The Sevan Podcast - #288 - Eric Roza Fired? CrossFit CEO removed.
Episode Date: February 3, 2022Eric Roza has been the CEO of CrossFit since the late summer of 2020. Today, in an internal statement, it was announced he would be shifting from his position as CEO to the chairman of the board for t...he business. The statement claims this was the long-term plan for Eric's place in the company but was accelerated as a result of his three-month absence sighting mental health reasons. They conclude the statement by saying that the search for the new CEO is still on going. "The Sevan Podcast" T-Shirts https://asrx.com/collections/the-real-sevan-podcast-collection Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Watch this episode https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC59b5GwfJN9HY7uhhCW-ACw/videos?view=2&live_view=503 Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Bam. We're live. 20 seconds early. My feet are cold travis bellinghausen let's go five dollar five
dollar apparently matt o'keefe is the new ceo of crossfit inc
wait really no that's just me doesn't that be fucking great
you heard it here first in case it actually happens my my as i walked in here my wife
gave me two pieces of advice she's like hey don't be mean i said okay and she's like and
if you think you're being chill be even chill. But I'm giddy as a fucking.
OK, so what do we know?
What do we know?
What do we know?
What do we know?
We know that we were misled from day one.
We were presented that this gentleman who loved CrossFit was going to come in and buy CrossFit Inc.
and save it from the racist Greg Glassman.
And what we know is, is that Floyd 19 had nothing to do with racism.
It was actually the exact opposite.
We know that Greg Glassman believed in the five buckets of death,
which he gave us, and he was leading us to just at least to persevere
and pursue a perception that was truthful and honest to the best of our ability.
But I think that Greg got a little tired of the fight and he sold.
And they laughed at him when he sold the company behind his back.
I don't know if everyone on the board, but people at the board thought that the massive amount of money
that they gave Greg to purchase CrossFit Inc., they were laughing like they stole it from him.
Like they're like, oh, we pulled one over on that guy.
And lo and behold, it ended up not being Eric Rosa who purchased CrossFit Inc.
Like we were manipulated and told to say we were lied to is a little strong, but they made it seem like, hey, this guy was coming in. He's a rich guy from Oracle and he was buying it. And that that's, that's would be a total
mischaracterization of what happened. And it was a lie. So, so, and, and then we know that since
there are investors, Greg was not, this company was, um, this company was a company where the
product was, as Greg Glassman said, when he put his arm around Jason Cleveland
2008, he said, this is the product. And it's very obvious and very clear that to me, that the people
who purchase CrossFitting don't, they don't know what they bought, but we don't know who the owners
are. So we don't know why they bought it. Did they buy it to destroy it? Did they buy it to make
money? Did they like, we don't know what their true intention so we don't know why they bought it did they buy it to destroy it did they buy it to make money did they like we don't know what their true intention is but either way
they thought they were buying harley davidson but they were buying the hell's angels there's a huge
difference harley davidson's a motorcycle manufacturing plant and hell's angels is a
activist group right um but whatever they do i don't know if they like help little kids or
deliver meth around the country i don't know exactly they like help little kids or deliver meth around the country
i don't know exactly what they do it's very diverse but they're different they're different
we can even use greenpeace green like it's they thought they were they thought greenpeace was a
whale watching tour group that they bought and it's not it's it's it's the exact opposite it
goes and it's a dangerous place to be it's not a place to go watch whales. It's U-Tag Japanese whaling boats.
And they're still confused to this day.
And I understand why they're confused because it takes a long time to get your head wrapped around it.
CrossFit is just selling personal responsibility and personal accountability based on Greg's knowledge of what movements and diet optimizes the human genome, human DNA, allows it to express itself in its finest form so that you end up looking like me.
And so Eric comes in. We're misled. A board comes in. They have a fiduciary duty, I presume, to make money totally different than what Greg is doing.
They have a fiduciary duty, I presume, to make money totally different than what Greg is doing.
They don't know what they bought.
From what they say, they think this is the CrossFit Games.
They're as dumb as most of you guys.
You guys are so confused.
And I understand the stupidity.
I give most of you a pass on it.
It's like looking at Matt Souza and thinking he is that on what you see on the outside when 99 of them is fucking blood and guts
and poop and veins and muscles and tendons and ligaments and i understand how you see it wrong
because you're just looking at the outside but i with a fucking pocket knife in five minutes i
could show you suza is not fucking what you think he is i just have to cut him open and splay out
all the shit on the inside and that's what what's happened with CrossFit Inc. It looks so fucking different on the outside
than what it really is.
It's a perfect metaphor.
So then this guy runs,
they stay along the same path
that Greg had fucked up with the company
in the last two years
and that dumb fuck CEO he had hired.
They don't rebuild the media team
and they really needed
to do that. And of course I'm biased as fuck and they don't do that. And they go down this road
and they get in, there's the gym closures and they believe the fucking mental psychosis of,
of the pandemic, the lies around that, like there's something scary here and people are
going to be dying. And what's even more bizarre that a company like this would believe that when this company has been for the last 15 years built on the premise that Greg Glassman warned us that the tsunami of chronic disease is coming.
And literally it was here and it is here.
And instead of this company speaking up and being like, thank God we're all prepared, it delved in deeper to all the political nonsense.
It embraced because they're they're woke you have to understand that everyone who works there is
woke as fuck i mean everyone i mean like more than 50 percent um they're woke as fuck and they
they they're they're scared and they just want to do any They want to like they're riding the wave of popular opinion in order to try to make money.
So excuse me. So that now you they're doing this and they're they build D.I. teams and they let gyms close and they run to the government for money to try to save their gyms.
This is all nothing that the Hells angels do by the way this is what
harley davidson does and um uh they end up in a situation where they can't manage the team well
first of all once greg left even prior to greg left left, I'll be completely honest with you. The soul of the company was rotting.
Like we went from a company where everyone was really stoked to work there to like people were hating it.
And then when Greg sold the company, it had like a momentary like up, but it wasn't a good up by that i mean you guys were eating a bale of cotton candy
and you were having a momentary sugar high but you were going to pay the price for it and that's
what the that's what rosa was it's like it's like going and eating a whole pizza that 40 minutes
that you're eating the pizza is great but everything after that's downhill and that's
where we've been in the last year and a half, two years. And basically what cross you have to think of CrossFit Inc as a, um,
someone asked me, are you happy that Rose is gone?
Are you happy that maybe you played a part in it? Are you like,
are you happy that, you know, really, um, I, I,
I want to be completely transparent on how I think of the situation.
Imagine, you know, like when you build a sandcastle at the beach, Sousa, and, and the tide's coming up. And after you spent like an
hour building it, the tide starts hitting it and like breaking it to pieces. That's what's
happening to CrossFit Inc. It is that sandcastle that you built too close and the water's coming
up and getting it. And I'm the bratty kid who went over there and started stamping stomping on it and like it's not cool i'm not and it's not healthy like i should just just chill like a mature
adult sit back in my beach chair crack a beer and just watch the ocean slowly pull the sandcastle
away but i've run down there with my fucking shovel and been banging on it so yeah well when
you work on it for 15 years you know maybe you get that right a little bit um uh remember
savon's rant about clickbait and half the video going by before any answers came out uh me too
it's a hashtag um me uh too it's hashtag uh so so we that there's nothing more guys listen m i'm gonna do you a huge favor
you should log off right now because i said everything i needed to say in the title the
rest of this is just clickbait this is you guys just hoping i'm gonna give you some fucking
insight that i don't have so you can all log off now bye bye i already told you rose is gone
bye bye that's it there's nothing more you can go that's it so what's gonna happen next though You can all log off now. Bye-bye. I already told you. Rose is gone. Bye-bye.
That's it.
There's nothing more.
You can go.
What's going to happen next, though?
We have to know.
Yeah, this is just bullshit speculation.
Now I just want you guys to just pile in so I can make money to pay for my kids' jiu-jitsu.
I've already told you.
Well, maybe we could clear a couple things up going back to what you said before.
We weren't necessarily lied to, but we were told a partial truth.
I'm going to get to it yes yes yes so so then they then this guy rose then this guy rosa um so they don't build back the media team and then this guy rosa um claims mental health issues and he's gone for two months and then he comes back and he fires dave
and when he fires dave there's a huge backlash from the community
and now a month later two weeks later he he gets fired i want to i want to read you what
they sent to their team you guys want
to hear that yeah let's give it let's start with the facts before the speculation okay okay i'm so
fucking cold that my like voice is a little shit yeah i'm freezing too and i can't turn on the
heater because it's gonna sound weird in the mic i have the heat on um this is from eric this came
this morning at 7 a.m this morning you guys ready for this this came from eric This came this morning at 7am this morning. You guys ready for this? This came
from Eric Rosa. It says team. I have loved CrossFit since the day I was introduced to it 12
years ago. And it has changed my life. When I saw the company was in trouble in the summer of 2020,
I came out of retirement to help get things back in the right place. That's, that's a lie. That's
the presuppositions. That's like, that's, that's, that's that's that's not even i mean that's not exactly
how it went down that's that's that's more mischaracterization more mischaracterization
nothing can be believed from these guys by the way remember this is the guy who wanted to fire dave
and but have it be on mutual terms because that was the professional way so anytime you hear the
word professional you should know that from these guys, that means lying.
They defined it, not me.
They defined it.
They just said it was tantamount to lying, professional lying. Okay.
My plan from the beginning was to set an ambitious vision, assemble the right team of executives to achieve it, and step into the chairman role on the board after three years or so.
I don't know if that's true, but that's not what he said to me
and the employees that I was in the room with
when he started.
That is not what he said at all.
So he was either lying then or he's lying now.
During my recent time away
and in subsequent discussions with the board
and our senior team over the past week,
I've decided to accelerate that timetable.
So he's saying during my recent time, meaning since he fired, since he said he's a quackadoodle,
his mental health issues and subsequent discussion, meaning he fired Dave and what you guys post on
Instagram, because we know that affects him with the board, our senior team. It's true. I'm not
lying. And I don't want to hear like those of you who are like, Hey, it's not nice to make fun of them. I'm not making fun of him for his mental health issues.
I'm making fun of you guys that you think it's okay to sit on an airplane and, and, and be more
concerned about the pilot when the pilot says he has mental health issues and you're 30,000 feet
in the air than the people, the kids in the, in the families on the airplane that's the part that's bizarre to me like you're so um i have speculations about the whole entire
mental health thing and how that was released do we want to okay yeah go ahead good don't don't
don't be don't be woke you can take care of people but the most important thing are the affiliates don't be fucking silly this
don't don't conflate the issues don't get distracted that's all just woke shit by saying
oh seven's not being nice to him someone's not being compassionate i don't like i'm not worried
about him he's on the ground in his fucking three million dollar home and fucking boulder with
fucking 20 million dollars in the bank and like in his fancy
fucking creek uh wherever he goes to when you're crazy like i mean i'm i'm making that up i don't
know those exact numbers but i'm not worried about him i'm not and i'm not worried about hurting his
feelings or anything like that other than i don't want my wife to think i'm a bad person
i'm just worried about the affiliates. And when I mean worried, I mean in the hierarchy, in the hierarchy of being concerned for things.
The affiliates matter so much more to me than Eric Rosa.
Like, come on, man.
I view it as selfish that he came out and said he's a quackadoodle.
I view it as 100% selfish.
I view it as a quackadoodle move.
So here's the thing. I think we're switching tracks switching tracks and then and then he knows that we are and then he sorry and then he nosedived the fucking plane by firing dave and instead of someone being
like hey maybe the pilot really is fucked up we're losing altitude quickly
i do have the best sources thank you jacklyn i do have the best sources. Thank you, Jacqueline. I do have the best sources.
