Sevan and Coop: "This Is How We Help Gyms Grow"

It's free, it's put out by two brain . It's beautiful. It's , uh, easily, what's that called when you can eat something, process something, consume , consume , consume , uh, palatable, palatable , uh, easily palatable with , uh, big pictures. Big. The numbers are big, the print's big, and , uh, tons of information.

So the survey, the , the survey is for all gym owners to take a link for the survey will be in all of our show notes moving forward until the survey closes. How long is the survey open ? Thank you .

They're doing little experiments, but that takes way too long and it's way too expensive. And , and if you screw something up, like it really hurts your business. So , uh, what we started doing back in 2018, first I pitched this to CrossFit hq and they didn't wanna do it, so we just started doing it.

We started collecting data from as many gyms as we could through the survey and then through partnerships, like what push press , kilo and , um, figuring out like what exactly are gyms doing? I mean, if you're a gym owner out there and you want to know how much should I charge? Like, the best thing to do is not go into a Facebook group and say, how much does everybody charge?

The best thing to do is say, well, looking at the data from 15,000 gyms around the world, here's the average price of a CrossFit class. You know, and like, that's in here. How many gym , how many clients does the average gym have? Like, that's in here, right? And then that will help you build a business

So we just collect the data, invest in publishing it and analyzing it, and then just give it out for free. And , um, we ship thousands of copies of this every year on my dime, and we give it out in digital format to thousands more.

Uh , how long the retention for people in gyms, what's the average? It goes on and on with every question you could want. Um, cost for , uh, a coach to run a class, as I mentioned, how much

Around the world, of which about 50% of them are , uh, CrossFit gyms.

And so we'll just continue to collect a bigger and bigger data set and then, you know, make it clearer and clearer for 'em .

What would you like to see from leadership? There's some, there's some things that are building from survey to survey that are fascinating also. Yeah,

You , you start with, here's everything that you could possibly do in your business, and let's cut out the things that don't work and focus on the things that do. And, you know , this is what's helped two brain , you know , it took us like seven years to produce the first 26 millionaires in two brain in seven months to produce the next 26.

And it's not that they're doing things dramatically different, it's just that they're not, they're not wasting time doing the stuff that wastes time. You know? Like, they're not doing more things. They're not doing different things. They're just not spending time on things that don't work. And to me, this was the process of developing CrossFit too.

You, you start with a blank whiteboard of let's write down everything that might improve fitness, and then slowly discard the things that don't improve fitness so that we can focus just on the things that do. And that's, that's how science works, and that's what we're doing here.

And it gets bigger every year too. So that just, it makes us the most relevant data set out there. And what's happened is that all of these other people who used to do a smaller collection are now just turning to ours and either using ours, you know, for free and giving us credit or using it for free, claiming that it's their own.

And , uh, you know, it's funny to go on YouTube and , and watch these guys like, rip the cover off and then read from our dataset as if it's something revolutionary, you know? It's amazing. Yeah . But it feels

And like, they're not quitting because they're unhappy, they're quitting 'cause they're broke. They're not quitting because like they've changed their mind about fitness. They're quitting because they're broke. And the, the biggest thing that we can do to enable these people to stay in business and keep changing, you know, a hundred lives a year for 30 years, is just arm them with the knowledge that they need to make money.

And, you know, when I was in their shoes, I didn't have any of this. I was treating my gym like a Petri dish, testing one thing after another. And, you know, it was really hurting me. So this is just our way of kind of like empowering the industry to move forward. And it's working.

You can , you can see it like the average revenue in gyms is climbing every year, and the average , uh, lifespan of a gym owner is lengthening and coaches are actually making a living now. And that comes from knowledge. And the knowledge comes from data instead of the same old myths.

90% of the people who do become clients of two brain business have an uptick in , um, uh, in , uh, financial success to prolong their life in the business. And part of that is you guys being the experts on the knowledge that you collect

And it's not easy to get affiliates to come because they have to take time of work and they have to pay money and all this stuff. Well, Chris, this year , uh, again, through an affiliate gathering in Chicago, I talked to him on the phone and he's like, oh man, he's, I'm , he's like, we had a thousand people , uh, show up and , um, and we only had a thousand seats.

And he's like, man, I should have made it bigger. I should have done this. And he's like, I can't believe how great it is. Well, yesterday an affiliate called me and told me, , I haven't told you this, su , I said, Hey, you should listen to the show tomorrow. We're gonna have Cooper on. And he's like, oh dude. He's like, I'm not even a two brain business member. And I snuck into their Chicago affiliates.

He said, it was the greatest two days ever. I'm like, you snuck in. He goes, yeah. I'm like, yes , Suzy used to do stuff like that. That's odd .

