Barbell Shrugged - Starting, Growing, Selling the Granite Games and the Future of CrossFit Sanctionals w/ Granite Games Founder John Swanson - Barbell Shrugged #411

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

John Swanson is the founder and CEO of The Granite Games, owner of Fast Factory Fitness, and owner of Factory Forged.  The goal of The Granite Games is to create a platform that allows all levels and ages to chase their athletic dreams. Our event gives athletes of every skill level the opportunity to compete and have their own professional athlete experience. Each element of this experience is carefully crafted to create a lasting impression. Everything from the athlete’s personalized name tag to the design of the competition floor all play a critical role in this experience. In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, the crew catches John Swanson weeks before the sale of the Granite Games to Loud and Live. Swanson is not only the CEO of the Granite Games but the owner of Fast Factory, a gym in St Cloud, MN and Factory Forged, and online gym consulting business for CrossFit affiliate owners. Minute Breakdown: 0-10 – How to Run a Competition the Size of the Granite Games on a 9 months schedule. 11-20 – Coaches walking the walk before coaching others 21-30 – Why you should not sell memberships based on athletes using the facility 31-40 - Did you ever think about ending the Granite Games 41 -50 - Creating a long term solution for the Granite Games 51 -60 - Creating sanctions with major events throughout the year  John Swanson on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Please Support Our Sponsors Savage Barbell Apparel - Save 25% on your first order using the code “SHRUGGED” Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged WHOOP - Save $30 on 12 or 18 month membership plan using code “SHRUGGED” at checkout One Ton Challenge Weekend August 1st - 4th Find your 1rm in the snatch, clean, jerk, squat, dead, bench.  Add them up to find your One Ton Total.  The goal is 2,000 pounds for men and 1,200 for women.  4 days. 6 lifts. 1 goal. 1 Ton.  http://live.onetonchallenge.com “What is the One Ton Challenge” “How Strong is Strong Enough” “How do I Start the One Ton Challenge”

Shark Family, it's CrossFit Games Week and I don't even know what to say. We have so much going on. If you're going to be at the games, you've got to come hang out with us. We're flying in Wednesday night late. We're going to be at CrossFit Big Dane all day Thursday. We've got three shows scheduled. Craig Ritchie is on the books. Russ Green from CrossFit Headquarters is on the books. And then Adrian Conway at 4.30 in the afternoon, which is going to be killer because he's also competing in the One Ton Challenge.

Friday morning, we've got a couple shows that are sort of books, so I don't want to say them yet. And then we're shutting it down about 1 p.m. and prepping for the One Ton Challenge, which is taking off from 5 to 8. First lift is at 5.30. We're going to start covering it right about 5 o'clock.

Athlete announcements will be about 5.15. And we have been told that the final event will end at 5.10. 10. So if you're going to be at the Alliance Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin for the CrossFit Games, make sure you get over to hang out with us. The one-ton challenge is going to be so lit. Wisk Hits just took gold at Pan Ams. Cleaning jerk 217 kilograms. That's like 465 pounds or something like that. We had to ensure that we had enough weight at the event so there's two male um platforms with 600 pounds and we had to get an additional 100 pounds just

because he's going to be there but we've got a stacked lineup um leah cassiano just set up with savage barbell they're bringing three females and one male, Kenny Leverich, three-times games champ. We've got a platform that's got West Kids, Adrian Conway, and Easy Muhammad lifting. So it's going to be so lit. And then Saturday, we're going to be at the FitAid booth all day. Sunday, all day at the FitAid booth. Make sure you get to the FitAid after party. Afterwards, it's an all-white party, so make sure you're there.

That's just where we're going to be throughout the week. Killer show today. We're hanging out with John Swanson. I don't know if there's anybody in the CrossFit space that I respect more that I've been able to learn from in the last couple years. He's also going to be doing a bunch of co-hosting with us at the games. If you see us

at the FitAid booth, there's a good chance he's going to be around. Come over, pick his brain. he just sold the granite games live and loud and this was the last interview that he did before selling it he actually had sold the granite games which we learned after the show before like just before we did this interview so it's a really really cool show because in the middle of it, towards the end of the conversation, you'll start to notice that I am recognizing that there is a big change happening in his life. And I kind of start pushing him a little bit

to find out what that is. And he's kind of deflecting because he did not want to talk about what's going on. I want to thank our sponsors for the show today. Savage Barbell, the official apparel sponsor, the One Ton Challenge. There's a reason that we picked them because they're really awesome. I love their shirts. They're incredibly comfortable.

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We actually have a recovery wearable sponsor for the One Ton Challenge. So radical. Whoop came in. They were one of the first people outside of FitAid to really sign on and see the vision of where we're going with the one-ton challenge. So they're in and you can go to whoop.com and you're going to save $30 on a 12 or 18 month subscription. That's $30 off a 12 or 18 month subscription using the coupon code shrugged. I literally just don't take mine off. My daughter ripped mine off of my arm the other day and we were on,

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Just trying to cut that background noise just a little bit. John, go ahead and say something, dude. Good morning, guys. Good morning. We're going to bring you a little bit tighter. Yeah, there you go. Hard things, man. Good.

How are you guys? Dude, this is – there we go. Fantastic. Stick that in your mouth. I got the gain turned down just to, like, buffer background noise a little bit, so we got to, like, eat the microphones. Okay. Is that good?

Yeah. Yeah, you're good. Might turn you up a tiny bit. I need to drink coffee through a straw. Okay. Is that good? Yeah. Yeah, you're good. Might turn you up a tiny bit. They need to drink coffee through a straw. Man. We walked downstairs at the hotel this morning. There was no coffee there. Brutal.

Where do you guys stand? Residence. Okay. It's pretty nice. We got a suite. There you go. Yeah. Let's stay with these guys.

They take care of us. That's our... Do you think he's from Los Angeles? Totally. I'd say so. Are you from L.A.? We can't tell. What do you do?

Oh, I'm an actor. And I carry a camera around for Instagram girls. Okay. Welcome to Venice Beach. It's like rothfeller had the exact opposite story of everyone who's ever moved to la from from the midwest he was like well it's just i was trying to i was trying to like have this like regular job and then it just wasn't working so i decided to do acting like the exact opposite of everyone else is like i'm an actor well where do you work you, oh, I serve tables still, but I'm working on it. I'm going to have my break soon.

I got some things. I got some irons in the fire. There you go. We're doing this thing. I didn't even know you hit the button yet. It's already recording right on. We can cut it whenever. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. John Swanson. Welcome back. See, I know what you did. You threw the competition three months early just to get back on Barbell Shrugged. Yeah, I wanted the same calendar. Yeah, speed this process up.

Normally a 12-month process. Make it nine. Get back on Barbell Shrugged twice in one year. It's genius. It's a long time to wait a whole year to do a competition. Yeah. Nine months is perfect. Yeah, let's rush it.

Dude. What has that process been like this year? I know last time we talked to you guys, it just announced that you were becoming, it wasn't even called a sanctional. Should we talk about sanctional being a real word now? That's the permanent thank you arm and hammer. I have a T-shirt that says it now. It's a real thing.

