The Sevan Podcast - 30 Million NEW CrossFitters?

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

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That's BetterHelp.com. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. What's up, everybody? Good morning. I think I'm here by myself today Siobhan is traveling to CrossFit Riverside

For their 15th anniversary With Greg The tsunami of rain, I guess, didn't get in the way that they thought it would So he's taking the morning off and headed there. You guys are stuck with me. I'm finally here. Odd. And Tavon is not. Sorry. Cool new profile picture, though. What's up, everybody? Frank, how you doing? You all right, bud? Matt Schindeldecker, good morning. Good morning, dude. Yeah, I still need to chat with you. I'm sorry.

I've been super busy, and I definitely want to have some conversations, but time just keeps on moving away. Sunday Rambler, the economy turning to the pooper. AI is stealing jobs, especially white-collar jobs, which are mostly CrossFit members. That's a bold statement. You think AI is stealing jobs already? I think like anytime there's new technology, there's going to be a shift in the job market. I don't know. We'll see. Bruce, what's up, dude? Can't believe you're blue. Good morning. Good morning, Melanie. Good

morning, Sean. Good morning. Standy room only 30 million high intensity athletes. Oh man. Yeah. I always, Oh, odd. Nice. Biggest letdown of the day, but I'm here for you. Thank you. I guess. Thank you. Okay. Dick butter. Dick butter. Where have you been? I felt like you haven't, I felt like you haven't been around. Like you've left us or something. That's fucked up, dude. But I'm glad you're here today. What's up, Dan? Good morning, son. Somebody already mentioned something in the comments that I thought about bringing up. Oh, yeah, it was Dick Butter.

Dick Butter, hey, guys, how many cringy text message exchange defending CrossFit have you had today? Oh, man, it's funny. It's funny because I actually put that in the notes for this morning. And I wasn't sure we were going back and forth if I was going to do the show, like if someone was going to, if Sevan was going to be here. Caleb still might show up. I'm wondering now, maybe it's because I didn't text him. Idiot.

Anyhow, I put together some notes for you guys. So we had some sort of topics to discuss here. And the text messages from crossfit on the like exchange back and forth uh which was obviously just a made-up photoshop was quite funny um christopher what is the next behind the scenes going to be released think about when is the next behind the scenes going to be released? And I do believe today. I think we're going to release episode 11 today. I think episode three will be coming out for free today.

Yeah, I'll double check on that. But that was the last time we had discussed. So that should be happening today. So you should have something for this weekend. Jake Chapman, Susie, do you have any tats? I do not zero not that i'm uh against them but uh for me i just never i never uh was really into it i always thought like i was super critical of anything i would draw and i would like draw something as like to get an idea of

what i'd want and then i would like leave it for two days and i come back and i'm like damn that looks like and i just kept doing that all the time. And I eventually realized that if I did that and put it on my body permanently, I would just be super critical, um, of what was on there and I would hate it eventually. So no, no tattoos. Okay. Three is up. Yeah, there you go. Three is up for free and, uh, 11 will be coming soon. There we go. Yeah. Three is up. Watch it before you went live.

Okay, cool. All right. So we're going to – well, first off, thank you to Paper Street Coffee, CA Peptides, and BirthFit. We don't – we can't express enough how awesome you guys are in keeping the lights on here at the 7-1 Podcast.

So go check out their websites if you guys haven't. I know most of you guys have, but if you haven't already, go do it again. If you go to birth fit, take the, take the console really good. I don't have any kids, but that's what I've been told. Um, so you tag buildings, just not yourself. Absolutely. That shit's super temporary. You could do something in like leave and come back the next

day to see it it's already gone absolutely temporary all things in life are temporary i guess even your tattoos to a certain degree okay i want to start off with this um i want to start off with this quote oh fuck maybe not yes no maybe and um they kind of shortened it on the graphic but somebody in the comments put the whole entire uh marcus aurelius quote up you must now at last perceive of what universe you are a part of and what administrator of the universe your existence flows in that a limit of time is fixed for you, which if you do not use for clearing away the clouds of your mind, it will go and you will go and it will never return.

Don't waste your shit. Don't, don't waste the limited time that you have here on earth. It's like we just said before it's all temporary and so if you're fixated on stupid little trivial things and not focused on the big picture it'll all pass you by so very quickly um daniel garrity after yesterday's podcast i ran into hunter who was running on the side of the road near my cabin couldn't miss the try i can't believe you didn't say something or just tried to like creepily like take a picture of him and hunter who was running on the side of the road near my cabin couldn't miss the try i can't believe

he didn't say something or just tried to like creepily like take a picture of him and post it on like the sevenistas uh instagram i feel like that would have been pretty funny this you driving by snapping a photo of him running after you just saw him on the podcast when he said he was going to go running what are the odds of that what are the odds of that uh What are the odds of that? Ninjas, going to be the first time not doing the Open in eight years, and it feels great. Why aren't you doing the Open? I wonder why.

Are all you guys doing the Open? You should be. I haven't signed up yet personally, but I probably will. Don't waste your shit on people's shit nothing matters yeah oh okay fair enough fair enough dale gary hunter had huge headphones on that's pretty funny okay 30 million crossfittersFitters. Do you guys remember? I think last year that was what, uh, Don was talking about in terms of his goal for the company. Although it was super vague because it just, I mean, anybody could say that, Hey, what do you

want to do? I want to make a million dollars. Okay. So it's like, why, how, why did you choose that number? Like there's so many unanswered questions, but it sounds really great, right? Like 30 million new CrossFitters, but like, how does that break down? How would that even work in the affiliates? How many new affiliates would need to spawn to support that many CrossFitters? What would that look like? Like there's just so many unanswered questions when it comes to that. But let's go ahead and take a look at the CrossFit ad that was recently put out. I guess you could call it an ad. It's really just an Instagram post that maybe wasn't thought through

all the way. And it's this one. You guys know it. I'm not even going to, I'm not even going to skip through all these because they ended up putting like what? 10 slides. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Did you guys read? Did you guys actually go through and read all those 10 slides? Oh my goodness. And the funny part about it is, is like the conversation about the injury rates. But if you look over to the side and you go to like the, the caption of it sounded better because it says Amy West is a specialist in sports medicine, a graduate of Harvard med Harvard, which is coming under some, some hot water for their scientifics, alleged scientific misconduct, which broken science is all over.

We'll go venture over there and check that out in just a minute. But Amy West, a specialist in sports medicine, a graduated of Harvard in a team position for the, some fucking acronym, athletic department conducted a literature review on injury rates for various exercise methods. Okay. So why don't you just show us the study? Like, why don't what, like, or why don't you

have her talk about it? Or why don't we dive into it? Right. But like, you just put up a bunch of fake text messages going back and forth, which by the way, that's already not good for the look. Like if you want to have like some sort of authenticity, like make your, the content like authentic, like have Amy talk about it, go to a CrossFit gym, interview some other people, show the study that you did, link us to the studies that she's doing so we can read them for ourselves. Instead, it's kind of this really awkward back and forth fake conversation, um, between, you know between some unknown person and some unknown CrossFit hater. Now, I get the sentiment. I get the spirit of it, right?

Because, hey, if you guys have CrossFitters, you guys have read into this before. You go and you meet somebody who's either a PT or they're a chiropractor, and then they say, oh, I love you crossfitters because you keep me in business. What the fuck? It doesn't even, I hate when people say that because it doesn't really make sense. The other thing is, is that if you do suffer quote unquote injuries, nine times out of 10, they're just musculature problems that could be fixed with a little stretching, a proper prehab, a proper rehab, a rehab exercise, and a little foam rolling for the most part. And they claim it to be injury. And then

you already know the path that that's going to take. You're going to go see your doctor and your doctor's going to say, don't move it at all. Sit on the couch, take these pills, go see the PT. It's just, it's a waste of your time it's a waste of the doctor's time it's crazy but anyhow I just thought that this was comical I just had to laugh

the other thing too is how many people did it take to come up with this how many people of approval was like yeah that's a great idea this is going to be a hitter let's go ahead and just make up a conversation with each other um and we're going to check out in a moment here the crossfade current uh their crossfade instagram at large and just kind of like scroll it just troll their gram but what do you guys think about that

30 million how close do you think they'll they'll ever think about that 30 million? How close do you think they'll, they'll ever talk about that again? Or if they do, do you think that they'll like change it and say like, Oh, we're, we like to put the goalposts really far out there. We knew this is a multi-year type thing. We weren't expecting to get 30 million in a year, which I get that. But it's just interesting that, um, it's just interesting that you would say a big claim like that, but I doubt we'll ever have any follow-up. And I don't think that there'll ever be any tactile milestones of like, hey, we made $5 million. Hey, we made $10. This is what we did. This is how we're going to get there. What is this? Oh. Bruce Wayne just sent me a thumbnail.

