The Sevan Podcast - Don, Berkshire and CrossFit, oh my! | Take 2

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

For Affiliates, Coaches and CrossFitters: https://www.skool.com/medialaunch Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthews0uza/?hl=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prime Day is here! With epic deals exclusively for Prime members, you'll feel like a winner. Behind door number three is Amazing Deals! Shop deals on electronics, home, and more this Prime Day. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news! We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show we can book your reservation and when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash y amex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply.

Oh, man. Hopefully it works out this time. Shit. Hold on. Do you guys have an echo? I'm going to try to do something new. Maybe I can write on something here. Hold on.

Okay. Echo. Where is that coming from? Can you guys hear it? No echo? Okay. Cool. It's just me?

Good. Then where is that coming from? You got to love the live shows. I tried to test it as much as possible. But of course, you never really know how it's going to go on here. Okay. There we go. I'm back.

All right. I still can't. Is that on this phone? Holy smokes. One second. One second. Okay, there we go. Austin, what's up, man?

Last week was a fail. Yep, you're right. It was a total fail. It turned out it was actually just my computer. It totally needed to be rebooted and updated, and the whole entire thing just collapsed. So that was good. Choppy.

I can never tell if Heidi's just screwing with me or if that's actually true. She's like the biggest troll in the chat. What's up, everybody? Audio is Chris. Mike looks like it's a little from the middle school choir show. Yeah, that's about right. That's where i got

this from that pokemon on your shirt probably has some wild attack power yeah poke pokemon um boom yeah it's an old shirt that's for sure that's for sure i didn't control delete i just actually shut down the whole entire computer and just restarted. It ended up working out fine. But you guys aren't here to deal with the technical difficulties and a bunch of other crap that I had to deal with last time. You guys are here because you want to find out what's going on over at CrossFit. And although there's going to be some speculation here, as always with this show. I think that the speculation comes with some pretty decent evidence, some pieces of the puzzle that I've been putting together.

And I would like to preface this whole entire thing by letting you know that, look, this is just a discussion on what might be. This is something that is not even going to... I'm not going to say if it's good. I'm not going to say if it's good. I'm not going to say if it's bad. I'm going to let you guys decide that for yourself. But it's definitely going to be different. And different is going to mean a lot of things to different people. For some of you guys that might have just started CrossFit in 2020,

it might not even matter that much. You might listen to this and be like, so what's the big deal? For some of you guys that have been around for a while, you might listen to this and be like, damn, that sucks. And it's coming to the path of private equity being a corporate versus an individual owner with a vision. And there is some major differences in that. And the truth of the matter is,

is that whether we like it or not, it's not a matter of when. It's just a matter of... I mean, it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when CrossFit is going to sell. And I think it's going to sell probably within the next 12 to 24 months. I think what's going to happen is it'll get through this game season. And then I think we're going to see some drastic changes to the CrossFit games.

Okay. What? Please check the configuration on the comments. They're not displaying to the public. I don't even know what that means, Edgar. i don't even know what that means edgar i don't even know what that means don is getting bottom surgery nick don is getting by surgery okay no that's too too far too early in the uh show for for uh those type of jokes too early in the show um can you guys not see the comments or something i don don't know. It's not that big of a deal. You can't see the comments. Let me change my brand here. You know, it'd be crazy too. So if I had like this like full day or something to, oh man, I thought the, I thought the

advertisement for the, for the behind the scenes would be in there. Okay. So before we get into this whole entire thing, one thing that has been going really well is over at Media Launch with the School Platform. Last time I was on here, when it was all choppy and shit, I talked about how we were almost at 100. Since then, we have gotten just about 23, 24 members. So if you guys aren't there yet, go on over. members. So if you guys aren't there yet, go on over. And you can check it out. Inside here, there's a bunch of really cool stuff. But one thing that is awesome is we have this discussion about reaching out and collaborating with other people in your local community for their Instagram. We have a local coffee shop, a local restaurant that

does their media really well, you can go in there, talk to them about doing some sort of post together, do a collab, and your business will basically be exposed to all of their audience and all the people that follow them.

And it's great if you do it at a local level. So there is that piece that some people were talking about and tried. The idea worked for them really well. I talked about it last time. We exchanged a ton of ideas in terms of new on-ramping, new members, how people do that,

the different processes that they have in there. And every Friday, we do a weekly call. We're just kind of a roundtable discussion. We'll pick a topic. All of us will just kind of chat. I'll kind of start off the conversation. And then typically, we turn it into more of like a free-flowing discussion. Usually, after we finish that call... I was going to say typically like 10 times in a row right there. Usually, after we finish that call, there's some sort of action, something to be done afterwards. And that's the whole entire point is that we have a collaboration of ideas in here, a bunch of people exchanging what works for them, what they did, asking questions.

All these really cool stuff is inside the school platform. It is completely free. There's obviously a lot of affiliate owners in there, but we have coaches as well. One of the new modules that we released, because there's a ton of them inside this classroom section here where you can click it, is a whole entire deal on Google. Intro to Google and analytics, how to read it, how to set up your Google business. If you guys want any information on if you wanted to try to dabble in running ads,

we have Ryan Haskin here who worked as a contractor for CrossFit for the last couple of years and everything he puts in here has a ton of value. Again, all of these are completely free. So I'll put the link down at the bottom in the comment section, and you guys could go ahead and check that out. It's as if Matt has a real job or jobs to make money, but also cares about this. Thank you, CrossFit Fat. Dude, my schedule over these last couple of weeks has been absolutely insane. Traveling to both semifinals, I basically come

home. I work in the gym all day for the two days that I'm home trying to give my other coaches a little relief while I'm gone. And then basically I coach the morning classes from 5.30 a.m. till 10 a.m. and then have been heading right over to the airport and jumping on a plane. That's literally been the last three weeks of my life. It's been nuts. And I'm not going to lie. I'm freaking tired, guys i'm tired also too if you're not a member of uh the podcast yet you should be because we are releasing the behind the scenes there we have the east coast semi-final day one already up and we have the uh west coast semi-final day one in the chamber so that'll be released within the next couple of days and they're gonna keep

rolling from there oh it's happening the same thing last time. Okay. That scared me because sometimes if the comment thing is off, it stopped working. Okay. So let's get into why you guys are here. I kicked it off with this clip last time before the whole entire show went to shit. And we're going to kick it off again just for a context of situ of uh the situation so here's the deal there was a clip over at coffee pods and wads that was um somebody who was at a affiliate gathering or heard from affiliate gathering that dawn essentially said um hold on let me answer this tori k uh when can non-members see behind the scenes never never it's never going to release to you ever Go and pay the 20 bucks and watch all of them.

Just kidding. They'll eventually be free, but I'm not telling you when because we don't really know when. Yeah. When can it be free? All your hard work and all the investments you made into it.

When can I have that for nothing? Ha! So we have the clip that was put by Coffee Pods and Wads. That was somebody at the affiliate gathering here that heard Don say he was looking to sell the company. Now, this should be no surprise. This happens in every single private equity. Don has said this before, but we're going to play the clip here just to get some comments.

For a CrossFit tour. And he basically said that they're looking to sell the company. So anything that isn't making a revenue right now, they're going to be trying to cut. Because somebody was asking the question straight up. It's like, are you trying to sell us? Is that what's going on? Are you trying to make?

