Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Redefining Fitness - with Craig 'Patty' Patterson

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Craig "Patty" Patterson is the founder of the Madlab School of Fitness. We went deep into Patty's journey, uncovering the challenges he faced leaving the world of engineering and corporate life behind to reshape the landscape of the fitness industry business model. Patty candidly shares the inception of Madlab, the transformative power of community, and his transition from coaching to mentorship. Hear firsthand how he's combating the traditional pitfalls personal trainers face, from burnout to financial struggles, and how he's revolutionizing the paradigm to ensure long-term career sustainability for fitness professionals. Check out Madlab here: https://www.madlabbusiness.com/andystumpf   The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/ Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

Well, hello again, everybody. I'm back. Back in the cleared hot slash change agent studios. Holy cow, that was a few weeks of travel. Missed our connecting flight last night, stayed in Salt Lake City, back home in the valley. I love traveling, but I tell you what, there's nothing like being home as well. Today's episode, you know it's brought to you by. It's brought to you by Black Raffle Coffee. Join me as we go to the Black Raffle Coffee website, Black Raffle Coffee.com, and we check out what they have to offer. The rotating banner up top today, they made it super simple. They're offering you 20% off to join their coffee subscription club. You can get whatever beans you want.

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Stocking stuffers, bags of coffee fit great in there, coffee mugs fit great in there, tumblers fit great in there. I've kind of done it all. So get a little bit ahead of your shopping. Go to blackcrafelcoffee.com. support an amazing brand and support the podcast as well. That's it. My guest for today is a man I've known for a very long time.

His name is Craig Patterson. I just call him Patty. And maybe a lot of people don't know this, but I owned and operated a CrossFit affiliate, CrossFit Coronado specifically back in 2008, 2008 through 2010, something like that. I by no means I'm an expert at running a gym or a CrossFit affiliate. But I did have some experience opening one of, the earlier ones in the era of that expansive growth, hosted some seminars, helped teach the

seminars. And during that time, when I was actually working for CrossFit, traveling, teaching seminars, I met Patty up in Canada. He was an engineer by schooling and by trade before finding or being introduced to CrossFit. I think he opened the fifth affiliate in, I was going to say in North America, but a damn near could be the world itself. So he saw it from very, early on. And it's not the easiest. I'm going to tell you right now, coaching and then running a business on top of that. And what he started and what he evolved into, the professional model for actually turning it into a business, is something that I think any business owner should whip out a notebook and start taking notes on. Because you can own a CrossFit affiliate or an affiliate of any

gym model that you want to, treating it like a business and having a structured approach, two very different things. We talk a lot of. more than just the business side, as I do with almost everybody on the podcast. I think it's my favorite thing to be able to just sit down and have a long-form conversation and talk about whatever you want. It's not boundaryed except for by time and I guess storage on a SIM card. But we didn't run out of either of those. So I'm going to shut up.

Episode number 307 with Craig, Patty Patterson. Enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now. Rules of podcasting, you're asking. They're super simple. I'm going to be responsible for what I say You be responsible for what you say So that way Greg only sues you

He's already done everything I think he can do Oh that's It's already fine I don't know if he's done everything he thinks he could do You never know Where do you want to begin? I don't know I think where I want to begin Is every time I've done I've sort of

I'm not a big fucking social media guy I'm a good sales guy but I'm not a good promoter. Like, I don't like being out, like, on Facebook and Instagram and stuff. And every time I've done one of these, the main core message of what I'm trying to get people to understand gets lost in, you fucking hate CrossFit or you're an idiot because you love CrossFit or, you know, and I've kind of put CrossFit away like years and years ago.

And I was super proud of what you did. I don't know how many years I'd go. That three years? Is that 2020 or 2021? What are you referencing? You know exactly what I'm referencing. Oh, my short little Full Out of Friday episode. Yeah.

I don't remember, actually. That was awesome. It was a few years ago, probably three. Probably three. It's probably the fucking dead, hardcore in the middle of COVID, right? It would have had to do. The Floyd 19 thing, yeah. Yeah, it would have had to have been.

Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't really throw up the hornet's nest. Did it, though? I think the hornet's nest might have already been kicked at that, point. The whole reason I ever said anything is that people were looking in the wrong direction. Well, that's what, that's kind of like what I'm, what I want to get to, what I want to get to today is there's been something going on in our industry that's been, it's very old,

and it was around before my time. And, um, I stumbled into it. And it was like, holy fuck, what is this? Right. And I went a different direction. And I kind of, I'll start off with just real simple. We can go all kinds of directions, but really simple. Like, if you look at it, what do curves, CrossFit, F-45, you can go on down the list after F-45, all have in common. Like, what is the core underpinnings of how their business works? I have no idea. Well, they're all designed to scale really quickly, right? So what goes on in the gym. Are you talking about from a business owner perspective? I would consider it from a client perspective, a coach perspective. and a business owner perspective.

Okay. If you let me elaborate for a second, there's a client development process, and whether Jim owner knows he has one or not, he's got one, right? And in those models, they depend on putting someone straight into a group class, like a high volume, sort of low barrier to entry kind of thing. And it has to work that way. There's no other way that can work for the scale from five gyms. Like, I was the fifth affiliate North America.

CrossFit affiliate. Yeah, to 15,000 in a very short period of time, right? Like less than 10 years, probably less than seven, right? There's just no way you can get there without it being super, super simple, right? And then from a coach development and a coach compensation standpoint, they also, you've got to pay them by the hour, super simple. And two-day course when you're a coach or something similar, right? You can see your F-45 guys or Orange Theory. I'm not familiar with F-45.

Oh, you're not? No. Is that a Canadian thing? Well, it's an Australian thing that they brought over to North America. F-45. They probably will run it at steam before they hit Calisbell. You guys would probably throw them out of here if they wouldn't be allowed. Is it a similar thing?

So it's fitness in 45. They took Greg's model and did it in Australia, basically with a franchising thing. Okay. Right? And, well, they went public in 2020. IPO is 18 bucks and they're now worth 11 cents I'm not a businessman but is that good it's good if you shorted it

buy high sell low is my investment strategy and then take your dividends and buy new cars yeah it's pretty dope yeah I mean I hope this is not too painful to describe it it's it's the worst underbelly of our industry and is what I've been fighting for 20 years this is my 20th fucking year

I sold my engineering business in 2004. And I'd work my balls off for years to build that up. And I was taking a time off. And I ran into Greg and a fucking charity event in Seattle. You know, Charming. Just randomly? Randomly. Right?

I had a friend who knew him. He was going to, like Dave Werner had the first gym in Seattle. That's right. Right? And if you walked into there then, it was just like you couldn't find anybody to pay. There was no class. It was fucking wide open. Yeah.

It was crazy, right? So I ran into, I mean, you know how charming you can be? I talked to him for like seven hours, and I was going to open another engineering firm and tackle this thing I was going to tackle, and I was all curing up for it and going to trying to find the best engineers. I was like, fuck it, I might open a gym. So he was like, yeah, let's, you know, how he can be. You talk me into it.

Anyway, I'll come back to that story. The Curves, CrossFit F-45 thing going back to it, they share three things in common. The client development process is straight into a group class. low-barred entry. Coach development is technical, two-day. Coach compensation, super simple, $25 an hour, $18 a class, whatever, and a percentage for maybe personal training, right? And then the owner development stuff is either non-existent or very simple. And the reason why this is is so that, like F-45 is the recent one, but Curves did it, CrossFit did it, is to convince a real estate agent for somebody who's in middle management, Lulu Lemon, to say,

napkin math i i did it 20 years ago right i get 200 people 200 dollars a month i run this many classes fuck them rich and they make money right off the bat right so they can sell so that whoever the license there is or franchisor is can go sell another one and then another one another one another one right and it fucking takes off like wildfire right now they're not thinking of what that's what's gonna come down the line three years five years ten years 20 years. I think the better question is, do they care? Oh, that's my point.

Right? They don't give a fuck. That's not what their concern is. I'm not saying they're horrible people necessarily. They're just not concerned about that. That is not what they're thinking about. Yeah. I mean, you were there.

You probably practically live with Greg. You spent a lot of time with them back in the day, right? We spent a lot of time together, for sure. And there were times where we did not when I was traveling doing the seminars. The first time I ever did was up in Edmonton, actually, for the Canadian military. and it was specifically doing just, not Canadian, actually it was largely Canadian military seminars to begin with, but I was focusing, they would only bring me in for the military stuff,

and then as it continued to grow, that's where they brought in more trainers, and I was traveling, I mean, I don't know if people, people new to the CrossFit world, like let's say you found CrossFit today. There's a chance you may not know who Greg was, or you might not hear that, if you found it today, today. when I in 2000 late 2005 early 2006 Greg taught every lecture at every seminar not only the conceptual but the practical movements as well he would have people demo and then originally the movements lectures started to be handed off to other people and then the last piece to go were the conceptual lectures that that were handed off because I think he had something every weekend for 52 weeks and midday working for you. He was going to just implode.

But it was a good amount of time. And then towards the tail end, I did a little bit more on the sponsorship managing the Reebok deal with my good friend, Steve. So I saw him, I guess I would say I saw him a little bit less, but then I was flying him around a lot. This is pilot, too. A good amount of time, though. So in that time, did you ever hear him talk about, man, we got to figure out how coaches can make 80 or 100 grand a year and not leave? They're gyms. It's been a long time since I have been around him talking.

I don't want to say definitively that I didn't hear him talk about those things. I remember him talking about in Q&A's at gyms. I remember him talking about scaling businesses and best business practices rising to the top. That was kind of the theme that he would go with. Don't worry if somebody opens up down the street and they're charging half as much. people are going to follow the value, which can be true until economic times get tight and then they're going to follow their wallet and nobody gives a fuck about the value. But it wasn't, what I feel comfortable saying is that it wasn't an emphasis.

Yeah, I mean, up until 2006 or seven, I think it was all about, I mean, I joined, it was all about professionalizing the coach. And that was what it kind of turned me on. You know what I mean? and that's what I'm still stoked about. And that's still my mission, right? And at one point, I remember he fell in love with curves. Like, I remember two thousand, dude, he would sleep in my bed,

and I'd be on the couch for the ones that came up to Vancouver. And one day it was all of a sudden fucking curves and curves. And I was like, man, what do we have to learn from those guys, right? Did he like the business model and the fact they had so many locations? They had just, he told me at the time they'd just reached 10,000. I did some research. I think they never got above 9,000. But anyway, they'd reach this.

Number. Yeah. Right. So I went out and started talking to a Curves owner and found this one woman who was like 60 years old and she owned three of them. And I was like started asking her about how it all worked and fuck, she was miserable. She'd come and started working out in my gym just to get away from her own and I can understand that. Yeah. I could probably do that myself.

But she was telling me how it was all imploding. And she was like, Craig, don't ever get close to your clients. I'm like, hmm, that sounds off. That's interesting advice from a gym owner. Yeah. Yeah. and she said they'll, you know, they'll be your best friends in the world for three months, and all of a sudden they'll just quit one day.

I was like, holy fuck, I hope we can do better than three months. I mean, back story of that, like, when I decided I was leaving the engineering business, it was kind of like, I didn't really make the decision right away. I was just had, I didn't have a lot of money, but I had enough money. I didn't, for the first time my life, I grew up in a small town, like my parents didn't even high school educations, you know. How did you end up in the engineering field? I was good math, chemistry, physics, and I got a scholarship to McGill Engineering, like a smaller one, but I had my choice of all the universities.

And my dad was a plumber. And he was like, you're fucking going to McGill because that's the best school in Canada and one of the best in the world. And you're going to be an engineer because in his world, you know, you're a plumber and you see the engineer come by and supervise the work and stuff like this. That was the big man, right? Yeah. That was kind of it. What type of engineering? Mechanical.

I wanted to be cars and planes and shit like that. Do you enjoy it? I fucking hated it. Checks out. It was fucking straight sideways awful. It was like, dude, it was hunger games. It was like fucking mortal combat with all these Chinese kids, you know what I mean? And they weren't, most of them were virgins and weren't too worried about changing that status.

You know what I mean? It was, I came from a small town and all of a sudden I'm in a big city and it was quite exciting. I was playing hockey at the time too. I played a hockey in the varsity hockey team. Shocker, real shocker, getting an accent. Well, in Quebec, it was like you either played hockey or you went skiing because you couldn't stay on the contact, right? Yeah. Okay.

There was two kinds of people where I grew up. Fair enough. You can pretty much, you recognize everybody now later in life, and you played hockey or you didn't. You probably noticed people in the military. You can probably just look at them and say, that guy was in this or that, no? Most of the time, because they were wearing camel. around still, yeah. In a backpack with Molly on it, which is unnecessary, but people seem to love it.

And their blood type somewhere on it as well. Yeah. But in the camo alone here in Montana might not give it all away, right? The type of camo will. I mean, if you're wearing Realtree or Sitka camo up here, people are probably going to assume you're a hunter. If you're wearing woodland or desert camouflage, not a whole lot of usage. Chase and White Tails. All right.

I'll tell you what, I'm going to take a deep breath and let you guide this thing wherever it's going to go. What are you talking about? It's already been guided. All right. Why did you leave the engineering field?

Well, when I graduated from McGill, I actually failed my last course. It was a math course that probably could still be failing forever. The math department used to, like, beating the shit out of the engineering department. They had like the math professors and the engineering professors

had beef, you know, who's the best mind? campus. So the, I feel like that was not a violent beef at all. You know, like, I don't feel like that was handled with swords and sticks in the courtyard. No,

well, it was funny, though. And back then, the professor used to get real drunk at these mixers and stuff like that. Like, it was different 30 years ago, right?

Like, and they would, they would, you could see them get, like, their backs off about the engineering department. It's the best minds in campus. Like,

fucking math nerds. Fuck you. Nerd alert. Yeah. Like, I mean, like there wasn't enough of them in engineering. department but there was certainly more of them in the math department right so would they like shout

the Pythagorean theorem at each other how compasses across the room at each other well they tried their best to fail to fail the guys that were middle low on the scale that was me you know what I mean like I'm out partying four times a week and playing hockey five times a week and then I'm trying to get through engineering which was it was 90% finals right I don't know if anybody out there has ever done 90% final but it's fucking stressful that's that's the weight they put on your final, the final test? Yeah, I mean, if you pass the midterm, maybe it was 70, but I failed every midterm anyway

because I wasn't even geared up by then, but that's heavily weighted tests. Yeah, yeah. So you needed to learn how to perform in three hours, right? So you had to make cheat sheets. You know, and you had to figure out how to pass the test. So that's what I figured out how to do pretty much, right? So, yeah, that was engineering.

