The Sevan Podcast - #664 - Coty Bradburn, CrossFit Affiliate Series

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

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Hey, good morning. I know I started four minutes early. It's okay. I went to Supercuts yesterday. Why would you do that? Oh, you got your own haircut. And I walked in there and there was no one in there, just the receptionist and a haircut lady, and she didn't have any customers. And she said, and the receptionist was this young girl with the mask on

i don't know 20 years old she goes she just looks at me she goes you're not going to shave your head are you i go i am going to shave my head she goes a number four all the way around i go i don't know thinking about like a number three on top and one or two on the sides she goes you can't do that like oh shit did my wife call ahead like what is going on here i said what do you mean she goes you have such beautiful hair i said oh thank you i go i don't want to be one of those old guys with uh like really long hair that just looks like a douche she goes you're not old i I go, I'm pretty old. She goes, you don't look old.

I go, that's cool. Thank you. Then the lady who cuts the hair, she's probably like 65, long hair, and she talks really slow. She goes, you know, one of those people who just every word just comes out really slow. Like you're talking to a cartoon character. That's like a snail. She's like, I think you should just maybe cut the sides and leave the top long. Okay.

So I just, I, I, it was weird. So I went in there and she just gave me the haircut she wanted. And it's like the, I think it's the fucking best haircut I've ever had in my life. Really? And that was a super cuts.

It was a super cuts. I can't believe it. I went in there to just, did she have my head shaved? I mean, don't you think it looks pretty fucking amazing? Look at it. Yeah. I'm honestly impressed. I look like a normal person.

Yeah, they cleaned you up pretty good. Hold on, I can't hear you. What? They cleaned you up pretty good. Yeah. It's not even like uneven. No. That's my biggest issue when I go to Supercuts is that they jack it up.

I think i look like i think i look like a model i look like one of those old men models yeah you look great you could be like a louis vuitton model or something i had to beg for that it's too late you could have said that before i said i look like a model you didn't say shit you didn't say yeah you actually look good so sorry but i was like holy cow. Look, she made me. This is like. And then the whole time she kept telling me how handsome I look. And I was just like, maybe that's what happened. She cast a spell on me.

She told me more times in that haircut that I look handsome than I've heard it in my entire life combined. That's weird. Look at Austin. Look at even Austin wants a piece i only hear that from gay guys or old black women there's an old white one it's the only time anybody says it on handsome yeah gay guys i get a lot of handsome from you guys you know the thing is is they're just not afraid to say it it's it's that they're free can you guys hear me hi yes i cannot hear you cody's really handsome that sucks that's gonna fuck up everything's relative it's his jaw okay i can hear you now oh

did we have an echo from Cody? No, it's good. Yeah. Getting a good haircut. And you know, what's crazy. She was in there. I was like, how long you've been cutting hair? And she's like, I don't know. She's I forget what she said since 1979 or something. I was seven. And I said, and I said, she goes, I really love my job. She goes, I like making people feel good. And I was like, oh, that's really cool. Kind of like Cody. And then she said, um, uh, the guy came in to get his haircut and she goes, oh, I'm so sorry.

I have to go pick my daughter up from somewhere from work and I don't have any more time for haircuts today. And then when he walked out, she said, oh, I feel so bad. He really needed a haircut i was like what is going on i'm like had the angel of haircuts cut my hair yesterday i had a super cuts every time i've been there it's just been douchebags her name is lola and she's at the super cuts in uh capitola anyway cody what's up not much man nice haircut oh this guy this guy's a podcasting genius just coming in unbelievable hey is that your what is it are you at the gym yes what room is that this is my office

oh that's nice yeah do the staff have access to that? Yeah, we do our staff meetings in here. Oh, that's cool. Oh, that's really cool. And then you got a coffee maker in there. And a microwave, the essentials. Yep, there's a fridge too. Cody is not up for super cuts talk maybe let's um let's uh i'm gonna say can we start a poll caleb and we'll check it at the

end of the show and we'll ask the the poll is does cody get haircuts or does he cut his own hair and we'll ask cody for the answer at the end and you can, um, and you can vote. So he also has a, uh, a nice large mic was very observant of you. And this morning we were shot out of the cannon. Thanks Jeff. Oh, Cody, thanks for coming on. This has been one of my favorite and easiest and most fulfilling kind of things i've tackled is doing these kind of affiliate shows where i'm trying once a week to interview an affiliate and i'm trying to do affiliates that i've never heard of before because i feel like there's like these 20 or 30 affiliates that always get like all the attention sure to no fault of their own

but they're the guys for some reason that you know you always see on the site or that they're always being interviewed or always get the meetings with the ceo so yeah man absolutely cheers yeah you're in where is your gym it's uh charlotte north carolina and is that is charlotte a coastal town no. We're about three hours from the coast. Okay. And what's the name of your gym? CrossFit Mountain Island. Mountain Island. Mountain Island, yeah.

It's misleading. Sevan, don't you do your research? Why didn't you know all that before? Hey, you jackasses. I'm asking so you can know. I don't want to hear any dumb shit in the comments workout get fit be happy um you are how old are you 29 man you're doing it and you're married and have a baby in the um oven that's it, man. Well, my wife does, but yeah. Right, right,

right. Important distinction. Well, congratulations. That's all pretty awesome. I stumbled upon the Instagram account, conservative hippie. Oh yeah. And yeah, I'm so, I'm so, I don't normally use this word because I don't mean it in any, um, condescending way, the way Dave used to use it to me. I'm so proud of your wife. I'm so fricking proud of your wife. Yeah. I went through her Instagram account and she is the best version of herself. She is like, like god and congratulations she seems so beautiful and so down to earth and like someone who really wants to work on herself and i was just like holy crap this he scored what a cool chick yeah i'm out of my league for sure she is she is so cool

brave as shit yeah you're not kidding she's the bravest person i know and she works at the gym too yeah we both run it together there's a ton to unpack with cody um because uh he's got tons of wisdom and advice and knowledge and know-how and experience on running a crossfit gym and yet also he himself has been on a remarkable journey from being a young man to kind of when he described himself as a kid reminded me of me. And we'll get into that. Didn't play any sports, chunky, and just CrossFit was kind of like the first thing that kind of late in life, while most people maybe were turning in their sporting mindset, he found something that, oh, maybe I can be an athlete. Maybe I can do something competitive.

And so it's a pretty cool journey. And then on top of that, there's a constant theme in all of his posts and presentations that he really wants to help people, that that's like his calling. He likes to work with people, likes to make them happy, likes to introduce them to things to make their life better. Fair assessment? Fair assessment? Yeah assessment yeah you make me blush oh good that's good that's my job um and by the way uh caleb was eating that's why his jaw's moving like that he has not got addicted to meth well to meth well i'll be too sure uh cody um uh let's go back to the beginning are you born and raised

in north carolina uh south carolina so where i live in charlotte's on the border of the states north and south carolina so i grew up in a town called indian land south carolina um it's just south of like valentinene, uh, which is a kind of affluent part of Charlotte. Um, so I grew up in South Carolina for the most part, and then spent most of my time between either North or South Carolina, all my family's in South Carolina, but then I was the first one to move in North Carolina when I bought my first house six years ago. Oh, congrats congrats uh no accent i'm sorry no accent yeah no man i've got um i don't have the southern draw my dad's got it and most of my family does

but i don't know what it is i didn't get it you didn't try to not have it it just you just didn't get it no it wasn't intentional even from a kid like i i've always had like a really more of a northern like language i talk pretty fast so coaching's helped me kind of dial that back a little bit but even as a kid my grandpa would tell me to slow down um being you know in south carolina but yeah no no southern drill but it wasn't intentional and um and you grew up just uh but both your you grew up with both your parents siblings yeah i've got um one brother he's 21 he'll be 22 in a couple months i know it was the two of us and my parents yeah and uh and there was the the there was that photo of you you weren't just chunky you were a kid. I was a fat kid, yeah.

Yeah, you weighed, I don't know when it was, but I saw somewhere you weighed up to 260 pounds. Yeah, I remember that was kind of a pivotal moment in my life. I remember stepping on the scale at the doctor's office. It was late in the day. It was around dusk at a medical plaza in Fort Mill. And I stepped on the scale and the woman kept tapping the scale over, tapped it over, tapped it over. I was probably 16, maybe 17 at the time. And it went past two 50 and I was at first, I was like, Holy shit.

And she kept tapping. It kept tapping it. And I think it was up to two, two 58. God. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. So on the left, that was me on a dock at my grandma's house and believe it or not there's a girl on both sides of me holding my hand oh yeah girls yeah i know but they were they were just friends charity picture yeah yeah charity picture um how how does that happen how do you how do you how do you get to um 16 years old what's the lifestyle that um you live from being born to 16 like 258 260 yeah like

like tell me typical days for you growing up like watching cartoons and eating boxes of ritz crackers or dude yeah i mean pretty much man was, um, it was a lot of, I mean, it was like most people that are in that position. It's at that age is ignorance, you know? So I remember as long as I can go back, you know, having friends that were skinny, thin, they weren't overweight, but we did the same things. Like I have got, I had this friend, AJ, we'd sit in this, um, his parents had a little warehouse by their house and they owned a

printing company so we'd sit in their offices and play runescape and video games all night and drink mountain dew for 12 hours straight you know yeah and just eat whatever we wanted to and he was he was thin and i was the fat kid and i that never really made sense to me but to answer your original question yeah i mean most of my time if i wasn't in school, I was playing, you know, Call of Duty 4, playing video games, watching TV, watching movies, just eating ramen noodles. My parents had this, like, little island in the kitchen that had a bunch of just snacks and treats on it, like grab-and-go type stuff. And I was just addicted to food, you know, addicted to feeling good. Did you get the new Call of Duty? What's that?

Did you get the new Call of Duty? I don't, man, because I've got to control my environment or I'll get re-addicted pretty fast. Isn't he good? I haven't tried it yet. I've been stuck outside of the U.S. Hey, you can't play that there, Caleb, from there? The internet keeps cutting out every time we try to download oh big brother uh is your brother in the military no that sounds like big brother they're not letting him play oh oh big brother okay

did that island did you drink capri suns and box juices and kiebler elves crackers and um lots of box i probably ate or drank it yeah i mean sweet tea i mean i remember my looking back so in the south sweet tea is a big thing right i remember watching um my parents they'd make a gallon of tea once every day and a half and because we drink it and i mean i would watch my mom put cups of sugar cups of sugar and sweet tea like probably two three cups at a time just for one gallon and i mean we could go through one of those in a day was there was there any talk about healthy eating in your house growing up um yeah we'd go through like uh we'd go through seasons of it where it would be like everyone

else like we'd make a good effort. And then, um, like, I remember doing the South beach diet with a mom for, for, for a while. Like I remember eating peanut butter before bed is like a healthy snack. Um, and then, I mean, it was, it wasn't that my parents were like not making an effort to be healthy. My mom's a nurse, you know, she works in the hospital. My parents aren't like obese or cigarette thing. They're just, it was just kind of like a cultural thing, I guess.

So, and it was also like not really knowing what to do. I mean, I think there's just a lot of ignorance around what is healthy eating. So like we'd have, you know, sometimes we'd eat pork chops and vegetables and the other nights would be lasagna and pizza. I mean, it's just the standard American diet, you know sometimes would be pork chops and vegetables and the other nights would be lasagna and pizza i mean it's just the standard american diet you know but the the thing that comes to mind is the the deviation from normal was a healthy meal and that was the problem was like we'd have a meat and a vegetable but that was a deviation from normal where normal was just random. Yeah, it's interesting because I think my mom was trying to keep us really healthy.

But like you said, in a lot of ways, they just believe what the TV set said, right? Well, yeah. You know, 7 to 14 servings of grains a day, right? Nonfat milk, low-fat Keebler cookies, healthy whole grain Ritz crackers. I mean, you know what I mean? Just all the shit that was written on there. Cereal for breakfast, for sure. Yeah, tons of cereal for breakfast.