And he's like, yes, we are. And so if we're not making any money, then I think we should probably not expect these things to come back. It was Q&A in Oslo when he was there with the team, and somebody was like, well, what's going on? Are you trying to sell us? Is that what it is? Are we getting ready? Is that what we're getting ready for? He's like, yes, they are looking to sell us.

They've been trying to sell us for years, so I'm not sure anybody's surprised. No, I'm not shocked that that's what's happening. I'm shocked that he outright said, yes, that's what we're doing. That surprised me a bit because I thought there might be more than that. Okay. So that's going to provide some sort of context as to where this kind of started from.

And it got me just thinking like, yeah. Okay. Even if somebody said that guy wasn't even at the affiliate gathering, I don't know if he was, or if he wasn. Either way, it doesn't matter. It's a private equity company. They're going to look to sell it, which got me thinking like, well, how would they sell it? What would happen? What changes would need for them to pump up a valuation to actually make money on the $200 million they spent on it? Now that's assuming that they want to make money on it. Because one thing that you guys should be aware of is Berkshire Partners has a bunch of companies

inside of its portfolio, a bunch of them. And it could be the larger picture for Berkshire, the company in and of itself, to actually close down CrossFit and cut its losses with it and turn those losses into some sort of tax advantage or something else that they have for a larger picture that none of us could see. So the thought that they need to sell it or they have to make it work is already completely wrong because they don't. And we don't know that. And we don't know the larger strategy of Berkshire Partners. We think, oh, we're special. They spent $200 million on it. They're probably really hoping to sell it to make more money on it. Maybe they are. Maybe they're just looking to offload it.

Because sometimes it eventually makes more sense to cut your losses rather than dump more and more money into something if they don't think it's going to work. And so cutting their losses could just mean slowly closing the whole entire thing down and killing it. Or it could mean just selling it at a loss anyways. It could mean selling it at a loss anyways. Brad PD, Sousa, they already made money off the lawsuit with Nazem 100 mil. How do you know that? The case is completely sealed. How do you know? Did you just pull that number out of your ass or do you actually have a source on that?

And if you do, be very careful because I heard, rumor has it, air horn rumor, rumor has it that that shit got sealed up with an with an nda and they're not even allowed to talk about it amongst themselves or anything they closed that thing sealed it up and freaking threw the key away it's like the jfk files with the government you ain't gonna find nothing it's like the epstein flight list don't even freaking think it's gonna get released so unless you have some sort of uh sound information on, which if you do, that'd be super interesting. Who knows how much they sold it for? Who knows?

Susan could give you the 30-second rundown on the organization of Berkshire company and where CrossFit fits into ownership. How the fuck would I do that? How would I give a 30-second rundown on Berkshire, the company, and where CrossFit fits into the ownership? I can't.

I don't know, dude. Think about it. I would love to sit down with the board members and figure out what the hell is going on. But I'm not going to be privy to that information, and nor would that be public. Why would they do that? Magnus Souza is getting bit by the money bug for sure.

I don't know what that means, Magnus, but I can assure you I've been doing a lot of shit and there ain't a lot of money involved in it, at least not for me personally. At least not for me personally. Keith Knapp, also, if they bought it for $200 million, set it for a million, they're still in the hole. Probably part of their deal, dude. We don't know. That's the thing. There's a major assumption of

that. We think they have to make money on it. We know they want to make money on it. Duh, that's a good business decision. But when you look in the terms of private equity, and you look in terms of venture capital, a lot of them go for grand Sam swings. They look for the huge winners that cover all of their losses. the huge winners that cover all of their losses. And you have no idea if they have all their eggs in this basket or what, or if they're just going to just cut the whole entire thing down. RB, Sousa drives an 07 Civic negative. Yeah. Money bug equals wanting to make more money. No, I want to stay poor, Magnus. I want to be someone of the people. I don't want to make any money. I want to struggle because then maybe you'll respect me more. Fucking stupid. Think about it, buddy.

Okay. So with that being said, what would the strategy be? How would they pump up an evaluation to get it to be to $400 million? Let's just play that game, right? 400 million. Let's just play that game. So in my mind, the first thing I would go to is, well, let's see, how could we determine some of the decisions that they're making? Well, we can look at the people that they're hiring. So if you think about who they're hiring, the major hire, which was the CMO, was Jenna Hocka. What is Jenna Hocka's resume? What did she do that would make me say, wow, this is a team player and I want them on our team? She created Barry X. Barry's X, right? Which was the online direct-to-consumer application for workouts at home. And it's a $40 a month membership. It's a $40 a month membership. Cape Tocosta.

Matty, where do I get that shirt? You got to go back in time to 2014 when Greg did his Crush Big Soda Tour. You got to show up here locally at Walnut Creek or one of the gyms that was listed on the back and stand at the table for a minute and get your free shirt. Yep. That's what I do. Following breadcrumbs. Exactly. That's exactly what we're doing. Brad, no source. It was just spoken on the podcast before that it was thought to be a large amount. It could be a large amount. Again, we don't know. We don't know. So Barry's X. Barry's X is a membership that is a direct-to-consumer of Barry's Bootcamp. Barry's Bootcamp is a franchise where you show up and you work out kind of in the dark with some fluorescent

lights and you do a bunch of high-intensity HIIT interval training exercises. So during 2020, when the pandemic came, they shifted to a direct-to-consumer model so you could get it on an application. I could follow my workouts and I could do them at home. 40 bucks a month, right? So the person responsible for making that successful was Jenna Hocka. Jenna Hocka is now the new CMO for CrossFit. CMO is a new title for her. She was very successful over at Barry's Bootcamp, by the way.

And with her Barry's X success, you would have to imagine that if that's going to be the shining star that she did super well because she hasn't been a CMO before, then there's a very strong reason that they're hiring her to go to a direct consumer model for CrossFit. Now, and I was going to try to set up my phone as a second camera and write so you guys could see it real time. You guys know, this is barely working right now and at the time. So you're just going to have to bear with me. You could write it down at home if

you want to think about it. But Don made a claim and he said, we want to get 30 million people crossfitting. If you guys watch one of Hiller's videos in the past, he basically said, how are you going to work? The math doesn't math on that. You would need to expand affiliates by a ton. And then you would need to have 2,000 members in each one of those affiliates globally to even get close to anywhere near that number. So then you have to ask yourself, okay, well, if that is the actual goal, and he wasn't just... Maybe he was overambitious at $30 million. Let's call it $15 million. So if that's the case, at some point, you'd have to say there's no way those are fitting all in affiliates. And we've been seeing affiliates decline since 2017, 2016. The peak might have been at 15,000. And now we've heard numbers as low as 10,000. So we don't even know.

So it's super aloof. They're like, oh, we have 11,000. Oh, we have 10,000. Oh, we still have 12,000. I've heard 13,000. So basically, let's just claim it's somewhere between 10, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and 13,000 affiliates. So that's a loss. And I would imagine that the growth of affiliates, meaning new people signing up, is probably in the steady decline. And we don't even know until the end of this year, until January 2025, how many of the current affiliates are going to stay on because we had that big price hike. It's kind of gotten quiet on that. But each month, a new affiliate has to decide, am I going to pay the $4,500 for the annual fee and continue on to be a CrossFit gym?