So we went from, basically the short story is we went from Greg to Eric Rosa to Don fall , and as Don came in, the survey came out and there was a huge uptick, I wanna say from 30% approval to 70 or 80% approval.

It's 10,000 and change. And if you look back over the last several quarters, you'll see that that number is steadily declining. And while those numbers are buoyed a little bit by , um, new affiliates opening mostly, you know, Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, those numbers are declining more so in the us . And, and that's enough to like outweigh the growth right now.

And so, you know, that's, that's kind of one hallmark. There's other ways that you can look at this. Like if you look at pictures from the L one certs, you look at a picture from 2009, 2010 through 2014, you'd have 25 pictures of 25 L one certs with 50 people in 'em , and you just don't see that anymore. You might see a half a dozen pictures.

And so these are all kind of indications that there's still kind of like a , I think a missing link. And, you know, it's interesting because last year when this was published, the news of the, the affiliate rate increase hadn't gone out anywhere. Nobody knew. We were first talking about that in November at the Rogue Invitational. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens now.

I think even with 10,000 affiliates, everybody's affiliation fee has gone up significantly. They're probably making more money, but I'm not sure that like the mission is expanding anymore. And, you know, we can, we can dive deeper into that if you want to .

So the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna set you up with the affiliate team's email address so that when new people are applying to be an affiliate, you'll see their applications come in and you'll see these stories. Well, there were so many applications that after a week I was like, shut it off, I can't keep up. And what was happening back then was that affiliates were failing. Nobody was talking about it.

And the new affiliates joining were joining so fast that the growth was still continuing at a really fast rate. But nobody

When they say, I wanna make a difference, I believe in the mission, automatic, yes. I don't care if they've got a bachelor's degree. I don't care if they've got a drug problem in their history, they just get outta prison. They wanna make a difference. They're an affiliate. And that's the kind of applications that you used to see coming in. Well, those people didn't suddenly like change their mind about the mission.

They've just changed their mind about poverty and, and like, oh, I don't know if I wanna sign another three year lease. Right? And it's really always money that ends, that ends their tenure as affiliates. Some are de affiliating now. And, and that's more a question of like, value than cost. You know? Okay. The , you know, my, my affiliation fee just quadrupled and the L two requirements.

And so most people out there are going to say, am I still receiving value that exceeds what I'm paying? And, you know, the hurdles that I'm jumping for it. And so they might keep their gym open, but de affiliate, we just can't see that in the data.

When before I felt like people didn't want to spend time thinking about it because it was whatever the price was, $3,000. It was like, you know, I don't, like, that was kind of Sue's thing. Like, Hey, the business is so busy, I don't have time to think about a $3,000 problem. It's just like, you know , the bathroom. Or it's just like your gym got flooded for, you know, one day on a rainy day.

But at 4,500, all of a sudden I'm hearing people say, Hey, maybe Facebook ads will make me , uh, uh, will they , they start looking at Facebook ads and they're like, oh, that'll actually make me 15,000 a year.

I think it's CrossFit's best, honestly, that said, I would have to turn my affiliate over to that staff person. I would no longer be the affiliate record unless I wanted to go with the L two myself. And so I'm gonna weigh that against like, does this actually improve my business personally?

And at that point, I was a 10 year affiliate already. And he's like, well, Chris, you know, if I was using something that somebody else had built, I'd wanna pay him for it good enough. You know, absolutely fair. But in my mind now, Greg has been paid for it, right? Like, that's what Berkshire Partners paid him for, was the development and the creation of this product.

And if I want to continue to use the name, we're starting from square one again, and I'm gonna measure differently. Before I was paying Greg as like a , as tribute, thank you for developing this amazing thing, this tool that's changing so many lives. Now what I'm paying for has to be measured differently. And so I'm gonna measure that value against a few different things. I'm gonna measure that against search charts.

Are people looking for CrossFit in my city? Maybe? Yeah. Uh, is, is CrossFit actually driving traffic in my door? Is it the traffic that I want in my door? You know? Um, and, and some other things too. Like there's, there's metrics that you can use to make this decision, but everybody can look at the same metrics. And if the decision was just a logical one, they could make their mind up off that.

But for most of us, the decision is an emotional one, because CrossFit still feels like our religion, you know, not just our business. Mm-Hmm. ,

And , and then obviously he's forward facing on this show every Tuesday with his show where they talk about , um, the business matters and the other day, so he's been speaking to a lot of affiliates , uh, probably more than , uh, he should be, he should be spending more time, you know, with his own clients or with me ,

Like, then therefore, we're more effective as a total in what we do. And the thing that I just kept running to is like this, this wait and hold pattern for year after year after year. Like, okay, well, I'm gonna hold onto this year and let's see, things will turn around. Maybe the media will come up. Maybe we'll get more mission, more direction. They're gonna invest in more education.

