Welcome And Why Mindset Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hey everybody, welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr. Sam Reed and myself, Coach David Siverton. 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 Herd Fit Podcast. I am Coach David Siverton. I'm here with my co-host, Dr. and Coach Sam Re. We're here. Uh Sam, this has actually turned into a somewhat maybe biannual podcast for the HerdFit Podcast. We are here yet again to talk about a new CEO of CrossFit Inc. And it's uh it's funny and sad and optimistic and pessimistic all at once. That's why it's a fascinating conversation. But this past week, uh Bruce Matthews has been named the new CEO. And I think he starts his day one tomorrow. On Wednesday, he has an a call with all affiliate owners via Zoom. I'm actually going to be out of town that afternoon, but I will I will watch it when I return. And this is something that we've seen a few times. We've done, I think, probably four or five episodes on the CEO of CrossFit. It was Dave Castro, Eric Rosa, Don Fall, who who we've uh had in our gym and we've gotten to talk on the Her Fit podcast with. And Sam, we knew this day was coming. We knew they were searching for a CEO, but in in inside, deep down, does it make you laugh a little bit that it's yet again here we are?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Yes, I think all of us find it comical because it's sad. And if you can't find humor in the sadness of something that we love and really want to succeed, then you know how are you gonna how are you gonna survive it otherwise?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

And it's funny, Bruce. I don't know him, he doesn't know me, have never met him, but it's funny. When I was in Las Vegas last December with Ashley, post legends, I was

Bruce Edwards Named CrossFit CEO

SPEAKER_00 2:00

in conversations with someone that we knew was uh trying to purchase CrossFit and um likely would have become CEO if that went through. And he told I asked him, I was like, what what person would a want this job would be welcomed by the community and could actually do it? You know, there's a three different answers there. And he said Bruce Matthews, and I was like, Man, I think there was an NFL player named Bruce Matthews one day, but um, that's not him. And I read up on him a little bit at the time, and you know, just to give a very, very brief history that's I don't want to spend too much time on this. Wait, Bruce Edwards. Sorry, Bruce Edwards, Bruce Matthews, Bruce, Bruce Matthews was the football player. Bruce Edwards um is the actual new CEO of CrossFit. And in 2020, that's when Greg Glassman no longer was CEO of CrossFit for comments that he made during COVID and the George Floyd and all that, you know, all that cancel culture time. I do think it was time for him to go, um, regardless of that. And then it turned into Eric Roser for what a year and a half, maybe two years. He stepped down, citing either mental health issues or he saw the job and said, Yep, I can't do this. And and Don Fall took over in, let's see, August 2022 and made it about three and a half years. And here we are again. Uh, not and we should give Dave Castro his shout-out. He was an interim CEO for a little bit of time, but in terms of new leadership, I mean, this role has not been held on to for three years yet by uh by four years yet by anybody. Sam, why do you think that is? What why can no one hold on to this job and bring it to a level in which a private equity firm wants to see achieved?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Yeah, I think it's the state of this uh company. This is a unique situation, and the degree of difficulty that it has taken to try to be successful is so high. I don't think these are bad people that are taking this these jobs. I think, and we'll talk about it. I think it's just a really uniquely difficult situation for a CEO to navigate. It's not like, I mean, I don't know. I guess it's like an NFL team. Like, what's the lifespan of most uh NFL coaches? Like, if you don't succeed, out. And I think that uh that we've seen that now for the past six years, just out, out, out.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

And we should acknowledge that Berkshire Partners, um, a PE firm, did purchase this with Eric Rosa. And so they are technically the financial owners. And when something this when something gets this big, those are the people, those are the players that are going to come in. This is not a a rich guy down the street that loves CrossFit. Like you're talking in around 200 million dollars to purchase this. And when those guys get involved, whether you agree with this or not, whether you think this is good or bad, it's the objective truth, they're looking at it as an investment, right? They want to purchase it, purchase it for X, and they want to sell it for more down the road. In most cases, it's in a five-year window. There are cases where it goes longer, there are cases when it goes shorter. But that is the primary goal. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. But that that does need to be known. And those people, when they buy something like this, they're selecting from a pretty small group of people to be a CEO. And the the typical CrossFitter, especially some of these guys that are in the media, they're like Dave Castro should be CEO because he's been around the longest. Or this successful gym owner who was owned an affiliate for 20 years, he should be the affiliate that he should be the CrossFit CEO. When you have to realize completely different skill set, they're not even in the discussion at some point. Maybe they would help out, maybe they would consult, maybe they're on the leadership team, but they're not CEO material. And that's where there is a disconnect from where people, most people within CrossFit media with a within CrossFit space, who they feel should be CEO, and who the actual owners are. Because the owners are looking at it as this guy or girl needs to get us our money back and some. And that is that is what you said early on. This is a very challenging position. Because as big as some people think CrossFit is in the world, it's not big. And it's funny, we actually have known people that are a part of different investment groups, and they're like, Yeah, yeah, we looked at CrossFit, it's way too small. It's like it's too cheap. It's not big enough for us. And like, that is that's how CrossFit is zooed within a lot of big business. It's not that big, even though there's 10,000 affiliates worldwide. So, what do you what do you think about the the if you were on a PE firm and you were looking for a CEO, what kind of profile would you be looking for? Because you're trying to make a return on investment, but you're also trying to see this, you know, this product get to the next level. What would Sam re look for in a CEO?