It's always funny seeing my face cut out on something. Absolutely terrifying to see that. Stephen Flores, what's worse, having diabetes and other core morbidities or orthopedic injury? Yeah. One is a moment of time and an inconvenience, and the other one is a death sentence. I mean, it's no fucking, you know what I mean? It's not even a comparison. Aaron Frazier, related industry all the time, right? It depends on the doctor. It depends on the dietician. It depends on the physical therapist. I think unfortunately, by and large, they're maybe not as effective as they could be. And I also know that a lot of the situation when it comes to the medical community, their hands are tied by the insurance companies. So they might be able to do a certain amount of procedure or something like

that. But at the end of the day, they don't have a gym inside their physical therapy facility. How are they going to get you back to exercise? And that's part of the problem. It's like working with the firefighters, some of these guys get injured on the job, like no shit, like a piece of roof falls on their head. Or one guy was like, oh, my back has problems. And I'm like, wow, what happened with your back? And he's like, oh, my back has problems. And I'm like, wow, what happened with your back? And he's like, I fell out of a helicopter. And I'm like, fuck, like maybe lead with that. So yeah, so there's certain times where obviously those PTs to get them back to normal functioning

movement is important. But then what happens from where the PT leaves them to get them back to exercising? And that's a pretty big gap that's missed, especially in that first responder community. And so if you are a PT and you don't have some sort of gym, like a squat rack or pull a bar or something that could get somebody back to normal functioning exercise, then you're kind of missing half of the work that needs to be done. So I don't even think that answered your question, but that's cool. Oh, barbell spin, fantastic.

Now we have somebody with some actual facts here. Don already admitted 30 million is a lofty goal. So he set the goal and then immediately backpedaled. We're going 30 million. It was a bit aggressive back there, guys. That was a bit aggressive. We're going to go for 1 million. Don already admitted 30 million is a lofty goal. Plus, he never really defined how they will count 30 million. So the question that I have...

Hold on. This phone's calling me right now. Hey. The call for already gone. Oh, awesome. Okay. You're live right now. Thank you for doing that. I'll turn this Bluetooth on right now. awesome. Okay, you're live right now. Thank you for doing that. I'll turn this Bluetooth on right now. Okay, of course. Okay, thank you. Bye. Bye.

Okay, we have the call line. Amazing. Did he text me that? Oh, yeah, he did. Thank you. Thank you, Salon, for sending me out the lifeline here. Hold on, guys. Let me get it set.

Okay, well, you're used to this because it's a Rodecast. Whoa, why did I feel like the light really washed my face out right there we could turn it down and talk about some doc stuff oh yeah yeah i am a mess okay the phone is now connected and the um call line is up okay so if you guys want to call in on this like yeah do it, do it. Let's have some conversations. Plus he never, okay. Back to the barbell spin question. Don already admitted 30 million is a lofty goal. Plus he never really defined how they will count 30 million. So then what was the point of that statement? That's what I want to ask. Like, where did, like, how did

there was some point there was like a conversation around that. And he was like, I'm going to present this. And the issue that I have is like, if you're going to present that, you're going to show it. Like, are we going to back it up? Or are we just gassing the room up? Just gassing it up. Kenneth, Aston Dave's week review,

that's the only way to get some kind of answer to tough questions. Yep. Yep. Yep. We'll just leave it at that. I love Dave. Susie tell my PT is a CrossFitter skier mountain biker and I'm blessed. Yes. That is somebody who you want to find somebody who, who works out avidly, who does new sports, who's super active and understands your needs. If you go to your doctor or your PT or something, and they're overweight and they don't really exercise at all, like, fuck, get out of there

because how are they even going to understand your needs and what you need to like get back to? Somebody could play it safe and call the first, make the first call and just test the line. You don't actually have to call out with a question. Steven, falling out of a helicopter is bad for your health. Definitely. Definitely, definitely, definitely. I will have my L1 and I'll finish PT school next year. Yes, we need more people like you, Steven Flores, that understand it from like a really higher level.

And you're going to better serve your clients who aren't CrossFitters too. If you're able to get people back to truly functional exercise and movement and not just like little things with the band until the person decides that going to the class is like done. Yo, you need a list, call line, Caleb, et cetera. My two cents, you are a hundred percent right. I do. I kind of have a list, but yeah. Let me get down to the bottom of these comments. Okay. We don't have choices here. My doctor, Sabir and Kelly, we don't have choices here. My sports doctor is overweight, so I don't take half of his advice. Yeah. Fuck. That's a hard, um, that's a hard thing. If you go into your doctor's office and you can tell that they're not already active and stuff like that. I always go back and forth.

I have a question for you guys. What do you think about coaches that are great coaches, great communicators, but maybe can't necessarily do some of the higher skill stuff like muscle-ups and handstand walks and stuff like that? Do you think that they should still be teaching those movements stuff like that. Do you think that they should so be teaching those movements or for some reason, do you think that they should not? I am curious as to how you guys feel about that. And then I will give my opinion afterwards. I wanted to show you guys this, this cool little graph. I'm a pretty big nerd when it comes to some sort of data or a graph that also moves. That's like animated.

So you can see how it's changed over the time. I don't know why I love that. Uh, Tony Martin, let's see what he says. I followed Mark riptoed shoulder rehab and never pulled, uh, told my PT.

I blew through PT and got released. Fair enough. Emily Rolf's husband, Jonathan Ortega, Emily Rolfe's husband can't do it, but he can coach it and teach it to you. So he, so Jonathan's in favor of that. Okay, cool. Uh, my two cents. I don't think you should look like my photo and be teaching. Why not though? Why not? What if they've already lost like 100 pounds and they're still continuing on that journey and they love to coach?

Should you not take advice from them and coach from them? They could coach. I don't know. Name one coach from elite sport who is top tier sport as their player. Jake Chapman. Great point.

I mean, you see like for us, like American football, like if you watch, I said American football, cause I know Jake, Jake's not, I know he's a UK or, um, when you see the coaches of those teams, half of them, you're like, there's no way that dude could even run the length of the football field, but they're great coaches. That's not their job to run the length of the football field. The job is to make sure that the team does it really efficiently. So I agree with that. Here we go. Somebody with a different point of view. Brandon Gomez, definitely should. I had a coach that was in her late 50s and could give the best. Oh, they should coach. I wanted to find somebody who disagreed with that point.

disagreed with that point. Um, let's see a couple of you guys here. Oh, barbell spin with another awesome comment. Do you want Frazier to be your coach? I don't know. If you watched, uh, some of Hiller's videos, I would say no. You're going to show up to the dungeon, some of Hiller's videos, I would say, no, you're going to show up to the dungeon, show up to get fit, leave with a mental problem. Just kidding guys. Just kidding. Joke. Um, a bunch of CrossFit coaches are still doing CrossFit. Pep wasn't top tier. Laugh out loud spin. Yeah. I don't think, I think the number one most important thing for you to possess as a coach is your ability to communicate. And we focus a ton on all like the tactile stuff, like, and how to see and correct movement. Obviously that's super important, but if you don't understand like how to communicate to each individual person and the nuance as you are like

roaming the floor and how I need to treat this person and how they respond to certain cues versus this person and how they respond to certain cues. Um, if you don't have that down, it doesn't matter how good you're seeing and correcting movement and all the anatomy stuff, you know, and the best community, uh, the best cues you could give. If you're not able to communicate them and change from nuance to person to person as you do it, then it doesn't matter how great of a coach you are. And so I always talk about communication books as being part of the repertoire as what you need for coaching, or just listening to an audible book on communication or a podcast or something like that. Because most people don't work on their communication in that regard. They don't study it. They don't learn how to become better at it. And I think that if you do,

not only will it make you better at everything else you do in life, but especially if you're a coach, I mean, your whole entire job is to transmit a message. Your whole entire job is to communicate something that's going to change the way somebody moves to make them more efficient and better. And if you're not working on the piece of like that transmission and how you're doing it and how you're bettering yourself at it, then all the L ones, the L twos, the L threes, like none of that shit will matter if you don't have great communication. And on top of that, if you want to level yourself up in that gym, maybe become like the full-time coach or eventually become an owner of the gym, then fuck your communication is going to have to, you're going to have to get really good at two things, communicating and letting shit just roll

off your back. And so I go back to the quote that I was taught that I shared with you guys earlier, which is like, don't waste your time on the dumb shit because there's a certain time limit that is assigned to us all. And if you just spend your time spinning your wheels in the mud, um, and getting caught up in all this bullshit that doesn't matter in the day-to-day, then yeah, you're just completely wasting your time. But as an affiliate owner, you're going to be responsible not only to communicate and transmit the message of your vision and how you want your gym to be ran to your coaches, but then you're going to also have to do that to your members. And you're going to have to be really good at

dealing with conflict and crucial conversations that come up. Because as affiliate owners, as coaches, our job is directly working with people. You think it's teaching them CrossFit, and it is, but also it's not because you're dealing with personalities, you're dealing with their psychology. How are their mood coming in here today? And if you guys know that I've been coaching for a long time, like you become half a therapist, which is kind of funny because that's what I did a little bit when I bartended as well.