How long did you stay in the field? Well, I hate to say, like, my first job, I got, I I left McGill and just drove and went out west, came out to Calgary with a friend. And I was going to try and travel around all this stuff. And I didn't have any money.

My parents had any money. So I wouldn't work for an uncle of mine. It was a great guy. But it was like construction. And I was there for like two months. And they found out I had an engineering degree. I was like, what the fuck? Are you doing here mucking stuff?

You know, with guys with grade seven education. I go, well, I just didn't want to tell anybody had an injury degree. I just kind of want to work with my hands for a while. I'll just get out of the office, you know, and get out behind a desk. And I did that for like three months. You said you can never save enough money, you know, those jobs. Yeah. By the time you got to Friday night, you fucking spent, you know,

you had to go blow it off with the boys and, you know, get back into it on Monday. So anyway, I just end up getting, I end up just going to a headowner and said, listen, I'm out here and this is it. And next thing, you know, they line me up all these jobs. I get this one job out of New York and St. Louis with an Emerson Electric. And it was like eight months of training. And they flew us around, like, first class. And it was like, okay, that's great.

And it was all management stuff. Like, I worked for two Fortune 100 companies for almost a decade. And it was like getting your MBA, right? So it was always on the business side. And it was always looking at, I ended up in Johnson Controls, and they were looking at buildings and how you make them last for 200 years. And look at that really long return on investments. And, you know, I was a financial guy by that point more than that.

So I would go to a CEO and say, hey, you know, I can buy all your mechanical electrical systems in this building. give you an $11 million check, take over the contract, break your union contract, and save you probably 30% a year, and you can put $11,000 off your balance sheet into your P&L, right? And they go, yeah, that sounds like a good deal bringing the CFO and walk and drive the deal down from there, you know. So that's what I was up to. How'd you know it was time to be done? Oh, fuck, I was unemployable.

Right? I was unemployable, and I gotten fired. And I got in fired, like, right before I was going to close a really big deal. And it was like in our office, it was kind of like a, it was a shitty dog office. My buddy, T-bear, who's actually worked for me for 17 years. We met each other 25 years ago in this office. He's been a coach for me now for 17 years. And it was like, I didn't even, I had five bosses in four years.

I didn't even talk to the last boss. I was dealing with guys in Chicago and Las Vegas that done deals like this. I was just on the phone all the day with these guys. And my boss had come in the office and try and figure. it out and she was like 10 million miles behind all she was doing was slowing me up and then she go behind my back to my client and try and figure out what the deal was I'm like what and the fuck are you doing man like just just beat it and I'll make you a fucking I'll make your fucking year for you just shut up and beat it and I actually said that to her and uh yeah it's usually a one-way ticket

out of an organization of any kind yeah yeah so I ended up uh I ended up joining a I left took off six months spent six months on my buddy's couch and played golf five days a week, did some landscaping, and just chilled, right? And after three months, he was like, Patterson, I can't handle your fuck. He's a really neat freak. I can't handle waking up and seeing you in this couch anymore and have your breadcrumbs trail to the fucking, to the fridge every morning. So he built a piece on the house.

He built an extra room for me to stay. So anyway, I stayed there, U.S. immigration was going to kick me out. Then I went back, work for a small engineering firm, and I was like, fuck out, I think I could do this on my own. And I went 18 months without a single deal. 18 months, zero, nothing, nothing coming in. I'd put myself on EI, my mom had co-signed a $30,000 line of credit. And I was out, that was it, I was done.

I had $710 left my bank account. My personal rent was $750. I was like, oh, fuck, this is it. I've actually, you know what I mean? You get into it working so hard. I was working 14, 16 hours, like, whatever. I'd go party a bit in the weekend, blow it off, but I was into it. And I'd work myself for it.

into this spot where I was like, holy fuck, I'm actually fucked here. I got no way out. I'm done. So I was like, it was kind of a sense of relief that came over me. I was like, well, I've tried everything I could do. And I don't smoke weed very much. There's one laying around there from a friend. I smoked it.

And I sat down and looked at the TV, which was turned off with powers cut off. And like, there was fuck all there. Right. And I sat there and I laughed. I laughed hysterically for about 45 minutes. And then I was like, well, you give it your best shot? And I got up Monday morning. And this architect called me.

She was like, dude, she might have been 13 on my list of potentials. She was a really well-respected Persian architect. She was like, okay, let's do it. I was like, what do you mean, let's do it? Well, let's do the deal. And I was like, you serious? And she's like, yeah. And all of a sudden, that turned into $3 million.

The next year, like $3 million where the fees came rolling in. And it was like, man, it was so much work that had a bigger company. It was a good friend of mine that ran the company. and he was executing the work and it became it became tenuous after a while because I'd done all of this work and then he had the business and anyway three years in I was I was in litigation just because he wouldn't pay me anymore so I do don't do all even if you have a good contract is whoever has the money you know what I mean if some guy has money and you don't and you can be right as rain they can they can delay and litigate you to death so they can grind you to dust

they can turn big rocks into little oxen little rocks and little rocks and the dust on you for sure. Yeah. Yeah. How soon after that, did you have that random encounter with Craig? Well, it was very interesting. It was when I knew it was finally done and I was going to be, it's going to be, we didn't actually go to court.

We had a, we got arbitration and all this kind of stuff. And it was 19 years ago on Labor Day. I was fucking down in the dumps. I had this fucking bombshelled girlfriend from the Czech Republic at the same time. And her boyfriend showed up from the Czech Republic and the same. Was this a boyfriend that you knew about? That's a yes. That's a hard yes.

So she was traveling and she was like a nanny for two years and she said she had this guy but it was broken off and all this stuff. I guess I was surfing with her all the time. We just got closer and closer and it was like, yeah, I knew. Yeah, exactly. It was my own stupid fault. Anyway, it all came down to me like all of a sudden the thing I've been working on for three years was come to an end. This girl I was all in love with was fucking. Dude, it was brutal.

All my friends were like, Patterson's girlfriend's got a boyfriend. Right. Anyway, they picked me up, dusted me off, took me to, uh, took me to Whistler and got me in a bungee jump harness. And I was like, holy fuck. I was like, I don't know, I was completely freaking out. He had to call my parents up and say goodbye to them, smoke like three cigarettes and that jumped off this thing.

And, uh, I met Greg like two days later. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The fifth CrossFit affiliate. Fuck, that was early on. Yeah.

Well, you know, and it felt like they'd been going for a long time before I got there. Like Rob had been around for, I don't know, three years, five years. The growth was just, well, in comparison, exceptionally slow. It was way early on in the bell curve. Yeah, there was nothing. It was until he figured out how to replicate the curves model and, you know, it's selling the two-day cert. I mean, if you take a look at, so to answer the question we had before, like, what were they really concerned about? What was their business?

Well, their business is not long-term success. of what's going on in the gym. Like, how do you get a client to never leave? That's not what they were trying to figure out. They were trying to figure how many more level one certs can we sell, right? How many more affiliates can be sign up? Yeah, the level one cert I would describe as the wide end of the siphon. Yeah, that thing made so much money.

Well, it made money, but then also that was a requirement to be a gym owner. So that was a self-sustaining ecosystem that would draw more. Not obviously everybody who went to a level one wanted to be a gym owner. gym owner, but even if you got 20% at whatever fee they were charging that year, it changed over time. That was the funnel that got them into the ecosystem for sure. But if you really look at the money, man, it was the whole thing with the engine. If you look at that, they were doing at the peak, how many where they were doing on a weekend?

Minimum, 50 a weekend? 50 seminars? 50 seminars a weekend? Man, I stopped paying attention to it when I quit. When did you quit? 2000. 14, I think. Yeah, so the peak had already probably crested by then.

Like, 2013, I think, was the peak of that thing. I would have to check back. I made sure to keep copies. I have a copy of my letter of resignation. Yeah. Because it's interesting how narratives will shift. And, oh, you didn't quit. You got fires.

Like, yeah, that's not exactly what this fucking piece of paper says, is it? I remember when you quit. 14 or 15, I would say. Yeah. So, I mean, that thing made a lot of money. Yeah. And obviously the... I don't know if I ever got to 50 seminars a weekend.

Oh, yeah. More than that. I remember the pictures. I don't think they had 300 staff, though. Dude, you remember that pitcher? And they had all, like, at first, it was like one every three months. They'd have a picture of the people that graduated in the thing. Right?

And then they became once a week. And then it became three a week and then 10 a week and got to 50 a weekend. I mean, on average staff of six people at a seminar, though, I don't know if they had 300 staff members. Around the world? Possible. My guess would be at the peak, high teens, to low 20s. Well, if you do the math, and they got 100% of the revenue, I mean, whatever, they had to pay the staff, but I don't know you would know that number better than me, but I bet you was probably less than 30% to the staff, maybe even less than 20% to the staff. There were some people getting daily rates, and there were other people who were getting a percentage of the gross.

Right. And that changed over time as well. Yeah. So, I mean, if you do the math, 50 times 50 times 1,000. Michael? Times 50 times probably 48 weeks. I know. Well, the first part of that is 20.

$2,500, so that would that be $250,000? I get flossing zeros. I get an engineering degree, but I'm a math retard, you know. Glover up here real fast. He's my quantitative. He can crank these. I didn't know Michael was Asian. He's a lot of things.

He does have a small dick, so. He's kind of good looking, though, actually. Your microphone's on mute. It's kind of good looking. Thanks, Patty, by the way. 50 times 50 times 1,000. 50 times 50, so 50 times 50 is 2,500. times a thousand.

No, is there 25,000? 2,500 times a thousand is 2.5 million. Okay, there you go. A weekend. Yeah, again, I never saw the books. I would guess that's probably on the high end. Yeah, it's probably the high end.

But my point is, their business was not the same as my business. My business is figured out how to never lose a client, right? Yep. And to see how much money I could get them to pay, which is fair value. Like, what is the service? Right. After a while, it's like, you know, we started thinking about, hey, should we add, like, laundry service on this thing?

Or should we have a dog walking thing? Like, you know what I mean? And there are gyms that are open up, like, now $1,000 or $2,000 a month where it's all this stuff all together. Really? Yeah, for executives, like, they, yeah. Fuck. You know, I don't think anybody at that time would describe their business model as anywhere

near trying to make sure that clients didn't leave. Their model was to create the infrastructure that people could create their own gym. and then it was their responsibility, whatever happened with their clients or not. I would say my guess would be they would describe it as that they were trying to build the ecosystem. But as far as the individual expressions of that, that was on the gym owners themselves. Fair enough. But if you look at the level two cert when they came out with that, right? And Greg was, you know, he said, Craig, you're going to go see this Patty and it's going to be awesome and all the stuff.

And I said, I'm going to show up without studying. I got the most successful gym in your whole ecosystem here. and if I can't do this thing and pass there it makes sense to me then what are we doing it for and he goes all you show up it'll be awesome I showed up there and it was it was them trying to teach a trainer how to coach seven people at one time so I'm going to bring in seven new people like this gang bang here you know and fucking coaching each one individually and all this stuff that's that nonsense of fucking putting someone straight into a group class I'm going to tell you it is nonsense it is fucking absolutely terrible for client retention and uh I know this because well I I'll give you another, if we're doing backstories, I'll give you another one. So if you go back to, like, I decided I'm not going to do, well, I hadn't decided I wasn't going to open engineering business. I was still talking to engineers. I was still lining up funds.

Because all I did was go get myself fit again. And you could get really fit really quickly if your mind was to it and that protocol. And if you could handle it, you can handle it mechanically. I was mechanically solid. And I was chemically solid. And I got extremely fit in months. And then my friends are like, what the fuck are you doing? And then they started doing it with me.

And then next thing, you know, I had a little troop in the, in the, park and and then we went to like the community center and it started raining and they throw you out and then you try this other place and they throw you out you know it's kind of like a write-of-passage back in the day like how many places you're going to get thrown out of and take videos of it and all the shit right anyway I ended up in a personal training studio this guy was pretty cool and had a buddy it was a high part of a high-tech firm and my buddy worked for this company radical entertainment anyway this guy was like yeah just five dollars ahead and you can train people fill your boots, whatever. I was like, okay, started just training people and it was like $5 a person to come in.

Per session. Yeah. For head, right? Per session. And I started training people up and, you know, people started asking for personalized stuff. So I'm like, okay, anyway, so I raised my prices from $5 to $10 and half of my clients quit. So I'm like, well, I'll either got the wrong fucking clients here or I'm no good. So it was a combination of both. I figured it out. But, uh, So anyway, lo and behold, people are like, hey, Patty, like, we can't, you can't, like, they were just telling me, let's, they had money. And they were like, why don't you just do a session with me one-on-one, then I'm ready for this class? And I was like, okay, so I just started personally training people.

And it was like, 50 bucks an hour good. 50 bucks an hour is good. So I'd give them like 10 sessions or 12 sessions. And I put them in a small group. And then I figured out, man, they never leave. You know what I mean? Like, they're cool. So I can make personal relationships with each one.

I could figure out how they moved. They could figure out what was, you know, I was honing my craft. And I was calling Greg up like three times a week and going to a new cert every six weeks or every three months or whatever it was then. And he was a great mentor. He really was. He was a great personal trainer. I mean, Greg's business. I don't know if you're around in the early days, there enough. But it was a personal trainer. He was personally training people. I met him right at the tail end of that at the original gym and Santa Cruz. Yeah. And then, you know, he started figuring out that he did personal training slots forever. And then when he finally got his own spot, it was like, hey, Susie and Ralph, you know, you're each paying whatever it was, $85. an hour. What have I put you together in a 60? Sure. And that was how the kind of group kind of came about. But, I mean, he'd be training and personally trained them probably for years before he did

that, right? Anyway, so I started doing that and, you know, 10 personal training sessions and you join a group class. And it was like I had three group classes. You could have joined three group classes a week. And I started off just adding one and then another. And as they grew, like they only got three personal. It was $200 a month for three group classes a week. Anyway, fast forward six months. And my personal training rates up to $65 an hour. And I got 35 clients in the small group. I'm working basically 27 hours a week.

And they're bringing about $8,500 a month. Jim got about $1,500, maybe $2,000. It was fucking good. I was like taking home $6,500 a month, about. And the problem is, in that model, and personal trainers all over the world that are doing this, they would, they would agree with me. It's like,

what happens if you want to take a vacation? Right? What happens if you get sick? What happens to your mom gets sick? You know? Take a month off. You're fucking done. You got no money coming in and how are you going to pay your bills, right? Yeah, unless you have the training staff developed underneath you. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I had to go figure

out. So I like to go out Friday night, get fucked up, meet girls, do all this kind of stuff. Then I had Saturday morning class, so I got a guy to help me with a Saturday morning class. And it turned out he wasn't that good enough, so I had to go give him more training. You know what I mean? Like, so it just kind of evolved from that really normally. Yeah.