Why The CEO Seat Stays Hot

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Well, I think that these guys, it's changed, right? After um, for the past couple years. Uh, I think this criteria that they use to pick Bruce Edwards is different than the criteria that they used for Don Fall, and different than why they chose Eric Rosa. They're all uh for different reasons. And I think we should really explore. I mean, I'm not a PE guy, I'm a doctor, I don't know jack about business. So I I couldn't imagine the sale, like the process in which they decided, but I could look at the externals and I think we'll talk about it. Like, first of all, I wanted to you know put in there I'm a CrossFit truth like believer. I believe in CrossFit, I wanted to do well. Um, I invested in CrossFit. I mean, you know, we both are um uh owners of CrossFit Bison and Outlast. And um, and these are things that and what I talk about today with uh, you know, with us is a lot of it's gonna be a lot of smack talking and it's gonna be a lot of negativity about CrossFit and the CrossFit business, but that's just because I'm frustrated. Yeah. And um I just want to lay out like is Bruce Edwards actually going to be able to pull anything off and and what will CrossFit be? You're right. When when you talk about businesses out there, 200 million dollars, it's a lot of money to me, but in terms of a national brand or a worldwide brand, it's really small. Like Facebook is billions and billions of dollars or or any other big fitness company. So uh so yes, it's it's small, but no smart person is going to take 200 million dollars and just throw it away on nothing. And and clearly Berkshire was not able to find someone to buy it. Yeah, and now they've changed their strategy, it looks like, with Bruce Edwards and and the words that are coming out of their mouths at this point.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Good. Now, we've talked about this so many times, and I don't want to uh bow in front of the camera here, but we were right about this that it's a really hard job to take for a lot of reasons, but one of them is old school thinking versus new school thinking, meaning what got CrossFit off the ground, and Bruce Edwards, by the way, was in Greg Glassman's initial classes of coaching CrossFit. Like that's how I mean there are OGs and old school and longtime CrossFitters, and then there's guys like him who were literally there at the start of it. And so that makes the you feel good that he's been at the bottom, he's been at the bottom, he's seen it grow, he's a truther, he's an OG, he was the COO of CrossFit from 2018 to 2000, sorry, 2013 to 2019, and that's when the affiliates really took off 15,000 worldwide. It was on a rapid increase, right? And then he left the CrossFit space, he stayed in the fitness space, he stayed in the COO roles and CEO roles of bar three, um, in shape health clubs, um, one of the biggest planet fitness franchise groups. He's in the business, he's in the fitness space. So it's like an ideal blend of his professional career, his background, and also knowing what CrossFit's all about. He also opened and operated somewhat an affiliate. And I actually listened to him talk to Chuck talk to Chuck Carswell on the official CrossFit podcast last night. And when I was listening to it, I, you know, he got me, he hooked me in by talking about how hard it was to run an affiliate, how it was just 24-7, 365, how you thought you'd have 30 people day one and you ended up having one person per class for a week. I mean, when you hear that kind of talk, it makes you feel good inside. However, that does that's not where it ends. There are other sides to this. And this is what Sam's talking about that were both emotionally, financially tied to the CrossFit space, but it's not all roses right now. Just because this guy was here in the background, uh he was here back in the history of when it was booming. I have a comparison for my uh I for my sports listeners, football. All right, we have Odell Beckham. If you remember, when Odell Beckham was drafted by the New York Giants, he burst onto the scene. He was a national icon pretty quickly. Like the blonde, bleached hair, he's making unbelievable plays. He was an all-pro. He's one of the best players in the league, but he had personality, he had flair. And it it was probably one of the more unique times for a Giants fan because they weren't, they've never been a historic organization of flair and flamboyance. It was just like, hey, almost white collar, do things the right way. We you know, we win with defense, not with explosive offense. But Odell Beckham started changing everything. Um, it started getting ugly at some point, started getting out of control. They traded him away, blah, blah, blah, right? They trade his last productive year in the NFL was 2019. It was five, six seasons ago. Since then, he's been on three or four different teams. Uh, he spent more time injured than not injured. He had wasn't even in the league last year. And now, Giants fans here in 2026, they want him back. And the only reason they want him back, and I would tie this to CrossFit and Bruce, the main reason why these OG fans, these OG truthers of CrossFit, Media, Savon, all those guys, it brings them back to the feelings that they had 10, 15 years ago. But that does not mean that it's gonna bring the same result that it did 10 to 15 years ago. Meaning, if Odell Beckham gets signed by the Giants, it's gonna make you feel good, it's gonna make every headline, it's gonna be national news. The guy's been a bad football player compared to other football players for seven years. And now he's on the wrong side of 30 in the NFL. That's a really tough age to come back from. So you have to ask yourself does a move like this within CrossFit, does it make you feel good? Absolutely. He's got a great story, a great background. But does it actually produce the result that is needed, right? Are the Giants gonna win because Odell Beckham comes back? No. Is CrossFit going to soar to the next level, which we all want because Bruce is back? We'll see. That remains to be seen. And I want to talk about both sides of this. So I want you to kind of start introducing some of your, I'm not gonna say um pessimistic views, I just think realistic views. And we don't need any more disclaimers from either one of us. We want to see as much as anyone, trust us, we want this thing to succeed, and it does start at the top. But

OG Credibility Versus New Era

SPEAKER_00 13:30

what are some things that might be a negative of bringing an OG person like this back from leaving seven, eight years ago?