We've made the word up. Dude, what has the last year been like? How have you, I mean, one going from 12 months to nine months, turning this massive competition around, and then all the changes of now you're this sanctioned event leading up to the CrossFit Games

and one of the last ones before the Games kicked off here in a couple months. It may sound a little bit weird, but the hardest thing for us was you you're you don't run the event based off like the exact calendar you run it off of like where you should be in the year like yeah it's like june okay programming like template should be done and like that was the hardest adjustment for me personally is i felt like my whole schedule like of where i needed to

be to make sure we were on the right timeline yeah i was like oh we got plenty of time and i was like somebody to be like hey the events in 36 days i'm like oh crap yeah so just that like biological or whatever you want to call that of knowing where you should be when you should be there when things should be starting to check the boxes was was pretty difficult this year in regards to being uh the sanctional i don't think really anything changed yeah the only time i felt a little bit of pressure this year was, oh, the judging really has got to be dialed in. Because if we miss something, it's not about the money. It's about somebody's pride and them being able to go to the games.

And I want to make sure that we do that right. So even the programming we wrote this year, we wanted to leave it where the athlete could do the work and the judge had less of an impact to do their job. Yeah. Did your programming change a little bit just because this is the lead up to the CrossFit Games now? Does it make it more difficult putting a weekend together? I wouldn't say more difficult. We try to take as much pride in keeping the programming simple, but extremely effective. Because I think it's easy to write, like, really complicated, challenging stuff, stuff, stuff.

Plug things. We're going. All right. A little technical hiccup. We're back. We'll edit that. So, in regards to programming, I think the most important thing for us was keep it simple, keep it effective. Now that we're like a sanctioned event, like our job is not to be the CrossFit Games.

Yeah. That's, you know, Castro does a wonderful job of creating really crazy unique tests that are outside the box. Our job is to keep it very classic and then maybe pull one or two elements that are non-gym-based, whether it's the trail run or the hill sprint, something like that. But don't get crazy with it. Keep it simple and let the athletes show the work that they've been putting in. Yeah, now that we're nine months down the road, the actual competition is happening. Do you kind of look back at yourself when all the chaos was happening

and it's like it all worked out pretty well? Yeah. Because there was a lot of uncertainty nine months ago when all these changes happened yeah and i i think there's still some uncharted water that we're all trying to figure out um you know somebody just made a comment to me and my response to them was we have really really excellent leadership and our leadership is the reason why the event runs the way it does. So super lucky in that facet that things seem to work out because of our people on our team that are really great leaders

and make good decisions. Do you guys have pretty good communication with HQ and Castro? Is there a voice in this competition, even though we may not see them here or it may not be like a CrossFit HQ event that Castro is making the program and Glassman has this, you know, for the games. Like, are you in communication with them regularly about what you're doing and what your vision is of the Granite Games? I would say it's 100% our event.

But they ask questions in regards to not like questioning what we're doing but more so checking into making sure we're being uh like if there's anything we need yeah to be successful um but yeah it's it's 100 i mean it's probably spitting image to what granite games was last year interesting um as far as the media coverage and stuff did you guys always broadcast it live like how does how do we scale crossfit the sport what are they even doing at the games that do they have a clue how it's being covered since they've gotten rid of everybody on the media team that wasn't even like a thing when we were here last year yeah i i think that's probably a question mark that i don't think any of us know

um and a lot of times i find out my information just like you guys do and uh you know for us it's you know we've worked with Flow Elite in the past, and they continue to do a good job. And I think our media team in-house and the people we've been able to bring in actually do an excellent job of trying to turn photos around and videos in the same day to kind of let people know that, you know, maybe don't want to pay for the subscription, that they can still kind of watch from afar. And in regards to what will happen in Madison in a handful of days,

I don't think I'm going to be there. So I guess we won't have to worry about it. We're all going to learn together. Yeah, it's really crazy. I mean, I don't think I've seen such a large company make such a massive shift. Do you feel like as an owner of a very large competition that's got a ton of revenue and expenses, and there's, like, a real business going behind it of, like, get your shit together.

Like, why is this change happening? Like, it affects you in a big way. It can. What I've always tried to do is position it so whatever anybody externally does, whatever decisions they make, I want to build a business that we're going to have our marching orders and we just keep moving forward. So external environment can change around us, but we have our vision. We know where we're going. We know what we stand for.

We know who we want to serve. And if they want to make decisions, that's fine if it impacts them. But we have to be kind of bulletproof in our own way. I think you guys have really made a nice space for yourself because I feel like if CrossFit went away tomorrow and never talked about competition, whatever, they're just gone, this event still goes on because the people love being here.

The athletes have so much fun. They get to do this cool team piece that isn't really offered anywhere else. I think that's something that really separates this competition from probably many of the other sanctionals or local competitions. Yeah, it's not a ton of people probably know yet, but we've created essentially a full season. So the 2020 season for us actually starts in September.

So we'll start with throwdowns at local gyms. We partner with them. They keep all the money, which is cool because we're infusing tons of actual cash back into the affiliates. We run three of those a year and those guys are punching their tickets. So if you finish top 10 in the worldwide in one of our throwdowns, you're already coming here. So that was going back to creating our own mini ecosystem. So whatever happens externally, we can stand on our own two legs. Yeah. So I think we're building some pretty strong affiliate partnerships, strong partnerships. Yeah.

And, yeah, I hope no matter what happens, whatever, you know, storms are out there, the Granite Games is, you know, as strong as ever. Well, I was wondering with Sanctionals becoming a thing and having each event now sending some to the CrossFit Games, if, like, the emphasis was going to skew toward the higher-level athletes and, like, the teams and the youths and the masters and everybody else was going to get deprioritized in some way or another. Has anything changed as far as how you guys are prioritizing the athletes,

especially with the more elite people? No. I mean, we've had Frazier's won our competition, Sarah's won our competition. I look at it as everybody's an athlete here, and we're going to treat everybody the same. You know, for the most part, the same number of workouts. Obviously, we're going to vary the pro volume versus the scaled volume. But I want to create an event where if you show up as an athlete,

you're treated as an athlete, and it's fair across the board. And I think that's what our community is about. And if we actually deferred to running our pro division, that was our focus, I think that would be a radical shift in our vision and mission, and it doesn't align with why this event was created in the first place. You spend a lot of time talking about the Granite Games, but you also have two other businesses that are functioning and doing very well. Talk a little bit just about your gym and the community that you guys have built there.

The gym has been an awesome change in the past year. We've really made an emphasis on coaching. And obviously, I think every CrossFit gym would say, well, we focus on coaching. But what we've really tried to do is add in the element of nutrition coaching and lifestyle coaching. So every person that comes in and joins our facility, they're not on an unlimited membership. They're not on a three-time-a-week. They're on what we call basically our Fast Factory Coaching membership. And so we're actually coaching our clients now as much off the floor as we are actually in class. And we've seen some radical transformations start to happen and just the speed at which we're

able to have a positive impact in people's life is is really pretty awesome yeah with the your ability to really get buy-in from your clients when they come in and buy in from the coaches how does that process start because most people probably show up to the gym just looking for fitness and crossfit yeah we we take them through kind of a discovery meeting where we have a specific process where we'll walk them down. Because most people walk in and say, you know, I'd like to lose 20 pounds. It's kind of like the caveat.

