The Sevan Podcast - Greg Glassman #22 | Would you have Raised Affiliate Fees?
Episode Date: December 7, 2023Welcome to this episode of the Sevan Podcast! Register for CrossFit for Health Summit HERE - https://www.crossfitforhealthsummit.com/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crossfitforhealthsummit.com%2Fa%2F214771978...8%2FezYHjNhB 3 PLAYING BROTHERS - Kids Video Programming https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers/daily-practice ------------------------- Partners: https://capeptides.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE SHIPPING https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://swolverine.com/ - THE SUPPLEMENTS I TAKE! BIRTHFIT Programs: Prenatal - https://marketplace.trainheroic.com/w... Postpartum - https://marketplace.trainheroic.com/w... Codes (20% off): Prenatal - SEVAN1 Postpartum - SEVAN2 https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS https://www.vndk8.com/ - OUR OTHER SHIRT https://usekilo.com - OUR WEBSITE PROVIDER 3 PLAYING BROTHERS - Kids Video Programming https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Visit rbc.com slash student offers. Bam, we're live. Oh, it looks like it's a good connection what's up everyone good morning oh
it's not a good connection how do i look guys how's it look choppy good
augustus good morning ernie good morning not a taxidermy dear good morning Good morning.
Greg, I kind of see you trying to get in, but it says not connected.
That's weird.
Maybe you have an ass connection too.
Good morning.
Everyone can hear me?
Looks good.
Awesome.
Thank you, Ernie.
No burpees for you today.
Rambler, what's up?
Hey. No,pees for you today. Rambler, what's up? Hey.
No, taxidermy, you were not first.
You were second.
Greg, you're in.
That's it.
Hey, is it easy to get in?
Yeah.
The links I send you don't work?
You know, it could have been my computer.
How are we? Good. Do I look good? Can you don't work? You know, it could have been my computer. How are we?
Good. Do I look good? Can you hear me good?
I'm at hotel Wi-Fi.
Sounds pretty good so far.
Guys,
those of you who are in the Phoenix area,
this weekend there's a Legends event
and Travis from Vindicate will be there.
Please go over there and support his booth.
Also,
Paulina will be there. Please go over there and support his booth. Also, Paulina will be there from Coffee, Paper Street Coffee,
also served coffee, I believe, at one of the BSI events.
They're a sponsor of this show.
Everyone knows Gabe is great.
Big Greg Glassman fan.
So they are all in Phoenix this weekend for the Masters,
I think it's called the Legends event.
And I think it starts tomorrow.
And maybe if I get it, if I'm capable, I want to go by there and swing by and say hi, too.
I can probably get you tickets.
You're home.
Someone else doesn't have an in for you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, cool. You know a guy?
Yeah, I do.
Are you
friends with the people who throw that event?
You know them?
I'm friends with the people that
organize the
big golf event
in town.
Oh, no. This is a CrossFit event.
Oh. When I say Masters, I thought... in town. Oh, no, this is a CrossFit event. Oh, oh, oh, oh.
When I say Masters,
I thought...
I thought you were talking about some kind of
PGA bullshit.
Oh, no, no, no.
Some CrossFit bullshit.
But, uh,
I do think, if I
recall,
that the guy who puts on this event asked me if I could get you to come there.
Anyway.
We could spend time.
Yeah, that'd be cool, right?
Yeah.
Are you missing your truck?
Yeah, fucking missing it.
I got conned on that one.
Yeah.
Mom was going to drive back.
She was going to fly out with me to go get it and then didn't.
I get it.
I mean, it's a pain in the ass, but I wish it were here.
It's a long drive, right?
15 hours from between Santa Cruz.
12.
A dozen.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that's stopping to eat some shit and gas up every 300 miles or whatever it is.
Because the truck gets a fabulous 6.3 miles per gallon?
I'm not advertising its mileage.
No.
Jamie Latimer, I will be there, Seve.
Okay, cool.
Awesome.
Okay, I will really make an effort to come by and hang out with you guys. Have a cup of coffee.
Cheer on some old people.
Oh, look, Cave Dastro.
Look it. It starts tomorrow.
It'll be going
for three days.
This guy, Cave Dastro,
very similar to our friend Dave
Castro. He will deliver
it for you, Greg.
Very kind of you. It might come to that.
It might come to that.
I enjoy the drive is the thing, which is ridiculous.
But there it is.
Thaddeus Bell, Greg, will you share?
It's 1G, by the way.
Will you share some of your Fran times?
Good dude.
Good dude.
You know, I've done in the three minute space
but you got to understand this i mean i think i had the world record for fran for 25 years
so fair enough and were you the only guy who did it for 25 years we have the unsuspecting client
you know but it wasn't until we got into the Greg Amundsen space that people took this
thing more serious than,
you know,
than everyone was accustomed to.
And you're,
and that's not fair.
Mike Bender to Mike Bender,
you know,
when he was doing the toughest cop alive competitions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was a,
that was a crazy machine.
It was a guy at 215 pounds could do 50 dead hang pull-ups.
Dead hang.
Like, yeah, he touched by the judge.
No, no, calm.
No.
Mike, they freed Craig Coley.
Oh, oh, wow.
Yeah, Mike Bender.
Yeah, he won the toughest cup alive yet several years in a row maybe five years
in a row wow wow you didn't know that uh I I I probably did know that I just never put it together
because whenever I would see him I just didn't make the connection I had I had I had a dozen
years of winning the top toughest cop alive in the gym on days that I would have. And it happened.
Mike Bender, Greg Amundsen, Phil Mancini, and Jason Hare.
The four of them had been, I mean, those were like, those were the stars of the stars.
And that was first the toughest cop alive, then toughest competitor alive to open up the environment.
And it didn't matter.
live then toughest competitor live they open up the environment and it didn't matter the same guys were like jason hair phil mancini greg amundsen and mike bender legends in that in that space
um uh is that a deflection from the question what my friend time is
no not at all everything it was as good as theirs.
Greg, what's your fitness like these days?
Before you answer that, I do think that I may have been there in Hawaii with you when you hung some –
did you hang rings from a tree in Hawaii and do a muscle- up and your shoulder went honky-wonky?
Back lever.
Back lever.
And suffered an enormous shoulder mishap.
And the thing was sub my maximum strength and nothing moved for me forever.
And the crazy noise and the abrupt pain and i dropped from
the rings and i did a muscle up after that just to prove to myself that whatever was wrong it wasn't
too wrong i don't know what the test showed but that's that's what that was and i've known you i think for almost uh
more than 15 years and the only time that i've ever heard of you going to a doctor
was at one point your shoulder was hurting you so bad we went to la sorry about breaking your
and you visited an orthopedic surgeon and that was just because it was interfering with your
sleep so bad right is that am i remembering that right yeah and these guys were like where the tommy john surgery came
from and we had connections and there was a doctor there there was a crossfit not
but you never got the surgery right you started going down the pipeline and then you're like ad
no thank you right right and it wasn't that i needed the tommy john surgery it's just that this job curling uh
orthopedic sports medicine clinic is world renowned and uh i thought i'd have him take a look
and um i don't know why this is so interesting to people but fuck it if it is it is and when you go
um uh you you have swimming pools at your residences uh you're a uh almost a daily
swimmer but when you go out um on these sailboats you're in the water every day
with the fish it's it's getting the water dry off pull up the anchor
go to another spot
jump in the water
dry off, eat, pull up the anchor
go to another spot
it's that all day long
there's really nothing else to do
you snorkel?
yeah
but I'm kind of gone from
the scuba dude
and actually had qualifications for scuba instructor and went from scuba guy as a young man to avid snorkeler.
And now it's like, give me the goggles and I'm pretty good even in terms of what I want to get out of the water experience.
How old are you?
67.
Mask fins and snorkel take up a shit ton of space in a bag.
It almost pushes you into this, I don't know, maybe not for everyone, but it could easily
be a quarter of everything I would bring.
Guys, also one more thing since you want to take a peek into Greg Glassman's how much he moves.
This guy has three fucking little kids.
Four, sorry.
Four little kids.
It is nonstop action.
He's a hands-on dad. It is're under us right now i mean this is uh this is an in-service day for them in school otherwise i'd be haranguing them right
now and by the way i've got it i get a parenting offering for everyone, especially you homeschoolers, diagramming sentences.
I knew grammar and came about it the hard way,
it seems to me.
And I guess that's resistant to it,
but eventually learned it and learned it well.
And so I picked up diagramming literally overnight.
Like, oh, fuck, this is easy, this is fun.
And I'm driving the kids nuts with it.
But it did this.
It transformed to a more accessible and relatable form everything I knew about grammar.
It was kind of like being a musician and not having known how to read music and then coming across that skill.
A blind guy learning the alphabet.