And then, you know, nine months in, all the personal trainers in this area got together and they wanted to throw me out. And it was fair enough. We were, we were, we were, you know, probably taking up a lot of space in the place. But, I mean, the real reason why is their clients were coming to me to want to train. Like, the fact of this stuff was exciting. It was fun. And we had a community and all this kind of stuff. And, uh, I didn't want to.

take I didn't want to take them. You know, that's a death nail stealing. Anytime you, you know, anywhere in life you start stealing, it's no good, no boyno, right? So anyway, so I decided, okay, I can open a gym. Now we're in 2005 or so, and I didn't have the confidence to do it on my own at the time. So I got two partners. One guy was a doctor. The guy was a business guy who I'd worked with. Anyway, we opened up, and immediately, they're telling me how to run it. And Greg's changed the tune because now CrossFit's, or curves is sort of the, you know, the beacon here of hope. And they're like, hey, you got to put people straight into a group class and you got to, you know, hire these girls and have them run the thing and, you know, get them to take them down to the two-day cert.

I was like, fuck, this thing doesn't make sense, right? The next thing, you know, my personal training business that was making $8,500 a month and taken home $6,65, whatever, fuck, we're making no money. And I'm doing all this work. And they got, and then I got these other girls doing classes. I don't really even need them. And we're doing a free class and a free week and a free Saturday class and bring a friend day. And it was like, man, in the next six months, we lost so much money. We had so much turnover.

It was like, why are we doing it this way? This thing doesn't make any fucking sense, Andy. It was like from an engineering standpoint, from a mass standpoint, from an economic standpoint, it made no sense for me as a coach. Like none, right? Because the clients, you couldn't really affect them. And the one thing I know, I'm not worried about Mirror or Nike's new gym or apps or any of that shit. I don't have any competition because nothing's going to replace the human relationship and one-on-one connection, right? And that's what we have in spades.

And that's why I don't have any competition and my business will last forever unless I do something really fucking stupid or we get just priced out with rent in Vancouver. But anyway, we weren't making those relationships, right? Here's 10 new people in a class, five new people in a class. And then the people that have been there forever get no attention and you're spending all your time like trying to train someone for fucking peanuts in this group class. I'm like, why are we doing this man? You know? Anyway, after nine months of that, we lost $73,000 and I was, you know what I mean? Like, it was fucked, you know?

And before I had no overhead and I was making money and now all of a sudden I got all this and I just wanted my partners to listen, this not work and there's no way we can do this. I don't know how I mean, I don't know how this possibly works for anybody. how this works. There's no fucking mathematical or economic sense here. Right. Did Greg try to rationalize it to you at all? What was his explanation for trying to change the business model? Cross.

It was so awesome. You could do any way you wanted and you could just put people into a group class. And if you're a great coach, you can train them in that, right? That was it. And I didn't really understand. I didn't, it took me 10 years until I was sitting in a meeting 10 years later. These guys would flow me into London in the UK. And they were, you know, a big.

franchisers. And this is like 2017, probably. Franchiser outside of the CrossFit space? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you look at F-45 and Orange Theory and all those things. Yeah. They're basically replicating Greg's model, but with a franchise, right? And they can control it better and all this kind of stuff. But it's the same kind of thing. Anyway, these guys set me down in a room and, you know, I'm literally sitting with a billionaire. It's the first time I've ever been in presence of a billionaire. And it was a little bit intimidating. Anyway, you started into it. And he started into, yeah, we do these things and this is how we run it and it all made sense. And it was like, you realize if you do that, you're going to have probably a 70% churn rate a year.

And they had their quant like Michael over here, not nearly as good looking, but, you know, he runs off and he gets some paperwork and he comes back and he goes, yeah, he's about right. We lose about 70% a year. And I go, that's not a problem. He goes, well, apparently not, right? I was like, okay, well, that's a fucking problem for me. If I lose any more than 20%, it's really inefficient. Like, I'm going to fucking something bad's going to happen. I'm going to have to go at a marketing company to fill this thing up or something.

I'm like, okay. And then I was like, okay, what about coaches? Oh, we just give them a weekend retreat and we teach them all this stuff. And then they have this check in every once in a while. And I'm like, and then what are they supposed to do? Well, they just run this workout kind of thing. I was like, holy shit. My coaching program's 18 months, right?

And it's all around business training. We teach them how to be professionals and how to get their own clients and how to keep them. And they're like little business. They're entrepreneurs inside my entrepreneurial business. And he's like, what? I was like, yeah, and you know, you realize that coaches quit every second cycle that the clients quit. You know, so if the clients are quitting every nine months, the coaches are gone on 18, basically. That's kind of the math we found because it's just too depressing.

We have burned out. Too depressing. You're fucking trying to actually want people who are there. They want to affect change. They want to help people and they're leaving. Right? Well, that, and I don't know your experience, but in owning and being a part of across the gym in Coronado, coaching is about 10% technical knowledge and 90% being somebody's ad hoc therapist.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, depends on the model and how you do it. Meaning you have all of your best intentions to try to improve them and you end up hearing the same problems and shit and excuses over and over and over again. It can be exhausting. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Totally. So, I mean, if you're doing that in a personal training session, they're paying you $100 an hour, it's just a whole lot better than if they're in there and they're probably generating $7 in this hour for you. Right? So that's the big difference. Same problem. Let's take home. Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway, I told him this. I go, he goes, well, fuck, that would slow it down too much. He goes, we have to sell, you know, 500 of these things within five years. And then we get out. You know, return on investment, it's got to be five years. So they were just trying to scale and then get out at the peak. Yeah.

That's what they all do, right? That is the model out there that I want to personally fucking crush because I just, it crushes people's lives. It doesn't work for anybody, but the investor class. at the top. Do you think that was CrossFit's model? I don't think it started off that way. Do you think it turned into it? Oh, 100%. There's no doubt. You know, take a look at how many have gone. I mean,

they keep that number hush, hush, but... What is your sense of it anecdotally? I didn't ever saw an accurate number even when I worked for the company. Full disclosure, I didn't ask. What were the peak affiliates? Well, the number they put it was around 15,000 around the world. That hurt 8,500 in the U.S. it might have been as high as 10. Anecdotally, what have you seen in your interfacing with the community? I feel like that number would be on the decline. What do you think it sits at now?

So, I mean, when I say these numbers, people freak out and all the stuff. This is, I have really good contacts in the insurance industry. They know that number better than anybody. They have to reinsure people. And they say 80,000 of them since 2010 when they got involved, and there's two different, there's two different sources. 80,000 have changed hands or gone bankrupt. 8,000 CrossFit gyms? That's what I was sold.

And if you look at someone, you get someone to go scrape. And we send up gyms all the time that have had five owners. That's not uncommon at all. I mean, it's really uncommon to have someone that's had one. That'd be the only way for that math to work out. Even at the peak of 15,000, you'd still have to have damn near five owners per gym on average to hit that 80,000. I think that number is high, to be honest. But if you look around, I mean, how many gyms have changed ownership?

The CrossFit Gym I started with a business partner eventually became his, and then he eventually sold it, and I don't know who owns it now. So I guess, I mean, that's three owners right there in a period of four years. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. We're going to leave here, and people are going to get this confused. I'm here to hate on Cross Theory. It's got nothing to do with it.

I tell you what, I hate on a 45, an Orange Theory, and, you know, curves and all those guys too. And the real reason is we don't need them, right? Everybody who's out there works in a gym or owns a gym or even goes to one should demand something better or something different. I've been working on the math on this thing for 20 fucking years. And I'm telling you, there is a way better way for it to work for everybody for the client, for the coach, and for the gym owner, right?

There's just a better way. And people who argue, oh, you can do it that way, put them straight into a group class, pay the coach by the hour, you know, give them very little, very little business training, a little bit of technical training, and it works. It's very inefficient. That number, like the retention number yearly on that model averages out to about 30%. Right? That's a lot of churn.

And even the best, I've talked to some really smart people that consult in that space for that model, and they say the best they can get is 95% per month. That's how they sell it per month. But when you start doing the math on that, Michael, you lose, say, about 100 clients, and you lose five every month, right? Yeah. You're below 50%. You're right around 50, but that number's kind of heightened anyway. I think the best you can tighten that up that I've seen,

and I know guys that have franchised that model, and they tell me it's a constant headache. They need someone at the front desk. You need client success managers. You know, you need marketing like crazy. You need all this software to automate. You know, all this stuff that you don't need. You really don't need any of it.

And if you allow me to expand, I'll just continue the story of where it goes, right? Well, how long did you stay with the CrossFit model? I stayed for like six to nine months before I said, fuck it. And I fired everybody, including my partners, right? And they were good guys, and we made a deal. I said, listen, we went and spent $73,000 here. Fuckin, I'm doing all the work in here, and you guys are still doctors and business guys. I'm telling you it doesn't work.

It really doesn't work for the coach. Like there's no fucking way. I can sit in here and make any money. You can't make any money as a coach in this model. And you're going to be burnt out and you can't affect change and you can't actually make any relationships in this thing. And you can't, right? So I fired them all and I started all over from scratch. And I looked around at our gym that had a couple hundred people come through it in nine months.

There was 30 people left or 35 people left. It was all the people I brought over from my personal training business. Those people were fucking resilient. So I just changed everything and I said I got rid of everybody. I got rid of like three quarters of our classes. We didn't need them. And I said anybody comes through here is going to do 10 personal training sessions at $800 to pop. And they did.

And we didn't lose them. Did you keep the name on the wall? I did. I did into 2012. And what year did you open? 2004 is when I started. So you stuck with the business model that was prescribed for nine months. but kept the name on the wall for eight years.

Yeah. So you were doing, well, you, I'm sure you would. I was, I was like, there was, the business model just became that lowest common denominator kind of model because there's so much volume. And people just refused to create a waiting list. The best thing you could ever have in your business is a fucking waiting list. And they, they, it, it takes a massive amount of volume. So fast forward to F-45 here now, right?

They go and they get 500 people to sign up for this gym for it's even. open. How do you do that? Fuck of I know. Right? But they do. And then they go to someone. I know three people.

I know one couple that bought three of these fucking things. And one was middle management and a big company. And it was a real estate agent, right? And they opened up with four or 500 fucking members. And you do the math on that. $250 a month. That's a great opening day. Yeah.

Man, you can't lose. But year two, year three, the problems start cropping up. And like our children went to the same daycare and this and that. And I saw them opening them up. I saw like, you know, Marky Mark is part of this at 45 and all this hype. And, you know, they opened up at $18. The CEO immediately quits after the fucking IPO at $18. Right.

That's a good sign I've heard. Yeah. He runs away with the money, right? I mean, it's at 18 cents now. But I watched this over four years. And I actually went to Australia. It's actually at 18 cents? 11 cents the last time I checked.

Dear Michael. What is the F-45 stock price? Oh, 22 cents. You're so wrong. Not even. They're worth so much more. 0.02 cents. Oh, fuck.

2 cents. Yeah. How dare you come in with decimal points like that? I know. So they got enough cash on the somewhere in the, they got enough in the balance sheet. Yeah, but they're up 15% for today. You know what I mean? Yeah.

From 0.012? Yeah. Yeah. They went from like, so in 2018, I get invited over to Australia to speak. Oh, look at that bitching curve right there at the end. Yeah, they figured it out. The market figured. The analysts figured out.

Oh, this thing's a fucking Ponzi scheme. It's a Ponzi scheme, right? So that's the same model of CrossFit and Curves. Go to the... Oh, you're already at the max? Yeah, this is Max. Okay. Holy shit.

When did it... Opened up in 2020, 18 bucks. Go to that second peak, Michael. Here? Yep. When is that? That's 2022. That's the Feb of 2022, and then go to the first little tick.

All the way up back here? Nope, to the right. to the right of the second peak. Keep going. That first little bounce where it comes up. What's that at? That was three months later. Holy shit.

Half the value in three months. Yeah, the analysts started figuring out how this thing works, right? You can't get around to reporting. And they see the clients taken off and they see the coaches taken off. They figure out how much marketing got to do. And, you know, the equipment gets old. The marketing gets old. Anyway.

Have you ever seen a company recover from a share price plummet like this? I'm not an expert in that kind of thing, but it's not going to recover. I'm not an expert in it by any stretch either. That's a, you know, a single data point, maybe not that important. Trends, perhaps important. Yeah. We have a ski slope, very steep ski slope. Wow, that'd be, does Mark Wahlberg still have his name associated with this?

I don't know. But he was, at $18 he was, I'll tell you that. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I might have had my name associated with it at 18. I might have been an F. I would have obviously started F44. I mean. Well, 44 minutes.

Instead of 45. Yeah, six minute abs. Six minute abs, dude. That's been my saying forever. Like, that's the whole industry, and it's not just the clients. It's the gym owners and then the overlord. I call them the overlords. Like, this is all done on Wall Street, this thing, right?

You know what I think of when I see a chart like this? You don't even, knowing that it's a gym model, I can tell you looking at this chart that they don't care about the members. It's a model about designing infrastructure to sell the infrastructure and get the fuck out with money for the people on the far left-hand side of that graph. They're not sitting around figuring out. how to keep the clients for 10 years before they, before they start selling gyms. No, they're figuring out how to get 500 people to join before they open, which that's a

fantastic feat. Exactly. And that's going to look great on your opening day and you're in the black that deep. Yeah. So, kudos to you. I know people that bought them. And they didn't come to me with it. After the thing starts to go sideways, my wife runs her gym owner consulting business.

And she was like, well, they're starting to ask me these questions. And then I'm like, I don't know, what do you want to tell them? I said, well, should I tell them the truth? And I was like, I don't know, how badly you want to keep their relationship. You know what I mean? Like, they're not paying you. And, you know, usually I'm the one sticking my nose into places and I'm trying not to in my life now. Anyway, two and a half, three years into this, they start selling franchises.

We're talking to F45 here or occurs? F45, right? And they start selling them. And they sell one, pop it down right beside one they own, you know? It's like I've seen another business Kind of do that same model Not necessarily intentionally

They just allowed somebody else to open one Near another gym Yeah so then what happens right They start stealing the clients and the coaches And started eating each other And like we've seen that happen for years Right like that was the feast When that feast was going on

We were all told oh it's strong survive And you know it's libertarianism And all this stuff right Sad You know, it's sad shit, but that's what happens. Oh, damn. I was looking at this earlier. We do have two in Montana.

Hover on that. Is that Bozeman? No, this isn't in Montana. This is, uh, oh, no, we do, I guess. It looks like Bozeman and Billings. Oh, keep going. Definitely one in Bozeman. Yeah, Bozangeles has got one.

