was 2017, 2018.

And I was really shocked that I wasn’t able to find anything as a consumer with a problem, I thought that was really interesting. So we started to do some more research and pretty much the only things that we could find were pay to play options that you have your monthly subscription that’s 75 or a hundred dollars.

And we weren’t quite there yet to want to take on that kind of cost up front. So it really left us with where most trainers are today, which is a website. And a website is great for some things, but it doesn’t necessarily offer a lot of value for the trainer to be able to notify their clients when there’s new times and new sessions available you could offer a package, but there’s no value added after that.

There’s no way to keep track of the package and the sessions that are being used in the credits of the package. You’re almost adding more time and energy to your schedule by having to keep track of the things that are happening on your website. So all of those pain points are what led us to starting to develop our own solution, which is Utrain.

[00:03:51] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you this just to start off. When you get this idea, so you’re looking for a solution to your problem as a basketball trainer, what you’ve run into, you’re trying to manage everything. It’s getting to be a pain in the neck. You want to be able to have sort of an all in one solution. How do you think about the tech side of that?

And where do you go for help with the technology? I’m assuming that you’re not the builder.

[00:04:22] Daniel Ginsberg: No, that is correct. I’m definitely not, I’m a non technical founder. Like I said, I played basketball up until I was 25, 26 years old professionally. So dove straight into basketball training from there.

So it’s kind of an interesting story, but to sum it up one of my good buddies and old teammates from high school Darryl Smith was a player who went on to play at Cornell and he’s a very bright guy, and he was back in Charlottesville for a random job interview around this time where I’m having these pain points with my training business and website and all the things I just mentioned. So we were buddies and teammates. And so he gave me a ring and said, Hey, I’m in town and we should go out to lunch. So we did. And I told him all the things that I had going on and, and he was like, man I think I can help you with that.

And I wasn’t quite sure what he had been up to since we were in school six years earlier. So I said, well, what’s your skill set basically? And he said, well, I’m a developer. I could build whatever you want pretty much. And that’s when the light bulb went off and we kind of started working on it as a side project, kind of a side hobby initially to kind of solve my own pain points.

And about after a year of development, we decided we’ve spoken to a lot of trainers at this point who are having the same issues. And it makes a lot of sense to turn it into a software as a service that all trainers can use and not just our own company. So that was pretty much the story for about three years where we were doing development by night and working and paying bills by day. Basically Daryl came to town and he offered a solution.

[00:06:31] Mike Klinzing: What does it look like, I’m just curious, when the two of you are sitting down and you’re obviously hashing out ideas or you’re talking about, hey, I want to be able to have a way to communicate directly with parents and collect money, just as an example here.

And, you know that that’s what you want to do, but you yourself don’t know exactly how you would turn that idea, that thought into something that is actually, is actually usable. So how do you and Daryl talk about that? And then what’s the process for taking like a piece of that idea and then building out or writing the code so that it actually comes to life?

What does that look like? I’m just curious.

[00:07:15] Daniel Ginsberg: So, like I said, at the time, it was really a kind of a hobby thing. So we weren’t doing things by traditional measures by any means, but essentially what we were doing is we would have phone calls with different trainers and say, Hey, what are you using?

What, what are your issues? What do you wish you had? And once we got a certain number of the same answer repeated we would circle it and then say, Oh, this is interesting. And then you just have to think about time spent on the function versus the value added and kind of balance those two things out as you go.

[00:07:54] Mike Klinzing: What was the number one thing you were hearing from trainers?

[00:07:56] Daniel Ginsberg: What they needed was a third party platform in between their personal cell phone number, right? To do scheduling and booking. So that was, that was actually one of the main things was communication. I want to be able to offer my calendar and my scheduling and handle my booking.

I want to be able to notify clients when I have new sessions that are available. And I want to be able to automatically collect payments without having to do anything. So basically I want to know that when a session is booked, that I don’t have to worry about being collecting the payment for it after the session.

And those were the main things function wise that we were hearing. And they also aligned with the Main platforms that trainers are putting together to get each of these individual functions today. So you see trainers using Acuity for their scheduling, but they still have a booking website on Wix, and maybe they’re using Bookeo through their website or jot form attached to their signup button.

It’s all over the place and you can’t blame the trainer. They’re just trying to provide a service well and they’re using what they have. So that allowed us to single out those functions pretty quickly.

