Welcome And Open Workout Debrief

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey everybody, welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr. Sam Ree and myself, Coach David Stiverton. This podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition, and most importantly, mindset. All right, welcome back to the HerdFit Podcast. I am Coach David Stiverton. I am here with my co-host, Dr. and Coach Sam Re. What's up, Sam? We both just finished our 26.3 CrossFit Open workout just a few hours ago. That ends the CrossFit Open for both of us because I don't know about you, Sam. I am not going to redo that one.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Really? I thought you looked fresh as a daisy after you finished it today.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

So I was smiling, but more out of uh joy that we're done with it. We get to move on. But we do have a handful of people doing it tomorrow. So I guess technically it's not over yet. The submission window is a little over 24 hours from now. Uh, but today, and we will touch on I'm gonna do an episode on just kind of breaking down the programming. Was it good or is it bad? Everyone has opinions about it. Um, I try to always stay away from good and bad and just talk about what it was, what it was not, what could have been different. But at the end of the day, uh, their tests of fitness and the cross-up methodology is built on not having an idea what's coming, and you just have to adjust to what's put in front of you. But I know it's a big talking point. We'll and we'll get there. And we usually do a uh wrap-up open or wrap-up season, I should say, episode where we hey, where should you go from here? We might wait till after quarterfinals for that. Uh, but we'll we'll talk about that in the coming weeks. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

I wouldn't have changed a thing. Everything was excellent, and and the only thing they should have done is double the times for the workouts, and that would have been it.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

That would have been even more sore-inducing. Imagine, I mean, uh, yeah, we'll get into the workouts from a macro perspective down the road, but just as common as CrossFit workouts come up in these episodes, I think one of the most common

Don Fall Steps Down As CEO

SPEAKER_00 2:05

talked-about topics that we've had is hey, there's a new CEO for CrossFit, or someone just lost the CEO position. I mean, this is now the fourth or fifth time we're talking about this. Oh my god, in our in our five to six year history of Herd Fit podcast being around. And if you guys have not seen the news, uh Don Fall, who I would say is a friend of bison, he's been here, we've been out of multiple times, and uh, we've had a pretty good relationship with him. He's no longer the CEO of CrossFit. Um, whether he stepped down, whether he got fired, that's all speculation based. We'll probably stay away from that. But I do want to touch on what this means for us as affiliate owners, for you guys as CrossFitters, and for people that just want to know, you know, what does this even mean? Does it matter? Does CrossFit need a CEO? And I think Sam and I both have touched on this a lot over the years. Uh, but Sam, were you caught off guard by this news? Like, what what was your initial reaction to seeing Donfall was no longer in the leadership position?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

I think a lot of people, including me, were very surprised. They announced it on March 3rd that on March 6th, he was quote, stepping down, which was in the middle of the open, right? So um CrossFit's been for sale for about a year. They announced like last March that they were gonna put CrossFit up for sale. Um, it hasn't been sold. And I don't think anyone expected that this was going to happen now in this way. Um, how did you feel when you heard it?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Yeah, shocked as well. I understand the timing actually that made this this decision, whether it's his or theirs, Berkshare Partners, um, was probably made around New Year, right? I mean, this we it's pretty open that CrossFit has been trying to sell, and there has not been agreement put in place, aka the current owners, the investors, think it's worth this, and anyone who's potentially wanting to buy it thinks it's worth down there. And there just has not been a meeting point, and that's part of what maybe not the only, but that's part of what a CEO job is for a company this big is to enhance the value so that whoever does buy it can take a profit. I know not many people view CrossFit or even Bison from that regard as a business, but there are investments made that if anyone made with your own money, you would want something back, at least get it back, but you were doing it to make a profit. And I would assume that this decision was made way before early March, but they didn't want to put it out there prior to the end of open registrations, so they kind of let that slide. If you notice, this was a this announcement was made right after the deadline of 26.1. So you couldn't, you know, if this had been made a month prior, maybe it takes some uh some gas out of the tank and and people don't want to sign up for the open for whatever reason, uh, because they don't believe in it or there's not enough continuity. Um, but it also can help sweep it under the rug because you know this time of year there's constant, constant attention on things within the actual sport, within CrossFit, within affiliates, uh, within Wadapalooza, even that it's actually pretty easy to forget about. So it might actually be a pretty strong and bold PR move to announce it during a peak time where the attention is easily put somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. Uh, the fact that I had to do a hundred and you know, potentially 144 bar facing burpees that definitely wiped other things out of my mind at the time. So you're right. Uh strategically, that it that makes a ton of sense why they would announce it now. Um, I assume you're gonna speculate a little bit about why they did this. Um, and uh I'd be interested to hear on what you had to say about that.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to um discuss like what Don Fall did, you know, it's uh love him or hate him. I don't really understand how anyone could hate or or even anoint him as a savior. Like he didn't do either, he didn't hurt or help CrossFit um as much as he probably thought he could. We had him on our podcast. If you guys want to go um circle back to that episode where we had Don Fall, just search Don Fall Herd Fit Podcast, and he was throwing the number out 20 to 30 million people that he wanted to do CrossFit. And the estimate right now is two to three, so that's times 10. And you know, it what you know about Don, what we know about Don, it's that he likes big, wants like a huge dramatic shift, and that would be a huge dramatic shift across it. It was probably a total too lofty, and we've discussed that. You can't have 20 to 30 million people doing CrossFit in affiliates unless you times 10 the number of affiliates, you know. So now you're talking going from 15,000 affiliates at the time to 150,000.

What Don Fall Improved At HQ

SPEAKER_00 7:00

That's the only way you would have bandwidth to handle that many people. So I I bring that up because he was really ambitious for those numbers when he started cross it, but that was not that really was not realistic with what it is right now. But I think there, so that will be the egg on his face that some people will probably bring up at some point and look at as a failure. But I don't think Don failed as CEO at all. I've been in this for a long time and you know, very appreciative of what Greg Glassman did, the movement that he started, but I have had so many more positive interactions and results from current leadership at CrossFit in the past four years, which he started August 2022 and ended March 26th. So about uh about three and a half years. I've had more positivity from HQ in that span than the previous 10 years combined. And it's not even close. And I mean that, and I'm I like both sides, I don't think there should be both sides, but what he did compared to some previous CEOs was that he made this a much more interactive system with the affiliate managers. I know Dave Castro got that off the ground, but Don Fall kind of took it to the next level. The affiliate playbook, which really tells you how to run an affiliate, the cat programming, the class plans. We don't need them at bison, but I'll tell you what, we could have used it in 2014, 2015. And it was, and we didn't hear from CrossFit for years. Now, at any given point, we hear from them multiple times per year. Could text Don right now, Jada Coons right now, and expect a text back. I mean, we would write an email to CrossFit and get it something back maybe a month later. So to me, I think Don Fall did do a good job of stabilizing a very unstable situation after Glassman, COVID, Dave Castro, Eric Rosa, Jason Dunlop, all these guys were CEOs of CrossFit, and it was just a very unstable time. And I'm actually thankful from the affiliate side that he stabilized that ship. Do you what are your thoughts on what his leadership has been and how he has studied a few things?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