I don't know what the fuck.
I don't have analogies for you, but it's really interesting.
For you personally, you're saying?
For me personally, even for a guy who knew the grammar.
I recognize now that I went at it the hard way in part because uh diagramming
is a method of teaching grammar and an absolutely brilliant one and to have lost that in the school
system is nuts and you can go to youtube and pick up just the bonehead version one for
kids five minute video on and diagramming and anyone can
walk anyone or group of people through it and then look at what comes next.
It's just, it really is that simple.
It's crazy elegant, it's powerful and it has kids thinking about things that seem and feel
obvious and yet here it is, they're trying to make a decision as to what that word's
modifying this one or that one
you know it's cool it's important uh caved astro um greg what's more important fran time or hog size
yeah geez
gotta have some of both uh
have someone bogged uh frogata frogat 24 hey greg passed my l1 last week congrats dude uh shadowing my box owner but he can only have me coach as and when he can only have me coach as
and when this is this how most coaches start? Any other ways into coaching?
I think basically he's asking, hey, I took my L1 and I'm shadowing now.
Is this the only way to start?
Dude, you could just open.
I took my L1 and I've been doing CrossFit at the park every single day and people just started jumping in.
And those are the people I started coaching.
And I did that every day for a couple of years.
Lugged all my shit in the back of my truck to the park in Berkeley.
But,
but do you have any issues with shadowing coaches,
Greg?
You like that?
No.
You like that?
Yeah.
I mean,
what's the standard thing?
You hang with someone and get a job,
build some clients and then split.
You just rate a good chunk of the business and go down the road a mile.
I think that's the complaint of the model.
Right?
I mean, isn't that kind of both sides of the story?
A guy claiming he raised someone up from nothing
and then he left?
Yeah.
Yeah, we investigated a lot of those.
He was just forced to. Here's the facts. Look to this guy talk to that guy and you would and and you'd found out that someone was trying to
um sell 60 an hour training by paying the trainer 20 an hour and keeping 40
and the customer was paying $60.
And the worst of the ripoff was when the guy was actually good enough to be worth the $60.
And you're paying him $20.
So of course he goes down the fucking street, you know?
But I knew, we had a birthday with Greg Amundsen at the Silver Spur one morning.
at the Silver Spur one morning,
Linda, who's since passed away,
the owner there asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
And he laughed and said,
he'd just like to do law enforcement
and someday own a gym.
And I'm like, own a gym?
Motherfucker, we'll go back to you right now
and I'll sign the thing over to you.
You can own it.
It's like,
that ain't shit owning the gym.
The business is taking care of people.
If you listen very carefully, you will hear
construction trucks
driving backwards.
Should I shut the door? No, not at all.
It's so faint. It's nice.
I like it even.
Anthony Martorano.
Tony.
Hey, Tony.
Good morning, coach.
My question is with the rampant spread of bad science,
where would be a best place to find the stats to support a post-covid rendition
of your five buckets of death lecture yeah i would i would root out the story and sources
that are in hold the book up set oh you know i don't have it with me but but also greg j
cooey and rfk have just come out with a new book called the wuhan
i'm gonna have j back on go to j cooey's rumble page and you can get all sorts of stats on that
and you're talking about the book by dowd greg yeah sorry i'll have two monitors tomorrow
dowd um i've got the book downstairs I just don't want to go off camera
and go fetch it.
Is it Sudden Death?
It is.
It's called Cause Unknown,
the Epidemic of Sudden Death.
Cause Unknown,
the Epidemic of Sudden Death.
And that thing is QR
quoted back
to newspaper accounts that can take you to studies.
I mean, there's as much there as you can want to see. have seen an increase in death that with the COVID deaths filtered out,
there's still a problem of enormous magnitude.
And that is sudden deaths.
And they're vaccine-related.
But it's worth looking at.
The insurance companies know the truth is the bottom line.
And that's pretty cool. I think. He's a looking at. The insurance companies know the truth is the bottom line. And that's pretty cool.
I think.
He's a numbers guy.
Will you go into that?
Why do the insurance companies know the truth?
I know it's obvious to you, but will you tell us?
Why do the insurance companies know the truth more than anybody else?
Why is the truth so important to them?
As opposed to Pfizer or Moderna or anyone else for life or death for
profit and I mean life or death of the company for their profit they depend on a science where
the predictive strength of the of the model governs the day is the determinant of validation.
And
man, they've got their dicks on the line,
their money on the line.
They're just
straight up numbers guys.
hey, look at this.
Oh,
dang. Someone listens to the show.
Just like that.
Cause unknown.
Where was I?
Hey, does she just live in that closet and any time you say something, she opens up, she comes out of the closet and hands you something?
Anything you need?
I had that door put in there.
That's awesome.
It's cool.
Some hot chick hands you a book.
that's awesome it's cool some hot chick hands you a book um you're basically saying it's a gambling game and they're stuck and they want to make sure that they're always winning they're the
fucking house right it's like you go no eventually if you play enough hands of blackjack that the
house is going to take your money it's a gambling game not i don't mean that with any implication or
or insinuation that's bad but they're going to take your people's money and offer them health insurance based on the fact that they make money.
They need a clean and sober view as to the risk,
and that's called actuarial science.
Okay. Is that true?
Did you make that up?
Is it called actuarial science?
That's what it is.
That's what it is.
You go to get a Bachelor of Science and apply mathematics
and take the actuarial exam, and you're off to the races. And CrossFit has employed them before. We have friends in the game.
and safe fitness, and it had to be divided up, fitness and sport.
We needed an actuary to look and investigate that,
to report back and work with the insurance company,
which was part of setting up the RRG, in fact.
We went to them armed with that.
Whether you saw it as a sport or as a fitness activity, it was exceedingly safe in comparison with other things.
And the actuaries had that.
But in that game, what you have to do is you want to find understanding
of the risk without any kind of romanticism or bullshit or being swindled
because what you want to do is rate against it enough to be profitable
and yet still competitive in the industry because the industry is so competitive.
And so a keener understanding of a risk manifests as you being able to raise or lower a premium
to effectively find profit in that risk and be competitive against others in the industry.
You're looking over both shoulders.
And it's a fantastic thing.
And we, knowing what we knew about the health space, had found people in the insurance industry
keenly interested in what we were doing when they manifested on the scene in
terms of the actuarial science for instance that was the story in with the
life insurer in South Africa the health insurance people someone said that
there's that it might have been car and at the book or something. Put up, I mean, not Karin, Emily.
Or maybe it was Karin.
Someone put up the Whistler talk.
Yep, yep, yep.
It just went up this morning on the BSI event.
We had a 10-year event, a gathering in Whistler, Canada,
for affiliates that had crossed the 10-year mark.
This was, I don't know, five years ago, four years ago.
And Greg gave a talk there.
And that talk, I don't think it's ever been made public.
And now it's available on The Broken Science.
That was an amazing talk.
You know, it was probably related to where you were going to take this anyways.
But it was good.
I felt good about it.
You know, it was a time when the games were exceedingly popular,
and every time I went to any event,
I had affiliates standing in line when I saw a face
that I'd known to have been around for a long time.
In the line, I could brace myself for them to tell me that this has no bearing on what goes
on in their box. That fun as these games may be, it's unrelated to what they're about.
And I know you were there and bore some of my frustration that they didn't know that I knew that.
There was a bigger picture to the story than the gladiators.
And I got that across.
But at the time, I'm rambling.
You're not rambling I was
struggling for all of us that drew a salary and and and were tasked with had
the responsibility of leadership of the entire thing um I was always very
concerned for our relevancy that is the value proposition that is affiliation.
Just what the fuck are they getting?
And the concern I had for that
prevented me from doing things like
CrossFit fish oil and CrossFit jump ropes
and the rest.
We left that space and opportunity open for people to apply their
trade and claim claim the best and have us look and consider it and the rest was staying true to
to some kind of some kind of mission the the um when you in that that 10 year that event where you brought together the affiliates
well before i go there i want to circle back to that give me one second let me say a couple
funny let me close a couple things we have open here uh get with the programming chase ingram
classic dude move shoulder explodes let's try another one just in case. Yeah, he is. He is a boy. Do you. Oh, I'll come back to that taxidermy.
OK. When you gathered these 10 years. is because the affiliate fees went up to $4,500 and the barrier of entry for the first time in any real measure went up
by now requiring a level two of all gyms within a year.
And I think basically you can still open a gym just with the level one,
but then you have to get your level two within a year if I'm correct.
And then some of the prices around,
like I got some notifications yesterday that affiliates around the world, many affiliates
around the world had their prices actually lowered based on where they were. So if you were in some,
in Africa or something where the economy is different than it is in North America,
your rates were lowered. Those were all things that you had to deal with when you were there,
raising affiliate fees, what should the barrier of entry should be, and should prices be different
for different countries. Before we get to that, why did you have a gathering of 10-year affiliates?