[00:09:24] Mike Klinzing: Here’s what I want to do.  I’m going to give you some scenarios that I experienced when I was training and I’m not doing hardly any training anymore with the podcast, but prior to the podcast. I was doing a bunch. And so, as you’re talking, a lot of the things that you’re saying are resonating with me because I can remember when I was trying to do those things, just again, how I went through and the process that I tried to use in order to be able to do that.

So maybe I’ll just kind of go through a couple of them and just tell you, Hey, here’s what I was doing. And then you tell me why Utrain is going to make my life as a trainer easier. If these are the things that I’m experiencing. So one of the things that I experienced that you talked about was I would do sessions and when the session was over, most of the time, the parents who were typically paying a lot of my clients ended up being like middle school and upper elementary kids.

So they weren’t necessarily, it wasn’t a high school kid who was paying. It was the parent was handling the money and most of the time the parents were pretty good about the lesson would end and I’d go over there and talk to them a little bit about what we did and what I saw when we did and thinking about the next session and then most of those parents would have their money ready and they’d hand me my fee and you’d go on and I’d do the next one, but they were always those people that That’s it.

They either didn’t really offer and then sometimes you feel like, Oh, do I really want to ask this person right now for money? And you got to get, so there’s this whole kind of awkward moment where the lesson ends and then you kind of got to go over and have them pay you the cash. Or eventually I had like a PayPal whatever, a Stripe card and I card reader that I would use.

So how does Utrain help me with that payment collection? Just walk me through that process.

[00:11:12] Daniel Ginsberg: Yeah, exactly. I’ve been exactly where you are. So, rather than a website that doesn’t offer value after the purchase or that scenario that you just mentioned in person, Utrain is a true marketplace. So it accepts a payment when the time is booked from your schedule and it sits in escrow until the services are rendered, meaning that the training session has ended and both sides agree that they were there and it happened, right?

Since the money is pulled in escrow, it can also be auto transferred at the end time of the session without any interference or cancellations or refund requests, right? So it actually not only offers value for the trainer to auto collect their funds, but it offers value for the athlete and or a parent.

Because you have the opportunity to request a refund on the funds that are sitting in escrow until the time or the end time in the session. Right. So if you book on a website, the money is transferred, it goes through. So then you’d run into the same awkward scenario of the parent or athlete having to personally request those funds back from you as the business, if they are asking for a refund, so it offers value to both sides of the marketplace.

[00:12:37] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I can see where there are times where if you’re booking with a trainer as a client and something happens and the trainer can’t make it or this or that, then I’ve been in situations where, okay, do you roll that forward where you give the person the credit and that doesn’t count or maybe they cancel at the last minute and then you’re kind of stuck and that used to always make me mad when I’d have like four hours of sessions booked and then somebody who is…one of those middle two hours would, would cancel and then you’re like, okay, what happens there? And so those are scenarios that like now, now I’m stuck here for an hour with nothing to do until my next person gets there. And so I can see where having those funds in escrow just makes the process simpler on both sides of it.  It makes a lot of sense to me.

[00:13:22] Daniel Ginsberg:  Yes. It also allows each trainer on Utrain to handle each individual refund requests based on their own company cancellation policy, right? That way we don’t interfere with we don’t have a mandatory cancellation policy that we set on the platform for all users to follow.

We just created a system that allowed… each individual situation to be handled, based on how the trainer wanted to handle it. So in that case, if you’re there and rightfully so you, they want to cancel six minutes before the session then it’s up to your discretion, whether or not you want to accept or deny that refund.

And you also have the ability to add texts on both sides. So when you request a refund as an athlete or parent, You can put a message with it stating why you’re doing that. And as a trainer, you can do the same thing in your response. So it removes the face to face interaction that you were just talking about.

[00:14:33] Mike Klinzing: The second thing that struck me that you talked about is just the idea of having the communication all in one place. Because when I was training, what I would do is I did almost all of my scheduling basically through back and forth email. So, I would have my list of people and I would know that, let’s say on Tuesday night, I was going to do training from 5 p.m. to 9 p. m. And so, I’d let all the people know who were kind of in my client list, Hey, I’ve got openings from 5 to 9, if anybody wants it, let me know. And then, of course what happens is you get some nights or some sessions that you have nobody, and then you have four people that all want from eight to 9 p.m. And so then you’re having to go back and forth with each of them. Hey, can you do seven? Hey, I can’t do eight cause I already booked somebody for eight, even though I just sent the email five minutes ago and it gets really confusing. So how does Utrain help me with that? Yeah.