You know, these things that I'm hoping that will happen. And , um, year after year, you just don't see it. And so at some point, you know, you gotta make the call of like, Hey, what value am I receiving for this? And what am I learning from the leadership?

And the problem is, is that if I can't learn something from that leadership, if I can't be inspired by that leadership, if I can't be driven to get up outta my bed and cheerfully run down to the gym at 5:00 AM to open up that , that bay door because I know I'm making a difference, and I know the mothership's got my back and continuing to push the message of that mission, then it's real tough to, to pay the

$4,500. Because we're also not talking about the real cost , Chris, because like you said, you would've to become an L two mm-Hmm . So if that's like a thousand or 1200, really it's not a $1,500 difference that I could potentially be paying. It's a $2,700 difference,

And I , it's all changed. You know, people use terms like wad and AMRAP programming, like those terms didn't exist before Greg. Right? But then what happens when that kind of inspirational and motivational leader go away is the company kind of doesn't have a head anymore. And so what , what if you look at like , um, Richard Feynman called this Cargo Cult Science. Have you guys heard that term before? Mm-Hmm.

, this is cargo cults. Yeah. Amazing story, right? But what typically happens is that the business turns inward and they say, okay, we've, we've bought this thing, this CrossFit asset, and we want it , it's in our best interest for it to remain the same.

So now you have nobody going out and doing science, and instead of, you know, doing science, they'll say, well, we're doing it this way because we've always done it this way. You know , um, and you know, that's the seat that Greg sat in. Nobody moved that seat. And you , it becomes dogmatic instead of scientific. And the world begins to shrink and shrink and shrink.

And so when you're a private equity firm and you're buying this, this company that's been led by this disruptor, you don't want to keep changing the company. You know, Greg has said in interviews that he's a product guy, which means he's gonna test things and bring new things in. You don't want that as private equity. So the , the first standard private equity play is like, grow the market, right?

Expand CrossFit to more people. That's great because it benefits affiliate owners, but it didn't really work. And then a couple years in, you're kind of like, oh, I gotta make more money because the investors need to see a return. So now you look inward and you say, how do I make more money from the audience that we have? Well, let's start our own software and sell that to affiliates. Let's raise the affiliation rate.

Let's find somebody on staff that really wants to make T-shirts. You know, we've had like three different CrossFit stores in the last two years. Um, let's , uh, you know, Cooper's over there doing business coaching, let's start our own business mentorship thing. And like, you know, that happened and , uh, oh, let's, hey , uh, here's , um, muscle. What's the , the monster energy drink ? Like they wanna pay us Wonderful.

Let's take their money. And so you, you start to like lose the inspiration that came from the values and the brains and the passion of the leader. And if that doesn't turn around, you know, there's a lot of examples where the company just kept shrinking down.

So I, I think like that's maybe a big challenge that CrossFit has right now, is it needs inspirational leadership and it needs somebody doing science if it's gonna return to growth.

Like, I , I'm staying focused on what I'm focused on. So Greg's whole thing was just reinventing , uh, uh, like a lot of guys, like you'll see the , a lot of these Indian gurus or religious people, all they do, you know, they find the truth, they find the Bible, or they find the Bva Gita , and they just keep trying to repackage the truth, which is cool, right?

They keep repackaging the truth so that it's , they're kind of like coaching cues so that more and more people, they point to the truth in a way that more and more people can understand it with whatever mind they have, right? So you have CrossFit and Greg says in 2018, the cat's out of the bag. I have nothing else to to offer. And so that's when he starts the litigation education and legislation.

And then he is even honest with you, Hey, I'm not really offering you anything, just pay me because I invented it. And you're like, all right , cool. I mean , it's a really weird thing. Uh , I wonder if the people who bought it, if they knew that was the business model, if they would've bought it. But here's what, let me ask you this.

They buy the company and they have this figurehead, when he used to address the company, he always addressed it with vision. Yeah . Now they have a CEO and , uh, Don Fall who's a business guy, and when he represent , when he presents to the , uh, um, uh, to the community or to the affiliate owners , he doesn't give his vision. He doesn't talk about the world's most vaccine problem or those things.

He talk , he's more business minded, right? Yeah. He's more like, Hey, we need to, we're gonna increase prices here. We need more members and affiliates. We need more affiliates. These are things that we never heard from Greg. Why wouldn't they? Was it just because of the Floyd 19 thing? Why when they sold the com when Greg sold the company, didn't they require him to stay on because they thought he was that toxic?

