The Sevan Podcast - #42 - Chris Cooper

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

The Sevan Podcast EP 42 - Chris Cooper & Brian Friend @TWOBRAINBUSINESS @SEVANMATOSSIAN @BRIANFRIENDCROSSFIT The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio exclusively on fan duel casino where winning is undefeated 19 plus and physically located in ontario gambling problem call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca please play responsibly man i'm glad you're doing this. Thanks. There's a great story behind this podcast. Let's hear it. So I had the CrossFit podcast, and I had you on as a guest. And of all the podcasts we did, it was probably one of the lowest-rated podcasts in terms of just views and YouTube. but it was, it was the one that we got the most comments on. We got the most emails. We got the most write-ins. We got the most thank yous. Oh, that's great. Were you on, were you on twice? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. And,

um, and I, and I know you and you're always been very friendly. And when we had you on the podcast, we had fun. I can't remember what, but we made a list of poking fun at you. It's a long list. And I can't even remember. I was like, as I'm telling the joke, I'm like, oh, no, this guy might be too serious. I don't even know if he gets this. But anyway, and eventually I realized you did get the joke. And eventually I realized you did get the joke.

But about – so I started the Sevan podcast and then I – I don't know. Let's say a year ago. And then I just kind of abandoned it. It was too much work. I was tired of scheduling all of the – scheduling all the guests. It was too much of a pain for me. My focus is really on my kids and like I just didn't I just I just didn't want to do the scheduling and then I started the podcast with Josh and Matt and it's on that podcast it's just the three of us so there's no real scheduling I just we just text back and forth and once we land

on a time we just do it well an affiliate reached out to me and said hey why aren't you doing the podcast anymore yeah CrossFit affiliate CrossFit gym and i said well because i just don't want to do the scheduling he said well i want to tell you a story i was running a crossfit gym and i was struggling and i was basically not able to make ends meet and you had chris cooper on as a guest this is like you know years ago three four years ago yeah yeah and i said oh that's cool and he goes and now my gym is very, very successful. And I go, did you do his program? He goes, I just devoured all of his books, man. He gives his books away free and I devoured all of his books and my gym is killing it. I am just killing it. And I said, cool. And he goes, and I want to pay it forward to you. And I go, what do you mean?

He goes, I have an employee and I want to give you one of my employees to use to help you get your podcast going. And I'm thinking in my head, like, God, this guy needs to leave me alone. I'm like, no, thank you. And he just goes, no, I really want it. What can I do to help you? I really want to help you. He's all the Chris Cooper podcast blew my mind. And I'm telling you, like, I am killing it. And he really is killing it. He's doing some actually some crazy stuff. And he credits your books for all of that. Wow. And so I'm like, okay. And I slept on it, and then I was just like, hey, this is once again the universe conspiring to take care of me, and I better take the omen.

So I went outside and hugged a few trees and believed that the universe was conspiring to help me, and now he schedules all the podcasts. It's the guy that reached out to you. Oh, is it Matt? Yeah. And, uh, and he's, and now he schedules all the podcasts and it's the guy that reached out to you. Oh, is it Matt? Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Isn't that a really cool story? So then I was just, I was just, this is, this is crazy. And I always thought it was amazing that that podcast, I mean, it did well, but it was not relative to like us having like, I don't know, other people on, but it was amazing how many comments we got. And the reason why, and I always, it's funny, someone called me

the other day and was talking to me about likes on Instagram. And I said, Oh, I never look at likes. I don't even, is that the heart? And they're like, yeah, I'm like, I only look at comments. And that's always my metric because my, because just because personally I prefer engagement. I just want engagement. I just want to like the conversation with other humans is what I see is the most valuable thing. You know, I, I quote you on Instagram all the time. Um, you're a good dude. You're a good dude. No, I, no, I do. And there was one time when we were having a barbecue or something at your house and there was a games athlete there and he was showing us how many Instagram followers he had. And your words were, dude, you're only CrossFit famous.

Do you know what CrossFit famous is? Not famous. I would never say anything so rude, so blunt. It was the harshest thing you've probably said in 30 years. But yeah, you did. And then you pulled up somebody, some pop culture person. You're like, that's what famous is. And they had like 10 million followers or something.

And I can't even remember the kid who was there from the games. He was playing with your son. But I've told that story so many times that it's just like clear in my head now. the kid who was there from the games, he was playing with your son. But I've told that story so many times that it's just like clear in my head now. What I've noticed, and this is kind of spinning, running with that in a different direction. What I've noticed, so I lost my job at CrossFit Inc. And it's allowed me to be really, really free. And Greg used to say the best thing about my job is I get paid to tell the truth.

That's all I have to do. And when you have the truth on your side and that's all you're worried about, there's something incredible about it. And he used to say that over and over and over again. I'd be like, okay. I knew I needed to listen to that, but it didn't resonate with me. And when I lost my job, all of a sudden I'm like, holy cow, I'm free. I can now, it's not say whatever you want. Like there's tons of idiots doing that. Not talking about what you feel or what your opinion is,

but you can actually just pursue the truth. And sometimes you're wrong, but I've never been happier, except for maybe during my stint as walking the earth playing an ascetic, trying to pretend like I'm Jesus, my homeless years. But besides those two years, this might be the happiest I've ever been because all I do is just pursue the truth. nothing that anyone can do to you as opposed to all of these other blue check marks out there they basically i'm gonna tell you guys something they are terrified of losing followers they are absolutely terrified of losing followers and um whether they know it or not they their goal is is to make you happy and and and that's why so many of them know the truth about so many things that are going on today, but they don't talk about it. There's a little bit of lack of integrity that I kind of sprinkle on them from my judgment bank because of that. Hey, don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid. It's so worth telling the truth. But can you ever worth telling the truth. But can you ever completely tell the truth when you're working for somebody else? I mean like so even though you are working for a very truthful organization. No, I couldn't. I couldn't. Greg could.

You're right. I don't know. I don't think you can. I don't know. You know, we interviewed this psychiatrist from Stockholm the other day. He's the head of his psychiatric facility. I mean, I think it's the largest psychiatric facility in Stockholm. His name was Dr. David Eberhard.

I mean, a crazy brilliant man, published a bunch of books, all bestsellers. And that's what I asked him. And he's basically talking about the mass psychosis. He says we're basically living through a mass delusional psychosis. You can basically, my word's not his, but diagnose half the population is living in mass delusion right now because they haven't done the assessment. They haven't done a fear risk assessment on what's going on on the planet. And I said, hey, does your boss get mad at you for saying that? And he said, no, my company is actually really, really good,

and they know me for saying controversial stuff. Having a little bit of money, and by that I don't mean necessarily rich, but knowing you can pay your mortgage and your food, or at least have enough runway, is really liberating in that respect too. And that's sort of what I did, right? I mean, I lived on one quarter of my pay for the last 15 years. And so I don't, you know, my family and friends have told me, my dear friends have told me there's a joke.

Hey, they hashtag me unemployable. Like I'll post something and I'll get a text message and they'll just hashtag unemployable. That's great. So thank you. Thank you for, you know, indirectly, That's great. on YouTube. You know, I do want it to be successful. And I saw in the numbers relative to the podcast I do with Josh and Matt are very, very low. It's like, it's 2% of the viewers that watch Josh and Matt and I, but then yesterday I got our iTunes and Spotify numbers and we're at 50, we, we have 50% of the viewers of them. And I'm like, holy shit, we're killing it

on iTunes and Spotify. So, and I was telling my wife this last night and she said, yeah, it's because that podcast you do with Josh and Matt, half the fun is just watching your guys' expression because we talk a lot of shit to each other. A lot of your mama jokes, stuff like that.

So she said, that's kind of the part people are like looking to see who gets offended and who's sensitive. And so maybe I need to up to your mama jokes yes is that what's gonna happen here i need to pick on brian more is what it is i used to pick on matt all the time and it was great it's a little harder to pick on brian well i was one of the i was one of the uh people who was very interested in the podcast that you guys did a few years back in that time period, which was, I think, mostly 2017, I think. I was traveling around a little bit and I was staying with a friend of mine who had recently taken over the sole ownership of his gym in Texas. And quite

frankly, it was struggling quite a bit. And we watched all your stuff and started reading some of your stuff and getting to work of trying to apply some of it. But we didn't actually, I don't think we ever followed through with actually hiring a mentor and the gym eventually went under. But I was very interested in what you were talking about then. So it's kind of cool to be talking to you now, a few years later. Thanks, man. I'm sorry to hear that. It's a really common story, unfortunately, but still, it sucks to hear it. I mean, he's moved on.

Brian, do you have the blue light facing you on your microphone? Because last night the podcast was pretty – do you see the blue light? Yeah, it's right in front of me. Okay. Maybe you need to talk into the middle of the microphone. I don't know. He sounds good to me. Don't be biased.

Don't be biased. Do you have a biased? I'm a Canadian, man. I mean, the first education we get is tact. You guys can't even use that anymore. The way you're handling this COVID response, it used to be like, thank God I'm a Canadian. I can put a sticker on my backpack and travel the country and people respect me. You guys can't even use that anymore. You guys are, you guys are, I don't know what you're doing over there.

You can tell me. It's okay. It's complete. It's complete insanity what you're doing. I mean, it looks stupid what we're doing, but your, your, your, your, your president and your dictators, your, your elected officials have basically implemented a plan on such a level that you have no exit strategy. There's no way to get out of the plan that you guys have made. You will never get rid of SARS completely, and that seems to be the goal for you guys. And so therefore your whole country is going to be locked down forever.