Tons of – my house always had orange juice in it, always. Fresh and natural yeah i think that was the only thing that my dad actually poured an actual serving size up for us was orange juice i always get so mad that he didn't fill it like all the way to the top of the glass you'd feel like half a glass like only eight hours yeah right everything else was like a full bowl of cereal and all my kids glasses are four ounce glasses that's a good idea yeah just for you just get a four ounce glass you just and you just repour but you know i don't give my kids that my kids have never had juice yeah no juice no so in

hindsight it's even it's even um when i think about it i'm sure i had it too we weren't allowed to have soda in the house but i can't even imagine giving caffeine to kids now in my current mindset. But back then, like if you were drinking sweet tea and Mountain Dew, and I've seen those videos where they show moms putting Mountain Dew in baby's bottles. Oh, wow. I haven't seen that. Yeah. Have you ever heard of the thing called Mountain Dew Mouth? No. yeah have you ever heard of the thing called mountain dew mouth no oh man oh man it's basically they give kids mountain dew just from a young age like from when they're babies and then by the time they're like you know 10 years old their whole entire fucking gum line and teeth line is just completely rotted out another reference for that uh for that word is appalachia. So that's an indicator of what goes on over there.

And you're right. It's because they don't know. It's because they don't know. It's sad, man. It's just like walking around Walmart makes me sad. Very, right? So you're 16 and you get to the end. Are you playing any sports at this time are you doing

any activity are you do you avoid pe class as a kid um man we could spend the whole show like all my childhood in school you know just crazy shit no i mean i wasn't avoiding i didn't play sports i played baseball for a few years like coaches picks i was like probably the longest sport i played as an adolescent but that was before high school a lot of my weight came on like i would probably say if i had to roughly like sixth grade to maybe 11th grade um so like there was a span there where i got out of baseball i didn't play any sports i skateboarded that was the extent of my activity was skateboarding activity was skateboarding i skateboarded for six or seven years um but as active as that is you're still riding on a piece of wood you know so there's not a lot of exercise happening there and with kids that culture too is kind of like hey let's skate to 7-eleven get a bag of doritos

and a mountain dew right oh for sure arizona sweet teas um going to taco bell trying to win as much free as we came off those little quarter spinny things you know and then go skate for four or six hours on the weekends i did taco bell too that's fascinating you did taco bell i would get like the 12 pack of soft tacos and eat them all to myself that's that's impressive yeah did you used to do that uh i went more for my crunch like crunch wraps i didn't like the soft tacos the taco bell so not the ground beef in the top it just it didn't sit right like the crunchiness made me ignore what the beef probably was i think 12 tacos and 12 packets of hot sauce oh my god yeah hot sauce was just shitting fire i didn't even care

i was i was a trash compactor. And even though I was the smallest kid amongst my friends, I would always eat the most. And I would always tell them, like, if they ordered one omelet, I would order two. Just on principle. I just, they were amused by how much I could eat. And I was, if I could get attention doing that, I probably just did it, would be my thought in hindsight.

In the Midwest, we have Taco John's, and they sell a thing called a 12-pack and a pound. So it's 12 hard-shell tacos and then a pound of potato olays, which is basically hash browns, mini hash browns a season. hash browns, like mini hash browns a season. And so that was our thing with the football team. It's like, oh, in your preseason, you got to fuel up so you go get a 12-pack and a pound in between your two-a-days. And dip them into high-fructose corn syrup that's called ketchup.

Yeah, sour cream. Fucking all that shit. The essentials. Did any of the kids make fun of you or start pointing out to you that you were heavy? Did people start talking about your weight, your friends? Yeah, they were really good at it. They were professionals.

What would they say? Oh, man. You know, there's a few very vivid memories that stick out. I remember this one time I was probably 11 or 12, maybe I had like just gotten a cell phone. I remember this kid calling me. It was a kid and a friend of mine. Well, friends, a strong word in retrospect, but they called me like probably two or 3 AM and they prank called me to tell me how fat I was. So they woke me up to tell me how fat I was. Yeah. So that happened. Wow.

Yeah. I remember that. I'll never forget that. But just like kids would, you know, they'd call me the fat kid. They'd walk up and like, try to scoop my man boobs.

You know, that was a thing for a long time. So then I wore hoodies and walked with like this really kyphotic forward position. So the kids couldn't see my man boobs i remember that that was a big part of high school um you know getting bullied in the bus riding home it was interesting man it it was like my friends liked me because i was i was a good person but all these kids that didn't know me, they would just assume that I was, I don't know, lacking value.

How did you, how did you take it? Like in the moment, how did you take it? Would you take it like a champ or would you, would you like hide the fact you were offended or? No, I wasn't the kid that would like laugh along. I mean, I would just introvert and like ignore it and walk away you know or just avoid eye contact just take that shit and push it down i'll deal with that in my 30s yeah lock it away exactly um did you at that point did you have any aspirations as that starts pouring in do you catch yourself doing weird shit in your room at night?

Like before you go to bed, do a fucking hundred sit-ups or start trying to do push-ups or avoid situations of ever taking your shirt off if you went to a pool party? How did they get that picture of you right there with your shirt off? What were you doing with your shirt off? Shouldn't you have been so embarrassed at that age? I was, yeah. I swam with the shirt on. Most of the time, I would would avoid situations taking my shirt off like i remember spending you know 20 30 minutes in the mornings before school trying to find clothes that i wasn't embarrassed to wear um i would

avoid going to pool parties or taking my shirt off at the beach i would i just avoid all situations situations that I may have to be talking about shirtless. Um, and then I didn't really lean into the exercise thing. Like I, I wasn't like doing pushups for a bed. Like my, I would make efforts, you know, my mom was really cool and she got me this, um, like it was one of those flat benches that's upright on this steel contraption that you can hang on and do dips and leg lifts on. I had that in my bedroom for a while, but that was a waste of effort. It was like someone buying a treadmill and then using it for a coat rack. It was good intention, but to follow through.

But it goes back to ignorance. I don't know what I should be doing with this freaking machine in my bedroom. what I should be doing with this freaking machine in my bedroom, you know? Right. And I'm not, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do enough leg lifts to out to out perform the, or to, to overcome all of the trash. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I had one of those essentially.

Oh, no shit. Wow. Yeah. That's really cool that she bought you that. It was dude. Yeah. So she was really, really supportive. And she always has been um and i in retrospect i know she really wanted to help me i just like most people i just don't think she knew how you know right like most parents don't know how to help their kids not be fat you know it's interesting you say that i never thought about that my mom knew that i was really insecure about my weight or i think she did but she was so busy working. But in hindsight, maybe she should have insisted that I join a track team or some shit, like just push me through some hardship, let me get made fun of, and then make me – so I could get to the other side. I mean there's some value to kids bullying me.

I mean it worked out. Right. And in retrospect, I'm glad they did it sucked back then but i mean if they hadn't i would have just gone through life thinking that i was it was okay right worse right way worse way worse way worse i don't know if you saw the episode we did with the affiliate owner last week named Matt Schindeldecker. Yeah, he was on the program with the at-risk youth. Yeah. And his mom got on a school bus and killed the bus driver right in front of him.

Yeah, he was the last one on the bus, right? Yeah. And if that wouldn't have happened, a horrible incident, but if that wouldn't have happened 28 years later, he wouldn't have the experience like she didn't that didn't happen in vain because now he uses that experience to help all of these kids yeah well we're all responsible for what we do with our life experience right um was there a rock bottom um for you with your weight was there a moment in just your whole identity that like, did you remember the moment that you're like, okay, I'm going to take control of this shit?

The rock bottom that I can point to was that time in the doctor's office. And it's interesting because the reason I was in that situation to begin with is because we were moving, my family and I, we were moving down to Garden City, which is just south of Myrtle Beach South Carolina so I actually graduated high school a year early and I was going down there to begin prerequisite classes for nursing um so I was getting some just like like a basically a checkup done before we left with our um family medicine doctor and that was my rock, but it worked out because I had this gap

this summer where I was moving somewhere that I I'd never been before. I didn't know anybody. And that was a catalyst for me that led to me just starting to learn about, okay, how do I control this? Like, how do I lose this weight? What do I do? Because I was going somewhere that no one had this preconceived notion that I was the fat kid. So that was a chance to start over. So you walk out of that office and what was the plan? What was your next step? There was a lot of like shame and like just frustration because I didn't know what to do.

The first thing I did was I started running, man. Like I just, I knew that the kids that at school that ran, they weren't fat. So I'd start there. I think I did that and I picked up a teen nation magazine and asked my mom to help me learn how to cook. So like my mom taught me how to broil chicken breasts, which tastes like shit. She taught me how to cook some vegetables in the oven.

And then I had a friend of mine, Robert Wendover in high school, he'd actually lost about 80 to 100 pounds over the course of a year from like his junior year. And I remember asking him, like, what did you do? How did you do this? And one of the things he said was that he stopped drinking soda and started drinking diet Lippton green tea so i think i bought like four 24 packs of that put in my bedroom and like running every day started um like baking and broiling chicken and vegetables and i just stopped eating trash stopped eating fast food stopped drinking soda stopped drinking sweet tea started drinking um diet lipton green tea like it was a cure for cancer. And then I

ran every day and I started off just, you know, I'd run out off the front porch and I would try to get to the end of the street, running towards the beach, which was like maybe a mile away. And then every night, you know, I eventually found a loop that was about three miles. And every night I would just set another target. Okay. Tonight I'm going to run to the end of the road. All right. Tomorrow I'm going to run to the end of the road. All right, tomorrow I'm going to run to this next mailbox. Okay, now I'm going to get to the light post. And then after a couple months, you know, I was getting that runner's high,

and then I was getting daily positive reinforcements. I was making it further. And then eventually I ran the whole three miles loop without stopping, and that was like a huge deal. Were you ever embarrassed about going running i can remember even when i first found crossfit i wanted to start running and i lived in berkeley at the time and i was just embarrassed that like i didn't know how to like i didn't know how to run like what are people gonna think but i would just have to i would have to block that out and just go out running anyway but for some Oh, is that why you did that? You ran at night. So no one would see you. Oh, wow. Wow.

I always thought I was going to get lost. And I thought somebody would know I was going to get getting lost while I was running. So then I just wouldn't, that was like the story. Everybody knows I have no idea where I'm going. So, um, had you ever run before in your life like like the first time the first day you ran it must have been like you ran 100 yards and you were exhausted a dog chased me once at my friend's house that was probably it it was always like all right based on practice you gotta run suicide sprints i've never gone

out for a run of my own volition wow crazy and did you ever run with anybody not that i remember no not during that period no and then um phones and i was just listening to music and you know and then what happened? What was the next evolution in that? Did you start seeing weight loss as you did that? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I started seeing weight loss, man. That was the most powerful thing was it started working. You know, like after I saw momentum and I saw progress,

it was just reinforcement to keep cooking my own food, you know, stop eating. That was the hardest part because, like, we still had the same food in the house. You know, my parents still had the same habits of just shopping for groceries. I just asked them to also buy me some chicken breast and vegetables. And I just had to choose to eat that instead. But once you start seeing like, once you go from being so overweight and you start to see your body changing and closed, you're fitting better and people are giving you attention and like seeing it, that becomes more addicting than the food. So the next evolution was I, so it's interesting. My guidance counselor had actually screwed up and I was missing one math credit. And this was actually like a great thing that ended up happening. So I had to go back to high school

down in Myrtle Beach for my senior year and get that credit. But the credit couldn't be, I couldn't take that class to my second semester. Um, so I ended up just taking a bunch of bullshit classes, like in high school and finished my senior year. And I signed up for weightlifting and, um, weight training. So I got exposed to like strength training for the first time in my life after I'd lost a lot of the weight. Um, And I was essentially just working out with football players is what it came down to because they all took that class, you know, the wrestlers. So then I got into wrestling. I took wrestling for a semester or I took wrestling for a season. I played football that season, met some guys, got exposed to weight training and strength training, just in like a high school weight room,

started lifting weights. And it's interesting. so when you're that fat for that long you inherently your body inherently has more skeletal muscle mass to carry that weight around right so i lost a lot of the fat and i was a lot stronger than i would have expected i would have been not having lift weights before so i was i wasn't batted i wasn't weak um and just seeing the progress of losing weight feeling better and then seeing then the progress of losing weight, feeling better, and then seeing the progress of getting stronger. I just got hooked. So then after high school, I graduated, you know, my senior year, and then I signed up for a gym membership down the street and I just kept

lifting weights and I'm like kind of conventional, like bodybuilding splits. Like I would go in and, you know splits like i'd go in and you know bench press do machines you know all that stuff the curls and everything um but i mean i'd go for two three hours a day what was that like if you didn't play any sports and then you sign up for wrestling and football those are fucking hard practices yeah yeah it was hard and how did the other boys treat you well they didn't know me. So they didn't have this preconceived notion that I was like, you know, this fat kid. So, I mean, I was actually, it was the best year of high school of my life of the years leading up to it.

