The Sevan Podcast - Affiliate Town Hall | Souza’s show

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

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or visit getg9.ca today. Let's hope this works for me. After five freaking attempts earlier this morning with someone, so weird the roadcast are updated and now it does this thing where I can hear my voice, but the second I stop talking I can't hear any feedback it just like stops. Kind of strange. Anyways welcome to the affiliate town hall. If you're out there in the ether please let me know if this is actually working because I know we had a lot of issues with StreamYard this morning and I'm hoping we don't have those same issues now. Are you free now since Sevan is on with Colton? I don't think he's on with Colton.

I'm live now. I don't understand. Chris, can you hear me out there? Mike isn't working. Oh, maybe it's the wrong one. Yeah, there we go. How about now? How about now? now how about now is it working now? Mike isn't working. Where is it? Did we get it together?

That might have just been operator on my part. I wonder if you guys Yep, it's working Can you hear this? You can hear. All right, cool. Okay. I was partly wondering if like, am I starting this now or is there still issues? But it looked like I saw on the back end of YouTube that Sevan got a working with Colton.

It just took five attempts. So have you guys tried these C fours before smart energy? I don't know. I saw it and I figured I'd give it a go. Sometimes I've paid out. I mean, it's my face all itchy. If I try to drink these without working out, you gotta, gotta remove the sweatshirt. Hold on. All right. Now we're into it then. I can get my camera to focus. Maybe. Okay, there we go. I remember back in the day, I told you guys, Ortega told me how to fix it. He's like, you got to put your camera focus on auto or something of the sort. Never got to figure it out. Welcome to the official affiliate town hall where we actually talk about affiliates, what's going on,

what we could do to improve it, and the vision to come. Let me bring up this. A while back I made a hierarchy of needs for a CrossFit HQ type. God damn, nothing's working today. There we go. You guys remember this. If you watch the show with any sort of frequency, at least the ones that I do, I've talked about this a couple of times. I'm bringing it back up onto here now. Okay. So this is the importance. And this is one of the things that I really want to draw clarity on. If you're an affiliate owner, if you're a coach and you're trying to make a career out of what you do, you do not actually run a results business.

You do not actually run a fitness business. You don't even run a community business even though a lot of us like to think that it's all relationships. And it is once they get inside your building. But until you can bring them inside of your gym, you're a media company. Every single business, every small business, every solo entrepreneur, every person who got their L1 and headed into their garage and wants to just teach their mom and their neighbor up the street how to squat better and how to move needs to be a media company. And now whether you like it or not, it's just the cold hard truth and fact of the time that

we live in. And it's hilarious because I've had lots of conversations with Media Launch because when we first started Media Launch up, like Jay basically was like, I'm done with the fitness industry, like I wanna get like, you know, no, I don't wanna film people working out anymore, I wanna go to different direction.

And it was funny because when we got into like the Silicon Valley, like it's obviously just right up the road and that's where Jay's from. So there's a lot of connections there with the venture capital types and stuff. And the most hilarious thing was having a conversation with them about their need for media or social media presence or just constantly making it look like from the outside in that the company is just like this living, breathing thing.

Get to know the characters inside the company. Get to know you, your vision, what your morals are, what your company stands for, how you could create some really fun, creative stuff to put out there. And all of them would be like, ah, yeah, kind of, but we need a campaign. We need to have some sort of objective, runs call to actions. And I don't disagree with that at all, especially if you're a gym. You want to create some sort of offer and put it out there. But by and large, you would rather just have constant media coming out of talking about

who you guys are and what you guys do. And these venture capital types would listen to this and they would kind of like him and ha about it, almost like they didn't really... They weren't bought in. They didn't really believe me. They're like, okay. And then all of them stop the meeting and they go to X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it. They go to Instagram, they go to Facebook, they go to LinkedIn, and they start to get their news and entertainment.

And it's crazy to me that they would dump any amount of money into these campaigns or these drawn out, this old school frickin mentality of how you would run media or for lack of a better word, like marketing. And to me, marketing and media is essentially the same, the same thing. Remember, I don't have some MBA from Harvard, so take it with a grain of salt. But they want to create these big frameworks around the media and they want to make it just way more corporate in structure than it needs to be. And really what you need to do, especially if you're a CrossFit affiliate, but just a business in general, is just find a way to develop a relationship via media with potential customers. That's it. And the bigger your business is,

the more it could scale. Like if it's a software company, or in this case, CrossFit, where you could have an affiliate ship and it could essentially go anywhere it wants to in the world, then your message needs to be even broader and you need to even have more consistency. And if you're a smaller local business like my gym, right? Why I wouldn't spend a bunch of money to do some national exposure to my gym because those people don't live close enough. But you still need to be able to target your local audience there. Find a way to make connections with the other businesses that are in your market. And you leverage each other's audiences and media to grow in your local area. So if you're a CrossFit affiliate and you're going into 2025 and you are not thinking about how you

could optimize, start, become more consistent, or have more intention behind the media that you post and that's coming from your gym, you are going to lose. You will just go out into the abyss. And some gyms are like, well, I have a great word of mouth and, and, and I have, you know, this, that, or the other thing. Awesome. But you still need a long-term strategy because right now your strategy is sitting around and hoping that your other members go and talk to people and bring them into your gym. But you have no other strategy behind that.

And it doesn't take very long to figure out that if you are going to develop some sort of strategy to grow your gym, to grow your business, that you need media to do so. And so I just really want to drive home the importance in the first couple minutes here of this unofficial affiliate town hall, official affiliate town hall, whatever you want to call it. To the fact that if you're not focused around and on your media, that you're going to have a really tough time going into the future, Mason startup, Mason. What's up, dude? Susie, I go to Jim.