I mean Australia and New Zealand have done the same thing. They walk around bragging about their low numbers, but there's no exit strategy. It was this psychiatrist in Stockholm who kind of pointed this out to me. You can't have the people who absolutely have to pound every nail in, and until every nail is pounded in, we're not going to let everyone loose because these nails are going to keep popping up. You have to have a different exit strategy. I mean, it's nuts what I'm seeing over there.

It's a very different, uh, perspective by the population. So for example, a lot of my friends in the States who are like, just open your gym anyway, what are they going to do? Right. Um, it's a very different perspective here. So for example, when a local bar owner was like, I'm out of options, I'm out of money. I need to open my bar. I mean, there was police presence in front of the bar. Nobody showed up for his protest, and he just got trashed on social media, and he went bankrupt. And when we have rallies here, and they're not even anti-mask rallies. They're just like reopening rallies. Ten people show up in a public park in a city of 80,000, they're quickly fined and they just go away.

And most people consider them crazy. Do you know the story about the Donner Party in the United States? Yeah. I mean, we have a very, very soft society, and we're pushing them to a brink, and Canada is kind of speeding it up, I guess, which is good for the rest of the world so we can see what happens so we can turn around before but but the people are you're going to force the people to eat each other i mean metaphorically but i mean

it's um people have to eat yeah like like like how low are we willing to let the quality of life go before you're like, okay, it's okay. It's okay for a few hundred thousand people to die who are over 80 years old, who are 30 years complicit in their demise. I mean, and the kids, I have, I have relatives in Canada and they say the stuff that they're doing to kids is just the pressure on the kid population. There is insane. The kids that have been locked in their house for over a year. And that's another thing, you know, all the serial killers and all the bad people, they have one very common thing.

There's something more in common than not having a dad at home. And that's not being socialized properly during the first four years of their child development. Yeah. It's that stuff's all true. That's happening. I've got three kids upstairs at my kitchen table doing their school right now.

And the teenagers, whatever, we're on a break, we're going to go outside. It's really the little kids who are struggling. And that has a trickle-up effect to their parents too. So even if their parents could be working, they have to stay home and school their kids. And schooling in this case isn't like homeschooling. It's enforce your kids to look at the screen for several hours a day. Even the manager of my gym, he's a great guy. He wants to be at the gym. He's got two kids under

the age of eight. So if they reopen the gym, he really is going to have a tough time getting back to work because the kids are still not in school. So how many books have you written, Chris? All of them. Five, five books. Yeah. And how many have you given away free? Most of them. I mean, the first book, which is like the worst, sold about 26,000 copies. I tried to give away the first 30 for free, and most of them just got left in a box at an affiliate down in Fort Lauderdale. And now what happens is our sales, marketing, outreach teams, all the mentors know, like if somebody is asking a question in a Facebook group and you try to help them and they

just need more help, just send them a book. And so it's not like I have a warehouse full of books and that doesn't cost me anything to send them. We actually go on Amazon and buy them a book. And we've done that probably about 2000 times just with the last one. And what is the topic of your books? What's the theme of your five books? So most of them are about gym ownership. Four out of five are specific to gym owners. One of them is more of the life cycle of the entrepreneur. And they're all really geared to help entrepreneurs, but specifically gym owners get clarity on what they're supposed to be doing. The number one problem that most entrepreneurs face is overwhelm, especially now it's, there's so many ideas. There's so many options that, um, you know,

we just never complete anything and never get anywhere because we're trying to do everything. And in your, in your, in tell me the name of your program that people can actually sign up for if they want to get more handholding. Yeah. So we, we publish for free every single day and we, we give people, it's not just like, here's a great idea. It's like, do exactly this, take this step. And we're getting better at that. And, you know, I learned it from CrossFit media and I swiped the editor of the journal, Mike Workington to help me do this. Maybe one of the greatest employees at CrossFit. If you guys don't know who Mike Workington is,

you should figure out who he is. And if you need someone, you should double the pay that Chris has given him and take Mike. Mike is one of the most capable human beings in the fitness space. He should, he should be, he should be running. I seriously can't believe the head Hunter hasn't come and got him and made him like the, the,

the editor, chief editor of like GQ or, you know what I mean? He, he is the man. Yeah. Anyway, sorry,

go on. And he was probably more about CrossFit than just about anyone. He may even know more than Greg. He just started actually for the last three weeks. He's got a column about what's going on in CrossFit. And I read it yesterday. I read it yesterday. Yeah, yeah.

That was great. That was great. I was so happy to see his little picture pop up in my email box. Yeah, exactly. He did it. And, uh, so he and I work for two brain business.com, which I founded in 2016. We're a mentorship practice and the free material in the books tell people the change that they need to make. And then it's the mentor's job to help the person manage the change. And, um, so it's, there's a little bit of teaching, but it's more coaching.

And I know I met you. I learned about your work. I learned about your good work. I've never heard anything. There's other mentors out there, and I've heard bad things about them. Bad might be a little strong, but just that it didn't work for them. But every single person I've met who went through your program, whether they succeeded using it or not, was like, holy shit, this is the one.

This is the one. And then I know you came and did a talk at HQ. You sort of gave a beta seminar. And I remember Nicole Carroll was really impressed and that the staff at the office was really impressed. Why didn't and then on the other side, I know Greg really, really despised a best practices

list or class coming out of HQ. Do you have any thoughts on why that is? Why didn't, why didn't, why didn't after you were there and so many people were liking you, so many executives like myself and Nicole Carroll and Bruce Edwards, Bruce Edwards was the chief operations officer. Why didn't, why didn't HQ, why didn't Greg make that, um, from the outside, what did that look like to you? Yeah. And again, I'm speaking from the outside. So one of the most telling conversations that I ever had was with Bruce and Jeff, and it was at a breakfast in Santa Cruz.

And I said, you know, you don't have to tell gym owners what to do, but as a central hub, you could be collecting data and just saying, you know, here's what the average gym charges in Atlanta. That would be helpful. And Bruce said, that's a great idea. We're never going to do it. And he said, but you should do it. That's one of Bruce's favorite lines.

Oh, really? That's the only time I heard it. Perfect. I'm glad. Yeah, yeah. I mean, because he knew Greg so well. He was one of the few people who knew Greg longer than I did. He probably didn't know him better than I did, longer than Greg, well. He knew he was one of the few people who knew Greg longer than I did. He probably didn't know him better than I did longer than Greg longer. And, uh, and he, and he just knew that

good, a lot of good ideas we didn't pick up, but sorry, go on. So, no, it's okay. So, so he said, you know, you should do it. And, uh, you know, at first I was kind of mad about that and I went away and I, I tried building an app and I spent 75,000 bucks and it didn't work. And I went away and I tried building an app and I spent $75,000 and it didn't work. And, you know, so for about two years, I was kind of pissed. And then when we finally started to get a data set, I was like, Bruce was right, number one. And number two, I'm so thankful that CrossFit HQ didn't do this because the way that we can put it together and, you know and we can draw from partners without appearing biased. So, for example, imagine if CrossFit had gone to Zen Planner but not Wattify and said, give us your data set.

Well, that would have dramatically influenced the market where I can do that and it doesn't influence anybody. So we can kind of provide a more unbiased view. The other thing too, is that having us do it is more of a ground up initiative. And so it's kind of coming from gym owners instead of coming from the top, you know, so there's, it's not just that there's bias in it, but there's no liability attached to it. You know, we can say in my experience, this has happened. And the data says this, where, you know, Greg wouldn't even say in my experience, this is the best way to price or, you know, any of that stuff. So we, we go as deep as we wanted to without bias and, uh, and it wouldn't get anybody in trouble, right? Like the real reason, the perspective that I had after talking to some people at HQ

is that if HQ gives any business advice, they're culpable, even if not legally, morally, if an affiliate fails after following that advice. Man, I hear that as a bit of a scapegoat. I hear that as a bit of a scapegoat. We could have at least then taken your stuff and published it in the journal. We had a wonderful journal that was hugely successful. Those of you who don't, Chris mentioned Jeff's name. Jeff was the CEO that came in in 2018 and, in my opinion, completely destroyed the company,

fired the entire media team, turned off social media. L1 sales plummeted. Journal was at the highest readership it had been in the history of CrossFit. L1 sales were the highest they had been since 2014. And then they revamped the website and everything went to shit. So if you're trying to figure out who Jeff is, that's Chris was mentioning Jeff. And I obviously have my biases there because I ran the media team. But it was a huge,

it was a colossal disaster to bring him in. Greg should have made Dave Castro CEO right away if he wanted to take space. And there was unlike what people think. People thought that when Greg did make Dave, the CEO, that it was, he was a puppet. There couldn't be anything farther from the truth.

Dave was completely, Dave is a leadership challenge. He is completely, he is a man of the highest integrity. And in just the two weeks or month or two months he was CEO, he immediately started turning the media machine back on and we started seeing fantastic changes. And he understands the protocol, the business model. You know, he made a, one summer he decided he was going to every day visit a different affiliate and work out there in San Diego County.

And he did that for 100 days and worked out in 100 affiliates. Wow. I mean, the guy is, yeah. And the people who work there, we did so much more than our job requirements asked. Like, that's not part of his job requirement. No. No, he's not part of his job requirement no no he's the director of training and and you know he wasn't paid gas miles or that wasn't a pr stunt that was

dave just embracing like okay this is something i want to do yeah i've never heard that story that's great so you collected all of this data and i remember you giving it to us and it being like mind-boggling i'm Holy shit, this is some incredible stuff. What are there any things that stand out to you? Four or five statistics that you were like, Oh my God, like, like, like what's the best price to charge? Should you do an on-ramp? What were some of the things that you spotted? Yeah. So the on-ramp was one.