But anyway, to reiterate, they have to put people straight into a group class, right? Because you need to take 500 members to open a new one. So think about it. So I went over in 2018 to speak at a conference or whatever. And then there was a bunch of F-45 gym owners from Australia, as had been there before, flagged me down after. And they said, well, you give us a like a workshop. They were like, we need to talk to you. And I was like, okay, well, I'll do a workshop with you guys tomorrow.

There was sort of something scheduled. And then it came a five-hour, like, marathon. I'm showing them all the math and showing them how this shit works. You need to have this kind of client retention. You need to have this kind of average client value. The coaches need to win. So what's a win? They need to make $80 grand a year or 1.25 times the average household income.

You get that number. You can keep them, right? And then they need to make more than a plumber or an electrician because they'll even go become an electrician and plumber. So you make at least $50 an hour when they're actually working on the floor. So I mean, so I sat them down and showed them all this stuff. And then I showed them like, here's how you pay everybody based on performance. And even you, you got to pay yourself based on performance.

And then what's left over is real profit. And they started showing them. They were loving it. They went to their headquarters and they showed them this stuff and they wouldn't let them do it. So the people that you were talking to were already bought into this effort, but did not receive any of this type of business coaching or structure inside of that. They weren't concerned about that. They were concerned about selling that.

Yeah, the map. Yeah. The affiliate map, if you were. I mean, four or $500,000 for a new one. Really? Yeah. Damn. Right?

or even think about a new CrossFit gym back in the day. There's probably five coaches or five people that took the level one cert. And then an affiliate license is 3,000. There's 8,000. Boom. If we sit around right now and spend 10 more years figuring out how not to lose clients and how to pay coaches so they never leave and how to make profit, that's 10 years later.

Yeah. Right? Which is what I'm up to. I'm a nerd when it comes to the data analysis. So this map is eerily reflective of the old CrossFit affiliate map. Yeah. Yeah. Orange Theory's got a similar one.

And, you know, we had a guy that was middle management for Orange Theory, and he called up my wife. Got a hold of her somehow. I don't know. I went dark for about four years. I was sort of depressed after all this stuff. I was like, I just worked internally on and making our product awesome, and I didn't want to be out in the world.

That's why no one's see me. But this guy came to her. He said, listen, I've been reading all your stuff. and I bought your Mad Lab 101. I got to tell you, I've got an MBA, and this is like, blow my fucking mind. He goes, I want to do this. And she was like, well, they won't let you there.

He goes, yeah, I'm getting that. So he said, I'm going to call you up. I want to start my own gym and want to do this stuff, you know. And 45 people get a hold of us and we're like, they won't let you do it. You know, they won't let you do it. That's not their business. Their business isn't retaining clients inside the gym. Their business isn't finding, making sure there's a sustainable really good wage for coaches that have like 401Ks, five weeks paid vacation.

Like they don't have that shit. They're not interested in that. It's a cog and a wheel. That's the argument for Greg not wanting to do a franchise model. It's, it's he, in listening to him speak, and I'm not trying to speak for him, I'm repeating things that I heard years ago. He didn't want to set the best practices. for each and every gym because he wanted the gyms to be able to do so. He didn't, you know, if you go inside of a franchise model for people who have never done it

before, it's very positive in the nature of control. This is what you can do and this is what you can't do. If it's a subway sandwich, you know, you probably don't have to do a lot of marketing or anything other than slinging roast beef and cheddar cheese, you know, because it's a sandwich shop. Well, you're talking about the 401K going for new clients, the retention. Again, the argument to not have CrossFit affiliates be a franchise, but it be an affiliation is it gives them that flexibility to do what they think is best practices. But it's also the other side of that argument is they're passing the buck along because they have no interest in you actually doing so.

They're interested in you paying your affiliation fee. I don't know how many times I heard people present we should do a business course, a level one for business for affiliate owners. I got shot down every single time. Yeah, I think there was a fear that someone figured out exactly how to teach these guys how to run their business properly that they would run off with it or something like this, right? They probably would run off with it and open more of those gyms if they wanted to replicate that model. Well, that's kind of what happened to me. I mean, at one point, like Greg had me speak at the Affiliate Fest at 2008, and I got up and started talking about what we kind of do, and we kind of went viral. And, you know, all of a sudden I had like 150 gyms calling me up trying to help them.

And I was like, fuck, I don't know how to help you, man. I got no real infrastructure to help you. You know, so, but I said, listen. So I took about five of them that I liked and I could talk to on the phone. I gave them five hours for 1,500 bucks and a bunch of like powerpoints. And I don't know how to make a PowerPoint. Maybe it was a PDF that I got something to make up. And I did the best, like, try to scale this thing a little bit to help them because they were, they were seriously in trouble.

And what was the repeating theme that you were seeing as far as the gym's in trouble? They're losing clients. Just churn. I mean, man, if you, you don't know that person or all, you come in and jump into a group of class. Like, you don't know what's going on for that person, what their psychology is, what they're hurt, what their limitations are? Like, what they even fucking, what are you doing here? Like, what do you want? You know what I'm here to do the work out of the day?

Well, that fuck, that's fine. But, I mean, you know, that's not going to last, right? What lasts is a professional coach sitting down and doing a professional fucking consult and figuring out all these things and figuring out whether you should be working to you. together and why you're there. You know, I want to go fucking elk hunting. I want to drag this thing up the hill. I want to be with my kids, oh, this kind of stuff.

That's access. It's access to why you're really there. And then you do a three-day assessment to figure out where you're fucked or not, right? I mean, that's just being responsible. It's just the bare minimum, in my opinion, right? So these are the kind of things that we should be doing, right, that are necessary.

So if you don't do that, you're going to turn them. I don't give a fuck what anybody says. I don't care how many people you get here. I don't know how many lawsuits you try and throw me through. I know the numbers. I said, I did a study with Zen Planner, actually, for two years. Their CEO and their CEOO really cool. When the CEO was a real good data nerd,

like he had fucking, like, statistical analysis degrees coming to his ass, and I get into it with him. We looked at 1,600 gyms over 18 months, 20 months, and he got, he ended up, like, just leaving. We got in so much trouble for it. And we showed... Why did you get in trouble for it? Well, I produced the results.

I showed the results. Right? Yeah, fucking everybody went. bananas you don't remember that no so i got click baited into it it was an article by breaking muscle in 2016 if i could my son my wife was pregnant just what had my son and i was going to show the data and the data showed that fucking crossword affiliates at 80 percent turn rate per year right so if you got 100 clients you got 20 left after the years old yeah and we were we were the inverse we were losing 20 and keeping 80 right and then the gyms we were consulted to were summers in the middle

and you know the title was clickbait but it kind of came out that way it was 90% across the gym were slowly going bankrupt anyway that was the title that was the title that is going to be clickbaity and I'm surprised you didn't get sued

yeah so anyway I was fuck dude we were supposed to have this home birth and uh shower curtain shows up and I'm like what's that for and my wife's like what do you think it's for dummy fuck right so anyway long story short of course you know I did all the baby

courses and did everything and they're like, it's never going to come fast. That shit about leaving in a taxi. That doesn't happen. Of course, the fucking thing happens just like I had dreamed up my worst fucking nightmare, right? So I'm not responsible for the title.

I was just, I was doing the data. I was showing why it's all fucked up and why these gyms are, you're going to, you're going to churn people. You have no fucking choice. That's how it works. It's a mathematical equation. It's sure is Newton's fucking first law, right?

You put people straight into a group class. It's going to churn. No two ways about it. That's it. Right? and you got to replace them and you've got to come up with all kinds of stuff.

Anyway, and they're in my wife, we were at, I don't know, we were at lunch with a client and all of a sudden she's like, oh, this feels weird. The next thing you know, we're at home. She's fully dilated.

We're on the shower curtain. No doula, no midwife, no nothing. I'm delivering this baby here, too. Is there a reason you didn't take her to a hospital? Well, we're getting there. In the middle of that,

the guys called me up, said, I want to run the story, I want to run the story. And had like three headlines. I said, just go with one like a fucking dude. I'm delivering a baby here. Like, fuck off with this.

And that's what they put up. And it was no, all hell broke loose for that. I got so much trouble for that. Anyway, that's why, coming on here today, that's why I wanted to come on. I'm not here to hate CrossFit. I'm not here to hate any of it. It is a business model that is there 100% to grow more and more gyms as fast as you possibly can. And it doesn't work for the client.

It doesn't work for the coach. And it doesn't work for the gym owner over the long term. him. Sure is rain. And I get in so much trouble. You wouldn't believe how many times I've been sued and how many times I've had trolled. Who's suing you? There's a whole industry. Well, the usual suspects. I'm not even allowed to talk about them. Really? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Anyway.

You should talk about them. I can't. You can, though. Who's going to listen? Anyway. Just say like one. That shit's actually the boring part, right? But, I mean, we had internet trolls on us after that. I had to go, I had to get the CEO of Zen Planner to come off his European vacation to make a statement on it. But everybody lost the plot.

Like the thing became about hating CrossFit and it was like all this, there was so much chatter and went on Reddit. And then it was like, the Huffington Post is calling me up. And then the Wall Street Journal is calling me up. And I'm like, fuck, they're all missing the point of the story. The point of the story is not CrossFit. It's fucking how these things are run. Yeah. And you know what?

You're talking about their inability to separate the methodology from the business. Yeah, like fucking people do. I have fucking love. CrossFit. Same. I got fucking jacked, right? So then you think you're protecting cross. No, that's not it.

You can do CrossFit like many different ways. But if you want to keep your clients and you want to keep a team professional coaches and you want to make some money without pulling your fucking hair out, there's a better way. And it's just data analysis. We just, we tried everything. Yeah. Right? That short episode I did, that Friday episode, I actually haven't watched it back. I actually don't think I ever did watch it back or listened to it back.

But I'm pretty sure I open with talking about that I've always thought the methodology is pure. I don't have an issue with the methodology. If you want to get fit really fast, nothing can be good. For sure. But it is just a tool, and you have to apply it appropriately. If you're an endurance athlete and your job is to race marathons, you could use CrossFit as a tool, but you probably should spend some time on the track, too, you know, race and marathons. It's a tool that can be used properly and improperly, but I've never had criticism of the,

system itself. Well, I mean, if you're talking about straight performance, like, it's fucking wicked. If you're talking about longevity now, like, we've changed our programming quite a bit and our methodology a lot towards longevity. After 20 years of doing it, you can't run fucking Fran all the time.

Well, you shouldn't, though, I don't think. And again, you catch somebody in their late teens, they're prepping for a selection course. Smashmen to fucking Little Rocks, right? You find somebody in their 20s, and they're reaching for something for an athletic goal, whatever it may be, hit it hard.

30s, 40s and beyond. You can use the same tools, meaning the exercises and modalities and all of those things. But you need to be responsible with the application. It's the same, you know, you can take a hammer and hammer and nails, and if you hit yourself in the finger with it, is it the hammer's fault? No. You need to use the hammer properly for the desired outcome responsibly. And I think that's, but again, I look back at the time I spent with the time I spent with the organization, a two-day intro to the methodology in the movements is a good two-day

intro. Yeah, I mean, it's not a mastery. It's a great thing. I mean, it's fucking, dude, I learn more from those things. I learned so much from those things. I'm not taken away from any of those things. I mean, Pilates and yoga have the same fucking thing. You can go look at Bikram's yoga.

Let's go follow that thing and look at their fucking rise and fall. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. The clients are going to leave because they don't have, they're not. It's just time to get rid of all those fucking things and develop a professional class fitness coaches. Well, a lot of them. And there's a methodology that you need to follow. There's a math, manical system that, I mean, if anybody spent enough time in it and just run it.

I lived in a fucking basement for 10 years with five of my best friends that are coaches and they're still there. And they're still making $80, $100,000 a year. I got three guys have been there for fucking 16 years, right? It doesn't go on. It doesn't happen anywhere in the world. They're getting five. Some of them are taking seven, eight weeks of vacation a year. They're making 80 to 100, and they have families, and they're 50 years old or more.

Yeah. And they're there. It's not happening anywhere else in the world. Then we're showing other gyms how to do this. I'm not sitting here saying I got all the answers. I think the thing's going to evolve. And it's evolved way farther to me. My current coaches, the young ones, they've only been there for like seven years.

They think I'm a fucking retard. I heard you say that on a podcast before. I'm not allowed to say that. It's retarded. You're not allowed to say that north of the border? That's super weird. But, I mean... Are you even going to be allowed to listen to this episode in Canada?

They haven't taken my guns away yet. I still got them. I don't know if I would say that. If you're going to return to Canada and this episode's going to come out. You might stop me at the border. I doubt it. When is this episode going to come out? I don't know. Nobody knows.

We're here, too, two weeks? Three weeks? We haven't given Michael enough attention over here yet. He gets plenty of attention. We just did an episode together last Friday. Yeah, yeah. He came totally unperpared. Yeah.

All come prepared next time. Yeah, I'm sure you will. A number of times I've heard you say that. Yeah. Yeah, we covered a lot of ground there. But I can just kind of... Part of the Beekrim thing, though, too, is that they didn't want to touch his penis. You know, a lot of people left because of that as well.

That's a great documentary. I see it. Yeah. I did Bickram's Yoga for about six months, and it was like, and push, and push. And I got a neck injury from hockey, and they fucking pushed me right into the hospital. It's a good... I'm pretty sure it was Beakrum. I apologize if it's not.

But there's a good documentary. on pretty damn sure it's the beak room yoga head guy that you got to touch him on the vagina to do his proper the retreats training part in the coach's training or whatever yeah got a little kinky yeah i think that's what happens when you get this cult like following right weird shit happens i think it fucks with your head yeah oh yeah i think it fucks with your head if you add money and fame whatever you know i guess even money people have varying definitions and degrees of wealth same thing with fame or notoriety or recognizability. I think if you're not, the best description I've ever heard of money is that it is an

amplifier for who you already are. If you are a good person, it expands the scope, scale, and reach of what you're able to do. If you're a broken person or have issues, all it does is exacerbate that. And I have found that to be true more often than not. Yeah, I also, I agree with you. I think I've been sort of semi-famous twice in my life and I act like a fucking dickhead if I think about it. I'd go back.

It's like Chris Rock said. Everybody blows their first money. No, that doesn't have to be correct. Well, I don't think you turn into that big of an asshole, but you kind of... You don't take financial advice from Chris Rockie. Well, people kind of stretch it one way, but I agree with you. I mean, if you're thinking of what I'm thinking, there's some things that I had... As far as I know, I'm the only person that didn't take his money.

