The Downtown 174- Chad with Atonement Crossfit

On this episode of The Downtown, we talk to Chad with Crossfit Atonement. We talk about how they started, the community they’re building, and so much more. 



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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to Downtown, Marky bar I went to Citi Media.
I am Rudy John and on this episode of The
Downtown we talked to Chad with CrossFit Atonement. We talk
about how they started, a community, they're building, and so
much more. This is such a fun conversation. What they're
doing over there at CrossFit Atonement is absolutely incredible. But
you again don't want to hear from my mouth, You
want to hear from his. Here is Chad with CrossFit Atonement.

(00:48):
I would like to welcome the show Chad with Atonement CrossFit.
How are you doing today? Good? We're also here with Bernie.
How are you doing today?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Speaking?

Speaker 3 (00:56):
No?

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Speaking?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Well, uh for those that don't know, I mean CrossFit
has been around, oh man, how long?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Since two thousand and seven.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, something like that. And what's great about it is
that there's a workout of the day and that's it. Like, yes,
there's some modifications and everything, but for the most part,
like every CrossFit gym can do the exact same workout. Now,
how did you first find CrossFit for yourself?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
My wife's brother.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, Shelby.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
He d We were living in Granbury when I was
working at our other dealership m and.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
He was like, hey, let's go work out. And I
was like, Okay, where are we going. He's like like
he knew people that don't CrossFit Granberry. They were affiliated
at the time, and uh, he drugged me there and
I hated it. I hated it. I was terrible. I
was overweight.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
And I think we did it for like I did
it kind of consistently for like three months, and then
I was like, man, no, I had to get up
cause I.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Had to give up super early. Yeah, and uh, we
lived in we lived like twenty five minutes from the gym. Oh,
we had to give it earlier. We lived in like
the dumbest part of Granberry, you know. I mean you're
talking about like thirty minute drive everywhere. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
We had our own grocery store or own gas station
and a pizza joint. But like if you didn't want
those things, right, you had to drive all the way
into Granberry.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Can there.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
I guess I never looked at how big Grandberry is
because I'd have to go there sometimes for where I
used to, but not anymore place. It's so many yeah,
oh yeah, well, plus there's so many people will keep
moving there too, and we.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Lived all the way of complantations.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Oh that's what it is, just so far.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
And so he got me there two or three months
and I was like, oh, this isn't for me.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
I had done. He got me to go when like
right when the open was going okay and they opened it.
Like back then it was five weeks of workouts, like
you had one workout a week.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
You could do it RX, which is prescribed how it's written,
you do it scale which is modified.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
And then now they even have like a beginner Oh
that's like they call it foundations. But you know, me
being a competitive I think when I was in high
school and stuff like that, I was like, oh.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
I'm gonna do this all right, just like they said.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
And man, like the average person did that work in
like fifteen minutes and I think it took me forty minutes.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
And after that I was done, I was like, hey,
this is not for me. And you know, I just
went on about my life. I would go back every
once in a while, right, but no, man, it was
just that was not for me. It was not explained to.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Be right, right, That's that is the problem is they
got me. Yeah, if it's not yeah, if it's not
described the way you need it to be like, because again,
we all learn differently. So yeah. And then also I've
done CrossFit a couple of times. I had a buddy
who did it. I've always just loved working out in general,
So I like to try different workouts and see what
I do like and don't like, and then I will

(03:42):
like to choose you let you see that's fine. I
don't I don't want to stop pinning, but I like
to come up my own workouts, and a lot of
times I'll put them online afterwards and people are like, oh,
you like do you like CrossFit type workouts? I'm like, no,
I just like I super said a lot of stuff,
and then I'll put a lot of stuff like I
do cattaballs. You gotta go through the whole thing, Yeah,
and you do it over again.

Speaker 4 (04:01):
But that's what people don't understand about CrossFit. Everyone hears CrossFit,
and they hear every doctor that they've ever heard say
that's terrible for you. But you don't hear doctor saying
Olympic lifting is bad for you. Don't hear doctor saying
running is bad for you. You don't hear Olympian a
doctor's tell olympian world class olympian rowers you shouldn't row

(04:22):
because it's bad for you. You don't go tell powerlifters
you shouldn't powerlift. It's like you don't tell basketball players
to not jump all the time from boxes and seated
positions and doing jumping jumping squads. But yeah, when you
put those all together, all of a sudden, CrossFit is
the devil and.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
You shouldn't do it. But if you do them separately,
it's like okay. But if you do, oh, whoa across,
what's bad?

Speaker 4 (04:47):
It's like I explained to people, you work out at
La Fitness. You've ever gone to Planet Fitness, You've ever
gone to YMCA, you ever worked out in your garage.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
The stuff you do there is the same thing as
we do here.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
But you've got ten or twelve or fifteen other people
that you're gonna see every day, right, Because the great
thing about is most of our people come to the
same class every day.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
You'll be sitting with the same ten twelve people almost.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
Every single morning, right, and they're waiting for you to
show up, and you're waiting to see them.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
That's the only difference. That's the only difference.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah, the crossfits of double don't do that. You're gonna
hurt yourself. Okay, we can hurt yourself walking.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
You literally could hurt yourself doing everything.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah. So yeah, that's kind of where that is.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, well that's what's so great about what you just
said is that, yes, you do have those fifteen other
people in the same class, and they're all motivating each
other too, like not only with just their actions, but
their words as well. You know, sometimes you gotta team
up and do stuff. And it's really it can really
make people come together when they didn't think that, you know,
that's what they're coming to get here, Like they're coming
here to you know, work out and you know, get

(05:51):
in better shape or whatever their reason is. But then
they find a community and they just thrive.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, that's exactly what happens here. Yeah, and we're big
on like family, I guess you could say we're much
bigger on family. Like we don't have like we have chalkboards.
Everyone could run all over the board. We have the
big kids room. It's all the chalkboard. You know. We
want them to bring the kids, We want them to
bring their moms, their dads, their uncles, because if everyone's
like doing it with you, it's much easier to come

(06:16):
especially the kids are here. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:18):
Man, the kids, the kids have black We let them
go half like in between classes, and they just they
they'll turn that whole thing.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Into a monkey bar. Yeah, and they'll just be all
over to where you're like cringing, Oh, they're gonna fall,
you know, But they never fall right, you know. And
even if they fall, they're just like whatever they're too
they're having way too much fun to.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Care exactly, you know. And that is the other thing
I think a lot of people have issues with when
it comes to finding a place that they can work out,
is that, hey, what am I gonna do with my kids?
Like and if you can bring the kids even better? Yeah,
So yeah, I'm glad y'all do that.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
There's a ton of gins rounder that don't have kids.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Spot yep. Yeah, Like I work out over at colop
there are things, but I used to work out a
lifetime out in Mansfield or death get area for the paperwork,
the extra factly.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, it's like it's like my wife and I decided
that we were going to do this, like that was her.
That was her number one half to half m. It
was it had to she had to have it, had.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
To have a kids area where kids could do whatever
they wanted and the only rules don't hurt each other.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, like we got a little basketball going there. You've
got a multi kdeen there for him to play. You know,
we got a TV. We have a bunch of toys,
we have chair, we have bean bags, and we just like,
as long as you don't hurt each other, do what
you want there. Yeah, just don't hurt each other, right,
you know, we have you know, we bring their iPads
if they want, they can play around that. They're not
allowed on the mats during gym time obviously, you know,

(07:37):
they have to stay over here, and every parent has
the same concern. I can't keep I'm not going to
be able to keep my kid there. It's just like hey, man,
like they understand, Like if you just tell them and.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
They go in there for a couple of minutes where
they the bottom them just hang out of here. Now
they just go back and forth and they just they
you know, it's just like burning.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
She doesn't run underneath bar bells.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Kids don't want to.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
That's still run under a bar bell get squashed, mommy,
you know, they want they want to watch you do stuff.

Speaker 4 (08:04):
And if they're just like they can't calm, you know,
or they're they're shoved in some room that's thirty feet
away from mom and dad, and what are they getting
out of it? You know, they and you'll find that
they want to come out here and after gym's over,
they want to jump on the ball because they want
to use their ring.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
They want to hang on the ropes, you know, they.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
Want to do the ring stuff, right, you know, they
want to jump on a bike, they want to jump
on a row.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Right. All you're doing is teaching your kids that it's
fun to work out. Right.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Also, if you're teaching them early enough and they have
they see that working out can be fun, then they're like, oh,
I could I want to keep doing this? I want
to keep coming back to this.

