It's Two-Brain Radio. Every week we'll deliver top-shelf tactics to help you improve your fitness business and move you closer to wealth. And now here's your host, the most interesting man in fitness, Chris Cooper.
Hey, Jason Williams. Welcome to Two-Brain Radio.
Thanks, Chris.
So folks at home, Jason is a co-owner at CrossFit Thames. Would you say it's one of the biggest boxes in the UK still, Jay?
It's definitely one of the most well-known boxes in the UK, and one of the most well-known boxes in Europe.
OK. I agree with that. And also sole owner CrossFit Hale back in California. So Jay, I think you've got a really interesting story. Let's take a few minutes and walk through that.
Yeah, absolutely. So we started our first gym—well I started doing CrossFit back in 2007, just looking for a way to get in shape, kind of found it, and I ended up moving to London as part of a job transfer. I used to work for a bank. When I got to London, that was in 2008. And when I got to London, there was actually nobody or no CrossFit gyms in the whole city. And so, you know, I found a couple of people that I could work out with.
We started training together and worked with a box, a very small box that decided to open. We said, you know what, we could do it better, so we opened our own gym at the end of 2009. And, you know, long story short, that gym has grown to be very well known, very popular. I eventually moved back to California and opened our second gym, CrossFit Hale in 2013. And I can get into details and stuff, but that's kind of the short version of it.
Yeah, sure. So when you say we opened up Thames, who was with you at the time and then who's a partner now?
Yep. So, basically, my two partners are Jami Tikkanen, who also runs the training plan that's coaching with Annie Thorisdottir and a few other competitors, and Phil Morton, who does a lot of the day-to-day operations at the gym. We opened that place as a very small box, you know, and the point was just for us to have a place to train, to kind of experiment with some of the things that we were doing and teach some people who were interested that we knew on how to do it.
We actually started with a different group of people, so Jami and I were the first two and then we had another lady who started it with us. That kind of didn't work out after about a year or so. We had another partner, and that didn't work out. After about another six months, we finally found Phil, and ever since then it's been, you know, there's been some ups and downs, but you know, the partnership has been pretty solid.
And how big is Thames today?
In terms of members, we've got about 250 or so people, which is about the max that we could handle in that space. Our space is about 2,700 square feet. I say it's the max; we could probably do a little bit more. But you know, given our coaching and you know, how we like to do things, we're probably gonna go between 225 and 250 on a regular basis.
OK. How long did it take to get you over the 100-member mark, the 200-member mark?
Yeah. So, we started in a very small space, 600 square feet. After the first year or so we had about 30, 35 people. We had no idea what we were doing. There was nobody to train us. None of us had started a business before and all we did was just offer this thing that we liked.
After above 18 months or so, I got to the point where I think we had like 70, 80 people and it was just like, it was way too many people for a little 600-square-foot room, and we moved into a bigger space and within three months of moving to that bigger space we doubled in membership just because there were a lot of people out there that were kind of thinking about it and maybe wanting to do it.
And so, you know, short answer is it took us about a little over 18 months, you know, to get to 150 people then we kind of stuck there for a while and as we started to get our processes in place and get more coaching and open a few more classes, we pushed up to around 200, then we kind of vacillated between 200 and 250.
And you were a banker when you went over there. At what point did you decide "I'm going to be a box owner full time"?
So I started—I moved over to London, fun place, you know, I went out drinking about three, four nights a week as a banker. And after about six months of doing that, I said, "You know what? I got to get in shape." And I started really focusing on fitness. And pretty soon after that I realized there was no place that I felt comfortable doing this style of training that I got accustomed to, which is CrossFit. And so it was just like, look, I got to find a place to work out.
When we were working at another gym, I found a few people that did it. We found a group that opened another gym and we started training there and the guy was just so inept. I won't talk about who it was, but it was just so terrible that we said, "You know what, it's like, if this guy can open a gym, then we can open a gym." And at that point it was, OK, it's just a matter of finding a space. Once we found a space, we opened it. I can't say that we followed all the laws to be able to get it open.
But if you've followed all the laws in that country, you would never open a business. After a while, like, you know, once we kind of opened that place, it grew from that small spot to a bigger spot and we started to actually employ people besides just the owners. I realized like this is actually a viable thing and I could actually make a career out of doing this. And so then it was just like a countdown to when I was going to quit the job.
And you know, it probably took about eight months or so before I was actually able to do that. And even then, once I quit the job, I didn't have enough income from the gym to be able to support myself, but I had enough savings to just be able to go six months without income. So I said, "You know what, I'm just going to give it a try and see how it goes."
And again, the legalities of all of that, you know, with my visa and all that stuff were always a little bit suspect, but I just kept taking chances and it ended up working out. Six months later I had enough money to support my family coming from the gym. And it was my full-time job.
And it was a successful gym when you decided to come home to California. So what made you make that decision, Jay?
So in 2011, we had our daughter and, I don't know who's been to London, you know, it's great for young people. Not great for people with families. So when we had our daughter, it was like, "Ah, you know, we can take her out, we can do some of the things that used to do." But mostly we just ended up staying home. And, you know, having her being away from the family, it just became really clear that eventually we're going to have to move back to California.
We were dealing with a couple of different issues with getting a visa, so we've moved back. We came back to deal with those issues and we spent about a month or two here and it was pretty clear to us that we didn't want to go back. So, you know, we're back in California.
The gym was kind of in a rough pack because I was doing a lot of the day-to-day stuff and, we realized if we're not going to go back to that gym, we need to figure out how to deal with some of those, like some of the operational stuff, make sure all the classes are going to be covered, even though I'm not coming back. And, you know, we started really pushing to get all the operations in a place where we were happy with it.
