The Sevan Podcast - #634 - Don Faul, CrossFit CEO

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Don Faul, the newly appointed CEO of CrossFit LLC, joins the show to talk about his first few months in the positions and how he sees the future of the company right now. Support the showPartners:https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATIONhttps://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK!https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bam, we're live. Don, good morning. Below you is Caleb Beaver from an undisclosed location. I suspect you maybe have been. And Matt Souza, the owner of CrossFit Livermore. I should have asked you before. Is it okay if we start four minutes early? Absolutely.

Let's do it. Oh, that room is awesome. The acoustics. I like this room that you're in. All right. All right. Yeah, furniture, couches, blankets, it stops the echo a little bit. I moved all the furniture on this morning to make sure the acoustics were perfect. You man. Hey, in that other room, there's like this huge machine behind you. Is that like a, that's like a copy fax machine scanner, the whole.

Yeah. That's the complete, the aesthetic is the big HP printer there. So. Look how hard I work. Is that thing from 1987? It is. I bought like 7,000 toner. So I'm just milking that thing forever. That's like the size. It's like in jugs in your garage. Exactly. I make my kids refill it. It's great.

Three kids. That's right. I watched so many videos on you in the last two years. Five, seven, nine. Correct. Wow. Impressive. I was like, what if they got

older? I have a two five-year-olds and a, um, eight-year-old. Okay. Boys, girls, boys, all three boys. I'm kind of in the same boat as you. So you had the, you had the twin boys after the first one, huh? Yes. I have the same thing as you, but I have the dumb version of humans, the man. Well, yeah, I think you're going to be getting the last laugh in about five years when I've got three teenage girls. So it's going to be amazing. And you're just up. You're just up the road for me. You're actually kind of equidistant between where I live and where Matt Sousa lives. I'm in Santa Cruz and he's up in Livermore. Oh, perfect. Yeah. I'm right up on the peninsula. So not far. I'm down in Santa Cruz two, three days a week now. It's funny. Cause I looked up your neighborhood yesterday to check

out your commute. It is, it is a, um, I mean, you're going the opposite direction of traffic, but you have to go over the 17. That's a, um, that's a, that's a little bit of a tedious haul every day. You know what? If I leave at the right time, it's like 40, 45 minutes door to door. So it's not bad. And it's a pretty drive. As long as there's no accident on 17, it works out nicely.

And what Don is saying is very valid. As long as there's no accident. That place, it's basically a two-lane highway each direction super windy through the mountains yeah and there's zero alternatives so if that thing shuts down you're just sitting in it so i was actually i kind of fell down a rabbit hole yesterday and i was looking the original road that came over the hill was the road called old san jose road it was built in 1853 and it was made of obviously of dirt and i was just imagining coming over that pass on a horse and buggy wow yeah that would have been pretty intense

i watched all everything i could find on youtube about you well there's not much so that's good there is hey there isn't that much um but there was a talk from about eight years ago that you did at a conference, and I think it was about eight minutes long, and it talked about – I think you were at Pinterest at the time. Okay. And you talked about the challenges of growth there, which I thought were really cool, and the differences between the group that starts a company versus the group that kind of carries it into the next phase. It was a really good talk. Your talk with the guy, it's some sort of military podcast. It's about 50 minutes long, and you basically are giving advice on how to transition out of the military. That actually, of all the ones I listened to, that one's money.

Good on you for doing that. Oh, thank you. Well, I was super lucky. I got off active duty in 2004. And I've got actually two younger brothers, both Marine veterans as well. And the transition is kind of brutal. You go through the thing of getting excited to get off active duty, and then you have no idea how to think about it, what to to do where to look how to talk about and communicate what you've done so i was super lucky to to talk to a bunch of folks when i was getting out of the marine corps who were super helpful to me and so i've always felt you know a bit of a responsibility to you know try to pay it forward and help other folks as they go

through their journey um tons of insecurity right because you're basically working in this bubble even though you might be highly skilled, you might be highly competent. Basically in this video, you talk about you're so insecure because you're not sure how these skills are going to translate to the real world, but really you have no reason to be insecure. You have insane skills. Yeah. It takes you a little while to realize that. Like I went to, you know, I was lucky enough to go to grad school and I remember, you know, starting a business school and sit next to all these folks who have been at investment banks and consulting firms doing strategy X, Y, and Z.

And half the classes we went through, I had literally zero context around. And I remember this overwhelming sense of imposter syndrome and holy shit, how am I possibly going to be successful? I don't even know what the professors are talking about. And it takes a while before you realize that actually like all of the hands-on leadership experience that you've had is, you know, one of the most important things. And most of the folks around you have not had an opportunity to do any of that. So, um, but it can be, it definitely can be a bit of a daunting transition initially. Uh, it, it's kind of in the vernacular too right

they start using they start using all of the it's kind of like that for when i first started working at crossfit i was surrounded by mill guys surrounded by them and and i couldn't even understand what they were saying the vernacular but but it was the same thing when i would talk to other guys and i'd been a crossfit media for 15 years and I would speak to the head media guy at the UFC. And because our culture is so different at CrossFit, I didn't understand any of their vernacular. I mean, we weren't allowed to use words like marketing when I was there. Totally. Totally. No, that's exactly right. And when you eventually break it down to simple language and single terms, you realize it's not as complex as you thought it was,

but the vernacular can be intimidating. There was this thing i learned from working with people the the mill guys uh specifically i'll choose the one that still works there now dave castro there was this thing now that people project onto him that the that um he doesn't behave professionally and maybe that would have been my perspective when i first came there because i was the dirt twirling hippie from berkeley and i believed in all the political correctness stuff and i believed in in just a certain protocol you know are you sure this is okay is this how does this bother you is this but after working with dave for five years and a ton of other mill guys jimmy letchford andy stump just the names go on and on um todd widman uh i realized that

the script was actually flipped they were the real professionals and the definition of profession that i would use is their decisions had the utmost important because it was they were they were they were used to making decisions that were life or death are we going to eat tonight are we going to live tonight where are we going to sleep tonight who's going to shoot at us tonight and i'm like holy fuck these are the real professionals but but the rest of the world wasn't hadn't um they were looking for the suit and tie and then the uh and the salutations and the niceties but the actual effectiveness was with with with these guys. It was weird. It was, it was a tough transition for me.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I get that. And, and one of the things I appreciated about my time in the military that I think is, is, you know, pretty consistent theme with the veterans is you learn really early there that your decision makings are always oriented around, you know, we should say the Naval Academy, they taught us ship, ship made self. Like it's always about the mission. It's always about your teammates next. And then it's about yourself last. So it's never about your own interests and your own priorities. And, and I was super grateful to learn that. And I think that's a pretty consistent thing

that you see in veterans who are about, okay, what is, and you know, I think Dave emulates this, like, Hey, it's about getting it done. It's about putting all of our efforts towards what's most important for the collective, not the individual. Your path is kind of nuts. It's kind of like you were made for this. And as I watched all these videos, it made me really happy. It's like you talk openly about how this is your dream job. I've never heard someone become the CEO of Coca-Cola and be like,

oh, that was my dream job. I mean, I'm sure they're excited about the paycheck and the equity, but you were pretty open and giddy that you got this gig and you're open about your nervousness during the application process it was really cool oh thank you yeah i mean i uh i have definitely had a little bit of a weird bizarre background kind of every step you know i grew up in this little town in new jersey without much military legacy in my family and was lucky enough to kind of discover the military, make the decision as a 17-year-old to go to the Naval Academy, having literally zeroed idea what I was getting myself into. But that 10 years, you know,

between me and my time at Navy and then my time on active duty was so formative for me. Gosh, what a privilege. I learned so much surrounded by such amazing people. And then to go from that to, you know, the Valley and go into an early stage consumer technology company. I mean, going from Google to the Marine Corps, it's like one end of the cultural spectrum to the other. They could not have been more different, which was amazing for me because I got to learn a whole host of completely new things. And then, you know, super lucky and fortunate to get a chance to work at some cool companies. And then, you know, super lucky and fortunate to get a chance to work at some cool companies. And then serendipity comes along and the opportunity with my last company, Athos, which started to make the bridge from tech into sports performance,

fitness, health, which has always been an interest and passion of mine. And then CrossFit. I mean, it's, you know, I think the takeaway for me is like, you can't, you just can't script your career. When I talk to people all the time, like you can't look 15 years out and map your way. I think the best you can do is try to make sure you're in a role that you love, where you feel like you can have an impact and help the people around you. And then, you know, when the opportunities come along, hopefully you have a chance to jump on it. And so, yeah, this is, I mean, I never would have imagined I'd be here when I started CrossFit seven, eight years ago. But, yeah, really amazing and kind of funny how my respective experiences, I think, line up to hopefully put me in a position where I can really help in this role. uh born in allendale new jersey uh obviously did well in high school end up going to the naval academy from there enter the marine corps somewhere you pick up rugby in 1998 you're named

an all-american in uh rugby so so right off like, Hey, this guy is a glutton for punishment and there's no laziness in them. Are your brothers older or younger? They're younger. So they're twins. Oh, I think it's younger. You're a natural leader. The first born is always the leader. Yeah. Did they, do you remember them looking up to you as a kid? Uh, you know, yes. Uh, you know, we were, you know, we had that age where we were five years. So until I was probably 16 or 17, you know, we hung out, but, but we mostly battled, right. It was that, that, uh, sibling, um, dynamic. And then when I went to college, they started to get to a point where we went from like

younger, older brother to super close friends. And, um, you know, it's funny, my brother, one of my brothers grew up absolutely from the age of 12 saying, Hey, I want to go into the military. The other one went the other direction, went to university at Colorado of the three of us actually had fun in college at a great time. And then surprised the salt senior year and said, hey, I want to go in the Marines. He ended up being a Marine pilot. The youngest one, the one that went to the University of Colorado. Correct. Yeah, he's the older of the two twins. But yeah, he was the one who surprised us. We thought he was having a great time in college, zero interest whatsoever. And then senior year

said, hey, this is for me. Ironically, he ended up staying in the Marine Corps the marine corps the longest he did about 10 11 years i don't mean to be confrontational with you so quickly in the podcast but the opposite of the marine corps is university of portland if there is one not gotcha gotcha uh yeah i apologize for being contentious early. I love it. So then from there, after that, you get out and you – which is – I'm reading through the lines here. But to hide, you go to Stanford. It's a fucking weird place to hide. To buy yourself some time to kind of assimilate back to the public would probably be more accurate you choose to go to one of the most difficult schools uh in the world well i you know it's funny when i got out of the marine corps i had absolutely no idea what i wanted to do i went from this moment

of like yes like i'm going to be out of the marine corps i can start why did you get out don sorry why did you leave you know a combination of yeah for sure. There are elements of it I loved. And I was in, you know, when I got out, I was in what for me was like the dream job in the military. I was at this unit called First Force Reconnaissance Company. I was a between men or it was the dream job. There were two things I knew most likely I was not going to be a career guy. You know, if you end up staying in the career for the folks who do it, you have to check a bunch of boxes and you have to go from an operational job to administrative jobs. And I just didn't have passion for that. I love the operational elements of it, but I didn't really have interest in some of these roles that would have been necessary.