Speaker 4 (08:35):
We had some people here yesterday because we do we
have a competition coming up on June seventh, and they
were training for it and they got done, you know,
doing something and one of her kids was like, well.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Can I try to lift the bar? And it had
like one hundred and fifteen pounds on it and she's like, yeah, sure,
let's just hurt ourselves. It was like, hey, let's make
sure your reform's good, right, and we just walked him
through the floor. The kid picked up man, it was
like it was like you got an autgraph from his
famous baseball player and he was like, I picked it up,
you know, And then all the other kids wanted to
try to pick it up, like swapping out wait, and

(09:05):
you know they just had fun.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Right, And that's what it is at the end of
the day.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
It should be fun. Working out should be fun. Yes,
it shouldn't be like I gotta go, right.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
I mean there are days like that, because no matter
how even if your job is the most fun job
in the world, there's sundays you're like, oh, I'd much
rather just stay in better or not go. But yes,
obviously there's mornings that I wake up and I'm like,
if I could just leave longer, maybe it'd be better.
But nobody ever feels bad after they leave the gym.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Nope, Yeah, everything's just so much nicer, right, and you're done, right,
exactly done, especially the first first thing. The more you're oh,
I can.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Do whatever I want the rest right, Also, you feel
more accomplished because you've probably done more in your morning
than most people are probably gonna do all day.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (09:42):
Yeah, I mean I pull into the house at like
seven twenty and the rest of the family's just getting
up right, you know, and they's like, I don't.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Miss a lot of because they're just not getting up. Yeah.
So they're like Dad was at the gym. You know,
Bernie runs in. They're like, hey, Bernie. So it's like, yeah,
you're right.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
Most people are just like most just getting up at
six thirty seven o'clock and you got you get two classes.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
In the morning. It's like they're done, you know.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
And then they're like because it's so much more difficult
to get here in the evening. You've been at work
all day, you're tired, You've already had probably three meals,
two other pieces of food you didn't want to eat,
and you're just like, oh, I just want to go
home and chill and veg.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
And it's also depending on where you work, the traffic
you had to sit through.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, no one wants to do that stuff. No one
wants to fight to get to the gym and I
four hundred people, Yeah, you know, no one wants to
do that stuff.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Well, how did y'all decide that this.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Is what y'all wanted to do.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
So we got we got really into it. So I
broke I broke my leg five years ago, and after I,
after I rehab from that, I got.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
A little I got much more serious about it.

Speaker 4 (10:53):
And we were going to a gym that's now closed
down across the boom where they're local.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Fire By used to own it and his mom comes
here now. But yeah, I was going there and he
had had a great situation. It was a good family,
It was a good it was a good group of people.
Everyone liked each other. But there was things obviously it
didn't have. It didn't have a seat, it didn't have heat.

(11:20):
Oh wow, it didn't have showers. It didn't have a
place for the kids to play.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
It was literally a box.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
It was literally a box, and it like had rolled
up doors and you're you know, you're right next to
a training track. It was like this the epitome of
what crossfits started out being.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Uh so, yeah, for a lot of people that don't
know that, the gym places are called boxes.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yeah, And they were just boxes. They were just four
walls and whatever ceiling you could get, whether however good
it was, and it was brutally hot in the summer,
and it was like Antarctica in.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
The winter, Like you come in in the morning.

Speaker 4 (11:51):
Classes and you would like walk in with gloves on
because you didn't want to hold.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
The bar bills. That's how cold they were. Uh. And
then the summer you just never stopped sweating, right, like
you would walk and start sweating, and like if you
had to go back to work, it was just like
what's the point. Yeah, So then we moved when that
place closed, we moved to another gym. Again, great gym,
good community.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
They weren't affiliated, but great group of members, great owner,
great coaching staff. Had an ac but no heat, but
didn't have a kids area again, so the kids were
just going.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
In the bathroom. There was like five or six kids
that were just going in the women's bathroom and they're
just playing the women's bathroom all the time. And it
was just like, yeah, it's weird, Like you know, like
if I was there by myself, my wife wasn't there,
and then my kids in the women's bathroom, It's like
can you go check on my kids?

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Right?

Speaker 2 (12:38):
You know, I can't even check on my kids. So
we decided, like I guess about two years ago, maybe
two and a half years ago. This is what we
wanted to do. We wanted to do it in Arlington.
We wanted to do something that we could give back
to the community.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
We wanted to do something that wasn't just a ridiculous
amount of money, but where we cared about.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Our members right like it weren't you weren't true as
a number. We hear that alloted companies.

Speaker 4 (13:02):
We didn't want to treat people like they were a number.
We wanted to know everybody personally. We wanted to know
everybody was going on their lives. We wanted to make
it a point that we knew them. Even if they
didn't stay at our gym, we still knew them.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
They knew we cared. So we started looking for a place.
We didn't know what we wanted.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
We didn't know like where we were going to find one.
And we looked and we man. We looked and we
looked and we looked and we looked for like six
or seven months, and everything we found there wasn't something.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
There wasn't a piece of criteria that was meeting that
we're reading. We had to have parking.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
Yeah, Okay, we were dead set on we had to
have a c and obviously we wanted something big enough
to where we could have a kids area, plain and simple,
and we wanted something that was large enough to where
we could host.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Events and we could do like you know now we
host Elijah Snow's workout every year, you know, because that's
who I worked out with a CrossFit boom too. We
wanted something that was big and had the room. It
had to have showers, it had to have bathrooms, like
we had a laundry list of things. Almost. It was
almost like looking for that perfect tallis and you're like,
you're never going to find this house, so stop looking.

(14:12):
Give up one thing, give up, and we're like, we're
not going to give up anything. We're not going to
give up anything because we wouldn't give up for our members.
So if we're not going to give up for our members,
we're definitely not going to give up for the gym.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
So we eat at Pantago Cafe just right here, religiously
on Wednesdays, Like I mean, for like two years straight,
every Wednesday, we were there right after we worked out.
And we were sitting there one morning eating breakfast. Walk
outside and.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
There's a sign and it says four leaves gym ready.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, because this used to be a ju jitsu cleanser
to be ala.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
So I was like that, I mean that place it
looks small from outside right you look at it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Here, this is literally the first I've been in here,
because I I used to call on the liquors next
door and I'd always see the juicus rice like okay, cool,
and I'd see some pictures, but I never saw how
big it was. There's actually a really good size place.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, So I was like, there's no way that's probably
big enough. And they just go over there and look
through the window.

Speaker 4 (15:12):
So we come over here, we peer through the window
and we're like are you kidding? Like, and when we
look at it, man, I can show you pictures like
that had this flooring down this like park lamined flooring,
and then everything else is like that old school, uh school,
laid down one twelve by twelve tiles all the way
to the back.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
All the walls are white, like this place is just
like it's blind how bright it is.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
And there's these red chairs that we're sitting on now,
and then there's like there's like high top tables all
over the place and it's almost like they were using
it for banquet, yeah, the banquetthole. And so I'm like,
I'm just gonna call.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
They probably want a mint for this place, and it's
gonna be out of the rodget because we had like
a certain like again in our laundry list of must
have the last thing was like it has to do
within budget. Wow.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Budget yeah, maybe one of the first five things. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
So I'm like, Okay, it's just not gonna work because
all we saw were the bathrooms and we couldn't even
see over here. You can't see this from over here.
So I call the number and the guy the other
line answers the phone and I'm like, yusef and he's
like is this chat? I'm like yeah, Like what are
you doing? Answer in this phone? He's like, what are

(16:26):
you doing calling this phone? This is my business phone?
And I'm like, I'm calling about did I call the
wrong number? Dude? And he's like and he's like rouse
with rooms, Like yeah, that's it. I'm like, I'm calling
about the gym. That's like the gym ready. He goes
by the liquor store and I'm like yeah, he goes
it's yours.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Wow, Like can I come see it?

Speaker 2 (16:44):
But like I know him, I know yuseif he owns
all the liquor depots, Oh yeah, he buys. He buys
all these trucks from me, all these cars.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Which one is he because I know rob.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, Robbie works at the one either.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
I thought Robbie ran animal. No Robbie and the Ali guy.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah yeah Ali, Yeah, so I run into the Okay,
this is a great story, dude. So we're at the
dealership one day and uh, this guy walks in and
all the cells were like Chad Chat show. This guy
wants to speak with the bos, wants to be the boss,
wants to be the bossing. He is losing his mind
out there, and I like, put my hands, man, I
can't deal with any more heat today.

Speaker 4 (17:19):
Yeah, I can't. I can't handle the guys. Like, can
someone else talk to this guy? He's like no, he
wants to talk to the boss.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
I'm like, okay.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
So I walk out there and dude, he is like colorful.
His hands are all over the place.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
He's like he's talking and he's talking at the speed
of light, and I'm like, dude, calm down, sir. What
seems to be the problem He's like, my name is
Ali and who are you And I'm like I'm Chad.
He goes, look, man, I want to buy a t
Rex right now. He's got a lot of cars and
I'm like, okay, we like what the order you want?

Speaker 4 (17:50):
Like they weren't even they weren't even on the ground yet,
like we're still taking orders for these things. And we
had we had a whole lot of people that were
like coming and they were like putting it too, pause
down tires and they're calling through their side with the
car anymore so, and christ was really like wearing us
out like we had to when we were working a TRX.
We had to send in a proof of deposit, proof
of a buyer's order, a signature driver's license and insurance

(18:10):
and all this kind of stuff because a lot of fake.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Orders are being put in. Ah.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
So I said, hey, man, you know it's this, it's this,
and I told them the whole thing. He's like, I
don't care, I want one or just like you wanted it.
And that car comes in like six months later finally,
and it just like.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
It was just it became a beautiful relationship.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
How many years ago is this? Because I think I
remember when he got that.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Four years ago, the white one with yeah, yeah he
got it.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
I was like, right, the fuck does he have that guy?
Because he traded worn Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
That he bought that he had bought from me, but
I didn't know he had bought it from my stool.
And so anyway, it comes in like random all of
a sudden. He's like buying cars all the time. Then
he introduced me to Yusif YUSUF wants a TRX.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
Which wants Yusif you've probably never seen him, I may
not have like mid fifties super clean cut, always wears
slacks and a button up shirt.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
No, I guess not. Yeah, like a.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
He drives like a metallic pearl green Lexus SUV. Yepinitely,
it is just like boom, like you know he's coming right.
And he is just the nicest man on the planet,
Like just they're all just the nicest you can be.