Well, it depends. I might be thinking what you're thinking. What are you thinking? Well, I mean, it got pretty crazy there for a few years in the job that you had, I would think. But you would know a lot more than I would. Working for Greg? Yeah. How so?

I don't know. What did you see? That is the million-dollar question. What did I see? Everything. Yeah. Is the reality. And the reason that I didn't say anything about, I didn't see, I take that back.

there was what I thought I saw and what I was exposed to. And after I did that video, the people that I became connected to and the people that reached out to me, there was what I thought was going on and then there was what was really going on. And the reason I never did a second episode and why I didn't really do anything beyond that, reporters did reach out to me. And I would say, maybe you should talk to this person because this isn't my story to tell by any stretch. I can absolutely talk about the things that I personally saw, but if you want to get the story on fill in the blank, you need to go talk to the person who lived through fill in the blank. It is not for me to tell that story.

I don't even want to think about how bad that could have been. I saw what it was capable of, I think. And it was 2011 and it was like, boof, man, I got to, because for two years I went into hiding almost 2009 and 2011, because I had to go, I had to go figure out how to become a school. So I went and got accredited as a school. And that was the whole zoning issue and business license. And I had so many people come to learn from us that it broke all kinds of laws in BC

that you have to actually become a school. If you're taking that money from training people, it was a whole thing. So that was two years and three months and eight days. I finally got the fucking accreditation on D-Day. It was, yeah, of 2011. Yeah, June 7th. How was your departure from the CrossFit ecosystem? I was fine.

I mean, there was a lawsuit, and I settled. I was going to try and do the big fight, and I realized that even if I won, I was going to lose, and it was going to take away three years of my life, and I was getting married, and it was like, no, fuck it, I'll roll over, so I did. What did you think about the change of hands ownership-wise? Well, I mean, I called up, well, I mean, any of that was

you know Greg was always paranoid that the liberals were going to get on right as it turned out it kind of did I actually had reconnect with him a little bit when that was going on because like you he wasn't a racist and they were pigeonhole and all that shit and you know that was fucking ridiculous he was a lot of other things that were way worse

and that's what you hit upon but I'd I'd been talking to him a little bit in that time and then when you did that podcast it really made me shake my head and look at you know I'd pulled away so many times of four, why am I sticking my toe in here at all? And then when he, like, he pulled the shoot and sold, you know, and that was supposed to be his whole thing.

I thought he was going to go through a lot more trouble than that, but... I don't know if he had a choice. Yeah, I mean, I can't. I can't speak to it. I mean, he told me, like, you know, the kind of endanger his ability to have a livelihood, you know, fair enough, you know? The discovery process would have been a bastard. Oh, yeah, that part.

You know what I mean? That's why I mean by not necessarily having a choice. If you're presented with the opportunity and I have no idea what the sale was for, I hope it was for a good amount of money. And I hope that whoever got that money is smart with it and generational wealth. Drive on. The choices between that and a magnifying glass up your ass. Yeah. I probably wouldn't want one either, right?

Well, yeah. And, yeah, I don't know if he had a choice. Yeah. I know when Eric DeRosa bought it or whatever, whoever I think was Berkshire Hathaway money, but anyway, he was the CEO and Rob Wolf put a word into him to talk to me. Like if you want to know why these gyms are failing or if you want them to do better or whatever, give him a call. So he did, and I sat down and asked him, I said, I think you've got a churn problem.

He's like, he disagreed me vehemently. And then he's got his own gym or whatever in Denver, which Rob told me is like a cathedral. It's like a beautiful, you know. this stuff. And I was like, well, do you know how to track it? And he didn't know how. I didn't know what that meant. And I was like, just track it for a year. And they call me back or track it for six months. I'll guarantee you're going to have this turn rate. And he didn't. But then he said, I said, you're going to have problem keeping coaches. You're going to have problem paying coaches properly. And you're going to have a coach problem. He goes, oh, yeah,

that's for sure. Our coaches are completely useless. And I was like, you don't think that's a problem. And it's like, it didn't even occur to them. That's the root of the problem. That's your consumer facing chat. That's the whole fucking thing. And it was like, again, it's like this person that owns a gym that's going to remote control it and pull levers like, you know, the wizard behind the fucking veil or something like a gym runs like that. It doesn't. It's about making relationships and having a fair value trade of energy, right? So I'm going to sit down with you. Like you said, you're going to have to go through all that drama and all that stuff. I want $100 an hour for that, you know, and then if I run a group class or the whole group of team, I probably want $300 an hour for that. And then it makes it worth it. And then I get five weeks of vacation or six or seven. I can fucking rehab from all that. Because if you work up to 23 hours a week, personal training with a little bit of group, it's awesome. And Greg told me that. I said every Patterson up until hour 23 is going to be great.

Every hour after is going to exponentially worse until you're bagged. All right. So all this stuff, maybe I did a maybe I was like, I don't know what he was expecting, but I think he had in his mind he was going to turn this into a technology company or something and it was going to solve all the problems. For me, it's really very simple. I mean, I spent 10 years living in a basement looking at every fucking thing you possibly do. Oh, should we have bring a friend day? Or should we put three people together in a personal training?

Every iteration you can probably think of and how you pay the coach. Like you pay them 25 bucks to run a group class. What happens? Well, they become really good performers in that group class. And then they leave. And the client goes home and does all the other shit. You know, they're only there, maybe three or four hours a week. And they go do all this other stuff.

And they're alone in their head and then they quit. And the gym owner's, now the gym owner's going to be like, why are you, you know, why are you quitting? But no one knows because no one's got a relationship with that person, right? So the coach becomes a great performer and not a great, like advocate for that person's life. Yeah. You know, they're just doing, like I said, it's all set up so that you can bring in 400 people first day, right? So now you've mentioned something before that really gets it. CrossFit can run it any way they want.

That's the beauty of it. that's the benefit of not being a franchise. Well, that's it. If you consider that a pro, there's plenty of cons as well. Well, the pro is anybody out there is right now owns one of these things or works in one of them, you can change it. You know what I mean? If you go to it, if you go to one and, you know, shit, you're not getting what you need. You should demand better.

Like, if you're going, anybody walks into an F-45, like, I have a couple clients left for one. I was like, yeah, we'll see you in three months. And they come back and goes, what the fuck was that? How do they structure the classes? I know almost nothing about it. It's a 45-minute workout, and you come, you know, some of them have TVs and all this kind of stuff. You know, the Orange Theory people get TVs, the SoulCycle people that's on a bike. Is it stationary equipment-based?

Yeah, you're moving from one equipment to the other and stuff like that. But it doesn't really, my opinion is I don't care. You could be doing P-Nuckle in there for all I give a fuck, right? The fact that it matters, you're going to run straight into a group class. The coach, you're going to get paid by the hour, and you're going to take a massive amount of volume so you can sell the next franchiser license. Right. Now, if you look at the marketing companies now, like the gym launch one, and the guy sold the business for like $48 million.

Like they were bringing in 50 people a month, like, you know, the marketing company, a free six-week challenge, you know what I mean? And shit, four or five thousand gyms bought that thing, $16,000 a piece. Now, why could they do that? Because you had all of these CrossFit gyms and their lookalike sitting there fucking dying for clients because they already churning too many, right? I mean, my gym's, dude, my best coaches are a waiting list. We don't do any marketing.

It's all referrals, right? Reputation and referrals is what you're trying to generate. So the marketing companies come along and they go, here, you can buy this product. I'll get your 50 new clients. Fuck, sign me up. And guess what? They all, they're tricked into it. It's not a six free six week challenge.

It's like, oh, it's a $600 deposit. And then if you lose this much weight, you get your money back, you know, all this kind of stuff. That's fucked. Yeah, yeah. They fucking line to them right off the bat. I mean, the client's going to remember that, right? I'm trying to remember the coupon deal that was just the death stroke to a lot of CrossFit Jim's. Yeah, the fucking...

What's it called? That's why I changed my brand. It was like an online coup. God. Yeah, I can't believe I can't remember that right now. People would be screaming as like we're idiots for not being able to remember it. Groupon. Groupon.

A hundred percent correct. Yeah. Come in first month, and you'd get so many people to come through the door at a price point that was so low that would steal your time, attention, and energy away from the clients that were paying full price. and they wouldn't stay. I did an article on that, and I got all kinds of shit from CrossFit for that. They thought that was a good thing for their business because it brought all these people in. But all it did was give people probably a pretty horrible experience and they quit because they're going to churn because there's no relationships made. And very few people stay there just for the fucking machines in the workup.

Did you in your consultation with any of the CrossFit gyms after change of ownership, did they express to you that anything had actually changed from a interface with CFHQ? Yes, actually. I got one guy who was an apprentice on mine, like 2007, and he opened a gym up. He's had it for at least 10 years. They got a good business. They were on our basic model, our nine laws. And he said, listen, man, what they're saying out there and what they're putting out there is good stuff. I was like, I don't know, man, I don't think I can go back to the well on that. But yeah, I had heard that they're putting out some better stuff, you know? Which is good. Yeah.

I think, you know, you're talking about the perspective of a coach and the value of the relationship between a coach and a client. Right. I think it's one of the, and I'm super Monday morning quarterbacking this and looking in the rearview mirror 10 years. I think it's one of the most consistent themes that I personally would hear from affiliates is that there was no interaction or communication or relationship at all

from CFHQ until their affiliate dues or insurance requirements became due. They didn't know what to tell them because, I mean, the whole organization didn't know how to run a gym. Nobody in there, right? Greg left before he really built up It built the model out He was he did personal

Yeah that none of them owned a gym And they've had to run it properly They're not going to come in and teach him how to Fuck you get a hold of I never thought about it like that Get a hold of any of them and say hey How do I keep my clients? They don't fucking know

Because they've never had clients Never had fucking never owned Nobody in the organization actually Fucking properly ran a really good one And that's my point Andy If they had to spend 10 years in a basement Learning how to fucking Why does it have to be a basement?

I don't know because I like saying that Because I was paying less rent than anybody that work for me. Okay. I live in Vancouver. You couldn't, you know what I mean? It's expensive as hell. Like, they've got a fucking housing crisis like you can't believe, right?

Meaning you have extremely expensive housing that nobody can afford? That's right. Yeah, I mean, if it can work in Vancouver, it can work anywhere, you know. We've got the average household income is 73,000 Canadian, which is about the same as Omaha, and it's one 12th, or sorry, 12 times higher for the, for a dwelling. Jesus. Yeah. crazy right yeah that's not sustainable no it's i mean it's completely out of control and uh so many

people made so much money on doing nothing but sitting on their house for 10 15 years like i yeah i shouldn't have done any of this i should have just went and bought three condos in 2013 and uh fucking dude i'd be rich like crazy why'd you decide to stick with it so long you know you didn't you didn't enjoy the engineering path so you kind of ejected or off ramped off of that are you still coaching people today, or are you focused specifically on the mechanisms of developing coach and client retention? Well, I've been out of the gym and the day-to-day running of it since 2013-14, as I started the Mad Lab business, which is to train gym owners and coaches on how to do it.

And I tell you, I went and saw a counselor about, I'm about three weeks ago. I see this lady, she's like a rebirther. It's a three-hour thing, and you do a whole lot of breathing and fuck, you end up crying at the end of it every time. Anyway, I was like... That sounds horrendous. It's a real good way to pitch fucking. fucking mental health.

It's great. Therapy and counseling. That's awesome, dude. Anyway, I was like, maybe I should have just taken these money in 2012 and not done any of this. She was like, dude, probably one of you would have ended up dead or something. It would have been bad. And then I was like, well, why did I bother open this up?

Because I really enjoyed training people. That was fun. And hanging out with my boys, like, and girls. We had one of my, I have one female coach who just had a kid. She's been with me for 14 years. And, like, being in the gym every day and hanging out. with these coaches that I poured my life into. And they're still all there.

And I feel like a sense of regret of going out and trying to show people, try to change the industry is really what I've been trying to do, which is a big undertaking. It's bigger than me. But you doing that is what created the environment where they're able to thrive and actually be able to stay. Yeah, I mean, I could have just stayed in the gym. We could have just had a great time in the gym and had a good life and it would have been fine.

We should have bought a dwelling in 2013 before he got it a hand, and my life would be fine. Like, it's been a, I'll tell you, it's been a real struggle, like, you know, with the constant attacks. And, you know, it's not like I haven't made mistakes. With the first few gyms, we tried to implement this on, it was kind of like, it was a little bit like, you know, normally beach landings. The first few took some, took some serious hits. And it takes a long time to learn how to develop a real consulting and education company. It's been 10 years, right? 10 years of fucking blood, sweat and tears.

And I'm at the point now, right, I, you know, like we said before, why didn't CrossFit take 10 more years to figure out a business model, but they couldn't. I've taken 10 years to figure out how if you, someone joins my organization, I know exactly what to say and what to do, and they meet with a consultant every week, and they do these courses, and it's not cookie cutter. We figure out exactly why they're there, what they want in life, what they want this thing to look like, what their action strategy would be and develop a team of coaches that they love

that don't leave, right? And the clients don't leave and you develop a great community. Now, to figure out how to do that properly has been a whole other stress, right? Why do people keep attacking you? Well, I mean, you look at the industry, if you look at that model of putting people straight into a group class, a lot of volume,

pay coaches by the hour, repeat, you know what I mean? There's a lot of infrastructure built up around that. If you look at the software companies, other consultants, I mean, marketing companies, everybody's playing in that model. And they simply don't like you saying that the model's fucked, right? Because it kind of implies that what they're doing is irrelevant, which, you know, if everybody's just looked at it and said, hey, let's take a step back, right? We're just going to go in an alternate universe, and there's a different way to do it. And, you know, the clients don't leave. they leave at a very slow rate

and most of the time it's because they move the coaches stay for 20 years and they make a good living and they don't leave and the gym owner is not pulling his hair out every fucking minute or every day and he's making you know my gym does 1.2 million

I did 17% EBITA right and I don't have an impact I don't have a job in there really I meet with my gym once a week we have coffee I meet with my coaches and my friends we go play golf or surf and that's it

You know, if I didn't, like my GMs the other day, he's like, Craig, I know how hard you've been working at the global thing? My business license is all tied up in that too. And he's like, what would you change if all of a sudden you got the number you wanted and everything was going good? I go, fuck, it wouldn't change anything, right? My life's pretty complete. I have a great wife, fantastic wife. I got a great little boy. I got my friends.

I got my communities. Like, it's good. I got my hunting communities. My fishing communities. I got my fucking, I don't fish as much as I'd like to, but golf, all these things. things, you know. What are you guys playing golf for about 90 days? You can go fuck yourself right now.