That is a high rocks affiliate. We have five people come in per week. That's a high rocks online. I want to try it. Never see that with CrossFit anymore. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And like, and this is the, um, and this is the main thing. If there's nobody focused on growing the pie, the more people excited about, uh, CrossFit, this is what Hirox is doing. You guys see

it all the time. Even the negative stuff that Hitler is putting out on Hirox is still good for Hirox. It's still spreading the message. Even though you, we see it as CrossFitters and we're like, God, that's standard and judging because fricking awful only comparable to Dubai maybe. And it's like, that was a dig at Dubai, a joke. And it's still more, it's still doing more than CrossFit is. And it's because they're paralyzed by choice. I saw this picture on somebody's story and it was like, here's our marketing and media company.

And there was like, it looked like there was like 15 people in the picture. And I was like, what? If I had to take a guess, I would have thought your media team, your marketing and media team, I would have thought it was two people. I would have thought it was two people. That's why Hydrox and Apex in UK is skyrocketing. Dude, the fitness industry up until the point across it was mostly selling you complete bullshit. You guys remember the fricking the ab belt you would wear and it would like electrocute

your abs or all the different shit that they were able to sell people back in the day. Hi, Elizabeth. How are you? Or all the different shit that they were able to sell people back in the day. Hi, Elizabeth. How are you? Craig? What's up, dude? I forgot to say hi to Chris and Justin too. Hi, hi, hi. Tyler, what's up?

We talked to this. Susie. I told someone in your town to sign up at your gym. Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that. And, um, if you don't, it like, if there's nobody focused on how are we going to continue to excite people and bring them into the fold, convert

them into our way of thinking. What's our way of thinking? A hundred words of fitness. You guys know this and we do not spend a lot of time on that as CrossFit affiliates. I'm not even going into HQ anymore. Like I, I fuck hopes lost there, right? I don't even know. But if you're a CrossFit affiliate, you have the ability. Bernie, what's up, dude? Wait, what? Electro-Ab belt is no good. Well, results may vary. We'll say that results may vary. I know I'm kind of all over this place, but I want to show you guys. So this take it for what it's worth here. Um, I just plugged this into a Chad GPT, the AI,

and I asked what the fitness industry was worth and it spit back out that it was like in the U S it was a 33.5 point 33.2 5 billion, apparently is the US market for the fitness industry. Now with 64.9, sorry, 64.19 million in memberships in the US. So $64 million are memberships held in the US. So then I asked to split it down. I was like, with the information provided, can you give an estimate on how much of the market share larger gyms take? So like Planet Fitness, Flow State of the Home, and CrossFit. I'm gonna get to that next. Planet Fitness, LA Fitness, these major conglomerates... I got this new fancy side camera.

That's what I'm holding on to if it looks weird. These major conglomerates take the mass share of those $64 million in gym memberships that are paid. Planet Fitness and LA Fitness and Anytime Fitness dominate the market with their extensive networks and lower price points It's a low price point because they're just selling leasing. That's it And the reason why the popularity of the the exercise machine came in the sea of machines You see when you walk into these corporate gyms is because they replaced the trainers

They replaced the trainers because if I have a machine that fits you into the little box, and then I got a little demo onto the side that tells you what to do, and pretty much you could do it without hurting yourself at all for the most part because you're stuck in that machine and you could adjust the little weight thing. There's no need for me to have a personal trainer. So I could just get a commercial space, load it with equipment, just have some people to run the front desk, a cleaning crew to maintain it. And then that's it. I could drop my price as low as I need to and just go off volume.

There's not that many variable costs. I'm not having to pay out trainers and these other things. Most of the costs are going to be fixed. And it's crazy when you think about that. that's what we're, that's what we're quote unquote competing with. And it's so easy to win against those gyms because they offer nothing. They offer nothing. But they're just beating us because there's more dollars and resources and they could appeal to people's self image of what they want to be.

Oh, I really want to be somebody that works out. So I'm going to go get a gym membership for $30 a month. I'm never going to use it, but in the back of my mind, I'm going to tell myself, Oh, I could go in and use it at any point in time. And then I'm stuck at that price point and I'm like, ah, well, I might use it. And it's not that much. I don't notice it coming out of my account. That's how that's what the fitness industry was made of before CrossFit came along. That

was it. There was maybe a few kind of smaller boutique gyms. I did some group class stuff and there was like, you know, specialty ones like curves was like a women's only one. There was like jazzercise. Shout out Mrs. Howell. But outside of those few things, there was nothing else in the fitness industry besides the corporate fitness gyms. So anyhow, I asked it again, like the chat GPT, the split between that 64 million and gym memberships, how much of it do we estimate goes to like CrossFit gyms? Now of course, inside this estimate, it's going to lump in like functional fitness style

gyms that aren't paying an affiliateship because there's not a lot of ways that they could take that data and know. Mostly because CrossFit is a private company, so they don't have access to those numbers and stuff. But essentially, the estimate that this chat GPT came out with was while corporate gyms hold the majority of the $64 million at 70% or 80% or even higher of the total market that's coming in. CrossFit affiliates, while impactful, likely represent a smaller portion, perhaps 5 to 10% or less. Or less. And when you think about that, and then you think about the incentives of the headquarters, the people that are supposed to be growing the ecosystem. Who are we really going after here?

Who is your customer? How do we reach more people? And if you think you're going to do it with some campaign and just recycle a bunch of drawn out stories from the affiliates, it's like, yes, that's important, but fuck how much you have to continue to evolve your message. And we have to continue to evolve our media. Flo, flow state home of CrossFit to what? Kisperi, geez, I suck at reading.