And I knew at some point that I wanted to have a family. And as you know, it's obvious, especially during that timeframe, you're deploying once every 18 months or so. It's really, really tough. The big driver though, honestly, was I had a boss in the Marine Corps who was tough, just a really tough person to work for. Ethically, bunch of issues from a leadership perspective that made it really, really hard. And it had, I didn't have the love and passion showing up for work every day that I had. I was super bummed. That fits that motto or that line, that tagline, people don't leave jobs, they leave people. A hundred percent. Yeah, a hundred percent. And that was absolutely

it for me. I would have stayed in at least another year and a half, two years. And you were tip of the spear. Marine recon, there's SEALs, there's pararescue, there's Rangers, there's Delta Force. I mean, that Marine recon, once again, All-American and rugby, Stanford, and here's another example. You were a Marine and then you had to be like, hey, I'm going to choose that path. And you went the hardest path, right? Yeah, that's one. Yeah, certainly one way of looking at it. It was, you know, for me, you know, I guess I've always been somewhat motivated by kind of what's the next challenge?

What's the next hard thing? And, you know, as much to prove to myself, like, can I do it? I actually, like, growing up, I was not a great athlete. I was an okay athlete, but I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder because I had no, no path coming out of high school to play in college, even though I desperately wanted to. And so I think I came out of high school with a little bit of a chip, like, Hey, can I prove to myself that I can actually, you know, get to that level. And so, yeah, Force Recon was another kind of step on that path and a chance to work with who I perceive to be, you know,

the most elite, the best Marines in the Marine Corps within our domain. I had a guy on here, Roger Sparks, the other day. He's a little bit older than you. He's 50, and he was Marine Recon. And he chose Marine Recon because his dad was an enforcer of the Mongols. But these are two common stories I'm hearing of the boys that go to the tip of the spear that something else wasn't working out, but they were going to show you. And then the other group of boys was like, fuck this. I this lifestyle like home home was hard oh yeah and they still want to be bad asses but home was like home was it like going to be a dead end like you were you were headed to jail

yeah no and i was i was fortunate i could not have come from a more blessed upbringing uh amazing so for me it was this little growing, probably a little bit of a chip to like, Hey, can I prove that I can do this? And you, that can be squandered. Like, like the, I mean, we see, we see it all the time, right? People who, who you're saying you had this blessed upbringing, but that doesn't, that doesn't do anything for you, except, I mean, the opportunities still have to be taken. Yeah, no question. And, and, you know, you can have a CrossFit gym right next door to you, but if you don't sign up, you're not getting fit. Right.

Totally. And I think it's actually quite easy. You know, my, I look back and think I'm really grateful to my parents because I, we didn't want for anything. And yet, you know, my parents taught us the value of hard work and perseverance. And so I think it's easy. You know, if you grow up in a blessed upbringing, it can be easy to not develop, you know, that muscle to not face adversity, to take the easy path. And so I feel really lucky that I had this great upbringing, but also came out of it with a real hunger to try to prove things to myself.

Like that you turn that you leverage that chip, you leverage your ego. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's an interesting, my wife and I talk about it all the time because she had a similar, my wife was much better athlete than me, you know, much better student than me, much better on most dimensions, but she also lucky upbringing, but also came out with this. We have a little bit of this. We kind of have joke about it, like irrational competitive streak that comes out in all sorts of weird ways. But I look back and I'm super grateful for it. Cause I think it led to a lot of opportunities for both of us. Um, yesterday, uh, I don't remember what I think I was, I think, Oh, I think we were at like a tennis tournament or something. And then she was going to take them somewhere else. And I had to come home and prepare for Dawn fall. And I actually felt a little competitive. I said, Oh shit. She goes, what? I'm like, you might be a better, the better parent today. Like I want to go to bed every night being the better parent. It was weird. She looked at me like I was crazy, but it's good. Those things are good. If you can say that again, I said, I get that look a lot. You might be crazy, but it's good when you see those things. Cause you can leverage those things for a positive, you know, exactly. And, you know, and now I think I'm at the point in my life where I can also be aware of, there are ways that it

can manifest in ways that aren't the most constructive um and so being a little bit more conscious that as well um don can you do these uh we reached out to don don can you do the podcast he said absolutely then we said how about seven and pacific standard time and don says uh i prefer nine i have to deal with i have not deal i mean it was a nicer word than that i'm working with my daughters in the morning and I need to get a workout in. And I'm like, Oh man, this is, you want them over right then. Oh my, this is so good because that's, I mean, that's why I should get everything out of the way first thing in the morning so I can spend the rest of the day with my boys. Like I need that time.

And working out, I have to work out. Even if it's one in the morning, I have to go to the garage. Yeah. You don't want to be around me if i'm missing workouts so it's not pleasant so so you're being serious it really is you need that mentally physically oh 100 check that box 100 yeah i uh you know it's interesting when i got when i got out of the marines started working at google facebook i actually got in a path where where i was working too much and not taking care of myself. I was eating my shits. I was not working out, not training. And it was a bad spiral. It was a bad spiral. Did you get chubby? I did. I did. I did. I remember, you know, one of my friends at some point we had posted, I was, I was still doing triathlons at that point,

but one of my friends made some comment and I was like, shit, I need to get my house in order. Aren't friends great. Aren't friends great aren't friends for sure i mean especially my you know my military friends like mince no words uh so which i appreciate um i i i a few weeks ago i had sent dave a text saying hey dude long time buddy like what's up like you just vanished off the face of the earth what your new job got you busy this fucking guy comes over last week and texts me and goes hey your garage door's open that means he's pulled up to my house i haven't seen or talked to him i opened the gate and he goes fuck you got old i mean i'm like at least don can lose some weight what do you want me to do i can't i me to do? I can't turn back the clock.

That's your way of bonding after I send you a nasty text? That's how we show our affection. I remember my mom, the first time she met my friends in the Naval Academy, she heard us hanging out for a while just giving each other shit. And she said, wait, Don, these are your friends? And I said, yeah, Mom, this is how we show our affection for each other. We tear each other down. So it's your love language. Exactly. It's our love language.

Don, what, what do your parents do or what did they do? Um, so my mother, um, my mother was a nurse and, um, she was actually, she, um, up until she, she had me, um, this kind of full-time professional nurse. Um, and when, um, when I was born, basically kind of put that all to the side, put her career to the side as was often the case, I think for a generation. And she raised me and she raised my brothers. She sounds smart. Yeah. Smart. And she definitely took the harder path. Zero question about that. It didn't, didn't recognize that, but but now having having little kids um my dad was um he worked in environmental engineering um and had a law degree so he

worked at companies really early on in the early 80s when the epa started cracking down on on kind of super fun type stuff he worked at a firm that would take toxic waste and help companies remediate it uh and did that for a long time And you went to engineering school at the Naval Academy. I did. Yep. I did engineering there. And in one of the interviews, you said something about your parents wanted you to serve. What does that mean? They wanted you to serve. If I'm, if I'm a parent, I'm scared to death to send my sistine chapel my greatest piece of artwork off to for sure in harm's way what does that mean they wanted you to i think for my parents it was about teaching us that we had a responsibility to give something back peace corps peace corps peace corps

yeah and that could be anything not marine peace corps totally and i think if my brothers and i had chosen that path they would have been 100% okay with it. Or if we chose to volunteer in our town or if we had done whatever it is, I think there's a million ways. But my parents wanted us to know that like, hey, yes, we live in this. We were blessed growing up. We live in this amazing society, the best society on the planet. And you, we as members of that society have a responsibility to do something and get back. This does not all come for free. And so that manifested in military for us. But I think

the broader issue and the broader notion was about giving back about service. How, how happy are your parents? They probably don't even know what you're doing right now. You are now in the leadership position, and obviously I'm biased, but all by side. You're now in the leadership position of a company, a community. I don't know what it is. A movement. that could have the greatest impact the planet's ever seen in terms of just what – making humans better, letting humans – setting humans free, making humans comfortable with themselves, letting them live longer. It's nuts. Does she know? Do your parents know? Do your parents do CrossFit?

They don't. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. It's hard. It's hard to get them to. I got my mom to, and she cries to this day. She can't believe she does it. And my mom's not a crier at all. She'll be like, thank you for introducing me. Sorry, go ahead. Do your parents know where you've landed? I think on one dimension, I think they see and hear from me how happy I am.