And some of them don't have to make that decision until December, like myself. So I have the whole year to figure out. So we don't even know what that total number and shakeout is going to be come January 2025. So it only makes sense that you would want to do some sort of direct-to-consumer model, right? So what does that look like? Well, that might look like something a lot like Barry's X. You wouldn't have to look much further than street parking to know that there is some success with this particular community for a direct-to-consumer model. Okay. Now, you're asking, well, how do you know something like that might happen? Is it totally just speculation? Well, that's where trademarks are important. And trademarks are public. You could go onto a website here, uspto.com, and you could search different trademarks and you could see when they were published. You could see if they're active. And you could see, most importantly, what their use is for. back, they decided like a CrossFit kind of like startup on-ramp where I could do that in the comfort of my own home and realize CrossFit's not that scary and then hopefully move from that on-home model to a CrossFit gym, to a CrossFit affiliate. Okay. Now, that was the on-ramp.

And so what we have here is the trademark for that. So that's what this looks like. CrossFit Start. We have the filing date right here, which is 2022, basically when they started that out. And we have providing online videos featuring exercise in fitness training instruction, not downloadable. Okay, that's the key. Not downloadable. Right. Now the status is still good. December of last year, everything was good. And they kept that trademark in handy. So that was CrossFit Start. So that was kind of that on-ramp piece of it. They also trademarked CrossFit Start on-ramp as well. Okay. So you're like, what a big deal. So they're going to start doing some on-ramps on

there. Well, you have to ask yourself if there's a finite amount of capital, finite amount of money, is another word for capital, finite amount of cash in which they can invest into different initiatives, how much money are they going to invest into online videos and direct-to-consumer model versus any sort of investments into the affiliates. So that's where my kind of goes is like the allocation of capital, how much they have. Now, the interesting thing is we've heard Don say they're going to take a meaningful money out of sport, a meaningful amount of money out of sport. We don't know what that looks like. We probably won't know that until after this game season and sometimes into the probably closer to

the open, right? They're going to keep that closer to the vest because they don't want to rock the boat too much. Joel, I'm just bringing up your comment because I saw like two brain business. There should actually be two businesses, CrossFit the sport and CrossFit the methodology. I could not agree with you more. And maybe CrossFit sees it the same way. So who knows? Maybe they're going to offload sport completely and just sever it and sell that as its own thing. Okay. Now, what are you asking yourself? You're like, dude, that's not that big of a deal. You're just trying to like cry wolf for like clicks and views on here. Like, who cares if they do an on-ramp? That might just be good for gyms in general.

You get people more exposed to CrossFit, they might come into your gym. Might. Okay. But now, as I search for more trademarks, we found... Hopefully this brings up the right one. Nope.

I already brought that one up. One second. Sorry, I got a bunch of them open that I'm going to share with you guys. Ah, here it is. Forging Inclusive Fitness. Forging Inclusive Fitness. three, the status became here, boom, on January of this year. And it has not yet been signed to an examiner. So this thing is still going through the process. So what is forging inclusive fitness? And what are they going to do with inclusive fitness? Well, if we go down to the goods and services here, they're going to provide physical fitness instruction, including or conducting

fitness classes, providing fitness and exercise facilities, consulting services in the field of fitness and exercise, providing a website featuring information on exercise and fitness, providing online non-downloadable fitness videos, providing live and online fitness certifications, seminars, and exams to personal trainers. So we already know that the L1 kind of moved to this online model where you could go and you could take it online. The biggest difference between what the personal training certifications were originally being offered in the L1 between what the personal training certifications were originally being offered in the L1 was that there was up to and over eight hours of in-person seeing, moving, and correcting movement. It was the only certification that had you at the time show up in person, in front of the trainers,

in front of the red shirts, and of the red shirts and watched you move, watched other people move, and then corrected that in real time. So you were physically in the room. Now we've seen that the, does it say CrossFit anywhere? Yeah. You mean the people who trademarked it, buddy? CrossFit LLC? So now if you are taking the classes online, the L1 online, how much does that water down the culture of what CrossFit used to be? Right? There we go. Nathan.

It's listed Joel Friedman as the attorney of the name. He's the attorney of record for a CrossFit LLC. Okay? I wouldn't show you guys this if I didn't know that it was CrossFit that trademarked it. All right, Dan? Okay. Did my homework a little bit here, buddy.

Did my homework a little bit here. All right, Dan. Okay. Did my homework a little bit here, buddy. Did my homework a little bit here. So if we have a forging inclusive fitness, making it like, let's say they're making it available for everybody and anybody, right? That's going to move it directly to the direct-to-consumer market. So you have to ask yourself, again, if we go back to capital, we go back to cash on hand in which they can invest into different initiatives, how much of that investment money is going to go into in-person training? The cost there is a lot. You have to have your trainers on deck. You have to fly them around. I have to pay for their expenses, right? But that was wildly important

to a long-term vision of keeping a culture and disseminating the culture and what's important with CrossFit from person to person. It makes a hell of a lot more sense if I need to save money somewhere, but I still want to have my L1 and I still have to have the L2 because I need those as barrier to entries for you to own an affiliate. So I just move it all online. And what does that do? It starts to water it down a ton. And you've already seen that they're struggling to sell the L1s. And I'm going to show you guys this in just a moment here as well too, in terms of that CrossFit is no longer a movement. CrossFit is no longer having a culture of being this forging elite fitness. And in fact, one of the tagline lines that is also trademarked on here, which is, and you guys already know this because we've seen it places, is a leading platform for performance, health,

and happiness. The whole entire premise, at least for me and the reason why I got so obsessed with it, was because for the first time, Greg Glassman put a definition to what is fitness. It was defined. It was quantifiable. It was measurable. It was observable. It was repeatable. It wasn't up for debate. But now when you make the tagline... Oh, and by the way, by the way, I meant the scratch. Turn it all the way up. Scratch. By the way, CrossFit was always inclusive. You could have gone on in 2001 when the website became live all the way up until they sold it.

You could have gone to the CrossFit Journal. You could have downloaded every single video. You could have downloaded every single article on there for free, including Garage Gym and how to find equipment on the cheap. And you could have started doing CrossFit in your garage. It already was inclusive. It was for anybody who was willing to try, anybody who is going to learn, anybody willing to do it. So the fact that now it's trying to be positioned as inclusive is misleading in terms of the methodology and where it came from. That already existed. So now we have this new tagline of the leading performance of our leading platform,

leading platform of performance, health, and happiness. How do you quantify happiness? Even in 1776, they realized that that was not a metric in which you could quantify and staple down. That's why it says it's in pursuit of happiness. So it starts to already change the whole entire directory of what the methodology was founded on, which was truth, which was definition, which was observable, measurable, and repeatable. So when we have been forging inclusive fitness and making it accessible for everybody at home, now we have online classes, we have download videos. Slowly, I start to take away the in-person courses. It starts to save me as a company more and more money. So what does that mean? Well, that means that again, going back to capital distribution, when you have so much money to invest in different things,

how much of that money now is going to go to affiliates? How much money is going to go to affiliates? Are affiliates the most important piece of the puzzle? to go to affiliates. Are affiliates the most important piece of the puzzle? They call the stakeholders. Now, how much of my stake actually matters as you're trying to shift and go directly to consumer? Now, here's the deal. Here's the deal. A lot of you guys are going to say, well, is this good or is this bad? And obviously, I don't really know. And typically, depending on what CrossFit means for you, this could be a good thing. What does that mean? That means more people could start doing CrossFit and more people might come into my gym if