Oh, Vancouver all year around. Just you're in the rain a lot. I forgot actually that Vancouver is far more temperate. I was thinking like the tundra of the great wet. Canada, for me, for me, clarity. Canada is the top hat of America. All right? Yeah, we are.

51st state. I wish. You should see the fucking tax. Yeah, but you got, free healthcare. Yeah. It's great for if you're, it's great if you have cancer, if you're poor, if you can break your leg, but you know how it is. How was it during COVID? How'd your gym fare during the, I don't actually, how would you describe it, the lockdowns that they applied? It seems like to the entire country. Well, in BC, we were the most like, we have a left-wing

provincial government and they were probably the most progressive. Like, we were open before everybody else. We didn't go down in lockdown again. Like in Quebec, they had fucking curfews. me. That's where I grew up on the eastern side. And they had curfews for Christ's sake. They were, you know, if you were driving at night by yourself in a fucking car, they'd show me your papers type shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy shit. Right? B.C. wasn't so bad. And we were, um, we did pretty good because our clients and coaches have a really good relationship. And they would just call them up and say,

hey, this is the service we have the offer now. I need you, buddy. And they'd be like, yeah, how fucking I need to be fit? So good. We retained, I would say nine, in that first you know, three-month hell lockdown. I'd say we were trying 94 to 95%. I'd have to look at the numbers again. I didn't know that number on the top of my head. But the level of like the amount that we could charge came down. Like, you know, we had people on $500,000, $500,000 packages. Like our average client value, like our minimum client value is $300 a month. It's hard to do that online. You can't. Like, our, our gross revenues drop like 30 or 40 percent, but we kept our clients. Yeah. How do you think Canada would respond if, I'm starting to start a lot of,

starting to hear rumors of a resurgence of COVID. I saw a newspaper article about, I think it was a school on the East Coast that's masking up kids again. I think I might have it right now, by the way. I've been sick. It feels like I was surfing, and then I was, like, golfing. And I was like, I feel like I've been sick for, like, two weeks. I've had COVID three times. I'm okay.

This would be my third time. The first two times was actually a vacation. I went in the back room, got a bottle of whiskey, and then slept for 14 hours a day. It was awesome. That's very Canadian. Do you add cinnamon to your whiskey or were you just drinking fireball? There was a hot toddy mix. There was a hot toddy mix that my wife, her mother came over and made up, actually.

It was quite nice. How do you think Canada would respond, though, if they went with overbearing lockdowns again? Do you think that they would rebel? Oh, yeah, I think so. Definitely in the western provinces. Like, Alberta, you'd have no chance there. So then how would Trudeau, though, and the eastern provinces respond to that? Fuck, I don't know, man.

You're way above my pay-grade. I like to only make comments on things I actually understand, you know. But, I mean, I can sit here and think I understand it. But it's got to be someone who actually has inside policy debate and knows Trudeau and stuff like that. They can imply whatever policy they want to or they can try to. I think I just don't think people would do it again. Trudeau has the lowest polling numbers, I think of all time for him. And I think it might be one of the lowest ever for a prime minister since they've started polling right now.

So he'll probably get reelected then. Oh, God, I hope not. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think he's done, done. That's what people are saying about Biden, too. I think by that they mean he's actually not alive and is being run by an autonomous robot.

I saw the one where he just, did he have a stroke or something? Or was that Mitch McConnell? That was Mitch McConnell. That's happened twice. Michael, pull that shit up. I watched that one. He was like all of a sudden like blank.

But here's what I can't understand. Why does anybody talk? tolerate that, regardless of political belief, left or right-hand side of the aisle, let's have empathy for the man who is clearly having an issue of some kind on the national stage. Hey, man, let's get you to a doctor. Let's get you checked out. You probably are not fit currently to be serving in your capacity, serving other citizens in your elected role.

Like, why would anybody tolerate that? Well, how does it happen in American politics? There's like Nancy Pelosi. She's still pretty hot at like 82 years old or something. She's 84. She's 84. And no, she's not. Why are all these, oh, come on.

Michael, you're telling me you cannot find? I don't know. I just got it. You just need to Google, Google Mitch McConnell vapor lock. Yeah, I mean. Code black. Why do, I mean, Trump? How old is Trump?

He's like 77? Like, how is it all these guys are so old? We can't, you can't find somebody a little younger here. This is a different one, though, when I saw. It's happened multiple times. When I saw he was against a wall. Oh, shit. God, damn.

Oh, man. It's like watching your grandfather having a struggle at Christmas dinner here. Here's the thing, too. I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on. Putting a man or a woman in this position and seeing this happen, like, I'm sorry, we have to do, we have to do better. Are you okay? He can't fucking talk. No.

No, all they're doing is sitting there worrying about the political fallout of it at that point, right? Who gives the fuck about the political fall? Get the guy to a doctor. Yeah. You know, the political side, I'm sure there's mechanisms in place for the government to allow him to seek whatever help he may need from a medical perspective. Then he's found unfit to continue his office. Then I think they run another, you know what I mean, in an election or figure out a way to fill it. Why is that acceptable?

That's a political leader in this fucking country. I expect that from you guys. I'm Canadian. You know what I mean? Or guys are pretty young. You guys wear some dope-ass shit in your house of commons or whatever it is. Some fancy ass shit. Here's the one you probably saw.

Yeah, that's the one I saw. How old is Mitch McConnell? 110, I think. Mike, what do we got? I love it. Let me see. My dad's 802 and it's like he goes up and splits wood and stuff. I wouldn't want to put him on a camera on the stage, right?

Fuck. Do you hear the question, Senator? Oh, God. Oh, God. That's tough. It's not fair to that person. I don't care what side of the aisle you land on. What do you think he's like, he just popped up there?

He doesn't have his own say anymore or what? No, I think he's, I think he is struggling through a medical issue in real time. Yeah, why was he step away after the first one? Like, why is he up there again? You know, that's his own choice or what? But think about the position of power and influence that these people are in. Yeah. They, the last thing they want to do is leave it.

Yeah, I guess. I mean, fuck, that's where it's like, uh, I don't know, man. I don't know. I mean, that actually is the, that video is the perfect metaphor for our political system. It's full of people who have been in politics. Biden's a good example. Again, I'm not, I'm not talking shit about left or right.

The man's been in politics for a long event. He's been out of politics. He wields influence. He has power. He has wealth accumulated through, he probably won't live long enough to go gather any more wealth by getting a, I mean, I guess he could get a sponsorship from a fucking baby food company afterwards after he leaves. But, you know, the open door revolving policy of people serving in government and then going right into industry, which I can understand that. But maybe we shouldn't let people do it at that age for that long.

Yeah. I mean, term limit. I got a buddy who's, I went to McGilloweth, who's American. He grew up in Florida. He's in New Jersey now. He's pretty far right on the spectrum. I got him on left and right. I love talking to each one of them and kind of get in their perspective and, like, they don't really talk to each other.

And then I'm kind of in the middle saying, like, fuck, what, you don't have any friends that aren't vaccinated? And they're all, no, they're all retards. And then on the other side, it's like, it's kind of cool to be in the middle and listening to both sides as I'm Canadian. It kind of shocked me how far down. He's like term limits everywhere. Term limits to the Senate, term limits everywhere. I actually agree with that. I think it would solve a lot of the issues.

Take care of all that stuff you're talking about. I don't know if it would take care of all of it. but I think without a step like that. How many terms is Mitch McConnell being in there? It's got to be like 48 or 50, I think. That's a lot, right? I don't know. Nancy Pelosi, like how many, how many?

She's 84. Right. She still looks pretty good. She does not. God, I would hate to hear your, would you. Would you? No. Would you?

No. First off, I don't think it would be physiologically possible. I don't think you drink any, you don't drink anymore or what happened? Dude, did you give up all that? I still drink, but God damn it, I don't think that would be physiologically possible. It wouldn't be enough? No. You've changed since I first met you then.

Yeah, but haven't we all changed in the time that we've known? I would hope that we've all changed. I don't even recognize myself anymore. I would like to think I'm a better version of myself in some areas I'm sure I've achieved that and others. Fuck, I don't know, man. Doing the best I can. Stumbling my way through life. I saw that, when you sent me that photo of Andy shot a very big elk, one of the biggest ones I've ever seen.

This is you're Canadian. Yeah. Yeah, apparently, apparently it was smaller elk. Yeah. Anyway, I looked at his face. He was like, Jesus, this kid doesn't change the bits since I've seen him. I try to stay active. When I see you now, like, when I see you in person, I don't know, maybe you're just so giddy after shooting an elk that, you know, you're radiating all that joy and juice and all that stuff.

You look a little more weathered. All right. But good. I mean, I don't know to take that as an insult or a compliment. I'm pretty sure you can go fuck yourself, but. I said I was like, I don't even know you think you're going to recognize me

the years have been so fucking hard on me that I don't know if you'd recognize me but you did you walked into the coffee shop and we've done each other for a long time how long do you want to stay in the fitness game tell you the truth I'm kind of getting to the point where

I don't know how much more I got to take this cross the finish line more so for my wife and the guys at my gym and myself to see it through I mean it's a hard thing to see through it's 20 years I need to see this through

and I don't need I don't need like a lot of volume right we don't take any more than five new gyms a month if I had two or three a month and we actually could just push it one step further you know and get more people you know looking at having a

like a professional coaching service rather than run you know and then have all that comes with that have people that are really interested in that that want to make a difference in the fitness industry I need to have I need to pass the project along probably within two to three years. I know who I can pass it along too.

So I got two to three years of really making sure that every bit of our system's tight. Because, I mean, in 2016, 17, like, I told you, like, back in 2007 and 8, I didn't have the infrastructure to handle, you know, the people that came in. Yeah. Well, after that article I was telling you about, I did Rob's podcast, and I think this podcast podcast, Well, we hadn't 300 people trying to join. I didn't have the infrastructure. I didn't have the systems in place to really handle it back then.

And it became a nightmare, to be honest. Because we tried. I kind of did the same thing myself. I tried to handle all this volume. And I was like, what the fuck you're doing this for? You can't. And I learned the hard way. Yeah.

I was listening to one of your podcasts, the guy, climbed Deferrous. And you met him in the South. Tyler, Connor Valley. Yeah, man. I love that guy. And he was, you know, he was saying, some stuff that really hit home and it was like yeah you know um you can only control what you can

control but i need this time around you know what i mean i'm kind of doing i'm doing the podcast circle with you thank you very much for having me on i know you have a huge influence i'll probably do robs again i got another buddy stewbrower who we like scrapping with and then we're actually going to do some marketing i've never done any marketing for this thing so i've like got facebook people and all this different stuff and you know and we're doing it pretty cheaply and but you know the thing about the gym and it's got its own natural referral source. You know, I do a good job. You're going to tell your friends, your family, people are going to notice you get referrals.

I never did any marketing. Like 19 years in there, I think I've never done more than $500 a month for some various thing. Never needed it. In this business, gym owners don't really talk to gym owners, right? And a lot of them don't like each other. So there's not a natural referral source there. This viewed as probably competition? Yeah.

And they kind of hate each other and stuff. And, you know, so there's not a natural referral source there. And if I had to go back 10 years and I knew it was going to become, like, marketing, fuck, I probably wouldn't have started it, to be honest. Because it's not something I really enjoy. I love coming out here and talking to you. But like me going and being on Facebook or Instagram and stuff. Like nails on a chalkboard.

Dude, like, I'm fucking not interested in that. And that's pretty much, like, if I look at it, if I have competition, I don't really think I have competition, but if you looked at some people would say, analysts have a competition, they're very good marketers, right? They're either really good at movement and they're really good at marketing, you know, and they're good at marketing movement. Yeah. Or just straight marketing, right? Like what we have is a business model that you don't need marketing. You don't need client success managers. You don't need the front desk people. You don't need all

the stuff, right? So it's, I don't know, it's just an honest way to run a community gym that you'll be recognized as the best gym in town and you get referred. and your clients, you'll have a waiting list, and your coaches will do good, and your clients do good, and it's good. You know what I mean? Like, I love our gym. I love her communities.

What do you think you'll do if you're able to pass the torch on? I don't know, man. I've got no idea. How old are you now? 52. Fuck, you're almost dead. I heard you say that 46 was old, and I was like, fucking 46.

I'll give you three more years tops. No, I'm a pretty hearty soul. Pretty hearty soul. You're going to stay in the cove? Probably not. Like I didn't buy property back when it was even expensive. Like now, like, just purely unattainable now. Well, now it's like a house.

Like my buddy just bought a house a little bit out of the down, like the sort of the Vancouver Corps in Burnaby. And it was $2.1 million. Like. How many square feet? It was like, I don't know, maybe a 2,000 or 2,500 square foot. Fuck. With a tiny little lot. Right off with that.

Yeah, like this kind of thing. Like a two-bedroom condo where you're in the, concrete jungle is like $1.1 million. The townhouse can be $1.6 or 7 and it's like if I went and made $5 million, like would I go and invest in that to be there? Like I love our little community that we're in.

I would advise you to not. No. I mean, I see the way you're living here and like I'd probably move summers closer where I could surf on a more regular basis. Like it's really tough for me to I can't possibly do a day surf. It's always like you got to go over for a weekend and it's like fuck you got to take a ferry and it's a hassle. Like, yeah.

You think you would stay in Canada or moved to the U.S.? I would love to move to the U.S., but I just, I don't, there's no clear pathway to it and the surfing places are, I mean, I do love Southern California. I looked into that and it's like,

it's kind of the same thing. It's kind of like, I don't know if it's unattainable or it's kind of like, it's kind of like gone. Like the dream has already sailed. You know, that was, that was, uh, depends on what your dream is. I mean, you're, the waters you're surfing

up north are not necessarily warm. Yeah. Even in Southern California. And people, ah, it's warm water. I'm like, yeah, it's not that warm. Stay in there for a couple hours and board shorts. Yeah. You'll come out of their cold.

They're surfing all along the coast, you know, obviously from the southern portion of Cali all the way up to where you guys are at. I'm sure you could find some areas that would be a little bit cheaper, maybe a little bit more off the beaten path. Yeah, I mean, tell you the truth, I really like Oceanside. If you read. California? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you would know it. Well, right? That's your stomping ground. So, like, I don't know. I remember reading about a book. about, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago. And a lot of the time they sell you this dream that, you know, it's easy waves. There's no crowds and it's warm water.

I mean, that's the dream. That book better been in the fiction section. I ended up in some crazy places. Like I ended up like Christmas Island in a bunker one time. I got sold someone shit. Anyway, Oceanside, they're like, don't go. There's gangs. You get the ship beat out of you.