OK, when we look at our Google Analytics, CrossFit still makes a lot of search hits each month. Again, how is that a strategy? How long does that last for? How could you rely on that? What's the predictive value in that? I'm not disagreeing that it still doesn't hold weight that somebody might put in like Crossfit near me and your gym would pop up and you could even argue. And, argue, and

I would probably agree with this, that paying your $375 might be worth having CrossFit in your name. So that way you populate at the top if somebody's looking for a CrossFit style workout. But by and large, most people do not know the difference between an actual CrossFit affiliate and somebody who just doesn't between an actual CrossFit affiliate and somebody who just doesn't have the name CrossFit in it, but is saying that they do CrossFit. If I were at charge of CrossFit, I would be trying to make the biggest differentiator I can between those two gyms.

The reason why is because we need to be able to make being a CrossFit affiliate matter if they want to keep the affiliateships up. Just like they had to do with the open. Because soon, like a lot of the major athletes, we're like, why join the open? It doesn't matter. I don't take it seriously, all this stuff. And so the value of it started to drop. And so outside of SEO search, we need to have more.

No, I mean for the argument that Hirox is bringing in people and CrossFit, the brand doesn't. Not sure. Not sure what you mean by that. But I wasn't disagreeing with this at all, FlowState. I still think CrossFit has worked hard for the SEO. But I'm just saying like if there's like that should be part of the equation, of course, but like there has to be more that you could do to continue to bring new people into the

fold. Group classes existed. People like Richard Simmons were doing it, but no one ever scaled it like CrossFit did. There you go. What do you think media coming for HQ should look like? whatever skill that like CrossFit did. There you go. What do you think media coming for HQ should look like? Well, it's funny that you mentioned that because we've been working on this on with a media launch for a while.

And we have, I think myself as a gym in it, and we have two other, four other gyms that are now starting the program. And what the messaging should CrossFit should look like, should be a constant reminder of why CrossFit exists. So let's break that down. There should be a message. And this is what Greg used to do all the time, and this is why Greg was so important to the vision of CrossFit, is because he talked about the reason why the affiliates existed, and he talked about the value of the affiliates. And the line that we heard all the time was that a CrossFit affiliate is a lifeboat in a sea of chronic disease. And so that is the media that should be coming from the

mothership because more and more people especially at this time like it has never been a better time for people to start getting more involved in their health and fitness and looking at alternative ways of eating and exercising. What's up, Brett? Good afternoon, dude. And if there's, if we are not the ones that are constantly pointing out, and the term I like to use here is like the mess, because that's the way that Greg kind of framed the whole thing up, right? And you had the corruption coming down from the big food companies, like the Coca-Cola,

American Beverage Association, Procter & Gam like Kraft, um, General Mills, like all these different major food companies that have lots and lots of money out there, resources, send in lobbyists to the medical industries for junk science, to the universities, to the politicians, to the regulators, to start to twist in and change the wording, to make it sound like Cheerios are heart healthy and making that okay to say, but we all know they're not. In that system in which we live in, and you could include the insurance companies into this, you could include big pharma into this, like however you want to write that down,

like that is the problem. And we should be highlighting that constantly and then showing, Hey, you could find the solution to this problem at your local CrossFit affiliate. And then that's what the messaging in my opinion needs to look like coming from CrossFit HQ. When I opened my gym in the gains lab, when I opened my gym in 2014, the message was simple. We do challenging stuff here worked like a charm that's another that's actually another great angle that you could take and this is the thing too okay so right here we like um uh mason asked a great

question about what type of media should be here right and uh then gains lab talked about we do challenging stuff here there's so many different angles that you could come from like a differentiator with across the gym that all these ideas are great and they should just be running media on all of it. Right? When I... Bernie, again, when I Google CrossFit gyms near me, only five of the top 10 returns are actual CrossFit affiliates. So 50%... Now, I know this is anecdotal here. But if CrossFit was saying, hey, we've been doing a lot of stuff with like SEO search and all these other things.

So we've been taking all the money from affiliates and we've been putting it into this. And this is kind of the value proposition because we see value in helping affiliates grow by buying more SEO. And what Bernie is saying here is that 50% of all those resources don't even go to affiliates in the first place, which is interesting. And I'm curious to see, you guys should all try it and see what your results are. Hopefully we don't get the same thing that Bernie got because then that would mean that like it really is not as impactful as CrossFit would hope it would be.

Absolutely agree. Complete coordinated attack on American health and well-being. Yes. Okay. Mason startup, do you think a why CrossFit message is better than a what CrossFit message? I think they both, they both, both, both need to be constantly need to beat the drum. And like, I don't really like have too much of a preference on the nuance on like why CrossFit exists, what CrossFit is, or like continuing to break down the different elements of it, as long as there's something that is constantly talking about the importance of them in doing a differentiator

from the other boutique or smaller group fitness classes that are being offered. Because right now it's functioning as like a lead generation, meaning like getting more people to help sign up at my gym and stuff. And that, that, that is not, that should not be the function of HQ. So anyways, as I was doing my little research on the, uh, like really like little research, because I just typed it into a bunch of AI chat shit, right?

And, um, when I was doing that on the fitness industry, the really the breakdown that I wanted to like find here is like, Hey, like what are like, who are the major players in the finish industry? Why in the world can we not get a stranglehold on more of the market, meaning people that are interested in fitness? And the biggest question and the thing that I'm constantly thinking about and wanting to work towards, is how in the world can we professionalize the trainer in a way that allows them to make them $100,000 or more a year?