It took a while, but once we got there, like, I realized I didn't have to be involved on a regular basis and we were able to stay here with our family. Does that answer your question? I'm not sure.
Yeah, absolutely. OK. So next question I guess then is how did that affect your partnership at Thames?
It was tough. You know, with three partners, we had one guy that was you know, had a bunch of other stuff, you know, Jami has the training plan and a bunch of other coaching and he also coaches Level 1's and stuff. So he was kind of in and out. And I think initially when I was gone he took on more of the load, but it was clear that he wasn't going to be able to do that. So we had to figure out a way to deal with that.
And then Phil at the time was much younger and didn't have a lot of experience dealing with sort of the day-to-day stuff. And I had to spend a lot of time with him kind of making sure that he was up to speed and we hired somebody to help with the office management and that kind of thing. And it really became all about supporting him. So, you know, the partners, they weren't necessarily like—t wasn't easy for them, but they weren't resentful that I had to go.
They understood, you know, my family and everything, and I think they understood as well that, you know, it was an opportunity for them to kind of grow in the way that they wanted to grow. And so I kept supporting Phil in particular, and making sure that he grew and kind of move forward and that he had the support that he needed. And I think that kind of resolved any issues that we would have had as a result.
OK. So you come home to California, was there ever a question that you would open another box?
Yeah. I mean, initially those first few months, it was just like being on vacation. You know, you're in the UK, you don't see the sun very often. You're in California, you see it every day. And it felt like we were on vacation, After a while, you know, I mean, that's probably true of anyone who kind of retired and has millions of dollars. It's like that just gets old and you realize that we do need to have a purpose in what you're doing on a regular basis.
So, you know, one day, we had some issues with our visa and one day I was sitting here and I said, you know what, I'm not going to go back to the UK. I don't want to do anything besides, you know, grow a business. And I think I've actually done a pretty good job of growing this one. So I'm gonna try another one. And that was sometime in, I think it was August or so of 2013, from the point, and that was about the end of August.
From the time I had that idea to the time I had my first class at the new gym was about eight weeks.
Wow. OK. So obviously you got to make all your mistakes you got your buddies around you and you wind up owning one of the biggest CrossFit gyms in the UK. What lessons did you apply to opening CrossFit Hale?
So the first thing was like, I stopped making everything so complicated. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. Like I knew for example, how I wanted to learn the classes. You know, what kind of people I wanted to bring to the gym, what kind of equipment I needed it to be able to do that and what the whole thing should look like. So then the main problem going from that decision to open a gym to actually doing it was more of a space-planning thing. It's like, OK, where am I going to get the space?
Where am I going to get the money to buy the equipment? You know, where am I going to get the equipment from? What type of equipment am I going to get? What's it going to look like in the first three months? What's it going to look like 6, 12, 18 months down the line. And it just became sort of a problem-solving thing rather than—it felt like there wasn't a whole lot of decisions to be made. It was just like, OK, how are we going to do this thing? OK, how are we going to do the next one?
How are we going to do the next thing? And I felt like everything was kind of laid out based on what we had already done.
OK. And was there any cushion during that time? Like were you still collecting an income from Thames?
Yeah, I was. So part of the part of the deal was I was going to continue to support them and continue to collect income so I didn't have to worry about my day to day. You know, one of the things that I actually learned living in a city like London is you can live with a lot less and you think. And so, you know, we moved from a big house in California to a small apartment in London and we had, you know, all kinds of stuff and cars and you know, all that stuff too. None of that stuff in London.
And we ended up selling almost everything that we owned here in California when we moved over there. And so we learned like you don't actually need as much as you think. And so we took, we kept that attitude when we moved back. Like, we don't need a big apartment, we don't need a bunch of cars, you know, let's keep our expenses low so we can do what we actually love to do, which is help people.
So, we did have the expenses kind of covered from London but we also had this idea like, OK, our goal for the first three months at CrossFit Hale is to earn enough money to pay for the rent. That was our first goal. Earn enough money to pay for the rent. Once we hit that goal or enough money to pay for our daily expenses, once we hit that goal, earn enough money to hire another person. So that was really how we approached it.
OK. And did you also approach it as you don't need as much as much gym as you might think or—you know, a lot of affiliates are trying to open now with 10,000 square feet, you know, do you take that same approach with the gym?
I did. What you can get for your money in a somewhat suburban town in California is hugely different than what you can get in the middle of the one of the most expensive cities in the world. So, you know, I kind of had this idea, it's like, well, I'm paying, you know, less than a quarter of the amount that I am in London for a space that's actually bigger. And it wasn't much bigger. I mean, we have 4,500 square feet.
One of the big things when I started was I negotiated pretty hard on the lease to make sure that we could actually build a business without being crippled by the amount of rent that we had to pay. So I started with 4,500 square feet thinking—and I bought only enough equipment to be able to support, you know, a class of 10 people or so thinking that if we did a good enough job, we'd be able to grow in that space to whatever size gym we wanted.
And that was a conscious choice and when we had the opportunity to move into 7,500 square feet, which would have been a lot more expensive and in a different area and that kind of thing. And you know, in the end we just decided it wasn't the right thing for us. So we decided to go a little bit smaller in a slightly better location. And since then we've had the opportunity to expand, but we haven't taken advantage of it. To be honest, bigger is not always better.
OK. I think that's probably a key point of what we'll be talking about in the next few minutes. So right now. How many members do you have, you know, qwhat's your day look like?