I I like Don Fall, and I think this was a job that I don't know if anyone could have done necessarily better than Don Fall did. But on the flip side, you got to look at the metrics. Yeah, and they're tough, they're very tough. Uh you know, 2024 we had 343,000 in the uh CrossFit Open. 2025, it was down to 233, so that was a 32% decrease. We lost, um, we went from 11,300 some of affiliates to eight uh in 2024 to less than 10,000, like 9,800 plus. So, and I don't know how 2026 is going. Uh, so if you're looking at it from a strict metrics number standpoint, you could criticize CrossFit as an organization for failing to show growth or or or improvement. Um, it's been over a year since uh or about a year since CrossFit HQ announced they were selling uh the organization and no sale has occurred. And I don't know what Don Fall's role was in that. And I think um so you can't really attribute the failure of a sale after a year to him. But if you just look at it objectively, these are not things that you would look at an organization and say, great, you know, like we're on the upswing, we're doing okay, like things are good. Um, and again, I don't know if you can really attribute all of this to Don Fall or any of it. I don't know. Um, like

The Numbers Affiliates And Open Decline

SPEAKER_01 10:45

you said, he's really been instrumental in terms of communicating better with affiliates. Um, I hope that the overall, I think one of the biggest things we've always talked about is is quality control for affiliates. And I think that they've certainly made strides towards that. Whether or not that translated into objective measurements, it's hard to say. But I I think part of it also was some un uh unfortunate incidents. I think uh the death of Lazar Dukic in 2024 was was um was terrible, and and I think that that really was a difficult uh uh tragedy that he had to navigate as well as CrossFit HQ. And and I think all of these things were almost insurmountable in some ways. And um I I like Don. I think he uh is an excellent person. Um and I and all the pundits out there, I don't know if I've really heard of anyone really savage him that I respect in terms of like their analysis, but but it it's been a really tough road ahoe. And I I don't envy Don over the past three years dealing with what he or four years at dealing with what he's had to deal with.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, I remember telling him on our podcast, and I think I still I bring this up sometimes, I don't think he liked hearing it, but I said it was like, how do you feel about kind of being like a new face in here? And you're kind of coming into a pre-existing culture that really got this thing off the ground and created this unbelievable methodology, and and that was a rebel mentality for a long time as well. And now you're a corporate guy, and a lot of rebels hate corporate, whether they're justified feeling that way or not is irrelevant, that's just the way it is. And there is a band of old school CrossFitters that wear a badge of honor because they did it before 2012, and then you have a lot of people coming into it, and you almost feel like you have to kind of bring some new thoughts, ideas, and evolve CrossFit a little bit. But the the the founding fathers, if you will, the truth we call them truthers on this podcast, and we all know who we're talking about in that. It's almost like, hey, you're not one of us. Like, how do you band those people together to create this North Star of growth and of impacting more people's lives and really changing the world through fitness? I mean, that's what I think everybody does want that's truly in the weeds with this stuff is to make a difference. And and then there are a group of people that want to profit off it. There's nothing wrong with either side, but getting the people that want to profit and the people that just love CrossFit to come together is the number one job. And that's what I mean by old school versus new school. You know, it it's right now it feels like it's a club. That's what CrossFit is. It's a club, and some people want to make this a business. Now it's worth probably close to 150 to 200 million dollars, so you can't not call it a business. But one thing I always try to do is relate things to a CrossFit affiliate, to Bison. I do think bison is probably one of the truest representations of what CrossFit was, what CrossFit is, and what CrossFit can or will be. And it's not a and I wouldn't say that I would say that about CrossFit Diablo in California, CrossFit Hendersonville in Tennessee. I don't know those people from the back of my hand. I don't know them at all. But gyms that

Old School Culture Versus Business Reality

SPEAKER_00 13:55

have been around for 12 years, they're constantly have a lot of people, they're constantly doing CrossFit, but they have evolved a little bit. Those are the people you want to pay attention to in terms of all right, where is this now? Like what what ease what direction is this even going in? And I think that is something that we'll we'll touch on in this episode as well. But in terms of, you know, did it truly not work out? I think the death of Lazar Dukic is was something that I mean that was the number one reason you saw things plummet in the open last year. This year it spiked backward, upward. Um, the old school guys is what I brought up, but I also raised affiliate pricing. And that is when that's like the f it would be no different, Sam, than us showing up to the gym one day and looking at some numbers and like you know, you got to pay these people. This rent went here, this equipment's costing us this. We got to replace the floor, we got to put in new heating. You know what we're gonna have to do, Sam? We're gonna have to raise prices at bison. And businesses have to do that at some point. We've done it, we did it in 2022, I believe. It was 2022 or 2021. Sent the email out, and again, something that you kind of had to do, but that and that ends up getting some people feeling a certain way, whether it's justified or not, you can let everyone has is entitled to their own opinion. But when you raise affiliate fees to $4,500, it's going to throw fuel on the fire of people feeling that they're no longer doing this together, they're trying to take advantage of us. Like there are clients. If you put them on a lie detector test, I bet at least a few were being like, Oh, they just want our money now. You know, we just launched some high rocks training. Oh, they just want our money, yoga, they just want our money. Um, and I think you have that's where if you don't trust Donfall, you don't trust new leadership, it's really easy to not want to be a part of it. You kind of look the other way and do your own thing. Can you relate what he had to do, raising affiliate prices, to what some gym owners have to do at some point, and that's raise their fees as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Yes. Uh, and I think looking at CrossFit HQ and looking at us, there are some very good analogies. I think when I look at CrossFit HQ, well, the first thing is uh is I think they've missed the boat a couple like but for a couple decision trees, they could have been a very different organization at this point. I think the the biggest miss that Glassman made was not, well, there were two. One was not sort of incorporating rogue into part of CrossFit and Rogue being its own sort of, you know, because he was really tight with the rogue guys, and if they had been partnered more tightly, all that rogue equipment money could have been actually part of CrossFit. And yep, and kudos to rogue for sticking with CrossFit. The other thing was the whole social media, like shutting all that stuff down and the media team that that was terrible in 2018. I think the thing that um Don Fall faced, which is what you mentioned, is the old school new school. So I think it was really hard for him to make any radical changes or aggressive changes or new changes because he always had to keep in mind all these OGs, the truthers. Like if he did anything super different, um, and we have talked to even other CEO candidates, and they threw out some really radical ideas of how they would revamp CrossFit or change CrossFit. And I don't think Don Fall even had the latitude to be able to do that. I think one of his big misses, I think directly related to the OGs, was not partnering more with HIROX. And I think had CrossFit really taken a lead role with the HIROX thing or taken over or or or been like had a bigger role, um, because that directly arose out of people in CrossFit, basically. Like that that was a I think a potential miss. And and I think I think Don Dan, you know, Castro, D, you know, Dave Castro and all these others were like looking at