[00:15:32] Daniel Ginsberg: S Yeah. o it allows you to set your schedule with availability, right.  And slots. So, in theory, those were individual slots that you were emailing in that situation. Is that correct? Right. So, you post those hour time slots on your schedule and whoever would like to book them first means that they have now paid and, and booked that slot. And it also removes that slot from being purchased because all of the slots have been filled in that case, it’s individual.

So only one person needs to book it. Now it’s no longer available for the next person. The next parent or athlete, they will automatically, the calendar will be updated, right? And they will see that that time is no longer available. So you don’t have to communicate back and forth. It’s an open schedule that all parties can see.

And you can determine how many slots are available when you create the session.

[00:16:37] Mike Klinzing: So I could tell you that that particular feature, when I think about what I was doing when I was training, that particular feature to me would be invaluable. I think about how I use Calendly for booking podcast guests.

And so I basically do the same thing, right? I go on, plug in my availability, I send it out. When I contact you or anybody else who’s going to be a guest on the podcast, I send that stuff out and then. People grab time slots and if somebody grabs one, that time slot is no longer available and I move on.

Whereas before we started using Calendly again, it was a back and forth of, Hey, I’m available at 8:30. Are you available at 8:30? What day are you available? It’s this time or that. And it just gets to where You’re wasting a ton of time on something that when it can be automated, this to me just makes a ton of sense.

Anybody I think who is trying to manage multiple clients and multiple sessions in a week, I don’t see how you couldn’t appreciate what this particular feature within Utrain. To me, it would just be invaluable to anybody who’s doing basketball training because you eliminate that back and forth via email or text, which is what I was doing all the time.

[00:17:57] Daniel Ginsberg: Yes. And you also have the ability to share sessions inside of the messages in the app, right? So it takes a tap of a plus sign and filling out the form to create a session so you can actually create sessions on the fly per the conversation and tailor the session to the individual.

There’s a title and description in this session, so you could actually say, Jimmy’s 6 p. m. session as the title and send that session to Jimmy or Jimmy’s parents to book and personalize it that way. So there’s a lot of things that you can do to tailor it to each specific booking that you have. And on top of that there’s a small social media component where you have a profile and you can connect with other users. So that same email list, once you onboard them onto the platform, they’re actually being notified by notification on their phone and by email, every time you post a new session that’s available, assuming that you marked it public and not private and you wanted them all to be notified.

That is also a large value add as well. So not only does it provide a booking platform and calendar, but it also is a virtual assistant in your pocket that’s letting everyone know that there are new sessions available the second that you make them posted.

[00:19:27] Mike Klinzing: Gotcha. Okay. So let me clarify it, make sure that I understand it, make sure our listeners understand it.

So let’s say I’m talking to this client, Jimmy, and I’m talking to Jimmy, he’s a high school player, or maybe I’m talking to Jimmy’s parent. And in the course of that texting message, we go back and forth and we decide, okay, we’re going to do Tuesday at 7 PM, but I want to make sure that that gets in my calendar and that.

They have the opportunity to pay and I have an opportunity to collect their funds. So what I can do is I can send that particular session that we just talked about. I can get on uTrain and I can send them that session, have them book it and pay it immediately after that conversation. That’s part one. Is that correct?

That’s correct. Yeah, I mean, I can see a 100 percent the value again as I’m going through and thinking about my experiences and again, how I tried to do that versus what you’re describing. I mean, it would be like, it would be like night and day because a lot of times I would send. An email with, Hey, I’ve got this availability.

And for me who I have, yeah, I had a training business, but I also had a business with camps. And so a lot of times my emails were all jumbled together where people who came to camp were not necessarily, I mean, people who did training with me oftentimes were people who went to camp, but not everybody who went to camp did training.

And so then you’re sending out sort of this mass email to everybody. And of course, when you’re sending mass emails to everybody who it’s not as targeted as maybe you’d like it to be, then you get people like, I don’t want these silly training ads. I’m never going to do this. I don’t want these emails. So then they unsubscribe from something that you want them to be subscribed to.