So, so, hold that thought. Let me finish reading this. Let me finish reading this.
As board chairman, I will provide support and mentoring to the leadership team and continue to partner with them on long term vision and strategy while continuing to represent and brand externally. And we have begun to search. We have begun the search process for a new CEO.
So this is like saying nothing. That sentence says nothing. That just means they don't know
what they're doing. That means that that means that this has been rushed the same way firing
Dave was rushed. The pilot put on a parachute and jumped out of the plane yes yes yes yes the good news is this fucking guy isn't flying the plane anymore the bad news is is
we don't know who's flying it it's just god it's such fucking it's such bad leadership that and
maybe they're maybe they know maybe maybe they're um maybe, maybe they're, um, fuck. Well, maybe they're bringing Dave back and they're not telling us who knows, but yeah,
I don't think that's what they're doing, but who knows?
Our team strength comes from its breadth of experience in the tech world.
I fucking love these just vapid sentences.
This is amazing.
This is our team.
This is like not saying why don't you just say what you'd like.
People would respect you.
Do you understand that the affiliates would respect you so much more?
These are hardworking people.
If you just told them the fucking truth.
Hey, man, this fucking guy fucking is stressed out because his fucking family.
He's kind of a
fucking mess he's got too much money he loves crossfit but he just fucked up he fired dave
because he didn't know how to manage dave and we got to get our shit together we're getting rid of
him we're bringing in this fucking other dude to hold down the ship for like a month we're going
to keep you posted um let's fucking really focus on the open i mean just like some straight talk
our team strength comes i mean you're wasting you're wasting the affiliates
time by making them read this this is paragraph number four we're on the truth goes against our
community guidelines but it is right but it is um but it is really fun for my podcast so so i should
thank you and i mean that from the bottom of my heart um our team strength comes from its breadth
of experience background knowledge and skill all united by a shared passion for crossfit you have fewer people working at hq who do crossfit now
than in the history of the fucking company you know that right you like you know okay my wife told me however calm i'm being be calmer in spite of the pandemic
in 2021 we added more than 1 000 affiliates added it to what how many did you lose it's like when
they say they added can i trust anything you say since every sentence before this is live what did you say susan i said it's like when they say we look how many jobs we've
added since the pandemic like if just because they went back to work doesn't mean you added shit
look how much money we've added to the economy during the pandemic three trillion
oh my goodness i hope i hope he's taking's taking fucking Andrew Weinstein with him too.
I hope,
man,
if they're not taking that guy with him,
you guys are in big trouble.
Cause this is written,
by the way,
this isn't written by Eric Rosa would be my guess.
This is written by a guy named Andrew Weinstein,
who he takes everywhere with them.
I think from job to job to job,
this is just a PR guy.
Yeah.
This is the guy who told Rosa he should come probably straight with his um mental
health issues like this guy i really want to get to that mental health issue thing because i i think
i might we might have some i do i have might have a personal i might have a different take on that
that i think people might be interested in okay um uh a thousand credentialed over 15 000 new
coaches that by the by credential that means they've sold 15,000 L ones,
which is awesome.
Makes me,
I'm stoked on that.
Um,
and welcome hundreds of thousands of new members.
They,
I don't think they have,
they have no proof of that at all.
Like,
I don't know what the fuck they're like.
The gyms are open back up.
Yeah.
Like what do you,
well,
what even as COVID,
how many,
and none of this matter.
Like it doesn't matter if i put on a thousand
gyms if i lost three thousand so um yes let matt talk no i will not talk uh thank you though for
your vote alissa um uh even as covid continues to impact many of our key markets, this is tremendous progress. No, it's not COVID.
There's no lie.
It's not COVID impacting.
COVID does not impact markets.
You guys know that, right?
That's lie.
That's word fuckery.
You know that, right?
Please tell me, those of you who listen to the show know that.
That's word fuckery.
I'll explain it for anyone.
If you guys have a question, if you guys don't understand what I'm saying, I'll go into more detail on it, but that's not what this show is about.
The world needs CrossFit more than ever.
I just can't believe how empty this is.
I know.
Yeah, no shit, dude.
And with your engagement, there are no limits to CrossFitentiality to change millions of more lives in the years ahead.
I'm honored to be on this journey with you.
You're not on the journey with me.
You are not on the journey with me.
You're toast.
Let me tell you what.
He is gone for not being able to perform.
This is what I think.
I think he misled the board he misled himself
i don't think that that's his fault i think it's hard to see that matt sues is really just a bunch
of blood and guts and veins and tendons and organs and it's hard to realize that when you're just
looking at his beautiful skin and his whatever that locust t-shirt of his and his biceps dangling
out but um then he bought it and he realized, oh, shit.
And then he actually, when he fired Dave, he accidentally cut the heart out of the body.
Oh, my goodness.
It is such a mess.
From Jan Clark, $10 for your kids.
Thank you.
Okay, Sousa, what's your theory?
Alyssa, here you go, Alyssa.
Where's Alyssa? Let Matt talk. OK, fine. Here we go.
OK, so I think when we go back to the original thing about the mental health issue, there's two different buckets we have to categorize this in.
One, we're not talking about mental health issue and people coming out and saying, oh, you know, you're you're bashing that and we're wrong. OK, so put that in a separate bucket than this. I think what that was, was an insurance policy against what we're seeing now. Because just like
if you guys listen to the Jake Hagel podcast, he said, I made fun of myself. So that way it took
away the power for other people to make fun of me. So when they talk about the experience of the team.
Wait a second, wait a second second you think that them you're not
think sorry you're proposing an idea you're just you don't i'm okay you don't think this but what
you're saying what if that you say that he has some mental health issues not necessarily knowing
you're going to get rid of him but but it lays some groundwork for being a like you see some waves coming wow let me place that
a little more if i understand correctly you're saying that they know that they want to
get rid of dave they know that eventually they want to move him to chairman of the board or to
the board and you're saying that they're not playing checkers like me your hypothesis
thank you jeffrey you that this is chess for them and they're like okay they laid it out months in
advance holy shit that would be crazy first we're going to say that you have some mental health
issues that'll play to those that group of people not even the people but that's the insurance policy
of now we can't say anything negative about r Rosa or about his performance or about what's happening as a community, as a total, because that would be frowned upon for the same reason why a lot of people came back at us and said, what you're saying about mental health issues is wrong because people like you that make it so they can't speak out.
Right.
So we've already said that.
People said that about me.
What's that?
Okay.
about me okay and then and then but you're you're suggesting that they knew all of this in advance possibly like don't like i shouldn't be so nice i find that really hard to believe but i am kind
of naive like that i i realize i don't play chess um i think some of the most um one of the the
biggest thing is when you when you're purchasing a company that large and you have a private equity group like Berkshire Partners, you're very strategic.
You're not thinking one move ahead.
You're thinking five moves ahead, six moves ahead.
Jeff Bezos used to say when the earning reports come out and people get it of like what happened in the last quarter, he goes, we're already working on a year out ahead of that.
already working on a year out ahead of that.
So you guys are so far in the rear view mirror of what's actually happening at the table with the board that it's too hard for you to see out to what's going on and to catch
up with them.
And if we go back to what I say about the experience of the team, he's right.
Andrew Weinstein is a very intelligent individual and he's somebody who's worked in a political
arenas and different things like that and PR in this corporate world for a long time.
And if you're only one move out ahead, you're going to get eaten by these sharks.
You've got to be five moves out ahead.
And another reason why I'm speculating on that is because if it were me and I own a gym and other things, that if I were having issues like this, it wouldn't be a scripted thing that talks more about statistics on mental health.
It would be a personal message from me to the community.
And there was no personality to it.
There was no personal touch to it.
It was, hey, guys, I have mental health issues.
Here's a laundry list of facts on mental health issues in the U.S.
Here's how we're going to talk about it affecting somebody on the team.
Wow.
That poor guy and his family they brought in.
And then there's no,
there's,
that's it,
right?
There's no personal touch to it.
And then we're just going to leave this here because now if we need to come
back to it,
we have our insurance policy.
You,
that that's really a suit of what you said.
There was nothing there.
It's just like,
there's nothing personal and we're seeing it again. There's nothing personal here either you said there was nothing there it's just like there's nothing personal and it's and we're seeing it again there's nothing personal here either it's
just fucking it's just hot air and rhetoric and it's like you basically if if if if a hundred
percent of the people are saying hey we need to hear something from you guys they say something
and 80 of the people are the sheep are all settled because they heard something.
That's right.
And the other 20% of us are like, wait, that's just the same.
Yeah.
It's a copy paste message.
It's curated.
It's thought through and they're, they're giving themselves options by doing that.
Because guess what?
If it, if the firing of Dave Castro went maybe a different route and people were like, yeah,
we all, we're all behind this. Then they could just take their insurance policy and slide it away.
And we don't even have to bring up Rose's mental health issues again.
Or if it's really based on performance, meaning the return on investment that whoever owns CrossFit is looking to seek, then they could pull that thing back off the shelf again, too, and use that as well.
Shit. It's out.
Okay. And so now I'm gone. You guys will never see me again.
You're gone. Bye.
Yeah, man, it's good. What did you think of it? Well, then let me ask you some questions since you're the brain.
Why?
Someone just sent me a link to, um, not the brain, just speculating.
Someone sent me a, um, a link just now to the morning chalk up article that they just
released about it.
What took them so long?
Like I know, so I know that they're basically on the dole of CrossFit HQ.
I know basically –
They're the loudspeaker.
Yeah, and I know CrossFit HQ finds ways to give them money.
So, for example, CrossFit HQ does not have to advertise at the morning chalk up for the open at all.
The morning chalk up exists to advertise the fucking open.
They're going to talk about the open ad nauseum.
fucking open like that like they they're gonna add they're gonna talk about that open ad nauseam and yet i'm crossfit inc and basically says okay we'll give you a hundred dollars a month
and uh we'll run these ads wink wink and uh and you better do our bidding or else we're not gonna
run these ads i mean so that's the um it has to be because they don't have a media team the media team sitting right here with me or right i wonder why did morning chaka wait two and a half hours to post this i'm sure
andrew weinstein told them yesterday hey we got to get ready to do damage control on this
so why did they wait two and a half hours and maybe it's not even worth asking that question
um i have another uh email that came from hq do you want to hear that one so that first email i
read you a few minutes ago was um from eric to the staff at hq now Now I have another email I'm going to read you guys.
And this is from the executive team to all the members.
What's up, Bradley?
Hey, what's going on, man?
Just chilling, just trying to get some numbers for my YouTube channel.
You know how I do it.
Just milking the shit.
Oh, I hear that.
Man, what the fuck is going on?
Hey. Holy shit. Oh, you know you know shoot you just reminded me bradley barbelljobs.com i'm gonna just put that up while i talk to you in case um rosa wants to look for a new job okay go ahead what do you
think's going on bradley what do you think you have any speculation we need a good conspiracy
theory so i have no clue so i literally just turned on my
computer i'm um hang on i'm a 10 i'm a 10-year affiliate um so i've been doing crossfit since
2007 i literally just turned on my computer and i was like and it was live i was like eric rosa
fired i'm like what the fuck is going on i gotta i just gotta call he's. He's claiming – they're claiming – I just read the first letter.
You can go back, and I'm about to read a second letter.
But they're basically claiming that he's moving to board, to chairman of the board, and this was something that they had planned all along.
But what I'm trying to – the things I'm not trying to talk about, the things that as we about it, that reveal is that they haven't been honest since day one.
We don't know who owns the company.
They told us that he was going to buy the company.
They fired Dave.