I'm an affiliate owner, a stakeholder here. But then all I have to do is ask myself, well, if I were to look at something that might shed a little light, a little insight onto what might happen if they go to the direct consumer model, wouldn't I just look at street parking? Now, how many street parking members do street parking and then also have a gym membership to a CrossFit gym? What do you think those numbers are? How many people do you think left their gym and started street parking? How many people do you think start street parking and then join a CrossFit gym? Now, I don't really know that answer to that. I don't know. Maybe I could call Miranda and Julian and ask them or something, but I don't know. But those are the questions that I'm

asking myself. And so these are the questions that you just kind of have to toss over and everybody's going to have a different opinion on it. But the way that I see it is that CrossFit has always just been the name. It was to protect the brand. And it was to make sure that we could keep what's happening in our affiliates legal and free and good. from HQ to continue to educate us, especially on the long-term of the vision, which is essentially revolutionizing healthcare and putting it back into the individual person's power with health, exercise, nutrition, and having them take ownership of their health and preventative measures. Okay. So if we were to ask Brandon Julian, Hey, how many street parking members have pushed me people into gyms is probably going to be low. So again, we go back to now, does that mean that I'm in competition with CrossFit HQ for memberships for people that are going to show up and buy my membership and continue to pay me so I could thrive as a CrossFit affiliate?

Or are they just going to start moving a direct-to-consumer model and pay $30 or $40 a month and just get all their classes and all their programming online? And by the way, the trademark for that Forging Inclusive Fitness is also for equipment and shirts and everything else. So now you imagine I got my CrossFit bundled package of dumbbells and all my at-home stuff, and I just go direct to the consumer and I pay and are direct to HQ and I pay them $30 a month and they deliver classes whenever I want them. And I get to follow the new red shirt L1s on the non-downloadable video. And every now and then, like on Peloton, I could catch a live one as well too. Right? So one thing that I did as well is if you do the math on the direct-to-consumer model. So let's say we have 10,000 affiliates, we have 10,000 affiliates, right? And I'm going to do this via calculator because I'm not going to do math live on air. We all know how that ends up going, right? So if I have $4,500 on an annual

basis, so this is annual revenue, and I take that, I times it by my 10,000 affiliates, it's just going to be easy math, right? Boom, I get 45 million in annual revenue. Okay. So let's say I charge the same as Barry's X. We know that price point was right for what they were delivering in terms of online classes you could join, in terms of classes that are pre-recorded that you could do on your own time and at your house. So let's call it $40 a month. And let's say they get 200,000

people at the $45 a month to sign up. That's now $8 million a month times your 12 equals 96 million a year. So that means that if I went to a direct consumer model, I could control a ton of stuff. I could advertise it. I could make it easy and frictionless to get people to start because it's all online.

And I end up making a shitload more money in the long term than I do off my annual affiliates. Here's the other thing too. I don't have to worry about appeasing the affiliates. I don't have to worry about a value proposition. It's not that big of a deal to me because I'm just going direct to consumer. And if I keep half of it for a period of time on that annual, we take that 96 million out there, 200 that they have, and we times that by the 45 million that they get. And now we got ourselves a real life,

strong evaluation on a company. So for me, it totally makes sense, not only with the people that they hired, but with the things that they trademarked for the reasons why they trademarked them. And the dollar amount checks out in terms of pumping up my evaluation, having more control over my product and turning my annual revenue into a monthly revenue.

Now, what about the games? So what would you do with the games? Well, wouldn't it make sense if I just turned the whole entire thing into online? You just compete from the open all the way to the games just online. And then I could have things like my $20 entry fee to the open, my $50 entry fee to quarter finals where the top 25% go, a $250 thing to semifinals. And then my only in-person actual competition would be at the games. Or maybe not even at all. Maybe not even at all. be at the games or maybe not even at all. Maybe not even at all. So without selling it, if they were to hold on to it, I think that all that would shift online because that also makes way more sense in terms of having an application or direct-to-consumer model. But Matt, they don't have an app. Well, if you guys caught the Semi-East commercials that were on there, you probably saw something that says HustleUp. Now, they were advertising HustleUp all over the place.

And the interesting thing was, if you downloaded HustleUp, it basically looked like a CrossFit HQ. They had a space for education. They had a space for training. They had a spot for competition for local leaderboards. Everything was trying to be packaged into this one app. had a spot for competition for local leaderboards. Everything was trying to be packaged into this one app. So if they partner with HustleUp, now I could have all my app in this beautiful location. I could have gym software. I could have competition stuff. I could have everything

into one solid piece. And I don't have to develop that on my own because again, we're talking about how much cash they have and where they can invest it and where that money goes. So it'd make more sense just to partner with this person or entity, bring it in. And then now we could just start to move all of that stuff on to that one location that could be the app. Again, speculation. What do I know? I'm just a dude reading some shit. So here's what I saw. I was watching... I'm a fan of Andrew Schultz. You guys like Andrew Schultz? I'm a big fan of Andrew Schultz. And so I was watching his podcast and some of you guys might have saw this clip. It was on my Instagram. And I saw this one piece and I was like, holy shit. Holy shit.

This could be an opportunity where something, in my opinion, right? This is just my opinions. Good would come out of with the games, right? And so I'll play it here for you if you haven't already seen it. I like taking niche sports that people don't think work and making them fucking work. That's what I like to do. But that is the excitement. At the end of the day,

you are an entrepreneur that loves building businesses, especially when people think that there's no chance. Yeah. So you almost need that, the monkey on your back. I do. I do.

I do. I hate to fucking admit that, but I do. But it's extra money. Dana White. Dana White. Dana White. Dana White has done this with Power Slap. We've seen him do it with the UFC.

He has a couple other brands inside that portfolio that's owned by the William Morrison Endeavor Group, which is also a little bit involved with CrossFit. So the chances of something like that happening aren't too crazy. But again, I don't know what the intention of the games is. Now, you guys have heard me talk about this before, that training and affiliates have always subsidized the CrossFit games because it costs a lot of money to put that thing on. Now, it used to be great because when you had the straight line between the athletes, the affiliate owners, the L1 staff, and the affiliates in and of themselves,

it became just this expression of the methodology at the highest level. And there was a very clean line, especially almost in the terms of open to regionals to games. It just made sense. It was easy to follow. You could trace. I could watch it on ESPN. And then I could see these people that are doing it. Then I know, oh shit, Jason Klupe, that guy owns a gym too. That's awesome. So that kind of made sense as a marketing tool. Over the years, those have continuously become loss. Like it's separated out. The athletes, the sport, it almost has no attachment to the affiliates whatsoever

other than the open in and of itself. And I was thinking about the open too. I was like, damn, you know what's crazy? Is that the open's kind of like a pimp and the affiliates are just kind of like the whores. You know what I mean? Like, hey guys, we got this really cool thing and you got to sell it to your members. You don't get any cut of the money. And then on top of that, you have to do all the work logistically to pull this thing off at your gym.

And as the media fell out of the open, as all the cool stuff kind of did with like the Rovers, Boz, and like, you know, and as slowly that kind of changed, it kind of made less and less sense for me to promote something that I make no money off of. And now I have to work harder because logistically, I have to pull this thing off. I mean, the least you could do is send me some sort of flyers with the QR code that I can hang up around my gym to make it a little bit frictionless to have people sign up or to have people know how to submit their scores. But nah, you left that up to us too. So that's why I was saying, I feel like the CrossFit Open is a pimp and the affiliates are the whores. Because I don't give a shit if it's snowing.

