Barbell Shrugged - Why Branding And Vibes Are Everything With Games Podium Finisher, Gym Owner, And Clothing Brand Entrepreneur Justin Ahrens — Real Chalk #73

Episode Date: April 30, 2019

In this week's episode I visit my friend Justin Ahrens (@justin.ahers) in Eugene Oregon and chat about his new gym and clothing brand that have been doing quite well in a short period of time. We discuss a lot about how he runs his gym, why branding is important, and how the vibe is everything. Did I mention that Justin just happens to be a CrossFit Games podium finisher for the team division? And he’s been in the game for just as long as I have. Side note... In college he was a competitive golfer. Weird huh?   Anyway, this is a great easy listen that reiterates how important the “little things” are in business and life. Hope you enjoy it and follow Justin and his new clothing brand called Treeline.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/rc-ahrens ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/ barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Tuesday. It's your boy Ryan Fish. I've been hanging around Oregon for the last five or six days. I went to Bend, did some mountain biking, did some snowboarding, hung out with some friends, and definitely got some much-needed outdoor time that I absolutely love. It's such a great time of year for this place. And then I realized that one of my very good buddies, Justin Ahrens, lives in Eugene, Oregon. And I've always been a huge fan of Steve Prefontaine. I'd love to go check out University of Oregon. And hopefully I have a friend who's going to get me into the actual football weight room there, which would be insane. To see the Ducks weightlifting area.

So I made the trip down over here. And I'm going to be gathering up some podcasts over the next couple weeks for you guys from a bunch of people who are native to Oregon. So there's a bunch of cool people coming up. I really love Aaron's story. I mean, Justin Aaron's story, because he's opened a gym in a time that is not favorable, right? I mean, there's a lot of people out there, they want to open a gym, they don't understand the ins and the outs. So he did a couple things that worked out really well for him that I want you guys to understand and realize. And then I also talk about a little bit of my like little business, little stabs in there that I like to kind of motivate him or tell him some things that kind of go well on my behalf and talk about maybe some things that he wished he did

differently or some of the things that are just on his mind at the moment. So his space is great. He's got a great membership. He's got a great vibe going on. I say in the podcast that it's one of those places you walk in and you immediately realize that you are in a good establishment, which is hard to find these days. So I'm really proud of him for that. He has a really great clothing line right now, Tree Line Lifestyle. It's just such a cool logo, and it's dope, it's clean, and it's something that you really want to wear pretty much on the regular. So I'm stoked for him, for that brand, and I think it's going to grow really well for him.

Before we get into the show, I just want to talk about my new high-intensity interval bodybuilding book, The Hundreds. I've been working on this thing for a while. It's finally out. You guys can check it out at jimryan.com. G-Y-M-R-Y-A-N.com. All things gym related. So basically with the HIB 100 program, I basically combined good old, old school bodybuilding program called German Volume.

It's like one of the best ways I've ever packed on muscle in my life. So it's usually 10 sets of 10. And I put it into a like HIIT training format. And I made it a little bit more fun and kind of put my own little twist on it. So all the workouts equal 100 reps for the big lifts. And there's a little bit of accessory things here and there. And I've been doing it for the last couple months now. It's been something I've been really, really getting into and really loving.

And I've been doing them on the road as I travel as well. And it's a great way to get in and out of the gym fast and just get just insane results. And because you're getting so many reps in such a short period of time, the muscle soreness is pretty good too. And I love to be sore. It makes me know, it lets me know that what I'm doing is working. I'm creating muscle damage. I'm getting sore and I love it. So I'm really stoked on that. In a couple more weeks, you guys are going to have the chance to join another one of my carb cycling challenges. If you guys haven't seen the results on those, it's pretty insane.

And to be honest, it's probably going to be the thing that puts me out in the world more than anything else I've ever done because it's been so popular and the prizes are rad and the before and after pictures are insane. And the style of it is truly something that's very easy to follow and doesn't take a lot of time out of your day. So basically I'm teaching you how to fluctuate your carbohydrate intake. Yes, there's a certain amount of fat and protein you eat every day, but it's not nearly as important as how much carbs you're eating every day. And as you fluctuate throughout the week, by the end of the month, your body looks totally different. And then we go on to phase two, which is kind of the earning your carbs type of lifestyle, which is what I do now.

But it's definitely great to start with the challenge. So you guys can find out when I'm doing challenges and you guys can sign up at jimryan.com. You guys can always follow me on Instagram, Ryan Fish, R-Y-A-N-F-I-S-C-H. If you don't follow me on Instagram, that's so sad. What are you doing? Making me sad. Anyway, all of my books right now, including the Hib 100, which I just came out with, no one's getting a discount on that except for listeners of this show. So all you have to do is type in REALCHOC in all capital letters, and you will get a 20% discount on any one of the books in the store as well as that one and no one else will get that discount. So enjoy that. The other product that I've been

using a lot of, they're not a sponsor for the show, but I love their product and I just wanted to give them a shout out is the 7 Points CBD. A lot of people have been asking me about the CBD that I put on my knees all the time in my stories. It's just a friend of mine's company. He works out of chalk and he owns this company. So it's really cool. And I like it. And I bring it with me everywhere. It's a it's seven points spelled out. So S-E-V-E-N-P-O-I-N-T-S CBD.com. And if you use code real chalk, you get I think it's 25% off on any of the products in there. And they have like this really cool rub you put on your knees and they also have um like the tinctures and the pills and all that stuff personally like i don't get bummed if i like miss a day of taking the pills or the tinctures but i do kind of get bummed if i don't put the stuff on my knees even if it's just mental i just like it

and it smells good it's got all natural ingredients like coconut oil and lemon peel and stuff in it there's nothing nothing weird in there. So I'm stoked on the company. They're just a great company. And yeah, I'm going to have some really cool stuff coming for you pretty soon. I'm starting my own company very soon, which is going to be starting with a bar that I actually haven't told anyone yet. So you guys are the first ones to hear it. It's going to be a badass bar. You guys are going to be so stoked on it. And it's going to be pretty much circled around the earn your carbs lifestyle,

which I am a big advocate of. So I'm excited for you guys to see this product and try it and all those good things. So without further ado, let's get into the show. Let's talk with Justin. Let's shoot the shit a little bit. Let's have some fun. And let's enjoy the Eugene vibes because it always smiles around here. It's always happy around here.

You guys are going to feel it in the show. Justin's such a good dude. And he's rad. And he's down to earth. And he's been a good friend of mine for a long time. So here we go. All right, Chalk Nation. I'm out here in Eugene, Oregon with Mr. Justin Ahrens, who I've known for a long time.

I think the first time I met him was in Dubai. That was the first time, right? Yeah, absolutely. Which now is a sanctional, which is crazy. Yeah, super crazy. I think we all knew something special was going to happen there. Yeah, when you have a Sheikh funding a complete competition on his dime, I'd say that the world is going to get involved in some way.

He's insane. That whole place is insane. I want to definitely talk about some ridiculous stories that happened when we were in Dubai for sure. But yeah, I remember you talking about Oregon a lot. And I didn't really understand why anybody would want to be in Oregon when I was living in California. And I was like, whatever. And I got older and started getting into more outdoorsy stuff. And I'm like, man, this place is kind of heaven.

And for those of you who don't know, I grew up being a ginormous Steve Prefontaine fan because I ran track in high in high school and I wanted to run in college and stuff and I just got burned out my coach just kind of sucked I mean he didn't suck he's probably listening to this podcast damn it um he just like he just ran me into the ground you know he's a fan of the podcast and I just oh Jesus sorry Mr. Thomas um he just i was running like 100 miles a week and just like after a while i just got kind of burned out but um what i what i like about the person that's in front of me right now is he has a super diverse um portfolio so basically he you've been to the crossfit Games a couple times now. Just once, actually. Oh, was it just once? Just once with Fort Vancouver.

Okay. Yeah, back in 2017. And you guys got? And we took third. Third place. Yeah. I remember that, too. I was like, damn, that's insane.

Yeah. Because you've been working so hard for so long, and then all of a sudden you went to the Games, and you didn't just do pretty well. You did awesome. I'd come close a couple times individually overseas when I was living in Dubai when we met. I think the closest was 2015 when it was the first time it was a Super Regional at the Meridian.

And they took five that year and I took seventh personally. But, yeah. And then once we relocated, I just happened to fall into the situation at Fort Vancouver. Yeah, an awesome group of people. Awesome group of people. Really cool the fact that we were standing there on that podium and looking left and right, and you had super team mayhem. Yeah. You had super team brute whose sole purpose that year was literally to just bring people into, into their team to, to win, to win, to go, to go take down mayhem. And then you

stood and you looked at the guys on the podium in third, which was us, and it was just a bunch of people who happened to be working out in the same gym. It was truly an affiliate situation. No more the super team stuff like Affiliate Cup, like six people that worked out together and just enjoyed it. I really like the style of that because that's how it really should be. That's pretty awesome.