So we have 150 members. Now we're just about to celebrate our two-year anniversary. When I started, I coached every single class. Now I'm down to coaching only six hours a week. And those are six hours that I really choose to coach. I don't have to do it if I don't want to. My day looks like, I mean, I just got back from visiting London and while I was gone the gym grew by nine people. And I didn't have to be involved in any of the decisions that happened as a result of that.
I got back and, you know, the gym was just as clean as it was when I left. Things had been handled and it sort of moved on. The feedback is amazing. You know, I wake up when I want to wake up nowadays, and I go and I take classes like a member. And I, you know, I am focused on the actual business of growing that gym.
And lifestyle outside the gym. Are you living in basically the same comfort level? You know, I won't ask, is it the same income because you know, you're saying that it costs four times as much to live in London, but are you living at kind of the same lifestyle level?
So, you know, I worked for the bank and when you work for the bank, you get paid a lot of money. So, you know, I don't make as much as I did working for the bank. But I will say that my earning potential is actually much higher having these gyms than it was when I was working for the bank. I mean, I would be surprised if by the end of next year I wasn't earning more than I was with the bank. You know, in terms of my lifestyle, what I want is different.
I actually don't care as much about some of the things that I used to care about. What I want is, you know, a safe, happy life for myself and my family. I don't necessarily want, you know, BMW or you know, whatever. You know, one of my big goals this year was to be able to spend more time at home and take more vacations. So now, I mean, like I said, I'm only obligated for six hours a week and I've taken six vacations this year.
So it's, you know, my lifestyle is actually much better than it was before I opened these gyms.
That's interesting. I think you and I have very similar values there and I think a lot of other boxes do too. So do you think, you know, knowing what you've been through now, you've got kind of a unique experience having gone from a giant box to a smaller box, can an owner do just as well on a gym with 150 members as they can on a massive gym, you know, with 250 members in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world with three partners?
Absolutely. You know, the funny thing is we made—you know, that gym in London, Thames, has been open for almost six years. And I think in retrospect it succeeded almost despite itself sometimes, you know. There's an advantage to having access to that many people is that you can really mess up a bunch of stuff and you can, you know, you can still be OK. So, what I realize now is that the principles of business apply everywhere. It doesn't matter where you are.
You know, the difference is like when we started in London, there were hardly any CrossFit gyms. Now there's like 40 or 50, so there's a lot more competition. But because we figured things out and it's actually an enjoyable place to be, people choose to go across town and come to our gym rather than choosing one of the other gyms in town. And, you know, I'm sure in five years there'll be 40 more gyms there.
And the competition will basically even it out so that it's the same as opening a box in the suburbs. Now, you know, having a box in the suburbs, it's like you have to just be—not that you can't make mistakes, you're gonna make mistakes, but the same lessons really apply. It's like, business is business. It's not just because you're doing quote unquote "CrossFit" that is special.
I mean you have to actually focus on making sure that you're bringing in more money than you're spending, making sure that you're you know, getting the right people that you want to work with. Making sure that you're keeping those people and doing things that keeps them excited and keeping them happy. And the biggest thing that I am learning is that you have to constantly evolve. And if you don't constantly evolve somebody else is going to come along and do it better than you.
Right. What are some of these lessons then from Hale that you can take back to Thames and apply then, if that's what we're really looking at.
So some of the main things that we're looking at like—Thames started as a classic CrossFit gym where all you do is just pay a monthly fee and you go to the classes. Right? And that was it. All we offered was classes and people wanted some different kind of classes we would, you know, add those classes if there was enough interest. Right. So it's just straight-up monthly fee. That's how it goes. Right? And that's how we started with Hale as well.
What we found was at a certain point, you know, is that's the same as what every other CrossFit gym is doing, and so what makes you special? You can say like, "Oh, the coaching is better," but all the places say that. You can say, know, our gym is cleaner and you know, all that kind of stuff. But until you actually start, you know, taking a look and figuring out some new things that you can offer people, it's not going to be any different than any other gym.
So what we started doing at Hale is we started offering specialty courses. So if people said, y ou k now, hey, I want to be able to do Olympic lifting, we offered an Olympic lifting course and there was a n extra fee for that. So you pay that extra fee and you get, y ou k now, specialty coaching on that thing. We offered a womens only course.
We started making personal coaching a little more of a center of what we do because we found that people were getting better results i f they started with personal coaching and then went to the regular classes. We started making sure that, you know, retention was a main focus. So, you know, making sure that we knew what everybody's goals w ere, you know, following up and making sure that they're reaching those goals. And so we started putting all those in place, obviously, with your help, Chris.
We started putting all that stuff in place at Hale, but it was slow at the beginning because we don't have as many people coming through as we did over at Thames, but what we found was people were just generally happier and we were getting more of the right people and we were offering them more of the things that they wanted.
And so we found a few things that worked and I went over to the guys at Thames and I said, "Hey, why don't you try this thing?" The first course that they tried sold out, and not only did it sell out, but the feedback was just phenomenal. People were like, "Wow, you know, there's no other place that offers stuff like this. When are you going to offer the next one?" They've offered it three times and it's sold out every time.
The first time that they started offering personal coaching as on-ramp, it became really clear that it was a much better way to kind of get the right people in place or get the right people and have them doing the right things before they go to class than having them do a group version of it.
So all the little things that we put into place, we started putting in the weekly calls, you know, making sure that we're following up on people their first couple of weeks, you know, the second couple of weeks congratulating them on PRs. All of a sudden the whole attitude of that gym—not that it was bad before, but it just was so much better. There were more people coming to the events, more positive feedback.