We know how important everything that we do as affiliate owners and coaches is to people's lives, to bettering their quality of life. And it will extending their lives. But yet it's like a fricking, most people, most people say, um, Oh, I'm going to do this till I get a real job or I'm doing this part time, or I'm doing it as a passion project. It's like, shit like that drives me mad. Like we should be working together to become more seen as like a healthcare professional or somebody that is, that is highly valuable rather than somebody that kind of does this part time. And without something like a larger with a bunch of resources, also continuing to find ways to

highlight that message, find opportunities for trainers, then like, it'll never happen. And it's just frustrating because it felt like it was getting close for a while just because of like the DDCs. And it definitely, it definitely stopped at least under the CrossFit umbrella. Now I could tell you 100% this, this mission is continuing at Broken Science and with the stuff that Emily's got going on with a Metfix. And I actually have the privilege of working with them to, um, help with part of the handbook, like the functional movement side. And, uh, if you guys, if you guys want to watch, I've been like,

rehearsing the lectures on my YouTube channel. Elizabeth, you're trying to set me off. You're trying to set me off. I'm going to talk about that in a moment. Unfortunately, you can. But on my YouTube channel, I've been doing the lectures because for me to sit down to write out a book is not going to happen. But I could stay here and talk about it and talk it through as if I'm lecturing it

to people because I do this with the fire departments all the time. And I've done this with the corporate world, uh, prior to COVID and all this shit, so like I, I'm much more comfortable like talking through it than I am writing it out. So I've been doing that on the, um, on my YouTube channel and going through some of the lectures. So if you guys want to sneak peek at it or like some of the clarity that I'm bringing to why we, uh, functional movements are so important and, and how to

differentiate what you could define as functional versus not, which is basically just like a further deep dive on Greg's work. There's nothing new there, but I hope that the different examples of the reason why that I'm using in those lectures really draws to the importance and clarity of using functional movements. But anyhow, I have the pleasure of being able to help out with that angle of the MetFix stuff and it's really exciting. So you guys can go ahead and check that out. But at least I'm pumped to be working with another group that believes in that and wants

to continue to push that forward. And I'm not saying that there still isn't part of CrossFit that also believes in that and wants to continue to push that forward and I'm not saying that there still isn't part of a crossfit that that also believes in that because The stuff with like the L the L1 the L2 the L3 the L4 those things are still extremely valuable Those things those the education pieces are still fucking great You should definitely be still working towards those But from the outside looking in and you guys know being listeners of this show and the Sevan podcast out of total and stuff, it has not been about... How much do you really hear about training?

They started that separate YouTube channel and unfortunately that seems like that's slowly kind of like dying on the vine. And so at least for me it is, it doesn't even populate on my YouTube and I used to keep pretty good track of that. But at least that mission is being carried on over there and I'm super excited to be a part of that. Okay, Elizabeth, we'll get to your... Actually, hold on.

Let's do this real quick. I want to... I know a lot of you guys Googled that, so I want to go through some of this. Okay, so Bernie McGinn, he got like five out of 10, so that was a 50%. HQ can't get local affiliates to be on top of its lists on top Start over scratch that H you can't get local affiliates to be in the top hits of local searches when you search Where you search from affects the search?

50% says that 50% of affiliates in that area have overlooked the value of that search. 50% says 50% of the affiliates. So the affiliates didn't buy into the SEO? Is that what you're saying? So then also with that argument as well, should CrossFit HQ not be putting any resources to SEO then? That's kind of what I got out of that.

Is there a way CrossFit could somehow make it so that non-affiliated gyms don't come up in the search? No, I don't think so. I don't think you could. Only Google could shadow band. Timo? Is it Timo? Timo? Seven out of ten for me in Germany okay cool Chris I've been playing with the Google Gemini for like the last two weeks and I love it yeah that's where that's me too that's that's a five out of five for me when I use a cognitive mode four out of four my regular search oh interesting Ryan so

Ryan hit five out of five since 100% for them okay Elizabeth's question can I remote coach can I coach remote and make 100k? Yeah, you probably could. You probably could do it easier remotely than you could doing a brick and mortar. You know why, Elizabeth? You would probably have very low, if any, fixed costs. Meaning you're not having to pay a rent on a big building. You don't have to buy a bunch of equipment and stuff like that. You would probably just need to focus mostly on production costs, like getting nicer cameras,

good streaming capabilities, like that type of stuff. And those are like one-time costs because once you buy all the equipment, you have it. So if you were able to build an audience and get a bunch of people on reoccurring membership so you could coach them remotely, you would probably actually go to 100K quicker without having the brick and mortar

because you don't have to carry all those expenses. As much as I hate to say that. There's so many variables into play that into organic search results that the best thing HKE can do is tell affiliates how to get better results. Tell them how to get better results. So education. Mason Star, I'm not really... Something about the websites for those gyms have SEO terms

added to it and cannot be removed by a third party. It's annoying. Yeah. Because a lot of the time, especially like a WordPress and stuff, you could build in the SEO. And so there's like keywords and different things like that. So it helps make yours populate. CrossFit Livermore, when I was really active on like posting to Google, my

business all the time, I was also posting to YouTube all the time. I was making, um, I was making a bunch of content on there and like doing stuff like that, that actually used to keep me at the top and I didn't pay a dime for SEO in my area. I was just feeding the beast. Now this was back in like 2017 to like 2020 area, like 2016 to like 2020 ish or so when I started to make more content and that was that's how I was able to bump the SEO. Ryan, 100% spot on that's the best way for a solution.