Why was that important to you to gather that particular group? Why not just do an affiliate
gathering? What message did you have for them? At the point you've kept your doors open 10 years,
you have for them? At the point you've kept your doors open 10 years, you've seen some amazing, amazing things. It's not possible to, to bend there so frequently at 5am, unlock the doors and,
and plied that tray did not seem things that were fundamentally miraculous.
And so I could listen to the details of a type two diabetes reversal, a hundred pound loss, blah, blah, blah.
I'm not here to promote CrossFit, but the, the tails were, were reason for, for living.
You know, we were giving life to people and, and to be able to make a good living in doing that at least a decent
living doing that was an absolutely incredible thing and you can't keep the doors open for 10
years and not you know all the people with excuses all the bullshit it's kind of hard to stay above
water for 10 years without tapping into what really makes this thing miraculous.
And that is the clean expression of the stimulus and maintaining healthy relationships with people
to monitor and encourage, support. You're docent to their path to a better lifestyle.
And people that do that found it rewarding
in every sense of the word.
Do you think those 10-year affiliates
are more valuable to the ecosystem
than, let's say,
a one-year affiliate?
And if so, why?
So I had 800 people there
and I was just thinking this
and they kicked them off
the $500 a month a year?
Yeah.
Right?
From what I know, everyone's been kicked off the $500 a year. Is that $ month a year. Yeah. Right. Yeah. From what I know,
everyone's been kicked off the $500 a year.
Is that $400 a year in fees
in terms of what they were paying?
3,500 times if there were 800.
No, there were 800 people there.
Yeah.
An increase of, let's say, $3,000 a pop for easy math.
No, they were paying $500.
Oh, what they were paying then.
Yeah, $500 times $800.
Yeah.
Is that $400,000?
Yeah, $400,000.
I would have rather paid them $400,000 with a net difference of $800,000 than raise them.
That's how important you think they are.
That it's like if you cross the 10-year mark,
all of a sudden we're going to start paying you to keep your doors open.
Why is that? Why is that, Greg?
Because they kind of hold the code.
They've cracked the code on how to be successful for 10 years how do like like what you said uh keep the message clean and and be able to
maintain relationships those two qualities are like the people that were in that room that day
had talked to them about a clean bathroom and they roll their eyes like the they they know that
they know that but shut up greg we already know that they already know that they know that. They know that. Shut up, Greg. We already know that. They already know that.
They know that.
In watching, you see things in the experienced affiliate that you watch as an experienced trainer,
and you're encouraged and heartened
to see that they know.
So you lose a
10-year affiliate and that's worse than losing
10 3-year affiliates?
Yeah.
A year or two
is like that. You just ran out of someone's money.
Right.
No.
We've seen
that happen.
Hey, there was a lot of tragedy
in people doing these deals
like one guy's
going to weld the gear
and the other guy's got
credit for the lease
and then the third guy's going to do all the training
and they're equal partners. You know some of the principles involved in that so the guy welds the gear and he's done
like wow i got a lifetime membership now these motherfuckers work for me and i'm taking a third
off the top the guy that had the credit to get the lease on the building and he's he's just
executed some kind of financial genius then you
got a guy who's working from 5 a.m to 10 p.m at night lugging these fucks around
and that that you can do that for two years brendan gilliam you know and then you're done oh man
it's not that kind of thing imagine imagine opening a surgical practice like that i mean
maybe that is how it goes now maybe that is what you have to do
greg let me let me break this down and maybe it doesn't work a parcel parcel parsed parsed out
like this but but if it doesn't um you can unfuck me but let's just talk about some of the things do you have any there's some things on the table what is that what is what is it that keeps
an affiliate uh staying with the crossfit brand so that's the proposition let's kind of put that
off to the side a second do you have any issues with raising affiliate fees like my personal
feeling is is like hey double the fees or take it to ten thousand dollars
grandfather the one if you it depends on how hot you think the brand is i don't think it's
that fucking hot i never did i thought that the miracle was was what happens with the young lady
that opens the fucking door at 4 30 and turns the heater on and you know starts setting up rowers and writing on
the board there's and that relationship with the people that come through the door in terms of the
physiological impact and then the the joy that that brings to the proprietor and the friendships
and relationships that develop that's all that hot. That's super fucking hot.
That happened before CrossFit.
It happened with greater frequency of the CrossFit.
But those of us who controlled the brand,
collected the fees and gave the okay to make your own shirt,
we weren't contributing beyond that initial spark,
truth of it is.
And so what you see on the Whistler video is me coming to terms with what the hell makes me relevant.
What is it that I'm providing when I collect your fees?
And it was litigation, legislation, validation, and continuing ed education.
Those were the things that we were doing.
So you roll and turn the clock forward now and that stopped and the fees go up.
I'm lost.
Okay.
Maybe the brand is so fucking hot that you can charge $1,000 a month and it doesn't matter what the fuck is going on out there in the real world.
$1,000 a month and it doesn't matter what the fuck's going on out there in the real world
Maybe that maybe I don't understand how hot the brand is but it's past anything that that I
Understand I was having trouble with the three thou the forty five hundred figures
It's got it it's got it it's got it speaks for itself that's what it – it speaks for itself. That's what it is.
It speaks for itself.
I don't know if this is the best metric, but I think the brand – I haven't done a lot of traveling lately, but I knew the brand was hot because when you walk through the airport, if you saw someone with nanos or with a rogue shirt on or a cross shirt on, you gave them head nod like two black dudes passing in an all-white high school you know what i mean like you like didn't matter who they fucking were if you saw them with nanos you gave them a what's up old
person young person indian person didn't fucking didn't matter and so i knew at that point the
brand was hot like we were we we thought we were special you know what i mean like two dudes with 81 on
their shirt you know what i mean like we were hell's angels motherfuckers so so and i still
think that that it has that but you're you just keep tying it back to what the fuck is the
mothership doing to protect the gyms and i'm differentiating that miracle that happens when when honeycutt or king or one of these folks
unlocks their gym in the morning what happens there there's no disparaging that it's hard to
put polish on that it's hard to improve on that and to remain relevant to those individuals that
have cracked the fucking code and are showing more leadership than the mothership.
Just what are they paying for?
Fond memories?
I mean, this has got to be a prevailing thought.
And I go where?
I go where I would go.
I built the thing I would join.
They've turned it into a thing I wouldn't belong to.
What does it stand for?
What's it stand for?
Okay, what about this? What about this?
What's its position
on critical health information
and metrics?
Probably too sensitive.
It's cowardly.
So you're saying that
you would have weighed in on what's going on with
the efficacy of COVID vaccinations?
I would have been focused with the people
that came into my gym in the morning. Part of this construction you hear right now on with the efficacy of COVID vaccinations. I would have been focused with the people that
came into my gym in the morning. And part of this construction you hear right now
is me building a space that will rival anything that I've ever been able to get my hands on
when in the industry. Meaning a gym. Greg, what about this? What about this just simple? What
about just this simple thinking? Okay, I'm going to pay going to pay the 4500 it's going to bring three new people to my gym every single year based on google search or whatever
and that in itself is going to make me uh an extra uh 1500 bucks and then i can still offer
the open to my clients what about just those is that just enough on its own just speaking just
uh dollar sign yeah maybe
right i mean it's just a simple
but but but then again you i mean with with that then you're thinking just
well i don't know it's fair to to categorize those people as strictly um
Well, I don't know if it's fair to categorize those people as strictly.
Your success is super fucking busy.
And the schedule is being tested professionally and personally with CrossFit membership.
You're involved.
Even when off, you're seeing those people around.
It gets that way.
And what it says on the sign is so irrelevant to that.
And those people, some of them, they almost have to be reminded they're doing CrossFit,
others not, but the relationship and the magic,
it sits at that level, it's that interaction.
And it's significantly unimpacted by the buzz
that we live on and look at.
It really is.
And so we would have these calamities that seem like internals of the organization.
You know, the media department's been replaced
with freelancers around the games.
That kind of thing.
The people in the box,
there was someone that followed the games
or two or three of them
but basically no
no
we'll come back to that
conversation for sure do you have any dreams
you've given up on Greg
I was thinking about something like that
earlier I think maybe even
yesterday. Let me come back to it.
It puts my head in a different space.
I'm still going to take your money.
Jake Chapman, Greg, do you also think people
who send their kids to school are shitty parents?
Jake, just so you know before you answer that, Greg,
I don't think that they are.