But I'm glad to be on the other side of that and giving the quote-unquote therapy while they're doing something to better their lives rather than the quote-unquote therapy while you're just serving them alcohol because you know that's not going to end well. Sunday Rambler, Susan, what's your favorite communication book? I started reading about the love language.

Love languages are great. My personal favorite is called Thanks for the Feedback. As far as a communication book. Let's bring that up here for you guys. Thanks for the feedback. it takes a little bit only like 24 minutes in maybe about maybe about 14 minutes ago 10 minutes ago you get more comfortable talking talking to you guys it's talking to you guys but it's also just talking to me on on a screen and like there's no like when i stop talking if you're like wait for response you just get the radio silence so it takes a little bit to uh settle into the format um okay so here's the

book i'll share with you guys thanks for the feedback the science and art of receiving feedback well but also like giving feedback in this book so this will be its weight in gold for you guys as coaches and as affiliate owners. Listen to this, read this book, and if you actually truly take it in and listen to it with the intent of changing the way that you communicate, I promise your relationships and everything else will get better all around you. No question about that. No question about that. You got to hit this button so we can see all our beautiful sponsors back there. Is the phone not working or are you guys

just fucking like, fuck this, I'm not calling in? I'm not calling in. Oh, perfect. Okay, I just got sent something. We're going to add that to the notes in just a minute here. Let's go through a couple more questions. Standing room only. Susie, you mentioned you give your new coaches a book. Yeah, I do. It's actually, let's see what's here. Oh, bingo. All right, I do have them right here. Okay, yes.

So this is a coach's handbook. And I make, even if you've been coaching, like is the, a coach's handbook and I make, even if you've been coaching, like if you show up to my gym and you're like, I've been coaching for whatever, three years, I'm like, fucking great. You're still going to go through this portion of it because I'm not going to assume anything. And we're going to make sure we're on the same page. We'll go through that in a minute. Here we go. Um, hold on one second, caller. One second. Hold on one second, caller. One second.

Okay, caller, are you there? No. Hi. Hey. Yes, I got you. Just testing the line for you guys. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Yep. Hey, hey, one question. Have you ever, are you a coach? You coach CrossFit? No. Do you go to CrossFit gym? Yeah. What's the culture like at your gym, if you could sum it up in one word?

In one word. One word. Putting you on the spot. Honestly, probably fantastic. That's awesome. That's a great word to describe it. All right. Thank you for calling and testing the line.

I won't put you on the spot with any more questions. All right. Thank you for calling and testing the line. I won't put you on the spot with any more questions. Thank you. All right. You too. Bye. Okay. So we know it works. Assholes you could call in. Um, uh, but yeah, so anyhow, this is the coach's handbook. It's got a lot of like our elements stuff in it. There's like the logistics checklist, um, the timing of the classes, like this whole portion is like how they want, we want them to conduct themselves. This is kind of like the flow chart. So as they come in, they know exactly like where they are, um, in their journey. And so do I, or any other coach that is taking them through the intern process. So like you could open it up and you could see where they are,

what they've done, what we still need them to do. I do have small little tests at the end of it. They're basically just to see like how well you could, you know, field questions and stuff like that. So we do a whiteboard competency test where we'll put up two or three workouts

onto a whiteboard and then we'll have the coach who's going to be on the floor, like give us back the workouts and then we fill them questions and kind of like raise their hand and be like, my arms don't work. How am I going to do the snatch legless rope climb workout? And they have to kind of like go through that. And, um, and we see what it looks like as they process different questions that we filled at them. And then we also do a warmup, uh, competency. So what we'll do is we'll give them one workout.

We'll leave the room for a couple of minutes and we'll have them come up with like a general warmup and then a specific warmup. And then we like explain why they like chose what they chose and how this is going to benefit people in the workout. And then I also have this one, which, uh, this just started at the gym, not that long ago. This is like the general manager one. And, um, this has everything from like all the expectations on like this is my personal copy but this is all like the expectations on like what we want them to do um yeah and different things and then we go through and we just if you set an expectation at the beginning of what you want your coaches or the manager of your gym or your front desk or whatever the case is going to be if you set the expectations and they're clearly defined, it becomes a lot easier to

reinforce your standards and your expectations because all you have to do is recall back to where you guys started. If you don't set an expectation, you don't set a standard, you don't spend some time really focused on that and going through it together, inevitably, issues are going to come up and when issues come up you're going to be like hey we do it this way here and then they're going to come back to you and be like i didn't know that how was i supposed to know that and then you kind of get in this tit for tat thing as opposed to when everybody's fresh at the beginning there hasn't been any history between you guys the new coach is all gun ho to do everything the right way

and everything else you manage expectations set expectation right at the beginning. And it gives you kind of a, uh, a foundation to always, um, pull back to, uh, Daniel Gary, I'm just pulling these questions out of nowhere. And sorry, if there's other comments down, I got stuck up here. Uh, Daniel Gary, um, did you always do a good job of separating friendships in your business? Early CrossFit gyms, board those lines frequently. I did a terrible job at that at in your business? Early CrossFit gyms blurred those lines frequently. I did a terrible job at that at the beginning. Terrible job at that. And you got to remember too, when I first opened the gym, I was like 25, 26.

So it took a lot of trial by error. I've faced all the same issues that most CrossFit gyms are going to, where you have a head coach that's doing a bunch of hours and, you know, has different expectations of how they want you to run your gym and you guys inevitably reach conflict and the coach says, fuck you, I'm out of here and throws the key at you one day when you're sweeping up the ropes. That's not a specific example. Maybe it is. And they leave and they say, I'm taking 20 members with me. And they start calling all your members and they're like, hey, I'm at the new gym. You

should come over here. Yeah, I've had to deal with all of that. And that's how number one, I started to study more communication of like, okay, how could I navigate these conversations better? And how could I avoid them from the get go? And then started to come up with my own system and procedure and both the, well, with the exception of the general manager, one is a more recent one that I did, but the other coaches handbook, a lot of that stuff is from years ago when I first like put it all down on paper, um, earlier, like right around the time that I found like Chris Cooper and stuff like that. So that would have been probably about seven years ago, eight years ago when I originally started to write those out and they always, I'm always like evolving them, right? You always have to check

back in and say like, hey, is this true? Do we still operate this way? Are we still adhering to our own expectations that we're setting? Because you've got to always, always keep that in check. Sean, Sousa, do you know the way you want to follow Chris Cooper? I want to follow you. A love and flight from Dublin, teach me your ways. 11 hours is quite, quite the fart. Dude. I,

I've had conversations with, um, a couple of people that have called in or like, you know, super enthusiastic about coaching. They're on a run their own gym. And I'm just like, fuck, I wish you guys lived closer because I would definitely, um, I could definitely use a lot of the coaching help and would love to set something up in a manner that allows you to like ascend in a CrossFit gym. That's another thing too. Like if you do own a gym, always keep communication with your coaches that are doing full time and taking information from them. Don't start blocking information or think you know everything because I never understood this. And a lot of the coaches that will call me always call me with the

conflict of like, hey, I'm at the gym, I really think that things should be done this way. I coach all the classes, the members are the owners are never there. The members also agree with some of the initiatives that I want to do, like, how do I get the gym owner to agree with me on this? And now we're butting heads. And there's this whole issue, which from a generalist perspective, I never really fully understood that. because if you're managing expectation right away and then you're bringing them in as more of a partner rather than employee, there's a lot of great stuff that could come out of that, especially if you have somebody who's like a real go-getter and wants to do a bunch of cool stuff with the gym.

Like don't become like the opposition of that person. See if you could find a way to work with them to better your communities. All right, let's bring something else up. We're going to change it here. I'm going to go back to the data graphic for a minute. I can't actually play the song on it because it's just music the whole time.

But this is US rent prices versus income. And it starts at 1985. There's a red line that's the rent prices. There's a blue line that is the income. And right now, the income is higher than the red line. And very quickly, in 1987, they cross. And rent prices just skyrocket. And income drops quite significantly, even as it climbs.

And going back to what Rambler said the first time about AI taking over jobs, you could see where it said right there, the tech boom. And you watched how everything dropped and then started to come back up because as more money gets put into technologies and yeah, people end up losing their jobs. As we learn to put jobs behind those technologies, the human resources of it grow. But look at that. That's fucking crazy. That is crazy. So the blue line, if you're just listening to this, is damn near at the very bottom, and the rent price has completely soared, and we're at September of 2020 right now. Yeah, that's nuts, huh? Rambler. Blame private equity.

I don't know if you could just blame one entity like that. But I saw this graphic and I just wanted to share this with you guys because I just thought that that was just incredible. No real answer for that on my end. Just interesting fact that I wanted to share with you guys. on my end. Just interesting fact that I wanted to share with you guys. Okay, we got another one. Maybe this will spark some call-ins. Have you guys been seeing on Instagram and all over the TikToks that there's this takeover?