Or, hey, I saw CrossFit on ESPN. I want to try it. And what we'll do is we'll walk them through why are you really here? And then why are you having this, you know, why are you making this decision that you want to make this change? And a lot of times we can get them back to, you know,

they want to change their relationship with their son or daughter. They want to have more energy to play with their kids. And we find if we can get them back to why they're really there, that's the thing that gets them out of bed at 5 a.m. That keeps them going past the, you know, three-week, you know, luster of doing this new thing. When the honeymoon ends, how do you keep them engaged? Totally. You've got to know why they need to do it in the first place.

A lot of times they don't know that. So if you can help them find that and keep them focused on it, they're going to keep pushing forward. Are you bringing people in to work with your coaches on that stuff, specifically on the lifestyle piece? We do fitness. I like to think I know a little bit about lifestyle, but not in the same way that like a lifestyle coach would actually know um yeah so we i we have kind of i guess three spokes to that

wheel um so if you walk into my facility i always say like we're going to coach you in three areas lifestyle coaching um which is really between the ears like and habits and like time blocking and little things like that to be more effective. Nutrition. And we work with Working Against Gravity on that side. So all of our coaches go. Oh, yeah. You guys were part of the initial affiliate rollout that they had, right? Yeah. Awesome.

So our gym, all of our coaches work on that side, those certifications. And then fitness is fitness. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, I think it would be probably irresponsible just to be like, we're going to coach in these avenues. And we've done no education on it. I think a lot of coaches end up doing that. It's like now all of a sudden we're like, oh, well, here's like, you should get into this meditation thing.

Like, we know about this. It's like, do you know it? Like, the guru does. And we, I don't know, as fitness coaches, because us as athletes, we have to streamline our lives and optimize everything, and it's really hard. We can't, I don't know what to say to her. She wants a FitAid. I don't know what to say.

Sorry. You got the shirt on. Yeah, I don't know. I just have the shirt. Yeah, and we almost end up overstepping our boundaries and our knowledge set. And it's really tough in a gym because as an owner, as a coach, as an athlete, you know that there's so much more to the story than just that 20 pounds. But building that trust is a really difficult process.

How are you guys, I don't know, with the coaches that you have at your gym, like hiring process and getting them bought into this process too. So one of the big things is that I think starts with me working with our team at a leadership level of like, before you can coach it, I need to see you practicing this day in and day out. And it doesn't mean like, I don't think you master nutrition. I don't think you master fitness. I don't think you master lifestyle.

I think it's a constant like evolution of you trying to get better. But if you yourself as a coach cannot time block your day out, you can't take time to meditate and de-stress. You're not, you know, making your nutrition and your sweep and those, you know, we always say there's like, you know, really seven, I guess six or seven really key like priorities of health and happiness. Number one is your mental health. Number two is your physical health number three is your marriage or a significant relationship number four is family number five is career number six is uh friends and number seven is hobbies what we do is we want to see our coaches start walking that down so if they have something going on in their home life no questions asked you take off work you handle your stuff there and we always make our

decisions based off those priorities so in the workday it's carved out here's your 90 minutes to train at work and people are like you let your employees work out on schedule i'm like yeah are you hiring yeah right i'm ready so and for us i think if you can get your your coaches to be bought in on the belief system and then get them practicing yeah they're going to be able to pull those people up because a lot of those people they don't need the the guru per se they need them because they're they're coming on the couch right they you're just trying to take their first step so if you can just start to share with them and as we lift them up the information has to get stronger and better but you know a lot of times it's like just get people to start

sleeping eight hours is a huge that's mean, that's a hard battle. Do you guys have like a, how long is your internship process? We were talking to Jason Lydon yesterday. In the past, Mike Boyle. Like all these really good gyms have this system of internship. Is there a big onboarding process to be working at your gym? Yeah, so we have, you start as an intern, and then you go test out into assistant coach, which means you cannot lead the class.

You can only do one-on-one instruction. Then you go to lead instructor, and then you go into associate coach, which is where you're actually doing lifestyle and nutrition. I want to say it's two years to get to associate level coach, which is our full level of coach, but it depends on your learning curve. I mean, I've seen interns being interned for 90 days i've seen some have to be there for six months yeah but there's uh set parameters and tests along the it's like going through school how are you guys setting up metrics to be

able to track kind of buy in with your clients and then two years down the road making sure that everything's actually working yep um so we work's actually the exact way we run our business, but everything's set from a three-year, like, big picture to a one-year plan down to 90 days. Then we set a 30-day, what we'll call major milestones, and then we do weekly check-ins. So we're in constant contact with a client, both in person and then digitally, basically daily. And we basically roadmap it. Just like when you guys landed at the airport, like there's mile markers along the way and we're constantly checking,

is that person moving along to their journey? And a lot of times it's, they just go a little off track. And if you can get them back on track, it's not getting a lot of. That was the Thai restaurant we stopped at. It was a little off track. Wasn't that healthy. We made it work. We got back on.

We're here. So that's kind of been our process. I don't think it's probably super special or unique to anything, but it works for us and it seems to work for our clients. I love hearing about the systems of gyms and how they really keep people because I think I would love to know at this stage in CrossFit, people, I think the education has gotten to the place where we have to have a longer term vision then kind of show up get smashed by fran and then everything's just going to happen in my life

and as a gym owner that that really that conversation has to change for you in order to have longevity which we're seeing as a as a whole industry it's kind of the longevity piece is really difficult i think what you what we probably found in the first 12 years, 15 years of this space is people showed up, they got smashed by Fran, they figured it out, and then they also figured out nutrition and lifestyle. Yeah. And they kind of went on this journey. But that was 10% of the population, and we're losing 90% of the population when you look at it as a two-year, three-year, five-year churn.

And if you go ask some affiliates, like, what is your churn rate over a three- or four-year picture? They don't want to talk about it. And I think it starts with building out an actual coaching company that says, yeah, you do fitness, but if your job is to actually transform this person's life, you're missing like the 80% of the key elements that ensure the fitness actually is carried through. Now, the fitness might be how we do some of the things that people can physically see. But if you miss this, that probably does not happen at a, if we zoom out to 10 years, your actual transformation never actually happens because it may happen and then it goes away.

Yeah. And we're talking about let's carry this all the way through till they expire. Finding some deeper purpose to why we're all here. So the third business that you have is actually building the system out with affiliates. Where did that kind of start once you guys had your systems in place and then a little bit of just scaling that into helping gym owners? Yeah, and scaling a company is a whole different podcast, probably in a different conversation.

Doubling, tripling all your problems. Yeah. I think the big thing was people started calling and whether they would come to the Granite Games and then drop into the deck. Yeah. What's going on here? And for us, it's really just helping affiliates

have a mental shift of you're not a gym that sells access and time. You're a gym or you're a coaching company that creates transformation. And then when you sit down with an affiliate and say, what is your goal? Because each affiliate's actual transformation they're trying to elicit. One may want to work with athletes. One may want to work with youth. One may want to be more female-based or what have you.