Now, I'm a shitty parent
too. There's things that I do
that are shitty also, but let me tell you something. If you don't think sending your kid to an indoctrination camp where they can't clearly fucking define the difference between a man and a woman and where you have to take – you have to say why your DEI – what your DEI things are, and you also have to use pronouns and and you have and there's people telling your kids
to wear masks then more than you're a shitty parent you're fucked hard okay that's my opinion
greg what do you think about parents or something yeah i i don't i don't i don't buy that at all
what i said but i would i don't think they're shitty parents, to answer the question. No, I do not. Okay. But I do think this.
I think that the education that can be delivered,
if you are so blessed as to have several hours each day
to be able to sit at a table with your kids,
if you can dedicate that to your children,
what they will learn compared to what they're going to pick up
at the public school is shitty.
And so there's potentially some shittiness.
If you're fortunate enough to sit there for several hours each day and work with your kids,
you can make what they're going for, what they're getting out of the public school, shitty by comparison.
And what I'm seeing is that we're going to 2 to 3x the K through 6 rate shooting for some work every day,
which is probably averaging when the train's moving nicely, two and a half hours a day
with a fair amount of harangue added throughout the day.
Like stopping a kid and what's the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb.
That kind of stuff.
Keeping it all percolating in the background.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
That's an amazing thing.
And so I look back at what I made my kids do on the 9 to 3,
and I feel guilty.
It's sad.
At best, you don't want what's best for your kids if you send them to school,
and at worst, you fucking hate them.
How's that, Jake, you douche nozzle? Okay, tax taxidermy i don't know what this is in response to but go read the early journal obviously greg knew how to write uh sleaky i love thank you i love
diagramming sentences my 10 and 12 year olds are nerds and love it too you see you can see the grammar. And I think it's very much akin to being able to read music.
It doesn't mean you didn't know how to play, but something happens.
Did I miss anything?
I was doing jujitsu.
Oh, God, I would love to see you do jujitsu.
Jiu-jitsu.
Oh, God, I would love to see you do jiu-jitsu.
She's been, Miss Allison, you've been a Cinderella of the dojo for 20 years.
Who knew rolling around with a bunch of sweaty men could be so fun?
Holy shit.
Don't get pregnant.
Aerie Bros, does Greg think CrossFit can right the ship?
Any thoughts on that, Greg?
No.
They've got to maximize the revenue because the investors want that.
They want the revenue maximized.
And I can't yet imagine, and I've tried, I've put considerable energy into it,
and what that looks like that isn't gas full for the affiliates.
So good luck for that.
I mean, I don't know how you do it.
The analogies came at some point about selling Hell's Angels to Costco.
I don't know how they do it.
I don't know how you sit there
and we've all watched the floundering and the effort
to turn something that wasn't being driven
with an eye to to maximizing revenue but but had being super
solvent even profitable to extend and support a uh what was the revolution in wellness health
care and fitness that was the thing and so you give that a brand new purpose now what is that it's fucking money so make it money and
what is that it looks like it look i'm like a bus driver and guys come around with these fucking
hoods on with the eyeballs pointed to the back of their head tell me i'm driving the bus wrong
so good take the fucking wheel show me how you do this. Show me.
And I'm getting to watch.
I'm getting to watch.
This is what it looks like.
Hey, you know...
So you don't think they can right the ship
because of the nature of what their objective is.
You would build something that
you would want to be a part of. They're going to build something
that makes money, and you don't
think that those two can coexist? you're what you built made money also not like not like people
that are not like investors like um i want to i want to tell you a situation here. This is going to take about 90 seconds. Bear with me. Okay, ready?
Yeah.
There's a gym in – I think it's in Ohio, and the owner of the gym was on my show.
And he started a program at his gym that took kids. It started with one kid who was sentenced to juvenile detention.
And this guy said, hey, I'll take this kid and put him through a 16-week course or whatever. And let's see what happens. The kid goes through the 16 week course. And part of that 16 week course, I'm oversimplifying it was
that the probation officers had to come work out with the kids also. Right. And so he, so he builds
this relationship between the probation officer and the kid after 16 weeks, the kids like, holy
shit, the judge can't believe what happens. Next thing you know, they're teaching a whole class
with those kids. Next thing you know, this program has spread to with those kids next thing you know this program has spread to 14 states next thing you know the governor of this uh and some of the details i might be saying
might be off but the spirit is very close next thing i know next thing this affiliate owner knows
is the governor of the state of ohio i think it's ohio i'm sorry if i'm wrong contacts this affiliate
owner and says hey i'm going to send out an email to every single first responder in the state,
41,000 of them, and tell them to go into CrossFit gyms in the entire state to do a 9-11 workout.
And he sends that email.
The next thing you know, the governor of this fucking state contacts this dude or his people do
and says, hey, I want to open CrossFit gyms in all 27 correctional facilities in the state,
and I want to get
six L1 people at every facility and I want you to manage it. This affiliate owner has been trying
to work with CrossFit on this. And it's been action that the first three are about to open.
The governor's pulled the trigger on the first three. He contacted me the other day and he goes,
Hey, I can't get any like real connection with HQ. Should I open these as affiliates
or should I open them as other gyms?
Should I call them something else?
I know that's a lot of information with probably some missing details,
but what are your thoughts on this?
This thing is moving very fast.
How many years have to hear this?
Where's the money again?
I mean, how is this different than my –
I mean, we've seen this.
We watched the CrossFit kids curriculum go to 4,000 schools.
Right.
Entire school districts, entire high schools have been their only PE.
I mentioned the interaction with the insurance company.
I've seen this kind of interface, but whether it's the Marine Corps or an insurance company,
or at some point of decisions made,
that looks like a money thing.
And,
uh,
if you were,
if the state of Ohio asked you to open 27 gyms,
would you call them CrossFit gyms?
Would you affiliate all of them?
Yeah,
you would. If they'd have have it even in the current atmosphere even remember when we told nasa that if you can't
say crossfit from space on our on the kickoff of the game then fuck you i can't i can't say
nasa you shitheads right so they said okay we'll rethink that and they said crossfit and we said nasa
you think they really did that from the space station or was that a fake space station
i'm sure it was fake hey there's so there's entire there's a whole evening of stories to be told
around our interface with nasa so in the
but but greg in the space station in the space i remember working out's a problem and anything like
you know foot tapping like i'm i'm doing here that will that any kind of repetitive movement
jerking off anything will set off our uh oscillation eventually some harmonics that amplify
and the wings of the thing shake and alarms go off and so people are caught doing all kinds of
things in terms of repair and they want us to help them with exercise but no repetitive movement
but but greg so in the current climate you would open basically this guy's you know in a catch-22
he's not getting the support he would like from hq and then he sees the the the the the tribulations
the trials and tribulations hq is going through what would you do would you open i think it it
reminds me very much of my wanting to go into underserved neighborhoods, saddle up with the local Baptist church with 3,000 members, and talking to the minister who's doing two diabetes-related funerals weekly about a gym around the corner in an industrial space that
we're basically funding. It's free. And the difference between that and running it for big
dollars, you know, the visions of it being profitable, they're not that different. But
in the profitable version, it's not exciting to the VC minded and
in the non profitable version it's like what the fuck is this and so some of
those things that had to go like my my underserved community and at the
mothership Bones goodbye to those fuckers. Why? It's people that, you know, they don't even want them in their ads.
They were marginally ambulatory, elderly, grossly overweight, senior.
No one's putting those people in their ads.
Not for fitness.
It's crazy.
Where it has the most to offer.
Let me push it on you one more time.
This guy has an opportunity.
This guy is going to open 27 gyms.
Should he send 27 times 4,500 to CrossFit HQ because this guy owns two CrossFit gyms?
because this guy owns two CrossFit gyms,
or should he just keep his two CrossFit gyms and open these 27 other gyms that will have L1 certified people
but not call them CrossFit gyms
because he can't get the cooperation from CrossFit?
Can't get anything from CrossFit.
Let me just ask you this even more specifically.
What would you do if an affiliate said that to you?
If they came to you and be like, Hey Greg,
we want to get these 27.
Well, that was kind of where my response was from. I mean,
basically you wouldn't have charged them. You'd have been like, Hey,
it's in a correctional facility. We waive your fees for these 27 places.
I mean, Kathy will speak to this best, but I think there was,
I think there were probably 500, 750 of those,
at least in the roster of 15,000 gyms.
500, 750 of those at least in the roster of 15,000 gyms.
Did someone say that I brought the numbers down to 6,000 or by 6,000?
I have only heard – I've heard very dirty rumors about that.
I have not validated – I have not heard it come from anyone's mouth. in the escrow, the sale, the final disposition of funds was escrowed up to the some period shortly after the sale where the number of affiliates couldn't fall. And the worry was
is that on news of my departure, what if 5,000, 3,000, 1,000 people headed for the hills?
And there was a number in there, and I think it was 12,000 that would have abrogated everything that we had agreed to.