People could see that some of the things they were requesting were being put on the schedule. Like, "Oh, there's a specialty course for this and that." And it just, it really kind of transformed that as a business. You know, and I mean, we can go into like why I was there last week, but, you know, we're kind of moving into the second phase of that and looking at like, well actually, you know, we're probably underestimating what this business is capable of.
And it could probably be a lot more than it than it is.
So, you know, when you did it at Hale, you were small when you started making these changes, Thames was not. You know, how hard was it to start implementing some of these changes?
You know, it really came down to selling it to the coaches first. You know, the coaches would say like, "Oh, you know, everyone's asking for this thing," you know, for example, everyone wants to get stronger. And we never had an offering for that. And it's like, well, OK, well, everyone wants to get stronger. So what specifically do they want, what can we do to help them solve that problem? And we just really started looking at like, how do we solve that problem?
We said, well, let's offer a specialty course on how to get stronger. Let's make it eight weeks, let's make it a reasonable price and let's offer it to some of the people that have said, Hhey, we want to do this thing." And just like with any change, there's almost always resistance. Like, ah no one's going to pay for this, no one's going to want it. You know, whatever. We reached out to two or three people.
So for that first course, actually, specifically what we did was—sell-out would be 12 people. We will run the course if we have six. And so I said to the coach that was going to run it, I said, "Your only job is to get six people in that course. You already know four of them that have asked you about getting stronger, go reach out to those people and find out if they want this course." So before we even created it, we reached out to those people. Three of them said they wanted it. Great.
Let's make the course. Within like five days after we announced that it was sold out. And so once you have that small sort of win, it's much easier to sell the next thing, you know, to the coaches, and once you start selling it to the coaches, they start to focus in and they see where it actually makes a difference, is that coach actually got paid based on that course, then it's easier to go onto the next thing and the next thing.
Yeah, I think that there's a cultural behavioral shift that has to take place, and I think it's really wise of you to say that it starts with the coaches. So let's talk about coaching culture. How many coaches are at Thames right now?
We just hired one more. So let's see,t here's seven coaches and probably in about three months there'll be nine.
OK. And how many at Hale?
There are six of us.
What's the difference in just the coaching culture, first. We won't talk about the entire gym culture.
You know, to be honest, there's not a whole lot of difference in the coaching culture. The coaches at Thames are obviously much more experienced because we've been open for longer. The head coach, which is Phil, is—it comes down to the head coach. The head coach is really strong there, right? He does the programming, you know, he trained those guys on how to be coaches, and really focuses on the quality of the coaching. It's the same thing here on the head coach here at Hale.
And I focus on making sure that these guys have everything that they need to be successful as coaches. So, you know, in terms of the culture, I don't think there's a lot of difference between the two. We base what we do on the, you know, we started with the principles of the Level 1: Do you understand the basic nine movements? Can you teach those backwards and forwards and all kinds of different ways?
And you know, we run our coach-training session and we start with those movements like, OK, teach me how to air squat. All right, you know, what do you see about Joe's air squat over there? What do you see about, you know, Jenny's air squat. Teach me how to do a deadlift, teach me how to do a press. We focus on those as really really basic things. We very rarely spend a lot of time coaching our coaches on how to teach the muscle-up or how to teach, you know, a squat snatch or whatever.
Because the truth is most of their coaching is going to be squats, presses, deadlift, the really basic stuff. So we focus on getting you really good at the basics.
And is there a difference in the clientele? I mean, if you put everybody from CrossFit Hale on an airplane and you took them over to CrossFit Thames and you introduce both—you pool them all together, what differences would see in the type of clientele in each box?
Yeah, the main difference is in London it tends to be younger working professionals. They tend to be single. You know, we get a lot of folks in t his sort of 20- to 30-year-old l anes. That's our main sort of clientele. There's a decent amount of turnover there because where we are is actually in one of the financial districts and i n financial services, people move and change jobs all the time.
So w e get, you know, we still have people that have been members for five years p lus, but we do get more turnover there, whereas a t H ale it tends to be a little bit older crowd. Like we do have some folks in their early twenties, but we tend to get more focused in the sort of 28 to 40 range and they tend to be young families or maybe folks that have been recently married. Most people have young kids, so it's a little more sort of suburban.
T here a re exceptions in both cases, but those two clienteles are are very different. So for example, what you'll see at Thames is you'll get more folks that are interested in looking good on the beach or being good at, you know, CrossFit or, you know, getting as strong as possible and having a 200-kilo or 440-pound back squat. Right. W hereas at Hale, it's like, OK, y ou k now, I just want to get back in shape. You know, I haven't been doing anything for a w hile.
I had a kid and I haven't done anything for a year and a half. Maybe I have an injury that I need to work on or I have some sort of thing I need to work around. And it's just slightly different.
Was that by design, Jay?
Not really. Um, I mean, I suppose if I wanted to have the same clientele as I do at 10, then I would have opened a gym in San Francisco. Uh, because, you know, you'd have more younger people there. Um, I just, I basically opened the gym in the neighborhood that I wanted to live. Um, you know, I mean, this is a, it's actually really good point. The only reason I opened these businesses is to really scratch my own itch.
You know, like I wanted to, I wanted to have a place to train and I love coaching people and I wanted to be able to share that with people. When I was in London, there was no place to do that. So I went and found the place. I decided to do it on my own. When I moved back here, I was like, yeah, I didn't really have a place that I felt comfortable doing it. Like I didn't have a gym that I could go to where I was like, yeah, this, this is just me.
So I decided I, you know, I'm gonna move to this area and openness the gym that I want.