And they know me well enough to be really happy about that, obviously. And as, you know, as a parent, you are with your children. I think, you know, and I think this is in general, like, if you're not inside the community, it's hard to get. It's hard to get. Totally. I mean, this is like one of our biggest challenges. Like, how do we communicate this thing that we all feel that is really hard to put words around and really hard to internalize for folks who haven't experienced it themselves? And so, you know, I think my parents absolutely can see how energized I am, despite how insanely busy things are. They're really excited about that. I talk a lot about it. You know, my brothers actually, when I got the job classic, they said, great, you're going to talk about it even more now. Um, but, uh, you know, it's, I, I think it is hard for folks to kind of fully get it if you and figure out what the fuck this thing is. the inside for 15 years and it probably still took me 10 years to start really understanding like oh shit this is not this is something different and people come into it um working

here or even from the outside the things that you hear people complain about crossfit about like it it doesn't even make sense it would be like if someone said, hey, this apple is the worst piece of meat I ever had. Like they came to a presupposition that it was meat, and that's why they're fucking completely clueless, right? They've – they're not even in the conversation. It is – it's – I don't – leading this thing is nuts because I don't know if there is a case study. I don't know if it's the church, the Catholic church, or I don't know if it's like Charles Manson, or I don't know if it's the hell's angels maybe, but this thing isn't, um, okay, it's McDonald's. It's November guys. Time to set, put out your happy meals. Okay guys. It's, um, it's, it's October. It's time to do

chicken wings. There's no, you're massaging and it's a small business miracle, right? Totally. I mean, the whole thing is just like, how do you, how do you, um, what do you, what do you look to? Right. I mean, Burger King can look to McDonald's and be like, Oh, that's smart. They changed the wrappers to yellow and their hamburger sales doubled. Yeah. Like, like what is there, do you have any case studies do you think is there anyone you look at and be like okay this these are some of the things i want i mean obviously the chain of command that you learned in the military sorry i gotta throw this in there too when when the mill guys came in and they they kept chain of command at crossfit we it was crazy it took me forever to get a grip on that. But once that was in place

and everyone knew their duties and there was trust, and I've heard you talk about that. Once everyone got out of the leadership, like people like Dave would give you your orders and then get out of your way, we exploded. And then in 2018, they tried to make the company flat. And I hear a lot of people tell you that in 2020 is when everything got fucked up. That is not true. I hear a lot of people tell you that in 2020 is when everything got fucked up. That is not true. In 2018, we were the best employment brand on the planet. Every single person wanted to work there.

And then we had a cultural collapse in 2018. Bizarre, right? And they tried to make the company flat and everything just scattered. So there's two big, huge pieces. And I'm so happy to hear you say that you want to fix the culture internally because it really used to be every single person there. You didn't even have to tell them what to do. Totally. Because everyone wanted to be – it was like probably in the Marines.

You knew you got up in the morning. You did this, this, this, and this. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's – I think on the first point, how do you look? What's the proxy? I think actually on the cultural side, there's a lot of places that we can look to because I think ultimately, one of the things I've learned having worked in very different environments, Marine Corps, technology, now CrossFit, I think at the end of the day, there are some universal truths as it relates to people and what puts them in a position to do their best work and love what they do. And CrossFit had that. And as you mentioned, we've lost our way a little bit. But I think there is a path to getting back to that with clarity, like clarity of vision. What are we working towards? And is that something that people actually truly believe in? Can we articulate that clearly?

Do we have a culture internally where we have a shared set of values? Do we have a structure that clarifies ownership and responsibility? There are a set of things that we can do that we're working on that put people in a position where they can show up every day and just run as fast as they can and feel great about what they're doing. And we've not been there for a little bit. What does that look like? Like there, there was a point, a guy I really, really liked. So I don't want to say his name, but he came from another company,

almost a billion dollar company. And he started working across it and he started hiring people from outside. And that's when we started losing the collapse of that's when the culture started collapsing because it used to be okay. If I was working out in the gym and I was doing overhead squats with 95 and some 18-year-old girl was doing overhead squats with 135. She goes, God, you're a bitch. And I would just be like, I know who that's directed at. That's a military culture. Yeah. And she wasn't even a mill girl.

I know. She had to learn that. Someone had to do that to her to be like – and I'm not saying that that's the appropriate culture forever, but we had our culture there, and everyone there worked out. And then some people started getting hired who didn't do CrossFit. Yeah. And what are some – how are you – and don't get me wrong. I'm sure compared to McDonald's or even Facebook up the Hill, I've been in their offices. People are more happy to work at CrossFit than either of those places, but this machine has the potential that every person is an apostle, right? For sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, look, one of the, um, one of the challenges and

things that I don't know that we've done the best job. It is CrossFit has such a unique history and culture that is impossible to just write down on paper and communicate to someone, um, internally, but also within the community. And so bringing someone in, and this is to some degree been true of like some of the biggest failures I saw in my career were like at Facebook, we hired a bunch of people from Google and they came in and tried to do what we did at Google. And it fell flat because the culture was different and the business was different and the nuance and the language was different. And the folks who were not self-aware, who didn't take the time really struggled and take that, you know, the challenge that existed

there. I think the complexity of, of's unique is 100 times more challenging at CrossFit. So we have that same issue. And so I wouldn't say explicitly that someone who hasn't done CrossFit can't be successful, but it is much, much, much, much more challenging. much, much, much more challenging. And if we're going to hire people in who, who are not coming from that environment, we have to make sure they are spending the time to listen, spending, you have to do CrossFit. That's just kind of black and white. Like you, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta work out, you gotta do CrossFit. There is no other way to learn and understand what it means or get really immersed in the culture. Or by the way, if you don't want to do CrossFit, why are you working here? Um, you know, isn't another piece, but I think that the, um, there is a high organ rejection

rate. I was talking to our board about this. What was the word you used? A high or organ rejection. Like I think about in terms of like, Oh, organ rejection, right? Like if we are not hiring people, look, I've spent eight years doing CrossFit. I came from a military background, two things that I think worked in my favor, and I'm still learning. It's still hard to get all the nuance and really understand.

So trying to hire folks who don't have any of that, I think is really, really challenging. And so I think for us moving forward, I think we just have to be really cognizant. One, we have to work really hard to find amazing people who are in the community. And there are a lot of people out there. So if we're looking for roles, I think we should start by looking within the community first. If we feel like we need to hire, there is a role where we benefit from hiring someone who is world-class, who can help us win, then we have to work really hard to first, that person has to be self-aware. They have to come in knowing that their instincts and the language and the culture they're coming from is fundamentally different. And before they come

in and say, we should do X, Y, and Z, the first X months would just be listening and learning. That's it. When you say self-aware, you mean catch themselves from doing their regular reactions, kind of to be in full meditation mode. Exactly. Like, you know, even for me, I remember my second day so my second day was at the games i did a podcast with um uh stefan and uh by the way great podcast i really hate to say it i really wanted him to fail but fuck he killed you guys killed it you're easy to podcast with by the way too you're a great talker oh thank you thank you well next time i want them to put me um next to someone who doesn't make me look like such a puny what is that vein on his arm

seriously i was super happy to come on with you savan in that respect i'm old and washed up adapting to our culture well you would be both uh but i remember in that podcast um i was talking about about the impact that crossfit has and and why i was so bullish because i've never seen anything you know working at facebook they're gonna google which by the way have billions of people using their product and yet i think the impact that we have is so much more profound and i called um crossfit product. I just said, hey, our product. And we got done with the podcast. And I remember I asked right after, we stopped and people said, hey, great. That was great. And I said, okay, great. Feedback,

where can I get better? And silence. I'm like, no, I know that wasn't perfect. I'm on day two. I know there's a bunch of stuff I screwed up there. And then, you know, someone on the team said, CrossFit's not a product, not a product. And I was like, shit, thank you for sharing that. Because words matter, semantics matter. And I tell that story because I think anyone who's coming in is going to miss steps like that. And because what we do is just so fundamentally unique, even if you have the best of intentions. And if you're not open to learning and asking and recognizing that with the way you approach something or the idea that you threw out there, that may have been a hundred percent right in the place that you came from. Very often, it's not going to be perfect here. And if you can't come in with that self

awareness, you're going to really struggle. So I think that I think is really, really important. It's interesting you say that when there was a period, I think is really, really important. It's interesting. You say that when, uh, there was a, a peer, I didn't get fired right away. They kept me for a little bit. And so I got to sit on some, some of the, uh, calls where everyone was on at the same time. And the two things that stood out to me the most were, uh, one, when Gary Gaines came on, he actually, it was actually amazing.

It was probably the best thing that was said during the whole thing. He opened with, thank you, guys, for building this. And like, God, that went so far. And, of course, the 200 people who worked there are all on one text thread together just waiting to jump on anyone, right? And then someone else referred to CrossFit as a platform, and that, no one liked that, right? Because it's coming from the tech like you said and and if you in the 2008 documentary every second counts at the very end jason kalipa wins and greg glassman puts his arm around him he goes this is our product which is

the weird part about the business again you don't get the product you are the product yeah that's right crossfit's not offering the product you're product. The whole thing is it's so hard to – I would tell people that I thought that CrossFit was part Catholic church, part Greenpeace, and part Hell's Angels, right? Yeah. It's a really – and it's a crazy resilient brand, isn't it? Oh, it's a really and it's a crazy resilient brand isn't it oh it's incredible i mean it's the the awareness that we have relative to what i mean we're the company full time is only 200 people it's tiny tiny oh i'm so glad you say that i used to have to defend that all the time guys we're not fucking coca-cola yeah this is a little what are the small ships in the navy that just go around and kick ass we've got to be what the frigates

yeah we're crossfit's a frigate yeah yeah that's right that's right which means we need to be super nimble right like the advantage of being small is moving fast and being more nimble than everybody else you would say that you wanted growth and you would keep saying that. And I know that they were just in the, it was kind of unfair. You were being asked your plan for CrossFit on day four, you know, and all these podcasts I watch of you were in the first month. And it triggered me. I kept getting concerned like growth.

Is he going to, what's he gonna do is he gonna inject a tree with steroids is he gonna hang from the branches and try to make them grow he should he should just be worried on excellent about excellence but then last night at 11 o'clock while i'm swinging my mace only quiet su quiet. I come across this video, this podcast. It was the worst host. But once again, that's what made me realize what a great guest you are because you carried the podcast. Sousa, can you go to that YouTube clip at 101? This is where I was like, oh, shit, Don gets it.