They tried to make us say that it was mutual with Dave.
Like we don't really know what's going on.
We do know that this company though is susceptible to,
um,
what all woke people are susceptible to.
And it's massive peer pressure.
Like that's the whole,
the woke thing just wants to ride whatever
perception so it's kill witches today fine we kill witches it's love which is tomorrow we love
witches it's killed jews tomorrow we killed you we love jews tomorrow you know that's what they're
doing yeah they're a woke company so it's woke fit and and what happened that made it so that
eric rosa left we know it's not like part of the plan and they even so much as admit it something
that something and i have to assume that it's because dave i'm assuming that the pressure
i mean we we even saw gary gaines go on that podcast recently saying where he likes dave
and we had and i have to imagine that marshall and nicole are fucking devastated and chuck and
todd widman and half the l1 team i mean even if you hated dave and you
worked at crossfit inc he's still one of the apostles like no one wants to see him go fucking
get taken out and get killed sorry go ahead and so so what are we a year into this a year and
and three months since the the official change or or whatever i don't even know if it's been that
long i think it's been almost three i think it's been almost three well in the letter that rosa wrote today i think he said almost three years
believe it or a year was it three years i don't know that's what didn't he say almost three years
2020 to 2000 i mean maybe a year and a half i don. I mean, that seems kind of crazy, but I think you're right.
I think you're right. Everything has shifted, um, in the last year and a half and no, and, and as affiliate owner who I found CrossFit in 2007, uh, I've owned two affiliates. I still
own my affiliate. Uh, I run it every single day. Um, it's, It's disheartening as an affiliate owner because we have no understanding and no direction of what's going on.
Right.
You don't hear anything.
You don't you just see little headlines.
Right.
You got little things that, you know, morning talk puts up and whatever.
But you have no clue what's going on, what direction or anything.
And it's just like. All you have no clue what's going on what direction or anything and
it's just like all you can say is what the fuck yeah it what do you like i'm gonna let me play
devil's advocate here for a reason what do you care well how about how about fuck you go back
and train someone like what if that was like their word? Yeah, well, like, what do you care about the mothership? What do you care what the mothership is doing?
You've been around. You've been around since 2007. I've been around since 2007. You've been around before that.
Just a little bit before. Yeah, just towards the end of 2006. Yep. Just a little bit.
Right. The the the feeling that you had when you started CrossFit then.
Right. The community, everybody's
padding, everybody's back.
You're there, right?
Last person finished the workout.
You're still right there.
You had that community feeling.
And now it just seems like as an affiliate owner, I'm just doing my own thing, right?
Like there's no direction and there's no understanding of what the path is
to where we want to get. Are they putting out more information as far as like a health and
fitness agenda? Yeah. Like they are putting that out there, right? They're being more vocal with
that as far as that. But when you go back and you look at what Greg Glassman was doing
whenever he started, I mean, that dude went after everybody. He,
if you attack the CrossFit brand, if you attack the methodology of CrossFit and what the affiliate
owners were trying to do and trying to get people from the couch into the gym and trying to change
their life in the most positive way possible, right? And now you look at it, you're just like, what's that? You don't see that.
Right. You don't feel that. And I have, I talked to affiliate owners on a constant basis. Every
single day I have some of my best friends are affiliate owners and they all just like, and I
was affiliate on it before them. And they're, and they got into wanting to be an owner. Cause they
saw my passion for it. And they, they're like, what the hell is going on?
And I'm like, I have no clue.
I don't know where we're going, what direction we're going.
And it's just every single day, it's like, what?
It's just a loss.
We're lost, right?
And that's that.
Someone said in the comments here, and I think this addresses a little bit of what you're saying.
Why doesn't CrossFit HQ treat the affiliatesates like shareholders that is what they're doing this is the very last thing you
want from your leadership i know it sounds like it's a good idea but what you really want is you
want one fucking dude who can stay true to the course and anyone who doesn't like it will fall
off the back it's okay we all aren't going to the top of Everest.
The problem with HQ now is they're trying to appeal to everyone. It was so much better.
You just have Greg at the helm. You have a guy who's okay holding his middle fingers up in the
air and saying, my true North is health, fitness, and longevity. And we go there. And now not
everyone's going to go somewhere along the way. You're going to be like, Hey, I don't like that. Or like, Hey, I need to make more money than be focused on,
on this specific goal because I have family and kids, or I thought Floyd 19 was racist because
I'm woke and I don't understand it was to help black people. And so you break off and you,
it's okay. But the problem is the problem is, is they are listening now. They have like 10,000 voices in their ear.
I was looking at this thing, Bradley, that they call CrossFit Health.
Now, I'm not an expert on CrossFit Health, but I know that Greg Glassman and Karin Thompson are experts.
And the purpose of CrossFit Health was to show the ills of modern medicine, basically to show that, hey, that there
is no truth in the stat in stat and science to show that, you know, they bled out George Washington
to show that to point out why is it that they're all of a sudden influenza went away, but COVID
stronger than ever, like to show all the fucking lies coming from the medical establishment and
get the medical establishment on truth. Right. That was the point.
Well, when Rosa bought the company and I use this as an example, just to be indicative of everything that's going on there, they took a department that nobody knew really what it was
because it was Greg's. It was so it was so young and it was so Greg's vision was so strong. And
he had Karn Thompson doing it for him.
And then when they bought CrossFit, they should have thrown away CrossFit Health.
There was no one there unless they gave Karin carte blanche to do what she wanted with it.
There was no one there who was going to be able to pursue it the way Greg did.
That was his project, right?
Yeah, I mean it's his baby.
And now it has nothing to do with the ills of modern medicine.
They kept this fucking department. It would be like if tomorrow Harley Davidson only sold flowers.
Like they had like they they've invited the wolf into the hen house by the direction they've taken CrossFit health.
It's like, no, you fucking idiots. And it's the same. It's the same thing with the DEI council.
fucking idiots and it's the same it's the same thing with the dei council if you really they should they should get rid of the dei council all the money that they spend on that all the money
that they spend on trying to help people all that stuff they should build a media team and anytime
an affiliate is doing something that they like they should go out and make a piece on it and
they should do that every week so they should go go out to Louisiana. Is that where your affiliate is, Bradley?
Yeah, I'm in Louisiana.
And they should go to your three o'clock class
that's only for fat and old people.
And they should do a fucking $10,000 video on it.
And then they should go to the affiliate in Harlem
that's just for kids whose parents make less than $15,000 a year
and do a fucking video on it.
HQ needs to be celebrating and promoting
and jerking the affiliates off
non-fucking-stop and stop worrying about anything else yeah i mean if you look back right like look
back on some of like old those old videos that were on the journal right like whenever uh what
was it they went to tahoe i think it was like a gen faster rogue yes um and then they did like
big sky mountain and they did like the workouts and everything like that
like
that was
that was like
the top of the top
right
like that was where
everybody wanted to be
right
I remember
when I started
like my whole thing
was like
I want to be a 10 year
affiliate right
so when they have
the 10 year affiliate
gathering
I can be there
and be a voice
yeah
right
and now it's like
a 10 year affiliate like you like a 10-year affiliate like
you're just a one-year affiliate like it doesn't thank you for your payment there's no yeah it's
like right and somebody's asking like what are you going to do brad like i'm like well fuck i can
turn around a three thousand dollar profit by the end but in october if i don't if i don't, if I don't, you know, resign my affiliation. Right. Because I'm, I'm 10 years in. I can get out the negative by just saying, you know, it sucks.
my kids playroom. I have one in my living room and I have one in my bedroom. I think the smallest one's like 50 inches and the biggest one's 90 inches. And I don't let my kids watch TV except
on Friday night after the sun goes down on Saturday. And for whatever reason, I'm having
some issues with Avi right now. He doesn't want to do jujitsu because he had a urinary track
infection, blah, blah, blah. So yesterday I tell him, Hey, if you are able to do jujitsu, if you do jujitsu today, just for 10 minutes,
the class is an hour and a half. You just do the warmup, go out there and I'll let you watch a
little bit of TV tonight. He says, really? I said, yeah, he goes out there and does it. He comes home.
They're watching TV. Okay. Bradley, my three sons. Yeah. One of them doesn't like to show
they're watching and he wants to go turn on another tv no sorry motherfucker this is like
no you'd like you cannot watch tv but and that's the problem with crossfit hq like and so that son
cries and runs away though that's gonna happen to 20 of the affiliates 20 of you fuckers are
gonna be unhappy at all times and when hq tries to fucking
accommodate them i know we're a little off subject here the whole thing is going to get
fucked we're going to compromise the vision well it's already been compromised because it's about
making money greg would have never let thorn and and fucking whoever the fuck else is in there i
have a couple thoughts i'm gonna i'm gonna explode if we don't get to talk about it okay sorry
bradley let matt say something here a second. Sorry, Bradley. I'm done.
I just think it's important.
One thing that we should stay like, even when Greg was CEO, the affiliates were always shareholders. And I'm going to make a reference here because when Amazon went public in 1997, the first thing Jeff Bezos said is if you're investing in this company to get a return on your profit, take your money somewhere else.
if you're investing in this company to get a return on your profit, take your money somewhere else. Because he understood the long-term vision and he understood the long-term direction of
Amazon, the company, just like Greg did of CrossFit. So what he was saying is if you're
in this to get money here and that's what you're doing and you want a shareholder because you want
a return on profit, this probably isn't the place for you. Yeah. No, I understand that and what i'm saying is i've never had an issue with affiliation right
when when i remember i was that clarify that thought real quick what i'm what i'm saying
like there was never a disconnect where i was like man i don't ever want to like i don't want
to be affiliated when all the drama was going on i'm talking about you know whenever the issue uh
was was was uh was um was separating from his wife and they were trying to get bought out by
a hedge fund i never had a thought my mom was like i'm not unaffiliated right when when i remember
the night that that glassman put out the tweet um that that shook the whole community. I even was like,
I texted a buddy, screenshot. I was like,
yeah, he fucked up with that one.
But people didn't understand
what his purpose was.
Right, totally.
I never had a thought process
at that time
to unaffiliate.
Right now, it's just a
shit show and I feel like i'm not getting
anything back from the the past nine years and 10 years that i've put into this and into my clientele
and my clients and all that and now it's just like everything's crumbling down and you're just
like what the you don't there's really nothing like I'm trying to find that, that, that kind of drive and focus to keep pushing on and on and on the CrossFit methodology because it completely changed my life.
And it's changed the millions of people around the world.
Mine too.
Mine too.
And my mom's.
And it just sucks because now you're sitting here and you're just like, every time it's not getting brought up
in a positive, right? Let me stop you right there for a second. The reason why I was bringing up
the connection between Amazon and investing in it in the early days and Bezos saying,
if you're investing in this to get a return on your money or not, because we're not going to
turn a profit for a long time, was because you were buying in on the vision and the direction of the company.
So agreeing to the point, I was hoping that you would get around to it.
And the purpose of you being affiliated and staying, even when the rotters got rough was
because you knew, and we were committed to Greg's vision and direction of CrossFit.
We knew that that was what you were buying into.
You weren't buying into it as a, as a business model to hopefully get more money. You were buying into the vision, into the direction you were buying into. You weren't buying into it as a business model to hopefully get more money.
You were buying into the vision, into the direction.
You were buying into the methodology that Greg set forth.
And a couple of things I want to mention here real quick, because the vision and direction,
if you were close to CrossFit at all and you were paying attention, you read the articles,
you were very clear that we were lifeboats for the tsunami of chronic disease.