So how do you prepare your coaches for those two different demographics? Because obviously there is a different skill set required for dealing with a competitor than for dealing with the retiree, say with, with injuries.
You know, I don't think there is. I think when it comes down to it, it is always about mastering the basics. I think if you focus on just getting really good at the basics of coaching, you know, and that's not just being able to teach a squat, press and deadlift, but also getting inside people's heads and figuring out what they actually want and figuring out how to deliver that to them. Then you know, how you actually go about doing that will reveal itself. So, I'll give you an example.
Like a competitor, you know—and Glassman always says the difference is in degree, not kind, you know, and a competitor, for example, yeah, they can do muscle-ups, they can do all of this stuff, but you know, you still add enough weight to that bar or you still make that box jump high enough and they're going to get nervous. Just like a grandmother who is touching a barbell for the first time and has never done a box jump before. They're both gonna get nervous.
You need to kind of figure out, first of all where they're at, get them to that point and then push them just a little bit harder. And you know, where that point is is going to be very different depending on where you are. But ultimately, you know, if they're really good at the basics and you are finding out what they want and kind of pushing them a little bit where they are, then you're delivering the best quality of coaching that you can.
So how do you train your coaches to see inside them, you know, to develop that empathetic component?
Just ask a lot of questions. I mean, honestly, I tell my coaches, especially when I'm training them, as soon as you start to realize that it's not about you, it's about the person in front of you, then you become a coach.
If you stop worrying about what you look like and whether you're teaching the thing the right way and whether you're, you know, like what your hair looks like or whether you said something silly, if you stop worrying about that stuff and you actually focus on the person in front of you, then you will be able to figure out what their needs are. And always it comes back to, you know, helping people first, like you wrote in your book. It's like, you're helping the person in front of you.
And it takes a while for the coaches to kind of get that. Initially, the first time you're coaching, it's like you're so nervous, did I do this progression right, did I do that right or whatever. And after you start to realize like, you know, it's not necessarily about whether you did this the right way and passed this, you know, arbitrary test, it's about how well the person in front of you moves and how much they got out of the interaction.
The coaching just sort of comes out, you know what I mean?
Yeah. So is it already in there and you're teasing it out or can it be trained?
It can be trained if you have the right attitude, and that's one of the things that we have learned at both places. So we have a very rigorous internship program over at Thames, where you actually have to pay a deposit to join the program. You have to fill out an application, you have to go through a couple rounds of interviews, and you have to go through, once you're in the program, you have to pass three tests before you can actually get to be a coach.
So I think in our last program we had like 20 people apply. Only about eight of them made the cut to where we actually want to them. We told them, you know, you've got to pay this deposit and do this and only six of them took us up on it. You know, out of those six it looks like about three of them are going to work out to be coaches. So you know, it comes down to like selecting those people and you know, of those people, it didn't matter what their background was.
Like one of them worked at a prison, the other one is a banker. You know, there's all sorts of different backgrounds. What mattered is that they cared enough about actually getting better and helping people to kind of jump all those hurdles that we put in front of them. If I get somebody who really cares, who really wants to help people, I can train them how to be a coach.
If I get someone who just wants to focus on the nuances of, you know, Olympic lifts and doesn't actually care about helping people, like they're probably a pretty crappy coach. I couldn't train that person to coach at my gym.
Does a typical Games athlete maybe fall into that category, then would it be tougher to train a Games athlete to be a good coach at your gym?
I think so. Yeah. I mean, not to disparage Games athletes, which I know some of them are really great coaches. But the best athletes don't make the best coaches. That is consistent in my experience. You know, sometimes the best athletes—I never like to think is it's a natural thing, but you can be an amazing athlete and not be able to actually share how you became an amazing athlete with anyone.
You know, and I mean, I've had some amazing athletes teach seminars at my gym, and it's like, OK, well, they something and I'm really thinking, "Actually how did you do it?" And they're just like, "Yeah, I just did it." And you don't really get into the heart of like how they actually do it and how I could do it if I wanted to do. And so, yeah, my experience is the best athletes don't make the best coaches.
In fact, at our gym in London, sometimes the people that make the Regional are the people that we have to fire from the gym because they just don't fit it, you know, like they can't even be athletes at the gym because they just don't have the right attitude to fit in with the community.
Do you think maybe that's the attitude they need to succeed, though? So I'm talking about, you know, one of the things that's always impressed me most about you is you have a collaborative attitude. And I think that, sometimes to be a good competitor you have to develop a competitive attitude. So, you know, where Jay Williams is excellent at sharing information and ideas and implementing them himsel, maybe a competitive attitude would make you worse at those things, but better at sport.
Yeah, I mean—thinking about it I think that makes sense. I don't think it's necessarily mutually exclusive. We have some amazing athletes there that are also amazing coaches and you know, really great guys. And you know, remains to be seen how how they do overall. But I think as a competitor, you do have to go to that dark place. And you know, sometimes that dark place means that you just ignore everyone else around you and you don't care about anything but being that just amazing competitor.
At the end of your competitive career, when you decide what you want to do next, it's not automatic that you will just go to, you know, coaching other people. Because you can't really teach that dark place. It's just something that you kind of force, you know, you have to learn that through going through some hard stuff. You know, I think there's some good examples, for example, in the Navy SEALs of the folks that train people to get ready for BUD/S and things like that.
They've gone through all of that stuff and they are also really good at coaching people through the hurdles that they need to go through to get there. You know, and there are examples in you know, other professional sports where people can do that. I almost look at those two things as just different beasts.
