March 20, 2025 • 23 mins
Last week, Chris Cooper published a blog titled “How to Save CrossFit,” and the response was massive—affiliate owners, coaches and industry leaders reached out with questions and concerns.
Today, in this special episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris answers their questions.
Coop addresses why he deaffiliated from CrossFit and why the method must evolve, then he digs into a question many have asked him: Would he ever buy CrossFit LLC?
Chris also defines what real change would look like in a complete overhaul, including how to rebuild CrossFit Media, redefine the purpose of the Games, and offer affiliates real education and mentorship to help them succeed.
Stay tuned for upcoming episodes in this series: Chris will explain how affiliates can be saved and lay out a plan for the evolution of the CrossFit Games.
And if you missed the first part of this special series, it's linked below.
Links
How to Save CrossFit
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
5:33 - First 90 days of complete change
10:21 - What about Europe?
14:42 - Is CrossFit in danger?
17:34 - Affiliates’ concerns
20:35 - Could Coop buy CrossFit?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, I am Chris Cooper. This is Run a
Profitable Gym . I'm thefounder of Reign Business and
last week I published a blogpost called How to Save
CrossFit. It was prompted byCrossFit Inc's announcement
that they were looking for abuyer the way they did. It felt
kind of like your way at summercamp and your mom and dad put a
for sale sign in front of yourhouse. But that's beside the
(00:24):
point. I wanted to publishsomething to start a
conversation on what it wouldtake to change. I wanted to
give a plan knowing that noplan is ever perfect at
inception, but a plan is alwaysrequired to start. Immediately
after I published the Post, Igot a lot of texts from people
that I really admire in theindustry, people around the
perimeter of CrossFit who arevery invested like me in the
(00:47):
health and wellbeing ofaffiliates. Most of the texts
that I got said something like,I really liked your first five
points, but I didn't reallyagree with point number six.
And that's okay. No plan isever perfect on first draft,
but you have to start with aplan and adjust or you'll never
get anywhere. It's very, veryeasy to complain or to knock
(01:08):
holes in somebody else's planor say That guy's dumb. That
won't work. But it's alsoreally, really easy to spend a
year apologizing for yourmistakes without fixing
anything. You know, trust me,I'm a Canadian. It's super easy
to take surveys and tell peoplewe're listening, we hear you,
but not actually make anychange. And these are all just
(01:28):
ways of kicking the can ofresponsibility down the road,
like the next owner will fixit. What's really hard is
saying, here's the plan,because you're gonna open
yourself up to all that otherstuff from people who don't
want to face potentialcriticism, right? The people
who want to condemn andcomplain and shoot fiery arrows
(01:49):
and raise the pitchforks, butdon't wanna share a plan
themselves. This is the kind ofstuff that you see in big
bureaucratic companies, butit's also the kind of stuff
that you see online. After Iposted the blog post though,
well I did get some of that. Igot some really great questions
from people, very smart peoplein our free group, gym owners
united.com, and of course fromthe smartest people in the Two
(02:12):
Brain Business Mentorshipprogram. And I'm gonna go
through them here because Ithink they really add a lot of
value to the conversation andprobably evolve the plan to
make an even better one. So thefirst question that I got
wasn't really a criticism, butsomebody said like, why are you
talking about this when you'renot even an affiliate? And the
truth is that I , I affiliateda couple of years ago. I first
(02:33):
affiliated , uh, when Greg soldthe company de affiliated .
When Greg sold the company,Dave Castro called me and said,
just give us a year. We'regonna fix it. After another
year and a half, I deaffiliated again when the L two
requirement came in. I'm not inmy gym every day. I'm not gonna
go get an L two to keep myaffiliate, but there's two ways
to look at the affiliation. Thefirst is to say, coop , you're
(02:54):
abandoning a sinking ship. Andthat's what I told myself for
many years that I could helpmore from the inside. I've
spent over a decade giving,helping first trying to get
CrossFit HQ to help affiliatesmore. Sometimes it worked, it
got through. I'm stillpublished in the CrossFit
Journal sometimes. Most of thetime it , it just didn't work
out. The other way to look atde affiliation is to say, I'm
(03:17):
no longer willing to prop upthe regime that's giving
affiliates bad advice. Now it'sa personal choice, right? I
don't think anybody else hashad the same experience that I
have trying to work this outwith hq. And that's why I don't
tell people through Tube Brainto affiliate or de affiliate or
re affiliate. I'm not anaffiliate right now , but I
might be against someday . Now,when Berkshire Partners bought
(03:38):
CrossFit, I had a couple ofconversations with Eric Rosa .
Within 48 hours of him takingover things just didn't feel
right. And so that's when I putin my first de affiliation
request. Dave Castro called andsaid, give it a year, but
things actually got worse inthat year. That said, there are
over 20 mentors at Two Brainwho are still affiliated. And
I'm optimistic that someday Iwill re affiliate. I love
(04:00):
CrossFit, but I just couldn'tsupport the current ownership
anymore after trying to dealwith them. Eventually you learn
to walk around the tableinstead of stubbing your toe on
it all the time. But again,personal choice, probably a
unique situation. On the otherend of the spectrum, I got 10
times as many messages sayingyou should buy CrossFit and
thank you for that. It's veryflattering that people think
(04:22):
that I should, but I'm actuallybetter on the outside. If I
worked for HQ or any companythat bought CrossFit, I would
be beholden to them. And thiswould be true even if somebody
loaned me the money to buy itmyself From Berkshire Partners
right now, one of the thingsthat people at HQ have working
against them is that they haveto show a profit right now, and
(04:44):
that means they can't make someof the hard moves that are
necessary for the long term .