We had the solution,
the elegant solution to the world's most complex and vexing problem, right? But then when that
changed and it became corporate labels such as health, performance, and happiness, it's really
hard to have any metric on that. And it's really hard to have a vision and direction behind that
because it's vague, right? And here's one of the biggest differences. When Greg would say that, he would say, all as I know is that when you walk
into one of my affiliates, you will become better. I'm not going to define better. You are going to
tell me what became better by you walking into it, right? And that's the biggest difference between
just putting little labels so everybody could do stuff.
And Greg just saying, no, no, no, no.
I've handed you the methodology to make your life better.
You're going to put that definition on it after you follow the path of the methodology.
So I was agreeing with you in the sense of that.
We had a strong vision and direction that we were buying into when we were shareholders of CrossFit when it was owned by Greg.
And then that got lost when Rosa bought it.
Yeah.
And it was, it's just one of those things that I try, you know, I try, you get clients come in, right?
And they, they read, they, you know, you got clients that are in the mix and everything like that.
And they want to, what's going on, you know, and you try to have the conversation and you try to say, there's a, the bigger picture is like, I'm in the health and fitness business
as far as teaching people how to move their body in a, in a better way.
Right.
And my clientele is a based off of 30, 35, 40.
I got 75 year olds that are clientele.
And I tell them all the time, like, my job is the longevity
of your life, right? And we're doing that through CrossFit. But on the other side,
it's when I've been so connected to something since 2007, it's just, like I said, it's disheartening
that you have to come home. It's like, it's so much like breaking up with your high school
girlfriend, right? Because it's like, you know, like up with your your your high school girlfriend right because it's like you know like you love her so much right but then there's this other side
just like man she's batshit crazy right already in high school no i didn't have any batshit crazy
ones in high school you had oh no definitely definitely they they start them young over here
louisiana man bradley thank you very much for calling in brother stay in touch no much They start them young over here in Louisiana, man.
Bradley, thank you very much for calling in, brother.
Stay in touch.
No, much appreciation, guys.
Thank you, Bradley.
I want to read more of this letter from the leadership team to HQ,
but I want to address something that CallMeDave, CallMeD says.
He says, Dave, you mean the guy who – and's he's attacking someone must have said something about dave castro and he's trying to like um go after dave castro a little bit he says dave
question mark you mean the guy who gave athletes sunstroke and blamed it on the athletes despite
the medical team's objections the one who scheduled swim events and water bodies against local advice
so call me d i just want to um say that i think it's inappropriate misguided and um
disingenuous and in in line the way you're presenting it i mean dave the guy who um
was on his uh was on his high school football team as a wide receiver and never got to start
never got to play but still came to practice every day.
I mean, Dave, who went to the Navy and was on SEAL Team 4, SEAL Team 8, SEAL Team 6.
Yes, all those. And who then also did exchange program with Delta Force.
I'm talking about Dave, who was recently called to the East Coast to meet with a two-star general who was Delta Force commander when Dave was serving, who even as a SEAL respects the fuck out of Dave.
a street cred to wearing a CrossFit shirt, a CrossFit.com shirt, and to competing at the CrossFit games so that you can say you're the fittest man or woman on the planet. There's no
question that the person who wins that event is the fittest man on the planet. No one thinks it's
a running back for the Raiders. No one thinks it's a decathlete. No one thinks anything.
No one thinks it's a decathlete.
No one thinks anything.
Everyone would love to see Matt Fraser or whoever, Rich Froning, smash any fucking athlete anywhere.
Everyone's proud to wear these shirts because we know how fucking hard it is from our affiliate to when we do it in our garage like a pussy like me to going to the CrossFit games. Those of us who are there and have seen the sunstroke. There's equal blame on everybody.
Just as much on the athletes who could have toned it down a little bit.
And not pushed as hard.
They're in control of themselves.
This is about personal responsibility and personal accountability.
It's not athlete safety first.
If it was athlete safety first they wouldn't compete.
They would be sitting at game consoles.
They'd be playing fucking UFC 4 on a game console and they wouldn't go out there.
You're completely misguided.
You are what makes human beings weak.
You want to argue limitations.
You want to take things out of context.
It's not appropriate, call me D.
The one who scheduled swim events and water bodies against local advice.
And when you say medical teams, you know that doctors in this country are the leading third leading cause of death in this
country, right? 250,000 people die a year because of medical errors. You know that doctors hold no
fucking authority, no moral authority. You know that they are the worst at risk management and
risk assessment. The worst. They have no business doing that. You know that, right? A doctor is supposed to tell you that
one in 32 million people who are 18 years and younger will die from COVID. Not that COVID's
dangerous. They're supposed to give you those numbers and you make the assessment. And this
thing about scheduled swim events against water bodies, against local vice, you know that body
of water that you're referencing and you're being ambiguous, it has e coli in it all year you know iron man is there you know they do an event there in the water to help clean the water
you think you what you think that dave knew that it was dangerous and pushed the athletes in there
you're out of your mind dude you're in your mind you're a fucking hater get the fuck out of here
sorry i try to be nice to you but i just can't it's just it's
just douchebaggery if you can't swim without swallowing so much water that you get swicked
then swim slow with your head out of the water fucking another t-shirt another t-shirt colton
mertens colton mertens um okay so email okay sorry so we're gonna read that email yeah i'm just trying to keep you on
track because i appreciate it i think it's important that we're that we land on points
before we go too too far out because we got a lot of really good stuff here so we should take
this time to be articulate clarify and then and then continue to track on this is i was going to
use a sexual metaphor but yeah this is this is just such a beautiful, this,
this is such a intellectually rich landscape that there's just so much. I'd love to swerve
off onto morning chalk up a little bit and take it. Don't do it yet. Take a dump in their front yard.
Um, uh, um, okay. Did it, have I started this to follow up on Eric's news?
We wanted to share some additional information and the next step with you.
This is from, this is a letter from the X team signed by someone named Alison, Andrew,
Aaron, Gary, Jason, Jeremy, Justin, Marshall, Nicole, and Trish.
And I believe it's to all the, all the staff.
I would love to know how many of those people there can squat below parallel.
Justin must be tripping.
Justin must be tripping.
If they're getting it, let's say they're getting rid of Eric and they're going to bring Dave
back.
You have to understand when, when Greg, when Greg did Floyd, sorry, Susus, I know you're
trying.
When Greg did Floyd 19, one of the things that we all saw, and Dave talks about this
in the interview I did with him a couple of years ago or a year and a half ago. One of the things we saw and the metaphor I'm
going to use is imagine a live shooter comes into a room and you're with a hundred of your
best friends in a cafeteria. You get to see where everything does. So Sousa grabs the last bite of
a sandwich. I'm like, fuck that dude likes sandwiches. Um, the guy to the right of me
holds up a baby as cover. I'm like, Oh shit. That guy's like, that guy's willing to put a baby's life ahead of his. We got to see how everyone reacted in a time of serious trauma.
And it was crazy trauma at HQ. Everyone was fucking, some people were like running to get
the active shooter. Some people were running out the door. Some people were holding babies up. We
got to see how everyone, it was a faint, right? Like in fighting, we got to see how everyone
reacted. This is another thing you got to see how everyone reacted.
This is another thing you have to remember how crazy this is, because when they fired Dave, we all get to see how the company reacts.
We get to see how like someone like how Justin might react or or Nicole might react or or
or this girl, Erin from Waze, who runs the media team.
We get to see how everyone reacts,
um, based on the fact that one of the staff got fired. So some people see it might see a power
vacuum and try to fill Dave's role. Some people might like just start throwing a temper tantrum
and can't work anymore. Cause they're so upset that their boy Dave got fired. There's a whole
variety of responses you might have. Well, Dave got to see this. We all got to see it depending
on your, your, your proximity to, to, to, to the, to the damage, to the epicenter.
And imagine someone like Justin who got Dave's job when Dave's gone. And now the guy who fired
Dave is gone. And now there's probably, I would be speculating that Dave would be coming back.
I have no proof of that, by the way.
No one get all fucking crazy on that.
I have zero proof of that.
We can all hope we could all hope.
But just imagine all the people freaking out because like I don't know exactly what Justin did.
But.
Yeah.
He got to see everyone flinch again and then it's like it's like just kidding i'm back it's like oh no i wish i could convey to you guys how real that phenomenon is okay um so
then i don't know who wrote this letter but but i but all these people i'm sure andrew wrote this
i'm sure andrew went this is all just PR. This is just bullshit.
Okay.
So it says, while Eric is shifting roles – I don't believe that, by the way.
Me personally, I think he's gone.
And we know that they're liars over there.
And I can give you dozens and dozens of examples.
While Eric is – and a nicer way to say it, they try to mitigate damage or be politically correct.
Hey, what about this analogy here?
He was the one nobody liked in the fraternity, but he's already paid his due.
So you have to let him stay. Sure. Yes. Yes. Who, which one? Who? Rosa. Rosa. Yes. Oh yes. Maybe.
Yes. I was never in a fraternity. I really wanted to be there for a little while. Um,
while Eric is shifting roles, the leadership team is unified and committed to driving the
business forward, the business forward, huh? Working closely with the board.
Isn't it? So it's so funny too, because wait, did Rosie, they don't know, like the affiliates
aren't even used to, and the employees, even though you've been there, you're in half,
they're not used to even thinking like that. Like they don't think about a board or as a business.
Like, right.
It's so trippy.
Like they don't know who they're fucking talking to.
Did it say we'll be working closely with the board?
Was that what that was?
While Erica is shifting roles, the leadership team is unified and committed to driving the business forward, working closely with the board.
Who's the board?
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Right.
I know the whole thing.
They just don't know who they're talking to.
This is all just,
they don't realize that by putting this shit out,
they're just making things worse.
Right.
They're just,
it's like,
it's,
it's,
it's like when you go visit your mom has Alzheimer's and she keeps calling
you by the wrong name and you just can't accept it.
Like you're just like,
you're talking to the wrong people.
The team includes Jason,
the president, by the way, who I've heard good things about.
Allison, CFO.
I thought they had a dude as a CFO.
Aaron, Aaron, CMO.
That's the lady at Waze.
Hey, guys from Waze, that's listen to you knuckleheads.
Get rid of all the DEI shit.
Get rid of any programs you have to help people.
Get rid of all the DEI shit.
Get rid of any programs you have to help people.
All that crap.
And give all of that money to Erin.
And let her start making videos out of affiliates and L1s.
Please.
That's your only hope. You have to start rewarding the affiliates with the good work they're doing.
You want more black people in HQ?
Find a fucking affiliate that's fucking giving free classes to black.
There's an affiliate in Louisiana.
It's a police affiliate.
The guy's name is Bobby.
I had him on the podcast.
I think it's Louisiana.
He has a program.
It's like 90% black kids who come there after school.
It's free and it's at a police station.
Go do a fucking video over there instead of have a DEI council.
Make that video and show it to the world.
Make one of those every week
aaron i will i will i i i know you probably think i'm an asshole call me i will fucking tell you how
to fucking i will help you i'll make suggestions i'll be friendly and humble and i will help you
and you don't ever have to mention my name i'll tell you exactly what you should have been doing
because we used to do it and we fucking murdered it we killed it uh jeremy cto i think that's like the the geek that's the chief technical
officer um nicole i'm assuming that's nicole carroll they call it edu switch that back to
training that's a dude like what gary jim switch that back to affiliates justin sport switch that
back to game i mean, knuckleheads.
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You're trying so hard to change stuff.
Stay with the email.
Stay with the email.
Okay, okay, sorry.
Brian, hi.
I can't talk to you.
What do you want?
You can't.
You can answer the phone, dude.
I know, but it's still.
I can't talk to you.
So I go in and out.
I'm listening, and then I come back and forth on the,
on the thing.