Educate affiliates on how to use Google effectively. Big little gyms do this really well. Exactly. I mean, there could be more more done to a flow state. Yes, there's really good third party options, but affiliate owners shouldn't have to pay a third party for something HQ should be able to do. Well, OK, if we think that's it. Crawford, OK, they're talking amongst themselves now. The 50 percent that aren't at the top, aren't utilizing SEO. Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe. Okay. So back to this.

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That's 15% off your order at truenutrition.com with the promo code SEVON, S-E-V-A-N. Take the guesswork out of nutrition with true nutrition. So like I said, if we have media media, because most people are going to engage with that and there's a, there needs to be a combination of what's happening on uh, the media, there's usually like, it's a multifaceted thing. It's not just like one post or one type of thing is going to do it. You need to be, um, creative in your approach and you need to kind

of attack from all angles. The second rung up is education. So, um, flow state that's exactly to your point. creative in your approach and you need to kind of attack from all angles. The second rung up is education. So flow state, that's exactly to your point and what Ryan was saying on like, how do we continue to provide education for affiliates? Well imagine if you had some sort of podcast coming from CrossFit HQ where they did just that all the time, right? And don't for, for, for goodness sake, do not start a second channel or a third channel

or four channel for like affiliate stuff. But yeah, that education portion could be good. And they do have some stuff in the affiliate toolkit. So I don't want to like completely say they don't. It just seems like there's not a lot of like intention or priority in that, in that Mason startup or get some good lawyers in there to protect the copyright somehow. Well, if you guys saw the thing when like, Savon was on with Taylor on the CrossFit Games Update Show last week when they were talking about that to license an event, that looks like exactly the way that they're going now. And basically, it's just like, hey, if you guys want CrossFit in your event, or your thing,. Just fill out this application to get approved

and pay us and then we'll license you the event. The thing that's kind of scary about that is if there's not a regulation on how much they do it, I wonder if there's going to be any issue with oversaturation. And then you could run into the issues that Plotty's had. And I talked about that on the show last time where essentially they didn't really protect the trademark and then a bunch of studios were using it. And it was just like, they tried to go back and do it and sue those people and send them cease and desist and all that because of the trademark and they just couldn't do it.

They couldn't attack it, go after everybody at the same time. So they ended up just losing Pilates. And then anybody could just use it now. They lost the trademark. And so there is a little bit of that, which is interesting to think about in terms of like how they would staff HQ after that, because if they started to really license that name out, I wonder how much more legal would have to beef up for them to be able to continuously go after any trademark or IP theft. Because it could be a serious issue. Like if that genie gets out of the bottle,

like it could be a problem. The next portion on here is like coaches and L1 staff, because that has to be the path through to get to affiliateship. And so the way that I see it is like, if you have something that's like, have a certification once you get the certification, you could open your own thing. If you're going to have that, you have to realize that what that is, is like we have the top of the funnel, which would be our media. So you could just take this, this whole thing and flip it on its head. So the top of the funnel is the media. That's what gets people excited about it. Gets it to know what it is, puts it in front of them.

It's all over the place. Then you go to the education. So we're drawing further clarity, like what we are, who we are, and who we go after. And then we shrink it down to the coaches. Now that's actually the point in CrossFit HQ where there's a sale that is made. So if I have the media talking about the message all the time and like going after everything, then I have a lot of free education. Essentially, you could get it all for free online. And I'm talking about what's already happened, right?

Because you guys know that this is kind of the deal. And then from that education, this excites people to buy my thing, which is the certification, in this case, the L1, the L2. Then they're so in love with it, and they want to continue on that they go to the upsell, which is opening their own affiliate. And if you think about it in terms of that way, of like, that's the way that the business would function, then you would have to only draw the conclusion

that the education and the media should just be highlighting all around the certifications, the coaches, and what that is and what that provides. Because that's essentially the top of the funnel sale. Because even if I'm like, see the media and I'm like, fuck it, yeah, I want to open a CrossFit affiliate. I got my heart set on, I want to go. I still have to go through that other rung.

I still have to go get my L1. I still, in this case, I think your L2 or whatever it is. And then eventually become the affiliate. And so if you think about it in terms of like, okay, that makes sense. We need to have more people, more seats in the butts for seminars to get more affiliates. Then you have to backtrack into like, okay, that makes sense. We need to have more people, more seats in the butts for seminars to get more affiliates. Then you have to backtrack into like, that's who we go after is coaches. So our job is to convert people to want to become coaches

or to inspire them to it. We give them a bunch of free education. And then we say, Hey, once you've soaked that up and you're super pumped about it, now you come and sign up for our course and now you're doing that. And you're maybe showing people at your gym that you belong to or at your, you know, at the Globo gym or in your garage or at the park or whatever the case may be. And then you move to the upsell of like opening your own spot. And so that's it. That's what needs to be the focus. Now, why does this matter if you're an affiliate listening to this? Why does this matter to flow state? Well, we essentially function as the same thing, but it's set except it's affiliate being after coaching that becomes

like member, right? The media gets them excited. They've already planted the seed. I need to be healthier. I want to get stronger. I need to have some strength and conditioning. You're highlighting your awesome community and everything that you guys have to offer inside your gym. Then you're educating them on the problems and how they could take their own health into their into their own hands. And then we're bringing them in as a member. And then we're bringing them in as a member. And so you could use that same kind of playbook for your affiliate, but the base of that is going to be the media that comes out of your gym. And I'm going to get into some detail about that now.

Flo say, I think what HQ did well pre-2022 was educating the public about what Genpop thinks fitness is and then detailing what the belief, what we believe fitness is, giving them the light bulb moments we all had. Bingo. Yeah. Yep. And actually, uh flow state, I think that's a better way to kind of sum up what I was, what I was saying earlier, like what we were talking about in, in Mason startup was saying it too. He's like, like it's like why not why CrossFit is, but what CrossFit is. And I was like, yeah, all of it that sums that up.