Missed Opportunities With Media And Hyrox

SPEAKER_01 17:55

it and and they ended up passing on it. That's my guess. I don't know if that's the truth or not, but it seems like Hyrocks has really exploded and it's so adjacent to CrossFit, it looked like an apart an opportunity that could have happened. Uh for us as CrossFit bison, I think one of the things that we've done is we did raise prices, and that was a hard swallow for a lot of people, but we also are offering different um benefits, right? So, you know, the nutrition challenge, like we that we charged a lot more this year, but we offered a lot more. And there was all it was there was way more value. Same with uh the yoga, uh the stretch class, same with Olympic lifting. And the newest part is is outlast, which is very radical. That is a totally radical different change that is so not CrossFit, but yet so CrossFit at the same time. And that's the kind of thinking that like an OG CrossFitter would be like, what are you talking about?

Outlast As A CrossFit Adjacent Model

SPEAKER_01 18:55

No barbell, like no complicated like gymnastics, like what you guys are losers. This isn't CrossFit. Uh and that's and had CrossFit HQ offered something like that, what do you think would have been this? It would have been the same response. And yet we felt because we know our community and we know our athletes, we said, and we saw, I mean, honestly, let's we stole the idea from um CrossFit 908 when they started theirs. Uh, kudos to Tim Carroll and those guys. But like we saw them, we're like, we see the future, we see alternatives, we see how we can grow. And that is where I think CrossFit HQ needs to open their mind a little bit and be like, listen, this is CrossFit adjacent. This isn't exactly the way Glassman taught the you know X number of 10 principles or whatever, but it's it it is recognizable as CrossFit, and so we need to appeal to greater numbers of people, and that's where we have tried to do better. Yep, but CrossFit HQ, I think, has kind of slipped.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah, and part of it's because they have people that have been there for 20 years, yep. And I'll tell you what, I mean, you bring up Tim Carroll, I mean, he's another guy. It's like those are the people you want to listen to. It's not, and no offense to Hiller or Savant, but those guys live their lives on YouTube, like they they're not in affiliates at 5 a.m. They don't go to the gym on Sunday night to clean the floor so it looks nice on a Monday morning, they don't offer extra hours of open gym at their time, taking away family time so someone could do thrusters and burpees, even though they had 21 hours to choose from to do the workout. They don't do that stuff, they're not in the affiliates, they don't truly know what is actually working and what's not working, what's starting to slow down, like the affiliate owner Tim's been around for 15 freaking years. You want to talk about a guy that has a finger on the pulse of what's actually happening to the most valuable asset in CrossFit, the affiliate. I mean, to not go that direction. Tim has never heard from CrossFit to this day, he's never gotten a message from them, and that to me is just like whoa, like he's gotta be one of the top man, one of the 100 oldest gyms in the country. And the fact that you won't, and it's not like Tim is not an egotistical, you better listen to me, here's my opinion. But I'm sure he's not the only one. I'm sure I'm sure there's a lot of, but you could see Dave Castro walking into the same California gym for the 18th time in three years. Like, when's the last time he was in New York and New Hampshire, other than the games? And look, and and it doesn't even always have to be Dave Castro. Like, I understand Savon and Hiller, they try to do some things for affiliates, but you know, Savon Sam, you know Hiller, you don't think about affiliates when you think about them.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

You don't, you know, and and the thing that really strikes me is that you are as CrossFit as CrossFit can be. I don't think you would ever give up being an affiliate. You you drive your drive is about performance. Within the CrossFit space. I know for the longest time and still is, one of your goals is to perform as best as you can within the competitive CrossFit space. You foster that within our gym. But on the other hand, you also are able to expand your perspective and say, what else are we doing to not exclude others? How can we reach the most number of people? How can we get everybody involved? And for someone who honestly, if anyone was like, who drinks the Kool-Aid the most at our gym, it would have to be Dave Siversen. But then on the other hand, when this concept of a non-crossfit type CrossFit gym came about, you were the first to embrace it and say, Yeah, this is this is this is it. We see this. We need this. We need more people to seek exercise as a win. We need to grow this side of it. And you went all in, you brought the rest of us, uh, investors in on it, and it's doing gangbusters. It's it's the fastest growing part of our business. And we're looking to expand it more than anything else at this point. And so, so this is where CrossFit needs to have people and hopefully another CEO that can see the old, but also look at the new.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah, and I think there are a lot of people capable, but not everyone's capable of communicating it. And I do think CrossFit has improved communication, podcasts, interviews, all that, but they they need more spokespeople, they need more people in the front telling them why they're doing this. Like, I would love, this would be sick. I would love Adrian and Castro to do a podcast next week for an hour, breaking down why the workouts were the way they were. And it's it's not because I need to hear it, but it's because like they want to explain themselves, they're so confident in their vision that they can talk to anybody about it. And to me, sometimes when you never hear, like, oh, CrossFit's launching this, this marketing campaign, but you never hear on a talk about it. And like, I almost wish you had more, like, I wish Don Fall leaned into that more. We call it storytelling, marketing, whatever you want. We want more content for us to take in so that we can think about it, reflect on it, put our spin on it, and then project it outwards. Because, yes, I am as cross as cross it gets, but I bet there's an a group of people that would call me a sellout for open instead of opening up a second CrossFit, we opened up Outlast. And but you take that, you like that's part of being in front of anything. You're gonna take good and you're gonna take bad. But I I do think that as CrossFit goes to the next stage, one of the biggest responsibilities they're gonna have is being able to communicate vision without trashing anyone. And I'll get into I think affiliate owners have as much responsibility as a new CEO, to be honest with you. I got a couple of real examples for you too that I'm a little that just happened this afternoon that I'm really pissed off about, and I can't wait to share with you. But um, it's I I really do think CrossFit has a step or two up to take from where it is right now, but it won't come down to one CEO, it'll come down to a vision, and it's gonna come down to some of these old school guys, which you know, we actually actually have had some good conversations with people that have been very involved with the sale or potential sale of CrossFit. And you do hear that there is a culture there that you're you're almost afraid to disagree with someone that's been there for a long time, and that's not healthy for growth, it's just not. Um, so I don't want, like, I'm not gonna spend an hour. Sam's not gonna spend an hour saying, What would we do if we're a CEO? Like, I don't have that's not my skill set. That's um every now and then someone will joke, like, yeah, you should be a CEO or you blah blah. Rich Froning should be CEO. I'm like, look, there's a different skill set, a different level of comprehension and uh ability and talent that it's someone a real CEO would need. Like, you have to speak so many different languages and so many different backgrounds. But at the end of the day, I do think you and I could come up with a couple of ideas of