But I think that the big thing here is there's a lot of people out there right now who they want to open a gym or they want to open a fitness studio or something along that that caliber and i feel like i try to tell people all the time like i don't know if this is the right time for you anymore it's kind of like you know on the down but it's not really on the down if you really create something special and uh i've never been here but i know you and i know how passionate you are about it and then i've seen how you kind of market it and i didn't expect anything less than like when i walked in i was like oh this place is really cool and i and you can tell when you walk in i feel like you don't really need music on you don't need um anything special i feel like you can just walk

in and immediately know if you're gonna to like it. Yeah, 100%. I feel like the same thing with people. Like you see somebody and you're like, he's cool. Yeah. He's cool. Or maybe not. And the gyms are the same. Like I walk in gyms all the time.

No right away. Hundreds of gyms. And I'm like, hmm, don't like it. Yeah. I don't care what workout we do today. It'll be a great workout, but I don't like this gym. Yeah. Dude, I constantly, I get emails all the time that are like,, we're here. Nothing but good things about what you're doing there. I have a

few friends that are working out there and I'd love to love to sign up. Like, where can I do that? And my first response is, Hey, before you do that, I want you to spend a week with us. Like I do the exact same thing. I'm not going to charge anything. Come here, spend a week. Let's make sure first of all, it's a good fit for our coaches with you. You like the you like the people that are already here do you even like the music that we're playing do you like our program and do you like our coaching and this facility like fit out for what you want and uh after a week if you want to go window shop elsewhere like i encourage you to do it yeah and we're ready for you if you come back but yeah absolutely i do the exact same thing i think the week is like crucial because one day could be a bad experience like the coach could have a bad day he's just like

maybe he's sick maybe he just like his grandma died the day before you know what i mean like you never know but if you see all the coaches all week you try all the workouts out maybe the first day is like snatch right suck at snatching it's like no you guys need a week to try this out yep i definitely strongly agree for anybody out there who owns a gym or a fitness studio. Don't give them one day. Give them a week. I think it's great. And honestly, if you're that concerned with making that extra week of money off of that person, then you're in the wrong industry.

That will be paid off long term if they're with you. And if they're truly bought in from that week and they love everything about it then then they're with you for the long haul and speaking of like try to create a community vibe you have a really cool little locker room set up which is really really cool these these middle school lockers that we pulled from yeah but they're so sweet we we picked these up a member of ours uh their father-in-law tears down schools in town and said hey we've got we've got access to a bunch of lockers. Would you want them? I said, 100%.

Grab me 30 of them, please. And we're just going to paint them and reuse them. So we actually rent them out at $7 a month. Oh, wow. And so there's a limited number of them. We have a waiting list for them of our membership. And then the rest are just cubbies. But, dude, as you can see, like, I'm super OCD with, like, cleanliness of constantly.

And so it's like, hey, we've got the cubbies, but those are for use of you're here during that hour. Those cubbies are open, but it's not leave your bag there for the week type of thing. Like, it's going to end up at Goodwill if it's here for a week. Yeah, I struggle with people's things. And I have locker rooms, too, but it's not really able to really. I mean, people have keys, and it's just like they take them, but it's not really able to, uh, to really, I mean, people have keys and it's just, they take them and it's just, it's a nightmare, but yeah, I definitely would like a better locker situation than I have now. So let's talk about, cause I know the first year you had,

how many members you have in the first year? Um, I'd say we, we approached, let's see, I want to say we hit that a hundred, a hundred mark. It wasn't a year. It was like a few months. Yeah. We sold out actually 65 members before we opened our doors. See, like that's what you're trying to do. We opened up a founding father membership that was – and we marketed it and we said this is the space we have. These are the coaches that we have. This is what we're going to be providing. If you want in on this founding father membership, you will be stapled to that price for the life of your membership. As long as you are an active member. Um, and, and as membership goes

up, yours will stay like you you're in it for, for, for the long haul. And, uh, we did that for the first 50 and we sold 65 memberships before we opened our door. None of those people even saw the facility. Um, it was just strictly off what we were saying we were going to be providing. And of those 65 people, um, 35 of them had never done CrossFit before. Oh, wow. Yeah. Which was really awesome. So how did you get them? Um, solely from word of mouth of people that had followed kind of my journey as, since I grew up here, followed my journey over to Dubai. They had tried CrossFit gyms in the area. It wasn't quite their vibe type of thing. They didn't feel like it was something that they were very welcomed with.

It's so different at every gym. Yeah, and they were scared of getting hurt. Yeah. And so they looked at it as, I'm going to walk into another gym here. I'm brand new to it. They've already got their clicks. They've already got their membership, and I'm going to walk into another gym here. I'm brand new to it. They've already got their clicks. They've already got their membership and I'm going to feel out of place. Almost, I'd say probably 25 of those 35 people came to me and said, we looked at this as it's a brand new gym, a brand new community, a brand new family, a brand new group of people. Everyone's going to be new.

It's a perfect opportunity for me to like try it with a new group of people. So we had a massive one-on-one class right there at the beginning. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I remember my first day I had a hundred people, but it was mainly because I was working at another gym in town and it was like kind of like falling apart and everybody like really wanted to go somewhere else. So I opened the gym that everybody kind of wanted.

I remember you talking about that. Man, it really sucked. Like the owner just kind of just didn't care anymore and it started to everybody kind of wanted. I remember you talking about that. Man, it really sucked. Like the owner just kind of didn't care anymore. And it started to just kind of dilute into and spread into like the coaches and the management and all that stuff. I even struggle right now because I'm like, man, like I'm traveling a lot like doing podcasts and doing other things. And I have a whole bunch of stuff going on.

And it's like I think about the manager position and I'm just like like I don't know if a manager really exists in a CrossFit gym I feel like the owner is like is either there all the time or he's in and out and then the coaches just have to take responsibility but how do you feel about that yeah that's tough um because right now I'm like I really really think I need one but I'm like oh I don't know I just feel like it's kind of like it's such a strange position. You've got to have 120% trust in that one individual. The coach, yeah, who's there. Yeah, who's going to be there to be able to take it.

Or a person at the desk. I have a person at the desk. A person at the desk. Is really good. That's so hard though. I don't – I would hope that we would get to a point that maybe – for me personally, I'm hoping that my wife can be brought on full time at some point um and we kind of can keep at least in the family somewhat but but from with

that said like that's tough man it's really tough i'm already having i already have a hard enough time i mean you're you're five years into it but i already have a hard enough time going on vacation and like trust and not checking on my arlo, checking my cameras in the gym constantly to like, see like, Hey, who's in there. Who's running, who's running the class.

Like, is everything going well? Dude, my first year open, I think I, I went to Dubai. Yeah. I think I remember.

Yeah. And you were, and I was there for a month panicking. I was losing my mind because we, the first year of Dubai guys, we had to go out. It was two weeks before the competition to do the qualifier. Yeah.

And you weren't just going to, like, come back and then go back again. Like, nobody was even making money in CrossFit. Just the ticket to go to Dubai was, like, devastating to me. You had to be present to, like, qualify. I was like, holy crap. So then it was, like, a $1,000 ticket out there. And then actually the first time I didn't even pay. Speaking of didn't pay.

Not only did we not pay, or did I not pay. I was already there. We all got word of it. We all got word of it. Hey, we're doing the Dubai Championship. We're bringing out Kenny Leverage. We're bringing out Annie Thor's daughter, Ferdinand Kigetius, Ryan Fisher. They're all coming out to do it.

Lindsey Valenzuela came out that year. Who else came out that year? Is that it? I think that's pretty much it. But we all stayed at the Burj Khalifa Tower, which is the Armani Hotel. It's like four or five grand a night. We were there for a month. Remember after finally we were done?

It was me, Tanner, and you went back, and we had a steak. It was $1,500. We walked around in robes upstairs outside the pool. That was one of my best experiences of my entire CrossFit career, for sure. That was an amazing, amazing time. They let me fly out there and just let you buy whatever you wanted, do whatever you wanted. I felt like I was President Obama. And yeah, Justin and I and this kid Tanner,

I was like, hey, let's just have a dinner in the hotel. They said, whatever gets fine. And then we're all looking at the menu, and I order this steak, and as soon as I ordered it, Justin gets so uncomfortable. Are you sure? I just remember looking at Tanner, I'm like, are we sure we're

not paying for this like i'm really not comfortable ordering this and then be getting the bill i think the bill was like 2500 was over it was oh it's ridiculous like three of us eating but yeah that was an insane time yeah um yeah and those times just don't really exist anymore i feel like i feel like it's It's such a different vibe now. It's more of a business vibe now than ever. I think because of social media, there's so many people making a business on social media. So now you have a lot of the business owners that are trying to kind of tap into that as well. So now you have the online programming world, and you have the e-book world,

and all these different things kind of going on right now. And I was saying to you the other day when we were working out, you're like, oh, what do you think of this? What do you think of this? And I was like, man, it's all great. And hopefully this is like a great like window shopping experience for all the other things that you have three more years down the road. Hopefully. I really do hope so. Yeah, I'm excited about the lifestyle, Treeline Lifestyle brand that we opened.