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah, I I listened to that same Chuck Carswell podcast, and I also uh felt a kinship to him. First of all, the fact that he started with Greg Glassman before CrossFit was CrossFit is that that does make all the truthers feel good. Like this guy knew Glassman before he had even developed CrossFit. The fact that he was COO during that great period where it grew, the fact that he's an affiliate owner and he talked about the same things you went through and all affiliate owners went through in terms of cleaning the bathrooms and and doing the programming and and opening up the gym or in the early morning. That's great. But does that give him the skill set to take CrossFit, as you said, 10, 15 years later into the next era? And let's face it, none of us are the same as we were 10 or 15 years ago. I wish I was in a lot of ways, but but we're not. So so let's look at where we are now with CrossFit in 2026 and what he has to face. Okay. First of all, the fitness market is growing, it's bigger, right? It's now $53 billion. So it's not that all fitness uh businesses are going down. A lot of them are going up. It's just CrossFit that's going down. Um, the uh average affiliate now is about 150 to 200 members, price point 150 bucks a month. We're paying $4,500 a year in affiliate fees, but like our you know, our overhead is increasing. So at this point, we have lost a lot, CrossFit has lost a lot of affiliates. We there were 15,000 in 2020 globally. Now there's about 10,000, as you mentioned. Um open participation was at an all-time high in 2024 at 340,000. Uh it dropped uh in 2025 to 233,000. Um, we're now back at 250 to some thousand this past year, which is better, like eight percent better. But it's still like we've lost a ton of people participating. And um so Berkshire hath Berkshire tried to sell CrossFit and they could not. Um, they it they entertained a lot of different buyers, and these buyers had some interesting ideas, some different ideas. They negged all of them. I I saw one of them where they wanted to increase the affiliate fee to like 10 grand a year, something like that. And uh, which I don't know what if it would have worked or not, but let's face it, um, if you're an affiliate owner right now, or if you want to start an affiliate, would you start an affiliate right now? And let's let's look at what the previous two CEOs did not do, right? Uh, what did Don Falls say? He wanted to like bring back the younger demographic, he wanted to he wanted to expand CrossFit to like millions and millions of people worldwide. Yeah, 30 million. Yeah. Did he do that? No. He he wanted to have a digital strategy, right? Which we also agreed at, like trying to expand CrossFit in you know, a new newer mediums. I I always talked about having a CrossFit app. Um and uh the CrossFit methodology has not changed. That is the other thing that I think we should maybe touch on is that none of what um CrossFit has been espousing has changed in 20 years. The level one is the level one. Nutrition teaching is the same nutrition teaching with the zone. Like no new exercises, no new methodologies uh have been instituted. Although in the past 20 years, we ourselves as coaches and programmers have have instituted a lot more. We think about mobility, we think about VO2 Max and level two and you know, intervals and you know, better nutritional guidance, all these things which CrossFit has not touched. What and yet why aren't they? Like CrossFit always did great when Glob Glassman took stuff from everyone else and threw it into CrossFit. Like he stole from everyone. And why are we not still stealing from everyone? So, and I have some thoughts about this, but I will say um the past two CEOs did not do enough in terms of um sort of taking those aspects where CrossFit could grow and grow, and then the worst part is really the affiliates. So let's I think the biggest thing uh that we should be focusing on is how are the affiliates doing? And when I heard him talk about all the sweat equity that he put into it, I agree that's great. But should the new affiliate owner do that? Do we all have to start without knowing anything, without doing, you know, um knowing how to start a business? When like I look at our own example with CrossFit bison, and what did you do? You brought in PushPress, right? And what did Push Press give us? It gave us metrics, it gave us tracking for retention, revenue, like all these things, which yes, if you are a dreamer and you you want to focus on the purity of like you know, the message of CrossFit to others, that's great. But if you want to be a business that continues to do that, you need this information, and yet you um opted to pay a fair chunk of money to pr to push press in order to get this information, which was very helpful for us. It didn't detract from our goal of helping others, but it helped us understand where our weaknesses were in terms of communications with our members, how how we could do better service for them. And yet all these affiliates, like CrossFit doesn't offer any of that stuff. So, what is Bruce Edwards going to do with his hopefully with his experience with InShape Health Clubs and all these other brands that he was part of, uh, and as an OG, like what is he going to do to help affiliates who are starting a new affiliate at this point? And and I looking at what the previous two CEOs did, I'm I'm very skeptical that he's going to be able to pull that off.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, and and I think it's not even just about the individual person skill set. I also think a lot of it comes down to the culture of affiliate owners. And that is another reason why this is impossible. I shouldn't say impossible, it can seem impossible. If you have the right person at the top, it still takes more than that, right? Now, the first group of people that he reached out to within CrossFit was the seminar staff, the red shirts. And those people, you know, he called them like I think he he used a certain term in the in the podcast with