Speaker 4 (19:17):
If you ever go to one of their stores and
walk and he says, hey, go see this person. When
I walk in and say, hey, my name is Channis,
will see you. That's like red carpet. Gotcha, It just
red carpet. And so anyway, long story short, Yeah, they
probably bought like two dozen cars for me.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
You know that sounds accurate, you know, so, like I
know has a lot of cars.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
So like I call him. He's like, I can't believe
you're calling me, Like where you come on the snow?
Like I can't. I want to look at the space.
He's like, man, whatever you need, it's yours. And I said, okay,
when can I come look at it? He goes, I'll
be there in twenty minutes. So we sit.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
Outside, we come in, open it up, and we see that.
We see the cerea over here. It's like that's a
kid's room.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
It already has a window, the rig can go here.
It's got two baths. He goes, it's got two showers.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
Oh, and there's two showers behind it.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
And I'm like, this is perfect, literal, it's absolutely perfect.
It was like God put it in front of us
and said, hey, now's the time. Now's your time.

Speaker 4 (20:18):
Now you can do it. I've given you everything. Now
go ahead and make your dream come true for this.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Kind of stuff. Because we wanted like something that was affordable,
was big enough, had bathrooms, had a kids there, had
plenty of parking, had ac and heat, and they're putting
a new AC unit. It's like I just ordered it
two weeks ago. I'm just like, there's something wrong, Like, so,
what do you want for this place? He ride as
out this number and I'm like, okay, that's super cheap,
but I want it cheaper.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Ah nice, and.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
He goes okay, and he just said okay to everything.
And he's like, do whatever you want. You can keep
anything you want here, Like if you want the chairs,
if you want the tables, anything you want here, keep it.
Anything you don't want to, just let me know and
I'll get it removed. Wow. And what's like, we really
can keep these chairs? Absolutely? Tell me how many you want? Right?
And he's just been like he's been our and he's

(21:05):
been like our biggest fan. That's awesome. He calls me
all the time. How's it going, how you doing? Need anything?

Speaker 4 (21:13):
If you need something, just go next door, you know,
like if I need something, like if I need ice,
just go next door and grab it. If we're having
a party, send everybody over and they get a big discount.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
You know. He just man's and he's just as nice
as they can be.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
And that was a year ago. Wow, a year and
a month.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
You guys have been opening a year and a month.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, okay, yeah, it's crazy story. Yeah. And I never
walked up there to said out.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
Ali, I would have never had this place. That's insane
and four years in the making, you know. But it's
just like wow, because we looked at places that were
like perfect, perfect size, one parking spot, or we'd find
a spot that had like thirty parking spots and we'd
get in there and they'd have it advertised as three
thousand square feet and like two thousand.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Of it's not usable. What are we It was just
like poles everywhere, you know. We'd get somewhere and they'd
be like, well, you know it. I know it says
a C, but the a C hasn't worked in two
years and it was just completely closed off, and it
was just it was just terrible. And they're even in
the winter, so it's just everything hit all at once,
all at once, all once. It was just like wow,

(22:14):
and like our name across fit Atonement. I was like,
what do you want the name to do this? I
don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Like we
were all this stuff, all this kind of stuff, and
then one day we were at church and the appreciated
something about it, toning for your sins and rang goes
across a tone. It was just like the same thing.
It was just like everything just pop pop pop pop pop.

Speaker 4 (22:35):
And uh that was November a year and a half ago, right,
and uh.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
So we weren't we didn't, man, we didn't have our affiliate.
We weren't affiliated yet.

Speaker 4 (22:45):
So we said yes to this place before we had affiliation,
before we had our level one certification, before we had
an ounce of equipment. I mean, like I had I
had like those two stand up rigs over there.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
I had that. That was my wall rig in my garage.
It was a folding one, right. I had that red
that solid red wall ball, the gray wall ball at
the top. I had my bar bell my wife had
given me. Didn't have a box. And then all the
colored Olympic plates I have, those were in my garage.
And that's like and we had two dumbells and she's like,

(23:20):
all right, let's do it.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
So we readistered for our class in January, pasted like
into January past our class in past our certification in February,
finally got our affiliation approval in like March, whoa, and
like I don't ready start buying stuff of course, Like
we're in the January class and like, hey, we're opening
up this new gym.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
You know, this is how big we got. And like
the trainers there are like, whoa, dude, you guys need
to chill, Like y'all are going too big. You don't
need to go that big. You're gonna fail.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
That is not something.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
This is what they're telling me. That insanity. And I'm like,
why would we fail? Yeah? He's like, well, man, I've
I've had I'm like, I'm a Level four. I'm a
Level four trainer and I've had my affiliate for nine
years and i haven't even moved out of my garage yet.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
That's not you.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
I'm like, well, then you don't have high enough aspiration.
Ex Like if you want to stay in your garage,
that's on you. But like, I want to help people
and that's what this is about. This is about helping people,
and how can I help people in my garage?

Speaker 1 (24:23):
So like you gonna do one or two at a time,
Like yeah.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
So then we just like then everything keeps falling in place, dude,
everything keeps falling in place.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
My buddy Ryan Cox. You'll see on all the all
the bumper plates own Cox Fitness Supply at the time, right,
And I'm like, hey, you know I need some equipment.
I talked to him about the jam. He's like, dude,
we're done. Like we're done with this. It's too much work.
They both had regular, like normal eight to five jobs.
He goes, I'm constantly having to leave work to go

(24:52):
meet someone at my spot. He goes, what do you need?
And I gave him a laundry list of things. Again
it's like like the perfect house. Again.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
I'm like, all this stuff because I had everything, everything
you need, and again we worked out a price and
then he delivered it for me.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
That has insanity.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
And we built the rig in a Saturday Sunday. Me
and like five of my buddies. One of them knew.
A painter painted this place for me for nothing, you know,
just said hey, man, can I come work out for you.
I supplied him and his three bodies to paint. It
was just like everything was just.

Speaker 4 (25:30):
Like everything is help falling, help, help, and like we
didn't ask for help, right, it was just like people
just kept wanting to help us, and we're like great,
So I mean we did that. We started with no members,
We started with no coaches.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Dude.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
I knew one girl that used to coach at another
place that went on that that stopped doing businesses CrossFit,
and they were closing it like the same time we
rode and so I got some of their rowers, I
got some of their bikes. I got their clock timer
up there for pennies on the dollar.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
And I knew she had coached there and I knew her.
I texted her. I was like, Hey, we're just opening
up a gym.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
We're probably three months away. Would you like to come
coach for us? And I was like, I didn't get
would you like to come coach for me?

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Out of my mouth? And she says, yes, absolutely, What
time are you all going to start? And like she
started coming in the mornings and working out with us,
And we had like just a crew like six people
that were coming to like six fifteen in the morning
to work out with me. Because I didn't have a
gym membership anymore, didn't have the desk built. All we
had was the floors put down, the rig put up,
we had some barbells. We didn't even have this wall finished, right,

(26:38):
and we're sitting up here on a Sunday. It was
me and my wife. It was Ryan Ryan Cox. We'll
get and like three of my other buddies, my mother
and her husband. Right, and we're building this desk. Okay,
now he's like he's like old school, like he built
do in school. It's like this thing. You can up

(27:00):
on the thing. It's time moving, Okay, it's got twenty
four studs. Yeah. Wow, it's insane. I'm like at one
point I was like, dude, we gotta stuff.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Is too crazy.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
I wanted sitting. So we're sitting there in my phone rings,
I'm telling about Trump. This is my wife Ryan, I'm
John And what do you keep barking at?

Speaker 1 (27:20):
This is what she does during this she hears all
this stuff.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, just chill sweet. So my phone rings, I'm okay,
this is chack. It goes. Hey, my name is Travis.
I'm calling my.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Trust for Jim.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
And I looked at my wife and I was like, huh,
Like like, we didn't have a yell page. We have
a Google page, right, we didn't have a website. We
did have a Facebook page, like we had our we
had this nowhere right, like a handful of people knew
still maybe like.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Do you even have to sign outside yet?

