The Sevan Podcast - 2024 State Of The Industry Report w/ Chris Cooper

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

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Red 1. We're coming at you. Is the movie event of the holiday season. Santa Claus has been kidnapped? You're gonna help us find him. You can't trust this guy. He's on the list. He's a naughty lister.

Naughty lister? Dwayne Johnson. We got snowmen! Chris Evans. I might just go back to the car. Let's save Christmas. I'm not gonna say that. Say it.

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Good morning. Good morning, guys. This is exciting. Great to see you. Fifth edition of the State of the Industry report is in the house. We don't have a hard copy yet, but we have a couple beautiful, we have the PDFs. They're beautiful. I think hard copies have already made it to the postal service and are

Tracking all over the world going to gem owners. Yep. Thousands of copies have been shipped already So if you're on the list, you should get one pretty soon This is last year's edition Yep There is uh, there's nothing like this in the industry. It's such a huge honor to have you on chris I say that with no fluff with uh as sincere as I can be it's really crazy that We've done this. This is either our second or third year in a row Where when it's been launched you've decided to come on the show and talk about it here first. It's it's it's really an honor

I I I In the shower this morning as I was like prepping my opening monologue, I was thinking, man, you're the, you're the guy, you're the undisputed most knowledgeable accumulation in a single person and a business for knowledge about small gyms worldwide on all seven continents and the, what however, hunt 200 countries are on the planet and You've been extremely generous with all of your data. You always give it up. You have many free books out there for gym owners There's no one who has your longevity or your success and there's not even a second place. So man, thank you Yeah, I don't think people realize how much you've done for people.

I know last year, the success rate was 90% of your clients in your, which is the largest gym consulting service in the world. 90% of your clients had an increase in revenue and profit. That's a, that's a crazy, crazy success rate. Every single person we've had on the show, Every single person we've had on the show who has used your services has given us glowing reports. So thank you. And this year I called you and said, hey, do you want to do an affiliate video contest? I had no idea how well it was going to do. It was massively successful. It was 10 times as successful as the one we did when I worked at HQ. I did steal the idea from Greg because we did do it once at HQ. You immediately, you didn't ask any questions.

You're like, yeah, I'll give 5,000 for first. I was like, what? We were just thinking, you know, maybe 1,000 for first. You 5,000 for first. What was second, Sousa? 3,000. And then 2,000 for third, correct? Yeah, then 1000 1000 for third. Yeah, that's crazy. The the people the people poured poured in submissions. And to be completely

honest, yeah, Susan did six live shows where he watched the vid all the videos live it took six shows two hour shows to do that and Yesterday when Susan got off the Show he said oh shit And I said what he said watching all those videos had unintended consequences on me and it was funny because I just watched one I just did one show and it had unintended consequences on me It really we're gonna show five of the videos two honorable mentions and the winners today funny because I just watched one, I just did one show and it had unintended consequences on me. It really, we're going to show five of the videos, two honorable mentions and the winners today.

Well, you're on the show. They'll, they'll you sit down and watch all these videos and it'll rock your world. You'll be like, wow, I'm really in a, uh, I'm really in a special business. That's all about just changing people's lives. By the way. so then I called Chris and I asked him for the money and he said, yeah, and then I started talking about how we would somehow incorporate two brain. He goes, hey, it doesn't matter. He's like, it doesn't matter. This is what I want to do. It's part of my charter to help businesses.

However, you guys want to integrate two brain. It doesn't matter. I just want to help. I just want to put content out there to drive the gyms. And it's always that easy to Work with you and I really appreciate it. Thanks, man That was actually inspired by something that you said earlier, which was like the right thing to do is the right thing to do for across with affiliates whether we're doing it as

CrossFit HQ or whether we're considered outsiders, you know, so I do, I really do think like this is really important, especially for CrossFit affiliates. And so I'm happy to contribute. All the gyms, I know everyone who listens to the show who knows this, but it's always a good reminder. Every time a gym opens up in a community, it is a great asset to any community it lands in. It's basically like you drive by and you see a CrossFit gym and you know, wow, that place is making people better, more confident, kinder, less of a stress on the entire, you know, social infrastructure of a community.

It's making people nice. But we all know that when you're more capable, you're more likely to help someone with their groceries. You're more likely to be kind to people. We know that you use less resources at the local hospital. We know you're the person who shovels the snow for your neighbor. When you're fit, we know that those people who leave there on a better mood when they went in, they're truly, they'll never get the credit.

They deserve every single one of these little CrossFit gyms. But watching these videos, you start going, wow, it's the, the potency of what they contribute to just the global civilization of human beings on the planet is, is it's unexplainable. It's create, it's the potency of what they contribute to just the global civilization of human beings on the planet is unexplainable. It's wild. We're in a really good business where we can look our kids in the eye and be like, yeah, we're doing the right thing. Yeah, it's really unmatched. And I get to see the other side of that, which is people who have entered the career in fitness, whatever transformation they had to change their life, they've entered it with a strong sense of purpose and nobody expects that they're going to make a lot of money on it.

But unfortunately, that's the reason that people quit the industry is they're not making enough money and they might give another reason like I'm burned out. I just couldn't get help. My spouse didn't support me You know, it's too stressful Whatever, but it always comes down to money and that's why every year you get 10,000 new fitness pros and 9000 leaving And that's what we're about stopping because the individual impact of every single one of these gyms is important And I think we're gonna see that probably in the videos today

I'm really thrilled guys, by the way that you're surprising me with this part of the show. It's awesome. Dude, the submissions were wild. That's awesome. And by the way, it really, this is crazy to say it's really not fair to pick a winner. It wasn't. It was so hard. We have to pick one. There's 20 of you that tied for first. There's 20 of you that tied for second. There's 20 of you that tied for first there's 20 of you that tied for second There's 20 of you that tied for third the honorable mentions that were two honorable mentions We're gonna play today could have easily won first place

It is at some point it just became a like hey We just have to pick a winner and I want to thank Brett Brett out of yeah salty hive CrossFit. Yep Chris pointing up even more cash than the prize money and we paid him to make six original videos or ten, I can't remember, and he did an amazing job and he went through the videos and helped us pick the winner too. It was extremely tedious. We bid off more than we, than we, watching 200 videos or 300 videos and trying to categorize

them which one is the best was a, was an impossible task. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. which one is the best was a, uh, impossible task. Uh, Susan pretty much took that on himself. Chris, before we get started, I want to ask you a question about what's happened here in the United States, uh, with American politics, but we still don't know what's going to happen, but it appears that we have, uh, elected someone who really doesn't belong to either party. Uh, he has much said so on the Joe Rogan podcast that the only reason why he ran as a Republican was because the system is rigged so you can only come up through two of those ladders

and that he wants to be, he wanted to come in through the Transformation Party. He is surrounded himself by people who are sharing the means Means brother and sister, RFK, these people and we know JFK was his uncle was an incredible proponent of fitness and health. He said it was like the single most important issue in the country and it never got taken care of it's just slidden down since he was in office. We know that these people are now talking about stuff that we have all had the honor to hear Greg talk about for 15 years. And Greg never thought that we would save everyone or even most people. He just thought, hey, the best we can do is get these 15,000 gyms up in on seven continents and we can

make these little lifeboats and people who want to take the personal responsibility and accountability and surround themselves by people who want to take the personal responsibility and accountability and surround themselves by people who want to eat well and move well, can have the best life that they can possibly live, right? And his, one of the cornerstones of his program, or no, sorry, not cornerstone, one of the foundation of his program was don't eat sugar, move and don't eat sugar, right? Right. So now we have this man who has taken office in the United States and is going to deregulate. Theoretically, he says he's going to deregulate so many things,

which could really change the landscape in the whole health industry, right? Dramatically. He's saying all these rules around peptides or supplements or herbs and spices and all these places that people have been trying to regulate, he's gonna open all of those up and he's gonna put a premium on, I think the tagline is, make America healthy again. Wow. And he brought this guy on stage with him and this guy has been, this RFK guy has been a kind of a cornerstone of his campaign as we move forward. Have you thought about the implications it's going to have on businesses here in the United

States? If nothing else, inspire more people to think it's safe to maybe open gyms or have you thought about the implications this is going to have and then the ripple effect worldwide? Well, in Canada, we actually have fewer regulations, but more bureaucracy. So it kind of nets out the same. But like, you know, I can I can prescribe a nutrition program to somebody in Canada without those restrictions of licensure that you have in the states. So I do have a little bit more freedom there. My hope would be twofold. Number one, it does result in more gyms because in this information age, you know, we don't need more books, we don't need AI to tell us what to do. We need a coach to make us do it. That's one thing. And the second thing is that I really hope that we determine in our schools that we need to teach science

so that people know they have their own BS filter and they know how to self advocate and they have physical literacy so that they know what will actually make them happy and healthy and so that they're not just chasing the next ozempic. Right, right. I'm just looking at your reaction and I know that you keep your head down a lot and you just work and you don't really get caught

up in the rumors and the politics. Was this something you hadn't thought about? Yeah, so I definitely keep my opinion to myself most of the time because I acknowledge that my opinion is my opinion I am very politically active behind the scenes in Canada, of course not in the States But I yeah I had no idea that that had even happened yet The the coverage that we get of American election is very similar to the coverage that we get of the Super Bowl Okay, meaning just lots of drama and clips and highlights and literally

Okay, meaning just lots of drama and clips and highlights and literally. Okay. Well, that one didn't make it nor it is, you know, we went through a regardless of where you feel, you know, we went through a global shutdown for four years and we didn't hear one of our leaders. We didn't hear Trump. We didn't hear Biden. We didn't hear a sing. I don't know if you've true dose anything.

We didn't hear one sing. I don't know if you've true do say anything. We didn't hear one leader say not once Hey, you should buy an assault bike or an echo bike and you should stop eating sugar and it would have been We never heard that once now. Hey guys, you're gonna be locked up now would be a great time to Work on your health now would be a great time to go for a walk. Nothing we heard heard and I do to my core sincerely, I think that would have been the most effective method of dosing the world population with something positive and net positive. Instead, we had an average human being gain 29 pounds in the United States. I mean, that's a lot of weight. That's two 15 pound dumbbells. Especially depending on where they started out.

That's true. Yeah, 130 to 160. Right, good, great point. Yeah, that's huge. And so in that respect, I have a lot of hope. I think the messaging from our leadership could be profound. This was the, you know, we had two people running for office, Vivek and RFK this year,

who is part of their, we saw them doing pull-ups. We saw Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the guys who was running to be president, actually do Murph this year. Amazing. Yeah. And so as much as, it just seems like we've never been able to crest into the mainstream movement and diet and it seems like wow this is the closest we've been in my lifetime. Yeah I think it's really important for us to become better storytellers than ever before because there's more knowledge out there, there's more books, there's more you can buy programming for free like you know Garmin sends me a program for free every single day if I want to use it. But the reality is that nobody's going to do any of that stuff like

more salute more knowledge is not the solution. What really is the solution is coaches people who care enough to dedicate their lives to helping you get rid of that 29 pounds get off the couch, get off the sugar, who will show up at your house like skip chased it back in the old CrossFit Journal article and empty out your cupboards into garbage bags and take it outside and then take you to the grocery store. Like that's what we need is humans doing those things. And I think, you know, CrossFit has probably inspired more people to become fitness coaches,

certainly more people to become gym owners than almost any other movement. That's what's really important. And it's our responsibility as current affiliates, as former affiliates and as future affiliates to keep telling a better story that draws people to fitness starting from wherever they are and then continues fitness for their entire lifetime. It's a heavy responsibility, but nobody else is gonna do it. Governments on both sides of the border just missed their best

opportunity that they'll have in the next 30 years to do that. It's up to us. Yeah. Very well said. It is, it is up to us. And I guess that ties, uh, that's the end of the line there. By that, I mean, that's also what Greg said. Government's never going to help us.

Now we're in a really tough business, the personal accountability, personal responsibility business. You're not selling someone a bag of M&Ms or some Ozempic and saying, hey, here's the cure. Eat these M&Ms and you'll be better. Here's your Ozempic, you'll be better. We're selling something to people, hey, I have something for you, but you're going to have to do everything. Push up some broccoli. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, tell you how you can do all the work. It's not an easy business. Definitely. Um, but you know, you really have to admire the dedication of the people who want to do it, knowing that, and, you know, knowing that most people are not passionate exercisers like they are, and they're really willing to change people's lives. And while we do say to people, nobody is coming to save you, the reality is that there are thousands of people coming to save you and most of them on GMs.

