What Would You Hand to AI, and What Would You Never Give Up?

Behind The Design, Ep. 43: Coaching & Technology With OPEX Coaches Daniel Persson and Brandon Gallagher

Most of the AI conversation in coaching is about prediction. Will it write better programs than you? Will it take your clients? Will it take your job?

Nobody can answer those questions, and trying to usually ends in one of two places: denial or panic.

At the OPEX Coaches Retreat in Lisbon, the room was handed a more useful question. Of everything you do as a coach today, what would you gladly give up? And what would you never give up?

Daniel Persson was in that room. In this episode of Behind The Design, he brings the question home to Brandon Gallagher and the two work through their own lists.

Start by being honest about what you want versus what you believe

Daniel opened with the trap he caught himself in during the retreat.

"There's a difference in what I want the future to look like and how I believe the future is going to look like."

Every coach wants to stay valuable. So the instinct is to say "AI will never replace me because of this, this, and this." Daniel's challenge is to ask whether that answer comes from real belief or from hope.

His method is to test the belief instead of protecting it. Run the scenario where AI gets better than you at the thing you're proudest of. If your position still holds up, good. If it doesn't, you found that out on your own terms.

Brandon put it in simpler terms: it's like cleaning out your room. Do I need this? Do I even use this? And he named why AI is so hard for coaches to wrap their heads around. Many coaches have never defined what fitness and coaching mean through their own lens. Without that, it's easy to get dragged along by whatever the industry says coaching is supposed to be.

What they would give up

Admin. No surprise here. Bookkeeping, billing, scheduling, tracking business numbers like average client length and lifetime value. Brandon pointed out that most coaches aren't business people, and the time spent managing the business is time the coaching suffers.

Digesting weekly check-ins. Brandon reads every check-in today and isn't handing that off. But he can see a version where AI pulls the main points forward so he can spend his attention on the response.

Content management, not content. Both coaches have grown to like marketing. Daniel went from "the classic coach where marketing is not for me" to seeing it as a form of teaching that boils his thinking down to principles. Brandon's warning: if every coach asks AI what to post, every coach posts the same thing. Keep the voice. Hand off the logistics.

Writing out the program. This was the big one. Daniel built his early value as a coach on program design. He studied it hard. And he would still hand off the writing.

"When I already have it in my head, how I want the design to look, I'm happy to hand that over to AI."

His reasoning is client-first. If AI can already work through some of the most complex math problems, does he really believe he'll beat it at sets and reps five years from now? If the client is better served, his job is to work with it and protect what matters more.

One caveat from both: you can't hand off what you don't understand. Daniel compared it to hiring. It's tough to hire a marketer if you know nothing about marketing and can't give direction. You still need the reps, and you still need the principles.

What they would never give up

The first conversation. Brandon was firm on this. Speed matters when someone reaches out, but he doesn't want a chatbot to be a prospect's first contact with him, even if replying himself takes longer. "Are we losing our voice because we want to get there faster?"

Ongoing conversations with clients. Both coaches landed here, for different reasons.

For Brandon, it's the definition of the job. "If you ever get to a point that you feel like AI should take that over for you, I think you should consider not coaching."

For Daniel, it's where he learns. Client conversations test him and develop him as a coach. He also made the business case. He keeps a closed roster so that when he sees a client's name in CoachRx, he knows where they are in their training block and which conversation to pick back up. A coach can only hold so many relationships.

"Relationships is a limited resource, which makes it valuable."

Individual design. Here is the distinction that ran through the whole episode. Program design is sets, reps, and tempo. Individual design is the decision-making around the person: who they are, how many days they can train, how lifestyle, nutrition, and behavior fit together. Brandon had "program design" on his never list and changed it to "individual design" mid-conversation.

Progression, regression, and the coach's eye. Knowing when a client is ready for more, or needs less, comes from watching, listening, and reading the data in context. Brandon admits this may be more hope than certainty. He's keeping it anyway.

The business model question

Daniel raised a point that's worth sitting with. If your model is low ticket, high volume, and little interaction, you're in a race to see who implements AI best and fastest. He doesn't see the generalized program with no coach contact surviving better technology.

Individual design runs on a different logic. The value is the relationship, and relationships don't scale infinitely. That's the point.

Brandon agreed. Once there's no interaction, "you're not actually coaching anybody. You're essentially just building software for someone to do workouts on."

Technology that gets you back to coaching

Neither coach is anti-technology. Brandon's filter for any tool is whether it helps him coach more.

"There are automated things inside of CoachRx. But they're not to take away from the experience. They're just to enhance your ability to be there for the client."

Daniel closed with what he set up the week he got home from Lisbon. His coaching calls are summarized automatically, action items flow into one to-do list, and follow-ups land in his calendar. He gets a morning briefing, an evening briefing, a Friday summary, and a Monday look ahead. Nothing lives in his head or across five different lists. The payoff, in his words, is more conversations and more time with clients.

Try it yourself

Brandon's advice for any coach trying to navigate this: write two lists.

1. What would I give up?
2. What would I never give up?

Then go through them honestly. The first list shows you where technology can buy back time. The second list tells you what kind of coach you are.

Bonus: how many touch points per client, per week?

A listener asked. Daniel's standard is a minimum of three: the weekly check-in inside CoachRx, at least one message during the week, and an end-of-week follow-up, plus comments on training results. He also counts indirect touch points. His Instagram stories let clients see how he thinks, so the coaching calls start from shared principles.

Watch or listen to the full episode of Behind The Design with Daniel Persson and Brandon Gallagher.

Become an OPEX Coach in 2027. The retreat conversation behind this episode happened inside the OPEX coaching community. The OPEX Method runs only two semesters in 2027, with 40 coaches in each. That's 80 coaches for the year, and some spots are already gone. The spring semester starts in early February.

Learn more about the OPEX Method

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