The Numbers Behind CrossFit’s Slide

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Chuck, but really at the end of the day, he was essentially saying, like, those are like the lifeline of CrossFit. Like the affiliates probably are the most matter most as a group, but the people, the the red shirts, the people that are giving the L1s, L2s, L3s, right? Those are the guys that have been around the longest. They drink the Kool-Aid, they're very uh unwavering with standards, they hold the line. And I will say, through all the changes within CrossFit, the fact that Chuck Carswell's still there, James Hobart's still there, it's like it makes you Austin was still there until he left for mayhem. When those guys were around, it made you feel better. If those guys started disappearing, if they started leaving the brand, that really could have been what kind of toppled this entire thing over. So he it was an intelligent decision for him to set have them be the first people to reach out to and try to rally the troops and make sure he's got that support. Next up on Wednesday, the affiliates. Now, what can he say? Now, I don't get too much into the pump up speech, you know, like I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. It's it gets it sounds like a politician at some points where you're just like, okay, okay, okay, don't believe it, but hey, we'll see. I'm also big on, I just want to see what you do rather than what you say. But I understand that what you say part is step one. And you want to introduce yourself to everyone. And I always come back to, and I feel like I feel this way as an affiliate owner, as a coach, and as a programmer. And um, I have an episode coming up soon about programming and what you like, what you don't like, how to respond. To it, you you a leader, a CEO can only do so much, a coach can only do so much, a program can only do so much. The people taking it in have to apply their best effort. And when I talk to affiliate owners, and one of the things that I feel like is an underlying common ground, especially those that have been around for over a decade, is that they thought they would be further along than where they currently are. They for the last 10 years, they said, hey, I in 10 years I plan to be here. They're not there, whether it's income, revenue, whether it's their quality of life, their hours, how many coaches they have, all that stuff. And it's easy, just like it's easy to criticize a program that you're not getting results from, like, hey, that's not good enough. That person's not good enough. And I wonder how much of an is that the CEO's job to make sure the affiliates are better. I don't know, Sam. I just I don't know if if an app or proper guidance or good advice on what has happened from other successful affiliates would help enough, unless you can really verify that these people are putting these practices into you know into their own practice. Um, you can give nutrition guidance to someone, it might be awesome, but if you don't actually put the effort in, it just doesn't mean anything. That's one of my fears that the and this is this could be previous CrossFit's fault, pre previous leadership's fault, in that they made it a little too wild, wild west for six, seven, eight, nine, ten years. People got to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, however they wanted, because it wasn't a true franchise model. It was a license. You get to use my name and go do what you want. And now, if you have someone in coming and trying to standardize everything and make you do this and make you do that, and open this door and open that door, would they be open enough and willing enough to put the effort in to make those steps better for their affiliate? Because I agree with you, the affiliates hold the keys to the bus, and everyone kind of knows that. But they need the blend of support slash ambition on their on their end.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

You know, I think one of the things that holds true with CrossFit affiliates is that good coaching or great coaching is not enough, in my opinion, to be a successful business.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Done. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

But when I listened to Bruce Edwards talk to Chuck Carswell, he is OG in the sense he said, if you do great coaching, your business will eventually be successful. And so that's why I am pessimistic about this. Yeah. Um you're right. Uh all of us who have, and especially you, been through the fire, like what sort of help do affiliates need? I understand. You've looked at the affiliate's playbook, all the starter information they that they provide, and you're like, yeah, not so helpful. But because you've learned it all, like you had to learn it. But then you also took the next step where you took you you got more data for yourself in terms of tracking objective measurables about your business. Uh, you knew how to do that. There are a lot of affiliate owners who never get to that point. And like you said, they go in five years, eight years, and they they haven't really made financial progress. So um, and you're right, the CEOs have not done enough. I and I don't think that you can continue to make CrossFit successful by leaving it like that. Like you said, old school. Throw it out there and let them figure out how to do this. There's no way I would want to start an affiliate if I was with that kind of lack of support. I would want them to give me uh like someone who's hands-on. And so you're you're really big on if you point out a problem, you got to provide possible solutions. Yeah, and and when I was thinking about this, I thought about what you your your belief, and it's very important. I believe in it too. And you have to provide actional business business systems, not just suggestions. Like, I mean, if CrossFit was like you have to use a push press like system, you have to, yeah. You're become an affiliate, I think it would be a net benefit. Like would the OG or scream like you're tracking all this data about me? I don't want, I don't want you, big brother, to know all this stuff. No, it it's a non-negotiable in my mind. Yeah, like um, how does CrossFit know how they're doing? And we talked about that. I'm getting deja vu again when we talked about Don Fall and when he started. Like, why are they not doing this? Why are they not like having someone be that person? They have regional managers for uh affiliates, but I mean that contact is very limited. When you you're a new affiliate person and you come in, they hand you a playbook and and some resources digitally when you pay your thousand dollar application fee. Yeah, and then they if you if they approve your affiliate, then you get to pay $4,500 a year. Done. And whether or not you use any of that stuff or not, it's up to you. No, that doesn't work anymore in 2026. You have to guide you need someone at HQ who is literally like guiding them through this for the first 90 or 180 days, saying, Okay, what's your lease