Like, you have your competitive hat on and that's what you focus on and then you have your coaching and business hat on and that's what you focus on and you have to really treat them as different things. You know, I like to think about that as like when I do programming for the gym, right? Like I have my programming hat on when I do the program. Once that's done, I completely forget what the programming is because I like to be excited about what's coming up next.
You know, I take classes just like everyone else. So when you know, when it's eight o'clock on Tuesday night, I'm like, oh, what's the workout for tomorrow? Because I've completely forgot cause I've got my athlete hat on when I'm looking at the stuff.
So you said that the best athletes don't always make the best coaches, do the best coaches always make the best business owners? Is that a logical progression?
Again, I think those are two different animals. I mean, I think you can learn both if you have a desire and a willingness to learn. I don't see myself as the best coach. You know, I think there's some things that I do really well. But I think, for example, Phil is a better coach than me and there's probably a few other folks that—there's definitely a few other folks that coach for me that are better coaches than I am.
I do think that I am really good at seeing the big picture and making decisions based on that big picture, which I think is what's really important about being a business owner. Those are very different animals. I think there's some things that that overlap. You know, if you're a good coach then you can teach people things and being a business owner you have to teach people things because otherwise you're going to do everything by yourself.
But you know, learning how to teach people how to squat and learning how to, you know, do your taxes at the end of the year, two very different things, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. Any lessons that you've learned from coaching that you apply to entrepreneurship now? Because I think you're more than just a gym owner at this point. I think you're a real entrepreneur, you know, what has being a coach for so long taught you that you apply to that?
I'm constantly—i's like the better I get at anything, the more I realize like how much of a beginner I am. You know, it's like the better coach you become, the less ego you have about being a coach. That's how I feel about it. Like, for example, when we went to the affiliate gathering, Carl gave a talk about gymnastic movements and stuff, and I've known Carl for a w hile and, you know, he c hanges w hat he does on a regular basis based on the feedback that he gets, because he's always learning.
You're a constant beginner. You're getting better and better, you know, at teaching people based on the feedback that they give you. And I apply that same lesson to business. It's like the more I learn, the less I know. And if I ever start to feel like I have this thing mastered, then I feel like that's when I'll get complacent. You know, and that's a big thing that I took from coaching is like, you know, I still learn new ways to teach the squat or new cues to give and that sort of thing.
And similarly, I still learn new ways to talk to people about what CrossFit is and to manage people and that kind of thing. So that's, that's number one. Number two, and sorta on the same line is the more questions that I ask and the better I listen, the better my business goes. And it's the same with coaching. At the beginning if you ask the questions, then you learn what you need to do to coach the person.
And with the business, if I ask the right questions of people that I'm hiring or people that are considering working with or partnering with, if I ask the right questions, then I'll know how to proceed with that. Whereas if I go in with all my own ideas, then I usually, you know, if I am successful, it's usually just luck. But if I ask uestions, I can know exactly what I need to do to be successful.
OK. So, you know, back to coaching a little bit more. What's the biggest class you've ever coached?
Oh my gosh. We used to do park workouts in London and we'd have these huge groups of people from all over. So I would say 50-plus, at least. Yeah.
So what, what skill set do you need to control a group of 50 people that I'm sure you didn't have before, but that a guy like me who coaches 12 or 14 people at a time has never had to develop.
Well, you have to project. So you project and you make sure that you're commanding everyone's attention at the same time. There's an interesting piece, like, if you can get the entire group on the same page about anything, like even just like, OK, everyone stand and face me in this direction. If you can get the entire group on the same page about that one thing, they create momentum that you can use to help kinda coach those people through whatever it is that you need to coach them through.
So you know, with that big group, I might say, "OK guys, everyone stand and face me." And I will just wait until everyone does that. And then I'll say, "OK guys, put your feet in, you know, this position, like you're doing a squat," and wait until everyone does that. And you know, it becomes this rhythm, where like everyone in the group sees everyone else doing it and so they do it. And you can start to sort of pick up the rhythm. OK guys, let's get down to the bottom of the squat.
OK, now it's almost to the top, down, up, down. You create that kind of momentum. Once you have that, it's like, it's almost like with that big group, it's almost better than a smaller group because there's so many examples for other people to look at that it just means that they're just kind of swept up in it.
And that's one of the fun things about coaching big groups because if you can get them all on the same page, it's like, I like to think of it like a DJ that's having a concert, it's like everyone's following you. Everyone's waving their hands at the same time. Everyone's doing a squat at the same time. It's a lot of fun.
Yeah. I think that's something that a lot of critics of group training miss out on is that you're surrounded by models of people doing the behavior that you're supposed to be doing. It's really hard to fail.
Yeah. Like if you have one person, I mean I see this sometimes withe one-on-ones, it's like the same strategy doesn't work with one-on-one. You can show them, you can tell them, you can draw it on the board and they still don't quite get it. But if you get two or three other people around them that are doing it, they'll just follow along. That works a little bit better. It doesn't work in every case, but you know, a lot of t hings it does. We're very social animals, right?
Yeah, exactly. I think it's really easy when you're doing a lot of personal training to get away from the value of models and just demonstrate something and then explain something and expect people to learn that way. But that's not really how we learn. So let's talk about who your models are. You know, when you think "that person is really successful and I'd like to do more of what they're doing," who pops to mind? Maybe your top three.
Do you count?
No.
So you're one of them. I've actually learned a lot from you and not just about business. I mean, you helped me with a few things with business but I like your philosophy about things and I like how you kind of approach it and you know, so I'll count you as the bonus one. I've always liked what Tim Ferriss does. I followed him for a long time and the thing I like about him is he's willing to try things and kind of experiment and sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it does.