And someone actually, you kind of start explaining what you mean by growth. That's it. And someone actually you kind of start explain what you mean by growth. And then I was I felt a sense of, well, both relief and darn it, this guy might succeed. Here we go. We'll come back to that darn it. Here we go. Sure. Yeah. So and and you're right. And look, you know, the way that I think about this in terms of what we focus on, what success looks like, the absolutely we want to build a really compelling, successful business. And the best way for us to do that is focus on getting more people exposed to CrossFit. You know, we are a and the reason we talk with that and the reason we lead with that is that's what gets all of us excited. Do I want to build a successful business? Yes. But I get a lot more excited candidly about building something that can be the biggest force in improving health globally.

And I think we have a shot at being in that ballpark. And if we do that, holy cow, this is going to be an extraordinarily successful business. No question. You know, what does that look like in terms of numbers? Look, we don't, we don't share. We're done, Susan. Good. The guy basically is trying to lead you down. He wants to ask you how much money the company makes, what's your goal as a business. And then you said, Hey, you know, obviously on one hand, we want to make money. We have to put food on our table. We have to pay the people back, you know, who invested, you know, in the company,

rightfully so. But the work has to be done in letting the world know that this is the greatest force in health and fitness that's on the planet right now. Jump on board. And I heard that, and I was like, oh, thank God. Like you get it. Yeah. Well, it's really helpful for you to share that because I think the takeaway for me is I need to be, um, I need to be more clear in how I communicate what growth means. And, you know, there's that one clip, but I need to show up with that level of clarity every time I talk about it. So, well, to be honest, people are so shallow, they don't even catch it. I'm special. Don't, don't, you don't, don't, you don't have to

clearly, um, yeah. And, and look like the, I actually think I'm used to, you know, when I say growth, my default is like like I'm not talking about revenue. I'm talking about people. And the revenue will come, right? If you can get 20,000 more people to realize, oh, shit, this is the way. So this is a very interesting point too. This is a trip. I'd love to help more people get exposed to CrossFit and make it feel less intimidating, ready to be milked.

Great story, by the way. This guy's been on the podcast, lost a couple hundred pounds. And I told him, I said, when he was on, I was like, hey, CrossFit should be just using you. Send a cameraman to you. Send you to an L1 and just milk you to death and just make tons of content and show. But here's the interesting part, right? When I walk, no matter what you think about crossfit it hurts people those people don't shut the fuck up it's bad whatever all the people who have it wrong and negative

when i walk into starbucks 50 year old five foot five little me people still know that i'm the fittest person in starbucks everyone knows when i when i'm when i have my crossfit shirt on they know oh shit shit, that guy. And no one wears CrossFit shirts. Who's not CrossFitters. It's like, it's like, it's like ultimate UFC shit. You better not wear that shit unless you're going to punch someone out in the face. My mom loves that about the brand. My mom never played a sport her whole life. She's 79 years old. She's been doing CrossFit for 10 years. She loves going to her book club and wearing her CrossFit shirt. And the other little old ladies are like you do crossfit she's like

yeah i did a lunch today so you want to make it accessible but we're still fucking uh uh everyone can try out for marine recon but it's still marine recon yep that's right. Like we all squat below parallel. And I'm assuming you have to think about that, right? Like the goal isn't to be like, this is CrossFit light. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Look, we can't, we can't dilute the experience. We can't dilute the brands like that. That is when we say growth, that is not the path. That is actually the fastest path of losing everything we have. I think the, the thing that gives me real hope here is I'd be a lot more worried if you

walked into every box and all you saw were super fit 30 year olds who were jacked. That's not the case. You walk into boxes and you're going to see people of all ages, sizes, levels of fitness, et cetera. Is CrossFit for everyone? No, it's not. But the only thing that's required is up here. It's just a mentality, in my opinion. That's it. If you're willing to put in the work, if you're willing to walk through the doors, you've got a community that's going to welcome you. You have a methodology that works for anyone, irrespective of what level of fitness you have. So that is an exceptional gift. If we didn't have that,

this would be a much harder battle. What we got to figure out is how do we take what's happening inside the box and expose it to people who haven't gotten a chance yet to walk in because they're intimidated. And so I think a lot of it is getting back to what we did really early, is doing a better job of telling stories, of taking big and flexy. He reached out to me. We talked. His story is amazing. Helping more people who can look at his story and say, gosh, that feels like me.

Like there are parts of that that really resonate with me. Maybe I could give this a shot. Maybe this could work for me. So I think there is a way for us. We have to remain. Maybe this could work for me. So I think there is a way for us. We have to remain. I think we need to ensure our brands and our community remains aspirational while making sure it's fully approachable for everyone. And I think you can do both.

When I heard you talk about, I don't know if you use the word the three pillars, but the three parts the company you said the affiliate team the games and um training um but for the longest time up until 2018 there was a fourth branch and it was the media team and for many years greg referred to crossfit inc and everyone everyone internally referred to crossfit inc as a media company yeah and and it was a pretty enormous uh media. And it was, although it was big, it was very nimble. Like you said, it was very, very nimble. And I think if you go and look at the metrics, dig in the books, you will see that between September of 2017 and November of 2018, you will see some very, very interesting growth in the company. And there was a point back there in 2016 against the will of everyone who worked there, everyone who worked there.

Greg said, we have everyone who's fit. We've captured the tip of the spear. It's now to go to the other end. We're not going to deal with anyone in the middle. We're going to get all the fatsoes now. We have to start making content like that. So we shifted and we doubled down on our – we basically doubled down on media. And not with money, but just reinvigorated the team. And I think every metric, Don, you will see was its highest ever since 2014. At the end of 2018, we reached our 2014 size, except for retention. We were still struggling a little bit with retention. And then they shut everything down.

And one of the most bizarre moves I've ever, like, I don't think there is a parallel. I don't know one. Shut down, basically, you know, if there's a billion people. By the way, for those of you, one more thing about Don. Don was at Facebook when it had 40 million users and only 400 employees. And now it's like billions, right? Yeah.

When you left there, how many did it have? Oh, gosh. I think probably somewhere just under a billion. Crazy growth. Oh, insane. Crazy. So Don has seen this and another great thing on don's resume is don entered the social media world when people said it couldn't be monetized and that's that's

the kind of shit that i talk oh fuck don screwed they're never going to make money off this thing but but the guy has has has done some remarkable things. Do you see, do you see, do you have any thoughts about media? What you're going to do? I see the CrossFit podcast is kind of like edging its way back in. But do you ever, like, I think someone could just go back and I've heard you say, hey, we need to go back

and do some of the things we used to do. You could just go back and be like, okay, this is the kind of stuff we did. And it could be done on the cheap. Yes. Yeah, there is no question. So when we think like our number one goal, you've heard me talk about this, it's exposing more people to CrossFit. So get the flywheel going again.

And I think the most leveraged way that we can do that is through media. It's by telling stories. It's by showing people that those preconceived notions are not true. And again, we don't, like most other fitness brands, we don't have to hire actors. We don't have to get this bullshit before and after. We can literally lift up all these stories that are happening. And so we will do more around media next year. We are working right now on getting ourselves to a place where we're clear on, you know, who we want to focus on the stories we want to elevate. And then there is some work we have to do to be able to actually assess and measure what's working and what's not.

And so that we can be incredibly aggressive about the things that are really, really working to get them out there and reach more. And we're a little bit behind where we need to be on that front. So we're putting that foundation in place right now. Last thing I'll say, about a week and a half ago, I spent the week down in Brazil and Ecuador. Amazing, amazing trip. One of the biggest takeaways for me is we have to figure out how to lift those stories up in all these countries around the world. It's not good enough, I think, just to show the American walking into a CrossFit box. We need to enable our teams, our affiliates to lift up the stories that they're seeing. That's what's really going

to resonate for folks in those countries, not a English language American walking into a box. We need to have something that feels really approachable to those folks on the ground. If I may, I told myself I wasn't going to do this, but now I'm 49 minutes in. Don't go the corporate route. Find 19-year-old filmmakers, run-and-gun CrossFitters who just have aspirations,

who live in Brazil, who live in Russia. There's tons of starving filmmakers out there who are CrossFitters. Like, fuck spending 250 000 on a team that shows up with lights and shit there's cameras now that can make everything look gold there's 19 years olds who will bring the most authentic content to life they'll they'll go home with the guy who has type 2 diabetes and you'll see him throw his needles away and that

only cost us a hundred dollars to bring forward not okay let's throw it in the trash again one of the lights was where our kelvin temperature was off on the light screw that shit don't do that please i love it just um but it's what people know it is what they do at google and facebook and and at youtube and and um it's just uh well i think there's two things we know. I think there's two things, like there's still a lot. I don't know, uh, clearly still get up to speed, but one of the things I do know is, is, um, authenticity is essential in this community. Anything that sniffs like bullshit or sniffs manufactured or corporate, et cetera, not only is really expensive, but it does not work. And so we have to make sure we have to figure out how to tell those stories in a way that is truly authentic. And the other thing is with

one of our biggest challenges, we are small. We have 200 people. We are tiny relative to the size of our community and the size of the opportunity that we're going after, which means the things that we invest in have to punch above their weight. We have to find ways to have a bigger impact with fewer resources. And one of the gifts we have is we have this community. I was down in, when I was down in Sao Paulo, we had an affiliate owner who had come in from small village and he was talking about this local story. And we were talking about, great, how do we support that? We have a member of our team in Brazil. Who's amazing. She's super skilled on it. She's awesome. She's incredible. incredible but this affiliate owner said i've already done it i've already done the like i've done the work and we maybe do some work to get it to a place where it's ready for

distribution but we have folks who are willing to do it and invest the time because they love this community and they want to get those stories out there and that's a huge advantage for us and there's like no there's no, there's no downside. Like if someone makes a video on how to do a pushup and it's got like a bad camera angle or the audio is fucked up, it doesn't even matter. Like you want it. So when people type in pushup, five CrossFit videos pop up, right? Exactly.