The fifth edition of the State of the Industry Report is finally done. It comes out every year. report is finally done. It comes out every year. It's beautiful. The PDF is beautiful, but if you can actually get your hands on the actual hard copy, you'll be very happy. It's obviously a tremendous amount of work. Do you have a summation that you've thought of after looking at this year's largest accumulation of data, statistics, questions. What are your thoughts on the state of the? Yeah, so broadly gyms are becoming more sustainable, which is great. And so number one, like their prices are going up, especially if you look at like CrossFit gyms, they had to come up. They were all a lot of gyms are in a death cycle and the price was kind of like, you

know, the plug in the sink for that. Also a lot of them are actually increasing their client headcount. It's not a lot, but they're not losing more clients than they're gaining anymore. Even last year, most gyms were just kind of like holding steady. Now the average gym is gaining about three, three and a half clients a month. And yeah, which is really great, right? They're really having an impact. And if they stay focused on that and don't get overly optimistic, you know, that's great,

especially when you consider that a lot of people believe that we're in a recession right now, like they're curbing their spending habits, maybe they're not going into debt. It's good that the fitness industry is like actually rising and that's lifting all boats a little bit. It's a mistake to believe like I am good at business because I'm successful in 2024 until you've been through another 2021, you can't say that,

but there's lots of reasons to be optimistic, which is awesome. The other big change that really thrilled me this year is that gyms are keeping clients around longer. So if you want to measure your impact that you're truly having, it's not how many people come in the door and do a trial workout or whatever. It's how many people stay. That's how you measure your impact. And so at our gym, we said, we're going to measure our impact in this community in four ways. Like,

do people stay for at least two years? Page 32. Thank you. Yeah, that's the retention metric for sure. Yeah. You know, do people reach the goal that they said they had when they came in? That's another one. A third one is like when they leave our gym, are they quitting fitness or are they just quitting catalyst? Because if they go on to do triathlons and stuff, that's totally fine with me, mission accomplished. And the fourth thing is like, have they had a meaningful life-changing experience? Have they kicked, you know, metformin or whatever,

another medication? Have they met the person who's gonna become their spouse? Like, so if any one of these four things are true, to me, you know, I've achieved my mission with that individual client. And what we see in the state of the industry this year is that gyms are keeping clients longer. The first year that we did this,

they were keeping clients for about eight months. That's not long enough to change their lives. Then the number went up to about 11 months, 13. And now what we finally see is that a lot of gyms are able to keep clients for 17 months, which is absolutely fantastic. Like we're getting closer. It's not enough.

Um, but like the top gyms in the world are keeping people for just over two years. If you've got somebody working out three times a week, you know, maybe doing a couple of no sugar challenges in your gym and they're still there in two years, you've changed their life. Uh, eight months to 11 months, 13 months to 17 months and you're seeing gyms with retention as high as two years. Yeah. Yeah.

So the things that you really like about the state of the industry is increased number of clients from last year. Yeah. Increased memberships, meaning people are paying a little bit more money for their memberships, which is good for the gym owners with inflation and retention. Yeah. Those are my big three. And you know, if those are the three key things that we measure in a gym's health and they're all on the rise, I'm happy. Now, ultimately, what really makes a difference is how much the gym owner takes home from the gym because, you know, there's lots of gyms out there.

Um, 300, 400 members, the gym owner is not making a cent. That gym is not sustainable. You know, the gym owner is going to have to go get a job selling real estate. When it all comes down to it was like the owner has to make money. But if they've got more members, the members are paying more and the members are staying around a long time, they've got the building blocks to do that. And I'm guessing the more involved the gym owner, some of these things breed more success. So if you have clients that are there longer, you're going to get a better community at

your gym. If the gym owner can make more money, he can be there longer and he can make the gym nicer and be more attentive to it. So a lot of these things are just as they get better, they breed more success on top of themselves. Yeah, you know, years ago in this conversation with Greg, I said, you know, are you worried about these gyms that are quitting? And he said, no, you know, like what should happen is

when one gym fails, the clients from that gym go to a better, more successful gym. And the coaches go to a better, more successful gym. And the coaches go to the better, more successful gym because now they can get a better job and the owner of the better, more successful gym becomes bigger and better and more successful and can open up more gyms. And what we've seen from in our program, you know, is like the top hundred gyms in two brain are the ones who are most likely to open up a second location, third location, or a bigger location and actually be successful.

And if we really empower those people, they are the ones that are at kind of the spearhead of the industry and they're the ones that are going to pull the rest of us along with them. Got it. I like that. Let's talk about something sad a little bit. I could see all of these metrics moving north, increase the number of clients, increase the cost of membership and increase in retention. If on the other hand, on the

negative side, we had more gym closures, right? So if we're losing gyms, theoretically, that would make it so other gyms would grow. Are we at a all time low of crossfit gyms, but let's say boutique gyms, I don't know what the phrase you use in general. No, it appears, I looked at the CrossFit affiliate map yesterday and it looks like there's 10,163 affiliates. And that's the lowest it's been in a very long time, but that doesn't mean those gyms have closed.

What that means is that maybe they've deaffiliated, or maybe they're something else, they've merged, maybe they've been bought up by another gym. And this is just like what happens with any service when you raise the price, you're going to get a smaller number of clients who are paying more, and hopefully that makes up the difference in revenue.

And I don't think we've seen that completely shake out yet. There's a lot of gyms that haven't reached that part of their building cycle where they have to pay like 4X what they were paying for affiliate fees last year. And a lot of, sorry, go ahead. So I think that number will go down, but if you do the math and you say, okay, well, you know, CrossFit has lost another 2000 gyms or whatever. But the average gym is paying now, you know, 1.5 to 2 times more. In my case, it would have been 4 times more.

They're actually ahead on revenue, right? If you're a private equity firm, mission accomplished. Right. I don't know. I don't remember what year this was, but there was a year where there were some years where Starbucks was growing crazy. I lived in a town with 26,000 people and we had five Starbucks gyms, five in Venetia, California. It was crazy. I lived in a town with 26,000 people and we had five Starbucks gyms, five in Venetia, California. It was crazy. And then a couple years later, they lost two of

the Starbucks. Two of the Starbucks went away and it went back down to three, or maybe they lost three and it went to two. And Starbucks seems to be doing fine these days. Is that part of me thinks that like yeah, dude, it shot up to 15,000 gyms a retraction down to 10,000 seems totally normal, right? Like this launch and then sort of a resettling. This can't be unique. It was obviously not unique to CrossFit. No, it's not. I mean, the same thing happened with F45 to a larger extent where the franchisor actually had to go back in and buy a bunch of their own stores just to protect their stock price. But the problem is that this isn't a sudden thing. I mean, even before the sale, CrossFit had lost 10,000 affiliates over time. And you could wonder like,

where did they go? And the only reason that I bring that up is when you're looking at these stories, these videos of these gyms, we have to remember there were 10,000 more just like that, and they're not in play anymore. So, you know, I'm not sure that like the changes that are happening are enough to prevent the backsliding. A lot of the growth is happening in Europe, for example, where you still have like, you know, a lot of early adopters to CrossFit. These gyms are opening up and a year later, they've got 250, 300 members. You know, that doesn't mean they're necessarily good at business. It just means like they're right, doing the right thing at the right time. And I hope that they can sustain it.

Um, and I really, really, really hope that we don't sink any further. And I hope that CrossFit goes up to 30,000 affiliates, cause I don't think 10,000 is anywhere near like the, the carrying capacity for CrossFit. I'd love to see 30,000. Um, over the, I know there's a lot of numbers in, in the, in the book, um, over the years since you've been tracking this what has the ratio been of of I don't know what to call them high intensity gyms that are CrossFit versus not CrossFit well for that we don't publish that number but we do track with

a bunch of like insurance brokers for example and we say like you know when this when this gym bunch of like insurance brokers, for example, and we say like, you know, when this, when this gym calls you, are they going out of business, or are they changing their name? And quite often, like, they're just changing their name. So it is probably, you know, if you see a decrease of 1000 gyms on the affiliate map, you're probably looking at like 5050 deaffiliation and closing or 6040 maybe even deaffiliation. Interesting.

I will say too, a lot of these GMs are just flipping. You had Chris Cristini on the show, and he said something to me that was a real epiphany a few months ago that a lot of the OG affiliates have been through two or three owners. So while you have a 14-year affiliate out there, So the, while you have a 14 year affiliate out there, the owner might actually only be a two year gym owner. And so, you know, unfortunately, like, hopefully that person is learning the lessons that forced the previous owners to sell. Are you okay sharing with us your clientele what percentage are affiliated? Yeah, sure.

Yeah. So right now, we actually have more CrossFit affiliates in TwoBrain. So out of 1000 gyms worldwide, there's about 540 CrossFit affiliates. This time last year, that number would have been around 49. I don't think that people are going back and reaffiliating, sorry, 490, you know, so it's always like, wait a second. There's not a lot going back and reaffiliating, but there certainly are

some people who have said, you know what, I'm going to do affiliate for now. I can always come back and you know, maybe they're waiting for something. And, uh, you know, whatever that's what they're doing. Do you, um, your, uh, people who are using your service, is that all has that increased from last year? Yeah, so I mean, around this time last year, or maybe February 2024, we announced that we're going to cap our service at 1000 gyms. And immediately the the blowback from my staff was massive, like, no, we have to help gyms or somebody shows up at our door knocking, we have to take them. And so I immediately recanted

that and said, Okay, well, then we have to upgrade our systems to help more gyms. And so that's kind of what we did. So now we're, I don't know, maybe 70 gyms higher than we were at this point last year. Real. Yeah, yeah, thank you. The real growth though is in the top performing gym. So if you look at like our top tier, these are the people who are consistently making it $100,000 a year. And now they're investing for the future. A lot of them are tracking toward millionaire status or they're buying their business, they're building or they're like opening more locations. That number has gone up dramatically from about 60 to about 100 gyms. And so the best gyms are growing faster than ever, which I see as a

huge benefit because we can copy what they do. Oh, more data on the successful gyms. Yeah. I mean, you know, like what Greg said was I don't want to be the best deadlifter in the world, but I want to know who is so that I can copy their program. Right. So, and, you know, ditto for weightlifting and gymnastics and stuff. And that's really why we want to look at these people who are summiting Everest because, you know, we're all mountain climbers and I want to copy what they're doing. And the more gyms that are becoming successful faster, the more we can learn from them and just turn around and teach it to everybody else.

And I think that's also why two brain so important because when you have an aggregate that's able to essentially show the roadmaps that these gyms kind of, I view them as like carving the path through the jungle, right? Like they're getting there, they're hacking everything out. The best gyms really clear out, excavate the road so it's even clearer and easier for you to go through. But when we have something like two brain, you're able to take the aggregate of all that and then distill it down. And I brought these metrics up here because so if you're a gym owner, you're

considering being a gym owner, this is your bread and butter here. These metrics that Chris and everybody at TwoBrain Business laid out, if you're not keeping your thumb on the pulse of these metrics here, then you really have no control over what's happening in your business. Especially if you're just like a ballparker type person. So to dig into these numbers will give you a clear roadmap for your personal gym of, hey, what knobs do I need to start to dial to make this sustainable? The other question I got for you, Chris, here is in terms of, and Sevan, I don't know if you had a plan with this, forgive me if I'm joking around.