So I don't know if I've like,
if I'm going to rehash territory,
I'm also an affiliate owner for 10 years and been around for a minute.
My question,
I guess is,
you know,
I go back to when Glassman sold the company and all of a sudden Rosa comes
out of nowhere and just do the whole thing
that's happened with Dave getting fired and all these sort of like behind the
scenes machinations.
Is there ever,
is there an inside story about how he kind of like got all of a sudden he had
an Instagram profile,
which he didn't have before.
Like,
cause as soon as his name gets announced,
you're like,
who is this dude? Like, is he one of us did he you know where his open score is
you know and he's kind of presented as hey this guy's a fran time and uh he he looks like a
crossfitter like but then he wasn't and he's not like whatever it was that he is um was a that was
a fabrication i think as a year or so whatever it is has played
out you're like this guy was this was a work like a pro wrestling work like we had greg who was kind
of like your who i love forever is like your crazy old uncle and they're like here we got a good
looking one he's a better version oh shit how dare you say that about my friend
and i love him man he's a handsome man he should keep his mouth shut but he is a handsome man he's
got an awesome body yeah so we get this like crazy and ever since then it's just like i just
watched like i'm watching succession on h. Do you watch that show? No.
Is there nudity in it?
I might watch it if there's nudity.
You know what's crazy, man?
It's the only HBO show without nudity.
Like Game of Thrones, you're good for poops and butts.
Yes.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Disgusting.
But yeah, it's terrible that they don't have it.
But it's all these like, here's a here's a political we
want to name a ceo we want to name the next person and it's just a show about infighting
like i stayed away from it because i thought i was about a business i don't care about business
but it's about you know how a company deals with media and infighting in the modern era.
And all these, like Matt was saying earlier,
these are test moves.
They're using like, hey, we've got option A,
we've got option B.
You don't have to use option A.
We can get away with it.
This doesn't work.
We do that.
Ryan, can I interrupt you a second?
Yeah.
By the way, that's cool that you're a 10-year affiliate.
What state?
California.
Oh, man, I'm so sorry.
Me too.
Where in California?
Oakdale.
I'm on the way to – I'm outside of Modesto on the way to Yosemite.
Hey. The way for me.
Oh, I may have been to your affiliate once.
Is it really tiny?
Is it the closest affiliate to Yosemite?
It is not.
You have not been,
although like I was,
you were filmed.
I went to Santa Cruz,
North Santa Cruz.
It was called back.
Oh shit.
And you filmed,
you were filming.
Andy stump was the flow master.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
When you were,
you were there filming.
And I was like, cause I was good at CrossFit at the time. And I like this guy he's gonna i'm gonna be a star and you didn't film me
and uh but i'm over it kind of um so so um so basically i was on instagram one day and this
guy david woods reaches out to me and he says hey my buddy will give write a check today for
nine figures or ten figures to buy crossfit from greg if he wants to sell it this is during just fucking the turmoil
right the floyd 19 shit and i'm like what the fuck so i tell greg i'm like can this be real
so i get a piece of paper and i write out nine zeros and ten zeros and i'm like holy shit that's
like billion millions hundreds of millions and billions of dollars so i passed the message to greg's from there uh i
think that he also had emailed greg this guy david woods or somehow got in touch with greg
and then greg and and eric met and basically eric said he's gonna fucking buy the company and he's
gonna buy it for x amount of dollars and told greg hey better not shop this shit around it's a done
deal they shake hands it's a done deal greg sells the company by no means did greg have to sell the company by the way like right like it's his he could have just
been like fuck you uh for whatever that bitch's name was in washington and we called him racist
he should have been like fuck you bitch i ain't racist and any affiliate who thinks i am get the
fuck out like he could have done that i'm not saying it's i'm not i'm not saying he should have
but he could have but he's also you have to also remember he's almost 70.
He's probably like 65 years old now.
I'm like, how much more fight does he want inside?
And a lot of his staff were chicken shit too.
You have to remember it was scary times.
So let me, let me, let me butt in real quick.
Okay.
Cause I was there for the unbuyable era and like, yeah, very rarely the CrossFit HQ ever
called us twice.
And once was, Hey, Axios or Axiom or whatever it was called.
It's going to buy the company.
Brian Kelly, Anthos, scumbag.
Yes.
Right.
But here's my question.
When shit was going bad in 2020, does do those guys reach out again?
Or are these guys just Anthos in other clothing?
Well, no one knows.
No one knows the answer to that. Yeah, exactly. Who the fuck owns the company? one knows no one knows the answer to that yeah exactly
who the fuck owns the company yeah no one knows well i mean someone knows like the owners know
like and does greg know uh no greg doesn't know i don't think you know i don't know what greg knows
i believe greg doesn't know but i believe there were a lot of there was a lot of crazy shit going on with the nsca then they were in deep deep shit man basically there was there was rumblings that
they were going to pay 50 million dollars for greg to let them go let them off the hook and greg was
like nope i'm not i'm not fucking you guys for the money i'm fucking you for the sake of fucking you
because you wanted to put licensure on all gyms on in the united states of america
not just crossfit gyms basically they were trying to make it so every and greg was like there's no
fucking my legacy is going to be i'm going to cut you fucking out like a cancer i'm not going to
fucking chemo you and let you grow back in 10 years that's what's the hardest thing about working
with greg the motherfucker is a savage and he's focused and he's principled and so if like you got on that side of his fucking like like if he's cutting you out he's cutting you
out and he was he was done with the nsca i mean he caught them lying about every every fucking
affiliate in the country he lied about them that's what's another thing that's crazy i hope this new
ceo releases the nsca file i hope well I don't even know if he can do it.
They took a fucking settlement sealing that.
Greg used to tell us.
I don't see why he couldn't because he, like, whoever the new CEO is or whoever the people are, like, they didn't sign this agreement.
And, like, the NDAs are, like, people break NDAs now because there's loopholes loopholes in them that like people are usually afraid to do,
but once the money is off the table for whomever did the signing,
and I'm not a lawyer, but I know I watched TV.
The whole,
one of the problems with a lot of the communication back in like 16, 17,
18 was when Greg started going into these fights and started whatever happened with the games and
things started to shift and these were not communicated as well as me I went for my level
one in 2009 right I knew the whole level one I had watched every video that Greg had ever done
careful and I it's like um but it was and it was like, it was great to go, but he was constantly
communicating with us and explaining the vision of what he wanted to do.
Like he explained when he changed from sectionals to the open and like there was grumblings
then, but it was like, Greg was like, laid it out.
This is the way it's going to be.
This is our, how our sports going to evolve.
And if you don't like it, leave, it's his, like, that was the hard part. People didn't realize it was like, Greg was like, lay it out. This is the way it's going to be. This is how our sport's going to evolve.
And if you don't like it, leave.
It's his.
Like, that was the hard part people didn't realize.
It was his.
It's his sandbox.
We're playing in it.
And everyone wants this, oh, we should all vote.
We should all vote. Shut the fuck up.
But as you start to get into these existential fights that he started to fight kind of in boardrooms with lawyers,
it was not explained to us the importance of it right
and for those of us that were right distracted by the shininess of the games um it you know we
lost like we lost that because i i say this like greg is punk rock man that deed and when you say
i know some hell's angels and that guy's a fucking like runs like a Hells Angel. Yeah, he used to run with the Hells Angels too.
Did he really?
That's why it's apropos.
But that's like when he kind of stopped communicating,
it just opened up the door for all this garbage.
But those fights are like those folks have long memories.
And if Coca-Cola really does own cross, this is crazy.
And I'm not saying I don't want to be.
It is crazy.
No, no.
Hey, it's a total.
It's not out there.
It's not any more crazy than to think that there's a pandemic.
I always talk about movies and bullshit.
Like if you ever watched the Major League, the great Charlie She sheen classic the team buys the lady gets the
team and her goal is to just move it to florida so she doesn't have to be in cleveland anymore
is that what happened across it they sold the team and now they're just let's fuck this thing
over let's get rid of their good people anything's possible man bring in these uh i got a corporate
douchebag brian I appreciate you calling.
I'm going to read the rest of this letter.
All right, bye.
You're a good dude.
Bye.
Okay.
Sorry, Susan.
I just while I'm reading your body language, I'm like, oh, I'm freaking out.
Well, I know everybody's patiently waiting here.
And although Brian had some great stuff, it was just, yeah, let's give the people what they want.
Okay.
So I'm continuing this letter.
This is a letter from the leadership team to uh everyone at hq while eric is shifting roles the leadership team is unified and committed
to driving the business forward working closely with the board the team includes jason as president
allison is cfo aaron is cmo jeremy's cto nicole is training gary is affiliates justin is games
trish is trish as hr um marshall is legal and andrew is comms by comms they mean pr like
comms comms comms what does aaron do chief marketing officer by the way we never did
we weren't allowed to use the word marketing at um hq when i was there it was called the media
team and the reason why is because greg didn't believe there was anything that that we should
be doing that doesn't add value to the affiliates.
So we should never be selling you on anything.
We should only be producing material that adds value to your life or your business.
We start from a strong position.
Thanks in large part to your outstanding efforts.
The company is on solid financial ground, and all of our lines of business are healthy and growing.
We are entering our most exciting period of the year with the open. We're tracking toward our aggressive targets for
participation. I don't believe that's true. I don't know if that's true, but I would love to
find out the open numbers and see if they're really tracking. Our registrations for core
EDU courses, that means training courses, L1, L2, L3 are up 20% year over year. Now,
what's interesting about that is January is always the biggest year for
all training companies.
And they're saying it's up 20% from the previous year,
which was probably the worst year,
January in the history of CrossFit,
I would guess.
So I,
so it's,
it's,
it's,
and,
and when you see stuff like this and you see them trying to paint,
put pig,
uh,
put lipstick on a pig,
it makes it worse.
You start to become super duper disingenuous and, uh, it's tough. It's, it makes it worse. You start to become super duper disingenuous
and it's tough. It doesn't help. We have already added more than 100 gyms to the community this
year. Okay. But how many of you lost? In short, we're heading in the right direction and we have
great momentum. Yeah, it's not, it's so disingenuous. We know it's been a challenging
period for many members of the team and we appreciate how everyone has remained focused
on our mission. You guys have not, they, we know people. So it's interesting that he says that
we know it's been tough for the team. It's been excruciating for the people at CrossFit HQ,
excruciating for the old people, the new um from the smallest level to they don't know what
they're doing to the fact that they're watching their peers get thrown out to the fact that
there's things like crossfit health that have taken a radically bad turn in bad direction like
completely fucking off the rails supporting pharma instead of fucking like doing it what it was
supposed to be they should get rid of crossfit health by the way you you have no business running
that it was great it was greg's like just should get rid of CrossFit Health, by the way. You have no business running that. It was Greg's. Just let that go. But anyway, because CrossFit is
health. CrossFit is health. You don't need a separate thing. But anyway, and it says we're
remaining focused on our mission. When they say they're being focused on their mission, and if
you're an affiliate owner, you're probably not going to want to hear this. You're probably going
to want to plug your ears. This is going to your fucking heart um but crossfit hq has hired a firm out of new york city to help them re-establish who they are
their identity and their mission and the direction they're going that they have completely lost their
way and they've had to hire an outside firm they they could have just like i don't understand why
they just didn't ask walk over to nicole's desk and ask nicole who knows what the fuck is going
on that'd been a great start.
Yeah.
It might not be what makes the most amount of money,
but it's what the affiliates want.
We're sure you have a lot of questions,
so we plan to communicate on an ongoing basis with you
about our plans and next steps, including monthly all-hands-on meeting.