You know, I mean, it was. And that was your senior year? Yeah. Wow. So it was cool. And I mean, it was it's like that that decision. Well, how all that happened was interesting because that affected the next three years of my life. But I essentially got exposed to this social circle in high school of, quote, unquote, like the popular kids and the cool kids and the jocks and the kids never experienced that before leading up and it was like this just sudden social acceptance that I'd never experienced in that way and I just leaned and

do it hard you know I got I went up you know I mean I just I partied a ton I went out to all these house parties and talked to girls and had all these athletic friends and these cool friends and it was just it was it was the exact opposite experience of my life leading up to that point which was really interesting um but the kids in the team I mean they you know they accepted me I just tried I tried hard and I wasn't the best I mean I wasn't I wasn't like an athletic anomaly. I just went to practice and made friends. But it was great because, I mean, the alternative would have been I would have met no one if I hadn't gone to school.

And you kind of – it probably is kind of like how CrossFit was for me. You went in there. How tall are you? Six foot one. Oh, okay. So you're tall. So 260 is not as – it would be crazy if you were like five, eight. Yes. That would be a different, a different, yeah.

So, so, um, you're at this point, you're also finding yourself too, right? You're like, oh my God, like I can play football. Oh, I can, I can wrestle. I'm confidence is just fricking skyrocketing. i'm guessing you went there terrified like i wouldn't want to switch high schools my senior year that sounds terrifying yeah yeah no it wasn't it wasn't exciting you know i didn't know anybody and i was a new kid but what are you gonna do you know on the bright side i wasn't fat anymore so that helped yeah that's crazy what did you get down to do you know yeah my lowest was 181 wow hey is that what you wrestled 185 yeah yeah and um how all that weight that you had put on

that 80 pounds you had lost did it affect your body permanently that's a lot of weight to put on like to this day do you have extra skin or do you be like yep that's that's it's surprising maybe a little bit but not very much not as much as you would think yeah because i do that show with andrew uh hiller and i don't see it on his body but he said he used to be fat he said and he'll show me like he'll pull his skin together and he'll be like look this is from when I was so much fucking overweight. But you can't see it on him if you're just standing next to him. Yeah. But he can feel it to his touch and he can like he can he can gather it.

Right. Yeah. I mean, I can do that, too. Like there's definitely some fat like there's like skin like there's still skin left over. It's not just like a washboard, you know, but it's not as much as you would think with someone losing 70, 80, 90 pounds. But it was a long process. That weight loss took me over a year. So I'm not sure if that impacts your body composition as opposed to someone that maybe has a surgery.

Right. Or someone who's older. The thing is, obviously, the younger you can catch it, the better. Or someone who's older. The thing is, is obviously the younger you can catch it, the better. But I always think about that when I see kids who are so heavy, and I'm like, fuck, they – it's like you got a car, and you're going to have it for 20 years. But in the first week, you crash it so bad that you can't be fixed, and you got to drive it around for the next 19 years. Yeah. Yeah, I saw Kelly yesterday.

She was probably – I was at the zoo my wife i took her for our one year anniversary and um she was probably 11 and she she was every bit of 240 man just yeah breaks breaks my heart and she should be an 80 pound girl yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. Nuts. Yeah. When I see the kids who they put on so much weight that it's like severely affected their locomotion, like they walk their every way they move, the way they move their arms, the way they walk. Everything has been altered by that. I've had clients come in like that, dude, like kids that are nine, 10 years old and like like, they move, like they are fresh out of a retirement home. Like they're on the back end of life. And that's what they have. They, their, their proprioception,

their coordination, their mobility, their like self-awareness, their kinesthetic awareness. It's just doesn't exist. It was like for the past six years, they've just sat and done nothing with their body and they can't use it. You know, you have to like reteach them.

And it's like, you're 11. Yeah yeah why can't you understand this concept you know it's just it's crazy to see it's so so then um do you go to nursing school when you finish your senior year i did yeah well i started my i started nursing school so i've and that's that kind of segues the the new social life thing because i got into nursing school and then I was doing the prereqs for nursing school and I was going to Coastal Carolina, which is a party school. And I can confirm it's a party school. So I majored in that essentially. I had a nursing major, but I was partying a lot. I wasn't taking school seriously because I had this whole new life experience of just all this social acceptance that I'd wanted for the past, you know,

three, four or five years of my life that I'd never gotten. Um, looking back now, I think that was part of the experience. So, um, I did, yeah, I did prereqs for a couple of years. Like I was doing my prereqs for a freshman school and then I, you know, I was flunking out. I wasn't doing great at all in school. And then I you training yeah like with like exercising yes yeah yeah i mean if i left my house or my apartment it was to go to class sometimes to go to a party or to go to the gym okay that was it me too that's all i did um so yeah i kept lifting weights you know a couple hours a day every day and. And, um, starting one at school for nursing. I mean, I always had a, an interest in like anatomy and physiology. So even like in junior year,

sophomore year of high school, I was taking A&P classes, like college level A&P classes and science classes. And I had a teacher that really helped me, um, grow in that, that study. Um, but you know, after I got, I started doing the labs and the idea of being in a hospital and working in medicine just did not appeal to me at all. It was just gross. Um, but, but like you said earlier, I've always had an inclination to help people. Like that's always been on my heart. I'm pretty empathetic but yeah there was just no interest in being in hospital once i got into the uh the major and it sucks yeah i i it seems like it would yeah it's what sucks it shouldn't you know but like at the end of the day like as medical professionals you guys's responsibility is to essentially help people manage their sickness when it's really just it

should be on them like just a lack of responsibility makes it but it's always yeah and it's your problem because you can't fix it with something that is immediate like yeah it's like you have people coming in yeah you have people coming in with injuries that they've had for two years long or like two years and they're like oh well i've tried physical therapy for a month and i'm like okay what have you done anything else like you haven't tried obviously like you're going to physical therapy once a week for a month that's four sessions if that and you're not you're obviously not going to see any benefit yeah your definition of trying is skewed 100 100 sucks caleb is is that what did you go to rn school uh no i got my degree in um athletic training so sports medicine uh so i got to work with a

bunch of athletes when i was in college and then outside of college obviously i started doing the same thing um but it's it's kind of similar kind of not we're not super in a clinical setting we get to go out on the fields and see and like watch the sports and get a lot of acute injuries and stuff but um but now my job now i'm sitting in a clinic all the time where i'm working inpatient uh like you're seeing people monthly for the same issue and you're like why the hell are you not getting better and like you really just wish you could follow them around 24 hours a day and be like stop that stop so it's not stuff it's not only stuff that they need to do there's a ton of shit they need to stop doing yeah absolutely uh jr howell there's nothing

like helping someone who wants to be helped this is rarely seen in inpatient setting uh jr is a nurse i think his wife might be a nurse also. He's a retired nurse. No nurses for the week. So you go to college, but really it's a place to work out and meet girls. Yeah. And it involves a lot of alcohol and loud music and house parties and then and then what and then what happened but but you don't lose your um love for fitness that you that you finally found your senior year being around some kids who finally didn't didn't harass you didn't didn't fuck with you although we acknowledge the importance of that and then and you get into sports and you're starting to find yourself and build confidence and then what happens after that what's the next is that when crossfit came into your life um um very close yeah

so i ended up moving back to charlotte um once i stopped going to coastal i got out of school i was trying to just reassess my life and kind of reevaluate my priorities and what i was going to do you actually graduated no oh oh yeah neither did i good job yeah i don't have a degree no um but so i i stopped how many years how many years did i go to college yeah two okay i put in seven of undergrad nice east okay go on is that when you're when you're homeless like you chose to be homeless for a while no that was that homeless came after that that's when your parents stopped paying for your college seven years of undergrad they're like get the fuck out of here my mom that's the

reason you should have gone to school then seven years dude i would have dude i went to uc santa barbara i had a very similar those were i did exactly i only went to UC Santa Barbara. I had a very similar, those were, I did exactly, I only went to class to look at girls. Okay. So, so you, so then what happened? So I got out of, I stopped going to college and then I worked for a little bit and then I thought I'd go into the military. You know, I had some friends that were in the Marines. So I had an interest in the lifestyle they were talking about and tell me, Oh, you know, and the real reason was it was, I still wanted to get into stay in medicine, but the idea of a hospital setting wasn't appealing and the appeal of the military with the, you know, the fitness requirements and the activity level was, it was, you know, attractive to me. So I thought I'd go into the Marines. Um, I tried to go to the Marines, but then I already

had tattoos at the time. And during this part of the military, I don't know, organization, they, they wouldn't allow me in the Marines with the tattoos I had, um, because of the sizes of my tattoos. So then I went to the Navy and i looked into being a corpsman in the navy so i could still go out with marines and i got pretty far into the process of being in the military um so i took i think it was the asvab is that the right one yeah so i took that and i was talking to a recruiter about getting a ship date. And you'll like this one. Back when I was in college and working out all the time and then the interim between, I used to smoke cigarettes.

So I smoked like a pack of Marlboro Reds a day. And that didn't lend itself to the best conditioning. So I got into CrossFit to get my conditioning up for basic training in the military. That's how I found CrossFit. I was like 20 years old. Going back a second, do you remember the first cigarette you ever smoked? Yeah.

Yeah, it was with this kid, Zach. And we were in between house parties. I was probably 18 or 19. And we were in Myrtle beach near, we were at his apartment near Broadway, the beach. Yeah. Did you throw, did it make you throw up? No. The first time I ever held any smoke before.

Yeah. I was in the, I i had been i was partying with some friends and then this girl said hey you want to smoke a cigarette i was probably 18 19 20 i was probably 20 and i said sure and we climbed into the back of this pickup truck just ran a pickup truck in santa barbara and um you know people walking around everywhere partying and we're back there and we and she hands me a marlboro and i smoke it and i just fucking yeah i started yeah i was drunk as fuck i started spinning and puked all over the fucking place but that didn't stop me i got i kept smoking yeah yeah uh i had no idea about the marine corps about this um i just well i didn't get i didn't get in the military i don't talk about it because i didn't i didn't get in the military.

I don't talk about it because I didn't get in the military. I didn't actually follow through with that. That wasn't a part of my life. That was just part of a chapter of my life, and I was trying to find out what my future was. I'm just looking at what the – it says tattoo policy. You can have tattoos anywhere on your chest, back, torso, upper arms, upper thighs, and groin.

There are no restrictions as to the size, shape. So they've changed this. Yeah yeah that just got changed pretty recently it changes like depending on whether we need people or not that's like one of the standards that we can just use arbitrarily for no reason to say like oh we, like, it depends on who the, like, for us, it's the chief master sergeant of the Air Force. Like, if she decides, like, hey, we want to, I believe that it would be better if our airmen or our Marines or whatever had less tattoos or something. And they can just decide to, like, implement that rule. It happens all the fucking time it's ridiculous so now they're so desperate for people they'll take anyone exactly they're even they're waving

like um i think they're waving marijuana use and some asvab scores got reduced pretty significantly so that instills confidence. Massive. Tell me about it. What did your parents say when you when you said you were going to join the Marines? Were they were they were concerned? Yeah. Yeah. My parents were like my mom's like most moms. Right.

She's protective and she's worried about me. So she wasn't excited, but there was still like some pride there. My dad was really proud of me. me so she wasn't excited but there was still like some pride there my dad was really proud of me you know he wanted to go in the air force but he couldn't because of a um an issue with his vision that he's had as a child so he never he could never get in so they had a lot of pride and concern you know like i think most parents would but they supported it and so you and so you pivot and you want to go you're going to want to become a Navy corpsman and to get in shape for that, you find a CrossFit gym. How did that happen? Who told you about CrossFit?