Winning Younger Adults Through Social Media

SPEAKER_00 26:10

right, how do we get this thing growing again? We just talked about Outlast, we'll touch on that a little bit, but let's talk about social media. Um, Sam and I are not in our 20s, if you can't tell. Um, but Sam does have a couple of uh children that are in college-aged. I have a five-year-old, so he's not gonna help much. But let's talk about the biggest elephant in the room for affiliate owners. This is something CrossFit needs to listen to, and I I haven't heard them put any content out about this. And we talk about it, we talked about it literally today at the gym, Sam. Yeah, you're not getting a lot of college-age and young adults people to start CrossFit. Now, we actually have seen a spike somewhat in the past year at Bison, but I think for the future of this future growth, it can't just be thinking about next year and the year after. It's got to be thinking about 10 years down the road. And if we could go find every, you know, we have a lot of 35 to 45 year olds in the gym. If we can go find that version of them 10 years ago and get them into bison, I would feel a lot more secure about 10 years from now. What are your thoughts? Like, how how can social media or how can anything attract more college kids slash adults? Or is that not something you think cross at CEO should pursue?

SPEAKER_01 27:23

No, we definitely, I mean, I think the company definitely should pursue better social media. There's no doubt. Like that drives businesses more than anything else. Now, exactly how to go about doing it is certainly a challenge. And especially for us in our you know 30s, 40s, and 50s, we're not thinking like 20-year-olds or or 15-year-olds, and that's that's the demographic you're gonna need to chase in order to build your business for the future. I would say um, looking at what how my kids consume social media and what they're thinking about, um I think the first part of it is to focus on aesthetics. So, you know, when my kids, like when my daughter does Pilates, she's looking at, you know, and the image is long, lean, like, you know, um they they use these words which sort of drive young women to feel like this is something they want to be part of. Now, does Pilates make you long and lean? Who the F knows? I don't know. I don't know if anyone has done studies showing Pilates is a better exercise modality for making you leaner than say something else. But that is the concept that they've espoused and somehow gotten into these kids' heads, and now they're all friggin' doing Pilates. And Pilates isn't new. Pilates had like, I remember the first um rise of Pilates like 10 years ago, but somehow they took this which 10-year-old or 15-year-old thing, exercise modality, and it's spiked again recently. So if people say, well, yes, fitness is a fad, and it is true, you can you can ride that fad, you can get back on there. Um, so I think you know, uh I think and guys want to be muscular. So it I think there's going to be a way of sort of working on the concept of aesthetics and CrossFit in social media. And I'm not a a person who is skilled at that, but I do know once you get these core concepts embedded into into kids' heads, no matter what it is, that's that's what they're gonna believe. And I I feel like CrossFit has done if we were to look honestly at Don Falls' tenure for the past three years, I would say I think all of us actually talked about social media three or four years ago. And and unfortunately, that's they they haven't made any if progress and maybe backwards progress, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Yeah, I haven't seen I can't think of anything right now that would make me think, oh, yeah, they had a real effort into getting younger people involved. Um, maybe there's things behind the scenes, but again, we've talked to like who's who and cross multiple times. Nothing has been brought up about how to get younger people involved. What do they want? Well, and you know, it might not work, but there's the effort still needs to be put into that. I mean, you can even go, we can go into a rabbit hole talking about do people in their 20s want to do really hard things? I mean, that's gonna be something that could ruffle some feathers of that age group, you know. But they are the people that we have at Bison right now that are in that age group. I think they're an anomaly. Like they come in and they're like, you know, CrossFit is it's hard, it's really challenging in so many different ways. Like you show up to the gym and there's things you can't do. Like, yes, we talk about scaling all the time, but that's an age group where like you're finding yourself, you're becoming more confident. You don't want to be told, like, sorry, you can't do the rope climb, you're gonna have to scale to the ring row with the gram on the corner, you know, or like sorry, you can't snatch what the women are, uh Johnny, but you're gonna have to snatch, uh, you're gonna have to snatch even lighter than that weight. Egotistically, a lot of them cannot handle that. And then they have to make that decision. Hey, can I actually suck it up, play the long game, and work really hard for a really long time in the middle of doing 5,000 burpees this year, or do I want to do something that has a little bit less resistance? It's a little bit easier, it's a little bit less uh challenging to get to a high level. That's where I don't know. I'm I'm 40 now. Wow, I am 40. And I don't know if I can relate to that age group, but I remember when I was 25, 26, starting this stuff out, like I couldn't wait to get to the gym every day and do the hard stuff. Am I different or is my am I in a different generation? Because the world's a lot different now.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