Speaker 2 (27:49):
No, Like there maybe been twelve people that knew we
were doing.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
This, right, So it's like we were just like keeping
it super.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Quiet until we got closer to the opening day obviously,
and I was like, well, we're really not open yet,
but I mean, if you want to come work out,
all of those like we're going to open in like
two months, we want to come work out with us.
We're like, there's a group of five of us that
work out Monday, Wednesday, Friday, six fifteen. Here's a copy
there in the morning, and he shows up and he
just starts to work out. He's our first member. Don't
know how he found us, Huh, don't know, work out

(28:17):
a number.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
And I tell you that story because four months later
his wife got diagnosed with circle cancer.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
And the first thing that comes to my head is
this is what we did this for. This is why
we built this place, so we could turn and help somebody,
and all the coaches at that time actually helped us
find some more coaches. Our membership was grown, We're like
in the thirties or forties or something like that, we
still weren't very big because this was like two three,
four months later, and everyone at the same time goes,

(28:45):
let's do an event, and I'm like, I want to
do it.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
I want to do one workout. Like I went crazy
with this thing, dude.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
I'm like, I want to do a workout every hour
for twenty four hours. WHOA Like, I want to be
open for twenty four hours and I want to work
out every hour for twenty four hours. And I want
to raise this dude some money so we can fight,
so we can fight this stuff. And it went off
the chain. Dude. We had a goal. What was our goal?
Honting thirty five hundred bucks. Our goal is thirty five
hundred bucks. How much did we get up raising seventy

(29:15):
eight Like seventy eight hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Goodness, that's more than.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
Everybody was in here. We were selling, we were selling
time slots, we were selling workouts for each hour, we
were doing sponsorships for each ow and it was just
like the money.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Was just like pouring in, just pouring everyone. Like we
had a big chart over there, and it was like
we could keep up. It was just like every day
it was going four five hundred bucks. That's and then
we'd have someone donate five hundred bucks and not one
like is anonymous, here's five hundred bucks. You know.

Speaker 4 (29:45):
It was just like it's the word was spreading and
it was like this is what we did this for
and our very first member, like.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
It couldn't have been more picture perfect. It was like
everything that we wanted to do happened, and it's just
growing from there.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Like we don't advertise, yeah, you know, I don't. I
don't spend any money on search, right, you know, I
keep my.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Google, you know, just because I want to be relevant
with Google, of course, but that's all are advertising a
new word of mouth, ye, friends, family referrals, and just
treating people the right way. Yeah, and they just want
if they want their friends to come, and then they
want their parents to come in, and they want their kids
to come. Like we've got probably a dozen mother daughter

(30:24):
father's father daughter duos that come work out here. That's
really cool. You know, our youngest is fifteen, okay wow,
and our oldest member is probably almost seventy.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
So well, once people come here and they feel safe,
obviously they're gonna tell everybody else and they're like y
oh yeah, y'all need to come over here now.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, and we just we kind of we we got
to the point where people were telling us when they
were going on a vacation like, hey, I'm worn on
vacation next week, and I'm like, okay, man, cool, she's up.

Speaker 4 (30:54):
And they'd be like, well, I don't want you to
worry about me, you know, I don't want you like
you haven't been here for covid asn't should like where
are they? So they wore start telling us when they
were going places, Hey, I'm not going to be.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Here this weekend.

Speaker 4 (31:04):
I'll be back Tuesday, right, you know, I'm gonna be
gone all next week or hey, you know in the
month of June.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
I'm like, they were prepping.

Speaker 4 (31:11):
Us, so you don't worry about it about them, and
my wife doesn't worry about them. The coach are like, hey, man,
where is Alisha Ben? Where is Barry Ben? You know,
where's Michelle Ben?

Speaker 2 (31:20):
They were like they don't want they don't want a story.
You know, they were prepping us and they pay us.

Speaker 4 (31:25):
Yeah, like they pay us to come here and they're
making sure that we know that they're okay and they're
not going to be around and uh, you know one
of the members, you know, Alisha, you know, she was
like the first person that told us, And I was like, okay, man, cool,
I thank you for telling us. She's just like, well,
I went to this other gym and I was going
for like two months and they didn't even know m

(31:45):
and like I was going for three.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Days and you called me and asked me where it was.
I was like, well, you know, we just like just
do things differently. You know, I'm big on I'm real
big on Amazon, you know, like I want to treat
people what Amazon treats people. If you call Amazon, do
you ever hear now, good point? Do you ever hear
We're not gonna help you in right? Do you ever hear?

Speaker 4 (32:08):
There's no way you never get. It's always like how
can we help you? What can we do to make
your experience better?

Speaker 2 (32:14):
So and so? And that's kind of like what I
want to do. I want like everyone to feel like
we care about them and only them, right, you know,
it's not like we care about you. We let'st care
about everybody else. We care about you. You're the most
important portion to us, no matter what the situation is.
So it's just been a whole lot of that, like
everything's just kind of falling or falling into place and

(32:37):
coming to our labs where it's just been like, this
is what you're supposed to do. Yeah, you always hear
those like those stories where you know, you fight it,
you fight it, and you fight it, you fight this
is what I want, this is what I wanted, This
is what I want. And it's like my wife told me,
she's like, just be patient, come when it comes, and
if it doesn't come, it's okay, Yeah we'll do something different.
And it's just like a game and it's just like

(32:57):
it's been great, right, you know, it's been absolutely great.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like everything like you said,
we're just falling into place, and why would why would
you fight that because everything's already going the way you
needed to go. Yeah, and then yeah the spot opens up,
and then yeah, everything after that it's insanity.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Like we're always like.

Speaker 4 (33:15):
We're very like when it comes out, it's the best
risky Yes, I want to say a counting and I'm
just like I'm like that, guys, like I don't have
any fear less just go and like finally we both
agreed and it.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Was just like it was like it was fun. We
have a good time. Like I don't mind coaching five am.
I don't mind coaching six fifteen because I like my people.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah, you know, like my two morning crews.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
I miss him, yeah, you know all on Sundays, I'm like, hey,
wait for tomorrow. Like I don't dread waking up at
four am, yeah, because I know I get to see
all these people I get to see every morning. Yeah,
and they're happy to be here. They do their little
complaining where we can make fun of it and we
can have a good time with it and they're all happy.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
You know, at the end the day, it's really of
what it's And they come for her, well, mainly come
for her. I mean she's very sweet, yeah when she's
not barking edge, which is pretty rare. Well, so when
it comes to like, I know they have the CrossFit
games every year, how much do you have people here
that want to try to compete for that?

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Is?

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Like is that their goal? Or like obviously everyone comes
in here and anybody comes to any gym tries to
figure out what their goals are going to be. And
then I always think that people need to find out
what what workout and what kind of gym works out
better for you because everybody is like, oh we'll cross
it doesn't work, or oh I don't like to lift weight,
or oh I don't like cardio blah blah, but whatever
it is. But when the people come here and they
when they see what the CrossFit games are, which is insanity.

(34:41):
It's almost like the peak athletes and peak athletes that
are not the Olympics.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
That's like going and pitching to Mike Trout right exactly.
You know, we're trying to catch Tom Brady's past.

Speaker 4 (34:49):
Yeah, with Antonio Brown running by a side, right, Okay,
you're not going to compete.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
With those people, right, those one yes, And that's you
have to like, you really have to explain to people.
Those are the ones. You know, they drilled something.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Into our head when we got our level one and
it's kind of stuck with me, like it's like, of
all the things. This was a two day class, which
I know is not a lot having people's health in
your hands, but it was very it's very.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Informant, it's a very it's very in tune, it's very
to the point, it's very it's very detailed, even though
it's only two days. But they drilled in our head
was ninety percent of the people will scale ninety percent
of the time. M just because you have like Friday's
workout or I don't even know what Friday's workout as anymore,

(35:34):
but like I don't think. I think the only person
that did it as it was written was me and
one of my other coaches, and no one cares. Yeah,
like we had that side right there, but this is
good enough. Yeah, you know we do form overweight. Yes,
we do form over high school gymnastics, form over any

(35:58):
kind of like heavy dey running and rowing. Like you know,
we're going to make sure your form is good before
you get crazy with something, because you can really mess
yourself up, can I mean you really can. So that's
the core thing we like really like we have probably
four or five of us that want to compete at
CrossFit Games level. No, we don't have anybody like that,

(36:22):
and that's okay, Like.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
To be just honest with you, that's not the gym
we want good you know, we want a competitive, fun,
family friendly environment where you know, we did we did
the open hoping would just happened.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Not too long ago. We had like sixty something people
sign up to do it just here. That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
We had four teams. We had everyone had like a
team captain, which was coaches and coaches board with coaches.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
You know, and we we drew them. We like brought
it in a hopper, you know, like a bingo thing.
Everyone's name in it, and we just drew names randomly
like that. And we had a big Facebook live event
you should go look at. It's pretty funny. Yeah, And
we just wrote them on the boards. We did it,
and that's how we picked our teams, and we like
we were here. We would come on Fridays. We would

(37:10):
start at five. We would go over like a little
bit of workout, you know. We would do like these
are the standards, these are the things you need to
do if you want to be legit. And then we
had people judge, like everyone got to judge, Like just
because you've only been doing this like a month or
like even two weeks, we let them judge. That's cool,
you know, we shouldn't what to look for. We had
people that would change weights and then everyone competed like

(37:34):
and it was just a bunch of fun, you know.
And so there's like four or five of us that
could go to competitions and do good, right, but anything
like we had Illy. Illy is my six fifteen coach.
She qualified for TFX. This is the Fitics Experience this year,
and she did good in her age group. She did well.

(37:55):
We're all very proud of her. I think she got
like twelve out of like thirty people. That's because she's
very good, very good. TFX is very I mean that's
not just like people in Austin's like that's like there's
been like games athletes go to that.

Speaker 4 (38:08):
It could be there was games athletes there this year,
could be. So it's it's a good it's a good
judge of your fitness level. She's probably our fittest person,
you know.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Better than that. We got to look, four or five
of us are just regular. We get RX, but then
we scale, we scale workouts too. But I said, that's
not we're.