I used to date this girl, Cassie. Her name was Cassie Coley. She lived in Rock Hill. She was a few years older than I was. I think when we were dating, I was like 19. She might have been 25 or 26 and she was doing CrossFit for a long, for a while. or 26 and she was doing crossfit for a long for a while and i i was the guy that made fun of crossfit because i went to the gym and and benched and did curls and couldn't squat 135 you know um so i would make fun of crossfitters and say oh you know you're gonna get hurt doing it it's dangerous it's stupid um but i think she she was over one day and she had me watch the crossfit games and i remember seeing kristin clever back in like 2013 or 2012 and doing a crossfit games event and i was like she's a badass you couldn't argue that um so i searched you know crossfit gym near me i found one that

was like three miles away from my parents house because i was you know living home at the time and i just thought i'd go by so i I dropped in one day where I walked in. I didn't drop into a class, but I walked in one day and I remember walking up to the building. It was, it's a, you know, it's your traditional cross gym.

It's in a warehouse back in a bit like a business park. They've got garage doors rolled up. It's, I think it's late in the day. It's kind of past dusk. So this, the lights low, there's like,

you know, lights inside and there, the lights are like silhouet dude in a squat rack this guy ryan he i remember him still he was he was just yoked that's in mind this guy was probably six feet like 240 235 but just you could see every muscle on his body just popping out he was doing something with a barbell and it was so intimidating i was like i don't know how to do any of that shit right now i can't do any of that you know but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna fail um so i walked up and walked in the gym and introduced myself to this guy named eric he was running the gym at the time um and just told him you know hey i need to get in shape for the military i think i'm gonna go into you know go to the navy and i need to get a boot camp

and they're like all right great you uh, foundation class is tomorrow at six. Why don't you come take that class and get good, good foundations. And you can, you know, then you can join. So that's what I did. And that was that.

Had you ever even deadlifted in your life at that point? No. Yeah. I remember when I found CrossFit, I had never heard of a deadlift either. Nope. Fucking nuts. Right. Fucking nuts, right? In fact, like the gym, like in weight class in high school, I mean, all we did was bench press.

They had a lot of machines in there, and then we would do a little bit of back squatting, but, you know, probably quarter squats. Right. Safety pads. Jeremy Eat World, Caleb, and the truth to the more lib states reworking the pt test because soldiers have been complaining about it not being inclusive but of course but of course uh and um and you were addicted from from from when you went in there you took the class and you were just addicted yeah yeah look man that was because i'd never been good at anything before like that in my life and um i spent so much time weight training i was i was kind of strong like strong enough and i was young so i was like 20

years old and um there was a competitive part i didn't know was there so when i had a chance to express that um and i was decent at it yeah got hooked. What movement was your go-to from the beginning? What movement were you the most proud of? I was actually pretty good at deadlifting, believe it or not. I'm pretty tall. I'm like, I'm tall. I've got long levers, got pretty long femurs. So, I mean, I think within probably six months I was deadlifting 405. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And you're like, I can dig in 405. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And you're like, I can dig this.

For me, it was pooling. Pooling? Like pull-ups? Yeah, just pooling. Yeah, just muscle-ups, pull-ups. I was like, I sucked at everything. I was the least athletic person you ever met in your life. But you're right. I found something that was good.

There was such a vast variety of shit to do in there. Yeah. I was like, well, at least I can – I can't beat this girl in 20 of the fucking events, but in this one I can. I'm in the game. Yeah. And you love the community right away? Is that – when you went in there, how did the people treat you? I see someone's – Bailey's asking which gym. And you loved the community right away? Is that when you went in there, how did the people treat you?

I see someone's Bailey's asking which gym. It was CrossFit S3 in Indian Land, South Carolina. Yeah, man, I love the community. I got into it. I mean, there were all these men and women in their early to mid-30s that immediately I just connected with and I made friends with right away. And the head coach was great you know he took me to his wing um i made a lot of friends you know there are a lot of people in that gym that i got close with pretty fast and um you know i was a 20 year old hanging out with the guys in their mid-30s with families just trying to learn from them and hang

out with them and just learn from their wisdom. You're not good. Are you a pretty standoffish guy? No, I don't think so. No? Are you pretty stoic? I've been told I'm stoic. Yeah.

I mean, when I comb through the internet looking for stuff about you, you seem very stoicic to me maybe standoffish was too strong what does stoic mean to you um reserved in in your in your um you have thoughts that maybe you don't share as frequently as other people who just they have a thought and then they just share it that's that's probably accurate but but even being that kind of person you went in there and you felt welcome like people just embraced you absolutely yeah i think that happens in all cross the gyms if it doesn't that cross the gym is probably not going to last it was the opposite of high school that's the opposite of your freshman, sophomore year. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because they were adults, I think. And when did that, when did the, I'm guessing that at that point, the desire to go to the Navy started slipping and the desire to be more affiliated

with doing something with CrossFit, there was some sort of shift there. Yeah, absolutely. If I, if I think back, like, I don't know that this was a conscious decision or thought, but I think I was probably looking just for a group to be a part of and be accepted by, right? So like identity, you know what I mean? If I can go into the Marines and military, there's identity there, there's peers, there's a group to be part of something bigger than yourself. And as a young man, I mean, I can't imagine I didn't want that, you know, so I must have been looking for something, and I found it in CrossFit, so I remember the coaches at the CrossFit gym, there's a coach, Christine, the other guy, Eric, they seem like good people, you know, I saw them

working at the gym, they seemed like their lifestyle was great, you know, I was pretty good at CrossFit, people liked me. So I asked the coach if I get my level one and just learned to coach. Um, and that seemed like a more appropriate way for me to help people than working in a hospital personally. Right. Cause I'd gone through this journey of like losing a lot of weight at this time. And I wasn't done, but I'd gotten pretty far and I had friends and family asking like hey what did you do how did you lose this weight they were looking for guidance so i'd already experienced that level of leadership a little bit um so it just seemed like a natural progression to to look for it in crossfit or to

find it through crossfit yeah i didn't know i know one day but i just wanted to be a coach i wanted to work out and i want to go to the CrossFit Games. You did? So you had aspirations for that also? Yeah, for sure. The competitive side of it was appealing. And when you asked the coach if you could take the Level 1, what did he say? And how did that play out? Yeah, he said that I could take it, and if i got my level one and passed the test i could

take the onboarding classes and the on-ramp classes and he would teach me to coach wow did he pay for your level one no i think they might have done half of it but that was that was a while that was almost 10 years ago wow that's fucking cool and what did you think your level one did that take you to the next level in terms of your passion? Yeah, man. Yeah. It was, it was life changing. You know, I mean, I still remember a lot about it. I mean, I remember the guy I sat beside was a guy in his mid thirties and he, him and his partner about to open a gym and he was the money, his partner was the coach, but he needed, he was level one. So you could, they could have the affiliate in his name. I remember, you know, talking to him about that. Um, I wish wish i remembered my trainers but i didn't know like i was six months into crossfit so i didn't understand the value of like the

seminar staff at the time but i remember getting my first strict muscle up because the coaches there they talk they talk me through that um yeah i mean it definitely set me on a path yeah that's crazy that's where i got my first uh my first muscle-up period um that's all was it was at my level one i couldn't even fucking believe it and i remember it was because of the seminar staff i think it maybe was like greg amundsen really yeah oh yeah did you get did you get like at the end of the second day in front of everybody uh not in front of every well back then it was different because there would be like 40, 40 or 60 people taking, and then there would be like 40 trainers there because people who'd already taken their level one could come back and they wouldn't be like the official trainers. There were still like only like four or five official trainers, but then they would be like advisors.

But he just yelled at me. I think maybe he said to me, quit being a pussy or something. I think that was, I think that was the cue I got. It's a strong right you like when i did mine they let me try like four or five times to get a restricting muscle up and i didn't get it it was like very demoralizing it's very bad yeah it can go one of two ways yeah it was very interesting yeah it was a it was a cool moment so you you you um you finished the level one. You come back, and you just dive full head into coaching at this point?

Yeah, I mean, as much as I could. I was still working at Ruby Tuesdays at the time as a server. I mean, I was a server for a while, even from Myrtle Beach up into Charlotte before I got into coaching. A server is a waiter? That's a waiter? Yeah. Wow, a stoic waiter. Would you be charming to your guests and work the tips? Hi, how are you doing? Good. Nice to see you guys. Oh, is this the seats you normally sit in? Come on. Let me get, I can, we got a nicer seat here by the't see you doing that all right yeah that's awesome i always wanted to be a server and kind of like now whenever i go into a coffee shop i'm like i would fuck this shit up

i would be it's easy to fuck up well no i mean fuck it up in a good way oh okay like be great at it oh yeah i'd be schmoozing the shit out of people oh my god your dog is so beautiful oh my god just people i would mean i would 99% of it would be authentic. What's the 1% that wouldn't be? Just the fucking guy. If you came in there just looking rich as shit, I might say some shit that's not true just to get some of your loot. And so you do that, and at some point that transitions to wanting to actually own your own gym? That's like a long road, right?

Well, I mean maybe not that long. It's pretty long. Yeah, eventually it led to me wanting to own my own gym. So I got into CrossFit. I was coaching at CrossFit S3, and I was trying to pursue being good enough to be competitive in the sport of CrossFit. So all of my time was spent when I wasn't working, coaching, and working out. So the coaching job and the weighting job were to subsidize this desire to compete. I wouldn't say it was to subsidize because it was, it was a passion I wanted.

It wasn't a means to an end, but it made sense to pursue it to allow me the freedom to also train to be competitive. Um, so I was at that gym for a while and then there was another gym down the road, CrossFit Weddington, um, which had a more competitive edge to it. And they had a team that had gone to regionals a year prior. And I got in with one of the guys that worked out there.

I forget how we met, but he invited me to come train with him on Saturdays at their team training Saturday mornings. So I met the owner. I met some of the other athletes there. And I started kind of going back and forth between both so i'd coach at s3 and i'd take some classes i'd work out there and i'd also work out with the guys and girls at weddington sometimes and then there was just an organic just transition from s3 to weddington because i had more opportunity there i had more chances to coach the owner was kind of a mentor

for me and he kind of brought me in and then there was um there were people there that i could push myself against to get better as far as an athlete goes and a coach honestly i mean in retrospect i didn't realize at the time but i became the coach i am today because of my time at that gym with uh cory the owner meaning he was a good mentor you learned a lot from him he was a great mentor yeah i learned everything from him is that gym still around yeah yeah i went and saw him like two weeks ago i hung out with him for a few hours and so you're you're doing this job uh waiting and when you went to this new gym weddingtondington, did you also pick up coaching hours there?

Yes. Yeah. I eventually coached full time and I stopped waiting tables. Okay. And then are you living at home at this time? Yeah. Your mom must be so proud of you to see you've gone through all that, your mom and dad. I think so um i think that they were proud of me for like taking control of my life at least my health um and then finding

something i was passionate about i think that they were proud of that um and there there was like there was a path to a future there it wasn't like i was squandering my life or just wasting time you know um and it worked out so and you quit smoking and quit drinking yeah absolutely yeah because it wasn't because it wasn't because it was affecting your goals to be a better athlete yes yeah that's amazing quitting smoking is hard yeah quitting smoking is hard shit but like the lifestyle like being in i't know, I feel like you can't be in a CrossFit gym, like really be in a CrossFit gym and hold on to that kind of lifestyle. Like, cause if you're holding on to that lifestyle, I'm not sure how into the CrossFit gym you really are, especially as a coach. Like if I'm a, if I'm training people and I'm a coach and I'm like some kind of leader in the space trying to like help my clients and people in class.

But I'm also like on the weekends going out and getting hammered and smoking a pack of cigarettes like that's not gonna last that's that's fake you know there's that's not gonna last very long right it was a natural progression to get rid of those habits and quit smoking but yeah you're not gonna go to the crossfit games you can smoke and cigarettes for sure i remember in the early days i haven't seen it in a long you know in forever but i remember in the early days going haven't seen it in a long you know in forever but i remember in the early days going to europe for a uh i think it was a regionals and filming there and there would be teams i remember the italian team in between events would be smoking cigarettes

no shit this is like a 2010 or something yeah i'm wrong often so no no you're not wrong because that shit doesn't happen anymore you don. You don't see that shit anymore. Okay, so then from there, oh, you killed as a bartender, Sousa? I bet. God, I bet. Sousa's really good at taking abuse too. Like someone could talk shit to him. Be like, oh, let's talk about it, buddy.