When you can key into what their transformation is, you can build that system. So that's the hardest part about our coaching company at Factory Forge is that we don't try to make it plug and play. Like it's not a, you know, here, just take this website. No, it's we got to discover what is your niche. Let's write your message because otherwise it doesn't resonate. Yeah. You know, if you're trying to

attract youth athletes but you're taking my template which is working with adults you'll you'll fail miserably yeah i imagine many people show up kind of saying oh i love crossfit i love working out i definitely want to own a gym because that makes sense and then the wheels fall off because that's that's running a business doesn't mean you get to work out all the time. It doesn't mean, like trainers, you have to have these systems in place to actually track where you're going. How long, I guess, where in that journey, the customer journey or the affiliate owner journey, before someone actually ends up reaching out to you and saying help? Our goal is to kind of get somebody between the six-month

and 24-month mark of them starting their business. Because if they're in zero to six, there's kind of that euphoric phase where you're like, I think I got this. And there has to be a couple. I'm a genius. I know. I have 50 members. Yeah.

There's got to be a couple moments of pain where they realize, like, oh, I probably don't have this and i need to i need to make some changes i do find that if if you get them at four years five years six years they can have uh created some pretty gnarly habits and some people are willing to do the work and some people are kind of at that stage where they're just like i'm over it and they're they're basically on their you know their last year of opening the doors, and they're really checked out mentally. Because it's hard to go back and rebuild it. Because not only have you got to rebuild the business from the ground up, you've got to now go attack all these things that you decided,

and now they're wrong. And not only wrong, but you have to go fix them. And so it's double the work. You're going to have to tear it all down. Yeah, you have to go fix them and so it's double the work you're gonna have to tear it all down yeah you have to have hard conversations with members that are on the $99 129 a month you know unlimited membership or what you know what have you yeah and no it's not fun yeah well when you're set i mean talking about the $99 129 other people those people showed up for crossfit to do crossfit and now having that conversation of well there's so many more layers to this uh when did that really start to kick in

at your gym and how you guys i mean you have to tear everything down and rebuild it that's hard so we're i don't know this is probably not my personality i don't know why i did this but when we opened um I pulled every price of every CrossFit gym in a five state radius. I put it in an Excel doc and then, uh, I pulled all the gymnastic schools and all the dance studios. Like any, anybody that was like a customer service in like kind of that space, um, or at least loose to it. And I found the top 10% and that's how I opened my gym. So we started at one 85 And I look back on it and I'm like, I was scared to death because we were

$85 more expensive than the other CrossFits in town. And I was like the youngest kid. But I was just like, why would I want... And I think I read it in a message board. Someone was like, pull the pricing in the area and actually see what people like the top gyms are charging. If you want to be a top gym,

you know... What metrics did you use to decide they were a top gym? Was it just by price? You could price, but you could also, like, dig into their social, right? Like, you know, you can look at website. If website's a complete disaster, go into their, you know, Facebook page and, like, look at the photos. Like, I'd actually go in and look at the photos of their gym. Like, how does their class look disorganized?

Does it look structured? What is a coach? You can tell a lot by social media. Yeah. In retrospect, what would you have done if you knew what you knew now? Never sold an unlimited or any membership that was based off of them coming in to use the facility. Yeah. But based off of the end result thereafter.

Only chasing the quality of the engagement and coaching ability. That's interesting because I always thought that if I would do it again, I would have like the $75 open gym and then just a really big personal training business. Do you guys do personal training? It's kind of, I mean, that's kind of already built into our model where everyone has a coach specific to their goals specific to their needs so every if you're a member of our facility you are assigned to a coach at any time you have direct communication with them they're working

with you on lifestyle nutrition fitness things you know so they're if you need an assessment done we're doing it if you need an in-body like yeah we're not what i love about that is my coaches don't have the awkward conversation of like you want to do an in-body, like we're not, what I love about that is my coaches don't have the awkward conversation of like, you want to do an in-body? It's $25. And I'm like, I always thought to myself, why would we charge somebody $25 to do a, you know, a 10 minute screen? Yeah. When that data is quintessential to getting them to realize they need to make the change and or what we're doing is working. Yeah. Did you go back to all of your members and say, okay, now this $189 membership,

which is already $85 more than the median price in town and across all these states, well, now it's $229 or $250, $300. How does that conversation go? Is everyone happy about that? It's a really delicate conversation. So I think we're 305 right now um to be a member and then after two years we we call we move you into like our ambassador program meaning you probably have started to build the habits around lifestyle nutrition and we don't need to be as hands-on

and then it drops to 225 so instead of daily and weekly support yeah um touch points you're moving to more of a monthly check-in. And I think it goes back to having honest conversations of like, do you really want this thing? And then this is the way it needs to be structured. And also taking responsibility that you as the owner were the one that was wrong. You know, like you didn't give them all the tools they needed. But being also honest and saying for us to do that,

we have to be able to train our coaches and pay our coaches. And this is, I can ensure the transformation, but I also have to get my team up to speed. It's like that dichotomy of the balance of the coaching staff having the right education and the members having the right buy-in. And you will lose members, but those are also probably the members that only see value in coming into, you know. Well, that's really scary when you start losing members,

and that change is really because you're building it from the ground up all over again. Are you spending a bunch of time talking to people like James Fitzgerald? I mean, he runs his program design in somewhat of a similar way with having that really high touch price point with, I guess, all of his program design people and OPEX gyms. Where are you kind of looking out for information and people that have been down this path? Well,

that probably is the biggest impact and the only connection between my gym and Granite Games is Granite Games allowed me to meet really awesome people like you guys and just people that are a complete wealth of knowledge. So I'm always asking questions and picking their brain. And I think the big difference between us and, like, an OPEX gym

is they're doing completely individualized programming, like each person's getting their own track. And what we've done in our class track is we've created three different tracks. So we have a sport, performance, and fitness. And then in real time, our coaches are walking down any modifications because they're well aware of, like, hey, this person has got a hinging issue or this person's got a knee flexion issue or what have you. So our members aren't on a full individual design. They're still doing the group class structure because I love what happens in a class setting.

But we're able to get people kind of dialed into what's going to give them that benefit. We're not looking for, I'm not trying to train an elite athlete, so I need the 80% of the recipe because that's going to get them basically 90% there. How hard is it to get that buy-in from your coaches? Because the system you've set up is not a, like, when they show up and then we work really well with them for two, three weeks. Like, you have to get coaches buy-in for two years of showing up every day and working very hard knowing their clients like that conversation's not easy for a lot of coaches that don't understand what being a professional

coach actually means 100 i think that goes back to the internship process and setting the standards and then it also goes that's on management right that's that's on the manager's job is to give them the tools and then coach them up through that process. And if you think that they're just going to come in and be able to do what you said, they're opening their own space in 24 months anyways, because they don't need you, right? Like your team members in your company need you as much as your members need you. And your job as an owner is to coach your staff so they can have a wide impact. But if you try to do both, you're going to actually end up not coaching your staff. And I think that's what

a lot of gym owners are struggling with is they want to keep coaching the client and they need to step away, even though service will suffer for maybe 90 days. And if they just poured all that energy into like literally, we call it elevate and delegate, elevating their actual current employees, they would have a longer and probably stronger impact in the entire community. But it's hard to take that band-aid off. Yeah. Are you niching your employees down to saying one person is more on the nutrition side, one person is more on the rehab side, and when new clients come in,

actually getting them a coach that's a little bit more specialized um way we'll do it is is am and pm and then they all go through the same training but then our coaches will uh they'll share so like we have definitely so all of our coaches have the base foundational coaching and then if somebody's working on like we have two uh like my wife's an ex you-chiropractor, so, like, there's an issue going on there. She'll look at them. We have some ex-PTs, and, yeah, so, like, they all kind of have their own little thing that they like. So we have one coach that is an ex-gymnast, so any bodyweight stuff she really digs into. We have one guy that is an ex-weightlifter.