Because isn't that kind of a normal practice? If you're gonna buy a startup, you make the , the founder stay on?

And I think like what actually happened in CrossFit, and this is just my own personal, you know, view through the keyhole, is Greg's gone. The first call I got was the next day from Dave Castro, and he was like, Hey man, I , you know, I'm gonna be here in the transition to ease the transition as much as I can. Like, don't de affiliate, just give us a year. And I said, okay, great.

And then, you know, 48 hours later, I think he introduced me to Eric Rosa and I was on calls with him in the first week. And, you know, I mean, there was kind of like a, a sequence there. It was definitely kind of an incase of emergency break glass handoff. Right. But yeah, I mean, really to, to , to grow the, the program, again, you have to have an inspirational leader maybe with even their own vision.

That might even be a little bit different from Greg's. But it's enough to inspire people to stay on the bus and new people to get on.

So, you know, luckily Trace was there, trace is a pastor, and I said, look, trace, like if you want to get off the , the marketing message, let's just ask people what they need to, to kind of process this tragedy on Saturday. And so, you know, he and I stayed in touch with, with what was happening there. Yeah. I mean, it's not , it's a hard conversation.

And I , and I don't think Adrian even said that . It's completely not true at all. Yeah. Like zero. They, like, they didn't even allow cameras in there , uh, the first two years , uh, uh, other than , uh, and finally letting me come in in 2008 for a little bit, but , um, to make every second counts. But , um, it was , it was really just 'cause Greg wanted to throw a party. I mean, it's really that simple.

That's all it was. And you know, Greg, I mean, it's, it's just par for the course, and he just wanted to throw a party for the affiliates. But now I think it's fair to say is that it's this huge marketing tool, right? It's, it's for , it's the most forward facing thing with the most media, with the most beautiful bodies, with the brightest lights.

And now the 50 cent analysis would be , um, this marketing campaign went on. It's the climax of the year, and the marketing message this year is CrossFit Kills, right? Mm-Hmm . , I'm not agreeing with that, but that's, I think that's how like outside media has taken it. Look at , uh, we've been Right all along. CrossFit's dangerous, it killed the guy. Does Is that sending a ripple through?

Like, do the affiliates even know, like, I can't because I'm in my, in sort of my own echo chamber here, do the affiliate. Yeah. I said it. Uh , do the affiliates know, does this , does this affect them? Like , are there , are there affiliates all over the world? Like, is this sending a ripple through them?

Like, holy, there's no leadership money to this marketing campaign up, and instead of it helping us, it hurt us. Like , is there any of that going on, or no? Well,

And, you know, for context, I don't know if it's like six or seven deaths every single year in Ironman events, let alone like the neighborhood triathlons that you see. Right? Where affiliates have to stay vigilant though, is the, the periphery, right? So there's this, this industry of businesses that support CrossFit Affiliates Insurance is one good example.

And we had a call last week , uh, this week actually from an affiliate who said, my insurance company just notified me that they're not gonna renew our insurance because they have quote , no appetite for CrossFit related activities. And that wasn't a big insurance company like affiliate guard . You know, affiliate guard is like gonna fight to the death for affiliates.

And RRG I'm sure is, is on board to fight for affiliates. It's just kind of like a , a bellwether that like, hey, people are paying. I think

And so if I'm an affiliate, I wanna be watching my insurance premiums when they come up for renewal, and if they've gone up a dollar, I'd be calling the insurance company and saying why? And if it's, well, you've got the word CrossFit in your name, you know? Now again, like we're, we're balancing the value of affiliation. And that goes into Ledger, doesn't it?

And we know this very well with how society runs this day, day and age. If we just have a message that's out there enough, and it gets repeated enough, that just becomes the truth. And the sad part is, is that we don't often hear anything from CrossFit. CrossFit doesn't curate or craft its own narrative because it has no voice, it has no media.

So then when something like this happens, and I get sent NY Times article from my friends who don't do CrossFit at all in my text saying, look at this, look at this. That is literally the only narrative and perception that is coming out of CrossFit. And we have no tools and no ammo to fight against that. And so now

It's a media machine that is pumping every single day at 7:00 AM live here to talk about anything we want to, and bringing on the best people in the health and fitness space. And then saying, by the way, if you want a piece of what we have going on here, go to your local affiliate. This is how you do boots on the ground of what we're talking about. And to me, that was the biggest value proposition that happened.

And we saw that shake up a little bit in 2018. But since I was also able to sneak into a DDC, I saw the light of where it could go and where the media was gonna go. And that re-inspired me, because for me, that was a , that was the mission I wanted to be attached to. So the biggest thing that came out of this is the fact that it's very obvious. We have no voice, we have no narrative, we have no leadership.