It's just to really use our logo, our brand as a platform to kind of reach a different community of people and through apparel and whatever it may call for. I like the outdoorsy style apparel. Simple, simplicity. I like the outdoorsy style apparel. Simple. Simplicity. We have this place. It's called The Camp. And it's in Orange County, California. And they have all these outdoorsy brands. And they just look so cool.

And I feel like they're kind of on the up right now. And your logo is just so rad. I remember when I first saw it, I was like, oh, that is freaking sweet. Dude, the Treeline CrossFit was built in the process of being built when i first met you over in dubai yeah and you were building chalk at the time and uh the business plan was built but the name like dude i know you went through the same problem it's like holy crap like did you have a lot of emails back and forth the whole remember it's like hey give us your top three. I sent one every time.

It was like, no, I'm not settling on two or three because I don't want that name. This is the first name I want. And it was like, no, that's denied. That's not approved, whatever. Why did they deny you? At that time, they had swapped over. I wanted to keep it Pacific Northwest oriented in some way. But they got away from you couldn't use regions.

You couldn't use states, names, cities, whatever it was. And we always wanted something that we didn't want something that was intimidating crossfit domination dude i hate when people do shit like that and and i also didn't want it to start with crossfit for if crossfit ever tanked i wanted it to be able to be recognized by the name itself hey i'm going to tree line and um going to chalk and uh and we wanted to keep it if you're an oregonian if you're live in the pacific northwest i don't i don't know if you can really find a group of people that are more proud to be from an area um that for that sole purpose of when we first spoke like texas yeah yeah true yeah true texas baby um but and and all oregonians love the outline of their state

and they love nature when we lived overseas in dubai for for six years the cast and i looked at each other and was like what's the one thing we miss most nature trees living in the desert looking i don't know how you did it brown sand for six years i can't believe you did like back and forth every time we would come home we'd land in Eugene and be like, it's like looking at HD screen outside. Like this is so bright and green and, uh, it's okay. How can we incorporate the trees into it? Man, tree lines, tree lines, not technically one word, but we blended the two together and we wanted a logo that can be defined with its text. because we knew we had to market it from the beginning that it had to be recognized via words and then we wanted a logo that hopefully

we could pull away from the text could it be recognized on the back of someone's car membership knew what it meant because they are the sole drivers of that brand right to the community but then as it expanded and as people believed in what we were doing and kind of the story that we had then they would be attached to it and so we built the uh my brother and i and one of the one of the members uh james lee and um and and we built the built the tree and took a line through it and called it that but oh i didn't understand that the line is part of tree line oh that line is just spacing between it cheekier now some people some people look at that and they're like is that the t i'm like no it's like nope tree line yeah i didn't really yeah i didn't think of it that way but yeah

it's cool yeah that is really cool um but you also have your online programming for the gym as well too right yeah we do an online program, Treeline Athlete Program. Is it mainly just athlete focused or is it a little bit of everything? You know, it's a little bit of everything. Ben and I write the program. Ben Stoneberg and I write the program. We always agreed that if we were to ever come in on programming and coaching for a gym

that we wanted the gym to be a place that your coaches, the top athlete in the gym, is also going to be doing the class. And so we wrote the program in a way that the class is the priority. We write the class program, and then we build off of that for our athlete program. We first called it the Competitors Program. And very quickly, we realized that's not what we want.

We already have people look at my name and his name in town. And at the beginning, a lot of people had a hard time walking through our doors because they didn't want to be competitors. And they thought this is gonna be a competitors only like type of gym, like environment. And we didn't want that at all. We wanted people that have extra time to train and they just want direction in training to keep it constantly varied. What can they have? What type of program can they have? And I'd say we have, of our 170 members or so, 40 of them or so are on our athlete program as well. You've got your stay-at-home moms that are doing it. And then we've only got maybe three handfuls of people that are online doing it outside of here.

A couple regional athletes. But that side hasn't grown as much, but internally I love it because of the fact that those athletes, there isn't that click that you walk into your normal CrossFit gym and you're like, man, why are those people too good to do our warmup? Like, why are those people not circling up at the whiteboard? I'm super old school and we circle up at the whiteboard and we go around, you introduce yourself every single day. And there's a random question of the day this morning. It's Hey,

are you that type of person? You go grocery shopping. Do you try to get all those grocery bags inside the house on one load? Or do you make multiple trips out to the car back and forth? Like just something to break the ice, get them hearing each other's name on a daily basis so that they can feel comfortable talking to each other and, uh,

and then learn about each other. And so that they have something to talk about during the warmup. But, um, yeah, it's crazy. The, the competitor term is like, gosh, it's pretty scary for a lot of people and with everything that's changing. Yeah. It's not worth it anymore to be specialized in that area. We honestly have had a, we've had a, we, we had one, one person online join us from OPEX, and they were with OPEX for nine years. And it got to the point where, man, I can't afford to be paying this much for an online program anymore,

remote programming, when it's not realistic of me even going to the games anymore. Like it's just not in the cards. But I want to stay fit. I want to have time to do extra stuff other than just the class of the gym that i'm going to like it's so nice to have something written out it's just like like even yesterday when you and i were working out we were looking at the board just even for a few minutes like oh i think i might do this i might do that just like i'm doing this and that's it you know what i mean and it's like it's like not very expensive yeah most likely 30 bucks 30

bucks yeah yeah so on mine actually i have mine, actually, I have my CrossFit workouts. I have my sweat workouts, which is like a conditioning deal. And then I started adding this daily dumbbell workout. I called it the Daily D. The Daily D, yeah, I saw that. You'd be surprised how many people signed up just for that. So it's like we have all these people who are on social media, and they look at me. And obviously, I'm not doing the Daily D every day.

Right. But that person is inspired in some shape or form to do something like that. By you, though. Yeah. By you. The thing is they're buying into Ryan. Yeah. Ryan Fisher.

But there's not as many people hitting. Like I wouldn't have a successful living if I was like going off of the competitor training that I love to do all the time. Which I don't do anymore because I'm all messed up now. But yeah. don't do anymore because i'm all messed up now but uh yeah like i think a lot of people are missing out on the fact that the average person is that that is your demographic when you when you own any sort of fitness facility there's not a ton of people that are badass that want to be more badass yeah and if they are they probably are figuring it out on their own and of those people i think the biggest thing even with those people that want that are the badasses that want to like go hard and do all this extra stuff,

and I was a victim of it early on as well, is that I thought I was on catch-up. And I was doing everything and training forever and doing every movement. I always say that. Rich Froning ruined CrossFit. Dude, holy crap. When they made that video of him. That video of him doing everything and not eating. And then when all of us were at that time, we all wanted to be really good. It's like, oh, that's what I have to do.

In order to catch him, that's what I have to do. And I really wish that video never came out because I think that CrossFit would be probably a little in a better place right now. Especially when you used to look at CrossFit HQ's workouts, CrossFit.com, and it was 5x3 split jerk. Yep. Done. Only. That's it. Done.

See, I don't 100% agree with that. We. Done. Only. Yeah. That's it. I see. I don't 100% agree with that. We always breathe hard no matter what. We maybe lift heavy three days, two to three days out of the week. But on those days, our membership knows that my heart rate is going to get elevated after that, at least for a certain period of time. Like there's going to be some conditioning. Yeah.

A hundred percent. And I love the condition. Like that's what makes me happy. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's walk away breathing hard. Yeah. I love that conditioning. That's what makes me happy. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Walk away breathing hard. Yeah, I love that feeling.

So speaking of all that, so for your programming, when you structure a class workout, you said that you like to keep the best member and the worst member of the gym in mind when you're making the workout. I think that's smart as well. How much time do you keep for the warm-up? How much time do you make for the workout? And do you always do a strength and a conditioning component? Do you sometimes just do all conditioning? Let's talk about that. Yeah. Warmup. Um, I leave, I leave some, uh, some flexibility to the coach that's running the class on how they want to warm up. I think it's

an opportunity for them to, if they want to mix things up a little bit, um, and, and they've got some ideas, man, that's, that's their hour. Like I absolutely hate when people program warmups, let them like, let them do it. And I get, I get questions from some of our remote people as well. It's like, Hey, what's a good warmup for this? I'm like all the time, man, get creative. Like, you know what muscle groups were hitting, like have some fun and get warm and get loose. Like that's, that's your job. That's the sole purpose of the warmup. We're just giving you some tools for it. And if you see some of these other programs out there, like there's some big names out there with online programs, and they have a warm-up, and they have this, and they have that.