Maybe it's just my algorithm, of course, because they just put more in front of what I watch, right? But more in front of me, the stuff that more in front of me the stuff that i watch yeah there we go got that out but what about this like demon thing have you guys been watching this like these celebrities and like rappers and and um and pop artists and like anybody who basically seems like they quote unquote popped out of nowhere and are famous for a thing um and are apparently put there by the devil, and are doing certain things to worship the devil in public to give signs that that's what they're a part of, and that's why they are a celebrity or famous person. And in this case, in this example,

and I'm sure you guys have seen this by now, but Andrew Tate called out Ice Spice. I don't even know who the fuck Ice Spice is until this, which is interesting. Did you guys know who Ice Spice was? Maybe it's just me. I don't really listen to music and shit, so fuck, I don't know.

But Andrew Tate called out Ice Spice allegedly promoting satanism satan if i could say it right satanism during her super bowl appearance by making what he perceives as devil devil symbols and wearing an upside down cross um okay so we're gonna play the clip and then uh and then andrew uh right there so what they're referring to is her hands there which make that with the nails and especially like the low quality photo it does look creepy as shit though doesn't it yeah janelle no no clue who she is yeah me either me either olivia i thought she was a porn star oh justin c, because they've sold their souls. Yeah. That's what, that's what like the whole consensus is, right? They sold their souls for fame and gold. Um,

Marcus Nielsen, thank you for becoming a member. Please enjoy all the cool behind the scenes stuff. Um, and then mark as you became a member again maybe you double paid thank you for that um i thought she was a spice girl that's what i thought when they said ice spice i was like damn she looks young for how old i thought they were okay so she's making the devil hand symbols here. Cross and kind of stares at it and lifts it up. And apparently that is the upside down cross. On a very serious, serious note,

you have someone wearing an upside down cross making devil symbols at the biggest cultural event in American history. Everything I said about how you can see demons if you pay attention. Did you look at her and think that's a demon maybe you didn't but after listening to this please pay attention she is wearing an upside down cross the matrix has made her famous nobody knows why it's certainly not yeah that's interesting right the matrix made her famous none of us knew who she is because of fucking talent and she's wearing balenciaga and she's wearing balenciaga which we know which are fucking talent. And she's wearing Balenciaga, too. And she's wearing Balenciaga, which we know.

Child molesters. Which are child molesters. And she's making devil symbols. What more, what kind of clue are you looking for if those aren't the clues you need? What do you want? What do you guys think? What do you guys think?

I don't know. Eric Wise, Illuminati. How wrong was I? I thought she was a Spice Girl. My teenagers laughed at me, and I assumed she wasn't a Spice Girl. Yeah, recycled names. Jonathan Ortega, Andrew Tate is an idiot. Bold claim.

Bold claim. The algorithm made her popular. Yep. Kenneth the lab. Shit's real. Interesting. Interesting. Like I said, I feel like I see more of it, but it's like the shit that gets put in front of us because of the algorithm.

Like who said that up here before? Whatever. One of the comments. I lost it but the algorithm yeah exactly like that if you watch those and then you watch it a bunch of times the algorithm is going to say oh they like this content let's put more of this type of content in front of them and there you go now you feel like you see it everywhere. So I get it. I get it. Judy Reed, glad you're here. Now we can start.

This is exciting. Mike McCassey, no, Tate is entertaining as hell. You think so? Okay. What was this one? Navigating hard questions. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So going back to communication, this guy is a communication genius watch how he handles this tough question here watch this this guy in the microphone i don't know if we're gonna catch this

first part but he says how many genders are here hey genders are there i don't know i just got here like a perfect way to escape the question how many genders are there i don't know i just got here when in doubt just don't even answer the question at all okay why we're on the uh illuminati uh devil thing let's bring up a little taylor's taylor swift conspiracy theory huh While we're on the Illuminati devil thing, let's bring up a little Taylor Swift conspiracy theory, huh? Now, tell me what you guys think of this.

You know what Super Bowl is? It's 58. You know what 5 plus 8 is? 13. It's Taylor Swift's album called 13. Yo! Dang! You guys know the date of the Super Bowl? It's the Swift's album called 13. Yo! Dang! You guys know the date of the Super Bowl?

It's the 11th. Of? February. 11 plus 2. Yo! Who are they playing? The 49ers. It's 4 plus 9?

Dude, come on. 13. Just saying. What seed are the 49ers? The 1 seed. What seed are the chiefs the two seat no the three one three 13. this dude is so stupid where's uh taylor swift coming from she's come from tokyo to the super bowl what does that mean a flight from tokyo to las vegas 13 hours it's 13 hours and i'm not even kidding what What? You know how many games Taylor Swift has been to?

13? 12. This is the 13th? The Super Bowl will be the 13th? Is this all true? No, this is all for real. What do you guys think about that one? I think it's here.

Oh, Rambler, swifty here lover yeah so he's all about the thing all about the number 13 i think it's funny the guy that just keeps going yo that's just that's the job i want on this show that's what i need to set on all the time just hype him up frank if don fall sells his soul to the devil, will that get us 30 million CrossFitters? That's probably the funniest thing I've heard you say. Kendall, how was the Health Summit? The Health Summit was awesome. The Health Summit was incredible. The speakers that were there were really great.

I know that CrossFit captured a lot of them. They'll trickle out that content over time. So you guys will definitely get to see or hear the speeches and see the speeches. But I love the health stuff with CrossFit. I think that that's going to be how we reach a larger audience over time, especially working with other people that are in our space that might not necessarily be CrossFitters yet, kind of like the Rhonda Patrick type with a large audience that's really into personal responsibility and taking care of diseases at their core through lifestyle changes. So as we get more and more of those people with their audiences, I think we'll turn more and more people on to CrossFit. So I like it from that point of view as well, just reaching a larger audience. But I also like it from what exactly CrossFit is,

like the methodology at its core and how that relates to health. Because to me, that's the most important part. I know we get caught up with the CrossFit games and the competition side of stuff quite a bit because it's fun. It's cool. And it's an expression of what we do at the highest level, but it's not the most important thing that we do. And so I love the fact that they're kind of investing into these health summits. I hope to do more and more of them each year. I know Dave's talked about that trainer summit. That would be really cool. They already do the affiliate summits. I just got a email yesterday actually saying that there's going to be an affiliate summit here in Northern California, I think in like April or something like that, which is really cool because anytime

you bring all those people together into the same room, everybody starts talking, you start cross-pollinating ideas. And if anything else, it just leaves you feeling really energized about the work that you do and excited to go back and do it. And so that's what I think like the most important part of the health summit was, is that it just fired everybody up. It gave a ton of them information and, um, and it, and it empowered people to go back to give that information back to their members of their gym and, uh, their friends and family around them. So it was great. It was great. One life CrossFit. We don't believe in coincidences, but they have to exist.

Miss Burns, what's up? Suza flying solo this morning. Yes. Hanging in there with it. Jonathan Ortega. I had a friend that tried to explain the 13 to me. She said it was symbolism. I asked, what does it symbol?

He couldn't tell me. That's like what everybody everybody knows details but nobody knows big picture right uh frank how much of the health summit was done by hq seems to be like karen organized it in sebon promoted it and i held both their hands through the whole process so karn was contracted by crossFit to put on the event. That's what CrossFit does these days is that you guys know they probably contracted somebody to make that silly little text message thing back and forth. That's what they do now. That's what they do.

They've reduced their team down. I mean, there's no marketing team really anymore. After they let go of Keith, I don't know who else is in marketing department. So maybe they don't have it anymore. Um, also to you guys know that their media team has shrunk down to like two people, if that. So, and they outsource everything and I think they're going to outsource marketing and other stuff like that. So hold on to your hats. It should look crazy. Um, Oh, Susie tell she was there, helped out. someone was great along with a weekend of activities how great was friday at crossfit central in austin amazing workout by boss 65 more crossfitters

yeah a lot of fun really cool really cool i hope you guys get a chance to go to the uh next one here cody i think i met zeb but there were 200 owners there so i shook a lot of hands and had many conversations over coffee yeah cool that's what it's about frank dave talked about the trainer summit lots of talk and promises from hq to get affiliates to stay affiliated well they got to do something and here's the thing to dave's point like i i think we have to realize that how things process through hq anymore it's not like dawn and this is my thoughts i don't know this to be true this is just this is just my thoughts here but i think that um dawn and dave don't have very much

autonomy in terms of pulling the trigger on decisions a lot. I think now all decisions have to go through a certain filter of stuff to where, meaning I have an idea, so I'm going to tell Don. Don's going to say, hey, I like this idea. We need this and this back from it. Then I give this and this back to Don. And then Don takes it to the board and says, hey, we want to allocate resources to here, and here's why. And then the board has to go, okay, have you thought about this? And then it trickles back down to Dave and they say, hey, have you thought about this? And then Dave put something together and he runs it back up the line to the board. And then the board says, okay, cool. We can invest this much money into it. And then Dave goes, ah, I wanted $10 and you