Speaker 5 (38:27):
Not looking for that nice Okay, those having a whole
bunch of and I hate calling those people having a
whole bunch of those high levels super duper competitive, extremely
fit people.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah, they scare regular.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
People of course, because they're like I can't be that, Like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
This isn't this isn't the place for me, right, but
when you walk in and you.

Speaker 4 (38:48):
See like my brother, Yeah, God, bless her is a
small person. Yeah, and she's in here blessing her, but
having a good time with my wife's mother and then our.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Gym mother, Polly, and they're all just having a good time.
You know, they're working out, they're sweating, they're messing up
the workout, and they're just enjoying themselves. Like an hour,
that's what we want. That's awesome. You know. So those
people are more than local, They're probably not going to
be happier, right, you know, we're more of the eighty percenters.
You know, I have a role in the car business.

(39:23):
You know, there's ten percent they're complete jerks. There's ten
percent that are gonna do whatever you say. You're gonna
buy that car, Okay, yeah, you know there's ten percent
of the like this is the crazy. I don't care
you're gonna tend what to do. I'm a jerk, you know.
So always like it's eight, we focused on the eighty
percent of people because those are the people that you
could make happy the majority of the time. And that's

(39:43):
what we have here. We have a very solid group
of eighty percenters. Yeah, that want to stay fit. I
want to be able to pick up their grandkids, want
to be able to play with their kids. Yeah, I
want to be able to just run around with their dog.
Want to be able to get up out of a chair.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Without being in pain or moaning or moaning.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Or getting out of bed without cracking four thousand. Yeah, yeah,
you know that's the gym we have. Yeah, that have
family lives that aren't gonna be here all the time,
but they have soccer games and basketball games and football
games and cheer and track and all that kind of
stuff and we can root them on. Yeah, you know,
that's the gym we have. I love that. So, yeah,
we don't have those people.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Well, so as much as we were in Arlington, we're
also in Pantigo, and Pantago is very good about the
Mama Pop places. How has the reception been with Pantigo
and the relationship.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
And with them, man, my wife has a really good
relationship with them. You wanna chr you wanna chime in
on this. The city of Pantigo, like Language Passenger Pigeons.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
How's the relationship with Pantigo.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
Oh it's really good.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yeah, they're.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
They're like really supported on social media.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
I'm bad about tagging them on stuff. As long as
I tag them on stuff, they will share it. And
sometimes when I grow up tag them, we could like
forget Yeah, still find it and share it.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
They'll do like shout outs every now and then and
they'll have us on there. They do have a lot
of monthly like meetings just business owners you kind of
being on top. We haven't been able to go.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
To those yet, but you know they exist, yes, yeah,
so but I.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Do know like when I go, cause cause when we
had the grand opening, all of the other small businesses
the owners came here. Yeah, the opening, So that was
really cool and luckily we had other people show up,
but I was kind of nervous now to show up,
and so it was.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Super cool to then it came they ever had like
a hundred people in that night.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Yeah, they had some Antigo, fire was here, board came, yeah,
everybody else here.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
So they're definitely supportive. They they have good marketing plans
in place for to make small businesses like this grow
and kind of be seen on social.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
Media for sure.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Yeah, I know. Shot Pantego does a fantastic job with
all of that, and I think against the City of Arlington,
but they are lacking big time when it comes to
my mind.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
I mean they showed up that day, they were like
we put the sticker on your door or like yeah,
and like ever since then, we're included on all of them.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
The small business I love that and they're super easy
work with, like this competition, like even the inspections. Yeah,
like they came in like you know, we were innovating
our house or an it was terrible, yeah, terrible, And
then uh Pantego was just like so like what are
you doing here? When you do a gym, he's like
cool man, Like when y'all play, like he was asking

(42:39):
us like when we were gonna open, yeah, like what
are y'all gonna open? Like what's it gonna do? What
are y'all gonna do? Like what's it gonna be?

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Like?

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Is it something I can do?

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (42:46):
You know, and it was just like it was more conversational, right,
like they weren't. It wasn't just all business. Yeah, And
then you know, even like when the fire Marshal came
out like to do the inspection for that, He's like alright, man,
I'm just make sure stuff is up today springers look
good man, good luck guys.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
And so they also gave us some tips because like,
we have a back door that doesn't have a handle
on the back and they realize that they were like, hey,
I mean this passes, but just to let you know,
like you might want.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
To change this just yeah, just to be safe.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
And then when we went to apply for the permit
for the back they were just like, I didn't know
what to do right, Like I had never applied for
a special event permit and they were just like, okay,
give you a second, and they walked me through the
whole thing. Wow, they're like and they even like help
me get like my map on the top of my
buildings that I can mark out for them like where
like what I needed. And they're like, can you just
do it just like this? If you do it just
like this, you're gonna be fine. Just like this. Just

(43:37):
do it like this, okay, and this is what we need.
We don't need a whole but don't give us too
much information. Just this is what you're doing. This is
what you're never like super super helpful that it was
like Forrie and they were all over there like, hey,
you know, when's this gonna be now? You know, they're like,
can we come out there? You know, they're they're just
like her. She's had a ton of interaction with them.
That's why you're barking around the conversation. But like the

(43:58):
two times I've interacted with them, man just assaulted the arth. Yeah,
just super duper nice.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
You know, want to just help, yeah, like legitimately just
you can tell they want to.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Help, right, you know. Now, obviously y'all are a married
couple that own a business. Is there like a safe
word y'all use so you don't talk about business when
you're out doing whatever it is? Or is it kind
of like always open?

Speaker 2 (44:22):
It's it's usually always Yeah. I think we've.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
We've never had that problem.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, Yet now you're gonna think about like, wait a minute,
we don't wanna talk about this.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
To figure out how to divide things, m even like
maybe what three months ago, we had a switch. We're
like I was in charge of arding all the merchandise. Yeah,
and I realized that just wasn't my thing. That's really switched.
Stress was taken off. Try to divide and conquer that
in each other's laying too much.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
She's got way more strings than she handles.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Like Bernie's the face of the company, right, I obviously
listening to business like Ryan Handle's right, has all the
different stuff that I'm not capable of handling. Right, Like,
I'm just stop. You know, I can talk to people
all day long. I can make sure members are happy, right,
and I have no fear of calling them. I don't
have a single problem taking a risk like they Like

(45:20):
when we started doing first law, I'm like, let's just
go ahead first, you know, it's like an eighteen hundred
dollars word. She's like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
I'm like we're gonna be fine, you know. So like
it's that stuff that like she does really well of
keeping me.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
In checked and that's very important.

Speaker 4 (45:35):
Yes, And I think we've gotten to the point where
we know and we're both done.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
So we just stopped talking about it, you know, like
we don't need like, Okay, we're done, like we should stop.
We just kind of like one of us to walks away. Okay. Yeah,
she wanted some things taken off her plate. There were
some things I didn't want to do anymore, you know,
like I just didn't. I don't like it. Yeah, you know,
just and if you don't like something, you're gonna figure
right away to screw it up for sure.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Shortcuts herself, all right.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah. So she does a really good job with all
the stuff that I don't like, okay.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
You know, like she always even though I take care
of the schedule, that's her thing, you know.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
And she's like, did you do the schedule? Are you sure?
Did you did? You make sure? You know right, can't
do this, And I'm like, yeah, I remember, I remember,
thank you, I remember.

Speaker 4 (46:21):
You know, Like even though like she doesn't still do
the schedule, she still makes tread and.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
I don't screw it up, you know, because that's her realm, right,
Like she's the itinerary and the schedule of the planning.
And I'm just like, let's go yeah, yeah, we'll fit
it in. Yeah, we'll figure it out. I'm that way. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
You know.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
We go on a trip and I'm like, okay, we're
going here, and this is when we arrived, and this
is when we leave everything in betweens up for grabs, true,
you know, And she's like, okay, well we're gonna get
up at seventy and we need to be dressed by.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Seven color coordinatederary.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
That's cute.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
I like that, but I always leave a day in there.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
We have no think as you do only because of you,
because it drives me creepy, right.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Like that's just like when.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
My mom goes on vacation, She's like, shades are open
six in the morning, Like, you don't have to vacation.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
What are we doing right now? This is awful. That's
one thing I do. Like we'll we sit on them.
That gives us like four or five days of like
an hour or two piece in the morning, sit and
chill and drink coffe.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
Yeah, you know, and just like even if we don't talk,
we're just it's just quiet time, you know.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
And we would just sit there and chill.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, you know, a good way to ease in the morning. Yeah,
that wed.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
The pretty good. We've been together twelve years now. I
think we're gonna make it. Especially now here's the thing.
You know you're gonna make it. We gunted a house and.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Renovated it, oh wow, and everything did it killed each
other and we started a business together. That's a lot
kill each other.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
So I think we're Okay, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
I think're all gonna be fun. Yeah, I think we did.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
I think we've done good. So she's really good at
keeping me each other. As she laughs, that's the biggest
challenge of is life, keeping me in check. It was
like one of her vowels, like, yeah, make sure you
don't do this, this, and this all the time. Shoes. Oh,

(48:18):
he has a watch collection. I have a watch fetish.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
I'm not a big watch guy, mainly cause I'm allergic
to metal. So for me, it was never something that
I was like, Okay, cool watches. Uh, but I can
appreciate them.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
But yeah, I'm not a Yeah, I'm I'm I'm a
big watch guy. How many watches do you own? How
many watches do you It's I don't know that many,
at least ten yet more. Now it's a lot.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Are they like in a box or boxes or they're
like displayed as I say, there's six of.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
'em there in display case. She has two and does
to rotate right as a sh well has a shoe. Man,
Don't let her fool you. She's got she's got some
free but yeah, they you know, they're in display like
the ones I wear regularly, right, you know, I don't
like to I don't like to reset them all the time. Automatics.
I just like I'll leave mumble watch winer, gotcha. You
know they're the ones that I don't wear that often.