No, no, no, no, please. Go, go. I'm writing down my questions so I won't forget them. Okay, awesome. In terms of the demographics as far as like the average age goer of the gym, have you seen anything interesting there? Because one of the things that I know with talking with a lot of gym owners and then something I'm feeling myself is it seems like there's less of these young twenty-somethings that are showing up to the gyms and being dedicated, which has had some

sort of strain on being able to elevate them to potentially part-time coaches or getting new people into the field. It's a good one. Seeing anything around there? Yeah. What I see is like massive opportunity. So if I'm looking at like US data, gym client demographics, which is on page 16 of the guide, what I see is like 32% of the people in your gym

are aged 31 to 40. So, you know, my big mistake when I started my gym was thinking that all my clients were gonna be just like me. You know, I thought I thought this was 2008 when I started my CrossFit gym, I'd already owned a personal training studio for a few years and been a trainer for years before that, you know, I still lived on the assumption that everybody was going to be just like me. They wanted to come in, do a crazy hard workout, throw up, fall in love, compete at the CrossFit sectional events in Toronto. Like that's what I thought everybody was going to be. What I gradually learned is like not only are most clients, nothing like that, but I'm my own worst client. Like the people who were the most like me were probably the worst clients to have because I was broke, you know, and I wanted to stay in the gym for two hours a day and like, I did not want to clean up my chalk and all that stuff. So the point that

you raised on that is like super valid. If I'm 31 to 40 years old, I can afford to pay more for a gym membership. I cannot afford to volunteer my time to be a volunteer coach. And if you look at the shift this year, like, you know, 32% are age 31 to 40, 20% are 40 to 50. They are not going to be doing volunteer coaching. 13% are over age 50. Like only 20% of your clients really can you draw on for coaching and the other missing 13% are like too young. So now what that does is it reduces your pool dramatically. Especially if you don't have the money to pay a coach a lot and you're trying to work out a trade or pay them like under 20 bucks an hour, man, that pool is small.

Yeah. Yeah. And because that's one thing that I was, I just found interesting. I, I wonder if, um, back in more of the early adopter days, like the 20, 2011 to 2013, let's say that timeframe, like I wonder how much more of a percentage would have skewed just a little, a little younger. Cause when I, you know, when I first started, we opened the affiliate 2013, 2014, it seemed like everybody that was there for a while was like, Hey, should I go get my own one? I really love this.

Like I want to dig in and coach. And like now it's like, I keep continuing to raise the hourly price just to find some people to come into fill in some part times. And it's like, you know, just for as a joke, I've thrown out like, Hey, a hundred dollars per class. And people are like, Oh man, I just don't really have the time, but I would love to do it. And you're just like, shit, you know, it's just, uh, something that I found interesting and I wonder how much that correlates or ties into, uh, the lack of

media we've seen particularly around the sport for that younger group. Um, I wonder if there's any correlation there because before, when you had kind of the road to the games and all these other media pieces that were coming out, that told the story of actually making it into the CrossFit games, just not the actual events, but the stories behind the athletes, it really drew a lot of that younger crowd in, and then once they got into the gym and started doing it for themselves, like you said, they started to fall in love with, Hey, I'm actually really helping people here.

I'm making an impact. And they make that leap from, you know, I'm going to regionals, baby, to, hey, maybe I want to just help my mom air squad a little bit better. At least that was kind of the leap that I had made over time. It's true. And you know, as I think a lot of affiliate owners have matured, they've been drawn more to the mature client. I mean, we certainly we don't run a kids program anymore, but we have like a program for over 50 specifically, classes just for them. And the upside is that when this class comes in

at 10 a.m. on Wednesdays, man, it feels like CrossFit 2009. Like they wanna buy all the catalyst shirts and they wanna do the lingo, and they're doing the selfies and all that stuff. It's super, duper fun. Um, and I love coaching them, but none of these people are going to be coaches at my gym. You know, um, we got enormously lucky with an immigrant from Brazil who wanted to become a permanent resident of Canada. And,. And we were so lucky to help him meet his goal

of becoming a Canadian citizen and coaching full-time for us. But if you look at like, what is the average gym paying per class on page 41? 32.50. I mean, that's up dramatically from last year. Last year it was around 22, 23 bucks. People were paying a coach per class. But that might not be enough, especially if you're a demographic excuse toward over 30

people because it's like, I actually make a lot more than that. Yeah, that's it. That's a big jump. $22 in 2020 to 2022, 26, 46 for 2030. And then this year we got 3250. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Is there any correlation to other rises? I mean inflation was massive this year in the United States. I mean, so at some point people, I don't mean to be Debbie Downer, but at some point you had to raise fees. If the price of beef jerky went up 300% at the gas station in the last four years.

So I don't wanna say that people don't see more value because they do see more value if they're paying more, but also the whole needle, everything got pushed forward. Wouldn't you say, Susa? Yeah, for sure. Especially the expense column. I wanna say this really quick. If you filled out the survey this year

for Two Brain Business that made up this state of the fifth edition of the state of the industry report, you have a link in your inbox right now where you can get a copy of this. And I believe we also have a link that we will put in the show notes so anyone can click it I believe Mike Warketon the great Mike Warketon gave that to us so we'll put that in the show notes if you can get a hard copy you really do want to get it I think it's a

I think it's so fun to hold in your hands I think it this is probably a good time to say guys if you don't mind that like the data in this report comes from like hard data from whatify and kilo who really help us a lot with this. They have exceptionally good clean data. We do run a survey every year. We get about 1000 responses and we use those for the more qualitative like how are you feeling about things questions. But one thing that we don't want is we don't want people estimating because if you say to the average gym owner, like, how long do people stay at your gym? I would immediately think of my longest serving clients. Oh, 13 years. Well, that doesn't actually help me make decisions. We want to know the real number, you know? So unfortunately, even for me me reading this report is sometimes a little bit uncomfortable because I'm like wow my gym is way behind in that metric

ARM needs to come up, but that's what the truth should do is prompt you to fix things And you last year you had it divided into qualitative and quantitative data. Is it like that? Also, is it organized like that this year? We've called it out But like I thought it was really important this year, number one, to use really, really good data. And so we actually shrunk our sample size on purpose from 13,000 to about 8,800, because some of the stuff, the responses that we were getting, it was hard to tell

if they actually understood. But so that's the number one thing. But the number two thing is like, what we wanna do is make this something that Gmlers can use. And so the first version of this was like this 100 page encyclopedia of numbers, which was cool. I mean, it looks great on the back of your toilet. But this year, the ethos was less but better.

And so what we've done now is we've got graphics that show you, are you in the red zone for client head count? Are you in the middle yellow or are you green? And so what a gym owner can do is find themselves on any of these charts and say, okay, well, I'm a green here, I'm a green here, I'm a yellow here, I'm a red here, that red is my first priority, how do I fix that? So, you know, client headcount is the one that Matt has up there. You know, if you've got zero to 95 clients and you're a cross phygium, big group, how do you increase the number of clients? Like that's your top priority. And if you are in the yellow,

but you're in the red for ARM or, you know, retention, that's your top priority. It's not always get more clients, get more clients, get more clients. So I think like we've made the guide more helpful this year by giving graphics. Workington believes that we are evolving toward hieroglyphics again. And so like the simpler we can make things to understand. He's a brilliant guy. I mean, that says something about the IQ of our planet. Do you think of the meme, right?

The meme, it's just a hieroglyphic that expresses multiple things in one photo, one picture. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's, you know, that's good. It takes, it's so hard to make things that clear. I think it's a mark of genius. Workington is great at that. Greg Glassman was great at that. And I appreciate their help. Cause I'm not.

Look at that, Mike. You get thrown in the same bucket as Greg. That's not bad. Okay. Last year on page 58, there was a question. It said crossfit approval. And I'll show you the page really quick before I read to it. It's on page 58. And- Yeah, it had gone up. It said, yeah, it had gone up. It said 89.7% of gym owners in the CrossFit category

who are currently affiliated feel confident about the future of the brand. Yeah. And then 1% of the respondents said they do not feel confident about the future of the brand. Yeah. And then 1% of the respondents said they do not feel confident about the future of the brand, but this wasn't even an option and yet people wrote this in, which is crazy. 9% of the people said they were unsure or apathetic about the current status, but hopeful for the return of Glassman. Yeah. Where do you think that was there a question like this in this year's? No. No. What do you now that there's been a launch? I don't think it's extremely clear what a broken science is or what Metfix is,

but it is the I mean, I mean, definitely The CrossFit community has it has one year up like, hey, what's going on over there? What's Greg doing over there? And he does come on the show every Wednesday and he's very low key about his responses. He's he's in typical Greg form. He's not trying to sell anyone anything. He's not pushing anything. He's just chugging along and making his little, you know, diamond over there. The same way he did with CrossFit, right? No marketing,

just put out the best product and see what happens. Are you hearing any rumblings anecdotally about what's going on? And about the community's response? Yeah, so we applied for a Medfix affiliation and got denied. I'm also not in the States. That's OK. No hard feelings. Don't worry, we'll take care of that for you, Chris. I'm deeply embarrassed. I was really hoping you wouldn't say that.

I'm deeply embarrassed that we could get denied. I will call someone I know right when the show starts. That's okay. It's already been handled. It's already been handled. We're good. Are you sure you can read, Chris? You must have read it. Yeah, I know. Maybe. But what was interesting in the rejection letter was 3,000 people applied. And I'm going to bet that a large number of those were current or former affiliates. My attraction is that, you know, I said earlier that Greg's genius is making the complex simple, right?

Like taking the universe and reducing it to E equals MC squared. Like that is a mark of genius. And from what I've read about MedFix is it's a further simplification. So you're gaining focus on fixing metabolic health. And while metabolic health was also always like a cornerstone of what CrossFit did, there's a difference between being one cornerstone and being the sole focus of the program. And so if this takes CrossFit and you know focuses it squarely

on fixing the metabolic problems that we face as a society, then I am all in on that. Yeah, and that's exactly the intention is to take the intellectual powerhouse that of cohort of people that Greg and Emily are able to collect, take all that information, continue to distill it down and then turn it into a boots on the ground situation

and so it could be displayed in practicality inside of gyms. Yeah, now that said, I do think, you know, CrossFit HQ is making some smart moves right now with, um, you know, their partnerships in healthcare and, uh, you know, hopefully the new initiative to sell health insurance to gyms, uh, turns out to be as good as, you know, people are hoping it will be. Is that, is that really, I haven't heard that that's really on the table? Yeah.

So, you know, probably, um, half of the mentors on our team are longstanding CrossFit affiliates, you know, and we do work with well over 500 gyms worldwide at any given time. And so I, I do get to hear all of the chatter. And so like, this is one thing that has people, um, really has their hopes up. And I really hope that CrossFit HQ can fulfill to the level of expectation that they've generated. Have you heard about this, Sousa, as an affiliate?

No more than I've heard about stuff before that just is kind of like aloof. Just my recollection of this one, when I worked at CrossFit was, and maybe the details of this aren't exactly right, but there was talk of getting membership for gyms, sorry, health insurance for gyms. And the way the health insurance would work is, the way it was sold to Greg is that it would save you so much money that it would pay for your affiliation. That basically health insurance is so expensive that if you got this cohort of healthy people

together and you got them their own insurance as a group, their premiums would be so low or their monthly payments would be so low because of such few resources we use relative to the general population, that it would lower prices for insurance, health insurance, and then it would basically be a wash on your affiliation. You could actually make money. And then eventually it would go from owners to trainers. But there was a problem, I think. I do remember that it would take three years

to get to that point. And so it would start out higher and the Jimmins would have to make that leap of faith, faith to build that, um, that nest egg that would give that a process stability. I, I that's my rough understanding of it from when I worked there. And you know, with Greg at the helm, I think that could have happened, right? Because Greg was a sticky influence. He was a, an amazing storyteller and people were willing to believe.

It's a much harder proposition if you're a private equity firm in any industry to get people to believe that if we pay into this thing for three years, that there's going to be a benefit to us in the end, especially when maybe you're struggling to pay the landlord's rent increase that starts in January. Right. Chris, going back to the state of the industry, are there any correlates that stood out to you that are outside the control of gym owners that you're like, hey, if you're going to set yourself up for success, like gyms that open at 2000 square feet seem to succeed 80% more, or gyms that open in epicenters with population densities

at a higher level or a lesser level, or if you open a gym like 10 miles away, or it could be even contrary to conventional thought. If you open a gym within a mile of another gym, you're more likely to be successful. Was there anything that stood out to you that you were like, ooh, that's an interesting metric. It's not in anyone's real control, but that's a valuable one.