guys gave me five. And they're like, we'll make it work with five. And then he has to make some adjustments. And so all that to say, I think that when Dave truly says like, we're considering it, we're working on it. I, I still believe him. I think that he is, I think that there's a lot of great ideas and I think that he knows that there's a lot of great ideas and it's just going to be about how well they could execute on those ideas. And if they get autonomy and funding, again, my opinion from the board to execute on them, because I think that there's just a lot of red tape in place. Maybe before when it was just Greg, we could be like, Hey, Greg, we're going to run an affiliate

summit. And then Greg just goes, sounds like a great idea. And the next thing you know, they're working on it. That is not the case. And that will never ever be the case again with CrossFit too. So you guys have to realize that. And if you think that things are going to move that quickly, like they did back in the old days, or like like it's just the matter of fact of having an internal conversation and then acting on it. I don't think that's the case anymore. I think that everything has to be ran through the board and then it has to get approved and there has to be like this process to it. Yes, somebody from X. Awesome. All right. Just popping in to say hi, you guys are doing amazing work. Well, thank you it's always uh funny when somebody else um it's it's always funny when somebody

else comments from like either facebook or like x or like something like that like oh somebody new here from a different platform um here we go we gotta call it except for the part matt almost got sex trafficked by a hispanic man i don't remember that part did that did that almost happen to me yo caller what's up man how you doing what's heading in bwee hey good to hear your voice yeah man it's good to be here i've been on a on a drought lately as far as my seven content conception yeah it's good to catch a little bit of catch a little bit of live with Susan. Oh, right on. Right on. Well, welcome to the show. This is blade for those who don't recognize the voice here. Oh, whoops. There we go.

I hit the yellow. Accidentally on purpose. I hit the yellow button accidentally on purpose. Accidentally on purpose. Point taken. That's what I get. That's what I get for being acid. So that's what I get.

I'll take my L. So how you doing, man? I'm great, man. So I've been listening for a little bit now, and I just took a couple notes. And then we can go from there. Then there was one person who asked me in the comments a question that i thought had validity just to get this keep this going but back when you were back when you're talking about coaches so excuse me for bouncing around but back when you're talking about coaches back when i used to coach there was this dude i gave everybody nicknames. There's a dude I called pops.

He was an old dude. And I called him pops. And one day I was coaching being my color energetic self. And he said, you know, when I come in here and you're coaching, it's really a breath of fresh air. And that was probably the dope that that's like before. That's the one compliment that stuck with me. I don't even remember any other compliment. Who knows? That might have been the only one I ever got. Doubt it.

But I think like now obviously you need to know the game when it comes to coaching. You can't just be a breath of fresh air and that's the end all be all. But if coaches thrive for that to make like that hour, hour and a half the end all be all. Right. But if coaches, if coaches thrive for that to make like that

hour, hour and a half, whatever, to be the best part of somebody's day. Yep. That, that shit would,

that shit would be contagious and it would grow like wildfire. You know what I'm saying? Not like, not like, oh,

well, you kicked ass at regionals while I'm aging myself. You kicked ass at semifinals. Oh my my god I saw your PR whatever whatever those are those are dope don't get me wrong yep and it's nice nice nice to get your back patted every once in a while for stuff like that but when somebody comes at you talking about

you're really a breath of fresh air that's that's the name that's the name of the game right there and if you can get a few doing that who also you know obviously love crossfit and aren't snapping everybody up yeah and remembering what what got them there then oh my god i'm rucking right now nice get them on get them on that life then i think that's a good foundation you know i'm saying yeah i mean absolutely like if you like you see you already said it if you come in and you got get them on that life, then I think that's a good foundation. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Like you already said it. If you come in and you got great energy, what's up?

How are you doing? Like all of a sudden, all the stress and the shit that they walk through the door with kind of melts away for that hour, right? Like they don't got to think about it anymore. And you laid the foundation for that just with the energy and the way that you address them right when they walk in the door. Right. And it's reading the room like hey who's that that black dude off the office the one who's salty as fuck y'all know you know what i'm talking about i know exactly yeah but i'm terrible with the names face right yes a hundred percent a hundred percent yeah exactly so

always like monotone reading the room too yep, it's about reading the room because those cats that walked in like that every day. And I didn't waver. Now, I didn't fucking laugh them and smile them into submission. Right. But I did get micro-dose them with, I ain't going nowhere, motherfucker. I'm going to be smiling at your ass. And you're going to smile one day and every once

in a while i'll get him to crack a smile and once you break that seal you got him at least for a day yep you know i mean so so it's like a balance you can't be motherfucking spongebob you know you can't be spongebob out here totally all the way but but everybody needs a little bit of that in them to make it better. Completely. I agree. Yep. Let's see. The next note I have is there's a saying I put in the comments quite often. I tell people all the time, there's, there's two. One is I'd rather you be an asshole to my face than the snake in the grass. And a lot of people, man man we're falling into a big spell of this feel-good energy but we're forgetting like a lot of these are snakes and grass

yeah that make you feel good right now and and then you feel all warm and fuzzy but what's there what's going on behind the scenes what's their intentions yep and we're getting so we you know we want we want comfy we want we want the acquaintance who will tell us, Oh, do what's best for you. Oh, yeah, man. Just one hit. Are you good? You got to do what's best for you. Not not the actual friend who's like the fuck on you. Yeah, no, don't do that. That's a terrible idea. What you mean? You know what I mean? Mm hmm. So now, no matter where you are, like, in every aspect, everywhere you look, we're kind of folding to snakes in the grass because we don't want the discomfort of somebody being an asshole to our face.

You know, when I'm working, like I'll be talking with somebody and there'll be a moment where I take a deep breath. I go, OK, could I, is it okay if i speak to you as your homie like can i speak to you as blade and not officer such and such and they're like okay and then i'll hit them i'm like what are you doing like i go at any moment tell me like the fullback or if i feel this getting too tense then we could pull it back but like you need to use your head and then I'll talk to them like I'm their homie like how I would want advice spoken to me and it's it's oddly refreshing like when I get when I get in a little pissing match with somebody yeah they're being real with me and I'm being real with them yeah of course our blood boils a little bit and we may go cry in the car for a few minutes.

But after you settle down, it's like – that's actually oddly refreshing that somebody will step to you every once in a while because you know it's real. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, exactly. And you don't have to guess their intentions or second-guess yourself of how the interaction went. You know how it went because both people being honest right there, right? Exactly. And then the other saying I have is, if it stinks like shit everywhere you go,

you might want to check your own drawers. You might be the common denominator. Exactly. Because people keep wanting to run from certain situations and they'll be be like, oh, man, I came here, and it was this. And then it's cool for like a month or two. But then no matter where you go, you are you. Unless you change, no matter where you go, you are you. And so then you go somewhere else, and then it stinks like shit again.

And so we can keep trying to do oh we as in crossfit i'm not i'm not them but you know what i mean um they keep trying to do the same shit and running from harsh truths or whatever it may be but if we keep doing all this then we're going to be in the same exact spot because at some point we got to make decisions and make tough decisions and the thing about the thing about tough decisions is don't nobody want to make them right and so right that's kind of the crossroads we're at right now when you're talking about the chain you know and okay we're working on that and i understand this is this has gotten to a point where it's big as

fuck you know i mean like it's it's a lot bigger than just a mom and pop now we done accidentally grown into a motherfucking denny's right so it is what it is but but there's a saying the worst decision is no decision and so something isn't isn't going well and y'all just stay piddle paddling for six months for eight months for a year and a half for three years before you know it's been five years and y'all are in the same spot or if not worse because nothing's changed and people are continuing to get pissed and and just floating in space you know what i'm saying oh totally yeah so we need that asshole to our face again and it was you know obviously it was glass i love that

yeah yep uh but and then and then to a degree it was castro for a little bit and he he had completely softened up but i'd be lying if i said it it didn't feel a little bit different yeah you know he's got two middle fingers in the air. Now he got one. And it's kind of low. It's kind of low, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Hey, you know when you were like third grade and you just want to flip somebody off real quick? Sneak it in there. Exactly. That's kind of how his middle finger is now. Mm-hmm. Agreed. Yeah, so I think when we get somebody like that, who is just like, this is what we are.

We're going to be fine. We're going to be here. If y'all want to take your super billions somewhere else, so be it. But we're going to be here. And they'll be back. Quite frankly, they will be back. It's like hanging up in somebody's face. You're like, oh shit,

I just hung up on them. And then you're waiting for that call back and then here it comes. You're like, hell yeah, I knew there was a call back. You know what I'm saying?

That's right. So that's that kind of, that's that kind of energy I'm talking about that attracted me in the first place. And I hope, I hope to see. Agreed. And then, if you don't mind, there was a Sunday that kind of energy i'm talking about that attracted me in the first place and i hope i hope

to see the green and uh if you don't mind there was a sunday i think no no it was daniel earlier who asked you that great question about business and uh separating business from friendship yes yep they asked me a question in the comments for when i called in they said uh something along the lines of do I let CrossFit do I let my fear of getting injured do I let my fear of getting injured at CrossFit affect my attitude my training or something like that because I don't want to get hurt for the job and it's quite frankly it's a good it's a good question yep valid question but it's it's not even not it's a good, it's a good question. Yep. Valid question, but it's, it's not even, not even close. Right.

