Infinity Movement is a strength and conditioning studio in Montreal, and the first studio to run on NexScale™. Its owner, Heidi Lee Rubin, has been in the fitness industry for 25 years. This is what happened when she handed member follow-up to software — and why she stayed.
Published 28 August 2026. Figures are as reported by the studio in April 2026 and are illustrative of one studio's experience, not a guarantee of results.
It started with a walk
Not a demo. Not a trial. A walk with her dog, between clients, in another province.
Heidi met NexScale at a point when she had no room left to take a call, let alone adopt software. So our founder flew to Montreal and walked with her between sessions — because the only way to fix an operator's problem is to understand the operator. That first hour is the reason there was a second one.
"Right from the beginning I felt like I could be myself with you. It was reassuring to know that you had space for the real me, because you want to get to know the real me — it's the only way that we could get to the bottom of my issues."
Heidi didn't set out to own a business at all. She wanted a room that felt aligned, and the only way to get one was to build it — "a pay cut, go into debt, figure out how to run a business, and work with people that I love."
That origin shows up in the operating detail. The four-week trial membership runs four weeks rather than two, so a member on their period still gets a real chance to try the studio. There are monthly challenges with passports and stickers at the front desk. There is an energy exchange programme, so members who love the space can work in it. There is a sliding scale. The care isn't a marketing layer on top of the studio — it is the product, and it is expensive in exactly one currency: the owner's attention.
The problem: care doesn't scale on one person's memory
The fitness industry loses new members quietly, and it loses them early. Research tracking 3,802 members across two facilities found that 50% had stopped attending by month three, 66% by month six, and 85% by month twelve. Note what that measures: people stop showing up long before they stop paying.
The gap between those two moments is the whole opportunity. A study of 7,752 gym members found an average of 2.31 months between a member's last visit and their cancellation. That is the window in which a studio can still act — if it notices. Across the industry, average annual member retention sits at 66.4%.
At Infinity Movement, noticing was Heidi's job, and it lived in her head.
Before NexScale
Noticing that a member had gone quiet depended on Heidi personally remembering.
Follow-up messages were written by hand, then copied and pasted between systems.
Weekly numbers meant pulling reports out of the booking system and cross-checking them.
Milestones were celebrated when someone happened to catch them.
Who mentioned an injury, who was travelling, who needed a follow-up next week — all held in one person's head.
On NexScale
NexScale watches attendance and booking patterns and surfaces the members who have drifted.
Messages arrive pre-written in the studio's own voice, ready to approve.
A custom weekly report lands on schedule, with numbers the team trusts.
Milestones that matter — a newcomer's fourth-week streak — are caught automatically.
Replies are read and remembered: the injury, the trip, the reason to stop asking.
The objection: "the machines are coming to get me"
The hard part was never the integration. It was asking an owner whose entire product is human connection to let software speak to her members. She said no first.
"That was extremely terrifying for me at first. I'm like — technology, the machines are coming to get me. This is a no. I don't want to. This is unethical."
What changed her mind wasn't a feature.
"To know that the business is founded and created by someone who has such a heart and cares so much, and truly wants to understand, helps me to feel comfortable on the technology side — giving you access to my CRM."
NexScale's answer to that objection is structural: the approval gate. Nothing reaches a member without a person pressing send. NexScale drafts; the studio decides. That isn't a setting that can be switched off — it's the shape of the product.
How it works: three signals, one button, a memory
The AI Business Partner running inside Infinity Movement is called NexScale Chloe™. It connects to the studio's existing booking system — PushPress, in this case — through its API. It is not a replacement for that system, and it does not hold the member relationship. The studio does.
It watches three things:
Milestones that matter. A newcomer's fourth-week streak, not a ten-year member's fourth week.
Quiet, or a changed pattern. Someone whose attendance rhythm has shifted — before they cancel.
Newcomers. The first 90 days, where half the industry loses its new members.
When one of those fires, NexScale drafts a message in the studio's own brand voice. A person on the team reviews it and approves it with one button. Once it's sent, NexScale reads the reply and remembers what's in it — an injury, a trip, a life event goes into the member's profile, the nudges stop, and the follow-up returns at the right time.
Teaching it that voice took Heidi several weeks of reviewing messages and flagging what was wrong — the founding-operator tax.
"You helped to show me what I needed to do to teach Chloe how to help me. And like with any relationship, we need to teach the people that we are opening ourselves up to. It takes time. But they learn. And Chloe learned."
That loop is now a structured onboarding step. New studios set their brand voice with the NexScale team on day one, and their first batch of messages generally lands right. Heidi's trial and error is why.
What a week looks like now
Morning — Daily Brief. Who's booked in today, which classes are filling, which new members are walking through the door.
Through the day — the approval queue. The team works the queue and sends. Declining a task with a reason teaches NexScale how this studio handles that kind of member.
End of day — Daily Wrap Up. Who checked in, who was new, which class had the highest attendance.
Weekly — executive report. The studio's own numbers, on the studio's own schedule, with no pulling and cross-checking exports.
Asked about the reports, Heidi's answer was one word: "Massive."
What moved
Between January and April 2026, Infinity Movement's active membership grew from 179 to 209 — up 16.8%. Over the same period, average monthly churn ran at 2.57%, against 13.75% across the first half of 2025. Month by month in 2026: January 5.03%, March 0.98%, April 1.43%.
What those numbers do not say
They do not attribute the change to NexScale, and we will not present them that way. Over the same period Infinity Movement changed its intro-offer workflow, rebuilt its new-member onboarding sequence, moved members toward annual memberships and adjusted pricing. NexScale was one of several things that changed at once.
The honest claim is narrower, and it is still worth making: the studio's retention improved sharply over the period it has been running on NexScale, and the owner reports she can see the return. Heidi dates the point she could feel it to "the last three, four months."
The verdict
"There is a clear return on investment. I see it. I feel it. The people that I'm working with see it."
Her comparison was to a coaching engagement the year before: "very expensive, and the truth is I'm not too sure at the end of the day what I got. There isn't any kind of measurable improvement in my return on investment."
Two other things she said are worth sitting with. On the daily weight of running a studio:
"The reports have helped soothe my mind in a way that's hard for me to explain — I'm way less terrified on a day-to-day basis as a business owner."
And on her own CRM, the system she had been using for years:
"My own CRM has felt like it's sabotaged me, and this is the only one that's supported me in a way that makes me feel really, really like human and cared for."
Heidi is planning two expand her business locations to three within the next three to five years. She intends to be on NexScale for those, as well.
Where the numbers came from
179 → 209 active members and 13.75% → 2.57% monthly churn — Infinity Movement's own operating data, as reported in the studio's business review of 27 May 2026. January and April 2026 are the measured endpoints. Not attributed to any single change.
50% / 66% / 85% dropout by month 3 / 6 / 12 — Oliveira et al., Revista Brasileira de Ciências do Esporte, 2021 (n = 3,802). Measures attendance dropout, not cancellation.
2.31 months between last visit and cancellation — DellaVigna & Malmendier, American Economic Review 96(3), 2006 (n = 7,752).
66.4% average annual retention — Health & Fitness Association, 2025 Fitness Industry Benchmarking Report (175 companies, 17,000+ facilities, 27 countries).
All quotations — recorded conversation with Heidi Lee Rubin, 25 August 2026, published with her permission. Lightly edited for readability only.
Get started with NexScale
If your members are drifting weeks before they cancel, the first thing to find out is which ones. Get started with NexScale — three month introductory period, 100% satisfaction guarantee.