I think it it's a it's a different marketing perspective because I look at some of these disciplines like yoga, and to be really good at yoga, like it's freaking impossible. Like when they do these positions like Crow or you know, like these in insane positions, that is really hard. And and I think any discipline, whether it's Pilates, CrossFit, um, bodybuilding, you know, whatever it is, to get to a very advanced status, it takes a lot of time, effort, and and and it's and grind. And so I would never say an expert yoga person did not grind as much as say an expert CrossFit person. Like they they spent uh a ton of time, and it's and it's it's very hard. Like if you ever try to hold a position in yoga, like you know like how painful that can be. So I think what we have done in CrossFit is is not marketed it to sell the payoff or or compare CrossFit. Like we say we're harder than everyone else. I don't think we're harder than anyone else, we're just as hard as anyone else, but like we have to somehow show the payoff of what that that grind is, and and so um again, I think it's it's a marketing perspective. And I don't think that this younger generation, and we've gone back and forth, is um weaker or less dedicated. I think they just want to know more before they get into it. Like they're smarter in the sense like, wait, what is this gonna get me? And they already know what Pilates or they think they know what Pilates is gonna get them or yoga is gonna get them. I don't know if we've sold the concept of what CrossFit would really do if they really lean in on it. They're they're too smart to not um to bite without actually seeing something, I think.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the information age, you know, like you can look up anything about anything at any given point from any device you have and get a full-blown education on it. And so that's a good point. You can't can't fool them or trick them into trying, they're gonna do their research. I like that. Um, we touched on the Outlast style model a little bit, and I I believe that you know, without starting that conversation over again, I just again some metrics on this. We had 26 people from Outlast uh do the CrossFit open this year, and that introduced those people to the open, to which is as CrossFit as CrossFit gets barbells, rigs, scaling, gymnastics, going dark, blah, blah, blah. And a lot of them, the feedback I've gotten from them, like they're elated. Some of the uh feedback that they gave some of our coaches, like how welcoming Bison was, how a part of the crew they thought it was. A couple of them are now buying memberships at Bison. Now, which have they have literally said in the past, I never want to go in there, I don't want to go, and now they're members. So it's again like the open was a marketing tool to get those people involved in this. It kind of gave them a taste. Now they want the full thing. Um, but someone sent me a message when I was on with Savon a few weeks ago, and Outlast came up. And obviously, when you're getting interviewed, you can't read comments. So someone screenshotted a comment to me and it said, as we were talking about outlast, someone called it CrossFit Light. Oh, so basically, what you guys are doing is CrossFit Light. And whatever. I mean, you would you would assume that's someone that just like is always kind of in the comments, wants to make fun of this. If you don't do squat snatch, you suck, right? That kind of stuff. But I would challenge anyone that, especially affiliates, that feel like you have a space but B, you need to create more revenue, it's to go down this model. And man, can you imagine if a CEO fully embraced this and created some guidance and programming and coaching guidance on how to do this for your affiliate, whether it's extra or honestly, for some of you, a replacement because you can't hang anymore in the CrossFit space. You can't, CrossFit's not paying your bills anymore. And why not try to revamp? So instead of de-affiliating from the CrossFit model, which costs 4,500 bucks a year, maybe ground roots, you know, like $1,500 a year for the outlast model. And you're still kind of a part of this, like this culture, this ecosystem that has all these resources and all these people and all the support. But yeah, we don't use barbells, we don't go upside down. Everything we do gymnastics is strict, and we do high intensity probably two or three days per week. Everything else is either strength or long endurance. And I bet you would get new people in, you would revitalize some people that are feeling burnt out, and then all of a sudden you might have a booming business again.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

This is where the philosophy of CrossFit is in direct opposition of what an outlast model is. Because if you presented this to Adrian Bosman, like he'd be like, Wait, you're not writing anything down on a whiteboard, you're not measurable, you're not repeatable, you are not, you know, you're not engaging in high intensity, like three days a week or four days a week. Like this is not CrossFit, this is bullshit, is honestly what they would say. So the OG, and we we know them, they're so uncompromising, they would never accept this type of exercise philosophy, exercise programming, exercise model as acceptable because there's just too much in there that is just not and you know, and we've trained, we're coaches, we've done, we've taken the L1, we've taken the L two. We know exactly what they're thinking in CrossFit. And yet, this is the funny thing. We we know this, and yet we developed you developed programming and a gym that strips some of those principles away, and it works, it works, and that is the thing that again, if you want to analogise CrossFit and our gym that they need to think out of the box on. But I don't ever think CrossFit will ever say, okay, it's all right not to write things on the whiteboard, okay, it's not okay, you know, you don't have to do pull-ups like with kipping. Like, there's no way on God's green earth. And this is why I am a little pessimistic about CrossFit, because you need someone who can say, I believe in CrossFit, but I also believe you can set up a gym model like this because you are right. This, if any gym out there feels like they need more, they need something else, they need additional, they need lift. Like that's what this gym has brought us. And you're right. It is it allows, it doesn't mandate, but it allows a lot of these outlast athletes to taste a little bit of like, oh, so what does a higher intensity workout feel like? Oh, what does it feel like to do something for time and you know, and push a little bit harder? What is it like to learn a slightly more complex skill? And some of them, after a while, have tried it, tasted it, and they're like, this is good because listen, we know CrossFit is good. It's just some people take to it, some people don't. But this allows all of the negative stereotyping around CrossFit, and that's the other thing over the past three years. I don't think CrossFit has fixed their negative stereotyping out in the real world about like what they people think CrossFit is, but these people have now looked at it for themselves, not listened to everyone saying it's dangerous and bad and and crazy, and been like, I kind of liked doing that wall ball, you know, workout. Like that was pretty, pretty cool. And so um, this is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking I think that that we need more of. And and I I I am like you, I encourage more gyms to sort of do that. The programming, the way you implement it, there are subtleties there, which I've seen you do with this. It's not CrossFit Light. You can't just like say we're doing Fran, but with dumbbells, and you know, yeah, like that's that's not what this is. There's a whole different mentality to it, and but but that is the joy of it, but also why CrossFit probably will never incorporate it.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah, like if I ever did get to present that in front of an Adrian and he's like, This is bullshit, this isn't CrossFit. I would say, how did that work out with you guys in HyROX? Out because I I bet that was the answer. This isn't CrossFit because it's knowable, it's predictable, you know it's coming, and now go figure. Now there's going to be a competitor race of high rocks that Zenom or whatever, yeah, whatever it's called, Zenom or Z Mom or something like that. Yes, and like that's it. I mean, so again, this is not getting rid of CrossFit. This is they would be one thing, Sam, if I said, Hey, CrossFit, let's get let's get rid of Olympic lifting, let's get rid of muscle ups, um, and let's get rid of like the girl workouts, the four time stuff. Let's get rid of it. Let's let's replace it. It's not replacing CrossFit. That's what everyone in CrossFit, in my opinion, the truthers, they're so threatened all the time that something that they love is going to be taken away from them. And this is not taking away from anyone, it's adding to for the purpose of bringing more people in. And again, talk to an affiliate owner that's been doing this a long time. It's literally bringing people in. This is not like some foreign concept that we hope occurs. Membership is coming to our CrossFit side because of Outlast model. And you know, whether it's the guy in the comments or one of the podcasters that is friends with Dave Castro, you that this is where when you're not in the affiliates, you just don't get it. And that the credibility is not there. It you this is not lived in YouTube, like it's lived tomorrow at 5 a.m. at CrossFit Bison. Like that's where the truth is. And you guys would rather sleep in bed and talk to a microphone than really put yourself in the grind of understanding that this is reality. This is not that this is really happening, that an outlast model is helping the CrossFit model. And you can bring in finances if you want to get away from just helping people out. This can put money in gym owners' pockets. And I'm not talking about one class a week on a Tuesday night in the back corner of the gym while there's three people doing your CrossFit workout in a 4,000 square foot gym. Like, no, a real gym, its own programming, its own equipment, its own investments, all that scary shit that we went through, hiring staff and training staff and schedules. Trust me, it's hard. But if you guys are truly in it for the right reasons, I don't think there's any debate why you wouldn't want to do this. And that's that's what I would say to CrossFit if they said it's it's a bullshit concept. Dave Siversen for CEO. Yeah, yeah. My uh my degree from Montclair State is not that impressive.