Because if we educate the public and the general population to say, Hey, this is what actual fitness is and we've defined it and here it is. And you could take it and you could even start to do it on your own and stuff like that. They get that light bulb moment of, Oh shit, I don't need to be inside of the Smith machine or doing bicep curls. Like I should be doing thrusters. I should be mixing my running in my jump rope at the same time. I should be mixing my weight lifting in my cardio days, right? To speak that language. And I should be focusing on the diet. My nutrition has the base of that. And you're right.

The more media that we have on, the more we educate the public on why that is, the more people will have that light bulb moment to make that change, to shift. It'll be a lot easier for us to convert as CrossFit affiliates. It's a lot easier for us to convert people coming out of gyms that have already had some sort of consistency in their workout than it might necessarily be to get somebody to start who hasn't been working out. Just for laughs, I put Susa Fitt in my Google search and I got a ton of results. Apparently, Susa Fitt is a meal prep company servicing New York in New Jersey.

No way. That's amazing, Bernie. So check this out. This is what the hope is. Okay? Let me go. I'm going to give you guys the grand scheme of things here to a certain degree. So the gyms that I was talking about earlier that I said that we are helping out with media launch, I talked about it at the very end of the last show here. But essentially, when I was thinking about this problem, because this is an issue that I deal with with my affiliated issue that most affiliates deal with is like, how do I get consistent in my

media? And then what does that messaging need to look like? And for heaven's sakes people, it is not a shirtless 20 year old dude who ripped doing bar muscle ups. Don't put that on your fucking website. We get it. There's enough of that. This is no longer 2011. We don't need to see it. Bar muscle ups aren't that cool. A bunch of people can do them. Right? So when you think about what type of media matters the most in terms of your gym, um, flow state, take it easy. Thanks for all your, uh, input. Great, great stuff. Take it easy. Have a great rest of your day. Um, um, flow state, take it easy. Thanks for all your input. Great, great stuff.

Take it easy. Have a great rest of your day. Um, when it comes to your media, I think there needs to be a certain recipe. And I look at it almost like programming, right? So let me show you this. Matthew wants to see, uh, me shirtless doing bar muscle ups. Well, that is true, but that's for other reasons. That's not to bring people into the gym. What about ring muscle ups?

Yeah, more cool than bar muscle ups if I had to choose. I guess you're right about that. Okay, so check this out. This is the big idea. Okay, a little camo thing. I'm sure you guys are familiar with this so what we have here is What I like to call the kind of three pillars and and Show off your chunky folk that doing a hardship that'll speak to a good portion of America

Yeah, exactly. So these are the elements that I think it make up at least from what we've tested from June in my gym. We have a couple other gyms that are going to be start testing this. So the data will start to grow and we'll really be able to like dial in exactly what kind of works the best to convert people. But here's what it is. We got the unified message.

What's the unified message is off the carbs, off the couch. If all of the gyms are kind of posting stuff about the mess and us being the solution to that, that really helps continue to grow the pie. The second thing on that pillar, the third one is going to... I mean, the second out of the three is going to be the testimony. So now if you think about what drives members into your gym the most majority of the people are going to say it's the members. They go and they tell their friends and family, like they can't shut up about it. So they bring them in. Right. And so my thought was it's like, okay, so if we know that's the case to be true, then how do we take those conversations, the, the conversations that people are having outside of the gym to convince people to

come in and try out the CrossFit class? And we essentially turn them into digital pieces of content, right? Like, hey, what's your favorite part about the community here? What's, you know, scraping Google reviews with things that are already publicly out there or asking specific questions about The results that they've experienced how their life has changes about being into your gym if they've met friends there What's their favorite community event to come to something like that, right? Did they get off prescription medications? How much weight did they so this is so many? facets to these conversations that happen in terms of people wanting to bring people into their CrossFit gyms. So what we call it here is digital word of

mouth. And we have a couple different ways to deliver this, meaning like there's Google forms I've used. We obviously scraped the reviews from Google, Facebook, Yelp, wherever there's a review we could scrape that offline and then we build that into content. And then of course you have the gyms with like the gym workout B-roll, maybe some interviews of your coaches, some pictures of the place and things like that

so people could see it. But essentially it distills down, right? So this is the main kind of raw footage. And we take it through this cool little pyramid distill here. Verified means that it looks good. It looks cohesive with your brand, your logos, all of that. And then we distribute it across all of your platforms. Now the cool thing is, is we found out how to do this automatically. And the problem and the way that I saw it

And the problem, and the way that I saw it, was that gym owners don't have time to create, film, produce, and publish content. Most of them don't have a skill set or the desire to learn. And even if they did, you'd still have to find the time to film, produce the content, and publish it on the regular. Not to mention analyzing the data and creating content that converts and speaks to your individual gym as a culture. See, this is the gym owner. Ah, I'm so confused. Because it's so much work and I have to do it all.

But you don't, because we have the solution. So what does it look like? So you're like, okay, that's cool, but it's kind of heady. We want to see an actual example. This is what it looks like. Okay. So this kind of speaks to the Monday Motivation stuff. These are just definitions because again, what was different between our fitness and everything else that was happening pre license was is spelled wrong in your diagram. Thank you.

So definitions are part of it, right? So we like to bake that in there a little bit too. And then here's what like the digital word of mouth looks like. This is a review that we took. We got some pictures of the community to frame it up. And then you have the actual word of mouth from the person. And you're able to take a few of these things. You could also showcase this type of stuff in your community. You could see my boy Pete doing some step ups on a box. And in the background, you can see people jumping.