The big, I mean, the big takeaway for me was that most gym owners are aiming at the wrong target. They're counting how many members they have instead of how much a member is actually paying for your service. And that's a big thing. If you've got the wrong target for headcount, you're in a lot of trouble. And COVID shut down a lot of big gyms who had 300 members, but no, no profit margin. You know, they just couldn't eat. Coaches were laid off in the first month and then that was it. Um, uh, another one was like, yeah, you, you should have an on-ramp.

The data is super clear about that. Like Nikki Violetti wrote about this in 2006. And you know, if you're still not doing it, then you're 14 years behind. There was some other stuff too, like the most profitable affiliates are not like the most metropolitan. So let's say that I've got a gym in Santa Cruz and I've got a gym in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, where I live. The cost of living in Santa Cruz is five times what it is in Sault Ste. Marie, but my gym probably charges more. And so like the price of the gym doesn't follow the cost of living index at all.

You know, Vancouver, a coach can make a hundred thousand bucks a year coaching in Vancouver. That's great. Except a hundred thousand bucks in Vancouver means like you're in a three bedroom apartment with two roommates, right? A hundred thousand bucks where I am means you own your house on a six acre farm, you know? So it's, um, yeah, it was telling from that perspective for sure. Really, it's just a lot of the stuff that you think matters doesn't matter. What matters is that, you know, everybody by name, that nobody's getting injured and that you're the person that says good job because they don't have that person anywhere else in their life. It's fascinating to hear you throw those metrics out there. And once again, I don't mean to be

the dead horse and to think that we didn't embrace that at HQ because as everyone knows, and he's still like this today, I talk to him daily, Greg is really, really not only into metrics, but even more so into metrics that matter. And clearly, all the problems we have today in the United States, it looks like the world is people are looking at the wrong metrics. People have been blinded by the media by looking at the wrong metrics. And it's like, hey, if you look at the wrong metrics, you're screwed. You are screwed. If you're thinking the correlates are the cause, then, I mean, you're missing a huge piece.

And to those of us who see that, it's so obvious. That's the other weird part. And there's people who are smarter than us. And I actually think it's the smarter group of people in the country and in the world who are just looking at the wrong metrics, which is just fascinating to see so many smart people being led down the wrong road. Yeah. But I think like it, it starts right from ground zero, at least in Canada. So Canada is a very socialist country. I think most people understand that. It means that, um, means that most of the, like all the

education system is heavily unionized. And so the lessons that our kids get from the early stages are like, there's a process to your life. And the process is you pass elementary school, you pass high school, you do well enough to go to university. And if you do well at university, you have a job for 30 years. And meanwhile, you contribute to your registered retirement savings plan. And at age 60, you're done and vote liberal. And so that's the environment that three generations have been brought up in. And so the teachers of our kids don't know anything different. And so when they're talking to kids, they're still teaching how to write a cover letter, you know, where I'm teaching my kids, like how to start a YouTube channel, build an audience, get, get away from this stuff. So when the government says in Canada,

like we will open the door when, um when 70% of the population is vaccinated. This is zero resistance because we all say, great, let's get vaccinated, you know? And I don't necessarily disagree with vaccination and we can get into that if you want to. I've been vaccinated, you know, we just got vaccinations here, but the machinery of the country is very, very slow. We were the last country to get vaccines, and the worst at distributing them. The word you said there, procedure, they follow the procedure, and that is exactly why our medical community in the United States is so corrupt, corrupt in both senses, um, been infiltrated in, in, in, in, in doing stuff that's unethical and immoral, but also corrupt in the

sense that like the way a file on a computer would be corrupt, broken. Yeah. What are the, what are those diagrams call? I keep forgetting where there's a box at top at the top and it says, are you hungry? And if you answer yes, it goes to another box. No, just a flow chart. A flow chart. There's a flow chart. So you come in and you're obese and doctors follow a procedure that looks like a flow chart.

And when you live in a society where everyone's working on procedure, you're basically just putting people to sleep. They're basically just robots. And you get very poor innovation. You get very poor results, especially as time moves forward. Because, I mean, clearly we know that the medical community does not have a cure for obesity. They do not have a cure for type 2 diabetes. And your gym does. Your gym does. gym does but but but

that's not in the procedure flowchart for doctors and so people go to doctors with or you know for let's say fatty liver but they don't have the answer for it they do not have to cure for that and if the numbers are correct that's 86% of our our medical expense and 91 percent of all pharma goes to people with you know as we know chronic disease and the medical community doesn't have a cure for that they're basically i've used this before they're docents for the um for the graveyard that the procedure walks you to your burial site it doesn't give you a cure. It doesn't walk you to health and then a new girlfriend. Never. No. And that's what we all want. The best medical advice I ever heard was someone told me like, instead of ever, never ask a doctor, what should I do? Always ask,

what would you do? And if that was the question that was getting asked in our city, I would have three times as many clients because all of the doctors come to my gym, but still most of their patients, you know, just carry on with high carbohydrate, you know, couch based lifestyles. I can remember being a precocious 12 year old boy and being in no, and learning that. What would you do when you go to buy a car? Well, what would you do? Would you get that accessory or would you wait?

Or what would you do? And I would say to doctors, it's a great line. What would you do? I just saw a spy cam Instagram video where a guy walks into a vaccine center in the United States, and he just keeps asking the lady, what would you do? And then she reads from the script. He's all, no, no, I want to know what you would do. And it's, it's, it's fascinating. And eventually she says, yeah, if you're, she says if you're not over 50 and you don't have type two diabetes,

I wouldn't get it. I'd wait until the trials are over. No, it's like, interesting, but he has to really push her. This one's coming in hot. You holding on to your seat tight, Chris? Yep. If there were 15,000 affiliates at the peak, CrossFit affiliates at the peak of CrossFit Inc., how many do you speculate there are now?

That's tough because, again, you know, if CrossFit doesn't have to collect or publish data, then they don't have to be transparent with how many affiliates there are. Um, so there are lots of stories and, you know, keep in mind that most of the stories I hear are from people in trouble, right? So we filter for that. And, um, they'll say like I've de-affiliated or they'll say, you know, we're done or, uh, CrossFit HQ gave me three months for free or six months for free. So I really have no idea. I will say that in my case, um, when I said I'll de-affiliate, they said, let's put you on hold for six months and see if you're, if you change your position. When I didn't

do anything in six months, they said, we're going to give you another three months extension. So it could very well be that there are affiliates who are not active, who are still technically on the books. What I haven't heard, and I used to hear all the time, was we just opened an affiliate. all the time was we just opened an affiliate. And so, you know, prior to, you know, 12 months ago, a lot of our clients, so maybe 30 out of 40 gyms coming into Two Brand every month would say something like, I'm just about to open an affiliate, or I have just opened an affiliate in the last year. And we don't hear that at all. It's, you know. That counts like zero to one per month right now. There are fewer coming in. So I think we had 32 or 34 new gyms come in last month,

and none said, I've just affiliated or I've just opened an affiliate. Okay. So anecdotally speaking, you used to see a lot of new gyms come to you, and you don't anymore. Sorry, man. I do see a lot of new gyms come to you, and you don't anymore. Sorry, man. I do see a lot of new gyms come to me. I don't see a lot of new gyms saying I'm an affiliate. Oh, I thought you were saying that you don't see new affiliates coming to you. You just see old affiliates coming to you, which could be a sign that there's not a lot of new people affiliating.

Brian, don't correct me. I hate seeing the YouTube comments where people are like, Brian corrected Sevan again. I have an advantage. From our perspective, like there are still, I would guess proportionally the same number of gyms coming to us who are CrossFit affiliates. But I know that some de-affiliated. And in our perspective, through our lens, we haven't seen a lot of new affiliations come through. That doesn't mean they're not doing it. It's just we're not meeting them, and we used to, and nothing's really changed.

Okay, Brian, correct me. Sorry. Oh, no, I was saying I have the advantage because I just sit and listen for 10 minutes. You're thinking of always the next question, next question. There's an affiliate fee. So if I want – Chris Cooper's company is Two Brain Business. It mentors people who own a gym who want to either take it to the next level or save it from going out of business. And I guess at some point,

so the reason why I wouldn't come to you if I was an affiliate owner is because I would be holding onto my wallet so tight, right? I would be like, oh shit, I'm going to pay this. I already pay $3,000 a month in affiliate fees. Now this guy is going to want, you know, $1,000 of my money or however much you charge. More than that, yeah. One's an observation and one's a question. I guess at some point, if you have to ask yourself, let's say in your budget you only had $5,000. You could be like, well, or let's say you didn't have any money in your budget to see Chris.

You could be like, or Two Brain Business. You could say, well, I'll just de-affiliate and allocate that money to something that can help my business grow that might be better than just being branded CrossFit. But what would you say to people who would be like me, who would be like, oh, man, that's one month's rent at my gym, and now I'm going to pay it to this guy to help me? Like, I would be scared. Yeah, no, I would say you're right. And I lived through that for several years too. And the thing is, like every every entrepreneur follows a similar trajectory in their life cycle. And that that first trajectory is like I'm taking a risk. Therefore, I'm a risk taker. So I'm just going to figure this out. And we all think that, you know, that was me for years and years. At some point, you get tired of being kind of on this roller coaster because you do win sometimes and sometimes you don't.