Exactly. And I think for us, the thing we need to, one of the things that we need to really be conscious of is getting as many shots on goal as we can. As many what? As many shots on goal. So, so in other words, you know, if we spent, you know, X amount of money next year on five incredibly highly produced things, I would rather have the 100 things that are a fraction of the cost that are slightly different versions that we can look at and say, holy shit, these three really worked. Now let's double down on that. We just got to move faster. Again, this comes back to like our advantage should be, we can move more quickly and be more nimble and tap into the authentic

folks in the community who are ready to kind of contribute. And the L1 team, the seminar staff, they need to be milked as hard as big and flexi. Like they need to be completely like showcased and like completely exploited. Is there another, like, I would probably put it in slightly different. I know, I know. I'm a crass man. I language. I know, I know. I'm a crass man. I'm a crass man, Don. I'm a crass man.

My mom doesn't like it. You're bringing me back to my Marine Corps days. Our seminar staff, actually, one of the things we're talking about is we have our seminar staff team and our affiliate team. And we need to show up as one team in market. And we have folks, you know, showing up all around the world. Their seminar staff is amazing. Again, another secret weapon that we have folks, you know, showing up all around the world. Their seminar staff is amazing. Again, another secret weapon that we have, how do we take advantage of what they can do when they're in market, touching affiliates, you know, interacting with members? They're an

incredible asset that I think, you know, we can get, we can set them up to have an even bigger impact. So Spiegel, this is, this is kind of why I showed that video of Don saying that the incentives are misaligned if they focus on affiliate growth. But that was left a bad taste in my mouth from the last group that was saying, hey, we need people into the affiliates. Correct. And then naturally those people then will take L1s. And then for every 10 people that take an L1, they have some sort of metric that they know one of those people opens an affiliate. But they know you have to stuff them into the affiliates and spill out that way. I think you're aware of that. That's right. Affiliates for us, like our top line, the most important thing we're going to focus on is more people doing CrossFit around the world. Obviously, affiliates play a really essential and critical role, but it's in service of supporting members.

There are places where we need more affiliates because there is not a local box that someone can walk into. There are places now where we have amazing affiliates, and our job is not to try to open a new affiliate around the corner, but rather get those local CrossFitters, get more members in the door. If I may say one thing on that point real quick, I think the L1 is actually your key to everything. And the biggest differentiator, I've heard you talk about this on some of the other podcasts too, like, hey, what's the difference between my CrossFit affiliate? Why do I pay my affiliateship when I could just say I'm a functional fitness gym? And for me, it was always the message of what is CrossFit. It was always the CrossFit journal, because what that shows is the expertise and the truth that CrossFit brings to the table in terms of health and fitness.

And so for me, I like to think that the L1 and the stories happening in there, and most importantly, the message that CrossFit and the what Is Fitness articles and those other ones way back when that were written in the early 2000s, is that differentiator, is the vision. And so sometimes I hear like, hey, we're looking for this vision, we're looking for it. And I always, I'm screaming, I'm like, it's right there. There's the vision. That's what got us to the point. It was the fact that we put definitions to terms.

We were able to articulate in a mathematical equation what health and fitness is. But the one thing that I worry a little bit, and I'm not sure if you could speak to this or not, is that message pushes against a lot of the current narratives that we're hearing in the media. And so my question is, is there going to be a comfortability level between the board as a person who is going to hold that message, who's going to drive that message? And are we okay with some of the pushback that'll happen when that message starts to get out there? What's an example of where you think we'll get pushback? Example of saying stop eating processed foods, personal responsibility,

Example of saying stop eating processed foods, personal responsibility, cut out sugar. Don't worry about what the advances in medical are happening there. Just focus on exercise, focus on cutting processed carbohydrates and getting sugar out of your diet. Awesome. you know what the board wants is actually what we've talked about seven eight years out which is a really healthy a massive ecosystem lots of people doing CrossFit that drives this incredible business our job like they look to me and the rest of the team to figure out how we get there and I my deep deep conviction is the way we get there is leaning into what helped us get this far and figuring out how to expose it to more people. And when I think about like we talked before about like the fastest thing we could do to ruin this business would be to stray from, you really clear on what we stand for in an environment and ecosystem where everyone else lies, where everyone else, well, everyone else may be a bit extreme, where most folks are telling a story that they know not to

be true. That is what differentiates us. That is why our community is part of us. And so we have to figure out, I think the L1, I look at that and say, how do we, this is our secret weapon. How do we reach more people with it? How do we expose that to not only coaches, affiliate owners, but members. I was talking to a few friends this morning who I work out with every morning about, they love CrossFit. They've not been through the L1 yet. I think it'll make them more passionate members of the community. I think they'll enjoy it. They'll take a lot away from it.

So we're thinking about how do we take this incredible asset that the early team developed and get it in front of more people. Where they say that there's pills that can make you like your diabetes, type two diabetes and like make you lose weight. These are people who are fighting for the same piece of the pie that CrossFit is fighting for. Right. If there you know, there's a limited number of, you know, dollar bills on the planet. But it's but they are willing to lie. For sure. They are willing. They are willing to lie to get a piece of the pie. for sure they are willing they are willing to lie to get a piece of the pie and and this has been as long as people have cared about their health and what they look like this has been true they're hurting people because you know honestly it's people want an easy path a lot of people want an easy path they want the god that message sounds great before and after looks easy all i

have to do is wake up every day and take a pill. Um, I mean, shit, I've been susceptible to it. I've done stuff in the past that I look back and I'm like, gosh, that's snake oil. And so, um, you know, what CrossFit did, we talked about this was revolutionary because it said a, a message that was 180 degrees. It's not easy. We're not going to tell you it's easy. The things that you're, a lot of your comforts around what you eat and sitting on the couch and being sedentary is bad for you. And if you want to get better, you can, but you got to work really hard. And that really, I think that message resonated clearly with millions of people. And then the results prove it to be true.

And so I think our continued success is sticking to that. And we need to continue to have conviction that telling the truth, saying the hard thing, not getting distracted. There are going to be a million more competitors that do some version of the snake oil, the easy path. that do some version of the snake oil, the easy path. We got to stay true to what we do and figure out how we tell our story in a way that reaches more people. And I 100% believe that to be the case.

Are you going to do that by – are you guys going to – well, first of all, the CrossFit Journal has to be pulled back to the front. I mean – and if you put – I'm going to tell you a crazy story, Don. You ready for this? Ready. I i'm gonna tell you a fucking crazy story in 2018 we went to this meeting to this big tech company in portland they build websites cool company cool cats and um the the leadership in there above me that i think there were only maybe two people senior to me in the company at that time, they wanted to pull the journal down. And the president of this company reached out to me and been like, Hey, you got to talk some senses into your boss. You cannot pull the journal down.

And they wanted to get rid of the CrossFit journal. And they, because they, there were 10,000 pieces of content in there and they wanted to filter up the early stuff that Greg did and bring it to the front that, which they thought was the smart stuff, which it is the smart stuff. But, but there's a lot of different voices in there transcribing what Greg said. Right. Heber and Mars, the buttery bros, they have their own version of sharing that message. It might not be for everyone, but but it is still has that DNA in there. Right. Craig Ritchie, all these people, it might not be for everyone, but and they have loud platforms. Anyway, I digress. Soress so they they say hey we're

going to pull the journal to the back but we want to get rid of the journal we want to hide the journal and then and then bring it up sometime later ceo of this company calls me he's got talk sense in your bosses i i try i i push so hard that i almost lose my job it gets really fucking contentious and then um at the end they send a and please feel free to fact check this they they call the cfo of crossfit inc at the time um who i'm pretty sure you you know who that is and they say to him hey we have to have you sign some paperwork before we pull it down because this you guys are going to go from top of the search engine to the bottom everything that drives traffic to your fucking site is through um is through this journal

it's like 90 and they still pulled it down and to this day you guys are in um ownership of this like and what and then and then obviously there was an app and every time we posted something it sent the notice i mean you know you came from tech like i would love it if i got a notification every day new article in the crossfit journal yep like every day i would love if i could go to my apple tv and just watch the ott pop up the journal right crossfit you're like yeah look at seven and don fall chopping it up on audible and be able to listen to all the articles yeah um i did everything i said i wasn't gonna do no i love it come on i expected a lot more than this no i wanted i did the thing is this uh some of my asshole friends are like dude get him get him i'm like fuck that i want the guy to come back are you

kidding me no and i know my mom's watching i need to be like and you're the son my mom wish she had hi mom um well easy watching. I need to be like, and you're the son my mom wished she had. Hi, mom. Well, easy. Look, I love the notion of what you're talking about. And it very much aligns with what we are spending a lot of time talking about right now. I think we I think one of the things that we do exceptionally well is we've got this extraordinary methodology that is grounded in first principles, empirically driven methodology. A lot of the content around the journal was something that really resonated with folks. I think we used to have a subscription product where people subscribe to it. 95% of it's free.

That's even the better part. And people still paid to get that little tiny 5%. It was great. Exactly. And it aligns so well with, I think, our mission and vision, which is like, we should be the source of truth that if you want to find out truth around health and fitness, you know where to go. And so we are talking a lot about how do we build on what we've learned there historically? And how do we bring um how do we we continue to invest in or invest more in educating members coaches affiliates the broader community so we're looking a lot at what we've done with the journal um and thinking a lot about it so more

to come on that front for sure um they uh CrossFit really is the CDC. I know that's fucking blasphemy and that's going to really get some people wound up, but that journal, um, if you want to bet the best shot to let your body kind of express itself in its greatest, you know, potential that journal and, and, and fight off disease and build the hedge. How, how was your L one? Did you love it? Oh, it was amazing. I did it with my wife. It was awesome. Cool.