So here you’re talking about, it’s a dedicated list of people who are your training clients that it’s going to. And like I said, I can see 100 percent what that value is both on the training side, but then think about it from the client side of not being inundated with. Stuff that I don’t want and I’m also getting this direct link to be able to go on and as soon as I get it, I can check and look and see, hey, can I book this?

Can I not book that? And I think just like you mentioned before, when it comes to the payment side of it, I think there’s a value add on both sides of this.

[00:22:31] Daniel Ginsberg: Yeah. I mean and for the parent, right, you can now tap an app on your couch and tap another button and tap one more button and you’ve booked a session for next week and you’re now connected with the trainer, you don’t even have to look for it.

You’re being notified of it. And your payment is stored on the platform or there are other payment options available, but let’s just say it’s stored. Now it’s two taps because you received a notification. You’ve tapped that notification. It’s opened up to the booking page in the app of the session with all the session details and you hit book, right?

So it does make things a lot more simple for the athlete or the parent to know how to be able to keep up with the trainer’s schedule.

[00:23:29] Mike Klinzing: You’ve eliminated the back and forth for the trainer, but you’ve also eliminated the back and forth with the parent as well, which I think nobody likes to waste our time and we all know that back and forth, there’s a reason why an app like Calendly and some of the other ones that allow you to book, there’s a reason why those are so popular, why everybody uses them.

It’s because they work. And everyone dislikes that back and forth of, when are you available? Are you available this time? Well, I’m not available that time, I’m available this time. And so to be able to make sure that you’re getting that, to me, I mean there’s a tremendous value add.

Let me ask you about the feature when somebody comes on, let’s say they’re not affiliated with me as a trainer. So here I am, I’m in Cleveland, Ohio. There’s a client there’s somebody out there that doesn’t. Know who I am. They have no idea. They’re maybe looking for basketball training. And clearly if you’re a basketball trainer and you have a website, you’ve got a social media presence, people are probably reaching out to you, trying to find you randomly.

But I know Utrain has a feature that allows people to find them within the app. So talk a little bit about that.

[00:24:50] Daniel Ginsberg: Yeah. So it’s basically twofold. So there’s a map and that same session with all those details that we were mentioning previously also drops a pin on the map, the public Utrain map for anyone to see.

So it’s actually a great way for trainers to access new clients. And just like that scenario that you just described where someone, an athlete onboarding because they heard about Utrain independently and they want to find a trainer near their area, so they open the app. The map is tailored to the location services, so it sees where you are and it’ll tell you where the sessions are based on your location.

So here’s the closest 3. There’s one, two miles away, 2.1 miles, 1.9, and 1.7. You can just tap the pin or tap the description below and it’ll go straight to the description page and you can actually view the trainer’s profile as well if you’re not familiar with them and see their ratings and review system based on the other bookings that have already happened.

So you could find a new session with a pin on a map, or there’s also your traditional search based on location. So we have it by city, state. So you could simply say Cleveland, Ohio search and a list of users with the same city, state of Cleveland, Ohio will come up and you can find a search of, trainers in your area, the same, the same way you could actually find other athletes and connect with them as well.

[00:26:33] Mike Klinzing: I see the value in that too, as especially as this gets built out and you have an extensive list of clients and list of trainers who are utilizing the app where it just becomes an easy way for parents to be able to find and to vet and to get an idea of who’s the trainer, who’s available, where are they? And then to be able to book. And so it’s just a simple marketing tool that can add to the other things that a basketball trainer might be doing. So maybe I’m already doing some social media, maybe I’m already doing some email marketing.

But this is kind of an all-in-one tool that enables people to find you and enables you then to connect with people once. They have found you. And I know one of the things that you talked a little bit about was the social media, media side of it. Can you tell me a little bit about how Utrain sort of connects or interacts with social media that somebody, maybe a trainer already has an existing social media account, just how you guys utilize social media within the app?

[00:27:39] Daniel Ginsberg: Yeah, So at the moment what we have in the profile, just like on Instagram is a way to insert a link. So what trainers are doing is they’re copying their Instagram profile link and putting it into their Utrain bio. And then they’re copying and pasting their Utrain bio and putting it into their Instagram link.