You go in the water and, you know, they'll fucking stab your tires, all this stuff, right? I remember looking at my wife said, and that's where I want to go, right? people give a shit and they're protective of their stuff and I firmly believe if you stay in line, you'd be fine. And so we end up spending like three or four months there in an RV back in 2017 when shit was falling apart. It was like, and yeah, man, it was like first two or three weeks, I mined my peas and cues and Q's and you just think I did like this and that.

And then finally they cheered my wife in one day, then realized we were necessary together. And then they're like, oh, no, we got to take this guy too. you know and you know the next thing you know you're it's like a little community and you're you know you're seeing these people and they're they're kind of protecting you and they're keeping the place you know respectful and I like living in places that people mind their peas and cues like I'm a member of a private golf club that I probably should have never joined it was like a lot of money to join it's a lot of money to stay in with and I find myself wanting to beat the shit out of people all the time in there you know I probably will get kicked out of there

someday for just slapping somebody because they can say whatever they want and they know they got some you know they're really rich and they're probably never never been in situations that you've been in that maybe I've been in the situations you've been in but I grew up in a place that you're not missing out on shit by being in the situations I've been in well I think there's a part of every man that would like to know how we'd stand up in combat and you know that about yourself right

yeah I don't know if I'm a better person for it but Whatever. Sure, I have the answer to that question. You should play that act all you want. At least you know what you're made up. I have the answer to that question, but I don't know necessarily. So cool. You survived and potentially thrived into combat environment.

Does that mean shit outside of that environment? Man, I don't think it does. Well, that's why I love about you is that, you know, you took a humbleness to it. And when we first met each other, I'd met a lot of Navy SEALs. And that wasn't their attitude, right? There was the first attitude was a standard programming of arrogance that they, you know, it's hard to get over. I mean, I fucking... Depends on the person, man.

Yeah, I agree. There was, I don't know, I think you know some of the same people. I can't remember all their names, but I grew up in a place where, you know, you get picked on or you're a good athlete. English, French, you're going to get in a fucking fight. Like, I got in quite a few fights that were never my choice. I didn't have any choice in the matter. Yeah. Right?

And not usually one guy, usually more than one guy. She was the girl in high school It was the toughest guy in the whole school. We had a girl everybody was terrified of it. She had a cast and her arm most of the time. And yeah, anyway, you know, there was a few guys. I was like, that's it. Fuck it.

I can't take any more disrespect from you. Navy seal or not. Like, I don't give a fuck, right? Yeah. And me and you almost our first interaction, something had happened and you switched right away. Like I was like, fuck, Andy. You can't talk to me like that anymore.

We're like, fuck you, right? We were out on Grambles Street having a drink. I had to summon that in my brain. Yeah, you were probably into 15 by that point. Right? And yeah, it's like you switched right away after that. And you're like, fuck, sorry, man, that was disrespectful. And then we found a real sweet spot of love and respect.

And I fucking love you and I respect you. And, you know, you say it didn't make a difference, but it did. And the thing you step away from CrossFit when, you know, it was fucking rolling. And I'm sure you made a lot of money. And to speak up about your values? I did not make a lot of money. One of the, one of the, and I don't know if this was intentional or not, one of the ways that people would get themselves handcuffed to that organization was the pay.

What I would say is they paid more than the market would have bared for the same job. For the same person. For the same person. And if you change your lifestyle to go along. with your new pay, you're proper fucked. You're stretched into it then. It's a golden handcuffs. And again, I don't know if that was intentional or not.

I think the people behind the scenes are smart enough to realize that level of control and what I would describe as false loyalty by doing that because it's not real. You just feel trapped. I look back at what I was paid and at the time, I thought it was

an immense amount of money. It is not in the grand scheme of things. But coming from the military in making that amount of money, the richest dude that's ever walked and now, but oh, I guess I can't say this. I guess I can't say how I really feel. I can't push back on that because you're worried about losing that income. And, uh, yeah, I did not make a lot of money, long-winded answer to, well, I think we talked about it was a fair amount of money. I think I was offered something similar and it would have changed my life forever if I had taken that and banked it. Yeah. Yeah, it would have changed my life fundamentally. I wouldn't,

I wouldn't have struggled as hard. Anyway, maybe I wouldn't have tried this hard either. So, So whatever. Yeah, you never know what I mean? Like, fuck it, life is, you know. Path untravelled. You never know where it would have taken you. The one thing I say is that everything that's in my life I put there, I'm responsible for it, right? Yeah.

Why did you start seeing a therapist? Oh, I've done that shit for years. So I, first one I ever went to. I don't ever heard of the landmark education? No, but I feel like this is a cult. That's a massive cult. It was fucking awesome. The CEO of Lulu Lemon, they make it man.

mandatory for everybody to do it in the first year. So CEO Chip Wilson, brilliant guy. I trained him for a while. Their head office when they were smaller was right beside ours. And he'd done it 17 times, which is fucking below us my mind. Is this like a weekend getaway type thing?

Yeah, there's like, there's all kinds of different ones. The first one is Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You can go home to your house. But it's like you get sleeped up and you get you basically. You're describing an LGAT, large group awareness training program. Exactly. Yeah. Pull that shit up,

Yeah, and neuro-logistic program. Landmark or large group awareness training? Landmark is likely going to be an Elgat. If I need to take a pee, how do we do this right now? Do I get to pull out a bottle? No, just hold it. I won't be able to. You should have prepared yourself before we started.

I did. I peed right before I came here. Just go piss. This isn't live. I'll cut the in and out. Give me a second. Yeah, then we're getting into this colt. Oh, it's going to be good.

Save your crying for your fucking Elgat. You don't need to cry in front of me. I'm here to create trauma. You need to go deal with that shit somewhere else. Oh, dude, it was a, fucking, it was a trippy shit, man. You should go to one of these things just a... How do you think I know about it? Did you go?

Yeah. I led a fucking... It was called the military? No, it was not. It was post-military. I basically almost led a revolt. They hated me. Oh, yeah.

We should go to one. Oh, I can see that for sure. I'm talking straight fucking... Snippy, like, yeah. That'd actually be really funny to go to one. I don't have a tolerance for people being treated, like... shit like that. Yeah, yeah.

If this is anything like the one that I went to, it was, first off, I'm not an expert in therapy. What was the name of the one you do? I'm going to leave that out of it so I don't get sued. Oh, come on, you pussy. Come on. It was not landmark. Are they only calling it 30 years?

It was, the one I went to was based around relationships and people would go there when their relationship with their significant other was struggling. However, I have now seen the same methodology apply. It's almost this, God, it's almost CrossFit-esque in, what do you want to do? This works for that too. What do you need to do? This works for that too. What they don't tell you, you know, the large group awareness training is that you are going to sit there and watch people relive their trauma.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And also become fucking traumatized by it. You are absorbing and listening to somebody recount and there's confronting your mother. confronting your father the lifeboat drills all of and of course you know the lifeboat drill

what was the hardest part for you when did you start to freak out not fucking laughing when did you start to freak out they must have triggered something there was no freaking out I just slowly started adding passive

and then less passive resistance to their bullshit yeah did you get up on the stage and cry or doing that stuff first no no no Michael you must be low

I can just see you just see you him in this thing. You know I'm a whole lot better than I do, but I fuck I would love to have a tape on camera on that one. Well, it would seem, sometimes it would seem like if the exercise wasn't cracking the person enough, they would start needling them. They would egg them a little bit because they're trying to get that emotional response. Well, that's the really bad one. These guys here start off like that. But I don't have tolerance for that shit.

So I would stop that and they didn't fucking like that at all. It's like, listen, motherfuckers, I'll mutiny this place right now. That's mean you did? Did you sit through or you walk out? Did you drag people with? I eventually sat quietly. I was there with my ex-wife. You were there to become a better person

so you could get along with your ex-wife or if it was your fault or what was the premise? Whatever. If I can pick whatever bucket you want to. Again, the program is, there's so many things about those large group trainings that they don't tell you going in. And they rake over all this emotional stuff

from people's past. And they're not fucking counselors. And they're not therapists. and they don't have a landing for you afterwards. And one of the things I hate, one of the things I hate about those fucking programs is that they're basically MLMs. Yeah.

They are, it becomes a part of, hey, you need to bring five people. We're going to set a goal for you, but your fucking goals are always based around bringing more people into the program. And you can fuck off into the sunset with that shit.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. So I did that shit in 2001. It changed my life completely. Like I was working in the small engineering firm. And after doing it, like my boss put me in there with a barrel of a gun. You got to do it. I'm firing you.

It's like, oh, fuck, okay. So I went in there and, like, I did have some epiphanies, and I, I'd done a lot of work, called my dad up a lot. Like, I was a gifted athlete. I fucking hate saying that. I was pretty good at sports at one point. And it was a small fish bowl, English, French. And we went to- Big pond, small fish. We had a lot of trauma.

Like, I remember seeing my mom getting thrown over flights of stairs. Like, we had to go through these, like, Iroquois lines and beating the shit out of us. And I'd have a posse of kids. chasing me down to beat me up all the time. So there was a certain amount of trauma that I had to deal with, and I dealt with it in there. Yeah. And kind of in a small group, not up on stage doing all that. And I learned a shit ton from it, but they don't leave you in a good spot.

No. You say, they drop you off somewhere. They bring all this shit to the surface and say, bon voyage, but also bring five people with you. Go tell all these people. They're geniuses at getting like ordinary, regular people to become salespeople for them. They're geniuses. God. Anyway, I'm sure it works great for some people.

I'm not too well for it. Well, I did it for like three years. I saw really behind the curtain. I was going to go to the teacher training. They're like, it was all about the numbers like you're talking about. That was all it was. And I was like, okay, no, I'm going to take a step back from this. I'll go sell for my own company.

And, well, after I did the first one, I walked out and quit, I went to my boss and said, thank you for giving me that training. I can't work for you. I've been lying to you and myself for a fucking... Have you? considered that's why she sent you in the first place it was a guy no this a different a dude yeah this a dude that guy might have been playing checkers or you might have been playing checkers he might have been playing chess it turns out he did because i did doing a business

arranging with him after that went quite sideways and uh i didn't come out on the top of that so yeah yeah i've done all kinds of that stuff uh there's one that's actually really ethical that's really good the old there's an older lady her name is thelma what the hell is thelma's last anyway she used to work with like dr phil like 50 years ago and she went off and She's actually really doing a lot. She died recently. She was one of my mentors. But she had a thing called Choices.

And she was working with the native communities and really making a huge difference in there. Like the first one I went to, I was 2006 or seven. And it was like I fired everybody and I was starting all over. And I had a client that came in and hugged me and I got the nowhere well. And she was like wearing these goofy jackets around and stuff. And she's like, tell me about it. And then I just went in one day. And that one, it was even five days and sequestered.

but it was like three or four white people and 35 natives, and you want to talk trauma, man. I don't know if you know the legacy of the residential school stuff in Canada, but that shit's real. Yeah, that's, anyway, I took another step and met my wife. And anyway, I'm a firm believer in personal development and growth. And, you know, it's really hard to drag some of that stuff out if you have trauma, you know. And childhood trauma is the hardest and the younger, you feel it.

The younger, you experience it, probably the worst. You know, I had extremely great parents and grew up in a good community, and I didn't think I had any of that stuff, but it turns out I did. You know, and yeah, I dealt with it. So I continue to continue to deal with it as the shit builds up. Yeah. Yeah. And you know way more about that than me and your community,

and I see the stuff you're doing, so. I don't know if I know any more about it. I think some people are more, I won the lottery with my parents. I would not describe my child is traumatic. And I don't know, though, necessarily if that would make the exposure to the stuff that war involves easier or harder to deal with. Because I know some people who had horrendously traumatic upbringings and tolerated it super well. And people who won the lottery with their upbringing and had a really hard time. I've seen that as well.

You know what I mean? I don't know the answer there. And I don't think that it's a linear equation. I think it just really, God, it's so variable. I think it depends on the person. I have noticed in conversations that I've had. I've been out now for 10 years, and I'm very incredibly thankful of the career that I had and incredibly thankful for the time that I now have away from it.

In conversations with guys I used to work with, I'm coming to the conclusion that not everybody, but some people with trauma, generational trauma, actually seek out that job. It's a way for them to not pass the trauma down generational. it's a way for them to use, you know, nobody's responsible for the trauma that happens to them, especially childhood trauma, but I do believe firmly that you are 100% responsible with what you do with it. You can, you know, the alcoholic, abusive family, the grandfather who passes it onto the father, who passes it onto the son, somewhere in that fucking chain that needs to be broken. And the father's not responsible from the trauma that the grandfather put on him,

but the father is responsible for not passing it on and dealing with it. What a better way to lateral that trauma than going to a community where you essentially get to target evil and bullies. The mistake that I think is made is you're reorienting that trauma, but you're still carrying it. You still at some point in time have to do the work to deal with it or it's going to sneak up on you. Yeah. In the native community, they call that a dry drunk, right? Yeah. The alcoholic who doesn't drink anymore?

Yeah. that's the first time I heard that. I have two really good mentors that went through the residential school system and they tell me stories and they were like, yeah, I quit drinking like 20 years ago when I was like a dry drunk. I was a ticking time bomb until I had this training or whatever, right? So, yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I don't know what it's like to be in combat

and to have done all those things, but after it's over, you're still left with who you are and how you were made and formed. So, yeah, I'd imagine you'd have to... It's a great excuse for some to define their life by it and then be defined by it for the rest of their life. And it's a mistake, unfortunately. Right.

It's the out that it was that did it, but not dealing with what's actually there is what's what. I agree. What do we not cover, Patty? Patty the Pissor, which is your new name. Can't even make it through a single episode. I'm terrible. Terrible.

Can't make it through, like, I got it three times a night. I just, that's how it is. I drink a lot of water. Three times a night, you need to go get your prostate checked. I have. They say it's fine. I was all prepared to get the finger and I was getting stoked for it.

No, you're going to get the hose. They're going to go up there, a little video camera, the old chocolate highway, if you know what I'm talking about. I wouldn't get all the tests. Like, I figured, you know, as much as I've drank in my life and all the stuff, I figured I was fucked. And I wouldn't get all the tests for life insurance. And they're like, I went and had three real good stiff martinis. I mean, it's a few years ago I did this. But I made sure I wasn't fucking bullshit in the test, right?

I had like three stiff martinis the night before. And I was like, you know, this is probably not an average day, but it's probably at one of my worst days. Came back flying colors. Like they said they don't need to stick the finger on the bum anymore. They can do it through a blood test. But I think you'd like the host. Well, I was getting ready for it.