What Affiliates Need Beyond Coaching

SPEAKER_01 27:30

like? What are your overheads? What's your space like? What are you gonna do for this? What are you gonna do for that? How about your coaches? Like, literally, like help that person for that, you know, it might be labor-intensive, but I bet you the overall success rate and also the perception that affiliates have would be much better. And I think the success rate in terms of new affiliates starting up would be great. And I think that you could also say, like, give them guidance on data, like, you know what, we had like four affiliates start here in the past 10 years and they all failed. Like, this is maybe what you might want to do. Maybe they were all too small, or maybe they were all too big, or maybe something, something, something. So, why there's no doubt that I think, and I don't think I honestly think Bruce Edwards, I would be skeptical, I'm skeptical he would do it, is really provide that kind of level of support for affiliates.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah, and uh what I like, and this is where I'm on the same boat as you if they made all affiliates give a quarterly report of everything and really go into the weeds, what's the average age of your member? What's the churn rate of your membership? How many classes per day do you done? Uh, what program are you using? How many classes are each of your coaches uh coaching? What are they getting paid per class? Like if you start putting, if you start mandating that all affiliates hand in a quarterly report with all of that information, not only are you going to force them to get to know their business, probably deeper than a lot of them do, but it gives cross at the data to share with everyone that if, hey, if you're an affiliate, you're handing this in. If you don't, you're no longer an affiliate. But if you actually got 10,000 gyms that were handing in four quarterly reports, imagine what they could do with all that information. A for the present, but B for the future. And that changes a lot in this. And you know, the people that would kick and scream the loudest are the ones that have been around the longest but don't want change. And I'm gonna bring back another thing that we've talked about several times is the programming/slash the outlast model. And the it's still, I can guarantee you, if that got brought to anyone that's been around and is drinking the Kool-Aid hard and wants to snatch every week and walk on their hands and do muscle ups and barbell this, barbell that, they would they would hear something like that and say, like, that's not CrossFit, which is objectively untrue. You know, it's just it's uh it's a false statement to say that it's not a CrossFit methodology. You just don't do all the movements that you think should be involved in it. But at no point, even in this CrossFit definition that everyone likes to use, at no point are they saying barbells and gymnastics, get on the rig, go upside down. 90% of your back squat here, 80% of your front squat there. It's that's never mentioned. That gets really micro level, very specific based on what you think CrossFit is. CrossFit did start to lean in this direction. They did a bad job when Greg Glassman was there with the whole milk cartons and old people standing on couches. It was the right mindset, it was just a bad delivery, and it kind of made everyone want to make fun of it. But and that's not what Outlast is, by the way. We're not a bunch of 88-year-olds getting up off the couch with a milk carton and a cane, right? The workouts we in there, like they're real strength building. And I'll tell you what, we're a year in. Congrats, Sam, by the way. All right. The uh the results, I got the I'm gonna highlight it on social media this week. We got a result from someone that's down 32 pounds in fat and up four pounds in muscle since we started a year ago. And like those kinds of results are coming from this kind of program that is based in CrossFit methodology, but it's not what some people think CrossFit should be, based on their own per their own bias. And those biases, though those people that have a loud voice but don't have an open mind, are what can prevent a Bruce from coming in, rattling the boat a little bit, but still keeping everyone together and moving and opening up a new avenue for affiliates or even future gym owners, right? You guys might run across an affiliate and you love your gym, you don't want to mess. Don't I'm we didn't mess up with bison at all in Outlast. We didn't we didn't say, like, hey guys, now that we've opened Outlast, every Wednesday we're not gonna do a CrossFit workout. We're gonna we're gonna have the gyms do the same workout. Or, hey guys, because Outlast has gone so well, we're actually gonna go sell our barbells and we're just gonna do dumbbells and kettlebells. And like we're we're never you don't need to touch that. It's like what can I add to it? The stretch class, the next level program, the power nutrition, right? These are clear examples on the local/slash affiliate level of what CrossFit can do with new leadership. And but the the support has to be there from the people that have been there the longest, even if it's not your first desire, right? One of the biggest sides, like you know, CrossFit like this came up yesterday. Humility comes up all the time when Chuck Carswell's on and Denise Thomas and James Hobart, they love the humble approach to everything. And but if we brought the Outlast model to them and they say, and they were kind of like here, to me, that lacks humility. That's that that you're kind of missing the boat, almost contradicting yourself in if you don't support that kind of model. And I would question, do you think someone like Bruce, who does have experience in fitness beyond CrossFit as an executive, do you think that is something a guy like them can or should look at as something that's gonna grow this brand?