And that way you can create a little marketing circle and bring your clients that may see that cool post on Instagram and get excited to make an impulse booking and now they can tap the link in your Instagram bio and there, and actually we will in just a few days be on the mobile browser as well.

So there won’t be that download barrier. So they could actually just tap the link in the Instagram bio and see the sessions that are available on the trainers profile. So we’re actually calling it a free booking website. Even though it’s just, your trainer profile in the app, but you can also share your link outside of the app.

And it’s available on mobile browser. So it can become your booking website.

[00:28:46] Mike Klinzing: Nice. Yeah, that’s very cool. That is a cool feature to be able to have that. And again, the more integration you can have with platforms that already exist that trainers are using, I would think the better off everybody’s going to be.

You’re going to be able to get in front of more people and people are going to be more, I guess, comfortable sharing it throughout when you start thinking about being on a platform that a trainer may already Have built a built a brand, built a, built a following on and now boom, all of a sudden here’s this thing that makes my life so much easier as a trainer that I can now utilize that through a platform that I’ve already built a following on.

I think that makes a lot of sense. Now what’s cool about this from a training standpoint is that this whole thing is free. So the question I’m sure that anybody who’s listening has is, okay, this thing’s free. It has all these. Great features that I think anybody who’s training, who’s listening to this, if you’re not already convinced that this thing’s going to help you, I’m not sure, I’m not sure what I can do for you, but okay.

It’s a hundred percent free. How, how?

[00:29:48] Daniel Ginsberg: Yeah. So what we’ve done is we’ve taken the, the card processing payment that you can’t get around when you’re making purchases online and we forwarded it forwarded to the customer. So what we’ve done is we’ve created all the value add or almost all the value add for the trainer.

The trainer tells the athlete or parent how to book with them. And so to break that down, for example, if you have an individual session, that’s 50, the client parent or athlete will pay 51 and 97 cents. And that allows the trainer to collect the full 50. Once the services are rendered, the session is over that full 50 is deposited into the Utrain balance of the trainer.

And then they have the opportunity just like a Cash App, Venmo or PayPal to deposit into their payment method by free one to three days. Or you can instant deposit from your Utrain balance into your payment method, your bank account, or your debit card. So that is how we have basically it’s by trainers for trainers is what I would say.

We know the pain points that the trainers are having. The pay to play models are specifically in this time of the year where there’s the transition into the season and you might still have four clients when you had 20, a few months ago. And now you don’t necessarily want to continue paying 75 a month just to be able to still have that same offering of your booking platform.

So you know, there’s no more pay to play barrier. You can you can still have the same offering year round.

[00:31:27] Mike Klinzing: All right. I have a question for you. If I have a large training business where I might have several trainers working for me. I’m the head trainer. I have several trainers working underneath me.

Is there a mechanism for all of those trainers to be linked together or would each one of those trainers have their own profile or is that something that you guys have thought about? Is that something that You have going now, just explain to me how that could potentially work.

[00:31:59] Daniel Ginsberg: Yes. So it’s definitely not the final finished version that we’d like to have, but today what we would call that as an organization.

So when a trainer onboards onto the platform, they have the ability to set up an organization. And then they become the admin in that organization. So if you do have trainers that are below you, they create their Utrain account, and all they have to do is select that organization on their Utrain profile.

Now, when users go to that profile, they can tap on the organization and they actually have the ability to see all of the trainers that are under that organization and tap their Calendar to see all of the sessions that they have available or go to their individual profiles.

[00:32:45] Mike Klinzing: I like that idea of being able to see everybody who’s underneath a trainer.

Again, this is something that as at the tail end of when I was doing things, I’d have guys that were doing some training underneath me, and so it’d be like, okay, I’m not available at this time, but okay, who’s available? And when are they available? And so, to be able to put all that in one place and be able to see, okay, who’s available and when are they available?

And yeah, part of this organization, I can also see the person’s background. So again, where I was emailing out, well, here’s Coach Joe and Coach Joe, here’s his background on this. Do you want to work with Coach Joe?

And again, just to be able to have a place where you can go and say, boom, here, go check these guys out. If one of them looks good that you want to work with, check out the times that they’re available and bang, you can get it registered, get it selected and get it scheduled. And then you’re ready to go. I just think that putting it all in one place.