(49:11):
Just they sit in the big wrong watch box and
they just they just sleep. Yeah, you know, ones I
just probably shouldn't have bought. But you know it's like
one of those had to have had to have it. Gotcha
had to have it.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
He justifies it now, because watches only appreciate and value if.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
They're taking care of, yes, which is crazy. Yeah, almost
everything else in life you buy and like all right
by money.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean like probably my third watch
I ever bought. You know, it was like now you
you would volmit if you like at the price ain't
paid for when the brand new, right, Like it was
just like so readily available, like you could just call
it like it's back when like every boutique can sell
a rollings, right, you know, so like walks wasn't that

(49:56):
big video, right, you know, like the higher end ones
were like tough, but like you're.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Just like you may not know this.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
Now you can't just go and.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Buy, Yeah, you just can't. You get vetted. Really, you
just can't walk into a boutique buy roluts anymore. Why
they just don't want them everywhere because.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
And then they're not as the gray market.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
So like you could go into a Rolluts store, you
could buy a Relex and like they would. They became
so difficult to get during COVID, COVID totally jacked up
the watch markets exactly, and you would buy that you
would like you would sit on like a watch dealer,
like we buy I buy my watches from autumns. They're
not even in business anymore, so I don't know what
I'm gonna do anymore. But like you go and you

(50:37):
buy one from them, like you would sit and they
would say, hey, here, we've got this watch, and you know,
people would go in there and buy them. And it
got to the point where the authorized Dealers ads were
like monitoring third party sites because people would go pay
retail for like a ten thousand dollar watch and then
put it on eBay or Chrono Watch or one of

(50:59):
those places like that for twice as much because that's
how difficult they were to get. Wow, So they started
monitoring them and they would like they would like make
you late and they would sell you one and if
they ever found it on a site, you didn't get
to go buy another one. Right of course you got
blacklisted at all the eighties. That's amazing. So like it
got that bad, or like you would go get like

(51:20):
a Batman, for instance, a black and blue bezel and
it's like eighty nine or dollars retail, and they were
going for nineteen grand. Woof, you know, and that was
a good deal on, right. People were just flipping them
like crazy, so they put a huge deal on. So
now it's like you go into a Rolloux boutique now
and it says for display purposes only. You just can't
walk in and bol anywhere.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
And then if you have never bought from them, yeah,
just good luck. Minds would piss off. Wow.

Speaker 4 (51:48):
You know, Like I jokingly walked into one that I
had never bought one before, had a nice watch on
my wrist, you know, wasn't dressed like this, but I
like I had like a hoodie on and I had
like a kid in tow and I look like.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
I shouldn't be in there, right, And I ask about
a watch and they're like, yeah, yeah, it give us
your name and number, we'll call you m That was
four years ago. Say no, you know, just say no, man,
like we get it, Like you don't think I can
buy a watch? Okay, cool whatever, But yeah, you just
can't do that anymore. Interesting. I didn't do it with
a lot of them.

Speaker 4 (52:21):
Yeah, you still buy a who Blot Black Cardier. But
like the tough like and some of the rouxs, you
can't like.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Walking and get it through there. Yeah, but like the
ones that are very very sought after, good.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Luck, it'll be two years, good and two years and.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
That's if you bought something from they'll like make you
spend as much as the watches before they'll sell you
an entrance fee. Yeah, it's vetting process.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
That's hilarious. I'll be good for them. But at the
same time, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
It just it's screwed up the watch mark. Yeah, by
you know, people being greedy. Yeah, I mean that's what
we are mean America.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Yeah, I mean the spirits resale market also same way.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
So it's like, yeah, it is like you said to
tell me about that all the time.

Speaker 4 (53:04):
Yeah, you know, because when he bought one of his trucks, uh,
he brought.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Me a bottle of Pappy van Winkle, Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
And I was like, yeah, cool, I didn't know what
I mean. I collected, but I don't like collectedly is
it like I don't drink liquor? Right? So he handed
to me and you know, one of my Soulsimen was like,
what do he just give you? I hated it, damn.
He's like this put little bottle, pappy. Yep. I'm like, okay, cool,
I don't know what that means. And it looks like

(53:32):
seventy five hundred bucks. Whoa. I was like, good, which
year was that? It was like five years ago?

Speaker 4 (53:37):
No, I met like it's sitting up pop shelf and
you know, my pantry and it's like got so much.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Dust on it you probably can't see it. Wow, you know,
but it's like that, Yeah, he was telling me. But
he's like, you know, this is like we only get
so many of these, yeah, like we only get so
many like bourbons, we only get so many blands. Yeah,
you know, we really get it. And he was like
he'll call me. He's like, hey, I've got this, this
and this, and I only get nine of these year
one most times, Like no, like, what's the point, right,
It's just not my thing. Yeah, if you want to

(54:05):
get it to me, of course, I'm cool.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
But I will always take free liquor.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
And I'm just I'll tell them, dude, I don't drink it,
don't waste it on me. You know. It's like someone
that you know like is going to enjoy it. Let
them enjoy it. Yeah, I'm not. I'm never going to
enjoy that.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, you know a beer dude in.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
A box wine guy. I'm a big box wine guy.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
There's so much good box wine out there, Like, it's
they get a lot of awards. People always poo poo
on it, but it is. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
We love the photo box.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
The boxes are possibly the better ones.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Yeah, and then they have one that's like the light.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Version they like Breeze. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
You don't even know how much you drink.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
That's the best thing about box wines is that you
don't know how much you're like, it's empty.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah, and I don't think it should be empty. No,
you know, we just bought that.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
You're doing the like, when did I open the Like.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
I hadn't had any yet. What are you doing? Guess? Yeah,
Like COVID really messed up a lot of that interesting
and COVID really destroyed a lot of gems.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Oh for sure, Because I remember I was working out
in my garage already my old house, and I already
had all the equipment I needed, and I was good,
but like, you know, you're already at home, might want
some extra stuff. Yeah, no, good fucking luck. Because COVID,
everybody bought everything.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
And everyone was reselling it, and you're just like, dude,
and you'd always see the same people and they'd be
like it was always like rude comments like don't ask
me if it's any cheaper because it's not, and you're
just like, yeah, okay, yeah, what do you want me
to do? Yeah? The code really vested up a lot
of that stuff really like enhanced the secondary market because

(55:42):
it was so difficult to get it firsthand, and the
people just had gold with gold because people just pay whatever,
like if you had it, they would pay whatever. Car
businesses like that too.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Mmm.

Speaker 4 (55:56):
That was one thing that we made it a point
of we weren't going to take advantage of people sold
cars on your MISRP. Yeah wow, We'd sell cars four
MSRP that were going for five and ten grand over jeez.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
It just wasn't the right way to do business. Yeah,
you know you you treat people the right way. It
comes back on you. Yeah, you treat people the right
way and nothing ever happens. You can at least be
happy to what you did exactly.

Speaker 4 (56:20):
You know you've built tag on Like I go buy
a fifty pound dumbell that no one can get and
I want to sell it for nine dollars a pound.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Yeah, and I bought it for a dollar a pound.
I'm really doing it right by anybody. No make a
dollar a pound. Yeah, you know, just be happy with
what you've done, right, that's what you want to do. So. Yeah,
COVID really messed up a whole and shut a lot
of gyms down.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Yeah, it did.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
You had like ten foot by ten foot you know
boxes you could be in. You don't have so many people.
But COVID didn't live down here where we're sitting right now.
Oh no, COVID died. Yeah, it dies at the forty
eight inch level. Yeah, Like we joke about that, Like,
you know, it's like smoking sections, like you know, Chic,
are you still smoking El Chico? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Is it? Is it that in the garden? Then you
shouldn't be able to.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Make smoking El Chico.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Well, I know it.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
They have a smoking section in the bar.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Weird.

Speaker 4 (57:16):
Yeah, but the smoke stops at the bar is like
seven ft. Why it stops like it's a it's like
that cartoon barrier.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 4 (57:24):
So it's like the same thing like COVID doesn't live
below four feet and smoking doesn't exit outside its.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Yeah I know, John Bees, you can still smoke in yeah. Yeah,
but I just figured it's a dowar in the gardens thing, John,
Yeah Bees, Uh, Arkansas just up.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
He's always wanted to take me there.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
It's not bad, you know, I think.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
They Oh is that the one that's over here? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Okay across from the yet the old house that mysteriously
burned down that no one wanted to buy. Everyone had
a murder story about it, and everyone at least got
one trouble with the cops for going in there at
some point. But yeah, just burned down. It's yeah, miraculously
burned down one time. And they still haven't built a
new things, so I don't know. Wow, Yeah, this area

(58:10):
is fun. Well, we have a second on the show.
We call it the Tournament Topping, trying to find the
best pizza place in Arlington. What is y'all's favorite pizza place?