Well, I think a lot of it is having a plan. So certainly you can be successful in downtown Manhattan, you can be successful in a town with 300 people, you know, you can you can do either of those things, but you have to be aware of the market and actually have a plan for it. So I think, you know, you can you can do either of those things, but you have to be aware of the market and actually have a plan for it. So I think, you know, that's, that's one thing. And then there were actually some other things too, in the report that are largely beyond like the affiliates control, but they're

not beyond the affiliates control to deal with them. So for example, right now, a lot of people are facing rent increases. And as a landlord with some commercial buildings, I understand, like a lot of us couldn't increase the rent for the last few years, and we sustained losses because we were paying mortgages and stuff and we were locked down, you know, in Canada for like two years. And now we like we have to recover that right. And so we're raising rates and a lot of gym owners now are saying, oh, my landlord's raising my rent by a thousand bucks. Okay. You really can't control that. Maybe you can negotiate a little bit. What you can control is your ability to handle that. So if you are profitable, that thousand dollar a month raise, that stinks, but you can handle

it. If you're not profitable or you're barely profitable, that thousand dollars is gonna put you out of business. And so it's really incumbent on all of us to run these successful businesses that are resilient, even anti-fragile to these things that we can't control. And I think that's where TwoBrain has probably been the most successful is

when these things come up, CrossFit's raising affiliation fees. Well, that stinks, but we got this. The landlord is raising the rent. Oh, that stinks, but we got this. You know, that's where I'm most proud is when our community handles things that way. Unfortunately, like if you don't have a plan to handle that, if you're, if you're mostly volunteering, you know, if you've got 10 shareholders, you're pretty fragile and any one of those things could kill you. And that's, that's a shame.

And do you think that that is the biggest, I mean, I've heard this come from, uh, uh, HQ and I do happen to, um, agree with them is the fact that they were saying a lot of the, uh, you know, forcing of that hand of like, okay, well, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. We are going to close down now, or, you know, we are going to try to sell the gym is happening through like rent increases and different things like that. Have you been hearing that as well too, as like the number one reason for, uh, gyms closing the doors?

Yeah, I mean, um, so rent is part of it, but it's just like a symptom of the larger problem, which is that gyms are not profitable. And so it could be, it's going to be the first problem that comes along. And if the first problem that comes along is, Hey, you know, your rent's going up. That's what kills you. You know, it's, it's like you're overweight, you're diabetic, you're very, very sick, you have no mobility. The first germ that you catch could be the one that kills you. And you know, your gym has to be like fit from a business perspective, or you're just

as susceptible as some of your sickest clients are. And so you're saying that having access to a real estate agent might not fix that problem Uh, I don't know. I I think I'm getting set up for a story here No, no, that was it that was it just a joke at the end I mean, this is an example that like people they point to wealthy people and they say all the rich keep getting richer But it's that's not it. It's. People aren't greedy. They just have a plan. So for example, I own the building that my gym is in. Well, that was great for me and my family as kind of like a retirement move. But it's also an amazing hedge because I've owned that building now for a decade and any other landlord would have raised the rent three times. Right? I don't have to.

landlord would have raised the rent three times. Right? I don't have to. Yeah. And on top of that too, you have the long term of the asset. So push comes to shove. Now lease that building out or you could start to leverage that for other things in the future. Or you can adjust your rent to however it's favorable for your taxes. Exactly. Yeah. And so, right. Because you're the landlord and you're the business owner. So you adjust the rent so you can maximize it on both ends. Yeah. You know, um, right. Because you're the landlord and you're the business owner. So you adjust the rent so you can maximize it on both ends. Yeah. You know, so for example, we just discovered a tax I didn't know existed. And it was that if you're paying more than a million dollars in payroll a year, there's this bonus fun little tax, just a fun one of an extra 2% on every dollar.

Just because you're, you're punished. You're punished. I just want to say it. So you're punished for running a large business. You don't get a two percent credit for paying over a million dollars worth in taxes or no over a million in payroll. You get punished for that. Yeah and this is not a tax on my profitability. It's a tax on my payroll. So I'm actually punished for hiring more people. Right. So you're incentivized to fire people. It was like that at CrossFit, I remember. Yeah. There was one point where there were three people who on the payroll we didn't have a job for.

And Greg was like, keep them, keep them, keep them. And then the accounts are like, hey, those three people were going to get sued because you can't do this, this, and this with those three people. And he's like, that only hurts. Greg's like, that only hurts those people. They're like, it's just the way the law, it's set up in California, the way the taxes are set up yeah yeah great sorry go ahead knowledge knowledge of taxes is probably the the best fastest path to more profitability is like you have to have a strategy for this and uh you know back to the the building like that was part of my tax strategy for many many years was that excess profits just got clumped into the, um, the asset faster.

And, you know, tax law in Canada is even more convoluted than tax law in the States. But again, nobody's coming to save you. You got to figure this stuff out. Yeah. So, so people think about that. That's just, there's, there's a thousand things like that, but that's when the media says, when you hear a politician says he's going to lower corporate taxes, and people say, Hey, you're only helping the rich. There's an

example right there, where you're only hurting the middle class and the poor. Because if Chris's payroll is $1 million, $1,600,000, he's not gonna, all he's going to do is cut that $600. And if he stays over that million dollar mark, he's going to have to pay an extra 2%. The wisdom is to fire an employee. Not to pay that. But it's the truth. It's not to pay that.

If you're just barely over that million dollars, there's no fucking point in helping the people around you when it's going to hurt everyone else on your team, because you're gonna have to pay an extra $20,000 a year in taxes. It's it's, it's, it's insane. It's insane. I don't know how this stuff happens where we incentivize people for their or de incentivize people, we punish people for their success. It's wild.

In what we saw in Canada, especially Ontario in the last five years is that the minimum wage has gone up from $14.60 to close to $18 now. What that's meant is that there's a lot of people working in gyms for 18 bucks a class. Well, those people are not going to be happy working for minimum wage anymore. It pushes everything up. The gym owner has all these extra costs going on They've got inflation going on. They've got these extra taxes going on

if if you're still running the same rates that you were five years ago, like you're losing ground and Unfortunately, that could be the thing that kills you. I Signed up for it. I don't know what it is and someone from two brain called me immediately. They're on it. Awesome. Hey, um, we've had probably I don't know I'm making this up 20 to 40 affiliate owners who all use to brain and every single one of them. There's a question I asked somewhere and there is do you wish you would have signed up before you open the gym and all of them say yes, they wish they would have signed up before they even opened the gym. They wish they would have gotten their location and two brain at the same time, hand in hand. So yeah, me too. Can I just please comment on that, on that caller that mess, whatever poster there. So one of the interesting things that you'll see in the industry. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. CK Kevin. One of the things you'll see is like the average response time. There it is right there. Matt knew where I was going. So this was a shocking

stat to me. So 14.4% of gyms admit to never even returning a phone call from somebody that's interested. So let's just like put this in perspective here, right? This person has said, I've had it, I'm fed up, I need to change my life, what are my options? Okay, I'm gonna call this Jim. And that for most people is as scary as, you know, being like a 13 year old boy, calling a girl to your first high school dance. Like it's terrifying.

Oh, they didn't answer the phone? I'm gonna leave a message. An hour passes, no call back. Huh? I guess I won't wait around anymore. I'll go to the grocery store Maybe they'll call before I get back haven't called by the next morning. I haven't called by the next day and they never call you What message is that person getting? They're getting the message F off. We don't want you you don't fit here. You don't belong They're getting the message F off. We don't want you you don't fit here. You don't belong It's it's not just like oh, well, they must be really busy It's no they've turned their back on me and for a lot of those people They've had the experience of somebody turning their back on them earlier in their life and you've just done it to them, too

and so when somebody contacts you it is Important that you extend your hand right away and say, welcome, we've got you. Imagine you're in line at Starbucks and Matt's got a cool shirt on, it says Phoenix. He told me it was from this cool gym, but my watch is also called Phoenix, spelled with an F. And I tap you on the shoulder, I'm like, oh man, such a cool t-shirt. And instead of turning to talk to me, you turn the other way and you obviously don't want to have a conversation. How do I feel?

And that's exactly how people feel when they call your gym and you don't respond. Chris, it's totally that, that, that works in all the businesses, right? So going, but you're at a coffee shop and you order. And if every two minutes they, the barista looks up at you and goes, I see you. That's all they have to say yeah or they say what would or they say what was your drink and you tell them be like okay I see it's in the line I'm so sorry we're really busy you'll let them if you wait 20 minutes for coffee you'd be furious but if they if they look at you and acknowledge you three times in that 20 minutes you're cool as shit you're

just over there fooling around on your phone. You know, they're busy, you get a little empathy and compassion for them. It's crazy how little it takes to settle someone down. So little. Yeah. I mean, when we travel with our tinker group, there's 100 of the top gym owners in the world in this group, and we all go for coffee together in the morning. And so we'll walk up to some local cafe, you know, five minutes to seven, we're knocking on the door and the staff just goes, Oh, shit. Right. But like, the first thing that we do, you know, the good cafes, they'll come out and be like, Hey, guys, there's a lot of you, we're going to do whatever we can. And we're like, Yeah, cool. You know, and, you know, from there, it's all good.

But there is another number there that I'd really like to talk about too. And that's like the average wage. Okay. So I just got a text from somebody who's really kind of an idol to me. Let's call him Bill H. And he's like, you know, the industry average for, is that too obvious? No, no, I don't even know what you're talking about. I was laughing at some meme someone sent me.

I wasn't even listening to you. So the the average industry income is around 30,000 a year for a coach, right? And like, that's abysmally low, that's way too low. It's actually coming up. And so when we started doing this, you know, the average income for a coach at a CrossFit gym, if you looked on like Glassdoor or whatever, was around 23,000 a year. So in the last five years, that's come up to 30.

Fantastic news for the coaches, we're not there yet. That needs to come up even higher because this is a profession. That might be a challenge for the owners. If you're having trouble retaining coaches, well, you probably need to raise your rates. It's not a marketing problem because you need to pay these coaches. I don't know about you, Matt, but like the reason I founded my gym was I wasn't

making enough working for somebody else. And I said, I've got a wife and a brand new baby in a house. I've got to go start my gym. Like gym owners are all millionaires. I have no choice. And, um, you know, I really think like it's important that you have to be able to pay your staff a good amount of money and, and that means you have to be more profitable. Yeah.

And there's, there's two things I would like to piggyback on this. Sorry for the scrolling you guys, if you see this, you're good, you're good. It's a lot of pages. It's, but I just wanted to, um, just kind of highlight, uh, Chris's point there. So if we go back to the lead time response, right? So if you just take, so let's just look here in a big group, right? We have 15%, almost 16% got no call back at all. That was just what you were talking about, Chris.

Another 6% of that got in the same week. So if you were to take those two right away, you could say that you could probably increase your revenue by 22% if you just picked up the phone and called faster. This NFL season, get in on all the hard hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props, or combine your bets in a same game parlay for a shot at an even bigger payout. Plus with super simple live betting, lightning fast bet settlement, and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever

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Because if you knew, and then this is why length of engagement is important, because if I knew that if I picked up the phone, had a great conversation with that person, got them in, started helping them out, started helping them achieve their goals and making their life better around them, I could now say, hey, this in the average for us is like three years and three months. And so it's like, if I could get that person in and we could start to deliver some results for them and get them integrated under our community,

chances are I'm gonna have them for the next three years, right? And so I just wanted to point that out because there's nothing more under your control that's even easier than just picking up the phone and making a call back, especially if you could stay in the under an hour or one to three hours. I mean, I heard this phrase, I forget where it is, but it's money loves speed and wealth loves time. And the quicker I can get those calls and get my people in for the no sweat

and get them into a trial class or get them into a startup or whatever it is that I do, the faster I'm going to start turning, turning those potential clients into dollars for me, which is going to be really important into being able to pay my staff a livable wage. Like we made that effort. I made that effort here about a year ago to bring in a GM and to give him something that he could actually live off of pay rent in California, you know, have some groceries, hell, maybe even go out to dinner on a weekend. If we get crazy, I don't know. But in order, in order to do that, you have to have, um, some sort of game plan.