And many of the longtime staffat HQ really depend on their
jobs, so they can't afford torock the boat. One of the
higher level execs told me lastmonth, we know that we're
probably not giving the advicethat we should, but affiliate
owners don't want to hear it.
So we tell 'em to just keepgetting more coaching
(05:04):
credentials. Now that'sparaphrasing, that's not a
verbatim quote, but just thewhole principle there had me
going. It's our duty to tellpeople what they need to hear
and then let them come to termswith it instead of just, you
know, saying what they thinkthey want to hear. And as an
outsider, I can do that. I cansay, Hey, the emperor's not
wearing any clothes withoutgetting fired or carrying about
(05:27):
making Berkshire Partners adividend this quarter. One of
the best questions I got wasfrom Josh who said, what would
the first 90 days of a completechange look like? Well, the
first step is always clarifyingthe mission. Are we still
selling constantly variedfunctional movement at high
intensity or is that a tool todeliver the real mission, which
(05:47):
is to improve fitness in ourcommunities across broad time
and modal domains? Now, ifthat's the mission to improve
fitness in our communities,then the definition of fitness
should be evolving over time,and that will evolve the
methodology too. It's just amatter of course. So obviously
we need somebody with ascientific approach to weigh
the benefits of the newscience, like tracking
(06:08):
biomarkers, you know, CrossFitpromoted us all buying a whoop,
but what do we do with that?
Well, I guess nothing. Uh ,what about zone two? We should
be talking about that. Which ofthese things have merit and
should be incorporated into themethodology to make it stronger
and which of them are justfads? Now this can't be done by
committee. I watched.comprogramming get done by
(06:28):
committee once while I wasworking at hq, and I think you
can guess how that went.
Everybody got their own littlespicy workout, right? And we
lost the , the principle welost. Why are we doing this?
The next most important thing,and this is critical, it's
urgent, is CrossFit Media hasto be rebuilt. Most of the
value of affiliation was themedia produced by hq.
(06:49):
Storytelling is more importantthan anything else as we need
to give clients hope, we needto give affiliates hope, and
that's by telling a betterstory, a story of success, a
story of evolution, a story ofchange, a story of improvement.
And then if the mission isreally to increase fitness in
our communities, the games hasto change. It has to be a
representation or the of thepinnacle of that story. It's
(07:13):
too late to change it for 2025,but in 2026, I would look more
toward a festival repeated infive to six places in the US
instead of finding the one ortwo fittest on earth. So you
have a full day with multipleevents to test fitness. You
make it possible to runthousands of people through
like Spartan Race or HighRocks. I'd probably just leave
(07:33):
the operations to Rogue becausethey do it right. If you've
ever been to the RogueInvitational, you know what I
mean? The goal should be to putthousands of people through not
to crown the single fittest onearth. The finding the fittest
on Earth doesn't help hq, itdoesn't help affiliates, it
only helps the person who wins.
And then you have a concert toend the day, make everybody
feel like they've justaccomplished the fittest day of
(07:54):
their lives. Give them aT-shirt and that's a win for
thousands of people instead oftwo. Now, I said earlier that
HQ has three products. So thefirst is the methodology, the
second is certification. Iprobably wouldn't mess with
certification, but I'd shortenthe bench to the best and the
brightest. Greg had a habit ofhiring people just 'cause he
liked them and he wanted togive them a job. That's how I
(08:16):
got my job at media. I didn't,I wasn't qualified for that
job, but Greg liked me for awhile and at least, and that's
how I got the job. But withfewer certification, weekends
requiring fewer people, manyinstructors are now getting
called out once every four tosix weeks, make the best
full-time, send them out everyweekend and maximize the value
at seminars. Now the thirdproduct is affiliation. In
(08:38):
truth, I would do what TwoBrain is already doing. Start
collecting data from partnerslike Waify , push Press and
Kilo. Publish that every yearto every affiliate. We do this
because HQ said that theywouldn't then begin a real
educational series foraffiliates. Start by teaching
them how to read a profit andloss statement, then teach them
(08:58):
how to build an on-ramp, how tosell an on-ramp, how to build a
great income with 150 members.
You don't have to force aparticular model on anyone, but
you do have to teach everyonehow to choose a model based on
math and financial metrics. Youhave to make business owners
financially literate. Andagain, two , brainin does
exactly this because it's whatI think HQ should be doing.
(09:20):
Then you teach how to build andrun for marketing funnels, how
to retain clients better, howto pay yourself and your staff,
and you teach this to all newaffiliates. You provide a
mentorship option for all newand existing affiliates because
coaches should have coachesprovide the course as part of
affiliation and make thementorship optional for a fee.
It's probably worth mentioningthat two Brainin does a lot of
(09:40):
this for free already. So it'snot hard to find speakers or
tools or resources to sharewith affiliates every month
instead of putting onmeaningless round tables or
putting people on stage whocan't prove that their idea
works. In short, I try toprovide all the stuff that HQ
should be making available. Thetools and knowledge are free
through gym owners united.com.
(10:02):
The step-by-step courses areavailable through our
mentorship program, and ofcourse we sell mentorship with
a real investment so thatpeople will do the work. Just
like coaching at your gym, it'sno coincidence that like
CrossFit, the knowledge is freeand the coaching is magical.
The next great question that Igot, thanks Josh for that
again, was what about Europe?
(10:23):
The gyms there seem to bethriving, or what about Europe?
I just opened in Spain. I'vegot 300 members in a year.
Well, the affiliates in Franceand you know Denmark, Germany,
they're now facing whathappened in the Nordic
countries, Finland, Sweden,Norway a couple years ago, and
also UK and Ireland fall inthat bucket. The early adopters
(10:43):
joined when the gyms open andnow they're gone. The days of
easy leads are over That myththat if you build a day will
come. That's a thing of thepast. This happened in Eastern
North America in Australiaabout five years ago, Western
North America , uh, about sevenyears ago, and it continues to
just follow the growth ofCrossFit around the globe from
west to east. Right now, owninga CrossFit gym in Spain is
(11:06):
pretty easy, just as it waspretty easy in France in 2021.