And then at one point for me, I looked back and I'm like, wow, I've been doing this for three years and I'm not making any more money. I have a second kid now, but we're surviving off the same paycheck I was making three years ago. I'm working more, if not, you know, if not the same more, um, what the hell? Like, I thought I was just going to figure this out. There are people who are dumber than me who are doing better. And that drove me crazy. And, um, so a friend of mine was like, Hey, we've got this mentorship program. This guy, this guy's amazing. He's leaving town. It was kind of a Lee Iacocca story, but with our local steel plant, this guy, he took shares in a $1 salary and shares were trading at like 52 cents or something. And five years later they were trading at $70. Yeah. And he was like cashing out and he was going to leave his legacy of five local entrepreneurs.

And a friend of mine said, I can get you in. It's $500. I said, I don't have it. And he said, come to the first meeting. So I go to the first meeting and they're like, Chris, it's $500. And I said, I don't have $500. And the guy said, I know that's why it's $500. Other people are paying $10,000 for this because they don't have $10,000. Um, like it's gotta hurt. And so I wrote a check for 500 bucks. I'm like, I can't cover this check. Don't cash it. And he's like, we're cashing it tomorrow. And I went back to the gym and, you know, somebody walked in the door and I'm like, Hey, do you want to pay for five personal training sessions in advance? They said, sure. And I, I made my $500 back right there, you know, and that's how mentorship works,

but it has to hurt. And if, if you're still of the ego of like, I don't need this, I'm just going to figure it out by myself. Good. Stay there, keep trying it on your own. And then, you know, when you're ready, kind of a mentor will appear for you. So there are so many great moments in that story. Obviously, it goes along with my belief that we all live charmed lives and the universe is conspiring to help us if we allow it to. So you have that story with, you know, you took the leap and the universe matched you with it by bringing a client in and then you sucked it up and you got your first lesson in mentorship to ask that client an uncomfortable

question, right? We can go down that, that road, man, because I love this universe conspiring to help us. I mean, that client was coming in anyway. The only thing that was different in our interaction was I didn't say, Hey, Seve, how's it going? I said, Hey, Seve, Hey, do you want to pay for five sessions in advance? Would I have ever asked that if I hadn't had the meeting with my mentor and needed the $500? There's no way. And so it's, it's like, um, you know, the, the tea was in the ground. The golf course was all mode. Somebody put a club in my hand and I just, just swung. And that's all the mentor really does.

Got it. You, you don't know how much I love metaphors and analogies and similes. It's got, it's got a warm and fuzzy. Um, and then, and then the second thing is, is, is thing is like, yeah, that guy didn't need your 500 bucks. No, he didn't. It was more like a, hey, are you in? Yeah. Hey, motherfucker, are you in?

Yeah. And I had to learn that lesson from the other perspective too. There have been three times when somebody across from HQ said, can you help this person out? They're struggling. And in each case, it was kind of like an affiliate with Renown. So it was somebody who was either famous because of the games or they were famous because they had a beautiful looking facility. And they said, will you work with this person? And the person didn't have any money. Every time we took them, it just didn't work out. They didn't do the work. Sometimes the skin in the game analogy is actually true.

It's cool because you got a free experiment to prove your hypothesis. That's right. It has that. Go ahead, Brian. I see you leaning in with that pretty new haircut. No, it's a great example. I think that the detail you added about the $500 for you and the $10,000 for someone else is an important piece as well. This painting behind me is from a Dominican Republic when I used

to work there. And I worked with a lot of kids and there was one kid in particular that I thought was, I saw a lot of potential in him. And so I took a small investment and I gave him a phone and I bought him a limited amount of minutes on the phone. And I said, this phone is only for you to contact me if you need something. And we can, you know, I was basically just doing a little experiment with him. And then when I tried to contact him, the phone was dead. Well, he'd spent all the minutes talking to the girls, you know. And then that was it.

I abandoned him basically. I said, like in my mind, I was like, you failed the first test i did this thing for you you couldn't follow the rules so i'm not going to give you more money more opportunity whatever and maybe it sounds harsh but he wasn't bought in he didn't have that investment and so maybe on my side i should have made him pay for the minutes is what i'm thinking now it's tough to know man i you know, we're all in this to serve and, uh, a place that, or something that I do that I have to talk to my therapist about a lot is like, I try to get everybody around me to start a business and, you know, I help them by either lending them money or like, Oh, I'll pay for your mentor. I'll pay for your whatever. And the truth

is that most of them should never start a business and I might be ruining their lives you know Brian is there anything you can do to bring that mic closer to your face I'm just when I when I've seen the the Chris and I are getting a lot of green dots on the audio kind of metrics here and you're not. You're barely popular. I mean, I can fix it in post, but. I'll do my best. Or maybe the mic needs to be higher, maybe for the next podcast.

Chris, there was, in one of the podcasts, and this was the example I gave to Greg when I said, hey, man man this guy is really amazing and he kind of got frustrated with me can you tell the story um you gave an example of one of the things you offer in your book or in one of your books where you talk about the decision making when you open a gym that the first decision is easy and then there's two decisions and then there's four decisions and there's 12 decisions and how does that resonate? Do you remember what I'm talking about? Like you were telling a story and I thought this was fascinating that basically everyone

can do the first decision and then you make a second decision of where you spend your money. Should you buy a new toilet paper roll or should you buy a new barbell? Should you, and then, and then you said basically like, what we've done is we've talked to enough gyms and you failed enough on your own that you don't have to make the same mistakes. You didn't waste your money painting new lines in your parking lot because you knew that that wasn't until, you know, year two to spend your money. Could you explain that? Yeah, man. Sure. Okay. So this actually does tie in with the metrics we were talking about. So the first thing, you know, when you decide I'm going to take the leap,

that's actually a fairly easy decision. But psychologically, after you make that first leap, you're very susceptible to further leaps. So, you know, car salesmen know this, the best time to sell you tires, rims, leather seats is the 10 seconds after you said, yeah, I'll take the truck because you're just open to taking risks, right? So what happens is you say, okay, I'm going to open up a gym. And the first thing that enters your head is what kind of gym am I going to open? Well, I'm going to open a gym that follows my method, CrossFit. I love CrossFit. That's my, I'm going to open a gym that follows my method, CrossFit. I love CrossFit. That's my method I'm going to open. Or you could say the same for

Pilates or yoga or whatever. And then you're going to say, well, what's my business model? Well, I think the business model is get as many clients as I can. Okay, great. So now I've got a couple of other decisions that flow from that decision. So if my model is get as many clients as possible, then I'm going to need a big space. So I'm going to take a 10,000 square foot space because that will let me get about 20, 25 people in at a time. And if I need 25 people, I can't really coach that by myself, so I'm going to hire somebody else. And if I'm hiring somebody else and I've got 25 people working out, then I need 25 barbells. But what if half of them are women? Now I need 40 barbells. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling,

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because there was in the regionals last weekend. Well, I got to get 40 rowers. And before you know it, what's happened is you've created this massive gap for yourself that you're going to have to try and bridge as quickly as possible. You know, when you've got expenses that are like 15, $20,000 per month, you need clients in because you just can't survive like that for very long. And so, okay, well, I need to get people in the door. How do I do that? Well, have low pricing, do free trials, give people three weeks for free, do everything, like try everything. But the problem is like the people who come in during discounts and trials and, you know, the free classes,

their retention rate is really, really poor. So in just under seven months, all of those people are gone and have to be replaced. Okay. But the people who are most open to doing CrossFit, the easy people, the early adopters, they just left. So now who do I go after? Well, they just left. So now who do I go after? Well, you know, the next most eager for my service, they're not quite as eager. They're more price sensitive. So maybe I've got to work on like a family discount. Okay. You know, and you're going down this downward spiral before you even start. And the clock's ticking with each decision you make, you may think they're good decisions, but they're really just experimental because you have no, you're just using what you think is logical. That's right. And that's the assumption that almost every gym was making.

I mean, it was almost a universal assumption that you wanted to have 300 members. And it wasn't really anybody's fault, but that was the problem was there was nobody really in charge of collecting this data and saying, what story do we want to tell? And so the story that was being told over and over was the story of the games winning affiliate. And most of those people had 300 members and they were winning the games. And, you know, so I would go around and I would meet these people. They were almost all men. So I'm going to say guys here. I hope that doesn't offend anybody.

Of course it does. Yeah. So I'd meet these guys and it's like, well, where's your revenue coming from? Well, two thirds of my revenue comes from t-shirt sales. Quarter of my revenue comes from selling online programming. Well, where's the money from your gym? Well, the money from my gym just pays my coaches. So the model that we're putting on a pedestal here isn't actually paying the owner of the gym. And that was a really dangerous precedent to set because as time went on, you would have this first batch of 300 affiliates, let's say, and the first guy in Atlanta is charging $99 a month. Where did that number come from?