And it never happened.
I don't know what happened between 15 and 12, but I know we didn't get to
nothing like that happened. It never
was a factor. It didn't look
like it was going to be a factor. It was never a
concern.
Losing a 10-year black belt
is worse than losing six
blue belts.
For sure.
A 10-year black belt is pretty gnarly.
That's pretty gnarly. Yeah, something went wrong.
Something went wrong.
Okay.
Here's how I ran my gym.
I ran my gym so it never made sense for any Sakamoto or Greg Amundsen
to go down the street and open a box.
And it didn't until I left.
When I left, it made sense.
But while I was there, it would have been stupid.
Why? left when i left it made sense but while i was there it would have been stupid why were they smart enough to know what it cost to buy to lease a box to fill it with gear
and the tax and electric burden and the things that you that you know the what of life changes
i knew what that was and i knew what the margins were for me.
I ran a gym that I, as a trainer, would have never left.
Are you kidding me?
For 20%? I got this?
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Eaton Beaver, good morning.
Okay, Greg, this is a great comment, and then I'm going to add something to this.
Augustus Link, Matt is right, though.
In the business world, if they keep one out of every nine affiliates that were paying $500, they net the same income.
What changes in the culture?
It's true.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, I've told this story with our wonderful friends before.
But there was a moment at Microsoft in dealing with them.
And those guys were truly, you know, more than acquaintances, maybe shorter friends.
But they were CrossFitters.
And so we had that that makes you see us as friends.
And their design team was CrossFitters.
And this is the Xbox devices division folks.
And many of the people that headed the program,
like they got a 50-year-old engineer
that might be the fittest 50-year-old in tech, period, globally.
And there's a lot of 50-year-olds in tech.
But this nice guy and his crew had been working
at Microsoft together for,
for what was getting onward of 30 years.
And the rapport they had in their communication
within the space of a, of a large conference room
where we're sitting Microsoft guy, CrossFit guy,
Microsoft guy, CrossFit guy, Microsoft guy, CrossFit guy
up in their headquarters. The quality of their communication was remarkable, something you
couldn't. And it was from that and thinking about that and dealing with them and listening to how
they would end a meeting and schedule another one without me noticing anything having been said.
a meeting and schedule another one without me noticing anything having been said um the uh
the power of that led me to understand that you could take all of the cvs of a business that is everyone's everyone's resume and skills and all of the hardware associated with a business and plug it in
and flip the switch on and you don't have anything without that legacy of those relationships
and that skill and quality of communication.
That the neural connectivity of the employees that have worked together on tech projects for 25 years is more important
than the buildings, the paint, the location, anything, anything. And the relationship with
affiliates is there too. And so I wouldn't have to sit long with one of the long-term affiliates and reconnect.
I don't talk to Doug Chapman often,
but we have an enormous amount in common,
and maybe more so every couple of years than we did before,
even with talking less.
How do you like that?
There's a galvanizing effect of the
experience of keeping these doors unlocked for a decade. I saw him for the first time in eight
years, by the way, a year ago at your house. And I was closer to him than I ever was. So like,
that's a, I had a better exchange with him and more intimate exchange than I ever did.
So I hear, I hear you loud loud and clear there's a galvanizing
impact and i and i in my speech at whistler and in my last um you know as the evolved
approach to the management of the of the of the and leadership went um
and leadership went, I don't know, what am I saying?
I just saw that that became clear what the role is and what the opportunity was and what it was that we could provide.
And it was fairly narrow bandwidth.
In the total scheme of what it is that keeps the doors open
and makes it all work, we gave it away.
They know you go to your L1 and the secrets are out.
That's it.
The L1 kernel is the secret part.
And the rest is home-brewed and baked and taught and self-learned.
There's some sharing with others for the smartest of the set but the truth of the matter is
is that the things that we could do as those that were they were stewards of the brand um was very
very very limited from the perspective of beneficial to the affiliates and outside of their
wheelhouse we're not going to come up with better bathroom cleaning tips.
Although that might've been an interesting one.
You know,
I can see the journal got to a point where that,
that would have been publishable.
I would have been all ears to it.
If someone could make the case,
but improvements on teaching the push press,
unlikely,
unlikely. You see with,
it was,
uh,
Osario,
right.
With,
uh,
forget her name always, but,
uh,
as a master technician at work,
I,
I,
I think,
um,
uh,
90% of the gyms could have done that with her.
And I bet you a lot of them did have clients like that.
There were things I saw like the fingertips somewhere in that rhomboid space.
Actually making contact is better than a visual.
You'll feel someone fall before you'll see any fall even staring at them
and it's you'll react quicker if there's a if there's a contact and the cargo is precious and
and the grip is frail you know i mean it's there's challenges there i don't even want
someone like that falling onto an eight inch crash pad it's right right even a 36 inch crash
rat uh i mean i just don't need it but there's a there's a set of people where the the rise will
be an issue getting back up i i want to throw i want to throw a couple things out there and read
some comments also uh so last night i went to uh i haven't i haven, I haven't talked to Greg in, in, uh, all week
for, he, he moved.
And then we talked on the phone only like three times for like two minutes each throughout
the week.
And then I got to his house last night and I hung out there for probably three or four
hours.
And not once did we, not once did we talk about, uh, affiliate fees going up or what's
going on at HQ.
Um, we hung out, we talked about our kids.
Um, we, we fucked
around with the dog. Uh, we ate a bunch of steak and then we talked a lot about, um, uh, the
relationships between Israel and kind of the, the, and, uh, and Gaza and shit like that. None of this
stuff, um, is rehearsed. None of this stuff is planned. Greg doesn't know what I'm going to ask
him. He doesn't know what you guys are going to ask him. There's no... We are so
lucky to have this type of
conversation and forum. I just want to just
share that with you.
Second of all,
Sleeky says, we didn't think
we were special, Savon. We were special.
You're right. We still are
special. Not in the Special Olympics
sense. There was
something else in here that Seema said.
Okay, this is a good one.
Seema, inflation is real.
Whatever logic you use is fine.
Meaning the inflation is real.
Can we come to terms with that?
Like, hey, if 3,000 to 4,500 fees hadn't been raised in 11 years.
But you could also say that the offering
well the offering has changed significantly also like you said there is no uh there's no legislation and litigation really anymore the the bare bones of things that were taxable um
were taxable and things that would be, you know, our key spend, even inflation impacted,
would be relatively insignificant to the total spend.
I think 90% of our spend was discretionary.
And so when I hear of the company
and some of the changes and cuts that have been made,
those would be MBA exciting reductions in expense and contributing to an increase in revenue.
And that would be like the rollover and play dead on the litigation front.
Quit making vital enemies of soda and corrupt academic fitness.
Surrendering all of that comes at an enormous savings.
I spent millions of dollars on that shit.
Tens of millions.
Just so you know,
a great example of that,
there's hundreds of examples,
thousands of examples,
but there was a guy in New zealand who was trying to make it so every basically gym in the united states would have
to be certified through him and his program i think it was called reps right and uh it was a
beverage industry sponsor and consortium For the registry of exercise professionals.
I'm sure it's still in existence.
And not only did Greg go straight to war with him,
he flew the team to New Zealand to confront him.
I mean,
so.
There was a journalist.
There is a journalist that told us that she,
that he told her that we were killing people here in the States.
And then she went radio silent on me.
So we airplaned up and went to Oakland and showed up at lunchtime at her newspaper.
And sat with her in the cafeteria and begged her to help us.
And she says, okay, I told you that he told me
that's not true, it was an email,
and I'll give them to you.
And she did.
The fucker told her in an email.
And he had just testified to the judge
that he never told her shit.
And she was backing off the story that he told her he didn't tell her he
emailed it to her and now I have the email it would have been that would have been way more
costly for him and in the state of California or in the federal court than it was in New Zealand.
So just imagine that, guys.
Someone talks shit trying to extract money out of every single gym.
Greg flew to New Zealand.
Internationally.
International effort.
Yeah, and it was a real threat, guys, supported by Soda.
And I think Dale Saran, I think I saw him in the comments.
I think he went too. I went, a bunch of us went and, and Greg confronted the person, got the emails and stopped it.
It's like little things like that.
Change changing the history of how gyms operate worldwide.
No one's going to do that shit anymore.
By the way, a Graciano Rubio,
people are learning the hard way that they shouldn't have complained about
Greg's leadership without having a proven example of how to do fitness uh business better
what was it just
um you know what i was i was uh i was doing something a little different than traditional
business and was well aware of the magic and the opportunity to lead the people that we were leading.
And the clamor for more marketing, I didn't want to work with an affiliate that needed more marketing.
Charged $999.95, you'll sell more.
I don't want an influx of customers that are too stupid
to not see that being a nickel off a thousand bucks.