And even if you invest that, like we use Jim lead machine with a kilo is even that small investment, like if you look at the percentage that I just said, and you had some sort of software that was able to have some sort of automation to deliver right away for your people that are coming in, that helps a ton. You know that they got handled, you know that they're going down your client journey system, and you're able to field those a lot easier. And if you paid, you know, 300, 400 bucks a month for one of those, but you captured part of that 22% that is just going out the door because you're simply not contacting them, that's a month for one of those, but you captured part of that 22% that is just

going out the door because you're simply not contacting them. That's a huge turnaround. And so having that game plan is really important. But I think us as an industry too, we just have to continue to move towards being professional so we could professionalize the trainer and pay them livable wages. Professional and what's crazy is, is when you think of professional, you think of less personalization, but even more personalization. By that I mean more like a customer to owner contact.

Those stats are actually, I'm going to suggest that you just showed, are way worse than they show. And here's the reason. If I call a gym and I want to sign up, if you don't call me back within 15 minutes, I may have gotten cold feet and got scared. I may have found somewhere else. I may have already be like at the donut shop with my friends. I may have already taken off to the bar. I may be.

So I'm guessing that each second you wait that you don't call them, it actually gets worse and worse and worse. call them, it actually gets worse and worse and worse. And, uh, these numbers are shocking. It almost makes you think it to some point, um, they want to fail if you're not calling people back or you don't have a method and, um, and answering your phone. Yeah. Yeah. And automating it is a huge, we, we made this joke that like, it was like, Hey, text them enough to where they get, they like tell you to stop. Like, let's see what happens on the other end of that. Right? Yeah. You have to, you have to care enough about people to get over your own BS. You know, it's the stuff that's in your head that's stopping that call.

But a few years ago I was trying to find, um, the jujitsu instructor for Seve's kids. It took me eight days and there was a specific person I was looking for, right? Like if I was just looking for any jujitsu instructor, you know, in Scott's Valley or Santa Cruz or whatever, I, I would have called somebody else. Impossible. It's impossible to find them. Yeah.

It's impossible to find them. Yeah. They're, they're strictly, they're strictly stuck in a word of mouth. Wow. Jim owners can't do that anymore. And if you want to know like what that phone call is actually worth to you, you can scroll to the LTV section of that map. So, you know, 1998, I was trying to break into the fitness industry.

I had maybe five clients and I was working at a treadmill store and I was talking to my boss and the phone rang and I didn't sprint to answer it. I didn't get it in time. And she said, Chris, that's a $10,000 phone call. You always answer the phone no matter what. Well, we can tell you what that phone call is worth because we know what the lifetime value of a client actually is.

And it's pretty significant. So if we go to the LTV section here, Matt. Yeah. Yeah, keep going down. What does lifetime, what's that? Lifetime value. Yeah. Yeah. I keep going down a lifetime. What's what's the lifetime value? Okay. Yeah. So your value to them is like five years of happy life, you know, added to their lifespan, their value to you is like 13 to 1700 bucks. So if you look at this page, not to mention other people, the free marketing they give and other people they might bring in that doesn't even take into account for oh, yeah

Yeah, great. I mean, that's a great point. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's the next step So, you know, what if I is great at figuring this out and what they did was they took like here's the average number of people In a gym. Here's how much they actually spend including like bottles of water memberships t-shirts all that stuff And what you'll see there is the US the average client is worth about $1,380 now this is is all in USD. Like we convert everything, but that tells you like the average client in the U S is actually more valuable than any other place on earth. They stick around longer and they pay a little bit more. And so if you're a U S based gym and you're not calling this person, you're saying that $1,300 doesn't matter to me, let alone that life doesn't matter enough to me to call back. So, I mean, if you're busy, you're out with your kids, it's 5pm on

a Friday. Okay. Maybe you're not going to call them right away. I get it. It's 8pm. You're unwinding. Send them a text. Can I call you in the morning? Like pretend it's somebody that you already know and care about and just treat them like a human. Chris, I'm going to shift here really quick. Speaking of friends that you might have who are also in the business of health and fitness. When you hear, when you talk to these people and you hear there's a shift in sales of the way they're selling things, not the way they are, but what they're selling, do you do, does that affect you? Because they, you know, there was a time and you know, you're closer to Bill than I am,

but there was a time when every Tom, Dick and Harry was buying a barbell and a set of rings. And I'm sure that the perspective that Rogue has on the industry is quite unique and very valuable, right? Because if they're all of a sudden selling lat pulldown machines, they know there's been a shift. Do you do you talk to him about that? So that gyms can maybe accommodate with different kinds of trends with equipment? Yeah, so I could never speak for Bill. Bill is a genius. But I did get to spend a couple of days at Rogue

a couple of months ago. Bill was kind enough to host our top-level gyms and our mentor team for a few days. And I spent a couple of hours sitting and talking to him. And I learned a ton. I mean, first, the flight to visit Bill in Columbus was insightful because I used to walk through the Detroit airport and I'd run into maybe three to five people wearing a CrossFit shirt,

right? And if there was an opportunity, I'd say hi. This time I ran into three people wearing a rogue shirt. That was very telling. I see rogue shirts all over popular media, you know, football game. Now you see that stuff. It's literally a rogue shirt on underneath here. So that was interesting. But also, you know, we're, we're sitting there and I'm looking at his machines and like, okay, there's a lot of lat pull downs here. And to me, it just makes sense because, you know, at my gym, we have a lot pull down. I think that the best scale for somebody who wants to get a pull up is okay, like a prone row in the rings. But before that, the most obvious scale is a lot pulled down. So we use that type of equipment.

The rogue stuff is absolutely gorgeous. And it's no surprise that he's selling more stuff to in-home users now than ever before, because it's over engineered. It's not like the old life fitness thing where you had the three inch pulley. I didn't even think of that. I was,'s I never. So you're saying that's another component to the trend you're saying it's like sales to gyms versus individuals. Also, I mean, he does both. I mean, he's right, right. He does amazing things. And it's inspiring just going to the factory. If you're anywhere near Columbus, like you've got to go But that's another trend he has access to say because he's seen the percentage over the years of sales to gyms versus sales to individuals

Oh that I didn't even think of that distinction. That's that thing They might be the biggest fitness manufacturer in the world right now. I'm not sure but it wouldn't surprise me I mean just walking through his warehouse But what's really profound is that, where in the past a life fitness or a Cybex would have been selling like a recumbent bike in the house, all these people are buying power cages, bumper plates, pull-up bars, that's insane.

And like, no matter what happens to CrossFit in the future, CrossFit can hold its head up high and say, that is the effect that we've had on the industry. Right. The gyms are amazing. The people who come to the games are incredible. All that stuff. But the average person in their average house is getting a rig from Rogue. Like that didn't happen without CrossFit. Right. That's, that's amazing. And yeah, that stuff is just so gorgeous. I want to own all of it. Yeah, it's great. I get so many. I see this pop up on my Instagram so much now, that it's it's clear and I used to never see this stuff. Ever, ever, ever, ever. It was all just,

you know, ropes and rings and tape and chalk. But now look at this thing. Are we gonna see, do you think we're gonna see a trend to see more of this stuff in CrossFit gyms? Yeah, I hope so. Because this is familiar equipment, it's something that people are used to seeing in commercial gyms.

And I think we've gone from the days when you've got these early adopters and people wanna jump in and throw up and rip their hands in their first workout, right? Now you kind of have to ease them into it. And so if you start with, here's what you know how to use. The reason that most commercial gyms have a lot pull downs and just lots of machines and no free weights is because a newcomer walking into the gym can stand there for two minutes and know exactly what to do and not feel dumb. And this has always been a challenge, you know, and this is why we meet with people

one on one before they start with our gym is so we could explain where's all the equipment and like, what's that box for? What is that rope? The first woman that ever walked into my gym, her name is Tiffany. She the first thing she sees is this power cage and I've got chains draped over the end of the barbells. I could say her last name. I still remember this vividly. She goes, what the fuck is that?

Turns out it walks out. I never saw her again. But if you've got rogue equipment with lap hold downs on it, people are going to say, okay, I kind of get it. And if they see other people doing things that they think they can do they'll say maybe this is for me You know, so I love it. I think it's so important. Yeah, and I just think that um, you know when they when rogue when Bill Kaye brings something like this to market like the attention to detail there is so great I mean look at the the ability to raise up and down

is so great. I mean, look at the, um, the ability to raise up and down. Uh, it shows they have a little notch cut out so you could see which number it's on. So you can make it easier to like match them up and like those type of things like that. And I guarantee you I've, I've never, um, used one of those rogue pulley systems before, but I bet you that a thing is smooth and works really well, uh, relative to the life core, um, traditional ones that you would see inside of a Globo Gym. So I think it's great too because I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing those racks and stuff in more and more of that type of setting, which would be great for Rogue.

But I wonder how much of that, if you look at the sales versus individual garage versus gyms and stuff, you might, it's kind of interesting to compare because as a gym, you couldn't necessarily, like I couldn't buy one of those because with the class size that I have ranging from anywhere from eight to 25, it's like, you know, how many of those would I need and what would the cost? I think those are expensive. I think those are like 10 grand. Yeah, dude. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I still think that if you if you're if you're a gym and everything else, you'll

probably still be getting more economically available equipment that you could use across multiple people at one time. So it's I'm very curious as to why they've seen a lot more of these pulley cells and which type of people they're selling them to. I think we're in a to. I'm curious. I think word has spread. I mean, these guys are rogues in hospitals, they're in universities, they're on cruise ships,

they're everywhere that the average person goes. And this can only help CrossFit gyms too, right? Like, oh, I was on this cruise ship and I did this thing and it said rogue on it, now here I am. And there's that rogue thing again. I think that's good that's good for Jim's like, yeah, a lot. There's always been press about how much rogue benefited from CrossFit and Bill, I think is going to be the first to say that. But the reality is that CrossFit has benefited even more for rogue and continues to benefit from everything that rogue does, even just from having this guy in the ecosystem.

And yeah, that's it. Yeah, and it's, I mean, think about it before Rogue, right? Like I still was in that transition phase where like half of my pull-up bars were the galvanized plumbing piping. Yes, sir. And then like the other one was that first freestanding Rogue rig, right? And it was the first time that all that stuff

was available in one, uh, one place and without having that underlying support for the ecosystem of affiliates, there's no way that growth would have been, um, possible because you just want to have access for equipment to serve all your members. Right? Like it just wasn't there before. Um, and so, yeah, they've made just a incredible, incredible, uh, contribution to the space.

Could you ride one of the bikes when you were there, Chris? No, there were two up in Bill and Katie's offices, but I should have tried driving down the stairs or something. But I'll say I know like there's a lot of people who listen to this show who are kind of CrossFit OG. If you go to a rogue invitational event, and they just had theirs in Scotland, Aberdeen last weekend. Did you go?

No, it's my son's birthday. We sent a team. They had an amazing time. But it feels like... You did go. I mean, you didn't go. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, man. We were so thrilled to do anything with Rogue. But it feels like CrossFit 2014, you know, at a Rogue event. And I loved it. And when I went last year in Austin, I just felt like, okay, the movement is alive and well, it will carry on, you know, no matter what private equity is

doing, they had just announced the rate increase and stuff. And no matter, you know, what, who the owner of CrossFit is, who holds the CrossFit baseball card, like the method will survive, the ethos will survive, the community is going to be alive and strong. And I just felt like a rededicated self with purpose to serving that community and helping, you know, from where we are. And even if CrossFit HQ wants to push too bright into the outside, that's fine. It doesn't matter. You know, is that happening? Well, that's been happening for

10 years. I'm just used to it. That's fine. No, no, it's your it's your homeostasis. But we're better there, right? Because like, if you're if you work for HQ, you can't say, Hey, the Emperor is not wearing any clothes. We sit in this like very privileged position where I get to be friends with people like you. And I can say that. And we've seen that we've seen people's messaging change, whether they're on the inside or the outside of the company, as soon as they fall onto the inside, their message changes in a way's seems to lack a lot of sincerity and Yeah, I think I think you're definitely better off on the outside Just tell in the line if you're on the inside there was something I was gonna ask you guys. This was totally off-topic What is that thing on these machines? That's that roll? What is that roller? I keep seeing on their machines this thing What is this thing you gotta gotta share your screen. I can't see it.

What is that black thing that looks like it's... What is that? Do you see that? Mm-hmm. I'm not sure if I want one. Yeah. I know. I know, right? I need that whole attire set up in my apartment. Add to cart.