Because, because quite frankly, I'd rather, I'd rather get hurt at CrossFit becoming harder to kill. Yep. Then get killed on the job because I didn't go to CrossFit. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right. Triage, right? What's more important that you can run and climb and get up over that wall as quick as you possibly can, or staying away from trying so you don't put yourself to potential risk of shoulder injury, right? Right. Or like, for example, those is my entire team for an entire, for like a six month window started working out with me before shift. six month window started working out with me before shift. And, uh, one of the shifts I was first on scene to an attempt at kidnapping and a motherfucker and a motherfucker took off. And I always have the saying, like for those of y'all who only run, yeah, you're going to cash to do,

but when you get there, you're going to be too weak to do anything. Yep. Yeah. Or for those, for those that only lift, I'm going to be like, yeah, and you catch them, but then you get there, you're too tired. That's right. And so he takes off and I started dipping and, and this dude, he's a skinny black dude who's clearly high as fuck. And so I don't catch him right away. And I think, man, this motherfucker is probably high on something.

You could probably hold this case for like, you can run this for a marathon. Exactly. And so I pull back a little bit. But then I see a cheek in his arm. And he slows down just slightly. So I turn the jets on and I catch him. And who's right behind me?

My entire fucking team. Yep. Because they all been there with me the previous six months doing box jumps, rowing, trick or cleans, all that, sprinting, all that. And so it was dope as hell because I told them at the end of the call, I was like, hey, this dude chose the wrong shift. He chose the wrong shift to try to snatch up somebody's kid. Pick the wrong group.

Exactly. And so there's moments like that are exactly what I'm not tripping on injury because I have like came up lame. You know, Chuck Norris snipe me in my hamstring a couple of times during some sprints. Yup. Yup. Happens to the best of us. And quite frankly, you know, there's like for the next week at work, you just kind of

take it easy. As long as like, you don't sprint. Cause even then I'll just get in my car. Like there weren't, you try, you just just try to you just try to stay away from certain moments where if you absolutely needed to you make shit happen right but you just try to be cool for a minute and if it's terrible then you take a sick day because they give you those hours for sick or injured yeah and so it's just like that it's checks and balances and i'd much rather be a savage than worry about getting hurt. A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

And in the ironic part of it is it'll, it'll, uh, it'll prepare you to make sure that you come home safe every day. Right. People, people worried about like having a potential strain in their shoulder or hip are missing the larger picture of, man, you need to be able to be harder to kill, right? Exactly. And then I also have neighborhood alpha dad things I

gotta, you know what I'm saying, quotas I gotta meet. Oh, hell yeah. You got a house full of girls, man. You gotta let them know what time it is out there. Exactly. Right around 1.30 when everybody's going by to pick up kids from school, I'll be outside with a slanty dog. That's right.

Alpha dad. Don't you forget it. Yeah, this house ain't the one, y'all. Oh, that's awesome. But that being said, that's about it for my notes. And I look forward to hearing the rest of the show, man. Hey, thanks, bro. Thank you so much for calling in and all the great stuff there. Appreciate it. All right, man.

All love. All right. Bye. Blade Walker, everybody. That's a great call. He's always got such good energy. You imagine going to a CrossFit gym with him and he's the coach. Like, you walk in and try to have a bad day.

It ain't going to happen. It ain't going to it ain't gonna happen he won't let it um there was a comment up here earlier when you are coaching dropping into class um cody uh turn it around when you as a coach are taking a class or dropping in somewhere what makes a great experience for you chances are yes exactly exactly man and i can't tell you how much we use as as an example like go to another gym like you're walking in you're already feeling like a little bit of afraid anxious like nervous about the whole situation and if you're not greeted right away or somebody's not like you know enthusiastic to see you it even makes that tougher caller hi welcome to the show

hey matt how you doing it's, Frank, what's going on, man? Not much. I wanted to follow up on what you were saying about Don and Dave. I agree with you. I think they have to fight for affiliates. And I guess that's, as the organizer of the CF Affiliate Collective, that's my kind of primary issue with private equity owning is that they are having to constantly fight to do

more for affiliates. And isn't the solution ultimately that if affiliates own the company, couldn't we get back to where the good old days, and I think you referred to them? Yep. Here's two things about that. Number one, I feel that the good old days are always better in hindsight. Right. So there was probably still a lot of improvement that could have been made back then. There's a lot of decisions that happened that if there was this landscape of media at that time would have berated some of those decisions just as we do everything else right now. So, number one, there's always kind of this glorifying of the past. right now so number one there's always kind of this glorifying of the past and number two i don't think that that will ever happen again unless there's a single owner of crossfit and they have

like a a vision that matches similar to what where greg was kind of steering the ship and they get really core to the methodology of what crossfit is which would be tough to do. Yeah, you know, I think it will definitely be different than when Greg was in charge, but I think largely affiliates would, you know, direct Don to, hey, do what's right for affiliates and that's your guiding star. And if you make decisions that do that and give Don and Dave and Nicole the autonomy, I mean, I think they have demonstrated that they want to do the right thing long-term for affiliates. The question is, you know, how much is the board letting them?

And even if it was a matter of, you know, just giving them free reign or having oversight, you know, affiliates ultimately, I think, want to do what's best for affiliates. And my biggest concern with private equity is they seem to be concerned with short-term profits preparing to sell the company in three to five years. Yeah, well, here's the deal. They're concerned with whatever the initiatives that the board wants, right? So their job is to appease their bosses and their bosses is the board and the managing partners at Berkshire.

And Berkshire wants one thing. They want a return on their investment. They didn't buy CrossFit because they think it was going to change the world's health and that they were going to just steer that ship into that direction until all of eternity. Like they basically bought it and saw that they could make some changes

that would make it more profitable and would give it some stronger, more consistent revenue lines and that they could use that to say, hey, in five years, this will be worth this X much more and makes it appealing to another private equity company, right? Absolutely. So maybe you get back to the topic for the episode,

I think was 30 million crossfit. How do we get there? I think that's a long-term strategy for Don, and I don't know if private equity has any interest in that goal. I'm kind of surprised they let him even put it out there. I mean, I think it's a good long-term strategy, and maybe private equity thinks, you know, that'll increase the value of the brand short-term, but, you know, the question is how much money are they realistically being willing to spend on it? So, when you talk about the health conference, you know, or a trainer summit, you know, is that something they're spending money on? Or is it something, you know, like you said, they're outs three and a half years has been that we have,

you know, people on the board making decisions about marketing that aren't CrossFitters, don't own gyms, you know, how are we going to get to 30 million? Yeah, I mean, that's a great question, right? And if I had the chance to kind of probe on that more, the first question I would just come up with is why 30, right? Because then you could start to reverse engineer, like what gave you like, why not 10? Why not 300? Why not, you know, why 30? Right. And then the next question of course would be like the, how, the, how that's how we're going to get there with it. Um, but here's the deal. I think we've already heard Don say on, um, the other podcasts and Cocktails, that he was taking a

meaningful amount of money out of the games. And if you listen to some of the stuff that I've said about the games, I've always said that the revenue from training and the revenues from affiliates subsidizes the CrossFit Games because the CrossFit Games as a standalone would not be profitable. So meaning if no money could be put into the games and it had to be self-sufficient, meaning the Open funded it, sponsors funded it, quarterfinals funded it, would it still exist? Could it still stand up on its own?

And I think the answer to that is no. I mean, we've seen this in multiple different examples with like, you know, when they tried to license out semifinals and this type of stuff and like, you know, with Guad know, with water blues or these pop-up of these zealous games. And we know that it's really hard for them to turn a profit. Um, and so if you were just to reroute the money that the CrossFit games was pulling out of training and pulling out of affiliates and just saying, Hey, this marketing tool isn't working as well as we needed to, let's reinvest these dollars into CrossFit

for Health summits, affiliate gathering, trainer summits. You could see that that would become more of an investment because if they're able to do more of these things, bring more of those people together, affiliate owners and trainers, and improve the quality of service just through connection, and then also reach a larger audience by pulling in some of these high profile speakers and stuff like that. That's going to be more of an investment to grow affiliates, to grow coaches, to grow CrossFitters. Yeah, I'm with you.

I mean, I think the games has always been something that intimidates people. I think there's some, I mean, I think it unites the existing community, you know, and I think the games largely should stand on its own or be used as a platform to promote the approachability of CrossFit and the message and methodology of CrossFit instead of showing the empty competition or, you know, in between heats. I think I could be telling the stories of transformation. You know, I think there's a case to be made there for continuing to support the games if it supports affiliates.