And essentially the affiliates are now o uh , off to fend for themselves with all their friends sending 'em the New York Times article.

So when I was hired, you know, my first media summit was like 2013, and you know, I'm, I'm all starstruck by the people around me. And that was a big room , probably 120 people there. Greg gets up in front of everybody and says, CrossFit's a media company. And I just, it was like, you know, the hallelujah chorus in my brain, like I, oh my God, I get it in that vacuum.

When you're not hearing from a brand, you're left to fill in the gaps yourself. And unfortunately, outside media is filling that gap with , um, negative sentiment. Mm-Hmm.

But if, if you look at like, where the sponsors are coming from now, it's more and more internal sponsors. Sponsors that came from the CrossFit brand paying money to be on the stage, like two Brain , right? We're gonna sponsor the, the , uh, the mechanical bull . It's stuff like that. It's not like a bigger and bigger TV stations are calling to get the CrossFit games on.

That said, and , and, you know, that's reflected also in like the audience, right? It's more and more people watching it's CrossFit fans watching the games. They're watching the behind the scenes more than they're watching the actual live stream . And until you get that in front of a bigger, bigger audience, a bigger mainstream audience, I think it's gonna like, struggle to grow.

Let's say it was put back , uh, um, next to a lake outside and it was just a two day event, like more like a , a a a party than a than a sport that people are , are trying to really claim that it is. Um, do you think that it would affect , uh, the affiliates negatively? Like do you think students loses, attracts , uh, fewer people or loses people if the games goes away?

Let's just say, let's just go there, let's just drop the ax . Let's say the games goes away.

I know that they work at a pig farm and they raise all this stuff and I'm invested in them as a human being. And that's the type of person that attracts an outside audience to actually make me care about them doing thrusters on the floor.

When you remove the storytelling, when I don't hear the Valley , you know, grading papers in between things, when we don't put the camera in Scott EK's face and he just talks about his members and coaching his members, when you ask him what he's doing on his every day and we take away those stories and we just have the, the athletes in a fishbowl, you lose any of that attractiveness that would actually bring people in

from the outside and then disseminate them to the affiliates. All is we're doing is this circle jerk of like, Hey, check us out. If you're already a part of CrossFit now you're gonna go ahead and watch these people do fast thrusters. My mom doesn't give a about UFC, but if we get the tell of the tape, next thing you know, she's like, oh, I want Nick Diaz to win. Didn't just see his mom. You know what I mean?

And so she's now invested into that. She doesn't wanna watch two people roll around on the ground and punch each other in the face, but she's completely invested in the story. And that's why when you were saying the behind the scenes is the most important part, this is why every second Counts was so powerful because it didn't show the competition as Heat won Heat Two, here's the bell that go away.

It showed the story of the games, the individual athletes, and the drama that was happening on the floor. That's what people care about. And we don't even have that at all anymore.

So the fact that like the games, I could now make the argument that the games is more harmful to affiliates, even in light , like before this tragedy, especially now than it was ever before, because they've taken away the storytelling, they've taken away that connection between the gym and the people out on that floor.

It's an emotional attachment that people aren't thinking about clearly because it just , it's always been there.

People don't recognize him right away by the time he checks in and stands beside me and we're gonna walk to dinner, there's 25 of us, everybody wants to have dinner with Ben Bergeron. Right? It , it's not like, wow, coup might pay for a barbecue here. It's like, there's Ben ,

And, and people lined up for two hours to have Jason Khalifa sign his book. Why is that? Right? And like, would that happen with the current CrossFit Champ? Maybe with Tia? But it's because we know so much about her story. And I mean, it's not just true in CrossFit. This happened in Formula One, two years ago. They produced this kind of behind the scenes documentary about Formula One.

Now I've got a kid that's a massive Formula one fan. She's traveling to races and they doubled their TV viewership, the second largest viewed sport in the world, doubled its viewership by telling the backstory of their drivers Wow . In a year. And then, so Tour De France third biggest watch sporting event in the world doubled its viewership the next year because they did the same thing that F1 had done.

They created a behind the scene storytelling journey of some of the lesser known riders . And now we're all captivated. Like my wife will watch Tour de France with me for three hours in the morning. It's, it's amazing. And it's just dudes in spandex going up a hill. , you know ,

They spent, they spent, they went into deficit and they did, you know, 30 years ago or whenever they did their first reality show, they spent every last dime they had with Spike tv and it saved the company. They were basically gonna go outta business the next year.

But more than anything, tell the story of CrossFitters and don't shy away from the competitive athletes. Like tell their story too . You know, now we've gone to this, we're trying to completely change the brand where it was forging elite fitness.