Pretty easy in Sweden in 2019.
Pretty easy in Boston in 2017and pretty easy in LA in 2014.
But that will change. Theaffiliates running a tight ship
with defined systems and solidmarketing funnels will survive.
The affiliates who havecommitted to a huge space and
12 coaches for clients whoaren't there are gonna fall to
(11:29):
the competition. The nextquestion was, are the
non-serious gym owners, thehobbyists ruining it for the
affiliates who depend on ontheir gyms to make a living?
Now we're not sure because wecan't identify these in our
data dataset. We do have aqualitative survey that about
500 gyms fill in every year,but we have quantitative data
from thousands more. But I willsay that over 70% of the
(11:51):
affiliates who join two braininhave an income goal of a
hundred thousand dollars ayear. So either they're relying
on their gym as their solesource of income or they wanna
leave their other job withinthe next two years. So
empirically speaking, most ofthe hobbyists seem to be gone
now there's this separation inthe market because between
those people who are gettingbetter and those who are
getting worse, and the peoplewho were in the middle who
(12:14):
could just tread water can't doit anymore because of rising
rents and affiliate fees andinsurance, et cetera . Now the
libertarians out there wouldsay that this is what's
supposed to happen. And overdecades, maybe that's true, but
to me, every single affiliateowner is a human being who's
taken a life-changing risk fora cause they believe in to help
other people live healthier,happier lives. They are in the
(12:37):
arena, they're some of thescrappiest entrepreneurs in the
world, and as somebody said inthe gym owners united.com group
earlier, HQ needs itsaffiliates more than they need
hq. They're the ones who cansave the movement. Another
great question was, what aboutthe lease rents model that Greg
Glassman promoted? Well, thelease rents model doesn't mean
(12:58):
that HQ doesn't offer moreservices. It means they don't
make more services mandatory toroll it into the price and
build the price up. The RRG isa good example. It was an
unnecessary addition to theecosystem to generate cash flow
, though there was really goodstorytelling around it, right?
Affiliates were already wellrepresented in the insurance
(13:18):
space by good insurancecompanies with a good track
record of fighting thesebattles, but it was still not
forced on anybody. No affiliatehad to buy it. Many of them did
because of the goodstorytelling. They said stuff
like, only we can protectCrossFit, right? Unfortunately,
private equities MO is justplain generate revenue and they
can do that through adding moreaffiliates, selling more
(13:39):
courses and selling moresponsorship. But if they can't
do those things or if doingthose things is really hard,
then they have to make moremoney on the affiliates and the
courses and the sponsorshipsthat they already have. And
that means increasing theaffiliate rate, requiring an L
two to own an affiliateshortening the recertification
cycle from five years to threeselling sponsorships that don't
(14:00):
really fit the mission andtaking a revenue cut from the
partners that they recommend inthe A PN. Now that these have
all been done, the next ownerwill have to do more of the
same. And so that will likelymean increasing affiliate
rates. Again, bringing in moreservices inside hq, like
offering uh , free booking andbilling software. For example,
getting control of your paymentcash flow and then increasing
(14:22):
the price of affiliation.
That's the more rents model.
However, the more theseservices become baked in, the
closer the affiliation gets toa franchise, right? And that's
where we start to cross somelegal lines. So the next buyer
can only do that up to a point,but it's very likely that they
will do it. The next questionwas, is CrossFit actually in
(14:44):
danger? It seems profitable,and this was in response to the
title of my post, how to SaveCrossFit. So let me clarify,
the company isn't in danger ofbankruptcy. It's in danger of
losing affiliates, shrinkingits size, reach, and revenue
and ability to save lives. Theindividual affiliates are in
danger as they always have beenbecause we all started as first
(15:04):
time entrepreneurs and webelieve that being good coaches
would make us good at business.
The methodology itself is alsoin danger. The trademark is in
danger. The certifications arein danger of losing talented
staff due to shrinkingenrollment. The games are in
danger. These not just thecorporation make up CrossFit,
it's not the company, it's themovement that's at risk. Any
(15:28):
method or process or systemthat does not evolve becomes
fragile. People look foralternatives that match their
updated reality. As long asCrossFit gyms dogmatically
adhere to constantly variedfunctional movement at high
intensity, make every workouthard for the sake of being hard
run free trials and big groupsas their only option, they'll
(15:48):
continue to wonder why theykeep running outta clients
after two to three years. Butprivate Equity's mission is to
buy a working product thathasn't been fully monetized and
either sell more of it or makemore from its existing
audience. They're not in thisto evolve the method or debate
science that would slow downtheir return on investment. And
so the methodology staysstagnant and becomes more
(16:09):
fragile as affiliates adoptwearable tech and program more
zone two, and they run HighRocks events and they start to
ask themselves, am I reallystill doing CrossFit? The brand
is in danger as they continueto hire media and marketing
experts who are more concernedwith getting their name
mentioned in future businesscase studies in the Harvard
Business Review than withtelling stories about CrossFit.
(16:32):
These are true conversationsthat I've had with people at
hq. One said, somedayCrossFit's gonna be a case
study at Harvard. Whether we'resuccessful at turning it around
or not, that is not what uh , alive or die CrossFitter is
gonna say, right? Affiliatesdepend on all of these things
to work regardless. Who holdsthe CrossFit Ink baseball card
(16:53):
this month? And that's what Icare about. The next question
was a follow up . What do youmean when you say the method
must evolve? Well, it's reallywhy we started strength coach
collective.com to have theseconversations as with two brand
business back in 2016, insteadof waiting for CrossFit HQ or
the NSCA to do the right thing,I'm just gonna do it now.