So the next guy in Atlanta has got to charge $89 a month because that's cheaper than the $99. The third guy, and so I had this phone call in 2017 when somebody who was one of the first gyms in Atlanta says, you cannot charge more than $79 a month for CrossFit in Atlanta. And it's all just the trickle-down effect of this one flawed assumption that the bigger gyms make more money. The reality is, and this is what we pulled out of the data, is that the gyms with about 150 clients usually have the biggest profit margin because they're not killing themselves on space equipment. They're not hiring 50 coaches full time, you know, and, um, with 150 people, they remember everybody's names. They know, you know, what kind of dog you have. They probably know what you do for a living. They don't have a

retention problem, so they don't have a marketing problem and they're probably charging more than enough to make a good living. It's interesting. The more clients you have makes sense. And then, yeah, of course, you've got to charge less and have more clients so you can beat out the competition and get all the clients. And then I hear you explain all this stuff. You just take a moment to think about it a little more deeply or bigger picture. Basically, you get a higher perspective

from a higher altitude. And all of a sudden what you're saying makes complete sense. And what's also cool about what you said is that it still doesn't limit the fact of you growing to 300 members. No. So once you have 300 members at $79, you're not going to, it's going to be, I'm guessing, it's going to be very difficult to get 300 members at $109. But if you have 300 members at $79, you're not going to, it's going to be, I'm guessing it's going to be very difficult to get 300 members at $109. But if you have 150 members at $129, there's, there's a, there's a very good chance that you'll have 300 members at $129. Yeah. So like the, I think the best thing that Mike and I have ever published is this new guide. That's how to make a hundred

thousand dollars with 150 clients. And it's not because we want people to slam the door at one 50. It's because like 150 people who are willing to take your advice over their doctor, who are willing to like, get out of bed, wake up their spouse, you know, uh, miss an hour a day with their kids to listen to you. If you've got that many people in your local community who are willing, who are that dedicated to you, like you should be making a pretty damn good living. Right. I mean, but, but most people weren't, I mean, so, so we ask people a lot of questions about like, where did your pricing come from? And, oh, well, we were doing what that guy's doing for five bucks less. But the reality is like, you know, personal trainers

are charging way more than most CrossFit gyms are. And now we're starting to see some gyms charging like $2,000 a month, not in our program, but in other programs. And we're saying like, hey, you know, you're providing a better service than they are. The thing that's stopping you from charging what you're actually worth is in between your ears, not in the client's. I really don't want to say what I'm going to say next. You go ahead. I don't want any of, I feel like I might be jumping on a sword here,

but Avi has a piano has a piano class my oldest son yeah and it's in the in the owner was charged the teacher was charging 35 a half hour and he lives across town and uh probably 10 miles away and he just contacted us one day and he said hey i gotta start charging 50 an hour because of my time and gas yeah so we you know so we my wife and i like do we like him that much? Is it, is it worth it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we never even finished the conversation. He just came the next day and we started paying him the 50 bucks. And it's the same with all of his coaches. And I've told all his coaches this,

like, like his striking coach charges $30 a half hour. And it's crazy. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's so affordable. And, um, yeah, I mean, I, it's, it's, it's tough because my money is tight for everyone and I don't want to screw people out of like, um, people who are using the services of trainers out of these great deals that they're getting from some people. But I would guess that I would say half of all these teachers that he has, and I take my kids to a lot of professionals for training, and I don't think they charge enough. I think the tennis coach probably charges enough.

The gymnastics coach charges enough. But, I mean, the private jiu-jitsu and private striking is just crazy affordable. And it's so good. I mean, these are young guys who still haven't, I guess, maybe figured out their worth. I mean, I'm glad they're not charging more. That's why I like the jiu-jitsu instructor who comes to the house. He comes to the house one hour a week. I always buy bacon the day before he comes and then invite him to stay for breakfast.

Like, I'm like, you know, seriously. Well, that's probably the only way to get fed. Right. Right. Right. So about a year and a half ago, um, I started this practice that's, I don't want the discount. So if there's a local, um, business person that I really like, they, they've all got some kind of discount and they'll throw it out before you even ask for it. So for example, you know, I buy bicycles. I spend probably $15,000 a year on bicycles and they just started giving me points so that I could get discounts. You come back in, you redeem your points. I'm like, I don't want the points and I don't want the discount. I want you to be here next year when this bike breaks. And yes, you want to keep the business.

Yes. That's why. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like you don't have to charge me more. Just stop giving me discounts. But I was in that mindset where in the early days of my gym, I was looking for an excuse to discount your membership.

You know, Seve, I'm going to give you the teacher discount. Okay. Like didn't Haley teach a class one time or something? Like, you qualify for this. Let me give you an extra five bucks a month off, you know? A place where my kids go to all the time, they go basically five days a week for training. The business was having some issues a couple of years ago and before my kids even went there and I knew the owner of the business through Greg and he called

me and he basically said, Hey, do you want me to do some training with your kids? I need to come up with $2,000 quickly. So I gave him $2,000. I never did. I never did the training with my kids cause it was, it was. And then so finally now my kids go to his facility to train basically five days a week. And he said to me, hey, I'll credit you don't have to pay for this amount of time while your kids come here. And I did the exact same thing you did for that one reason.

I need that place. And that's where my kids during the entire pandemic rolled around on the ground with other kids. That's where my kids, all my kids' friends are. That was the only place my kids could go or one of the few places my kids could go where they weren't requiring a mask. I mean, I voted with my dollar. And on the other hand, I have this dear, dear friend of mine who I feel like is very often, I don't know if it's so much him or his wife, I think it's more his wife is always trying to get discounts. And the classic story is she got some free doula service for her pregnancy. Now, you should got some free doula service for her pregnancy

now you should never accept free doula service for your pregnancy and the doula left the the labor was so long that she'd used up her free hours with the doula and the doula left before the baby came and i'm yes i had a crazy story and when i hear this i'm just like uh it's funny too um i when i had insurance through crossfit they i would see this thing it would say like they would send you this you know the bill and they would be like you're you went in there and you know and you got your tetanus shot and it was a 3500 visit but we got you a deal and it's only 54 and i would tell my wife and i learned this from greg i don't want a fucking deal i don't want you striking deals with my fucking doctor. Yeah.

I don't want you, like, shaking my doctor down. Pay him whatever he's, like, I pay you every month, like, a premium. Like, pay him the fucking full price. Yeah. Like, I don't want my doctor being upset that he billed you $3,500 and you talked him down to $54. This is insanity. you 3,500 bucks and you talk them down to $54. This is insanity. It's crazy, but I,

I am going to register discount doulas.com as soon as we get off this call. Damn. Chris, what's the, uh, do you think there are permanent changes to the gym industry as a result of the last 12 months? Yeah. And mostly positive ones. So, um, when is this podcast coming out? Hopefully tomorrow, depending on how much time I spend with my kids in the next 24 hours, I won't give away exactly what he said, but, um, Jocko Willink was talking about the fitness industry. He's a CrossFit affiliate by the way. And, um, we were having this conversation about like getting through and what's on the other side of the shutdowns. And, uh, he was saying like, he likes it when operating conditions are worse than they should be. Like it's snowing on the day that you're supposed to go out on a mission because,

um, the other guys will hate it too. And so they, they probably won't go out that day, you know, but that's, so that's the best day to compete. And what's happening in the fitness industry right now is that lifetime 24 hour goals. These guys are all in bankruptcy protection. They're scared to make moves. They're closing locations. They're laying off staff. And that means that there are passionate, enthusiastic fitness professionals floating around out there. It's a buyer's market for staff right now. It means that there is space out there cheap getting rented for like pennies on the dollar because they're trying to offload debt and not go bankrupt. It means that there are thousands, maybe a million clients in the US right now who are looking for guidance, who don't want to go

through this, who don't want to be susceptible. They've been awakened by the COVID scare more than ever before, and there's nowhere else to go except for the micro gym. And when the first gym started to reopen last year, we saw an 8% revenue surge in the first gyms to reopen. So we're talking like Texas, Florida, Atlanta, 8% revenue surge right off. The gyms that have been closed for longer than that are seeing a bigger surge. And so some of the gyms worldwide that are just opening right now are seeing a 35% revenue surge. And these aren't just clients coming back. It's not people spending more. It's people they've never heard from in their lives who are more aware of fitness, and they don't have anywhere else to go. They're all being funneled to our gyms.

An affiliate in Mount Shasta, California, it's in Northern California. It's probably, I don't know, two hour, 150 miles north of San Francisco. They DM me and told me that they never closed the doors once during the, and it's like, you might imagine it's, it's really mountainous area. It's a tourist attraction area, but it's, it's, it's not a super popular tourist attraction, amazing place. They never closed the doors. And in the last 12 months, they doubled their membership. I believe it. I'm just like, dude, this thing has been great. And I think this is one of those towns where the community surged a city council hall, and they basically fired every – just in one city council hall meeting, they fired the entire city council.

They reelected a new one, and they said we're not closing anything and not requiring any mask mandates. And they thrived. They thrived. And of course it was probably people from all the other counties, right? Well, what would you, what would you say is the surge? Would you say, would you say the fear that the people have become more health conscious? What do you think? I mean, you gave the fact that other businesses are hurting who are in the fitness space, but would you say, is there any component to it that it's like, Hey, more people are going to want to take responsibility for their health? Yeah. So fitness, you have way more faith than me. No, I do think it's true. So fitness is everybody knows fitness is important, but fitness is never urgent to anyone right people will spend twenty five thousand

dollars a year on heart medication because that's an urgent problem they won't spend two thousand dollars on a fitness membership because that's not urgent even though they know it's important so 20 years ago when i was selling treadmills i was the worst treadmill salesman in the world until one day i printed out these signs and I stuck them above the treadmills. And the signs were like heart attack, $26,700, you know, diabetes, you know, and I forget what it was like $6,000 per year. And you stick them on the wall above these treadmills that are 3000 bucks and suddenly you start selling more treadmills. And, you know, from the guy that was selling zero to the guy that started selling, you know, five a month, the difference was obvious. And I think that's, what's happening

now is that this crisis has made fitness, personal responsibility in your own healthcare, a more urgent problem instead of just an important one. Context and relativity is what Mr. Chris Cooper just pointed out. We need way, way more of that. When someone says to me, there are 3 million prisoners in the U.S. jail system, I never just take that number and just let it sit in my head. I immediately go, okay, so there's 330 million people in the United States. That means it's one out of every 300 people who's in jail. And my graduating class in 1990 from high school had 300 people so one of those guys is in jail or when someone says the postal service has a million people who work for it immediately do

the math i put every if someone says a number and you're not putting it in context and relativity you are either not listening or you don't give a fuck. And it's a huge mistake not to do that. I have to ask all of you to do that out there. It will make you such a better decision maker. It will make you so much smarter with risk assessment. I just heard a doctor say the other day that if you're under 50, you're twice as likely to die in a car accident than you are from SARS-CoV-2. I'm just like, we need those. People need to be doing that. You have to be doing that.