Suppose that doubled the number.
Oh, Jesus Christ, that's a lot of stupid fucking people.
That's not going to make things easier on the affiliate team.
It's not going to help retention.
It's not going to be,
the idea isn't to get any fish that will bite on the
hook. You have to get someone who enjoys the miraculous transformative aspect of the stimulus
and response and the friendships that ensue. And for the compensation,
which is, you know,
earn a salary like a dentist.
I'm completely making this up.
Bear with me here.
Let's say 10% of the gyms
are gyms that have
this 60 to 90 people range.
No, let's say 30 to 90 people range,
10% of the gyms.
And all the coaches there work
for free and it's a break-even enterprise and it's a passion gym and there's 10 of them and
you're going to lose all 10 of them by raising the fee um there's this notion out there from some of
the the pundits and some of the mentor programs that it's like, fuck those gyms. Like, Hey, if you can't afford the 1500,
you suck anyway.
Do that.
Do that same math for,
for a surgical practice or a radiology group.
And you,
you end up with the current crisis.
I'm not following.
Can you explain,
walk me through that?
Yeah.
There's these small groups of lone wolves
that that carry everything and that's the very guy you're not going to get better medical service
than running from a clinic that's it's perhaps not profitable but keeps a good cast of surgeons
on salary and is it is paying the staff the staff and the places spick and span
clean. And where is the need for the accumulation of capital if you've got kids in private school
living in a $2.5 million home on 15 acres and drive new cars? mean what the else might you be looking for other than
that gratification of someone providing an incredible amount and i'm not i'm talking about
her i'm talking about in medicine more so than in fitness right right but the uh their lifestyles
and what what so many affiliates have gotten for themselves is something that I've got more humility than to be anything other than impressed with.
The number of people that own a home and own their box and have kids in private school or at the university is really impressive.
But why would the mothership give a shit about those gyms?
What do they offer?
They're not in my business.
What do you mean?
They're in the business of the $3,000 a month.
And someone says, why isn't that $4,500?
I go, I don't know.
Well, what if it was? Oh, wow.
That is cool. Look what that does.
Why not make it $6,000?
I don't know where the
break is. I'm past the
break. I'm no longer
a judge as to who breaks next.
What do you mean you're
past the break? Meaning you personally wouldn't
do it because you wouldn't def't affiliate at $4,500
I think I would have been out
I would have seen
The CrossFit
Versus NSCA settlement
As a betrayal of
What I was told my fees were going for
And when I looked around
I would see it everywhere else
The whitewashing of CrossFit health
The off of the
soda kick the softening the stance on carbohydrate the monster sponsorship i'm like i think i smell a
rat for me for me but i you know what listen this is all it's it's a profound bias because the discussion is what is wrong with the
vision that greg created now that someone else is controlling that vision and then you're asking
greg what he thinks like what the look like i don't it's not that is what we're doing that is
that is what we're doing hey but here's we're doing. That is what we're doing.
Hey, but here's also the thing.
Your vision was.
Here's what I think is going on.
I think you nailed it.
Your vision was always.
You were always reiterating your vision and and refining it.
And so so you had stumbled upon the truth.
And and so you basically spent 15
years of your life
I felt rich at
5% of my lifestyle
right
filthy rich unbelievably
blessed beyond what I
knew what I could ever do with
and so part
of my like you had a swimming pool
and a cord of wood to burn and you were like fuck
i mean i had multiple homes and more cars and i could drive city like you know what that was like
that was plenty yeah and uh but let me go i don't want to i don't want to lose this thread greg
what if what if the whole magic of keeping the affiliates together, you're going to hate this,
but was the fact of people wanting to get together to hear your, your poetry of the cure for the
world's most vexing problem, the five buckets of death, the, um, uh, all these repackagings that you did through your art, because, because you're a science and
an artist meshed into one and that you got off on re keep repackaging the truth, right? You have
whiteboards in every house. Everyone who knows you is like, Oh, I'm going to Greg's house. I'm
going to hear his newest iteration of the truth.
What if there's just no one else who's ever going to be able to do that?
What happens to this thing?
I know you hate this question, but just bear with me here.
What if this is the truth? What if it's just like, hey, they made a subscription to your – the affiliate was just a subscription to your – you're keeping the message fresh and deep and poignant and like on target, on target, on target, on target.
Is there anyone who could do that besides you?
I would think so.
Oh, God.
Are you saying that to like feign humility. Oh, God. Are you saying that to feign humility?
No, no.
I mean, I would hope there is.
I think that's going to be the problem.
I was just this very morning talking to the kids,
wanting to explain to them that business and wealth creation come about through taking resources that are
largely available to everyone
undervalued by all and aggregating
them through your own blood, sweat
and tears. You can find resources
name them whatever you want.
It's infinitely expansive.
That is the sense of committing of yourself
100 percent with these everywhere available, underappreciated,
undervalued resources and aggregating that into something
that creates wealth and seems unobtainable.
And this is the part that that I think it was Billy Blanks
that said he took Tybo door to door for 20 years
and then when it made $20 million a year,
all of a sudden it was called an overnight success.
And think of the refinement of message and approach
and understanding.
And I think you'd learn to navigate that after a while.
And maybe that's what happens.
But I used to regularly encounter, and I think you've seen this, be told that I was an outstanding salesman.
And I took considerable offense to that, and maybe even that's part of why I could deliver F-bombs
and have a puking clown and so much,
because I had a passion and a zeal and commitment to the product
that probably felt like the ShamWow guy to a lot of people
that were used to hucksterism and had made vast fortunes
selling software
and hardware that didn't work.
The Sham thing, though, did work. The Shammy?
That thing absorbed... The ShamWow? It was good.
Yeah, that was good.
I always assumed it was.
Yeah, it was crazy. You could absorb anything.
You could drive a whole fucking car with this thing and just keep
rinsing it out. It was crazy.
I think Shams are that way. Yeah, that's what i was thinking that's it was
as good as crossfit and the uh if crossfit was a a car drying rag did that guy did that guy meet
a horrible end somewhere i don't know i hope he got so rich those things were fascinating i was
fascinated by them as a kid um greg um why not um god i guess i shouldn't give away the whole kitten caboodle
i wonder um if i was them i would just be repack i would be just repackaging everything you ever said
and see how many miles we could get out of it but maybe they don't do that because they're
threatened by you because you're still alive you know what mean? Like it's a double-edged sword. It would promote you. Um, and, and the, and the fear of promoting someone like you is just the fact because you're,
you, um, you're still so vocal on subjects that might be very, that are very difficult for
corporations or money-driven businesses to navigate. They can't navigate them.
You can, you can sail off into seas where they can't chase you. So maybe that's,
um, let me say something about public, more about public schools.
Not all public schools are like Portland and California. Okay.
I take it back. You're not shitty parents. I love all of you.
You're doing the best you can. Oh, you're so cool.
Find a great school and send your kids there. Okay.
I believe, I believe that. And you know what? And so For so many people
They just don't have a choice
I can't do that
I can't argue people's limitations
I can't do that
I can't do that
If she doesn't
If she doesn't
I just know too many people
That have pulled it off brilliantly
You're talking about a mom with four kids That has three jobs If she doesn't, you know, I just know too many people that have pulled it off brilliantly.
You mean you're talking about a mom with four kids that has three jobs.
How the fuck is she supposed to? I'm talking about how she's a professor of anesthesiology at the medical school.
And he's one of a maxillofacial surgery.
And they're homeschooling their kids?
I don't know what they're doing, but they've got six kids.
And I don't think it's homeschooling.
do them, but they've got six kids, and I don't think it's homeschooling.
Zach Jones,
Greg, would you buy CrossFit back for half
the price you sold it? No.
I'm not going to negotiate that thing here,
but no.
Yesterday, we had
the quarterback of the Chicago Bears.
Today, we will negotiate a buybacks deal.
Here's what I would do.
I would cheerlead for a group that would want to buy a bag for affiliates.
Hey, everything eventually sells out.
That's the nature of uh of how things work there is an
organization called the pasada it's a non-denominational meditation group you're not
allowed to pay them until you go until you take their services and then you go home and then you
can pay or not pay they were completely fucking broken away from the herd soon as the fucking
so-called pandemic came, they started requiring vaccinations.
Even if you did that, Greg, I think it fails.
At some point, you just have to accept that it lived its life.
Right?
I think even if you supported that, the affiliates end up fucking up.
I think they fuck it up faster than these guys.
Let me throw one more.
If someone has some sense of me being thrown out the dining hall and peeking through the
windows, he's sadly mistaken.
What I have going on at Broken Science, I feel like I got dislodged to 20 years down
the road.
Right.
And what was wrong with fitness was wrong with medicine
and I was perplexed by it
and I no longer am.