I want you out there hoeing. Wad Zombie. Matt, if you had a CrossFit doomsday clock, what would you say? I don't even know if this is doomsday, dude. And thank you so much, dude, for the $4.99 and the hanging out at the West Coast Classic. It was dope being able to spend some time with you. Side note. Lost my train of thought for a second.

So if you were to take all of that and you look at the open for what it is, you're trying to figure out like, okay, what do we do with the games? How does this matter? How should we make this matter to affiliates? And then maybe you just include like, hey, maybe it doesn't.

Maybe affiliates are almost a little bit more of a hassle than they are anything else. Okay. Now, the other thing that I saw that made me really feel like, well, how do you know that orange theory, fitness? Now, how do you know that that's kind of the ultimate goal, right? CrossFit used to be different. CrossFit used to be different. How do I make it to where it doesn't show up my search? Ah, fuck it.

You guys know I live in Livermore anyways, whatever. F45. F45. F45. Okay. So, and we'll get into like kind of what I think about this whole thing. So, here's what we got. Here's what we got. Okay, CrossFit.com.

Hang with me on this. Go macro first. Go macro. We got an opportunity for you to find a gym. We have some cool little videos showing some people doing some workouts. Dale Kingsham, what's up, dude? Then we have what? We have some social proof. We have some kind of testimony things, right? This is like, these people look like me. Maybe I could do CrossFit too.

What else do we have? We have another option for you to try CrossFit, for you to learn more. So we have an opt-in. We have social proof. We have an opt-in. And then what do we have here? Frequently asked questions.

These are kind of handling normal objections that people would get from their gym. Okay. And then we have another opt-in. So look at the big framework. Opt-in, social proof and testimony, opt-in, social proof and testimony, opt-in. Okay. Cool. Matt, what do you mean? Where are you going with this? Orange Theory Fitness, opt-in and video, you mean? Where are you going with this? Orange Theory Fitness. Opt-in and video. Social proof. Testimony. And more opt-in at the bottom. It's the same freaking website. It's the same freaking template all the way across the board. Now, what happens here?

Let's go to F45. Oh, opt-in. Almost exactly the same. Trial, find a gym. Oh, testimony. Go figure. More, opt-in. Huh. More testimony in social proof. It's the same freaking thing, y'all. Oh, wait. No. Here, look. We got an app. Direct-to-consumer. Now, we got our nutrition component in there. Now Now we have everything else. We got our body weight. We got our exercises. And we have our last opt-in.

They are the three same websites. The three same websites. So the issue there is like, okay, well, what's wrong with that? Well, the thing is, to me, is that CrossFit before, when you went to the old CrossFit.com website, old CrossFit, and this is where I'm going to get to kind of my opinion on it,.com. Okay, we got to go to images here because that shit don't exist no more. Oh, CrossFit website. Bring this up. Okay. Now, if we had the old CrossFit website, we had the CrossFit journal right off the top. You had a workout. That's what CrossFit was. There's your free workout, right? We had the archives. You could go back and start to search stuff. You could search stuff here at CrossFit.com. You could search right here. Check out all my certs across the world. Basically sold out at that time. The way that I looked at this is this was an educational piece.

You had the workout right off the bat. We're different. Here's our workout. By the way, it's free, inclusive, if you will. Also, too, we have the CrossFit Journal. Go and learn. And then you open that thing up. That was the first tab they had on there. And you guys know that when you get to the journal, it was just nothing but a ton of education. A ton of education. And then of course, we had the L1,

which was only delivered in person. And a ton of them were sold out everywhere. And if you guys remember back in the day, you had to put down essentially your 250 and hold your spot before you would go to the gym or the cert because they sold out so quickly that if one came up in your area, you just had to commit to it, put down the 250 and go. I hated this website. Did you hate the look of it? Or did you hate the fact that it was just there and free and had a ton of education and had a ton of resources, whether you were a coach, whether you're a CrossFit, just curious about it, or whether you were an affiliate owner. You can hate the look and the color. Yeah, the look. Yeah, exactly. Whatever. I don't give a fuck about that. I'm talking about the meat and the potatoes of it. I'm talking about what CrossFit

was. And to me, CrossFit was an educational company. CrossFit was media, and CrossFit was education. And the media and the education was revolutionizing healthcare in the way we saw it. Now, we're just going back to obscurity to look like another Me Too fitness offering. We're literally no different. If I'm looking at this and I'm saying, okay, I need to do something for my health. I want to get in better shape. You have now three of the same exact options. Three of the same exact options in my book. Fire. The world moves on. Seems like CrossFit OGs have a hard time accepting it. This podcast is long layman. Boo hoo. No, you dumb motherfucker. It's because I want to revolutionize healthcare.

We were on a mission. We had a vision. We were the only ones pushing it back against all this bullshit that is the CDC, all the bullshit that happened over the last four years. It was different, dude. I was on a mission. I signed up to this shit not to fucking run a treadmill. Bullshit.

Orange Theory and F45. Freaking, oh, just follow the thing. Get the information on the app. Don't worry. You're just a drone. I didn't sign up for that shit, dude. I was on a mission. And whether it was going to come and realize or not, it didn't matter, dude, because that's what fired me up. It's not about boo-hoo. It's about the complete changing of CrossFit as we see it it is no longer about definitions it is no longer about science, measurable, observable, repeatable

it is now about fucking just doing the same exact shit as Orange Theory, the same shit as F45 the same shit as Gold's Gym we were the rebels dude and now, fall in line and yeah, welcome to the boohoo podcast, bitch Rebels, dude. And now, fall in line.

And yeah, welcome to the Boohoo podcast, bitch. That's the difference. That's the difference to me. I didn't sign up to be another one of these things. I didn't sign up to share membership with CrossFit HQ and their direct-to-consumer model through an app. I signed up because I knew what I did mattered. It changed my community. The type of people that signed up for Forging Elite Fitness

were ones that weren't accepting mediocrity. They weren't accepting average. They wanted to come in, and they wanted to really take ownership of their health, and then they wanted to tell everybody else about it. And by the way, Choir Dude, I just used you basically to go through that whole entire rant. I have nothing personal against you, buddy. Sorry for the name calling. But that is what mattered to me. That is what fired me up. That is what drove me out of bed to coach my classes,

to get up at 5.30 in the morning because I felt that the way that we did fitness, the way that we viewed health could change the world. And it could take away this corruption that we see in the fucking medical institutions in society. Now, there's nothing pushing up against that. There's nothing. It's gone. Get me all fired up, choir boy. Yeah, choir boy. Yeah. Sorry about that, dude.

Like I said, I didn't need to name call you. Don't apologize, Susan. Pimp hand needs to be strong sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed. So in conclusion here, this could be left up to the individual. What do you think?

Is this what you signed up for? Is this what CrossFit is? Is this what Cross represent? Is this what Crush Big Soda came into play when we're exposing the corruption and exercise science? Who else is doing it? Who else is going to continue to do it? Here in the United States, the obesity rate is through the freaking roof, dude. And the CDC and the World Health Organizations and all those institutions are the ones responsible for all of this stuff. And now who's going to push back against that? Where's the rebels?