And he's always willing to share it and kind of be honest and open about it. And you know, he's not the perfect guy, but I think there's a lot of value in those types of things that does and the type of things he tries and how he's grown his audience. I think that's one. I mean, it's like a cliche, but you know, I read a lot of biographies and I always liked what Elon Musk has done. You know, he's obviously one of the most successful guys in the world right now.
But I think the thing that I like about him is he is just not afraid to dream big. I mean, solve the biggest problem that is impossible to solve, and that's very inspiring. I mean, just, I'm going to solve the energy crisis. I'm going to, you know, make self-driving cars. I'm going to fly up to Mars. I mean, to be able to think that big is just very, very inspiring. So those are really two of them.
And just more on a local level, you know, I had a friend that, nobody will know him, his name is Mike and you know, I think he's just one of the most generous, genuine guys that I know. And like, he really loves his family and he loves his friends and he's the kind of guy who will just give you everything he's got and doesn't ever ask for anything in return ever. And there's no pretense about it.
There's nothing like that and he's just such a genuine guy and I'm constantly inspired by his example. And t here a re just, t here a re so many people, if y ou look in your life, there's so many people in the world like that. But they don't get that celebration. And it's just like, you have to look at those examples in in your life to give you kind of like a g uide f or what life i s about.
And one of the things that actually inspired me really to open this gym, you know, there are people in my life here in California that haven't gotten to experience what I've brought to the world, which was this gym in London. And you know, part of me doing this gym was to bring some of what I'm really good at to them. And now that we've done really pretty well with both of those gyms, I'm starting to bring a little more of my thinking to people like that.
It's like, "Hey, actually you don't have to work at this job that you don't like" or you don't have to like, you know, do this that and the other. You can do more with your life. And I feel like if I can find a lot more of those people in my life and help them, then I'm doing everything that I can do in life.
OK. And let's say that you are helping those people and you're going to start off by giving each of them a book recommendation. What do you tell them to read it?
So, a book that I've read a few times, it's called "The One Thing." And part of the reason I read that is because I really struggle with focus and for me just focusing on one thing, like accomplishing one thing per day. I don't remember, it might be Jay Papasan, I can't remember the author, but it's called "The One Thing," that's one book. You know, sticking Tim Ferriss, I think "The 4-Hour Work Week" was a great book that I've read a few times. Gosh, so many books that I have read.
This is gonna sound like a funny one, but, you know, if you want to learn really about the art of writing and, you know, dealing with constraints, I think the Cat in the Hat is a fantastic book.
How so?
So, you know, I read this to my daughter on a regular basis, it's one of my favorite books. So when Dr. Seuss wrote "The Cat in the Hat," he was limited to using only 220 words that were words that help kids learn how to read. And he took those words and made it into this really beautiful poem, which is "The Cat in the Hat." And you know, my parents read that to me and that's one of the things that helped me learn how to read.
They read it to my sisters and now I'm reading it to my daughter and she is at the point now where she can almost read it herself and it's still good. It's just so beautiful, you know? So I encourage everyone to read "The Cat in the Hat" again,
There's an obvious analogy there to coaching CrossFit, right? Can you walk down that road?
Yeah. I mean, it's about the basics, you know, and having those real constraints makes it, you know, there's, there's beauty in constraint, you know, you don't have to have every option in the world to be good at something or to enjoy something. So, you know, "The Cat in the Hat," they could only use 220 words to help people learn how to read. And they created this beautiful poem.
You know, in CrossFit, if you just focus on the basic nine movements, getting really getting, you know, being a master as much as you can with those nine movements, all of the other stuff kind of flows from those. You know, learning how to squat really well means that you're able to do some Olympic lifting basics. You're able to do some power lifting. You're able to do, you know, different things that you would do in sport, you're able to get off the toilet.
You know, you're able to do all of these different things just by learning how to squat really well. I found, actually, learning how to do a squat well helps you with knee problems, helps you with back problems, helps you with all kinds of things. And just by focusing on those basics, you know, by learning how to read "The Cat in the Hat," I was able to read "The 4-Hour Work Week," then you know, "The One Thing," and all the other things that I like to read.
So yeah, focus on the basics and you expand from there.
Well let's take that into business, Jay. What can "The Cat in the Hat" teach us about owning a business?
I mean, again, it's focus on the basics. One of the things I've learned with businesses, it comes down to finding out what people want and then giving it to them. You find out what people want, you ask them what they want, you know, and then you give them what they want and then you ask them again, like, is this what you want? "Ah, it's not quite, you know, do this, that and the other thing and then add more and more." OK, great.
You know, you make those changes, you know, find out what they want, and you just keep doing that, you find out what people want and you give it to 'em, and you know, so that's sort of one aspect of it. If you were just going start a business from scratch, you know, that would be one way to do it. The other way to do it is, you know, you really kind of scratch your own itch. I mean, people say kinda chase your passion.
If you find a big problem that really interests you, that you would be willing to do free, you know that's the thing that you kind of start with, it's like I could have started a landscaping company, but I have no passion for landscaping, I don't care about landscaping. I'm not going to care enough to ask what people want with landscaping. But I do care about fitness. I was trying to scratch my own itch, I was trying to get in shape. I was trying to share that with people.
And that kind of drives me to be able to ask more people, what do you want? What do you care about getting in shape, you know, and it kind of goes from there.
But this business with all its limitations has trained you to be an entrepreneur. And as I said to Jason Ackerman last week, I think that's one of the biggest gifts that we can actually get from CrossFit is you got the cheapest entrepreneurial education ever. So you know, what's next for you? Is it a landscaping company? I guess not.