(17:14):
Strength Coach Collective iswhere we talk about bridging
the , the gap between theresearchers, the scientists,
and the practice of actuallycoaching people. It's where we
take the ideas from atia and wetalk to people who are actually
implementing them in your gym.
Another question was aboutaffiliate rates. And I had
mentioned that rates are verylikely to go up if there's a
new buyer. And this personsaid, do you think affiliates
(17:35):
would pay more for aaffiliation if the rates went
up? Again? I think manyaffiliates would welcome the
addition of value if it exceedsthe additional price. So if you
raise it by a thousand a year,but provide 10,000 more in
value, yeah, people willembrace it, right? Tube
Brighten is a case in point.
CrossFit had the opportunity tolaunch a mentorship program for
business a decade ago. Now,thousands of affiliates are
(17:59):
happy to pay our team ofmentors because the ROI is many
times more than the investmentwhen they do the work. It's too
late for CrossFit HQ to try anddo that themselves from scratch
because they're 10 years behindus with no data. It's just
guessing. But there are otherways that they can add value
that's disproportionate to theprice. I just want to quickly
(18:19):
mention something here. Thecurrent Facebook marketing
strategy is not it. Someaffiliates are now saying like,
oh, I get two to three leadsper year, per month, or
whatever from CrossFit, butreally this is a Trojan horse.
Um, and a lot of affiliateshave brought this up, right? It
didn't occur to me untilsomebody pointed to it. What
(18:40):
happens is that when somebodyin your city sees a Facebook ad
from CrossFit, they're directedto the CrossFit site, then
they're guided to the crossclosest CrossFit affiliates
near them. What that means isthat the all of the lead
traffic is going to CrossFit,and if you de affiliate, you're
cut off from that. In fact,you're kind of competing with
CrossFit on ad spend . Ifyou're running ads and they're
(19:02):
running ads and you're both inNew York, they're driving up ad
costs for CrossFit for yourgym. What this also means is
that they can cut off your leadflow. Now, luckily this hasn't
been successful enough foranybody to become dependent on
it yet, but affiliates shouldbe looking at this stuff with a
skeptical eye. The key tohaving affiliates understanding
increased value beforeincreased price is gonna be
(19:24):
changing the story, right? GregGlassman's Lease rents model
was a really sticky one that hetold to explain their pay to
use the name, and that's it.
Agreement. In reality, itallowed HQ to license the name
without taking responsibilityfor affiliate success by
crossing into that franchiseterritory and all the laws that
go along with it. So a new andbetter story would be about
(19:44):
value, not price, but CrossFitneeds a really strong media
team to change that story andteach it to the affiliates who
also need to change their storyabout value and price. By the
way , um, the next questioncame from somebody who actually
said, I'm glad it's shrinking.
There's too many affiliatesalready in three years, there
will be no other affiliatesexcept for me, and I'll have no
(20:05):
competition in my city. I thinkthat the affiliates competing
against each other is just aproduct of the environment.
It's kind of a scarcitymindset, and we're all first
time entrepreneurs and they ,we come into this terrified, we
have a lot to lose. So we adoptthis mindset of scarcity and we
think , uh, you know , stealingall my clients. And the only
(20:25):
way outta that is to teachfinancial literacy and
marketing and sales to actuallytrain people to be good at
business, or they'll always bescared for good reason. The
next question was anotherflattering one, like, couldn't
somebody like you just buy it?
The problem is that I can'toperate under the confines or
influence even of a board,right? Movements do not get
(20:47):
started by committee. GregGlassman had a small group of
of people he really trustedaround him, but he wasn't
taking a poll. He wasn't tryingto run a democracy at hq. So
while affiliates could pooltogether, they have all the
power form some kind of board,and collectively buy CrossFit,
they still need to set that upproperly. You know, somebody I
(21:08):
really admire in this spacelast night was talking to me
about the Hershey ChocolateCompany structure. So
essentially, Hershey is ownedby a trust. Like the affiliates
could own a trust. That trusthas a board of directors, but
there's a CEO who runs thecompany without interference.
Affiliates could form a trust,basically elect a board, and
then that board would hire ACEO . That CEO would still be
(21:29):
accountable, but they'd havethe power to make unilateral
decisions because they wouldjust be fired if it didn't turn
out. Now, I would be skepticalof forming one huge cooperative
of 9,958 affiliate owners,which is the current count I
saw on HQ's website thismorning, because getting them
to agree on anything isimpossible. However, the RRG
(21:51):
proves that it might work. Areally great story creates
belief, which buys the CEO timeto fix the problems. This would
take a very strong decisive CEObecause things are gonna have
to get worse before they getbetter. The time for easy
change is over. It's four yearsbehind us. Also, I just wanna
make it clear like I'm notgunning for a CEO job. I'm
(22:11):
pretty much unemployable atthis point. I'm better on the
outside. I'm just the kid inthe crowd that's yelling. The
emperor's not wearing anyclothes. You know, all growth
starts with the affiliates.
Now, in the beginning, theformula for growth for CrossFit
was somebody found the mainsite, they fell in love with
the method. They got certified,they opened an affiliate. But
by 2013, that model hadcompletely flipped. Now it's
(22:33):
find an affiliate. Fall in lovewith the method. Get certified,
open your own affiliate. Allrevenue used to start with the
main site. Now it starts withthe affiliate. All
certifications come from theaffiliates. All new affiliates
come from existing affiliates.
The affiliates have all thepower and they're decreasing in
number. Hopefully this q and a,which came from amazing
(22:55):
questions from the two brandbusiness membership program,
and also from our free group.