Anytime you hear that chronic diseases, diabetes kills X amount of people every year, pick some other weird stuff. How many people die from swallowing paperclips every year? How many people die from falling down stairs here and start doing the simple math it's third-grade math it really makes the world a a better place for you yeah it's perspective yeah it's all perspective in context and so you put those you put those signs up over the treadmill and and all of a sudden they have context oh shoot this is how I'm to spend my money and my time. There's probably a, so, um, I figured that I'm going to spend, if I, if my time is worth $50 an hour and, um, and I figured in gas, if over the next 10 years,

I drive my kids to jujitsu three days a week, it's going to cost me $80,000 with gas in my time. So I figured, oh shit, maybe I should build a barn on my property, to three days a week it's going to cost me eighty thousand dollars yeah with gas in my time so i figured oh shit maybe i should build a barn on my property you know yeah and and provide a service rent it out free to an instructor to run a class there and provide a service and then also save all my time i save all my time and so those are all things to be – I'll give one more quick example. I was at the Apple store with my mom who is an attorney who charges $400 an hour, and we had to cross a bridge that costs $5. And she lived 20 miles away from the Apple store, and she's buying the computer. And she's like, I really want this mouse.

And the guy is like, oh, you should try this mouse to see if you like it first. And I'm like, mom, that mouse is $40. The one you want. I know it's not cheap, but it's so, and my mom's a really smart lady. It's so much worth it just to buy it now. And if you don't like it, you can return it. It's worth it to you to spend two hours coming back, you know, round trip to this Apple store and having to deal with all their bullshit. And so people have to think like that a little bit. Yeah, we, we saw this last week. So my wife was sending her mom flowers in the hospital and we can't enter the hospital because of COVID protocols right now. So she's sending the flowers in and she's on the phone with the flower lady.

And the lady says, peonies are pretty expensive right now. And Robin says, it's my mom. She's like, well, they're eight bucks a stem. It's my mom. And it's like, it was really interesting to hear what the flower salesperson's perspective was. And she's like, oh boy, all these things together, this bouquet is going to be like $100. And Robin's like, yeah, it's my mom, you know? And it's still her mom at the end of the conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Like,

yeah, I don't know. People are just so shocked when you don't, um, you don't say I want a discount or that's too much money. You know, I have, I have a peonies that comes back every year in my yard and every year i love it it's not i'm not a huge fan of it but but what i like about it is my mom likes it so my mom comes to my house you know once a day and she always walks over and goes your peonies is so nice and that's better than any flower just make it there you go i'm happy sorry i interrupted your story so you were going to say finish that story about the so the anyway the the point that i maybe should have made earlier was that it's really, really important for gym owners to get financially secure, even wealthy themselves

before they start trying to take care of other people. And this is actually the biggest flaw. It's not that they're dumb, but not by any means. It's not that they're not hardworking. You know, the reasons that people get into fitness are because they want to serve others and they're generous and they don't expect an extravagant lifestyle, but that also sometimes sabotages their efforts because they started giving stuff away. And it's like, well, you're a, you're a fireman. Wow. You know, thank you for your service. Here's a 25% discount. I mean, they don't realize that that actually belittles the fireman service. The fireman did not sign up to be a fireman to get a 25% frigging discount at the gym, right?

So you need to, you need to like put your own mask on first before you start helping the other people around you. And when you do that, then you're able to give back and make a more meaningful contribution to the people around you. And that's kind of the stage that we're in right now. And that's what I want for all the gym owners. So many people have trouble understanding that. You have to understand, at least all the people I've known my entire life who've had money and when I've been flush with cash, they become very generous. But I did take care of myself first.

I did take all the furniture from my mom's house that I grew up with as a kid so I could save my money. But when people – it's like that $2,000 I had. I didn't need it. I had already made my way in the world. People – you have to trust people. You have to. You have to people you have to trust people you have to you have to you have to trust people and don't this and this is the really hard one people want to pull rich people down that is not going to make you better you are not going to be in a better place by taking stuff from

people who are on the higher rungs in the ladder you You actually need those people. And so you should get clarity. People should need to get clarity on the fact is what do you want? Do you want to live a better life or do you have some sort of resentment to successful people and you're trying to pull them down and thinking we should not be accommodating to the lowest common denominator in society. Medicine already does that and it's ruined. We should not do that in economics. It will ruin it. The end game is that fewer people are rich and a lot more people are poor. We see this more in Canada where there's this strong suspicion of wealth where if

you have more money, it's because you took it from somebody else. And, um, this is something that unfortunately my family is dealing with more and more now is there's like this resentment, right? So you have to kind of hide, um, that you have money and downplay things that you buy or places where you spend. And, um, yeah, unfortunately, like that's the opposite of what should be happening. There's $20 billion in the fitness industry every year. And it's not like there's a big bubble of money out there waiting for the next fitness pro to tap into. Every dollar that exists in the fitness industry is a new dollar in value that was created by a fitness professional. So you can make as much money as you want to, but there's none for you to just take. Chris, what's, what's your perspective on the gyms act

and how vocal CrossFit's being impressing that? I think it's a good initiative. Um, the thing is though that the middleman is wrong. So I have a very strong opinion on this, Brian. So, um, so Ursa is the middleman, the international health racquetball sports association and what yeah oh yeah so oh yeah racquetball racquetball with a q in it all right so these guys um were like the biggest gym owners association in the US, probably the world at the start of the COVID pandemic. They were uniquely positioned to introduce some real lobbying and they didn't do a good job. And their president resigned and they hired somebody from within to be their president. And now his wife's the vice president. And their whole business has just collapsed.

They were mostly funded by the big chain gyms. They weren't funded by any small affiliates or trainers. We jumped in about a year ago in May as a partner. We paid them about $1,500. And we're like, okay, good. Who's we? Two Brain? Two Brain, yeah.

So we're like, we want to be politically active here. We want gyms at the table to talk about what's going on here. These guys seem to have it in, they had a lobbying arm at the time. So we jumped in and they just basically collapsed. Like when, um, uh, 24 hour fitness and all the other guys filed for Chapter 11, IHRSA lost all of its funding. And it turned out that they made all of their money from their gigantic summit events or whatever they're called. And because they couldn't hold those, they're pretty close to bankrupt. All of their meetings now are begging for money.

So they decided that one of the best ways to make money was to launch a new arm, which they called the lobbying arm. Forget that they were a lobbying organization in the first place. This new lobbying arm is supposed to represent gyms, and this is what's pushing the Gyms Act or supporting the Gyms Act. Now you have to look at this new arm of IHRSA. Who's running it? Who is it? They have their own board of directors.

The vice president of this initiative is like the CEO versus wife. Then you have these other players who are all from the commercial gym industry. There's not a single non-franchisee on that board. There's no CrossFit affiliates on there. There's no trainers. These are franchisees, with affiliates on there. There's no trainers. These are franchisees, right? These are not small gym owners. And so they're backing the Gyms Act. But really what happened was that the Gyms Act was initiated by a couple of senators or reps or whatever on their own. And now IHRSA is just kind of like getting behind it and getting a letter writing campaign going. But that didn't work in the first days of COVID. It didn't stop the gym closures, you know? So in my mind, Ursa had a big opportunity to step up and lead the industry. They didn't do it. They're not doing anything

different right now. And if the gyms act succeeds, it's, it's probably not going to be due to, or because of a lack of their efforts. Is this in the United States? Yeah. But you're in Canada. Why get involved in this? Just because of your business and you're looking out for your clients? Yeah. So my job at the start of COVID, I realized was like...

So a lot of the gyms in Two Brand, about 70% of our gyms are CrossFit affiliates. And so they immediately looked to HQ for support. Nothing was happening. Nothing was being said. And then the George Floyd stuff goes down. Suddenly there's this turnover to Eric Rosa and there's this six month vacuum of leadership. There's nothing. And so that at that point, we're like, okay, who's going to lead? Well, it's Ursa. Okay. Let's give them our money. Uh, no, it's not going to be them. It's going to be these other people, SFIA. Let's give them our money. No shit. There's a vacuum. Nobody's saying anything. I got to say something. And so we started publishing a daily guide of like,

here's what this affiliate is doing. And it worked, you know, from all over the world. is doing and it worked, you know, from all over the world. Um, and because about 70% of our gyms are in the U S we were paying super close attention to what was going there. Like we were publishing a daily, what state is opening, what state is closing, you know, et cetera. When you say there's a six month vacuum in, in, in during the transition, what, what, why isn't it a 16 month vacuum? What have you seen after six months that makes you think we're still not, not seeing any leadership? um yeah exactly this man i don't want to get into uh so it's the only way we're going to pick up an extra 10 viewers so like with with i'm just harassing you you do you chris no it's cool man i'm trying to be

tactful and respectful and I'm not within HQ. Greg was almost a spiritual leader and people were signing up for CrossFit affiliation because they believed in Greg's vision, right? Like it was almost a religion. And when I was sitting at his kitchen table up in Portland, I said like, Greg, why should somebody sign up for CrossFit affiliation? And he said, well, if I was using something that somebody else invented, I would feel like I owed them so I would pay them. And I think that's why a lot of affiliates were paying CrossFit. Listen to what Chris just said, how honest that is, people. That is what Greg said.