It's disastrous.
It's worse than I thought
but I can now explain it
and I think I can explain it
as well or better than anyone else
and I've made allies out of the people
that helped me get through this understanding
and they're basically the rock star hall of fame of even giving a fuck about these kinds of issues like broken science.
And so I've been granted something that I never would have been able to find in a retirement I hadn't even imagined.
Right.
These are people just asking that question.
I want to share with everyone that I'm so enjoying the place I'm at and this
thing I'm kind of doing for media and
wonks in March
to be able to clearly state exquisitely where science broke,
how it broke, who broke it, the advantages of a broken science, the disadvantages of
broken science, places where it won't broke, can't broke, isn't going to break, and places
where it will remain broken and has to be broken.
When will registration go up for that March event?
It's not even going to be like that.
I'm kind of working with people that I've been working with all along,
and I want to do a dry run, if you can even call it that, with them.
I'll film it. I would love that. if you can even call it that with them. And, you know, there's been so many.
I'll film it.
I would love that.
There's so many of the Jay Bhattacharya and the RFK Jr. and staff.
You mentioned Jay Cooey here recently. And I've just got so many good friends.
good friends, the people at Kimball's New Criterion that helped us purchase David Stove's epic work.
I just yesterday was tripping at two of the most important things ever written on the rationality of induction, the two books by David Stove. And one was written in 71 and the other in 86
and between 82, he wrote Popper and After,
which has been printed three times
under three different titles.
And I own the thing,
Emily and I and the Broken Science Initiative
own this book. And what's important
about it is that it does a world-class exposition as to how it is that academic science shit the
bed and why it is that it has the problems it has with p-values and no hypothesis significance testing in an unfathomable error rate in replication
and how that incentivizes corruption of the other sort for money the fake science the photoshopping
and all that bullshit so so that so what this is about is like you know what i'm doing do i want to quit doing this
to run a fitness company dude that's a nightmare i'm i really like what i'm doing i like
homeschooling the kids i would rather talk with other people homeschooling than uh you know do
you know you could have have your kids diagram two sentences a day, do two math problems a day, and read for a half hour
and write for a half hour.
Just those four things could turn into six hours,
seven hours a day of graduate level study
by the time the kid's 17 years old.
The opportunities in such simple and old school kind of approaches to teaching people things
it's just amazing but that kind of stuff has a lot more pull for me right now than
than squabbling a bunch with the with the in that world uh you know i don, I don't know if there's any correlation between these two, but, um, look at who's left at CrossFit HQ in terms of the staff, old staff versus new staff.
And then just imagine that that same thing is going to happen to the affiliates.
So think of them as mirrors towards of each other.
I don't think that that's a bad way to look at it.
And they have, imagine how long it takes to get up to speed on what it would take to empathize and understand what happens in an affiliate.
And then look at who's running the affiliates there at HQ.
It's not a dig at that person.
It's just that there's going to be some mirroring that goes on.
And I think that the people there with the historical knowledge
and influence and contribution is very limited.
Very, very limited.
So I'm kind of answering my own question as to why they –
that makes sense to me why that maybe there might not be any concern
about 10-year affiliates or affiliates that are, you know,
the 50-person affiliate that isn't going to make it anymore.
You know, it's in someone's back 40 in a garage.
The Stanford MBAs that had such keen interest in CrossFit looked at the 15,000 affiliates
and each of them with a successful t-shirt business and just turned that into between
nine and 10 figures left on the table.
And they did the same with equipment
and they did the same with supplements.
And this is money that stupid Greg Glassman,
we actually saw the business plan
from the group most interested in getting it.
Someone internally revealed it.
And we saw, I get to read the psychological profile of myself.
That I was a narcissist that was only interested in business, in the fitness business.
I took a huge exception at that, seeing this hacked material and myself described such
a way.
It was hilarious.
But it was right there.
It was nine to 10 figures being left on the table
on three different fronts
those aspirations
were entirely inconsistent with mine
entirely inconsistent
and mine was consistent with maximizing the spread of the,
of the miracle that is the CrossFit application.
That's what I was interested in doing.
And I wanted to reduce the, the,
whatever the friction would be on, on accomplishing that.
And that delivered to me a lifestyle that exceeded what I thought I would
ever get
i got brand new cars and a brand new home brand new clothes brand new clothes i put the fuck else
i mean i get up when i want and i go to bed when i want and it but lifestyle was so good
they're going on a cruise ship with you and some other crossfit people is a fucking bore um i i would like to add to that i mean
you you found your calling in life you are always doing the same thing it's not like you go on
vacation and you're not you have a way that you think and you apply that to everything. And you have a passion for digging down for the truth. And so it's not like some people
compartmentalize their life. They work nine to five at the fucking bank at bank of America.
And then on the weekends they go home and watch football. Like you don't, that's not,
that's not your life. You have one life. You're T you're either teaching it to us through this
podcast, but later on when I go to your house,
you'll be teaching it to me as we drive to the taco place.
Then in the afternoon, I'll hear you gather
all the kids around and teach it to them.
Different versions, different iterations,
but you teach people how to think.
With
little regard to the venue,
just as a matter of principle, I'm thinking of
opening up an only fans fans account and do an exercise
you'll pay for it right uh dale dale king uh case for rewarding loyalty since i opened there
have been five gyms three affiliates that have opened from people who started in my gym. Additionally,
no less than 28 people who've gotten
a level one. Yeah, Schindledecker's about to
fucking blow the roof
off of that shit. He's about to sell
a couple hundred level ones.
Yeah,
he's got a...
Matt Schindledecker's
fascinating case. That's the guy
who owns, I think, Crave CrossFit in Ohio, I was telling you about.
He's got some decisions to make.
Danny Abbas, go ahead.
Ohio does so well on so many locations.
They're thriving.
Yeah.
Here we go.
Dale Saran, former general counsel for CrossFit Inc.
I'll give you – and guest on this show several times.
I'll give you some numbers.
During the seven-plus years I was general counsel, we had 58 lawsuits.
We were averaging eight lawsuits a year for every year I sat in the seat.
All were in defense of the affiliates and when he says defense i'm not sure if dale's using that word accurately because uh
maybe some more of the offense of the affiliates because um these greg had no if someone's stepped
into your guys's um arena at all uh the team would go over and beat their ass just like they um uh just like they did in new
zealand this is a great question i would like to know the answer to this too cave duster
dale saran have you ever taken an iq test dude it's crazy being around dale he's sharp as huh
greg amazing i i he's a dear friend i talk to him all the time. I always will.
Yeah. Not a dork either. He's one of the smart guys who's not a dork. It's kind of crazy.
He's critical to my critical sounding board and contributor to my broken science front.
And one of the things that's so cool about where we've taken the Broken Science Initiative is that in the very simple terms that I could explain to a fifth grader what went wrong
in science is also the same logic and validates a critical Supreme Court decision, Daubert, the Daubert decision, D-A-U-B-E-R-T.
It's logically, fundamentally, scientifically flawed. And it ascribes to the very science
that won't replicate. It's diseased. It's epistemically deranged. It's been practiced
outside of the natural sciences at the university.
So it's the social sciences, humanities, and medicine.
Cutters, I think this is regarding New Zealand.
Greg, I met, or Sevan, I met you and Greg out there at CrossFit Taumata.
Ever grateful for the visit and time to talk to both of you.
Jody Lynn, this must be a line that you said in the podcast,
and I'm not remembering it.
Surrendering to that, save them millions, preach.
Surrendering to that, save them millions.
Must have been something about the new, is it something that the new regime surrendered to, save them millions. Must have been something about the new...
Is it something that the new regime surrendered to,
save them millions?
Boy, every time you invoke...
Thank you, Jody, by the way.
Greg, every time you invoke the NSCA case,
it's kind of a nail in the coffin.
It's always such a, like a,
what the fuck?
I forgot about that.
I can't believe they did that.
Crazy.
With any,
with any kind of reasonable follow through inexpensive follow through,
um,
the NSA would be barred from participating in any kind of federal contract
anywhere.
I mean, they had to walk out of that reality to settle.
Yeah.
Had to relinquish eliminating them from the competitive sphere.
Jeffrey Howard, the NSCA case was an absolute betrayal on Rose's behalf.
I don't think it was Rose's behalf.
In fact, he may be a victim of the betrayal.
It's ownership.
This is an ownership issue, not a CEO goof off.
Just in terms of a potential asset, the thing sat there was a $100 million fucking golden egg.
And that doesn't even include the opportunity costs and throttling them with hanging them with the verdict of their own scientific misconduct.
And so there's still reasonable people that send emails out deborah hughes cscs unaware
of the fact that the organization's fraudulent it's an academic scam
if they don't want it they should sue me again too by the way
the last time i told them they should sue me, they did, and they fucked. They almost did them in.