And like next thing you know, they're fucking giving him a 10 spot for therapy. I believe it. He's a world-class therapist. Um, so then, um, from there to tell me about how you got into the gym, what, how did that happen where you decided, okay, I'm going to open my own gym. So I was at Weddington for a couple of years training out of there and I was getting closer and closer to qualifying for regionals, which was kind of my big goal. I really wanted one of those name placards that has your name, you know? Yep. That's cool.

Yeah. So I spent about four years pursuing that goal from Weddington. I moved on to CrossFit South Charlotte because there was an opportunity at that gym to manage the gym and get like a base stipend, like a salary quote unquote. And they also had an even more competitive drive in that gym so they had gone to regionals as well whereas weddington's team had kind of like aged out of pursuing that goal they got in families and it wasn't a party anymore so then south shore had a younger younger demographic kind of like where i was at so i

trained there for a couple of years managed that gym while the owners were in asheville kind of like where I was at. So I trained there for a couple of years, managed that gym while the owners were in Asheville, kind of removed from day to day. I picked up some personal training clients that I trained at their garage. Cody, this is the 10,000 square foot gym with like almost 200 clients I've heard you talk about. Yes. South Shore. Did you say you managed it? Yeah. I was a manager for them wow were there other managers uh before me yeah no no while you were there you no so you were the guy there i think so um like the owners they still had a really heavy weight in the gym, so like Jeremy and Abby. Everyone that was – all of the members that were kind of foundational to that gym, they still loved Abby and Jeremy. But Abby and Jeremy had moved to Asheville.

They'd opened another affiliate or two other affiliates actually. And I was the in-person manager, and I was the guy, I guess you could say there, um, for a couple of years. Yeah. Why do you think they gave that to you? That seems like a lot of trust. Someone's gym like that as their baby. Yeah. I have no idea. I mean, I went, cause when I, when I originally went to South Charlotte, I was just going to train with some friends of mine, Josh, Nick Brinson, um, some guys that I was trying to pursue. So that's – is that CrossFit Charlotte? That might be Andy Hendel's gym. Owl is at CrossFit South Charlotte.

But – so that's where Taylor self-sate. I'm sure you know that. But he's at Andy's gym. Owl is at another gym, CrossFit South Charlotte, which the owner used to be part of CrossFit Charlotte. But anyways, I went there I went to start training kind of trying to go to regionals there were some guys there that had gotten close to qualifying and we wanted to make a team and um when I got to the gym they had a manager at the time Rick Ball

he was a really good friend of Jeremy's who was the owner and they they kind of went back to being PJs back in the day and Rick was kind of like an interim manager like he was doing him a favor but it wasn't his long-term plan to be a manager so then i think they just saw this like 20 something year old come in that didn't have a family that was at the gym all the fucking time anyways and they were like hey you're a coach we can teach you some of this admin stuff if we give you like a salary would you want to manage this place for us? So Rick can pursue other things. Yeah. Why not?

I'm ready here as it is. Like that'll have, that'd be helpful to have a little more income and some responsibility. Yeah. Yeah. There's the, they're the soft one guys. Exactly.

Yeah. I followed that for a really long time. Really? Yeah. I mean, I remember he had softwad banners up and i would listen to jeremy talk about programming for it he's a great programmer he's a smart dude yeah it was good shit the nuances to this story are so important for everyone to

hear especially if anyone in leadership at crossfit is listening you have andy hendel former uh professional football player you have a guy splitting off from one gym to open another gym. You have pararescue guys. You have a guy who's the main character of this story, Cody Bradburn, who was using CrossFit to try to help him set him up for success in bootcamp. It's something that a lot of people forget that the foundation of this, that we the base it is a certain kind of person and i'm not saying that it has to cater to that person but it shouldn't be forgotten who the base is there's a there's a strong theme in all the affiliate interviews we do these are all interesting stories about how gyms split who leaves the support they get even the way you hear cody talk about all the ex gyms now we've heard about four gyms and everything has been positive and fondness and mentors and leaders. And it's a, um,

it shows you, it's, it's, it's a, uh, it shows you just the deep interconnectedness between all of these people and what their goals are, what their issues are, what their, you know, um, their, their families, what they've done. It's, it's really like the guy so you're absolutely right so cory the guy that owns wedding he also branched off of crossfit charlotte so like brian strump owns steel creek i'm pretty sure brian branched off of charlotte opened steel creek um cory branched off of charlotte i'm pretty sure to open weddington and i i'm pretty sure jeremy branched off of Charlotte. I'm pretty sure to open Weddington. And I, I'm pretty sure Jeremy branched off of Charlotte open social. I might be wrong about that,

but they're all connected. Like you said, I used to go to Corey's, the guy that was waiting to the mentor of mine. When I was a coach at his gym, I'd go to his house every Sunday and have dinner with his family, like with his kids and his daughter and his wife. We'd hang out and,

you know, watch church and have dinner and hang out every, every Sunday night for months. Did you say watch church? Yeah, like Elevation Church. Elevation Church would stream their services. Oh, and he would just play it up on the TV. Yeah, play it up on the TV.

Watch church. I never heard that phrase, watch church. Okay, so then that is true. Matt Souza jeffrey dahmer that a lot of people don't know that that that actually is 100 killed like jeffrey dahmer oh oh oh darn it okay damn it uh so so you so you're at that gym and you found this new group of guys and so you're at that gym, and you found this new group of guys, and so you're still pursuing the dream, the guys who are close to being regionals in the team. And then what happens after that? So Josh, Nick, and I were pursuing regionals,

and then we qualified for the Atlantic regionals back in 2017 as a team with three other girls. So we qualified. It was actually the guys that was me, Josh and Brandon, uh, he trick Brandon owns CrossFit Dilworth and his wife, Gracie. So we qualified regionals. We went and competed. Um, that was great. I had, I had a fun time. Um, then the next year I was pursuing individual and I bought a house kind of up, up this way. Um, and a town called belmont which is pretty

close to charlotte so on the outskirts of charlotte and my mom had a friend this one that was an attorney so my mom was um in an incident at work man like 10 years ago where she was in a patient's house, a dog tripped her. She fell on the stairs, really messed up her knee. Yeah. And that led to her having this autoimmune disorder called RSD, which is essentially like nerve pain, like nonstop nerve pain. So she had to hire an attorney and they had to go through this whole process to get workers' comp involved. Anyways, she knew this woman that was going to the gym I own now. One night, my mom calls me. I'm outside of Target.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, complex regional pain syndrome. Characterized by Samir Bernie. She would describe it as like her foot being on fire just always, just for years. Interesting fact, if you have RSD or know someone that does have RSD, the only thing that ever gave her relief was hyperbaric treatment. Oh, damn, that's good. Damn, that's good.

We had a hyperbaric expert on here man that shit sounds legit it's legit legit yeah legit wow so she calls me i'm outside of like i'm somewhere shopping for i'm getting i think because i was gonna like totally prefer south charlotte crossfit she's like hey you know my friend said that the guy that owns her gym wants to sell it. She thinks you should buy it. You should go check it out. Okay, mom. Yeah, that's going to happen.

And you're already spread thin. You just bought a house. Yeah, I just bought a house, you know, like a few months prior. I was like, yeah, okay, sure, mom. I'll go talk to the guy. So I remember leaving. And the gym, like, from where I used to live, was only 12 minutes away. So it wasn't like a big ask. I just stopped by to the guy. So I remember leaving and the gym, like we're from where I used to live was only 12 minutes away. So it wasn't that it wasn't like a big ass. I could just, I just stopped

by and walked inside. I remember walking to the front door and it was dumb. Again, it was, it was tragic, man. Like I walked inside and this dude is teaching like a bootcamp class, but he has like three members there at probably 7. There's like three older clients that are just like, I think they're doing bear crawls and maybe kettlebells, something they're doing something kettlebells. And this guy's has his back to me. So I walk in the front door, half the lights are burned out and looking at his phone and he's just like texting on his phone. All these people are working out. And I just stood there for like five minutes. Didn't say anything. He didn't even, he didn't know I was there. He didn't look up on his phone while they were working out. So I walked across the gym and

like, I was like, Hey man, um, I heard you want to sell this place. He turns around and looks at me. He's like, looks me up and down. He's like, yeah, let's talk. All right. So, um, he finished his class. I guess you could say he finished class. He wasn't doing anything about the class, but we met in his office and I was like, you know, I heard from so-and-so that you want to go to this at the gym and you want to sell it. And, um, I, you know, I run a gym down the street and I'm interested. So long story short, he'd man, it's, that's a, that's a fucking crazy story. This guy didn't do crossfit like he wasn't a crossfitter the guy with the phone standing there didn't do crossfit wasn't a crossfitter

dude it was the first time i've ever heard this where there's a crossfit coach that doesn't do crossfit me too it was kind of bizarre so this guy had bought the gym he was the third third owner i'm the fourth owner of this of this affiliate he bought the gym. He was the third owner. I'm the fourth owner of this affiliate. He bought the gym from another guy and he bought the gym because he caught a domestic abuse charge, got convicted, and part of his...

I'm not sure what the right word would be. He had to essentially do community service for children. Like, he had to essentially do community service for children. Like to get back to you. I fucking love this world. So he buys the gym from this other guy that was kind of like just burned out, ready out of the business. And he,

he's fraudulently steals this franchise called lean teens. Doesn't pay any affiliation to this lean teen program puts a sign up for lean teens and runs across the gym and he basically monetizes this thing he has to do from the court to do public service for kids so he charges for the lean teen program and then uses that as his community service so he doesn't go to jail hey let me ask you this real quick was he behind on his affiliate fees too like when you took over no oh wow impressive point first point for that guy good job buddy well i think that's probably more of a cross that thing than him thing like so so at this point after you when you leave there that day, does it go from there's no fucking way to, oh, shit, I'm going to end up owning this?

Yeah, I can work later. But when you were actually talking to him, were you like, okay, I bet you I'm going to end up owning this shit? Yeah. So we talked, and he's like, yeah, man, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm ready to go to Florida. I'm not into this whole CrossFit thing and I want to sell it. He had taken a membership from like 60 people. I think when I bought the gym, he was down to seven or eight paying clients.

Wow. Yeah. We're in like a strip mall. He has like a retail space he's on the hook for rent for. He was drowning for sure so i talked to him we essentially agree that like he doesn't have a business worth buying and that i would just buy his equipment and assume his lease if we were to move forward with this so he's sitting itemized is it a very honest raw conversation like do you just tell them like that is it hey buddy i don't see a business here but i will take this off your hands for yeah i was like all

right man well like i didn't know much about running a gym like i was managing a gym but i didn't know much about like you know the financial aspect because like the owners manage that i'll say all right well how many members do you have and he was like oh you know we've got like you know there's there's a few members that are paying and there's a lot of leads that are coming in through groupon i was like all right cool so like how many paying customers do you have it's like you know we have eight or nine right now i was like oh okay cool cool um so that's not good and you did everything you could not to laugh at that point or let your jaw hit the ground yeah and i was like so you understand that like so you're losing money he's

like yeah for now but there's a lot of good potential in this business. And I was like, all right, you know, you have, you have a leg press machine in your office, dude. Like, you don't, don't tell me there's this potential in this business. It's like, you don't understand what you're doing. So he sent me a Google, he basically sent me a Google spreadsheet with all of the equipment he had itemized in the gym and then what he thought it was worth for the total at the bottom.

So we negotiated that a little bit and then I was going to go to the bank and ask for a loan to buy it, you know? So I actually told one of my, I had this guy, I was training down in Weddington, him and his wife and their pool house. And I was like, Hey man, you know, there's an opportunity to buy a gym. This is kind of like the next evolution of my training career meeting my future um and I've been training this guy for a little over a year a year and a half at a time I'd go see him like three days a week and train him and his wife in their pool house and I was you know I've got I've got a great friend of mine you know I'm gonna give her your number so you guys can connect about you know training so she can keep keep it up for you but I'm gonna have to step away because of the responsibility at the gym and he's like okay yeah man that's great how much is the gym like what do you need and i was like

i was gonna be you know this much to buy the gym he's like oh okay well just you know just send me your riding number and i'll um i'll help you buy it you can just pay me back whenever you want to i was like what another another classic crossfit story throw that in there with the base being first responders and middle guys and everyone. Another classic story. Incredible, dude. Incredibly generous. Wow. I didn't think it would actually happen, but then after that conversation, I was able to move forward pretty quickly because I didn't have to go to a bank to finance it. Hey, that's the second person in this story.