And you look at the warm-up, and it's like, that's not a warm-up. You're just doing it because you have to write something for them. And now they're going to get hurt. And you're creating more work for yourself. Yeah. For what reason? Give them some ownership to it. But, I mean, what if they're squattingting in the workout and I can't get below parallel,

like very easily. Well, I should probably do some, you know, some flossing on my knees and should probably do this and that and probably to be doing more rowing for my warmup. And then someone else, you know,

maybe it's just like hard to put their arms back and grab the bar and they do some upper mobility just before they even squat. You know what I mean? So like it's two totally different warmups. It doesn't make any sense. Like, yeah, get a little sweaty,

get moving around a little bit, but I think everyone should have some specific points. Yeah, absolutely. That just, that area makes me really upset. But so, okay. So you have your warmup. How long is that? Maybe 12 minutes or so that they're, they're, they're warming up.

Um, I'd say max, um, usually involves, dude, a huge piece of it is especially for early morning classes. I'll put on the board sometimes three minutes of movement to start your run row, ski, bike roping for three minutes like it's 5 30 in the freaking morning yep i don't know how that crew works out that early in the morning but if i know it was me i better start moving with some purpose i'm not 5 a.m so it's insane like um but yeah so 12 minutes of that um then we get in if we're doing a barbell movement there's always some empty barbell coaching and we're going through movement pattern over and over again pockets hips snatch drop snatch whatever it may be hitting positions you've got your experienced crossfitters or lifters that are in there they're

doing the same empty barbell warm-up with everyone else that it's no different i honestly credit now running almost every single class for almost two years. I'm stronger. I'm hitting more PRs than I ever have. And I honestly credit to the fact of having to go through those empty barbell warmups and hitting those positions over and over and over again with my classes. A hundred percent, um, warmup. If we're doing lifting, the lifting maybe is going to take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes,

depending on, um um depending on what the lift is and what heavy complex we're working up to or if it's on the minute dude i was gonna say do you do a lot of emoms a lot of emoms um i'm like super far away from like 15 minutes to hit a max lift yeah i like never do rarely rarely will we do that um if we're if we're maybe maxing out on a back squat or something like that or or a, or a jerk, maybe we will, we'll say, Hey, 12 to 15 minutes to build up to a heavy single. Rarely does that happen though. Ben and I are huge believers in just EMOM fashion. Like if we're doing Olympic lifting on an EMOM, let's get explosive in some way. So it's adding jump rope or box jumps or burpees in some way to open up your hips, um, before you're lifting and then get into conditioning. So

whatever the conditioning may be. Um, but him and I do believe in one thing and that is every week we're going to have an endurance piece. That's going to be a 20 to 30 minute EMOM alternating minutes. Let's build capacity. And then you're always going to every week have one sprint and you, we, we preach it to our membership is when we step in front of that class is hey this is your one time this week to put the hammer down hard like the body is going to benefit greatly from it if you max out capacity on this workout but you can go through the motions and probably feel pretty good but if you hit this workout as hard as you possibly can right now like you are it's you're gonna be in a lot of pain i promise you're gonna be in a lot of pain but you're gonna better yourself like for the rest of the week i just

did one like that last week it was it was a two minutes on one minute off and it was like 12 calorie assault bike 10 alternating dumbbell snatches and then max toes bar oh yeah in two minutes burn and then you get a minute rest and it was five rounds so like that was that was our sprint but yeah those are hard it's it's tough to get someone to be like yo you need to go on this bike right now like that's what calories better be done in 12 freaking seconds get the hell off the bike and get over that dumbbell you know what i mean or uh i think our first ever sprint for the for the gym was 30 cal bike buy-in 800 meter run for time oh go go and we just repeated it for the first time i think last month just literally go.

And that was our first, first class introduction to what the salt bike could do to you. And over time they built up like their capacity to it, but typically it involves the assault bike in some way or the skis or the rower or running to the skis by far my favorite machine. I know I want to put skis like in my workouts more, but my online community is, is pretty big right now. So I don't want to have so much ski in there because a lot of people don't have them.

Dude, they're so fun though. But in class, I tell the coaches all the time, I'm like, dude, if you guys can put the ski up, let's do the skis for sure. I remember when Dubai first introduced the ski. You love this story. I was going to go into something else. If you want to go into that story, we can. Go for it. I was going to say, I put a rower. I came back here for summer and I was trying to practice ski

and no one had a ski. I inverted a rower against the wall and tied it to a rig and then pulled down on the handles of the rower and kept the rowers together and said, that's going to be the only way that I'm going to be able to work that muscle group and get that feeling

of skiing. How did that work out? I mean, it was decent. I mean, it's good enough. It's closer than my best ski at the time. The fish looks like he's milking a cow going on the ski. Guys, my first time in Dubai, like the qualifying workout was five-minute skier for like max meters or max calories or something. I think it was 10. Was it 10 minutes?

I think it might have been 10 full minutes on that thing. And I remember – we definitely did a 10-minute row. Oh, yeah. That's right. I think it was a five-minute ski. A 10-minute row, yeah. And I remember just my first time ever on the ski and I remember looking over and like Justin and Tanner, like they were pulling like over 2,000 calories an hour. And I was like, what the fuck?

Like I literally was like, was like yo guys come over and check this out like i would just start going as hard as i could and i'd be hitting like 1200 and they were like dude i don't know what to tell you i'm like dude this is bullshit i don't i don't understand like i'm going as hard as i can how is this fair and now i can actually ski like significantly better than i can row but yeah i could not understand it. Of all the machines, I agree. I think the skier is the best one.

It's like the one thing that we don't overdo is our lats, I feel like. Whereas the bike blows up your legs, the rower blows up your legs. When you run, you're blowing up your legs. It's like over and over and over again. And aesthetically. Let's just talk aesthetically. Dude, full body, core, that arm, tricep pump, lap pump. Like, anyone that loves that feeling, that pump feeling, dude, ski 100%.

I actually do one of my favorite little ab workouts that I'll do, like, at the end of the day. If I'm like, you know what, I just kind of, like, want to get a little something extra in, I'll do a 10-minute EMOM. And I'll do 15 cow ski on the odd and 15 toes a bar in the even. Oh, yeah. Or GHD. Or GHD. Woof. Woof. Woof. mom and i'll do 15 cal ski on the odd and 15 toes a bar in the even oh yeah or ghd or ghd woof and and every time i hear a whoop i have so many gay followers on my instagram i literally just think of like an old man just like double and i'm just like oh no

because i've seen you write stuff on your instagram when you say and i'm like no double if i open up my DMs right now, there's so many woofs in there right now. It's literally like an Oregon dog park in my DMs right now. Which, by the way, everybody loves dogs here. Everyone loves dogs.

Do you have a dog? Yeah, I got Griffey. He's not here right now because we're finishing up some construction upstairs, but he likes to roam up there, but we got a golden doodle. Yeah, that's the way to go.

Dude, I wanted a gym dog and they don't shed that was the big thing i'm like my ocd with cleaning i'm not having a dog that sheds going around here no people think i'm literally like freaking stalling when i walk in my gym because i'll just be like no dogs allowed ever like i just like start screaming it like if a dog's in the gym i'm like get him out of here right get about dude they they make fun of it the ocd at the cleanliest and i'm sure they do with you down there but that is by far the first compliment anyone gives me when we walk into they walk into our gym it's like it is so clean in here it feels so nice to walk into a gym and know that i'm not going to get some disease by laying on the ground or like touching a barbell that's rusted over and chalked up like i feel like it's the first thing that needs to be important like when you're opening a gym you're like okay my

membership is going to be 200 right so you're in oregon it's probably cheaper yeah so like but for me in california i'm like all right this is going to be 200 it has to look has to look similar to equinox when you walk in yeah like i'm not saying i like equinox but their big membership is 200 24-hour fitness is like $50. It's allowed to be a little bit dirtier. That person who's going to spend $200, they want to see something nice.

Regardless of the coaching, regardless of what they're going to receive there, first impression, walk in, is this place sick? Is it sweet? I'll never forget. I feel like I'm in a garage. I'll never forget being a coach and people coming in and being like, how much is the gym like when i didn't own it and i'd say 200 and they would look at me like i was nuts and i'd be like oh my god when i own a gym one day i do not want that to be absolutely the first impression that they get nope or like the first

reaction they say is like oh my god it's 200 agreed and i never get that anymore at my gym oh 100 and i've been there it It's absolutely legit. Yeah. Absolutely. So now you have like a 15-minute, 10 to 15 or 12 to 15-minute strength component, and then your conditioning is usually like 15 to 20 minutes? I would say if there's that much strength involved, our conditioning piece is going to be probably no more than 10 minutes on those days if there's a strength piece involved. If anything is 15 minutes or greater as far as the workout is concerned, then that's typically going to be it.

We're going to make that the priority. We might pick a skill to work on prior, but I've trained our coaches that, hey, if class ends early, your job is to fulfill that hour with them. Like get creative. Do a core cash out with them. Do some static holds some way like on the minute Tabata style. I like that. Maybe like be creative but fulfill the hour with them.