They kind of naturally have found that. Yeah. And then if we need to send them there for like a cross coaching session, they'll do that. When you're working with other gym owners, are you laying that out for them of like, hey, in your hiring process, start looking for these things? Because I imagine you've had to work very hard and at the same time gotten lucky with the trainers that have shown up to your gym by the culture you've created, all the things that go into attracting good people.

But that's a skill in itself. And I imagine going and talking to these gym owners like, hey, we're going to train your coaches to have these skill sets, and they don't even have the tools themselves to do it. Yeah, I would say if a gym is looking to start hiring in that facet, I would actually say get people that match your core values and and share your mission and train them up on that foundation of nutrition lifestyle and fitness and then once you have that system running if you want to take it to the next level then you can get a little bit picky but even for us we still have a hard time finding great

coaches i mean a lot of times we're bringing these coaches up from the they're actual members that are you know coming up through our system in six years, seven years. But if a gym were to do that and I think go that way, I think they're going to have a hard time finding anybody. So find the people that can coach nutrition and, or at least have the ability to learn how to do it. Because all of our coaches, they didn't know anything about nutrition. We had, just like myself, I didn't come out of high school and I didn't know nutrition.

I had to study it. I had to, you know, and then I had to work on myself with it. And then we worked with other people. So there's that process and you can't skip it. Yeah. When I was running the gym, one of the first things we were always looking for with a potential new coach is, like, how easily and how quickly do they make friends? Yeah. Like, if you make friends just right away, like, you walk in the room, everyone's just like, I like that guy.

Yeah. Perfect. You can teach them all the details and the skills and whatever else. That's easy, but you can't teach somebody how to make friends really fast. That's tough. Yeah. It's funny. Our core values have nothing to do with how to do the job. It's all about their personality and just who they are as a person. Because if they're the right core value fit and they share your vision, they're going to do the work to learn everything else.

Yeah. When we come back to the Granite Games, are you implementing a lot of this system into how you build out and structure an entire year, which the Granite Games now is season? How does a lot of this stuff play into

just other online programs the coaching side like how do you structure a system to build an entire sport and a season out of that we've uh we've always stayed away from it and the reason being is granite games is its own entity and i have a lot of friends that are in the space and it's always kind of a delicate balance of like the minute you do that your best friends that you really look up to yeah you're now like competitors and so it's i've never that's the one thing i've done a poor job of how to juggle yeah because there are we we've done it once uh a couple months ago we we worked with the granite games community

on uh it was like an eight week uh lifestyle nutrition and it was like where we we really attacked like journaling and things like that and it was the first time we kind of beta tested it i would always i've always wanted to take that concept of how we coach our members and bring it to here yeah but then i also feel like i'm exiling a lot of the people that are also very important in this community and And so it's a delicate balance. Yeah. I think that the Grand of Games is so cool, though, with the different types of teams and stuff that you guys have.

It would be very cool to have, like, just watching the season unfold and having the guys and girls competitions and stuff like that. Like, I don't know. I want to write a program for all the people and have have them like training as as teams like that's uh that's always an interesting thing to me of like how you've separated yourself um and nobody else has really gone down that path how do you see wadapalooza the socal classic dubai and are you guys all on the same team? Or is this very competitive amongst the sanctional people now? I would say it's the least competitive it's ever been. Yeah.

And I would say that's probably one of the things that the sanctionals has done is the ability to share information has like skyrocketed. Yeah. Because everything you see at the Granite Games here was either something I learned when I was in Carson watching that crew do something, like how they set up the floor, but nobody talked.

And we were always kind of the black sheep to begin with. And then on top of that, we were fighting for table scraps, really. And so it was like, you're on your own. You figure it out out sink or swim and now that everybody's you know trying to make sure that the product is good for the greater community so we are a good representation of crossfit um it's been really cool that i mean you can reach out to people there's a couple uh sanctional directors here this weekend and they've

come up and i'm like hey you know like there's no animosity whereas before like i always got nervous if i went to somebody else's event like are they gonna see me yeah they're trying to are we creeping yeah you know how does this fit so yeah back when you were fighting for table scraps as you just said like was there any time where you're like ah fuck maybe maybe this just isn't for me like maybe i'll just shut it down and go do something else like or was it always just like this is gonna be be rad the whole time? I think there's like three distinct years where I've sent out emails to our executive team. And I'm like, hey, guys, it was a great year. Just want to let you know, though, that was the last year. I'm done.

I can't handle the stress anymore. I'm going to die. I remember I sent out one email. Like the fourth time you get that email, you're just like, oh, here he goes. He's coming back. Give him a week. So I send out an email and I CC, I didn't even tell my wife I'm sending this. And she's like one of the directors of the company. She gets it. I'm showering and she comes flying in the bathroom and she just started screaming at me, yelling at me. She's like, are you really going to be a quitter? And I'm like, I am. I'm emotionally distraught right now, and you're just going to scream at me like this.

I put my heart into that. Yeah. And that was like, I was done that year. It was just, you know, the community, as much as you can love it, can also be extremely, they can wear on you. They really expect the world. There's only like, what, 10,000 opinions here? Yeah. It's crazy.

And all of them need to be happy. Yes. And my personality is probably not the best to be in the role I'm in because I never focus on all the good we do. I'm like, okay, that one person wants that thing, and we could have done it better, and I want to improve on it. So a lot of times I actually walk out of the Granite Games weekend, and I'm like, oh, that was good,

but here's my bullet list of a thousand things we should have done better. And that's been a – so we talk about lifestyle and meditation. That's been huge for me to try to flush some of that stuff away and just focus on the task. I feel like because of that, I think a lot of people are like that in some respects. And that's what makes big live events so difficult. As you get done, you're like, oh, everything should have have been better that could have been better that could have been better so all the money you potentially could have made and taken to your family or whatever else has to be reinvested into the next year to make it bigger and better than it ever has been before and then

then it's just tough to make money like how do you how do you balance that with with investing in the next year versus you know paying your staff a little better or taking some money for yourself or whatever happens to be i'm probably a horrible person to ask because our staff is paid well i've never taken a paycheck um my wife's never taken a paycheck um we've completely just done this because we did it and we'll keep doing it that way um you know for me i our gym is successful factory forge is successful so i feel blessed to get paid that way. I don't think I'm the right person to answer that because I've done a good job of taking care of our staff and constantly pouring money back into this, but I've never used it to probably set myself up for success

because I've never felt like I was, you know, it's like that. I'm not there yet. I don't deserve to have the paycheck yet. Yeah. What does it look like when you are able to pay yourself or feel like you've done a good enough job where it's okay to sit back and maybe take a dollar out of this thing? I don't know.