You have to imagine that, I mean, obviously you're being very humble, but those people who gave you, put you in charge of their gym, it's crazy. They must have seen something like crazy in you. And then now this, these people at the pool house must have seen something. Let me just ask you this. That pool, those pool house clients, how many times did you cancel on them in that year and a half you were training them at their house? Never. Yeah, I figured. I knew that was the answer never yep and and there were things that you wanted to do weddings or your own training or but they always came first yeah for sure man i have responsibilities them you know i gave my where i was gonna be there i'm gonna be there

yeah and i'm sure there were times that you went there not a lot but there were times you went there and they forgot or. Yeah. Yeah. They wouldn't, they wouldn't be out there. And I'd walk in the playoffs and I'd hang out and wait for them. They'd be in, you know, 20 minutes later, cause something came up, which is fine. Yeah. And third time, you know, I mean, they're paying for it. Yeah. Um, that's the story, you know, Greg had Greg Glassman had, he, he, uh, you, you probably know the story, but he trained some really wealthy people and he said he would,

they paid him by the hour. He said, sometimes he'd wait in there five six seven eight hours all day and he would and uh and not only that that's when he started writing his journal articles that's where the inspiration for the journal came sitting around waiting for crazy wealthy clients for sure yeah okay sorry so so so you so you make the deal on the gym and you get the gym yeah man i mean i met the gym and you get the gym. Yeah, man. I mean, I met the guy and two, three weeks later, I was coaching class. It was mine. Wow. Yeah. That was crazy. It was wild how it all happened. Happened fast. And, um, and you negotiated, I think I heard you say you negotiate, you talked to the landlord and you're like, Hey, you got to give me three months free rent. Yeah. I talked to the landlord. I was like, Hey, guys, I'll take this lease.

Obviously, his business is failing. I think I can save it. I think it has potential. And I'll re-sign for three more years. I just need you guys to give me three months to rebuild the client base so I can pay your rent. I had a little bit of money in savings as like an old shit fund. But I mean, I wasn't training the clients anymore. I wasn't at a South Charlotte managing, so I didn't have any income.

So I just had to, I had to go for it. You know, I just jumped in and I was like, I can probably make this work, but you guys can give me some time. And I had to do like a personal guarantee on my house to be able to like let, to sign the lease, to take her up the space. But yeah, they gave me three months before i think i bought the gym in october of 2017 and i didn't know rent until january one you know maybe february one the next year i wonder why they didn't just tell you to

fuck off and get out no we're not doing it we'll rent to someone else well i'm not in a part of town that's drawing a lot of tenants like they've got they've got open open spaces in the building okay and were they cool about it um yeah the property was cool hunter hunter was the property manager he was a cool guy he was cool he's like yeah man you know do your thing he was really laid back you know good luck if you need anything let us know but are you still in that same space today yeah so four years you've been there five five years five and and um what's the most clients you've ever had there um 110 oh shit so you've grown it by more than 100 hundred clients. Yes. Unbelievable.

Yeah. So like the Walgreens, they, they left. So they're not there anymore. That's just empty. Empty. I tried to get to,

I tried to get the building, but it's just so expensive. It's insane. Being a retail spot. Yeah. Great. You mean to actually buy the building or to actually move your gym into the walgreens my gym i've thought about trying to buy this whole shopping center like i've i've entertained

the notion of it um i haven't gone to the owner yet but the owner lives in like he lives in california and i don't know man i don't know if i want to buy this place like it could go one of two ways but like there's a good chance it goes in a not a good way as far as owning it is concerned so god wouldn't that be crazy if you owned a shopping center yeah it'd be pretty fucking well uh and in in this in this journey so you buy the place and can you kind of take me through the process of how you got from here to five years? What are some of the things you start tackling right away to grow the business? Yeah, I mean, I remember – so I was in the attorney's office in Charlotte to do the paperwork to sign over the gym and make the purchase.

I mean, that happened at like 2 p on like a Friday and I was coaching class at four 30 that day, you know? So like it was immediately just stepping in and. Dude, those clients must've tripped to go from the guy who doesn't do CrossFit to have you walk in there. Yeah. They were pretty stoked. Oh, they were stoked. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They were excited. Um, and then, so like when i got back into the gym so here's an example of this guy right this guy that owned it before me he he heard about hero workouts like he didn't know that was a thing and he found out they existed so he got excited and he programmed hero workouts every day for a month

yeah so like the members told me that and then at a certain point, all right, man, like we're not doing this anymore. So we're either going to leave. You can give us a key and we'll just come and go as you please. He's like, all right, that sounds good. So you gave him a key. So members, the ones that were still here, they're like six or seven that were like a little group. They would just come in and like do their own workouts and, you know, come and go as they please. So I had to kind of overcome that and let them know you know how things were going to go but they were super they were cool because they were excited about having me there but yeah i just i bought the gym i was coaching class that night and then the first month was just me coaching 5 30 a.m noon 4 30 p.m 6 you know like all the all the classes and then in between

classes i was trying to like give the gym a facelift because he didn't care about it. So it was a mess. So I tried to make it look at least more aesthetically appealing. So a lot of projects, my family, they'd come and help me work on it. And I was also training full time because I still want to go to regionals. So I was still training pretty hard. So I would coach class, work out, go print off, like, pamphlets and flyers and go drop in people's mailboxes and all the neighborhoods around, try to like just get our name out there. I got all of his old waivers he'd had signed from old clients that had been, you know, in the gym in the past and put all their emails in an email, like an email list.

And then drafted up like a about me to send to them. and then drafted up like a about me to send to them and that helped like that got me from eight to probably like 35 and maybe two weeks you know a lot of members that they still want to do crossfit but they find out you know they've been members with the previous owner that owned it before this guy that i bought it from but then you know that guy got burned out because he was coaching all the classes and barely making enough money to get by and like he just got it's like most crossfit you know affiliate owners that you hear about they just they just get burned out because he was coaching all the classes and barely making enough money to get by. And like, he just got, it's like most CrossFit owners that you hear about, they just, they just get burned out and they sell it or they get out of the business because it's, it just takes up their life.

So they had left when they found out he sold it to this dude that had a domestic abuse charge. A lot of the women didn't want to be in the gym by themselves if he was going to be there, you know, in classes. So they, they canceled canceled so then when i put out an email that i'd taken ownership and kind of given to my story a lot of them they were still wanting to crossfit so they came back you know they rejoined um so we got back up to 30 40 members in a few months or less than that and and did that was that did that um meet your expectations yeah yeah i thought that there was a good chance that would happen after i met the guy so you that gave you like oh i'm not gonna lose my house yeah you're

just like i can pay my mortgage and i can pay rent like the network this is gonna be fine like this is probably gonna be okay um but i mean when i bought the gym like i think that same week i called chris cooper i think i told him my situation. Why did you do that? Why did you call Chris Cooper? How did you hear about him? I'd seen some of his blog posts online, and I saw him in a couple CrossFit gym owner Facebook groups. So even before I bought the gym,

I had joined a few affiliate owner groups on Facebook because I was running a gym prior. So I was trying to have ideas and have somewhere to bounce ideas off and get feedback. Um, so I'd seen them in there pretty actively. And I'd also seen other gym owners during my journey that looked like they maybe were on a path to get burned out being a gym owner. And I didn't want that for myself because I bought it. I was 20, I was 23 when I bought it 24 and I bought it. So I didn't, and I mean, I don't have a degree, so I'm not trying to how to run a business. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just, I like CrossFit and I'm a good coach.

And I like to work out, you know? So that was kind of my prerequisites I'd had for owning an affiliate. So then I knew I didn't want to get burned out and I knew I didn't want to ruin the gym or, you know, end up like one of the other guys that sold it a year later. So I called them and told them, I was like, Hey man, you know, I've been following you for a while. I just bought a gym. The previous owner kind of ran into the ground.

I've got like five grand in the bank that to cover rent, just in case. I can't get it up to it's where it needs to be to pay for my bills i could take that money and pay for your mentorship and he was like no don't do that he's like get your get yourself up to a point where you can sustain your rent and your bills get out of the red and then call me and we'll do it i was all right so i spent like three or four months just kind of getting to a sustainable number and then i called him back and signed up with him and went through the two brand process did you actually talk with chris cooper yeah that was back when he was relating calls wow he told me you know he told me he told me to make um he gave me an idea from mike mccallow it's

it's called a seed a seed client list she said make your seed client list like make a get a piece of paper put a smiley face and a frowny face um and then make another list with a dollar sign and your clients that are on the dollar sign being like they spend the most money with you and your clients that are on the happy side of the smiley face list those are your best clients if they're on both lists talk to them and try to like get them to bring their friends in and like run ideas by them because those are your best clients who spend spend your all your energy on those clients and if you do that you'll be okay and then you know give me a call back when you're in the green and we'll we'll do your the two brain stuff and did you do that practice yeah on the phone the phone, I was like making the list with him.

Whatever you say, dude, I just don't want to fuck this up. So yeah, I'll do it. Yeah. Chris is so cool. Anyone who gets to interact with him, he is so cool. Um, and so, and did that help? Did you, did you then pursue speaking to those clients and how did those conversations go? What do you say to them? Um, I just met them and I kind of told them where I was at and you know, what, what I hope to do with the gym and what my my uh goals were at the affiliate and you know why i left crossfit and i asked them things like you know what would you like to see in the gym like what would be meaningful to you what would make you want to come back like why do you come to the gym and then based on the feedback i got from them as to why they came i used that in my messaging

on social media and my email campaigns to talk to more people like them. Like they made an avatar, right? So you talk to your avatar and then that draws more people in. Wow. So, wow, that's so, that seems so logical.

That's just basic algebra. What's working on this side of the equation, you ask them what's working and then you go tell, use that to tell the world yep and then and everyone likes to help too right so now they they are they are fulfilled by the fact that they get to help participate in your growth yep and there's something about people like i think when you see someone go all in on something and you see them there day in and day out in the mornings, every night, you can't ignore that consistency. So then, you know, it's genuine. So, I mean, why wouldn't you want to help someone if they're genuinely trying to be successful? And, you know, it comes from a place of good intention. place of good intention after this three months that you just followed this this small piece of advice that chris had given you small but potent why not just keep your the money you've saved

and keep going why did you go back to them because i knew that was just the surface like that was just scratching the surface there was so much more and like i mean if i am if i'm going to tell my clients that they need a coach in their corner to help them be successful, but I don't also practice what I'm preaching and like have a coach for myself, then who am I? You know, that's right. Right. And so you signed up with him and how did that go? It was great. You know, um, I signed up, I didn't work with Chris after that point through the mentorship process i worked with jeff smith who is still a mentor for two brain today and i

went through they call it uh i think they called it the incubator that's the incubator so you go through the incubator it's like a three name of their program incubator yeah the initial part so you sign up and you go through the Incubator. That's how it was back five years ago. And that's essentially like a deep dive crash course on how to not screw up being a gym owner and what to do, how to create systems, how to hire a cleaner, why you should hire a cleaner, how to change your mindset, how to sell personal training, why you should sell personal training, X, Y, all these different just basic gym owner things, how to manage your finances. And then after the three months of the incubator, you can choose to go to growth, which is essentially like a monthly subscription to be part of their Facebook group and have a mentor call every month with your mentor. And they'll help you set goals, pursue your goals,

kind of give you advice and guidance based on their experience. Um, it's just a mastermind. And I mean, I'm still, I'm still into your brain. So I spent five years. I've been doing that. No shit. Yeah. Wow. And you don't work for them. No, I've thought about applying to be a mentor, but I haven't done it yet. Wow. That is really cool. And have you helped other gyms with the stuff that you've learned from Two Brain? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you think that if you wouldn't have gone that way with Two Brain, things would have been different? Yeah. Definitely. When I spoke to him, the most powerful thing that he said to me that stands out – he probably said a ton of stuff – was that basically he made a shitload of mistakes himself. Yeah. And the way he explained the way mistakes happen was fascinating to me. He said everyone knows the first thing you do. That's the easiest. You the gym yeah and then what's the second thing and the third thing and the fourth thing and at some point down there it becomes should you get a new mirror in the

bathroom or should you buy a new kettlebell and he says in these decisions i'm paraphrasing i remember exactly what the examples he gave me but it was when i had him on the podcast when i was when i was at crossfit and he said basically there's wrong decisions to be made there a lot of them yeah and so you want to make sure you're making the right you're choosing that right path it's kind of like that game candyland or whatever those board games are where they got a million fucking paths you don't want to fall down the wrong ladder yeah dude well i mean like the guys that owned it before me they fucked up candyland like they right, made a bunch of shitty choices, and then they sold it. There was a reason I was the fourth owner.