But I'm with you. continuing to support the games if it supports affiliates. But I'm with you. I mean, I just, and I think it's interesting that it's 30 million CrossFitters. It's not Jim, every affiliate being a lifeboat. I have a concern that CrossFit headquarters is seeing dollar signs and that may not be a

pass through affiliates. You know, it may be, you know, starting to offer online training and they even kind of push that out at one point and suggested, oh, this is just a stepping stone to get people into affiliates. And it works out that way. Great. But I think part of the magic is the community you get in affiliates and the coaching you get in affiliates. So I guess I'm a little biased as a gym owner slash former affiliate owner, but I don't know, a couple of thoughts there. Yeah, interesting. Cut me off whenever. Hey, well, I got one question with you. So this affiliate collective thing, how would that work?

I guess a big question, but largely affiliates make up the vast majority of HQ's revenue. If we are organized and collectively come to private equity and say, hey, we, you know, say there's 10,000 out of the 12,000 affiliates, we come to private equity and say, hey, we want to buy the company. Private equity could certainly say no, and we'll say, great, we're going to go start our own brand and they will I think chase us out the door. But if they don't we can easily start a new brand. I think everybody loves CrossFit and what it stands for methodology wise and community wise but largely the community comes with the affiliates and the methodology while Greg owns it you know arguably with his IP. affiliates and the methodology while Greg owns it, you know, arguably with his IP, CrossFit Inc. doesn't own the methodology and nobody owns burpees and, you know, thrusters and, you know,

a salt bike. So, well, somebody owns a salt bike, you know, fan bikes. So, you know, I think largely private equity has taken their initial investment out of the company. I think, you know, again, I'm theorizing, I guess, but, you know, these are things that come up in the negotiation. I think if they put in $200 million, they settle the NSA lawsuit for $100 million and take that money out. And then someone in private equity told me that, you know, typically private equity will take out a large loan in the books of the company to pay themselves back that initial investment. And it doesn't surprise me that they break even if they have a large loan payment on a $100 million loan for the remainder of their initial investment. So they've already broken even as best I can tell or what seems to me to be private equities formula. And it makes sense, right? They've

taken their money out. Now the only thing they can do is break even. Worst case scenario, the company goes bankrupt and they break even. They sell the company for even 20 million and they've made 10 percent profit or 40 million and they've made their 20 percent profit. You know, obviously, you know, that's that's kind of what they want. Right. And so, again, we you know, we have all the negotiating leverage if there's multiple affiliates, you know, or I should say the vast majority of affiliates are organized and we come together collectively and say sell us the company and again if they don't want to be collectively threatened to leave and if they still don't want to tell us the company we leave and start a new brand and cross it is just a word and really the only thing HQ owns is the word

CrossFit in the phrase forging elite fitness and we can easily replace that word with another word, you know? And yeah, I think that's largely how it works. Now, in terms of what happens once we buy it, well, I think the company is run by a board of directors. The board of directors being made up of affiliate owners, and they would be elected by affiliate owners who are part of the collective that go in and buy this company. I think if you didn't want to buy in for whatever reason, you can continue to stay an affiliate. And really it's some of these decisions are up to a board to decide,

not for me to decide, but this is my initial thoughts. The board of directors would, you know, replace the PE private equity board of directors and, you know, and go to Don and say, Hey, here's the things we think, you know, you got H we need go to Don and say, Hey, here's the things we think, you know, you got H we need to do as HQ. Um, and, and largely would be doing for affiliates what they can't do for themselves and promote the brand positively, um, counter the negative perceptions in the brand and the broader public. And the board would hold Don and the team accountable, um, for, you know,

metrics around how are you doing on those things? You know, versus right now, like you had mentioned earlier, private equity is, you know, the board meetings largely consist of, you know, how are we doing on cutting costs? How are we doing on increasing revenue? And largely the only lever they seem able to pull on increasing revenue is increasing our fees. And I suspect they will do that again. But in terms of how, you know, I see affiliates running the company, I think, you know, largely affiliates want the same things. We want HQ to do what we what we can't do for ourselves. So they would do things like legislate and litigate. You know, we'd hire back the lawyers. We hired back the lobbyists. If affiliate owners are running the board, then I think that we don't need affiliate reps or not at least as many as we have.

I think we'd need better international representation for the international affiliates. I think that's a real opportunity and something we should be doing better. I think largely, you know, marketing the brand in a way that is just effective in terms of promoting the brand positively. All right, well, fair enough. There's more on the Instagram, but I can go for hours.

All right, well, fair enough. Well, thanks for giving those points, Frank. I think a lot of people find some of the stuff that you say interesting here. So we appreciate your opinion. Yeah, if anybody's interested in learning more, go to CF Affiliate Collective on Instagram. All right, brother. Thanks for the help.

Bye. Replace a board with a board. Okay. I know somebody is like, we've been hijacked. Hello, this is Captain speaking and we've been hijacked. Okay, so what are we talking about here hold on caller hello welcome to the show yellow

yes hello what's up brother how you doing i'm great how are you doing i'm fantastic i know so i know who this is because I have your number so popped up Do you want to share with the audience? This this is everybody's favorite friend right now Keith Knapp. There we go What's up Keith, how you doing, bro? I'm doing good, man. I'm actually driving to the gym right now. Just got some new speakers. We're going to go get those set up. Awesome. And I'm also in the middle of chauffeuring kids around to sports games.

Got seven games today. Seven games? Holy shit. You're going to be a busy man. Yeah, dude. We have four kids, three of them playing sports, two of them in tournaments in the weekend. It gets a little crazy. So yeah, today's a day. That's awesome. So you're getting some speakers up in the gym. How is that coming along? I've been seeing some of the stuff on Instagram. It looks like it's awesome. It's good, man. The gym is basically ready to roll roll we've got all the equipment in and rig is fully set up we've had some crew crews coming in this week to do like

test runs of workouts we've done we've had all of our kids classes in there for the past two weeks we had lot Lobby got fully set up, uh, over the weekend, black or over the week this week. Um, all we're doing, all we have left to do right now is, um, a couple of weeks.

And making sure everything stays clean before we have a big grand opening party on Saturday. Dude, that's awesome. I'm I got, uh, your Instagram pulled up right here with a couple of shots, uh,

that you took of the, uh, gym and it looks great, dude. You look like it's fucking, it's ready. got uh your instagram pulled up right here with a couple of shots uh that you took of the uh gym and it looks great dude you look like it's fucking it's ready that's that's good we're kidding there man it's uh it's um it's been a labor of love for sure but we're we're excited about where we stand dude watching you like paint these uh like the lines and stuff on the post on the wall is giving me like ptsd with how much painting i've done in my past i'm like oh if i see another uh freaking have to mask off some more tape lines and shit the gym i'm gonna go crazy oh dude it's it's nuts um but like yeah little stuff like that and like you know the i you know, this is an affiliate owner. Like the grind is, is real. And, um, it's like, in some ways,

this whole situation has been a blessing because I was able to put more time into this than I probably would have been able to otherwise. So. Yeah. So you're all in on this now, right? Like this is like the ships have been burnt behind you. You're on the Island and you're going to make it work. Yeah. I mean, for for the for let's uh in some ways yes i mean there's still the the reality was this gym and the size of it and where it's located it was never intended to be a primary income source yeah um and like i don't

know i don't know if we have the square footage in this space for it to be a primary income source so there is absolutely work that i'm doing um networking that i'm doing in inside the ecosystem to try to find another primary income source um but that being said like for the immediate time being this is this is like what i'm spending all my time on so like five up at five o'clock in the morning not going to bed until way later than I should. Getting the website ready, getting flyers made, doing outreach with people in the community. We had a conversation with like Chamber of Commerce last week. They're going to come out and do a ribbon cutting, getting merchandise all set up. We're getting some of our merch for the for the lobby area we're getting a fit aid cooler and all that kind of stuff set up like just we're pulsing that dude

that's awesome and do you have any do you have any coaches coming on with you right now are you going to be doing all the classes yourself no man we have five coaches five coat you lucky sob how the hell did you get five coaches dude i'd kill for five coaches yeah i mean they're not obviously they're not full-time like i think yeah people most of my coaches are gonna take like one class a night yeah yeah yeah or one class a week like they'll take the evening classes um i do have one coach that's gonna take all of my 9 30 a.m classes nice uh she's. She's a stay-at-home mom who has been coaching boot camp stuff for a long time. And she's like, this is the class that I would want, so I want to make sure we offer it. So she's taking all those classes.