Yeah. I just want to add something to that actually, because there was a time when I—there was drama and stuff going on at Thames and I was thinking, you know what, we may have to close this gym. And I remember saying to myself at that point, you know, I've worked on this for, I guess it was maybe two years and I put X amount of money into it.
And I said, you know what, even if I closed it down today, I've learned more about myself and learned more about how to run a business than I would ever learn by going to school or by doing anything else. I've learned so much in this two years that it's worth it if we just shut the doors and I walk away with nothing. It's absolutely worth it. And I absolutely agree.
It's like entrepreneurship, or you know, running a business and making all these mistakes, it leads you to become a better person, become an entrepreneur. So yeah. Just adding on to that. So what's next for me? You know, I recently really put more systems in place at the new gym to where I created more freedom for myself and my family. I see my next job as sorta putting the people that work for me in a position to get that same outcome from their quote unquote "job," you know.
So, for example, someone that just started as a coach for me, you know, eventually I want them to kind of understand that they get to choose how they go forward. You know, they can choose what courses they want to run. They can choose who they want to work with, pick and choose when they want to work, you know, within the framework of the businesses that we created. So, I'm trying to remove all the barriers to them being able to do that.
And then, sort of as I do that, you know, we've been doing business now for six years, as I do that, get more and more questions from other people that are just starting out like, well, how did you do this aspect? So how did you do that? And so I find myself just helping other people answer those same questions. It's like, well, in a way, it's sort of like a mentorship or you know, whatever.
And I do see that as sort of the next extension of me coaching, like, OK, now we're going to coach people to sort of run businesses like that.
Yeah, and I think just like coaching makes you a better athlete, I think that coaching others in their business can actually make you better at business. I think that's, you know, another lesson and I've probably learned from Glassman. So Jay, I would say that you've come full circle. But it's more than that.
I think that you've actually taken, you know, a giant step forward and while you'll be repeating a lot of the same process you learned when you opened your first business, now you'll be doing it from Perfect Day with a solid foundation. So congrats on that, man. There's very few people who deserve it more. Any last piece of advice you'd want to give our audience?
Yeah, one of the biggest things that I've learned with the second business, and I kind of always knew this, but one of the biggest things is that you don't know everything. And even though I had this successful business and we opened the second business, it was like starting all over again and I realized that if I start finding people who have done this before and ask them questions and just do what they say, I'm going to be a lot more successful than if I try and figure it all out by myself.
And so a big learning for me over the last few years is just investing in my own education and my own growth and be that through, you know, going to conferences or reading books or, you know, getting a mentor. Like I need to find people who are doing what I want to do and find out what they're doing, take the aspects that I think would work best for what I'm doing and apply that.
And that was a big learning for me is like, I really don't have things figured out and the more I learn from everyone, whether they are, you know, extremely successful or whether they're just getting started, the more I learn from people, the better I get to be and the better my businesses get to be. So I would definitely take that as like, you're always learning. Go find somebody who's done it and do what they're doing.
OK man. Well that's a great way to wrap it up. So I'm gonna leave it right there. Thanks a lot, Jason. People are going to learn a lot from this. Where can they reach you if they want to ask more questions?
So, you can email me, you know, jay@crossfithale.com. You can check out our website, we're at crossfithale.com or at crossfitthames.com, you can email me at jay@crossfitthames.com. I don't do social media too much. So, you know, best way is to just email me, I'm kind of older. Just send me a note.
That's great. OK. Thanks a lot man.
Thank you Chris.
It's time for critical questions. Got a question for Chris? Email chris@twobrainbusiness.com. Here's our most critical question this week.
Today's critical question comes from Ray and Ray asked what is the most important metric to be tracking in my business? That's a tough question, but I would say it's a choice between ARM, average revenue per member, and LEG, length of engagement. My philosophy has always been with fitness and with business that if I can keep somebody around for a long time, they're going to see results and my business is going to see results.
And so length of engagement is critically important, but average revenue per member for most gyms is probably a more immediate concern. You know, I still talk every week to gyms who have a hundred members, 125 members, and the owner is not making a living. They can't pay all their bills on that number of people. So if you look at sociology and you look at behavioral sciences and you calculate how many people can I actually influence in this world, that number is really around 150.
If you have an incredible entrepreneurial coaching staff, you might be able to bump that number up to 200, 250, but from what you've just heard from Jay at CrossFit Hale, you don't actually need that number. Jay could make a great living just on the CrossFit Hale gym. He doesn't actually need CrossFit Thames to pay his bills. It's nice, but both gyms have very different models. CrossFit Thames primarily historically has run group classes.
CrossFit Hale has focused more on the one-on-one interaction and both pay Jay roughly the same amount. Can you make a great living in a small gym? You absolutely can off 120, 150 members. You can have a fantastic career, have a full-time staff and a couple of other part-time coaches as long as you're paying attention to average revenue per member and keeping people around for a long time. Length of engagement.
A final note on leg length of engagement: When you focus on keeping people around for 10 years, you don't worry about teaching them perfection the first day. You worry about making them happy the first day and the second day and the third day. You s top thinking about why won't this guy learn what I'm telling h im or why is he showing up late to class and you s tart thinking about how am I going to change this person's life? It becomes less about you and more about them when you focus on LEG.
That's our show for this week. We try every week to bring you the best possible fitness business and coaching podcast t hat we can. If you have a specific question you can email twobrainbusiness@gmail.com. You can download a free copy of my first book, "Two-Brain Business," at twobrainbusiness.com and you can even book a free call to talk to me live for half an hour with so sales pressure at 321goproject.com. Have a great week.