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Man, you hit us, you hit just you just hit
us between the eyes on it.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Oh good? Okay, we frequent too, Okay, we frequent too.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Old school pizza, of course is great. Yeah, we've been
wonder since before he bought it.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Okay, Des is amazing. Yeah, I mean yeah, that place
has gone through a lot of ups and downs, but
the pizzas always been. I think the.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
Pizza is top notch. Des is old school business owner.
Like if you're there and he's there, he's saying hi
to everybody, good and it's not just hi, how are
you doing the shake of the hand. The dude sits
down and like has a conversation with you. It is
generally interested about your life and what you're doing and
how things are going. Like it's it's it's very refreshing.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
That's what a business should be.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Yeah, like this.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
This competition we're having, I've just mentioned it to him. Hey,
we're having a competition, Dune seven. I'm looking for sponsors.
And it's like, how much do you need? I'm in
you know, just come find me. But every time we're
there and so hey, hey, stops whatever, He's doing. He
walks over, he says, hi to our kids.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (59:17):
You know, our oldest son hadn't been there for what
a year, I think it was a year, and he
still remembered his name.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Wow. You know, that's insane. And the other one we
frequent pretty quickly is Mellow Mushroom. Yeah too. Marissa the
waitress there, she used to walk around a boot, hands
down best waitress Snarlton at Best Water.

Speaker 4 (59:38):
Snarleton loves the kids, shows the kids all the love
in the world.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Lets him make their own pizza.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Oh that's cool.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Lets him go back there and make their own drinks,
you know, just like she's like, come on, let's go.
And they want to do it and want to go
with her, and we trust her.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Yeah, and she's just great.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Those are the two pieces.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
I love that so much. Yeah, Old School is almost
everyone's number one.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
So yeah, that place is the bomb. Yeah, the bomb.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Oh yeah, that's yeah. If if I go there and
don't order that, I feel like something's wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
And they have a great selection of beer.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Yes, yeah, I'm much happier now that all the beer
is actually all the taps are being used, as opposed
to before I was like yeah, oh what happened?

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
What? We really liked Dees Yeah, and we really like
Marissa and allomush yeah, so shout out.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Those two a great ask for Marissa at Mellow, asked
for at old school there, those two are great.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
We'll tell us about the competition, real fest we got.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
It's a two gym competition, so we wanted to make
sure one we could handle one. Right. I think doing
a competition.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
Is very it's very scary because if it's successful, good, yes,
like you'll continue to do it and people will want
to come to year next and they'll tell me I
did this competition is great. If you don't have a
good competition, everyone tells everybody cost fit is very dighting it. Yeah,

(01:01:01):
So if you have a good competition, you're gonna be
successful and you're gonna get people in the past.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
So we wanted to make sure we can do that.
That's awesome. So my f my good friend's own crossed Midlothian.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
Okay, And funny, that's funny that you bring that up
because I asked.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Two of the local CrossFit gems mmm.

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
If they wanted to do this with me, and neither
one the said yes hmm And I.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Liked called Robert. I was like, hey, this is what
I'm thinking. He goes, I'm in. Yeah, Like again, I'm
in before I can even get all.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Out of that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:32):
So it's just our two gyms. Okay, it's a partner competition. Uh,
it's no RX, so it's no prescribed athletes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
So it's gonna be all of our beginners. Yeah, and
all of our intermediate athletes.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Oh that's awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
Uh no coaches, Yeah, no owners obviously, and uh it's
a two person competition. It's all down Saturday, June seventh, obviously,
come out.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
I wanted to do it for beginners and intermediate because
from experience, it's like, I don't wanna go out there
and compete, Jim, I've never been to it's scary. And
so for them to be able to have the opportunity
to do it here with their friends and you know
people that they work out every day, we just wanted

(01:02:14):
to give them the opportunity so that way they you know,
had the confidence to go and do a competition somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
Ruh, yeah and tell us what we did right and wrong.
Of course, you know that's what that was my biggest fear. Yeah,
you know, Ryan, The coaches were like, hey, let's give
them the space to do it without them being fearful.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
And my fear was we would do.

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
This and no one would tell me if it was
bad or not, you know, And I'm just like, I
wanted to be close people.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
So like, if Emily Man, this was great, this was great,
this was great, She's not gonna be scared to tell
me this sucked.

Speaker 4 (01:02:50):
Yeah, don't do this again, you know. So, uh, two
person competition male male, female female. Uh, four workouts. We've
got some super cool prizes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Some of the vendors that we've partnered with have really
like stepped up and get us some pretty cool stuff.
Considering what we're charging for the event, those two person
competitions one hundred fifty bucks. Wow, we charge one hundred
oh wow. Basically we're just covering our expenses. Yeah, there
might be a little extra. We'll get the one way
yeah yeah, and we'll see if we can logistically hold one,

(01:03:23):
you know, and if we if we can, and it's
great and it goes for.

Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
And we can work the kinks out too. Yes, it's
much easier to work the kinks out with.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Your members because they understand versus you know, you got
say fifteen outside teams, and they're just like, what is
going on? We're supposed to go at nine oh five?
I warmed up, you know, and then you're just like,
oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 (01:03:48):
Then people's just like it's just a bunch of head
buddy just you're it's damage control.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
Yeah, So we figured we could work at all the
kinks if we use the open as the first kink.
How many people can we run, how many heats can
we run? What's timeline going to be? What is our
plan when we get out of line, Like if we
started getting behind, what's our plan to get back? Yeah,
and then we just got We've got a good support staff.

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):
We've got a bunch of members that are are ex
athletes that are like, I'll.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Completely come judge, I'll completely come help change weights.

Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
It's awesome, Like just because they're not going to be
they can't do it, they still want to help, right,
And same thing with the other gym, those that are
just they can't because of their stat at their fitness level,
it's like, we'll come.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Help, you know. So that's kind of the gist of it.
We just wanted it to be. So we wanted to
be comfortable. Yeah, and if people are comfortable coming here,
they're that's the majority of you. The sycophore wife said,
you walk into a place you've.

Speaker 4 (01:04:49):
Never been to, and it's just like, where's the bathroom? Okay,
I'm nervous, Okay, we're up at my stuff. Okay, where's
the warm up area? Am I allowed to drop this?

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
I drop this plane? You know you're just like you're
super duper timid. I just didn't want that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
Most of most of your beginner athletes have never competed before, sure,
and those are the ones that need to Those are
the ones that really need to get out there and
see because they see where they're at here. Is this
a good Does this give them a good idea where
they're at?

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Probably not. They can watch what they do, but they
need to see what like a whole bunch of them
are doing that way they see, I'm pretty fit, fit individual.
I did way better than I thought I could. Same
thing for the intermediate ATHLETs in the middle of the
road athletes where you're just like.

Speaker 4 (01:05:41):
Most of the gym is intermediate, but it's like you
don't always work out with them. Yeah, you'll work out
with this group of people five am, you'll work out
with this group of people. At six fifteen, you'll work
at this group of eight fifteen ers.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Then every once in a while you'll flip like you'll
come to a later class. But then you're just like,
I don't know you.

Speaker 4 (01:05:58):
Yeah, you know, so like I see you name on
the board, but now I can actually see who you are,
and I can see what you're doing, and it's like
you can get.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
A better idea of where you're at.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
So that's why we just we eliminated coaches, We eliminated
anyone that was like pretty fit, and we just wanted
to like just want to do something for the majority
of our members. Again, like we wanted to do something
for the majority of our members that normally wouldn't get
to do this, right, you know, we got people that
probably wouldn't compete and we said, hey, a bunch of
us are doing this competition. They'd be like, no, let's
go support you. Yeah, you know, and that doesn't give

(01:06:30):
me the same.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
Feel you know, also a good motivation too, like like
you said, like, oh I'm way better or oh not
as good as them, but I saw what they were doing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Yeah I can do that. You typically will you'll have
a whole bunch of people that are rooting for you.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
Yeah, because you've been to across the gym before. We
do have those members are like, if I'm still working out,
turn your head.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
I don't want to hear you. I don't want to
hear you. Go come on, let's finish.