Gym owners united.com will helpanswer some of the secondary
questions that come fromintroducing a plan, and that's
why you introduce a plan sothat you have these meaningful
discussions instead of justthrowing more mud at HQ and
blaming them for everything. Ihope this helps you. I'm Chris
(23:15):
Cooper. This is Run aProfitable Gym, and no matter
what kind of gym you'rerunning, if it's a CrossFit gym
or not, we can all learn a tonas we go through this
experience and go through it.
We're gonna have to, becausethe only way out is through it
.
Hey, I am Chris Cooper. This is Run a
Profitable Gym . I'm thefounder of Reign Business and
last week I published a blogpost called How to Save
CrossFit. It was prompted byCrossFit Inc's announcement
that they were looking for abuyer the way they did. It felt
kind of like your way at summercamp and your mom and dad put a
for sale sign in front of yourhouse. But that's beside the
(00:24):
point. I wanted to publishsomething to start a
conversation on what it wouldtake to change. I wanted to
give a plan knowing that noplan is ever perfect at
inception, but a plan is alwaysrequired to start. Immediately
after I published the Post, Igot a lot of texts from people
that I really admire in theindustry, people around the
perimeter of CrossFit who arevery invested like me in the
(00:47):
health and wellbeing ofaffiliates. Most of the texts
that I got said something like,I really liked your first five
points, but I didn't reallyagree with point number six.
And that's okay. No plan isever perfect on first draft,
but you have to start with aplan and adjust or you'll never
get anywhere. It's very, veryeasy to complain or to knock
(01:08):
holes in somebody else's planor say That guy's dumb. That
won't work. But it's alsoreally, really easy to spend a
year apologizing for yourmistakes without fixing
anything. You know, trust me,I'm a Canadian. It's super easy
to take surveys and tell peoplewe're listening, we hear you,
but not actually make anychange. And these are all just
(01:28):
ways of kicking the can ofresponsibility down the road,
like the next owner will fixit. What's really hard is
saying, here's the plan,because you're gonna open
yourself up to all that otherstuff from people who don't
want to face potentialcriticism, right? The people
who want to condemn andcomplain and shoot fiery arrows
(01:49):
and raise the pitchforks, butdon't wanna share a plan
themselves. This is the kind ofstuff that you see in big
bureaucratic companies, butit's also the kind of stuff
that you see online. After Iposted the blog post though,
well I did get some of that. Igot some really great questions
from people, very smart peoplein our free group, gym owners
united.com, and of course fromthe smartest people in the Two
(02:12):
Brain Business Mentorshipprogram. And I'm gonna go
through them here because Ithink they really add a lot of
value to the conversation andprobably evolve the plan to
make an even better one. So thefirst question that I got
wasn't really a criticism, butsomebody said like, why are you
talking about this when you'renot even an affiliate? And the
truth is that I , I affiliateda couple of years ago. I first
(02:33):
affiliated , uh, when Greg soldthe company de affiliated .
When Greg sold the company,Dave Castro called me and said,
just give us a year. We'regonna fix it. After another
year and a half, I deaffiliated again when the L two
requirement came in. I'm not inmy gym every day. I'm not gonna
go get an L two to keep myaffiliate, but there's two ways
to look at the affiliation. Thefirst is to say, coop , you're
(02:54):
abandoning a sinking ship. Andthat's what I told myself for
many years that I could helpmore from the inside. I've
spent over a decade giving,helping first trying to get
CrossFit HQ to help affiliatesmore. Sometimes it worked, it
got through. I'm stillpublished in the CrossFit
Journal sometimes. Most of thetime it , it just didn't work
out. The other way to look atde affiliation is to say, I'm
(03:17):
no longer willing to prop upthe regime that's giving
affiliates bad advice. Now it'sa personal choice, right? I
don't think anybody else hashad the same experience that I
have trying to work this outwith hq. And that's why I don't
tell people through Tube Brainto affiliate or de affiliate or
re affiliate. I'm not anaffiliate right now , but I
might be against someday . Now,when Berkshire Partners bought
(03:38):
CrossFit, I had a couple ofconversations with Eric Rosa .
Within 48 hours of him takingover things just didn't feel
right. And so that's when I putin my first de affiliation
request. Dave Castro called andsaid, give it a year, but
things actually got worse inthat year. That said, there are
over 20 mentors at Two Brainwho are still affiliated. And
I'm optimistic that someday Iwill re affiliate. I love
(04:00):
CrossFit, but I just couldn'tsupport the current ownership
anymore after trying to dealwith them. Eventually you learn
to walk around the tableinstead of stubbing your toe on
it all the time. But again,personal choice, probably a
unique situation. On the otherend of the spectrum, I got 10
times as many messages sayingyou should buy CrossFit and
thank you for that. It's veryflattering that people think
(04:22):
that I should, but I'm actuallybetter on the outside. If I
worked for HQ or any companythat bought CrossFit, I would
be beholden to them. And thiswould be true even if somebody
loaned me the money to buy itmyself From Berkshire Partners
right now, one of the thingsthat people at HQ have working
against them is that they haveto show a profit right now, and
(04:44):
that means they can't make someof the hard moves that are
necessary for the long term .
And many of the longtime staffat HQ really depend on their
jobs, so they can't afford torock the boat. One of the
higher level execs told me lastmonth, we know that we're
probably not giving the advicethat we should, but affiliate
owners don't want to hear it.