I mean, again, I just keep coming back to thinking about how I used to do things with email back and forth and some people booking on the website and some people just scheduling with me over text or via email and me trying to send stuff out as opposed to, Hey, here’s everything right where I want it.

It’s all in my phone. It’s all in one place. And it’s not only all in one place for me as the trainer, but the fact that it’s also all in one for the clients. That’s got to be a huge piece of it. Have you guys done, I know you’ve done a lot of work talking with trainers and what they’re looking for. What kind of feedback have you guys gotten from clients of people that are using it on the sort of the other end of the spectrum?

[00:34:28] Daniel Ginsberg: To be 100 percent transparent, I haven’t thought about it once. Like, we haven’t, we don’t have any feedback mechanism for that end at the moment. The only feedback that we did get was negative, which makes sense. Where… We actually have changed our model since this time. But at the time the pickups which is just another session type, you can manage your pickup sessions in the platform.

And so you have people who rent out a gym and they collect their, their fee 5 or 10 a person to fill their slot and come, come play pickup for a couple hours. And the, the, the processing part of it turned it from a 5 session into a 6 and 70, 70 cent session. And so when you think about it, that’s like a, I don’t know, 20, 20% processing fee and it makes sense that they were not happy about that. So that was actually great feedback, even though it was negative. That’s sometimes the best feedback that you want to get.

[00:35:38] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I think that when you start looking at that, it’s interesting when it comes to the processing fees, where there was a time.

If I go back three, four, five years ago, and I was signing my kids up for a soccer league or some other sport, I’d get to the end and there’d be the processing fee. And I’d be like, Oh man, I don’t I don’t, dang it. I can’t believe I can’t believe you’re charging the processing fee. And then now.

It feels like it’s almost a rarity where you don’t have that processing fee. And it feels like, at least from my perspective, most people don’t really even bat an eye anymore because it’s just sort of an accepted practice of what goes on. Like I had never charged a processing fee for my camps. Up until about six months ago.

And I was actually talking to a friend of mine who, he runs a similar business and has an AAU program. And somehow we were just talking and he’s like, yeah, I I charged the processing fees. Actually, cause it was cause I signed my daughter up for one of his things. And he’s like, yeah, I charged the processing fee.

And he goes, when I look at the difference that it makes in the amount of money that. I earned over the course of a year, like it’s a pretty significant chunk of money. And I started thinking about it. I’m like, yeah, I probably should start doing that. And I started doing it. And again, it has had zero effect whatsoever on people registering for what I’m doing.

I think it’s just sort of an accepted practice. And to me, it just, it makes a lot of sense. Like I said, I think people, they just, they understand it way more now and they get it, especially when you start talking about small businesses. There’s so many people out there that they don’t mind paying that because they know that that money ultimately isn’t going necessarily to the credit card.

At least the person who’s earning the money is getting the full payment. I think people feel better about that.

[00:37:35] Daniel Ginsberg: Yes. And also what we have done coming out with the new update here in just a couple of days, are packages, right? So let’s just say you do have a parent or athlete who is not happy about that dollar and 38 cents per per booking, because maybe, they come Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and by week three, dad is going to be like, I spent like 17 on fees, I’m not happy about this, right?

So the solution is packages, right? So now you can purchase a package of X amount of credits and that package can be, can be used until the expiration date, right? So the trainer sets the expiration date for the package when it’s posted. You can purchase four sessions at this time for the discounted price that you get the advantage of and the value added as the client and the parent.

And you have the ability to book with those credits until the time of the expiration date. You even have the ability to request a refund and get a credit back within the expiration date time. So if you’re not happy with those processing fees, you can bypass all of them and use credits the whole time.

You just need to purchase a package. And that also is better for the trainer, right? Because now they have sold four sessions or eight sessions or X amount of sessions versus one session. So it’s a win win.

[00:39:07] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, you made a great point there. I know that there were times where I would do sessions.

Sometimes I’d do a discount if somebody booked five or whatever, but then I know you mentioned earlier, like trying to keep track of that and be like, okay, was this your fourth one? Was that the third one? You know, I’m not sure. And then not only do you have to keep track of it at the train as the trainer, but you also have to make sure that you and the parent or you and the client are on the same page that, Hey, that was your third one.

Or, Hey, that was your fourth one. And then, like you said, being able to get paid. Paid upfront for four sessions or eight sessions or whatever it is that somebody’s paying for in advance. It’s always nice to have that money hit your bank account earlier. And then from a client perspective, obviously they’re not having to pay those fees.