I was like, I was kind of disappointed. I was like, all right. I was like, yeah, I'd be so scared of that my whole life. You know what I mean? Start with a baby carrot, work your way up to a cork. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like, I don't know,

Did you have a stag, like a proper stag with a whole bunch of dudes? No. No? I went over a couple friends, and I had no bachelor's – Stag, bachelor's – I had no bachelor's party, my first marriage, and then I got – In Canada, they call it a stag. You guys call it a bachelor's. Yeah, and I got remarried last year and just went and hung out with some friends.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing you'd do now. I had a dual stag. 17 days in Nicaragua with my best friend. It was absolutely insane. Anyway. How the fuck did you get that authorized or approved by your significant other? Well, I mean, that's how we, she lives her life.

I live my life. And, you know, that's not how we don't really ask for approval to live our lives. She understands fully who I am and she knew the deal when we started. And I understand who she fully is and I support it. And that's it. The problem with that is, if anybody out there, if you're ever going to have a stag, have to make sure it's one night, right? We had, like, four guys leaving, four guys leaving, then four guys coming in.

It was like every night it was a stag. And it was like, just, dude, it wore me out worse than anything in my life. But, yeah, childhood fear. I remember seeing a stag when I was about eight years old. The guy came home to our hometown. He'd been making lots of money in an auto plant in Ontario. He came home with a brand new Z-28 to show him off around town. And they threw a stag for him.

And, dude, the way they stripped him naked. His own mother put flour and water on him, and they drug him behind a truck. And it was like, it was. They drug him behind a truck. And this was supposed to be a celebration? Yeah, it was, yeah. Okay. Yeah, this is my hometown, Gaspé, Quebec.

Shout out to everybody from Gaspi. That's kind of how they did it back in the day. It was a little rugged. So I was always terrified of a stag and more terrified of like showing your penis in public. So, yeah. Somehow we addressed all the fears in one spot. Yeah, that's in my hometown. That's kind of how it was.

So we figured we'd do it right and go to, I don't know how we got in this conversation. We should just move on. Fair enough. Yeah. Give me a full download on exactly the business. model and service that you have and where people can find it. It's probably the best way to wrap it up. Yep.

Yeah, let's do that. So what we have is like if I look at, we go back to 2006 when I fired everybody, one of my best buddies, T-Bear, he quit his job in Seattle for Johnson Controls, came up and just lived in my one-bedroom apartment. I made a little, called the dog bed underneath my desk. And we were sitting around just figuring out how we're going to make this thing work. And he was like, I want to be a coach. want to do this but man i need to make a hundred thousand a year i can't do it you know so we just we were like thinking about you know star trek like uh prime directive you know so what's the prime

directive it's got to work for the clients it's got to work for the coach and it's got to work for the owner and we wrote that on a wall and we had this big like you know big board of figuring out this thing's going to work and uh we started off with how it's going to work for the clients with all these you know fitness tests and all this stuff and figure that it didn't matter they could ace the test or be shitty on the test they quit they quit you know like So then it was like, well, I think our number one metric is they don't leave retention. You know, and then the second one was, well, if they're only paying me $40 a person training or $7 a class, I'm going to go broke with this. So the second one was the average client value, right?

And then T-Barr was like, well, I need to make $100,000. So I was like, okay, total coach pay. We've got to make sure you make $100,000 or this thing's not going to work for you. And then it's like, at one point, we were working 45 hours a week. And it was like, okay, dollar per coach hour. That's important. Right. You got to get that up. And then at one point, the coaches are making so much a fucking business is going bankrupt.

Just like, hang on a second here. Right? Bleeding you dry. Yeah, EBDA, profit's got to make a difference. And then at the end of it, you know, you talk to consultants and you go to the banks, what can I sell this for? And if you feel like, you know, it's got to be stable. And if you keep your coaches for five years and your clients aren't churning and you have some stability with your lease,

we can get you five times EBTA. I'll get your loans against that. Right? We got numbers sometimes six, seven. But so, okay, that's our platform. Those are six key performance indicators. And everything we do is going to get measured against that. Right.

And we fuck it every month. It'd be like, you know, when Groupon came out, it's like, okay, we're going to take five at one time. We tried it. Same coach, five at one time, one on one, right? And the average client value obviously was shit. So that lost right away. Yeah.

The coach didn't make any money. It was shit. The business didn't make any money. It was shit. I was like, why are we doing this? And then the clients turned like crazy anyway. So why the fuck are we doing this? You know? So it's a framework. It's a rational framework around making business decisions, right? So we did iteration after iteration after iteration for years until I got hooked up with Zen Planner. And we started looking at meta studies, 1600 gyms for like 18 months. And the numbers, they came back. And there's sure as rain. There's an equation that comes out of that, which is the lower the coach to student ratio, meaning one on one, the, the,

hire the retention. That's how it works. The more you charge, the higher their retention until you get to a certain point where it drops off, right? And like doing a personal training and group class together,

like they'll graduate to a group class and then we'll see their coach once every month or once every six. We've tried this now with like hundreds of gyms, like iteration after iteration after iteration after iteration to just produce the fucking data of how it works. And it all came out with nine basic laws, right?

and those nine laws, they're on our website. And if you want the in-depth one, if it explains everything out, then I sold probably 500 of those at $1,000, for your community, I got 75% off. So anybody is watching this thing, they can go buy it for $249, right? And then if they still don't believe me, because people are like, fuck you and all this stuff,

and basically I'm giving it away for free. There's a mini training on there. It shows how this whole thing works. and then there's for a price of one personal training session from 20 years ago, which is 50 bucks, they can download PT first, which is the hardest thing. I think people like, the thing I hear all the time is I think people have a general fear of selling something. Like put them straight into a group class. It's pretty easy.

You know, you don't have to do the face-to-face sale or anything that stuff. It scares people. It's not that hard. You know what I mean? It's not that hard once you've done it for a bit. Yeah. I encountered that when I started doing public speaking. and people would say, hey, how much do you charge?

It is fucking hard to put a value to your time and to sit there and be confident in your response. Yeah. Until you've done it for a bit. Yeah. And then it's like, hey, this is what a cost. And if you're not interested, cool. Yeah. The whole sales training course, we teach people over the long haul.

Like, I can teach someone to go sell 10 or three personal training sessions for 300 bucks in our market. Maybe it's law supply and demand. If you haven't done very much, maybe it's 150 bucks or whatever. but our first two laws are one-on-one by consult only, by appointment only, a one-on-one consult. So you're sitting at one-on-one with a person, we train you how to do that, right? And the second one is how to do three-day, sorry, three-day assessment and then sell 15 personal training sessions.

That's the first two laws of the nine. If you learn how to do that, you're going to have a real good chance of being a professional. And fuck, you wouldn't believe how many people call me up a sudden is no way I can do that. I give them, I give them a script. And I'm saying, listen, this is just honesty. You're not lying to anybody. You're not cheating anybody. You're straight up, you know, this is what I do.

What is your problem? I think I can solve it. Do you think I can solve it? Yep. We got a deal. Yep. Done. Selling things is tough.

I've watched my wife. She used to do a lot of the consultations at the Jiu-Jitsu gym. And it's a lot of reading people. And it's a lot of knowing when to explain more and when to say less. And that comes with the experience. And there are some people who need a script. And there's, again, some people are better at tall. Trailerating trauma than others, depending on where you come from.

But it is not easy to sell things. It's asking questions. It really, Andy is not as, like I did, my first job, I did eight months of sales training before they let me go on a call with a supervisor. That sounds like hell. It was fucking crazy. I learned a lot. Did you guys do a lot of role playing, though? Oh, tons of them.

I bet you did, you sick fuck. Yeah, it's way harder. The roleplay is fucking harder than showing up. It's like fucking talking to a fake girl and then you have to go to the bar and talk to one. It's easier at the bar, right? But anyway, you wouldn't believe how many people go, they're fucking terrified of it. And I said, well, just ask them these questions and get to the bottom of it. And it's not like a script you're trying to fucking trick anybody.

You're trying to ask them questions of why they're there, what they want, what they need, what they're looking for, you know. And then you're presenting your solution to the problem. And it's really natural. It's normal. It's like you become friends of the person, like probably pretty quick. Or you figure out, I don't want to work with this person. That's cool. Yeah.

You know, we're going to get to a no or yes. And that's it. that's fine, right? You wouldn't believe how many people. For me, I used to sell 10 up front. All the new guys are all like, no, I would sell three and do a proper assessment. Like, they're figuring this stuff out now.

The nine laws are kind of universal, right? Are absolutely universal. And then inside them, they're modifying, and making them better all the time. And if someone comes up with a 10th law, so the sixth one's fucking irrelevant, we've got to change it. I'm open to it.

Yeah. Show me the data, right? It's all just one big data analysis. So for like $47, we'll show you how to do the hardest step. which you get over that hump, right? And it's, it wouldn't believe how many people come up to me and say, fuck it, I just sold 10 for 500 bucks, man. It's, fuck, that was easy.

You know, and then they realize, I really don't want to work with that person, you know, three months later or something, you know? So they get better at it. Like, when I started, dude, I had, like, I remember Greg saying, you're going to have people with club foot and, you know, cleft pallets and stuff.

I did literally have people with club cleft palettes. And, you know, some of them turned out of the fucking coolest people in the world. Yeah. Some of them became my best friends. And then someone who were the sharpest one showing up in the Porsche were fucking dicks. You know, and that sounds stereotypical. Some were great. But you can't tell who's going to be awesome.

All I'm saying is the outward appearance of this person you're sitting in front of, you've got no fucking idea until you get into it. Right. And once you get into it and you start doing this, it's really rewarding. It's a really rewarding business. I mean, you asked me what I'd do next. I think I would, if everything was cool and everybody's in the right place, I think I'd go back just to training, like a few people and running a few classes and, you know, show my son. and like, here's your dad in your community, you know, kind of thing, right? I think it'd be cool.

I enjoyed teaching the classes. I did not enjoy all the other things that are ancillary to that, but have to be done for the business to be successful. Yeah, yeah. Where can people, since you're such a spectacular marketer, where could people actually find this information? So I hired a girl I went to high school with. I used to be her tutor in math, chemistry, and physics,

and she was like a English whiz. She got a full scholarship to any university she wanted to, So I figure she owes me one. So she's been my, she's my director of marketing, Kelly Embry, how you doing? And she came up with this page

and it's, Madlabbusiness.com forward slash Andy Stump. And you... Super original. I think you sent me the link to it. I was like, should it be cleared hot

or should be Andy? Anyway, whatever. I'll put it in the show notes and people can click it or not. Yeah, I mean, basically, go check out the training. It's fucking free.

I held on to my IP for so long that I was just like, see if anybody can, I used to think people would figure it out, that'd be irrelevant. Trust me, if you want to hire us to consult and full education program, I would do that right away. If you think you want to do this and you watch the training, it's my wife and one of her good friends, who's a gym owner with me for nine years, that you sit down with them once a week for a fucking year,

and we show you how to actually do it. And then each coach has their own mentor too. So for the gym owner, it's 11,500 for the year. I know our return of investments less than 10 months. For the coach, it's 18 months and it's business training. We're going to show you how to make money, man. You know what I mean? Like fucking, you can go learn a kettlebell search and all that shit.

Come out doesn't make any difference. We're going to teach you how to gain clients, gain referrals, build a business inside of a gym business. Or, you know what? What I would say is if you're a coach in this thing and you're getting paid by the hour and like the four-nights thing or whatever, like four-nights of the, personal training you can't make it you just there's just no way you know what i mean like you maybe you make 50 grand of the best and if you take a vacation you're not getting paid anything

you know it's fucking rugged you know you should demand better like you need to demand better and you know take a look at the training if you want to even show open open your own gym we can show you but i'll tell you most people say i would not open my own gym if my gym was running this program right like i wouldn't have to be honest yeah i would have just made my 120 grand a years a coach and fucking see ya like you know gone surfing goddy what do you want to close it out with man we bet out for shit well over two hours is that right yeah fuck it's a little time warping here man you got something really cool vibe in this thing yeah it's michael's gayness just just he had a disco ball in order like emanating a rainbow

over here yeah yeah i'd mention maybe a little shout out to rob wolf to say hi you know he just moved to bozman otherwise he would have been in town i know i called him up and said fucking i'm gonna go do and he's punch him podcast. I sold him some bullshit and he's going to bring me on and he's like, fuck I'm leaving to Bozeman. Yeah. I go how far. I got to look up how far boy Boseman was. It's not close. No. They're flash to bang from when I believe he moved there to continue his career with Element. Yeah.

The flash to bang from when he heard he was going to move there to when they pulled the trigger. Wow. Yeah. They were gone right quick. Yeah, he hates moving. So who doesn't. Anyway, I want to thank you. Yeah. I had some friends that had been in the military. He did a lot of tour. and, you know, they've got their struggles, and they just wanted to say you're doing a lot of good for that community and to thank you for that. Yeah. Do what I can.

Yeah. Just try to be honest about my experiences, stuff that's helped and stuff that didn't. Yeah. Cool, man. Yeah, so it's madlabbusiness.com forward slash Andy Stumpf. What if they just put in madlabbusiness.com? Does that still work, too? That'll work, but they want to get the discounts are fucking real.

All right, I'm just saying. Yeah. No, the discounts are real. whole website ecosystem with the ford slash and stuff. I did. I fucking did. And then there's like a code to get 75% off of Mad Lab 101 and all this shit, right? So anyway, I wanted to make it real.

I think it is. All right. Well, right on, man. Thank you for taking the time making the drive down from old Calgary. Yeah, that was a fucking great drive. I forgot how nice it was. I was so many animals, man. Just don't hit them.

Yeah, I was thinking about that after a while. They win every time versus a car. I'd rather be the car than a buck getting hit. But 120 kilometers an hour, though. Not if it comes inside the windshield. That's the moose. I was driving one time in Canada, not paying attention, and I looked out the driver's side window,

and there was a moose matching my pace. Yeah. And I just let off the gas and let it coast, because I really didn't know what the fuck the move is in that situation. It is amazing how many times they do that. I've had that happen a couple of times. Holy shit. Just to look out, and they're right beside you looking in the window?

And I think they were looking at me, looking at them, and I just off the gas, I'm going to stay on my side you stay on your side and please don't run in front of me you hear stories of them charging trucks and all kinds of shit they're in the rock

in the town that I stopped at to get gas there was one that had just been detonated by a semi truck and they had a tow truck that they were like a flatbed tow truck they were throwing the pieces into it I don't think people realize how big meat what's the plural of moose

I don't know if there is I think it's still moose I think it's Mice people don't realize how big Mese are Moosai? I think it was Mooseys. Mooseys. Come on, Moosey's. All right. That's all I got. Patty, that's all I got.

Thanks, buddy. What else you got? All right, bye, later.