Hey, I will actually go I'm I think I don't think that thing will fit in my garage because if it did I'm afraid I'd buy one if I is that if I were to guess I think it's probably adjustable it's probably for hamstring curls oh yeah in the hip thrusts because you could lay on your you could lay your back on that with the barbell on your lap and then you lift up and you could lay your back on that with the barbell on your lap and then you Lift up and so that protects your back as you Drive the barbell up. So hamstring curls you would lay down on your stomach and put your ankles underneath there and then come up

Yeah on that bench. That's there depending on how low that drops. Yeah, and This is a squat rack to God. This thing is nice. So yeah, what's really interesting here Is that rogue is driving innovation? Within the community like two years ago if we've been talking about lat pulldowns It would have been like sacrilege, you know here heresy, right? Because I don't think that there is anybody at CrossFit, but also at any of these franchises who's doing that Who's saying a a really good point. Try this, you know, Greg would have, uh, Greg would have come out hard against this thing. Now, no one's going to stop that. And I'm not saying he's right or wrong,

but now no one's going to stop that. You're right. The messaging, the messaging is now coming strong from rogue is what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, you know, that, that bar, if it's what you tuck your ankles under and you, you know, it, it replaces a GHD. So, I mean, I think that that bar if it's what you tuck your ankles under and you know, it replaces a GHD So, I mean I think it's it's valuable right but we have to be open to new science When I started CrossFit there was a lot of that experimentation going on right like the virtual snow shoveling and the ball throw in the games and like there was parkour and swimming and you know eventually like as we as we gain focus. And, you know, eventually, like,

as we as we gain focus, we lose scope. And that's how science works. But at some point, you have to say like, wait, this is a valuable addition. Zone two training might actually help some people, you know, putting a bar across the the rig might help people substitute who don't have room for a GHD in their garage, you know, and, and, um, it's lucky that Bill is the kind of guy that he is because, you know, he can, he can introduce innovation like this that doesn't harm the original movement. Yeah. And if you were to think about it too, like with going back to the lat pull down, which we were like poking at that, that would have now existed earlier. If you were to take, um, any trainer that's been around for a length of time and you said,

Hey, you have strict pull ups in today's workout. Uh, we have five of these lat pull downs. Would you rather have people scale in a band on their pull up or go use the lat pull down? All of us would agree. The lat pull down would be better for them to strengthen their back and to achieve a strict pull up. Yeah, exactly. Oh, and also too, looking at that one more time, Savon, I think you maybe actually face forward, slide your legs underneath it. And if you do a heavy lat pull down, that almost would probably work as like a little seatbelt

to keep you attached. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's the thing with when they build stuff like that, they make it so functional that each little, there's just like, there's just no waste. Like everything that's there is there intentionally and, uh, in with, in with purpose and, um, and with that being said, I think like what you were saying earlier,

Chris, like if you're going to open a gym, you have to be just as intentional as a rogue is with their engineering. And if you look at, um, this metric here, I'm going to swap that out real quick. So on, and we have like the average attended class at six, you know, 6.3, uh, people or whatever. So such as it's called six P six people per class. Like if you're, if you're listening to this and you are, um, hoping to open a gym one day or considering to make, to make that move relatively soon, or you're looking at buying a gym. This is where you need to start. Because if you look at your number of people that are coming in, there's a couple of metrics that go unnoticed. And we talked about it in the school

platform, which is like, you could take down your expenses to how much it costs for you to run that particular class. And then you could take the average members that attend that class and you could do the math on the different say is this class profitable? Do I need to have all these classes? Or should I start to shed a few to save on labor and other things like that? Right? The other thing is, is what looking at the size is you could start to say, how much equipment do I need? What size building should I start out with? Because it's really easy to have these grand visions of everything. And one example was like, we had the first facility we had was way too large from when I had started. And I was so gung ho that I was like, my gym is going to open out 530 in the morning, it's not going to close till 730pm. And it turns out that between one and three, nobody works out. That's right. Between 10 and between

10 and like noon, nobody really works out. And it just ended up screwing me over as I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs, not even able to leave to go get lunch. Right? So to have some sort of game plan and to have something as valuable as what we have here, you could really chart a very clear vision of opening a gym or starting a gym there. The more survey the median big group gym costs to open is 50k Averages 92,000 That's pulled up by like the global gyms, which costs 300, right? I open my gym for 16 thousand dollars and I wasted two-thirds of that on stuff that we just never used You can you can start a gym

today on a credit card with a barbell, with maybe one kettlebell and a box that you build yourself. Eventually, yeah, you're going to want to buy some stuff from Rogue and open up and stuff. But early on, Greg admonished people that you expand when people are doing burpees on the sidewalk, you don't start with something that's going to drive you into a serious debt hole right in the beginning. And if you look at like the average gym size here, you'll see their their square footage is not massive. But they're enormously successful. Because they know that they're going to have six or seven people in a class, they're going to charge appropriately. They're going to staff appropriately. They're not going to waste money, you know, running a class for two people

where they're actually like losing money and they're going to have a plan. Hey, I do want to say this. This is completely old school, but just from walking around town and my wife doesn't spend a lot of time walking around town, but just from walking around town and my wife doesn't spend a lot of time walking around town But just from driving the kids around My wife always has at least one to three clients for the last five years that she teaches CrossFit to in our garage Now she doesn't charge any of them, but these are these are she does nothing but walk around She does nothing but you know what I mean get in and out of the car

She's at the side of the pool wrapping the towel around the kid and some mom will come up and there's it's here every week I hear the garage door open and here come the one to three moms uh and that's just and that's starting a gym that's with zero effort that's just my wife is not outspoken she's not uh doesn't consider herself a trainer you know, but that that method of starting that small is possible. You can go to the park and work out yourself and someone will come up to you and be like, what are you doing? And yeah, I mean, you know, you're not you're not you're not going to be cranking

in 100,000 but it's there the spark is always there. If you're a practitioner of CrossFit, people are going to come up to and be like, yo, what's going on? And especially if you look approachable, like your wife is very approachable. Very approachable. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to bet that once somebody says I want you to train me, like they stay with her for a decade. Right. All the people who stay with her. Yeah. And even when they move out of town

five years later, when they're back visiting, they come train with her. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, it's just a small clientele and she doesn't make money from it, but I'm just saying the spark is still there. The OG spark. Absolutely. Yeah. The OG spark is definitely there. And if you approach things like an OG and say,

like I'm going to bootstrap, you know, one of the first articles in CrossFit Journal was like, how to make your own stuff, you know, and even, even Bill started off making rings because he's just like, I could do that better, you know, And even Bill started off making rings because he's just like, I could do that better. And now he's got one of the biggest fitness manufacturer in the world.

I mean, that's the key is like, people think like, I'm gonna jump into this, I'm gonna skip five steps. I'm gonna open up a 10,000 square foot gym. This guy's promising me 30 leads a month. This person's telling me I need to have 300, 400 members. Like the reason that we published this guide is to shine some light on the actual truth promising me 30 leads a month. This person's telling me I need to have 300, 400 members. Like the reason that we published this guide is to shine some light on the actual truth

that you can open up with 1200 square feet, a box you made yourself. You can pour pebbles into old basketballs and make your own. Like that will still work. You can open up a gym that changed people's lives and you can put it on a credit card. You don't need the 90,000, right? You can do with your dog running around upstairs. That's fine. Like it will still work and get yourself stable and then build up from there and grow a little bit at a time. Don't try and skip steps because that's what kills gyms. They get into this massive hole where they've got this massive payment. They're willing to sell their souls to get one client. They'll do anything to make a dollar and they wind up hating the industry and quitting.

Yeah. And it's funny too, because if you talk to a lot of gym owners that have been for a long, long time and you say, Hey, if this all went to dust and you've had to restart back over, like what would you do differently? And at least for myself, the way that I'd answer is I was like, okay, if I didn't want to build something really grand or I didn't have, you know, some, you know, huge, huge vision here, but I just really wanted to have a great business that served my community and did it really well. Like I would do exactly what he said. I'd probably go to like a 1200, 2000 square foot facility. I would do semi-private group training. I would do a full nutrition, like wraparound

service. I would hire, charge a really high premium. And I'd have like 50 clients that I'd be making $150,000 a year. And you would might be done with working by like noon because you would serve them all in the morning or different things like that. And so you could make yourself a really great lifestyle business doing just exactly that. But not unless you have some sort of game plan ahead of time. The hard hitting questions from Jake Chapman. How old is Chris Cooper? I can't decide if he's an old 30 year old or a young 47 year old.

I'm 48. So thanks. He's 27. I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you. He lived a hard life in Canada. He's 27. Okay. We're gonna play a couple videos here. We'll start with the first honorable mention. This one did not win. It definitely could have won. By the way, thank you for all the submissions. This is the affiliate video contest brought to you by 2brain. Here we go. The winner here will get 5,000. This person gets zero except just some love. Here we go. Wow. Oh my goodness. I'm playing these, correct? Okay. Sure. Yeah. All right. All right.

I'm Jen. I am Lucy's mom. Our world was kind of flipped upside down in 2023 because we were in a motor vehicle accident, which left my daughter a paraplegic. My name is Blue See and my age is 11 and I have a T4 so like right here. One thing was really clear that she wanted to be an athlete again. First day of school she was just hit with failure after failure and realizing that the people around her didn't view her as a competitor. They didn't quite understand. That was pretty frustrating stuff. When I first came in here, I was a little bit nervous because I had never been really in a gym before.

But when I came into this gym, it was different because it was like everyone's welcome. If you're in a chair, if you're not in a chair, no matter what. CrossFit Watchtower quickly became our home. It's really important because it helps with my independence and not just with like strength, like I can pick something else that's heavier, but just I don't know, I just feel a lot more confident and just a lot more happy and stuff. It's amazing the community that supports her. And I wouldn't even just say supports her but supports our whole family. Here she is a competitor. She figures it out. And that's really because of

the confidence and the independence and the strength work that she's done here at Watchtower. All of the videos from Watchtower. That didn't win. All of the videos from watchtower that didn't win Chris Chris there is so many of them that were like that that like just trying to narrow down was just over like it was overwhelming and When I was watching a lot of these especially the very first watch party that I did when it was live like I Don't know why but something really it like came over me and I had this

just like strong convention that I was like, fuck it, I'm dying on this hill. Like I was getting a lot of I was getting a lot of kickback. Like I used to kind of have this in with with CrossFit, some of the people inside there, then they recently kind of like pushed me out. And then for a little bit, I was I was I, um, I was doing a lot of the stuff with the, with Metfix and that kind of went, went silent for a little bit. And it was funny cause on both sides, people were like, Oh, like he's, he's bought in, like he's bought and paid for by Memphis. Other people were like, well, what is he doing?

Is he, is he kind of on CrossFit side? And finally I was like, dude, I am here to serve the affiliates, the people that are inside those gyms, changing those people's lives Most of those gyms you will never hear of most of those people you might never hear but it's happening all the time And anyhow for whatever reason it just like it stuck with me and even that was like a that was you know A couple weeks ago and I still feel very strongly about contributing and giving everything I can to continue to fight for the cause here Quick note. No one has served the CrossFit ecosystem and the politics and better than Shannon and Kevin like the We are so lucky to have them

in the community that they Just great people. Anyway, I just wanted to say that. Yeah. All right. Next honor up. So this one won a popular vote by our members of the seven podcast community. And actually got the most views from the members as well here. So this is this video and. I'm Christie Manato. I am a just recently coined 45 year old. For over the past eight years I've kind of been struggling to find myself again. I was just kind of hitting that low of like not

finding that happiness within myself that I've been looking for for a long time. I just broke and I was just like you know what it's time to focus on me. I've been coming here now very consistently, watching my diet finally and really starting to find myself again, find my groove again. And honestly, this gym has provided me such an outlet of positivity, it's provided me an outlet of finding myself laughing again and just like having fun with athletics. It's been such a long time. I really feel that that has helped me progress within this CrossFit gym. I have found friends for life. I've never felt so good about myself, my body, my body image. So a lot more than just strength has come out of this. It's, you know, the growth of my mind

and understanding that this is my body. God gave me a strong body. It's about damn time I tap into that and let the world see that I'm proud of it. I'm not gonna hide behind big baggy clothes because my shoulders might be bigger than yours. It's just part of the game. Super passionate guy. That's Joe Nels's gym, right?