I wanted to stop that. Fourth owner in four years? Yeah, dude. That's amazing. Why do you stay at CrossFit Gym? Why do you keep paying? Why do you stay a CrossFit gym? Why not now that you've had the success, just let your affiliate fees lapse and change the name to Mountain Island Cody Bradburn? Because I value integrity. And to me, if I kept doing CrossFit and stopped supporting the brand of CrossFit,

I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. And I've gone back and forth. Because, you know, Greg's not there anymore. And it's like the story of, what is it, Odysseus' boat. It's like if it's the same boat, but you've replaced all the boards on the boat, is it the same boat? I it's like if it's the same boat but you've replaced all the all the boards on the boat is it the same boat i mean i say it's the same boat you know like i i still eat breathe and sleep crossfit you know i spend all my time listening to their podcast and watching your videos and people make me like i just i care about it so if i were to like disenfranchise from crossfit or leave crossFit to save $3,000 a year. It's like, that's not worth it.

Like I'd much rather support the mission and the vision that Greg created. And it's still in motion in some way. Like, even though they're struggling right now with direction, I still hope that they can get back to their roots and pursue Greg's vision. And I'd much rather pay to support that than not. What would be the equivalent elsewhere? The example that I've used a lot of times is it's a tithing you're paying, the way people would pay money to a church or i heard greg refer to it as you know hey you know we've let the cat out of the bag now the affiliates

are just paying a brand loyalty payment you use the word integrity i like that i wonder what the okay i'm sure this is a really hard pill to swallow if you're running a company right because like you're the all the mbas are like well of course of course we sell M&Ms and these pretty wrappers and we trick kids to buy them and we put them at the counter there and we have them buy food that hurts them and it adds no value to their life, but we keep selling it to them. I mean, you know what I mean? But that's what they do. But yours is – this reason that affiliates I think are staying on board is so abstract. this reason that affiliates i think are staying on board is so abstract and these people who work there want to add that no no one at hq wants to be late i shouldn't say no one but the vast majority of people don't want to be lazy they want to find a way to add value to the affiliates even

if the affiliate fees are going to just pay and someone like craig howard over at pleasant and crossfit or diablo crossfit has set the bar so low that like, Hey, just don't fuck up the brand. Yeah. Don't do anything for me. Yeah. Just don't poop on the doorstep. But, but those people need, those people want to add value. The people who work at CrossFit HQ, they want to add value. Yeah. They're making an effort for sure. And it's getting better. Like they put out the, the affiliate round tables, they put out the affiliate owner handbook. They're doing the quarterly affiliate owner meetups where they have people presenting like best practices, which is great. I'm glad to see that.

What did you think about that? Have you read the handbook? I've, I've, I've read through it a little bit. I haven't read it front, front to back. I've, um, I've checked out sections. There's a lot of stuff in there that I already do that I learned from two brain. Um, Do you think it do that i learned from two brain um do you think it's plagiarized from two brain no no okay so it's not the same as your brain there's yeah for sure there's um they're saying a lot of similar things in a different way like with different voices but the end outcome the outcome still sounds the same to me and there's

there's a lot of stuff i could be doing better there's a lot of things i could do better and that's why i i have the affiliate playbook on a tab and my computer always open so i can outcome, the outcome still sounds the same to me. And there's, there's a lot of stuff I could be doing better. There's a lot of things I could do better. And that's why I have the affiliate playbook on a tab and my computer always open. So I can go back and look at it when I'm, when I have a few minutes to like, you know, work on some personal growth and development from that. So I try and do that often, but even if CrossFit wasn't doing that, I would still pay my affiliate fees. I'd still be an affiliate because I'm proud to be an affiliate.

And I'm proud to give them money to help them pursue their vision and try to fix society because it's pretty fucked right now. The word. I wonder if it's equivalent to your members paying you during the months you were closed down for COVID because they – or like I used to – when my – where my kids do tennis or my kids do jiu-jitsu, it's more than just a place they do jiu-jitsu or do tennis or do skateboarding. It's a place that I can't – I don't want it to go away no matter what it's a community for my kids 100 i would be so bummed if one of these places closed down not because they couldn't do the sport anymore but because that that community where would that community go so it's sort of so it's kind of that right big picture you pay into that to make sure the community stays together yeah that's a good way to put it so interesting how long were you closed during the um the the pandemic restrictions or whatever

the fuck people call it these days um two to three months somewhere in there oh okay so did you give the middle finger and just open back up that doesn't seem very yeah police ever come Oh, okay. So did you give the middle finger and just open it back up? That doesn't seem very – yeah. Police ever come? No. Awesome. I'd love to hear that. Thank you, officers of Charlotte, for not going to the gym and letting people get healthy. Yeah. What do you tell people? If someone asks you what you're selling? What do you tell people? Or does anyone ever ask you that?

Not in those words. But when that topic comes up, I mean, I tell them I'm selling the solution to their problems. You know, that's what it comes down to is it's this will solve your problem if you listen to me and take my advice. But that's where I'm having relationship problems sure this will help with that yeah 100 yeah you're having problems at work yeah yeah it really is amazing how does it work for someone to become a member at your gym yeah so like um say somebody comes in on the website and they have questions, um, I'll call them and we'll schedule. We have a couple of steps in the process. We do a discovery call. So they'll fill out the lead form. I'll get their information. They get a text from me. Hey, have you had a chance to book an appointment yet? And it'll prompt them to schedule a call. So then that way they're getting a response back immediately. And then I'll go back if they haven't responded.

I'll give them a personal call if they haven't responded in like, you know, a few hours if I'm available and schedule a discovery call. That's usually seven to 10 minutes. So we'll just talk about, okay, who are you? What's your goal? Why do you want to come to the gym? And if it sounds like a good fit, then I'll schedule an in-person consultation. But if I'm on the phone and someone says like, Hey, I want a place to come work out and like do my own thing.

Like, all right, cool, man. This isn't the place for you, but go check out this gym down the street, you know? But if you're like, Hey, I want to lose weight. I want to get healthy. You know, I want to make, you know, be a better person. I want to, you know, any of those things. Okay. Sounds great.

Let's get you in the gym and we'll schedule a free no sweat intro. They'll come in for 30 to 45 minutes and meet with me or my wife. And we'll sit down right over there and talk about just their history, like where they've been, what they've done, what's worked, what hasn't worked, what their goals are, why their goals matter to them. And then, you know, how we solve their problems with CrossFit, what CrossFit is. And then we'll talk about our onboarding process and then present the options. And it's a prescriptive model, which I learned from Two Brain. So if somebody comes in and they haven't worked out in 20 years and they're afraid of being

in a group, I'm not going to suggest they take group classes. I'm going to suggest personal training for one or two or three months. And then after they become confident and competent and they're being consistent with some personal accountability coach, and then they're safe in class, maybe then if they want to, they can graduate to group classes. But I've got clients, I got two clients out there right now that don't want to do group classes. So they're doing one-on-one training with Megan and they're happy with that. But if I took that same client and threw them in a class, you know, they're probably going to fail.

So we have that conversation on the front end so I can make a recommendation, and then we'll move forward from there. Do you ever say to a client, hey, you've been here six months. I know you said you're not interested in a group class. I really think it would be an important stimulus for you and life experience for you. I'm not suggesting you do it all the time, but I really think that it would add value to you. If nothing else, get you out of your comfort zone. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Carl, he comes in the mornings at 6.30 a.m.,

and we always recommend he, like, try some classes out and get around some of his peers and push himself a little bit. Yeah, we have clients like that. Yeah, it's interesting. It's like that in jiu-jitsu or in tennis or in anything. Like, hey, you might not want to be a competitive skateboarder or a competitive tennis player but it's important to at least sign up for a tournament once a year or you know to at least get out there and experience it and the vast

majority just to break through your fears right for sure or your preconceived notions i never want to go to an affiliate. Going to an affiliate is like sex. Sometimes you don't want to have it, but you never, ever regret it. Yeah, you need it. And you never regret it. I've never gone to an affiliate and worked out and been like, oh, I didn't like that. It's always like, even if I have the worst experience in the world, I still had a fucking great time working out with the other people in there. Yeah, for sure.

Lookit, they heard me say that, and all the porn sites started botting us. Russian bot forums. What happens next for you? Is a second affiliate in sight for you? What happens next for you? Is a second affiliate in sight for you? I don't think so, man. I mean, we could, but my mentor that I work with now, Jeff Juka, he put it well a couple months ago on one of our calls.

Because at this point, with my gym ownership, I could do a couple of things. I could functionally retire and step away and like go pursue other things I wanted to I could open a second location another affiliate um but I don't really have an interest in either of those things so you can either go big or you can go deep and my wife and I decided we want to just go deep with our affiliate so we want to be present you know continue to help our coaches develop and get better at coaching, continue to refine our member experience and consider to pour into the community, like the way we're doing it now, and just continue that, try to get more depth with them and just make this affiliate as impactful as we can. The next thing I'm trying to do is buy a building so that I can own some commercial

real estate and I could get some tenants to help create some additional revenue streams and help me pay the note down so that I can go from being a renter to an owner. And then I might pursue seminar staff. I'm undecided on that just because of my wife being pregnant and having our first child in the way so that those are the two big things other than just growing my gym and making my affiliate as good as like you know the best affiliate i can i'd like to be able to you know move us into a dream gym that i own or that we own right and maybe apply to be on seminar if i have you know what it takes um yeah when the baby comes out it's for sure going to change i don't know in what way but it's for sure going to change your perspective like in like this second you're you're going to be a dad and then you kind of start to see the world even if you don't want you start seeing the world you'll

start wanting to be more familial with everyone like you're saying you want to go it sounds like you're already going in that direction you'll want your gym to be deeper uh because you're gonna everywhere you go you're gonna be nesting you know what i mean everywhere you go you're gonna be like would my son or my daughter be happy here is this an adequate place you start doing that you take everything like to the next level right it's like it's like i never never in a million years when i go to the skate park the first thing i do is i walk around and look for trash and needles and anything that would cause my kids to trip while they're skateboarding or dangerous to them if i see other kids sweatshirts on the ground i pick them up and hang them up just dumb shit that old people do i can't even

fucking dumb shit though dude like that's that's a reflection of yours a person man yeah i can't even help it i just turned into a dad you just can't even help it you know what i mean it's like you know what's what's better than that right i wear something when it's too hot i wear the sombrero so my fucking skin doesn't burn yeah i do all the old people should i look at birds yeah so so you're you're gonna be headed that way man your affiliate owners are your affiliate members are really going to benefit from that next level of depth. I hope so. That you're going to add, yeah. I really appreciate you coming on.

Was there any stone that you thought, hey, I want to make sure I share this story while I'm on there that maybe we didn't talk about? I don't think so man um i just i appreciate what you guys are doing for a crossfit even though you're no longer employed by them i hope they hire you back if you'd even take a job um yeah i, I don't know. I just, I think that gym owners and CrossFit gym owners specifically, I just hope they don't lose sight of why they opened an affiliate to begin with. And, um, one of my coaches put it well, like our society nowadays wants to tell us that we need to be bigger and like successful and as wealthy as possible and grow, grow, grow, become as big as you can. But there's also nothing wrong with being that mom-and-pop shop that impacts people's lives in a meaningful way. And I think that's worth pursuing and being proud of. I mean, look, you were doing some guy in a pool house, him and his wife in a pool house and in a meaningful way.