SPEAKER_01 33:14

First of all, I agree with you more than a thousand percent on all of this. And that's why I have said before, you should be CEO because, or at least uh special advisor to the CEO, let's put it that way. Um, because we've been you've been preaching this for so long. I agree with it a thousand percent. And not only are you preaching it, you're you're a spouse, you're living you're living we're doing it, we're doing it successfully. And and again, deja vu, CrossFit HQ is uncompromising. That's the nice way I say it when I say they're stubborn or close-minded, I just say they're uncompromising. Right, right. These things which are CrossFit are not things that I think they would incorporate as um part of what they would support.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Uh, I don't I I I hope they do, and I hope Bruce Edwards is open-minded enough based on his life experience and his different businesses that, or he has people around him that are similar saying, Hey, listen, you can have more than one programming track if you so choose. It's the same but different. Um, you can have you can encourage affiliates to do more than just what you think traditional CrossFit is. You can encourage them to this is how you they build a nutrition program. Like, I don't think CrossFit has ever really like made that formal as part of it. Like they've talked about it, you can get additional courses in it, but whether or not it's part of a blueprint, like, because I think all affiliates have to do that. Like, yeah, you know, they have never sort of put that in the L1 or or your L2 or or anything, like where you were like, okay, after this, this, this, and this, this is what you need to do based on these metrics, whatever. Like that is the only way I think Bison has survived and grown, yeah, is by embracing a bigger picture of what CrossFit is, not a narrow idea of what CrossFit is,

Broader Programming And New Modalities

SPEAKER_01 35:20

but expanding the CrossFit mindset to be bigger. And you're right, that takes open-mindedness and humility that what you've been teaching for 20 years is bigger than just what those eight you know basic movements or nine basic movements are. Like but F if I know if they're gonna do that. Like, yeah, they we've talked about it for years, and and they haven't even expanded even a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

You can even go to an extreme level, which like I haven't even partaken in this yet, but like I'm intrigued, and like if my schedule clears up in the next few weeks, I'm I want to try. I've been offered a few times, but this this re-emergence of Pilates has come into the scope, and every time that I've talked to someone that has tried it or has done it, it's like they're every almost every time they're talking about these little muscle areas, these groups that we in traditional CrossFit are not very strong with. And you know, you ask yourself all the time, like right now, I just got done telling Sam I have a pretty significant neck issue right now, and I didn't do and nothing in my workout uh caused it. It was um a lot of things that kind of just drum up, you know, and it was two hours after my workout when something actually happened, and you know, you you start wondering, it's like you I whenever something like this happens to me, I look back, I'm like, what was my what was wrong with my training? You know, like never asleep, by the way, which is I should always be looking at my sleep or the hydration, the nutrition. But there are, I think there are a lot of areas, a lot of muscles, a lot of joints that can be strengthened and made more bulletproof by doing something like a Pilates, like by doing something like a stretch class or a yoga class, or honestly any other area of fitness, there's so many different components that can be thrown under the cross at umbrella that but you never hear it because you don't want to, and I understand why it's not just stubborn, it's also we don't want to overcomplicate this. But when you don't overcomplicate things, right? If that's your viewpoint of it, you are never going to get to 20 to 30 million people. Guarantee that you need to cast a broader net and get people, and look, this has happened with the outlast model. How many outlast athletes did the CrossFit open this year that have never done CrossFit, that have never held a barbell? They signed up for the CrossFit open because the net was cast very wide, it got them intrigued. And look what happened. I bet next year we have twice as many people doing the open from Outlast. I'll put I'll put a hundred bucks on that right now. DM me if you want to take the other side of the bet. We won't be friends until then.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