Let's tell the story of these animals doing these two minute workouts that are killing them to now it's like, don't be scared, you know, this is for grandma, bring her in, she's gonna lose 200 pounds. Like, you gotta tell that story, but you gotta tell the whole story and you have to be telling it every day .

And you know, to Matt's point, like if you're not telling a story every day you create a vacuum where other people are gonna fill in the story for you, and it might not be the story you want to tell.

And I, I see a parallel there to what you're saying is, is like, and , and I, I'm gonna add some words to your mouth, but I think that the message should be just always speaking to the base. I think you should speak to the base. Who is the base? The base happens to be people whose lives depend on their fitness.

So ambulance for all first responders, military guys, and then we all know that anyone who's afraid of that, if they can get past that and walk into an affiliate, they'll see, oh, wait, there's grandmas in there. Oh wait, if they scratch the surface, they'll talk , they'll see Greg Glass and says, it's infinitely scalable.

And of course you still tell those other stories, but they should have ne we should have never abandoned the base. It should always be, you should stick to what? To, to the base.

And this happens in business books all the time, where you take this really complicated concept and you make it very simple for other people to understand. And now you're a hero. And I think that that's the big opportunity with Greg. It is not to repeat dogmatically fitness in a hundred words, is let's explain that in common language so that people understand it. Right, right off the couch , off the carbs.

Greg said that later on, but that's something that's sticky that everybody can remember. Like get moving and get off the sugar.

So that I, at the affiliate when somebody's calling me up and being like, what's CrossFit? I'm no longer saying constantly very functional, movement firm , high intensity, I'm saying a different workout every day that will get you to your goals faster than you ever thought possible. Or, or whatever that mantra is that's gonna stick.

Like, that's the kind of message that HQ should be doing is evolving, simplifying, making sticky Greg's genius. Mm-Hmm.

It's like someone said to me the other day, it's just a rich watch wristwatch on the organism. You know what I mean? It's not the heart, it's not the lungs, it's not the kidney, it's not the brain. It's just a wristwatch. You can take it or leave it. It doesn't matter what kind of wristwatch it is. You know what I mean?

It doesn't matter who the athletes are, it's just, it's , it's an accoutrement, you know what I mean? Or a garnish , uh, uh, whatever. Do you think that that's a fair do , do you see, I'm open to you punching holes in that. Do you see that? No. It should be its own thing. It should be, because there's always been this thing like make it its own thing, make it bigger, grow the sport.

And I'm like, nah , I don't, I'm starting to like see the light. I think Nope , it should just be, if you can't answer the question, if whatever you're doing with the games doesn't help the affiliates, then don't do it. That should be just a flat out litmus test.

I think, you know, years ago I was asked to explore the connection between Spartan Race, tough Mutter and CrossFit, and I did it the wrong way. I tried to figure out who was like the best Spartan racer, the toughest mutter guy, and I found this guy Hunter McIntyre and like, oh yeah, he does CrossFit, you know?

And so to me that was the article, but what it should actually have been was like, how the hell does Spartan race get 30,000 people to show up and run through the mud every weekend? And like, that's what the game should be.

It , yes, you want to crown the fittest because they're the ones going up Everest and we're all mountain climbers, but more than anything else, you wanna get 50,000 people at the base of Everest at the same time and like all do something together.

You know, you , you go to like the average marathon in any city in the world, and you've got 300 people of every shape, color, creed, you know, and they're all running together and you ask them at the end of the marathon, like, who won? And most of 'em are like, I have no idea. I don't care. Right.

And what I found was an introduction or a , like an invitation to the first CrossFit games. And it was this graphic first ever CrossFit games, aromas , California, you know, and like, that's it, it was not a Meteor marketing event, it was a picnic. So yeah, I believe what you're saying, but like, if, if you really wanna make the games benefit affiliates, it should be like, everybody do the open now.

Everybody come with me to this city an hour away and we're gonna do the next round with them . And then if you want to go to like the biggest party of the year, that's when we're all going to go down to Fort Worth and we're all gonna do this massive thing to through his events. That's how , uh, tough Mudder , Spartan Race became this billion dollar company.

It's not singling out the best, it's including the most Mm-Hmm. . Yeah.

Uh , Chris, when people open a gym, do they , uh, what percentage of your clients, if you don't mind sharing this, come to you when they first open the gym versus after they've been opened ?

I think Greg's biggest gift was he launched 30,000 small businesses, but we're all first timers. And so how do we price? I don't know, like what's Matt's gym doing? Geez , we don't have this kind of data. So we look at what the last gym is doing and you know, I just quit that gym . I'm gonna start my own, I'm gonna price it $5 cheaper. And so the , the value goes down, down, down. It takes years to fix that.