Like they're paying for that hour with you. Like fulfill it. My class every single day, it sounds so odd, but no matter what, it's 35 to 36 minutes long. Like no matter what it's 35 to 36 minutes long like no matter what so like it might be um it might be 15 or 20 minute lifting yeah but if it's 20 minutes of lifting it's 15 minute workout still yeah and it might be like 15 minutes to finish or you know five minutes on cap on it three minute rest five minutes on something like that i have a lot of caps yeah um but yeah it's the only thing that i come

into like a little bit of struggle with is the coaches don't always have a lot of time to coach the movement right it's like we got to get warmed up and we got to get we got to kind of get going because this is how it's going to be yeah but for my clientele we've had so many people doing crossfit in the area that like i'm kind of the go-to now like when you want to step it up like the workouts are going to be hard they're going to be longer it's going to be a little bit more intense like this is where you go for that it's kind of the go-to now, like when you want to step it up, like the workouts are going to be hard. They're going to be longer. It's going to be a little bit more intense. Like this is where you go for that. It's kind of the same, same reputation we've gotten. We've, we've absorbed, um, quite a few members from, from other facilities in the year and a half that we've been open.

Um, what, regardless of, of if it's for the fact of, I just feel like I'm kind of plateauing, like, which is going to happen, right? From any coaching standpoint, look at, uh, look at Yonakoski when he left Salo. Miko Salo told him straight up, I've given you everything I can. I don't have any more knowledge to provide for you. I've coached you as much as I possibly could. It's time for you to either go alone or find a new coach. What I think is big as a coach, like as someone to be able to say that, like physically be able to say that, like that's, that's crazy. But, um, I agree. We have, we've

absorbed a lot of people that just have felt like, man, I've just plateaued and they've recognized the level of an athlete here. And I love hearing our membership leave and they'll drop into another box out of town or whatever. And they'll'll come back they'll be like dude no one in the class finished the workout but me i was a total badass yeah they're like it felt so good to do that because i come in last place every time i'm here yeah tree line dude that's like at my gym too yeah they're like dude i'm last here and i just just kicked everyone's ass everybody yeah and it was dirty and it was this or it was that and people are literally just like so thankful appreciative of what they're receiving. Yeah, that's amazing.

It's a great reminder, right? Then they come back. And that's just good for you to hear as an owner and as a coach as well. Because, dude, you can't help but also as an owner, as a coach, constantly when you hear the noise around the gym, it's typically negative in some way. Like, man, I wish we had this. Yeah, I can't stand that.

Or why don't we have that? Or, hey, why haven't we done this? Or whatever it may be. And as an owner and as a coach, you're constantly, you personally, of course, they're also saying positive stuff. But that doesn't resonate in your mind. Like, for me personally, I just, I hear the negative stuff. How am I going to fix that? Like, what am I going to do next that's going to provide them, like, oh, this is awesome.

Like, he's reinvesting money back into the company constantly. For us, it's showers. You still might be at that phase where you want to please everybody. I just got to the point where I'm like, you know what? Fuck you. You know what I mean? It's not fuck you, but you know what? It's like I already know that I'm not winning this battle.

I'm not going to try to win this battle. I'm not going to let this battle stress me out. You're still in the stages where it's like, I need everyone to be happy. And then eventually there'll be a point where you're just like, I can't do it. Yeah, not necessarily need, but want. You're going to have 97% of the gym be so stoked.

And there's going to be like 3% that are like, well, he does this or he does that. He only cares about these people. And I think that's been a hot topic for my wife and I recently is that, man, helping manage a gym over in Dubai and coaching over there for the longest time. I mean I'm experienced in what I do. But with that said, I had forgotten and put on the back burners a little bit how much owning a gym, being the head coach, wearing all the hats, how much under a magnifying glass you are for everything, but also like for each individual person, they have a specific need and desire of when they walk into, walk into your gym, what they want to see out of you. And dude, you're going to have bad days too. I'm going to

have bad days. And it's hard to completely like drop that drop kick it and make that hour truly like the best hour of their day like that's a big motto of ours like i want that hour to be the best hour of their day for that coach that's coaching the class whether it's me or not and regardless of what i have got going on outside of that class that's not for their business but they're watching and they're looking and they're taking notes right like some of them are taking more notes than others if they're here a whole lot more, but dude, I can't tell you when I go to like my story on my Instagram, all the top people who watch it, like, like, you know, the people on top of the people who watch it the most. Yeah.

It's like literally like all my coaches, all like my like pretty, like, like, it's like, it's not the members that are like the super OGs. They're like, they're like, they want to see me do something that they're maybe not approved of or something. Sometimes I'm about to take a story and I'm like, I don't know if I should do this. I think my coaches and stuff are kind of like, I wonder if he's just out there goofing off or if he's actually working hard. I've asked some of them, I'm like, hey, can you guys maybe try to write me a few sweat workouts? Try to write me a few cross-out workouts.

Let me see what you got. And it just never, it's never my vision, you know what I mean? The stuff I write is just so much different than other people's stuff. It's very, very different. There's thought that goes into it.

And we get the same thing. I didn't even finish last night, I was telling you. I was in Whole Foods for probably like four or five hours. And I got 70% of my work done. But, yeah, it's really, really hard to come up with cool stuff. 100%. But they appreciate it. Yeah.

Like tenfold. And they know right away. Big time. Because they've been to other gyms or they've done other workouts or whatever. And there's something about what's happening there that is very, very special to them. Same thing with us. We've got multiple members that have owned gyms in town. I've seen your workouts.

You have great workouts too. They've closed their gym or they coached at another gym in town that closed and they've ended up here and they've said the same thing. They look at the program and they're like, you can tell that there's actual thought into what's going on and it's not waking up and like, i'm gonna make them a row 3k today yeah whatever it may be i'm gonna throw these movements together like there's a lot of gyms out there where the guy gets there and just like writes it up yeah writes on the whiteboard i'm

like oh my god just brainstorming right there like what so do you have a like a recovery day put into the week or do you just make it go straight Monday through Friday? Our athlete program is on a schedule that Thursday, if they want to do an active recovery day, that's their day. Sunday, they're typically taking completely off. If there is in a recovery day, quote unquote, then that would typically be a Thursday for your typical membership, meaning that we're going to step away from the barbell at least. Um, it's going to be more odd object based D balls and whatnot. Um, there might be the occasional bench on that day for, for membership that isn't following the program otherwise. Um, but that's a day typically for me

to pull from movements that the athlete program is doing as accessory work on top of their stuff and compile some of those movements into a, into a workout for the, so you implement the recovery day into the actual gym to some extent. They're still with that said, we also run a sweat. We also run a sweat class as well. Similar to you guys. We run it three days a week on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. And how was that class doing? you? Awesome. Awesome. For me, it kills it. Awesome. We probably, we probably average, uh, 12 members to that, that a lot of those people would have never stepped foot in our gym if it wasn't for it. And then they realized pretty quickly that this isn't very different than CrossFit. I'm kind of doing CrossFit. Yeah, you are. Um, but what I tell them is, Hey, none of this, none of this is for

time. It's going to be interval-based in some way. So we're not keeping score. There's no score going up on the board. You're going to get as much out of the sweat class as you put into it. You can make it really hurt if you want to, if you want to go really hard. Exactly. Or you can go through the motions and just use it as a warm-up, and people will feed it into their 10 a.m. class, CrossFit class.

Or they'll do the sweat class, and then they'll do the strength piece for the 10 a.m. class, and then they'll bounce. No, they love it. Yeah, the sweat class, I think, is the crucial part. Yeah. And we do Saturday partner workouts as well, just like you guys do. And it places rock. It's insane. Our 9 a.m. averages probably 30 to 40 people in that class,

and, man, it is rocking. I love it too. Ben and I typically partner up on that, and we just get after it. We usually join the 9 a.m. class and it, man, it, it is rocking. I love it too. Ben and I typically partner up on that and we just get after, we usually join the 9am class with them and then, uh, and then we run the 10am as well. But, um, do you join the class while you're coaching it type of deal? Um, sometimes. And, and only if I struggle with that sometimes I really do. And, and it only depends on the group that I have with me. Yeah. If I have a full group of full class, where I, I truly believe that all movements that we're doing, there's nothing technical about it,

that... And everyone's going to be fine. Everyone's fine, then on that occasion, I will on Saturdays only. Yeah. Not in a normal, like, weekly. I get my stuff done

in the middle of the day at an open gym. But on the Saturdays, sometimes, and with that said, I'm still walking around during my rest period when I'm with my partner

and yelling at people and, like and cheering them on and stuff. For the first time in five years, last Saturday, I didn't have a partner on Saturday. What's been happening is I go in on Saturday and no one wants to be my partner because they know they're just going to die. So no one wanted to be my partner and I got really bummed out. I was like, dude, I don't think I want to come on Saturdays anymore. This sucks. For four Saturdays in a row, everybody was like, no, dude, I'm not going to be your partner.