I was exhausted by the end of the weekend. I didn't anticipate that, but it was, yeah. And I was super lucky. Our seminar staff team was incredible. Who'd you have? I had Nicole Christensen, Kevin Ogar, Jenny Orr, and Katie Hogan. Wow. Wow. And did your wife like it? Be honest. I'm looking in your eyes. Oh, she loved it. You know, it's funny. So my wife, um, ran track, uh, in college for a little bit after she weighed trains, but she had not gotten into

CrossFit and her first CrossFit workout ever was the day before the L1. And we dropped into roots in Boulder. And I said, Hey, I was, you know, we talk about it a lot, but I said, Hey, look, this will probably be a, we don't do a lot of long workouts. Usually it's kind of 20 minutes, super intense. And, uh, we did the workout that day was bike. It was the first workout from the game. So we ended up doing 14 miles on an assault bike and 75 chest to bar and 75 toes to bar and so we were both really smoked but can your wife do pull-ups your wife can do pull-ups yeah wow yeah yeah she's she is without question the best athlete in our family hands down what what did she uh oh i'm one minute over bad boy she ran 800 and mile uh at stanford and then ran cross country as well

uh wow wow the 800 is nasty uh terrible yes don um i was told that um you have to go right now i do i need to run a problem dickhead i know that. I'll probably need to get my safety belt. I honestly hope you, I honestly hope you had a good time. I re I, uh, it's really weird that you came on. Everyone else.

Thanks you for coming on. I promised myself. I wouldn't thank you for coming on. I just say it's no, I appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation and, and, uh, you know, hope I can come back for sure. Oh just say it's no, I appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation and, and, uh, you know, hope I can come back for sure.

Oh, dude, I got, I just to let you know how nervous I am. The more note, usually if I have two pages of notes, I know I'm not nervous at all. I have eight pages of notes. I must be really nervous today. Well, I, I, I had a sense when you were talking about dirt roads, going through the mountains as part of your research, you got pretty far down the rabbit hole.

Hey, did you get the shirts I sent to the office? Oh, I don't think so. I will – I'll go look for them. I'll make sure. Don't let those – don't let the minions steal the shirts I sent you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Castro probably took them. I bet he did.

All right. All right, guys. Thanks so much. Mr. Fall, thank you. Cheers. Cheers. See you much. Mr. Fall, thank you. Cheers. Cheers. See you guys. Sorry.

Okay, let me have it. Go ahead. Me? No. Wad zombie. No, no, no. In the comments. Wad zombie.

You don't need to wait. Tons of photographers and people with smart phones are going to their affiliates today. They can catch. Yeah. I mean, give him a second, dude. Give him a second. Give him a fucking second. Just like we just talked about it.

Give them 15 minutes of a video. Everybody was surprised you don't wear your CEO shirt. I if I was going to wear any shirt, I was going to wear my CrossFit media director shirt. I really I did so much um i did so much uh research research on him i thought um like holy shit i did so much research on him that I started like really liking him too much. Yeah, he's he's very easy to like. And he's dude, he's like. I kind of resented the fact that he had been at Google and Facebook and Pinterest, and I thought that those were probably damaged him.

But it's kind of he's he has enough introspective that I think he knows that's that wasn't where he wanted to be. Those people aren't on the right path. You kind of see that. Yeah, well, I was a little worried when he when he went behind enemy lines over there. He didn't he did. He wasn't like one of them. When he gave me a little pushback on like, well, what what in the message would the would like the media attack or what goes against the narrative? And I'm like, fucking everything.

The fact of get off your carbs, get off your couch, recognize that obesity is unhealthy. Like, right, there's this whole push now that like obesity is good, love your body, and all these different things. So I was just thinking like, oh, that's a little concerning. Because if you really understand the methodology and where you're going with it, you're going to have to outright and doesn't have to attack certain articles that are coming out, but like that obesity pill. That should be a huge talking point for CrossFit and should just deconstruct the whole entire thing. What do you think about this, though?

What do you think about just staying focused? I think the way – from what I'm hearing about Don, that he doesn't get into the mud. He just stays focused on our mission. So he's driving this way and like he, he's not going to do, he's not going to get into petty fights. You know, he's only had two posts on his Instagram account since 2017.

Hi Brian. Yeah. Hey Brian, you're muted. I don't know if that's necessarily getting into the mud, but I'll, but what I think is like, I'm worried because there's a lot of talk of the mission,

but like, how do we put our fingers on it? What is the mission? You know? And for me, if you were to wave a wand and say, okay, Susie, you're a CEO, you got all these great ideas, put them to use right now. I would immediately just say every single journal article, let's just get the whole entire team on it and let's just push it out at mass scale in every platform you can and start to get our hands dirty with it. Oh, but this is this is what I this is what I took away. And I watched so many videos about him. Maybe he didn't say it in this show, but this is my takeaway. He realizes that he's sitting on the cure for the world's most vexing problem.

He realizes that he's the only way to, to grow the company is to get more people into the affiliates. And the only way to do that is to, uh, make more media. Now I wish you, I wish you would have said, but this is just pie in the sky shit. Of course we have the old OTT you built seven on. We're bringing forward next week. Um, we've have 25 filmmakers around the world, but who are making videos and they're going to be on the CrossFit Journal. And we're re-skinning the app that you guys had released, and that will be available tomorrow. But we've got to give him six months, right? But I do think he knows that you have to tell stories to get people into the gyms, and getting people into gyms is how you grow the company.

And God knows there's enough sick people. He was hired in July, July, August, right around then? Yeah, I would assume July and then announced in August, right? Yeah, basically think of games. The day of the games he was hired in July. July, August, right around then? Yeah, I would assume July and then announced in August, right? Yeah, basically think of games. The day of the games he was hired. That's a good way to think of it. Yeah. I mean, he mentioned while you're talking to him that, yeah, there needs to be a period of time of just listening.

August, September. Listening to who is what I wonder. I mean, this is a big question. When did they bring Dave back? A month or two before that? No, wasn't it after that? No, I think it was right before the games. Oh, shit.

You know what I wanted to ask him? Damn. I wanted to ask him if he thinks that part of the reason they brought him back was to manage Dave. Damn it. Or if they brought Don on to help manage Dave. Because he's such a talent, you don't want to lose him,

but you need a super strong person who can manage him. Damn, I had that in mind. Well, I mean, look, as I've been, obviously you can only really know what Dave's been up to based on what he's talking about and releasing and posting. But he seems to also be doing a lot of listening during these months. So let's just say they both came in July. So then between the two of them, they've had three or four months to listen. They obviously went to Brazil and South America and did

some listening there. Dave's been making his affiliate tours, gathering these people who've been trying to push forward the message and the affiliates for whatever period of time they've been doing that. And, but you can only do that for so long. And so I don't know when, you know, but they might still be in that process and maybe they're, they're thinking about what they're going to do with the information that they're gathering. Um, and it sounds like we will get a chance to, if he doesn't explicitly say it outright, at least we'll get a chance to see it unfold in, in the next year. I mean, that's what he said when he asked him about media, is their intention is to have more media that's

specifically focused on telling the stories that are already there and not trying to create new ones. Exactly. And Tavon, I liked your point. I'm actually really glad you said it when you're, for lack of better words, you're like, hey, leave it open source. Don't try to make the media fancy. Let the people who are already creating it and just use your platform to tell their stories. Brian, you put the guy in that, in the chat, what was his name? I didn't, I don't want to butcher it. Amit. Amit Triparanian. His last name is very difficult, but this is the, if anyone's not familiar, he's the guy that's been doing,'s been traveling around europe asia indo indonesia all the pacific countries for the last several years and creating stories about crossfit and

culture in those those smaller countries some is bigger culture countries but smaller in terms of crossfit population yeah and really you know uh trying to understand the intersection of CrossFit into those cultures. If Don and I've shared with Dave are interested in learning as, you know, at least getting a groundwork or foundation understanding about what CrossFit is like across the Eurasian continent, Amit has already done a lot of the work and he might be a great resource for them. Yeah. And I think they're so worried about like, how do we tell the message in other countries in their words and with their culture? And the thing is, is like CrossFit doesn't. They should just take the people that are already living the message in those countries and then just use CrossFit as the platform to

elevate their voices. So then that way, the story of CrossFit is being told by their people in their culture that are already doing it. So you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You just need to give them a platform to tell those stories in the way that they're already telling it unique to where they are. And I think, you know, I, people who, people who listen to us a lot will know how critical I often am from a sport perspective of what happened in 2019. But because of the opportunity that Greg created there for athletes from all over the world to come to the games for one year at least, I think that was actually profoundly impactful in those countries back home. And on Mitt's documentary series, he gets a chance to talk

to some of the representing or qualifying athletes from small countries that competed in one event at the CrossFit Games that year and either couldn't climb the rope or couldn't do the snatch. But it's neat to see them express what that was like for their small CrossFit community, wherever they're coming from. And I know that even right now in the sport, there's this conversation, especially with impending changes and allocation of game spots. Do we want to favor global representation or do we want to have the best games athletes there? And I think that, you know, I've heard this in the team division. Everyone's saying, well, for the teams, you could have super teams all you want, but we still want an affiliate cup.

And I wonder if there might be an opportunity through the open or something like that to create a competition that's not the games, but it's for the best athlete in every country around the world who doesn't have a games qualifier. I don't even think we talked about the games once. No. Well, just in passing as one of the couple of branches of CrossFit. But I've been kind of thinking about this thing just this past couple of days when people have mentioned that they want to see two different team competitions. It's like, well, could we open something up? And it would also like you've always wanted to have a little bit of more importance into the open where we get a more diverse representation of countries, even if they don't have the skills or fitness level required to make it to the games somewhere, because that does seem to have an impact on those

communities as well yeah i think the open is the intersection of the affiliates the sport and helping to grow the community and so the more emphasis they could put on and the storytelling exactly 100 referencing how many times we've seen this through the you know the go back several years or we would see the open be an opportunity to tell the stories that he's referencing and maybe, or perhaps that's what they're intending to do. Yeah. Yeah. I, how do you think Don did, uh, Brian? I thought he was, uh, you know, really great because he was only given about 30% of the opportunity to speak. I think someone was dominating the speaking.