So I think that that really is something that is, is a really, is a really good feature of, of what you’re talking about in terms of being able to add those. You know, those multiple bookings, those payment you know, the payment plans there where you have somebody that’s buying sessions in advance. Tell me a little bit about the team behind it.

You talked a little bit about you and Darryl kind of getting the thing started, but I know you have some other people that are part of your team. Just tell us a little bit about who you have kind of behind the scenes and, and what their roles are.

[00:40:22] Daniel Ginsberg: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. So Korey Harris is a, is another co founder who I believe has been on here a couple of times.

You know, Korey and I connected in in China. We were there together for about a year. And we had some, some really cool experiences out there, but we were helping out Gannon Baker and, and Stephon Marbury out there with some camps and, and some coaching clinics and it was really cool experience, but yeah, so Korey is a co founder as well.

You know, basketball training guru. Feet are still on the ground in the business his value and input is as good as it gets. But where things started to take a change about two years ago is when our advisors got involved you know, Cade Lemke and Joseph Toe. And Robert Pons are all very experienced entrepreneurs  in their own right.

And were coaches of mine. I played for them 12 to 15 years ago in in both high school and aau. And formed a great relationship and they’ve been mentors since then and now. You know advisors on the business end. And that’s when things really went from being a hobby company to an actual business and now we’re incorporated.  The learning curve has been pretty sharp.

[00:41:43] Mike Klinzing: What was the hardest feature to put together? Was there one that stood out of like, Hey, some of this stuff came together? I don’t want to say easily because clearly that’s not the case, but what was the hardest thing that you guys had to put together to make sure it was working the way that you wanted it to this one thing stand out overall, over all the others, or were they all kind of the same?

[00:42:07] Daniel Ginsberg: Probably the two of them would stand out the map and both of them are API. So you’re actually using information from someone else, right? So the map is Google maps. And you have to work with that API and what data you can and can’t use. And what you’re able to build on top of it is limited sometimes.

And so that was like I said, with the breaks that was a layer that we just didn’t expect to run into an issue there. So we had to do some workarounds and same thing with setting up the payment processor that does handle the escrow and refund time logic and when to capture that on the back end and how to know when the services are rendered.

Things like that were a little tricky, but it’s at the same time, we are looking to, or have designed an app for basketball trainers specifically. And the basketball trainer, athlete, and parent. So all of these amazing functions that we’ve been talking about this whole time, you’ll open the app and you’ll see a very simple interface.

And it should be very intuitive to learn how to use hopefully your first or second time using it. So that’s been our goal is, is to just make it very, very simple to use.

[00:43:29] Mike Klinzing: All right. So, is there anything that we missed that we didn’t hit on that you want to share and start there? And then.

If there is, you can share it. If there’s not, then let’s tell people where they can go to get it, what they’re looking for, how they can reach out to you, find out more about it. So just kind of give me all the contact information, where people can find it. And then again, if there’s anything that we didn’t touch on that you think we needed to hit before you do that.

[00:43:53] Daniel Ginsberg: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we’re on all social media platforms Utrain_app or the Utrainmobileapp is where you can find us. We are UTrainMobileApp.com is the website. And we are days away from launching a whole new app with 26 plus new functions. And so the best way to keep up with that new app launch is on Instagram.

Again, that’s Utrain_app on Instagram and we’ll be on the app store, Google play and mobile browser here in the coming days.

[00:44:29] Mike Klinzing: Daniel, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to jump on with us. I can honestly say. That as I’m going through and hearing what you’ve said and looking at what I’ve looked at so far with Utrain, if you are a basketball trainer and you’re listening to this or you want to get into basketball training, I can’t possibly imagine something, a better tool than what Daniel and his team at Utrain have put together.

I would highly recommend you go out, check it out. See for yourself what it can do. And if you’re already in the training business, you’re going to see how much it simplifies it. And if you’re just getting started, well, you won’t know all the pain points that Daniel and I talked about tonight, but that’s a good thing.

Trust me. So please go check out Utrain, download the app, take a look at it. Build your training business around it. And I think if you do that, you’re going to be really, really happy with what you get. So Daniel, again, thank you for your time tonight. Truly appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.  Thanks.