Yeah. Right there. Yeah. And, you know, for many years I was happy doing that. And then when Greg left, I said, I took a harder look at like, you know, what is the value of my affiliation here? And I decided that I, you know, we had just run out of runway and I decided to just end it. And, um, it had been coming. I mean, this was not just like a Greg's gone, I'm out kind of thing. But that spirituality, that inspirational leadership is kind of what's lacking now. Eric Rosa is a very fit dude. He is a super fan of CrossFit. He loves the games. He and I have a lot in common. I think we would be friends. But I just, I'm not going to hitch my cart to his horse, you know, instead I'm just going to go on and make my own way now. And so when I say there's a vacuum of leadership,

I don't mean that there's a lack of leaders. It's just a lack of direction. And so, you know, where did Nicole Carroll go? I don't know. Where did Dave Castro go? Don't know. You know, um, where's CrossFit going? I don't know. And that's why I'd rather just kind of follow my own star at this point. I would like to, because people really don't realize this, and Chris was nailing it. People thought CrossFit was a business. And so then when they think of CrossFit as a business, CrossFit HQ as a business, they think that it's going to follow like the Harvard Business School model, you know, profit margins. Basically what Greg was doing is he was curating people with integrity who had a singular focus on making people healthy.

And every week there was a new amazing tagline coming out of CrossFit HQ via all Greg. We have a cure for the world's most vexing problem. Forging elite fitness, fitness in a hundred words, um, CrossFit help. I mean, it was just nonstop the stuff he, and it was all a singular vision. Now, whatever shortcomings he had is, uh, I remember reading this book, the three things you need as a leader. And one of them is vision. Greg would not stop talking about his vision. It poured off of him, and it was super, super consistent, and he just kept saying it in different ways for 15 years,

and there was no one who was going to sway him from it. And when Chris says, he asked Greg, hey, what do people get for affiliation? He goes, hey, it's just kind of a moral obligation or something a man of integrity would do because I created this thing and you should pay me and i know a lot of people have trouble believing in that but people send money to the sierra club and to this and that and this and greg was basically like and hey and if you don't want to fuck off yeah like literally you don't want to play this game you don't want to play the honor system integrity game you don't want to play you don't want to like you you want

to teach crossfit and lie to all your clients that you didn't it's not crossfit go the fuck ahead i don't care fuck you get out and that is was a really even working there that was hard to do because we all the employees wanted to make more money because we wanted to get paid more yeah i wanted to get the leather seats in my minivan so but yeah i mean you you nailed it i if you had a good car salesman would have sold you the leather seats the first 10 seconds after you bought the car that's right and a tread and a tread um um what's interesting is and this is the first time i think being around you that i'm humble enough to say this i don't't, I don't see vision coming out of HQ. I have no idea what they fucking stand for.

I'm completely likes when I, I watched the part of the semifinals and it said brought to you by woo, this, that, and this, and then it said CrossFit training and said the, you know, pre whatever they said,

the premier program for coaches and trainers. And my, it broke my heart because in my last two years of running the media team there all we were trying to do is tell people that crossfit l1 is the ultimate operating manual for the human genome the the dna to express itself the greatest and we were making it was awesome it was like oh my god we're really contributing to humanity now we're gonna we're gonna inoculate people and i feel like and i still post about that all the time on my instagram like hey you have to take your l1 you have to take your

l1 if you're gonna be a human on this planet and especially if you have kids and um but just now listen to you talk maybe my bias is is that there is a vision coming out of there, but I just can't hear it. I'm blinded to it because of my proximity to Greg, and there's a new vision, but for some reason it's just going over my head. I mean, I'm open to it. I'm having trouble saying that even out loud, though. But CrossFit has two products, right? They have training, which nobody is questioning is the best training out there. And it's great training for humans, not just fitness coaches. Then there's affiliation. And that's a very different story. Like the value proposition of the training is your life will be better. Like you might add a year onto your life for a thousand bucks. The value of affiliation is unclear. And that's where the inspirational leadership, I mean, we just haven't seen it yet. You know, Eric might be relying on the athletes to provide that. That could very well be the case. You know, I'm seeing a younger generation

getting interested in CrossFit again because of the renewed emphasis on the games. It could be that he hasn't had time to formulate his plan or share it with everybody yet. Or it could be that he's a type of leader who wants like the local regional reps to step up and be the leaders. And can I throw one other idea out there? Sure. Yeah, sure. He, the, the, maybe, you know, he had the dream to be in this position, but maybe it came about suddenly, and he maybe never actually thought through how he would execute it. And so maybe he's just taking time to observe and evaluate.

And then after a year or two, he'll have, okay, I've gathered the information, and I'm ready to execute my vision. But that's allowing time to wait. And you're right, Brian. So, I mean, that is valid. and I'm ready to execute my vision. But that's allowing time to wait. And you're right, Brian. So, I mean, that is valid. A lot of leaders do that. When your gyms are closed, though, you don't have that luxury, man. And so I'm not disagreeing with you. What I am saying is that if that is the strategy,

that maybe it could have been rethought. Here's two things I've been mulling over quite a bit. One, I think CrossFit Inc. missed a tremendous opportunity. We were shut down for 15 months, the world, and people were stuck in front of their TVs. They should have hired me back. They could afford me. And they should have built back the entire media team,

and they should have been producing massive amounts of content while people were addicted to their screens. They missed an enormous opportunity to get people addicted to CrossFit media. Huge. I mean, now they're putting out one video every, I don't know, three to four months that we used to put out at least, you know, two to three on that level every single week. But they should have, they should have doubled, tripled, quadrupled down a media. Like series, crazy little competitions, game shows, weight loss. They should have just gone berserk. And the second thing is I believe that the people who purchased CrossFit Inc.

think that they purchased Harley Davidson. And what they really purchased was the Hells Angels. And they're still looking around for the motorcycle manufacturing plant. And there isn't one. We deliver meth up and down the western seaboard of the United States at any cost necessary. We ride cool motorcycles and we'll fuck you up. And that's basically what crossfit was it

was a it was it was a like you said it was basically a lifestyle cult and then it started because getting into activism when people like coca-cola started getting involved in the health space so greg had to pull out the guns on our motorcycles and start shooting back at them hey get the fuck we run meth on the west coast. And I understand why he would think that. That's not a dig at him at all, because if you're a business-minded person, you think everyone's selling hamburgers. We're not selling hamburgers.

We're not selling widgets. We're selling personal responsibility, and you can't sell personal responsibility. So that's kind of my, and it's an enormous shift, mental shift to make. I make, I make it sound so easy. Like I worked there 15 years and I only have the most clarity on it now that I don't work there. What exactly we were doing, but this was an experiment that a mad scientist was running. All 162 countries who jumped on board were nothing but volunteers.

We were all, we were so happy to be volunteers we even paid him to be volunteers for this vaccine program and now the the mad scientist has left the room and the experiment is over the experiment is over and it's now a business and so now it's it's kind of cool we're going to get to see hey can you run an experiment can you turn something that was once just an experiment into a business? And I mean, yeah. And what's cool in the small business miracle in this is, and I don't mean to make light of it at all, is that these people have, some people, including yourself, Chris Cooper and Two Brain Business, and your amazing staff have cracked the code that you can actually on a, on the ground level, turn this experiment into a very, very lucrative career where you're helping people, you're staying

true and you're making money and feeding your kids. I mean, it's a, it's kind of the ultimate church, right? And contributing back to your community. I mean, your kids, right. That's what I mean. Yeah. Right, right, right, right., your kids, right. That's what I mean. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Hugely contributing.

That's what I mean. Tell by telling the truth. Yes. Yeah. Hugely contributing to your community. I mean, if you run a successful CrossFit gym, that the best part about working at HQ,

I used to tell my wife and everyone in my family is this is what I get to tell my kids. I do. I save people's lives for a living. Yeah. I don't even save people's lives for a living yeah i don't even save people's lives i give people the information so they can save their own lives it was awesome even better there's there was a boat missed and there was kind of a huge advantage surrendered uh during covid with the online media stuff like um some chains like orange theory they

had to scramble for six months just to get a base version of what CrossFit already had. And unfortunately, CrossFit just couldn't make any headway with the media that it already had. It's too bad because things were set up. But you live and learn. And next, there will be probably another pandemic of sorts. Oh, stop, Chris. Oh, stop. Oh, stop. Oh, stop.

You're saying there'll be another opportunity for Netflix and Bezos to explode again? Please don't tell me. Dude, come on. I mean, what happened here was governments around the world basically, you know, they set their playbook for the next time this happens, right? So, like, Texas next time probably won't lock down at all. Florida probably won't lock down at all. Canada probably will. They'll still be locked down by then.