Yeah, and you come from a very difficult place
because first
you told that this is a letter by the way from the executive team to all the staff of hq that
i'm reading from right now and basically they're in a really tough spot because basically what you
did is you had the leader who was flying the plane come out and saying he's crazy he's having mental
health issues and then come back two months later and fire dave castro and i cannot emphasize enough
even the people there who hated Dave and are and they're
so bummed he got fired he's that person no no like like um he's the um he's the tree in your
yard that fucking like you're like you you might struggle with because it fucking you have to rake
the leaves every winter but if someone if a car hit it you get out and beat the dude who hit it
yeah and I think a lot of people knew whether it was conscious or subconsciously that he was basically the last figure between
like the methodology and what truly crossfit was in the corporate world where it is now and he had
that gangster attitude he was our true fucking silent professional yeah he was the only professional
left okay and he was our mill guy which if you don't know those are the origins of crossfit
that's why crossfit exploded because first first responders in the military were using it to save their lives.
And that links back to the NSA case because they first tried to block those contracts in the military.
Well said.
We'll have all hand meetings, regular email updates and in-person meetings and off sites as COVID allows.
Once again, blaming the COVID thing, which is a lie, which is lies built on top of lies built on top of lies. I mean, yeah.
Fascinating. And, uh, and we didn't do emails at CrossFit just so you know,
we'd like, that was one of the things we did not, um, do.
It did work out.
Greg did. Greg did not send out emails like that.
He did not spam the employees, did not spam the affiliates.
And this is what this is this whole
thing is spam i'm reading it to you just so i can get viewers and time watch so that i can buy
jujitsu for my kids but this is just i it could have just been like hey nothing has been said
it's all smoke and mirrors it's all just it's just nothing at our at our all hands meeting this month
we will share the company's strategic and business plans.
You don't need to tell me that.
You can just do it next month.
Just shut up and do it.
And you're not going to anyway.
They're waiting for what the firm says that they're doing so then they can tell us.
Right.
So we can all align on our objectives for the year.
And their objectives will be stuff like increase the number of affiliates, increase the number of people in the open.
They won't be like the objectives Greg gave us. It's so funny to hear when I heard Daniel Chafee and Gary Gaines and Austin Maliolo talking about how Greg never gave us goals.
We were fucking defending a fucking mountain.
At that next meeting, we want to sure we address any as many topics as possible
so people submit any questions you have to parissa parissa is i think that's the girl that um
i think that's eric rose's assistant or used to be his assistant. She replaced David Woods. David Woods was the guy I told you who originally,
he knew Rosa because he used to train at Rosa's gym
and they were friends from there.
And then when Eric bought the company,
when Eric was involved in the purchase of the company,
he brought David Woods on as his assistant
and then him and David Woods had a falling out.
And then this girl, Parissa,
has since taken David Woods' place. And David Woods, I think assistant, and then him and David Woods had a falling out, and then this girl, Parissa, has since taken David Woods' place.
And David Woods, I think,
works with Justin now. I kind of feel,
I can't tell if I like David Woods or if I feel sorry for him
or if I'm pissed at him. Because those people
insisted, including Andrew Weinstein, that I would never
be fired. They just fucking lied to me from the
beginning. Yeah.
So it's documented very well.
You should know, by the way.
And you know who you is.
Settle down, Seve.
So people submit any questions you have to Parissa for inclusion in the discussion.
if you get raised to a position of power don't be an asshole really really strive don't be like well i need to be strong now do not be an asshole
uh um in the interim please reach out with any questions thank you for everything you do
signed alice and andrew aaron gary jason jeremy justin marshall nicole and trish
yeah and there's like people on that list that like the majority of the staff
hate so let's say that was just the greatest letter in the world like like
there's people on that list of names i just read who are fucking rotting corpses in the business
they're like so bad for morale just based on their existence and uh in the company and um and and it's
like they they shot themselves in the foot just by even sending that out it's just a mess yeah it's
true eric rosa they're basically saying that eric rosa stepped down i don't believe it for a fucking second i think and the easiest way to say it is that he fired
dave they felt so much fucking pressure from social media that they had to get rid of rosa
maybe if you want to think of the chess plan that you know suza was just speculating maybe this whole
thing's been played out like six moves in advance you know first they tell us he has mental health
issues then they fire dave then they get rid of both of them um but i hope you're joking i hope this is a joke guy saying rose has got a promotion he
i'm gonna spin it that way for sure but you gotta realize that's that is not even close to the that
that's uh that's um retard talk yeah he it's just a it's just a framework and i wouldn't even be
surprised if um big speculation here just my opinion opinion, only my opinion, that the Make Wads Great Again guy is kind of in the cahoots because of his audience size that he could kind of shift a little bit of the community there into how they're framing and thinking about it.
He was also big on the mental health thing too.
He was one of the top comments that said, this is the leadership we need when that thing came out about Rose's mental health.
Well, that guy locked himself in a basement during all of COVID.
That guy believed the COVID scare.
And you said something earlier that I just want to touch on because something came to mind.
You said, I hope maybe the new CEO that's coming in will release the stuff on the NSCA case.
And the only thing that comes to mind—
He can't, by the way.
After I said that that i was like oh
he can't yeah but the only thing that comes to mind is a uh song by the who called won't get
fooled again and there's a line in there that says the new boss is the same as the old boss
and that's all that is it's just gonna be a figurehead that'll go in there that'll say
yes to whatever the mysterious board is pulling the strings on. So in also just to make
it clear to when major, um, which goes back to what I was saying, do I feel good about Rosa being
gone? Not in any healthy way, right? In a healthy way. And the main, main thing that people have to
realize here is that there's only two outcomes for the people that purchased CrossFit, right?
They're either going to sell it to another company so they could make a return on their investment, essentially a buyout,
or there'd be an IPO, meaning a public offering, right? It would go on and you could buy shares.
What was the first option you said that they might sell it?
They would sell it to another company. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty much the two main goals
of any private equity or venture capital, right? They're just going to buy a thing to make
a return on that investment.
And when you buy something of that size
and you spend $200 million on something,
it's really tough to make a big enough return
on that investment that makes it worth your time, right?
You don't want to spend $200 million
to get $200 million back.
You want to spend-
Wait, you broke up.
Say that again.
You don't want to what?
You're breaking up.
I said, you don't want to spend $200 million
to get $200 million back.
Right.
Right? Like you need to have some sort of... The return on investment has to be big enough to
matter. And I don't think there's going to be an IPO involved because the structure of the company
would have to change so drastically in order to make that happen. So then you just have to ask
yourself like, okay, what is the optimal outcome for the
investors? Because if we know what the optimal outcome for the investors are, then we can
reverse engineer their game plan as to who CrossFit's customer is. And that's the biggest
question is like, who is their customer? And who are they selling to? And what are they selling?
The biggest challenge right now at CrossFit Inc. is going to fall on Gary Gaines.
He's going to have the most, I mean, basically every time something like this happens, the hive gets disturbed, right?
So now there's this disturbance in the hive.
And my advice to him, not that he's asked it, not that he gives a fuck, but he gives a fuck, isize Nicole like you never have before.
Like that's what I would do.
I was never particularly – Nicole and I had a weird relationship.
I wouldn't say that we weren't – we were close because we did a lot – I don't know if Nicole ever liked me, liked me, or trusted me.
And I don't know if she respected me.
But I respect the fuck out of her. She an amazing order she knows her shit bring her close like
i don't i don't have the integrity that dave does part of me wants to but i also like
you guys like you guys fuck don't make the same mistake you made with Dave.
Like you fired Dave.
I really want to emphasize too that that was just failed leadership.
He's an amazing talent.
It's like having a gun that has too much kick, but it's the only one that can kill the elephant that's threatening the village.
So you throw the gun away because no one can hold it.
No, get stronger.
Get leadership that's stronger that can manage people like Dave.
I don't think necessarily Nicole's as big of a handful as Dave, but she does have crazy integrity too.
Like bring her fucking close and use her.
Use her to fucking manipulate and calm down the affiliates.
She is a – she's a world-class orator, but she's soothing.
She's a soothing human being.
She's powerful and she's soothing.
So the biggest, I think Gary's going to, and I know Gary's a good talker.
He's going to have a massive challenge on his hands settling down the hype.
The second thing is, is my advice to you is abandon. And I said it before, abandon everything that's
not necessary and get the media team fired up again. It's just like how you raise kids.
So when my kids do something bad, I don't give them attention because even when you give negative
attention, kids will keep doing it because they just want attention. They're alchemists. They can
take energy and just transform it into just useful energy. You, what you want to do, you can beat a
kid and they'll be happy. They got attention. So what you want to do is you want to treat the affiliates like children.
Any one of them that's doing something great reward the fuck out of them and do that with media.
And I don't mean a fucking article. Like no one wants something written about them.
Send fucking Michael Kozlap or Dalton or, or someone over there to put a camera in their face and show that like,
and it can be for any stupid shit you want to do.
You want to fucking reward affiliates that are only working with dudes who've
had their penises turned inside out and her chicks do it.
I don't give a fuck.
What like you,
that's your fucking thing you want to do.
Do it.
And dude,
it's drop all the DEI shit.
That shit's,
that shit,
that's all going to backfire.
That shit's all coming to an end anyway.
And the sooner you get out of that nonsense,
the better.
That shit's going away.
No one cares about that.
Hello,
caller.
How are you?
What's going on?
Just getting on my high horse.
Hold on.
Let me get off my horse.
Get that ladder.
All right.
All right.
All right.
So I'm,
I'm trying.
So we,
I was actually on your guys's live.
I want to blue the mat.
I was behind you.
Me and my dad met you.
Do you remember that?
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're the,
we're the,
we're the brothers quote unquote,
because he doesn't eat sugar and does CrossFit.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So I,
listen,
I'm opening an affiliate this year.
I'm so pumped about it. Like, I mean, I've So I, listen, I'm opening an affiliate this year. I'm so pumped about it.
I mean, I've been addicted to CrossFit my whole life.
I'm super excited to make it happen,
but I'm torn with like everything that's going on.
And like, I mean, I'm doing it because, I mean,
I feel like it's up to the affiliates to carry on the torch
with everything else that's going on. But,
but I think it's important that like, now that I'm going to be an affiliate, I start
trying coming up with solutions rather than just pitching with problems and stuff. So, um,
I'm also a PGA professional. So a little bit of background about PGA, we got 25,000 PGA
professionals in the world and very similar to like CrossFit level one, like they're the man
there are men and women. They're, they're the people who like know the most about the golf
industry and their accreditation higher than everyone else. And the PGA as an organization
is actually a nonprofit organization that is owned by the members themselves. Okay? The PGA Tour, or the people that you watch on TV,
have no affiliation with PGA
other than the Tour licensed out the name PGA.
So I think there is a possibility for CrossFit
to hopefully do something like this,
where the name CrossFit, the entity of CrossFit,
is owned by the affiliates,
and they're ran by the affiliate.
And you can just license the name CrossFit out to the game
because I think that's the biggest issue,
is the pull between the affiliates and the sport of CrossFit.
I don't – I hear you.
I think the biggest problem with the affiliates is that –
I don't think that they're – I don't believe that there's ever a way out of the problem.
Like like it's circling the CrossFit is circling the bowl and I don't think there's any way to stop that.
And by that, I mean, you cannot have consensus.