Yep. Yeah, Jessica made those. Yeah. When she said it's about damn time. I just got like a shiver. Yes. You're gonna open another gym here in a second, Chris. Hold on. You're gonna open another gym here in a second Chris hold on I know you do Okay Just answer this Jake. We didn't add anything to these videos. These were all done edited made everything

by the gyms and the creators inside of them, but all the positive comments come from you guys like I like Heidi and just hating on Bryson here Anything Bryce had Bryson touches goes to shit the poor guy is not on this show It has nothing to do with any of this and he's just catching strays out there one of the regulars on the show Just gets beat down on it's better not to be Bryson. Well, thank you Heidi This very there's feels very inclusive in this group very sweet of you guys. Thank you Okay, so we got one more honorable mention and then we did in third honorable mention Okay

Yeah, cuz we had the two when I sent you to kind of pick through and then when I was going back through last night I mean, I just really wanted to Go through I know I know it was impossible for me to pick. I mean Chris the stories it Yeah, yeah, I'm just really, um, really thankful for everybody who did it. I'm really, uh, happy that you guys all did it. I hope, I hope, I hope that this inspired you to pick up a camera to tell these stories. Um, and we'll still continue to play them on the seven podcasts here.

We'll, we'll slowly release them on the channel over time. We'll play the shit ones. Even that yeah Everybody's gonna get a lot of air time with these over the course of this year. Okay last honorable mention. Here we go I'm having Bryson on tonight. You should yeah D team cheese So seven doctors walked into the room and at that point I knew something was going on. I was like, what's up guys? We looked at the video of your results and found out that what you have is what's called myocardial bridge.

This is an issue where the blood flow does not go throughout your body. And the only really true cure is open heart surgery. I was also told there that it's after the surgery, or even if I don't have the surgery, I'll probably never exercise again. that it's after the surgery, or even if I don't have the surgery, I'll probably never exercise again.

January 27th, 2023, I had open-heart surgery. The first week or two was just really bedridden in trying to get myself moving around. Never been in depression before, but it was a very scary depression that I didn't know where I was gonna go with it. I didn't know what to do with my life. I was kind of contemplating what is life all about?

Why am I alive? And I got to the point where I said, I can't let this depression kill me. I'm gonna take care of it. Three months into CrossFit, which was six months post-surgery, I was doing things that no other person that had open-heart surgery ever had done. One of my friend's sister had open-heart surgery.

I saw her six months after mine and she says, look at you. You're absolutely amazing. She's like, it took me one year before I could start moving around. And I said, are you kidding me? I'm doing CrossFit. I said, I'm pulling up, I'm lifting, I'm running, energy is up. I came to the realization that this was going to be the rest of my life. I was going to be in CrossFit.

to the realization that this was going to be the rest of my life. I was going to be in CrossFit. Wow. That's the undisputed champion out of all the CrossFit gyms that have ever been around for media. All their media is crazy. CrossFit 845, man. 4.5. I mean, seriously, Ms. Jen, I love you to death. Maybe just hire that guy, that gym to do media for CrossFit. That guy's out of control, dude.

All their stuff is nuts. Yeah, Dave is great. So those were all amazing. And if you're watching this and you own CrossFit Watchtower Kenosha, I think was the second in 845, like get in touch with me and I'd just love to give you a summit ticket or something

and meet you in person. Like you're doing amazing work out there and thank you for your service. Yeah, that is awesome. You're just getting moved. I'm not a pretty big wimp, but it's not hard to make me choke. There's no wimps north of the border. Except for your leader. Okay, easy Seve. All right. Okay, third place. Third place. If you love it, I take credit. If you don't, it's Suzy's fault.

Sorry, go ahead and say it again. It's okay. Go ahead. All right, here we go. Hi, I'm Lily Wu. I'm 65 years old. I'm a priest. I teach dance and dance.

I teach dance and dance. I teach dance and dance. I teach dance and dance. I teach dance and dance. I teach dance and dance. I teach dance and dance. I teach dance and dance. I teach dance and dance.

I teach dance and dance. I teach dance and dance. I teach'm a nurse. I teach the competition and was like, can you do it? Coach Ray encouraged me. Because I had a long jaw, and I was so old, can I do it? Coach Ray said, Mom, you can.

After I started CrossFit, I realized it was a diverse, novel and charming sport. I look forward to what the World Cup will be like. I work out with young people every day. I'm also young. I've been working out for 6 years. It's been very helpful for my heart and lung function.

My core muscles and bones are very helpful. I do home shopping and weightlifting. I hope that people my age can work together to stay healthy. Yeah, that's all I saw too. I saw what a supportive husband. I like how our boyfriend standing by her the whole time. Yeah, that's what I saw too. I love that guy. He's just like, yes, dear. Yeah, spine injury and getting at it. Amazing. Yeah. So cool. Where was that gym? That was that came all the way from, um, uh, say the name of that town. Yeah, it was, uh, it was, Hey, I'm glad you chose them. Cause there's no way we can get them the prize money. There's no way they Venmo or anything. We'll just pocket that. Yeah. That's going to be routed right to my new, uh, pulley system, uh, from rogue in my garage. What is the name of that gym? Do you know? Yeah, it's x-ray crossfit and hold on, let me

uh x-ray crossfit and I believe they're in like um yeah Taiwan. Wow, fantastic. So that came all the way from uh Taiwan. I'm not even gonna try to pronounce the city. No, we're not even trying to pronounce it. Wow, I love this. Whoa fitness. Wow Okay So yeah So we like that that one came all the way from from very far and it was funny because what they did is they shot that So the first one you guys see the supportive husband, but if you watch the other videos He he talks and she does it so they kind of shot it up the same time. Yeah. Yeah better this way

Yeah, that was great. Yeah, so they kind of shot it up the same time yeah yeah better this way yeah that was great yeah so they were uh oh I think she's my girl's nail tech racism strong in this one I like that I mean uh yeah great thank you geez Louise okay we got to behave Chris is on the show come on I know I told myself I'm ending the show when Chris gets off today so that I don't do anything to ruin this show. That's a good idea. Yeah. From Taipei, Ashen Fernando. That is from Taipei. Fantastic.

Congrats. That's third place winner of the affiliate Two Brain Business video contest. Changing lives. All right, should we do second place? Oh yes, let's do it. Let's do it. Here we go. I have given it all. This doesn't scare me. I've been through this before.

Like in the first training. Several years ago. My coach has known how to demand me. Sometimes more, sometimes less. My classmates go through the same thing. I never thought that I could do this at the age of 44. And I will continue to do it until my body can no longer. God, I love that one. I love that one.

Yeah, that one's great. And her coach, her coach, her coach, she's doing stuff at 44. She never thought she could do and her coach is getting her to do it. She trusts her coach. You can tell the relationship there is strong. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. And that gym in, in Chile there, it's really cool. They had a bunch of the other videos

you got to see inside of it. It's just very unique. You go to see the CrossFit gyms in different countries, especially bigger, thriving ones, and you're like, man, this would never fly in the US right now. Half of it was mad, and half of it wasn't, but like, I mean, it's just, it's so familiar at the same time and their community, um, was definitely, uh, uh, you could tell it was a really tight knit community, which was, uh, which

was cool, uh, very relatable. Everybody I knew was going to happen. Seven. I knew that. How did this beat the wheelchair girl? It didn't, it didn't. I knew that. How did this beat the wheelchair girl? It didn't. It didn't. I'm telling you, it didn't. Nothing, nothing. Just someone gets the money. They're all, it's impossible. It's impossible. Okay. First place, ladies and gentlemen, $5,000. The Two Brain Affiliate Video Contest, this year's winner. Action.

Well, this is going to be interesting filming myself. My name is Jose. I'm 35 and I go to vintage CrossFit. What this affiliate means to me it has brought me out of my comfort zone, but also helped me find myself. Growing up I was always overweight. After college, I was always overweight. After college, I almost hit 500 pounds. I had my weight loss surgery in April 2019, and I was able to lose over 250 pounds. Ever since I found CrossFit,

it has shown me the skills that I never thought I would do as an obese person. They love my story. They feel inspired. When people say that, it makes me feel good. I just don't want to know what did you go through, what I went through. I'll have to be that advocate for my family,

be that role model that I want for my future kids. Thanks to fitness and CrossFit, I've been able to do that. I've been able to do that. My favorite part about that was how well that guy moves. Crazy, right? Got some good coaching. Vintage CrossFit, you should be proud. Not just on the weight loss thing, but how well that person moves. That's incredible.

Incredible. Yep. Uh, hand, handstand walking, those front squats were insane. And then, uh, you know, they only had 90 seconds, but there's the, the line that really hits me is I don't want anyone else to have to go through this. But the truth is, is that we've reached a point where there are a lot of people in Jose's condition and, uh And it's going to take that group, it's going to take him to speak up, because he's going to be the most relatable to that cohort. And you can't put a price tag on how valuable messaging from him

is, because it's going to give people I mean, you know, most people probably 500 pounds, they've just completely given up hope completely it's certainly a downward spiral mental and physical so um you know and that they unfortunately complement each other so you you feel a little bit overweight i'm gonna lose 10 pounds before i start at my crossfit gym i got to get in shape first and then next year you're 15 20 20 pounds overweight, you know, and it's like, well, I could never do that now. The reality is the best way to get started is to just start. And I love telling stories like Jose's.

And even a cameo with Froning. I saw that. That was amazing. Which is cool, right? Yeah. I, what I really liked too is number one, the first time I watched it, I was like, I had to like go back. I was like, did this dude like use some sort of like AI to put himself in a fat suit?

Because there's no way that's the same guy that we're watching on the camera talk right now. You know, and they show the photos of him at the wedding and stuff. And it just yet in to see the two end of the spectrum to see somebody that looks like that. And then it cuts to a clip of him, you know, handstand walking. I just I love the messaging in that because most people even fit people that weren't in his situation when it came in and be like I can't do this. These guys handstand walking. They're moving the barbell. I've never seen these movements before. But to take somebody to how far he's come and to see it go through that,

I mean it really shows that there's nothing that can't be achieved with a proper coach, It really shows that there's nothing that, um, can't be achieved with a proper coach, a great community, a great gym, and somebody who's just as consistent and as, uh, dedicated as, as Jose was. So, and Jose actually made that video too. Wow. Amazing. So in all the rest of the four that he did at Vintage CrossFit were great. And, uh, this is, um, this is him right here.

Congrats Jose. Wow. Jose. Great to see you. Congrats. Congrats. So cool. He also sat through and watched all every watch party with me. He was one of the main people. There was a handful of them that were pretty much at all six of them for two hours as we sat through and I would pause and I would tell some random story about something in my life

We play and yeah, it was uh, it was it was pretty awesome. Oh CrossFit Santiago Congratulations guys Congrats. Yeah Congrats guys. So awesome. Well done You know, yeah, if you're an affiliate on like this is one of the best things you could do is just capture these client stories It doesn't have to be cinematic or anything. It's just pull up your phone and say we're so proud of you. I think that your journey could inspire somebody else. Go, you know, and like that's it. Years ago, Tyson old right when I was

in Scotts Valley to do a podcast, Tyson was like, I don't understand why more gyms don't just do what they see us doing at HQ, telling stories. And I was like, well, you know, we got to tell them. So it is a lot of work. It's easier said than done. You know, some people obviously, I mean, the 845 people have put in a lot of work. Sure. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, you could just actually just go there and just watch their stuff just for enjoyment. I mean, you could just scroll through their Instagram account and everything

is like, amazing. And for some reason this stuff comes easier to some people than others. But yeah, telling the stories is huge. I saw one, sometimes I see stuff and I'm like you know that doesn't capture my attention at all but also there's different audiences right? So something might not get a lot of views and it might show, you know, just some 70 year old person doing, you know, just doing something, but those might be the clients that you're going for. And even with those hundred views, you'll get more clients than

someone who got 10,000 views. Yep. It's just, yeah, just toss that help one person to be worth it. And, and thank you, Chris, because, um, you know, this would not be possible without you and all the good folks over at Two Brain Business. So we really appreciate the opportunity. I know a lot of gym owners got behind the camera, started getting more active with filming some of their stuff, and it was really great.