He got in one great line at your expense, so he gets extra credit on my books for that. That was cool. Here's the thing. I know a lot of people get upset if I interrupt people, and it's a constant criticism on the podcast if shit starts

to get too superficial for me or someone starts rambling on about superficial shit and they don't start going deep i just start to interrupt like i can't i can't have i can't talk about growth more than once in the show and then after that we have to start defining what growth is and we constantly have to go deeper and if he is a really he's really really good if you watch the other podcast he's on he's really really good about talking about the surface. But he's also very deep. Yeah. Go ahead.

If I'm being totally honest with you here. Please. The problem was that he had to go after an hour. Usually you get the best stuff after your guests. Right. 30 minutes. Right. I agree.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I was definitely chatty Cathy today. What Stefan just said is why this is the best podcast on the planet. Well, thank you. Oh, look. There he is. Shit. Mr. Grendler. Hi, guys.

All-star cast. Thank you. Shit. How did I not see that? I don't know, dude. I heard my ding on your phone when I was in the backstage. You were back there 38 seconds waiting. That's about 30 seconds too long. I apologize. It's all good. Dude.

Have you watched a bunch? Go ahead. Go ahead. I watched the whole thing. Why didn't you ask? You guys got into all the talks, and this is just what you were talking about, the surface stuff. What was the mission? I mean, at least Sousa at least said it.

Like, your mission statement will drive what you do. You can't sit there and say, let me figure out all the things and then come up with a mission afterwards. Otherwise, you're going around in a circle. What's the mission? Is it the old mission? Is it a new mission? That's what i was uh and maybe once again i didn't ask that because i'd watched too many of his other videos and i and i there

was i almost like knew too much you know like it's like when you read a book and then you go see the movie you can kind of fill in all the holes yeah but is the mission we need to get more people into crossfit is that i also didn't ask them that's a kind of a dust statement you know okay so what would give me an example of a mission that you would like to hear. Blast the L1 everywhere. Blast the L1 everywhere. Tell them to blast the L1. Go, go, go.

Well, that's an action. Absolutely. The mission would be like, okay, so what's great, Sevan, is you say a lot of the stuff that Greg said all those years. say a lot of the stuff that greg said all those years we have the answer to the most vexing health question on the planet that that the answer to that is our mission and how do we do that yes it's by getting more people in it but how do we we show people that it works we show people using 100 words to elite fitness that that's what works all the like that's consistency that's where it works and then people like wad zombie but but and then but but we're not going to do any of that

now on the show right we kind of just want to hear that at least for me i just wanted to hear like i was dying to ask him about the nsca case i didn't ask him about that it's his first time in my house i don't want to fuck you overwhelm him no not go ahead it doesn't mean i wasn't even meaning the little things but like okay man you're step you're stepping in you're now driving the ship which way are we going like what direction with the what is our direction because every business is saying i want more people like that's that's not a mission statement that's a i want the business to succeed so obviously i have to get. Like that's, that's not a mission statement. That's a, I want the business to succeed. So obviously I have to get more people in that, but that's not a mission statement. So like a mission statement in my, like for my gym would be,

I believe that everyone has the opportunity to thrive with their health and fitness. And we want to be the beacon for that. We want to be the light for that. How do we do that? Okay, well now every decision that I make guides me towards that mission statement. I want to be able to thrive. How do we do that? He didn't say it on this show,

but he said it on every other show that I watched that he was on, every other one. This is almost verbatim. I'm dogmatic about one thing, growth. Right, and we even talk about that which is a good thing growth is great i mean i'm not saying they don't want to grow right and he did say this i've been while talking to you he said get we want to get more people exposed to crossfit and be the biggest force that can help improve health globally yeah okay all right from the from the clip from the other podcast. No, that, uh, Oh, that was a, yeah, but still good. I'm telling you, I had watched everything he put out and that was the,

that was, it was just at the end that there was that gem and that hit me most profoundly. That made me, at least then I knew he, he knows what he has in his hands. He, he, he's acutely aware that he's the leader of something that's, that could have a deeply profound impact on planet earth. He's, he's acutely aware that he's the leader of something that could have a deeply profound impact on planet Earth. He's very, very, very, very, very aware of that. Bill, what did you think about his comment that CrossFit is not for everyone and the only thing that's required is the mindset?

I think that the fact that CrossFit has put people – if you want to gain any sort of benefits, it's not going to be the pill like that article that these guys are talking about. Take this pill and it will fight diabetes and blah, blah, blah. You're going to have to get a little bit uncomfortable. People don't like to get uncomfortable. So because of that, no, it's not for everyone. It's made for everyone, but not everyone will want to do it and that always says it's for everyone it will it's not for everyone but it's for anyone oh yeah whatever that statement would i think i totally agree with i don't disagree with that at all um but then it's our job at the affiliate level i think think, to educate.

In fact, he said this, and I put it up in the post, and I'm surprised no one said anything about it. When he mentioned that you guys are talking back and forth about CrossFit Lite, I fucking hate that. CrossFit Lite. Give me a fucking break. It's a scaled version of whatever the workout is for that day. It's not a CrossFit Lite. Amen. It is a – it's not a crossfit light amen is a it's it's

crossfit but you're doing your version so that you get the stimulus and the response and all that like it's your workout it's not crossfit light and i think that um uh it's our job on the affiliate level to educate people that come in but we need help to get people to come here when When someone wants to lose weight, this is what I think HQ should do. And someone actually had like the Superbowl commercial. Yeah. Fuck yeah. I want to be separated out from all the other crap that's out there for the, in the, in the health and fitness space, all the strength and conditioning programs, all the Pilates, all the bar, this, all of the stuff. Cool, they're out there. Yes, fine, whatever.

But when someone wants to actually improve their life, not just I want to check the box and do something, but if they want to improve their life, automatically CrossFit will come up. So that if someone needs to pick what gym to go to, they're just looking at what CrossFit gym do I want to go to. Not all of the stuff that's out there. That's what I think. Or doing CrossFit at some other gym. I'm fine with that. I'm fine if you go into Planet Fitness and do CrossFit.

Well, I mean, I did. That's how I started. I was doing it at the local gym doing CrossFit and everyone looking at me all weird. Hey, what has khalil said that what's the bottom word bill there weren't crossfit bottom line yeah easy we just called we called them caves back then bill you were the guy who asked me in a text one day um are you gonna give don a chance or just fucking just start hating on him um after seeing a bunch of people interview him i don't know if you've met him yet do you do you do are you optimistic yeah i i absolutely i i think if anyone

if anyone is stepping into that position they have to realize that it's not gonna no matter no matter even even rosa it didn't matter who it was if you're gonna if you're gonna step in behind greg glassman and the greatest fitness change ever on the planet like you're kind of stepping into a shit storm and you know it will we'll see what sort of you know what sort of fortitude he has i mean obviously if you look at the guy's resume i mean he's he's kind of built for this kind of stuff you know his resume is not his resume is nuts it's pretty cool so yeah i i am i like i like the things he said i by me saying that the whole mission thing uh it's i wasn't disagreeing with what he was saying or or or anything like that i

just i guess i just want to i want to hear him say where like where are we going man like tell me where we're going because when glassman talked it was like i knew exactly where i was going the interesting thing i don't want to be him i don't want him to be we haven't really heard don talk yet though we haven't heard yeah we haven't heard him address the community yet he hasn hasn't come out. It's an interesting thing. You go to his Instagram account and he only has 5,700'm not he hasn't done anything stupid so far which is huge that fits the craig howard model just don't like really we need a leader who doesn't fuck the brand up and it would be so it's so easy to fuck this thing up and that's why i like the analogy of steve jobs and tim cook like steve jobs was the visionary so he planted the seed as to

making products that change people's lives right and? And he did the iPhone and everything else. He was a creative genius. And when Tim Cook came into the company, his job was just to take that mission that was already implanted and just do it well so it doesn't fail. Not to become a new visionary and create a new mission, but just to hold true to the mission that was already set in place by the visionary, by the founder. And so the question is, is how do we transition from a great glassman, a founder, a visionary to somebody else who just knows how to stay true to that original vision and mission and not try to figure out what the new mission is, but how do we just make this mission more appetizing to everybody around us, but not change it in any manner as well and i i think that i think that

you don't have to well then i guess that's what my question was when i was taught saying that in the chat was i felt like rosa had a different mission the mission was i want to you know we're money on the table let's turn this into a corporate i I mean, all of those things. Not bad. It's a money game. And I totally get all that. But you can have the old mission, the original mission, and have different actions to suit that mission and to push towards that mission. So I think that's where I was kind of wanting to hear him say was to basically repeat what the old mission is and then be like okay what i'm trying to do right now is fine i didn't give him a chance i talked too much i gave him i didn't give him a chance possible i'm a babbler like you are too so i probably would have been the same way but

does that make sense yeah i i i i i that's the thing too by the way he's gonna do he's a really good podcast guest because he will just go and go and go. And he will feel the dead air if you let him. But but you but he also steers easy. He needs to be steered to the depths. Brian, whoever's under the table, tell them to get out. Brian, what do you think? I'm laughing at Chase. Chase is giving Bill a hard time. Are you are you optimistic? Are you optimistic, Brian? I mean, mostly my perspective towards this has just been a holding pattern. I don't want to make any – because of what you just said.