You have to have a really fucking strong leader who believes that if you want it to be what it originally was designed to be it has to be incorruptible and and as long as as long as
there's people like that as long as you set it up the way you're saying it will still be corruptible
it can still be bought like the olympics all that shit it's it's it's um
it's it's like this people are so naive they think that it's a good idea to tax cigarettes because it reduced smoking. But the problem is that now the government is in bed with cigarette companies. They're now business partners. They're now owners of the cigarette companies.
truth or not truth it's just word fuckery and trickery i hear you i want it to work but the thought of the affiliates owning it then all of a sudden all the affiliates are going to be like
okay we want it so every affiliate puts a black lives matter poster up in their window we want
and then next week it'll be we want every affiliate to put a swastika up in their window
and anyone who thinks i'm crazy for making that leap you are not fucking paying attention to
what's going on it's not a leap at all. And so that part concerns me.
I don't – I don't –
My biggest thing is, I mean, how are you going to get the best leader back in place, right?
And, I mean, with Dave gone and Greg gone and all the OGs gone, the only OGs left are the OG affiliates, the original affiliates.
Right.
Well, there's Nicole and Marshall.
There's Nicole there.
And their general counsel is a fucking great guy.
I mean, I haven't talked to him since the day I've been fired.
And I don't blame him.
I wouldn't fucking talk to me either.
I would wait until he gets fired,
and then me and him can go have a beer.
But there are some good people there.
You know, Chuck Carswell there. Todd's there. Lisa Ray's there. I mean, there's, there's people there who know. this affiliate but like i need to be convinced that i need to stay a part of this because um
because i i mean i i really want i want to be an affiliate i want to continue i mean no matter what
if i even if i didn't affiliate every coach in my gym would take the l1 right every single person
would take the l1 because i just believe in the l1 i can't take the online version they'll go in
person right and take the l1 right um but i, to what they were saying, though, is they've significantly increased the staff
that's helping run affiliates.
They told me that they've hired like 60 more people to help the affiliates, like from that
management.
And I didn't know what it was before, but it sounds like they have a really big team
now there to help the affiliates. But I
don't hear people talking a lot about that. Yeah. I mean, they can hire you.
They probably have. I've heard that they've gone on a massive hiring spree and I've heard it's
caused disaster within the company. There's this guy who works for the Sevan podcast. He doesn't
get paid any money and his name is Will Brand Brandstetter and he does the work of what would take,
um,
me $500,000 a year to pay someone to do.
It's fucking nuts.
He,
he is fucking just amazing.
And why does he do it?
I don't know.
He's a 22 year old kid.
He digs the podcast.
He wants to be a part of something and it's a place he can express himself
creatively and explode.
I was the exact same. I was the exact same way when I came to CrossFit Inc. He wants to be a part of something, and it's a place he can express himself creatively and explode.
I was the exact same way when I came to CrossFit Inc.
So was Mars.
So was Heber.
So was Jay Vera.
So was Michael Dalton.
Like the work they got out of us because we were fucking – we had seen God through the – I used to say that metaphorically.
We had found God through CrossFit, and we were unstoppable forces. We needed we needed no direction and we just crush it the company's not like that anymore so one of the things i think about when you have 60 people like they used to have a woman there who worked
there named paula gravat she was a fucking she could do the work of 100 women and 200 men and she's not there anymore but like i i don't i i mean have i would let matt
matt this guy matt susie here with the black shirt and do you notice any difference since
they've hired these 60 people for affiliates like do you feel any better as an affiliate owner
what they're gonna help me with yeah so well so for them there's like
well so like they're putting out what they call the blueprint, right?
Which is like helping you out with...
Yeah, which would be awesome if it was year one, or if I was considering it, or I just
wanted some sort of outline.
But when you're talking about a long-term affiliate owner, a 10-year affiliate owner,
or just even a two-year affiliate owner that already has a space, that already understands of those things in there then i mean don't get me wrong i think it's great and
it's great for like new growth and new affiliates that may maybe are really passionate about crossfit
but just aren't like business minded um it's awesome for that but i just wondering what
they're offering isn't there a statistic that the the average CrossFit affiliate brings in like $3,000 a month profit?
I don't know that.
That's what I've heard.
Yeah, that's what people say.
That's what I've heard.
And I mean, that seems high to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, I mean, yeah, you're right.
Well, so for me, I was like, hell yeah, I'm about to start this business.
I need as much help as I can get.
And my affiliate fee is going to pay for this blueprint for them to help me out.
And I got a whole team behind me to kind of, I'm like, oh, that's super exciting and reasons why I would affiliate.
And even for your 10 years, because I know people who have gyms for 10 years who are losing money.
They just do it because they like it kind of thing, right?
Like, but you're exactly right.
Back to like the affiliates are the lifeblood of everything because that's how we spread the word
and all that kind of stuff. The other thing is I'll put you back up under your high horse there.
The fact that people don't understand how impressive CrossFit level three trainers are
is ridiculous. So I'm, I'm, I'm getting my master's degree right now in exercise science,
and I'm doing it all virtually because COVID. And so I can do it while I'm I'm I'm getting my master's degree right now in exercise science and I'm doing it all
virtually because COVID and so I can do it while I'm working and all that kind of stuff
I tried for my L3 two months ago and I failed and it was the most difficult test I've ever taken
in my life where I've taken all the NASM certifications and all that stuff through
my master's program right and it's Right. And it's just like, whatever. It's just like definition question.
But that test in itself is the most applicable education where it's all
situational.
There's no matter how many times you read the L1 or the L2 and know it like
the back of your hand, you actually have to be putting in the work.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.
Just like someone who goes to law school gets out of law school and passes the bar they're not a lawyer just like someone who
gets out of fucking police academy as a cop for a month you're not a cop that's why it's so stupid
when people think they're being so clever so what makes you think you can train if you've only done
the two-day course first of all shut the fuck up like nothing in the world works like that nothing
like i've been walking for i crawled for fucking 13 months before i fucking walked and then i fucking and
then i have kids who are fucking world-class fucking kids and my seven-year-old can still
fucking barely run and he's been and he's a fucking stud so like and he's been doing it now
for fucking six years and he still doesn't have running masters so shut the fuck up not you
but just these people who don't get,
I'm agreeing with what you're saying.
Hey, look at this stat, what Heidi said.
This is the truth.
Hiring 60 people at 50K a year is 3 million
they're spending on these salaries.
She's being very, very generous
with her numbers, by the way, too.
It's probably 100K a year,
and then another 50 for fucking health insurance
and all that shit.
But if they spent 3 million a year on new hires, fucking um health insurance and all that shit but if they spent
three million a year on new hires um what was your name again brian no mark no carol no john
me yeah thor thor thor yeah thor oh you kind of looked like a thor that's interesting um so
so um uh thor if they would have taken for five hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year, you could pay these journalists to go out every week for 52 weeks for five hundred twenty thousand dollars and make them pretend that's ten thousand dollars a video and make the most insane media content.
Insane media content promoting, promoting the affiliates. It would go on YouTube. It would go on Instagram.
It would stay alive forever on there. And, and, and these are things, I mean,
we were fucking it up when, after they fired me, the whole thing went to shit.
True story. You can look,
you can look at the metrics of when they fucking fired me and just watch the
whole fucking thing. Take a fucking tank. Not just me. Of course.
I like to say it like that, but the entire media team, the whole fucking thing take a fucking tank. Not just me, of course. I like to say it like that. But the entire media team. The whole fucking
thing took a fucking tank.
The only thing that we were shitty at at CrossFit
HQ was affiliate retention.
Affiliate retention was really hard.
Other than that, we fucking murdered
it.
We were spreading the gospel.
What do you think all these books are going to do
for CrossFit here?
What books?
What do you think? Warren books are going to do for CrossFit here? What books? What do you think?
I mean,
I mean,
Warren Shockup just made another post about the Greg Glassman book coming out.
Oh my God.
I don't know if you want to get me started on that.
That guy's such a piece of shit.
That guy better fucking watch out.
That guy fucking emailed me and said he fucking,
basically he emailed me and said,
Hey,
I work at the New York times,
something like that.
Or I'm from the New York times. I'm a reporter with the times and would you be willing to talk to me
and i wrote back to him and said something i'm paraphrasing along lines do you ever work with
and i forget the girl's name but a girl did a hit piece on greg and i got fucking smashed in it um
and i said do you ever work with this girl and he said no I don't actually work at the times. I just have
written for them. So, so now like the truth is coming out a little bit more, right? I don't
respect anyone who works for the New York times. Just like, I don't respect anyone who went to
Harvard. I think you're a piece of shit. Actually. Listen, I, I had a, I had a countdown on my phone
for January 1st. Cause I thought you were going to get Greg on the podcast. I'm sorry. I don't
know. I asked him again yesterday. I asked him again yesterday. I apologize. I know. Clickbait, clickbait. Throw me in the pile with Craig Ritchie.
Clickbait. So, so then, um, so then basically, so I never respond to the guy, but I'm 99% sure
he hasn't spoken to me, Dave, Nicole, or Greg. And I'm in it. And how could you write a book
about CrossFit if you haven't spoken to all of us or at least one of us?
And for
Morning Chalk Up to play that, I mean, it's just...
Listen, it's a
great story, no matter what. Even if it's
a wrong story, it's going to be a great
story.
I want to tell you about my...
Thor, I want to tell you about my 15-inch dick. It might
not be 15 inches, but it's a fucking great story.
Listen, that's the best part about CrossFit is how great the stories are.
So this month, me and my buddies have a challenge.
We're doing every girl's workout this month. Right.
And I made a post about it and I put in there like why they're called the girls workout.
Because in tribute to like national hurricanes are named after girls and greg
thought that that this workout hit you like a storm so he named it after girls and then my
comments came flooded in with like a bunch of different stories they heard but there's just a
million great stories like that around crossfit i think the real story i think the real story is
like any good girl you should be left on your back when she's done with you.
I think that was the...
Looking up at the stars, like, yeah, yeah, right?
I think that is actually the real story.
But again, it's a good story.
Mine's just the PC version of that story.
Right, right, right.
Hey, maybe they're bringing Greg Glassman back.man back maybe maybe you know what maybe they have
i you this is actually speaking a story story this is what i heard i heard that they have um
greg glassman and matt o'keefe in a room right now and they're interviewing both of them to be
the next ceos of cross it that's actually what i heard yeah that's a great story that's a great
story i don't know how true it is but it's a great story thank you yeah all right all right i'll let you guys get back to it
appreciate you taking the call okay bye thank you ford was that too long 14 minutes no it wasn't
long it just kind of like we i actually wrote down all the kind of open doors we have here
from things that we opened up and so it just it just puts it it just puts a little um pause on
them and i don't know if we even want to hammer down our exact like you know close each door so to speak but uh no uh fair enough bring up anything you want suza
uh are you talking about the crossword book in the same industry no this this fucking uh
these goofballs at the morning chalk up this man just sell that thing already
justin just go climb off onto an ice rock and build an igloo igloo and go away
dude you hate your life you hate the people you work with you hate you you put out just
stuff that's misleading it's just like just stop how do you sleep at night
um are you talking are you talking about the cross and i'll absolve you of your sins mr
lefranco just for 100 burpees Just go do 100 burpees and start over.
You're talking about the CrossFit book, the same as the Instagram handle?
No, there's this other one that LaFranco was publishing on his blog or whatever you want to call that thing.
So one of the things that I want to touch on real quick was actually a comment that was up there when we kind of opened the door to like what what's the ultimate goal of Berkshire partners and what they hope to do with CrossFit. And somebody said, like,
I'm a 10 year affiliate. We don't know who owns CrossFit. And that's upsetting. That was a comment that we both had put up there. And then somebody came back and said, Berkshire owns it a super,
a simple Google search determines that. Yeah, but dude, that still means nothing. You have
to understand unless there's one individual a charge in charge and
that we could hold accountable and that could give us the vision and direction you've also
just said nothing we already know what google also says there's a pandemic you know what a
pandemic means google also says so it just was is very big um the other door we kind of had
opened here was like the again just staying in the same line here is the ultimate goal of CrossFit
and the investors in CrossFit, which we basically determined there's only two options when something
like that happens with the amount of money that was put into it, which is either an IPO.