I'm like, dude, it's funny and all, but I'll go easy. They're like, no, dude, I just don't want to be your partner. You're too gnarly. Then my coach was like, dude, I'll be your partner if you let me work out with you. It was the first time in a long time. We had 50 people there. He worked out with me. I walked around a little bit during my rest break and yelled at people. I was like i don't know this is okay i was like so stressed out about it

yep 100 and then like once you do something like that it just kind of like gives free reign for the coach at some point like he's gonna go do that when you're not there or something like that so i kind of get a little bit bummed about it and i've had problems with it in the past but yeah i mean sometimes people like to see you work out and be part of the community almost saturdays especially they like that's a, that's a different hour, I think. I try to make Monday through Friday make sense. Like if you're going to work out Monday through Friday, which a lot of people want to do and take the weekend off, my program makes sense the whole way through.

Saturday is going to repeat some movements. Yeah. And it's going to be really fun. It's not going to repeat anything that happened like on Thursday or Friday. Yeah. But it's going to repeat a lot of other stuff, and it's going to be really fun. It's not going to repeat anything that happened like on Thursday or Friday. But it's going to repeat a lot of other stuff. And it's going to be a 35-minute workout. Ben and I structure it where regardless of if there's strength or not, Monday through Friday we have kind of a muscle group designation.

So currently Monday is snatch day right now. Tuesday is shoulder to overhead. Wednesday is squat or deadlift. Thursday is typically odd object day. We may bench. There may be some pressing or floor pressing. And then on, on Friday is clean or clean and jerk right now.

Every two months though, we rotate that for the chance that you have a three day a week member that comes diligently Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If my Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If my Monday, Wednesday, Friday day is the same muscle group for the life of our gym, those people are never going to do any of the other movements. And so every two months, switch it up. Cause I usually always

squat on Mondays and everybody's like, dude, I don't come on Mondays. Like, yeah. And I remember just being like, you know what? Like I was going to be like, you're that guy. I can't please. But I was like, you know what? That's actually, this is actually a fair point for a lot of people yeah so i started switching it up and then i would have a lot of people online cancel and they'd be like you know what it was like too predictable like i knew you were gonna do this movement this day or this day and i was like you guys really you don't get it like that's how you get stronger like i mean the workout's different every time right but like yeah the movement has to be that same thing for a couple weeks because 100 it's the only way a couple of weeks because it's

the only way you get stronger. But again, it's not enough to, to bother me. Yeah. But, um, yeah,

I think that's really, really important is being able to switch that stuff up. I love having things that keep you moving and you don't have to think, even if I'm doing a regular strength lift. Now I do like dumbbell Russian twists in between or like something else. I've actually started doing like, we'll do presses and I'll do like dumbbell lateral raise supersets um heck yeah everything i do now is a superset like we'll do squat hip thrust supersets we'll do back rack lunges single leg deadlift supersets yeah that's like so like my first strength section is always some sort of

superset um like strict press weighted pull-ups stuff like that like a lot of push pull stuff we'll do bent over rows different things like that yeah but yeah i love the superset thing i think a lot of people are missing out on that yeah because people are getting a lot more work done agreed and i think that it's now to a point where people look at crossfit and they understand that they've been educated enough now hopefully that the accessory stuff the isolation stuff actually works like yeah it's good for you it's not uh looked at and downplayed of bro pump over there like type of thing like doing these isolated like bulgarian split squats like this no like it works like do it like don't don't avoid it like do it and the olympic lifts are great they're so amazing like

they're so good for you the thing that sucks is like my my one knee is getting to the point where i can't do a lot of impact anymore so i can't like the explosiveness of lifting is gets pretty rough for me after a while so i do a lot more stuff from the hang i don't do as much high rep for it and all that and when i catch stuff i'm a little bit more crooked now than ever so i got a 24-hour fitness membership because it's right down the street from my gym and i'll go just to do like an arm day. And then on leg day, I'll use like some of the machines, like hamstring curls and like abductor adductor machine. Cause I can't do a ton for legs in my gym. Do you think you, do you think if you had, if you had a little bit more usable space that you would have by now bought those machines and just had them in your gym? For sure. I'm so

tempted to turn that space over there eventually into dumbbell racks and machines like lat pull downs and some bicep machines well have you seen the new rogue attachment they have that it's it literally it's an attachment that has a pulley system on it and you can do lat pull downs and then there's like a plate on the ground where you just put your feet against the plate and you take that same lat pull down that piece comes off and you can do rows. And it's a $2,000 attachment. And it's like it's got the stack of plates and everything.

It's rad. For me, I then look at that though as, man, I'm going to take up space where classes are going to be going. Whereas if that space – I'll show you what it looks like. It wouldn't even be in the way at all. And it would be so cool. But, yeah, i think those those like bodybuilding movements now are going to start getting really really popular everything changes

like every like five to ten years type of deal and i think everyone right now wants to do crossfit and bodybuilding together because i can tell you right now like i know more than ever what people want because now i go to 24 hour fitness and i know what it's like and it's so bad the vibe is so bad like even the people in there there's only like probably 10 of the people in the gym that actually know what they're doing i see people on a knee extension and they're literally going like they're just like freaking kicking it as hard as they can and i'm like oh my god your patella is gonna snap off like what are you, what are you doing? And then, like, there's also, you know, like, the vibe is low. There's no communication.

There's no community. There's no, like, anything. And it's like there's a lot of stuff missing. So now I understand why it's so important and motivating to be in a classroom setting. But then also there's a lot of things that people are looking for because the sport of CrossFit is kind of coming down. I think the brand of Crossfit is kind of coming down i think the brand of crossfit is is probably bigger than ever a lot of people want to do hit training i'll call it right yeah i feel like if we all change our gyms to hit training instead of crossfit it would start crushing yeah

yeah and it's like that's why i just dropped the name crossfit completely and i just call myself chalk i still pay for the affiliate fee right that's what i was curious about is if you if you still have the the affiliate fee or not with it's what I was curious about is if you, if you still have the affiliate fee or not with it. Cause I think is it's $3,000 a year for those of you don't know. And I think you get enough drop-ins alone throughout the year just to pay for it from that sole reason, because they are at a CrossFit gym. Yeah. The same thing with us as well.

We're not getting anything else like out of it really, but drop-ins. Other than the ability to, if you do have the couple of members that are maybe masters athletes that are wanting to, you know, use it for the open right like and be able i mean the open is just a for us we do the whole friday night do you guys still do friday night lights yeah i do but it's not nearly as popular as it used to be right we had our second year of it this year and i mean i'll forever do that i had more fun with the open this year than i ever had if only for the sole purpose of ben and

i strictly we participated in friday night lights on the, we, we would have everyone do it. And then the coaches would be the final heat of Friday night lights so that everyone got to experience the pain and then they could physically watch their coaching staff like suffer and actually go through it, which I think is fun for them. I did Friday night lights this year too. I didn't do all the workouts. I couldn't do all of them. Yeah.

But I got second in the world in the thruster pull up one. Those are my jam. that is your jam yeah heck yeah yeah i was only like 15 or 20 seconds off of frazier's time on that dude is which which is insane because the next time was like another 30 seconds later yeah so i was like damn that was pretty cool and i didn't really warm up like a ton either like i just just did it with the class that's awesome i was I was dying for a good workout in my wheelhouse. Oh, speaking of Frasier, it's on the TV. So what are some big things right now that you are happy that you did in the beginning of opening your gym? And then maybe a couple of things you wish that you maybe would have changed?

Maybe like three things each. I'd say that the Founding Father membership, by far, extremely thankful that I did that and marketed it from the beginning and sold what we were going to be providing from the beginning to get people in the door. I knew, dude, I wanted to move into a space. You're sitting in here. I wanted to move into a space that I could be in for the life of our business. I didn't want to change facilities and grow out of it and have to find a new warehouse being in oregon we like marijuana like every warehouse space is pretty much occupied for growth like and growing and distribution and so we we were lucky to find one that did not um the owner didn't want to have anything to do with marijuana and uh and so as we've grown we've expanded the founding father thing 100 not allowing buying enough equipment to know that i could be creative

with the programming from the beginning give them assault bikes skis and rowers from the beginning yeah you have to have that dude you can't like there's so many people are like i'm just gonna buy like one or two i'm like why what are you gonna do for you for you at open gym cool like someone was saying that the other day they're like hey when are we gonna get an assault runner i go huh yeah are you nuts it's five thousand dollars for one and we need five at least yeah i need at least five and i'm pretty sure we got some pretty quality concrete outside that we can run on which Which I would rather run on. Yeah, exactly. And so being able – but with that said, leaving space to expand as growth, I think we've done a really good job of we've added equipment,

knocked down walls of space that we've been able to provide, and grown the gym as the gym has grown. Being disciplined to not buy equipment until we need it, need it. But with that said, being very willing to buy equipment as soon as we need it. There's too many, I think, gym owners out there that, I don't want to use the word stingy, but dude. Yeah, they are. They want to make money so bad that like, they're just blinded by what actually makes money. Like the experience, your membership isn't stupid either.