Where's the people that are going to say, no, we're not going to do that. And in fact, we're going to eat a certain different, we're going to eat a different way. We're going to train a different way. And our main focus is going to just be educating the public. And by the way, it's completely free and accessible because if you just take the time to learn it, to educate yourself through the journal, then you could just go and do it in your garage. And guess what? For those of you that really get fired up about it and did really well in your garage and then start to have three people, five people, 10 people show up, we have an upsell for you. It's called an affiliate. Go get a brick and mortar.

Now you can build a business off of it. That doesn't exist anymore. The affiliates were never supposed to be a vehicle, an investment vehicle. It wasn't like, and Greg did that on purpose. He made it so you can't own a bunch of them and all these other things. So then that way, it wasn't about just building another franchise

or building another business just to turn a buck. That's all Berkshire cares about now is they just want to turn a buck. There is no revolution. There is no vision. It's Forging Inclusive Fitness online downloadable app. We're the lifeboats in a tsunami of chronic disease. Now, the lifeboats are too expensive. We can't afford to keep them. It's cheaper if we just let it go.

Because the most important thing is always going to be the bottom line when it comes to a private equity company. And that's not anything bad on Berkshire at all. That's not bad on Berkshire at all. That's not bad on any of the individuals that work inside of CrossFit HQ right now. That has nothing to do with them. Most of those people who I met are really good, awesome people. They're doing their jobs. So don't take this as a negative on any one individuals. It's not. Berkshire is focused on the bottom line. They care about their evaluation. They care about turning a buck. They care about selling it to the next guy. And you know what? Sometimes if you just got to put lipstick on a pig and make it work for a little bit so you can get that lemon off, it is what it is.

It is what it is. So in conclusion, we have now the world's leading platform for health, happiness, in performance, unquantifiable, unmeasurable, unobservable, or repeatable things. We are going to have, in my opinion, a direct-to-consumer application where you could pay your $20, $30, $40 a month and take your classes whenever you want. And the job, the way that I saw it, and the way my website looks, I'm like, well, what does your website look? My website looks like it's direct to consumer, bro, because that's the point. I'm trying to bring people into my gym.

CrossFit HQ wasn't trying to bring people into their umbrella. CrossFit HQ should have just been doing one thing and one thing only, a shitload of media and spreading the message. So where does it go from here? Well, frankly, I don't know. Just going to be honest. I don't know. I wish I had more of an answer.

I wish I had it all figured out. I don't. All I did was follow a bunch of breadcrumbs, looked at this whole entire thing in its entirety, and figured, oh, shit. I think this is where it's going. And again, this is my opinion. This is speculation. I could be completely wrong. There could be people watching this at HQ that is like, wow, he's completely off base. That's completely wrong. We're not doing that at all. Great.

But I don't know, man. It doesn't seem like we're the revolution anymore. It doesn't seem like we're the movement. It doesn't seem like I'm a lifeboat in a tsunami of chronic disease. It doesn't seem like I'm a lifeboat in a tsunami of chronic disease. It seems like I'm another me to fitness brand. It seems like I'm another me to fitness brand. So here's what I want to do, you guys. Before I jump off here and end with like kind of a line for everybody just to consider is I'm going to open up the phone line here. consider is I'm going to open up the phone line here. And if you have an opinion on this or a comment, I'm going to keep it brief. Don't come on here and try to get some sort of interview

or whatever. Just give your comment, give your opinion. If you completely disagree with me, good. Even better, call in because I think the back and forth is a great discussion. I think we all benefit from that. And we got the live call number up. So if you want to call in, if you have a comment, if you have an opinion on this or just anything that you want to throw out there, feel free. This is your opportunity. Let me connect to the Rodecaster Pro. And it's set up. Feel free to call in. We'll hang out for a little bit longer.

I'll start going through some of these questions. Peter, where would things be if Greg hadn't sold it? Wasn't he thinking axing the games? I think so. I do think that there was a winding down of the games big time, especially in terms of media. We saw that happen in 2017. But I honestly think that if Greg didn't sell and Greg got really loud through 2020 to now,

but got loud as he was starting to with the five buckets and death and stuff, dude, I think greg i think his like stardom or his like celebrity which he would probably hate that i use that term but i mean his popularity just would have started skyrocketing because everybody else finally started to realize what greg knew all along and so i think he just would have continued to uh grow and grow and i think it would have been really good for a cross. We would have decided our audience, that's for sure. It wouldn't be this like foo-foo, me too brand. It would definitely be revolutionary in the sense of thinking in terms of the way that we view healthcare as CrossFitters. Matt, have you considered CrossFit's message has evolved

because of what Greg once explained as early adopters, early majority, late majority, and people who would never buy in? Yeah. So obviously the audience is going to change. The different type of people that come into your gym will change. You're going to have the hardcore early adopters. Then you're going to have a lot more people, just the way you laid it out. But the one thing that shouldn't have changed is the methodology. We should have just been doubling down on the whole time. Doubling down on what we view as healthcare and preventative measures in terms of health. I'm trying to scroll through. Justin, $1.99. Thanks, dude. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Jonathan, people got to make that money. Completely agree, dude. Completely

agree. People do have to make that money, but here's the deal. At what cost and on what time horizon? On what time horizon? And that's really important because you being a media guy, dude, you know this. If somebody is going to invest in media, they're going to pay out a lot of money and they have to be willing to do it for a long term to actually see the return on that. And media takes a minute. You can't be like, oh, I'm going to start posting more stuff to my Instagram and hopefully I grow and then I can grow this business for that through my posting and through my media. You will, but that's not going to happen in six months. It's not going to happen in a year. It takes some time. It takes some time. But with the private equity, they're on a short time horizon. They're on a real short time horizon.

JK, Lance, it was methodology, not just a fitness program. Exactly, dude. Exactly, exactly, exactly. When I had a vision for my gym, like a long-term vision of my gym is I wanted to be a community health center. I wanted to have physicians in there that believed in long-term preventative care and measures, not just, well, go do diet and exercise and they know that you're not going to do shit and you'll be back in five years and I'm going to throw you

on the prescription meds and you're going to be on that slow descent to decrepitude and death. I wanted a health center and a community center that we could have like-minded individuals inside of there that are going to be making massive contributions to my local community into individuals that are coming in there to seek alternative lifestyles and treatments and preventative measures for chronic diseases and different things that we deal with here in the U.S. like type 2 diabetes and cancers. Who we got? Tyler, could CrossFit currently be trying to kill the methodology L1 and local gym in order to boost other Berkshire companies that they rely on an unhealthy population and kill trainers teaching nutrition? I don't know.

But I know that they have no interest in being the rebels. I know they have no interest in, as Greg would say, correcting the public health record. They just have interest in making sure that they get a ton of money. Why would CrossFit change? They don't need to spend on media. They've got Savan and Hiller and Mayhem, et cetera, doing it for free. Wrong. It needs to come from the mothership. CrossFit HQ needs to have a relationship with the community. It needs to. What you just said would be extremely risky in terms of CrossFit HQ's narrative. Because if you're just saying, well, why are we promoting things?