I'm going to coach all the 5.30 a.m. classes. Yeah, buddy. And then I've got a couple of other coaches that are going to fill in and do some kids stuff like right out like after school hours so yeah we're rolling dude that's awesome and i was looking through here too you know what i would love to uh you know what i'd love to see you do is just talk through like how you just said like the chamber of commerce the ribbon cutting i would love I would love some content on you just talking through how you're, how you're positioning the gym and like marketing it and building it up. Cause I think that, that a lot

of other affiliate owners could gain from that. And obviously that's your skillset. That's your knowledge right there. And so to see it apply directly at the level with you doing it with opening a new CrossFit gym, I think there's a lot of, a lot of value in that. So I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts on what you did, what worked for you, what didn't, what you would put more of your time into, what you wouldn't. Because selfishly, I'll just copy a lot of it too. So it's not only for people at large. I mean, that's the cool thing about this community, right? It's like a lot of these ideas aren't new it's just um having really great mentors in the space and man i've been so blessed to like meet great affiliate owners all across the country and all across the world who are like reaching out with

hey have you thought about this have you thought about this um and a couple that are like right around the corner too that have been really cool about um like i had crossfit blue ash um blake evans he's like a long time 10 plus year affiliate owner um he actually had a very similar situation when he first opened his gym he was gainfully employed and lost his lost his job like right before he was getting ready to open and was like all right well this is the thing so he's been an awesome mentor to me had a lot of great thoughts about how to set the rig had a lot of great thoughts about how to set up memberships like dale king is another one who's been like anytime i have a question about how to use like the crm that i'm using or how to set up membership plans or like he one thing that he has

in common with with my area is there's a lot of families that he wants to get in. So he's like, make sure you have a family add-on plan. Like just little things like that that if you're jumping into this brand new and you don't have those relationships, it's going to be a lot harder. But the biggest piece of advice I would give anybody that's getting ready to do this first is just start talking to other owners because there's so there's like such richness in those relationships i mean you i've had conversations with you too about how you engage with fire departments and yep um one of the one of the workouts we did earlier this week we had a couple of folks from the firehouse come over and do like a do a workout and it was just like

them seeing the space and being the space like oh man we got to get more people over here yep right so that's it yeah so it's been it's been good man it's been good well that's awesome dude once you get opened up and stuff i mean we definitely have to have you on in the full capacity and and listen to the whole story and uh and watch your gym just continue to rise and build and build and build i I'm excited for you. I think it's going to be awesome. Appreciate you guys, man. Um, we just wanted to call and say hi,

as I was, uh, in between, in between games and, um, appreciate everything you guys do. Appreciate the conversation. Love this,

love this little, uh, tribe that we all get to be a part of. Yeah. Uh, wish you guys the best. Dude. Thank you.

Thanks so much for calling in bro. And Hey, as always, I know I reached out, but please let me know anything that, uh, I could do or we could get to be a part of. I wish you guys the best. Dude, thank you. Thanks so much for calling in, bro. And hey, as always, I know I reached out, but please let me know anything that I could do or we could do to help. Awesome. Love you guys. All right, brother. Take it easy.

Bye. Keep nap, ladies and gentlemen. That's cool. Called in. Man, what are the odds, too? It's like, you know, what do they say? Like when one door closes, another one opens up. I mean, at least, at least he had such a positive outlet,

like being able to work on his gym. I think like sometimes when people get like removed from jobs, especially one that like Keith was like, he, he, he gets it. Like he was like a big methodology guy, understood the community, like engaged with us and with Hill, like, like he was in the mix. You know what I mean? So when you talk about wanting to market CrossFit, and I think of somebody like Keith, who is really engrossed in all levels of the ecosystem. He gets it from what he has to do at his job and dealing with the board and that red tape there. And then he also understands and knows how to handle the media portion of the community like us and Hiller and the other podcasts.

And then at the same time, he could coach a CrossFit class, right? I mean, what better person to be in that position in terms of marketing who just understands it and lives and breathes it. So kind of a bummer. He's not in that position. I always felt like he was one of the good guys on the inside. But he's got his gym. It's going to be awesome. No doubt. It's going to be a success. Uh, I got the pleasure to work with Keith with, for like quite a, quite a few weeks where we met pretty much weekly, um, with the CrossFit for health summit stuff. And so I got to see, uh, him in many different capacities. And, um, I could say that, uh, there's no doubt he'll be successful in whatever, next venture he he finds himself in especially with the gym now there's a productive phone call um hold on somebody else said something

that i was gonna bring up but maybe not well gang thanks for hanging out we made it an hour and a half dang so it was kind of interesting. Like last night, like we were running around, it was Grace's birthday. And so we had to coach full classes, like leading all the way up. Then we went and grabbed some dinner and hung out and did some stuff like that. And so preparing, and then I found out later in the night that I was doing the show solo today. So I was trying to get a bunch of stuff like together and prepare it. And as I'm like concluding the show, I feel like it was a little bit all over the place. Um, so I apologize for that if, if it felt a little all over the place, but that's how

we kind of roll. It's just, it's just chaos on Tuesdays at 11 AM. I am, um, going to be stepping out on my own and doing a show once a week. So it'd be on Tuesdays at 11 AM. The idea here is that we'll have some conversations about affiliate stuff. I've been kind of writing down some of the things that I've been dealing with in the affiliate, just as like a normal business owner or coach or different things that I think would make some cool discussions and hopefully add some value, hopefully contributes to you guys in some way, whether if it comes from me or like these conversations that we have as we process stuff together.

And then the other thing I'm going to be doing, which I thought would be cool, is we're going to go over to the Broken Science website and we're going to be looking at some of the articles that they've been putting out. If you guys haven't already, if you guys haven't already, go to the Broken Science website.

They have videos and articles and stuff that is just filled with fascinating information and things that are going on. They've been kind of watching this. Diane Farber Cancer Institute is um, misconduct. This was the stuff over at Harvard. Um, and these, uh, articles here written by Russell Berger and you guys know him, he was just recently on the show, um, are incredible. And it's crazy when you start to like crack that nut open, like as far as like how how these the person that's supposed to review the uh literature and the studies that are coming out of harvard is like best buddies with all the people that are writing it and then their funding is intermingled with that and they're just basically

approving shit up into all the way and including straight photoshopped images and AI generated images that were passed off and approved in a quote unquote peer review paper that were never corrected. Holy shit. Are you guys kidding me? So anyways, the idea is that I'll kind of read these articles. We'll break them down. We'll dissect them together. We'll probably bring a couple people on that wrote them onto the show just to talk about them. These people are much smarter than I am. So they can give you guys more of an insight on the articles and the importance of them and what that means. Now, the interesting thing and why you guys should care is because once these papers and these different things are put into play, usually they get in the hands of the politicians and then they're put into policies

and the policies govern our lives. And we saw a massive example of this during COVID time, right? Like nobody even, even, uh, what's his face, the fricking Fauci, even he came out and said, yeah, we didn't really know where the six foot rule came from. We just kind of ran with it. Right. So that's the type of bullshit that we need to be able to have discernment against. And if we're know how, what to look for and, um, and how to dissect those papers and the information that's given to us, it's going to allow us to make better decisions to, uh, govern our lives. So, um, anyways, that's what kind of the, uh, the show will be about there. And we'll finish off with, uh, Rand Alcaraz.

She was also at the, um, she was also at the CrossFit for Health Summit and she spoke on a panel called Simple Not Easy. And this is just a snippet from that here. This thing is not to do it for a short time. It's to do it forever. That's, that's how we are wired as humans is to look for the easy path. But we're also wired as humans to be happiest and to be most effective through struggle and challenging ourselves. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. And it's funny because like she said, it isn't hard to do it for a short period of time. It's hard to do it for forever.

And I think a lot of the stuff that we know and do as CrossFitters, which is working out, eating right, taking personal responsibility is easy to do for a short period of time, a day, two days, three days. But to do it for forever and to do it well for forever, that's where the simple but not easy portion comes in. It's easy to save money for a day. It's hard to do it for five years. So anyhow, we'll be going through some of that stuff as well, some of the CrossFit stuff and everything else. And this, I thought, was just genius, and I wanted to remind you guys about this

because as you go through the internet and you click Agree and Accept on everything, you may want to second guess it and clearly this guy drinking a knockoff version of Mountain Dew um shirtless with a zip-up sweatshirt on is my kind of guy that I take advice from when I see a gentleman of this scholar here, I'm thinking to myself, this guy knows what he's talking about. I got homies go up in the urgent care, signed a couple forms. Uh-oh, they brought him a car from Carvana, dog. He didn't even know he bought a car at the urgent care because that's how many forms be in that pile, dog. You don't even know what form in the pile but you probably gonna sign it

because you want to see that doctor but they gonna be like uh-uh got you on that apr financing that's what they do on them forms that's why i never ever ever dog i ever sign no form unless it's in my blood. Yep. There it is. So I will leave you guys with that. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

I think. Maybe it'll just be Caleb and I again. And then we got some cool guests coming up. We got Kevin Ogar. Of course, we got Greg Glassman. We got Rafa finally down. We got John on Friday, the dude that eats only raw meat.

You guys seen his account? And then we have Paul Litchford as well. We got some cool people coming up this week. And then we're getting closer and closer to the open. And the open announcements are about to be freaking crazy. That shit is literally about to be nuts. Um, we're going to be having a great time with that. Um, he believes in flat earth. Dude, maybe we'll just have me in the flat earth guy on. Oh my gosh. Wouldn't that be something funny? You guys would have me. Okay. All right, guys. Thank you so much

for hanging out. Thanks for everybody who called in thanks for listening thanks for being awesome you guys have a great rest of your day bye