Yeah. Like they know what they're paying a month. They got an idea of how many members that you have. They know the market of what you're paying for rent. They're going to start questioning where's the money going? Like, are you reinvesting it back into the business at all? They appreciate that from the very beginning. I buy new stuff all the time. Yeah. they're going to start questioning where's the money going? Like, are you reinvesting it back into the business at all? They appreciate that from the very beginning.

Um, I buy new stuff all the time. Yeah. And you got, and you've got a, I've listened to that podcast as well. Talking about, um, how you will sell kind of beat the system with taxes,

right? You'll sell equipment to then use that fund as a write off to then buy your new equipment. Yeah. Eventually there'll be a point where you start making money where you're excited. But then you start paying taxes and you're like, oh, man, this wasn't really that much better than I thought. Yeah. So that's why I always feel like the gym, especially for people like us, it's like if you have that entrepreneurial mindset.

And you have the clothing company and you have online stuff. You have other things I know that you're going to do in just because the type person that you are and like this will always just kind of be like the nucleus of everything else right and you have to drive it all yeah you have to just keep feeding this thing like this is your child this is that's where it all started with you as well right i mean it was it was chalk like yeah you had you had your following because you chewed out your you chewed out your judge at regionals. A big part of it. A big part of it. I think it might have been.

I'm not sure. I don't know if I would have been more famous if I didn't or if it wasn't. I'm not really sure. But with that said, chalk formed like everything that has come from where you are now. It's all chalk based. It started with chalk. Like regardless of the podcast, regardless of Barbell Shrug.

Dude, and I still make the same paycheck right now that I made the first day I opened. Dude, and that's another thing as well is that I didn't take a paycheck I want to say eight months in. Cass and I, when we moved back from Dubai, every dime we saved in Dubai, I said, I'm not taking a loan out to open up Treeline.

Like the money that we make is not ours because it's going to go straight into the gym. And poured the money right into the gym. All of our dime, we didn't take a loan out, didn't owe anyone a dime, which for me personally, going to bed every night helped like a ton. Um, but with that said, my CPA has told me over and over again, like, dude, you've done a great job of not a lot of people are making money in a business and are willing to not pay themselves. But Cass and I live pretty simple lives and, um, I'm not going to take money out unless I need it. And he finally got me on track after about eight months in to start actually writing myself paycheck monthly, actually like taking a check regardless of if it was needed or not for our family. But now I am starting to panic a little bit because we're having twins here. Yeah, I heard about that.

That's insane. But yeah, being smart. I would say the next biggest thing is just being smart with your funds like actually knowing where the money's going not forgetting about the thousands of rolls of toilet paper and paper towels that you have to buy yep not forgetting about having to restock soap constantly like people look at it and constantly have just like oh it's just this cost this cost this cost yeah well there's another few grand that goes into it every month from just miscellaneous stuff that you're buying and things breaking oh things breaking. Oh, things breaking all the time.

Things break all the time. New equipment needs to get bought. Yeah. For me, I get holes in my floors. Every hole is like freaking quite a bit of money to fix. It sucks, man. I have crazy, crazy bills. But, yeah, I've actually never gotten a paycheck from my gym.

I've only had the same salary like forever. Yeah. Because I just take the money and just keep putting it straight back in, straight back in. But I did owe my partner a hefty check. I own 70% of my gym, and he owns 30%. I own 100% of Chalk Online and all my other stuff. But the only partner I have in anything is my buddy Aaron. He's from New Zealand, and he was a personal client of mine. He actually made MySpace

and sold it for $50 million. When he gave me a million bucks, it was not a big deal. I've paid him back officially. He's officially happy. Maybe after this year, I might pay myself some money, but I'm not really sure yet.

I've been thinking about just buying a whole bunch of more stuff or whatever. I don't know. I get excited to buy stuff. For me, it's like Christmas time in the gym. Dude, so do I. I want five bike ergs so bad. Oh, the bike ergs? I don't love them. If you use them, they're okay.

I love them for the sole reason of if I'm doing those 20 to 30 minute EMOMs for the class of 15 calories or 12 calories ladies row ski or bike, that implement 20 to 30 minute EMOMs for the class of 15 calories or 12 calories. Ladies row, ski or bike that implement of adding the third concept to, and the way it's dude, I think the assault bike is incredible for power output,

like high power output. But that biker, I think it's just better for getting on this thing and keep a constant. I think for ladies too, it's very like unintimidating. They get on that thing and they're just ready to go. Like they're probably excited about it.

And for the sweat class. I think it'd be an awesome, awesome implement for sweat class. I'd actually like to ask Jason Kalipa about that because I know he switched all his assault bikes out and got all bike ergs.

Did he get all bike ergs or the rogue? He switched them all out for the C2 bike ergs. Oh, wow. So I'd like to know like what that actually changed into.

Yeah. But it seems like he's kind of closed a couple of gyms down. I know. That's what I was kind of wondering as well. But, yeah, he's a whole different dynamic. Yeah. Mainly corporate stuff.

Yeah. So is there anything that you wish that you did that you didn't do that you know now? Oh, man. Because as far as I know, you're probably one of the most successful gyms in the last two years that have opened in the last two years. You know, I might have wished that a little bit earlier that I would have knocked down a few of these walls a little bit earlier when we were doing other projects. Because in result, it's costed me more to start a new project and do it instead of having people in here helping me and knocking it all down at once, trusting and anticipating that we're going to continue to grow. But I've always struggled with that. My whole life is like playing it safe and just like do it as it,

as it needs to happen. But as soon as it needs to happen, like do like get it done um instead ride that wave that i did of buying into 6500 square feet and trust that people are going to come and they're going to continue to come and they're going to see what we're doing and as you add more stuff in here it's just going to be more word of mouth people are going to be like oh they have this they have that they have this blah blah i'm just going to keep going on and on do you cap classes at all i never do yeah i haven't i don't ever want to get to that point. My 4.30pm class is pretty insane. Big. Yeah, it's my big class too. My floor space

is significantly smaller than yours. My space is 5,500. Floor space is only 3,500. And we get a ton of people in there. You know what's weird is I have more members now than I've ever had but not as many people show up. Huh.

So, like, maybe two years ago, I had multiple times where there would be so many people that I had to turn the class into a team one. Oh, wow. And everybody was super stoked on it, actually. Nobody got mad about it. Yeah. So, whenever there was, like, 40 or 50 people would show up, we'd just be like, all right, well, we're just going to double everything and you're going to team up and here we go. And like no stress, nothing. Everybody was stoked on it and it was no big deal.

But I have not had to do that in two years. My follow-up question to that is have you ever thought of not necessarily capping a class but that you were going to get to a point and say, I'm going to cap membership? No. What I've been thinking about doing is like, maybe I should make it really expensive. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like everything's going up in California more and more and more all the time. I have a hard time wrapping my head around like certain numbers.

Cause like right now we're one 99 a month. Yeah. When I, like my intro people were one 75, the founding fathers type of deal. And then, um, it went to one 89 and it went to one 99. Now I'm like, man, I kind of want to just be like 225, which is a huge jump. But I don't really want any more people in the gym. And, I mean, I do, but it's like I need them at specific times. You know what I mean?

That's why we're doing the showers right now is to shuffle the morning. And God knows when they're going to show up. You know what I mean? So, like, if I get 20 more members, yeah, that's – if I get 50 more members, I can definitely accommodate them. But when are they going to show up? If they all show mean? So like if I get 20 more members, yeah, that's – if I get 50 more members, I can definitely accommodate them. But when are they going to show up? If they all show up at four, then I'm screwed.

Yeah. I know. I've toyed back and forth with it of capping membership at a number so that Ben and I can still have flexibility in our programming because I don't want membership to get confined to a four- foot box that they're working out and now it becomes boot camp. Do you know what I've done that worked really well was some of the classes, like my 5 a.m. at the time and my 7.15 p.m., they were really small.

So I went online on my social media and I said, hey, if you want to work out at 5 a.m. or 7.15 p.m., you've been thinking about joining my gym, you can have this next month for free. And then when you decide to sign up, you know, you'll pay full price, dude. My 5am went from like five people to like 25 people. I kept all of them. Oh, wow. And they're staying at that, that time slot. Yeah. And they stay there now. Wow. And like, uh, so I was like, I will give you the first month for free. You have the whole month. Yeah. And then at the end of that, if you want to pay, let me know.

And pretty much everybody was like, yeah, I'm down. I love this. Let's go. Yeah, wow. And I had the same kind of hit at the 7.15 p.m. class. That's a late class. Yeah, 7.15. Man.