Yvonne and Hiller, Mayhem, they got it. Dude, you don't control that. So that leaves you completely vulnerable. You need to be able to control your own narrative as a company. You need to be able to have a relationship with your community. You have to. able to have a relationship with your community. You have to. And CrossFit HQ does not have a media relationship with its community, with the CrossFit community anymore. Vindicate, should CrossFit gyms have Forging Elite Fitness and the journal link on their site? This came up on Savan's TDC

review. Yes, that was part of the buy-in. When you became an affiliate owner, you had to have the CrossFit journal accessible on your site. Forging Elite Fitness, whatever. You could use that tagline or you can't. But again, that's the job of HQ to propagate Forging Elite Fitness, not the individual jobs of the gym. But I do think that CrossFit Journal should have been on the website of all the individual gyms because now you have 15,000, let's call it back in the day, individual journal distribution centers. Now, if I just go to my gym and I don't really know much about the methodology and I click on my website to get any information

from my local gym and all of a sudden I go, oh shit, what's this, the CrossFit Journal? And it clicks it, it reroutes me to there and I have this whole, these resources of education. It allows me to look at that in my own time. I spent a long time in 2019. I took about 12, I think, or maybe 10 articles, and I converted them all into audio files. Like Reddit verbatim, in Greg's words, did a whole little intro, this little do-do-do-do-do song at

the beginning and everything. Because I believed in it so much. And I knew that there was so much of the younger generation going to voice voice and audible and like consuming through, um, uh, audio more than they were like reading that. I thought it was really important that all that message continued to live on for another audience. Um, Mark Moss, uh, what other companies do they own Berkshire a lot? Just go to their website. You can check their portfolio. It'll give you the whole low down on all the companies that they've owned, um, uh, that they currently own that they owned in a lot. Just go to their website. You could check their portfolio. It'll give you the whole lowdown on all the companies that they've owned, that they currently own, that they owned in the past, how long they owned them for, when they sold for. You could even go on there and probably

see the managing partners of CrossFit and you will know who really owns it, I think. Will the new CrossFit marketing chick come on the show? I got the pleasure to meet Jenna. She's awesome. She was great. She was great. And again, I really want to separate my feelings of what CrossFit was, the private equity company that owns it, and the awesome individuals that are working in there.

Don't conflate it. Don't conflate it. This is not an attack on anybody in HQ. This sure the hell isn't an attack on Jenna. This is just me basically putting the pieces of the puzzle together, kind of trying to predict what's going to happen to something that I'm very heavily involved in and invested in. Clearly, not only with my career and everything else, but also emotionally, as you guys could see when I blew up on Choir. He's gone. He ain't going to be a member.

He's not paying $20 to stay on the podcast. Oh my goodness. I've got a ton of articles printed. Alejandro, I got a ton of journal articles printed, available at my gym's lounge for a member to read. I'm not affiliated. Yeah, because you believe in the message. All right, so I'm going to hang for just believe in the message. All right.

So I'm going to hang for just another minute. If any of you guys want to call in, I promise I won't yell. Why would CrossFit change? Didn't it just been, oh, I already read that comment. Mark, you also asked, yeah, right here. Susan, where'd you get this shirt? I got it in a Walnut Creek in 2014, listening to Greg do his talk on Crush Big Soda, which was funny because a lot of people thought he wanted Coca-Cola off the shelves or some sort of government

like involvement with the big soda companies and he did not. He even started the talk being like, I don't give a shit if people drink soda or not. I just don't want them in our exercise sciences. It's pretty simple. Greatness needs a trademark. Great needs to set up a new trademark with acceleration and move and you all move over to that. Forget the CrossFit name. Interesting. Dick butter. Interesting. All right. I'm trying to see if there's any other comments. Okay. interesting. All right.

I'm trying to see if there's any other comments. Okay. Any of you guys want to call in? That's cool. I get it. That's a nice camera back there. You like that one? It's an old one.

I was going to try to use it to do the down point because I was going to like write stuff out too, but I didn't. I had like no time to get it set up. Dan Souza. I did my L2 before the West coast class with attention to re-affiliate um we also need rowers and bikes what would you do between those two oh dude can i be honest with you guys for a minute about the affiliation and staying with it or not i mentioned my face because i drank a c4 i wasn't gonna tell you guys i like wanted to get coffee and i didn't get it and i just cracked one of these c's for now that like beta's like

kicking in my face feels super flush um i'm glad it's kicked in now and not earlier in the show i would have been way too fired up okay if i could be honest with you guys about this affiliation and what my stance is on it is i don't know dude like emotionally i'm attached to crossfit like if there was a way that i could that i could buy it i'd buy it tomorrow i got an idea if all us affiliates just throw in five bucks oh that was um but yeah that i don't have a good answer i don't have a good answer. I don't have a good answer. I keep going back and forth. And I guess the shit answer is like the answer that isn't really an answer is kind of like the wait and see approach. Well, who knows? Maybe it might sell to this entity or company that would be really good. maybe um maybe uh you know maybe a private buyer would come in and buy it and and reattach like a long-term vision and make it more of a movement make it more of a revolution which was what i was uh i was more excited about um crossfit hq might die one day the method the methodology and the ethos all of us will never die boxes will keep their doors open and make people fitter.

Yeah, I know. But I like the fact that it unified us. The name unified us. And although that has changed quite a bit, it was kind of a unifying thing. And I think, I guess that's why I struggle with it because, you know, on a standpoint of, um, you know, like do people still type in CrossFit gym near me and show up and come through my door because of that? Yeah, they do. Um, but here's the thing, and this is kind of the larger strategy of the school platform that I started this thing with, uh, advertised for you guys to jump in. The idea that i'm doing there is um with the help of the awesome team that i have jay verrett especially and his creative ability

and um stuff like that is to create media through there that represents what crossfit was and we position the media in that way um i'll start doing a bunch of stuff to my gym to start to really like showcase the methodology portion of it and really get loud about the methodology and how that's revolutionizing healthcare and there's an alternative option. collection of people that are still really interested in spreading the methodology and continuing to develop that and continuing to showcase that that's what their gym represents to their local markets through media and different things that we'll be doing in there. Ken Walters, $5 super sticker. Thanks, dude. Thanks, Ken. Appreciate that, bro. What's the best case scenario for CrossFit? In my completely arrogant opinion, Mark,

is I'll go up the street to the liquor store right here. I'll buy a Powerball ticket. I'll hit it for like the $400 million that it's on. After taxes, I'll probably end up with like $200 million or a little less than $200 million. And I'll make an offer. Is that arrogant or what? Welcome to America, the land of the free slaves under corporate America. Oh man, not wrong. How much did they pay? Did, did they pay for what? I don't know. Sorry, did I miss the beginning portion of that?

Or was it something? Do you remember 60 Minutes that did the feature on CrossFit? I did. Yep. Yeah. Hey, and by the way, inside the school platform, there's this old media piece that never saw the light of day that showed how the growth of CrossFit, especially in pop culture and everything else.

And that's free. You can go check that out in there. I think you can download it too. But getting rid of social media slash getting rid of the old media team, recording people with the water drugs, all that decision started, which started the downfall.

No, that started the downfall of the games for sure. Like that connection of like open to regionals, to games and how streamlined that was in the growth of the games. But I think that it was just a hard pendulum swing the opposite way. In my opinion, I would have done that in a couple of steps. I kind of agreed with the overall theory of it. I think the execution of it was pretty abrupt. But again, I don't have all the information that was made on that. But in my opinion, I probably would have done something very similar,

but over a longer period of time. And I would have repositioned all those media and creatives to start pumping stuff out about the L1, the methodology and, and that type of stuff rather than just games, games media. Oh, okay.