So we tell 'em to just keepgetting more coaching
(05:04):
credentials. Now that'sparaphrasing, that's not a
verbatim quote, but just thewhole principle there had me
going. It's our duty to tellpeople what they need to hear
and then let them come to termswith it instead of just, you
know, saying what they thinkthey want to hear. And as an
outsider, I can do that. I cansay, Hey, the emperor's not
wearing any clothes withoutgetting fired or carrying about
(05:27):
making Berkshire Partners adividend this quarter. One of
the best questions I got wasfrom Josh who said, what would
the first 90 days of a completechange look like? Well, the
first step is always clarifyingthe mission. Are we still
selling constantly variedfunctional movement at high
intensity or is that a tool todeliver the real mission, which
(05:47):
is to improve fitness in ourcommunities across broad time
and modal domains? Now, ifthat's the mission to improve
fitness in our communities,then the definition of fitness
should be evolving over time,and that will evolve the
methodology too. It's just amatter of course. So obviously
we need somebody with ascientific approach to weigh
the benefits of the newscience, like tracking
(06:08):
biomarkers, you know, CrossFitpromoted us all buying a whoop,
but what do we do with that?
Well, I guess nothing. Uh ,what about zone two? We should
be talking about that. Which ofthese things have merit and
should be incorporated into themethodology to make it stronger
and which of them are justfads? Now this can't be done by
committee. I watched.comprogramming get done by
(06:28):
committee once while I wasworking at hq, and I think you
can guess how that went.
Everybody got their own littlespicy workout, right? And we
lost the , the principle welost. Why are we doing this?
The next most important thing,and this is critical, it's
urgent, is CrossFit Media hasto be rebuilt. Most of the
value of affiliation was themedia produced by hq.
(06:49):
Storytelling is more importantthan anything else as we need
to give clients hope, we needto give affiliates hope, and
that's by telling a betterstory, a story of success, a
story of evolution, a story ofchange, a story of improvement.
And then if the mission isreally to increase fitness in
our communities, the games hasto change. It has to be a
representation or the of thepinnacle of that story. It's
(07:13):
too late to change it for 2025,but in 2026, I would look more
toward a festival repeated infive to six places in the US
instead of finding the one ortwo fittest on earth. So you
have a full day with multipleevents to test fitness. You
make it possible to runthousands of people through
like Spartan Race or HighRocks. I'd probably just leave
(07:33):
the operations to Rogue becausethey do it right. If you've
ever been to the RogueInvitational, you know what I
mean? The goal should be to putthousands of people through not
to crown the single fittest onearth. The finding the fittest
on Earth doesn't help hq, itdoesn't help affiliates, it
only helps the person who wins.
And then you have a concert toend the day, make everybody
feel like they've justaccomplished the fittest day of
(07:54):
their lives. Give them aT-shirt and that's a win for
thousands of people instead oftwo. Now, I said earlier that
HQ has three products. So thefirst is the methodology, the
second is certification. Iprobably wouldn't mess with
certification, but I'd shortenthe bench to the best and the
brightest. Greg had a habit ofhiring people just 'cause he
liked them and he wanted togive them a job. That's how I
(08:16):
got my job at media. I didn't,I wasn't qualified for that
job, but Greg liked me for awhile and at least, and that's
how I got the job. But withfewer certification, weekends
requiring fewer people, manyinstructors are now getting
called out once every four tosix weeks, make the best
full-time, send them out everyweekend and maximize the value
at seminars. Now the thirdproduct is affiliation. In
(08:38):
truth, I would do what TwoBrain is already doing. Start
collecting data from partnerslike Waify , push Press and
Kilo. Publish that every yearto every affiliate. We do this
because HQ said that theywouldn't then begin a real
educational series foraffiliates. Start by teaching
them how to read a profit andloss statement, then teach them
(08:58):
how to build an on-ramp, how tosell an on-ramp, how to build a
great income with 150 members.
You don't have to force aparticular model on anyone, but
you do have to teach everyonehow to choose a model based on
math and financial metrics. Youhave to make business owners
financially literate. Andagain, two , brainin does
exactly this because it's whatI think HQ should be doing.
(09:20):
Then you teach how to build andrun for marketing funnels, how
to retain clients better, howto pay yourself and your staff,
and you teach this to all newaffiliates. You provide a
mentorship option for all newand existing affiliates because
coaches should have coachesprovide the course as part of
affiliation and make thementorship optional for a fee.
It's probably worth mentioningthat two Brainin does a lot of
(09:40):
this for free already. So it'snot hard to find speakers or
tools or resources to sharewith affiliates every month
instead of putting onmeaningless round tables or
putting people on stage whocan't prove that their idea
works. In short, I try toprovide all the stuff that HQ
should be making available. Thetools and knowledge are free
through gym owners united.com.
(10:02):
The step-by-step courses areavailable through our
mentorship program, and ofcourse we sell mentorship with
a real investment so thatpeople will do the work. Just
like coaching at your gym, it'sno coincidence that like
CrossFit, the knowledge is freeand the coaching is magical.
The next great question that Igot, thanks Josh for that
again, was what about Europe?
(10:23):
The gyms there seem to bethriving, or what about Europe?
I just opened in Spain. I'vegot 300 members in a year.
Well, the affiliates in Franceand you know Denmark, Germany,
they're now facing whathappened in the Nordic
countries, Finland, Sweden,Norway a couple years ago, and
also UK and Ireland fall inthat bucket. The early adopters
(10:43):
joined when the gyms open andnow they're gone. The days of
easy leads are over That myththat if you build a day will
come. That's a thing of thepast. This happened in Eastern
North America in Australiaabout five years ago, Western
North America , uh, about sevenyears ago, and it continues to
just follow the growth ofCrossFit around the globe from
west to east. Right now, owninga CrossFit gym in Spain is
(11:06):
pretty easy, just as it waspretty easy in France in 2021.
Pretty easy in Sweden in 2019.
Pretty easy in Boston in 2017and pretty easy in LA in 2014.
But that will change. Theaffiliates running a tight ship
with defined systems and solidmarketing funnels will survive.