And we work really hard with gyms to fix that, but some of them, they go outta business before they can fix it. So the new gyms coming in with, with to two brain before they open, they don't make those mistakes. And what's bananas is that like within two years, they're making a hundred thousand dollars take home and they've got like a full-time coach.

I mean, it took me 10 years to get to that point, and it's because I had to make every mistake myself. I didn't have anybody to point to that said, here's the actual average. You know, I, I believed a lot of the stuff that was coming from the CrossFit message board, and some of that was wrong or some was fake. And, you know, there, there was no like guiding light of, of truth.

And so when new gyms come into our program, I have massive optimism for them . Gym ownership is like, it's a hard business, but it's one of the easiest to start. You can start a gym for $5,000, right? You, you print up your a-frame, you put a QR code on it, you buy three barbells and three kettlebells and three wall balls from Rogue, and you go to the park. And that is how you start a gym.

And a gym we all know is it's a community more than it is a physical space. You start to build that community in the park and in church basements and in public school gymnasiums. And eventually you move into a facility and you grow from there. You don't have to do it the way that you see on Main site .

If you go to HQ right now and you're , you click on the open and affiliate, they're gonna tell you it costs $160,000 to start a CrossFit affiliate.

Like, that's the mission, the , the Millionaire status. It's like, it's a signal. It's not the goal. It's a signal that you're being successful in changing lives. If you look at Candace Wagner, and I hope you have her on the show, she owns CrossFit, iron Horse. It's a massive affiliate. It's the closest one of the games this year. You know, she has full-time staff who are making meaningful living.

She's helping hundreds of people, and she can do that because she's successful. It's not that having 400 clients made her successful. It's not that having the biggest space or the most equipment or being the closest to the games venue made her successful. She has all those things because she's successful and she can expand out. So yeah, man, I really belabor that question. Sorry.

It was a real eye opener to me is that every time they would find somebody who said, yeah, we're a 10 year affiliate, they were like the third or the fourth owner. Hmm . So really what you have are these gyms that have been around for 10 years, but they're owned by people who've only been in business for two or three years, and they haven't learned the lessons that you would hope they'd have learned.

So when we're looking at like, what are the most successful gyms in the world? You can't look at tenure . You can't look at headcount. You have to look at like, who's the most profitable, because those are the ones who are still gonna be here in another 10 years. And that's why you wanna talk to people like Candace.

You want to talk to Oscar and Carl at CrossFit Medicine , Stockholm, you know, you , you want talk to Ro who's got this like 500 member gym, you know, in, in Europe. Like, you wanna find these people and you wanna interview them and say, what are you doing? You don't wanna host a round table where the guy who's gonna be bankrupt next month is giving advice on marketing.

And that's, you know, that's another place that data helps.

And I was thinking to myself, well, he had a thousand , uh, gym show up in Chicago, and I, and I already know that , um, you guys are, are , are at the 50 yard line of selling out for the conference next year, which is still a year away. Are they in that space?

And so the first thing that you sign is like a release of all of your information to Zen Planner . Well, why in hell would I want Zen Planner to have all my information? Like, no, thank you. So I backed out and I asked our affiliate rep, like, why are we signing this? And she's like, well, you don't have to, but it would help affiliates if you did. So I just said , you know, no thanks.

And you know, the reality is that , uh, no thank you hq. Like we don't need your help to, to scale our state of the industry data. But in 2018, my first pitch was like, CrossFit should have this and make this available to affiliates. They said, no, we started doing it on our own.

And now I see that it's actually better to come from an objective source instead of within, which would just kind of like perpetuate the whole cargo culture again. You know, you can't trust when you're inside the cult. You can't trust the data that comes from inside the cult because it's that echo chamber, you

And then they're trying to also come to this side, which I , I don't necessarily blame them to best practices for, to run the business and make money. Have you ever thought about coming onto their side? Have you ever thought, oh, maybe I'll start my own affiliate program and , and come onto their side and have my own programming and my own , um, I mean, I mean, you're an accomplished coach yourself.

You're surrounded by thousands of accomplished coaches . , have you ever thought about extending your business out of your lane onto their side?

Uh , Mo was such a smart guy, you know , and he said like at that they had been in the game helping affiliates for a decade, and he's like, up until now we've never done the billing side because we always knew that it would be way easier for us to build that later to do their thing later than for them to do our thing later. If we focus on what makes us the best Mm-Hmm . .

And like, there's a reason that I don't build software and I don't go out and create a coaching certification. Right . That's because I can't be the best in the world at it.

Do you get a lot of love and support from HQ since you are helping , um, their affiliates pay their affiliate fees? Like I would think like I would be nurturing the out of that pub .