Speaker 4 (01:06:55):
They're just like, no, just walk away, Just let me
finish in peace, you know. But then there's people that thrive.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
On sure, you know, there's people that are just like,
hey man, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the encouragement. I
needed it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:07):
Yeah, you know, because you get your mind gives up
before your body does any time, and if you haven't
been doing this a long time, your mind gives up
even sooner.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
The longer you work out, how long do you do anything,
the stronger your mind becomes. Yep, And the more per
seriance you have, and the more you can push through
that a little bit of pain, because it's really just
a little bit of pain. Yeah, then you're just being
of it, you know, talking about twelve minutes, anybody can.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Do something for told minutes exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
That's the majority of what the workouts are, right. It's
a competition where she's really relaxed. You're like part of
the fan, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
I'm fine. Well he said she didn't have a nap,
so yeah, Well, if people want to find you guys online,
obviously you know, come by the gym.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
How can they do all the things at CrossFit atonement
dot com. There we go, Facebook page across oftement, Instagram
page across Atonement, my personal cell phone. You can text me,
call me. It's on the door.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
We're pretty open around here. If I don't call you
back or we don't respond to an inquiry, we will
very quickly. But there's two of us that do it.
Me and then Ray who's my new member coordinator. We
both get the email, okay, so we'll just immediately hated
you see it, and it's like first to respondents. Yeah,

(01:08:18):
but we always include ourselves, like if she takes someone
that I haven't, it's always like, hey, this is Ray
or coordinator, and then I've also included chat. If you
have any questions, you can text either one of us
or calling one of us. We call, or you can
just you can just show up. Man. Yeah, there's five
classes a day. Saturdays are always free.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
Okay, if you want to come.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Work on Saturday with us. That's always free. We do
something a little bit different than a lot of CrossFit gyms.
You have five days free. Wow, no matter what. Okay, So, like,
if you want to try this out and you've never
done it before and you're super scared, which most people are.
Most people you know that CrossFit word has a four
letter word.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Yeah, I feel like you're joining a cult or something.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Yeah, so you can come in. You can check it out,
you know, because like in our experience, like we will
go drop in somewhere else. We always drop in, like
the most inopportune day, Okay, Like the day we'll drop
in we're on vacation is the day where it's like
it's a ten k bike, a four k row and
a mile run, a mini trathl one. I just spent
twenty five bucks to do what I could have done

(01:09:21):
outside on vacation, you know. So that's what I don't want,
you know, my life again. The brain's the operation. She's like,
I want people to be able to come in and
feel comfortable from day one and not feel like they didn't.

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
Get anything, because you might be flipping Like you might
be an early person, but you might be able to
come to the five.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Sixteen or the age fifteen class. And let's say you
come in and most crossing gyms give you one day.
You come into that five am class and if you
just don't mess with them, like it's.

Speaker 4 (01:09:51):
Just not the same personality, or you're kind of scared,
you're not super duper talkative.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
Yet, because our five am classes are very talkative, very talkative,
they have to really wrangle them in sometimes, like I'm
talking about huge glass. Oh come on, guys. So like
sometimes it doesn't work, you know, like like you know,
or you don't like to work out, or you don't
feel that well that day and you wasted your one freer.
So it's like we give people five days. That way

(01:10:16):
they can come check out a couple of different classes,
they can get an experience of a couple different coaches,
they can meet a couple of different people, and it's
a little less intimidating.

Speaker 4 (01:10:25):
You know, you're not just locked into that one day
and then you're gonna start getting beat up about joining.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
We don't beat anybody up about joining. Like it's like,
do you want to be part of the family. Fantastic
If you don't completely understand did we do something wrong.
Did we rub you the wrong way and someone's say
something to you. If they did, please let us know.
We want to fix it right, you know. And if
you don't want to be a member, you're always still
well over right, you know. If you want to come
on free days, come on free days. We have a
couple of people that only come on hiders and it's

(01:10:54):
just like a lot of gyms would get would start
to get tired of that one. Yeah, of course, but
like come it's free for reason. Yeah, you know. It's
like we're not gonna like advertise it's free and be like,
well it's just not freeomore.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Yeah, it's only free first three times, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
So it's just like we have a lot of people
just come on Saturdays and we like encourage our members
to bring our friends and it's cool, like as long
as you fell out the waiverroom, did you enjoy it? Fantastic? Yeah,
that's really all we care about it. You know. We
don't want really ask anybody. We ask them how they feel,
how they think, what they think about it, and do
they want to what are their thoughts about becoming a member,
And they usually tell you, you know, and if it's negative.

(01:11:32):
We just address it and say I'm sorry, and like
you want to come more time? If we want to
do this or we're sure you feel that way, maybe
in the future it's better for you. Yeah, you know,
so we just don't ask a lot of that. That's cool.
You know people will If people want to come here,
they're much more willing to continue to come in. Yes,
if you beat them up and you pressure them into

(01:11:53):
you're probably gonna have them for a very short amount
of time, if any.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
Time, because they don't feel comfortable in the Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
You get people five days free. It's even on the website.
You can look free troll and then it just sends
you an email and it sends me an email. Hey,
John's free troll call you. Hey, soe you inquiring about
the gym? Fantastic? When would you like to show up?
It's where yeat? What have you been doing? And that's
about it. That's cool. Even our waiver like questions are

(01:12:20):
pretty simple. Do you smoke? Yeah, do your drink? How
often do you work out? Are you najured right? You know?
And then what do you hope to get out of it?
And then if you were referred by someone who wasn't
so we can make them. Yeah, you know, and it's
really it. That's awesome. It's very simple, it's very short.
It's very short. It's very to the point. That's good.
We would rather people be here so they can actually

(01:12:40):
see it, yes, you know, and feel it and see
what we're building, you know, because we're just we're spilling
the big goofy family.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
That's all.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
I mean. You can look at some of the pictures.

Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
Yeah, those pictures, I've been looking at them. They look
a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 (01:12:53):
And that's our first year of our our favorites, and
then we've got them all over the place.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
Yeah, yeah, and then we do live. We celebrate birthday
as you should. You know, if you're a member and
your birthday's coming up, we make sure everybody knows it's
your birthday. We got a happy birthday tiaras that you wear,
you know during the workout, you know, so we write
it on the board.

Speaker 4 (01:13:13):
We're on Facebook, we celebrate on Facebook, we Celebriach on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
We new members of the Model. You know, we're big
on celebrating our members as you should.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
Like you said, they're not just another number.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Yeah, you know, all the coaches vote on Members of
the month.

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
Yeah, you know it's like hey and here, why yeah,
like why are they ever? What do you think makes
them different than everybody else?

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
They deserve this, you know, because a lot of times you
want to pick your favorites. We all have favorites. Yeah, well,
we all have favorites. It's just the way it is.
You know. We all have people work closer to. Yep,
that's a better way to put We all have people.

Speaker 4 (01:13:45):
That at the gym work closer to we have more
of a commonality with, or we have the same goals,
or we're the same compute personality, we have the same
serious personality, or we speak and sign, you know, or
we just speak mentally to each other.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
We don't have at the top. And there's always those people,
you know. So you know we have boards up there
of goals. Yeah, we we want everyone to see them.
We have one member that has a pair of shorts
she hasn't been able to get into. She brought her
shorts up here. I love that, you know, and so
when she comes to work out, we put them over
there in her little area that she loves to sit in,

(01:14:20):
and we make her stare around. Yeah, you know this
was your dealing with ours? You know, let's get to it.
That's awesome, you know. So it's like stuff like that,
you know, for my stupid birthday, Like I'm on a
big celebrator of birthdays for me. Yeah. I actually planned
it to where I coached that Saturday, okay, so then
I did not have to do it, you know, and

(01:14:41):
then I got here and they had already set it up.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
Of course they did.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
And they had made these pictures of my face.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Yeah, I like solid face over there.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
I'm just curious about that. So it was like you
had to run part of your run, you had to
run it with the face. Yeah. So they put those everywhere.
There was one in the shower. There's one of them
in shower like staring at you. I'm just like, come on, no,
So they do. They all got shirts said I blame Chad.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Oh it's perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
So they're just like they just that's the kind of
community like where everyone will like get involved for people's birthdays.
For Advance, you know, we had our we had our
one year party, and we had two eight foot tables
of food. Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
And I'm not just talking about They went to Costco
and got some sandwiches.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
And fruit plates. Like we had someone make a pork butt. Whoa,
we had someone make ribs. We did someone make like
homemade cookies. Yeah, we had one of our members brought
burgers and hot dogs, cheese for everybody, and buns and cheese.

Speaker 4 (01:15:41):
It's just like they just go out of their way,
you know, to make sure that that we're successful.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Yeah, so they can be successful. You know, I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Well, thank you so much for this, uh for this chat.
And I love what you guys are doing here and
I can't wait to see you guys just thrive here
for years to come.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
They got a couple of well I have to require Yeah, yeah,
we're gonna hunt you down.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
So the other that thing about me saying we don't
ask you Now, we're just gonna be a t it's
gonna be like every day, Okay, are you coming? Are
you coming? Are you coming?

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
So the answer is yes, and you got to meet
Ernie exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Everyone comes.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
Thanks so much for Chad for being on the show.
You heard from his mouth. They are absolutely doing incredible
things over there, and I love that they're building not
only a community but a family as well.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
And you know, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
Definitely gonna make it over there. I gotta try CrossFit again.
I am looking for some hot boys summer stuff this
year or this summer, I should say, because I'm just
trying to get back at it. So if you want
to challenge yourself and you want to push yourself, definitely
head on over to CrossFit Atonement. Now why you're doing
all the fun things, make sure to eat local, drink local,
and go rediscover your city. Tag us and send those

(01:16:49):
pictures over to us on Facebook Arlington Citizen Media, Twitter
at x Citizen Media. Tag us on Instagram Arlington citisen
Media and send those pictures the old fashioned way. Email
Arlington Citizen Media at gmail dot com. Also go to
our website www dot Arlington Citizen Media dot com. Don't

(01:17:09):
forget to subscribe and give those five star reviews of
the downtown at Apple Music, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and also
hit us on SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and YouTube.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
A couple of people about everybo