So this communicates a bunch of stuff in one go. Is CrossFit for me? I'm used to seeing really fit 20 somethings. Well now here's an older guy, here's some other people behind him, all of them are doing the same workout, but he's going at his own pace. This was actually a ad that I ran for a while. It did pretty good. Okay, here's another thing of what digital word of mouth looks like.

This is another one. Okay, here's some stuff with the unified message that we post. It's like, there you go. You want to know what to eat, right? Here's what it looks like. Right? And then of course all the other videos. But these type of things, doing it on the regular, Completely changes the game in terms of your of your media

Don't let hillar see Pete step ups He's fine, I'm worried about fucking step ups the problem with you guys did it kill So anyways I just think that in terms of your gym and everything else, if you are not doing that and posting on the regular, then you're going to be falling behind. And unfortunately, there isn't a big thing happening from the mothership. So it's going to be up to you to continue to optimize your media and continue to produce content that shows your community and continue to produce content

that shows your community and your local area. But here's the good thing, you don't have to do it on your own. You could hit us up at Media Launch and we'll take care of it. Because that's how important, thank you Augustus. Fuck, and how do you guys know he's not dealing with a hip thing?

And his hip flexor is super tight. So when he stands all the way up and extends through the hip, it actually bothers his back. It's a fucking problem with this too much completion with the competition shit. When I look at dude, I cannot tell you the biggest pet peeve I have with fucking new coaches when they come over and I'm watching them and they're going through the internship process at the gym or whatever and we pick somebody out and we go, okay, hey, what is Pete's ball balls look like over

there? And then they say he's not getting low enough. And I say, okay, good call. What do you think the queue is? Like, what are you looking at? And then they go, I'm just going to tell them to get lower because it doesn't count. It makes me want to punch you in the fucking face. You need to figure it out. Why can't they get below parallel? Is there a problem with the ankle? Do they not have flexion in the ankle?

Is there a problem with the hip? Is something being, is something being fucking impinged? Like is there an issue? Why? And don't say it doesn't count because your job as a coach is virtuosity, not a competition standard, and especially not an open one

that fucking changes every single year. Your job is to make them move through a full range of motion. And if they can't get through that range of motion, your job is to figure out the limitation and work with them until they can't get through that range of motion, your job is to figure out the limitation and work with them until they can. It's not just about, it didn't count. Be better. Watch the movement, determine the limitation and then coach them through it. That is your job. And unless you're hosting the open or hosting a competition

That it doesn't count language or they need to get better or whatever the fuck stop Coach them better Make them move through a full range of motion by giving them the tools necessary It's not about did it count for the day and and for you crossfitters out there to fucking train and practice stop showing up every single day like it's a competition shit drives me nuts you have people that want to like rush they sign up at the gym and they're looking around like I'm gonna do hands

and push-ups and then they got three fucking Ad mats their range of motions dog shit and nobody's nobody's changing and by the way, they can't even do a full freaking regular push-up yet And yet here we go. You got them upside down because they want to move to some freaking arbitrary rx Or a competition standard no virtuosity full range of motion, competency in their movement. That's the important, uh, Ryan, Susie, how do you measure success of these IG posts, et cetera? Great question.

Um, off the rant box, the, uh, how we measure them is simply like, is the form being clicked, are people engaging with it? It's a little bit different necessarily than like, is that I get a bunch of comments or did he get a bunch of likes or things like that? Like, I basically we want to see like, is it being posted on the regular? Are we hearing people reference it when they come in? If I ask them like, hey, how'd you find out about us? Then here's the thing, Ryan, when I asked that, a lot of people... This path of the... How do they say it in the business world?

Consumer behavior. The path of consumer behavior is typically like, I heard about it from a friend. I heard about it. Somebody at work or something does it. So I searched it on Google or I searched it on YouTube. I kind of checked it out. And then I went and found your guys' social media on Facebook or on Instagram because you were the one closest to the, you know, my house or you were one of the ones inside of my area. And then I started looking through your Instagram. And so like,

that is kind of a measure of success for us is like, did we highlight our community and culture through our social media platforms enough to where when somebody looked through it, they were like, yeah, I want to go check this place out. This is for me. And it's not through like, so like engagement, because we don't I don't want to like grow the social media platform just for the sake of more followers. I want to be able to reach people in my local area and then bring them into the gym. And then once we find a piece of organic content like that, we're like, hey, this did kind of well.

People were referencing this. A lot of our members shared it. That's another metric there. If they're stoked about it and it represented their gym, they'll share it. And then we take that piece of content, we could turn it into a paid ad. And then you could really start to analyze the data on it because that just serves it to way more people in your area. Of course, you got to set the radius. Don't set it out too far. But then you could start to see is that piece of content actually converting

people to click the button or do the call to action? And it's every evolving too, but by and large, that's how it is. Or they're just incompetent about and not knowing about the standard. That's that's probably the biggest reason, I guess. And like, you know that too, like being a coach and like a higher level like cross fitter and stuff. It's oftentimes, um, a lot of the newer coaches and stuff really are diving like deep into the material. Like I remember well before I got my L one, like I had already gone through that handbook, like probably like three times, like I had consumed a ton of the information before ever stepping foot inside the cert. And so I don't think that that's happening as often.