He hasn't come out and addressed the community yet. Obviously, he and Dave have been making an effort to get out there and talk to people. But you have to do something with the information. making an effort to get out there and talk to people, but you have to do something with the information. That comment you put up just a little while ago saying, if we're wanting Greg, we'll always be disappointed. That's not what Suze is implying there. He's just saying, you don't need to come in and recreate a brand new thing. You just need to keep the ship steering in the direction it was already going. And I think that he has a good enough head on his shoulders to understand that. I think that's

kind of what he was saying by weaving around some of the things that you were asking him and giving some of the expected verbiage, but we're not going to know until or verbiage, but we won't know until some kind of action happens. So I'm hopeful that in the next couple of months, he'll, he will make some kind of public statement and we will start to see some of the things that he alluded to that they're talking about roll out. My guess is that in the build-up to and throughout the open we'll have a good opportunity to see some of those things uh him in action and some of the plans they've been working on start to take shape and we'll have more to say about it at that point let me ask you this brian um it seems like i feel that the the you don't feel the statements i do sometimes

the statements and stuff that you're talking about are very games oriented um do you see him driving the game side or driving the affiliate side because i feel like in this in this group that we have here we have suzanne hardcore on the affiliate side we have you hardcore on the game side. Do you think his job is to take either one of those separate or have that overarching umbrella? Well, first of all, I do appreciate that my public persona in this space is really around the games. But in my life, I coach at an affiliate every day. And I've been there for three and a half years. And it's really important to me that part of the equation as well I think that he'll find the the the median that

CrossFit's almost been neglecting throughout the last decade which is that they can build each other up and the games has obviously been a driving force to getting people into the box and the people in the box have obviously been supportive of the games not everyone on either side of those equations by any means, but I think if you ignore the fact that they can help each other, then you're limiting what either one of them can do. And I wasn't saying you weren't on the affiliate side. Dude, I know you're a coach. Come on now.

You have to. You were saying that, Bill. You have to do some benign neglect of the games and i think he's going to do that the games is is is um it's she's the pretty girl in the room she's the handsome guy in the room like just don't give them too much attention it's like they they it throws everything out of balance you know being a little heavy-handed but you have to give the game some benign neglect and i hear this guy is i think this guy understands that that monster is really happy over there it's got plenty of attention i think he's going to focus i really hope he doubles down quadruples down on just media i hope he heard if i told myself i wasn't going to tell him but i think i

spit i threw the whole kit and caboo out and bring the journal back hire filmmakers start telling the stories it's a really simple play. And I even told him he can go back and look at the metrics from 2017 to 2018. And he'll see what happened there when we switched our media. Yeah. But see, but to do it,

it all fits. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a Hydra. I agree. The games will benefit from it. That's why you can neglect it. Yes.

The more people that go into affiliates, the more people will, the more people that go into affiliates spill out everywhere. They eventually take out ones. They get interested in the games. That's why you can neglect it. Yes. The more people that go into affiliates, the more people will, the more people that go into affiliates spill out everywhere. They eventually take out ones. They get interested in the games. That's the thing. Roll the red carpet out as far as you can to the front door of the affiliate.

What made, what made the open when it first came out so cool was that you had those games athletes and you had the never to be games athletes. First time ever worker outers whatever all doing the exact same workout whoa dang that's not for you bill that's okay um i and i i think that that is that piece was a we were the only fitness thing anywhere, any sport, any anything were the every person could battle the world's best at the same time. You don't see that in marathons. You don't see that in basketball.

You don't see that in baseball. You don't see that in bodybuilding. You don't see that anywhere. We were the only place they had. So that was our connection. That that that that piece. And yes, when they're in the affiliate, it's about the people that are losing weight and the people that are getting their first pull-up or whatever. And over here on the sports side, these are the people that are doing everything that they can to win.

And I mean, for even myself, being in both of those. To win the sport. To win the sport, 100%. To win the sport. I think it's drastically important that both pieces are together. I totally do. Like, I'm in awe of both of them, you know what I mean? I see that the barbell spin says that those two things have drifted too far away.

And it actually was something that Sousa and Hiller brought up in their little beach date video from whatever that was. it up in their little beach date video from whatever that was, is that back in the 2010 to 14 time period, there were a ton of games athletes that were also embedded into the CrossFit community that had nothing to do with the games. And you think about Matt Chan and Tommy Hackenbrook and Chris Spieler, Bill Grunler, Chase Ingram, Rich Froning, and just go down the list. All of these people that were investing their life outside of the sport into building up the affiliate, the community, the seminars, et cetera. And the games athletes have drifted from that in the last, you know, five to basically since 2015 till now where they're not,

now they're pursuing professional careers in the sport and their own brands and marketing and all of that thing. And you don't see them teaching seminar staffs. You don't see them opening affiliates. The ones that are still doing that, we're already doing it. The Scott Panchik's and the Ben Smith's, et cetera. Yeah. And I think that, you know, there's not a Roman Krennikoff, Ricky Garrard affiliate. You don't see these guys going on there and talking about the way that they're living

it out in their lives outside of the sport. And those are just two of them. Is it a bad thing or a good thing? It's just, it's different. And it's something that people like Don, when answering this question should recognize is that the landscape of what the games athletes are doing for the community still might be important, but it's very different than it was 10 years ago.

I think if you want them to feed each other, you got to, if you qualify for the games, you immediately get a free L1. You immediately get a free L1. You qualify for the games, you immediately get a free L1. You immediately get a free L1. You qualify for the games, you immediately get a free L1. If you're an affiliate owner, once a year, you get two free L1s to give to somebody in your membership. So you got an added value proposition to the affiliates because now I could find my bright spot, as Chris Cooper would say, in the gym and say, hey, Bill, you're awesome with the members. Have you ever considered going to get your L1? Well, no, I haven't, or it was too expensive. Cool. I got two that I get to give scholarships to. We're giving you

one this year. Okay. Then you get all the games athletes and then you give them the L1s. And then what you do is you take a low budget film crew, just somebody inside the L1 that's constantly, as Siobhan said, finding the heaviest person in that room and going right up to him with the camera and say, Hey, tell us your story. Why are you here? What affiliate do you belong to? Right? So you have that, but then you also do that with the new games athletes that are coming in especially the up-and-comers they'd want the attention they want to be shown on the crossfit games platform they'd want to be shown on the crossfit platform and now you have the intersection of where methodology meets the competitor and now the competitor is they're going this was awesome i'm here and i did my

one and i'm 18 and this changed my life and i'm going to take this back to my mom and i'm taking back to my grandma and then crossfit games gets the I'm 18 and this changed my life and I'm going to take this back to my mom and I'm going to take it back to my grandma. And then CrossFit Games gets to post that up and say, hey, look. Don't even let them compete in the games until they've taken the L1. Fuck those guys. Make it the gatekeeper. But if you continue to push. It's a safety thing.

It's a safety thing. You got to take your L1 before you compete in the games. There you go. Yeah, there you go. And if you push everybody through the L1 and then continue to highlight that spot, not only does it just keep spreading the message of the methodology, but it's also the feeder into the affiliates. Because, Siobhan, you said it, the L1 was the spreader of the DNA in the culture of CrossFit, the community. We didn't even get to that. Yeah.

And if so, if you were going to say, hey, how do you get more people excited about CrossFit? Well, you spew your DNA all over them. that is the way it is the way gross that was for someone specifically i know i figured he got out of the marine corps in 2003 so so he what's interesting also is that he found crossfit afterwards so when he was getting out uh that shit was just like just getting on the web. Anything else you want to add, Brian? Glad that he came on and hopefully can have him back. I'm excited to see what the next few months look like.

I mean, I think he says he's been setting the table at this point and we got to see what's going to be delivered. I really wish he would have been wearing a CEO shirt. Do you send them one ahead of time? Here's the, here's the, I'll tell you how I failed. I'll tell you my mission for him coming on the podcast. There were two things I, there was only one of two things I wanted. Nice hat. I either wanted him to cry or I wanted him to invite me to the gym to work out. I either wanted him to cry or I wanted him to invite me to the gym to work out. Then I would have known that I cracked the seal.

Those things could have only happened in the last 30 minutes that you didn't get. Good point. Thank you. God, Brian, you're a good dude. Savon Lowkey just nailed it. Make the game's athletes get their L1s. Think of the amount of no reps you'd have to. I wonder if this would look good on my microphone. Should I just put this on here?

Permanent looks damn good, dude. Look at that. Hell yes. Hell yes. Okay. Caleb, how many people,

um, how many people, uh, do you, do you see people besides you doing CrossFit, uh, on your deployment? Oh yeah. The tent's pretty packed just about every day.

And most everyone's doing CrossFit? Yeah. I wanted to ask him this too, Caleb. I wanted to ask him if he recognized who the base was of CrossFit, if he knows that it's first responders, that it was basically the – I mean, back in the day, all the Google searches were coming from bases all over the world. Yeah, we have a lot of bases that are affiliated. They have their base gym as an affiliate itself, and then they get a bunch of people with their L1s that coach classes and stuff. It's pretty rampant. And you know if you're in the Army, you can take a free L1 now. Yeah.

Well, not free. The Army will pay for it, which is crazy. I wanted to talk to him the army will pay well not free the army will pay for it which is crazy i wanted to talk about that too that's okay they need to uh i'm ready to go outside uh anyone want to finish with anything i was i was stoked you got him on here dude that was awesome cool thank you That was really cool. It's really, it's him. It's pretty cool that he did it. No, 100%. Well, and that's what I mean. The dude has a plus in the win section right there.

Because of all the people, if there was anyone else, you know that they would have tried to, it would have appeared that they would have tried to sidestep you. Because you always seem to be the tough question guy. But I let you down bill no no you did great you did a great job you did a great job bill's lying right now look at him hey and i like the way brian says it you let us down but it's not your fault you didn't have that extra half he had to go so you know you can only do so much. I will tell you this.

I'm really excited about a guest coming up. I reached out to Emma Carey, and Emma Carey has agreed to come on the show. I'm really excited. I've never interviewed her. I think she is up there as one of the highest prospects that CrossFit's going to see. We've invited probably 40 athletes to come on the show over the next month. We're going to double down on crossfit as we go through rogue and so um i want to do so much crossfit that i get nauseated by it again all right guys thanks everyone for checking in brian thanks for coming on bill thanks coming on caleb you demand thanks suza about time you were back