And so when we, when we had, and we've been having partnership talks for, for over a decade, you know, at different times CrossFit HQ has said, can you come out here and bring your staff and run a seminar because all the affiliates around Santa Cruz are in trouble. Yes. You know, and, and since then it's always been like, can you pay for lunch at this affiliate gathering? And the answer is always yes.

Where the affiliate, like the actual partnership talks came to a head was a couple years ago, Gary Gaines was in charge of the partnership and they were launching the A PN and the um, the conversation was like, what are you willing to pay

And they're like, well, you know, you can raise the price, charge them more and just give us like, you know, an extra 1200 bucks. And I said, that just doesn't feel right to me. Like, it actually kind of feels like rent seeking . And they were like, well, you're the best. We wanna work with you. But they had actually made the identical offer to about five people, like on the same week. Oh. And yeah, you're

And while we do travel along parallel lines, like the way that we can help people best is by being the best business mentorship practice in the world, not by being HQ's business mentorship practice. Hope that makes sense.

Realistically, how many shifts can it possibly still make before Berkshire partner says, we're done dumping resources into this? Can

Uhhuh , we know that CrossFit is running enthusiastically in the wrong direction For me as an affiliate owner, how much more can they change ideas and take the leftover $5 that they have and put to those ideas before Birth Tire says our 10 bucks are gone, you guys had a good run, we're out.

And so, you know, at some point the goal of every private equity firm is to build this thing for sale. So how can I get at least a 20% return on my investment and then the , the next buyer is gonna come in and try to make another 20% return. So

But I would imagine that the patients is probably there right now for a couple reasons. Number one, they do seem to be doing better. You know, they've just done a , a year of touring around saying we're sorry, we'll do better at their affiliate gatherings. We sponsored those. Then you do have some growth in Europe that , that is like promising.

And the growth that's happening over there is exactly what happened in North America years ago where you just open your doors and you've got 300 people and you say, I'm good at business. Woohoo. And then three years later you're like, uhoh . But, but that is happening, right? And so that's, that's a positive sign. The other thing too right now is that money is very expensive .

When CrossFit was sold years ago, there wasn't a high interest rate. It didn't take a lot of money to buy $200 million worth. Now it is pretty expensive. And so there's probably some impetus to sell and there might even be like an acceptable loss possible. So, you know, if you look at like the average time, their private equity company owns something like this. They're not buying it as a cashflow asset.

They're buying it to build gain 20 to 40% on their investment and sell, you know, usually that's about four years. And so I, I wouldn't be surprised if there were suitors for CrossFit right now, like serious ones. I wouldn't be surprised if there were conversations happening.

He probably caught Greg at a moment of peak frustration when he was like, okay, you know, I've, I've achieved this, I've made an impact, I don't need this. I'm , I'm done. Right? Like, that would be me.

That's not gonna happen with a private equity firm because now you've got like boards and you've got bureaucracies and you've got, you know, like shareholder money involved and , and reports that have to come out every corner to shareholders. They're not going to make a decision like that. You can't just look for a low point.

So the , the, my guess would be that right now Don's conversations with his boards are keep it a little bit longer and we will see this much return from it. And so there's probably a plan to increase like that return to shareholders and investors. That plan is going to either increase , uh, include growth or it's going to include more money from the current ecosystem. And probably both.

So, you know , that's probably what we

And my my thing is, is like you don't have that many big shifts left in the wallet.

When someone says they work at Apple, you're like, oh, you're, you know , I mean maybe not as much as before to to , to do a media blitz today in the current system of how many uh , creators, the content creators there are. You , you better be an employment brand . You're not gonna get it done by taking applications. Do you know what I mean? No , absolute . It's gonna Absolutely .

You're not gonna , you , you won't, you don't have the money. It would cost billions to do what if you had an employment brand would cost less than a million to do. And I really mean that. 'cause you would just have thousands of people making content for you. Mm-Hmm. cash like, like the buttery bros. Or , or , or I used to do for CrossFit. Like you're just crazy about it. You're just screaming from the treetops.

And unfortunately now you've kind of lost those, those people who are so passionate about the brand that are going to create media that promotes the brand itself instead of their thing that they benefit from. Mm-Hmm .

But the most important thing is we identify like what are the best gyms doing this is like our CrossFit games. Right? Wow . I can remember what Greg was saying about the games is like, let's find the best dead lifter in the world and copy their program to make everybody better at deadlifts . That's what we're doing with lead gen A RM staff.

Yeah. So, so December-ish, we'll get everybody like their copy of it digitally and then we start mailing these out. We send out seven or 8,000 of them through, you know, US mail and that happens. Most people get them December, January. Alright.