Basically,
you're saying that because
you think if they sued you...
It's true, and I believe it.
It's true, and I believe it, and that makes litigation hard.
But also, if they did,
in discovery, you could get all the details
about the settlement.
If they were going to sue me,
they'd be stoking the furnaces right now,
trying to eliminate shit from their servers.
The problem is they probably don't have the skills to eliminate shit from
their servers commensurate with the people that we hired to find shit.
You eliminated from the servers.
I mean,
these guys were doing the Hillary Clinton beating cell phones up on the cameras.
Academics.
Tyler Watkins, creator of the Heat One
app, which sponsors
the Coffee, Pods, and Wads show
that happens at 12 noon today
Pacific Standard Time. Make sure you watch that show.
Pedro does it over on the Coffee, Wads,
and Pods, Coffee,
Pods, and Wads channel.
Jason, Tyler Watkins, I told you this in a phone call, Sevan.
Okay, I'm listening.
Gym owners were happy to follow a cause of bringing health to the world.
They did that locally and understood their affiliate dollars were to be used to fight.
Bernie Gannon, definition of the world's most vexing problem has changed.
It's no longer health.
They are vexed about year over year
profit.
That guy's such a good writer.
Tyler Watkins, again,
fight Goliaths. Making people healthy locally is fine,
but it's a limited vision and relatively
uninspiring when compared to the idea that we could change
the world by fighting against lies.
Oh, so he's basically talking about where you were doing health or uh crossfit and now you've gone uh
20 uh you know 20 miles up the road and there's the truth to it but it comes at a cost too i mean
i sit in this rarefied space and nobody really gives a I mean, that is the truth of it. And so we're laughing about this little seminar we're going to do. And like, you know, let's just bite the bullet.
And it's the puking clown equivalent. It's epistemology camp. People are going to a camp
about a subject they can't even pronounce or spell and have no idea what it means and
can't say it and don't want to learn about it.
That is kind of the truth of it.
I'll invite you to go back to the CrossFit
health talk that my
father gave on P-values.
Fucking hilarious. We should get our hands on that.
Get S.J. Bear
or someone to pull that out.
He needed
eight hours to do something
he's trying to do in 45 minutes
it was a
colostomy
it was so bad
but good
it's funny because I
in my own studies
have come to
see much of the same material
and oh this is important
and like to be careful
because like
that's a hard thing to explain.
Mike Halpin,
a prostitute
bit off the ShamWow guy's tongue
so he beat her up.
Oh, shit.
Wow.
Wow.
Here's Greg Glassman.
Best I can offer is 20 mil.
Greg, is that you posting on the side or no?
That's very good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Go ahead. go ahead.
This is after I'd been offered $100 million
and told someone to fuck off,
I told Laura that and she countered with $50.
Unable to pay her own bills.
Sevan sold out when he forewent asking Annie real questions.
Oh, is that true, Mr. Cow?
What would be the real question?
What would you ask her?
Oh, he wants me to – she's been on the show a handful of times.
They want me to be like, hey, what did you mean when you said you were out?
Why did you post the black square?
What's your deal with – why did you turn when you said you were out? What, why did you post the black square? What's your deal with, uh, why did you turn on Greg? They want me to have her into my living room and then, and then,
and then beat her down. And here's the thing. There's a place for that. And there's not a place
for that. And there is a place for, uh, dialogue and forgiveness. And, but there's also a place for,
uh, honesty and truth and forthright. And some people I take a long-term range on.
Sometimes I take – people I take a short-term range on.
I don't hate the ants when they come into my house and are all over my kitchen.
I clean them up and I move them out.
But there's other things that I truly hate, right?
Like I don't want a fucking skunk in my yard.
And so I evaluate these things piece by piece
and to call me a sellout is,
you're a fucking punk ass bitch for saying that.
I am not, I'm by far a sellout.
You're probably upset
because you send your kids to school.
And you're a shitty parent, right?
Yeah, and a shitty parent.
I take that back.
Fuck you guys if you send your kids to school, you're a shitty parent right yeah and a shitty parent i take that back fuck you guys if you can just be your shitty parent um
yeah uh let's see what else there is um jeffrey howard uh that l3 thing gets me every time that's
why i click on you uh fuck pepsi on a good note hq did make a post recently about being alone
making people sick
and CrossFit can save them from that.
That's the hard message I'm looking for HQ
to make. We cure chronic disease.
People about
being alone.
HQ did make a
sounds like some
mental health shit.
Yeah, I mean, if you don't want to talk
about, you know,
problems at the pie hole,
you can get into all kinds
of, spend
trillions getting into the weeds and trying
to find the genetic link
or factors in
predisposition to diabetes
because you don't want to talk about eating
blueberry pie with both hands but you can do that and that is what's been done
but you're always it's always going to come back to that if you can
thank you natalie bates uh the fitness industry has been forever changed because of your heart
and contribution.
Thank you, Greg.
Affiliates, it's time to stand up
and take the torch that's been lit.
The mothership is sinking.
Yeah, it's true.
I mean, you're all calling us for this.
You don't,
HQ has nothing but opportunity.
They're not willing to protect you.
They don't understand,
they don't understand what you do.
There aren't people
that understand.
If you were to ask, what is the
central organizing
scientific principle at CrossFit,
you'd be
hard-pressed to find someone at
CrossFit that could tell you that
it was the constantly varied high-intensity
functional movement
of increased work capacity
across broad time and modal domains.
Outside of the seminar staff,
the training staff, they've increasingly felt
their lack of relevance in how the ultimate message
isn't promulgated by the mothership
oh wow
uh savon's dog woof coach uh
let me see this
uh
let me see
this where is it
uh
hey cow I don't know what you said but you said I do
big man talk here on the show but I won't do it to your face.
Listen, buddy, that will probably be one of your last comments.
And anytime you see me in public, come up to me and I'll tell you you're an absolute shit crap parent for sending your kids to school.
How about that?
And then you can just leave the show now because now you've crossed the line.
Now you've crossed the line.
Why don't you just leave?
Coach, go ahead, Greg. Why don't you just leave? Coach,
go ahead, Greg. What were you going to say?
I need that translated.
What I just said?
Yeah.
Oh, good. I'll translate it for you later
over a steak.
Coach Murat,
Reebok CrossFit,
Mi Wellness, 10-year affiliate from Shanghai, China.
Yeah.
Wow.
I remember her.
Dude, awesome having you on.
What a fucking cool thing to have you.
Yeah, you're a fucking stud.
Thank you for doing this.
These shows are my favorite.
Come on over and I'll show you the new gym.
Yeah, and thanks for tolerating this subpar setup
and no phone calls and all that.
Tomorrow we should be back in full action
when I kind of land in my permanent hotel room.
Yeah, that looks and sounds good, pal.
All right.
All right.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, Sebi.
Yep.
I'll see you soon.
Bye-bye.
Greg Glassman.
All right, Dale.
Good.
Get back to suing people. All right. Got to get back to suing people all right got to get back to suing people hey
dale thanks what you're doing by the way for the fight uh for those of you who don't know go ahead
and google dale seren's name and i don't know type in the word covet after it or type in u.s
military and you will see that he is fighting the crazy crazy um uh good good fight he's fighting Crazy, crazy.
Good fight.
He's fighting.
Cave, just say congrats on getting your Instagram back.
Yeah.
It pays to know Facebook executives.
Can you get Dale on?
I can try.
I can try.
You know, the next two weeks, I'm trying to get really easy guests.
Because I'm not going to be in studio and I wanted to have an easy time.
And Dale's easy as shit.
So I'll try to get him on the next two weeks.
All right, guys.
Love you.
Talk to you soon.
Tomorrow.
Oh, oh.
What is today?
Boys, what's today?
Friday?
Today, Friday?
What is today?
Oh, Wednesday.
Wednesday.
Okay, so tomorrow, shut up and scribble.
Today, though, at noon, make sure you go over there right after you get,
right after you log out here and go over to the coffee pods and wads YouTube
page,
sign up for the notifications.
They got a great show today at noon.
It's Pedro's brand new grain game show.
It's going to be awesome.
Can you get Russell burger on?
I got to do that too.
I definitely have to do that.
I definitely, definitely, definitely, uh, have to do that too. I definitely have to do that. I
Definitely definitely definitely have to do that
All right
Plus one for burger interview, okay, I will get restaurant, you know, it's funny as I I actually have been texting with burger quite a bit Yeah. Yes Russell Russell burger. Okay, a lot of people want to see Russell burger. Okay, we'll get him on
Alright Russell Russell Berger. Okay. A lot of people want to see Russell Berger. Okay. We'll get them on. All right.
Love you guys.
Bye.