You know, this this is where I feel like if the red shirts or let's say if Chuck Carswell and a group of like five very well-respected CrossFit HQ coaches just tried all these different modalities because that's what we've done, right? Yeah, and experimented, say, okay, let's try yoga, let's try Pilates, let's try bar, let's try this. And and if they actually tried all these modalities as a CrossFit committee and then came back and said, Okay, what's different? What do we like? What is uh something that we could like emphasize under CrossFit that would be similar to? I like you said, I just tried my first reformer Pilates class uh two weeks ago, yeah, and it was really different, and it really opened my mind to what you talked about. Like we it's it it sucked because in CrossFit, most of what we do is is performed at a relatively high intensity. Yeah, and and whether it's weight or without weight, body weight, um, dumbbell, barbell, and to be able to move on a machine with some resistance, but in in in a way that you couldn't necessarily do with CrossFit movements supplements CrossFit in a in a great way. Honestly, different than yoga. And I've done yoga, I like yoga, but I actually kind of set thought if I was a CrossFit athlete that really wanted to perform at a higher level, I would probably do reformer Pilates versus yoga. Yeah, uh, I mean, there's only so much time in the in the week that you have, but but um, and so Susan's gone back and now she's taking a class a week in it. Yeah, I love that yeah, and she's fitting it in. And and so um taking some of these principles is not wrong. And why CrossFit HQ does not continually actively seek out yeah, learning more, doing more. I that that bothers me.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah, and I think it's viewed as winning and losing, right? It's like, oh, if we concede to partner, and this is where I actually want to go the partnering path of partner with Pilates. Imagine CrossFit partnered with high rocks, imagine CrossFit. Uh, well, they are they had partnered with Xenom, right? Like the guy that we had on the so I'm gonna get his name. I'm terrible with names today. Um, but all of these things, right? Why can it be that way? In the OG days when I started, there was CrossFit football, there was CrossFit Kids, there was CrossFit Strongman. And I actually back in the day when I didn't even know what I was getting myself into, I had just started CrossFit. I was like, wow, they do everything. And that's kind of where I want to be as uh as a person in related to fitness, right? What do I always say? What makes someone fit? It's not the body fat, it's not your six pack, it's not what your friends say about you. Can you show up and fulfill a physical task no matter what, no matter when, no matter how long? That's fitness, right? We had people last gen last week from bison, they showed up to a half marathon and ran on Sunday, and a couple of them broke two hours and like what they run a few times leading up to. Why can they do that? Because they're fit, right? Some of them we have multiple athletes in the gym right now doing semifinals this weekend and doing a high rocks a couple weeks later, and like they're just in the and doing a local comp another in between, and it's like that's fitness to me. That's what I love, and this is what fitness truly is is like you can step into any class at any point and get it done, and not just to check the box, but to say, like, wow, this is making me fitter, this is helping me. And you hear Bruce talk about that's really the foundation. He got me, he'll he hooked me when he started talking about the ethos of what CrossFit is. It's people just wanting to get fit, be around others, and help each other, build each other up. All right, there are countless ways to do that in the fitness world. So I hope at some point that he and the people that have been there a long time can actually put their money where their mouth is and say, like, you know what? For anyone to say that a Pilates class is it's not CrossFit, so it's not good enough for us. You've missed the boat, you've actually prevented CrossFit from getting to the point where it can get to. Just because you liked the Odell Beckham days 10 years ago, right? Those days are not coming back. You might get a taste of it every now and then. Those days are not coming back, and if you cling on to them with a death grip, you will be the one that prevents CrossFit from reaching the next level. That's how I feel about trying to expand while also understanding it still fits under the definition of what CrossFit is.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

I think CrossFit, I agree with you, but I have another skepticism about it. So I agree that they should constantly, we both agree, they should be constantly reaching out, like expanding, looking for opportunities, whether it's to change who they are at their core, which I doubt, or leveraging their partnerships with others or or embracing other fitness modalities um as uh you know on some level, like that is what we do as human beings and athletes is we're constantly learning, seeking, growing. And I hope CrossFit as a business

Private Equity Pressure And Price Fears

SPEAKER_01 43:40

continues to do that, not just stick with what they think they know.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

The problem is also that PE owns CrossFit. So for us to expand and grow what we did, what did we have to do as a business? We had to spend money. We had to a lot of money, right? Like we had to take risks. And we had to throw some capital in there to see if this would work. Do you think PE is really going to give Bruce Edwards that leash to like take those jumps or those risks and spend money on growing CrossFit? I don't, I, I, I'm very skeptical because I don't think they've done that to date.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

You're right. Absolutely. And I haven't thought about that angle. Like if he goes and says, Hey, we need another $200 million investment for XYZ, they're probably like, hey, we're already a couple hundred million in the hole. You need to get us out. And you know, one of my one of my fears is that the easiest way to do it is to raise affiliate prices. Yeah. 10 grand. Yeah. I'm honestly if they if they made people pay 10 grand, you know, a lot of people would leave, but it's the same thing as gym memberships. You would make more money. Like if we like we I talked about this example, and I'm not afraid to talk about it now. If we raised our membership to $300 per month, people would leave, but we'd make more money.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

And only like 20% would leave. Yeah. But you'd be making 50% more exactly on the people who didn't.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Right. And that's that's a struggle point. That's one of the struggle points of an affiliate owner, but also PE. It's yes, we care about everyone. Okay. We also care about our families and what we're trying to do with our own personal lives. And I wonder how many people, if you dictated your income, what would you do? You know, it's easy to talk about it from the sideline, especially if you're one of the people that's paying, right? An affiliate owner, oh my gosh, we're like, woe is me. I have to pay 10 grand a year now to be a CrossFit affiliate. Maybe I'll maybe I'll leave. They're they're trying to suck every penny out of me. But there's the other, there's the other side to it. You know, what if this company is trying to take this to a point where you're partnered with all these different people and gyms and casting a wider net, and all of a sudden you got 500 members in a few years, paying that 300 bucks a month. You know, are you affiliate owners? Are you still gonna say no to it? You'd say yes before I could even finish the question if you knew that was gonna come your way. And and that happens with a lot of affiliate owners. I know a lot of affiliate owners have struggled with this. I've I've been a part of so many calls and conversations where, like, hey, I gotta increase my prices. I haven't done it in five, five, six years. Everything around me is more expensive. I want to pay my coaches more money, um, but it's not there. So there's only one way to create it, and it's you make people pay more. And uh whether you think it's worth it or not, it's the objective truth. That's the way to do it. And at some point, you have to understand that what what no matter what side of that argument you're on, or no matter what we're all on both, we're all on the uh consumer side of something, right? I think I just got an email the other day. It was a notification from my the thing that tracks my money that their Netflix subscription just went up. I don't even know how much it went up. I think it was like $1.30, right? You everyone's on these receiving ends of increasing costs, right? It causes a lot of stress in our world today, but there's also another side to it. And I I'm always trying to check myself and critically think like, don't complain about something that you're on the other side of. Like, don't be a hypocrite, right? And it's very hard to judge something if you don't want to be judged. And it that that's something that always kind of rings true in my head with where CrossFit is going, where bison and outlast is going and has gone, that there's always two sides to it. And if they and I just don't know if the leadership within CrossFit, they have to prove it to us, Sam. That's kind of what I'm trying to get to. Yeah, they need to prove to us that they can make these good decisions while still fulfilling the ethos, but not being a victim to the ethos, not being a victim to the OG CrossFitters.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