Every year I'm like, all right, guys, start me at a small salary. And then as soon as we get into it, I'm like, but we can get that video for whatever. All right, give my paycheck. That's where we'll find it in the budget. And so I'm like horrible at like, if there is, I always see my,

my line is like leaders eat last. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a bad, I've really struggled with that. And, but at the same time, I don't know if we're here today,

if, if I'm trying to pull cash out of the company. Yeah. Well, at some point it's so much work and so much stress. I feel like this was something I wanted to ask a couple minutes ago but now that you've been through a season

of the new changes there was 14 or you guys were the second people to become a sanctional now then there was 14 of them now there's 22 is there like anything where you're just like maybe we'll just pull out of this, and maybe this isn't the actual path that we want the Granite Games to go.

There has to be kind of that, not a buyer's remorse, but there is another path if you wanted to create your own and not be a part of the 22 things that are going on throughout the year. Is there any of that emotion inside of like, maybe we'll just do it on our own i don't want to get you in trouble sorry glassman i think we take it one one year at a time yeah and reevaluate um so our after this year's up we'll reevaluate and you know i think the important thing is continue to listen to the community yeah listen to your partners and listen to the people

in your inner circle of who you trust and try not to make any decisions emotionally yeah yeah uh just curious this is a big event like do you would you want it to be bigger at this point is there any is there any benefits to making this single event any bigger because there's there's what thousands of athletes here how many people are here yeah um we have not tried to grow the athlete perspective for five years now um i i would say that between us and guadalupalooza and i think it's about the same every year from an athlete perspective i think we've hit the threshold because sure i could get an extra thousand athletes here but i can't it's it's the gear logistics it's also the

judging it's the staffing it's it's not a like natural curve like if you were to chart it out on like ease of use as you like events do not you can scale spectators but you cannot scale athletes because it the actual difficulty of the event exponentially gets harder as you bring another athlete in which is with like weights barbells judges exactly set up i mean you have a 25 person rig i didn't actually count it but this thing's gigantic yeah this floor the fact that you're running 20 25 people i can't see the far number how big is this it's 20 lanes 20 lanes at one time all day long the number of judges in between that like come out of the like locker room or wherever you have them corralled it's incredible how much everybody's on the same page we have a hundred what is it uh we have 100 lanes

running today for you know it's like three judges per for alternating heats and so plus head judges yeah and then you got the little things like the food's got to be catered in like it's so to answer the question if we were to scale spectators and what we're trying to continue to get better as how do we make it more of a spectator experience so whether it's like we have the workout area this year and some different things like that where they can also feel like an athlete but inside that arena i would i always joke i'm like i would like to actually shrink that portion because i think we're we're right at that red line where if we go even a little bit more it could actually break the system i last year we talked a little bit about uh changing venues i know there's been a couple rumors i don't even know if there's been an actual decision made

on where it'll be next year but are you guys still looking at finding different cities? Yeah, I think it would be irresponsible not to look. I mean, it's not a secret that it's a 90-minute drive from the airport. It's not a secret there's not enough hotels in the city. The event's too big for the city. The issue is that when you get here, there's not another venue that's better than this setup. And I think we probably have one of the best setups in the world i would agree yeah that's the issue so once you're here it's amazing yeah if and i could get around the 90 minute drive it's the lack of hotels yeah like we got we got

people like you like people that are coming in we got them on a list six months early where we're having to lock hotel rooms down we can't even leak the date that we're going to have it because all the athletes will pre-book and then we're sold out so it's the hotel is probably a severe issue we opened up dorm rooms this year because school's not in session so we're playing with that oh wow but the actual venue of how we have the three floors and then you got just everything right here is it flows so well. Yeah, and almost to a counterpoint of that, of moving it, I love coming to these smaller towns, smaller cities, because the town, it's like when you go to the games, everyone in Madison loves you.

There's big smiles on people's face in 10 Cloud when you show up and they know you're part of the CrossFit thing. From getting your car at the airport, you check into the hotel, everyone's happy because what else is going on this weekend without this happening? And all of a sudden, you're bringing a ton of money into a place, and St. Cloud isn't just some random city

you pick. You live here, you have a gym here, this is actually your community. You went to college here, played hockey here. That's difficult to leave and say we're going to the big city or wherever the next stop is. Yep. Yeah, it's...

I don't think anybody can make that decision. Like, either way, you're going to be wrong. Yeah. When you make that decision. It's just at what point... I don't... Unless something changes here from a hotel perspective, I don't think this is a long-term solution. But right now

there's not a better solution yeah and so we're not going to just pull it to band-aid it and get into a different city and then have a whole bunch of different headaches on our hands if we move it's because it's a permanent move it's the right fit for us it's making everything better for our partners our athletes or our community once you move to another city you're not going to be home for like four months either yeah you got to move to another city, you're not going to be home for like four months either. Yeah. You got to move to that city. Now you got another rent, another mortgage.

You're going to buy a house. You're going to be a full-time resident in another place, just getting it set up. No one thinks about that stuff when it's like, it becomes a full experience like you've created. Yeah. We do walkthroughs leading up to the event. And now it's like, we just walk through and like check the boxes like yeah i could tell you the measurements of

this entire building yeah i know the rig goes down on like this dot on this you know taped floor and like it's it's also so comfortable like our team is the same team now for six years that runs like everybody's in the same role so our walkthrough meetings are are like. Yeah, it's more like a reunion. Yeah, we do like a 15-minute walkthrough of the entire campus. We're like, any questions? Nope, looks good. Yep, yep. And, you know, in the early years, we were here for, I mean,

there was days I was in here alone for three, four hours, like trying to figure everything out, get all the measurements right because, you know, vendor booths change. And every year when you do this, do you feel like you were just here? Like we were just here last year and just went by like that? Nine months especially? This year more than ever. It didn't hit me that the Granite Games were happening

until we were out at Powder Ridge and the athletes were running. I was like, oh, so we're like really doing this thing. We were building the rig and it's like we kept kind of joking like, oh, it's like really here. And then all of a sudden the athletes arrived on the bus and i was like oh it's really here we're like right now we're gonna run um it was a really it was a really weird year yeah just the schedule and all that how does it feel being uh i guess this is the last one leading up or last one last qualifying event before the crossfit games um do you see kind of where you guys are positioned in the season changing?

Or is this, do you enjoy having kind of this final spot, the last chance qualifier type feel? I like where we are. I don't, I have no clue what 2020 is for, I don't even know who all the sanctioned events are. I don't know what the schedule looks like. I think it's. You need to create the unifying body of all these people yeah and then you'll translators france it's a job in itself right so i think

when you get the 2020 schedule and things start to flush out i mean i've heard some things but i don't know nothing's confirmed so we'll see i think it'll be really interesting to watch what happens in 2020 in 2021 and i think by the end of 2021, you'll have a real sense of how things are. I think right now it's like a newborn. And to judge it is probably a little unjust because we're all trying to... Well, one thing that I think I've really started to see is the people that are benefiting the most, in a way, I don't want to be too much of a jerk, but I feel like you guys benefit the least from this new schedule.