And they did you back. Right. It's kind of it's amazing, right? It absolutely is. Hey, when that happens, who's the first? Do you go back to your car and just call your girlfriend right away and just be like or your mom? And you're like, you're never going to fucking believe this. That's what I do whenever that shit happens and i was like i didn't i sat in shock i didn't want to believe it i was like there's i'm not gonna get my hopes up that's probably not gonna happen like he's just being a nice guy he's just saying that and i didn't want to believe it until like i saw the wire transfer go through and when that happened like it just settled in that it was actually possible and that was um it changed my life

you know how else can you say it are you still friends with him we're i wouldn't say we're friends we stay in touch um and he comes to visit the gym sometimes and like i still check on his son and how his son's been in football um it was a big part of my life but once we were able to get squared up and you know it was just a natural progression that we right our paths i wish that he could have been a part of it but he lives about an hour away from where my ability is now so right that's not realistic to expect that yeah i um the people on this podcast this it's like crazy every day someone either says something to me sends me something gives me something does something for the podcast that kind of blows me away.

Yeah. And you must see that in your gym all the time, just being around such a good community. Yeah, man. I think people have a lot of generosity in their hearts. They just need someone to express it. Right. It's easy to think that that doesn't exist out there, but it does. It's crazy exists. You got to be just open to it, open to it right too yeah you have to be open to it you have to look for it and be willing to accept it if you don't give a shitload you won't receive a

shitload but but but you can't give and you can't give it's weird i need to learn how to phrase it but you but you can't be giving thinking that you're going to be returning shit. There's this thing – the only kind of metaphor that I can think of is – I think I saw it in the Bible. There's this thing in the Bible where if you pray in church, you'll receive the glory of God in church. If you pray behind closed doors, you'll receive the glory of God in abundance in your life. And the way I take that is, is like, if you give to people want and expecting in return, you're going to get like, if I wait till someone's looking before I give them something. Yeah. So that the whole world that's, that's the accolades I get.

Yeah. But still, when you do generous things, just because you're a generous person, it still puts the world in motion to give back to you. I know it sounds magical, but I think that's how I'm seeing it work at 50. Who's to say that magic isn't real? Right. Philip Kelly, how did Cody prepare to take his L3? You have your L3, Cody?

Dang. I got it back in May. How did you prepare for that? So whenever the governor shut down gyms for COVID, my wife and I were at home. All of our members that stayed on with us, we rented them out of equipment. So they all took kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, plates, rowers home. And every day, every morning we wake up we have a list we split the list in half right and we would text all of our clients specific modifications of the workout of the day based on the equipment they have and then tell them why they should do it based on their goals

and then that was our morning so we spend a few hours in the morning doing that you know about 40 to 50 clients a piece we go we'd go through and text them all and make sure that they were set and had a plan for the day. And then in the evenings, we would check them, Hey, how'd it go? What was your time? What was your score? Um, send us a, send us a picture post-workout. So, you know, you did it just an accountability, you know, and to give them some kind of value for keeping up their panel with us. But in between those hours, there wasn't much to do. So I decided I was going to take my level three. And I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with level three study material,

but it's essentially this PDF of probably, it's probably seven or eight pages. And they've got, I don't know, 100 to 120 articles from the journal in just six different categories. to 120 articles from the journal in just six different categories so every day every morning before we text the clients i wake up a little earlier have some coffee and just sit on the couch and pick a few articles and read through them and that was years ago a couple years ago you know so i read through a lot of the articles and then the gym reopened i got back into coaching full

time i got back into trying to rebuild the gym and my team. So I got away from that for a while. And then after I had some good coaches back on my staff and I had some more time, I went back to studying again. So I went back and reread all the articles, highlighted them, took notes. And then I took a couple of online courses for programming with Chuck.

Watched any videos I could find about the level three, but there's not much with Chuck, who Chuck Carswell, like he has a whole lot for programming. He teaches it. Oh, I didn't even know that. Wow. Yeah. So that's like 60 bucks, man. Like the, it's super cheap, right? So anybody listening that wants it, I would say take that. Um, I went back and did the judge's course. I went back and watched, um, spot the flaw courses and, you know,

reviewed all those and took notes. But I just read the materials that they gave you. You know, there's not really a better way. I mean, all you can do is obsess over CrossFit. What, you know, read the old articles, read, read the stuff in the study guide that they give you. You know, I watched videos every night with E.C. Sienkowski. She's talking about, you know, nutrition.

So I watch a lot of her stuff. I try to understand just the methodology at its core. But there's not really like a secret way to prepare for it, you know? Like you've got to just – you've got to love CrossFit. You got to know CrossFit. You got to believe in CrossFit. If you don't believe in it, you're not going to pass it. And then how was the test?

It's hard. You know, I mean, it's, you know, you go to a Pearson VUE testing center and you can't talk. You're in front of a computer. They give you a notepad and you have like, I think two or three hours to take it. It's like 120, 150 questions. And it's mostly just like, it was mostly like scenarios. Like, okay, you have this new member that comes into the gym and, you know, he's a college kid. He hasn't worked out in two years.

He partied last night. He's hungover. Which one of these workouts is the most at risk of giving him rhabdo right or what's the most dangerous workout he could do or you've got these three clients working out and then this is the workout of the day they've got you know this client uses this weight this client uses this way this client uses this weight this is their individual times who produce the most power during that workout. So like things like that, you know, and then there's a lot of questions about just the methodology and CrossFit and stuff that you read about in those articles.

Did you leave that thinking you passed? So when you leave, they give you the response. They give you your pass fail right away. Oh, shit. When I, when I finished the test, I was pretty confident I passed it because a lot of the questions I wasn't wondering. I was pretty confident in my answers. Going into it, I was really nervous.

I was going to put it off because my wife and I were about to go on our honeymoon. So we were about to go to Costa Rica for like two weeks. And one of my coaches, she was like, you should take the test before you go because if you don't, you're going to be stressed out your whole honeymoon. Oh, good advice. Just take it, get it over with, and then go relax. So I did. So I was stressed going into it.

But then when I finished it and I finally went back and checked a couple of my questions that I hadn't been sure about and finalized my answers and spent it, I was pretty confident. So I got up and walked out, and they handed me the pass. And that was a, that was a great feeling, man. Cause that was a really big goal of mine.

Yeah. That's basically my college degree. Yeah. That's awesome. Uh, and they're going to have a level four. Now it looks like I just saw that. Yeah.

That's my next goal. You will get right on that, huh? Yeah. I'm going to go for it for sure. I'm probably gonna get smoked my first drive but i'm gonna try uh and would you in so the process of studying for the level three is what makes you a better coach i'm guessing that made you a significantly better coach just all the hours you put in studying yeah i think so yeah that's awesome uh sarah summer i used to coach for cody he was one of the best affiliate

owners to be under he genuinely cared about the development making us the best i can only imagine things have gotten better love the show thank you thank you sir uh cody has been killing it since the grid years oh you did yeah dude grid man that was back in the day we did the uh sagl i was the corey i'm on different teams no i think we're on the same team we um yeah we did great for a few months for a while thank you cory um thanks dude i appreciate it yeah for sure dude i was looking forward to this all day, so I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, anytime. You got my number. Text me anytime.

Good to meet you. Yeah. Lots of nice things said here. Lots of good information. I think I'm stoked on this podcast. Thank you, brother. Thanks, bro. Yeah, me too, man.

I really appreciate this, man. Thanks again. Okay, and don't hesitate. I always tell all the guests this. Don't ever hesitate to text me. No one can bug me i have no problems ignoring people and i also have no problems like texting me 24 hours a day so like no one can bug me okay well if you guys are ever in charlotte and you come work out let me know for sure but you got a place to sleep too okay oh uh and from michael

sorry michael my problem with the l3 is the cost to maintain it. What's that mean? He probably means that you have to maintain a certain level of CEOs, CEUs. So you have to go do online courses. You have to go to in-person seminars. You have to go to things that CrossFit has sanctioned as approved from CrossFit to be able to maintain your level three. I don't know the exact requirements, but.

Oh, here we go. If you're, if you're just a, if you're a, you'll put into anything, like what you put into what you care about is a reflection of the value associated to it. So if you value CrossFit, you'll invest the money into it to maintain your level. If you don't, that's fine. You just don't waste your time doing it. You just keep it keep getting level ones and level twos and

that's fine that's not wrong but like the money that i'm going to spend to maintain my level three is insignificant to the value i get from being a level three damn cody you should be on seminar staff you already got the answers they should pay you a thousand bucks for that answer that was a great answer okay so let's pull up the poll. Thank you, Caleb. Oh, my goodness. I'm so glad we made it to the two hour mark. The question was, does Cody cut his own hair or does he go to super cuts? Forty eight percent cut his own hair. I'm going to say cuts his own hair, too. He's got like that manly shit going. He's not like me.

Or does he go to super cuts? Cody, I go to a barber shop and my barber open carries a glock on his hip oh no we need another pull or does he go to a barber who carries a gun okay thanks dude um great meeting you our paths will cross again i'm sure yeah i hope so okay ciao i got you damn good ending so that's good so that that makes up for the fact that he doesn't cut his own hair he still gets the tick in the masculine section because the barber carries a glass. It's probably one of those barbershops that you can get whiskey at, too. I bet you his barber's Russell Burger.

His barber's Russell Burger. Amazing. All right. Tomorrow, we have on as a guest a young lady. Maybe she's not even a young lady anymore, but I knew this girl. I knew of this girl when she was 16 because I worked with her mom and her dad at CrossFit events. and her name is Devin Kim. And now she is like a full blown badass CrossFitter. I mean, she was a badass CrossFitter as a kid too, I remember, but I just paid her no mind. So it's too busy with the camera and Josh Bridges face. But I remember seeing her doing the demos at the Del Mar regional in San Diego, California. And she would do the demos with Adrian Bosman. She was just a young girl. And now she's going to be on the show and she's competing at the Zello Games. And I actually ran into her at the ranch a couple months ago.

And it took me a while. And she was so kind and polite and turned into this mature woman. And now I'm finally making the connection where I knew her. But anyway, she's coming on the show at 7 a.m. tomorrow. I can't wait to get reacquainted with her. I can't wait to get reacquainted with her. And then tomorrow evening, Brian Friend and Andrew Hiller will be joining me on the show to discuss Zello Games. Zellos Games? Zello Games? I should learn how to pronounce it.

Then on Wednesday, we have Christine Kohlenbrander at 7 a.m., another amazing athlete I've never met before. I'm excited to meet her. And then in the evening, on Wednesday night, we have Aaron Cairo on. He is the king of YouTube when it comes to skateboarding. He is the man. He has built an organization called Braille. They own YouTube when it comes to skateboarding. And I think he's made it his life goal to make skateboarding accessible to everyone. He is a pretty hardcore, benevolent dude, a giver of the highest level.

And I'm really excited to have him on. I think most kids these days know who that is. Thursday, Jason Grubb. We've had him on before. Great guy. One of the nicest guys ever. Masters champion in CrossFit. No one scheduled for Friday yet. Saturday, No one. Oh, I like it when.

Okay. Oh, Saturday and Sunday we have the Zellos games. Okay. So we're getting there. Um, regardless how that turns out, that's going to be a blast this weekend. A bunch of us will be on here. Uh, we will be doing our best. It's our first time broadcasting something. It's going to be, it's pretty experimental. I'm excited about it. Um, even if there's like fights between us and camera movements and either way, you're going to see the, you get to see the behind the scenes and the real thing simultaneously.

It's going to be quite the fun, uh, show with moments of, uh, a lot of shit being tossed around. Yeah. That was the best answer ever, right?

That was. And Michael, thank you for the question. And thank you for the $10. Thanks for throwing the alley- thank you for the $10. Thanks for throwing the alley-oop up for Cody. CrossFit Mountain Island, they serve beer. Who serves beer?

The barber shop, he does too. Oh, that's nice. Cody, your mom was on here saying how proud she was of you. I wanted to pull the comment up, but then it like, it blew by me. I apologize. But it sounds like you got a good crew of support and loving family you're a good dude all right uh any final words caleb no