Storytelling That Changes CrossFit’s Image

SPEAKER_00 42:40

But um, again, so the last one storytelling, messaging, marketing. I don't have an expertise in marketing, so I'm not gonna pretend I do. Um, I think bison's social media is a five out of ten at best. So, but I do think that if I had the funds, if I had the time, I would love to put more into telling stories of what people that go to the gyms think. Um, and Allison Larondi and Abigail Burke, we had on Herd Fit um a couple months ago. Um, women in their 60s crushing this uh stuff four days a week, and some of the stuff that that um she has said about bison and talk about pregnant women doing this until a week before, you know, we just had an athlete that did 26.1 and 26.2 and then had a baby girl two days ago. Think about that. She did 26.1 and 26.2, and just had a baby couple days. Who wouldn't want to hear that story? And it kind of and it what what storytelling does to me, because I like taking in content that I relate to and motivate me and inspire me, it makes me want to go be a part of it. It's not just to clap my hands, oh, that's cool, moving on. Some people do, but I look for things that kind of give me a kick in the ass and really want to get going. I think CrossFit could do a better job, like just a full social media account, a Full YouTube channel at only that, telling stories of some of the cool stories with good videos, good graphics that people can relate to. Because you know there are still people out there that think they can't do this. They're not fit enough to do CrossFit. They can't relate. Everyone there rips their shirt off and has a 12-pack and can and do muscle-ups and snatches. Where the vast, vast majority, if you want a number, I'd say 75% of affiliate of CrossFitters can't do any of that and they're not shredded. They are pretty normal looking, all right, but they're they get something out of doing it. That they we need more storytelling and more messaging that really dives into that.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

The people that are most inspirational to me are not the ones who are. A lot of the messaging should be. Um, the stories that I would love to see, because I would love to highlight those people. And and then also, as we talked about younger people, because I don't think I've seen a single person under the age of 20 in a freaking CrossFit. I mean, I think the youngest one that I've ever seen is Rebecca Foos, you know, Fuselier. And she's an elite CrossFit athlete. But who else is that? And you know what? The young women athletes, like my daughter still follows Haley Adams, yeah, you know, follows um all of these, you know, the younger side athletes uh on the CrossFit space because they're really awesome, they're good role models. And so why are we not highlighting more of these younger athletes? You know, the one you know, in the everyday younger athletes at gyms, like I don't think I've ever seen a storytelling with someone uh under the age of 25, you know. So let's do that. Like, we got some people too, like I mean, a couple, not a ton, but a few, and and we should be working on that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

And and even just like some of the former elite big time celebrity athletes, like a lot of them are no longer in the game, but wouldn't it be cool? Like, you know, I'm not a huge Matt Frazier fan, but I like watching him do some workouts now because he's more like us and he's still grinding, he's still going hard. Because one of the biggest issues with CrossFitters is that you hear this weekly. I used to be able to do this, but I can only do this now. And they get upset with themselves to the point of tears sometimes, and eventually you just run away from it. Like very few people accept it and be like, all right, like is what it is. I'm just gonna keep continue to work hard. So that they leave, they quit. But if you know and you can see stories and read about messages about people that, yes, I got worse too, honestly, because I don't put the time in like I used to with training because other things going on, or honestly, just don't feel like it. But I'm still here doing the thing, I'm still grinding, I'm still trying as hard as I can because the second you take your foot completely off the gas, you will stop and you will regret it. Absolutely, and those are stories that I think we would love to get. Like, I would love to see what Graham Holmberg is doing now. Yeah, I think Rich Froning, I mean, he's still a leader, he's not a great example, but he has lost a step and he talks about it all the time on his podcast, and like he's still top one percent of top one percent, but it is cool to see like the guy's still doing the thing, he's trying as hard as he can, he's got to scale some things because he's got a bad knee, but he still goes out and tries to crush what he can. And it makes me feel like hey, obviously different level athlete, but I'm not the kind of guy that's just gonna quit because I'm no longer this, because that's gonna carry over into other areas of life too, and you'll you'll regret it. You you will regret completely stopping um just because you're not as good as you used to be. And maybe it's a reality check that you needed that this should not be about your ego, this should be about your health and the quality of your life, not what others might think about you, which in most cases is simply not true. You're a hundred percent right.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

If you give up on yourself in that way, you will regret it for the rest of your life, even if you feel like your ego is hurt because you didn't perform the way you did this open versus the last open. I get that, I get that in a huge way, and um and I think that these are the messages that CrossFit HQ should be putting out there um for everyone. Um, I mean, I honestly our gym does great, and uh, we don't need as much social media as most people think because we do so much word of mouth business. Yeah, like um, but I think definitely from a media campaign, this is where HQ needs to be helping us, and this is where we were five, six, seven years ago. We're like, why are they not putting more messaging out there? Why are they not driving more people? They always say, We're gonna help you drive uh clients to your affiliates. Do you think over the past three or four years they've done that? Nope. Okay, so yeah, this is where the business is not as stagnant, it hasn't changed. I think Don Fall did a as good of a job as he uh tried, but like we're sort of reiterating the same problems that we talked about three, four, five years ago.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Yeah, so yeah, I'll we can wrap it up there. I'll I'm gonna I'll save my little uh somewhat rant on affiliate owners.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

No, I want to hear it to see. Okay, you want to do it?

SPEAKER_00 50:48

I didn't know I'm taking up too much.

SPEAKER_01 50:49

I

The Affiliate Owner Mirror Check

SPEAKER_01 50:50

want to do it.