Bryson shirt. How much did Greg sell it for? $200 million. What would it take to buy it realistically? $50 million? Maybe $50 million? I don't know. I don't know. Caller, hello. Welcome to the show. Thank you for

calling. We have one person. This is good. It only took about eight minutes to get there, but we got there. What's up? How are we doing? What's going on, Matt? How are we doing? I'm good, man. Is this Mr. Keith Knapp? This is Mr. Keith Knapp. How you doing, dude? It's good.

I recognize your voice now. Nice. Did I blow your cover? Were you like hoping that? No, not at all. Not at all good this is a good conversation man it's like the first show i've been able to catch in a while it's really good to just kind of listen and um hear like it was pretty pretty cool hearing you get fired up thank you about stuff so i appreciate it yeah yeah i mean i mean the only thought that i would have is like there's um i put at the very, very, very beginning of this conversation, all the way up to the very top of the chat, like some interesting things like messages that I've received just from my past engagements with HQ that I think are also kind of interesting just from a timing perspective.

was a huge i think they're also kind of interesting just from a timing perspective um but like the the point that alivander just made that you just uh brought back up about like you know believing in the message even though you're not affiliated and all that kind of stuff it's like there's um i i've been thinking a lot about the um like the similarity between frostbite the methodology and faith and being affiliated and belonging to a church um and like harvard school did all this stuff like um research you know was probably eight years ago ten years ago where um they kind of talked about kind of the decline in organized religion and how CrossFit was filling some of that space or how other organizations were filling some of that space.

And what you're saying, like you went kind of the point you were making about you opened your gym because you wanted to be a center in your community for like-minded people to come together and do their thing. And, um, as you're saying that, I'm like, well, hell yeah, that's exactly what we all did it for. Um, but at a certain point, like, do I need, do I need to belong to the church in order to believe in the, in the thing? Yeah. I mean, are you asking me as a question like that?

Like posing it as a question? Yeah. I'm just, it's like, it's a, it's a rhetorical question to some extent, but it's just like, I think, you know, as we're, as the, as the mission for HQ continues to feel like it's shifting further and further away from working league fitness and establishing a framework for people to truly understand how to make the take the right steps in their life to become more fit measurable measurably and observably and repeatably um i guess we continue to move

further and further away from that from the mission that hq seems to be like promoting at what point does like luther come up to the front door of the catholic church and just like nail the feces on it and say like look we're kind of done with this yeah yeah i mean and that's a great question because here's the deal i think yes to a certain degree like a band together movement of everybody that isn't fragmented out to these individual um you know non-affiliated gyms is going to be stronger right like so we're if we're a collective and and they know us like you know by name and this is crossfit and this is what we stand for and this is how we define who we are as crossfitters it's definitely going to be stronger and taken a lot more seriously than when we have individual fragmented, non-affiliated gyms that aren't basically operating off the same sheet of music.

Which is kind of what we have right now, though, anyways. And to your point. And so, yeah. So I don't have a good answer for that. But I always see something in terms of the collective total band together is going to be always stronger than a bunch of individuals trying to carry the message especially when it comes to in the into the heart of the matter of it for me is that like if we take away the l1 and the awesome like uh red shirts in the seminar staff and we start to shrink that down just to the fact of like cost savings because

we know we can move it to online and our overhead goes way down um to me you're going to lose so much of the essence of what the crossfit methodology is and it's going to be turned more about just checking a box as a barrier to entry for me to uh either become a coach at a gym or potentially open up my own affiliate right it right right man good stuff dude thanks bye uh well love the conversation appreciate appreciate you always doing the thing and um yeah for you know all the affiliators out there listening like nothing changes about the work that we do at the local level to change lives of people that are walking in the front door of our gym so um you, it's not always an easy thing to keep doing, but appreciate everybody who's taking that mantle. Yeah. Well said, dude. And thank you, bro. Thanks for calling in.

You broke the seal. At least I had one caller. See you, brother. Thanks, bro. Bye. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point, right? It's a good, it's a good point. It's a good point. So what does it look like if everything's fragmented and we're no longer underneath this umbrella? At a local level, like Keith was saying, we still show up, we still do the work.

And I guess this is just harder for me because I look at it, I'm like such a more of a big picture kind of like thinker, like long term. And so for me, I see the movement being so much more powerful, like unified under one umbrella with one message. And over the years, that has been lost a little bit. So my online red shirt couldn't demo anything. And he also kept losing power. Everyone was sleeping while he spoke. Point in case. Thank you, Franco. Point in case. This is why the in-person training, being there, being around the other people, getting the certification. Man, it's so, so, so important to the methodology and all of us operating off that same sheet of music. Matt, are there many others like you, even among affiliates, or are you like Don

fighting a windmill. I don't know who that last one is. I can't even pronounce that name. So Bernie, sometimes your stuff's too smart for me, dude. It's a little over my head. But I think there's lots of other people like me. I think that there's lots of other affiliate owners that are hopefully invested in the movement, the larger picture of what CrossFit is.

The fact that I see CrossFit as actually a CrossFit HQ, I see it as a media and an education company more than I see it as a direct-to-consumer fitness brand. So again, that's just one guy's opinion.

If you were to improve slash save your gym, sign up for 2Brain instead of the $4,500 to affiliation with a company that gives two shits about you. Yep. Great freaking point. Yep. Christian, all I got to say about that is yes. And thank goodness for... Dude, did you go to the summit? Oh man, I wanted to go to Chris's summit. It looked so dope.

The media coming out of there and stuff. I was watching it and I had some serious FOMO. I'm not going to lie. He had a thousand gyms, over a thousand gyms show up. The speakers all looked awesome. Chris Cooper and the people over at Two Brain Business have a really cool thing going on. And I'm for sure going next year. I'm for sure going next year. Just got home from the summit.

Yeah, dude. I bet it was great. I bet being there in person. Now, when you tell me, Christian, would that be better online? Would you have got the energy? Would you have gotten fired up? Would you have been ready to run through a wall if you just had it playing in the background of your Zoom? Oh, that's another thing too. Somebody way earlier said, if you bought CrossFit, what would be the first three things that you would do? Number one, bring back media. Number two, heavily invest in the CrossFit Journal. And number three, establish a CrossFit HQ and let everybody know who works for CrossFit that they got six months to come and move in because we're

no longer going to be a remote company. One, two, three. Media focused around methodology and education, CrossFit Journal, fire back up, articles, audio, media. And third, everybody needs to come in-house. I want all my employees here. I want everybody to be in the same building, sharing ideas and executing because we would essentially have to be running it

like a startup all over again. And there's no way I would start doing that through decentralized work from home stuff. It just gets so messy. And there's no way to really keep track of everything that's going down in an online remote setting that way. Okay.

So that's it. I hope you guys learned something from this. Again, like I said, I could be wrong about all this. This is the way that I see it. You guys saw the reason why I disagree with it. I'm super passionate about it. And I feel like if we let down the sword of this healthcare revolution, if we don't continue to educate the public and take it into our responsibility to be that lifeboat in a tsunami of chronic disease, that nobody will. That nobody will. And my favorite thing with this is kind of like the line, I'm pretty sure, I'm like 99% sure this is a Batman thing, where you either die the hero

or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.