The affiliates who havecommitted to a huge space and
12 coaches for clients whoaren't there are gonna fall to
(11:29):
the competition. The nextquestion was, are the
non-serious gym owners, thehobbyists ruining it for the
affiliates who depend on ontheir gyms to make a living?
Now we're not sure because wecan't identify these in our
data dataset. We do have aqualitative survey that about
500 gyms fill in every year,but we have quantitative data
from thousands more. But I willsay that over 70% of the
(11:51):
affiliates who join two braininhave an income goal of a
hundred thousand dollars ayear. So either they're relying
on their gym as their solesource of income or they wanna
leave their other job withinthe next two years. So
empirically speaking, most ofthe hobbyists seem to be gone
now there's this separation inthe market because between
those people who are gettingbetter and those who are
getting worse, and the peoplewho were in the middle who
(12:14):
could just tread water can't doit anymore because of rising
rents and affiliate fees andinsurance, et cetera . Now the
libertarians out there wouldsay that this is what's
supposed to happen. And overdecades, maybe that's true, but
to me, every single affiliateowner is a human being who's
taken a life-changing risk fora cause they believe in to help
other people live healthier,happier lives. They are in the
(12:37):
arena, they're some of thescrappiest entrepreneurs in the
world, and as somebody said inthe gym owners united.com group
earlier, HQ needs itsaffiliates more than they need
hq. They're the ones who cansave the movement. Another
great question was, what aboutthe lease rents model that Greg
Glassman promoted? Well, thelease rents model doesn't mean
(12:58):
that HQ doesn't offer moreservices. It means they don't
make more services mandatory toroll it into the price and
build the price up. The RRG isa good example. It was an
unnecessary addition to theecosystem to generate cash flow
, though there was really goodstorytelling around it, right?
Affiliates were already wellrepresented in the insurance
(13:18):
space by good insurancecompanies with a good track
record of fighting thesebattles, but it was still not
forced on anybody. No affiliatehad to buy it. Many of them did
because of the goodstorytelling. They said stuff
like, only we can protectCrossFit, right? Unfortunately,
private equities MO is justplain generate revenue and they
can do that through adding moreaffiliates, selling more
(13:39):
courses and selling moresponsorship. But if they can't
do those things or if doingthose things is really hard,
then they have to make moremoney on the affiliates and the
courses and the sponsorshipsthat they already have. And
that means increasing theaffiliate rate, requiring an L
two to own an affiliateshortening the recertification
cycle from five years to threeselling sponsorships that don't
(14:00):
really fit the mission andtaking a revenue cut from the
partners that they recommend inthe A PN. Now that these have
all been done, the next ownerwill have to do more of the
same. And so that will likelymean increasing affiliate
rates. Again, bringing in moreservices inside hq, like
offering uh , free booking andbilling software. For example,
getting control of your paymentcash flow and then increasing
(14:22):
the price of affiliation.
That's the more rents model.
However, the more theseservices become baked in, the
closer the affiliation gets toa franchise, right? And that's
where we start to cross somelegal lines. So the next buyer
can only do that up to a point,but it's very likely that they
will do it. The next questionwas, is CrossFit actually in
(14:44):
danger? It seems profitable,and this was in response to the
title of my post, how to SaveCrossFit. So let me clarify,
the company isn't in danger ofbankruptcy. It's in danger of
losing affiliates, shrinkingits size, reach, and revenue
and ability to save lives. Theindividual affiliates are in
danger as they always have beenbecause we all started as first
(15:04):
time entrepreneurs and webelieve that being good coaches
would make us good at business.
The methodology itself is alsoin danger. The trademark is in
danger. The certifications arein danger of losing talented
staff due to shrinkingenrollment. The games are in
danger. These not just thecorporation make up CrossFit,
it's not the company, it's themovement that's at risk. Any
(15:28):
method or process or systemthat does not evolve becomes
fragile. People look foralternatives that match their
updated reality. As long asCrossFit gyms dogmatically
adhere to constantly variedfunctional movement at high
intensity, make every workouthard for the sake of being hard
run free trials and big groupsas their only option, they'll
(15:48):
continue to wonder why theykeep running outta clients
after two to three years. Butprivate Equity's mission is to
buy a working product thathasn't been fully monetized and
either sell more of it or makemore from its existing
audience. They're not in thisto evolve the method or debate
science that would slow downtheir return on investment. And
so the methodology staysstagnant and becomes more
(16:09):
fragile as affiliates adoptwearable tech and program more
zone two, and they run HighRocks events and they start to
ask themselves, am I reallystill doing CrossFit? The brand
is in danger as they continueto hire media and marketing
experts who are more concernedwith getting their name
mentioned in future businesscase studies in the Harvard
Business Review than withtelling stories about CrossFit.
(16:32):
These are true conversationsthat I've had with people at
hq. One said, somedayCrossFit's gonna be a case
study at Harvard. Whether we'resuccessful at turning it around
or not, that is not what uh , alive or die CrossFitter is
gonna say, right? Affiliatesdepend on all of these things
to work regardless. Who holdsthe CrossFit Ink baseball card
(16:53):
this month? And that's what Icare about. The next question
was a follow up . What do youmean when you say the method
must evolve? Well, it's reallywhy we started strength coach
collective.com to have theseconversations as with two brand
business back in 2016, insteadof waiting for CrossFit HQ or
the NSCA to do the right thing,I'm just gonna do it now.
(17:14):
Strength Coach Collective iswhere we talk about bridging
the , the gap between theresearchers, the scientists,
and the practice of actuallycoaching people. It's where we
take the ideas from atia and wetalk to people who are actually
implementing them in your gym.