SPEAKER_00 50:51

So I'll say this about affiliate owners, and they have more to do with the potential growth or decline of CrossFit than any group of people on the face of the earth, including Berkshire, including the the media or half media, whatever you want to call them, and definitely a CEO. We those guys, what we have the power, yes, affiliate owners. Like they have to do a good job because at the end of the day, we talk about hey, get more people in my door. Like, that's we know this, Sam. That's like step one of 20 of getting someone to be here for a long time and be a customer and have their life change. Like that, there are 19 more steps, yeah, that are gonna have to take place. And those 19 steps are affiliate owners. And to me, I think the actual quality of the average CrossFit gym, not below or above average, just the average CrossFit gym, is not very good. And it meant it's an easy place to leave because it's not uh cheap, it's an expensive membership. And I the from what I observe on calls with other affiliate owners, conversations with people from other affiliates that have now come to Bison or people that I talk to around the country that CrossFit is that the affiliate owners and coaches, I'm gonna put that uh this on them as well, they're just not as fired up as they used to be. They don't go the extra mile. Uh, they don't, they're not there with the service mentality. And to me, if that is the case at your affiliate, it's eventually going to close. It or it will never reach a high level. It's not, it's gonna peak at some point. And sometimes it's hard. Like you're an affiliate owner, you're grinding seven days a week, 12 months a year, right? Like, feel bad for you, all that stuff, right? No one wants to hear that. Nobody, because it is truly a 24-7, 365 job. I I get that, trust me. And no one wants to be told you're not doing well. It's not a you're not doing enough work, it's not that you're not good enough. It might be that you have not evolved from the person that has to do it all, right? You have to try to think two, three, four years down the road and try to develop other people or develop or lift other people up to put them in a position that might be better than you at making the affiliate better. And I have stories and stories of examples of this, but I'm gonna give one right now that happened today. I'm not gonna throw Jim under the bus, though. But I have a relative that dropped into a long time CrossFit gym, over I think over 15 years. Wow. Open gym, did the open workout. He showed up again. You don't need a parade, you don't need you know high fives every time you walk into a gym. But he said the second I walked in there, it was cold, not temperature. Like no one even like would look at them, then look away. No highs, no, where are you from? And I that's not that does not make an affiliate bad, but that right there is the initial vibe of a place. Like, like we our coach Liz at head coach at Bison says, like, the second someone steps in, like that could be the make or break for them. Is do does anyone even acknowledge their presence? Hey, where you're from, how you doing? Let's go work out. Okay, so he shows up for the open gym, does the open workout. No one talked to him the entire time, other than yeah, go in the back corner, you can do it. No judge, by the way. They didn't help him out with the judge. Again, I get it. I've been there before. If someone came to our gym tomorrow during open gym and they needed a judge, we're gonna get him a freaking judge, but whatever. Does the open workout, gets the second barbell, so you have to put the tens on, right? Again, mind you, no one talked to him. Middle of his thruster set, someone comes over and says, get those weights off your bar, you can't drop those. And comes over with a different pair of tens that are smaller, throws them on the ground here's barbell, walks away. And it's like, all right, well, no one told me. And like that was the only interaction he had with anyone at that gym. So in the middle of his open workout, he's taking the weights off, putting them back on, finishes his workout, and I talk to him after, and he goes, Yeah, like it's just like it feels so different than my home gym down south, CrossFit, North Carolina. He goes, like, everyone there is overly generous, overly helpful, overly nice, overly supportive, almost to the point where it's like a fake bubble that doesn't exist elsewhere in the world, which, if you think about it, is exactly what a CrossFit affiliate should be. It's different, it stands out because of how supportive, how nice it is, and how comfortable you can make someone feel in a place where most people naturally don't feel confident and comfortable. They just don't. There's ripped people all over the place. You're not around any friends, you're not in your confident career or workplace. It's easy to not feel good like you're winning when you walk into any sort of gym. So that's an opportunity to make yourself stand out. And he is used to downsouth CrossFit in North Carolina, who's somewhat new, they're already outgrowing their space, they got an awesome community. I follow them on social media, I talk to them sometimes. They are what we were back in 2015-16, just like growing fun, on fire, loving CrossFit, Friday night lights, all this stuff. And but it's not just how they treat their people, it's how they treat the new people that come in. And that to me, I've heard that conversation. You have dropped in a lot of times, Sam. I've heard so many people that come to Bison now that are like, Man, you guys are different. I'm like, what is it? The coaching? It's good, but is it the programming? Nah, it's good. It's it's the vibe, it's the feeling that you have. You want to come work out, yes, but you also want to be with these people. Why? Because they're nice. Are you friends with everyone? No, but it's just a good group of people to hang out with, and this is where I think a lot of affiliate owners they drop the ball, and that is what keeps people here. It's not a marketing plan. What are your thoughts on that? I think affiliate owners, they they drop a lot of them drop the ball. I've been on these calls, I'm not making this up. It's almost like they just want the business, they just want people coming in the door. I'm like, dude, that is you're not even five percent of the way done when that happens.