That's just what we do now. Yeah, I mean, whatever, right? We're still locked down. Hey, why open up? We can just keep – Chris, do you ever think about leaving Canada? So, the most recent idea, you're like, yeah, I own a mansion in Costa Rica already. Well, I do have a cottage on the river that borders Canada and the States. And I mean, I can canoe across to the States. When I was a kid, lots of people did. They'd go

buy cheap smokes and come back. And so there are a lot of vaccines right across the river from me and there are none where I am. And so a local reporter called the hospital in the States and said, you know, could I just come over and get a vaccine? And they're like, yeah, walk on in 30 bucks, you know, high five. And he was like, amazing. And then he called our border control control and said, Hey, if I go across and get vaccinated can i come back and they're like no so the government cares about you yeah yeah i know so anyway uh the reason that most most people don't in canada don't own homes outside of canada is because they're not allowed to leave no you can, but it's hard to come back, right? We can leave. Oh yeah. We can leave once. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, Chris, as, as we wrap up here, what, what are you reading? What, what books in the last couple of years do you think that would you recommend to someone? Um, one of the things that I'm really getting into right now is, um, bettering myself as a leader. I've made a million mistakes in that area. Um, I'm working with a psychotherapist now to help with that. And what she's helped me see is that like the building blocks of leadership, they don't come from the latest book from some military person, right? They come from within you and you have to build them up like a fitness. Um, for most of us, we open a business, we hire our first person. And it's just like, it's like going to CrossFit your first day doing Fran as

prescribed and killing yourself, right? Like you just thrown to the wolves and what you really need to do is learn the air squat. And then that's, you know, the building blocks of leadership. And so the stuff that I'm reading right now, I just finished The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko. I was getting ready to have him at our summit, and I hadn't read that book yet, and it's incredible. Really good, even though it's from a military perspective. The one that I'm finishing right now is Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty. Different perspective, but he actually teaches really the same stuff. Uh, let's see here. That's two. That's good. Have you read range by David Epstein? Yeah. Yeah. Last year, uh, inside on the bike, I read that. Yeah. Really interesting stuff.

Um, so because, so in the business world for years and years, Jim Collins wrote this book called good to great, which was commonly accepted as like, yeah. So one of the key ideas in that book was the hedgehog concept. Get really, really good at one thing and just do that, right? Well, it turns out that in a new economy, you have to be kind of good at a lot of things and then piece them together into like a career. And I mean, I'm kind of good at blogging. I'm kind of good at, you know, uh, data. I'm kind of good at how to build a website. And so you put all those things together and you know, that's the recipe for the biggest gym mentorship agency on the

planet. And, um, is that two brain? Yeah. Oh yeah. By, by a long shot. Thanks man. Awesome. Yeah. So, um, you know, I really think like that's, that's, uh, the key, that range concept is the key to be teaching our kids. And, um, can I just finish on a Jim Collins story? Please, please. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So, so I'm in, I'm in New York. The universe just kind of does this to me all the time. I'm in New York. I'm in Manhattan. I'm with my business mentor, Todd Herman. And Todd wrote The Alter Ego Effect.

And we're walking down Fifth Avenue, okay? And we're talking about Jim Collins. And he's like, you know, the hedgehog concept, it used to work. Like the hedgehog used to win. But now it's the foxes. The foxes who know how to build an audience. Once you know how to build an audience, you'll never go hungry. They'll follow you everywhere.

My phone rings. Guess who was calling me? Jim Collins. What? How did he get your number? F-ing Collins. Because I had called him a couple weeks ago to see if he would just, you know, if I could fly out and spend a day with him.

And his secretary said, I'll check, I'll check, I'll check. And he didn't want her to tell me no. So he called me to say no. And like, that's cool. That's cool. It was amazing. So I'm talking to Todd Herman and I'm like, like, this guy's kind of a recluse. I'm like, that's Jim Collins. But the universe just kind of does this to me once in a while, you know, and if you're open to these kinds of experiences, they happen, but you have to be over your own ego and open to mentorship and open to accept these gifts that the universe wants to give you. Yeah.

Tell me about that. Every time you say that you're, you're in therapy and you're working on your leadership, it makes me uncomfortable. I can't go to therapy. Well, like, like,

is that scary? No. So like, like you're too old and successful and happy and fit to go to therapy. Why are you, you're like, why are you trying to fix something that's not broken to therapy why it's you're like why are you trying to fix something that's not broken well it's not broken but like why am i doing thrusters in my garage right like my shoulders aren't broken right so what happened there was I I own some commercial buildings and this woman

named Bonnie Skinner who's a psychotherapist rented an office from me. And one night as I was leaving the building, she was sitting in her office like this. And, um, I said, Hey, you know, what's going on? And she's like, I think I just made a huge mistake. I, I had this job. I was making a good living, like $42 an hour to do psychotherapy. And I was getting, you know, 30 hours a week and it was stressful and I like hated life, but now I'm on my own and I'm starving. And I sat down on her couch and I said, well, why are you starving? And she's like, I don't have any clients. And I said, well, let me, let me just give you some tips here. So we got her a client and the first client paid

her $120 an hour, triple what she was making. And she was like, holy shit. And then we got her a client and the first client paid her $120 an hour, triple what she was making. And she was like, holy shit. And then we got her another client and then we started getting her referrals. And then, um, I said, okay, you know, like what, what is it that's so special about you that made you want to leave in the first place? And she said, well, I don't believe in depression. I'm a psychotherapist who doesn't believe in depression. And I said, well, everybody believes in depression. How do you not? And she's like, it's a lie. And so she took me through this. I like her. I like her. I like her. She did this exercise with me and I was like, and when Bonnie gets going, she talks like Oprah. She sounds just like her. And, um, she taught me this exercise called a personal check-in. And it's just basically like,

you know, on a scale of one to 10, um, if we're rating your relationship with your family, what does a 10 out of 10 look like for you? And then you say, what does a one out of 10 look like? And then what's a five and where are you now? And then, you know, what's the step that you can take to move it from a five to a six, that kind of thing. Well, that, that approach to self-betterment really appealed to me. And so, um, what happened was that she started getting calls from business execs from my program and she's like, all these people feel like imposters, like they shouldn't be in charge and they're terrified. And I said, well, what do you tell them? And she started telling me what's the building blocks of leadership. And so I started working with her myself and it's

been incredible. Like my whole life is different. That's amazing. No wonder you slipped in there so maybe you're an egomaniac like me too and you just accidentally slipped in like i i like this story this is good this is good yeah this is awesome she flipped the script on you you went you know what she probably was already wealthy and had a million clients and she saw you walking by and she put her hand she makes you look like a beginner in sales in salesmanship. She's just schooled you, I think, Chris. I'm going to go with that story. She sets you up.

I'll send you a video of her talk from our summit after it's over. Oh, please. Please do. That's a great story. You have great stories that all have a common thread of just really being open. Thanks. Yeah. The bottom line is it doesn't matter what inspires somebody as long as they get inspired to live a better life. And, um, if Richard Simmons is what does it for you and that makes you pop in the DVD four times a week

and, you know, do the Richard Simmons thing and in your living room and you live an extra 10 years and you're happier because of it, then I am the biggest Richard Simmons fan in the world because he can do that for you. And, um, yeah, that, that's really been the lesson that I've had to learn the hard way the last five years. Like the solution doesn't have to come from me, but if it can come through me, then I feel great. Brian, do you want to say anything before I crack one last joke? Brian, do you want to say anything before I crack one last joke? I've been curious to ask him if there was any inspiration or cool story behind the title of the Founder Farmer Tinker Thief book, because I just think that's an awesome title. Well, I was raised – thank you.

I was raised a farmer, and one day I was just kind of thinking about the entrepreneurial lifespan. I was out on my bike and I was trying to explain to somebody who had sent me this long email. And he had been listening to Gary Vaynerchuk. You guys know who Gary Vee is. I don't really like Gary Vee anymore. I used to be a great fan, but Gary Vee's message is really, really useful when you're in the startup mode and you're grinding and you're working an 18-hour day and your head is down and you're just going. But eventually, you want to get out of that mode and you want to get out of that mode quick because if you continue down that path, it leads to self-martyrdom and self-sacrifice and you ruin your relationships and your health and your family. And I was headed down that road. Um, and so I, I was thinking like, well, when is somebody like Gary V appropriate? And when is he the opposite of what you want? And, um, so I just started, I was listening to, um, uh, old pioneers. You guys know that poem? No. Look it up. It's Walt Whitman. Um, you're an American.

I totally thought that was part of your curriculum, but yeah, Walt Whitman. It probably was. Oh, pioneers. I was listening to that on my headphones and I'm riding my bike and I was like, you know, what, you know, the pioneers evolved to become farmers and the farmers evolved to become tradesmen, tinkers. And then, you know, the epitome of that, you know, what comes after tinker and the book was originally supposed to be called founder, farmer, tinker King. And then, um, working with Todd and working with my editors, they were like, do you really want to be a King? And I said, no, I want to be to be robin hood and um so that's where thief came from nice cool true yeah if you guys hear water running uh it's during this whole podcast i realize it sounds like someone like someone's in one of the rooms you guys are in there's a toilet and there's just a line of guys peeing in the toilet. But I'm sure that's just – That's just the tin can under my desk.

I'm guessing Chris is in his kitchen or something and every once in a while someone comes in to turn the water on. It's about me. Sorry about that. No, no. It's not me. Hey, that's the greatest part. Someone made the greatest YouTube comment ever the other day. They said, hey, I'm really glad that there's thousands of podcasts that are

out there that are polished and you still just don't give a shit. And I'm like, yeah, go with that. Exactly. Exactly. Chris, thanks. I tell you, I prepare for every single podcast I do and I'm a little nervous for every podcast I do and this podcast I was so excited with no nervousness and I wasn't prepared at all because I know that you and I are um have swimmed in enough waters together yeah we've never and we don't really see each other you're swimming in the Atlantic and I'm swimming in the Pacific so it's cool always to for us when our whatever time of year that is for when our sharks are, what is that called? Our migration seasons cross paths, like two birds that fly by each other once a year.

And I just love seeing you, and I know we have so much to talk about. So thank you. Well, you're welcome. I have a big regret, and that is that you have way more stories than I do, and I never get to hear them. that you have way more stories than I do and I never get to hear them. So, um, if, if you wouldn't mind returning the favor, I'd love to have you on our show and just let you tell some stories. Awesome. Well, I do 80% of the talking on my show anyway. No, it would be an honor to me. I would love that. I'd love that. Yeah. Okay, cool. Um, don't hang.