And the athletes benefit a ton because now they've got 22 events that they can go to to make money. And sponsors can pay them to go to these events for appearance fees. There's so many events that it's spread out enough where if you're a really good team or a really good athlete, you can go and you've got four or five events. The sponsors have significantly more events to go to. They're not having to travel all. Like if you're on the regionals thing, you've got three, four weekends, and you've got to be in three different locations.

Now it's at least spread out in a seasonal format, so you've got different places. But the competition owner is is really an i of the people i think that you guys have benefited the least in in a way what's interesting too is like because we're a sanctional event but all these other events have also gained that status the sponsorship dollars have i mean they're being there's only so many companies in this space so they're having so many t-shirts you can sell yeah so the it like i said i think 2020 2021 the economics of this thing at that point you can really understand is this the right direction um because the athletes 100 i think they are winning but also they're also

having to try to navigate you know which events are going to run a quality event because that's not a guarantee yet. And then second is the sponsorship dollars are being pulled in every which direction. The other thing I've realized this year is the judges and your volunteers, the judges now are getting asked to go to 26 events, whereas before they were getting asked to go to one. Oh, I didn't even know that. So there's a whole kind of behind-the-scenes dynamic happening where I'm just kind of sitting back and watching how does this play out.

So we used to run 120 or 140 lanes. We shrunk our event this year from a lane perspective because our judges' numbers aren't as high because they were at Rogue or they were at all these different events. So as the number of events keep coming up, do the judges' numbers rise? I didn't realize the judges were, like, going from event to event to event. I thought these were just your people and your judges. No.

Like, it's these judges. They travel. I mean, there's probably 30% of them that are at Rogue or at Wadapuzza and all that. And so it's one thing when there's like five main events, but if there's 26, you know, they only have so many because they're putting their own bill. Yeah, I was going to say, is there like a governing body for the judges being created? Are they getting paid outside of morning donuts and coffee?

Nope. What is wrong with these people? What do they do on the weekends? This is it. They get one, two, five left. That's their thing. And they do a tremendous job. Yeah.

Holy crap. 2020. We need a product for them. How to judge the car competition. Yep. That's insane. So I'm excited. I think you have to, if you're going to go this way,

you've got to get it going. And you can't judge it until 2021. I think that's when you'll start to see some changes get made. Right now it's just super. It's chaos. And they're adding them. I thought 14 was like a really good number. Now that it's in the 20s, and it may be growing,

who knows what's going to happen. How do you have sanctioned events without a sanctioning body? How does that work? What do you guys have? I mean, that was like a real question. Like, is there a thing happening behind the scenes of we should at least have some sort of body that oversees what's going on at the Granite Games? Because if the Granite Games is being affected by the French throwdown

or whatever is happening in Iceland, like it all feeds into the same pool of athletes and judges. And I mean, it's, it's, it's a business that is affected by other people's businesses. Yeah. And I don't think I'm the right person. I have no clue.

I don't know from that side. I mean, we've always just taken the stance that we have enough to worry inside these, you know, five venues that we're heading down and we're going to produce the best event. And if somebody calls, I'm happy to share advice with them on how we do things, you know, time permitting that I'm not in the middle of the event.

But truthfully, I hope every event does well because that's the best thing for the space. I hope they all raise the judge numbers up. I hope there's new companies that come out of it. I hope it grows the entire space. Because that is the right amazing solution that happens. But if it doesn't go that way, then there's going to be some hard conversations happening. Because, I mean, there's, you know, events that...

I'd be curious to know how many events in 2019 actually ran at a profit you can't keep running the events at a loss because how many events ever run at a profit and then now you have I don't even know what the agreement is with CrossFit but I assume there's some sort of financial thing that is a pretty good chunk of money to even call yourself a sanctioned event. Now you're just starting in the red by a pretty deep number. And like I said, the economics will flush out in the next two years. And I think from there, we'll see if the system works.

From an actual human resource level, financial level, community level. And that part has me super intrigued. Yeah. There is a, just in watching Glassman over the last 12 years, this is like the most Glassman move ever, of just removing himself from all of it and saying, you guys figure it out. Like, I created it.

Now you guys can put all the pieces together. He did it with all the gems when it was like, we need need structure like why why don't we have zoning for the gyms he'd be like uh that's not my job i just do the fitness part and you guys play play the rest of it um how i guess how do you see if there was a way i got and i guess one other thing i wanted to ask is like i know you guys made a big marketing push to getting more people in the stands. There's significantly more vendors here this year. So it has been a very positive effect, I think, for you guys overall. Would that be a good assumption?

Yeah, we actually lowered ticket prices, made Thursday free. And, yeah, because we want more people to come and experience. We want our vendors to be successful. With more vendors comes more pressure for them to do well. It's not like, oh, we have more vendors. Awesome. Our job's done. It's like, no, we have to get people here now

because the vendors need to be successful because if they're not successful, they don't come back. It's unbelievable how many people you have to answer to when you own something like this like the number of stakeholders that really have an opinion about the way you do your job is almost overwhelming from the athletes to the spectators

the vendors, random people like us we've got a lot to talk about off the mics here about our opinion because we think it's important it's interesting so one of my business coaches we were talking about factoring forward, and he's like, so you basically answer to the affiliate. And I said, yes.

And he goes, so Granite Games, you have to answer to the volunteers, you have to answer to your partners, your vendors, the city, CrossFit, the athletes. And he just kept making a list. And he goes, why do you do this? This is so complex. And I'm like, it's a great question. But I love it.

But I love it. And I think we do a good job of, like, handling the chaos. But we also have a director that has to first take in all of the information. So, like, I kind of handle all the athletes. But, like, you know, you guys have met Adam. Adam handles all the vendors. So he's taking in their stuff. And then it gets flushed to me, and we just try to do our best to keep every dimension of the brand happy.

Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. No. I was going to say, has the city been helpful over the years, or has there been conflict there? Like, what is that dynamic like when you're throwing when you're throwing a multi-thousand person event in a very small town? It depends on who in the city. I mean, the police department is great, which is awesome.

But the short answer would be not as much as you would expect. I think the economic report was like $6 million we bring into the system for positive economic impact. The hotels kind of have the stance that they know they have us because there's not enough of them. So they jack up the prices. We try to actually keep them to get prices low. We don't take rebates on the hotel rooms or anything like that. We're trying to keep it low for the athletes.