SPEAKER_01 56:50

You know, it's funny because as as you're telling me about this, the first thing is I I also remember all my other drop-ins at other places and and having very similar experiences to that. And yeah, and and and that's why I agree with you. Most CrossFit affiliates don't do a great job, they're very average to not great in terms of business execution. Second thing that goes through my head is all the two-brain and and business philosophy stuff where they're like, you take your lead, you do this, you do that, you do this, you do that. And you have like a 15-step foolproof way of keeping someone on board, you know, into your gym. And it's like, okay, there's there's nothing wrong with with that. Uh, and we've incorporated a couple things where we make sure we we don't lose track of these people because, like, listen, like it's not like even 10 years ago, like it was very haphazard. It was like every every other gym. Like, sometimes you you followed up, sometimes you didn't. Like, it's just the way you learn how to, and so now it there is more of a systems approach to it, but but the part which you are talking about is the community, and whether that comes from the owners when you're small and it's 6 a.m. and it's only you and two other people, or when it starts getting bigger and then it's the coaches, or when it's even bigger and it's the community, and it brings to mind now for us because we have a lot of new people, and it you know, five, six, seven, eight years ago, like I would run around and like say hi to everybody over and over again. Yeah, you did. Um always did, and and now, like the past couple like month or two, I see these new people, and I'm like, listen, I gotta go over and say hi. But the great thing is, is half the time before I do that, some other member is just like shooting the shit with them. And I'm like, wow, like we have a good community. Someone's just like went over and started talking to them, and and and then like I just go over and just say hi and fist bump and let them keep talking because like that's where I am so happy that we have who we have at our gym, owners, coaches, but most importantly, the members. So that's where you you when you talk about this. Had any member at this crappy gym just took it upon themselves to come over to your brother and say, Hey, like, didn't have to be anyone else special, yeah, and and just talk to the guy, like that would have made all the difference in the world. Yeah, and I feel like our gym does that better than anyone else. I love our members, I love how so many of them will just come over and say hi to people. They know what it's like to be new, and when you can foster that at your affiliate, yeah, you know you got a good business.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Yeah. I mean, that was one of the key points someone from Outlast talked about in terms of doing the open. She's like, Everyone here is so welcoming. I'm like, well, you're literally sharing the building with them every day when you're here. But yeah, there it's a different, you're in the different room, and you are a newbie when you come to the cross at open, but you didn't feel that way once it starts. And I do think that's one of the biggest separators from people joining a gym. Is they come in, they're they're too intimidated. They won't admit it, they're too intimidated to walk in through the door. But the second someone welcoming talks to them and it happens two, three weeks in a row, and it's different people, and then we have a social event, the open party, like you were like, wow, it's really not that shouldn't even be my scope right now, being intimidated by the group of people. Like, that's just yeah, I'll be intimidated by thrusters, I am too. But the people, no, it's actually a reason why people come to the gym now, is for the people, and then yes, you get to work out. So I want put I want to put pressure on affiliate owners. Like, if you really want this thing to grow, because I do believe this, like Froning says this, Austin says this, um, Trinidad says this from the the Miami gym. He goes, the better CrossFit is, the better every affiliate can be. Okay, or will be, all right. I I look at it as can be the better CrossFit is, the better affiliates can be, meaning you still have to put your your two your best foot forward. But if CrossFit does grow back to 15,000 affiliates in the next five years, let's say, I bet your affiliate is going to be better. You have to do the work, but you should want CrossFit to do well, and that CrossFit needs you to do well for it to grow. It's no longer just give me, give me, give in. You're like uh you're you have to, there's gonna be a lot of give and take on your end as an affiliate owner, and it's doing all these little things at a really high level. Your whiteboard briefs, your warm-ups, your programming, how you greet people at the door, what you say to people at the whiteboard after they give you your score. You know, like can you recall something that they did last week? Can you go up to someone after the open work? And I'm like, hey, remember last year you couldn't do the thrushers at 135, you just did two in a row? Like, can you do that? Do you put thought into it? Do you obsess about this stuff the way honestly they they want you to? The people at your gym, they want attention, they want to feel liked and respected and seen and loved. And maybe that's not what you wanted to get into. Maybe you you viewed CrossFit as I love CrossFit, I want to wear sweatpants to work, and I want this to be my job. That's what I want to do. You will probably fail at some point. But if it's like, hey, I'm gonna put everything I can into making this better for other people, your business is inevitably gonna grow. And I would challenge like Bobby with next level at bison, Kelly with next gen, uh, Mindy with Breakthrough, um, Kelly and Kayla with with power nutrition. That's just bison right there. Our outlast coaches, you're going to benefit if you really go into it saying, what else can I do for the people here? Not I gotta go, I gotta get make my 25 bucks. Uh, gotta wake up early. And I think the more you do that, the more you're gonna realize, like, yeah, that's gonna make everything and everyone better. And it doesn't have to be coaching, it doesn't have to be grinding at 5 a.m. It could be simple conversations of just greeting people, literally just saying hi. Like if someone went up to my brother at that affiliate and said, Hey, hey, just so you know, I know most people drop the barbells in CrossFit. We don't drop these tens over here. He would be like, Oh, cool, thanks for letting me know. You know, not a uh throw the weights over and tell them not to do it, middle of the workout, right? Like if I saw that as an affiliate owner, be like, crap, I should have told him, but that's my fault. I'm gonna let him do the rest of the workout. I'm not gonna make him change workouts, guy could barely breathe. And you know, it's uh the I really do want to challenge affiliate owners as you all look for a new CEO to come save your day. That that man or woman, whoever takes that job, it they're just gonna get the the road off the the car off the shoulder, they're gonna put it in the road and they're gonna start the car. And then it's good that maybe maybe they put the car in drive. So it starts rolling forward, but from there on, it's you. You got to do everything else. Every now and then they'll steer you back. Maybe every now and then you get a little turbo boost, you know, they'll fill up your gas tank, but you're the one that has to get it done, and you have it in you. And I I think that is the the path to the future, not a new face, you know, of not a new CEO that you hope is your friend, right? Because we know that's what a lot of people want. You old school guys just want one of you to be the CEO because you don't want anything new or to disrupt your flow. Uh, but there's a life outside of your flow that many of you don't comprehend.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

I think that's a really good point. We keep looking at CrossFit HQ and making comments, but no one's ever looked at a mirror and said, Okay, what if, like you said, what am I doing? Instead of dragging CrossFit HQ down, just by being successful the way we are as affiliates, like you said, every successful good CrossFit affiliate out there does pull CrossFit up CrossFit HQ up by a little bit. And you just the more good CrossFit uh affiliates out there, the better CrossFit HQ will do. And ultimately, like you said, stronger. Uh I agree with you and Fronig, stronger CrossFit HQ makes for a strong, you know, stronger uh group of affiliates, stronger group of affiliates, stronger HQ. Now, that being said, I really want to see some effort on CrossFit HQ. Otherwise, we're all gonna become mayhem affiliates and we're gonna start like you know, following Rich Fronig all the time. But I mean, you're right. Like, we should not use this as an excuse, like, this is why my business is failing, this is why I'm not getting new leads because I'm a CrossFit affiliate and CrossFit HQ isn't doing anything. Like we are irrelevant, completely irrelevant. We as gyms, like you said, should be doing I mean, engaged in a service mentality. Every time you talk about this and every time I think about success at the gym, it always comes back to that service mentality. And whether it's coaching, whether it's c connecting.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:00

with it's it's just connection it's just yep and and um and it's community and uh whether these affiliates are doing that or not that that's going to determine their success you don't have to have every like you don't have to have the best whiteboard talk you don't have to have the best programming you don't have the best anything but if you care and you are striving

Final Takeaways And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 1:06:20

to do better you're gonna do okay like you're gonna do okay you know even if even if um you program you know 50 50 cleans every day and and people are what the fuck you'll you'll eventually figure it out you'll do okay if you care and if you're trying yep all right well that's gonna wrap it up that went longer i hope everyone enjoyed that though i i i did i did believe i do believe that everything in there has some value to it uh when it talks to the affiliates when it comes to affiliate owners a potential new CEO of CrossFit current leadership at CrossFit but also just people that go to crossit gyms like they're they're the ones that are in some ways like they hold the keys to the bus and I think it's important for them to know what direction we're heading in. That's why we try to be really transparent at Bison and I think that can carry over from CrossFit HQ down to affiliates because those are the people that are the most important. It's always about the customer it's always about the client the member the athlete whatever you want to call them and being transparent with them and overcommunicating is absolutely the way to go. And um you know as long as again just like our members at Bison if they know we care about them I think they're gonna have our back. And just like if a new CEO and new leadership if they know if we know that they care about us as affiliate owners and they show it um we feel that they should feel that we're gonna have their back as well. All right thank you Sam I will uh I'll see you at 5 a.m class tomorrow or 6 a.m one of those two classes congratulations on everyone finishing the open this year that was an awesome uh experience for everyone yeah that was a really fun open at Bison and uh can't wait till next year we're about 49 weeks away and we'll give a uh programming recap where to go from here probably after quarterfinals all right thank you guys see you thank you everybody for taking the time out of your day to listen to the Herd Fit podcast be on the lookout for next week's episode