Another question was aboutaffiliate rates. And I had
mentioned that rates are verylikely to go up if there's a
new buyer. And this personsaid, do you think affiliates
(17:35):
would pay more for aaffiliation if the rates went
up? Again? I think manyaffiliates would welcome the
addition of value if it exceedsthe additional price. So if you
raise it by a thousand a year,but provide 10,000 more in
value, yeah, people willembrace it, right? Tube
Brighten is a case in point.
CrossFit had the opportunity tolaunch a mentorship program for
business a decade ago. Now,thousands of affiliates are
(17:59):
happy to pay our team ofmentors because the ROI is many
times more than the investmentwhen they do the work. It's too
late for CrossFit HQ to try anddo that themselves from scratch
because they're 10 years behindus with no data. It's just
guessing. But there are otherways that they can add value
that's disproportionate to theprice. I just want to quickly
(18:19):
mention something here. Thecurrent Facebook marketing
strategy is not it. Someaffiliates are now saying like,
oh, I get two to three leadsper year, per month, or
whatever from CrossFit, butreally this is a Trojan horse.
Um, and a lot of affiliateshave brought this up, right? It
didn't occur to me untilsomebody pointed to it. What
(18:40):
happens is that when somebodyin your city sees a Facebook ad
from CrossFit, they're directedto the CrossFit site, then
they're guided to the crossclosest CrossFit affiliates
near them. What that means isthat the all of the lead
traffic is going to CrossFit,and if you de affiliate, you're
cut off from that. In fact,you're kind of competing with
CrossFit on ad spend . Ifyou're running ads and they're
(19:02):
running ads and you're both inNew York, they're driving up ad
costs for CrossFit for yourgym. What this also means is
that they can cut off your leadflow. Now, luckily this hasn't
been successful enough foranybody to become dependent on
it yet, but affiliates shouldbe looking at this stuff with a
skeptical eye. The key tohaving affiliates understanding
increased value beforeincreased price is gonna be
(19:24):
changing the story, right? GregGlassman's Lease rents model
was a really sticky one that hetold to explain their pay to
use the name, and that's it.
Agreement. In reality, itallowed HQ to license the name
without taking responsibilityfor affiliate success by
crossing into that franchiseterritory and all the laws that
go along with it. So a new andbetter story would be about
(19:44):
value, not price, but CrossFitneeds a really strong media
team to change that story andteach it to the affiliates who
also need to change their storyabout value and price. By the
way , um, the next questioncame from somebody who actually
said, I'm glad it's shrinking.
There's too many affiliatesalready in three years, there
will be no other affiliatesexcept for me, and I'll have no
(20:05):
competition in my city. I thinkthat the affiliates competing
against each other is just aproduct of the environment.
It's kind of a scarcitymindset, and we're all first
time entrepreneurs and they ,we come into this terrified, we
have a lot to lose. So we adoptthis mindset of scarcity and we
think , uh, you know , stealingall my clients. And the only
(20:25):
way outta that is to teachfinancial literacy and
marketing and sales to actuallytrain people to be good at
business, or they'll always bescared for good reason. The
next question was anotherflattering one, like, couldn't
somebody like you just buy it?
The problem is that I can'toperate under the confines or
influence even of a board,right? Movements do not get
(20:47):
started by committee. GregGlassman had a small group of
of people he really trustedaround him, but he wasn't
taking a poll. He wasn't tryingto run a democracy at hq. So
while affiliates could pooltogether, they have all the
power form some kind of board,and collectively buy CrossFit,
they still need to set that upproperly. You know, somebody I
(21:08):
really admire in this spacelast night was talking to me
about the Hershey ChocolateCompany structure. So
essentially, Hershey is ownedby a trust. Like the affiliates
could own a trust. That trusthas a board of directors, but
there's a CEO who runs thecompany without interference.
Affiliates could form a trust,basically elect a board, and
then that board would hire ACEO . That CEO would still be
(21:29):
accountable, but they'd havethe power to make unilateral
decisions because they wouldjust be fired if it didn't turn
out. Now, I would be skepticalof forming one huge cooperative
of 9,958 affiliate owners,which is the current count I
saw on HQ's website thismorning, because getting them
to agree on anything isimpossible. However, the RRG
(21:51):
proves that it might work. Areally great story creates
belief, which buys the CEO timeto fix the problems. This would
take a very strong decisive CEObecause things are gonna have
to get worse before they getbetter. The time for easy
change is over. It's four yearsbehind us. Also, I just wanna
make it clear like I'm notgunning for a CEO job. I'm
(22:11):
pretty much unemployable atthis point. I'm better on the
outside. I'm just the kid inthe crowd that's yelling. The
emperor's not wearing anyclothes. You know, all growth
starts with the affiliates.
Now, in the beginning, theformula for growth for CrossFit
was somebody found the mainsite, they fell in love with
the method. They got certified,they opened an affiliate. But
by 2013, that model hadcompletely flipped. Now it's
(22:33):
find an affiliate. Fall in lovewith the method. Get certified,
open your own affiliate. Allrevenue used to start with the
main site. Now it starts withthe affiliate. All
certifications come from theaffiliates. All new affiliates
come from existing affiliates.
The affiliates have all thepower and they're decreasing in
number. Hopefully this q and a,which came from amazing
(22:55):
questions from the two brandbusiness membership program,
and also from our free group.
Gym owners united.com will helpanswer some of the secondary
questions that come fromintroducing a plan, and that's
why you introduce a plan sothat you have these meaningful
discussions instead of justthrowing more mud at HQ and
blaming them for everything. Ihope this helps you. I'm Chris
(23:15):
Cooper. This is Run aProfitable Gym, and no matter
what kind of gym you'rerunning, if it's a CrossFit gym
or not, we can all learn a tonas we go through this
experience and go through it.
We're gonna have to, becausethe only way out is through it
.
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