It used to be 7.45. I changed it. Getting home and eating dinner at 930. Dude, for sure. It was gnarly. And sometimes that coach would coach the next morning. I didn't want that, but they were like, dude, I'm fine. They're young kids.

I can't do it anymore. Yeah, we've been fortunate enough with one of our coaches. But I think you should try that. That's a great idea. I mean, he had nothing to lose. Our 530 AM class is still really big. I mean, you had nothing to lose. Our 5.30 a.m. class is still really big, but that – man. I'm sure you have one time that's pretty small. Yeah, 100%.

I've done it. So now I have 7 a.m. sweat class every day. 7 a.m. was a CrossFit class, but as sweat got bigger and bigger, I implemented it at 7 a.m. every day. It used to be every other day at 7 so that the CrossFitters could get their CrossFit fix. A lot of people didn't want to come at 6 a.m. Right. And when I did the 7 a.m. sweat, I did the same thing.

First month free. Go for it. See if you guys like it. Pumped it up. Dude, that's awesome. It was pretty great. I think a lot of people are scared to give stuff away for free, but it's literally – What's it going to cost you?

It's not costing you anything as the gym owner. Dude, a month is like enough to like really like a girl. You're like – You're like, I really like this chick. Like I'm thinking about telling her I love her right now. I got to talk to my mom about this and be like, mom, is this okay? So like you're going to love your gym like in a – In a month, 100%.

In a month. A month is a lot of time to fall in love with a girl oh my god it's not but i mean like feelings all the feels all the feels all the desires so you do a month and now that person's in love for sure but it's gonna be awkward when they leave yeah they can't at that point they're stuck they've had a month free from you they've been mooching off you for a month uh that was great but i'm out yeah it's too weird now yeah they made some friends maybe they found a girl they like yeah you personally played cupid there for a little while oh that is funny. Yeah, so that's one thing I really like. That's a good idea.

I like that. Yeah, I completely agree. I think gym owners don't – they look at it as this person is using my space, like whatever it may be, like why wouldn't I charge them? Think of it this way. Regardless, if they're not there, you're not making money. If they are there, they're hopefully falling in love with it, like you said. And then you've got them potentially for 15 more years to come.

But I think the big thing is people are like, man, he gives a whole month away for free right now. They're probably listening to it. It's like, dude, what's your favorite class of the day? Yeah. Which one is it for you? For me personally, as far as to coach? Yeah. Is it the four?

The big one? Dude, it's a blast. It's a lot of fun. I mean, it's hard. So maybe all the other classes are that packed too. Yeah. But the vibe, like even if you just walked away, went to the bathroom in the middle of the class, that class would be bumping. Yeah.

Because it's big and it's crazy and it's exciting. I agree. That's why I like doing crazy stuff like that, crazy deals. Yeah. Because it just gets the classes packed and people are stoked. Because I have a hard time even watching a coach coach a five-person class. I'm like, God, this looks painful. That's tough.

You know what I mean? I feel like five-person classes are way harder to coach than 25-person classes. The rare occasion that it's just one. I've had that happen a couple times where it's just like, oh, man, this is like PT all over again. When I was in Dubai doing one-on-one personal training. I actually don't mind one, but I mind like three. And they aren't bros. And they aren't friends.

It's just like super awkward. Why don't you guys introduce yourself and get to mingle a little bit. All right. Any music requests? What are we thinking here? They say nothing. It's usually like the three most awkward people in on yeah whatever i got on damn it but yeah we also do it we do a thing uh i don't know if you remember this but in dubai um and it's still to this day does every gym i've been at i'm

implemented western wednesday okay and i and i go by it's the best day of the week if you love america and i introduce the class on it every single day. And to this day, I still get videos from Dubai of a bunch of Emirati Arab men working out to country music on Wednesdays in the Middle East, which is awesome. So you guys don't wear, like, country clothes or anything? No, we don't wear any country clothes. But we do have a lot of members that will wear, like, our 4th of July or Murph edition stuff on those days. But it's always introduced as Western Wednesday, best day of the week if you love America. We're doing two pieces today, blah, blah, blah.

And all the coaches, they say it every single time. And it's country music all day long. And it's always, hey, make sure you got some upbeat country music. Yeah, upbeat, yeah. But with that said, dude, that's probably one of our most popular days is that people come in. Oh, wow. We might have five members that say, I don't come on Wednesday come up i don't come on wednesdays because music

yeah fine like so be it like type of thing but and i wish more people like country in my gym but they like hip-hop and edm and all that stuff but yeah yeah i'm obsessed with country music we have we have one female i don't know if she's here yet for for sweat class april um i want to say she's 65 years old and she does our sweat class and the biggest fan of corn. Oh, my God. She comes in on Western Wednesdays. She's like, you make me hate working out on Wednesdays with the Western music. But on Thursdays, I'll sometimes do like a thrasher Thursday for her during sweat class.

Oh, yeah. And I put on corn and it's just like, die, mother ever, die, die, mother ever, die. She's all about it. She's just singing like screaming. She put her daughter there, mother ever. She's all about it. She's just singing, like, screaming. She's with her daughter there next to her. That's insane. I had two people come in for 10 a.m., and it was overlapping. And they come up to me like, do you always play this music for sweat class?

I'm like, dude, yeah, these guys are freaking badasses, dude. It's like, what about April over there? This is her playlist, 100%. That's amazing. Yeah, you never know who you're getting in these doors. Dude, but the music is, you do it as well.'s it's a huge piece of it right it's massive it has to be bumping and i have a little side office next door and i i'll go on there and i'll turn my music on sometimes because if you're surrounded by it constantly like your brain is going a bit crazy too and you

need to separate and get to some just more mellow chilled out music yeah um but i completely agree it's got to be it's got to be pumping and bumping from the very, very get-go. Yeah, it's a huge, huge piece. People are always looking for the experience. Yeah. All right. Well, as we wrap this thing up, where can everybody find you, the gym, TreeLine programs, your TreeLine brand?

The brand, guys, is really dope. I think you guys should check it out for sure. Dude, that would be awesome. Check out Treeeline Lifestyle Co. is our branding, and it's for apparel right now. And we'll be launching our summer line here shortly. Is that a.com and an Instagram? Yeah, treeline underscore lifestyle underscore co for Instagram. And then treelinelifestyle.com is the website where you can order everything via there. Treeline CrossFit is Instagram. And then treelinelifestyle.com is the website where you can order everything via there.

Treelinecrossfit is Instagram. Treelinecrossfit.com. And then I'm just – who's Justin Ahrens? Never heard of her. Justin.Ahrens for Instagram. And then the gym. Where can people kind of see what you guys got going on in the gym? Yeah, Treeline CrossFit.

Technically, we're in Springfield, Oregon, Eugene Springfield. We're at the back end of Shelley Street in the industrial area. But, yeah, more than welcome to bring you in and spend easily a week with us. And as Ryan just said, might as well spend the full month, I guess, now. We're trying to get you guys teamed up with some lovers over here. I've got Nolan. I think he just walked in he's always looking for someone he's walking around back there somewhere but yeah we got some single people for you all right this is gonna be you've heard of bumble this is gonna be like the hive this is the beehive this is where you guys all come together heck yeah fall in love this is a blast yeah thanks man thank you um

hope you guys love listening to a few things from another gym owner who's been killing it. And he came in at a pretty rough time to start up, in my opinion. And he's doing a great job doing big things. And I'm happy for you. Dude, just love your members, man. Like, love on them. Make them feel a part of the family from the very beginning. Make them feel important.

I think it's super important. You probably do this. I almost obnoxiously do it as people walk in. What's up, Kevin? Heck yeah, man. Welcome. No matter who they are, call them by name. And people call me out on all the time like,

how long does it take you to remember someone's name? Well, hopefully the first time I meet them if they're a gym member potentially, like as a gym owner. They have value in my life right now, like walking through those doors. It seems so easy to just love everybody and make it just the best experience ever, but people mess it up all the time. Big time. I think that's the hard part about being a gym owner is like I've had to fire

like four or five coaches now, and it's hard. I'm just like, dude, you just don't give a good vibe off. You're a great coach, but your vibe just sucks. You're not too good to do what they're doing as well. As a gym owner, they want to be able to look at you as someone who's not a competitor and be able to see, like, oh, he's not going to care if I work out with him. Oh, but, Jim, I've got a bunch of stay-at-home moms that are working out, throwing down together because they don't feel intimidated by it.

Don't make them feel intimidated at all. You've got to do that. The vibe is the whole thing. 100%. That's why the guy who almost killed his judge and didn't go to the CrossFit Games does well. So, I mean, it can be done. It can be done. I couldn't ski over 1,200 calories an hour either.

You can't now. There's a whole bunch of things, you know. I never reached like 5'7". I mean, there's a ton of things that are really hard in life. Takes a large t-shirt from my retail, but really should be taking a small all right guys over and out i gotta see you guys next tuesday see you later