And we actually have somebody else, Lisa, who I'll talk to her again about it, but she was saying that she'll give some money out to the winners. She has an ad agency to run some ads for them in their local markets with a few ad dollars that they're willing to donate in for them if they want to do so. So we'll be getting in touch with the gyms here, making sure that they get their prize money and then also setting them up with her if they want to do that. Chris, do you know Lisa Gall? No. them up with her if they want to do that. Chris, do you know Lisa Gall? No, she is the I don't know what her official title is, but she's the media director for the adaptive

games. I have to connect with her. She is a truly she's a powerhouse. And she's an incredible human being and she has a pretty darn successful consulting business of her own. And she has jumped in with both feet and been working very closely with Kevin and his team. I mean, she is part of that team. The adaptive games are so easy to work with, but she is a specialist in taking content

and putting money behind it on social media to get numbers and results. So I'll definitely need to put you in touch with her. She'd be great. She'd be great for someone for you to have at the summit. By the way, last year the summit sold out and this year before the summit was over the 2024 summit was over 300 tickets that had already been sold to the 2025 summit. The summit last year was in Chicago. Is it in Chicago again? Yep. Yep to brain summit calm and There are still some tickets I think

My favorite story last year though was the the guy that snuck in and told you about it hilarious. Yes. Yes I think that was actually one of the video contest People that we just saw That being said I also want to say this if you have any thoughts about going to the summit, we couldn't get 1,000 people to our summits when I worked at HQ. And so that should speak to you about how much people, they go to this summit in Chicago, the Two Brain Summit, and they leave so invigorated. It's a very special meeting. It's

obviously you know, as Crossfitters, it's not your traditional summit. It's a it's a great bonding experience, lots of education, a lot of friend building some great, sincere networking that occurs there. So I can't recommend it enough. That that line that's so that's Bergeron the line to have him sign a book was two hours long. was amazing. Wow. Yeah, we smoke and you know the the kalipa kalipa just travels in a pack're going to walk to dinner and by the time we get to dinner, there's 20 of us. And it's just like, these are the people who have run great affiliates and, uh, because they're just so magnetic themselves and, um,

we just love having them and putting them all together. And when you come to the summit, you're going to meet 50 more just like them. Um, I don't want to give away, you know, I won't be able to do it justice. But the example uses Ben Bergeron, the talk that Ben Bergeron gave at the summit this year from people I spoke to who were there was a one of a kind talk. It was the most vulnerable and sincere he's ever been. What I heard about what he was saying, it blew my mind. It is not it is not your your Chris isn't selling you

anything there. You're not leaving with like protein powder or 10 box DVD set or the stomach cost me a ton of like, we lose like $200,000 a year. It's just yeah, it's important to me to connect people and let them feel like they're not alone out there. Yeah. It's more like in a video game when your car runs through the right lane and you get energized. It's more of that type of event. It's a place to go get energized, reinvigorated, healed. It's a healing event from what I've been told.

Thank you. Chris, go ahead. No, I just wanted to piggyback off that and say, Chris, if there's any thing that we could do, something that just immediately comes to mind for the summit is if I could take a handful, maybe 20 of the high high production, great videos that we have from the affiliate summit and deliver those original files for you guys, maybe just have playing in the background on a loop or something like that or anything as well. Um, I'd be happy to help assist with that anyway. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We love telling stories that are, thank you. Um, yeah, we just love telling stories. Like every year when I'm picking speakers, I'm like, what's this person's message?

How do we, how's it going to help the person sitting in the audience, like working alongside with them, but also can they can they tell a good story? And I mean, you know, Kalipa Bergeron, they did not disappoint last year, they went places I didn't think that they were that anybody would go and I was wild. Yeah, that's so cool. Yes, that was the that was actually not the two brain summit that was just prior to the insurrection on the Capitol. That is correct.

Sorry. All right. Chris, you've been busted. All right. That's right. Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show. I look forward to getting my hard copy. I look forward to having you on again soon.

Thanks for doing this. Congratulations on all the success. Thank you for everything you do in the community. Yeah. Thanks, brother. All right. Take care, guys. Thank you for everything. Thank you. Community. Yeah. Thanks. All right. Take care guys. No, go ahead. Go ahead. You go. I was gonna say if anybody wants a copy, you can just go get it. It's to brandbusiness.com forward slash data. You can just have it like we make it for you. We do it because I just you

know, we're in kind of a unique spot in the industry where we can be objective, but we're also extremely passionate about helping gym owners and you can go download a copy. I believe now Yep, it's available. The link is live. It's an introduction of this show. It's also in the comments So go check it out guys dive into the data. It's a thank you. All right. Ciao Thank you, Mike work and for bringing this all together. Talk to you soon Chris. Bye bringing this all together. Talk to you soon, Chris. Bye. Could be a five hour fucking show.

I know there's like, there's so many different conversation points, especially with the, with that book too, that we could dive into, but we held them for two hours and that was fun. Good job, dude. Good job. Okay. Who wants to fight about what videos won? Fucking fight you. Who wants to fight about what videos one fucking fight you who wants to fight? I mean that um crossfit watchtower with The the young lady in the wheelchair is Yeah, I think yeah Chris had that was his tear ducts turned on

Mm-hmm. How could they not? And her attitude is great. Hey, you know what's funny? You didn't see it because there was a couple other videos in that CrossFit Watchtower and you know the scene where she rolls over the plates that they have stacked where you could tell it's like tough to get the wheelchair up and over them and they're at different heights. And so it's kind of like, yeah, she's like struggling and then she just kind of hits this, like lean and then just shoots across the top. There's scenes in the the, the other videos from across the watch tower where like male adults are trying to go over those things and you could see the like

struggling because you saw a shot when she like shot across it, then it kind of zooms out and Kevin's kind of smiling. Like, yeah, I saw, I saw. Yeah. The reason why is because everybody else struggled to get over the top of it. And once she got it, she just like zoomed across it. And so he was kind of giving that like, yeah, all right, she's got it.

The 11 year old beat the adults. Yeah. Tomorrow, Greg Glassman, Thursday, Horave Enter is, oh, Thursday, Marcus Capone. In the evening, yes. Okay. Marcus has a movie, a new movie coming out. I think Marcus has done all the big podcasts.

I want to say he's been on Rogan, Sean, Ryan. That should be interesting. I think I've met Marcus at the games before. I think he's been on Rogan a couple of times. And then Friday, Will Roush is on. He's got a huge Instagram account. Great guy. Saturday, Kil Taylor. Sunday, Josh Cedar is coming on. Josh, I think he was a contestant on The Bachelor. And then he ran an experiment on his Instagram where he pretended to be a tranny for a year.

That should be a fun podcast. Joe Nels, I can't thank Jess enough for bringing our stories to life. Give her some love in her DMs. The real Jez Ka. Jake Chapman, how come sometimes it's green when Jake posts and sometimes it's not? How do they do that? I'm not sure. Maybe it's like a member post or something.

The incentive made every video played a winner. Even the ones not played one. They probably had ideas whilst recording or reminded how special what they're doing is. Good job, Chaps. More of this. We will Thanks, play all the um Videos on the show like we'll rotate in five or six new videos every single month. We'll be playing all the videos, uh, you know Selfishly, that's what I wanted to do. That was the original thought of the video contest was is like how can I get a ton of videos?

Uh that promote affiliates and the support affiliates so that I could also pee at the same time? So that was the, uh, that was the catalyst for the story. And then I happened to have Chris's phone number. So I called Chris and I didn't mention the pee break part, but he got in. Uh, Jose V I had told Susie, I didn't want to record it, but my, uh, Jim urged me to awesome. Well, good job. Yeah. His, his story, his story, which is crazy, right? Yeah, it's nuts.

What's crazy is it moved me more watching it just now with you and Chris and on the show than the first time I had seen it. Yeah. And I'm shout out to all the average Joe's crossfit somebody said like how could they get on that great videos to you crossfit FC ooh crossfit Man, there's just so many Jigsaw crossfit locally over here to Fremont had a great story Yeah, there was just, dude, there was so many really just awesome ones that came out of

it. And so like we said, guys, we're going to still continue to upload them here to StreamYard. We'll be playing them for a long time into the future and keep getting fresh ones in so you guys can all see them. I think every single one of them got played during my live affiliate watch parties. And that's something that I'm proud of to make sure that everybody's, um, got some air time and got some discussion and, you know, got, got to be played on the show.

So thank you. Dear bill and Katie, how much do you think that thing is? Dude, it's gotta be like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, like it's got all the bells and whistles So it's hard to tell from that photo, right? But I bet you just the skeleton of it is like 10 grand and then if you were to take everything in that photo Yeah, would you say 13 or something? That's probably closer

I just the videos it's so fucked because that when they move those things up and down. I Just want to do that. So smooth and effortless, you know, like slides and clicks into place. The fact like the road or dude, it's fitness porn. It really is. Hey, if you want to go to the brothel, go to the rogue. If you're ever in Columbus, Ohio, you want to go to the Go to the rogue.

Um, if you're ever in Columbus, Ohio, if you want to go to the road, because I, you were saying it's just like, it's just, you look at it. You're just like, oh my gosh, it's like, it's like fitness porn or whatever. But when you go to a rogue in Columbus, Ohio, oh, and you just went there, right? Yeah. I got to stop by there on my way home from a meeting with the people from the state. But, uh, if you get a chance to go in there, they have a retail area. And in the front, it's all the clothing, but then they have this section where it opens up and it's basically every piece of gym equipment that they have. And it's just inside there for you to use, play around with, mess around. They got this huge strip of Astro turf down the middle of it too that says Rogue. And, um, and, you know, they just have all these sleds out there and all this

different stuff for you to just kind of like play with and it's really cool. Oh, you seeing what it is now? Yeah. I'm going to see like, if you just get all the, uh, just every attachment for it. Yeah. I mean, you need a barbell to rogue ankle cuff cable attachments. I don't even know what that is, but I'll take one. So you could like attach it to your legs and do like leg lifts or lateral leg side raises or whatever.

It's not as bad as I thought. What is it? Six grand. Oh, that's it? But you need the bench and you need a bar and you need some weights. It's probably by the time you get the weights in the bar. Oh, and shipment must be crazy, dude. I wonder how long that takes to put together.

Yeah, depends on how good you are. Yeah, Christian booty kickbacks. So you can do you can do every you can do every, you can do, I mean, look at this, I didn't even get those attachments, but you can basically just do everything on it. It's a squat rack, deadlifts. It's got the pull-up bar. I could even lower that pull-up bar.

God, that is so nice. That Rogue FM twin twin functional trainer Fucking look different heights Fit inside garages or whatever yeah, Oh Rack depth cheese Louise They did it all. Wow. All the different pull-up options and damn. I bet you there's some schools that just ordered ten of those, huh? Yeah, probably. Hopefully. All right, I have so much fun stuff I wanna show you,

but like I said, I don't wanna ruin the show that Cooper's on. Yeah, that was fun. Thanks again to Two Brain for the winners. Thanks for everyone for their submissions. Big week ahead of us. Yeah, lots of great guests. It's gonna be fun. That's cool that these are all loaded up. All right guys, we will see you. I don't, maybe there will be a show tonight. I don't know what's going on. Never know.

Oh, do you have a show today? I was going back and forth on like if I should still do it or not. Alright. I think I will. Maybe I will. 82% chance Susie does a show. That's a good percentage. Alright, talk to you guys soon. Well, this is going to be interesting filming myself.

My name is Jose, I'm 35 and I go to Vintage CrossFit. What this really means to me, it has brought me out of my comfort zone, but also helped me find myself. Growing up, I was always overweight. After college, I almost hit 500 pounds I had my weight loss surgery in April 2019 and I was able to lose over 250 pounds Ever since I found CrossFit it has shown me the skills that I've never thought I would do as an obese person They love my story. They feel inspired

When people say that it makes me feel good. I just don't want to know what I went through. I'll have to be that advocate for my family, be that role model that I want for my future kids. Thanks to fitness and CrossFit, I've been able to do that.