I don't think this is very likely because that would have to change the whole entire
business structure of CrossFit. And I don't know how viable that option is, but again, I'm sure there's people
out there smarter than me that could probably articulate that. And then the other option is
to sell it, right? But then if they build it up and they sell it, what exactly are they building
up? And then what exactly are they selling? And then once they sell it, is it just going to be
bought so that way it can continue to just cashflow for the new investors? Or are we going to re-see a whole replay of this again? So both options aren't necessarily optimal.
And then this coming here, I'm going to pay managed CrossFit for... Okay, perfect. So again,
we have a shadowy figure. We have no leader. We have no direction. We have no vision. And
therefore, we still are right back where we
started. Although thank you very much, Jake Kelly, for letting us know that. And Siobhan,
I'm sorry, I just pulled away your comment and I. No, no, no, you're good. You're good. No,
no, no, no. I'm messing with stuff. I'm messing with stuff right here. Okay. But just close.
So just closing the door on, um, on that one. And then also to the question is for the community
of CrossFit, like how long are we
going to accept these partial truths? I'm not going to call them lies because there is, it's
not necessarily a lie, but how long are we going to accept the partial truths? How long are we
going to accept the, Hey, this is what we're going. Oh, it's actually where we're not. Hey,
this is who's in charge. Oh, they're actually not. Um, until we actually want to hold somebody accountable.
Accountable.
And then here's the CEO that stepped down
and he fired the most ethnic person on their staff,
Dave Castro.
For those of you who've been to the ranch, why don't you send a letter to HQ and be like, Steve Castro.
For those of you who've been to the ranch,
why don't you send a letter to HQ and be like,
you know that motherfucker is Mexican as they get, right?
And you've replaced him with this giant white dude.
And I have no problem with giant white dudes.
They're like some of my favorite dudes.
I love a giant white dude.
My best friends in life is, I have two giant white dudes,
Jeff Holman and Chad Wolf, two of my best friends in life,
giant white dudes.
Love them.
Love a giant.
I love,
I love making a movie,
John Wellborn,
but it's bizarre that this fucking guy,
this white Jewish dude comes in riding the D I cock and then fires the most
ethnic dude on the fucking board and replace them with this giant white dude.
Wait,
is that what that morning chalk up says is Justin CEO?
No,
no,
no.
I'm just,
it's head of the games.
It's head of the games.
It's just fucking bizarre.
No,
this is just something totally different.
This is what they,
this is what the morning chalk up came out with.
I kind of want to read it,
but I think it's just going to upset me because it's going to be just more
fluff and nonsense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We'll read it and then still not know anything at the end of the article. So I probably, I probably shouldn't read it but i think it's just going to upset me because it's going to be just more fluff and nonsense yeah you will read it and then still not know anything at the end of the article yeah
so i probably i probably shouldn't read it and i'm tempted to go over and look at that and show
you guys the article about the crossfit book but it really should be its own show like this yeah
i i wonder too like you guys have to learn to think more people need to learn to think like
we're not sitting here saying um that we don't who owns CrossFit, and then you're going over Googling it, and it's Berkshire.
And you're like, what?
Oh, you idiots.
Come on, guys.
That's not me.
Yeah.
Going back to the DEI Council, I think it's important to know that everybody that is on that one, like we had talked about before, there's no personal attack. I'm sure I haven't met all of them, but the ones that I have met that are on there, which was just very brief, is they're
super great people. And I don't necessarily think that there's anything wrong with what their
intentions were. But I think almost when I, me personally, in the way I view it, is it's almost
slightly insulting because what you were saying to me as an affiliate owner is that I was inherently doing a bad job of being inclusive. And how would you know that unless
you came into my gym? And how would you know that unless you saw the way we treated the people in
the gym in the community? So for me, it's more or less like, so what is that saying? Are we saying
at large, the affiliates were doing a bad job of this? And then if they were, and you were an
asshole, and you were somebody who, you know, acted
that way towards people and had certain prejudice, then your affiliate would just bomb and tank.
The market would decide that you're terrible and nobody would show up there.
So I'm just wondering what exactly the initiatives are from that.
What is the hope?
And then how do I, as the affiliate owner, not kind of look at that and say like, man,
well, what is that saying about me and the hard work that I put in to make my gym the most welcoming
opening place? And in fact, we have one of our standards on there that says community. And then
the words that I have behind it, so we could put a definition is come as you are, come as you are,
whoever you are, when you walk in this door, regardless of anything else, I just want you inside so we
can work on your health.
Because unless it's about thrusters and squats, and we're talking about how we could better
your nutrition, then the rest of this stuff is your personal choice.
And I accept you as how you are.
The only way you're going to get pushed out is if you're disrespectful to others in the
community or you're disrespectful to somebody on the coaching staff.
disrespectful to others in the community or you're disrespectful with somebody on the coaching stuff. They don't, they don't ask you at CrossFit Livermore what your gender is because they don't
care. They don't care if you're a boy who his whole life wanted to be a girl. They don't care
if you're a white man that wants to only sleep with black girls. They don't care whether you're
a Jew who, um, uh, who, who, who resents their own Jewishness or you're a German who has guilt for killing Jews.
They don't care.
Don't care at all.
They actually hope you'll have a moment to get away from that noise.
That's what they want you to do.
On yourself.
Yeah, they want you to have a moment to actually just be happy and get away from yourself.
No one cares.
And if you do go to a gym where they do care about that, just switch gyms.
That's just life.
Exactly.
That's life.
I've sat down.
I mean, let me tell you something.
On an airplane, nobody wants you sitting next to them.
So anytime you're not on an airplane and you're somewhere else and there's at least one person that's okay with you, think, oh, at least I'm not on an airplane.
Nobody on your southwest
flight wants you sitting next to them i mean unless you're just hot as everybody wants the
whole also too i i want to note that another thing that we i just realized what a lie that
was if you're super hot chick everyone everyone wants you like even to – even other chicks want you to sit next to them.
That's true.
Oh, man.
I'm trying to think of like, oh, what's a good CrossFit girl for that?
Another thing that we have is respect.
Like imagine Tia Toomey.
She just worked out, and she got her hair in a little ponytail, and she's traveling without Shane, which is probably unheard of. And she sat next to you. I let her have the armrest. Yeah. Fuck. She could have my
fucking scone. And another thing we do is, is when we talk about respect, which is, which is one of
our core values at the gym, it's important to know that it's the old, the old kind of saying is like, you need to earn my respect
is not the way that we do it.
Everybody gets respect that walks through the door.
Now, you could lose it based on your character and based on the way you behave and treat
other people.
But it starts with you just having it just because you did the hard thing of showing
up and walking into the affiliate because we all know how intimidating that is to do
for the first time.
So some of these initiatives are all, you know, although well-intended, um, and put together with
wonderful people, I just really think that we have to ask like, what exactly are we doing it for?
And what exactly are the actionable strategies that are taking place? And then how and who
does this benefit? And it shouldn't be heavy you want some
brothers in your gym get some brothers in your gym you want some like you want more girls in your gym
get more girls in your gym you want more fatties in your gym get more fatties and you don't make
it heavy you want more old people in your gym have fucking senior hour it doesn't have to be heavy
it doesn't have to be like it doesn't have to be be against white people it doesn't have to be
against um like we don't have to be like there's too many black girls in this gym.
We've got to like put a limit to them.
Like it doesn't have to be heavy.
And if the white guys are afraid of black girls and that's why they're not coming to the gym, it's their fucking problem.
But don't make it heavy.
It's not a big deal.
Get whatever you want in your gym.
Get it.
Get it. Get it.
I would love to have a lot of gay Asian dudes. I think that's a really wealthy, clean demographic.
If I ran a gym, that's what I would – I don't think they pee on the floor. I think they pay their bills on time. But yeah, like you said, if you're seeing something missing, be the advocate in your
community, not by putting together symbolism in these different initiatives, but by actually
going out into your community, reaching out to the people who you think need it most and
doing the good work that needs to be done.
If you're an affiliate owner, you have that power.
You don't need anything from HQ to show you the way.
Go out there, get into your community and help those people that need it.
If Margo had a bottle of wine, she could sit on both sides of me i'd stand she could have the aisle
just bring a bottle of wine she owns a winery right what's it yeah she does yes she does
um so in a nutshell as we wrap up here, basically what we found out today is that Eric Rosa has – we don't know the truth, but he's no longer in the position to CEO.
I believe he got fired.
I think that the pressure from firing Dave was too much, and those woke motherfuckers didn't stand by it.
And I don't think their problems are over unless they take super duper duper duper drastic actions.
I think that basically, like the metaphor I said, it's a sandcastle that's been built too close and the tide is rising and it's going to take it back into the ocean.
So, yeah, larger bodies.
If you want more larger bodies, yes, Athena, larger bodies.
If you want more larger body people, then just get more larger body people.
Yeah, Perfect. And, um, so, um, that's where we're at right now. We don't know who's replacing him.
I don't think, um, it seems like it was a pretty drastic move that's been done pretty fast, uh,
which makes me think that it was forced somehow if they would have, if they were doing this on
their own terms, they would have had a replacement for him already so there's definitely some stuff going on that we
don't know um but i do believe just from the way this works that whatever that
i don't think they're playing chess although um suza has um put throughout some ideas out there
that maybe they are playing chess that this this has been planned since Sousa,
since Rosa said that he had some depression or some mental issues that they've
known all of these steps were going to unfold like this.
Sousa is not saying he subscribes to it, but he put it out there as a possibility.
I just think what happened is Rosa just fucked up,
fired Dave and thought it was going to be a good idea and it's not a bad idea.
And now he got too much heat. So then he's been fired fired and i don't think whatever he's gonna be doing i don't
think he's gonna be doing crossfit shit i think the whole thing is is misguided i think they're
gonna try to get away from him as fast as they can but those are just my beliefs um yeah i did
rosa mutually agree this we'll never know because because we know they don't tell the truth over there.
At least not the whole truth.
Do you think Nicole and Adrian and others fought back after TDC firing?
these people are um uh like people and it's more than just adrian and nicole let's say there's 20 of them over there like they've worked basically so close with dave and dave has worked so close
with them they've basically grown up together for the last 10 or 15 years and so and i do think that they were naive in the fact
that they when they got rid of dave it's like cutting off an appendage of those other peoples
like that that this thing is so tightly woven like we're not we weren't just employees there
we were we were family like we were like like you could we knew everyone's kids there. You were there when a guy got too drunk at a party and peed his pants or you were there when so-and-so got the I've seen basically Chuck and Adrian and Dave and a ton of those guys have fucking fought and wept tears while building the games.
And I don't say that as a metaphor.
I mean, actually, like fought and wept tears together and gone through crazy stuff.
Yeah, they got a problem over there.
They're trying to pull apart a family.
Yeah, it's nuts.
I don't envy what they're doing, and I feel sorry for the board because they bought something and they don't know what it is.
No one should have ever bought this from Greg.
Nobody.
Unless it was just one person who was just like really going to be like, okay, I'm going to do this with it.
But this isn't a company.
All right.
Had fun, guys. The second I know more, I'll let you know. But this isn't a company. All right.
Had fun, guys.
The second I know more, I'll let you know.
Thanks so many.
Thanks for all you tuning in.
Peace and love.
YOLO is a bot.
Yes, YOLO is a bot.
Thank you, Jason.
I finally figured that out too.