I think there are two things that um I want to bring up before we finish this up. The first is the reason why I think Berkshire didn't sell is because everyone who had real money who thought they were potential buyers, yeah, thought uh, and I read this that CrossFit was a falling knife. So a falling knife is basically it's plummeting, so but you don't want to catch it until it hits the ground. And yeah, so why buy CrossFit at a value when you think it's gonna crash? And a year or two ago, death during the CrossFit games, hemorrhaging affiliates, losing open participation, everyone's like, Where's this where's the floor on the value of CrossFit as a business? And they're like, I'm not paying X amount more, I'm gonna wait till it hits rock bottom, then I will buy. So I think PE uh Burk, uh the owner uh realizes that there's no way they can sell this at this point, they just have to build it back up again. That's what they call the restoration

Longevity Strategy And CEO Predictions

SPEAKER_01 48:50

or whatever you want to call it. And they're pinning their hopes on Bruce Edwards restoring value to CrossFit. Whether he can or he can't, I don't know. The other thing, which I think was a little bit of a sort of a hint about where Bruce Edwards might go with this, is that I don't think he's gonna chase the young demographic anymore. If you notice, he's been attending those metfix seminars with Glassman and talking about longevity and you know, chasing this uh old demographic, which is us basically. Um, I think they're gonna start giving up on trying to make it sexy or cool and go for the, you know, you saw this marketing, right? Tough, like be strong. Like this is not easy, and yeah, and sort of, you know, and that's sort of more of an old person's type of philosophy and mantra. Um, it's not cool and it's not sexy. And I think they're deliberately going to be going for longevity, um, making CrossFit like for old people, whether or not they can actually do so, I don't know. Yeah, but I don't think I think I think we should give up on them trying to make this like broad for for everybody. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

Okay. Well, yeah, let's wrap it up there because that was a good conversation. What that went longer than I thought it would, but you know, there's a it's a loaded situation. It's a conversation that we have a lot of experience with.

SPEAKER_01 50:17

Well, let me just ask you to finish. What is your prediction about what Bruce Edwards is going to do? Let's let's call it now, because in a year, when we have to do this talk all over again, or two years, we we we can go look back and see what our predictions were.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

So I don't think he's gonna shake up the leadership team. So I don't think he's gonna come in and fire Dave Castro. I don't think he's gonna come in and replace the red shirts. Um, what I think he's gonna do is you know, obviously get through the game season, right? Like let that play out. But my my guess is that he's gonna try to go more the medical route, that try to create a little bit more like uh creating CrossFit as more of like a medical provider, where you can go get blood work, where you can go get real assessments, like whether it's quarterly, yearly, and try to go after that that route. Because I think that's where his relationship with Greg, I'm sure they have a real relationship. I'm sure they've talked a lot as this has happened. I don't think this came out of the blue. Um, that's kind of where MetFix went. Where I agree with you, it's gonna be less about let's get everyone in the world doing this one rep max snatch and get all these guys out of college, these men and women out of college, and have them work out really hard until they flame out in 10 years, like a lot of them do. Um, and let's try to make this more about this is what I'm doing for the next 20 to 30 years of my life. But it's not just about the workouts, it's about my labs, my blood work. And I think that's gonna be, you know, the CrossFit Medical Society. I think that's gonna, you're gonna see that come back because that's in my opinion, that's really what Greg was trying to pursue, you know, back in the day before he and then the success of CrossFit, where do you think it's going? I'm gonna I'm not I'm gonna quote a a member, I won't say his or her name, um, but I think CrossFit is on a scale of one to ten, it's probably like a six or a seven right now in terms of what it could be. And I think no matter what, because of ish things that I've already talked about in the episode, that it's so much about the people running the gyms and what they implement and what they're passionate about and how they treat people that are coming into their facility, I don't think it's ever gonna get past a seven out of ten. So I think the CEO's job, I think what Bruce is gonna try to do, well, what he will end up doing as a prediction. I hope it's better, by the way, um, is that he's gonna keep it at a seven out of 10.

Final Thoughts And What’s Next

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Yeah. And it I don't see it getting to a higher level than what it is right now. So we could even say this is the climax, and uh, I hope I'm wrong.

unknown 52:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:50

All right. Well, thank you guys. That was a fun conversation. Um, if I have time today, I'm gonna throw one out. You know what? I'll have time before the next episode uh about some programming talk that just that a lot of us can relate to. It'll be a shorter one, 15 to 20 minutes. This one was more of a bird's eye perspective of the big landscape, of big CrossFit. And um, thank you guys for listening, and we'll see you guys next week. 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.