Now I just think a lot of coaches are just kind of like, oh yeah, I'm really enjoy doing this. I'm just going to do the next step in getting my L1. Of course, I have no like data on that or anything, but it just, it just kind of like feels that way, especially with a lot of the newer coaches that have been going through like our internships and stuff like that like they're very green And they they should be they're just starting so there's nothing wrong with that at all. But Yeah, there's just not a lot of Preemptive research being done often. I feel like members just don't realize they aren't getting low enough Most aren't related to actual injury or the reason. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes like when you're warming them up and you guys are going through slow squats or whatever, a couple points of performance on like a wall ball or something to use that example. And you

could see like they could go all the way down. Then in that case, yeah, it's just a like, Hey, Augustus get lower, man. Come on. And they're like, okay. But, but I'm talking about in the sense, well, you know, you know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about in the sense of like, if they can't, well, I can't play it right. Uh, that message, you just said virtuosity quality movement first. That that should be the core, uh, to the message. Yes. Exactly.

Exactly. Um, why would you, uh, ask the new coach to follow up the question of why related to not hitting the movement on, I would always, yeah, that's yes, double down on it, Ryan, exactly. Right. And like you could keep going down that rabbit hole until you could tell the rope runs out on their, on their knowledge. And there's nothing wrong with that, especially if you're a new coach. Like you want to continue to go down the Y until you find the limitation in their knowledge or the limitation in their skill and able to be able to like rehab that person up to bring them up to standard. And yeah, that's, that's a really, that's a really good, a really good question.

Like why, why aren't they hitting it? Like go, go deeper. Very true. Very true. Dude, Pedro's got Nick Johnson on the guy from proven. It's bingo in our Augustas being, oh, in our stretching and warmup. I like to make them hit the full range of motion so I could actually see what their non-workout range is like.

Yep. And that's a sign of a good, competent coach. I always make the joke that when we're talking about the interns, I'm like, okay, this is your crystal ball. It's going to give us a look into the future because you're going to know like if they're having limitations in the way that they move, like through the warmups and through the stretching and clearly there's something there like that tells you, okay, I'm going to have to have an extra set of eyes on this person with the snatches or with whatever the movement might

be because I know they have limitations versus like you watch everybody move and they're moving great. And then the workout comes and they're shortening up and you're just like, come on, man, don't be lazy. Like we're not here to, to fudge the standard or to ride the line. So you can go faster. This is not a competition. Slow it down a little bit.

Get it right. But you're absolutely correct. I guess this and like that warmup portion and making your members move through the general movements that they're going to be doing in the warmup is exactly that. That should be your test to watch everybody move and say, okay, how are they looking? Who am I going to have to have eyes on? Who needs some extra, some extra help? Who do I have to check in on?

Because I typically see them go, you know, whatever on their deadlift and now they're not. So like, is there something up with their back? Do I need to have a touch point with that person? Yes. Very important. Great points. But Pedro's got Nick Johnston on starting in one minute. And I'm going to go over there and watch that. I had a very interesting run in because you guys know the contentious relationship with Shane and the Sevon podcast crew. So when I was out there at the semifinal East last year,

it was funny because I was like trying to film some of those people. Obviously, they know I'm attached to Sevon, right? But at the same time, like, I feel like since I didn't say some of those things, maybe I could go and film with them and they're not going to be an issue. But I definitely got the freaking cold shoulder from Shane hardcore. But Nick Johnson was a G. He came right up to me and he was like, hey, what's up, man? I just want to introduce myself. I love you guys' work. Like if there's anything, you know, I could do to help create some synergy here. If there's anything I could do to like bridge, like, like he was just open.

And ever since then, he's always come up and like been decent. Like he knows how to kind of build and mend those relationships. So, um, and Pedro is fricking great, uh, with his interviews. So you guys will definitely want to go check that out. Um, because I think, uh, I think he'll be, I think he'll do good. And I think Nick Johnson was a really good call on, um, Shane and T as part to bring him into to prove it. In a recent wall ball class, I said, welcome to CrossFit where we squat low.

We squat down like this, not doing high rocks here. Oh man. Yeah, definitely. Um, and some of these shows guys, I'm not going to lie. Like I do love the clickbait titles and I have a lot of opinions on like the games and like, you know, the Lucas situations and the chase situations. But the more I was thinking about it, I was like, these videos, these types of videos aren't going to get a ton of views and that's okay. But I think that, um, I enjoy talking about the affiliates and talking shop about

coaches and wanting to continue to grow it. So we'll probably sit in this lane for a little That's okay. But I think that I enjoy talking about the affiliates and talking shop about coaches and wanting to continue to grow it. So we'll probably be sitting in this lane for a little bit here. Unless of course, some juicy gossip comes out right before the show. But anyhow, thanks for joining guys. I really appreciate it. Thanks for hanging out. Listen to my rants about media.

If you are a gym owner and you do want some help with your media, you could join us at school.com backslash media launch everything I talked about we give away completely for free in there you could go through it all the resources everything um but on top of that if you don't want to do it on your own pay us we'll do it for you you won't even have to look at it we'll post it and guess what I got some of the best creators in the CrossFit space. You guys kind of been paying attention. I've been slowly scooping them up.

We got the old head writer, Brittany Saline. She does captions and different things like that. We got Jay Vera, worked with Sevon for 12 years at CrossFit HQ, made majority of those films and everything we all know and love. And now they're all over at Media Launching, could be helping you with your stuff with your affiliate. Okay. Listen to all of them as an affiliate owner.

Awesome. Jenny, thank you for that. I work for Matt. Soon. When we go for that IPO, alright guys go over to a pager station coffee pods and wads last time you guys all showed up And said that I sent you there. I could not tell you how freaking happy I'm coming It was amazing, okay, I got a call with Tyler walkin I'm two minutes late I'll see you guys later. Go over tell Pedro. I said hi tell Nick Johnson. I said he was cool

Peace out. Thanks for hanging in guys. Catch you next time. Love you