And they don't want to work with us because they're like their attitude is we'll just sell out anyway so uh that's minneapolis has been begging us to move down there because they see how many people are flying in and that part is enticing because i want to work with a city that actually wants us um i mean when i met with the mayor here he was basically like the reason why nobody wants to work with you guys is nobody understands what you guys do and my response was you don't need to understand like what the fitness is you need to understand that we fill hotel rooms and we fill restaurants on very dead weekends for you guys go ask any of the restaurants or hotels what's the best weekend and they will say whenever the granite games is yeah so for that type of attitude at the highest level here that

was that's frustrating. We don't understand what you do. You don't need to. Understand the economics of what the event does. Yeah. And we've talked about it a couple times on the show already, but when I think of the Granite Games, I always think about how many cool ways that you guys have created competition

to mix it up with the guy-girl pairs, the three-person teams. There's always been the elite of the elite athletes showing up, but it never really felt like that was, like, the thing you guys focused on. It was always getting people a great experience and making everyone an athlete. With this being a sanctional, have you noticed any drawback in, like, the numbers or the season that you guys have because it is part of this big system now? There's two things that I've noticed this year. One was it was the first time ever our pros had bigger crowds than the other divisions.

So normally our team of three scaled is the biggest crowd in the venue. Awesome. Which is really incredible to watch. I mean, you see these scaled athletes going. There's like 2,000 people. They're just going hard in the paint crushing it out there and then I think there was actually a little we'll have a better feel for it post event

but there is I think tension coming in from the community that we became a sanctioned event because we've always had a hard stance that we are for the entire community and I think some of the community I don't think we did anything because i don't think we've changed anything yeah um i think they were kind of waiting to see like oh have they changed like because they're sanctioned now they've changed um and and i heard rumblings and i had people you know

directly reach out to me and say here's what the community feels right now and i'm like i don't know how to help them not feel that because that's not at all what we're doing. And you see that with how we're running the events and how many workouts there are and just how things are working. And sometimes maybe those emotions, they have to play out and they have to realize like, oh,

nothing's changed. Because people hate as much as we like to say unknown and unknowable, people hate it. And I think when we became a sanctional event, our greater community that has backed us, I think they were like, well, are they going to change now? Or am I no longer going to be important? And the answer is no. Our athletes are always, our all athletes are number one priority.

That's awesome. Did you ever watch the Joe Rogan episode that he did with Elon Musk? Yes. Did you listen to that? At the very beginning of that episode, Joe asks Elon like three or four times in a row, and Elon kind of skated the question like every single time about how he manages blocking his time with SpaceX and SolarCity and Tesla, et cetera. You mentioned time blocking earlier. Given that you have multiple companies, like how do you block your time out day to day, week to week?

So you cannot get me in a meeting Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. And Monday is heavily meetings plus workout time. Tuesday is a couple meetings, and then it's priorities, like priority rock time, so working on my number one priority. The gym is ran by a complete executive team, so i only actually meet with one person there and for the most part i have no impact in day-to-day ops so and the granite games has a full executive team so i'm meeting with those individuals but i'm actually for the most part not actually doing hands-on physical lifting i'm actually advising and thenon physical lifting i'm actually advising

and then forge is where i'm actually going in and doing like building out course content and things like that so i'll beta test some of that stuff in the gym so if you see me working on something in the gym it's because i'm testing it here because i'm going to pull it and make it a course here but that's that like so i don't have like a set way of like this company gets this many hours it's how i structured my week as a whole like Monday You can block me for a meeting and my assistant will do that Tuesday. She gets a couple hours and then after that It's all organized by Macro 90-day rocks that I have to accomplish and that's how I prioritize and everything else gets pushed to our team to you know

Take care of the rest. Yeah, and which part about all that is the most enjoyable to you? What's your favorite part? I think that changes with the season. As you get closer to Granite Games, this becomes more fun. Post-Granite Games, I'm like, I don't want to sit in a Granite Games meeting. I just want to be free of it. I really like helping the affiliates. I think because I know the impact it can have in the downstream of all those people's lives that they get to coach.

And I think a lot of the affiliates aren't, they're trying to do a really great thing, but they're actually sacrificing time with their kids and all the things I experienced. And so that to me is a really, I think that's probably my passion, is to help the affiliate owners run a wonderful business that has crazy impact in the world and is changing lives, but also they improve the quality of their life to be a dad or a mom or a husband or a wife and their fitness. And that's like that, because that's my journey. So I think that's why it's natural for me to want to help others there i mean it's not i don't think i could be passionate about trying to teach other

people how to run a fitness event like we fell into this thing we i think do a wonderful job but i would never like i wouldn't be passionate about trying to teach other people how to do that that's just not my jam i can't wait to watch it grow can't wait to watch uh where this thing goes over the next couple years 2021 it's gonna be fun because like you said i think it's gonna take two years for everybody to for everything all the dust to settle um is there uh just any any big vision that you can share with us on things we can expect out of the granite games not at the moment i think get through this weekend and just for us,

like we're trying to feel out where things are at. And yeah, I think solving the location problem in the next, you know, foreseeable future, it's number one priority. And then our affiliate initiatives

of how can we help the affiliates make more money, provide better lifestyle for their coaches and for them. Because ultimately, take better care of your coaches, you're going to get an opportunity to take better care of yourself because you're not there at 8 o'clock at night or opening the gym every morning. So as long as Grounded Games keeps marching to those initiatives, I think we'll be on

a good path. I love it. I have a blast. I like hanging out. This is one of the events that we make sure we get to every year so it's really cool where can people find you of all the things you have going on? I think the easiest place is probably Instagram

John W. Swanson and you will get a mixed bag of kid pics, business, dog pics nutrition, a dog perfect Doug Larson, same deal, find me on Instagram Doug Larson, get over to theonet Find me on Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. Get over to theonetonchallenge.com.

Snatch, clean jerk, squat that bench, 2,000 pounds, getting you into the One Ton Club. 1,200 for you ladies. Get your scores up on the leaderboard for all your PRs. See how close you get. And then our boy Coach Travis Mash has written a 12-month program building you and all those lifts to get you to 2,000 pounds. You can find me at Anders Varner because I'm Anders Varner. Shrug Collective at Shrug Collective. program, building you and all those lifts to get you to 2,000 pounds.

You can find me at Anders Varner because I'm Anders Varner, Shrug Collective at Shrug Collective. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. That is what it sounds like after you just sold your beautiful business and you're not allowed to tell anybody about it. This is what's so great about being on Barbell Shrugged. It's not always the conversation that you guys hear it's the conversation before the conversation right after the conversation after we've all loosened up and maybe had one or two drinks when we're on

the road those are the beautiful conversations when we get to learn all the real stuff at the angles and the emotions and the love that people feel about their lives it's very very cool um thanking our sponsors. First and foremost, the Once On Challenge, sponsored by FitAid, the presenting sponsor. It's just unbelievable. I'm so excited for Friday night. So if you're going to be at the games,

come hang out with us. Savage Barbell. Get over to savagebarbell.com. Use the coupon code SHRUGGED to save 25% on your first order. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Get the green, the red, the gold juices and whoop.com saving 30 bucks on a 12 or 18 month membership. Friends, get to the games. Come hang out with us. Take a picture. I love you. I can't wait to see you.

This is like Christmas. I get to see all the people that are a part of the audience that I never get to see on a daily basis. And it's my favorite time of the year. So come see us. We're going to be at the FitAid booth. One-ton challenge Friday night from 5 to 8 p.m. Let's get after it.